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President Biden on Tuesday night said the next two years under his leadership, and by implication a second term, can deliver on big promises, bold ideas and a better world.
During a lively 73 minutes in the Capitol, Biden credited bipartisan problem-solving for economic strides and told Americans that other benefits — lower costs for insulin under Medicare and investments in clean energy, for instance — happened on his watch “when Democrats had to go it alone.”
Appearing relaxed and in command, the president’s refrain was “let’s finish the job.” In hushed tones speaking directly into the camera, Biden allied himself with working families who worry about medical bills, teachers who deserve raises, seniors who are trying to afford home health services, and “Black and brown families” who worry about losing their children “at the hands of the law.”
The foes he described included “Big Pharma,” “Big Oil,” the “Big Lie” of the 2020 election, big corporations that pay no taxes, and big banks that “play us for suckers” with exorbitant fees.
The president began the evening by politely recognizing Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and referring to “my Republican friends.” Minutes later he asserted that “some” in the other party “want Medicare and Social Security to sunset every five years,” assuring Americans, “I won’t let that happen.”
McCarthy, seated behind the president, shook his head in disagreement, saying, “Come on,” amid a crescendo of heckling from GOP lawmakers, which forced Biden to pause. Seated in the House chamber, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) repeatedly yelled “liar.”
▪ SF Gate: McCarthy shushed Greene.
▪ Politico: The state of Biden’s union with a GOP Congress: It’s tense.
The president responded to the rebukes, repeating in a mild tone that cuts to Social Security and Medicare are “being proposed by some of you.” He seized on Republican denials he heard in the chamber to cast the reactions as bipartisan commitments, negotiated live in front of millions of viewers.
“So folks, as we all apparently agree, Social Security and Medicare are off the books now, right? Biden said. “All right. We got unanimity.”
The president will visit a union training center in DeForest, Wis., today to reinforce the economic themes of his speech. He’ll be in Tampa, Fla., on Thursday to describe Democrats’ defenses of Social Security and Medicare.
▪ Roll Call: Biden attracts GOP jeers over debt limit while pushing unity.
▪ CNN: Transcript of the president’s speech, annotated.
In a speech heavy on explanations about the innards of new laws that polls suggest most Americans don’t fully understand, the president offered few new proposals and bookended his talk of collaboration between “Democrats and Republicans” with veto threats. House GOP proposals, in fact, are unlikely to reach his desk under the Democrat-controlled Senate. Nevertheless, Biden vowed to block any efforts by Republicans to “raise the costs of prescription drugs” or pass a national abortion ban.
Biden has been engaged for weeks in a simmering faceoff with McCarthy and House conservatives over federal spending and the debt ceiling. While asserting that inflation is easing and that Republicans have been hypocritical about this year’s discomfort with debt, he pledged to “sit down together” to discuss GOP ideas to cut spending after he sends his budget blueprint to Congress on March 9.
McCarthy stood and applauded the president’s pledge to resume discussions the two began this month in the Oval Office.
▪ The Hill: Biden, GOP battle at raucous State of the Union.
▪ The Hill’s Niall Stanage: Five big takeaways from the State of the Union speech.
▪ Politico: The debt moment when Biden’s State of the Union turned spicy.
Biden boasted that his budget lowers the federal deficit by $2 trillion over a decade, would not raise taxes on individuals earning less than $400,000 per year and would extend the Medicare Trust Fund “by at least two decades.”
Americans believe federal spending cuts and the partisan wrangling over the nation’s debt ceiling should be separate debates in Washington, as Biden argues. But Republican lawmakers are lining up behind linking the two for potential leverage. Public disapproval of the GOP’s strategy poses a significant challenge for McCarthy and McConnell, explains The Hill’s Alexander Bolton.
Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell on Tuesday repeated his warning that the central bank cannot rescue Congress from its legislative need to raise the $31.4 trillion debt limit, now nearly depleted under law, to pay bills and stave off potential default. “This really can only end one way, and that is with Congress raising the debt ceiling in a timely fashion,” he said.
▪ The Hill: Fact-checking Biden’s claims on the economy in the State of the Union.
▪ Vox: Five winners and two losers from Biden’s 2023 State of the Union.
▪ Axios: Biden urges Congress to “do something” on police reform.
▪ The Washington Post: Three takeaways from Biden’s State of the Union address.
Biden made brief mentions of foreign affairs, turning to an unsettled world late in his remarks.
The president referred only indirectly to the suspected Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the coast of South Carolina over the weekend, saying “if China threatens our sovereignty, we will act to protect our country. And we did.”
