Joe Biden
Biden vows to check Russian aggression, fight inflation
Addressing a concerned nation and anxious world, President Joe Biden vowed in his first State of the Union address Tuesday night to check Russian aggression in Ukraine, tame soaring U.S. inflation and deal with the fading but still dangerous coronavirus.
Biden declared that he and all members of Congress, whatever political differences there may be, were joined “with an unwavering resolve that freedom will always triumph over tyranny.” He asked the lawmakers crowding the House chamber to stand and salute the Ukrainians as he began his speech. They stood and cheered.
Biden highlighted the bravery of Ukrainian defenders and the commitment of a newly reinvigorated Western alliance that has worked to rearm the Ukrainian military and cripple Russia’s economy through sanctions. He warned of costs to the American economy, as well, but warned ominously that without consequences, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression wouldn’t be contained to Ukraine.
“Throughout our history we’ve learned this lesson – when dictators do not pay a price for their aggression, they cause more chaos,” Biden said. “They keep moving. And, the costs and threats to America and the world keep rising.”
As Biden spoke, Russian forces were escalating their attacks in Ukraine, having bombarded the central square of country’s second-biggest city and Kyiv’s main TV tower, killing at least five people. The Babi Yar Holocaust memorial was also damaged.
Biden announced that the U.S. is following Canada and the European Union in banning Russian planes from its airspace in retaliation for the invasion of Ukraine. He also said the Justice Department was launching a task force to go after crimes of Russian oligarchs, whom he called “corrupt leaders who have bilked billions of dollars off this violent regime.”
“We are coming for your ill-begotten gains,” he said, pledging that the U.S. and European allies were coming after their yachts, luxury apartments and private jets.
Read: Russian forces escalate attacks on Ukraine’s civilian areas
“Putin may circle Kyiv with tanks, but he will never gain the hearts and souls of the Ukrainian people,” Biden said. “He will never extinguish their love of freedom. He will never weaken the resolve of the free world.”
Even before the Russian invasion sent energy costs skyrocketing, prices for American families had been rising, and the COVID-19 pandemic continues to hurt families and the country’s economy.
Biden outlined plans to address inflation by reinvesting in American manufacturing capacity, speeding supply chains and reducing the burden of childcare and eldercare on workers.
“We have a choice,” Biden said. “One way to fight inflation is to drive down wages and make Americans poorer. I have a better plan to fight inflation. Lower your costs, not your wages.”
Biden entered the House chamber without a mask, in a reflection of the declining coronavirus case counts and new federal guidance meant to nudge the public back to pre-pandemic activities. But the Capitol was newly fenced due to security concerns after last year’s insurrection.
Set against disquiet at home and danger abroad, the White House had conceived Tuesday night’s speech as an opportunity to highlight the improving coronavirus outlook, rebrand Biden’s domestic policy priorities and show a path to lower costs for families grappling with soaring inflation. But it has taken on new significance with last week’s Russian invasion of Ukraine and nuclear saber-rattling by Putin.
As is customary, Energy Secretary Gina Raimondo was kept in a secure location during the address ready to take over the government in the event of a catastrophe, in holdover from the Cold War that took on new significance in light of Putin’s threats.
In an interview with CNN and Reuters, Zelenskyy said he urged Biden to deliver a strong and “useful” message about Russia’s invasion. Ahead of the speech, the White House announced that Ukrainian Ambassador to the U.S. Oksana Markarova would join first lady Jill Biden in the galleries to watch Biden’s address.
Rising energy prices as a result of Russia’s war in Ukraine risk exacerbating inflation in the U.S., which is already at the highest level in 40 years, eating into people’s earnings and threatening the economic recovery from the pandemic. And while the geopolitical crisis in Eastern Europe may have helped to cool partisan tensions in Washington, it didn’t erase the political and cultural discord that is casting doubt on Biden’s ability to deliver on his pledge to promote national unity.
Biden spoke to an American public that is frustrated with his performance. A February AP-NORC poll found that more people disapproved than approved of how Biden is handling his job, 55% to 44%. That’s down from a 60% favorable rating last July.
Ahead of the speech, White House officials acknowledged the mood of the country is “sour,” citing the lingering pandemic and inflation. Biden, used his remarks to highlight the progress from a year ago — with the majority of the U.S. population now vaccinated and millions more people at work — but also acknowledged that the job is not yet done, a recognition of American discontent.
Biden aides say they believe the national psyche is a “trailing indicator” that will improve with time. But time is running short for the president, who needs to salvage his first-term agenda to revive the political fortunes of his party before November’s midterm elections.
Before Biden spoke, House Republicans said the word “crisis” describes the state of the union under Biden and Democrats — from an energy policy that lets Russia sell oil abroad to challenges at home over jobs and immigration.
“We’re going to push the president to do the right thing,” said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
At least a half dozen lawmakers, including Reps. Jamie Raskin and Pete Aguilar, both members of the committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, and Sen. Alex Padilla, D-Calif., had tested positive for COVID-19 and were not expected at the Capitol for the speech.
Where his speech to Congress last year saw the rollout of a massive social spending package, Biden this year largely repackaged past proposals in search of achievable measures he hopes can win bipartisan support in a bitterly divided Congress before the elections.
Read: 520,000+ refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia waged war
The president also highlighted investments in everything from internet broadband access to bridge construction from November’s $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure law as an example of government reaching consensus and delivering change for the nation.
He also appealed to lawmakers to compromise on rival competitiveness bills that have passed the House and Senate, both meant to revitalize high-tech American manufacturing and supply chains in the face of growing geopolitical threats from China.
“Instead of relying on foreign supply chains – let’s make it in America,” Biden said.
The speech came as progress on many of Biden’s other legislative priorities remains stalled on Capitol Hill, after Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin scuttled the sweeping “Build Back Better” spending bill that Biden championed last fall.
As part of his pitch to voters, Biden looked to resurrect components of the legislation, but with a new emphasis on how proposals like extending the child tax credit and bringing down child care costs could bring relief to families as prices rise. He was also outlined how his climate change proposals would cut costs for lower- and middle-income families and create new jobs.
