This would bode well for infrastructure bill.
3 Likes
White House southern border coordinator Roberta Jacobson to leave post
2 Likes
He is a champ. Fighter all the way.
The pandemic relegated Democratic power lawyer Marc Elias to fighting election lawsuits on an iPad from his home in Northern Virginia. He traded his suit and tie for a sweatshirt, and he argued cases with his two dogs lying next to him on the couch. That’s where he worked last fall as Donald Trump’s campaign sought to overturn Joe Biden’s victory, sometimes attending two Zoom meetings simultaneously to keep up with the workload. “I don’t sleep a super amount anyway,” he says in a March 16 interview, “but during that time period it was very intense.”
Elias has earned a reputation as the nation’s most aggressive Democratic election lawyer. The 52-year-old is a partner and chair of the political law practice at Perkins Coie, the Democratic party’s go-to firm. He served as general counsel for John Kerry and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaigns, successfully litigated recounts for former Senator Al Franken and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, and carved out a niche as a campaign finance guru. But was in 2020 that he skyrocketed to national prominence and became something of a resistance hero.
First Elias represented Democratic groups fighting to expand voting access before the 2020 election. Then he battled the Trump campaign, which filed a trove of futile lawsuits to overturn the 45th President’s loss. In the tense post-election months, Elias notched 64 legal victories against the Trump campaign and lost just one case. He has his own website, Democracy Docket, where he posts updates on litigation and fundraises for his efforts. He’s amassed nearly half a million followers on Twitter, his home office has a ring light for his virtual MSNBC hits, and his January 2021 appearance on actress Alyssa Milano’s podcast was titled, “Marc Elias saves Democracy, one court at a time.”
But Elias’ new challenge may prove the most formidable: fighting Republican state legislators, who are drafting hundreds of bills to tighten voting laws across the U.S. Already, Elias has lawsuits pending in Georgia and Iowa, which he filed hours after their governors signed bills making it harder to vote. And with states like Arizona, Florida, and Texas on track to pass similar legislation soon, his docket will almost certainly grow.
The stakes couldn’t be higher— for Elias, the millions of votes that hang in the balance, and, he argues, for the health of American democracy as a whole. “A hundred years from now, if we don’t succeed, what history books will write about this time will be about the pivot from the age of American democracy to a post-democratic America,” Elias says. “There is a lack of recognition about what a dangerous place we are in right now.”
It was on December 7, 2020 —exactly one month after news networks declared Biden the President-elect—that Elias realized the battles over voting access wouldn’t end anytime soon.
It was clear by then that Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s victory were doomed. But the Texas Attorney General filed a lawsuit with the Supreme Court in an attempt to invalidate Biden’s win in Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, arguing that the battleground states had unlawfully used the pandemic to relax their voting rules. The Supreme Court dismissed the complaint four days later, but not before it had been endorsed by 17 Republican Attorneys General and 126 Republican congressional lawmakers. As Elias watched the filings come in, he realized Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud would continue to dominate the GOP’s agenda long after Trump vacated the White House. “They’re no longer united by trade,” Elias says. “They’re no longer united by economic policies. They’re united by shrinking the electorate.”
4 Likes
Some key positions expected to be announced today and subject to approval for NSA and cybersecurity. There is obviously a great need for these spots with the giant hole left ‘open’ after the Russians attacked our cyber systems. Glad these will to be filled and looks like they have two excellent candidates.
President Joe Biden on Monday will name two former National Security Agency officials to top cybersecurity positions in his administration, filling vacancies that lawmakers and policy specialists have bemoaned as digital security crises wrack the country.
Biden will name former NSA Deputy Director Chris Inglis to be his national cyber director, choosing a former senior intelligence official to lead a newly created White House office that will guide Biden’s cyber strategy and oversee agencies’ digital security, according to five people familiar with the matter.
The president will also nominate Jen Easterly, a former deputy director of the NSA’s counterterrorism center, to lead the Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, which helps defend federal government networks and America’s critical infrastructure facilities, three people familiar with the matter said.
Inglis and Easterly had both been considered frontrunners for the national cyber director job, while Rob Silvers, a former DHS official, had been considered the leading candidate to take over CISA. Instead, Biden will nominate Silvers to be the under secretary of DHS for policy, a role in which he is expected to focus heavily but not exclusively on cyber issues, two people familiar with the matter said. All requested anonymity to discuss nominations that have not been announced.
Inglis’ and Easterly’s nominations, first reported by The Washington Post, cement the power of the NSA alumni community in Biden’s White House. Anne Neuberger, whom Biden earlier appointed to the new post of deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, held senior roles at the NSA between 2013 and 2021. Inglis, Easterly and Neuberger overlapped at the spy agency for several years, at a time when the NSA and its military partners were increasingly flexing their muscles in cyberspace.
