Closing summary
The Ohio train derailment found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers said they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street from the Capitol at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal of a lower court ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Here’s what else happened today:
TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.
Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Marianne Williamson is back, becoming the first Democrat to challenge Joe Biden for the presidential nomination.
Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who recently won re-election in one of America’s toughest House districts, is jumping into the Michigan Senate race.
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Elissa Slotkin, a Democratic House lawmaker from Michigan who won re-election last year in one of the most hotly contested races of the cycle, announced she will stand for the state’s open Senate seat in 2024.
“I’m running for Senate because I believe that we need a new generation of leaders that thinks differently, works harder, and never forgets that we are public servants,” Slotkin wrote in an email to supporters. She would replace Debbie Stabenow, Michigan’s Democratic senator who has opted not to seek another term.
A former CIA analyst who worked in the defense department under Barack Obama, Slotkin banked heavily on her support of abortion rights in her successful run for election last November.
John Fetterman’s office has released an update on the senator’s health after the Pennsylvania Democrat earlier this month checked himself into a hospital to be treated for clinical depression.
“There’s no real news to report except that John is doing well, working with the wonderful doctors, and remains on a path to recovery,” his communications director, Joe Calvello, said in a statement.
“He is visiting with staff and family daily, and his staff are keeping him updated on Senate business and news,” Calvello said.
“We understand the intense interest in John’s status and especially appreciate the flood of well-wishes. However, as we have said this will be a weeks-long process and while we will be sure to keep folks updated as it progresses, this is all there is to give by way of an update.”
At today’s White House press briefing, national security council spokesperson John Kirby downplayed the energy department’s report into Covid-19’s origins, noting it represents the opinion of just one part of the US government:
National Security Council’s John Kirby urges caution regarding the WSJ report that the Department of Energy believes, with “low confidence,” that COVID-19 leaked from a lab:
— The Recount (@therecount) February 27, 2023
“There is not a consensus right now in the U.S. government about exactly how COVID started.” pic.twitter.com/Gceirrwy6k
There was more intelligence-related news this weekend, when the department of energy weighed in on the origins of Covid-19 and found it probably emerged from a laboratory, but could not say for sure. The conclusion will no doubt fuel the ongoing dispute over the pandemic’s origins and the extent to which China deserves blame. The Guardian’s Nicola Davis and Amy Hawkins took a closer look at what exactly the report says:
What has the US energy department said about the origin of the Covid outbreak?
According to the Wall Street Journal, an updated and classified 2021 US energy department report has concluded that the coronavirus behind the recent pandemic most likely emerged from a laboratory leak but not as part of a weapons programme.
Does this report mean it is more likely Covid came from a lab?
Not necessarily. The report’s conclusion runs counter to that from several scientific studies as well as reports by a number of other US intelligence agencies. What’s more, experts are unable to scrutinise the evidence the US energy department report is based on.
The top Democrats and Republicans in Congress and the leaders of the House and Senate intelligence committees will receive a briefing tomorrow on the classified documents found in Donald Trump’s, Joe Biden’s and Mike Pence’s possessions.
That’s the word from the Guardian’s Hugo Lowell:
New: Gang of Eight will be briefed on Trump Mar-a-Lago, Biden and Pence docs and risk assessment tomorrow afternoon by ODNI, per sources.
— Hugo Lowell (@hugolowell) February 27, 2023
The Gang of Eight is an informal term for top lawmakers who are occasionally given classified briefings by the intelligence community. The group today encompasses speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy and the chamber’s top Democrat Hakeem Jeffries, Democratic Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer and his Republican counterpart Mitch McConnell, as well as the leaders of the chambers’ intelligence committees: Republican chair Michael Turner and Democratic ranking member Jim Himes in the House, and Democratic chair Mark Warner and Republican ranking member Marco Rubio in the Senate.
Lawmakers, particularly in the Senate, have demanded a briefing from Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines ever since the Mar-a-Lago classified documents scandal became public last year. Their calls only grew louder as more documents turned up in Biden’s and Pence’s possession in the months that followed.
