Apple CEO slams internet giants ahead of new privacy features
InternationalJan 29. 2021Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Technology television interview in San Jose, Calif., on June 5, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Natalia Drozdiak, Mark Gurman
Apple Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook lambasted tech giants for “data exploitation” and called for reform around the practices of selling user data to target ads.
The iPhone maker is rolling out new privacy features that restrict how mobile apps such as those from Facebook and Google gather data about users to target ads.
“If a business is built on misleading users, on data exploitation, on choices that are not choices at all, then it doesn’t deserve our praise, it deserves reform,” Cook said Thursday at the online Computers, Privacy & Data Protection Conference.
Without naming specific businesses, Cook criticized companies’ algorithms for perpetuating the spread of disinformation and conspiracy theories, saying “we can no longer turn a blind eye to a theory of technology that all engagement is good engagement.”
The Apple CEO also reiterated calls for a U.S. privacy law much like the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation. He said it’s time for “worldwide laws and new international agreements that enshrine the principle of data minimization, user knowledge and data security around the globe.”
Following an update to Apple’s iPhone and iPad operating system software this spring, users will be prompted to explicitly permit or deny developers the ability to track their data across apps or websites.
It’s expected many consumers will choose not to allow this, making it harder for apps to show users ads based on their past online activity, drawing the ire of Facebook and other advertising companies that rely on such abilities.
In full-page newspaper ads in December, the social network attacked Apple over the plans, saying the features would hurt small businesses and on Wednesday, Facebook told analysts the iOS changes could curb its revenue growth. A group of French online advertisers last fall filed an antitrust complaint against Apple, warning publishers’ ad revenue could plunge by as much as 50% as result of the update.
Apple says the features will give users more transparency about how their data is used, and in a way that still enables advertising.
The remarks come after Apple on Wednesday issued a cautious outlook for its wearables and services sales, despite posting quarterly revenue that topped $100 billion for the first time. The company also published a separate report detailing how companies track user data across websites and apps, alongside quotes from privacy advocates supporting Apple’s new measures.
The Apple CEO last spoke at a Brussels privacy conference in 2018, when he lashed out at Facebook and other Silicon Valley competitors that collect user data, equating their services to “surveillance.”
Since then, the regulatory situation for Apple in Europe has only darkened. Apple faces EU antitrust investigations concerning its app store and payments system and, along with other tech giants, a threat of steep fines and business break-ups loom as part of legislation proposed by the European Commission in December. It’s also facing lawsuits in several European countries over misleading claims about the battery life of older iPhones.
Biden team slams China claims in swift calls to Asia allies
InternationalJan 29. 2021Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister, wears a protective face mask as he delivers a policy speech in the lower house of parliament in Tokyo on Jan. 18, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Kiyoshi Ota.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · Isabel Reynolds
President Joe Biden and his team staked out early opposition to Chinese territorial claims in a series of calls to Asian allies, as Beijing warned that trying to contain the country was “mission impossible.”
Biden reaffirmed in a telephone call with the Japanese prime minister the U.S.’s commitment to defend uninhabited islands controlled by Japan and claimed by China that have been a persistent point of contention between the Asian powerhouses. Meanwhile, newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken rejected Chinese territorial claims in a call with his Philippine counterpart and emphasized U.S. alliances in talks with top Australian and Thai officials.
While some observers had anticipated a ratcheting down of U.S.-China tensions under Biden, the series of calls didn’t indicate any softening of security policies in Asia. Chinese President Xi Jinping earlier this week called for the world to abandon “ideological prejudice” and shun an “outdated Cold-War mentality” as he signaled in his first international address since Biden entered the White House that Beijing would continue to forge its own path regardless of criticism.
Over the weekend, China sent an early warning to the new U.S. administration by flying 13 warplanes into the Taiwan Strait. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Wu Qian told a regular news briefing Thursday that trying to contain China was “mission impossible” and urged the U.S. military to use the “new starting point” to bring relations back on track.
Biden’s pledge to Japan, which was made in his first call since taking office with Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, poses the risk of the U.S. becoming embroiled in any potential conflict arising in the dispute between China and Japan, the U.S.’s biggest ally in Asia. Suga and Biden spoke in the early hours of Thursday Japan time, according to a statement issued by Foreign Ministry.
“President Biden expressed his unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan, including the application of Article 5 of the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty to the Senkaku islands,” the ministry said. Biden also expressed a commitment to “extended deterrence,” both governments said, a term that refers to the potential use of nuclear weapons to defend an ally.
Vessels from Japan and China often come into close contact around the East China Sea islands — called the Senkakus in Japan and the Diaoyus in China — raising concerns of a bigger confrontation. China this month passed a law allowing its coastguard vessels to fire on foreign ships, in a development that could ratchet up tensions with several of its Asian neighbors.
The White House said in its statement that Biden and Suga discussed “the United States’ unwavering commitment to the defense of Japan,” specifying that this covers the Senkaku islands. Japan, whose pacifist constitution limits the activities of its military, seeks regular assurances from the U.S. — its only defense ally. Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin have made similar comments on island defense in talks with their Japanese counterparts in recent days.
Earlier this week, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said the Biden administration was approaching its relationship with Beijing with “patience” and plans to review hard-line policies that were a hallmark of Donald Trump’s presidency.
Blinken told Philippine Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin the U.S. rejects China’s maritime claims in the South China Sea if they exceed the maritime zones that China is permitted under international law, and pledged to stand with Southeast Asian claimants in the face of Chinese pressure. Malaysia and Vietnam are among other countries embroiled in similar disputes with China, which claims about 80% of the resource-rich South China Sea.
