China is criticizing a short visit by Taiwan’s president to the United States, saying it violates the “one-China” principle.
Foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang urged the U.S. on Friday to cease official exchanges with Taiwan and not allow stopovers by President Tsai Ing-wen.
Tsai is already in New York on a two-night stay en route to an official visit to four Caribbean nations. She was scheduled to deliver a speech to a U.S.-Taiwan business summit on Friday and attend a dinner with members of the Taiwanese-American community.
The United States recognizes Beijing as the government of China, but provides military and other support to Taiwan. The self-governing island split from China during a civil war in 1949.
A reporter in Mississippi who was denied access to cover a candidate for governor because she is a woman is calling the rejection sexist and a violation of press freedom.
The candidate, Robert Foster, said in an emailed statement he was just following the “Billy Graham” rule where a man is never alone with a woman besides his wife. The reporter, Larrison Campbell, said she was told he was concerned about the optics for his campaign of being alone with a woman.
Foster’s campaign manager said people could use her presence as a smear tactic and it was too close to the primary election to risk it, according to the post Campbell published in “Mississippi Today”.
Campbell said in a phone interview she offered to wear a press pass the whole time, write the article quickly so the campaign could point to it as an explanation, and pointed out she wouldn’t be alone with him because the male campaign manager would be there all day.
Campbell told VOA this is an example of sexism and it hurts freedom of the press.
“The only reason you would think people might see a woman’s presence with a man as being improper is if you think that a woman’s presence in a political arena needs an explanation because she doesn’t belong there,” Campbell said. “Any time a reporter is denied access it hurts freedom of the press. It’s not a question of not being able to publish, it’s a question of there not being access.”
In a statement, Foster reiterated his decision was based out of respect for “my wife, character and our Christian faith.”
“Before our decision to run, my wife and I made a commitment to follow the ‘Billy Graham Rule’, which is to avoid any situation that may evoke suspicion or compromise of our marriage. I am sorry Ms. Campbell doesn’t share these same views,” Foster said in an emailed statement. “We don’t mind granting Ms. Campbell an interview. We just want it to be in an appropriate and professional setting that wouldn’t provide opportunities for us to be alone.”
Campbell said sexism in the industry can prevent women from getting the access they need.
“Your work should be what determines how well you do and if you get access to the bigger candidates you’re going to break bigger stories. It hurts you as you aren’t taken as seriously, that hurts your access to stories,” she said. “I have some fantastic sources, on both sides of the political spectrum. It does ultimately hurt your access and I’m definitely not the only woman who feels that way.”
Gaye Tuchman, a professor of sociology emerita at the University of Connecticut elaborated on the importance of access to the first amendment.
“The reason that a free press exists is because it enables people who read the press, or in the 21st century use other media, to find out things,” said Tuchman. “In that sense the constitution guarantees the right to find out things.”
Kayleigh Skinner, a colleague of Campbell’s at “Mississippi Today”, said she often finds the people she covers do not treat her with as much respect as her male colleagues. She also said after the #MeToo movement women might have more difficulty doing their jobs.
“Maybe now women are seen as threats, something to gain out of accusing someone. I think men are more cautious now of getting caught up in a compromising situation,” Skinner said. “This is not the way to handle it. We are just doing our jobs.”
Campbell said while this is the most overt sexism she has experienced, sexism is a problem everywhere.
“I think that this story is obviously getting traction. It’s in Mississippi, it’s a Mississippi Republican. This does fit a narrative,” she said. “But there’s a problem everywhere. It’s not going to change unless we talk about it and analyze it and understand it.”
President Donald Trump unloaded via Twitter on Republican former House Speaker Paul Ryan after Ryan’s comments critical of Trump appeared in excerpts from a new book.
Ryan condemns Trump in “American Carnage,” by Tim Alberta of Politico, in excerpts running in various publications. Alberta wrote the former speaker, who retired from Congress in 2018, could not stand the idea of another two years with the Republican president and saw retirement as the “escape hatch,” according to The Washington Post. Ryan is quoted saying: “I’m telling you, he didn’t know anything about government. I wanted to scold him all the time.”
