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Trump’s ex-lawyer Cipollone is at eye of hurricane for Jan. 6 panel

House investigators examining last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol have set their sights on a figure they deem crucial to discerning former President Trump’s actions through the long hours of the riot: Trump’s former lead attorney. 

Pat Cipollone, who served as White House counsel for the final half of Trump’s tenure, has emerged in recent days as a central player in the behind-the-scenes drama that unfolded at the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, after a mob of Trump supporters had breached the Capitol and a team of Trump’s increasingly frantic aides scrambled to convince a reluctant president to call them off. 

During Tuesday’s revealing hearing on Capitol Hill, Cassidy Hutchinson, the former lead advisor to Trump’s chief of staff Mark Meadows, said Cipollone had foreshadowed trouble on Jan. 6 days in advance, and grew furious during the attack when Trump and Meadows took no steps to curb the violence, even as the mob was threatening to kill Vice President Mike Pence.  

“Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your effing hands,” Cipollone warned Meadows, according to Hutchinson’s first-hand account. 

Cipollone appears to be a useful foil to Meadows. Both men had front-row visibility to the numerous plots to keep the president in power. But where the committee has cast Meadows as a servile Trump loyalist, they’ve made clear they see Cipollone as being one of the few inner-circle figures to protest the president’s bellicose plans for Jan. 6, including his persistent intention to march with his supporters to the Capitol that day. 

“Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy,” Hutchinson told the select committee, relaying Cipollone’s plea to her on the morning of the 6th. “Keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen.” 

Cipollone has met with investigators informally behind closed doors, but has not testified under oath. That’s a mistake, said Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the vice chair of the select committee, who has used the public hearings to urge his cooperation.  

“We think the American people deserve to hear from Mr. Cipollone personally,” she said during another hearing on June 21.  

After numerous public pleas, the committee lost its patience on Wednesday, issuing a subpoena for Cipollone’s testimony. 

The subpoena called him “uniquely positioned” to help the committee as it looks to examine Trump’s “awareness of and involvement in activities undertaken to subvert the outcome of the 2020 presidential election.” 

The White House counsel was aware of Trump’s various strategies for clinging to power following his election defeat. It was Cipollone’s office that pushed back on the scheme to send fake electors from states Trump lost as “not legally sound.”  

“Hey, this isn’t legally sound, we have fleshed this out internally, it’s fine that you think this but we’re not going to entertain this in an official White House capacity on behalf of the President, we’re putting a stop to this,” Hutchinson characterized the White House Counsel’s Office as saying in a portion of her testimony released in court documents in April.  

He was also in the now infamous Jan. 3 Oval Office meeting where a host of legal advisors talked Trump out of firing his acting attorney general and replacing him with a Justice Department lawyer willing to advance the president’s baseless claims of election fraud.  

The idea that the DOJ would falsely tell key states that it had suspicions of such fraud, Cipollone warned in that meeting, was the legal equivalent of “a murder-suicide pact,” according to testimony provided last week by Richard Donoghue, who was acting deputy attorney general at the time.  

Cipollone or his office also repeatedly raised legal concerns about Trump’s planned speech and actions on Jan. 6 and repeatedly sought to urge White House action as the attack unfolded. 

The White House counsel’s office wanted to strike language from Trump’s speech encouraging his supporters to “fight” as well as march toward the Capitol. Trump did both anyway. 

“Both Mr. Herschmann and White House counsel’s office were urging the speechwriters to not include that language for legal concerns, and also for the optics of what it could portray the president wanting to do that day,” Hutchinson said, referring to another top Trump lawyer, Eric Herschmann. 

Cipollone also told Hutchinson a few days before the attack he was worried if Trump marched to the Capitol it could appear he was helping to incite a riot or abet other crimes.  

“Pat was concerned it would look like we were obstructing justice or obstructing the Electoral College count….that it would look like we were obstructing what was happening on Capitol Hill,” she said.  

Cheney has repeatedly indicated they view Cipollone’s actions on the 6th favorably as well. 

