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A motorist rides past a hoarding decorated with flowers to welcome G20 foreign ministers in New Delhi, India, March 1, 2023.

REUTERS/Amit Dave

What We’re Watching: Tense G-20 talks in India, Finland’s fence-building, China’s economic activity, Chicago’s mayoral runoff

An awkward G-20 summit in Delhi

When G-20 foreign ministers met in New Delhi on Thursday, it was, as expected, an awkward affair. While India, the current G-20 chair, had hoped that the bloc would focus on issues of importance to the Global South, like climate change and the global food crisis, the agenda was disrupted by US-Russia bickering over the war in Ukraine, which US Secretary of State Antony Blinken called "unprovoked and unjustified war", while Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov blamed the West for not doing enough to extend a deal to allow Ukrainian grain exports that will soon expire. Of course, focusing on anything else was going to be a tall order when the top diplomats of the US, China, and Russia were all in the same room. (President Biden and Xi Jinping last met at the G-20 summit in Bali in November, though there was no bilateral meeting between the US and Russia.) In a sign of how fractured Washington's relationship remains with these two states, Blinken on Wednesday again urged Beijing not to send lethal weapons to Russia and canned China’s peace plan for Ukraine. As for US-Russia relations … need we say more? India, which has gone to painstaking lengths to maintain its neutral status over the past year, says it thinks the group can get stuff done. But at a meeting last month of G-20 financial heads, the group couldn’t even agree on a joint statement.

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Protestors gather outside the U.S. Supreme Court ahead of the oral arguments in two cases that challenge President Joe Biden's $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan.

Megan Smith-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect

What We’re Watching: SCOTUS mulling student debt relief, Blinken visiting Central Asia, Biden's partial TikTok ban, Petro’s post-honeymoon phase

US Supreme Court weighs student loan forgiveness

The US Supreme Court began hearing arguments on Tuesday in a pair of cases that will test the limitations of presidential power and could derail Joe Biden’s plan to forgive $400 billion in student debt. Biden campaigned on debt relief, promising to help families burdened by the pandemic-fueled economic crisis. But now the court will decide whether Biden has the authority to forgive student loans. The White House cites a 2003 law aimed at alleviating hardship suffered by federal student loan recipients following a national emergency, but opponents say debt relief should require congressional approval. Biden hopes to fulfill his campaign promise ahead of next year’s presidential race, and millions of millennials and Gen-Z scholars – many of whom could see up to $20,000 of their federal student loan debt wiped away – will be waiting with bated breath. A decision will drop before the court adjourns in June, but so far, justices in the conservative majority seem critical of Biden’s move.

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Russian President Vladimir Putin walks to deliver his annual address to the Federal Assembly in Moscow.

Reuters

What We’re Watching: Putin blames the West, China in Ukraine war, Sunak close to Northern Ireland deal

Putin blames the West … for everything

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin played all the greatest hits Tuesday when he took to the podium for a State of the Union address to Russian legislators and the military just days out from the one-year anniversary of the Ukraine war. In his typically defiant fashion, Putin said that the West “started the war” and warned that Moscow would not back down from its objectives in Ukraine, emphasizing Russian unity on the issue. He also revived the (debunked) justification that the war was crucial to “protect Russia and liquidate the neo-Nazi threat” from Kyiv. Crucially, Putin implied that Russia would break with the New START treaty, which limits Moscow and Washington to deploying 1,550 nuclear weapons a piece, though Russia has reportedly already exceeded that number. Suspending the treaty would also block the US from monitoring compliance. This comes just hours before US President Joe Biden will deliver a speech in Warsaw, where he is expected to again frame the war in Ukraine as a fight for democracy itself.

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Let's Talk About the Balloon | Quick Take | GZERO Media

China's spy balloon chills relations with US

Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I'm at Columbia University, just about to teach my class. I just got back to New York and a Quick Take to kick off your week.

