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Tag: international-us politics

  • Exclusive: Philippine defense secretary vows to stand up to ‘bully’ China | CNN

    Exclusive: Philippine defense secretary vows to stand up to ‘bully’ China | CNN

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    Manila, Philippines
    CNN
     — 

    China is behaving like a schoolyard bully toward smaller countries, the Philippine defense secretary told CNN Friday during an exclusive interview in which he warned his nation, and the wider world, had to stand up to Beijing’s territorial expansion in the South China Sea.

    “I cannot think of any clearer case of bullying than this,” said Philippine Secretary of National Defense Gilberto Teodoro Jr. “It’s not the question of stealing your lunch money, but it’s really a question of stealing your lunch bag, your chair and even enrollment in school.”

    His comments follow increasingly assertive moves by the Philippines to protect its claim to shoals in the South China Sea during more than a month of high-stakes maritime drama.

    While tensions between China and the Philippines over the highly-contested and strategic waterway have festered for years, confrontations have spiked this summer, renewing regional fears that a mistake or miscalculation at sea could trigger a wider conflict, including with the United States.

    The region is widely seen as a potential flashpoint for global conflagration and the recent confrontations have raised concerns among Western observers of potentially developing into an international incident if China, a global power, decides to act more forcefully against the Philippines, a US treaty ally.

    Recent incidents have involved stand offs between China’s coast guard, what Manila says are shadowy Chinese “maritime militia” boats and tiny wooden Philippine fishing vessels, Chinese water cannons blocking the resupply of a shipwrecked Philippine military outpost, and a lone Filipino diver cutting through a floating Chinese barrier.

    Teodoro characterized the Philippines’ refusal to back down in the waters within its 200 nautical-mile exclusive economic zone as a fight for the very existence of the Philippines.

    “We’re fighting for our fisherfolk, we’re fighting for our resources. We’re fighting for our integrity as an archipelagic state… Our existence as the Republic of the Philippines is vital to this fight,” Teodoro said in a sit down interview at the Department of National Defense in Manila. “It’s not for us, it’s for the future generations too.”

    Video purportedly shows Chinese ship firing water cannon at Filipino vessel in disputed waters

    “And if we don’t stop, China is going to creep and creep into what is within our sovereign jurisdiction, our sovereign rights and within our territory,” he said, adding that Beijing wont stop until it controls “the whole South China Sea.”

    Beijing says it is safeguarding its sovereignty and maritime interests in the South China Sea and warned the Philippines this week “not to make provocations or seek troubles.” It accused Philippine fishing and coast guard vessels of illegal entry into the area.

    China claims “indisputable sovereignty” over almost all 1.3 million square miles of the South China Sea, and most of the islands and sandbars within it, including many features that are hundreds of miles from mainland China. Along with the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam, Brunei and Taiwan also hold competing claims.

    Over the past two decades China has occupied a number of reefs and atolls across the South China Sea, building up military installations, including runways and ports, which the Philippines says challenges its sovereignty and fishing rights as well as endangering marine biodiversity in the resource-rich waterway.

    In 2016, an international tribunal in The Hague ruled in favor of the Philippines in a landmark maritime dispute, which concluded that China has no legal basis to claim historic rights to the bulk of the South China Sea.

    But Beijing has ignored the decision and continues to expand its presence in the waterway.

    Philippine Coast Guard removes Chinese floating barrier in disputed area of the South China Sea.

    Video released of diver cutting China’s floating sea barrier

    In his first sit-down TV interview with an international news outlet since he took the position in June, Teodoro was keen to stress whatever happens in the South China Sea impacts the globe.

    Crucially, the waterway is vital to international trade with trillions of dollars in global shipping passing through it each year. It’s also home to vast fertile fishing grounds upon which many lives and livelihoods depend, and beneath the waves lie huge reserves of natural gas and oil that competing claimants are vying for.

    With nations already suffering from inflation brought about by Russia’s war in Ukraine, there are concerns that any slow-down in travel and transporting of goods in the South China Sea would result in significant impact to the global economy.

    “It will choke one of the most vital supply chain waterways in the whole world, it will choke international trade, and it will subject the world economy, particularly in supply chains to their whim,” Teodoro said, adding that if this were to happen, “the whole world will react.”

    The defense secretary warned that smaller nations, including regional partners, rely on international law for their survival.

    “Though they need China, they need Russia, they see that they too may become a victim of bullying. If they (China) close off the South China Sea, perhaps the next target may be the Straits of Malacca and then the Indian Ocean,” Teodoro said.

    This photo taken on February 14, 2020 shows a Filipino fisherman sailing off at sunset from the coast of Bacnotan, La Union province, in northwestern Philippines facing the South China Sea. (Photo by Romeo GACAD / AFP) (Photo by ROMEO GACAD/AFP via Getty Images)

    Why it matters who owns the seas (April 2021)

    Only a few years ago the Philippines was treading a much more cautious path with its huge neighbor China.

    But since taking office last year, Philippine President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr has taken a stronger stance over the South China Sea than his predecessor Rodrigo Duterte.

    Marcos has also strengthened US relations that had frayed under Duterte, with the two allies touting increased cooperation and joint patrols in the South China Sea in the future.

    In April, the Philippines identified the locations of four new military bases the US will gain access to, as part of an expanded defense agreement analysts say is aimed at combating China.

    Washington has condemned Beijing’s recent actions in the contested sea and threatened to intervene under its mutual defense treaty obligations if Philippine vessels came under armed attack there.

    US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Lindsey Ford reiterated Washington’s commitment to the mutual defense treaty in testimony before a US House subcommittee on Tuesday.

    She said the treaty covers not only the Philippine armed forces, but also its coast guard and civilian vessels and aircraft.

    “We have said repeatedly and continue to say that we stand by those commitments absolutely,” Ford said.

    A Philippine supply boat, center, maneuvers around Chinese coast guard ships as they tried to block its way near Second Thomas Shoal, locally known as Ayungin Shoal, at the disputed South China Sea on August 22.

    Defense secretary Teodoro has concerns about a possible escalation “because of the dangerous and reckless maneuvering of Chinese vessels” but he was clear that any incident – accidental or otherwise – the blame would lie with China “squarely on their shoulders.”

    And he called global powers to help pressure Beijing over its moves in the South China Sea.

    “Peace and stability in that one place in the world will generate some relief and comfort to everyone,” he said.

    As part of the Marcos administration’s commitment to boost the Philippines defense and monitoring capabilities in the South China Sea, Teodoro said further “air and naval assets” have been ordered.

    “There will be more patrol craft coming in, more rotary aircraft and we are studying the possibility to acquiring multi-role fighters,” he said, adding that would “make a difference in our air defense capabilities.”

    Preferring cooler heads to prevail, Teodoro said that diplomacy would provide a way forward providing Chinese leader Xi Jinping complies with international law.

    “Filipinos I believe are always willing to talk, just as long that talk does not mean whispers in a back room, or shouting at each other, meaning to say there must be substantial talks, open, transparent and on a rules-based basis,” he said, while also adding that talks cannot be used as a delaying tactic by Beijing.

    The Philippines, he said, has “no choice” but to stand up to China because otherwise “we lose our identity and integrity as a nation.”

    But conflict, he added, was not the answer or desired outcome.

    “Standing up doesn’t mean really going to war with China, heavens no. We don’t want that. But we have to stand our ground when our ground is intruded into.”

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  • Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

    Takeaways from President Biden’s first impeachment hearing by House Oversight panel | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Republicans kicked off their first impeachment inquiry hearing Thursday laying out the allegations they will pursue against President Joe Biden, though their expert witnesses acknowledged Republicans don’t yet have the evidence to prove the accusation they’re leveling.

    Thursday’s hearing in the House Oversight Committee didn’t include witnesses who could speak directly to Hunter Biden’s foreign business dealing at the center of the inquiry, but the hearing offered Republicans the chance to show some of the evidence they’ve uncovered to date.

    None of that evidence has shown Joe Biden received any financial benefit from his son’s business dealings, but Republicans said at Thursday’s hearing what they’ve found so far has given them the justification to launch their impeachment inquiry.

    Democrats responded by accusing Republicans of doing Donald Trump’s bidding and raising his and his family’s various foreign dealings themselves, as well as Trump’s attempts to get Ukraine to investigate in 2019 the same allegations now being raised in the impeachment inquiry.

    Here’s takeaways from Thursday’s first impeachment inquiry hearing:

    While Republicans leveled accusations of corruption against Joe Biden over his son’s business dealings, the GOP expert witnesses who testified Thursday were not ready to go that far.

    Forensic accountant Bruce Dubinsky, one of the GOP witnesses, undercut Republicans’ main narrative by saying there wasn’t enough evidence yet for him to conclude that there was “corruption” by the Bidens.

    “I am not here today to even suggest that there was corruption, fraud or wrongdoing,” Dubinsky said. “More information needs to be gathered before I can make such an assessment.”

    He said there was a “smokescreen” surrounding Hunter Biden’s finances, including complex overseas shell companies, which he said raise questions for a fraud expert about possible “illicit” activities.

