Biden Releases Tax Forms, Resuming an ‘Almost Uninterrupted’ Tradition

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Biden releases his tax forms, showing that he and his wife, Jill Biden, earned just over $600,000 in 2020.

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President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris both released financial disclosures on Monday.Credit...T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York Times

President Biden released tax forms on Monday showing that he and his wife, Jill Biden, earned just over $600,000 in 2020. The release resumed a presidential tradition of disclosure broken by Donald J. Trump.

The Bidens paid an effective federal income tax rate of 25.9 percent after donating about 5 percent of their income to charity, the documents showed. Their total federal income tax bill was just over $157,000. For 2019, the Bidens had an adjusted gross income of $985,000 and paid federal income taxes of nearly $288,000.

Mr. Trump declined to release his tax returns while a candidate and while president from 2017 through the start of this year, saying he was under audit. He fought efforts by prosecutors and congressional Democrats to obtain the returns. Documents obtained last year by The New York Times showed that Mr. Trump paid $750 in federal taxes in 2016, the year he won the presidency, after reporting heavy losses in his business empire to offset his income.

Previous presidents had released tax returns annually, dating back to Richard Nixon.

Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband, Douglas Emhoff, a lawyer, also released their 2020 tax forms on Monday. They earned nearly $1.7 million for the year and paid an effective federal income tax rate of 36.7 percent.

The disclosures came hours before the deadline for Americans to file their annual income tax returns without penalty. Federal officials had delayed that deadline by a month this year, citing the complications of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris also released their personal financial disclosure forms, which are required under federal law.

Both the presidential and the vice-presidential households appear to fall safely in the top 1 percent of American income earners, based on statistics from the Internal Revenue Service. And both would face tax increases this year if Mr. Biden succeeds in pushing Congress to raise a variety of taxes on high earners, as he is proposing to help fund nearly $2 trillion in new spending and incentives meant to strengthen education, child care, paid leave and other social programs.

Much of the Bidens’ income came from pensions, including Mr. Biden’s government pension from his years as a senator and vice president. That disbursement will pause now that Mr. Biden has re-entered the government, White House officials said. Dr. Biden received nearly $300,000 in income — including income from business profits — from an S corporation controlled by the Bidens, which received money in 2020 from two publishing houses, Simon & Schuster and Flatiron. An S corporation is a small business designation that allows business income, credits and deductions to pass through to shareholders.

Ms. Harris’s and Mr. Emhoff’s income included nearly $350,000 for writing by Ms. Harris, who published a book, “The Truths We Hold: An American Journey,” in 2019.

White House officials took a slight jab at Mr. Trump in a news release announcing the disclosures. “Today, the president released his 2020 federal income tax return,” they wrote, “continuing an almost uninterrupted tradition.”

The Biden administration will begin making monthly child tax credit payments in July.

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Families Will Start Receiving Child Tax Credit Payments in July

President Biden said on Monday that millions of American families would begin receiving hundreds of dollars in monthly payments in July from a child tax credit created as part of the American Rescue Plan.

I want to tell everyone with children why, as they’re filling their taxes — filing their taxes today, they should know that a new tax cut will be coming their way for working class and middle class folks, and very soon. We put that tax cut into the American Rescue Plan, which was signed not long ago. And I signed the tax cut into law in March. Ninety percent of the families, all middle-class and working-class families, will get this tax cut. It’s a one-year cut that reduces your taxes by $3,000 a year for each child you have under the age of 18. Two kids, it’s a $6,000 tax cut. And if those kids are under the age of six, they’ll actually get $3,600 per child. You won’t have to wait until your next year’s tax return to get that break. I’m announcing today that on July 15, and the 15th of every month thereafter, throughout the year, you will get deposited in your bank account, half of your tax cut, at least, $250 per child each month, a direct deposit into your account. So if you’re a working family with two kids, you’re going to get $500 a month into your bank account on the 15th of every month, starting in July. We’re getting — we are getting you a tax cut this year, now, when you need it, and not have to wait. And if you get your tax cut refund deposited in your bank account automatically, this tax cut will be put into your account automatically. If not, it will be mailed to you. In addition to helping Americans hard pressed and working families, experts have told us this will cut child poverty in America in half. This tax cut sends a clear and powerful message to American workers, working families with children. Help is here.

