US threatens to exit Niger as Russia's Wagner Team revels in army coup attempt

Joel Gehrke

July 31, 04:00 AM July 31, 04:00 AM

President Joe Biden has threatened to minimize armed forces ties with Niger if a coup in opposition to the West African democracy’s incumbent president proceeds, in accordance to U.S. officials nervous to reduce his bodyguards from keeping ability.

“We remind these trying this electric power seize by power that an overthrow of a democratically elected president ... would location the U.S.’s sizeable cooperation with the federal government of Niger at risk,” White Residence Countrywide Protection Council spokesman John Kirby explained to reporters Friday. “Specifically, a armed forces takeover might bring about the United States to stop stability and other cooperation with the governing administration of Niger, jeopardizing present stability and non-safety partnerships.”

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The warning reflects U.S. hopes that the overthrow of Nigerien President Mahmoud Bazoum still can be averted, regardless of presidential guard Gen. Abdourahmane Tchiani’s announcement that he has seized electric power. Nevertheless the nature of U.S. leverage in Niger also factors to the large stakes of the political disaster, as the withdrawal of American troops could simplicity stress on terrorist corporations and pave the way for Russia’s Wagner Team paramilitary forces to acquire root in a state they have very long coveted.

“After the coup in Burkina Faso in October last year, there were Telegram accounts joined to Wagner that have been brazenly stating ‘Niger is our subsequent focus on,’” Africa Centre for Strategic Scientific tests research director Joseph Siegle advised the Washington Examiner. “Russia has been interested in seeing a military takeover, which probably presents an chance for them to get extra impact.”

Tchiani is perceived to have introduced the coup in get to protect against Bazoum from changing him as head of the presidential guards, a place he has held given that 2011.

“Such a takeover would reinforce violent extremist organizations, undercut steadiness in the state, and exacerbate regional insecurity and violence,” Kirby explained. “Further, a military takeover would undermine Niger’s authority as a regional chief — and they are. The United States and Niger’s associates in Africa, as nicely as other worldwide associates, are closely looking at this problem to decide our upcoming steps collectively."

Tchiani’s maneuver has drawn condemnation from the African Union and major Western powers, but Russian authorities have taken a extra ambiguous posture. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov referred to it as “an anti-constitutional act,” but claimed that it is analogous to the Ukrainian movement that culminated in the Ukrainian parliament voting to get rid of the pro-Russian president from electric power just after security forces fired on protesters in 2014.

"This has practically nothing to do with Russia. We hardly ever interfere in [other country’s] inner affairs,” Russian Deputy Overseas Minister Mikhail Bogdanov mentioned Friday, per state-operate TASS. "Unfortunately, this is not the first time this has took place in Africa ... And I am worried that it will not be the previous. This kind of are the inner processes there.”

But Russia’s Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin reportedly hailed the Nigerien general’s emergence as a defeat for the West.

"What happened in Niger is absolutely nothing other than the wrestle of the persons of Niger with their colonizers,” Prigozhin is reputed to have reported in an audio message printed by Wagner-aligned social media accounts. “Thousands of Wagner fighters are capable of bringing purchase and of destroying terrorists and of not letting them to harm the area populations of these states.”

Russian point out media pundits also implied that the coup could be connected to Bazoum’s refusal to send any Nigerien officers to attend Putin’s summit.

"You really don't go to St. Petersburg, you get a coup,” as a person media identity claimed Friday.

Prigozhin’s forces have benefited from several coups in African states in the latest decades, which include amongst Niger’s neighbors. President Joe Biden’s administration blacklisted 3 officials from Mali on the grounds that they have enabled Prigozhin to “expand Wagner’s presence in Mali due to the fact December 2021,” with dolorous penalties in Mali and outside of. And Niger, with its wealth of all-natural means — which includes “about 5% of environment mining output from Africa's highest-quality uranium ores,” for every the Entire world Nuclear Affiliation, could present a money and geopolitical bonanza.

“The deeply disturbing pattern of military coups in the region are unable to be tolerated,” Senate International Relations Chairman Bob Menendez (D-N.J.) explained in a joint assertion with Idaho Sen. James Risch, the top Republican on the panel. “The United States will have to choose swift action to hold anti-democratic forces accountable and ship a apparent signal that attacks on constitutional democracy will not be satisfied with impunity.”

Prigozhin’s operations in Africa are of large value to the Russian government, as evidenced by his attendance at Russian President Vladimir Putin’s summit with African leaders in St. Petersburg this week, in spite of his quick but mutinous march on Moscow.

“Without investing incredibly a lot on the continent, Wagner has greatly magnified Russian influence by means of its irregular techniques,” Siegle claimed. “It just would be unstrategic for Russia to pull the rug out from less than Wagner in Africa, because they really do not have something comparable that can create the influence that they’re having.”

The coup in Mali, and Wagner Group’s subsequent emergence as a crucial electricity participant, set the stage for the scuttling of France’s counterterrorism functions in the place, as perfectly as the new regime’s latest desire that United Nations peacekeepers leave the state. Some of the 2,400 French troops in Mali had been redeployed to Niger.

“France does not recognize the authorities that emerged from the armed forces coup led by Normal Tchiani,” the French International Ministry reported Friday. "We reiterate in the strongest terms the intercontinental community’s crystal clear requires calling for the speedy restoration of constitutional get and the democratically elected civilian governing administration in Niger.”

There are “a small bit far more than a thousand” U.S. military personnel in Niger, as Kirby set it Friday, and Biden’s staff is hoping that Nigerien authorities will regard their withdrawal as a bug, not a element.

“We've produced crystal clear to leaders in Niger that our safety cooperation is predicated on rule of legislation and aid for democracy and civilian control,” Kirby reported. “And yet again, as I said at the really starting, we however believe that you will find room for diplomacy here.”

Tourist boat capsizes in southern India, at least 22 dead

May 08, 02:48 AM May 08, 02:48 AM

NEW DELHI (WHD) — A double-decker boat carrying more than 30 passengers capsized Sunday night off a beach in southern India, and more than 22 people including children died, officials said.

Police officer Abdul Nazar said the rescue teams were expecting to recover more bodies from inside the boat after pulling it ashore from the muddy waters. He said India’s National Disaster Response Force and the Indian Coast Guard personnel were engaged in rescue work and trying find those who were still missing.

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The tourist boat capsized near the estuary of Poorappuzha River in Tanur, a coastal town in Kerala state’s Malappuram district, and most of the passengers were tourists. Nazar said authorities were investigating the cause of the accident and it appeared the boat capsized due to overcrowding.

The dead included children who had come for a ride on the boat during their school vacation, Sports Minister V. Abdurahiman told the Press Trust of India news agency, adding that four people in critical condition were admitted to a hospital.

The state's chief minister, who will visit the area Monday, tweeted his condolences to the victims' families and urged the district's authorities to oversee the rescue.

