U.S. stocks finished higher Friday, with the Nasdaq Composite closing out June with its strongest first half of a year since 1983, as investors hoped the Federal Reserve might be able to back off its inflation battle more quickly than Fed chief Jerome Powell has telegraphed.
How stock indexes traded
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, +0.84%
rose 285.18 points, or 0.8%, to close at 34,407.60
The S&P 500 SPX, +1.23%
gained 53.94 points, or 1.2%, to finish at 4,450.38, its highest closing value since April 20, 2022.
The Nasdaq Composite COMP, +1.45%
climbed 196.59 points, or 1.4%, to end at 13,787.92, marking its highest closing value since April 7, 2022.
For the week, the Dow gained 2%, the S&P 500 advanced 2.3% and the Nasdaq increased 2.2%, according to Dow Jones Market Data. All three indexes rose in June, with the S&P 500 climbing for a fourth straight month to book its longest monthly win streak since August 2021. The Nasdaq also climbed for a fourth consecutive month to score its longest such win streak since April 2021.
What’s driven markets
The final trading day of the week, month and quarter presented a positive picture for U.S. stocks as the main indexes advanced following the latest inflation report.
“Clearly today the market likes and is responding to the inflation data,” said Chris Fasciano, portfolio manager at Commonwealth Financial Network, in a phone interview Friday. “It continues to show softening inflation and that’s clearly what the Fed’s looking for,” he said. “I think investors are comfortable right now with a soft-landing scenario” for the economy.
On Friday, data showed U.S. inflation measured by the personal-consumption-expenditures price index eased to 3.8% in May on a 12-month basis, the slowest increase since April 2021.
The PCE price index edged up 0.1% on a month-over-month basis in May, while core prices, which exclude volatile food and energy products, increased by 0.3%. The government’s PCE inflation report was in line with economists’ expectations.
The data added to an increasingly upbeat portrait of a U.S. economy, which has continued to expand despite the Fed’s aggressive tightening of monetary policy. Gross domestic product in the U.S. expanded 2% during the first quarter, much stronger than the previous 1.3% reading, data released on Thursday showed.
The Federal Reserve has been raising interest rates since 2022 to cool the economy and tame inflation. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said earlier this week that he didn’t expect inflation in the U.S. to return to the central bank’s 2% target until 2025.
“Right now, the Fed’s job is not clear-cut,” said George Mateyo, the chief investment officer of Key Private Bank, in emailed commentary Friday. “While they may not be done with rake hikes, perhaps they don’t have much more work to do.”
The U.S. stock market has rallied this month, bringing the S&P 500 index’s gains this quarter to 8.3%. The S&P 500 jumped 15.9% in the first six months of this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq soared 31.7% for its best first half since 1983, according to Dow Jones Market Data.
Constellation Brands Inc. STZ, -0.29%
slipped 0.3% after posting better-than-expected fiscal first-quarter earnings on Friday, boosted by strength in its beer business where sales rose 11% due to strong growth for Modelo Especial, which recently replaced Bud Light as the bestselling beer in the U.S.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California lawmakers approved a $310.8 billion budget on Tuesday that closes a nearly $32 billion budget deficit while also extending a lucrative tax break for the state’s iconic film and television industry.
The nation’s most populous state has had combined budget surpluses of well over $100 billion in the past few years, enabling the Democrats in charge to greatly expand government.
But this year, revenues slowed as inflation soared and the stock market struggled. California gets most of its revenue from taxes paid by the wealthy, making it more vulnerable to changes in the economy than other states. Last month, the administration of Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom estimated the state’s spending would exceed revenues by over $30 billion.
California has cited two Northern California mushroom farms for health and safety violations and proposed more than $165,000 in fines five months after a worker killed seven people in back-to-back shootings.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom is pushing for big changes in the state’s building and permitting process.
California’s transit agencies are asking Democrats who control the state’s government to rescue them like Democrats in New York recently did.
Two insurance industry giants have stepped back from the California marketplace. They say that wildfire risk and soaring construction costs have prompted them to stop writing new policies.
The budget approved by lawmakers covers that deficit by cutting some spending — about $8 billion — while delaying other spending and shifting some expenses to other funds. The plan would borrow $6.1 billion and would set aside $37.8 billion in reserves, the most ever. Newsom has said he will sign it into law.
Despite the deficit, lawmakers agreed to extend tax credits for movie and television productions that film in the state. Those credits will reduce state revenues by up to $330 million per year. The big change is that those tax credits will be refundable. That means if a movie studio has credits that are worth more than what it owes in taxes, the state will pay the studio the difference in cash.
“It’s real hard to justify doing this when we’re not doing that for a lot of people who are struggling in California,” Republican Assembly Leader James Gallagher said.
Others said the improved tax credits are needed as California faces competition from other states seeking to lure TV and movie productions out of California, which has long been synonymous with the glamor of Hollywood.
“It’s something I know people can argue over whether it benefits California or not, but it is iconic and it creates jobs,” Senate President Pro Tempore Toni Atkins said.
California’s budget reflects the partisan divisions that permeate the country’s politics. Democrats praised the budget for avoiding painful cuts to health care and public education programs, two of the biggest areas of state spending. But Republicans criticized the budget as unsustainable. Republican Assemblymember Vince Fong noted the budget Democrats approved on Tuesday assumes much higher tax revenues than the projections from the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office.
“If revenues come closer to the independent legislative analyst’s projections and if a recession occurs, not only will the deficits be larger, they will consume most, if not all, of our reserves,” Fong said.
The budget is a complex array of nearly two dozen bills that include much more than just spending decisions. It includes protections for the Joshua tree, a native desert plant at the center of a long debate about how to safeguard it from threats driven by climate change without adding unnecessary roadblocks to housing and solar development projects in areas where the tree grows.
The state will charge a fee to developers who remove the trees, pledging to use the money to conserve the species. Chuck Bonham, director of the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, called the bill an “innovative approach” to balancing tree preservation and development efforts.
But Assemblymember Tom Lackey, a Republican representing Palmdale, a Southern California city in the Mojave Desert where many of the trees grow, worried the bill will hinder housing development in his district.
“There’s never been a bill that’s more impactful to my desert community than this one,” Lackey said.
The budget includes a lifeline for public transit agencies struggling to survive following steep declines in riders during the coronavirus pandemic. It allows transit agencies to use some of the $5.1 billion in funding over the next three years for operations.
Still, some San Francisco Bay-area lawmakers said the spending wasn’t enough to forestall painful service cuts over the next few years. On Monday, they proposed legislation that would increase tolls on seven state-owned bridges — including the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge — by $1.50 over the next five years.
Civil liberties groups were upset that the budget allows state officials to withhold some records related to investigations of police misconduct until 2027, a delay the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training said was necessary as it prepares to handle an estimated 3,400 cases each year.
Lawmakers agreed to impose a new tax on the private companies that contract with the state to administer Medicaid benefits. The tax will bring in an estimated $32 billion over the next four years, with some of the money going to doctors while other funding will go to rural hospitals struggling to avoid bankruptcy.
“This will fundamentally help us change how we do health care,” Democratic state Sen. Anna Caballero said.
The budget includes more than $2.8 billion to increase pay for state-subsidized child care workers. But it delays until next year funding for an additional 20,000 slots in the state’s subsidized child care program for low-income families.
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Associated Press writer Sophie Austin contributed to this report. Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna
DOWNIEVILLE, Calif. (AP) — Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the U.S. West through a multi-billion dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth.
Yet one year into what’s envisioned as a decade-long effort, federal land managers are scrambling to catch up after falling behind on several of their priority forests for thinning even as they exceeded goals elsewhere. And they’ve skipped over some highly at-risk communities to work in less threatened areas, according to data obtained by The Associated Press, public records and Congressional testimony.
With climate change making the situation increasingly dire, mixed early results from the administration’s initiative underscore the challenge of reversing decades of lax forest management and aggressive fire suppression that allowed many woodlands to become tinderboxes. The ambitious effort comes amid pushback from lawmakers dissatisfied with progress to date and criticism from some environmentalists for cutting too many trees.
The haze of unhealthy air that settled over the Great Lakes region Tuesday reminded U.S. residents from the Midwest to the Northeast and as far south as Kentucky to brace for more depending on which way the wind blows as Canadian wildfires rage on.
Canadian officials say rainfall likely won’t be enough to extinguish the wildfires ravaging northern Quebec, but the wet weather could give firefighters a chance to get ahead of the flames as the country surpassed the record for area burned by wildfires this week.
Drifting smoke from the ongoing wildfires across Canada is creating curtains of haze and raising air quality concerns throughout the Great Lakes region, and in parts of the central and eastern United States.
Wildfire smoke from Canada has prompted officials to issue a record 23rd air quality alert for much of Minnesota through late Wednesday night as smoky skies obscure the Minneapolis and St.
Administration officials in interviews and during testimony maintained that the thinning work is making a difference. Work announced to date, they said, will help lessen wildfire dangers faced by more than 500 communities in 10 states. But they also acknowledged finishing the task will require far more resources than what’s already dedicated.
“As much money as we’re receiving, it’s not enough to take care of the problems that we are seeing, particularly across the West,” said Forest Service Chief Randy Moore. “This is an emergency situation in many places, and we are acting with a sense of urgency.”
