Gillibrand says Schumer should bring military sexual assault bill up for a vote
BY JOSEPH CHOI - 05/30/21

THE HILL

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Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) on Sunday called on Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) to bring her military sexual assault bill up for a vote on the Senate floor.

Speaking to host Jake Tapper on CNN's "State of the Union," Gillibrand said the bill, which she reintroduced in April, is "how we build a military justice system that's worthy of the sacrifice our men and women in the military make."

Gillibrand lamented the current system under which military sexual assaults are investigated, which requires a commander to look at an investigation and decide whether it will go to trial. The New York Democrat pointed to bias against sexual assault survivors as well as Black and brown service members as a reason for a new system.

"Take biases out of the system across the board, you need a trained military prosecutor to make these decisions about whether it should go to trial. That takes it out of the chain of command," Gillibrand said. "The chain of command has bias because they may know the perpetrator, the accused. They may know the survivor. And they may have a certain lens about which service member is better for fighting a war or better for good order and discipline within the ranks."

"Over the last 10 years, the number of sexual assaults have gone up, but the percentage of cases going to trial and ending in conviction have gone down. Under President Trump, the statistics and details got even worse. And so we are not moving in the right direction," Gillibrand added. "And, last, our allies have already done this."

Gillibrand attempted to get a vote on her bill last week but was met with opposition from Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed (D-R.I.).

Reed argued that the issue would be included in a sweeping annual defense policy bill and that it should go through his committee instead.

Tapper asked Gillibrand why she thinks Reed is blocking her legislation.

"You would have to ask Jack Reed," Gillibrand responded. "But his insistence on narrowing this bill to one crime, the crime of sexual assault, you're going to have — you're going to basically break apart the criminal justice system within the military. You're going to create one set of justice for one set of plaintiffs and defendants and the rest for everybody else. It's not fair."

Biden budget aims to raise $35B from cutting fossil fuel tax benefits
BY RACHEL FRAZIN - 05/28/21
THE HILL

President Biden’s budget proposal released Friday takes aim at specific tax provisions that benefit the fossil fuel industry d projects that eliminating these measures will generate $35 billion over the course of a decade.

The new $6 trillion budget proposal is a more detailed proposal than the “skinny” version released last month, which had called for spending an additional $14 billion on tackling climate change and proposed funding increases for the Energy Department, Interior Department and Environmental Protection Agency.

The White House has also previously, in its infrastructure plan, said that it wanted to “eliminate tax preferences for fossil fuels,” but the new proposal gets much more specific.


“These oil, gas, and coal tax preferences distort markets by encouraging more investment in the fossil fuel sector than would occur under a more neutral tax system,”a Treasury Department document states, outlining the administration’s tax proposals.

Among the benefits Biden hopes to cut are those received by the fossil fuel industry for enhanced oil recovery, a method of extraction that allows companies to get to fuel they wouldn’t be able to otherwise reach, and another for “intangible” costs like wages, repairs, supplies and other expenses that are needed for oil and gas drilling.

Biden is also targeting a provision that allows oil and gas companies to deduct as much as 15 percent of the revenue they get from a well.

Biden's budget is a proposal and Congress will enact its own spending plans, but the budget is reflective of an administration's policy priorities and goals.

Industry criticized the parts of the budget that would eliminate these benefits, arguing that it would push production overseas.

“Increased taxes on American energy will only undermine economic recovery and job creation, push natural gas and oil investments overseas and lead to less government revenue, not more,” American Petroleum Institute President and CEO Mike Sommers said in a statement to The Hill.


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Supporters said they hoped that the move would discourage additional oil and gas development.

“This should bring us a little closer to the true cost of actually developing oil and gas and my hope is that it will decelerate the development of new fossil fuel infrastructure, which is so harmful to our planet and to communities,” said Sujatha Bergen, health campaigns director at the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Autumn Hanna, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, said her organization hoped to see the administration go even further, saying “there are a lot of details missing.”

What you need to know about the international tax talks
BY NAOMI JAGODA - 05/29/21

THE HILL

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The Biden administration has been making international tax negotiations a top priority, particularly the portion of the talks focused on the creation of a global minimum tax.

