Aug. 18, 2021, 5:15 p.m. ET

Daily Political Briefing

Biden addresses the economy and pushes for further spending.

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Biden Says ‘Sustainable Investments’ Are Key to Economic Recovery

President Biden spoke about economic opportunity and decline in the American job market since the start of the pandemic.

What the best companies do, and what we as a country should do, is make smart, sustainable investments with appropriate financing … … to make this nation more productive, to advance America’s leadership in clean energy, to win the jobs of the future, while meeting the threat of climate change, and to ensure that all working Americans benefit from the growth they’re helping produce. The independent experts who have analyzed my plans have found that they would do just that, expand output and enable millions of Americans to enter the labor workforce. What we can’t do is go back to the same old trickle-down theories that gave us nearly $2 trillion in deficit-financed corporate tax giveaways that did nothing to make our economy more productive or resilient. The same people who cheered on that approach are now telling us it isn’t the problem. The big companies have actually to compete for workers and offer them a fair wage with some dignity. I could not disagree more. We can’t go back to the old, failed thinking — we need to grow the economy from the bottom up and the middle out as I said before. The investments. I’m proposing are investments the American people want and the investments that our country needs.

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President Biden spoke about economic opportunity and decline in the American job market since the start of the pandemic.CreditCredit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

President Biden delivered remarks Monday morning at the White House to press Congress to act on both halves of his economic agenda, claiming momentum from an uptick in job growth over the course of his administration and pushing back on Republican critiques of his multi-trillion-dollar spending plans.

Mr. Biden cast his economic policies and his administration’s vaccination efforts as a key driver of accelerating growth, and he promised his remaining agenda items would help Americans work more and earn more money while restraining inflation by making the economy more productive.

The spending he has proposed, Mr. Biden said, “won’t increase inflation. It will take the pressure off inflation.”

Mr. Biden used the speech to champion the nearly $600 billion bipartisan infrastructure agreement he struck with Democratic and Republican centrists in the Senate last month. The deal is in jeopardy after Republicans balked at a key revenue source included in the initial deal: stepped-up enforcement efforts at the I.R.S. to catch tax cheats.

“Our economy has come a long way over the last six months,” Mr. Biden said. “It can’t slow down now.”

White House officials and Senate negotiators — including 11 Democrats and 11 Republicans — are working to salvage it by substituting a new revenue source.

“We are still negotiating,” the lead Republican negotiator, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday. “In fact, last night, I was negotiating some of the final details with the White House. And, later today, we will be having additional negotiations with the Republicans and Democrats who have come together to put this bill into a track that’s very unusual for Washington.”

Mr. Biden also used the speech to push for a second facet of his agenda, which Democrats are planning to pursue without Republican support: a $3.5 trillion plan, achieved through the budget reconciliation process that bypasses a Senate filibuster.

In describing the varied social and environmental initiatives he hoped to include in the plan, the president repeatedly stressed the need for government action as a means to raising living standards and creating jobs. His comments came on the day a committee of economists at the National Bureau of Economic Research declared that the Covid-19 recession officially ended more than a year ago, in April 2020, making it the shortest recession on record.

“What we can’t do is go back to the same old trickle-down theories that gave us nearly $2 trillion in deficit corporate tax giveaways, that did nothing to make our economy productive or resilient,” Mr. Biden said.

“Simply put, we can’t afford not to make these investments,” he added.

That plan contains the bulk of Mr. Biden’s $4 trillion economic agenda that is not included in the bipartisan bill, like expanding educational access, building more affordable and energy-efficient housing, incentivizing low-carbon energy through tax credits and a wide range of other social programs meant to invest in workers.

Mr. Portman and other Republicans have ramped up criticism of that spending in recent days, claiming it will stoke more inflation for an economy that is already experiencing rapid price growth. Mr. Biden’s economic team has said repeatedly that inflation increases today are largely a product of the Covid-19 pandemic and will fade in the months or years to come.

Administration officials also say the Democrats’ $3.5 trillion plan will dampen price pressures by freeing up Americans to work more — through subsidized child care, national paid leave and other measures — and improving the efficiency of the economy.

Mr. Biden dismissed a question from a reporter after the speech about the potential for unchecked inflation, which he said no serious economist foresees.

He also told reporters that he planned to include a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants in the $3.5 trillion bill because it was a political vehicle that could allow such a pathway to pass with only Democratic votes.

“The budget bill is an appropriate way to get around the filibuster,” he said.

Zach Montague contributed reporting.

The Biden administration is sending Afghan visa applicants to an Army base in Virginia.

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U.S. to Send Afghan Visa Applicants to Virginia Military Base

The Biden administration said it would evacuate almost 2,500 Afghans who helped the U.S. government during the 20-year war and who now face reprisals from the Taliban to an Army base in Virginia, pending approval of their visas.

At the president’s direction, the Department of State is working to relocate interested and eligible Afghan nationals and their families who have been approved through the special immigrant visa or S.I.V. program as the next step in that process, I am pleased to announce that the Department of Defense has agreed at the request of the Department of State to allow the use of Fort Lee, Va., as the initial relocation site for the pool of applicants who are closest to completing special immigrant processing. These are brave Afghans and their families, as we have said, whose service to the United States has been certified by the embassy in Kabul and who have completed thorough, S.I.V. security vetting processes. They will be provided temporary housing and services as they complete the final steps and the special immigrant process. We expect to begin the first relocation flights before the end of July as you heard from the president. Approximately 2,500 Afghans and family members are currently eligible to finish special immigrant processing in the United States, and we’ll certainly provide more details as they become available.