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The FBI recently arrested a Virginia man on allegations that he participated in the deadly US Capitol attack more than two years ago after matching a photo of the shoes he wore at the Capitol that day with a photo of him wearing the same shoes while doing a Crossfit workout, NBC News reporter Ryan J Reilly tweeted Monday.
Also recently arrested by the FBI: Jan. 6 defendant Jeffrey Etter of Portsmouth, Virginia. They matched up the shoes he wore to the Capitol to a Crossfit photo. https://t.co/1qwNnNWhmg pic.twitter.com/1PxPaosQM3
— Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) February 27, 2023
Jeffrey Etter, of Portsmouth, faces charges of illegally entering a restricted federal building as well as engaging in disorderly conduct at the Capitol, according to court documents filed on 22 February. There was no telling on Monday how long it might take for the case against him to be resolved.
As of Monday, at least 1,000 people have been charged in connection with the Capitol attack, which a bipartisan congressional report linked to nine deaths, including the suicides of officers who were traumatized after securing control of the building, according to officials. More than 475 of those have pleaded guilty, and a smaller number have been convicted at trial.
Supporters of Donald Trump who were trying to prevent the congressional certification of his defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential race staged the attack. Trump, who told his supporters to “fight like hell” on the day they targeted the Capitol, has not been among those charged in connection with the attack.
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The bestselling self-help author Marianne Williamson has announced that she is again running for president in 2024, becoming the first Democrat to sign up to challenge incumbent Joe Biden for the party’s nomination next year.
Williamson, 70, ran in the 2020 race which saw Biden oust Donald Trump as president, bringing what the Associated Press described as “quirky spiritualism” to the campaign. In a Facebook post over the weekend that alluded to Trump’s White House victory in 2016 without mentioning him or how it was the Republican’s first time holding elected office, she argued that it was foolish “for anyone to think they can know who can win the presidency”.
“I’m not putting myself through this again just to add to the conversation,” Williamson added in the post. “I’m running for president to help … bring forth a new beginning.”
Williamson is sure to face the steepest of odds trying to win her party’s nomination over the sitting president. She is scheduled to kick off her campaign in Washington DC on Saturday.
Biden hasn’t formally declared himself a candidate for re-election. But first lady Jill Biden gave one of the clearest indications yet on Friday that the president would seek office again, telling the AP in an interview that there is “pretty much” nothing left to do but set the time and place for the announcement.
In a separate interview with CNN published on Monday, Jill Biden was asked if there was any chance her husband wouldn’t run. “Not in my book,” Jill Biden said.
Jill Biden added that she was “all for it, of course”, when asked if she supported her 80-year-old husband’s search for a second term in the White House.
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The day so far
The Ohio train derailment has found its way on to Congress’s agenda, where House and Senate lawmakers say they are determined to get answers, but will also probably use the accident as a cudgel against their political opponents. Across the street at the supreme court, justices have agreed to hear the Biden administration’s appeal to a ruling that would have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Here’s what else has happened today so far:
TikTok could be banned across the United States, if a bill House Republicans are pursuing becomes law.
Primetime TV viewers can tune in tomorrow to a congressional hearing on the Chinese Communist party and how its policies affect the United States.
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
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After the East Palestine train derailment, Democrats have accused Donald Trump of laying the groundwork for the accident by deregulating the freight rail and chemicals industries during his presidency.
But a Washington Post fact check of some of those arguments shows they don’t hold water, at least based on the information currently available. “From our analysis, none of the regulatory changes made during the Trump administration at this point can be cited as contributing to the accident,” the piece concludes.
However, there does seem to be some difference of opinion on whether electronically controlled pneumatic (ECP) brakes could have made a difference in the crash. Barack Obama’s administration promulgated a rule that would have required this more sophisticated braking system on all “high hazard” trains. Trump put that rule on hold when he took office in 2017, and Joe Biden hasn’t reinstated it. Indeed, his chair of the National Transportation Safety Board Jennifer Homendy has said it would not have made a difference even if it had been in place.