Biden during his speech noted that his last State of the Union address occurred days after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched his invasion of Ukraine, which presented a “test for the ages” for the U.S. and the world.
“Would we stand for the defense of democracy?” Biden asked. “Yes, we would. And yes, we did. Together, we did what America always does at our best. We led. We united NATO, we built a global coalition. We stood against Putin’s aggression. We stood with the Ukrainian people.”
Addressing Ukrainian Ambassador to the United States, Oksana Markarova, a guest in the first lady’s box who put her hand over her heart, Biden pledged to stand with Ukraine “as long as it takes.”The White House is expected to announce more than $2 billion worth of military aid for Ukraine that will likely include longer-range rockets as well as other munitions and weapons (Reuters).
▪ The Hill: Congress unites behind Ukraine as Biden calls war “test for the ages.”
▪ The New York Times: For a president who spends his days confronting Russia and China, a domestic focus.
Related Articles
▪ The Hill: State of the Union shouting: What lawmakers yelled out.
▪ The Hill: U2’s Bono, founder of the ONE campaign, joined a rich tradition on Tuesday night as one of the president’s State of the Union guests to mark 20 years and 25 million lives saved thanks to PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, established under former President George W. Bush.
▪ Bloomberg Law: Retired Supreme Court Justices Stephen Breyer, Anthony Kennedy attended the State of the Union speech (and chatted amiably with Biden afterward).
▪ The Hill: What messages are Congress members sending with their buttons?
▪ Reuters: The Biden economy: waning inflation, record jobs, lingering uncertainty.
▪ The Hill: In order for the Fed to achieve its goal of “price stability” at 2 percent inflation, continued Fed interest rate hikes are likely through this year and into 2024, Powell said.
▪ Axios: Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders called for a “new generation of Republican leadership” during the GOP response to Biden’s speech.
▪ The Hill: Former President Trump tears into Biden in pre-taped State of the Union response.
LEADING THE DAY
➤ MORE POLITICS
New Hampshire’s nickname is the Granite State, and not just because of its quarries. Democrats in the state are so displeased with the Democratic National Committee’s (DNC) decision last week to move the state’s traditional first-in-the-nation primary behind South Carolina’s — and schedule it on the same day as Nevada’s primary on Feb. 3 — that mutiny looms.
The state’s Democrats, citing a New Hampshire law, say they will continue to go first despite Biden’s view (and the DNC’s vote) that South Carolina is a more representative starting point for Democratic primary candidates, despite South Carolina’s Republican leanings and the fact that the state has rarely been predictive of eventual Democratic presidential nominees, reports The Hill’s Julia Manchester. The risks: Some non-New Hampshire Democratic party stalwarts, otherwise eager to display party unity to contrast with the GOP heading into 2024, have called for penalties if the Granite State flouts the new primary calendar.
Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.) in the coming weeks will hold events in Iowa and his home state as part of a listening tour that is expected to springboard him into the 2024 Republican presidential primary, making him the first senator to seek the presidency this cycle from either party.
There’s also a chance he could be the last during this cycle, The Hill’s Al Weaver reports. Over decades, the Senate has nurtured many who harbored presidential aspirations. But in contemporary politics, just two men succeeded in making the direct leap from the upper chamber to the Oval Office: former Sens. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.). Scott’s early status as the lone senator in 2024 who may run is a measure of the upcoming presidential contest and Trump’s candidacy. Scott is the only Republican senator who is Black and he could also gain traction as a vice presidential pick.
“There’s a lane out there, and it’ll start probably getting occupied more as time goes on,” Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.) told The Hill, acknowledging that the power dynamic in the Republican Party is forcing senators who would otherwise dive into the presidential waters to recalibrate. “With Trump in, that affects, probably, some folks’ decisions.”
🍊Tampa Bay Times: Disney’s Reedy Creek special taxing district in central Florida would be renamed within two years and get a new board of directors selected by Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis as part of a legislative change pending in a special spring session called by the governor. The legislation is the latest twist in DeSantis’s clash with The Walt Disney Co. after the company opposed Florida’s Parental Rights in Education legislation last year, called the “don’t say gay” bill by critics. Initially, the governor, who is buffing up his conservative bona fides for an expected 2024 presidential bid, had wanted to dissolve the board, according to the Times.
▪ The Hill: Democratic centrist Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia is weighing a White House bid in 2024 as a third-party candidate. “I don’t like the direction we’re going,” he said Tuesday.
