It was an international summit of democracies, but several democratic countries in Asia and Africa were absent; some were not invited and some turned down the invitation. 

Pakistan declined to attend, giving no excuse except that Islamabad will engage Washington, a close ally, bilaterally.

The real reason for Pakistan’s absence, experts say, was not about democracy but about China. 

“This was a fairly straightforward diplomatic decision,” Michael Kugelman, director of the South Asia institute at the Wilson Center, told VOA.

“China was not invited, and Taiwan was. Pakistan, out of deference to its Chinese ally, would not want to attend a forum where Taiwan was present,” he said.

The only nuclear-armed, majority-Muslim country in the world, Pakistan has extensive economic and political ties with the United States and China. 

In 2020, the United States was the top export country for Pakistani products — over $4.1 billion — while Pakistan imported products worth more than $12.4 billion from China, more than from any other country, according to the World Bank. 

China is the single largest creditor to Pakistan with over $31 billion in loans, while the United States has given more than $32 billion in direct support to Pakistan over the past two decades. 

It is unclear how Pakistan’s preference to skip the U.S. invitation to gain China’s approval will work out at a time when the country is facing serious economic challenges.   

Yet Pakistan’s decision was not driven purely by economic calculations, experts say. 

Fragile democracy

The U.S. summit came at a critical time for democracies around the world. The pace of democratization has slowed, while authoritarian regimes have become more effective and influential, according to Freedom House, a U.S. entity that reports on civil and political freedom globally.

“Democracy is on life support in Pakistan,” Kugelman said, adding that the country’s democratic progress made since 2008 is in peril.

For much of its existence since 1947, Pakistan has been taken over by a military dictatorship whenever the country suffered a civilian political breakdown.

Amid intensifying political brinkmanship between the incumbent coalition government of Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and former Prime Minister Imran Khan, leader of a major opposition party, there is fresh speculation about yet another coup. 

A declaration of martial law by the Pakistani military “would be the worst possible outcome for the country,” tweeted Madiha Afzal, a fellow in the foreign policy program at the Brookings Institution.  

The United States has long held a policy of supporting and promoting democracy across the world, but Washington seems to be distancing itself from the intensifying political drama in Pakistan.

“The sobering reality is that the U.S. has itself contributed to Pakistan’s democratic deficit by emphasizing its relations with Pakistani military leaders. That may advance U.S. goals for Washington’s relations with Pakistan, given that the army makes the big decisions on relations with the U.S., but it doesn’t help a perpetually fragile democracy that today is gasping for breath,” said Kugelman. 

Turkey

The United States did not invite Turkey, a constitutional secular democracy and a NATO ally, to the first democracy summit held in 2021 nor to the one that took place last week. 

Often labeled as an autocrat and dictator, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is blamed for taking Turkey on an undemocratic path — criticism that Erdogan has strongly rejected. 

“Turkey is no longer a democratic state but is perhaps best described as an electoral autocracy,” Paul Levin, director of the Institute for Turkish Studies at Stockholm University, told VOA.

Aside from concerns about its democratic backtracking, Turkey is the only NATO member country that has refused to enforce Western sanctions against Russia, particularly in the aftermath of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. 

“Ankara feels like it cannot afford to antagonize Russia, as it is dependent on energy imports and deferment of loan payments, as well as needing Russian cooperation to achieve its own objectives in Syria,” Levin said. 

By playing on both sides of the war in Ukraine, Erdogan tries to offset the economic crisis that Turkey has been facing, analysts say.

The absence of Turkey and Pakistan in the democracy summit was not conspicuous. Indonesia, the most populous Muslim democracy, Bangladesh and many others were also absent.

“Regarding why certain countries are not invited, we will not discuss internal deliberations. However, we reiterate that for the summit, we aim to be inclusive and representative of a regionally and socioeconomically diverse slate of countries. We are not seeking to define which countries are and aren’t democracies,” a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of State told VOA in an emailed response. 

Bringing 74 democracies to a forum, despite significant differences evinced in the final declaration of this year’s summit, was officially lauded as a major achievement.

But that achievement has limits, some analysts say.

“There was a certain arbitrariness to the summit guest list that I fear takes away from the credibility of the summit itself,” Kugelman said.  
…

Charles Loloma is regarded as one of the most influential Native American jewelers of the 20th century. The Hopi artist incorporated new designs and materials in rings and necklaces that sell for tens of thousands of dollars and are among the most valuable in Native American jewelry.

Loloma died in 1991. So when previously-unknown Loloma jewelry started showing up on eBay, it looked suspicious to federal agents charged with enforcing the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. Investigators posed as buyers and purchased from California resident Robert Haack $10,000 of what he advertised as genuine Loloma jewelry.

Agents then called Loloma’s niece, Verma Nequatewa, a jeweler who studied under her famous uncle. She traveled from her home on the Hopi Nation to a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service forensics laboratory in Oregon to deconstruct the jewelry and certified that it was a fake.

“It just makes me angry,” Nequatewa told VOA. “Some of us artists work very hard to make our living, and people like this just get away with it.”

Haack was indicted on four counts of violating the Indian Arts and Crafts Act. He pleaded guilty in 2021 and is awaiting sentencing.

Nequatewa’s husband, Robert Rhodes, estimates that Haack sold more than one million dollars of fake Loloma jewelry before his arrest.

“It hurts the whole industry of Native American art,” he said. “Because if somebody thinks that they’re buying a real Loloma piece and they pay ten thousand dollars for it only to find out it’s a fake, they’re not going to buy a piece of Indian art again.”

Few prosecutions

The Haack case is one of the few prosecuted by the Indian Arts and Crafts Board, which a GAO study found received 649 complaints between 1990 and 2010 and prosecuted five.

“These cases take a great deal of time and resources,” said Indian Arts and Crafts Board director Meredith Stanton, an enrolled member of the Delaware Nation of Oklahoma.

The law protects the artistic work of any member of a federal- or state-recognized Indian tribe or anyone whom a federal or state-recognized Indian tribe certifies as an Indian artisan. Products marketed as “Native American style,” however, are not prohibited under the law and may be manufactured and sold by anyone.

Products designed by a Native American but produced by a non-Native American do not qualify as Native-American made. Products manufactured overseas are meant to be indelibly marked to identify their country of origin. But Cherokee historian and activist David Cornsilk says unscrupulous dealers simply peel off those labels and pass off those crafts as “Native made”.

History

The Navajo began producing jewelry in the mid-19th century, obtaining silver from melted down coins and candlesticks.

“We didn’t really have a money system. When we traded and got silver – whether it be through Spanish coins or whatever – we ended up converting that into jewelry,” said Navajo jeweler Reggie Mitchell. “In essence, we were wearing our wealth, and that became our way of bargaining or trading.”

The railroad – and later the automobile – brought curiosity seekers and ethnographers to the American Southwest. Enterprising Navajo, Hopi and other Pueblo artisans found ready buyers for their wares at railway stops in Albuquerque and Santa Fe.

As demand for their crafts grew, Congress passed the Indian Arts and Crafts Act of 1935 (IACA). The law established an Indian Arts and Crafts Board within the Interior Department to help Native craft persons to market their work. The law also made it a misdemeanor to sell imitation products and set penalties at up to $2,000 and/or up to six months in jail.

This did not stop the counterfeiting, however. By 1985, the Commerce Department estimated annual sales of Native American arts and crafts at $400 to $800 million and suggested that cheap imitations imported from Mexico and Asia made up 20 percent of that market.

Congress in 1990 amended IACA, upgrading violations to felonies punishable by up to $250,000 in fines and/or five years in prison for individual violators and fines up to $1,000,000 for businesses.

“The original was directed toward the economy and well-being of American Indians, and the 1990 law was aimed at protecting buyers from fraud,” Cornsilk told VOA. “The Internet complicates things because it allows for the buying and selling of items without actually coming in contact with the vendor, so there’s no way to know whether the person selling is legit.”
…

Kansas is banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports from kindergarten through college, the first of several possible new laws restricting the rights of transgender people pushed through by Republican legislators over the wishes of the Democratic governor.

The Legislature on Wednesday overrode Gov. Laura Kelly’s third veto in three years of a bill to ban transgender athletes, and came a day after state lawmakers passed a broad bathroom bill. Nineteen other states have imposed restrictions on transgender athletes, most recently Wyoming.

The Kansas law takes effect July 1 and is among several hundred proposals that Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have pursued this year to push back on LGBTQ rights. Kansas lawmakers who back the ban are also pursuing proposals to end gender-affirming care for minors and restrict restroom use.

The measure approved by Kansas lawmakers Tuesday would prevent transgender people from using public restrooms, locker rooms and other facilities associated with their gender identities, and bars them from changing their name or gender on their driver’s licenses. Kelly is expected to veto that.