    Conservative law professor Jonathan Turley also said that the House does not yet have evidence to support articles of impeachment against Joe Biden, but argued that House Republicans were justified in opening an impeachment inquiry.

    “I want to emphasize what it is that we’re here today for. This is a question of an impeachment inquiry. It is not a vote on articles of impeachment,” Turley said. “In fact, I do not believe that the current evidence would support articles of impeachment. That is something that an inquiry has to establish. But I also do believe that the House has passed the threshold for an impeachment inquiry into the conduct of President Biden.”

    Turley said that Biden’s false statements about his knowledge of Hunter Biden’s business endeavors, as well as the unproven allegations that Biden may have benefited from his son’s business deals, were reason for the House to move forward with the impeachment inquiry. (CNN has previously reported that Joe Biden’s unequivocal denials of any business-related contact with his son have been undercut over time, including by evidence uncovered by House Republicans.)

    Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor, has repeatedly backed up Republican arguments on key legal matters in recent years, including his opposition to Trump’s first and second impeachments.

    Rep. Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, pushed Turley further on his comments, asking whether he would vote “no” today on impeachment.

    “On this evidence, certainly,” Turley said. “At the moment, these are allegations. There is some credible evidence there that is the basis of the allegations.”

    Witnesses are sworn in before the House Oversight Committee on September 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC.

    House Republicans opened their first impeachment hearing Thursday with a series of lofty claims against the president, as they try to connect him to his son’s “corrupt” business dealings overseas.

    House Oversight Chairman Rep. James Comer claimed the GOP probes have “uncovered a mountain of evidence revealing how Joe Biden abused his public office for his family’s financial gain,” even though he hasn’t put forward any concrete evidence backing up that massive allegation.

    Two other Republican committee chairs further pressed their case, including by citing some of the newly released Internal Revenue Service documents, which two IRS whistleblowers claim show how the Justice Department intervened in the Hunter Biden criminal probe to protect the Biden family. However, many of their examples of alleged wrongdoing occurred during the Trump administration before Joe Biden took office.

    Ahead of the hearing, the Republican chairs released a formal framework laying out the scope of their probe, saying it “will span the time of Joe Biden’s Vice Presidency to the present, including his time out of office.”

    The document outlines specific lines of inquiry, including whether Biden engaged in “corruption, bribery, and influence peddling” – none of which Republicans have proved yet.

    The memo included four questions the Republicans are seeking to answer related to whether Biden took any action related to payments his family received or if the president obstructed the investigations into Hunter Biden.

    House Oversight Committee ranking Democratic member Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks on Capitol Hill in Washington, DC, on September 28, 2023.

    At the close of the hearing Thursday, Comer announced that he was issuing subpoenas for the bank records of the president’s son, Hunter Biden, and brother, James Biden.

    The subpoenas will be for Hunter and James Biden’s personal and business bank records, a source familiar with the subpoenas confirmed.

    The subpoenas are not a surprise, as Comer has been signaling his intention to issue the subpoenas for the personal bank records. They show where Republicans will head next in their investigation as they continue to seek evidence to substantiate their unproven allegations about the president.

    Some inside the GOP expressed frustration to CNN in real time with how the House GOP’s first impeachment inquiry hearing is playing out, as the Republican witnesses directly undercut the GOP’s own narrative and admit there is no evidence that Biden has committed impeachable offenses.

    “You want witnesses that make your case. Picking witnesses that refute House Republicans arguments for impeachment is mind blowing,” one senior GOP aide told CNN. “This is an unmitigated disaster.”

    One GOP lawmaker also expressed some disappointment with their performance thus far, telling CNN: “I wish we had more outbursts.”

    The bar for Thursday’s hearing was set low: Republicans admitted they would not reveal any new evidence, but were hoping to at least make the public case for why their impeachment inquiry is warranted, especially as some of their own members remain skeptical of the push.

    But some Republicans are not even paying attention, as Congress is on the brink of a shutdown – a point Democrats hammered during the hearing.

    “I haven’t watched or listened to a moment of it,” said another GOP lawmaker. There’s a shutdown looming.”

    Rep Jim Jordan delivers remarks during the House Oversight Committee hearing on Capitol Hill on September 28, 2023 in Washington, DC.

    Democrats repeatedly pointed out that the Republican allegations about foreign payments were tied to money that went mostly Hunter Biden – but not the to the president.

    “The majority sits completely empty handed with no evidence of any presidential wrongdoing, no smoking gun, no gun, no smoke,” said Rep. Jamie Raskin, the top Democrat on the Oversight committee.

    Raskin’s staff brought in the 12,000 pages of bank records the committee has received so far, as Raskin said, “not a single page shows a dime going to President Joe Biden.”

    Raskin also had a laptop open displaying a countdown clock for when the government shuts down in a little more than two days – another point Democrats used to bash Republicans for focusing on impeachment and failing to pass bills to fund the government. The Democrats passed the laptop around to each lawmaker as they had their five minutes to question the witnesses.

    Their arguments also previewed how Democrats intend to play defense for the White House as Republicans move forward on their impeachment inquiry.

    The Democrats needled Republicans for not holding a vote on an impeachment inquiry – one Democrat asked Turley whether he would recommend a vote, which Turley said he would.

    Rep. Jamie Raskin speaks on the Democratic side of the aisle, as the House Oversight Committee begins an impeachment inquiry into President Joe Biden, Thursday, Sept. 28, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington.

    House Democrats’ 2019 impeachment of Trump was sparked by Trump’s attempts to push Ukraine to investigate allegations involving Biden and his son’s position on the board of a Ukrainian energy company – some of the same allegations now being probed by the House GOP.

    That led Democrats Thursday to push for testimony from Rudy Giuliani, who as Trump’s personal lawyer sought to dig up dirt on Biden in Ukraine in 2019.

    Twice, the Democrats forced the Oversight Committee to vote on Democratic motions to subpoena Giuliani, votes that served as stunts to try to hammer home their argument that Giuliani tried and failed to corroborate the same allegations at the heart of the Biden impeachment inquiry.

    “I ask the question: Where in the world is Rudy Giuliani?” said Rep. Kweisi Mfume of Maryland, one of the Democrats who forced the procedural vote. “That’s how we got here, ladies and gentlemen. And this committee is afraid to bring him before us and put him on the record. Shame! And the question was raised. What does this have to do with it? It has everything to do with it.”

    In addition to Giuliani, Raskin sought testimony from Lev Parnas, an associate of Giuliani’s who was indicted in 2019. Parnas subsequently cooperated with the Democratic impeachment inquiry, including providing a statement from a top official at Burisma Holdings, the Ukrainian energy company, stating, “No one from Burisma had any contacts with VP Biden or people working for him.”

    Several Democrats also raised Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law who worked in the White House, receiving $2 billion from Saudi Arabia through a company he formed after leaving the White House.

    The Democrats charged that Kushner’s actions were far worse than Hunter Biden’s, because Kushner worked in government, while Biden’s son did not.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Schumer declines to call on Menendez to step down | CNN Politics

    Schumer declines to call on Menendez to step down | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on Wednesday declined join a growing group of Democrats who are calling on indicted Sen. Bob Menendez to resign his seat, though he did say the New Jersey Democrat’s actions fell “way, way below the standard” of the office.

    “Like you, I was just deeply disappointed, disturbed when I read the indictment,” Schumer said at a news conference on Capitol Hill. “Look, I’ve known Sen. Menendez a very long time. And it was truly, truly upsetting.”

    At least 30 of the members of the Democratic caucus, including members of Schumer’s leadership team have called on Menendez to resign. According to CNN’s count on Wednesday, 21 Democrats and independents who caucus with the Democrats have not called on Menendez to resign, including Schumer and Menendez himself. Three of those who have not called on Menendez to resign sit on the Senate Ethics Committee and therefore will not comment on any issue that may come before their panel.

    “For senators, there’s a much, much higher standard,” Schumer added. “And clearly, when you read the indictment, Sen. Menendez fell way way below that standard. Tomorrow, he will address the Democratic caucus, and we’ll see what happens after that.”

    Menendez is expected to address the Senate Democratic caucus at a closed-door meeting on Thursday, according to Sens. Jeff Merkley of Oregon and Mark Warner of Virginia.

    On Wednesday, Menendez and his wife, Nadine Arslanian Menendez, pleaded not guilty to all corruption-related charges.

    Menendez has been charged with three counts for allegedly taking bribes to use his political power and connections to help the government of Egypt obtain military aid as well as pressure a state prosecutor investigating New Jersey businessmen and attempt to influence the federal prosecution of a co-defendant.

    Co-defendants Jose Uribe and Fred Daibe, entered not guilty pleas as well. A fifth co-defendant, Wael Hana, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

    Menendez has said he will not step down. In a public statement Monday, he accused those who “rushed to judgment” of doing so for “political expediency.”

    “I recognize this will be the biggest fight yet,” Menendez said, referencing the legal battle ahead. “But as I have stated throughout this whole process, I firmly believe that when all the facts are presented, not only will I be exonerated, but I still will be New Jersey’s senior senator.”

