Exploring the relationship between humanity and nature, the Reach to Forest international festival brings artists together to plant ideas among viewers about the environment and conservation. From the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, VOA’s Cristina Caicedo Smit has the story. Camera: Phillip Datcher
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US President Joe Biden and his main challenger, Donald Trump, went to opposite ends of the 1,931-kilometer border separating Texas from Mexico on Thursday. Both went to draw attention to the surge of migrants seeking to enter the US, but their messages were radically different and show how Democrats and Republicans view this key election issue. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
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WASHINGTON — A federal judge held veteran investigative reporter Catherine Herridge in civil contempt on Thursday for refusing to divulge her source for a series of Fox News stories about a Chinese American scientist who was investigated by the FBI but never charged.

U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper in Washington imposed a fine of $800 per day until Herridge complies, but the fine will not go into effect immediately to give her time to appeal.

Cooper wrote that he “recognizes the paramount importance of a free press in our society” and the critical role of confidential sources in investigative journalism. But the judge said the court “also has its own role to play in upholding the law and safeguarding judicial authority.”

“Herridge and many of her colleagues in the journalism community may disagree with that decision and prefer that a different balance be struck, but she is not permitted to flout a federal court’s order with impunity,” wrote Cooper, who was nominated to the bench by former President Barack Obama.

A lawyer for Herridge, Patrick Philbin, declined to comment. Representatives for CBS and Fox News did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.

The source is being sought by Yanpin Chen, who has sued the government over the leak of details about the federal probe into statements she made on immigration forms related to work on a Chinese astronaut program.

Herridge, who was recently laid off by CBS News, published an investigative series for Fox News in 2017 that examined Chen’s ties to the Chinese military and raised questions about whether the scientist was using a professional school she founded in Virginia to help the Chinese government get information about American servicemembers.

The stories relied on what her lawyers contend were items leaked from the probe, including snippets of an FBI document summarizing an interview conducted during the investigation, personal photographs, and information taken from her immigration and naturalization forms and from an internal FBI PowerPoint presentation.

Chen sued the FBI and Justice Department in 2018, saying her personal information was selectively leaked to “smear her reputation and damage her livelihood.”

The judge had ordered Herridge in August to answer questions about her source or sources in a deposition with Chen’s lawyers. The judge ruled that Chen’s need to know for the sake of her lawsuit overcomes Herridge’s right to shield her source, despite the “vital importance of a free press and the critical role” that confidential sources play in journalists’ work.

Herridge was interviewed under oath in September by a lawyer for Chen, but declined dozens of times to answer questions about her sources, saying at one point, “My understanding is that the courts have ruled that in order to seek further judicial review in this case, I must now decline the order, and respectfully I am invoking my First Amendment rights in declining to answer the question.”

Philbin, who served as deputy White House counsel during the Trump administration, has said that forcing Herridge to turn over her sources “would destroy her credibility and cripple her ability to play a role in bringing important information to light for the public.”

Philbin also told the judge that disclosing the identity of Herridge’s sources raises national security concerns, writing in court papers that there is a “serious risk” that Chen “was involved in making information about U.S. military members available” to the Chinese.

Legal fights over whether journalists should have to divulge sources are rare, though they’ve arisen several times in the last couple decades in Privacy Act cases like the one filed by Chen. Some lawsuits have ended with a hefty Justice Department settlement in place of a journalist being forced to reveal a source, an outcome that remains possible in Herridge’s case.

In 2008, for instance, the Justice Department agreed to pay $5.8 million to settle a lawsuit by Army scientist Steven Hatfill, who was falsely identified as a person of interest in the 2001 anthrax attacks. That settlement resulted in a contempt order being vacated against a journalist who was being asked to name her sources. 
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MIAMI — A former career U.S. diplomat told a federal judge Thursday he will plead guilty to charges of working for decades as a secret agent for communist Cuba, an unexpectedly swift resolution to a case prosecutors called one of the most brazen betrayals in the history of the U.S. foreign service.

Manuel Rocha’s stunning fall from grace could culminate in a lengthy prison term after the 73-year-old said he would admit to federal counts of conspiring to act as an agent of a foreign government.

Prosecutors and Rocha’s attorney indicated the plea deal includes an agreed-upon sentence, but they did not disclose details at a hearing Thursday. He is due back in court April 12, when he is scheduled to formalize his guilty plea and be sentenced.

“I am in agreement,” said Rocha, shackled at the hands and ankles, when asked by U.S. District Court Judge Beth Bloom if he wished to change his plea to guilty. Prosecutors, in exchange, agreed to drop 13 counts including wire fraud and making false statements.

The brief hearing shed no new light on the question that has proved elusive since Rocha’s arrest in December: What exactly did he do to help Cuba while working at the State Department for two decades? That included stints as ambassador to Bolivia and top posts in Argentina, Mexico, the White House and the U.S. Interests Section in Havana.

