Web searches reveal what America really cared about this year  
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President Joe Biden has pardoned six people who have served out sentences after convictions on a murder charge and drug- and alcohol-related crimes, including an 80-year-old woman convicted of killing her abusive husband about a half-century ago and a man who pleaded guilty to using a telephone for a cocaine transaction in the 1970s.

The pardons, announced Friday, mean the criminal record of each crime is now purged. They come a few months after the Democratic president pardoned thousands of people convicted of “simple possession” of marijuana under federal law. He also pardoned three people earlier this year and has commuted the sentences of 75 others.

Biden’s stance on low-level crimes, particularly low-level drug possession, and how those crimes can impact families and communities for decades to come has evolved over his 50 years in public service. In the 1990s, he supported crime legislation that increased arrest and incarceration rates for drug crimes, particularly for Black and Latino people. Biden has said people are right to question his stance on the bill, but he also has encouraged them to look at what he’s doing now on crime.

The pardons were announced while the president was spending time with his family on St. Croix, in the U.S. Virgin Islands. The White House said those pardoned are people who went on to serve their communities. It said the pardons reflect Biden’s view that people deserve a second chance.

Those granted pardons are:

— Beverly Ann Ibn-Tamas, 80, of Columbus, Ohio. At age 33, Ibn-Tamas was convicted of killing her husband. She testified that her husband beat her, verbally abused her and threatened her. She told jurors that she shot him moments after he had assaulted her, while she was pregnant. The judge refused to allow expert testimony on battered woman syndrome, a psychological condition that can develop among victims of domestic violence. Ibn-Tamas got one to five years of incarceration with credit for time served. Her appeal was among the first by someone with battered woman syndrome, and her case has been studied by academics.

— Charles Byrnes-Jackson, 77, of Swansea, South Carolina. Byrnes-Jackson pleaded guilty to possession and sale of spirits without tax stamps when he was 18, and it involved a single illegal whiskey transaction. He tried to enlist in the Marines but was rejected because of the conviction.

— John Dix Nock III, 72, of St. Augustine, Florida. Nock pleaded guilty to using his property as a grow-house for marijuana 27 years ago. He didn’t cultivate the plants, but he got six months of community confinement. He now operates a general contracting business.

— Gary Parks Davis, 66, of Yuma, Arizona. When Davis was 22, he admitted using a telephone for a cocaine transaction. He served a six-month sentence on nights and weekends in a county jail and completed probation in 1981. After the offense, the White House says, Davis earned a college degree and worked steadily, including owning a landscaping business and managing construction projects. He has volunteered at his children’s high school and in his community.

— Edward Lincoln De Coito III, 50, of Dublin, California. De Coito pleaded guilty at age 23 to being involved in a marijuana trafficking conspiracy. He was released from prison in December 2000 after serving nearly two years. Before the offense, De Coito had served honorably in the U.S. Army and the Army Reserves and had received numerous awards.

— Vincente Ray Flores, 37, of Winters, California. As a 19-year-old, Flores consumed Ecstasy and alcohol while serving in the Air Force, later pleading guilty at a special court-martial. He was sentenced to four months of confinement, loss of $2,800 in pay and a reduction in rank. Flores participated in a six-month rehab program that gives select enlisted offenders a chance to return to duty after therapy and education. His reduction in rank was amended, and he remains on active duty, earning medals and other awards for his service.
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Democrats in the U.S. Congress released six years’ worth of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns following a years-long legal fight in which Trump sought to keep the information private. The newly publicized records amount to nearly 6,000 pages, including the personal tax returns of Trump and his wife, Melania, from 2015 to 2020, as well as tax returns from Trump’s businesses.

Here are five key takeaways from the documents:

1. Trump’s personal income varied greatly year by year.

Of the six years covered by the documents from 2015 to 2020, Trump’s adjusted gross income ranged from a low of negative $32.4 million (in 2016) to a high of $24.4 million (in 2018).

1. Trump’s tax liability also greatly fluctuated.

Trump paid little to no taxes in three of the six years covered by the documents released: $0 taxes paid in 2020 and $750 in taxes paid in both 2016 and 2017. The former president paid larger sums in 2015 ($641,931), 2018 ($999,466) and 2019 ($133,445).

1. Trump claimed large deductions and losses.

While Trump’s gross income ran into the hundreds of millions of dollars, he also reported large losses and claimed various tax deductions, which reduced his adjusted gross income, along with the taxes he would have to pay on it.

1. Trump had bank accounts in several foreign countries.

In his tax filings, Trump said he had financial accounts in various foreign countries between 2015-2020, including China, Ireland, Great Britain and the Caribbean nation of St. Martin. By 2018, he had closed all his overseas accounts except for the one in Great Britain. The former president also reported earning money in foreign nations.

1. Trump’s charitable giving varied year by year.

Of the six years covered by the documents, Trump’s charitable giving ranged from a low of $0 in 2020 to a high of $1.8 million in 2017. Trump gave about half a million in each of 2018 and 2019, and $1.1 million in 2016.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Democrats in Congress released six years of former President Donald Trump’s tax returns on Friday, the culmination of a yearslong effort to learn more about the finances of a onetime business mogul who broke decades of political precedent when he refused to voluntarily release the information as he sought the White House. 

The returns, which include redactions of some personal sensitive information such as Social Security and bank account numbers, are from 2015 to 2020. They span nearly 6,000 pages, including more than 2,700 pages of individual returns from Trump and his wife, Melania, and more than 3,000 pages in returns for Trump’s business entities. 

Their release follows a party-line vote in the House Ways and Means Committee last week to make the returns public. Committee Democrats argued that transparency and the rule of law were at stake, while Republicans countered that the release would set a dangerous precedent undermining privacy protections. 

Trump did not release his returns when he ran for president, a major break in practice, and had waged a legal battle to keep them secret while he was in the White House. But the Supreme Court refused last month to keep the Treasury Department from turning them over to the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. 

“The Democrats should have never done it, the Supreme Court should have never approved it, and it’s going to lead to horrible things for so many people,” Trump said in a statement Friday. “The radical, left Democrats have weaponized everything, but remember, that is a dangerous two-way street!” 

He said the returns “once again show how proudly successful I have been and how I have been able to use depreciation and various other tax deductions as an incentive for creating thousands of jobs and magnificent structures and enterprises.” 

The returns underscore how Trump used tax law to minimize his liability. 

A report by Congress’ nonpartisan Joint Committee on Taxation released last week showed Trump paid $641,931 in federal income taxes in 2015, the year he began his campaign for president. He went on to pay $750 in 2016 and 2017, nearly $1 million in 2018, $133,445 in 2019 and nothing in 2020. 

For 2020, the filings released Friday show, more than 150 of Trump’s business entities listed negative qualified business income, which the IRS defines as “the net amount of qualified items of income, gain, deduction and loss from any qualified trade or business.” In total for that tax year, combined with nearly $9 million in carryforward loss from previous years, Trump’s qualified losses amounted to more than $58 million for the final year of his term in office. 

The release, just days before Trump’s fellow Republicans retake control of the House from the Democrats, provide the most detailed picture to date Trump’s finances, which have been shrouded in mystery and intrigue since his days as an up-and-coming Manhattan real estate developer in the 1980s. 

The disclosures, which focus on Trump’s time in office and include foreign tax credits and charitable contributions, come a month after Trump launched another campaign for the White House in 2024. 

The tax returns show that Trump claimed foreign tax credits for taxes he paid on various business ventures around the world, including licensing arrangements for use of his name on development projects and his golf courses in Scotland and Ireland. 

Trump, known for building skyscrapers and hosting a reality TV show before winning the White House, did give some limited details about his holdings and income on mandatory disclosure forms. He has promoted his wealth in the annual financial statements he provides to banks to secure loans and to financial magazines to justify his place on the rankings of the world’s billionaires. 

Trump’s longtime accounting firm has since disavowed the statements, and New York Attorney General Letitia James has filed a lawsuit alleging Trump and his Trump Organization inflated asset values on the statements as part of a yearslong fraud. Trump and his company have denied wrongdoing. 

In October 2018, The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series based on leaked tax records that showed Trump received a modern-day equivalent of at least $413 million from his father’s real estate holdings, with much of that money coming from what the Times called “tax dodges” in the 1990s. 

A second series in 2020 showed that Trump paid just $750 in federal income taxes in 2017 and 2018, as well as no income taxes at all in 10 of the past 15 years because he generally lost more money than he made. 

In its report last week, the Ways and Means Committee indicated the Trump administration may have disregarded a post-Watergate requirement mandating audits of a president’s tax filings. 

The IRS only began to audit Trump’s 2016 tax filings on April 3, 2019 — more than two years into his presidency — when the committee chairman, Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., asked the agency for information related to the tax returns. 

By comparison, there were audits of President Joe Biden for the 2020 and 2021 tax years, said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. A spokesperson for former President Barack Obama said Obama was audited in each of his eight years in office. 

The Joint Committee on Taxation report last week raised multiple red flags about aspects of Trump’s tax filings, including his carryover losses, deductions tied to conservation and charitable donations, and loans to his children that could be taxable gifts. 

The House passed a bill in response that would require audits of any president’s income tax filings. Republicans strongly opposed the legislation, raising concerns that a law requiring audits would infringe on taxpayer privacy and could lead to audits being weaponized for political gain. 

The measure, approved mostly along party lines, has little chance of becoming law anytime soon with a new Republican-led House being sworn in in January. Rather, it is seen as a starting point for future efforts to bolster oversight of the presidency. 

Republicans have argued that Democrats will regret the move once Republicans take power next week, and they warn that the committee’s new GOP chair will be under pressure to seek and make public the tax returns of other prominent people. 

