Authorities in the Texas border city say they will continue to move forward with emergency declaration contingency plan
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Republic of Congo President Denis Sassou-Nguesso says significant developments came out of this year’s U.S. Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. Also the chairperson of the African Union High-Level Committee on Libya, Sassou-Nguesso has called the world’s attention toward resolving the political crisis in Libya. He sat down with VOA Correspondent Mariama Diallo in this exclusive interview. Videographer: Hakim Shammo
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A major bill that would provide a pathway to permanent residency for tens of thousands of Afghan evacuees has not yet drawn enough support to pass Congress, but lawmakers Tuesday proposed 4,000 additional visas for Afghans.

“While I’m frustrated that partisan obstruction necessitated an eleventh-hour solution, I’m relieved that we have a deal to extend the authorization of the Afghan SIV program and that this bill provides an additional 4,000 visas,” Democratic Senator Jean Shaheen, a leading proponent for Afghan evacuees, said in a statement Tuesday.

An estimated 80,000 Afghans fled the country during the chaotic U.S. military exit from Afghanistan in August of 2021. Many were eligible for SIV (Special Immigrant Visas) for their work for the United States but were unable to obtain legal permission to come to the U.S. through the famously complicated and slow system. Instead, they were granted a two-year temporary “humanitarian parole.” If passed, the AAA would have provided Afghan evacuees with a pathway to permanent residency in the United States before that humanitarian parole expires.

The AAA had broad support among Senate Democrats and some Republicans.

“Our bipartisan bill fulfills a moral obligation to the men and women who sacrificed in support of the U.S. mission helping American troops and diplomats. These Afghan allies worked as journalists, translators, non-profit workers, guards, and interpreters – as well as other dangerous professions that put their and their families’ lives on the line. This effort is urgent as their situation is increasingly desperate. These at-risk Afghans deserve a clear path to citizenship,” said Democratic Senator Richard Blumenthal when the legislation was introduced back in August.

In a letter to congressional leaders first obtained by American news network CNN this past weekend, two dozen former U.S. military leaders said a failure to pass the AAA would make the United States “less secure. As military professionals, it was and remains our duty to prepare for future conflicts. We assure you that in any such conflict, potential allies will remember what happens now with our Afghan allies.”

But the legislation failed to secure the support of 10 Republican senators necessary for Senate passage.

Senator Chuck Grassley, the ranking Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and others object to the legislation on security grounds. In September, the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General found the U.S. may have admitted Afghan nationals who were not sufficiently screened.

“Yet again, another independent watchdog confirms that the vetting of those admitted to the United States in the wake of President Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan has been completely insufficient,” Grassley said in a statement on the report.

Incoming House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul and House Oversight Chairman James Comer, both Republicans, have pledged to conduct investigations into the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan withdrawal and the failure to provide Afghans with SIVs.

“Urgent action by Secretary [Antony] Blinken and President [Joe] Biden to fix the significant problems inside the SIV program is necessary and long overdue. The United States pledged to support those who bravely fought alongside our troops, risking their lives for our country. We owe the thousands of qualified Afghan SIV applicants shamefully left behind in the wake of the Biden administration’s chaotic and haphazard withdrawal to fulfill our promise to grant them a way out of Afghanistan and to freedom in the U.S,” McCaul said in an Oct. 27, 2022, statement.

McCaul told American news publication The New Republic earlier this year he was still reviewing the text of the AAA. 

The failure to include the AAA in this year’s government spending bill almost guarantees it will not pass the U.S. House of Representatives in its current form when Republicans assume the majority in the new Congress next month. Tens of thousands of Afghans face the prospect of returning to Taliban-controlled Afghanistan when their parole expires in 2023.   

 
…

U.S. congressional leaders early Tuesday unveiled a more than $1.6 trillion spending and policy plan to fund the government through the end of next September, including billions of dollars in new aid for Ukraine to fight its war against Russia, a 10% boost in defense spending and revised controls on certifying the election of U.S. presidents.

The measure, which also includes about $40 billion to help U.S. communities recover from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters, is likely to be the last major piece of legislation that lawmakers will consider in the current session of Congress.

But the 4,155-page bill must be approved by midnight Friday, when current, temporary funding expires, or lawmakers will face the prospect of a partial government shutdown heading into the Christmas holiday this coming weekend.

If the measure is not passed, lawmakers could approve another temporary funding bill extending into next month. Some Republican lawmakers favor that outcome because they will narrowly control the House of Representatives when the new session of Congress opens on January 3, which could give them leverage in negotiating spending policies with the Democratic-controlled Senate and Democratic President Joe Biden.

The proposal includes $772.5 billion for non-defense discretionary programs and $858 billion in defense funding.

Included in the package is about $45 billion in emergency assistance to Ukraine as it battles Russia’s 10-month invasion, the biggest single allocation yet for the Kyiv government, although piecemeal measures for Ukraine have already totaled about $68 billion. The congressional proposal for Ukraine would top Biden’s $37 billion request.

The overall end-of-year proposal wraps in other measures that have languished as stand-alone bills. Various provisions would improve the country’s readiness for future disease pandemics and ban the use of Chinese-owned TikTok on government-owned devices.

It also tightens the rules under which lawmakers can object to the final vote counts submitted by each of the 50 states when Congress meets every four years to certify the outcome of presidential elections. Dozens of Republican lawmakers supporting former President Donald Trump objected to declaring Biden the winner when Congress met on January 6 last year to certify the outcome of the 2020 election, on a day when about 2,000 Trump supporters stormed the Capitol to try to keep Congress from acting.

As it stands now, only one senator and one member of the House of Representatives is needed to contest the outcome of the presidential vote in any state. But the new proposal would require at least 20 of the 100 senators and 87 of the 435 House members to object before their protest could be considered.

The legislative proposal also clarifies an 1887 law to explicitly say that the vice president’s role in counting the Electoral College votes from throughout the country is ceremonial and does not give the vice president the right to overturn the outcome of the election. Trump claimed erroneously last year that then-Vice President Mike Pence had the right to upend Biden’s victory and keep Trump in power for another four years.

In the United States, presidents are not elected by national popular balloting, although Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump. Instead, presidents are elected in the Electoral College, depending on the state-by-state outcome in each of the 50 states, with the most populous states having the most electors and thus the most sway on the national outcome.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in the early hours of Tuesday, “Nobody wants a shutdown, nobody benefits from a shutdown, so I hope nobody will stand in the way of funding the government ASAP. Finalizing the omnibus [spending bill] is critical, absolutely critical for supporting our friends in Ukraine.”

Shalanda Young, director of the government’s Office of Management and Budget, said in a statement that neither Republicans nor Democrats got everything they wanted in the deal. But she praised the measure as “good for our economy, our competitiveness, and our country, and I urge Congress to send it to the president’s desk without delay.”

But some Republicans threatened to hold up the measure to push the funding debate into January to give them new leverage, even as Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell said his party had curtailed Biden spending plans in the proposal announced Tuesday.

But House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, who is attempting to become the new House speaker in two weeks, assailed his Republican counterparts in the Senate for even negotiating with Democrats.

Another Republican, Congressman Chip Roy, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, complained on “Fox News Sunday” this past weekend, “Republicans are about to literally give the Biden administration a blank check. Republican leadership in the Senate — and frankly, too many in the House — are walking away from using that important tool to check the executive branch.”
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Suspense mounted at the U.S. border with Mexico on Tuesday about the future of restrictions on asylum-seekers as the Supreme Court issued a temporary order to keep pandemic-era limits on migrants in place.

Conservative-leaning states won a reprieve — though it could be brief — as they push to maintain a measure that allows officials to expel many but not all asylum-seekers. In a last-ditch written appeal to the Supreme Court, they argued that an increased numbers of migrants would take a toll on public services such as law enforcement and health care and warned of an “unprecedented calamity” at the southern border.