“It’s a scary time to be raising a trans child in Kansas,” said Cat Poland, a lifelong Kansas resident and mother of three who coordinates a Gay-Straight Alliance at her 13-year-old trans son’s school about 65 kilometers northwest of Wichita. “We may face the very real threat of having to move, and it’s heartbreaking.”

The ban demonstrates the clout of religious conservatives, reflected in the 2022 platform of the Kansas Republican Party — “We believe God created man and woman” — and echoes many Republicans’ beliefs that their constituents don’t like any cultural shift toward acceptance.

“I wish it was 1960, and, you know, little Johnny’s a boy and Mary’s a girl, and that’s how it is, period,” Republican state Rep. John Eplee, a 70-year-old doctor, said during a committee discussion of the bathroom bill.

LGBTQ-rights advocates say its part of a national campaign from right-wing traditionalists to erase transgender, non-binary, gender-queer and gender-fluid people from American society.

Alex Poland, an eighth-grade cross-country runner who hopes to play baseball next year, said legislators are pursuing “bills against children” who “haven’t done anything to harm anyone.”

Alex, who lobbied for trans rights with his mother at the Statehouse last week, said it’s good for trans kids’ mental health to play on teams associated with their gender identities, and that most other kids just don’t care.

It’s largely adults who “care so much about what the trans kids are doing,” Alex said.

Kelly told reporters in the Kansas City area that she believes legislators eventually will regret voting for “this really awful bill.”

“It breaks my heart and certainly is disappointing,” Kelly said.

The first state law on transgender athletes, in Idaho in 2020, came after conservatives retrenched from the national backlash over a short-lived 2016 bathroom law in North Carolina. In Kansas, conservatives’ biggest obstacle has been Kelly, who narrowly won reelection last year after pitching herself as a political centrist.

Conservative Republicans in Kansas fell short of the two-thirds majorities in both legislative chambers needed to override Kelly’s vetoes of the transgender athlete bills in 2021 and 2022. But this year, the House voted 84-40 to override her veto, exactly the two-thirds majority needed. The vote was 28-12 in the Senate, one more than a two-thirds majority.

Supporters of the ban could not have overridden Kelly’s veto this year but for the only Democrat to side with them against the governor. Rep. Marvin Robinson, of Kansas City, told reporters that he had wanted to “meet in the middle” but found the debate “all or none out there.” He said he prayed for guidance before the vote.

Two LGBTQ Democratic lawmakers from the Kansas City area were especially upset because they believed Republicans were gloating over the House vote.

Rep. Heather Meyer stood up, opened her jacket and displayed a “Protect Trans Youth” T-shirt before making a rude gesture as she left the chamber. Rep. Susan Ruiz yelled at GOP members, briefly cursing at them before being told she was out of order.

“We’re tired of putting up with it, and I’m tired of putting up with it,” she said later. “There needs to be some respect.”

Across the U.S., supporters of such bans argue that they keep competition fair. Track and field last month barred transgender athletes from international competition, adopting the same rules that swimming did last year.

Supporters argue that they’re also making sure cisgendered girls and women don’t lose the scholarships and other opportunities that didn’t exist for them decades ago.

“Over the past 50 years, females have finally been able to celebrate our differences and create a division that enabled us to achieve athletic endeavors similar to our male counterparts,” Caroline Bruce McAndrew, a former Olympic swimmer and member from the Kansas Sports Hall of Fame from Wichita, testified to lawmakers.

LGBTQ-rights advocates acknowledge that arguments about competition resonate outside Republicans’ conservative base because of the longstanding assumption that men and boys are naturally stronger than women and girls.

They’re also frustrated that the debate often focuses on whether transgender athletes have or can win championships.

Hudson Taylor, a three-time All-American collegiate wrestler said youth sports should be about learning discipline, “healthy habits,” and having fun in a supportive environment. He founded and leads the pro-LGBTQ group Athlete Ally.

“There’s been a professionalization of youth sports over the last 40 years,” Taylor said. “So often, the legislators and people who oppose trans-athlete inclusion really go directly to the most elite, top talent, Olympic-hopeful athletes.”

The Kansas measure bans transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ teams starting in kindergarten, even though sports and other extra-curricular activities aren’t overseen by the Kansas State High School Activities Association until the seventh grade.

That’s one reason LGBTQ-rights advocates are skeptical that the true issue is fair competition. Another is the scarcity of transgender female athletes.

The state association said three transgender girls competed in sports in grades 7-12 this year, two of them seniors. Taylor said transgender athletes in college likely number fewer than 500. The NCAA says about 219,000 women play collegiate sports.

The international track and field ban doesn’t affect a single transgender female athlete.

Cat Poland, the Kansas mother with a trans son, said: “They just keep taking the next, the next step, the next step, until where are trans people supposed to go? Where can they can exist to be safe and live happy and fulfilling lives?”
…

Georgia’s Stacey Abrams will join the faculty at Howard University in Washington, D.C., the next step in her reemergence after the Democrat lost her second bid to be governor of Georgia last year to Republican Brian Kemp. 

Howard, one of the nation’s top historically Black colleges, said it was appointing Abrams as the Ronald W. Walters Endowed Chair for Race and Black Politics beginning in September. 

“Stacey Abrams has proven herself an essential voice and eager participant in protecting American democracy -– not just for certain populations, but for everyone with the fundamental right to make their voices heard,” Howard President Wayne A. I. Frederick said in a statement. 

The 49-year-old political activist and lawyer won’t be a traditional full-time faculty member, the university says, but she will lecture, invite guest speakers, and host symposiums. Howard says she will work across multiple academic departments to focus on “real-world solutions” to problems facing Black people and other vulnerable groups.  

Abrams will still live in Atlanta. 

“We are at an inflection point for American and international democracy, and I look forward to engaging Howard University’s extraordinary students in a conversation about where they can influence, shape and direct the critical public policy decisions we face,” Abrams said in a statement. 

Abrams’ next steps have been closely watched since her loss. She was an international election observer in Nigeria in February, has been promoting her children’s book, “Stacey’s Remarkable Books,” and announced a tour for an adult book, “Rogue Justice” beginning in May. Last month. Abrams was named senior counsel at Rewiring America, a group promoting clean energy and electrification. 

In January, Abrams left open a return to politics in an interview with Drew Barrymore, saying “I will likely run again,” and adding, “If at first you don’t succeed, try try again. If it doesn’t work, you try again.” 

Abrams made history in 2018 as the first Black woman to be nominated by a major party for governor of an American state. Her place in politics now is unclear, though.  

Georgia isn’t scheduled to have any major statewide races on the ballot until 2026.  

Abrams was unchallenged as leader of the state Democratic Party going into the 2022 election, with voters backing her endorsed choices for down-ballot running mates. But while she has lost twice, Georgia now has two Democratic U.S. senators, Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock. 

Abrams, a Mississippi native, graduated from Atlanta’s Spelman College, another top historically Black institution, and has taught there as an adjunct professor. A former Atlanta deputy city attorney, she was also the minority leader of the Georgia House, an entrepreneur who tried her hand at multiple startups and a voting rights activist. A longtime writer who has now published 15 books, Abrams earned $5 million from books and speeches in the years between her pathbreaking 2018 gubernatorial loss and her second run in 2022. 

Abrams is filling a chair named for a legendary figure. Waters was a professor of political science at Howard from 1971 to 1996 and later directed the African American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland. As a youth, he organized a lunch counter sit-in to protest segregation in his hometown of Wichita, Kansas. He later advised the Congressional Black Caucus and was campaign manager for Jesse Jackson’s pioneering presidential bids in 1984 and 1988. 
…

Concerned that a rematch between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump in the 2024 presidential election is likely — despite the fact that polling shows a majority of Americans say they would prefer that neither man run — a group in Washington is prepared to spend $70 million to create a path for a third-party candidate to enter the race.

The group, called No Labels, describes itself as “a national movement of commonsense Americans,” and has been working for a number of years to create bipartisan compromise in Congress. Over the past year or more, it has turned its eye toward presidential politics, believing that most Americans are dissatisfied with the two-party system dominated by conflict between Democrats and Republicans.

The organization says it has not officially decided to nominate a candidate, and that doing so will only be necessary if neither the Republicans nor the Democrats nominate a candidate who appeals to a broad swath of politically centrist Americans.

Right now, according to No Labels chief strategist Ryan Clancy, that requirement would rule out both Biden and Trump. He cited recent surveys by his organization and other national pollsters showing that significant majorities of Americans say they would prefer that neither Biden nor Trump run again in 2024.

