White House Mulls AI Oversight, Protections with Industry Leaders
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A once-confident Vladimir Putin may finally be giving up on his designs to quickly subdue Kyiv and conquer Ukraine, according to the most recent assessment by U.S. intelligence officials.

U.S. intelligence agencies have previously argued the Russian president believes it is necessary for him to conquer Ukraine for him to fulfill his destiny.

But as the war drags into its second year, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Russian leader has conceded, somewhat, to realities on the ground.

“We assess that Putin has probably scaled back his immediate ambitions, to consolidate control of the occupied territory in eastern and southern Ukraine and ensuring that Ukraine will never become a NATO ally,” Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Thursday.

“Russian forces gained less territory in April than during any of the three previous months as they appeared to transition from offensive to defensive operations along the front lines,” Haines said.

“Russian forces are facing significant shortfalls in munitions and are under significant personnel constraints,” she added. “If Russia does not initiate a mandatory mobilization and secure substantial third-party ammunition supplies, beyond existing deliveries from Iran and others, it will be increasingly challenging for them to sustain even modest offensive operations.”

Haines, echoing a warning from her testimony before Congress in March, said Russia and Ukraine remained locked in a “brutally grinding war of attrition in which neither military has a definitive advantage.”

Ukraine, she said, remains reliant upon Western military aid to push back against Russia’s manpower advantage while the Kremlin is being forced to rely more heavily on asymmetric threats and tactics because of the degradation of its ground forces.

Russia’s ground forces are “relying on reserves and reserve equipment,” said Lieutenant General Scott Berrier, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.

“It’s going to take them a while to build back,” he told lawmakers while testifying alongside Haines. “The estimates go from five to 10 years based on how sanctions affect them and their ability to put technology back into their force.”

Nuclear option

Berrier, however, warned that the degradation of Russia’s ground forces should not been seen as an indication of overall weakness.

“Even though their ground forces are degraded right now, they will quickly build those back,” he said, describing Moscow as “still an existential threat” because of its nuclear forces, which have not yet been tested.

But as for whether Putin might be inclined to use nuclear weapons to alter the course of the war in Ukraine, the U.S. intelligence leaders said, as of now, not so much.

“There are a number of scenarios we’ve thought through,” Berrier told lawmakers. “Right now, I’d say we think it’s unlikely.”

“From an IC [intelligence community] perspective, it’s very unlikely,” Haines added.

Kremlin drone attack

Like other senior U.S. officials, Haines and Berrier urged caution regarding Russia’s accusation that Ukraine launched a drone attack against the Kremlin this week as part of an attempt to assassinate Putin.

“You’ve seen the Ukrainian government deny having engaged in this and, at this stage, we don’t have information that would allow us to provide an independent assessment on this,” she said.

Haines said it is well known that Putin does not usually spend the night at the Kremlin, which casts some doubt on the Russian claim.

The DIA’s Berrier also said that the available photos suggested the attack was staged with drones that would need to have been controlled by someone on the ground, within sight of the Kremlin.

Russia, China

Both Haines and Berrier told lawmakers that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had bought Moscow and Beijing closer together.

“Since the invasion, that closeness has accelerated to some extent and, in part, this is due to the fact that Russia is increasingly beholden to and needs China,” Haines said.

“And China perceives Russia increasingly as a country that was already in the sort of little brother role, is often how it’s described, but nevertheless is now even more beholden and therefore they have greater leverage.”

Haines warned that this has led to greater cooperation between the two countries in the Arctic.

“Russia recognizes that they’re going to need China and their investment in order to get to some of the resources that they’re interested in in the Arctic,” she said. “And as a consequence, China sees an opportunity, and an increasing one in light of the current scenario.”

China, US

As relations between China and Russia deepen, ties between China and the United States have become “more challenging,” Haines said.

Chinese President Xi Jinping is growing ever more distrustful of the U.S., she said, reflecting a growing pessimism among Chinese officials who increasingly seek to portray Washington as the root of the world’s problems.

Still, Haines said U.S. intelligence analysts “continue to assess that Beijing wants to preserve stability and avoid triggering additional technology restrictions.”

Taiwan

U.S. intelligence agencies are also taking note of Xi’s rhetoric on Taiwan.

“We continue to assess that he [Xi] would prefer to achieve unification of Taiwan through peaceful means,” Haines told lawmakers. “But the reality is that he has directed his military to provide him with the military option.”

If and when Xi might decide to use force to take Taiwan is less clear.

“There are a number of dates out there that mean different things to different people,” Berrier testified. “Bottom line is he’s told his military to be ready. For what, we are not sure. When, we are not sure.”

Islamic State, Afghanistan

While much of the U.S. focus has shifted to great power competition with China and Russia, terrorist groups such as the Islamic State group (IS) and al-Qaida remain a concern.

But Haines suggested that one of IS’s key affiliates has suffered a significant setback.

In March, the commander of U.S. Central Command, General Michael Kurilla, told lawmakers that the IS affiliate in Afghanistan, known as IS-Khorasan or ISIS-K, could launch attacks against U.S. interests or Western allies in under six months.

Haines, however, told lawmakers there is reason to think that external attack capability has been degraded.

“There have been some developments we can talk about in closed session since that statement was made that I think could affect the timeline,” she said.

FISA

Haines also urged lawmakers, again, to renew authorities granted under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which expire this year.

FISA Section 702 allows U.S. intelligence agencies to gather electronic data of non-Americans without first obtaining warrants. But its use has been controversial because of repeated incidents in which officials have collected information on U.S. citizens.

FISA Section 702 “is utterly fundamental” to U.S. national security, Haines said. “Fifty-nine percent of every PDB, our president’s daily brief articles, are sourced to 702 information.”
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The U.S. State Department said peace talks between diplomats from Armenia and Azerbaijan held outside Washington since Sunday are expected to conclude Thursday. 

In a statement, the department said Secretary of State Antony Blinken will take part in a closing session of the bilateral talks between Armenian Foreign Minister Ararat Mirzoyan and Azerbaijani Foreign Minister Jeyhun Bayramov shortly before 2 p.m. Washington time. 

The two sides have been meeting at a state department diplomatic facility in Arlington, Virginia. 

The talks were convened as tensions between the neighboring, former Soviet republics increased in recent months over Azerbaijan’s blockade of the Lachin Corridor, which is the only land route giving Armenia direct access to the contested region of Nagorno-Karabakh. 