Monday has been declared a day of official mourning, PTI reported, quoting a government statement.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said he was “pained by the loss of lives” and announced compensation to the victims' families in a tweet.

Boating accidents are common in India, where many vessels are overcrowded and have inadequate safety equipment.

In September 2020, 12 people drowned when a sightseeing boat capsized on the swollen Godavari River in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. In May 2018, 30 people died when a boat capsized in the same region.

Democrats re-introduce Green New Deal with new goals

Breanne Deppisch

April 20, 01:01 PM April 20, 01:05 PM

Congressional Democrats re-introduced the "Green New Deal" legislation on Thursday, a pared-down version of their original sweeping climate bill meant to shape the spending of billions of dollars authorized by last year's Inflation Reduction Act.

Bill authors Sen. Edward Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) said their goals have changed in the four years since they introduced the Green New Deal in 2019.

They also unveiled an "Implementation Guide" to help government spend the money.

"We're hoping that this guide will provide cities states, tribes, nonprofits, businesses and individuals with the tools to take full advantage of what is in here," Ocasio-Cortez said at a press conference outside the Capitol Thursday.

Markey also joined Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) to introduce the "Green New Deal for Health," which will seek to help Americans affected by climate disasters.

The presser also served as a sort of victory lap for lawmakers, who touted the original bill as the spark that helped ignite a broader grassroots movement for climate change.

"The core tenets of the green New Deal four years ago were considered unrealistic" Ocasio-Cortez said, but have now been enacted.

Green New Deal Network Director Kaniela Ing said the IRA "was the Green New Deal, phase one."

"The Green New Deal is a 10 year project," he added. "Phase two is about to begin."

EV push threatens to strain power grids and threaten reliability

Breanne Deppisch

April 12, 05:35 AM April 12, 05:50 AM

The Biden administration's push for widespread electric vehicle adoption threatens to place significant strain on aging power grids, threatening capacity during hours of peak demand and raising the risk of blackouts.

To date, the administration has announced tens of billions of dollars in federal spending to help entice families and states to embrace electric vehicles as it seeks to meet its target of having electric vehicles make up 50% of new car sales by 2030.

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The biggest incentives include the $7,500 consumer tax credit for electric vehicle purchases in the Inflation Reduction Act designed to mitigate high upfront costs for consumers, as well as the $7.5 billion in funding under the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law dedicated to building out a national network of 500,000 public EV charging stations.

An estimated 3.2 million EVs are on the roads in the United States today, representing approximately 1% of vehicles in the country.

That number is slated to rise sharply in the coming years: The Edison Electric Institute estimated that by 2030, the number of EVs in the U.S. is expected to grow to about 22 million vehicles — a massive increase that will correlate with a strong rise in demand on U.S. power grids.

But without proper planning, widespread adoption of electric vehicles could add severe strain to already-stressed U.S. power grids — threatening transformer blowouts, electricity shortages, and even requiring the use of costly new power plants to meet the heightened demand.

How much additional power EVs will require is difficult to quantify. A 2020 estimate from the Brattle Group suggested as much as $125 billion would need to be invested in grids to meet the demand.

That number includes $30 billion to $50 billion for additional power generation and grid storage, $15 billion to $25 billion for transmission and distribution upgrades, and $30 billion to $50 billion for EV chargers and infrastructure, the report found.

Otherwise, the threat of power shortages will become increasingly frequent.

The risks increase if grids fail to add the necessary transmission to bring clean energy resources online, if EV users fail to heed mitigation strategies such as charging their vehicles during the day, or if grid operators move too quickly away from fossil-fueled or "dispatchable" resources in an effort to decarbonize the grid.

Ronald Schoff, the director of the Electric Power Research Institute, told reporters this month that decarbonizing U.S. power grids while also ensuring that they can withstand growing EV demand is likely to prove a “daunting," though not altogether impossible, challenge.

“In order to hit those kinds of figures, we see a rapid buildout of renewable energy — from the 230 gigawatts [of renewable power] we have today to over 600 gigawatts potentially by 2030,” Schoff said, citing ERPI's modeling.

“We are effectively rebuilding an airplane that is in midflight,” he said.

“We are trying to switch the fuel, and we're trying to change out the wings, the wheels, the engine, all as we go,” he added. “Which is possible — but it's complicated.”

Why it matters

The supply-demand imbalance on U.S. power grids has been on stark display in recent years, especially in certain states — threatening rolling blackouts or fears of complete collapse.

Last September, a historic heat wave descended on California, bringing blistering triple-digit temperatures and pushing energy demand to a record of 52,000 megawatts.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) declared a state of emergency, and the state's grid operator activated an emergency conservation program that stretched beyond a week, successfully but narrowly avoiding more blackouts like those that roiled the state in 2020.

Earlier this year, federal regulators approved a request to extend the life of California's Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant — a once-unthinkable request from Newsom and other Democrats made in the name of reliability concerns.

Reliability concerns are also top of mind in Texas after a devastating 2021 winter storm caused 4.5 million Texans to lose power and a near-collapse of the state's power grid.

As a result, state lawmakers are weighing new bills that would shift the state’s power generation away from renewables and toward natural gas, threatening its status as a wind and solar energy powerhouse and possibly driving up costs for consumers.

Proponents of the bills say adding more fossil-fueled or "dispatchable" generation to the grid will help protect against outages from other extreme weather events.

A team of researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said in a new report that it is necessary to develop “demand mitigation strategies” to help reduce EV strain on grids as the rate of adoption increases.

One key mitigation strategy is to invest in strategically located public chargers downtown and near workplaces to encourage charging during the day, when electricity demand is lower.

These need not be the faster, Level 2 variety chargers, the researchers said. Rather, they found that the addition of even slow public chargers at workplaces can sufficiently help reduce the strain on power grids.

Workplace chargers also help use renewable sources, such as solar power, which is often in abundant supply during the day, they noted.

Oftentimes, excess solar generation is wasted in the hours of peak generation because most grids lack the battery or storage capacity required to keep it online for very long in the evening.

Solar power oversupply during daylight hours can also cause fossil fuel-powered plants to reduce their power generation to maintain the supply-demand balance, thus resulting in a resource shortage during the evenings, when solar generation abruptly retires and household demand sharply increases — the phenomenon known as the “duck curve.”

And since workplace charging cannot be the sole source of charging, researchers also recommended "delayed home charging," under which drivers would program their EVs to charge by a fixed amount overnight.

The delayed home charging solutions can eliminate peak demand from EVs by "well over 50%," the report found.

Without these mitigation strategies, they said, as much as 20% more power generation would need to be installed for power grids to keep up with the added demand from EVs.

Failure to adopt such mitigation strategies would also increase electricity prices relative to today's costs, thus raising costs of EVs over time compared to conventional gas-powered vehicles and “potentially providing a new barrier to further electrification of the transport sector," they wrote.

