Obama hits Russia, China for ‘lack of urgency’ on climate
GLASGOW, Scotland — Barack Obama expressed confidence at U.N. climate talks Monday that the Biden administration will ultimately get its $555 billion climate package through Congress, and faulted U.S. rivals China and Russia for what he called a “dangerous lack of urgency” in cutting their own climate-wrecking emissions.
As nations complained of lagging trust and progress in the climate talks, Obama, one of the leaders who paved the way for the historic 2015 Paris climate deal, threw in a touch of his trademark hope but admitted that “images of dystopia” were creeping into his dreams.
“There are times where the future seems somewhat bleak. There are times where I am doubtful that humanity can get its act together before it’s too late,” Obama said at the two-week-long negotiations. “(But) we can’t afford hopelessness.”
His comments came as conference leaders acknowledged Monday that many key sticking points exist after a week of talks. A trust gap between rich and poor nations has once again emerged and developing countries used the word “disappointing” when leaders talked Monday about the progress to date in the talks.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court struggled with whether to allow a lawsuit by Muslim men claiming religious bias by the FBI to go forward despite the government’s objection that doing so could reveal national security secrets.
The case the high court was considering involves a group of three men from Southern California. They filed a class action lawsuit claiming the FBI spied on them and hundreds of others in a surveillance operation that began several years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks. The men, represented by lawyers from the American Civil Liberties Union and others, claimed religious discrimination and violations of other rights, saying they were spied on solely because of their faith.
A lower court dismissed almost all their claims after the government said allowing the case to go forward could reveal “state secrets” — whom the government was investigating and why. But an appeals court reversed that decision in 2019, saying the lower court first should have privately examined the evidence the government said was state secrets.
WASHINGTON — Further expanding its probe, the U.S. House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection has issued subpoenas to six additional associates of former President Donald Trump who were closely involved in his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.
The committee’s chairman, Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, said in a statement that the panel is demanding testimony and documents from former Trump campaign officials and others who participated in a “war room” ahead of the siege and strategized about how to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s victory.
Thompson said the committee had issued new subpoenas to Bill Stepien, manager of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign; Jason Miller, a senior adviser to the campaign; Angela McCallum, national executive assistant to the campaign; John Eastman, a lawyer who advised the former president; Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump who talked with Trump ahead of the insurrection; and Bernard Kerik, who the committee says paid for hotel rooms that served as command centers ahead of Jan. 6.
“In the days before the January 6th attack, the former president’s closest allies and advisers drove a campaign of misinformation about the election and planned ways to stop the count of Electoral College votes,” Thompson said. “The Select Committee needs to know every detail about their efforts to overturn the election, including who they were talking to in the White House and in Congress, what connections they had with rallies that escalated into a riot, and who paid for it all.”
WASHINGTON — Randal Quarles announced that he will resign from the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors at the end of the year after completing a four-year term as its top bank regulator, opening up another vacancy on the Fed’s influential board for President Joe Biden to fill.
Quarles has served as the Fed’s first vice chair of supervision, which gave him wide-ranging authority over the banking system. In that role, he oversaw a broad loosening of some of the financial regulations that were put in place after the 20082009 global financial crisis and recession.
Quarles’ deregulatory approach prompted criticism from some on the Fed and from many progressives. It has also sparked resistance from progressives to the
potential re-nomination of Jerome Powell as Fed chair, who has voted in favor of Quarles’ regulatory changes.
With Powell’s term as chair ending in February, an announcement is expected sometime this month on whether Biden will offer him a second four-year term. The president is considered likely to re-nominate Powell, although he could decide instead to elevate Lael Brainard, who is the lone Democrat on the Fed’s seven-member board, to the position of chair.
Besides Quarles’ soon-to-be vacated position on the board, a second slot is vacant and a third will open up in January, when Vice Chair Richard Clarida’s term will expire. Counting the seat held by the Fed chair, that gives Biden a total of four slots to fill.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is encouraging local school districts to host clinics to provide COVID-19 vaccinations to kids and information to parents on the benefits of the shots as the White House looks to speedily provide vaccines to those ages 5 to 11.
First lady Jill Biden and Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy visited the Franklin Sherman Elementary School in McLean, Virginia to launch a nationwide campaign to promote child vaccinations. The school was the first to administer the polio vaccine in 1954.
The visit came just days after federal regulators recommended the COVID-19 vaccine for the age group. The White
House says the first lady will visit pediatric vaccination clinics across the country over the coming weeks to encourage the shots.
KENOSHA, Wis. — A protester and volunteer medic wounded on the streets of Kenosha by Kyle Rittenhouse testified that he was pointing his own gun toward the rifle-toting Rittenhouse — unintentionally, he said — when the young man shot him.
Gaige Grosskreutz, the third and final man gunned down by Rittenhouse during a night of turbulent racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020, took the stand at Rittenhouse’s murder trial and recounted how he drew his own pistol after the bloodshed started.
“I thought the defendant was an active shooter,” the 27-year-old Grosskreutz said. Asked what was going through his mind as he got closer to the 17-year-old Rittenhouse, he said, “That I was going to die.”
Rittenhouse shot Grosskreutz in the arm, tearing away much of his bicep — or “vaporized” it, as the witness put it.
BRUNSWICK, Ga. — Jurors were shown graphic, closeup police photos of the gunshot wounds that killed Ahmaud Arbery, while the first officer to find the 25-year-old Black man bleeding in the road testified he did not try to render medical aid because it would not have been safe.
Three white men are on trial for murder and other crimes in the slaying of Arbery, who was chased and shot Feb. 23, 2020, after he was spotted running in a neighborhood just outside the port city of Brunswick.