Rep. Don Beyer, chairman of the Joint Economic Committee and a Ways and Means Committee member, presided over the routine pro forma session in the House as the tax returns were released. Beyer, D-Va., said the release was delayed as committee staff worked to redact personal and identifying information, a promise Democrats made to Republicans during a closed meeting last week. 

“We’ve been trying to be very careful to make sure that we weren’t ‘weaponizing’ the IRS returns,” he said. 

Every president and major-party candidate since Richard Nixon has voluntarily made at least summaries of their tax information available to the public. Trump bucked that trend as a candidate and as president, repeatedly asserting that his taxes were “under audit” and couldn’t be released. 

Trump’s lawyers were repeatedly denied in their quest to keep his tax returns from the House committee. A three-judge federal appeals court panel in August upheld a lower-court ruling granting the committee access. 

Trump’s lawyers also tried and failed to block the Manhattan district attorney’s office from getting Trump’s tax records as part of its investigation into his business practices, losing twice in the Supreme Court. 

Trump’s longtime accountant, Donald Bender, testified at the Trump Organization’s recent Manhattan criminal trial that Trump reported losses on his tax returns every year for a decade, including nearly $700 million in 2009 and $200 million in 2010. 

Bender, a partner at Mazars USA LLP who spent years preparing Trump’s personal tax returns, said Trump’s reported losses from 2009 to 2018 included net operating losses from some of the many businesses he owns through the Trump Organization. 

The Trump Organization was convicted earlier this month on tax fraud charges for helping some executives dodge taxes on company-paid perks such as apartments and luxury cars. 

 
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Capping a year of increasing tension between Washington and Beijing over advanced chips used in everything from smartphones to weapons of mass destruction, China has initiated a trade dispute at the World Trade Organization (WTO) against the United States for imposing wide-ranging semiconductor export controls on China.

The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Bureau of Industry and Security announced an extensive set of regulations on October 7, which restricted chips made using American tools from being exported to China, in addition to any semiconductors designed for artificial intelligence applications.

The wide-reaching export controls have effectively hobbled China’s semiconductor industry, prompting Beijing to announce on December 12 that it would initiate the WTO dispute.

“China’s filing of a lawsuit at the WTO is to resolve China’s concerns through legal means and is a necessary way to defend its legitimate rights and interests,” the country’s Ministry of Commerce said in a statement.

Beijing’s statement added that the U.S. restrictions “threatened the stability of the global industrial supply chain.”

In response, the United States said the WTO was “not the appropriate forum” to settle national security concerns, the BBC reported.

“U.S. national security interests require that we act decisively to deny access to advanced technologies,” U.S. Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Export Administration Thea Kendler said.

The export controls — which are among the strictest Washington has imposed — aim to slow China’s ability to produce high-end semiconductors that have uses in commercial and military technology. Advanced chips are used in artificial intelligence, supercomputers and weapons.

The U.S. began restricting sales of American technology to Chinese companies such as Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp. in 2020. In December 2021 the United States sanctioned nine Chinese technology companies over their ties to the surveillance of ethnic minorities such as Uyghurs.

In late August of this year, the Biden administration restricted technology companies like Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices from selling graphics processing units to China.

China’s initiation of a WTO dispute over the export controls did not surprise Martijn Rasser, director of the technology and national security program at the Washington-based Center for New American Security.

The dispute “underscores just how few options Beijing has to really counter the U.S. moves,” he told VOA Mandarin in an interview. “It’s mostly a symbolic move by Beijing. I don’t expect that Chinese leaders are really expecting anything to come out of this in their favor. But it’s one of the few courses of action that they have, so they took it.”

Reported chip developments over the summer in China may have spurred the United States to launch these extensive restrictions, according to Gerard DiPippo, a senior fellow at the Washington think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“My feeling is that they are worried about China’s progress in chips related to supercomputing and artificial intelligence,” he told VOA Mandarin.

Among the restrictions is a ban on the supply of cutting-edge graphics processing units (GPUs), or any electronics containing GPUs, to China. GPU chips play an important role in developing artificial intelligence applications.

The ban on GPUs also applies to chips made outside the U.S. because they are covered by the foreign direct product rule, so any chip made directly from U.S. technology or even partly produced from U.S.-made semiconductor production equipment is subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Since all semiconductor fabrication facilities use at least some U.S.-manufactured equipment, Washington has jurisdiction over every GPU in the world.

The United States imposed these GPU and other restrictions due to national security concerns, U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an October 12 speech at Georgetown University. He added that Washington was implementing a “small yard, high fence” policy.

“Chokepoints for foundational technologies have to be inside that yard,” he said. “And the fence has to be high — because our strategic competitors should not be able to exploit American and allied technologies to undermine American and allied security.”

To Washington, national security concerns outweighed any administration goals to lessen tensions with Beijing, according to Chris Miller, a Tufts University professor and author of the book “Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology.”

“The judgment made by the Biden administration is that this has created a risk that the United States is unwilling to tolerate,” he said. “For the United States, it is better to try to slow down China’s progress in chip manufacturing, even if it increases the tension between the two countries.”

When countries cite national security concerns, according to Rasser, the WTO typically lets that stand. Washington’s national security concerns about chips in this case “are ironclad,” Rasser said, so it’s extremely unlikely that the WTO will rule in favor of China.

Although the short-term effects of these restrictions are significant for China, Miller expects China will eventually be able to produce this technology on its own.

“China will eventually be able to find alternative sources, but I expect that it will not be very easy,” Miller said. “It’s going to be a long process and probably a pretty expensive one.”
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President Joe Biden on Thursday signed a $1.7 trillion spending bill that will keep the federal government of the United States operating through the end of the federal budget year in September 2023 and provide tens of billions of dollars in new aid to Ukraine for its fight against the Russian military.

Biden had until late Friday to sign the bill to avoid a partial government shutdown.

The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill 225-201, mostly along party lines, just before Christmas. The House vote came a day after the Senate, also led by Democrats, passed the bill 68-29 with significantly more Republican support.

Biden had said passage was proof that Republicans and Democrats can work together.

Representative Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader who hopes to become speaker when a new session of Congress opens January 3, argued during floor debate that the bill spends too much and does too little to curb illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl into the U.S. from Mexico.

“This is a monstrosity that is one of the most shameful acts I’ve ever seen in this body,” McCarthy said of the legislation.

McCarthy is appealing for support from staunch conservatives in the GOP caucus, who have largely blasted the bill for its size and scope. Republicans will have a narrow House majority come January 3, and several conservative members have vowed not to vote for McCarthy to become speaker.

The funding bill includes a roughly 6% increase in spending for domestic initiatives, to $772.5 billion. Spending on defense programs will increase by about 10%, to $858 billion.

Last-minute passage

Passage was achieved hours before financing for federal agencies was set to expire. Lawmakers had approved two short-term spending measures to keep the government operating, and a third, funding the government through December 30, passed last Friday. Biden signed it to ensure services would continue until Congress sent him the full-year measure, called an omnibus bill.

The massive bill, which topped out at more than 4,000 pages, wraps together 12 appropriations bills, aid to Ukraine, and disaster relief for communities recovering from natural disasters. It also contains scores of policy changes that lawmakers worked to include in the final major bill considered by that session of Congress.

Lawmakers provided roughly $45 billion for Ukraine and NATO allies, even more even Biden requested, an acknowledgment that future rounds of funding are not guaranteed when Republicans take control of the House next week following the party’s gains in the midterm elections.

Though support for Ukraine aid has largely been bipartisan, some House Republicans have opposed the spending and argued that the money would be better spent on priorities in the U.S.

McCarthy has warned that Republicans will not write a “blank check” for Ukraine in the future.

Federal election law revised

The bill also includes about $40 billion in emergency spending, mostly to help communities across the U.S. as they recover from drought, hurricanes and other natural disasters.

Biden signed the bill Thursday in the U.S. Virgin Islands, where he is spending time with his wife, Jill, and other family members on the island of St. Croix. The Bidens are staying at the home of friends Bill and Connie Neville, the White House said. Bill Neville owns US Viking, maker of ENPS, a news production software system that is sold by The Associated Press.

Also in the bill are scores of policy changes that although largely unrelated to spending, lawmakers worked furiously behind the scenes to get them added to the bill, which was the final piece of legislation that came out of that session of Congress. Otherwise, lawmakers sponsoring these changes would have had to start from scratch next year in a politically divided Congress in which Republicans will return to the majority in the House and Democrats will continue to control the Senate.

One of the most notable examples was a historic revision to federal election law to prevent a future president or presidential candidate from trying to overturn an election.

The bipartisan overhaul of the Electoral Count Act is a direct response to then-President Donald Trump’s efforts to persuade Republican lawmakers and then-Vice President Mike Pence to object to the certification of Biden’s victory on January 6, 2021, the day of the Trump-inspired insurrection at the Capitol.

Among the spending increases Democrats emphasized: a $500 increase in the maximum size of Pell Grants for low-income college students, a $100 million increase in block grants to states for substance abuse prevention and treatment programs, a 22% increase in spending on veterans’ medical care, and $3.7 billion in emergency relief to farmers and ranchers hit by natural disasters.

The bill also provides roughly $15.3 billion for more than 7,200 projects that lawmakers sought for their home states and districts. Under revamped rules for community project funding, also referred to as earmarks, lawmakers must post their requests online and attest they have no financial interest in the projects. Still, many fiscal conservatives criticize the earmarking as leading to unnecessary spending.
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A Chinese military plane came within 3 meters of a U.S. Air Force aircraft in the contested South China Sea last week and forced it to take evasive maneuvers to avoid a collision in international airspace, the U.S. military said Thursday.

The close encounter followed what the United States has called a recent trend of increasingly dangerous behavior by Chinese military aircraft.

