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Live coverage: Jan. 6 panel to focus on Trump pressure campaign on state officials to overturn election

Former President Trump’s role in pushing state officials to bypass election requirements and aid him in claiming victory will take center stage on Tuesday afternoon for the fourth hearing from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. 

“We’ll be taking a close look at how the president and his allies came up with these schemes to pressure Republican-controlled legislatures and other state officials to reverse the certification of his electoral loss,” a committee aide told reporters on Monday.

Follow The Hill’s live coverage below:

Who is Shaye Moss, former Georgia elections worker to testify before Jan. 6 panel?

9:19 a.m.

A former Georgia elections worker is set to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot during the panel’s latest public hearing on Tuesday as it seeks to show former President Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and his role in the riot.

That official, former Fulton County, Ga., elections worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, will appear before the committee during its second panel. 

She received death threats after being accused of counting ballots for then-candidate Joe Biden multiple times in addition to counting fraudulent ballots, becoming a target of Trump and his allies.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum noted that she was forced to go into hiding and have her appearance changed due to the number of death threats she received, though she continued on with her work. 

–Caroline Vakil

Jan. 6 panel subpoenas filmmaker with access to Trump family

9:16 a.m.

The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol is probing new sources for information on former President Trump, his children and former Vice President Mike Pence, issuing a subpoena to a documentary filmmaker.

The subpoena to Alex Holder, first obtained by Politico, asks not only for footage he captured as the Capitol riot was unfolding, but also interviews he conducted from September 2020 and onward as he documented Trump’s reelection campaign.

–Rebecca Beitsch

Get caught up while you’re waiting for the hearing to begin

9:00 a.m.

Tuesday afternoon’s hearing is scheduled to begin at 1 p.m. Get caught up on the latest developments while you’re waiting.

Trump’s pressure on state GOP to take center stage

GOP senators downplay Jan. 6 panel’s importance

Trump ratchets up attacks amid questions about his presidential viability

Full Jan. 6 hearings coverage

–The Hill staff

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden moves to restrict military's use of land mines

The Biden administration on Tuesday moved to limit the U.S. military’s use of landmines, reversing a Trump-era policy that loosened restrictions on anti-personnel landmines.

“The world has once again witnessed the devastating impact that anti-personnel landmines can have in the context of Russia’s brutal and unprovoked war in Ukraine, where Russian forces’ use of these and other munitions have caused extensive harm to civilians and civilian objects,” White House National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said in a statement.

“President Biden is committed to continuing the United States’ role as the world’s leader in mitigating the harmful consequences of anti-personnel landmines worldwide,” she said.  

The White House said that Biden had directed the U.S. to align its policy on landmine use alongside the border between South Korea and North Korea with provisions of the Ottawa Treaty, a 1997 treaty with the goal of eliminating the use of anti-personnel landmines around the world. 

The White House said that Biden would bar “the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines.” 

Additionally, the White House said Biden would order the Pentagon to work to find “alternatives” to such landmines that would allow the U.S. to join the Ottawa Convention, which the U.S. cannot join because of its current policies.

— Developing

Source: TEST FEED1

Is it time to scrap the China-US ‘Three Communiques’?

Chinese officials have become increasingly strident about U.S. support for Taiwan. For years, they simply reiterated their well-worn positions while ignoring established U.S. policy. Then, they began conflating the two governments’ positions, dismissing the difference between Beijing’s One China “principle,” which claims Taiwan as part of China, and Washington’s One China “policy,” which recognizes the People’s Republic as China’s only government but maintains that Taiwan’s international status is undetermined.

Now, Chinese officials have escalated their argument to a new level, alleging American bad faith and duplicity. They contend that Washington always knew it was accepting China’s claim regarding Taiwan and is reneging and trying to change history.   

Zhao Lijan, China’s official military spokesperson, demanded recently: “The U.S. needs to abide by … its political commitment to China on the Taiwan question.” China’s ambassador to the United Kingdom elaborated: “The one China principle is … the political foundation of China-U.S. relations. The …U.S. side [is] attempt[ing] to deny [it] by misrepresenting history and distorting facts … be it the One China principle or the One China policy, the essence of both is ‘one China.’’’ 

