Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. Republican Senator Rand Paul on Wednesday blocked a bid to fast-track a ban of popular Chinese-owned social media app TikTok, which more than 150 million Americans use, citing concerns about free speech and uneven treatment of social media companies.

“I think we should beware of those who use fear to coax Americans to relinquish our liberties,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Every accusation of data gathering that has been attributed to TikTok could also be attributed to domestic big tech companies.”

Republican Senator Josh Hawley had sought unanimous consent for a TikTok ban bill. “It protects the American people and it sends a message to Communist China that you cannot buy us,” Hawley said, adding the app is spying on Americans.

“If Republicans want to continuously lose elections for a generation they should pass this bill to ban TikTok — a social media app used by 150 million people, primarily young Americans,” Paul said on the Senate floor. “Do we really want to emulate Chinese speech bans?… We’re going to be just like China and ban speech we’re afraid of?”

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said last week he expects the house will take up a bill to address TikTok but the timing is unclear. It is also not clear what a final bill to address TikTok might look like.

A small but growing number of Democrats and Republicans have raised concerns, citing free speech and other issues and have objected to legislation targeting TikTok as overly broad.

TikTok Chief Executive Shou Zi Chew appeared before Congress last week and faced tough questions about national security concerns over the ByteDance-owned app.

Democratic Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a TikTok video on Friday opposed a TikTok ban, calling it “unprecedented” and said Congress has not gotten classified TikTok briefings. “It just doesn’t feel right to me,” she said.

Last week, three Democrats in the House of Representatives opposed a TikTok ban, as do free speech groups like the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this month, the Biden administration demanded TikTok’s Chinese owners divest their stakes or face a U.S. ban. Then President Donald Trump’s attempts in 2020 to ban TikTok were blocked by U.S. courts. TikTok says it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

Many Democrats argue Congress should pass comprehensive privacy legislation covering all social media sites, not just TikTok.

Senators Mark Warner, a Democrat, and John Thune, a Republican, have proposed the RESTRICT Act, which now has 22 Senate cosponsors, to give the Commerce Department power to impose restrictions up to and including banning TikTok and other technologies that pose national security risks. It would apply to foreign technologies from China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Venezuela and Cuba.

Paul said the bill “would basically be a limitless authority for the president to ban speech.”

A growing number of conservatives oppose the measure. Former Republican Representative Justin Amash said the “RESTRICT Act isn’t about banning TikTok; it’s about controlling you. It gives broad powers to the executive branch, with few checks, and will be abused in every way you can imagine.”

A Warner spokesperson said, “To be extremely clear, this legislation is aimed squarely at companies like Kaspersky, Huawei and TikTok that create systemic risks to the United States’ national security – not at individual users.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Josie Kao)

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By Andrew Hay

(Reuters) – Republican lawmakers in Kentucky on Wednesday overturned the governor’s veto of a bill to ban transgender youths from gender-affirming healthcare and restrict which toilets they use in public schools, voting in line with a national conservative-led movement.

Both chambers of Kentucky’s general assembly, where Republicans hold large majorities, voted overwhelmingly to override last week’s veto by Democratic Governor Andy Beshear, who is running for reelection in November.

Supporters of the bill said they passed the legislation to protect children from undergoing gender-affirming treatments they would regret later in life.

Beshear said the bill would increase youth suicides and permit excessive government interference in personal healthcare decisions.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Kentucky promised legal action to stop medical sections of the bill taking effect in about three months.

The legislation will let teachers refuse to refer to transgender students by their chosen pronouns, outlaw gender reassignment surgery for minors, stop use of puberty blockers and prohibit gender-affirming hospital services.

The bill is part of a wave of nationwide actions to restrict LGBTQ rights. Measures include bans on discussion of gender identity in schools, clampdowns on drag shows and blocking transgender participation in sports.

West Virginia on Wednesday passed a law banning gender-affirming care for transgender youth after about 10 other states approved laws restricting or outlawing medical treatments for transgender minors.

(Reporting by Andrew Hay in Taos, New Mexico; Editing by Donna Bryson and Leslie Adler)

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By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Senate Energy Committee Chair Joe Manchin said on Wednesday he may go to court after the U.S. Treasury releases guidance later this week on battery sourcing guidance for electric vehicle tax credits.

“If it goes off the rails” and violates the intent of the climate legislation approved in August, “I will do whatever I can – if that means going to court and I can do it, I’d do it,” said Manchin, a Democrat.

