In early January the United States put in place a new humanitarian parole process which allows some Cuban, Haitian and Nicaraguan migrants to live and work temporarily in the U.S. and expands the number of Venezuelans eligible. Some Central American migrants argue they should also qualify for the same humanitarian relief. Victor Hugo Castillo reports from Reynosa, Mexico. Video editor -  Veronica Villafane.
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British Foreign Minister James Cleverly will seek to bolster support for Ukraine on a trip to the United States and Canada which begins on Tuesday, ahead of the first anniversary of the invasion by Russia.

Britain has been a steadfast supporter of Kyiv since Russia’s invasion last February, and at the weekend pledged to send 14 Challenger 2 tanks and other heavy weaponry to Ukraine.

Germany is under pressure to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, but its government says such tanks should be supplied to Ukraine only if there is agreement among Kyiv’s main allies, particularly the United States.

Cleverly will tell U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Canadian counterpart Melanie Joly that it is the right time to go “further and faster” to give Ukraine military support.

“Today we stand united against Putin’s illegal war, and we will continue to use our uniquely strong defense and security ties to ensure that, in the end, the Ukrainian people will win,” Cleverly said in a statement ahead of the trip.

The British foreign ministry also said Cleverly would raise the topic of Iran while on the trip after Britain temporarily recalled its ambassador following the execution of British-Iranian national Alireza Akbari on Saturday.
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The White House counsel’s office said Monday that no visitor logs are kept at President Joe Biden’s residence in Wilmington, Delaware, thwarting one Republican effort to find out who might have visited the home while classified documents have been stored there.

On Sunday, Representative James Comer, the new chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked Ron Klain, Biden’s White House chief of staff, in a letter for information on the searches for the documents at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington and at Biden’s home, including lists of who visited the residence since he became president nearly two years ago.

“Like every president across decades of modern history, his personal residence is personal,” the counsel’s office said in a statement. “But upon taking office, President Biden restored the norm and tradition of keeping White House visitors logs, including publishing them regularly, after the previous administration ended them.”

The Secret Service also said that while a security detail is assigned to the home, it does not track who comes and goes.

“We don’t independently maintain our own visitor logs because it’s a private residence,” a Secret Service spokesperson said.

Newly empowered House Republicans have been demanding more information about who might have had access to classified documents from Biden’s vice presidency that ended in 2017 that were discovered at his Washington think tank office where he worked occasionally and at his Delaware home.

Biden has said he was surprised that any classified documents — about 20 in all — were found at locations linked to him.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, the top U.S. law enforcement official, has named two special counsels, one to investigate how Biden and his aides handled the classified documents as he left the vice presidency and one to investigate how former President Donald Trump took more than 300 classified documents with him to Mar-a-Lago, his oceanside retreat in Florida, when his presidency ended two years ago.

Biden has turned over the documents recovered at locations linked to him to the National Archives and Records Administration, as required by law. In both instances, the Trump and Biden documents should have been turned over when their terms in office ended.

Meanwhile, Trump, at the request of the National Archives, returned some documents months after he left office, but when officials came to believe he still had more classified materials at Mar-a-Lago, they secured court approval for a search of the property in August and recovered dozens more documents.

Comer’s request Sunday for the visitor logs came a day after the White House said Biden’s aides had found five additional pages of classified material at his home, in addition to an earlier disclosure that other documents had been found in the garage at the residence and at the Washington office Biden occasionally used before running for president in 2020.

Republicans, who reclaimed narrow control of the House of Representatives in November’s nationwide congressional elections, have assailed Biden for not acknowledging the existence of the classified documents from his vice presidency until last week even though the cache at his office was discovered in early November, just days before the elections.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” show Sunday, Comer said he was not accusing Biden of wrongdoing, but added, “I will accuse the Biden administration of not being transparent” in not confirming that the classified documents had been discovered until after CBS News first reported it.

“The hypocrisy here is great,” Comer said about Biden attacking Trump for his document cache and then not confirming his own until weeks after the election, the disclosure of which could have influenced voting.

The White House, seeking to minimize the political fallout from the disclosure of the classified material found at Biden locations, has noted that it is fully cooperating with the investigation of his documents while Trump has decried the probe of the material found at Mar-a-Lago.
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President Joe Biden declared Monday that “in America, hate will not prevail,” as he recalled the life of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on the national holiday commemorating the slain civil rights leader and his quest for justice and equal rights for Blacks in the United States.

Biden, speaking in Washington to leaders of the National Action Network, a civil rights group, said Americans must “never grow weary in doing what is right.”

He cited actions he has taken to improve the lives of Black Americans during the first two years of his presidency, but added, “Folks, we have a lot of unfinished business. We cannot remain silent.”

The Democratic president promised to work with the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives on issues where they might be able to reach agreement. But he also said he will veto legislation that he feels would hurt working-class families.

He assailed Republicans for their passage last week of a measure attempting to rescind $80 billion in new funding for the country’s tax collection agency, the Internal Revenue Service, saying the lack of new auditors at the agency scrutinizing tax returns would “reduce taxes for the super wealthy.”

Republicans say the extra funding would have led to burdensome audits of small businesses and middle-income taxpayers. Biden said he would veto the measure in the unlikely event the Democratic-controlled Senate passes it. He also attacked a call by some Republicans for a national sales tax on almost every purchased item and doing away with taxation on income.

Biden said the U.S. recovery from the economic depths caused by the coronavirus pandemic has laid the foundation for a stronger, more equitable economy for decades to come.

“Black unemployment is near record lows,” he said. “Wages for Black workers are up. Two strongest years ever for small business creation including for Black small businesses.”

“We’re expanding efforts to build Black generational wealth like every other person who built their wealth,” Biden said. “How’d they build it? Homes.”
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Authorities in California were set to assess damage on Monday after a wave of storms killed at least 19 people, swept away scores of homes and forced thousands to evacuate.

The state was expected to get a break from rain on Monday, but forecasters warned mud and rockslides are possible in canyons and steep hills as the ground is saturated after three weeks of rain and snow. Local and state emergency declarations remained in effect in Los Angeles County and dozens of other counties as the state begins to dig out.