“Ambassador Rocha,” as he preferred to be called, was well known among Miami’s elite for his aristocratic, almost regal, bearing befitting his Ivy League background. His post-government career included time as a special adviser to the commander of the U.S. Southern Command and more recently as a tough-talking Donald Trump supporter and Cuba hardliner, a persona friends and prosecutors say Rocha adopted to hide his true allegiances.

Peter Lapp, who oversaw FBI counterintelligence against Cuba between 1998 and 2005, said the fast resolution of the case benefits not only the elderly Rocha but also the government, which stands to learn a lot about Cuba’s penetration of U.S. foreign policy circles.

Typically in counterintelligence cases, the defendant is charged with espionage. But Rocha was accused of the lesser crimes of acting as a foreign agent, which carry maximum terms of between five and 10 years in prison, making it easier for prosecutors and Rocha to reach an agreement.

“It’s a win-win for both sides,” said Lapp, who led the investigation into Ana Montes, the highest-level U.S. official ever convicted of spying for Cuba. “He gets a significant payoff and the chance to see his family again, and the U.S. will be able to conduct a full damage assessment that it wouldn’t be able to do without his cooperation.” 

But the abrupt deal drew criticism in the Cuban exile community, with some legal observers worrying it amounted to a slap on the wrist.

“Any sentence that allows him to see the light of day again would not be justice,” said Carlos Trujillo, a Miami attorney who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Organization of American States during the Trump administration. “He’s a spy for a foreign adversary who put American lives at risk.”

A Justice Department spokesperson declined to comment. 
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WASHINGTON — U.S. security officials are bracing for an onslaught of fast-paced influence operations, from a wide range of adversaries, aimed at impacting the country’s coming presidential election.

FBI Director Christopher Wray issued the latest warning about attempts to meddle with American voters as they decide whom to support when they go to the polls come November, telling a meeting of security professional Thursday that technologies such as artificial intelligence are already altering the threat landscape.

“This election cycle, the U.S. will face more adversaries moving at a faster pace and enabled by new technology,” Wray said.

“Advances in generative AI [artificial intelligence], for instance, are lowering the barrier to entry, making it easier for both more and less sophisticated foreign adversaries to engage in malign influence while making foreign influence efforts by players both old and new, more realistic and more difficult to detect,” he said.

The warning echoes concerns raised earlier in the week by a top lawmaker and by the White House, both singling out Russia.

“I worry that we are less prepared for foreign intervention in our elections in 2024 than we were in 2020,” said Mark Warner, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, during a cybersecurity conference on Tuesday.

On Sunday, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” there is “plenty of reason to be concerned.”

“There is a history here in presidential elections by the Russian Federation, by its intelligence services,” Sullivan said.

U.S. intelligence agencies concluded Russia sought to interfere in both the 2016 and 2020 elections.

But Russia has not been alone.

A declassified intelligence assessment looking at the 2022 midterm elections concluded with high to moderate confidence that Russia was joined by China and Iran in seeking to sway the outcome.

“China tacitly approved efforts to try to influence a handful of midterm races involving members of both U.S. political parties,” the report said.

“Tehran relied primarily on its intelligence services and Iran-based online influencers to conduct its covert operations,” it said. “Iran’s influence activities reflected its intent to exploit perceived social divisions and undermine confidence in U.S. democratic institutions during this election cycle.”

The United States has also alleged other adversaries, such as Cuba, Venezuela and Lebanese Hezbollah, have sought to influence elections, as have allies, such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

The warnings from Wray and others are encountering pushback from some lawmakers and conservative commentators who view such statements as an attempt to resurrect what they call the “Russia hoax” — saying the narrative that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help former President Donald Trump win is without merit.

Warner, however, dismissed that view in response to a question from VOA on the sidelines of Tuesday’s security conference. “Anyone who doesn’t think the Russian intel services have and will continue to interfere in our elections … I wonder where they’re getting their information to start with,” he said.

Wray on Thursday suggested the list of countries and other foreign groups seeking to influence U.S. voters is set to expand. “AI is most useful for what I would call kind of mediocre bad guys and making them kind of like intermediate,” he said.

“The really sophisticated adversaries are using AI more just to increase the speed and scale of their efforts,” he said. “But we are coming towards a day very soon where what I would call the experts, the most sophisticated adversaries, are going to find ways to use AI to be even more elite.”

Some private cybersecurity firms also see the danger growing.

This past September, Microsoft warned that Beijing has developed a new artificial intelligence capability that can produce “eye-catching content” more likely to go viral compared to previous Chinese influence operations.

Others agree.

“Whether it’s robocalls, whether it’s fake videos — all those things really even back to 2022, weren’t as prevalent,” Trellix CEO Bryan Palma told VOA. “You weren’t going to get any high-quality type of deepfake video.