BIG MONEY FOR BIG PROBLEM
Congress in the last two years approved more than $4 billion in additional funding to prevent repeats of destructive infernos that have torched communities including in California, Colorado and Montana.
By logging and burning trees and low-lying vegetation, officials hope to lessen forest fuels and keep fires that originate on federal lands from exploding through nearby cities and towns.
The enormity of the task is evident in an aerial view of California’s Tahoe National Forest, where mountainsides are colored brown and gray with the vast number of trees killed by insects and drought. After work on the Tahoe was delayed last year, Forest Service crews and contractors recently started taking down trees across thousands of acres.
“The forests as we know them in California and across the West, they’re dying. They’re being destroyed through fire. They’re dying from drought, disease and insects,” said forest Supervisor Eli Ilano. “They’re dying at a pace that we’re having trouble keeping up with.”
The scale of spending is unprecedented, said Courtney Schultz with Colorado State University. The forest policy expert said millions of acres have been through environmental review and are ready for work.
“If we really want to go big across the landscape — to reduce fuels enough to affect fire behavior and have some impact on communities — we need to be planning large projects,” she said.
Key to that strategy is addressing forest patches where computer simulations show wildfire could easily spread to inhabited areas. Some areas have yet to get the extra funding for thinning despite facing high risk, including portions of California’s Sierra Nevada range, Montana’s Bitterroot Valley and around Mescalero Apache lands in southern New Mexico.
Only about a third of the land the U.S. Forest Service treated last year was designated with high wildfire hazard potential, agency documents show. About half the forest was in the southeastern U.S., where wildfires are less severe but weather conditions make it easier to use intentional burns, the documents show.
The infrastructure bill passed two years ago with bipartisan support included a requirement for the administration to treat forests across 10 million acres — 15,625 square miles or 40,500 square kilometers — by 2027. Less than 10% of that was addressed in the first year.
“The Forest Service is obligating hundreds of millions of dollars, but not in the areas required by law,” said Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
Forest Service spokesman Wade Muehlhof said the agency was confident in the administration’s strategy, but declined to say if it would meet the acreage mandates.
MIXED FIRST-YEAR RESULTS
An AP analysis of federal data reveals the scale of the challenge: Hundreds of communities are threatened by the potential for fires to ignite on federal forests and spread to populated areas.
In California, thinning zones announced to date address the risk to only about one-in-five houses and other buildings potentially exposed to fires on federal lands, the analysis shows. In Nevada and Oregon, it’s about half of exposed structures, and in Montana it’s one-in 25.
A crew member uses a tree processor to strip bark and branches from logs before being transported to a mill, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Tahoe National Forest supervisor Eli Ilano, foreground, walks past a pile of cut down trees, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. “The forests as we know them in California and across the West, they’re dying,” Ilano said. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) –
Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP
The stump of a tree can be seen in the Tahoe National Forest, Tuesday, June 6, 2023, near Camptonville, Calif. Using chainsaws, heavy machinery and controlled burns, the Biden administration is trying to turn the tide on worsening wildfires in the U.S. West through a multi-billion dollar cleanup of forests choked with dead trees and undergrowth. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez) –
Godofredo A. Vásquez/AP
Trees are visible from the town of Downieville, Calif., Tuesday, June 6, 2023. (AP Photo/Godofredo A. Vásquez)
Most areas identified as hot spots where forest fires have high potential to burn into populated areas won’t be addressed for at least the next several years, according to government planning documents. And computer models project up to 20% of areas that need thinning will be hit by fires before that work occurs.
Architects of the Forest Service’s strategy based it on tens millions of computer wildfire simulations being used to predict areas that pose the greatest risk. Those scenarios showed fires on only 10% to 20% of the land would account for 80% of exposure to communities.
“This is a mapped plan through time, where we can laser-focus on one highly important issue: the problem of communities being destroyed by wildfires started on public lands,” said Forest Service fire scientist Alan Ager.
FALLING SHORT IN A RISKY AREA
In 2022, the Forest Service missed its treatment goals in four of 10 areas targeted as priorities. One was the Tahoe National Forest’s North Yuba region, where the agency addressed only 6% of the acreage planned.
Small towns tucked into the forest’s canyons escaped disaster two years ago when the Dixie fire raged just to the north, destroying several communities and burning about 1,500 square miles (3,900 square kilometers) in the Sierra Nevada range. Those communities also escaped another fire to the south that burned more than 1,000 homes and structures. The previous year, yet another fire killed 15 people and torched more than 2,000 homes and structures in the region.
The same conditions that whipped those fires into infernos exist on the Tahoe forest — densely-packed trees and underbrush primed to burn following years of drought. And government computer modeling suggests it’s among the U.S. communities most exposed to wildfires on federal lands.
Five million trees died on the Tahoe last year alone, said Ilano, the forest supervisor.
“What we’re realizing is we’re not moving fast enough, that the fires are burning bigger and more intense, more quickly than we anticipated,” Ilano said.
FILE – An air tanker drops fire retardant to battle the Dixie Fire in the Feather River Canyon in Plumas County, Calif., July 14, 2021. (Paul Kitagaki Jr./The Sacramento Bee via AP)
FILE – Fire Battalion Chief Craig Newell carries a hose while battling the North Complex Fire in Plumas National Forest, Calif., on Sept. 14, 2020. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)
Earlier this month, tracked vehicles including one known as a “harvester” worked through dense stands on the North Yuba, clipping large trees at their base and stripping them bare of branches in just seconds, then piling the trunks to be burned later. Elsewhere, work crews walked slowly behind a wood chipper as it was pulled along a forest road, stuffing the machine with small trees and branches cut to clear the understory.
The increased logging needed to reach the government’s lofty goals has gained acceptance as the growing toll from wildfires softens longstanding opposition from some environmental groups and ecologists.
“Gone are the days when things were black and white and either good or bad,” said Melinda Booth, former director of the South Yuba River Citizens League. “We need targeted treatment, targeted thinning, which does include logging.”
Others think officials are going too far. Sue Britting with Sierra Forest Legacy says the North Yuba plan includes about nine square miles (23 square kilometers) of older trees and stands along waterways that should be preserved. Yet for most of the work, Britting said it’s time to “move forward” on a thinning project years in the making.
OBSTACLES TO THINNING STRATEGY
Hindering the Forest Service nationwide is a shortage of workers to cut and remove trees on the scale demanded, government officials and forestry experts say. Litigation ties up many projects, with environmental reviews taking three years on average before work begins, according to the Property and Environment Research Center, a Bozeman, Montana think tank.
Another problem: Thinning operations aren’t allowed in federally designated wilderness areas. That puts off limits about a third of National Forest areas that expose communities to high wildfire risk and means some thinning work must be carried out in a patchwork fashion.
Keeping track of progress presents its own challenges. Acres that get worked on are often counted twice or more — first when the trees are cut down, again when leftover piles of woody material on the same site are removed, and yet again when that landscape is later subjected to prescribed fire, said Schultz of Colorado State University.
Even where thinning is allowed, officials face other potential constraints, such as protecting older groves important for wildlife habitat. A Biden inventory of public lands in April identified more than 175,000 square miles (453,000 square kilometers) of old growth and mature forests on U.S. government land.
The inventory will be used to craft new rules to better protect those woodlands from fires, insects and other side effects of climate change. But there’s overlap between older forests and many areas slated for thinning. That includes more than half of the treatment area at North Yuba, according to an AP analysis of mature forest data compiled by the conservation group Wild Heritage.
“What’s driving all of this is insect infestation, drought stress, and all of that is related to the climate,” said Wild Heritage chief scientist Dominick DellaSalla. “I don’t think you can get out of it by thinning.”
Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — A vote on the future of Wisconsin’s top elections official ended in partisan deadlock Tuesday amid Republican calls for the nonpartisan administrator of the statewide elections commission to resign over how she ran the 2020 presidential contest.
A stalemate between elections commissioners on whether to reappoint Meagan Wolfe creates uncertainty over who will be in charge of elections in a battleground state so narrowly divided that four of the past six presidential elections in Wisconsin have been decided by less than a percentage point. Wolfe has staunchly defended the decisions she’s made and fought back against false claims of election fraud, including those made by former President Donald Trump.
“When your constituents challenge you about the integrity of Wisconsin elections, tell them the truth,” she wrote to lawmakers just days before the vote on her reappointment. “When people perpetuate false claims about our election systems, push back publicly. Election officials cannot carry the burden of educating the public on elections alone.”
Republican legislative leaders say there will be no substantive changes to the state budget, meaning that a cut in funding to the University of Wisconsin that puts the entire spending plan in jeopardy of being vetoed will remain.
The Republican-authored Wisconsin state budget includes a $3.5 billion income tax cut covering all income levels, a cut to the University of Wisconsin System and more money for public K-12 and private voucher schools.
Income taxes would be cut across the board by $3.5 billion under a plan passed by Republicans who control the Wisconsin Legislature’s budget-writing committee.
Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has signed a bipartisan bill that sends more money to Milwaukee and gives both the city and county the ability to raise the local sales tax in an effort to avoid bankruptcy.
The six members of the Wisconsin Elections Commission are evenly divided between Republicans and Democrats. Republican commissioners voted to reappoint Wolfe, but Democrats abstained from Tuesday’s vote for fear that reappointing her would allow the Republican-controlled state Senate to reject her confirmation. Commission actions require at least a four-vote majority.
