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Tag: Biden

  • How Biden saved Silicon Valley startups: Inside the 72 hours that transformed U.S. banking

    How Biden saved Silicon Valley startups: Inside the 72 hours that transformed U.S. banking

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    The result, announced just minutes before financial markets in Asia reopened, was sweeping: The federal government would provide SVB’s depositors with access to all their funds, effectively averting painful financial uncertainty — and the threat of heavy losses — for thousands of venture-backed startups. Signature Bank, which had followed SVB into insolvency, would receive the same guarantee.

    Even more critically, the Federal Reserve would provide a massive lifeline to the nation’s banks: It would singlehandedly give all other similar lenders access to funds designed to keep them afloat and quell the panic brewing across the country.

    The swift and forceful action to rescue depositors at the two failed midsize lenders rewrote crucial banking guardrails in ways that could reverberate for years. It put the Biden administration’s stamp — for good or ill — on the sector’s future financial stability, while sending a message about the government’s willingness to rescue private businesses in new ways. It also was done without passing a single new act of Congress or holding hearings among elected officials in recent days.

    And it almost didn’t happen.

    President Joe Biden began the weekend highly skeptical of anything that could be labeled a taxpayer-funded bailout, according to four people close to the situation, who were not authorized to speak for attribution.

    That would be a serious political risk for the president given that many of SVB’s customers were start-up entrepreneurs and investors with so much money deposited in the bank that they far exceeded the federal government’s $250,000 insurance limit. Signature catered in part to once-high-flying crypto investors.

    Biden, who as vice president had watched then-President Barack Obama get hammered over his role in bailing out giant banks during the financial crisis, had little desire for a repeat — especially since he had long embraced a “bottom-up, middle out” economic philosophy focused on average working families, the people close to the situation said.

    Yet as officials worked through the weekend — mostly in open-ended virtual meetings tying several agencies together — to determine the blast radius of SVB’s failure, they concluded that failing to protect the bank’s depositors could leave small businesses across the country unable to access money needed to pay workers and keep their operations going.

    “There’s not a way to help the people he wants without also helping the uninsured depositors who made a bad choice by putting too much money into a single bank,” said one adviser to the White House. “I have no doubt in my mind that he feels ambivalent about it. But he’s not willing to take a risk with this economy.”

    Though there was little concern that the failures of SVB and Signature threatened to destabilize the entire banking sector, officials mapping the network of companies tied to those institutions worried that refusing to step in could disrupt large swaths of the economy.

    Panicked depositors would likely pull their money en masse from other regional banks, creating a cascading crisis on top of the alarm already spreading throughout Silicon Valley.

    Biden aides and Democratic lawmakers had also grown concerned about the viability of certain payroll-processing companies tied to SVB, two people familiar with the discussions said. If they were unable to function, the number of workers at risk of not receiving their paychecks would increase exponentially. The situation risked spiraling quickly from there, denting consumer confidence in the economy’s stability.

    “There’s just a lot of sensitivity, and he doesn’t want to disrupt an economy that he thinks is doing really well for workers,” the adviser said. “The direction was: Stabilize everything.”

    Biden eventually came around to the view that an emergency rescue was the only viable option after multiple briefings Friday through Sunday from chief of staff Jeff Zients and new National Economic Council Director Lael Brainard, who just joined the White House after serving as vice chair of the Fed and chair of the central bank’s Financial Stability Committee. He also spoke with California Gov. Gavin Newsom on Saturday about SVB’s failure and its impact on the state.

    Biden received a final briefing from Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen along with Zients and Brainard on Sunday afternoon shortly before the announcement.

    Throughout the weekend, Biden’s inner circle emphasized the potential impact on workers’ paychecks, which they believed would resonate both with the president and the public, said one of the people familiar with the deliberations. And they urged Biden to speak to the public before U.S. markets opened to ward off runs on other regional banks.

    Biden agreed, but not before stressing that his speech needed to play up his concern for small businesses and make it clear Americans should maintain trust in the banking system.

    At 1 p.m. Friday, Yellen convened a team to come up with a battle plan: Fed Chair Jerome Powell, FDIC Chair Martin Gruenberg, Acting Comptroller of the Currency Michael Hsu, and San Francisco Fed President Mary Daly, whose regional branch oversaw the bank.

    Their teams eventually settled on three potential options, according to a person familiar with the talks: looking for a buyer, backstopping uninsured depositors, and launching a new emergency lending program at the Fed. By Saturday, they’d agreed to pull the trigger and work on all three.

    But it was not easy getting to the finish line, especially when it came to the FDIC and protecting all depositors at the two failed banks.

    The FDIC’s decision was particularly fraught and down to the final hours, two people said. Agency officials worried that the proposal could create thorny issues for the agency, which is statutorily bound to protect the deposit insurance fund — a longstanding pot of money financed by bank fees.

    It also raised questions about whether the FDIC might be expected to make all depositors whole anytime a bank fails, something it is not designed to do, making the decision especially painful for Gruenberg and his fellow board members.

    Though the Fed and the FDIC were each designed to stop financial panics, the moves by both agencies also risked ratifying the notion that the government would always be there to dull the consequences of the collapse of a larger bank. It was the “moral hazard” question that dogged rescue efforts in 2008 and 2009.

    But the administration needed a straightforward solution, and also faced increasing pressure from Capitol Hill, where California lawmakers inundated by worried constituents pushed officials to take whatever steps were necessary to maximize SVB’s chances of being bought by another bank.

    Members of the California delegation spent the weekend scrambling for any information that might shed light on whether SVB’s extensive customer network of high-tech startups and powerful venture capitalists would be able to access their funds come Monday. A briefing with FDIC officials on Friday offered little substance — according to a lawmaker who attended — as the agency was still gathering information about the bank’s uninsured deposits.

    As information trickled out on Sunday about a possible plan to backstop depositors, FDIC and Treasury officials wouldn’t even confirm or deny a widely reported auction process for SVB’s assets, Rep. Anna Eshoo, a California Democrat whose district includes a large section of Silicon Valley, said in an interview.