Manchin said he is most concerned about how Treasury will classify processing and manufacturing in determining eligibility for $7,500 EV tax credits. Manchin, who has often pushed fossil fuel industry interests in Congress, says he is trying to move the EV battery supply chain from China. His political opponents say he doesn’t like the EV industry.

“Manufacturing is meant to bring manufacturing back to the United States. It’s not basically allowing everyone to put all the parts and build everything you can for that battery somewhere else and then send it here for assembly,” Manchin told reporters.

Reuters reported earlier the Treasury battery sourcing rules for electric vehicle tax credits, due out by Friday, will result in fewer vehicles qualifying for full or partial credits.

The EV rules are part of a $430 billion bill passed by Democrats in August to cut climate emissions and reduce drug costs, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act.

The Treasury declined to comment on Manchin’s remarks.

Under the new rules, 50% of the value of battery components must to be produced or assembled in North America for EV buyers to qualify for $3,750 of the credit, and 40% of the value of critical minerals must be sourced from the United States or a country with which it has a free trade agreement to qualify for another $3,750 credit.

Those quotas rise by 10 percentage points annually.

China dominates the global supply chains of products like EV batteries and solar panels.

Manchin hammered the Biden administration, which he hamstrung in legislative negotiations last year, in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece Wednesday, accusing it of thwarting the bill’s original intent.

“Instead of implementing the law as intended, unelected ideologues, bureaucrats and appointees seem determined to violate and subvert the law to advance a partisan agenda that ignores both energy and fiscal security … The administration is attempting at every turn to implement the bill it wanted, not the bill Congress actually passed.”

Manchin also urged Biden “to sit down with fiscally minded Republicans and Democrats to negotiate common-sense reforms to out-of-control fiscal policy.”

The White House has no immediate comment.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Heather Timmons and Stephen Coates)

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By Nandita Bose

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden will announce new funding to bolster democracies around the world on Wednesday amid criticism his administration has made little progress in advancing human rights and democracy as a focus of its foreign policy.

Biden will announce $690 million to fight corruption, support free and fair elections and advance technologies that support democratic governments at a second White House-led Summit for Democracy, senior administration officials said on Tuesday. He announced over $400 million for similar programs in 2021 when he last held such an event.

Rights advocates say there is little evidence the countries joining the summit have made progress on improving their democracies, and that there is no formal mechanism to hold participants to the modest commitments made at the first meeting even as Biden and South Korea announced plans to host a future third summit.

The world has seen big changes since then with countries emerging from the global pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

More recently, a move by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition government to weaken the power of Israel’s judiciary; Mexico’s move to gut its election oversight body; and India’s decision to disqualify a top opposition political leader have all cast a pall over Biden’s repeated claims that democracies have become stronger.

In addressing the summit on Wednesday, Netanyahu voiced confidence that a political compromise could be reached on the judicial reforms, which he argued could be reconciled with civil liberties even as his opponents have accused him of seeking to curb judicial independence.

The senior administration officials said Biden will look to make the case that the events of the last year have put into stark relief that democratic governments grounded in the rule of law remain the best way to promote peace and prosperity.

“As President Biden has said, we’re currently at an inflection point when it comes to the future of democracy both within the United States and globally,” one of the officials said.

The summit will be co-hosted by the governments of Costa Rica, the Netherlands, South Korea and Zambia. The event involves 120 countries including Taiwan, civil society groups and technology companies.

(Reporting by Nandita Bose in Washington; Additional writing by Susan Heavey; Editing by Michael Perry and Mark Porter)

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By Tim Reid, Alexandra Ulmer and James Oliphant

(Reuters) – The battle for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination has for months been seen as a two-man race: a fight between Donald Trump and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, a rising national star long viewed as the only candidate capable of defeating the former Republican president.

Yet missteps by DeSantis on foreign policy and a doubling down by Trump on politically violent rhetoric in recent days – the type of grievance politics that has alienated some previously loyal Trump supporters – has underscored the volatility of a race still in its earliest stages, party strategists and donors say.

While both Trump and DeSantis, who has not yet declared, remain top contenders for the nomination, both are displaying vulnerabilities that could mean a long and bitter dog fight between both men, but also provide opportunities to other Republican hopefuls.

DeSantis’ muddled messaging on Ukraine and the multiple legal investigations into Trump mean that this year’s primary race “is a vast sea of uncertainty,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist and former DeSantis pollster. “The nomination fight is wide open.”

Recent Republican primary races serve as a reminder of how unpredictable the race could be: Trump, a former reality TV star, was initially dismissed as a longshot candidate before his shock rise to capture the 2016 nomination; Senator John McCain won the nomination in 2008 months after his campaign ran out of money and he was counted out by pollsters.

