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NATO unanimously backs U.S. exit from Afghanistan

InternationalApr 15. 2021

By John Hudson
The Washington Post

BRUSSELS – The 30-member NATO alliance on Wednesday unanimously backed the United States’ decision to withdraw all forces from Afghanistan by Sept. 11 after President Joe Biden’s top diplomat and defense official made the cause for the move in a joint visit to Brussels.

In a closed-door meeting of alliance foreign ministers, followed by a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg, Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to put a positive spin on the conclusion of the long-grinding conflict, which has lost the confidence of the general public in much of Western Europe and North America. He said the alliance had ensured that Afghanistan would never again become a platform or haven for global terrorists.

“The threat from al-Qaida in Afghanistan is significantly degraded; Osama bin Laden has been brought to justice,” Blinken said. “We have achieved our objective.” Remaining in Afghanistan, he said, is not “in our interest. Not for the United States, not for NATO and our allies.”

The military alliance went into Afghanistan after invoking its collective defense clause, Article 5, for the first time in its history following the 9/11 attacks. About 7,000 non-U.S. foreign troops remain in Afghanistan, mostly from NATO countries such as Germany, Italy and Britain, but also non-NATO countries including Georgia and New Zealand.

Those troops outnumber the 2,500 troops the United States maintains in Afghanistan, but they rely heavily on U.S. air and logistical support. That reliance caused many NATO allies to express concern in recent years when President Donald Trump would tweet sporadically about a full U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan without coordinating with allies.

Blinken on Wednesday assured foreign partners that there would be no such surprises in the Biden era.

“I am here to work closely with our allies, with the [NATO] secretary general, on the principle that we have established from the start: ‘In together, adapt together and out together,’ ” Blinken said before an earlier meeting with Stoltenberg.

Blinken was joined in Brussels by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, who is also meeting with NATO counterparts on the plan to begin a U.S. troop withdrawal and complete it by Sept. 11.

In a closed-door meeting among all 30 NATO members, Austin set the tone for the discussion with a strong endorsement of the withdrawal, said a European official familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss alliance deliberations. Austin referenced his military service and intimate knowledge of the sacrifices made in the conflict, but underscored that the time to leave the country was upon us, the official said.

Following Austin’s remarks, the official said, those in the room who spoke for their countries broadly supported the withdrawal plan, with the exception of some grumbling from the representatives of the Czech Republic and Belgium, who spoke about the speed of Biden’s decision and the investments European countries had made in the conflict.

British and German officials have indicated that they will accompany the United States with their own departure from Afghanistan. For some countries, however, the exit is more difficult to swallow.

“We have had dozens of soldiers die there,” said one Western European official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss his reaction to the U.S. plan. The diplomat noted, however, that the terrorism threat from Afghanistan has been significantly reduced, which was always the main objective.

“Our first and foremost goal is just not to have in Afghanistan a future place for international terrorism,” the diplomat said.

At the news conference, Stoltenberg said the alliance decision was “unanimous,” adding that “this is not an easy decision and it entails risks. . . . We’ve said for many months we face a dilemma, because the alternative to leaving in an orderly fashion is to be prepared for a long-term, open-ended military commitment with potentially more NATO troops.”

Like Blinken, he said that the alliance and other partners would continue to support Afghanistan. “This is not the end of our relationship with Afghanistan, but rather the start of a new chapter,” Stoltenberg said.

But in making that pledge, he also referred to the problems Afghanistan will face, and the belief of many officials and experts that the Taliban is likely to increase its campaign to take over the country.

“It is now for the Afghan people to build a sustainable peace” that “puts an end to violence, safeguards the rights of all Afghans – particularly women and children – and assures that Afghanistan never again serves as a safe haven for terrorists,” Stoltenberg said.

He made clear that the U.S. withdrawal was a primary factor in the NATO decision. “In light of the U.S. decision to withdraw, we discussed the way forward today,” he said, adding that any Taliban attack on departing troops “will be met with a forceful response.”

For years, many NATO members, especially Germany, indicated that any withdrawal must be based on the conditions on the ground in Afghanistan. But the Biden administration made clear on Tuesday that this would not be the standard.

Austin did not respond to a question at the news conference about his own recent statements that withdrawal would be “conditions-based.”