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The Biden administration said it would evacuate almost 2,500 Afghans who helped the U.S. government during the 20-year war and who now face reprisals from the Taliban to an Army base in Virginia, pending approval of their visas.CreditCredit...Mariam Zuhaib/Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The Biden administration plans to evacuate an initial group of Afghans who helped the United States during the 20-year war and who now face reprisals from the Taliban to an Army base in Virginia in the coming days, the State and Defense Departments said on Monday.

About 2,500 Afghan interpreters, drivers and others who worked with American forces, as well as their family members, will be sent in stages to Fort Lee, Va., south of Richmond, to await final processing for formal entry into the United States, officials said.

“This is a group who have completed that step, the security vetting process, the rigorous process that is required before we bring the applicants and their families to the United States,” Ned Price, the State Department spokesman, told reporters.

The White House announced last week that it would begin evacuating Afghans the last week of July, in an effort called Operation Allies Refuge, but officials declined to comment on many details of the rapidly evolving program, including where the initial visa applicants and their eligible relatives would go in the United States.

With the American military in the final phases of withdrawing from Afghanistan, the White House has come under heavy pressure to protect Afghan allies who helped the United States and speed up the process of providing them with special immigrant visas.

More than 18,000 Afghans who have worked as interpreters, drivers, engineers, security guards, fixers and embassy clerks for the United States during the war have been trapped in bureaucratic limbo after applying for special immigrant visas, which are available to people who face threats because of work for the U.S. government. The applicants have 53,000 family members, U.S. officials have said.

American diplomats have been scrambling to reach agreements to relocate the Afghans to third countries, including some in Central Asia and the Persian Gulf, as well as United States territories like Guam, to complete the visa application process in safety.

But with those negotiations dragging on and the security situation in Afghanistan worsening, the administration came up with a stopgap measure for applicants who had completed most, if not all, vetting: Bring them directly to the United States for final processing.

Administration officials are still working out last-minute details about sending the first group of Afghans to Fort Lee.

John F. Kirby, the Pentagon press secretary, spoke opaquely about this option last week when he told reporters that the administration might potentially house some of the Afghans at bases inside the United States on a “short-term” basis while their applications are processed. This would most likely be through humanitarian parole, a government program that allows people to apply to enter the United States for urgent humanitarian reasons.

The vast majority of Afghan applicants and their families, however, would go through the relocation process and be moved to an American base in another country.

“Clearly, we are planning for greater numbers than just this initial 2,500,” Mr. Kirby said. “But what that looks like over time, I just couldn’t be able to predict right now.”

Applicants and their families will stay in available barracks or family housing units at Fort Lee. The Pentagon also will provide “food and water, proper sustenance, appropriate medical care,” including coronavirus screening, Mr. Kirby said.

The mission is aimed at fulfilling a pledge by President Biden to not repeat the abandonment of U.S. allies during the withdrawal from Vietnam, and comes as the Taliban gain more ground throughout Afghanistan, seizing swaths of territory, displacing tens of thousands, and wounding or killing hundreds of civilians.

House members from both parties, who are expected to approve legislation this week increasing the number of State Department special immigrant visas and streamlining the application process, praised the administration’s efforts but complained they should have happened much faster.

“The ability to conduct an evacuation now is going to be different from the ability to conduct an evacuation in August, September, October, November,” Representative Jason Crow, Democrat of Colorado and a former Army Ranger who served in Iraq and Afghanistan, said on MSNBC this month. “It’s going to get worse with each passing month.”

Those seeking a special immigrant visa are required to submit identification documents, proof of their work for the U.S. government and a letter of recommendation from an American official. The applicant must also clear multiple background checks, submit fingerprints for each family member and pass an interview at a U.S. embassy.

Despite a congressional mandate that the State and Homeland Security Departments process the visas within nine months, more than 8,000 applicants had been stalled longer than that, according to the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, which filed a lawsuit against the federal government over the delays.

Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reporting.

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Biden praises Jordan’s King Abdullah as a loyal friend in a ‘tough neighborhood.’

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‘We Will Always Be There for Jordan,’ Biden Says

President Biden hosted King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House on Monday, the first Arab leader to visit during his presidency, in a sign of strengthening ties after a rocky relationship with the Trump administration.

“I want to thank you, Your Majesty, for your enduring and strategic relationship with the United States. You’ve always been there, and we will always be there for Jordan. We talked about the Covid crisis. We’re able to be a little of help to Jordan, and we hope to be able to help some more, and end this pandemic. And we also want to thank you for your vital leadership in the Middle East. You live in a tough neighborhood. And the fact is, I look forward to hearing from His Majesty, about the pressing challenges that, that Jordan faces.” “Mr. President, thank you as always, for the kindness you showed me. And as you alluded to, I had the honor and the privilege of knowing you with my father decades ago. And so this is very warming for me to be able to see you in this position and to thank you for the generosity you always have shown me and my country. You alluded to supporting us with vaccine. So on behalf of Jordan and the people of Jordan, thank you so much for the leadership, not only in supporting our country, but fighting Covid internationally, you’ve set the standard for the rest of us to follow.”

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President Biden hosted King Abdullah II of Jordan at the White House on Monday, the first Arab leader to visit during his presidency, in a sign of strengthening ties after a rocky relationship with the Trump administration.CreditCredit...Sarahbeth Maney/The New York Times

President Biden on Monday praised King Abdullah II of Jordan as a “loyal and decent friend’ as the two leaders met at the White House, a critical visit for a Mideast leader who found himself sidelined under former President Donald J. Trump.

King Abdullah is the first Arab head of state to visit the White House since Mr. Biden took office, a sign that the United States wants to elevate Jordan once again to its traditional role as a regional peacemaker.

“We’ve been hanging out together for a long time,” Mr. Biden said Monday, as the two sat in the Oval Office ahead of their bilateral meeting. “It’s good to have him back in the White House.”