Chief Justice John Roberts granted a stay pending further order, asking the administration of President Joe Biden to respond by 5 p.m. Tuesday. That’s just hours before restrictions are slated to expire on Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for enforcing border security, acknowledged Roberts’ order — and also said the agency would continue “preparations to manage the border in a safe, orderly, and humane way when the Title 42 public health order lifts.”

Migrants have been denied rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law 2.5 million times since March 2020 on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 under a public-health rule called Title 42.

The decision on what comes next is going down to the wire, as pressure builds in communities along both sides of the southwestern U.S. border.

In El Paso, Democratic Mayor Oscar Leeser warned Monday that shelters across the border in Ciudad Juárez are packed to capacity with an estimated 20,000 migrants who are prepared to cross into the U.S.

Despite the court stay Monday, the City of El Paso rushed to expand its ability to accommodate more migrants by converting large buildings into shelters, as the Red Cross brings in 10,000 cots.

Local officials also say they hope to relieve pressure on local shelters by chartering buses to other large cities in Texas or nearby states, bringing migrants a step closer to relatives and sponsors in coordination with nonprofit groups.

“We will continue to be prepared for whatever is coming through,” Leeser said.

At a church-affiliated shelter a few blocks from the border, migrants including women and children lined up in the early afternoon Monday in hopes of securing a bed for the night, accepting donations of food from a succession of cars bearing gifts. Police and municipal garbage workers arrived to removed abandoned blankets and discarded possessions.

Jose Natera, a 48-year-old handyman from the Venezuelan town of Guaicaipuro, said he traveled for three months to reach El Paso, sometimes on foot, with no money or sponsors to take him further.

“I have to stop here until I can get a ticket” out, he said.

El Paso residents Roberto Lujan and Daniela Centeno handed out fruit, Hostess cakes, soda and chips to throngs at a street corner.

“I have to do it,” said Lujan, a 39-year-old construction worker. “I have kids and I know the struggle.”

Conservative-leaning states have argued that lifting Title 42 will lead to a surge of migrants into their states and take a toll on government services like health care or law enforcement. They also charge that the federal government has no plan to deal with an increase in migrants — while in Washington, Republicans are set to take control of the House and make immigration a key issue.

Biden administration officials said they have marshaled more resources to the southern border in preparation for the end of Title 42. That includes more border patrol processing coordinators, more surveillance and increased security at ports of entry.

About 23,000 agents are currently deployed to the southern border, according to the White House.

Immigration advocates have said that the Title 42 restrictions, imposed under provisions of a 1944 health law, go against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution — and that the pretext is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve. They sued to end the use of Title 42; a federal judge in November sided with them and set the December 21 deadline.

Catholic bishop of El Paso, Mark Seitz, expressed concern Monday that the stay would keep migrants who have no choice but to flee their home from even making the case for protection in the U.S., after years of pent-up need.

“What happens now with all those on their way?” he said.

Title 42 restrictions have applied to all nationalities but have fallen disproportionately on those from countries that Mexico has agreed to take back: Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador and, more recently Venezuela, in addition to Mexico.
…

Harvey Weinstein was found guilty Monday of rape at a Los Angeles trial in another #MeToo moment of reckoning, five years after he became a magnet for the movement. 

After deliberating for nine days spanning more than two weeks, the jury of eight men and four women reached the verdict at the second criminal trial of the 70-year-old onetime powerful movie mogul, who is two years into a 23-year sentence for a rape and sexual assault conviction in New York. 

Weinstein was found guilty of rape, forced oral copulation and another sexual misconduct count involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1. The jury was unable to reach a decision on several counts, notably charges involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, the wife of California Gov. Gavin Newsom.  

The jury reported it was unable to reach verdicts in her allegations and the allegations of another woman. A mistrial was declared on those counts. 

Jurors were 10-2 in favor of conviction of the sexual battery of a massage therapist. They were 8-4 in favor of conviction on the rape and sexual assault counts involving Siebel Newsom. 

Weinstein was also acquitted of a sexual battery allegation made by another woman. 

He faces up to 24 years in prison when he is sentenced. Prosecutors and defense attorneys had no immediate comment on the verdict. 

“Harvey Weinstein will never be able to rape another woman. He will spend the rest of his life behind bars where he belongs,’” Siebel Newsom said in a statement. “Throughout the trial, Weinstein’s lawyers used sexism, misogyny, and bullying tactics to intimidate, demean, and ridicule us survivors. The trial was a stark reminder that we as a society have work to do.” 

“It is time for the defendant’s reign of terror to end,” Deputy District Attorney Marlene Martinez said in the prosecution’s closing argument. “It is time for the kingmaker to be brought to justice.” 

Lacking any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts of assaults Weinstein’s accusers said happened from 2005 to 2013, the case hinged heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women at the center of the charges. 

The accusers included Newsom, a documentary filmmaker whose husband is California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Her intense and emotional testimony of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005 brought the trial its most dramatic moments. 

Another was an Italian model and actor who said Weinstein appeared uninvited at her hotel room door during a 2013 film festival and raped her. 

Lauren Young, the only accuser who testified at both Weinstein trials, said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter who was meeting with Weinstein about a script in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her and masturbated in front of her. 

The jury was unable to reach a verdict on the charges involving Young. 

A massage therapist testified that Weinstein did the same to her after getting a massage in 2010. 

Martinez said in her closing that the women entered Weinstein’s hotel suites or let him into their rooms, with no idea of what awaited them. 

“Who would suspect that such an entertainment industry titan would be a degenerate rapist?” she said. 

The women’s stories echoed the allegations of dozens of others who have emerged since Weinstein became a #MeToo lightning rod starting with stories in the New York Times in 2017. A movie about that reporting, “She Said,” was released during the trial, and jurors were repeatedly warned not to see it. 

It was the defense that made #MeToo an issue during the trial, however, emphasizing that none of the four women went to the authorities until after the movement made Weinstein a target. 

Defense lawyers said two of the women were entirely lying about their encounters with Weinstein, and that the other two had “100% consensual” sexual interactions that they later reframed.  

“Regret is not the same thing as rape,” Weinstein attorney Alan Jackson said in his closing argument. 

He urged jurors to look past the the women’s emotional testimony and focus on the factual evidence. 

“Believe us because we’re mad, believe us because we cried,” Jackson said jurors were being asked to do. “Well, fury does not make fact. And tears do not make truth.” 

All the women involved in the charges went by Jane Doe in court. The Associated Press does not typically name people who say they have been sexually abused unless they come forward publicly or agree to be named through their attorneys, as the women named here did. 

Prosecutors called 40 other witnesses in an attempt to give context and corroboration to those stories. Four were other women who were not part of the charges but testified that Weinstein raped or sexually assaulted them. They were brought to the stand to establish a pattern of sexual predation. 

Weinstein beat four other felony charges before the trial even ended when prosecutors said a woman he was charged with raping twice and sexually assaulting twice would not appear to testify. They declined to give a reason. Judge Lisa Lench dismissed those charges.  

Weinstein’s latest conviction hands a victory to victims of sexual misconduct of famous men in the wake of some legal setbacks, including the dismissal of Bill Cosby’s conviction last year. The rape trial of “That ’70s Show” actor Danny Masterson, held simultaneously and just down the hall from Weinstein’s, ended in a mistrial. And actor Kevin Spacey was victorious at a sexual battery civil trial in New York last month. 

Weinstein’s New York conviction survived an initial appeal, but the case is set to be heard by the state’s highest court next year. The California conviction, also likely to be appealed, means he will not walk free even if the East Coast conviction is thrown out. 
…

Recent minor changes in the relationship between the United States and Venezuela may signal that a greater degree of engagement between the two countries is possible in 2023, though experts remain doubtful that the Biden administration’s goal of seeing free and fair presidential elections there in 2024 is likely to be achieved.

U.S. oil firm Chevron this month took over operations at a major Venezuelan oil processing facility after the Treasury Department granted a limited license for the firm to import a small amount of Venezuelan crude oil into the U.S. Chevron is currently involved in four petroleum projects in the country.