DeSantis, fresh off a landslide re-election victory as Florida’s governor in November, has cultivated a national profile as a conservative culture warrior who upset liberals by forbidding classroom instruction in Florida about sexual orientation and gender identity.

With polls and interviews showing many Republicans looking for an alternative to Trump, DeSantis’s message in a recent national book tour has been that he can deliver on conservative priorities but without the legal woes, palace intrigue and track record of defeats linked to Trump.

Last week, however, DeSantis was forced to backtrack after calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine just a “territorial dispute.” It was an attempt to appeal to the “America First”, isolationist Republican base but backfired badly, drawing condemnation from many inside his own party.

Trump has also recently stepped up his attacks on DeSantis, who has largely declined to fight back, and has also called for widespread protests and warned of “death and destruction” if he is charged by Manhattan prosecutors investigating an alleged hush money payment to a porn star in 2016.

DeSantis’s Ukraine comments and Trump’s stepped-up attacks on his former protege have unnerved some Republicans, including deep-pocketed donors, who would rather see DeSantis as the nominee because they view Trump as too damaged to win a 2024 general election.

Two longtime and wealthy Republican donors told Reuters that DeSantis’s comments betrayed a lack of national experience and made them concerned that he is not ready for the prime-time exposure of a presidential campaign.

Metals magnate and donor Andy Sabin backed Trump in 2016 and 2020 but is now planning to spend money in the Republican primary on “anybody but Trump.”

Sabin gave $55,000 to DeSantis’ re-election campaign last year, but told Reuters the Ukraine comments shook him. “I’m not happy about it. I want to see how it plays out. It’s certainly going to affect me a lot.”

Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist and longtime critic of Trump, has conducted regular focus groups with Republican voters.

“How good is Ron DeSantis? I think we have just seen nobody is quite sure,” Longwell said.

A source close to DeSantis, who asked to remain unidentified because of the sensitive nature of the topic, said the Florida governor would be “staying the course” in his ramp-up toward a presidential bid. Trump’s attacks are viewed by the DeSantis camp as an attempt to knock him out of the race before it begins in earnest, the source said. 

TRUMP MEDIA FRENZY

In recent days, Trump has strengthened his position in some national primary polls as he has again dominated the news cycle by publicizing what he says is his imminent arrest. He has used the huge media exposure to try to rile up his base.

But Trump’s current advantages of near-universal name recognition, media attention and a core base of supporters could quickly dissipate, said Stu Rothenberg, a non-partisan political analyst.

Political analysts said Trump’s attacks on DeSantis could also hurt him. Enthusiastic crowds of Trump supporters were mostly quiet when he mocked DeSantis at two recent rallies.

The vulnerabilities of the two leading contenders for the nomination could provide openings for other Republican hopefuls, political analysts said.

Trump’s former U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley, the only other big-name candidate officially in the running, and Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, have criticized DeSantis for his Ukraine comments.

For now, despite the volatility, Trump and DeSantis remain the two leading contenders, said David Tamasi, a Republican donor and lobbyist.

“You have two candidates getting 75-80% of the vote,” said Tamasi, who previously backed Trump but is not this time. “It’s ups and downs. Ping pong.”

(Reporting by Tim Reid in Los Angeles, Alexandra Ulmer in San Francisco and James Oliphant in Washington, Editing by Ross Colvin and Alistair Bell)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Democratic U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday called on House Speaker Kevin McCarthy to outline this week the spending cuts Republicans want in exchange for votes to raise the government’s debt ceiling.

Biden urged the top congressional Republican to spell out his proposals before lawmakers leave Washington for a two-week recess set to start on Thursday.

That followed a missive from McCarthy proposing scaling back domestic spending, clawing back unspent COVID-19 relief funds and other changes that he said would save trillions of dollars.

“My hope is that House Republicans can present the American public with your budget plan before the Congress leaves for Easter recess so that we can have an in-depth conversation when you return,” Biden wrote in a letter posted on Twitter.

McCarthy told CNBC earlier that he was prepared to lay out $4 trillion in spending cuts for Biden, if he would agree to meet. Republicans have not yet produced a budget plan of their own and could be weeks or months away from doing so.

McCarthy’s proposals, though lacking detail, paralleled the demands of hard-right House Republicans far more closely than ideas put forward by moderate Republicans.

Democrats said Republicans need to first unite behind a proposal.

Biden, a Democrat, has insisted that Republicans who control the House instead raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling without conditions and produce a fiscal 2024 spending plan before he will engage in talks about spending.

