POLITICO NIGHTLY: No stock answers for Congress’ trading problems

 

BY ELANA SCHOR Traders work on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images CAPITOL GAINS — In the Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said today that he supports it, while Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said he’s prepared to look at it. Speaker Nancy Pelosi has left the door open to backing it, and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy is said to be eyeing it. What is “it”? Across the aisle, momentum seems to be building for legislation that would restrict lawmakers’ stock trading. How Congress got here is easy to understand. After heightened scrutiny of trades by members of both parties, including reported Justice Department inquiries into four senators, it became impossible to ignore the potential for politically perilous — if not truly illegal — stock-market plays by lawmakers who are often privy to privileged information that the average investor never gets. How Congress can fix the problem is more complicated. About a decade ago, members passed a law that requires disclosures of their trades, but that didn’t stop several of them from landing in hot water thanks to spotty compliance. Now there’s a flurry of proposals out there to rein in lawmakers’ trades, so many that Schumer said today that he’s asked his Democrats to “try to come up with one bill.” The most frequently cited proposals would require members of Congress to choose mutual funds or other diversified investment options, while either divesting of individual stocks or moving them into “blind trusts.” Blind trusts are designed to turn over control of investments to third-party trustees, who manage the money out of members’ sight, and influence. But that hasn’t stopped several politicians from running into tough questions over the years about how truly blind their blind trusts are, including former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist (R-Tenn.) and Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.). Manchin’s holdings in a coal brokerage steered by his son earned him $500,000 last year, according to financial disclosures. He has said he uses a blind trust for those holdings and adheres to Senate ethics guidelines. Yet the Washington Post has reported that the size of Manchin’s disclosed blind trust doesn’t seem to encompass the full scope of his reported earnings from the family business. Which gets us to the questions: Can Congress be trusted to set up its own blind trusts? And will the public be too, uh, blind to the contents of those trusts to tell what lawmakers are doing behind the scenes? Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah), who faced his own PR troubles over a blind trust during his 2012 presidential campaign, called the blind trust “an age-old ruse, if you will,” during his 1994 Senate run . “Which is to say,” he went on, “you can always tell the blind trust what it can and cannot do.” Now, that’s not a fair description of the current rules for blind trusts owned by federal lawmakers, which Romney wasn’t subject to in 1994 because he was but a Senate candidate at the time. An FAQ produced in 2015 by the Senate ethics committee, which approves blind trust arrangements for the chamber, states: “When interviewing a trustee, the grantor may communicate his or her overall investment objectives for the portfolio, but may not communicate specific directions about how to construct or manage the portfolio.” Even so, Frist ran into trouble in 2005 after reports emerged that he had delivered very specific instructions to his blind trust about selling stock in a family-founded hospital company, which would seem to fly in the face of that guidance. The Senate and House ethics committees may well have since tightened up their internal rules for approving blind trusts — but we haven’t exactly seen press releases trumpeting that. That’s because, though the House panel has made some strides since the establishment of the Office of Congressional Ethics, both chambers’ internal ethics are known more for their opacity than their transparency. Given that truism about the ethics committees, putting all lawmakers’ individual stock trades into the existing blind trust approval structure might shed less sunshine on lawmakers’ investments, rather than more. And perhaps it wouldn’t matter, if the majority of the members of Congress responded to a stock trading ban by simply selling their stocks or moving into mutual funds, as McConnell said he’s recommended to his Republicans. The truth is, we don’t know. But it’s time to start asking whether more blindness, as it were, would help eliminate congressional conflicts of interest, or just make us blinder to them. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at eschor@politico.com, or on Twitter at @eschor.   HAPPENING THURSDAY – A LONG GAME CONVERSATION ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS : Join POLITICO for back-to-back conversations on climate and sustainability action, starting with a panel led by Global Insider author Ryan Heath focused on insights gleaned from our POLITICO/Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll of citizens from 13 countries on five continents about how their governments should respond to climate change. Following the panel, join a discussion with POLITICO White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López and Gina McCarthy, White House national climate advisor, about the Biden administration’s climate and sustainability agenda. REGISTER HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — Congress inches ‘real close’ to government funding deal: Congressional leaders are zeroing in