“I think you’re going to see more and more of that as we get closer to the election,” he said.
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Washington — U.S. lawmakers sharply criticized Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday over the failure to inform the White House about his hospitalization earlier this year for complications from cancer treatment.

Both Democrats and Republicans expressed dismay over the secrecy, but the House Armed Services Committee hearing ultimately shed little light on why information had been withheld from other top officials.

“It’s totally unacceptable that it took three days to inform the president of the United States that the secretary of defense was in the hospital and not in control of the Pentagon,” Representative Mike Rogers, the committee’s Republican chairman, said during the hearing.

“Wars were raging in Ukraine and Israel, our ships were under fire in the Red Sea and our bases were bracing for attack in Syria and Iraq. But the commander-in-chief did not know that his secretary of defense was out of action,” Rogers said.

The committee’s ranking Democratic member, Representative Adam Smith, said “the lack of transparency” should not be repeated and that “we need clearer, more transparent information about what’s going on at the Pentagon.”

Austin insisted “there was never a break in command and control,” but said that “what we didn’t do well was a notification of senior leaders.”

The Pentagon chief repeated that he “never told anyone not to inform the president, White House or anyone else about my hospitalization,” admitting however that “we didn’t get this right.”

Austin, a 70-year-old career soldier, initially underwent minor surgery to treat the cancer on December 22, returning home the following day. 

But he was readmitted due to complications including nausea and severe pain on January 1.

The White House was not informed about Austin’s hospitalization until January 4, while Congress was not told until the following day, and President Joe Biden did not learn of the cancer diagnosis until January 9.

Various Republican lawmakers called for Austin — who apologized earlier this month for the secrecy surrounding his treatment — to be sacked, but Biden has stood by him.

The Pentagon conducted a 30-day review of the situation and released a summary on Monday that said privacy concerns contributed to the secrecy, but found no evidence of intentional wrongdoing or obfuscation
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WASHINGTON — An inflation gauge favored by the Federal Reserve increased in January, the latest sign that the slowdown in U.S. consumer price increases is occurring unevenly from month to month.

The government reported Thursday that prices rose 0.3% from December to January, up from 0.1% in the previous month. But in a more encouraging sign, prices were up just 2.4% from a year earlier, down from a 2.6% annual pace in December and the smallest such increase in nearly three years.

The year-over-year cooldown in inflation is sure to be welcomed by the White House as President Joe Biden seeks re-election. Still, even though average paychecks have outpaced inflation over the past year, many Americans remain frustrated that overall prices are still well above where they were before inflation erupted three years ago. That sentiment, evident in many public opinion polls, could pose a threat to Biden’s re-election bid.

Inflation, as measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge, fell steadily last year after having peaked at 7.1% in the summer of 2022. Supply chain snarls have eased, reducing costs of parts and raw materials, and a steady flow of job seekers has made it easier for employers to limit wage increases, one of the drivers of inflation. Still, inflation remains above the central bank’s 2% annual target.

Excluding volatile food and energy costs, prices rose 0.4% from December to January, up from 0.1% in the previous month. And compared with a year earlier, such so-called “core” prices rose 2.8%, down from 2.9% in December. Economists consider core prices a better gauge of the likely path of future inflation.

Some of January’s inflation reflects the fact that companies often raise prices in the first two months of the year, leaving January and February price data high compared with the rest of the year. But the costs of hospital and doctors’ services are also rising to offset the sizable pay raises commanded by nurses and other in-demand health care workers.

That trend could help keep inflation elevated in the coming months. But by early spring, most analysts expect prices to settle back to the milder pace of increases that occurred in the second half of 2023, when inflation eased to a 2% annual rate.

January’s uptick in inflation helps explain the concern expressed by many Fed officials, including Chair Jerome Powell, about potentially cutting interest rates too soon this year. One influential official, Christopher Waller of the Fed’s Board of Governors, said this month that he would want to see two more months of inflation data after January’s to determine whether prices were cooling sustainably toward the Fed’s target level.

Beginning in March 2022, the Fed raised its benchmark rate 11 times to attack the worst bout of inflation in 40 years. Those rate hikes have helped cool inflation drastically. But they have also made borrowing much more expensive for consumers and businesses. In particular, high loan rates have throttled sales in the economy’s crucial homebuying sector. Conversely, rate cuts by the Fed, whenever they happen, would eventually lead to lower borrowing costs across the economy.

Thursday’s inflation data mirrors figures released earlier this month that showed that the government’s more widely followed consumer price index also rose faster in January than it had in previous months. The Fed prefers the measure reported Thursday, in part because it accounts for changes in how people shop when inflation jumps — when, for example, consumers shift away from pricey national brands in favor of cheaper store brands.