Trump blasted Ryan as a “lame duck failure.”
“He had the Majority & blew it away with his poor leadership and bad timing,” Trump tweeted late Thursday. “Never knew how to go after the Dems like they go after us. Couldn’t get him out of Congress fast enough!”
Ryan had no comment Friday on the president’s tweets about him, his spokesman Brendan Buck said.
Trump may have been angered by various revelations in the book, including accounts recalling widespread negative GOP reactions to his off-color videotaped comments in the “Access Hollywood” scandal in the closing weeks of the 2016 election campaign. Ryan’s reaction was particularly harsh.
The book recounted Ryan, who served in Congress for 20 years, saying Trump’s presidency was slipping as he was less willing to accept advice from Republicans to moderate his approach.
“Those of us around him really helped to stop him from making bad decisions. All the time,” Ryan said. “We helped him make much better decisions, which were contrary to kind of what his knee-jerk reaction was. Now I think he’s making some of these knee-jerk reactions.”
And Ryan, who often was Trump’s wing man on some congressional issues but had a strained relationship with him, was the main focus of Trump’s Twitter rage.
“Paul Ryan, the failed V.P. candidate & former Speaker of the House, whose record of achievement was atrocious (except during my first two years as President), ultimately became a long running lame duck failure, leaving his Party in the lurch both as a fundraiser & leader,” Trump tweeted.
Trump tweeted that when presidential candidate Mitt Romney chose Ryan as a running mate “I told people that’s the end of that Presidential run.”
“He quit Congress because he didn’t know how to Win,” Trump tweeted. “They gave me standing O’s in the Great State of Wisconsin, & booed him off the stage. He promised me the Wall, & failed (happening anyway!)…”
Outgoing British Prime Minster Theresa May has leveled a thinly disguised swipe at Conservative Party front-runner Boris Johnson as she underscored the necessity of character in taking on the country’s top post.
May told the Daily Mail in an interview published Friday that the job of prime minister is not about power but about public service. Though she didn’t mention Johnson by name, he has made a career out of being the biggest personality in the room.
All too often, those who see it as a position of power see it as about themselves and not about the people they are serving,'' she said.There is a real difference.”
May stepped down from being Conservative Party leader after her failure to get Parliament to approve a plan for Britain’s departure from the European Union. Johnson and Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt are in a runoff for that post, which will also make the winner Britain’s next prime minister. The runoff vote will be announced July 23.
May underscored she had done all she possibly could to try to get her Brexit deal approved and did nothing to conceal her frustration with the fact that some of her most strident opponents on Brexit are those now backing Johnson.
She added it’s unlikely that her successor will negotiate further Brexit concessions from the EU.
I had assumed mistakenly that the tough bit of the negotiation was with the EU, that Parliament would accept the vote of the British people and just want to get it done, that people who'd spent their lives campaigning for Brexit would vote to get us out on March 29 and May 27,'' she told the Mail.But they didn’t.”
May, who will return to Parliament as a lawmaker, also took issue with those who chided her for becoming emotional as she announced her departure from the post.
If a male prime minister's voice had broken up, it would have been saidwhat great patriotism, they really love their country.” But if a female prime minister does it, it is `Why is she crying?”’ she said.
When he resigned as defense secretary last December, Jim Mattis thought it might take two months to install a successor. That seemed terribly long at the time.
Seven months later, the U.S. still has no confirmed defense chief even with the nation facing potential armed conflict with Iran. That’s the longest such stretch in Pentagon history.
There is also no confirmed deputy defense secretary, and other significant senior civilian and military Pentagon positions are in limbo, more than at any recent time.
The causes are varied, but this leadership vacuum has nonetheless begun to make members of Congress and others uneasy, creating a sense that something is amiss in a critical arm of the government at a time of global uncertainty.
William Cohen, a former Republican senator who served as defense secretary during President Bill Clinton’s second term, says U.S. allies — “and even our foes” — expect more stability than this within the U.S. defense establishment.