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  • Supreme Court returns for first private meeting of the term amid even more controversy | CNN Politics

    Supreme Court returns for first private meeting of the term amid even more controversy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Supreme Court returns to Washington to face a new term and the fresh reality that critics increasingly view the court as a political body.

    In the wake of a series of controversial decisions made possible by former President Donald Trump’s three nominees, including the seismic reversal of Roe v. Wade, the justices find themselves catapulted into the very center of the political discourse.

    Their opinions feature prominently on the campaign trail, approval ratings have plummeted to new lows and Democrats in Congress are vowing to regulate the third branch in the midst of allegations justices are skirting ethics rules and attacks on the very legitimacy of the court.

    So far, they have struggled to respond. At public appearances they grasp at the promise of judicial independence while sending mixed signals about changes that might be afoot.

    Tuesday, the justices will meet in person for their first closed-door conference of the term.

    Chief Justice John Roberts is at the center of it all.

    How he navigates this term will shape the trajectory of his tenure going forward. Some say he’ll remain on the sidelines, out of the fray. Others say he cannot afford to do so.

    Earlier this year, Roberts declined an invitation to appear before the Democratic-led Senate Judiciary Committee to discuss Supreme Court ethics, citing separation of powers concerns. In May, speaking before an audience in Washington, Roberts said he wanted to assure the public that the court is committed to adhering to the “highest standards of conduct.”

    It was one line in one speech.

    But at the end of June, as controversy continued amid a raft of high-profile decisions that largely broke along ideological lines, Roberts made an unusual choice. In a 6-3 opinion striking down President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, the chief strayed from the case at hand.

    He said that it had become a “disturbing feature of some recent opinions to criticize the decisions with which they disagree as going beyond the proper role of government.”

    He appeared to be responding to the dissent penned by Justice Elena Kagan and joined by Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson. “In every respect, the Court today exceeds its proper limited role in our Nation’s governance,” Kagan began.

    Noting her disagreement, Roberts took the occasion to write, “we do not mistake this plainly heartfelt disagreement for disparagement.” He added: “Any such misperception would be harmful to this institution and our country,” he wrote.

    It was unclear if the line was directed at his dissenting colleagues or critics outside of court or both, but it was an unusual digression from a justice who, by definition, lacks an obvious pulpit to defend his branch of government.

    The way forward for Roberts is not obvious.

    Even if he did believe a formal ethics code is necessary, it’s unclear whether he would need a unanimous vote to move forward. Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito might, for instance, balk at such a move arguing that it would never satisfy critics whose true goal is to damage the institution.

    Some believe Roberts ultimately will steer clear of the controversy.

    “I don’t see him moving in any direction to encourage further disclosure reforms, and I don’t see Congress as being able to get sufficient traction,” Cate Stetson, a lawyer at Hogan Lovells, said at the Cato Institute earlier this month.

    But if the court does nothing, pressure will continue.

    Senate Judiciary Chair Dick Durbin, a Democrat, traveled to the Supreme Court on September 12 as an invited guest to the annual meeting of the Judicial Conference – the policymaking body for the federal courts.

    Sitting next to the chief justice on Roberts’ home turf, Durbin lobbied him to adopt an enforceable code of conduct directed specifically at the justices, according to a source.

    Roberts and others have continuously stressed how difficult it would be to adopt such a code, particularly when it comes to recusal issues.

    In April, all nine justices released a new statement hoping to provide “clarity” to the public about their ethics procedures, noting that they consult a “wide variety of authorities” when addressing specific ethics issues. They noted that while the Judicial Conference has a code of conduct followed by lower court judges, the conference “does not supervise the Supreme Court.”

    The statement outlined complications that distinguish the Supreme Court from the lower courts.

    At the lower court level, for instance, federal judges can substitute for each other if one judge recuses from a case. That’s not true at the high court where only members can hear a dispute.

    The statement did little to appease critics who say the justices can no longer continue to voluntarily follow rules that govern lower court judges. They must, critics say, have a code of conduct that binds them directly.

    Response from the bench

    Some conservatives believe there is no impending judicial crisis. Instead, they say, critics of the court are manufacturing a controversy to delegitimize the institution and staunch the flow of conservative opinions.

    Carrie Severino, president of the conservative Judicial Crisis Network, who is also a former clerk for Justice Clarence Thomas, tweeted recently that the problem is not corruption.

    “The problem is the coordinated campaign by dark money activists, radical politicians, and a willing media to imply there is corruption, undermining the Court’s integrity and selectively smearing the justices they disagree with,” she wrote.

    Alito, who wrote the opinion overturning Roe, has taken a radically different approach than the chief justice.

    In an interview in July that appeared on The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, Alito said forthrightly that Congress should stay out of the Supreme Court’s business.

    “I know this is controversial view, but I’m willing to say it,” he said. “No provision in the Constitution gives them the authority to regulate the Supreme Court – period.”

    Alito said that he marveled “at all the nonsense that has been written about me in the last year” and noted that in the face of a political onslaught he was rejecting the notion that judges and justices “should be mute” and leave it to others to defend them.

    “I’ve said to myself, nobody else is going to do this, so I have to defend myself,” he wrote.

    A month earlier he sought to preempt a ProPublica report that had not yet been published concerning allegations that he should have disclosed luxury travel from 2008.

    Over the summer, other justices were asked about ethics and the court’s legitimacy by friendly questioners at universities and judicial conferences – although they never addressed specifics.

    Unlike Alito, Justice Elena Kagan suggested in August that here was some daylight on the question of whether Congress has a role to regulate the Supreme Court. Last week, she told an audience in Indiana that she thought it would be a “good” idea if the court were to adapt the ethics code used by lower court justices to fit the Supreme Court.

    For her part, Justice Amy Coney Barrett noted that criticism of the court is nothing new. At an appearance before a judicial conference in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, she said that “critiques of the court” are part of its history. Public criticism “comes with the job” she said.

    Justice Brett Kavanaugh had a different message in Ohio saying he was “hopeful” that there would be some “concrete steps” taken soon to address the ethics issue.

    But his sentiment may have been aspirational.

    As the justices grapple with how to respond, they are hampered by an additional factor.

    Change at the high court comes slowly. The court’s unofficial mascot – the tortoise – can be found at the bottom of bronze lampposts on the building grounds. The tortoises are meant to symbolize the slow and steady pace of justice.

    Almost nothing at the high court comes quickly, and the institution is not new to controversy. The justices may decide to ride out the storm.

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  • 3M agrees to pay almost $10 million to settle apparent Iran sanctions violations | CNN Business

    3M agrees to pay almost $10 million to settle apparent Iran sanctions violations | CNN Business

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    CNN
     — 

    3M has agreed to pay almost $10 million to settle apparent violations of Iranian sanctions, the US Office of Foreign Assets Control said last week.

    The agency said 3M had 54 apparent violations of OFAC sanctions on Iran. It said between 2016 and 2018, a 3M subsidiary in Switzerland allegedly knowingly sold reflective license plate sheeting through a German reseller to Bonyad Taavon Naja, an entity which is under Iranian law enforcement control.

    It’s the latest of a stream of high-publicity and high-dollar settlements that 3M — which makes Post-It notes, Scotch Tape, N95 masks and other industrial products — has made this year.

    3M has not replied to a request for comment regarding last week’s settlement announcement.

    One US person employed by 3M Gulf, a subsidiary in Dubai, was “closely involved” in the sale, OFAC said.

    The alleged sales occurred after an outside due diligence report, which flagged connections to Iran’s Law Enforcement Forces.

    OFAC notes Iranian law enforcement stands accused of human rights violations both in Iran and Syria.

    The Switzerland subsidiary, known as 3M East, sent 43 shipments to the German reseller even though it knew the products would be resold to the Iranian entity, according to the OFAC.

    OFAC said senior managers at 3M Gulf “willfully violated” sanctions laws and that other employees were “reckless in their handling” of the sales.

    “These employees had reason to know that these sales would violate U.S. sanctions, but ignored ample evidence that would have alerted them to this fact,” OFAC wrote.

    3M voluntarily self-disclosed the apparent violations after discovering the sale hadn’t been authorized, according to OFAC. It said it fired or reprimanded “culpable” employees involved, hired new trade compliance counsel, revamped sanctions trainings and stopped doing business with the German reseller.

    In June, 3M agreed to pay up to $10.3 billion over 13 years to fund public water suppliers in the United States that have detected toxic “forever chemicals” in drinking water.

    3M has faced thousands of lawsuits through the last two decades over its manufacturing of products containing polyfluoroalkyl and perfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS), which have been found in hundreds of household products.

    3M said that the multi-billion-dollar settlement over PFAS is not an admission of liability.

    A few months later, in August, the company agreed to pay $6 billion to resolve roughly 300,000 lawsuits alleging that the manufacturing company supplied faulty combat earplugs to the military that resulted in significant injuries, such as hearing loss.

    3M also said its earplug agreement was not an admission of liability.

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  • White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

    White House strategy on government funding meets serious test this week | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden and his top aides at the White House plan to hammer away at a blunt message as the US government inches closer to a shutdown this week: A handful of extremist Republicans are entirely to blame for the havoc that would be unleashed across the country.