The source of the controversy is the Shanghai Communique, the original sin of U.S.-China-Taiwan relations, the Indo-Pacific’s most dangerous flashpoint.

In Henry Kissinger’s memoir, “White House Years,” and in Winston Lord’s “Kissinger on Kissinger,” he describes the Sino-U.S. negotiations that produced the document. Even before the two sides met in Shanghai, the ground had been prepared for the critical wordsmithing needed to craft a communique both sides could live with after decades of isolation and hostility.

In accordance with the strategy he and President Nixon had devised, Kissinger wrote, “[For] the outline of a communique, I submitted a draft in the traditional form, stressing agreements. But Mao [Zedong], through Zhou [Enlai], had a different concept. He proposed listing disagreements because it was more credible, and then emphasizing the agreements we did reach. So we reversed what we had come to do. We accepted Mao’s scheme and brought it back to Nixon. … He never questioned one line of it.”

Under the Mao-Zhou approach, each side would make a statement of its positions and the other side could offer comments. The Chinese took maximum advantage of their counter-proposal by laying out a full-throated indictment of the U.S.-led international order and criticism of American “interference” in other countries’ affairs. The U.S. chose not to offer any rebuttal or reciprocal criticism of China’s international behavior. Nor did it even mildly disagree with the Chinese assertion that Taiwan is an integral part of one China ruled by the People’s Republic. To the contrary, it stated:

“The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.”

Kissinger occasionally has said he found that formulation in an earlier State Department document. Among the Merriam-Webster definitions of “acknowledge” is “to take notice of,” which Washington insists was the U.S. side’s intended meaning. But another, equally accepted, synonym of “acknowledge” is “to recognize” or “admit as true.” Beijing obviously chose the definition more favorable to its position and has run with it since. In the Chinese version of the communique — and in the practice of Chinese diplomats — the term “acknowledge” is translated as “recognize.”

A passage in Kissinger’s book could be read as supporting the Chinese interpretation: “[W]e secured [the Chinese side’s] agreement stating that we acknowledged Taiwan as a ‘part’ rather than a ‘province’ of China, thus eliminating a suggestion of subordination.” But that nuance would have made no difference if the American negotiators were merely taking note of the position of “all Chinese,” rather than expressing concurrence in the position itself. Kissinger’s statement suggests the latter. In any event, China retained the term “province” in its own statement, and apparently the Kissinger team did not object — even as they were allowing the China side to urge changes in the U.S. statement.

Kissinger described a critical example of the negotiating process: “The Chinese wanted us to state that a peaceful solution was our ‘hope.’ We insisted on affirming it as an American interest, indeed on ‘reaffirming’ it, implying that it was a continuing commitment. … [W]e had achieved our basic objective. We would reaffirm our interest in a peaceful solution of the Taiwan question.”

But the Americans did not state it as a reciprocal condition, or even expectation, and did not ask China to commit to a peaceful solution to “the Taiwan question,” let alone insist that it “must” do so, as the Chinese commanded “all U.S. forces and military installations must be withdrawn from Taiwan.” Nor, apparently, did the U.S. ask China to reciprocate by at least “acknowledging” Washington’s “interest” in a peaceful resolution. 

Kissinger mentioned an interesting aspect of the negotiations: “[O]ne of the associates of Zhou Enlai… had a fantastic English vocabulary. He was a genius in finding an English word that would meet the requirements of both sides.” Kissinger took the U.S. acquiescence a step further, agreeing to use the Chinese interpreters, whom he considered superior to the American ones. 

The one-sided, strategically ambiguous Shanghai Communique has haunted the relationship ever since. The second (1979) and third (1982) Sino-U.S. communiques repeated and built upon the flawed language in the 1972 document.  

Both Beijing and Washington complain that the other side is not living up to the original agreement and, worse, is distorting its meaning. That amounts to the absence of a meeting of the minds, which, under the common law of contracts, constitutes a failure of actionable agreement. A legal argument could be made that the undertakings — exclusively by the U.S. side — are null and void.