A Stanford University study published last fall in the journal Nature Energy cited similar concerns.

Researchers found that rising levels of EV ownership in the West could cause electricity demand to increase by as much as 25% by 2035 overall, should drivers continue the dominant trend of charging their EVs in their homes at night.

In order to reduce the strain on grids, the Stanford report also called for “significant” investments to build out more public charging infrastructure, particularly downtown and near places of work.

California and other Western states should also consider adopting new time-of-use electricity pricing structures to encourage daytime charging, they added.

Their recommendations go beyond just the West Coast, where EV adoption is highest: They warned that similar supply-demand gaps are growing for all U.S. power grids as electrification spreads, particularly due to the rise in EV sales.

“All states may need to rethink electricity pricing structures as their EV charging needs increase and their grid changes,” the study’s lead author, Siobhan Powell, said in a statement.

The MIT researchers found that workplace charging during the day reduced grid demand during evening "peak hours" by a whopping 70% in New York and 80% in Dallas, the two locations it studied closely for the report.

Decarbonizing the grid

Increasing the share of EVs in the U.S. to 50% compared to the just 5% of EVs on the road today will require a “rapid” buildout of renewable energy resources and transmission to supply grids nationwide, according to researchers.

But that's especially true the Biden administration hopes to deliver on its pledge to halve U.S. carbon emissions by 2030 compared to 2005 levels as part of the nation's commitment under the Paris climate accord.

The U.S. transportation sector accounts for 27% of the nation’s greenhouse gas emissions, meaning that electrifying the fleet is key if the U.S. hopes to deliver on its goals of fighting climate change and meeting its target set under the Paris Agreement.

Doing this presents myriad challenges for utilities, generators, and grid operators, which must develop planning models that anticipate both the rise in energy generated by EVs and what the charging patterns will be, including during hours of peak demand.

“I think that’s one of the challenges,” said former Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Chairman Neil Chatterjee, who oversaw key efforts to help reconfigure and prepare power grids for electrification during his tenure.

“Charging at the workplace, charging cars during the day — that anticipates that you drive to work and park in at work," he said. "And what if you're in an urban environment, where parking your car at the office or plugging it in there is not an option? Similarly, for residential charging — what about people who don't have garages and who don't have the ability to plug in when they come home?”

Chatterjee, now a senior adviser at Hogan Lovells, said he is optimistic that grid operators can anticipate and meet the heightened demand from EVs and add clean energy to the grid to do so, though he said these dual challenges also underscore the importance of adding transmission to the grid.

“As we just electrify more in society, we’re going to have to understand not just the surge in demand — the timing and when those surges in demand come and be ready for that. I think the system can handle it,” he said.

“But I think that also argues for why we need more transmission to get more clean power onto the grid,” he added. “So that we can kind of ameliorate some of these situations.”

Biden condemns spyware in democracies amid Israel row

Joel Gehrke

March 29, 06:29 PM March 29, 06:29 PM

President Joe Biden condemned government use of commercial spyware in a repudiation of Israeli-made surveillance technology that coincided with deepening anxiety about Israel's democracy under Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“One key focus of our democracy work will be in making sure that technologies can continue to develop that are used to advance democratic governance, not used to undermine it,” Biden told a virtual session of the 2023 Summit for Democracy. “U.S taxpayer dollars should not — should not — support companies that are willing to sell their products to convey human rights violations and violations.”

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Biden couched that statement as an assurance that U.S. agencies would not use such systems just months after revelations that the FBI considered the use of spyware developed by an Israeli tech company. Biden’s team restricted that company's access to the U.S. market in 2021, but this week’s move to renounce such programs put a spotlight on an embarrassing subject for Netanyahu as the two leaders clash about a proposed overhaul of the Israeli judiciary that Biden and Netanyahu’s domestic critics regard as a threat to Israel’s system of governance.

“Israel and the United States have had their occasional differences, but I want to assure you that the alliance between the world's greatest democracy and a strong, proud, and independent democracy, Israel, in the heart of the Middle East is unshakable,” Netanyahu affirmed in his own virtual appearance at the summit. “Nothing can change that.”

Netanyahu’s certitude was belied by the eruption of an acrimonious international dispute over the fate of a draft legislation that would cripple the Israeli Supreme Court’s ability to strike down laws passed by the Israeli parliament. On Monday, Netanyahu paused the process of passing the legislation in the face of a nationwide strike, but Biden acknowledged while traveling Tuesday that he remains “very concerned” about the ramifications of the initiative for Israeli society.

“They cannot continue down this road,” Biden said Tuesday evening. “Hopefully, the prime minister will act in a way that he is going to try to work out some genuine compromise. But that remains to be seen.”

Netanyahu was quick to retort that Israeli “makes its decisions by the will of its people and not based on pressures from abroad, including from the best of friends.” His allies were more dismissive.

“They need to understand that Israel is an independent country and no longer a star on the U.S. flag,” said Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, one of the far-right leaders who has led the charge for the law.

A more mainstream Netanyahu ally and former envoy to the United States responded with an even sharper barb by arguing that Biden should avoid “preaching democracy” so soon after the Jan. 6 crisis at the Capitol.

“I don't think a country that has experienced, not so long ago, an insurrection is in a position to be preaching democracy to Israel or in fact to anybody,” former Israeli Ambassador Michael Oren said Wednesday. “It is not exactly in a position to tell us what is democratic and what is not democratic.”

Netanyahu struck a more conciliatory note during his appearance at the democracy summit.

“Israel is undergoing, in its robust democracy, a very intensive public debate, and the debate is how do we ensure a proper democracy,” he said. “Democracy means the will of the people as expressed by a majority, and it also means protection of civil rights, individual rights. It's the balance between the two. I want to assure you that Israel was, is, and it will always remain a proud, strong, and vibrant democracy, as a beacon of liberty and shared prosperity in the heart of the Middle East.”

U.S. officials welcomed Netanyahu’s more modulated tone — “There’s a lot to like about it,” as White House national security spokesman John Kirby said Wednesday — but Biden didn’t give Netanyahu any reason to believe that he’ll drop the issue.

“As you can probably tell, strengthening democracy is a subject about which I am somewhat passionate,” Biden told the summit. "I believe this is a defining challenge of our age.”

First-Citizens Bank to buy Silicon Valley Bank

Conrad Hoyt

March 27, 01:27 AM March 27, 02:04 AM

First-Citizens Bank has reached a deal to acquire the assets of Silicon Valley Bank about two and a half weeks after the Santa Clara, California-based bank collapsed, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation announced early Monday morning.

The 17 former branches of Silicon Valley Bank are open as First–Citizens Bank & Trust Company as of Monday, according to the FDIC, and all depositors with SVB will automatically become depositors of First–Citizens Bank. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based bank has assumed all deposits of SVB, estimated to be more than $119 billion.