Small rainstorms lingered early on Monday from San Francisco through central California and a few inches of snow fell on the foothills of the Sierras, the National Weather Service reported.

“It’s coming to an end as we speak,” said meteorologist William Churchill on Monday morning at the National Weather Service (NWS) Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland.

President Joe Biden on Saturday approved California’s request for a federal disaster declaration, making federal funding available to assist recovery efforts in the three counties most impacted by the storms: Merced, Sacramento and Santa Cruz.

Since Dec. 26, California has been pounded by a string of atmospheric rivers – storms akin to rivers in the sky that carry moisture from the Earth’s tropics to higher latitudes, dumping massive amounts of rain.

Churchill said that after dry days on Tuesday and most of Wednesday, a small, weak storm will do a “driveby, glancing blow” late Wednesday in North and Central California and then blow south.

Then most of the state will have sunny days and at least a 10-day spell of dry, cool weather.
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Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will meet with her Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Liu He, in Switzerland on Wednesday to discuss economic developments between the two nations.

The Zurich talks will be a follow-up to the November meeting between President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping on the sidelines of the Group of 20 summit in Bali, Indonesia. The two world leaders agreed to empower key senior officials to maintain communication.

Strains between the world’s two leading economies have been growing despite their trade ties. The Biden administration has blocked the sale of advanced computer chips to China and is considering a ban on investment in some Chinese tech companies, possibly undermining a key economic goal that Xi set for his country. Statements by the Democratic president that the U.S. will defend Taiwan against a Chinese invasion have increased tensions.

The meeting comes ahead of Yellen’s travel to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa this week in what will be the first in a string of visits by Biden administration officials to sub-Saharan Africa during the year.

Africa is crucial to the global economy due to its rapidly growing population and significant natural resources. China’s deepening economic entrenchment in African nations, surpassing the U.S. in trade with the continent to become one of the world’s largest creditors, is also a motivator for the U.S. to deepen ties with African nations.

Yellen has spoken at length publicly about China’s financing practices on the continent, calling them “economic practices that have disadvantaged all of us.”

She has also called on China explicitly to end its relationship with Russia as the Kremlin continues its invasion of Ukraine. The U.S. and its European and Asian allies have imposed sanctions and an oil price cap on Russia in retaliation for the war, putting China in a difficult spot as it had promised a “no limits” friendship with Russia before the invasion began.

It will be Yellen’s first in-person meeting with Liu since taking office and follows three virtual meetings between them.
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Los Angeles based conductor Charles Dickerson is convinced that every metropolitan area with a big African American population should have a classical youth orchestra to help take local kids off the streets. He created the largest majority Black youth orchestra in the U.S. Genia Dulot reports.
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The U.S. military’s new, expanded combat training of Ukrainian forces began in Germany on Sunday, with a goal of getting a battalion of about 500 troops back on the battlefield to fight the Russians in the next five to eight weeks, said Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Milley, who plans to visit the Grafenwoehr training area on Monday to get a first-hand look at the program, said the troops being trained left Ukraine a few days ago. In Germany is a full set of weapons and equipment for them to use.

Until now the Pentagon had declined to say exactly when the training would start.

The so-called combined arms training is aimed at honing the skills of the Ukrainian forces so they will be better prepared to launch an offensive or counter any surge in Russian attacks. They will learn how to better move and coordinate their company- and battalion-size units in battle, using combined artillery, armor and ground forces.

Speaking to two reporters traveling with him to Europe on Sunday, Milley said the complex training — combined with an array of new weapons, artillery, tanks and other vehicles heading to Ukraine — will be key to helping the country’s forces take back territory that has been captured by Russia in the nearly 11-month-old war.

“This support is really important for Ukraine to be able to defend itself,” Milley said. “And we’re hoping to be able to pull this together here in short order.”

The goal, he said, is for all the incoming weapons and equipment to be delivered to Ukraine so that the newly trained forces will be able to use it “sometime before the spring rains show up. That would be ideal.”

The new instruction comes as Ukrainian forces face fierce fighting in the eastern Donetsk province, where the Russian military has claimed it has control of the small salt-mining town of Soledar. Ukraine asserts that its troops are still fighting, but if Moscow’s troops take control of Soledar it would allow them to inch closer to the bigger city of Bakhmut, where fighting has raged for months.

Russia also launched a widespread barrage of missile strikes, including in Kyiv, the northeastern city of Kharkiv and the southeastern city of Dnipro, where the death toll in one apartment building rose to 30.

Milley said he wants to make sure the training is on track and whether anything else is needed, and also ensure that it will line up well with the equipment deliveries.

The program will include classroom instruction and field work that will begin with small squads and gradually grow to involve larger units. It would culminate with a more complex combat exercise bringing an entire battalion and a headquarters unit together.

Until now, the U.S. focus has been on providing Ukrainian forces with more immediate battlefield needs, particularly on how to use the wide array of Western weapons systems pouring into the country.

The U.S. has already trained more than 3,100 Ukrainian troops on how to use and maintain certain weapons and other equipment, including howitzers, armored vehicles and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, known as HIMARS. Other nations are also conducting training on the weapons they provide.

In announcing the new program last month, Air Force Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said the idea “is to be able to give them this advanced level of collective training that enables them to conduct effective combined arms operations and maneuver on the battlefield.”

Milley said the U.S. was doing this type of training prior to the Russian invasion last February. But once the war began, U.S. National Guard and special operations forces that were doing training inside Ukraine all left the country. This new effort, which is being done by U.S. Army Europe Africa’s 7th Army Training Command, will be a continuation of what they had been doing prior to the invasion. Other European allies are also providing training.
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Iranian American Siamak Namazi has launched a seven-day hunger strike to call attention to his continued detention in Iran, while calling on U.S. President Joe Biden to bring home all Americans jailed in Iran. 

Namazi was arrested in 2015 and convicted of what the United States and the United Nations said were false spying charges. 

His appeal Monday came in the form of a letter to Biden, released by Namazi’s lawyer Jared Genser, on the seventh anniversary of a deal in which Iran freed five Americans in exchange for the United States offering clemency to seven Iranians. That swap coincided with the implementation of the Iran nuclear agreement, at a time when Biden was the U.S. vice president. 