Several Fed officials have said they’re optimistic that inflation will continue to fall back toward the Fed’s target level, with some downplaying the recent pickup in prices as a one-time jump.

“The path will continue to be bumpy, and we should not overreact to individual data readings,” Susan Collins, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston, said Wednesday. “I remain what I call a ‘realistic optimist’ in thinking that the economy is on a path to 2% inflation on a sustained basis while maintaining a healthy labor market.”

Some other officials sound more uncertain. Jeffrey Schmid, the new president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, said this week that “when it comes to too-high inflation, I believe we are not out of the woods yet.”

Outside the Fed, most economists envision a steady, if fitful, slowdown of inflation in the coming months. Economists at Goldman Sachs project that core inflation, as measured by the Fed’s preferred gauge, will drop rapidly to just 2.2% by May — low enough for the Fed to initiate rate cuts in June.
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washington — U.S. President Joe Biden’s is a “healthy, active, robust 81-year-old male who remains fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency,” his physician, Dr. Kevin O’Connor, said in a statement released by the White House on Wednesday, following Biden’s annual physical examination. 

“The president feels well, and this year’s physical identified no new concerns. He continues to be fit for duty and fully executes all of his responsibilities without any exemptions or accommodations,” O’Connor said following Biden’s visit to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, earlier Wednesday.  

The checkup included consultations with optometry, dentistry, orthopedics, physical therapy, neurology, sleep medicine, cardiology, radiology and dermatology specialists, O’Connor said.  

It’s Biden’s third physical since taking office, amid concerns about his age as he seeks a second term.  

“They think I look too young,” Biden joked to reporters at the White House after his checkup. “There is nothing different than last year,” he said.

According to the summary, Biden is currently being treated for several conditions, including obstructive sleep apnea, gastroesophageal reflux, seasonal allergies, arthritis and sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet. He also has atrial fibrillation with normal ventricular response, a type of asymptomatic irregularity of the heartbeat.  

His doctor pronounced his conditions as “stable and well-controlled,” with “three common prescription medications and three common over-the-counter medications.”  

The symptoms were similar to those described in Biden’s 2023 physical exam report that noted the president’s “stiff gait,” due to “a combination of significant spinal arthritis, mild post-fracture foot arthritis and a mild sensory peripheral neuropathy of the feet,” and “occasional symptoms of gastroesophageal reflux,” that made him have to clear his throat often.     

President didn’t undergo cognitive test 

Recent events have highlighted Biden’s potential age-related issues, including the president being described in a special counsel report as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”      

In pushing back on reporters’ questions about his age, Biden insisted that his “memory is fine” but shortly after mistakenly referred to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sissi as the president of Mexico. That and two other mistaken references to world leaders’ names in recent weeks fueled further attacks by his rivals.     

Responding to reporters’ questions during her briefing on Wednesday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden did not undergo a cognitive test as part of his physical because the president’s physician, “doesn’t believe that he needs one.” 

As president, Biden passes a cognitive test “every day,” Jean-Pierre underscored. 

A poll by the George Washington University shows 35% of respondents say Biden was in good enough physical health to serve effectively as president, and 38% said he has the mental soundness to serve effectively as president.  

This is lower that what respondents say about the leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination, Donald Trump, who is four years younger. For Trump, the numbers are 54% and 46%, respectively. 

“These figures indicate that this is a big problem for Biden,” Todd Belt, professor of politics at George Washington University, told VOA. “The campaign has changed course to attack Trump on his vulnerabilities on the mental soundness issue.” 

Biden did exactly that during an appearance on a late-night television show earlier this week, by referencing a video in which Trump appeared to forget his wife’s name.  

Americans concerned about Biden’s age

Trump was 70 when he took office in 2017, which made him the oldest American president to be inaugurated until Biden broke his record at 78 in 2021. The former president has also made blunders, including praising Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban for his leadership of Turkey, and confusing his Republican rival, Nikki Haley, with former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.   

A February ABC News/Ipsos poll conducted after the release of the special counsel report indicated concerns among 59% of Americans regarding the age and capability for a second term for both candidates, although more Americans are worried about Biden compared with Trump, said Clifford Young, president of Ipsos Public Affairs.   

“Age is an Achilles’ heel, is an anchor for Biden,” Young told VOA. “It was four years ago. Without a doubt, it will be this year.”   

Though not publicly announced in advance, the timing of Biden’s physical was anticipated, given the increasing focus on his age and health in the context of his reelection campaign ahead of the November election. 
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Tukwila, Washington — Though the number of migrants crossing daily into the United States has fallen since December, local communities are still scrambling to provide them with resources.

In the Pacific Northwest, Riverton Park United Methodist Church in Tukwila, Washington, has become a shelter for hundreds of asylum-seekers from Africa and Latin America.