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"The FDIC and First–Citizens Bank & Trust Company entered into a loss–share transaction on the commercial loans it purchased of the former Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, National Association. The FDIC as receiver and First–Citizens Bank & Trust Company will share in the losses and potential recoveries on the loans covered by the loss–share agreement," the FDIC announced in its press release.

SVB was taken over by regulators as Silicon Valley Bridge Bank after the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation closed SVB due to its collapse. The purpose of establishing Silicon Valley Bridge Bank, according to the FDIC, was to allow time for the agency to "stabilize the institution and market the franchise."

The FDIC estimated that the cost of the failure of SVB to its Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF) is approximately $20 billion, but the exact cost will be determined when the FDIC "terminates the receivership."

On March 9, a day after suddenly announcing that it needed to raise $2.2 billion, the SVB was closed, with the FDIC moving its remaining assets to the newly created Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara.

The bank's collapse raised questions as to which banks were misjudging the cost and lifespan of their deposits. The yield and duration of their assets were also called into question. These fears manifested in the tanking of several leading bank stocks as depositors scrambled to retrieve their money.

Customers can find more information about the transaction on the FDIC website.

Biden’s Justice Dept. keeps hard line in death row cases

March 26, 04:38 PM March 26, 04:41 PM

CHICAGO (WHD) — Rejon Taylor hoped the election of Joe Biden, the first U.S. president to campaign on a pledge to end the death penalty, would mean a more sympathetic look at his claims that racial bias and other trial errors landed him on federal death row in Terre Haute, Indiana.

But two years on, Justice Department attorneys under Biden are fighting the Black man’s efforts to reverse his 2008 death sentence for killing a white restaurateur as hard as they did under Donald Trump, who oversaw 13 executions in his presidency’s final months.

“Every legal means they have available they’re using to fight us,” said the 38-year-old’s lawyer, Kelley Henry. “It’s business as usual.”

Death penalty opponents expected Biden to act within weeks of taking office to fulfill his 2020 campaign promise to end capital punishment on the federal level and to work at ending it in states that still carry out executions. Instead, Biden has taken no steps toward fulfilling that promise.

But it’s not just inaction by Biden. An review of dozens of legal filings shows Biden’s Justice Department is fighting vigorously in courts to maintain the sentences of death row inmates, even after Attorney General Merrick Garland temporarily paused executions. Lawyers for some of the over 40 death row inmates say they’ve seen no meaningful changes to the Justice Department’s approach under Biden and Trump.

“They’re fighting back as much as they ever have,” said Ruth Friedman, head of the defender unit that oversees federal death row cases. “If you say my client has an intellectual disability, the government ... says, ‘No, he does not.’ If you say ‘I’d like (new evidence),’ they say, ‘You aren’t entitled to it.’”

Administration efforts to uphold death sentences for white supremacist Dylann Roof, who killed nine Black church-goers, and Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev are better known. Lower-profile cases, like Taylor’s, have drawn less scrutiny.

The Justice Department confirmed that since Biden’s inauguration it hasn’t agreed with a single claim of racial bias or errors that could lead to the overturning of a federal death sentence.

It’s a thorny political issue. While Americans increasingly oppose capital punishment, it is deeply entrenched. And as Biden eyes a 2024 run, it’s unlikely he’ll make capital punishment a signature issue given his silence on it as president.

In announcing the 2021 moratorium, Garland noted concerns about how capital punishment disproportionately impacts people of color and the “arbitrariness” — or lack of consistency — in its application. He hasn’t authorized a single new death penalty case and has reversed decisions by previous administrations to seek it in 27 cases.

Garland recently decided not to pursue death for Patrick Crusius, who killed nearly two dozen people in a racist attack at a Texas Walmart. His lawyers have said he had “severe, lifelong neurological and mental disabilities.” He could still be sentenced to death under state charges.

Garland also took the death penalty off the table for a man accused in 11 killings as part of a drug trafficking ring.

Defense lawyers say that makes it all the more jarring that Garland’s department is fighting to uphold some death sentences. In one case, Norris Holder was sentenced to death for a two-man bank robbery during which a security guard died, even though prosecutors said Holder may not have fired the fatal shot.

Prosecutors decide before trial whether or not to seek the death penalty, and current death row inmates were all tried under previous administrations. Prosecutors have less leeway after a jury’s verdict than before trial.

Court challenges after trials are also often not about whether it was appropriate to pursue the death penalty, but whether there were legal or procedural problems at trial that make the sentence invalid.

“It’s a very different analysis when a conviction has been entered, a jury has spoken,” said Nathan Williams, a former Justice Department lawyer who prosecuted Roof. “There has to be a respect for the appellate process and the legal approaches that can be taken.”

A Justice Department spokesman said prosecutors “have an obligation to enforce the law, including by defending lawfully obtained jury verdicts on appeal.” The department is working to ensure “fair and even-handed administration of the law in capital-eligible cases,” he said.

Inmate lawyers dispute that prosecutors have no choice but to dig in their heels, saying multiple mechanisms have always existed for them to fix past errors.

Justice officials announced this month that they wouldn’t pursue death in the resentencing of Alfonso Rodriguez Jr., convicted of killing North Dakota student Dru Sjodin. But that only happened after a judge vacated the original death sentence.

Notably in 2021, the department agreed with lawyers for Wesley Coonce, sentenced to death for killing a fellow inmate in a mental health unit, that lower courts should look again at intellectual disability questions in his case. But the Supreme Court disagreed, declining to hear his case or remand it to lower courts.

Seven federal defendants are still facing possible death sentences.

The first federal death penalty case tried under Biden ended this month. The jury was divided, meaning the life of Sayfullo Saipov, who killed eight people in a terrorist attack on a New York bike path, will be spared. Trump made the decision to seek death and Garland allowed the case to move forward.

Garland’s criteria for letting some capital cases proceed isn’t clear, though the department often consults victims’ families. Some feel strongly that suspected or convicted killers should face death.

Inmate attorneys have asked for all capital cases to get a fresh look. Garland has appeared to take one step in that direction.

The department this year restored written guidance emphasizing that staff can be proactive in fixing egregious errors in capital cases, though none has invoked that option. Garland also re-set processes in which capital defendants can, in certain circumstances, ask the department to consent to their bids for relief.

Taylor was charged with killing restaurant owner Guy Luck in 2003. His lawyers say the 18 year old “discharged his gun in a panic” as Luck tried to grab a gun inside a van in Tennessee.

The prosecution described Taylor to his almost entirely white jury as a “wolf” whom they had an “obligation” to kill. An alternate later said some jurors were determined to get Taylor, recalling: “It was like, here’s this little Black boy. Let’s send him to the chair.”