The Chinese Foreign Ministry reaffirmed its claims to territory in the East and South China seas in response to questions Thursday about the U.S. diplomatic calls. “We hope non-regional countries will fully respect China and regional countries’ efforts to properly handle maritime differences and disputes and safeguard peace and stability,” ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian told a regular briefing in Beijing.
Blinken also discussed with Thai Deputy Prime Minister Don Pramudwinai the importance of working together to “advance our shared prosperity, security, and values across the free and open Indo-Pacific region.”
In a call with Australian Foreign Minister Marise Payne, Blinken reaffirmed his commitment to the so-called Quad. This is a grouping of the U.S., Australia, India and Japan that became elevated under the Trump administration and has been admonished by China as a “clique” that could stoke a new Cold War.
Volkswagen loses title of world’s top-selling carmaker to Toyota
InternationalJan 29. 2021Toyota vehicles bound for shipment at a port at dusk in Yokohama, Japan, on Oct. 31, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Toru Hanai.
By Syndication Washington Post, Bloomberg · River Davis, Tsuyoshi Inajima
Toyota overtook Volkswagen in 2020 to become the world’s top-selling automaker, the first time the Japanese group has clinched the position in five years.
Toyota’s group sales, which include those of its subsidiaries Daihatsu Motor Co. and Hino Motors Ltd., for the year were 9.53 million units, the company said Thursday. That compares with VW’s 9.31 million, announced earlier this month.
The victory for Toyota came despite a painful year for automakers. Although demand for cars recovered marginally toward the end of 2020, industry-wide factory and showroom shutdowns in the spring were enough to drag sales down 14% from 2019, according to an estimate from IHS Markit.
It was also a topsy-turvy year in which the gravity of automakers’ losses was largely determined by their level of exposure to the regions most disrupted by the virus.
VW has a strong footprint in the European Union, where passenger car sales fell an “unprecedented” 24% to fewer than 10 million units in 2020, according to the European Automobile Manufacturers Association. The German carmaker’s sales fell 15%, its worst performance in close to a decade.
VW Chief Executive Officer Herbert Diess initiated a strategic shift after he took over the top job in 2018 to focus on lifting profitability rather than chasing sales growth. VW’s return on sales has been lagging behind Toyota for years and the market slump triggered by the covid-19 pandemic a year ago exposed the German manufacturer’s relatively high costs.
Toyota, on the other hand, has a bigger presence in the U.S., where total car sales in the nation fell 15% in 2020. The Japanese automaker’s global sales were down 11%. Although the U.S. has the most Covid deaths and cases, there haven’t been the same lockdowns as in Europe.
“Naturally the number of units sold was lower than in the previous year because of the spread of coronavirus,” Toyota spokeswoman Chisato Yoshifuji said Thursday. “But because Toyota and its partners were able to thoroughly implement measures to combat the spread of the virus, we were able to continue our corporate activities and keep yearly declines at the level they were,” she said.
Prior to 2020, VW outsold Toyota in every year since 2015. But the two companies’ results last year may be indicative of a longer-term trend, according to analysts.
While VW is expected to temporarily surpass Toyota again in 2021, Toyota is projected to pull ahead each year through 2025, IHS Markit said. VW’s push to produce more electrified vehicles should lead to a sales spike this year, but prolonged lockdowns and shop closures in its domestic market will continue to have an adverse impact, analyst Yoshiaki Kawano said.
Kawano said Toyota will continue to enjoy strong sales in its core markets of Japan and the U.S. In China, the world’s largest car market, it should “put up a good fight” by pushing out more EVs and SUVs in line with local demand, he said.
Although a number of factors such as the continued spread of the virus and a global chip shortage will persist in 2021, IHS Markit estimates auto sales will recover steadily to 84.4 million units from 76.8 million in 2020. Global car sales are expected to touch 94.8 million in 2025.
WHO team investigating coronavirus origins ‘finally free’ from 14-day quarantine in Wuhan
InternationalJan 29. 2021An international team led by the World Health Organization
By The Washington Post · Adam Taylor
An international team led by the World Health Organization to study the origins of the coronavirus in China have completed the first stage of their visit: a mandatory two-week quarantine in Wuhan.
“Graduation, revised,” Marion Koopmans, a virologist at the Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands and one of the members of its 10-person team, tweeted Thursday along with a photograph of medical workers.
“So proud to graduate from our 14 days ‘isolation quarantine’ – no one went stir crazy & we’ve been v productive!” another team member, EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, added in his own message.
The WHO-led investigation into the virus’s origins in China, mooted since the earliest days of the pandemic, had already been long-delayed amid disagreements over the nature of the investigation.
Geopolitical rivalry complicated the matter further, as U.S. officials in the Trump administration suggested repeatedly that the virus could have leaked from a lab in Wuhan, while Chinese officials claimed that the virus may not have originated in China at all.
In early January, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus made a rare public criticism of China, accusing the country of holding up the process.
“Today, we learned that Chinese officials have not yet finalized the necessary permissions for the team’s arrival in China,” Tedros said during a news conference in Geneva on Jan. 5, adding that he was “very disappointed.”
The WHO team arrived in China less than two weeks later on Jan. 14 but were then immediately restricted to their hotel in Wuhan under China’s mandatory 14-day quarantine required for all arrivals.
Even now, after two weeks in isolation, the team is not fully clear of restrictions: Under Beijing’s recently announced “14+7+7″ policy, team members will be required to continue with health checks and avoid gatherings for another two weeks.
An Associated Press reporter who saw the team leave their hotel Monday noted that though the WHO-backed team just wore masks, the Chinese driver of their bus was in a full-body white protective suit.
The team left their quarantine hotel to move to a different hotel that had a more impressive setting. “Finally free to walk along the lakeside at our hotel on a beautiful sunny day in Wuhan,” Daszak wrote on Twitter.
