Tag: U.S. News

Biden keeps US target for refugee admissions at 125,000

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SAN DIEGO (AP) — President Joe Biden on Tuesday kept the nation’s cap on refugee admissions at 125,000 for the 2023 budget year, despite pressure from advocates to raise it even higher to meet the need after falling far short of that target this year.

Refugees advocates have been pushing the Biden administration to do more to restore the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program. The more than four-decade-old program suffered deep cuts under the Trump administration, which slashed admissions to a record low of 15,000.

After taking office, Biden quadrupled the number of refugee admissions permitted for the remaining months of the 2021 budget year. He then set the target at 125,000 for the 2022 budget year, which ends Sept. 30. But so far fewer than 20,000 refugees have been admitted.

That number excludes the roughly 180,000 Ukrainians and Afghans who came to the United States via a legal process called humanitarian parole that got them into the country more quickly than the traditional refugee program but only allows for stays of up to two years.

Refugees are provided a path to permanent residency. Their admissions are determined by the president each year, and federal funding for resettlement agencies is based on the number of people they resettle in a given year.

The 125,000 target “is justified by humanitarian concerns or is otherwise in the national interest,” Biden stated in his presidential determination. Historically, the average has been 95,000 under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Biden earmarked 5,000 more slots for people from Europe and Central Asia for the 2023 budget year, making room to accommodate those fleeing the war in Ukraine.

The largest number of slots — 40,000 — was set aside for refugees from Africa, followed by 35,000 from South Asia and 15,000 each from East Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Biden has struggled to restore the U.S. Refugee Program despite raising the numbers and removing bureaucratic barriers put in place by his predecessor, which slowed the process and led to a massive backlog.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, head of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service, said the Biden administration must act now to improve the refugee program with the United Nations reporting a record 100 million people being displaced from their homes.

“It must ramp up and streamline overseas processing of refugee applications if this lifesaving program is to remain relevant amid an unprecedented global displacement crisis,” she said in a statement.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement that “this ambitious target demonstrates that the United States is committed to rebuilding and strengthening the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program” through various means. He pointed to plans for a pilot program that is expected to get underway by the end of the year that will allow regular Americans to sign up to resettle refugees in their communities, much like U.S. citizens did in stepping up to help Afghans and Ukrainians over the past year.

Traditionally refugees are placed in communities by nine refugee resettlement agencies.

“Our refugee admissions program embodies the best of American values and the will to help those in need, and it will continue to provide access to resettlement as a lifesaving, durable solution,” Blinken said.

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September 28, 2022
Progressive Democrats frustrated with 2022 primary losses

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NEW YORK (AP) — With less than two months until the midterm elections, progressive Democrats are facing a test of their power.

Their party is heading into the final stretch of the campaign with a robust set of legislative accomplishments that include long-term progressive priorities on issues ranging from prescription drug prices to climate change. But the left has also faced a series of disappointments as Democratic voters from Ohio to Illinois to Texas rejected high-profile progressive challengers to moderates or incumbent members of Congress during the primary season.

The frustration is particularly acute in New York, where Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeated one of the highest-ranking congressional Democrats four years ago, injecting fresh energy among the party’s most liberal voters. This year, however, New York City Democrats chose Dan Goldman, a former federal prosecutor who is more of a centrist, over several progressive rivals, including freshman Rep. Mondaire Jones. About 30 miles north in the Hudson River Valley, a powerful establishment candidate, Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney, defeated a state lawmaker running to his left and backed by Ocasio-Cortez.

Those setbacks have raised fresh questions about the progressive movement’s standing among Democrats. Progressive leaders urge against reading too much into those losses, particularly in New York, where repeated elections this summer after a redistricting battle left some voters disoriented or disengaged.

“New York was just a mess,” said Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. “It was like the timing of the redistricting maps. I mean, that’s not a situation that’s going to get repeated a lot.”

Progressives have notched notable victories this year. In Oregon, Jamie McLeod-Skinner ousted moderate Rep. Kurt Schrader. Activist Maxwell Alejandro Frost topped a crowded field of Democrats in Florida and is poised to become the youngest member of Congress. And labor organizer Summer Lee edged out an establishment-backed candidate in Pennsylvania.

But those wins risk becoming the exception rather than the rule as moderates have repeatedly asserted their strength in recent years. President Joe Biden won his party’s nomination in 2020 after overcoming challenges from more liberal contenders including Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts.

