Fox Business has abruptly canceled Lou Dobbs Tonight, its highest-rated show, and a prominent platform for one of the staunchest pro-Trump voices on cable news.
The cancellation, reported by the LA Times on Friday, comes just one day after voting software company Smartmatic filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox Corporation, Fox News, and three Fox anchors — including Lou Dobbs — over false claims that Smartmatic technology was used to commit voter fraud.
It’s not exactly clear why Dobbs’ show was canceled. Some media analysts, including CNN’s Brian Stelter, say that despite his ratings, Dobbs was causing trouble for Fox Business even before his lawsuit, reporting that his insistence on repeating Trump’s false claims about election fraud scared off major advertisers. Fox had previously announced that it had been considering changes to its lineups after the presidential election, and said Friday that the cancellation was part of its planned changes.
“As we said in October, Fox News Media regularly considers programming changes and plans have been in place to launch new formats as appropriate post-election, including on Fox Business — this is part of those planned changes,” a Fox News Media spokesperson said in a statement. “A new 5 p.m. program will be announced in the near future.”
Given these plans for new shows, and the advertiser issues, the emergence of the defamation lawsuit may have accelerated considerations that were already underway.
Dobbs is still on contract with Fox News Media, but the company has no plans to put him back on the air, according to the New York Times. It’s unclear what, if any, actions Fox might take regarding its two other star anchors named in the Smartmatic lawsuit, Maria Bartiromo and Jeanine Pirro.
A right-wing populist who first rose to prominence on CNN, Dobbs was an early backer of the racist birtherism conspiracy theory — which falsely claimed that former President Barack Obama was not born in the US — former President Donald Trump helped popularize. Dobbs later used his Fox Business show to defend the Trump administration and to influence its trade and immigration policies. He also boosted Trump’s disinformation campaign to cast doubt on the results of the 2020 election.
This support for Trump led the former president to release a statement backing Dobbs on Friday: “Lou Dobbs is and was great. Nobody loves America more than Lou. He had a large and loyal following that will be watching closely for his next move, and that following includes me.”
But that support has also placed Dobbs, and his employer, in legal jeopardy. Smartmatic’s lawsuit alleges that Dobbs, as one of Fox Business’ leading hosts, ruined the company’s future earnings by accusing it of rigging the election. For example, on one episode in November, Dobbs responded favorably to Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani, who said during an interview that Smartmatic was founded by people close to the late Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez “in order to fix elections.”
In a statement sent to Vox, a spokesperson for Fox News Media defended the company’s editorial choices and said, “We are proud of our 2020 election coverage and will vigorously defend against this meritless lawsuit in court.”
CNN’s Brian Stelter described the cancellation of a show as popular as Dobbs’ show as “exceedingly rare.”
“The closest thing to it is when Fox News fired Bill O’Reilly when his secret history of sexual harassment settlements was revealed,” Stelter said on Friday. “There is no sign with that with Dobbs. Instead it’s Dobbs’ extreme content that is the issue and his weakness with advertisers. Of course, he was a sycophant for President Trump, one of Trump’s biggest boosters on TV, and now there is less use for that.”
Fox News is rebuilding post-Trump
As Vox’s Aaron Rupar has reported, Fox News Media’s channels — particularly its main Fox News Channel — have struggled to pivot to a post-Trump reality. While Fox News Channel was regularly the top news network during the Trump administration, that is no longer the case. As Stelter recently wrote for CNN’s Reliable Sources:
Nielsen numbers for the month of January were released on Tuesday, and Fox ranked third in the three-horse cable news race for the first time since 2001. Furthermore, CNN was the No. 1 channel across all of cable.
It remains to be seen whether Fox News is able to rebound from these numbers. However, it has made changes to do just that — in January, Fox News announced a big shake-up of daytime and primetime lineups, with anchors like Martha MacCallum, Dana Perino, and Bill Hemmer losing their slots and being pushed to shows earlier in the day. Insiders at the network described the moves as demotions and a sign that the network was scrambling to cope with a big post-election ratings slump.
As a channel with a specialty focus, Fox Business never received the same sort of viewership that Fox News Channel did. At the end of 2020, it touted its top shows as having viewership that topped 300,000 (compared to Fox News’ average of 1.53 million viewers in the post-election period). But like the main Fox News Channel, Fox Business was known for besting its rivals, like CNBC — and there is a focus on bringing new shows to the network that can do that. For instance,Larry Kudlow, Trump’s top economic adviser, will soon have his own Fox Business show.
Cheney, a staunch conservative, has received heavy criticism from Trump loyalists for her vote to impeach the populist former president, who is facing a Senate impeachment trial beginning next week.
Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida headed to Wyoming to hold an anti-Cheney rally Jan. 28, laying into her with a plethora of insults. But House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy defended her at the closed-door meeting before the Republican caucus vote.
Cheney defended her vote in a statement after the state party censure.
“I’m honored to represent the people of Wyoming in Congress and will always fight for the issues that matter most to our state. Foremost among these is the defense of our Constitution and the freedoms it guarantees,” Cheney said.
“My vote to impeach was compelled by the oath I swore to the Constitution. Wyoming citizens know that this oath does not bend or yield to politics or partisanship. I will always fight for Wyoming values and stand up for our Western way of life,” she added.
Cheney isn’t the only Republican to come under fire for insufficiently supporting Trump in the eyes of a state party.
Arizona Republicans censured Gov. Doug Ducey and former Sen. Jeff Flake, as well as Cindy McCain, Sen. John McCain’s widow, on Jan. 23.
Ducey opposed Trump’s bid to subvert the election results and Flake and McCain endorsed Joe Biden for president instead of the Republican incumbent.