“Our intent from the beginning has not been to blow up the two-party system. Our intent has been to make it work,” Clancy told VOA. “The issue with 2024 is, we’ve now reached a place, unfortunately, where it seems like for the presidential race, both parties could be close to nominating candidates the vast majority of Americans do not want to vote for.”

Bipartisan affiliations

No Labels was founded in 2010 by former Democratic fundraiser Nancy Jacobson. The organization is affiliated with a number of well-known figures associated with both major political parties, including Democratic Senator Joe Manchin, Republican Senator Susan Collins, Republican former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, and Joe Lieberman, a former Democratic senator and vice presidential nominee who is now an independent.

The group was responsible for the creation of the Problem Solvers Caucus in the House of Representatives, a bipartisan group of lawmakers who seek to bring the parties together on issues of mutual agreement.

No Labels’ plan to potentially support a third-party candidate has begun to attract some criticism.

William Galston, a public policy scholar and a co-founder of No Labels, has publicly broken with the group over its third-party plan. He said he is concerned that the addition of a third-party candidate to a close 2024 contest would siphon support away from Biden and lead to the reelection of Trump, whose efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election remain the subject of an investigation by the Department of Justice.

“I am proud of No Labels’ record of bipartisan legislation, and I know its leaders want what is best for the country. But I cannot support the organization’s preparation for a possible independent presidential candidacy,” he said in a statement issued to The Washington Post.

“There is no equivalence between President Biden and a former president who threatens the survival of our constitutional order. And most important, in today’s closely divided politics, any division of the anti-Trump vote would open the door to his reelection,” Galston said.

No Labels insists it has done extensive polling that indicates a centrist third-party candidate would draw votes away from the Republicans and Democrats in equal measure.

‘Unity’ ticket

On the No Labels website, the group describes its effort as “Insurance Policy 2024.”

Clancy told VOA his organization has already secured the ability to place a candidate on presidential ballots in 28 states, and said he is confident it will be in a position to enter a candidate in all 50 states by 2024.

The group has said it would most likely look for one Republican and one Democrat to fill the presidential and vice presidential slots, creating a “unity ticket.”

The No Labels candidate would be chosen by a nominating committee. The composition of the committee would be made public, but its deliberations would remain confidential, Clancy said. The nominating committee, he said, would be “a diverse, distinguished group of Americans” made up of “established figures from across the political spectrum, different genders, ethnicities, we wanted as much as possible to look like and think like America.”

Clancy said the group is already planning to hold a convention in Dallas in spring 2024, and that it is recruiting delegates who could vote to ratify the nomination of a candidate.

Funding secret

No Labels is organized under section 501(c)(4) of the Internal Revenue Code as a social welfare organization. The law does not require the group to reveal the names of the people and organizations who donate to it. According to its 2021 tax return, No Labels brought in $11.3 million in 2021 and had net assets of $9.7 million at the end of that year, suggesting a large inflow of cash has made the third-party effort possible.

Clancy said the $70 million the organization is currently investing in the effort is coming from “donors across the country, across the political spectrum by geography.”

In the event that the money his group spends winds up building what he called the “launchpad” for a viable presidential candidate in 2024, Clancy said the organization will still decline to identify the sources of the funding that made it possible.

“We never have and never will release individual donor names,” Clancy said.

Political scientists dubious

On its website, No Labels challenges the idea that by nominating a third-party candidate, it would be acting as a “spoiler” and tipping the election to one of the major parties by leaching support from the other.

A slide presentation offers one entry suggesting that a No Labels ticket “is not a spoiler, it’s a winner.” The accompanying graphic shows a hypothetical three-way 2024 election outcome in which Biden wins only California and Connecticut, Trump wins nine hardcore Republican states, including Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, and a No Labels candidate wins the 39 remaining states.

Political scientists contacted by VOA said they doubted the projection was realistic.

“This is utterly ridiculous,” Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics, told VOA. “If they want to be taken seriously, that’s not how to do it.”

Sabato said he believes a third-party candidate nominated by No Labels would be likely to help a Trump campaign while harming Biden’s. He also expressed concerns about the lack of transparency of No Labels’ financing.

“If they can’t even tell us who’s funding them, then it does make me very suspicious of their motives,” he said.

Seth Masket, director of the Center on American Politics at the University of Denver, told VOA he does not expect any third-party effort to gain much traction in 2024.

“It seems like pretty much every election … someone gets some millionaires to donate some money for this effort to put together a unity ticket,” he said. “There’s some initial interest, and it doesn’t really go anywhere.”

The reasons, Masket said, are structural.

“The American election system is engineered to produce a two-party system outcome, and so voters tend to not want to waste their votes,” he said.
…

U.S. lawmakers Wednesday dismissed a warning from China’s embassy that they should not meet with Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen, who is visiting California.

A bipartisan group of 17 lawmakers accompanied House Speaker Kevin McCarthy for a private meeting with Tsai at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California.

Hours before, U.S. news outlet Punchbowl News reported that some of the lawmakers meeting with Tsai had received emails expressing “China’s deep concern and firm opposition to this possible move.”

“The Chinese side strongly opposes any form of official interaction between the U.S. and Taiwan, strongly opposes any visit to the U.S. by the leader of the Taiwan authorities regardless of the rationale or pretext, and strongly opposes all forms of contact of the U.S. officials with the Taiwan authorities,” wrote Li Xiang, identified as a counselor at the embassy, in an email obtained by VOA.

Lawmakers said there would be no change in their plans.

“China cannot dictate who members of Congress meet with on U.S. soil. The congressman looks forward to meeting with President Tsai and Speaker McCarthy today,” a spokesperson for Representative Adam Curtis’ office told VOA.

The House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party told VOA that several,  not all, of the lawmakers traveling to California for the Wednesday talks had reported receiving the embassy email.

The email said Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy and other lawmakers would violate the “One China” principle, held by the People’s Republic of China, that Taiwanese sovereignty is an internal matter.

“China has no room for compromise on this issue. We urge the U.S. side to refrain from facilitating a meeting between the U.S. lawmakers and Tsai Ing-wen, and stop all forms of official interaction with Taiwan,” the letter said, warning that China would “most likely take necessary and resolute actions in response to the unwanted situation.”

The U.S. State Department maintains that transits by high-level Taiwanese authorities are not visits and are private and unofficial. Every Taiwan president has transited the United States and this is Tsai’s seventh visit since taking office in 2016.
…

Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen’s talks this week with members of Congress will continue following Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s historic meeting with the head of the self-governing island Wednesday in California.

House Foreign Affairs Chairman Michael McCaul, along with a bipartisan delegation of lawmakers, is scheduled to meet with Tsai on Thursday in Taiwan.

“We are confronting a generational threat from the Chinese Communist Party, and the Indo-Pacific theater is our first line of defense against their encroachment. That’s why now, more than ever, it’s critical the United States strengthen relationships with our allies and partners in the region,” McCaul said in a statement.

Even before Tsai and McCarthy, along with as many as 17 other U.S. lawmakers, held talks Wednesday, Tsai’s U.S. transit stop drew advance criticism from China, which considers the island a part of the country.

Mao Ning, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, said Tuesday, “China firmly opposes the U.S. arrangement for (Taiwanese President) Tsai Ing-wen’s transit visit and her meeting with House Speaker (Kevin) McCarthy, the No.3 person in the U.S. government. This act seriously violates the one-China principle.”

According to that principle, China considers the issue of Taiwanese sovereignty an internal matter. Under U.S. policy, Washington recognizes Beijing as the sole legal government of China. However the U.S. does not recognize Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan and has never agreed to refrain from meeting with Taiwanese leaders.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with Tsai as she transited through New York last week. In a statement noting that the meeting did not deviate from the longstanding unofficial relationship between the U.S. and Taiwan, Jeffries said, “We had a very productive conversation about the mutual security and economic interests between America and Taiwan. We also discussed our shared commitment to democracy and freedom.”

Last year, then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and a delegation of five House Democrats visited Taiwan for meetings with Taiwanese officials. The visit increased tensions in the region as China launched military exercises in the area around Taiwan and suspended or canceled some lines of military cooperation with the United States.

In addition to a three-day trip to Taiwan, McCaul and the delegation are also set to visit Japan and South Korea.

 
…

Cambodian communities in California organized a parade and cultural festival ahead of this month’s solar new year. For VOA, Genia Dulot has our story from Long Beach.
…

For many people in the U.S. holidays mean enormous lawn decorations. But generally, these decorations coincide with Western holidays. Now, some Muslim families are finding unique ways to celebrate Ramadan. VOA’s Dhania Iman reports. Videographer: Andri Tambunan 
…

Brandon Johnson, a union organizer and former teacher, was elected as Chicago’s next mayor Tuesday in a major victory for the Democratic Party’s progressive wing as the heavily blue city grapples with high crime and financial challenges. 