The administration sees an agreement on a minimum tax as a way to prevent companies from making decisions about where to locate based on corporate tax rates. Administration officials also see an agreement as a way to prevent U.S. multinational corporations from becoming less competitive if the U.S. raises its corporate taxes.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said at a House hearing on Thursday that the U.S. is attempting to reach an agreement on a global minimum tax “that would stop what’s been essentially a race to the bottom, so that it’s competitive attractions of different countries that influence location decisions, and not tax competition.”

Countries participating in the negotiations at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the Group of 20, two groups of industrial countries, are hoping to reach a political agreement in July.

Here’s what you need to know about the international tax negotiations.

There are two main topics under discussion

The OECD has been working on international tax issues for a number of years, and their current efforts focus on two key issues.

The area that the Biden administration has most emphasized, known as Pillar 2, focuses on a global minimum effective tax rate for companies’ foreign earnings. This part of the negotiations is aimed at preventing corporate profits from escaping taxation.

There is no global minimum tax rate, and countries have varying rules about their domestic corporate tax rates and how they tax their corporations’ foreign income.

An agreement on a global minimum tax would not require countries to raise their corporate tax rate to a certain level. Instead, it would encourage companies to have ways to subject their corporations’ foreign earnings to a minimum level of tax that’s at least as high as the rate the agreement specifies.

For example, a country could require its companies to pay to it the difference between its minimum tax rate and the tax rate that it paid on foreign earnings to foreign countries. The U.S. enacted this type of minimum tax, known as the global intangible low-taxed income (GILTI) tax, as part of President Trump’s 2017 tax law, and it has a rate that officially ranges from 10.5 percent to 13.125 percent.

Countries could also disallow deductions when companies make payments to related parties in countries that don’t adopt a minimum tax rate. President Biden has proposed establishing this type of mechanism as a way to help pay for his $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan.

The other area under discussion, known as Pillar 1, seeks to make changes to rules about where companies’ profits are taxed.

This issue stems from the fact that there are some large companies, notably U.S. tech companies, that had not been paying taxes in countries where they generate significant revenue but don’t have operations. That has prompted some countries to enact unilateral digital services taxes (DSTs), which the U.S. argues are discriminatory against its businesses. U.S. policymakers and tech companies would prefer an agreement at the OECD.

The two pillars are “tied together,” said Daniel Bunn, vice president of global projects at the Tax Foundation. Some countries are more interested in one pillar than the other, and the OECD wants to reach an agreement on both items at the same time, he said.

Biden has put renewed emphasis on talks

The Trump administration had weighed in on the negotiations but had some concerns. It was supportive of an agreement on a global minimum tax, but wanted to ensure that such an agreement would not require the U.S. to make changes to GILTI. It wanted an agreement related to where corporate profits are taxed to be optional for companies.

The Biden administration has been more supportive of the negotiations and more eager to reach an agreement. It has dropped the Trump administration’s proposal for a location-of-taxes agreement to be optional. And it has signaled that an agreement on a global minimum tax is a top agenda item, with Yellen frequently discussing the issue in speeches and congressional hearings.

The Biden administration “came in really strongly early on to say we’re committed to getting to a consensus-based solution,” said Manal Corwin, a former Obama administration Treasury official who is now principal in charge for KPMG’s Washington National Tax practice.

Biden has proposed paying for his $2.25 trillion infrastructure plan in part by raising the U.S. corporate tax rate from 21 percent to 28 percent and by raising the GILTI rate to 21 percent. The administration views an agreement on a global minimum tax as a way to address concerns that its proposed corporate tax increases would make U.S. companies less competitive.

In recent discussions with OECD countries, the U.S. pitched that the rate for a global minimum tax should be at least 15 percent, which is less than the 21 percent rate the administration is proposing for its own minimum tax.

Some other countries, such as Germany and France, have reacted positively to the U.S. proposal. But others, such as Ireland and Hungary, have raised concerns.

Republicans have concerns

Congressional Republicans in recent days have expressed some concerns about the negotiations in recent days and have raised some of their priorities to Treasury Department officials and nominees.

Republicans do not want the U.S. to raise the rate for GILTI before other countries take actions to implement similar types of taxes. They argue that doing so would put U.S. companies at a disadvantage compared to foreign companies. They also want to ensure that an agreement on a minimum tax doesn’t include any carve outs for countries that are competitors of the U.S., including China.