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President Biden said on Monday that millions of American families would begin receiving hundreds of dollars in monthly payments in July from a child tax credit created as part of the American Rescue Plan.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Biden administration will begin paying hundreds of dollars per month to millions of American families in July as it rolls out a refundable child tax credit that was created as part of the economic relief legislation Congress passed in March.

Democrats view the tax credit as central to their efforts to reduce poverty and income inequality in the United States. The program is expected to provide additional funds to 39 million households, and the Biden administration projects that it will lift five million children out of poverty this year.

Speaking at the White House on Monday, President Biden hailed the payments as a tax cut that would help the middle class.

“This tax cut sends a clear and powerful message to American working families with children. Help is here,” Mr. Biden said.

The Treasury Department said on Monday that the temporary payments of up to $300 per month would begin on July 15. Families with children under 6 years old can receive the full payments, while those with children over 6 can receive up to $250 per month.

The size of the payments will be reduced based on income levels.

The money is an advance on expanded refunds that taxpayers are eligible to receive under the American Rescue Plan. Families are getting half of the money as monthly payments this year and will get the rest when they file their tax returns next year. The law increased the maximum size of the tax credit to $3,600 this year.

Mr. Biden wants to extend the benefit as part of his recently proposed American Families Plan.

As with the economic stimulus payments, the child tax credit money will be distributed by the Internal Revenue Service through direct deposit, checks or debit cards.

“We are getting you a tax cut this year, now, when you need it,” Mr. Biden said.

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A new presidential pardon policy is being formed, with an emphasis on racial justice.

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President Joe Biden after attending mass in Wilmington, Del., on Sunday.Credit...Sarah Silbiger for The New York Times

Administration officials have quietly begun evaluating clemency requests and have signaled to activists that President Biden might start issuing pardons or commutations by the midpoint of his term, possibly before the 2022 elections.

The effort, which is being overseen by the White House Counsel’s Office and the Justice Department, is an implicit rebuke of President Donald J. Trump’s approach to clemency, which mostly bypassed the Justice Department and relied on an ad hoc network of friends and allies, resulting in a wave of late pardons and commutations to people with wealth or connections.

Mr. Biden’s team has signaled in discussions with outside groups that it is establishing a more deliberate, systematic process geared toward identifying entire classes of people who deserve mercy. This approach could allow the president to make good on his campaign promise to weave issues of racial equity and justice throughout his government.

Mr. Biden’s approach to his pardon powers is part of a long-term shift in his criminal justice policies. During his 35 years in the Senate, he helped fashion a string of bills that enacted harsh sentences for drug crimes and laid the groundwork for the mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities.

On the campaign trail, Mr. Biden apologized for portions of one of the more aggressive tough-on-crime measures he championed, the 1994 crime bill. And as president, he has surrounded himself with supporters of overhauling the system.

Fighting rages overnight after Biden voices support for a cease-fire.

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Smoke rising from the site of an Israeli bombing in Gaza City on Tuesday morning.Credit...Hosam Salem for The New York Times

The worst Israeli-Palestinian fighting in years spilled into a ninth day on Tuesday as the Israeli military bombarded Gaza and southern Lebanon and Hamas militants fired rockets into southern Israeli towns, hours after President Biden expressed support for a cease-fire during a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel.

Mr. Biden’s carefully worded statement fell short of an immediate demand for an end to Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza, which showed little sign of ending after Mr. Netanyahu said on Monday that his country’s armed forces would “continue striking at the terrorist targets.”

Despite growing concern in foreign capitals over the violence — and among some of Israel’s staunchest defenders in Washington — the region’s heaviest clashes since a 2014 war threatened to escalate. Late Monday, the Israeli military fired artillery shells into Lebanon for the first time since the hostilities began, striking what it said were Palestinian militants who had attempted to fire rockets into Israel.

The Israeli Army said it believed that a small Palestinian faction in Lebanon — and not the militant group Hezbollah — had fired the rockets, most of which failed to reach Israeli territory. The United Nations peacekeeping mission in southern Lebanon tweeted that it had intensified patrols in the area and that the situation on Tuesday morning was calm.

But the toll on civilians continued to grow. By late Monday, the Israeli bombardment had killed 212 people in Gaza, including dozens of children, and Hamas rockets had killed at least 10 in Israel.

