Tag: Washington news

White House vows more federal aid to reduce homelessness in 5 cities and California

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LOS ANGELES — Five major U.S. cities and the state of California will receive federal help to get unsheltered residents into permanent housing under a new plan launched Thursday as part of the Biden administration’s larger goal to reduce homelessness 25% by 2025.

The All Inside initiative will partner the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness and its 19 federal member agencies with state officials in California and local governments in Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle and the Phoenix metro area.

The goal is for the federal government to provide “knowledge, resources and elbow grease” to population centers where nearly half the nation’s unhoused residents live, said Susan Rice, President Joe Biden’s domestic policy advisor.

The administration will offer “tailored support” for two years to improve efforts toward housing unsheltered people in the participating communities, including embedding a federal official in each area, officials said.

In addition, teams will be deployed to help the communities obtain federal funding, establish a network of resources and identify areas where regulations can be loosened and the process for securing housing can be sped up.

Philanthropic groups and private businesses will be invited to help identify opportunities for support and collaboration, officials said.

More than 580,000 Americans were homeless in 2022, with 4 out of 10 of them unsheltered and sleeping on sidewalks and in tents and cars, Rice said.

“We know we cannot meaningfully address our nation’s homelessness problem without a distinct focus on unsheltered homelessness,” she said during a livestreamed announcement with the city’s mayors and other officials.

Agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, Social Security Agency, Department of Labor, Federal Emergency Management Agency, will be involved under Thursday’s announcement to help coordinate housing opportunities.

Funding specifics were not offered, but the White House said the program will build on the $2.5 billion already allocated to prevent homelessness under the administration’s American Rescue Plan and $486 million in the Department of Housing and Urban Development funding released to local municipalities earlier this year.

Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said she hoped the initiative would unstick the current bottleneck plaguing her program Inside Safe, which offers homeless people motel rooms and a path to permanent housing with services. The LA initiative has over 1,200 enrollees so far, she said, but the process is moving slowly because of bureaucratic red tape.

“If anything, we know that our current system on the federal, state and county level isn’t designed for the emergency that we are facing today,” Bass, a Democrat, said.

Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell said the White House plan will “unite our systems,” bringing solutions that are effective in some cities to other areas.

“What’s working in one city will work here because we’re dealing with the same American issues,” Harrell, a Democrat, said.

The Seattle area had the nation’s third highest population of homeless residents in 2022, after Los Angeles and New York, at more than 13,300, according to a one-night count required by the federal government.

Seattle, King County and nearby cities joined together to launch a regional homelessness authority two years ago. But many officials say the new agency has underperformed, been beset by political fights and had trouble fulfilling administrative duties such as executing contracts with service providers.

Meanwhile, the city of Phoenix is under increasing pressure to do something about a massive downtown encampment known as The Zone, where as many as 1,000 unhoused people have congregated near social services.

Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs, a former social worker, successfully pushed for $150 million to be included in Arizona’s Housing Trust Fund in the state’s budget to shore up rent and utility assistance programs, eviction prevention, and build new shelters and affordable housing.

Biden’s All In strategy roadmap made public last December follows a 2010 effort called Opening Doors, which was the nation’s first comprehensive strategy seeking to prevent and end homelessness.

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Associated Press reporters Anita Snow in Phoenix and Gene Johnson in Seattle contributed.

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May 18, 2023
Supreme Court avoids ruling on law shielding internet companies from being sued for what users post

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WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday sided with Google, Twitter and Facebook in lawsuits seeking to hold them liable for terrorist attacks. But the justices sidestepped the big issue hovering over the cases, the federal law that shields social media companies from being sued over content posted by others.

The justices unanimously rejected a lawsuit alleging that the companies allowed their platforms to be used to aid and abet an attack at a Turkish nightclub that killed 39 people in 2017.

In the case of an American college student who was killed in an Islamic State terrorist attack in Paris in 2015, a unanimous court returned the case to a lower court, but said there appeared to be little, if anything, left of it.

The high court initially took up the Google case to decide whether the companies’ legal shield for the social media posts of others, contained in a 1996 law known as Section 230, is too broad.

Instead, though, the court said it was not necessary to reach that issue because there is little tying Google to responsibility for the Paris attack.

“We therefore decline to address the application of Section 230 to a complaint that appears to state little, if any, plausible claim for relief,” the court wrote in an unsigned opinion.

The outcome is, at least for now, a victory for the tech industry, which predicted havoc on the internet if Google lost. But the high court remains free to take up the issue in a later case.

Anna Diakun, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University.

“The Court will eventually have to answer some important questions that it avoided in today’s opinions. Questions about the scope of platforms’ immunity under Section 230 are consequential and will certainly come up soon in other cases,” Anna Diakun, staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, said in an emailed statement.

The families of victims in both attacks asserted that the internet giants did not do enough to prevent their platforms from being used by extremist groups to radicalize and recruit people.

They sued under a federal law that allows Americans injured by a terrorist attack abroad to seek money damages in federal court.

The family of a victim in the bombing of the Reina nightclub in Istanbul claimed that the companies assisted in the growth of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the attack.

But writing for the court, Justice Clarence Thomas said the family’s “claims fall far short of plausibly alleging that defendants aided and abetted the Reina attack.”

In the Paris attack, the family of college student raised similar claims against Google over her killing at a Paris bistro, in an assault also claimed by the Islamic State. That was one of several attacks on a June night in the French capital that left 130 people dead.

The family wants to sue Google for YouTube videos they said helped attract IS recruits and radicalize them. Google owns YouTube.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled that most of the claims were barred by the internet immunity law.

The Supreme Court’s decision in October to review that ruling set off alarm at Google and other technology companies. “If we undo Section 230, that would break a lot of the internet tools,” Kent Walker, Google’s top lawyer, said.

Yelp, Reddit, Microsoft, Craigslist, Twitter and Facebook were among the companies warning that searches for jobs, restaurants and merchandise could be restricted if those social media platforms had to worry about being sued over the recommendations they provide and their users want.

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May 18, 2023
Biden campaign sees multiple ‘viable pathways’ to 2024 election win

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WASHINGTON — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden ‘s reelection campaign is vowing to hold the states that won him the White House in 2020 but also compete in places it lost like North Carolina and increasingly Republican-dominated Florida, providing what it says are “a number of viable pathways to the 270 electoral votes” needed to clinch four more years.

Offering her first extensive comments on strategy since she was named manager of Biden’s campaign last month, Julie Chavez Rodriguez wrote in a memo to “interested parties” that the 2024 race presents “significant opportunities to grow Democratic support.” It was released while Biden was traveling in Japan, but he is skipping previously planned, subsequent stops in Australia and Papua New Guinea to focus on debt limit talks in Washington.

Rodriguez said the reelection campaign is planning early investments to try to retain battleground states Biden won in 2020 including Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Nevada and New Hampshire, and to hold Georgia and Arizona, which hadn’t voted Democratic in a presidential race in decades prior to three years ago.

But the campaign will also “look to expand the map even further in states like North Carolina and Florida” and Rodriguez said both would be included in a “7-figure” advertising buy that encompassed investments in a string of swing states.

Biden’s reelection campaign is built around asking Americans to allow him to “finish the job” he started, and has sought to paint “extreme” Republicans like former President Donald Trump and supporters of his “Make America Great Again” movement as threats to core American political values.

Trump is now seeking the White House for a third time, and while Rodriguez’s memo did not mention him by name, it did predict Biden would “prevail over the MAGA extremist agenda once again.”

Biden’s political advisers have long argued that Biden beat Trump once and can do so again. If someone else captures the GOP presidential nomination — like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who is widely seen as a top Trump alternative — Biden’s team maintains the same strategy can work since most top Republicans have done little to distance themselves from the MAGA movement.

Though Rodriguez’s memo makes no mention of it, contrasting Biden with his opponent may be the president’s strongest reelection tactic. An Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found that only about half of Democrats think the 80-year-old Biden should run again, though 81% said they would at least probably support him in the 2024 general election if he is the nominee.

The memo says the reelection campaign plans to spread its message online and through in-person contacts with voters, but will rely heavily on leveraging voters’ existing social circles.

“While trust in the media may have eroded, trust in people’s personal networks has never been stronger,” Rodriguez wrote. She promised that the campaign will “engage early and often” with its traditional base supporters among women, as well as Black, Hispanic and Asian American voters, and young people who didn’t turn out for the 2022 midterms. The memo also says organized labor “will be core to our electoral success.”

Biden’s reelection campaign says it plans to try for gains among targeted groups of voters during next year’s race. That includes building on 2020, when Biden “made small, but critical gains among rural and white working class voters in battleground states.” It further notes that Democrats saw support rise slightly in those demographics during last year’s midterms in “states like Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Nevada and Wisconsin, and remain consistent in Georgia and North Carolina.”

The memo says strong suburban support helped lift Biden to the 306 electoral votes he won in 2020, and there could be room for growth among such voters, who may be energized by the Supreme Court’s overturning of the Roe v. Wade decision.