    While lawmakers remained largely in the dark until shortly before the announcement, officials from the Fed, FDIC, White House and Treasury spent all weekend in rolling virtual meetings that continued through Friday and Saturday nights into Sunday.

    The administration had yet to finalize its plan by the time Yellen went on “Face the Nation” Sunday morning, forcing her to remain noncommittal about a path forward. Yellen merely said the government would not be bailing out a bank’s investors.

    Yet over the next several hours, officials raced to nail down the final details of their approach. Emails and drafts were exchanged among the top players right up until they pushed the button on the announcement and held press briefings. One person familiar with the meetings described them as short of frantic but “very driven and determined.”

    At 6:15 p.m. ET on Sunday, the Fed, Treasury and the FDIC jointly announced that the government would immediately provide access to all depositor funds held at the two failed banks, using the government’s power to immediately designate the institutions as systemically significant.

    The action did forestall a market meltdown. Stocks ended Monday only slightly lower. But it did not keep investors from hammering other regional banks. Shares in First Republic, which saw lines of panicked depositors over the weekend, plunged 62 percent despite the government actions, suggesting investors still have doubts about the banking system, especially the tiers just below the most heavily regulated giant banks.

    Bob Kocher, a partner at venture capital firm Venrock and former Obama-era White House official, said some panicked companies are going as far as transferring all their money into board members’ individual bank accounts while they set up their own new accounts with major financial institutions.

    “There’s no way now as a board member you can sign off on putting all your money into a regional bank,” he said, adding that he expects to see significant outflows at similarly sized institutions like First Republic Bank and PacWest Bancorp. “Everybody’s racing to put their money into JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs.”

    Beyond making payroll, Kocher said, SVB’s failure raised questions about how companies would pay for basic services like cloud storage and website maintenance, as well a constellation of smaller suppliers, if their deposits got tied up in a troubled bank.

    “I think it’s going to take at least a month or two for things to calm down and settle out,” he said.

    There’s similar trepidation among Biden officials, who spent Monday holding their breath, closely monitoring banks’ falling stock prices for signs of broader contagion.

    In the meantime, aides have tried to head off blowback from the party’s progressive wing, emphasizing that taxpayer money won’t directly go toward propping up SVB’s depositors — and that the toll on workers could have been far worse had they simply let the bank fail.

    Biden stressed that point on Monday in remarks aimed at calming the markets, expressing confidence that “the banking system is safe” while also repeatedly emphasizing that taxpayers wouldn’t be on the hook for any losses.

    Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, was similarly resolute. “The government is not bailing out anything,” she said in an interview. “If the banks have made mistakes, if the investments have been bad, if they weren’t watching the balance sheet, they’re going to be held accountable.”

    Jonathan Lemire, Sam Sutton and Eleanor Mueller contributed to this report.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • GOP killed Big Business. Biden buries the corpse.

    GOP killed Big Business. Biden buries the corpse.

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    The moves by Biden hold important implications for big business and the economy. Federal regulators had little choice over the weekend but to intervene to rescue depositors at the failed Silicon Valley Bank along with Signature Bank in New York and take other actions to protect financial institutions. But the White House noted that no taxpayer would bear any of the losses. And the broader shift to more populist policies, like the “Buy American” campaign also championed by Trump, could drive up the cost of production for companies — and consumers — at a time when the Federal Reserve is jacking up interest rates to bring down record-high inflation.

    And companies themselves fear a chilling effect on their operations from both Democrats seeking to toughen regulations and from Republicans ready to rip any firm that adopts progressive policies on climate and a range of social issues.

    “We have come a long way from when Bill Clinton used to say he wanted there to be more millionaires in America because that would mean more successful entrepreneurs creating jobs,” said former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers who served under both Clinton and President Barack Obama and has often antagonized the left.

    “The world has changed with rising inequality and increasing concerns about monopoly and corporate abuse,” Summers added. “But I worry about the pendulum having swung much too far toward rampant populism with extreme emphasis on protectionist steps like ‘Buy American,’ implausible rhetoric about price gouging and extreme regulatory appointments.”

    The White House did not respond to a request for comment.

    Corporate America in 2020 was largely resigned to Biden favoring policies on taxes and regulations that they didn’t like. But most executives were relieved to get a far less volatile president who would end Trump’s war on big business. They got the first part. Not so much the second.

    And now as the 2024 campaign begins, candidates in both parties have to be more careful about how they interact with Wall Street and collect corporate cash. And businesses must contend with perhaps the most hostile political environment they’ve known in almost a century.

    In the GOP primary, for example, likely candidates including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has taken money from Wall Street titans like Citadel founder Ken Griffin, have to worry about Trump turning them into the 2024 version of Jeb Bush, Wall Street’s once dream candidate who quickly melted under Trump’s relentless attacks.

    To be sure, corporations remain an enormous force in American politics. Companies are overwhelmingly among the biggest spenders on lobbying. And businesses and aligned political groups contributed some $3.5 billion to politicians during the 2022 midterm cycle, a slight increase from the 2018 midterms.

    They still wield power in the legal system as well following multiple rulings by the Supreme Court’s conservative majority granting them rights similar to individual citizens and then slashing most limitations on corporate speech in the form of political contributions. But the ground has clearly shifted away from them.

    “They are very far from homeless, but instead may be more like your drunken lout friend, the one you don’t want to be seen with in public,” said progressive economist Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Biden has stepped in pretty far with an agenda to limit the power of big business. They surely don’t like his plans for taxing share buybacks, negotiating drug prices, and taking anti-trust seriously.”

    But Baker said Biden “can’t pull the whole party along with him,” noting that Sens. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Kyrsten Sinema (I-Ariz.) “nixed direct increases in the corporate tax rate.”

    While Trump touted a business-skeptical populism, his signature legislation — the sweeping 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act — was derided by progressives as a huge gift to business.

    Biden himself has taken pro-business steps as well, including granting subsidies for domestic semiconductor manufacturers and clean energy companies. He hasn’t hesitated to hire at least a few Wall Street-friendly aides and is expected to forego expansive new restrictions on American investment in China, denying a push by some hawks in his administration and in Congress.

