Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a virtual summit that lasted roughly two hours. According to the White House’s readout of the conversation, Biden shared “deep concerns” about Russia’s increased troop presence along the country’s border with Ukraine, which has stirred fears of a potential invasion.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden urged Putin to embrace “de-escalation and diplomacy” toward Ukraine. Sullivan also said that Biden warned Putin there would be “strong economic measures” taken if Russia invaded Ukraine. “I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked President Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now,” Sullivan added, referring to the US response to the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Biden spoke with several European leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to provide an update on his conversation with Putin. “The leaders underscored their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the need for Russia to reduce tensions and engage in diplomacy,” the White House said.
Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, is no longer cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. Meadows’ attorney said the panel wanted the former official to discuss matters over which Trump has claimed executive privilege, although lawmakers have rejected the legitimacy of the former president’s claims.
The select committee warned it would move forward with holding Meadows in criminal contempt if he did not appear for his scheduled deposition tomorrow. Committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney said in a statement, “If indeed Mr Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.”
Elsewhere in the political landscape today, my colleague Ed Helmore reports on the hurdles that Donald Trump’s new media company, Truth Social, is already hitting even before it gets up and running.
On Monday it was revealed that top US financial regulators are scrutinizing the deal between Trump Media & Technology Group Corp (TMTG) and Digital World Acquisition Corporation, an acquisition firm, which agreed to merge to form the new media company. Helmore writes:
Donald Trump’s plan to launch “Truth Social”, a special purpose acquisitions backed social media company, early next year may have hit a roadblock after US regulators issued a request for information on the deal on Monday.
The request from the SEC and the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority for information from Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC), a blank-check SPAC that is set to merge with Trump Media & Technology Group, comes as a powerful Republican congressman, Devin Nunes, announced he was stepping out of politics to join the Trump media venture as CEO.
The twin developments set the stage for a major political battle over Truth Social, a platform that purportedly plans to challenge Twitter and Facebook, social platforms that have banned or curbed the former president over his involvement in stoking the 6 January Capitol riot.
The request for information relates to DWAC board meetings, policies about stock trading, the identities of certain investors and details of communications between DWAC and Trump’s social media firm. It comes three weeks after Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren asked the SEC to investigate possible securities violations at the company.
Warren quoted news reports that said DWAC “may have committed securities violations by holding private and undisclosed discussions about the merger as early as May 2021, while omitting this information in [SEC] filing and other public statements.”
But investigations into the Trump project appear to predate Warren’s request.
“According to the SEC’s request, the investigation does not mean that the SEC has concluded that anyone violated the law or that the SEC has a negative opinion of DWAC or any person, event, or security,” DWAC said in a statement.
People in counties that voted for Donald Trump are nearly three times more likely to die from Covid-19 than those who live in counties that voted for Joe Biden, according to a new study by National Public Radio.
NPR examined deaths per 100,000 people in about 3,000 counties across the US since May 2021. According to NPR, 1 May was chosen as the start date as it is roughly the time when vaccines became universally available to adults.
The study found that areas that voted for Trump by at least 60% in November 2020 had death rates 2.7 times higher than counties that voted heavily for Biden.
The study also found that counties that voted for Trump by an even higher percentage had lower vaccination rates and higher Covid-19 death rates.
Charles Gaba, an independent analyst who helped review NPR’s methodology, said that in October, the reddest 10th of the country saw death rates six times higher than the bluest 10th.
“Those numbers have dropped slightly in recent weeks,” he said. “It’s back down to 5.5 times higher.”
Hawaii, Nebraska and Alaska were excluded from the study because they either do not report election results by county or do not report county-level vaccine data.
The study only examined the geographic locations of Covid-related deaths. The political views of each person remain unknown. Nevertheless, according to NPR, “the strength of the association, combined with polling information about vaccination, strongly suggests that Republicans are being disproportionately affected”.
People in rural Republican areas, and white Republicans in general, tend to be more resistant to getting vaccinated. According to the latest data from the Kaiser Family Fund, the rate of Republican Covid vaccination has plateaued at 59%, while 91% of Democrats have been vaccinated.
The White House has said it “strongly opposes” a resolution introduced by the senators Bernie Sanders, Mike Lee and Rand Paul that would block a proposed $650m arms sale to Saudi Arabia.