Sen. Ben Sasse of Nebraska is also facing potential censure from his state party’s central committee after he declined to back Trump’s bid to challenge election results. He responded to the state party committee with a blistering video.
“Politics isn’t about the weird worship of one dude,” Sasse said. “The party can purge Trump skeptics. But I’d like to convince you that not only is that civic cancer for the nation, it’s just terrible for our party.”
The vote to censure Cheney also comes as the GOP grapples with its identity in a post-Trump political reality. McCarthy declined to punish Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene — who has voiced racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic views and promoted QAnon conspiracy theories — before Democrats voted to kick her off her committee assignments.
After Cheney’s vote to impeach Trump on charges of inciting the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, the Wyoming Republican Party said it had never heard so much blowback from fellow Republicans. She’s now facing a pro-Trump primary challenger.
“The consensus is clear that those who are reaching out to the Party vehemently disagree with Representative Cheney’s decision and actions,” the party wrote in a statement Jan. 13.
After Trump was impeached, the Trump-supporting chair of the state party, Frank Eathorne, suggested seceding from the union.
“The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President.,” Cheney wrote Jan. 12.
President Joe Biden said this weekend that it is unlikely a $15 federal minimum wage provision makes it into the next Covid-19 relief package, hitting pause on a key campaign promise as Democrats in Congress press ahead to pass $1.9 trillion in stimulus without Republican support.
Biden said his administration would push for a stand-alone bill to raise the minimum wage.
“I put it in but I don’t think its going to survive,” Biden told CBS’ Norah O’Donnell in an interview scheduled to air in full on Sunday. “My guess is it will not be in [the stimulus bill].”
Democrats in Congress have moved to pass the $1.9 trillion stimulus package without Republican support in the Senate using a parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said Friday that the lower chamber aims to pass the fiscal relief package within two weeks.
The budget resolution directs committees to write legislation reflecting Biden’s Covid relief package, while staying under the $1.9 trillion target. Democrats plan to pass provisions like $1,400 direct payments, a $400 per week jobless benefit through September, $350 billion in state, local and tribal government relief, a $20 billion national Covid vaccination program, and $50 billion for virus testing.
The bill is also likely to include $170 billion for K-12 schools and higher educations institutions and $30 billion for rent and utility assistance.
Republicans oppose including a wage hike in the Covid-19 relief package warning it could put added strain on businesses already grappling with the economic fallout of the pandemic. And West Virginia Democrat Sen. Joe Manchin also opposes the pay increase, meaning Democrats wouldn’t have the votes to pass it even with a simple majority under reconciliation.
While Biden said the $15 per hour wage provision would be unlikely to make it in the Covid relief bill, he promised to prioritize passing the wage hike in separate legislation.
“I’m prepared as the president of the United States on a separate negotiation on minimum wage to work my way up from what it is now,” Biden said. “No one should work 40 hours a week and live before the poverty wage and you’re making less than $15 an hour, you’re living below the poverty wage.”
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“I think you can count on that,” Castor said. “If my eyes look a little red to the viewers, it’s because I’ve been looking at a lot of video.”
Earlier in the segment with Ingraham, Castor alleged “there’s a lot of tape of cities burning and courthouses being attacked and federal agents being assaulted by rioters in the streets, cheered on by Democrats throughout the country,” seemingly referring to ongoing unrest in Portland, Ore.
Trump repeatedly pushed hard against the nationwide racial justice protests last year, railing in particular against the Black Lives Matter movement.
Portland saw more than 100 days of protest around a federal courthouse in the wake of the police killing of George Floyd in May. Trumpmisleadingly blamed violence in the city on the far left while downplaying far-right groups’ role.
Castor, who will defend Trump alongside attorney David Schoen, continued: “Many of them in Washington are using really the most inflammatory rhetoric possible to use. And certainly there would be no suggestion that they did anything to incite any of the actions.”
“But here, when you have the president of the United States give a speech and says that you should peacefully make your thinking known to the people in Congress, he’s all of a sudden a villain. You better be careful what you wish for,” he continued.
House impeachment managers have argued that Trump’s speech at the Capitol Jan. 6 “foreseeably resulted in” the riots, specifically pointing to Trump saying that “if you don’t fight like hell you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
Rep. Waters (D-Calif.) in 2018 called on supporters at a rally to confront Trump officials in public to protest the Trump administration’s child separation policy, which many Republicans have pointed to in defense of Trump.
Any move to use Democrats’ words against them might not take center stage, though. Castor told Ingraham that the “primary issue” will be the argument that the Senate can’t impeach Trump because he is no longer in office. Most Senate Republicans voted last week in favor of a motion saying that the Senate trial was unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president.
“By the House impeachment resolution logic, they can go back and impeach Abraham Lincoln,” Castor told Ingraham. “They could impeach Donald Trump if he was dead because he’s not in office.”
Republican senators have urged Trump not to focuson false claims about the election in his defense. But in a brief, Trump’s legal team denied that Trump attempted to subvert the election results and said Trump had a First Amendment right to give his opinion about them. Castor said on Fox earlier on Friday that there have been many “misstatements” about the brief’s claims, which argue that Trump’s claims that he won “in a landslide” weren’t false.
“I don’t have to prove that he was accurate,” Castor said. “All I have to say is you prove that they were false.”
Castor and Schoen were not originally on Trump’s defense team, as Trump’s first team left after disagreeing over whether to wade into Trump’s election claims. A spokesperson for Trump has previously said he “will not testify in an unconstitutional proceeding.”
People make three-finger salutes during an anti-coup march on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar.
