Sept. 30, 2021, 2:37 p.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

‘We Did Not Inherit a Plan’: Blinken Is Grilled in Congress Over Afghanistan Exit

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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken defended the administration’s plan for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.Credit...Al Drago for The New York Times

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said on Monday that there was no way to predict how quickly Afghanistan would fall to the Taliban and no evidence that extending the U.S. troop presence could have stabilized the country, in a resolute defense of the American withdrawal last month.

In more than five hours of testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Mr. Blinken faced at least two calls for his resignation, as well as a string of demands from critics who accused the Biden administration of badly mishandling the end of the 20-year war. Even Democrats noted the desperation of Afghans who had allied with the United States but were not evacuated and wondered how they would survive under Taliban rule.

“Make no mistake, Mr. Secretary — the Biden administration’s egregiously inept withdrawal has left America and the world a much less safe place,” said Representative Ann Wagner, Republican of Missouri. “Do you take any responsibility, Secretary Blinken, for this disastrous withdrawal, or do you still want to call it a success?”

Mr. Blinken, his voice straining, said he accepted responsibility for his decisions — including to evacuate nearly 125,000 people from the airport in Kabul over a two-week period, and to pressure the new Taliban government to respect Afghans’ rights.

“And we made the right decision in ending America’s longest war,” he told Ms. Wagner. “We made the right decision in not sending a third generation of Americans to fight and die in Afghanistan.”

His measured defiance did not, however, satisfy lawmakers who questioned how the Biden administration failed to understand how quickly Afghanistan would deteriorate as the U.S. military prepared to leave.

An early intelligence assessment predicted that Afghan security forces would be able to repel the Taliban well into 2022, Mr. Blinken said, a forecast that was shortened in July to the end of 2021. “Even the most pessimistic assessments did not predict that government forces in Kabul would collapse while U.S. forces remained,” he said.

Additionally, he said, “there’s no evidence that staying longer would have made the Afghan security forces or the Afghan government any more resilient or self-sustaining.”

Mr. Blinken also could not clarify with precision how many American citizens and residents, or Afghans at high risk of Taliban retribution, remain dependent on U.S. help to escape. He described that as a mission without a deadline, and noted that more than 50 American citizens and legal residents have left Afghanistan over the last several days. More than 6,000 exited before the U.S. military departed on Aug. 30.

By the end of September, he said, about 60,000 Afghans who worked for the American government over the course of the war will have been admitted to the United States — a high priority for their U.S. military partners, who are struggling to evacuate tens of thousands more.

He acknowledged disjointed coordination across the American government in trying to pull off one of the largest airlifts in history, including the unexpected evacuation of the U.S. Embassy in Kabul. “It definitely improved, but it did not start from a great place,” Mr. Blinken said.

Democrats on the House panel repeatedly raised the fact that the withdrawal was negotiated by the Trump administration, seeking to shift some blame for its chaos away from President Biden.

“We inherited a deadline,” Mr. Blinken said, adding that the Taliban would have attacked U.S. forces had they stayed. “We did not inherit a plan.”

“It’s amazing that it was not much, much worse,” responded Representative Brad Sherman, Democrat of California.

Mr. Blinken said that the Biden administration would not abandon Afghans, noting continued diplomatic efforts from Doha, the capital of Qatar, and nearly $64 million in humanitarian aid that the U.S. Agency for International Development announced on Monday for relief agencies working in Afghanistan.

He said the Biden administration was focused on minimizing security threats — both through so-called over-the-horizon strikes to keep terrorists from gaining ground in Afghanistan and in vetting even longtime Afghan allies before they are allowed into the United States.

The Taliban has agreed to refuse refuge to terrorist groups as a condition of the U.S. military withdrawal, which the Trump administration brokered in February 2020. But it is widely believed that Al Qaeda’s most senior leader, Ayman al-Zawahri, is living in Afghanistan, and top C.I.A. officials, including William J. Burns, the agency’s director, have acknowledged that their ability to gather information on terrorist activity there is now diminished.

Ahead of Mr. Blinken’s testimony, the Biden administration’s top intelligence official said Afghanistan was not the most pressing terrorism threat for the United States, even after the Taliban’s takeover. Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said the withdrawal of American troops and the collapse of the U.S.-backed government have created challenges for collecting intelligence in the country.

But, she said, “in terms of the homeland, the threat right now from terrorist groups, we don’t prioritize at the top of the list Afghanistan.”

Her comments underscored a tenet of Mr. Biden’s decision to leave: that the enduring conflict in Afghanistan had become a distraction from more immediate threats to the United States, like China, Russia, climate change and the coronavirus.