Some members of the team Thursday said it was a relief to finally escape the quarantine, which had left them confined to their hotel with windows sealed and unable to even meet with each other.
“The only thing I could see for 14 days from the hotel room has been concrete,” Thea Fischer, a Danish member of the team, told Reuters in a phone interview, adding that arriving in the new hotel was like “one has landed from the moon.”
“I lived opposite two of the others in the team, so it was my hope that every time they knocked on the door, that the other two also went out and had their temperature measured, so you could at least exchange a few words and see a human being,” Fischer added.
“But we were always asked kindly but firmly, like some naughty children, to go back to our rooms.”
While the team members were confined to their rooms, they said that they were able to be productive. Peter Ben Embarek, a Danish food safety expert and head of the mission, tweeted that there had been as much as 13 hours of meetings every day and “no time for books, movies or the like. A bit of exercise early morning in the room or during some of the online meetings.”
Daszak tweeted an image of a yoga mat and weights on the floor of his room, noting that his “office” and “gym” had been the same space, but added praise for the hotel.
“Surprisingly easy to do 14 days in quarantine, the high workload meant days have sailed by & this is a v nice hotel,” the British zoologist wrote.
The real work will now begin. Public health experts say that understanding the spread of the virus, which is thought to have originated in bats and likely spread to humans by an unknown animal, is vitally important for preventing the spread of deadly zoonotic diseases in the future.
In an interview with The Washington Post this year, Ben Embarek said that “everything was on the table,” including theories of lab leaks and spread from outside China, but he emphasized that the “least surprising” result would be that the virus had leaped from animals to humans.
One area of early focus is expected to be the Huanan Seafood market in Wuhan, which many of the first cases of the virus were linked to more than a year ago.
Some virologists and public health experts have expressed skepticism that the team will be able to get adequate access for their investigation and suggested that pressure from Beijing could influence the team.
In a briefing Wednesday, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said what she called the “misinformation” coming out of China was of “great concern to us.”
“It’s imperative that we get to the bottom of the early days of the pandemic in China, and we’ve been supportive of an international investigation that we feel should be robust and clear,” she said.
But Tedros, despite his previous criticism of Chinese authorities, suggested there had been progress in discussions with Chinese officials in a message on Twitter on Thursday. “Thanks, Chinese Health Minister Ma Xiaowei, for a frank discussion on the #COVID19 virus origins mission,” the WHO chief tweeted.
“I asked that the international scientists get the support, access & data needed, and the chance to engage fully with their Chinese counterparts.”
By The Washington Post · Isabelle Khurshudyan, Robyn Dixon
MOSCOW — A Moscow judge denied Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny’s appeal for release from detention Thursday, after the opposition leader slammed the court process and thanked protesters for showing that his supporters “cannot be intimidated.”
Navalny spoke via a video link from a bare room with a single chair in his Moscow pretrial detention center. He was detained Jan. 17 after returning to Russia from Germany, where he recovered from a near-fatal nerve agent poisoning.
Tens of thousands of protesters across more than 100 Russian cities and towns demonstrated in Navalny’s support last Saturday, and more than 3,700 people were reported arrested. More protests have been called for Sunday.
Navalny said authorities may have the upper hand at the moment, “but it will not last forever.”
“I want to express my full support to all those who come out in the streets because only they are the last obstacle to complete degradation of our country, the last obstacle for those in power to steal everything,” Navalny said in his closing message at the hearing. “These people are in fact defenders of our country and patriots of our country.
“You won’t be able to scare us,” he added. “We are the majority. Tens of millions of people, whom this power has robbed, cannot be intimidated. More and more people now understand that the law is on our side, the truth is on our side, we are the majority, and we will not let a bunch of scoundrels impose their order on us.”
The 44-year-old Navalny has said Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a toxic attack on him during Navalny’s trip to Siberia last summer. The Kremlin has denied that, rebuffing international calls to investigate the incident.
Wearing a navy hoodie, Navalny chatted via video link with his attorney Olga Mikhailova, who told him about Wednesday’s sweeping police crackdown on the opposition. Police searched Navalny’s apartment and detained more key allies.
Leonid Volkov, chief of Navalny’s national network of regional headquarters, was charged with urging minors to protest in support of Navalny’s freedom. Navalny’s brother Oleg and another close ally, Lyubov Sobol, were detained on charges of breaching coronavirus restrictions during Saturday’s protests.
“Sobol, too? And Oleg for what?” Navalny asked his lawyer before the hearing began. In a conference room, journalists watched two screens showing Navalny at the detention center, and the judge and Navalny’s lawyers in the courtroom. Navalny took notes during much of the hearing, asking the judge to repeat his name so he could note it.
On Jan. 18, in a makeshift courtroom set up inside a Moscow police station near the airport, Navalny was sentenced to 30 days in a pretrial detention center pending his Feb. 2 trial for allegedly violating probation terms. Thursday’s hearing was to appeal the current detention.
As the judge exited the courtroom, one of Navalny’s attorneys asked the bailiff approximately how long it would take before a verdict was announced.
“Not long,” the bailiff replied.
“Not long,” Navalny repeated sarcastically.
The judge deliberated for just five minutes before announcing that Navalny would not be released.
He then asked if Navalny understood the verdict, to which Navalny replied: “Actually, everything was clear even before the start of the trial. Thank you.”
Navalny’s lawyers said they would appeal to the European Court of Human Rights over his 30-day detention. Volkov said there was no known legal basis for Navalny’s continued detention. Navalny faces court Tuesday, when he could be jailed on charges that he violated the terms of a 3½-year suspended sentence in a 2014 case. That case has been declared to be political by the European rights court.