Although Mr. Biden’s foreign policy priorities are heavily focused on China and Russia, the Middle East is a region that the new administration quickly learned it cannot afford to ignore. The visit also comes as Jordan has been struggling amid coronavirus restrictions and as King Abdullah has had to fend off an alleged plot — involving his own half brother — to overthrow him.

During his 22 years in power, King Abdullah has been seen by American presidents as a moderate, reliable ally in the Middle East, often playing the role of envoy from the Arab world in Washington.

That special relationship ended with Mr. Trump, who favored working with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States instead.

“Trump’s departure is a huge relief to him,” said Martin S. Indyk, a former U.S. ambassador to Israel and a former special envoy for Israeli-Palestinian negotiations.

King Abdullah, for instance, was not consulted on the Trump administration’s Mideast peace plan, which in its original version provided for annexation of the Jordan Valley. And King Abdullah was also worried that American aid to Jordan was in jeopardy during the Trump era.

The United States has been the largest provider of assistance to Jordan since 1994, when Jordan signed a peace treaty with Israel, according to Lucy Kurtzer-Ellenbogen, director of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict program at the United States Institute of Peace.

“As much as this administration has tried not to get consumed by the Middle East, it is very much focused on preserving stability there,” Ms. Kurtzer-Ellenbogen said. “It sees Jordan’s role as key in that and one that was eclipsed in the last few years.”

The king and Mr. Biden have a long friendship that dates back to before King Abdullah assumed power and when Mr. Biden served in the Senate.

King Abdullah, who was accompanied by his eldest son, Crown Prince Hussein bin Abdullah II, noted that he “had the privilege of knowing you with my father decades ago.”

King Abdullah’s father, King Hussein, ruled the country for more than 40 years before his death in 1999. He added, “this is very warming for me to be able to see you in this position.”

Jordan is a small country with limited power in the region, and King Abdullah’s challenge is to connect with more powerful countries, like Egypt and Israel, in order to demonstrate that he can still play a critical role that justifies American support for Jordan. Experts in the region said they expected him to present Mr. Biden with ideas for task forces that could promote a more stable situation in Syria and other parts of the tumultuous region, and new alignments designed to keep Iraq as an ally in the Western world.

King Abdullah’s wife, Queen Rania, did not attend the meeting on Monday, but was scheduled to have tea with the first lady, Jill Biden.

On Monday, Mr. Biden praised the king for his “vital leadership in the Middle East.”

“You live in a tough neighborhood,” Mr. Biden said.

‘Facebook isn’t killing people’: Biden softens his attack over vaccine misinformation.

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Facebook’s headquarters in Menlo Park, Calif.Credit...Laura Morton for The New York Times

After a weekend of rancor between the White House and Facebook, President Biden has softened his forceful criticism of social networks over the spread of misinformation about Covid-19 vaccines.

At a White House news conference on Monday largely focused on the economy, Mr. Biden stepped back from his comment on Friday that platforms like Facebook were “killing people.”

“Facebook isn’t killing people,” Mr. Biden said. “These 12 people are out there giving misinformation. Anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It’s killing people. It’s bad information.”

He appeared to be referring to a study from earlier this year showing that 12 online personalities, with a combined following of 59 million people, were responsible for the vast majority of Covid-19 anti-vaccine misinformation and conspiracy theories, and that Facebook provided the most consequential platform.

“My hope is that Facebook, instead of taking it personally that I’m somehow saying ‘Facebook is killing people,’ that they would do something about the misinformation,” Mr. Biden said.

In a blog post on Saturday, Facebook called on the administration to stop “finger pointing,” laid out what it had done to encourage users to get vaccinated, and detailed how it had clamped down on lies about the vaccines.

“The Biden administration has chosen to blame a handful of American social media companies,” Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, said in the post. “The fact is that vaccine acceptance among Facebook users in the U.S. has increased.”

Mr. Rosen said that the company’s data showed that 85 percent of its U.S. users had been or wanted to be vaccinated against the coronavirus. The country fell short of meeting Mr. Biden’s target of having 70 percent of American adults vaccinated by July 4, but, Mr. Rosen said, “Facebook is not the reason this goal was missed.”

On Sunday, the surgeon general, Vivek Murthy, reiterated warnings that false stories about the vaccines had become a dangerous health hazard. “These platforms have to recognize they’ve played a major role in the increase in speed and scale with which misinformation is spreading,” Mr. Murthy said on the CNN program “State of the Union.”

On Monday, Mr. Biden called on Facebook’s officials to consider the impact the spread of misinformation about the vaccine could have on people they cared about.

“Look in the mirror,” Mr. Biden said. “Think about that misinformation going to your son, your daughter, your relative, someone you love. That’s all I’m asking.”

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The Biden administration accuses China of breaching Microsoft email systems.

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A Microsoft office in Beijing. The Biden administration has accused China of breaching the company’s email systems, which are used around the world.Credit...Ng Han Guan/Associated Press

The Biden administration on Monday formally accused the Chinese government of breaching Microsoft email systems used by many of the world’s largest companies, governments and military contractors, as the United States joined a broad group of allies, including all NATO members, to condemn Beijing for cyberattacks around the world.

The United States accused China for the first time of paying criminal groups to conduct large-scale hackings, including ransomware attacks to extort companies for millions of dollars, according to a statement from the White House. Microsoft had pointed to hackers linked to the Chinese Ministry of State Security for exploiting holes in the company’s email systems in March; the U.S. announcement on Monday morning was the first suggestion that the Chinese government hired criminal groups to hack tens of thousands of computers and networks around the world for “significant remediation costs for its mostly private sector victims,” according to the White House.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken said in a statement on Monday that China’s Ministry of State Security “has fostered an ecosystem of criminal contract hackers who carry out both state-sponsored activities and cybercrime for their own financial gain.”

