White House Disavows Senator's Call for Assassination of Putin

The Biden administration is not advocating for regime change in Russia, the White House said Friday, after a U.S. senator called for Russians to assassinate President Vladimir Putin.

“That is not the position of the U.S. government and certainly not a statement you’ll hear from — coming from the mouth of — anybody working for the administration,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in response to a question from Voice of America.

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, suggested in a televised interview Thursday evening that “somebody in Russia” should assassinate Putin. He repeated his statement Friday in another televised appearance on Fox News Channel.

“How does this end? Somebody in Russia has to step up to the plate … and take this guy out,” Graham told Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Following the interview, Graham posted on Twitter, “The only people who can fix this are the Russian people.”

“Is there a Brutus in Russia? Is there a more successful Colonel Stauffenberg in the Russian military?” the senator wrote. Marcus Junius Brutus assassinated Roman ruler Julius Caesar, while German army officer Claus von Stauffenberg tried but failed to assassinate German leader Adolf Hitler in July 1944.

Russia’s ambassador to the United States, Anatoly Antonov, called Graham’s comments “unacceptable and outrageous” and said they expressed “off the scale” hatred in the United States toward Russia.

He demanded “official explanations and a strong condemnation of the criminal statements.”

U.S. lawmakers, both Democrats and Republicans, also criticized Graham’s comments.

Texas Republican Senator Ted Cruz called Graham’s proposal “an exceptionally bad idea,” while Democratic Reprepresentative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota tweeted: “I really wish our members of Congress would cool it and regulate their remarks as the administration works to avoid WWIII.”

Graham introduced a resolution in Congress condemning Putin and his military commanders for committing “war crimes” and “crimes against humanity” in Ukraine.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse.

Race Excluded as White House Rolls Out Climate Justice Screening Tool

The Biden administration has released a screening tool to help identify disadvantaged communities long plagued by environmental hazards, but it won’t include race as a factor in deciding where to devote resources.

Administration officials told reporters Friday that excluding race will make projects less likely to draw legal challenges and will be easier to defend, even as they acknowledged that race has been a major factor in terms of who experiences environmental injustice.

The decision was harshly challenged by members of the environmental justice community.

“It’s a major disappointment and it’s a major flaw in trying to identify those communities that have been hit hardest by pollution,” said Robert Bullard, a professor of urban planning and environmental policy at Texas Southern University in Houston and a member of the White House Environmental Justice Advisory Council.

President Joe Biden has made combating climate change a priority of his administration and pledged in a sweeping executive order to “deliver environmental justice in communities all across America.” The order, signed his first week in office, sets a goal that the 40% of overall benefits from climate and environment investments would go to disadvantaged communities. The tool is a key component for carrying out that so-called Justice40 Initiative.

Brenda Mallory, chair of the White House’s Council on Environmental Quality, said the tool will help direct federal investments in climate, clean energy and environmental improvements to communities “that have been left out and left behind for far too long.”

Catherine Coleman Flowers, a member of the advisory council who served on a working group that gave the Biden administration recommendations for the tool, said she agrees with the move to exclude race as an indicator.

She said that this tool is a good start that hopefully will improve with time and that it’s better than creating a tool that includes race as a factor and then gets struck down by the Supreme Court. She said, “race is a factor, but race isn’t the only factor.”

“Being marginalized in other ways is a factor,” she said.

The screening tool uses 21 factors, including air pollution, health outcomes and economic status, to identify communities that are most vulnerable to environmental and economic injustice.

But the omission of race as a factor goes against a deep body of scientific research showing that race is the greatest determinant of who experiences environmental harm, environmental justice experts pointed out.

“This was a political decision,” said Sacoby Wilson, associate professor at the University of Maryland School of Public Health. “This was not a scientific decision or a data-driven decision.” Wilson has studied the distribution of environmental pollutants and helped develop mapping tools like the one the Council on Environmental Quality released Friday.

This isn’t the first such tool to exist in the United States, or even in the federal government. California, Maryland, Michigan and New Jersey have had tools like this for years. And the Environmental Protection Agency has a similar tool, EJ Screen. Many of those screening tools include some information about the racial makeup of communities along with environmental and health data.