In New York City, Eric Adams defeated several rivals from the left for the party’s mayoral nomination last year with an explicit critique of progressives, including Ocasio-Cortez. And New York Gov. Kathy Hochul easily dispatched a more liberal rival during this summer’s primary.

“Progressive” has long been a squishy label for Democrats. It generally refers to the party’s left flank but has been embraced by rank-and-file liberals as well as those much further left on the spectrum, including self-described democratic socialists like Ocasio-Cortez and Sanders.

The term “progressive” was even the subject of the first 2016 Democratic presidential debate between Sanders and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, with Sanders suggesting Clinton was not sufficiently progressive and Clinton disputing that and calling him the “self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism.”

Some candidates championed by progressives have grappled with the label this year.

“No, I’m just a Democrat,” left-leaning Pennsylvania Senate candidate John Fetterman said in a May interview with NBC when he was asked if he is a progressive. He said his positions were considered progressive six years ago but “now there isn’t a single Democrat in this race or any race that I’m aware of that’s running on anything different. So that’s not really progressive. That’s just where the party is.”

Texas Rep. Jasmine Crockett, who won a Democratic congressional primary in May and was endorsed by the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told Politico that she’d been labeled a progressive but knows most of the Democratic voters in the Dallas-area seat where she’s running identify as moderates or conservatives.

Crockett said that means she won’t align with members of the further-left subset of progressives in the House known as the “Squad,” which includes Ocasio-Cortez and has been known for challenging the party’s establishment.

“I’ve got to be very cognizant. Honestly, I love so many members of the ‘Squad’ and I think that they do right by their districts,” Crockett said. “I think in my district, while they don’t self-identify as progressive, they love a lot of the things that I stand for.”

New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the chair of the House Democratic caucus and a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said “there’s a difference between the socialist machine and mainstream progressives.”

Jeffries, speaking to reporters in a roundtable interview a few days before New York’s August primaries, said Democrats whose legislative records are “deeply progressive” still face criticism from “online virtue signalers” because they are not further left.

“There are some forces on the left that want to define ‘progressive’ as ‘You bend the knee and we tell you what to do, and if you fail to fall in line, you’re a machine Democrat or a corporate sellout.’ That’s a joke,” he said.

Jeffries said the left had some success taking out more traditional Democrats in 2018 and 2020 as Democratic frustrations with President Donald Trump translated into energy for insurgent campaigns. But Jeffries said that once Biden won the White House and his Democratic-controlled Congress began passing legislation, Democratic voters were no longer looking for insurgency.

“At a certain point in time, voters want results, particularly when Democrats have been entrusted with majorities,” he said. “And that is what we have been delivering.”

Bill Neidhardt, a progressive Democratic strategist who worked for liberal former New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, said that while there have been noted losses in recent contests, the Democratic Party’s left flank has seen bright spots.

“It’s not a perfect record, but it never is in elections. I would challenge anyone to show me one of those,” Neidhardt said.

Neidhardt said progressives in Congress can point to growing political power, such as Biden’s recent student loan debt forgiveness plan or Democrats’ new law, the Inflation Reduction Act, tackling climate change and capping prescription drug costs.

“That’s got the progressives’ fingerprints all over it,” he said.

Though Fetterman has shrugged off the progressive label, Neidhardt said the Pennsylvanian opposing Republican Mehmet Oz might help progressives see one of their biggest coups yet. Fetterman and Wisconsin Senate candidate Mandela Barnes are running in two hotly contested U.S. Senate seats that Democrats hope to flip while hanging onto their thin majority in that chamber.

“Who’s going to defeat Ron Johnson? Who’s going to defeat Dr. Oz? It’s going to be progressives,” he said.

___

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri in Washington contributed to this report.

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September 28, 2022
Chief: Man shot by Chicago police infiltrated SWAT training

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CHICAGO (AP) — A man climbed five stories of a fire escape to infiltrate a Chicago police facility Monday while officers were undergoing a SWAT training exercise and grabbed at least two guns before he was shot and wounded by police, the chief said.

Police Superintendent David Brown said the suspect was taken to the hospital with injuries not considered to be life-threatening. One officer was taken to the hospital with a sprained ankle.

Brown said the suspect was seen on video leaving the facility and then returning to infiltrate it. He asked where to go to retrieve personal property at the facility in Homan Square on Chicago’s West Side. Then he came back to the building and climbed the fire escape to the fifth floor, where a door had been propped open for ventilation because there are no windows on that floor.