However, there’s this, from the Post’s fact check: “Cynthia Quarterman, who helped write the rule as administrator of the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration during the Obama administration, told The Fact Checker that if the rule had not been delayed and then shelved, she believes ECP brakes might have been widely adopted by industry and could have ended up on this train.”
Last week, Russia’s president Vladimir Putin announced he was pulling out of New Start, its last major nuclear arms control treaty with the United States.
Perhaps he spoke too soon. CNN reports that the state department says Russia was still complying with the treaty as recently as today:
Kinda wild: Russia's New START suspension hasn’t been officially affected yet, after Putin's announcement last wk. "We’re still receiving notifications, as recently as today, under the treaty,” top State arms control official Mallory Stewart says, h/t @jmhansler.
— Kylie Atwood (@kylieatwood) February 27, 2023
Want to help Ukraine? Adopt an orphan. That’s the message from the leader of one non-profit, as the Guardian’s Ramon Antonio Vargas reports:
Since Russian troops invaded Ukraine a little more than a year ago, some in the US have shown their support for the encroached country by volunteering to fight for it while others have called on politicians to equip the defenders with munitions and weapons.
Randi Thompson is calling on Americans to ponder another way: aiding efforts to place Ukrainian children orphaned by the Russian invasion in new families within their country.
Thompson is the president, chief executive officer and co-founder of the Los Angeles-based non-profit Kidsave, which is dedicated to connecting older children in institutionalized care around the world with families to adopt them. The group had worked in Ukraine for six years before the invasion by Russian forces on 24 February 2022 made a bad situation worse.
Officials estimate there were more than 105,000 children across 700 orphanages, boarding schools and other institutions in Ukraine when the war there started – that’s more than 1% of the nation’s underage population and Europe’s highest rate of youth institutionalization.
Numbers since then are harder to track as children have been evacuated and moved out of Ukraine’s institutionalized care for safety reasons. But there’s reason to think things have gotten only harder for Ukraine’s orphans.
Treasury secretary Yellen in surprise visit to Kyiv
Treasury secretary Janet Yellen has made a surprise visit to Kyiv, where she’s underscoring Washington’s continued support for Ukraine one year after Russia invaded.
We at the Guardian have a separate live blog with all the latest Ukraine news, which you can follow along here.
In other regulatory news, Punchbowl News reports that House Republicans are moving forward with a bill that would allow the president to ban social media app TikTok:
New: The House Foreign Affairs Cmte will mark up a bill tomorrow that would allow the president to ban TikTok in the United States. Bill is being offered by @RepMcCaul, HFAC chair
— John Bresnahan (@bresreports) February 27, 2023
Despite its worldwide popularity, TikTok has been a subject of increasing concern in Washington due to its ownership by Chinese firm ByteDance. Lawmakers of both parties fear the Chinese Communist party could be controlling ByteDance, and using TikTok as a way to access users’ data.
Late last year, Congress banned the app from government-owned devices. In March, TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is expected to testify before the Republican-controlled House energy and commerce committee.
Before she became a senator, Democrat Elizabeth Warren played a major role in the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
She advised Barack Obama on the agency’s set-up, and takes credit for proposing the idea behind it.
Here’s what she has to say about the supreme court’s decision to review an appeals court decision that, if upheld, could defang the agency:
Despite years of desperate attacks from Republicans and corporate lobbyists, the constitutionality of the CFPB and its funding structure have been upheld time and time again. If the Supreme Court follows more than a century of law and historical precedent, it will strike down the Fifth Circuit’s decision before it throws our financial markets and economy into chaos.”
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Supreme court takes up challenge to Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
The supreme court has agreed to hear the Biden administration’s challenge to an appeals court ruling that could have defanged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which was created in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis to ensure Americans are treated fairly in the financial sector.
The conservative-dominated high court will review an October decision from the fifth circuit court of appeals, where three judges appointed by Donald Trump ruled the CFPB’s funding mechanism was unconstitutional. According to the Washington Post, the Biden administration has argued that the decision “calls into question virtually every action the CFPB has taken in the 12 years since it was created.”
