Politics

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The chair of a U.S. House of Representatives panel wants TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew to address questions next week about the popular Chinese-owned video app’s efforts to protect children from inappropriate content and potential exploitation.

Chew will be appearing for the first time before Congress when he testifies before the House Energy and Commerce Committee on March 23.

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers, a Republican, said Thursday lawmakers “need to know what actions the company is taking to keep our kids safe from online and offline harms.”

McMorris Rodgers and other Republicans in December wrote TikTok saying said “many children are exposed to non-stop offerings of inappropriate content that TikTok’s algorithm force-feeds to them.” They also raised concerns that TikTok livestreamed events allow adult TikTok users to offer monetary rewards to “persuade children to perform sexually suggestive acts.”

TikTok, owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, said the Biden administration had threatened to ban the app in the United States if its Chinese owners did not sell their stakes in the company.

“Americans deserve to know the extent to which their privacy is jeopardized and their data is manipulated by ByteDance-owned TikTok’s relationship with China,” she added. The U.S. government has raised concerns that TikTok’s user data could be passed on to China’s government.

TikTok, which did not immediately comment, said earlier this month it is developing a tool that will allow parents to prevent their teens from viewing content containing certain words or hashtags on the short-form video app.

TikTok announced new features to help users limit the amount of time spent on the app. Accounts belonging to users under 18 will automatically have a time limit of one hour per day, and teens will need to enter a passcode to continue using the app.

TikTok and the Biden administration have been negotiating for more than two years on data security requirements. TikTok said it has spent more than $1.5 billion on rigorous data security efforts and rejects spying allegations.

The Biden administration demand for divestiture was the most dramatic in a series of recent steps by U.S. officials and legislators.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Eric Beech

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The Atlanta grand jury that probed ex-President Donald Trump’s 2020 election meddling heard a taped telephone call he placed to Georgia’s Republican House leader seeking to reverse Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in that swing state, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported on Wednesday.

The existence of such a recording, or that it was played for the 23-member special grand jury during the course of its eight-month investigation, has not been previously reported.

Then-Georgia House Speaker David Ralston, since deceased, told local media in December 2020 that Trump had called him the day before asking him to convene a special session of the state legislature to overturn the presidential election results in Georgia.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said it learned that a recording of the Trump-Ralston call existed from the newspaper’s own recent exclusive interview of five of the grand jurors who said they had heard it.

The newspaper quoted one of the panelists it interviewed as saying that Ralston “basically cut the president off” without making any specific promises, telling Trump, “‘I will do everything in my power that I think is appropriate.’”

“He just basically took the wind of the sails,” the juror told the newspaper, recounting that Trump then thanked Ralston, which at that point was “all the president could say.”

Ralston and other state legislative leaders never called a special session, and the Georgia House speaker himself testified before the special Fulton County grand jury in July 2022, according to local media accounts. Ralston died about four months later, in November.

Unlike evidence and testimony examined in open court by trial juries in the United States, the proceedings of grand juries, which play a role in bringing criminal charges through indictments, are generally closed to the public.

The George elections grand jury also is known to have examined a previously disclosed call Trump made on Jan. 2, 2021, to then-Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger falsely claiming that the November election results were fraudulent.

In a recording of that call, which has been widely available to the public, Trump is heard asking Raffensperger to “find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have, because we won the state.”

The Wall Street Journal has posted a recording of yet another phone conversation Trump had with Raffensperger’s chief investigator at the time, Frances Watson, who was conducting an audit of about 15,000 ballot signatures, urging her to find the “dishonesty” that he claimed without evidence had cost him the election.

The Journal-Constitution said the five grand jurors it interviewed – three men and two women – spoke on condition of anonymity to protect their safety and privacy, and declined to discuss parts of its final report that remain under seal.

That report, submitted to the Fulton County district attorney in January before the panel was dissolved, included who the grand jury recommended should be indicted.

In a previous interview with the Journal-Constitution, the jury foreperson, Emily Kohrs, said, “it’s not a short list” when asked how many individuals the panel recommended be criminally charged.

The special grand jury, unlike a regular grand jury, was not empowered to issue indictments, only recommendations, and the decision on whether to press charges ultimately rests with the district attorney, Fani Willis.

(Reporting by Eric Beech in Washington; Writing by Steve Gorman; Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A Republican senator accused Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Thursday of lying about whether President Joe Biden was willing to meet with Republicans to discuss Social Security, a break in decorum that drew an admonishment from the panel’s chairman.