Johnson, a Cook County commissioner endorsed by the Chicago Teachers Union, won a close race over former Chicago schools CEO Paul Vallas, who was backed by the police union. Johnson, 47, will succeed Lori Lightfoot, the first Black woman and first openly gay person to be the city’s mayor. 

Lightfoot became the first Chicago mayor in 40 years to lose her reelection bid when she finished third in a crowded February contest. 

Johnson’s victory in the nation’s third-largest city capped a remarkable trajectory for a candidate who was little known when he entered the race last year. He climbed to the top of the field with organizing and financial help from the politically influential Chicago Teachers Union and high-profile endorsements from progressive Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren. Sanders appeared at a rally for Johnson in the final days of the race. 

Taking the stage Tuesday night for his victory speech, a jubilant Johnson thanked his supporters for helping usher in “a new chapter in the history of our city.” He promised that under his administration, the city would look out for everyone, regardless of how much money they have, whom they love or where they come from. 

“Tonight is the beginning of a Chicago that truly invests in all of its people,” Johnson said. 

Johnson, who is Black, recalled growing up in a poor family, teaching at a school in Cabrini Green, a notorious former public housing complex, and shielding his own young kids from gunfire in their West Side neighborhood. 

He referenced civil rights leaders Martin Luther King Jr. and the Rev. Jesse Jackson and called his victory a continuation of their legacies. He also noted that he was speaking on the anniversary of King’s assassination. 

“Today the dream is alive,” Johnson said, “and so today we celebrate the revival and the resurrection of the city of Chicago.” 

It was a momentous win for progressive organizations such as the teachers union, with Johnson winning the highest office of any active teachers union member in recent history, leaders say. For both progressives and the party’s more moderate wing, the Chicago race was seen as a test of organizing power and messaging. 

Johnson’s win also comes as groups such as Our Revolution, a powerful progressive advocacy organization, push to win more offices in local and state office, including in upcoming mayoral elections in Philadelphia and elsewhere. 

Vallas, speaking to his own supporters Tuesday night, said that he had called Johnson and that he expected him to be the next mayor. Some in the crowd seemed to jeer the news, but Vallas urged them to put aside differences and support the next mayor in “the daunting work ahead.” 

“This campaign that I ran to bring the city together would not be a campaign that fulfills my ambitions if this election is going to divide us,” Vallas said. 

In a statement, Lightfoot also congratulated Johnson and said her administration will collaborate with his team during the transition. 

Johnson and Vallas were the top two vote-getters in the all-Democrat but officially nonpartisan February race, which moved to the runoff because no candidate received over 50%. 

On Tuesday, Johnson took many of the predominantly Black southern and western areas where Lightfoot won in February, along with the northern neighborhoods where he was the top-vote getter back then, according to precinct-level results released by election officials. Vallas did well in the northwest and southwest areas that are home to large numbers of city employees, just as he did in February. 

The contest surfaced longstanding tensions among Democrats, with Johnson and his supporters blasting Vallas — who was endorsed by Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, the chamber’s second-ranking Democrat — as too conservative and a Republican in disguise. 

Both candidates have deep roots in the Democratic Party, though with vastly different backgrounds and views. 

After teaching middle and high school, Johnson helped mobilize teachers, including during a historic 2012 strike through which the Chicago Teachers Union increased its organizing muscle and influence in city politics. That has included fighting for non-classroom issues, such as housing and mental health care. 

Vallas, who finished first in the February contest, was the only white candidate in that nine-person field. A former Chicago budget director, he later led schools in Chicago, New Orleans, Philadelphia and Bridgeport, Connecticut. 

Among the biggest disputes between Johnson and Vallas was how to address crime. Like many U.S. cities, Chicago saw violent crime increase during the COVID-19 pandemic, hitting a 25-year high of 797 homicides in 2021, though the number decreased last year and the city has a lower murder rate than others in the Midwest, such as St. Louis. 

Vallas, 69, said he would hire hundreds more police officers, while Johnson said he didn’t plan to cut the number of officers, but that the current system of policing isn’t working. Johnson was forced to defend past statements expressing support for “defunding” police — something he insisted he would not do as mayor. 

But Johnson argued that instead of investing more in policing and incarceration, the city should focus on mental health treatment, affordable housing for all and jobs for youth.  

He has proposed a plan he says will raise $800 million by taxing “ultrarich” individuals and businesses, including a per-employee “head tax” on employers and an additional tax on hotel room stays. 

That plan is no sure thing, as some members of the City Council and the state Legislature — whose support would be needed — already have expressed opposition. 

Resident Chema Fernandez, 25, voted for Johnson as an opportunity to move on from what he described as “the politics of old.” He said he saw Vallas as being in line with previous mayors such as Rahm Emanuel, Lightfoot and Richard M. Daley, who haven’t worked out great for places like his neighborhood on the southwest side, which has seen decades of disinvestment. 

“I think we need to give the opportunity for policies that may actually change some of our conditions,” Fernandez said. 
…

Wisconsin voters on Tuesday elected liberal Janet Protasiewicz to the state Supreme Court, flipping control to a liberal majority ahead of rulings on an abortion ban and other matters that could play a role in the 2024 presidential election. 

Protasiewicz defeated conservative candidate Daniel Kelly in what New York University’s Brennan Center for Justice called the most expensive judicial election in U.S. history. More than $42.3 million had been spent as of Monday, according to a WisPolitics.com review, far outstripping the previous record of $15.2 million. 

In a major victory for abortion rights advocates, the result turns a court with a former 4-3 conservative majority to liberal control after 15 years, likely affecting several issues that have polarized Americans in other states such as voting rights and partisan control over drawing legislative maps. 

But it was abortion that dominated the campaign, with the court expected in the coming months to decide whether to uphold the state’s 1849 abortion ban. 

That law took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year to eliminate a nationwide right to abortion by reversing Roe v. Wade and granting individual states the authority to ban abortion. 

With 75% of the ballots counted, Protasiewicz had 55.4% of the vote to 44.6% for Kelly, a lead of nearly 160,000 votes, according to the Associated Press. 

The wide margin in a normally closely contested state suggests Democrats have continued to benefit politically from the Roe decision, which has brought motivated voters to the polls. 

Protasiewicz put abortion at the center of her campaign, saying in one advertisement that she supports “a woman’s freedom to make her own decision on abortion.” Kelly, meanwhile, won the endorsement of anti-abortion groups. 

“Tonight we celebrate this historic victory that has obviously reignited hope in so many of us,” Protasiewicz told a victory celebration. 

Republicans also underperformed expectations last November in the first national elections since the court struck down Roe. 

Kelly reluctantly conceded in an address to supporters, calling Protasiewicz an unworthy opponent who ran a “deceitful, dishonorable, despicable campaign.” 

But he added, “I respect the decision that the people of Wisconsin have made.” 

The election’s outcome also holds major implications for the political future of the battleground state. Just as it did in 2020, the court could issue crucial voting decisions before and after the 2024 presidential election, when Wisconsin is again poised to be a vital swing state. 

In addition, the court may revisit the state’s congressional and legislative maps, which Republicans have drawn to maximize their political advantage. 

While the election is technically nonpartisan, neither Protasiewicz nor Kelly made much effort to hide their ideological bent. The state Democratic and Republican parties poured resources into their favored campaigns, and outside organizations spent millions of dollars supporting their preferred candidate, including anti- and pro-abortion rights groups. 

Democrats asserted a Kelly victory could have endangered democracy itself in Wisconsin, noting that a lawsuit from Republican Donald Trump challenging his presidential election loss to Democrat Joe Biden in 2020 came within one vote of succeeding at the court. 
…

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is now a criminal defendant. He surrendered Tuesday at a courthouse in Manhattan and pleaded not guilty to 34 felony charges of falsifying business records. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias followed the developments on this historic day.
…

Furious at U.S. efforts that cut off access to technology to make advanced computer chips, China’s leaders appear to be struggling to figure out how to retaliate without hurting their own ambitions in telecoms, artificial intelligence and other industries.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s government sees the chips — which are used in everything from phones to kitchen appliances to fighter jets — as crucial assets in its strategic rivalry with Washington and efforts to gain wealth and global influence. Chips are the center of a “technology war,” a Chinese scientist wrote in an official journal in February.

China has its own chip foundries, but they supply only low-end processors used in autos and appliances. The U.S. government, starting under President Donald Trump, has been cutting off access to a growing array of tools to make chips for computer servers, AI and other advanced applications. Japan and the Netherlands have joined in limiting access to technology they say might be used to make weapons.

Xi, in unusually pointed language, accused Washington in March of trying to block China’s development with a campaign of “containment and suppression.” He called on the public to “dare to fight.”

