#BREAKING | US needs to keep lines of communication open with Russia to achieve some stability, State Dept says

🖊 State Department spokesman Ned Price said there is clear progress in the ongoing negotiations in Vienna on the nuclear deal.

Although "big challenges remain," and the negotiations still have a long way to go, a deal seems quite achievable

"Not to start conflict – but to prevent one," - that's how Biden explained the need to build up military power in the Indo-Pacific region in his address to Congress.

The White House's new strategy for China is increasingly looking like Thucydides' trap, isn't it?

While it wasn't done in a conventional manner, Republican Congresswoman Lauren Boebert decided to draw the attention of President Joe Biden to the issue of migration, who himself barely touched on this subject in his speech to Congress.

Wrapped in a blanket of first aid that is distributed to migrants, Boebert clearly highlighted the urgency of the situation.

Maybe he noticed?

👨‍⚖️ 16 states have filed lawsuits challenging the constitutionality of legislation known as the American Rescue Plan Act 2021, which prohibits the use of pandemic funds to lower taxes.

The states claim that the rescue plan's policies violate the 10th Amendment, which helps define the relationship between the federal government and the states

👓 The United States is alarmed by the Ukraine cabinet ministers' actions to dismiss the supervisory board of Naftogaz, US State Department spokesperson Ned Price said.

Little brother getting out of control?

🖊 Some liberal movements, including BLM, have attacked on Twitter literally the only black Republican in the Senate, Tim Scott, R-S. C., changing the racial slur "Uncle Tom" to "Uncle Tim" in reference to the senator.

The term was trending for several hours before Twitter eventually blocked it on Thursday morning

📖 Simon & Schuster employees collected signatures for a petition urging the management of the publishing house not to publish books by authors who are in any way connected with the Trump administration, and, in particular, the memoirs of former US Vice President Mike Pence.

Freedom is being cancelled one small step at a time

🏡 Have you ever seen a subdivision full of abandoned mansions?

An eerie collection of mansions in Missouri that was intended as a $1.6 billion resort community turned into a ghost town when the 2008 housing crisis hit, leaving behind crumbling abodes abandoned among overgrown plants at the Indian Ridge Resort in Branson

📈 The Commerce Department reported that gross domestic product jumped 6.4% for the first three months of the year on an annualized basis. Outside of the reopening-fueled third-quarter surge last year, this period saw the highest level of GDP growth since the third quarter of 2003

🛩 While US spy plane flights near China increased dramatically under former US President Donald Trump, they have only increased further since Joe Biden entered the White House in January.

“Since the current US administration took office, the number of activities conducted by US warships and surveillance aircraft in the sea areas around China has increased by more than 20% and 40% respectively over the same period last year” Chinese Defense Ministry spokesperson Senior Col. Wu Qian said

👨‍🌾 A group of Midwestern farmers has sued the federal government, claiming that the Biden administration's plan to contain the spread of COVID-19 includes $4 billion in loan write-offs for socially vulnerable farmers and ranchers who are Black, American Indian, Hispanic, Alaskan, Asian-American, or Pacific Islander.

White farmers aren't eligible, amounting to a violation of the plaintiffs' constitutional rights, the lawsuit contends

Check out some news you may have missed:

▪️ US Embassy in Russia announces sharp reduction of consular services

▪️ US extends probe into ‘directed-energy’ attacks to mainland

▪️ US sanctions led to Huawei losing smartphone market share to rivals, company executive claims

▪️ US asks citizens to leave India

▪️ Views of Biden's speech less than half of Trump’s 2017 TV audience

▪️Australia to buy four CH-47F Chinook cargo helicopters, after US green light

📺 President Joe Biden may have used his first address to a joint session of Congress to drive home the message that his administration has made great progress during the first 100 days he’s been in office, yet viewer ratings beg otherwise.

Nielsen ratings data was released on Thursday to show that Biden's audience, as he pitched his 1.8 trillion spending package to “transform and expand government’s role in the lives of everyday Americans” paled compared to his predecessor’s viewership.

The number of people who watched Joe Biden’s speech on Wednesday was nearly 44 percent less than the figure accrued by Republican President Donald Trump during his first address to a joint session of Congress in 2017.

At the time, the 46th POTUS commanded an audience of 47.7 million TV viewers on 11 networks.

Even Trump's last State of the Union Address, delivered in February 2020, managed to attract 37 million viewers

❗️#URGENT | Pentagon: Conflict with China not inevitable, but both countries must avoid 'needless escalation'

🇺🇸 🇨🇳 "The United States and China have every reason to communicate with each other" and "extreme competition" does not necessarily equate to conflict, which both sides have an interest in preventing, Hicks said, speaking at a virtual event hosted by the Aspen Institute, a Washington, DC-based think tank, on Friday.

"President Biden has stated that while there is going to be extreme competition between the United States and China, we do not need to have conflict. In advancing American interests, we anticipate the US military will often serve as a supporting player to diplomatic, economic and other tools. Central to the military's value is demonstrating the will and capability to credibly deter PRC aggression. This will best position us to avoid a conflict. In the extremis, where our vital interests are threatened, we will ensure the US ability to fight and win," the deputy Pentagon chief added.

Hicks warned that China now has "the economic, military, and technological capability to challenge the international system and American interests within it" using a broad range of tools, "from routine statecraft through the use of sharp power or grey zone tactics, to the potential for sustained combat operations and an expanded and capable nuclear enterprise." She also pointed to the People's Republic's growing military, space, and cyber capabilities

💬 Former US secretaries of state Hillary Clinton and Condoleezza Rice have criticised President Joe Biden’s plan to withdraw the US troops from Afghanistan in a House Foreign Affairs Committee members-only Zoom call on Wednesday, two attendees said.

"A little disagreement on Afghanistan, but they both agreed we're going to need to sustain a counter-terrorism mission somehow outside of that country," one committee member told Axios.

"Condi Rice is like, 'you know, we’re probably gonna have to go back'," the member said.

Both former secretaries raised concerns about the potential negative consequences from a quick removal of US troops, another member of the committee told the outlet.

Clinton and Rice were also concerned about protecting the US diplomats on the ground following the withdrawal

👮‍♂️ Houston police found 90 people trapped in a home after responding to a report of kidnapping. The 2,319-square-foot, five-bedroom, two-bathroom home had 5 women and no children, all the others were men. A police officer noted that "It definitely looks more like smuggling than human trafficking."

After the Biden administration announced that it would take a new approach to negotiations with North Korea to dismantle the country's nuclear and ballistic missile programs in exchange for the lifting of sanctions, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that U.S. policy “will not focus on reaching a major deal and will not rely on strategic patience."