At the church entrance is a hum of conversations in Portuguese, French and Spanish, as asylum-seekers from countries such as Angola, Congo and Venezuela gather to discuss their immigration claims.

Eurice, a bespectacled woman in her 50s, came from Venezuela. She asked that her last name not be used.

“I don’t want to be a burden to the United States,” she said. “I didn’t come here for a dream. Because of my work at the Colombian consulate, I was labeled a traitor. I’ve worked all my life, and instead of a peaceful retirement, I had to flee my country, walking through the jungle, crossing seven countries.”

She said she is grateful to find shelter at this church.

“I thank God and the lady pastor for providing a roof over my head, a bed to sleep in, and a plate of food. I am blessed already,” she said.

Pastor Jan Bolerjack said that over the past year, Riverton has helped find shelter, food and basic necessities for about 1,000 asylum-seekers of various ages, including pregnant women and toddlers. Some of them arrived on their own. Others were brought in by the police.

“The police department in Seattle found them on the streets in tents and realized they were a different population from our usual homeless individuals,” Bolerjack told VOA. “And so, they started bringing them here. We went from zero to 100 by March 2023, and then 400 by July. In October, the mayor of Tukwila declared a humanitarian emergency here. And this is where we are now — continuing with this humanitarian emergency.”

Unlike refugees who are eligible for resettlement services, asylum-seekers are unable to work legally before their work permit application is approved in a process that may last many months.

Bolerjack said her church has always had an open door for the most vulnerable members of the community, but with limited resources, staff and volunteers are overwhelmed.

“We have to provide everything, from food to laundry to bathrooms, showers, tents, sleeping bags, mattresses. Everything has to come from our friends and sources in the neighborhood,” she explained, walking through the church hall where piles of donated mattresses, suitcases and bags line the walls, and past a tiny kitchen, where several young African women are cooking, and through an area where volunteers sort donated clothes.

“Somehow, this place has been advertised across the country and at the border as the place to go,” Bolerjack explained. “And you know, I can take great pride in that. And yet, I’m kind of embarrassed when they arrive after a long, traumatic journey and we have to say, ‘You have to sleep in a wet, soggy tent.'”

In winter, when temperatures in the area dropped below zero, hundreds of asylum-seekers were temporarily moved from tents to local hotels. Some refused to return to the encampment, asking lawmakers for help.

State Representative Mia Gregerson is working to improve the state’s response to the crisis with legislation to better coordinate migrant services. Speaking with VOA at her office in the state capital, Olympia, she said that despite Tukwila’s tradition of welcoming newcomers, the community of fewer than 22,000 people shouldn’t be pushed to shoulder the crisis on its own.

“I think they’re really rolling up their sleeves well and making a go of it,” Gregerson said. “But there is a lot of uncertainty. What are we going to do when the funds run out?”

She said processing asylum cases is often complicated by different immigration statuses within a family. The bill she introduced with 18 co-sponsors seeks to empower the state’s Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance.

“The idea is that the office is able to be nimble and utilize resources quickly to not only put them into the system for legal advice that’s correct and factual, or quickly get them the education resources, transportation needs, and housing vouchers,” Gregerson said. “And we need to maintain that contact with them so we can help them through the system. Otherwise, they may fall victim to other types of issues.”

Washington Governor Jay Inslee’s current budget includes $5 million in new funding for the Office of Refugee and Immigrant Assistance to expand support services for newly arriving people who do not qualify for federal refugee resettlement program services. A separate request for $3.4 million is meant to help provide transitional and long-term housing support to asylum-seekers in the county around Seattle.

Volunteers at Riverton help asylum-seekers complete the required paperwork in English. In the past year, Bolerjack said just one person won their asylum case and obtained a work permit.

That has not diminished the optimism of Jeremiah Lefau, who said he left Angola with his wife and three children in December 2022 because of insecurity in his country. They lived at Riverton for four months before they were approved for family shelter. The children are enrolled in local schools along with more than 100 young asylum-seekers. Lefau is taking English classes and volunteers at the church.

“I feel good about the future,” he said. “Now, we need to help others as the church helped us.”

Eurice, from Venezuela, hopes to return to her country someday.

“My family is still there. I miss them,” she said. “I hope to stay here as long as necessary to be safe, and I thank the United States for this opportunity they are giving us. But I have faith that one day my country will be able to repair itself so I can return.”

Meanwhile, the Biden administration is advancing measures making it more challenging for asylum-seekers to stay in the U.S.
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The eyes of free press advocates and U.S. intelligence officials are on London, where the High Court is set to rule on the fate of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. Washington wants him extradited to face 18 charges tied to the hacking and theft of classified material. VOA’s Jeff Seldin reports.
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New York — A New York appellate judge on Wednesday refused to halt collection of Donald Trump’s $454 million civil fraud penalty while he appeals, rejecting the former president’s request that he be allowed to post a bond covering a fraction of what he owes.