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People make three-finger salutes during an anti-coup march on Saturday in Yangon, Myanmar.
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Days after a coup and the detention of Aung San Suu Kyi and other elected leaders, the military in Myanmar is moving to strangle free speech by blocking access to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and WhatsApp.
The Internet clampdown came as protests grew Saturday on the streets of Yangon, the country’s commercial capital, where thousands turned out to demand the return of the legitimately elected government led by Suu Kyi.
“People passing by in their cars honk their solidarity with the protesters, many of whom are carrying the red peacock flag of Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy, with many, many others holding up three fingers in the salute of defiance from The Hunger Games,” reporter Michael Sullivan told NPR’s Weekend Edition from neighboring Chiang Rai, Thailand.
“Today’s protests were peaceful. There was a heavy police presence, but there was no violence,” said Sullivan.
The country’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology said Facebook would be blocked until Sunday, Reuters reported.
“Currently the people who are troubling the country’s stability … are spreading fake news and misinformation and causing misunderstanding among people by using Facebook,” the ministry said in a letter posted online.
“A near-total internet shutdown is now in effect” in Myanmar, reported NetBlocks, a network monitoring group. Connectivity was 16% of normal levels, the group said Saturday.
A Facebook official said the company was “extremely concerned” by the shutdown. “We strongly urge the authorities to order the unblocking of all social media services,” said Rafael Frankel, Facebook’s Asia-Pacific director of public policy.
Kathleen Reen, Twitter’s senior director of public policy and philanthropy for the region, said the government’s online clampdown “undermines the public conversation and the rights of people to make their voices heard. The Open Internet is increasingly under threat around the world. We will continue to advocate to end destructive government-led shutdowns.”
Telenor Myanmar, a telecommunications company in Myanmar, said it was “gravely concerned” by the shutdown. It said the government ordered mobile operators and Internet providers on Friday to block Twitter and Instagram “until further notice” following an earlier order to block Facebook.
“While the directive has legal basis in Myanmar’s telecommunications law,” Telenor Myanmar said, the company has “challenged the necessity and proportionality of the directive” and said it contradicts international human rights laws.
United Nations investigators say Facebook has been used to incite violence against minority Rohingya Muslims in Myanmar. Just this week, the company’s oversight board overruled the removal of a post from a Facebook user in Myanmar that Facebook said violated its rules against hate speech for disparaging Muslims as psychologically inferior.
“Facebook’s Oversight Board bent over backwards to excuse hate in Myanmar — a country where Facebook has been complicit in a genocide against Muslims,” said Eric Naing, a spokesperson for Muslim Advocates, a civil rights group.
Earlier this week, the Biden administration raised the prospect of sanctions in an effort to urge Myanmar’s military to release detained activists and officials and end the coup.
WASHINGTON – Around 5 a.m. Friday in the nation’s capital, bleary-eyed senators who had spent hours debating a COVID relief bill looked up to see Vice President Kamala Harris presiding over the chamber.
Within minutes, she would cast two important, tie-breaking voteson a budget resolution, clearing the way for what Democrats hope is the quick passage of a $1.9 trillion COVID relief package that President Joe Biden sees as necessary to ramp up vaccine distribution and get America back on its economic feet.
Harris’ vote could presage a busy legislative role for her: The likely tie-breaking vote in an evenly split Senate deeply divided over policy. It’s an action seldom taken throughout history, but may turn out to be a crucial tool the Biden administration uses to move appointments and priorities through Congress.
As vice president, Harris holds the title of Senate president, which, while largely ceremonial, means she can vote to break ties on bills, court nominees and Cabinet appointments.
Even before Friday’s votes, her very presence had made an impact. When Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff unseated two Republicans in Georgia’s Jan. 5 runoff election, the Senate became evenly split between both parties. Harris’ position automatically gave Democrats control of the chamber.
She’s poised to reprise her role as tie-breaker in the coming weeks when the COVID relief proposal, known as the American Rescue Plan, comes up for a final vote in the 50-50 Senate.
Tie-breaking opportunities could be limited
Though Harris has the deciding vote in the split Senate, she may not get a final say on much.
That’s because Harris only has the authority to vote when the Senate is deadlocked at 50-50. Controversial measures such as curbing oil and gas development, efforts to reverse decades of systemic racial discrimination or expand health care are likely to be blocked by Senate filibusters that require 60 votes to overcome.
Harris won’t be able to participate in filibuster votes though she may be part of negotiations to find common ground.
The COVID relief plan is different because it’s being passed through a special budget maneuver known as “reconciliation.”
That allows the Senate to pass legislation with a simple majority, bypassing Senate filibuster rules. The mechanism can’t be used to push through bills that don’t have a direct fiscal impact – so the opportunities for the vice president to break ties onother issues could be limited.
Harris herself has publicly said she hopes she won’t be breaking too many ties.
“I intend to work tirelessly as your vice president, including, if necessary, fulfilling this constitutional duty,” she wrote in a recent column for her hometown newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle. “At the same time, it is my hope that rather than come to the point of a tie, the Senate will instead find common ground and do the work of the American people.”
Vice presidents’ public prominence is largely tied to their role as the next in line should a president die, resign or be removed from office. Less apparent and more uneven is the influence they can wield in advising presidents on key policies and appointments.
But in a hyper-partisan era where so many major issues fall among party lines, Harris is poised to emerge as a consequential veep on legislative issues by personally delivering on Biden administration priorities in the Senate.
But while Harris’ early-morning votes have cleared the way for a massive relief package, they also fed into a growing GOP complaint that Biden’s pledge to reach across the aisle was an empty promise.