Condemnation from NATO and the European Union is unusual, because most of their member countries have been deeply reluctant to publicly criticize China, a major trading partner. But even Germany, whose companies were hit hard by the hacking of Microsoft Exchange — email systems that companies maintain on their own, rather than putting them in the cloud — cited the Chinese government for its work.

“We call on all states, including China, to uphold their international commitments and obligations and to act responsibly in the international system, including in cyberspace,” according to a statement from NATO.

Biden is reviving an effort to move detainees out of Guantánamo Bay.

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At its peak in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, the prison on a U.S. naval base in Guantánamo Bay held about 675 men.Credit...Alex Brandon/Associated Press

The Biden administration on Monday transferred its first detainee out of Guantánamo Bay, repatriating a Moroccan man who had been recommended for discharge from the wartime prison starting in 2016 but nevertheless remained there during the Trump years.

The transfer of the man, Abdul Latif Nasser, 56, was the first sign of a renewed effort under President Biden to winnow the population of prisoners by sending them to other countries that promise to ensure the men remain under security measures. Mr. Nasser was never charged with a crime.

The transfer process, which was pursued by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, had atrophied under Donald J. Trump. With Mr. Nasser’s departure, there are now 39 prisoners at Guantánamo, 11 of whom have been charged with war crimes. At its peak in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and the invasion of Afghanistan, the prison complex at the U.S. naval base there held about 675 men.

The remaining 28 prisoners who have not been charged during the nearly two decades they have been in custody are held as Mr. Nasser had been — as indefinite law-of-war detainees in the armed conflict against Al Qaeda. Of those, 10 have been recommended for transfer with security arrangements by a federal parole-like panel.

The Biden White House, while supporting the goal of closing the prison, has adopted a low-key approach in that effort. Mr. Obama made it a signature policy, ordering that the prison be closed during his first year in office — and failed in the face of intense opposition from Congress. Mr. Biden and his aides have sought to avoid igniting the same kind of backlash by working quietly to begin reducing the prison population again.

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Garland tells prosecutors not to seize reporters’ records.

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Attorney General Merrick B. Garland wrote in a memo on Monday that he was trying to better protect “the important national interest in protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of information revealing their sources.”Credit...Pool photo by Stefani Reynolds

WASHINGTON — Attorney General Merrick B. Garland issued a broad ban on Monday on using subpoenas, warrants or court orders to seize reporters’ records from their employers or from communications firms in an effort to uncover their confidential sources in leak investigations, outlining sharp new limits on the practice.

“The Department of Justice will no longer use compulsory legal process for the purpose of obtaining information from or records of members of the news media acting within the scope of news-gathering activities,” Mr. Garland wrote to federal prosecutors in a three-page policy memo. He added that the department would also revise its regulations to reflect the new limit.

The memo, which also bans forcing reporters to testify about their sources or turn over their notes, said the department would support legislation to give greater protections to reporters’ information to better ensure that the policy changes Mr. Garland announced would hold up under future administrations.

Mr. Garland’s memo laid out a set of exceptions. They included if a reporter is under investigation for an unrelated crime; if a reporter is suspected of committing a crime like “breaking and entering” to gather information; if the department is seeking to authenticate already published information — a situation that arises sometimes in television news broadcasts of footage that can be evidence of a crime; or if reporters themselves have been deemed to be agents of foreign power or members of foreign terrorist groups.

An exception will also apply in situations where seizing reporters’ records is deemed “necessary to prevent an imminent risk of death or serious bodily harm, including terrorist acts, kidnappings, specified offenses against a minor” or attacks that could incapacitate or destroy critical infrastructure, Mr. Garland wrote.

The memo has been expected since last month, when President Biden vowed not to let the department seize reporters’ phone and email records amid disclosures that it had done so late in the Trump administration in cases involving The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN.

The publisher of The Times, A.G. Sulzberger, who was among a small number of news media leaders who met with Mr. Garland about the issue last month, praised the policy memo while calling for additional action by Congress.

“The new policy, which largely bars federal prosecutors from subpoenaing news media records or testimony, represents a significant step forward in the protection of press freedom,” Mr. Sulzberger said. “But there is still more to be done, and we urge the Biden administration to work with Congress to pass a federal shield law to make these improvements permanent.”

Under previous rules, prosecutors had to obtain high-level permission to seize reporters’ data for leak investigations, and they were generally supposed to notify news organizations ahead of time so the scope of the request could be negotiated or challenged in court. But the attorney general or a small number of other high-level officials could make exceptions.

Recently unsealed court filings show that the Justice Department initiated a secret effort to get court orders to seize email records of reporters at both The Times and The Post on Dec. 22 — the day before William P. Barr left office as attorney general.

Prosecutors were separately able to seize the reporters’ phone records without court orders. The department never obtained the email data, but the fight for it spilled over into the early Biden era and involved, in the case of The Times, the extraordinary imposition of gag orders on lawyers and executives for the newspaper.

Those investigations involved leaks in 2017. In a separate leak investigation that was also revealed this spring, the Trump-era Justice Department obtained the phone records and some email records of a CNN reporter.

In meetings with newsroom leaders, Mr. Garland has embraced the idea of ending such seizures, and press-freedoms advocates praised his memo as a sweeping and significant change in how the department has operated under administrations of both parties.

Jameel Jaffer, the director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, called the new policy “an important step forward” while also calling it “crucial” that Congress put Mr. Garland’s rules into law.

“This will help ensure that journalists can do the work we need them to do — shine a light on government conduct, inform public debate and hold the powerful accountable — no matter which party is in control of the executive branch,” he said in a statement.