National Democrats have remained strongly unified behind Biden. He faces only token opposition in the party’s presidential primary from self-help author Marianne Williamson and anti-vaccine activist Robert Kennedy Jr. That means, Chavez wrote, that the reelection campaign “is able to leverage party infrastructure from Day One, including tools, technology and people, which means we aren’t starting from scratch.”

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May 18, 2023
Biden says there’s ‘work to do’ on global stage as he heads to Japan; US debt limit standoff looms

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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden said there’s “work to do” on the global stage as he headed to Japan on Wednesday to consult with allies on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s assertiveness in the Pacific at the same time that a debt limit standoff looms at home.

With high-stakes talks to head off a federal default underway in Washington, Biden pledged to remain in “constant contact” with negotiators in the capital city while he conducts international diplomacy.

The president departed Washington aboard Air Force One a day after scrapping plans for a historic stop in Papua New Guinea and a key visit to Australia amid the showdown with House Republicans over raising the federal debt limit. The three-nation trip had been meant as a triumphant global leadership showcase, and instead threatened to become a truncated reminder of how partisan disagreements have undercut U.S. standing on the global stage.

“I’ve cut my trip short in order to be here for the final negotiations and sign the deal with the majority leader,” Biden said in remarks before departing the White House. “I’ve made clear America is not a deadbeat nation, we pay our bills.”

For Biden, the intertwined dynamics of the debt standoff and his foray abroad put a spotlight on two key aspects of his presidency — his efforts to assert U.S. prowess on the international stage and to address economic concerns at home. They also are playing out as Biden is in the early weeks of his candidacy for reelection, adding political overtones to the situation.

Aboard Air Force One en route to Japan, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy put Biden in the bad position of canceling part of the trip.

“He is taking the American economy hostage,” she said.

The president was still set to attend the annual Group of Seven summit of advanced democracies in Hiroshima, where sustaining support for Ukraine’s expected counteroffensive against Russia is set to take center stage, alongside economic, climate and global development issues. More than a year after Moscow’s invasion, Biden and allies have armed Kyiv with ever-more-advanced weaponry and maintained deep sanctions on Russia’s economy, though maintaining resolve has grown more challenging in Washington and other global capitals.

While in Hiroshima, Biden also plans to sit down with the so-called Quad leaders of Japan, Australia and India, a partnership meant to serve as a counterweight to China in the Indo-Pacific, a region that he bills as a top priority in U.S. national security strategy. That meeting had originally been scheduled to occur next week on what would have been his inaugural visit to Canberra and Sydney as president.

Off the agenda entirely is a stop in Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea, where Pacific Island leaders were to gather for a first-of-its-kind meeting with a U.S. president. It was meant to be a rejoinder to China’s increasing military and economic pressures in the region. The U.S. has recently opened embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga and has expressed a desire to reverse a decades-long pullback in the region.

No U.S. president has ever visited the island nation, and high hopes for the visit were dashed by Biden’s announcement that he wouldn’t make the stop.

When asked whether he thought his shortened trip was a win for China, he said: “No.”

“Because we still work with allies,” he said.

White House National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan dismissed the idea that jettisoning the Australia trip would do any diplomatic damage or give China leverage, arguing Biden’s reputation as a strong ally would help soften the blow while acknowledging the disappointment, particularly in Papua New Guinea, the cancellation has caused.

“The work that we need to do bilaterally with Australia and with the Pacific Islands is work that can be done at a later date, whereas the final stretch of negotiations over the debt limit or the budget cannot be done at a later date,” Sullivan said.

During a roughly hour-long meeting in the Oval Office on Tuesday, Biden and McCarthy designated chief negotiators to try to draft an agreement to allow more government borrowing in conjunction with GOP-demanded spending cuts. The Treasury Department has warned that action is likely needed by June 1 to assure the U.S. can continue to meet its financial obligations.

U.S. officials have warned in increasingly urgent tones that a default would not only spark a deep recession, but also weaken its standing on the world stage.

“Countries like Russia and China that would love nothing more than for us to default so they could point the finger and say, ‘You see, the United States is not a stable, reliable partner,’” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Tuesday. “So, that is a high priority, as it should be, for the president.”

For weeks, White House officials have said Biden could manage both the Capitol Hill negotiations and foreign commitments while on the trip. But in recent days aides have fretted as McCarthy has repeatedly called for Biden to scrap his trip, worried that while abroad, the president would appear to the public as disengaged from the swelling crisis.

The instability of the cancellation could have the opposite effect of the initial purpose of Biden’s trip — reinforcing American commitments to the region, warned Charles Edel, a senior adviser and the Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“It would underscore for partners that despite welcome U.S. focus on the region and the focus on allies and partners at the heart of U.S. foreign policy, domestic politics is still a constraint on U.S. engagement and perhaps on budgetary commitments as well,” he said last week. “And I think that’s something that will be talked about widely.”

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Boak reported from Hiroshima, Japan.

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May 17, 2023
Trust in Supreme Court fell to lowest point in 50 years after abortion decision, poll shows

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Confidence in the Supreme Court sank to its lowest point in at least 50 years in 2022 in the wake of the Dobbs decision that led to state bans and other restrictions on abortion, a major trends survey shows.

The divide between Democrats and Republicans over support for abortion rights also was the largest ever in 2022, according to the General Social Survey. The long-running and widely respected survey conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago has been measuring confidence in the court since 1973, the same year that Roe v. Wade legalized abortion nationwide.

In the 2022 survey, just 18% of Americans said they have a great deal of confidence in the court, down from 26% in 2021, and 36% said they had hardly any, up from 21%. Another 46% said they have “only some” confidence in the most recent survey.

The drastic change was concentrated among women, Democrats and those who say a woman should be able to get an abortion if she wants one “for any reason,” the survey shows.

Just 12% of women said they have a great deal of confidence in the court in 2022, down from 22% a year earlier and from 32% in 2018. Confidence among Democrats fell to 8% in 2022 from 25% a year earlier. And among those who think abortion should be available to a woman who wants one for any reason, confidence in the court dropped from 25% to 12%.

Even among Republicans, though, confidence has slipped somewhat over the past several years in a court dominated by Republican-appointed conservative justices. Twenty-six percent said they have a great deal of confidence in the court, down from 31% in 2021 and from 37% in 2018.

The survey is conducted using in-person and online interviews over the course of several months. Most interviews were conducted after the court’s conservative majority issued its Dobbs decision in late June that overturned Roe and all were conducted after a draft of the decision was leaked seven weeks earlier.

Support for widely available abortion did not change substantially between 2021 and 2022, but the poll shows support for widely available abortion has increased since 2016, when just 46% said that abortion should be available if a woman wants one for any reason and 54% said it should not. In the new survey, slightly more said it should be available than that it should not be, 53% to 47%.

The difference is driven by skyrocketing support for abortion rights among Democrats, while Republican levels of support are at or near a 50-year low. The 77%-28% split between Democrat and Republicans in their backing for abortion rights is the largest-ever partisan divide on the question.

Large majorities of Americans said they think a woman should be able to have an abortion if her own health is at risk, if there is a strong change of a serious defect in the baby or if the pregnancy was the result of rape.

Multiple states now ban abortion with no exception in cases of rape or incest. Mississippi’s ban has an exception for rape but not incest.

The General Social Survey has been conducted since 1972 by NORC at the University of Chicago. Sample sizes for each year’s survey vary from about 1,500 to about 4,000 adults, with margins of error falling between plus or minus 2 percentage points and plus or minus 3.1 percentage points. The most recent survey was conducted May 5, 2022, through Dec. 20, 2022, and includes interviews with 3,544 American adults. Results for the full sample have a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

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May 17, 2023
BP subsidiary agrees to record $40M penalty and pollution-cutting steps at Lake Michigan refinery

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TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. (AP) —

A BP subsidiary will pay a $40 million penalty and install technology to control releases of benzene and other contaminants at its Whiting oil refinery on the Indiana shoreline of Lake Michigan, Biden administration officials said Wednesday.

The actions will settle a civil case against BP Products North America Inc. filed by the U.S. Department of Justice and the Environmental Protection Agency, which described the penalty as the largest ever under the Clean Air Act for pollution from a structure. Additionally, the company will invest around $197 million in improvements.

“This settlement will result in the reduction of hundreds of tons of harmful air pollution a year, which means cleaner, healthier air for local communities,” said Larry Starfield, acting assistant administrator of EPA’s Office of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.

The 134-year-old refinery, located between Hammond, Indiana, and Chicago, is the biggest in the U.S. Midwest and sixth largest nationally. It processes about 440,000 barrels of crude oil daily, making a variety of liquid fuels and asphalt.

It has a record of pollution rule violations, reaching settlements in 2019 and 2022 over releases of sooty “particulate matter” linked to asthma and other respiratory diseases.

A new federal complaint accused the BP unit of breaking rules limiting benzene in refinery wastewater streams and emissions of hazardous and volatile air contaminants.