Judge Anil Singh of the state’s midlevel appeals court ruled that Trump must post a bond covering the full amount in order to stop enforcement of the judgment. Singh did grant some of Trump’s requests, including pausing a three-year ban on him seeking loans from New York banks, which could help him secure the necessary bond.

Trump’s lawyers told the appellate court earlier Wednesday that Trump was prepared to post a $100 million bond, arguing that the lending ban in the Feb. 16 verdict made it impossible for him to secure a bond for the full amount.

Trump’s lawyers floated the smaller bond offer in court papers as they sought an order from the appellate court preventing New York Attorney General Letitia James’ office from enforcing the judgment while his appeal plays out. Singh ruled that Trump needs to post the full amount, which would pause collection automatically.

In all, the Republican presidential candidate and his co-defendants owe more than $465 million to the state. They have until March 25 to secure a stay, a legal mechanism pausing collection while he appeals, or they’ll be forced to pay the monetary penalty or risk having some of their assets seized.

“The exorbitant and punitive amount of the judgment coupled with an unlawful and unconstitutional blanket prohibition on lending transactions would make it impossible to secure and post a complete bond,” Trump lawyers Clifford Robert, Alina Habba and Michael Farina wrote in their request.

James’ office opposed Trump’s plan, saying his lawyers have all but conceded he has “insufficient liquid assets to satisfy the judgment.”

“These are precisely the circumstances for which a full bond or deposit is necessary,” Senior Assistant Solicitor General Dennis Fan wrote, saying Trump’s offer would leave James’ office and the state “with substantial shortfalls” if the verdict is upheld.

“A prevailing plaintiff is entitled to have her award secured, and defendants have never demonstrated that Mr. Trump’s liquid assets could satisfy the full amount of the judgment,” Fan wrote.

James, a Democrat, has said that she will seek to seize some of Trump’s assets if he’s unable to pay the judgment.

Judge Arthur Engoron found that Trump, his company and top executives, including his sons Eric and Donald Jr., schemed for years to deceive banks and insurers by inflating his wealth on financial statements used to secure loans and make deals.

Among other penalties, the judge put strict limitations on the ability of Trump’s company, the Trump Organization, to do business. Paperwork making the judgment official was filed on February 23. That started a 30-day window for Trump to pay up or file an appeal and seek a stay.

Trump filed his appeal on Monday. His lawyers are asking the Appellate Division of the state’s trial court to decide whether Engoron “committed errors of law and/or fact” and whether he abused his discretion or “acted in excess” of his jurisdiction.

Trump lawyers argued that Trump’s vast real estate assets and oversight mandated by Engoron’s ruling, including supervision of his company by an independent monitor, “would alone be sufficient to adequately secure any judgment affirmed.”

The $100 million bond, they said, “would simply serve as further security.”

Trump maintains that he is worth several billion dollars and testified last year that he had about $400 million in cash, in addition to properties and other investments.

In all, Trump has at least $543.4 million in personal legal liabilities from Engoron’s ruling and two other civil court judgments in the last year.

In January, a jury ordered Trump to pay $83.3 million to writer E. Jean Carroll for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually assaulting her in a Manhattan department store in the 1990s. That’s on top of the $5 million a jury awarded Carroll in a related trial last year.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell’s said on Wednesday he would step down from his leadership role, leaving a power vacuum atop the party he has piloted for nearly 17 years, more than any other party leader in the chamber’s history. 

“I turned 82 last week. The end of my contributions are closer than I prefer,” McConnell said on the Senate floor, his voice breaking with emotion. “Father Time remains undefeated. I’m no longer the young man sitting in the back hoping colleagues remember my name. It’s time for the next generation of leadership.” 

The Kentucky lawmaker’s departure will remove a central character in negotiations with Democrats and the White House on spending deals to keep the federal government funded and avert a shutdown. 

It will also mark the step back of an orderly counterpart to the tumultuous approach of Donald Trump, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination, and the hardline House Freedom Caucus ahead of the November election for president, the full House of Representatives and a third of the Senate. 
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WASHINGTON — Hunter Biden appeared Wednesday on Capitol Hill for a closed-door deposition with lawmakers, a critical moment for Republicans as their impeachment inquiry into his father and the family’s business affairs teeters on the brink of collapse.

“I am here today to provide the committees with the one uncontestable fact that should end the false premise of this inquiry: I did not involve my father in my business,” Hunter Biden said in an opening statement obtained by The Associated Press.

The deposition could mark a decisive point for the 14-month Republican investigation into the Biden family, which has centered on Hunter Biden and his overseas work for clients in Ukraine, China, Romania and other countries. Republicans have long questioned whether those business dealings involved corruption and influence peddling by President Joe Biden, particularly when he was vice president.

