The bustling northeastern Chinese city of Dandong has long offered a rare window into isolated North Korea and its trade with Beijing, its largest economic partner and benefactor.

But commerce ground to a halt in January 2020 when North Korea slammed its borders shut to insulate it from Covid-19 — marooning thousands of its citizens overseas.

Three years on, many have still not returned home.

In Dandong in September, diners at North Korean restaurants tucked into fresh seafood and nodded along to schmaltzy song-and-dance performances.

The entertainers — young women sent to work as waitresses before the pandemic — said they missed home but had not been told when they could return.

“Do you happen to know?” smiled a waitress at an eatery specialising in North Korean craft ale.

Two servers told AFP they had come on “internships”.

United Nations sanctions prohibit North Korean labourers from working overseas on the grounds that they generate funds for Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons programme.

But AFP journalists have identified at least 10 restaurants and hotels in three Chinese cities staffed by North Koreans since the start of the year.

Western experts say such workers have virtually no control over their postings, endure miserable living and labour conditions, and have much of their wages confiscated by the North Korean state.

The diners in Dandong were forbidden from filming or photographing the performances.

Restaurant patrons included at least eight North Korean men, some with red badges bearing their leaders’ portraits pinned to their chests.

One replied in fluent English that he lived in Dandong, but shrugged and walked out when asked about the border reopening.

– ‘Stuck waiting’ –

North Korean athletes are now attending overseas competitions and leader Kim made a rare foreign trip to Russia in September.

But traders in Dandong told AFP they have not seen that openness translate on the ground.

“We have no idea when they’re going to open up,” a Chinese cross-border trader said in a darkened office near the river separating the two countries.

“We’re stuck waiting, with nothing to do except sit around and drink,” another merchant said.

Nearby, dozens of import-export shops stood shuttered or derelict.

Beijing confirmed last year that rail freight with North Korea had resumed.

AFP reporters in Dandong this month saw a train clank into the North Korean city of Sinuiju at around 7:40 am, returning about 45 minutes later.

China’s volume of trade with North Korea has ticked up recently but remains about 30 percent lower than the month before the border closure, according to an AFP calculation based on figures from Beijing’s General Administration of Customs.

But traders said restrictions on the movement of people and goods continued to hammer commerce.

“I haven’t done any business from this in over three years,” said an exporter specialising in household electronics.

He said he had pivoted to making clothing for domestic customers after trade and communications with North Korean clients dried up.

His income had fallen by around half compared to before the pandemic.

Traders declined to be identified in order to freely discuss the politically sensitive topic of dealing with North Korea.

Dandong’s customs authority declined to comment on the current state of trade.

– Wigs, seafood and ginseng –

Doing business with North Korea is fraught, with Pyongyang’s trade in everything from coal and oil to seafood and sporting equipment restricted.

Traders told AFP it had still been possible to conduct limited commerce from China to North Korea in some medical equipment and certain types of clothing.

But the sweeping nature of the sanctions has pushed some into unorthodox ventures.

One merchant advertising wigs and fake eyelashes said he sent raw materials for processing in North Korea before reimporting finished hairpieces for sale.

Human rights groups and defectors say the hair market employs prisoners from the country’s detention centres.

Other traders hinted that certain types of under-the-table commerce were also possible.

One at a Dandong night market touted North Korean seafood, saying Chinese fishermen often raided their waters for “fresher, higher-quality” produce.

Another shopkeeper said he had “channels” for importing the ginseng lining his shelves, “but what those channels are, I won’t say”.

A brighter spot appears to be tourism — restricted to the Chinese side for now.

Several Chinese travel agents in Dandong said domestic tourists were finally rebounding after years of virus curbs crippled internal travel.

Two tour operators geared towards Western visitors said they had not received an official notice but were quietly confident about a reopening next year.

“There are positive signs,” said Simon Cockerell from travel firm Koryo Tours, stipulating that he didn’t see a reason to “get over-excited just yet”.

Before the pandemic, North Korea welcomed thousands of tourists every year.

On a boat along Dandong’s river, around 30 people gazed at Sinuiju’s rusty docks, smokestacks and near-empty roads.

A guide declared that North Korean authorities had not allowed most of the city’s residents to work near the water since the pandemic for fear of contagion.