Additionally, Republicans want Treasury to only accept an agreement relating to Pillar 1 if it requires countries to repeal their DSTs.

Democrats in Congress also strongly oppose the unilateral DSTs that countries have been enacting in recent years.

Implementation won’t be quick

The OECD is hoping to reach a political agreement in July, with more details to follow later.

Tax experts following the negotiations said that it will take time for the U.S. and other countries to implement any agreement once one is finalized.

It is voluntary for countries to implement the agreement. To implement it, the U.S. and other countries will need to make changes to domestic laws and possibly also tax treaties, experts said.

Sex workers gain foothold in Congress
BY CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO - 05/30/21 0

Sex workers have gained the backing of a small group of Democratic lawmakers after largely being shut out of the policymaking process.

The turning point was the Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA), also referred to as SESTA after the original Senate bill, which was framed as a way to punish online platforms facilitating trafficking and abuse but was broadly opposed by the very industry it was meant to help.

Despite the best efforts of sex workers to dissuade lawmakers, the bill passed through both chambers easily and was signed by then-President Trump in 2018.

“It was not just that their perspective was discarded. Their perspective wasn't even heard. They were considered almost untouchable in the Capitol,” said Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), who is pushing a bill designed to study the effects of FOSTA-SESTA.

Sex worker advocate organizations and congressional staffers who spoke with The Hill said that stigma was one of the primary factors keeping those voices sidelined.

“No politician wants to or until very recently wanted to be seen as facilitating sex work or encouraging sex work,” said Mike Stabile, director of public affairs at the Free Speech Coalition, an adult industry trade association.

Khanna told The Hill that his colleagues “didn't even want to take meetings because of the possible images or pictures” with sex workers that could have been taken.

Stigma also hurts organizations’ funding because consumers of pornography are “embarrassed” to publicly back them, says sex worker and writer Cathy Reisenwitz.

Tight funds have left sex worker organizations with minimal capacity to put pressure on lawmakers on the ground in Washington.

“There are no lobbyists. ... There's more people who are engaging in federal legislation, but we're all still kind of working on spit and duct tape here,” Kate D’Adamo, a sex worker rights activist and partner at Reframe Health and Justice, told The Hill.

Some organizations have narrowed their efforts to sympathetic lawmakers to make up for the lack of resources.

Mary Moody, a founding board member at the Adult Industry Laborers & Artists Association, met with Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) office earlier this year. The Massachusetts lawmaker is the Senate lead on the FOSTA-SESTA study bill and has met with sex worker groups in the past.

“We were able to discuss issues impacting workers, how legislation around Section 230 and like SESTA-FOSTA can cause harm and ask them to commit to keeping an open line of communication on future issues,” Moody told The Hill, referring to the 1996 law that protects online platforms from liability for content posted by third parties.

Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) also became more aware of sex worker concerns during the debate over FOSTA-SESTA and has kept in touch with the organizations since.

“Sex workers sit at the intersection of a lot of important, but exceedingly difficult, issues surrounding law enforcement, gender, race and speech,” he said in a statement. “When Congress makes policy that affects any of those concerns, it would be malpractice not to take their voices into consideration.”

The sex worker community has been particularly vocal on internet regulation proposals, especially as many of them have had to rely on online revenue streams during the pandemic. FOSTA-SESTA’s carved out an exception in Section 230, a mechanism that several recent bills have borrowed.

Advocates did hours of outreach last year to try to slow down the EARN IT Act, a bill championed by Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that would make exceptions under Section 230 protections for child sexual abuse material.

Concerned that the threat of lawsuits would dissuade platforms from hosting any adult content at all, they worked to get lawmakers and experts to address the root causes of exploitation such as insufficient health services and excessive criminalization, according to D’Adamo.

Sex workers also organized earlier this year against Sen. Mark Warner’s (D-Va.) SAFE TECH Act over fear that it would lead platforms to censor their content.

Adult industry organizations are also active at the state level and have had some recent successes.

Maxine Doogan, a working prostitute, launched the Sex Workers and Erotic Service Providers Legal, Educational and Research Project in California in 2008 after a San Francisco ballot measure to decriminalize prostitution failed.

The group has since successfully blocked multiple ballot initiatives in California and pushed for reforms in other states such as Alaska, which passed a measure in 2017 that gives immunity to sex workers who report dangerous crimes from being cited for prostitution.