“Meagan Wolfe is the best person to run our agency, and that’s why I’m abstaining. I will take my shots with the court rather than at the Senate,” Democratic Commissioner Mark Thomsen said.
The impasse means it could be months before commissioners or lawmakers choose someone to lead the elections agency through the 2024 presidential race and beyond, if they do so at all.
A recent Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling appears to allow Wolfe to continue as administrator, even after her term ends on Saturday. But relying on that decision, which has allowed Republican appointees to stay on state boards, raises unanswered legal questions.
“We are in unprecedented territory,” Wolfe said at a news conference after the vote. “I have a very clear intent here, and that is to make sure that our commission, our agency, our local election officials, that they have the stability they need as we move forward.”
Commission Chair Don Millis, a Republican, warned that having a holdover administrator would only decrease stability by encouraging conspiracy theorists and drawing questions about Wolfe’s authority during the 2024 election.
“It’s more than a bad look. It’s going to create problems for us and for elections officials across the state,” he said.
Wolfe has served as the state’s elections administrator since 2018 and has become one of the most respected elections leaders in the nation. Before defending her record in a letter to state lawmakers, she called on commissioners to vote for the option they believe offers the most stability for Wisconsin elections even if that’s not her.
If the commission eventually appoints Wolfe or someone else to replace her, they will need to be confirmed by the Republican-controlled state Senate.
Some Republican state senators have vowed to vote against reappointing Wolfe, who has sparred with them over election conspiracy theories on numerous occasions. If a commission appointee is rejected by the Senate, then commissioners would need to make a new appointment within 45 days or else a legislative committee controlled by Republicans could choose the next administrator.
Relatively few people meet the legal requirements or hold the experience necessary to serve as Wisconsin’s top elections official. An appointee for elections administrator cannot have ever worked in a partisan office or donated to a partisan campaign in the past year, and the state’s elections system is one of the most decentralized in the country.
The commission’s vote comes as a divided GOP struggles to move past election lies that Trump and his followers have promoted since his loss to President Joe Biden in 2020. Republican state lawmakers across the country have sought to expand their control over elections in recent years, and far-right candidates have won seats in local government with platforms built on election skepticism.
But by and large, election denialism has hurt the GOP. Most candidates in 2022 in swing states including Wisconsin who supported overturning Trump’s defeat lost. A draft Republican National Committee report obtained by The Associated Press earlier this year reviewing the party’s performance in recent elections called for candidates to stop “ relitigating previous elections.”
In Wisconsin, the outcome of the 2020 election has withstood two partial recounts, a nonpartisan audit, a conservative law firm’s review, numerous state and federal lawsuits, and a Republican-ordered review that found no evidence of widespread fraud before the investigator was fired. The GOP-controlled Legislature has rejected attempts to decertify the results.
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Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed to this report.
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Harm Venhuizen is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Harm on Twitter.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Non-U.S. citizens would be able to teach in Pennsylvania classrooms in a measure passed by the state House of Representatives on Monday.
The bill passed 110-93. It now goes on to the state Senate, which is considering its own version of the measure.
The legislation would allow teachers with a valid immigrant visa, work visa or employment authorization documentation to be eligible for certification to teach in Pennsylvania schools.
The International African American Museum will soon open in Charleston, South Carolina, at one of the country’s most historically significant slave-trading ports.
Russian forces have destroyed or damaged thousands of Ukrainian schools. But the disruption to education goes far beyond devastated buildings.
The first-grade teacher who was shot by her 6-year-old student in Virginia no longer works for the school system that employed her.
Exiting from the pandemic, the assumption might be students who returned quickly to in-person learning might be the least scathed academically.
Currently, the state prohibits non-U.S. citizens from teaching unless they are applying to teach a foreign language or have a green card and have documented their intent to become a citizen. Additionally, young immigrants, who are living in the country undocumented and are protected under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program and can legally work, are not eligible for teacher certification in the state.
Sponsors for the bill say it will help offset the decline in teachers — with fewer new teachers certifying and higher teacher attrition in the state. It also would help chip away at the gap between the percentage of students of color and teachers of color, sponsors said.
“Let’s as a collective tackle this growing problem and let’s continue to eliminate some of these barriers that don’t apply to most careers in the Commonwealth, let alone in the United States,” said the bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Johanny Cepeda-Freytiz, a Democrat from Berks County. “We have so many people that are qualified.”
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Republicans plan to make no substantive changes to the state budget, meaning that a cut in funding to the University of Wisconsin System that puts the entire spending plan in jeopardy of being vetoed will remain, legislative leaders said Tuesday.
Democratic Gov. Tony Evers has threatened to veto the two-year spending plan if UW funding for diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, programming is cut. The plan passed by a Republican-controlled budget committee reduces UW funding by $32 million and eliminates nearly 190 positions, money and staff dedicated toward DEI staff salaries and programs.
However, the budget does allow UW to come back and get the $32 million if it shows how it would be spent on workforce development efforts, and not DEI programs.
The Republican-dominated North Carolina legislature has swept six vetoed bills into law. The House and Senate completed the efforts on Tuesday following a succession of votes with margins large enough to overcome Democratic Gov.
Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers says in a newspaper report that he won’t sign the state budget if Republican lawmakers cut funding for the state’s university system’s diversity officers and initiatives.
New St. John’s coach Rick Pitino has thrown out a ceremonial first pitch at the Subway Series between the New York Yankees and New York Mets.
Republican lawmakers have suspended a vote on funding for University of Wisconsin campuses, just hours after a top GOP leader promised to slash the college system’s budget as part of an ongoing fight over diversity and inclusion initiatives.
Evers also has the power to make more limited line-item vetoes, but he could not increase funding with a partial veto. Evers on Sunday told WISN-TV that he was waiting to see the final budget text before making decisions on vetoes. His spokesperson Britt Cudaback referred to those comments Tuesday when asked about the governor’s plans.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said he “can’t imagine” that Evers would veto the entire budget because of the UW funding cut. But Vos says he had not spoken with Evers about it.
The Senate is scheduled to vote on passing the budget on Wednesday. It would then go to the Assembly, which would have to pass an identical version before it would go to Evers. The Assembly could make changes, which would then send it back to the Senate for another vote.
But Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu and Vos told The Associated Press in separate interviews Tuesday that no changes were planned.
Democratic Attorney General Josh Kaul, along with school and law enforcement leaders, have been pushing Republicans to increase funding for the state’s school safety office. That office, created by Republicans in 2018, was designed to prevent violence in schools after the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
The office provides safety grants to Wisconsin schools, maintains a 24/7 tip hotline, offers training and maintains blueprints of school layouts to assist law enforcement when reacting to emergencies. The Legislature’s budget committee voted to cut funding for the office this month, a move that Kaul said would essentially gut it and not allow it to provide all the services it currently does.
The office would have more than half a million dollars in funding to pay for nearly four full-time positions. It currently employs 16 people, with 12 of them paid for by time-limited federal funding that came during the pandemic.
Vos defended the cut, saying the Legislature won’t replace pandemic-era federal funding and that the core functions of the office can continue with the money provided.
If Kaul wants to make a case to the Legislature later for additional funding, “we’re always willing to take a look at it,” Vos said.
Kaul said he was “certainly disappointed” that the Legislature doesn’t plan to continue current funding levels. If funding isn’t found to replace it by the end of the year, Kaul said programming that helps schools around the state may be lost.
Kaul said that all avenues to maintain current funding, including going back to the Legislature, will be pursued.
Democrats and child care providers have also been pushing to restore funding for a pandemic-era child care subsidy program that Republicans cut. Advocates have argued that the move would be devastating for needy families and the state’s economy.
Kaul, the UW System and others advocating for additional funding have argued that it could be done given that the state has a projected budget surplus of nearly $7 billion. Republicans have instead focused on cutting taxes.
The state budget includes a $3.5 billion income tax cut for all taxpayers, a plan Democrats have derided because wealthy people will get a bigger reduction than lower earners. The budget also includes $1 billion more for K-12 public schools, additional funding that Evers secured as part of a deal with Republicans to increase state aid to Milwaukee and other local communities.
Evers signed the past two state budgets passed by Republicans and took credit for tax cuts they included.
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania state court on Tuesday rejected the latest Republican effort to throw out the presidential battleground state’s broad mail-in voting law that has become a GOP target following former President Donald Trump’s baseless claims about election fraud.
It is the latest of several refusals by a state court to invalidate Pennsylvania’s 2019 mail-in voting law, enacted barely months before the COVID-19 pandemic began and Trump began attacking mail-in voting.
In the lawsuit filed last year, 14 current and former Republican state lawmakers said the court must invalidate the law because two earlier court decisions triggered a provision written that says the law is “void” if any of its requirements are struck down in court.
Gov. Josh Shapiro is trying to wrap up his first budget by Saturday’s start of the new fiscal year, as the Democrat works to balance Pennsylvania’s politically divided Legislature.
A Pennsylvania state trooper who was shot and killed earlier this month when he went to work on his day off after learning his barracks had been attacked by an armed man was lauded during his funeral as a hero who only wanted to serve his community.
Spurred on by train derailments, some states crisscrossed by busy freight railroads aren’t waiting for federal action to improve safety.
Delaware state Sen. Sarah McBride says she’s running for the U.S. House of Representatives. Already the first openly transgender state senator elected in the country, she’d be the first trans member of Congress if she wins in November.