    For Biden, there’s a lot riding on that message getting through to Americans.

    Biden’s advisers have been assessing for weeks how involved to get in lawmakers’ deliberations to fund the government ahead of the end-of-month deadline, and ultimately decided to take a hands-off approach. The expectation: Should the Republican-led House struggle to reach consensus, they would ultimately shoulder the blame for any disruption.

    “Watch the GOP struggle and force them to govern or be blamed for shutdown,” a Biden administration official said, summing up the strategy.

    The White House is planning to dispatch a number of Cabinet officials this week to help lay out the broad range of ramifications if the government were to shutdown – everything from flight delays to childcare centers shutting down.

    Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack will appear at Monday’s White House news briefing to discuss how a government shutdown could hit everything from food programs to loans for farmers, a White House official said.

    “This would stop us in our tracks,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on CNN on Sunday. “A shutdown that would mean service members wouldn’t get paid, coming back to transportation to air traffic controllers who would be working in the towers. They wouldn’t get paid.”

    Over the weekend, White House officials continued to monitor for any signs of movement on Capitol Hill to extend funding for the federal government ahead of the deadline. How to handle a possible shutdown was a key agenda item when White House chief of staff Jeff Zients huddled with senior advisers in the West Wing on Saturday, according to people familiar. But heading into a new work week, Republican members had not put anything realistic on the table, officials said, leaving the White House bracing for what is to come.

    In the days ahead, the president and his allies will repeatedly point to “who’s responsible” for the mess that could unfold, one senior administration official said simply.

    The White House took a similar approach this spring during the debt ceiling negotiations, but not without a seeming hit to Biden. In a CNN poll conducted mid-May, 59% of respondents said the president was not acting responsibly as talks stalled and the government careened toward default. The difference then: Republicans had coalesced around a specific position, passing a bill in the House that reflected their priorities and catching the White House off guard. Negotiations escalated in the weeks that followed, resulting in a deal that set broad guardrails around federal spending for the 2024 fiscal year.

    That deal was supposed to usher in months of in-depth appropriations work that would yield a full-year spending package and avert a government shutdown. Now, the White House says Republicans dropped the ball.

    Speaking over the weekend at the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation Phoenix Awards Dinner, Biden said it was “small group of extreme Republicans” that was refusing to “live up to the deal” that he had struck months ago with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

    “The president did his job,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said when asked whether the White House would do anything to stave off a shutdown. “This is not something we can fix. The best plan is for House Republicans to stop their partisan political play and not do this to hurt Americans across the country. That’s the plan.”

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  • What happens if you don’t pay your student loans? | CNN Politics

    What happens if you don’t pay your student loans? | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Student loan payments are due in October for the first time in three-plus years – but for the next 12 months, borrowers will be able to skip payments without facing the harsh financial consequences of defaulting on their loans.

    The Biden administration is providing what it’s called an “on-ramp period” until September 30, 2024. During that time, a borrower won’t be reported as being in default to the national credit rating agencies, which can damage a person’s credit score.

    Think of it as a grace period for missed payments. But interest will still accrue, so borrowers aren’t off the hook entirely.

    Here’s what borrowers need to know:

    Any federal student loan borrower who was eligible for the pandemic-related payment pause, which took effect in March 2020, is eligible for the “on-ramp” period. That includes borrowers with federal Direct Loans, Federal Family Education Loans and Perkins Loans held by the Department of Education.

    Borrowers don’t need to apply for the benefit.

    Normally, a federal student loan becomes delinquent the first day after a payment is missed. Loan servicers will report the delinquency to the three national credit bureaus if a payment is not made within 90 days.

    A loan goes into default after a borrower fails to make a payment for at least 270 days, or about nine months, which can result in further financial consequences.

    A default can further damage your credit score, making it harder to buy a car or house. It could take years to establish good credit again. Borrowers could also see their federal tax refund or even a portion of their paycheck withheld.

    Once in default, the borrower can no longer receive deferment or forbearance and would lose eligibility for additional federal student aid. At that point, the loan holder can also take the borrower to court.

    Because the pandemic payment pause has ended, interest restarted accruing on September 1 after interest rates were effectively set to 0% for three-plus years.

    That means if a borrower misses a payment now, he or she could end up owing more debt over time due to interest.

    As interest builds up, a borrower’s loan servicer may also increase monthly payment amounts to ensure the debt is paid off on time. (This won’t happen to borrowers enrolled in income-driven plans, which calculate payments based on income and family size.)

    And unlike during the pause, a missed payment means that a borrower will miss out on a month’s worth of credit toward student loan forgiveness under certain repayment plans.

    For borrowers enrolled in the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, for example, each month during the pause still counted toward the 120 monthly payments required to be eligible for debt forgiveness.

    Before missing a payment, it might be worth considering switching into an income-driven repayment plan that could lower monthly payments.

    A new income-driven repayment plan launched this summer, called SAVE (Saving on a Valuable Education), offers the most generous terms and will likely offer the smallest monthly payment for lower-income borrowers.

    Under SAVE, a single borrower earning $32,800 or less or a borrower with a family of four earning $67,500 or less will see their payments set at $0.

    Borrowers can apply for a new repayment plan whenever they want, for free, but should allow at least four weeks for the change to take effect.

    Borrowers who fell into default before the pandemic pause started in March 2020 can apply for the Department of Education’s “Fresh Start” program.

    If borrowers use Fresh Start to get out of default, their loans will automatically be transferred from the Department of Education’s Default Resolution Group to a loan servicer and returned to an “in repayment” status, and the default will be removed from their credit report.

    To claim these benefits, log in to myeddebt.ed.gov or call 800-621-3115. The process should take about 10 minutes, according to the Department of Education.

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  • The Fed has a perfect interest rate in mind. Here’s what it is | CNN Business

    The Fed has a perfect interest rate in mind. Here’s what it is | CNN Business

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    There’s a star the Federal Reserve is chasing.

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  • Mexico makes agreement with US to deport migrants from its border cities amid ongoing surge in illegal migration | CNN

    Mexico makes agreement with US to deport migrants from its border cities amid ongoing surge in illegal migration | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Mexico has made an agreement with the United States to deport migrants from its border cities to their home countries and take several actions to deter migrants as part of a new effort to combat the recent surge in border crossings.

    Mexican officials met with US Customs and Border Protection officials on Friday in Ciudad Juárez,, Mexico, which is across the border from El Paso, Texas, following the recent spike in illegal crossings into the US, which temporarily closed an international bridge and paused Mexico’s main cargo train system.

    As part of the agreement, Mexico agreed to “depressurize” its northern cities, which border the El Paso, San Diego and Eagle Pass, Texas, where the mayor has declared a state of emergency. They will also implement more than a dozen actions to prevent migrants from risking their lives by using the railway system to reach the US-Mexico border, according to Mexico’s National Migration Institute.

    The US Department of Defense is ramping up resources at the US-Mexico border, sending at least 800 new active-duty personnel to the border, where 2,500 National Guard members are already servicing, Department of Homeland Security officials announced Wednesday night in a call with reporters.

    The move comes as migrant crossings along the border are rising, surpassing 8,600 over a 24-hour period this week, according to a Department of Homeland Security official. It is up from around 3,500 daily border arrests after the expiration in May of Title 42 triggered new consequences for those who cross the border illegally. There were more than 8,000 apprehensions on Monday.

    The busiest sectors are Del Rio, El Paso, Lower Rio Grande Valley and Tucson; each facing more than 1,000 encounters over the last 24 hours, according to the official. Eagle Pass is in the Del Rio sector.

    Friday’s meeting was attended by Customs and Border Protection’s Acting Commissioner Troy Miller, the commissioner of Mexico’s National Migration Institute, the governor of the Mexican state of Chihuahua, members of Mexico’s national defense and national guard and representatives of Ferromex, a Mexican railroad operator, according to the institute.

    Mexican officials vowed to carry out a series of 15 actions as part of the agreement, some in coordination with Customs and Border Protection and Ferromex, which includes deporting migrants to their home countries by land and air.

    The country said it will carry out negotiations with the governments of Venezuela, Brazil, Nicaragua, Colombia and Cuba to confirm receipt of their citizens deported from the US-Mexico border. It will also allow US border patrol agents to expel migrants through the Ciudad Juárez international bridge, which connects to El Paso.

    Other terms of the agreement include submitting a daily report of the number of migrants on the train system to Customs and Border Protection’s El Paso sector, establishing checkpoints along the Ferromex rail route and conducting interventions on railways and highways, according to Mexico’s National Migration Institute.

    The institute said Mexico had deported more than 788,000 migrants to their home countries from January 1 to September.

    The agreed-upon actions by Mexican officials raise questions about the country doing work typically designated for the US – from the south of the border – to manage the influx of migrants in recent weeks, which have has strained federal resources and overwhelmed already-crowded facilities, CNN previously reported.

    Many who leave their homes for the United States face long and dangerous treks in hopes of finding better, safer lives. Some may flee violence, while others may immigrate for economic opportunities or to reunite with family, experts say. Deteriorating conditions in Latin America exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic also have contributed to the influx of migrants into the US.