In addition to causing cancer, long-term inhalation of benzene is linked to blood disorders and reproductive problems for women, the EPA said. Volatile organic compounds help create smog-produce ozone, implicated in various lung ailments.

Under the agreement, BP will add equipment to strip benzene from wastewater streams flowing to its lakefront treatment plant.

The company also promised a $5 million project to reduce diesel emissions in nearby communities.

Additionally, it will step up pollution surveillance, placing one monitoring device on the refinery grounds, three at the fence line and 10 beyond.

The control measures “will greatly improve air quality and reduce health impacts on the overburdened communities that surround the facility,” said Todd Kim, assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice Environment and Natural Resources Division.

The settlement, which also involves the state of Indiana, requires court approval after a public comment period.

“With this new agreement, we are committing to additional, robust steps — including significant capital investments — to monitor and mitigate wastewater emissions at Whiting Refinery,” BP spokesperson Christina Audisho said in a statement.

The improvements will be made “over the next several years,” Audisho said.

The Environmental Integrity Project, an advocacy group that previously sued BP over Whiting refinery emissions, praised the latest settlement “for holding BP accountable for its illegal emissions and for the tough new cleanup standards” it imposes.

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May 17, 2023
State Department offers Republican lawmaker a chance to view Afghanistan dissent cable

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The State Department is offering to allow the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan

Ranking member, Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., right, asks questions as Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, left, listens during the House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing on the struggles of women and girls in Afghanistan after the U.S withdrawal, Wednesday, May 17, 2023, on Capitol Hill in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The State Department offered Wednesday to allow the Republican chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee to view a classified cable from U.S. diplomats in Kabul sent shortly before the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Rep. Michael McCaul of Texas had threatened earlier this week to make an unprecedented push to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress if he did not turn over the so-called dissent cable.

It was not immediately clear whether the State Department’s offer would appease the Republican lawmaker, who also wanted to see Blinken’s response to the cable.

State Department deputy spokesman Vedant Patel told reporters Wednesday that McCaul, as well as Rep. Gregory Meeks of New York, the top Democrat on the committee, would be invited to the department to view the cable “with appropriate personal information redacted.”

“Chairman McCaul himself has said that this is what he is interested in,” Patel said. “And so it is our sincere hope that our offer here will be sufficient to satisfy their request for information.”

McCaul was planning to have the committee vote next week on a resolution to hold Blinken in contempt of Congress. It would have then proceeded to a full vote in the House, where Republicans hold a slim majority.

The State Department had previously briefed McCaul on the substance of the cables, but he said he was not satisfied.

The vast majority of the 123 cables sent since 1971, when the dissent channel was created during the Vietnam War, have remained classified, according to the National Security Archives at George Washington University. The State Department has long protected the cables from being released publicly.

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May 17, 2023
‘True heroism:’ Biden honors 9 with Medal of Valor including 2 NYPD cops killed during 911 call

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WASHINGTON — Two New York Police Department officers ambushed and killed after responding to a 911 call and the rookie cop who took down the gunman were honored Wednesday, along with six others, by President Joe Biden with the Medal of Valor, the nation’s highest honor for bravery by a public safety officer.

The three NYPD officers, a Houston police officer, Colorado police official, Ohio sheriff’s deputy and three FDNY firefighters all received medals in a White House ceremony before Biden departs for Japan and the Group of Seven summit.

“I don’t know all of you, but I do know you,” Biden said. “From small towns to big cities, you’re cut from the same cloth. You run into danger when everyone else runs away from danger.”

Biden told the crowd the award was given for “actions above and beyond the call of duty,” singling out the families of the officers to thank them.

NYPD officer Wilbert Mora and his police partner Jason Rivera were shot Jan. 21, 2022, while responding to a call about a family dispute in a Harlem apartment. Officer Sumit Sulan shot and killed the gunman, ending the deadly encounter moments after it began and keeping the civilians safe. Rivera died that night, Mora was pronounced dead four days later. The families of the two officers accepted their awards.

The fallen cops were no strangers to tensions between the NYPD and some of the communities they police; they’d both seen it growing up. Both sought to be catalysts of change when they became police officers, but neither got the chance they deserved, gunned down during a spate of shootings of police officers in 2022 in the city.

Biden, who recently announced he’d seek reelection, has spoken of the need to reform how police interact with communities, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd and the deaths of other Black people at the hands of police. But he also says law enforcement needs better funding and tools in order to do a highly stressful job that’s only getting worse, particularly post-pandemic.

“I think one of the hardest jobs in America, what you signed up for,” the president said Wednesday as he presented the medals. “You represent the best of who we are as Americans.”

Rivera, 22, had been a police officer for barely a year. Mora, 27, was in his fourth year on the job. All three were promoted to detective — the fallen officers posthumously and Sulan in a ceremony where he was given detective shield No. 332, a symbol of the three from the 32nd precinct where they worked in Manhattan.

The nation’s largest police department has roughly 35,000 officers; the next largest is Chicago with 13,000.

Attorney General Merrick Garland said the recipients showed “extraordinary valor” above and beyond the call of duty.

“At the end of every shift, you are there,” he said to the families. “It is your care and encouragement that makes it possible for our public safety officers to do their jobs. We are so grateful to you.”

Biden also honored three New York City firefighters for the bravery, including Lt. Justin Hespeler, who rescued a newborn baby from a burning house. “That’s true heroism,” Biden said.

Firefighter Patrick Thornton who, aboard an FDNY boat, saved a man trapped under a capsized vessel in the waters off the coast of Staten Island was also honored, along with retired Lt. Jason Hickey who was on the FDNY’s marine training unit when he got a distress call of a man in the Harlem River, a tidal strait that flows swiftly between the Hudson and East Rivers. Hickey jumped in and saved the man from drowning.

The other recipients are:

— Corporal Jeffrey Farmer of the Littleton, Colorado Police Department. Farmer was responding to a call of shots fired possibly out of a car window, and chased the suspect to the door of an apartment where the man opened fire, hitting Farmer’s partner. Farmer worked to fend off the shooter, then, realizing an ambulance was too far away, dragged his partner into his police car and drove him to the hospital himself, saving his life.

— Deputy Bobby Hau Pham of the Clermont County, Ohio Sheriff’s Office. Pham saved a drowning woman who had driven her car into a lake, though he could not swim.

— Sergeant Kendrick Simpo of the Houston, Texas Police Department. Simpo was working a second job at the Houston area Galleria mall when he heard on the radio a heavily armed man wearing a black mask was roaming the mall, near where a group of children were gathered for a dance competition. Simpo tackled the suspect who was carrying an AR-15 rifle, handgun and 120 rounds of ammunition. No one was injured.

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May 17, 2023
Biden declares ‘America will not default,’ says he’s confident of budget deal with GOP lawmakers

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WASHINGTON — An optimistic President Joe Biden declared Wednesday that he is confident the U.S. will avoid an unprecedented and potentially catastrophic debt default, saying talks with congressional Republicans have been productive as he prepared to leave for a global summit in Japan.

Biden’s upbeat remarks came as a select group of negotiators began meeting to try and hammer out the final contours of a budget spending agreement to unlock a path forward for raising the debt limit by June 1. That is when the Treasury Department says the U.S. could begin defaulting on its obligations and trigger financial chaos.

“I’m confident that we’ll get the agreement on the budget and America will not default,” the president said from the Roosevelt Room of the White House. He said a meeting late Tuesday with Vice President Kamala Harris, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., and other congressional leaders was “productive” and that “everyone came to the meeting, I think, in good faith.”

Biden stressed that every leader — McCarthy, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. — agreed the U.S. would not default on its obligations.

“It would be catastrophic for the American economy and the American people if we didn’t pay our bills,” Biden said. “I’m confident everyone in the room agreed … that we’re going to come together because there’s no alternative. We have to do the right thing for the country. We have to move on.”

Soon after his remarks on Wednesday, Biden was leaving for the Group of Seven summit in Hiroshima, Japan. The president said he would be in “constant contact” with White House officials while attending the summit.

Biden and McCarthy tasked a handful of representatives to try and close out a final deal, with negotiations beginning late Tuesday. Those include Steve Ricchetti, counselor to the president; legislative affairs director Louisa Terrell and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young for the administration, and Rep. Garret Graves, R-La., a close McCarthy ally, for the Republicans.

McCarthy was upbeat Wednesday on resolving the issue, but cautioned on CNBC’s “Squawk Box”: “The problem is, the timeline is very short.”

The national debt currently stands at $31.4 trillion. An increase in the debt limit would not authorize new federal spending; it would only allow for borrowing to pay for what Congress has already approved.

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May 17, 2023
Hopes for historic Pacific visit dashed after Biden cancels trip to Papua New Guinea

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WELLINGTON, New Zealand — Papua New Guinea had declared next Monday a public holiday in anticipation of an historic visit by U.S. President Joe Biden and other leaders from the region.

