Tag: line

It’s Maryland vs. Virginia on Capitol Hill, with billions on the line

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Leading the push for a Virginia-based FBI are the state’s two Democratic senators, Mark Warner and Tim Kaine. Warner, in discussing the “ferocious debate,” referred to Hoyer in the practiced and professional tones of a heavyweight rival in a boxing match with thousands of jobs on the line.
“I’ve got great respect for Mr. Hoyer, and I’m anxious that the process proceed,” Warner said. “We’ve got criteria, we made our last and best final offers last week and I feel good about where Virginia stands.”

Rep. Steny Hoyer’s (D-Md.) home-state passion is being put to use in the battle over the location of the next FBI headquarters.
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Jose Luis Magana/AP Photo
The FBI headquarters face-off has stoked fierce divisions among two congressional delegations that interact more than nearly every other pair of states, excepting the Dakotas or Carolinas. Yet it’s not the only fresh fault line between Virginia and Maryland, whose Democratic senators split over disapproving a progressive D.C. crime law, with the former duo backing the rollback and the latter backing the D.C. Council.
Then, of course, there are the standard tension points: bragging rights over the Chesapeake’s famous blue crab and football (the Virginia Cavaliers are set to take on the Maryland Terrapins this fall).
The FBI battle has dramatically intensified recently, ever since Marylanders learned that Virginia would have at least one leg up in the process. That’s because the agency leading the headquarters hunt, the General Services Administration, plans to weigh the two sites’ proximity to the FBI academy in Quantico, Va., as a larger part of its overall decision.
“This goes beyond a rivalry,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.). “This is about the mission of the FBI and getting the taxpayers the best deal.” But Van Hollen made one point clear: “The oyster wars, that was part of our longstanding rivalry. Just for the record, Maryland won the oyster wars.”
Members of the two Senate delegations, all of them Democrats, insist though that they agree on more than they disagree, highlighting their work together on WMATA funding, H-2B visas and their support for federal employees.
“Generally, we’re together more than not,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.). “I have the utmost respect for my two colleagues from Virginia.”

Still, the competition is stiff for the FBI building. Hoyer, the former House majority leader, is perhaps the most fervent FBI-to-Maryland booster of all. He recently drove to Virginia’s proposed headquarters site in Springfield, snapping cell phone photos to help make his case.
More than a decade after then-FBI director Robert Mueller first walked into his office to discuss the subject, Hoyer estimated in an interview that he spends about one-fifth of his time per week on the new headquarters. He’s worked with Wes Moore, Maryland’s rising-star governor, to deploy every possible resource on their state’s behalf, including personal pleas to Biden and the new White House chief of staff, Marylander Jeff Zients.
The Free State’s pitch is bolstered by the NAACP as well as civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton, centered on a push for equity that Black community advocates say is critical for Prince George’s County — and for Biden’s own reelection.
And that pressure campaign has infuriated many Virginians, some of whom have quietly gone to the White House themselves with an entreaty to ignore it.
Things could soon get even nastier. Hoyer did not rule out flexing some of his power over the federal purse this fall if Maryland’s bid is rejected. He and Van Hollen are both the top Democrats on a spending panel that oversees funding for the very agency in charge of the headquarters search, the GSA.
“I don’t think we’d go quietly into that dark night,” Hoyer said when asked if he would try to influence the selection through his Appropriations Committee perch if Virginia wins. “Van Hollen and I will still be where we’ll be.”
Virginians, though, insist they wouldn’t let the FBI building clash derail another spending bill. The headquarters was one of the final hangups delaying passage of December’s government funding deal, with Hoyer in particular refusing to yield until he secured new language that helped keep Maryland’s bid alive.
Maryland’s stance shocked the Virginians, including Warner, who ultimately went to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to help end the standoff. Schumer eventually reached a deal with the two delegations.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.), who represents the Springfield site, responded coolly to Hoyer’s suggestion that another spending bill could hang in the balance: “Threats to retaliate against a professional decision made on the merits, I think, are unworthy of any senior member of Congress, and I hope will not work.”
Connolly himself has plenty of experience with Beltway-state squabbling that, as he put it, “goes back to King Charles.” As a top official in Fairfax County, he once got embroiled in a lawsuit between the two states over the location of a drinking water pipe that went all the way to the Supreme Court — which ultimately ruled for the Old Dominion.
He added that he’s disappointed by the “element of desperation” in Maryland’s jockeying during the last few months, particularly its case for diversity and equity — he pointed to the more than 100 languages spoken in Springfield.
Kaine, meanwhile, insisted that the fight for the FBI building is not an anomaly for the two states and described it as a “friendly competition.”
“I don’t view this as different than other instances where Maryland and Virginia have squared off,” Kaine said. “Virginia would love to have NIH. Virginia would love to have some of the intel agencies, the NSA in Maryland. I’m sure Maryland would love to have some of the things that are in Virginia.”

Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) insisted that the fight for the FBI building is not an anomaly for the two states and described it as a “friendly competition.”
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John C. Clark/AP Photo
This time, however, the Hill is paying even more attention to the two states because they’re also home to two national political players in their respective parties: Moore and Glenn Youngkin, Virginia’s Republican governor.
Moore and Youngkin have been planning to sit down together after they both won in November, according to a person familiar with the discussions. In the meantime, Moore challenged Youngkin to a one-on-one pickup basketball game to determine the FBI’s future hub. (When Youngkin didn’t respond, Moore accurately picked UVA to lose in the first upset of March Madness in his bracket. The Terps won the same day.)
While Virginia Democrats acknowledge it’s a bit awkward to root for handing Youngkin a big political win in the FBI building as he eyes a potential 2024 bid, they say a bipartisan approach is also critical. Kaine, Warner and Youngkin wrote a joint Washington Post op-ed on Thursday that made the case again for their state. And if Maryland makes any maneuvers in year-end spending bills, for instance, Youngkin could call on House GOP leaders to stop them.
Hoyer predicted Youngkin wouldn’t hesitate to use a potential FBI win on the campaign trail, whether he’s seeking his party’s presidential nod or a different prize. “I’m sure he would,” he said.
Meanwhile, lawmakers are already looking ahead to what could be the next fight. The White House announced last week that Biden’s new disease-fighting agency, ARPA-H, will house its headquarters in the D.C. metro area.
Its location will be chosen by GSA.
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#Maryland #Virginia #Capitol #Hill #billions #line
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 20, 2023
Fall in line or be destroyed: In Budget speech, AAP govt warns ‘enemies of Punjab’

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Chandigarh: Days after the siege of the Ajnala police station by supporters of a pro-Khalistan preacher, the state government on Friday asked “enemies of Punjab” to fall in line or be destroyed.
The warning was delivered by Finance Minister Harpal Singh Cheema during his Budget speech in the state assembly.
In its first full budget, the Aam Aadmi Party government has allocated Rs 10,523 crore for maintaining law and order — up 11 per cent from the previous year.
“Some evil forces are always looking for opportunities to disturb peace and order in our border state,” Cheema said, adding that such attempts in the past were thwarted by “our brave police forces”.
“I, on behalf of my government warn the enemies of Punjab to fall in line else our government shall destroy them from the root,” he said.
Punjab’s ruling AAP has been under flak from the opposition over the “deterioration” of law and order.
The minister did not directly refer to the incident in Ajnala near Amritsar on February 23, when radical priest Amritpal Singh’s supporters barged into a police station complex, forcing authorities to agree on the release of an arrested man.
Cheema said the state government has set aside Rs 40 crore in the 2023-24 Budget to strengthen the security infrastructure in border districts. This includes CCTV cameras in areas close to the international border, lights and high-end police vehicles.

He said the state government is preparing its law enforcing agencies and police forces for all odds.
The counter-intelligence wing of the force is being fortified with the latest equipment and infrastructure, he said. An outlay of Rs 40 crore has been sanctioned for this.
He said Rs 64 crore will be spent on modernisation of the police force and Rs 30 crore on combating cybercrime in the coming year.
Cheema said the Anti-Gangster Task Force had arrested 567 criminals and killed five gangsters, busted 156 modules, and seized 563 weapons and 125 vehicles till February-end.
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#Fall #line #destroyed #Budget #speech #AAP #govt #warns #enemies #Punjab
( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 10, 2023
Democrats draw ‘red line’ around Medicaid as GOP mulls cuts