The announcement of the lease came as representatives of the regime of Nicolás Maduro, whose presidency is disputed by the country’s opposition and not recognized by Washington, reached an agreement with opposition leaders on humanitarian aid. The deal will allow the United Nations to oversee the use of Venezuelan funds, frozen overseas by U.S.-led sanctions, to pay for humanitarian relief in the country totaling, by some estimates, roughly $3 billion or more.

Beginning of changes?

The oil leases and the unfreezing of funds for humanitarian aid, together, represent tiny cracks in the wall that has gone up between the U.S. and Venezuela in recent decades. Major obstacles remain to any meaningful rapprochement, and significant changes to the political landscape, both within Venezuela and in South America more broadly, significantly complicate an already difficult situation.

Still, a growing recognition that neither sanctions nor international backing for an interim government headed by Maduro’s chief political rival have produced positive change for the people of Venezuela may be forcing a reassessment of existing policies.

Another major factor is that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown global energy markets into turmoil, making Venezuela’s huge oil reserves an enormously attractive resource for both the U.S. and its allies in Europe.

“Although U.S. government officials have insisted that U.S. policy towards Venezuela hasn’t changed, we have seen some evident changes,” Diego Area, deputy director for strategic development at the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, told VOA. “I do believe that looking at 2023 we’ll see increased engagement between the U.S. and Venezuela.”

History of conflict

The U.S. relationship with Venezuela has been fraught since at least 1999, when former military officer and socialist firebrand Hugo Chavez assumed power after winning the country’s presidential contest promising to implement far-reaching leftist reforms. Chavez and Maduro, who took over the country when Chavez died in 2013, made opposition to the U.S. a signature element of their foreign policy, including, in Chavez’s case, after a failed 2002 coup attempt against him that some observers contended Washington was slow to condemn.

The relationship soured further in January 2019, after Maduro disputed the results of a presidential election held a month earlier and refused to cede power. The United States and dozens of other countries refused to recognize him as the legitimate president of Venezuela, throwing their support instead behind opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who much of the international community accepted as the true victor in the election.

In 2020, Maduro held parliamentary elections that were decried as a sham by the U.S. and many other countries. Since then, the U.S. has continued to recognize the previous parliament, elected in 2015, as the legitimate legislative body in the country, and has recognized Guaidó as Venezuela’s interim president.

Punishing sanctions led by the U.S. have frozen overseas assets and have severely restricted the Maduro regime’s ability to sell oil on the open market — a major economic blow to a country with the world’s largest proven oil reserves.

Partly because of sanctions and partly because of economic mismanagement by the Chavez and Maduro regimes, the Venezuelan economy has shrunk dramatically, plunging millions into poverty and pushing millions more to leave the country, many seeking asylum in countries across Latin America and in the U.S.

Maduro, however, has maintained his grip on the country, and there are now reasons to believe that his position in the region is stronger than it has been in years.

Lima Group fragmented

In 2017, a group of primarily South American countries formed what became known as the Lima Group, in hopes of finding a way to end ongoing turmoil in Venezuela, which had spent three years wracked by riots over economic conditions and the repressive tactics of Maduro’s government.

When Maduro refused to cede power to Guaidó in 2019, the Lima Group formally denounced him and recalled ambassadors from the country.

Since then, however, changes in the leadership in a number of South American countries have resulted in multiple members of the Lima Group indicating a willingness to recognize Maduro once again. Argentina and Mexico left the group in 2021, and that same year Peru moved to recognize the Maduro government.

In particular, the replacement of center-right governments in neighboring Colombia and Brazil with left-leaning leaders has also led to a regional thaw toward Maduro. Colombian President Gustavo Petro has reopened his country’s borders with Venezuela and Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, Brazil’s president-elect, has indicated that he intends to reestablish relations with Maduro as well.

“It makes life harder for the U.S., because Maduro’s 2023 goal is recognition — appearing as though countries are normalizing with him,” Ryan Berg, director of the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told VOA.

“Having Lula normalize relations, having Petro meet with Maduro and opening the border, that plays into the narrative that Venezuela is becoming a normal country again,” he said. “So, if you’re the regime, looking out on the region, you feel much better about your situation today than you would have in 2019 or 2020, when the region was mostly center-right, and a lot of countries didn’t recognize you.”

Guaidó seen as weaker

Guaidó has been unable to translate international recognition as the legitimate leader of Venezuela and access to some of the country’s frozen funds into meaningful change on the ground in his country, and there are signs that his support among other opposition figures is waning.

In public statements over the past several months, leaders of major factions within the opposition have signaled a willingness to explore alternatives to the current interim government, which would result in Guaidó losing his position as interim president.

In comments to the McClatchy news service in October, a Biden administration official was quoted as saying, “The United States continues to recognize Juan Guaidó as the interim government of Venezuela,” but added, “If the Venezuelan opposition decides to do away with the interim government, it is their decision.”

The Biden administration excluded Venezuela from June’s Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles.

Limits of the possible

All in all, it seems like a recipe for possible change in Washington’s approach to Caracas, though it remains unclear what that change might look like.

“There seems to be considerable frustration with the fact that earlier policy efforts have so far not succeeded,” Patrick Duddy, who served as U.S. ambassador to Venezuela from 2007 to 2010, told VOA.

Duddy said that it may be time to recognize that the goal of using sanctions to pressure the Maduro regime into allowing elections that it might lose, is not necessarily a realistic one.

“Among other factors, given that the United Nations has highlighted the very dire human rights situation [in Venezuela] and even suggested that there are those in the regime who are likely guilty of crimes against humanity, suggests that those elements of the regime are going to be very reluctant to give up the protections the come with being part of the government,” Duddy said.

A process, not a moment

Area, of the Atlantic Council, agreed. “I doubt that any election that will really contest Maduro’s power is viable in Venezuela.”

However, Area said that he believes there may be a way to persuade the Maduro regime to loosen some controls in a way that allows for broader representation without directly threatening the regime.

“The implicit goal is to rebuild capacity in civil society organizations, promote greater alignment among opposition parties, and strengthen their capacities and of the traditional Democratic political parties in preparation for the future,” he said.

Berg, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said that he believes that the Biden administration has accepted the fact that any shift toward democracy in Venezuela is going to be, at best, incremental.

While Maduro is unlikely to agree to major changes, Berg said, it might be possible to persuade him to allow small reforms that would, nevertheless, improve the lives of Venezuelans.

“I think the administration sees this as a transition in the truest sense of that term, not as a discrete moment in time, where all of a sudden, you’re going to have a flash of light and there’s a democracy,” he said. “This is going to take a long time, and it’s going to be a process.”
…

The U.S. Supreme Court set a Tuesday afternoon deadline for responses to its order, leaving, for now, restrictions in place at the U.S.-Mexico border that have been used to prevent hundreds of thousands of migrants from seeking asylum.

The restrictions, commonly known as Title 42, were put in place under former President Donald Trump at the start of the coronavirus pandemic. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control said the measures are no longer necessary to protect public health, and President Joe Biden’s administration has said it wants to end the policy.

A federal judge set Wednesday as the end date for Title 42, but a group of 19 states with Republican attorneys general challenged that ruling, arguing that lifting the restrictions will burden border states with an influx of migrants.

The White House has sought $3 billion in extra funding for personnel, technology and holding facilities.

Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Monday that lifting the restrictions “does not mean the border is open.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

With Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso by his side, President Joe Biden said Monday the U.S. is looking to expand and strengthen the U.S. relationship with one of its staunchest allies in South America and a country that’s getting plenty of attention from China.

Lasso’s visit to Washington comes as his tiny nation is on the verge of completing a trade agreement with China, the strongest economic competitor of the United States. China this year surpassed the U.S. as Ecuador’s top trading partner on non-petroleum goods.

The already fragile economy in oil-exporting Ecuador was battered by the coronavirus outbreak. One of Lasso’s top priorities when he took office last year was to sign a free trade agreement with the United States, joining Colombia and Chile as the only other countries in South America to enjoy such privileged status.