“Indeed, our evidence shows that Mr. Cipollone and his office tried to do what was right. They tried to stop a number of President Trump’s plans for Jan. 6,” she said in the panel’s fourth hearing. 

Hutchinson’s in-person testimony added new details to that portrait. 

Cipollone at least twice urged Meadows to demand action from the president, both when rioters first stormed the Capitol and again when he heard there were chants of ‘“Hang Mike Pence” coming from the crowd.  

Hutchinson said Cipollone told Meadows something to the effect of, “This is effing crazy, we need to be doing something more.” 

Meadows, she said, was indifferent, responding “something to the effect of, ‘You heard him, Pat. He thinks Mike deserves it.’”  

Cipollone took on the difficult role of White House counsel in the fall of 2018, just as the midterm elections were approaching and Democrats, poised to flip the House from GOP control, were readying to pepper the Trump White House with new investigations. 

He was also the face of Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment in 2019 and 2020, when Democrats alleged the then-president had abused his power in leveraging critical defense aid to Ukraine in order to pressure President ​​Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the Biden family. The House impeached him with no Republican support; the Senate declined to convict.  

Democrats, at the time, had hammered Cipollone and the other members of Trump’s defense team, saying they had championed arguments with no legal basis. Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) had suggested they should all be disbarred.  

“I don’t know how they can retain their lawyer status, in the comments that they’re making,” Pelosi had said.  

By the time of Trump’s second impeachment trial in 2021, Trump was out of the White House and Cipollone was no longer representing him. He had returned to a private firm in Washington, D.C., falling off the media’s radar until the recent House hearings on the Jan. 6 attacks thrust him back into the public eye. 

Amid the effort to secure Cipollone’s participation, the committee has won a strong ally in John Dean, the White House counsel to former President Nixon, whose explosive testimony to Congress during the Watergate scandal led to Nixon’s ultimate downfall. For his role in the coverup, Dean was charged with obstruction of justice, pleaded guilty and was incarcerated for roughly four months. Afterwards, he was disbarred.  

Now, Dean is calling on Cipollone to take the similar step, saying his constitutional oath obliges him to cooperate with investigators about the events of Jan. 6.  

“It seems the older you are, the more vested you become in your career, and where you’re going to go from the White House. I think Cipollone’s got that problem. He’s got a large family to support. He looks towards Republican clients, probably, and is influenced in Washington. And he’s worried about damaging all that,” Dean said Wednesday evening in an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, alluding to Cipollone’s 10 children.  

“But I’ll tell you, if we don’t address the problems that this issue raises with Trump and Jan. 6,” he added, “we’re not going to have much of a democracy he needs to worry about.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Have wealthy Democratic elites abandoned the working class?

For decades, the mantra for Democrats during a national election was “Republicans are in the pockets of special interests.” Now, more and more people have come to believe that the Democrats are aligned with the “special interests.” The question is — as they hobnob with Big Tech billionaires, Hollywood celebrities, music executives, internet “influencers” and woke corporate CEOs — do they take even a moment to catch up on the actual news of the day?

Much of the news is financially and mentally crushing working-class Americans and those living below the poverty line. Or, to classify those constituencies in a category the Democratic elites might understand: Tens of millions of voters.

As the elites who pull the levers of the Democratic Party continue to appease their far-left wing with the Jan. 6 hearings; a Green New Deal costing at least $6 trillion (yes, trillions of dollars); forgiving college loans for predominantly wealthy white kids; and the redistribution of wealth, most Americans are literally crying out for help with factors that are negatively impacting their lives and their safety.  

Again, current events may not be talking points at five-star, private jet-accessible retreats that these elites attend, so here is a recap: Crippling gas prices may cause some Americans to choose between food and fuel; skyrocketing inflation forces some to do without; violent crime rates in major cities threaten to spread to suburbs; unchecked illegal immigration adds unsustainable stress to our health care system, constituent services and federal, state, county and city budgets, and is literally costing lives. We know this because the “real news” that elites may have missed or turned away from tells us that, just this week, at least 51 migrants were found dead in an abandoned tractor-trailer in Texas. Shouldn’t such a tragic development be a topic of discussion at the next cocktail party?