“When the Obama Administration unconscionably left me in peril and freed the other American citizens Iran held hostage on January 16, 2016, the U.S. Government promised my family to have me safely home within weeks,” Namazi wrote. “Yet seven years and two presidents later, I remain caged in Tehran’s notorious Evin prison, holding that long overdue IOU along with the unenviable title of the longest held Iranian-American hostage in history.” 

Namazi cited what he called “well-intentioned statements” from senior U.S. officials saying the release of U.S. hostages from Iran is a top priority, but that he has learned not to get his hopes up. 

While saying he will deny himself food for seven days, Namazi urged Biden to spend one minute on each of those days “devoted to thinking about the tribulations of the U.S. hostages in Iran.” 

Namazi’s father, Baquer, was arrested in 2016 after traveling to Iran to visit his son and spent years in prison on the same charges before being released in October on medical grounds. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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The new Republican head of a key House committee assailed Democratic President Joe Biden and his aides Sunday for their handling of classified documents discovered at a Washington office Biden used after his vice presidency ended in 2017 and at his home in the eastern city of Wilmington, Delaware.

Representative James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee, asked Ron Klain, Biden’s White House chief of staff, in a letter for information on the searches for the documents at Biden’s office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement in Washington and at Biden’s home, including lists of who visited the residence since he became president nearly two years ago.

Comer’s request came a day after the White House said Biden’s aides had found five additional pages of classified material at his home, in addition to an earlier disclosure that other documents had been found in the garage at his home and at the Washington office Biden occasionally used before running for president in 2020.

In all, about 20 classified documents have been found at the Biden office or home, including some that were first discovered in early November, just days before crucial nationwide congressional elections, but not acknowledged by the White House until last week. All have been turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration as required by U.S. law when presidents and vice presidents leave office.

Watch related video by Veronica Balderas Iglesias:

In the run-up to the elections, where Democrats won more contests than predicted— before the voting, Biden attacked former President Donald Trump as “totally irresponsible” for taking more than 300 classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago oceanside retreat in Florida when he left office. Eventually, Trump returned some of the documents as the Archives requested, while dozens of others were not recovered until FBI agents discovered them in a court-ordered search at Mar-a-Lago last August.

In an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union” show, Comer said he was not accusing Biden of wrongdoing, but added, “I will accuse the Biden administration of not being transparent” in not confirming that the classified documents had been discovered until after CBS News first reported it.

“The hypocrisy here is great,” Comer said about Biden attacking Trump for his document cache and then not confirming his own until weeks after the election, the disclosure of which could have influenced voting.

Comer made no request for visitor logs at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago retreat where he lives in the winter months.

“No one’s been investigated more than President Trump,” Comer told CNN, “but no one’s investigated President Biden.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland has appointed two special counsels, one to investigate Trump’s classified documents and another to probe Biden’s collection of classified material.

The White House, seeking to minimize the political fallout from the disclosure of the classified material found at Biden locations, has noted that it is fully cooperating with the investigation of his documents while Trump has decried the probe of the material found at Mar-a-Lago.

In his letter to Klain, Comer said, “It is troubling that classified documents have been improperly stored at the home of President Biden for at least six years, raising questions about who may have reviewed or had access to classified information.”

Biden has said he was surprised to learn that any classified material was discovered at locations linked to him.

Comer, asked by CNN if he cared more about the mishandling of classified documents when it related to Democrats, replied, “Absolutely not. Look, we still don’t know what type of documents President Trump had.”

“My concern,” he said, “is how there’s such a discrepancy in how former President Trump was treated by raiding Mar-a-Lago, by getting the security cameras, by taking pictures of documents on the floor. … That’s not equal treatment, and we’re very concerned and there’s a lack of trust here at the Department of Justice by House Republicans. That’s the outrage.”
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As the United States this week remembers the champion of civil rights, Martin Luther King, Jr., President Joe Biden is facing scrutiny into whether he mishandled classified documents. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports on why both Republicans and Democrats agree that the ongoing investigation into the matter is necessary.
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President Joe Biden told Americans to look towards Martin Luther King Jr.’s life for lessons on repairing their divisions, extremism and injustice, as he become the first sitting U.S. president to speak at a Sunday service in the civil rights leader’s church in Atlanta.

Marking Monday’s national holiday celebrating King, Biden delivered a sermon at Ebenezer Baptist Church at the invitation of its pastor, Democratic U.S. Senator Raphael Warnock, centered on a common theme — the country and the world are battling against autocratic forces.

“The fact is that I stand here at a critical juncture for the United States and the world in my view,” Biden said, calling it a “time of choosing.”

“Are we a people who will choose democracy over autocracy,” Biden asked. “We have to choose a community over chaos. Are we the people going to choose love over hate? These are the questions of our time and the reason I am here.”

King worked for voting rights, Biden said, but “we do well to remember that his mission was even deeper. It was spiritual. It was moral.”

King often asked ‘Where do we go from here?’ Biden said. “My message to the nation on this day is we go forward. We go together.”

Sunday would have been King’s 94th birthday. He was assassinated at age 39 in 1968 in Memphis, Tennessee, by avowed segregationist James Earl Ray. King was pastor of Ebenezer church from 1960 until his death.

“The battle for the soul of this nation is perennial,” Biden said in his tribute to King. “It’s a constant struggle between hope and fear kindness and cruelty, justice and injustice.”

Many presidents, including Biden, have visited Ebenezer to honor King, usually during events around the time of his birthday. But Biden was the first to speak from the pulpit at a regular Sunday service.

King “reminds us that we are tied in a single garment of destiny, that this is not about Democrat and Republican, red, yellow, brown, black and white,” Warnock said earlier on Sunday.

On Monday Biden will meet with civil rights advocate Al Sharpton in Washington, and speak to his group, the National Action Network.

Biden is expected to announce his re-election bid in the weeks ahead.

Biden was elected in 2020 with strong support from Black voters after pledging to do more to expand voting rights and address other racial justice issues. But some activist groups boycotted his 2022 speech honoring King, disappointed by what they see as his lack of action.
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R’Bonney Gabriel, a fashion designer, model and sewing instructor from Texas who competition officials said is the first Filipino American to win Miss USA, was crowned Miss Universe on Saturday night.