“It’s just like China in the 1970s or ’80s,” she told the crowd.

“Very backward.”

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Data showing a smaller-than-expected rise in personal consumption and a still-healthy US economy injected a little optimism at the end of a debilitating week for traders, who are coming to terms with the prospect of borrowing costs staying elevated for some time.

However, there is still plenty of uncertainty as Fed officials line up to warn that more work is needed to bring inflation down to their two percent target, even after more than a year of tightening and with rates at two-decade highs.

All three main indexes in New York advanced Thursday thanks to a softening in crude prices, which have hurtled towards $100 a barrel in recent weeks owing to supply cuts by Saudi Arabia and Russia and a pick-up in demand in key consumer nations.

The dip came on the back of profit-taking, though observers said there may have been some help after the president of consultancy Rapidan Energy Group said Riyadh might be ready to revive production earlier than many had thought thanks to elevated prices.

“They do not want to deliberately over-tighten the market, because if you get a spike, then you get a demand collapse, and you get a bust,” Bob McNally, told Bloomberg Television on Thursday.

The recent advance in oil prices has stoked inflation concerns and sent Treasury yields to 16-year highs, dampening risk appetite.

But a sharp slowdown in personal consumption to its weakest pace in more than a year gave hope that another Fed hike before the end of the year was not a certainty.

– ‘Goldilocks economy’ –

Richmond Fed chief Thomas Barkin said it was too early to make a call on another hike owing to the prospect of a government shutdown if lawmakers do not hammer out a funding deal.

That came after Chicago Fed boss Austan Goolsbee said decision-makers were in danger of overtightening as they focus too much on the need for job losses to tame inflation.

Eyes will now turn to the release of the personal consumption expenditures price index, which is the central bank’s preferred measure of inflation.

“The latest economic puzzle pieces potentially paint a picture of a ‘Goldilocks’ economy,” said SPI Asset Management’s Stephen Innes, referring to an economy that is neither too strong nor too weak.

“At the same time, some investors may embellish the latest data prints as indicators that sufficient factors are slowing the growth trajectory, potentially leading them in the direction that interest rates cannot rise indefinitely.”

But he warned “the coming months could prove to be more demanding for the economy. Several potential growth headwinds loom on the horizon, including higher rates and oil prices, resumption of student loan repayments, labour strikes and government shutdowns”.

In Asian trade, Hong Kong jumped more than two percent thanks to a surge in tech firms including Alibaba and JD.com, while Sydney, Singapore, Wellington and Jakarta were also up. However, Tokyo and Manila dipped.

Mainland Chinese markets were closed for a public holiday.

An index of regional markets is on course to end the quarter down around four percent.

– Key figures around 0230 GMT –

Tokyo – Nikkei 225: DOWN 0.1 percent at 31,836.24 (break)

Hong Kong – Hang Seng Index: UP 2.1 percent at 17,730.26

Shanghai – Composite: Closed for a holiday

West Texas Intermediate: UP 0.4 percent at $92.03 per barrel

Brent North Sea crude: UP 0.1 percent at $95.43 per barrel

Dollar/yen: UP at 149.36 yen from 149.28 yen on Thursday

Euro/dollar: UP at $1.0580 from $1.0570

Pound/dollar: UP at $1.2226 from $1.2203

Euro/pound: DOWN at 86.54 pence from 86.59 pence

New York – Dow: UP 0.4 percent at 33,666.34 (close)

London – FTSE 100: UP 0.1 percent at 7,601.85 points (close)

— Bloomberg News contributed to this story —

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But his corporate empire — which served as proof to many voters of his economic bonafides — is now in jeopardy after a judge ruled Tuesday that the former president, his sons and the Trump Organization had engaged in “persistent and repeated fraud.”

The ruling stemmed from a fraud case brought by New York Attorney General Letitia James, which still must go to trial Monday.

In a partial victory for James, Judge Arthur Engoron found there had been a systemic overvaluation of assets, such as Trump Tower and other properties, to better negotiate with banks.

In addition to finding that Trump and his sons committed fraud, the judge also revoked their state business licenses and asked the parties to propose receivers to manage the dissolution of the companies in question.

James is seeking $250 million in penalties and the removal of Trump and his sons from management of the family empire, the Trump Organization.

