(WASHINGTON) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg is “optimistic” that the bipartisan infrastructure bill will pass the House and Senate, he said Sunday.
“We’re very optimistic the president put forward this framework because he believes that it will pass the House in the Senate and can get to his desk, and as soon as it does, it’s going to make such a difference in the lives of Americans,” Buttigieg told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos.
Congress was not able to reach a deal on President Joe Biden’s $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill as the House pushed off the vote before Biden left for his trip to the G20 summit in Italy.
In her dear colleague letter that she sent out Thursday, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) reiterated members’ support for the Bipartisan Infrastructure Framework, even though the vote has been postponed.
“The good news is that most members who were not prepared for a yes vote today have expressed their commitment to support the BIF.”
Even though there seems to be consensus among House members that they are prepared to pass the infrastructure bill, Stephanopoulos pointed out that a new ABC News/Ipsos poll shows that 69% of the public does not know much about what is in the bill, and 32% believe the bill will hurt them.
Buttigieg responded by focusing on the family-focused aspects of the bill, such as affordable child care, universal preschool and a possible child tax credit expansion. He addressed the audience directly saying, “[if] you have kids, nine out of 10 chance that you will personally benefit to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars from that child tax credit expansion.”
Stephanopoulos pressed Buttigieg over paid family leave being dropped from the bill and asked if there’s any chance of bringing the provision back.
“It’s definitely something that we believe in, and so while it is not in this framework, we’re gonna keep fighting for it,” Buttigieg said.
Despite the changes to the framework, Buttigieg defended the current state of the infrastructure package and said there’s a “sense of urgency” to get the bill passed because “American people are impatient to see pro-family policies.”
“It is the most transformative legislation for families, for health care, [and] for climate that we’ve seen, certainly in my lifetime, and it’s going to be an extraordinary achievement,” he said.
The secretary also mentioned an almost $12,500 discount on electric vehicles in an effort to “benefit the climate” and create more American jobs.
“So, look, whether you’re a policy wonk or whether you’re just trying to get through life raising your family, anybody who has ever driven on a road or a bridge, anybody who drinks water … anybody concerned about internet access coming to a neighborhood near you, this bill is for you,” Buttigieg said.
Even though Buttigieg is optimistic the bill will pass, Stephanopoulos pointed out that we have yet to see support for the bill from Democratic moderates Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
“Again, we’re the closest we have ever been,” Buttigieg said. “The president put forward this framework having talked to them and others throughout the progressive and moderate wings of our party, confident that it will pass.”
“I know you’re confident, but what are the consequences of failure?” Stephanopoulos pressed.
“Look, we just have to get this done. And I’m not just saying that politically. … We need bold action to set us up for success, not just getting through the winter but getting through the next decade and beyond,” Buttigieg said.
ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Sunday he, Rep. Liz Cheney and “a few others” are the only House Republicans “telling the truth.”
“You can fight to try to tell the truth, you can fight against the cancer in the Republican Party of lies of conspiracy of dishonesty,” Kinzinger told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview. “There are about 190 people in the Republican Party that aren’t going to say a word, and there’s a leader of the Republican caucus that is embracing Donald Trump with all he can.”
Kinzinger announced Friday he will not seek reelection to Congress next term. Among House Republicans, the Illinois congressman is one of the most prominent critics of former President Donald Trump and was one of 10 Republicans in the House to vote to impeach Trump following the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
Kinzinger, who serves on the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack, said in a video posted to Twitter the “time is now” to move on from serving in Congress.
“In order to break the narrative, I cannot focus on both a real election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide,” he said in the five-minute video. “I want to make it clear, this isn’t the end of my political future, but the beginning.”
Stephanopoulos pressed Kinzinger on what led him to make the decision.
“Just a month ago, you were confident you were going to run again, what changed? Was it the redistricting plan that was put forward by Democrats in Illinois that basically squeezed you out of your district?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“It’s a couple of things — it’s sitting back and saying, ‘OK, what happens if I win again?’ I go back, and Republicans will probably be in the majority,” Kinzinger responded. “I’m going to be fighting even harder on some of these things, and it’s been obvious over the last 10 months that nobody … I haven’t seen any momentum in the party move away from lies and toward truth.”