Given that strategy, the overall decision to withdraw from Afghanistan “made good sense,” said James F. Jeffrey, a former ambassador who worked closely with Mr. Blinken and other senior officials during the Obama administration and is now chair of the Middle East Program at the Wilson Center, a think tank in Washington.

But, Mr. Jeffrey said, “the preparations for this thing, and the failure of imagination on how fast it would happen and how complete the collapse — that’s a problem that you have to point to the administration on.”

The diplomatic effort that Mr. Blinken vowed would continue largely focuses on pressuring the Taliban to ensure safe passage for people who want to leave Afghanistan, and to protect Afghan women and girls who were denied educations and jobs, and in worst cases, brutalized, when the Taliban last ruled, from l996 to 2001. On Monday, he acknowledged that the Taliban had fallen “very short of the mark” in creating a government that includes women or ethnic minorities, as many countries have demanded.

“I know there have been night letters that have been posted on doors marking people for interrogation or assassination,” said Representative Abigail Spanberger, Democrat of Virginia. She added that “murders and beatings have been documented against those who have helped the United States.”

Mr. Blinken agreed that such episodes “are deeply, deeply disturbing” and suggested that the Biden administration was preparing consequences for the Taliban should their leaders renege on their assurances. They are expected to include economic sanctions against the government, and an end to Taliban hopes for international funding and legitimacy.

Officials had expected Mr. Blinken to face a vitriolic hearing, and Republicans who questioned him from the House dais or through a teleconference lens berated him as having lost credibility or not being forthcoming.

At one point, Representative Steve Chabot, Republican of Ohio, questioned whether the withdrawal marked “the worst foreign affairs disaster in American history.” At another, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina — who famously shouted, “You lie!” as President Barack Obama addressed Congress in 2009 — hammered Mr. Blinken for the steps that led to the Taliban’s takeover. “You should resign,” Mr. Wilson said.

Mr. Blinken will appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday. Hours later, Gen. Austin S. Miller, the former commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, is set to testify to the Senate Armed Services Committee, but in a closed-door session.

The House committee’s chairman, Representative Gregory W. Meeks, Democrat of New York, said ending the war in Afghanistan was “never going to be easy for my friends who presume a clean solution for the withdrawal existed.”

But he suggested that the Trump administration bore responsibility for the deal that outlined the withdrawal and that the current outcry carried a partisan tinge: “Once again, you’re seeing domestic politics injected into foreign policy,” Mr. Meeks said.

Julian E. Barnes contributed reporting.

Intelligence chief warns that countries besides Afghanistan pose a greater terror threat.

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Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence, said a big focus of the agencies she oversees is monitoring “any possible reconstitution of terrorist organizations.”Credit...Melina Mara/The Washington Post for The New York Times

Afghanistan is not the most pressing terrorism threat for the United States, even after the takeover by the Taliban, the Biden administration’s top intelligence official said Monday.

The withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and the collapse of the U.S.-backed government has created challenges for collecting intelligence in the country, said Avril D. Haines, the director of national intelligence. But she added said that Afghanistan is not the top global terrorism threat facing the United States.

“In terms of the homeland, the threat right now from terrorist groups, we don’t prioritize at the top of the list Afghanistan,” she said. “What we look at is Yemen, Somalia, Syria and Iraq for ISIS. And that’s where we see the greatest threat.”

Yemen is the base for a Qaeda offshoot that has attempted attacks on the United States. Somalia has Al Shabab, a terrorist group which regularly attacks neighboring Kenya. While diminished, the Islamic State still operates in Syria and has mounted attacks in Iraq.

Long before the Afghanistan withdrawal, Biden administration officials said that parts of the Middle East and Africa were more urgent terrorist threats than Afghanistan, though they made the argument before a swift collapse of the Afghan government. Since the Taliban takeover last month, military officials have said Al Qaeda may be able to rebuild its presence in Afghanistan more swiftly than previously estimated.

Intelligence officials have said the most immediate threat in Afghanistan is from the Islamic State’s affiliate in the country, which conducted the suicide bombing that killed scores of Afghans and 13 American service members on Aug. 26.

While Ms. Haines did not offer any assessment of the groups operating inside Afghanistan, she said a big focus of the agencies she oversees is monitoring “any possible reconstitution of terrorist organizations.”

Speaking by videoconference to the annual Intelligence and National Security Summit, Ms. Haines acknowledged that without American troops on the ground the intelligence collection in Afghanistan would be diminished.

“That is something that we have to prepare for and that we have been preparing for, frankly, quite some time,” she said.