Another legal principle applies, that of conditionality — condition precedent and condition subsequent. The Taiwan Relations Act (TRA) of 1979, enacted to complement the switch in U.S. recognition from Taipei to Beijing, captures the point precisely: “[The United States decision to establish diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic of China rests upon the expectation that the future of Taiwan will be determined by peaceful means.”  

Beijing rejects that “expectation” and passed its Anti-Secession Law to counter the TRA and mandate use of force to resolve Taiwan’s status. Kissinger has warned Taiwan that “China will not wait forever.” Chinese leader Xi Jinping agrees. President Biden, urgently and definitively, needs to inject some strategic clarity from the U.S. side. He should declare the U.S. understanding of the communiques as the only binding U.S. commitment.

After 50 years, China now claims the entire Taiwan Strait as Chinese waters, never contemplated at the time of the Shanghai Communique. Beijing has nullified it; it’s time for Washington to declare its One China-One Taiwan policy and return U.S. forces to Taiwan. 

Joseph Bosco served as China country director for the secretary of Defense from 2005 to 2006 and as Asia-Pacific director of humanitarian assistance and disaster relief from 2009 to 2010. He served in the Pentagon when Vladimir Putin invaded Georgia and was involved in Department of Defense discussions about the U.S. response. Follow him on Twitter @BoscoJosephA.

Source: TEST FEED1

Here are the best-run cities in America: report

The best-run city in America is Nampa, Idaho, the state’s third most populace city, according to a new Wallet Hub analysis.  

WalletHub compared the operating efficiency of 150 of the largest cities in the nation along 38 “quality of services” metrics, which were then measured against the city’s budget, to determine which U.S. cities were managed the best.  

Boise, Idaho; Fort Wayne, Ind.; Nashua, N.H. and Lexington-Fayette, Ky. rounded out the top five spots.  

Cleveland, Chattanooga, New York City, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. were ranked the worst-run cities in 2022.  

One of the metrics propelling Nampa to the top position was the city’s amount of outstanding debt per capita. Nampa has the lowest in the country at $607. The site found that Nampa’s debt per capita is more than 36 times lower than Washington, D.C. where it is the highest at $22,178. 

The study also found that Austin, Texas, ranked 85^th, has the highest high school graduation rate, while Provo, Utah, ranked 15^th overall, has the lowest unemployment rate in the U.S. at 1.5 percent.  

Meanwhile, Washington, D.C. has the lowest high school graduation rate, according to the analysis.  

America is changing faster than ever! Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news. 

Experts interviewed by Wallet Hub said citizens have the power to improve the quality of their cities by showing up and participating. 

“Speak up to share your views, but that right comes with the obligation to be prepared and know something about the topic, which is not likely to be gained by listening to talk radio and its television equivalent,” said Terry L. Clower a Public Policy professor at George Mason University. 

“Local leaders will likely surprise you with the degree to which they welcome reasoned, thoughtful, and respectful input,” Clower said.  

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Source: TEST FEED1

Buy now, pay later is not a cure for credit building

Buy now, pay later (BNPL) products have exploded in popularity in recent years. Nearly 8.5 million consumers used BNPL in one month alone (December 2021) and the industry is expected to increase 10 to 15 times its current size by 2025. 

Buy now, pay later products allow consumers to buy retail items with short-term loans, usually repaid by a down payment and three more installments over a six-week period. Consumers, especially younger ones, have flocked to BNPL as a supposedly better alternative to credit cards. But is it really a better mousetrap? With regards to helping consumers build a credit history, the answer is no — at least right now. 

Buy now, pay later products are far inferior to credit cards in establishing a solid credit record. Younger consumers who are avoiding credit cards might think they are building a good credit score with BNPL repayments, but they probably are shortchanging themselves. 

First, many buy now, pay later lenders aren’t even reporting payment information to the Big Three credit bureaus (Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion). The loans from these lenders are only reported when accounts become delinquent and are sent to debt collectors, which then report the negative information. So missing payments on a BNPL loan could definitely hurt a borrower.