Police were tightening security, billboards were going up, and people were getting ready to sing and dance in the streets. Expectations were high for what would have been the first visit by a sitting U.S. president to any Pacific Island nation.

“I am very honored that he has fulfilled his promise to me to visit our country,” Papua New Guinea Prime Minister James Marape had written on Facebook.

Those expectations were dashed Wednesday when Biden canceled the visit to focus on debt limit talks at home.

To be sure, many of the festivities will still be going ahead. Biden’s planned three-hour stopover — sandwiched between the Group of Seven meeting of wealthy democracies in Japan and a now-scrapped trip to Australia — was timed to coincide with a trip by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who will still meet with Pacific Island leaders to discuss ways to better cooperate. But now that Biden plans to return home directly after the G-7 meeting, many in Papua New Guinea are feeling deflated.

Steven Ranewa, a lawyer in the capital, Port Moresby, said Biden’s planned visit had been very big news across the Pacific, and he planned to watch the motorcades from the street.

“Everyone was excited,” he said. “But now that it’s been canceled, it’s really demoralizing.”

Konio Anu, who manages a lodge in the capital, said she was saddened by the news, and wondered if people would still get the day off on Monday. She said she was waiting to see if one international guest who booked for Monday would cancel.

Some other leaders had their doubts as well. New Zealand Prime Minister Chris Hipkins deliberated most of the day before announcing that he would still go ahead with his trip to Papua New Guinea.

Anna Powles, a senior lecturer in international security at New Zealand’s Massey University, said that although Pacific leaders would understand that Biden was needed at home, the cancellation demonstrated how domestic U.S. politics can undermine the nation’s foreign policy agenda.

“Unfortunately, it speaks to a pattern of behavior that causes many in the region to regard the U.S. as a less-than-reliable partner,” Powles said.

She said the meeting had been framed as a sequel to a summit held with Pacific leaders in Washington last year, and was supposed to represent a deepening of the relationship between the U.S. and the Pacific at a time when China is increasingly exerting its influence in the region.

The U.S. has recently opened embassies in the Solomon Islands and Tonga, and plans to open more in the region as it tries to reassert its presence in the Pacific.

Powles said the hectic schedule leading into the U.S. elections next year would make it difficult for Biden to reschedule.

Home to nearly 10 million people, Papua New Guinea is the largest Pacific Island nation by population. It is located just north of Australia on the eastern side of New Guinea island, the world’s second-largest island. The western side of the island is part of Indonesia. Papua New Guinea is relatively poor, with many people leading subsistence lives.

During a 2016 speech in Australia when he was vice president, Biden talked about his connections to the Pacific region and said that two of his uncles had fought in Papua New Guinea during World War II. He said one had been killed and the other had returned home badly injured.

But China ended up sending a top-level delegation first, after Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Papua New Guinea for an APEC summit in 2018.

Ranewa, the lawyer, said that China’s increasing influence could be seen throughout the nation, whether it was in providing services or building infrastructure. He said some welcomed China’s help, while others did not.

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May 17, 2023
Australia rules out Quad summit going ahead in Sydney without President Biden

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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out a so-called Quad summit taking place in Sydney without President Joe Biden

ByROD McGUIRK Associated Press

FILE – Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks during a press conference in Sydney, Australia, Friday, June 10, 2022. Australian Prime Minister Albanese has ruled out a so-called Quad summit taking place in Sydney without President Joe Biden, saying the four leaders will talk at the Group of Seven meeting this weekend in Japan. (AP Photo/Mark Baker, File)

The Associated Press

CANBERRA, Australia — Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has ruled out a so-called Quad summit taking place in Sydney without President Joe Biden, saying the four leaders will talk at the Group of Seven meeting this weekend in Japan.

Albanese said Wednesday he understands why Biden pulled out of the summit to focus on debt limit talks in Washington since they are crucial to the economy. The summit including Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida had been scheduled for May 24.

“The blocking and the disruption that’s occurring in domestic politics in the United States, with the debt ceiling issue, means that, because that has to be solved prior to 1st June — otherwise there are quite drastic consequences for the U.S. economy, which will flow on to the global economy — he understandably has had to make that decision,” Albanese told reporters.

Biden “expressed very much his disappointment” at being unable to come to the Sydney summit and to the national capital Canberra a day earlier to address Parliament, Albanese said.

The four leaders will soon be together in Hiroshima, Japan, for the Group of Seven summit and are planning to meet there, he said.

“The Quad is an important body and we want to make sure that it occurs at leadership level and we’ll be having that discussion over the weekend,” Albanese said.

He said Modi will visit Sydney next week, noting the Indian leader was scheduled to give an address to the Indian diaspora at a sold-out 20,000-seat stadium on Tuesday. But Kishida will not visit.

“Prime Minister Modi will be here next week for a bilateral meeting with myself. He will also have business meetings, he’ll hold a very public event … in Sydney,” Albanese told Australian Broadcasting Corp.

“I look forward to welcoming him to Sydney,” Albanese said. “Prime Minister Kishida of Japan was just coming for the Quad meeting. There wasn’t a separate bilateral program.”

Albanese said it was “disappointing” that Biden decided he could not come.

“The decision of President Biden meant that you can’t have a Quad leaders’ meeting when there are only three out of the four there,” Albanese said.

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May 17, 2023
Criminal cases for killing eagles decline as wind turbine dangers grow

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ROLLING HILLS, Wyo. — Criminal cases brought by U.S. wildlife officials for killing or harming protected bald and golden eagles dropped sharply in recent years, even as officials ramped up issuing permits that will allow wind energy companies to kill thousands of eagles without legal consequence.

The falloff in enforcement of eagle protection laws — which accelerated in the Trump administration and has continued under President Joe Biden — was revealed in U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service data obtained by The Associated Press.

It comes amid growing concern that a proliferation of wind turbines to feed a growing demand for renewable energy is jeopardizing golden eagle populations already believed to be declining in some areas.

Dozens of permits approved or pending would allow roughly 6,000 eagles to be killed in coming decades, government documents show. Most permits are for wind farms, and more than half the killed birds would be golden eagles.

The AP’s findings — that significant numbers of eagles continue to die while fewer criminal cases are pursued — underscore a dilemma facing the Biden administration as it tries to confront climate change. Pursuing that goal through clean power development is requiring trade offs such as more dead birds from collisions with wind turbines that can tower 260 feet (80 meters) with blade tips spinning in excess of 150 miles per hour (240 kilometers per hour).

“They are rolling over backwards for wind companies,” said Mike Lockhart a former U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist. “I think they are killing a hell of a lot more eagles than they ever anticipated.”

Companies often pledge to perform conservation work to offset the deaths. Some permits include direct payments for dead eagles — about $30,000 per bird. Numerous permits allow the killing of bald eagles with no compensation required.

A pending proposal from the Biden administration would further streamline permits — making them automatic in some cases as they allow wind-energy projects and power line networks to harm eagles and disturb their nests.

Since retiring from the wildlife service, Lockhart has continued researching wind turbine impacts on golden eagles under a government contract in central Wyoming. Migrating golden eagles routinely soar through the sage brush flats that define the region, where hundreds of wind turbines have gone up over the past 15 years.

Turbines have killed at least six golden eagles Lockhart had previously trapped and tagged for research, including a male that bred successfully in five out of six years. The biologist said it was killed about two months after a wind farm in 2021 started operating about a mile from the nest.

CONFLICTING MANDATES

At some wind farms, companies have relocated turbines or reduced their numbers to minimize deaths. But Lockhart said turbines continue to go up in areas frequented by golden eagles, and the cumulative impacts could be disastrous for the birds.

Many more turbines are planned.

In Wyoming alone, anticipated wind energy projects could kill as many as 800 to 1,000 golden eagles, a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist said during a March 28 meeting with eagle researchers, wind energy companies and government officials, according to meeting minutes.

“They’re going to more than double the (wind) capacity and in doing that, the impacts on wildlife, particularly golden eagles, are going to be exponentially going up,” Lockhart said.

Fish and Wildlife Service officials said they are working to avoid such a scenario by working with companies to reduce bird deaths. “We expect the final number to be much smaller,” spokesperson Vanessa Kauffman said.

There have been a small number of high-profile prosecutions of wind companies that continued killing eagles despite prior warnings from wildlife officials — including major utilities Duke Energy, PacifiCorp and NextEra Energy. Each company agreed to take steps to limit eagle deaths.

At Duke Energy’s windfarms in Wyoming, eagle deaths became more frequent after the North Carolina company reached a 2013 deal that included a $1 million fine and shielded it from prosecution for 10 years, according to government and court records. The company says the rate has fallen since it installed a camera system that spots eagles and triggers shutdown of nearby turbines.

Eagle deaths at PacifiCorp’s wind farms continued, although at a lower rate, after it paid $2.5 million in fines and restitution in a 2015 case, documents show. NextEra has not reported how many eagles have been killed at its wind farms since it was ordered to pay $8 million in fines and restitution last year. PacifiCorp and NextEra did not respond to questions about their cases.