Trump Tower, 721 Fifth Avenue, New York City. — Photo: © William Edwards, AFP

Engoron’s initial decision puts in jeopardy Trump’s control over not just the iconic Trump Tower, but other restaurants and boutiques, as well as high-end commercial property.

– ‘Nationalization’ –

While it wasn’t immediately clear whether Trump would have to sell his assets affected by the ruling, or they could be overseen by the yet-to-be-named receiver, the ruling was a serious blow for the Republican billionaire.

“Trump’s ability to do business in New York State has pretty much ended by this ruling,” Pace University law professor Bennett Gershman told AFP.

“The overseer can now manage the properties, basically Trump and his organization will not be allowed to manage these properties anymore,” he said.

The ex-president’s lawyers immediately announced their appeal, with Trump’s camp accusing Engoron of trying to “nationalize one of the most successful corporate empires in the United States and seize control of private property.”

A fraud ruling threatens not just Donald Trump’s business empire, but also the story the former president sells about his success. — © AFP Patrick T. Fallon

For Trump, who is seeking the White House again in 2024, the stakes are high: according to Forbes magazine, the 77-year-old’s New York real estate represented $720 million of his $2.5 billion fortune.

Outside of New York, the Trump Organization runs luxury hotels and clubs, including Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Palm Beach, Florida.

– Symbolic blow –

While the details of how the ruling will be carried out remain unknown, and though James must still go to trial for the $250 million, the ruling is a symbolic blow to “the story that Donald Trump tells about himself as a businessman,” says Will Thomas, a University of Michigan assistant professor of business law.

“We’ve seen even before he was president, Donald Trump really cares about his net worth as a reflection of his talent,” Thomas told AFP.

“And what we saw yesterday is a court saying, ‘There’s no dispute about the fact that Donald Trump has systematically lied about his wealth,’ in really dramatic ways, up to hundreds of millions or even billions of dollars.”

But if Trump’s business dealings were key to helping him win the White House once before, it’s unclear if the potential dissolution of his empire will hurt him this time around.

The fraud case isn’t even among his four most serious court cases right now — where he’s accused, among other charges, of hoarding secret documents and trying to overturn the 2020 election.

And despite the fact that he might be spending so much time in court when he could be campaigning, he remains the Republican favorite in the race to challenge Biden in 2024.

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But Sam Bankman-Fried’s stunning rise to prominence and wealth would be matched by his spectacular fall, and with it that of his platform FTX.

In the space of just a few months the Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate with a degree in physics had taken a startup he founded in 2019 and built it up into the world’s second largest crypto exchange platform.

He quickly became more than just a young entrepreneur, fashioning himself as an ambassador of crypto and making his first appearance in Congress in December 2021, testifying before lawmakers on the then-novel form of currency.

The public would come to know a seemingly oddball whiz kid with a mop of curly dark hair who, when not suited up for appearances on Capitol Hill, wore shorts and a T-shirt as his look de rigueur.

The young man known as SBF would charm US lawmakers with his straight talk and vision of crypto’s future, including an extensive regulatory regime — a position at odds with many in the sector.

– Worth $26 billion –

He devised project after project, from a platform for people to make donations in cryptocurrency to Ukraine to a market for financial derivative products that stepped on the toes of Wall Street.

Before it all came crashing down, at his peak this native Californian amassed a fortune estimated to be worth $26 billion. “Save for Mark Zuckerberg, no one in history has ever gotten so rich so young,” read a headline in Forbes, which put Bankman-Fried on its cover in October 2021.

The son of two Stanford University professors, Bankman-Fried ventured outside the world of cryptocurrencies, making donations to US politicians and persuading celebrities like American football star Tom Brady or basketball player Stephen Curry to endorse FTX, for which they were richly rewarded.

CNBC has reported that Bankman-Fried even pursued a contract with singer Taylor Swift, though it fell through.

SBF is a vegan who said he believed in the concept of effective altruism — finding the best way to help other people, in particular by donating all or part of one’s wealth to charity rather than, say, volunteering at a soup kitchen.

When the cryptocurrency world lurched into crisis in the spring of 2022, Bankman-Fried billed himself as a savior, buying the troubled platform BlockFi, and shares in another company that was in trouble, Voyager.