▪ The Hill: Trump is upset. He ripped the conservative Club for Growth on Tuesday after he was not invited to its annual donor retreat. The former president also groused that the group initially opposed his candidacy in 2016.
➤ JOBS & ECONOMY
When a president’s Labor secretary elects to leave for a new job in professional sports (The Boston Globe), it says something about Bostonians’ love of hockey (and compensation reported to be in the neighborhood of $3 million a year). Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, a former mayor of Beantown, will soon depart Biden’s Cabinet to become executive director of the National Hockey League Players’ Association, news first reported last week by TSN’s Hockey Insider. Walsh introduced himself to the union’s search committee last week via Zoom while still serving in the Cabinet (Daily Faceoff). It’s an unusual sequence for a top federal official while he’s still employed by the taxpayers.
Walsh was Tuesday night’s “designated survivor,” the Cabinet member not in attendance for the president’s speech. It’s a holdover tradition that began in the 1950s (CNN).
And speaking of Zoom, despite current data indicating a strong U.S. labor market, headline-leading layoffs in the tech sector continue. Zoom, which experienced a huge boost during the pandemic lockdown, announced on Tuesday that it plans to jettison 1,300 employees, or about 15 percent of its workforce (CNBC).
USA Today, explaining why tech layoffs might not be as dire as they look, reports that 297 tech companies have laid off nearly 95,000 workers since the year began, according to data compiled by Layoffs.fyi, a website that’s been tracking tech layoffs since March 2020. If that rate continues, the industry could cut more than 900,000 jobs in 2023. That’s nearly six times the total for the industry in 2022, according to the site.
Dell Technologies announced 6,650 layoffs on Monday, or 5 percent of a 133,000-employee workforce, in a memo to employees filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission titled “Preparing for the Road Ahead” (CRN TV).
Tech hiring trends are shifting geographically — just ask Washington, D.C., and New York City. Those metro areas now have more job openings for software developers than do California markets. Nontechnology companies are loading up on engineering talent while startups and tech behemoths cut back (The Wall Street Journal). Here’s a Journal graphic published last month illustrating the downshifting in tech.
If you’ve lost track of major tech behemoths stampeding to purge employees, Forbes rounded up the publicly disclosed reasoning (plus analyses from independent experts) for recent announcements by Meta, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, IBM, Salesforce, Spotify and Coinbase, to name a few.
IN FOCUS/SHARP TAKES
➤ INTERNATIONAL
Rescue teams in Turkey and Syria are racing to save people still trapped in the rubble amid freezing temperatures after a 7.8 magnitude earthquake ripped through the region in the early morning hours on Monday, killing more than 9,600. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan declared a state of emergency in 10 provinces Tuesday as residents in some cities dug for loved ones with their bare hands. In neighboring Syria, the disaster is compounding an already dire humanitarian crisis made worse by more than a decade of sanctions and war (The Washington Post, Al Jazeera and Bloomberg News). Many of the nearly 3.5 million Syrian refugees in Turkey live in areas devastated by the quake (CBS News).
▪ The Washington Post: See the earthquake’s total devastation through before and after images.
▪ The New York Times: How Turkey’s Anatolian fault system causes devastating earthquakes.
▪ Slate: The grim reality about saving people trapped by an earthquake.
▪ The Washington Post: Want to donate to help earthquake victims? Here’s what to know.
Ukraine will join dozens of countries in sending aid to fellow NATO member Turkey in the aftermath of the deadly earthquakes. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky signed off on an executive order ordering humanitarian assistance to be sent on Tuesday “to help overcome the consequences of the emergency situation” (The Wall Street Journal).
The Department of Defense on Monday revealed the size of the suspected Chinese spy balloon that the U.S. shot down over the Atlantic Ocean this weekend — and it turns out it was bigger than the Statue of Liberty. The balloon is believed to have been up to 200 feet tall, officials said, and was carrying surveillance equipment the size of two to three school buses (CBS News). The U.S. intelligence community, meanwhile, has linked the balloon to a vast surveillance program run by the People’s Liberation Army, and U.S. officials have begun to brief allies and partners who have been similarly targeted.
The surveillance balloon effort, which has operated for several years partly out of Hainan province off China’s south coast, has collected information on military assets in countries and areas of emerging strategic interest — including Japan, India, Vietnam, Taiwan and the Philippines (The Washington Post).
▪ The Hill: Spy balloon offers a worrying trial run for a bigger U.S.-China crisis.
▪ CNN: “Total miscalculation”: China goes into crisis management mode on balloon fallout.
▪ CNBC: New photos show the Navy recovering a downed Chinese spy balloon off the U.S. coast.
