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President Joe Biden appears to get emotional when the crowd chants ÒdonÕt give upÓ before he delivers a speech to a large crowd at Renaissance High School in Detroit on Friday, July 12, 2024.
Biden unleashes pardon power
President Joe Biden set the record for the largest act of clemency on Thursday, reducing the prison sentences of 1,500 people and pardoning 39 others. The 1,500 former prisoners were serving terms that would have been shorter if sentenced under today’s laws, and most had already been reintegrated into their communities since being relocated to home confinement during the pandemic. Most of those pardoned had committed nonviolent drug offenses in their early lives.
It is traditional for presidents to exercise their pardon power at the end of their terms. Biden has said that he will continue to do so in his remaining weeks in office, with Democratic lawmakers urging him to commute the sentences of the 40 people on death row, as well as take actions to address mass incarceration and systemic racism in sentencing disparities.
But the practice is more controversial than ever since Biden blanket-pardoned his son Hunter, who had been convicted on gun and tax charges, a move critics have called a self-interested abuse of power. Biden has also floated the idea of issuing preemptive pardons to a range of current and former officials Trump has threatened to target. Doing so may limit Democrats’ ability to credibly criticize Trump if he follows through on his plans to pardon Jan. 6 insurrectionists on his first day in office.
U.S. President Joe Biden stands with his son Hunter Biden, who earlier in the day was found guilty on all three counts in his criminal gun charges trial, after President Biden arrived at the Delaware Air National Guard Base in New Castle, Delaware, U.S., June 11, 2024.
Biden pardons son after promising not to do so
So much for the rule of law. After previously promising to allow the justice system to handle Hunter Biden’s federal felony gun and tax convictions, outgoing President Joe Biden instead issued a "full and unconditional pardon" to his son on Sunday. “I hope Americans will understand why a father and a President would come to this decision,” Biden said, noting that he felt his son was singled out for political reasons.
The younger Biden’s serious problems with drugs, infidelity, and questionable overseas business deals were frequent targets for Republicans over the last four years, including as part of an aborted attempt to impeach the president. He’ll now avoid possibly decades behind bars, though federal sentencing guidelines were expected to call for less time.
President-elect Donald Trump responded to the pardon by posting on social media, “Does the Pardon given by Joe to Hunter include the J-6 Hostages, who have now been imprisoned for years?” (Nope). Trump is calling the kettle orange when it comes to familial clemency: He pardoned his son-in-law's father Charles Kushner after the 2020 election and just appointed him ambassador to France. But Biden is singing a similar to tune to Trump by pointing to the politicization of the justice system.
United States President Joe Biden makes a statement on the general election.
Hard Numbers: Biden addresses Trump’s win, Earth keeps getting hotter, Starvation imminent in Myanmar, US forgives Somalia’s debt
74: In the wake of Kamala Harris’ loss in the presidential election, President Joe Biden addressed the country from the White House Rose Garden on Thursday, 74 days before he’s due to hand the keys back to Donald Trump.In his speech, Biden stressed that he would ensure a peaceful transition of power, called for unity, and said that he hoped the result would restore Americans’ faith in election integrity.
2.5: For the second year in a row, scientists at the European Climate Agency report that Earth is the hottest it’s ever been, breaking 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming compared to preindustrial averages. While factors like El Niño and volcanic eruptions are playing a part, they say the data clearly shows an unprecedented sequence of record-breaking temperatures that would be impossible without the levels of greenhouse gasses being emitted by humans.
2 million: Two million people in Myanmar’s Rakhine state, which borders Bangladesh, are on the brink of starvation because of trade blockades and violence that have led to a “total economic collapse,” according to the UN. People in the region are seeing their incomes plummet because of the violence while food prices are soaring due to junta-enforced trade blockades, creating a deadly cycle of conflict and economic crisis.
1.14 billion: The US has decided to cancel $1.14 billion of Somalia’s outstanding loans, a quarter of the country’s outstanding debt. The government has suffered under the crippling bill, borrowed under the era of Siad Barre’s military dictatorship, that went unpaid during the three decades of civil war that followed its collapse in the early 1990s. The forgiveness was part of an IMF and World Bank program that aims to relieve the poorest countries of unsustainable debt levels.
President Joe Biden meets with Ukraine's President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House in Washington, U.S., Sept. 26, 2024.
Will a lame-duck Biden be bold before Trump takes over?