The bipartisan resolution is driven by concerns over Saudi Arabia’s involvement in the war in Yemen. “As the Saudi government continues to wage its devastating war in Yemen and repress its own people, we should not be rewarding them with more arms sales,” said Sanders in a joint statement from the lawmakers.
The proposed arms sale package includes 280 air-to-air missiles and 596 launchers, as well as other equipment and technical support from the US government and contractors.
“These missiles are not used to engage ground targets,” the White House said in a statement today. “Saudi Arabia uses these munitions to defend against aerial cross-border attacks, such as Houthi explosive-laden drones.”
The senators behind the resolution have argued that the missiles could be used offensively, and asserted there is a lack of assurance that the equipment wouldn’t harm any civilians.
The Senate is expected to vote on the resolution tonight.
Analysis: Putin’s Ukraine rhetoric driven by distorted view of neighbor
Andrew Roth
Even as Vladimir Putin has built up an invasion force on his borders, he has repeated a refrain that Russians and Ukrainians are one people, bemoaning a “fraternal” conflict that he himself has provoked.
As Putin speaks on Tuesday with Joe Biden, western analysts have likened his focus on Kyiv to an “obsession” while Russians have said Putin believes it his “duty” to reverse Ukraine’s path towards the west.
Putin has threatened a broader war in Ukraine over Nato enlargement, demanding “legal guarantees” to ensure Ukraine does not join the military alliance or become a kind of “unofficial” member hosting troops or defense infrastructure.
But that fear has gone hand-in-hand with chauvinistic bluster that indicates Moscow has a distorted view of modern Ukraine and the goals it wants to achieve there.
“Russia fundamentally misunderstands Ukraine and its nature,” said Pavlo Klimkin, the former Ukrainian foreign minister. “Russia has been continually trying to prove that Ukraine is a sort of failed state, that Ukraine has no statehood, no history, no language, no religion. It’s a kind of separate reality.”
In June, Putin published an article in which he doubled down on a public claim that “Russians and Ukrainians were one people”, saying the formation of an ethnically Ukrainian state hostile to Moscow was “comparable in its consequences to the use of weapons of mass destruction against us”.
Analysts in Washington were alarmed by the rhetoric because it came shortly after Russia had engineered its first troop build-up, causing a war scare in April. Eugene Rumer and Andrew S Weiss of the Carnegie Endowment called Putin’s text a “historical, political, and security predicate for invading it – if and when that ever became necessary.”
US immigration judges are embroiled in a tense dispute with Joe Biden over their battle to restore union rights taken away from them under the Trump administration.
The head of the federal immigration judges’ union has accused the Biden administration of “doubling down” on its predecessor’s efforts to freeze out their association even as they struggle with a backlog of almost 1.5m court cases and staff shortages, which exacerbate due process concerns in their courts.
Mimi Tsankov, president of the National Association of Immigration Judges (NAIJ), declared herself “mystified” that Biden’s Department of Justice would not negotiate with her members despite the US president vocally and frequently touting his support for workers’ representation.
“This administration has really doubled down on maintaining the [Trump] position that we are not a valid union,” Tsankov said.
Tsankov was appointed as an immigration judge in 2006 and is based in New York, where she also teaches at Fordham University School of Law. She spoke to the Guardian only in her union role.
After what she described as “decades” of relatively smooth relations between the NAIJ and the Department of Justice, Donald Trump capped four years of rightwing immigration policy by successfully petitioning to strip hundreds of immigration judges of their right to unionize.
The hostile move was decided by the Federal Labor Relations Authority (FLRA), an independent administrative federal agency that controls labor relations between the federal government and its employees, on 2 November 2020, the day before the presidential election.
That’s it from me today. My west coast colleague, Maanvi Singh, will take over the blog for the next few hours.
Here’s where the day stands so far:
Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin held a virtual summit that lasted roughly two hours. According to the White House’s readout of the conversation, Biden shared “deep concerns” about Russia’s increased troop presence along the country’s border with Ukraine, which has stirred fears of a potential invasion.