As part of that push, Biden called for lowering health care costs, pitching his plan to authorize Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices, as well as an extension of more generous health insurance subsidies now temporarily available through the Affordable Care Act marketplaces where 14.5 million people get coverage.
He proposed new initiatives on mental health that dovetail with growing bipartisan interest in Congress amid evidence that the pandemic has damaged the national psyche, and discussed new ways to improve access to health benefits for veterans sickened by exposure to the burning of waste during their service, officials said.
Biden also appealed for action on voting rights, gun control and police reform, which have failed to win significant Republican backing.
In addition, the president to pushed the Senate to confirm federal judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to be the first Black woman on the Supreme Court. He nominated her last week.
Biden hits Russia with sanctions, shifts troops to Germany
President Joe Biden hit back Thursday against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, unleashing robust new sanctions, ordering the deployment of thousands of additional troops to NATO ally Germany and declaring that America would stand up to Russia's Vladimir Putin.
He also acknowledged that the invasion — and efforts to thwart Putin — will have a cost for Americans. But he sought to reassure the public that the economic pain that may come with rising energy prices will be short-lived in the U.S.
As for the Russian president, Biden said: “He’s going to test the resolve of the West to see if we stay together. And we will.”
Also read: Biden, Putin signal bigger confrontation ahead over Ukraine
Targeting Russia's financial system, Biden said, the United States will block assets of large Russian banks, i mpose export controls aimed at the nation's high-tech needs and sanction its business oligarchs.
The president said the U.S. also will be deploying additional forces to Germany to bolster NATO after the invasion of Ukraine, which is not a member of the defense organization. Some 7,000 additional U.S. troops will be sent.
Some U.S. lawmakers — and Ukrainian officials — called on Biden to do more.
“There is more that we can and should do,” said Sen Bob Menendez, D-N.J., the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, pointing to the possibility of removing Russian banks from the SWIFT international banking system and sanctioning Putin personally. “Congress and the Biden administration must not shy away from any options.”
Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell expressed support Thursday for Biden's latest moves but also urged Biden to apply maximum pressure on Putin. McConnell said the top four congressional leaders in the House and Senate received a classified briefing from the president late Thursday.
“We’re all together at this point and we need to be together about what should be done,” McConnell said. “But I have some advice: Ratchet the sanctions all the way up. Don’t hold any back.”
White House deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh stressed that the Biden administration valued closed coordination with allies and avoiding even the perception of hurting ordinary Russian citizens as they roll out sanctions. He declined to detail a circumstance in which Biden might approve cutting the Russians off from SWIFT or target Putin directly.
Also read: ‘Thugs and bullies’: Nations sanction Russia over Ukraine
“When we consider which sanctions to apply, we’re not cowboys and cowgirls pressing a button to impose costs,” Singh said. “We follow a set of principles. We want the sanctions to be impactful enough to demonstrate our resolve, and to show that we have the capacity to deliver overwhelming costs to Russia.”
Biden declared that Putin, who has referred to the collapse of the Soviet Union as the “greatest geopolitical catastrophe” of the past century, is looking beyond Ukraine.
“He has much larger ambitions,” Biden said. “He wants to, in fact, reestablish the former Soviet Union. That’s what this is about.”
The penalties announced Thursday fall in line with the White House’s insistence that it would hit Russia’s financial system and Putin's inner circle, while also imposing export controls that would aim to starve Russia’s industries and military of U.S. semiconductors and other high-tech products.
“Putin is the aggressor,” Biden said. “Putin chose this war, and now he and his country will bear the consequences."
But Biden, for now, held off imposing some of the most severe potential sanctions, including cutting Russia out of the SWIFT payment system, which allows for the transfers of money from bank to bank around the globe.
Biden announced the sanctions at the White House while Ukraine’s government reported mounting casualties inflicted by Russian forces attacking from the east, north and south.
Oil and natural prices have already surged over concerns that Russia — an energy production behemoth — will slow the flow of oil and natural gas to Europe. Biden, however, acknowledged the sanctions are “going to take time” to have their effect on the Russian economy.
Biden added that after Russia’s “brutal assault” against Ukraine it would be a mistake to allow Putin's actions to go unanswered. He said if they did, “the consequences for America would be much worse.”
“America stands up to bullies, we stand up for freedom,” Biden said. “This is who we are.”
Biden spoke hours after holding a virtual meeting with the leaders of Britain, Canada, France, Italy and Japan. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, European Council President Charles Michel and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg also joined the meeting.
The president also met with his national security team in the White House Situation Room as he looked to flesh out U.S. moves in the rapidly escalating crisis.
While Biden described the sanctions as severe, Ukrainian officials urged the U.S. and West to go further.
“We demand the disconnection of Russia from SWIFT, the introduction of a no-fly zone over Ukraine and other effective steps to stop the aggressor,” Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a tweet.
The Biden administration, however, has shown some reluctance to cut Russia from SWIFT, at least immediately, because of concerns the move could also have enormous ramifications for Europe and other Western economies. Biden, answering questions from reporters, appeared to push a decision on SWIFT to European allies.
“It is always an option but right now that’s not the position that the rest of Europe wishes to take,” Biden said. He also contended that the financial sanctions he announced would be more damaging to Russia.
The Belgium-headquartered system allows for tens of millions of transactions daily among banks, financial exchanges and other institutions. The U.S. notably has previously blocked Iran from the system because of its nuclear program.
Officials in Europe have noted that the loss of SWIFT access by Russia could be a drag on the broader global economy. Russia has also equated a SWIFT ban to a declaration of war. And because the system cements the importance of the U.S. dollar in global finance, outright bans also carry the risk of pushing countries to use alternatives through the Chinese government or blockchain-based technologies.
Brian Frey, a former Justice Department prosecutor during the Trump administration, said while SWIFT is the primary messaging system for financial payments, “there are alternatives to the system” and cutting Russia off would create a “splashback and immediate problems for the international community.”
The sanctions include targeting Russia’s two largest banks, Sberbank and VTB Bank. The U.S. Treasury Department says the sanctions overall “target nearly 80% of all banking assets in Russia and will have a deep and long-lasting effect on the Russian economy and financial system.”