Brown said it has not been determined if the man went to the building to retrieve property, saying that the man had an extensive record. It wasn’t immediately clear if property taken from the man was stored in the building.

He had no other information about the man, other than to say he was a resident of Waukegan, a suburb about 42 miles north of Chicago.

Police later said the man is 47.

Brown said investigators believe the man grabbed at least two guns that were on a table during the training exercise and pointed them at officers. He said the guns did not have live ammunition in them, adding that they were either empty or contained munitions, such as pellets that are used for training exercises, because they sting when they strike a person but do not cause serious injury or death. He said he did not know if the man attempted to shoot officers with the guns.

He said the investigation will reveal what officers in the room knew about the guns the suspect took.

Brown speculated on what officers in the training room saw as the man entered the room.

“These were guns that were being watched,” he said. “Obviously, someone coming from a stairwell outside startled everyone. Who is this person? Is this person associated with the training? We do have live actors sometimes who come in plainclothes.”

He also said that it was likely the officers said something to the man when they spotted him, but that, “We just don’t know what the offender said.”

He said most of those taking part in the training were tactical officers assigned to specialized units but that a few of them were uniformed officers assigned to City Hall or to Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s home.

The officer was taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and listed in good condition with the ankle injury. He was not shot, Brown said.

The suspect was initially described as being in critical condition with at least one gunshot wound. Later in the day, Brown said the man’s injuries were not life-threatening. Department spokesman Tom Ahern said the man has been placed under arrest and is under police guard in the hospital because he is a suspect in the incident. He did not know what specific charges he might face.

The shooting is being investigated by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. The officer or officers involved will be placed on routine administrative duties for 30 days, the police department said.

The police facility is in a large red brick building that houses evidence and recovered property on the first floor. Some of the police department’s specialized units also work out of the building.

Early Monday afternoon, crime scene tape was stretched across South Homan Avenue a block south of the police station and across the same street just north of the building.

A nearby school was placed on lockdown.

___

Williams reported from West Bloomfield, Michigan.

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September 26, 2022
After rocky start, hopes up in Oregon drug decriminalization

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SALEM, Ore. (AP) — Two years after Oregon residents voted to decriminalize hard drugs and dedicate hundreds of millions of dollars to treatment, few people have requested the services and the state has been slow to channel the funds.

When voters passed the state’s pioneering Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act in 2020, the emphasis was on treatment as much as on decriminalizing possession of personal-use amounts of heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine and other drugs.

But Oregon still has among the highest addiction rates in the country. Fatal overdoses have increased almost 20% over the previous year, with over a thousand dead. Over half of addiction treatment programs in the state lack capacity to meet demand because they don’t have enough staffing and funding, according to testimony before lawmakers.

Supporters want more states to follow Oregon’s lead, saying decriminalization reduces the stigma of addiction and keeps people who use drugs from going to jail and being saddled with criminal records. How Oregon is faring will almost certainly be taken into account if another state considers decriminalizing.

Steve Allen, behavioral health director of the Oregon Health Authority, acknowledged the rocky start, even as he announced a “true milestone” has been reached, with more than $302 million being sent to facilities to help people get off drugs, or at least use them more safely.

“The road to get here has not been easy. Oregon is the first state to try such a bold and transformative approach,” Allen told a state Senate committee Wednesday.

One expert, though, told the lawmakers the effort is doomed unless people with addictions are nudged into treatment.

“If there is no formal or informal pressure on addicted people to seek treatment and recovery and thereby stop using drugs, we should expect continuing high rates of drug use, addiction and attendant harm,” said Keith Humphreys, an addiction researcher and professor at Stanford University and former senior adviser in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

Of 16,000 people who accessed services in the first year of decriminalization, only 0.85% entered treatment, the health authority said. A total of 60% received “harm reduction” like syringe exchanges and overdose medications. An additional 15% got help with housing needs, and 12% obtained peer support.

The Drug Addiction Treatment and Recovery Act, also known as Measure 110, has become a campaign issue this year as Republicans seek to wrest the governorship from Democrats, who have held it since 1987.

“I voted no on Measure 110 because decriminalizing hard drugs like heroin and meth was and is a terrible idea,” said GOP candidate Christine Drazan, who supports asking voters to repeal it. “As expected, it has made our addiction crisis worse, not better.”

Unaffiliated candidate Betsy Johnson, a former veteran lawmaker, said she would work to repeal what she called a “failed experiment.”