The law has a requirement that voters must hand-write a date on the outer envelope of their mail-in ballot in order for the ballot to be counted. The Republicans argued that the two earlier court decisions refused to enforce the hand-written date requirement — meaning the law should be thrown out.
But the Commonwealth Court, in a 24-page opinion, unanimously found that the court decisions did not invalidate “the dating provision” of the law. It dismissed the lawsuit, in favor of Gov. Josh Shapiro’s administration and the national and state Democratic parties.
Democrats hailed the ruling for protecting the opportunity to vote by mail. Shapiro’s administration said over the past three years, more than 7.5 million Pennsylvanians have voted by mail.
“We are pleased that today’s court ruling allows all eligible voters to continue exercising their fundamental right to vote using this secure, accessible method,” Shapiro’s administration said in a statement.
Greg Teufel, the lawyer for the 14 Republican lawmakers, said he expects to appeal to the state Supreme Court, which has twice upheld the mail-in voting law against previous Republican-backed challenges.
In an interview, Teufel said he disagreed with the court’s rationale, saying that the court is ignoring the plain language of the law.
“They’re sidestepping a critical issue, just pretending they don’t see it,” Teufel said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — The FBI and the Department of Homeland Security downplayed or ignored “a massive amount of intelligence information” ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S Capitol, according to the chairman of a Senate panel that on Tuesday is releasing a new report on the intelligence failures ahead of the insurrection.
The report details how the agencies failed to recognize and warn of the potential for violence as some of then-President Donald Trump’s supporters openly planned the siege in messages and forums online.
Among the multitude of intelligence that was overlooked was a December 2020 tip to the FBI that members of the far-right extremist group Proud Boys planned to be in Washington, D.C., for the certification of Joe Biden’s victory and their “plan is to literally kill people,” the report said. The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee said the agencies were also aware of many social media posts that foreshadowed violence, some calling on Trump’s supporters to “come armed” and storm the Capitol, kill lawmakers or “burn the place to the ground.”
The special counsel who investigated the FBI’s probe of ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign found himself at the center of a heated political fight as he appeared before a congressional committee.
An American missionary who spent six years in captivity in Africa says he was beaten, locked in chains and pressured repeatedly to convert to Islam.
The Biden administration is releasing what it says are newly declassified examples of how U.S. surveillance programs are used.
As Donald Trump readies for a momentous court appearance Tuesday on charges related to the hoarding of top-secret documents, Republican allies are amplifying, without evidence, claims that he’s the target of a political prosecution.
Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, the Democratic chairman of the Homeland panel, said the breakdown was “largely a failure of imagination to see threats that the Capitol could be breached as credible,” echoing the findings of the Sept. 11 commission about intelligence failures ahead of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
The report by the panel’s majority staff says the intelligence community has not entirely recalibrated to focus on the threats of domestic, rather than international, terrorism. And government intelligence leaders failed to sound the alarm “in part because they could not conceive that the U.S. Capitol Building would be overrun by rioters.”
Still, Peters said, the reasons for dismissing what he called a “massive” amount of intelligence “defies an easy explanation.”
While several other reports have examined the intelligence failures around Jan. 6 — including a bipartisan 2021 Senate report, the House Jan. 6 committee last year and several separate internal assessments by the Capitol Police and other government agencies — the latest investigation is the first congressional report to focus solely on the actions of the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis.
In the wake of the attack, Peters said the committee interviewed officials at both agencies and found what was “pretty constant finger pointing” at each other.
“Everybody should be accountable because everybody failed,” Peters said.
Using emails and interviews collected by the Senate committee and others, including from the House Jan. 6 panel, the report lays out in detail the intelligence the agencies received in the weeks ahead of the attack.
There was not a failure to obtain evidence, the report says, but the agencies “failed to fully and accurately assess the severity of the threat identified by that intelligence, and formally disseminate guidance to their law enforcement partners.”
As Trump, a Republican, falsely claimed he had won the 2020 election and tried to overturn his election defeat, telling his supporters to “ fight like hell ” in a speech in front of the White House that day, thousands of them marched to the Capitol. More than 2,000 rioters overran law enforcement, assaulted police officers, and caused more than $2.7 billion in damage to the Capitol, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report earlier this year.
Breaking through windows and doors, the rioters sent lawmakers running for their lives and temporarily interrupted the certification of the election victory by Biden, a Democrat.
Even as the attack was happening, the new report found, the FBI and Homeland Security downplayed the threat. As the Capitol Police struggled to clear the building, Homeland Security “was still struggling to assess the credibility of threats against the Capitol and to report out its intelligence.”
And at a 10 a.m. briefing as protesters gathered at Trump’s speech and near the Capitol were “wearing ballistic helmets, body armor, carrying radio equipment and military grade backpacks,” the FBI briefed that there were “no credible threats at this time.”
The lack of sufficient warnings meant that law enforcement were not adequately prepared and there was not a hardened perimeter established around the Capitol, as there is during events like the annual State of the Union address.
The report contains dozens of tips about violence on Jan. 6 that the agencies received and dismissed either due to lack of coordination, bureaucratic delays or trepidation on the part of those who were collecting it. The FBI, for example, was unexpectedly hindered in its attempt to find social media posts planning for Jan. 6 protests when the contract for its third-party social media monitoring tool expired. At Homeland Security, analysts were hesitant to report open-source intelligence after criticism in 2020 for collecting intelligence on American citizens during racial justice demonstrations.
One tip received by the FBI ahead of the Jan. 6 attack was from a former Justice Department official who sent screenshots of online posts from members of the Oath Keepers extremist group: “There is only one way in. It is not signs. It’s not rallies. It’s f—— bullets!”
The social media company Parler, a favored platform for Trump’s supporters, directly sent the FBI several posts it found alarming, adding that there was “more where this came from” and that they were concerned about what would happen on Jan. 6.
”(T)his is not a rally and it’s no longer a protest,” read one of the Parler posts sent to the FBI, according to the report. “This is a final stand where we are drawing the red line at Capitol Hill. (…) don’t be surprised if we take the #capital (sic) building.”
But even as it received the warnings, the Senate panel found, the agency said over and over again that there were no credible threats.
“Our nation is still reckoning with the fallout from January 6th, but what is clear is the need for a reevaluation of the federal government’s domestic intelligence collection, analysis, and dissemination processes,” the new report says.
In a statement, Homeland Security spokesperson Angelo Fernandez said that the department has made many of those changes two and a half years later. The department “has strengthened intelligence analysis, information sharing, and operational preparedness to help prevent acts of violence and keep our communities safe.”
The FBI said in a separate response that since the attack it has increased focus on “swift information sharing” and centralized the flow of information to ensure more timely notification to other entities. “The FBI is determined to aggressively fight the danger posed by all domestic violent extremists, regardless of their motivations,” the statement said.
FBI Director Christopher Wray has defended the FBI’s handling of intelligence in the run-up to Jan. 6, including a report from its Norfolk field office on Jan. 5 that cited online posts foreshadowing the possibility of a “war” in Washington the following day. The Senate report noted that the memo “did not note the multitude of other warnings” the agency had received.
The faultfinding with the FBI and Homeland Security Department echoes the blistering criticism directed at U.S. Capitol Police in a bipartisan report issued by the Senate Homeland and Rules committees two years ago. That report found that the police intelligence unit knew about social media posts calling for violence, as well, but did not inform top leadership what they had found.
Peters says he asked for the probe of the intelligence agencies after other reports, such as the House panel’s investigation last year, focused on other aspects of the attack. The Jan. 6 panel was more focused on Trump’s actions, and concluded in its report that the former president criminally engaged in a “multi-part conspiracy” to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election and failed to act to stop his supporters from attacking the Capitol.
“It’s important for us to realize these failures to make sure it doesn’t happen again,” Peters said.
___
Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Rebecca Santana contributed to this report.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — The country’s largest public pension fund says the personal information of about 769,000 retired California employees and other beneficiaries — including Social Security numbers — was among data stolen by Russian cybercriminals in the breach of a popular file-transfer application.
It blamed the breach on a third-party vendor that verifies deaths. The same vendor, PBI Research Services/Berwyn Group, also lost the personal data of at least 2.5 million Genworth Financial policyholders, including Social Security numbers, to the same criminal gang, according to the Fortune 500 insurer.
The U.S. is imposing sanctions on four firms and one individual connected to the Wagner Group. The Russian mercenary group led a brief revolt against the Kremlin last week.
Workers in the fields of computer science, real estate, finance and insurance experienced the greatest bumps in working from home during the first years of the pandemic, while it barely budged for laborers in occupations like stockers, truck operators and order fillers.
Former U.S. Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy says he will seek the 2024 Republican nomination to challenge Montana U.S. Sen.
More than $200 billion may have been stolen from two large COVID-19 relief initiatives. That’s according to new estimates from a federal watchdog investigating federally funded programs designed to help small businesses survive the worst public health crisis in more than a hundred years.
The breach of the MOVEit file-transfer program, discovered last month, is estimated by cybersecurity experts to have compromised hundreds of organizations globally. Confirmed victims include the U.S. Department of Energy and several other federal agencies, more than 9 million motorists in Oregon and Louisiana, Johns Hopkins University, Ernst & Young, the BBC and British Airways.
The criminal gang behind the hack, known as Cl0p, is extorting victims, threatening to dump their data online if they don’t pay up.
