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Bipartisan calls are growing on Capitol Hill for the United States to ban imports of oil from Russia over its invasion of Ukraine, but the White House stopped short of an outright ban — and experts said the impact would be limited.

The United States and other Western nations have imposed an unprecedented raft of sanctions on Russia, but they have created exceptions for the oil and gas sector — from which the Russian government derives much of its income — because of fears cutting off the supply would drive up energy prices around the world.

But Republican members of Congress have for weeks been calling for a ban on imports of Russian crude oil and petroleum products, saying it would kneecap Russian President Vladimir Putin more than the Biden administration’s sanctions have so far.

“Putin’s major source of revenue is selling oil and gas and Biden’s given an exception,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said Wednesday. “You can continue getting billions of dollars to fund the invasion of Ukraine.”

Experts predict muted impact on Russia

Just 1% of Russia’s total crude oil exports in 2020 went to the United States, according to U.S. government figures.

So while cutting off that trade would force Russia to find other buyers for that relatively small amount of oil, it would not have as significant of an impact as if Europe — where Russia sends nearly half its oil — stopped them, experts told ABC News.

And the crippling financial sanctions on Russia’s banks and other parts of its economy have already turned off potential buyers of Russian oil who are wary of doing business in a country quickly becoming a financial pariah, the experts said.

“Russian oil has already been de facto sanctioned” by the United States and its partners, Patrick De Haan, the head of petroleum analysis at GasBuddy, told ABC News.

The global market has already started to react, according to Ben Cahill, an expert on energy security at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“For Russia, this is part of a bigger set of challenges — which is a lot of people don’t want to buy their oil,” Cahill said. “There’s a lot of self-sanctioning happening in the marketplace.”

The U.S. relies on Russian oil more than Russia depends on sending its oil to the U.S., with about 7 to 10% of the United States’ imports of crude oil and petroleum products coming from Russia in recent years.

De Haan said cutting off the supply would likely raise gas prices in the U.S. in the short term.

But Cahill said the switch would be “manageable,” with the U.S. potentially turning to countries like Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia and Canada to replace the Russian oil.

Growing bipartisan support runs up against White House reluctance

Still, a slew of Democratic senators, as well as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, on Thursday threw their support behind cutting off Russian oil imports.

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, led by moderate Democrat Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., and Republican Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, introduced legislation Thursday that would declare a national emergency and direct President Joe Biden to impose a ban.

But Biden already has such authority.

And while the White House has not completely ruled out the possibility, it has expressed concern it could lead to higher energy prices for Americans who are already being hit at the gas pump by record-high inflation rates.

“The president’s objective has been to maximize impact on President Putin and Russia, while minimizing impact to us and our allies and partners,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.

The group backing Manchin’s proposal is bipartisan. Nine Republicans have signed on as co-sponsors. And Democratic supporters span the caucus from traditionally moderate members like Sen. Jon Tester, of Montana, to more progressive members like Hawaii Sens. Mazie Hirono and Brian Schatz, and Connecticut’s Sen. Richard Blumenthal.

“Putin has weaponized energy,” Tester said. “I don’t believe this country should be importing anything from Russia, but the fact of the matter is energy is something Putin depends upon for his finances, and he is depending on it to fight this war in Ukraine.”

Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., has offered a separate bill that would also ban Russian oil imports. In addition, his legislation would require a report identifying entities involved in the import of Russian crude oil and petroleum products into the U.S. — and impose sanctions on those entities based on the report’s findings.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gave the effort her stamp of approval Thursday.

“I’m all for that,” Pelosi told reporters. “Ban it. Ban the oil coming from Russia.”

Manchin said Americans should be willing to make a sacrifice.

“You talk about an inconvenience, can you imagine if you lived in Ukraine right now?” Manchin said. “If there was a poll being taken and they said, ‘Joe, would you pay 10 cents more a gallon to support the people of Ukraine and stop, basically, the support of Russia?’ I would gladly pay 10 cents more a gallon.”

Republicans call for new drilling on US public lands

Pelosi was clear that she did not back an increase on oil and gas drilling on federal land, which the Biden administration has restricted — and which Republicans want.

While the bipartisan bill makes no mention of domestic production, many Republican lawmakers — and some Democrats, including Manchin — see the two policies going hand in hand.