Defunding the police and not prosecuting criminals, or releasing them back onto the streets and doing away with cash bail, may be the dream of leftist district attorneys but, as a recent recall election in California showed us, it’s the stuff of nightmares for Americans who must deal with the consequences of such policies.

The death spiral that many believe the United States to be in has moved well past which party will control Congress after the 2022 midterms and who will win the White House in 2024. If the elites paid attention to what’s happening in America far from their gated communities, they might realize that most voters now care about basic quality-of-life issues. Can anyone in the Democratic Party read the room … anyone?

There are many high-level, skilled and empathic Democratic advisers out there who do believe that their party — and the nation as a whole —must embrace more commonsense, pragmatic solutions to America’s problems. But, as I’ve been told, a number of them simply don’t want to deal with the wrath that progressives would direct toward them if they dared to offer opinions.

So, while they join a long list of Democrats who are running away from the issues, more and more voters — including traditional Democrats — are running toward the issues. They are doing so because their quality of life is being turned upside down by decidedly illiberal policies.

For Democrats who seemingly answer only to the far left, I have one final question: Since when did the welfare of 90 percent of the American people not matter to your party anymore?

Douglas MacKinnon, a political and communications consultant, was a writer in the White House for Presidents Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, and former special assistant for policy and communications at the Pentagon during the last three years of the Bush administration. His latest book is “The 56: Liberty Lessons From Those Who Risked All to Sign the Declaration of Independence.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Dems campaign off Roe overturn, raise more than $80M

Over $80 million has been fundraised by Democrats and groups one week after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, an impressive fundraising haul that comes just ahead of the November midterms, The Associated Press reported.

That digital fundraising platform ActBlue recorded those numbers, which found that within the first 24 hours of the decision being announced, $20 million had been raised alone, the news outlet noted.

Last week, the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion, a decision that was celebrated by conservatives while it was blasted by Democrats. 

The ruling has led a patchwork of states to begin rolling back access to abortion – now requiring girls and women to cross state lines to receive the medical procedure. 

The decision was anticipated by some after a leaked Supreme Court draft opinion in May indicated the high court ruling that way, which fueled Democratic fundraising shortly thereafter.

“Donors gave $12 million through ActBlue from the time of the SCOTUS leak thru midnight yesterday, giving to groups that are organizing right now—abortion funds, reproductive justice groups both big and small, & candidates who will fight GOP efforts to restrict abortion access,” ActBlue tweeted on May 4.

The latest fundraising haul indicates that the issue can excite Democrats’ base, but it is not clear how that will translate by November. Democrats are already bracing for losses given President Biden’s low approval ratings, high inflation and the historical precedent that the president’s party generally suffers losses in the midterms. 

The Hill has reached out to ActBlue for comment.

Source: TEST FEED1

US is playing risky game with Saudi Arabia and Iran

“This summit,” Khaled Al-Suleiman, a Saudi Arabian columnist, wrote of President Biden’s upcoming trip to Saudi Arabia, “may be a golden opportunity for the American president to restore the [regional countries’] faith in America as a trustworthy historical ally with a solid policy that can be relied upon.

“For the alternative,” he warned, “is that these countries will actually change the map of their international alliances in order to safeguard their interests and enhance their ability to overcome the miscalculations of some of their traditional Western allies regarding the need to defend them from the threat of Iran, whose aggression is known to all and which never stops threatening and igniting fires and wars in the region!”

As Riyadh was planning to seek Biden’s assurances that Washington remains a reliable partner in confronting Iran’s regional expansionism, U.S. and Iranian officials met in Doha in hopes of reviving the 2015 global nuclear deal with Iran — the very deal that Riyadh opposes because it won’t prevent Iran from developing nuclear weapons over the long term and because it would do nothing to curb Tehran’s terror sponsorship and other destabilizing regional activities.

For Washington, the question is whether it can have its cake and eat it too — reassure a leader of Sunni Arab nations that seek to contain Shia Iran and reach a nuclear modus vivendi with the latter. The risk, of course, is that Washington will lose on both fronts — fail to revive the nuclear deal and feed more concerns among Saudi officials that Riyadh may need to reconsider its heavy reliance on Washington for regional security.