“Your position – if maintained – could prevent America from meeting its obligations and hold dire ramifications for the entire nation,” McCarthy had said earlier on Tuesday.

The political standoff, which has taken hold since Biden and McCarthy held an initial meeting in early February, has raised concerns in the financial markets about a possible U.S. debt default that could cripple the economy.

Republicans have sought to blame Biden, but only Congress has the authority to raise the debt ceiling.

“The only thing missing is a real plan,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech.

Members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus said McCarthy’s letter paralleled their own spending proposals and claimed it showed adherence to a closed-door agreement with conservatives that allowed him to become speaker in January.

“Today’s letter from the speaker to the president represents Speaker McCarthy’s fidelity to that agreement,” said Representative Matt Gaetz, one of 20 hardliners who forced McCarthy to endure 15 floor votes before being elected speaker.

The House Freedom Caucus has called for cutting nondefense discretionary spending to pre-pandemic levels and allowing it to return only to fiscal 2022 levels after a decade. McCarthy said he wanted to reduce “excessive” nondefense spending to “pre-inflation” levels with limited growth in future years.

Both also called for reclaiming unspent COVID-19 funds, imposing work requirements on social programs for the poor, and deregulating the energy sector.

The approach is a far cry from proposals offered by moderate Republicans, who have called for holding government spending in line with inflation, tying the debt ceiling to national output or raising it without conditions.

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Richard Cowan, Kanishka Singh and Susan Heavey; editing by Andy Sullivan, Jonathan Oatis and Chris Reese)

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By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A group of senior Democratic lawmakers will introduce legislation on Wednesday to more closely ensure that U.S. weapons sales to foreign customers do not end up contributing to or facilitating human rights abuses.

The Safeguard Act seeks to codify into law a new Conventional Arms Transfer (CAT) policy introduced last month by Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration to increase the emphasis on human rights concerns, according to information about the legislation seen by Reuters.

The bill is led by Senator Bob Menendez, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Representative Gregory Meeks, the ranking Democrat on the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee. It has four other sponsors in the Senate and five in the House, all Democrats.

“Much like we should be requiring universal background checks before selling weapons of war domestically, we should be prioritizing a government’s human rights record before providing them access to our arms and defense services,” Menendez said in a statement.

The CAT policy covers review of security assistance, government-to-government weapons transfers and licensed commercial sales of U.S.-origin military equipment and services overseen by the State Department as well as the Defense Department and Department of Commerce, including firearms commonly available in the United States.

Defense companies and activists scrutinize such policies for insight into the administration’s posture as it balances commercial interests of exporters like Lockheed Martin Co and Raytheon Technologies against the country’s stated commitment to human rights.

Under U.S. law, the chair and ranking member of the Foreign Relations and Foreign Affairs committees review major weapons transfers. They often take human rights into account and at times seek to delay or block planned sales.

For example, Menendez opposes the sale of Lockheed Martin F-16 aircraft to Turkey for reasons including its record on human rights.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A federal judge has ruled that former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence must testify to a grand jury about conversations he had with former President Donald Trump leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a source familiar with the ruling said on Tuesday.

In a ruling that remains under seal, the judge also said that Pence can still decline to answer questions related to Jan. 6, the source said, adding that Pence can still appeal the ruling. The appeal option is being evaluated, the source said.

The source, confirming reports by CNN and NBC, said the judge’s decision compels Trump’s former vice president, and potential challenger for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024, to appear before the federal grand jury but shields him from testifying about Jan. 6, 2021, itself.

Asked during an interview on Newsmax on Tuesday as to whether he would appeal the order, Pence said there was a limited amount he could say on the proceedings.

“I’m pleased that the court accepted our argument and recognized that the Constitution’s provision about speech and debate does apply to the vice president,” he said.

“But the way they sorted that out and the requirements of my testimony going forward are a subject of our review right now and I’ll have more to say about that in the days ahead.”

In February, a source told Reuters Pence was preparing to resist a grand jury subpoena to secure his testimony.

Ahead of the Jan. 6 events, Trump had repeatedly lambasted Pence, publicly and privately, for refusing to try to prevent Congress from certifying Biden’s win in the 2020 election, sources told Reuters at the time.

Representatives for Special Prosecutor Jack Smith, who is leading the U.S. Department of Justice’s investigation into Trump and his allies’ alleged efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss, could not be immediately reached for comment.