An increase in U.S. production would blunt rising oil prices and provide a global alternative to Russian oil, they argue.

“We must dramatically increase domestic production of energy to support the energy needs of American consumers without causing increased financial burden,” Manchin said in a statement Tuesday.

Increasing U.S. oil production is a controversial move. Many Democrats applauded steps taken by the administration for sidelining the Keystone XL pipeline project last year and taking steps to pare back production in favor of greener energy sources earlier this year.

But the White House says oil companies have access to plenty of places to drill, and the Biden administration supports investing in clean energy in the long term to prevent a reliance on foreign oil.

Cahill said there are signs U.S. producers are already reacting to demand that increased even before the war in Ukraine — and that most of the new drilling would take place on private land.

“This industry mostly takes its signals from Wall Street, and the market is going to take care of some of this on its own,” Cahill said. The White House lending its rhetorical support could help, though, he said.

Murkowski echoed that sentiment.

“If the president were to come before the American people and give a speech and say we in this country need to embrace the role that we can take on as a full energy producer,” she said, “I think that that would do as much to send a signal to help calm the markets to help address what we are seeing with the daily prices of fuel at the pump.”

ABC News’ Zunaira Zaki contributed to this report.

Source Article from https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/bipartisan-calls-russian-oil-ban-meet-resistance-white/story?id=83228215

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden delivered impassioned remarks Friday condemning the “extreme” Supreme Court majority that ended a constitutional right to abortion and pleading with Americans upset by the decision to “vote, vote, vote vote” in November. He signed an executive order to try to protect access to the procedure under mounting pressure from fellow Democrats to be more forceful in response to the ruling.

The actions Biden outlined are intended to mitigate some potential penalties that women seeking abortion may face after the ruling, but his order cannot restore access to abortion in the more than a dozen states where strict limits or total bans have gone into effect. About a dozen more states are set to impose additional restrictions.

Biden acknowledged the limitations facing his office, saying it would require an act of Congress to restore nationwide access to the way it was before the June 24 decision.

“The fastest way to restore Roe is to pass a national law,” Biden said. “The challenge is go out and vote. For God’s sake there is an election in November.!”

Biden’s action formalized instructions to the Departments of Justice and Health and Human Services to push back on efforts to limit the ability of women to access federally approved abortion medication or to travel across state lines to access clinical abortion services. He was joined by Vice President Kamala Harris, HHS secretary Xavier Becerra and Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco in the Roosevelt Room as he signed the order.

His executive order also directs agencies to work to educate medical providers and insurers about how and when they are required to share privileged patient information with authorities — an effort to protect women who seek or utilize abortion services. He is also asking the Federal Trade Commission to take steps to protect the privacy of those seeking information about reproductive care online and establish an interagency task force to coordinate federal efforts to safeguard access to abortion.

Biden is also directing his staff to convene volunteer lawyers to provide women and providers with pro bono legal assistance to help them navigate new state restrictions after the Supreme Court ruling.

The order, after the high court’s June 24 ruling that ended the nationwide right to abortion and left it to states to determine whether or how to allow the procedure, comes as Biden has faced criticism from some in his own party for not acting with more urgency to protect women’s access to abortion. The decision in the case known as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization overturned the court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling.

Since the decision, Biden has stressed that his ability to protect abortion rights by executive action is limited without congressional action, and stressed that Democrats do not have the votes in the current Congress to do so.

“We need two additional pro-choice senators and a pro-choice house to codify Roe,” he said. “Your vote can make that a reality.”

Biden for the first time last week announced his support for changing Senate rules to allow a measure to restore nationwide access to abortion to pass by simple majority, rather than the usual 60-vote threshold required to end a filibuster. However, at least two Democratic lawmakers have made clear they won’t support changing Senate rules.

He predicted that women would turn out in “record numbers” in frustration over the court’s decision, and said he expected “millions and millions of men will be taking up the fight beside them.”

On Friday, he repeated his sharp criticism of the Supreme Court’s reasoning in striking down what had been a half-century constitutional right to abortion.

“Let’s be clear about something from the very start, this was not a decision driven by the Constitution,” Biden said, accusing the court’s majority of “playing fast and loose with the facts.”