South Dakota GOP Sen. John Thune, the second most powerful Republican in the Senate, said there was no need to jam the budget resolution through given that Congress has negotiated and passed five prior COVID relief packages with overwhelming bipartisan support.
“Now is the time for President Biden to show whether he really intends to live up to his inaugural pledge and unify our nation,” Thune said in a statement hours after the Senate vote. “That means not just talk, but action. It means working with lawmakers of both parties to develop legislation – not pushing exclusively Democrat measures.”
Biden has countered that the crisis demands quick action, telling House Democrats during a private call Wednesday that paring his $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan down to the $618 billion proposed by 10 Senate Republicans was “not even in the cards.”
Vice presidents vary on how often they break ties
Despite the split Senate, history suggests Harris might not get many opportunities to wield her tie-breaking vote over the next four years.
There have been 268 occasions where a vice president has broken a tie, a relatively modest amount considering the first Senate session took place in 1789. That’s a little more than one tie-breaking vote per year on average, although there have been about 37 years when the nation had no vice president.
John C. Calhoun, who served under both John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson, broke the most ties (31), while John Adams, under George Washington, came close with 29. But 12 never cast one, including Biden who spent eight years as Barack Obama’s second in command.
Just weeks into her term, Harris already has more broken ties (two) than Teddy Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Walter Mondale, who each had one.
The most recent vice president, Mike Pence, broke 13 ties – the most by a Senate president in nearly 150 years – even though Republicans had at least a four-seat advantage during his four years in office.
As Pence’s example suggests, ties aren’t only confined to 50-50 Senates. Only two of the eight tiebreakers Vice President Dick Cheney cast took place when the chamber was evenly split in 2001.
Joel K. Goldstein, a St. Louis University Law School professor and the author of “The White House Vice Presidency: The Path to Significance, Mondale to Biden,” expects that Harris might outdo Pence given the even split in the Senate, the increasing polarization on Capitol Hill and the ability to block confirmation of judicial nominees and top administration appointees.
“There are very few vice presidents who cast more tie-breaking votes per year than Pence did,” he said. “So if you figure that the Senate is more evenly divided at least for the next two years you think the odds of her casting some tie breakers would be greater.”
Not all tie breakers are the same. With a country reeling from a pandemic and social unrest, Harris is already making an immediate impact with Friday’s votes on COVID relief.
Harris’ two tie-breaking votes were each cast Friday morning, once in favor of an amendment and again on passage of the overall budget resolution that cleared the way for the COVID stimulus plan.
Her next opportunity to break a tie could be even bigger: Final passage of the $1.9 trillion package, perhaps within weeks.
So far, no Senate Republican has expressed support for the president’s plan, foreshadowing another split vote and another appearance by Harris, who with one vote could give the Biden administration its first major legislative victory.
If that happens, Goldstein said it would mark a “very consequential” vote by a vice president in a chamber that has seen a number of important tie-breaking moments.
Calhoun’s vote in 1832 denied future president Martin Van Buren an ambassadorship to Great Britain. Al Gore’s vote in 1993 secured approval of President Bill Clinton’s economic package budget that reduced the deficit and raised taxes on the rich. Pence’s vote in 2017 ensured passage of a measure giving tax breaks to families who home-school or send their children to private or religious schools.
The prospect of needing Harris to break ties means Democrats might have to schedule key votes based on the vice president’s availability. That might limit her ability to travel but her role as the president of the Senate 51st vote carries key political benefits as well, Goldstein said.
“If she gets to break a vote on something that’s really important to Democratic constituents,” he said. “She can put that on her political resume, even though she’s simply acting as an administration loyalist.”
Since the coup, a steady drumbeat of resistance has been building, first with a civil disobedience campaign largely organized on social media, Facebook in particular, which is the de facto Internet in Myanmar, widely used and integral to communications there. The military-run government then blocked access to Facebook, prompting a migration to Twitter, which was also blocked, along with Instagram.
The Supreme Court late Friday ruled that California can’t enforce some of its restrictions on church services, partially lifting limits put in place during the coronavirus pandemic.
In a 6-3 ruling, the judges held that the state can’t ban indoor worship, but it can cap indoor services at 25 percent capacity. The court also didn’t stop the state from enforcing a ban on indoor singing and chanting.
The court ruled in two cases brought against the state by churches — one by South Bay United Pentecostal Church and another by Harvest Rock Church — over restrictions there.
California had moved to bar indoor worship services and other indoor activities such as dining and movie screenings in areas designated as “Tier 1” — which covers most of the state — due to high coronavirus numbers.
Chief Justice John Robertswrote that federal courts owe “significant deference to politically accountable officials regarding public health restrictions” but added that deference “has its restrictions.”
Roberts also explained that the way the state decided that “the maximum number of adherents who can safely worship in the most cavernous cathedral is zero … appears to reflect not expertise or discretion, but instead insufficient appreciation or consideration of the interests at stake.”
“Of course, if a chorister can sing in a Hollywood studio but not in her church, California’s regulations cannot be viewed as neutral,” Barrett wrote. “But the record is uncertain, and the decisions below unfortunately shed little light on the issue.”
“I fervently hope that the Court’s intervention will not worsen the nation’s COVID crisis,” Kagan wrote. “But if this decision causes suffering, we will not pay.”
“While the Supreme Court enjoined the state’s restriction on indoor worship services in counties where COVID-19 is widespread, the Court left in place public health measures imposed to protect worshippers, their families, and the communities in which they live,” Lopez said in a statement to The Hill. “We will continue to enforce the restrictions the Supreme Court left in place and, after reviewing the decision, we will issue revised guidelines for worship services to continue to protect the lives of Californians.”
