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Tag: northwestern united states

  • 7 arrested in protest supporting Montana state lawmaker who argued against anti-trans bill | CNN Politics

    7 arrested in protest supporting Montana state lawmaker who argued against anti-trans bill | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Seven people were arrested Monday after protesting in support of a Montana lawmaker who argued against a bill that would ban medical care for transgender minors.

    Tense moments were captured on video during Montana’s House floor session with supporters of Democratic state Rep. Zooey Zephyr, who is transgender, chanting, “Let her speak.”

    “Today—when the Speaker continued to not recognize me as a duly elected official—my constituents & community protested on behalf of their democratic right to be heard. I raised my mic and stood in solidarity with them. I am devoted to those who rise in defense of democracy,” Zephyr said in a tweet Monday.

    Zephyr added, “When my constituents and community members witnessed my microphone being disabled, they courageously came forward to defend their democratic right to be heard – and some were arrested in the process. I stood by them in solidarity and will continue to do so.”

    During the session, after a vote was announced, protesters were heard saying, “Let her speak.”

    As the chanting continued, the state House speaker is heard asking the sergeant of arms to clear out the guests in the gallery.

    The audio of the live stream of the session later cuts off and is replaced with music, with Zephyr seen in the video with an arm raised, holding up a microphone, looking in the direction of the protesters that were in the gallery. During that time, some protesters are seen being escorted out by law enforcement.

    As the upstairs gallery is cleared of protesters and observers, the speaker is heard in the video saying that the House will come back to order.

    The seven protesters were arrested with criminal trespass, a misdemeanor, according to Lewis and Clark County Sheriff-Coroner Leo C. Dutton.

    “As I’ve been watching this session, there is an assumption by Republicans who have a super majority in both chambers that they could simply silence or, or, speak over the voices that they do not agree with. And I think that what yesterday demonstrated was a pretty tremendous display of solidarity and support for Montana’s transgender community,” Paul Kim, one of the protesters who was arrested, told CNN’s Lucy Kafanov.

    Last week, a number of Republican lawmakers from the Montana Freedom Caucus demanded Zephyr be censured by the state House for “using inappropriate and uncalled-for language” during a floor debate over amendments concerning a bill that would ban medical care for transgender minors.

    Montana House Republicans tweeted a joint statement Monday from state Reps. Matt Regier, Rhonda Knudsen and Sue Vinton. “House Republicans condemn violence and will always stand for civil debate and respect for our processes of government. Today’s riot by far-left agitators damages our discourse and endangered legislators and staff. Their actions did not represent Montana values.”

    Montana House Minority Leader Kim Abbott, in statement released by the Montana House of Democrats Tuesday, said, “To me, it’s an incredible statement in support of the trans, nonbinary, and Two Spirit community – and against the Republican agenda that would strip our neighbors of their basic rights, dignity, and humanity.”

    CORRECTION: A previous version of this story’s headline incorrectly said Zephyr had been censured. She only has been threatened with censure.

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  • Washington state eliminates death penalty from law | CNN Politics

    Washington state eliminates death penalty from law | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The death penalty was abolished in Washington state Thursday after Democratic Gov. Jay Inslee signed a bill into law eliminating the state-sanctioned punishment.

    Besides the death penalty, Senate Bill 5087 also eliminated other laws, including a measure that allowed sterilization as criminal punishment. The Democratic-controlled legislature passed the bill earlier this month.

    “I initiated a moratorium against the death penalty in Washington State in 2014, and our rationale for that decision was affirmed by our (state) Supreme Court decision in 2018, when they invalidated the death penalty statute,” Inslee said during the bill signing Thursday. “They made clear, and we know this to be true, that the penalty has been applied unequally and in a racially insensitive manner.”

    Advocates for abolishing the death penalty, including the state’s American Civil Liberties Union chapter, praised the move.

    “Racial bias plays a role in death penalty decisions here in Washington and across the United States,” M. Lorena González, the group’s legislative director said in a statement to CNN on Friday. “We are pleased that the Washington state Legislature has finally finished the work of ending this arbitrary and discriminatory practice.”

    The bill has faced criticism from Republicans, including state Rep. Jim Walsh, who called it “another sad example of the interests of criminals being put ahead of the interests of victims and their families” in a Facebook post earlier this month.

    In 2018, Washington state’s Supreme Court ruled that the death penalty was unconstitutional because it was inconsistently applied. Use of the death penalty varied depending on the location of the crime or the race of the accused, which is a violation of the state’s constitution, the court said at the time. County of residence and budgetary resources were also contributing factors, the ruling also stated.

    Washington state has carried out five executions since the US Supreme Court reinstated capital punishment in 1976, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. All defendants were White.

    But studies have suggested that race does play a role when it comes to jury decisions to sentence a defendant to death. A 2014 report by the University of Washington found that jurors in the state were “more than four times more likely to impose a death sentence if the defendant is black.”

    As of April 1, 2022, there were 2,414 people on death row in the United States, according to data from the Death Penalty Information Center. Capital punishment is legal in 27 states, the center also says.

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  • Passenger ferry carrying almost 600 people runs aground in Washington | CNN

    Passenger ferry carrying almost 600 people runs aground in Washington | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    All passengers have safely disembarked a passenger ferry that ran aground on Saturday in Rich Passage near Bainbridge Island in Washington state.

    A total of 596 passengers and 15 crew members were aboard the ship, according to a tweet from US Coast Guard Pacific Northwest, which responded to the scene. The last of the passengers had safely disembarked by 10 pm, Washington State Ferries said in an update.

    The ferry Walla Walla ran aground at around 4:30 pm Saturday while making the trip from Bremerton to Seattle, Washington State Ferries wrote in a tweet.

    There were no injuries reported, said Washington State Ferries. The agency said that initial signs suggest the vessel suffered a “generator failure” and an official investigation is forthcoming.

    Passengers were transferred to Kitsap Transit vessels that took them to Bremerton, said Washington State Ferries. Travelers with cars on the grounded ferry were instructed to retrieve them at the Bremerton terminal on Sunday morning.

    “We know it’s not ideal, but thanks for helping us make the best of a bad situation,” officials wrote on Twitter. The agency also mentioned that they are “working on a process for refunding all of tonight’s customers for their uncompleted trips.”

    The Washington State Department of Ecology reported that “no pollution or hull damage” was detected from the ship’s grounding.

    One passenger aboard the Walla Walla when it ran aground described hearing sirens and seeing lights flicker as the ship lost power, according to CNN affiliate KOMO.

    “We heard some sirens going off and the lights flickering on and off and then you can feel the ferry lose power,” said Matt Holyoak.

    “They made another announcement saying ‘everyone needs to come to the passenger deck, we’ve lost steering (control) and everyone needs to brace for impact,’” he went on, according to KOMO. “And so we were all sitting down and a little concerned.”

    The voyage from Bremerton to Seattle typically takes around an hour, according to the Washington State Department of Transportation’s website. The department deployed another ship, Issaquah, to take over the Walla Walla’s route on Sunday.

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  • An Oregon man ‘gifted’ money to strangers by dropping $200,000 in cash out his car window | CNN

    An Oregon man ‘gifted’ money to strangers by dropping $200,000 in cash out his car window | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    An Oregon man was stopped by police Tuesday after he tried to “gift” strangers money by tossing hundred dollar bills on a busy highway from his car window.

    Police received multiple phone calls about bills “floating” on busy Interstate 5 toward the south end of Eugene, about 120 miles south of Portland, around 7:30 p.m. PT Tuesday, according to a news release from the Oregon State Police.

    Multiple vehicles stopped in the road and people left their cars to grab the cash, which was reportedly in the form of hundred-dollar bills, witnesses told police.

    Police say the person behind the free cash was 38-year old Colin Davis McCarthy, who told officers that he wanted to “gift the money.” He estimated that he’d thrown about $200,000 in bills from his car window, authorities say.

    Officers asked McCarthy to stop tossing out the cash “because it was causing a significant traffic hazard,” the news release said. He was “cooperative” and agreed to stop, according to the release.

    Police say no criminal charges are currently being considered against McCarthy and motorists appeared to pick the road clean of any bills left behind.

    “Motorists did a thorough job of gathering the loose money as troopers were unable to locate any further currency after the incident,” police said in the release. “Troopers followed up the next morning and were still unable to locate further bills along the roadway.”

    The police department urged residents to “avoid the temptation to go looking for money along the highway.”

    “These searches create a hazardous condition and put both the searchers and motorists at risk,” they added.

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  • Shelter-in-place order is issued for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel as the EPA conducts air monitoring | CNN

    Shelter-in-place order is issued for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel as the EPA conducts air monitoring | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A shelter-in-place order was issued Sunday for neighborhoods near a burning fishing vessel in the Hylebos Waterway in Tacoma, Washington, where a “significant explosion” took place and fire conditions have worsened, officials said.

    The burning vessel – which is believed to be carrying 55,000 gallons of diesel and 19,000 pounds of freon on board – caught fire early Saturday morning while moored in the waterway, the US Coast Guard said in a news release.

    “We were very fortunate that the fire was quickly spotted and reported and the crew onboard was able to safely evacuate,” US Coast Guard Lt. Stephen Nolan told CNN affiliate KING-TV.

    There was a “significant explosion” linked to a heated compressed gas cylinder on the vessel, and smoke production shifted toward Northeast Tacoma, Port of Tacoma officials said Sunday night, citing fire officials.

    “Due to smoke from a boat fire in Tacoma, Twin Lakes and Green Gables residents should avoid prolonged outdoor exposure whenever smoke odors are present or if smoke is visible,” Federal Way mayor Jim Ferrell tweeted late Sunday night.

    By Sunday, the fire had spread throughout the vessel and was about 100 feet from the ship’s freon tanks, according to the Coast Guard. Freon is a trademark name typically used to refer to several different refrigerants, including chlorofluorocarbons, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency.

    As the fire continues to burn, the heat from the flames can build pressure in the freon tanks, which have built-in heat-activated pressure relief valves designed to release pressure from the tanks in an emergency, according to the Coast Guard.

    “While freon can be toxic if inhaled in large quantities or in a confined space, the release of freon into the atmosphere is not expected to pose any health and safety risks to the public,” the Coast Guard said.

    Still, the City of Tacoma Fire Department asked residents of the Northeast Tacoma, Browns Point and Dash Point neighborhoods to “remain indoors and limit exposures to smoke.”

    “Residents concerned about smoky conditions can provide additional protections by keeping doors closed and shutting outside air vents. Residents may also want to avoid any strenuous activity or exercise outdoors,” the mayor tweeted.

    The EPA has been conducting air monitoring in the surrounding areas and first responders have deployed floating barriers around the vessel to contain any spills, the release said.

    The Coast Guard has also closed the Hylebos Waterway for all commercial and recreational vessel traffic.