– Compared to Warren Buffett –

“We take our duty seriously to protect the digital asset ecosystem and its customers,” he tweeted at the time, as some people were comparing him — barely 30 years old then — to the legendary investing guru Warren Buffett.

But behind his reassurances, Bankman-Fried was walking a financial high wire and taking colossal risks, as revealed later in court documents.

Without their knowledge, Bankman-Fried’s team is alleged to have used the money of FTX customers to cover risky operations by an affiliated trading company called Alameda Research, to buy posh real estate and to make political donations.

In November 2022, the crypto news outlet CoinDesk revealed that Alameda had converted a large part of its assets into FTT, a crypto token created by FTX. That news caused that currency to plummet.

Hours later Changpeng Zhao, the head of Binance, the world’s largest crypto exchange platform, announced it was selling all the FTT tokens it held, causing it to lose 90 percent of its value in a matter of days and taking the Bankman-Fried empire with it.

His fortune having vanished overnight, Bankman-Fried was extradited from the Bahamas, where FTX had its headquarters. In December 2022 he was indicted on charges of fraud and racketeering.

He faces a seven-count indictment in a trial starting Tuesday in Manhattan.

“I’m broke and wearing an ankle monitor and one of the most hated people in the world,” he wrote in a document published recently by The New York Times.

Days after the collapse of FTX, Bankman-Fried admitted that he “screwed up” but denied taking other people’s money and blamed former colleagues for the huge mess, including some who will now testify against him during the trial.

“There will probably never be anything I can do to make my lifetime impact net-positive,” he wrote.

The fallen whiz kid added: “The truth is that I did what I thought was right.”

The post Sam Bankman-Fried, the fallen wunderkind of cryptocurrency appeared first on Digital Journal.

As in many other agricultural zones around the country, criminal gangs in the western state of Michoacan have become a major market force, driving up costs and hurting not just farmers but also consumers.

Take limes, for example: despite a national increase in production, and a slowing of overall consumer price inflation, the cost of the citrus fruit rose by more than 50 percent in the past year, according to the Agricultural Market Consulting Group (GCMA), a consulting firm.

The impact is huge in a country where limes are a vital ingredient in many dishes.

“The prices are through the roof!” said Gabriela Jacobo, a 53-year-old housewife who now only buys a few limes a week.

The threat from organized crime is such that trucks transporting limes now have police escorts, AFP reporters saw during a visit to the region.

The fallout has even been felt in Mexico City, where drug and gang violence is often seen as a faraway problem and the ability to source food from all around the country eases supply problems.

The price of limes in the capital doubled, reaching almost $4.5 per kilo ($2 per pound) in August.

“It’s not because of a supply issue,” but because of extortion, said GCMA analyst Juan Carlos Anaya.

– Turf wars –

Michoacan, which covers an area as big as Costa Rica, is riven by bloody turf wars between rival gangs such as the Jalisco New Generation Cartel, Los Viagras and La Familia Michoacana.

As well as fighting over drug smuggling routes, they also compete to make money through extortion.

Payment is taken in the form of a charge of 11 US cents to package each kilo of limes, a farmer told AFP, speaking on condition of anonymity due to fear of reprisal.

It may not sound like much, but the region can produce about 900 tons of the fruit every day.

In the past, “the criminals had their fights but they left us to work. Now they don’t even leave us to work,'” the farmer said.

Tomato, banana and mango producers, as well as transporters and distributors, must also pay the gangs, he said.

“They put a price on everything,” he added.

Extortion and theft cost companies in Mexico about 120 billion pesos ($6.8 billion) a year, equivalent to 0.67 percent of the country’s annual economic output, according to official figures.

In the southern state of Chiapas, extortion and violence have caused food shortages in communities bordering Guatemala.

“There’s no electricity. There’s no food. There’s no water. There’s no gas,” a resident told AFP.

The region is gripped by a turf war between the Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa cartels that has led to dozens of business closures and forced locals to buy supplies in Guatemala, at higher cost.

Even the ingredients for tortillas — a Mexican staple — are being purchased across the border.

Cities such as Chilpancingo, the capital of southern Guerrero state, also saw widespread closures of chicken shops in the past after farmers and merchants who allegedly refused to pay extortion were murdered.

– ‘Deep trouble’ –

Avocado growers have also fallen prey to the battle for control of Michoacan’s agricultural riches.

