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Tag: President Joe Biden

  • TikTok finalizes a deal to form a new American entity

    TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years on the platform now used by more than 200 million Americans.The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.President Donald Trump praised the deal in a Truth Social post, thanking Chinese leader Xi Jinping specifically “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.” Trump added that he hopes “that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.The deal ends years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.“China’s position on TikTok has been consistent and clear,” Guo Jiakun, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Beijing, said Friday about the TikTok deal and Trump’s Truth Social post, echoing an earlier statement from the Chinese embassy in Washington.Apart from an emphasis on data protection, with U.S. user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on U.S. user data, the company said in its announcement.The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties — specifically the algorithm — with ByteDance. Under the terms of this deal, ByteDance would license the algorithm to the U.S. entity for retraining.The law prohibits “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group, so it is unclear how ByteDance’s continued involvement in this arrangement will play out.“Who controls TikTok in the U.S. has a lot of sway over what Americans see on the app,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University.Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX are the three managing investors, each holding a 15% share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9% of the joint venture.___Associated Press writers Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report.

    TikTok has finalized a deal to create a new American entity, avoiding the looming threat of a ban in the United States that has been in discussion for years on the platform now used by more than 200 million Americans.

    The social video platform company signed agreements with major investors including Oracle, Silver Lake and the Emirati investment firm MGX to form the new TikTok U.S. joint venture. The new version will operate under “defined safeguards that protect national security through comprehensive data protections, algorithm security, content moderation and software assurances for U.S. users,” the company said in a statement Thursday. American TikTok users can continue using the same app.

    President Donald Trump praised the deal in a Truth Social post, thanking Chinese leader Xi Jinping specifically “for working with us and, ultimately, approving the Deal.” Trump added that he hopes “that long into the future I will be remembered by those who use and love TikTok.”

    Adam Presser, who previously worked as TikTok’s head of operations and trust and safety, will lead the new venture as its CEO. He will work alongside a seven-member, majority-American board of directors that includes TikTok’s CEO Shou Chew.

    The deal ends years of uncertainty about the fate of the popular video-sharing platform in the United States. After wide bipartisan majorities in Congress passed — and President Joe Biden signed — a law that would ban TikTok in the U.S. if it did not find a new owner in the place of China’s ByteDance, the platform was set to go dark on the law’s January 2025 deadline. For a several hours, it did. But on his first day in office, President Donald Trump signed an executive order to keep it running while his administration sought an agreement for the sale of the company.

    “China’s position on TikTok has been consistent and clear,” Guo Jiakun, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson in Beijing, said Friday about the TikTok deal and Trump’s Truth Social post, echoing an earlier statement from the Chinese embassy in Washington.

    Apart from an emphasis on data protection, with U.S. user data being stored locally in a system run by Oracle, the joint venture will also focus on TikTok’s algorithm. The content recommendation formula, which feeds users specific videos tailored to their preferences and interests, will be retrained, tested and updated on U.S. user data, the company said in its announcement.

    The algorithm has been a central issue in the security debate over TikTok. China previously maintained the algorithm must remain under Chinese control by law. But the U.S. regulation passed with bipartisan support said any divestment of TikTok must mean the platform cuts ties — specifically the algorithm — with ByteDance. Under the terms of this deal, ByteDance would license the algorithm to the U.S. entity for retraining.

    The law prohibits “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group, so it is unclear how ByteDance’s continued involvement in this arrangement will play out.

    “Who controls TikTok in the U.S. has a lot of sway over what Americans see on the app,” said Anupam Chander, a professor of law and technology at Georgetown University.

    Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX are the three managing investors, each holding a 15% share. Other investors include the investment firm of Michael Dell, the billionaire founder of Dell Technologies. ByteDance retains 19.9% of the joint venture.

    ___

    Associated Press writers Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong and Didi Tang in Washington contributed to this report.

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  • Democrats Hand The Administration Another Win With Cannabis

    Democrats hand the administration a huge cannabis win due to their inability to understand voters 

    For more than a decade, cannabis reform has stood out as one of the few political issues with overwhelming bipartisan support. Recent surveys show nearly 88% of Americans are open to expanded legalization or meaningful reform, including rescheduling marijuana under federal law. Yet despite controlling the White House during critical moments, it seems the Democrats hand the administration another win with cannabis, allowing the current President to have another landmark victory. That failure now risks becoming another durable point of contrast credited to this administration, while reinforcing a broader pattern of Democratic miscalculation.

    RELATED: What Does Cannabis Rescheduling Mean

    Cannabis reform once appeared to be an inevitable Democratic victory. Under President Barack Obama, federal enforcement softened in tone, but marijuana remained classified as a Schedule I drug—grouped alongside heroin and defined as having “no accepted medical use.” While states rapidly legalized medical and adult-use cannabis, the Obama administration chose to manage the contradiction rather than resolve it. Executive authority existed, but it went unused.

    The same hesitation carried into the Biden era. President Joe Biden campaigned on acknowledging the failures of the drug war and the need for reform, yet once in office, decisive action stalled. Reviews were ordered, agencies were consulted, and timelines stretched. What could have been a clear, popular, legacy-defining achievement—rescheduling cannabis—was instead delayed into political limbo. The moment narrowed, then passed. This lead some in the industry to see it was just an election tool with no real support, despite public opinion.

    The cost of the delay is not merely policy-based; it is political. In today’s environment, contrast matters. By failing to deliver a concrete, broadly supported reform, Democrats allowed Trump to position himself again—however imperfectly—as more open to change through a states’ rights framework. Even symbolic momentum can define a win, and Democrats surrendered the narrative space.

    This failure mirrors a recurring pattern within the Democratic National Committee. Time and again, leadership has struggled to translate clear public opinion into federal action, particularly on issues where Washington caution collides with voter urgency.  Often ignoring mainstream businesses, issues and concerns, the DNC focuses on “beltway buzz” rather than voters. The collapse of support from rural areas so how far away DNC leadership is away from the electorate. Cannabis reform, supported across age groups, regions, and party lines, should have been an exception. Instead, it became another example of internal hesitation and indifference overriding external consensus and popular support.

    That disconnect is now reflected in the numbers: the DNC and congressional Democrats are registering historically low approval ratings in the most recent Quinnipiac poll, underscoring growing voter frustration with inaction on widely supported issues.

    The disconnect is further underscored by the actions of party leaders, especially Senator Chuck Schumer and Cory Booker. Both have spent years presenting themselves as champions of cannabis reform, unveiling sweeping legalization proposals and high-profile press events meant to demonstrate urgency and moral clarity. Yet with rescheduling still unresolved, those efforts now risk appearing performative rather than effective.

    RELATED: Who Is Rep. Andy Harris And Why Does He Hate Cannabis

    By attempting to lead with comprehensive, all-or-nothing legislation, Schumer and Booker arguably misread the political moment. While full legalization remains a worthy goal, rescheduling was achievable, popular, and immediately meaningful. Securing that step first would have delivered tangible relief to businesses, patients, and workers. Instead, the emphasis on symbolism over sequencing allowed momentum to dissipate.

    For everyday Americans and the thousands of mom and pop industry businesses, the consequences remain concrete. Legal cannabis businesses are still locked out of banking. Patients face conflicting laws. Workers remain vulnerable to outdated federal classifications. These are not failures of public will, but of political execution.

    In the end, cannabis rescheduling stands as a cautionary tale. Democrats had public support, executive authority, and time. By inaction, they lost a clear win—and reinforced a growing perception the party too often listens last to voters who are increasingly disenfranchised with the party.

    Terry Hacienda

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  • This Atom-Splitting Startup Just Hit a Critical Milestone 

    An advanced nuclear startup just achieved a milestone as it races to meet an ambitious Department of Energy goal. 

    Founded just over two years ago in July 2023, El Segundo-based Valar Atomics announced it had achieved what is known as “cold criticality” during a November test at Los Alamos National Laboratory, the New Mexico site best known for its role in the Manhattan Project. 

    Cold criticality occurs when uranium-235, the isotope used as nuclear fuel, achieves a self-sustaining reaction, but without reaching full operational temperature or producing power, according to Valar. Valar used a special fuel that was originally made by General Atomics and sourced through the DOE, and equipment from Los Alamos National Laboratory. Valar contributed the reactor core and general configuration, which was meant to mimic the design of its Ward 250 reactor, but at a smaller scale.

    Valar Atomics CEO and founder Isaiah Taylor says the benchmark is a crucial step for data gathering as the company pushes toward the bigger goal of achieving criticality (that actually produces power) in a full-scale test reactor. 

    “All of these things give us a ton of data that we can then go use and make sure that we understand our full scale Ward 250 core before we go take that critical and actually make some power in it next year,” Taylor says.

    Following the achievement on Monday, Taylor took to social media platform X to trumpet that Valar “became the first startup in history to split the atom,” and doubled down in a press release, saying Valar secured “the first criticality ever achieved by a venture-backed company.” 

    The exuberant announcement sparked some backlash online, including from nuclear consultant Nick Touran, who has a PhD in nuclear engineering from the University of Michigan.

    “Having the institutional capability to relatively quickly get first in line at the Los Alamos critical facility and get some of your stuff in there and test it, I think that’s impressive,” Touran says. “But they certainly are not the first startup to split the atom.”

    Touran also runs the educational resource whatisnuclear.com, and spent 15 years at Bill Gates-backed TerraPower. He noted that TerraPower already tested fuel in a test reactor that splits atoms at a high rate. TerraPower did not respond to requests for comment by publication time.

    In a conversation with Inc., Taylor narrowed the scope of his claim, saying that what Valar was the first to do was achieve zero-power criticality using a startup-built reactor core.

    “Other startups have built fuel and have tested fuel in other reactors, but no startup has ever built a core and taken a core critical,” Taylor says.

    Touron also notes that cold criticality experiments are no longer quite so common, given advancements in computing that render cold criticals effectively unnecessary: “Our computer simulations can predict what a cold critical test tells you.” But Taylor pushed back, arguing that nuclear engineering tends “to massively overweight our mathematical models” and that real world, precise data is still crucial.

    The news follows the August kickoff of the Department of Energy’s Nuclear Reactor Pilot Program. Valar’s project was one of 11 advanced nuclear projects from 10 different companies (two projects from Oklo were chosen) selected by the DOE in an effort to construct, operate and achieve test reactor criticality in at least three reactors by July 4, 2026.

    The Biden-era Inflation Reduction Act created incentives for nuclear power, as well as allocating funding toward a domestic supply chain for fuel production and infrastructure improvements at labs like Los Alamos. The bipartisan ADVANCE Act, passed in 2024, also kicked off reforms within the Nuclear Regulatory Commission meant to accelerate licensing. The Trump administration’s program, Touran notes, is building on that progress by opening up resources and streamlining regulation for these startups in an effort to accelerate innovation: “They basically are asking the nuclear industry to throw down and actually build stuff.”

    Nuances of Valar’s milestone aside, Touran adds there is value from an innovation standpoint in having more companies participate more quickly in such experiments. The ultimate prize, however, is still a ways off.

    “I think we’ll see a bunch of people doing relatively simple criticality experiments, and that’s better than nothing. Even if they all go critical, none of them are anywhere near having an economical, reliable power plant,” Touran says. “But everybody’s excited to get going and see if all this talk actually means anything.”

    As for Valar, a lot has to happen between now and the July 2026 goalpost for taking its test reactor critical. Taylor says the company already has a version of its high-temperature gas reactor built at a facility in Los Angeles, but still has to build up the Utah test facility where it broke ground in September. Valar is one of a number of companies working to develop small modular reactors (SMRs), which are meant to be less expensive and faster to build than today’s larger scale reactors.

    “It is much easier to achieve a zero power criticality than to actually make power in a reactor. There’s a huge technical gap between those things,” Taylor says. “But I certainly wouldn’t underestimate the value of the data that we’re going to get out of this test.”

    The final deadline for the 2026 Inc. Regionals Awards is Friday, December 12, at 11:59 p.m. PT. Apply now.

    Chloe Aiello

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  • Former FTC Chair Lina Khan will help Zohran Mamdani build his new administration

    A familiar face will be helping Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani set up his new administration before he takes office in 2026. Lina Khan, former Federal Trade Commission Chair under President Joe Biden, has been officially announced as one of Mamdani’s transition co-chairs, alongside Grace Bonilla, Maria Torres-Springer and Melanie Hartzog.

    Mamdani’s platform is focused on affordability, with fighting corporate corruption a key way he hopes to lower prices for New Yorkers. Mamdani’s proposed policies include working to ban hidden fees and non-compete clauses, while funding challenges to utility company rate hikes. It’s not surprising that Khan and Mamdani would be aligned. As Chair, Khan is best known for trying to rebuild the FTC’s anti-monopolist backbone, but she was similarly interested in banning non-compete clauses and hidden junk fees. Khan has also publicly expressed her appreciation for the Mamdani campaign’s focus on small businesses in The New York Times Opinion section.

    “I think what we saw last night was New Yorkers not just electing a new mayor, but clearly rejecting a politics where outsized corporate power and money too often end up dictating our politics,” Khan said at a press conference announcing her new role. “And a clear mandate for change, where New Yorkers can get ahead and where all workers and small businesses can thrive, not just get by.”

    While Mamdani has served as a New York state assemblyman, his relative lack of experience has been used as a consistent criticism of his candidacy for mayor. Clearly, that didn’t matter to voters, but Mamdani’s chosen transition team members suggest he plans to surround himself with people who are experienced. In the case of Khan, that includes a transition co-chair who’s willing to be openly critical of corporate power. The Trump administration has effectively remade the FTC in its image, but there’s more than one place the influence of big businesses can be checked.

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  • Northwest Native Nations could lose hundreds of millions in federal funding, report says

    Lucy Suppah, a member of the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs, attends a protest in Madras on Saturday, April 5, 2025. (Photo by Julia Shumway/Oregon Capital Chronicle)

    A new report from Portland State University found that budget cuts under President Donald Trump’s new spending bill threaten nearly half of federal funding allocated to federally recognized Native American and Alaska Native nations last year.

    Roughly $530 million of the $1.19 billion allocated to Northwest tribal nations in fiscal year 2024 — used to fulfill the federal government’s trust and treaty obligations to Native American and Alaska Native tribes — is at risk of being cut. The congressionally allocated funds serve myriad functions for tribes in the Northwest, including providing clean drinking water, affordable housing, schools, transit and land management. Funding is decided by Congress on a yearly basis and can be disbursed over a period of time that exceeds the calendar year it is allocated.

    “All across the board tribes are worried about the funding cuts that are happening right now,” said Serina Fast Horse, who is Lakota and Blackfeet and serves as the co-director of the Northwest Environmental Justice Center, which provides grant application assistance and advising to Indigenous communities in the Northwest.

    Fast Horse says there are serious concerns among Northwest tribes about further cuts to vital programs ranging from health and wellness to early childhood education. The report warns of vulnerabilities to programs and grants that tribes rely on for resilience in the face of climate change, like improving home weatherization, managing forestland and renovating aging homes. Federal dollars to help Northwest tribes bolster their infrastructure against the increasing threats from wildfire, drought and sea-level rise could also be slashed.

    The Portland State report found millions in Clean Air Act funding could also go away — the Environmental Protection Agency earmarked nearly $2 million in 2024 for Northwest tribes in a series of grants for monitoring air quality and pollution. Much of the congressionally allocated funding has yet to be distributed to tribes and is now at risk of being cut altogether.

    The report demonstrates how proposed major reductions across the federal government, including at the Environmental Protection Agency, the Department of the Interior and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, could reverberate across Indian Country.

    Tribal officials shared concerns that drastic cuts could cause the federal government to fall short of trust and treaty obligations that mandate the federal government support tribal services, uphold tribal sovereignty and protect tribal treaty resources — responsibilities that courts, including the U.S. Supreme Court, have repeatedly upheld.

    “All the funding reductions addressing clean water, air and dealing with climate change have impacts on the Tribes’ culture and treaty protected resources,” said William E. Ray Jr., chair of the Klamath Tribes.

    Researchers declined to disclose specific projects at risk of elimination for fear of retaliation, and a number of tribes and tribal organizations declined to comment to InvestigateWest, citing similar concerns.

    “Trump and Congressional Republicans are wreaking havoc on Tribal communities with their ‘Big, Ugly BETRAYAL’ of a law that arbitrarily cuts many programs supporting folks in Indian Country, where chronic underfunding is already impacting services and exacerbating disparities,” said Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat.

    He added that the federal government plays an outsized role in funding essential services to tribal communities, including health care, education and public safety, and that the Inflation Reduction Act took important steps in advancing funding for water infrastructure and environmental programs for tribes.

    In 2024, Clean Air Act related funds were used to fund 15 projects for 12 Northwest tribes. The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the Tulalip Tribes are some of the Native American nations set to receive research grants for improving air quality and pollution monitoring. Among 12 tribes selected for funding, several of them focus on minimizing exposure to poor air quality and harmful pollutants to their elderly and medically vulnerable residents. Other tribes intend to study impacts of pollutants on important first foods — culturally significant staple foods consumed before colonization — that officials say are critical to improving health outcomes for their citizens.

    Researchers at PSU examined 469 programs impacted by President Trump’s reversal of former President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14008, which sought to address climate change and created a number of environmental justice initiatives. Sixty of the programs identified by researchers were specifically named in the Republican-led spending bill for cuts, and 17 of those provided funding directly to tribes. The programs accounted for roughly 35% of all federal investments in tribes in 2024. The report says not all of the funding will be cut, but a significant portion of it could be.

    The cuts come at a time when Native Americans and Alaska Natives already have limited access to federal services and funds, according to a December 2024 report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office, a nonpartisan congressional watchdog. It found when tribes had to compete with other entities for federal funding, they may receive a small portion of the total amount, and that limited access to federal services and funds contributes to known disparities for Native Americans and Alaska Natives compared to other Americans.

    Of the $20.15 billion in federal funding that went to tribes between 2010 and 2024, tribes within the boundaries of Idaho received a total of $304.56 million, Washington tribes $1.81 billion, Oregon tribes $690.76 million, and Alaska Native tribes received $2.35 billion.

    Other programs at risk of being cut include the EPA’s embattled Environmental Justice Government-to-Government Program, which funded initiatives by states, tribes and local governments to support activities that lead to measurable environmental or public health impacts.

    Under that program, in 2023, the EPA awarded the Tulalip Tribes $977,000 to work in conjunction with the Confederated Tribes and Bands of Yakama Nation to create a tool to detect which homes are at greatest risk from wildfire smoke infiltration and dangerously hot weather, which are growing issues affecting both communities.

    While the federal government has repeatedly affirmed its obligations to tribes, actual allocations remain disproportionately small compared to population figures. In 2024, Native American tribes received just 1.7% of federal energy and environment spending, despite Native people making up 2.9% of the U.S. population.

    Between 2010 and 2024, tribes within the bounds of Idaho, Washington and Oregon received roughly $2.81 billion in federal investments in energy and environmental infrastructure, which represents roughly 14% of the $20 billion in allocations made to tribes nationwide.

    The researchers determined that programs funded under the Inflation Reduction Act, Biden’s 2022 climate, health and tax law, are at particular risk of being eliminated. The funding allocated to tribes under the IRA represented a historic investment in infrastructure in Indian Country, more than doubling energy and infrastructure investment from $1.51 billion nationwide to $3.94 billion in 2024, around .04% of total federal grant spending obligations for 2024.

    “When you put them in the context of how much money the federal government actually spends on certain things, it’s pennies on the dollar,” said Sophie Lalande, a co-author of the PSU report.

    Soon after taking office and without consulting Congress, the Trump administration suspended some grants that tribal communities used heavily, such as community change grants, distributed by the EPA’s Offices of Environmental Justice and of External Civil Rights Compliance during the Biden administration, to support climate resilience and clean energy. Distributed as a part of the Inflation Reduction Act, the grants were suspended as part of the Trump administration’s anti-diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

    The grants helped tribal communities in the Northwest tremendously, according to Fast Horse.

    “They were providing hundreds of thousands of dollars to communities for infrastructure improvements, like access to clean drinking water and climate resilience hubs, just really essential pieces of community development for health and safety of communities,” she said.

    The report stresses a multiplier effect from investments made in tribal communities. Infrastructure dollars invested on tribal lands often serve as anchors for broader local development, since tribal lands often share regional infrastructure like power grids, roads or water systems with non-Native communities, with the power of dollars rippling outward into surrounding rural towns and cities.

    Bobby Cochran, a researcher with Portland State University and senior project manager at the National Policy Consensus Center, co-authored the report.

    “We just haven’t made a major investment in infrastructure since the ’60s or ’70s, so this wasn’t fluffy,” he said. “It’s really important stuff that was just trying to play catch-up.”

    InvestigateWest is an independent news nonprofit dedicated to investigative journalism in the Pacific Northwest. Visit investigatewest.org/newsletters to sign up for weekly updates.

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  • Trump signs executive order saying his TikTok deal is legal

    President Donald Trump has signed an executive order finalizing some of the terms of a deal to bring TikTok’s US business under American control. The new TikTok entity will be owned by a group of US-based investors, while ByteDance will maintain a smaller stake in the new company and keep the app’s algorithm.

    TikTok has faced more than a year of uncertainty about its future in the United States since former President Joe Biden signed a law last year requiring ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a ban. In January, the Supreme Court upheld the law and TikTok briefly went dark just as Trump took office. Trump promptly signed an executive order extending the ban deadline for the app. (He signed off on a fourth extension last week.) Today’s order declares that the plan to split off a US entity from the ByteDance-owned company will meet requirements of the ban.

    The executive order comes after a flurry of interest in TikTok from US companies and investors. Microsoft, Amazon, Perplexity AI, Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian and YouTuber MrBeast were all reportedly among those vying for the business.

    Under the new arrangement, US investors will have a large stake in the US entity. CNBC reported that Oracle, Silver Lake and MGX would be part of a core group of investors that own 45 percent of the business. Trump confirmed Oracle’s involvement, and also mentioned Michael Dell and Rupert Murdoch as investors as part of the deal. ByteDance, TikTok’s current owner, will have a 19.9 percent stake and the rest will go to a group of investors that includes ByteDance’s previous investors. Vice President JD Vance said the new company would be valued at around $14 billion.

    Oracle, which has previously partnered with the company on data security, will continue in its role overseeing the app’s algorithm and security. The fate of the TikTok algorithm has been a major question. Some lawmakers have questioned the decision to license the algorithm from ByteDance. Earlier this week, both the Republican chair and Democratic ranking member of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party expressed concerns about any arrangement that doesn’t put the algorithm squarely in American hands.

    Answering questions after Trump signed the order, Vance said to reporters that the deal ensures that US investors will have “control over how the algorithm pushes content toward users.” In reponse to a question about whether the algorithm would prefer MAGA content, Trump lamented that although he would love for the platform to be 100 percent MAGA, it would in fact treat “everyone fairly.” Trump described China as “fully on board” with the deal.

    Karissa Bell

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  • Lawsuits against federal government over Columbia Basin dams to resume

    The possibility of removing four Snake River dams — Ice Harbor Dam, Lower Monumental Dam, Little Goose Dam and Lower Granite Dam — has long been a contentious one that has generally split along party lines. Shown is the Ice Harbor Lock and Dam, the first of four dams constructed as part of the Lower Snake River Project, authorized in the Rivers and Harbors Act of 1945. (Photo by Columbia River System Operations EIS)

    Northwest states, tribes and environmental groups will resume suing the federal government over its hydroelectric dam operations in the Columbia River Basin that have harmed endangered native fish species. 

    The move comes after the Trump administration in June withdrew from a “historic” deal made two years ago, when President Joe Biden was in office. This agreement called for putting long-running legal battles aside and investing in the restoration of endangered Columbia River fish runs. 

    Behind the litigation are 10 environmental groups backed by Oregon, Washington and four Lower Columbia River tribes: The Confederated Tribes and Bands of the Yakama Nation, the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, the Confederated Tribes of the Warm Springs Reservation of Oregon and the Nez Perce Tribe. 

    Court fights over the dams had gone on for more than three decades before the pause. Now, they are back on, according to Amanda Goodin, an attorney with the environmental law group Earthjustice, which filed a motion Thursday in U.S. District Court in Oregon to end the multi-year pause on a 2021 lawsuit. 

    “The Trump administration’s recent actions leave us with no choice but to return to court,” she said. 

    On Oct. 8, Earthjustice will officially resume its lawsuit, spokesperson Elizabeth Manning said. 

    Earthjustice’s plaintiffs include the National Wildlife Federation, Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermen’s Associations, Institute for Fisheries Resources, Sierra Club, Idaho Rivers United, Northwest Sportfishing Industry Association, NW Energy Coalition, Columbia Riverkeeper, Idaho Conservation League and Fly Fishers International, Inc.   

    Oregon’s attorney general, Dan Rayfield, said in a statement that Oregon, too, was ready to resume legal action. 

    “The federal government has put salmon and steelhead on the brink of extinction and once again broken promises to tribal partners. Extinction is not an option. Oregon will return to court to hold the federal government accountable and ensure these iconic fish runs have a future,” he said.

    White House spokespeople did not immediately respond to a request for comment late Thursday. 

    The 2023 Resilient Columbia Basin Agreement involved pausing active Snake River litigation for a minimum of five years while the federal government worked with tribes and states on a plan to advance recovery of native fish populations in the Columbia Basin. 

    At the heart of the issue are four Snake River dams that provide irrigation and emissions-free hydropower for nearby communities, but have also contributed to the near extinction of 13 salmon and steelhead populations that return to the Columbia Basin from the Pacific Ocean to spawn. 

    The fish are important to tribal health and sovereignty and to basin ecosystems, and the declines are hitting southern resident orcas off the coasts of British Columbia, Washington and Oregon that rely on salmon for food and that are federally listed as endangered.

    “These wild native fish are essential to tribal cultures and important to sport, commercial, and tribal fishing communities and economies throughout the Pacific Northwest. We can and must do better,” said Bill Arthur, the director of the Sierra Club’s campaign to protect salmon in the Snake and Columbia rivers. 

    The Columbia Basin Restoration Initiative included a roadmap for salmon and steelhead recovery, as well as steps to replace the energy, transportation, irrigation, and recreation services provided by the four lower Snake River dams so they could potentially be breached. 

    The agreement was a way to increase salmon populations and fishing opportunities while improving public services, cutting taxpayer subsidies and meeting promises made to the tribes, according to Mike Leahy, senior director of wildlife, hunting and fishing policy for the National Wildlife Federation. 

    In June, President Donald Trump signed a memorandum withdrawing the federal government’s support from the agreement, calling it “radical environmentalism” and saying completion of the restoration initiative would “be devastating for the region.” 

    “It’s been disappointing to see the federal government overrule all the progress made in the region in favor of returning to court,” Leahy said. 

    Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek said in a statement that renewing the lawsuit is necessary to protect natural resources, preserve fish runs, and hold the federal government responsible.

    “President Trump walking away from these commitments presents a very real threat at a time when the fish are on the brink of extinction. It also continues our nation’s shameful legacy of broken promises to sovereign tribal nations that this partnership sought to repair,” she said.

    While environmental groups agree that going back to court is an essential next step, they have committed to finding other ways to continue restoring the Columbia Basin while the lawsuits are ongoing. 

    “We will nevertheless keep working with sovereigns and stakeholders across the Northwest to find real solutions to restore healthy, abundant salmon and bring our communities forward together,” said Columbia Riverkeeper Legal Director Miles Johnson.

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  • Judge blocks Trump’s attempt to fire Lisa Cook from Federal Reserve, but Trump can appeal

    A federal district judge’s ruling late Tuesday keeps Lisa Cook on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors for now. But it’s probably not the last word in the historic case, which is likely to come from the Supreme Court.

    Cook moved for a temporary restraining order against what she called President Donald Trump’s “unprecedented and illegal” attempt to fire her from the central bank board long before her term’s expiration in 2038. Trump argues that he had cause to fire her, citing his administration’s claim of mortgage fraud by Cook prior to her Senate confirmation. Cook was nominated by former President Joe Biden, as was the judge who sided with her Tuesday in Washington, U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb.

    Cobb wrote that Cook had made a “strong showing” that Trump’s attempt to fire her violated federal law, which requires cause for removal. The judge reasoned that the “for cause” requirement in the Federal Reserve Act “does not contemplate removing an individual purely for conduct that occurred before they began in office.” She wrote that the “best reading of the ‘for cause’ provision is that the bases for removal of a member of the Board of Governors are limited to grounds concerning a Governor’s behavior in office and whether they have been faithfully and effectively executing their statutory duties.”

    Cobb noted that the case involves “the first purported ‘for cause’ removal of a Board Governor in the Federal Reserve’s 111-year history” and that it “raises important matters of first impression,” meaning issues that haven’t been legally resolved by courts before.

    Cook, who has not been officially charged with any fraud, argues that Trump’s claim of wrongdoing against her falls well short of the cause mandated by federal law to remove a board member prematurely. “Without emergency relief,” her lawyers wrote ahead of a hearing Cobb held before she ruled, the government is “now likely to allow an unexpired vacancy to occur for which President Trump has indicated he is ready to fill.”

    Cook’s complaint underscores the stakes, noting that the Federal Reserve’s independence “is vital to its ability to make sound economic decisions, free from the political pressures of an election cycle” and warning that “[i]f markets and the public believe that the central bank is making decisions based on political pressure rather than sound economic data, that confidence erodes.”

    With the justices likely to have the last word, it’s worth noting that, while the high court’s Republican-appointed majority has been boosting Trump’s firing powers in his second term, it also has signaled an intention to protect the Federal Reserve’s independence more than that of other agencies whose members it has been letting Trump fire without cause. That the president has claimed he has cause to fire Cook could help him carry out this particular firing, but his success could hinge on the extent to which the justices say the president must prove his claim (if he has to at all).

    Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.

    This article was originally published on MSNBC.com

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  • Will Trump’s push for stricter voter laws impact Tennessee? What to know ahead of 2026 elections

    President Donald Trump is moving forward with attempts to change election rules, despite court rulings determining he lacks the authority to do so.

    On Aug. 30, Trump announced plans to sign an executive order requiring voters to present identification in all elections. A previous executive order signed in March, which mandated government-issued proof of U.S. citizenship to register for federal elections, has been blocked by the courts, USA TODAY reported.

    In a post on Truth Social, Trump wrote: “Voter I.D. Must Be Part of Every Single Vote. NO EXCEPTIONS! I Will Be Doing An Executive Order To That End!!!”

    He did not specify what kind of identification would be required, when the order would be signed or the legal basis for enforcing it.

    “The Constitution does not grant the president any specific powers over elections,” U.S. District Judge Denise Casper of Massachusetts wrote in June. A federal judge in Washington, D.C., reached the same conclusion in April.

    Here’s what to know in Tennessee.

    Why does Trump want to enforce stricter voting laws?

    Trump has long questioned the U.S. electoral system and continues to falsely claim that his 2020 loss to Democratic President Joe Biden was the result of widespread fraud.

    Trump and his Republican allies have also made baseless claims about widespread voting by noncitizens, which is illegal and rarely occurs, USA TODAY reported.

    What are Tennessee’s voter laws?

    A voter hands their identification to a poll worker at Pleasant Ridge Elementary School during primary Election Day for Knoxville City Council at on August 26, 2025.

    Thirty-six states have laws requesting or requiring voters to show some form of identification at the polls, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The remaining 14 states and Washington, D.C., use other methods to verify the identity of voters, for example: non-photo forms of identification such as a bank statement with name and address.

    Tennessee is considered to have “strict” photo ID laws.

    All voters must present a federal or Tennessee state ID containing the voter’s name and photograph when voting at the polls, whether voting early or on Election Day, according to the Secretary of State.

    If a voter cannot present a photo ID, the voter votes on a provisional ballot and must return within two days to show an acceptable form of ID.

    What voter identification is required in Tennessee?

    First-time voter Alexander Pack hands his identification card to a poll worker at Woodland Elementary School on Election Day in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.

    First-time voter Alexander Pack hands his identification card to a poll worker at Woodland Elementary School on Election Day in Oak Ridge, Tenn., on Tuesday, November 5, 2024.

    Tennessee accepts the following ID’s, even if expired:

    • Tennessee driver license with your photo

    • Photo ID issued by the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security

    • Photo ID issued by the federal or Tennessee state government

    • United States Military photo ID

    • Tennessee handgun carry permit with your photo

    First time voters who register by mail or using Online Voter Registration must also present one of the following if the ID is expired:

    • Copy of a current utility bill

    • Paycheck or other government document that shows the voter’s name and address

    Trump’s voter ID push aligns with 2026 Tennessee governor race

    Former President Donald Trump gives a kiss to U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee before they embark on a townhall Sept. 27, 2024 at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan.

    Former President Donald Trump gives a kiss to U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee before they embark on a townhall Sept. 27, 2024 at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan.

    Trump’s push for stricter voting laws coincides with the 2026 gubernatorial elections, during which 36 states, including Tennessee, will elect new governors.

    In Tennessee, two prominent Republicans have entered the race — U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a staunch Trump ally, and U.S. Representative John Rose. According to reports from the White House, Trump has struggled to decide which candidate to endorse.

    “I’ll probably be forced to do it. I wish I didn’t have to do it. But you know, I’ll probably be forced to do it,” Trump is quoted as saying in an X post by USA TODAY White House Correspondent Joey Garrison. The president also called both candidates “fantastic.”

    Rose first announced his bid for the Republican primary ticket in March, while Blackburn didn’t announce her candidacy until August. The two candidates are the only Republicans who have thrown their hats into the ring so far ahead of the 2026 election, but there are a number of Democrats vying for the position as well, the Tennessean previously reported.

    Who is running for Tennessee governor? Marsha Blackburn and John Rose are not the only ones. What to know

    What are the arguments for and against voter IDs?

    Proponents argue that stricter identification requirements can help prevent in-person voter fraud and boost public trust in the election process.

    However, critics contend that such fraud is rare, and that these measures place undue burdens on voters, potentially infringing on their right to vote. Furthermore, critics argue that the laws impose unnecessary costs and administrative challenges on elections officials.

    Regardless of the verification rules in place, all voters are subject to perjury charges if they cast a ballot under false pretenses, added the National Conference.

    What does the Constitution say?

    The Constitution’s so-called elections clause says that the “Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof.” The clause also says Congress can “make or alter such Regulations.”

    Contributing: USA TODAY, Joyce Orlando

    Diana Leyva covers trending news and service journalism for the Tennessean. Contact her at Dleyva@gannett.com or follow her on X at @_leyvadiana

    This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: President Trump seeks stricter elections: What to know in Tennessee

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  • Trump follows through on first-term promise moving Space Command from Colorado to Alabama

    President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced the U.S. Space Command headquarters would relocate from Colorado Springs, Colorado, to Huntsville, Alabama.

    In 2018, Trump signed an executive order reestablishing the space command during his first term. In 2023, former President Joe Biden decided to keep the headquarters in Colorado, where it was temporarily located.

    Trump’s announcement Tuesday officially reversed Biden’s decision and is consistent with his original plan.

    “The U.S. Space Command HQ will move to the beautiful locale of a place called Huntsville, Alabama, forever to be known from this point forward as Rocket City,” Trump said in a press conference.

    President Donald Trump speaks about the relocation of U.S. Space Command headquarters from Colorado to Alabama in the Oval Office of the White House, Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2025, in Washington. | Mark Schiefelbein

    The decision was criticized by Democrats, who say it will be costly to relocate the headquarters and puts jobs in jeopardy in Colorado.

    Trump said Tuesday that Colorado’s use of mail-in voting was a “big factor” for why the change was happening. Alabama allows absentee ballots that can be requested and returned by mail.

    Alabama, which voted in favor of Trump in all three of the elections he ran in, celebrated the decision with its congressional delegation joining Trump in the Oval Office for the announcement. The relocation is expected to bring jobs and investment to Huntsville’s Redstone Arsenal.

    “We had a lot of competition for this and Alabama’s getting it,” Trump said, acknowledging the state’s leaders flanking him on either side.

    The Air Force had previously said Redstone was the preferred location for the headquarters, but officials said new construction would have to happen in Alabama to support the operations already underway in Colorado. The Biden administration opted instead to overturn Trump’s decision and keep operations where they were.

    Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement Tuesday that Trump was playing “political games” with the military’s readiness and their families.

    “Moving Space Command Headquarters to Alabama is not only wrong for our national defense, but it’s harmful to hundreds of Space Command personnel and their families,” Weiser said.

    Donald Trump

    In this Aug. 29, 2019, file photo, President Donald Trump, left, watches with Vice President Mike Pence and Defense Secretary Mark Esper as the flag for U.S. space Command is unfurled as Trump announces the establishment of the U.S. Space Command in the Rose Garden of the White House in Washington. President Joe Biden has decided to keep U.S. Space Command headquarters in Colorado, overturning a last-ditch decision by the Trump administration to move it to Alabama and ending months of politically fueled debate, according to senior U.S. officials | Carolyn Kaster

    Weiser said his office had been preparing for Trump to make this announcement and is ready to challenge it in court.

    Trump’s announcement Tuesday was his first televised remarks in a week, since a three-hour Cabinet meeting last Tuesday.

    After several days with no public appearances, there was speculation online about the president’s health. He noted during the press conference that he had an “active” weekend by golfing, posting online and doing an hourlong interview with an outlet.

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  • Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler to retire from Congress

    Democratic Rep. Jerry Nadler, the longest-serving New Yorker in the House, will not seek reelection in 2026, stating that there’s a “necessity for generational change in the party.”

    In an interview published Monday in The New York Times, Nadler said that after watching former President Joe Biden withdraw from the 2024 election following his rough debate against President Trump, he decided a younger successor “can maybe do better, can maybe help us more.”

    “I’m not saying we should change over the entire party,” Nadler told The New York Times. “But I think a certain amount of change is very helpful, especially when we face the challenge of Trump and his incipient fascism.”

    He did not tell the Times who he would prefer succeed him.

    Nadler, 78, was first elected to Congress in 1992. He was chair of the House Judiciary Committee from 2019 to 2023 and then served as ranking member until Rep. Jamie Raskin of Maryland launched his bid to unseat Nadler. The New York Democrat made the decision to step down in December 2024. Nadler also served as a manager of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment.

    Nadler was facing a primary challenge from 26-year-old Liam Elkind. Elkind told CBS News in August that the party needs “to be the party of fighters. We need to be the party of organizers. We need to be more generationally relevant, better organized and ready to fight.”

    House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries in a statement called Nadler “a relentless fighter for justice, civil rights and liberties and the fundamental promise of equality for all.”

    “As the legendary Chairman of the powerful House Judiciary Committee, he helped lead two historic impeachments and ensure that no one, not even the President, is above the law,” Jeffries said. “In that role, he championed legislation to protect our democracy and the American way of life, fighting for women, people of color and the LGBTQ+ community, including enshrining into law the Respect for Marriage Act. … Jerry’s years of leadership have earned him a spot among our nation’s greatest public servants. He will be deeply missed by the House Democratic Caucus next term and we wish him and his family the very best in this new chapter.”

    “Portrait of a person who’s not there”: Documenting the bedrooms of school shooting victims

    Passage: In memoriam

    Dr. Sanjay Gupta on the mysteries of chronic pain

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  • Trump revokes Kamala Harris’ Secret Service protection

    Washington — President Trump has revoked former Vice President Kamala Harris’ U.S. Secret Service protection, a senior White House official confirmed to CBS News.

    Former vice presidents, their spouses and children younger than 16 typically only continue to receive protection by the Secret Service for up to six months after leaving office under a law passed by Congress in 2008. But for recent administrations, an outgoing vice president’s detail has been extended beyond that allotted time because of a heightened threat environment.

    Federal law allows the secretary of Homeland Security to direct the Secret Service to provide temporary protection for a former vice president for longer than six months after leaving the White House “if the Secretary of Homeland Security or designee determines that information or conditions warrant such protection.”

    Former President Joe Biden had signed an executive order in early January that extended Harris’ detail to 18 months after she left office, two senior officials at the Department of Homeland Security told CBS News.

    But Mr. Trump made the decision Thursday to revoke that continued protection, and an executive memorandum was issued to Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem directing her to rescind Harris’ Secret Service detail, effective Sept. 1, the officials said.

    The directive was then forwarded to the Secret Service, and the agency will comply with the order, the Homeland Security officials said.

    The U.S. Secret Service ran a threat assessment on Harris and did not find anything alarming, nothing that would warrant extending her detail past the usual six months, according to sources familiar with the situation.

    “The Vice President is grateful to the United States Secret Service for their professionalism, dedication, and unwavering commitment to safety,” Kirsten Allen, a senior adviser to Harris, said in a statement to CBS News.

    The decision by Mr. Trump was first reported by CNN.

    Since returning to the White House for a second term, Mr. Trump’s administration has removed Secret Service protection for several people, including John Bolton, who was the president’s national security adviser in his first term, and Hunter Biden and Ashley Biden, the children of former President Joe Biden.

    Former presidents and their spouses receive Secret Service protection for life, but that ends for a president’s children who are over the age of 16 when they leave the White House. Biden, however, had signed an executive order before the end of his term that extended protection for his adult children, multiple sources told CBS News in March.

    Minneapolis Catholic school shooter identified

    Everything we know about the Minneapolis Catholic school shooting so far

    Annunciation school shooter’s mother interviewed by officials

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  • Trump’s offensive Madison Square Garden rally triggers fears of an overshadowed message and fallout with Puerto Rican voters

    Trump’s offensive Madison Square Garden rally triggers fears of an overshadowed message and fallout with Puerto Rican voters

    (CNN) — The violent and vulgar rhetoric at Donald Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally Sunday has prompted finger-pointing within the former president’s inner circle and deep concern that his message was once again eclipsed by controversy.

    Several of Trump’s allies expressed dismay at the language used by speakers at the New York City event, particularly an off-color joke about Puerto Rico by comedian Tony Hinchcliffe, who opened the event and set the tone for an evening of disparaging and divisive remarks.

    “I’m livid,” one source close to the former president said, noting that they were stunned the remarks had not been thoroughly vetted before speakers took the stage.

    Throughout Sunday afternoon and evening, a parade of speakers roused the crowd at Trump’s pre-election MAGA celebration, adopting the anything-goes tone of the Republican nominee. Some lobbed racist barbs about Latino and Black Americans; others deployed misogynistic attacks against Trump’s female political adversaries, past and present.

    Many of these remarks appeared to be read from teleprompters, indicating they had been approved by someone within the event’s planning team. One campaign adviser told CNN that speeches were supposed to be vetted ahead of time and was uncertain as to how the overtly racist language had made it to the stage. Another senior adviser said the speeches were vetted but insisted that the more offensive remarks were adlibbed and not on any draft given to the campaign.

    By Monday, there were still disputes within the campaign over who approved Hinchcliffe’s set, which was replete with racial tropes. One adviser suggested no one had reviewed Hinchcliffe’s remarks in full. Another said the campaign was not given a draft that included some of the comedian’s more indecent jokes but did flag one calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “c*nt” as “in poor taste” and nixed it from the set.

    The program diverged sharply from the meticulous staging of this summer’s Republican National Convention, where every speech was carefully scrutinized and tightly choreographed. During the convention, campaign advisers routinely edited and, in some cases, rewrote the remarks of invited speakers, with minimal room for improvisation. Campaign aides acknowledged to CNN that the level of preparation exercised at the Milwaukee convention was not applied to Sunday’s rally.

    Since the RNC in July, a period marked by an extraordinary series of events — including Harris replacing President Joe Biden on the Democratic ticket — Trump’s advisers have struggled to keep him focused, and his public appearances have grown increasingly erratic has he veers further off message. Some allies have at times publicly questioned whether the former president was striking an appropriate tone to win over the voters needed to carry the election in battleground states.

    Sunday began with Republicans optimistic that Trump’s campaign was, at least, striking the right tone with a new advertisement that looked ahead to the prospect of a second Trump presidency.

    “President Trump fights for you. His strength kept us safe. Trump cut taxes for families. Prices were lower, and the border secure. Now, President Trump can do it again, and we are going to a new golden age of American success for the citizens of every race, religion, color, and creed,” a narrator intoned.

    Scott Jennings, a Republican strategist and CNN political commentator, praised the ad as a “perfect closing argument” from Trump’s campaign. But by 8 p.m., any hopes that Trump would build on that message at Madison Square Garden had evaporated.

    Yet, the offending comments that evening were not altogether out of place in the context of a Trump rally, where the use of crude slogans, explicit anthems from Kid Rock, and offensive nicknames for political opponents has been the norm. Many of his supporters express themselves through crass messages on T-shirts. Trump himself has often adopted nativist language and increasingly uses profanity in his speeches.

    For nearly a decade, Trump has endured — if not thrived — on the lack of a filter that defines his political brand, leaving Democrats with no clear path to exploit it in the closing stretch of the race. In a similar vein, Future Forward, the leading super PAC supporting Harris’ presidential campaign, recently cautioned that Democrats risk diluting their final message by spending time labeling Trump a fascist.

    Still, the timing of Sunday’s event — so close to Election Day and with a high-profile New York backdrop — has prompted a new wave of concern from Republicans.

    The controversy largely centers around Hinchcliffe’s joke about Puerto Rico, which he called a “floating island of garbage.” A handful of Republicans, some closely aligned with Trump, issued statements condemning the remarks. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, the state with the largest Puerto Rican population, described the comments as “neither funny nor true.” Rep. Byron Donalds, also from Florida, said, “Nobody agreed with that.”

    Allies expressed worry that the remarks could have political repercussions, especially given Puerto Ricans’ growing influence in battleground states, with about half a million residing in Pennsylvania alone. Sources close to the former president confirmed that a number of calls had been made to campaign officials stressing the need to respond to the remarks.

    Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a New York Republican and Puerto Rican who is facing one of the toughest reelection battles in the country, wrote on X, “The only thing that’s ‘garbage’ was a bad comedy set.”

    “Stay on message,” D’Esposito advised.

    The Trump campaign, generally unapologetic about inflammatory statements, swiftly released a statement on Sunday night distancing itself from Hinchcliffe’s remarks.

    “This joke does not reflect the views of President Trump or the campaign,” campaign spokeswoman Danielle Alvarez said.

    Trump’s distancing from Hinchcliffe did not extend to the comedian’s other inflammatory remarks — including a stereotype about Black people and watermelons, as well as a crude assertion about Latino immigrants’ sex lives. Nor did the campaign acknowledge other speakers who have drawn condemnation, such as one who referred to Harris as “the devil” and “the antichrist.”

    As of Monday, there were not plans for Trump to address the comments during his upcoming appearances. The former president held an event Monday in Georgia and travels to Pennsylvania on Tuesday.

    Democrats quickly seized on the outwardly offensive display Sunday. In the aftermath of the rally, Puerto Rican music super star Bad Bunny signaled his support for Harris to his 45 million followers on social media, which her campaign quickly promoted.

    Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is of Puerto Rican heritage, called Trump’s Madison Square Garden event a “hate rally” and suggested the campaign was in damage control mode over Hinchcliffe’s comments.

    “They’re just realizing that they might have made a big error by saying out loud what they’re thinking,” she told MSNBC on Monday.

    It remains to be seen, though, if Trump faces electoral consequences for the remarks disparaging Puerto Rico. Trump himself once called the territory “one of the most corrupt places on earth.” He accused local officials there of inflating the death toll from Hurricane Maria – estimated at 3,000 – to make him look bad.

    Democrats attempted in 2020 to mobilize Puerto Ricans in some battlegrounds by attacking Trump’s handling of the response to Maria. Spanish-language ads and billboards in Florida featured Trump tossing paper towels to survivors who had lost their homes and highlighted his past criticism of the island. In Osceola County, where the population surged after Maria and one in three voters identifies as Puerto Rican, Democrats enlisted storm survivors to reach out to other Puerto Ricans against Trump.

    In the end, Trump won Florida and, in Osceola County, his performance improved by 7 points.

    Steve Contorno, Kristen Holmes and CNN

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  • Georgia authorities investigating ‘catastrophic failure’ of dock gangway that collapsed, killing 7

    Georgia authorities investigating ‘catastrophic failure’ of dock gangway that collapsed, killing 7

    Georgia authorities said Sunday they are investigating the “catastrophic failure” of dock gangway that collapsed and killed seven on Sapelo Island, where crowds had gathered for a fall celebration by the island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.“It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds,” Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference.The gangway was installed in 2021, authorities said.Rabon said three people remained hospitalized in critical condition from Saturday’s collapse.Rabon said “upwards of 40 people” were on the gangway when the “catastrophic failure” occurred, and at least 20 people fell into the water. The gangway connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore.None of the seven people killed were residents of the island, Rabon said. Eight people were taken to hospitals, at least six of them were initially reported Saturday to have critical injuries.The ferry dock was rebuilt after Georgia officials in October 2020 settled a federal lawsuit by residents of the tiny community of Hogg Hummock, who complained the state-operated ferry boats and docks they rely upon to travel between Sapelo Island the mainland failed to meet federal accessibility standards for people with disabilities.The state agreed to demolish and replace outdated docks while upgrading ferry boats to accommodate people in wheelchairs and those with impaired hearing. The state also paid a cash settlement of $750,000.Crews from the U.S. Coast Guard, the McIntosh County Fire Department, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and others searched the water, according to Natural Resources spokesperson Tyler Jones. The agency operates the dock and ferry boats that transport people between the island and the mainland.A team of engineers and construction specialists were on site early Sunday to begin investigating why the walkway failed, Jones said.“There was no collision” with a boat or anything else, Jones said. “The thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”Helicopters and boats with side-scanning sonar were used in the search, according to a Department of Natural Resources statement.Among the dead was a chaplain for the state agency, Jones said.President Joe Biden said federal officials were ready to provide any assistance needed.Sapelo Island is about 60 miles south of Savannah, reachable from the mainland by boat.The deadly collapse happened as island residents, family members and tourists gathered for Cultural Day, an annual fall event spotlighting Hogg Hummock, home to a few dozen Black residents. The community of dirt roads and modest homes was founded after the Civil War by former slaves from the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.Hogg Hummock’s slave descendants are extremely close, having been “bonded by family, bonded by history and bonded by struggle,” said Roger Lotson, the only Black member of the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. His district includes Sapelo Island.“Everyone is family, and everyone knows each other,” Lotson said. “In any tragedy, especially like this, they are all one. They’re all united. They all feel the same pain and the same hurt.”Small communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South — known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia — are scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say their separation from the mainland caused residents to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and basket-weaving.In 1996, Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the United States’ treasured historic sites.But the community’s population has been shrinking for decades, and some families have sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes.Tax increases and zoning changes by the local government in McIntosh County have been met by protests and lawsuits by Hogg Hummock residents and landowners. They have been battling for the past year to undo zoning changes approved by county commissioners in September 2023 that doubled the size of homes allowed in Hogg Hummock.Residents say they fear larger homes will lead to tax increases that could force them to sell land that their families have held for generations.____Emily Wagster Pettus reported from Jackson, Mississippi.

    SAVANNAH, Ga. —

    Georgia authorities said Sunday they are investigating the “catastrophic failure” of dock gangway that collapsed and killed seven on Sapelo Island, where crowds had gathered for a fall celebration by the island’s tiny Gullah-Geechee community of Black slave descendants.

    “It is a structural failure. There should be very, very little maintenance to an aluminum gangway like that, but we’ll see what the investigation unfolds,” Georgia Department of Natural Resources Commissioner Walter Rabon said at a news conference.

    The gangway was installed in 2021, authorities said.

    Rabon said three people remained hospitalized in critical condition from Saturday’s collapse.

    Rabon said “upwards of 40 people” were on the gangway when the “catastrophic failure” occurred, and at least 20 people fell into the water. The gangway connected an outer dock where people board the ferry to another dock onshore.

    None of the seven people killed were residents of the island, Rabon said. Eight people were taken to hospitals, at least six of them were initially reported Saturday to have critical injuries.

    The ferry dock was rebuilt after Georgia officials in October 2020 settled a federal lawsuit by residents of the tiny community of Hogg Hummock, who complained the state-operated ferry boats and docks they rely upon to travel between Sapelo Island the mainland failed to meet federal accessibility standards for people with disabilities.

    The state agreed to demolish and replace outdated docks while upgrading ferry boats to accommodate people in wheelchairs and those with impaired hearing. The state also paid a cash settlement of $750,000.

    Crews from the U.S. Coast Guard, the McIntosh County Fire Department, the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and others searched the water, according to Natural Resources spokesperson Tyler Jones. The agency operates the dock and ferry boats that transport people between the island and the mainland.

    A team of engineers and construction specialists were on site early Sunday to begin investigating why the walkway failed, Jones said.

    “There was no collision” with a boat or anything else, Jones said. “The thing just collapsed. We don’t know why.”

    Helicopters and boats with side-scanning sonar were used in the search, according to a Department of Natural Resources statement.

    Among the dead was a chaplain for the state agency, Jones said.

    President Joe Biden said federal officials were ready to provide any assistance needed.

    Sapelo Island is about 60 miles south of Savannah, reachable from the mainland by boat.

    The deadly collapse happened as island residents, family members and tourists gathered for Cultural Day, an annual fall event spotlighting Hogg Hummock, home to a few dozen Black residents. The community of dirt roads and modest homes was founded after the Civil War by former slaves from the cotton plantation of Thomas Spalding.

    Hogg Hummock’s slave descendants are extremely close, having been “bonded by family, bonded by history and bonded by struggle,” said Roger Lotson, the only Black member of the McIntosh County Board of Commissioners. His district includes Sapelo Island.

    “Everyone is family, and everyone knows each other,” Lotson said. “In any tragedy, especially like this, they are all one. They’re all united. They all feel the same pain and the same hurt.”

    Small communities descended from enslaved island populations in the South — known as Gullah, or Geechee in Georgia — are scattered along the coast from North Carolina to Florida. Scholars say their separation from the mainland caused residents to retain much of their African heritage, from their unique dialect to skills and crafts such as cast-net fishing and basket-weaving.

    In 1996, Hogg Hummock, also known as Hog Hammock, was placed on the National Register of Historic Places, the official list of the United States’ treasured historic sites.

    But the community’s population has been shrinking for decades, and some families have sold their land to outsiders who built vacation homes.

    Tax increases and zoning changes by the local government in McIntosh County have been met by protests and lawsuits by Hogg Hummock residents and landowners. They have been battling for the past year to undo zoning changes approved by county commissioners in September 2023 that doubled the size of homes allowed in Hogg Hummock.

    Residents say they fear larger homes will lead to tax increases that could force them to sell land that their families have held for generations.

    ____

    Emily Wagster Pettus reported from Jackson, Mississippi.

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  • Hopes for ceasefire in Gaza tempered by difficult politics as Kamala Harris heads to Michigan

    Hopes for ceasefire in Gaza tempered by difficult politics as Kamala Harris heads to Michigan

    (CNN) — When Vice President Kamala Harris stepped in front of reporters on Thursday to deliver a statement about the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, the moment was a product of some careful choreography.

    Harris was the first US official to say anything on camera about the monumental occasion. President Joe Biden, who was aboard Air Force One jetting toward Germany, had drafted a paper statement with his team hailing Sinwar’s death and calling for renewed ceasefire talks.

    Biden’s statement hit inboxes at 2:10 p.m. ET. Harris walked out to cameras five minutes later. The moment was carefully coordinated between aides to the president and vice president.

    The one-two step was a glimpse into the methodical approach to the conflict taken by Harris, who has been under scrutiny for her approach to the war but unwilling to break from Biden’s strategy.

    For Harris, the complicated politics of the Middle East are unlikely to be made much easier by Sinwar’s demise. Standing outside the campaign event in Wisconsin where she was speaking Thursday, demonstrators kept up their pro-Palestinian chants.

    And as she headed to Michigan a day later for a three-stop swing, the fraught politics were likely to continue dogging her. The Israel war has proven a complicating factor as the vice president looks for votes among the state’s large Arab- and Muslim-American population in the Detroit metro area.

    Many in that community have said they cannot vote for Harris, angry over the Biden administration’s largely unequivocal support for Israel and refusal to limit most weapons to the country.

    Despite the swell of political pressure, Harris has resisted describing how she might approach the conflict differently. She has instead pointed to the nascent ceasefire and hostage negotiations, which have been stalled for weeks.

    Earlier this month, Harris met with Arab-American leaders in Michigan, where participants encouraged her to distance herself from Biden’s approach to the conflict.

    On Thursday, however, there was little daylight in Biden and Harris’s approach. Both used Sinwar’s death to make renewed calls for restarting the hostage talks.

    “This moment gives us an opportunity to finally end the war in Gaza,” Harris said during her three-minute speech, delivered carefully from a script and ended without taking any questions.

    She said the war “must end such that Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom and self-determination.”

    “It is time for the day after to begin,” she said.

    Speaking hours later on the tarmac in Berlin, Biden said he’d congratulated Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu but also told him “now is the time to move on” from the war in Gaza.

    “I talked with Bibi about that. We’re going to work out what is the day after now, how do we secure Gaza and move on,” he said.

    Kevin Liptak and CNN

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  • Georgia State Election Board and Fulton County spar over election monitor plan

    Georgia State Election Board and Fulton County spar over election monitor plan

    ATLANTA (AP) — With less than a month to go before voters head to the polls, the State Election Board is embroiled in a fight with Georgia’s most populous county over a monitoring team to observe the county’s election practices.

    The monitoring team was part of a resolution of a complaint against Fulton County stemming from the 2020 election. The State Election Board in May found that the county violated some parts of the state election code. It voted to issue a letter of reprimand, which included instructions for an agreement on a mutually acceptable monitor to be entered into by the board’s August meeting.

    But the county and state election boards have been unable reach agreement. The county favors a team proposed by Ryan Germany, a former chief lawyer for the secretary of state’s office, and the Atlanta-based Carter Center. The Donald Trump-endorsed majority on the State Election Board has proposed an alternative slate that includes people who questioned the results of the 2020 presidential election.

    In late August the county went ahead and hired its team without agreement from the state board, and it has been in place monitoring pre-election practices for over a month. But the disagreement between the county and state boards continued to fester and escalated significantly this week.

    On Monday the Fulton County board filed a lawsuit asking a judge to declare that the state board lacks the authority to force it “to accept, and Fulton County to pay for, additional monitors for the 2024 election that have been hand-picked by certain State Election Board members.”

    At a State Election Board meeting Tuesday, member Janice Johnston said the county doesn’t seem to be holding up its part of the bargain. She had voted against the agreement because she didn’t believe the investigation into the original complaint was complete and has repeatedly tried unsuccessfully to reopen it.

    Johnston proposed subpoenaing a trove of 2020 election documents from the Fulton County clerk of court. She and the other two Republican members of the board voted for the subpoena over the objections of the lone Democratic member and the nonpartisan chair, who pointed out that the state attorney general said the case was closed and could not be reopened.

    An Aug. 19 legal opinion written by state Attorney General Chris Carr and obtained by The Associated Press says final decisions of the State Election Board are “preclusive” and that “re-litigation of all claims which have already been adjudicated, or which could have been adjudicated, is therefore prohibited.” Fulton County attorneys assert that the approval of the motion at the May meeting and resulting reprimand meant the case is closed and can’t be reopened, and that “argument is likely correct,” Carr wrote.

    Asked about the attorney general’s guidance, Johnston said, “That was opinion. That’s not a legal finding. That was their advice or opinion. We have different opinions about that.”

    Fulton is home to about 11% of the state’s electorate and includes most of Atlanta. Problems with its elections, including long lines and slow reporting of results, have drawn national scrutiny. Then-President Trump falsely asserted that widespread voter fraud in Fulton County during the 2020 presidential election cost him the state.

    After a particularly problematic primary that year, the county and the State Election Board formally agreed to assign an independent monitor to examine county’s election practices during the general. He documented “sloppy processes” and “systemic disorganization” but found no evidence of illegality or fraud.

    Fulton County’s elections have been closely watched since then, and the State Election Board voted last year not to take over its elections after a performance review found the county showed marked improvement.

    The county and the secretary of state’s office both signed off in July on a team proposed by Germany, who also was part of the team that did the performance review. The county also rejected a proposal from Johnston.

    The Republican majority on the State Election Board repeatedly said during meetings in August that they did not approve of the county’s team. But the county board reaffirmed its selection, and county commissioners voted to approve the contract days later.

    The state board Republicans in September repeated their dissatisfaction, and Johnston suggested that she and board chair John Fervier meet with Fulton County election board chair Sherri Allen.

    Fervier said at Tuesday’s meeting that they met last week, that Johnston proposed that the monitoring team be expanded and that the state board sent a list of eight proposed members. Allen told them the county commissioners would have to make the change, and Fervier said he believed no action was taken on that front.

    Fervier then said he was alerted that morning about the Fulton board’s petition to the judge. Johnston said she interpreted that as a rejection of the monitoring team members they proposed and accused the local board of not complying with its obligation under the agreement.

    Associated Press

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  • Kamala Harris meets with Arab and Muslim American leaders in Michigan as frustrations boil over Middle East escalation

    Kamala Harris meets with Arab and Muslim American leaders in Michigan as frustrations boil over Middle East escalation

    (CNN) — Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to meet Friday with a group of Arab American and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan, according to three sources familiar with her plans, but frustration over the Harris campaign’s outreach efforts is boiling over amid Israel’s recent escalations in Lebanon.

    The gathering comes as the Harris campaign works to garner support within the community in the face of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war that has expanded to a multifront conflict involving Iran, which launched missiles at Israel this week, and Iranian-backed groups in Lebanon and Yemen.

    Michigan, which Joe Biden narrowly won in 2020, will be a crucial battleground again this November and is home to a large Arab American population.

    Emgage Action, an organization aimed at boosting the Muslim American vote, endorsed Harris last month while acknowledging “strong disappointment” with the Biden administration’s stance on Gaza. The leaders of Emgage Action are expected to participate in the meeting, according to one of the sources.

    CNN has reached out to the Harris campaign for comment about the meeting.

    Absent from the guest list were leaders of the “Uncommitted” movement, which sprung up during the Democratic primaries this year in opposition to the Biden administration’s policy on the war in Gaza. Harris interacted with leaders of the group in early August during a photo line at the Detroit airport.

    The group has called on the vice president to hold meetings with families affected by the war after her campaign and national Democrats denied the group’s previous request for a Palestinian American to speak during the Democratic convention in Chicago this summer.

    Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to meet Friday with a group of Arab American and Muslim leaders in Flint, Michigan as frustrations boil over Middle East escalation. In this September 2 photo, Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate in Detroit where Harris was scheduled to speak. (Scott Olson/Getty Images via CNN Newsource)

    Uncommitted leaders have since announced that their group will not endorse Harris, though they also warned against a vote for Donald Trump or, in states where they might appear on the ballot, third-party candidates.

    Uncommitted movement co-founder Abbas Alawieh, a former Capitol Hill staffer, confirmed Friday that his group was not invited to the meeting with Harris.

    In a social media post, Alawieh said he was “glad our pressure is helping yield more engagement. What we need right now is for the @VP to specifically say that as president she will respect international humanitarian and U.S. law and stop sending the Israeli military weapons for war crimes.”

    James Zogby, a co-founder of the Arab American Institute and a Democratic National Committee member for more than 30 years who addressed the Uncommitted movement during the Chicago convention, told CNN he turned down an invitation to Friday’s meeting with Harris. He cited growing frustration with what he described as a campaign more concerned with optics than addressing the anger and anxiety among Arab American voters.

    Zogby was part of a Wednesday call with Harris national security adviser Phil Gordon that the White House described as a virtual gathering with “Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian American community leaders” to discuss the latest developments in the Middle East.

    “There was no ground broken. I wasn’t quite sure what the intent was other than to just say … that they met with leaders. There were no leaders,” Zogby said of the Wednesday conversation.

    That call and other communications with the Harris campaign, and Biden’s before that, have irked the longtime Democratic pollster. And Israel’s escalation in Lebanon has also turned up the heat in states like Michigan, where Lebanese Americans have made up a major part of the Democratic coalition.

    “With Lebanon in flames, they’ve got a bigger job. And I don’t think they’re ready to handle it,” Zogby said of the Harris campaign. “It’s sort of like trying to sell a car to somebody with terminal cancer. ‘What’re you talking for? I have bigger things on my mind right now.’”

    Abed Ayoub, the national executive director of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, said there have been “many meetings with both the campaign and administration. They know our concerns and demands.”

    “Our position and work is focused on bringing an immediate ceasefire, and an end to the genocide in Palestine and the war on Lebanon,” said Ayoub, who noted that his group has nearly 130,000 active voters as members, including 7,500 in Michigan.

    This week, Harris’ running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, took the campaign’s pitch to Emgage Action’s “Million Muslim Votes: A Way Forward” summit.

    “I know the pain of this community is deep. Our hearts are broken. The concern of the vice president and Harris and I – it’s on our minds every day. The scale of death and destruction in Gaza is staggering and devastating. Tens of thousands of innocent civilians killed, families fleeing for safety, over and over again,” Walz said at the virtual event.

    Harris has occasionally been disrupted at campaign rallies by pro-Palestinian protesters. In those moments, the vice president, who has spoken about the devastation in Gaza, has stressed that the administration is working toward a ceasefire deal.

    Zogby said Friday he “desperately” wants Harris to win but is concerned about the campaign’s efforts to stage-manage the issue.

    “They have to say something about the issue that’s on people’s minds,” Zogby said, “and they just don’t seem able to bring themselves to talk about it.”

    CNN

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  • The port strike is over. Here’s what happens next.

    The port strike is over. Here’s what happens next.

    New York (CNN) — It took only three days for one side to blink and the potentially crippling strike at the United States’ East and Gulf Coast ports to come to an end, with likely only limited damage to America’s economy.

    Members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, the union representing 50,000 members covered under the contract with the United States Maritime Alliance, were back on the job early Friday after the two sides reached an agreement on the key dispute in the strike that started early Tuesday – the scale of wage increases.

    The work stoppage had threatened to disrupt supply chains, causing shortages of some consumer goods and supplies needed to keep US factories running. It also temporarily cut off the flow of many American exports, putting overseas sales at risk for some US businesses.

    But relatively little damage was done, with the strike lasting only three days, especially since many shippers had rushed to move their goods through the ports ahead of the 12:01 am Tuesday start of the strike, a deadline that had been known for months.

    What’s in the deal

    The maritime alliance, which operates under the acronym USMX, agreed to raises of $4 an hour for the union members on top of the current base pay of $39 an hour, an immediate raise of just more than 10%, according to a person familiar with the deal. Then union members will get additional $4-per-hour raises every year during the life of the six-year tentative deal. That will raise pay by a total of $24 an hour during the life of the contract, or by 62% in total.

    The union had been willing to consider the $4-an-hour deal before the strike, union boss Harold Daggett said on the picket line outside the Port of New York and New Jersey early Tuesday, soon after the start of the strike. But when the company countered with a $3-an-hour offer, he rejected it with colorful language and took his members out on their first strike since 1977.

    But Thursday the USMX agreed to up its offer, and the strike came to a quick conclusion.

    Once there was an agreement on wages, both sides were eager to get workers back on the job as soon as possible, even if there is still more to be done on the rest of the contract.

    There were ships anchored offshore waiting to come into ports from Maine to Texas, in order to load and unload goods. The workers, who were not getting paid and did not have any strike benefits available to them from the union during the strike, were eager to limit their loss of income. So it only made sense for both sides to have the strike suspended and the previous contract extended to January 15 as the sides negotiated the remaining details.

    A return to normal will take days

    But it will still take a while for the flow of goods to return to normal. Ahead of the strike various logistics experts had said it would take three to five days to recover from any one day the ports were shut.

    For example, the Port of New York and New Jersey, the largest port that was affected and the nation’s third-largest port by cargo volume, as well as the Port of Virginia both announced to shippers that their gates would remain closed to trucks Friday as the two ports work to get containers positioned to move around their grounds as soon as possible.

    Typically containers can be loaded directly from ships onto trucks, but they are also often stacked on port grounds waiting to be picked up and moved. Trucks will be allowed in the gates starting Saturday. Other ports are looking to add weekend hours to try to deal with the backlog.

    Of course, a three-day shutdown is not uncommon, even if this is the first strike in nearly a half-century. Extreme weather can also cause shutdowns. In fact, several of the struck ports in the Southeast had been shut ahead of the strike due to Hurricane Helene.

    Despite talk of the strike affecting hurricane recovery efforts, there was almost no impact on the flow of emergency supplies to storm victims. All of the ships calling on those ports are foreign-owned vessels coming from overseas ports. Under well-established US maritime law, those ships are not allowed to transport goods from one US port to another.

    How much were the losses?

    The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey lost between $250-300 million dollars a day during the strike by members of the International Longshoremen’s Association, said Bethann Rooney, the port’s director, Friday.

    The unloading of containers from ships will resume at 7pm ET this evening, so the port will have seen four days of inactivity. That’s about $1 billion in economic losses to a single port.

    There are currently 24 ships at anchor waiting to get into the Port of New York and New Jersey to unload as of Friday morning. They include four car ships, one specialty ship, and 19 container ships carrying 35,000 import containers with all types of consumer goods.

    There are an additional 35,000 containers on inbound ships to the port. The port on average receives 400,000 containers a month.

    It is not unusual for a port to be closed for 2-3 days because of storms. The Port of NY/NJ was closed for five days or longer during Hurricane Sandy and 9/11, and was “able to recover very quickly,” said Rooney.

    Could the strike return?

    Thursday’s deal likely is the end of the strike, but it doesn’t close the door on a new strike in the future. The final language in the full contract, when it is completed, will need to be ratified by the union’s rank-and-file members before it can take effect.

    Should the members vote against the deal, the strike might start once again. And such a rejection of a tentative labor deal is not unheard of.

    Just last month, the International Association of Machinists and jet maker Boeing (BA) reached a tentative deal, which union leaders recommended their 33,000 members accept. The leadership even described it as the best deal they had ever negotiated with the company. But union members voted nearly unanimously to reject it and have remained on strike since September 13.

    Chris Isidore, Vanessa Yurkevich and CNN

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  • Judge puts Biden’s student loan cancellation on hold again

    Judge puts Biden’s student loan cancellation on hold again

    A federal judge in Missouri put a temporary hold on President Joe Biden’s latest student loan cancellation plan on Thursday, slamming the door on hope it would move forward after another judge allowed a pause to expire.Related video above: Delinquency reports for student loan borrowers restart in OctoberJust as it briefly appeared the Biden administration would have a window to push its plan forward, U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in Missouri granted an injunction blocking any widespread cancellation.Six Republican-led states requested the injunction hours earlier, after a federal judge in Georgia decided not to extend a separate order blocking the plan.The states, led by Missouri’s attorney general, asked Schelp to act fast, saying the Education Department could “unlawfully mass cancel up to hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans as soon as Monday.” Schelp called it an easy decision.Biden’s plan has been on hold since September, when the states filed a lawsuit in Georgia arguing Biden had overstepped his legal authority. But on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall decided not to extend the pause after finding that Georgia doesn’t have the legal right to sue in this case.Hall dismissed Georgia from the case and transferred it to Missouri, which Hall said has “clear standing” to challenge Biden’s plan.Proponents of student loan cancellation briefly had a glimmer of hope the plan would move forward — Hall’s order was set to expire after Thursday, allowing the Education Department to finalize the rule. But Schelp’s order put the question to rest.“This is yet another win for the American people,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement. “The Court rightfully recognized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot saddle working Americans with Ivy League debt.”Biden’s plan would cancel at least some student loan debt for an estimated 30 million borrowers.It would erase up to $20,000 in interest for those who have seen their original balances increase because of runaway interest. It would also provide relief to those who have been repaying their loans for 20 or 25 years, and those who went to college programs that leave graduates with high debt compared to their incomes.Video below: Older Borrowers Struggle with High Student Loan DebtBiden told the Education Department to pursue cancellation through a federal rulemaking process after the Supreme Court rejected an earlier plan using a different legal justification. That plan would have eliminated up to $20,000 for 43 million Americans.The Supreme Court rejected Biden’s first proposal in a case brought by Republican states including Missouri.In his order Wednesday, Hall said Georgia failed to prove it was significantly harmed by Biden’s new plan. He rejected an argument that the policy would hurt the state’s income tax revenue, but he found that Missouri has a strong case.Missouri is suing on behalf of MOHELA, a student loan servicer that was created by the state and is hired by the federal government to help collect student loans. In the suit, Missouri argues that cancellation would hurt MOHELA’s revenue because it’s paid based on the number of borrowers it serves.In their lawsuit, the Republican states argue that the Education Department had quietly been telling loan servicers to prepare for loan cancellation as early as Sept. 9, bypassing a typical 60-day waiting period for new federal rules to take effect.Also joining the suit are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Dakota and Ohio.

    WASHINGTON —

    A federal judge in Missouri put a temporary hold on President Joe Biden’s latest student loan cancellation plan on Thursday, slamming the door on hope it would move forward after another judge allowed a pause to expire.

    Related video above: Delinquency reports for student loan borrowers restart in October

    Just as it briefly appeared the Biden administration would have a window to push its plan forward, U.S. District Judge Matthew Schelp in Missouri granted an injunction blocking any widespread cancellation.

    Six Republican-led states requested the injunction hours earlier, after a federal judge in Georgia decided not to extend a separate order blocking the plan.

    The states, led by Missouri’s attorney general, asked Schelp to act fast, saying the Education Department could “unlawfully mass cancel up to hundreds of billions of dollars in student loans as soon as Monday.” Schelp called it an easy decision.

    Biden’s plan has been on hold since September, when the states filed a lawsuit in Georgia arguing Biden had overstepped his legal authority. But on Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge J. Randal Hall decided not to extend the pause after finding that Georgia doesn’t have the legal right to sue in this case.

    Hall dismissed Georgia from the case and transferred it to Missouri, which Hall said has “clear standing” to challenge Biden’s plan.

    Proponents of student loan cancellation briefly had a glimmer of hope the plan would move forward — Hall’s order was set to expire after Thursday, allowing the Education Department to finalize the rule. But Schelp’s order put the question to rest.

    “This is yet another win for the American people,” Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said in a statement. “The Court rightfully recognized Joe Biden and Kamala Harris cannot saddle working Americans with Ivy League debt.”

    Biden’s plan would cancel at least some student loan debt for an estimated 30 million borrowers.

    It would erase up to $20,000 in interest for those who have seen their original balances increase because of runaway interest. It would also provide relief to those who have been repaying their loans for 20 or 25 years, and those who went to college programs that leave graduates with high debt compared to their incomes.

    Video below: Older Borrowers Struggle with High Student Loan Debt

    Biden told the Education Department to pursue cancellation through a federal rulemaking process after the Supreme Court rejected an earlier plan using a different legal justification. That plan would have eliminated up to $20,000 for 43 million Americans.

    The Supreme Court rejected Biden’s first proposal in a case brought by Republican states including Missouri.

    In his order Wednesday, Hall said Georgia failed to prove it was significantly harmed by Biden’s new plan. He rejected an argument that the policy would hurt the state’s income tax revenue, but he found that Missouri has a strong case.

    Missouri is suing on behalf of MOHELA, a student loan servicer that was created by the state and is hired by the federal government to help collect student loans. In the suit, Missouri argues that cancellation would hurt MOHELA’s revenue because it’s paid based on the number of borrowers it serves.

    In their lawsuit, the Republican states argue that the Education Department had quietly been telling loan servicers to prepare for loan cancellation as early as Sept. 9, bypassing a typical 60-day waiting period for new federal rules to take effect.

    Also joining the suit are Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, North Dakota and Ohio.

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  • European Stocks Futures Gain Before US Jobs Data: Markets Wrap

    European Stocks Futures Gain Before US Jobs Data: Markets Wrap

    (Bloomberg) — European and US stock futures gained in line with Asian equities ahead of US jobs data that will identify the path ahead for interest rates. An oil price rally eased after Middle East tensions led to the biggest one-day jump in almost a year.

    Most Read from Bloomberg

    Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 0.2%, and contracts on the S&P 500 advanced 0.1%. Equities in Japan and South Korea rose while markets in mainland China were shut for a holiday. A gauge of Chinese shares in Hong Kong advanced as traders assessed its recent rally’s sustainability and await details of fiscal stimulus and holiday spending.

    An index of dollar declined marginally, but is still poised for the biggest weekly gain in nearly six months as traders pared back expectations for aggressive US rate cuts. Treasuries were flat after selling off on Thursday, increasing yields to levels not seen since September.

    West Texas Intermediate and Brent crude eased slightly after each rose more than 5% to a one-month high on Thursday. Earlier gains came after puzzling comments from President Joe Biden, who told reporters the US was discussing whether to support potential Israeli strikes against Iranian oil facilities.

    Investors are concerned that, should Israel strike critical Iranian assets, the Islamic Republic will lash out and escalate the conflict, dragging in more countries and potentially disrupting global energy shipments. Israel said it bombed more than a dozen Hezbollah targets in Beirut on Thursday.

    “The market fear is that there could be supply disruptions coming out of Iran,” said Tai Hui, chief Asia market strategist for JPMorgan Asset Management, on Bloomberg Television. “Demand for oil should remain healthy, but at the same time the risk to the supply side is very much there.”

    The initial buying frenzy in Chinese stocks after Beijing’s stimulus is waning as traders take profit and await policy details and holiday spending data for further confidence. Invesco Ltd.’s chief investment officer for Hong Kong and China, Raymond Ma, who predicted double-digit returns in Chinese equities this year, said there are signs the surge has gone too far for some stocks. Still, strategists at HSBC Holdings Plc and BlackRock Inc. are among Wall Street heavyweights turning bullish on the once beaten-down market.

    The yen strengthened 0.6% against the dollar, paring some of its recent losses from earlier this week after Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba had said the nation isn’t ready for another interest-rate increase.

    Amid all the geopolitical uncertainty, investors are looking for further signals on the health of the US economy, with the monthly payrolls report due on Friday. The unemployment rate is forecast to hold steady at 4.2% in September while payrolls are expected to rise by 150,000.

    “If the unemployment rate ticks up, I wouldn’t be surprised that markets would shift back toward expecting 50 basis points and then it is a question of how the Fed may react,” Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt, said on Bloomberg Television.

    Other economic signs showed robustness in the US economy. The Institute for Supply Management’s index of services posted its best reading since February 2023, ahead of Wall Street estimates. Applications for US unemployment benefits rose slightly last week to a level that is consistent with a limited number of layoffs. Continuing claims, a proxy for the number of people receiving benefits, were little changed from the previous week.

    “The US dollar could stay supported on safe haven demand amid Middle East risks, and more so if US payrolls surprise on the upside,” Wei Liang Chang, a foreign-exchange and credit strategist at DBS Bank Ltd., wrote in a research note. “The yen may be a beneficiary too, as geopolitical risks restrain appetite for carry trades”

    Key events this week:

    Some of the main moves in markets:

    Stocks

    • S&P 500 futures were little changed as of 6:34 a.m. London time

    • Nikkei 225 futures (OSE) were little changed

    • Japan’s Topix rose 0.3%

    • Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 fell 0.7%

    • Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose 2.2%

    • Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 0.2%

    • Nasdaq 100 futures rose 0.1%

    Currencies

    • The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed

    • The euro was little changed at $1.1030

    • The Japanese yen rose 0.6% to 146.11 per dollar

    • The offshore yuan fell 0.2% to 7.0571 per dollar

    • The Australian dollar was little changed at $0.6846

    • The British pound was little changed at $1.3134

    Cryptocurrencies

    • Bitcoin rose 0.6% to $61,156.99

    • Ether rose 1.5% to $2,376.85

    Bonds

    Commodities

    • West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.1% to $73.62 a barrel

    • Spot gold rose 0.4% to $2,666.99 an ounce

    This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

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    ©2024 Bloomberg L.P.

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