The Utah House of Representatives approved new rules on Tuesday that limit where members of the press can film and interview lawmakers, following similar action taken by the Utah Senate two weeks ago.
The rules extend pandemic-era restrictions on when journalists can report from the floors of state legislative chambers.
Journalists covering the Utah Legislature must now ask for permission to interview lawmakers on the floor of the House of Representatives and other restricted areas. TV reporters must ask committee chairs for permission to film speakers and crowds from behind the dais where lawmakers sit in committee hearings.
“I know that sometimes committee members get a little bit nervous from the cameras right behind them because they can see their screens,” Republican Rep. Timothy Hawkes said Monday in a committee hearing about the measure.
Media organizations and journalists covering the Statehouse opposed the rules changes in the Utah House and Senate, arguing that restricting media movements would make it more difficult to cover fast-paced action and make it easier for lawmakers to dodge the press. They said the move reduced transparency — a claim that lawmakers denied.
Utah Media Coalition lobbyist Renae Cowley Laub on Monday proposed an alternative, telling lawmakers that credentialed members of the media were working on establishing a formal press corps that could work with lawmakers to refine the rules in a mutually satisfactory way.
She proposed creating a commission with two members of the press and designees from the House, Senate and state legislative officials to govern press rules, similar to the method used in Utah courthouses.
“As you can tell by doing simple math, the committee would already be stacked in favor of the government. But it does offer the media and members of the press the opportunity to be a part of some of the decisions made regarding their practice and their profession,” she said.
Outside of Utah’s Republican-led Statehouse, similar restrictions have been passed in Iowa and Kansas.
The new limits come in an environment of increasing attacks on the media and parallel new restrictions placed on journalists covering protests and courtroom proceedings.
They also come as U.S. states and cities loosen coronavirus restrictions that have returned restaurants, sporting events and offices to pre-pandemic capacity.
U.S. lawmakers condemned Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine early Thursday, calling on the Biden administration to act swiftly to address the first full-scale war in Europe in more than 70 years.
“History will prove Vladimir Putin’s decision to sacrifice the lives of countless Ukrainians and Russians was made out of fear — fear of allowing a neighboring independent, sovereign nation to pursue democracy and freedom,” said Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez in a statement early Thursday.
“This unprovoked attack has brought into sharp focus the need to expel the current Kremlin leadership from the international community. Today must mark a historical shift in how the world views and deals with the despot in Moscow,” he continued.
Flame and smoke rise from the debris of a private house in the aftermath of Russian shelling outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 24, 2022.
In a speech late Wednesday, Putin rationalized the unprovoked attack on the independent eastern European nation claiming, without evidence. that a genocide was occurring in Ukraine and calling for the “de-Nazification” of the country, which is led by an elected Jewish president.
The top-ranking Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jim Risch, said the Russian bombardment of cities in Ukraine was “a premeditated and flagrant act of war. Despite committed efforts to find a diplomatic solution, Putin has violated the border of a sovereign country.”
Earlier this year, both Menendez and Risch introduced legislation sanctioning Russia for a possible invasion of Ukraine.
FILE – This satellite images provided by Maxar Technologies shows troops gathered at a training ground in Pogonovo, Russia, on Jan. 26, 2022.
As Putin massed troops at the Ukraine border in recent weeks, U.S. lawmakers struggled to reach an agreement on sanctions legislation. Republicans favored triggering sanctions earlier to deter Putin while Democrats favored the Biden administration approach of working in concert with European allies to negotiate a diplomatic solution.
Now that a full-scale Russian invasion has begun, there are several options at the disposal of lawmakers, including $750 million in aid for Ukraine in the 2022 omnibus spending bill and as much as $1 billion in humanitarian aid.
The U.S. Congress is on recess this week and not set to return to Washington until Monday. But lawmakers will receive an unclassified phone briefing from administration officials later on Thursday.
Congressional Republicans have criticized the Biden administration for not acting forcefully enough to deter Putin from the invasion and warned about the consequences of the United States appearing weak on the international stage.
FILE – Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, center, speaks on the close of the war in Afghanistan, at the Capitol in Washington, Aug. 31, 2021.
However House Foreign Affairs Committee Lead Republican Michael McCaul, House Armed Services Committee Lead Republican Mike Rogers and House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Lead Republican Mike Turner issued a statement putting the blame for the violence in Ukraine squarely on the Russian president.
“Every drop of Ukrainian and Russian blood spilled in this conflict is on Putin’s hands, and his alone,” they wrote. “In response, we are committed to enacting the strongest possible sanctions and export controls to cripple Russia’s ability to make war, punish its barbarity and relegate the Putin regime to the status of an international pariah. We cannot respond like we did in 2008 or 2014.”