The incident, which involved a Chinese Navy J-11 fighter jet and a U.S. air force RC-135 aircraft, took place on December 21, the U.S. military said in a statement.

“We expect all countries in the Indo-Pacific region to use international airspace safely and in accordance with international law,” it added.

A U.S. military spokesperson said the Chinese jet came within 10 feet of the plane’s wing, but 20 feet from its nose, which caused the U.S. aircraft to take evasive maneuvers.

The U.S. has raised the issue with the Chinese government, a separate U.S. official said.

The Chinese embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In the past, China has said the U.S. sending ships and aircraft into the South China Sea is not good for peace.

U.S. military planes and ships routinely carry out surveillance operations and travel through the region.

China claims vast swathes of the South China Sea that overlap with the exclusive economic zones of Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Trillions of dollars in trade flow every year through the waterway, which also contains rich fishing grounds and gas fields.

In a meeting with his Chinese counterpart in November, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin raised the need to improve crisis communications, and also noted what he called dangerous behavior by Chinese military planes.

Despite tensions between the U.S. and China, U.S. military officials have long sought to maintain open lines of communication with their Chinese counterparts to mitigate the risk of potential flare-ups or deal with any accidents.

Other countries report harassment 

Australia’s defense department said in June that a Chinese fighter aircraft dangerously intercepted an Australian military surveillance plane in the South China Sea region in May.

Australia said the Chinese jet flew close in front of the RAAF aircraft and released a “bundle of chaff” containing small pieces of aluminum that were ingested into the Australian aircraft’s engine.

In June, Canada’s military accused Chinese warplanes of harassing its patrol aircraft as they monitored North Korea sanction evasions, sometimes forcing Canadian planes to divert from their flight paths.

Friction between China and U.S.

Relations between China and the U.S. have been tense, with friction between the world’s two largest economies over everything from Taiwan and China’s human rights record to its military activity in the South China Sea.

U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s trip to Taiwan in August infuriated China, which saw it as a U.S. attempt to interfere in its internal affairs. China subsequently launched military drills near the island.

The U.S. has no formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan but is bound by law to provide the island with the means to defend itself.
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The U.S. Justice Department is suing one of the largest U.S. drug distributors for failing to report suspicious orders of prescription opioids, saying the company’s “years of repeated violations” contributed to the deadly U.S. opioid epidemic. 

In a civil lawsuit filed Thursday, the department alleges that AmerisourceBergen and two subsidiaries violated the Controlled Substances Act by failing to report “at least hundreds of thousands” of suspicious orders for prescription painkillers to the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The department is seeking potentially billions of dollars in penalties.

“For years, AmerisourceBergen prioritized profits over its legal obligations and over Americans’ well-being,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said during a press call.

Under the Controlled Substances Act, distributors of controlled drugs are required to monitor and report suspicious orders to the drug agency.

The lawsuit alleges that AmerisourceBergen failed to report “numerous orders from pharmacies that AmerisourceBergen knew were likely facilitating diversion of prescription opioids.”

The complaint cites five such pharmacies.

A Florida pharmacy and a West Virginia pharmacy received opioids from AmerisourceBergen that the company allegedly knew “were likely being sold in parking lots for cash,” according to the complaint.

In Colorado, AmerisourceBergen distributed prescription painkillers to a pharmacy it allegedly knew was its largest purchaser of oxycodone 30mg tablets in the state.

AmerisourceBergen identified 11 patients at the pharmacy as potential “drug addicts.” Two of those patients later died of overdoses, according to the lawsuit.

In New Jersey, an online pharmacy that received opioids from AmerisourceBergen has pleaded guilty to illegally selling controlled substances, while the chief pharmacist at another pharmacy has been indicted for drug diversion.

“These incidents were part of the systematic failure by AmerisourceBergen, including dramatically understaffing and underfunding its compliance programs,” Philip Sellinger, U.S. attorney for the District of New Jersey, said during the press call. “In one year, AmerisourceBergen spent more on taxicabs and office supplies than on the Controlled Substances Act compliance budget.”

In a statement, AmerisourceBergen said the lawsuit represented an attempt to “shift the onus of interpreting and enforcing the law from the Department of Justice and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to an industry they are tasked with regulating and policing.”

The five pharmacies were “cherrypicked” by the DOJ out of thousands the company serves, the statement said.

AmerisourceBergen is one of three major U.S. pharmaceutical distributors. The other two are McKesson and Cardinal Health.

In February the companies, along with pharmaceutical manufacturer Johnson & Johnson, agreed to pay $26 billion to settle thousands of civil lawsuits brought by state and local governments. Most of the money will go toward treatment and prevention.

The U.S. drug epidemic has killed more than 1 million people since 1999, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Opioids are the main driver of U.S. drug overdose deaths. Of an estimated 108,000 drug overdose deaths reported in the country last year, 81,000 involved opioids such as fentanyl, according to the CDC.  

 
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The U.S. State Department has approved the sale of an anti-tank mine-laying system to Taiwan amid the rising military threat from China.

The department on Wednesday said the Volcano system and all related equipment would cost an estimated $180 million.

It’s capable of scattering anti-tank and anti-personnel mines from either a ground vehicle or helicopter, the type of weapon some experts believe Taiwan needs more of to dissuade or repel a potential Chinese invasion.

To advertise that threat, China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the self-ruled island it claims is its own territory, Taiwan’s Defense Ministry said Monday.

China’s military harassment of Taiwan has intensified in recent years, along with rhetoric from top leaders that the island has no choice but to accept eventual Chinese rule.

That has seen the ruling Communist Party’s increasingly powerful military wing, the People’s Liberation Army, send planes or ships toward the island on a near-daily basis.

Between 6 a.m. Sunday and 6 a.m. Monday, 47 of the Chinese planes crossed the median of the Taiwan Strait, an unofficial boundary once tacitly accepted by both sides, according to the Defense Ministry.

That came after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions in a U.S. annual defense spending bill in what has come to be a standard Chinese practice.

China conducted large-scale live-fire military exercises in August in response to U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan. Beijing views visits from foreign governments to the island as de facto recognition of Taiwan as independent and a challenge to China’s claim of sovereignty.

While Washington has only unofficial ties with Taiwan in deference to Beijing, those include robust defense exchanges and military sales.

In its announcement, the State Department said the Volcano sale “serves U.S. national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability.”

It said Taiwan would have “no difficulty absorbing this equipment into its armed forces,” and that the sale would “not alter the basic military balance in the region.”

Analysts differ over what Taiwan’s defense priorities should be, with some calling for big-ticket items such as advanced fighter jets.

Others argue for a more flexible force, heavily armed with land-based missile systems to target enemy ships, planes and landing craft. China’s overwhelming numerical advantage in personnel and equipment give Taiwan little choice but to opt for that more “asymmetric” approach, they say.
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U.S. Representative-elect George Santos of New York was under investigation by Long Island prosecutors on Wednesday after revelations surfaced that the now-embattled Republican lied about his heritage, education and professional pedigree as he campaigned for office.

Despite intensifying doubt about his fitness to hold federal office, Santos has shown no signs of stepping aside — even as he publicly admitted to a long list of lies.

Nassau County District Attorney Anne T. Donnelly, a Republican, said the fabrications and inconsistencies were “nothing short of stunning.”

“The residents of Nassau County and other parts of the third district must have an honest and accountable representative in Congress,” she said. “If a crime was committed in this county, we will prosecute it.”

Santos’ campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

He is scheduled to be sworn in next Tuesday, when the U.S. House reconvenes. If he assumes office, he could face investigations by the House Committee on Ethics and the Justice Department.

The Republican has admitted to lying about having Jewish ancestry, a Wall Street pedigree and a college degree, but he has yet to address other lingering questions — including the source of what appears to be a quickly amassed fortune despite recent financial problems, including evictions and owing thousands in back rent.

Fellow Long Island Republican Representative-elect Nick Lalota said he was troubled by the revelations.

“I believe a full investigation by the House Ethics Committee and, if necessary, law enforcement, is required,” Lalota said Tuesday.

The New York attorney general’s office has already said it’s looking into issues that have come to light.

Brendan Brosh, a spokesperson for the Nassau County DA’s office, said Wednesday, “We are looking into the matter.” The scope of the investigation was not immediately clear.

Other Republicans castigated Santos but stopped short of asking him to step aside.

“Congressman-elect George Santos has broken the public trust by making serious misstatements regarding his background, experience and education, among other issues,” said Joseph G. Cairo, chair of the Nassau County Republican Committee, which is within the 3rd Congressional District.

Questions intensified after The New York Times examined the narrative Santos, 34, presented to voters during his successful campaign for a congressional district that straddles the north shore suburbs of Long Island and a sliver of Queens.

The Times uncovered records in Brazil that show Santos was the subject of a criminal investigation there in 2008 over allegations that he used stolen checks to buy items at a clothing shop in the city of Niteroi. At the time, Santos would have been 19. The Times quoted local prosecutors as saying the case was dormant because Santos had never appeared in court.

Santos continued to deny he was being sought by authorities in South America.

Democrats pounced, calling Santos a serial fabulist and demanded he voluntarily not take office.

In an interview with the New York Post earlier this week, Santos apologized for his fabrications but downplayed them as “sins” over embellishing his resume, adding that “we do stupid things in life.”

He admitted to lying about working for Citigroup and Goldman Sachs, as well as having earned a degree in finance and economics from Baruch College in New York.

Beyond his resume, Santos invented a life story that has also come under question, including claims that his grandparents “fled Jewish persecution in Ukraine, settled in Belgium and again fled persecution during World War II.”

During his campaign, he referred to himself as “a proud American Jew.”