Senator Bill Cassidy repeatedly told Yellen during a Senate Finance Committee hearing that Biden has not been willing to meet with a bipartisan group of senators to address problems with Social Security.

“Why doesn’t the President care?” Cassidy asked.

“He cares very deeply – ” Yellen began to answer.

“Then where is his plan?” Cassidy persisted.

“He stands ready to work with – ” Yellen offered.

“That’s a lie,” Cassidy said.

Yellen later finished saying that Biden stands ready to work with Congress to address future shortfalls in Social Security, which Cassidy dismissed as “empirically” not true.

The exchange was a departure from the decorum usually often upheld in the Senate, and the respect typically afforded to Yellen, a former Federal Reserve chair.

“Accusing witnesses of lying is over the line,” the committee’s Democratic chairman, Ron Wyden, admonished Cassidy.

Cassidy replied he wasn’t accusing the Treasury secretary of lying and understood she was repeating what she had been told.

Later, another Republican senator, Ron Johnson, exhibited impatience with Yellen. Johnson asked Yellen how much the total deficits were over the 10-year period covered in Biden’s budget. When Yellen paused to look at some documents, Johnson quipped, “You don’t know that off the top of your head?”

(Reporting by Doina Chiacu; Editing by Nick Zieminski)

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By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) – New York’s attorney general urged a state judge to reject Donald Trump’s bid to delay her civil fraud case against him, and said the former U.S. president might use his 2024 White House run as an excuse for further delay.

In a Wednesday night court filing, Attorney General Letitia James said her office had provided Trump and other defendants with an “enormous quantity” of material, including 1.7 million documents and interview transcripts for 56 witnesses.

She said that negates their plea for an extra six months to gather evidence to defend themselves adequately at trial, now scheduled for Oct. 2, and accused them of being slow to conduct their own witness depositions.

“The record defendants have and are compiling is more than sufficient to afford them due process and prevent the trial from becoming a game of surprise,” James said.

“When the calendar turns over into 2024, Donald J. Trump will be in the midst of a campaign for President,” she added. “Defendants have used his campaign as a reason for delay in both 2016 and 2020. There is no reason to believe 2024 will be any different.”

Lawyers for the defendants did not immediately respond on Thursday to requests for comment.

Arthur Engoron, the judge who oversees the case, has scheduled a March 21 hearing to consider the trial schedule.

James sued Trump, three of his adult children, the Trump Organization and others last September, following a three-year probe.

The $250 million lawsuit concerns an alleged decade-long scheme to manipulate more than 200 asset valuations and Trump’s net worth, to win better terms from banks and insurers.

Trump, a Republican, has called James’ case a partisan witch hunt. James is a Democrat.

The case is separate from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s criminal probe into a hush money payment to keep porn star Stormy Daniels quiet before the 2016 presidential election about her alleged affair with Trump.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Mark Potter)

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By Moira Warburton

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Congress needs to act on bipartisan legislation strengthening banking industry controls, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said on Wednesday, amid global worries over the financial soundness of Credit Suisse and the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

“We need strong legislation and hopefully we can put something together that’s bipartisan,” Schumer told reporters following a closed policy lunch with his fellow Democrats.

Schumer’s comments came in response to a question about whether he would support legislation spearheaded by Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren, which would reinstate banking regulations and oversight rolled back under former President Donald Trump.

He declined to say whether he would support Warren’s bill.

Calls for increased oversight of the U.S. banking industry grew as fallout from Friday’s collapse of Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) widened.

Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sherrod Brown, however, downplayed the likelihood of Congress passing a “significant” banking bill anytime soon. “There are people who will introduce bills, but I cannot imagine — with the hold that the banks have on Republicans in Congress — that we could pass anything significant,” Brown, a Democrat, told reporters.

Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House of Representatives and Democrats do not control enough votes in the Senate to advance legislation without Republican cooperation.

Brown said his committee would hold oversight hearings. “We’ll bring in the regulators, for sure,” he said.

Senators are largely unified on demanding answers from regulators about the SVB collapse.

“Most of our members want to have the question answered by the regulators, what happened? How come they were asleep at the switch and didn’t see this coming?” Senator John Thune, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican, told reporters.

He disagreed with Schumer on whether more legislation was necessary.

“I think it would be premature to start talking about solutions before we fully define the problem,” he said.