Lawmakers called on Biden to impose the toughest possible sanctions on Putin ahead of an expected speech to the nation at midday U.S. time. Republican Senator Rob Portman, the co-chair of the Ukraine Caucus, said in a statement, “We can and we must cripple Russia’s military by starving it of financing. Next, we must impose export and import controls, especially of vital electronic goods like semiconductors. Doing so could restrict the tools Russia needs to manufacture and resupply its military.”
FILE – Ukrainian service members unpack Javelin anti-tank missiles, delivered by plane as part of the US military support package for Ukraine, at the Boryspil International Airport outside Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb. 10, 2022.
Portman also called for increased military support to Ukraine and other U.S. allies in the region, including supplying anti-tank, anti-ship and anti-aircraft weaponry.
While some wings of both the Republican and Democratic parties have expressed concern about the U.S. being drawn into a ground conflict in Ukraine, Biden has repeatedly stated the U.S. will not commit its own troops to the conflict.
U.S. lawmakers stepped up calls Tuesday for sanctions against Russia, urging the Biden administration to act swiftly to penalize Russian President Vladimir Putin for recognizing the occupied regions of Donetsk and Luhansk in eastern Ukraine as independent states.
Despite significant bipartisan unity for deterring Russian aggression in Ukraine, Democrats and Republicans have struggled to agree on how to sequence sanctions to discourage and penalize Putin for incursions into the independent eastern European nation.
But Putin’s televised national speech Monday characterizing Ukraine as historically part of Russia and “never a true nation” drew swift condemnation from top U.S. lawmakers.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, chairs a Security Council meeting in the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Feb. 21, 2022.
“Vladimir Putin’s illegal recognition of the self-proclaimed Donetsk and Luhansk People’s Republics is an act of unprovoked aggression and a brazen violation of international law,” Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said in a statement.
“This illegal recognition is an attack on Ukraine’s sovereignty. To be clear, if any additional Russian troops or proxy forces cross into Donbas, the Biden administration and our European allies must not hesitate in imposing crushing sanctions,” Menendez continued.
An estimated 150,000 Russian troops have massed at the border with Ukraine in recent weeks. Putin’s claim that the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk are no longer a part of Ukraine opens the door for so-called Russian “peacekeeping” troops to go into those areas. The U.S. and its allies say this mission is a false flag operation to allow further incursion into Ukraine.
Many Republicans have criticized the White House’s approach to the crisis, calling the Russian leader’s move an invasion and accusing the Biden administration of waiting until it is too late to deter Putin.
“Setting the trigger for meaningful sanctions to Russian tanks rolling across Ukraine’s border was a dangerous mistake,” Rep. Mike McCaul and Mike Rogers, the ranking Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs and House Armed Services Committees, said in a statement Monday. “Secretary Blinken committed to a “swift and firm response’ by the United States and its allies if Putin recognized Russian-backed separatist Republics in Donbas. Now that the Kremlin has done so, we must immediately impose real costs for this blatant act of aggression.”
Donetsk and Luhansk regions
The United States has already announced an executive order prohibiting new American investment and trade in those regions. The White House said additional “swift and severe” actions would follow Tuesday.
But some Republicans said these actions had come too late to be effective.
“Biden-Harris officials are to an enormous extent directly responsible for this crisis. He and his administration instead settled for an endlessly deferred and wholly uncredible strategy of responding to Putin’s aggression after an invasion. They have pursued bizarre tactics like declassifying American intelligence and trying to shame Putin. That approach has failed,” Republican Senator Ted Cruz said Monday.
Congressional Democrats praised Biden for preparing for this moment and said it marked a turning point in triggering sanctions on the Kremlin.
“The time for taking action to impose significant costs on President Putin and the Kremlin starts now,” Senator Chris Coons, a top-ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said in a statement Monday.
“President Biden has ably led months of preparation for this moment with our allies in NATO and Europe, and I’m encouraged by clear condemnations of Putin’s actions as well as statements of unity from our partners and allies. We must swiftly join our NATO allies and partners in the European Union to impose forceful new sanctions on Russia,” Coons continued.
Both Menendez and Risch have introduced sanctions legislation in the U.S. Senate that would end Russian access to international banking transactions, provide hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine as well as cutting off funding for the Nord Stream 2 pipeline.
Both the Senate and the House of Representatives are in recess this week and not set to be back in session until the end of the month.
