President Biden said Friday he has asked the Pentagon to conduct a thorough investigation into how a 21-year-old Air National Guardsman gained access to top secret documents, going months without being detected. Willie James Inman has the details.
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The Biden administration is proposing strict new automobile pollution limits that would require up to two-thirds of new vehicles sold in the U.S. to be electric by 2032, a nearly tenfold increase over current electric vehicle sales.
The proposed regulation, announced Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, would set tailpipe emissions limits for the 2027 through 2032 model years that are the strictest ever imposed — and call for far more new EV sales than the auto industry agreed to less than two years ago. While the stricter limits would mandate any changes, if enacted and followed, they would necessitate the production of more electric vehicles.
If finalized next year as expected, the plan would represent the strongest push yet toward a once almost unthinkable shift from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to battery-powered vehicles.
In a statement, EPA administrator Michael Regan called the new regulations the “the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks.”
A look at what the EPA is proposing, how the plan serves President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal to cut America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and whether the auto industry can meet the new EV targets:
Q. What is the EPA proposing?
A. The proposed tailpipe pollution limits don’t require a specific number of electric vehicles to be sold every year but instead mandate limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on how automakers comply, the EPA projects that at least 60% of new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. would be electric by 2030 and up to 67% by 2032.
For slightly larger, medium-duty trucks, the EPA projects 46% of new vehicle sales will be EVs in 2032.
A Rivian R1T electric vehicle (EV) pickup truck on the assembly line at the company’s manufacturing facility in Normal, Illinois, US., on Monday, April 11, 2022. Rivian Automotive Inc. produced 2,553 vehicles in the first quarter as the maker of plug-in trucks contended with a snarled supply chain and pandemic challenges. Photographer: Jamie Kelter Davis/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Bloomberg
EPA Administrator Michael Regan called the proposal “the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks,″ and he said it would reduce dangerous air and climate pollution and lower fuel and maintenance costs for families.
The agency will select from a range of options after a public comment period, Regan said. The rule is expected to become final next year.
Q. What is the auto industry saying about the proposed rules?
A. John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing Ford, General Motors and other automakers, called the EPA proposal “aggressive by any measure” and wrote in a statement that it exceeds the Biden administration’s 50% electric vehicle sales target for 2030 announced less than two years ago.
Reaching half was always a “stretch goal,” contingent on manufacturing incentives and tax credits to make EVs more affordable, he wrote.
“The question isn’t can this be done, it’s how fast can it be done,” Bozzella wrote. “How fast will depend almost exclusively on having the right policies and market conditions in place.”
General Motors said in a statement that it was reviewing the EPA proposal and called for other policies to be implemented that would help speed up investment and adoption of EV cars, like permitting reform and support for domestic investments in manufacturing, supply chain and charging infrastructure.”
European car maker Stellantis said officials were “surprised that none of the alternatives” proposed by EPA “align with the president’s previously announced target of 50% EVs by 2030.″
Q. How will the proposal benefit the environment?
A. The proposed standards for light-duty cars and trucks are projected to result in a 56% reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions compared with existing standards for model year 2026, the EPA said. The proposals would improve air quality for communities across the nation, avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions by 2055, more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions last year, the EPA said.
The plan also would save thousands of dollars over the lives of the vehicles sold and reduce U.S. reliance on approximately 20 billion barrels of oil imports, the agency said.
Q. Is the EPA proposal realistic?
A. With electric vehicles accounting for just 7.2% of U.S. vehicle sales in the first quarter of this year, the industry has a long way to go to even approach the Biden administration’s targets. However, the percentage of EV sales is growing. Last year it was 5.8% of new vehicles sales.
Many auto industry analysts say it will be difficult for automakers to meet the projected sales percentage. The consulting firm LMC Automotive, for instance, said new EV sales could reach 49% in 2032 but are unlikely to go above that, citing high prices for EVs compared with gas-powered cars.
A new poll released Tuesday shows that many Americans aren’t yet sold on going electric for their next cars, with high prices and too few charging stations the main deterrents. Only 19% of U.S. adults say it’s “very” or “extremely” likely they will purchase an EV the next time they buy a car, while 22% say it’s somewhat likely. About half, 47%, say they are unlikely to go electric, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.
White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said EV sales have tripled since Biden took office and the number of available EV models has doubled. Analysts have repeatedly revised their forecasts upward since Biden, a Democrat, took office, and the industry announced over $100 billion in EV investments, Zaidi told reporters Tuesday.