Gabriel closed her eyes and clasped hands with runner-up Miss Venezuela, Amanda Dudamel, at the moment of the dramatic reveal of the winner, then beamed after her name was announced.

Thumping music rang out, and she was handed a bouquet of flowers, draped in the winner’s sash and crowned with a tiara onstage at the 71st Miss Universe Competition, held in New Orleans.

The second runner-up was Miss Dominican Republic, Andreina Martinez.

In the Q&A at the last stage of the competition for the three finalists, Gabriel was asked how she would work to demonstrate Miss Universe is “an empowering and progressive organization” if she were to win.

“I would use it to be a transformational leader,” she responded, citing her work using recycled materials in her fashion design and teaching sewing to survivors of human trafficking and domestic violence.

“It is so important to invest in others, invest in our community and use your unique talent to make a difference,” Gabriel continued. “We all have something special, and when we plant those seeds to other people in our life, we transform them, and we use that as a vehicle for change.”

According to Miss Universe, Gabriel is a former high school volleyball player and graduate of the University of North Texas. A short bio posted on the organization’s website said she is also CEO of her own sustainable clothing line.

Nearly 90 contestants from around the world took part in the competition, organizers said, involving “personal statements, in depth interviews and various categories including evening gown & swimwear.”

Miss Curacao, Gabriela Dos Santos, and Miss Puerto Rico, Ashley Carino, rounded out the top five finalists.

Last year’s winner was Harnaaz Sandhu of India.
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The U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. While there’s no evidence of extraterrestrials, they still pose a threat, the government said in a declassified report summary released Thursday.

Last year the Pentagon opened an office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, solely focused on receiving and analyzing all of those reports of unidentified phenomena, many of which have been reported by military pilots. It works with the intelligence agencies to further assess those incidents.

The events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its 2022 report.

The classified version of the report addresses how many of those objects were found near locations where nuclear power plants operate or nuclear weapons are stored.

The 510 objects include 144 objects previously reported and 366 new reports. In both the old and new cases, after analysis, the majority have been determined to exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” and could be characterized as unmanned aircraft systems, or balloon-like objects, the report said.

But the office is also tasked with reporting any movements or reports of objects that may indicate that a potential adversary has a new technology or capability.

The Pentagon’s anomaly office is also to include any unidentified objects moving underwater, in the air, or in space, or something that moves between those domains, which could pose a new threat.

ODNI said in its report that efforts to destigmatize reporting and emphasize that the objects may pose a threat likely contributed to the additional reports.
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A single winning ticket for a Mega Millions lottery jackpot of at least $1.35 billion, the second largest jackpot in U.S. history, was sold in Maine, lottery organizers said Saturday.

“Congratulations to the Maine State Lottery, which has just won its first-ever Mega Millions jackpot,” Ohio Lottery director Pat McDonald, lead director for the Mega Millions Consortium, said in a statement. “It’s the fourth billion-dollar jackpot in Mega Millions history.”

The winning ticket, which cost $2 and matched all six numbers, was bought at Hometown Gas & Grill convenience store in Lebanon, Maine. The ticket holder, yet to be identified, has the choice of a lump-sum payment of $723.5 million or an annual payout over 30 years.

Most winners go for the lump sum, which comes with a hefty tax bill, according to the Mega Millions website.

The winning numbers for the jackpot were 30, 43, 45, 46 and 61, plus the power ball 14.

“This is a small rural town in southern Maine,” Fred Cotreau, the owner of Hometown Gas & Grill told Reuters. “We do not know yet who the winner is, but we are anxiously awaiting to see if it’s one of our friends.”

The jackpot had been rolling since it was last won Oct. 14, when a $502 million prize was shared by winning tickets in California and Florida. It is the second largest in the 20-year history of the game, topped only by the $1.537 billion won in South Carolina in October 2018.

In addition to the jackpot-winning ticket, 14 tickets matched all five numbers to win the game’s second-tier prize of $1 million. Four were sold in New York, two in California and one each in Florida, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas.

Half of the proceeds from the sale of each Mega Millions ticket remains in the state where the ticket was sold, where the money supports lottery beneficiaries, such as education or public employee pensions, and retailer commissions.

Cotreau stands to receive a substantial bonus for the ticket.

“I don’t know yet, but I’m gonna call my lottery agent first thing Monday morning to find out.”
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New data from the United States government suggests holiday gatherings didn’t spark surges in respiratory diseases.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that visits to doctors’ offices for flu-like illnesses fell for the sixth straight week. Reports of RSV, a common cause of cold-like symptoms that can be serious for infants and the elderly, are also down.

When flu and RSV surged in the fall, causing overloads at pediatric emergency rooms, some doctors feared that winter might bring a “tripledemic” of flu, RSV and COVID-19. And they worried holiday gatherings might be the spark.

But it didn’t happen, apparently.

“Right now, everything continues to decline,” said the CDC’s Lynnette Brammer, who leads the government agency’s tracking of flu in the United States.

RSV hospitalizations have been going down since November, and flu hospitalizations are down, too.

‘It has slowed down’

Of course, the situation is uneven across the country, and some places have more illnesses than others. But some doctors say patient traffic is easing.

“It has really eased up, considerably,” said Dr. Ethan Wiener, a pediatric Emergency Room doctor at the Hassenfeld Children’s Hospital at NYU Langone in New York City.

Dr. Jason Newland, a pediatric infectious diseases physician at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri, said “it has slowed down, tremendously,”

Newland said he wasn’t surprised that flu and RSV continued to trend down in recent weeks, but added: “The question is what was COVID going to do?”

COVID-19 hospitalizations rose through December, including during the week after Christmas. One set of CDC data appears to show they started trending down after New Year’s, although an agency spokesperson noted that another count indicates an uptick as of last week. Because of reporting lags, it may be a few weeks until the CDC can be sure COVID-19 hospitalizations have really started dropping, she said.

Second wave could still come

Newland said there was an increase in COVID-19 traffic at St. Louis Children’s Hospital in December. But he noted the situation was nothing like it was a year ago, when the then-new omicron variant was causing the largest national surge of COVID-19 hospitalizations since the pandemic began.