A still-undefined post for Inglis
Biden’s selection of Inglis came after the White House spent nearly three months reviewing the best way to create the cyber director role, a congressionally mandated position that some senior administration officials opposed because it would give the Hill more oversight of White House activities.
POLITICO previously reported that Biden aides were reluctant to empower a Senate-confirmed White House official who would be accountable to Congress, despite the growing array of cyber threats that had prompted lawmakers to order the post’s creation last year over the objections of the Trump White House. Concerns also arose about competing power centers after Biden created Neuberger’s position.
But supporters of the national cyber director office say its importance has only grown in recent months as Biden grapples with two major digital security crises: the SolarWinds cyber espionage campaign, in which suspected Russian hackers breached nine federal agencies and roughly 100 companies, and a spate of attacks on tens of thousands of government and corporate Microsoft Exchange servers that began as a Chinese operation but soon became a feeding frenzy for cyber criminals.
Biden appears to have wavered on whom to nominate for the cyber director job almost until the last minute. Inglis’ selection was “a very recent turn of events,” said one of the people familiar with the matter, who said the White House notified him “within the last week.”
Inglis, a managing director at the investment firm Paladin Capital Group, served as deputy director of the National Security Agency during both the Bush and Obama administrations. He held the post from 2006 to 2014 — a time when tracking nation-state hackers and breaching foreign networks became an increasingly important part of the spy agency’s mission.
If confirmed by the Senate, Inglis will play a major role in defining his new office’s roles and responsibilities. The office, the marquee recommendation of the congressionally chartered Cyberspace Solarium Commission, is supposed to raise the profile of cyber issues inside the White House, quarterback the government’s digital security agenda, provide guidance to agencies and hold their leaders accountable for protecting their networks. It replaces an NSC cyber coordinator position that former President Donald Trump eliminated in 2018. Lawmakers authorized 75 staff for the office, but it remains unfunded.
The national cyber director position would be the first non-military, non-intelligence assignment for Inglis, who joined the Air Force in 1976, briefly taught at the Naval Academy and then spent nearly 30 years at the NSA.
The decisions that Inglis makes will shape the government’s response to cyber threats long after he leaves the position. Key questions about the office’s remit remain unanswered in a White House that was reluctant to create it in the first place. Depending on Inglis’ choices, the office could either turn out to be supremely influential or superfluous — a driver of change or a roadblock for the real power players.
One of Inglis’ biggest challenges will be dividing responsibilities with Neuberger, who has served as the public face of the White House’s cybersecurity efforts since joining the administration.
Inglis’ military background will be a double-edged sword for him. When his name first surfaced as a potential cyber director, it prompted concern among some cyber specialists who said the new office should be led by someone with a history of seeing cyber issues through a civilian lens. On the other hand, Inglis’ NSA career could help him establish the new office’s primacy over not just civilian agencies but also the military and intelligence communities, which are used to their own rules and procedures and may not bend easily to a new White House official.
Inglis’ time at the NSA also armed him with experience dealing with threats from China. While at the agency, he held a senior position in its China office.
As the NSA’s deputy director, Inglis served as its senior-most civilian official and oversaw its day-to-day operations. He was serving as the NSA’s No. 2 official in 2009 when his boss, Gen. Keith Alexander, created and became the commander of U.S. Cyber Command. The unit, originally conceived as a largely defensive force, subsequently morphed into a full-fledged combatant command with more offensive responsibilities. Guiding Cyber Command and reviewing the doctrines that it adopted during the Trump administration will be a major part of Inglis’ new job, as the U.S. seeks ways to impose costs on foreign hackers.
Inglis’ NSA service may also help him work smoothly with Neuberger, who previously led the NSA’s Cybersecurity Directorate and who rose swiftly through the spy agency’s ranks — helping to establish Cyber Command, advising Alexander and leading the NSA’s private-sector engagement arm during the nearly eight years that Inglis oversaw its day-to-day operations.
A daunting task for Easterly
Easterly, who oversees Morgan Stanley’s resilience strategy, was the NSA’s deputy director for counterterrorism from 2011 to 2013. She later served on President Barack Obama’s National Security Council as special assistant to the president and senior director for counterterrorism. During the Obama administration, she helped create the military’s U.S. Cyber Command.
During the transition, Easterly advised Biden aides on how to set up the new cyber director office, which Congress created as part of the Executive Office of the President in a defense policy bill that lawmakers enacted over Trump’s veto.