Compounding fears of contagion from SVB’s collapse is Credit Suisse, one of 30 global financial institutions considered systematically important by the international Financial Stability Board.

On Wednesday stock prices of the Swiss bank plunged after its largest shareholder, the Saudi National Bank, said it could not provide further financial support.

The news re-ignited jitters among investors about the resilience of the global banking system.

“Everybody is concerned” about the impact of Credit Suisse on the U.S. bank system, Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent who caucuses with Democrats, said on Wednesday.

“I don’t see this being widespread but it’s very, very important to stay on top of it and the administration is,” Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow, a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, told Reuters. “Nobody takes this lightly and they’re monitoring all of this very closely.”

(Reporting by Moira Warburton and Richard Cowan in Washington; Editing by Mark Porter and Nick Zieminski)

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By Luc Cohen and Karen Freifeld

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Stormy Daniels, a porn star who says she had an affair with Donald Trump, on Wednesday spoke with prosecutors investigating the former U.S. president’s role in a payment for her silence about the sexual liaison before the 2016 election, her lawyer said.

Trump, who has denied having an affair with Daniels, is seeking the Republican nomination for the presidency in 2024. The Manhattan District Attorney’s office has given him a chance to testify before the grand jury probing the payment, a sign prosecutors may be close to bringing charges against him.

“Stormy responded to questions and has agreed to make herself available as a witness, or for further inquiry if needed,” Clark Brewster, Daniels’ lawyer, wrote on Twitter.

In a tweet, Daniels thanked Brewster “for helping me in our continuing fight for truth and justice.”

A spokeswoman for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment.

Susan Necheles, a lawyer for Trump, did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Daniels’ talks with prosecutors. Trump has denied the affair ever happened and has called Bragg’s probe a politically-motivated witch hunt.

Joseph Tacopina, another Trump lawyer, said earlier this week Trump did not plan to appear before the grand jury, but that a decision had not yet been made.

The investigation centers on a $130,000 payment Daniels – whose real name is Stephanie Clifford – received in October 2016 from Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer.

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to campaign finance violations tied to his arranging hush payments to Daniels and another woman, among other crimes. He has said Trump directed him to make the payment.

Cohen testified before the grand jury on Monday and again on Wednesday, according to his lawyer, Lanny Davis. Grand jury proceedings are not public.

(Reporting by Luc Cohen and Karen Freifeld in New York; Editing by David Gregorio)

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MEXICO CITY (Reuters) – A U.S. judge on Wednesday sentenced a former Mexican governor to nine years in prison for accepting at least $3.5 million in illegal bribe money and using it to fraudulently purchase property in the United States.

According to a court filing, Tomas Yarrington, a former governor of northern Tamaulipas state, was sentenced to nine years in prison and three years of supervised release.

The 66-year-old had pleaded guilty in March 2021, three years after he was extradited to the United States from Italy while traveling under an assumed name and false passport, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

“Even if you are governor of a Mexican state, we will not stand idly by when you use your position to wrongfully fill your pockets and violate the laws of the United States,” U.S. Attorney Alamdar Hamdani said in a statement.

“Today’s prison sentence for Yarrington concludes a multi-year, multi-agency international investigation spanning two continents concluding in bringing a corrupt politician to justice.”

Hamdani’s office said Yarrington had used the bribe money, obtained when he was governor between 1999 and 2005, in the United States by purchasing beachfront condominiums, large estates, commercial developments, airplanes and luxury vehicles.

According to the filing, several other charges including bank fraud and conspiracy to import cocaine and marijuana into the United States were dismissed. A court summary suggested Yarrington may have laundered as much as $9.5 million.

(Reporting by Sarah Morland; Editing by David Gregorio)

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By Gabriella Borter and Brendan Pierson

AMARILLO, Texas (Reuters) -A U.S. judge on Wednesday questioned lawyers for President Joe Biden’s administration on whether the federal regulatory approval given to the abortion pill mifepristone 22 years ago was proper as he considered a request by anti-abortion groups to ban sales of the drug nationwide.

U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk during a hearing in Amarillo also pressed the groups, led by the Texas-based Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, to explain how he could reverse approval of a long-established drug.

The judge raised the possibility of a more limited ruling, keeping the drug on the market but re-imposing some restrictions lifted by Biden’s administration, including requiring it to be dispensed in person rather than by mail. Kacsmaryk, appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump, said he would rule “as soon as possible.”