But Biden, in the first two years of his presidency, has shied away from entering new trade pacts as he’s focused on first settling a U.S. economy that’s been battered by the pandemic, historic inflation and supply chain issues exacerbated by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

“Today we’re going to keep building on the progress we’ve made,” Biden said at the start of an Oval Office meeting with Lasso. “Together, we’ve made historic strides.”

Lasso met with USAID administrator Samantha Power later Monday and was scheduled to hold talks with CIA Director William Burns, members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and others before returning to Quito on Wednesday.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio, in a letter to the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation CEO Scott Nathan, urged the Biden administration to surge investment into Ecuador to counter China’s growing influence in the region.

“While the Biden administration continues to assert that the U.S. is the ‘partner of choice’ for Ecuador and other Latin American countries, governments and civil society in the region bemoan the lack of American-led, and other Western alternatives, to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) current and future investments,” Rubio wrote.

The White House, in a statement following the meeting, said the finance corporation was releasing a $13.5 million disbursement to support microfinance loans in Ecuador and said USAID intended to provide $5 million to aid Lasso’s initiative to address child malnutrition in his nation.

The alliance has become more important to the U.S. as much of South America has veered to the left, limiting the political space for cooperation with Washington, whose military and political interventions during the Cold War is recalled with bitterness across the region.

The U.S. Senate last week passed a bipartisan bill, the United States-Ecuador Partnership Act, which seeks to expand bilateral cooperation on the economy, security and environmental conservation. The effort is part of the annual defense bill that awaits Biden’s signature.

Among its provisions are a promise to transfer two excess U.S. Coast Guard cutters to help Ecuador patrol the protected waters around the Galapagos Islands, where China’s distant-water fishing fleet has become an unwelcome presence.

“Without a doubt, yes, we have been allies for decades now,” Lasso said. “And I am here to reaffirm that theory that we share among us as allies in our fight for democracy, peace and justice — not only in the region but also to support your vision throughout the world.”

While the Biden administration says it is invested in Ecuador’s success, Lasso confronts a long list of major challenges. Chief among them is the growing influence of criminal gangs — which have been behind recent prison riots — and an economy pegged to the U.S. dollar that has struggled to compete with cheaper production costs in neighboring countries.

Eric Farnsworth, a vice president of the Council of Americas in Washington, said the U.S. would be wise to provide meaningful assistance to Ecuador, which he described as a “strong democracy in a troubled neighborhood,” whether it’s from criminal gangs in Colombia or ongoing unrest in Peru.

“He needs help, and the U.S. is in a position to provide some,” said Farnsworth, who nonetheless thinks it is too early for the U.S. to commit to a free trade agreement. “Hopefully he will return to Quito with more than just praise.”

Lasso told reporters after meeting with Biden that they spent much of their roughly hour-long conversation talking about migration.

A U.S. court has ordered that immigration authorities can no longer quickly expel prospective asylum seekers. Title 42, as it’s called, has been used more than 2.5 million times to expel migrants since March 2020. The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday issued an order temporarily blocking the lower court order to lift pandemic-era restrictions on asylum seekers.

Ecuadorians represent only a fraction of the more than 2.7 million migrants encountered on the southwest border in the last fiscal year, but their numbers have been steadily rising since the coronavirus pandemic.
…

Nearly 15 new commitments between U.S. and African businesses were announced during last week’s U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, in fields ranging from mining to healthcare to basketball.

Gina Raimondo, U.S. Secretary of Commerce, talked to reporters about one of the biggest deals made at the summit, an investment by U.S.-based Kobold Metals, which will be “a commitment of over $150 million dollars into Zambia’s mining sector.”

Raimondo added, “I think this is a model of what we need to be doing more. It’s a big deal.”

Why Zambia? Kobold Metals president and founder Josh Goldman said that when the company looked around the world for the best places to invest, Zambia rose to the top, as a “safe and peaceful place where we can hire exceptional people, where the laws support investing for the long term, where we can operate in ways that protect the environment and support local communities and where government supports our investment with actions that are fair, transparent and fast.”

Goldman added that his company will be working with the global mining investment firm EMR Capital and Zambia’s public/private mining company ZCCMIH.

Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema was at the signing and said this new partnership goes beyond his country, and that “This investment is in copper and cobalt, which are critical minerals to gravitating us from carbon-driven fuels to green fuels. Electric vehicles, that’s what we are talking about.”

Hichilema said that, “This is not about Zambia, this investment today is not about Kobold and ZCCM, it’s not about Zambia, it’s about all these and the rest of the world as we grapple with climate change issues, as we grapple with replacing climate damaging fuels with green fuels, and therefore electric vehicles, very, very important to us.”

Cobalt is an ingredient in lithium-ion batteries used in electric vehicles, tablets, laptops and smartphones.

Another signing occurred between two financial institutions: U.S. EXIM Bank and the African Export-Import Bank known as Afreximbank. The latter’s president and chairman, Benedict Okey Oramah, told VOA that by signing a memorandum of understanding, the two institutions moved from intention to action.

“It’s an MOU for collaboration to support trade and investment between Africa and the U.S. with special focus on diaspora engagement.” Oramah said. “We have an envelope of $500 million dollars attached to that MOU.”

“We also use this fund to support the critical sectors that Africa needs; the healthcare sector, climate adaptation projects, aspects of transportation and infrastructure and power as need be,” Oramah added.

The National Basketball Association was also at the summit to announce its ventures into Africa.

The league’s Africa CEO Victor Williams told VOA he was excited to be part of the forum because sports is an area where Africa has world class talent.

He said that while Africa NBA is happy to grow the game of basketball on the continent, there’s more: “We are also interested for sport to be a driver in economic growth and development as well as for sport to be a vehicle of social impact.”

The league already has offices in South Africa and Senegal and plans to expand in other regions.

Williams told VOA that earlier that year, they had opened an office in Lagos, Nigeria, and just announced that they will be opening an office in Cairo, Egypt, in 2023.

“This speaks to our commitment to grow our footprint on the continent and to use those office as a springboard to get close to our African fans,” Williams added.

He said each of those countries represent significant basketball and commercial opportunities.
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With images of snowy villages, nutcrackers, candy canes and more, Artechouse’s “Spectacular Factory: The Holiday Multiverse” brings to life the festive feelings of the season. Maxim Moskalkov visited the event. Camera: Sergey Sokolov
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Jury selection in the seditious conspiracy case against former Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four others charged in the attack on the U.S. Capitol began Monday after the judge denied defense attorneys’ last-minute bid to delay the trial over action by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021, insurrection.

Defense attorneys pushed to postpone jury selection in the high-profile case until after the new year, citing concerns that media coverage of the January 6 panel could taint the jury pool. A defense attorney told the judge it’s also impossible to know what evidence related to the Proud Boys might be released by the committee, which urged the Justice Department on Monday to bring criminal charges against former President Donald Trump and his allies.

“We don’t want to be picking the jury in this highly confusing and combustible environment,” attorney Norm Pattis, who is representing Proud Boy organizer Joseph Biggs, told the judge.

U.S. District Judge Timothy Kelly said they would push ahead, despite the committee’s work, and told defense attorneys he would remind jurors to avoid media coverage related to January 6. 

“The former president is not on trial here today,” the judge said before the first group of potential jurors were called into the courtroom.

Tarrio is perhaps the highest-profile defendant to face jurors yet in the attack that temporarily halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s win, left dozens of police officers injured and led to nearly 1,000 arrests. Tarrio, of Miami, and the others — Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola and Biggs — are charged with several other crimes in addition to sedition. 

They will face jurors just weeks after two leaders of another extremist group, the Oath Keepers, were convicted of seditious conspiracy in a major victory for the Justice Department. If convicted of sedition, the Proud Boys could face up to 20 years in prison. The trial is expected to last at least six weeks. 

Jury selection began hours before the January 6 House committee held its final public meeting and recommended criminal charges against Trump and associates who helped him launch a pressure campaign to try to overturn his 2020 election loss. 