Mr. Jaffer also flagged some issues that remain unanswered related to how broadly the department would define and interpret key terms in the new rules, like “news gathering.” He called them gaps that should be filled when the department issues its new regulation.

One ambiguity, he noted, is that the memo discusses a prohibition on compulsory legal tools that are listed in the old regulation — subpoenas, warrants and court orders — but does not mention another such tool the department sometimes uses to obtain records like logs of communications in national security inquiries, called a national security letter.

Still, the phrasing of Mr. Garland’s memo suggested an answer to one open question: whether the policy would protect reporters’ records in situations in which their source is suspected of being an outside hacker who stole information, as opposed to a government insider who leaked it.

Based on its wording, a reporter’s records would apparently still be protected. The memo said the prohibition would apply whenever “a member of the news media has, in the course of news gathering, only possessed or published government information, including classified information.”

The new limits apply only to reporters’ records. Mr. Garland noted that the government could still seize records of officials who are suspected of being the source of unauthorized disclosures.

In his memo, Mr. Garland noted that the Justice Department had previously operated under a “balancing test” that included some procedural limits on when prosecutors could seize reporters’ records, and required senior officials to weigh the interest in protecting a free flow of information to the press against the interest in gathering evidence that could solve crimes.

The attorney general wrote, however, that there were “shortcomings” to that approach and that the new policy was intended to better protect journalists’ ability to do their jobs.

“The United States has, of course, an important national interest in protecting national security information against unauthorized disclosure,” he wrote. “But a balancing test may fail to properly weight the important national interest in protecting journalists from compelled disclosure of information revealing their sources, sources they need to apprise the American people of the workings of their government.”

Nicholas Kristof, a Times columnist, is weighing a bid for Oregon governor.

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Nicholas Kristof interviewing Mohammed Ali al-Houthi, a senior Houthi official, in 2018 in Sana, the capital of Yemen.Credit...Mohammed Huwais/AFP-Services, for The New York Times

Nicholas Kristof, the award-winning columnist for The New York Times, is considering running in the Democratic primary race for governor of Oregon.

Mr. Kristof, who grew up on a farm in Yamhill, about 25 miles west of Portland, said in a statement that friends were trying to recruit him into the race to replace Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat who is prevented from running for re-election by term limits. Last month, he decided to take a leave from The Times to consider the possibility of a political campaign.

Any bid for governor would most likely be difficult for an outsider, even one with local roots and a national media platform. At least six candidates are considering entering the race, including the state treasurer, the speaker of the state’s House of Representatives, the state attorney general and a top union leader. News of Mr. Kristof’s potential candidacy was earlier reported by The Willamette Week.

Mr. Kristof, 62, is known for his coverage of human rights abuses and women’s rights, winning Pulitzer Prizes for his reporting on the Tiananmen Square protests in China and on genocide in Darfur.

Last year, he published a book, “Tightrope: Americans Reaching for Hope,” with his wife, Sheryl WuDunn, that explored stories of poverty, addiction and inequality through the stories of several of his childhood schoolmates.

He became more involved in managing his family farm two years ago, when he returned to the state with Ms. WuDunn, to transition its business from growing cherries to cider apples and wine grapes.

“Although Nick has not made up his mind about whether to pursue a political candidacy, we agreed he’d go on leave from The Times, in accordance with Times standards, after he brought this possibility to our attention last month,” said Danielle Rhoades Ha, a spokeswoman for the newspaper.

Mr. Kristof, a Democrat, said in his statement that he was interested in hearing what Oregonians thought about his possible bid.

“I have friends trying to convince me that here in Oregon, we need new leadership from outside the broken political system,” he said. “All I know for sure is that we need someone with leadership and vision so that folks from all over the state can come together to get us back on track.”

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Capitol rioter given 8-month sentence for trying to stop electoral vote certification.

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Paul A. Hodgkins, holding a Trump flag, stood in the Senate on Jan. 6. He was sentenced on Monday to eight months in prison.Credit...U.S. Capitol Police, via Associated Press

The first person to have pleaded guilty to storming the Capitol on Jan. 6 with the intention of stopping the certification of the Electoral College vote was sentenced on Monday to eight months in prison in what could serve as an indicator for scores of similar cases.

The defendant, Paul A. Hodgkins, pleaded guilty last month to a single felony count — obstruction of an official proceeding before Congress — and admitted to breaching the Senate floor with a Trump flag and backpack filled with items like goggles, rope and a pair of latex gloves.

Mr. Hodgkins’ acknowledgment that he had gone deep into the Capitol intending to disrupt the peaceful transition of power set him apart in the eyes of prosecutors from scores of other members of the mob who merely walked into the building, causing no disturbance or destruction.

At his sentencing hearing in Federal District Court in Washington, Judge Randolph D. Moss said there needed to be “severe consequences” for the Jan. 6 attack, but also noted that Mr. Hodgkins, a 38-year-old Florida crane operator, was a first-time offender.

While Mr. Hodgkins’ sentence was less than the 18 months the government had asked for, Judge Moss pointed out that the events of Jan. 6 — when, as he noted, a mob assaulted the home of Congress and forced legislators to drop the business of democracy and flee — were “extraordinary” and “chilling.”

“When a mob is prepared to attack the Capitol,” he said, “democracy is in trouble.”

In a separate case, Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right nationalist group the Proud Boys pleaded guilty on Monday to a misdemeanor charge of property destruction stemming from the burning of a Black Lives Matter banner torn from a historic Black church after a pro-Trump rally in Washington in December.

