|
|
|
|
Progressives turn a blind eye to Houthi terrorism to criticize US retaliation
By Will Marshall
PPI's President
for The Hill
As a U.S.-led coalition steps up airstrikes to suppress Houthi attacks on international shipping, progressives are accusing President Biden of going back on his promise to keep America out of “forever wars” in the Middle East.
It’s a bum rap that confuses cause and effect. What’s the greater evil, an outbreak of maritime terrorism or the United States using force to stop it? On the left, the habit of blaming America first dies hard.
Biden is walking a tightrope between a U.S. public leery of being dragged back into the region’s endemic violence by the Israel-Hamas war, and Houthi attacks that are disrupting routes where about 12 percent of global trade passes through.
Americans don’t relish open-ended military engagements anywhere, but our enemies get a vote, too. Today’s Middle East landscape is littered with Iran-backed jihadist groups who see themselves as waging a Holy War to erase Israel from the map. They know they can’t do that without driving the United States from the region.
|
|
|
New from the Experts
ICYMI: Will Marshall, PPI President: Don't Kill Bill
⮕ Democracy Journal
Elan Sykes, PPI's Energy Policy Analyst, and Neel Brown, PPI's Managing Director: Challenges with the LNG Climate Test Pause
⮕ PPI Blog
Tamar Jacoby, PPI's Director of the New Ukraine Project: As the mood darkens in Ukraine, the majority still oppose negotiation
⮕ The Hill
What US Economic Measures Can Be Expected If Trump Is Reelected?, ft. Ben Ritz, PPI's Director of the Center for Funding America's Future
⮕ Barron's
Trade Fact of the Week: WTO members will decide whether to preserve “duty-free cyberspace” by February 29
⮕ PPI's Trade Fact of the Week
|
|
|
As the World Trade Organization (WTO) prepares for its 13th Ministerial Conference late this February, its 164 members face a key decision — whether to renew a 25-year-old e-commerce tariff “moratorium” that helped create a “duty-free cyberspace” principle for the group in 1998 and has done so ever since.
A new PPI report examines whether the WTO members should continue their current “moratorium” on imposing tariffs on (or otherwise taxing) electronic transmissions over the internet. Report authors Malena Dailey and Ed Gresser argue that the WTO members should continue this moratorium and outline the extensive policy reasons for why they should do so.
|
|
|
|
🚨 NEWS: PPI welcomes former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio) Tim Ryan as Senior Advisor to our new Campaign for Working Americans.
As a tireless fighter for working families, Ryan will help develop a pragmatic governing agenda to help Democrats win back working Americans.
|
|
|
How Ukrainians Are Dealing with Republicans Dithering Over Military Aid
By Tamar Jacoby
PPI's Director of the New Ukraine Project
for Washington Monthly
Ukrainians reacted with surprising equanimity last week when Donald Trump all but clinched the Republican nomination for president by winning the New Hampshire primary. Most mainstream media outlets here in Kyiv treated the looming possibility of the 45th president’s return to office as a second-tier story, despite his hostility to Ukraine’s war for survival and his determination to scuttle a U.S. border security deal that would pave the way for $61 billion in aid to Kyiv. The Telegram channels where most Ukrainians get their news hardly seemed to notice his victory over former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, a fervent advocate of aid to Kyiv. There were no screaming headlines, angry political speeches, or sardonic commentary by Telegram subscribers.
The Trump victory comes at a dark time for Ukraine: stalled fighting in the country’s southern and eastern regions, intensifying Russian missile strikes, growing fears that Ukrainian fighters—those on the front lines and those defending civilians against air attacks—are running out of ammunition. Kyiv depends on Washington—more than $75 billion has flowed here since February 2022, when Vladimir Putin invaded in full force. (Russian forces have controlled Crimea since 2014.) The outcome of this week’s debate on Capitol Hill is as important for Ukraine’s future as anything that happens on the battlefield.
|
|
|
|
Mosaic Moment
Internet Access As We Know It
According to The International Telecommunications Union, two-thirds of the world now has internet access. On this episode of the Mosaic Moment, PPI’s Ed Gresser sits down with two of the nation’s leading broadband experts, Meagan Bolton and Christine O’Connor to discuss where connectivity gaps remain and what U.S. policymakers are doing to bridge this digital divide.
|
|
|
|
Don't Miss These PPI Reports
|
|
Staff Spotlight: Kateryna Halstead
 Kateryna Halstead
Policy Fellow
Kateryna Halstead is a Policy Fellow at the Progressive Policy Institute. During her tenure as a fellow, Kateryna is working on AI and emerging tech policy and
analyzing the impact of AI on the proliferation of disinformation campaigns against the backdrop of the 2024 US elections.
She has a background in disinformation, information and asymmetric warfare research from her time with the Atlantic Council and CSIS, as well as a background in US security policy and engagement in Russia and China.
Kateryna is a graduate student at Johns Hopkins SAIS and enjoys salsa nights in her free time.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