Navalny complained to the judge that he had been given no opportunity to confer with his attorneys, Mikhailova and Vadim Kobzev, since he was detained. The judge told him he could do so over video in the court hearing, but Navalny asked for privacy.
“I’m looking at two guards who are filming me and have stern expressions,” Navalny said. Judge Musa Musaev told them to leave and ordered a 10-minute break to allow him to speak to his attorney.
Navalny appeared in good spirits at times, grinning at the camera and joking to the guards. “Well, I’ve gotten you kicked out,” as they were ordered to leave.
Kobzev submitted documents stating that Navalny was receiving treatment in Berlin until Jan. 15, two days before he flew home. He told the court that bailiffs were informed of Navalny’s address in Berlin – “the whole world knew” where he was, Kobzev said – and that there was no evidence he was violating the terms of his probation by hiding from authorities.
At his last court appearance Jan. 18, Navalny was able to record a video message for his supporters, imploring them to “take to the streets.”
He stopped short of that sort of call this time, instead devoting most of his speaking opportunities to opining on Russia’s “lawlessness” as an intimidation factor for its citizens, citing last week’s makeshift courtroom at a police station as an example.
Mikhailova, Navalny’s attorney, said big protest turnouts could influence Navalny’s next trial “because if no one talks about this, then [officials] can do anything.”
“We see that people are interested, and they understand that Alexei is not being treated fairly,” she said. “As of now, whatever the authorities want is being satisfied despite all norms of the law.”
Only women need to “stay home” to stem the spread of the coronavirus in the United Kingdom – or at least that’s how people interpreted a now-yanked National Health Services campaign.
The National Health Service, Britain’s publicly funded health-care system, released an ad Wednesday that ostensibly was created to encourage people to stay home as much as possible amid the pandemic. It showed four scenes: one with a woman relaxing on a sofa with her male partner and three in which women are home caring for children or cleaning the house.
The stereotypical tone did not sit well with its targeted social media constituency.
Social platforms were buzzing with accusations of sexism after the NHS posted the advert on its Facebook page Wednesday night. Among the most common reactions was “who thought this was okay?”
Prime Minister Boris Johnson addressed the image in a statement: “I will make clear that it does not reflect the government’s view on women which is why we have withdrawn it,” Sky News reported.
But the criticism was swift and continued to circulate even after the ad was removed.
Labour MP Yvette Cooper addressed the ad Thursday morning, tweeting: “Turns out 1950s sexism is spread fast too.”
Health officials around the world have pleaded with people to stay home as much as possible to limit the spread of the coronavirus. In the U.K., the number of new cases has been declining since early January, but experts fear the emergence of new and more contagious variants could lead to another increase. The digital flier was an attempt to get citizens to stay at home as coronavirus cases slowly decline with a new variant discovered in the country contributing to more infection.
Johnson is taking heat this week for claiming that his government had truly done “everything we could” to save the lives that were lost in the pandemic. While the country’s vaccine rollout has been going relatively smooth, Johnson’s critics pointed to a year-long pattern of bold promises followed by failures.
More than 3.7 million cases and 103,000 covid-related deaths have been reported in the U.K., according to data tracked by The Washington Post.
Globally, the pandemic has disproportionately affected women, causing their job losses to be 1.8 times greater than that of men. Women’s voices and perspectives have also been marginalized in the coronavirus conversation, according to multiple studies.
Women and people without a college education have been most affected by the U.K. lockdown restrictions, according to a University of Cambridge study.
Biden struggles to define his ‘unity’ promise for a divided nation
InternationalJan 29. 2021President Biden speaks about American manufacturing before signing an executive order at the White House complex on Monday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
By The Washington Post · Ashley Parker, Matt Viser, Annie Linskey
WASHINGTON – Barack Obama offered “hope and change.” Donald Trump vowed to “Make America Great Again.” George W. Bush promised “compassionate conservatism.”
And for President Joe Biden, the slogan comes down to one word: “unity.”
Biden campaigned on – and came to office promising – the ineffable concept of unity, a feel-good catchall that proffered bipartisan bonhomie, but with few tangible specifics.
Now, Biden and his team are working to implement that amorphous goal, which has already been weaponized by Republicans who disagree with Biden’s policy aims and challenged by some fellow Democrats.
Facing a deadly coronavirus pandemic and a troubled economy, as well as the slimmest of congressional majorities, Biden and his advisers are attempting to implement a blueprint of unity for a country that can only seem to agree on how much it disagrees.
Even coming up with a common definition for what unity should mean has proved impossible to unify around.
“I do think it means a lot of different things,” said John Anzalone, a top Biden adviser and campaign pollster. “When we would ask people in polls what was Joe Biden’s message, they understood it was unity. They would say ‘bringing people together’ or ‘unity.’ “
“It may have meant different things to them,” Anzalone added. “Maybe it was bringing the different parties together. Or healing the country by using a different tone and demeanor.”
Republicans – citing various Democratic initiatives that Biden is putting forth – have already sounded anti-unity alarms, claiming that the fact Biden is governing as a Democrat means he is not committed to his campaign mantra. And Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., defined “unity” differently still, arguing Sunday on CNN’s “Inside Politics” that the phrase perhaps should mean Democrats being “unified against insurrection,” a reference to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol by a mob of angry Trump supporters.
The upcoming Senate impeachment trial of Trump over his alleged role in inciting that riot underscores the riven nature of the nation’s politics, with all but five Republican senators voting Tuesday to challenge the constitutionality of impeaching a former president.
Biden and his aides have offered broad, and sometimes conflicting, definitions of what unity entails.
The president told reporters Monday that it means trying to “eliminate the vitriol,” “trying to reflect what the majority of the American people – Democrat, Republican, independent – think,” and trying to “stay away from the ad hominem attacks on one another.”