The Israeli Army said that Hamas had fired almost as many rockets in eight days — 3,350 — as it did in the 50-day war the two sides fought in 2014. About 90 percent of them were destroyed in midair by the Iron Dome, an antimissile defense system partly financed by the United States, the Israeli Army said.

The fighting has been focused on the Gaza Strip, the crowded coastal enclave ruled by Hamas, as the Israeli Army bombards infrastructure and underground tunnels that it says Hamas uses to support its military operations. But protests and violence have also erupted in the West Bank and Israel, where Arabs have clashed with the Israeli police and Jewish residents.

The Biden administration has stepped up its diplomatic engagement, dispatching an envoy to the region last week. In a readout of Mr. Biden’s call with Mr. Netanyahu, White House officials said the president had “expressed his support for a cease-fire and discussed U.S. engagement with Egypt and other partners towards that end.” But Mr. Biden had “reiterated his firm support for Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks,” the statement added.

The Biden administration previously avoided the use of the term “cease-fire,” with top officials like Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken talking instead about the need for a “sustainable calm” and others referring to the need for “restraint.”

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Democrats, including some who’ve long supported Israel, are pressuring Biden over the Gaza assault.

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Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) speaks to reporters at the U.S. Capitol in Washington last week.Credit...Stefani Reynolds for The New York Times

President Biden’s carefully worded statement on Monday supporting a cease-fire between Israelis and Palestinians came amid growing pressure within his own party for the United States to take a more skeptical stance toward one of its closest allies.

Mr. Biden’s urging — tucked at the end of a summary of a call with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel — followed a drumbeat of calls from Democratic lawmakers across the ideological spectrum for his administration to speak out firmly against the escalation of violence. It reflected a different tone than the one members of Congress have sounded during past clashes in the region, when most Democrats have repeated their strong backing for Israel’s right to defend itself and called for peace without openly criticizing Israeli actions.

The push is strongest from the party’s energized progressive wing, like Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, but their intensity has obscured a quieter, concerted shift among more mainstream Democrats that could ultimately be more consequential.

Underscoring how skepticism around the campaign in Gaza had spread to even some of Israel’s strongest defenders in Congress, Representative Gregory W. Meeks of New York, the chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee and a fixture at the annual conference of the powerful lobbying group American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, told Democrats on the panel on Monday that he would ask for the delay a $735 million tranche of precision-guided weapons to Israel that had been approved before tensions in the Middle East boiled over.

A day earlier, 28 Democratic senators — more than half of the party’s caucus — put out a letter publicly calling for a cease-fire. The effort was led by Senator Jon Ossoff, Democrat of Georgia and, at 34, the face of a younger generation of American Jews in Congress. As Republicans pumped out statements squarely blaming Hamas militants, the Democrats’ appeal put the onus on both sides to lay down their weapons — and on Mr. Biden to weigh in to demand it.

Much of the shift can be traced to debate over the Iran nuclear deal, when Mr. Netanyahu made a concerted effort to insert himself in American domestic politics to kill the pact being drafted by President Barack Obama. The Israeli leader portrayed support for the deal as a betrayal and worked to drive a wedge between Republicans and Democrats on the issue. Mr. Netanyahu’s close alliance with Mr. Obama’s successor, Donald J. Trump, only deepened that partisan divide.

Republicans and AIPAC have been swift to warn against any perceived weakening of the U.S. commitment to Israel. Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, condemned Ms. Ocasio-Cortez on Monday for describing Israel as an “apartheid state” and urged Mr. Biden to “leave no doubt where America stands.”

The U.S. plans to send 20 million vaccination doses to help world battle the virus.

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Biden Says U.S. Will Be an ‘Arsenal of Vaccines’ for the World

President Biden said on Monday the U.S. will send at least 20 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson, and Moderna coronavirus vaccines overseas by the end of June to help fight the pandemic.