“It is needlessly disruptive to have a leadership vacuum for so long at the Department of Defense as the department prepares for its third acting secretary in less than a year,” Cohen told The Associated Press. He said he worries about the cumulative effect of moving from one acting secretary to another while other key positions lack permanent officials.
“There will inevitably be increasing uncertainty regarding which officials have which authority, which undermines the very principle of civilian control of the military,” Cohen said. “In addition, other countries — both allies and adversaries — will have considerable doubt about the authority granted to an acting secretary of defense both because of the uncertainty of confirmation as well as the worry that even being a confirmed official does not seem to come with the needed sense of permanence or job security in this administration.”
Key members of Congress are concerned, too.
“We need Senate-confirmed leadership at the Pentagon, and quickly,” Sen. Jim Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican who heads the Armed Services Committee, said Thursday. The panel’s ranking Democrat, Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, said the vacancy problem has created “disarray” in the government’s largest bureaucracy.
It started with Mattis, who quit in December after a series of policy disputes with President Donald Trump that culminated in his protest of administration plans to pull troops out of Syria as they battled remnants of the Islamic State.
At least outwardly, the Pentagon has managed to stay on track during this churn, and senior officials caution against concluding that the military has been harmed.
Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford, center, walks to a classified briefing for members of the U.S. Senate on Iran, on Capitol Hill in Washington, May 21, 2019.
Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, whose chosen successor as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Army Gen. Mark Milley, had his Senate confirmation hearing Thursday, told reporters that military commanders understand what their civilian leaders expect of them.
“We’ll look forward to a confirmed secretary of defense in the near future, for sure, but I don’t think (the vacancies) had a significant impact over the last six months,” Dunford said Tuesday. “I don’t believe that there’s been any ambiguity across the force about what they need to be doing and why they need to be doing it.”
The day after Dunford spoke, trouble struck on another personnel front, potentially endangering the nomination of Air Force Gen. John Hyten to take over as vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff when the incumbent, Gen. Paul Selva, retires July 31. The vice chairman is the nation’s second-highest military officer.
A senior military officer has accused Hyten of sexual misconduct. Members of Congress this week raised questions about the allegations and about the military investigation that found insufficient evidence to charge Hyten. It’s unclear when, or if, Hyten will get a confirmation hearing.
Just last Sunday, the Navy was hit with its own leadership crisis.
Adm. William Moran, who had already been confirmed by the Senate to become the top Navy officer on Aug. 1, abruptly announced he was retiring . He said he felt compelled to quit because of an investigation into his use of personal email and questions about the wisdom of his association with a retired Navy officer who had been accused of inappropriate conduct with women in 2016.
At Milley’s Senate hearing Thursday, he was asked repeatedly about the problem of multiple and lengthy vacancies in the higher ranks of the Pentagon. His responses suggested he sees at least the potential for it to cause damage.
“It would be much better to have the nominees fully vetted and confirmed because that gives us much more effectiveness in terms of dealing with our adversaries,” members of Congress and the American public, he said.
Mark Esper, who has been the acting secretary of defense since Mattis’ first fill-in, former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan, abruptly resigned in June , is scheduled to testify at his confirmation hearing next Tuesday. But even that comes with complications. He is required to step aside pending Senate confirmation, and Navy Secretary Richard Spencer will move into the role of acting defense secretary until Esper is approved. Spencer would then return to the Navy.
This tangled web is unlike anything the Pentagon has ever seen. Only twice previously has the Pentagon had an acting secretary; in the longest and most recent instance, the fill-in served for two months in 1989 during the George H.W. Bush administration. No administration has ever had two acting defense secretaries, let alone three.
John Hamre, who served as deputy defense secretary from 1997 to 2000, says much of the work in the Pentagon is based largely on a policy framework established by previous defense secretaries, and that work is not greatly affected by the absence of a confirmed secretary.
What can be hurt is coordination with the White House, “where an acting secretary is underpowered when sitting opposite a secretary of state, for example,” Hamre said. He added that defense policy innovation might be the area that suffers the most.
“This is where we will see the greatest impact by having only acting secretaries,” he said.