But Biden also said consensus should not be confused with bipartisanship, and left open the possibility muscling through his coronavirus relief package over the objections of congressional Republicans.
“Unity also is trying to get, at a minimum, if you pass a piece of legislation that breaks down on party lines, but it gets passed, it doesn’t mean there wasn’t unity,” Biden said. “It just means it wasn’t bipartisan.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a press briefing Monday that unity signifies “approaching our work on legislative issues through a bipartisan lens,” but also “projecting that he is going to govern for all people and address all of the issues that the American people are facing.”
“Unity is about the country feeling that they’re in it together,” Psaki said, “and I think we’ll know that when we see it.”
Sen. John Hickenlooper, D-Colo., echoed the same phrase, which is often associated with the definition of obscenity famously offered by then-Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart.
“I’ll know it when I see it,” Hickenlooper said when asked how to recognize unity. “Isn’t that what they say about pornography?”
Early polling indicates that most Americans agree with Biden’s call for bipartisanship, with 71% saying they would rather see congressional Republicans work with Biden than focus on keeping him in check, according to a new Monmouth University poll conducted in the days after the inauguration. About 6 in 10 Americans have some confidence that Biden will be able to get Washington to be more cooperative, and nearly 8 in 10 said it was very or extremely important that the federal government address the lack of unity in the country.
But Republicans argue that by pursing policy goals with which they disagree, the new president is spurning his own appeals for unity. The stance is arguably disingenuous, but also potentially politically effective, allowing Republicans to undercut Biden’s entire organizing principle.
In a tweet, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, linked to a story on Biden’s move to end Trump’s ban on transgender soldiers serving in the military, writing: “Another ‘unifying’ move by the new Administration?”
Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., criticized Biden’s aspirations, as well. “I just wish that his actions matched the words of his inaugural in terms of being unifying and healing,” Johnson said this week. “I’m not seeing his initial actions being that, which is disappointing.”
And Mark Levin, a conservative talk radio and Fox News host, used his show to lambaste what he said were Biden’s false claims of unity. “Joe Biden made much of the word unity,” he said last weekend. “Nothing that Joe Biden has done since his inauguration speech demonstrates any form of unity.”
Writing online, Dan Pfeiffer, a former senior adviser to Obama, moved to temper the realm of the possible: “The ‘unity’ conversation is going to be constantly distorted with unfair expectations, bad faith arguments, and general stupidity.”
Natural partisan disagreements, he wrote, should not be misconstrued as disunity, and one metric for success should be consensus from a majority of the country, not a majority from the opposing party.
“Joe Biden won the election. Republicans lost. Joe Biden doing the things Americans elected him to do is not divisive. The Republicans may not like it, but that’s their problem,” Pfeiffer wrote. “A majority of Americans voted to rejoin the Paris Accords, repeal the Muslim ban, implement more comprehensive pandemic measures and so on. Pushing forward on agenda items supported by the majority of Americans is not divisive just because [Republican Sens.] Ted Cruz and Ron Johnson find it irksome.”
At the same time, even some of Biden’s Democratic allies have struggled to articulate the exact meaning of the word in a Biden administration, often defining it by what it is not.
House Majority Whip James Clyburn, D-S.C., said unity can be observed and felt, but not necessarily measured. “Unity to me simply means finding common ground – it doesn’t mean unanimity,” he said. “I don’t know why people think you can’t be unified unless you’re unanimous. That’s all Biden is talking about: trying to find common ground.”
Clyburn liked it to his 58-year marriage to his wife, who died in 2019.
“There was never any disunity to our marriage,” he said. “But there was a whole lot of difference of opinion. We were seldom unanimous in what we did and what we thought, but there was always unity.”
Still, Clyburn added, though he believes Biden’s main goal is seeking common ground, the concept can also be warped – and even dangerous.
“I don’t want to be unfair about this, but one of the reasons I don’t like this unity argument is because I’ve been Black all my 80 years and in the South,” he said. “The South was unified against me. There was Southern unity for segregation. So you have to be relative about this. You can be unified and be inhuman. Unity is to me something we have to be careful about.”
Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., who often talks with Biden and spoke to him as he prepared the foundation of his campaign, said that some of the symbolic actions in the early days of Biden’s presidency – a day of service shortly before his inauguration, a memorial for coronavirus victims and a bipartisan invitation to lawmakers to join him for a church service – were designed with unity in mind.
“It doesn’t mean uniformity, it doesn’t mean conformity or unanimity, it doesn’t mean we’re all going to agree on everything,” Coons said. “Bringing unity to the country starts with telling us the truth, having a real and concrete plan. It’s not just brave words. It’s actually doing the job of being president.”
Hickenlooper, a former governor of Colorado, laughed out loud when confronted with the question of how unity can be measured. “I’m not sure how you measure when you’re there,” he said. “But I do think that what President Biden is putting out is a road map.”
The concept has been a guiding force for Biden since the earliest days of his campaign, when he was meeting with advisers at a home he was renting in McLean to sketch out his fledgling bid.
“We choose unity over division,” Biden said, again and again, in the climax of almost every stump speech.
On the campaign trail, he frequently used unity and civility interchangeably, often while mentioning the lesson imparted to him by the late former Democratic senator Mike Mansfield: “It’s always appropriate to question another man’s judgment, but never appropriate to question his motives.”
Biden’s rhetoric was generally cast as naive in a Democratic primary in which candidates often engaged in partisan warfare, as Biden trumpeted his ability to work with Republicans.
“I kept talking about unity, and everybody said, ‘No, you can’t have unity any longer. It’s changed so fundamentally, Joe. It can’t be put back together again,’ ” he said during a 2019 fundraiser. “Well, if that’s the case, we’re all dead. We’re in real trouble, because our constitutional system requires consensus.”
