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Eli Kantor is a labor, employment and immigration law attorney. He has been practicing labor, employment and immigration law for more than 36 years. He has been featured in articles about labor, employment and immigration law in the L.A. Times, Business Week.com and Daily Variety. He is a regular columnist for the Daily Journal. Telephone (310)274-8216; eli@elikantorlaw.com. For more information, visit beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com and and beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com

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Tuesday, June 30, 2020

David v. Queen of the Valley Medical Center

A nurse’s declaration that her charge nurses would look at the clock while she was on her breaks does not support a reasonable inference that she was pressured to end her breaks early; this assertion also does not create a triable issue of fact regarding interrupted or insufficient breaks when the nurse testified that no supervisor ever told her to end her break early, discouraged her from taking a break, or told her to work while she was taking a break. An employer’s rounding policy was lawful where the worker sometimes gained minutes and compensation under the policy, and sometimes lost minutes and compensation; a worker’s bare assertion she was entitled to additional house of wages does not create a triable issue of fact. The de minimis doctrine does not apply to wage and hour claims brought under California law.

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'The Roberts Court': U.S. Chief Justice Cements Pivotal Role

'The Roberts Court': U.S. Chief Justice Cements Pivotal Role
by Reuters

WASHINGTON — Conservative U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts cemented his role as the Supreme Court's dominant figure by siding with the four liberal justices in a trio of major rulings this month including Monday's 5-4 decision striking down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law.
Roberts, appointed in 2005 by Republican former President George W. Bush, also joined the liberals in a 6-3 decision on June 15 backing LGBT worker rights and a 5-4 ruling on June 18 thwarting President Donald Trump's bid to rescind protections for hundreds of thousands of illegal immigrants dubbed "Dreamers" who entered the United States as children.
Roberts, a traditional conservative protective of the Supreme Court as an institution, is the justice closest to being a swing vote following the 2018 retirement of fellow conservative Anthony Kennedy. The court is closely divided, with five conservatives and four liberals.
"He is clearly the court's pivot point," Columbia Law School professor Gillian Metzger said. "Put simply, it is truly the Roberts Court now."

His frequency in being in the majority has been at its highest over the past decade during the current term, which began in October.
As the court's term nears its end, Roberts has been in the majority in 50 out of 51 cases that have been decided including all 10 cases in which the court was split 5-4, according to lawyer Adam Feldman, who tracks court statistics at a website called "Empirical SCOTUS."
The only case in which Roberts was not in the majority was an April ruling in which the court ruled 6-3 that there must be unanimous verdicts in jury trials involving serious crimes.
Roberts also was in the spotlight in February when served as presiding officer in the U.S. Senate during Trump's impeachment trial. Roberts disappointed Democrats who had wanted an extended trial of the Republican president including witnesses, declining to expand on his largely ceremonial role.
His votes in recent cases increasingly have drawn the ire of conservative activists, who place a high value on the judiciary's power to influence social policy.

After the Dreamers ruling, Trump asked on Twitter: "Do you get the impression the Supreme Court doesn't like me?"
"It's part of a troubling pattern," said Carrie Severino, president of the Judicial Crisis Network, a conservative legal group that has advocated for Trump's judicial appointments including Supreme Court Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
"Ironically, in an effort to appear less political, he appears to be making decisions that are in fact premised on politics," Severino added, referring to Roberts.
OBAMACARE RULING
Until recently, Roberts had rarely sided with the court's liberal wing in closely decided cases. Before the court's current term, Roberts had joined the four liberal justices in a 5-4 decision only five times, according to Feldman.
One of them in 2012 preserved the Affordable Care Act, commonly called Obamacare and considered the signature domestic policy achievement of Trump's Democratic predecessor Barack Obama. In 2019, Roberts wrote a 5-4 ruling that blocked Trump's administration from adding a citizenship question to the 2020 U.S. census that critics called an attempt to dissuade immigrants from taking part in the decennial population count.
Roberts, who in his 2005 Senate confirmation hearing compared the role of a judge to a baseball umpire calling balls and strikes, has sought to portray himself as above politics. In the court's Dreamers ruling, for example, Roberts specifically said he was not weighing in on whether the program at issue or Trump's attempt to rescind it were "sound policies."
Kavanaugh and Gorsuch thus far in their careers have been reliable conservative votes, though Gorsuch has shown flashes of an independent streak. For example, Gorsuch wrote the LGBT ruling for the court majority that included Roberts and the liberal justices.