In a telephone briefing, a senior State Department official, speaking on background, told reporters Monday the United States expects the talks to conclude with “commercial movement of goods” to start soon in the blocked Lachin Corridor. 

The official said, “About Lachin, we have been very clear throughout the last few months about the importance of ensuring the free movement of commercial and humanitarian traffic and people through the Lachin Corridor between Armenia and Nagorno-Karabakh. We continue to engage in those discussions.” 

Early Monday, Blinken held separate meetings with the Armenian foreign minister and his Azerbaijani counterpart. 

Monday’s meetings occurred after Blinken’s call with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev on Sunday, when the top U.S. diplomat reiterated Washington’s call to reopen the land route “to commercial and private vehicles as soon as possible.” 

The State Department had voiced “deep concern” that Azerbaijan’s establishment of a checkpoint on the Lachin Corridor undermines efforts for peace talks. 

A representative from Armenia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Mirzoyan’s working visit to the United States is to discuss “the agreement on normalization of relations” with Azerbaijan. 

The two countries have had a decades-long conflict involving the Nagorno-Karabakh region, which is inside Azerbaijan but populated mainly by ethnic Armenians. 

The Lachin Corridor allows supplies from Armenia to reach the 120,000 ethnic Armenians in the mountainous enclave and has been policed by Russian peacekeepers since December 2020. 
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A federal jury in Washington has convicted the former leader of the far-right Proud Boys and three associates of seditious conspiracy for their role in the violent siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.  

Former Proud Boys chairman Enrique Tarrio and regional leaders Joe Biggs, Ethan Nordean and Zach Rehl also were found guilty Thursday of conspiring to obstruct Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election.  

But the jury failed to reach a verdict on both conspiracy charges against a fifth defendant in the case, Dominic Pezzola.   

Pezzola is a former Marine and boxer who joined the Proud Boys after the 2020 election but held no leadership position.  

The five defendants faced a total of nine charges related to the attack on the Capitol, including obstructing an official proceeding and conspiracy to prevent Congress and federal officers from discharging their duties. They were found guilty of most.    

Pezzola was also convicted of an additional charge of robbery for stealing a police officer’s riot shield to smash a Capitol window.   

The verdict marked a major victory for the U.S. Justice Department as it probes the deadly rampage that left five people dead, wounded more than 100 police officers and sparked one of the largest criminal investigations in U.S. history.   

Prosecutors faced a daunting challenge in the case: to build and prove a seditious conspiracy charge that is notoriously difficult to prosecute.  

Seditious conspiracy is a rare charge that dates to the early days of the American Civil War. The law defines seditious conspiracy as plotting to use force to overthrow the U.S. government, oppose its authority or “prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States.”

“This is a significant win for DOJ and lends further credence to Attorney General [Merrick] Garland’s commitment to following the facts of the case wherever they lead and to proceed in a deliberate fashion,” Jordan Strauss, a former Justice Department official who now works at the risk consultancy firm Kroll, told VOA.  

The Justice Department did not respond to a request for comment.  

The verdict followed five days of jury deliberations and a complex trial that lasted four months and featured dozens of witnesses and numerous legal fights. 

The convictions marked the third time members of an extremist group involved in the attack of January 6 had been convicted of seditious conspiracy.   

In two earlier cases, juries convicted Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and a top lieutenant of seditious conspiracy in November and found four other members of the anti-government militia guilty of the charge in January. They have yet to be sentenced. 

In all, 14 members of the Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys have now been either convicted of or pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, a charge that carries a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.  

The Proud Boys, a self-described group of Western chauvinists known for their anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric, emerged during the 2016 presidential campaign and became among Trump’s most fervent supporters during the 2020 race. 

The group caught national attention when Trump declared during a September 2020 presidential debate: “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by!” 

After Trump lost the election and refused to admit defeat, he launched a relentless campaign of lawsuits to overturn the outcome.  

But as his legal efforts floundered, he rallied his supporters to come to Washington on January 6, the day Congress would confirm Biden’s win.  

In an infamous tweet repeatedly referenced during the trial, Trump wrote on December 19, 2020: “Be there, will be wild.”  

The Proud Boys took that as a call to arms, prosecutors alleged.   

To prepare for January 6, Tarrio assembled a group of comrades that he dubbed the “Ministry of Self Defense.” 

Under the guise of organizing protests, the group acted as “a violent gang that came together to use force against its enemies,” prosecutors said. 

Assistant U.S. Attorney Conor Mulroe said in his closing arguments that the Proud Boys saw themselves as a “fighting force” for Trump and were “ready to commit violence on his behalf” to overturn the election results.   

Defense lawyers countered that there was no evidence of a coordinated plan to attack the Capitol. They said the Proud Boys were so disorganized that they couldn’t plan a trip to McDonald’s. 

Prosecutors, the defense argued, failed to show any evidence of a conspiracy to use force against the government.   

The defense also tried to shift responsibility for the events of January 6 to Trump.  

Nayib Hassan, Tarrio’s lawyer, told the jury that his client was not in Washington on January 6 and that prosecutors were using him as “a scapegoat for Donald J. Trump and those in power.”  

In the end, however, the defense team “failed to generate reasonable doubt in the minds of the jurors,” Strauss of Kroll said.  

The unprecedented assault on the Capitol set off one of the largest and most complex criminal investigations in the Justice Department’s history. 

As part of the probe, the FBI has arrested more than 1,000 people and says it is seeking information about more than 260 others suspected of committing violence on the Capitol grounds.  

More than 500 defendants, including members of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, have pleaded guilty to various federal charges, while dozens have been convicted at trial.  
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The U.S. Small Business Administration has named Abdirahman Kahin, a Somali American restaurant chain owner in Minneapolis, Minnesota, as the National Small Business Person of the Year for 2023. Mohamud Mascadde in Minneapolis and Abdulaziz Osman Washington have more in this report, narrated by Salem Solomon. Videographers: Abdulaziz Osman and Mohamud Mascadde
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Providing further proof that U.S. children suffered significant learning loss when schools were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic, the National Assessment Governing Board released a report Wednesday that showed test scores measuring achievement in U.S. history and civics fell significantly between 2018 and 2022.