At CISA, Easterly would replace acting Director Brandon Wales, giving the beleaguered cyber agency a permanent leader for the first time since November, when then-President Trump fired its first chief, Chris Krebs, for publicly debunking his conspiracy theories about the election.
And Easterly would take the post at a critical time, as CISA struggles with SolarWinds and the attacks on Microsoft Exchange servers.
The two crises have compounded CISA’s longstanding woes. The agency’s network monitoring programs are outdated and can’t detect sophisticated modern threats. Its incident response teams are stretched thin as they try to support federal agencies, private companies and local governments grappling with cyber threats.
If confirmed by the Senate, Easterly will face many challenges at the underfunded and overworked CISA, which was established in late 2018 to replace a DHS division that helped defend ports, hospitals and power plants from cyberattacks and dirty bombs.
Lawmakers gave CISA an emergency infusion of $650 million in Biden’s Covid-19 relief bill, and CISA has big plans for spending that money. Managing that process will be one of Easterly’s top jobs.
In the new role, Easterly would have help from Silvers, who held several senior roles at DHS during Obama’s presidency, including deputy chief of staff and assistant secretary for cyber policy. He also co-led the CISA unit inside Biden’s DHS transition team.
Silvers, a partner at the law firm Paul Hastings, is also close with DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, having served as his senior counselor from 2013 to 2014, when Mayorkas was deputy secretary of homeland security. During that time, he was also a key player in DHS’ responses to digital security crises.
Natasha Bertrand contributed to this report.
3 Likes
Corporations are taking a stand where R’s will not. It goes without saying, that we are glad to have this important component to protest the new voting law legislation.
More than 100 chief executives and corporate leaders gathered online Saturday to discuss taking new action to combat the controversial state voting bills being considered across the country, including the one recently signed into law in Georgia.
Executives from major airlines, retailers and manufacturers — plus at least one NFL owner — talked about potential ways to show they opposed the legislation, including by halting donations to politicians who support the bills and even delaying investments in states that pass the restrictive measures, according to four people who were on the call, including one of the organizers, Jeffrey Sonnenfeld, a Yale management professor.
While no final steps were agreed upon, the meeting represents an aggressive dialing up of corporate America’s stand against controversial voting measures nationwide, a sign that their opposition to the laws didn’t end with the fight against the Georgia legislation passed in March.
It also came just days after Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) warned that firms should “stay out of politics” — echoing a view shared by many conservative politicians and setting up the potential for additional conflict between Republican leaders and the heads of some of America’s largest firms. This month, former president Donald Trump called for conservatives to boycott Coca-Cola, Major League Baseball, Delta Air Lines, Citigroup, ViacomCBS, UPS and other companies after they opposed the law in Georgia that critics say will make it more difficult for poorer voters and voters of color to cast ballots. Baseball officials decided to move the All-Star Game this summer from Georgia to Colorado because of the voting bill.
The online call between corporate executives on Saturday “shows they are not intimidated by the flak. They are not going to be cowed,” Sonnenfeld said. “They felt very strongly that these voting restrictions are based on a flawed premise and are dangerous.”
Leaders from dozens of companies such as Delta, American, United, Starbucks, Target, LinkedIn, Levi Strauss and Boston Consulting Group, along with Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank, were included on the Zoom call, according to people who listened in.
4 Likes
State of the Union address - April 28th this year. A lot of reasons for the delay…but glad it is scheduled.
Pelosi Invites President Biden to Address Joint Session of Congress on April 28 | Speaker Nancy Pelosi
4 Likes
Part of the Corporate reactions towards voting restrictions created by the Republicans…a few more companies are aligning with those who support voter’s rights.
Hundreds of prominent executives from high-profile companies, including Amazon, Google, BlackRock and Starbucks, signed a statement that opposes discriminatory legislation that makes voting harder.
The statement, printed Wednesday in an advertisement in the New York Times, was organized by Ken Chenault and Ken Frazier, two of America’s most prominent Black corporate leaders. The statement called democracy a “beautifully American ideal” and for it to work, “we must ensure the right to vote for all of us.”
“We all should feel a responsibility to defend the right to vote and to oppose any discriminatory legislation on measures that restrict or prevent any eligible voter from having an equal and fair opportunity to cast a ballot,” it continued.
4 Likes
Biden takes on the restrictions that T tried to enforce…anti-abortion measures must not stand.
The Biden administration is moving to reverse a Trump-era family planning policy that critics describe as a domestic “gag rule” for reproductive healthcare providers.