“I fully support his decision,” Austin said of Biden. “Our troops have accomplished the mission they were sent to achieve.” Asked if U.S. military leaders agreed on the departure, Austin said he would not speak for them. “What I can tell you is this was an inclusive process,” he said of internal administration decision-making, “and their voices were heard, their concerns taken into consideration as the president made his decision.”

Strong reservations about the fate of Afghanistan remain, but European diplomats acknowledged that staying in the country indefinitely was unsustainable, logistically and politically.

“As long as the U.S. consults, gives at least a veneer of co-decision, and withdraws responsibly enough that it doesn’t leave the Europeans high and dry, then the Europeans won’t be hard to deal with on this issue,” said Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “In the end, the Europeans went into Afghanistan for America and NATO; they’ll accept to leave for the same reasons.”

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CDC advisers seek more data on rare blood clots before deciding whether to resume Johnson & Johnson shots

InternationalApr 15. 2021

By Lena H. Sun, Carolyn Y. Johnson
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – A federal vaccine advisory committee said Wednesday it wanted more data before deciding whether to resume use of Johnson & Johnson’s coronavirus vaccine, leaving in place a pause that federal officials had recommended because of a rare and severe type of blood clot identified so far among six of the 7.5 million people who received the shot.

The move means the single-shot Johnson & Johnson product will remain on the shelf for at least a week.

At a hastily arranged emergency meeting a day after federal officials recommended a pause in use of the vaccine, advisers to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention agreed to reconvene within 10 days, acknowledging the urgency of making a decision about a vaccine that is a key part of the strategy to end the pandemic in the United States and globally.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices reviewed details about six cases of blood clots in women who were between the ages of 18 and 48. The women developed symptoms, most often headaches, six to 13 days after vaccination. One vaccine recipient, a Virginia woman, died in March, and another is in critical condition, health officials have said. Two have been discharged and three remain in the hospital.

Instead of voting on a recommendation about whether and how the vaccination campaign could be restarted, panel members said they wanted more information on the risks, cause and frequency of the rare brain blood clots. When the panel reconvenes, members could vote at that time to recommend the vaccine for people 18 and older, continue an overall pause or pause use for certain age groups.

“We are very fortunate, because we have multiple other alternatives in the U.S. to help stop this pandemic. We have very good, well-proven alternatives where we are not seeing safety signals,” said Helen Keipp Talbot, an associate professor of medicine at Vanderbilt University and committee member. “I think that puts us in a little bit of a different position, and we can be much more cautious and thoughtful and use the old model of, ‘First, do no harm.'”

Beth Bell, a global health expert at the University of Washington who leads the panel’s coronavirus vaccine work group, said she did not want to take a vote Wednesday for fear of undermining support for the easier-to-use vaccine.

A national Economist-YouGov poll found that public confidence in the Johnson & Johnson vaccine might already be declining. The share of people who thought the vaccine was “very or somewhat unsafe” increased in a matter of days, from 26% of people during the past weekend and Monday to 39% on Tuesday after federal officials recommended a pause.

The vaccine has been viewed as a powerful tool for building immunity among vulnerable communities, such as homebound people or homeless populations who might not be able to return for a second shot. The decision will also almost certainly reverberate around the globe.

The vaccine was a large part of the U.S. vaccination strategy, and the drugmaker has delayed the rollout of its vaccine in Europe as the investigation continues. South Africa suspended use of the shot.

But some public health officials said Wednesday’s lack of a recommendation is a decision that will have consequences.

“The extension of the pause will invariably result in the fact that the most vulnerable individuals in the United States who were prime candidates for the Johnson & Johnson vaccine will remain vulnerable. The most at risk will remain at risk, and those who would benefit immediately from vaccination will remain unvaccinated for an unknown period of time,” said Nirav Shah, director of the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention. “That would come at a period where the United States is still logging 5,000 deaths in the past seven days across the country.”

A CDC official and a Johnson & Johnson executive described the six cases in the greatest detail yet. All of the women were White, and only one was taking hormonal contraceptives that can cause blood clots, suggesting that was not the reason for the clots.

Tom Shimabukuro, of the vaccine safety team at the CDC, explained that the rare, severe clots were especially alarming because they were accompanied by low levels of blood cells involved in clotting – a combination virtually unheard of among healthy, young people.

“We have a picture where we have clots forming in large [blood] vessels in the presence of low platelets, so it’s kind of a paradox here,” Shimabukuro said. “This is unusual – it usually doesn’t happen.”