“That was the worst,” he said.

The fall RSV and flu surge was felt most acutely at health care centers for children. Wiener said the pediatric emergency department traffic at Hassenfeld was 50% above normal levels in October, November and December — “the highest volumes ever” for that time of year, he said.

The RSV and flu surges likely faded because so many members of the vulnerable population were infected “and it just kind of burnt itself out,” he said.

It makes sense that respiratory infections could rebound amid holiday travel and gatherings, and it’s not exactly clear why that didn’t happen, Brammer said.

That said, flu season isn’t over. Thirty-six states are still reporting high or very high levels of flu activity, and it’s always possible that a second wave of illnesses is still ahead, experts said.
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Russia’s space agency Roscosmos announced new contingency plans Saturday for the three-member crew of a damaged capsule docked to the International Space Station, saying the U.S. member of the trio would return to Earth in a separate SpaceX vessel if they needed to evacuate in the next few weeks. 

The Soyuz MS-22 capsule, which serves as a lifeboat for the crew, sprang a coolant leak last month after it was struck by a micrometeoroid — a small particle of space rock — which made a tiny puncture and caused the temperature inside to rise.  

Roscosmos and NASA said this week that a new spacecraft, Soyuz MS-23, would be launched next month to bring back cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dmitry Petelin and U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio. But it will not dock with the space station until February 22. 

Given there could be an earlier emergency, Rubio’s seat was being moved from the MS-22 to a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft, also docked to the space station, Roscosmos said Saturday. 

If an emergency evacuation is necessary, Rubio will return to Earth on the Crew Dragon, and the Roscosmos cosmonauts will return on the Soyuz MS-22, it said. 

“The descent of two cosmonauts instead of three will be safer, as it will help reduce the temperature and humidity in the Soyuz MS-22.”  

The mission was due to end in March, but the plan now is to extend it by several months and bring the three men home on the MS-23. The latter had been due to take up three new crew in March, but instead will be launched empty next month to dock with the space station.

Four other crew members are currently on the orbital station — two more from NASA, a third Russian, and a Japanese astronaut. All arrived in October on the SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule. 

Relations between Russia and the U.S. have been poisoned by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, but the two countries continue to work closely together on the space station, an orbital laboratory about 250 miles (400 km) above the Earth that has been occupied continuously for two decades. 

Russia has said it plans to quit the project after 2024 and launch its own station. 
…

Key dates related to the discovery of classified documents tied to U.S. President Joe Biden, based on statements from the White House, the president, and Attorney General Merrick Garland:

Jan. 20, 2017: Biden's two terms as vice president to President Barack Obama end.
Mid-2017-2019: Biden periodically uses an office at the Penn Biden Center, a think tank in Washington.
Jan. 20, 2021: Biden is sworn in as president.
Nov. 2, 2022: Biden's personal attorneys come across Obama-Biden administration documents in a locked closet while packing files as they prepare to close out Biden's office in the Penn Biden Center. They notify the National Archives.
Nov. 3, 2022: The National Archives takes possession of the documents.
Nov. 4, 2022: The National Archives informs the Justice Department about the documents.
Nov. 8, 2022: Midterm elections.
November-December 2022: Biden's lawyers search the president's homes in Wilmington, Delaware, and Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, to see if there are other documents from his vice presidency.
Nov. 9, 2022: The FBI begins an assessment of whether classified information has been mishandled.
Nov. 14, 2022: Garland assigns U.S. attorney John Lausch to look into whether a special counsel should be appointed to investigate the matter.
Dec. 20, 2022: Biden's personal counsel informs Lausch that a second batch of classified documents has been discovered in the garage of Biden's Wilmington home. The FBI goes to Biden's home in Wilmington and secures the documents.
Jan. 5, 2023: Lausch advises Garland he believes that appointing a special counsel is warranted.
Jan. 9, 2023: CBS News, followed by other news organizations, reveals the discovery of the documents at the Penn Biden Center. The White House acknowledges that "a small number" of Obama-Biden administration records, including some with classified markings, were found at the center. It makes no mention of the documents found in Wilmington.
Jan. 10: 2023: For the first time, Biden addresses the document issue. During a press conference in Mexico City, he says he was "surprised to learn that there were any documents" in the Penn Biden Center and doesn't know what's in them. He does not mention the documents found in Wilmington.
Jan. 11, 2023: Biden's lawyers complete their search of Biden's residences, find one additional classified document in the president's personal library in Wilmington. NBC News and other news organizations reveal a second batch of documents has been found at a location other than the Penn Biden Center.
Jan. 12, 2023: Biden's lawyer informs Lausch that an additional classified document has been found. Richard Sauber, special counsel to the president, reveals publicly for the first time that documents were found in Biden's Wilmington garage and one document was found in an adjacent room. Garland announces that he has appointed Robert Hur, a former U.S. attorney in the Trump administration, to serve as special counsel.
Jan. 14, 2023: The White House reveals that Biden's lawyers found more classified documents at his home than previously known. Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden's private library. Sauber said Biden's personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Justice Department.

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Lawyers for President Joe Biden found more classified documents at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, than previously known, the White House acknowledged Saturday.

White House lawyer Richard Sauber said in a statement that a total of six pages of classified documents were found during a search of Biden’s private library. The White House had said previously that only a single page was found there.

The latest disclosure is in addition to the discovery of documents found in December in Biden’s garage and in November at his former offices at the Penn Biden Center in Washington, from his time as vice president. The apparent mishandling of classified documents and official records from the Obama administration is under investigation by a former U.S. attorney, Robert Hur, who was appointed as a special counsel on Thursday by Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Sauber said in a statement Saturday that Biden’s personal lawyers, who did not have security clearances, stopped their search after finding the first page on Wednesday evening. Sauber found the remaining material Thursday, as he was facilitating their retrieval by the Justice Department.

“While I was transferring it to the DOJ officials who accompanied me, five additional pages with classification markings were discovered among the material with it, for a total of six pages,” Sauber said. “The DOJ officials with me immediately took possession of them.”