Iranian lawmakers have urged President Ebrahim Raisi to obtain guarantees from the United States and three European countries that they won’t exit the nuclear deal being renegotiated in Vienna, Iranian state media reported on Sunday.
In a letter to Raisi, they stated that the United States and European parties to the nuclear deal — Britain, France, and Germany — should also guarantee that they would not trigger the “snapback mechanism” under which sanctions on Iran would be immediately reinstated if it violates nuclear compliance.
“We have to learn a lesson from past experiences and put a red line on the national interest by not committing to any agreement without obtaining necessary guarantees first,” lawmakers said in the letter.
The statement was signed by 250 out of 290 Iranian parliamentarians.
It comes as negotiators from Iran and the remaining parties to the agreement — Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China — are working to revive a 2015 deal, which granted Iran sanctions relief in exchange for curbs on its nuclear program.
The United States has participated indirectly in the talks because it withdrew from the deal in 2018 under then-President Donald Trump. President Joe Biden has signaled that he wants to rejoin the agreement.
Iran’s lawmakers also made it a condition that a return to the deal should only go ahead if all sanctions on Iran are lifted.
They also first want to confirm that Iran receives money from its exports, before Tehran returns to nuclear compliance, the letter said.
On February 19, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said that the talks in Vienna have come a long way over the past 10 months and that “all elements for a conclusion of the negotiations are on the table.”
But he also criticized Iran for continuing enrichment while suspending monitoring by the UN nuclear agency.
On the same day, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that it’s up to Western countries to show flexibility and “the ball is now in their court.” He said Iran was “ready to achieve a good deal.”
Information from AP and AFP was used in this report.
Republican lawmakers in several states are scaling back access to government business, extending pandemic-era rules that restrict when journalists can report from the floors of state legislative chambers and, in effect, making it easier to dodge the press.
As the public returns to the corridors of state capitols, new rules approved in Iowa last month and in Utah this week critically limit reporters’ access to lawmakers, sparking an outcry from media organizations and press advocates.
“It is critical that there is some accountability with respect to those who have tremendous power, such as you,” Lauren Gustus, the executive editor of The Salt Lake Tribune, told Utah lawmakers in a committee hearing last week, where she testified against such rules.
These rule changes limit when journalists can work on the floor of the legislature where lawmakers sit, making it easier for elected officials to avoid interacting with the press, even when they take up high-profile topics like election laws, taxes and abortion.
Rules governing where journalists can work vary across the nation’s 50 statehouses. Most allow credentialed reporters to observe from the chamber floors; some allow reporters to ask questions before or after proceedings; others require they remain in press boxes or alcoves separated from lawmakers, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
In states that are now moving to change their procedures, lawmakers argue that creating formal rules allays security concerns and prevents bad actors from disrupting governance. Press advocates say the proposed rules make it more difficult for journalists to ask questions and impede the reporters’ ability to keep tabs on fast-paced statehouse action.
In Iowa, Republican leaders this year did not issue credentials to journalists to work at press benches on the state Senate floor as they had previously. They said the policy change addressed “confusion” because of changing media that now includes blogs and newsletters that identify themselves as the press.
In Utah, reporters are now being required to ask for permission each time they’d like to interview a lawmaker on the Senate floor or in certain adjacent hallways. There and in the Iowa Senate, reporters now must work from a gallery high above the chambers though they can still work from the floor in the House of Representatives.
Under new rules passed through Utah’s Senate and advancing through the House, camera crews will be required to ask for permission to film in certain parts of committee rooms.
In a hearing on the rule last week, Utah lawmakers said daily press conferences and efforts to stream all proceedings online demonstrated their commitment to transparency. They said putting a clear rule on the books would help both lawmakers and the press know what’s allowed.
“The barriers of civility and discourse that have been respected in this state and this country for years and for decades are changing and they’re changing rapidly,” said Utah GOP Sen. Todd Weiler, who supported the rule change, adding that “if they are pushing the barriers, it is nice to have a rule in place.”
In Kansas, new rules from leaders in the state Senate relegate newspaper reporters to the chamber’s gallery, which has made it easier for senators to avoid reporters after sessions. In exceptional circumstances, like when the gallery is filled with other members of the public, journalists are allowed to report from the floor like the rules allowed before.
“Placing restrictions on journalists in the Senate chamber suggests there is something to hide, or that leadership is taking unwarranted and unnecessary retaliation against reporters,” former Kansas lawmaker Steve Morris wrote in an editorial in the Kansas Reflector.
Morris, who led Republicans in the Kansas Senate from 2005 to 2013, said that as a politician and a news consumer he saw the benefits of having journalists able to observe and report from a statehouse floor. When discussions draw considerable public interest, he said, people want to know how their lawmakers are reacting, which at times can mean body language like eye rolls or enthusiastic gestures.
