Vice President Harris had what she called “robust” talks with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
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Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Vice President Harris had what she called “robust” talks with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei.
Jacquelyn Martin/AP
Vice President Harris, in her first foreign trip since taking office, had a direct message for Guatemalans thinking of migrating to the United States: “Do not come.”
Speaking at a news conference Monday after meeting with Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei, Harris said the Biden administration wants “to help Guatemalans find hope at home.” She then added, “I want to be clear to folks in this region who are thinking about making that dangerous trek to the United States-Mexico border: Do not come. Do not come.”
She added, “The United States will continue to enforce our laws and secure our border.”
Record numbers of people, mostly from Central America, have come to the U.S. border with Mexico in recent months to try to seek asylum, fleeing violence and corruption. The humanitarian challenge has created a political problem for the Biden administration, and Republicans have been critical that Harris — assigned to tackle the root causes of the migration — has not visited the border.
But her admonition to would-be migrants drew criticism from a fellow prominent Democrat, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, who called it “disappointing” and said the United States needed to “acknowledge its contributions to destabilization and regime change in the region.”
Asked about Ocasio-Cortez’ comment, Harris said she was focused on her mission.
“Listen — I’m really clear we have to deal with the root causes. And that is my focus. Period,” Harris said just before boarding Air Force Two for Mexico City.
In Guatemala, Harris announced the formation of an anti-corruption task force, comprised of officials from the departments of Justice, Treasury and State, to address the thorny issue of corruption in the region. “We are creating this task force to address corruption, to address human smuggling, doing the work to make sure certain progress be made if we are going to attract investment,” Harris said.
“We must root out corruption wherever it exists,” she said. “It erodes the confidence the people have in their government and its leaders.”
Harris had what she described as a “robust, candid and thorough” conversation with the Guatemalan president, whose government has been accused of corruption. But Giammattei denied the charge. “How many cases of corruption have I been accused of?” he asked an American reporter. “I can give you the answer: Zero.”
In Guatemala, Harris announced $40 million to help boost the education and economic opportunities for indigenous women and girls. She also said the administration will provide 500,000 COVID-19 vaccines, which she said would not end the pandemic in Guatemala, but would “make a dent.”
Man accused of shooting Arcadia officer surrenders to authorities
A man has surrendered to police after a long standoff after an officer was shot responding to a domestic dispute.
ARCADIA, Calif. – A suspected gunman is in custody after authorities say he shot a cop in the face and then led SWAT on an hours-long standoff in Arcadia.
A source initially told FOX 11 of a possible shooting investigation in the 2500 block of Greenfield Avenue on Wednesday afternoon. The Arcadia Police Department later confirmed the location of the incident, adding that the incident stemmed from a fight between two brothers. One of the brothers was armed with a gun.
When Arcadia PD arrived, the armed man started shooting at the officers, hitting one of them in the face. A female family member from the house was also shot during the series of gunfire and a second civilian was also hit.
The second civilian, not the family member of the suspect, was likely hit by shrapnel, Arcadia PD said during a 9 p.m. press conference.
The triple shooting prompted a SWAT response, with the standoff extending just past 10:30 p.m. Wednesday. Prior to the arrest late Wednesday night, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, who is helping with investigations, warned the public that the standoff is considered an extreme threat to life and property in the area.
PREV. COVERAGE: Arcadia cop shot in face, prompting SWAT standoff
The conditions of the officer and the two civilians are unknown. Officials have not released the police officer’s identity.
It is unknown what prompted the fight between the two brothers in the Arcadia home.
Prior to the arrest, Arcadia PD Lt. Brett Bourgeous shared the following message to the suspected gunman:
“Please give yourself up. We want this to resolve peacefully,” Bourgeous said.
The suspect is expected to face several felony charges including the attempted murder of a peace officer.
Even before today’s news, experts complained that epidemiological information from China has been incomplete, threatening containment efforts.
The new coronavirus is highly transmissible and will be difficult to squelch. A single infected “super-spreader” can infect dozens of others. Outbreaks can seem to recede, only to rebound in short order, as the weather or conditions change.
Recent clusters of coronavirus cases suggest the new coronavirus not only spreads quickly, but also in ways that are not entirely understood.
In Hong Kong, people living 10 floors apart were infected, and an unsealed pipe was blamed. A British citizen apparently infected 10 people, including some at a ski chalet, before he even knew he was sick.