    It is likely the number of border crossings will continue to increase, as more Mexican nationals are making plans to come to the US, Ariel Ruiz Soto, a senior policy analyst at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute in Washington, told CNN.

    US government data show more Mexican families coming to the border, likely to seek asylum, Ruiz said. In July 2022, for example, Customs and Border Protection figures indicate 4,000 Mexican family encounters at the border. A year later, the number had more than quadrupled, reaching nearly 22,000.

    “These are the three levers that are in play right now. … And regardless of what the Biden administration does today or tomorrow,” he says, “the people that are on the way already are going to continue, unless something else happens in the region.”

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  • Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics

    Biden unveils a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Friday unveiled a new White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention, a step he said was part of an effort “to send a clear message about how important this issue is to me and the country.

    In a speech in the White House Rose Garden, the president detailed his experience traveling to the sites of mass shootings across the country, including after the Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 as vice president.

    “Anyone who doesn’t think that these kinds of engagements have a permanent effect on young children … these were hardened, tough cops, asking me, could I get them psychiatric help?” he asked, raising his voice.

    An official told reporters on a call Thursday previewing the announcement that the office’s mandate will be twofold – it will be tasked with implementing and expediting last year’s Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the president’s signature gun legislation, and with finding additional actions within the president’s purview to stem the flow of gun violence.

    The announcement comes just days after a group of congressional Democrats in a letter called on Biden to leverage “the full power of the executive branch” to combat gun violence. In March, a day after a mass shooting left six dead in Nashville, Biden told reporters, “I have gone the full extent of my executive authority to do, on my own, anything about guns.”

    Biden on Friday took the opportunity to tout the steps his administration had taken to address the scourge of gun violence.

    “To date my administration has announced dozens of executive actions to reduce gun violence – more than any of my predecessors at this point in their presidencies, and they include everything from cracking down on ghost guns, breaking up gun trafficking, and so much more,” he said.

    “And last year with the help – with your help I signed into law the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the most significant gun safety law in almost 30 years. It expanded background checks, expands the use of red flag laws, improves access to mental health services and so much more. This historic law will save lives. It’s a really important first step.”

    Vice President Kamala Harris will head the new office, Biden said.

    Biden said Harris “understands this more than any vice president ever – no, really. That’s not hyperbole, that’s a fact. She’s been on the front lines of this her entire career as a prosecutor, as an attorney general and as a United States senator. Her deep experience will be invaluable for this office.”

    And he thanked the gun safety advocates assembled in the Rose Garden for their work.

    “We’re never going to forget your loved ones, we’re never going to get there unless we remember. You know, I know we will do this because I know you – heroes, heroes proving that even with heavy hearts, you have unbreakable spirits,” he said.

    CORRECTION: This headline and story have been updated to reflect the correct name of the office.

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  • Dallas mayor switches parties to join GOP | CNN Politics

    Dallas mayor switches parties to join GOP | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson announced Friday that he is switching parties and will serve as a Republican-affiliated mayor of the blue-leaning city.

    While the Dallas mayoral office is nonpartisan, Johnson previously served as a Democrat in the Texas legislature. He slammed his former party in an op-ed for Wall Street Journal published Friday, blaming Democratic policies for “exacerbated crime and homelessness.”

    “The future of America’s great urban centers depends on the willingness of the nation’s mayors to champion law and order and practice fiscal conservatism,” Johnson wrote. “Our cities desperately need the genuine commitment to these principles (as opposed to the inconsistent, poll-driven commitment of many Democrats) that has long been a defining characteristic of the GOP.”

    He added: “In other words, American cities need Republicans—and Republicans need American cities.”

    Johnson’s announcement makes him the only Republican among the mayors of the 10 most populous cities in the US.

    Johnson was reelected for a four-year term in May with 93% of the vote after being first elected in 2019. President Joe Biden won Dallas County by more than 30 points in the 2020 election.

    The Texas Democratic Party issued a scathing statement Friday, accusing Johnson of being dishonest with Dallas voters.

    “[T]he voters of Dallas deserved to know where he stood before he ran for reelection as Mayor,” the chair and vice-chair of the party said. “He wasn’t honest with his constituents, and knew he would lose to a Democrat if he flipped before the election.”

    “This feeble excuse for democratic representation will fit right in with Republicans — and we are grateful that he can no longer tarnish the brand and values of the Texas Democratic Party,” they added.

    On the other hand, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott welcomed Johnson’s new party affiliation.

    “Texas is getting more Red every day,” Abbott said in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter. “He’s pro law enforcement & won’t tolerate leftist agendas.”

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  • GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

    GOP hardliners sink Pentagon bill in another blow for McCarthy | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The House on Thursday has voted down a rule that would have advanced a Defense Department bill, another stumbling block for Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Republican leadership ahead of a looming government shutdown deadline.

    The final vote was 216-212.

    While the specific legislation is separate from a proposal to keep the government funded beyond the present September 30 deadline, the defeat is another sign of divisions within the House Republican Conference, which has been negotiating for days to come up with a plan that can unify GOP House members. This is the third time House Republicans have bucked McCarthy and GOP leadership in a vote on a rule, a traditionally pro forma step that is taken to advance legislation.

    McCarthy emerged visibly frustrated from the House floor while it was in total paralysis as House hardliners tanked another rule, slamming the group for just wanting to “burn the place down.”

    “It’s frustrating in the sense that I don’t understand why anybody votes against bringing the idea and having the debate,” McCarthy told reporters.

    Opposition from hardliners has plagued efforts by Republican leadership to unify behind a plan to fund the government. Days of negotiations have yielded a few apparent breakthroughs, but McCarthy’s Republican opponents have been quick to throw cold water on progress and openly defy the speaker’s calls for unity. McCarthy’s thin margin in the chamber means that in most votes he can only lose four members without any support from Democrats – and absences can raise and lower the majority threshold.

    Late Thursday evening, McCarthy briefed his conference behind closed doors on a new plan to keep the government open – paired with deeper spending cuts and new border security measures – all in an attempt to win over wary members on his right flank. The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at a $1.471 trillion spending level, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

    As part of the deal, Republicans told CNN on Thursday night that they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong Pentagon spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday, with Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicating they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

    But Thursday’s vote had five Republican opponents as well – as six Republicans total ended up voting against the rule. Reps. Dan Bishop of North Carolina, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Matt Rosendale of Montana, Eli Crane of Arizona and Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia voted against the bill. House Rules Committee Chairman Tom Cole of Oklahoma also eventually changed his vote, casting his vote against the Rule so he could bring it back up for reconsideration. It’s unclear when Republicans may try the vote again.

    Republican leadership has alerted House members they plan to stay in session Friday and Saturday amid the standoff.

    This story has been updated with additional developments.

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  • McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

    McCarthy privately outlines new GOP plan to avert shutdown, setting up clash with Senate | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    House Speaker Kevin McCarthy privately outlined to members a new GOP plan to keep the government open on Wednesday after a marathon two-and-a-half-hour GOP conference meeting.

    The California Republican later told reporters that Republican negotiators made “tremendous progress as an entire conference,” following days of GOP infighting and less than two weeks before a government funding deadline.

    “We are very close,” McCarthy said Wednesday evening when asked specifically what progress had been made on the GOP short-term bill. “I feel like just got a little more movement to go there,” he added of the new GOP plan. When asked specifically about the topline numbers, he wouldn’t get into details but said: “We’re in a good place.”

    The plan, as outlined by the speaker, would keep the government open for 30 days at $1.471 trillion spending levels, a commission to address the debt and a border security package. Separately, they also agreed to move year-long funding bills at a $1.526 trillion level. That level is below the bipartisan agreement that the speaker reached with the White House to raise the national debt limit.

    The levels are also far lower than what senators from both parties and the White House are willing to accept, meaning it’s unclear how such a deal would avert a government shutdown. With just 10 days left to fund the government, the new plan sets up a standoff with the Senate over how to keep the government open.

    As part of the deal, Republicans now believe they have the votes to move forward on the yearlong spending bill that five conservative hardliners scuttled just Tuesday.

    GOP Rep. Mike Garcia of California said after Wednesday evening’s conference meeting there is now “a little more clarity” on the path forward.

    “We have a little more clarity as to a potential plan moving forward,” Garcia said, adding, “We are still negotiating that final number and trying to figure out exactly what we can do.”

    Some of the people that were previously opposed now signaled they are supportive. Reps. Ralph Norman of South Carolina and Ken Buck of Colorado indicated they will flip to a yes on the rule and will vote to advance the Department of Defense bill Thursday after the speaker came down to the spending levels that Norman had been demanding.

    “Sounds like we’ve got the votes for the rule,” Garcia said, pointing to Buck and Norman as having committed to changing to a “Yes.”

    With McCarthy’s extremely thin margin in the chamber – and Democrats so far united against the GOP proposal – Republican leadership has been negotiating for days to try to win over enough GOP support to pass their legislation.

    When asked about struggling to make progress earlier Wednesday, McCarthy repeated his favorite line, insisting he will never back down from a challenge no matter how messy.

