News
CNN, – March 23, 2022
Madeleine Albright, the first female US secretary of state and who helped steer Western foreign policy in the aftermath of the Cold War, has died. She was 84 years old.
The cause was cancer, Albright’s family said in a statement Wednesday.
Albright was a central figure in President Bill Clinton’s administration, first serving as US ambassador to the United Nations before becoming the nation’s top diplomat in his second term. She championed the expansion of NATO, pushed for the alliance to intervene in the Balkans to stop genocide and ethnic cleansing, sought to reduce the spread of nuclear weapons, and championed human rights and democracy across the globe.
The United States will welcome up to 100,000 Ukrainians and others fleeing Russia’s aggression, a senior administration official announced Thursday.
“To meet this commitment, we are considering the full range of legal pathways to the United States,” the official said, which includes US refugee admissions program, parole and immigrant and non-immigrant visas.
More than 3.5 million refugees have now fled Ukraine, according to data from the UN refugee agency released on Tuesday. A vast majority of those refugees have fled to Ukraine’s western neighbors across Europe.
The wave of the Omicron subvariant BA.2 is crashing into countries around the world, leading to renewed masking and high hospital case counts in some regions.
Many countries worry they’re next.
To date, the new cases have been mild in the United States and other countries. More BA.2 is being detected in parts of the U.S. but without the dramatic surge in total infections that the subvariant brought to parts of Europe.
CNN, – March 24, 2022
Beyond the hyperbole and theatrics that have punctuated this week’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearings, a portrait of Ketanji Brown Jackson as jurist has begun to emerge.
Like the justice she would succeed, Stephen Breyer, Jackson leaned on multi-part legal methods and data points. She emphasized regard for judicial precedent. She also took a page from the conservative side of the bench when she spoke of searching for the “original” meaning of the Constitution.
“I believe that the Constitution is fixed in its meaning,” she told senators. “I believe that it’s appropriate to look at the original intent, original public meaning of the words … that’s a limitation on my authority to import my own policy views.”
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Politico, – March 24, 2022
Surely, there have been more preposterous endorsement sagas than the one that’s played out in the Alabama Republican Senate primary, but it’s hard to think of one.
Donald Trump endorsed Rep. Mo Brooks on the presumption that Brooks was a faithful acolyte without scruple — for which, to be fair, there was considerable evidence — and then when Brooks faltered in the polls, unendorsed him in humiliating fashion.
Brooks responded with a statement about how Trump had pressured him to support throwing Joe Biden out of office, reinstating the former president, and holding a new presidential special election. To his minimal credit, Brooks didn’t bend to Trump’s demands. It raises the question, though, of why he was touting — indeed, making the main feature of his candidacy — the endorsement of a man who urged him to back these feverishly outlandish measures?
CBS News – March 24, 2022 (01:43)
CNN, – March 24, 2022
Sunrise Movement, the youth-led climate activist group, on Thursday announced its endorsements of Summer Lee in Pennsylvania’s 12th Congressional district, Nida Allam in North Carolina’s 4th Congressional district and Erica Smith in North Carolina’s 1st Congressional district, further bolstering progressive support behind the three Democratic candidates for the US House of Representatives.
With the endorsements – shared first with CNN – Sunrise promises a combination of phone banking as well as digital and on-the-ground canvassing for its candidates powered by its cohort of digitally savvy young people.
Sunrise’s endorsements come as the trio of candidates continues to receive a wide array support from the progressive left.
CNN, March 24, 2022 – 9:38 am (ET)
https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/politics/new-us-asylum-rule/index.html
The Biden administration will soon release a federal regulation that overhauls the US asylum system to settle claims at a faster pace and help alleviate the immigration court backlog.
The new rule gives asylum officers more authority by allowing them to hear and decide asylum claims – cases that are usually assigned to immigration judges – when migrants present at the US southern border. The regulation applies to migrants who are subject to expedited removal. Unaccompanied children are exempt.
Administration officials have been alluding to the change in processing asylum claims for months. It comes as the administration is under mounting pressure from Democratic lawmakers and immigrant advocates to overhaul the US immigration system and amid concerns about a potential migrant surge.
CNN, – March 24, 2022
Four days after Russia invaded Ukraine, President Joe Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan authorized a team of officials to quietly map out potential ways the US could respond if Russian President Vladimir Putin took an extreme step, including deploying chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, a senior administration official told CNN.
The group, known internally as a Tiger Team, is a new version of the one assembled last fall when it appeared Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. Now a month into the invasion, this group meets several times a week to examine how the US could respond if Russia were to conduct a biological weapons attack, encroach on NATO territory, target US convoys or any other step Putin may take given his clear frustration over Russia’s lack of progress.
These national security officials are focused on what they can plan against for the next three months, the official said. The New York Times first reported the details of the preparation.