Despite that, Beijing has been slow to retaliate against U.S. companies, possibly to avoid disrupting Chinese industries that assemble most of the world’s smartphones, tablet computers and other consumer electronics. They import more than $300 billion worth of foreign chips every year.

Investing in self-reliance

The ruling Communist Party is throwing billions of dollars at trying to accelerate chip development and reduce the need for foreign technology.

China’s loudest complaint: It is blocked from buying a machine available only from a Dutch company, ASML, that uses ultraviolet light to etch circuits into silicon chips on a scale measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. Without that, Chinese efforts to make transistors faster and more efficient by packing them more closely together on fingernail-size slivers of silicon are stalled.

Making processor chips requires some 1,500 steps and technologies owned by U.S., European, Japanese and other suppliers.

“China won’t swallow everything. If damage occurs, we must take action to protect ourselves,” the Chinese ambassador to the Netherlands, Tan Jian, told the Dutch newspaper Financieele Dagblad.

“I’m not going to speculate on what that might be,” Tan said. “It won’t just be harsh words.”

The conflict has prompted warnings the world might split into separate spheres with incompatible technology standards that mean computers, smartphones and other products from one region wouldn’t work in others. That would raise costs and might slow innovation.

“The bifurcation in technological and economic systems is deepening,” Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong of Singapore said at an economic forum in China last month. “This will impose a huge economic cost.”

U.S.-Chinese relations are at their lowest level in decades due to disputes over security, Beijing’s treatment of Hong Kong, and Muslim ethnic minorities, territorial disputes, and China’s multibillion-dollar trade surpluses.

Chinese industries will “hit a wall” in 2025 or 2026 if they can’t get next-generation chips or the tools to make their own, said Handel Jones, a tech industry consultant.

China “will start falling behind significantly,” said Jones, CEO of International Business Strategies.

EV batteries as leverage

Beijing might have leverage, though, as the biggest source of batteries for electric vehicles, Jones said.

Chinese battery giant CATL supplies U.S. and Europe automakers. Ford Motor Co. plans to use CATL technology in a $3.5 billion battery factory in Michigan.

“China will strike back,” Jones said. “What the public might see is China not giving the U.S. batteries for EVs.”

On Friday, Japan increased pressure on Beijing by joining Washington in imposing controls on exports of chipmaking equipment. The announcement didn’t mention China, but the trade minister said Tokyo doesn’t want its technology used for military purposes.

A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Mao Ning, warned Japan that “weaponizing sci-tech and trade issues” would “hurt others as well as oneself.”

Hours later, the Chinese government announced an investigation of the biggest U.S. memory chip maker, Micron Technology Inc., a key supplier to Chinese factories. The Cyberspace Administration of China said it would look for national security threats in Micron’s technology and manufacturing but gave no details.

The Chinese military also needs semiconductors for its development of stealth fighter jets, cruise missiles and other weapons.

Chinese alarm grew after President Joe Biden in October expanded controls imposed by Trump on chip manufacturing technology. Biden also barred Americans from helping Chinese manufacturers with some processes.

To nurture Chinese suppliers, Xi’s government is stepping up support that industry experts say already amounts to as much as $30 billion a year in research grants and other subsidies.
…

The 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump, is expected to make history today by surrendering to authorities in New York City. Trump will be fingerprinted as he appears in court for the first time as a criminal defendant. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi takes us to the scene in Manhattan.
…

Forecasters are warning of more severe weather, including tornadoes, Tuesday and Wednesday in parts of the South and Midwest hammered just days ago by deadly storms. 

That could mean more misery for people sifting through the wreckage of their homes in Arkansas, Iowa and Illinois. Dangerous conditions Tuesday also could stretch into parts of Missouri, southwestern Oklahoma and northeastern Texas. Farther south and west, fire danger will remain high. 

“That could initially start as isolated supercells with all hazards possible — tornadoes, wind and hail — and then over time typically they form into a line (of thunderstorms) and continue moving eastward,” said Ryan Bunker, a meteorologist with the National Weather Center in Norman, Oklahoma. 

In Keokuk County, Iowa, where 19 homes were destroyed and more were damaged Friday, emergency management official Marissa Reisen worries how those cleaning up the damage will cope if another storm hits. 

“All of the people who have been impacted by the storms Friday night are doing all this work, to clean up, to gather their stuff, to pile up the debris,” Reisen said. “If a storm comes through and hits them again and throws all that hard work all over the place again, it will be so deflating to those people.” 

Severe storms could produce strong tornadoes and large hail Wednesday across eastern Illinois and lower Michigan and in the Ohio Valley, including Indiana and Ohio, according to the Storm Prediction Center. The severe weather threat extends southwestward across parts of Kentucky, Missouri, Tennessee and Arkansas. 

Just last week, fierce storms that spawned tornadoes in 11 states killed at least 32 people as the system, which began Friday, plodded through Arkansas and onto the South, Midwest and Northeast. 

The same conditions that fueled last week’s storms — an area of low pressure combined with strong southerly winds — will make conditions ideal for another round of severe weather Tuesday into early Wednesday, Bunker said. 

Those conditions, which typically include dry air from the West going up over the Rockies and crashing into warm, moist air from the Gulf of Mexico, are what make the U.S. so prone to tornadoes and other severe storms. 

A blizzard warning was in effect for nearly all of North Dakota and most of South Dakota through at least Wednesday night. The National Weather Service predicted parts of South Dakota could see up to 16 inches of snow and wind gusts as high as 55 mph.

In Minnesota, a winter storm warning was in effect in the north, while the southern part of the state expected thunderstorms that could include hail and strong winds.

The state’s popular EagleCam captured the moment in which high winds blew a 20-year-old eagle’s nest out of a tree, killing an eaglet that had hatched just days earlier. Officials believed heavy snow that fell in a weekend blizzard — coupled with the weight of the more than 2,000-pound nest — became too much for the tree to support.

The threat of fire danger is expected to remain high Tuesday across portions of far western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, northeastern New Mexico and far southeastern Colorado, with low humidity, dry vegetation and wind gusts as high as 110 kph, according to the National Weather Service. 
…

President Joe Biden’s administration is making $450 million available for solar farms and other clean energy projects across the country at the site of current or former coal mines, part of his ongoing efforts to combat climate change.

As many as five projects nationwide will be funded through the 2021 infrastructure law, with at least two projects set aside for solar farms, the White House said Tuesday.

The White House also said it will allow developers of clean energy projects to take advantage of billions of dollars in new bonuses being offered in addition to investment and production tax credits available through the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act. The bonuses will “incentivize more clean energy investment in energy communities, particularly coal communities,” that have been hurt by a decade-plus decline in U.S. coal production, the White House said.

The actions are among steps the Biden administration is taking as the Democratic president moves to convert the U.S. economy to renewable energy such as wind and solar power, while turning away from coal and other fossil fuels that produce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

The projects are modeled on a site Biden visited last summer, where a former coal-fired power plant in Massachusetts is shifting to offshore wind power. Biden highlighted the former Brayton Point power plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, calling it the embodiment of the transition to clean energy that he is seeking but has struggled to realize in the first two years of his presidency.

“It’s very clear that … the workers who powered the last century of industry and innovation can power the next one,” said Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm, whose agency will oversee the new grant program.

Former mining areas in Appalachia and other parts of the country have long had the infrastructure, workforce, expertise and “can-do attitude” to produce energy, Granholm told reporters on Monday. “And now, thanks to President Biden’s investments in America, we have the resources that can help them bring this new energy economy to life.”

Up to five clean energy projects will be funded at current and former mines, Granholm said. The demonstration projects are expected to be examples for future development, “providing knowledge and experience that catalyze the next generation of clean energy on mine land projects,” the Energy Department said.

Applications are due by the end of August, with grant decisions expected by early next year.

In a related development, the Energy Department said it is awarding $16 million from the infrastructure law to West Virginia University and the University of North Dakota to study ways to extract critical minerals such as lithium, copper and nickel from coal mine waste streams.

Rare earth elements and other minerals are key parts of batteries for electric vehicles, cellphones and other technology. Biden has made boosting domestic mining a priority as the U.S. seeks to decrease its reliance on China, which has long dominated the battery supply chain.

One of the two universities that will receive funding is in the home state of one of Biden’s loudest critics, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, a fellow Democrat who has decried what he calls Biden’s anti-coal agenda. Manchin complained on Friday about new Treasury Department guidelines for EV tax credits that he said ignore the intent of last year’s climate and health care law.

The new rules are aimed at reducing U.S. dependence on China and other countries for EV battery supply chains, but Manchin said they don’t move fast enough to “bring manufacturing back to America and ensure we have reliable and secure supply chains.”

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy Committee, also slammed Biden last year after the president vowed to shutter coal-fired power plants and rely more heavily on wind and solar energy.