A spokeswoman for Democratic candidate Tina Kotek, a former House speaker, said Drazan and Johnson “want to go against the will of the voters. … Oregonians do not want to go backward.”

“As governor, Tina will make sure that the state is delivering on what voters demanded: expanded recovery services statewide,” spokeswoman Katie Wertheimer said.

Under the law, people receive a citation, with the maximum $100 fine waived if they call a hotline for a health assessment. But most of the more than 3,100 tickets issued so far have been ignored, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported. Few people have dialed the hotline.

Tera Hurst, executive director of Oregon Health Justice Recovery Alliance, which is focused on implementing Measure 110, said coerced treatment is ineffective. Hurst said it’s important to focus on “just building a system of care to make sure that people who need access can get access.”

Allen called the outlay of million of dollars — which come from taxes on Oregon’s legal marijuana industry — a “pivotal moment.”

“Measure 110 is launching and will provide critical supports and services for people, families and communities,” he told the Senate committee.

It will take time, though, to use the funds to build out the services.

Centro Latino Americano, a nonprofit serving Latino immigrant families, plans to use its $4.5 million share to move treatment services to a bigger space and hire more staff, said manager Basilio Sandoval.

“Measure 110 makes it possible for us to provide this service free of charge,” Sandoval said. “This allows us to reach people we could not serve previously because of a lack of insurance.”

Scott Winkels, lobbyist for the League of Oregon Cities, said residents are running out of patience.

”People are going to need to see progress,” Winkels said. “If you’re living in a community where you’re finding needles, how many times do you need to see a needle in a park before you lose your cool?”

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September 26, 2022
Texas vow to ‘eliminate all rapists’ rings hollow at clinics

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AUSTIN, Texas (AP) — When Texas’ new abortion law made no exceptions in cases of rape, Republican Gov. Greg Abbott defended it with an assurance: Texas would get to work eliminating rapes.

One year later, Lindsey LeBlanc is busy as ever helping rape victims in a college town outside Houston.

“The numbers have stayed consistently high,” said LeBlanc, executive director of the Sexual Assault Resource Center in Bryan, near Texas A&M University. Despite hiring two additional counselors in the past six months, she still has a waitlist for victims.

“We are struggling to keep up with demand,” she said.

The constant caseloads in Texas are another example of how Republicans have struggled to defend zero-exception abortion bans that are unpopular in public polling, have caused uproar in high-profile cases and are inviting political risk heading into November’s midterm elections. A year since Texas’ law went into effect in September 2021, at least a dozen states also have bans that make no exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

The absence of exceptions has caused divisions among Republicans, including in West Virginia, where a new law signed this month allows a brief window for rape and incest victims to obtain abortions only if they report to law enforcement first. Recently, South Carolina Republicans scuttled a proposed ban after failing to get enough GOP support.

“It really disgusts me,” said Republican South Carolina state Sen. Katrina Shealy, ripping into her male colleagues on the floor of the state Senate.

Republican U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, also of South Carolina, allowed exceptions under the proposed national abortion ban he introduced last week. The proposal has virtually no chance of passing, with even GOP leaders not immediately backing it, reflecting how Republicans have broadly struggled to navigate the issue of abortion with voters since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this summer.

Overwhelming majorities of voters think their state should generally allow abortion in specific cases, including rape, incest or if the health of the pregnant person is endangered. Even Republicans are seeing it as a line with some voters.

“It’s a very gray issue,” said Claudia Alcazar, the GOP chairwoman in Starr County along the Texas-Mexico border that has become a new political battleground after Republicans made big gains with more conservative Hispanic voters in 2020.

She said she knows those who are “hardcore, never have abortion for any reason, period. And then I have the other ones that are like, ‘Well, you know, it depends.’”

In Texas, the blowback was swift when Abbott said last September: “Texas will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets.” Critics called it detached from reality. A sexual assault hotline in Houston has answered almost 4,800 calls through August this year — putting it on track to exceed last year’s volume of 4,843.

As of this summer, all abortions were banned in Texas except if it would save a mother’s life.

Asked what Abbott has done in the past year to eliminate rape, spokeswoman Renae Eze highlighted older measures to clear rape test kit backlogs, a law signed in June aimed at coordinating and expanding sexual assault resources and a task force his office launched in 2019 to address the issue.

“To prevent such heinous crimes before they happen, and to prosecute any criminals to the full extent of the law, Governor Abbott has aggressively fought against defunding the police and led bail reform efforts to prevent the release of dangerous criminals,” Eze said in a statement.