Mr. Tarrio, who lives in Miami, also pleaded guilty to possessing a high-capacity rifle magazine emblazoned with the Proud Boys’ logo. He will face a maximum sentence of six months in prison on each of the counts when he is sentenced on Aug. 23.

After 5 virus cases, Texas Democrats in Washington will hold voting events virtually.

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Texas House Democrats held a news conference last week at Dulles International Airport in Washington after leaving Texas in an effort to block Republicans’ voting restrictions bill.Credit...Kenny Holston for The New York Times

Dozens of Democratic state lawmakers from the Texas House of Representatives on Monday resumed their lobbying campaign in Washington for federal voting rights legislation, but they were forced to switch many of their events from in-person to virtual after five of the legislators tested positive for the coronavirus in recent days.

A battery of events, including an hourlong town-hall-style broadcast on MSNBC, will now be held virtually, with legislators appearing from either a conference room or their rooms at their hotel in downtown Washington.

The shift has taken some of the steam out of the second week of what the Texas Democrats say will be a nearly monthlong stay to fight for voting rights at the Capitol.

After spending their initial days in a series of well-documented meetings with Democratic senators, including Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the Texans have no additional congressional meetings scheduled, though they may gather with the Congressional Black Caucus and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. It is not clear whether those sessions will be in-person or virtual.

All five lawmakers are fully vaccinated and were experiencing mild or no symptoms, the Texas House Democratic Caucus said in a statement. It said all caucus members and their staff members in Washington were being tested daily.

“I am quarantining until I test negative, and I am grateful to be only experiencing extremely mild symptoms,” said State Representative Trey Martinez Fischer, one of the five legislators who tested positive for the virus. “I will be teleworking with my colleagues, staff, partners and allies. We’re planning more good trouble, and hope to make announcements soon.”

On Monday, that meant participating in the first day of what the Democrats are now calling a “virtual voting rights conference” with Mi Familia Vota and S.E.I.U. Texas. The morning sessions will continue through the week, live from the Texas Democrats’ hotel.

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Democrats Take Stalled Voting Rights Push to Georgia

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U.S. Senators Visit Georgia to Promote Voting Rights

A group of Senate Democrats traveled to Atlanta on Monday to speak to voters who have faced challenges casting their ballots, in an effort to highlight the need for new federal voting rights protections.

We’re here today in Atlanta to shine a spotlight on what has been happening in Georgia and in states around the country to undermine the freedom to vote. We Americans live in a great house that democracy built. And right now, that house is on fire. Your vote is your voice. And your voice is about your human dignity. The fight for voting rights is the fight for human rights. There’s nothing more noble, more important for us to do in a moment like this. And sadly, what we’re seeing in Georgia is an attempt to deny certain people the ability to have their voices heard in our democracy. I feel awful that I was standing in line, got there and was not able to cast my vote, nor the people that I brought with me. I saw people in the line, waiting so people in that line, coming into the parking lot and seeing the size of the line and leaving, that’s not acceptable. Ms. Butler, which voters, and this has been documented extensively, are typically made to wait much, much longer to vote in our state. The people that wait the longest in this state are people of color, Black, Latino, Asian American and other people of color.

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A group of Senate Democrats traveled to Atlanta on Monday to speak to voters who have faced challenges casting their ballots, in an effort to highlight the need for new federal voting rights protections.CreditCredit...Matthew Odom for The New York Times

ATLANTA — Senate Democrats took their faltering push for a federal voting rights law on the road to Georgia on Monday, seeking to make the case for an elections overhaul in Congress from a state at the heart of a national battle with Republicans over access to the ballot.

At a field hearing at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights here, state lawmakers and voters warned the Senate Rules Committee that Georgia’s restrictive, newly enacted voting law was slowly undoing decades of hard-won progress. Casting the measure as a deliberate attempt by Republicans to disenfranchise Black voters, cause chaos at the ballot box and consolidate their tenuous grip on power, they demanded that Congress intervene.

“There is much talk about not being able to give food and water to voters on line, but the actual law is much more abhorrent than that,” Representative Billy Mitchell, the chairman of Georgia’s House Democratic Caucus, told the panel. “What I am most concerned about — and hope you come up with a solution for — is cheating umpires that these laws are creating.”

Senate Democrats said they were hopeful that the change of scenery would provide a fresh spurt of momentum to their campaign to pass a bill that would put in place a federal floor for ballot access nationwide, effectively nullifying many of the changes adopted in Georgia and several other states. But there was little sign that would be the case, given that Republicans have blocked that legislation and they lack the support to eliminate the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster.

Though senators have locked arms with voting rights activists and huddled last week in the Capitol with Texas state lawmakers, Monday was the first time they had tried to shine an on-the-ground light on one of more than a dozen states that have adopted voting restrictions.

“If you just stay in Washington and get doused down and gridlocked out by our archaic procedures in the Senate, you lose sight of what you are fighting for,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, who led the hearing.

Still, it seemed unlikely that the session would make a meaningful impact on the legislative debate 500 miles away in Washington, where Republicans dismissed the hearing as a stunt and boycotted it.

An initial attempt by Democrats to debate their overhaul, the For the People Act, failed in the Senate last month in the face of unified Republican opposition. The legislation would have mandated automatic voter registration, and early and no-excuse mail-in voting nationwide; ended partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts; and put new requirements on super PACs to disclose their big donors.

Now Democrats are trying to retool. The stakes are high. As Republican states race ahead with new laws, Democrats have been unable to find a way around Republican opposition in the Senate or deliver on promises of success. Voting rights activists are growing impatient for progress and warning that if Congress fails to act by early fall, it could be too late for its changes to take effect before the 2022 elections.