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“No one’s interested in doing anything other than saving it to make it more solvent for those that might need it down the road,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) told POLITICO. “If you want to save [Medicaid] for future generations, it’s never too early to look at how to do that.”
Biden, who is expected to release his budget on Thursday, has spent much of the year castigating Republicans for proposals to cut Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act part of a broader effort to paint the GOP as a threat to popular health programs. Though Democrats, who control the Senate, will almost certainly reject big cuts to Medicaid, Republicans’ desire to rein in federal spending portends a drawn out political fight over a program that now insures more than one-in-four Americans.
Republican House and Senate leadership have been adamant that they will not cut those two entitlement programs, but have said less about Medicaid, which insures more than 90 million Americans. That number swelled during the Covid-19 pandemic, when states were barred from removing people who were no longer eligible.
Asked if assurances by GOP leaders that Medicare and Social Security are off the table have put more pressure on lawmakers to find savings in Medicaid, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) quipped: “It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that out.”
Some Republicans want to revive a 2017 plan to phase out the enhanced federal match for Medicaid and cap spending for the program — an approach the Congressional Budget Office estimated would save $880 billion over 10 years and increase the number of uninsured people by 21 million.
“If you remember back to the American Health Care Act, we proposed that we make some significant changes to Medicaid. I think you’re gonna find that some of those same ideas are going to be revisited,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), a member of the House Budget Committee and the conservative Republican Study Committee, a group now working on its own budget proposal to pitch to GOP leadership.
Carter added that there is also interest in the caucus in abolishing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, arguing that the majority of states that have opted to expand the program over the last decade might have “buyer’s remorse.”
“Medicaid was always intended for the aged, blind and disabled — for the least in our society, who need help the most,” he said. “Trying to get back to that would probably be beneficial.”

Carter and many other Republicans are also pushing for Medicaid work requirements, though the one state that implemented them saw thousands of people who should have qualified lose coverage.
“For the people who are on traditional Medicaid — the pregnant, children and disabled — there’s no sense in talking about work requirements,” Burgess said. “But for the expansion population, able-bodied adults who were wrapped in under the Affordable Care Act, yeah, that has to be part of the discussion.”
Other Republicans want to make narrower reforms. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee, is looking at changes to value-based payments in Medicaid so that states aren’t “on the hook for treatments that don’t work.” Still others are weighing potential changes to areas within Medicaid, including provider taxes and how to handle coverage for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.
The GOP members are spurred on by outside conservative groups like the Paragon Institute, which has been holding monthly briefings for Capitol Hill aides and backchanneling with members.
“If you look at what’s driving the debt, it’s federal health programs,” Brian Blase, the president of Paragon, who worked at the White House’s National Economic Council under the Trump administration, told POLITICO. “Either Congress will reform federal health programs or there will be a massive tax increase on the middle class.”
Democrats, for their part, are working to make any proposal to cut Medicaid as politically risky for Republicans as threats to Medicare.
“I worry that my Republican colleagues have, I guess, heard from the public about their desire to cut Social Security and Medicare [and] are looking elsewhere, and obviously poor people have very little representation in Congress, so that’s an easy target,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Democrats hoping to shield Medicaid in the upcoming budget negotiations are emphasizing how many red states have voted to expand the program since Republicans last took a run at it in 2017. They’re also stressing that the people covered by Medicaid aren’t solely low-income parents and children.
“Right now at least 50 percent of Medicaid goes to seniors, and a lot of that is for nursing home care,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters. “People don’t realize that Medicaid is the ultimate payer for nursing home care once you run out of money or once your Medicare runs out.”
In a speech in late February, President Joe Biden excoriated Republicans for pushing deep cuts to Medicaid, arguing that doing so would threaten the finances of rural hospitals that are barely able to keep their doors open today.
“Many places throughout the Midwest, you have to drive 30, 40 miles to get to a hospital. By that time, you’re dead,” he said. “Entire communities depend on these hospitals. Not getting Medicaid would shut many of them down.”
Two people familiar with White House plans tell POLITICO that Biden is expected to include a federal expansion of Medicaid in the remaining holdout states in the budget he will submit to Congress later this week.
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
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#Democrats #draw #red #line #Medicaid #GOP #mulls #cuts
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 9, 2023
Democrats draw ‘red line’ around Medicaid as GOP mulls cuts