on a broad funding accord to set new totals for federal government spending into the fall. Top appropriators continued to close in on a bipartisan “top-line” deal today to set the overarching budget caps for military and non-defense agency spending, as well as ground rules for hashing out the details of a final package. Once they strike that compromise, spending leaders are expected to quickly wrap up a 12-bill bundle to fund the federal government through September. — Canadian truckers shut down busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing: A convoy of Canadian truckers and protesters objecting to Covid restrictions has caused Ottawa residents headaches for weeks. Now, they are disrupting the other side of the border. The Ambassador Bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ont., was closed to Canada-bound traffic today, according to the Michigan Department of Transportation and the Canadian government, and trucks were told to cross at another bridge 60 miles away. Cars and trucks initially blocked the approach to the bridge in Windsor on Monday, and other vehicles jammed the area in solidarity. — McConnell critical of GOP censure of Kinzinger, Cheney: McConnell said today that it’s not up to the Republican National Committee to be calling out specific members of the party. “The issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who ... have different views from the majority,” McConnell told reporters, when asked about the committee’s censure of Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “That’s not the job of the RNC.” Police officers wait outside Dunbar High School as members of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia conduct an investigation of a security threat at the school. | Alex Wong/Getty Images — Emhoff whisked out of event following reported bomb threat: Doug Emhoff, the husband of Vice President Kamala Harris, was whisked out of an event today at a Washington high school by Secret Service agents following an apparent bomb threat. Emhoff was at Dunbar High School for an event in commemoration of Black History Month. He was in the school’s museum for about five minutes before a member of his security detail approached him saying, “We have to go.” Emhoff was removed from the building into his waiting motorcade. — House staffers confront reality of unionization: ‘No one knows how it would work’: While congressional staffers’ talk of unionizing its long-overlooked workforce has suddenly accelerated, they’re already crashing headfirst into the more complicated reality. Buoyed by an endorsement from Pelosi herself, dozens of senior House staff, mostly on the Democratic side, are searching for the next steps for their union drive. But it turns out that many of the problems with the Capitol as a workplace — notably, that there are more than 535 offices, each of which sets their own policies — are some of the same reasons it would be so tricky to collectively organize. — Hogan won’t challenge Van Hollen for Maryland Senate seat: Gov. Larry Hogan made the announcement during a regularly scheduled news conference today, telling reporters he would remain focused on the job of governor until his term ends in January 2023, at which time Hogan will consider getting into the 2024 presidential race.   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     AROUND THE WORLD WORLD ON CLIMATE CHANGE: UGH — A new POLITICO Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll reveals frustration from citizens that they are being left to take on climate action on their own, when they believe governments and the companies with the most resources (which also tend to bear the most responsibility for carbon emissions) should shoulder the burden. Ryan Heath has the first numbers from the poll, and visit POLITICO tomorrow for more, including widespread agreement that companies must shoulder more of the cost in lowering carbon emissions. NIGHTLY NUMBER $4.5 billion The amount that went missing in a 2016 hack of a cryptocurrency exchange. The Justice Department announced the arrest today of a couple in New York charged with conspiring to launder stolen Bitcoin linked with the hack. PARTING WORDS Civilians participate in a Kyiv Territorial Defense unit training session in Kyiv, Ukraine. | Chris McGrath/Getty Images FOOD FIGHT — International policymakers are looking with horror at the implications of a Russian invasion of Ukraine for global security and energy markets, but the consequences for world food supplies have attracted less attention than they deserve, Zosia Wanat and Sarah Anne Aarup write. Once the breadbasket of the Soviet Union, Ukraine is a farming powerhouse and conflict there would send instant tremors and price hikes through grain and food oil markets, just as European households are grappling with surging inflation. Ukraine is the EU’s fourth biggest external food supplier and provides the bloc with about one-quarter of its cereal and vegetable oil imports, including almost half of its corn. A major food producer itself, the EU should probably be able to adapt to the immediate shock of a rupture in bilateral trade. The potentially greater strategic concern hinges on Ukraine’s even more pivotal role as a supplier to the Middle East and North Africa. Analysts identify food supply as one of several significant underlying factors behind the Arab Spring revolutions that ignited a decade ago, and the EU has persistent fears about instability in its neighborhood. Egypt, for example, is a major buyer of Ukrainian grain.   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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POLITICO NIGHTLY: How Russia’s war would hit the economy