Individuals close to Putin were also targeted in the latest sanctions. They include former chief of staff Sergei Ivanov; Andrey Patrushev, a Putin ally who has held high-ranking positions at the state-owned Gazprom Neft; and former Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin, chairman of the management board of the oil company Rosneft.
Treasury also announced sanctions against Belarusian banks, the country's defense industry and security officials over support for the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Biden said the export control measures he ordered would "impose severe cost on the Russian economy, both immediately and over time.” The measures will restrict Russia access to semiconductors, computers, telecommunications, information security equipment, lasers and sensors.
“We’re going to impair their ability to compete in a high-tech 21st century economy," Biden said.
Meanwhile, Russia’s second-ranking diplomat in Washington, Minister Counselor Sergey Trepelkov, was expelled in retaliation for the Russian expulsion of the No. 2 U.S. diplomat in Moscow earlier this month, a senior State Department official said Thursday.
The expulsion was unrelated to the invasion and is part of a long-running dispute between Washington and Moscow over embassy staffing, the official said.
Over 130,000 Russian troops now staged outside Ukraine: US
Some airlines canceled flights to the Ukrainian capital and troops there unloaded fresh shipments of weapons from NATO members Sunday, as its president sought to project confidence in the face of U.S. warnings of possible invasion within days by a growing number of Russian forces.
President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke to President Joe Biden for about an hour, insisting that Ukrainians had the country under “safe and reliable protection” against feared attack by a far stronger Russian military, aides said afterward. The White House said both agreed to keep pushing both deterrence and diplomacy to try to stave off a feared Russian military offensive.
The Biden administration has become increasingly outspoken about its concerns that Russia will stage an incident in the coming days that would create a false pretext for an invasion of Ukraine.
U.S. and European intelligence findings in recent days have sparked worries that Russia may try to target a scheduled Ukrainian military exercise slated for Tuesday in eastern Ukraine to launch such a “false-flag operation,” according to two people familiar with the matter. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about it.
Read: War, peace, stalemate? Week ahead may decide Ukraine’s fate
American intelligence officials believe targeting the military exercise is just one of multiple options that Russia has weighed as a possibility for a false-flag operation. The White House has underscored that they do not know with certainty if President Vladimir Putin has made a final determination to launch an invasion.
Moscow’s forces are massing on Ukraine’s north, east and south in what the Kremlin insists are military exercises.
A U.S. official updated the Biden administration’s estimate for how many Russian forces are now staged near Ukraine’s borders to more than 130,000, up from the more than 100,000 the U.S. has cited publicly in previous weeks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s conclusions.
Zelenskyy has repeatedly played down the U.S. warnings, questioning the increasingly strident statements from U.S. officials in recent days that Russia could be planning to invade as soon as midweek.
“We understand all the risks, we understand that there are risks,” he said in a broadcast Saturday. “If you, or anyone else, has additional information regarding a 100% Russian invasion starting on the 16th, please forward that information to us.”
But while Zelenskyy has urged against panic that he fears could undermine Ukraine’s economy, he and his civilian and military leaders also are preparing defenses, soliciting and receiving a flow of arms from the U.S. and other NATO members.
A military cargo aircraft carrying U.S.-made Stinger anti-aircraft missiles and ammunition from NATO member Lithuania landed Sunday, bolstering the country’s defenses against any attack by air.
Zelenskyy wore military olive drab at a drill with tanks and helicopters near Ukraine’s border with Russian-annexed Crimea this weekend. In the nearby city of Kalanchak, some expressed disbelief that Putin would really send his troops rolling into the country.
“I don’t believe Russia will attack us,” said resident Boris Cherepenko. “I have friends in Sakhalin, in Krasnodar,” he said, naming Russian regions. “I don’t believe it.”
In Kyiv, others expressed uncertainty whether any Russian move would be economic, military, or happen at all. One woman, Alona Buznitskaya, speaking on a central street of the capital bearing a few signs declaring, “I love Ukraine,” said she was calm.
“You should always be ready for everything, and then you will have nothing to be afraid of,” she said.
The U.S. largely has not made public the evidence it says is underlying its most specific warnings on possible Russian planning or timing.
“We’re not going to give Russia the opportunity to conduct a surprise here, to spring something on Ukraine or the world,” Jake Sullivan, the U.S. national security adviser, told CNN on Sunday, about the U.S. warnings.
“We are going to make sure that we are laying out for the world what we see as transparently and plainly as we possibly can,” he said.
The Russians have deployed missile, air, naval and special operations forces, as well as supplies to sustain an invasion. This week, Russia moved six amphibious assault ships into the Black Sea, augmenting its capability to land on the coast.
Putin denies any intention of attacking Ukraine. Russia is demanding that the West keep former Soviet countries out of NATO. It also wants NATO to refrain from deploying weapons near its border and to roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe — demands flatly rejected by the West.
Biden and Putin spoke for more than an hour Saturday, but the White House offered no suggestion that the call diminished the threat of an imminent war in Europe.
Read:Biden warns Putin of ‘severe costs’ of Ukraine invasion
Reflecting the West’s concerns, Dutch airline KLM has canceled flights to Ukraine until further notice, the company said. The Ukrainian charter airline SkyUp said Sunday its flight from Madeira, Portugal, to Kyiv was diverted to the Moldovan capital.
And Ukraine’s air traffic safety agency Ukraerorukh issued a statement declaring the airspace over the Black Sea to be a “zone of potential danger” and recommended that planes avoid flying over the sea Feb. 14-19.
The Putin-Biden conversation, following a call between Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron earlier in the day, came at a critical moment for what has become the biggest security crisis between Russia and the West since the Cold War. U.S. officials believe they have mere days to prevent an invasion and enormous bloodshed in Ukraine.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz will fly to Kyiv on Monday to meet with Zelenskyy and Moscow on Tuesday to meet with Putin.
While the U.S. and NATO have made clear they do not intend to send troops to Ukraine to fight Russia, any invasion and resulting punishing sanctions promised by the U.S. and other countries could reverberate far beyond the former Soviet republic, affecting energy supplies, global markets and the power balance in Europe.
The United States was pulling most of its staff from the embassy in Kyiv and urged all American citizens to leave Ukraine immediately. Britain joined other European nations in telling its citizens to leave.
Biden has bolstered the U.S. military presence in Europe as reassurance to allies on NATO’s eastern flank. The 3,000 additional soldiers ordered to Poland come on top of 1,700 who are on their way there. The U.S. Army also is shifting 1,000 soldiers from Germany to Romania, which like Poland shares a border with Ukraine.
Russia and Ukraine have been locked in a bitter conflict since 2014, when Ukraine’s Kremlin-friendly leader was driven from office by a popular uprising. Moscow responded by annexing the Crimean Peninsula and then backing a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine, where fighting has killed over 14,000 people.
A 2015 peace deal brokered by France and Germany helped halt large-scale battles, but regular skirmishes have continued, and efforts to reach a political settlement have stalled.
Biden threatens: No gas pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine
In a flurry of diplomacy across two continents, President Joe Biden met with Germany’s new leader Monday and vowed the crucial Nord Stream 2 Russia-to-Germany gas pipeline will be blocked if Russia further invades Ukraine. Russia’s Vladimir Putin retorted that the U.S. and its allies are the only ones talking invasion.
Putin and French President Emmanuel Macron met for more than five hours in Moscow at the same time Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz spoke at the White House in efforts to defuse the crisis before armed conflict breaks out. Russia has massed thousands of troops at the Ukraine border, adding military might almost daily.
The White House has expressed increasing alarm about the prospects of war, and Biden has been looking to solidify support among European allies for economy-jarring sanctions against Russia if it attacks.
Also read: Top Biden aide says Ukraine invasion could come ‘any day’
“If Russia invades, that means tanks and troops crossing the border of Ukraine again, then there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2,” Biden said. “We will bring an end to it.”
That would hurt Russia economically but also cause supply problems for Germany. Construction of the pipeline has been completed, but it is not yet operating.
“We are jointly ready, and all of NATO is ready,” Biden said, referring to the powerful Western alliance, though Ukraine is not a member.
While Biden reiterated with certitude that the pipeline would not move forward, Scholz stressed the need to keep some ambiguity about sanctions in order to press Russia to de-escalate the crisis.
“It’s necessary for Russia to understand that a lot more could happen than they’ve perhaps calculated with themselves,.” Scholz said.
The buildup of over 100,000 Russian troops near Ukraine has fueled Western worries of a possible offensive. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan warned Sunday that Russia could invade Ukraine “any day,” triggering a conflict that would come at an “enormous human cost.”
At the same time, Biden and NATO allies have made clear there are no plans for sending in troops to fight Russia on Ukraine’s behalf.
Also read: Russian bombers fly over Belarus amid Ukraine tensions
Macron and Putin, during their lengthy meeting — with a dinner that featured the choice of sturgeon or reindeer — registered their disagreements but also emphasized a need for more talks.
Putin noted that the U.S. and NATO have ignored Moscow’s demands that the alliance guarantee it will keep Ukraine and other ex-Soviet nations out, refrain from placing weapons in Ukraine and roll back alliance forces from Eastern Europe.
“We are categorically against any further NATO’s expansion eastward because it poses a threat to us,” Putin said. “It’s not us who’s advancing to NATO, it’s NATO coming to us and so it’s illogical to talk about Russia’s aggressive behavior.”
He scoffed at Western descriptions of NATO as a defensive alliance, saying sarcastically that “people of Iraq, Libya and Afghanistan have learned it from their own experience.” And he threatened a wider war if Ukraine should join the alliance and perhaps try to win back Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014.
“European countries will automatically be drawn into a military conflict with Russia,” Putin said. “You will be drawn into that conflict beyond your will. There will be no winners.”
Macron described the talks as “substantial, deep” with a focus on conditions that could help de-escalation.
“We tried to build converging elements,” he said. “The upcoming days will be crucial and deep discussions together will be needed.”
Putin signaled his readiness to continue negotiations and denied anew that Russia has any intention of invading Ukraine.
In the meantime, Biden warned “it would be wise” for Americans other than essential diplomats to leave Ukraine.
On a positive note, Putin said without elaboration that some of Macron’s proposals could serve as a basis for a settlement of the conflict in eastern Ukraine, adding that they agreed to have a call after Macron’s visit to Kyiv Tuesday.
Likewise, Biden said when asked if there remained an “offramp” for Russia in the standoff, “The answer is yes.”
Before meeting Biden, Scholz told German media that “there will be a very high price if Ukraine is attacked militarily. And we are preparing for this very precisely and have been talking about the details for a long time.” Scholz will travel to Kyiv and Moscow Feb. 14-15.
German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said her country would add up to 350 troops within a few days to about 500 already a part of a NATO battlegroup in Lithuania. “With this, we are strengthening our contribution to forces on NATO’s eastern flank and sending a very clear signal of unity to our allies,” she said.
Biden already has deployed additional U.S. troops to Poland, Romania and Germany, and a few dozen elite U.S. troops and equipment landed Sunday in southeastern Poland near the border with Ukraine, with hundreds more infantry troops of the 82nd Airborne Division set to arrive.
Britain said the U.K. was sending 350 troops to Poland to bolster NATO forces, joining 100 Royal Engineers already there.
At a news conference in Washington, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell defended the increasingly dire Western warnings that a Russian invasion may be imminent.
“This is not alarmism. This is simply the facts,” Blinken said. “And the facts are that we’ve seen over the last few months a massive amassing of Russian forces on Ukraine’s borders.”
Borrell noted that “140,000 troops massed on the border is not to go to have tea.”
NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said the alliance is weighing a more permanent military presence in southeast Europe in response to Russia’s “massive military deployment” near Ukraine.
“We are considering more longer-term adjustments to our posture, our presence in the eastern part of the alliance,” Stoltenberg said after talks in Brussels with Polish President Andrzej Duda. “If Russia really wants less NATO close to the borders, they get the opposite.”
Stoltenberg gave no details and said no final decision has been made, but the move could mirror NATO’s long-term military presence in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland, where about 5,000 troops are stationed. It would see a similar force based in Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary and Slovakia.
The aim would be only to bolster the defenses of NATO allies in the region. The troops would not cross into Ukraine should Russia invade.