We need to help fight the disease around the world to keep us safe here at home, and to do the right thing of helping other people. It’s the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do. It’s the strong thing to do. In March, we shared over four million doses of our AstraZeneca vaccine with Canada and Mexico. At the end of April, we announced that we would provide another 60 million doses of our AstraZeneca vaccine overseas. Remember, this is the vaccine that’s not authorized for use in the United States yet. So we’re going to be sending it to folks once the F.D.A.’s reviewed this, and said it’s safe. This is all the AstraZeneca vaccine produced in the United States — all of it will be sent to other countries. And today I’m announcing they will also share U.S.-authorized vaccine doses of Pfizer and Moderna, and Johnson and Johnson, as they become available with the rest of the world as well. These are vaccinations and vaccines that are authorized to be put in arms of Americans and by the end of June, when we will have taken delivery of enough of such vaccines to protect everyone in the United States, the United States will share at least 20 million of those doses, that extra supply, with other countries. This means over the next six weeks, the United States of America will send 80 million doses overseas. Just as in World War II, America was the arsenal of democracy, in the battle against Covid-19 pandemic, our nation is going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world. We’ll share these vaccines in the service of ending the pandemic everywhere, and we will not use our vaccines to secure favors from other countries. We’ll work with Covax, the international organization set up, and other partners to ensure that the vaccines are delivered in a way that is equitable and follows the science and the public health data.

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President Biden said on Monday the U.S. will send at least 20 million doses of Pfizer-BioNTech, Johnson and Johnson, and Moderna coronavirus vaccines overseas by the end of June to help fight the pandemic.CreditCredit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

President Biden, heeding widespread calls to step up his response to the pandemic’s surge abroad, said on Monday that his administration would send 20 million doses of federally authorized coronavirus vaccine overseas in June — the first time he has pledged to give away doses that could be used in the United States.

The donation is another step toward what Mr. Biden promised would be an “entirely new effort” to increase vaccine supplies and vastly expand manufacturing capacity, most of it in the United States. He also put Jeffrey Zients, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, in charge of developing a global strategy.

“We know America will never be fully safe until the pandemic that’s raging globally is under control,” Mr. Biden said in a brief appearance at the White House. “No ocean’s wide enough, no wall’s high enough, to keep us safe.”

With new cases and deaths plummeting as vaccination rates rise in the United States, the epicenter of the crisis has moved to India and other nations. A growing and bipartisan chorus of diplomats, health experts and business leaders has been pushing the president to do more to end what the AIDS activist Asia Russell calls “vaccine apartheid.”

Mr. Biden said on Monday that 20 million doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson vaccines — all approved for domestic use — would be sent abroad. That is in addition to the 60 million doses of AstraZeneca’s vaccine he pledged last month, though those doses are not approved for domestic use and cannot be released until regulators deem them safe.

“He’s crossed the threshold into direct donations,” said J. Stephen Morrison, a global health expert at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, which teamed up with three other health institutes on Monday to release a plan to ramp up vaccine supply. “That’s an important shift.”

International health activists want far more.

“Donating 80 million doses of vaccines without a plan to scale up production worldwide is like putting a Band-Aid on a machete wound,” said Gregg Gonsalves, a longtime AIDS activist.

Those 80 million doses amounted to five times the number that any other country had donated, Mr. Biden said, noting that taking the lead in helping the world beat back the coronavirus was a chance to reassert American authority. And unlike Russia and China, which have sought to use their vaccines as an instrument of diplomacy, the United States will not expect any favors in return, the president said.

“We want to lead the world with our values, with this demonstration of our innovation and ingenuity, and the fundamental decency of the American people,” Mr. Biden said. “Just as in World War II America was the arsenal of democracy, in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic our nation’s going to be the arsenal of vaccines for the rest of the world.”

Mr. Biden’s announcement came not long after a World Health Organization news conference at which the director general, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said that countries with high vaccination rates had to do more to help countries that were being hit hard by the coronavirus, or the entire world would be imperiled.

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The Arizona vote review is ‘political theater’ and a ‘sham,’ G.O.P. leaders say.

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Arizona Republican Leaders Criticize Election Audit

The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which administers elections for the majority of Arizona voters, called the ongoing audit of the county’s votes in the 2020 election a “mockery.”

“This board is done explaining anything to these people who are playing investigator with our constituents, ballots and equipment, paid for with real people’s tax dollars. People’s ballots and money are not make-believe. It’s time to be done with this craziness and get on with our county’s critical business.” “The election wasn’t in question until a couple of days after the final vote count. That’s when all of a sudden, whoa, there might be problem. We don’t like who won the election. So let’s call into question. Let’s start rumors and unfounded statements and conspiracies. Let’s throw these out there. Let’s do everything we can to undermine the will of the voter, undermine our democracy. Let’s do everything we can. And I don’t see this ending, Mr. Chairman, unfortunately, because you have some folks right now that are in control of the Arizona State Senate and it is not elected members of the body.” “The reality is there was doubt cast. So I supported an audit. I supported cooperating with the Senate. What I didn’t support is a mockery. And that’s what this has become.” “We ran a bipartisan, fair election. That’s every piece of evidence that I’ve ever seen put in front of us. We are operating on facts and evidence presented to this board. That’s why we certified the vote. That’s why we canvass the vote.”