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“No one’s interested in doing anything other than saving it to make it more solvent for those that might need it down the road,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) told POLITICO. “If you want to save [Medicaid] for future generations, it’s never too early to look at how to do that.”
Biden, who is expected to release his budget on Thursday, has spent much of the year castigating Republicans for proposals to cut Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act part of a broader effort to paint the GOP as a threat to popular health programs. Though Democrats, who control the Senate, will almost certainly reject big cuts to Medicaid, Republicans’ desire to rein in federal spending portends a drawn out political fight over a program that now insures more than one-in-four Americans.
Republican House and Senate leadership have been adamant that they will not cut those two entitlement programs, but have said less about Medicaid, which insures more than 90 million Americans. That number swelled during the Covid-19 pandemic, when states were barred from removing people who were no longer eligible.
Asked if assurances by GOP leaders that Medicare and Social Security are off the table have put more pressure on lawmakers to find savings in Medicaid, Rep. Michael Burgess (R-Texas) quipped: “It doesn’t take much imagination to figure that out.”
Some Republicans want to revive a 2017 plan to phase out the enhanced federal match for Medicaid and cap spending for the program — an approach the Congressional Budget Office estimated would save $880 billion over 10 years and increase the number of uninsured people by 21 million.
“If you remember back to the American Health Care Act, we proposed that we make some significant changes to Medicaid. I think you’re gonna find that some of those same ideas are going to be revisited,” said Rep. Buddy Carter (R-Ga.), a member of the House Budget Committee and the conservative Republican Study Committee, a group now working on its own budget proposal to pitch to GOP leadership.
Carter added that there is also interest in the caucus in abolishing Obamacare’s Medicaid expansion, arguing that the majority of states that have opted to expand the program over the last decade might have “buyer’s remorse.”
“Medicaid was always intended for the aged, blind and disabled — for the least in our society, who need help the most,” he said. “Trying to get back to that would probably be beneficial.”

Carter and many other Republicans are also pushing for Medicaid work requirements, though the one state that implemented them saw thousands of people who should have qualified lose coverage.
“For the people who are on traditional Medicaid — the pregnant, children and disabled — there’s no sense in talking about work requirements,” Burgess said. “But for the expansion population, able-bodied adults who were wrapped in under the Affordable Care Act, yeah, that has to be part of the discussion.”
Other Republicans want to make narrower reforms. Rep. Brett Guthrie (R-Ky.), who chairs the Energy and Commerce Committee’s Health Subcommittee, is looking at changes to value-based payments in Medicaid so that states aren’t “on the hook for treatments that don’t work.” Still others are weighing potential changes to areas within Medicaid, including provider taxes and how to handle coverage for people who are eligible for both Medicare and Medicaid.
The GOP members are spurred on by outside conservative groups like the Paragon Institute, which has been holding monthly briefings for Capitol Hill aides and backchanneling with members.
“If you look at what’s driving the debt, it’s federal health programs,” Brian Blase, the president of Paragon, who worked at the White House’s National Economic Council under the Trump administration, told POLITICO. “Either Congress will reform federal health programs or there will be a massive tax increase on the middle class.”
Democrats, for their part, are working to make any proposal to cut Medicaid as politically risky for Republicans as threats to Medicare.
“I worry that my Republican colleagues have, I guess, heard from the public about their desire to cut Social Security and Medicare [and] are looking elsewhere, and obviously poor people have very little representation in Congress, so that’s an easy target,” said Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who chairs the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee.
Democrats hoping to shield Medicaid in the upcoming budget negotiations are emphasizing how many red states have voted to expand the program since Republicans last took a run at it in 2017. They’re also stressing that the people covered by Medicaid aren’t solely low-income parents and children.
“Right now at least 50 percent of Medicaid goes to seniors, and a lot of that is for nursing home care,” Rep. Frank Pallone (D-N.J.), the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, told reporters. “People don’t realize that Medicaid is the ultimate payer for nursing home care once you run out of money or once your Medicare runs out.”
In a speech in late February, President Joe Biden excoriated Republicans for pushing deep cuts to Medicaid, arguing that doing so would threaten the finances of rural hospitals that are barely able to keep their doors open today.
“Many places throughout the Midwest, you have to drive 30, 40 miles to get to a hospital. By that time, you’re dead,” he said. “Entire communities depend on these hospitals. Not getting Medicaid would shut many of them down.”
Two people familiar with White House plans tell POLITICO that Biden is expected to include a federal expansion of Medicaid in the remaining holdout states in the budget he will submit to Congress later this week.
Adam Cancryn contributed to this report.
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#Democrats #draw #red #line #Medicaid #GOP #mulls #cuts
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 9, 2023
Fed’s Powell faces Wall Street firing line on Capitol Hill