The spokesperson defended the state’s efforts to combat COVID-19, saying it took “necessary steps throughout the pandemic to protect Californians from COVID-19 and prevent our health care system from being overwhelmed by the disease, particularly during the recent surge.”
The ruling comes a few months after the high court ruled 5-4 to bar New York from enforcing limits on how many people can attend services due to the coronavirus pandemic.
President Joe Biden said he doesn’t think former President Trump should continue to receive intelligence briefings, which is up to Mr. Biden’s discretion as the commander-in-chief. “CBS Evening News” anchor and managing editor Norah O’Donnell spoke to Mr. Biden in the first network news interview he has given since his inauguration. It will air in the 4 p.m. hour ahead of the Super Bowl on Sunday.
“Well, let me ask you then something that you do have oversight of as president,” O’Donnell said. “Should former President Trump still receive intelligence briefings?”
Former presidents often have the opportunity to receive intelligence briefings as a courtesy.
“I think not,” Mr. Biden responded.
“Why not?” O’Donnell asked.
“Because of his erratic behavior unrelated to the insurrection,” Mr. Biden said.
“CBS Evening News” anchor Norah O’Donnell interviews President Joe Biden.
CBS News
The president did not elaborate on his concerns about what might happen if Mr. Trump continues to receive the briefings, but questioned what value that could add for the country.
“I’d rather not speculate out loud,” Mr. Biden said. “I just think that there is no need for him to have the intelligence briefings. What value is giving him an intelligence briefing? What impact does he have at all, other than the fact he might slip and say something?”
Earlier this week, Mr. Biden said he hoped to work with Republicans on a COVID-19 economic relief plan, but he said on Friday he wanted to act fast. Mr. Biden told O’Donnell he won’t budge on the amount of the $1,400 stimulus checks, but he’s willing to negotiate on who qualifies for the checks and on whether a minimum wage increase to $15 an hour is included.
He said he doesn’t believe a minimum wage increase will ultimately make it into the American Rescue Plan.
The president said the $15 minimum wage is apparently “not going to occur because of the rules of the United States Senate.”
“CBS Evening News” anchor interviews President Joe Biden.
CBS News
“I put it in, but I don’t think it’s gonna survive,” Mr. Biden added.
Instead, the president said he’s prepared to work on a standalone $15 minimum wage proposal.
“My guess is it will not be in it,” the president said of the nationwide hourly raiseincluded in the American Rescue Plan. “But I do think that we should have a minimum wage, stand by itself, $15 an hour and work your way up to the — it doesn’t have to be boom. And all the economics show, if you do that, the whole economy rises. I am prepared, as president of the United States on a separate negotiation on minimum wage, to work my way up from what it is now, which is — look, no one should work 40 hours a week and live below the poverty wage. And if you’re makin’ less than $15 an hour, you’re living below the poverty wage.”
The full interview will air Sunday during the 4 p.m. ET hour ahead of the Super Bowl, only on CBS.
“These are angry, defiant, violent people that we housed at the justice center. There is no one housed for misdemeanor, municipal offense or a low-level felony. These are assaults on a police officer, homicide, things of that sort — very, very violent men that are housed in these two units,” Edwards said.
President Biden, in an interview broadcast Friday night, said he does not expect his economic relief package to include an increase in the federal minimum wage to $15, but vowed to push for it as a separate piece of legislation.
Some Democrats have pushed to include the federal minimum wage increase in the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief bill. While Biden has backed that effort, the measure would need support from all 50 Democrats in the Senate to pass, and it does not appear to have the votes, raising the likelihood it will be dropped from the final version.
“I put it in, but I don’t think it’s going to survive,” Biden told CBS News, citing Senate rules on reconciliation.
“I am prepared, as president of the United States on a separate negotiation on minimum wage, to work my way up from what it is now. … Look, no one should work 40 hours a week and live below the poverty wage. And if you’re making less than $15 an hour, you’re living below the poverty wage,” he added.
Biden said he supports raising the minimum wage gradually until it reaches $15 per hour, citing studies that show it would benefit the entire economy.
“My guess is it will not be in it. But I do think that we should have a minimum wage, stand by itself, $15 an hour,” Biden said.
The Senate early Friday passed a budget resolution that paves the way for the chamber to pass the larger economic relief bill without GOP support. But the package will require the support of all 50 Democratic and independent senators, and the federal minimum wage increase does not appear to have the votes needed to make it law, raising the likelihood it will be dropped from the final version.
The current federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour, which was approved in 2007 and set in place two years later. Supporters of raising the wage argue the current level is not enough to make ends meet and that an increase is long overdue to buoy workers and the economy as a whole.
A Congressional Budget Office analysis on raising the minimum wage also found that it would dramatically decrease poverty, with a $15 minimum lifting 1.3 million people above the poverty line.
Opponents argue a minimum wage increase could have unintended negative consequences, including burdening small businesses, reducing employment and pushing companies toward automation.
Biden’s coronavirus relief plan included a provision that raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2025. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, has been leading the charge to move it forward in the Senate through the so-called reconciliation process, which essentially allows Democrats to pass a broader coronavirus relief package without GOP support.
Sanders and his allies argue that the higher wage would reduce the amount of federal assistance low-income individuals receive and increase their taxable income — meeting the Senate parliamentarian’s requirement that any reconciliation measure have an effect on the federal budget.
Now that the Senate passed a budget resolution early Friday, it can begin to consider whether the $15 minimum wage qualifies for reconciliation. But even if the parliamentarian approved the measure, it could run into resistance from Democrats like Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.V.), who opposes raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
During Thursday’s “vote-a-rama” leading up to the final vote on the budget resolution, the Senate approved by voice vote an amendment from Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa) that would ban a $15 minimum wage hike during the pandemic.