“Ten years ago, the Democrats in Illinois came after me, and threw me with an incumbent Republican, and they did it again — I’m not complaining, it’s redistricting,” he added. “But when Democrats do say they want Republican partners to tell the truth, and then they specifically target me, it makes you wonder.”
Responding to the news, Trump wrote “2 down, 8 to go!” in a statement referencing the 10 GOP representatives who voted to impeach him. Kinzinger became the second of the group to announce they would not run for reelection after Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, R-Ohio, did so in September.
Stephanopoulos pressed Kinzinger on whether his announcement hands Trump “another win.”
“Potentially, but I don’t think it was my decision that would hand Donald Trump a win,” Kinzinger responded. “I think it is — it’s the situation we find ourselves in.”
Kinzinger said if Trump runs for president again in 2024, “he’ll be the front-runner no doubt.”
“The Republican establishment now — whether it’s the [National Republican Congressional Committee], whether it’s Kevin McCarthy — have held onto Donald Trump,” he said. “They have continued to breathe life into him, and so actually, it’s not handing a win as much to Donald Trump as it is to the cancerous kind of lies and conspiracy” that are now the “mainstream argument of the Republican Party.”
“It’s not on Liz Cheney and I to save the Republican Party,” Kinzinger added. “It’s on the 190 Republicans who haven’t said a dang word about it, and they put their head in the sand and hope somebody else comes along and does something.”
Kinzinger and Cheney are the sole Republicans on the Jan. 6 committee. A new court filing released early Saturday morning revealed some of the records Trump is attempting to block the National Archives from turning over to the committee.
“I think if you look at that archive request and what the former president is trying to block, it is very telling,” Kinzinger said. “We are going to fight as hard as we can to get that, and the president has no grounds to claim executive privilege as he is today.”
Pressed by Stephanopoulos on whether the committee will have enough evidence to prosecute the former president, Kinzinger said he’s not comfortable making that statement yet but said the committee is continuing to learn new information every day.
“If the president was aware of what was going to happen, didn’t do anything — didn’t lift a finger to do anything about it, that’s up to the DOJ to make that decision,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — For the next two weeks, governments around the world will convene for a highly anticipated summit on climate change that has been billed as the “last best chance” to meet the goals of the Paris Agreement and prevent the worsening effects of climate change.
Here’s how to make sense of all the news around the COP26 summit.
What is the climate summit?
The climate summit in Glasgow is called COP26, which stands for the 26th “Conference of the Parties” and represents a gathering of all the countries signed on to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change and the Paris Climate Agreement.
The group meets every year to discuss progress on the fight against climate change and negotiate how to fulfill the terms of climate agreements.
Last year’s in-person meeting was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic so COP26 will be the first time countries have met since the U.N.’s latest climate science report issued a dire warning that the impacts of climate change are getting more severe and that time is running out to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
COP26 President Alok Sharma said the pressure is on world leaders to ramp up their ambition to tackle the climate crisis at the summit.
“We still have some of the most difficult questions to answer. And we’re effectively in the last half hour of the exam,” he told reporters at a press conference organized by Covering Climate Now, an organization that collaborates with journalists and newsrooms on climate coverage.
Who will be there?
President Joe Biden and more than 100 world leaders will speak in the first two days of the summit to lay out their countries’ plans to reduce emissions and possibly announce new goals or commitments on climate issues.
But some important leaders from countries that contribute the most global greenhouse gas emissions like President Xi Jinping of China and Russian President Vladimir Putin are not expected to attend, citing concerns about COVID-19.
Influential figures like former President Barack Obama and the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are also expected to attend to discuss the importance of taking action to limit the impacts of climate change. Climate activists like Swedish teenager Greta Thunberg are expected to lead large protests outside the official venue, pressuring world leaders to do more.
After the high-profile remarks to start the summit, other officials and negotiators from each country will hammer out technical documents detailing their agreements on climate policy and higher-ranking officials like Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry will meet with their counterparts to try to negotiate any sticking points.
What’s on the agenda?
Negotiators for this year’s climate summit will face questions about how to limit the impact of climate change by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, as well as how to help countries adapt to climate change in parts of the world where the effects are getting more severe.
The most critical item on the agenda for the climate summit is increasing nearly every country’s commitments to decreasing climate-warming emissions as quickly as possible. Even with current promises to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement, the U.N. says the world is set to miss that goal to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius.
The latest U.N. analysis says current commitments put the world on track for 2.1 to 2.7 degrees Celsius of warming, which would trigger more dangerous impacts of climate change like worsening severe weather and drought conditions that could start to hamper food production in parts of the world or make it more difficult for communities to survive.
“The time has passed for diplomatic niceties,” U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres said at a U.N. meeting on climate action this week.
“If governments — especially G-20 governments — do not stand up and lead this effort, we are headed for terrible human suffering,” he added.
In addition to ramping up efforts to prevent climate change from getting worse, negotiators will also confront questions about how to deal with impacts of climate change that are already being felt and how to support vulnerable countries struggling with changes like worsening storms and sea-level rise.
The Paris Agreement promised $100 billion a year in financial support for developing countries to combat climate change, but wealthier countries expected to contribute the most to that goal have not followed through, so negotiators will need to come up with a plan to meet that goal as well as discuss how much to increase it going forward as the impacts of climate change continue to worsen. That funding is meant to both help poorer countries build renewable energy infrastructure to avoid expanding fossil fuel use and make changes to adapt.
But representatives of those countries say even that isn’t enough.
Pelenise Alofa, national coordinator for the Climate Action Network in Kiribati, said COP26 will be important for the future of her island nation and the conversation about climate finance should include compensating countries experiencing effects of climate change for helping residents relocate or recover from worsening or more frequent severe storms.
Alofa said Kiribati and other island nations face an existential threat from climate change as sea-level rise and worsening tropical storms threaten their ability to live and produce food.
“As someone living in the islands in Kiribati, loss and damage from climate change is now a permanent feature of our lives. It is not about a one-time event or disaster. It is about rising sea levels that threaten to totally swallow our homes,” she told reporters in a briefing.
What does success look like?
The U.N. secretary general has said there is a “high risk of failure” from COP26, but there is not a single outcome that will solve all the challenges that come with the global climate crisis.
Experts say they’ll be watching to see if the Glasgow negotiations make tangible progress toward the goals of the Paris Agreement, including watching whether countries like China increase their commitments to reducing greenhouse gas emissions and burning fossil fuels, and if parties are able to agree on steps that can lead to real, measurable results.
But ultimately, even a successful COP26 will still be more of a step in the right direction than a final solution to the climate crisis.
“We have to have significantly turned the corner by next year or the year after or else we have no shot of keeping 1.5 [degrees Celsius] alive,” Jake Schmidt, senior director of the international climate program from the Natural Resources Defense Council, told ABC News.
(NEW YORK) — Negotiations on the infrastructure and social program bills have consumed Capitol Hill for months. Still, a new ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday finds Democrats are failing to sell the legislation to the public, who are broadly unaware of what is in the spending packages or skeptical they would help people like themselves, or the economy, if signed into law.
President Joe Biden was unable to secure a legislative win before departing on his second foreign trip since taking office, even after he laid out a framework for the package focused on social programs and climate change around which he believes Democrats can rally. He pitched that package, which no longer includes paid family and medical leave or free community college, as a “historic economic” opportunity on Thursday, but this poll reflects the continued confusion and intraparty mistrust over these bills.
Although a majority (55%) of the public is following news about the negotiations at least somewhat closely, about 7 in 10 (69%) Americans said they know just some or little to nothing about what’s in both bills. Fewer than half (31%) said they know a great deal or good amount. Despite Republicans having sat on the sidelines while the White House works exclusively with congressional Democrats to get both bills to the president’s desk, the lack of knowledge extends across all parties.
Americans also do not feel like these bills would help them or the U.S. economy if they become law.
The ABC News/Ipsos poll, which was conducted using Ipsos’ KnowledgePanel, found that a plurality (32%) of Americans think the bills would hurt people like them if they became law, while fewer (25%) think it would help them. Nearly 2 in 10 (18%) think the bills would make no difference, and 24% said they didn’t know.
Even among Democrats alone, fewer than half (47%) think the two bills would help people like them. A quarter of Democrats think the bills would make no difference for people like them and about 2 in 10 (22%) don’t know how they would impact their lives. Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Republicans think the bills would hurt people like them, and so do about 3 in 10 (29%) independents.
The American public is evenly divided — 34% to 34% — over whether they believe these bills would help or hurt the U.S. economy if they become law. Very few (6%) think the bills would have no effect on the economy, and a quarter don’t know. Democrats are much more likely to think the legislation would help the economy if enacted than Republicans and independents, 68% compared with 7% and 29%, respectively.