“Reporters are our avenue to see what’s going on,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press.
“Especially when there’s something controversial,” he added. “The session adjourns and members skedaddle out of there rapidly so it’s hard for journalists to get to them, unlike when they’re on the floor they can immediately get to them.”
The new limits come in an environment of increasing attacks on the media and parallel new restrictions placed on journalists covering protests and courtroom proceedings. They also come as states and cities loosen coronavirus restrictions that have returned restaurants, sporting events and offices to pre-pandemic capacity.
Parker Higgins, the advocacy director at the Freedom of The Press Foundation, said the ways transparency and access increased during the pandemic — for example, when courtrooms allowed members of the public to hear and watch trials remotely — were being reversed.
After speaking with reporters in Kansas and Iowa, he said “most say it’s not impossible to do their jobs without floor access. But, in terms of doing your job quickly and effectively, you can’t get that from the public gallery.
Six months after the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, lawmakers have few good options for sending aid to prop up the struggling Afghan economy without enabling the Taliban.
In the almost 20 years the U.S. was involved in Afghanistan, the country depended on foreign aid for more than half its economy. But the U.S. froze most of the country’s $9.4 billion in currency reserves last August to isolate the Taliban after they took control.
“There is frankly moral hazard in putting billions into Afghanistan right now,” Democratic Senator Chris Murphy said in a congressional hearing Wednesday. “We can do our best to route it around the Taliban, but there is no doubt that the partial effect of aid is to save the Taliban from itself. That is deeply distasteful.”
The United Nations issued an appeal to the international community last month for its largest-ever aid ask, saying $4.4 billion was needed as “a full-blown humanitarian catastrophe looms.” According to estimates by the World Food Program, only 2% of Afghans will have enough to eat this winter.
“Six months ago, Afghanistan was a poor country, a very poor country,” David Miliband, president and CEO of the International Rescue Committee, told lawmakers. “Today, Afghanistan is a starving country, not just a poor country. The reason — I’m very sorry to report — the proximate cause of this starvation crisis is the international economic policy, which has been adopted since August and which has cut off financial flows not just to the public sector but in the private sector, in Afghanistan, as well.”
Miliband testified that his staff could confirm media reports that Afghans are selling organs to buy enough to eat amid a fall in currency prices that has dropped the value by at least one-quarter.
Top lawmakers on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee acknowledged that the Afghan people are suffering because of the United States’ concerns about enabling the Taliban’s repressive policies. But many warned of the dangers of sending aid.
“We of course must continue to be vigilant in our efforts to deny the Taliban any resources — financial or otherwise — they can use to conduct further acts of terror,” said Republican Senator Todd Young. “The worst-case scenario involved would be if humanitarian aid were diverted from legitimate recipients towards the Taliban and (their) partners and terror.”
FILE – Hundreds of Afghan men gather to apply for humanitarian aid, in Qala-e-Naw, Afghanistan, Dec. 14, 2021.
The heads of nongovernmental organizations acknowledged the difficulty of easing some U.S. sanctions based on negotiations with the Taliban.
“The (U.S.) Treasury cannot feasibly list every permitted sector in the Afghan economy. Instead, U.S. officials must forbid what is not allowed — for example, arms trafficking,” said Graeme Smith, a consultant with the International Crisis Group.
“Unfortunately, many of these steps require cooperation with the Taliban. That is hard, and it is distasteful, especially as the Taliban continue to flout human rights standards. Months of talks between the Taliban and Western officials have not resulted in much progress when the impasse is partly the Taliban’s fault. They have resisted reasonable demands such as allowing education for girls of all ages. However, the U.S. is also pushing unrealistic goals, such as an inclusive government.”
Smith and Miliband told lawmakers the U.S. could take several steps to ease the humanitarian crisis, including releasing $1.2 billion in the World Bank-managed Afghan Reconstruction Fund to directly pay the salaries of Afghans, clarifying the application of U.S. sanctions in the private sector of Afghanistan’s economy, and releasing private assets while keeping Afghan government assets frozen.
But easing those restrictions could be a tough political argument to U.S. lawmakers weighing the cost of the U.S. effort to defeat the Taliban in Afghanistan in trillions of dollars and thousands of lives lost.
Democratic Senator Jean Shaheen said Wednesday, “We need to provide humanitarian assistance to ensure that the people of Afghanistan, the families in Afghanistan, are not starving. And I understand that that means to some extent, we’ve got to thread the needle. But I really reject the premise that we should enshrine with the Taliban their restrictive relationships with their citizens.”
