Author Archives: Reuters News Agency

Republicans see opportunity in U.S. debt-ceiling standoff

By David Morgan

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – In a high-stakes standoff over the U.S. debt ceiling, congressional Republicans believe they see a chance to scale back President Joe Biden’s sweeping domestic agenda while boosting their odds of retaking Congress in 2022.

The Republican gambit passed an initial political test on Tuesday, when the House of Representatives voted 220-211 along party lines to approve a measure to suspend the $28.4 trillion debt ceiling and fund the federal government beyond Sept. 30, when the current fiscal year ends.

Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that his caucus, which holds half the chamber’s 100 seats, will block it, seeking to frame the vote as a referendum on a $3.5 trillion Biden domestic spending package the House and Senate will take up in coming weeks.

The stakes are high. Failing to fund federal agencies past Sept. 30 could trigger the third partial government shutdown in a decade and a failure to suspend the debt ceiling by mid-October brings the risk of a historic default that could shake financial markets and even spark a recession.

Both McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer have used the word “catastrophic” to describe the fallout from a default.

“America must never default. We never have and we never will,” McConnell told reporters on Tuesday. “The debt ceiling will be raised, as it always should be. But it will be raised by the Democrats.”

Republicans, while insisting they want to avoid a crisis, could be relatively insulated from any threat of default.

“The American people will say, ‘I’m mad at everybody’,” Senator James Lankford told Reuters. “But I don’t know that it becomes the fault of the group that’s in the minority in the House, in the minority in the Senate and not in the White House.”

A Sept. 18-20 Morning Consult poll showed that 42% of registered voters would blame both parties equally for any default, with another 33% blaming Democrats but only 16% blaming Republicans.

McConnell and his fellow Republicans want Democrats to suspend the debt ceiling on their own through a parliamentary maneuver called reconciliation, which Democrats have already used to pass a $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief bill and intend to use again for Biden’s domestic spending plan.

Schumer denies that the debt-ceiling debate has anything to do with Biden’s agenda and has accused McConnell of “engaging in fantastical feats of sophistry.”

The Treasury Department will exhaust its borrowing authority sometime in October unless the debt limit is suspended. The Democratic bill would suspend the limit on government borrowing through December 2022.

DEMOCRATS DIVIDED

Moderate Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are objecting to the size of Biden’s proposed $3.5 trillion package, while House progressives insist they will reject anything smaller. Republicans contend that forcing Democrats to own the debt-ceiling suspension could further undermine their unity and lead to a smaller package.

“There are a lot of moderate Democrats here in the Senate, and for that matter, in the House, who have concerns about the level of spending. It’s a stratospheric amount,” said Senator John Thune, the chamber’s No. 2 Republican.

Republicans also see the debate as a way to draw a bright ideological line between themselves and Democrats, who they claim are being led by self-declared socialists including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

“What’s at stake is not simply a temporary hitting of the debt ceiling or defaulting temporarily or anything like that. It’s really whether we’re going to sit back and let them embed socialism into the institutions of our government,” Senator Kevin Cramer told Reuters.

Some Republicans, who worry about being blamed for a failed vote, have suggested that they could give Democrats consent to pass the debt ceiling and funding measure on a simple majority. But Republican Senator Ted Cruz vowed to block that route.

Others said that their high-profile stand against the Biden agenda could help Republicans turn out the vote in the November 2022 election that will determine control of Congress.

“Anytime you’re having a fight over taxes and spending, it’s good for Republicans,” Thune, who is seeking reelection in South Dakota, told reporters when asked if the showdown could aid Republican candidates.

(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Scott Malone and Mark Porter)

U.S. and Mexico fly Haitian migrants away from border as pressure builds on Biden

By Daina Beth Solomon

CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico (Reuters) – Mexico and the United States were on Wednesday preparing to fly more Haitian migrants away from chaotic U.S.-Mexico border camps, as pressure mounted on U.S. President Joe Biden to stop expulsions of Haitians to their poor, disaster-hit homeland.

U.S. authorities have deported more than 500 Haitians since Sunday from a camp housing thousands of mostly Haitian migrants on the U.S. side of border, by the small Texan city of Del Rio.

Such deportation flights back to Haiti would continue, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security said.

At the same time, Mexico has begun flying migrants away from the U.S. border, as well as sending some by bus, towards its border with Guatemala in the south.

U.S. politicians have criticized Biden’s handling of the situation with some opponents calling it a “disaster.”

U.S. authorities have ordered an investigation into an incident in which mounted U.S. border agents used their reins like whips to intimidate migrants trying to cross the Rio Grande border river.