Sauber has previously said that the White House was “confident that a thorough review will show that these documents were inadvertently misplaced, and the president and his lawyers acted promptly upon discovery of this mistake.”

Sauber’s statement did not explain why the White House waited two days to provide an updated accounting of the number of classified records. The White House is already facing scrutiny for waiting more than two months to acknowledge the discovery of the initial group of documents at the Biden office.

On Thursday, asked whether Biden could guarantee that additional classified documents would not turn up in a further search, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters, “You should assume that it’s been completed, yes.”

Sauber reiterated Saturday that the White House would cooperate with Hur’s investigation.

Bob Bauer, the president’s personal lawyer, said his legal team has “attempted to balance the importance of public transparency where appropriate with the established norms and limitations necessary to protect the investigation’s integrity.”

The Justice Department historically imposes a high legal bar before bringing criminal charges in cases involving the mishandling of classified information, with a requirement that someone intended to break the law as opposed to being merely careless or negligent in doing so. The primary statute governing the illegal removal and retention of classified documents makes it a crime to “knowingly” remove classified documents and store them in an unauthorized way.

The circumstances involving Biden, at least as so far known, differ from a separate investigation into the mishandling of classified documents at former President Donald Trump’s private club and residence in Florida.

In Trump’s case, special counsel Jack Smith is investigating whether anyone sought to obstruct their investigation into the retention of classified records at the Palm Beach estate. Justice Department officials have said Trump’s representatives failed to fully comply with a subpoena that sought the return of classified records, prompting agents to return to the home with a search warrant so they could collect additional materials.

 
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The Biden administration is nearing deals with two Pacific Island nations to extend ties that are considered critical to maintaining balance in the U.S.-China rivalry for influence in a region where the Chinese are rapidly expanding their economic, diplomatic and military clout. 

This week, the U.S. signed memorandums of understanding with the Marshall Islands and Palau that administration officials hope will pave the way for the quick completion of broader agreements that will govern the islands’ relations with Washington for the next two decades. Those ties grant the U.S. unique military and other security rights on the islands in return for substantial aid. 

The administration believes that extending those so-called “Compacts of Free Association” agreements will be key to efforts to retain American power and blunt Chinese assertiveness throughout the Indo-Pacific.

The memorandums signed this week lay out the amounts of money that the federal government will provide to the Marshall Islands and Palau if their compacts are successfully renegotiated. Negotiations on a similar memorandum with a third compact country, Micronesia, are ongoing.

The current 20-year compacts with the Marshall Islands and Micronesia expire this year; the current compact with Palau expires in 2024 but administration officials said they believe all three can be renewed and signed by mid- to late-spring.

Officials would not discuss specifics of the amounts of money involved because the deals aren’t yet legally binding and must still be reviewed and approved by Congress as part of the budget process.

A Micronesian news outlet, Marianas Variety, reported Thursday that the Marshall Islands will receive $700 million over four years under the memorandum that it signed. But that amount would cover only one-fifth of a 20-year compact extension and does not include the amount Palau would receive.

Joe Yun, Biden’s special presidential envoy for compact negotiations, said the amounts will be far greater than what the U.S. had provided in the past.

Islanders have long complained that the previous compacts they signed did not adequately address their needs or long-term environmental and health issues caused by U.S. nuclear testing in the 1950s and ’60s. Lawmakers had expressed concern dating back to 2021 that the administration was not giving enough attention to the matter.

Yun, who signed the memorandums with representatives of the Marshalls and Palau on Tuesday and Wednesday in Los Angeles, said the Marshall Islands would be compensated for such damage and would be given control over how that money is spent.

Yun said it would pay “nuclear-affected communities’ health, welfare and development” and noted that the U.S. had committed to building a new hospital as well as a museum in the Marshalls to preserve the memory and legacy of their role, notably in the Pacific theater during WWII.

This week’s signings clear the way for individual federal agencies — including the Postal Service, the Federal Aviation Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the National Weather Service — to negotiate their own agreements with the Marshalls and Palau, which will then become part of the broader compacts.

Along with the federal money, those agencies provide their services to the islands. In return, the U.S. is given unique military and national security basing rights and privileges in an area where China is increasingly flexing its muscles.

Yun said China did not come up specifically in the negotiations, but it was a major element in all sides’ discussions.

“The threat from China is unstated but there is no question that China is a factor,” Yun said. Not only does China have a large and growing economic presence in the region, but the Marshall Islands and Palau both recognize Taiwan diplomatically. “They are coming under Chinese pressure,” he said.

China has steadily poached allies from Taiwan in the Pacific, including Kiribati and the Solomon Islands in 2019. The U.S. announced plans last year to reopen an embassy in the Solomon Islands, which has signed a security agreement with China.

Since World War II, the U.S. has treated the Marshall Islands, along with Micronesia and Palau, much like territories. On the Marshall Islands, the U.S. has developed military, intelligence and aerospace facilities in a region where China is particularly active.

In turn, U.S. money and jobs have benefited the islands’ economy. And many islanders have taken advantage of their ability to live and work in the U.S., moving in the thousands to Arkansas, Guam, Hawaii, Oregon and Oklahoma.
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 The recent discovery of classified documents at U.S. President Joe Biden’s former office at a think tank in Washington and his home in Delaware has invited comparisons to a case involving former President Donald Trump’s handling of government records.

Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Thursday that he was appointing a special counsel to examine the Biden documents case, just weeks after he named a special counsel to investigate Trump’s handling of classified documents at his Florida estate.

Meanwhile, Representative Jim Jordan, the Republican chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said on Friday that the panel will investigate the Justice Department’s handling of both cases, saying “we have a similar situation happening to President Biden.”

But with much of both investigations under wraps, legal experts cautioned against drawing hasty comparisons.

“I think it’s very early to be making comparisons generally as there is more information publicly known about the Mar-a-Lago matter and other matters than there are about the [current] president’s case,” said Jordan Strauss, a former federal prosecutor now a managing director at Kroll.

Here is a look at the similarities and differences between the two cases and the stakes for Biden and Trump:

What documents were found

Both cases involve classified documents, including some marked “top secret.”

Federal investigators have recovered more than 300 documents with classified markings that left the White House with Trump, according to court documents.

About 100 of those documents, some of them classified as “top secret,” were seized during the FBI’s August 2022 search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.

By comparison, Biden’s personal lawyers say they found a “small number” of classified documents – said to number fewer than a dozen – at the Washington office of the Penn Biden Center on Nov. 2, 2022, and another “small” batch at Biden’s Delaware home on Dec. 20.

But legal experts said the substance of the documents is more important than their number.

“What matters to me … is what those documents were,” said Charles Stimson, a former federal prosecutor and deputy assistant secretary of defense who is now a senior legal fellow at the Heritage Foundation.  “I mean you could have one document that had special compartmentalized information in it that could be incredibly damaging if disclosed to the wrong people versus 40 documents that were classified but not as important.”

The government has not disclosed the content of the classified documents under investigation, but news reports have suggested that among the records recovered from Trump was sensitive information about China and Iran’s missile program.

CNN reported this week that the 10 documents found in Biden’s office included “intelligence memos and briefing materials” about Ukraine, Iran and the United Kingdom.

What criminal charges could Biden and Trump face?

Under the Presidential Records Act, presidential records belong to the government and must be handed over to the National Archives and Records Administration at the end of a president’s term in office.

What is more, the Espionage Act of 1917 prohibits the improper disclosure, publishing or mishandling of classified information.

Inadvertently taking classified documents home or to another unauthorized location doesn’t always result in a criminal penalty.

From prosecutors’ perspectives, far more important is what someone does when they find documents that they are not authorized to keep.

In Biden’s case, his lawyers say they turned over the documents to the government without delay and that they’re cooperating with the National Archives and the Justice Department.

In Trump’s case, the FBI executed a search warrant of Mar-a-Lago for documents in his possession after he failed to turn them over in response to a May 2022 subpoena.

Strauss said the Justice Department investigation of Trump’s handling of classified documents appears to be more focused on “what the former president’s actions were after receiving the demand and the subpoena.”

With the investigation into the Biden documents case, “it’s too early to know exactly what the focus will be on President Biden,” Strauss said.

“Depending on how this is handled, can be anything from a simple security violation all the way up to a much more serious crime, and that’s all very fact dependent,” Strauss said.

Who are the special counsels?

Citing “extraordinary circumstances,” Garland has appointed separate special counsels to investigate the Trump and Biden documents cases.

Jack Smith, a former chief of the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section, is leading the investigation of Trump’s handling of documents.

Robert Hur, a former U.S. Attorney and Justice Department official under Trump, is heading the Biden probe.

A special counsel is a quasi-independent prosecutor appointed when a perceived conflict of interest might cast doubt on the integrity of a Justice Department investigation.

While the appointment of a semi-independent prosecutor will shield the investigations from any perception of undue political influence, it is ultimately the attorney general who will decide whether to file any criminal charges against either Trump or Biden, Stimson said. 

“And so that process has to play out.”

Complicating any decision by Garland is a long-standing Justice Department legal opinion that states a sitting president can’t be indicted.

“So it definitely makes things harder for the Justice Department, particularly for a Justice Department that is so publicly committed to restoring faith in the rule of law,” Strauss said.
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With rain-soaked California expected to see more stormy weather over the weekend and into next week, Gov. Gavin Newsom, and other state and federal officials pleaded with residents Friday to stay alert to possibly more flooding and damage.

A series of storms has walloped the state since late December, leaving at least 19 people dead. On Friday, 6,000 people were under evacuation orders and another 20,000 households were without power, said Nancy Ward, the director of the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.

Homes have flooded, levees breached and topped, and mudslides and hurricane-force winds have slammed parts of the state, including a tornado touchdown in Northern California, she said at a press briefing with Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, who was in California to tour damage.

“People will become complacent, but the ground is saturated. It is extremely, extremely dangerous,” Ward said. “And that water can continue to rise well after the storms have passed.”

The ongoing atmospheric river pattern brought showers to Northern California early Friday, and additional surges of moisture, which will be even stronger, are expected to again spread rain and snow elsewhere in the state over the coming days.

In the last 18 days, a state plagued by drought has averaged more than 23 centimeters of rainfall a day — a remarkable amount that has seen some locations meet their average annual rainfall already, said David Lawrence, meteorologist with the National Weather Service.

A Saturday storm will bring widespread, powerful rainfall and heavy mountain snowfall — with wind gusts of up to 97 kph and the possibility of more trees falling and power outages, he said.

There have been at least 19 storm-related deaths, and half of those have involved motorists, with some of the deaths preventable if drivers had heeded road closure signs, said Sean Duryee, acting commissioner of the California Highway Patrol.

On Friday, Newsom visited the upscale community of Montecito in Santa Barbara County — which had been evacuated earlier in the week — on the fifth-year anniversary of the mudslide that killed 23 people and destroyed more than 100 homes in the coastal enclave.

He thanked members of the California National Guard for clearing debris out of a catch basin that was constructed after the mudslide in order to divert rain. He also asked residents to exercise caution, and to heed warnings from public safety and law enforcement.

“I know how fatigued you all are,” Newsom said. “Just maintain a little more vigilance over the course of the next weekend.”

On Monday, President Joe Biden issued an emergency declaration to support storm response and relief efforts in more than a dozen counties, but Newsom is still waiting on the White House to declare a major disaster declaration that would provide more resources.

Flood warnings were in effect for the Salinas River in an agricultural valley about 145 kilometers south of San Francisco. At least 8,094 hectares of farmland were at risk of flooding, the National Weather Service said.

In some parts of Northern California, cars were submerged, trees uprooted, and roofs blown off homes.

In Southern California, authorities determined that a storm-related sewage spill into the Ventura River was much bigger than initially thought. Two Ojai Valley Sanitary District sewer lines damaged on Jan. 9 spilled more 53 million liters, the Ventura County Environmental Health Division said Thursday. Warning signs have been placed along the river and beaches.

East of Los Angeles, Santa Anita Park proactively canceled Saturday’s horse-racing event, an eight-race card, due to the rain forecast. Those races will be run as extras on three subsequent days, the track said.