“The automakers have … technology and the infrastructure and supply chain to be able to achieve this with the lead time they’ve got,″ Zaidi said.
Q. Why is the tailpipe rule so important?
A. Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., accounting for about 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2020, according to the EPA. Electric power generates the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions at 25%.
Environmental groups say stricter tailpipe pollution standards are needed to clean the air we breathe and slow the impacts of severe weather events such as hurricanes, tornados and wildfires.
“Done right, these (new rules) will put the U.S. on the path to end pollution from vehicle tailpipes — while also slashing our dependence on oil, creating good domestic jobs and saving consumers money on fuel,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council.
Margo Oge, former head of EPA’s Office of Transportation and Air Quality, called the tailpipe rules “the single most important regulatory initiative by the Biden administration to combat climate change and to really reduce the worst outcomes of climate change.”
Q. What else is the Biden administration doing to promote EVs?
A. Besides stricter pollution rules, tax credits for EV manufacturing and purchases included in the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act passed last year will help reach the tougher requirements, the White House and its allies said.
At present, many new EVs manufactured in North America are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit, while used EVs can get up to $4,000. However, there are price and purchaser income limits that make some vehicles ineligible. And starting April 18, new requirements by the Treasury Department will result in fewer new electric vehicles qualifying for a full $7,500 federal tax credit.
A smaller credit may not be enough to attract new buyers for EVs that now cost an average of $58,600 according to Kelley Blue Book.
Data released Wednesday shows the Consumer Price iIdex rose 0.1% in the month of March, beating estimates from Dow Jones. Barron’s economics and politics senior writer Megan Cassella joined CBS News’ Omar Villafranca to discuss the latest inflation data and what it could mean ahead of the Federal Reserve meeting in May.
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The Biden administration is considering possible rules on artificial intelligence. The Commerce Department is allowing the public to weigh in with suggestions on policymaking for the next 60 days. Washington Post technology policy reporter Cat Zakrzewski joins CBS News’ “Prime Time” to discuss what these policies could mean.
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The Biden administration has proposed a rule that would prevent schools and colleges from enacting outright bans on transgender athletes. If approved, the proposed rule would fall under Title IX. Ed O’Keefe has more.
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Lawyers for Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich visited him for the first time since his arrest in Russia. David Whelan, the brother of Paul Whelan, who is serving a 16-year prison sentence in Russia, joins CBS News to discuss.
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When President Biden earlier this month released his budget for the next fiscal year, his priorities included raising trillions of dollars in taxes to help reduce the federal deficit by almost $3 trillion over the next decade.
Now, the Tax Policy Center has analyzed the budget and estimated the impact on U.S. taxpayers based on their income. Some lower-income Americans could end up benefiting, while the wealthiest households could see a significant increase their tax burden, the think tank said.
To be sure, Mr. Biden’s budget isn’t set in stone — instead, it reflects a starting point for negotiations with lawmakers, who ultimately craft and pass spending bills and new tax laws. But the White House’s push to raise taxes on the wealthy reflects a push to place a higher burden on the richest Americans in order to increase funding for education, housing and health care, among other priorities.
“As Biden has made clear since his 2020 campaign, he wants to raise taxes substantially on high-income households and corporations and provide modest tax cuts to low- and moderate-income households,” wrote Tax Policy Center senior fellow Howard Gleckman in a blog post. “And, like it or not, that’s what his budget does.”
Many middle-class families would effectively see no changes in their after-tax income under Biden’s proposed budget, according to the analysis.
The biggest lever hiking taxes on high-income households is tied to the Biden administration’s proposal to boost the highest rate on capital gains taxes from 20% to 39.6%, the Tax Policy Center noted.
The proposed budget also includes a 20% minimum tax on people with more than $100 million in wealth, but the Tax Policy Center notes that would affect only about 20,000 U.S. households. Still, the impact “would be substantial,” it noted.
Lower-income households would see a benefit from a proposed expansion of the Child Tax Credit and the Earned Income Tax Credit, the group noted.
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WILMINGTON, Del. (AP) — President Joe Biden’s choice to run the Federal Aviation Administration has withdrawn his nomination, a setback for the administration that comes after Denver International Airport CEO Phillip Washington failed to gain enough support in the closely divided Senate.