It is shaping up as the most consequential abortion case since the U.S. Supreme Court, powered by its conservative majority, last year overturned its landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling that had recognized a constitutional right to terminate a pregnancy.

The anti-abortion groups sued the U.S. Food and Drug Administration in November, contending the agency used an improper process when it approved mifepristone in 2000 and did not adequately consider the drug’s safety when used by girls under age 18.

The plaintiffs are asking Kacsmaryk for a preliminary order halting sales of mifepristone nationwide – even in states where abortion is legal – while their lawsuit proceeds.

Twelve of the 50 states now ban abortion outright while many others prohibit it after a certain length of pregnancy, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a research organization that supports abortion rights. A ruling against the FDA would hinder abortion access in every state as medication abortion – with mifepristone part of a two-pill regimen – accounts for more than half of U.S. abortions.

The judge heard arguments in a windowless courtroom in a small courthouse in the northwest corner of Texas for more than four hours, listening intently and asking questions.

Erik Baptist, a lawyer with the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom representing the plaintiffs, said the scope of the judge’s ruling should be “universal and nationwide.”

The judge questioned lawyers for Biden’s administration on how the FDA accelerated its approval for mifepristone under a process typically used for drugs to treat HIV infection and other life-threatening illnesses. The administration has said that the drug’s approval was well supported by science, and that the challenge comes much too late.

‘PUBLIC HARM’

Lawyers for the U.S. Justice Department and an attorney for mifepristone’s manufacturer, Danco Laboratories, argued that the plaintiffs had no standing to bring the case, and said mifepristone has an impressive safety and efficacy record.

“An injunction here would upend the status quo. An injunction would cause significant public harm,” Justice Department attorney Julie Straus Harris told the judge.

Harris also argued that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would undercut trust in the FDA, the agency charged with signing off on the safety of food products and drugs in the United States. Harris said such a ruling would also increase the burden on surgical abortion clinics, already overcrowded as they admit patients from states where clinics have closed in the wake of last year’s Supreme Court decision.

Mifepristone is available under the brand name Mifeprex and as a generic. Used in conjunction with another drug called misoprostol, it is approved to terminate a pregnancy within the first 10 weeks of a pregnancy. The FDA in January said that the government for the first time will allow mifepristone to be dispensed at retail pharmacies.

Major medical organizations, including the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have weighed in on the side of the FDA, saying mifepristone “has been thoroughly studied and is conclusively safe.”

Abortion rights supporters, contending that the lawsuit is a baseless attempt to slash abortion access, protested outside the courthouse on Wednesday morning. One dressed as a kangaroo and carried a gavel, suggesting that the hearing was a “kangaroo court.”

By suing in Amarillo, where the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine had been incorporated just three months earlier, the plaintiffs ensured that the case would go before Kacsmaryk, a conservative former Christian activist. His courthouse has become a favored destination for Republicans seeking to challenge aspects of Democrat Biden’s agenda.

Kacsmaryk’s eventual ruling is likely to be appealed immediately by the losing side to the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, with the U.S. Supreme Court a possible next step after that.

The 5th Circuit has a conservative reputation, with more than two-thirds of its judges appointed by Republican presidents. The Supreme Court has a 6-3 conservative majority.

(Reporting Gabriella Borter in Amarillo, Texas and Brendan Pierson in New York; Additional reporting by Liliana Salgado in Amarillo; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi)

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By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Senate Budget Committee begins debate on Wednesday over Democratic President Joe Biden’s $6.8 trillion budget proposal, as the collapse of a pair of banks threatens to ratchet higher the stakes of a partisan standoff on spending and debt.

Biden’s proposal is an early step in a negotiation over fiscal 2024 spending with Republicans who control the U.S. House of Representatives, who say they will refuse to raise the nation’s $31.4 trillion debt ceiling unless Democrats agree to sharp spending cuts.

Failure to do so could lead to an unprecedented default by the federal government which would rattle the global economy and markets, which have been volatile following the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank.

White House budget director Shalanda Young will testify about the Biden plan, which calls for nearly $5 trillion in tax increases on the wealthy and large corporations to help offset the deficit and shore up Medicare.

Republicans rejected the proposal outright, with the hardline House Freedom Caucus last week issuing a counterproposal that includes a near freeze on discretionary spending and an end to multiple Biden programs.