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It’s clear the push is already getting traction. Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), joined by nine other Republicans who will be in a position to grill Powell this week, told the Fed chair in a letter Friday that there’s no reason to hike capital requirements for the banks.
“Nobody is going to miss the point of this letter, which is hammering Jay Powell to testify the way Wall Street’s biggest banks want him to testify, with the suggestion that there will be political consequences if he doesn’t do that,” said Dennis Kelleher, president and CEO of the watchdog group Better Markets.
In a financial policy space where crypto has become the bright, shiny object for Congress, the hearings are poised to reveal how much juice the big bank lobby still has in Washington. For Powell, it’s a test of whether he wants to take on Wall Street in addition to the battle he’s waging on inflation. The banks have framed the potential increase in regulation as a threat to the economy because they say it would force them to retrench in the services they provide — a familiar lobbyist talking point that may have new political salience as the U.S. stares at a potential recession.
“In response to higher capital requirements, banks have two choices,” JPMorgan Chase CFO Jeremy Barnum said last week, summing up the banks’ case at a Washington symposium hosted by the Bank Policy Institute trade association. “We can charge higher prices or we can do less lending. Both of those choices are ultimately bad for consumers and businesses.”
Barnum’s appearance in Washington was part of a broad lobbying effort by the industry to grab the attention of policymakers. The Bank Policy Institute, the Financial Services Forum and the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association have been flooding email inboxes for weeks with arguments against raising capital requirements, in addition to closed-door meetings with lawmakers and their staffs. It’s the industry’s top issue in Washington this year.
The calibration of bank capital requirements has major ramifications for the economy. It requires regulators to strike a balance between preventing a financial crisis — which could be triggered by an unforeseen event, like a pandemic — while not limiting banks so much that it crimps economic growth.
“Every decision a bank makes first factors capital costs or benefits,” Federal Financial Analytics managing partner Karen Petrou, who advises lenders on policy, wrote last month.
The largest banks in the U.S. were subject to higher capital requirements after the 2008 global financial crisis, as regulators around the world sought to protect taxpayers from having to bail out the industry again during a future meltdown. Banks survived the depths of Covid-19, armed with bigger capital buffers and buoyed by a flood of government rescue money across the economy.

The issue is returning to the top of banks’ agenda again because U.S. regulators are in the process of finalizing the last piece of the post-2008 capital rules, with a proposal expected by the summer.
But the Fed in the last couple of months has upped the ante.
Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr, a Biden-appointed official who is the central bank’s point man on regulation, triggered the banking lobby late last year when he announced plans for a “holistic” review of bank capital. He also signaled that he already had a view that the current rules aren’t strong enough.
“History shows the deep costs to society when bank capital is inadequate, and thus how urgent it is for the Federal Reserve to get capital regulation right,” Barr said in December. “In doing so, we need to be humble about our ability, or that of bank managers or the market, to fully anticipate the risks that our financial system might face in the future.”
The lenders are complaining that Barr should be more transparent about the process, though he has taken time to speak with bank executives. Barr said in December that any rule changes would be subject to public notice and comment.
“It is an internal process,” said Kevin Fromer, who represents executives of the largest U.S. banks as CEO of the Financial Services Forum. “We, as well as the rest of the public, are outside looking in.”
Barr isn’t the only threat. Banks expect the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is also led by a Biden appointee, is going to push for stricter rules as well. Senate Banking Chair Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), who leads Congress’s Fed oversight, has long argued for higher capital requirements and may provide political cover.
Now the big banks and their allies in Congress want to know whether Powell plans to defer to his colleagues or will intervene.
Scott, who is seen as a likely 2024 GOP presidential candidate, told Powell with fellow Republicans Friday that it was “incumbent on you” to oversee the capital review launched by Barr. They warned Powell against violating a 2018 law that eased bank regulations. And they echoed points made by the banking industry about the potential impact on borrowing costs, investment and the competitiveness of U.S. markets.
“We have received the letter and plan to respond,” a Fed spokesperson said.
It’s unclear where Powell will come down on the issue. But during the Trump administration, he responded to calls by big banks to lower their capital requirements by saying that the levels were “about right,” and he dismissed suggestions that strict regulations were hurting their ability to compete with foreign banks. He supported moves to loosen rules around the edges.
The Republican-led House has made the issue a priority as it ramps up scrutiny of the Biden administration. Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.), who leads the subcommittee overseeing the Fed, said in a statement that he is planning “vigorous oversight” of the capital review. He will be one of the lawmakers grilling Powell this week.
“I am particularly focused on preventing regulators from imposing excessive requirements that would sideline capital as we continue to battle forty-year high inflation,” Barr said.
Kelleher’s group Better Markets is pushing back, arguing that capital standards should be raised to protect the economy from bank failures and taxpayer-funded bailouts.
“Congress’s job is to ask questions,” he said. “But their job isn’t to try and basically work the refs by trying to bully them into an outcome that is not actually data-driven or risk-driven.”
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#Feds #Powell #faces #Wall #Street #firing #line #Capitol #Hill
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