The intelligence agencies have been largely silent about how they intend to collect information, though current and former officials have said they will work with Afghans supporters of the United States that remain in the country and will continue to intercept communications.

Overall, the threat of a foreign-sponsored terrorist attack in the United States has diminished in recent years, she said. But even if they cannot easily conduct attacks from overseas, terrorist groups continue to be able to ideologically inspire homegrown violent extremism, she said.

“That’s something that we also monitor and counter so that we can really try to reduce the hatred and vitriol, frankly, that terrorism is based on and the tragic consequences that it has for our society,” she said.

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Courting moderates, House Democrats stop short of proposing the most aggressive plans to tax the rich.

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Jeff Bezos is one of the wealthiest people in the world, but his salary from Amazon was just $81,840 last year. The richest of the rich earn little money from actual paychecks.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

House Democrats’ plans to raise taxes on the rich and on profitable corporations stop well short of the grand proposals many in the party once envisioned to tax the vast fortunes of tycoons like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk — or even thoroughly close loopholes exploited by high-flying captains of finance.

Instead, the House Ways and Means Committee, influenced more by the need to win the votes of moderate Democrats than by progressive Democratic ambitions, focused on traditional ways of raising revenue to pay for the party’s $3.5 trillion social policy bill — by raising tax rates on income.

The proposal, which is set to be considered by the panel on Wednesday, does include measures to raise taxes on the rich. Taxable income over $450,000 — or $400,000 for unmarried individuals — would be taxed at 39.6 percent, the top rate before President Donald J. Trump’s 2017 tax cut brought it to 37 percent. The top capital gains rate would rise from 20 percent to 25 percent, a considerably smaller jump than President Biden proposed.

A 3-percent surtax would be applied to incomes over $5,000,000.

But more notable is what is not included. The richest of the rich earn little money from actual paychecks (Mr. Bezos’s salary from Amazon was $81,840 in 2020). Their vast fortunes in stocks, bonds, real estate and other assets grow each year largely untaxed.

The Senate Finance Committee wants to tax that wealth with a one-time surtax imposed on billionaires’ fortunes, followed by levies annually on the gains in value of billionaire assets, the way property taxes are adjusted each year to reflect gains in housing values. The Ways and Means Committee shrugged that off.

Representative Bill Pascrell, Democrat of New Jersey and a Ways and Means Committee member, conceded on Monday that the real wealth in the country is tied up in assets, not large salaries, but he said many Democrats were leery of going too far.

“I am very suspect of a wealth tax,” he said. “I think it’s perceived as ‘soak the rich.’ I don’t think it is, but that’s how it’s perceived.”

The committee did take aim at a loophole in retirement savings exploited by billionaire Peter Thiel, who, according to a ProPublica investigation, was able to take a Roth individual retirement account worth less than $2,000 in 1999 and grow it to $5 billion, which could be completely shielded from taxation.

In a Roth I.R.A., small annual deposits of money from previously taxed income are allowed to gain in value free of capital gains taxation, as long as it the funds are withdrawn after retirement. But Mr. Thiel, the founder of PayPal and a prominent Silicon Valley conservative, opened his Roth, then deposited stakes in start-up companies at fractions of pennies a share, which then exploded when the start-ups took off. The gains in value — and investments made in other companies from those gains — will go completely untaxed if Mr. Thiel waits to withdraw it just before he turns 60.

To prevent such exploitation, the Ways and Means Committee would stop contributions to retirement accounts once they reach $10 million.

In other areas, the committee appears to be making only glancing blows at the nation’s highest fliers. Barack Obama, Mr. Trump and President Biden have all vowed to close the so-called carried interest loophole, in which private equity managers pay low capital gains tax rates on the fees they charge clients, asserting that it is not income since it is drawn from their clients’ investment gains.

Senate Democrats hope to close the loophole completely, saving the Treasury $63 billion over 10 years. The House proposal would force Wall Street financiers to hold their clients’ investment gains for five years before claiming them as capital gains and cashing out, a demand that could limit the use of carried interest, but would save a fraction of the Senate proposal, $14 billion.

As Senate Democrats return to Washington, divisions remain over a spending bill.

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Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia promoted the infrastructure bill alongside a bipartisan group of lawmakers at the Capitol in July.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

Senate Democrats returned from their summer recess on Monday to confront intraparty divisions over the scope and structure of a $3.5 trillion economic policy bill, as the House races to finish cobbling together the package in the coming weeks.

House Democrats have been working to coalesce around details of the proposal, including releasing their opening proposal on Monday for tax increases on wealthy corporations and individuals, but a number of hurdles remain to ensure that the package can clear the chamber as early as this month. Democratic senators are likely to use a caucus lunch on Tuesday to walk through the work that has been completed over the recess. House committees continue to steadily advance pieces of the legislation.