Despite joining the liberals in some big cases, Roberts remains a solid conservative, as evidenced by a 5-4 ruling he authored on Monday - with all the conservatives in the majority and the liberals in dissent - handing Trump greater authority over the federal agency responsible for protecting consumers in the financial sector.
"The CFPB case delivers a big victory for the conservative legal movement," said Deepak Gupta, a liberal appellate lawyer in Washington.
Gupta noted that conservatives have long talked about rolling back what they call overly burdensome regulations implemented by a bloated federal bureaucracy, with Roberts a receptive ally.
"The chief justice is a master at this - he knows which things will grab the headlines and which will deliver long-term conservative jurisprudence in ways that might fly under the radar," Gupta added.
(Reporting by Lawrence Hurley and Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)

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U.S. Supreme Court Spurns Environmental Challenge to Trump's Border Wall

U.S. Supreme Court Spurns Environmental Challenge to Trump's Border Wall
by Reuters 

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear a challenge by four environmental groups to the authority of President Donald Trump's administration to build his promised wall along the border with Mexico.
The justices turned away an appeal by the groups of a federal judge's ruling that rejected their claims that the administration had unlawfully undertaken border wall projects in Arizona, California, New Mexico and Texas harmful to plant and animal life. The groups had argued that the 1996 law under which the administration is building the wall gave too much power to the executive branch in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
The groups that sued are the Center for Biological Diversity, the Animal Legal Defense Fund, Defenders of Wildlife and the Southwest Environmental Center. They said the wall construction efforts would harm plants, wildlife habitats and endangered species including the jaguar, Mexican gray wolf and bighorn sheep.
The border wall is one of Trump's signature 2016 campaign promises, part of his hardline policies toward illegal and legal immigration. The Republican president has vowed to build a wall along the entire 2,000-mile (3,200-km) U.S.-Mexico border. He promised that Mexico would pay for it. Mexico has refused.

The 1996 law, aimed at combating illegal immigration, gave the U.S. government authority to build border barriers and preempt legal requirements such as environmental rules. It also limited the kinds of legal challenges that could be brought.
The environmental groups argued that the law was unconstitutional because it gave too much power to the executive branch - in this case the Department of Homeland Security - to get around laws like the Endangered Species Act and the National Environmental Policy Act without congressional input.
Progress toward building the wall has been limited because Congress has not provided the funds Trump has sought, leading him to divert money - with the blessing of the Supreme Court - from the U.S. military and other parts of the federal government.
Trump on June 23 visited a newly built section of the wall along the frontier with Mexico in San Luis, Arizona, autographing a plaque commemorating the 200th mile (320 km) of the project.
(Reporting by Jan Wolfe; Editing by Will Dunham)

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Roberts a Pivotal Vote in the Supreme Court's Big Opinions

Roberts a Pivotal Vote in the Supreme Court's Big Opinions
by The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The biggest cases of the Supreme Court term so far have a surprising common thread.
On a court with five Republican appointees, the liberal justices have been in the majority in rulings that make workplace discrimination against gay and transgender people illegal, protect young immigrants from deportation and, as of Monday, struck down a Louisiana law that restricted abortion providers.
As surprising, Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative nominated by President George W. Bush who has led the court for nearly 15 years, has joined his liberal colleagues in all three.
Since the retirement of Justice Anthony Kennedy in 2018, Roberts has played a pivotal role in determining how far the court will go in cases where the court's four liberals and four conservatives are closely divided.
Here's a look at where Roberts stood in the abortion, immigration and LGBT cases, his history on the court and what's at stake in coming decisions in which Roberts could play a key role:
ABORTION
On Monday, Roberts joined liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in striking down Louisiana's Act 620. The justices ruled that the law requiring doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals violates the abortion rights the court first announced in the landmark 1973 Roe v. Wade decision.