Genworth disclosed the hack Thursday of the MOVEit instance managed by PBI Research in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Minnesota-based PBI Research did not immediately return a phone message seeking details on which of its other customers may have been affected. The company’s website lists the Nevada, New Jersey and Tennessee public pension funds as among customers of its mortality verification service.
“This external breach of information is inexcusable,” CalPERS CEO Marcie Frost said in a news release. “Our members deserve better. As soon as we learned about what happened, we took fast action to protect our members’ financial interests, as well as steps to ensure long-term protections.”
CalPERS had more than $442 billion in assets as of Dec. 31 and about 1.5 million members.
Security experts say such so-called supply-chain hacks expose an uncomfortable truth about the software organizations use: Network security is only as strong as the weakest digital link in the ecosystem.
The stolen data included names, birth dates and Social Security numbers — and might also include names of spouses or domestic partners and children, officials said. CalPERS planned to send letters Thursday to those affected by the breach.
CalPERS said PBI notified it of the breach on June 6, the same day cybersecurity firms began to issue reports on the breach of MOVEit, whose maker, Ipswitch, is owned by Progress Software.
PBI reported the breach to federal law enforcement, and CalPERS placed “additional safeguards” to protect the information of retirees who use the member benefits website and visit a regional office, officials said. The agency did not elaborate on those safeguards, citing security reasons.
___
This story has been corrected to reflect that Genworth disclosed the hack on Thursday, not June 16.
___
Bajak reported from Boston.
___
Sophie Austin is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow Austin on Twitter: @sophieadanna
Twitter needs to do more work to fall in line with the European Union’s tough new digital rulebook, a top EU official said after overseeing a “stress test” of the company’s systems in Silicon Valley.
European Commissioner Thierry Breton said late Thursday that he noted the “strong commitment of Twitter to comply” with the Digital Services Act, sweeping new standards that the world’s biggest online platforms all must obey in just two months.
However, “work needs to continue,” he said in a statement after reviewing the results of the voluntary test at Twitter’s San Francisco headquarters with owner Elon Musk and new CEO Linda Yaccarino.
Tony Estanguet won gold medals for canoeing in the 2000, 2004 and 2012 Olympic Games. Now, the trim 45-year-old is the face and chief organizer of the 2024 Paris Games.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is insisting that right-wing populism won’t gain the upper hand in his country, days after a far-right party won control of a county administration for the first time since the Nazi era.
The U.K. government’s climate advisers have slammed officials for their slow pace in meeting their net zero target and backtracking on fossil fuel commitments.
Maltese lawmakers have unanimously approved legislation to ease the the strictest abortion laws in the European Union.
Breton, who oversees digital policy, is also meeting other tech bosses in California. He’s the EU’s point person working to get Big Tech ready for the new rules, which will force companies to crack down on hate speech, disinformation and other harmful and illegal material on their sites. The law takes effect Aug. 25 for the biggest platforms.
The Digital Services Act, along with new regulations in the pipeline for data and artificial intelligence, has made Brussels a trailblazer in the growing global movement to clamp down on tech giants.
The mock exercise tested Twitter’s readiness to cope with the DSA’s requirements, including protecting children online and detecting and mitigating risks like disinformation, under both normal and extreme situations.
“Twitter is taking the exercise seriously and has identified the key areas on which it needs to focus to comply with the DSA,” Breton said, without providing more details. “With two months to go before the new EU regulation kicks in, work needs to continue for the systems to be in place and work effectively and quickly.”
Twitter’s global government affairs team tweeted that the company is “on track to be ready when the DSA comes into force.” Yaccarino tweeted that “Europe is very important to Twitter and we’re focused on our continued partnership.”
Musk agreed in December to let the EU carry out the stress test, which the bloc is offering to all tech companies before the rules take effect. Breton said other online platforms will be carrying out their own stress tests in the coming weeks but didn’t name them.
Despite Musk’s claims to the contrary, independent researchers have found misinformation — as well as hate speech — spreading on Twitter since the billionaire Tesla CEO took over the company last year. Musk has reinstated notorious election deniers, overhauled Twitter’s verification system and gutted much of the staff that had been responsible for moderating posts.
Last month, Breton warned Twitter that it “can’t hide” from its obligations after the social media site abandoned the bloc’s voluntary “code of practice” on online disinformation, which other social media platforms have pledged to support.
Combating disinformation will become a legal requirement under the Digital Services Act.
“If laws are passed, Twitter will obey the law,” Musk told the France 2 TV channel this week when asked about the DSA.
Breton’s agenda Friday includes discussions about the EU’s digital rules and upcoming artificial intelligence regulations with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose company makes the popular AI chatbot ChatGPT. But a briefing for journalists was canceled.
For European users of big tech platforms, it will be easier to report illegal content like hate speech, and they will get more information on why they have been recommended certain content.
Violations will incur fines worth up to 6% of annual global revenue — amounting to billions of dollars for some tech giants — or even a ban on operating in the EU, with its with 450 million consumers.
Breton also is meeting Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, the dominant supplier of semiconductors used in AI sytems, for talks on the EU’s Chips Act to boost the continent’s chipmaking industry.
Final approval is expected by the end of the year, but it won’t take effect until two years later. Breton has been pitching a voluntary “AI Pact” to help companies get ready for its adoption.
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden on Monday said that high-speed internet is no longer a luxury but an “absolute necessity,” as he pledged that every household in the nation would have access by 2030 using cables made in the U.S.
“These investments will help all Americans,” he said. “We’re not going to leave anyone behind.”
Biden announced that more than $40 billion would be distributed across the country to deliver high-speed internet in places where there’s either no service, or service is too slow.
The United States has flown nuclear-capable bombers to the Korean Peninsula in its latest show of force against North Korea.
Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. says a request for his country to temporarily host a U.S. immigrant visa processing center for thousands of Afghans faces security and other concerns but is still being considered by his administration.
The United States is about to start the countdown to its 250th anniversary. The buildup begins this July 4 at a Major League Baseball game between the Milwaukee Brewers and the Chicago Cubs at American Family Field in Milwaukee, where the organization created by Congress to oversee the party will ki
The Pell Grant program is about to expand exponentially next month, giving about 30,000 more students behind bars some $130 million in financial aid per year.
“But it’s not enough to have access — you need affordability and access,” the president said, adding that his administration is working with service providers to bring down costs on what is now a household utility — like water or gas — but often remains priced at a premium.
With Monday’s announcement, the administration is launching the second phase of its “Investing in America” tour. The three-week blitz of speeches and events is designed to promote Biden’s previous legislative wins on infrastructure, the economy and climate change going into a reelection year. The president and his advisers believe voters don’t know enough about his policies heading into his 2024 reelection campaign and that more voters would back him once they learn more.
Biden’s challenge is that investments in computer chips and major infrastructure projects such as rail tunnels can take a decade to come to fruition. That leaves much of the messaging focused on grants that will be spent over time, rather than completed projects.
The internet access funding amounts depended primarily on the number of unserved locations in each jurisdiction or those locations that lack access to internet download speeds of at least 25 megabits per second download and upload speeds of 3 Mbps. Download speeds involve retrieving information from the internet, including streaming movies and TV. Upload speeds determine how fast information travels from a computer to the internet, like sending emails or publishing photos online.
The funding includes more than $1 billion each for 19 states, with remaining states falling below that threshold. Allotments range from $100.7 million for Washington, D.C., to $3.3 billion for Texas.
Biden said more than 35,000 projects are already funded or underway to lay cable that provides internet access. Some of those are from $25 billion in initial funding as part of the “American Rescue Plan.”
“High-speed internet isn’t a luxury anymore,” he said. “It’s become an absolute necessity.”
Sen. Joe Manchin, who Biden called out as a “friend” during today’s announcement, celebrated the $1.2 billion West Virginia will receive to expand service in the rural, mountainous state of around 1.8 million.
U.S. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo joined Manchin at a press conference after Biden’s announcement and said West Virginia’s allotment would be enough money to “finally connect every resident.”
“When I say everyone, I mean everyone,” she said. Raimondo said the reason that hasn’t happened in the past is because it’s expensive to lay fiber in a rural or mountainous area.
“And so the internet providers haven’t done it — it doesn’t make economic sense for them,” she said. “What we’re saying to them now is, ‘With this money, $1.2 billion to connect about 300,000 folks in West Virginia, it is plenty of money to get to everyone.’”
Congress approved the Broadband Equity, Access and Deployment program, along with several other internet expansion initiatives, through the infrastructure bill Biden signed in 2021.
Earlier this month, the Commerce Department announced winners of middle mile grants, which will fund projects that build the midsection of the infrastructure necessary to extend internet access to every part of the country.
States have until the end of the year to submit proposals outlining how they plan to use that money, which won’t begin to be distributed until those plans are approved. Once the Commerce Department signs off on those initial plans, states can award grants to telecommunications companies, electric cooperatives and other providers to expand internet infrastructure.
Under the rules of the program, states must prioritize connecting predominantly unserved areas before bolstering service in underserved areas—which are those without access to internet speeds of 100 Mbps/20 Mbps—and in schools, libraries or other community institutions.
Hinging such a large investment on FCC data has been somewhat controversial. Members of Congress pressed FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel about inaccuracies they said would negatively impact rural states’ allotments in particular, and state broadband officials were concerned about the short timeline to correct discrepancies in the first version of the map.