“I want to be clear: America is in real danger due to decades of gross fiscal mismanagement, but President Biden has done nothing but make this situation worse,” Republican Senator Rick Scott said in an open letter to Young on Tuesday which pelted her with questions on inflation, job market participation, interest costs, the future of Social Security and other issues.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Sheldon Whitehouse and other Senate Democrats have said Biden’s plan would lower costs for households, reduce deficits by nearly $3 trillion, protect the Social Security retirement program and extend the life of the Medicare health insurance program.

“Republicans have pledged to use draconian cuts to pro-growth investments for everyday Americans,” Whitehouse said in a statement on Tuesday.

Leaders of both parties say they will not cut Social Security and Medicare which currently account for about one- third of the federal budget. Not touching those, or failing to cut defense spending, leaves little chance of addressing the government’s budget deficit.

A presentation by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office to House lawmakers last week laid out options for addressing the deficit and projected that spending cuts would have substantially less effect on the deficit than increased tax collections.

Republicans who control the House of Representatives are working to release their own budget in coming weeks, which lawmakers have said could contain up to $150 billion in cuts for domestic nondefense spending. Republicans are determined to avoid tax hikes and to preserve tax cuts for the wealthy implemented under former President Donald Trump.

Forecasters warned on Tuesday that the bank collapses could push closer the deadline to raise the debt ceiling or risk default.

Experts had recently said the Treasury could stave off a default until sometime between early June and September, depending on the federal government’s cash balances.

But Democrats and Republicans could have a much shorter time frame due to the bank collapses, which required the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp to make a record withdrawal of funds from the Treasury General Account.

(Reporting by David Morgan in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)

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By Joseph Ax

(Reuters) -North Carolina Republicans on Tuesday urged the state’s high court to reverse course and permit lawmakers to draw politically advantageous legislative districts, an outcome that would boost the party’s chances of holding onto its tenuous majority in the U.S. House of Representatives next year.

The hearing in Raleigh took place after the state Supreme Court’s conservative justices agreed to reconsider a 2022 ruling that found partisan redistricting, or gerrymandering, was unlawful under the state constitution.

That ruling, issued by what was then a Democratic-majority court, invalidated a Republican-drawn map that would likely have secured 11 of the state’s 14 congressional seats for Republicans. Instead, Democrats and Republicans split the seats evenly in November’s elections under a court-approved map.

In the same elections, Republicans flipped two Democratic seats on the court, installing a 5-2 conservative majority that weeks later made the extremely unusual decision to rehear the redistricting case. Legal experts have said the move suggests the court intends to throw out the earlier ruling.

Tuesday’s hearing offered little evidence to the contrary. Several conservative justices appeared sympathetic to the Republicans’ arguments, while the court’s two Democrats expressed skepticism.

Phillip Strach, a lawyer for Republican lawmakers, said the power to oversee redistricting resides in the legislature, not the courts.

“Just to be clear, you’re saying … that the legislature has free rein to enact legislative districts that give extreme advantage to one political party,” said Justice Anita Earls, a Democrat.

“This court does not have the power to address that issue,” Strach replied.

Lali Madduri, a lawyer for the voting rights groups who challenged the original maps, said allowing extreme partisan redistricting would essentially disenfranchise supporters of the opposing party.

“The ultimate standard here is whether the voters have substantially equal voting power,” she said.

While a reversal would aid Republicans’ quest to maintain their U.S. House majority, it could doom a separate Republican-backed effort to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to grant state legislatures sweeping new powers over federal elections.

North Carolina Republicans also appealed last year’s redistricting decision to the U.S. Supreme Court, where they advanced a contentious legal theory, the independent state legislature doctrine, that has gained traction in conservative legal circles.

The theory holds that it is unconstitutional for state courts to review lawmakers’ actions regarding federal elections and would give legislators unfettered authority over voting rules and redistricting.

Democrats have warned that doing so would invite new restrictions that would threaten fair elections, while Republicans say it would corral activist state courts that are undermining legislative power.

The Supreme Court’s conservative justices appeared to agree during oral arguments in December. But after the North Carolina court’s decision to rehear the case, the U.S. Supreme Court asked the various parties in the case to weigh in on whether the court still has jurisdiction over the matter.

If the justices decide they no longer have jurisdiction, they could dismiss the case without issuing a ruling.

(Reporting by Joseph AxEditing by Colleen Jenkins and Rosalba O’Brien)

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