    “I wouldn’t quit the first time I went for the vote for speaker,” McCarthy said, a reference to how he was voted speaker only after 15 rounds and days of voting in January. “The one thing if you haven’t learned anything about me yet, I will never quit.”

    However, an additional potential complicating factor emerged Wednesday night with former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican nomination, coming out in opposition to a short-term funding bill as he called on lawmakers to defund the DOJ and the investigations into him.

    McCarthy and his GOP leadership team have been trying to sell the House Republican Conference on unifying behind a plan to fund the government, brokered between the House Freedom Caucus and the more moderate Main Street Caucus over the weekend. But that proposed legislation encountered immediate opposition from more than a dozen far-right Republican lawmakers who wanted deeper spending cuts attached.

    Amid that impasse with conservatives, moderates in the bipartisan House Problem Solver’s Caucus are close to finalizing their own framework on a short-term spending bill that would fund the government for several months at current levels and include Ukraine aid and disaster assistance, according to two sources. Even with Democratic support, that plan would still likely face major challenges – not the least of which is how it would get to the floor before the government runs out of money.

    There are already signs that this alternative plan could face its own strong headwinds – not just with Republicans but with Democrats. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, a progressive Democrat from Washington state, told CNN on “Inside Politics” that she wants a “clean” continuing resolution of funds, a sign that progressives may not back some of the border security provisions that the Problem Solvers Caucus members are eyeing.

    House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the House Problem Solvers Caucus earlier Wednesday, and said afterward that they need a bipartisan agreement in line with what was already negotiated in the debt ceiling package.

    “We need to find a bipartisan agreement consistent with what was previously reached,” he said.

    House GOP leadership announced Wednesday night that the House will be in and voting on Friday and Saturday, making official what was expected as the majority struggled to reach an agreement all week.

    The House is expected to pass a rule for the defense appropriations bill Thursday. Assuming the rule passes, the House will then start consideration of the defense bill with final passage expected Friday.

    The thinking would then be to pass the new GOP stopgap plan on Saturday, which is expected to be a full day.

    Members were advised on Tuesday to keep their schedules flexible as weekend votes were possible. Members filtering in and out of Whip Emmer’s office the past two days are insistent that they are making progress, but Rep. Kelly Armstrong of North Dakota told CNN earlier Wednesday that while they are getting closer, they are not close yet.

    Rep. Garrett Graves from Louisiana, who has been in the room for negotiations, had echoed that schedule change and projected Friday and Saturday work.

    “I think we’re going to be here this weekend,” he said.

    When pressed on what exactly they’d be up to and if they’d be able to vote by Saturday, Graves said, “Well, we won’t be having Mardi Gras parties,” indicating they’d be voting.

    Rep. Steve Womack, a Republican from Arkansas who sits on the House Appropriations Committee, lambasted the hardliners, calling it a “breach of duty.”

    “We’ve got a handful of people that are holding the rest of the conference, the majority of our conference kind of held hostage right now and in turn, holding up America,” he told CNN.

    Womack also said this will likely extend into the weekend and that “either it’s gonna be good or it’s gonna be bad.”

    This story and headline have been updated with additional developments.

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  • Five Americans back on US soil after release from Iranian detention | CNN Politics

    Five Americans back on US soil after release from Iranian detention | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Five Americans freed from Iranian detention this week returned to US soil early Tuesday following an initial stop in Doha, Qatar, a US official tells CNN.

    Emad Shargi, Morad Tahbaz and Siamak Namazi, along with two Americans who have not been publicly named have arrived in the Washington, DC, area, after they were released Monday as part of a wider deal that includes the US unfreezing $6 billion in Iranian funds.

    The freed Americans will have the option to participate in a Department of Defense Program known as PISA (Post Isolation Support Activities) to help them acclimate back to normal life now that they are back in the United States.

    The return of the five Americans, all of whom had been designated as wrongfully detained, caps a significant diplomatic breakthrough after years of complicated indirect negotiations between the US and Iran, who do not have formal diplomatic ties.

    The group was flown out of Tehran on a Qatari government jet to Doha on Monday, before taking off for the Washington, DC, area to be reunited with their families, according to a senior administration official. Namazi’s mother, Effie Namazi, and Tahbaz’s wife, Vida Tahbaz, who had been previously unable to leave Iran, were also on the flight from Iran to Doha, the official said Monday.

    After a year of indirect negotiations, the deal began to broadly come together in Doha about seven months ago and the first tangible public steps took place about five weeks ago, when four of the Americans were transferred to house arrest. The fifth American was already under house arrest.

    President Joe Biden on Monday celebrated their release “after enduring years of agony, uncertainty, and suffering.” But while the release stood as the latest high-profile deal negotiated by his administration to secure the release of Americans deemed wrongly detained abroad, Biden drew criticism from some Republicans who likened the agreement to a “ransom payment.”

    A senior Biden administration official said Monday that the deal “has not changed our relationship with Iran in any way,” noting the US would still work to hold Iran accountable for its human rights abuses and to constrain its nuclear program.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • That jet the Marines lost? Taxpayers will pay $1.7 trillion for the F-35 program | CNN Politics

    That jet the Marines lost? Taxpayers will pay $1.7 trillion for the F-35 program | CNN Politics

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    A version of this story appears in CNN’s What Matters newsletter. To get it in your inbox, sign up for free here.



    CNN
     — 

    The military losing a fighter jet near Charleston, South Carolina, and asking the public to help find it is a plotline in which “Top Gun” (fighter jets) meets “The Hunt for Red October” (country can’t find its weapons system).

    But the larger story of the F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter is like tax dollars meet “The Blob” (unstoppable force consumes everything in its path).

    “How in the hell do you lose an F-35?” wondered Rep. Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican, in a post on social media that speaks for everyone who read the headline about the state-of-the-art military plane that went missing Sunday after its pilot ejected and parachuted to safety.

    “How is there not a tracking device and we’re asking the public to what, find a jet and turn it in?” she continued.

    A more general and important question could be asked of the F-35 program writ large: How in the heck can you spend so much money on a plane that doesn’t work the way it’s supposed to?

    The exact amount of money for a single aircraft like the one that went missing is somewhere around $100 million.

    The entire F-35 program is on track to cost $1.7 trillion over the lifetime of the plane. Trillion. With a “t.”

    CNN’s Oren Liebermann reported the facts of what we know about the missing aircraft on CNN on Monday:

    • The pilot ejected safely and was taken to a hospital.
    • Joint Base Charleston posted a social media plea for information from anyone who might have seen the jet or its remains.
    • The search is focused northwest of Charleston near Lakes Marion and Moultrie.

    But we’re left with so many questions, he told CNN’s Jim Sciutto.

    “Was the transponder working? If not, why wasn’t it working? Why, maybe, had it been switched off? What was the mission it was on? All of this is either under investigation or a question we haven’t gotten an answer to yet.”

    When I asked Liebermann by email how to generally explain the F-35 program, he noted it is the most expensive weapons program in US history.

    For a country that spends a good portion of its income on its military and is known to have the most advanced fighting force on Earth, that’s saying something.

    The F-35 is what’s known as a “stealth” fighter, which means it is supposed to be able to avoid detection by enemies. Maybe a little too stealth.

    But if you watch the glossy Lockheed Martin video at F35.com, the jet is also supposed to be able to communicate with rest of the military, “sharing its operational picture with the ground, sea and air assets.” The video shows the jet beaming information to the ground and satellites.

    The New York Times’ editorial board used the word “boondoggle” to describe the F-35 program in 2021. But it added that the US is essentially stuck with the program.

    Or as CNN’s Zachary Cohen wrote back in 2015, “Is the world’s most expensive weapons program worth it?” Eight years later, the question still applies.

    Many US allies – Canada, Germany, Japan and others – also buy F-35s from Lockheed.

    The F-35, as developed by Lockheed at the request of the US military, was supposed to be the jack-of-all-jets, with versions to do different jobs for the Air Force, the Navy and the Marines.

    The version that went missing over South Carolina – the F-35B – is used by the US Marine Corps and meant to be able to “land vertically like a helicopter and take-off in very short distances,” according to a fact sheet from Lockheed. Another F-35B crashed in 2018, also in South Carolina.

    The Project on Government Oversight, a nonpartisan watchdog group, has written extensively on the F-35 and its cost overruns. I asked Dan Grazier, an F-35 expert for POGO, what has gone wrong.

    It all boils down to “failure at the conceptual level,” he told me in an email.

    “The architects of the program attempted to build a single aircraft to meet multiple mission requirements for not just three separate services but also those of multiple countries,” Grazier said, noting the difference between a small and nimble fighter jet and a long-range jet.

    “When someone attempts to design a single aircraft to perform all of these roles, they have to make numerous design tradeoffs that generally results in an aircraft that can sort of do it all, but doesn’t do anything particularly well.”

    The jet has never reached its full operational capability and already needs updates and tweaks, including a new engine. “Every F-35 built until now is nothing more than a very expensive prototype,” Grazier told me.