Washington’s withdrawal was confirmed Saturday night by a person familiar with the situation who insisted on anonymity to discuss the matter. The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Republicans were united in opposition to Washington, calling him unqualified because of limited aviation experience. Democrats and allied independents still might have pushed the nomination through, but key senators on their side balked at supporting Biden’s pick.
Washington’s fate appeared settled when Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., abruptly called off a scheduled vote last Wednesday — a sign that she lacked enough votes to move the nomination out of committee. She said some senators wanted more information about Washington.
FILE – Phillip Washington, the nominee to become administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration, testifies before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee at the Capitol in Washington, March 1, 2023.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, who was a Democrat until switching to independent in December, and moderate Democrat Jon Tester of Montana declined to say how they would have voted. Before the White House announces a new nominee, it likely will want assurances of support from Sinema, Tester and other moderates.
The FAA has lacked a Senate-confirmed administrator since March 2022. The agency is trying to reassure Americans that air travel is safe despite a surge in close calls between planes this year. It is also struggling with aging technology that failed in January, briefly canceling all takeoffs around the country. And it is still trying to repair its reputation after approving Boeing planes that crashed in 2018 and 2019.
Washington ran transit agencies in Denver and Los Angeles, but his only aviation-related experience is serving as CEO of the Denver airport for less than two years. He has strong ties to the administration, however — he led Biden’s 2020 transition team for the Transportation Department, which includes the FAA.
Biden nominated Washington last July, but he didn’t get a committee hearing for eight months. Republicans attacked his resume and seized on disclosures that his name appeared in search warrants related to a corruption investigation in Los Angeles.
Washington said he did nothing wrong and had not been contacted by law enforcement. The agency is being led by an acting administrator, Billy Nolen, a pilot who has held safety jobs at three airlines and the FAA. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who led opposition to Washington, said Nolen could win bipartisan support.
Three-quarters of Americans have at least some confidence in their own banks, which is more than they have in banks and financial institutions writ large.
Inflation remains the No. 1 reason people continue to say the economy is bad, and that far outweighs recent issues with U.S. banks and the stock market, in the public mind.
That’s partly because as many people ascribe recent problems with banks to decisions made by those banks themselves as to any systemic issues with the banking sector.
Plus, most people simply aren’t paying very close attention to the recent turmoil — not nearly as much as during the 2008 financial crisis — which is perhaps a function of its not having spread as far.
The Biden administration, for its part, gets narrowly positive marks for handling those bank issues well, at 51%. But people do see disparities as events unfold: there’s a widely held view that government helps the wealthy more than the middle class when things do go wrong.
That said, there is plenty of uncertainty about the future, and people see significant disparities in those whose interests the government protects in the event of trouble.
Americans overwhelmingly think the government looks after the wealthy and large investors in banking issues, much more than the middle class, poor people and small investors.
Confidence in the system is connected to perceptions of who gets help. Those who think the government tries to protect the wealthy or large investors a lot tend to be less confident in the banking system than those who think it tries to protect the middle class.
Perhaps following from that, there isn’t a lot of confidence in the institutions and actors involved in managing the banking system — not in the Treasury, Federal Reserve, or the White House, and especially not in Congress.
That stands apart from who they think the government should help.
Most say no U.S. banks should be considered too big to fail, and that a bank’s customers, individuals, and businesses ought to be helped more than its stockholders and management.
And on a practical level, large majorities think loans are going to become harder to obtain.
The Biden administration, as a whole, gets higher marks for handling things well than the president does in his personal approval rating on this issue.
But for his part, Joe Biden does get higher approval on these banking issues than on other areas, including on inflation, specifically. And his overall approval rating stays where it was last month.
Views of the national economy continue to be negative, but not much worse than last month.
This CBS News/YouGov survey was conducted with a nationally representative sample of 2,117 U.S. adult residents interviewed between March 20-22, 2023. The sample was weighted according to gender, age, race, and education based on the U.S. Census American Community Survey and Current Population Survey, as well as the 2020 presidential vote. The margin of error is ±3.2 points.
Anthony Salvanto, Ph.D., is CBS News’ director of elections and surveys. He oversees all polling across the nation, states and congressional races, and heads the CBS News Decision Desk that estimates outcomes on election nights. He is the author of “Where Did You Get This Number: A Pollster’s Guide to Making Sense of the World,” from Simon & Schuster (a division of ViacomCBS), and appears regularly across all CBS News platforms. His scholarly research and writings cover topics on polling methodology, voting behavior, and sampling techniques.