The tests, part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), commonly known as the “nation’s report card,” were given to hundreds of eighth-grade students across the country. Scores on the U.S. history assessment were the lowest recorded since 1994, while the scores on the civics test fell for the first time ever.

Only 13% of students tested in U.S. history were considered proficient, meaning that they had substantially mastered the material expected of them. That was 1 percentage point lower than in 2018. Another 46% tested at the NAEP “basic” level, meaning they had partial mastery of the material, down 4 percentage points. The remaining 40% of students tested did not meet the bar for basic knowledge, an increase of 6 percentage points.

In civics, 20% of students tested qualified as proficient, and 48% had basic knowledge of the material — both down 1 percentage point from 2018. Another 31% failed to demonstrate even basic knowledge, an increase by 4 percentage points over 2018.

In both cases, declines in proficiency were concentrated among lower-performing students, while achievement among the top 25% of students was little changed.

Further breakdowns of the data indicated that declines were notably larger among racial minorities and lower-income students, indicating that the impact of the pandemic on educational achievement was not evenly distributed across the population.

Echoes of past warnings

The results issued Wednesday, like those of other NAEP assessments released last year, demonstrated that a decline in educational achievement was exacerbated by lengthy school closures during the pandemic.

In a statement, National Assessment Governing Board Chair Beverly Perdue, a former governor of North Carolina, said the results should be a call to action.

“The wake-up calls keep coming,” she said. “Education leaders and policy makers must create opportunities for students to gain the knowledge and skills they need to catch up and thrive. The students who took these tests are in high school today and will soon enter college and the workforce without the knowledge and skills they need to fully participate in civic life and our democracy.”

U.S. lags in education

Even before the pandemic took hold, experts were sounding alarms about the state of education in the U.S. In 2019, the year before pandemic-related shutdowns began, results of the Program for International Student Assessment, commonly known as PISA, showed U.S. students lagging behind their peers in East Asia and Europe.

The results ranked U.S. students 13th in reading, 18th in science, and 37th in mathematics when compared to a global sample of their peers.

Consistently at the top of each category were China, where only four mainland provinces participated, and Singapore. The U.S. consistently trailed its northerly neighbor, Canada, in all three categories. It also lagged the English-speaking United Kingdom and Australia in all categories except reading.

‘New human crisis’

The U.S. was not the only country where learning suffered because of the coronavirus pandemic. In January, the World Bank issued a report describing pandemic-related learning loss as a “mass casualty event” that, at one time or another, forced 1.4 billion students around the world to miss significant time in the classroom.

Stephen Heyneman, professor emeritus of international education policy at Vanderbilt University and the editor in chief of the International Journal of Educational Development, told VOA that the pandemic-related education crisis is “the worst we’ve had in my lifetime.”

In an editorial published in the May edition of the journal, an editorial board made up of nine researchers from universities worldwide assessed evidence of the pandemic’s impact on education and concluded that the world “is on the verge of a new human crisis.”

The researchers confirmed that in the relatively wealthy industrialized countries, known as the Global North, the poor felt pandemic-related educational impacts most deeply, while financially well-off families often could mitigate much of the impact on students.

The news was worse for the relatively poorer countries, often referred to as the Global South.

“In the Global South, the learning challenges have proved multi-dimensional and much harder to tackle, given the triple burden of schooling deprivation, learning inequality and learning poverty,” they found.

The disparities, first noted early in the pandemic, have continued, the researchers found. “The consensus view is that, despite many promising innovations, learning shortfalls have persisted or even increased, three years into the pandemic.”

Frustration

Asked how the U.S. had performed during the pandemic compared with other developed nations, Heyneman said that “comparison evidence, so far, is too little for me to make any generalizations.”

However, he said, he and his colleagues have noticed — and been frustrated by — a common practice that has been adopted by most public school systems around the world as they have reopened.

Rather than assessing where students had pandemic-related deficits and working to correct them before continuing on with standard curriculums, schools have consistently attempted to simply restart, placing students in the classes and grade levels that correspond to their ages rather than to their actual educational attainment.

“They have not tested the learning loss in any systematic way, and when they have tested, they often haven’t released the scores,” he said. “And whether or not they have tested, they have not treated the results as an emergency. That makes me furious.”
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The United States will allow Chinese airlines to increase U.S. passenger services to 12 weekly round trips, the Transportation Department (USDOT) said on Wednesday, equal to the number of flights Beijing has permitted for American carriers.

It is a boost from the eight weekly round-trip flights currently allowed by Chinese carriers and matches what Beijing has permitted for U.S. carriers, but a small fraction of the more than 150 round-trip flights allowed by each side before restrictions were imposed in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

USDOT’s order said its goal was “a gradual, broader reopening of the U.S.-China air services market.” China in March reopened its borders to foreign tourists for the first time in the three years after abandoning COVID-related border controls for its own citizens in January.

U.S. carriers American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, and United Airlines operate scheduled passenger services between the countries, as do Chinese operators Xiamen Airlines, Air China, China Southern Airlines and China Eastern Airlines.

USDOT noted American began operating two additional round-trip weekly flights to Shanghai from Texas in March after Chinese pandemic restrictions were dropped.

USDOT said in its order that Chinese restrictions on air travel “had, and continue to have, a devastating effect on the U.S.-China air transport market.”

U.S. airlines and other foreign carriers are barred from flying over Russia in retaliation for the United States banning Russia from flights over the U.S. in March 2022 after its invasion of Ukraine.

In February, two key senators issued a letter urging the Biden administration to halt Chinese airlines and other non-American carriers from flying over Russia on U.S. routes, which gives them an advantage in fuel burn and flying time.

Airlines for America, which represents major U.S. carriers, in February praised the senators’ letter, noting it underscored long-standing industry concerns regarding Russian overflights that had disadvantaged American passenger and cargo carriers. 
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A top House Republican subpoenaed FBI Director Chris Wray on Wednesday for what he claimed are bureau records related to President Joe Biden and his family, basing the demand on newly surfaced allegations he said an unnamed whistleblower made to Congress.

The White House said it was the latest example in the years-long series of “unfounded, unproven” political attacks against Biden by Republicans “floating anonymous innuendo.”

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Accountability, is seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. Comer, in a letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

The subpoena seeks all so-called FD-1023 forms and accompanying attachments and documents.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

Comer and Grassley said those “disclosures” demand further investigation, and they want to know whether the FBI investigated and, if so, what agents found.