 

BY RENUKA RAYASAM President Joe Biden and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz shake hands following a joint news conference in the East Room of the White House. | Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images FRONT LINES, MEET BOTTOM LINE — The tensions between Russia and Ukraine heightened this weekend, with reports of U.S. intelligence analysts predicting as many as 50,000 civilian deaths, and thousands more military deaths, in the event of a full invasion as U.S. troops moved into Eastern Europe to reassure allies. Beyond the military moves, a global trade conflict could be brewing. President Joe Biden and Germany’s new Chancellor Olaf Scholz said today that the U.S. and its allies were ready to present a united front of severe sanctions against Russia if President Vladimir Putin were to invade Ukraine. Scholz has been trying to counter the perception that Germany is not willing to stand up to Russia. But he remained silent about the future of Nord Stream 2, a gas pipeline connecting Russia to Germany, even as Biden said, during their joint press conference, “We will bring an end to it” should Russia invade Ukraine. “We will act together,” Scholz said today during the joint press conference with Biden. “We will not be taking different steps. And they will be very, very hard to Russia.” About 40 percent of Europe’s gas imports come from Russia, and West Germany used “pipeline diplomacy” during the Cold War to bring the two countries together. Russian retaliation to sanctions would hit Europe a lot harder than the U.S., trade reporter Doug Palmer told Nightly during a Slack chat today. U.S. companies had investments totaling about $12.5 billion with Russia in 2020 — compared with $123.9 billion in China and $3.5 trillion in all countries in Europe. This conversation has been edited. Why is Europe far more worried about a trade war with Russia? The EU depends on Russia for a lot of its energy supplies. So the concern is Russian President Vladimir Putin might respond to sanctions by cutting off natural gas shipments through Ukraine. That could cause a lot of pain if it happened during the winter months, and U.S. officials also say they are confident that the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline carrying gas from Russia won’t become operational if Putin further invades Ukraine. The EU and Russia also have much more non-energy trade than the U.S. and Russia. Would there be any U.S. sectors or companies that would bear the brunt of retaliatory sanctions from Russia? Technology companies could be hurt, because one sanction the administration is considering is export controls. That is expected to bar both U.S. companies and foreign companies from selling items to Russia that contain certain sensitive technologies like semiconductors. That would affect U.S. sales to Russia and to foreign companies that use the components in products they sell to Russia. The diverse membership of the U.S.-Russia Business Council shows many well-known U.S. companies who could be affected by new sanctions, including on the financial front. Those include Abbott, Boeing, Cargill, Pfizer, Google, ExxonMobil, Procter & Gamble, among others. The U.S., Europe and G7 countries imposed sanctions on Russia in 2014 in the aftermath of the Crimean invasion. What has been the long-term impact of those? One study estimated that those sanctions have cost Russian corporations almost $100 billion since 2014. But they clearly weren’t painful enough to persuade Putin to reverse his actions in Ukraine. U.S. officials are trying to send the signal that a new tranche of sanctions would be much more severe and do much more damage to Russia’s economy, both in the short and the long-term. But the big question is whether Putin believes the U.S. and EU sanctions will pack that big a punch. What about broader global markets if war breaks out? Russia accounted for only about 1.9 percent of world imports and exports in 2020, according to the World Trade Organization. That puts it between Switzerland and Taiwan. Still, an invasion would be an event of global significance and could affect international relations in a number of ways, including by potentially pushing China and Russia closer together and encouraging both countries to rely less on the West. U.S. export controls and financial sanctions could also strain relations with countries, such as China, that continue to trade with Russia. It also would likely accelerate trends in Europe to diversify energy supplies and force companies that currently do business in Russia to make difficult decisions about their future plans. It could disrupt global energy markets if Russia were to cut off gas shipments and the EU suddenly had to find alternative supplies. U.S. officials have said they are making contingency plans if that happens. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com. Or contact tonight’s author at rrayasam@politico.com, or on Twitter at @RenuRayasam.   HAPPENING THURSDAY – A LONG GAME CONVERSATION ON THE CLIMATE CRISIS : Join POLITICO for back-to-back conversations on climate and sustainability action, starting with a panel led by Global Insider author Ryan Heath focused on insights gleaned from our POLITICO/Morning Consult Global Sustainability Poll of citizens from 13 countries on five continents about how their governments should respond to climate change. Following the panel, join a discussion with POLITICO White House Correspondent Laura Barrón-López and Gina McCarthy, White House national climate advisor, about the Biden administration’s climate and sustainability agenda. REGISTER HERE.     