One of the roadblocks for sex workers both in states and at the federal level has been a collection organizations including the anti-trafficking group Exodus Cry and the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE), formerly known as Morality in Media.

These groups, according to sex workers who spoke with The Hill, overstate the risk of trafficking and weaponize that sentiment to demonize and threaten the porn industry.

“Their approach, which has been very successful, has been to oversimplify and exaggerate the extent of the problem,” added Jeremy Malcolm, the executive director of the Prostasia Foundation, which seeks to take an evidence-based approach to reducing the harms of sex trafficking.

The groups have also been successful at pulling in funding — the Justice Department gave NCOSE a $240,000 grant in 2020 to research the sex trade — and influencing Congress.

For example, Laila Mickelwait, the founder of the Exodus Cry-backed campaign to shut down Pornhub, Traffickinghub, appeared before the House Financial Services Committee earlier this year.

Sens. Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.) and Ben Sasse (R-Neb.) cited reporting relying heavily on the campaign when introducing the Stop Internet Sexual Exploitation Act, which sex workers have said could be the death knell of their industry.

Counteracting those forces and stabilizing the adult industry’s foothold in Congress will take more time and work from sex workers, their organizations and the small cadre of lawmakers in their corner.

Khanna told The Hill that one step in that process is passing the FOSTA-SESTA study bill, which those lawmakers are working to persuade key colleagues on before reintroducing this Congress.

“We need the study in the bill,” he said. “But the issue is about overcoming the stigma, it's about getting people who are on the margins of society a voice. The legislation is just a vehicle towards trying to accomplish that.”

Instagram alters algorithm after complaints it censored Palestinian content during Gaza conflict
BY JOSEPH CHOI - 05/31/21 

THE HILL


© Getty Images

Instagram has changed its algorithm after a group of employees complained that pro-Palestinian content was being hidden from other users in the midst of conflict between Israelis and Palestinians that culminated in an 11-day conflict in Gaza.

The Verge reports that Instagram will now surface original and reposted content at the same rate, as it had previously surfaced original content before reposted.

As BuzzFeed News reported last week, employees at Facebook, the parent company of Instagram, complained that content featuring Arabic or pro-Palestinian content was often flagged or received a label warning.

“I fear we are at a point where the next mistake will be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and we could see our communities migrating to other platforms,” one unnamed Facebook employee wrote to his co-workers.

A Facebook spokesperson told the Verge that the change in its algorithm was not entirely about pro-Palestinian content. According to the spokesperson, Facebook realized that bubbling content that it believes its users care about the most had made it appear as though the company was suppressing certain viewpoints.

“We want to be really clear— this isn’t the case,” the spokesperson told the Verge. “This applied to any post that’s re-shared in stories, no matter what it’s about.”

Instagram CEO Adam Mosseri, who is Israeli, acknowledged users in early May who complained they were unable to post pro-Palestinian content for several hours, tweeting, “Many people thought we were removing their content because of what they posted or what hashtag they used, but this bug wasn’t related to the content itself, but rather a widespread issue that has now been fixed.”

The Facebook spokesperson said the original algorithm had been designed to show original content first because of users who said they were interested in seeing content from their friends first.

“But there’s been an increase— not just now but in the past as well — in how many people are resharing posts, and we’ve seen a bigger impact than expected on the reach of these posts,” the Facebook spokesperson explained. “Stories that reshare feed posts aren’t getting the reach people expect them to, and that’s not a good experience.”

The company will be looking into new tools to allow for original content to be seen as it still believes users wish to see original stories more.

USA Pride Month organizers to draw attention to anti-transgender laws
BY MARINA PITOFSKY - 05/31/21
THE HILL

© Getty Images

Tuesday marks the beginning of Pride Month, and LGBTQ groups say they plan on drawing attention this year to the anti-transgender bills making their way through state legislatures across the country.

GOP-backed measures targeting transgender people have picked up steam in recent months, ranging from bills banning transgender girls from participating in girls’ sports to legislation prohibiting gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors.

“Those bills are damaging, those bills are dehumanizing," Human Rights Campaign (HRC) Executive Director Alphonso David told The Hill.

By HRC's tally, 250 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures this year, including at least 35 blocking transgender youth from accessing gender-affirming care.