Biden’s inability to get these bills over the finish line has not helped the president’s mediocre approval ratings on an array of issues, which have solidified since the Sept. 24-28 ABC News/Ipsos poll.
His handling of the coronavirus pandemic and rebuilding the United States’ infrastructure are the only issues where a majority of the public approves of Biden — 56% and 52%, respectively — and neither is an improvement compared with the last ABC News/Ipsos poll. On both issues, he’s bolstered by near-universal support from members of his own party, as well as about half of independents.
Just under a majority of Americans approve of the president’s handling of climate change (48%) and the economic recovery (47%). Again, relatively high support among Democrats — 78% and 86%, respectively — keeps his approval from sinking too far.
Republicans are generally unified against the president on all issues, but overall approval for Biden takes the biggest hit on issues where Democrats’ and independents’ confidence drops.
While about half (49%) of independents approve of Biden’s handling of climate change, on other issues — economic recovery, gun violence, crime and taxes — independents’ approval hovers around 4 in 10.
The president’s overall approval dips below 40% on three issues: gun violence (39%), Afghanistan (34%) and immigration and the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border (31%).
Fewer than two-thirds (64%) of Democrats approve of Biden’s handling of gun violence. A similar share (62%) of Democrats approve of the president’s handling of Afghanistan. On immigration, Biden is barely holding onto majority support among his own party, with just 54% approving of him on this issue.
Only around 3 in 10 independents approve of Biden’s handling of immigration and Afghanistan, 29% and 31%, respectively.
METHODOLOGY: This ABC News/Ipsos poll was conducted by Ipsos Public Affairs’ KnowledgePanel® Oct. 29-30, 2021, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 514 adults. Results have a margin of sampling error of 4.7 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions were 31%-24%-36%, Democrats-Republicans-independents. See the poll’s top-line results and details on the methodology here.
ABC News’ Ken Goldstein and Dan Merkle contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Construction of an oil pipeline deep in America’s heartland has become one of the most contentious environmental battles in the country.
The thousand-mile long Line 3 pipeline transports Canadian tar sands oil — a high-emissions fossil fuel often described as the world’s dirtiest oil — through indigenous lands and waters, including the vulnerable headwaters of the Mississippi River.
The project has been the target of multiple court battles and a years-long massive civil disobedience campaign led by indigenous women in Minnesota, resulting in nearly 900 arrests, including dozens around the U.S. Capitol earlier this month.
“Seeing the expansion of Line 3 tar sands into sensitive wetlands while there is a massive drought is really jarring and it should be for any person who is worried about the climate,” Tara Houska, a tribal attorney who has fought the project for years and co-founded a Line 3 opposition group, told ABC News.
Enbridge, the Canadian corporation responsible for the pipeline, describes Line 3 as a safety-driven replacement of an aging line first put in during the 1960s.
“We made the decision that it would be better for us, better for society, better for the communities that the pipeline runs through to actually look at replacing that pipeline,” Enbridge Chief Communications Officer Mike Fernandez told ABC News.
However, many critics refer to the project as an expansion. More than one third of the new Line 3 follows an entirely new route and the new, wider pipe will roughly double the operating capacity of the old version, according to state documents.
Enbridge argues they are restoring the line’s historic capacity which has not been operational for more than a decade. The move comes after some leading scientists pushed for a moratorium on tar sands growth all together.
“Climate scientists say, ‘Leave the tar sands in the ground.’ Full stop,” said Laura Triplett, an environmental scientist with Gustavus Adolphus College who testified against Line 3 during the permitting process.
Oil began flowing through the controversial pipeline on Oct. 1, marking a long-sought victory for its corporate owner and a devastating defeat for its opponents, who had pleaded with the Biden administration to halt the project.
“I am appalled by the lack of action on something like this,” Houska said. “You can’t be the climate president when you’re allowing through one of the largest tar sands infrastructure projects in North America. That’s his climate legacy,” she said.
The White House declined to provide a representative to be interviewed for this report, and did not respond to a request for comment.
Biden and the tar sands
Canadian tar sands oil requires more emissions to extract and transport than conventional oil. It also results in more carbon emissions when burned, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists.