    And now, climate activists are bracing for a big setback from the administration as Biden moves closer to approving an Alaskan oil project that would pump as much carbon into the atmosphere as 60 coal-burning power plants.

    Still, businesses find themselves under attack on numerous fronts, with Republicans hammering banks for taking what they dismiss as “woke” positions on issues like climate risk, and the White House doubling down on some of Trump’s tough stances with U.S. trading partners.

    The president on Thursday rolled out a budget heavily focused on boosting taxes on the rich and corporations, including wiping away much of the Trump corporate tax cuts. He also wants to raise antitrust spending at the DOJ in the coming year by $100 million — a record annual increase.

    Former members of Congress from both parties complain that there is increasingly no political home for politicians who believe in solid but not onerous regulation, modest taxation and not getting in the way of the economy with stifling rules and taxes.

    “Populism has grabbed hold of both parties and it is en vogue to vilify business,” said former Democratic congresswoman and finance executive Stephanie Murphy of Florida. “At the same time, we are asking business to help us be competitive. The incongruence of this approach negatively impacts American prosperity. We need all voices at the table, including the business community.”

    A White House official noted that Biden is not behaving like Trump on economics. He is simply moving to take back issues like trade and skepticism of giant companies that Trump co-opted in 2016. The official, who was not authorized by the White House to be quoted by name, said the administration believes Trump “talked the talk but did not walk the walk” on protecting forgotten workers, instead focusing his biggest legislative item on slashing taxes on corporations and the wealthy.

    Murphy, Summers and other more centrist-leaning economists worry that some of Biden’s current proposals, including reshoring entire supply chains, are not realistic or even desirable and would serve to push up inflation with American businesses passing higher production costs on to consumers.

    And they worry about any measures that would reduce legal immigration, given that there is such heavy demand for workers in the economy and not enough Americans willing to fill the openings.

    Top executives often privately vent that Biden was supposed to be the answer to Trump rather than a highly modified version of him.

    “Look, we knew Biden meant more taxes, tougher regulators and all that,” said the CEO of a Fortune 100 company who asked that his name not be used because his firm is closely regulated by the government. “But now he’s co-opting the Trump trade agenda and gearing up to run this soak the rich, tax everyone into oblivion campaign. It’s obviously frustrating.”

    Kevin Madden, a consultant at corporate strategy firm Penta and former top aide to 2012 GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney, said the bipartisan shift away from the corporate world means companies need to spend a lot more time lobbying for their interests.

    “Reactionary politics still has its limitations, whether it’s from the left or the right,” Madden said. “It’s shortsighted for both policymakers and business leaders to just focus on the partisans.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Biden to put Arctic waters off limits to new oil leases as Willow decision looms

    Biden to put Arctic waters off limits to new oil leases as Willow decision looms

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    The White House has been mulling the Willow decision for weeks. The deliberations have focused on the legal constraints posed by the fact that Conoco has held some leases for decades and “has certain valid, existing rights granted by prior Administrations, limiting the Biden Administration’s options,” the official continued.

    Stopping new oil leases, plus other measures meant to conserve the Arctic from new drilling, is meant as a “fire wall” to protect 16 million acres of land and water in the state, said the official.

    The Sierra Club environmental group gave tempered support to any new rules.

    “These unparalleled protections for Alaskan landscapes and waters are the right decision at the right time, and we thank the Biden Administration for taking this significant step,” Sierra Club Lands Protection Program Director Athan Manuel said in a prepared statement. “However, the benefits of these protections can be undone just as quickly by approval of oil and gas projects on public lands, and right now, no proposal poses a bigger threat to lands, wildlife, communities, and our climate than ConocoPhillips’ Willow project.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Biden says the U.S. and Ukraine are united. Cracks are starting to show.

    Biden says the U.S. and Ukraine are united. Cracks are starting to show.

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    Publicly, there has been little separation between Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, an alliance on full display last month when the American president made his covert, dramatic visit to Kyiv. But based on conversations with 10 officials, lawmakers and experts, new points of tension are emerging: The sabotage of a natural gas pipeline on the floor of the Atlantic Ocean; the brutal, draining defense of a strategically unimportant Ukrainian city; and a plan to fight for a region where Russian forces have been entrenched for nearly a decade.

    Senior administration officials maintain that unity between Washington and Kyiv is tight. But the fractures that have appeared are making it harder to credibly claim there’s little daylight between the U.S. and Ukraine as sunbeams streak through the cracks.

    For nine months, Russia has laid siege to Bakhmut, though capturing the southeastern Ukrainian city would do little to alter the trajectory of the war. It has become the focal point of the fight in recent weeks, with troops and prisoners from the mercenary Wagner Group leading the combat against Ukrainian forces. Both sides have suffered heavy losses and reduced the city to smoldering ruins.

    Ukraine has dug in, refusing to abandon the ruined city even at tremendous cost.

    “Each day of the city’s defense allows us to gain time to prepare reserves and prepare for future offensive operations,” said Col. Gen. Oleksandr Syrskyi, the commander of Ukraine’s ground forces. “At the same time, in the battles for this fortress, the enemy loses the most prepared and combat-capable part of his army — Wagner’s assault troops.”

    Multiple administration officials have begun worrying that Ukraine is expending so much manpower and ammunition in Bakhmut that it could sap their ability to mount a major counteroffensive in the spring.

    “I certainly don’t want to discount the tremendous work that the Ukrainians’ soldiers and leaders have put into defending Bakhmut — but I think it’s more of a symbolic value than it is a strategic and operational value,” said Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

    Kyiv, for now, has ignored Washington’s input.

    Meanwhile, an assessment by U.S. intelligence suggested that a “pro-Ukraine group” was responsible for the destruction of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines last fall, shedding light on a great mystery. The new intelligence, first reported by The New York Times, was short on details but appeared to knock down a theory that Moscow was responsible for sabotaging the pipelines that delivered Russian gas to Europe.