HRC will be using Pride Month "as a platform to really amplify the importance of advocacy and engagement," David said.

“We need to make sure that the community understands and appreciates the current climate that we live in, in the United States, where state legislators are looking to take away legal protections that we have,” David added. “We have members of the trans and non-binary community that are living in a state of fear.”

Cathy Renna, communications director for the National LGBTQ Task Force, said transgender individuals will likely be “front and center” at Pride Month events in response to the state-level efforts.

“In some ways, Pride will be very different, but it will also not be that different in that we are using Pride as a platform to elevate and amplify these issues and get people talking about them,” Renna told The Hill.

“You're going to see a tremendous amount of visibility of both trans youth and adolescents, and also their allies, and their families. That's not something we've seen as much of until really the last few years,” she continued.

Pride Month organizers and LGBTQ groups said Pride Month this year will also reflect the new administration in the White House.

David touted President Biden’s support for the Equality Act, House-passed legislation that would prohibit discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity in housing, education and other areas. Biden also reversed former President Trump’s ban on most transgender people serving in the military.

“We're looking forward to having an administration that actually celebrates pride, as opposed to an administration that is looking to denounce LGBTQ equality,” he added.

Renna said that compared to last year, the Biden administration will create a “different mood” and a “sense of hope” among Pride participants.

But LGBTQ activists are keeping up the pressure on Biden.

Dan Dimant, a media director for NYC Pride, said the administration needs to make a slate of LGBTQ protections a reality, adding that “the issues for our communities don’t just disappear overnight.”

“Part of what I think activists in our community are really making sure to do is to hold this administration accountable,” Dimant said. “I think a lot of promises have been made. And I think, they're only a few months in, but we want to know that at the end of this term, that there has been follow through on those promises.”

More immediately, many Pride Month organizers are focused on holding either in-person or hybrid events during June after last year's gatherings were largely online due to the coronavirus pandemic.

As more cities and states scale back their COVID-19 restrictions, many Pride celebrations are taking on a more familiar look compared with 2020.

In Washington, D.C., organizers with the Capital Pride Alliance are planning to hold a few scaled-back in-person events, as well as several virtual events.

Ryan Bos, executive director of the Capital Pride Alliance, praised DC Mayor Muriel Bowser’s (D) announcement earlier this month that most capacity limits on bars, restaurants other venues will be lifted by June 11, around the time of Pride weekend.

“We are excited that we will be able to scale up some of our initially planned programs for this June because of the reopening guidelines,” Bos said.


In New York City, organizers announced a digital rally that will raise awareness about violence against the LGBTQ community, along with a smaller version of the city’s annual in-person march. The event will be streamed since there won't be the normal amount of participants.

In Los Angeles, LA Pride will stream a free concert from singer Charli XCX and an event that will include “trans profiles, celebrity shout-outs” and performances, according to its website.

Organizers are offering in-person events as well.

“Because we’ll be having events throughout the month of June and throughout the year, folks should anticipate in-person events, some like we’ve been traditionally known for, but also many innovative, broader reaching, and more diverse experiences,” Gerald Garth, board treasurer for LA Pride, told The Hill.


In San Francisco, Pride Executive Director Fred Lopez said they are skipping virtual events this year after moving Pride Month online in 2020.

“I think what we found we missed with virtual programming solely is just that sense of connection that folks really experience from Pride and a sense of visibility in terms of being around those folks that we see ourselves in,” Lopez said.

Johnson & Johnson ask Supreme Court to review $2B talc product verdict
BY JOSEPH CHOI - 05/31/21 

THE HILL



Johnson & Johnson is asking the Supreme Court to review a $2 billion verdict in favor of women who claim its talc powder products caused them to develop ovarian cancer, The Associated Press reports.

The multinational corporation is arguing that it did not get a fair trial in Missouri where it lost a case that resulted in an initial $4.7 billion payout to 22 women who developed ovarian cancer. A state appeals court later cut the amount down to less than half, though it upheld the outcome of the trial.

Judge Rex M. Burlison wrote in his ruling that the evidence displayed “particularly reprehensible conduct on the part of Defendants.”

According to Burlison, J&J “misrepresented the safety of these products for decades,” as it knew its products aimed toward mothers and babies contained asbestos.