Biden and Scholz also discussed contingency plans for providing gas supplies to Europe should Russia cut off supply. Europe is already dealing with liquefied natural gas supplies being sapped by a cold winter last year, a summer with little renewable energy generation and Russia delivering less than usual.
Biden asserted the U.S. and other countries could make up a “significant portion” of supplies lost should Russia move to cut off Europe.
But energy experts say replacing Russian gas would be complicated and can’t be done overnight. Export terminals cost billions of dollars to build and are working at capacity in the U.S.
Biden orders forces to Europe amid stalled Ukraine talks
President Joe Biden is ordering 2,000 U.S.-based troops to Poland and Germany and shifting 1,000 more from Germany to Romania, demonstrating to both allies and foes America’s commitment to NATO’s eastern flank amid fears of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Pentagon said Wednesday.
Russia fired back with a sharply worded objection, calling the deployments unfounded and “destructive.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin also had a new telephone exchange with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. But readouts from both governments showed no progress, with Putin saying the West was giving no ground on Russia’s security concerns and Johnson expressing deep concern about Russia’s “hostile activity” on the Ukrainian border, referring to Putin’s buildup of 100,000 troops there.
The Biden administration is aiming to demonstrate U.S. resolve without undermining efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the crisis. Biden notably has not sent military reinforcements to the three Baltic countries on NATO’s eastern flank — Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — that are former states of the Soviet Union.
Read:Russian roar on Ukraine rings hollow to Latin America allies
No U.S. troops are being sent to Ukraine, and White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Wednesday said the administration has stopped calling a Russian invasion “imminent,” because that word implies Washington knows Putin has made a decision to invade. Officials say Putin’s intentions remain unclear.
However, increasing U.S. troop levels in Eastern Europe is exactly what Putin has said he finds intolerable, along with the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. The U.S. already has several thousand troops in Poland, and Romania is host to a NATO missile defense system that Russia considers a threat. The U.S. presence in the region has increased since 2014 when Russia made its first invasion of Ukraine.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said the soon-to-deploy U.S. forces are intended to temporarily bolster U.S. and allied defensive positions.
“These are not permanent moves,” he said, stressing that the purpose is to reassure allies. Kirby said Russia had continued its buildup, even in the previous 24 hours, despite U.S. urgings that it deescalate.
In Moscow, a senior official said the U.S. movements will complicate the crisis.
“The unfounded destructive steps will only fuel military tensions and narrow the field for political decisions,” Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko said in remarks carried by the Interfax news agency.
Ukraine’s Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba again played down fears of a Russian attack in a call with reporters but said that if Russia makes moves that could signal an imminent invasion Ukraine would react as necessary.
Of the 2,000 U.S. troops newly deploying from Fort Bragg, North Carolina, about 1,700 are members of the 82nd Airborne Division infantry brigade, who will go to Poland. The other 300 are with the 18th Airborne Corps and will go to Germany as what the Pentagon called a “joint task force-capable headquarters.”
Poland’s Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszczak wrote on Twitter that the deployment to his country is “a strong signal of solidarity in response to the situation in Ukraine.”
The 1,000 U.S. troops going to Romania are members of the 2nd Cavalry Regiment based at Vilseck, Germany. They will augment about 900 already in Romania, Kirby said.
The cavalry deployment’s purpose is to “deter aggression and enhance our defensive capabilities in frontline allied states during this period of elevated risk,” the Pentagon said in a separate written statement.
“It’s important that we send a strong signal to Mr. Putin and to the world” of the U.S commitment to NATO, Kirby said.
He said France has decided it, too, will send troop reinforcements to Romania under NATO command, and he noted that a number of other European NATO countries are considering adding forces on NATO’s eastern flank. Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron touched base in a phone call Wednesday night.
NATO has been beefing up its defenses around allies in Eastern Europe since late last year. Denmark, for example, said it was sending a frigate and F-16 warplanes to Lithuania, and Spain was sending four fighter jets to Bulgaria and three ships to the Black Sea to join NATO naval forces. The Netherlands plans to send two F-35 fighter aircraft to Bulgaria in April and is putting a ship and land-based units on standby for NATO’s Response Force.
Read: Russia says US ignored its security demands over Ukraine
Biden has said he will not put American troops in Ukraine to fight any Russian incursion, although the United States is supplying Ukraine with weapons to defend itself and seeking to reassure allies in Eastern Europe that Washington will fulfill its treaty obligation to defend them in the event they are attacked.
Ukraine is not a NATO member, and therefore the U.S. has no treaty obligation to come to its defense.
The military moves come amid stalled talks with Russia over its buildup at Ukraine’s borders. And they underscore growing fears across Europe that Russian President Putin is poised to invade Ukraine. Smaller NATO countries on the alliance’s eastern flank worry they could be next.
The Pentagon also has put about 8,500 U.S.-based troops on higher alert for possible deployment to Europe as additional reassurance to allies, and officials have indicated the possibility that additional units could be placed on higher alert soon. The U.S. already has between 75,000 and 80,000 troops in Europe as permanently stationed forces and as part of regular rotations in places such as Poland.
Washington and Moscow have been at loggerheads over Ukraine, with little sign of a diplomatic path forward. However, Kirby on Wednesday confirmed the validity of a document reported by a Spanish newspaper that indicated the United States could be willing to enter into an agreement with Russia to ease tensions over missile deployments in Europe if Moscow steps back from the brink in Ukraine.
The daily El Pais published two documents that Kirby confirmed were written replies from the United States and NATO last week to Russia’s proposals for a new security arrangement in Europe. The U.S. State department declined to comment on them.
In reference to the second document, NATO said that it never comments on “alleged leaks.” But the text closely reflects statements made to the media last week by NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg as he laid out the 30-nation military organization’s position on Russia’s demands.
The U.S. document, marked as a confidential “non-paper,” said the United States would be willing to discuss in consultation with its NATO partners “a transparency mechanism to confirm the absences of Tomahawk cruise missiles at Aegis Ashore sites in Romania and Poland.”
That would happen on condition that Russia “offers reciprocal transparency measures on two ground-launched missiles bases of our choosing in Russia.”
Aegis Ashore is a system for defending against short- or intermediate-range missiles. Russia argues the site in Romania could be easily adapted to fire cruise missiles instead of interceptors, a claim that Washington has denied.