Late in the campaign, Biden delivered a major speech in Gettysburg, Pa. – a place chosen to highlight the perils of division, and the merits of unity. “The closing argument is that we need to unify the country,” Mike Donilon, Biden’s chief strategist, said at the time. “He won’t represent just Democrats or Republicans; he’ll represent everyone.”
In his inauguration speech, Biden mentioned “unity” more than a half-dozen times, at one point citing other challenges that tested the nation – the Civil War, the Great Depression, two world wars and the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
“In each of these moments, enough of us came together to carry all of us forward,” he said, referring not to an end of partisanship but an idealistic joining of the nation. “And, we can do so now. History, faith, and reason show the way, the way of unity.”
One example of Biden’s approach occurred at the end of a brief question-and-answer session with reporters Monday. As Biden’s aides began to wrap up, ushering the media out of the room, the president paused and turned to Fox News Channel’s Peter Doocy, who as a reporter covering the campaign often rankled Biden and his team with his pointed questions.
“I know he always asks me tough questions, and he always has an edge to them,” Biden said. “But I like him anyway.”
“So,” the president continued, addressing the reporter from a network whose prime-time hosts frequently propagate false conspiracy theories against him, “go ahead and answer – ask the question.”
WASHINGTON – The Senate is hurtling toward a shotgun impeachment trial that will accomplish almost nothing by design and likely leave everyone with a bitter aftertaste.
Democratic voters will be furious that GOP senators refused to hold former president Donald Trump accountable for his role in encouraging a mob to attack the Capitol on Jan. 6. Republicans will be upset that Congressional Democrats went through with an impeachment trial three weeks after Trump left the White House.
And independent voters, more focused on the health and economic crises fueled by the coronavirus pandemic, will wonder why Congress prioritized an impeachment process at all.
That’s the almost inevitable outcome of the Senate trial crafted by Majority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., particularly after McConnell and 44 other Republicans stuck by Trump’s side in an initial procedural vote.
With House managers now facing an almost impossible task in reaching 67 total votes to convict, some Trump critics are now debating whether to even hold the trial.
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., has been the most outspoken on this front, calling for the Senate to approve a resolution censuring Trump instead. Though Kaine would vote to convict Trump, he said he believes that time might be better spent focusing on moving pandemic relief legislation.
But a vast majority of Democrats have signaled that they support the emerging Schumer-McConnell approach of a shortened impeachment trial that skips some of the phases that produced a three-week trial of Trump last year.
“I think the sooner we get on to solving covid and solving climate, the better. So I think if this gets drawn out too much, it doesn’t help anybody,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., one of the more liberal members of the caucus, said Wednesday.
Even Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., the runner-up in the last two Democratic presidential primary campaigns, has endorsed a speedy trial to get on with bills to help “working families.”
The current thinking imagines a trial finished in a week.
It’s a stunning reversal for a Democratic caucus that cried out for witnesses and documents during last year’s trial, focused on Trump’s attempt to force Ukrainian officials to investigate the Biden family
They didn’t have the majority during that trial, so McConnell could muscle through his wishes. Now, with 50 members of Schumer’s caucus, plus a handful of Republicans who voted against Trump in Tuesday’s proxy vote, Democrats have a working majority to actually call witnesses and subpoena documents.
A small but vocal group would like to at least give that a try, given the severity of events in a riot that left five people dead, including a Capitol Police officer beaten to death by the mob, and at least 140 officers injured, some quite seriously.
“We just had one of the most terrifying incidents in American history that put in question the viability of our democracy,” Sen. Christopher Coons, D-Del., told Politico on Wednesday. “How much time do you think we should spend on that?”
Coons is a close Biden ally who wants to quickly move on to the new president’s agenda. Yet at the same time, he is angry about how many senators are prepared to move past the Jan. 6 attack in a speedy trial.
“There’s still evidence that we need,” Sen. Angus King of Maine, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said Wednesday of Trump’s Jan. 6 actions. “The evidence that I’m particularly interested in is: What did he know about the intention of that crowd when he was addressing them? What did he have in the way of intelligence that may or may not have put him on notice that this was a dangerous situation? And then secondly, what I am interested in is, what did he do that afternoon when it was unfolding?”
Democrats privately rejected the easiest way to handle such an evidentiary task. They could have created a special impeachment trial committee that would have been tasked with issuing subpoenas, conducting depositions of witnesses along with House managers and Trump’s lawyers, and fighting in court any efforts to block testimony or documents.
This approach would have allowed Schumer to move ahead with Biden’s agenda and confirming his cabinet, while the trial committee handled those legally protracted issues.
But that might have meant delaying the full Senate trial for several months when the fury of the moment will have faded.
But advocates of this approach believe that the initial 55-45 vote signaled that the only way to change GOP minds would be to produce evidence showing that Trump was more complicit than is currently known.
“We have an obligation to get the facts, it seems to me,” King said. “And I think those are two relevant facts. If he had intelligence, when he was talking to that crowd, that their plan was to come here and storm the Capitol, to me that is a very important piece of evidence in terms of his culpability.”
After harrowing ordeal, Rep. Joe Neguse to play key role in impeachment trial
The Senate twice used special trial committees in the late 1980s to handle the scut work of impeachments of federal judges, procedures that were upheld by the Supreme Court.
After brushing aside this idea, some Democrats considered handing off the Trump matter to the already existing Judiciary Committee, a panel that is already swamped with the confirmation of Attorney General nominee Merrick Garland and immigration legislation.
Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the incoming chairman, said he would leave procedural questions up to the House managers.
“I’m waiting to hear what their proposal is, but for us to suggest a trial strategy for the House managers, I don’ think that’s our job,” Durbin said.