He backtracked on that claim, saying he never intended to claim Jewish heritage, which would have likely raised his appeal among his district’s significant ranks of Jewish voters.

“I am Catholic,” he told the Post. “Because I learned my maternal family had a Jewish background, I said I was ‘Jew-ish.'”

In a statement Tuesday, the Republican Jewish Coalition repudiated Santos.

“He deceived us and misrepresented his heritage. In public comments and to us personally, he previously claimed to be Jewish,” the coalition said. “He will not be welcome at any future RJC event.”

On Fox News Tuesday night, Santos came under withering questioning by former Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who was sitting in for Tucker Carlson.

“You don’t really seem to be taking this seriously,” she told him.

“You’ve apologized. You’ve said you’ve made mistakes. But you’ve outright lied. A lie is not an embellishment on a resume,” she said.

“Look, I agree with what you’re saying,” Santos replied. “We can debate my resume and how I worked with firms such as —”

“Is it debatable?” Gabbard interjected. “Or is it just false?”

“No, it’s not false at all,” he said. “It’s debatable.”

Santos lost his first race for Congress in 2020 but successfully ran again this year.

In its opposition research on Santos, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee raised several red flags about the Republican’s record — but also accepted some of his assertions, including his educational record, as fact. The 87-page dossier sought to tie him to the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and his support for baseless claims of widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.

The report also sought to depict him as a far-right candidate. But buried within its report, the DCCC had raised issues about his shaky financial standing and multiple evictions that left him thousands of dollars in debt.

Federal campaign records show that he loaned his campaign more than $700,000, but the source of that money has yet to be explained.

While his Democratic opponent, Robert Zimmerman, also tried to raise Santos’ misrepresentations during his losing campaign, it did not gain much traction.

Zimmerman has said that Santos is unfit for office and has called for him to step aside so a special election can be held.
…

As Republicans prepare to take control of the U.S. House of Representatives, they are looking to put their stamp on a range of issues, including China.

House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy of California, who is campaigning to become the next speaker of the House of Representatives, has named Republican Congressman Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin to lead a new House Select Committee on China.

Gallagher spoke with VOA Mandarin on December 15 on Capitol Hill about his plans for the new panel, which aims to focus on economic and security competition with China.

A large part of what the new committee will do, Gallagher said, is “explain to our colleagues and by extension the American people why this [China issue] matters. We want to connect … the sort of the geopolitical concerns about China to the day-to-day reality for Americans and explain why this is … the biggest challenge of our time.”

VOA: You are going to lead the new House Committee on China next year. Can you share with us some of your priorities when you start the chairmanship?

Rep. Mike Gallagher: Our first priority right now is just getting the best team together, both in terms of members and not just Republicans, but Republicans and Democrats. I want it to be a group of serious, sober members. I want it to be bipartisan and also just recruiting a good staff.

We want to make sure that we’re enhancing and elevating the discussion on China while also being sensitive to committee jurisdiction for [the] other committees that are already in a lot of space. I mean, Mike McCaul has led the China Task Force and he did a phenomenal job with it. HFAC (House Foreign Affairs Committee) obviously has been on foreign assistance; Taiwan, we don’t want to step in that territory. We just want to … enhance the conversation and maybe pick a few issues where people aren’t paying sufficient attention or aren’t naturally part of the committee’s jurisdiction.

So that’s, one, getting the team together. Two is kind of really mapping out the strategy for public hearings. I think a large part of what we need to do is explain to the American people, explain to our colleagues and by extension the American people, why this matters. I mean, sometimes you think about China’s sort of distant territorial threat or obscure territorial claims in the South and East China Sea, or some obscure discussion about microelectronics or things like that. We want to connect the concerns, the sort of the geopolitical concerns about China to the day-to-day reality for Americans and explain why this is kind of the biggest challenge of our time. So that’s kind of the hearing schedule, and the public conversation we have on China is going to be a big part of that.

I am starting to think through, “What are the deliverables for the committee?” You know, potentially, like an annual report that we put out there. One other function we can play is just sort of collecting and curating all the China-related legislation that gets introduced every single day. I mean, every member of Congress is doing something related to China. What’s the clearinghouse for evaluating that? And then potentially identifying the 10 to 20 priority pieces of legislation that the speaker wants to actually push forward in the next Congress. So those are a few of the early ideas.

VOA: Is there any Democratic member reaching out to you or talking about their interest in joining the committee?

GALLAGHER: There is a lot. I’m not going to name names, but a lot of [members] reached out to me. I hope, I’m very optimistic that it will be bipartisan. You know, last time Democratic leadership wouldn’t let their members participate in the China Task Force. I think we’re past that now. And I’m trying to communicate [that] this is going to be like a bombing practice. It’s going to be serious and we want it to be bipartisan.

VOA: We know there are a lot of issues between the U.S. and China that are very complicated. But what’s the most important issue?

GALLAGHER: I think the most important thing is near-term deterrence with respect to Taiwan. We’ve entered the window of maximum danger. And we want to make sure that we are doing everything possible to find hard power, west of the International Dateline and around Taiwan to prevent the [People’s Liberation Army] from doing something stupid.

The second issue is what I call “economic statecraft” — how do we smartly and selectively decouple when it comes to technology, when it comes to data and when it comes to U.S. dollars? We don’t want American taxpayer dollars or retirement financial security subsidizing China’s military modernization or subsidizing genocide. And part of that is enforcing laws we’ve recently passed, whether it’s the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act or the Export Control Reform Act.

And then the third thing is what I would call ideological competition and human rights. How can we shine a light on some of the malicious practices of the regime and the [Chinese Communist Party’s] abysmal human rights record? And that’s important, so that the American people understand who we’re dealing with.
…

A Delaware trucker described as an architect of the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan’s governor was sentenced Wednesday to more than 19 years in prison — the longest term yet given to anyone convicted in the plot.

Prosecutors had sought a life sentence for Barry Croft Jr., 47, who was the fourth and final federal defendant to learn his fate. Judge Robert J. Jonker described him as “the idea guy” behind the plot and called him “a very convincing communicator” for people who were open to his views.

“However twisted or irrational it may seem to many of us, it did resonate to the targeted audience,” the judge said. “That is as important a method of leadership as being out in the field telling people where to go.”

Defense attorney Joshua Blanchard said he would appeal the sentence.

Croft and Adam Fox were convicted in August of conspiracy charges in Grand Rapids. Croft also was found guilty of possessing an unregistered explosive.

Fox, 39, was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years behind bars. The government also sought a life sentence for him.

Both men were accused of hatching a stunning plot to abduct Governor Gretchen Whitmer from her vacation home just before the 2020 presidential election. The conspirators were furious over tough COVID-19 restrictions that Whitmer and officials in other states had put in place during the early months of the pandemic, as well as perceived threats to gun ownership.

Whitmer was not physically harmed. The FBI was secretly embedded in the group and made 14 arrests.

“We’re talking about a conspiracy to physically kidnap the governor, potentially assassinate her as well. It doesn’t get much more serious than that,” Jonker said before announcing Croft’s sentence. “The group had a lot of guns. This group had all kinds of material ready to go to achieve their end.”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler called Croft the “spiritual leader” of the group of conspirators, comparing his role to that of “some sheikh in ISIS.”

“He essentially was putting himself as a role of a prophet … there are people who believe this sort of rhetoric, and he used it,” Kessler told the judge.

“This man is fully radicalized. He hasn’t changed his viewpoint,” Kessler added. “He’s not admitting the ideas are wrong because he still holds them. This whole thing was Mr. Croft’s idea.”

Whitmer’s office declined to comment Wednesday. She said in August that the guilty verdicts proved that “those who seek to divide us will be held accountable.” She also said such plots are “a disturbing extension of radicalized domestic terrorism” that threaten “the very foundation of our republic.”

Croft regularly wore the type of tricorn hat common during the American Revolution and had tattoos on his arms symbolizing resistance — “Expect Us” — as he traveled to Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan to meet with like-minded extremists.

A different jury in Grand Rapids couldn’t reach a verdict on the pair at the first trial last spring but acquitted two other men.

The abduction was meant to be the beginning of a “reign of terror,” Kessler said in court documents. Croft’s plan called for riots, “torching” government officials in their sleep and setting off violence across the country.

In one key piece of evidence, Croft, Fox and others traveled to see Whitmer’s vacation home in northern Michigan, with undercover agents and informants inside the cabal.

At one point, Croft told allies: “I don’t like seeing anybody get killed either. But you don’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, you know what I mean?”

Croft’s attorney tried to soften his client’s role. In a court filing, Blanchard said Croft did not actually have authority over others and often frustrated them because he “just kept talking.”

Croft “went way down a conspiracy rabbit hole,” Blanchard said Wednesday in seeking a sentence less than life.

“When the pandemic touched off, a lot of people went down a similar rabbit hole and suddenly Mr. Croft was connected with a lot of people who felt the same way he did,” Blanchard told the judge.

Blanchard, who got emotional in the courtroom when speaking about Croft’s three children, told reporters outside the courthouse that the sentence means Croft will not get to see his kids grow up.

Blanchard also maintained that Croft wasn’t the “ideas guy” he’s been portrayed as. He insisted that “most of what Mr. Croft said was excluded because the government didn’t want the jury to hear it.”

Two men who pleaded guilty and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2 1/2-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.

In state court, three men recently received lengthy sentences for assisting Fox in the summer of 2020. Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is.

When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
…

President Joe Biden, currently vacationing in the U.S. Virgin Islands, has said he would take time over the holidays to discuss with family members whether he should seek re-election in 2024.

White House and Democratic Party officials say it is almost certain Biden will run again. But will he secure his party’s nomination?