On the campaign trail, President Joe Biden described the Keystone XL pipeline as “tar sands that we don’t need — that in fact is very, very high pollutant.” He canceled Keystone XL shortly after taking office but has so far declined to intervene against Line 3, and his Department of Justice has defended the project in court.
“When I think about how much carbon is going to be emitted by this, I actually literally feel nauseous,” Triplett told ABC News.
Line 3 could emit between 35 and 193 million tons of CO2 annually, according to the project’s environmental impact statement — the latter being the equivalent of 45 new coal-fired power plants coming online or 38 million cars being added to the road, according to multiple independent scientists.
“If this pipeline is going to run and bring these tar sands oil to market, we have a much more even massive job to do, reducing emissions elsewhere,” Triplett said.
Enbridge argues that if the pipeline weren’t built, oil would have to get to market through even more carbon-intensive means such as truck or rail lines.
Triplett says there are road maps for how the U.S. can transition to a lower carbon emissions economy. “But none of those plans include building a brand new big pipeline to bring tar sands oil to market,” she said. “That’s not part of any transition. That’s terrifying.”
Dividing communities in its path
On the ground, the project has divided local indigenous communities in its path. Three tribes — the Red Lake Nation, the White Earth Nation and the Mille Lacs Band of Ojibwe — have opposed the project throughout and sued to halt construction. The tribes say the project violates their treaty rights and fear the pipeline will eventually leak, contaminating sacred waters and vital wild rice beds.
Two other local tribes — the Fond du Lac Band and Leech Lake Band — came to agreements with Enbridge to allow Line 3 to pass through their reservations. They also agreed not to oppose the project, in exchange for an undisclosed sum of money and promises of future infrastructure investments, according to local reports. As of May 2021, Enbridge says it has spent $250 million with Tribal nations, communities and contractors.
Enbridge’s agreement with the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe included removing most of the old Line 3 pipeline from the reservation and building the new pipeline on lands to the south. Details of the agreement are not public, but the Bemidji Pioneer reported that Enbridge agreed to a broad commitment with the tribe to work on green energy projects.
The Leech Lake Band did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
In the case of the Fond du Lac Band — which originally opposed the project — leaders say the tribe was put in an difficult position after Minnesota authorities forced them to choose between allowing the pipeline to run along its existing route through the reservation or agreeing to a route south of the reservation that would still cut through treaty territory, where tribal citizens hunt, fish and gather.
“There is no perfect outcome here,” tribal council Chair Kevin Dupuis Sr. told MPR News at the time of the deal. “All remaining options threaten the environment for all, and livelihood of the Indigenous people of Minnesota.”
Fond du Lac member Rob Abramowski, who grew up on the reservation and has worked on Enbridge projects for years, including Line 3, welcomed the project.
“Enbridge went out of their way to encourage Native people to work on the pipeline,” said Abramowski, who is one of the 500 Native Americans out the roughly 4,000 temporary workers Enbridge hired to construct Line 3, according to the company.
Abramowski says the jobs are more than just temporary. “Because of the experience that they’re gaining here today, they can carry that as far as they want,” he told ABC News. Abramowski believes the new pipeline will be safer and less likely to spill, but most important to him is that his tribe appears to now have a seat at the table.
“The major part is that my reservation leaders have a say in what happens here, not only today, but in the future,” he said.
Other Fond du Lac members see it differently.
“The Fond du Lac Band cannot speak for all of the other Anishinaabe Nations,” Taysha Martineau, a fellow Fond Du Lac member and prominent Line 3 opponent told ABC News.
“When they approved Line 3, and they started construction, they took away the voice of the wider nation,” Martineau said.
The Fond du Lac Band Tribal Business Council declined ABC News’ request for an interview and did not respond to a request for comment.
Houska, who comes from a small town in Northern Minnesota, co-founded one of the groups most known for conducting direct actions: Camp Namewag. A former intern at the Obama White House and later Native American Affairs Adviser to the Bernie Sanders campaign, Houska says she’s “participated in the process as much as anyone.”
“What I observed over time was a process that was so incremental in its approach, that was incredibly inefficient in addressing existential problems like a habitable planet to live on,” she said.
Spills, past and present
Enbridge pipelines have resulted in two of the largest inland oil spills in American history. In 2010, an Enbridge pipeline dumped nearly 1 million gallons of tar sands oil into a tributary of the Kalamazoo River in Michigan, as Enbridge pipeline controllers ignored repeated leak warnings for 17 hours before shutting down the pipeline, according to the National Transportation Safety Board.