The proposal published on Wednesday would largely return the federal Title X family planning program to its status before Trump took office. The current rules, implemented in March 2019 under Trump, forbid any provider who provides or refers patients for abortions from receiving federal funding through Title X to cover services such as contraception and STD screenings for low-income people.
“As a result of the dramatic decline in Title X services provided, the 2019 Final Rule undermined the mission of the Title X program by helping fewer individuals in planning and spacing births, providing fewer preventive health services, and delivering fewer screenings” for sexually transmitted infections, said the proposed rule published by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
4 Likes
Biden will get tough with the Russians.
And its got some heft to it, and holds Putin to account for cyber attacks, encroaching on Ukraine and Crimea.
WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is set to announce on Thursday a string of long-awaited measures against Russia, including far-reaching financial sanctions, for the hacking of government and private networks and a range of other activity, according to people who have been briefed on the moves.
The sanctions will be among what President Biden’s aides say are “seen and unseen” steps in response to the hacking, known as SolarWinds; to the C.I.A.’s assessment that Russia offered to pay bounties to militants in Afghanistan to kill American troops; and to Russia’s yearslong effort to interfere in United States elections, according to American officials and others who have been briefed on the actions.
The moves will include the expulsion of a limited number of diplomats, much like the Obama administration did in response to the Russian efforts to influence the election five years ago. But it is unclear whether this set of actions will prove sufficient to deter Russia from further hacking, influence operations or efforts to threaten European countries.
The sanctions are meant to cut deeper than previous efforts to punish Russia for interfering in elections, targeting the country’s sovereign debt, according to people briefed on the matter. Administration officials were determined to draft a response that would impose real costs on Moscow, as many previous rounds of sanctions have been shrugged off.
“It will not simply be sanctions,” Jake Sullivan, the president’s national security adviser, said in February. He has frequently said it will include “a mix of tools seen and unseen,” though there have been disagreements in the administration about how many of the steps to make public.
Restrictions on sovereign debt affect a nation’s ability to raise dollar-denominated bonds, with lenders fearful of being cut off from American financial markets. The United States has used similar techniques against Iran, among others.
Russian bond prices have fluctuated in recent weeks in anticipation of possible sanctions. Russia has relatively little debt, making it potentially less vulnerable to the tactic. And rising oil prices will benefit the country’s economy.
Nevertheless, any broad sanctions on Russia’s financial sector would amount to a significant escalation in the costs that the United States has been willing to impose on Moscow. And part of the administration’s concern has been whether Russian entities could retaliate by exploiting “back doors” implanted in American systems.
Officials have acknowledged that they do not know if the SolarWinds hacking — in which Russian hackers gained access to network management software used by thousands of government entities and private firms — opened routes for counterretaliation.
On Tuesday, Mr. Biden spoke with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, warning Mr. Putin about the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border and in Crimea. Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary, said on Wednesday that the call was meant to emphasize the consequences of Russia’s activities, but it was unclear if Mr. Biden telegraphed any of his administration’s pending moves.
4 Likes
One of the last cabinet picks as a Science Advisor has yet to be confirmed due to some questions on Eric Lander possible ties to Epstein. The OMB Secretary is the other Cabinet level pick still pending because they have not nominated any else after Neera Tanden dropped out…
President Joe Biden’s nomination of Eric Lander to be his top science adviser has been delayed in part because of a Democratic senator’s concerns about meetings Lander and his colleagues had with Jeffrey Epstein, the late financier who was charged with sex trafficking in 2019 before his apparent suicide.
Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.), the chair of the Senate Commerce Committee, has wanted more clarity on the extent of Lander’s associations with Epstein, according to an official familiar with the situation.
Asked Wednesday about her concerns about Lander and Epstein, Cantwell said: "We’re having a hearing on him next week and we’ll see what happens with that.”
Lander has met with Cantwell, according to the White House. Her office declined to comment further on what happened in the meeting.
Lander is the director of the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard and Biden’s pick to be director of the Office of Science and Technology Policy, which the president for the first time has made a Cabinet-level post. He’s the only Cabinet nominee who has yet to be confirmed (Biden has not yet nominated an Office of Management and Budget director after he had to withdraw his first pick). His confirmation hearing is set for April 29, more than two months after the hearings for Biden’s other Cabinet nominees wrapped up.
Lander and several other professors met with Epstein in 2012 in the office of Martin Nowak, a Harvard mathematical biologist, four years after Epstein pleaded guilty to solicitation of prostitution involving an underage girl. The meeting was reported by BuzzFeed News as part of a 2019 investigation that revealed Epstein’s lavish donations to scientists at M.I.T. and Harvard. There are also several photographs of the meeting showing Epstein with scientists, including two of Epstein and Lander. The pictures had previously been on JeffreyEpstein.org, a website Epstein ran for one of his foundations.