J&J has maintained that its products don’t cause cancer, saying the verdict in the trial is “at odds with decades of independent scientific evaluations confirming Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, is not contaminated by asbestos and does not cause cancer,” the AP reports.

The company is not seeking to rehash whether its products caused cancer, but is instead arguing that it should not have been made to defend itself in one trial against claims made by women living in 12 different states, who had different backgrounds and varying histories of using J&J talc products.

Asbestos is a known carcinogen and its structure is similar to that of talc. J&J had agreed in 1976 to make sure its products did not contain detectable amounts of asbestos, the AP notes.

An analysis of 250,000 women led by the U.S. government failed to find strong evidence connecting baby powder to ovarian cancer, the AP reports, though the lead author of the study called the results “very ambiguous.”

The largest business groups in the country are backing J&J, the AP reports. The father of Justice Brett Kavanaugh, E. Edward Kavanaugh, is also mentioned in court documents due to his long association with the trade group for cosmetic and personal care products.

The elder Kavanaugh's group, the Personal Care Products Council, fought against efforts to list talc as a carcinogen, the AP reports. Experts who spoke to the AP said they saw no reason that Justice Kavanaugh should recuse himself, should the Supreme Court decide to hear the case.

However, the AP notes that one justice will most likely recuse himself. Justice Samuel Alito reported that he owns $15,000 to $50,000 in J&J stock last year, with federal law preventing judges from sitting on cases in which they have a financial interest.

RED SCARE 2.0

Biden shows little desire to reverse Trump's Cuba policies

“They’ve continued the Trump policy without public debate, without 

evidence, and without the normal government processes of looking at the facts.”

BY REBECCA BEITSCH - 05/31/21 
THE HILL

The Biden administration’s first major move on Cuba is the strongest signal yet it has little appetite to reverse Trump-era policies toward the island nation.

The State Department this past week listed Cuba as among those “not cooperating fully with United States antiterrorism efforts,” renewing a determination first made in 2020.

For those in favor of normalizing U.S. ties with Cuba, the move was seen as a purely political decision, but one that suggests the Biden administration may continue with the hardline approach taken by former President Trump.

“It’s a political determination, and a signal they’re trying to give the right wing that they’re going to stick with the status quo,” said Fulton Armstrong, an American University professor and director of Inter-American Affairs at the National Security Council during the Clinton administration.

“These determinations are B-O-G-U-S,” he added, criticizing the State Department for offering little insight into what factored into its decision.

The determination was made under the Arms Export Control Act, which requires a report every May listing countries barred from defense exports and sales with the U.S. Obama had removed Cuba from the list in 2015.

But the statute is also one of the three laws weighed when adding countries to the state sponsors of terrorism list — something Trump added Cuba to in the final days of his presidency.

While the Biden team has pledged to review Trump’s state sponsor of terror listing, White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters in March that “a Cuba policy shift is not currently among President Biden’s top priorities.”

To Cubans, the latest determination looks like a continuation of the Trump era.

“The U.S. changed presidents, but it’s more of the same,” Alejandro Gil Fernández, Cuba’s deputy prime minister and top economic policy minister, wrote on Twitter.


The State Department said the decision was made after “a review of a country's overall level of cooperation in our efforts to fight terrorism, taking into account our counterterrorism objectives with that country, and a realistic assessment of its capabilities.”

Iran, North Korea, Syria and Venezuela are among the other countries on the list.

The decision earned praise from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), who has blasted Cuba for remaining close with Venezuela. He called the move “a positive step that follows four productive years of the Trump Administration’s efforts to end Havana’s destructive and destabilizing efforts.”

But others see little fodder for the determination beyond Cuba agreeing to let Colombian National Liberation Army members stay in the country after negotiations it hosted on behalf of the nation in 2018 fell apart, and the Colombian government refused safe passage for the group to return.

“It's hard to have cooperation on counterterrorism or anything else if you're not talking with one another,” Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) a longtime proponent of normalizing ties with Cuba, told The Hill, noting the limited diplomatic relations between the two countries.

“And it's hard to get cooperation when the United States has not moved forward with any kind of genuine reengagement with Cuba,” he added.