March 7, 2023
Telangana: TSTRANSCO plans for conversion of 132KV line into 220 KV line soon

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Hyderabad: Chairperson of Southern regional power committee (SRPC) D Prabhakar Rao, in a high-level meeting on Saturday in Pune, said that due to transmission losses in northern Indian states, the southern states are getting affected.
In the 45th SRPC committee meeting, he said that the All India Transmission recorded a loss of 4.49% which is higher than the southern regions which recorded 3.88% .
“Due to higher transmission loss to the northern states, the southern states are getting affected,” he said.
In the SRPC meeting, Prabhakar said that despite assurances from the National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) to commission the under construction 2x800MW units of the super thermal power station at Ramgundam by 2022 itself, NTPC has not completed the works.
“Telangana State Power Utilities are made to purchase power from exchange to meet the increasing demand due to ongoing Rabi season and on-set of scorching summer,” he said.
On March 1, SRPC recorded a demand of 61,402G watts. “Plan well in advance duly considering the previous year’s constraints faced by the entire nation during the same period due to various reasons such as acute coal shortage, sudden outages, and nonavailability of power in exchange,” he said..
TSTRANSCO has taken up a pilot project of conversion of 132KV line into 220KV line by utilizing the insulated cross arms for upgrading the power capacity of the line. It has replaced the old conductor with an HTLS conductor.
“Entire 132KV Line from Gachibowli to Ramchandrapuram (for a length of 12km) in Hyderabad city is being upgraded to 220KV line for transmitting higher quantum of power without any extra corridor requirement,” he said.

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( With inputs from www.siasat.com )

March 4, 2023
Traffic on the Sokolnicheskaya metro line in Moscow was restored

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The post Traffic on the Sokolnicheskaya metro line in Moscow was restored appeared first on Pledge Times.
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February 28, 2023
Meet the ‘tough as nails’ Texan trying to keep the GOP in line on spending

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In short, the 80-year-old former mayor has almost no room for error. And this time, she’ll have to support any tough spending compromises her committee tries to reach from the majority. Four women lead Congress’ appropriations panels from both parties for the first time in history, but it’s Granger with the biggest challenge ahead. She says she’s ready.
“I was a school teacher, taught for nine years — high school — then I had my first child, and two years later I had twins,” Granger said in an interview. “And so if I can get through that, believe me, I can get through writing this bill.”
The promises Kevin McCarthy made last month to finally lock in the speakership will make Granger’s job much harder. House conservatives demanded standalone floor votes on each of the 12 spending bills, a feat the chamber hasn’t accomplished since summer 2009. Additionally, the Californian granted their calls for unlimited amendments — which will make it even more difficult to rally enough support to pass the full dozen.
The GOP’s internal hostility over earmarks and demands to cut spending will add to Granger’s burden, as the debt limit raises the stakes in the debate to fund the government before a shutdown strikes in September.
“The lift could get a little heavy,” said Rep. Steve Womack (R-Ark.), an appropriator who split with the panel’s top Republican in supporting the government funding package last December. But he added that Granger is “very strong, in the sense that she’s not going to be rolled by anybody. And that’s an important quality to have.”
Granger won’t have the luxury of largely sitting out spending talks this year, as she did in 2022, and will have to work with Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.) and Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.), her opposing-party counterparts atop the appropriations panels.
DeLauro called Granger a “trailblazer” who made history even before becoming the first Republican woman to chair Congress’ spending committee. The Texas Republican was the first woman elected mayor of Fort Worth, in 1991, and then the first woman to chair the elite defense spending subpanel on Appropriations.
Over the course of her long career, Granger once aligned with her Democratic counterparts on some social issues, supporting abortion access and Roe v. Wade until reversing her stance in 2020. She has sometimes declined to take a stance on hot-button topics, such as treatment of LGBTQ troops.