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch, Steve Holland, Kanishka Singh and Susan Heavey in Washington, and Costas Pitas in Los Angeles; Editing by Tomasz Janowski and Stephen Coates)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Republican U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy urged President Joe Biden on Tuesday to begin budget talks to raise the U.S. government’s borrowing limit, as Democrats pressed him to provide specific spending-cut proposals.

In a letter to Biden, McCarthy proposed scaling back domestic spending, clawing back unspent COVID-19 relief funds and other changes that he said would save trillions of dollars. But his Republicans have not yet produced a budget plan of their own and could be weeks or months away from doing so.

The top Republican in the House of Representatives told CNBC that he was prepared to lay out $4 trillion in spending cuts for Biden, if he would agree to meet.

McCarthy’s proposals, though lacking detail, paralleled the demands of hard-right House Republicans far more closely than ideas put forward by moderate Republicans.

Democrats said Republicans need to first unite behind a proposal.

“It’s time for them to put out a budget,” White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Biden, a Democrat, has insisted that Republicans who control the House instead raise the $31.4 trillion debt ceiling without conditions and produce a fiscal 2024 spending plan before he will engage in talks about spending.

“Your position – if maintained – could prevent America from meeting its obligations and hold dire ramifications for the entire nation,” McCarthy said in the letter.

The political standoff, which has taken hold since Biden and McCarthy held an initial meeting in early February, has raised concerns in the financial markets about a possible U.S. debt default that could cripple the economy.

Republicans have sought to blame Biden, but only Congress has the authority to raise the debt ceiling.

“The only thing missing is a real plan,” Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech.

Members of the hardline House Freedom Caucus said McCarthy’s letter paralleled their own spending proposals and claimed it showed adherence to a closed-door agreement with conservatives that allowed him to become speaker in January.

“Today’s letter from the speaker to the president represents Speaker McCarthy’s fidelity to that agreement,” said Representative Matt Gaetz, one of 20 hardliners who forced McCarthy to endure 15 floor votes before being elected speaker.

The House Freedom Caucus has called for cutting nondefense discretionary spending to pre-pandemic levels and allowing it to return only to fiscal 2022 levels after a decade. McCarthy said he wanted to reduce “excessive” nondefense spending to “pre-inflation” levels with limited “out-year” growth.

Both also called for reclaiming unspent COVID-19 funds, imposing work requirements on social programs for the poor, and deregulating the energy sector.

The approach is a far cry from proposals offered by moderate Republicans, who have called for holding government spending in line with inflation, tying the debt ceiling to national output or raising it without conditions.

(Reporting by David Morgan; additional reporting by Richard Cowan and Susan Heavey; editing by Andy Sullivan and Jonathan Oatis)

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By James Oliphant

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, expected to be a top contender for the 2024 U.S. Republican presidential nomination, will travel to Israel next month as the country is being riven by a crisis that has led to widespread protests.

The trip, which is being billed by DeSantis’ office as a trade mission, follows a longstanding tradition for Republicans seeking the White House but comes at a particularly volatile moment.

Israel has been beset by unprecedented protests and worker strikes against plans by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to overhaul the judiciary. Netanyahu on Monday said he would delay the overhaul in order to open talks with the plan’s opponents.

DeSantis, who likely will announce a presidential run in the coming weeks, will speak on April 27 to a crowd of about 400 attendees, including about 120 U.S. Jewish philanthropists, according to a release from the Jerusalem Post and the Museum of Tolerance Jerusalem, which are sponsoring the event.

“At a time of unnecessarily strained relations between Jerusalem and Washington, Florida serves as a bridge between the American and Israeli people,” DeSantis said in the release.

As Florida’s governor, DeSantis has vowed to be a staunch ally of Israel and led a trade delegation there in 2019. But his recent sojourn into foreign policy as a potential presidential hopeful has been problematic.

Earlier this month, he dismissed the war in Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” earning criticism from some fellow Republicans. He subsequently took a tougher stance toward Russian President Vladimir Putin, labeling him a “war criminal” in an interview.

The wobble concerned some prominent donors in the party who were hopeful DeSantis can derail former President Donald Trump’s bid for another term. [L1N36005H]

The White House said it had no comment on DeSantis’ plans, while maintaining administration officials have been regularly in touch with the Israeli government during the crisis.

DeSantis has said he supported the relocation of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in 2018 and has been a strong supporter of Netanyahu. In a speech to Jewish conservatives last November, he referred to Israel-held territories in the West Bank as “disputed” not “occupied” in contravention of official U.S. policy.

DeSantis is widely expected to enter the 2024 race once the Florida Legislature concludes its current session in early May.

(Reporting by James Oliphant, additional reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Alistair Bell)

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