▪ Axios: The Chinese spy balloon drama from inside China.
Zelensky will make a surprise visit to London today, officials said, at a time when Kyiv is urging the West to send more weapons and military support to counter Russian advances. British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak’s office said Zelenskiy would visit troops training in Britain and address the British parliament (CNN and Reuters).
“President Zelensky’s visit to the U.K. is a testament to his country’s courage, determination and fight, and a testament to the unbreakable friendship between our two countries,” Sunak said.
Meanwhile, Tanks are arriving in Ukraine ahead of a predicted surge in attacks from Russia. The first of the Leopard 2 tanks Canada is donating to Ukrainian forces arrived in Poland late last week, which Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand announced in a Sunday tweet, accompanied by a photo of a tank rolling out of the belly of a plane (CTV News).
“Alongside our allies, we’ll soon be training the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the use of this equipment,” she said.
Ukraine is set to receive at least 100 restored Leopard 1 tanks from industry stocks using pooled funds from Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands, according to a joint statement published on Tuesday. The countries said Ukraine would receive the tanks as well as training, logistical support, spare parts and an ammunition package. Dutch Defense Minister Kasja Ollongren said despite being an older model, the Leopard 1 was “definitely still suitable” for combat use (Reuters).
“It’s really a tested tank,” she said on Dutch television. “They’re being fixed up and made battle-ready, so they will definitely be useful for the Ukrainians, and also better than a number of Russian tanks.”
German arms maker Rheinmetall, meanwhile, expects to supply 20 to 25 Leopard 1 tanks to Ukraine this year, CEO Armin Papperger said Tuesday (Yahoo Finance).
▪ Time: Why Russia is so determined to capture Bakhmut.
▪ Forbes: A brigade of Ukrainian moms, dads, bloggers and retirees is resisting Russia’s human wave attacks in Bakhmut.
▪ CNBC: Biden expected to visit Poland near the end of this month; Moscow seen moving troops into east Ukraine ahead of expected offensive.
Coal power plants are a major contributor to climate disruption — but current policies give just a 1 in 20 chance of phasing them out by 2050. Growing calls for an end to the use of coal — and widespread global agreements to stop burning the fuel for electricity — won’t be enough to keep the world from burning coal through the midcentury, according to a study in Nature Climate Change. As The Hill’s Saul Elbein reports, doing so will require more hands-on regulation and policies, the scientists found. The study sheds light on why exiting coal — an agreed-upon goal of the international community since the 2021 United Nations climate change conference — is such a heavy lift.
➤ CONGRESS
Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) told embattled Rep. George Santos (R-N.Y.) he shouldn’t have attended the State of the Union address, much less positioned himself near the center of the House aisle to shake hands with the president. Romney, who appeared to have a heated encounter with the disgraced freshman lawmaker as he walked down the aisle to take his seat, told reporters “he’s a sick puppy. He shouldn’t have been there” (The Hill).
“I don’t think he ought to be in Congress and he certainly shouldn’t be in the aisle trying to shake the hand of the president of the United States and dignitaries coming in,” he continued. “It’s an embarrassment.”
NBC News: Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) after the State of the Union: Santos showing up was “questionable.”
Lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee traded barbs Tuesday at a hearing over the Biden administration’s policies at the southern border, as Democrats accused their Republican colleagues of fueling inflammatory rhetoric against migrants. Two U.S. Border Patrol chiefs from sectors in Texas and Arizona testified, the second House hearing on the border this month.
Comer, the chairman of the committee, said the aim of the hearing was “to gather facts about the border crisis from career law enforcement officials.” But congressional Democrats on the committee argued again that the new GOP House majority held the hearing as a political opportunity to hammer the administration on high migration levels (Roll Call).
▪ The Hill: Partisan rift widens on immigration policy, as seen in two House hearings.
▪ CNN: White House looks to undercut GOP arguments ahead of border security hearing.
▪ The New York Times: Caught in the GOP’s crosshairs, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas faces a political showdown over the border crisis.
🛬 Congress is digging into the recent air travel mess following high-profile meltdowns from the Federal Aviation Administration and Southwest Airlines, writes The Hill’s Karl Evers-Hillstrom. Lawmakers on Tuesday held their first hearing on aviation safety since last month’s FAA system outage that forced the U.S. to ground all flights for the first time in decades. The hearing kicks off a series of investigations into recent disruptions as the FAA seeks a five-year funding package from Congress this year.
“Our aviation system is clearly in need of some urgent attention,” said Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.
▪ The Washington Post: As Southwest, FAA probes begin, fallout could shape flying for years.