So, instead, the Senate will rush through a trial in which the only evidence likely to be presented will be the stuff that senators themselves already lived, video clips of rioters breaking into the Capitol as senators fled through underground tunnels to their secure location.
Senators will likely not even attempt to answer the fundamental questions of every impeachment trial – what did the president know and when did he know it?
“It will be surprising to me if we ever know the answers to that,” Durbin said.
By The Washington Post · Erica Werner, Seung Min Kim, Jeff Stein
WASHINGTON – The two newly elected Democratic senators from Georgia pressed White House officials and fellow Senate Democrats Thursday to act quickly to pass a new round of stimulus checks, arguing that this promise won their party the Senate majority and needs to get done.
The comments by Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock during a private lunchtime call with the Senate Democratic caucus and top White House economic advisers were confirmed by several people with knowledge of them, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the discussion was private.
Ossoff and Warnock won special elections in Georgia this month on promises to deliver voters a new round of $2,000 stimulus checks if elected. President Biden made the same pledge to Georgia voters while campaigning for the two candidates, whose victories gave Democrats narrow control of the Senate.
The stimulus checks are a centerpiece of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief plan, which Democrats are aiming to move quickly through Congress in coming weeks through special budget rules that would allow them to pass the legislation without GOP votes. The checks in the Biden plan are $1,400 per person, but would come on top of $600 checks included in the last relief package in December, a two-payment total of $2,000.
The arguments from Ossoff and Warnock in favor of fast action on the checks played into a larger sense of urgency among Democrats during the discussion Thursday that Biden’s package must be enacted swiftly, with or without GOP support. Aides to Ossoff and to Warnock declined to comment on the closed-door lunch.
“My strong impression was that there is general unanimity, and it’s strong that we need to be bold and decisive, particularly in putting shots and putting vaccines in people’s arms and putting money in people’s pockets and putting kids back to school,” Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., said. “And one way to put money in people’s pockets is to fulfill our promises on stimulus payments.”
Biden administration officials on Thursday’s call included National Economic Council Director Brian Deese; Jeff Zients, who heads the administration’s covid-19 response team; and Anita Dunn, a senior adviser to the White House. A White House spokesman declined to comment.
Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., added in a statement: “Both Brian and Jeff showed us how serious the White House takes this pandemic and the actions needed to get our arms around this crisis. We know Americans need urgent help and Senate Democrats are prepared to act as soon as possible.”
The discussion came as Democrats formalized plans to move forward on their own with the stimulus legislation, despite warnings from Republicans that they might regret doing so, especially after Biden ran for president as a bipartisan dealmaker.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said earlier Thursday that the House and the Senate would take initial votes next week on a budget bill that would allow subsequent party-line passage of the sweeping relief package. She portrayed the partisan “budget reconciliation” approach as a fallback position that could pressure Republicans to come on board.
“By the end of the week we will be finished with the budget resolution, which will be about reconciliation if we need it,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly news conference.
“We have to be ready. I do think we have more leverage to get cooperation on the other side if they know we have an alternative,” she said.
The “reconciliation” process allows a budget resolution to pass the Senate with a simple majority vote instead of the 60 votes normally required for major bills. That could allow the Democrats who control the Senate to pass the legislation with no GOP support, though it would be a struggle because the Senate is split 50-50 between the two parties after Ossoff and Warnock flipped two GOP-held Senate seats in Georgia. Democrats have the majority because Vice President Kamala Harris can break ties.
Senate Republicans, including members of a bipartisan group that has been meeting with administration officials about the relief plan, criticized Democrats’ plans to move forward under reconciliation – especially given Biden’s call for unity.
“It starts the whole process off in a very different place than I think President Biden was in his inaugural address just two weeks ago,” said Sen. Roy Blunt, R-Mo., a member of GOP leadership.
“It’s confrontational. It’s certainly not collaborative,” Blunt said.
Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, a leader of the bipartisan group, told reporters that “it’s certainly not helpful” if reconciliation moves forward. She also said she had spoken personally with Biden and had “a very friendly call,” in one of the first public indications that the president is engaged in the kind of personal bipartisan outreach he promised while campaigning.
Several Republicans suggested that they would be open to a narrower bill focused on money for vaccines and other priorities. But Democrats and White House officials said they were not going that route. In addition to the new round of stimulus checks, Biden’s plan includes an extension of unemployment benefits set to expire in mid-March, an increased child tax credit, and hundreds of billions of dollars for schools, vaccines and the health-care system.
“We are not looking to split the package,” said White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“And the reason is because we are not going to put ourselves in a place where . . . we’re choosing between helping families to put food on the table and making sure kids get back to school and getting a vaccine in the arms of Americans,” Psaki said.
Democrats said they were determined to move ahead, especially in light of alarming economic reports released Thursday, including news that economic growth shrank in 2020 more than it did during the Great Recession.
It remains uncertain whether Democrats will have the votes to move forward with a partisan reconciliation bill. The most conservative Senate Democrat, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, sidestepped when pressed Thursday on whether he’d support that approach, insisting several times that “we’re going to make Joe Biden successful.”
InternationalJan 28. 2021On a rainy day in Portland, Ore., deli manager Talia Light prepares for outdoor seating only on Sept. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Leah Nash. Photo by: Leah Nash — For The Washington Post Location: Portland, United States
By The Washington Post · Heather Long
WASHINGTON – The pain in the U.S. economy remains deep with more than 15 million Americans on unemployment, long lines at food banks, and restaurants, shops and entertainment venues fighting for survival, but this recession might be over – at least technically.
The textbook definition of a recession is the period between the economy’s last peak and trough. Think of it like a hiker descending a mountain after reaching a summit. Once the hiker reaches the bottom again, the hike is over, even if it’sa long walk with blistered feet to the car or a long time before the hiker climbs another mountain again.