Photographs of the incident sparked anger and the Biden administration said the agents had been pulled from front-line duties.

The deportations came amid profound instability in the Caribbean nation, the poorest in the Western Hemisphere, where a presidential assassination, rising gang violence and a major earthquake have spread chaos in recent weeks.

Filippo Grandi, the head of the U.N refugee agency, has warned that U.S. expulsions to such a volatile situation might violate international law.

Hundreds of the migrants have also gathered on the Mexican side by Ciudad Acuna, across from Del Rio. The migrants crossed back over the Rio Grande, to retreat from the U.S. camp because of shortages of food and poor conditions there.

On Tuesday, after talks with Haitian government representatives, Mexico said repatriation flights would be offered to those “who wish to return to their country”.

‘IT’S DIFFICULT’

While reports abound of Haitians across Latin America heading towards the United States, some are having second thoughts.

In Ciudad Acuna, Haitian migrant Maurival Makenson, 31, said his older sister was making her way to the border from Colombia but he was trying to persuade her to turn back.

“I tell her it’s difficult to get papers, there’s deportation,” he said.

Some of the deported Haitian migrants on Tuesday reacted angrily as they stepped off flights in Port-au-Prince after spending thousands of dollars on arduous voyages from the troubled Caribbean nation via South America hoping for a better life in the United States.

Some 130 people have traveled on Mexican flights to the southern Mexican city of Villahermosa, and another 130 people to the city of Tapachula on the Guatemala border, a Mexican government official said.

On Tuesday evening, officers from Mexico’s national migration institute (INM) entered two budget hotels on a small street in Ciudad Acuna and escorted about two dozen migrants, including toddlers, onto vans.

One woman, speaking from behind a partition, told Reuters she did not know where they were being taken.

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon; Editing by Drazen Jorgic, Robert Birsel)

U.S. farmers face supply shortages, higher costs after Hurricane Ida

By P.J. Huffstutter and Mark Weinraub

CHICAGO (Reuters) – Troy Walker’s phone will not stop ringing at his Kansas farm cooperative, with growers needing fertilizer for their wheat fields in the coming months.

In Kentucky, corn and soybean farmer Caleb Ragland said shelves at his local farm supplier are often bare of weed killer glyphosate and other crop chemicals. He expects the situation could get worse.

Bayer’s glyphosate manufacturing plant in Louisiana remains shut after Hurricane Ida slammed the Gulf Coast in late August, further complicating logistical and supply chain problems that had already tightened global supplies of fertilizers and chemicals.

“Ida was like a heavyweight boxer going 15 rounds, and threw a hard upper-cut at the farmer,” said Ragland, a ninth generation corn and soybean farmer in Magnolia, Kentucky. “Things were already bad. Ida made it worse.”

Ida disrupted grain and soybean shipments from the Gulf Coast, which accounts for about 60% of U.S. exports, at a time global crop supplies are tight and demand from China is strong.

Now, the storm’s ripple effects are hampering production and movement of some fertilizers and crop chemicals ahead of U.S. harvest. This is straining an agricultural and food supply chain already battered by trade and logistics delays during the pandemic.

Rising input costs threaten the incomes of farmers who had banked on booming profits this year, as crop prices soared to the highest in nearly a decade, after years of stagnating around break-even levels. Ragland and other farmers have been rethinking what they will plant in the spring; crops requiring less fertilizer look more attractive.

“At the current prices for nitrogen, it’s making me take a hard look at my corn acres,” Ragland said. “It makes me think we might grow soybeans on some of those acres.”

Before Hurricane Ida, the U.S. Agriculture Department had estimated that farmers would face a 2.2% increase in all corn input expenses for every acre planted in 2022, according to the most recent data, as chemicals and fertilizers followed higher crop prices and supply chain disruptions.

Global supplies were thin of the raw ingredients needed to make farm herbicides including glufosinate, atrazine and glyphosate, partly due to pandemic-related labor and shipping issues, said Marc-Andre Fortin, director of North American crop protection with Farmers Business Network, an online marketplace for farmers.

Imports of glyphosate containers shipped into the Port of New Orleans were down 71% from the same period a year earlier and herbicide container imports were down 1.2%, according to Panjiva, the supply chain research unit of S&P Global Market Intelligence. Potash imports into New Orleans dropped 14.8%.

Then, Ida hit and shuttered Bayer’s glyphosate plant in Luling, Louisiana. The plant helps provide all the active ingredient for Bayer’s Roundup branded ag herbicides in the United States, the company told Reuters.