An appeals court rejected Taylor’s bias claims in 2016, though a dissenting judge said courts must be especially diligent to guard against bias when a defendant is Black and the victim white. She also said Taylor didn’t seem to be among the worst of the worst, for whom death sentences are reserved.

Taylor revived the bias claims, though the department hasn’t directly addressed them. It has rejected many of his separate claims.

As the 2024 election looms — and with the chance of someone even less sympathetic to their claims entering the Oval Office — death row inmates know the clock is ticking.

“Trump ran out of time during his killing spree,” Taylor told the WHD via a prison email system. If elected again, “I don’t think he’d waste any time in continuing where he’d left off.”

New missile strikes injure more US forces in Syria: Report

Misty Severi

March 24, 10:59 PM March 24, 10:59 PM

More United States forces were injured in an Iranian-backed rocket attack in Syria Friday. It followed the death of a U.S. contractor on Thursday, according to U.S. officials.

At least one more U.S. citizen was injured in the attacks on two U.S. bases in eastern Syria. The exact number of injured servicemen from Friday's attacks is not clear, but five servicemen and one U.S. contractor were injured in Thursday's attack. The other attack, on a base called Green Village, did not result in any injuries, according to Pentagon Press Secretary Pat Ryder.

US BASE TARGETED AFTER BIDEN ORDERS STRIKES AGAINST FACILITIES USED BY IRGC AFFILIATES

The injured service members are in "stable" condition and have been transported to a hospital in Landstuhl, Germany, an unnamed senior defense official told WHD News.

Another U.S. defense official reported that there were three attacks on U.S. bases on Friday, according to CBS News. Defense officials have only publicly confirmed the rocket attack on Green Village.

A suspected Iranian drone, struck a maintenance facility on a coalition base in northeast Syria on Thursday afternoon killing the contractor. U.S. troops then launched retaliatory airstrikes against facilities in eastern Syria on Friday that were used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

“At the direction of President Biden, I authorized U.S. Central Command forces to conduct precision airstrikes tonight in eastern Syria against facilities used by groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC),” Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said in a statement. “The airstrikes were conducted in response to today’s attack as well as a series of recent attacks against Coalition forces in Syria by groups affiliated with the IRGC.”

The main air defense system at a U.S. military base in Northeast Syria was also allegedly not working properly at the time of the initial attack on Thursday. The reason the defensive system was "not fully operational" is not clear, and an investigation into the system failure is ongoing. It is also not clear whether the pro-Iranian forces knew that part of the system was down when they attacked.

Pro-Iranian forces in Syria said in an online statement on Friday that they have the capabilities to respond to further U.S. strikes against them, according to Reuters.

The recent attacks are not uncommon in Syria and Iraq, but fatalities are rare. Gen. Erik Kurilla, the head of U.S. Central Command, told lawmakers on Thursday that there have been nearly 80 attacks against U.S. forces by Iranian proxies since 2021.

Inside with Jen Psaki premiere to feature Hakeem Jeffries, Gov. Whitmer, and Eric Adams

Julia Johnson

March 17, 06:00 AM March 17, 06:01 AM

Former White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, who served in the role for the first 16 months of President Joe Biden's administration, is gearing up for the first episode of her new MSNBC Sunday show, Inside with Jen Psaki.

The premiere episode will air on Sunday at 12 p.m.

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Last week, Psaki attended 2023's South by Southwest conference, where she unveiled her new show's logo, as well as several big-name guests who will join her for the first episode.

The first three guests will be House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY), Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI), and New York City Mayor Eric Adams, according to a reporter who attended SXSW 2023.

According to Variety, one of the show's segments, "Don’t Freak Out," aims to offer more nuance to news and “lower the temperature” around some current events.

“I have found there are certain five-alarm fires, especially in the world we are living in today, and we will talk about them,” Psaki told the publication. “I will tell you, everything is not a five-alarm fire. Sometimes, you get focused on one aspect of something when, really, the bigger story about it is largely different.”

One of the program's other segments is called "Weekend Routine." This portion of the show will reportedly try to give viewers a better understanding of various influential politicians and public figures. The first subject: Mayor Adams.

Freshmen Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-FL), 25, is said to be a future focus of this segment.

“I will always be transparent when I believe in something,” Psaki explained ahead of her hosting debut. “I have done work before for Planned Parenthood. I’m not going to pretend I see both sides of that issue."

"I believe that people should be able to marry anyone that they want. I’m not going to both-sides that issue," she continued. “But I also hope that I can have people from different political viewpoints on the show. I do think there is a space and a place for engaged poricidal discussion and debate. That’s something during the Trump era that we lost a bit, and I think it’s important to try to bring some of it back.”

The program's executive producer Alex Lupica told Variety, “What you can’t teach is 20 years of experience on campaigns and in government.”

According to her, Psaki “has a deep curiosity about issues and the news, and an incredible work ethic. All the others stuff you can practice and learn.”

On Wednesday, a group of influential members of the Biden administration, as well as powerful media players, reportedly gathered to celebrate Psaki's debut.

One report indicates that the guests included: MSNBC President Rashida Jones, MSNBC host Andrea Mitchell, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart, MSNBC host and former Chief Spokesperson to the Vice President Symone Sanders Townsend, White House Senior Adviser Anita Dunn, and journalist Kara Swisher.

The event took place at Maydan, a restaurant in Washington, D.C.

After it airs on Sunday, Psaki's show will be available for streaming on Peacock.

This won't be the former press secretary's only gig at the network, however. She will still be included in special coverage across programs and is also developing two more of her own projects. MSNBC previously announced she will begin both an original streaming show and a social show this Spring.

She will also write a regular column for MSNBC Daily, a morning newsletter.

Austin makes unannounced visit to Iraq as 20-year anniversary of invasion approaches

Mike Brest

March 07, 06:57 AM March 07, 06:57 AM

Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin made an unannounced visit to Iraq, where he reaffirmed the U.S.'s long-term commitment in the region.

Austin's trip makes him the highest-ranking Cabinet official to visit the country since the start of the Biden administration. He met with Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani and is expected to meet other senior officials while he is in the country.

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The secretary said in a statement he's in Iraq to “reaffirm the US-Iraq strategic partnership as we move toward a more secure, stable and sovereign Iraq," according to the press pool.

Austin's visit comes weeks ahead of the 20-year anniversary of the U.S.'s invasion of Iraq in March 2003, which ultimately resulted in both the toppling of Saddam Hussein and the deaths of 185,000 and 208,000 Iraqi civilians, according to the Costs of War Project by the Watson Institute for International Studies at Brown University.

The defense secretary, who was the last commanding general of U.S. forces there after the invasion, is in the middle of a trip that includes stops in Jordan, Egypt and Israel.