Learning where Granger draws her personal lines will be key to striking a broader funding agreement later this year, Murray said.
“I think all of us have a big challenge ahead of us this year, but I think the four women at the top of this committee have a commitment to themselves and to each other to do our best to get it done,” the Senate Appropriations chair said in an interview.
Democrats learned more than a decade ago how exhausting it can be to allow the amendment free-for-all that House Republicans are embracing this year for each of their 12 funding bills.
“It is mayhem,” Granger acknowledged, recalling what she observed in 2009 as Democrats gave up on the laborious process, halting floor action mid-debate and forcing through stricter amendment constraints well after midnight.
She said she plans to minimize similar pandemonium by communicating early with members “on both sides of the aisle” to win buy-in for her bills well before they hit the floor.
Indeed, Granger is clear about her plans to try to win Democratic votes where she can — hardly a given, since she voted against major spending bills when they ruled the chamber — and she’ll have some help in that department with the return of earmarks, albeit with new constraints.
But the often-derided practice of directly aiming federal dollars toward home-state projects could rouse the ire of the House’s rebellious fiscal conservatives as Republican leaders work to fund the government this year. About a quarter of the chamber’s GOP lawmakers voted in December to pass on earmarking.
That’s not to mention the long line of Republicans demanding spending cuts as a condition for voting to raise the debt ceiling. Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) and others are calling for overall funding levels to essentially fall back two years, reverting to the totals Congress passed for the fiscal year that began in the fall of 2021.
Any proposal to reduce military funding in that process is a non-starter for Granger. “I don’t support cutting defense,” she said. “That’s the one that I’m really, really hard-core on.”
And while she doesn’t project a hard-core image, Granger is “tough as nails,” as former Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen (R-N.J.) described his successor atop Appropriations in an interview.
“She has a deep respect for the history of the committee,” said Frelinghuysen, who chaired the panel until 2018. “But she’ll do her best to protect Republican interests and the new majority’s priorities.”
Her ability to balance institutional awareness with intra-party self-protection came into full view when she beat three challengers for the Appropriations chairmanship five years ago. When the committee’s GOP top spot opened up, Granger’s seniority didn’t guarantee her the post. She ultimately won after a dramatic, monthslong drive to court a select group of her peers.
As is typical of those leadership races, she benefited from a quiet campaign to leverage influence within the caucus. And McCarthy, himself trying to ascend the leadership ladder at the time, was seen as a key ally of Granger’s.
Looking back, she recalls staying out of the closed-door drama. “I literally just kept my head down and kept doing our work,” she said. “I wasn’t going to spend my time trying to convince people to elect me to that position.”
But she had boosters who wouldn’t leave her race to fate.
Texas Republicans, the largest GOP delegation in the House, talked privately back in 2018 about a strategy for locking in McCarthy’s support despite the Californian’s close friendship with then-Rep. Tom Graves (R-Ga.), one of Granger’s opponents in the committee race. Their proposed offer to McCarthy: back Granger, and every Republican lawmaker from the Lone Star State would support your leadership ambitions.
“There’s no doubt that, when Texas is united, our state has enormous influence here on Capitol Hill. And Kay’s chairmanship is an important part of that,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas).
Whether that Texas alliance with McCarthy was secured is a closely held secret. (And it technically unraveled after the 2018 election of Roy, an initial McCarthy skeptic from Texas who later came around.) All Granger acknowledged is that her race to lead the party on Appropriations helped build “relationships that are going to be extremely important as we write” government spending bills.
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#Meet #tough #nails #Texan #GOP #line #spending
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 27, 2023
Jockey unseated, Banksy’s freezer and world’s fastest zip line: Thursday’s best photos

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Penrhyn slate quarry, UK
Sally Webster, 85, a care home resident from Cheshire, who has completed the world’s fastest zip line in Wales, going at about 100mph, with the help of Care UK
Photograph: Darren Robinson Photography/Care UK/PA
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#Jockey #unseated #Banksys #freezer #worlds #fastest #zip #line #Thursdays #photos
( With inputs from : www.theguardian.com )

February 16, 2023
Blinken: Crimea a ‘red line’ for Putin as Ukraine weighs plans to retake it