But the deep differences, including disagreement on the size and funding of the package, have festered for months. Democrats, with razor-thin majorities in both chambers, are using an arcane budget process known as reconciliation to shield the larger package from a Republican filibuster in the Senate and advance what could be the most significant expansion of the social safety net since the 1960s.

The differences are most apparent over the revenue provision, as moderate Democrats resist some of the sweeping tax increases Mr. Biden and liberal Democrats have proposed.

The proposal from House Democrats would raise the corporate tax rate to 26.5 percent for the richest businesses and impose an additional surtax on individuals who make more than $5 million. But it is unclear how much that will change in the coming weeks, as people briefed on the details cautioned that the text could still change to secure enough Democratic votes.

Key representatives of the opposing wings of the caucus appeared on multiple news shows on Sunday morning to defend their positions before the Senate’s return.

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, reiterated that he would not support spending $3.5 trillion, saying that Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, “will not have my vote” on a package of that size.

“Chuck knows that — we’ve talked about this,” Mr. Manchin said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “We’ve tried to help Americans in every way we possibly can, and a lot of the help that we’ve put out there is still there, and it’s going to run clear until next year, 2022, so what’s the urgency?”

He also voiced skepticism that the legislation would be finished by the end of the month, adding that the hasty time frame “makes no sense at all,” and raised concerns about some clean energy and tax provisions.

But when asked later on “State of the Union” about Mr. Manchin’s comments, Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent who leads the Budget Committee, said “it’s absolutely not acceptable to me” to reduce the size of the package.

“I don’t think it’s acceptable to the president, to the American people or to the overwhelming majority of the people in the Democratic caucus,” he added. “Many of us made a major compromise in going from the $6 trillion bill that we wanted.”

Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California has committed to a Sept. 27 vote on the bipartisan infrastructure package in the House, and Democrats hope to have completed the second economic package before then. The top Senate rules enforcer has also begun hearing arguments over whether certain provisions in the $3.5 trillion bill adhere to the strict rules that govern the reconciliation process.

Senior leaders will also have to soon confront a potential lapse in government funding on Oct. 1 if Congress does not act, as well as the looming deadline to prevent the federal government from defaulting on the national debt.

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Capitol Police officials brace for a rally in support of those arrested on Jan. 6.

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A plan to temporarily put up a fence around the Capitol ahead of a Sept. 18 demonstration was approved.Credit...Tom Brenner for The New York Times

Citing “concerning online chatter,” Capitol Police officials on Monday urged anyone considering violence to stay home instead of attending a Saturday rally in support of defendants arrested in connection with the deadly storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“We are here to protect everyone’s First Amendment right to peacefully protest,” Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said in a statement. “I urge anyone who is thinking about causing trouble to stay home. We will enforce the law and not tolerate violence.”

The warning came as the Capitol Police Board voted Monday to reinstall a fence around the complex ahead of the “Justice for J6” rally scheduled for Sept. 18, because of concerns that hundreds might attend, including members of some extremist groups. The rally is organized by Matt Braynard, a former Trump campaign operative, and his organization, Look Ahead America, which has demanded that the Justice Department drop charges against what the group calls “nonviolent protesters” facing charges stemming from the Jan. 6 riot.

The Capitol Police Board also issued an emergency declaration, which will allow the department to deputize outside law enforcement officers as United States Capitol Police special officers. Officials also plan to use recently installed camera technology for expanded coverage of the campus.

Mr. Braynard said in an interview that his group would be peaceful and that the rally would last a little longer than an hour.

“My first instruction to attendees is to be respectful and kind to law enforcement officers,” he said. “We’re not there to cause anybody any trouble.”

He added that on Tuesday he would be announcing the names of some “very significant speakers” who would appear at the Saturday event at the Capitol.

Of the decision to reinstall the fence, he said, “This is a political decision by the House leadership to intimidate people from attending.”

The steps taken to secure the Capitol mark a starkly different stance from the one security officials took before the Jan. 6 riot, when hundreds of Trump supporters overwhelmed an unprepared Capitol Police force.

As a mob stormed the Capitol that day, about 140 police officers were injured, including 15 who were hospitalized, and several people died in connection with the riot, including officers who took their own lives in the days and months after responding to the assault.

Mr. Braynard has argued that the brutal attacks on police officers during the assault were the work of a “few bad apples” and accused the Biden administration of targeting the “peaceful Trump supporters who entered the Capitol with selective prosecutions based on their political beliefs.”