    As of Sunday night, no injuries had been reported and there were no signs of maritime pollution, the Coast Guard said.

    As crews continue to battle the fire with cooling spray, it remains unclear what ignited the blaze. Authorities said the cause of the fire remains under investigation.

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  • Indiana and Idaho enact bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth | CNN Politics

    Indiana and Idaho enact bans on gender-affirming care for transgender youth | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Indiana Republican Gov. Eric Holcomb signed a bill Wednesday to ban gender affirming care for minors in the state, following a growing trend of GOP-led states restricting transgender youth’s access to such treatments after Idaho enacted similar legislation earlier in the week.

    “Permanent gender-changing surgeries with lifelong impacts and medically prescribed preparation for such a transition should occur as an adult, not as a minor,” Holcomb said in a statement upon signing Senate Bill 480 into law.

    The legislation, which takes effect July 1, states that physicians or practitioners who provide minors with such care, including puberty blocking medication, hormone therapy and surgery intended to help transition genders, will be subject to discipline by their regulatory board.

    Transgender youths’ access to gender-affirming care – medically necessary, evidence-based care that uses a multidisciplinary approach to help a person transition from the gender they were designated at birth to the gender by which they want to be known – has become a flashpoint in red states across the country.

    Some Republicans have expressed concern over long-term outcomes and whether children should be able to make such consequential decisions, even with parental consent. But major medical associations say that gender-affirming care is clinically appropriate for children and adults with gender dysphoria – a psychological distress that may result when a person’s gender identity and sex assigned at birth do not align, according to the American Psychiatric Association.

    Indiana’s new legislation was met with immediate backlash by LGBTQ advocates.

    The American Civil Liberties Union and local ACLU of Indiana sued the state Wednesday on behalf of four transgender youth and their families, as well as a doctor and healthcare clinic, alleging the new law violates their constitutional rights.

    “Gender-affirming care is life-saving care for our clients,” Ken Falk, legal director of the ACLU of Indiana, said in a statement. “No child should be cut off from the medical care they need or denied their fundamental right to be themselves — but this law would do both.”

    Holcomb’s signing of SB 480 came a day after Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little enacted similar legislation.

    Under the Idaho law, which takes effect on January 1, 2024, physicians or practitioners who provide gender affirming care, including puberty blocking medications as well as surgeries, could face a $5,000 fine and a felony charge.

    “In signing this bill, I recognize our society plays a role in protecting minors from surgeries or treatments that can irreversibly damage their healthy bodies. However, as policymakers we should take great caution whenever we consider allowing the government to interfere with loving parents and their decisions about what is best for their children,” Little said in a statement to lawmakers.

    Following Little’s signing of the bill, the ACLU of Idaho said it planned to challenge the law.

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  • Justice Department moves to end consent decree with Seattle Police Department | CNN Politics

    Justice Department moves to end consent decree with Seattle Police Department | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    The Justice Department moved Tuesday to end a consent decree with the Seattle Police Department, bringing to a close more than a decade of federal supervision of the police department.

    The Seattle consent decree was established under the Obama administration in 2012 after a Justice Department investigation found that the police department there had a pattern of using excessive force.

    Specifically, the Justice Department found at the time that the police department used weapons either excessively or unnecessarily more than half the time during arrests, and that officers engaged in a pattern of discriminatory policing during pedestrian encounters.

    The Seattle Police Department has made “far-reaching reforms” since the institution of the consent decree and is now a “transformed organization,” the city of Seattle and the Justice Department said in a court filing Tuesday.

    The Seattle Police Department “achieved remarkable progress,” they said, highlighting that the department has complied with stringent use of force policies and implemented a crisis intervention program, the filing said. “Any pattern or practice of unconstitutional force that existed has been eliminated.”

    The request will go to the federal judge in Washington state who oversaw the police department’s progress and compliance in implementing police reform since the consent decree was signed in 2012.

    If approved, the end of the consent decree will mark a significant milestone in the function of federally supervised implementation of police reforms. There are several similar and ongoing consent decrees with police departments across the country, as well as pattern-and-practice investigations like the one conducted in Seattle.

    Critics of consent decrees point to the years-long agreements as proof that federal oversight and investigations can last several years. Early in the Biden administration, the Justice Department implemented new reforms to try and curtail the length of the federal oversight.

    Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of DOJ’s Civil Rights Division said during a news conference Tuesday that the Seattle Police Department “reached and sustained compliance with our consent decree by consistently implementing reforms necessary to change policing in this city.”

    “Seattle stands as a model for the kind of change and reform that can be achieved when communities, police departments, and cities come together to repair and address systemic misconduct,” Clarke said.

    She continued: “The overall message today is that policing in Seattle looks dramatically different today than it did 10 years ago. The consent degree in Seattle has provided the strong medicine necessary to cure the problems and improve the way policing is carried out across the city of Seattle.”

    The city established a community policing commission and fostered better trust between residents and the police department, Clarke said. The use of force has become rare, appearing in “fewer than one quarter of one percent” of instances, she said. In addition, the department has adopted a “bias-free policing policy,” and more than 90% of police stops are now supported by “reasonable, articulable suspicion.”

    The police department, Clarke said, has pledged to continue monitoring their reforms.

    The Justice Department and the city of Seattle asked for continued, narrow federal oversight in two instances where they say the police department still struggles, “ensuring a sustainable system of accountability” and “improving the use, reporting, and review of force in crowd settings.” Clarke said Seattle is still reviewing the use of police force during the racial justice protests in 2020, and “that work must be completed before it’s appropriate to fully end court oversight on that issue.”

    “While the Justice Department is opening new pattern or practice investigations into police departments across the country,” Clarke said, “we are also achieving significant progress in cities that have worked for years to institute reforms that are called for by our consent decrees.”

    The Justice Department has initiated several probes, including into the police departments in Minneapolis, Phoenix, and Mount Vernon, New York.

    This story has been updated with additional details.

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  • Idaho governor signs bill that restricts transgender students’ bathroom use in schools | CNN Politics

    Idaho governor signs bill that restricts transgender students’ bathroom use in schools | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    Idaho Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a bill this week that prohibits transgender students in the state from using public school bathrooms that do not align with their gender assigned at birth.

    Senate Bill 1100, which takes effect July 1, requires public schools to provide separate male and female bathrooms, locker rooms, showers, dressing areas and overnight accommodations for students in the state. The restrictions do not apply to single-occupancy restrooms. The bill also requires reasonable accommodations to be made for students who are unwilling or unable to use multi-occupancy restrooms or changing facilities.

    “Requiring students to share restrooms and changing facilities with members of the opposite biological sex generates potential embarrassment, shame, and psychological injury to students,” the bill states.

    Under the law, students can take legal action against the schools in instances where they encounter people of the opposite sex using gendered facilities if the schools gave those people permission to use the facilities or failed to “take reasonable steps” to prevent the person from using those facilities.

    Students who are successful in their private lawsuits will receive $5,000 from the public school systems for each time they saw “a person of the opposite sex” in those gendered facilities or sleeping quarters and can receive monetary damages from schools for psychological, emotional or physical harm.

    Advocates have for years worked to combat bathroom bills like the one passed in Idaho, blasting them as an unnecessary and harmful attack on transgender students’ humanity.

    Democratic state Sen. Rick Just told CNN on Saturday that he had voted against the bill largely because it allows people to file private lawsuits against school systems. “I don’t believe it’s helpful to encourage citizens to seek damages whenever they feel aggrieved in the slightest way,” he told CNN in an email.

    Republican state Rep. Ted Hill, one of the bill’s sponsors, said the legislation would ultimately “bring peace” among the schools, school boards and parents, and that it would help them focus on students’ education instead.

    “The most important part of this legislation was to recognize the rights of everyone,” Hill told CNN in an email. “Recognized the rights for young girls to be safe and secure in a place where they are most vulnerable, same for the boys to be safe and secure where they are most vulnerable, and the rights for everyone else to be safe, secure and comfortable in a place where they are most vulnerable.”

    Little did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the bill Saturday.

    Following the legislation’s passage, the Human Rights Campaign, the largest LGBTQ advocacy group in the US, slammed Little and said, “LGBTQ+ people in Idaho deserve the opportunity to live their lives with dignity and respect.”

    “Unfortunately, the bills that Gov. Little is signing into law will make life harder on LGBTQ+ folks across the state,” the group’s state legislative director and senior counsel, Cathryn Oakley, said in a statement. “These bills will not accomplish anything other than to further alienate and stigmatize those already on the margins of life in this state.”

    The Human Rights Campaign said that more “bathroom bills” have been filed across the country so far in 2023 than in any previous year.

    The Idaho legislation follows similar bills Republican governors in Arkansas and Iowa signed this past week.

    On Tuesday, Arkansas Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders signed a bill that prevents transgender people from using restrooms that do not match the sex they have listed on their birth certificates. And in Iowa, Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a bill prohibiting transgender people from using school restrooms that do not correspond to their sex assigned at birth.

    Transgender Americans make up a tiny fraction of kids in the US – the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has estimated less than 2% of high school students identify as transgender.

    Health care professionals have said the types of bills Republicans are pushing are likely to further ostracize transgender kids, a group that already struggles with higher rates of depression, anxiety and suicide.

    The political debate around which bathrooms trans people are allowed to use exploded in 2016, when North Carolina enacted a law that required people at government-run facilities to use bathrooms and locker rooms that corresponded to the gender on their birth certificates, if the rooms in question were multiple-occupancy. The measure drew intense criticism from businesses and advocates, and it was later repealed.

    Alongside the transgender legislation, Little signed House Bill 186, which allows for executions by firing squad in Idaho if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injection. Several states have struggled to source the drugs required for lethal injection, causing them to pause executions.

    This story has been updated with further reaction.

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  • Idaho lawmakers approve bill that would allow execution by firing squad | CNN Politics

    Idaho lawmakers approve bill that would allow execution by firing squad | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Idaho lawmakers approved a bill Monday that would allow execution by firing squad, according to the legislature’s website.

    State Rep. Bruce D. Skaug confirmed the move in a statement to CNN.

    “H186 has now passed the Idaho Senate and House with a veto proof majority,” Skaug wrote in an email to CNN. “Upon signature of the Governor, the state may now more likely carry out justice, as determined by our judicial system, against those who have committed first degree murder.”

    A total of 24 officials voted for the bill, while 11 voted against it.

    House Bill 186 will move to Republican Gov. Brad Little’s desk next. CNN has not yet received a comment on the bill from Little.

    The bill stipulates that firing squads will be used only if the state cannot obtain the drugs needed for lethal injections. Several states have struggled to source the drugs required for lethal injection, causing them to pause executions and triggering lawsuits from inmates who argue the injections are inhumane.