The powerful coal state lawmaker called Biden’s comments last November “divorced from reality,” adding that they “ignore the severe economic pain” caused by higher energy prices as a result of declining domestic production of coal and other fossil fuels. The White House said Biden’s words in a Nov. 4 speech in California had been “twisted to suggest a meaning that was not intended” and that the president regretted any offense caused.

“No one is building new coal plants because they can’t rely on it, even if they have all the coal guaranteed for the rest of their existence of the plant. So it’s going to become a wind generation,” Biden said in the speech in Carlsbad, California. “We’re going to be shutting these plants down all across America and having wind and solar.”

Biden has set a goal to cut greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030 and achieve a net-zero emissions economy by 2050.

White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Monday that Biden believes U.S. leaders “need to be bold” in combating climate change “and that includes helping revitalize the economies of coal, oil and gas and power-plant communities.”
…

The University of Connecticut earned its fifth U.S. men’s college basketball championship Monday with a 76-59 victory over San Diego State. 

UConn’s Adama Sanogo, who is originally from Mali, was named the tournament’s Most Outstanding Player after scoring 17 points and pulling down 10 rebounds in the final game. 

UConn got out to a strong start, building a 16-point lead late in the game’s first half.  But San Diego State responded in the second half, cutting the UConn advantage to just five points with about five minutes left in the game. 

Then a UConn run of nine unanswered points put the game out of reach. 

Monday’s men’s title game followed the women’s championship game Sunday in which Louisiana State University topped the University of Iowa 102-85 to win the school’s first title. 

Jasmine Carson led LSU with 22 points as the team surpassed the previous record of 97 points scored by one team in a women’s championship game. 

There was also record interest in the contest, as 9.9 million viewers made it the most watched NCAA women’s basketball game on record. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
…

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is expected to turn himself in Tuesday to face a criminal indictment in a New York state court, the first ever filed against a current or former U.S. leader.    

Trump’s lawyers say he will plead not guilty to charges linked to his $130,000 hush money payment to a porn actor, just ahead of his 2016 presidential election victory, to silence her about her claim of an alleged tryst with him a decade earlier. Trump has long denied the claim.        

The former president traveled Monday from his home in Florida to New York City.    

Lawyers for Trump argued against allowing cameras in the courtroom Tuesday. In a letter to the court Monday, they said such coverage would “exacerbate an already almost circus-like atmosphere around this case.”     

Officials familiar with the indictment say a grand jury last week charged the 76-year-old former president with more than 30 counts of criminal wrongdoing. The indictment remains sealed, and the exact charges, and possibly supporting evidence, could remain secret until the indictment is publicly disclosed at Trump’s arraignment Tuesday before Judge Juan Manuel Merchan in New York State Supreme Court.        

When he is booked, Trump is likely to be fingerprinted like any criminal defendant and his mugshot taken. But authorities say as a deference to his standing as a former president, he is unlikely to be handcuffed or paraded before photographers in a so-called “perp walk.”     

Dozens of police have assembled near Trump Tower and the courthouse, while Trump’s Secret Service detail has mapped out his passage into the courthouse and walk to Merchan’s courtroom. The White House declined to discuss security arrangements but said the government is “always prepared” for whatever might unfold.     

New York City Mayor Eric Adams warned that “rabble-rousers” coming to the city to protest had better behave. “Our message is clear and simple: Control yourselves. New York City is our home, not a playground for your misplaced anger,” he said.     

When asked if he thought there would be unrest in the city, U.S. President Joe Biden, who was touring a factory in Minnesota, replied, “No, I have faith in the New York Police Department.”      

Barricades have been erected to restrict traffic near the courthouse, but Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally, and the New York Young Republican Club, say they are planning a “peaceful protest” against Bragg across the street from the courthouse Tuesday afternoon.      

Trump has criticized Bragg on social media for what he says is a political “witch hunt” against him. Trump has contended the judge “hates me” after Merchan, in a separate case earlier this year, fined subsidiaries of The Trump Organization $1.6 million in a tax fraud scheme.         

After the proceeding, Trump, who is trying to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and reclaim the White House, is planning to fly back to Florida, where he will deliver remarks Tuesday night from his Mar-a-Lago estate and gather with his supporters.         

Since his indictment last Thursday, Trump’s campaign said it has raised $5 million and logged more than 16,000 volunteer sign-ups, which campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said were “key indicators that Americans from all backgrounds are sick and tired of the weaponization of the justice system against President Trump and his supporters.”        

Before the indictment, Trump led national polls in surveys taken of Republican voters on their choice for the party’s presidential nomination.     

The former president is also facing other criminal investigations. They include federal probes of his efforts to upend his 2020 reelection loss to Biden, including Trump’s role in encouraging supporters to try to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, and his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. He was required to turn over the material to the National Archives when he left office.       

Meanwhile, in a narrower case, a prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia is probing Trump’s efforts there to reverse Biden’s win when Trump asked election officials to “find” him enough votes to claim victory.        

While the details of the New York hush money case remain undisclosed, the outcome of any trial could hinge on the intent behind the payment to adult film actor Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time former lawyer and political fixer, used his own money to make the payment to her just ahead of the November 2016 election and was later reimbursed by Trump in installments, with Trump listing the payments on his corporate ledger as a business expense for Cohen’s legal fees.        

On Sunday, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina told CNN the payment to Daniels was a “personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the payment in early 2018. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
…

Donald Trump’s arraignment scheduled for Tuesday is expected to last less than an hour. But it could take years for his case to reach a conclusion as the litigious former president fights the charges, extending the case beyond the 2024 presidential election in which he is running as a candidate.   

Trump became the first former president to face criminal charges when a grand jury in New York voted last week to indict him in connection with a hush money payment to a porn actor in 2016. The indictment remains under seal.  

“In a typical felony case, you could be talking about a year of back and forth before the case goes to trial,” said Lance Fletcher, a New York City criminal defense attorney and former prosecutor in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office. “If it’s a high-profile case or [involves] very serious charges, this back and forth during the pretrial could easily take two years. So, I wouldn’t be surprised if this took more like two years.” 

An arraignment is a criminal defendant’s first court appearance. At Trump’s arraignment on Tuesday, the judge will read the charges against him, and as is customary of defendants, Trump will enter a plea of not guilty. 

After the arraignment comes a series of pre-trial proceedings, followed by jury selection and trial. Though more than 90% of felony cases in New York end with a plea bargain, Trump is not expected to take that option.  

That means he will fight the charges tooth and nail even before the case goes to trial.  

Trump’s lawyers have said in recent days that they’ll try to have the charges dismissed based on the novel legal theory upon which the case is apparently built.  The judge is unlikely to oblige, experts say.  

But Trump has other tactics at his disposal to fight and potentially prolong the case.  Another important tool in his toolbox: pre-trial motions.  

In criminal cases, common pre-trial motions include motion to dismiss the charges for lack of enough evidence, motion to suppress illegally acquired evidence and motion to change the trial’s venue due to publicity.  

In Trump’s case, his defense team is expected to raise all of those issues and more, according to legal experts.   

Among other motions, Trump’s defense lawyers will likely challenge the indictment on the grounds of New York’s statute of limitations, said Cheryl Badar, a clinical associate professor of law at Fordham University School of Law. 

A statute of limitations is the maximum time after a crime with which a suspect can be charged. In New York, the statute of limitations is two years for misdemeanors and five years for most felonies. 

Given that the hush money payment was made nearly seven years ago, defense lawyers could argue that Trump can’t be legally charged with a crime related to the payment. 

Another looming pre-trial fight will likely revolve around discovery, or the process by which the parties share information with each other. 

The Trump team is likely to ask for “an ocean of material,” ranging from all the investigation notes and all business and financial records, Fletcher said.  

“We could be talking about thousands or tens of thousands of pages of materials,” Fletcher said.  “And, with every page that’s turned over they’ll be able to argue back and forth about whether that’s the complete record of that document.” 

Jonathan Turley, a law professor at the George Washington University, said an “early fight” may arise over a possible gag order on Trump.  

In high-profile cases, it has become common for judges in recent years to order defendants to refrain from making public comments on the case.   

But Trump is a presidential candidate, and imposing a gag order on him could violate his First Amendment right to free speech, said Turley, who appeared as a Republican-invited witness during Trump’s first impeachment hearing. 

“This is someone running for president, and one of the issues he’s running on is the politicization of the criminal justice system,” Turley said in an interview.  

Each motion filed by Trump’s defense team will likely trigger a government response and lead to one or more court hearings, a back-and-forth that could take months to resolve.   

To prolong the case, Trump’s attorneys could ask the court for adjournments, “but those are generally at the judge’s discretion and with all the eyes of the nation watching, and primaries right around the corner, this judge may want to keep this case moving without delay,” Badar said. 

