Category: US

A plane carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her delegation departs Taipei on Wednesday.

Taiwanese Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

hide caption

toggle caption

Taiwanese Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

A plane carrying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her delegation departs Taipei on Wednesday.

Taiwanese Foreign Ministry/Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

When House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived late Tuesday night in Taiwan, its tallest building — iconic landmark Taipei 101 — lit up with words of welcome, blinking “Thank you” and “TW ♥ US”

While Pelosi’s visit delighted people in Taiwan, it enraged Beijing and set the region on edge over what China might do in retaliation. From the Philippines to Singapore, countries are worried about the status quo could turn from tension to conflict.

“What countries in this region know is that China cannot do nothing — it will look weak,” says Singaporean veteran diplomat and academic Kishore Mahbubani. “China has no choice but to react,” he says, adding, “at the same time, China doesn’t want to start World War III.”

China views Taiwan as a breakaway island that should be ruled by the mainland. The US follows an intentionally vague “One China” policy, which views Taiwan as an independent entity that should eventually be integrated into China.

Pelosi has long been a critic of China and an advocate for Taiwan’s democracy. She was the first House speaker to visit in 25 years, as US officials generally avoid any moves that could touch off a military conflict — China versus Taiwan, and possibly, the US

Southeast Asia especially feels the strain of living in the shadow of the US-China rivalry. “Governments will be very cautious” talking about cross-Taiwan Strait relations, “for fear of how China will react,” says Manila-based maritime expert Jay Batongbacal.

He says the region does not want to become “an arena of major power conflict,” and countries would not like to be seen as taking sides.

For that reason, governments in Southeast Asia have stuck to mild statements about the importance of the US and China avoiding “any miscalculation and further escalation of tensions,” as the Philippines Foreign Affairs Ministry put it. Indonesia has called on “all parties to refrain from provocative actions that may worsen the situation.”

China announced fresh live-fire drills in six locations near Taiwan within hours of Pelosi’s arrival on the self-governed island of 23 million. His military maneuvers have restricted air space and water routes around Taiwan, and an anxious region is watching.

Japan complained to Beijing that the area overlaps with its exclusive economic zone, while Taiwan called the move “a challenge to the international order.”

The live drills — more aggressive than usual exercises — should have been anticipated, according to Dewi Fortuna Anwar, an analyst at the Indonesian Institute of Sciences, a government research agency. She calls Pelosi’s trip “dangerously provocative” and says it came at a time when tensions were already high in the region.

Anwar says with Russia invading Ukraine, “We are all very nervous.” The prospect of China moving on Taiwan, replicating events in Europe, looms over Asia, she says.

Anwar says the Taiwan visit by such a high-ranking US official flouted the one-China policy that many countries adhere to when they conduct business with Taiwan, but refrain from sending their senior-most figures. “It’s a matter of face for China,” she says, and this “is spitting in their face.”

Anwar questions what the endgame is for the United States: “Does it want an open war with China over Taiwan?”

Because war is so “unthinkable,” says De La Salle University international studies professor Renato Cruz de Castro in Manila, regional governments don’t tend to game out the geostrategic significance of Taiwan. His own government focuses instead, he says, on more manageable issues like how to evacuate the 142,000 overseas Filipino workers from Taiwan in the event of armed conflict.

Across the South China Sea, Beijing is flexing its muscle, accused of intimidating fishers, interfering with other nations’ ships and occupying islands claimed by its smaller neighbors, including Vietnam and the Philippines.

Being “dragged into a US-China conflict over Taiwan is pretty high on the list of anxieties for most US allies and partners,” says Gregory Poling with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Pelosi’s visit, he says “will be seen as, at best, unnecessarily risky to most regional governments.”

That said, countries of the region “do not want the US to seem a paper tiger” — which he says would only embolden further “bullying” by China.

But Batongbacal believes Pelosi’s visit was neither reckless nor deserving of China’s threat of military action, which he called “excessive” and “disproportional.” Beijing, he says, is “hyping what should be a minor event.”

Pelosi provided China “an opportunity to instigate” a confrontation, he says, and China’s rhetoric sounded like “it was spoiling for a fight.”

That’s an outcome no one wants.

“There will be no winners in a military conflict,” Anwar says. “We are much too integrated now. If you disrupt trade in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea, the whole economy of Southeast Asia will be destroyed.”

President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order that his administration says will help low-income people pay for abortion services if they have to travel out of state to obtain them.

The order, according to administration officials, paves the way for Medicaid to cover abortion-related costs for people who have traveled from states where their abortion is banned to states where it is not.

But Biden and other officials on Wednesday provided few details about how the change would work — or a timeline for it to be implemented.

“Today, I’m signing the second executive order that responds to the health care crisis that has unfolded since the Supreme Court overturned Roe [v. Wade] and that women are facing all across America,” he said at a White House event.

It remained unclear how this change to Medicaid coverage would avoid legal run-ins with the Hyde Amendment, a federal law that prohibits federal government dollars from being spent on abortion except in cases of rape, incest and to save the pregnant person’s life.

Already, people covered by Medicaid have extremely limited abortion coverage in 34 states and the District of Columbia, while just 16 states use their own funds to aid abortion coverage under Medicaid.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Wednesday the order “will not violate the Hyde Amendment,” but she did not elaborate.

Biden’s order directs the secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS) to pursue these changes, and Jean-Pierre deferred specific questions about how the change would work to that agency.

Spokespeople for HHS did not provide additional details when asked by ABC News, and HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra did not mention the potential changes to Medicaid coverage when he spoke after Biden at Wednesday’s event, which was the first meeting of an interagency task force Biden launched in the wake of the Supreme Court reversing Roe in June.

The new directive allows Becerra to “invite states to apply for Medicaid waivers so that states where abortion is legal could provide services to people traveling from a state where abortion may be illegal to seek services in their state,” a senior administration official told reporters.

Technically, these states would apply through what’s known as a Medicaid 1115 waiver.

The official noted that when the White House looked into declaring a public health emergency for abortion and what that would allow the federal government to do, this change to Medicaid — an assistance program for low-income patients’ medical expenses — was one of the options. But the White House realized the president could also do that through an executive order.

The timeline for these changes remains unclear, though.

ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega pressed Jean-Pierre on Wednesday for more details on the implementation of the executive order for women who want to seek abortion care soon.

“Are we talking about days, are we talking about weeks, are we talking about six months?” Vega asked.

Jean-Pierre said the administration didn’t “have the details to share today but [HHS] will soon have more on what a waiver could look like and the timeline.”

Biden’s order also directs HHS to make sure “health care providers comply with federal non-discrimination laws so that women receive medically necessary care without delay,” according to the White House. That could include “providing technical assistance for health care providers who may be confused or unsure of their obligations in the aftermath of the Supreme Court decision [on Roe],” or providing other information and guidance to providers about their obligations and consequences of not complying with non-discrimination laws.

The order further instructs the HHS secretary to improve research and data collection on maternal health outcomes, according to the White House.

Speaking broadly on the state of reproductive rights, Biden on Wednesday reflected on the last few weeks, calling it a “critical moment where women’s health and lives are on the line amidst chaos and uncertainty unleashed by this decision.”

His executive order comes just one day after abortion rights activists secured a major win in Kansas, where voters on Tuesday overwhelmingly rejected removing the right to abortion from the state constitution.

Biden said the US Supreme Court “practically dared women in this country go to the ballot box and restore the right to choose that the Court just ripped away after 50 years.”

“The voters of Kansas sent a powerful signal that this fails the American people will vote to preserve and protect the right and refuse to let it be ripped away from politicians,” Biden said.