The Biden administration wants TikTok’s Chinese parent company to divest itself of the popular social media platform, or it could face a possible nationwide ban, TikTok confirmed to CBS News on Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. (CFIUS) recently made the divestment ask, and a TikTok spokesperson did not dispute that account.
The Treasury Department, of which CFIUS is a part, declined to comment. The White House and National Security Council also declined to comment.
“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan told CBS News in a statement.
“The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing,” Shanahan added.
A spokesperson for TikTok also said that it was not exactly clear what divestment would actually look like, and that concrete details on this were not provided to the company. It was not clear if the company was given any sort of deadline.
TikTok, which is owned by the Beijing-based ByteDance, has already been banned on federal government devices, including military devices, and more than half of U.S. states have banned the app on state government devices as well. There has been increasing bipartisan support for a full nationwide ban over possible national security concerns.
“TikTok is a modern-day Trojan horse of the [Chinese Communist Party], used to surveil and exploit Americans’ personal information,” Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas, the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said in February. “It’s a spy balloon in your phone.”
In a letter to the CEOs of Apple and Google, Democratic Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, wrote in February, “Unlike most social media platforms, TikTok poses a unique concern because Chinese law obligates ByteDance, its Beijing-based parent company, to ‘support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work.’”
As CBS News has previously reported, TikTok, like many other tech companies, tracks users’ personal information, including phone numbers, email addresses, contacts and WiFi networks.
“We do have national security concerns,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said last year. “They include the possibility that the Chinese government could use it to control data collection on millions of users.”
Michael Beckerman, TikTok’s head of public policy for the Americas, told CBS News in December that the concern is overstated and “makes for good politics.” He said TikTok collects less data than other social media apps and is working to move user data to servers in the U.S., out of reach of China.
TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee later this month, and he is expected to face tough questioning over the company’s data collection and sharing procedures.
— Caitlin Yilek, Scott MacFarlane and Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.
Government agencies have 30 days to delete TikTok from federal devices and systems, a White House official said Monday.
The directive from the Biden administration comes after the popular video app was banned by Congress on federal government devices in December, amid growing national security concerns that TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance could give access to user data to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
National security experts also fear that the CCP could use the app to spread misinformation and disinformation or manipulate the algorithm to control what users in the U.S. see.
Reuters first reported the White House deadline for agencies on Monday.
Earlier this month, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said the Chinese government requires companies doing business there to turn over the keys to their data.
“The data obtained today could be used in new and frightening ways tomorrow,” she predicted, during an address at a British think tank. “I don’t use TikTok and I would not advise anybody to do so,” she added later.
Some lawmakers would go further than banning TikTok on federal government devices and have encouraged a ban the app on all devices nationwide.
China blasted the ban on Tuesday. “We firmly oppose the wrong practice of the United States to generalize the concept of national security, abuse state power, and unreasonably suppress firms from other countries,” Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said at a regular news briefing, according to Agence France-Presse.
TikTok’s CEO Shou Zi Chew is set to testify before the House Energy and Commerce Committee in March about the platform’s relationship with the CCP, its consumer privacy and data security practices, and its impact on kids, the committee announced in January.
U.S. intelligence believes China may be considering sending lethal aid to Russia in its war with Ukraine. While there is no indication Beijing has decided to send the aid, the U.S. is warning China not to assist Russia in its war effort. Skyler Henry has more.
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Author Chris Whipple joins Major Garrett for this week’s episode of “The Takeout” to discuss his new book, “The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House,” and to explore the successes and failures of the Biden administration’s first two years.
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The Biden administration moved Friday to require patients see a doctor in person before getting attention deficit disorder medication or addictive painkillers, toughening access to the drugs against the backdrop of a deepening opioid crisis.
The proposal could overhaul the way millions of Americans get some prescriptions after three years of relying on telehealth for doctor’s appointments by computer or phone during the pandemic.
The Drug Enforcement Administration said late Friday it plans to reinstate once longstanding federal requirements for powerful drugs that were waived once COVID-19 hit, enabling doctors to write millions of prescriptions for drugs such as OxyContin or Adderall without ever meeting patients in person.