To be sure, Biden faces an unusually complicated global landscape that has forced him to backtrack on his campaign promise to make Riyadh a “pariah” over human rights, particularly over the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi that the U.S. intelligence community believes was ordered by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS).

The unprecedented sanctions that Washington and its allies have imposed on Russia, along with the growing military arsenal they have sent to Ukraine, have not forced Vladimir Putin to re-think the aggression that has shaken the post-war order. After stalling elsewhere on the ground, Russia’s military is making progress in capturing territory in Ukraine’s eastern region while shelling civilian sites in hopes of demoralizing Ukrainians and prompting Kyiv to surrender.

Moreover, sanctions on Russia’s oil sector have sent global oil prices much higher. That, and decisions by China and India to buy more Russian oil, have enabled Moscow to make more money from oil sales than before it invaded Ukraine. At the same time, U.S. consumers are paying much more at the pump, helping to drive inflationary pressures that prompted the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates dramatically. That move, in turn, is threatening to spark a U.S. recession.

Not surprisingly, Biden hopes to convince Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to increase oil production in hopes of lowering prices and, with mid-term congressional elections looming, give himself a political boost.

Riyadh, however, seems emboldened by Biden’s decision to scrap the “pariah” talk and visit the kingdom.

“[T]he Biden administration must prove that its renewed interest in the Gulf states is not [just] circumstantial and is not just a constraint imposed by the need for oil,” the pro-government Al-Riyadh newspaper wrote in an editorial. “Moreover, it must prove with deeds, not just with words, that it is still committed to the security of the Gulf and [recognizes that] the Gulf [states] have urgent needs that must be considered.”

Biden’s hopes of strengthening U.S.-Saudi relations is just one more reason to wonder why the administration still wants to revive a nuclear deal that, at best, would constrain Iran’s nuclear pursuits only until the deal expired in the coming years.

As the Saudis, other Gulf nations, and Israel have complained relentlessly, a revived deal would do nothing to constrain Iran’s nuclear-related ballistic missile program or force Tehran to change its regional behavior.

Nor would it force Iranian officials to cooperate with nuclear inspectors any more than they did before President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal in 2018. After the International Atomic Energy Agency passed a resolution in early June to urge Tehran to fully cooperate with inspectors who were probing suspected nuclear activity at three undeclared sites, Tehran responded that it would disconnect 27 cameras at nuclear-related sites that were designed to monitor its compliance with the nuclear deal.

All in all, Biden’s commitment to reviving the nuclear deal is not only problematic in terms of curbing Iranian nuclear activity, but it also threatens to undercut his effort to restore relations with Riyadh that have become increasingly important to U.S. strategic interests.

Lawrence J. Haas, senior fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council, is the author of “The Kennedys in the World: How Jack, Bobby, and Ted Remade America’s Empire,” from Potomac Books.

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Bezos, Musk and other billionaires lose combined $1.4T in first half of 2022

Billionaires — including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk — took a financial hit in the first half of 2022, losing a total of $1.4 trillion, Bloomberg reported.

Zuckerberg, whose total net worth is about $60 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire Index, had begun the year with more than $100 billion, the news outlet noted. 

The index notes that Bezos has a current total net worth of $133 billion, while Bloomberg notes he lost around $63 billion in the first half of the year.

Meanwhile, Musk, whose total net worth is $210 billion, lost close to $62 billion during that same time period.

Among the billionaires who have seen the steepest losses for 2022 include cryptocurrency exchange executive Changpeng Zhao at close to $80 billion; Zuckerberg, who lost $65.5 billion; Bezos; Musk and LVMH CEO and chairman Bernard Arnault, who lost about $49 billion.

Bloomberg noted that some of the billionaire losses were attributed to poor company performance in the last quarter; others come against swings in certain markets, like cryptocurrency.

Those losses also come against several other factors: decades-high inflation, an ongoing Russian invasion in Ukraine tampering with an already sensitive supply chain; and the Federal Reserve’s announcement last month to raise interest rates at the fastest pace in nearly 30 years.