An ideal place to explore that question is Prince George’s County, Maryland, where Biden received 89% support — his highest percentage in the 2020 general election.

Only about one-fourth of the 400,000 eligible voters in Prince George’s County usually cast ballots in major elections. Regardless of the turnout, the outcome is predictable in general elections for countywide offices — Democrats are almost assured victory in the largest African American-majority county in the United States.

The county executive, the 11 members of the county council, the sheriff, the clerk of the court and the nearly two dozen lawmakers from the county holding office in the state general assembly are all Democrats.

“There is no Republican I can think of that actually is viable, that would be able to win within Prince George’s County,” county Democratic Central Committee chair Kent Roberson said.

The Republican Central Committee vice chair in Prince George’s County agrees.

“Not in my lifetime. I’m 70 years old right now. So, Maryland has become more Democrat-leaning — certainly the county has — over the years that I’ve been here,” Jim Wass told VOA.

That does not mean Republicans in the county should give up casting ballots in general elections, said Wass.

“One of these times, it’s going to matter.”

An issue of age

What matters for many voters of both parties is that Biden, already the oldest U.S. president, would be 86 years old if he were to finish a second term. But in this county where he topped the polls in 2016, would he be able to vanquish all primary election challengers in 2024?

“I don’t believe he has blind total support,” Roberson told VOA. “And one, if we look at the [low] approval ratings, I don’t think that’s just all Republicans who feel that way, but it is Democrats, as well. And regardless of how I feel about the president and how he is succeeding, I think that we’re also aware that individuals are concerned that he might not be the one to continue in office for another four years.”

Biden, according to Roberson, did his part by bringing the country “through a transition stage from President [Donald] Trump to where we are now.”

As in other heavily Democratic districts across the country, Prince George’s County Democrats are not monolithic. Democrats individually wear different labels: progressive, moderate, liberal or conservative. In 2016, they came together for Biden to deny Trump a second term.

“We all have been able to take all of our differences and work together. But you’ll also see where some of those individuals think that leadership is needed to move forward in a different candidate. And so, that also sways how individuals feel whether President Biden should continue in office or not,” Roberson said.

Many possible contenders

Incumbent presidents seeking a second term rarely face serious intraparty challenges, but Biden’s age could put precedent aside.

Asked to assess Democratic presidential hopefuls, Republican Wass said Gavin Newsom, the 55-year-old governor of California, perhaps could appeal to Prince George’s Democrats more than Biden.

“Somebody like Gavin Newsom might fit the mentality of Prince George’s Democrats,” he said.

As recently as November, Newsom has dismissed speculation he would challenge Biden.

“He not only beat Trump once, I think he can beat him again,” Newsom told Politico in an interview. “I hope he runs. I’ll enthusiastically support him.”

If Biden does not run for reelection or is forced out of contention by a health issue, Newsom is seen as a leading candidate, along with Vice President Kamala Harris, who is 58; Senator Bernie Sanders, 81; and Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, a relatively youthful 40. All three were contenders in the 2020 Democratic primaries.

Wass recalls 1992 when an obscure governor from Arkansas named Bill Clinton decided to run for the Democratic Party presidential nomination, despite political pundits predicting New York Governor Mario Cuomo was the one to beat incumbent Republican George H.W. Bush. Cuomo’s campaign collapsed before it began, and Clinton defeated Bush in the general election.

“Gavin Newsom must run or he’s wasting that opportunity,” said Wass, adding that for the same reason, former Vice President Mike Pence and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo should enter the Republican primary contests in 2024.

“Even with former President Trump appearing to lock up a lot of the money and attention right now, these guys must run,” Wass said.

Other possible primary challengers to Trump include Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley, South Carolina Senator Tim Scott and Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney (who was defeated for reelection this year and is the daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney). Also mentioned among moderate Republicans are New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu and Maryland Governor Larry Hogan.

The only elected president in American history to be denied his party’s nomination for a second term was Democrat Franklin Pierce in 1856. But the concern then was the president’s policies, not his age.

The hard-drinking Pierce favored enslavement as the country headed toward civil war over the issue. His party decided to instead nominate James Buchanan, a former secretary of state who had served as Pierce’s ambassador to the United Kingdom and thus had not been involved in the contentious slavery debate.

Buchanan, who was himself no friend to the abolitionists, bested two contenders in the general election from the Whig and Republican parties, despite not actively campaigning, capturing every slave state except Maryland.

Historians generally consider Pierce and Buchanan among America’s worst presidents.
…

Families hoping to catch a Southwest Airlines flight after days of cancellations, missing luggage and missed family connections suffered through another wave of scrubbed flights, with another 2,500 pulled from arrival and departure boards Wednesday.

Exhausted travelers sought passage by other means using different airlines, rental cars, or trains — or they’ve simply given up.

According to the FlightAware tracking service, more than 91% of all canceled flights in the U.S. early Wednesday were from Southwest, which has been unable to recover from ferocious winter storms that raked large swaths of the country over the weekend.

The operational systems of Southwest have been uniquely effected, so much so that the federal government is now investigating what happened at the Dallas carrier, which has frustrated its own flight and ground crews as well.

This week, with cancellations from other major airlines ranging from none to 2%, Southwest has canceled nearly 10,000 flights as of Wednesday and warned of thousands more Thursday and Friday, according to FlightAware.

In a video that Southwest posted late Tuesday, CEO Robert Jordan said Southwest would operate a reduced schedule for several days but hoped to be “back on track before next week.”

Jordan blamed the winter storm for snarling the airline’s “highly complex” network. He said Southwest’s tools for recovering from disruptions work “99% of the time, but clearly we need to double down” on upgrading systems to avoid a repeat of this week.

“We have some real work to do in making this right,” said Jordan, a 34-year Southwest veteran who became CEO in February. “For now, I want you to know that we are committed to that.”

The airline is now drawing unwanted attention from Washington.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions, said his agency would examine the causes of Southwest’s widespread cancellations and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers.

“Because what we’re seeing right now, from the system and the flights themselves to the inability to reach anybody on a customer service phone line, it is just completely unacceptable,” Buttigieg told CBS early Wednesday.
…

NASA is exploring whether SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft can potentially offer an alternative ride home for some crew members of the International Space Station after a Russian capsule sprang a coolant leak while docked to the orbital lab.

NASA and Russia’s space agency, Roscosmos, are investigating the cause of a punctured coolant line on an external radiator of Russia’s Soyuz MS-22 spacecraft, which is supposed to return its crew of two cosmonauts and one U.S. astronaut to Earth early next year.

But the December 14 leak, which emptied the Soyuz of a vital fluid used to regulate crew cabin temperatures, has derailed Russia’s space station routines, with engineers in Moscow examining whether to launch another Soyuz to retrieve the three-man team that flew to ISS aboard the crippled MS-22 craft.

If Russia cannot launch another Soyuz ship, or decides for some reason that doing so would be too risky, NASA is weighing another option.

“We have asked SpaceX a few questions on their capability to return additional crew members on Dragon if necessary, but that is not our prime focus at this time,” NASA spokeswoman Sandra Jones said in a statement to Reuters.

SpaceX did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.

It was unclear what NASA specifically asked of SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capabilities, such as whether the company can find a way to increase the crew capacity of the Dragon currently docked to the station, or launch an empty capsule for the crew’s rescue.

But the company’s potential involvement in a mission led by Russia underscores the degree of precaution NASA is taking to ensure its astronauts can safely return to Earth, should one of the other contingency plans arranged by Russia fall through.

The leaky Soyuz capsule ferried U.S. astronaut Frank Rubio and cosmonauts Sergey Prokopyev and Dimitri Petelin to the space station in September for a six-month mission. They were scheduled to return to Earth in March 2023.

The station’s four other crew members — two more from NASA, a third Russian cosmonaut and a Japanese astronaut — arrived in October via a NASA-contracted SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule, which also remains parked at the ISS.

SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, a gumdrop-shaped pod with four astronaut seats, has become the centerpiece to NASA’s human spaceflight efforts in low-Earth orbit. Besides Russia’s Soyuz program, it is the only entity capable of ferrying humans to the space station and back.

Three possible culprits

Finding what caused the leak could factor into decisions about the best way to return the crew members. A meteroid-caused puncture, a strike from a piece of space debris or a hardware failure on the Soyuz capsule itself are three possible causes of the leak that NASA and Roscosmos are investigating.

A hardware malfunction could raise additional questions for Roscosmos about the integrity of other Soyuz vehicles, such as the one it might send for the crew’s rescue, said Mike Suffredini, who led NASA’s ISS program for a decade until 2015.

“I can assure you that’s something they’re looking at, to see what’s back there and whether there’s a concern for it,” he said. “The thing about the Russians is they’re really good at not talking about what they’re doing, but they’re very thorough.”

Roscosmos chief Yuri Borisov had previously said engineers would decide by Tuesday how to return the crew to Earth, but the agency said that day it would make the decision in January.

NASA has previously said the capsule’s temperatures remain “within acceptable limits,” with its crew compartment currently being vented with air flow allowed through an open hatch to the ISS.

Sergei Krikalev, Russia’s chief of crewed space programs, told reporters last week that the temperature would rise rapidly if the hatch to the station were closed.

NASA and Roscosmos are primarily focusing on determining the leak’s cause, Jones said, as well as the health of MS-22 which is also meant to serve as the three-man crew’s lifeboat in case an emergency on the station requires evacuation.

A recent meteor shower initially seemed to raise the odds of a micrometeoroid strike as the culprit, but the leak was facing the wrong way for that to be the case, NASA’s ISS program manager Joel Montalbano told reporters last week, though a space rock could have come from another direction.