More than 14,000 rape crimes have been reported in Texas since the law took effect last year, according to data from the Texas Department of Public Safety. That was slightly down from the year before and consistent with a decline in other violent crime figures across the state.

Crisis centers in Texas say the number of rape victims they’ve accompanied to hospitals for exams is rebounding since the pandemic restrictions kept advocates from entering. The Women’s Center in Fort Worth has made more than 650 visits to counsel victims undergoing exams in the past year compared to about 340 in the year prior, said Alisha Mathenia, the assistant director of crisis services at the center.

The majority of sexual assaults are never reported to police, making any available data an incomplete picture. And about 8 out of 10 sexual assaults are committed by a person known to the victim, according to the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network.

“We’re not talking about a large of number of rapists walking around on the street. That’s a myth,” said Democrat Donna Howard, a state representative in Austin who co-authored the bill creating Abbott’s task force.

At The SAFE Alliance in Austin, where sexual assault victims can get exams and medical care at its Eloise House, senior director Juliana Gonzales said it’s admirable for Texas to work on rape prevention. “But I also think it’s important for the state to live in the reality that we have to respond to sexual assault,” she said.

___

Stengle reported from Dallas.

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Find more AP coverage of the abortion issue: https://apnews.com/hub/abortion

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September 26, 2022
Bam! NASA spacecraft crashes into asteroid in defense test

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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — A NASA spacecraft rammed an asteroid at blistering speed Monday in an unprecedented dress rehearsal for the day a killer rock menaces Earth.

The galactic slam occurred at a harmless asteroid 7 million miles (11.3 million kilometers) away, with the spacecraft named Dart plowing into the space rock at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph). Scientists expected the impact to carve out a crater, hurl streams of rocks and dirt into space and, most importantly, alter the asteroid’s orbit.

“We have impact!” Mission Control’s Elena Adams announced, jumping up and down and thrusting her arms skyward.

Telescopes around the world and in space aimed at the same point in the sky to capture the spectacle. Though the impact was immediately obvious — Dart’s radio signal abruptly ceased — it will take as long as a couple of months to determine how much the asteroid’s path was changed.

The $325 million mission was the first attempt to shift the position of an asteroid or any other natural object in space.

“As far as we can tell, our first planetary defense test was a success,” Adams later told a news conference, the room filling with applause. “I think Earthlings should sleep better. Definitely, I will.”

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson reminded people earlier in the day via Twitter that, “No, this is not a movie plot.” He added in a prerecorded video: ”We’ve all seen it on movies like “Armageddon,” but the real-life stakes are high.”

Monday’s target: a 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid named Dimorphos. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid five times bigger that flung off the material that formed the junior partner.

The pair have been orbiting the sun for eons without threatening Earth, making them ideal save-the-world test candidates.

Launched last November, the vending machine-size Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — navigated to its target using new technology developed by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, the spacecraft builder and mission manager.

Dart’s on-board camera, a key part of this smart navigation system, caught sight of Dimorphos barely an hour before impact. “Woo hoo!” exclaimed Adams, a mission systems engineer at Johns Hopkins.

With an image beaming back to Earth every second, Adams and other ground controllers in Laurel, Maryland, watched with growing excitement as Dimorphos loomed larger and larger in the field of view alongside its bigger companion. Within minutes, Dimorphos was alone in the pictures; it looked like a giant gray lemon, but with boulders and rubble on the surface. The last image froze on the screen as the radio transmission ended.

Flight controllers cheered, hugged one another and exchanged high fives. Their mission complete, the Dart team went straight into celebration mode. There was little sorrow over the spacecraft’s demise.

“Normally, losing signal from a spacecraft is a very bad thing. But in this case, it was the ideal outcome,” said NASA program scientist Tom Statler.

Johns Hopkins scientist Carolyn Ernst said the spacecraft was definitely “kaput,” with remnants possibly in the fresh crater or cascading into space with the asteroid’s ejected material.

Scientists insisted Dart would not shatter Dimorphos. The spacecraft packed a scant 1,260 pounds (570 kilograms), compared with the asteroid’s 11 billion pounds (5 billion kilograms). But that should be plenty to shrink its 11-hour, 55-minute orbit around Didymos.

The impact should pare 10 minutes off that. The anticipated orbital shift of 1% might not sound like much, scientists noted. But they stressed it would amount to a significant change over years.

“Now is when the science starts,” said NASA’s Lori Glaze, planetary science division director. “Now we’re going to see for real how effective we were.”

Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth. Multiple impactors might be needed for big space rocks or a combination of impactors and so-called gravity tractors, not-yet-invented devices that would use their own gravity to pull an asteroid into a safer orbit.

“The dinosaurs didn’t have a space program to help them know what was coming, but we do,” NASA’s senior climate adviser Katherine Calvin said, referring to the mass extinction 66 million years ago believed to have been caused by a major asteroid impact, volcanic eruptions or both.

The non-profit B612 Foundation, dedicated to protecting Earth from asteroid strikes, has been pushing for impact tests like Dart since its founding by astronauts and physicists 20 years ago. Monday’s feat aside, the world must do a better job of identifying the countless space rocks lurking out there, warned the foundation’s executive director, Ed Lu, a former astronaut.

Significantly less than half of the estimated 25,000 near-Earth objects in the deadly 460-foot (140-meter) range have been discovered, according to NASA. And fewer than 1% of the millions of smaller asteroids, capable of widespread injuries, are known.

The Vera Rubin Observatory, nearing completion in Chile by the National Science Foundation and U.S. Energy Department, promises to revolutionize the field of asteroid discovery, Lu noted.

Finding and tracking asteroids, “That’s still the name of the game here. That’s the thing that has to happen in order to protect the Earth,” he said.

___

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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September 26, 2022
EPA preparing plan to help fix Jackson’s water system

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JACKSON, Miss (AP) — The federal government wants to work with officials in Mississippi’s capital city to reach a legal agreement that ensures Jackson can sustain its water system in the future, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Michael Regan said Monday.

Federal attorneys also sent a letter to city officials Monday threatening legal action against the city if it does not agree to negotiations related to its water system.

Regan returned to Mississippi’s capital city Monday to meet with Jackson officials about the city’s troubled water system. At the meeting with Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and U.S. Assistant Attorney General Todd Kim, Regan said the federal government would work with the city to “deliver long overdue relief for Jackson residents.”

“The people of Jackson, Mississippi, have lacked access to safe and reliable water for decades. After years of neglect, Jackson’s water system finally reached a breaking point this summer, leaving tens of thousands of people without any running water for weeks,” Regan said. “These conditions are unacceptable in the United States of America.”

In a Monday letter sent to city officials and obtained by the news station WLBT-TV, Kim and attorneys for DOJ’s Environmental Enforcement Section said they were “prepared to file an action” against the city under the Safe Drinking Water Act, but hoped the matter could be resolved through an “enforceable agreement.” The letter said that state and local officials “had not acted to protect public health.”

Regan said in a separate statement that he wants to work with the city to reach a “judicially enforceable agreement,” which would avoid a legal dispute. A Department of Justice spokesperson declined to specify what such an agreement could entail. The purpose of the meeting was to discuss how the federal government might protect public health in Jackson and address “longstanding environmental justice issues” facing the city, the spokesperson told The Associated Press.

In a news release, Lumumba’s office said city officials discussed “plans of the federal agencies to immediately engage in negotiations” with Jackson’s leadership to address its water system needs.

Most of Jackson’s 150,000 residents lost running water for several days in late August and early September after heavy rainfall exacerbated problems in the city’s main treatment plant. The EPA had already issued a notice in January that Jackson’s system violates the federal Safe Drinking Water Act. Lumumba said coordination with the federal government represents the best path forward for the city to fix its water system.

“We believe that it is imperative that we enter into agreements with a team that is solely and sincerely focused on an objective of ensuring safe and reliable drinking water to the residents of Jackson,” Lumumba said in the news release.

On Sept. 15, Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves and the state health department told people in Jackson that they no longer had to boil water before drinking it or using it to brush their teeth. But disruptions to clean water in parts of the city continued.

Lumumba’s office announced new boil-water notices Monday affecting approximately 1,000 water connections in the city. A city spokesperson said a contractor inadvertently severed a water line. This came after multiple major water leaks occurred the previous weekend. Several areas were placed under a precautionary boil-water notice, including the neighborhood home to Millsaps College. The college has asked for donations to help build its own water source.

The EPA said 300 boil water notices have been issued over the past two years in the city, most of which came before the most recent drinking water crisis. “It’s clear this community has suffered long enough,” Regan said.

In early September, Regan came to Jackson to meet with residents and elected officials about the water problems. He said the city needs to receive “its fair share” of federal money to repair the system.

A stopgap funding package Congress is set to consider this week includes disaster assistance for Jackson, a person familiar with the legislation said Monday.