To the White House, the subpoena is further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Bidens “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, said Biden “has offered an unprecedented level of transparency” about his personal finances with the public release of a total of 25 years of tax returns.

The FBI and Justice Department confirmed receiving the subpoena but declined to comment further. The president’s personal lawyers had no comment.

Republicans claim they have amassed evidence in recent years that raise questions about whether Biden and his family have used their public positions for private gain.

House Republicans have used the power of their new majority to aggressively investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of the family’s finances. Comer has obtained thousands of pages of the Biden family’s financial records through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions since January.

Comer has not revealed much about the findings of his investigation so far. Most recently, Comer claimed one deal involving the Biden family resulted in a profit of over $1 million in more than 15 incremental payments from a Chinese company through a third party.

Both Comer and Grassley have accused both the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their investigations and politicizing the agency’s years-long investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Last month, an IRS special agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress to disclose a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.
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Two 10-year-olds are among 300 children who worked at McDonald’s restaurants illegally, a Labor Department investigation of franchisees in Kentucky found.

Agency investigators found the 10-year-olds received little or no pay at a McDonald’s in Louisville, the Labor Department said. The franchisee for the Louisville store was among three McDonald’s franchisees fined $212,000 in total by the department.

Louisville’s Bauer Food LLC, which operates 10 McDonald’s locations, employed 24 minors under the age of 16 to work more hours than legally permitted, the agency said. Among those were two 10-year-old children. The agency said the children sometimes worked as late as 2 a.m., but were not paid.

“Below the minimum age for employment, they prepared and distributed food orders, cleaned the store, worked at the drive-thru window and operated a register,” the Labor Department said Tuesday, adding that one child also was allowed to operate a deep fryer, which is prohibited task for workers under 16.

Franchise owner-operator Sean Bauer said the two 10-year-olds cited in the Labor Department’s statement were visiting their parent, a night manager, and weren’t employees.

“Any ‘work’ was done at the direction of — and in the presence of — the parent without authorization by franchisee organization management or leadership,” Bauer said Wednesday in a prepared statement, adding that they’ve since reiterated the child visitation policy to employees.

Federal child labor regulations put strict limits on the types of jobs children can perform and the hours they can work.

The Kentucky investigations are part of an ongoing effort by the Labor Department’s Wage and Hour Division to stop child labor abuses in the Southeast.

“Too often, employers fail to follow the child labor laws that protect young workers,” said division Director Karen Garnett-Civils. “Under no circumstances should there ever be a 10-year-old child working in a fast-food kitchen around hot grills, ovens and deep fryers.”

In addition, Walton-based Archways Richwood LLC and Louisville-based Bell Restaurant Group I LLC allowed minors ages 14 and 15 to work beyond allowable hours, the department said. Archway Richwood didn’t immediately return a call seeking comment and Brdancat Management Inc., which Bell Restaurant Group is part of, declined comment.

“These reports are unacceptable, deeply troubling and run afoul of the high expectations we have for the entire McDonald’s brand,” McDonald’s USA spokeswoman Tiffanie Boyd said. “We are committed to ensuring our franchisees have the resources they need to foster safe workplaces for all employees and maintain compliance with all labor laws.”
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U.S. Senate Democrats launched a renewed effort to stave off competition from China on Wednesday, planning legislation to boost the country’s ability to face up to the Asian powerhouse on issues from technology to security and threats to Taiwan.

After passing a sweeping bill last year to boost competition with Beijing in semiconductors and other technology, Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer and Democratic committee leaders said they would write legislation they hoped to introduce in the next several months to limit the flow of technology to China, deter China from initiating a conflict with Taiwan and tighten rules to block U.S. capital from going to Chinese companies.

Schumer said the bill, dubbed China Competition 2.0, would broaden last year’s “Chips and Science” act.

“Today, we are announcing a new initiative, one that will build on this momentum and develop new and significant bipartisan legislation,” Schumer said at a press conference.

He said he hoped the bill would be bipartisan and said Republicans in the Senate had been supportive of some of the ideas proposed for the package. The measure will need Republican support to become law, as Republicans control the House of Representatives.

The desire for a hard line on China is one of the few bipartisan sentiments in the perennially divided U.S. Congress, and last year’s legislation passed with overwhelming support from both Democrats and Republicans.

However, John Thune, the Senate’s No. 2 Republican, said the new China initiative would have a hard time getting through Congress, given his party’s concerns about spending and the debt and the size of last year’s bill.

“It would be challenging, and partly because of spending and debt — concerns about too much spending and the impact it’s had on inflation, the way the deficits exploded and ballooned,” Thune said.

The bill signed into law by President Joe Biden last year authorized hundreds of billions of dollars to boost scientific research and subsidize domestic semiconductor manufacturers.

This year’s planned legislation would also seek funding for additional domestic investments in key technology areas and provide a better U.S. alternative to China’s Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative, an effort to counter Beijing’s international influence.

“We know that China uses its economic power like a bully,” Democratic Senator Chris Coons told the news conference.

Schumer said lawmakers would look at TikTok and other foreign-based apps while writing the China bill. TikTok, which is owned by Chinese tech company ByteDance, has been a subject of intense scrutiny in Washington and other Western capitals.

TikTok has been banned from government-issued phones in countries such as Canada and Australia over concerns about whether China can access user data or influence what people see. Some U.S. lawmakers have called for a nationwide ban.
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The chief executive officer of the United States Agency for Global Media said Wednesday the agency she leads is playing a critical role globally in giving audiences access to credible and unbiased news countering media run by authoritarian regimes.

“We are at an inflection point,” Amanda Bennett said in prepared testimony for the Senate foreign relations subcommittee overseeing the State Department and other international activities.

“Authoritarian regimes are using malign influence, disinformation, propaganda and information manipulation to close the flow of information and undermine those seeking fact-based information about the world around them. The governments of the [People’s Republic of China], Iran and Russia often work together to amplify their malign influence,” she continued.

USAGM estimates that 394 million people access its programming each week. The federally funded agency overseen by the U.S. Congress comprises two federal entities — Voice of America and the Office of Cuba Broadcasting — and four nonprofits: Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Radio Free Asia, the Middle East Broadcasting Networks and the Open Technology Fund (OTF).