But Roberts' reason for siding with the liberals had less to do with his feelings on abortion than with his feelings on whether the court should do an abrupt about-face. Four years ago the court's four liberal members and Justice Kennedy struck down a Texas law nearly identical to Louisiana's. At the time, Roberts was a vote in dissent. But with Kennedy's retirement and replacement by conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, many conservatives had hoped the result in the Louisiana case would be different. Not so, Roberts wrote: “The result in this case is controlled by our decision four years ago."
IMMIGRATION
On June 18, the court ruled 5-4 against the Trump administration, saying it did not take the proper steps to end the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which protects some 650,000 young immigrants from deportation. Roberts wrote the court's opinion, joined by the four liberal justices.
Everyone agreed that the administration can end DACA, but the dispute was whether it had been done properly. Roberts said no, writing that the administration had, among other things, failed to consider "what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”
Trump has already said he will renew his effort to end DACA.
LGBT RIGHTS
The court's immigration ruling followed just days after its June 15 ruling that a landmark civil rights law protects LGBT people from discrimination in employment. The ruling didn't divide the court like the abortion and immigration rulings, however. Six of the justices — Roberts, the court's four liberals and Trump appointee Neil Gorsuch — ruled against the Trump administration and in favor of the LGBT plaintiffs in the cases. Gorsuch wrote the opinion, which Roberts joined.
ROBERTS IN THE TRUMP ERA
If liberals have this month been cheering Roberts' decisions while conservatives have bemoaned them, Roberts is used to taking heat from both sides and defying easy political labels. He has sided with the court's other conservatives in 5-4 decisions allowing the Trump administration to tap Pentagon funds to build more fencing at the U.S.-Mexico border and upholding the administration's travel ban. At this time last year, he handed Republicans a huge victory protecting even the most extreme partisan electoral districts from federal court challenge. But, on the same day, he served the Trump administration a defeat, writing an opinion that kept a citizenship question off the 2020 census.

Even on Monday, Roberts and the conservatives united in two other cases, ruling that the structure of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is unconstitutional and to uphold a provision of federal law that requires foreign affiliates of U.S.-based health organizations to denounce prostitution as a condition of receiving taxpayer money to fight AIDS around the world.
THE FUTURE
Partisans on both sides could quickly find their feelings on Roberts changing. The justices still have 10 decisions remaining to release before they go on their traditional summer break. Most of the outstanding cases were argued in May when the court heard arguments by telephone because of the coronavirus pandemic. The remaining cases include fights over the president’s tax returns and important cases involving religion in public life. If those cases divide the court, Roberts' vote will again be key.

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Barriga v. 99 Cents Only Stores LLC

When a plaintiff appeals an order denying class certification, the appellate court can also review an interim order denying a motion to strike the defendant’s declarations if the interim order was related to the merits of the denial of certification, the decision on the motion to strike necessarily affected the denial of certification, and the decision on the motion to strike affected the plaintiff’s substantial rights. A trial court has a duty, and the authority, to exercise control over precertification communications between parties and putative class members; the court must closely scrutinize declarations filed in opposition to certification, if they were obtained under potentially coercive circumstances.

For more information contact us at http://www.beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com/

Oman v. Delta Airlines, Inc

California’s wage statement laws apply only to flight attendants who have their base of work operations in California, and that the same is true of California laws governing the timing of wage payments.

For more information contact us at http://www.beverlyhillsemploymentlaw.com/

Ward v. United Airlines, Inc.

Whether workers entitled to California-compliant wage statements depends on whether their principal place of work is in California; for pilots, flight attendants, and other interstate transportation workers who do not perform a majority of their work in any one state, this test is satisfied when California serves as their base of work operations, regardless of their place of residence or whether a collective bargaining agreement governs their pay.