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The Maricopa County Board of Supervisors, which administers elections for the majority of Arizona voters, called the ongoing audit of the county’s votes in the 2020 election a “mockery.”CreditCredit...Courtney Pedroza for The New York Times

The Republican leaders of Arizona’s most populous county issued a blistering rebuke to a review of the November election that had been ordered by Republicans in the State Senate, calling it “a grift disguised as an audit” that had spun out of the legislators’ control.

The senior Republican in Maricopa County, Jack Sellers, the chairman of the board of supervisors, said flatly that the county would stop cooperating with the review and suggested that it would challenge in court any of its conclusions that pointed toward improprieties.

“This board is done explaining anything,” Mr. Sellers said at a special meeting of the five-member board, four of whose members are Republicans. “People’s ballots and money are not make-believe. It’s time to be done with this craziness, and get on with this county’s critical business.”

It was an extraordinary pushback to an election review that was supposed to placate voters who insisted that President Donald J. Trump’s narrow loss in the state was a result of fraud, but which has mushroomed into a political spectacle with what experts call serious procedural lapses.

Montana’s new voting laws violate Native Americans’ rights, a lawsuit argues.

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A parade on the Crow Reservation, one of seven Native American reservations in Montana, in 2019.Credit...Victor J. Blue for The New York Times

The American Civil Liberties Union and the Native American Rights Fund filed a lawsuit on Monday challenging two new election laws in Montana as unconstitutional infringements on Native Americans’ right to vote.

Montana legislators enacted the laws — H.B. 176, which eliminated same-day voter registration, and H.B. 530, which restricted ballot collection — this spring, amid a national Republican push to tighten voting regulations in connection with President Donald J. Trump’s false claims of election fraud.

The lawsuit argues that the measures in Montana, where an estimated 6.5 percent of the population is Native American and district courts struck down another ballot collection restriction last year, are “part of a broader scheme” to disenfranchise Native voters. It argues that the laws violate the right to vote, freedom of speech and equal protection under the Montana Constitution.

“The legislature knows that Native Americans are very distant from registration opportunities,” said Jacqueline De León, a staff attorney at the Native American Rights Fund. “They know that they have a very limited window to register and vote on the reservation, and they know that so many homes don’t receive residential mail delivery, and so they are again, I think, taking advantage of those barriers and amplifying them.”

The lawsuit was filed in Montana’s 13th Judicial District Court on behalf of the advocacy groups Western Native Voice and Montana Native Vote, as well as multiple tribes. The defendant is the Montana secretary of state, Christi Jacobsen.

Ms. Jacobsen said in a statement on Monday, “The voters of Montana spoke when they elected a secretary of state that promised improved election integrity with voter ID and voter registration deadlines, and we will work hard to defend those measures.”

Native Americans who live on reservations often have to travel long distances to reach an elections office or polling site, and many don’t own cars or can’t take time off work for what can be several hours round-trip. Many have relied on same-day registration in order to make that trip once instead of twice.

Keaton Sunchild, the political director at Western Native Voice, said that last year, nearly 1,000 Native Americans registered to vote after the deadline set under one of the new laws.

Other Native Americans vote absentee, which poses challenges because reservations often lack reliable mail service. As a result, get-out-the-vote groups often collect and return voters’ sealed ballots. One of Montana’s new laws forbids anyone to provide or accept a “pecuniary benefit” in exchange for collecting ballots.

Supporters of the laws say they will increase election security, though there is no evidence of any widespread irregularities in the 2020 election. The lawsuit says that “many tribal members rely on paid ballot collectors,” including ones hired by Western Native Voice and Montana Native Vote, which do extensive get-out-the-vote work.

H.B. 530 differs from the ballot collection law struck down last year in that it applies only to paid collection and not to, for instance, informally collecting ballots from neighbors. But Alora Thomas-Lundborg, a senior staff attorney at the A.C.L.U., said that because so many Native Americans relied on organized collection programs, it was “functionally the same” in its impact.