Bayer’s plant has been closed since Aug. 28. The company, which hopes to restore power within weeks, said it is also working to repair wind damage and run system tests.

RATIONING SUPPLIES

Global glyphosate supplies were already tight as flooding, COVID-19 outbreaks and congested ports snarled production and exports in China for months, said Allan W. Gray, executive director of the Purdue University Center for Food and Agricultural Business.

As a result, chemical manufacturers are rationing supplies to farmers and others, Gray said.

Fertilizer is problematic, too. Walker and the staff at Kansas farm cooperative MKC have not been able to get price quotes from fertilizer suppliers for early 2022. Suppliers do not know if they will have anything to sell, he said – so Walker has turned away some customers.

Such problems have plagued retailers for months. China, the world’s top exporter of phosphate, temporarily halted urea and diammonium phosphate fertilizer exports this summer to feed domestic demand as energy costs and corn prices rose.

More recently, fertilizer producer CF Industries Holdings Inc halted operations at two United Kingdom manufacturing complexes, citing high costs for natural gas feedstock, a key raw material used in nitrogen fertilizers.

Canada’s largest potash producer Nutrien Ltd is sold out in North America through at least the third quarter, and global stocks for potash are tight for the rest of the year, said Ken Seitz, executive vice president of potash at Nutrien Ltd.

Ida tightened fertilizer supplies further, when CF Industries and Incitec Pivot Ltd shut plants because of the hurricane and declared force majeure for customers.

As the supply chain snarled, prices spiked. Prior to the storm, a New Orleans barge of urea set to ship in September to destinations across the U.S. or Canada traded at $450 a ton, said Josh Linville, director of fertilizer at StoneX Group Inc. After, the price jumped to $552 a ton.

“In the fertilizer world, anything that can go wrong, will go wrong,” Linville said. “It’s death by a thousand cuts.”

Wheat and cotton farmer Keeff Felty, 54, said the situation is spiraling. He is studying soil samples to see where he can cut back on fertilizer next season, and paid a company to haul some in-state after local suppliers could not fill his order.

“The price went up from Monday to Wednesday,” said Felty, “and by that night, they were out.”

(Additional reporting by Rod Nickel in Winnipeg, Manitoba; Editing by Caroline Staufer and David Gregorio)

U.S. House Democrats advance abortion rights bill, Senate passage unlikely

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives advanced a bill on Tuesday that would protect the right to abortion and annul some new restrictions passed by Republican-controlled state governments.

If the “Women’s Health Protection Act” passes the Democratic-controlled House, it is unlikely to succeed in the 100-member Senate, where Republicans also are a minority but hold enough votes to prevent it from reaching the 60-vote threshold to pass most legislation.

Democrats sent the bill to the full House after a law took effect in Texas early this month that almost completely bans abortion in the state.

The right to abortion was established in the Supreme Court’s landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision, but abortion-rights advocates fear it could be overturned when the court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority, hears Mississippi’s bid to overturn that decision.

“Action is both urgent and necessary,” said Representative Norma Torres during a hearing of the House Rules Committee, which voted 9-4 along party lines to advance the legislation to the full House.

Republicans attacked the legislation, arguing that it would expand access to abortions beyond the intent of Roe v. Wade.

“It’s the fiercest assault on the unborn since Roe was decided,” said Representative Tom Cole, the senior House Rules panel Republican. He added that the Democrats’ bill “would pre-empt any state law that seeks to protect (unborn) life.”

While a majority of Americans for many years have supported at least some forms of abortion, it is one of the most divisive issues in American society.

A mid-June Reuters/Ipsos survey found that 52% of adults said abortion should be legal in “most” or “all” cases, while 36% said it should be illegal.

(Reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Scott Malone and Peter Cooney)

U.S. FAA wants airlines to do more to address unruly passengers

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) on Tuesday urged U.S. passenger airlines “to commit to take more action” to address reports of violent or unruly passengers.

The agency said it had asked airline trade groups at a meeting on Tuesday to disclose within a week what steps they will take to curb such incidents. The FAA said the industry is facing a record number of airline passenger disturbances, and it plans to soon hold similar meetings with representatives from airports and labor.

The meeting with groups, including Airlines for America, a group representing American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and others, discussed “ways the industry can work together to reduce the number of unruly passenger incidents,” the FAA said, adding it “believes additional action by the airlines and all aviation stakeholders is necessary to stop the unsafe behavior.”

On Monday, two senior U.S. Senate Democrats urged Attorney General Merrick Garland to prosecute unruly air passengers.

Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin and Commerce Committee chair Maria Cantwell said “civil penalties alone are failing to deter criminal activity by airline passengers.”

In June, Airlines for America and aviation unions also asked Garland to prosecute disruptive and violent air passengers.

To date this year, there have been 4,385 reports of unruly passenger incidents, including 3,199 that were mask-related. The FAA has initiated enforcement actions in 162 cases, issuing more than $1 million in proposed fines.

FAA Administrator Steve Dickson imposed in January a zero-tolerance order on passenger disturbances aboard airplanes after supporters of former U.S. President Donald Trump were disruptive on flights around the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol attack. That policy will extend until at least as long as federal mask rules on airplanes are in place, which were extended last month into mid-January 2022.

Separately, the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee will hold a hearing on Thursday on unruly passengers.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Sonya Hepinstall and Aurora Ellis)

Biden urged to end Haitian border expulsions, Mexico detains migrants

By Daina Beth Solomon

CIUDAD ACUNA, Mexico (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden faced pressure on Tuesday to halt the expulsion of asylum seekers to Haiti from a Texas border camp, as worries about their safety compounded disquiet at images of officials on horseback using reins as whips against migrants.

Several hundred have been sent to Haiti from the camp in Del Rio, Texas, since Sunday. Thousands more have been moved into U.S. detention for processing and more flights are due to leave on Tuesday, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said.

U.S. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer urged fellow Democrat Biden to put an immediate end to the expulsions, adding to similar calls from several United Nations agencies.

Schumer said sending Haitians back to their home country, where a presidential assassination, rising gang violence and a major earthquake have spread chaos in recent weeks, “defies common sense.”

“It also defies common decency,” he said, calling images taken in recent days of mounted U.S. border agents using horse reins like whips “completely unacceptable.”

“The images turn your stomach. It must be stopped.”

The sprawling camp containing up to 10,000 mostly Haitian migrants under a bridge spanning the Rio Grande is a new flashpoint for the White House, already grappling with record numbers of border arrivals that Republican Senator Mitt Romney on Tuesday called a “disaster.”

The camp’s population peaked at up to 14,000 at the weekend, but has since diminished.

Mexican authorities also appeared to be detaining some of the migrants, who have regularly crossed back over to Mexico to get food.

A Reuters crew witnessed migrants who appeared to be Haitian detained on the streets of Ciudad Acuna across the river from the main camp on Monday by agents flanked by Mexico’s National Guard.

In one encounter, several migrants yelled and protested as agents boarded them into a National Immigration Institute (INM) van. INM did not immediately respond to a requests for comment.

The clashes at the border were also criticized by Mayorkas, who pushed ahead on Tuesday with moving migrants out of the camp to be flown to Haiti.

Speaking to CNN, Mayorkas said 4,000 Haitians had been moved from the camp. It was not clear if all of those were to be expelled from the United States, although he announced four flights were expected on Tuesday.

HOPE

Despite the risk of being returned to Haiti after sometimes years-long journeys through Latin America to reach the United States, the hope of being let in meant many migrants remain in the camp.

Carly Pierre, 40, said he was staying in the U.S. camp because he saw a chance to make it into the country with his wife and two children, ages 3 and 5, after several years living in Brazil.

“There are deportees, and there are people who will make it in,” he said, shorts still wet from having crossed the river to buy ice and soda at a convenience store on the Mexican side.

Despite the outcry over mistreatment and anger in Del Rio about the camp, Mayorkas emphasized that U.S. border agents were delivering medical attention and were working with the Red Cross.

In Ciudad Acuna, residents were also bringing relief to the migrants, after a couple of hundred gathered in a shady area resting on pieces of cardboard and blankets.

Jessica de la Garza, 22, who helped organize a drive on Facebook to collect donations, early on Tuesday distributed coffee, water, milk, sandwiches, cereal, beans and diapers.

“They say, ‘Thank you Mexico,’ because we are helping a little. The need is great, and so is the empathy.”

(Reporting by Daina Beth Solomon in Ciudad Acuna, Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Bernadette Baum and Rosalba O’Brien)

Iran wants resumption of nuclear talks that leads to lifting U.S. sanctions -Raisi

DUBAI (Reuters) – Iran wants a resumption of nuclear talks with world powers to lead to the removal of U.S. sanctions, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi told the annual U.N. General Assembly on Tuesday in a pre-recorded address.

“The Islamic Republic considers the useful talks whose ultimate outcome is the lifting of all oppressive (U.S.) sanctions,” Raisi said in his address.