    Intelligence analysts do not believe Zelenskyy or his aides were involved in the sabotage, but the Biden administration has signaled to Kyiv — much like it did when a car bomb in Moscow killed the daughter of a prominent Russian nationalist last year — that certain acts of violence outside of Ukraine’s borders will not be tolerated.

    There has also been, at times, frustration about Washington’s delivery of weapons to Ukraine. The United States has, by far, sent the most weapons and equipment to the front, but Kyiv has always looked ahead for the next set of supplies. Though most in the administration have been understanding about Kyiv’s desperation to defend itself, there have been grumblings about the constant requests and, at times, Zelenskyy not showing appropriate gratitude, according to two White House officials not authorized to speak publicly about private conversations.

    “I do think the administration is split, the National Security Council split” on what weapons to send to Ukraine, said McCaul, who’s in constant touch with senior Biden officials. “I talk to a lot of top military brass and they are, in large part, supportive of giving them the ATACMS.”

    The administration hasn’t provided those long-range missiles because there are few to spare in America’s own arsenal. There’s also fear that Ukraine might strike faraway Russian targets, potentially escalating the war.

    A recent report that the Pentagon was blocking the Biden administration from sharing evidence of possible Russian war crimes with the International Criminal Court also put another dent in the unity narrative. White House officials were dismayed when the New York Times story came out, fearful it would damage the moral case the U.S. has made for supporting Ukraine against Russian war crimes and crimes against humanity.

    The administration definitively declared the alliance between the United States — and its allies — and Kyiv remained strong, and that it would last as long as the war raged.

    National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said the White House is “in constant communication with Ukraine as we support their defense of their sovereignty and territorial integrity.” She added that with Putin showing no signs of ceasing his war, “the best thing we can do is to continue to help Ukraine succeed on the battlefield so they can be in the strongest possible position at the negotiating table for when that time comes.”

    But the growing disconnects may foreshadow a larger divide over the debate as to how the war will end.

    Though Biden has pledged steadfast support, and the coffers remain open for now, the U.S. has been clear with Kyiv that it cannot fund Ukraine indefinitely at this level. Though backing Ukraine has largely been a bipartisan effort, a small but growing number of Republicans have begun to voice skepticism about the use of American treasure to support Kyiv without an end in sight to a distant war.

    Among those who have expressed doubt about support for the long haul is House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who has said that the U.S. would not offer a “blank check” to Ukraine and rejected Zelenskyy’s invitation to travel to Kyiv and learn about the realities of war.

    “There is always some friction built in,” said Kurt Volker, a special presidential envoy for Ukraine during the Trump administration. “Zelenskyy also stepped in it a bit with McCarthy — coming across as needing to ‘educate’ him, rather than work with him.”

    But many observers credit remarkable transatlantic unity, praising the alliance holding firm despite the economic and political toll the war has taken.

    “I see the little fissures, but those have existed with points of disagreement and varied views between the U.S. and Ukraine even before the big February invasion, and since then,” said Shelby Magid, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Eurasia Center. “Zelenskyy has made pointed remarks before toward the U.S., and the White House has expressed disagreement with him — publicly and privately — on specific aspects, but that hasn’t shifted or eaten away at the overall U.S. support and partnership.”

    Points of crisis still hover on the horizon. Zelenskyy’s insistence that all of Ukraine — including Crimea, which has been under Russian control since 2014 — be returned to Ukraine before any peace negotiations begin would only extend the war, U.S. officials believe. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has signaled to Kyiv that Ukraine’s potential recapture of Crimea would be a red line for Putin, possibly leading to a dramatic escalation from Moscow.

    Moreover, the Pentagon has consistently expressed doubts whether Ukraine’s forces — despite being armed with sophisticated Western weapons — would be able to dislodge Russia from Crimea, where it has been entrenched for nearly a decade.

    For now, Biden continued to stick to his refrain that the United States will leave all decisions about war and peace to Zelenskky. But whispers have begun across Washington as to how tenable that will be as the war grinds on — and another presidential election looms.

    “There has never been a war in history without setbacks and challenges,” said Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.), an Army veteran and HFAC member. “The question is not whether Ukrainians have setbacks, but how they respond and overcome them. Ukraine will overcome, defeat Russia and remain free.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Biden expected to OK Alaska oil project — a blow to his green base

    Biden expected to OK Alaska oil project — a blow to his green base

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    Biden pledged to halt new oil and gas development on federal land during his 2020 campaign, and he and Democrats in Congress passed landmark climate legislation last summer aimed at weaning huge swaths of the economy off of fossil fuels. But the surge in oil prices after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced the administration into an awkward embrace of the oil industry, as Biden countered Republican accusations that his policies were to blame for the skyrocketing price at the gas pump that was stoking inflation.

    Approving Willow would be just the latest shift by Biden toward the political center as he moves toward a potential reelection bid. He similarly dismayed liberals last week by saying he would not veto a GOP-led repeal of changes to D.C.’s criminal code.

    The White House defended Biden’s environmental record Saturday in comments to POLITICO, saying Biden’s policies have made the U.S. “a magnet for clean energy manufacturing and jobs” with policies that help the U.S. come closer to meeting climate goals. A White House official said that using oil and gas is still consistent with Biden’s near- and long-term emissions targets, which the official said the U.S. is on track to meet.

    “This approach has not changed — nor will it. Our climate goals are cutting emissions in half by 2030 and reaching net-zero by 2050 — not 2023,” the official said. “That has always meant that oil will continue to be a part of the energy mix in the short-term while we shore up domestic clean energy production for the long-term.”

    Environmental groups acknowledged Saturday that they were largely in the dark about the White House’s plans, but said they believed that the current discussions inside the administration were largely over whether to limit the number of drilling sites at the Willow project to two rather than three. Conoco had proposed building five well pads.

    “It sounds like different groups in the White House are still discussing” the potential size of the project, said one environmental advocate who had been in contact with the administration late Friday.

    “They told us they had nothing to offer” on the state of project deliberations, added the person, who was granted anonymity to describe internal White House deliberations.