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According to four people with knowledge of Blinken’s response, he conveyed that the U.S. isn’t actively encouraging Ukraine to retake Crimea, but that the decision is Kyiv’s alone. The administration’s main focus is helping Ukraine advance where the fight is, mainly in the east.
That assessment echoes comments from Pentagon officials in recent weeks, who have spoken about the grinding fight still raging in the Donbas and in the country’s south, and who have questioned Ukraine’s ability to take Crimea in the near future.
Blinken, according to two of the people, gave the impression that the U.S. doesn’t consider a push to retake Crimea to be a wise move at this time. He didn’t say those words explicitly, they underscored.
Two other people didn’t take Blinken’s comments that way. The secretary remarked that it is solely the Ukrainians’ decision as to what they try to take by force, not America’s. That signaled to them that Blinken was more open to a potential Ukrainian play for Crimea.
While U.S. and NATO diplomats and military officials have never wavered from publicly stating that Crimea is part of Ukraine, since 2014 they have done little to contest Russia’s invasion and occupation of the peninsula.
“Overall the message is that there is a lot of uncertainty on how things will go from here with real questions about capacity of either side to make big gains,” one of the people said.
The four people spoke to POLITICO on the condition of anonymity to discuss the contents of an off-the-record conversation. The State Department declined to comment on the Zoom call, similar to others the secretary has had with experts to get outside perspectives on the conflict.
Blinken will join foreign dignitaries, including Ukrainian officials, at the Munich Security Conference this week. The diplomat will speak to them about how to coordinate future security assistance to the country as the war enters its second year.

Blinken, who was accompanied by Under Secretary of State Victoria Nuland in the session, is the latest senior Biden administration official to throw some cold water on Ukrainian designs on Crimea. Two weeks ago, senior Pentagon officials told members of the House Armed Services Committee that they didn’t think Ukraine could recapture the peninsula in the near future.
That assessment followed comments by Gen. Mark Milley, the Joint Chiefs chair, who has long signaled skepticism about the prospects of a Ukrainian advance.
“I still maintain that for this year it would be very, very difficult to militarily eject the Russian forces from all — every inch of Ukraine and occupied — or Russian-occupied Ukraine,” he said during a meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group in Germany on Jan. 20. “That doesn’t mean it can’t happen. Doesn’t mean it won’t happen, but it’d be very, very difficult.”
Some experts don’t believe Ukraine will try to retake Crimea, but instead will attempt to isolate it. “There are three critical points: the land bridge to Russia, the Kerch Strait bridge, and the naval base at Sevastopol. They should knock out all three,” said Kurt Volker, the former U.S. special envoy for Ukraine, who wasn’t on the call. “This would leave a lot of Russian forces without adequate support, without Ukraine actually trying to overrun Crimea, and it would still be a severe blow to Russia’s military effort.”
Occupied Crimea is bristling with air defenses, ammunition depots, and tens of thousands of troops. Many of those infantry forces are dug into fortified positions stretching hundreds of miles facing off against Ukrainian troops along the Dnipro River.
Punching through those Russian lines would be difficult for Ukrainian troops, even with the influx of artillery and armored vehicles arriving from Western donors.
The Ukrainian government has for months called for long-range artillery to begin hitting positions far behind Russia’s front lines, including in Crimea, where Russian forces have moved their headquarters and critical depots out of the 50-mile range of the rockets the U.S. has provided.
Kyiv has said that Army Tactical Missile Systems, fired from existing launchers, could hit those targets. The Biden administration has so far refused to provide them, initially claiming they were concerned Ukraine would launch attacks into Russia. U.S. officials have also said recently that there aren’t enough ATACMS in U.S. stockpiles to spare.
Speaking in Brussels Tuesday after another meeting of the Contact Group, Milley said “the Ukrainians are holding. They’re fighting the defense. The Russians, primarily the Wagner Group, are attacking, but there’s … a very significant grinding battle of attrition with very high casualties, especially on the Russian side.”
Meanwhile, the White House is privately up in arms over a Washington Post story on Monday featuring comments from an unnamed senior official questioning U.S. weapons aid through the end of the war. Officials say the comment didn’t reflect administration policy, reiterating that America’s support will proceed for “as long as it takes.”
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#Blinken #Crimea #red #line #Putin #Ukraine #weighs #plans #retake
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 16, 2023