Biden told CBS that he would continue to push to increase the minimum wage to $15 an hour.
“I am prepared as president of the United States on a separate negotiation of minimum wage to work my way up from what it is now,” he said. “No one should work 40 hours a week and live below the poverty wage, and if you’re making less than $15 an hour, you’re living below the poverty wage.”
The White House said this week that it had been reviewing whether the former president, whose impeachment trial in the Senate begins on Tuesday, should receive the briefings. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Adam B. Schiff, said last month, just before Mr. Biden’s inauguration, that Mr. Trump’s access to any classified information should be cut off.
“There is no circumstance in which this president should get another intelligence briefing, not now and not in the future,” said Mr. Schiff, Democrat of California, who was the House manager for Mr. Trump’s first impeachment trial, a year ago.
“Indeed, there were, I think, any number of intelligence partners around the world who probably started withholding information from us because they didn’t trust the president would safeguard that information, and protect their sources and methods,” Mr. Schiff said. “And that makes us less safe. We’ve seen this president politicize intelligence, and that’s another risk to the country.”
The question of how Mr. Trump handles intelligence came up several times during his presidency. Shortly after he fired the F.B.I. director James B. Comey in 2017, Mr. Trump told the Russian foreign minister and the Russian ambassador about a highly classified piece of intelligence about the Islamic State that came from Israel. The Israelis were outraged.
Later in his presidency, Mr. Trump took a photograph with his phone of a classified satellite image showing an explosion at a missile launchpad in Iran. Some of the markings were blacked out first, but the revelation gave adversaries information — which they may have had, anyway — about the abilities of American surveillance satellites.
MOSCOW – To his supporters, anti-corruption figure Alexei Navalny, whose detention has sparked massive protests across Russia, was sent to prison for the crime of daring to survive President Vladimir Putin’s efforts to poison him.
“Putin is turning his main threat into a martyr, a kind of Russian Nelson Mandela,” said Jaka Bizilj, the director of the Berlin-based humanitarian group Cinema for Peace Foundation, referring to South Africa’s anti-apartheid hero and former president.
In August, Bizilj organized for Navalny to be evacuated by private plane to Germany after he fell into a coma in the Siberian city of Omsk. Russia says there is no evidence the longtime Kremlin critic was poisoned. But German scientists determined Navalny had been exposed to the Russian military grade nerve agent Novichok, a claim backed by the U.S. and several European countries. An investigation by Bellingcat, a digital research organization, traced the poisoning to Russian security agents.
Five months after the near-fatal attack, Navalny returned Moscow in mid-January. Just before takeoff from a Berlin airport, he posted a video to Instagram of his wife quoting a line from a popular Russia crime movie: “Bring us some vodka, boy. We’re flying home.” Navalny was immediately arrested at the border. Russian authorities said that by seeking medical treatment abroad he violated the terms of his parole in connection with an embezzlement case from 2014 that is widely considered to be politically motivated.
For several weeks, tens of thousands of Russians have taken to the streets — and ice, one demonstration was held on a frozen lake in Kazan in southwest at -45 degrees Fahrenheit — across the country to demand Navalny’s release. More unrest is expected after Navalny was sentenced to 2.5 years in prison on Feb. 3.
“(Putin’s) only method is killing people,” Navalny said as the judge read the verdict. “For as much as he pretends to be a great geopolitician, he’ll go down in history as a poisoner.” As Navalny stood in a glass cage guarded by court bailiffs he pointed to his wife Yulia on the other side of the court and drew a heart on the glass wall.
Analysts say the demonstrations represent a burgeoning protest movement that is growing exponentially and is spurred on by myriad issues coming to a head including increased economic hardship, frustration with the coronavirus pandemic, and the shocking scale of graft that for decades has been perpetrated by Putin and Russia’s political elite – exposed by anti-corruption campaigners such as Navalny.
“This is qualitatively different from what we’ve seen before,” said Robert Legvold, an expert on Russia and professor emeritus at Columbia University, noting that the protests have occurred not just across Russia but across ideological groups (from pro-democracy reformers to conservative nationalists). “A very substantial portion of that population no longer regards the government as legitimate,” he said.
It’s not difficult to see why.
After Navaly was arrested, his Anti-Corruption Foundation released a two-hour video investigation on YouTube detailing a luxury mansion on Russia’s southern Black Sea coast purportedly belonging to Putin. The video alleges that it sits on a private estate 39 times the size of Monaco, is the largest private home in Russia and was paid for with “the largest bribe in history.” The property has a theater, a casino, a church, a hockey rink, an “aquatic” disco and a hookah lounge with a pole-dancing stage. Putin denies owning the opulent palace and Russian billionaire Arkady Rotenberg has since stepped forward to say the 20,000-acre estate in fact belongs to him, not Putin.
But Rotenberg and Russia’s leader are close. For a time they were judo sparring partners. Putin’s official annual salary is about $150,000, according to official figures, a relatively modest sum for a man routinely seen wearing $60,000 watches. And various watchdogs, investigation groups and anti-corruption campaigners have estimated Putin’s personal wealth to be somewhere between $70 billion and $200 billion.
Nobody seems to know how exactly Putin, 68, acquired all this wealth.
Some of the protesters in Russia have been expressing their view on the matter by mocking Putin by bringing gold-colored toilet brushes to the demonstrations.
“Everything that is happening (with Navalny) is illegal,” said Moscow resident Darya Grechishkina, 20, an office manager. “Navalny is in jail because he is Putin’s personal enemy and Putin has unlimited power. I do not trust the justice system in Russia.”