The public has 60 days to use the tool and provide feedback on it. The Council on Environmental Quality also announced Friday that the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine are working on launching a study of existing tools.

White House Prepares for Transition to Non-Crisis Stage of COVID Pandemic

Members of the White House COVID-19 Response Team Wednesday said they are cautiously optimistic about the trajectory of COVID-19 cases in the United States and the White House is preparing for the non-crisis stage of the pandemic.

During a virtual briefing Wednesday, U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said the daily average of new COVID-19 cases was down 40% over the past seven days. She said hospitalizations dropped by 28% and deaths were down 9.5%.

Walensky told reporters the CDC was gathering community health data and said its public health guidance regarding wearing masks “would be updated soon.” Last week, Walensky said COVID-19 hospitalization and death numbers weren’t yet low enough to warrant altering recommendations.

But the CDC director explained Wednesday that while case numbers have been steadily trending downward, community spread remains substantial or high in 97% of U.S. counties. She said the CDC’s most critical concern remains severity of disease, which leads to hospitalization and threats to hospital capacity.

Walensky also said the availability and access to vaccines and treatments will factor into when and whether CDC guidelines can be modified or adjusted.

She said most states and municipalities announcing plans to ease their restrictions are doing so in phases, with most saying they will begin lifting their mask rules by the end of February or early March. Walensky said she anticipates possible CDC guideline updates to “intersect.”

Meanwhile, White House COVID-19 Response Team Coordinator Jeff Zients said the White House has so far distributed 200 million free individual at-home COVID-19 tests around the country. He said the White House has another 800 million on hand for U.S. residents who want them.

Biden Orders Release of Trump White House Logs to Congress

WASHINGTON — 

President Joe Biden is ordering the release of Trump White House visitor logs to the House committee investigating the riot of Jan. 6, 2021, once more rejecting former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege.

The committee has sought a trove of data from the National Archives, including presidential records that Trump had fought to keep private. The records being released to Congress are visitor logs showing appointment information for individuals who were allowed to enter the White House on the the day of the insurrection.

In a letter sent Monday to the National Archives, White House counsel Dana Remus said Biden had considered Trump’s claim that because he was president at the time of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, the records should remain private, but decided that it was “not in the best interest of the United States” to do so.

She also noted that as a matter of policy, the Biden administration “voluntarily discloses such visitor logs on a monthly basis,” as did the Obama administration, and that the majority of the entries over which Trump asserted the claim would be publicly released under the current policy.

A Trump spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the decision.

FILE – President Donald Trump holds up papers as he speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House on April 20, 2020, in Washington.

The Presidential Records Act mandates that records made by a sitting president and his staff be preserved in the National Archives, and an outgoing president is responsible for turning over documents to the agency when leaving office. Trump tried but failed to withhold White House documents from the House committee in a dispute that was decided by the Supreme Court.

Biden has already made clear that he is not invoking executive privilege concerning the congressional investigation unless he absolutely must. Biden has waived that privilege for much other information requested by the committee, which is going through the material and obtaining documents and testimony from witnesses, including some uncooperative ones.

The committee is focused on Trump’s actions from Jan. 6, when he waited hours to tell his supporters to stop the violence and leave the Capitol. Investigators are also interested in the organization and financing of a Washington rally the morning of the riot, when Trump told supporters to “fight like hell.” Among the unanswered questions is how close organizers of the rally coordinated with White House officials.

Investigators also are seeking communications between the National Archives and Trump’s aides about 15 boxes of records that the agency recovered from Trump at his Florida resort and are trying to learn what they contained.

Meanwhile, White House call logs obtained so far by the House committee do not list calls made by Trump as he watched the violence unfold on television on Jan. 6, nor do they list calls made directly to the president.

That lack of information about Trump’s personal calls is a particular challenge as the investigators work to discern what happened what the then-president was doing in the White House as supporters violently beat police, broke into the Capitol and interrupted the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden’s election victory.

There are several possible explanations for omissions in the records, which do not reflect conversations that Trump had on Jan. 6 with multiple Republican lawmakers, for example. Trump was known to use a personal cell phone or he could have had a phone passed to him by an aide. The committee is also continuing to receive records from the National Archives and other sources, which could produce additional information.