“There were some folks who did engage in violence and they also deserve a fair trial,” he said, but he added that his “emphasis” was on supporting the “nonviolent” protesters arrested in connection with the riot.

Chief Manger briefed congressional leaders on Monday about the Capitol’s security precautions.

“They seemed very, very well prepared,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, told reporters afterward. “Much better prepared than before Jan. 6. I think they’re ready for whatever might happen.”

The precautions came as the Capitol Police announced Monday the arrest of a California man who had a bayonet and a machete in his truck near the Democratic National Committee headquarters.

The truck had a picture of an American flag where its license plate should have been, and a swastika and other white supremacist symbols were painted on the vehicle.

Capitol Police officials said it was not immediately clear if the man was planning to attend any upcoming demonstrations.

Democrats push in the reconciliation bill to legalize 8 million undocumented immigrants.

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Under the bill, undocumented immigrants would be eligible to become U.S. citizens if they passed requirements like background and health checks and paid a $1,500 fee.Credit...Kena Betancur/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

House Democrats pushed forward on Monday with their plan to use their $3.5 trillion social policy bill to create a path to citizenship for an estimated 8 million undocumented immigrants, as the House Judiciary Committee prepared to approve a major immigration component for the package.

“The immigration provisions in this legislation serve as a vital investment in human infrastructure that reflects our commitment to a stronger U.S. economy and a vibrant future for all Americans,” said Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and chairman of the committee, as he urged adoption of the proposal over stiff Republican opposition.

Democrats are proposing to grant legal status to undocumented people brought to the United States as children, known as Dreamers; immigrants who were granted Temporary Protected Status for humanitarian reasons; close to one million farmworkers; and millions more whom are deemed “essential workers.”

Under the legislation, undocumented immigrants would be eligible to become U.S. citizens if they passed background and health checks and paid a $1,500 fee, among other requirements. The bill would also recapture at least 226,000 visas that went unused in previous years, because of “Covid-19 or bureaucratic delay,” Mr. Nadler said.

The House’s legislative push came as the Senate’s top rules enforcer weighed whether the immigration measures can be included in the Democrats’ sweeping legislation to expand the social safety net, which they plan to muscle through under a fast-track process known as reconciliation that shields it from a filibuster. That would test the bounds of the Senate’s rules, which require than any measure included in a reconciliation bill have a direct impact on federal spending and revenues.

On Friday, senior Democratic and Republican aides with expertise in immigration law and the budget met with Elizabeth MacDonough, the Senate parliamentarian, who serves as the chamber’s arbiter of its own rules. It was unclear how quickly Ms. MacDonough would make a ruling.

Senator Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the No. 2 Senate Democrat, told reporters Monday that the parliamentarian asked for additional information about the “legal theories” behind the Democrats’ argument and will hold another meeting this week to discuss them.

“We feel very strong about that position, and we hope it is persuasive,” Mr. Durbin said.

Ms. MacDonough’s decisions are merely advisory, but several Democratic senators have indicated they would be reluctant to overrule her. She did not respond to a request for comment.

The budgetary cost of the changes in immigration law — which affect health care benefits, Medicaid spending and tax credits — exceeds $139 billion over 10 years, according to preliminary figures from the Congressional Budget Office. Moreover, Democrats estimate the legalization push would add $1.5 trillion to the U.S. economy over the next decade, creating more than 400,000 jobs.

Republicans, however, are resisting the proposals, arguing that they are tangential to the budget and that Congress should focus on securing the southern border before trying to overhaul immigration law.

“We’re told we need to legalize those who defied our nation’s immigration and employment laws and illegally took Americans’ jobs as essential workers,” Representative Tom McClintock, Republican of California, said. He blasted the immigration overhaul as “amnesty for millions of foreign nationals who illegally entered our country and are demanding to stay all while our borders are kept wide open.”

Representative Zoe Lofgren, Democrat of California and chairwoman of the Administration Committee, pointed to research showing immigrants are net contributors to the United States.

“The economic benefits of immigration to the United States are substantial and uncontroverted,” Lofgren said. “This investment is long overdue, and I cannot afford to miss this opportunity.”

Mr. Durbin said he only pushed for the immigration overhaul to be included in the budget package after talks he had organized with a bipartisan group of 15 senators fell apart.

Immigration advocates have readied some backup plans should the parliamentarian not rule in their favor, including updating the immigration registry.

Emily Cochrane contributed reporting.

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Under G.O.P. pressure, tech giants are empowered by an election agency.