Bennett said USAGM was built for this moment with more than 4,000 media partners around the world countering the influence of state-run media.

According to USAGM, RFE and VOA programming was viewed 8 billion times in Russian and Ukrainian in the year since the Russian invasion, and 1 in 4 Iranian adults used OTF-supported circumvention tools to access information.

“This is the most important time for this agency since the Cold War, and perhaps since World War II,” said Bennett. “USAGM must be positioned to be consistently competitive in today’s dangerous world of information manipulation and heavy investment by authoritarian regimes and other bad actors.” 

Agency asks for $944 million

USAGM has requested $944 million for fiscal 2024, a $59 million increase over the current year. Some lawmakers have questioned whether the agency is making good use of taxpayer funding.

“We have a very open system,” Democratic Senator Ben Cardin said, comparing USAGM networks to state-funded media. “We guard very carefully the journalistic independence of your agency, and we will do that. But we as policymakers want to make sure that we’re placing our resources and priorities in those parts of the world where we are the most vulnerable.”

USAGM has undergone Senate-directed structural changes in recent years to address different priorities across the entities, technological hurdles, government bureaucracy and low funding in comparison to state-funded media in other countries.

Earlier this year, House Foreign Affairs chairman Michael McCaul expressed concern about hiring practices and possible censorship at Voice of America, writing in a letter to Bennett, “As a publicly funded media organization, it is imperative that USAGM and VOA comply with these strict requirements for both integrity and nonpartisanship, keeping USAGM leadership out of the editorial decision-making process.”

USAGM valued abroad

Public diplomacy experts told lawmakers that USAGM should not try to adopt every platform and every target given resourcing challenges.

“Washington should undertake concerted campaigns grounded in truthfulness to expose the failures and false promises of dictatorship,” said Jessica Brandt, policy director for the Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Technology Initiative at the Brookings Institution. “It should also apply that information worldwide, not just because it’s consistent with democratic principles, but because it puts Russia and China in a defensive position.”

Brandt noted that overseas audiences value USAGM coverage for its truthfulness.

“In its coverage of the United States, VOA should not hesitate to present the American experience in its full complexity,” she testified. “It is a sign of strength, not weakness, for a government-funded entity to reckon honestly with its challenges. I think doing so may resonate with those who are struggling to nurture their own democracies.”
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A woman identified as the wife of a Texas man suspected of killing five of his neighbors was arrested Wednesday for allegedly helping the man elude capture for four days, authorities said, and a third person is expected to face similar charges.

Divimara Lamar Nava, 53, identified as the wife of suspect Francisco Oropeza, was in custody in connection with the Friday night shooting, according to Montgomery County Sheriff Rand Henderson.

Although Henderson identified Nava as Oropeza’s wife, jail records list her as not being legally married. The two share a home address, according to the records.

Nava had previously denied knowledge of Oropeza’s whereabouts, Henderson said, but authorities believe she hid him in the home near Conroe where he was arrested Tuesday.

Nava was arrested early Wednesday and was being held in the Montgomery County jail on a felony charge of hindering the apprehension or prosecution of a known felon, according to online jail records. The records do not list a bond for her and indicate she was arrested by state police at a home in Conroe.

Also, San Jacinto County District Attorney Todd Dillon said a friend of Oropeza’s, Domingo Castilla, was also arrested Tuesday in the neighborhood where the shooting took place. Castilla was taken in for marijuana possession, but authorities expect to also charge him with other crimes, including hindering Oropeza’s apprehension, Dillon said.

Found in a closet

A four-day manhunt for Oropeza ended Tuesday when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house.

At a news conference Wednesday morning in Coldspring, Tim Kean, chief deputy with the San Jacinto County Sheriff’s Office, said authorities spotted Oropeza, 38, on Monday afternoon in Montgomery County, prompting the lockdown of several schools.

“We did confirm that was him on foot, running but we lost track of him. That was not a false alarm. That was him,” Kean said outside the county jail.

The Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office had previously said reports of a possible sighting of Oropeza in the area was a false alarm.

Kean declined to comment on the tip that led authorities to the home where Oropeza was arrested as well as when he arrived or how he got there. Kean said the home had not been previously checked by authorities.

Kean said Oropeza only mildly resisted arrest and was not injured.

Kean said there have been several other arrests “but I can’t go into the details on that.”

Kean said the home where Oropeza was arrested has a personal connection to the suspect. He declined to provide more details but said there was no indication Oropeza was about to leave.

“I believe he thought he was in a safe spot,” Kean said.

Oropeza was expected to appear before a judge inside the San Jacinto County Jail on Wednesday and the judge would formally set his bond at $5 million, Kean said.

The home is near the community of Conroe, north of Houston and about 32 kilometers (20 miles) from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle shortly before midnight Friday.

Oropeza had been shooting rounds on his property and attacked his neighbors after they asked him to go farther away because the gunfire was keeping a baby awake, according to police.

The arrest ends what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions and had seen $80,000 in reward money offered. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropeza “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.

The tip that finally ended the chase came at 5:15 p.m., and a little more than an hour later, Oropeza was in custody, said FBI Assistant Special Agent in Charge Jimmy Paul. The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times between 2009 and 2016, according to U.S. immigration officials.

Connor Hagan, an FBI spokesman, said they would not disclose the identity of the person who called in the tip — one of more than 200 tips he says investigators received.

The hunt for the suspect

Authorities would not say where Oropeza had been since fleeing the scene in Cleveland, which authorities previously said was likely on foot.

Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropeza were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety, and U.S. Border Patrol’s BORTAC team.

Drones and scent-tracking dogs had been used during the widening manhunt, which included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Governor Greg Abbott offered a $50,000 reward as the search dragged late into the weekend, while others offered an additional $30,000 in reward money.

Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting, deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time regarding shooting rounds in his yard.

All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

A government official in Honduras said the remains of four of the victims would be repatriated. Velasquez Alvarado will be buried in the United States at the request of her sister and her husband, said Wilson Paz, general director of Honduras’ migrant protection service.
…

The fountain pen as a practical writing instrument has been declared obsolete numerous times. It was supposedly doomed by the innovations of the drip-free ballpoint pen and the typewriter, then the computer keyboard and now the ability to automatically render voices into text on cellphones.