Patients will need to see a doctor in person at least once to get an initial prescription for drugs that the federal government says have the the most potential to be abused — Vicodin, OxyContin, Adderall and Ritalin, for example. Refills could be prescribed over telehealth appointments.
The agency will also clamp down on how doctors can prescribe other, less addictive drugs to patients they’ve never physically met. Substances like codeine, taken to alleviate pain or coughing, Xanax, used to treat anxiety, Ambien, a sleep aid, and buprenorphine, a narcotic used to treat opioid addiction, can be prescribed over telehealth for an initial 30-day dose. Patients would need to see a doctor at least once in person to get a refill.
Patients will need to see a doctor in person at least once to get an initial prescription for drugs that the federal government says have the the most potential to be abused.
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Patients will still be able to get common prescriptions like antibiotics, skin creams, birth control and insulin prescribed through telehealth visits.
The new rule seeks to keep expanded access to telehealth that’s important for patients like those in rural areas while also balancing safety, an approach DEA Administrator Anne Milgram referred to as “expansion of telemedicine with guardrails.”
The ease with each Americans have accessed certain medications during the pandemic has helped many get needed treatment, but concerns have also mounted that some companies may take advantage of the lax rules and be overprescribing medications to people who don’t need them, said David Herzberg, a historian of drugs at the University of Buffalo.
“Both sides of this tension have really good points,” said Herzberg. “You don’t want barriers in the way of getting people prescriptions they need. But anytime you remove those barriers it’s also an opportunity for profit seekers to exploit the lax rules and sell the medicines to people who may not need them.”
U.S. overdose deaths hit a record in 2021, about three-quarters of those from opioids during a crisis that was first spun into the making by drug makers, pharmacies and doctors that pushed the drugs to patients decades ago. But the grim toll from synthetic opioids like fentanyl far outstripped deaths related to prescription drugs that year, according to Centers for Disease Control Data. Fentanyl is increasingly appearing on the illicit market, pressed into fake prescription pills or mixed into other drugs.
The proposed rules deliver a major blow to a booming telehealth industry, with tech startups launching in recent years to treat and prescribe medications for mental health or attention deficit disorders. The industry has largely benefitted from the reprieve on in-person visits for drugs brought on by the pandemic, although some national retailers stopped filling drug orders generated by some telehealth apps over the last year.
The DEA has grown increasingly concerned over the last two years that some of those startup telehealth companies are improperly prescribing addictive substances like opioids or attention deficit disorder medication, putting patients in danger, a DEA official told The Associated Press on Friday.
The official said the agency plans to have the new rule in place before the COVID-19 public health emergency expires on May 11, which will effectively end the loosened rules. That could mean people who may seeking treatment from a doctor who is hundreds of miles away need to start developing plans for in-person visits with their doctors now, pointed out Boston-based attorney Jeremy Sherer, who represents telehealth companies. Patients will have six months to visit their doctor in person when the regulation is enacted.
“Providers and their patients need to know what that treatment is going to look like moving forward and whether, once the public health emergency ends in May, if they’re going to need to figure out a way to have a visit in person before continuing treatment, and that can be a real challenge,” he said.
Many states have already moved to restore limitations for telehealth care across state lines. By October, nearly 40 states and Washington, D.C., had ended emergency declarations that made it easier for doctors to see patients in other states.
Jill Biden is making her first trip to Africa as first lady and will visit Namibia and Kenya. Cameron Hudson. senior associate of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, joined CBS News’ Vladimir Duthiers and Anne-Marie Green to discuss what the trip means for the Biden administration and what the U.S. can do to strengthen relations in the region.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration said Tuesday that it will generally deny asylum to migrants who show up at the U.S. southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through, mirroring an attempt by the Trump administration that never took effect because it was blocked in court.
The measure, while stopping short of a total ban, imposes severe limitations on asylum for any nationality except Mexicans, who don’t have to travel through a third country to reach the U.S.
The measure is almost certain to face legal challenges. President Donald Trumppursued a similar ban in 2019 but a federal appeals court prevented it from taking effect.
The Biden administration rule proposed Tuesday has to first go through a 30-day public comment period before it can be formally adopted. If adopted it would remain in place for two years.
Administration officials expect the rule will take effect when a pandemic-era rule that denies asylum on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19 ends. That rule, known as Title 42 authority, is set to expire May 11 but has been delayed twice by legal challenges from Republican-led states.