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The F.E.C.’s ruling in a case about a New York Post article on Hunter Biden provides further flexibility to social media companies to control what is shared on their platforms.Credit...Kris Connor/WireImage, via Getty Images

When Twitter decided briefly last fall to block users from posting links to an article about Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s son Hunter, it prompted a conservative outcry that Big Tech was improperly aiding Mr. Biden’s presidential campaign.

“So terrible,” President Donald J. Trump said of the move to limit the visibility of a New York Post article. Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, said Twitter and Facebook were censoring “core political speech.” The Republican National Committee filed a formal complaint with the Federal Election Commission accusing Twitter of “using its corporate resources” to benefit the Biden campaign.

Now the commission, which oversees election laws, has dismissed those allegations, according to a document obtained by The New York Times, ruling in Twitter’s favor in a decision that is likely to set a precedent for future cases involving social media sites and federal campaigns.

The election commission determined that Twitter’s actions regarding the Hunter Biden article had been undertaken for a valid commercial reason, not a political purpose, and were thus allowable.

And in a second case involving a social media platform, the commission used the same reasoning to side with Snapchat and reject a complaint from the Trump campaign. The campaign had argued that the company provided an improper gift to Mr. Biden by rejecting Mr. Trump from its Discover platform in the summer of 2020, according to another commission document.

The election commission’s twin rulings, which were made last month behind closed doors and are set to become public soon, protect the flexibility of social media and tech giants like Twitter, Facebook, Google and Snapchat to control what is shared on their platforms regarding federal elections.

Republicans have increasingly been at odds with the nation’s biggest technology and social media companies, accusing them of giving Democrats an undue advantage on their platforms. Mr. Trump, who was ousted from Twitter and Facebook early this year, has been among the loudest critics of the two companies and even announced a lawsuit against them and Google.

The suppression of the article about Hunter Biden — at the height of the presidential race last year — was a particular flashpoint for Republicans and Big Tech. But there were other episodes, including Snapchat’s decision to stop featuring Mr. Trump on one of its platforms.

The Federal Election Commission said in both cases that the companies had acted in their own commercial interests, according to the “factual and legal analysis” provided to the parties involved. The commission also said that Twitter had followed existing policies related to hacked materials.

Twitter and Snapchat declined to comment.

Emma Vaughn, an R.N.C. spokeswoman, said the committee was “weighing its options for appealing this disappointing decision from the F.E.C.” A representative for Mr. Trump did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden heads to California to campaign for Newsom in final stretch.

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President Biden arrived in Sacramento on Monday to campaign on behalf of Gov. Gavin Newsom.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

According to Gov. Gavin Newsom, California residents have one day left to decisively reject a Republican takeover of the nation’s biggest and most powerful Democratic stronghold.

On Monday, President Biden is set to join the governor in Long Beach to make his case on behalf of Mr. Newsom — the last in a stream of national Democratic leaders to offer their support in the final days of the campaign to help Mr. Newsom keep his job.

Mr. Newsom’s leading rival, the conservative radio host Larry Elder, was making his own last push on Monday. The day before, he held a news conference with the actor Rose McGowan, who accused Mr. Newsom’s wife, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, of trying to bribe her to prevent her from publicly disclosing her sexual assault allegations against Harvey Weinstein. A spokesperson for Ms. Siebel Newsom told ABC News that the allegation was “a complete fabrication.”

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President Biden at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland on Monday, en route to California.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

Mr. Elder said he had continued to describe his candidacy as one meant to rescue Californians from, as he put it in a tweet on Sunday, the chaos, failure and corruption of the Newsom administration and to appeal to voters frustrated with pandemic restrictions, homelessness and crime. He has promised that his first moves as governor would be to repeal Mr. Newsom’s pandemic policies.

Before voters are two seemingly simple questions: Should Mr. Newsom be removed from office? And if so, who should replace him?

Recent polls and voter turnout data suggest that a victory for Mr. Newsom is likely.

Which means that analysts will be focusing attention on the particulars of the next few days: Will there be a final surge of in-person voting by Republicans who have been dissuaded from dropping their ballots in the mail by baseless but widespread allegations of election fraud? How much support will each of the top Republican candidates garner? If he prevails, will Mr. Newsom emerge more powerful, with an energized base eager to re-elect him next year? Or will he be vulnerable, either to a Republican challenger, or to Democrats who believe they could better mobilize first-time, young and Latino voters?

Though more than 35 percent of California’s active, registered voters have already cast their ballots, tomorrow night is the deadline.

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In California, Worsening Fires Show Limits of Biden’s Power

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President Biden and Gov. Gavin Newsom in Sacramento, Calif., on Monday.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden visited California on Monday to tout his efforts to better protect the state against the raging wildfires that have burned more than two million acres, displaced thousands and pushed responders to the brink of exhaustion.