Even when buy now, pay later lenders do report all of their information, including on-time payments, to the credit bureaus, not all of them include the information in the main credit reporting files. That’s the only place where it could have an impact on a credit score. Experian is creating a special database for BNPL data, which doesn’t impact credit scores — although that might actually be a good thing for right now.

That’s because, under current credit scoring models, including BNPL data in credit reports, even positive information, will only help consumers if the data is furnished in one specific manner — as an ongoing, revolving line of credit, similar to how a credit card account is reported. Unless BNPL accounts are reported this way, BNPL might end up hurting more than helping, even if the borrower makes all their payments on time, because of how the credit scoring algorithms work. 

According to FICO, the most popular scoring provider, its credit scores are composed of the following factors: 

• Payment History (35 percent)
• Amounts owed, including in comparison with credit limits/original balances (30 percent)
• Length of Credit History (15 percent)
• New Credit (10 percent)
• Types of Credit in Use (10 percent)
• VantageScore, which is the other credit scoring provider, uses similar categories.

If buy now, pay later credit is reported as a series of individual six-week loans that are opened and closed in a short period — which is how most BNPL lenders characterize their products — many of these factors will end up hurting a credit score. (BNPL credit actually should be viewed as a form of credit card, as we have urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The loans would show up as relatively new accounts with very short lifespans. This would lower the consumer’s score based on the “new credit” and “length of history” factors. In addition to these age factors, the impact of having a bunch of short-term, low-balance loans on the “amounts owed” factor is uncertain. 

However, if BNPL lenders reported all their loans to one consumer as a single revolving, open-end account, the product could potentially help a consumer’s credit score based on these same factors. In fact, there is some evidence of this already. In December 2021, Equifax issued a press release touting a study finding that “the majority of consumers in the study were helped by having an on-time BNPL tradeline in their credit file, with an average FICO Score increase of 13 points.” The important point is that the BNPL lender in this study reported its accounts as revolving credit, i.e., as a credit card. 

There are many problems with credit cards, and they can lead consumers too easily into unmanageable debt. But the reality is that the credit reporting system, and the algorithms that generate the all-important three-digit credit score, rely heavily on credit card data. Until we can be assured that the reporting of BNPL will truly benefit consumers by being treated similarly to credit cards, young folks on their credit journeys might need to start their records the old-fashioned way — with an actual credit card.

Chi Chi Wu is a staff attorney at the National Consumer Law Center

Source: TEST FEED1

Who is Shaye Moss, former Georgia elections worker to testify before Jan. 6 panel?

A former Georgia elections worker is set to testify before the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot during the panel’s latest public hearing on Tuesday as it seeks to show former President Trump’s pressure campaign on state officials to overturn the 2020 presidential election results and his role in the riot.

That official, former Fulton County, Ga., elections worker Wandrea “Shaye” Moss, will appear before the committee during their second panel. 

Georgia was among a handful of battleground states that Trump lost during the last presidential election, baselessly claiming that election fraud had been committed.

Trump had urged Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) to “find 11,870 votes” to help him notch a win in the Peach State just days before Congress was set to certify the 2020 Electoral College results on Jan. 6, 2021.

Between 2017 and April 2022, Moss had worked with the Fulton County Department of Registration and Elections, according to John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum, and had been involved in vote counting on Election Day in 2020.

She received death threats after being accused of counting ballots for then-candidate Joe Biden multiple times in addition to counting fraudulent ballots, becoming a target of Trump and his allies.

The John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum noted that she was forced to go into hiding and have her appearance changed due to the number of death threats she received, though she continued on with her work. 

She and her mother, who also worked during the 2020 elections, later sued the parent company of One America News Network, people associated with the outlet, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani and conservative website Gateway Pundit for defamation. 

Moss was also one of five people to win the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year, awarded for the “courage to protect and defend democracy in the United States and abroad,” according to the library and museum.

Other officials whom the House select committee will hear from on Tuesday include Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers (R), Raffensperger and Gabriel Sterling, Raffensperger’s chief operating officer.

Bowers also received a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award this year. 