Some have expressed concerns over a recession, though President Biden and members of his cabinet argue that a recession is not “inevitable.” 

Source: TEST FEED1

Inside Russia’s war camps: Ukrainian POWs detail torture, abuse

An activist-turned-soldier whose fingers were mangled by metal tools. Women photographed naked and forced to hold their hands above their heads or be beaten. Hospitalized prisoners-of-war mocked, threatened and left to die. 

The Hill spoke to a half dozen former prisoners of war and their families this month about what life was like for those captured by Russian forces since Moscow launched its invasion of Ukraine more than four months ago. 

Thousands of Ukrainians have been detained during the war, with many being exchanged for Russian prisoners of war and set free. Among them was Igor Kurayan, a 55-year-old Ukrainian activist who joined the fight against Russia and was captured in April. 

He said Russian soldiers discovered that he had been running supplies to Ukrainian soldiers on the frontlines since 2014, when Russia took over Crimea, and accused him of financing terrorist organizations and preparing a terrorist attack on Russian soldiers.

During weeks in Russian captivity, Kurayan said soldiers beat and electrocuted him for information, and twisted and cut his fingers using pliers and metal cutting scissors. Other prisoners were beaten so badly they died, he added. 

“Every day he would be called out for the torturing and they wanted him to hand over his friends,” said a translator with PR Army, an organization that helped connect the former POWs to The Hill and translate interviews. 

“They even offered for him to become mayor of Kherson but he refused all their offers,” he added. 

The Russian forces also allegedly took Kurayan’s phone and used his social media accounts to post previous photos he took with Ukrainian forces, but adding captions making it appear that he was advocating for Ukrainian forces to surrender to Russia.  

Kurayan’s daughter, Karina, provided screenshots of some of the posts Russian soldiers made on her father’s account to The Hill. Kurayan deleted all the posts as soon as he was exchanged and free from Russian captivity. 

While Russian forces kept some captured Ukrainian soldiers in Ukraine, others were transported to Russia. 

Anzhelika Todorashko, 32, said her mother, a Ukrainian soldier, and her sister, a civilian, were captured by Russian forces shortly after the invasion began. 

Russian soldiers were able to quickly take over her small village near the Russian border, cutting off all supplies to the town and encouraging residents to take a bus to Russia, where they would be sent to a “filtration camp,” according to Todorashko, who spoke English. 

She said her mother, 52-year-old Viktoria, was captured in February for her work with the Ukrainian army, then taken to Russia where she said she was electrocuted, photographed naked, given little food and water, and heard screams from other prisoners asking for death. 

Todroashko said the Russian soldiers would humiliate prisoners, with her mother telling her that prisoners had to hold their hands above their head for hours a day, and if they dropped their hands they would be beaten. Soldiers also shaved the heads of the women and suffocated others. 

“[Russia] had all their people in masks. You will never see their faces,” Todorashko said. 

Viktoria was released weeks after being imprisoned and taken to a Ukrainian hospital only for Todorashko’s sister, Valeria, to be captured in March for 10 days as Russians worked to find any evidence she was working for the Ukrainian forces, Todorashko added. 

She was released when Russia couldn’t find any evidence of such activities.

The Russian Embassy in Washington did not respond to questions from The Hill about the abuse and torture described by former Ukrainian prisoners.

Twenty-five year old Hlib Stryszko told The Hill he was defending a bomb shelter in Mariupol shielding women and children when he was wounded by Russian forces. 

He said he was standing on a third-floor balcony when he saw a Russian tank approaching the building. The tank fired at him, causing him to fall from the third floor with debris collapsing on top of him. 

Stryszko was taken to the hospital where he found out he broke his pelvis, was unable to open his eyes and injured his jaw. He said he received treatment for his injuries, but two days later Russian forces took over the hospital and was transferred to another hospital where doctors refused to treat anyone speaking Ukrainian. 

Even after speaking Russian, Stryszko said he was hardly treated for the injuries he sustained during the blast. 