Before the latest water crisis, Jackson had already been under a boil-water notice since late July because of cloudy water that could make people ill. Tests by the state health department in 2015 found higher-than-acceptable lead levels in some water samples.

An independent watchdog in the Environmental Protection Agency said in September it was being brought in to investigate Jackson’s troubled water system.

In September, four Jackson residents filed a class-action lawsuit in federal district court against the city, Lumumba and his immediate predecessor, three former public works directors, an engineering firm and a business that had a city contract to replace water meters. The lawsuit seeks to force Jackson to make specific fixes, including the removal or repair of pipes and equipment contaminated with lead.

Regan said the EPA has a responsibility to protect the health of Jackson residents.

“The people of Jackson, like all people in this country, deserve access to clean and safe water,” Regan said. “They also deserve more than words – they need action.”

___

Associated Press Writer Matthew Daly contributed to this report. Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg.

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September 26, 2022
Kentucky man who shot classmates in ’97 imprisoned for life

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A Kentucky man who killed three fellow students and wounded five others when he was 14 years old will have to spend the rest of his life in prison without another opportunity to seek parole, the Kentucky Parole Board voted Monday.

Michael Carneal, now 39, told parole board members last week that he would live with his parents and continue his mental health treatment if they agreed to release him. He admitted that he still hears voices like the ones that told him to steal a neighbor’s pistol and fire it into the crowded lobby of Heath High School in 1997. However, Carneal said that with therapy and medication, he has learned to control his behavior.

The board, meeting in Frankfort, voted 7-0 to deny parole, after deliberating in private for about 30 minutes. Carneal watched the vote over Zoom from the Kentucky State Reformatory in La Grange. He sat hunched in a small chair as Kentucky Parole Board Chair Ladeidra Jones asked each member for their vote.

Jones then told Carneal that “due to the seriousness of your crime” he would serve out his life sentence in prison.

Carneal said only, “Yes, ma’am” and quickly left.

Missy Jenkins Smith, who had considered Carneal a friend before she was paralyzed by one of his bullets, said she couldn’t sleep Sunday night because she was so anxious for the decision. She said she was in shock after hearing it.

“It’s so hard to believe I don’t have to worry about it again,” she said. “I guess I’ll realize it later. It will sink in.”

Jenkins Smith watched the hearing from her home in Kirksey with another victim, Kelly Hard Alsip, and their families. Her oldest son, who is 15, had been worried that if Carneal were released he would come to their house, she said.

Jenkins Smith, Alsip, others who were wounded in the shooting, and relatives of those who were killed spoke to the parole board panel last week. Most expressed a wish for Carneal to spend the rest of his life in prison. Carneal told the panel there are days that he believes he deserves to die for what he did, but other days he thinks he could still do some good in the world.

Jones earlier told Carneal their “number one charge is to maintain public safety.” She informed him that his inmate file listed his mental health prognosis as “poor” and says he experiences “paranoid thoughts with violent visual imagery.”

Speaking by videoconference from the Kentucky State Reformatory last week, Carneal apologized to his victims, including the entire tightknit community of Heath, just outside of Paducah. Killed in the Dec. 1, 1997, shooting were 17-year-old Jessica James, 15-year-old Kayce Steger, and 14-year-old Nicole Hadley, who Carneal said was a “very good friend” to him.

“I’m sorry for what I did,” he said. “I know it’s not going to change things or make anything better, but I am sorry for what I did.”

Carneal was a freshman when he opened fire on a before-school prayer circle that met in the lobby each morning. He was given the maximum sentence for someone his age at the time, life in prison with the possibility of parole after 25 years.

A two-person panel of the parole board considered his case last week but could not reach a unanimous decision, sending the case to the full board meeting on Monday.

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September 26, 2022
Hurricane Ian nears Cuba on path to strike Florida as Cat 4

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HAVANA (AP) — Hurricane Ian was growing stronger as it barreled toward Cuba on a track to hit Florida’s west coast as a major hurricane as early as Wednesday.

Ian was forecast to hit the western tip of Cuba as a major hurricane and then become an even stronger Category 4 with top winds of 140 mph (225 km/h) over warm Gulf of Mexico waters before striking Florida.

As of Monday, Tampa and St. Petersburg appeared to be the among the most likely targets for their first direct hit by a major hurricane since 1921.

“Please treat this storm seriously. It’s the real deal. This is not a drill,” Hillsborough County Emergency Management Director Timothy Dudley said at a news conference on storm preparations in Tampa.