Of course, what we're talking about right now is the balloon, which was made for television. I mean, you know, you get to watch on the map as it's traveling across the country and check the popularity ratings. Democrats, Republicans, what do you think about the balloon? The reality is this is not going to be talked about in another week, but it is inconvenient, the timing for a few different reasons. First of all, because you have the State of the Union coming up tomorrow. And as a consequence, President Biden is going to have to address it in a very public way, and therefore it puts more of a chill in US-China relations.

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Annie Gugliotta

What We’re Watching: Australia’s climate bill, Ukraine’s progress, Sweden’s election

Australia passes climate bill after a decade

The Australian parliament has passed its first piece of climate legislation in over a decade just months after Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of the center-left Labor Party came to power vowing to prioritize climate change mitigation efforts. The bill – supported by the Green Party and independents but not by former PM Scott Morrison’s Liberal Party – passed the Senate (and is all but assured to be passed by the lower house). It includes a commitment to slash greenhouse emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by the end of the decade. For context, the US emission reduction goal for 2030 is 50%, Canada’s is 40%, and the UK’s is 78% by 2035. Although the new target is an improvement from the former conservative government’s 26%, critics say the bill doesn’t go far enough to offset Australia’s large carbon footprint. Australia is the world’s second-largest exporter of coal and relies on coal for 75% of its electricity consumption. The Albanese government has notably not banned new coal and gas projects – lucrative Australian exports – which some say could make this 43% target hard to meet. Still, after years of government foot-dragging, many Aussies are hailing this progress four months after a general election that was seen in large part as a referendum on climate (in)action.

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Former US President Donald Trump

REUTERS/Brian Snyder

What We’re Watching: Mar-a-Lago  "under siege," US pitches Africa, Italy’s left falters, Greek spy scandal

Trump claims FBI raid at Mar-a-Lago

Former US President Donald Trump said Monday that the Feds were searching his sprawling residence in Palm Beach, Florida. In a statement, Trump complained that his swanky Mar-a-Lago estate is "currently under siege, raided, and occupied by a large group of FBI agents." If his claim is true, the raid would be a big escalation in efforts by the Department of Justice to investigate the former president for trying to overturn the 2020 election result and inciting the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol building in Washington, DC that resulted in several deaths. It could also be related to a separate DOJ probe into 15 boxes of classified documents that Trump took with him to Mar-a-Lago after leaving office. Although federal law prohibits moving classified material to unauthorized locations, Trump might argue that, in his final days as president, he got to make the final call on declassifying the files. Either way, the raid — which has not yet been confirmed by the DOJ — will surely cause political ripples in the coming days: the former president and his fans will cite the search as proof that the so-called "deep state" is trying to stop him from running again in 2024, while Democrats and never-Trump Republicans likely hope that the FBI was indeed looking for evidence linked to the Jan. 6 committee hearings that could help indict Trump.

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Grading the US Response to Ukraine | GZERO World

Grading the US response to Ukraine

Michael McFaul, former US ambassador to Russia, is satisfied overall with how America has responded to Russia's invasion of Ukraine so far — with a couple of caveats.

First, the Biden administration needs to ratchet up sanctions so they don't pile up like parking tickets. And by that he means going after positions, not individuals, as well as offering a way a way to get off the list.

Also, the goal of the sanctions should be to stop the war, not hurt Russia beyond that, McFaul tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World.
Third, the US should definitely share intelligence with Ukraine — but keep it under wraps.

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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken

Brendan Smialowski/REUTERS

Hard Numbers: Blinken leads migration summit, Rohingya tragedy in Malaysia, East Timor votes, South African leftists join Eswatini protests

20: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken is meeting with representatives from 20 countries in Panama this week to try and form an agreement on mass migration in Latin America. Immigration is proving a headache for Biden ahead of midterm elections: Last month, US border officials apprehended more than 200,000 people at the Mexican border, the biggest monthly influx in over two decades.
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