All three companies subsequently received or applied for permits that allow accidental killing of eagles without penalty, providing they took steps to minimize the number.

Wildlife officials approved such permits for more than two dozen major wind projects across the country over the past several years, sometimes over opposition from Native American tribes that revere eagles.

Despite objections from the Colorado River Indian Tribes, officials approved a permit last year for Tucson Electric Power Co, operator of 62 turbines in southern New Mexico, allowing it to kill 193 golden eagles over 30 years. Federal officials said a permit offered the “only available avenue to require … conservation measures,” such as minimizing or compensating for eagle deaths.

The Grand Portage Band of Lake Superior Chippewa in Minnesota says the Biden administration should not go forward with its proposal to further streamline permitting. Chairman Robert Deschampe said wildlife officials had “abandoned” protections for eagle nests and ignored tribal concerns.

Gun Lake Tribe Historic Preservation Officer Lakota Hobia said the Michigan tribe was worried about the long-term impact of more eagle nests being disturbed. “Eagles are sacred to us, and their nests need to be protected in the same ways our sacred sites and Tribal historic properties are protected,” said Hobia.

Several major environmental groups lobbied the White House with Duke energy and other utilities in support of streamlined permitting. Some environmentalists said regulating the wind industry through permits was preferable to having companies ignore or cover up eagle deaths out of fear of prosecution.

“Part of the issue is that companies have generally not been requesting permits and they’ve been taking their chances and there hasn’t been a lot of law enforcement,” said Steve Holmer, vice president of policy at the American Bird Conservancy.

Under the Biden administration, he said, the wildlife service has “conflicting mandates: They are being directed to advance renewable energy and then they have obligations to preserve eagles.”

Some conservationists say the changes as proposed are too reliant on companies monitoring themselves, with not enough oversight.

“It’s sort of doomed to failure if you don’t have objective, neutral people with expertise going in and doing the monitoring,” said Eric Glitzenstein with the Center for Biological Diversity.

FALLING CASE NUMBERS

Violations of the Eagle Protection Act rose during the second term of President Barack Obama, after wind farms had proliferated and an AP investigation found dozens of unprosecuted eagle deaths including at Duke Energy’s Top of the World wind farm.

Under Trump, new cases fell off sharply. At the urging of the oil and gas industry, utilities and other companies, political appointees in the Republican administration rolled back enforcement of the Migratory Bird Treaty Act — which protects more than a thousand species in addition to eagles.

A Biden order reversed the rollback. However, cases continued sliding and hit their lowest level in a decade in the Democrat’s first year with 49 recorded violations, after peaking at 232 under Obama in 2014. They averaged 67 annually under Trump.

The figures do not include most of NextEra’s violations because the case against the company — which involved at least 150 eagle deaths at 50 wind farms dating to 2010 — was not fully closed when AP submitted its data request.

In response to questions about the falloff, Fish and Wildlife Service officials initially blamed it on the Trump administration’s decision to end enforcement of accidental bird deaths under the migratory bird law. But the agency later retracted that, saying officials were “unable to identify a specific cause as to why violations and investigations dropped.”

Only about one in eight cases brought under the Eagle Protection Act from 2012 to early 2022 resulted in fines, probation or jail time, according to AP’s analysis. Those cases include golden and bald eagles harmed or killed and nest disturbances and the taking of eagle body parts, such as feathers.

Whether criminal charges are ultimately brought is up to prosecutors. Fines, jail time and other punishments are up to the courts and are outside the wildlife service’s control, said agency spokesperson Christina Meister.

“Not every criminal investigation substantiates evidence of a criminal violation of federal law,” she said.

Wildlife advocates have long said that the agency’s law enforcement operations are understaffed and underfunded. In its 2024 budget request, the service revealed special agents were at historical low levels and that 47 agents will hit mandatory retirement in the next four years.

‘EAGLES FLY…BLADES SPIN’

While bald eagle populations have grown exponentially over the past decade, there are only about 40,000 golden eagles, which need much larger areas to survive and hunt on the same windy plains where utilities have erected thousands of turbines in Western states.

In the five years after Duke Energy pleaded guilty to killing 14 eagles at wind farms in Wyoming, at least 61 more eagles were killed by the company’s turbines in the state.

At Top of the World, at least 56 eagles have been killed since it started operating in 2010. The 110 turbines were installed before the company had an adequate process for siting them to avoid areas with eagles, said company scientist Misti Sporer.

Several years ago, Duke deployed an elaborate, computerized camera system at the site to detect incoming eagles. A turbine in a bird’s path can be shut down within a minute to keep it from being chopped by a spinning blade.

Since the cameras were installed, eagle deaths have not stopped, although they declined by more than 60%, Sporer said.

“Today, we would likely not put those wind turbines where they are,” she said. “We are … incidentally taking these (eagles) through otherwise lawful operations, and so it just so happens to be that eagles fly in the air and blades spin. And there’s inherently a conflict when you have both in the same location.”

___

On Twitter follow Matthew Brown @MatthewBrownAP and Camille Fassett @camfassett.

___

Associated Press climate and environmental coverage receives support from several private foundations. See more about AP’s climate initiative here. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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May 16, 2023
US announces criminal cases involving flow of technology, information to Russia, China and Iran

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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department announced a series of criminal cases Tuesday tracing the illegal flow of sensitive technology, including Apple’s software code for self-driving cars and materials used for missiles, to foreign adversaries like Russia, China and Iran.

Some of the alleged trade secret theft highlighted by the department dates back several years, but U.S. officials are drawing attention to the collection of cases now to highlight a task force created in February to disrupt the transfer of goods to foreign countries.

“We are committed to doing all we can to prevent these advanced tools from falling into the hands of adversaries who wield them in a way that threatens not only our nation’s security but democratic values everywhere,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, who heads the Justice Department’s national security division.

One of the newly unsealed cases, in federal court in San Francisco, accuses a former Apple software engineer of taking proprietary data related to self-driving cars before his last day at the company in 2018 and then boarding a one-way flight to China on the night that FBI agents were conducting a search at his house. Prosecutors say the defendant, identified as Weibao Wang, is believed to be now working at a China-based autonomous vehicle competitor.

Other cases disclosed Tuesday have resulted in arrests.

One defendant, Liming Li, 64, was arrested earlier this month on charges that he stole thousands of sensitive files from his California employer, including technology that can be used in the manufacturing of nuclear submarines and military aircraft, and used them to help competing Chinese businesses.

Li has been in custody since his arrest. A lawyer who has been representing him declined to comment.

Additionally, two Russian nationals, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Vasilii Sergeyevich Besedin, were arrested in Arizona this month on charges of conspiring to send aircraft parts to Russian airline companies. Lawyers for both men did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

The Justice Department also unsealed a separate criminal case accusing a Chinese national of conspiring to transmit isostatic graphite, a material that can be used in the nose of intercontinental ballistics, to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. And it charged a Greek national with participating in the smuggling of dual-use technology with a military application, including quantum cryptography, to Russia.

The departments of Justice and Commerce and other agencies earlier this year launched the Disruptive Technology Strike Force as a way to prevent U.S. adversaries from acquiring sensitive technology and address what officials said is a growing problem.

“Our greatest national security concerns stem from the actions of nation-states like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — nation-states that want to acquire sensitive U.S. technology to advance their military capabilities with their ultimate goal being to shift the world’s balance of power,” said Matthew Axelrod, an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department.

_____

Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

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May 16, 2023
Biden meets Congress leaders in urgent debt ceiling talks, weighs cutting short foreign trip

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WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden and top congressional leaders opened their second meeting Tuesday in talks over raising the nation’s debt limit as the White House said it was reevaluating parts of Biden’s overseas trip that is scheduled to begin later this week.

Biden met with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. Unlike last week’s meeting, Vice President Kamala Harris was participating in Tuesday’s session.

“We’re just getting started,” Biden said in brief remarks to reporters ahead of the meeting, being held in the Oval Office. Biden has remained optimistic on the talks, while McCarthy has said publicly that the negotiators have made little progress ahead of a June 1 deadline, which is when the Treasury Department says the U.S. could begin defaulting on its debts.

White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby told reporters the administration was evaluating whether it makes sense for the president to continue on with the rest of his foreign trip after attending a Group of Seven summit in Japan. Biden was scheduled to leave Wednesday for the summit, followed by stops in Papua New Guinea and Australia.

Kirby blamed congressional Republicans.

“We wouldn’t even be having this discussion about the effect of the debt ceiling debate on the trip, if Congress would do its job, raise the debt ceiling the way they’ve always done,” Kirby said.

Biden is discussing the debt ceiling with congressional leaders at the White House with reverberations across the globe as early outlines of a potential deal begin to emerge from painstakingly slow negotiations.

Raising the stakes, the Tuesday afternoon session came as Biden was to depart for the summit where the U.S. leadership will be on the world stage. The president and House Speaker McCarthy are trying to strike a budget deal before the U.S. Treasury runs out of cash to keep paying the nation’s bills, which could occur as soon as June 1.