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Senator Amy Klobuchar after the hearing, which was held at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights in Atlanta.Credit...Matthew Odom for The New York Times

Party leaders are working with Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the most outspoken Democratic opponent of the measure, to draft a narrower compromise bill, which could come up for another vote in August or the fall.

They are also preparing additional legislation, named after the civil rights icon John Lewis of Georgia, to strengthen the Voting Rights Act of 1965. And Ms. Klobuchar detailed a separate effort to use the party’s $3.5 trillion budget blueprint to incentivize states to expand ballot access through federal grants. That approach would allow Democrats to go around Republican objections using special budgetary rules, but it would not allow Congress to actually mandate that states take any action.

But the real fight is over persuading Mr. Manchin and a handful of other holdouts to support changes to the filibuster, allowing Democrats to move voting rights legislation despite Republican objections.

“I’m doing everything I know how,” said Representative James E. Clyburn of South Carolina, the No. 3 Democrat and the highest-ranking Black lawmaker in Congress.

In an interview, Mr. Clyburn said he had made his views on the need for a filibuster carve out plain to the White House and had another “long talk” last week with Mr. Manchin about the West Virginian’s concerns about proceeding unilaterally — without luck.

“Joe Manchin is really trying to find a place to maintain the integrity of the filibuster, which I’m not with him on,” Mr. Clyburn said in an interview. “I know the history of the filibuster; I intend not to ignore history. It has been used primarily — almost exclusively — to deny civil rights like voting.”

Democrats, he added, “could be relegating ourselves to the dustbin of history as a party” if they fail to take action during this Congress on the matter.

In Atlanta on Monday, Georgia Democrats issued similarly dire warnings.

Testifying in front of black-and-white photos of the civil rights movement, Helen Butler told senators about how she and another Black election official in Morgan County had been removed from the county elections board at the beginning of the month after a new law gave Republicans the power to appoint its members.

The changes, she said, “raised the specter that the goal would be to nullify the lawful vote of Georgia voters when the majority party is not satisfied with the outcome of the election, thereby achieving an outcome the former president was not able to in 2020.”

Adopted in April, the Georgia law put new ID requirements on absentee ballots, limited the number of drop boxes where voters could deposit them, outlawed third parties from giving food or water to voters waiting in line, and effectively granted the Republican-led legislature new power to overrule state and county elections officials and sway the outcome of an election.

Later, Ms. Butler, who has spent decades helping Black Georgians vote as the director of the Georgia Coalition for the People’s Agenda, said she worried about how fellow voters of color would navigate a tangle of new rules and requirements.

“They may be able to get over the hurdles, but my God, what kind of barriers will they have to get through?” she said.

José Segarra, a former Air Force pilot from rural Houston County, told senators that he had done just that in 2020, standing in lines so long that some voters simply had to leave to go to work or care for children before they had the chance to cast a ballot.

“After an hour and half standing outside, we made it inside the building finally — just to find out the line inside the building was just as long,” Mr. Segarra said. “Senators, this is wrong. It should not take so long to vote.”

Republicans on the Rules Committee did not invite any members of their party to defend the law, calling the hearing a disingenuous ploy.

“This silly stunt is based on the same lie as all the Democrats’ phony hysteria from Georgia to Texas to Washington, D.C., and beyond — their efforts to pretend that moderate, mainstream state voting laws with more generous early voting provisions than blue states like New York are some kind of evil assault on our democracy,” Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky and the minority leader, said in a statement.

In a video posted to his Twitter account just after the hearing concluded, Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, defended his state’s new elections law as “common sense reforms.” He accused Democrats of conducting “bogus hearings to try to demonize election integrity laws” and raise money.

The Justice Department sued the state last month over the statute, which the Biden administration argued discriminated against Black voters in violation of the law.

Lawmakers working on bipartisan infrastructure bill face new obstacles.

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Senator Mark Warner of Virginia, left, and Senator Rob Portman of Ohio, right, are part of the bipartisan group working to finish an infrastructure deal.Credit...Jose Luis Magana/Associated Press

Lawmakers scrambling to finalize a bipartisan infrastructure bill are facing new obstacles, with key Senate Republicans warning that they would not move forward with a planned test vote this week on an unfinished bill and negotiators jettisoning a crucial proposal to help pay for it.

Senator Rob Portman, Republican of Ohio, said on Sunday that lawmakers axed a provision to toughen tax enforcement at the I.R.S., which had been under discussion as a crucial source of financing for the plan, which would devote nearly $600 billion to roads, bridges, broadband and other physical infrastructure.

“We don’t have a product yet, and we won’t have a product until we can finish negotiations properly,” Mr. Portman said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

His comments indicated a thorny road ahead for senators who have been toiling to translate a deal they struck with President Biden into legislative text ahead of a vote that the top Senate Democrat has said could come as early as Wednesday.

Anti-tax conservatives led by Grover Norquist, the head of Americans for Tax Reform, had lobbied Republicans against giving billions of dollars to the I.R.S. to help beef up tax enforcement, warning that it would give the agency too much power. With that provision no longer under consideration, lawmakers will have to continue searching for alternatives to finance the sprawling bill.

Republicans have also amplified concerns about inflation in the aftermath of the $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill Democrats pushed through in March. In a letter to his conference this week, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the Republican leader, said that “prices on everything from gas to groceries are skyrocketing,” and he vowed that “we will continue to hold Democrats to account for their reckless handling of the economy.”

Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, announced last week that he intends to hold a preliminary vote as early as midweek on the plan, an attempt to ratchet up pressure for Republicans and Democrats to seal their agreement. Republicans have chafed at the vote, calling it an arbitrary deadline.

“How can I vote for a cloture when the bill isn’t written?” Senator Bill Cassidy, Republican of Louisiana, said on “Fox News Sunday.” “Unless you want program failure, unless Senator Schumer doesn’t want this to happen, you need a little bit more time to get it right.”