The Homeland Security and Justice Departments argued that surging numbers of migrants left them little choice. They anticipate illegal crossings to climb to between 11,000 and 13,000 a day if no action is taken after Title 42 ends; that’s even higher than the 8,600 daily crossings in mid-December as anticipation spread among migrants and smugglers that Title 42 was about to end. At the last minute the Supreme Court kept it in place.
Migrants wait to be processed after crossing the border on Jan. 6, 2023, near Yuma, Ariz. The Biden administration says it will generally deny asylum to migrants who show up at the U.S. southern border without first seeking protection in a country they passed through.
AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File
The proposed rule establishes “a rebuttable presumption of asylum ineligibility” for anyone who passes through another country to reach the U.S. border with Mexico without first seeking protection there, according to a notice in the Federal Register. Exceptions will be made for people with an “acute medical emergency,” “imminent and extreme threat” of violent crimes such as murder, rape or kidnapping, being a victim of human trafficking or “other extremely compelling circumstances.” Children traveling alone will also be exempted, according to the rule.
The rule largely calls on prospective migrants to follow legal pathways to apply for asylum such as using the CBP One app, through which prospective migrants can schedule an appointment to apply to appear at a border entry point to apply for asylum. The administration portrayed these efforts as a way to protect migrants from the dangerous journeys as they travel north to the U.S. and allow the U.S. border entry points to manage the migrant flows in a “safe and efficient manner.” But critics have said the app has been beset by technical problems and its not clear how many appointments are available every day.
U.S. officials insist the measure proposed Tuesday is different from Trump’s, largely because there is room for exemptions and because the Biden administration has made other legal pathways available, particularly humanitarian parole for Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans and Ukrainians.
“We are a nation of immigrants, and we are a nation of laws. We are strengthening the availability of legal, orderly pathways for migrants to come to the United States, at the same time proposing new consequences on those who fail to use processes made available to them by the United States and its regional partners,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas.
The rule was first mentioned in early January as part of a wider announcement by the administration to let in 30,000 migrants a month from four countries — Haiti, Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua — provided they apply to come to the U.S. and don’t just arrive at the border. In the ensuing weeks, the administration said migrant encounters from those countries plummeted, and they’ve hailed it as a model for dealing with immigration.
But immigration advocates have criticized attempts to limit asylum applications at the southern border, saying some migrants can’t wait in their home country and noting that other countries don’t have the same asylum protections as the U.S.
Four Democratic senators — Bob Menendez and Cory Booker of New Jersey, Ben Ray Lujan of New Mexico and Alex Padilla of California — said they were “deeply disappointed” the administration was moving forward with the rule and urged it to reconsider.
“We have an obligation to protect vulnerable migrants under domestic and international law and should not leave vulnerable migrants stranded in countries unable to protect them,” the senators’ statement read.
Anu Joshi of the American Civil Liberties Union, which litigated many of the challenges to Trump’s immigration restrictions, sharply criticized the rule, saying it was simply revisiting Trump’s asylum ban.
The new rule comes as President Joe Biden is facing a Republican-controlled House determined to make immigration a key issue as they attempt to portray the southern border as out of control.
For asylum seekers traveling north through Central America and Mexico to the U.S. border, Costa Rica and Mexico have the most robust asylum systems. Both countries, however, have been overwhelmed by the surging number of asylum applications in recent years.
Costa Rica, a country of only 5 million residents, trailed only the United States, Germany and Mexico in the number of asylum applications it received in 2021. In December, President Rodrigo Chaves decreed changes to the asylum system, alleging that it was being abused by economic migrants.
Most of those seeking asylum in Costa Rica in recent years are Nicaraguans fleeing repression in that country. In 2012, Costa Rica received barely 900 asylum applications. Last year, the total was around 80,000.
That has created a tremendous backlog and lengthened the process, something that led more Nicaraguans to look north to the United States last year.
Mexico has been facing increased asylum applications for years and last year received 118,478, mostly from Honduras, Cuba, Haiti and Venezuela. Many migrants had used the asylum system to legally cross Mexico while in process and then to try to enter the U.S.
Other countries along the migrant route north have very limited capacity for receiving asylum seekers.
Spagat reported from San Diego. Associated Press writer Christopher Sherman in Mexico City contributed.
Searches for two of the unidentified objects which were recently shot down by the U.S. military — over Alaska and the Great Lakes region — have been concluded with no sign of debris from either, federal officials announced Friday.