“We do see this lawsuit as an extension of the pattern that we saw in the earlier lawsuit,” Ms. Thomas-Lundborg said, “which is a clawing back of Native American voting rights in the state of Montana.”

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The Biden administration approves three Guantánamo detainees for release.

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A detainee being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, in April 2019.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times

The Biden administration has approved three detainees at Guantánamo Bay for release to countries that agree to impose security conditions on them, including the oldest of the remaining wartime prisoners, lawyers and United States government officials said on Monday.

The approvals raised to nine the number of the 40 detainees currently at the wartime prison who have been approved for transfer to other countries. It is unclear where the three men will go, or when, in part because the State Department has to make diplomatic and security arrangements with countries to take them. Some detainees cleared for release have been waiting for a decade for a country to agree to take them.

One of the three detainees recently granted approval is Saifullah Paracha, 73, of Pakistan, who was captured in Thailand in 2003. In addition to being the oldest of the detainees, he has also been described as among the sickest, with heart disease, diabetes and high blood pressure.

The other two were identified as Abdul Rabbani, 54, also a citizen of Pakistan, and Uthman Abdul al-Rahim Uthman, 40, a Yemeni. None have been charged with a crime by the United States in the two decades they have been in custody.

Word that the men were approved for release initially came from their lawyers, who heard about it from prisoners in attorney-client telephone calls. Two government officials confirmed the three release decisions.

The decision to approve the releases, one official said, was made by the attorney general, the director of national intelligence, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the secretaries of defense, homeland security and state. All have representatives who sit on the Periodic Review Board, which assesses the threat posed by the detainees.

Despite a pledge to renew the Obama administration effort to end detention operations at the Navy base in Cuba, the Biden administration has yet to restart the transfers. For now, it has not designated a senior U.S. official to negotiate the deals with other countries.

The Trump administration shut down the office of the special envoy for Guantánamo’s closing and transferred only one prisoner, a confessed Saudi terrorist who was repatriated in 2018 to serve his war crimes sentence at a rehabilitation center for former jihadists.

Biden marks the international day against L.G.B.T.Q. bigotry, urging states to fight discrimination.

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Activists gathered outside the Supreme Court in 2019 as it heard arguments in a major L.G.B.T.Q. rights case.Credit...Jonathan Ernst/Reuters

President Biden marked the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia and Biphobia on Monday by calling on dozens of countries — and half of the states in the union — to strengthen anti-discrimination protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community.

“Both Covid-19 and rising authoritarianism around the world continue to widen economic, social and safety gaps for LGBTQI+ people — and an epidemic of violence still rages, with a particular impact on the transgender community,” Mr. Biden said in a statement commemorating the day, which takes place on the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s move in 1990 to declassify “homosexuality” as a mental disorder.

“Around the world, some 70 countries still criminalize same-sex relationships,” he said. “And here at home, LGBTQI+ Americans still lack basic protection in 25 states, and they continue to face discrimination in housing, education and public services.”

The number cited by Mr. Biden refers to states that do not offer basic safeguards against discrimination, according to a report by the Movement Advancement Project, a nonpartisan think tank that analyzes local and state L.G.B.T.Q. laws.

Human rights groups fear that many states are moving in the other direction, driven by the conservative culture-war politics of many Republicans allied with former President Donald J. Trump. Recently, Arkansas, Mississippi and Tennessee have imposed restrictions on transgender athletes in school sports, and Arkansas banned gender-affirming treatment for transgender minors.

In the past year, predominantly Republican state legislators have introduced more than 250 bills that sought to restrict activities or roll back protections, according to Human Rights Campaign, an L.G.B.T.Q. advocacy group. (An earlier version incorrectly attributed this to Human Rights Watch.)

Mr. Trump also marked the holiday when he was in office, but he sent mixed messages as president.

In 2019, he delivered a speech calling on nations around the world “to stop criminalizing homosexuality,” and expressed solidarity with “L.G.B.T.Q. people who live in countries that punish, jail or execute individuals based upon sexual orientation.”

But he did little to back up those words with action. Some of the world leaders he viewed as most friendly to him, including President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil — who once said he would rather have a dead son than a gay one — have been antagonistic to L.G.B.T.Q. rights.

Mr. Trump also courted religious conservatives, tried to ban transgender people from serving in the military, opposed bipartisan anti-discrimination legislation, and rolled back Obama-era initiatives to leverage federal civil rights laws to protect L.G.B.T.Q. people.