Trump Took Kim 'Love Letters,' Government Records from White House

Washington — 

The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration retrieved multiple boxes of records — including “love letters” from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un — from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort that had been improperly removed from the White House, a report said Monday.

The documents and mementos — which included correspondence from former U.S. President Barack Obama — should have been turned over at the end of Trump’s term under the Presidential Records Act.

But the agency did not get hold of them until last month, according to The Washington Post, citing unnamed sources. A former Trump aide quoted by the paper said they didn’t think Trump had acted with criminal intent.

The former president, waxing rhapsodic about his relationship with Kim, told a West Virginia rally in 2018: “We fell in love. No, really. He wrote me beautiful letters.”

The comment prompted the media, as well as Trump supporters and opponents alike, to dub the unusual correspondence the Trump-Kim “love letters.”

The recovery of the boxes has raised questions about Trump’s adherence to presidential records laws enacted after the 1970s Watergate scandal that require Oval Office occupants to preserve records related to administration activity.

Trump lost his bid last month to stop the Archives from releasing diaries, visitor logs, speech drafts and other White House documents to the House committee investigating the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.

Some of the papers handed over had been “torn up by former President Trump” and taped back together, the Archives revealed, adding that it had also received a number of records that were still in pieces.

“It’s all a pristine example of Trump’s approach to the Presidency, namely that the vast power exists for him and not for the American people, to whom these records in fact belong,” former deputy assistant attorney general Harry Litman said on Twitter.

AFP reached out to the National Archives and Trump’s office for comment but there was no immediate response.

White House Dismissive of Putin–Xi Meeting

The White House dismissed a Friday meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin where the two leaders unveiled a strategic alliance aimed at countering the United States. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.  

Bidens Welcome Cat Named Willow to White House

President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden have finally added the long-promised cat to their pet family.

Her name is Willow, and she’s a 2-year-old, green-eyed, gray and white farm cat from Pennsylvania.

“Willow is settling into the White House with her favorite toys, treats, and plenty of room to smell and explore,” said Michael LaRosa, the first lady’s spokesperson.

Jill Biden had said after Joe Biden was elected in November 2020 that they would bring a kitty to the White House, but her arrival had been delayed. Last month, the White House said the cat would come in January.

The first lady named Willow after her hometown of Willow Grove, Pennsylvania.

The short-haired tabby made quite an impression on Jill Biden after jumping up on stage and interrupting her remarks during a 2020 campaign stop in Pennsylvania, LaRosa said.

“Seeing their immediate bond, the owner of the farm knew that Willow belonged with Dr. Biden,” he said.

The White House hasn’t had a feline resident since India, President George W. Bush’s cat.

Willow joins Commander, a German shepherd puppy Joe Biden introduced in December as a birthday gift from the president’s brother James Biden and his wife, Sara.

The Bidens had two other German shepherds, Champ and Major, at the White House before Commander.

But Major, a 3-year-old rescue dog, started behaving aggressively after he arrived in January 2021, including a pair of biting incidents. The White House had said Major was still adjusting to his new home, and he was sent back to the Bidens’ Delaware home for training.

The Bidens, after consulting with dog trainers, animal behaviorists and veterinarians, decided to follow the experts’ collective recommendation and send Major to live in a quieter environment with family friends, LaRosa said last month.

Champ died in June at age 13.

Monkey with white eye circles among 224 species discovered in Greater Mekong | Main | Spanish edition

A monkey with broad white rings around its eyes, a devil-horned newt and the world’s first succulent bamboo are among the 224 new species of fauna and flora discovered in the Greater Mekong region in 2020, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said on Wednesday .

In its annual report, which was not released last year due to the coronavirus pandemic, the conservation group highlights the discovery of a new mammal, 35 reptiles, 17 amphibians, 16 fishes and 155 plants and trees in this area of ​​rich biodiversity that includes Myanmar , Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam.

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White House Girds for Possible Russia Action in Ukraine

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Washington has put 8,500 military personnel on heightened alert for possible deployment to Europe and will evacuate some embassy personnel from Ukraine, as tensions rise between Russia and NATO countries over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s continued mobilization of troops near the Ukrainian border. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.