Defense attorneys for the Proud Boys and other January 6 defendants have said there’s no way they can get an unbiased jury in Washington, where the federal court sits less than a mile from the Capitol. But judges have repeatedly denied requests to move the cases out of the nation’s capital, saying fair jurors can be found under the right questioning. 

The first potential juror questioned Monday said he once worked as an aide in the Supreme Court and has a brother who is a White House lawyer. The judge disqualified him. 

The judge also dismissed a woman who was working for Congressional Quarterly on January 6 and had several co-workers who were trapped in the building that day. The woman also said it would be difficult for her to set aside her opinions about the Proud Boys, whom she described as having a “delusional superhero complex.” 

Tarrio wasn’t in Washington on January 6 because he had been arrested two days earlier on charges that he vandalized a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church during a protest in December 2020. But prosecutors say he was the leader of a conspiracy to stop the transfer of power from Trump to Biden. 

Days before the riot, Tarrio posted on social media about “revolution,” according to court papers. Citing what they alleged was an encrypted message group created by Tarrio, authorities say members discussed attacking the Capitol. One message said, “Time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill.” 

Prosecutors allege that even after his arrest, Tarrio kept command over the Proud Boys who attacked the Capitol and cheered on their actions from afar. As rioters stormed the building, he posted “don’t (expletive) leave” on social media, and later, “We did this …” 

Nordean, Pezzola, Biggs and Rehl were part of the first wave of rioters to push onto Capitol grounds and charge past police barricades toward the building, according to prosecutors. Pezzola used a riot shield he stole from a Capitol police officer to break a window, allowing the first rioters to enter the building, prosecutors allege. 

Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter president; Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer; Rehl was president of the Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia; and Pezzola was a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York. 

Defense attorneys have denied that the Proud Boys leaders planned or led an attack on the Capitol. 

Tarrio’s lawyers say he didn’t instruct or encourage anyone to go into the Capitol or engage in violent or destructive behavior. Nordean’s attorney accused the Justice Department of selective prosecution and targeting him based on his political associations and beliefs. Rehl’s lawyer asked the judge to toss the indictment on First Amendment grounds, arguing that the case rested solely on Rehl’s political views and free speech. 

Last month’s guilty verdicts for Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and Florida chapter leader Kelly Meggs were the first seditious conspiracy trial convictions in decades. Jurors acquitted three other Oath Keeper defendants of seditious conspiracy, although they were convicted of other crimes. Four others associated with the Oath Keepers are also currently standing trial for seditious conspiracy. 
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Teenaged boys in the United States are increasingly becoming ensnared in online financial “sextortion schemes,” impacting at least 3,000 victims and leading to more than a dozen suicides so far, U.S. Justice Department officials warned on Monday.

FBI and Justice Department officials told reporters in a briefing they are actively investigating thousands of tips, and they have already seen a tenfold increase in reported financial sextortion schemes in the first half of 2022 compared with the same time period last year.

In a so-called sextortion scheme, a person is coerced into providing sexually explicit images, and then later extorted for money.

Many of the cases, they said, are originating on social media sites such as Facebook and Instagram, and once the contact is made, the predators move over to using other messaging applications such as Snapchat or Google Hangouts.

“This is a unique threat,” one Justice Department official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity. “The motivation is money. The organization, the scale at which it operates — is quite different than anything we have seen before.”

Young girls have often been the target of online sextortion schemes, but the recent rise in incidents has involved teenage boys between the ages of 14 and 17, officials said. Some boys as young as 10 have also been become victims.

Law enforcement officials believe many of the criminals who are targeting young children are based in Nigeria and the Ivory Coast. The cases are actively under investigation, and officials said they were not yet aware of any public criminal charges.

FBI officials said they want to warn parents about the rise in sextortion threats ahead of the holiday season, knowing children will be at home and will have greater access to social media. They said the bureau has also received about 4,500 tips related to financial sextortion.

Justice Department officials said Meta, which operates Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp, has been providing cyber tips through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, and it has also been involved in helping training law enforcement officials in West Africa.
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Elon Musk had an eventful year, capping 2022 with a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, a takeover that almost didn’t happen. The controversial CEO has brought changes and disruptions, layoffs and resignations that put Twitter’s fate into question. VOA’s Tina Trinh has more.
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U.S. President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will host a Hanukkah reception at the White House Monday evening. There will be a menorah lighting and the menorah, created by the Whie House carpentry shop, will become the first Jewish artifact added to the White House archives.

Hanukkah, the eight-day Jewish celebration also known as the Festival of Lights, began Sunday. It commemorates the rededication during the second century B.C. of the Second Temple in Jerusalem.

The National Menorah of the United States was lit Sunday in Washington on The Ellipse.

In New York City Sunday, the world’s largest menorah was lit in Grand Army Plaza where Mayor Eric Adams reminded the crowd that New York is home to more Jews than any place else in the world, except Israel.

Jewish families around the world will light their home menorahs for each of the eight days of Hanukkah. This year Hanukkah ends the day after Christmas.

Even in the concentration camps during World War II, Jews found ways to observe Hanukkah. An ornate menorah carved by an inmate in the Theresienstadt camp was recovered after the war and is now in The Jewish Museum in New York.
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More than half of 17.5 million users who responded to a poll that asked whether billionaire Elon Musk should step down as head of Twitter voted yes when the poll closed on Monday. 

There was no immediate announcement from Twitter, or Musk, about whether that would happen, though he said that he would abide by the results. 

Musk has clashed with some users on multiple fronts and on Sunday, he asked Twitter users to decide if he should stay in charge of the social media platform after acknowledging he made a mistake in launching new speech restrictions that banned mentions of rival social media websites. 

In yet another significant policy change, Twitter had announced that users will no longer be able to link to Facebook, Instagram, Mastodon and other platforms the company described as “prohibited.” 

But that decision generated so much immediate criticism, including from past defenders of Twitter’s new billionaire owner, that Musk promised not to make any more major policy changes without an online survey of users. 

The action to block competitors was Musk’s latest attempt to crack down on certain speech after he shut down a Twitter account last week that was tracking the flights of his private jet. 

The banned platforms included mainstream websites such as Facebook and Instagram, and upstart rivals Mastodon, Tribel, Nostr, Post and former President Donald Trump’s Truth Social. Twitter gave no explanation for why the blacklist included those seven websites but not others such as Parler, TikTok or LinkedIn. 

Twitter had said it would at least temporarily suspend accounts that include the banned websites in their profile — a practice so widespread it would have been difficult to enforce the restrictions on Twitter’s millions of users around the world. Not only links but attempts to bypass the ban by spelling out “instagram dot com” could have led to a suspension, the company said. 

A test case was the prominent venture capitalist Paul Graham, who in the past has praised Musk but on Sunday told his 1.5 million Twitter followers that this was the “last straw” and to find him on Mastodon. His Twitter account was promptly suspended, and soon after restored as Musk promised to reverse the policy implemented just hours earlier. 

Musk said Twitter will still suspend some accounts according to the policy but “only when that account’s (asterisk)primary(asterisk) purpose is promotion of competitors.” 

Twitter previously took action to block links to Mastodon after its main Twitter account tweeted about the @ElonJet controversy last week. Mastodon has grown rapidly in recent weeks as an alternative for Twitter users who are unhappy with Musk’s overhaul of Twitter since he bought the company for $44 billion in late October and began restoring accounts that ran afoul of the previous Twitter leadership’s rules against hateful conduct and other harms. 

Musk permanently banned the @ElonJet account on Wednesday, then changed Twitter’s rules to prohibit the sharing of another person’s current location without their consent. He then took aim at journalists who were writing about the jet-tracking account, which can still be found on other social media sites, alleging that they were broadcasting “basically assassination coordinates.” 

He used that to justify Twitter’s moves last week to suspend the accounts of numerous journalists who cover the social media platform and Musk, among them reporters working for The New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, Voice of America and other publications. Many of those accounts were restored following an online poll by Musk. 

Then, over the weekend, The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz became the latest journalist to be temporarily banned. She said she was suspended after posting a message on Twitter tagging Musk and requesting an interview. 