    Additionally, the bill permits Idaho to use firing squads if lethal objections are deemed unconstitutional by a court.

    A fiscal note tied to the bill explains that refurbishing the Department of Correction to meet “safety and execution requirements for the firing squad” will cost around $750,000.

    If the bill is signed into law, Idaho will follow South Carolina, which approved the usage of firing squads in March 2022. Three other states permit firing squads, according to the Death Penalty Information Center: Mississippi, Utah and Oklahoma.

    A firing squad was last used in the US in 2010 to execute convicted murderer Ronnie Lee Gardner in Utah.

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  • The Willow Project has been approved. Here’s what to know about the controversial oil-drilling venture | CNN Politics

    The Willow Project has been approved. Here’s what to know about the controversial oil-drilling venture | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    On March 13, the Biden administration approved the controversial Willow Project in Alaska.

    ConocoPhillips’ massive Willow oil drilling project on Alaska’s North Slope moved through the administration’s approval process for months, galvanizing a sudden uprising of online activism against it, including more than one million letters written to the White House in protest of the project and a Change.org petition more than 3 million signatures.

    Here’s what to know about the Willow Project.

    ConocoPhillips’ Willow Project is a massive and decadeslong oil drilling venture on Alaska’s North Slope in the National Petroleum Reserve, which is owned by the federal government.

    The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil. That oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.

    ConocoPhillips is a Houston-based energy company that has been exploring and drilling for oil in Alaska for years. The company is the only one that currently has oil drilling operations in Alaska’s National Petroleum Reserve, though its two operating projects are smaller than Willow would be.

    Willow was proposed by ConocoPhillips and originally approved by the Trump administration in 2020. ConocoPhillips was initially approved to construct five drill pads, which the Biden administration ultimately reduced to three. Three pads will allow the company to drill about 90% of the oil they are pursuing.

    The Biden administration felt its hands were tied with the project because Conoco has existing and valid leases in the area, two government sources told CNN. They determined that legally, courts wouldn’t have allowed them to fully reject or drastically reduce the project, the sources said. If they had pursued those options, they could have faced steep fines in addition to legal action from ConocoPhillips.

    Now that the Biden administration has given the Willow project the green light, construction can begin. However, it is unclear exactly when that will happen, in large part due to impending legal challenges.

    Earthjustice, an environmental law group, is expected to file a complaint against the project soon and will likely seek an injunction to try to block the project from going forward.

    Environmental groups and ConocoPhillips are each racing against the clock. Construction on Willow can only be done during the winter season because it needs ice roads to build the rest of the oil project’s infrastructure – including hundreds of miles of roads and pipelines and a processing facility. Depending on the weather, the Alaska’s winter season could end sometime in April.

    If environmental groups secure an injunction before then to stop or delay the project, it could delay construction for at least a year. And since the project needs to be fully constructed before the oil can be produced, it could take years for the oil pumped out of Willow to reach the market.

    The Willow Project will almost certainly face a legal challenge. Earthjustice has told CNN it is preparing a complaint, and it has already started laying out their legal rationale, saying the Biden administration’s authority to protect surface resources on Alaska’s public lands includes taking steps to reduce planet-warming carbon pollution – which Willow would ultimately add to.

    “We and our clients don’t see any acceptable version of this project, we think the [environmental impact] analysis is unlawful,” Jeremy Lieb, an Alaska-based senior attorney for Earthjustice, previously told CNN.

    The state’s lawmakers say the project will create jobs, boost domestic energy production and lessen the country’s reliance on foreign oil. All three lawmakers in Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with President Joe Biden and his senior advisers on March 3, urging the president and his administration to approve the project.

    A coalition of Alaska Native groups on the North Slope also supports the project, saying it could be a much-needed new source of revenue for the region and fund services including education and health care.

    “Willow presents an opportunity to continue that investment in the communities,” Nagruk Harcharek, president of the advocacy group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, told CNN. “Without that money and revenue stream, we’re reliant on the state and the feds.”

    Other Alaska Natives living closer to the planned project, including city officials and tribal members in the Native village of Nuiqsut, are deeply concerned about the health and environmental impacts of a major oil development.

    In a recent personal letter to Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak and two other Nuiqsut city and tribal officials said that the village would bear the brunt of health and environmental impacts from Willow. Other “villages get some financial benefits from oil and gas activity but experience far fewer impacts that Nuiqsut,” the letter reads. “We are at ground zero for the industrialization of the Arctic.”

    In addition, a surge of online activism against Willow has emerged on TikTok in the last week – resulting in over one million letters being sent to the Biden administration against the project and over 2.8 million signatures on a Change.org petition to halt Willow.

    By the administration’s own estimates, the project would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    “This is a huge climate threat and inconsistent with this administration’s promises to take on the climate crisis,” Jeremy Lieb, an Alaska-based senior attorney at environmental law group Earthjustice, told CNN. In addition to concerns about a fast-warming Arctic, groups are also concerned the project could destroy habitat for native species and alter the migration patterns of animals including caribou.

    Willow advocates, including Alaska lawmakers, vow the project will produce fossil fuel in a cleaner way than getting it from other countries, including Saudi Arabia or Venezuela.

    “Why are we not accessing [oil] from a resource where we know our environmental track record is second-to-none?” Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska said during a recent press conference.

    Yes. During his 2020 presidential campaign, Biden vowed to end new oil and gas drilling on public lands and waters – which he initially carried out as part of an early executive order.

    However, the drilling pause was struck down by a federal judge in 2021, and since then the Biden administration has opened up several areas for new drilling. Several of these new oil and gas drilling areas have been challenged in court by environmental groups.

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  • Biden will announce sweeping protections preventing new Arctic drilling ahead of Willow decision | CNN Politics

    Biden will announce sweeping protections preventing new Arctic drilling ahead of Willow decision | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    President Joe Biden on Monday is expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska, according to an administration official, as the administration is poised to soon approve a major oil drilling project in the state.

    Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling. In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.

    The announcement comes as the administration is preparing to green-light the ConocoPhillips’ Willow project, a massive oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve. By the administration’s own estimates, Willow would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons (10 million US tons) of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    The protections will extend to the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay special areas – places that are important habitat to grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. The official said the administration views the new actions as a “firewall” against both future fossil fuel leasing and expansion of existing projects on the North Slope.

    CNN reported on Friday that the administration is soon set to approve Willow. The expected approval is a victory for Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region. It is a major blow to climate groups and Alaska Natives who oppose Willow, arguing the project will hurt the president’s ambitious climate goals and pose health and environmental risks.

    White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre pushed back Friday, saying no final decision on the project had been made and that the US Department of the Interior would make an “independent decision on the Willow Project.”

    The administration official said deliberations on Willow are focused on the legal challenges the administration faces if it tries to stop or substantially limit the venture, given ConocoPhillips’ existing, decades-long leases. These existing leases are limiting the administration’s options with the project, the administration official said.

    The additional protection measures may not be enough to assuage the concerns of climate and environmental groups, who have been pushing hard against the project.

    “These conservation decisions by the Biden administration are positive steps, but not nearly sufficient to blunt the impact of any version of the Willow oil and gas project,” Karlin Itchoak, Alaska senior regional director for The Wilderness Society, said in a statement.

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  • Biden administration approves controversial Willow oil project in Alaska | CNN Politics

    Biden administration approves controversial Willow oil project in Alaska | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The Biden administration has approved the massive Willow oil drilling project in Alaska, angering climate advocates and setting the stage for a court challenge.

    The Willow Project is a decadeslong oil drilling venture in the National Petroleum Reserve, which is owned by the federal government. The area where the project is planned holds up to 600 million barrels of oil, though that oil would take years to reach the market since the project has yet to be constructed.

    By the administration’s own estimates, the project would generate enough oil to release 9.2 million metric tons of planet-warming carbon pollution a year – equivalent to adding 2 million gas-powered cars to the roads.

    The approval is a victory for Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation and a coalition of Alaska Native tribes and groups who hailed the drilling venture as a much-needed new source of revenue and jobs for the remote region.

    But it is a major blow to climate groups and Alaska Natives who opposed Willow and argued the project will hurt the president’s ambitious climate goals and pose health and environmental risks.

    The project has galvanized an uprising of online activism against it, including more than one million letters written to the White House in protest of the project, and a Change.org petition with millions of signatures.

    Environmental advocates are expected to challenge the project in court. Earthjustice, an environmental law group, has been preparing a case against the project and intends to argue the Biden administration’s authority to protect resources on Alaska’s public lands includes taking steps to reduce planet-warming carbon pollution, which the Willow Project would ultimately add to.

    Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen blasted the administration’s decision on Monday.

    “We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden Administration committed to advancing,” Dillen said. “We know President Biden understands the existential threat of climate, but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals.”

    The venture was approved with three drilling pads instead of two. In recent weeks, the Biden administration had looked at reducing the number of approved drilling pads down to two and boosting nature conservation measures to try to assuage concerns climate and environmental groups had about the project.

    But ConocoPhillips and Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation aggressively lobbied the Biden White House and Interior Department for months to approve three drilling pads, saying the project would not be economically viable with two.

    Ultimately, the administration felt they were constrained legally and had few options to cancel or significantly curtail the project – which was initially approved by the Trump administration. The administration determined that legally, courts wouldn’t have allowed them to fully reject the project, two government sources familiar with the approval told CNN.

    Many oil drilling leases on the site were decades-oil, which the administration felt gave ConocoPhillips certain existing legal rights. Reducing the drill-pads to two would have allowed the company to drill about 70% of the oil they were initially seeking.

    Still, the final scope of the project will cover 68,000 fewer acres than what ConocoPhillips was initially seeking, the sources said.

    CNN has reached out to ConocoPhillips for comment.

    Biden on Monday is also expected to announce sweeping new protections for federal lands and waters in Alaska in tandem with Willow approval.

    Biden will declare the entire US Arctic Ocean off limits to future oil and gas leasing and will announce new rules to protect over 13 million acres in the federal National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska from drilling. In all, the administration will move to protect up to 16 million acres from future fossil fuel leasing.

    The protections will extend to the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay special areas – places that are important habitat to grizzly bears, polar bears, caribou and migratory birds. On Sunday, an administration official said the administration views the new actions as a “firewall” against both future fossil fuel leasing and expansion of existing projects on the North Slope.

    This story has been updated with more information.

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  • As the West’s drought eases, this area remains in the worst on record — and it’s hitting farmers hard | CNN

    As the West’s drought eases, this area remains in the worst on record — and it’s hitting farmers hard | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Cate Casad started noticing the for-sale signs pop up over the last year on farms around Central Oregon, which has been mired in water shortages amid a yearslong megadrought.