“We’ll be taking a close look at how the president and his allies came up with these schemes to pressure Republican-controlled legislatures and other state officials to reverse the certification of his electoral loss,” a committee aide told journalists on Monday.

“We’ll demonstrate that President Trump and his allies drove the pressure campaign based on lies. These lies led to threats that put state and local officials and their families at risk. These lies perpetuated the public’s belief that the election was stolen, tainted by widespread fraud, and these lies also contributed to the violence on Jan. 6,” the aide added.

Source: TEST FEED1

Musk says recession ‘is inevitable at some point’

Tesla CEO Elon Musk said on Tuesday that he thinks the United States will likely fall into a recession in the near future. 

“A recession is inevitable at some point,” Musk told Bloomberg Editor-in-Chief John Micklethwait at the Qatar Economic Forum in Doha.

“As to whether there is a recession in the near term,” he added, “that is more likely than not.” 

Musk’s remarks follow other top industry leaders who have voiced concerns that rising inflation and the Federal Reserve’s response may impact the economic growth the country has seen as it comes out of the COVID-19 pandemic. A recession is considered a time period in which the gross domestic product falls for at least two successive economic quarters. 

To combat inflation, the Fed raised interest rates last week by three-quarters of a percentage point, the largest increase since 1994. Stocks fell toward the end of last week after the announcement, with the Dow Jones Industrial Average finishing its worst week of losses since 2020. 

As the Fed takes steps to try to get inflation under control, economists have expressed concern that slowing down the economy will result in the economy shrinking. 

A survey of top business executives published on Friday showed that 60 percent of CEOs think a recession will occur by the end of next year. 

Goldman Sachs economists, meanwhile, said in a research note on Monday that the chances of a recession are rising, Bloomberg noted. They said they believe the chances of a recession in the next year have risen from 15 percent to 30 percent.

President Biden emphasized in an interview with The Associated Press on Thursday that recession is “not inevitable” and denied that the federal government sending stimulus checks to individuals during COVID-19 business lockdowns are to blame for inflation.

Source: TEST FEED1

Chappelle won’t name space after himself at alma mater

Dave Chappelle says he’s opting against renaming a space at his alma mater after himself — as he defended a past controversial Netflix comedy special — instead choosing to give a nod to artistic freedom.

“We call it the Theater for Artistic Freedom and Expression,” Chappelle told WRC-TV on Monday of the theater at Washington’s Duke Ellington School of the Arts, which the comedian attended.

“Because to me, that’s what I would want for myself, and that’s what I would want for every student that goes to this school,” Chappelle, 48, said.

“And I do feel like if that’s threatened, then the society at large is threatened. Then if artists feel stifled, then everyone’s stifled,” he added.

“I feel like artists have a responsibility to really be true to their art right now,” he said.

GLAAD and the National Black Justice Coalition were among the groups that condemned Chappelle’s 2021 Netflix special, “The Closer,” for its “transphobic” material.

In the special, Chappelle mocked members of the transgender community and used crude terms to refer to a transgender person’s anatomy.

Chappelle offered a defense of the TV project as he spoke at the arts school on Monday, and took a shot at the media’s coverage of it.

“You cannot report on an artist’s work and remove artistic nuance,” Chappelle said, according to The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin.

The 1991 Ellington graduate said when he’s told he “can’t say something,” the “more urgent” it is for him to say it.

“It has nothing to do with what you are saying I can’t say. It has everything to do with my freedom of artistic expression,” he said.

Source: TEST FEED1

Is it just me, or is it really hot again?

The summer solstice is here, and it’s historically hot again in the northern hemisphere. Millions of people have been under heat watches in the U.S. Parts of Europe are experiencing record-setting temperatures. And this spring South Asia had one of its most severe heat episodes on record. While the increasing frequency and severity of extreme heat may be shocking, it should no longer be surprising — this is what it means to live in a world that has warmed by more than 1 degrees Celsius globally.

There is now very clear evidence that global warming is increasing the frequency and severity of many kinds of extremes, including events that are so hot they are unprecedented in our historical experience. In fact, scientists have already determined that global warming made the severe heat in South Asia 30 times more likely. Research has shown similar results for other recent heat events, including the record-shattering heat wave in the Pacific Northwest last year.