The CFPB has long been in conservatives’ crosshairs, and in 2020, the supreme court allowed the president to fire its director, but held back from the more expansive ruling business groups were hoping for:
Here’s more on the latest challenge, from the Post:
The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act moved to insulate the CFPB from political influence by making the agency independent from an annual appropriation from Congress. Instead, it is funded from the operating reserves of the Federal Reserve, which itself is funded through bank assessments.
The 5th Circuit judges agreed with two financial associations who were challenging the CFPB’s regulations regarding payday lenders and argued that the agency’s structure was unconstitutional. They said the structure violated the constitutional command requiring congressional appropriation of any “Money … drawn from the Treasury.”
The appeals court vacated the payday lending rule and said it was taking that action not because the CFPB lacked authority over the issue but because of “the Bureau’s unconstitutional funding scheme.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar told the Supreme Court that the 5th Circuit decision was in direct conflict with every other court that looked at the funding structure.
“The court of appeals’ novel and ill-defined limits on Congress’s spending authority contradict the Constitution’s text, historical practice, and this Court’s precedent,” Prelogar wrote in a petition asking the justice for review. “And the court of appeals compounded its error by adopting a sweeping remedial approach that calls into question virtually every action the CFPB has taken in the 12 years since it was created.”
Republican congressman Mike Gallagher, chair of the newly created House select committee on China, says he hopes the panel’s first primetime hearing on Tuesday will be to impress that the Chinese Communist party’s influence is “not just an over-there problem” but a matter of “American sovereignty”.
“We have a responsibility to communicate not only to our colleagues but also the American people why any of this matters,” Gallagher told reporters on Monday, previewing tomorrow night’s hearing.
He said that panel’s work was designed to expose how the CCP’s “Orwellian model of totalitarian control is designed not just for the roughly 12 million Uighur Muslims living in an open air prison, or even the nearly one and a half billion Chinese citizens but increasingly, for all of us.”
Gallagher added that his expectations were realistic – accepting that the panel’s hearings likely wouldn’t pull in “Netflix viewership”. But he hopes that by embracing methods that are a “little bit outside the box”, the panel can lay out a compelling case for why Americans should care about the CCP.
As an example, the members intend to hold events and showcases, possibly including audiovisual “wargaming”, in addition to hearings. On Saturday, Gallagher held an event in New York with Democratic congressman Ritchie Torres at the site of a former CCP-run police station used to monitor and harass Chinese citizens living in exile.
On Tuesday, the panel will hear from four witnesses, including former national security adviser HR McMaster and former deputy national security adviser and journalist Matt Pottinger.
The panel’s first hearing will be an intentionally broad preview of the work it plans to do over the next two years. The Wisconsin lawmaker said he anticipates future hearings on land purchases by Chinese citizens, Taiwan, TikTok and the way China exerts control over US companies that operate there.
Gallagher said he was hopeful that much of the work would be conducted in a bipartisan fashion, commending the makeup of the committee. He also emphasized that the committee’s mission was focused on the Chinese government, not its people, whom he called the “primary victims of CCP repression.”
The committee was established on an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote. But several House progressives objected to the panel’s creation, worrying that it would exacerbate anti-Asian American hate, which has increased sharply since the start of the pandemic.
Gallagher said the committee formally defines the relationship between China and the US as one of “strategic competition”. But, he said: “The reality is, it isn’t a tennis match. It’s about what kind of world we want to live in.”
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Representatives of federal agencies went door-to-door in East Palestine, Ohio, this weekend, checking on families affected by the disaster, according to the White House.
The teams composed of Environmental Protection Agency, Federal Emergency Management Agency and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention staff spoke with 350 households by the end of the weekend, and expected to hit their target of 400 families later today, a White House official said.
Here’s an interview from Fox News with the leader of the CDC’s response to the derailment:
WH directed fed agencies to go door-to-door in East Palestine, Ohio, to check in on each family.