His trip is designed to reaffirm to U.S. allies in the Middle East that the U.S. "remains committed to supporting their defense and increasing and strengthening the strategic partnerships with each of these countries," a senior Pentagon official told reporters on Friday, ahead of his departure.

The topic of Iran's ongoing maligned behavior is also a top issue for Austin to discuss with regional partners.

“He will obviously be speaking about the unprovoked war of choice by Russia and Ukraine,” the official added. “He will share his views about the imperative of increasing support to Ukraine now. He will also talk about the strategic implications of increasing Russian-Iranian military cooperation, which right now is killing Ukrainians but, eventually, will come back with significant and negative security consequences for the Middle East.”

House Republicans face thorny challenges in Afghanistan withdrawal investigations

Mike Brest

March 06, 06:15 AM March 06, 06:21 AM

People long thought of the 2001-2021 Afghanistan conflict as "the good war." U.S. military action in the landlocked central Asian conservative Muslim nation was a direct response to the 9/11 attacks, which claimed nearly 3,000 lives on American soil.

The public largely saw the Afghanistan war as a matter of self-defense since its Taliban government had allowed al Qaeda terrorists to train there and use the country as a base from which to plan the Sept. 11 attacks. Though more than 2,400 Americans died in military efforts fighting terrorists in Afghanistan, its moral authority shone brightly compared to the invasion of Iraq and subsequent war, a conflict of choice, which, according to critics, stood as the worst U.S. foreign policy decision of the modern era after it empowered neighboring Shia Mulsim majority Iran and more broadly destabilized the Middle East.

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What the American public wasn't counting on, though, was a chaotic and deadly withdrawal process by American and allied troops, one that harkened back to the U.S. loss in Vietnam, with American helicopters in April 1975 ignominiously taking off from the roof of their country's embassy just before communist troops rolled in.

Worst of all, congressional Republicans said in late summer 2021, problems that plagued the Afghanistan withdrawal were likely foreseeable by President Joe Biden and his military and diplomatic advisers. So, since House Republicans in November won a narrow 222-213 majority, its leaders have been chomping at the bit to investigate the U.S. military's Afghanistan withdrawal.

But GOP lawmakers are finding that simply blaming the Biden administration for the seemingly botched withdrawal isn’t so easy, as they’ve had mixed luck obtaining documents and other materials from the Biden administration. The narrative of the Afghanistan troop withdrawal being Biden’s fault isn’t as simple as they’d make it seem since Biden’s Republican predecessor, former President Donald Trump, laid much of the military and diplomatic groundwork that led to the chaotic withdrawal, completed on Aug. 30, 2021.

A Difficult Investigation

House Republicans have said they want to focus largely on the disastrous end to the war. One main question is how the Taliban's August 2021 offensive easily toppled the U.S.-backed Afghan government despite the Afghan forces having been the recipients of billions of dollars for training and aid since the United States launched operations there on Oct. 7, 2001, upon the orders of then-President George W. Bush.

In the end, Afghan soldiers effectively laid down their weapons. U.S. forces ultimately conducted a chaotic evacuation effort for U.S. citizens and Afghan allies who had worked with American troops and were at risk under the Taliban regime. Thousands of Afghan allies were left behind, and many remain there to this day, under threat as the security situation worsens.

As U.S. forces evacuated more than 120,000 civilians in the final two weeks of August after the Taliban took control, their efforts were marred by a pair of tragic events. On Aug. 26, an ISIS-K operative detonated a suicide vest killing 13 U.S. service members and roughly 170 civilians outside the gates of the airport where the evacuations were occurring. Then, on Aug. 29, U.S. forces launched a strike at what they believed to be another imminent threat to the personnel at the airport, but the target was wrongly identified. Ten civilians were killed, including multiple children, while none of them posed a threat to U.S. forces or those at the airport.

The Biden administration ending the Afghanistan War under such circumstances was an obvious target of GOP investigation once they took power. At the start of the new Congress in early January, the issue got tied to support of Rep. Kevin McCarthy's (R-CA) bid to be House speaker by incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX), Armed Services Committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-AL), and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence lead Republican Mike Turner (R-OH). The trio released a statement in support of McCarthy, saying in part that the California Republican's "Commitment to America agenda outlines ... a plan to investigate the botched withdrawal from Afghanistan."

McCarthy won the speaker's gavel on the 15th ballot, in the wee hours of Saturday, Jan. 7, after three and a half days of voting. The Foreign Affairs Committee became the first panel to get its Afghanistan investigation off the ground and running. McCaul, the new chairman, sent a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Jan. 12 asking for a litany of documents related to the withdrawal. McCaul set a response deadline of Jan. 26, two weeks later.

The State Department met that deadline late on the night of Jan. 26, a House Foreign Affairs Committee majority staffer told the Washington Examiner, but not to the committee's satisfaction.

“We indicated to the State [Department] that we understand we won’t get everything by the 26th, but expect a substantial initial production. They instead responded on the 26th with a meager 218-page production of documents that had already been FOIA’d — and were heavily redacted,” the staffer said, alluding to past Freedom of Information Act document requests. “They told us in our meeting on Jan. 19 that they would send us unredacted documents. Instead, there were extensive redactions.”

The State Department also claimed to the committee that they couldn’t begin compiling the documents until receiving a letter from the chairman, while the staff said they are not aware of any law that would bar the department from internally compiling the documents they knew he’d want because he wrote them as the ranking member.

The agency declined to detail its response to the GOP-led committee.

That kind of back-and-forth was expected once Republican-led House investigations got underway. Biden administration officials suggested what they deemed legitimate issues of public concern would warrant their response to GOP requests, while other requests, like those probing alleged misdeeds by presidential son Hunter Biden, might be ignored. Biden administration officials cited ignored subpoenas by figures from the administration of former President Donald Trump and even Republican House members themselves during the Jan. 6 committee investigation.

A State Department spokesperson directed the Washington Examiner to spokesman Ned Price's recent comments on the topic: "On the various topics and regions of oversight, we are going to continue with the approach that we have exercised with the prior Congress, with the 117th Congress, with the 118th Congress. Congress has important functions: authorization function, appropriation function, and an oversight function."

McCaul, whose 10-page letter included a long list of questions he wants answers to, is planning for public hearings on the Afghanistan withdrawal. The majority staffer called the investigation "a top priority for the committee."

Nor is McCaul the only House committee chairman eager to bring the disastrous end of the Afghanistan War back into the public sphere.

House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-KY) sent letters in December, before he took the committee gavel, requesting information and documents from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, Blinken, national security adviser Jake Sullivan, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Majorkas, and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Powers.

“The Biden Administration’s botched Afghanistan withdrawal was a humanitarian and national security catastrophe," Comer told the Washington Examiner in a statement. "U.S. servicemen and women lost their lives, thousands of Americans were abandoned, billions of taxpayer dollars are still unaccounted for, military equipment fell into the hands of the Taliban, progress for Afghan women has stalled, and the entire region is now under hostile Taliban control. Nearly two years later, the American people are still without answers and sitting in the dark."