While Biden has remained upbeat that “we’ll be able to do this,” McCarthy is prodding the president to move faster. The Republican speaker says they need an agreement soon to avoid default. Expectations are low that a deal is imminent. It is more likely that staff talks will continue while the president is overseas.

“How much is too much?” McCarthy said Tuesday about the nation’s $31 trillion debt load, as he pushed for stricter work requirements on government aid recipients as a way to cut spending.

McCarthy stopped short of suggesting Biden cancel his trip abroad. But he said at the Capitol, “We’ve got 16 more days to go, I don’t think I’d spend eight days out of the country.”

It’s the second time in a week that Biden has met with McCarthy of California and other congressional leaders at the White House. Biden is confronting a politically divided Congress for the first time on the debt ceiling, a test for both the president and McCarthy, the new speaker, as they work to stave off an economic crisis that could come from a federal default. The meeting will also include Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York.

Even as the Democratic president and the Republican speaker box around the politics of the issue — with Biden insisting he’s not negotiating over the debt ceiling and McCarthy working to extract spending cuts — various areas of possible agreement appear to be emerging.

Talks have been under way at the Capitol for much of the past week, closed-door discussions where White House and congressional staff are discussing what it would take to craft a budget deal that would unlock a separate vote to lift the nation’s borrowing capacity to avoid a devastating default.

Among the items on the table: clawing back some $30 billion in untapped COVID-19 money, imposing future budget caps, changing permit regulations to ease energy development and putting bolstered work requirements on recipients of government aid, according to those familiar with the talks.

Democrats are growing concerned about the idea of putting new work requirements for government aid recipients on the table after Biden suggested he may be open to such changes.

The idea of imposing more work requirements was “resoundingly” rejected by House Democrats at a morning caucus meeting, according to one Democrat at the private meeting and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Progressive lawmakers in particular have raised the issue. Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus has raised concerns but not yet spoken directly to Biden about the issue.

We want to make sure that these negotiations do not include spending cuts, do not include work requirements, things that would harm people, people in rural areas, black, brown, indigenous folks,” Jayapal said Tuesday.

Democratic leader Jeffries’ staff sought to reassure them in talks late Monday, while a separate group of more centrist Democrats have signaled to their moderate Republican colleagues they are prepared to work something out to reach a debt ceiling deal, aides said Tuesday.

While McCarthy McCarthy has complained the talks are slow-going, saying he first met with Biden more than 100 days ago Biden has said it took McCarthy all this time to put forward his own proposal after Republicans failed to produce their own budget this year.

Biden has insisted Republicans must rule out default and consider budget issues separate from the need to raise the nation’s debt limit.

Though Biden did signal over the weekend that he could be open to tougher work requirements for certain government aid programs, the White House has indicated he is only referring to cash assistance programs and not food stamps or anything like Medicaid that would take away people’s health care coverage.

The debt limit must be lifted, as has been done countless times before, to allow continued borrowing to pay already accrued bills.

Compounding pressure on Washington to strike a deal, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said Monday that agency estimates are unchanged on the possible X-date when the U.S. could run out of cash — perhaps as early as June 1.

But Yellen, in a letter to the House and Senate, left some opening for a possible time extension on a national default, stating that “the actual date Treasury exhausts extraordinary measures could be a number of days or weeks later than these estimates.”

“It is essential that Congress act as soon as possible,” Yellen said Tuesday in remarks before the Independent Community Bankers of America.

In my assessment – and that of economists across the board – a U.S. default would generate an economic and financial catastrophe,” she said.

Time is dwindling. Congress has just a few days when both the House and Senate are in session to pass legislation.

“It’s time for the principals to get more engaged, get their closers out there,” said Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the Republican whip.

Details of a potential budget deal remain politically daunting, and it’s not at all clear they go far enough to satisfy McCarthy’s hard-right faction in the House or would be acceptable to a sizable number of Democrats whose votes would almost certainly be needed to secure any final deal.

Republicans led by McCarthy want Biden to accept their proposal to roll back spending, cap future outlays and make other policy changes in the package passed last month by House Republicans. McCarthy says the House is the only chamber that has taken action to raise the debt ceiling. But the House bill is almost certain to fail in the Senate, controlled by Democrats, and Biden has said he would veto it.

An increase in the debt limit would not authorize new federal spending. It would only allow for borrowing to pay for what Congress has already approved.

___ Associated Press writer Kevin Freking contributed to this report.

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May 16, 2023
YouTube’s recommendations send violent and graphic gun videos to 9-year-olds, study finds

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WASHINGTON (AP) — When researchers at a nonprofit that studies social media wanted to understand the connection between YouTube videos and gun violence, they set up accounts on the platform that mimicked the behavior of typical boys living in the U.S.

They simulated two nine-year-olds who both liked video games. The accounts were identical, except that one clicked on the videos recommended by YouTube, and the other ignored the platform’s suggestions.

The account that clicked on YouTube’s suggestions was soon flooded with graphic videos about school shootings, tactical gun training videos and how-to instructions on making firearms fully automatic. One video featured an elementary school-age girl wielding a handgun; another showed a shooter using a .50 caliber gun to fire on a dummy head filled with lifelike blood and brains. Many of the videos violate YouTube’s own policies against violent or gory content.

The findings show that despite YouTube’s rules and content moderation efforts, the platform is failing to stop the spread of frightening videos that could traumatize vulnerable children — or send them down dark roads of extremism and violence.

“Video games are one of the most popular activities for kids. You can play a game like ”Call of Duty” without ending up at a gun shop — but YouTube is taking them there,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, the research group that published its findings about YouTube on Tuesday. “It’s not the video games, it’s not the kids. It’s the algorithms.”

The accounts that followed YouTube’s suggested videos received 382 different firearms-related videos in a single month, or about 12 per day. The accounts that ignored YouTube’s recommendations still received some gun-related videos, but only 34 in total.

The researchers also created accounts mimicking 14-year-old boys; those accounts also received similar levels of gun- and violence-related content.

One of the videos recommended for the accounts was titled “How a Switch Works on a Glock (Educational Purposes Only).” YouTube later removed the video after determining it violated its rules; an almost identical video popped up two weeks later with a slightly altered name; that video remains available.

A spokeswoman for YouTube defended the platform’s protections for children and noted that it requires users under 17 to get their parent’s permission before using their site; accounts for users younger than 13 are linked to the parental account. “We offer a number of options for younger viewers,” the company wrote in emailed statement. ”… Which are designed to create a safer experience for tweens and teens.”

Along with TikTok, the video sharing platform is one of the most popular sites for children and teens. Both sites have been criticized in the past for hosting, and in some cases promoting, videos that encourage gun violence, eating disorders and self-harm. Critics of social media have also pointed to the links between social media, radicalization and real-world violence.

The perpetrators behind many recent mass shootings have used social media and video streaming platforms to glorify violence or even livestream their attacks. In posts on YouTube, the shooter behind the attack on a 2018 attack on a school in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 wrote “I wanna kill people,” “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” and “I have no problem shooting a girl in the chest.”

The neo-Nazi gunman who killed eight people earlier this month at a Dallas-area shopping center also had a YouTube account that included videos about assembling rifles, the serial killed Jeffrey Dahmer and a clip from a school shooting scene in a television show.

In some cases, YouTube has already removed some of the videos identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, but in other instances the content remains available. Many big tech companies rely on automated systems to flag and remove content that violates their rules, but Paul said the findings from the Project’s report show that greater investments in content moderation are needed.

In the absence of federal regulation, social media companies must do more to enforce their own rules, said Justin Wagner, director of investigations at Everytown for Gun Safety, a leading gun control advocacy organization. Wagner’s group also said the Tech Transparency Project’s report shows the need for tighter age restrictions on firearms-related content.

“Children who aren’t old enough to buy a gun shouldn’t be able to turn to YouTube to learn how to build a firearm, modify it to make it deadlier, or commit atrocities,” Wagner said in response to the Tech Transparency Project’s report.

Similar concerns have been raised about TikTok after earlier reports showed the platform was recommending harmful content to teens.

TikTok has defended its site and its policies, which prohibit users younger than 13. Its rules also prohibit videos that encourage harmful behavior; users who search for content about topics including eating disorders automatically receive a prompt offering mental health resources.

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May 16, 2023
TSA is testing facial recognition at more airports, raising privacy concerns

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BALTIMORE (AP) — A passenger walks up to an airport security checkpoint, slips an ID card into a slot and looks into a camera atop a small screen. The screen flashes “Photo Complete” and the person walks through — all without having to hand over their identification to the TSA officer sitting behind the screen.

It’s all part of a pilot project by the Transportation Security Administration to assess the use of facial recognition technology at a number of airports across the country.

“What we are trying to do with this is aid the officers to actually determine that you are who you say who you are,” said Jason Lim, identity management capabilities manager, during a demonstration of the technology to reporters at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport.