— The Recount (@therecount) February 27, 2023
Capt. Jill Shugart, leading CDC's response: "We're gonna ask some questions, we want demographic information, where folks were doing the exposure and what type of health effects ..." pic.twitter.com/fokaPPmClD
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If you pay attention to rightwing media, you’ll hear certain terms thrown around about the East Palestine disaster. The Guardian’s Ed Pilkington and Nina Lakhani report on how conservatives are attempting to make the environmental catastrophe about race:
Until 2 February it was business as usual in the small rural community of East Palestine, Ohio. The local paper carried obituaries and sporting results, interspersed with stories of a homecoming queen, an abusive puppy mill and the driver in the Toughest Monster Truck Tour who was arrested for human trafficking.
The next day it all went up in flames.
“Train derailment sparks massive fire, prompts evacuations.” “Videos show major fire raging after tanker train derails.”
The derailment of a 50-car freight train carrying toxic materials on 3 February shattered daily life in East Palestine and sent a pall of black smoke over the region. Potentially lethal chemicals spewed into the air, ground and water.
Three weeks into the disaster, a new set of headlines has started to billow up from rightwing outlets and commentators. Now the tragedy of East Palestine has morphed into a racialized lament for the “forgotten” people abandoned by the uncaring “woke” Biden administration.
For “forgotten”, read white.
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With Democrats in Congress demanding answers from America’s freight rail companies, Adam Lowenstein reports on how the industry has in recent years spent handsomely on political contributions, public relations and other methods aimed at crafting public opinion:
Six children, smiling and laughing, sit at a table with lunch boxes open in front of them. “Hey guys! My dad can stop a train with his finger,” one brags. “My mom can see into the future,” another says, holding up her hands as binoculars. “My mom? She speaks train,” a third claims.
Just then, her mom walks into the room. Another child asks if it’s true that she can talk to trains. “You betcha,” she says with a wink, as she stands in front of a sky-blue sign emblazoned with the logo of the Norfolk Southern Corporation.
The kids’ conversation takes place in “Everyday Superheroes”, a 2018 video created for Norfolk Southern, the $12.7bn operator of the train carrying toxic chemicals that derailed earlier this month in East Palestine, Ohio, causing an environmental disaster of still unknown proportions.
Expect Trump and Biden to loom large over train derailment investigations
The derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals that may have done long-lasting, potentially life-changing damage to a small Ohio community is certainly the type of calamity Congress is equipped to look into.
And on the surface, the hearings announced by a House and a Senate committee thus far seem intent on doing just that.
“Thousands of trains carrying hazardous materials, like the one that derailed in Ohio, travel through communities throughout the nation each day. Every railroad must reexamine its hazardous materials safety practices to better protect its employees, the environment, and American families and reaffirm safety as a top priority,” Maria Cantwell, the Democratic chair of the Senate commerce committee, wrote in a letter sent to the heads of the US’s top freight rail companies.
Republican House commerce committee chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers and Bill Johnson, who leads the environment, manufacturing and critical materials subcommittee and also represents the district encompassing East Palestine, addressed their letter to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) head Michael Regan.
They asked for “information to our Committee regarding the EPA’s overall response, the controlled burn of some of the rail cars, and its testing plan to ensure people are kept safe”.
Both sound like serious efforts to get to the bottom of the derailment, and they may well be. But they’re also opportunities for each party to make the case that the other is responsible for laying the groundwork for the disaster. For Republicans, they’ll argue the buck stops with Joe Biden and the leaders he’s chosen for the EPA and transportation department. For Democrats, don’t be surprised if they bring up Donald Trump, arguing his deregulation policies were friendly to the rail industry at the expense of the communities around their tracks.
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Congress demands answers on Ohio toxic train derailment
Good morning, US politics blog readers. East Palestine, Ohio, became America’s latest political battleground earlier this month when a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in the small community, sparking fears of life-changing pollution for its nearly 4,800 residents. Congress is now poised to get involved, with lawmakers of both parties pledging to hold hearings into the incident. For Democrats in the Senate, the focus looks to be on whether government deregulation and corporate malfeasance contributed to the accident. House Republicans, meanwhile, may see it as another opportunity to turn the public against the Biden administration.
Here’s what else is going on today:
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will hold a White House event to celebrate Black History Month at 5pm eastern time.
Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre will take reporters’ questions at 2.30pm.
The House and Senate are back in action, though no votes are expected.
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