    Casad and her husband, Chris, are first-generation farmers and ranchers who started off with just a few acres of land east of Bend, then moved north in 2017 to scale up their farm. Now, the couple manages around 360 acres of farmland in Jefferson County, where they grow organic food and raise cattle, heritage breed hogs and pastured chickens.

    Only a year after that move, they started experiencing the impact of the drought and water cuts so severe that they made the tough decision to stop growing potatoes — a valuable crop that took them nine years to build a local market for.

    But while Casad is determined to keep farming, neighboring farms have decided to cut their losses and sell land.

    “It’s devastating,” Casad told CNN. “Each year since then, we’ve been cutting back more and more and more to the point in which last year was the worst year yet — and this year, we think will be very similar.”

    As much-needed winter storms alleviate drought conditions in California and southern parts of Oregon, the deluge of snow and rain in the West largely missed Central Oregon, leaving Crook, Jefferson and Deschutes counties dry. And many of the farmers in this area don’t have priority rights to the water – putting their farms at heightened risk of failure.

    Around the peak of the western drought in the summer of 2021, nearly 300,000 square miles of the West was in exceptional drought, the worst designation in the US Drought Monitor. Comprising 10 states — every state in the West except Wyoming — this designation covered one-quarter of all the land.

    But now the exceptional drought has nearly disappeared after a winter deluge of rain and snow — all except for about 1,500 square miles, nearly all contained in Crook County. It has spent 87 consecutive weeks mired in the worst drought category — the longest current stretch anywhere in the country.

    Oregon state climatologist Larry O’Neill said Crook missed out on a full year’s worth of rain over the last three years and “by several different measures” has seen the worst drought in Oregon’s recorded history.

    “What we’re seeing now is this really poor water supply and how we haven’t really had any recharge in the last couple years,” O’Neill said. “Even if you stretch back to the year 2000 in that region of Central Oregon, 16 out of the last 22 years have received below-average precipitation.”

    Seth Crawford, a county judge in Crook, said most of the ranches and farms there rely on reservoir water, “and those reservoirs levels are at historic lows.” Farmers are seeing reductions in harvest yields and have had to shift to crops that require less water, which tend to be less valuable. And then their expenses pile up.

    “Our ranchers and farmers have had to sell livestock which will result in a negative effect on their bottom line,” Crawford told CNN, and they “are hauling water to locations where, historically, livestock water was provided by springs and pond. In addition to the issues that farmers and ranchers deal with, our rural residents are needing assistance in well-deepening and water quality.”

    The impact of the last remaining exceptional drought in the West spreads beyond Crook County’s borders. Early this year, officials in both Crook and Jefferson counties declared a drought emergency for the fourth year in a row, and two months earlier than last year.

    After weeks of urging from local officials, Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek in mid-February declared a state-level drought emergency for the counties, which could open the door for federal drought-relief funds.

    “If things don’t course correct, we’re on a path to see a massive rural depopulation of these areas, because it can’t farm without water,” Casad said.

    Spring Alaska Schreiner, who is Inupiaq and a member of the Valdez Native Tribe of Alaska, bought a few acres in Deschutes County just 20 minutes outside of Bend in 2018.

    Schreiner’s tribal name, Upingaksraq, means “the time when the ice breaks” — fitting, considering during her first year of owning Sakari Farm, hail storms destroyed the greenhouses and the plants inside. Then in 2020, the megadrought intensified.

    “As soon as we got the farm, [during] the first year, the climate had changed,” she told CNN. “We were seeing winters occurring later in the season. Like right now, we’re finally getting some snow but it’s March almost, and that’s just weird.”

    In 2021, reservoir levels in Central Oregon began to drop. Crescent Lake, which supplements water storage for the creek that Schreiner’s irrigation district pulls water from, dropped to 50% of capacity that year, which was the record lowest level at the time. That year, Sakari Farm and the rest of the junior water right holders like Casad started facing water cuts.

    With just half of its normal water allocation and later, the water being shut off biweekly, Schreiner said the farm — which grows native plants and seeds from Indigenous peoples which are then donated to other tribes — had to remove crops.

    Dry and inactive irrigation pipes are stored in a fallowed field in the North Unit Irrigation District near Madras, Oregon, in August 2021.

    “We can’t not water for a week because we had anywhere between 80 and 130 varieties of plants — it’s a very unique vegetable farm,” she said. “So, what we did was we started shutting off water in parts of the farm and we had to prioritize which crops to grow or to let die, basically.”

    As of Friday, Crescent Lake was only 9% full. And given the measly amount of precipitation the region has received in recent months, the impacts of the drought are still strongly felt at Schreiner’s farm. But she said the farm has had to be creative to stay afloat during the drought, including controlling what and how much is grown, who gets its food and how it rations water and food resources.

    And with the help of some federal funding from the US Department of Agriculture, she plans to switch the whole farm to drip irrigation, a method that delivers water more directly to the roots of plants and can reduce water waste from evaporation and runoff. She’s also looking to install weather stations and water sensors to gather data that will help the farm improve plant growth efficiency.

    “We’re doing everything we can this year, and there’s nothing else you can do,” Schreiner said. “After that, you just start taking more crops away, which is income.”

    Sakari Farm has had to remove several crop varieties due to drying soil and lack of water in the region. (Studio XIII/Sakari Farm)

    The farm grows native plants and traditional indigenous foods. (Studio XIII/Sakari Farm)

    A highway stretches through Jefferson County, Oregon.

    Watching family-run farms suffer — and then ultimately sell their land — weighs heavily on Casad. Even some of the oldest homesteads in Oregon, she said, are exploring plans to put their farms up for sale due to water scarcity.

    “There are some days that weight can feel heavier than others,” Casad said. And while she attributes these dire water challenges to the drought, she also blames the century-old water laws.

    Like the drought-plagued Colorado River Basin, Oregon water laws are based on seniority – those who were among the first to claim land or water rights have priority over those that followed.

    “While we’re all experiencing drought, not all drought is equal due to this 100-year-old Western water law that’s been put in place and hasn’t been changed, and that’s serving people very inequitably,” Andrea Smith, agricultural support manager with High Desert Food and Farm Alliance, told CNN. “But it is a system we’re dealt and working with right now – and there’s a lot we have to do to change it.”

    While Crook County may be driest county in Oregon, the system is such that junior water right holders like Casad and Schreiner, in Jefferson and Deschutes counties, get the short end of the stick.

    Workers at Casad Family Farms harvest organic onions.

    But even Crook County ranchers, some of which Smith said do hold senior rights, are struggling with water scarcity. Casad said she has spoken with ranchers there who have had to haul water to their cattle because the springs have yet to fully return and make up for the yearslong water deficit.

    Others, according to Casad, have packed up and moved to Eastern Oregon, where the conditions are becoming more viable than their old land.

    Natalie Danielson, the administrative director at Friends of Family Farmers, said she believes the main water scarcity issue is the unfair distribution of water. If the 100-year-old system changes, she said there may be enough water for everyone in Central Oregon.

    “We’re kind of at this turning point where there may be enough water, but we are locked in systems that don’t allow for getting that water to the people who need it,” Danielson told CNN. The drought just puts “more pressure on the system that wasn’t set up to be resilient in these conditions.”

    As the climate crisis creates a hotter and drier future in the West, Casad said people need to start rethinking how land is managed, while preparing to make tough and painful decisions.

    Farmers have always been incredibly resilient, Casad said. “This is not the first time we have faced insane climactic challenges and it won’t be the last.”

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  • 12 blue states sue FDA, saying it’s too strict in limiting abortion drugs as legal battle over mifepristone heats up | CNN Politics

    12 blue states sue FDA, saying it’s too strict in limiting abortion drugs as legal battle over mifepristone heats up | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Twelve states led by liberal attorneys general announced Friday that they had sued the Food and Drug Administration, saying its limits on mifepristone, one of the two drugs used for medication abortion, are too strict.

    The suit is a possible hedge by states waiting to see how a federal judge in Texas rules in a lawsuit brought by anti-abortion groups seeking to block the FDA’s approval of mifepristone altogether. Conflicting rulings could mean the Supreme Court is asked to sort out the issue.

    RELATED: How a medication abortion, also known as an ‘abortion pill,’ works

    “The federal government has known for years that mifepristone is safe and effective,” Washington state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a statement. “In the wake of the Supreme Court’s radical decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the FDA is now exposing doctors, pharmacists and patients to unnecessary risk. The FDA’s excessive restrictions on this important drug have no basis in medical science.”

    Mifepristone was first approved in 2000 and medication abortion accounts for more than half of the abortions in the US. It is the first drug, followed by misoprostol, in the medication abortion regimen. Patients and providers must sign agreements stating the drug will be used to end a pregnancy, and pharmacies must have special certification.

    The lawsuit was filed in federal court in the Eastern District of Washington state. The states in the lawsuit are: Washington, Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Mexico, Rhode Island and Vermont.

    A lawsuit seeking to block the use of medication abortion nationwide could receive an initial decision at any moment, after the plaintiffs in the case submitted to the court on Friday their final brief on the challenge.

    The lawsuit, filed in November by anti-abortion advocates against FDA, challenges the two-decade-old approval of mifepristone, the first drug in the medication abortion process.

    A decision by US District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in favor of the plaintiffs could have far-reaching consequences since medication abortion now makes up a majority of abortions obtained in the US.

    In the filing submitted Friday, the anti-abortion advocates rehashed many of the arguments they made in earlier briefs. Its submission means that Kacsmaryk could soon rule on a motion by the plaintiffs to temporarily block use of the medication. The judge had previously said that once the February 24 filing deadline ended, “briefing will then be closed on the matter, absent any ‘exceptional or extraordinary circumstances.’”

    Kacsmaryk, however, could also call for a hearing, or ask for additional responses.

    The defendants in the case – the FDA and Danco, which makes mifepristone – argued in separate briefs to the court that a decision against the drug’s approval would be unprecedented and would shutter the drugmaker’s business.

    Reproductive rights advocates have stressed that a ruling in favor of the plaintiffs would be devastating, with NARAL Pro-Choice America saying in a statement that if the drug is yanked from the market, “64.5 million women of reproductive age in the US would lose access to medication abortion care, an exponential increase in harm overnight.”

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  • Key senators torn over retirement decisions as party leaders try to fortify 2024 standing | CNN Politics

    Key senators torn over retirement decisions as party leaders try to fortify 2024 standing | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    Sen. Joe Manchin, torn over whether to run for reelection, says he’s “given everything I possibly can” over four decades of holding public office. Sen. Jon Tester is close to making his final decision on a 2024 bid and concedes there’s a risk of his seat flipping next year.

    “It’s a commitment,” the Montana Democrat said of another run.

    They’re not the only ones in a tough spot.

    Sen. Bob Casey, a Pennsylvania Democrat, is weighing health considerations after treatment for prostate cancer. Sen. Bernie Sanders, 81, says he’ll make a decision about whether to run for a fourth Senate term in Vermont “at the appropriate time.”