“These fires are blinking code red for our nation,” said Mr. Biden, who used the occasion to promote two bills pending in Congress that would fund forest management and more resilient infrastructure as well as combat global warming. The country couldn’t “ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change,” he said.

But experts say there are limits to what the federal government can do to reduce the scale and destructive power of the fires, at least in the short term. That’s because much of the authority needed relies on state and local governments, those experts said.

Federal action largely depends on Congress approving new funding — but even if approved, that money might not make much of a difference anytime soon.

“Climate change impacts can’t be absolved in a single year,” said Roy Wright, who was in charge of risk mitigation at the Federal Emergency Management Agency until 2018. The goal, he said, should be “investments that will pay back over the coming three to five years.”

On wildfires, like so much else, President Biden presented himself as the opposite of former President Donald J. Trump: Clear about the role of climate change, willing to listen to experts, and promising to better defend places like California against a growing threat.

“If we have four more years of Trump’s climate denial, how many suburbs will be burned in wildfires?” Mr. Biden said in a speech last year as California staggered through record-breaking fires. “If you give a climate arsonist four more years in the White House, why would anyone be surprised if we have more of America ablaze?”

Mr. Biden, of course, won the election — only to see the damage from wildfires in California and across the country continue to get worse.

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A view of the burned area of the Grizzly Flats and Caldor fires during Mr. Biden’s aerial tour in Mather, Calif., on Monday.Credit...Leah Millis/Reuters

On Monday, Mr. Biden flew over the Caldor fire, which has consumed more than 200,000 acres south of Lake Tahoe and forced thousands of people from their homes.

“We have to act more rapidly and more firmly and more broadly than today,” Mr. Biden told a small crowd gathered in the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. “We can’t afford to let anything slip further. It really is a matter of what the world will look like.”

Over the past decade, the number of fires in California each year has remained consistent, hovering around 7,000 to 10,000 annually.

What has changed is their scale.

Until 2018, the largest wildfires in the state seldom burned more than 300,000 acres, according to state data. In 2018, the Ranch fire consumed more than 400,000 acres, and last year, the August Complex fire topped 1 million acres, making it the largest blaze in the state’s history.

Just north of the Caldor fire is the Dixie fire, which has already burned more than 960,000 acres and is not yet contained. That fire could break last year’s record.

“The fire situation in California is unrecognizably worse than it was a decade ago,” said Michael Wara, director of the climate and energy policy program at Stanford University. He said that with the exception of 2019, each of past five years has brought fires that were more destructive than the year before it.

The wildfire crisis in California has often become a political fight. Last summer, President Trump blamed California for its fire problem, and initially denied federal disaster aid.

“You gotta clean your floors, you gotta clean your forests,” Mr. Trump said at the time, in comments that emphasized just one aspect of a complex problem. “There are many, many years of leaves and broken trees and they’re like, like, so flammable.”

Mr. Trump also dismissed the link between forest fires and global warming. When state officials urged him not to ignore the science of climate change, which shows that higher temperatures and drought are making fires more destructive, Mr. Trump inaccurately responded, “I don’t think science actually knows.”

While Mr. Trump was wrong to dismiss the role played by climate change in exacerbating the fires, he was right that more aggressive forest management is vital for addressing those fires, experts say. But much of that work must come from the federal government, which owns about half the land in California, Dr. Wara said.

Mr. Biden’s first budget request, earlier this year, didn’t ask Congress for enough money to reduce the amount of flammable vegetation in the nation’s forests, Dr. Wara said. The $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill now pending on Capitol Hill would significantly increase that funding.

“There’s no fixing the wildfire problem without dealing with how forests have been managed,” Dr. Wara said.

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transcript

Biden Says Wildfires Are ‘Blinking Code Red’ for Nation

President Biden, on his first trip to the West Coast as president, surveyed damage from wildfires in California, saying the U.S. could not “ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change.”

These fires are blinking code red for our nation. They’re gaining frequency and ferocity. And we know what we have to do. My “Build Back Better” plan includes billions of dollars for wildfire preparedness, resilience and response, forest management to restore millions of acres and to protect homes and public water sources. We know that decades of forest management decisions have created hazardous conditions across the Western forest, but we can’t ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change. It isn’t about red or blue states. It’s about fires, just fires. When I think about climate change, I think about not the cost, I think about good- paying jobs it’ll create. But I also think about the jobs we’re losing due to impacts on the supply chains and industries because we haven’t acted boldly enough. We have to build back, and you’ve heard me say it 100 times, not just build back, but build back better. As one nation, we’ve got to do it together. We’ll get through this together. We just have to keep the faith.