▪ ABC News: United Airlines faces a possible $1.15 million fine from the FAA over pre-flight system check.
OPINION
■ The state of the union could be a lot worse, by The Washington Post Editorial Board. https://wapo.st/40FoTEH
■ Why China doesn’t need balloons to spy on U.S. companies, by Jeremy Hurewitz, opinion contributor, The Hill. https://bit.ly/3I7J4Uy
WHERE AND WHEN
📲 Ask The Hill: Share a news query tied to an expert journalist’s insights: The Hill launched something new and (we hope) engaging via text with Editor-in-Chief Bob Cusack. Learn more and sign up HERE.
The House will convene at 10 a.m. and consider legislation that would end a federal order last year that requires most foreign travelers arriving by air to be vaccinated against COVID-19. The administration opposes the bill (Reuters). The House Oversight and Accountability Committee will hear testimony beginning at 10 a.m. from former Twitter executives about the platform’s handling of a 2020 article published by the New York Post about Hunter Biden’s laptop (USA Today). The House Intelligence Committee will hear from former national security officials at 10 a.m. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky, along with Food and Drug Administration and National Institutes of Health officials, will testify about the COVID-19 pandemic response at 10 a.m. before the House Energy and Commerce Committee (The Hill).
The Senate meets at 10 a.m. and will resume consideration of DeAndrea Benjamin to be a U.S. Court of Appeals judge for the 4th Circuit.
The president will travel to DeForest, Wis., to discuss jobs and the economy at a union training center at 1 p.m. Biden will return to the White House tonight.
Vice President Harris will appear live on “CBS Mornings” between 7 and 9 a.m. ET to discuss the administration’s agenda and Biden’s Tuesday night speech. She will fly to Atlanta to join a moderated conversation about climate change at the Georgia Institute of Technology at 1:10 p.m. She will return to Washington this evening.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken participates virtually in the COVID-19 Global Action Plan Ministerial at 8 a.m. from the State Department. He will speak at 11:15 a.m. during the Gender Champion Award ceremony at the department. Blinken and NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg will share a working lunch at noon and hold a joint press conference at 1:20 p.m. The secretary, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan will meet at 5 p.m. with Stoltenberg.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel to Spring Hill, Tenn., to visit the Ultium Cells battery plant to discuss clean energy manufacturing.
Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra will travel to Dallas for events at Baylor, Scott and White Health and Wellness Center (Juanita J. Craft Recreation Center)and at Friendship-West Baptist Church for a roundtable discussion, in both locations to tout the administration’s efforts to lower health care costs.
ELSEWHERE
➤ HEALTH & PANDEMIC
😷 Respiratory viruses — including the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID-19 – are not a serious concern for most of the U.S. public, even though they’re still affecting many, new survey data from the Kaiser Family Foundation found. Nearly 4 out of 10 households reported a recent case of one of the three viruses but most are not worried about getting seriously ill, according to the survey conducted in mid-January. About half of adults surveyed said they took some precautionary measures to avoid getting sick amid the winter cold season, including nearly a third who said they were more likely to wear a mask in public (CNN).
▪ The Los Angeles Times: The loneliness of being immunocompromised in the age of COVID-19.
▪ The Washington Post: Charles Silverstein, who helped declassify homosexuality as an illness, dies at 87. An activist and psychologist, he helped achieve “the single most important event in the history of gay liberation after the Stonewall riots.”
▪ The New York Times: “Miracle” cystic fibrosis drug kept out of reach in developing countries.
▪ The New York Times: Do gel manicures (and the ultraviolet lamps used with customers) pose a cancer risk? What to know.
💵 Advances in science and immense investments by the federal government and drug companies have completely altered prospects for people with conditions that seemed untreatable in almost every area of medicine — cancers, allergies, skin diseases, genetic afflictions, neurological disorders, obesity. But, as The New York Times reports, when the costs are too much, even for the insured, patients hunt for other ways to pay.
“This is the golden age of drug discovery,” said Daniel Skovronsky, chief scientific and medical officer of Eli Lilly and Company. But the prices reflect the inherently costly and fundamentally different way drugs are developed and tested today. Skovronsky said the burden on patients who cannot afford life-changing new drugs weighs heavily on him and others who work for drug companies.
Information about the availability of COVID-19 vaccine and booster shots can be found at Vaccines.gov.
Total U.S. coronavirus deaths reported as of this morning, according to Johns Hopkins University (trackers all vary slightly): 1,112,152. Current U.S. COVID-19 deaths are 3,452 for the week, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (The CDC shifted its tally of available data from daily to weekly, now reported on Fridays.)