But the 19th-century invention has defied total extinction and is even evolving.

In a warehouse in a gritty Philadelphia neighborhood, mechanical engineer Ian Schon is doing something no one else in America does: manufacturing writing implements with nibs — the business end of the fountain pen — handcrafted from titanium.

“The way we’re doing it is really what makes us separate from the other brands and other companies that have done this in the past, which is utilizing equipment in this workshop that’s traditionally designed for aerospace or medical manufacturing and repurposing it to create an innovative, unique experience that is just different,” Schon said.

Not only different in the 21st century, it is counterintuitive — with a risky investment in expensive equipment to make a pricey product for a niche market.

“A fountain pen is impractical. It can be messy. It’s not as good as a ballpoint pen. It’s expensive. So, it’s really in line with the culture of the pen user that it’s irrational and strange,” Schon said.

“The next wave of fountain pen collectors and users will be rebelling against technology,” he predicted. “They’ll hate how much time their parents spent on Facebook when they should have been out hiking in the woods. They’ll want to throw their cellphones into the sea.”

Schon, who also successfully tried his hand at watchmaking, is no Luddite. His company is a product of the digital age. The one-man startup was initially funded through Kickstarter in 2011, and the founder produces his own YouTube videos to explain his production process and promote the pens, which range in price between $125 and $400. He also manufactures a few models of ballpoint and rollerball pens for those who decline to dive into the retro era of refillable ink.

The metal nib makes the fountain pen distinct from all other writing instruments. It was an innovation for its time, allowing continuous writing without having to repeatedly dip the pen into ink. Early prototypes were around more than a thousand years ago; Leonardo da Vinci may have used a fountain pen he developed.

Investment analyst Tony Blair shows off his collection at Philadelphia’s 130-year-old Pen & Pencil Club, formed by the city’s journalists, who wielded fountain pens to conduct their interviews.

For Blair, the antiquated writing instrument endures as an antidote to the digital age.

“Any time you introduce input/output like you do with a computer, now there’s also these other distractions. You’ll get a pop-up, and I’ll lose my thread. Or if I type up something, am I going to remember it the same way? I think writing by hand helps you remember it,” said Blair, pulling out a fountain pen from a zip-up traveling case holding nearly two dozen of his favorite models.

Blair said his first fountain pen was a secondhand Pilot Metropolitan with a medium nib he purchased for $10.

Fountain pens are meant to last a long time, another reason some prefer them over disposable ballpoints. Fountain pens can be customized with different colors of ink and types of nibs. But there are inconveniences.

“You have to refill it with ink. You are much more likely to spill ink on yourself or something else than you are with a standard disposable ballpoint,” Blair warned.

By the late 19th century, the Waterman and Parker brands were mass marketed in America. Fountain pens became more commonplace than dip pens around the time of the World War I, although early 20th-century schoolchildren were still learning how to write with the older implements. That explains why you may still come across an old school desk with a hole in it — for the inkwell.

By the 1960s, the ballpoint pen had become fashionable. Subsequent generations who did not get instruction in cursive script are likely to find the fountain pen as mysterious as the rotary dial phone or the film camera.

Liz Sieber is accustomed to encountering such curious novices. She is the owner of Philadelphia’s Omoi Zakka, a Japanese-themed stationery shop selling fountain pens, writing paper and ink.

“Some people really understand what the different nibs are about and the difference between a machine-aligned or a hand-aligned nib,” said Sieber, standing in front of a tray containing fountains pens and ink bottles for sale. “And then we also meet a lot of people who have never tried one before and are looking for something that’s not too expensive, easy to use, plays nice with a lot of different types of paper.”

Most modern nibs are made of steel, gold or iridium, and the fountain pen bodies are made of ebonite, stainless steel or sterling silver. A true fountain pen also has a self-contained reservoir for ink, loaded manually or with a cartridge insert.

Sieber is a fan of a Sailor brand pen from Japan that has a 14-karat gold nib.

“The art of that nib is that it’s gold, which is a very soft metal. So, as I hold it, it will become shaped uniquely to the way that I hold the pen,” she said.

More stores in Japan than in the United States carry Schon’s made-in-Philadelphia pens, thus creating a tiny entry on the export side of America’s trade deficit ledger.  

“I love that challenge. I love being the underdog,” said Schon.

That challenge is also writing a new page in the story of American entrepreneurship.
…

The Molotov Kitschen plus Cocktails, one of the first Ukrainian restaurants in Denver, Colorado, opened its doors in January. The venue’s owner is the grandson of Ukrainian immigrants, and every dish is a tribute to his family. Svitlana Prystynska has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Volodumur Petryniv.
…

The United States and Mexico have reached agreement on a new plan to control the flow of illegal border crossings while also allowing migrants to enter the U.S. on humanitarian grounds. 

The plan was announced Tuesday after a meeting between Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and U.S. Homeland Security adviser Liz Sherwood-Randall in Mexico City. 

Under the plan, the United States will accept migrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela as part of a humanitarian parole program, while Mexico has agreed to accept migrants from those four nations who entered the United States illegally.  

The U.S. will also accept about 100,000 people from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras under a family reunification program. 

The agreement comes ahead of the end of COVID-19 restrictions imposed by the administration of former President Donald Trump known as Title 42. The restrictions allowed U.S. officials to quickly expel tens of thousands of migrants for illegally entering the country.   

The Title 42 policy will officially end on May 11.  

In a related move, the administration of President Joe Biden has agreed to send an additional 1,500 active-duty military personnel to the southern U.S. border as local and state officials brace for a surge of migrants from Central and South America. 

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

Hollywood writers picketing to preserve pay and job security outside major studios and streamers braced for a long fight at the outbreak of a strike that immediately forced late-night shows into hiatus, put other productions on pause and had the entire industry slowing its roll.  

The first Hollywood strike in 15 years commenced Tuesday as the 11,500 members of the Writers Guild of America stopped working when their contract expired.  

The union is seeking higher minimum pay, more writers per show and less exclusivity on single projects, among other demands — all conditions it says have been diminished in the content boom of the streaming era.  

“Everything’s changed, but the money has changed in the wrong direction,” said Kelly Galuska, 39, a writer for “The Bear” on FX and “Big Mouth” on Netflix, who picketed at Fox Studios in Los Angeles with her 3-week-old daughter. “It’s a turning point in the industry right now. And if we don’t get back to even, we never will.” 