The combination has also been seen, rarely, among people who received vaccine developed by AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford. Four of those vaccine recipients were treated initially with heparin, an anticoagulant that is not recommended because the events closely resemble an immune-triggered reaction to the drug that could worsen the clots.

Some of the women had blood clots in other parts of their body, and Shimabukuro said the agency would cast a wider net, looking for clotting accompanied by low levels of platelets.

In a company presentation, Aran Maree, chief medical officer for Janssen, the division of Johnson & Johnson that developed the vaccine, also presented data on two cases of clots in people who received the vaccine in the clinical trial, one of whom was a 25-year-old man with a hallmark of the symptoms.

“I’d like to reiterate that, based on the current data, Johnson & Johnson believes the overall benefit-risk profile for a vaccine is positive across the population for which it is authorized,” Maree said.

The blood clots are similar to those reported by several European countries after the use of AstraZeneca’s coronavirus vaccine, which uses a similar technology. Several experts said it is necessary to understand whether the risks of the vaccines outweigh the benefits for certain groups of people. But they also said the risk of developing a clot after receiving the vaccine appears far lower than the chance of a clotting issue caused by a severe covid-19 infection or from using hormonal birth control, such as oral contraceptives.

The immediate practical effect of the recommended pause was limited because the overwhelming majority of the 192 million shots administered in the United States have been made by Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna using a different technology.

Of the Johnson & Johnson doses administered to date, nearly 1.5 million have been given to women 18 to 50 years old, said Sara Oliver, a CDC medical officer and member of the committee’s covid-19 work group. The Johnson & Johnson vaccine makes up fewer than 5% of the inoculations that have been administered, Oliver said.

Food and Drug Administration and CDC officials said they decided to recommend pausing the use of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine because they were worried about the possible harm if clinicians did not know how to detect, manage and treat the complication. They want to make sure medical professionals are aware that blood clots potentially associated with a vaccine should not be treated with the conventional drug heparin, which could exacerbate the clots.

Officials also want to encourage reporting from clinicians in the event there are additional cases that could help clarify the syndrome or risk factors, officials have said.

In many ways, the scenario playing out in the United States echoes what happened in Europe as rare clotting events began to be recognized in early March among younger adults, predominantly women, who had recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The rare but alarming clotting cases in Europe caused some countries to suspend vaccination altogether, and scientists began to study whether the clots were connected to vaccination. A societal debate about the risk tolerance of regulators and the possible effect of vaccination suspensions on hesitancy erupted as countries halted inoculations in the middle of a pandemic. As time went on, more cases were recognized and studied.

Out of 34 million people given vaccinations in Europe, regulators there have identified 169 cases of brain blood clots and 53 cases of abdominal clots that raised suspicion.

After weeks of scientific work and meetings, European scientists and regulators concluded that the clotting events were possibly linked to the vaccine – and determined a diagnostic test and a treatment. Many countries have restricted use of the AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine to older adults as a result.

The type of brain blood clots identified in the six U.S. cases result in a condition called cerebral venous sinus thrombosis. The normal rate of those blood clots in the general population is 2 to 14 per million people in a year. What stood out to scientists and physicians was that these clots were accompanied by very low levels of platelets, the blood cells involved in clotting. That combination of symptoms – a risk of bleeding and clotting at the same time – sounds counterintuitive but occurs in rare immune responses, when the body creates antibodies that bind to platelets, causing them to be activated and also consumed.

A similar syndrome occurs in some patients after exposure to the anticoagulant heparin, which triggered the warnings not to use that drug when treating these patients.

Since the U.S. vaccination program began Dec. 14, safety experts from the CDC vaccine advisory committee have been monitoring data weekly.

Initial information about the six cases was detected in a vaccine-monitoring system run by the CDC and the FDA. That three-decade-old system, known as the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, or VAERS, is an early warning platform that also collects information about possible side effects or health problems after vaccination. It monitors unusual or unexpected patterns that require a closer look. Anyone can report a reaction or injury, including health-care providers, patients and patients’ representatives, such as caregivers or attorneys.

The recommendation to pause the Johnson & Johnson rollout resulted in swift action, with the U.S. military and many states announcing they were suspending the use of the single-shot vaccine. About 7.5 million doses of Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine had been administered nationwide as of Wednesday. About 16 million doses have been delivered to states and territories, and through federal channels, since the beginning of March.

– – –

The Washington Post’s Scott Clement contributed to this report.