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Diaz-Torres v. Barr

A petitioner seeking asylum and withholding of removal failed to establish that his proposed social groups comprised of Mexican professionals who refuse to cooperate with drug cartels and agronomists who refuse to help cultivate drugs are socially distinct where he presented no evidence that Mexican society views either proposed social groups as distinct, and the evidence indicated that almost anybody can be targeted by the drug cartels.


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Monday, June 29, 2020

Black Candidates Push Race Debate Into GOP-Held Districts

Black Candidates Push Race Debate Into GOP-Held Districts
by The Associated Press

COLUMBUS, Ind. — It was a scene Jeannine Lee Lake never would have imagined when she first ran against Greg Pence, Vice President Mike Pence’s brother, for a rural Indiana congressional seat two years ago: an almost entirely white crowd of more than 100 people marching silently in the Pences' hometown this month, offering prayers for Black people killed by police and an end to systemic racism.
Leading them was Lake, who is in a rematch against Pence. She is the only Black woman running for federal office in Indiana this fall.
The Democrat, who lost badly in 2018 and again faces long odds in the deeply conservative district, has spent much of the past few weeks at events such as the one in Columbus on Juneteenth. In communities across a district that is 93% white, Lake has talked about seeing her children pulled over by police and “harassed for no reason.” She has spoken the names of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people killed by police, telling crowds “we’re here to call for change.”
“In no way, shape or form is 2018 the same as the 2020 race in regard to the grassroots effort and the galvanization of the movement that is now Black Lives Matter,” said Lake, 50. “It’s just a total shift.”

The reenergized movement against racial inequality has amplified the voices of Black candidates, in some cases pushing the political debate over race into Republican-leaning areas. Democrats say they've seen a significant boost in fundraising and other engagement for candidates running on racial justice issues, and believe it could help the party flip some Republican-held districts in November.
Polls show unusually broad bipartisan support for some change to the nation’s criminal justice system. But lawmakers in Washington are at an impasse after far-reaching federal legislation passed the Democrat-led House on Thursday over objections from Republicans. Pence voted no, saying he opposes changes to the qualified immunity system that shields officers from liability.
In Arkansas, Democratic state Sen. Joyce Elliott says she's seeing new momentum in her bid to unseat GOP Rep. French Hill and become the state’s first Black woman elected to Congress. She began running digital ads shortly after Floyd’s death last month. In them, she spoke about her experience integrating a school in the 1960s where she and other Black students weren’t wanted.
It was the kind of fundraising appeal that typically would bring in about $1.50 for every $1 a congressional campaign spent on the ad buy. This ad cost Elliott’s campaign about $2,500 and raised $24,000 within one week, said Julia Ager, president of Sapphire Strategies, the digital firm for Elliott’s campaign. Other Black candidates are seeing a similar trend, she said.
“The environment is different, and that environment has created a boon of support,” Ager said. For people who are tired of inaction and want to see more Black people in Congress, “it seems like a clear place to direct money.”
Elliott, 69, has also been traveling to Black Lives Matter protests around the district, which includes Little Rock and its suburbs and has been represented by a Republican for more than a decade. Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the kidney donor speaks to crowds from the back of a pickup truck, often to predominantly white audiences. She tells her story of overcoming adversity, mentioning the people in school who didn’t want her or other Black students there. At one recent event, the crowd gathered in the shadow of a Confederate statue, where the discussion turned to trying to have it removed.
After a lifetime of feeling like she had to “push, push, push,” Elliott said, “now it feels like this is a big warm embrace.”
Her campaign has been backed by EMILY’s List, which supports women in politics, and the Congressional Black Caucus PAC. Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who is in the running to be the Democratic nominee for vice president, endorsed Elliott's campaign on Saturday.
“I’m feeling now as if a door has opened,” Elliott said. “People can look at someone like me and say, 'Why not Joyce Elliott? Isn’t she the right person for this moment?'”
In North Carolina, Democrats saw Pat Timmons-Goodson as a strong candidate for a newly redrawn congressional district held by Republican Rep. Richard Hudson even before the discussion over policing and racial inequality was reinvigorated.
Timmons-Goodson was the first Black woman on the Supreme Court of North Carolina and served on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, where she helped write recommendations on policing. In 2016, President Barack Obama nominated her to the federal court, though the nomination was among those blocked by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., and other Republicans.
Timmons-Goodson received national attention during that debate, as the seat on the court was left vacant for years and became part of a national fight over the courts. But her campaign says support for her candidacy exploded in recent weeks. Timmons-Goodson reported fewer than 1,000 individual contributions for the first quarter of 2020. In the quarter that ends Tuesday, the campaign expects to report some 20,000 contributions.