Comer spokesman Austin Hacker told the Washington Examiner that no Biden administration officials have responded to the requests.

Trump Administration Responsibility?

While the end of the war did not go as Joe Biden intended, the situation was more complicated, having bedeviled four presidential administrations. The Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction found that the Trump administration's agreement with the Taliban in February 2020 to leave within 14 months put the Biden administration in the position of having to uphold it.

That was a "catalyst" and the "single most important near-term factor" in the Afghan military's collapse, in part because it led to a drop in morale, a SIGAR report from last May lays out.

Anthony H. Cordesman, the emeritus chair in strategy at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said the best way to learn from the mistakes in the war is to look much further back than just how it ended.

"One of the key issues is, does the committee basically focus on trying to blame the [Biden] administration for the near chaos of the worst phase of the collapse? Or does it look at the overall set of problems that led to the collapse? Historically, I think we can just focus on the most immediate crisis and never really look at the causes, and I think that if we do that again, it simply will not provide any clear guidance for the future," Cordesman told the Washington Examiner.

Cordesman believes that to get a comprehensive understanding of the collapse of the Afghan government, the scope of the investigation should “certainly” go back to “at least 2015,” during the Obama administration, specifically on how the U.S. could have begun the peace process with a date certain — without "having any clear plan for peace or examination of how the sort of negotiating options would occur."

Bradley Bowman, an expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies who was a defense adviser for former Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), thinks the national security implications from the withdrawal are too important for committees to get dragged into partisan exercises.

"I get frustrated by Democrats who just want to put it all on Trump, and I get frustrated by Republicans who just want to put it on Biden because I think neither of those approaches is fact-based or accurate. It's just not," Bowman told the Washington Examiner. "And I think the stakes that we confront and the threats that we confront as a country are just too serious for partisan gamesmanship, and I think on Afghanistan and everything else, if we're going to adopt the national security policies we need, we need more serious-minded folks who are more interested in securing our country then winning partisan points."

With the U.S. leaving Afghanistan, Joe Biden and defense officials have said their counterterrorism strategy in the region focuses largely on the U.S.'s over-the-horizon capabilities, or the ability to launch strikes without troops in the country, though it's much harder to collect the necessary intelligence required for such an action without personnel there to gather it. In the roughly 18 months since forces withdrew, the U.S. has conducted one such strike, in July 2022, that successfully targeted Ayman al Zawahiri, the successor of Osama bin Laden in al Qaeda’s leadership.

Al Zawahiri's presence in Kabul’s Shirpur neighborhood, where U.S. officials alleged Taliban leaders not only knew he was there but engaged in a cover-up in an attempt to his presence there, demonstrates the tenuous security situation in Afghanistan.

Cargo ship runs aground in Suez Canal, traffic not impacted

March 05, 02:21 PM March 05, 02:21 PM

CAIRO (WHD) — A cargo vessel ran aground in the Suez Canal on Sunday, but traffic through the global waterway was not impacted, Egyptian authorities said.

The Liberia-flagged MSC Istanbul, heading to Portugal from Malaysia, got stuck in a two-lane part of the Suez Canal, said Adm. Ossama Rabei, head of the Suez Canal Authority. He added that tugboats were deployed to help refloat the vessel.

Despite the situation, convoys were transiting through the waterway without any problems, Rabei said, without elaborating on what had caused the ship to run aground. The Suez Canal allows for passage of two convoys of vessels a day in both directions. Later Sunday and after a five-hour effort, the MSC Istanbul was refloated.

Built in 2015 and operated by the Geneva-based Mediterranean Shipping Company, the MSC Istanbul is 399 meters (1,309 feet) long and 54 meters (177 feet) wide, according to Marine Traffic, a vessel tracking firm.

The vessel’s length is similar to that of the Ever Given, a colossal container ship that crashed into a bank on a single-lane stretch of the canal in March 2021, blocking the waterway. A massive salvage effort by a flotilla of tugboats helped by the tides freed the skyscraper-sized vessel six days later, ending the crisis, and allowing hundreds of waiting ships to pass through the canal.

After it was freed, the Ever Given was held for more than three months in Egypt amid a financial dispute with authorities. Its release came after its owner reached a settlement with canal authorities over compensation following weeks of negotiations and a court standoff. Officials did not reveal details on the terms of the settlement but canal authorities had sought more than $900 million in compensation.

The canal’s blockage forced some ships at the time to take the lengthy alternate route around the Cape of Good Hope at Africa’s southern tip, requiring additional fuel and other costs. Hundreds of other ships waited in place for the blockage to end.

Sunday’s incident was the latest case of a vessel reported stuck in the key global waterway. A tanker transporting liquefied natural gas broke down in the canal last month, also without impacting traffic. In January, a cargo ship carrying corn went aground before being refloated; after a while, traffic through the waterway was restored.

The canal, opened in 1869, provides a crucial link for oil, natural gas and cargo. About 10% of world trade flows through the canal, a major source of foreign currency for Egypt.

According to the Suez Canal Authority, last year, 23,851 vessels passed through the waterway, compared to 20,649 vessels in 2021. The revenue from the canal in 2022 reached $8 billion, the highest in the Suez Canal’s history.

Hockey coach experience helps House Majority Whip Tom Emmer in new leadership role

Juliegrace Brufke

March 05, 07:32 AM March 05, 07:32 AM

Rep. Tom Emmer (R-MN) played a key role in building the new House Republican majority. Now, as House majority whip, he's helping to coach it, a familiar position going back to his ice hockey days.

Emmer, first elected in 2014 to Minnesota's 6th Congressional District in the northern and western Minneapolis exurbs, was twice chairman of the House Republicans' campaign arm, where he had a strong run. Heading the National Republican Congressional Committee in 2020, Emmer oversaw the effort that shaved down the House majority that the Democrats won two years earlier, boosting House Republicans' ranks by 14 seats. And in 2022, with Emmer again chairing the NRCC, Republicans nabbed the House majority halfway through President Joe Biden's White House term — although they only have a narrow 222-213 edge over the Democrats.

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Emmer's House Republican colleagues rewarded him by backing him for majority whip in a contest where he beat out rival Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-GA) on the first ballot and Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) on the second, by a 115-106 vote. That made Emmer the third-highest House Republican leader behind Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA).

The majority whip's job is officially to whip House votes for the party's position on leadership, but the role is as much about being the eyes and ears of the conference and knowing how to make members succeed. That's all hard-earned experience from Emmer's eight years in the House, on top of six years as a state representative, his work as a city councilman, and his work as an attorney and establishing a youth hockey team in the 1990s, where the father of seven and onetime collegiate hockey player himself learned how to get people to work together.