THE CLOSER
And finally … 💗 It’s almost Valentine’s Day, which means supermarket shelves are stocked with boxes of chocolate, teddy bears and red roses — and pastel-colored conversation hearts. But the chalky seasonal treat requires annual tending. Months before each Valentine’s Day, candy companies begin pondering new messages and editing out the dated ones. The fresh sayings have to be current and inoffensive, charming and clever. Most importantly, they can’t overshadow classic expressions of romantic love, such as “Kiss Me,” which have been mainstays on such candy hearts for more than a century.
As The New York Times reports, for 2023, the Spangler Candy Company — one of two major manufacturers — has chosen an animal theme for its Sweethearts line, with a nod to all the people who acquired pets during the pandemic. Sweet new phrases include “Big Dog,” “Love Birds” and “Purr Fect.” According to Helen Fisher, a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and the author of six books on love, sex and the brain, the less amorous messages mark a cultural turning point.
“These candy hearts are yet another expression of this huge societal change since the pandemic,” she said. “It’s this theme of attachment. Much of the world is going to settle down and along with that, they’re looking not only for romantic love but also for deep, long-term attachment.” Energy & Environment — Senators form Colorado River caucus On The Money — Will Biden get credit for the jobs boom?
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Kenya drafts legislation to regulate cryptocurrencies
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adminKenya is preparing legislation to regulate cryptocurrencies with a draft proposal open for public feedback until Jan. 24.
Technology
Why Meta had to ‘bend the knee to Trump’ ahead of his inauguration
Published
4 hours agoon
January 11, 2025By
admin
Jakub Porzycki | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Mark Zuckerberg’s announcement this week that Meta would pivot its moderation policies to allow more “free expression” was widely viewed as the company’s latest effort to appease President-elect Donald Trump.
More than any of its Silicon Valley peers, Meta has taken numerous public steps to make amends with Trump since his election victory in November.
That follows a highly contentious four years between the two during Trump’s first term in office, which ended with Facebook — similar to other social media companies — banning Trump from its platform.
As recently as March, Trump was using his preferred nickname of “Zuckerschmuck” when talking about Meta’s CEO and declaring that Facebook was an “enemy of the people.”
With Meta now positioning itself to be a key player in artificial intelligence, Zuckerberg recognizes the need for White House support as his company builds data centers and pursues policies that will allow it to fulfill its lofty ambitions, according to people familiar with the company’s plans who asked not to be named because they weren’t authorized to speak on the matter.
“Even though Facebook is as powerful as it is, it still had to bend the knee to Trump,” said Brian Boland, a former Facebook vice president, who left the company in 2020.
Meta declined to comment for this article.
In Tuesday’s announcement, Zuckerberg said Meta will end third-party fact-checking, remove restrictions on topics such as immigration and gender identity and bring political content back to users’ feeds. Zuckerberg pitched the sweeping policy changes as key to stabilizing Meta’s content-moderation apparatus, which he said had “reached a point where it’s just too many mistakes and too much censorship.”
The policy change was the latest strategic shift Meta has taken to buddy up with Trump and Republicans since Election Day.
A day earlier, Meta announced that UFC CEO Dana White, a longtime Trump friend, is joining the company’s board.
And last week, Meta announced that it was replacing Nick Clegg, its president of global affairs, with Joel Kaplan, who had been the company’s policy vice president. Clegg previously had a career in British politics with the Liberal Democrats party, including as a deputy prime minister, while Kaplan was a White House deputy chief of staff under former President George W. Bush.
Kaplan, who joined Meta in 2011 when it was still known as Facebook, has longstanding ties to the Republican Party and once worked as a law clerk for the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In December, Kaplan posted photos on Facebook of himself with Vice President-elect JD Vance and Trump during their visit to the New York Stock Exchange.
Joel Kaplan, Facebook’s vice president of global policy, on April 17, 2018.
Niall Carson | PA Images | Getty Images
Many Meta employees criticized the policy change internally, with some saying the company is absolving itself of its responsibility to create a safe platform. Current and former employees also expressed concern that marginalized communities could face more online abuse due to the new policy, which is set to take effect over the coming weeks.
Despite the backlash from employees, people familiar with the company’s thinking said Meta is more willing to make these kinds of moves after laying off 21,000 employees, or nearly a quarter of its workforce, in 2022 and 2023.