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U.S. Capitol Police officer cleared of wrongdoing in fatal shooting of woman during Capitol attack

InternationalApr 15. 2021Pro-Trump protesters clash with police during the tally of electoral votes on Jan. 6. Photo by Amanda Andrade-Rhoades for The Washington Post.

By Keith L. Alexander, Justin Jouvenal, Spencer S. Hsu
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – A U.S. Capitol Police officer has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing for fatally shooting Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt as she attempted to breach a set of doors deep in the Capitol during the January siege, federal prosecutors in the District of Columbia announced Wednesday.

Authorities determined that there was insufficient evidence to prove Babbitt’s civil rights were violated, and that it was reasonable for the officer to believe he was firing in self-defense or in defense of members of Congress and aides who were fleeing the House chamber. Prosecutors did not identify the officer.

The killing of the 35-year-old California native became one of the defining moments of the riot, after graphic videos of her shooting spread across social media and were replayed by news outlets.

Prosecutors notified a representative of Babbitt’s family of its findings Wednesday, the office of acting U.S. attorney Channing Phillips of the District said in a statement. The statement said the U.S. attorney’s office and the Justice Department have closed the investigation, “acknowledging the tragic loss of life and offering condolences” to Babbitt’s family.

Roger Witthoeft, Babbitt’s brother, said he was not happy that prosecutors decided not to charge the officer.

“In my eyes, everyone should stand before a jury to face justice. That decision shouldn’t be made behind the scenes. I think he should at least stand trial,” Witthoeft said.

“I love my sister and I’ll always remember her as a decent woman and patriot,” he said.

Mark Schamel, the Capitol Police officer’s attorney, credited his client with showing great restraint.

“His bravery on January 6 was nothing short of heroic,” Schamel said in a statement. “He stopped the rioters from gaining entry into the Speaker’s Lobby and saved the lives of countless members of Congress and the rioters. His heroism should be no surprise to those who know him.”

To convict law enforcement officers of civil rights violations, including shootings resulting in death, prosecutors must be able to prove that an officer used “objectively unreasonable” force and “willfully” used more force than he thought was necessary. The high bar of willfulness makes bringing charges against an officer difficult, and Wednesday’s outcome was not unexpected by legal observers under the circumstances.

Multiple cellphone videos captured the shooting as it unfolded on the afternoon of Jan. 6. Babbitt and a group of other rioters made their way inside the Capitol to barricaded doors leading to the Speaker’s Lobby, which is the hallway outside the House chamber where some lawmakers were sheltering during the siege.

Videos show the group pummeling the wood-and-glass doors with a helmet, feet and a flagpole. A Capitol Police officer in a suit and a surgical mask is seen standing in a doorway on the far side of the doors with his gun drawn.

The officer opened fire as Babbitt, who was wearing a Trump flag like a cape, attempted to crawl through one of the broken panes of the Speaker’s Lobby doors, video shows. Babbitt, who was hit in the shoulder, tumbled backward onto the floor.

The attorney for the officer, a lieutenant, said in a statement that the officer clearly identified himself and ordered rioters not to pass a barricade at the doors of the Speaker’s Lobby before firing. Other officers had also ordered Babbitt to stop and she broke multiple laws in attempting to enter the Speaker’s Lobby, according to the statement.

A group that included officers, rioters and a Hill staffer rushed to her aide, video shows. Two law enforcement officials familiar with the investigation have said that Babbitt was unarmed. She later died.

Babbitt was one of five people who authorities said died amid the chaos of the Capitol siege, including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, whose remains lay in honor in the Capitol Rotunda in early February.

In death, Babbitt has become a martyr to many on the far right. Some even fashioned a flag that features a silhouette of a woman in front of a Capitol that is aflame. Below, it reads “Vengeance.”

Federal prosecutors have charged at least eight people who were in the crowd around Babbitt in the moments before she was shot. They include Christopher Ray Grider, a Texas winery owner who is accused of trying to kick in the Speaker’s Lobby doors; Zachary Jordan Alam, of Pennsylvania, who is accused of smashing the glass pane Babbitt attempted to crawl through; and Chad Barrett Jones, of Kentucky, who is accused of smashing another pane with a wood stick that had a Trump flag attached.

Authorities had suggested the possibility of bringing felony murder charges against rioters if Babbitt’s death was a foreseeable consequence of felony conduct by others, according to a person familiar with the matter. But they have since ruled out that possibility, given case law that allows such charges only in instances when an accomplice is responsible for a victim’s death, not a law enforcement officer.