Yet after conducting dozens of interviews and obtaining more than 100,000 pages of documents, Republicans have yet to produce direct evidence of misconduct by the president. Meanwhile, an FBI informant who alleged a bribery scheme involving the Bidens — a claim Republicans had cited repeatedly to justify their probe — is facing charges from federal prosecutors who accuse him of fabricating the story.

Despite the stakes of their investigation, it remains unclear how much useful information Republicans will be able to extract from Hunter Biden during the deposition. He is under federal investigation and has been indicted on nine federal tax charges and a firearm charge in Delaware, which means he could refuse to answer some questions by asserting his Fifth Amendment rights.

The task of interviewing Hunter falls primarily to Reps. James Comer and Jim Jordan, the GOP chairmen leading the impeachment investigation. They first subpoenaed Hunter Biden in November, demanding that he appear before lawmakers in a private setting. Biden and his attorneys refused, warning that his testimony could be selectively leaked and manipulated. They insisted that Hunter Biden would only testify in public.

On the day of the subpoena, Hunter Biden not only snubbed lawmakers waiting for him in a hearing room — he did also while appearing right outside the Capitol, holding a press conference where he denounced the investigation into his family.

Both sides ultimately agreed in January to a private deposition with a set of conditions. The interview with Hunter Biden will not be filmed and Republicans have agreed to quickly release the transcript.

“Our committees have the opportunity to depose Hunter Biden, a key witness in our impeachment inquiry of President Joe Biden, about this record of evidence,” Comer, chair of the House Oversight Committee, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “This deposition is not the conclusion of the impeachment inquiry. There are more subpoenas and witness interviews to come.”

Hunter will be the second member of the Biden family questioned by Republicans in recent days. They conducted a more than eight-hour interview last week with James Biden, the president’s brother. He insisted to lawmakers that Joe Biden has “never had any involvement,” financially or otherwise, in his business ventures.

Looming large over the interview are developments on the other side of the country in Nevada, where federal prosecutors this month indicted an FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, who claimed there was a multimillion-dollar bribery scheme involving the president, his son Hunter and a Ukrainian energy company. Prosecutors in court documents assert that Smirnov has had “extensive and extremely recent” contact with people who are aligned with Russian intelligence.

Smirnov’s attorneys have said he is presumed innocent.

Republicans pressed the FBI last summer over the informant’s claims, demanding to see the underlying documents and ultimately releasing the unverified information to the public. The claim was cited repeatedly in letters that House Republicans sent to impeachment witnesses.

Many GOP lawmakers say they have yet to see evidence of the “high crimes and misdemeanors” required for impeachment, despite alleged efforts by members of the Biden family to leverage the last name into corporate paydays domestically and abroad.

But the Republican chairmen leading the impeachment effort remain undeterred by the series of setbacks to their marquee investigation. Jordan, the chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said last week that the informant’s indictment “does not change the fundamental facts” that the Biden family tried to benefit off the family name in several overseas businesses.

And Comer told Fox News on Tuesday that Smirnov was never “a key part of this investigation.”

Both Comer and Jordan have insisted for the past year that their investigation and inquiry is focused solely on Joe Biden and what actions, if any, he took while as vice president or president to benefit his family. But at nearly every turn, their probe has had a consistent and heavy focus on Hunter Biden. Several lines of inquiry have been opened into Hunter’s international business affairs, his artwork sales and even his personal life and on-and-off battle with addiction.

Meanwhile, Hunter Biden has no shortage of legal headaches off Capitol Hill as he faces criminal charges in two states from a special counsel investigation. He’s charged with firearm counts in Delaware, alleging he broke laws against drug users having guns in 2018, a period when he has acknowledged struggling with addiction. Special counsel David Weiss filed additional charges late last year, alleging he failed to pay about $1.4 million in taxes over three years.

He has pleaded not guilty in both cases.
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Washington — President Joe Biden on Wednesday is signing an executive order aimed at better protecting Americans’ personal data on everything from biometrics and health records to finances and geolocation from foreign adversaries like China and Russia.

The attorney general and other federal agencies are to prevent the large-scale transfer of Americans’ personal data to what the White House calls “countries of concern,” while erecting safeguards around other activities that can give those countries access to people’s sensitive data.

The goal is to do so without limiting legitimate commerce around data, senior Biden administration officials said on a call with reporters. 

Biden’s move targets commercial data brokers, the sometimes shadowy companies that traffic in personal data and that officials say may sell information to foreign adversaries or U.S. entities controlled by those countries.

Most eventual enforcement mechanisms still have to clear complicated and often monthslong rulemaking processes. Still, the administration hopes eventually to limit foreign entities, as well as foreign-controlled companies operating in the U.S., that might otherwise improperly collect sensitive data, the senior officials said.