President Joe Biden has been a lame-duck president ever since he dropped out of the 2024 presidential race. But now that the election is over — and Donald Trump is president-elect — Biden no longer has to worry whether his decisions will hurt Kamala Harris’ chances of winning.
Could Biden potentially use this newfound wiggle room over the next few months to take steps that might’ve been politically damaging for Harris before Election Day?
Here are two areas of greatest attention:
The president, for example, could make good on warnings to Israel that his administration would cut military aid if humanitarian conditions in Gaza don’t improve. Such a move is “on the table” but would “still run into significant political backlash in the US,” says Eurasia Group’s US director Clayton Allen.
Plus, now that Bibi knows that Trump is heading to the White House in January, the effectiveness of conditioning assistance would be limited, says Allen.
“Bibi knows that things are going to get better for him in two-and-a-half months,” adds Allen, and would be unlikely to shift course in Gaza over a move that Trump could undo once he’s in office.
Biden could also take action by declining to veto UN Security Council resolutions seeking to hold the Jewish state accountable for its actions in Gaza. His administration has done this before, refusing to veto a resolution calling for a cease-fire back in March, stoking Netanyahu’s ire. But these measures would be largely symbolic, accomplishing little with Netanyahu, who has already signaled that the UN’s views on the Jewish state’s prerogatives amount to a hill of beans.
Another move could be approving the use of long-range weapons by Ukraine on targets in Russian territory, which the US has imposed restrictions on so far. That is a “more likely potential shift” than Biden taking any major steps to challenge Israel, says Allen, noting that the administration was already considering a move like this even before Trump won.
There could also be steps taken to “try and codify some sort of security commitment to Ukraine via the NDAA process,” adds Allen, referring to an annual defense funding bill, but that would depend on garnering support in Congress.
But at the end of the day, the lame-duck period is unlikely to yield lasting changes in policy, a fact that Zelensky seemed to acknowledge in his congratulatory tweet to Trump, in which he told the president-elect that he hoped to work together to achieve a “just peace.” Trump, for his part, has pledged to end the war within 24 hours after assuming office — but hasn’t expanded on how he’d accomplish this.
Members of the International Longshoremen's Association strike for higher wages and protection from automation outside Red Hook Terminal in Brooklyn, New York, on Oct. 2, 2024.
Port workers union suspends strike with tentative deal
The International Longshoremen’s Association announced late Thursday it would suspend the two-day-old strike across America’s East and Gulf Coast ports after reaching a tentative deal with their employers.
The deal reportedly includes a 62% rise in wages over the course of six-year contracts, which works out to about a $4 an hour wage increase per year. Workers won’t see the benefit for a few months though, as their current contract, which expires Tuesday, has been extended to Jan. 15, 2025.
President Joe Biden, who had pressed both sides to come to a deal — in no small part because of the political ramifications of a crucial labor strike five weeks before an election — praised the quick resolution. “I congratulate the dockworkers from the ILA, who deserve a strong contract after sacrificing so much to keep our ports open during the pandemic. And I applaud the port operators and carriers who are members of the US Maritime Alliance for working hard and putting a strong offer on the table,” he wrote in a statement.
With the threat of major economic disruptions from the strike now off the table, the week just got a little bit easier for Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign — and with polls showing essentially a dead-heat race, she’ll take any little advantage she can get.
The White House sees AI clash with climate goals
Joe Biden’s administration wants to forge ahead with its artificial intelligence goals, but those seem somewhat in conflict with their climate change mitigation efforts.
The US has a significant lead in the global AI race, with many of the most powerful AI models and chips necessary for running them deriving from the US, and thus subject to the full force of US law. But training and running AI models often involves accessing data centers that require copious amounts of electricity to run them, and water to keep them cool, presenting a challenge for an administration that set a goal of a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.
This conflict was at the center of a recent White House roundtable where executives from tech leaders such as Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google met with senior administration officials to discuss the energy infrastructure for AI in the United States, particularly the powerful data centers needed to train and run generative AI models. According to projections from the Electric Power Research Institute, data centers could consume up to 9% of US electricity generation annually by 2030, up from 4% in 2023.
The White House meeting focused on AI's energy usage, data center capacity, semiconductor manufacturing, and grid capacity. In response, the administration has announced a new Task Force on AI Data Center Infrastructure that will monitor the country’s data centers, develop new permitting standards, and aim to transition these electricity guzzlers to clean energy sources.