And if a piece of space debris is to blame, it could fuel concerns of an increasingly messy orbital environment and raise questions about whether such vital equipment as the spacecraft’s coolant line should have been protected by debris shielding, as other parts of the MS-22 spacecraft are.

“We are not shielded against everything throughout the space station,” Suffredini said. “We can’t shield against everything.” 

 
…

Marie Rodriguez of Bountiful, Utah, began using social media when she enlisted in the U.S. Navy. At first, she saw it as a positive thing.

“It helped me to really keep in touch with people at home while I was deployed and living overseas,” she told VOA.

However, in the two months since Tesla CEO Elon Musk acquired Twitter, Rodriguez and many of its hundreds of millions of users have been forced to reevaluate their feelings about the platform and about social media in general.

“I don’t think he’s been positive at all,” Rodriguez said. “He’s allowing all of these previously banned accounts back on the platform, and I’m seeing more offensive Tweets — more anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ hate speech.”

“Some social media platforms over-patrol,” she added, “but Twitter isn’t patrolling enough. The result is more trolling, more bots and more hate. I’ve definitely been using the platform less because of it.”

Musk is a polarizing figure among Americans. In his own self-created poll on the platform, 57.5% of respondents said he should resign as Twitter chief, compared to 42.5% who said he should stay. (Musk has said he will abide by the poll’s results and resign his post as soon as a replacement is hired.)

Independent surveys, however, have shown Musk’s actions to be less unpopular than his Twitter poll indicated. A Quinnipiac University survey from earlier this month, for example, found that Americans’ opinions are more evenly split, with 37% saying they approved of the way he’s operating Twitter, 37% disapproving and 25% offering no opinion.

“I’m generally critical of billionaires,” said Avi Gupta, a neurobiologist in the nation’s capital, “but I’m so far supportive of what Musk has done for Twitter. As far as free speech is concerned, definitely, but also the platform’s just a lot more exciting to follow.”

A new Twitter

Gupta said he became disenchanted with rival social media platform Instagram when he posted a photo of Ukrainian soldiers who appeared to be wearing patches containing Nazi symbols. The post was promptly removed by administrators.

“To me, in that example, what Instagram is saying is that reporting on Nazism is no different than glorifying it,” Gupta explained. “It’s a form of censorship, but it was happening in pre-Musk Twitter, too. They were too quick to suspend accounts when they challenged mainstream thinking — whether it be about the Ukraine war, U.S. military interventions or COVID.”

“Since Musk,” he added, “I don’t have to censor myself as much, and you’re seeing previously banned accounts from politicians and scientists welcomed back. You have to balance that with stopping dangerous hate speech, of course — which I think they’re doing OK with — but overall, I think it’s been a good thing.”

According to University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication Professor Damian Radcliffe, Musk arrived at Twitter with an entrepreneurial reputation and a desire to grow the platform that appealed to many users.

Others, however, expressed concerns about what Musk’s commitment to freedom of speech and a scaling back of platform moderation might mean, as well as the implications of users now being able to purchase a verified “blue check” account.

“Those worries seem to have been justified,” Radcliffe told VOA. “I personally have seen a lot of people I follow leave the platform. They’re pointing to a less civil discourse, as well as a greater prevalence of misinformation, hate speech and conspiracy theories in their feed as the main reasons they’re departing.”

In the two months since he took over, Musk has reinstated several previously banned Twitter accounts — most notably that of former U.S. President Donald Trump, though Trump eschewed the platform after his reinstatement. Musk has also banned (and sometimes reinstated) the accounts of several journalists.

“It’s been wild to watch as he came in talking about free speech,” said Ron Gubitz, executive director of a New Orleans nonprofit organization. “But then, all of a sudden, he’s suspending journalists’ accounts, banning an account tracking his jet, and — albeit temporarily — saying we couldn’t post links to other social media.”

Gubitz is a self-described “Twitter head,” having been on the platform for more than 14 years. He said he’s been disappointed in how it has operated since Musk’s purchase.

“Initially it was annoying because the discourse was all about Musk,” he said to VOA. “What is Musk saying? What is he going to do? It felt middle-school gossipy.”

“But the user interface has also actually gotten worse since he took over,” Gubitz added. “The platform isn’t updating well for me, it’s not adding enough new tweets, there are ads at the top of the screen every time I refresh and the whole thing just feels less secure. I’m cool with change, but this is going in the wrong direction.”

America’s relationship with social media

“I use Twitter less and less every day and I’ve actually removed the app from my phone,” said Kimm Rogers, a musician from San Diego, California. “I used to see tweets from the people I follow, but now my feed shows me [acquitted Wisconsin shooter] Kyle Rittenhouse, Elon Musk and [Texas Republican Senator] Ted Cruz. There’s a lot more hate especially towards black people, LGBTQ and Jewish people. There’s also more porn showing up in my feed as well as lots of disinformation over vaccines and the war in Ukraine.”

“It’s just hard on my psyche to see the lack of common decency and the cruelty often inflicted on others on this site,” Rogers added, “It diminishes my view of humanity.”

Polls show opinions on the direction of Twitter are often connected to political leanings. Quinnipiac’s December poll showed that 63% of Republican respondents said they viewed Musk favorably, while only 9% of Democrats said the same.

Many left-leaning users have threatened to leave the platform entirely. According to information from the Twitter analytics firm Bot Sentinel, approximately 877,000 accounts were deactivated in the week after Musk purchased Twitter. Nearly 500,000 were temporarily suspended. In total, that’s more than double the usual number and has included prominent celebrities who cited a rise in hate speech and the banning of journalists as their reason for leaving.

More recently, some users have organized “Twitter Walk-out Days” in which they log off for a period of time in protest. Others have threatened to move to other social media platforms that better align with their values.

If those users do move on, Nicole Dahmen, professor at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication, says it won’t be the first time users shifted away from a form of technology.

“Leaving Twitter is the latest iteration of unfriending Facebook a decade ago or killing your television in the 1980s,” Dahmen told VOA. “There are valid reasons to consume and participate with these mediums and there are even more valid reasons to leave them. They’ve ultimately trivialized American discourse, and our political, social and emotional health has suffered.”

But it’s not just Twitter that appears to be experiencing a plateauing of popularity around the world. From 2018 to 2022, average daily social media use increased by only five minutes — from 142 minutes to 147 minutes — according to Statista.com. During the previous four years, average social media use increased by a whopping 38 minutes per day.

Sense of community

“Social media can be a great thing in how it creates a sense of community and allows us to find commonalities,” said Ivory Burnett of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

Burnett said she prefers Twitter over other platforms because it encourages what she sees as more authentic, “less cosmetic” interactions.

“When used for good, it’s the megaphone for an entire generation,” she told VOA. “But it also results in bullying, misunderstanding and crowd-thinking that makes it easier to spread hate and harm.”

But, like so many who, despite their frustrations with the platform, say they don’t want to start over elsewhere after dedicating so many years to building a following on Twitter, Burnett said she has no intention of leaving.

“Leave? I’ve never considered leaving,” she said and laughed. “I’ll be here until my login stops working.”
…

A $1.7 trillion spending bill the U.S. Congress passed last week includes a measure seeking accountability for people working for or on behalf of the government of Iran to harass and surveil Iranian citizens.

The Masih Alinejad Harassment and Unlawful Targeting Act is named after a VOA Persian television host and critic of the Iranian government who was the target of a plot to kidnap her and take her back to Iran.

“Congress finds that the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran surveils, harasses, terrorizes, tortures, abducts, and murders individuals who peacefully defend human rights and freedoms in Iran, and innocent entities and individuals considered by the Government of Iran to be enemies of that regime, including United States citizens on United States soil, and takes foreign nationals hostage,” the legislation says.

The measure directs the U.S. secretary of state to file a report detailing the state of human rights in Iran, what actions the Iranian government has taken during the past year to target dissidents inside and outside of Iran and how it finances the silencing of its critics.

The report, which is to be updated yearly, is also required to identify people who work for the Iranian government who are involved in harassment, surveillance, kidnapping, torture or killing of Iranian and U.S. citizens who seek to expose illegal or corrupt activities carried out by Iranian officials.

Those individuals are subject to sanctions that include being ineligible to enter the United States, canceling of existing visas and blocks on owning property in the United States.

Foreign financial institutions that knowingly conduct a significant transaction with any of those individuals are also subject to sanctions.
…

Storm-weary road crews and residents of western New York state in the United States struggled on Tuesday to dig out from a deadly weekend blizzard, with snow still falling and forecasts for rapid warming and rains that could cause flooding and turn the frozen landscape to slush.

The region in and around Buffalo, New York — downwind of Lake Erie and Lake Ontario — emerged as ground zero for an Arctic deep freeze and massive winter storm that extended over most of the U.S. last week and through the Christmas holiday as far south as the Mexican border.

Confirmed storm-related deaths in New York’s Erie and Niagara counties rose to 32 on Tuesday, officials said, as snowfall began to taper off. Emergency crews continued locating and removing vehicles left buried under mounds of snow and drifts several feet high.

Some of the dead were found frozen in cars, others in snowbanks outdoors, while some died in medical emergencies such as cardiac arrest while shoveling snow, Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz told reporters.

“We’re recovering from the worst storm I’ve ever seen, certainly in terms of death from mother nature’s wrath,” he said.

Nationwide, at least 60 people died in weather-related incidents in recent days, NBC News reported.

52 inches in four days

In and around Buffalo, up to 52 inches of snow fell over four days, and a bit more was expected by Tuesday night, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).

The situation was expected to change dramatically. The NWS forecast a rapid thaw later this week, with spring-like temperatures well above freezing and well above normal, accompanied by rain that could unleash flooding.

“This is one of the reasons certain streets are targeted for extra clearance to allow for proper drainage of melt water,” Poloncarz said on Twitter.