He spoke emotionally of a 10-year-old Ohio girl who was forced to travel out of state to terminate a pregnancy after being raped, noting that some states have instituted abortion bans that don’t have exceptions for cases of rape or incest.

“A 10-year- old should be forced to give birth to a rapist’s child!” Biden nearly shouted. “I can’t think of anything more extreme.”

Biden added ahead of the November midterm elections that “The choice we face as a nation is between the mainstream or the extreme.”

The tasking to the Justice Department and HHS pushes the agencies to fight in court to protect women, but it conveys no guarantees that the judicial system will take their side against potential prosecution by states that have moved to outlaw abortion.

“President Biden has made clear that the only way to secure a woman’s right to choose is for Congress to restore the protections of Roe as federal law,” the White House said. “Until then, he has committed to doing everything in his power to defend reproductive rights and protect access to safe and legal abortion.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Mini Timmaraju called Biden’s order “an important first step in restoring the rights taken from millions of Americans by the Supreme Court.”

But Lawrence Gostin, who runs the O’Neill Institute for National and Global Health at Georgetown Law, described Biden’s plans as “underwhelming.”

“There’s nothing that I saw that would affect the lives of ordinary poor women living in red states,” he said.

Gostin encouraged Biden to take a more forceful approach toward ensuring access to medication abortion across the country and said Medicaid should consider covering transportation to other states for the purposes of getting abortions.

Gostin said, “We basically have two Americas.” There’s one where people have access to a full range of healthcare, and “another where citizens don’t have the same rights to the safe and effective treatments as the rest of the country.”

Chiquita Brooks-LaSure, the administrator of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, told the AP that the agency was looking at how Medicaid could cover travel for abortions, along with a range of other proposals, but acknowledged that “Medicaid’s coverage of abortion is extremely limited.”

Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America president Marjorie Dannenfelser condemned Biden’s order, saying, “President Biden has once again caved to the extreme abortion lobby, determined to put the full weight of the federal government behind promoting abortion.”

Biden’s move was the latest scramble to protect the data privacy of those contemplating or seeking abortion, as regulators and lawmakers reckon with the aftermath of the Supreme Court ruling.

The decision by the court is expected to make abortion illegal in over a dozen states and severely restricted in others. Privacy experts say that could make women vulnerable because their personal data could be used to surveil pregnancies and shared with police or sold to vigilantes. Online searches, location data, text messages and emails, and even apps that track periods could be used to prosecute people who seek an abortion — or medical care for a miscarriage — as well as those who assist them, experts say.

Privacy advocates are watching for possible new moves by law enforcement agencies in affected states — serving subpoenas, for example, on tech companies such as Google, Apple, Bing, Facebook’s Messenger and WhatsApp, services like Uber and Lyft, and internet service providers including AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Comcast. Local prosecutors may go before sympathetic judges to obtain search warrants for users’ data.

Last month four Democratic lawmakers asked the FTC to investigate Apple and Google for allegedly deceiving millions of mobile phone users by enabling the collection and sale of their personal data to third parties.

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AP writers Marcy Gordon and Hillary Powell contributed to this report.

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For AP’s full coverage of the Supreme Court ruling on abortion, go to https://apnews.com/hub/abortion.

Source Article from https://apnews.com/article/abortion-biden-us-supreme-court-government-and-politics-0e6496122de46f1039cbb2b5145d6d60

LVIV, Ukraine/KYIV, March 15 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will make his first visit to Europe since the invasion of Ukraine to discuss the crisis with NATO allies next week, the White House said on Tuesday as the refugee tally hit 3 million amid more Russian air strikes.

Moscow has not captured any of the 10 biggest cities in the country following its incursion that began on Feb. 24, the largest assault on a European state since 1945.

Local authorities said Tuesday’s bombardments on Kyiv killed at least five people as buildings were set ablaze and people were buried under rubble. read more

About 2,000 cars left the southern port city of Mariupol, location of the worst humanitarian crisis, the local council said.

Just over 3 million have now fled Ukraine, according to the United Nations, with over 1.8 million arriving in neighbouring Poland. Its prime minister and those of Slovenia and the Czech Republic were in Kyiv on Tuesday to show solidarity.