Landon Derentz, senior director of the Atlantic Council's Global Energy Center, told GZERO that the administration is both pursuing a comprehensive strategy to accelerate US global leadership in AI and maintaining its commitment to sustainability. “While net-zero targets … by 2050 remain the central tenet of the White House’s domestic and foreign policy agenda, winning the race for superiority in AI is an imperative today," he said.
Derentz noted that the administration isn’t just focused on allaying the demands on the US electric grid, but also on how AI could improve grid efficiency and energy use in the future.
“AI has tremendous potential to improve grid reliability and resilience as our energy systems become more complex,” he said. “It can also accelerate research and development of new technologies and materials that can enhance the United States’ strategic advantage in the energy sector.”
President of the United States Joe Biden and Prime Minister of Canada Justin Trudeau during welcome ceremony of the NATO Summit in Washington DC, United States on July 10, 2024.
US escalates opposition to Canada’s digital services tax
Last April, Canada confirmed that it was going ahead with a digital services tax, retroactive to 2022, on big tech firms with annual revenues above CA$20 million. A tax had been in the works for years as a multilateral effort among OECD countries, but it’s been stalled time and time again by the US. In the face of US opposition, Canada decided to go it alone.
The Biden administration argues the 3% tax unilaterally pursued by Canada unfairly targets US companies. It has requested trade dispute consultations with Canada, calling the measure “discriminatory” and alleging it violates the country’s free trade agreement by treating Canadian firms differently than their American counterparts.
The dispute consultations could take months and, if not resolved within 75 days, could lead to a dispute settlement panel that will arbitrate the matter.
In response to the tax, Google has levied a 2.5% ad surcharge, effectively passing the tax along to Canadians firms that may pass the cost along to consumers.
The Canadian business lobby is warning that the tax could provoke a trade war with the US. But the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau is not backing down, reiterating that it will keep the tax that it promised back in 2020, setting up a showdown with the US and tech giants ahead of the 2025 Canadian general election.
Israelis push Netanyahu for cease-fire after Hamas kills hostages
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your week and the work year. I want to talk about the Middle East and big demonstrations, the largest social dissent we have seen since the October 7th terror attacks, since the war in Gaza has started in Israel. And the proximate reason for this was the Hamas execution of six Israeli hostages in Rafah, likely before those positions were overrun by Israeli Defense Forces. The broader point anger with the way that Prime Minister Netanyahu is continuing to prosecute the war.
And it's a big deal, it's a general strike of the largest labor union in Israel, just as everyone in Israel is coming back from vacation. And so large scale action and certainly has an impact on the economy. The anger in particular with demanding a cease-fire deal and demanding the release of the hostages who have been held now for almost a year.
This has not been seen to be an adequate priority of the Prime Minister by a majority of Israeli citizens. This is not because there are large numbers of Israelis that are in favor of a two-state solution. For the Palestinians, that's not the case. It's certainly not the case that there's any sympathy for Hamas or that the Israelis are angry that a lot of Palestinians have gotten killed. That is not the issue either. It is that they want an end of the fighting, they want the hostages back, and they want a deal done, and they're tired of the way this war has been prosecuted, especially because the Israeli defense minister, the head of the Shin Bet, other senior military officials have broken themselves with the Israeli Prime Minister and said that they do not support what the Israeli leadership is pushing for on the ground in Gaza.
There are other fights about an Israeli budget. There's the long-standing fight that was before October 7th on the independence of the Israeli judiciary itself, very strong in Israel. There's the question of enlistment and the exceptions for the Hasidim, for the far-right Israeli ultra-Orthodox, all of these things in a very divided, very fragmented Israeli political system are creating plenty of folks that are angry with the Prime Minister, but he is still there and there is no way in the near term to take him out.
Now, I don't think this labor union strike matters all that much. It was not on the basis of a labor dispute, it was a political action. And in that regard, the Israeli government took them to court. The courts ruled that they had to shut that action down. The Labor Union agreed and shut it down. There's a lot of Likud, Netanyahu's party, oriented political leaders among the labor union's leadership and so it is unlikely, I think that you're going to see a lot more of this over the coming weeks and months, but you could still see a lot more social instability, a lot more unrest. And now that you've had hundreds of thousands on the streets, which had not been occurring, while the war is on, you've kind of taken off this restriction on, well, as long as there's a war, we all need to be hanging together. We need to be supporting this Israeli war cabinet. The war cabinet's had resignations and society is back to its fractious and very loud and boisterous self in Israel.