Enbridge CCO Mike Fernandez says the company spent $5 million cleaning up the spill and learned valuable lessons that resulted in hiring and training more staff. “It was a big wake-up call for us as a company,” he said.
However, incidents during the construction of Line 3 have opponents feeling less than optimistic. Minnesota authorities have reported 28 known drilling fluid spills during construction, including a spill at the headwaters of the Mississippi. Enbridge was also fined $3.3 million for illegally piercing an aquifer in January, which resulted in the loss of at least 24 million gallons of water.
“We were drilling, we found the problem. We took the problem to the State Department of Natural Resources,” Fernandez told ABC News. “They assessed a fine and we are going to pay it.”
Despite the project coming online this month, opposition groups have vowed to continue to fight Line 3, saying that their efforts have forced the fossil fuel industry to expect heightened resistance in the years to come.
“They know that we are a threat to their bottom line. And that Indigenous resistance and all of the people who feel inspired by that resistance is very threatening,” Houska said.
“I think we’re that stubborn thorn that just won’t go away. I mean, I think it’s pretty reflective of native people generally,” she said. “We underwent genocide, then cultural genocide, then displacement or removal. We’re still here after all that. And we aren’t going away.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is considering making settlement payments to migrants who were separated from their children during the Trump administration’s “zero-tolerance policy,” according to two people familiar with the planning.
Enacted in April of 2018, the policy that led to family separation drew widespread condemnation for removing children who crossed the border with their families and putting the adults into CBP custody, as opposed to keeping families together.
An Inspector General report in January found that former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was the “driving force” behind the policy, which was stopped in June 2018 after then-President Donald Trump signed an executive order.
The ACLU, among others, sued on behalf of families — seeking damages. The Wall Street Journal first reported on the payments, citing sources familiar with the matter saying an amount of around $450,000 a person — which could amount to nearly $1 million a family — was being discussed.
Officials who spoke with ABC News stressed on Friday that payment amounts have not yet been determined and could fluctuate per individual.
Former acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf slammed the proposal as “insulting to American taxpayers” and “dangerous” in an interview with ABC News on Friday.
“It appears as though they refused to go into court and to advocate against paying individuals or compensating individuals that have knowingly broken the law,” he said.
The Biden administration’s family reunification task force found that 3,913 children were separated from their families under the Trump administration.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas met with families who were separated in August and has previously called the policy “cruel.”
(NEW YORK) — Letitia James, the attorney general of New York whose sexual harassment investigation led to the resignation of former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, announced a run for governor Friday, mounting a formidable primary challenge to Kathy Hochul, the state’s first female governor.
James could become the state’s first Black governor and the nation’s first Black female governor.
James announced her candidacy in a video and through a campaign website highlighting her election promises and past work as attorney general.
“New Yorkers need a governor who isn’t afraid to stand up to powerful interests on behalf of the vulnerable,” James said.
Two other Brooklyn Democrats, New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio, are also interested in the job, along with Long Island Democratic Congressman Tom Suozzi.
In August, James released a report that found Cuomo sexually harassed multiple women, including a state trooper on his security detail. Cuomo attacked the report as politically motivated.
New York State Republican Committee Chairman Nick Langworthy called James a “radical left ideologue” who “turned a blind eye to Cuomo’s unethical behavior and corruption … when it suited her needs” in a statement Friday.
As attorney general, James has bolstered her profile with a lawsuit against the National Rifle Association. Her office is also investigating whether former President Donald Trump manipulated the value of some of his real estate holdings for tax and insurance purposes.
“I’ve sued the Trump administration 76 times,” James mentioned in her announcement video. “But who’s counting?”
She previously served in the New York City council and as the city’s public advocate.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration on Friday said it would make another attempt to end the “Remain in Mexico” protocols, a Trump administration initiative that forced tens of thousands of asylum seekers back into Mexican border towns to await their court dates in the U.S.
The administration has been under pressure from immigrant advocacy groups to end the policy but has met with legal roadblocks.
In a briefing before the announcement, Department of Homeland Security officials told reporters they had reassessed the policy, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, and Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas once again determined it was appropriate to end it despite acknowledging its impact in reducing unauthorized migration. One official pointed out that multiple factors can drive migration, but based on the department’s own assessment, the protocols had been effective in deterring border crossing attempts.