The bipartisan group continued negotiations over the weekend, wrestling over how to structure and finance the measure. They are still short of the support needed to push the measure past the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster and take it up. Doing so would require the votes of all 50 Democrats and independents, and 10 Republicans.

At the same time, Democrats are working to iron out the details of a far more expansive $3.5 trillion budget blueprint that includes expansions of child care, education and programs to address climate change. That proposal, which Mr. Schumer directed Democrats to agree on by this Wednesday, would unlock use of the fast-track reconciliation process, allowing the party to pass a sweeping economic package without Republican votes.

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The Justice Dept. accuses Chinese security officials of a hacking attack seeking data on viruses like Ebola.

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Justice Department Indicts Chinese Officials for Cyberattacks

The Justice department accused four Chinese nationals, including three state security officials, of hacking government and private computer systems around the world to steal sensitive information.

We are here today to announce the indictment of four Chinese nationals for coordinating a multi-year conspiracy to hack into computer systems belonging to private companies, universities and government entities in the United States and around the world in order to steal sensitive research and technology. There have been many reports about cybercrime recently, but this prosecution is unique. This case is about a cyberhacking and economic espionage campaign led by the government of China. The indictment alleges that three of the four defendants were intelligence officers with China’s Ministry of State Security, or M.S.S. They implemented the alleged cyberattacks through front companies in order to conceal the government’s role in the illicit scheme. These defendants coordinated with universities in China to achieve the goals of the conspiracy. For example, they worked with professors to organize hacking competitions with cash prizes. The goal was simple: to find China’s best hackers and recruit them to steal intellectual property for the benefit of China and its state-controlled companies. China’s foreign intelligence officials are trained to avoid detection, and they did everything they could to hide their crimes. But the team of agents and prosecutors in this case found them. And in doing so, have shown China’s government and the world the unwavering commitment of the Department of Justice to protect the United States against all threats, foreign and domestic.

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The Justice department accused four Chinese nationals, including three state security officials, of hacking government and private computer systems around the world to steal sensitive information.CreditCredit...Gregory Bull/Associated Press

The Justice Department on Monday accused three Chinese state security officials of coordinating a vast hacking campaign to steal sensitive and secret information from government entities, universities and corporations around the world, including research related to autonomous vehicles, genetic-sequencing technology and infectious diseases like the Ebola virus.

The announcement came as the White House formally accused the Chinese government of breaching Microsoft email systems and paying criminal groups to extort companies for millions of dollars in ransomware attacks, showing that the Biden administration was determined to aggressively confront Beijing.

In an indictment that had been sealed since May, the Justice Department accused officers in a provincial foreign intelligence bureau, the Hainan Province Ministry of State Security, of creating a sham information security company that they used as a front for a sprawling hacking operation.

The officers, Ding Xiaoyang, Cheng Qingmin and Zhu Yunmin, used the front company to manage a group of computer hackers and linguists who hacked into computer systems around the world to benefit China and hide Beijing’s role in the thefts, according to the indictment. One of the hackers, Wu Shurong, was accused of creating malware that was used to break into foreign computer systems.

From 2011 to 2018, the Chinese intelligence officers targeted companies, universities and government agencies in the United States, Austria, Cambodia, Canada, Germany, Indonesia, Malaysia, Norway, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, according to court documents. The allegations underscore China’s willingness to flagrantly disregard a 2015 agreement with the United States to refrain from computer-enabled theft of information for commercial gain.

“The breadth and duration of China’s hacking campaigns, including these efforts targeting a dozen countries across sectors ranging from health care and biomedical research to aviation and defense, remind us that no country or industry is safe,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa O. Monaco said in a statement.

Staff and professors at Chinese universities aided the operation by identifying and recruiting hackers and linguists, according to the indictment. Personnel at one university ran the company’s payroll and benefits.

The intelligence officers are accused of targeting aviation, defense, education, government, health care, biopharmaceutical and maritime industries.

Some of the thefts were identified in charges brought during the Trump administration against hackers associated with China’s main intelligence service.

While it is unlikely that all of the defendants will be tried in a U.S. court, national security officials have long said that it is important to publicly charge Chinese officials with wrongdoing as part of a broader effort to hold Beijing to account.

Democrats will introduce a plan to tax imports based on exporting countries’ emissions.

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A factory in China’s eastern Shandong Province in 2018. Democrats are seeking a tax on imports from China and other countries that are not significantly reducing the planet-warming pollution that they produce.Credit...Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Democratic lawmakers on Monday will make public a plan to raise as much as $16 billion annually by imposing a tax on imports from China and other countries that are not significantly reducing the planet-warming pollution that they produce.

The tax would be levied regardless of whether Congress passed new laws to reduce emissions created by the United States. It would be designed to be approximately equivalent to the costs faced by American companies under state and federal environmental regulations.

Experts said a border carbon tax would almost certainly provoke America’s trading partners and could create serious diplomatic challenges ahead of United Nations climate negotiations set for November in Glasgow.

The plan comes a week after the European Union proposed its own carbon border tax on imports from countries with lax pollution controls.

The proposal from Democrats, which Senate aides said was developed with input from the Department of the Treasury, the Office of the United States Trade Representative and other parts of the Biden administration, is expected to be attached to a $3.5 trillion budget resolution.

Democrats hope to pass their budget package later this year and use it as a way to expand social, educational and health care programs as well as fund a transition to clean energy. The decision to package the proposals in a budget reconciliation bill would allow Democrats in the sharply divided Congress to pass the measure without any Republican votes.

A handful of Republican lawmakers have explored a carbon border tariff as a way to counter China and protect U.S. industries.

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