    And Sen. Mitt Romney, a Utah Republican who has gone to battle with former President Donald Trump, says he’ll decide whether to run for a second term by mid-April, sounding ready to take on his party’s MAGA wing if he runs again.

    “People understand that every action has a consequence, and you accept the consequences for the actions that you think are right,” Romney, 75, said of potentially facing a stiff challenge from the right. He then added bullishly: “If I run, I’ll win.”

    As the 2024 landscape begins to take shape, the senators’ decisions about their political futures will dramatically alter the map and hold major ramifications for the makeup of the institution itself.

    For Democrats, the concern is the most acute. They already have a difficult road to maintain their slim 51-49 majority, with 23 seats to defend compared to just 11 for the GOP.

    Plus they’ll have to hold onto Democratic seats in GOP terrain, such as in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – not to mention keep their seats in swing states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Nevada. The map provides them with scant pickup opportunities, since Republican incumbents are mostly running in ruby-red states or states that have trended to the GOP, like Florida.

    Then there’s the complicated dance for both parties in Arizona, if Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, now an independent, decides to run again for a seat that would put her up against a Republican and Democrat in a messy, three-way race. For Republicans, fear is growing that the hard-right Kari Lake may mount a bid and put their hopes for a pickup in jeopardy.

    And with few pickup chances, Senate Democrats recognize they’ll have to limit losses – and prevent retirements – in order to cling to power.

    “I’m doing everything I can to help Manchin in West Virginia,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told CNN when asked if he were concerned that the conservative Democrat might hang it up, referring to legislative actions.

    After Michigan Sen. Debbie Stabenow announced she’d retire, Schumer and his top deputies are hoping to prevent others from following suit, recognizing that an open seat would give Republicans an even better chance of seizing control of the chamber they lost in the 2020 elections. The exception is California, where the 89-year-old Dianne Feinstein announced her retirement this week, something widely expected, as Democrats are expected to keep the seat in their control in the blue state.

    In particular, Democratic leaders are urging Tester and Manchin to run again, knowing full well that finding another Democrat to win in those conservative battlegrounds will be an extremely tall order in 2024.

    “Clearly, it’s important for them to run,” said Sen. Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who chairs the Senate Democratic campaign arm, when asked about Tester and Manchin. “I don’t know where they are. I’ve talked to them, but they’re just working through issues, personal issues for themselves as to what they want to do. So we just have to give them time to think that through and I look forward to their answers.”

    Peters acknowledged that his party’s effort to keep the Senate will grow bleaker if either or both men retire.

    “Those are states that are very Republican,” Peters told CNN, referring to Montana and West Virginia. “And I know they can win again, but they’re without question the strongest candidates in those states. It’d be more difficult without them running.”

    Democrats acknowledge they have close to no backup plans in Montana or West Virginia. But they have been heartened by the polls that are being released publicly by Republican groups in those states, showing their numbers have been better than expected – and perhaps encouraging – for the incumbents.

    But neither Manchin nor Tester seem concerned that the seat could turn red if they retire.

    “That’s not my factor,” Manchin said in the interview. “I’m not weighing that because of my, what it might do to the numbers as far as up here. No, I’ve been at this for quite some time. This term being up, there’ll be 42 years I’ve been in public service so I’ve given everything I possibly can.”

    Several Democratic operatives involved in planning for Senate races tell CNN they expect that ultimately, Tester will run and that Casey will as well after his successful surgery this week. Manchin has them more on edge, and they anticipate that’s how they’ll remain for almost a year: the West Virginia filing deadline isn’t until next January.

    That, after all, is what he did in 2018.

    Manchin, a former governor and state legislator who has served in the Senate since 2010, insists he’s not concerned about the prospects that the GOP governor, Jim Justice, is strongly considering a run against him, though Justice would have to escape a difficult primary against Rep. Alex Mooney and potentially the state’s attorney general, Patrick Morrisey, who may run as well. He has acknowledged that Justice would be the toughest candidate to face, though he insists he could still pull off a victory.

    Manchin, 75, just doesn’t know if he wants to do it again as he looks back at the last several years – especially in the 50-50 Senate in the last Congress where he was at the peak of his power in the chamber and played a central role shaping major laws. The question Manchin is weighing: whether he’ll have the same kind of impact with another six years.

    “I make a decision based on if I’ve been able to deliver for the state, have I been able to support the Constitution and the oath I’ve taken, I think I have,” Manchin said, confirming he’s been urged by Biden and Schumer both to run. “Is there more I can do in different, other areas? I don’t know.”

    Tester, who also said Schumer has been urging him to run, conceded that his seat could flip if he bows out.

    “Oh, absolutely there’s a risk of flipping there’s no doubt about that but so are all of them,” Tester said.

    But he contended other Democrats could mount a vigorous challenge for the seat.

    “Actually, we’ve got some really good folks in the wings that can run,” Tester, 66, said before he noted that things have gotten dire for Democrats in recent cycles. “We haven’t had the best of luck the last few cycles in Montana but I think that’s as much self-inflicted as it is the state turning red.”

    But Tester pointed to key positions he holds – chairing a subcommittee on Pentagon spending and running the veterans panel – as he weighs another run.

    “I’m at a point and time where we can get a lot of good things done because of my position on Veterans Affairs and defense chairman but it’s just something where I think you just need to take the time to think over,” he said.

    Yet Democrats could benefit from a potentially divisive GOP primary in Montana – with the possibility of candidacies from two House members, the governor and the state attorney general. That will put the other Montana senator, Republican Steve Daines, to the test as he plans to use his National Republican Senatorial Committee to be more assertive in GOP primaries to root out lackluster general election candidates, though it’s unclear how he would handle his home state.

    In an interview, Daines was noncommittal when asked about one candidate in particular – Rep. Matt Rosendale – a hard-right Republican who lost to Tester in 2018 and is considering running again. He said “it’s early” since candidates have yet to declare and that the field will get “sorted out,” contending the race is “winnable.”

    “These are three red states where the only statewide elected official left that’s a Democrat is a US Senator. That’s Montana, it’s West Virginia, it’s Ohio,” Daines said. “These are going to be spirited races.”

    And after last cycle’s GOP debacle, where several Donald Trump-aligned candidates petered out in the general election and effectively cost them winning the majority, Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell is determined not to allow that to happen again.

    “I just think we need to focus on candidates who can win in the general election,” said Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican from Texas and close McConnell ally. “We had some great primary candidates, but that won’t get the job done. You got to have somebody who can have a broader appeal than just the base. That was one of the most important lessons of this last cycle.”

    Democratic Rep. Ruben Gallego, at left, is challenging Sinema, at right, for her US Senate seat in 2024.

    Senate leaders in both parties see Arizona as the biggest wildcard – depending on what Sinema decides to do and which Republican decides to run.

    Lake, the Trump-aligned Republican who lost one of the nation’s premier governor’s races last fall, recently met with officials at NRSC headquarters – even though many Republicans are nervous about her potential candidacy and one GOP strategist called the potential of a Lake Senate run “disastrous.”

    As she made the rounds in Washington, Daines told CNN that he spoke with Lake.

    “I want to see a candidate who can not only win a primary, but can win a general election,” Daines said when asked about that visit, not commenting on Lake directly.

    Other top Republicans are unnerved about Lake – and her evidence-free claims of widespread election fraud – and are pushing for other candidates to jump into the race.

    “I’ve just said to any of our candidates or potential candidates in 2024, that you got to talk about the future, not the past,” said Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 2 Republican. “And I think if you’re building your campaign around the theme of a stolen election, that’s not a winning strategy. We’ve seen that. So if she does decide to do it again, I think she’s gonna have to talk about the things that are on the hearts and minds of American people.”

    Schumer and Democratic leaders, themselves, are in a bind in the state, refusing to say if they’ll back their party’s nominee with Sinema still undecided on a run. The reason: They need Sinema to continue to organize with them in order to maintain their 51-49 majority and are in no mood to alienate her.

    But some Democrats are angry at their leaders for refusing to say if they’ll back their nominee, especially backers of Rep. Ruben Gallego, the party’s leading candidate in the race.

    “At some point, they’re going to have to endorse a Democrat,” said Rep. Raul Grijalva, a fellow Arizona Democrat who backs Gallego, noting it would be “problematic” if party leaders didn’t dump huge resources to help their party’s nominee win a general election.

    “If they don’t, that would be an insult at many levels,” Grijavla said.

    While some Democrats are nervous that Gallego and Sinema would split the vote and give Republicans a victory, Gallego dismisses the possibility and says only a “strong Democrat” can win.

    “No matter what happens, Kyrsten Sinema is always going to be in third place,” Gallego said. “I also doubt she fully runs.”

    As she’s grown more alienated from her former party, Sinema has grown closer to Republicans, including one – Lisa Murkowski of Alaska – who told CNN she would endorse the senator if she ran again.

    “I absolutely support Sen. Sinema,” Murkowski said, noting she’s also backing Manchin. “She’s not afraid to take on hard things, and I’m gonna be supporting her too.”

    Sen. Debbie Stabenow of Michigan speaks to members of the media at the U.S. Capitol on August 03, 2022 in Washington, DC.

    Even in safe Democratic seats, there’s the potential for a shakeup that could bring more diversity and younger members into the ranks, including in Maryland and Delaware where Sens. Ben Cardin and Tom Carper, respectively, have not made a final decision to run yet.

    Cardin, 79, who hasn’t spent much time fundraising yet, said he would make his decision sometime in the spring, while Carper, 76, said he’d be ready to run but noted that campaigns are “way too long.”

    In Hawaii, Sen. Mazie Hirono said she plans to run again, as did Maine’s Angus King, an independent who caucuses with Democrats.

    “There’s only two ways to run: Scared or unopposed,” King said.

    In more contested states, Nevada’s Jacky Rosen said she is running, as did Ohio’s Sherrod Brown. And in Wisconsin, Sen. Tammy Baldwin said she’d make her announcement about her plans in the spring after upcoming elections in the state.

    In Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz has announced plans to run for a third Senate term, and Democrats are weighing whether to mount a serious effort to try to unseat him in the red state – with a focus on whether Democratic Rep. Colin Allred will try to mount an upset bid against the conservative senator.

    In Michigan, where Stabenow’s retirement is leaving Democrats with an open seat in a swing state, Rep. Elissa Slotkin is eying a run and could get some implicit help from the outgoing senator herself. Stabenow has spoken by phone with several prominent Michigan Democrats, and while some have perceived that as dissuading some weaker candidates from running, a Stabenow spokesperson says she’s just been giving everyone advice on the challenges of running statewide in Michigan and not trying to clear the field.