Sally Buzbee, The Washington Post’s executive editor, called it an “arbitrary suspension of another Post journalist” that further undermined Musk’s promise to run Twitter as a platform dedicated to free speech. 

“Again, the suspension occurred with no warning, process or explanation — this time as our reporter merely sought comment from Musk for a story,” Buzbee said. By midday Sunday, Lorenz’s account was restored, as was the tweet she thought had triggered her suspension. 

Musk’s promise to let users decide his future role at Twitter through an unscientific online survey appeared to come out of nowhere Sunday, though he had also promised in November that a reorganization was happening soon. 

Musk was questioned in court on Nov. 16 about how he splits his time among Tesla and his other companies, including SpaceX and Twitter. Musk had to testify in Delaware’s Court of Chancery over a shareholder’s challenge to Musk’s potentially $55 billion compensation plan as CEO of the electric car company. 

Musk said he never intended to be CEO of Tesla, and that he didn’t want to be chief executive of any other companies either, preferring to see himself as an engineer instead. Musk also said he expected an organizational restructuring of Twitter to be completed in the next week or so. It’s been more than a month since he said that. 

In public banter with Twitter followers Sunday, Musk expressed pessimism about the prospects for a new CEO, saying that person “must like pain a lot” to run a company that “has been in the fast lane to bankruptcy.” 

“No one wants the job who can actually keep Twitter alive. There is no successor,” Musk tweeted. 
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Along the U.S. southern border, two cities — El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juarez in Mexico — prepared Sunday for a surge of as many as 5,000 new migrants a day as pandemic-era immigration restrictions expire this week, setting in motion plans for emergency housing, food and other essentials.

On the Mexican side of the international border, only heaps of discarded clothes, shoes and backpacks remained Sunday morning on the banks of the Rio Grande River, where until a couple of days ago hundreds of people were lining up to turn themselves in to U.S. officials. One young man from Ecuador stood uncertain on the Mexican side; he asked two journalists if they knew anything about what would happen if he turned himself in without having a sponsor in the U.S., and then gingerly removed sneakers and socks and hopped across the low water.

On the American side, by a small fence guarded by several Border Patrol vehicles, he joined a line of a dozen people who stood waiting with no U.S. officials in sight.

El Paso County Judge Ricardo Samaniego told The Associated Press on Sunday that the region, home to one of the busiest border crossings in the country, was coordinating housing and relocation efforts with groups and other cities, as well as calling on the state and federal government for humanitarian help. The area is preparing for an onslaught of new arrivals that could double their daily numbers once public health rule Title 42 ends on Wednesday.

The rule has been used to deter more than 2.5 million migrants from crossing since March 2020.

At a migrant shelter not far from the river in a poor Ciudad Juárez neighborhood, Carmen Aros, 31, knew little about U.S. policies. In fact, she said she’d heard the border might close on December 21.

She fled the cartel violence in the Mexican state of Zacatecas a month ago, right after her fifth daughter was born and her husband went missing. The Methodist pastor who runs the Buen Samaritano shelter put her on a list to be paroled into the United States and she waits every week to be called.

“They told me there was asylum in Juarez, but in truth, I didn’t know much,” she said on the bunk bed she shared with the girls. “We got here … and now let’s see if the government of the United States can resolve our case.”

At a vast shelter run by the Mexican government in a former Ciudad Juárez factory, dozens of migrants watched the World Cup final Sunday on two TVs while a visiting team of doctors from El Paso treated many who had come down with respiratory illness in the cold weather.

Constantly changing policies make it hard to plan, said Dylan Corbett, director of the Hope Border Institute, a Catholic organization helping migrants in both El Paso and Juarez. The group started the clinic two months ago.

“You have a lot of pent-up pain,” Corbett said. “I’m afraid of what’s going to happen.” With government policies in disarray, “the majority of the work falls to faith communities to pick up the pieces and deal with the consequences.”

Just a couple blocks across the border, sleet fell in El Paso as about 80 huddled migrants ate tacos that volunteers grilled up. Temperatures in the region were set to drop below freezing this week.

“We’re going to keep giving them as much as we have,” said Veronica Castorena, who came out with her husband with tortillas and ground beef as well as blankets for those who will likely sleep on the streets.

Jeff Petion, the owner of a trucking school in town, said this was his second time coming with employees to help migrants in the streets. “They’re out here, they’re cold, they’re hungry, so we wanted to let them know they’re not alone.

But across the street from Petion, Kathy Countiss, a retiree, said she worries the new arrivals will get out of control in El Paso, draining resources and directing enforcement away from criminals to those claiming asylum.

On Saturday, El Paso Mayor Oscar Leeser issued an emergency declaration to access additional local and state resources for building shelters and other urgently needed aid.

Samaniego, the county judge, said the order came one day after El Paso officials sent Texas Gov. Greg Abbott a letter requesting humanitarian assistance for the region, adding that the request was for resources to help tend to and relocate the newly arriving migrants, not additional security forces.

Samaniego said he has received no response to the request and plans to issue a similar countywide emergency declaration specifying the kind of help the area needs if the city does not get state aid soon. He urged the state and federal governments to provide the additional money, adding they had a strategy in place but were short in financial, essential and volunteer resources.

El Paso officials have been coordinating with organizations to provide temporary housing for migrants while they are processed and given sponsors and relocate them to bigger cities where they can be flown or bused to their final destinations, Samaniego said. As of Wednesday, they will all join forces at a one-stop emergency command center, Samaniego said, similarly to their approach to the COVID-19 emergency.

Abbott, El Paso city officials and U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

Abbott has committed billions of dollars to “Operation Lone Star,” an unprecedented border security effort that has included busing migrants to so-called sanctuary cities like New York, Los Angeles and Washington, as well as a massive presence of state troopers and National Guard along the Texas-Mexico border.

Additionally, the Republican Texas governor has pushed continued efforts to build former President Donald Trump’s wall using mostly private land along the border and crowdsourcing funds to help pay for it.

El Paso was the fifth-busiest of the Border Patrol’s nine sectors along the Mexico border as recently as March and suddenly became the most popular by far in October, jumping ahead of Del Rio, Texas, which itself had replaced Texas’ Rio Grande Valley as the busiest corridor at lightning-speed late last year. It is unclear why El Paso has become such a powerful magnet in recent months, drawing especially high numbers of migrants since September.

Recent illegal crossings in El Paso — at first largely dominated by Venezuelans and more recently by Nicaraguans — are reminiscent of a short period in 2019, when the westernmost reaches of Texas and eastern end of New Mexico were quickly overwhelmed with new arrivals from Cuba and Central America. El Paso had been a relatively sleepy area for illegal crossings for years.

Meanwhile, a group of about 300 migrants began walking northward Saturday night from an area near the Mexico-Guatemala border before being stopped by Mexican authorities. Some wanted to arrive on December 21, under the mistaken belief that the end of the measure would mean they could no longer request asylum.

Misinformation about U.S. immigration rules is often rife among migrants. The group was largely made up of Central Americans and Venezuelans who had crossed the southern border into Mexico and had waited in vain for transit or exit visas, migratory forms that might have allowed them to make it across Mexico to the U.S. border.

“We want to get to the United States as soon as possible, before they close the border, that’s what we’re worried about,” said Venezuelan migrant Erick Martínez.
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U.S. lawmakers this week face a tight deadline to pass a massive bill funding the federal government through next September. The size and scope of the U.S. military budget and a new round of aid for the conflict in Ukraine are among the high-profile items being negotiated. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent, Katherine Gypson, has more.
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One chapter of the never-ending saga of the 2020 U.S. presidential election is coming to an end Monday, with the congressional committee that investigated last year’s January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol offering its final public assessment of how former President Donald Trump tried to claim another White House term despite losing the vote to Democrat Joe Biden.

The House of Representatives panel, after a 16-month investigation that included interviews with more than 1,000 witnesses, examination of thousands of pages of documents related to the final weeks of Trump’s four-year presidency and 10 riveting public hearings, appears set to conclude that Trump and close associates engaged in an “attempted coup.”