The hesitancy to do anything similar to the Obama-era thawing of Cuban relations follows significant losses for Democrats in Florida. Trump won the state in November, while Democrats also lost two South Florida districts in an election that underscored the party’s struggles to win over more Latino voters.

The designation is the latest move from an administration that has publicly sought to distance itself from the Obama administration — not its predecessor — when it comes to Cuba.

“Joe Biden is not Barack Obama on policy toward Cuba,” Juan Gonzalez, senior director for the Western Hemisphere at the National Security Council, told CNN en Español in April.

Geoff Thale, president of the Washington Office on Latin America, described Cuba and Venezuela as the center of the GOP’s successful messaging in Florida before they gained the two House seats in November, including the district encompassing Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood.

“It wasn't really saying, ‘You don't want to end the embargo on Cuba,’ it was a campaign that said ‘Democrats are all socialists and socialism will ruin your life.’ And is that a wild distortion of Democrats’ policies and the Democratic party? Yes, it is. But as a media hit it was fairly effective,” he said.

“The easy answer is to say, ‘We won't do anything about Cuba or Venezuela, and if we do, we’ll do it as quietly as possible,’ ” he said.

But Thale doesn’t think that’s the smart strategy.

“Say ‘We are making challenges in Cuba policy, and those changes actually benefit Cubans in America and their families in Cuba that will overtime lead to greater freedom in Cuba,’ ” he said.

“[Democrats] will probably get painted as socialists no matter what they do, so it seems to me they need to think smarter about what they can do on strategy,” he added.

But some see Biden’s approach toward Cuba as part of a broader strategy of taking a tough stance on other communist countries.

“They are returning to the Cold War with practically everyone — with Russia, with China, with Cuba — and I don’t know that that is very smart right now,” said Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat and ambassador.

“But he won’t admit the Obama option is the only option. Because what other option is there? Continue pressuring the government of Cuba? First, that doesn't get done what you think it gets done,” he said, arguing that Cubans are not going to overthrow their government because of the U.S. embargo, which has been in place in some form since 1958.

“But secondly, it makes the United States look bad. It makes the U.S. look mean and vindictive with a small neighbor.”

Still, not all proponents of normalizing ties are worried the carryover determination means the U.S. policy toward Cuba has been settled.

“I’m choosing to look at this as not that big of a deal,” McGovern said. “My understanding is there is a review going on in the administration of what our Cuba policy should be. And my hope is that if it is done objectively and rationally, he will conclude that we need to reengage.”

But Armstrong said the lack of an appetite to reverse even on the Arms Control Export Act list doesn’t signal an administration seriously considering sweeping change.

At the Cuba Communist Party’s eighth party congress in April, the nation for the first time established a government without a single Castro on its roster. Still, the theme was “continuidad,” a nod to continuity of its plans to slowly loosen the government’s grip on the economy as Raúl Castro stepped down from his post.

“There is more continuidad on Cuba policy in Washington than there is in Havana,” Armstrong said.

“They’ve continued the Trump policy without public debate, without evidence, and without the normal government processes of looking at the facts.”

Five things to know about the new spotlight on UFOs
BY ALEX GANGITANO - 05/31/21 

THE HILL

The Biden administration is taking a more serious look into unidentified flying objects (UFOs), publicly acknowledging what had previously been considered the realm of conspiracy theories and science fiction.

Congress and the public are expected to hear more soon from intelligence agencies on what they are calling “unidentified aerial phenomena.”

CBS New recently reported on what they called the regular sightings of such phenomena, which led to President Biden's top spokesperson answering questions from the White House podium this week about the government's investigations into them.

And lawmakers are also taking an interest.

Here are five things to know about the recent UFO news.

An intelligence report is coming

A report on UFO sightings expected to be released next month could be, well, out of this world.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the secretary of Defense are set to deliver an unclassified report to Congress, which was commissioned by a provision in the coronavirus relief package then-President Trump signed last year.

The report will likely include information about how the government plans to investigate situations in which UFOs are spotted and how data from such encounters is analyzed. It will also outline who is responsible for gathering and analyzing data on UFOs, including specific agencies, personnel and systems.

It’s unclear if the administration will release the report in full or how much the public will be privy to. White House press secretary Jen Psaki was asked about the extent of public knowledge last week and said that those decisions are in the hands of the ODNI.