In his first public remarks on the standoff in more than a month, Putin on Tuesday accused the U.S. and its allies of ignoring Russia’s central security demands but said that Moscow is willing to keep talking.
Russia invaded Georgia in 2008, and in 2014 annexed Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and provided military support for a pro-Russian separatist movement in eastern Ukraine. Around 14,000 people have been killed in the conflict in eastern Ukraine.
Biden vows US to act decisively if Russia invades Ukraine
President Joe Biden conferred on Sunday with Ukraine's leader over the Russian troop buildup near its border, promising that the U.S. and allies will act “decisively” if Russia further invades the Eastern European nation.
Biden and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's call came as the U.S. and Western allies prepared for a series of diplomatic meetings to try to de-escalate a crisis that Moscow said could rupture ties with Washington.
“President Biden made clear that the United States and its allies and partners will respond decisively if Russia further invades Ukraine,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said in a statement following the call.
Psaki added that Biden underscored his commitment to the principle of “nothing about you without you," the tenet that it won’t negotiate policy that impacts Europe without its allies’ input.
Biden has spoken of hitting Russia with economy-jarring sanctions if it moves on Ukraine's territory, but he said last month that U.S. military action is not on the table.
Read:Biden signs $768.2 billion defense spending bill into law
The Kremlin has demanded that any further expansion of NATO exclude Ukraine and other former Soviet countries. The Russians have also demanded that the military alliance remove offensive weaponry from countries in the region.
The White House has dismissed Russia's demands on NATO as a non-starter. A key principle of the NATO alliance is that membership is open to any qualifying country. And no outsider has membership veto power. While there’s little prospect that Ukraine would be invited into the alliance anytime soon, the U.S. and its allies won’t rule it out.
Zelenskyy said in a Twitter posting after Sunday's call that “keeping peace in Europe, preventing further escalation, reforms, deoligarchization were discussed.”
“We appreciate the unwavering support,” Zelenskyy said.
The United States has made little progress in efforts to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to ease tensions. Senior U.S. and Russian officials are scheduled to meet Jan. 9-10 in Geneva to discuss the situation. Those talks are to be followed by meetings at the NATO-Russia Council, and at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
Biden spoke with Putin for nearly an hour on Thursday. He told reporters the next day that he warned Putin that his economy would pay a “heavy price” if Russia, which has massed some 100,000 troops near the border, made further moves against Ukraine.
“I’m not going to negotiate here in public, but we made it clear that he cannot — I emphasize cannot — move on Ukraine,” Biden said Friday.
Biden said he told Putin it was important for the Russians to take steps before those meetings toward easing the crisis. Putin's foreign affairs adviser, in describing the presidents' conversation this past week, said Biden's pursuit of sanctions “could lead to a complete rupture of relations between our countries and Russia-West relations will be severely damaged.”
U.S. intelligence findings indicate Russia has made preparations for a potential invasion in early 2022. But White House officials say it remains unclear whether Putin has already made a decision to move forward with military action.
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Still, Biden said he remained hopeful for the upcoming talks. White House officials say they will consult closely with Western allies.
"I always expect if you negotiate you make progress, but we’ll see,” he said Friday. ”We’ll see.”
Past military incursions by Putin loom large as Biden weighs his next steps.
In 2014, Russian troops marched into the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and seized the territory from Ukraine. Russia’s annexation of Crimea was one of the darker moments for President Barack Obama on the international stage.
The U.S.-Russia relationship was badly damaged near the end of President George W. Bush’s administration after Russia’s 2008 invasion of its neighbor Georgia after Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili ordered his troops into the breakaway region of South Ossetia.
Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said Sunday he feared that Putin was intent on invading Ukraine and “nothing other than a level of sanctions that Russia has never seen will deter him.”
“Russia needs to understand we are united in this,” Schiff told “Face the Nation" on CBS. ”I also think that a powerful deterrent is the understanding that if they do invade, it is going to bring (NATO) closer to Russia, not push it farther away."
Biden signs $768.2 billion defense spending bill into law
President Joe Biden signed the National Defense Authorization Act into law, authorizing $768.2 billion in military spending, including a 2.7% pay raise for service members, for 2022.
The NDAA authorizes a 5% increase in military spending, and is the product of intense negotiations between Democrats and Republicans over issues ranging from reforms of the military justice system to COVID-19 vaccine requirements for soldiers.
“The Act provides vital benefits and enhances access to justice for military personnel and their families, and includes critical authorities to support our country’s national defense,” Biden said Monday in a statement.
The $768.2 billion price tag marks $25 billion more than Biden initially requested from Congress, a prior proposal that was rejected by members of both parties out of concerns it would undermine U.S. efforts to keep pace militarily with China and Russia.
The new bill passed earlier this month with bipartisan support, with Democrats and Republicans touting wins in the final package.
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Democrats applauded provisions in the bill overhauling how the military justice system handles sexual assault and other related crimes, effectively taking prosecutorial jurisdiction over such crimes out of the hands of military commanders.
Republicans, meanwhile, touted success in blocking an effort to add women to the draft, as well as the inclusion of a provision that bars dishonorable discharges for service members who refuse the COVID-19 vaccine.
The bill includes $7.1 billion for the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and a statement of congressional support for the defense of Taiwan, measures intended to counteract China’s influence in the region.
It also includes $300 million for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, a show of support in the face of Russian aggression, as well as $4 billion for the European Defense Initiative.
In his statement, the president also outlined a number of provisions his administration opposes over what he characterized as “constitutional concerns or questions of construction.”
Those planks include provisions that restrict the use of funds to transfer or release individuals detained at the Guantanamo Bay detention center, which the Biden administration is moving to close. Biden’s statement saidthe provisions “unduly impair” the executive branch’s ability to decide when and where to prosecute detainees and where to send them when they’re released, and could constrain U.S. negotiations with foreign countries over the transfer of detainees in a way that could undermine national security.
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The law also has provisions barring goods produced by forced Uyghur labor in China from entering the U.S., and it begins to lay out plans for the new Global War on Terror Memorial, which would be the latest addition to the National Mall.