The effort comes at a time when the use of various forms of technology to enhance security and streamline procedures is only increasing. TSA says the pilot is voluntary and accurate, but critics have raised concerns about questions of bias in facial recognition technology and possible repercussions for passengers who want to opt out.

The technology is currently in 16 airports. In addition to Baltimore, it’s being used at Reagan National near Washington, D.C., airports in Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Miami, Orlando, Phoenix, Salt Lake City, San Jose, and Gulfport-Biloxi and Jackson in Mississippi. However, it’s not at every TSA checkpoint so not every traveler going through those airports would necessarily experience it.

Travelers put their driver’s license into a slot that reads the card or place their passport photo against a card reader. Then they look at a camera on a screen about the size of an iPad, which captures their image and compares it to their ID. The technology is both checking to make sure the people at the airport match the ID they present and that the identification is in fact real. A TSA officer is still there and signs off on the screening.

A small sign alerts travelers that their photo will be taken as part of the pilot and that they can opt out if they’d like. It also includes a QR code for them to get more information.

Since it’s come out the pilot has come under scrutiny by some elected officials and privacy advocates. In a February letter to TSA, five senators — four Democrats and an Independent who is part of the Democratic caucus — demanded the agency stop the program, saying: “Increasing biometric surveillance of Americans by the government represents a risk to civil liberties and privacy rights.”

As various forms of technology that use biometric information like face IDs, retina scans or fingerprint matches have become more pervasive in both the private sector and the federal government, it’s raised concerns among privacy advocates about how this data is collected, who has access to it and what happens if it gets hacked.

Meg Foster, a justice fellow at Georgetown University’s Center on Privacy and Technology, said there are concerns about bias within the algorithms of various facial recognition technologies. Some have a harder time recognizing faces of minorities, for example. And there’s the concern of outside hackers figuring out ways to hack into government systems for nefarious aims.

With regard to the TSA pilot, Foster said she has concerns that while the agency says it’s not currently storing the biometric data it collects, what if that changes in the future? And while people are allowed to opt out, she said it’s not fair to put the onus on harried passengers who might be worried about missing their flight if they do.

“They might be concerned that if they object to face recognition, that they’re going to be under further suspicion,” Foster said.

Jeramie Scott, with the Electronic Privacy Information Center, said that while it’s voluntary now it might not be for long. He noted that David Pekoske, who heads TSA, said during a talk in April that eventually the use of biometrics would be required because they’re more effective and efficient, although he gave no timeline.

Scott said he’d prefer TSA not use the technology at all. At the least, he’d like to see an outside audit to verify that the technology isn’t disproportionally affecting certain groups and that the images are deleted immediately.

TSA says the goal of the pilot is to improve the accuracy of the identity verification without slowing down the speed at which passengers pass through the checkpoints — a key issue for an agency that sees 2.4 million passengers daily. The agency said early results are positive and have shown no discernable difference in the algorithm’s ability to recognize passengers based on things like age, gender, race and ethnicity.

Lim said the images aren’t being compiled into a database, and that photos and IDs are deleted. Since this is an assessment, in limited circumstances some data is collected and shared with the Department of Homeland Security’s Science and Technology Directorate. TSA says that data is deleted after 24 months.

Lim said the camera only turns on when a person puts in their ID card — so it’s not randomly gathering images of people at the airport. That also gives passengers control over whether they want to use it, he said. And he said that research has shown that while some algorithms do perform worse with certain demographics, it also shows that higher-quality algorithms, like the one the agency uses, are much more accurate. He said using the best available cameras also is a factor.

“We take these privacy concerns and civil rights concerns very seriously, because we touch so many people every day,” he said.

Retired TSA official Keith Jeffries said the pandemic greatly accelerated the rollout of various types of this “touchless” technology, whereby a passenger isn’t handing over a document to an agent. And he envisioned a “checkpoint of the future” where a passenger’s face can be used to check their bags, go through the security checkpoints and board the plane — all with little to no need to pull out a boarding card or ID documents.

He acknowledged the privacy concerns and lack of trust many people have when it comes to giving biometric data to the federal government, but said in many ways the use of biometrics is already deeply embedded in society through the use of privately owned technology.

“Technology is here to stay,” he said.

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Follow Santana on Twitter @ruskygal.

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May 16, 2023
US announces criminal cases involving flow of technology, information to Russia, China and Iran

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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Justice Department announced a series of criminal cases Tuesday tracing the illegal flow of sensitive technology, including Apple’s software code for self-driving cars and materials used for missiles, to foreign adversaries like Russia, China and Iran.

Some of the alleged trade secret theft highlighted by the department dates back several years, but U.S. officials are drawing attention to the collection of cases now to highlight a task force created in February to disrupt the transfer of goods to foreign countries.

“We are committed to doing all we can to prevent these advanced tools from falling into the hands of adversaries who wield them in a way that threatens not only our nation’s security but democratic values everywhere,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen, who heads the Justice Department’s national security division.

One of the newly unsealed cases, in federal court in San Francisco, accuses a former Apple software engineer of taking proprietary data related to self-driving cars before his last day at the company in 2018 and then boarding a one-way flight to China on the night that FBI agents were conducting a search at his house. Prosecutors say the defendant, identified as Weibao Wang, is believed to be now working at a China-based autonomous vehicle competitor.

Other cases disclosed Tuesday have resulted in arrests.

One defendant, Liming Li, 64, was arrested earlier this month on charges that he stole thousands of sensitive files from his California employer, including technology that can be used in the manufacturing of nuclear submarines and military aircraft, and used them to help competing Chinese businesses.

Li has been in custody since his arrest. A lawyer who has been representing him declined to comment.

Additionally, two Russian nationals, Oleg Sergeyevich Patsulya and Vasilii Sergeyevich Besedin, were arrested in Arizona this month on charges of conspiring to send aircraft parts to Russian airline companies. Lawyers for both men did not immediately return phone messages seeking comment.

The Justice Department also unsealed a separate criminal case accusing a Chinese national of conspiring to transmit isostatic graphite, a material that can be used in the nose of intercontinental ballistics, to Iran in violation of U.S. sanctions. And it charged a Greek national with participating in the smuggling of dual-use technology with a military application, including quantum cryptography, to Russia.

The departments of Justice and Commerce and other agencies earlier this year launched the Disruptive Technology Strike Force as a way to prevent U.S. adversaries from acquiring sensitive technology and address what officials said is a growing problem.

“Our greatest national security concerns stem from the actions of nation-states like China, Russia, Iran and North Korea — nation-states that want to acquire sensitive U.S. technology to advance their military capabilities with their ultimate goal being to shift the world’s balance of power,” said Matthew Axelrod, an assistant secretary at the Commerce Department.

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Follow Eric Tucker at http://www.twitter.com/etuckerAP

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May 16, 2023
YouTube sends gun videos to 9-year-olds: ‘It’s not the kids. It’s the algorithms,’ study finds

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WASHINGTON — When researchers at a nonprofit that studies social media wanted to understand the connection between YouTube videos and gun violence, they set up accounts on the platform that mimicked the behavior of typical boys living in the U.S.

They simulated two nine-year-olds who both liked video games, especially first-person shooter games. The accounts were identical, except that one clicked on the videos recommended by YouTube, and the other ignored the platform’s suggestions.

The account that clicked on YouTube’s suggestions was soon flooded with graphic videos about school shootings, tactical gun training videos and how-to instructions on making firearms fully automatic. One video featured an elementary school-age girl wielding a handgun; another showed a shooter using a .50 caliber gun to fire on a dummy head filled with lifelike blood and brains. Many of the videos violate YouTube’s own policies against violent or gory content.

The findings show that despite YouTube’s rules and content moderation efforts, the platform is failing to stop the spread of frightening videos that could traumatize vulnerable children — or send them down dark roads of extremism and violence.

“Video games are one of the most popular activities for kids. You can play a game like ”Call of Duty” without ending up at a gun shop — but YouTube is taking them there,” said Katie Paul, director of the Tech Transparency Project, the research group that published its findings about YouTube on Tuesday. “It’s not the video games, it’s not the kids. It’s the algorithms.”

The accounts that followed YouTube’s suggested videos received 382 different firearms-related videos in a single month, or about 12 per day. The accounts that ignored YouTube’s recommendations still received some gun-related videos, but only 34 in total.

The researchers also created accounts mimicking 14-year-old boys who liked video games; those accounts also received similar levels of gun- and violence-related content.

One of the videos recommended for the accounts was titled “How a Switch Works on a Glock (Educational Purposes Only).” YouTube later removed the video after determining it violated its rules; an almost identical video popped up two weeks later with a slightly altered name; that video remains available.

Messages seeking comment from YouTube were not immediately returned on Tuesday. Executives at the platform, which is owned by Google, have said that identifying and removing harmful content is a priority, as is protecting its youngest users. YouTube requires users under 17 to get their parent’s permission before using their site; accounts for users younger than 13 are linked to the parental account.