Those cuts affected much of Meta’s civic integrity and trust and safety teams. The civic integrity group was the closest thing the company had to a white-collar union, with members willing to push back against certain policy decisions, former employees said. Since the job cuts, Zuckerberg faces less friction when making broad policy changes, the people said.
Zuckerberg’s overtures to Trump began in the months leading up to the election.
Following the first assassination attempt on Trump in July, Zuckerberg called the photo of Trump raising his fist with blood running down his face “one of the most badass things I’ve ever seen in my life.”
A month later, Zuckerberg penned a letter to the House Judiciary Committee alleging that the Biden administration had pressured Meta’s teams to censor certain Covid-19 content.
“I believe the government pressure was wrong, and I regret that we were not more outspoken about it,” he wrote.
After Trump’s presidential victory, Zuckerberg joined several other technology executives who visited the president-elect’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida. Meta also donated $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund.
On Friday, Meta revealed to its workforce in a memo obtained by CNBC that it intends to shutter several internal programs related to diversity and inclusion in its hiring process, representing another Trump-friendly move.
The previous day, some details of the company’s new relaxed content-moderation guidelines were published by the news site The Intercept, showing the kind of offensive rhetoric that Meta’s new policy would now allow, including statements such as “Migrants are no better than vomit” and “I bet Jorge’s the one who stole my backpack after track practice today. Immigrants are all thieves.”
Recalibrating for Trump
Zuckerberg, who has been dragged to Washington eight times to testify before congressional committees during the last two administrations, wants to be perceived as someone who can work with Trump and the Republican Party, people familiar with the matter said.
Though Meta’s content-policy updates caught many of its employees and fact-checking partners by surprise, a small group of executives were formulating the plans in the aftermath of the U.S. election results. By New Year’s Day, leadership began planning the public announcements of its policy change, the people said.
Meta typically undergoes major “recalibrations” after prominent U.S. elections, said Katie Harbath, a former Facebook policy director and CEO of tech consulting firm Anchor Change. When the country undergoes a change in power, Meta adjusts its policies to best suit its business and reputational needs based on the political landscape, Harbath said.
“In 2028, they’ll recalibrate again,” she said.
After the 2016 election and Trump’s first victory, for example, Zuckerberg toured the U.S. to meet people in states he hadn’t previously visited. He published a 6,000-word manifesto emphasizing the need for Facebook to build more community.
The social media company faced harsh criticism about fake news and Russian election interference on its platforms after the 2016 election.
Following the 2020 election, during the heart of the pandemic, Meta took a harder stand on Covid-19 content, with a policy executive saying in 2021 that the “amount of COVID-19 vaccine misinformation that violates our policies is too much by our standards.” Those efforts may have appeased the Biden administration, but it drew the ire of Republicans.
Meta is once again reacting to the moment, Harbath said.
“There wasn’t a business risk here in Silicon Valley to be more right-leaning,” Harbath said.
While Trump has offered few specific policy proposals for his second administration, Meta has plenty at stake.
The White House could create more relaxed AI regulations compared with those in the European Union, where Meta says harsh restrictions have resulted in the company not releasing some of its more advanced AI technologies. Meta, like other tech giants, also needs more massive data centers and cutting-edge computer chips to help train and run their advanced AI models.
“There’s a business benefit to having Republicans win, because they are traditionally less regulatory,” Harbath said.
Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg reacts as he testifies during the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on online child sexual exploitation at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, U.S., January 31, 2024.
Evelyn Hockstein | Reuters
Meta isn’t alone in trying to cozy up to Trump. But the extreme measures the company is taking reflects a particular level of animus expressed by Trump over the years.
Trump has accused Meta of censorship and has expressed resentment over the company’s two-year suspension of his Facebook and Instagram accounts following the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
In July 2024, Trump posted on Truth Social that he intended to “pursue Election Fraudsters at levels never seen before, and they will be sent to prison for long periods of time,” adding “ZUCKERBUCKS, be careful!” Trump reiterated that statement in his book, “Save America,” writing that Zuckerberg plotted against him during the 2020 election and that the Meta CEO would “spend the rest of his life in prison” if it happened again.
Meta spends $14 million annually on providing personal security for Zuckerberg and his family, according to the company’s 2024 proxy statement. As part of that security, the company analyzes any threats or perceived threats against its CEO, according to a person familiar with the matter. Those threats are cataloged, analyzed and dissected by Meta’s multitude of security teams.
After Trump’s comments, Meta’s security teams analyzed how Trump could weaponize the Justice Department and the country’s intelligence agencies against Zuckerberg and what it would cost the company to defend its CEO against a sitting president, said the person, who asked not to be named because of confidentiality.