Last year the United States briefly suspended avocado imports from the state after a US inspector checking export shipments before the Super Bowl received phone threats. 

To confront crime, lime producers like Hipolito Mora founded self-defense groups in 2013 that were themselves later accused of links to criminals.

After vehemently denouncing drug traffickers, Mora was shot dead in June in Michoacan.

“We’re in deep trouble with the cartels,” said his brother Guadalupe Mora, who was being watched over by several bodyguards.

“They charge us a fee for everything — basic foods, soft drinks, beers, chicken. Everything’s very expensive because of them,” he said.

State prosecutor Rodrigo Gonzalez urged people to come forward to report such crimes.

“We’re committed to fighting these people, identifying them, arresting them and bringing them to court,” he said.

But many fear they will suffer the same fate as Mora if they speak up.

Despite the risks, the farmer said that he had no intention to leave his land.

“Lots of people depend on us and our work, to provide for their families,” he said.

The post ‘They put a price on everything’: extortion hits Mexican economy appeared first on Digital Journal.

The curly haired graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in just a few years turned his FTX platform into the world’s second biggest crypto exchange, propelling him to become the tech world’s latest out-of-the-blue billionaire.

Bankman-Fried’s meteoric rise was only matched by his ignominious downfall, which saw him escorted last year by police from his luxury apartment in the Bahamas and extradited to face charges in the United States.

At the height of his celebrity, Bankman-Fried was thought to be worth $26 billion, with FTX becoming a near household name through a frenzied marketing campaign and celebrity endorsements by supermodel Gisele Bundchen, NBA star Stephen Curry and others.

The 31-year-old’s empire began to crumble last November when revelations alleged that client money in the FTX platform was being funneled to prop up Alameda Research, the company’s crypto-focused investment arm.

The rumors quickly snowballed and investors pulled their money from FTX, sinking it swiftly into bankruptcy and disgracing Bankman-Fried as a financial pariah on par with Bernie Madoff or Elizabeth Holmes.

Manhattan US Attorney Damian Williams has accused him of diverting funds from FTX clients, but also wire fraud, securities and commodities fraud, and money laundering.

Danielle Sassoon, an attorney for the prosecution, told a hearing that the number of victims of Sam Bankman-Fried’s alleged actions could be “in excess of a million.”

– Pointing fingers –

Charged with fraud and criminal conspiracy, SBF, as Bankman-Fried is known, was extradited at the end of December from the Bahamas, where FTX was headquartered, and released on a $250 million bail upon his arrival in New York.

Pending the trial, Bankman-Fried was placed under house arrest at the Silicon Valley home of his parents, both professors at Stanford University.

But US District Judge Lewis Kaplan rescinded that decision, ordering Bankman-Fried behind bars over alleged attempts of witness intimidation.

According to prosecutors, while holed up at his parent’s home, Bankman-Fried passed on documents to the New York Times in an attempt to influence the testimony of Caroline Ellison, his ex-girlfriend and a former Alameda executive. 

She has also been indicted in the case and has agreed to cooperate with the US authorities, along with three other former executives.

They are expected to take the stand in his six-week trial — where Bankman-Fried will likely admit egregious management errors but no wrongdoing, and point the finger at Ellison. 

“If the prosecutors can do a good job explaining that people invested money, the fact that it’s crypto won’t really make a difference,” said Julia Jayne, a California lawyer specializing in white-collar crime.

A long blog post that Bankman-Fried had planned to publish on the social network X, published by the Times before he was taken into custody, offered clues to his defense strategy. 

In it, he presents himself, as he has done in the past, as an overworked boss — unable to rely on his incompetent or disinterested teams — who let himself be overtaken by outside circumstances.

The post Former crypto star Sam Bankman-Fried faces US trial appeared first on Digital Journal.

Lula, who turns 78 next month, has maintained a busy schedule of foreign trips since taking office in January.

And the veteran leftist politician postponed the operation as long as he could, admitting he didn’t like the idea of looking weak.

“I’m like the footballer who doesn’t want to tell the coach he has pain so as not to be benched,” the president said in July, when he announced he would go under the knife for hip problems that have plagued him for months.