Mr. Biden has sought to reverse all of those policies.

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The Supreme Court will hear a major abortion case.

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Activists demonstrating for and against abortion rights in front of the Mississippi State Capitol in 2019.Credit...Andrea Morales for The New York Times

The Supreme Court said on Monday that it would hear a case from Mississippi that could undermine Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion.

The new case, concerning a state law that seeks to ban abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy, will give the court’s new 6-to-3 majority its first opportunity to address the subject, and supporters of abortion rights reacted to the development with dismay.

Alarm bells are ringing loudly about the threat to reproductive rights,” Nancy Northup, the president of the Center for Reproductive Rights, said in a statement. “The Supreme Court just agreed to review an abortion ban that unquestionably violates nearly 50 years of Supreme Court precedent and is a test case to overturn Roe v. Wade.”

The court will hear arguments in the case during its next term, which starts in October. A decision is not expected until the spring or summer of 2022.

The new case, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, No. 19-1392, concerns a law enacted by the Republican-dominated Mississippi legislature that banned abortions if “the probable gestational age of the unborn human” was determined to be more than 15 weeks. The statute included narrow exceptions for medical emergencies or “a severe fetal abnormality.”

Lynn Fitch, Mississippi’s attorney general, said her state’s law was constitutional. “The Mississippi Legislature enacted this law consistent with the will of its constituents to promote women’s health and preserve the dignity and sanctity of life,” she said in a statement. “I remain committed to advocating for women and defending Mississippi’s legal right to protect the unborn.”

Last summer, the Supreme Court struck down a restrictive Louisiana abortion law in a 5-to-4 decision, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. providing the decisive vote. His concurring opinion, which expressed respect for precedent but proposed a relatively relaxed standard for evaluating abortion restrictions, signaled an incremental approach to cutting back on abortion rights.

That was before Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in September. Her replacement by Justice Amy Coney Barrett, a conservative who has spoken out against “abortion on demand,” has changed the dynamic at the court, diminishing the chief justice’s power to guide the pace of change.

The court’s decision to hear the Mississippi case, after considering it more than a dozen times at the justices’ private conferences, is an indication of sharp divisions among the court’s conservatives about how boldly to address the constitutional status of abortion rights.

Since the retirement of Justice Anthony M. Kennedy in 2018, state legislatures have enacted scores of abortion restrictions and bans in the hope that personnel changes at the court will spur it to reconsider its abortion jurisprudence.

President Donald J. Trump vowed to name justices who would overrule Roe, and three of his appointees now sit on the court. Two of them — Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Brett M. Kavanaugh — dissented from the Louisiana decision last year.

Anti-abortion activists expressed excitement at the court’s decision to consider the case, saying they hoped the justices would overturn Roe and allow states to restrict abortion at any stage of pregnancy.

“There’s a great sense of inspiration across the country right now,” said Mike Gonidakis, president of Ohio Right to Life. “This is the best court we’ve had in my lifetime, and we hope and pray that this is the case to do it.”

Joel Greenberg, the former confidant of Matt Gaetz, pleads guilty to a range of crimes.

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Joel Greenberg, a former confidant of Representative Matt Gaetz, has agreed to cooperate with federal prosecutors.Credit...Joe Burbank/Orlando Sentinel, via Associated Press

Joel Greenberg, the former confidant of Representative Matt Gaetz, pleaded guilty on Monday in federal court in Orlando to a range of charges, including sex trafficking a minor, as part of a plea deal that will require him to help in other Justice Department investigations.

“Are you pleading guilty to these charges because you are guilty?” said United States Magistrate Court Judge Leslie Hoffman.

“Yes,” said Mr. Greenberg, who was handcuffed and clad in a dark blue jumpsuit and white surgical mask.

Mr. Greenberg admitted in a plea agreement filed on Friday to multiple crimes. The hearing on Monday formalized that agreement, and Mr. Greenberg answered questions from a judge before admitting his guilt.

Mr. Gaetz is under investigation into whether he violated sex trafficking laws by paying the same 17-year-old for sex. Mr. Gaetz’s name was not mentioned in court on Monday or in the documents filed on Friday.

Mr. Greenberg faces more than 12 years in prison, but it is unclear when he will be sentenced. As part of his plea agreement, he needs to provide substantial help to the Justice Department’s prosecutions of others in exchange for help persuading a judge to give him a more lenient sentence. Defense lawyers typically want to delay the sentencing for as long as possible in order to give their clients time to help the government.

Mr. Greenberg, a Republican, was a newcomer to politics when he won a local election in 2016 to become the tax collector in Seminole County, Fla., north of Orlando.

Shortly after taking office, according to court documents, he began committing fraud and other crimes, including using taxpayer money to pay women for sex and buy sports memorabilia.

He was first indicted last June. At the end of last year, Mr. Greenberg began cooperating with the government as he realized that prosecutors had substantial evidence against him and that he could spend decades in prison if he lost at trial.

Mr. Greenberg’s lawyer, Fritz Scheller, had told reporters after a court hearing last month, “I am sure Matt Gaetz is not feeling very comfortable today.”

In response to questions outside the courtroom on Monday about whether Mr. Greenberg would cooperate against Mr. Gaetz, Mr. Scheller provided a slightly more measured response.

“He is bound by it, the plea agreement — he will honor it,” Mr. Scheller said.

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Votes on Capitol security and Jan. 6 panel set up another internal clash for Republicans.

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National Guard members outside the Capitol in March. Democrats are planning a vote on a bill that would provide $1.9 billion to strengthen the Capitol’s defenses.Credit...Anna Moneymaker for The New York Times

Congressional Republicans are heading for another round of bruising fights this week over former President Donald J. Trump and his continued election lies, as Democratic leaders plan votes on bills to harden Congress’s defenses against violence and establish an independent commission that would investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.

Democratic leaders say both actions are necessary to understand and respond to the full scope of the attack and the baseless claims of fraud in the 2020 election that fueled it. They struck a deal with a key Republican committee leader last week on the commission’s structure and a narrow mandate to look at the riot and its causes.

But the votes on that bill and a $1.9 billion security spending package will also drive fresh wedges through a Republican Party already battling itself over whether to call out Mr. Trump’s transgressions or continue to embrace his false statements.

Moderate Republicans appear ready to break with Mr. Trump to support the creation of the commission, if not endorse Democrats’ blueprint for keeping Congress safe. But Republican leadership, desperate to refocus the party on bashing President Biden before the 2022 midterm elections, has yet to take a position after earlier demands that any such panel look at left-wing violence unrelated to the assault.

“It’s important to get to the truth and find out just how widespread this thing was and make sure it never happens again,” Representative Fred Upton of Michigan, one of 10 Republicans who voted to impeach Mr. Trump, said on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday.

Mr. Upton called recent attempts by his far-right colleagues to whitewash what happened on Jan. 6 “absolutely bogus” and said his party, including its House leader, Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, should trust the commission process.

“It’s going to be fair,” he said. “It should get a good number of votes, and yes, I do hope Kevin McCarthy supports it.”

Mr. McCarthy has repeatedly shown that he is more interested in putting the entire episode behind him and cultivating Mr. Trump’s support, which he believes he needs to recapture control of the House next year. A decision by Mr. McCarthy or other Republicans to back the commission would almost certainly enrage the former president.

Mr. Trump, after all, remains fixated on vindicating his election claims and justifying his loss with false statements. “The Presidential Election of 2020,” he said in a statement on Saturday, “will go down as THE CRIME OF THE CENTURY!”

The debate is almost certain to churn up many of the arguments hurled last week over House Republicans’ decision to oust their No. 3, Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, from party leadership because she refused to stop criticizing Mr. Trump and members of her party for their roles in the attack.

Appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” Ms. Cheney said Mr. McCarthy and her replacement as chairwoman of the House Republican Conference, Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, were complicit in Mr. Trump’s lies and risked driving American democracy into a death spiral. She argued that a commission was vital to fleshing out the full extent of Mr. Trump’s campaign to undermine the election results, including anything Mr. McCarthy or other Republicans knew about it.

“I cannot imagine a more important issue than whether or not the Republican Party is going to be a party that embraces and defends the rule of law and the Constitution,” Ms. Cheney said.

Ms. Stefanik pushed back in her own appearance on Fox News, saying that Ms. Cheney was “looking backward” and that party leaders were eager to work with Mr. Trump to address “election integrity” issues with the 2020 vote.

“He’s critical to the party,” Ms. Stefanik said. “He is the leader of the Republican Party. Voters determine the leader of the Republican Party, and they continue to look to him for his vision.”

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