The last Hollywood strike, from the same union in 2007 and 2008, took three months to resolve. With no talks or even plans to talk pending between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which represents studios and productions companies, there is no telling how long writers will have to go without pay, or how many major productions will be delayed, shortened or scrapped.  

“We’ll stay out as long as it takes,” Josh Gad, a writer for shows including “Central Park” and an actor in films including “Frozen,” said from the Fox picket line.  

The AMPTP said in a statement that it presented an offer with “generous increases in compensation for writers as well as improvements in streaming residuals” and was prepared to improve its offer “but was unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table that the guild continues to insist upon.” 

The writers were well aware that a stoppage was likely. Yet the breakoff of contractual talks hours before a deadline that negotiations in previous years have sailed past for hours or even days, and the sudden reality of a strike, left some surprised, some worried, some determined.  

“When I saw the refusals to counter and the refusing to even negotiate by the AMPTP, I was like on fire to get out here and stand up for what we deserve,” Jonterri Gadson, a writer whose credits include “A Black Lady Sketch Show,” said on a picket line at Amazon Studios as she held a sign that read, “I hate it here.”  

All of the top late-night shows, which are staffed by writers that pen monologues and jokes for their hosts, immediately went dark. NBC’s “The Tonight Show,” Comedy Central’s “Daily Show,” ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel Live,” CBS’ “The Late Show” and NBC’s “Late Night” all made plans for reruns through the week. 

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” which had been scheduled to air a new episode Saturday, will also go dark and air a rerun, and the two remaining episodes in the season are in jeopardy.  

The strike’s impact on scripted series and films will likely take longer to notice — though some shows, including Showtime’s “Yellowjackets,” have already paused production on forthcoming seasons.  

If a strike persisted through the summer, fall TV schedules could be upended. In the meantime, those with finished scripts are permitted to continue shooting.  

Union members also picketed in New York, where less known writers were joined by more prominent peers like playwright and screenwriter Tony Kushner (“The Fabelmans”) and “Dopesick” creator Danny Strong. 

Some actors including Rob Lowe joined the picket lines in support in Los Angeles. Many striking writers, like Gad, are hybrids who combine writing with other roles.  

Speaking from his acting side, Gad said of his fellow writers, “We are nothing without their words. We have nothing without them. And so it’s imperative that we resolve this in a way that benefits the brilliance that comes out of each of these people.” 

The other side of his hyphenated role could be in the same space soon, with many of the same issues at the center of negotiations for both the actors union SAG-AFTRA and the Directors Guild of America. Contracts for both expire in June.  

Streaming has exploded the number of series and films that are annually made, meaning more jobs for writers. But writers say they’ve been made to make less under shifting and insecure conditions that the WGA called “a gig economy inside a union workforce.” 

The union is seeking more compensation for writers up front, because many of the payments writers have historically profited from on the back end — like syndication and international licensing — have been largely phased out by the onset of streaming. 

Galuska said she is among the writers who have never seen those kind of once common benefits.  

“I’ve had the opportunity to write on great shows that are very, very popular and not really seen the compensation for that, unfortunately,” she said.  

The AMPTP said sticking points to a deal revolved around so-called mini-rooms — the guild is seeking a minimum number of scribes per writer room — and the duration of employment contracts.  

Writers are also seeking more regulation around the use of artificial intelligence, which the WGA’s writers say could give producers a shortcut to finishing their work.  

“The fact that the companies have refused to deal with us on that fact means that I’m even more scared about it today than I was a week ago. They obviously have a plan. The things they say no to, are the things they’re planning to do tomorrow.”  
…

A four-day manhunt in Texas for a gunman accused of killing five neighbors ended Tuesday not far from the site of the shooting when authorities, acting on a tip, said they found the suspect hiding underneath a pile of laundry in the closet of a house. 

Francisco Oropeza, 38, was captured without incident near Houston and about 32 kilometers from his home in the rural town of Cleveland, where authorities say he went next door and shot his neighbors with an AR-style rifle after some of them had asked him to stop firing rounds in his yard because it was keeping a baby awake.  

“They can rest easy now, because he is behind bars,” San Jacinto County Greg Capers said of the families of the victims. “He will live out his life behind bars for killing those five.” 

The arrest happened in the Texas town of Cut and Shoot, near Conroe, ending what had become a widening dragnet that had grown to more than 250 people from multiple jurisdictions. As recently as Tuesday morning, the FBI said that Oropeza “could be anywhere,” underlining how investigators for days struggled to get a sense of his whereabouts and candidly acknowledged they had no leads.  

Drones and scent-tracking dogs were used during a widening search that included combing a heavily wooded forest a few miles from the scene. Republican Gov. Greg Abbott offered $50,000 in reward money as the search dragged late into the weekend. 

FBI spokesperson Connor Hagan said the three agencies that went in to arrest Oropeza were the U.S. Marshals, Texas Department of Public Safety and US Border Patrol’s BORTAC team. 

The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to U.S. immigration officials. The gunman was first deported in March 2009 and last in July 2016. He was also deported in September 2009 and January 2012. 

Capers said that prior to Friday’s shooting deputies had been called to the suspect’s house at least one other time previously over shooting rounds in his yard.  

All of the victims were from Honduras. Wilson Garcia, who survived the shooting, said friends and family in the home tried to hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door. 

Garcia said Oropeza came running over to their house loading an AR-style rifle after he and two other people had asked him to stop firing off rounds late at night. Garcia said Oropeza told him he could do what he wanted on his property. 

In offering the reward, Abbot called the victims “illegal immigrants,” a partially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday after drawing wide backlash over drawing attention to their immigration status. Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said they had since learned that one of the victims may have been in the country legally.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9. 

Osmán Velázquez, Diana’s father, said Tuesday that his daughter had recently gotten residency and had traveled to the United States without documents eight years ago with the help of a sister, who was already living there. 

“Her sister convinced me to let her take my daughter. She told me the United States is a country of opportunities and that’s true,” he said. But I never imagined it was just for this.” 
…

The United States is on track to open a new embassy in Tonga this month, the top U.S. diplomat for East Asia said on Tuesday, part of efforts to step up its diplomatic presence in the Pacific region to counter China. 