He finally decided to get the hip replacement after admitting the pain from his osteoarthritis “puts me in a bad mood and I want to stay in a good mood, because I made a commitment to make Brazil work.”

Lula has said he will be able to “work normally” during several weeks of convalescence in the capital Brasilia before attending a UN climate meeting in the United Arab Emirates in November.

This week, the president said he will likely need a walker to get around at first but that on the advice of his official photographer, he will not be seen with it in public.

“You will not see me with a walker or on crutches. You will see me handsome always, as if I had not undergone surgery,” he said with a chuckle.

Lula, who entered politics as a trade union leader was previously president from 2003 to 2010, then defeated far-right president Jair Bolsonaro in elections last year for a stunning return to power and a third term.

The one-time metalworker was diagnosed with throat cancer in 2011, soon after leaving the presidency after serving two successive terms. He went into remission after treatment.

In March, he had to postpone an official visit to China as he recovered from pneumonia. 

And last November, shortly after his election victory, he had surgery to remove a lesion from his vocal cords. 

But Lula has maintained a jam-packed schedule and grueling travel, attending meetings of the G7 in Japan, the BRICS in South Africa and the G20 in India, among others.

“Lula chose to postpone his surgery to take care of his government agenda, especially the foreign one,” political scientist Andre Cesar told AFP.

“Now with the global tour complete, he can take a break and look after his health.”

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The summit comes a day after the UN refugee organisation said more than 2,500 migrants had perished or disappeared attempting to cross the Mediterranean so far this year — substantially more than at the same point in 2022.

But it also comes as EU interior ministers finally made headway Thursday on new rules for how the bloc handles asylum seekers and irregular migrants, with a deal expected in the coming days.

Long in the works, there was new impetus to reach a deal after a sharp rise in migrants landing on the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa earlier this month.

Meloni’s hard-right coalition government, elected on an anti-migrant ticket, has clashed with both France and Germany as she presses other EU countries to share the burden. So far this year, the number of arrivals at Lampedusa has already passed 133,000.

But Meloni and Macron have sought to ease tensions in recent days, and met Tuesday in Rome on the sidelines of the state funeral for ex-Italian president Giorgio Napolitano.

“There is a shared vision of the management of the migration question between France and Italy,” a French presidential source said.

Paris is hoping Friday’s so-called “Med9” summit will offer a “clear message” that migration requires a response at the European level, the source said.

– Revamped Pact –

The EU is poised to agree a revamped Pact on Migration and Asylum, which will seek to relieve pressure on frontline countries such as Italy and Greece by relocating some arrivals to other EU states.

Those countries opposed to hosting asylum-seekers — Poland and Hungary among them — would be required to pay the ones that do take migrants in.

Disagreements within the 27-nation bloc over the proposed revisions have now largely been overcome, EU home affairs commissioner Ylva Johansson said Wednesday after the interior ministers’ meeting.

A formal agreement is expected “in a few days”, she said.

Both Meloni and Macron also want to prevent boats departing from North Africa by working more closely with Tunisia, despite questions over the country’s human rights standards and treatment of migrants.

The European Commission said last week it was set to release the first instalment of funds to Tunisia — one of the main launching points for boats — under a plan to bolster its coastguard and tackle traffickers.

Italy’s Interior Minister Matteo Piantedosi met with his Tunisian and Libyan counterparts in Sicily Thursday for talks on stopping the boats, the ministry said.

– Instability –

Rome and Paris are also keen to intensify EU controls at sea.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who will be at the Malta summit, included the possible expansion of naval missions in the Mediterranean in a 10-point action plan this month in Lampedusa.

There are fears arrivals could spiral further if instability in the Sahel affects North African countries.

The “Med 9”, which brings together Croatia, Cyprus, France, Greece, Italy, Malta, Portugal, Slovenia and Spain, is expected to call for greater investment by the bloc in the so-called Southern Neighbourhood.

Extra funding may be earmarked for countries across the Mediterranean’s southern shore in the review of the EU’s 2021-2027 long-term budget, a European diplomatic source told AFP.

The leaders will also discuss regional challenges posed by natural disasters — following a devastating earthquake in Morocco, flood disaster in Libya, and extreme weather events in Southern Europe.

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The White House said Democrat Biden’s speech will also “honor the legacy” of late Arizona senator John McCain, the moderate Republican stalwart who shared his antipathy for Trump.