The second version of the map, which was released at the end of May and used for allotments, reflects the net addition of 1 million locations, updated data from internet service providers and the results of more than 3 million public challenges, Rosenworcel, who in the past has been a critic of how the FCC’s maps were developed, said in a May statement.
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AP reporter Leah Willingham contributed from Charleston, West Virginia.
Harjai, who reported from Los Angeles, is a corps member for The Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.
NEW YORK (AP) — After a series of fires involving faulty e-bike batteries including a recent blaze that claimed four lives, New York City officials announced Sunday that they are receiving a $25 million emergency grant from the federal government to fund scores of charging stations citywide.
Mayor Eric Adams hopes the stations will provide a safer way for delivery workers, who rely on e-bikes to efficiently do their jobs, to recharge lithium batteries used to power their bicycles.
“This means that residents will no longer need to charge the e-bikes in their apartments — what we find to be extremely dangerous, particularly when you charge them overnight,” Adams said at a news conference Sunday. He was flanked by the state’s two U.S. senators who helped secure the funding from the US. Department of Transportation.
Washington next month will become the first U.S. state to deduct taxes from workers’ paychecks to finance a new long-term care benefit for residents who can’t live independently due to illness, injury or aging-related conditions like dementia.
Drivers in New York City will be charged extra in tolls to enter Manhattan south of 60th Street as part of a long-stalled congestion pricing plan.
New York’s former lieutenant governor and longtime civic leader Richard Ravitch has died at the age of 89.
New York City will add the festival of Diwali to the list of public school holidays in recognition of the growth of the city’s South Asian and Indo-Caribbean communities.
The announcement comes after a lithium ion battery caught fire and engulfed an e-bike shop in Manhattan’s Chinatown. The fire and thick smoke spread to apartments above the shop, killing four people and injuring three others, including a responding firefighter.
In the days since, New York City officials sought the public’s help in cracking down on unsafe e-bike shops and fire officials issued at least 10 citations to shops for improper handling of the batteries.
City officials said they’d previously fined the shop for its e-bike charging practices, though inspectors reportedly did not check to see if the store was selling reconditioned batteries on a recent visit.
Under new guidelines, fire officials will be directed to respond to complaints about e-bike batteries within 12 hours, rather than the previous policy of three days.
New York City has seen over 100 fires and 13 deaths this year linked to e-bikes, more than double the total number of fatalities from last year, officials said.
The city has issued nearly 500 summonses related to e-bikes, which can result in fines between $1,000 and $5,000.
The batteries can overheat if defective or improperly charged.
Adams had announced in March that the city was working to establish charging stations. The grant would fund an initial 170 charging units in about 50 locations.
New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, the Senate Majority Leader, said the charging stations proved “new hope” to prevent “these fires that start from shoddy China-made lithium ion batteries and chargers,” he said during the press conference.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand said she and Schumer were working on legislation to establish safety standards for batteries.
“If passed,” she said, “it would take improperly manufactured batteries off the market.”
U.S. stocks fell Friday with the S&P 500 index on track for its worst week since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank in March suggesting the three month rally may be coming to an end.
Investors sought safety in bonds and the U.S. dollar as a wave of interest-rate hikes and hawkish commentary from international central bankers revived worries about global economic growth.
How are stocks trading?
The S&P 500 SPX, -0.51%
fell 32 points, or 0.8%, to 4,349.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.43%
fell 204 points, or 0.6%, to 33,741.
The Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.75%
slid 145 points, or 1.1%, to 13,484.
On Thursday, the Dow industrials fell 4.81 points, or less than 0.1%, to close at 33,946.71. The four-day slide is the blue-chip gauge’s longest losing streak since a five-day drop that ended on May 25, according to Dow Jones Market Data. Both the S&P 500 and Nasdaq finished higher, snapping a three-day losing streak.
What’s driving markets
U.S. stocks on Friday looked set to snap the longest streak of weekly gains since 2019 for the Nasdaq.
Concerns that interest rate rises by central banks might harm global economic growth were weighing on global equities on Friday, analysts said, following interest rate rises in the U.K., Switzerland, Norway and Turkey on Thursday. The latest batch of rate hikes followed moves by the central banks of Canada and Australia earlier this month.
Data released on Friday also showed business activity in the eurozone losing momentum in June, according to a purchasing managers survey. U.S. economic growth may also be slowing. The S&P Global U.S. services index fell to a 54.1 in June from 54.9 in the prior month, a two-month low, while the manufacturing index, meanwhile, slid to a five-month low of 46.9 from 51 in May.
“US stocks are sliding as the global growth outlook continues to deteriorate following soft global PMI readings,” Edward Moya, Senior Market Analyst at Oanda wrote in a note Friday. “The risk of a sharper economic downturn is greater for Europe than it is for the US, so that could keep the dollar supported over the short-term.”
With central banks around the world promising to raise borrowing costs even higher to tame inflation, analysts focused on the potential ramifications of higher interest rates for both the health of the economy and equity valuations. In the U.S., analysts across Wall Street have warned that the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite valuations are again looking unreasonably rich.
The price-to-earnings ratio for the S&P 500 based on Wall Street’s forecasts for corporate earnings over the next 12 months is just shy of 19, according to FactSet. That’s higher than the five-year average.
While the Federal Reserve opted to leave interest rates on hold in June, Chair Jerome Powell reiterated in Congressional testimony this week that senior Fed officials strongly support hiking rates “a couple of times” later this year.
Ryan Belanger, founder and managing principal at Claro Advisors, is among the analysts who believe the market’s rally is getting ahead of itself.
“The market is too confident that the Federal Reserve can engineer a soft landing and it would be wise for investors to reduce exposure to stocks,” Belanger said in emailed commentary.
With the S&P 500 down nearly 1.5% for the week, stocks are on track for their biggest such pullback since March 10, FactSet data showed.
Of course, the market is coming off a rally which is leading some to conclude that this might be a healthy pullback. The S&P 500 had climbed for five straight weeks through June 16, its longest such winning streak since November 2021, Dow Jones Market Data show. Meanwhile, the technology-heavy Nasdaq had logged eighth straight weekly advance to mark its longest stretch of gains since March 2019.
“Some of this is a bit of a giveback and when you look at the market action from the last month and a half, we’ve kind of gone parabolic,” said Paul Nolte, senior wealth manager and market strategist at Murphy & Sylvest Wealth Management, during a phone interview with MarketWatch.
Defensive assets like the dollar and high-quality sovereign bonds were outperforming on Friday, with the yield on the 10-year Treasury note TMUBMUSD10Y, 3.742%
falling five basis points to 3.744%. Yields on 10-year U.K. gilt TMBMKGB-10Y, 4.317%
and 10-year German bunds were down by 10 basis points or more. Crude prices CL.1, -1.12%,
which are sensitive to expectations for the global economy, fell 1.6% to $68.49 a barrel.
However, U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen struck an upbeat tone Friday when she said during an interview with Bloomberg that recession risks in the U.S. have faded “because look at the resilience of the labor market, and inflation is coming down.”
Investors will hear from Cleveland Fed President Loretta Mester later. She’s expected to speak at 1:40 p.m. Eastern Time.
Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. SPCE, -19.27%
dropped after the space-tourism company said late Thursday in a filing it’s seeking to raise $400 million to scale up its business and improve its fleet.
NEW YORK (AP) — Pop star Kesha and producer Dr. Luke have settled nearly a decade of suits and countersuits over her accusation that he drugged and raped her and his claim that she made it up and defamed him, they announced Thursday, with the singer saying that “only God knows what happened that night.”
Dr. Luke, meanwhile, said he was “absolutely certain that nothing happened. I never drugged or assaulted her.”
Terms of the deal were not immediately disclosed, as both she and he revealed on Instagram that they had agreed to “a resolution” of the case and to a statement from each of them. Messages seeking comment were sent to their attorneys.
A man who was part of a group of teenagers wrongly accused and imprisoned for the rape of a woman in Central Park has taken a commanding lead in a Democratic primary for a New York City Council seat.
A New York appeals court dismissed Ivanka Trump on Tuesday from a wide-ranging fraud lawsuit brought against her father and his company last year by the state’s attorney general.
Air travelers have been putting up with widespread delays all month, and it’s continuing again, as bad weather rakes the Northeast.
Spirits giant Diageo says it’s cutting ties with Sean “Diddy” Combs after the rapper and entrepreneur sued the company over allegations of racism in the handling of his liquor brands, according to a Tuesday court filing.
“I cannot recount everything that happened,” Kesha wrote, adding that she wishes “nothing but peace to all parties involved.”
Dr. Luke, in turn, said he wished her well and wanted “to put this difficult matter behind me” after years of fighting to clear his name.
The deal averts a trial that had been scheduled for this summer over allegations that became a #MeToo cause for Kesha’s supporters and came to involve a lineup of music industry luminaries. Lady Gaga, Kelly Clarkson, Katy Perry, Pink, Avril Lavigne, Adam Levine and Taio Cruz are among those who gave testimony or sworn statements related to the case.
At the same time, the case raised important legal questions about fame and defamation. The stakes were seen as high enough that media outlets weighed in about pretrial rulings that they worried could help powerful people suppress unflattering reporting.
The court clash between the multiplatinum-selling singer and the Grammy-nominated producer has been playing out since 2014 and looming over both of their careers.