“He said that he spent about a week in the hospital without receiving the necessary help or treatment,” Natasha Sennett, another translator from the PR Army, said of Stryszko. “Basically, they were kind of sarcastically coming up to him every morning, saying ‘Hey, hang in there soldier, maybe something will come up for you.’”

Along with the limited treatment, Stryszko said music would be blasted at the soldiers and Chechen fighters, notorious for their ruthlessness, would come into the hospital and taunt the injured.

“They will take out their knives and take the knife and start grazing the knife on the wounded soldiers’ bodies,” Sennett said. 

Stryszko said he was eventually transported to Russia, where authorities realized he couldn’t be sent to prison due to his condition. He was eventually transported to Russian-controlled Crimea, where he was exchanged and brought to a Ukrainian hospital, where he is still recovering. 

Family members, meanwhile, went weeks not knowing whether their loved ones were dead or alive. 

“It was hell on earth,” Karina, the daughter of Kurayan, said in an interview, assisted by translator Natsya Popandopulos, another member of the non-profit PR Army, which works to share the stories of Ukrainians with the world. 

Only Karina, who is currently in the United Kingdom, could speak out about her father’s captivity, with family members fearing their own freedom and livelihood if they spoke out. 

Todorashko, whose mother and sister were captured, said she was unaware her mother was captured by Russian forces until she was released and able to contact her. She only learned of her sister’s captivity because her younger brother, who was in the village with her sister, was able to hide a phone and message her.

Todorashko’s brother had to hide the device because Russian soldiers would go into homes and take anything they wanted, including phones and laptops, according to Todorashko.

“It was terrifying. It was terrifying,” Todrashko told The Hill of not being in communication with her mom and sister for so long amid the war. 

For Ukrainians in Russia-annexed Crimea, the fear and abuse was nothing new. 

Volodymyr Balukh, a 51-year-old activist, said he saw his home in Crimea overrun by Russian forces in 2014. He refused to obey orders by the soldiers, continuing to fly his Ukrainian flag and switching from speaking Russian to Ukrainian. 

He said he was running food and supplies to the Ukrainian soldiers on the front lines for years as he was arrested multiple times by Russian forces, who eventually planted ammunition and explosives at his house in an attempt to frame him as a terrorist. 

Balukh then spent three years in prison from 2016 to 2019, where he says Russian soldiers waterboarded him, stripped him naked, electrocuted him, threatened him with rape and gave him limited food.

“In captivity, there is a struggle for modesty to preserve your honor and dignity every second, 24 hours,” said Popandopulos, one of the translators, relaying Balukh’s words. “The Russian system is built to push everything, every human being from yourself and feel only fear.”

Today, Balukh is still trying to assist Ukraine’s war efforts and has been working to raise money for vehicles needed to defend its territory. 

After his time in Russian captivity, he had some advice to share for Ukrainians who find themselves under Russian control. 

“Endurance, faith and steadfastness are very important in captivity,” Popandopulos said for Balukh. “It’s important to know, what are you fighting for? What are you living for?”

Source: TEST FEED1

City and state diplomacy are key to saving U.S. foreign policy

America’s partners around the world must have a serious case of whiplash. The past 20 years have seen U.S. foreign policy ricochet from unilateralism to “leading from behind,” from the isolationism of America First to an attempt to restore our diplomacy and global partnerships all at once. Foreign policy priorities always shift when the White House changes hands, but these swings are now more pronounced and jeopardize the credibility of U.S. commitments abroad. The polarization of American politics now includes our foreign policy.

That’s why one of the consistent sources of America’s strength — our cities and states — should be much more involved in designing and executing foreign policy. Cities and states have less partisan turnover and their leaders generally have less time for political shenanigans: They need to deliver tangible services for constituents. Elevating the role of cities and states in diplomacy — or in other words, decentralizing diplomacy — will build more practical, collaborative, and mutually beneficial diplomatic partnerships.

Cities and states across the U.S. are already engaged in diplomacy. They lead networks dedicated to combating climate change and advancing gender equity, welcome visiting foreign delegations, host major international events and position personnel overseas to support local economic development, tourism, and trade. Most of this activity happens independently, focused on bilateral technical and cultural exchange. 