    Republican recruitment efforts in the state are also up in the air, with a push for newly elected Rep. John James, who has lost two previous bids for the Senate. If he passes, GOP leaders believe other contenders will emerge, potentially former Rep. Peter Meijer and even some current members of the House delegation or local officials.

    While several potential Democratic candidates have decided not to run, other political players in the state remain unsure about Slotkin’s statewide strength and have continued talking privately about finding an alternative.

    Given how much Democrats in the state rely on high turnout in heavily African-American Detroit, finding a candidate who could run strong there has been a major topic in those discussions. Lt. Gov. Garlin Gilchrist, who got his start in Detroit politics is “very seriously thinking about making a run” and is expected to make a decision over the next month, according to a person familiar with his thinking.

    Meanwhile, several Democrats in Michigan tell CNN they have been surprised by outreach they’re getting from “The Good Doctor” actor Hill Harper, whose political experience mostly relates to being Barack Obama’s law school roommate, but who owns a coffee shop in Detroit and has gotten involved with the local business community there. Harper did not return a request for comment.

    Stabenow said she’s not endorsing any candidate in the primary to replace her.

    “What I’m saying to folks is that I want somebody that is strong, effective, who can raise money, who can win,” Stabenow said. “But I’m talking to everybody.”

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  • Here is what we know about the unidentified objects shot down over North America | CNN Politics

    Here is what we know about the unidentified objects shot down over North America | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A high-altitude object was shot down near Lake Huron on Sunday afternoon, marking the fourth time in just over a week that the US military has taken down objects in North American airspace.

    On Saturday, an unidentified object was downed over northern Canada, a day after another object had been shot down over Alaska airspace by a US F-22. Last weekend, a Chinese surveillance balloon was taken down by F-22s off the coast of South Carolina.

    There’s no indication at this point that the unidentified objects have any connection to China’s surveillance balloon, but it seems that national security officials across the continent remain on edge.

    Democratic Rep. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan said Sunday that the operation to down the object near Lake Huron was carried out by pilots from the US Air Force and the National Guard.

    CNN initially reported that the object was shot down over Lake Huron based on what sources said to CNN and a public tweet by Republican Rep. Jack Bergman of Michigan.

    The object was first detected by the North American Aerospace Defense Command and the US Northern Command over Montana on Saturday night, and fighter aircraft were sent to investigate, a senior administration official told CNN. At the time, those planes did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits, which led NORAD and NORTHCOM to believe it was an anomaly.

    But on Sunday, defense officials reacquired the radar contact and detected the object flying over Wisconsin and then Michigan. The path of the object and its altitude raised concerns that it could pose a threat to civilian aircraft, but it did not pose a military threat to anyone on the ground, the official said. President Joe Biden ordered the object to be shot down.

    Here’s what we know so far:

    Prior to the takedown of the object near Lake Huron, a US official said Sunday there had been caution inside the Biden administration on the pilot descriptions of the unidentified objects shot down over Alaska and Canada due to the circumstances in which the objects were viewed.

    “These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a National Security Council spokesperson said, referring to the suspected Chinese spy balloon.

    Earlier Sunday, Deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh also noted the difference between the incidents.

    “These objects shot down on Friday and Saturday were objects and did not closely resemble the PRC balloon. When we can recover the debris, we will have more for you,” she said Sunday

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer told ABC News on Sunday morning that he was briefed by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and that the object shot down over Canada was likely another balloon – as was the high-altitude object downed over Alaska on Friday.

    On Saturday, Canada’s chief of defense staff, Gen. Wayne Eyre, also made mention of a “balloon” when describing instructions given to the team that worked to take down the object.

    The unidentified object that was shot down in Canadian airspace had been tracked since Friday evening, according to a statement from Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder.

    The object was detected by NORAD, and two F-22 fighter jets from Joint Base Elemendorf-Richardson, Alaska, were sent up to monitor the object with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard.

    Analyst thinks this is why more unidentified objects are being spotted

    The object appears to be a “cylindrical object” smaller than the Chinese surveillance balloon that was shot down previously, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand said at a news conference on Saturday.

    “Monitoring continued today as the object crossed into Canadian airspace, with Canadian CF-18 and CP-140 aircraft joining the formation to further assess the object,” Ryder’s statement said.

    Eyre said Saturday that “the instructions that were given to the the team was whoever had the first best shot to take out the balloon had to go ahead.”

    US President Joe Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau both approved the shoot-down on Saturday, according to a statement from the White House.

    “President Biden authorized US fighter aircraft assigned to NORAD to conduct the operation and a US F-22 shot down the object in Canadian territory in close coordination with Canadian authorities,” the White House statement said. “The leaders discussed the importance of recovering the object in order to determine more details on its purpose or origin.”

    The object was shot down with a AIM-9X missile from a US F-22 – the same missile and aircraft that shot down an unidentified object on Friday, and the Chinese surveillance balloon on February 4.

    “The object was flying at an altitude of approximately 40,000 feet, had unlawfully entered Canadian airspace and posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight. The object was shot down approximately 100 miles from the Canada-United States border over Canadian territory in central Yukon,” she said.

    Ryder’s statement said that while Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations, the FBI will be “working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.”

    Sunday’s takedown of the unidentified object near Lake Huron marks the fourth such incident in just over week.

    On Friday, an unidentified object was shot down by a US F-22 over Alaskan airspace after it had been monitored by the US since Thursday evening.

    Pilots gave different accounts of what they observed after coming near the object, a source briefed on the intelligence told CNN; some pilots said it “interfered with their sensors,” but other pilots said they didn’t experience that.

    Colonel Leighton high altitude object nr vpx

    Retired colonel on what he believes ‘high-altitude object’ in Alaska could be

    The object was flying at 40,000 feet, which made it a risk to civilian traffic. That set it apart from the Chinese surveillance balloon, which was traveling “well above commercial air traffic,” Ryder said at the time.

    Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska said Friday, after the unidentified object was shot down over his state, that similar objects have been spotted over Alaska in recent weeks, the Alaska Beacon reported.

    “There were things that were seen on radar but weren’t explained,” the Senate Armed Services Committee member told the publication.

    The Chinese balloon was shot down off the coast of South Carolina last Saturday after traveling across the US. Biden administration officials said it posed little intelligence gathering and military risk.

    It did, however, pose a risk to people and property on the ground if it were to be shot down, as officials said it was roughly 200 feet tall and the payload weighed more than a couple of thousand pounds.

    The US military is still working to recover debris from the balloon on the ocean floor. Ryder said Friday that they have “located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.”

    Notably, the US intelligence community’s method to track China’s fleet of surveillance balloons was only discovered within the last year, six people familiar with the matter told CNN.

    The findings have allowed the US to develop a consistent technical method for the first time, which they have used to track the balloons in near-real time across the globe, the sources said.

    Earlier Sunday, before the shooting down of the object near Lake Huron, lawmakers on Capitol Hill offered a range of responses to the recent developments.

    House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Turner told CNN that the Biden administration does appear “somewhat trigger-happy” in how it dealt with objects over the weekend after allowing the first spotted balloon to fly across the country.

    “What I think this shows, which is probably more important to our policy discussion here, is that we really have to declare that we’re going to defend our airspace. And then we need to invest,” the Ohio Republican added. “This shows some of the problems and gaps that we have. We need to fill those as soon as possible because we certainly now ascertain there is a threat.”

    Turner’s Democratic counterpart on the Intelligence panel, Connecticut Rep. Jim Himes, told NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he had “real concerns about why the administration is not being more forthcoming with everything that it knows,” before adding, “My guess is that there’s just not a lot of information out there to share.”

    Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, meanwhile, said Congress needs to investigate why it took so long for the US to catch on to the Chinese government’s use of spy balloons.

    “I do think (Democratic Sen. Jon Tester of Montana) is looking into why it took so long for us, our military, our intelligence, to know about these balloons. That’s something I support. Congress should look at that. That’s the question we have to answer,” he said. “I think our military, our intelligence are doing a great job, present and future. I feel a lot of confidence in what they’re doing. But why, as far back as the Trump administration, did no one know about this?”

    Also Sunday, Rep. Michael McCaul, the chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said he remains unconvinced by assertions from the intelligence community that he suspected Chinese spy balloon did not seriously damage US national security during its flight across the country.

    “They say they mitigated it, but my assessment – and I can’t get into the detail of the intelligence document – is that if it was still transmitting, going over these three very sensitive nuclear sites, I think if you look at the flight pattern of the balloon, it tells a story as to what the Chinese were up to, as they controlled this aircraft throughout the United States,” the Texas Republican told CBS News.

    This story has been updated with additional information.

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  • What we know about the unidentified object shot down over Alaska | CNN Politics

    What we know about the unidentified object shot down over Alaska | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    An unidentified object was shot down 10 miles off the frozen coast of Alaska on Friday afternoon, US officials announced, but details about the object are scarce.

    US military pilots sent up to examine the object gave conflicting accounts of what they saw, which is part of the reason why the Pentagon has been cautious in describing what the object actually is, according to a source briefed on the intelligence.

    The incident marked the second time that US jets had taken down an object in less than a week, following the shooting down of a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the coast of South Carolina last week.

    On Saturday, the North American Aerospace Defense Command said it was monitoring “a high altitude airborne object” over northern Canada, and military aircraft are currently operating in the area from Alaska and Canada, according to a news release from the agency.

    Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced shortly after that he ordered the downing of the object.

    It’s currently not clear what this object is or whether it has any relation to the Chinese spy balloon or the object shot down over Alaska.

    Trudeau said he spoke with President Joe Biden on Saturday and that Canadian forces will lead the object recovery operation.

    The object taken down Friday, which officials have not characterized as a balloon, was shot down at 1:45 p.m. EST, according to Pentagon spokesman Brig. Gen. Patrick Ryder, who said recovery teams are now collecting the debris that is sitting on top of ice in US territorial waters.

    The object “came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters on Friday. “Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

    Asked about the operation on Friday afternoon, Biden told CNN, “It was a success.”

    Here’s a look at what we know so far about the object shot down on Friday.

    F-35 fighter jets were sent up to investigate after the object was first detected on Thursday, according to a US official. Kirby told reporters that the first fly-by of US fighter aircraft happened Thursday night, and the second happened Friday morning. Both brought back “limited” information about the object.

    But the pilots later gave differing reports of what they observed, the source briefed on the intelligence said.

    Some pilots said the object “interfered with their sensors” on the planes, but not all pilots reported experiencing that.

    Some pilots also claimed to have seen no identifiable propulsion on the object, and could not explain how it was staying in the air, despite the object cruising at an altitude of 40,000 feet.

    The conflicting eyewitness accounts are partly why the Pentagon has been unable to fully explain what the object is, the source briefed on the matter said.