Progress was slow due to the sheer volume and depth of the snow, which Poloncarz said “is not plowable.”

‘Lot of work to do’

Front-loader tractors were brought in to shovel snow into dump trucks to be carted off and discarded elsewhere. Poloncarz said it would take two days to open up one lane on every city street.

Giant snow-blowing machines were deployed to help clear several major highways clogged with towering drifts. A ban on personal road travel was still in effect for Buffalo.

Hundreds of electric company linemen were out restoring power, and Poloncarz tweeted that some 4,500 customers remained without electricity on Tuesday, as crews cleared downed trees with chain saws.

For residents essentially trapped in their homes for two days, the easing of the storm brought a realization of how much snow fell during white-out conditions that had limited their view.

“We would look out the window and it was blowing so much that we couldn’t really tell if we were getting any accumulation, but when it finally settled, we had a lot of work to do,” said Jim Nowak, who was out shoveling on Tuesday.

Accounts also emerged of residents who welcomed in strangers caught outdoors at the height of the blizzard and spent much of the holiday weekend with them. One was a barbershop owner who told the Buffalo News he sheltered 40 people the first night of the storm and about 30 the next.

NWS meteorologist Bob Oravec of the NWS Weather Prediction Center in Maryland predicted two more inches of snow would fall in western New York Tuesday, but said that was “probably the last.”

“It’ll be warming up soon. By Thursday the high will be [8 Celsius]. By Saturday it’ll be [12C],” Oravec said. Tuesday remained cold, with a high of -2 and a low of -6, he said.

‘Once-in-a-lifetime’ disaster

Buffalo, New York state’s second-largest city, was hardest hit by the blizzard, which took shape over the Great Lakes on Friday and extended its grip into the Ohio and Upper Mississippi valleys and mountains of Appalachia.

New York Governor Kathy Hochul called it an “epic, once-in-a-lifetime” weather disaster, the worst blizzard to hit the Buffalo area in 45 years.

The county has called in 100 military police from the state National Guard as well as officers from New York City to help manage traffic and enforce road restrictions.

Buffalo residents with plows attached to their Jeeps and pickup trucks helped clear side streets. People walked a mile or more in lanes cut by snowplows to reach convenience stores and supermarkets that were beginning to reopen.

Poloncarz, speaking at a press briefing Tuesday, urged residents to stay home and the curious to stay away.

“Please stay out of the city of Buffalo,” he said.
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Southwest Airlines scrubbed thousands of flights again Tuesday in the aftermath of the massive winter storm that wrecked Christmas travel plans across the United States, and the federal government said it would investigate why the company lagged so far behind other carriers.

A day after most U.S. airlines had recovered from the storm, Southwest called off about 2,600 more flights on the East Coast by late afternoon. Those flights accounted for more than 80% of the 3,000 trips that were canceled nationwide Tuesday, according to tracking service FlightAware.

And the chaos seemed certain to continue. The airline also scrubbed 2,500 flights for Wednesday and nearly 1,400 for Thursday as it tried to restore order to its mangled schedule.

At airports with major Southwest operations, customers stood in long lines hoping to find a seat on another flight. They described waiting hours on hold for help, only to be cut off. Some tried to rent cars to get to their destinations sooner. Others found spots to sleep on the floor. Luggage piled up in huge heaps.

Conrad Stoll, a 66-year-old retired construction worker in Missouri, planned to fly from Kansas City to Los Angeles for his father’s 90th birthday party until his Southwest flight was canceled early Tuesday. He said he won’t get to see his 88-year-old mother either.

“I went there in 2019, and she looked at me and said, ‘I’m not going to see you again.'” Stoll said. “My sister has been taking care of them, and she’s just like, ‘They’re really losing it really quick.'”

Stoll hopes to get another chance to see his parents in the spring, when the weather is warmer.

The Dallas-based airline had little new to say about its woes. The company did not offer any updates Tuesday afternoon. Its website gave customers the chance to change or cancel flights while warning that the phone system was “very busy due to high demand.”

The problems began over the weekend and snowballed Monday, when Southwest called off more than 70% of its flights.

That was after the worst of the storm had passed. The airline said many pilots and flight attendants were out of position to work their flights. Leaders of unions representing Southwest pilots and flight attendants blamed antiquated crew-scheduling software and criticized company management.

Casey Murray, president of the Southwest Airlines Pilots Association, said the airline failed to fix problems that caused a similar meltdown in October 2021.

“There is a lot of frustration because this is so preventable,” Murray said. “The airline cannot connect crews to airplanes. The airline didn’t even know where pilots were at.”

Murray said managers resorted this week to asking pilots at some airports to report to a central location, where they wrote down the names of pilots who were present and forwarded the lists to headquarters.

Lyn Montgomery, president of the Transport Workers Union representing Southwest flight attendants, was scheduled to talk Tuesday with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who has criticized airlines for previous disruptions and is now taking an interest in Southwest’s woes.

“I’m taking it to the highest level — that is how done we are,” said the frustrated Montgomery. “This is a very catastrophic event.”

Buttigieg’s office confirmed that he planned to speak with Montgomery but declined to comment further on the situation at Southwest.

Late Monday, the Transportation Department tweeted that it would examine “Southwest’s unacceptable rate of cancellations” and whether the airline was meeting its legal obligations to stranded customers.

In Congress, the Senate Commerce Committee also promised an investigation. Two Senate Democrats called on Southwest to provide “significant” compensation for stranded travelers, saying that the airline has the money because it plans to pay $428 million in dividends next month.

Southwest spokesman Jay McVay said the cancellations grew as storm systems moved across the country, leaving flight crews and planes out of place.

“So we’ve been chasing our tails, trying to catch up and get back to normal safely, which is our number one priority, as quickly as we could,” he told a news conference late Monday in Houston.

Bryce Burger and his family were supposed to be on a cruise to Mexico departing from San Diego on Dec. 24, but their flight from Denver was canceled without warning. The flight was rebooked through Burbank, California, but that flight was canceled while they sat at the gate.

“It’s horrible,” Burger said Tuesday by phone from Salt Lake City, where the family decided to drive after giving up the cruise.

The family’s luggage is still at the Denver airport, and Burger doesn’t know if he can get a refund for the cruise because the flight to California was booked separately.

The size and severity of the storm created havoc for many airlines, although the largest number of canceled flights Tuesday were at airports where Southwest is a major carrier, including Denver, Chicago Midway, Las Vegas, Baltimore and Dallas.

Spirit Airlines and Alaska Airlines both canceled about 10% of their flights, with much smaller cancellation percentages at American, Delta, United and JetBlue.

Kristie Smiley planned to return home to Los Angeles until Southwest canceled her Tuesday flight, so she waited at the Kansas City airport for her mother to pick her up. Southwest can’t put her on another plane until Sunday, New Year’s Day.

Smiley still doesn’t know what to think of Southwest. “They … acted like (Tuesday’s flight) was going to go until they started saying, ‘Oh, five more minutes. Oh, 10 more minutes.’ I’m not sure what’s up with them. It seems a little off.”

Danielle Zanin vowed never to fly Southwest again after it took four days, several canceled flights and sleeping in the airport before she, her husband and their two young children got home to Illinois from Albuquerque, New Mexico. They made stops at airports in Denver and Phoenix and reached Chicago only after ditching Southwest and paying $1,400 for four one-way tickets on American Airlines.

“I remember saying, ‘Oh my God, we’re getting on a plane!’ I was honestly shocked because I thought we were stuck in airports forever,” she said.

Zanin plans to ask Southwest to be reimbursed for part of their original tickets plus the new ones on American, and extra spending on rental cars, parking, an Uber ride and food — about $2,000 in all.

“I don’t have good faith that they will do much of anything,” she said.
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The Supreme Court of the United States is keeping pandemic-era limits on immigration in place indefinitely, dashing hopes of immigration advocates who had been anticipating their end this week.

In a ruling Tuesday, the Supreme Court extended a temporary stay that Chief Justice John Roberts issued last week. Under the court’s order, the case will be argued in February and the stay will be maintained until the justices decide the case.

The limits were put in place under then-President Donald Trump at the beginning of the pandemic. Under the restrictions, officials have expelled asylum-seekers inside the United States 2.5 million times and turned away most people who requested asylum at the border on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. The restrictions are often referred to as Title 42 in reference to a 1944 public health law.

Title 42

Immigration advocates sued to end the use of Title 42. They said the policy goes against American and international obligations to people fleeing to the U.S. to escape persecution. They’ve also argued that the policy is outdated as coronavirus treatments improve.

A federal judge sided with them in November and set a December 21 deadline to end the policy. Conservative-leaning states appealed to the Supreme Court, warning that an increase in migration would take a toll on public services and cause an “unprecedented calamity” that they said the federal government had no plan to deal with.

Roberts, who handles emergency matters that come from federal courts in the nation’s capital, issued a stay to give the court time to more fully consider arguments from both sides.

The federal government asked the Supreme Court to reject the states’ effort while also acknowledging that ending the restrictions abruptly would likely lead to “disruption and a temporary increase in unlawful border crossings.”

Migrants at border

The Supreme Court’s decision comes as thousands of migrants have gathered on the Mexican side of the border, filling shelters and worrying advocates who are scrambling to figure out how to care for them.

The precise issue before the court is a complicated, largely procedural question of whether the states should be allowed to intervene in the lawsuit, which had pitted advocates for the migrants against the federal government. A similar group of states won a lower court order in a different court district preventing the end of the restrictions after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced in April that it was ending use of the policy.