“In looking at the data from 2019, there is a fairly clear reduction in encounters at the land border starting around the time that the MPP was implemented across the entire border,” one DHS official said. “That said, you know, correlation is not necessarily causation.”
However, the officials said the humanitarian consequences outweigh the potential benefits of reduced illegal entries. Humanitarian organizations have documented high rates of murder, kidnapping and extortion on top of squalid conditions facing those subjected to “Remain in Mexico.”
A new policy memo to DHS officials dives deeper into the decision-making process by considering potential costs to states as well as potential improvements that could be made to MPP. However, the officials maintained that certain issues with returning migrants back across an international boundary will persist. Immigrant advocacy organizations have been principally concerned with the lack of access to legal services for migrants who are sent back.
“Once individuals are returned across an international border, there’s limited opportunities for the United States to be able to affect their safety and security once they’re in the control of another sovereign nation,” one DHS official said.
The acknowledgment of MPP’s deterrence capabilities is a significant concession for the Biden administration. For months, Republicans have condemned the administration for repealing “Remain in Mexico,” citing the decision as a driving force behind the record number of arrests at the border.
Biden suspended “Remain in Mexico” on his first day in office and Secretary Mayorkas attempted to officially end it in June. A federal judge ordered the Biden administration to reinstate the protocols last August in response to a legal challenge by the state of Texas and Missouri. The Justice Department continues to fight the order and hopes an appellate court will reverse it or remand the decision back to the district court.
Embedded in the district court’s order to reinstate was a suggestion that the administration needs to be capable of either detaining every migrant who attempts an illegal entry or subject them to “Remain in Mexico.” MPP was implemented by the Trump administration in 2019 and, as DHS officials point out, Congress has never provided enough funds to detain every unauthorized migrant.
Much of the administration’s ability continue the practice relies on cooperation from the Mexican government, which was initially opposed to the idea, but has since considered conditions under which it could be reinstated. Talks with Mexican officials are ongoing, DHS officials said.
Depending on whether the Mexican government will agree, the Biden administration is on track to reinstate “Remain in Mexico” by mid-November. Oral arguments are scheduled in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals on Nov. 2.
(WASHINGTON) — Illinois Rep. Adam Kinzinger, one of two Republicans serving on the House Jan. 6 select committee, and one of the most vocal critics of the GOP’s embrace of former President Donald Trump and the “big lie,” announced on Friday he is not running for reelection to Congress next term.
In referencing his first campaign, Kinzinger made the announcement in a nearly five-minute video to supporters and posted to social media.
“I also remember during that campaign saying that if I ever thought it was time to move on from Congress I would, and that time is now, but let me be clear, my passion for this country has only grown. My desire to make a difference is bigger than it’s ever been. My disappointment in the leaders that don’t lead is huge. The battlefield must be broader and the truth needs to reach the American people across the whole country,” he said.
“I cannot focus on both a re-election to Congress and a broader fight nationwide,” he said.
(ROME) — After meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican on Friday, President Joe Biden will participate in a G-20 weekend summit in Rome, the first time leaders of many of the world’s largest economies have met in person since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The pandemic, increasingly urgent concerns about climate change, disruptions to the economic supply chain and uncertainty over the future of Afghanistan are some of the major topics on the summit agenda and likely to come up in Biden’s other meetings with world leaders.
The G-20 summit in Rome comes just before many of the leaders will participate in the COP26 climate conference starting Monday in Glasgow, Scotland.
Here’s are some key things to watch for:
‘America back’ or ‘America first’?
Biden declared “America is back” when he took office — a pledge to affirm, with tested and steady leadership, the alliances strained by four years of President Donald Trump.
But the chaotic withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan and the swift collapse of the country to the Taliban frustrated and stunned some European leaders, who were forced to deal with policy fallout as well as resettling refugees from the war-torn country.
That, together with the Biden administration’s reluctance to ease travel restrictions for foreigners until the fall — much later than Europe — has led some allies to wonder whether “America First” didn’t leave the White House with Trump – and whether America can be counted on to keep its military and foreign policy commitments.
“The real question looming large over the summit is, how reliable will the United States be in the coming years? Not just because of the prospect that Trump could return, but where does Biden see America’s responsibilities shifting?” Brett Bruen, a former U.S. diplomat, told ABC News.