But without a connection to the U.S. State Department, we are losing an opportunity to leverage these relationships as a tool in our foreign policy. Neglecting the diplomatic channels created by cities and states also sidelines diverse leaders and valuable insight from their respective communities, and misses a chance to broaden the domestic stakes in our foreign policy. As global competitors invest heavily in supporting international engagement by their cities and regional governments, we risk falling further behind.

Over the past five months, the Truman Center for National Policy has convened a Task Force on City & State Diplomacy. This effort, involving more than 30 elected officials, diplomats, academics and members of the Truman National Security Project, proposes actionable recommendations to build a foreign policy informed by inputs from across the country. 

The first step is structural: the State Department should immediately establish an Office of City and State Diplomacy. This office will strengthen communication and collaboration between the State Department and city and state governments on foreign policy priorities. Legislation introduced by Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.) and Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), two co-chairs of the Truman Center Task Force, mandates the creation of this office; but the State Department can and should create the office on its own. This office can also explore embedding foreign service officers within city and state governments, map out how cities and states are already partnering globally, as well as establish a competitive grant program to build the diplomatic capacity of cities and states.

For their part, cities and states should invest in their diplomacy, starting with personnel. Only one American city, Los Angeles, has a Deputy Mayor for International Affairs (also a co-chair of the Truman Center Task Force). She has a team of eight people — robust by U.S. standards. Compare this, for example, to Shanghai, which has approximately 100 personnel dedicated to international engagement. Cities and states should create dedicated international affairs teams and leverage resources within their communities to grow them, by partnering with retired diplomats, academics, or non-profits working internationally.

There’s another key benefit of elevating city and state diplomacy: more diverse voices informing U.S. foreign policy. While the Biden/Harris administration has made progress in hiring professionals who better reflect the diversity of America, when Washington connects to city and state diplomats, a broader set of voices and perspectives informs our policymaking process.  

America’s global engagement is always going to ebb and flow depending on the people in power. By investing in city and state diplomacy we can reduce the costs of that volatility. The diplomacy led by cities and states endures across administrations, in part because it is directly tied to community-level needs.

Designing ways to connect our foreign policy to the pragmatic, solutions-based international engagement led by cities and states provides a moderating influence and demonstrates that American leadership extends well beyond Washington.

Jon Temin is the vice president of Policy & Program at the Truman Center for National Policy.  He was previously a member of the U.S. State Department’s Policy Planning Staff.

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10-year-old girl denied abortion in Ohio

A 10-year-old girl was denied an abortion in Ohio after the Supreme Court ruled last week that it was overturning Roe v. Wade, demonstrating the tangible impacts that the high court’s decision is having on patients seeking access to the medical procedure.

A child abuse doctor in Ohio contacted Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an obstetrician-gynecologist in Indiana, after receiving a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant, the Indianapolis Star reported. 

That patient is now heading west to Indiana given that an abortion ban in Ohio, which prohibits the medical procedure when fetal cardiac activity begins, around six weeks, had become effective quickly after the high court issued its decision.

While several groups filed a lawsuit seeking to block the state law from taking effect on Wednesday, an emergency stay of the abortion ban was rejected by the Ohio Supreme Court on Friday, meaning that the ban can be upheld as the case is reviewed, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported.

Ohio is among a number of states that have rolled back abortion access since the Supreme Court eliminated the constitutional right to an abortion. Some laws have been paused pending legal challenges.

But Indiana could soon find itself passing its own abortion law later this month given that a special session has been scheduled for later in July and the legislature is expected to touch on a ban on the medical procedure, WFYI reported. 

The Hill has reached out to Bernard for comment.

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What the Supreme Court ruled the EPA can and can’t do

A Thursday ruling by the Supreme Court significantly curtailed the Environmental Protection Agency’s power to restrict emissions from power plants under a 2014 rule, but the agency still retains other tools to curb emissions—for now. 

In the 6-3 ruling in West Virginia vs. EPA, the court’s conservative majority found that the EPA lacked the authority to enforce an Obama-era power plant rule without specific congressional approval.  