The Associated Press does not generally name people who report being sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly, as Kesha has done.
The singer made her name — originally styled Ke$ha — with a series of swaggering, just-try-to-stop-me party anthems, beginning with 2009’s “TiK ToK.” Those early hits were produced by Dr. Luke, who founded the record label that signed a Nashville unknown named Kesha Rose Sebert at age 18.
Born Lukasz Gottwald, he has produced chart-toppers for Perry, Lavigne, Flo Rida and more. Besides notching multiple Grammy nominations, Dr. Luke has repeatedly won pop songwriter of the year awards from the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers.
Kesha sued him in 2014, alleging he drugged and raped her nine years earlier and psychologically tormented her throughout their working relationship. She said he harangued her about her weight, denigrated her voice and lorded his power over her career.
“The abuse I suffered from Luke was a decade long, every day, every moment of every day,” she said during sworn questioning in 2017. According to Kesha, the ordeal sparked a flare-up of an eating disorder that led to her spending two months in a rehabilitation clinic in 2014.
Dr. Luke, who has not been charged with any crimes, responded by suing Kesha. He has asserted that she made “completely untrue and deeply hurtful” claims to tarnish him and get out of her record contract.
“Any reasonable person will not believe her,” he said when questioned under oath in 2017.
His attorneys have noted that Kesha herself said he “never made sexual advances at me” during sworn questioning in a separate lawsuit in 2011. She has since said she was “not entirely transparent” in those 2011 statements because she was terrified of Dr. Luke and felt compelled to protect him.
Kesha went five years without releasing an album during the standoff, saying she could not work with a “monster” but couldn’t get away from him because she was under contract with his label. His lawyers and the label’s attorneys maintained that she did not have to work with him personally.
She eventually returned with 2017’s “Rainbow” and two subsequent albums, all with other producers. Her most recent album, “Gag Order,” came out in May.
Dr. Luke’s career also took a hit after she went public with her allegations. He has said various artists, particularly female ones, eschewed “working with someone who’s called a rapist.”
But under the name Tyson Trax, he made it back to the top of the charts in 2020 with Doja Cat’s “Say So,” garnering his first Grammy nomination since 2014. By this year, he was ASCAP’s pop songwriter of the year once again.
Along the way, Kesha’s sexual abuse-related claims were dismissed because of time limits and other legal issues, without any findings about the merits of the allegations themselves. But she countersued Dr. Luke under a New York law against bringing frivolous suits to try to intimidate critics into silence; New York’s highest court recently ruled that she could pursue those claims.
The top court, which New York calls the Court of Appeals, also declared that Dr. Luke is a “public figure” in the eyes of the law. That’s significant because the legal requirements for proving defamation are tougher for public figures than for everyday people.
Lower courts had said the producer wasn’t a public figure. Over a dozen media outlets and organizations got involved in the case to argue that those earlier rulings could end up helping famous people squash free speech and reporting on sexual abuse allegations.
Earlier in the case, Kesha was ordered to pay Dr. Luke more than $373,000 in interest on royalties she paid him years late.
FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — Defense attorneys argued Thursday that rapper YNW Melly was being denied the right to face his accuser when a masked witness took the stand to testify about alleged gang connections during the performer’s double murder trial in South Florida.
Broward Circuit Judge John Murphy permitted Broward Sheriff’s Office Detective Danny Polo to testify with his face covered because he has received death threats from people unrelated to the case against YNW Melly. Defense attorney Jason Roger Williams said jurors are supposed to consider the demeanor of a witness to determine his credibility, and they can’t do that if they can’t see his face, the Sun Sentinel reported.
“The state could have chosen any expert in gangs,” Williams said. “They elected to choose one who has threats against his life that don’t concern this case, and who is undercover. They have precipitated this problem.”
Lawyers for the family of a Virginia man who died of asphyxiation after he was pinned to the floor for about 11 minutes while being admitted to a psychiatric hospital have asked the U.S.
An appeals court has denied a new trial request from a longtime Texas death row inmate whose supporters say there is evidence to back his claims of innocence.
A lawsuit against a Utah woman who wrote a children’s book about grief after her husband’s death and now stands charged with his murder is seeking over $13 million in damages.
An Indiana man charged with killing two teenage girls confessed multiple times to the murders in a phone call to his wife while in prison.
Polo was eventually allowed to testify, tying YNW Melly, whose legal name is Jamell Demons, to membership in G-Shine, an offshoot of the Bloods. Polo said there are hundreds of photos of Demons with other Bloods.
Demons, 24, is facing a possible death sentence for the October 2018 fatal shooting of his childhood friends, Anthony Williams and Christopher Thomas Jr.
Williams and Thomas were both part of the YNW collective, known respectively as YNW Sakchaser and YNW Juvy.
Demons, Williams and Thomas were riding in a Jeep driven by Cortland Henry, known as YNW Bortlen, after a recording session in Fort Lauderdale when Demons fatally shot Williams and Thomas, prosecutors said. Henry is charged as an accomplice in the case but will be tried separately.
After killing Williams and Thomas, prosecutors said, Demons and Henry drove the bodies to an area near the Everglades, where they shot at the back and passenger sides of Henry’s Jeep from the outside to make it look like Williams and Thomas were the victims of a drive-by shooting.
Prosecutors say the shooting was part of a gang action, while defense attorneys say the motive lacks credibility because Demons and the victims were close friends.
The gun used in the shooting has not been recovered.
On Wednesday, prosecutors and defense lawyers argued over whether a cell phone that appeared to be in Demons’ possession at one point on the day of the killings actually belonged to Demons. Witnesses testified that the phone was in the Jeep where the victims were killed, but defense lawyers say the state hasn’t proved Demons held the phone while the crime was being committed.
Demons gained attention with his breakout song “Murder on My Mind” in 2017. He later worked with Kanye West on “Mixed Personalities,” which was released in January 2019, a month before Demons was arrested on the murder charges.
The weapons supervisor charged with involuntary manslaughter in the shooting death of a cinematographer on the New Mexico set of the Alec Baldwin film “Rust” was charged Thursday with evidence tampering for allegedly passing drugs to someone else on the day of the shooting.
Hannah Gutierrez-Reed “did transfer narcotics to another person with the intent to prevent the apprehension, prosecution or conviction of herself.” the special prosecutors appointed in the case said in a Santa Fe County court filing. They gave no further details.
Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney Jason Bowles called the move “retaliatory and vindictive.”
Prosecutors have yet to offer any evidence that would solve the biggest mystery in the deadly shooting of a cinematographer by Alec Baldwin on a film set in 2021: How did live rounds get on the set?
Prosecutors are accusing the weapons supervisor on the film set where Alec Baldwin shot and killed a cinematographer of drinking and smoking marijuana in the evenings during the filming of “Rust.”
“It is shocking that after 20 months of investigation, the special prosecutor now throws in a completely new charge against Ms. Gutierrez Reed, with no prior notice or any witness statements, lab reports, or evidence to support it,” Bowles said in a statement.
Gutierrez-Reed is the sole remaining defendant in the case after prosecutors in April dropped an involuntary manslaughter charge against Baldwin, who was pointing a gun at cinematographer Halyna Hutchins during a rehearsal when it went off, killed her and injured director Joel Souza on Oct. 21, 2021. Prosecutors can still refile charges against Baldwin.
The new charge comes a week after prosecutors alleged in a court filing that Gutierrez-Reed was drinking and smoking marijuana in the evenings during the filming of “Rust” and was likely hungover on the day a live bullet was placed into the gun Baldwin used.
Bowles called that allegation “character assassination” from prosecutors with a weak case that the defense has asked a judge to dismiss.
In his own filing Thursday, Bowles revealed that he had been accidentally included on an email to District Attorney Mary Carmack-Altwies from her lead investigator in the case, who slammed the law enforcement response to the shooting.
“The conduct of the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office during and after their initial investigation is reprehensible and unprofessional to a degree I still have no words for,” Robert Schilling wrote in the email, in which he said he will be stepping down so special prosecutors can use their own investigator. “Not I or 200 more proficient investigators than I can/could clean up the mess delivered to your office.”
Bowles said in his filing that the email demonstrates the weakness of the case against his client. He said it suggests that the prosecution has been withholding evidence from the defense.
Emails seeking comment from the Sheriff’s Office and the special prosecutors were not immediately returned.
The increasingly crowded 2024 Republican presidential field is up to 12 relatively well-known contenders. The latest to declare his candidacy is former Texas Rep. Will Hurd, who entered the race Thursday.
Hurd singled out both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in his announcement, saying Biden would win re-election if Trump secured the GOP nomination. Trump has a big lead in polls of Republican primary voters.
The ex-congressman joins several other presidential hopefuls who have thrown their hats in the ring this month. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez launched his bid last week, and two weeks ago, former Vice President Mike Pence, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and current North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum all formally kicked off their campaigns.
Meanwhile, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin said last month that he won’t be on the presidential campaign trail in 2023 because of elections to his state’s legislature in November, but he appears to have left the door open to a 2024 White House run.
Below is MarketWatch’s list of Republican presidential contenders and the status of their candidacies.
On the Democratic side, Biden officially launched his re-election campaign in April, even as most Americans don’t approve of his performance. The president has been talking up the strong job market and his legislative record.
The first official debate of the GOP presidential primary is slated to be held in Milwaukee on Aug. 23. The Republican National Committee said there will be a second debate on Aug. 24 if “enough candidates qualify to make it necessary.”