District police are required by law to identify officers involved in serious uses of force within five business days of an incident. They are also required to release video from body cameras of the officers directly involved. The law only applies to District police. Capitol Police are not equipped with body cameras.

The law firm said it was keeping the officer’s name confidential because he has faced death threats.

Witthoeft, Babbitt’s brother, said it was “appalling” that the officer’s name had not been released “in this age when everything is public record.”

The three-month investigation was conducted by prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office’s public corruption and civil rights section. The Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and the District police internal affairs bureau reviewed social media video footage, statements by witnesses including the shooter and other officers, physical evidence, and autopsy results, prosecutors said.

Criminal charges against police officers involved in on-duty fatalities are rare in the District. City records show that prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office have never filed criminal charges against a District police officer involved in a fatal on-duty shooting. Such historical data was not available regarding officers from other agencies.

Babbitt hailed from the San Diego area and became an ardent supporter of QAnon, an extremist ideology that the FBI has deemed a domestic terrorism threat, and a backer of President Donald Trump, her since-deleted Twitter account showed. She often echoed Trump’s baseless claims that November’s presidential election was stolen.

“Nothing will stop us . . . they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours . . . dark to light!” Babbitt tweeted the day before she died.

Babbitt spent more than a decade in the military, first in the Air Force and then in the Air National Guard, but she had discipline problems and didn’t advance far. Her ex-husband, Timothy McEntee, has said she served in Afghanistan and Iraq.

After leaving the military in 2016, Babbitt started a pool business with family members that struggled financially, and her Twitter account shows she became more interested in online misinformation and conservative causes.

In one video posted to social media, Babbitt rants loudly about the effects of immigrants on the U.S. economy. In a tweet, she called for then-Vice President Mike Pence to be arrested and charged with treason, presumably for not being supportive enough of Trump’s baseless claims of electoral fraud.

“She was never afraid to speak her mind,” McEntee told The Washington Post in a January text message.

Babbitt seemed to derive a sense of mission from the Jan. 6 protest. In the days leading up to it, she retweeted messages from other demonstrators who were traveling to Washington.

One read: “It will be 1776 all over again . . . only bigger and better.”

– – –

The Washington Post’s Tom Jackman contributed to this report.

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John Williamson, economist who devised ‘Washington Consensus’ model of reform, dies at 83

InternationalApr 15. 2021John Williamson

By Matt Schudel
The Washington Post

John Williamson, a British-born economist for the World Bank and other institutions and think tanks, who was best known for coining the term “Washington Consensus” to describe a set of reforms aimed at reinvigorating struggling economies in Latin America and other countries, died April 11 at his home in Chevy Chase, Md. He was 83.

He had multiple system atrophy, said his daughter, Theresa Williamson.

Dr. Williamson began his career as a college professor and had stints working for the British government, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, developing policies to help bolster economies of countries around the globe.

After teaching in Brazil, he joined the Washington-based Institute for International Economics – later renamed the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)- in 1981, where he developed ideas to strengthen global economies and markets.

In 1989, after consulting economists at the IMF, World Bank, Treasury Department and Federal Reserve, Williamson suggested a list of 10 ideas to spur and safeguard economic development. His prescription became known as the Washington Consensus, which was subject to mistrust and misinterpretation from the beginning.

In its original form, the Washington Consensus presented several basic macroeconomic ideas to restore stability in countries with shaky economies. The first and perhaps most important requisite was fiscal discipline. Others included directing public expenditures toward health care, education and infrastructure; lowering tax rates; privatizing state-run businesses to improve efficiency and reduce corruption; and securing private property rights.

“The three big ideas here are macroeconomic discipline, a market economy and openness to the world,” Williamson said at the time.

The policy goals were meant to be applied to Latin America, but quickly became seen as a template for global economic reform in the wake of the collapse of communism across Eastern Europe.

“Initially there was a lot of criticism from Latin America calling it the ‘Washington Consensus,’ ” Williamson said in a 2006 oral history interview with the World Bank, “because this suggested that there were some people sitting in Washington deciding what Latin America needed to do. And the critics thought that these reforms were being imposed, which wasn’t my perception of how things were in fact happening, and certainly not how they should have happened.”