Authorities in Cuba were evacuating 50,000 people in Pinar del Rio province, sent in medical and emergency personnel, and took steps to protect food and other crops in warehouses, according to state media.

“Cuba is expecting extreme hurricane-force winds, also life-threatening storm surge and heavy rainfall,” U.S. National Hurricane Center senior specialist Daniel Brown told The Associated Press.

The hurricane center predicted areas of Cuba’s western coast could see as much as 14 feet (4.3 meters) of storm surge Monday night or early Tuesday.

In Havana, fishermen were taking their boats out of the water along the famous Malecon, the seaside boardwalk, and city workers were unclogging storm drains ahead of the expected rain.

Havana resident Adyz Ladron, 35, said the potential for rising water from the storm worries him.

“I am very scared because my house gets completely flooded, with water up to here,” he said, pointing to his chest.

In Havana’s El Fanguito, a poor neighborhood near the Almendares River, residents were packing up what they could to leave their homes, many of which show damage from previous storms.

“I hope we escape this one because it would be the end of us. We already have so little,” health worker Abel Rodrigues, 54, said.

On Monday night, Ian was moving northwest at 13 mph (20 km/h), about 105 miles (169 kilometers) southeast of the western tip of Cuba, with top sustained winds increasing to 105 mph (169 km/h).

The center of the hurricane passed to the west of the Cayman Islands, but no major damage was reported there Monday, and residents were going back into the streets as the winds died down.

“We seem to have dodged the bullet” Grand Cayman resident Gary Hollins said. “I am a happy camper.”

Ian won’t linger over Cuba but will slow down over the Gulf of Mexico, growing wider and stronger, “which will have the potential to produce significant wind and storm surge impacts along the west coast of Florida,” the hurricane center said.

A surge of up to 10 feet (3 meters) of ocean water and 10 inches (25 centimeters) of rain was predicted across the Tampa Bay area, with as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) inches in isolated areas. That’s enough water to inundate coastal communities.

As many as 300,000 people may be evacuated from low-lying areas in Hillsborough County alone, county administrator Bonnie Wise said. Some of those evacuations were beginning Monday afternoon in the most vulnerable areas, with schools and other locations opening as shelters.

“We must do everything we can to protect our residents. Time is of the essence,” Wise said.

Floridians lined up for hours in Tampa to collect bags of sand and cleared store shelves of bottled water. Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a statewide emergency and warned that Ian could lash large areas of the state, knocking out power and interrupting fuel supplies as it swirls northward off the state’s Gulf Coast.

“You have a significant storm that may end up being a Category 4 hurricane,” DeSantis said at a news conference. “That’s going to cause a huge amount of storm surge. You’re going to have flood events. You’re going to have a lot of different impacts.”

DeSantis said the state has suspended tolls around the Tampa Bay area and mobilized 5,000 Florida state national guard troops, with another 2,000 on standby in neighboring states.

President Joe Biden also declared an emergency, authorizing the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief and provide assistance to protect lives and property. The president postponed a scheduled Tuesday trip to Florida because of the storm.

Playing it safe, NASA planned to slowly roll its moon rocket from the launch pad to its Kennedy Space Center hangar, adding weeks of delay to the test flight.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers announced Monday night that the football team was relocating football operations to the Miami area in preparation for next weekend’s game against the Kansas City Chiefs. The Buccaneers said the team will leave Tampa on Tuesday.

Flash flooding was predicted for much of the Florida peninsula, and heavy rainfall was possible for the southeast United States later this week. With tropical storm force winds extending 115 miles (185 kilometers) from Ian’s center, watches covered the Florida Keys to Lake Okeechobee.

Bob Gualtieri, sheriff of Pinellas County, Florida, which includes St. Petersburg, said in a briefing that although no one will be forced to leave, mandatory evacuation orders are expected to begin Tuesday.

“What it means is, we’re not going to come help you. If you don’t do it, you’re on your own,” Gualtieri said.

Zones to be evacuated include all along Tampa Bay and the rivers that feed it. St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch urged residents not to ignore any evacuation orders.

“This is a very real threat that this storm poses to our community,” Welch said.

The hurricane center has advised Floridians to have survival plans in place and monitor updates of the storm’s evolving path.

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Associated Press contributors include Curt Anderson in St. Petersburg, Florida; Anthony Izaguirre in Tallahassee, Florida; and Julie Walker in New York.

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September 26, 2022