On the other hand, Badar noted, “there are several legal issues in the case — many of which are novel questions of law, so the judge will need to give Trump’s lawyers a chance to argue their motions.” 

If Trump is acquitted, the case will end. But if he is found guilty, Trump could initially challenge his conviction at the trial court level under New York’s criminal procedure law, Fletcher said.  

If his attempt fails there, he could appeal the case through the state appellate courts and all the way to the United States Supreme Court. 

Turley said an appeal could be filed even before a trial is held.  

“If the judge denies the motion to dismiss, Trump’s counsel is likely to ask for a right to go to the Court of Appeals [New York’s highest appellate court], even potentially the Supreme Court before any trial is held,” Turley said. 
…

In a grim report issued last week, the World Bank warned of a slow-growth crisis in the global economy that could persist over the coming decade unless governments worldwide adopt what it calls “sustainable, growth-oriented policies.”

The World Bank report says that global growth in gross domestic product between 2022 and 2030 is on track to decline to about 2.2%, down one-third from the rate that applied between 2000 and 2010. Although the growth rate in developing economies will be higher, it will also likely decline by one-third, from 6% to 4%, according to the document titled “Failing Long-Term Growth Prospects.”

The report says that a number of factors are depressing long-term growth prospects, including an aging workforce, slower population growth and lower rates of productivity-enhancing investment. The negative effects are exacerbated by global shocks to the economy, including the lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing war in Ukraine.

“A lost decade could be in the making for the global economy,” said Indermit Gill, the World Bank’s chief economist, in a release accompanying the report. “The ongoing decline in potential growth has serious implications for the world’s ability to tackle the expanding array of challenges unique to our times — stubborn poverty, diverging incomes, and climate change. But this decline is reversible. The global economy’s speed limit can be raised — through policies that incentivize work, increase productivity, and accelerate investment.”

Growth strategies

The World Bank report includes specific recommendations that, according to its own estimates, would boost the average predicted global economic growth rate to 2.9% from 2.2% through the remainder of the decade.

The report urges governments worldwide to lower inflation and assure stability in the financial sector. The report also recommends reducing sovereign debt levels, which would free up funds for investment in productivity-enhancing infrastructure.

Recommended infrastructure investments include upgraded transportations systems and environmentally sustainable improvements to agriculture, manufacturing, and land and water management systems.

The report also calls on countries to lower barriers to international trade, focus on ways to globalize service economy growth and increase labor force participation.

Social progress slowed

Macroeconomists generally agree with much of the World Bank’s assessment, saying that concerns about global growth have been on the rise for several years, and warn that the consequences of a sustained decline — especially in emerging economies — might be severe.

Liliana Rojas-Suarez, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and director of its Latin American Initiative, told VOA that growth began to slow several years ago in Latin America.

“A period of high growth in Latin America occurred in 2000 to 2014,” she said. “That was a period when commodity prices were very high and the region was really growing. But the important thing is that social indicators improved dramatically. Poverty declined, income inequality improved, food security, educational health — name any indicators, they were all improving.”

Since then, she said, much of that progress has reversed.

“Growth is not the only thing,” she said. “You need many more things to actually improve poverty and inequality, but growth is an important component. After [2014], it stopped, and now the social indicators are reverting.”

Impacts unevenly distributed

In a news briefing last week, Adam Posen, president of the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the World Bank was correct to warn of a difficult period ahead but that the effects were not likely to be evenly distributed.

“If you look at the last couple years, not only was there surprising resilience in Europe, but a big surprise — a positive surprise — has been the sustained growth in India, Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, as well as China, once you take out COVID. Indonesia plus India plus Brazil plus Mexico is an awful lot of human beings and an awful lot of global GDP.”

He said that all of those economies had weathered a year of Federal Reserve interest rate hikes without apparent damage to their own domestic currencies, and that most appear well-positioned to continue growing. However, he noted, the same thing cannot be said about many other regions of the globe.

“The World Bank, I think, is right to draw concern to the possibility of a lost decade in sub-Saharan Africa and Central America and South Asia,” Posen said. “An awful lot of human beings are at risk or are facing very grim situations. But from a global GDP outlook, or even a global population outlook, most of the major [emerging markets] along with most of the G20, essentially, are doing pretty well. I think it should be a concern for the poor people of the world but not for the world in general.”

New database

As part of the report, the World Bank announced that it is now using a new public database to assess global GDP growth, with data currently extending from 1981 to 2021. The database, according to the World Bank, is the first to track the way in which temporary economic disruptions, including “recessions and systemic banking crises,” affect economic growth over time.

The latter has particular relevance today, given the recent failures of several U.S. banks and the forced takeover of Swiss financial services giant Credit Suisse by UBS.

“Recessions tend to lower potential growth,” Franziska Ohnsorge, a lead author of the report and manager of the World Bank’s Prospects Group, said in a statement. “Systemic banking crises do greater immediate harm than recessions, but their impact tends to ease over time.”

Rojas-Suarez of the Center for Global Development praised the creation of the new database, saying that it “could be very useful, not only for future research but also for monitoring countries moving forward, and for international comparisons.”
…

Three U.S. astronauts and one Canadian astronaut are slated to make history in NASA’s upcoming Artemis II mission. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on the diverse crew scheduled to make the first lunar journey since 1972. Camera: Adam Greenbaum
…

Former U.S. President Donald Trump is flying from his Florida estate to New York, where he plans to spend Monday night at his Trump Tower residence and then turn himself in Tuesday to face a criminal indictment, the first ever filed against a current or former U.S. leader.

It is not known how Trump’s appearance at a state courthouse will play out. But his lawyers say he emphatically will not plead guilty to charges linked to his $130,000 hush money payment to a porn actress just ahead of his 2016 presidential election victory to silence her about her claim of an alleged tryst with him a decade earlier. Trump has long denied the claim.  

Officials familiar with the indictment say a grand jury last week charged the 76-year-old former president with more than 30 counts of criminal wrongdoing. The indictment remains sealed, and the exact charges, and possibly supporting evidence, could remain secret until the indictment is publicly disclosed at Trump’s arraignment Tuesday before Judge Juan Merchan in New York State Supreme Court.  

When he is booked, Trump is likely to be fingerprinted like any criminal defendant, and his mugshot taken. But authorities say as a deference to his standing as a former president, he is unlikely to be handcuffed or paraded before photographers in a so-called “perp walk.”   

But questions remain: Will the entirety of the indictment be read in open court? Will cameras — for still shots or television — be allowed in the courtroom, as media outlets are asking for? Will demonstrators, either those supporting Trump or angry at Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg for bringing the charges or expressing hope for a conviction, gather near the courthouse? If they materialize, will the protests be peaceful?

Barricades have been erected to restrict traffic near the courthouse, but Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Trump ally, and the New York Young Republican Club, say they are planning a “peaceful protest” against Bragg across the street from the courthouse on Tuesday afternoon.  

Trump already has criticized Bragg on social media for what he says is a political “witch hunt” against him. Trump has contended the judge “hates me,” after Merchan, in a separate case earlier this year, fined subsidiaries of The Trump Organization $1.6 million in a tax fraud scheme.   

After the proceeding, Trump, who is trying to win the 2024 Republican presidential nomination and reclaim the White House, is planning to fly back to Florida, where he will deliver remarks Tuesday night and gather with his supporters.  

Since his indictment last Thursday, Trump’s campaign said it has raised $5 million and logged more than 16,000 volunteer sign-ups, which campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said were “key indicators that Americans from all backgrounds are sick and tired of the weaponization of the justice system against President Trump and his supporters.”

Before the indictment, Trump led national polls in surveys taken of Republican voters on their choice for the party’s presidential nomination. Whether news of the indictment changes that show of support is not known.  

The former president is also facing other criminal investigations. They include federal probes of his efforts to upend his 2020 reelection loss to Democrat Joe Biden, including Trump’s role in encouraging supporters to try to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, and his retention of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida estate. He was required to turn over the material to the National Archives when he left office.

Meanwhile, in a narrower case, a prosecutor in the southern state of Georgia is probing Trump’s efforts there to reverse Biden’s win when Trump asked election officials to “find” him enough votes to claim victory.  

While the details of the New York hush money case remain undisclosed, the outcome of any trial could hinge on the intent behind the payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels. Michael Cohen, Trump’s long-time former lawyer and political fixer, used his own money to make the payment to her just ahead of the November 2016 election and was later reimbursed by Trump in installments, with Trump listing the payments on his corporate ledger as a business expense for Cohen’s legal fees.  

On Sunday, Trump lawyer Joe Tacopina told CNN the payment to Daniels was a “personal expenditure, not a campaign expenditure.” The Wall Street Journal first reported the payment in early 2018.   