    “All of them will have to go through an expensive retrograde process in the future when the design is complete to bring them up to something approaching full combat standards.”

    I asked a spokesperson for Lockheed Martin if the company is confident the jets perform as they should considering the taxpayer investment.

    They provided this statement:

    The global F-35 fleet has surpassed more than 721,000 cumulative flight hours and spans 17 nations and three U.S. military services. Since F-35s began flying 17 years ago, there has been one pilot fatality and less than 10 confirmed destroyed aircraft. More than 965 F-35s have been delivered and more than 430,000 sorties completed.

    Diana Maurer is director of defense capabilities and management at the Government Accountability Office, the government’s own watchdog that earlier this year described the F-35 program as “more than a decade behind schedule and $183 billion over original cost estimates.”

    She said pilots frequently report being impressed by the plane’s capabilities. But they also report not being able to fly it often enough.

    Problems getting spare parts, issues with repairs and a reliance on contractors all contribute to the F-35 having a substandard readiness and frequent groundings of the fleet.

    “There’s a variety of reasons why they can’t get these aircraft up in the air as often as they would like,” Maurer said. “And that’s really frustrating from a taxpayer perspective for something that already costs hundreds of millions of dollars a year; cost many, many multiple billions already; and will cost nearly $2 trillion over the life cycle of the program.”

    Grazier said officials at the Pentagon have acknowledged problems with the F-35 that can be applied to the design process in the future. But this is a program that evolved over successive presidencies and with a rotating cast of characters in charge both in Congress and at the Pentagon.

    The system is supposed to have safeguards against extreme cost overruns, but when those warnings were triggered in previous decades, the F-35 program was allowed to barrel forward. And here we are.

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  • Trump, who paved way for Roe v. Wade reversal, says Republicans ‘speak very inarticulately’ about abortion | CNN Politics

    Trump, who paved way for Roe v. Wade reversal, says Republicans ‘speak very inarticulately’ about abortion | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, who paved the way for the undoing of federal abortion rights protections, said that some Republicans “speak very inarticulately” about the issue and have pursued “terrible” state-level restrictions that could alienate much of the country.

    While avoiding taking specific positions himself, Trump said in an NBC interview that if he is reelected he will try to broker compromises on how long into pregnancies abortion should be legal and whether those restrictions should be imposed on the federal or the state level.

    “I would sit down with both sides and I’d negotiate something and we’ll end up with peace on that issue for the first time in 52 years,” he said.

    The former president targeted GOP primary rival Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis in his criticism of how the Republican party has handled the issue, calling Florida’s six-week ban “a terrible thing and a terrible mistake.”

    DeSantis’ camp hit back on Sunday, taking aim at the former president for saying he’d be willing to work with both parties on abortion.

    “We’ve already seen the disastrous results of Donald Trump compromising with Democrats: over $7 trillion in new debt, an unfinished border wall, and the jailbreak First Step Act letting violent criminals back on to the streets. Republicans across the country know that Ron DeSantis will never back down,” tweeted spokesperson Andrew Romeo.

    Trump also warned Republicans that the party would lose voters by advancing abortion restrictions without exceptions for cases of rape, incest or risks to the mother’s life.

    “Other than certain parts of the country, you can’t – you’re not going to win on this issue,” he said.

    Trump’s comments made plain the challenge for 2024 Republican presidential primary contenders: trying to balance the priorities of their conservative base, for whom the Supreme Court’s June 2022 overturning of Roe v. Wade was a victory decades in the making, and those of the general electorate, which has consistently supported abortion rights – most recently in the 2022 midterms and the Wisconsin Supreme Court race this spring.

    Abortion could also be a pivotal issue this fall in Virginia’s state legislative elections, which are widely viewed as a barometer of the electorate’s mood in the lead-up to next year’s presidential election.

    Trump’s appointment of three conservative Supreme Court justices paved the way to the reversal of the 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights across the United States through the first 24 weeks of pregnancy.

    That reversal left abortion rights up to the states, which has led to a patchwork of laws – including bans on abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy in Florida and Iowa, the first state to vote in the GOP presidential nominating process.

    Abortion rights have been a major fault line in the 2024 Republican primary. Trump’s former vice president, Mike Pence, has advocated a federal abortion ban after 15 weeks. DeSantis, Trump’s top-polling rival, has touted the six-week ban he signed into law. However, other contenders, including Nikki Haley, have taken more moderate approaches, warning of the political backlash Republicans could face among the broader electorate by pursuing strict abortion restrictions.

    Trump would not commit to a specific policy preference in the interview. He deflected questions about whether he would support a federal ban – and if so, after how many weeks – or would rather the issue be left to statehouses.

    “What’s going to happen is you’re going to come up with a number of weeks or months, you’re going to come up with a number that’s going to make people happy,” Trump said.

    Trump said he believed it was “probably better” to leave abortion restrictions up to the states instead of trying to pass federal legislation on the issue.

    “From a pure standpoint, from a legal standpoint, I think it’s probably better. But I can live with it either way,” Trump said. “It could be state or could it federal, I don’t frankly care.”

    The intra-GOP debate over abortion took center stage at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition gathering, attended by many of the state’s leading conservative evangelical activists.

    Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, one of the most vocal Trump critics among the GOP contenders, told reporters Saturday in Iowa that Trump has “taken evangelical voters for granted” and is “waffling on important issues.”

    “I think he is looking at the abortion question as not whether it’s going to win evangelical support, but what that’s going to look like down the road, and as he said he wants everybody to like him,” Hutchinson said.

    Asked about federal legislation on abortion, DeSantis continued not to engage on the topic of a national ban, instead pointing to new restrictions in states such as Iowa and Florida.

    “I’ve been a pro-life governor. I’ll be a pro-life president,” DeSantis said. “Clearly, a state like Iowa has been able to move the ball with pro-life protections. Florida has been able to move the ball.”

    Pence reiterated his support for a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy as a minimum, saying, “It’s an idea whose time has come.” He said Trump and other GOP candidates want to relegate the abortion issue to the states, “but I won’t have it.”

    ‘Personal for every woman and every man’

    However, other contenders more focused on the general electorate, including Haley – the former South Carolina governor and US ambassador to the United Nations – have sought to thread the same needle as Trump.

    Haley on Saturday told attendees at the Faith and Freedom Coalition in Iowa that her beliefs are the “hard truth.” She said pursuing a federal 15-week abortion ban would have “everybody running from us.”

    While Haley opposes abortion, she has emphasized she believes Republicans and Democrats need find a consensus on abortion issues, such as banning later abortions and agreeing not to jail women who get them.

    “This issue is personal for every woman and every man. And we need to treat it that way. I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice any more than I want them to judge me for being pro-life,” she said.

    Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said on CNN last week that he would be open to signing a federal abortion ban “if it represented consensus,” while admitting the current setbacks to reaching that consensus within the US Senate and across states.

    “I want all of the 50 states to be able to weigh in if they want to, and what their state laws should be, and then let’s see if it’s a consensus,” he said.

    Democrats, meanwhile, are eyeing abortion as one of the most important issues in the 2024 presidential election.

    CNN previously reported that President Joe Biden’s reelection campaign earlier this month made a digital advertising buy highlighting the positions of Trump and other GOP 2024 contenders on the issue.

    “As Donald Trump visits states where women are suffering the consequences of his extreme, anti-abortion agenda, this ad reminds voters in states that have passed some of the most extreme abortion bans of Trump’s key role in appointing conservative justices who voted to overturn Roe v. Wade,” Biden’s campaign manager, Julie Chavez Rodriguez, said in a statement to CNN.

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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  • Trump says he supports mental competency tests for presidency amid concerns over age | CNN Politics

    Trump says he supports mental competency tests for presidency amid concerns over age | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Former President Donald Trump, the oldest candidate in the 2024 GOP presidential field, said there should not be an age limit for the presidency but expressed support for requiring mental competency tests for candidates.

    “I’m all for the tests,” Trump told NBC’s Kristen Welker in an interview clip that aired Saturday, citing a cognitive test he took in 2020 at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center. “I aced it. I get everything right.”

    But the former president, 77, cast doubt on the practicality of requiring such a test, adding, “A lot of people say it’s not constitutional to do it.”

    Trump’s comments come as he considerably leads the Republican presidential pool to face President Joe Biden – who is 80 – in 2024.

    When asked if there is a need for a new generation to take the helm, Trump said, “It’s always time for a new generation.”

    But, he added, “Some of the greatest world leaders have been in their 80s,” though the 77-year-old quickly clarified that he’s “not anywhere very near 80, by the way.”

    The ages of the incumbent and the GOP front-runner have raised questions about whether they are fit for office, and other presidential candidates have used the issue to argue that they will not be effective leaders.

    Former Vice President Mike Pence, who is challenging his former boss for the GOP presidential nomination, told CNN in an interview that aired Sunday, “We don’t need a president whose too old and we don’t need a president whose too young.” But he stopped short of saying whether 77 is too old to be president.

    “I think that’s a judgment for voters,” Pence told CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.” “I trust voters to make their decision, whether it be the mental competency of people or whether it be their age or energy level.”

    But Trump said the problem with his successor is “bigger” than his age.