In Tianjin, China, at least 33 of 102 confirmed patients had a connection of some sort with a large department store.
“This outbreak could still go in any direction,” Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of the World Health Organization, said on Wednesday.
A change in diagnosis may make it still harder to track the virus, said Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, co-director of the University of Washington MetaCenter for Pandemic Preparedness and Global Health Security.
“Since taking control of the House, the Senate and the White House at the beginning of this year, the majority has made repeated decisions to spend massive amounts of taxpayer dollars with only Democratic votes,” said Representative Tom Cole, Republican of Oklahoma. “With that power also comes responsibility to effectively govern, and the majority has failed to do so.”
Understand the U.S. Debt Ceiling
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What is the debt ceiling? The debt ceiling, also called the debt limit, is a cap on the total amount of money that the federal government is authorized to borrow via U.S. Treasury bills and savings bonds to fulfill its financial obligations. Because the U.S. runs budget deficits, it must borrow huge sums of money to pay its bills.
Why does the U.S. limit its borrowing? According to the Constitution, Congress must authorize borrowing. The debt limit was instituted in the early 20th century so the Treasury did not need to ask for permission each time it needed to issue bonds to pay bills.
In a floor speech on Tuesday, Mr. McConnell made no mention of the deal he struck with Mr. Schumer to allow the increase to occur, but he noted that the debt ceiling would be raised solely with Democratic votes in the Senate. He also denounced Mr. Biden’s social safety net, climate and tax package, warning that it would exacerbate inflation and lead to the accumulation of more debt.
“If they jam through another reckless taxing and spending spree, this massive debt increase will just be the beginning,” Mr. McConnell said. “More printing and borrowing to set up more reckless spending to cause more inflation, to hurt working families even more.”
But Mr. McConnell has also fielded criticism from his right flank for allowing Democrats to steer the country away from a fiscal catastrophe.
“I’m sure this vicious tactic, the one used here, has not seen its last use — far from it,” said Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah. “With a blank check and a new special procedure, Democrats are able to raise the debt ceiling by whatever amount they deem necessary to accommodate their destroy America bill.”
Former President Donald J. Trump railed against Mr. McConnell in a series of statements over the weekend, charging that the senator “didn’t have the guts to play the debt ceiling card, which would have given the Republicans a complete victory on virtually everything.”
Mr. Trump continued to urge Republicans to remove Mr. McConnell from his leadership role.
On Monday, Kelly Tshibaka, a hard-line conservative challenging Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, pledged that she would not support Mr. McConnell if elected in 2022, citing his role in the debt ceiling process.
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Thursday tried to explain her lack of office hours by saying she’s still taking “baby steps” — but said constituents who can’t work with her sporadic schedule should follow her on Twitter.
Almost four months after her inauguration, the freshman congresswoman only recently opened a Queens office and still doesn’t have one in the Bronx.
Instead, on Thursday, she appeared at the Westchester Square Library for just two hours during the workday, where she met with 17 locals.
“Right now we’re just taking these baby steps and adapting according to community feedback,” the 29-year-old told The Post when asked why her brief availability was in the middle of the day.
“We don’t want to be too concrete, we adapt to the feedback of the community, so if we hear that folks want more evening hours we’re happy to do that.”
Asked what people with jobs should do in the meantime, she suggested: “You can give us a call, you can email us, you can add us on social media.”
Ocasio-Cortez added that she’s “constantly” attending community events, noting that she’d be at Bronx Community Board 9 that night.
But when asked for a schedule of future events she’d be attending so her constituents could find her, the self-described Democratic socialist claimed she wasn’t “allowed.”
“Due to safety reasons I’m not allowed to, so Capitol Police, uh, yeah, it’s intense, so, Capitol Police recommend that we don’t give specific details about where we will be and when too far in advance,” she said.
The Capitol Police said it wouldn’t comment on its “consultations” with “Member offices on security-related matters,” but a Democratic House aide said the cops “have nothing to do with the decision to have a public schedule or not.”
“The police don’t tell us what to do. The police did not send out a memo that we advise you not to send out a public schedule,” said the aide.
“You still have to provide the information publicly so your constituents can come.”
In a Time cover story published Thursday, Ocasio-Cortez’s staffers said they’d been trained on how to screen visitors because of the mounting number of death threats targeting the freshman lawmaker.
The rattled aides said they now worry whenever they hear a knock on the door of her office on Capitol Hill.