Although the ruling disallows that specific approach without lawmakers signing off, the agency still has its broader authority to regulate power plant outputs to cut emissions under the Clean Air Act.

The problem, from the point of view of those who want the EPA to cut emissions, is that in most cases they are less efficient and more expensive in a political and regulatory environment where every second counts. 

Following the ruling, the agency “still has a number of pathways to do its job to protect public health and the environment, including by limiting greenhouse gas emissions from power plants,” Dena Adler, a research scholar at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity, told The Hill in an email. 

But he and other sources agreed there are important limitations now for the EPA that weren’t there before.

Thursday’s ruling specifically applies to the EPA’s 2015 Clean Power Plan, which had a goal of so-called generation-shifting, or accelerating the shift from coal-fired power to renewable energy and natural gas.

“That’s a significant constraint, because it was the EPA’s first choice for a reason,” said Jack Lienke,

regulatory policy director at New York University’s Institute for Policy Integrity. “It reflects how the power grid actually operates and the fact that electricity is fungible.” 

In the wake of the ruling, the EPA has many of the same arrows in its quiver as before to address pollutants from power plants, but “the tools the EPA has are probably inadequate,” said Cardozo School of Law professor Michael Herz. 

One alternative to generation-shifting is co-firing, or the combustion of two kinds of fuel at the same time, which can create a more environmentally friendly product at an existing plant.  

“Depending on the level of co-firing that you assume, you could still get quite significant emissions reductions through that approach,” Lienke said.

He cited 2021 modeling by Resources for the Future, which indicates the co-firing approach could be an effective means of emissions reduction, but “almost certainly not as cost-effective as generation shift,” he added. 

Another possible approach is carbon capture and sequestration, through which carbon emissions are stored and contained before they can enter the atmosphere. 

However, the safest way to shore up EPA authority would be “legislation, appropriate, adequate, serious legislation,” Herz told The Hill.

“And failing that. EPA is going to do what it’s been doing, at least with Democratic presidents,” that is, attempt to implement the specific statutory provisions of the Clean Air Act, which “are not necessarily ideally suited” to lowering carbon emissions.

Adler was more sanguine, telling The Hill that “[w]hile certain techniques still on the table may be less economically efficient than the Clean Power Plan, it is worth remembering that industry has repeatedly overestimated the costs of Clean Air Act compliance throughout history.”

In the meantime, she said, state and local governments can potentially pick up some of the slack through transportation, zoning and building code policies. 

Robert Glicksman, a professor of environmental law at George Washington University, warned that the ruling might foreclose on some of the alternate possibilities as well. 

“It doesn’t say that’s unlawful, but I have my doubts, because if the impact of one or another of those techniques, alone or in combination, could pose significant economic burdens on regulated utilities, forcing some plants to close down because they couldn’t afford to comply,” regulators are likely to run up against the so-called major-questions doctrine, which requires specific congressional approval for regulations with major national implications. The doctrine was the foundation of the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.  

The court’s ruling comes as the Biden administration seeks to bridge two seemingly contradictory goals: an ambitious target of cutting national greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and increasing the supply of fuel as the U.S. and other nations face a major gas crisis. 

Many of the administration’s loftiest legislative climate priorities fell by the wayside after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.) announced in December he would not back the Build Back Better spending package. Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) said Thursday that the ruling illustrated the need for a deal on climate in the Senate. Democratic leaders this week reportedly reached a deal on prescription drugs, which would potentially clear the way for Schumer and Manchin to negotiate on its other major planks, tax reform and climate.

Ultimately, Lienke said, the ruling is a major setback for the Biden administration as it seeks to take major climate action against the backdrop of what are likely to be GOP gains in the midterm elections. However, he said, the ruling is not broad enough to put the agency’s more general regulatory authority at risk. 

“The significance of the loss for EPA here, losing the ability to use generation-shifting, is a significant constraint … under the law, but EPA does retain its authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act. That is not in doubt, no one disputed that,” he said.  “So EPA will move forward with another rule, and there are still tools available to get emission reductions.” 

Source: TEST FEED1