    “I don’t think Biden is too old, but I think he is incompetent,” Trump said. “And that’s a bigger problem.”

    Biden, who would be 82 at the start of his next term if reelected, has also shrugged off concerns about his age in recent months. When asked why an 82-year-old would be the best fit for president, Biden told MSNBC in May that he has “acquired a hell of a lot of wisdom.”

    “I’m more experienced than anybody (who’s) ever run for the office,” he said, adding that he thinks he’s proven himself to be effective.

    However, a recent CNN poll showed that roughly three-quarters of Americans say they’re seriously concerned that Biden’s age might negatively affect his current level of physical and mental competence and his ability to serve out another term if reelected.

    This story has been updated with additional information Sunday.

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  • Why some of Biden’s problems may be overblown at this time | CNN Politics

    Why some of Biden’s problems may be overblown at this time | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden had a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week. He’s under an impeachment inquiry, his son was indicted in Delaware, inflation seems to be tilting back up, the United Auto Workers went on strike after Biden said they wouldn’t, and the chattering class is talking about him not running for reelection.

    Some of these factors explain why my colleague Zach Wolf wrote that “Biden’s two worst weaknesses were exposed” this past week, and it’s also why I’ve written about the president’s difficulties heading into next year.

    But while Biden clearly has problems – no president with an approval rating hovering around 40% is in good shape – some of his issues appear to be overblown at this time. Here are three reasons why:

    A Washington Post op-ed by columnist David Ignatius that called on Biden not to run for reelection got a lot of play this past week.

    Putting aside whether Biden should or shouldn’t run, the fact is that he is running. A lot of people will point to polls (like those from CNN) showing that a majority of Democrats don’t think the party should renominate him.

    But these surveys only tell you so much. They’re matching Biden against himself and not anyone else. When asked in the CNN poll to name a preferred alternative to Biden, only a little more than 10% wanted someone else and could name a specific person.

    When matched up against the announced Democratic opposition (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson), Biden is crushing it. He’s over 70%, on average, in recent polling.

    Moreover, Biden’s job approval rating with Democrats hovers around 80%. That is well above the level at which past incumbents have faced strong primary challenges. Those challenges (such as when Ted Kennedy challenged incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980) came at a time when the president had an approval rating in the 50s or 60s among his own party members.

    It is worth analyzing whether the fact that a lot of Democrats don’t think Biden should be renominated masks a larger problem he could face in a general election.

    But Biden’s pulling in more than 90% of Democrats in Fox News and Quinnipiac University general election polling released this past week. In both polls, his share slightly exceeded former President Donald Trump’s among Republicans (though within the margin of error).

    The fact is Biden’s got problems, but worrying about renomination is not one of them.

    From a political point of view, Biden’s connections to his son Hunter have caused the president nothing but heartache. Most voters think Biden did something inappropriate related to his son’s business dealings.

    So, it might naturally follow that House Republicans’ impeachment inquiry into the president’s ties to his son’s foreign business deals would be harmful to his political future.

    About 40% of voters, on average, think Joe Biden did something illegal. Most voters don’t.

    Some Republicans are no doubt hoping that Biden’s own troubles will make their likely nominee (Trump), who is under four indictments, look less bad by comparison. A majority of voters, however, think that Trump committed a crime.

    The public doesn’t see the Biden and Trump cases the same way.

    A Wall Street Journal poll from the end of August found that a majority of Americans (52%) did not want Biden to be impeached.

    Republicans will have to prove their case in the court of public opinion.

    It’s conceivable that Republicans will overshoot the mark like they have in the past. The impeachment inquiry into Bill Clinton in 1998 preceded one of the best performances by a president’s party in a midterm election. Clinton’s Democratic Party picked up seats in the House, which has happened three times for the president’s party in midterms over the last century.

    To see how impeachment could turn things upside down for the GOP this cycle, consider independent voters. While the vast majority of independents disapprove of the job Biden is doing as president (64%) in our latest CNN poll, only 39% think he did something illegal.

    An election about a potentially unpopular impeachment would be better for Biden than one about an issue that really hurts him (such as voters seeing him as too old).

    Stop me if you heard this one before: Biden is the president heading into an election, voters are unhappy with the state of the economy, and his party does much better in the elections than a lot of people thought.

    That’s what happened in the 2022 midterms.

    The inflation rate is lower now than it was then, but it’s on the uptick. Voters, both now and then, overwhelmingly disapprove of Biden’s handling of the economy. They even say the economy matters more than any other issue, like they did in 2022.

    What none of this data takes into account is that Americans almost always call the economy the top issue, according to Gallup.

    Believe it or not, fewer Americans say the economy is the top problem facing the country now (31%) than they have in either the median (40%) or average (45%) presidential election since 1988.

    If you think about recent presidential elections in which the economy was the big issue (1992, 2008 and 2012), the state of the economy dominated the headlines.

    But as mentioned above, right now, there are a lot of other things going on in the country, as was also the case during the 2022 midterms.

    It’s not as if the economy is helping Biden. I’m just not sure it’s hurting him.

    After all, there’s a reason why Democrats have consistently outperformed the 2020 presidential baseline in special elections this year.

    If things were really that bad for Biden and the Democrats, they’d most likely be losing elections all over the country. That simply isn’t happening at this point.

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  • Florida GOP scraps planned loyalty oath in win for Trump over DeSantis in their shared home state | CNN Politics

    Florida GOP scraps planned loyalty oath in win for Trump over DeSantis in their shared home state | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Republican Party of Florida on Friday night scrapped plans to require presidential candidates to sign a loyalty oath, siding with former President Donald Trump over Gov. Ron DeSantis in a proxy war that tested the strength of the two rivals’ support in their home state.

    The party had quietly agreed in May to institute a pledge, mandating candidates promise to endorse the GOP nominee in order to make next year’s primary ballot – a move seen by Trump allies as a maneuver intended to boost DeSantis. Pro-Trump forces in the party, led by state Sen. Joe Gruters, pushed to reverse course Friday, arguing that the state GOP violated national party rules that bar such changes to candidate eligibility requirements within two years of an election.

    Gruters, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, made a motion to remove the language and won out in a voice vote by an “overwhelming” margin, he told CNN.

    “Common sense prevailed at the Republican Party of Florida tonight,” Gruters said.

    The vote by the state GOP’s executive committee took place during the organization’s quarterly meeting in Orlando, an event that should have been a celebration of the party’s recent electoral successes and a chance to lay the groundwork for the campaign to keep Florida red in 2024.

    Instead, the meeting exposed deepening divisions in the state party over its two presidential candidates. The outcome suggests that Trump maintains the upper hand over DeSantis in their shared home state.

    Republican Party of Florida Chairman Christian Ziegler did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

    In a statement to CNN after the vote, DeSantis spokesman Bryan Griffin said, “Once Ron DeSantis secures the party’s nomination, we hope everyone in the field will join him in that fight.”

    “We believe anyone who wants to run for president as a Republican should be willing to pledge their support for our eventual nominee,” Griffin said. “It is surprising that anyone interested in seeing the defeat of Joe Biden in 2024 would disagree.”

    On Friday night, the two 2024 rivals had dueling speeches in Washington, DC, about two miles from each other at separate Christian conservative events. DeSantis at the Pray Vote Stand Summit hosted by the Family Research Council and Trump at the Concerned Women for America Summit, where DeSantis made remarks earlier in the afternoon.

    In August, DeSantis signed the Republican National Committee’s loyalty pledge to support the party’s eventual nominee, one of the requirements to appear on the debate stage. Trump has not signed the RNC’s loyalty pledge.

    On Thursday, Trump told conservative host Megyn Kelly he does not plan to debate his fellow Republicans, pointing to his commanding lead over the 2024 primary field.

    “I don’t see it,” Trump told Kelly. “Why would I do it?”

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  • Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business

    Americans are feeling gloomier about the economy | CNN Business

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    Washington, DC
    CNN
     — 

    Americans aren’t feeling gloomy about higher gas prices just yet, but they’re still on edge about inflation and the economy’s direction — and concerns are starting to surface about the possibility of a government shutdown.

    Consumer sentiment tracked by the University of Michigan edged down in September from the prior month by 1.8 points, according to a preliminary reading released Friday.

    “Both short-run and long-run expectations for economic conditions improved modestly this month, though on net consumers remain relatively tentative about the trajectory of the economy,” said the University of Michigan’s Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu in a release. “So far, few consumers mentioned the potential federal government shutdown, but if the shutdown comes to bear, consumer views on the economy will likely slide, as was the case just a few months ago when the debt ceiling neared a breach.”

    Sentiment could start to sour soon, since gas prices are highly visible indicators of inflation. Sentiment fell to its lowest level on record last summer when gas prices topped $5 a gallon and inflation reached a four-decade high. The national average for regular gasoline stood at $3.87 a gallon on Friday, according to AAA, seven cents higher than a week ago and 17 cents higher than the same day last year.

    Consumers’ expectation of inflation rates in the year ahead fell to a 3.1% rate in September, down from 3.5% in the prior month.

    This story is developing and will be updated.

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