Biden says HIV/AIDS strategy needs to confront inequity
President Joe Biden on Wednesday unveiled his new HIV/AIDS strategy to end the more than 40-year-old epidemic, calling for a renewed focus on vulnerable Americans — including gay and bisexual Black and Latino men, who his administration says are too often stigmatized even as they are disproportionately affected.
The new strategy, which declares racism a “public health threat," was released on the annual commemoration of World AIDS Day. It is meant to serve as a framework for how the administration shapes its policies, research, programs and planning over the next three years.
But Biden acknowledged that the country still needs to work to destigmatize HIV/AIDS and noted that LGBT and racial minority groups have “endured the brunt” of the epidemic that's killed more than 36 million worldwide, including 700,000 Americans.
"I want to make sure that everyone in the United States knows their HIV status, and everyone with HIV receives high-quality care and treatment that they deserve and that we end the harmful stigma around HIV and AIDS," Biden said.
The new strategy asserts that over generations “structural inequities have resulted in racial and ethnic health disparities that are severe, far-reaching, and unacceptable.”
Read:Can Biden find the right balance on immigration?
Today’s HIV treatments not only can give people with the AIDS virus a near-normal life expectancy, they can make those patients less likely to infect other people. There are also medications that can help protect healthy people who are at risk from their infected sexual partners, a strategy known as “pre-exposure prophylaxis” or PreP.
New HIV infections in the U.S. fell about 8% from 2015 to 2019. But Black and Latino communities — particularly gay and bisexual men within those groups — continue to be disproportionately affected, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.
African Americans make up about 13% of the U.S. population but accounted for more than 40% of new infections. The Latino population accounted for nearly 25% of new infections but makes up about 18.5% of the U.S. population.
Historically, gay and bisexual men have been the most disproportionately affected group. They account for about 66% of new HIV infections, even though they are only 2% of the population, according to the CDC. In 2019, 26% of new HIV infections were among Black gay and bisexual men, 23% among Latino gay and bisexual men, and 45% among gay and bisexual men under the age of 35.
Disparities also persist among women. Black women's HIV infection rate is 11 times that of white women and four times that of Latina women.
To reduce the disparities, the strategy includes calls for focusing on the needs of disproportionately affected populations, supporting racial justice, combating HIV-related stigma and discrimination and providing leadership and employment opportunities for people with or at risk for HIV.
Besides addressing racism's impact on Americans battling the virus or at risk of contracting it, the new strategy also puts greater emphasis on harm reduction and syringe service programs, encourages reform of state laws that criminalize behavior of people with HIV for potentially exposing others and adds focus on the needs of the growing population of people with HIV who are aging.
Biden expressed disbelief that some states have laws on the book that criminalize spitting in public by HIV-positive people even though it has long been proven that the virus can't be transmitted through saliva. Thirty-five states have laws that criminalize various forms of HIV exposure, according to the CDC
“We have to follow science and that means eliminating laws that perpetuate discrimination, exacerbate disparities, discourage HIV testing and take us further away from our goal,” Biden said.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, health officials were celebrating how new medicines and other developments had gradually tamed HIV, prompting then-President Donald Trump to announce in 2019 a campaign to “eliminate” the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. by 2030.
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But researchers have expressed concerns that COVID-19 may have halted progress in the battle against HIV, with limited data collected by the CDC suggesting there was a large drop-off in HIV testing and other related services in early months of the pandemic.
The CDC looked at data from a lab that handles about a quarter of the nation’s HIV tests, comparing the numbers from March 13 through Sept. 30 last year with the same period the year before. The agency found there were 670,000 fewer HIV screening tests and about 4,900 fewer HIV diagnoses than normal. There also was a 21% national decline in prescriptions for PrEP.
The Biden administration recently announced it will host the Global Fund to Fight AIDS replenishment conference next year. The United States has contributed about $17 billion to the fund, about a third of all donor contributions.
A giant red ribbon, a symbol of support for people living with HIV, was displayed on the North Portico of the White House to mark World AIDS Day. The two-story ribbon display has become an annual tradition at the White House since 2007.
Trump received praise from some public officials, including Dr. Anthony Fauci, the government’s top infectious diseases expert, when he set the 2030 goal to eliminate the AIDS epidemic.
But as Biden marked his first World AIDS Day as president, he noted that his administration reestablished the White House Office of National AIDS Policy, an office that was eliminated during Trump's tenure. Trump also faced criticism during his time in office from some AIDS activists who said he did too little to address racism and the stigma faced by some most at risk of contracting HIV.
Biden praised former President George W. Bush, a Republican, for launching in 2003 the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, a global health initiative that is credited with saving more than 20 million lives.
He added that Bush's push for PEPFAR was “undeniable proof of the good that American leadership and innovation can achieve in the world when we commit to it.”
US expected to toughen testing requirement for travelers
The Biden administration is expected to take steps in the coming days to toughen testing requirements for international travelers to the U.S., including both vaccinated and unvaccinated people, amid the spread of the new omicron variant of the coronavirus.
The precise testing protocols were still being finalized ahead of a speech by President Joe Biden planned for Thursday on the nation’s plans to control the COVID-19 pandemic during the winter season, according to a senior administration official who said some details could still change. Among the policies being considered is a requirement that all air travelers to the U.S. be tested for COVID-19 within a day of boarding their flight. Currently those who are fully vaccinated may present a test taken within three days of boarding.
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“CDC is evaluating how to make international travel as safe as possible, including pre-departure testing closer to the time of flight and considerations around additional post-arrival testing and self-quarantines,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday.
The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans before the announcement, said options under consideration also include post-arrival testing requirements or or even self-quarantines.
The expected move comes just weeks after the U.S. largely reopened its borders to fully vaccinated foreign travelers on Nov. 8.
Much remains unknown about the new variant, which has been identified in more than 20 countries but not yet in the U.S., including whether it is more contagious, whether it makes people more seriously ill, and whether it can thwart the vaccine. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the top U.S. infectious disease expert, said more would be known about the omicron strain in two to four weeks as scientists grow and test lab samples of the virus.
As he sought to quell public concern about the new variant, Biden said that in his Thursday remarks, “I’ll be putting forward a detailed strategy outlining how we’re going to fight COVID this winter -- not with shutdowns or lockdowns but with more widespread vaccinations, boosters, testing, and more.”