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President Biden, on his first trip to the West Coast as president, surveyed damage from wildfires in California, saying the U.S. could not “ignore the reality that these wildfires are being supercharged by climate change.”CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Biden administration has taken other steps to reduce the damage from fires, including increasing the number of air tankers and helicopters at its disposal and boosting pay for federal firefighters to $15 an hour.

“We owe them a whole hell of a lot more,” Mr. Biden told California emergency workers on Monday, before leading a rendition of “Happy Birthday” for an employee.

FEMA has also made more money available to help communities prepare for fires in advance, for example by building fire breaks or retrofitting homes. And after a fire strikes, the agency has made it easier for fire victims who have lost proof of homeownership — documents that are often destroyed in a fire — to apply for assistance to rebuild that home.

And Mr. Biden has asked Congress to approve measures that would reduce the country’s greenhouse gas emissions. But even if those changes were to become law, the amount of carbon dioxide and other warming gases that has already been released into the atmosphere means the planet will continue to heat up for years.

Much of the action that would go the furthest toward reducing wildfire risk is outside the scope of federal authority, according to Kimiko Barrett, a wildfire policy expert at Headwaters Economics, a consulting group in Montana.

Protecting Americans from fires means reducing home construction in fire-prone areas — decisions historically made at the state and local level, she said.

“We’re developing and building homes in places that are very exposed to wildfires,” Dr. Barrett said. She said communities need to incorporate the risk of fires into how they grow, just as they do with flooding and, increasingly, with sea level rise.

Still, Mr. Biden could use the megaphone of the presidency to encourage state and local officials to be more thoughtful about where and how they build, said Michele Steinberg, wildfire division director for the National Fire Protection Association.

“Folks, there is something called building codes, and land-use ordinances, and they’re really good, and they really work when applied,” Ms. Steinberg offered as the message Mr. Biden could convey. “That would be a huge step in the right direction.”

But even if Mr. Biden wanted to send that message, he would be competing against the deeply held American view that land is something to profit from, rather than to conserve or protect, she said.

“It’s more like, let’s get the value out of this land that we can right now,” Ms. Steinberg said, “and let the next generation worry about it.”

Justice Barrett says the Supreme Court’s work is not affected by politics.

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“To say the court’s reasoning is flawed,” Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner.”Credit...Timothy D. Easley/Associated Press

Justice Amy Coney Barrett said on Sunday that political partisanship plays no role in decision making at the Supreme Court.

Speaking at the University of Louisville’s McConnell Center, in Kentucky, Justice Barrett said that “judicial philosophies are not the same as political parties.”

“To say the court’s reasoning is flawed,” she said, “is different from saying the court is acting in a partisan manner.”

Her remarks came after an introduction by Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, who helped found the center. Mr. McConnell was instrumental in ensuring Justice Barrett’s rushed confirmation just weeks after the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and weeks before President Donald J. Trump lost his bid for re-election.

The court now has six Republican appointees and three Democratic ones.

Justice Barrett’s remarks, reported by The Associated Press, were consistent with those of other members of the court who insist that partisan affiliations have nothing to do with their frequent splits along ideological lines. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton, has, for instance, made that point in a new book and in interviews promoting it.

Justice Barrett’s remarks followed a series of recent rulings — on asylum policy, the federal eviction moratorium and a novel Texas abortion law — in which the court’s three justices who were appointed by Democratic presidents were in dissent.

A correction was made on 
Sept. 13, 2021

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this item misstated Mr. McConnell’s leadership position. He is the minority leader, not the majority leader.

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Laphonza Butler, a former union leader, will become the first woman of color to lead Emily’s List.

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Laphonza Butler said she believed that new abortion restrictions enacted in Texas and looming in other states would energize Democratic women.Credit...Vivien Killilea/Getty Images

Emily’s List, the fund-raising powerhouse that has helped elect hundreds of women who support abortion rights, has chosen Laphonza Butler, a former union leader and well-connected Democratic strategist in California, as its next president.

Ms. Butler, 42, who grew up in Southern Mississippi, will be the first woman of color — and the first mother — to lead the organization, one of the nation’s most influential political action committees.

She will take over Emily’s List at a particularly fraught time, with Democrats facing the dual challenges of a difficult midterm election and the most fundamental and widespread threats to abortion rights since the Supreme Court established a constitutional right to abortion in Roe v. Wade in 1973.

In an interview, Ms. Butler said she believed that new abortion restrictions enacted in Texas and looming in other states would energize Democratic women, providing both a wake-up call and a potent line of attack for candidates backed by Emily’s List.

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