Data brokers are legal in the U.S. and collect and categorize personal information, usually to build profiles on millions of Americans that the brokers then rent or sell.

The officials said activities like computer hacking are already prohibited in the U.S., but that buying potentially sensitive data through brokers is legal. That can represent a key gap in the nation’s national security protections when data is sold to a broker knowing it could end up in the hands of an adversary — one the administration now aims to close with the president’s executive action.

“Bad actors can use this data to track Americans, including military service members, pry into their personal lives, and pass that data on to other data brokers and foreign intelligence services,” the White House wrote in a fact sheet announcing the move. “This data can enable intrusive surveillance, scams, blackmail, and other violations of privacy.”

The order directs the Department of Justice to issue regulations that establish protections for Americans’ sensitive personal data, as well as sensitive government-related data — including geolocation information on sensitive government sites and members of the military. 

The Justice Department also plans to work with Homeland Security officials to build safety standards to prevent foreign adversaries from collecting data. It will further attempt better checks to ensure that federal grants going to various other agencies, including the departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs, aren’t used to facilitate Americans’ sensitive data flowing to foreign adversaries or U.S. companies aligned with them.

The senior administration officials listed potential countries of concern as China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela. But it is China — and TikTok, which has over 150 million American users and is a wholly owned subsidiary of Chinese technology firm ByteDance Ltd. — that U.S. leaders have been most vocal about.

Rep. Mike Gallagher, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, recently noted, “There’s no such thing as a private business in China.”

The senior administration officials stressed that the executive action was designed to work in conjunction with legislative action. So far, however, numerous bills seeking to establish federal privacy protections have failed to advance in Congress.

Wednesday’s move follows Biden’s executive order on artificial intelligence last fall that seeks to balance the needs of cutting-edge technology companies with national security and consumer rights.

That sought to steer how AI is developed so that companies can profit without putting public safety in jeopardy, creating early guardrails meant to ensure that AI is trustworthy and helpful, rather than deceptive and destructive.
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The $95 billion foreign aid package approved by the U.S. Senate this month remains stalled in the Republican-majority House of Representatives, jeopardizing the delivery of $60 billion in aid to Ukraine to help it defeat Russia. Congressional leaders met with U.S. President Joe Biden on Tuesday to discuss the impasse. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more.
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washington — The United States might not be ready for the onslaught of disinformation and cyberattacks expected to hit the country ahead of this year’s presidential elections, according to a top U.S. lawmaker.

Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner told a cybersecurity conference in Washington that despite efforts by various U.S. government agencies to protect against election meddling, there are still gaps, especially when it comes to foreign influence campaigns.

“I worry that we are less prepared for foreign intervention in our elections in 2024 than we were in 2020,” he told the Trellix Cybersecurity Summit.

He added that the prevalence of artificial intelligence could also make Russia’s efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election look “like child’s play.”

Top U.S. law enforcement and cybersecurity officials have repeatedly voiced confidence in their ability to protect the nation’s voting infrastructure from attacks from any number of U.S. adversaries.

“Americans can be confident in our election system and our democracy,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers last month, backed by the leaders of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) and the National Security Agency.

But officials have expressed concerns about influence operations, especially from Russia, China and Iran, designed to exploit existing U.S. domestic political divisions.

Warner on Tuesday said he believes that is where Washington election defenses are most vulnerable, citing a court ruling that has prohibited social media companies from sharing information about potential foreign influence operations with the FBI or CISA.

“That ought to scare the hell out of all of us,” he said, adding that voter susceptibility may be at an all-time high.

“We’ve got a whole lot of more Americans in 2024, unfortunately, that are more willing to believe or have less faith in our system to start with,” Warner said.

Warner’s warning about Russian election meddling echoes comments by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan.

“There’s plenty of reason to be concerned,” Sullivan told NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday. “There is a history here in presidential elections by the Russian Federation, by its intelligence services.”

Those concerns, however, have riled some lawmakers and conservative commentators, who argue the White House is trying to resurrect what they call the “Russia hoax” — the narrative voiced by many Democrats that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. presidential election to help former President Donald Trump win.

Warner, talking to reporters, dismissed such arguments.

“Anyone who doesn’t think the Russian intel services have and will continue to interfere in our elections … I wonder where they’re getting their information to start with,” he said in response to a question from VOA.

In a declassified intelligence report on the U.S. 2022 elections, released late last year, the National Intelligence Council assessed with high confidence that Russia, along with China and Iran, ran operations that sought to influence the outcomes.

“The Russian Government and its proxies sought to denigrate the Democratic Party before the midterm elections and undermine confidence in the election, most likely to undermine U.S. support for Ukraine,” the report said.

China targeted a “handful of midterm races involving members of both U.S. political parties,” it added.

Both Russia and China have previously denied allegations of running influence operations aimed at U.S. elections.
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