Until the judge’s November order in the advocates’ lawsuit, the states had not sought to take part in that case. But they say that the administration has essentially abandoned its defense of the Title 42 policy and they should be able to step in. The administration has appealed the ruling, though it has not tried to keep Title 42 in place while the legal case plays out.
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Vandalism at four power stations in the western U.S. state of Washington over the weekend added to concerns of a possible nationwide campaign by right-wing extremists to stir fears and spark civil conflict.

Local police on Tuesday gave no information on who they suspected was behind the vandalism, which knocked out power on Christmas Day for about 14,000 customers in Tacoma, a port city area south of Seattle.

Tacoma Public Utilities, which owned two of the facilities targeted on Sunday, said in a statement that it was alerted by federal law enforcement in early December about threats to their grid.

The Pierce County Sheriff’s office said Sunday it was investigating but had made no arrests and did not know if it was a coordinated attack.

They said in a statement that they were aware of similar incidents elsewhere in Washington, in Oregon, and in North Carolina.

“It could be any number of reasons at this point. … We have to investigate and not just jump to conclusions,” they said.

But it follows warnings by U.S. officials that neo-Nazis who say they want to spark a race war are targeting electricity stations.

Violent extremists “have developed credible, specific plans to attack electricity infrastructure since at least 2020, identifying the electric grid as a particularly attractive target given its interdependency with other infrastructure sectors,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a January intelligence memo, according to U.S. media.

Attacks in other states

In early December, 45,000 homes and businesses in Moore County, North Carolina, were out of power after someone used a high-powered rifle to damage two electricity substations.

In February. three men with neo-Nazi ties pleaded guilty in Columbus, Ohio, to plotting to use rifles and explosives to damage power stations in various locations.

They pursued “a disturbing plot, in furtherance of white supremacist ideology, to attack energy facilities in order to damage the economy and stoke division in our country,” said Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen at the time.

And last year five men who allegedly belonged to white supremacist and neo-Nazi online discussion groups were charged in North Carolina with planning attacks on power stations.

They planned the attack to create “general chaos” as part of their “goal of creating a white ethno-state,” the indictment said.

Jon Wellinghoff, the former chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said on CNN in early December that the Moore County attack resembled one on an electricity network substation near San Jose, California, in 2013.

In that case, which has never been solved, one or more people fired close to 100 rounds at the station, damaging 17 high voltage transformers at a cost of $15 million.

The Washington Post said after the Moore County incident that law enforcement was investigating eight incidents in four states.
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The co-leader of a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was sentenced Tuesday to 16 years in prison for conspiring to abduct the Democrat and blow up a bridge to ease an escape.

Adam Fox’s sentence is the longest of anyone convicted in the plot so far, though it’s significantly shorter than the life sentence that prosecutors sought.

Fox, 39, returned to federal court four months after he and Barry Croft Jr. were convicted of conspiracy charges at a second trial in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

They were accused of organizing a wild plot to whip up anti-government extremists just before the 2020 presidential election. Their arrest, as well as the capture of 12 others, was a stunning coda to a tumultuous year of racial strife and political turmoil in the U.S.

The government said Croft offered bomb-making skills and ideology while Fox was the “driving force urging their recruits to take up arms, kidnap the governor and kill those who stood in their way.”

But Judge Robert J. Jonker said that while Fox’s sentence was needed as a punishment and deterrent to future similar acts, the government’s request for life in prison is “not necessary to achieve those purposes.”

“It’s too much. Something less than life gets the job done in this case,” Jonker said, later adding that 16 years in prison “is still in my mind a very long time.”

Jonker said he also considered the emotional baggage Whitmer will have to carry due to the plot.

“It undoubtedly affects other people who are in public office or are considering public office,” he said. “They have to count the cost. That does need a forceful sentence from the court.”

In addition to the prison sentence, Fox will have to serve five years of supervised release. He’ll also get credit for more than two years in custody since his arrest.

“Responding to domestic terrorism plots has been a priority for the Department of Justice since its founding and we’re going to continue to spare no expense to make sure we disrupt plots like these,” U.S. Attorney Andrew Birge told reporters outside the courthouse following the sentencing.

Fox wore orange prison clothes with long slicked-back hair and a full beard. He showed little reaction when the sentence was read.

Daniel Harris, who was acquitted by a jury earlier this year for his involvement in the plot, sat next to Fox’s mother in the gallery and hugged her after the sentencing was read. Fox looked into the gallery multiple times, often mouthing words.

He shook his head and repeatedly smirked while Assistant U.S. Attorney Nils Kessler spoke. Kessler said Fox’s smirking was a sign that he showed no regret.

Fox and Croft were convicted at a second trial in August, months after a different Grand Rapids jury couldn’t reach a verdict but acquitted Harris and one other man. Croft, a trucker from Bear, Delaware, will be sentenced Wednesday.

In 2020, Fox and Croft met with like-minded provocateurs in Ohio, trained with weapons in Michigan and Wisconsin and took a ride to “put eyes” on Whitmer’s vacation home with night-vision goggles, according to evidence.

Whitmer wasn’t physically harmed. The FBI, which was secretly embedded in the group, broke things up by fall.

“They had no real plan for what to do with the governor if they actually seized her. Paradoxically, this made them more dangerous, not less,” Kessler said in a court filing ahead of the hearing.

Two men who pleaded guilty to conspiracy and testified against Fox and Croft received substantial breaks: Ty Garbin already is free after a 2 1/2-year prison term, while Kaleb Franks was given a four-year sentence.

Three members of a paramilitary group that trained with Fox were convicted in October of providing material support for a terrorist act. Their sentences, handed down earlier this month in state court, ranged between seven to 12 years.

Five more are awaiting trial in Antrim County, where Whitmer’s vacation home is located.

When the plot was extinguished, Whitmer blamed then-President Donald Trump, saying he had given “comfort to those who spread fear and hatred and division.” In August, 19 months after leaving office, Trump said the kidnapping plan was a “fake deal.”
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Amid a strategic rivalry with China and the war in Ukraine, President Joe Biden intended in 2022 to strengthen ties with traditional Middle East allies such as Saudi Arabia and Israel to counter the threat from Iran and ensure stability in the region. Whether he accomplished that is a matter of debate. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara recaps Biden’s year in the Middle East. 
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Emergency crews in New York were scrambling Monday to rescue marooned residents from what authorities called the “blizzard of the century,” a relentless storm that has left nearly 50 people dead across the United States and caused Christmas travel chaos.

Blizzard conditions persist in parts of the northeastern U.S., the stubborn remnants of a massive sprawl of extreme weather that gripped the country over several days, causing widespread power outages, travel delays and at least 49 deaths across nine states, according to official figures.

In New York state, authorities have described ferocious conditions, particularly in Buffalo, with hours-long whiteouts, bodies being discovered in vehicles and under snowbanks, and emergency personnel going “car to car” searching for survivors.

The perfect storm of fierce snow squalls, howling wind and sub-zero temperatures forced the cancelation of more than 15,000 U.S. flights in recent days, including nearly 4,000 on Monday, according to tracking site Flightaware.com.

Buffalo — a city in Erie County that is no stranger to foul winter weather — is the epicenter of the crisis, buried under staggering amounts of snow.

“Certainly it is the blizzard of the century,” New York Governor Kathy Hochul told reporters, adding it was “way too early to say this is at its completion.”

Hochul said some western New York towns got walloped with “30 to 40 inches (0.75 to 1 meter) of snow overnight.”

Later Monday, Hochul spoke with President Joe Biden, who offered “the full force of the federal government” to support New York state and said he and First Lady Jill Biden were praying for those who lost loved ones in the storm, according to a White House statement.

Biden also approved an emergency declaration for the state, the White House said.

The National Weather Service forecast up to 14 more inches of snow Monday, in addition to the several feet that have already left the city buried, with officials struggling to get emergency services back online.

Erie County executive Mark Poloncarz tweeted Monday afternoon that the blizzard-related death toll had climbed to 27 across the county, including 14 people who were found outside and three who were discovered in a car.

Speaking at a press conference earlier in the day, Poloncarz said Erie’s death toll would likely surpass that of Buffalo’s infamous blizzard of 1977, when nearly 30 people died.

With more snow forecast and most of Buffalo “impassable,” he joined Hochul in warning residents to bunker down and stay in place.

‘Gut-wrenching’

National Guard members and other teams have rescued hundreds of people from snow-covered cars and homes without electricity, but authorities have said more people remain trapped.

Erie County Sheriff John Garcia called the storm “the worst” he has ever seen, with periods of zero visibility and authorities unable to respond to emergency calls.

“It was gut-wrenching when you’re getting calls where families are with their kids and they’re saying they’re freezing,” he told CNN.

Hochul, a native of Buffalo, said she was stunned by what she saw during a reconnaissance tour of the city.

“It is (like) going to a war zone, and the vehicles along the sides of the roads are shocking,” Hochul said, describing 2.4-meter drifts against homes as well as snowplows and rescue vehicles “buried” in snow.

The extreme weather sent temperatures to below freezing in all 48 contiguous US states over the weekend, including in Texas communities along the Mexico border where some newly arriving migrants have struggled to find shelter.

Sweeping power outages

At one point on Saturday, nearly 1.7 million customers were without electricity in the biting cold, according to tracker poweroutage.us.

That number has dropped substantially, although there were still some 50,000 without power mid-day Monday on the U.S. east coast.

Due to frozen electric substations, some Erie County residents were not expected to regain power until Tuesday, with one substation reportedly buried under 18 feet of snow, a senior county official said.

Buffalo’s international airport remains closed until Tuesday and a driving ban remains in effect for the city and much of Erie County.

Road ice and whiteout conditions also led to the temporary closure of some of the nation’s busiest transport routes, including part of the cross-country Interstate 70 highway.

Drivers were being warned not to take to the roads — even as the nation reached what is usually its busiest time of year for travel.
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