Lake may have a tougher fight ahead in Indiana, but she’s had to order more campaign signs and more than doubled her ranks of campaign volunteers. Pence's campaign largely ignores her bid.

Other Black activists tell Lake they’re considering running for office, too. Her campaign also is organizing “Candidates for Change” events, which will be held in more than half the district’s 19 counties and will focus on issues of policing, inequality and systemic racism — conversations that may not have occurred before in some places. Even as the pandemic has canceled much campaigning, the protests have gone on.

“I’m going to keep on going, as long as they do,” she said.

___

Burnett reported from Chicago. Smith is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

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Trump Retweets, Then Deletes, Video of Supporter Shouting 'White Power'

Trump Retweets, Then Deletes, Video of Supporter Shouting 'White Power'
by Reuters

WASHINGTON — U.S. President Donald Trump retweeted a video showing one of his supporters in Florida shouting "white power" at protesters of his administration, drawing rebukes from allies and adversaries as protests continue in the aftermath of George Floyd's death.
The video on Twitter, which was later deleted from the president's feed, showed Trump protesters and supporters in Florida shouting profanities at each other. After a protester called a Trump supporter a racist, the man responded by raising his fist and shouting, "white power." The slogan is often used by white supremacists.
"There's no question that he should not have retweeted it and he should just take it down," U.S. Senator Tim Scott, the Senate's only Black Republican, told CNN's "State of the Union" program.
In the tweet, Trump wrote: "Thank you to the great people of The Villages", a retirement community in Florida he visited last year.

White House spokesman Judd Deere said the president "is a big fan of The Villages. He did not hear the one statement made on the video. What he did see was tremendous enthusiasm from his many supporters."
The tweet comes on the heels of Trump's hostile response to protests against racial injustice engulfing the United States following the death of Floyd, an unarmed Black man who died after a white police officer knelt on his neck for almost nine minutes in Minneapolis.
"It was so profanity laced, the entire thing was offensive. Certainly, the comment about the white power was offensive," Scott added. "It's indefensible. We should take it down."
The Florida Democratic Party accused Trump of thanking "white supremacists" for their support and called on Floridians to deny him the swing state's support in the November election.
Trump has been accused of racism by lawmakers for attacks on Black lawmakers and for telling four congresswomen of color that they should "go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came."

Vice President Mike Pence refused repeated opportunities to say the phrase "Black Lives Matter" on Sunday, telling CBS' "Face the Nation" program: "I really believe that all lives matter and that's where the heart of the American people lies."
Pence added that he views the Black Lives Matter movement as having a "political agenda of the radical left" that calls for cutting off funding for police departments and tearing down monuments.
(Reporting by David Morgan and Chris Sanders; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)

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Trump Denies Briefing on Reported Bounties Against US Troops

Trump Denies Briefing on Reported Bounties Against US Troops
by The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump on Sunday denied that he was made aware of U.S. intelligence officials’ conclusions that Russia secretly offered bounties to Taliban-linked militants for killing American troops in Afghanistan. The Trump administration was set to brief select members of Congress on the matter on Monday.
The intelligence assessments came amid Trump’s push to withdraw the U.S. from Afghanistan, and suggested that Russia was making overtures to militants as the U.S. and the Taliban were holding talks to end the long-running war. The assessment was first reported by The New York Times and then confirmed to The Associated Press by American intelligence officials and two others with knowledge of the matter.
There were conflicting reports about whether Trump was aware of Russia’s actions. The intelligence officials told the AP that the president was briefed on the matter earlier this year; Trump denied that, tweeting on Sunday that neither he nor Vice President Mike Pence had been briefed. The president tweeted Sunday night that he was just told that intelligence officials didn't report the information to him because they didn't find it credible.
The intelligence officials and others with knowledge of the matter who spoke to the AP insisted on anonymity in order to discuss the highly sensitive matter.