His ideas, however well-intentioned, immediately ran into the roadblocks of reality. Left-wing populists such as Hugo Chávez in Venezuela centralized many aspects of the national economy, and other reforms ran aground because of labor opposition, corruption and other deep-rooted institutional problems.

“The Washington Consensus had escaped my control and it had become whatever people meant by it,” Williamson said in a 2018 interview with the Center for Financial Stability.

Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz wrote in his 2002 book “Globalization and Its Discontents” that fiscal conservatism, privatization and higher interest simply weren’t effective in economically underdeveloped countries. The Washington Consensus, he concluded, had left some countries worse off than they were before, with stagnant economic growth and weakened social safety nets.

But later studies by economists Kevin Grier and Robin Grier showed that countries that had maintained their long-term policies of economic reform had increased growth, income and other economic conditions.

“There’s no question that Latin America is doing much better than East Europe,” Williamson said in 2009 during another worldwide economic downturn. “There’s been much more restraint this time around in most of the countries. That’s what Latin America is benefiting from.”

John Williamson was born June 7, 1937, in Hereford, England. His father ran a plant nursery business, and his mother was a homemaker.

Williamson graduated from the London School of Economics in 1958, served two years in the British air force, then received a doctorate in economics from Princeton University in 1963. While teaching at the University of York in England in the mid-1960s, he developed the “crawling peg” theory, an economic model to maintain currency stability by limiting volatility in exchange rates.

Williamson worked for the British treasury department in the late 1960s, taught at the University of Warwick in England and had a two-year assignment with the IMF in Washington in the early 1970s. He taught at the Pontifical Catholic University from 1978 to 1981. During the 1990s, he spent three years working for the World Bank. He published more than a dozen books and wrote scores of scholarly articles before his retirement in 2012. His most recent books, “Growth-Linked Securities,” appeared in 2017.

Survivors include his wife of 47 years, the former Denise de Souza of Chevy Chase; three children, Andre Williamson of Silver Spring, Md., Daniel Williamson of Chevy Chase and Theresa Williamson of Rio de Janeiro; two sisters; and seven grandchildren.

DWilliamson was a dedicated conservationist and birdwatcher who had sightings of more than 4,000 species of birds in the 104 countries he had visited.

Partly for environmental reasons, he believed governments should impose stiff taxes on carbon emissions. He also saw another industry that he thought should be heavily taxed for the public good: advertising.

“One could easily envisage a 20 or 30 percent tax on advertising,” he said in a PIIE publication in 2012, “which would bring in a lot of money and would have beneficial effects in limiting the extent to which we are bombarded with these unnecessary things at the present time.”

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Biden selects Asian American outreach director

InternationalApr 15. 2021Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) at one point threatened to block future Biden nominees because of the lack of Asian American representation in the administration. (Reuters)

By Tyler Pager, Seung Min Kim
The Washington Post

WASHINGTON – President Joe Biden has selected Erika Moritsugu, vice president of the National Partnership for Women and Families, to serve as a senior adviser overseeing outreach to Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, the White House announced Wednesday.

The move comes after weeks of pressure from Asian American leaders to diversify the upper ranks of the White House.

Moritsugu is expected to report to Bruce Reed, Biden’s deputy chief of staff, with the rank of deputy assistant to the president, a person familiar with the announcement, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly, said.

Moritsugu did not respond to a request for comment. Biden is scheduled to meet with the leadership team of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in the Oval Office on Thursday.

Moritsugu previously worked at the Anti-Defamation League and served on the staffs of Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., and former Sen. Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii.

She has also held various policy roles at the Democratic Policy Committee, worked at the Department of Housing and Urban Development during the Obama administration and oversaw Senate legislative affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

After the March 16 spa shootings in the Atlanta area, in which six Asian women were killed, Duckworth and Sen. Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, threatened to block future Biden nominees because of the dearth of representation in the administration. They withdrew that threat after receiving assurances that Biden would appoint a senior Asian American White House official.

As Biden started to roll out his Cabinet and senior staff during the presidential transition, Asian American leaders raised concerns about the lack of representation of people of Asian descent.

Other than Vice President Kamala Harris, Biden only has one other person of Asian descent in his Cabinet, Trade Representative Katherine Tai. Biden nominated Neera Tanden to serve as director of the Office of Management and Budget, but she withdrew her nomination after bipartisan pushback from senators concerned about her sometimes hard-hitting Twitter feed.

Asian American leaders are now pushing Biden to nominate Nani Coloretti, a former Obama official, for the OMB spot.