If that calm continues, there will inevitably be another fight over what prompted it. Federal officials say their overwhelming force has made a difference. District officials say it is peaceful protesters — there were few arrests in the city on Tuesday and none Wednesday — who have prevented the convergence of so many law enforcement agencies from turning dangerous.
“The people saved us from this confusion,” said Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District but has no voting power in Congress.
Karl Racine, the Washington attorney general, objected to any appearance in Mr. Barr’s comments on Thursday that the District was on board with the deployment of federal officers to the city’s streets. “That simply is not the case,” Mr. Racine said.
“What the White House doesn’t want people to see is the multigenerational, multiracial, multiethnic, multigeographic, overwhelmingly peaceful nature of these protests,” Mr. Racine said. “This isn’t a few protests. This is a movement that believes justice should be for all; that policing should be fair and not disproportionately harsher for some.”
Mr. Racine said he contacted the dozen-plus states that had been asked to send national guard forces to the District, and that none of them could recall that the Trump administration cited any legal basis for the request. The D.C. National Guard has been in the city, too, the only force the mayor has requested. But under home rule, she didn’t have the power to deploy them herself; only the president can do that.
Mr. Racine said in a letter to Mr. Barr, Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Mr. Trump’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, that he was reviewing the legality of the federal government’s decision to ask out-of-state national guardsmen and federal law enforcement entities, including the Bureau of Prisons, to police Washington’s streets.
Bennett has retained a leading employment discrimination lawyer, Debra Katz, who in her own statement said that Bennett “will cooperate fully with the Attorney General’s investigation.”
“We are confident that no disinterested investigator who reviews this evidence would adopt the Governor’s self-serving characterization of his behavior as mentorship or, at worst, unwanted flirtation,” Katz said. “He was not acting as a mentor and his remarks were not misunderstood by Ms. Bennett.”
“He was abusing his power over her for sex. This is textbook sexual harassment.”
James, in a statement about her authority over the probe, said, “This is not a responsibility we take lightly as allegations of sexual harassment should always be taken seriously.”
Bennett, in her statement, said Cuomo “has refused to acknowledge or take responsibility for his predatory behavior.”
“As we know, abusers – particularly those with tremendous amounts of power – are often repeat offenders who engage in manipulative tactics to diminish allegations, blame victims, deny wrongdoing and escape consequences,” she said.
Bennett noted that “it took the Governor 24 hours and significant backlash to allow for a truly independent investigation” after she went public with her allegations Saturday in a New York Times article.
“These are not the actions of someone who simply feels misunderstood; they are the actions of an individual who wields his power to avoid justice,” Bennett said.
Cuomo over the weekend first suggested the allegations by Bennett and Boylan be investigated by a former federal judge who previously worked with the governor’s top advisor.
Cuomo then pivoted, with his office suggesting that James and Chief Judge Judith Kaye, who heads the state’s highest court, jointly oversee the probe.
James refused to share oversight. And the governor’s office, dealing with a growing political backlash to both the allegations and his machinations seeking to control the investigation, agreed to ask the attorney general to handle the probe.
Bennett said that in coming forward with her account “I fully expected to be attacked by those who reflexively question the honesty or motivation of those who report sexual harassment. I am not deterred by these voices.”
She also said that, “Coming forward was an excruciating decision. I decided to share my story because I had faith that I would be supported and believed. This is often not the case.”
“Sharing my experience was only possible because of past survivors who stood up and told their stories. I hope that my story helps other survivors feel like they can stand in their truth.”
CNBC has requested comment from Cuomo’s office.
A referral letter by Cuomo’s office to James on Monday granted her request to have the claims by Bennett and Boylan be investigated by a private attorney or attorneys deputized by the attorney general.
The letter from Cuomo’s special counsel Beth Garvey said that the findings of that investigation “will be disclosed in a public report.”
The letter also said that “due to the nature of this review” the governor’s office will not approve or be sent weekly reports which are normally expected under the state law authorizing the attorney general to deputize outside lawyers for such a probe.
“All New York State employees have been directed to cooperate fully with this review,” Garvey wrote in the letter, which James released.
“I will serve as point of contact for any witness interviews or document production for the Executive Chamber and will connect you with appropriate counsel in any other agency or entity for any documents or witnesses necessary for the review,” Garvey wrote.
Bennett, 25, told The Times in an article published Saturday that the 63-year-old Cuomo had asked her questions including whether she “had ever been with an older man,” whether she was monogamous in her relationships and other personal questions that made her feel uncomfortable.