    In a statement Saturday, US Northern Command said the command has no new information to share about the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin,” but noted that recovery efforts are being affected by Arctic weather conditions, “including wind chill, snow and limited daylight.”

    The statement added that “fighter aircraft” downed the “high altitude airborne object” on Friday following an order from Biden and said recovery operations for the remains of the object continue Saturday in coordination with the FBI and local law enforcement.

    Kirby said Friday that Biden was first briefed on the object on Thursday evening, as “soon as the Pentagon had enough information.” It “did not appear to be self-maneuvering,” Kirby said.

    It’s unclear what the object looks like, or where it came from. On Friday, Ryder said it was traveling north east across Alaska. He declined to provide a physical characterization, only saying that it was “about the size of a small car” and “not similar in size or shape” to the Chinese surveillance balloon that was downed off the coast of South Carolina on February 4.

    “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now,” Kirby said. “We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately-owned, we just don’t know.”

    There was not a significant concern about damage to people or property if the object was shot down, which was the primary reason the Chinese surveillance balloon was allowed to traverse the continental US last week.

    Ryder also emphasized that officials do not know the origin of the object, which did not appear to be manned and that it was shot down because it posed a “reasonable threat to civilian air traffic” as it was flying at 40,000 feet.

    Ultimately, the object was downed near the Canadian border and northeastern Alaska by a F-22 fighter jet out of Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson, Alaska, equipped with an AIM-9X – the same aircraft and missile used to take down the surveillance balloon. A US official said the military waited to shoot the object down during daylight hours to make it easier for the pilots to spot it. Ryder said the mission was “supported with aerial assets from the Alaska Air National Guard.”

    The Alaska National Guard and units under US Northern Command, along with HC-130 Hercules, HH-60 Pave Hawk, and CH-47 Chinook are all participating in the effort to recover the object, Ryder said.

    Sailors assigned to Explosive Ordnance Disposal Group 2 recover a high-altitude surveillance balloon off the coast of Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, February 5, 2023.

    Officials have given no indication so far that the object is at all related to the Chinese surveillance balloon downed last weekend, debris of which is still being recovered on the Atlantic Ocean floor.

    Ryder said Friday that recovery teams have “mapped the debris field” and are “in the process of searching for and identifying debris on the ocean floor.”

    “While I won’t go into specifics due to classification reasons,” Ryder said, “I can say that we have located a significant amount of debris so far that will prove helpful to our further understanding of this balloon and its surveillance capabilities.”

    When asked Friday if lessons learned about China’s balloon assisted in detecting the object shot down over Alaska, Ryder said it was “a little bit of apples and oranges.”

    The object did not appear to have any surveillance equipment, according to a US official, which would make it both smaller and likely less sophisticated than the Chinese balloon shot.

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  • Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

    Biden ordered US military to ‘down’ a ‘high-altitude object’ over Alaska, White House says | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    The White House announced Friday that President Joe Biden ordered the military to down what it described as a “high-altitude object” hovering over Alaska earlier in the day.

    “The Department of Defense was tracking a high-altitude object over Alaska airspace in the last 24 hours,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby told reporters when asked about rumors of another suspected Chinese surveillance balloon.

    The high-altitude object, Kirby said, was flying at an altitude of 40,000 feet and “posed a reasonable threat to the safety of civilian flight.”

    He continued, “Out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of the Pentagon, President Biden ordered the military to down the object, and they did. And it came inside our territorial waters – and those waters right now are frozen – but inside territorial airspace and over territorial waters. Fighter aircraft assigned to US Northern Command took down the object within last hour.”

    It’s the second time in a little less than a week that US fighter jets have shot down an object flying over American airspace. The Biden administration has faced questions over its handling of a suspected Chinese spy balloon that floated across the nation last week before being shot down in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of the Carolinas on Saturday/

    While the president has stood by how he and his administration handled that balloon, he has faced criticism from Republicans for allowing the suspected spy balloon to float over much of the country before shooting it down.

    The new object, Kirby added, was taken down with US Northern Command fighter aircraft “near the Canadian border” on water that is frozen in the Arctic Ocean.

    “The general area would be just off the very, very northeastern part of Alaska near the Canadian border,” Kirby said of the location.

    The object first came to the attention of the US government “last evening.” Kirby told reporters that the US assessed the “object” to be unmanned before it was eventually shot down.

    “We were able to get some fighter aircrafts up and around it before the order to shoot it down, and the pilots assessment was this was not manned,” Kirby said.

    Kirby also offered some nomenclature guidance on the object, which the US is not referring to as a balloon and has yet to attribute to China or any other entity.

    “We’re calling this an object because that’s the best description we have right now. We don’t know who owns it – whether it’s state-owned or corporate-owned or privately owned, we just don’t know,” Kirby said.

    He added: “We don’t have any information that would confirm a stated purpose for this object. We do expect to be able to recover the debris since it fell not only within our territorial space, but on what we what believe is frozen water. So a recovery effort will be made and we’re hopeful that it will be successful and then we can learn a little bit more about it.”

    The object was “much, much smaller” than the Chinese suspected spy balloon, Kirby said, comparing it to “roughly the size of a small car.” The balloon downed last Saturday was described by US officials as approximately the size of three buses.

    Biden “absolutely was involved in this decision” and ordered it at the recommendation of Pentagon leaders, Kirby said.

    This story is breaking and will be updated.

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  • Initial classified balloon report wasn’t flagged as urgent, drawing criticism | CNN Politics

    Initial classified balloon report wasn’t flagged as urgent, drawing criticism | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    A day before the suspected Chinese spy balloon entered US airspace over Alaska, the Defense Intelligence Agency quietly sent an internal report that a foreign object was headed towards US territory, military and intelligence officials familiar with the matter told CNN.

    The report – also known as a “tipper” – was disseminated through classified channels accessible across the US government. But it wasn’t flagged as an urgent warning and top defense and intelligence officials who saw it weren’t immediately alarmed by it, according to sources. Instead of treating it as an immediate threat, the US moved to investigate the object, seeing it as an opportunity to observe and collect intelligence.

    It wasn’t until the balloon entered Alaskan airspace, on January 28, and then took a sharp turn south that officials came to believe it was on a course to cross over the continental US – and that its mission might be to spy on the US mainland.

    This timeline of events – previously unreported – helps explain why US defense officials declined to act before the balloon had crossed over US territory. That lack of urgency has become a sharp political flashpoint on Capitol Hill, where some Republicans have criticized the administration for not sounding the alarm sooner.

    “Our government knew a Chinese military spy balloon was going to enter the airspace over the continental U.S. at least TWO DAYS BEFORE it happened Yet they failed to act to stop it,” Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, tweeted on Wednesday. “Biden must disclose to Americans when they knew the spay [sic] balloon was headed towards the U.S. & explain why they didn’t stop it.”

    Officials familiar with the original DIA report conceded Rubio’s point that they didn’t see the balloon as an urgent threat until it was already over US territory –  even as fresh revelations have emerged about what the US knew about Chinese spy balloons.

    During a closed door briefing on Tuesday, Senate staff repeatedly pressed military officials about who knew what – and when. On Wednesday, Rubio and Sen. Roger Wicker, the top Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, sent a letter to President Joe Biden’s top defense and intelligence officials raising questions about the administration’s decision-making after the balloon crossed into Alaskan airspace.

    CNN reported on Tuesday that US officials tracking the balloon’s trajectory recognized it as part of a known aerial surveillance operation run by the Chinese military that officials say has flown dozens of missions world-wide, including half a dozen near or within US airspace. A military intelligence report from April of 2022, exclusively reported by CNN, revealed that the US had tracked previous flights by similar balloons.

    It was only when the balloon turned south that it “got strange,” a senior US official told CNN. “We immediately started talking about shooting it down, then.”

    On January 28, when the balloon entered US airspace near Alaska, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, sent up fighter jets to make a positive identification, according to defense officials, reflecting a subtle shift in urgency.

    Still, officials tracking the balloon saw little reason to be alarmed. At the time, according to US officials, this balloon was expected to sail over Alaska and continue on a northern trajectory that intelligence and military officials could track and study.

    Instead, shortly after the balloon crossed over land, it alarmed officials by making its unexpected turn south.

    On January 31, the balloon had crossed out of Canada and into the Lower 48. And concerns that the balloon had been sent by Beijing explicitly to spy on the mainland US were confirmed when NORAD observed the balloon “loitering” over sensitive military facilities, multiple sources familiar with the intelligence told CNN.

    How much control China exerted over the balloon’s path remains a matter of debate. Although the balloon was equipped with propellers and a rudder that allowed it to turn “like a sailboat,” according to the senior US official, it largely rode the jet stream – one of the reasons US officials were able to predict its path across the US in advance.

    Senior administration officials appear not to have been made aware of the balloon until on or near January 28, when it crossed into Alaskan airspace, including America’s top-ranking general, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley.

    Biden, according to senior administration officials, was not briefed until three days later, on January 31, when the balloon crossed out of Canada and into the continental United States. At that point, Biden asked the military to present options “immediately” to shoot the balloon down, officials said.

    Military officials said it is not necessarily surprising that the president was not briefed until January 31, given the expectations for the balloon at the time.

    The “tipper” sent by the DIA also goes out across government channels routinely, and although US officials have access to these reports, whether they read them or whether those reports are included in briefings to senior policymakers is a matter of discretion.

    “Some of these places send emails and then count that as someone being informed,” the senior US official said.

    As more information about the administration’s decision-making process on the balloon has continued to trickle out, Congress has taken a keen interest.

    “There are still a lot of questions to be asked about Alaska,” a Senate Republican aide told CNN. “Alaska is still part of the United States – why is that okay to transit Alaska without telling anyone, but [the continental US] is different?”

    Some Republican lawmakers have raised pointed questions about why the Biden administration did not move to shoot down the balloon before it crossed down into the continental US – either while it was over Alaska or sooner.

    Military and intelligence officials who spoke to CNN said that it wasn’t known that the balloon was going to dip south into the Lower 48 until the balloon was already over Alaska. Before that, officials didn’t believe that it posed any real risk to the US, and in fact, presented more of an intelligence-gathering opportunity.

    “The domain awareness was there as it approached Alaska,” NORAD commander Gen. Glen VanHerck told reporters on Monday. “It was my assessment that this balloon did not present a physical military threat to North America… And therefore, I could not take immediate action because it was not demonstrating hostile act or hostile intent.”

    Once it was over US territory, officials have argued that the benefits of gathering additional intelligence on the balloon as it passed over far outweighed the risk of shooting it down over land.

    The US sent up U-2 spy planes to track the balloon’s progress, according to US officials.

    One pilot took a selfie in the cockpit that shows both the pilot and the surveillance balloon itself, these officials said – an image that has already gained legendary status in both NORAD and the Pentagon.