The White House considers UFOs a concern

Psaki was also questioned about the level of Biden’s concern over UFOs, and she pointed to the fact that a team is actively working on a report.

“Certainly, the safety of our personnel, security of our operations, our airspace are of paramount concern, whether that is identified or unidentified aircraft. And we don't discuss that publicly for a range of reasons, but certainly the president supports the ODNI putting together a report and following through on that commitment,” she told reporters.

Psaki noted that the president is taking the unidentified aerial phenomenon very seriously.

“We’re aware of the report requirement, and our team at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is, of course, actively working on that report. And we take reports of incursions into our airspace by any aircraft identified or unidentified very seriously and investigate each one,” she said.

Military members are speaking out

Two former Navy pilots spoke to CBS News last week about the unidentified aerial phenomenon, claiming they saw a UFO in 2004 over the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. has also recently been more open about other cases, notably when the Defense Department last year declassified three videos of objects in the airspace that were filmed by Navy pilots.

Another leaked video, filmed from a Navy aircraft in 2019, showed an object flying above the ocean and diving into water.

The uptick in interest stems in part from former Pentagon official Lue Elizondo, who has been open about his reports of UFOs. He worked with a formerly secret team that investigated reports of unmanned aerial phenomena, the Advanced Aerial Threat Identification Program.

Elizondo this week filed a complaint with the Pentagon’s inspector general, alleging that there was a coordinated effort to discredit him and label him as crazy while he was speaking out.

There is growing pressure to act

Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) is leading calls for a deeper investigation by the U.S. government into UFOs. He said in a recent interview that anything in the U.S. airspace that shouldn’t be there is a threat.

Senate colleagues are “very interested in this topic and some kinda, you know, giggle when you bring it up,” he said. “But I don’t think we can allow the stigma to keep us from having an answer to a very fundamental question.”

Rubio called for a mechanism to catalogue and analyze UFO data.

Others who have given legitimacy to reports of unidentified aircraft include John Ratcliffe, Trump’s director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, former President Obama’s CIA director. Ratcliffe said that “there are a lot more sightings than have been made public” and Brennan recently speculated that these unidentified objects “constitute a different form of life.”

Obama himself indicated earlier this month that the government is aware of more reports of UFOs.

“What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are,” he said on "The Late Late Show with James Corden" on CBS.

There are possible national security implications

The Pentagon in August set up the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force to investigate such objects, including the nature of where they come from.

The Navy also has guidelines for pilots to report aircrafts that are unidentified and could be considered UFOs in an effort to formalize the investigation process.

The U.S. military’s attention and focus on UFOs is a serious shift towards legitimizing reports that they exist and could be a threat to national security.

Christopher Mellon, a top defense official under Presidents Clinton and George W. Bush, told NBC News that reporting UFO sightings should be destigmatized within the military.

“My hope is that this administration will provide our military people the support they deserve,” Mellon told NBC News. “On this issue, that means determining ASAP what threat if any is posed by the unidentified vehicles that are brazenly and repeatedly violating restricted U.S. airspace over hovering around our warships.”

The best dark matter map to date raises questions about the universe

The cosmos is smoother than you think.

N. Jeffrey et. al/Dark Energy Survey Collaboration

J. Fingas
@jonfingas
May 30th, 2021

Scientists in the Dark Energy Survey have just released the best dark matter map yet, but it's not answering every question — if anything, the cosmos may be more mysterious than ever. As BBC News, Nature and Fermilab report, the survey of 5,000 square degrees used weak gravitational lensing (in this case, how gravity from nearby galaxies affects views of distant ones) to look for large patches of dark matter in relatively close sections of the universe.

The data also helped studies into dark energy, the as yet unexplained force that seems to be accelerating the universe's expansion. The team produced a 3D map thanks to redshifting, or the tendency of objects to appear increasingly red with distance.

Team members conducted observations using the 570-megapixel camera of the Victor M. Blanco telescope, at Chile's Cerro Tololo observatory, between 2013 and 2019.

While the high detail is helpful, it also validated concerns that have been floating for years. The DES results indicate that the universe is slightly smoother and more uniform than expected. While that largely supports current theories that dark energy is a constant, the discrepancy is enough that researchers might have to rethink existing ideas. The universe may not behave quite like scientists thought, and the dark matter map could lead to new models that challenge previous assumptions.