Lander described the meeting in a 2019 email to BuzzFeed as “an informal sandwich lunch at [Nowak’s] institute to talk science with various people,” adding that he didn’t know Epstein would be there.
“I later learned about his more sordid history,” Lander told BuzzFeed. “I’ve had no relationship with Epstein.”
The White House on Wednesday acknowledged that Lander had met Epstein twice. “Dr. Lander briefly met Epstein in Spring 2012, at two events with multiple Harvard donors, faculty and others, and he correctly decided to have nothing to do with Epstein,” a White House spokesperson said.
2 Likes
Good…Merrick Garland is fighting for justice.
Breonna Taylor shooting: Justice Dept. to investigate Louisville police, Garland says - The Washington Post
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Monday that the Justice Department will open a civil investigation into the Louisville Metro Police Department, 13 months after the shooting death of Breonna Taylor, a Black woman whose killing was among the flash points that sparked mass social justice protests across the nation last summer.
Garland said the federal “pattern or practice” probe will seek to determine whether the Louisville police have engaged in a history of abusive and unlawful tactics with little accountability — marking the second time in five days he has sought to use federal power to examine a local law enforcement agency’s use of deadly force. Last week, he said the federal agency will investigate the Minneapolis Police Department, whose former officer, Derek Chauvin, was found guilty in the killing of George Floyd, a Black man, last May.
Garland said the Louisville investigation will seek to determine whether the department engages in unreasonable force, unconstitutional searches and seizures and unlawful executions of search warrants on private homes. It also will examine how the Louisville police tactics impact racial groups, he said.
2 Likes
Turkey says it will respond in time to ‘outrageous’ U.S. genocide statement
3 Likes
There’s a memo being sent by a group of four-star military commanders asking for clarity on the amount of misinformation that is being filtered through our country that is supportive of China and Russia. They want it to stop.
America’s top spies say they are looking for ways to declassify and release more intelligence about adversaries’ bad behavior, after a group of four-star military commanders sent a rare and urgent plea asking for help in the information war against Russia and China.
A host of troubling actions from those two countries — including efforts to damage America’s relationships with allies and to violate other countries’ sovereignty — mean the Intelligence Community must do more to show the world what Russia and China are doing, according to the commanders.
The memo from nine regional military commanders last year implored spy agencies to give them more evidence they can make public as a way to combat “pernicious conduct.”
Only by "waging the truth in the public domain against America’s 21st century challengers” can Washington shore up support from American allies, they said. But efforts to compete in the battle of ideas, they added, are hamstrung by overly stringent secrecy practices.
“We request this help to better enable the US, and by extension its allies and partners, to win without fighting, to fight now in so-called gray zones, and to supply ammunition in the ongoing war of narratives," the commanders who oversee U.S. military forces in Asia, Europe, Africa, Latin America, as well as special operations troops, wrote to then-acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire last January.
“Unfortunately, we continue to miss opportunities to clarify truth, counter distortions, puncture false narratives, and influence events in time to make a difference," they added.
The memo, which was reviewed by POLITICO and has not been made public, made waves inside the Pentagon, the Intelligence Community, and on Capitol Hill over the past year, where it has come to be known as the “36-star memo.” It wasn’t a command or an ultimatum; rather, it implored the Intelligence Community to make big changes.
The fact that it was signed by nine of the 11 four-star combatant commanders — all but one of whom are still in uniform — is nearly unheard of, said multiple government officials familiar with the memo who said it underscored an unusual level of alarm among the top brass. The top leaders for U.S. Central Command and Cyber Command did not sign.
4 Likes
The Biden administration has announced the government will protect LGBTQ people against discrimination in health care — effectively reversing a Trump-era rule that went into effect last year.
4 Likes
Let the games begin…
discussions on bipartisan participation with Infrastructure, voting rights and all that good stuff. 
2 Likes
A win!
4 Likes
4 Likes
4 Likes
Her own significance – born in Martinique to Haitian immigrants, she could hardly strike more of a contrast from Donald Trump’s four white press secretaries – inevitably came up during questions.
Jean-Pierre replied: “It’s a real honor to be standing here today. I appreciate the historic nature, I really do, but I believe that being behind this podium, being in this room, being in this building is not about one person. It’s about what we do on behalf of the American people.”
She added: “Clearly the president believes that representation matters, and I appreciate him giving me this opportunity, and it’s another reason why I think we are all so proud that this is the most diverse administration in history.”
4 Likes