Emmer immediately drew on those skills in the opening days of the closely divided House. He helped McCarthy rally the support needed to secure the speaker's gavel amid a group of conservatives threatening to derail the California Republican’s bid. The effort took 15 ballots, and three-and-a-half days, before McCarthy finally won in the wee hours of Jan. 7.

“It's like problem-solving, right? People are entitled to their opinions," Emmer told the Washington Examiner about trying to overcome dissension in the House GOP ranks. "We're entitled to our emotions. We're entitled — all of that is just human stuff, right?"

Emmer recalled working in his office with House Chief Deputy Whip Guy Reschenthaler (R-PA) to figure out a way to victory for McCarthy.

"We did the [speaker] first vote that Tuesday — I can't remember how many we did before we went to adjourn. And then we ended up in here, Guy and I ended up in here with just a few members," Emmer said. "I won't get into which ones, but having a discussion — and by the way, they were on the opposite side of Kevin. So the discussion was, 'Is there a path?' How do we get there? And at that point, they weren't too inclined to talk that way.”

It helped grease the ultimate agreement that led to McCarthy's eventual win. The rules package that will govern the operations and priorities of the 118th Congress passed the House after McCarthy used it to barter a deal with conservatives in exchange for the speaker's gavel. The 55-page package includes an end to proxy voting as well as a return to the traditional "motion to vacate," which allows any member to bring forward a motion to oust the speaker.

Additionally, instead of an omnibus bill, all 12 appropriations bills will be considered and passed separately. Two new committees also were created: one to investigate China and the other to investigate the "weaponization" of federal agencies under the Biden administration. The rules package further calls for lawmakers to have 72 hours to review bills before voting on them. Moreover, the House side of the Capitol would be reopened to the public.

"It's like, 'You guys can make some significant changes — and significant changes, by the way, that the entire conference agrees with,” Emmer said about GOP House holdouts against McCarthy.

Emmer, who was the 2010 Minnesota Republican gubernatorial nominee, noted that he doesn’t expect his job to be easy over the course of the next two years. But the speaker’s race was a good “practice run” for what’s ahead, noting that hearing out members about their concerns and maintaining strong communication on where members of the conference stand will be a key part of his strategy.

“It was a great practice run for us. I mean, we literally set up our whip team on the fly, the whip counters, we couldn't rely on others to do things on the floor. So we literally stepped it up, put that together. I called it practice," Emmer said. "Imagine this is what we're going to be doing as a whip operation, so just we're going to use it, we're going to do some test things right and see how it works like a fire drill.”

The Minnesota Republican said he believes his background as a hockey coach has also provided him with a skill set that will be beneficial for his new leadership gig.

"A good coach celebrates the team when they're successful and, by the way, takes all the responsibility when they fail. I think that's the No. 1 rule," Emmer said. "And you also have to get your team to believe in the mission that you're setting out to — if they trust in the leadership, and if the leadership knows what they're doing, teams can achieve things that they really never should have been expected to achieve.”

Emmer offered a more specific hockey analogy.

“It's recognizing, like I did with every team I've coached, that every player has a role, and if that player is not performing, it affects everybody else," he said. "That comes from the top scorer on the team to the penalty kill guy that's out there for just a few minutes of every game, and you were only as strong as your weakest link. So everybody gets held to the same standard, everybody has the same consequences, and then they all start leaning on each other.”

With the razor-thin majority, Emmer acknowledged that there are likely to be significant hurdles during the course of the next two years, with factors like occasional absences potentially being a problem.

“I think the biggest challenge is going to be human issues," he said. "We've got members who have lives at home and, you know, making sure that people take care of themselves and stay healthy.”

But while Democrats utilized proxy voting during the 117th Congress, making it easier to pass legislation, Emmer said that he is glad that Republicans got rid of the pandemic-era practice. Proxy voting was being abused and shouldn’t have been extended for as long as it had, according to the congressman.

“If you don't want to come to work, then get a different job — proxy voting and Zoom hearings and all of this nonsense should never have happened," Emmer said.

China deepens diplomatic support for Russia at G-20 meeting

Joel Gehrke

March 02, 11:46 AM March 02, 11:46 AM

China helped Russia block a joint G-20 statement that signaled opposition to the war in Ukraine, just a few months after Beijing backed a similar statement at a gathering of world leaders in Indonesia.

“You have virtually everyone in the G-20 signing on to what had already been stated in Bali, and the two holdouts, of course, were Russia and China,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken told reporters in New Delhi. “So, I think we see broad consensus across the G-20 to work together, to act together, and to make commitments together.”

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China reinforced Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s opposition to the censorious language at the G-20 foreign ministers summit in India. Chinese General Secretary Xi Jinping allowed the G-20 to memorialize international opposition to the war in November when he met with President Joe Biden on the sidelines of a G-20 leaders meeting that Russian President Vladimir Putin did not attend.

“Two countries, Russia and China, did not agree,” Indian external affairs ministry spokesman Arindam Bagchi said. “You need to ask them about why exactly, on how their perspective is, or are they no longer with that text from Bali? You have to ask them.”

The diplomatic shift comes in the context of Western warnings that Beijing may provide Russia with weapons for use in the war — a line of support, Blinken emphasized, that would provoke the U.S. and its allies to impose sanctions.

“I'm not going to detail what they would be, but of course, we have sanctions authorities of various kinds — that would certainly be one of the things that we and others would look at,” Blinken said Thursday. “This concern that China is considering providing lethal military assistance to Russia, this is a shared concern. And many other partners have raised this and not just raised this with us, but it's my understanding have raised it directly with China, including here today in Delhi.”

The Bali statement itself was a compromise document that acknowledged the United Nations General Assembly votes against the war but did not bind China to any specific rebuke.

“Most members strongly condemned the war in Ukraine and stressed it is causing immense human suffering and exacerbating existing fragilities in the global economy — constraining growth, increasing inflation, disrupting supply chains, heightening energy and food insecurity, and elevating financial stability risks,” the statement said. "There were other views and different assessments of the situation and sanctions.”

Top intel officials to appear before Senate for hearing on 'worldwide threats'

Virginia Aabram

February 27, 12:16 PM February 27, 12:16 PM

Top officials in the intelligence community will appear before the Senate for a hearing on foreign security threats after a suspected Chinese spy balloon violated U.S. airspace last month.

The Wednesday, March 8, hearing will "feature testimony from the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies on the global security threats currently facing the United States." Senate Intelligence Commitee Chairman Mark Warner (D-VA) and Ranking Member Marco Rubio (R-FL) have been calling for more transparency from the Biden administration regarding the balloon the United States shot down after it flew over sensitive military sites in Montana. The military also took down several unidentified aircraft days in the days that followed.

The witness list is:

The public portion of the hearing will be followed by a closed session.

This story is breaking. Please check back for updates.