WHAT'D I MISS? — California, New Jersey plan to ease Covid restrictions: New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy will begin unraveling the state’s anti-Covid rules, starting with a school mask mandate for all students and kids in child care settings. The move by the Democratic governor, whose state faced some of the worst Covid casualty rates of the pandemic, offers a clear sign that the steady decline in cases that have followed the Omicron variant could lead to a new stage of life under Covid. California Gov. Gavin Newsom is also poised to ease statewide restrictions on mass gatherings and indoor masking as Omicron continues to recede. — White House sticks by science adviser despite inappropriate workplace behavior: White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the president’s top science adviser, Eric Lander, will not be dismissed over allegations about his bullying workplace behavior. Psaki said that senior White House officials recently met with Lander and told him that his behavior was “inappropriate and corrective actions need to be taken.” An internal White House review found “credible evidence of disrespectful interactions with staff” between the Cabinet member and the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander has been a key adviser to the president, including on the administration’s pandemic response. — Biden officials trying to recalculate U.S. Covid-19 hospitalizations: The Biden administration is working on recalculating the number of Covid-19 hospitalizations in the U.S., according to two senior officials familiar with the matter. A task force comprised of scientists and data specialists at the Department of Health and Human Services and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with hospitals nationwide to improve Covid-19 reporting. The group is asking hospitals to report numbers of patients who go to the facility because they have Covid-19 and separate those from individuals who go in for other reasons and test positive after being admitted, the two officials said. Fireworks are set off into the sky near Parliament Hill as supporters against vaccine mandates continue to gather in Ottawa, Canada. | Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images — Ottawa pleads to absent Trudeau for reinforcements to end convoy’s occupation: Ottawa authorities pleaded for police reinforcements to further loosen the trucker convoy protest’s grip on the heart of Canada’s capital city as the siege stretched into its 11th day. “There is a level of sustainability, financial capability, determined commitment,” Ottawa Police Chief Peter Sloly told reporters about the demonstrators and the 500 trucks paralyzing the core of the G7 capital. “We’re going to need a lot more to really get on top of this situation.” — ‘Precipitous decline’: J.D. Vance pollster issues warning on Ohio Senate race: Republican Senate candidate J.D. Vance “needs a course correction ASAP” — and that’s according to the well-funded super PAC supporting him. A 98-page PowerPoint presentation produced by Tony Fabrizio, who has been polling for the pro-Vance Protect Ohio Values super PAC since last year, paints a dire picture of the candidate’s prospects. According to the slide deck, Vance has seen a “precipitous decline” in Ohio’s GOP Senate primary since last fall, when a pair of outside groups backing a rival began a multimillion-dollar TV advertising blitz using five-year-old footage of Vance attacking former President Donald Trump. — Youngkin tweets ‘regret’ for campaign’s criticism of high school student: Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said he regretted a post to his campaign’s Twitter account over the weekend that lashed out at a 17-year-old high school student . The Republican governor, sworn into office just over three weeks ago, stopped short of apologizing for the exchange. The original tweet, sent from the official Team Youngkin campaign account, attacked Ethan Lynne — a high school senior involved with Virginia Teen Democrats — who tweeted a story from a Virginia-based NPR affiliate that detailed the resignation of a historian at the governor’s mansion. The story reported that an area of the mansion that once housed enslaved workers was being transformed by the Youngkin administration from an educational space into a family room. After that story’s publication, a spokesperson for the governor told Virginia Public Media that the space would not be used for a family room.   DON’T MISS CONGRESS MINUTES: Need to follow the action on Capitol Hill blow-by-blow? Check out Minutes, POLITICO’s new platform that delivers the latest exclusives, twists and much more in real time. Get it on your desktop or download the POLITICO mobile app for iOS or Android. CHECK OUT CONGRESS MINUTES HERE.     NIGHTLY NUMBER 3 weeks The length of the short-term spending patch congressional leaders released this afternoon, buying more time to lock in an expansive government funding deal. PARTING WORDS French President Emmanuel Macron and Russian President Vladimir Putin. | SPUTNIK/AFP via Getty Images PUTIN, MACRON AND A BIG TABLE — There was little doubt Emmanuel Macron had walked into the grizzly bear’s den. Seated at the far end of an enormous conference table in one of the Kremlin’s ornate meeting rooms, complete with gold-trimmed curtains and an elaborate inlaid wooden floor, the French president offered his opening thoughts on a tense military standoff at the Ukrainian border. From the other side of the table, Macron’s host, Putin, sat nearly immobile, offering his guest an icy death stare, David M. Herszenhorn writes. Hanging in the balance are the 130,000 Russian troops menacing Ukraine, which Putin refuses to remove until Western allies meet his demands that they roll back their presence in Eastern Europe — requests that have largely been rebuffed as nonstarters. Macron has taken it upon himself to try and negotiate with Putin, and today was his chance to personally cajole the Russian leader into taking what the Elysée has called a “path to deescalation.” Putin had a black earphone in place to translate Macron’s French, but it was not entirely clear he was listening as the French president declared, “This dialogue is necessary because it is the only one which, in my view, makes it possible to build real security and stability for the European continent.” One result of the talks: Memes. People took to Twitter and provided plenty of jokes on the size of the large table Putin and Macron met at, comparing it to a badminton court , an air hockey table and a seesaw .   Follow us on Twitter Chris Suellentrop @suellentrop Tyler Weyant @tweyant Renuka Rayasam @renurayasam Myah Ward @myahward   FOLLOW US