The list above features relatively high-profile names, but there are lesser-known GOP presidential hopefuls as well, such as Aaron Day, who is known in part for his 2016 run against former Sen. Kelly Ayotte of New Hampshire, a fellow Republican; Perry Johnson, a former gubernatorial candidate in Michigan; Steve Laffey, a former mayor of Cranston, R.I.; and former Montana Secretary of State Corey Stapleton.
A number of other Republican politicians have also been talked about as potential 2024 contenders but haven’t said they are running. That group includes Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who has passed on speaking in the key primary state of Iowa; John Bolton, a former national-security adviser and former ambassador to the United Nations; former Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who has run an ad in New Hampshire, another key state; South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem; and former Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan.
Among the prominent Republicans who have said they’re not seeking their party’s presidential nomination in 2024 are Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, former Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu.
Norway’s central bank on Thursday lifted interest rates by 50 basis points and said a further hike may be needed in the near term.
On a busy day for central banks, the Norges Bank boosted its policy rate to 3.75%. Markets had been divided between expectations for hikes of either 25 or 50 basis point hikes.
“The Committee’s current assessment of the outlook and balance of risks implies that the policy rate will most likely be raised further in August,” Norges Bank said in a statement on its website.
The Norwegian krone USDNOK, -1.28%
climbed 1.3% to 10.25 krone against the dollar.
The central bank is hemmed in by sticky inflation, with core inflation climbing to 6.7% in May from 6.5% in April, defying expectations for a gain of just 6.3%, according to analysts polled by Bloomberg News. Indeed, the central bank said inflation is “markedly above the target,” with international interest rates rising more than anticipated, and higher wage growth and a weaker krone than projected previously set to drive up inflation.
“If we do not raise the policy rate, prices and wages could continue to rise rapidly and inflation become entrenched. It may then become more costly to bring inflation down again,” said Governor Ida Wolden Bache.
Norges Bank said the effects of past rate hikes are not evident, with the effects on household consumption from those and higher inflation also an unknown right now. Thursday’s hike marks the third this year for 100 basis points in total.
U.S. stock index futures slipped lower Tuesday after a three-day break, with Chinese equities wilting on disappointment over the monetary stimulus efforts in the world’s number-two economy.
What’s happening
Dow Jones Industrial Average futures YM00, -0.31%
fell 109 points, or 0.3%, to 34,495.
S&P 500 futures ES00, -0.26%
dropped 11 points, or 0.2%, to 4,442.
Nasdaq 100 futures NQ00, -0.16%
decreased 28 points, or 0.1%, to 15,239.
On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average DJIA, -0.32%
fell 109 points, or 0.32%, to 34299, the S&P 500 SPX, -0.37%
declined 16 points, or 0.37%, to 4410, and the Nasdaq Composite COMP, -0.68%
dropped 93 points, or 0.68%, to 13690.
What’s driving markets
Investors were in a cautious mood following the U.S. long weekend in honor of the Juneteenth federal holiday, but that’s after a strong run. The S&P 500 gained 2.6% last week, its fifth week in a row of gains, as the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite took its winning run to eight weeks.
Mike Wilson, Morgan Stanley’s chief U.S. equity strategist, said both retail and institutional investor sentiment are at their highest levels in over two years.
“We note that the consensus is right about 80% of the time, which means such shifts in sentiment and positioning can often be right as the collective intelligence of the market knows best,” he said. “However, given our fundamental view on growth, we find it hard to get on board with the current excitement and narrative supporting it. In other words, if second half growth re-accelerates as expected, then the bullish narrative being used to support equity prices will be proven correct.”
One event that investors have to weigh is the resumption this fall of student loan payments, and what that may mean for consumers’ disposable income. Student loan payments have been paused since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.
China cut its 1- and 5-year lending rates by 10 basis points, which investors viewed to be modest, particularly after a Friday state council meeting didn’t result in other concrete measures. According to Societe Generale, there were expectations the 5-year rate, the benchmark for mortgages, would be cut by 15 basis points.
Tuesday’s economic data include housing starts data, which showed a 21.7% rise in May after a revised 2.9% drop in April. Building permits also climbed 5.2% in May.
A panel later Tuesday will include both New York Federal Reserve President John Williams and Fed Vice Chair for Supervision Michael Barr. On Wednesday Fed Chair Jerome Powell is due to deliver semi-annual congressional testimony.
BEIJING (AP) — The United States and China have pledged to stabilize their badly deteriorated ties during a critical visit to Beijing by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who met Monday with Chinese President Xi Jinping.
It remains to be seen whether the two countries can resolve their most important disagreements, many of which have international financial, security and stability implications.
Apart from a willingness to talk, there was little sign that either were few indications is prepared to bend from hardened positions on issues ranging from trade, to Taiwan, to human rights conditions in China and Hong Kong, to Chinese military assertiveness in the South China Sea, to Russia’s war in Ukraine.
At the meeting with Blinken, Xi pronounced himself pleased with the outcome of Blinken’s earlier meetings with two top Chinese diplomats, and said the two countries had agreed to resume a program of understandings that he and President Joe Biden agreed to at a meeting in Bali last year.
“The Chinese side has made our decision clear, and the two sides have agreed to follow through the common understandings President Biden and I had reached in Bali,” Xi said.
That agenda had been thrown into jeopardy in recent months, notably after the U.S. shot down a Chinese surveillance balloon over its airspace in February, and amid escalated military activity in the Taiwan Strait and the South China Sea. Combined with disputes over human rights, trade and opiate production, the list of problem areas is daunting.
But Xi suggested the worst could be over.
“The two sides have also made progress and reached agreement on some specific issues,” Xi said without elaborating, according to a transcript of the remarks released by the State Department. “This is very good.”
“I hope that through this visit, Mr. Secretary, you will make more positive contributions to stabilizing China-U.S. relations,” Xi added.
In his remarks to Xi during the 35-minute session at the Great Hall of the People, which was not announced until an hour before it started, Blinken said “the United States and China have an obligation and responsibility to manage our relationship.”
“The United States is committed to doing that,” Blinken said. “It’s in the interest of the United States, in the interests of China, and in the interest of the world.” Blinken described his earlier discussions with senior Chinese officials as “candid and constructive.”
Despite his presence in China, Blinken and other U.S. officials had played down the prospects for any significant breakthroughs on the most vexing issues facing the planet’s two largest economies.
Instead, these officials have emphasized the importance of the two countries establishing and maintaining better lines of communication.
Blinken is the highest-level U.S. official to visit China since President Joe Biden took office, and the first secretary of state to make the trip in five years. His visit is expected to usher in a new round of visits by senior U.S. and Chinese officials, possibly including a meeting between Xi and Biden in the coming months.
Blinken met earlier Monday with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi for about three hours, according to a U.S. official.
China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs wrote in a statement that Blinken’s visit “coincides with a critical juncture in China-U.S. relations, and it is necessary to make a choice between dialogue or confrontation, cooperation or conflict,” and blamed the “U.S. side’s erroneous perception of China, leading to incorrect policies towards China” for the current “low point” in relations.
It said the U.S. had a responsibility to halt “the spiraling decline of China-U.S. relations to push it back to a healthy and stable track” and that Wang had “demanded that the U.S. stop hyping up the ‘China threat theory,’ lift illegal unilateral sanctions against China, abandon suppression of China’s technological development, and refrain from arbitrary interference in China’s internal affairs.”
The State Department said Blinken “underscored the importance of responsibly managing the competition between the United States and the PRC through open channels of communication to ensure competition does not veer into conflict.”
In the first round of talks on Sunday, Blinken met for nearly six hours with Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang, after which both countries said they had agreed to continue high-level discussions. However, there was no sign that any of the most fractious issues between them were closer to resolution.
Both the U.S. and China said Qin had accepted an invitation from Blinken to visit Washington but Beijing made clear that “the China-U.S. relationship is at the lowest point since its establishment.” That sentiment is widely shared by U.S. officials.
Blinken’s visit comes after his initial plans to travel to China were postponed in February after the shootdown of a Chinese surveillance balloon over the U.S. A snub by the Chinese leader would have been a major setback to the effort to restore and maintain communications at senior levels.
And Biden said over the weekend that he hoped to be able to meet with Xi in the coming months to take up the plethora of differences that divide them.
In his meetings on Sunday, Blinken also pressed the Chinese to release detained American citizens and to take steps to curb the production and export of fentanyl precursors that are fueling the opioid crisis in the United States.
Xi had offered a hint of a possible willingness to reduce tensions on Friday, saying in a meeting with Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates that the United States and China can cooperate to “benefit our two countries.”
Since the cancellation of Blinken’s trip in February, there have been some high-level engagements. CIA chief William Burns traveled to China in May, while China’s commerce minister traveled to the U.S. And Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with senior Chinese foreign policy adviser Wang Yi in Vienna in May.
But those have been punctuated by bursts of angry rhetoric from both countries over the Taiwan Strait, their broader intentions in the Indo-Pacific, China’s refusal to condemn Russia for its war against Ukraine, and U.S. allegations from Washington that Beijing is attempting to boost its worldwide surveillance capabilities, including in Cuba.
And, earlier this month, China’s defense minister rebuffed a request from U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin for a meeting on the sidelines of a security symposium in Singapore, a sign of continuing discontent.