Now, the Knesset is coming back in session, the Israeli Parliament in October, and as that happens, there's going to be a lot more fighting against Netanyahu's position, and you could possibly see a no-confidence vote to bring down his government. One of the reasons why we don't have a cease-fire is because Netanyahu understands that the way he stays in power is by keeping his coalition intact with the far right, and they strongly oppose and have consistently strongly opposed any agreement that would allow for long-term ending of fighting on the ground in Gaza. They also want continued control, some level of Israeli occupation over Gaza. They don't want self-governance of the Palestinians there. And again, we're not talking about Hamas, we're talking about any Palestinian organization.
That is, politically, you have to say that Netanyahu has done an extraordinary job in being able, a masterful job politically, in being able to maintain his position under such an extraordinary level of pressure. And with such unpopularity among the Israeli population. More broadly, there's the fact that the United States looks feckless on this issue. Biden has now come out and said that Netanyahu is not doing enough for a cease-fire. And Netanyahu's response was extremely strong, saying, publicly, both Biden and the Secretary of State and others have consistently and repeatedly said that the Israelis have accepted extremely generous terms for Hamas, it's Hamas that's refused and now Biden's saying that they're not doing enough, what's changed? Only that six hostages have been executed, and after that you're putting more pressure on Bibi. You can imagine that that makes Biden look extremely weak. And the issue here is that Biden has not been willing to be critical of Netanyahu publicly, he's only put a little bit of pressure on the Israeli leadership privately, and that makes him look weak publicly when Netanyahu makes those claims.
All of the efforts to try to get a cease-fire by the United States are going nowhere, in part because Hamas refuses the terms, and in part because the terms that the US says Netanyahu accepts he doesn't really accept when they are having private discussions. And so the US is trying to paper over a chasm between the two fighting sides. Everybody else wants to paper that over too. I mean, if you look at who wants a deal here, you would say the majority of the Israeli population, the Gulf States, the Egyptians, the Europeans, heck, the Chinese and the United States, but not Bibi's government and not Hamas.
And that's why we continue to have this level of fighting. That's also why we continue to have the Houthis attacking oil tankers, including a Saudi-flagged tanker, clearly by mistake, in the last 24 hours in the Red Sea. You've got American military, UK military, others in operation across the Gulf, and yet incapable of preventing this ragtag group of militants from Yemen to continue to disrupt global supply chain. You continue to have militants in the So-called Iranian-led Axis of Resistance attacking US and other allied targets across the region. And so it's very hard to see this war coming to an end. It's very hard to see Netanyahu leaving power in the near term. It's certainly hard to see any option for the Palestinians that would de-radicalize them in the near future.
Kamala Harris has been doing her best to say very little on this issue because of course, she is not in a good position to try to carry water for a policy that clearly has failed for the Biden administration heretofore. And that's specifically to end the fighting, to get the hostages freed, to create at least a temporary but hopefully longer-term cease-fire and to create a two-state solution. None of the things that the Biden administration has said that they want on the ground in the region are happening, and that means that Kamala has a lot of vulnerability on that policy. That's interesting because where she would clearly like to be would be in coordination with US allies. And one of the reasons why US policy on Ukraine has been much more successful in the Middle East is because it's been in lockstep with everyone in NATO, sometimes moving too slowly, but nonetheless, all these countries are agreeing on the sanctions, on the diplomatic efforts, on the military support for the Ukrainians, the training, the intelligence all being done together.
That's not true at all. You've got the new Labour government in the UK now saying that a number of weapons systems being provided to Israel would be likely used in the commission of war crimes by the IDF, and so the UK government has said that those specific weapons systems will no longer be provided to Israel. Now, most weapons systems will still be provided by the UK, so it's not like the reality of UK policy and US policy towards Israel are all that different. This is a fig leaf by the Brits, but the point is these countries are all freelancing. They're making policies by themselves, that makes it much easier for the Israelis to focus on the United States and to also take the actions they want to. If you had a more coordinated policy by the United States and all of their allies on Israel, it would be a strong policy and it would be a policy that would protect those countries politically to a much greater degree.
That's not where the US or NATO is right now. I do think that's something that Harris would want to accomplish if she were to become president come January, but we are still many months away from that possibility.
So anyway, a lot going on right now in the Middle East, certainly not working out in America's favor and not working out in the Israelis' or the Palestinians' either. That's it for me, and I'll talk to you all real soon.