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CC Newsletter 06 Feb - Amnesty International Calling Israel an Apartheid State shakes the Zionist state

 

Dear Friend,

Amnesty International’s declaration of Israel as an apartheid state was a resounding announcement that resonated worldwide. The importance of this announcement is that it came from an organization with a respected reputation globally. Amnesty international has human rights lawyers who study every word before publishing the report.

If you think the contents of this newsletter are critical for the dignified living and survival of humanity and other species on earth, please forward it to your friends and spread the word. It's time for humanity to come together as one family! You can subscribe to our newsletter here http://www.countercurrents.org/news-letter/.

In Solidarity

Binu Mathew

Editor

Countercurrents.org

Amnesty International Calling Israel an Apartheid State shakes the Zionist state

by Dr Salim Nazzal

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/the-report-that-shakes-the-zionist-state/

Amnesty International’s declaration of Israel as an apartheid state was a

resounding announcement that resonated worldwide. The importance of this announcement is that it came from an organization with a respected reputation globally. Amnesty international has human rights lawyers who study every word before publishing the report.

Amnesty’s Israeli Apartheid Report Versus Zionist, IHRA & US Lies

by Dr Gideon Polya

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/amnestys-israeli-apartheid-report-versus-zionist-ihra-us-lies/

Amnesty International’s 2022 report exposing and condemning Israeli apartheid has provoked false allegations of lying and anti-Semitism from the mendacious and  genocidally racist Zionists and their US Alliance supporters.  In actuality, denial of Israeli apartheid is a lie, and the Zionists and their supporters  are manifestly mendacious, and both  anti-Arab anti-Semitic and anti-Jewish anti-Semitic by falsely defaming anti-racist Jewish, Arab, Palestinian and Muslim critics of Apartheid Israel.

The Curious Case of the State of Israel

– A Country Without Borders

by Anthony Fulton

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/the-curious-case-of-the-state-of-israel-a-country-without-borders/

If Israel is perceived as an apartheid state, then there is a link to this frontierism, to choices made by Israeli voters regarding borders. You can’t defend Israel against such accusations if you do not consider the West Bank to be ‘abroad’. The evidence of the last fifty years suggests that Israel is a frontier settler state set on expansion beyond ‘indefensible’ pre-1967 borders. How long can Palestinians live within these frontiers without rights? The international community and many Israeli citizens seem happy to avoid the question.

Hemispheric Gangsterism: The US Embargo Against Cuba Turns 60

by Dr Binoy Kampmark

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/hemispheric-gangsterism-the-us-embargo-against-cuba-turns-60/

It all seems worn, part of an aspic approach to foreign policy.  But US President Joe Biden is keen to

ensure that old, and lingering mistakes, retain their flavour.    Towards Cuba, it is now 60 years since President John F. Kennedy’s Presidential Proclamation 3447 imposed an embargo on all trade with the island state.

Covid Mandate Protests: ‘Freedom Convoy’ Blockades Leave Ottawa On Edge

by Countercurrents Collective

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/covid-mandate-protests-freedom-convoy-blockades-leave-ottawa-on-edge/

Canada’s capital Ottawa on Saturday was bracing for a surge of demonstrators to join a week-long protest against public health measures and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that has blockaded much of the downtown core, unnerved residents and been described by officials as an “occupation” and a “siege.”

Russia – China pledge to expand cooperation

Press Release

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/russia-china-pledge-to-expand-cooperation/

Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International

Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development

Signature Campaign: Citizens Demand Repeal of Anti-Conversion Laws in India

by Concerned Citizens

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/signature-campaign-citizens-demand-repeal-of-anti-conversion-laws-in-india/

We, the citizens of secular and democratic India, are shocked to witness the , moves of the state governments ruled by the BJP and other political parties, targeting Christians, Muslims, Dalits, Adivasis and Hindu women using Anti-Conversion Laws in India.

Shopping Mall or Shocking Mall

by Moumita Alam

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/shopping-mall-or-shocking-mall/

Eight farmers have taken their own lives.

The dead certificate is very crystal clear.

It’s suicide not murder.

The potatoes they had to sell

In zero profit

Are in shopping trolley now

With a tip – top price tag.

Rahul Gandhi and Our Constitution

by Hiren Gohain

https://countercurrents.org/2022/02/rahul-gandhi-and-our-constitution/

The initial remarks in Rahul Gandhi’s speech in Parliament the motion of thanks to the President’s speech have provoked a storm of abuse from BJP ranks within and outside the house.The matter needs some scrutiny