    But if the reports of the approval are true, Biden’s shift to the center on oil would threaten to demoralize the climate activists he needs to support him in 2024, said Jamal Raad, co-founder and senior adviser of the group Evergreen Action.

    “It will be harder for us and climate activists to rally around this president come next year,” Raad said, explaining the action would detract from his many accomplishments, such as the $370 billion in climate and clean energy incentives in the Inflation Reduction Act, while putting the onus on Biden to issue tougher environmental rules on cars and power plants.

    Conoco declined to comment until it hears a decision directly from the administration.

    Conoco Chief Executive Ryan Lance last week urged the administration to approve Willow, saying the project was in line with the Biden administration’s recent exhortations to the industry to increase oil production to help batten down prices.

    “This is exactly what this administration has been asking our industry to do over the last couple of years,” Lance told an energy conference in Houston.

    Regardless of the size, any plan would call for drilling oil and building miles of pipelines and roads, a gravel pit, an air strip and other infrastructure in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 36,875-square-mile patch of federal land in the relatively undeveloped Arctic wilderness. It would produce as much as 600,000 barrels of oil over its three-decade lifetime.

    The project would also add nearly 280 million tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over that period, according to the Interior Department’s environmental analysis. That would be the equivalent of adding two new coal-fired power plants to the U.S. electricity system every year, according to the Environmental Protection Agency’s emissions calculator.

    The National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, originally set aside by the Harding administration for potential oil drilling in 1923, is outside the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, another swath of northern Alaska that Biden has declared off-limits for oil development.

    Environmentalists said they were still holding onto hope based on the administration’s denial that it made a final decision to OK the project, despite multiple news reports saying that an announcement of the approval would be made in the coming days. (Bloomberg News first reported Friday night that the administration had decided to greenlight it.)

    “Great! Then there is still time to turn this all around!!!” Natural Resources Defense Council spokesperson Anne Hawke posted on Twitter after White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre denied on Friday that a final decision had been made.

    Hawke also reached out to Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg for help persuading Biden, tweeting at the young advocate: “In just days, the US will approve a massive oil project in Alaska. Can you help us tell US @POTUS to #StopWillowProject?”

    Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.), a longtime climate advocate, expressed dismay at the news.

    “We cannot allow the Willow Project to move forward,” he tweeted late Friday. “We must build a clean energy future — not return to a dark, fossil-fueled past.”

    An approval, if it comes, would infuriate environmental groups and continue a year-long strengthening of the administration’s relationship with the oil industry. But it would also come as market analysts are forecasting that oil prices will remain volatile for the next several years, which would make killing the project politically tricky.

    Biden himself has softened his rhetoric on transitioning the country away from fossil fuels, and he has repeatedly pressed the oil and gas industry to increase production in the short term to keep prices lower.

    “We are still going to need oil and gas for a while.” he said during his State of the Union speech last month.

    The Willow development is the rare large-scale oil project to be announced in recent years in the United States, where the industry has instead shifted its focus to drilling smaller, cheaper and faster projects using fracking to tap into shale fields in the Southwest. If approved, construction could start soon, and additional construction in Alaska’s North Slope for Willow will occur throughout the summer and fall, the company has said.

    Alaskan native tribes have expressed split opinions on the project, with some warning it would degrade their environment and others welcoming its potential economic gains.

    “The Willow Project is a new opportunity to ensure a viable future for our communities, creating generational economic stability for our people and advancing our self-determination,” said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the nonprofit Voice of Arctic Iñupiat, in a statement Saturday. “North Slope Iñupiat communities have waited nearly a generation for Willow to advance.”

    Yet that urgency to develop the project, and the signals from the White House, were disheartening to environmental groups.

    “To us, it all sucks because it flies in the face of meeting our climate goals. So we’re going to keep fighting until there is a final record of decision,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, senior vice president of government affairs with the League of Conservation Voters.

    Some of Biden’s green allies suggested the move could have repercussions for Democrats in 2024. Along with the long-debated Keystone XL pipeline from Canada, which Biden effectively killed in one of his first acts as president, Willow has joined the ranks of fossil fuel projects that in earlier decades would have flown under radar but have now taken on outsized political significance.

    The Biden administration is caught in the middle, hyping the Inflation Reduction Act it signed into law as the biggest climate-related legislation ever but also asking companies to keep pumping barrels to keep fuel prices low in the here-and-now. That law has also won praise from the oil and gas sector for its incentives for carbon capture and storage and clean hydrogen – technologies the fossil fuel producers are pursuing.

    Raad, from Evergreen Action, said the Willow project “was something that really took the internet and social media by storm the last few weeks – because it is a physical thing and a physical place that feels real.” And that has implications for Biden’s hopes for reelection, he added.

    “There’s just no escaping the fact that we’re going to need to rally young folks and folks interested in climate next year to win,” Raad said. “And this does not help in any shape or form.”

    As of March 2, environmental advocates were citing 9,000 videos protesting Willow on the social media platform TikTok. Former Vice President Al Gore earlier this week weighed in to say it would be “recklessly irresponsible” to approve Willow.

    Deirdre Shelly, campaigns director with the youth environmental group Sunrise Movement, said her organization is already strategizing for the next election and that approving Willow would make organizers’ jobs more difficult.

    “This is just a huge disappointment. … It does feel like an about-face,” she said. “It makes it even harder for us to convince young people that they need to vote, that the Democratic Party leaders will act on climate.”

    But the administration also felt heavy pressure from the oil industry and the state’s politically powerful Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski. Murkowski has long championed Willow as a needed boost to the Alaskan economy, which has been troubled for years as the overall oil industry has picked up stakes to move to the cheaper opportunities in the Lower 48.

    Oil and gas companies and energy-state lawmakers would have been ready to blame the rejection of Willow for any subsequent rise in energy costs, even though the Biden Interior Department has approved new permits to drill on public land at a faster rate than his predecessors.

    Murkowski, speaking Friday in Houston before the announcement, said she had met with the White House last week to warn that the administration was legally bound to approve the project, given that Conoco held oil leases on federal land.

    “The fact of the matter is these are valid existing leases that Conoco holds,” Murkowski told reporters. “If the administration [had] basically not allowed them to be able to access those leases, what follows then? … Alaska litigation is always something that we have to reckon with.”

    Catherine Morehouse contributed to this report.



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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Iranian American detainee begs Biden to intervene for his release

    Iranian American detainee begs Biden to intervene for his release

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    An American citizen of Iranian origin, Siamak Namazi, who has been held in Tehran’s Evin prison for seven years, has beseeched US President Joe Biden for his release and two other American nationals.

    51-year-old Namazi, was speaking in an unprecedented interview with CNN on behalf of himself, 58-year-old businessman Emad Shargi, and 67-year-old environmentalist Morad Tahbaz.

    “I implore you, sir, to put the lives and liberty of innocent Americans above all the politics involved and to just do what is necessary to end this nightmare and bring us home,” Siamak Namazi told CNN’s Christiane Amanpour in a telephone interview on Thursday.

    Namazi continued that he was “deprived of many of his rights as a prisoner,” as he is treated as a “hostage,” stressing that many criminals have more rights than him.

    He pointed out that in his more than seven years of imprisonment, he spent months caged in a cell, sleeping on the floor.

    “I remain very concerned that the White House does not realize the seriousness of our situation,” he said adding, Tahbaz, and Shargi are now being held at the same prison.

    Namazi made a similar request to Joe Biden in January 2023, seven years after the release of five American citizens in a prisoner swap negotiated to coincide with the implementation of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal under President Barack Obama.

    Namazi said it was “painful and upsetting” that Biden had not met with his family “just to give them some words of reassurance.”

    Siamak Namazi, an oil executive, was arrested in October 2015 on charges of attempting to overthrow the country’s powerful clerics, an allegation he has denied.

    In January 2023, Siamak Namazi went on a seven-day hunger strike in Evin prison.

    His father, Baquer Namazi was also detained in 2016 when he attempted to help his son, but he was freed on medical grounds in 2022.



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    ( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

  • Liberal groups raise ‘grave concerns’ about Biden judicial pick

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    The controversy surrounding Delaney’s nomination is unusual for a Biden judicial pick, compounded with further concerns voiced by some Democratic members on the panel. The New Hampshire judicial nominee is under particular scrutiny for his representation of St. Paul’s School in a school sexual assault case. During that case, Delaney filed a motion that would have allowed the plaintiff, who was a minor, to remain anonymous only if she and her representatives agreed not to speak about the case publicly during the litigation.

    The victim in the case, Chessy Prout, went public and a settlement was eventually reached in 2018. Prout recently wrote an op-ed in the Boston Globe encouraging the White House to withdraw Delaney’s nomination. During his confirmation hearing, Delaney said he was an “advocate” for St. Paul’s, and that the school “felt that the request to restrict [Prout’s] lawyers from trying the case in the media was compatible with her desire to proceed with privacy and anonymity.”

    Delaney, a former New Hampshire attorney general, has strong support from his home state Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Maggie Hassan, as well as the White House. Hassan and Shaheen have made the case for his confirmation broadly to their colleagues, including at the caucus lunch this past week.

    Delaney’s allies also highlight support from Susan Carbon, former President Barack Obama’s director of the office on violence against women at the Department of Justice, who wrote that he was “instrumental” in making changes designed “to improve the civil and criminal justice systems for victims of crime” in New Hampshire. Other endorsements include four former New Hampshire Supreme Court justices, appointed by both parties, and 29 past presidents of the New Hampshire Bar Association.

    “The strong support for Michael Delaney from legal experts, survivor advocates and lawmakers spanning the political spectrum speaks to his qualifications, ethics and commitment to justice throughout his nearly thirty-year career,” said Sarah Weinstein, a Shaheen spokesperson. “Senator Shaheen believes that both his record and strong backing from individuals in the advocacy and legal sectors underscore his qualifications.”

    Laura Epstein, a Hassan spokesperson added that “Delaney’s strong, bipartisan support from a wide cross-section of leaders … underscores his deep commitment to justice and why he will make for an excellent First Circuit Judge.”

    White House spokesperson Seth Schuster said the White House “has the utmost respect for sexual assault and domestic violence survivors and expects senators to take Mr. Delaney’s full record into account when considering his nomination — as the White House did before nominating Mr. Delaney to the First Circuit.”

    The Senate Judiciary Committee is slated to take up Delaney’s nomination next week, but that is likely to change depending on attendance. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has been out of the Senate recovering from shingles. Senate Republicans, meanwhile, have made the school sexual assault case a key focus and are not expected to support his nomination. While no Democrats have come out publicly against Delaney, it’s not clear he has the votes to get through committee.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Biden admin’s cloud security problem: ‘It could take down the internet like a stack of dominos’

    Biden admin’s cloud security problem: ‘It could take down the internet like a stack of dominos’

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    The cloud has “become essential to our daily lives,” Kemba Walden, the acting national cyber director, said in an interview. “If it’s disrupted, it could create large potentially catastrophic disruptions to our economy and to our government.”

    In essence, she said, the cloud is now “too big to fail.”

    The fear: For all their security expertise, the cloud giants offer concentrated targets that hackers could use to compromise or disable a wide range of victims all at once. The collapse of a major cloud provider could cut hospitals off from accessing medical records; paralyze ports and railroads; corrupt the software that help financial markets hum; and wipe out databases across small businesses, public utilities and government agencies.

    “A single cloud provider going down could take down the internet like a stack of dominos,” said Marc Rogers, chief security officer at hardware security firm Q-Net Security and former head of information security at the content delivery provider Cloudflare.

    And cloud servers haven’t proved to be as secure as government officials had hoped. Hackers from nations such as Russia have used cloud servers from companies like Amazon and Microsoft as a springboard to launch attacks on other targets. Cybercriminal groups also regularly rent infrastructure from U.S. cloud providers to steal data or extort companies.

    Among other steps, the Biden administration recently said it will require cloud providers to verify the identity of their users to prevent foreign hackers from renting space on U.S. cloud servers (implementing an idea first introduced in a Trump administration executive order). And last week the administration warned in its national cybersecurity strategy that more cloud regulations are coming — saying it plans to identify and close regulatory gaps over the industry.

    In a series of interviews about this new, tougher approach, administration officials stressed that they aren’t giving up on the cloud. Instead, they’re trying to ensure that rapid growth doesn’t translate to new security risks.

    Cloud services can “take a lot of the security burden off of end users” by relieving them of difficult and time-consuming security practices, like applying patches and software updates, said Walden. Many small businesses and other customers simply lack the expertise and resources to protect their own data from increasingly adept hackers.

    The problems come when those cloud providers aren’t providing the level of security they could.

    So far, cloud providers have haven’t done enough to prevent criminal and nation-state hackers from abusing their services to stage attacks within the U.S., officials argued, pointing in particular to the 2020 SolarWinds espionage campaign, in which Russian spooks avoided detection in part by renting servers from Amazon and GoDaddy. For months, they used those to slip unnoticed into at least nine federal agencies and 100 companies.

    That risk is only growing, said Rob Knake, the deputy national cyber director for strategy and budget. Foreign hackers have become more adept at “spinning up and rapidly spinning down” new servers, he said — in effect, moving so quickly from one rented service to the next that new leads dry up for U.S. law enforcement faster than it can trace them down.

    On top of that, U.S. officials express significant frustration that cloud providers often up-charge customers to add security protections — both taking advantage of the need for such measures and leaving a security hole when companies decide not to spend the extra money. That practice complicated the federal investigations into the SolarWinds attack, because the agencies that fell victim to the Russian hacking campaign had not paid extra for Microsoft’s enhanced data-logging features.

    “The reality is that today cloud security is often separate from cloud,” Anne Neuberger, the deputy national security adviser for cyber and emerging technology, said last week during a roll-out event for the new cyber strategy. “We need to get to a place where cloud providers have security baked in with that.”

    So the White House is planning to use whatever powers it can pull on to make that happen — limited as they are.

    “In the United States, we don’t have a national regulator for cloud. We don’t have a Ministry of Communication. We don’t have anybody who would step up and say, ‘It’s our job to regulate cloud providers,’” said Knake, of the strategy and budget office. The cloud, he said, “needs to have a regulatory structure around it.”

    Knake’s office is racing to find new ways to police the industry using a ‘hodgepodge’ of existing tools, such as security requirements for specific sectors — like banking — and a program called FedRAMP that establishes baseline controls cloud providers must meet to sell to the federal government.

    Part of what makes that difficult is that neither the government nor companies using cloud providers fully know what security protections cloud providers have in place. In a study last month on the U.S. financial sector’s use of cloud services, the Treasury Department found that cloud companies provided “insufficient transparency to support due diligence and monitoring” and U.S. banks could not “fully understand the risks associated with cloud services.”

    But government officials say they see signs that the cloud providers’ attitude is changing, especially given that the companies increasingly see the public sector as a source for new revenue.

    “Ten years ago, they would have been like, ‘No way,’” said Knake. But the major cloud providers “have now realized that if they want the growth that they want to have, if they want to be within critical sectors, they actually not only need to not stand in the way, but they need to provide tools and mechanisms to make it easy to prove compliance regulations,” he said.

    The push for more regulations isn’t getting immediate objections from the cloud industry.

    “I think that that’s highly appropriate,” said Phil Venables, Google’s chief information security officer.

    But at the same time, Venables argued that cloud providers are subject to plenty of regulation already, pointing to FedRAMP and the requirements cloud providers must satisfy in order to work with regulated entities such as banks, defense industrial base companies and federal agencies — the very tools Knake described as “hodgepodge.”

    The White House outlined a more aggressive regulatory regime in its new cyber strategy. It proposed holding software makers liable for insecure code and imposing stronger security mandates on critical infrastructure companies, like the cloud providers.

    “The market has not provided for all the measures necessary to ensure that it’s not being inappropriately used, that it’s resilient, and that it’s being good caretakers of the small and medium-sized business under its umbrella,” said John Costello, the recently departed chief of staff in the Office of the National Cyber Director.

    Cloud computing companies are “eager” to work with the White House on a “harmonized approach to security requirements across sectors,” said Ross Nodurft, executive director of the Alliance for Digital Innovation, a tech trade group whose members include cloud giants Palo Alto Networks, VMWare, Google Cloud and AWS — the cloud computing arm of Amazon. He also said that companies already comply with existing “extensive security requirements” for specific industries.

    A spokesperson for Microsoft, which is not a member of ADI, referred POLITICO to a Thursday blog post from a Microsoft executive making similar assertions that the company looks forward to working with agencies on crafting appropriate regulations. AWS said in a statement that it prioritizes security but did not address the question of whether it supports additional regulation. Oracle did not respond to a request for comment.

    If the government fails to find a way to ensure the resilience of the cloud, it fears the fallout could be devastating. Cloud providers have effectively become “three or four single points of failure” for the U.S. economy, Knake said.

    According to a 2017 study from the insurance giant Lloyds, an outage at one of the top three cloud providers lasting between three and six days could cause $15 billion in damages.

    Such a collapse could be triggered by a cyberattack on a major cloud provider, a natural or human-caused disaster that disrupts or cuts power to a major data center, or simply a failure in the design and maintenance of a core cloud service.

    If the White House can’t get the results it wants through using existing regulations and cajoling companies into improving practices voluntarily, it will have to hit up Congress. And that could be its biggest hurdle.

    Some Republicans have already criticized the White House’s national cybersecurity strategy for its heavy emphasis on regulation.

    “We must clarify federal cybersecurity roles and responsibilities, not create additional burdens, to minimize confusion and redundancies across the government,” Rep. Mark Green (R.-Tenn.), the chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, and Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-N.Y.), head of its cyber and infrastructure protection subcommittee, said in a statement last week.

    As gatekeepers of the House Homeland Security Committee, Garbarino and Green wield de facto veto power over any major cybersecurity legislation that the White House might send Congress.

    In the short term, that eliminates the possibility of the more ambitious cloud policy proposals outlined or hinted at in White House’s new strategy

    That could mean that the administration will have to increase pressure on the companies to do more on their own.