“There certainly are a lot of people after the withdrawal from Afghanistan that are wondering about their own security,” he said.
Plans for the pandemic, supply chain challenges
The G-20 leaders will meet in person for the first time since 2019 as the world is on track to miss the World Health Organization and United Nations’ goal to vaccinate at least 40% of the population in every country by the end of 2021.
The U.S. frustrated world health officials by moving forward with COVID-19 vaccine boosters — even as experts pushed to first use supplies to vaccinate more people across the developing world. Biden has promised to ship more than 1 billion vaccine doses abroad by next fall — but a key question is whether leaders will reach any agreement to speed up the production or delivery of vaccines to poorer nations.
White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Monday also told reporters that Biden hopes to improve “transparency” and communication between countries around supply chain bottlenecks. Speaking to reporters on Air Force One on Thursday night, Sullivan said Biden would convene a supply chain meeting with other world leaders in Rome.
On the economic front more broadly, the U.S. also wants the G-20 countries to promote new forms of debt relief for emerging economies that have struggled during the pandemic.
The U.S. will also tout the new international agreement on a global corporate minimum tax of 15%, which, if approved by Congress in the United States and lawmakers in the countries party to the deal, would make it more difficult for multinational corporations to avoid paying taxes, potentially raising billions of dollars in revenue.
US and France: Repairing the oldest alliance
The last time they met in Europe, Emmanuel Macron and Joe Biden laughed and clasped hands at the beach in England, huddling for longer than scheduled; the French president declared that America was “definitely” back.
Their upcoming meeting on Friday ahead of the G-20 in Rome could have a different tone, after the U.S. infuriated its oldest ally by announcing a new security agreement with the United Kingdom and Australia that scuttled a lucrative French military contract to provide a new submarine fleet to Australia.
The White House has run a full-court press to smooth things over with Paris after Macron briefly withdrew his ambassador to Washington.
Several senior Biden administration officials have met with him in Paris, and Vice President Kamala Harris will travel to Paris next month.
Separately, Biden could meet with other world leaders on the sidelines of both conferences. Sullivan on Thursday night confirmed that Biden is expected to meet with Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Scotland and will hold a meeting with the leaders of the United Kingdom, France and Germany in Rome on the status of negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program.
‘Build Back Better’ or ‘blah, blah, blah’?
The White House had hoped to broker a major social policy deal with congressional Democrats before Biden left for Europe Thursday — and with it, new U.S. commitments to fight climate change. But having failed to do so, how will Biden sell any potential progress abroad when his party failed this week to pass a package that included $550 billion in clean energy and climate investments? A figure that experts say is insufficient to meet the Paris climate agreement commitment to reduce 2005 emissions levels by 50% by 2030.
Or, as activist Greta Thunberg — who will be in Scotland — put in remarks in September, will experts and activists see Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan as more “blah blah blah”?
John Larson, a director of power and energy research at the Rhodium Group, told ABC News that the still-developing Democratic climate plan “could be the single largest action by Congress, if not the federal government, to reduce greenhouse gas emissions ever.”
If an agreement is eventually cemented in Washington, its terms could eventually give Biden more credibility to extract greater climate commitments from like-minded G-20 leaders, Matthew Goodman, a senior vice president for economics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said on a call with reporters ahead of the president’s trip.
Chinese, Russian leaders to skip attending in person
China’s President Xi Jinping will be participating in the G-20 summit virtually and will not attend the COP26 climate conference in Scotland. It’s a blow to the ambitions of the U.S. and other nations seeking to curb emissions given that China is the largest carbon emitter and home to half of the coal-fired power plants in the world.
At a time when some experts worry that Chinese military tests could prompt a new Cold War-style arms race, could the in-person meetings Biden has in Europe on the sidelines of the summits help align the U.S. and its allies against what the Biden administration has called “the biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century?”
Bruen, the former diplomat and Obama administration official, called Xi Jinping’s absence a “strategic mistake” that would work in Biden’s favor.
“The one thing that Joe Biden can do better than almost any other modern American president is to charm the socks off of even his deepest skeptics,” he said. “I would see this this as a moment for Biden to really try and use the powers of personal charm to advance what he wants when it comes to getting our fellow allies, and those that care about these issues, to do more than just say in private that they’re concerned.”
Another notable in-person absence: Russian President Vladimir Putin.