Along with TikTok, the video sharing platform is one of the most popular sites for children and teens. Both sites have been criticized in the past for hosting, and in some cases promoting, videos that encourage gun violence, eating disorders and self-harm. Critics of social media have also pointed to the links between social media, radicalization and real-world violence.

The perpetrators behind many recent mass shootings have usedsocial media and video streaming platforms to glorify violence or even livestream their attacks. In posts on YouTube, the shooter behind the attack on a 2018 attack on a school in Parkland, Fla., that killed 17 wrote “I wanna kill people,” “I’m going to be a professional school shooter” and “I have no problem shooting a girl in the chest.”

The neo-Nazi gunman who killed eight people earlier this month at a Dallas-area shopping center also had a YouTube account that included videos about assembling rifles, the serial killed Jeffrey Dahmer and a clip from a school shooting scene in a television show.

In some cases, YouTube has already removed some of the videos identified by researchers at the Tech Transparency Project, but in other instances the content remains available. Many big tech companies rely on automated systems to flag and remove content that violates their rules, but Paul said the findings from the Project’s report show that greater investments in content moderation are needed.

In the absence of federal regulation, social media companies can target young users with potentially harmful content designed to keep them coming back for more, said Shelby Knox, campaign director of the advocacy group Parents Together. Knox’s group has called out platforms like YouTube, Instagram and TikTok for making it easy for children and teens to find content about suicide, guns, violence and drugs.

“Big Tech platforms like TikTok have chosen their profits, their stockholders, and their companies over children’s health, safety, and even lives over and over again,” Knox said in response to a report published earlier this year that showed TikTok was recommending harmful content to teens.

TikTok has defended its site and its policies, which prohibit users younger than 13. Its rules also prohibit videos that encourage harmful behavior; users who search for content about topics including eating disorders automatically receive a prompt offering mental health resources.

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May 16, 2023
Stock market today: World shares mixed after China economic data weaker than expected

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European shares were trading mostly higher after a mixed session in Asia following the release of data showing China’s economy is weaker than expected, with domestic demand failing to bounce back as much as hoped for after the pandemic.

Benchmarks rose in Paris, London and Tokyo but fell in Shanghai and Sydney. U.S. futures edged lower and oil prices logged moderate gains.

On Tuesday, the government will report how much sales at retailers across the U.S. grew last month.

Germany’s DAX edged 0.1% higher to 15,928.83 and in London the FTSE 100 added 0.2% to 7,788.41. The CAC 40 in Paris shed 0.1% to 7,412.41.

The future for the S&P 500 was unchanged while that for the Dow industrials fell 0.1%.

China’s economic recovery after the pandemic faces pressure from sluggish consumer and export demand, a government official said Tuesday, with retail sales and other activity in April weaker than expected.

Retail sales rose 18.4% over a year earlier, up 7.8 percentage points from March, official data showed. Other indicators were mixed: Factory output rose 5.6% over a year earlier but was off 0.5% from March. Investment in factories, real estate and other fixed assets was up 4.7% in the first four months of 2023, but that was off 0.4 percentage points from the first quarter’s growth rate.

“Today’s activity data suggest China is mired in an extended soft patch,” said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management in a report.

Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said the post-pandemic recovery was likely to “fizzle out” in the second half of the year. “Meanwhile, the challenging global picture will prevent much pick-up in Chinese exports,” he said.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 0.7% to 29,842.99, continuing a climb toward its highest level since the early 1990s that has been helped by strong corporate earnings and signs that inflationary pressures might be easing.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong edged less than 0.1% higher, to 19,978.25, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.6% to 3,290.99.

In Seoul, the Kospi was nearly unchanged at 2,480.24, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.5% to 7,234.70.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% and the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher. The Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7% to 12,365.21.

The market was relatively quiet as several concerns dragged on sentiment.

A chief one is the fear of a recession hitting later this year, mainly because of high interest rates meant to knock down inflation. Cracks in the U.S. banking system and the U.S. government’s inching toward a possible default on its debt as soon as June 1 are added worries.

So far, a resilient job market has helped U.S. households keep up their spending despite all the pressures. That in turn has offered a powerful pillar to prop up the economy.

Several big retailers — Home Depot on Tuesday, Target on Wednesday and Walmart on Thursday — will give updates on their earnings in the first quarter of the year.

The majority of companies in the S&P 500 have topped expectations so far but overall they are on track to report a drop of 2.5% in earnings per share from a year earlier. That would be the second straight quarter they’ve seen profit drop, according to FactSet.

Looming ahead is the risk of the federal government’s first-ever default if Congress doesn’t raise the credit limit set for federal borrowing.

Most investors expect Democrats and Republicans to come to a deal, simply because the alternative would be so disastrous for both sides. U.S. Treasurys form the bedrock of the global financial system because they’re seen as the safest possible investment on the planet.

But one worry is that politicians may not feel much urgency to reach an agreement until financial markets shake sharply to convince them of the importance.

In other trading Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil picked up 20 cents to $71.31 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained $1.07 on Monday, to $71.11 per barrel.

Brent crude oil, the international pricing standard, gained 24 cents to $75.47 per barrel.

The dollar slipped to 135.75 Japanese yen from 136.12 yen. The euro rose to $1.0889 from $1.0875.

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AP Business Writer Joe McDonald contributed.

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May 16, 2023
Stock market today: Asian shares turn lower after China economic data weaker than expected

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Asian shares were mostly higher on Tuesday even though the latest data showed China’s economy is weaker than expected, with domestic demand failing to bounce back as much as hoped for after the pandemic.

Benchmarks advanced in Tokyo, Hong Kong and Seoul but fell in Shanghai and Sydney.

China’s economic recovery after the pandemic faces pressure from sluggish consumer and export demand, a government official said Tuesday, with retail sales and other activity in April weaker than expected.

Retail sales rose 18.4% over a year earlier, up 7.8 percentage points from March, official data showed. Other indicators were mixed: Factory output rose 5.6% over a year ago but was off 0.5% from March. Investment in factories, real estate and other fixed assets was up 4.7% in the first four months of 2023, but that was off 0.4 percentage points from the first quarter’s growth rate.

“Today’s activity data suggest China is mired in an extended soft patch,” said Stephen Innes of SPI Asset Management in a report.

Julian Evans-Pritchard of Capital Economics said the post-pandemic recovery was likely to “fizzle out” in the second half of the year. “Meanwhile, the challenging global picture will prevent much pick-up in Chinese exports,” he said.

Tokyo’s Nikkei 225 index surged 0.7% to 29,842.99, continuing a climb toward its highest level since the early 1990s that has been helped by strong corporate earnings and signs that inflationary pressures might be easing.

The Hang Seng in Hong Kong fell 0.2% to 19,945.86, while the Shanghai Composite index lost 0.5% to 3,292.99.

In Seoul, the Kospi edged 0.1% lower, 2,477.14, while Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 slipped 0.4% to 7,240.90.

On Monday, the S&P 500 rose 0.3% to 4,136.28 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average edged 0.1% higher, to 33,348.60. The Nasdaq composite climbed 0.7% to 12,365.21.

Some of the sharper moves came from companies announcing takeovers of rivals, including a 9.1% drop for energy company Oneok after it said it’s buying Magellan Midstream Partners. Magellan jumped 13%.

But market was relatively quiet as several concerns dragged on sentiment.

A chief one is the fear of a recession hitting later this year, mainly because of high interest rates meant to knock down inflation. Cracks in the U.S. banking system and the U.S. government’s inching toward a possible default on its debt as soon as June 1 are added worries.

So far, a resilient job market has helped U.S. households keep up their spending despite all the pressures. That in turn has offered a powerful pillar to prop up the economy. On Tuesday, the government will show how much sales at retailers across the country grew last month.

Several big retailers — Home Depot on Tuesday, Target on Wednesday and Walmart on Thursday — will give updates on their earnings in the first quarter of the year.

The majority of companies in the S&P 500 have topped expectations so far but overall they are on track to report a drop of 2.5% in earnings per share from a year earlier. That would be the second straight quarter they’ve seen profit drop, according to FactSet.

Looming ahead is the risk of the federal government’s first-ever default if Congress doesn’t raise the credit limit set for federal borrowing.

Most investors expect Democrats and Republicans to come to a deal, simply because the alternative would be so disastrous for both sides. U.S. Treasurys form the bedrock of the global financial system because they’re seen as the safest possible investment on the planet.

But one worry is that politicians may not feel much urgency to reach an agreement until financial markets shake sharply to convince them of the importance.

In other trading Tuesday, U.S. benchmark crude oil picked up 32 cents to $71.43 per barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. It gained $1.07 on Monday, to $71.11 per barrel.

Brent crude oil, the international pricing standard, gained 33 cents to $75.55 per barrel.

The dollar slipped to 136.01 Japanese yen from 136.12 yen. The euro rose to $1.0881 from $1.0875.

___

AP Business Writer Joe McDonald contributed.

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May 16, 2023