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SCOTUS Upholds ACA Individual Mandate – The Supreme Court issued a 7-2 ruling Thursday morning that upholds the individual mandate requiring health care insurance in the Affordable Care Act (ACA, or “Obamacare”), SCOTUSblog reports.The court ruled that Texas and 17 other states “lacked standing to argue that the individual mandate to purchase health insurance is unconstitutional.” The case is a remnant of the Trump administration’s promises to “repeal and replace” Obamacare with a better plan, which never materialized.
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New Unemployment Claims Up 37,000 – Seasonally adjusted new unemployment claims rose by 37,000 for the week ending June 12, to 412,000, the U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday morning. The four-week moving average is now 395,000, down 8,000 claims from the previous week’s average. That’s the lowest level since the week ending March 14, 2020, when it was just 225,000. But the increase is likely to bolster calls to cut off the $300 in supplemental federal unemployment insurance included in President Biden’s $1.9-trillion COVID-19 relief package, as owners of restaurants and other small businesses complain of worker shortages.
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How Do You Solve a Problem Like Vladimir? – You don’t, was President Biden’s answer from Geneva, Switzerland Wednesday, where he gave a press conference only after Russian President Vladimir Putin’s held his. Both followed the three-hour long talks between the two that was allotted for up to four hours’ time.
“Let’s get something straight,” Biden, who famously told ABC News he considers Putin “a killer,” said. “We know each other. We’re not old friends.”
Headlines from the summit, which concluded the American president’s European tour after the G7 Summit and meeting with NATO’s 29 other member countries, include Biden’s announcement of a cyber-cold war and conversely, a return to “normal relations” with Russian and U.S. ambassadors returning to their posts.
On the subject of hacking, Biden said, “I gave them a list. If I’m not mistaken. . . 16 specific entities” that must not be cyber-attacked. Presumably the list includes oil pipelines and meat processing plants, which were recently attacked in the U.S., allegedly by private hackers tied to Russia.
“I looked at him and asked him, ‘how would you feel if [cyber attacks] took on the pipeline of your oil fields? He said it would matter.”
Among the issues raised by Biden were:
•The Kremlin’s meddling in the U.S. elections.
•Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in 2014.
•Human rights violations including the imprisonment of such political enemies as Alexei Navalny and of detained Americans.
Biden did not return to Washington with any substantive agreements with the Kremlin, just the notion that he and Putin understand each other.
“Look. This is not about trust,” Biden said. “This is about self-interest, and verification of self-interest.”
Note: After G7 and NATO, the Biden-Putin meeting appears to be a way to keep the Kremlin in check while the U.S. and western Europeans turn their attention to bigger issues, notably China’s economic and military aggressiveness. Yes it is a big country, physically — nearly twice as large as the U.S .— but when looked at from an economic point of view there’s not a lot of there there. That is, according to the CIA World Factbook’s latest figures, its industrial growth rate is -1%. It was +2.3% in the U.S. The exports from Russia are petroleum, natural gas, coal, wheat, and iron. The exports from the U.S. are petroleum, cars and vehicle parts, integrated circuits, and aircraft. (When is the last time you thought about buying a Russian car or computer?) And in terms of its level of exports, it was estimated at $551.128 billion. The U.S.: $2,377,156,000,000. That’s trillions of dollars, not billions. Were it not for nuclear missiles, the importance of Russia would be trivial, at most. Just as Biden used the G7 and NATO meetings to re-establish good relationships with our European allies, he used the meeting with Putin as a corrective to Donald Trump’s elevation of the Russian autocrat’s importance.
Note II: The best line about the Biden-Putin meeting: “The only way this could have gone worse than Trump’s Helsinki summit was if Biden had turned up drunk. Even then, perhaps not.” — Emma Ashford, senior fellow Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, the Atlantic Council, in The New York Times.
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Press Crackdown in Hong Kong — While all eyes have seemingly been on Europe the past several days, today in Hong Kong five editors and executives at Apple Daily, a pro-democracy newspaper in Hong Kong (no, not that Apple), were arrested under a national security law, the AP reports. According to the news service, this is the first time that legislation, which was implemented a year ago, “has been used against the press.”
Note: The founder of the newspaper, Jimmy Lai, is currently serving a 20-month sentence for his involvement in 2019 anti-government protests. Responding to Thursday’s arrests, the Chinese government, according to the AP, wrote in a statement: “Freedom of the press is not a ‘shield’ for illegal activities.” If the government gets to arbitrarily decide what “illegal activities” are, then there evidently is no freedom of the press.
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Juneteenth Bill Heads to Become Law – The House of Representatives Wednesday passed the bill making Juneteenth a national holiday, by 415-14 vote, according to Roll Call. The anniversary of June 19, 1865, when enslaved Americans in Texas learned of the Emancipation Proclamation a year-and-a-half earlier, is the first new federal holiday since Martin Luther King Jr. Day in 1983.
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Congressional Black Caucus Backs Omar – The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) backed Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-MN, after House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-CA, called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi to strip Omar of her membership on the Foreign Affairs committee for her comments comparing U.S. and Israeli war crimes to that of Hamas and the Taliban, Politico reports.
“Congresswoman Ilhan Omar is a valued member of the Congressional Black Caucus Family,” the CBC said in a statement. “She represents a strong voice on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Furthermore, we appreciate her clarification of her recent remarks and find that this is another example of Republicans taking it out of context to shift the real attention from the abhorrent, disrespectful, and intemperate remarks of members of their own conference.
Note: That would be Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-GA, who has since apologized for her remarks comparing coronavirus mask rules to the Holocaust. Omar also has clarified/retracted her remarks. Both congresswomen are at the center of a vortex of WhatAboutIsm.
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Correction: A news item Wednesday quoting a tweet by Rep. Liz Cheney incorrectly listed the state she represents. She is a Republican from Wyoming.
--Edited by Todd Lassa and Gary S. Vasilash
Please note correction on yesterday's item on Rep. Liz Cheney's, R-WY, tweet.