Grechishkina said that she and most of her friends are afraid “to even go for a walk outside” because of the authorities’ intense crackdown on the protests. Police and security services have intimidated, beaten and detained activists, students and anyone who appears vaguely connected to the unrest. They’ve ordered social media companies to take down all posts calling for people to participate in the demonstrations and threatened them with hefty fines and other punishments for failure to comply.
Journalist jailed for a retweet
Almost 5,700 people have been detained across Russia, according to OVD-Info, an independent monitoring group that tracks political persecution in Russia. At least 80 journalists have been arrested, including Sergei Smirnov, the editor of MediaZona, an independent website founded by members of the Russian punk rock band Pussy Riot.
MediaZona’s reporting focuses on issues of human rights and criminal justice.
Smirnov was arrested for retweeting a post on Twitter that poked fun at his apparent resemblance to a Russian rock musician. The post also referred to a planned pro-Navalny protest that included a date but not the location or any other details.
“He’s calm because he’s innocent. He is upset that the court made an unfair decision,” said Fyodor Sirosh, Smirnov’s lawyer. “People are angry because they can’t get justice and can’t get a fair trial.” Smirnov was detained while on a walk with his five-year-old son. He was sentenced to 25 days “administrative arrest,” meaning there’s no trial.
Russia is no stranger when it comes to harassing and even killing journalists and opposition voices. In fact, 58 journalists have been murdered in Russia since 1992, according to the Committee to Protest Journalists; 28 since Putin ascended to the presidency in 2000. The list of high-profile Putin critics and former Kremlin insiders, spies and power brokers who are the victims of unsolved murders, grisly poisonings, suspicious deaths, as well as lighter forms of persecution and ill-treatment, is also long.
One of the doctors at the Russian hospital in Omsk where Navalny was treated immediately after his poisoning has died, the hospital said Thursday. The hospital said in a statement he died “suddenly” but did not provide a cause of death.
Polina Sadovskaya, literary and free expression group PEN America’s Eurasia director, said that the Russian government is currently trying to prevent “people (from) understanding the size of the protests and it seems like they want to put a lid on what’s happening right now and keep more of the public from taking to the streets.”
Sadovskaya said she is concerned Russia’s federal media watchdog “can literally force the media to take down any information that they find false and threaten media outlets that they can be closed if they don’t comply. And there will be more of those laws.”
‘New stage of the crisis for Putin’
Arkady Dubnov, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, a foreign affairs think tank based in Russia’s capital, described “the developments around Navalny” as a “new stage of the crisis for Putin’s regime.” He said Navalny’s video of “Putin’s palace” was especially troubling and dangerous because it made younger Russians laugh at him.
“This is the worst kind of delegitimization of power,” Dubnov said.
He added that when Russia holds nationwide elections in September it seems likely, because of the depth and scale of the anger underpinning the protests, that Putin “will for the first time in his life have to actively participate in the campaign… The authorities will have to work very hard to keep his United Russia Party from defeat.”
However, for now, the sweeping police crackdown has had little impact on Putin’s overall approval rating, a survey by independent pollster Levada Center showed Thursday. The poll, conducted in the lead up to Navalny’s sentencing, showed a 1% drop in Putin’s approval rating to 64%, although his popularity among younger respondents dropped 17% to 51%, and Navalny’s supporters say that even independent polls can’t be trusted because many Russians are fearful of speaking out against Putin.
What will Biden do?
Still, Vladimir Ashurkov, a Navalny ally and London-based executive director of his Anti-Corruption Foundation, said there is “no silver bullet” in terms of coming up with ways to secure Navalny’s release, reform Russia’s justice system, ensure media freedoms or persuade Putin to leave the office he has held for two decades.
Ashurkov recently called on President Joe Biden, who has characterized Navalny’s detention as a “matter of deep concern to us,” to sanction 35 members of Putin’s inner circle, including eight Russian oligarchs, to pile pressure on the Kremlin. These sanctions would go beyond what Washington has already imposed on Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine’s Crimea, election interference and for other malicious cyber activities.
Russia said Friday it was expelling diplomats from Sweden, Poland and Germany, accusing them of attending a rally in support Navalny. The action drew a strong rebuke from German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
“We consider this expulsion unjustified and think it is another facet of the things that can be seen in Russia at the moment that are pretty far from the rule of law,” she said in Berlin after a videoconference with French President Emmanuel Macron.
Top Navalny strategist Leonid Volkov argued Thursday that trying to maintain rallies every weekend would only lead to many more arrests and wear out the participants. Instead, he urged supporters to focus on challenging Kremlin-backed candidates in September’s elections and securing new sanctions against Russia.
Ashurkov said that “Putin is a tactician, not a strategist. When he feels enough pressure he’ll change his decision (about Navalny) and then the lawyers will find a pretext to let him go.”
He added that after Navalny recuperated in Germany there was never any doubt that he would return to Russia despite fears for his safety and liberty.
“It’s a moral choice. His life’s work is in Russia. The organization that he built is in Russia. His millions of supporters are in Russia. He has done nothing wrong. Why shouldn’t he return to his home country?” he said.
‘Bigger suffering’
But Moscow resident Tatiana Ivanova, 71, had a different take.
“If we look back in history nothing good ever came of a revolution in Russia. I am skeptical the protests will get us what we want. Nobody gives up power easily and if the power is bigger, it almost always means bigger suffering for ordinary people,” she said.
And Sasha Krasny, 47, a philanthropy consultant who emigrated in 1990 to New York, where she still lives, from the former Soviet Union, said Putin was doing it all wrong.
“He is shooting himself in the foot by trying to poison Navalny and imprison him. Because the more he does that the more Navalny is becoming popular,” she said.