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Asked by reporters if he would consult with allies about any changes in travel rules, given that former President Donald Trump had caught world leaders by surprise, Biden said: “Unlike Trump I don’t shock our allies.”
Can Biden find the right balance on immigration?
Democrats wielded demands to fix the nation’s broken immigration system as a cudgel against Republicans in the 2020 campaign. Elect us, went the argument, and we’ll stop the cruel treatment of migrants at the border, and put in place lasting and humane policies that work.
A year into Joe Biden’s presidency, though, action on the issue has been hard to find and there is growing consternation privately among some in the party that the Biden administration can’t find the right balance on immigration.
Publicly, it’s another story. Most Washington lawmakers are largely holding their tongues, unwilling to criticize their leader on a polarizing topic that has created divisions within the party — especially as concerns mount over whether Democrats can hold on to power come next year.
It’s a hard balancing act to pull off, said Douglas Rivlin, spokesman for America’s Voice, an immigration reform group. Especially when Republicans are unrelenting in their negativity toward the president, even a little friendly fire can be a challenge.
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“It’s hard but they’ve got to do it,” he said. “They’re going to face voters next year, all the people on the Hill. Biden isn’t, they are. And they have to be clear they’re pushing Biden to be the Democratic president we elected, rather than being scared of the issues because the politics are difficult.”
Democrats have pointed to the recent House approval of a huge spending bill backed by the White House that would allow for expanded work permits and some other, less ambitious immigration provisions. When Biden took office, he promised a pathway to U.S. citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally. Democrats say the measures in the spending bill are enough to show the party won’t shy away from the immigration issue during next year’s midterms.
“I don’t see it as as the fault of the president per se or ... these challenges that we’re facing today, solely falling on the shoulders of the president,” said Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar, who represents a district in El Paso, Texas, across the border from Juarez, Mexico. “It is a collective obligation that we have and and I think Democrats have solutions and we need to lean in on them.”
Her Democratic colleague, Rep. Joaquin Castro, from San Antonio, ducked a question when asked if House members in swing districts will be forced to run away from Biden in 2022, saying “I’m going to wait on political discussions.”
But Castro added that the party had done as much as it could do on immigration this session, given Senate rules that have prevented larger legislation on the issue from advancing with the required minimum of 60 votes in that chamber.
“Right now, Democrats have control of the White House, the Senate and the House and we have pushed as hard as we can with the number that we have in the chambers to get protections from deportation, workplace permits, driver’s licenses, travel abilities,” Castro said.
Former Democratic Rep. Beto O’Rourke, who recently announced he’d run for Texas governor, has been one of a few Democrats to put the border front and center, heading almost immediately to the U.S.-Mexico border after he announced he was running, where he suggested the White House is doing its party no favors.
“It’s clear that Biden could be doing a better job at the border,” O’Rourke said during an interview with KTVT TV in Dallas-Fort Worth. “It is not enough of a priority.”
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Like most top Democrats, O’Rourke will have to counter the narrative pushed by Republicans that an increase in the number of people crossing the border illegally this year has reached “crisis” levels. Incumbent Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s campaign accused O’Rourke of supporting Biden’s “open borders” policies and financed billboards along the border featuring O’Rourke’s face morphing into that of the president.
Nick Rathod, Rourke’s campaign manager, sees “neglect, I think by Democrats across the board, not just the Biden administration, in engaging in an authentic manner in those communities” along the border.
“It’s sort of created a vacuum. What we want to do is fill that space.”
But immigration is a complex issue, and no administration has been able to fix it. And Biden is trapped between the conflicting interests of showing compassion while dealing with migrants coming to the country — illegally — seeking a better life.
The administration has said it is focusing on root causes of immigration, and working to broker long-term solutions that make migrants want to stay in their homelands. They’ve pushed through regulations that aim to adjudicate asylum cases faster so migrants don’t wait in limbo, and they’ve worked to diminish the massive backlog of cases.
But mostly, Biden has spent much of the past year undoing Trump-era rules widely viewed as cruel that clamped down on asylum seekers, gutted the number of refugees allowed to the U.S. and then shuttered the border entirely in the name of COVID-19.
Despite that effort, Biden has faced a heap of criticism from progressives and immigrant advocates who say he is still making too much use of inhumane Trump-era policies.
One of the most criticized is the “Remain in Mexico” program, where migrants are sent to wait for resolution of their immigration claims over the border to Mexico in fetid makeshift refugee camps. It was put on hold after a judge ruled it was improper, but according to court papers, the Biden administration is waiting on final agreements with Mexico to start doing it again.
“We reject a system where people facing life and death consequences are forced to navigate a complex legal system — in a language they may not speak and in a culture which they may not be accustomed to — alone,” the Catholic Legal Immigration Network said in a statement.
Another is a provision, known as Title 42, that gives federal health officials powers during a pandemic to take extraordinary measures to limit transmission of an infectious disease. The White House has appealed a judge’s ruling that ended the regulation.
The administration has used the provision to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants who entered Texas. After viral images surfaced of U.S. Border Patrol agents on horseback using aggressive tactics, Biden’s team took heat from even the staunchest of allies.
Republicans are hammering border security, intent on keeping the issue in the headlines. The issue remains a high priority to some voters. A CNN poll earlier this month showed 14% of Americans identified immigration as the top issue facing the county, trailing behind the economy and the COVID-19 pandemic.
The U.S. Border Patrol reported more than 1.6 million encounters with migrants along the U.S.-Mexico border from September 2020 to September 2021, more than quadruple the number in the prior fiscal year and the highest annual total on record.
The number of encounters had dropped over the previous 12 months to around 400,000, as the pandemic slowed global migration. But the rebound is now higher than the previous record set in 2000, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection data. The tally includes both expulsions when migrants are turned away immediately, and apprehensions when they’re detained by U.S. authorities, at least temporarily.
The U.S. system is still ill-equipped to manage such a crush, though career immigration officials warned of a coming surge. Border stations are temporary holding places not meant for long-term care. It’s a massive logistical challenge, especially when dealing with children who cross alone and require higher standards of care and coordination across agencies.