The White House National Security Council would not confirm the assessments, but said the U.S. receives thousands of intelligence reports daily that are subject to strict scrutiny.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who golfed with Trump on Sunday, tweeted a day earlier that it is “Imperative Congress get to the bottom of recent media reports that Russian GRU units in Afghanistan have offered to pay the Taliban to kill American soldiers with the goal of pushing America out of the region.”
Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican in the House, called for the White House to share more information with Congress, saying if true, lawmakers need to know “Who did know and when?” and, referring to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, “What has been done in response to protect our forces & hold Putin accountable?”
Democratic presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden said reports that Trump was aware of the Russian bounties would be a “truly shocking revelation” about the commander in chief and his failure to protect U.S. troops in Afghanistan and stand up to Russia.
Russia called the report “nonsense.”
“This unsophisticated plant clearly illustrates the low intellectual abilities of the propagandists of American intelligence, who instead of inventing something more plausible have to make up this nonsense,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said.

A Taliban spokesman said the militants “strongly reject this allegation” and are not “indebted to the beneficence of any intelligence organ or foreign country.”
John Bolton, a former national security adviser who was forced out by Trump last September and has now written a tell-all book about his time at the White House, said Sunday that “it is pretty remarkable the president’s going out of his way to say he hasn’t heard anything about it. One asks, why would he do something like that?”
Bolton told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he thinks the answer “may be precisely because active Russian aggression like that against the American service members is a very, very serious matter and nothing’s been done about it, if it’s true, for these past four or five months, so it may look like he was negligent. But, of course, he can disown everything if nobody ever told him about it.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the few congressional leaders briefed on sensitive intelligence matters, told ABC’s “This Week” that she had not been informed about the reported bounties and requested a report to Congress on the matter.
“This is as bad as it gets, and yet the president will not confront the Russians on this score, denies being briefed. Whether he is or not, his administration knows and our allies — some of our allies who work with us in Afghanistan had been briefed and accept this report,” she said.
While Russian meddling in Afghanistan is not a new phenomenon for seasoned U.S. intelligence officials and military commandos, officials said Russian operatives became more aggressive in their desire to contract with the Taliban and members of the Haqqani Network, a militant group that is aligned with the Taliban in Afghanistan and that was designated as a foreign terrorist organization in 2012. Russian operatives are said to have met with Taliban leaders in Doha, Qatar and inside Afghanistan; however, it is not known if the meetings were to discuss bounties.
The officials the AP spoke to said the intelligence community has been investigating an April 2019 attack on an American convoy that killed three U.S. Marines after a car rigged with explosives detonated near their armored vehicles as they were traveling back to Bagram Airfield, the largest U.S. military installation in Afghanistan. Three other U.S. service members were wounded in the attack, along with an Afghan contractor. The Taliban claimed responsibility for the attack on Twitter. The officials the AP spoke to also said they were looking closely at insider attacks — sometimes called “green-on-blue” incidents — from 2019 to determine if they are also linked to Russian bounties.

In early 2020, members of the elite Naval Special Warfare Development Group, known to the public as SEAL Team Six, raided a Taliban outpost and recovered roughly $500,000. The recovered funds further solidified the suspicions of the American intelligence community that the Russians had offered money to Taliban militants and other linked associations.
One official said the administration discussed several potential responses, but the White House has yet to authorize any step.
Trump responded to Biden on Twitter, saying “Russia ate his and Obama’s lunch during their time in office”
But it was the Obama administration, along with international allies, that suspended Russia from the Group of Eight after its unilateral annexation of Crimea from Ukraine — a move that drew widespread condemnation.
Biden criticized Trump for “his embarrassing campaign of deference and debasing himself” before Putin. Trump tweeted that “nobody’s been tougher” on Russia than his administration.
___
Associated Press writer Lynn Berry contributed to this report.

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