Damage assessments, which have already started, are expected to surpass $1 billion. 
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An upcoming U.S. Supreme Court case that asks whether tech firms can be held liable for damages related to algorithmically generated content recommendations has the ability to “upend the internet,” according to a brief filed by Google this week.

The case, Gonzalez v. Google LLC, is a long-awaited opportunity for the high court to weigh in on interpretations of Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996. A provision of federal law that has come under fire from across the political spectrum, Section 230 shields technology firms from liability for content published by third parties on their platforms, but also allows those same firms to curate or bar certain content.

The case arises from a complaint by Reynaldo Gonzalez, whose daughter was killed in an attack by members of the terror group ISIS in Paris in 2015. Gonzales argues that Google helped ISIS recruit members because YouTube, the online video hosting service owned by Google, used a video recommendation algorithm that suggested videos published by ISIS to individuals who displayed interest in the group.

Gonzalez’s complaint argues that by recommending content, YouTube went beyond simply providing a platform for ISIS videos, and should therefore be held accountable for their effects.

Dystopia warning

The case has garnered the attention of a multitude of interested parties, including free speech advocates who want tech firms’ liability shield left largely intact. Others argue that because tech firms take affirmative steps to keep certain content off their platforms, their claims to be simple conduits of information ring hollow, and that they should therefore be liable for the material they publish.

In its brief, Google painted a dire picture of what might happen if the latter interpretation were to prevail, arguing that it “would turn the internet into a dystopia where providers would face legal pressure to censor any objectionable content. Some might comply; others might seek to evade liability by shutting their eyes and leaving up everything, no matter how objectionable.”

Not everyone shares Google’s concern.

“Actually all it would do is make it so that Google and other tech companies have to follow the law just like everybody else,” Megan Iorio, senior counsel for the Electronic Privacy Information Center, told VOA.

“Things are not so great on the internet for certain groups of people right now because of Section 230,” said Iorio, whose organization filed a friend of the court brief in the case. “Section 230 makes it so that tech companies don’t have to respond when somebody tells them that non-consensual pornography has been posted on their site and keeps on proliferating. They don’t have to take down other things that a court has found violate the person’s privacy rights. So you know, to [say] that returning Section 230 to its original understanding is going to create a hellscape is hyperbolic.”

Unpredictable effects

Experts said the Supreme Court might try to chart a narrow course that leaves some protections intact for tech firms, but allows liability for recommendations. However, because of the prevalence of algorithmic recommendations on the internet, the only available method to organize the dizzying array of content available online, any ruling that affects them could have a significant impact.

“It has pretty profound implications, because with tech regulation and tech law, things can have unintended consequences,” John Villasenor, a professor of engineering and law and director of the UCLA Institute for Technology, Law and Policy, told VOA.

“The challenge is that even a narrow ruling, for example, holding that targeted recommendations are not protected, would have all sorts of very complicated downstream consequences,” Villasenor said. “If it’s the case that targeted recommendations aren’t protected under the liability shield, then is it also true that search results that are in some sense customized to a particular user are also unprotected?”

26 words

The key language in Section 230 has been called, “the 26 words that created the internet.” That section reads as follows:

“No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher of or speaker of information provided by another information content provider.”

At the time the law was drafted in the 1990s, people around the world were flocking to an internet that was still in its infancy. It was an open question whether an internet platform that gave individual third parties the ability to post content on them, such as a bulletin board service, was legally liable for that content.

Recognizing that a patchwork of state-level libel and defamation laws could leave developing internet companies exposed to crippling lawsuits, Congress drafted language meant to shield them. That protection is credited by many for the fact that U.S. tech firms, particularly in Silicon Valley, rose to dominance on the internet in the 21st century.

Because of the global reach of U.S. technology firms, the ruling in Gonzalez v. Google LLC is likely to echo far beyond the United States when it is handed down.

Legal groundwork

The groundwork for the Supreme Court’s decision to take the case was laid in 2020, when Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in response to an appeal that, “in an appropriate case, we should consider whether the text of this increasingly important statute aligns with the current state of immunity enjoyed by internet platforms.”

That statement by Thomas, arguably the court’s most conservative member, heartened many on the right who are concerned that “Big Tech” firms enjoy too much cultural power in the U.S., including the ability to deny a platform to individuals with whose views they disagree.

Gonzalez v. Google LLC is remarkable in that many cases that make it to the Supreme Court do so in part because lower courts have issued conflicting decisions, requiring an authoritative ruling from the high court to provide legal clarity.

Gonzalez’s case, however, has been dismissed by two lower courts, both of which held that Section 230 rendered Google immune from the suit.

Conservative concerns

Politicians have been calling for reform of Section 230 for years, with both Republicans and Democrats joining the chorus, though frequently for different reasons.

Former President Donald Trump regularly railed against large technology firms, threatening to use the federal government to rein them in, especially when he believed that they were preventing him or his supporters from getting their messages out to the public.

His concern became particularly intense during the early years of the COVID-19 pandemic, when technology firms began working to limit the spread of social media accounts that featured misinformation about the virus and the safety of vaccinations.

Trump was eventually kicked off Twitter and Facebook after using those platforms to spread false claims about the 2020 presidential election, which he lost, and to help organize a rally that preceded the assault on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Major figures in the Republican Party are active in the Gonzalez case. Missouri Senator Josh Hawley and Texas Senator Ted Cruz have both submitted briefs in the case urging the court to crack down on Google and large tech firms in general.

“Confident in their ability to dodge liability, platforms have not been shy about restricting access and removing content based on the politics of the speaker, an issue that has persistently arisen as Big Tech companies censor and remove content espousing conservative political views,” Cruz writes.

Biden calls for reform

Section 230 criticism has come from both sides of the aisle. On Wednesday, President Joe Biden published an essay in The Wall Street Journal urging “Democrats and Republicans to come together to pass strong bipartisan legislation to hold Big Tech accountable.”

Biden argues for a number of reforms, including improved privacy protections for individuals, especially children, and more robust competition, but he leaves little doubt about what he sees as a need for Section 230 reform.

“[W]e need Big Tech companies to take responsibility for the content they spread and the algorithms they use,” he writes. “That’s why I’ve long said we must fundamentally reform Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, which protects tech companies from legal responsibility for content posted on their sites.”
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