U.S. Northern Command and North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORTHCOM/NORAD) said in a statement that “no debris from airborne objects” was found following multiday “systematic searches” involving “airborne imagery and sensors, surface sensors and inspections, and subsurface scans.”
The two objects were shot down by the U.S. military near Deadhorse, Alaska, on Feb. 10, and over Lake Huron on Feb. 12. Multiple federal and Canadian agencies were involved in both searches.
On Feb. 11, the U.S. military also shot down an unidentified object over the Yukon in Canada. The search for that object appears to be ongoing.
This comes after a Chinese spy balloon — part of a larger Chinese surveillance program, according to the Pentagon — was shot down Feb. 4 off the coast of South Carolina after traveling across the U.S. mainland. That recovery operation ended successfully Thursday, with the U.S. Navy retrieving that debris, which will be transported to an FBI laboratory in Virginia for examination, NORTHCOM/NORAD said.
Speaking Thursday, however, President Biden said the three unidentified objects were not believed to be connected to China’s spy balloon program. Although, Mr. Biden admitted that officials don’t know what they were.
“Nothing right now suggests they were related to China’s spy balloon program or that they were surveillance vehicles from … any other country,” Mr. Biden said. “The intelligence community’s current assessment is that these three objects were mostly balloons tied to private companies, recreation or research institutions studying weather or conducting other scientific research.”
— Kathryn Watson contributed to this report.
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Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, joins “CBS Mornings” to discuss the latest on the Chinese spy balloon and gun violence in America.
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The White House said Thursday the administration will “reevaluate and assess” how the Department of Defense rectifies the less than honorable discharges many LGBTQ veterans received when they were kicked out of the service before and during “don’t ask, don’t tell.” That comes after an investigation by CBS News found many of those kicked out for their sexual orientation are still struggling to get their honorable discharge status.
“It’s concerning, it is very concerning that veterans who were unfairly discharged under the don’t ask, don’t tell have been facing these challenges to upgrade their discharges, denying them benefits they have earned,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Thursday. “It’s something that we definitely are going to look into.”
During the 18 years when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was the law of the land, an estimated 14,000 service members were forced out of the U.S. military, in some cases with discharges that deprived them access to full benefits including VA loan programs, college tuition assistance, health care and some federal jobs.
The discriminatory policy was born of a compromise by President Bill Clinton to allow gay, lesbian and bisexual military personnel to remain in the armed forces as long as they remained closeted. The controversial law was repealed in 2011 under President Barack Obama.
Donnie Ray Allen, a Marine veteran, and Amy Lambre, who served in the Navy, both say the early years of “don’t ask, don’t tell” brought a fresh wave of homophobia to the military. They were both dismissed from duty with less than honorable discharges and say they’ve spent years suffering from the emotional fallout.
“I’m ‘less than’ … less than honorable,” Lambre said, explaining how this discharge changed her sense of self. “It’s a dark place.”
There are official channels that would open doors for those veterans who were less than honorably dismissed, that would give them access to benefits they would have otherwise been entitled to. But servicemembers told CBS News that many of those who qualify have been reluctant to seek an upgrade because they believe it’s difficult to access.
“The Department has conducted several outreach campaigns to inform all Veterans who believe they have suffered an error or injustice to seek correction to their military records,” the Department of Defense told CBS News. “This effort included an individualized letter campaign during the 5th anniversary of the repeal of DADT policy to those who may have been personally impacted.”
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat who serves on the Veterans Affairs Committee, called for a review of the upgrade process after the CBS News report.
“The discharge upgrade system needs to be reviewed because right now, the burden is totally on the veteran who may be completely uninformed about what their rights are,” Blumenthal said.
Lambre says she first started the process in 2013 without success. “It just got stalled and I didn’t feel like there was any hope for anything,” she said.
The Navy said it would not comment on Lambre’s case due to privacy.
Two weeks ago, Allen learned his discharge upgrade had come through, giving him access to benefits he previously couldn’t access like VA loans and tuition assistance.
“It’s an absolute 100% game-changer. Things that I never thought that I could do or get or have or attain now are attainable,” Allen said after receiving the news.
Jim Axelrod is the chief investigative correspondent and senior national correspondent for CBS News, reporting for “CBS This Morning,” “CBS Evening News,” “CBS Sunday Morning” and other CBS News broadcasts.