Contributing: Arthur Bondar in Moscow, Claire Thornton in Washington
An employee pushes carts in Long Beach, Calif., at a Kroger store. The supermarket chain announced a $100 incentive bonus Friday for employees who receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fredric J Brown/AFP via Getty Images
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Fredric J Brown/AFP via Getty Images
An employee pushes carts in Long Beach, Calif., at a Kroger store. The supermarket chain announced a $100 incentive bonus Friday for employees who receive a COVID-19 vaccine.
Fredric J Brown/AFP via Getty Images
The supermarket giant Kroger Co. announced Friday that employees who receive a COVID-19 vaccine will be rewarded with a $100 bonus.
The one-time offer is available to all company associates, nearly 500,000 individuals in 35 states, who provide proof of their vaccination to human resources, Kroger said. Workers must have received the full manufacturer-recommended dose. As for those unable to receive the vaccine due to medical or religious reasons, completing an education and safety course will enough for payment.
“As we move into a new phase of the pandemic, we’re increasing our investment to not only recognize our associates’ contributions, but also encourage them to receive the COVID-19 vaccine as it becomes available to them to optimize their well-being as well as the community’s,” Kroger Chief People Officer Tim Massa said.
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Kroger isn’t the first company to do this. The grocery chain Aldi offered employees two hours of pay per dose received. Dollar General also offered employees four hours of paid time. “We do not want our employees to have to choose between receiving a vaccine or coming to work,” the company said last month.
Just over 58 million doses of the vaccines have been delivered throughout the country. However, only approximately 36.8 million of those doses have been administered, the CDC reported. And only 7.5 million people have received their full inoculation.
In an effort to get as many shots into arms as possible, a push was made in mid-January to allow anyone over the age of 65 to receive a vaccine. As a result, many frontline workers feel left behind. The virus doesn’t grow tired or weary, but grocery store associates do.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention categorizes grocery workers as frontline essential workers, the same group as firefighters and police officers, public transportation workers and manufacturers. These individuals are part of the CDC’s phase 1B of its recommended distribution plan, making them eligible for inoculation after health care professionals and long-term care facility residents. But individual states draw up their own vaccine distribution plans.
Dr. Richard Besser, president of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and former acting commissioner of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told member station WBUR that states need to focus on vaccinating those that put themselves in harm’s way.
“I think that it’s critically important that we recognize that while every community is being hit hard by this pandemic, the burden of this disease is not being felt equally,” Besser said. “And those people who need to leave their homes every day to earn money, to pay the rent, to make sure that everyone else has food on their table, we need to do all we can to protect them.”
Kroger announced earlier this week the company plans to close two of its stores in Long Beach, Calif., after the city mandated a $4 raise for grocery workers at large supermarkets. The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union, which represents 1.3 million food workers including Kroger union members, said the company needs to do more.
“Kroger workers deserve free vaccinations for the risks they have faced and continue to face as COVID cases increase,” UFCW President Marc Perrone said in a statement obtained by NPR. “This one-time payment from Kroger is appreciated, but given the way the company has treated its workers during the pandemic, it does not recognize the contribution of these essential workers to our nation or the risks they face daily.”
The State Department plans to revoke the Trump administration’s decision to label the Houthi movement in Yemen a terrorist organization in an attempt to ease the humanitarian crisis in the country.
“[Secretary of State Antony] Blinken has been clear about undertaking an expeditious review of the designations of Ansarallah given the profound implications for the people of Yemen, home to the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophe. After a comprehensive review, we can confirm that the Secretary intends to revoke the Foreign Terrorist Organization and Specially Designated Global Terrorist designations of Ansarallah,” the spokesperson said, using another term for the Houthis.
“We have formally notified Congress of the Secretary’s intent to revoke these designations and will share more details in the coming days,” the spokesperson added. “Our action is due entirely to the humanitarian consequences of this last-minute designation from the prior administration, which the United Nations and humanitarian organizations have since made clear would accelerate the world’s worst humanitarian crisis.”
Pompeo had slapped the terrorist designation on the Houthis on Jan. 19, the last full day of the Trump administration, waving aside warnings that the move could restrict movement of humanitarian aid to key parts of Yemen.
The United Nations has said the civil war in Yemen between the Houthis and a Gulf coalition spearheaded by Saudi Arabia has produced the world’s worst humanitarian crisis, leaving 80 percent of Yemenis in need. Yemen’s Houthis have ties to Iran, while the U.S. has supported its ally Riyadh in the war.
President Biden said Thursday that the U.S. will end support for offensive operations in the conflict. Saudi airstrikes are blamed for widespread civilian casualties.
The State Department spokesperson said the move “has nothing to do with our view of the Houthis and their reprehensible conduct, including attacks against civilians and the kidnapping of American citizens.”
“We are committed to helping Saudi Arabia defend its territory against further such attacks,” the person said.
Biden also maintained this week that the U.S. would continue defending Saudi Arabia against attacks.
“Saudi Arabia faces missile attacks, [drone] strikes and other threats from Iranian supplied forces in multiple countries,” he said. “We’re going to continue to support and help Saudi Arabia defend its sovereignty and territorial integrity and its people.”
“This is coming at the absolute most difficult time when over 16 million Yemeni women, children and men are living in severe and worsening food insecurity,” Michelle Nunn, CEO of CARE USA, an international nongovernmental organization focusing on combating global poverty and world hunger, told The Hill.
“This particular designation is tantamount to a cease-and-desist order for the humanitarian response in northern Yemen and its impacts will lead to more despair and lives lost across the whole of the country,” Nunn added.
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