National security adviser Jake Sullivan said Biden urged Putin to embrace “de-escalation and diplomacy” toward Ukraine. Sullivan also said that Biden warned Putin there would be “strong economic measures” taken if Russia invaded Ukraine. “I will look you in the eye and tell you, as President Biden looked President Putin in the eye and told him today, that things we did not do in 2014, we are prepared to do now,” Sullivan added, referring to the US response to the Russian annexation of Crimea.
Biden spoke with several European leaders, including British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, to provide an update on his conversation with Putin. “The leaders underscored their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the need for Russia to reduce tensions and engage in diplomacy,” the White House said.
Mark Meadows, the former chief of staff to Donald Trump, is no longer cooperating with the House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection. Meadows’ attorney said the panel wanted the former official to discuss matters over which Trump has claimed executive privilege, although lawmakers have rejected the legitimacy of the former president’s claims.
The select committee warned it would move forward with holding Meadows in criminal contempt if he did not appear for his scheduled deposition tomorrow. Committee chair Bennie Thompson and vice-chair Liz Cheney said in a statement, “If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.”
The White House has released a readout of Joe Biden’s afternoon call with French President Emmanuel Macron, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Italian Prime Minister Mario Draghiand British Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“President Biden briefed leaders on his call with President Putin, in which he discussed the serious consequences of Russian military action in Ukraine and the need to de-escalate and return to diplomacy,” the White House said.
“The leaders underscored their support for Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as the need for Russia to reduce tensions and engage in diplomacy. They agreed their teams will stay in close touch, including in consultation with NATO allies and EU partners, on a coordinated and comprehensive approach.”
The Guardian’s Martin Pengelly and David Smith report:
Mark Meadows’ attorney, George Terwilliger, wrote in a letter on Tuesday that a deposition would be “untenable” because the 6 January select committee “has no intention of respecting boundaries” concerning questions that Donald Trump has claimed are off-limits because of executive privilege.
Executive privilege covers the confidentiality or otherwise of communications between a president and his aides. The Biden administration has waived it in the investigation of 6 January. Trump and key allies entwined in events leading up to the storming of the Capitol, around which five people died, have invoked it.
Terwilliger also said he learned over the weekend that the committee had issued a subpoena to a third-party communications provider that he said would include “intensely personal” information.
In an interview on the conservative Fox News network, the attorney added: “We have made efforts over many weeks to reach an accommodation with the committee.”
But he said the committee’s approach to negotiations and to other witnesses meant Meadows would withdraw cooperation.
Capitol attack committee warns Meadows of potential contempt charge
The House select committee investigating the Capitol insurrection has warned Mark Meadows that lawmakers will move forward with holding him in criminal contempt if he does not appear for his scheduled deposition tomorrow.
Meadows, who previously served as Donald Trump’s chief of staff, indicated earlier today that he would no longer cooperate with the committee’s investigation.
The chair and vice-chair of the select committee, Democrat Bennie Thompson and Republican Liz Cheney, warned Meadows of the potential contempt charge in a new statement.
Mark Meadows has informed the Select Committee that he does not intend to cooperate further despite his apparent willingness to provide details about the January 6th attack, including conversations with President Trump, in the book he is now promoting and selling.
“Mark Meadows has informed the Select Committee that he does not intend to cooperate further with our investigation despite his apparent willingness to provide details about the facts and circumstances surrounding the January 6th attack, including conversations with President Trump, in the book he is now promoting and selling,” Thompson and Cheney said.
The two lawmakers noted investigators have many questions and requests for Meadows that do not fall under potential executive privilege claims, including “voluminous official records stored in his personal phone and email accounts”.
“Tomorrow’s deposition, which was scheduled at Mr. Meadows’s request, will go forward as planned,” Thompson and Cheney said.
“If indeed Mr. Meadows refuses to appear, the Select Committee will be left no choice but to advance contempt proceedings and recommend that the body in which Mr. Meadows once served refer him for criminal prosecution.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan described the summit between Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin as a “useful meeting,” although he declined to characterize the Russian leader’s remarks during the discussion.
“He can speak for himself,” Sullivan said of Putin, noting that the Russian president was “direct and straightforward” in his conversation with Biden.
“This was a real discussion. It was give and take. It was not speeches,” Sullivan said. “It was back and forth. President Putin was deeply engaged.”