This intensification from global warming is now broadly true around the world: Overall, the level of heat that used to occur once in a half century is now likely to occur five times as often, and global warming has already increased the odds of unprecedented heat events across most of the globe. So, if it seems like every summer is treating us to another spate of heat-related disasters of historic proportions, well, that’s because it is.

While there is of course variability from place to place and year to year, the increasing frequency of these kinds of record-breaking heat events are a fundamental feature of global warming. And that means that we can reliably expect these trends to continue.

Unfortunately, increases in severe heat carry severe risks. In addition to the mountain of studies showing that hot events are intensifying, there is also very clear evidence that severe heat impacts people and ecosystems. These impacts include the direct effects of hot temperatures on human health through heat stress and other heat-related illnesses. They also include indirect health effects from labor injuries, poor air quality and mental health (including suicide). Multiple lines of evidence also show that high temperatures affect cognitive performance, labor productivity and economic growth, as well as interpersonal and intergroup conflict. And poor and marginalized people and communities are both more exposed and more vulnerable to these effects.

Heat also causes steep declines in agricultural yields, costing billions of dollars in the U.S. alone. Further, recent research shows that global warming has increased the odds that different breadbasket regions around the world experience severely hot conditions in the same year, elevating the risk of the kinds of supply shocks that exacerbate food insecurity. And the plants we grow aren’t the only plants that are vulnerable: Severe heat exacerbates drought conditions, dries out vegetation leading to larger and more severe wildfires, and it has been implicated in forest die-off events around the world.

To make matters worse, these impacts are not limited to plants and animals on land. Last summer’s Pacific Northwest heat wave was estimated to have killed as many as 1 billion marine organisms. Similar “marine heat waves” have impacted other ocean ecosystems around the world, including massive coral die-offs in reefs around Hawaii and Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, which is currently experiencing its fourth mass bleaching event in the last seven years. Globally, marine heat waves have increased 50 percent in the last decade, and are now 10 times as severe due to global warming.

There used to be a time, not too long ago, when the urgency of global warming was framed in terms of avoiding dangerous impacts in the future. What has become increasingly clear — in the scientific literature and in our lived experience — is both that climate change is impacting people and ecosystems here and now, and that the impacts are often non-linear. That is, all else being equal, we can expect the next degree of global warming to do a lot more damage than the degree that’s already happened.

But all else doesn’t need to be equal. Because human activities are the primary cause of global warming, human activities will determine how much additional global warming there is in the future — whether that is the additional 1.5 degrees Celsius implied by current policies and actions, or the much more ambitious targets agreed upon in the UN Paris Agreement (and now committed to by so many countries, corporations, and institutions around the world, including our own university, Stanford).

In addition, we also have control of how we respond to the climate change that is happening. This means preparing for the world that we now live in — a world in which extreme events such as record-setting heat waves are not a surprise, but a routine occurrence. For instance, we can ensure that individuals — especially the most vulnerable — have access to places to stay cool (either inside their homes or in their communities), that energy systems remain functional during extreme heat events, and that public health systems are prepared for surging demand for health services.

Absent these actions, some version of this perspective — in which researchers emphasize that the frequency and magnitude of extremes are increasing, the impacts are getting worse, and the risks are intensifying — will likely be published again about this time next year. And the year after, and the year after that, in increasingly amplified, histrionic form as scientific evidence continues to mount and people’s experience continues to become more acute.

Survey evidence from the U.S. and globally suggests that substantial majorities of people already think that climate change is an emergency, and that they support increased action from government, corporations and citizens. As climate researchers, we will continue to gather more evidence, and will continue to share our perspective to communicate the results. But until action is taken, it’s not clear what more or new there is to say.

Noah Diffenbaugh is the Kara J Foundation professor and the Kimmelman Family senior fellow in the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability.

Marshall Burke is an associate professor in the new Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, as well as a fellow at Stanford’s Center on Food Security and the Environment.

Source: TEST FEED1