The committee comprises seven Democrats and two vocal anti-Trump Republicans. It is set to vote on whether to make criminal referrals to the Justice Department on whether Trump and key advisers should be prosecuted for their actions in trying to upend the election results and thwart Congress from certifying the state-by-state vote counts showing that Biden had defeated him.

The panel has not taken public votes yet on the criminal referrals and its actions will have no official standing.

But its assessment could lend impetus to the ongoing criminal investigations of Trump and others that are being conducted by special counsel Jack Smith, subject to oversight by Attorney General Merrick Garland, and a state prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia.

Last week, a Trump spokesman belittled the possibility of the criminal referrals.

“The January 6th un-Select Committee held show trials by Never-Trump partisans who are a stain on this country’s history,” spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement. “This kangaroo court has been nothing more than a Hollywood executive’s vanity documentary project that insults Americans’ intelligence and makes a mockery of our democracy.”

Ahead of the committee votes on Monday, several panel members have made clear they think Trump should be prosecuted for engaging in a wide-ranging illegal effort to claim another four-year term in the White House. 

They also blame him for fomenting the rampage at the Capitol when 2,000 of his supporters stormed into the building, vandalized and ransacked congressional offices, scuffled with police and for hours kept Congress from certifying the Electoral College outcome that Biden had won the presidency.

It was the worst attack on the Capitol, the symbol of U.S. democracy around the world, in two centuries.

In the United States, presidents are not elected by the national popular balloting, although Biden won 7 million more votes than Trump. Instead, presidents are elected in the Electoral College, depending on the state-by-state outcome in each of the 50 states, with the most populous states having the most electors and thus the most sway on the national outcome.

After the rioters were cleared from the Capitol, Congress eventually affirmed Biden’s victory in the early hours of January 7, 2021.

The committee’s chairperson, Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, said the referrals may include criminal, ethics violations, legal misconduct and campaign finance violations. The panel’s lawmakers have said that Trump specifically could be singled out for alleged conspiracy to defraud the United States, obstruction of an official proceeding of Congress and insurrection.

One of the committee members, Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff of California, told CNN’s “State of the Union” show Sunday that he believes Trump committed multiple crimes.

On the insurrection allegation, Schiff said, “If you look at Donald Trump’s acts and you match them up against the statute, it’s a pretty good match.”

“This is someone who in multiple ways tried to pressure state officials to find votes that didn’t exist; this is someone who tried to interfere with a joint session [of Congress as it tried to certify the Electoral College outcome], even inciting a mob to attack the Capitol,” Schiff said.

“If that’s not criminal then I don’t know what it is,” Schiff concluded.

Democratic Congressman Jamie Raskin of Maryland said last week that the committee’s referrals will focus on “key players” where there is abundant evidence that they committed crimes.

Schiff said the committee could also make ethics referrals involving fellow lawmakers Monday.

“We will also be considering what’s the appropriate remedy for members of Congress who ignore a congressional subpoena, as well as the evidence that was so pertinent to our investigation and why we wanted to bring them in,” Schiff said. “We have weighed what is the remedy for members of Congress. Is it a criminal referral to another branch of government, or is it better that the Congress police its own?”

Among those who refused to comply with a subpoena from the January 6 committee was House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who is attempting to become the House speaker when Republicans take control of the chamber next month.
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The mayor of El Paso, Texas, Saturday declared a state of emergency as the U.S. border city faces a daily influx of thousands of migrants from Latin American countries over the border with Mexico.

Mayor Oscar Leeser, a Democrat, said the declaration would give the city the money and other needed resources to deal with the migrant crisis.

“We wanted to make sure people are treated with dignity. We want to make sure everyone is safe,” Leeser said.

U.S. officials say more than 2,400 migrants cross into El Paso every day, far beyond its shelter capacity, and thousands of migrants are sleeping on El Paso’s streets, just as the temperatures are dropping.

The emergency declaration came just days before a federal health order, referred to as Title 42, expires Wednesday. Title 42, enacted during the COVID-19 pandemic, allowed for the quick return of migrants across the border.

If Title 42 is no longer in effect next week, Leeser said U.S. officials have told him the daily number of migrants crossing daily into the U.S. through El Paso could jump from 2,400 to as high as 6,000.

Democratic state Senator César J. Blanco, who represents El Paso, said in a statement that the border community “is facing an extraordinary humanitarian crisis.”
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A prominent video game creator who helped lead Facebook’s expansion into virtual reality has resigned from the social networking service’s corporate parent after becoming disillusioned with the way the technology is being managed.

John Carmack cut his ties with Meta Platforms, a holding company created last year by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a Friday letter that vented his frustration as he stepped down as an executive consultant in virtual reality.

“There is no way to sugar coat this; I think our organization is operating at half the effectiveness that would make me happy,” Carmack wrote in the letter, which he shared on Facebook. “”Some may scoff and contend we are doing just fine, but others will laugh and say, ‘Half? Ha! I’m at quarter efficiency!'”

In response to an inquiry about Carmack’s resignation and remarks, Meta on Saturday directed The Associated Press to a tweet from its chief technology officer and head of its reality labs, Andrew Bosworth. “”It is impossible to overstate the impact you’ve had on our work and the industry as a whole,” Bosworth wrote in his grateful tweet addressed to Carmack.

Carmack’s departure comes at a time that Zuckerberg, Meta’s CEO, has been battling widespread perceptions that he has been wasting billions of dollars trying to establish the Menlo Park, California, company in the “metaverse” — an artificial world filled with avatars of real people.

While the metaverse losses have been mounting, Facebook and affiliated services such as Instagram have been suffering a downturn in advertising that brings in most of the company’s revenue. The decline has been brought on by a combination of recession fears, tougher competition from other social networking services such as TikTok and privacy controls on Apple’s iPhone that have made it tougher to track people’s interests to help sell ads.

Those challenges have caused Meta’s stock to lose nearly two-thirds of its value so far this year, wiping out about $575 billion in shareholder wealth.

Although Carmack had only been working part time at Meta, the dismay that he expressed seems likely to amplify the questions looming over Zuckerberg’s efforts to become as dominant in virtual reality as Facebook has been in social networking since he started the service nearly 20 years ago while attending Harvard University.

Zuckerberg began to explore virtual reality in earnest in 2014 with Facebook’s $2 billion purchase of headset maker Oculus. At the time, Carmack was Oculus’ chief technology officer and then joined Facebook after the deal closed. Before joining Oculus, Carmack was best known as the co-creator of the video game Doom.

Federal regulators are now trying to limit Zuckerberg’s sway in virtual reality by preventing his attempt to buy Within Unlimited, which makes a fitness app designed for the metaverse.

Carmack testified earlier this week in a trial pitting the Federal Trade Commission against Meta over the fate of the deal. Zuckerberg is expected to testify at some point in the trial, which is scheduled to resume Monday in San Jose, California.

Despite his frustration with the way things have been going at Meta, Carmack praised its latest virtual reality headset, the Quest 2, in his resignation letter. He described the headset as “almost exactly what I wanted to see from the beginning” of his Oculus tenure.

“It is successful, and successful products make the world a better place,” Carmack said of the Quest 2. “It all could have happened a bit faster and been going better if different decisions had been made, but we built something pretty close to The Right Thing.”

But Carmack ended his letter with this entreaty: “Maybe it actually is possible to get there by just plowing ahead with current practices, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Make better decisions and fill your products with ‘Give a Damn!'” 
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Attorney General Merrick Garland has taken action to end sentencing disparities that have imposed harsher penalties for different forms of cocaine and worsened racial inequity in the U.S. justice system.

For decades federal law has imposed harsher sentences for crack cocaine even though it isn’t scientifically different from powder cocaine, creating “unwarranted racial disparities,” Garland wrote in a memo Friday to federal prosecutors. “They are two forms of the same drug, with powder readily convertible into crack cocaine.”

With changes to the law stalled in Congress, Garland instructed prosecutors in nonviolent, low-level cases to file charges that avoid the mandatory minimum sentences that are triggered for smaller amounts of rock cocaine.