    Trey Herr, a former senior security strategist who worked in cloud computing at Microsoft, said cybersecurity agencies could, for example, require the heads of the major cloud providers to appear before top government cyber brass on a semi-regular basis and prove that they’re taking adequate steps to manage the risk within their systems.

    The major cloud providers “have plenty of ways to talk about the security of one product, but few to manage the risk of all those products tied together,” said Herr, who is now the director of the Atlantic Council’s cyber statecraft initiative.

    “It’s one thing to do a good job building a helipad on the top of your house,” he said. But “no one is asking if the house is built to handle that helipad in the first place.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Why Ursula von der Leyen matters to Biden

    Why Ursula von der Leyen matters to Biden

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    In late 2021 when Washington was warning of the looming threat of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, the big European capitals of Paris and Berlin were too distracted to pay much attention.

    Then von der Leyen stepped in. In November 2021, she met Biden in the White House and he sounded the alarm. Within days, officials in Brussels and Washington were working closely together on a complex package of sanctions and export controls that would be ready to go when the invasion began.

    Once the war broke out, the close cooperation between the Commission and the Biden administration continued — the trans-Atlantic relationship seemingly back on track after the tumultuous Trump years.

    But things soon soured. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, a huge legislative win for the U.S. president, infuriated officials in Europe, who were annoyed that climate provisions, particularly related to electric vehicles, were protectionist and disadvantaged European carmakers.

    Brussels found itself on the back foot, pouring huge diplomatic resources — belatedly — into trying to secure changes within the framework of the legislation.

    A few months on, there are signs that a deal of sorts is in the offing. Though no concrete result is expected today, the two leaders are expected to hail progress on the deal at Friday’s meeting and to kick-start talks on forming a global critical raw materials club — an effort to reduce the world’s dependency on China as a producer of raw materials for everything from cars to solar panels.

    Europe has other reasons to be confident. Despite all the naysayers, the EU has remained united in its response to the war in Ukraine, imposing 10 rounds of sanctions on Russia, even though the economic consequences are damaging at home.

    Similarly, on energy, the EU has weathered the winter energy crisis successfully despite Russian President Vladimir Putin’s threat to make Europe “freeze.” Gas prices have fallen, while Germany and other countries that were highly dependent on Russian supplies have rapidly diversified their energy sources, including with increased imports from the U.S.

    Von der Leyen may have plenty to feel confident about when she meets Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan on Friday. To Biden’s evident approval, she recently secured a breakthrough agreement on Brexit, putting relations with the U.K. on their best footing in years. And her leadership has helped keep the trans-Atlantic alliance together despite Putin’s efforts to divide the West.

    A potential clash is looming over China policy. The U.S. wants Europeans to take the threat of China much more seriously. But the EU has a lot at stake and is itself deeply divided over how to handle Beijing. For the moment, Friday’s meeting looks likely to be von der Leyen’s moment in the sun.

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

  • Congress moves against TikTok amid Biden administration ‘stalemate’

    Congress moves against TikTok amid Biden administration ‘stalemate’

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    The new legislation — co-sponsored by eleven other lawmakers, including six Democrats — underscores rising bipartisan impatience with Biden’s efforts to contain TikTok and deal with broader digital threats from China. With the administration’s own national security review of TikTok, which is being conducted by the the interagency Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., bogged down by internal disagreement, the White House quickly voiced its support for Warner’s bill Tuesday. The move signaled to lawmakers that any near-term action may have to come from Congress.

    “I am concerned that CFIUS has come to a stalemate situation,” said Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi, the head Democrat on the House Select Committee on China, who has signed on to a separate bill to ban TikTok. “When you have a stalemate then you end up with the status quo, and the status quo is unacceptable.”

    “Clearly it’s a fraught subject for evaluation,” added Sen. Mitt Romney, a Republican sponsor of Warner’s bill, who said he hoped the “broad authorities” in the legislation would help the administration find a solution.

    Those lawmakers and other policymakers worry the Chinese government could get its hands on TikTok’s massive amounts of user data — including from more than 100 million American users. It’s a widespread concern: Congress, the European Union and a handful of states have all moved to prohibit the use of TikTok on government devices.

    In addition to Warner’s bill, Krishnamoorthi and his counterpart on the China Select Committee, Chair Mike Gallagher, have put forward a bill to ban the app outright. So has House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Michael McCaul. Negotiations continue between lawmakers on how to harmonize the bill as the legislative session continues.

    The White House also recognizes the risk, directing CFIUS to restart a national security review of the app early in the administration, after the Trump administration’s efforts to force a sale of the app ran aground in court. But that review has dragged on without resolution after months of debate between Treasury department officials and representatives of various national security agencies.

    The White House, which worked with Warner in drafting the bill, says that the CFIUS review of TikTok continues and declined to comment on any potential impasse. But a senior administration official also added that Warner’s legislation would help the administration evaluate TikTok and other foreign apps by “allowing us to take a comprehensive approach to these threats.”

    It’s not just the CFIUS review that remains up in the air. The impasse has delayed a separate Biden executive order on foreign data collection planned for over a year, and the administration still has not finished a separate Commerce Department rule on information and communications technology.

    Warner and his co-sponsors hope their legislation can help nudge the administration ahead on multiple fronts. The bill would give the Commerce Department new authority and processes to evaluate the national security risks of TikTok and other foreign-made apps and products. It’s designed to override a section of U.S. law, known as the Berman amendments, that previously derailed the Trump administration’s efforts to ban the app.

    “Regardless of what happens with TikTok, we need this stronger tool to go after foreign technology,” Warner said.

    But some Republican China hawks remain skeptical. Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Intelligence Committee, said he opposed Warner’s bill because it only gave the administration new authority to regulate TikTok, rather than mandating an outright ban. He has signed on to Gallagher and Krishnamoorthi’s bill to prohibit the app in the U.S.

    “I don’t think the White House wants to do anything” about TikTok, said Rubio. “I support a ban.”

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    ( With inputs from : www.politico.com )