Boylan has said that Cuomo once kissed her without her consent, and jokingly suggested playing strip poker on an official flight.
Cuomo has denied the 36-year-old Boylan’s claims.
But in a statement released Saturday, the governor did not dispute Bennett’s claims of what he had said.
“I never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm. I spend most of my life at work and colleagues are often also personal friends,” Cuomo said that day.
“At work sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are funny. I do, on occasion, tease people in what I think is a good natured way,” the governor said.
“I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended. I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”
Cuomo also said, “To be clear I never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to.”
SAN FRANCISCO — Chesa Boudin, the son of anti-war radicals sent to prison for murder when he was a toddler, has won San Francisco’s tightly contested race for district attorney after campaigning to reform the criminal justice system.
The former deputy public defender declared victory Saturday night after four days of ballot counting determined he was ahead of interim District Attorney Suzy Loftus. The latest results from the San Francisco Department of Elections gave Boudin a lead of 8,465 votes.
Loftus conceded and said she will work to ensure a smooth and immediate transition.
Boudin, 39, became the latest candidate across the nation to win district attorney elections by pushing for sweeping reform over incarceration. He said he wants to tackle racial bias in the criminal justice system, overhaul the bail system, protect immigrants from deportation and pursue accountability in police misconduct cases.
Chesa Boudin shown with his father, David Gilbert, in the maximum security prison where he is serving a sentence for killing a Brinks guard and two police officers during a robbery by the radical group The Weather Underground.Ralf-Finn Hestoft / Corbis via Getty Images
“The people of San Francisco have sent a powerful and clear message: It’s time for radical change to how we envision justice,” Boudin said in a statement. “I’m humbled to be a part of this movement that is unwavering in its demand for transformation.”
Boudin entered the race as an underdog and captured voters’ attention with his extraordinary life story: He was 14 months old when his parents, who were members of the far-left Weather Underground, dropped him off with a babysitter and took part in an armored car robbery in upstate New York that left two police officers and a security guard dead.
His mother, Kathy Boudin, served 22 years behind bars and his father, David Gilbert, may spend the rest of his life in prison.
“Growing up, I had to go through a metal detector and steel gates just to give my parents a hug,” Boudin said in his campaign video.
He said that as one of the dozens of people whose lives were shattered by the deadly robbery in 1981, he experienced first-hand the destructive effects of mass incarceration and it motivated him to reform the nation’s broken criminal justice system.
He was raised in Chicago by Weather Underground leaders Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn before studying law at Yale University. He later won a Rhodes Scholarship and worked as a translator for Venezuela’s late President Hugo Chavez before coming to San Francisco.
He remained close to his parents and posted a photo on his Facebook campaign page of a family reunion in New York this past week.
In this Nov. 21, 1981, file photo, Katherine Boudin is led from Rockland County Courthouse in New York.Handschuh / AP
Loftus was appointed the interim district attorney by Mayor London Breed last month after George Gascon announced he was resigning and moving to Los Angeles to explore a run for DA there.
The American Civil Liberties Union of Northern California accused Breed of undermining the democratic process.
Loftus was endorsed by the city’s Democratic establishment, including Gov. Gavin Newsom and Sens. Dianne Feinstein and Kamala Harris.
“San Francisco has always been supportive of a progressive approach to criminal justice … It’s the nature of that town and I congratulate the winner,” Harris said Sunday while campaigning in Iowa for the Democratic presidential nomination. Loftus worked for Harris when she was the city’s district attorney.
Boudin received high-profile support from Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders and writer and civil rights activist Shaun King.
“Now is the moment to fundamentally transform our racist and broken criminal justice system by ending mass incarceration, the failed war on drugs and the criminalization of poverty,” Sanders tweeted Saturday when he congratulated Boudin on his win.
A new rule requiring vaccinations or regular tests would apply to companies with more than 100 employees.Credit…Jenna Schoenefeld for The New York Times
New federal safety regulations that call for businesses with more than 100 workers to require vaccinations against the coronavirus will affirm mandates already in place at many companies and give cover to employers that had yet to decide.
The proposed rules, which President Biden announced on Thursday, will require workers to be inoculated or face weekly testing and will mandate that the businesses offer employees paid time off to get vaccinated. They are the government’s biggest push yet to draw employers into a campaign to vaccinate the country.