The Biden administration pledged last month to donate an additional $308 million in humanitarian aid to address the crisis.
In the two years since COVID-19 began ravaging the United States, virtually every aspect of the pandemic has been politicized, often to the detriment of efforts to bring the disease under control and to treat its victims. Now, though, members of Congress are taking the first steps toward a bipartisan effort to understand the pandemic’s origins and to assess the federal government’s response.
The two most senior members of the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions have begun circulating a proposal to create a 12-member commission of private citizens with broad authority to investigate the origins of the disease – and how the Trump and Biden administrations responded to it. The initiative appears to have broad support among members of both parties.
The two lawmakers, Health Committee Chair Patty Murray, a Democrat from Washington, and the committee’s senior Republican, Richard Burr of North Carolina, have modeled the effort on the commission that was created to investigate the origins of the 9/11 terrorist attacks of 2001. That body won bipartisan praise for its exhaustive analysis of the events leading up to the attacks.
The proposal is part of a larger piece of legislation called the “Prepare for and Respond to Existing Viruses, Emerging New Threats, and Pandemics Act,” or the “PREVENT Pandemics Act,” for short. In addition to creating the task force, the bill would expand the capacity of public health agencies to respond to disease outbreaks, boost research and development, and strengthen the supply chain for medical products.
National task force
The panel proposed in the bill would be known as the “National Task Force on the Response of the United States to the COVID-19 Pandemic,” and would have the authority to issue subpoenas to compel testimony and the disclosure of records as necessary for the investigation.
Kristin Urquiza, one of the co-founders of an advocacy group for families affected by the pandemic known as Marked by COVID, told VOA she was encouraged by Murray and Burr’s proposal, calling it the best version of a framework for an investigative panel she has seen so far.
“Marked by COVID has been calling for a commission or a task force for well over a year,” Urquiza said. “It’s a top priority for our families to really ensure that we have an accurate record of what happened and why. Not only so we can have answers as to why our loved ones were lost, but so we can pass on learnings to ourselves and future generations for any mistakes that were made, and so that we can do better next time that there’s a public health crisis.”
FILE – A nurse attaches a ‘COVID Patient’ sticker to the body bag of a patient who died of coronavirus at Providence Holy Cross Medical Center in Los Angeles, on Dec. 14, 2021.
Political minefield
So far, discussion of the pandemic’s origins and the federal response have tended to be highly politicized. In the earliest days of the pandemic, then-President Donald Trump was eager to downplay the severity of the crisis, a stance many of his political supporters adopted.
This helped create a sharp divide in how Republicans and Democrats across the country viewed the federal response to the pandemic.
As COVID-19 deaths in America grew from the thousands to the tens of thousands, Trump made a very public effort to blame China, the country where the disease was first identified, for the global health crisis. Arguments over the degree of China’s responsibility for the spread of the virus have also taken on a sharply partisan tone.
Efforts to blame China
Many Republicans in Congress have thrown their support behind the theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 escaped from a laboratory in China, where the coronavirus was being studied. This theory is supported by the fact that there is a major infectious disease research facility located near the city of Wuhan, where the virus was first detected.
Democrats, on the whole, have been more inclined to back the view put forward by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that the virus migrated into the human population through close contact with wild animals – probably bats – that were already infected with a version of it.
The WHO, however, has sent mixed signals about the origins of the virus. A report issued by the body last year argued that it was extremely unlikely that the virus reached the human population through a laboratory leak. However, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director, said that China refused to share important data from early cases of COVID-19, hampering the ability of the WHO’s investigators to complete a thorough analysis.
In a series of congressional hearings, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the chief medical adviser to President Biden, has been aggressively questioned by Republican members of Congress who have accused him of withholding information about research at the Wuhan institute of Virology that was partially funded by the U.S. government.
For his part, Fauci has publicly supported calls for an investigation into the origin of the virus.
Hope for a balanced inquiry
In the earlier stages of the pandemic, Republicans were suspicious of any commission tasked with investigating the pandemic, out of concern that its findings would be used as a cudgel against the Trump administration.
Urquiza, of Marked by COVID, said that the passage of time has made it less likely that the findings of a committee will be seen as politicized, because both parties can be seen as having some successes and some failures in the COVID-19 response.
“Our worry from day one was that a commission would turn into a witch hunt for either China or President Trump,” she said. “Part of what we’ve seen now, over the course of the last year, is that the Biden administration now has a pandemic track record, and that has opened up the field to allow for both praise and criticism of what has happened.”