Civil rights leaders and advocates for criminal justice change applauded Garland, though they said his move will not become permanent without action from Congress.

The Rev. Al Sharpton led marches in the 1990s against the laws he called “unfair and racially tinged” and applauded the Justice Department direction that takes effect within 30 days.

“This was not only a major prosecutorial and sentencing decision – it is a major civil rights decision,” he said in a statement. “The racial disparities of this policy have ruined homes and futures for over a generation.”

At one point, federal law treated a single gram of crack the same as 100 grams of powder cocaine. Congress shrunk that gap in 2010 but did not completely close it. A bill to end the disparity passed the House last year but stalled in the Senate.

“This has been one of the policies that has sent thousands and thousands of predominantly Black men to the federal prison system,” said Janos Marton, vice president of political strategy with the group Dream.org. “And that’s been devastating for communities and for families.”

While he welcomed the change in prosecution practices, he pointed out that unless Congress acts, it could be temporary. The bill that passed the House with bipartisan support last year would also be retroactive to apply to people already convicted under the law passed in 1986.

But the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Iowa Sen. Chuck Grassley, said Garland’s move jeopardizes legislative talks on the issue. Grassley said the attorney general’s “baffling and misguided” instructions amount to asking prosecutors to disregard current law. “This is the wrong decision for the Justice Department,” Garland said in a statement.

The mandatory-minimum policies came as the use of illicit drugs, including crack cocaine in the late 1980s, was accompanied by an alarming spike in homicides and other violent crimes nationwide.

The act was passed shortly after an NBA draftee died of a cocaine-induced heart attack. It imposed mandatory federal sentences of 20 years to life in prison for violating drug laws and made sentences for possession and sale of crack rocks harsher than those for powder cocaine.

The Black incarceration rate in America exploded after the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 it went into effect. It went from about 600 per 100,000 people in 1970 to 1,808 per 100,000 people in 2000. In the same time span, the rate for the Latino population grew from 208 per 100,000 people to 615, while the white incarceration rate grew from 103 per 100,000 people to 242.

Friday’s announcement reflects the ways that years of advocacy have pushed a shift away from the war on drugs tactics that took a heavy toll on marginalized groups and drove up the nation’s incarceration rates without an accompanying investment in other services to rebuild communities, said Rashad Robinson, president Color Of Change.

“It is a recognition these laws were intended to target Black people and Black communities and were never intended to give communities the type of support and investments they need,” he said.
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Twitter owner Elon Musk tweeted early Saturday that the accounts of journalists that were suspended late Thursday will be reinstated.  

While some of the accounts were reactivated shortly after Musk’s tweet, however, not all have been restored.  

The Twitter account of VOA’s Chief National Correspondent Steve Herman showed his restored timeline, except for three tweets that the social media platform says violated its policies. All of those referred to a banned account that tracks Musk’s private jet.  

Musk said he suspended the accounts because the journalists were revealing information about the location of the jet, which he said led to a stalker harassing one of his children.

None of the journalists who had tweeted about Musk and his shutdown of the account @elonjet, though, had tweeted location information for his plane, which in any event is publicly available at other online sites.  

On other social media platforms like Mastodon and Post.news, Herman stated that Twitter was asking him to remove the three blocked tweets to have his account reinstated.  

“I have filed an appeal and will not remove the tweets,” Herman posted on Mastodon.

The account suspensions drew an outpouring of concern from other journalists, rights groups and international organizations.

United Nations spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Friday, “The move sets a dangerous precedent at a time when journalists all over the world are facing censorship, physical threats and even worse.”  He noted the U.N. was “very disturbed by the arbitrary” suspensions.  

The European Union, too, expressed concern about the suspensions. From her own Twitter account, EU Commission Vice President for Values and Transparency Věra Jourová wrote the suspensions were worrying and underscored: the “EU’s Digital Services Act requires respect of media freedom and fundamental rights. This is reinforced under our Media Freedom Act.”   

She said Musk should be aware of that. “There are red lines,” she said, “and sanctions too.”  

The Committee to Protect Journalists also expressed its unease, saying if the journalists were suspended as retaliation for their work, “this would be a serious violation of journalists’ rights to report the news without fear of reprisal.”  

Frederike Kaltheuner, director for technology and human rights for Human Rights Watch, said in a statement Friday that “the removal of the accounts is difficult to defend based on concerns about privacy or security alone.”  

From her official Twitter account, Society of Professional Journalists National President Claire Regan expressed concern about the suspensions, saying they go “against Musk’s promise to uphold free speech on the platform. We will continue to monitor the situation and advocate for journalism and free speech on all platforms.”   

VOA responded to the suspension of Herman’s account, saying, “Mr. Herman is a seasoned reporter who upholds the highest journalistic standards and uses the social media platform as a news gathering and networking tool. Mr. Herman has received no information from Twitter as to why his account was suspended. As Chief National Correspondent, Mr. Herman covers international and national news stories, and this suspension impedes his ability to perform his duties as a journalist.”  

Musk conducted Twitter polls to determine if and when the journalists accounts should be restored. Nearly 59% of the respondents wanted the accounts to be reactivated immediately. Musk tweeted the results, saying “the people have spoken.”  

Musk also tweeted early Saturday that Twitter Spaces was once again running. Spaces, a group audio chat function, shut down shortly after Musk exited a conversation with journalists who were discussing his suspension of their colleagues’ accounts. 
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Ecuadoran President Guillermo Lasso will meet with U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House Monday to discuss security and other issues — delicately trying to balance his nation’s deep interests with both the United States and China.

Lasso arrives in Washington with a list of priorities. At the top is securing help in battling drug cartels that have waged open warfare in Ecuador’s streets and prisons.

Drug-related violence prompted Lasso to declare a state of emergency in November in parts of Ecuador, which is sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest producers of cocaine.

John Kirby, the spokesperson for the U.S. National Security Council, said Friday that the two presidents, who last met in June at the Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, California, will discuss ways to boost cooperation in the battle against drugs.

Balancing act

Trade will be another prime topic. The two leaders will discuss regional economic initiatives, including the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP), aimed at mobilizing investment, promoting clean energy, and strengthening supply chains, White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said Friday.

Like other Latin American countries, Ecuador seeks to avoid the global rivalry between the United States and China by remaining on good terms with Washington while benefiting from Beijing’s open wallet.

Ecuador’s first conservative president in 14 years is looking forward to concluding a free-trade pact with China after nearly 10 months of negotiations.

Setting an example

Biden is expected to focus on the immigration crisis at the U.S. border with Mexico, where U.S. agents intercepted more than 2.2 million migrants in the year that ended September 30, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection office.

Ecuadorans constitute a relatively small share of the migrants. Still, their numbers have grown sharply this year, from 600 in January to 5,000 in September, according to official data.

Quito has set a good example on migration, Kirby said, noting it had regularized Venezuelan migrants and refugees living in Ecuador.

He also applauded Lasso for condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine, another issue for the White House talks.

The two leaders also will explore opportunities for collaboration once Ecuador assumes a non-permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council starting January 1.

News from Washington

Days before Lasso’s visit, Ecuador got some good news from Washington.

The International Monetary Fund approved the immediate disbursement of $700 million after completing a final review of a fund facility for Ecuador aimed at supporting its recovery from the pandemic, ensuring fiscal stability and expanding protections for vulnerable people.

And the U.S. Congress passed a bipartisan bill for the 2023 fiscal year that aims to help strengthen democratic institutions, foster more inclusive growth, and support environmental initiatives and the fight against corruption, crime and “malign foreign influence.”

Robert Menendez, chairperson of the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee, has said Ecuador has become a “model” for the region.

But at home, Lasso has been navigating troubled waters, marked by anti-government demonstrations led by the powerful Indigenous movement known as Conaie, which played a role in uprisings that brought down three presidents between 1997 and 2005.

Lasso and Conaie have put aside their differences for now, but for how long remains unclear.
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