Some 80 million workers will be affected. The requirements will be imposed by the Department of Labor and its Occupational Safety and Health Administration, which is drafting an emergency temporary standard to carry out the mandate, according to the White House.
“Some of the biggest companies are already requiring this — United Airlines, Disney, Tyson Foods and even Fox News,” Mr. Biden said during a speech Thursday.
The move, though, is sure to face political pushback and litigation. And it faces considerable challenges, like establishing a way to gather and store the vaccination information, as well as a process for exemptions. The president did not specify penalties for flouting the requirements.
Lawyers said Thursday that it was not immediately clear whether the rule would apply to all employees or only those who work in company offices or facilities.
The Biden administration also intends to require vaccination for federal workers and contractors, as well as for 17 million health care workers in hospitals and other institutions that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Mr. Biden pleaded for more businesses to help the effort to increase vaccinations. “To those of you running large entertainment venues — from sports arenas, to concert venues, to movie theaters — please require folks to get vaccinated or show a negative test as a condition of entry,” he said.
OSHA oversees workplace safety, which the agency is likely to contend extends to vaccine mandates. The agency has issued other guidelines for pandemic precautions, such as a rule in June requiring health care employers to provide protective equipment, provide adequate ventilation and ensure social distancing, among other measures.
“I think that the Department of Labor probably is in good stead to be able to justify its mandate for health and safety reasons for the workers,” said Steve Bell, a partner at the law firm Dorsey & Whitney who specializes in labor and employment.
“They’ve got a broad pretty solid basis for saying: ‘We’re here to protect the workers, and this is part of our purview, and we think that this is something that will protect employees,’” he said.
OSHA has the authority to quickly issue a rule, known as an emergency temporary standard, if it can show that workers are exposed to a grave danger and that the rule is necessary to address that danger. The rule must also be feasible for employers to enforce.
The regulation is expected to be challenged in court by employers and perhaps even some states. But the legal basis for a state challenge is likely to be weakest in states that are directly within OSHA’s jurisdiction. Among them are some of the states that have been hardest hit by Covid-19 recently and where politicians have been resistant to mandates — such as Texas and Florida.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the business lobby, said in a statement that it “will work to ensure that employers have the resources, guidance and flexibility necessary to ensure the safety of their employees and customers and comply with public health requirements.” Another major business advocacy group, the Business Roundtable, said it “welcomes” the Biden administration actions, including the requirement that companies offer paid time off for workers to get vaccinated.
The Culinary Workers Union, which represents 57,000 workers in Nevada, said “stricter” vaccine mandates were “the only way we see a full recovery possible.”
But some unions have been wary of mandates, with members worrying about potential health side effects or bristling at the idea of an employer’s interfering in what they regard as a personal health decision.
On Aug. 23, the Food and Drug Administration paved the way for broader mandates when it gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine.
Employers as various as CVS Health, Goldman Sachs and Chevron have put in place some form of requirement. Companies have been eager to get their workers back into the office and return to a degree of normalcy. And others, like AstraZeneca and JPMorgan Chase, are already requiring vaccination or else weekly testing.
Still, many mandates are not comprehensive. Companies like Walmart and Citigroup have requirements for their corporate employees but not for frontline workers in stores or at branches. Many companies are dealing with labor shortages and varying levels of vaccine hesitancy among workers.
“It levels the playing field,” said Ian Schaefer, a partner at the law firm Loeb & Loeb who specializes in labor issues and has been advising companies on their Covid policies. “Particularly in service industries or industries where they may have been represented by minority populations or lower-wage earners who are disproportionately likely not to be vaccinated — those employers were reluctant to push out a vaccine mandate because they thought they’d lose talent.”
“If they rolled out that mandate and people in their work stream weren’t getting vaccinated and walking across the street elsewhere, they’d be in a bind,” he said.
Mr. Biden had already raised the pressure on private employers to help with vaccination efforts. In August, the White House met with executives of companies that had mandated vaccination, including Scott Kirby of United Airlines, to discuss how they could encourage fellow business leaders to do the same.
Joseph Allen, an associate professor at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health who advises companies on Covid strategies, said the wide-ranging rule announced on Thursday was “a clear signal” from the federal government that it stood behind mandates.
“I suspect the dominoes will keep dropping,” he said. “It’s also necessary and needed. The voluntary approach has hit its limit.”
Katie Rogers and Noam Scheiber contributed reporting.
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