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  • Inside Biden’s decision to ‘take care of’ the Chinese spy balloon that triggered a diplomatic crisis | CNN Politics

    Inside Biden’s decision to ‘take care of’ the Chinese spy balloon that triggered a diplomatic crisis | CNN Politics

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    Washington
    CNN
     — 

    When President Joe Biden learned a likely Chinese spy balloon was drifting through the stratosphere 60,000 feet above Montana, his first inclination was to take it down.

    By then, however, it was both too early and too late. After flying over swaths of sparsely populated land, it was now projected to keep drifting over American cities and towns. The debris from the balloon could endanger lives on the ground, his top military brass told him.

    The massive white orb, carrying aloft a payload the size of three coach buses, had already been floating in and out of American airspace for three days before it created enough concern for Biden’s top general to brief him, according to two US officials.

    Its arrival had gone unnoticed by the public as it floated eastward over Alaska – where it was first detected by North American Aerospace Defense Command on January 28 – toward Canada. NORAD continued to track and assess the balloon’s path and activities, but military officials assigned little importance to the intrusion into American airspace, having often witnessed Chinese spy balloons slip into the skies above the United States. At the time, the balloon was not assessed to be an intelligence risk or physical threat, officials say.

    This time, however, the balloon kept going: high over Alaska, into Canada and back toward the US, attracting little attention from anyone looking up from the ground.

    “We’ve seen them and monitored them, briefed Congress on the capabilities they can bring to the table,” another US official told CNN. “But we’ve never seen something as brazen as this.”

    It would take seven days from when the balloon first entered US airspace before an F-22 fighter jet fired a heat-seeking missile into the balloon on the opposite end of the country, sending its equipment and machinery tumbling into the Atlantic Ocean.

    The balloon’s week-long American journey, from the remote Aleutian Islands to the Carolina coast, left a wake of shattered diplomacy, furious reprisals from Biden’s political rivals and a preview of a new era of escalating military strain between the world’s two largest economies.

    It’s also raised questions about why it wasn’t shot down sooner and what information, if any, it scooped up along its path.

    What was meant to be a high-profile moment of statesmanship -as Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepared to travel to China instead transformed into a televised standoff, testing Biden’s resolve at a new moment of reckoning with China. As Navy divers and FBI investigators sort through the tangle of equipment and technology that tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean on Saturday, Biden and his team must also piece together what the episode means for the broader relationship with Beijing.

    Minutes after the balloon was shot down at his order, a reporter asked Biden what message his decision sent to China. He looked on silently before stepping into his SUV.

    On Tuesday, as Biden darted from Washington to New York City for an infrastructure event and a fundraiser, Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, informed him there was a Chinese balloon floating over Montana.

    The location was unnerving: As officials watched the balloon’s path, there was alarm at what appeared to be deliberate effort to sit over an Air Force base that maintains one of the largest silos of US intercontinental ballistic missiles.

    For some administration officials, the timing also appeared intentional. The balloon floated over the US the same week Blinken was due to depart for China, a high-stakes visit viewed as the culmination of intensive diplomatic efforts launched late last year by Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping at a summit in Bali.

    In his Tuesday briefing with the President, Milley informed Biden the balloon appeared to be on a clear path into the continental United States, differentiating it from previous Chinese surveillance craft. The President appeared inclined at that point to take the balloon down, and asked Milley and other military officials to draw up options and contingencies.

    At the same time, Biden asked his national security team to take steps to prevent the balloon from being able to gather any intelligence – essentially, by making sure no sensitive military activity or unencrypted communications would be conducted in its vicinity, officials said.

    That evening, Pentagon officials met to review their military options. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, traveling abroad in Asia, participated virtually. NASA was also brought in to analyze and assess the potential debris field, based on the trajectory of the balloon, weather, and estimated payload. When options were presented to Biden on Wednesday, he directed his military leadership to shoot down the balloon as soon as they viewed it as a viable option, given concerns about risks to people and property on the ground.

    “Shoot it down,” Biden told his military advisers, he would later recount to reporters.

    But Austin and Milley told Biden the risks of shooting the balloon down were too high while it was moving over the US, given the chance debris could endanger lives or property on the ground below.

    “They said to me, ‘Let’s wait till the safest place to do it,’” Biden told reporters on Saturday

    Biden had another key request, though: he wanted the military to shoot down the balloon in such a way that it would maximize their ability to recover its payload, allowing the US intelligence community to sift through its components and gain insights into its capabilities, officials said. Shooting it down over water also increased the chances of being able to recover the payload intact, the officials said.

    While Beijing insisted on Friday that the balloon was simply a meteorological device that had strayed off course, the US government was confident that the balloons were being used for surveillance. Both the balloon discovered over the US and another spotted transiting Latin America carried surveillance equipment not usually associated with standard meteorological activities or civilian research, officials said – specifically, both featured collection pod equipment and solar panels located on the metal truss suspended below the balloon itself. The US also observed small motors and propellers on the balloons, leading officials to believe Beijing had some control over its path.

    US officials said the balloons were part of a fleet of Chinese spy balloons that have been spotted across five continents over the last several years.

    For the bulk of its journey across the US, the scramble to assess, monitor and eventually debilitate the balloon was kept to a close circle of Biden’s top national security advisers.

    But by the middle of the week, however, the mysterious white object floating above more populated areas of Montana was difficult to conceal. The balloon caused an hours-long grounding of commercial flights around Billings on Wednesday as the military worked to respond.

    And people starting looking up.

    Michael Alverson was working at the mines in Billings when he looked up and noticed a glowing orb in the sky. Realizing it couldn’t be the moon, he brought out his binoculars to take a closer look.

    “Me and my coworkers were shocked,” Alverson said. “It appeared to be a weather balloon – or so we thought.”

    Ashley McGowan told CNN she received a call from her neighbor wondering if she had heard jets flying about their neighborhood in Reed Point, Montana, on Wednesday. McGowan said she went outside with her dogs and saw a bright white dot in the sky.

    “What’s happening?” she recalled wondering. “Is this a UFO or is it like trash or is it the star? I had somebody try to tell me it was the green comet, I’m like that’s way too close to be the comet.”

    “This isn’t normal,” she remembered thinking. “There’s jets flying everywhere.”

    Officials attributed the decision to publicize the balloon’s existence to several factors, including the fact “that people were just going to see the damn thing,” one official acknowledged.

    As the military was fine tuning its options, a parallel effort was underway with the Chinese to assess the feasibility of Blinken making his highly anticipated visit to Beijing at a moment of fresh tension.

    Heading into the visit, White House officials had been cheered by more robust communications with China following Biden’s meeting with Xi late last year. After shutting down virtually all talks following then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan last summit, the Chinese were finally back at the table – a critical step, in the eyes of Biden’s advisers, to maintaining stability in the world’s most important bilateral relationship.

    The balloon would dash all of it.

    US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attends a meeting with China's Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Indonesia on July 9, 2022.

    On Wednesday evening, China’s top official in Washington was summoned to the State Department, where Blinken and Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman delivered “a very clear and stark message” about the discovery of the surveillance balloon, officials told CNN.

    Biden himself relayed to his top national security officials that he no longer believed the time was right for Blinken to visit Beijing, in part because the balloon would likely end up dominating his talks there.

    The trip was postponed hours before Blinken was due to board his plane.

    “In this current environment, I think it would have significantly narrowed the agenda that we would have been able to address,” a senior State Department official said.

    Republicans immediately moved to attack Biden for not shooting the balloon down immediately. The attacks, which came as Biden ignored questions on the issue throughout the day on Friday, served as an annoyance “that evolved into frustration,” inside the White House, one person familiar with the dynamic said.

    “This was a decision that was made at the recommendation of the Pentagon, for public safety reasons,” the person said in describing the rationale.

    Still, administration officials moved to brief key lawmakers and staff on Capitol Hill. That included briefings for the staff of the top Republicans and Democrats on the intelligence panels, as well as the top four congressional leaders – a group known as the Gang of 8.

    A formal briefing for the lawmakers in the Gang of 8 is scheduled to take place next week.

    Still, coming just ahead of Blinken’s travel to China, it was a move that officials across the administration said made little sense on its face and required a public and private response.

    US officials spoke to their Chinese counterparts throughout the week, making clear the balloon was likely to be shot down, an official said.

    Biden himself would be updated regularly over the course of the week, with his national security team providing updates on their conversations with Chinese counterparts and military officials presenting updated military options.

    US military and intelligence officials moved quickly to identify and close off any risks that may have extended from the balloon, though one official described them as “rather small to begin with,” given ongoing US efforts to mitigate spying threats from more sophisticated satellites.

    Another official also said US assets were immediately put into motion to monitor and collect any intelligence from the balloon as it followed its path through the US – including the scrambling of military aircraft as the balloon floated high above the central part of the country.

    Still, even without a direct threat to the American public, the widely held view inside the administration was that the balloon would need to be shot down, likely after it moved over open water.

    Waiting to carry out the operation allowed the US to “study and scrutinize” the balloon and its equipment, a senior Defense official said.

    “We have learned technical things about this balloon and its surveillance capabilities. And I suspect, if we are successful in recovering aspects of the debris, we will learn even more,” the official added.

    Officials also suggested that collecting debris from the balloon could be easier if it landed in water as opposed to on land.

    Government agencies worked throughout week to find the right place and right time to intercept the Chinese spy balloon, according to a government source familiar with the shoot-down plans. Earlier in the week, the Federal Aviation Administration had been told by the Pentagon to prepare options for shutting down airspace.

    A plan to shoot down the balloon was once again presented to Biden on Friday night while he was in Wilmington, where he approved the execution plan for Saturday.

    “We’re gonna take care of it,” Biden said later on the frigid tarmac Saturday in Syracuse, New York, where he was paying a brief visit to visit family.

    Government officials were told Friday night “decisions would be made (Saturday) morning” on when to close down airspace, and FAA officials were told to “be by the phone” early Saturday morning and “ready to roll.”

    Austin gave his final approval for the strike shortly after noon on Saturday from the tarmac in New York, according to a defense official. Austin had traveled north on Saturday for a funeral, but remained very engaged throughout the planning process and the operation, the official said.

    At about 1:30 p.m. ET, the FAA instituted one of the largest areas of restricted airspace in US history, more than five times the size of the restricted zone over Washington, DC, and roughly twice the size of the state of Massachusetts.

    The Temporary Flight Restriction – put in place at the request of the Pentagon, the FAA said – included about 150 miles of Atlantic coastline that effectively paralyzed three commercial airports: Wilmington in North Carolina and Myrtle Beach and Charleston in South Carolina.

    Biden had just taken off from Syracuse when fighter jets that had taken off from Langley Air Force Base in Virginia fired a single missile into the balloon.

    As its wreckage tumbled toward the Atlantic Ocean, Biden was on the phone with his national security team on Air Force One.

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