U.S. legal analysts say prosecutors in the hush money case will face the difficult task of proving that the money paid to Daniels was a campaign contribution to help him win the presidency and not merely intended for personal reasons to hide an alleged marital infidelity.  

Tacopina said he and other lawyers will develop Trump’s legal strategy to refute the charges once they see the indictment. In Sunday talk show interviews, he brushed aside as premature questions about whether he would ask for a venue change or file a motion to dismiss the case.  

“We’re way too early to start deciding what motions we’re going to file or not file, and we do need to see the indictment and get to work,” he told ABC’s “This Week” show. “I mean, look, this is the beginning.”  

But he added, “We’re ready for this fight. And I look forward to moving this thing along as quickly as possible to exonerate him.”
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Ten years ago this month, Senator Chuck Schumer declared, “We all know that our immigration system is broken, and it’s time to get to work on fixing it.” Senator John McCain quoted Winston Churchill. But it was Lindsey Graham who offered the boldest prediction.

“I think 2013 is the year of immigration reform,” the South Carolina Republican said.

It wasn’t. And neither has any year since those “Gang of Eight” senators from both parties gathered in a Washington auditorium to offer hopeful pronouncements. In fact, today’s political landscape has shifted so dramatically that immigrant advocates and top architects of key policies over the years fear that any hope of an immigration overhaul seems further away than ever.

Many Republicans now see calling for zero tolerance on the border as a way to animate their base supporters. Democrats have spent the last decade vacillating between stiffer border restrictions and efforts to soften and humanize immigration policy — exposing deep rifts on how best to address broader problems.

“There are big questions about whether or not anything in the immigration family — anything at all — has the votes to pass,” said Cecilia Muñoz, who served as President Barack Obama’s top immigration adviser and was a senior member of Joe Biden’s transition team before he entered the White House.

The last extensive package came under President Ronald Reagan in 1986, and President George H.W. Bush signed a more limited effort four years later. That means federal agents guarding the border today with tools like drones and artificial intelligence are enforcing laws written back when cellphones and the internet were novelties.

Laying the problem bare in the deadliest of terms was a fire last month at a detention center on the Mexican side of the border that killed 39 migrants.

Congress came the closest to a breakthrough on immigration in 2013 with the Gang of Eight, which included Schumer, a New York Democrat who is now Senate majority leader, and Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. Their proposal cleared the Senate that June and sought a pathway to citizenship for millions of people in the country illegally and expanded work visas while tightening border security and mandating that employers verify workers’ legal status.

Democrats cheered a modernized approach to immigration. Republicans were looking for goodwill within the Latino community after Obama enjoyed strong support from Hispanic voters while being reelected in 2012.

Prominent supporters of the proposal were as diverse as the powerful AFL-CIO labor union and the pro-business U.S. Chamber of Commerce. There was more momentum than there had been for large immigration changes that fizzled in 2006 and 2007 under President George W. Bush.

Still, Republican House Speaker John Boehner gauged support for the Gang of Eight bill in the GOP-controlled chamber in January 2014 and said too many lawmakers distrusted the Obama administration. By that summer, the bill was dead.

Obama then created a program protecting from deportation migrants brought illegally to the United States as children. The Supreme Court has previously upheld it, but the court’s relatively recent 6-3 conservative majority could pose long-term threats.

Years after the creation of Obama’s program, President Donald Trump called for walling off all of the nation’s 3,219-kilometer southern border, and his administration separated migrant children from their parents and made migrants wait in Mexico while seeking U.S. asylum.

Biden endorsed a sweeping immigration package on his Inauguration Day, but it went nowhere in Congress. His administration has since loosened some Trump immigration policies and tightened others, even as his party has seen Republican support rise among Hispanic voters.

Officials have continued to enforce Title 42 pandemic-era health restrictions that allowed for migrants seeking U.S. asylum to be quickly expelled, although they are set to expire May 11. The Biden White House is also considering placing migrant families in detention centers while they wait for their asylum cases, something the Obama and Trump administrations did.

Gil Kerlikowske, who was commissioner of U.S. Customs and Border Protection under Obama, said, “A lot of things are coming together at once,” including Title 42 possibly ending, a spike in the number of South American migrants crossing through the treacherous rainforests of the Darian Gap between Colombia and Panama, and a 2024 presidential election ratcheting up the political pressure.

“Two-and-a-half years into the administration, there really hasn’t been any announcement of what is our immigration policy,” Kerlikowske said. “Getting laws passed is almost impossible. But what’s been the policy?”

The League of United Latin American Citizens is so desperate for meaningful progress that it has begun advocating for a full moratorium of up to six months on U.S. asylum as a way of calming things at the border. Its president, Domingo Garcia, said that migrants know they are processed and allowed to remain in the U.S. for years fighting for asylum in court, and that authorities need to “turn off the faucet” to help strained border cities.

“We need a total reset,” said Garcia, whose group is the nation’s oldest Latino civil rights organization. “I think that people on the far left are just as wrong as those who believe they should close the border and let no one in.”

Biden’s administration announced in early January that it would admit up to 30,000 people a month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela for two years with authorization to work and make it easier to apply online. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas argues that the new rules are designed to weaken cartels that help migrants cross into the U.S. illegally.

Mayorkas said recently that officials aim to create “lawful, safe and orderly pathways for people to reach the United States to claim asylum and to cut out the smuggling organizations.”

It appears to be working, for now. After federal authorities detained migrants more than 2.5 million times at the southern border in 2022 — including more than 250,000 in December, the highest monthly total on record — the number of encounters with migrants plummeted during the first two months of this year.

But fewer crossings have created a backlog of thousands of migrants hoping to seek U.S. asylum waiting on the Mexican side of the border. Last month’s fire at a Mexican government facility began amid a protest by migrants fearing deportation. Some of those being held said they’d been attempting to apply online when they were rounded up by Mexican authorities.

Meanwhile, warmer months often see major increases in the number of migrants at the U.S. border. And activists say that Biden has sent mixed signals by continuing to enforce Title 42 and considering reopening family detention centers — a possibility that even top Democrats are now decrying.

“We urge you to learn from the mistakes of your predecessors and abandon any plans to implement this failed policy,” Schumer and 17 other Senate Democrats recently wrote in a letter to Biden that called family detention policies “morally reprehensible and ineffective as an immigration management tool.”

Republicans have criticized Biden’s “border crisis” and, since Trump’s rise, made gains among voters in some heavily Latino areas. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, widely expected to be the leading alternative to Trump in next year’s Republican presidential primary, flew migrants from Texas to Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts, arguing that Democrats around the country were ignoring the crush of migrants on the U.S.-Mexico border.

In Miami, Nery Lopez was among a group of activists who recently mobilized to oppose a state bill that would punish people who transport migrants in the country illegally. Now 27, she was brought to the U.S. as a 4-year-old from Mexico and is protected from deportation by the Obama-era program.

Lopez said advocates were counting on the Biden administration to counter Republicans’ hard-line immigration policies.

“People feel defeated. I feel defeated,” she said. “It’s like we are going into the same cycle.”
…

NASA is to reveal the names on Monday of the astronauts — three Americans and a Canadian — who will fly around the Moon next year, a prelude to returning humans to the lunar surface for the first time in a half century.   

The mission, Artemis II, is scheduled to take place in November 2024 with the four-person crew circling the Moon but not landing on it.   

As part of the Artemis program, NASA aims to send astronauts to the Moon in 2025 — more than five decades after the historic Apollo missions ended in 1972.   

Besides putting the first woman and first person of color on the Moon, the US space agency hopes to establish a lasting human presence on the lunar surface and eventually launch a voyage to Mars.   

NASA administrator Bill Nelson said this week at a “What’s Next Summit” hosted by Axios that he expected a crewed mission to Mars by the year 2040.  

The four members of the Artemis II crew will be announced at an event at 10:00 am (1500 GMT) at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.   

The 10-day Artemis II mission will test NASA’s powerful Space Launch System rocket as well as the life-support systems aboard the Orion spacecraft.   

The first Artemis mission wrapped up in December with an uncrewed Orion capsule returning safely to Earth after a 25-day journey around the Moon.   

During the trip around Earth’s orbiting satellite and back, Orion logged well over 1.6 million kilometers and went farther from Earth than any previous habitable spacecraft.   

Nelson was also asked at the Axios summit whether NASA could stick to its timetable of landing astronauts on the south pole of the Moon in late 2025.   

“Space is hard,” Nelson said. “You have to wait until you know that it’s as safe as possible, because you’re living right on the edge.   

“So I’m not so concerned with the time,” he said. “We’re not going to launch until it’s right.”   

Only 12 people — all of them white men — have set foot on the Moon. 
…