NATO leaders will meet at the military alliance’s headquarters in Brussels on March 24 to discuss the crisis that has prompted fears of wider conflict in the West unthought-of for decades.

“We will address Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, our strong support for Ukraine, and further strengthening NATO’s deterrence & defence,” NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg wrote on Twitter.

Biden will be in attendance, White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters.

“His goal is to meet in person face-to-face and talk about and assess where we are at this point in the conflict,” she said.

Asked if Biden would also visit Poland, do something tied to Ukrainian refugees or meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, Psaki declined to comment, saying trip details were still being worked out.

Russia calls its actions a “special military operation” to demilitarise and “denazify” Ukraine. President Vladimir Putin has also called its neighbour a U.S. colony with a puppet regime and no tradition of independent statehood.

Talks between Russia and Ukraine via a video link resumed on Tuesday. Ukrainian officials played up hopes the war could end sooner than expected, saying Moscow may be coming to terms with its failure to impose a new government by force.

In a hint of a possible compromise, Zelenskiy said Ukraine was prepared to accept security guarantees from the West that stop short of its long-term objective of joining NATO. Moscow sees any future Ukraine membership of the Western alliance as a threat and has demanded guarantees it will never join.

“If we cannot enter through open doors, then we must cooperate with the associations with which we can, which will help us, protect us … and have separate guarantees,” said Zelenskiy.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said it was too early to predict progress in the talks. “The work is difficult, and in the current situation the very fact that (the talks) are continuing is probably positive,” he said.

The crisis is being felt in the form of spiralling energy costs in many Western countries with some heavily reliant on exports from Russia and after a U.S. ban on imports of oil from the country.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson visits the Middle East on Wednesday to meet Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in the United Arab Emirates before seeing Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia in efforts to secure more oil flows.

“We will work with them to ensure regional security, support the humanitarian relief effort and stabilise global energy markets for the longer term,” said Johnson.

FORK IN THE ROAD?

In Kyiv, around half of the 3.4 million residents have fled and some spend nights sheltering in metro stations.

Zelenskiy said on Tuesday that 97 children had died so far in the invasion. Hundreds of civilians have been killed.

On the Romanian border, a woman named Tanya said she had fled the southern frontline town of Mykolaiv to save her child. “Because the people that are there now are Russians, Russian soldiers, and they kill children.”

A convoy with supplies for Mariupol, where residents have been sheltering from repeated Russian bombardments and are desperate for food and water, was stuck at nearby Berdyansk, Deputy Prime Minister Iryna Vereshchuk said.

Fox News said a second journalist working for the cable network was killed in Ukraine in the same incident in which a Fox cameraman died when their vehicle was struck on Monday by incoming fire. read more

But one of Zelenskiy’s top aides predicted the war would be over by May or even within weeks as Russia had run out of fresh troops.

“We are at a fork in the road now,” Oleksiy Arestovich said in a video. He said he expected either a peace deal within one or two weeks or another Russian attempt with new reinforcements, which could prolong the conflict for another month.

At the United Nations, Russian envoy Vassily Nebenzia said Moscow would end what it calls its “special military operation” when its goals were achieved, including demilitarisation.

LUXURY SANCTIONS

In Rivne in western Ukraine, officials said 19 people had been killed in a Russian air strike on a TV tower. If confirmed it would be the worst attack on a civilian target so far in the northwest where Russian ground troops have yet to tread.

Russia denies targeting civilians.

More than 100 buses carrying a few thousand civilians left the besieged northeastern city of Sumy in a “safe passage” operation, the International Committee of the Red Cross said on Tuesday. They were heading towards Lubny in central Ukraine after Russians gave a green light for the evacuation.

Russia said it now controlled the Kherson region in southern Ukraine. Reuters could not independently verify the report.

The conflict has brought economic isolation upon Russia.

The United States, the European Union and Britain announced further sanctions on Tuesday, while Moscow retaliated by putting Biden and other U.S. officials on a “stop list” that bars them from entering Russia.

The latest EU sanctions include bans on energy sector investments, luxury goods exports to Moscow, and imports of steel products from Russia.

They also freeze the assets of more business leaders believed to support the Russian state, including Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich. read more

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

Source Article from https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/us-warns-china-against-helping-russia-sanctions-mount-2022-03-15/