Hardline cleric Raisi, who is under personal U.S. sanctions over allegations of human rights abuses in his past as a judge, said the U.S. sanctions, imposed by former President Donald Trump in 2018, “were crimes against humanity during the coronavirus pandemic.”

Harsh sanctions reimposed by Trump since 2018 have prompted Tehran to violate the deal’s limits. However, Tehran says its nuclear steps are reversible if Washington lifts all sanctions.

Indirect talks between Iran and the United States to revive the 2015 nuclear pact stopped two days after Raisi was elected as Iran’s president in June. Parties involved in the negotiations have yet to announce when the next round of negotiations will resume.

However, Tehran said on Tuesday that talks with world powers in Vienna to reinstate the nuclear pact would resume in a few weeks.

(Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Chris Reese and Leslie Adler)

Post Trump, U.S. Democrats offer bill to rein in presidential powers

By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -U.S. House of Representatives Democrats introduced legislation on Tuesday seeking to pull back powers from the presidency, part of an ongoing effort to rein in the White House in a rebuke to the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump.

House leaders said the “Protecting our Democracy Act” would restore the balance of power between the executive and legislative branches of government that was written into the Constitution.

Among other things, it would put new limits on the use of presidential pardons, prohibit self-pardons and strengthen measures to prevent foreign election interference or illegal campaign activity by White House officials.

The bill also would boost subpoena enforcement, protect inspectors general and watchdogs and strengthen oversight of emergency declarations.

As president, Trump fired a series of inspectors general – watchdogs charged with fighting corruption at federal agencies. To sidestep congressional control over government spending, he declared a national emergency at the border with Mexico to force the transfer of military funds to help build a wall there, a campaign promise.

“We have to codify this… so that no president of whatever party can ever assume that he, or she, has the power to usurp the power of the other branches of government,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told a news conference.

Representative Adam Schiff, a lead sponsor, said Democratic President Joe Biden’s White House had been consulted on the bill’s contents. He said he hoped for a House vote this autumn.

The path forward was uncertain. Democrats hold only a slim House majority, and the Republican caucus stands firmly behind Trump, who is expected to run for re-election in 2024 and remains the party’s most influential leader.

Republicans overwhelmingly opposed Trump’s two impeachments – led by many of the Democrats who introduced the legislation – and rejected a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters.

Aides to House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Patricia ZengerleEditing by Bill Berkrot)

U.S. retail industry seeks 90-day lead time on COVID-19 rules

By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Two major U.S. retail industry groups on Tuesday asked the Biden administration for at least 90 days before imposing new rules that will require employees at larger firms to be vaccinated against COVID-19 or submit to regular testing.

On Sept. 9, the White House said the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is developing an emergency temporary standard that will require all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated, or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative COVID-19 test once a week.

The White House has said those rules will apply to more than 80 million private sector employees.

The Retail Industry Leaders Association and the National Retail Federation strongly encouraged OSHA “to provide a 90-day implementation timeline to allow retailers and other employers to create the systems necessary.”

The retail groups, which represent companies including Walmart, CVS Best Buy, Target, Kroger and Home Depot, asked how the administration will ensure adequate COVID-19 testing capacity to satisfy the “significant increase in demand.”

The groups said “there could be as many as 4 million retail workers who may need to be tested on a weekly basis.” They also asked other detailed questions like “what remedial actions can be taken in situations in which employees refuse vaccinations and testing?”

U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo told travel executives last week that the OSHA order is expected in “a matter of weeks. … We have been told in October.”

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

U.S. domestic terrorism investigations have more than doubled -FBI director

By Jan Wolfe

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The number of U.S. domestic terrorism cases under investigation by the FBI has more than doubled since spring 2020, its director told a Senate hearing on Tuesday, after the Justice Department warned that white supremacists and militias pose a growing threat.

“The domestic terrorism caseload has exploded,” FBI Director Chris Wray said during testimony before the U.S. Senate’s Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee.

The bureau now has about 2,700 domestic terror investigations open, up sharply form about 1,000 in the spring of 2020, Wray said.

“To meet that evolving threat, the FBI has surged resources to our domestic terrorism investigations in the last year, increasing personnel by 260%,” Wray said.

Domestic terrorism took on new urgency after the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump who were trying to overturn President Joe Biden’s election victory.

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland said the Jan. 6 attack by Trump supporters had shown white supremacists and militia groups to be the country’s greatest domestic security threat.

In June, Biden’s administration released a 30-page plan to counter domestic terrorism. It calls for increased information sharing between federal and local officials and social media companies, additional resources to identify and prosecute threats and new deterrents to prevent Americans from joining dangerous groups.

(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker)