The measures also come as tensions escalate amid a buildup of Russia’s aggression at the Ukrainian border. Blinken traveled to NATO headquarters this week amid the buildup.
In the U.S., tensions over policing escalated last week police officer Kim Potter fatally shot 20-year-old Daunte Wright, a Black man, during a traffic stop in Brooklyn Center, Minn.
Potter has since resigned and is currently facing charges of second-degree murder. Brooklyn Center Police Chief Tim Cannon also resigned after saying that he believed Potter meant to taze Wright, not shoot him.
Wright’s killing set off nights of protests in the city, as well as across the country. The shooting came during the murder trial of Derek Chauvin, the former police officer who knelt on the neck of George Floyd, another Black man, in Minneapolis last year.
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According to a report from Reuters, citing people familiar with the matter, the move to cancel the trip came after Luxembourg s foreign minister and other top European Union officials said they would not meet with Pompeo and were “embarrassed” after the attacks on the Capitol last Wednesday.
The State Department statement says that the transition with Biden’s team has been going well and will be finished before Biden’s inauguration next Wednesday.
“Both the Department and the President-elect’s team have been fully engaged for several weeks toward this end, and we are pleased with the level of cooperation and professionalism that has been displayed,” according to the announcement.
Dozens of progressive organizations will deliver a book to President-elect Joe Biden
The book contains 100 profiles of left-leaning foreign policy experts and potential positions they could fill.
The effort was led by Yasmine Taeb, a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, and Alex McCoy, the political director at Common Defense.
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Of the 100 people included in the Progressive Foreign Policy Talent Pipeline, about two-thirds are women or people of color, and the overriding qualifier was that none of the candidates have corporate ties or backgrounds.
The candidates generally advocate for foreign policy restraint and support cutting the budget at the Pentagon and pulling the U.S. out of foreign entanglements.