Biden to host families of Griner and Whelan amid US-Russia talks
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden plans to meet at the White House on Friday with family members of WNBA star Brittney Griner and Michigan corporate security executive Paul Whelan, both of whom remain jailed in Russia, the White House announced Thursday.
“He wanted to let them know that they remain front of mind and that his team is working on this every day, on making sure that Brittney and Paul return home safely,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at Thursday’s news briefing at the White House.
The separate meetings are to be the first in-person encounter between Biden and the families and are taking place amid sustained but unsuccessful efforts by the administration to secure the Americans’ release. The administration said in July that it had made a “substantial proposal” to get them home, but despite plans for the White House meetings, there is no sign a breakthrough is imminent.
Griner has been held in Russia since February on drug-related charges. She was sentenced last month to nine years in prison after pleading guilty and has appealed the punishment. Whelan is serving a 16-year sentence on espionage-related charges that he and his family say are false.
The U.S. government regards both as wrongfully detained, placing their cases with the office of its top hostage negotiator.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken took the unusual step of announcing two months ago that the administration had made a substantial proposal to Russia. Since then, U.S. officials have continued to press that offer in hopes of getting serious negotiations underway, and have been following up through the same channel that produced an April prisoner swap that brought Marine veteran Trevor Reed home from Russia, said a senior administration official who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Intel on Islamic State:
U.S. intelligence officials predicted two years ago that the Islamic State group would likely regain much of its former strength and global influence, particularly if American and other Western forces reduced their role in countering the extremist movement, according to a newly declassified report.
Analysts said many of the judgments in the 2020 report appear prescient today, particularly as the group is resurgent in Afghanistan following President Joe Biden’s withdrawal of American forces last year.
The Islamic State group is no longer controlling huge swaths of territory or staging attacks in the United States as it did several years ago before a major U.S.led offensive. But it is now slowly rebuilding some core capabilities in Iraq and Syria and increasingly fighting local governments in places including Afghanistan, where an affiliate of the IS group, also known by the acronym ISIS, is fighting the ruling Taliban following the U.S. withdrawal.
“The fact of those operations are, I think, reflective how serious this threat environment remains,” said Christy Abizaid, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, on Thursday.
Analysts have recently seen growth in IS group branches around the world, particularly in Africa, said Abizaid, who spoke at the Intelligence and National Security Summit outside Washington.
Slap at Hungary: European Union lawmakers Thursday declared that Hungary has become “a hybrid regime of electoral autocracy” under the leadership of its nationalist government, and that its undermining of the bloc’s democratic values had taken Hungary out of the community of democracies.
In a resolution that passed 433-123 with 28 abstentions, the parliamentarians raised concerns about Hungary’s constitutional and electoral systems, judicial independence, possible corruption, public procurement irregularities, LGBTQ+ rights, as well as media, academic and religious freedoms.
The lawmakers said that Hungary — which its populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban characterizes as an “illiberal democracy” —
has left behind many of the democratic values of the bloc.
The vote is the latest in a series of showdowns between the EU’s institutions and Orban’s government in Budapest. The bloc’s executive arm, the European Commission, is expected to announce Sunday that it is prepared to suspend payments of some EU money to Hungary over its alleged violations.
Meadows turns over files: Mark Meadows, the White House chief of staff under former President Donald Trump, has complied with a Justice Department subpoena and turned over records as part of a federal investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021 assault on the Capitol and efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election, a person familiar the matter said Thursday.
The records produced by Meadows are the same ones he earlier provided to a House committee conducting a similar investigation, according to the person,
who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The subpoena to Meadows makes clear that Justice Department officials are seeking information from the most senior of Trump’s White House advisers as they examine wide-ranging efforts to overturn the results of the election won by Democrat Joe Biden.
Gay marriage vote: Sen. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., said Thursday that the Senate would postpone an expected vote on legislation to provide federal protections for same-sex marriage until after the midterm elections in November, amid dimming hopes of drawing enough Republican support to ensure its passage.
Leading proponents of the Respect for Marriage Act said that delaying action would increase their chance of getting the 10 Republican votes needed to push it through the evenly divided Senate, where 60 would be necessary to move it forward.
The decision to do so came
as a relief to Republicans, the majority of whom oppose the measure and were worried that voting against it so close to the elections would alienate voters.
Mississippi water issues:
After nearly two months of being forced to boil their water before drinking it or using it to brush teeth, people in Mississippi’s largest city were told Thursday that water from the tap is safe to consume — but Jackson’s water system still needs big repairs that the mayor says the cash-strapped city cannot afford on its own.
Gov. Tate Reeves and Jackson officials said in separate announcements that the state health department lifted a boil-water notice that had been in place nearly seven weeks in the city of 150,000.
But a state health department official, Jim Craig, said households with pregnant women or young children should take precautions because of lead levels previously found in some homes on the Jackson water system.