It’s abundantly clear that the U.S. economy took a big plunge in March and April of 2020. The coronavirus crisis required many parts of the economy to shutter to minimize human contact to slow the virus’s spread. Economic activity declined so severely that the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Business Cycle Dating Committee, which officially declares recessions, sprung into action:February 2020 was the peak, and the U.S. was in a recession. That declaration process normally takes months. This time, it took 15 weeks, the fastest ever.
The committee hasn’t declared an official end to the recession yet, but one of its eightmembers says the U.S. recession is technically over.
“The recession is when the economy is going down,” said Robert Gordon, an economics professor at Northwestern University and longtime member of the recession-declaring committee. “The trough was clearly last April with unemployment at 14.7% and production way down as half of the country closed down. There is no way we are going to go back and revisit those trough levels of April.”
Gordon says NBER’s committee will probably end up declaring May or June 2020 as the official turning point from recession to recovery. The committee hasn’t come out and said thatyet, because it is notoriously slow-moving. Plus, there is still a chance that a fast-spreading coronavirus variant could force another massive shutdown of the economy. But Gordon expects this will be “one of the shortest recessions on record.” (The current shortest on record is the six-month recession in 1980).
On Thursday, the Commerce Department is expected to report that the U.S. economy grew at a decent pace in the fourth quarter from October through December. That comes after a strong rebound in the third quarter. The data supports Gordon’s view that the turning point was probably in late spring or early summer.
But for many Americans, the idea that the recession is over is laughable. It shows a disconnect between how economists and Wall Street investors think about the conditions versus how the broader public views the nation’s fortunes.
The economy is still clearly operatingbelow its potential. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said Wednesday that it’s a “long way” from normal, echoing the sentiment many Americans feel.
The same thing happened during the Great Recession. NBER’s committee said the official recession lasted from December 2007 to June 2009. Yet job losses kept mounting even after that point. Unemployment hit its high point of that downturn – 10% – in October 2009. And the economy spent years in a “jobless recovery.”
Right now there are nearly 10 million people who lost a job in March and April and are still out of work. That’s more unemployed than in October 2009.
“It’s not unusual for the economy to be in terrible shape during the first months or even years of the recovery,” Gordon said.
Thea Lee, president of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute put it this way: “This is not a normal recession. We are definitely in uncharted territory due to the nature of this recession.” She emphasized the especially deep losses that low-income workers, Black and Hispanic workers, and women have faced this time around.
That is why there has been a push in recent years to get policymakers in the White House, the Federal Reserve and beyond to look at a much wider array of data and perspectives as they make their assessments about the health of the economy. Simply looking at whether the economy is expanding or contracting doesn’t tell you everything – like hikers who only see that they are going up or down. They also want to know how steep the trail is and whether it’s likely to be icy or require climbing and special equipment.
In short, there’s a difference between the economy being out of a recession and being healthy.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is among many economists who have pushed for policymakers to watch a dashboard of indicators, including the Black unemployment rate, which is often the last to fall, and how many people are out of work for six months or more.
People who lose a job and can’t get back to work for half a year tend to have a much harder time getting their career and finances back on track. They often end up having to take a lower-paying job or needing to retrain. Long-term unemployment skyrocketed after the Great Recession and helped contribute to alarming numbers of Americans giving up on even looking for a job.
Nearly 4 million Americans were long-term unemployed in December, the highest level in U.S. history, except for during the Great Recession.
Harvard economics professor Gabriel Chodorow-Reich predicts long-term unemployment probably will peak in February at just above 4 million and then decline, but that is contingent on getting the coronavirus under control.
“The most important policy for the overall labor market is vaccination rollout and how well that goes,” Chodorow-Reich said.
Rebekah Love of Louisville, Ky., is among the millions of unemployed who still feel a deep recession. Love owned a pottery studio that had to close last March. The loss of her job – and her business – derailed her family’s life.
“I grew up poor. This has really plunged me back into what life was like at my parents’ house – poor,” said Love, a single mother of a teenager. “I’ve got no money in the bank. I am currently late on January’s rent. I don’t know how I’m going to make February rent. I think more community aid will come back online, but the money has yet to trickle down from the recent bill that was passed.”
Love, 46, has been searching for jobs without any luck. She ran the pottery business for just over two years. Before that, she was a computer programmer for more than a decade who never had any trouble landing good-paying jobs.
She’s barely getting any bites when she sends her resume out, even with her programming background. Companies and recruiters that do reach out have told her they want to make connections, but they also make it clear they aren’t ready to hire yet.
For Love and millions like her, the economy won’t be healthy until there are a lot more job openings and people back at work. That’s far more important than whether the nation is technically in a recession.
Tim Cook, chief executive officer of Apple Inc., speaks during a Bloomberg Technology television interview in San Jose, Calif., on June 5, 2017. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by David Paul Morris.
Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s prime minister, wears a protective face mask as he delivers a policy speech in the lower house of parliament in Tokyo on Jan. 18, 2021. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Kiyoshi Ota.
Toyota vehicles bound for shipment at a port at dusk in Yokohama, Japan, on Oct. 31, 2020. MUST CREDIT: Bloomberg photo by Toru Hanai.
An international team led by the World Health Organization
Alexei Navalny
President Biden speaks about American manufacturing before signing an executive order at the White House complex on Monday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford.
Mitch McConnell
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif.
On a rainy day in Portland, Ore., deli manager Talia Light prepares for outdoor seating only on Sept. 23, 2020. MUST CREDIT: photo for The Washington Post by Leah Nash. Photo by: Leah Nash — For The Washington Post Location: Portland, United States
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