Meta’s efforts to appease the incoming president bring their own risks.
After Zuckerberg announced the new speech policy Tuesday, Boland, the former executive, was among a number of users who took to Meta’s Threads service to tell their followers that they were quitting Facebook.
“Last post before deleting,” Boland wrote in his post.
Before the post could be seen by any of his Threads followers, Meta’s content moderation system had taken it down, citing cybersecurity reasons.
Boland told CNBC in an interview that he couldn’t help but chuckle at the situation.
“It’s deeply ironic,” Boland said.
— CNBC’s Salvador Rodriguez contributed to this report.
WATCH: Meta is returning to free speech tradition, says Facebook’s former chief privacy officer Chris Kelly
World
LA fires: Data and videos reveal scale of ‘most destructive’ blazes in modern US history
Published
8 hours agoon
January 11, 2025By
adminThe fires that have been raging in Los Angeles County this week may be the “most destructive” in modern US history.
In just three days, the blazes have covered tens of thousands of acres of land and could potentially have an economic impact of up to $150bn (£123bn), according to private forecaster Accuweather.
Sky News has used a combination of open-source techniques, data analysis, satellite imagery and social media footage to analyse how and why the fires started, and work out the estimated economic and environmental cost.
More than 1,000 structures have been damaged so far, local officials have estimated. The real figure is likely to be much higher.
“In fact, it’s likely that perhaps 15,000 or even more structures have been destroyed,” said Jonathan Porter, chief meteorologist at Accuweather.
These include some of the country’s most expensive real estate, as well as critical infrastructure.
Accuweather has estimated the fires could have a total damage and economic loss of between $135bn and $150bn.
“It’s clear this is going to be the most destructive wildfire in California history, and likely the most destructive wildfire in modern US history,” said Mr Porter.
“That is our estimate based upon what has occurred thus far, plus some considerations for the near-term impacts of the fires,” he added.
The calculations were made using a wide variety of data inputs, from property damage and evacuation efforts, to the longer-term negative impacts from job and wage losses as well as a decline in tourism to the area.
The Palisades fire, which has burned at least 20,000 acres of land, has been the biggest so far.
Satellite imagery and social media videos indicate the fire was first visible in the area around Skull Rock, part of a 4.5 mile hiking trail, northeast of the upscale Pacific Palisades neighbourhood.
These videos were taken by hikers on the route at around 10.30am on Tuesday 7 January, when the fire began spreading.
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At about the same time, this footage of a plane landing at Los Angeles International Airport was captured. A growing cloud of smoke is visible in the hills in the background – the same area where the hikers filmed their videos.
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The area’s high winds and dry weather accelerated the speed that the fire has spread. By Tuesday night, Eaton fire sparked in a forested area north of downtown LA, and Hurst fire broke out in Sylmar, a suburban neighbourhood north of San Fernando, after a brush fire.
These images from NASA’s Black Marble tool that detects light sources on the ground show how much the Palisades and Eaton fires grew in less than 24 hours.
On Tuesday, the Palisades fire had covered 772 acres. At the time of publication of Friday, the fire had grown to cover nearly 20,500 acres, some 26.5 times its initial size.
The Palisades fire was the first to spark, but others erupted over the following days.
At around 1pm on Wednesday afternoon, the Lidia fire was first reported in Acton, next to the Angeles National Forest north of LA. Smaller than the others, firefighters managed to contain the blaze by 75% on Friday.
On Thursday, the Kenneth fire was reported at 2.40pm local time, according to Ventura County Fire Department, near a place called Victory Trailhead at the border of Ventura and Los Angeles counties.
This footage from a fire-monitoring camera in Simi Valley shows plumes of smoke billowing from the Kenneth fire.
Sky News analysed infrared satellite imagery to show how these fires grew all across LA.
The largest fires are still far from being contained, and have prompted thousands of residents to flee their homes as officials continued to keep large areas under evacuation orders. It’s unclear when they’ll be able to return.
“This is a tremendous loss that is going to result in many people and businesses needing a lot of help, as they begin the very slow process of putting their lives back together and rebuilding,” said Mr Porter.
“This is going to be an event that is going to likely take some people and businesses, perhaps a decade to recover from this fully.”
The Data and Forensics team is a multi-skilled unit dedicated to providing transparent journalism from Sky News. We gather, analyse and visualise data to tell data-driven stories. We combine traditional reporting skills with advanced analysis of satellite images, social media and other open source information. Through multimedia storytelling we aim to better explain the world while also showing how our journalism is done.
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