With polls showing them neck-and-neck, the 80-year-old Biden has recently stepped up attacks on Republican frontrunner Trump for trying to “destroy” democracy.

Populist tycoon Trump faces criminal charges for trying to subvert the 2020 election, which his supporters tried to overturn by attacking the Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Biden’s speech in Tempe, Arizona “will focus on the importance of America’s institutions in preserving our democracy and the need for constant loyalty to the US Constitution,” a White House official said.

“The president will honor his friend and war hero, the late senator John McCain, whose intolerance for the abuse of power and faith in America sets a powerful example to live by,” the official added.

Invoking the memory of McCain, a Vietnam war hero and respected US political figure, is a clear bid by Biden to draw a contrast with the hard-right Trump.

– ‘Destroy American democracy’ –

McCain loathed Trump, withdrawing his support for him in the 2016 presidential election and saying before his death from brain cancer in 2018 that he didn’t want him at his funeral.

The feeling was mutual, with Trump mocking his war hero status in 2015.

Biden, on the other hand, delivered a eulogy at McCain’s funeral, saying that he “loved” him and that their friendship transcended political differences.

The US election is still more than a year away but this week has seen Biden and Trump locked in their first major head-to-head skirmishes of the campaign.

The pair made dueling visits to car workers in the battleground state of Michigan, with Biden standing on a picket line on Tuesday and Trump addressing employees on Wednesday.

Biden then set off on a series of campaign events, which he used to train his fire on Trump on the issue of democracy again.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy because they want to break down institutional structures,” he told a reception in California late Wednesday.

Biden’s speech also comes the day after Republican candidates debated in California without Trump, who has said he is so far ahead of them in the polls that he doesn’t need to turn up.

The post Biden to give democracy speech, fueling 2024 race with Trump appeared first on Digital Journal.

Without an agreement, funding for much of the federal government will expire at midnight on Saturday, threatening disruptions to everything from air travel to some benefit payments, and -– if the shutdown endures –- dealing a further blow to the precarious US economy.

The stand-off has been triggered by a small group of hardline Republicans who have pushed back against short-term funding deals, with Congress in deadlock over calls for deep spending cuts.

Some federal employees have been informed of preparations for a lapse, according to a notice seen by AFP.

A note to staff at the Department of Health and Human Services outlined how it would see “reduced staffing across nearly every division for the duration of the lapse” although many key programs will continue.

The department also updated its contingency plans, adding that “pre-notified employees would be temporarily furloughed,” meaning they are not allowed to work. They would receive retroactive pay after the lapse ends, the note said.

Staff at other agencies were understood to have received similar notices.

In a shutdown, hundreds of thousands of federal workers would be furloughed without pay, and members of the military and other employees who are deemed to be essential would continue working without a paycheck.

Certain benefits like Social Security checks would not be hit, but workers who go unpaid could eventually stop showing up, impacting sectors like air travel.

– ‘Dangerous’ –

Apart from the possible lapse in funding, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) faces the added headache of a Saturday deadline for reauthorization.

It remains unclear if lawmakers will pass an FAA reauthorization law separately from a spending package.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in a press conference on Wednesday that “there is no good time for a government shutdown,” but adding that “this is a particularly bad time.”

“The consequences would be disruptive and dangerous,” he said.

In Washington, a group of young climate activists of the youth-led Sunrise Movement entered Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s office to demand that a shutdown be avoided.

And the White House warned in a statement that a lapse would leave the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund underfunded, “delaying nearly 2,000 long-term recovery projects” across the country.

– ‘Avoidable risk’ –

With just days left to pass legislation that would keep the government running, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat, said Thursday that his chamber is “pursuing bipartisanship.”

He accused House Speaker McCarthy of choosing to “elevate the whims and desires of a handful of hard-right extremists,” with “nothing to show for it.”

Mitch McConnell, the Republican Senate minority leader, said shutting down the government is an “actively harmful proposition.”

In a full shutdown, the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) union estimates almost 1.8 million federal workers would go unpaid for the duration.

A spokeswoman for the International Monetary Fund added in a briefing on Thursday: “We do see a shutdown as an avoidable risk for the US economy.”

“We encourage the parties to come together to reach consensus on ways to fund the US government,” she said.

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