Daniel Kritenbrink told a subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the United States was also continuing to engage with Vanuatu and Kiribati about opening proposed new embassies in those countries. 

The State Department said in March it plans to open an embassy in Vanuatu. The United States has diplomatic relations with the South Pacific island nation, but these are currently handled by U.S. diplomats based in Papua New Guinea. 

The United States reopened its embassy in the Solomon Islands this year after a 30-year absence. 

Despite the diplomatic push, the Solomon Islands announced in March it had awarded a multimillion-dollar contract to a Chinese state company to upgrade an international port in Honiara. 

The United States and regional allies Australia and New Zealand have had concerns that China has ambitions to build a naval base in the region since the Solomon Islands struck a security pact with Beijing last year. 

Washington has also been working to renew agreements with the Marshall Islands, Palau and the Federated States of Micronesia under which it retains responsibility for the islands’ defense and gains exclusive access to huge swaths of the Pacific. 

The Biden administration is seeking $7.1 billion from Congress over the next two decades for economic assistance to the three countries, funds seen as key to insulating them from growing Chinese influence. 

The United States is also planning a possible Biden stop in Papua New Guinea on May 22 as part of stepped-up engagement with the Pacific-island region, according to officials familiar with the matter. 
…

U.S. lawmakers called for an enforceable code of ethics for justices on the nation’s highest court Tuesday, saying recent concerns have once again highlighted that the U.S. Supreme Court is the one branch of the U.S. government that lacks those standards.

“The court should have a code of conduct with clear and enforceable rules so both justices and the American people know when conduct crosses the line. The current highest court in the land should not have the lowest ethical standards,” Senator Dick Durbin, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said Tuesday.

Unlike the executive and legislative branches and every other federal bench, the Supreme Court does not have a written ethics code. Justices are required to follow some ethics requirements as laid out in federal statutes.

Lawmakers are asking for those new guidelines following an investigation last month by journalism nonprofit ProPublica showing Justice Clarence Thomas has accompanied billionaire and conservative donor Harlan Crow on luxury vacations for the last two decades.

Thomas also faces concerns about conflicts of interest due to his wife’s involvement in attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election that culminated in the January 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. He has served on the court since 1991 when he was narrowly confirmed after public accusations of sexual harassment.

In an April 7, 2023, statement, Thomas explained why he did not report his gifts from Crow, whom he described as a close personal friend.

“Early in my tenure at the Court, I sought guidance from my colleagues and others in the judiciary, and was advised that this sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends, who did not have business before the Court, was not reportable,” Thomas said.

The ethics concerns arise with public trust in the nation’s highest court at an all-time low. According to an October 2022 Gallup poll, only 40% of Americans approve of the job the Supreme Court is doing, and 58% say they disapprove — the highest number since that poll started in 1972.

But Senate Republicans pointed to ethics concerns about liberal-leaning Supreme Court justices and said this is just the latest attack from Democrats who are unhappy about a conservative majority on the court.

“This assault on Justice Thomas is well beyond ethics,” Republican Senator Lindsey Graham said Tuesday. “It is about trying to delegitimize a conservative court that was appointed through the traditional process.”

Republicans said they were concerned by previous inflammatory remarks made by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer suggesting justices should fear the consequences of their decisions. Republicans have also suggested that justices should receive increased security in light of threats to Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s children and a suspected assassination attempt against three conservative justices.

“Every five minutes, the Democratic Party wants to give lectures about upholding our institutions and protecting democracy,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “But just as often, they find a way to undertake some new reckless attack against the courts and the rule of law. I’m proud of how our nation’s highest court has weathered these latest baseless attempts to attack its authority.”

Multiple pieces of legislation have been introduced in the U.S. Senate that if passed would institute a code of conduct governing justices. Independent Senator Angus King and Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski would hold the Supreme Court to the same standards as other federal judges. Democratic Senator Sheldon Whitehouse also introduced legislation that would require justices to submit to the same ethics standards as members of Congress.

“The Supreme Court has the lowest ethical standards in government,” Kedric Payne, vice president, general counsel and senior director of ethics at the Campaign Legal Center, told senators on Tuesday.

“The Supreme Court does not have an internal ethics enforcement body,” Payne said. “Justices rely on ethics advice from random and anonymous sources instead of in-house ethics experts. This leads to incorrect and inconsistent interpretations of the law. Also, investigations of misconduct are extremely rare.”

Durbin invited Chief Justice John Roberts to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee about those concerns and possible solutions. Roberts declined, citing the separation of powers under the U.S. Constitution and the need to preserve judicial independence.
…

The United States worked together to impose terrorism-related sanctions on two individuals linked to funding two Syria-based groups already sanctioned by the United States and United Nations, the Treasury Department said on Tuesday.

The actions target Omar Alsheak, a leader of Haya’at Tahrir al-Sham group, and Kubilay Sari, who has received funds in Turkey from donors for Katibat al-Tawhid wal-Jihad, the department said in a statement.

“As terrorist groups continue to seek access to the international financial system, collaboration with our partners increases our ability to more effectively disrupt these facilitation networks,” said Under Secretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence Brian E. Nelson.

The new designations follow joint U.S.-Turkish actions on January 5 that target a key financial network of Islamic State, Treasury said.
…

The Biden administration will send 1,500 troops to the U.S.-Mexico border ahead of an expected migrant surge following the end of coronavirus pandemic-era restrictions, Pentagon press secretary Brigadier General Pat Ryder said in a statement Tuesday. 

Military personnel will do data entry, warehouse support and other administrative tasks so that U.S. Customs and Border Protection can focus on fieldwork, the officials said. The troops will not do law enforcement work and will be there for roughly 90 days, though their presence can be extended if necessary.  

The COVID-19 restrictions allowed U.S. officials to turn away tens of thousands of migrants crossing the southern border, but those restrictions will lift May 11, and border officials are bracing for an expected surge of migrants. Even amid the restrictions, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey. 

Biden’s actions follow similar moves by then-President Donald Trump, who deployed active-duty troops to the border to assist border patrol personnel in processing large migrant caravans, on top of National Guard forces that were working in that capacity. There are roughly 2,700 National Guard members at the border. 

The Pentagon on Tuesday approved the request for troops by the Department of Homeland Security, which manages the border, one of the officials said. 

But the deployments have a catch: As a condition for Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to support the border mission throughout fiscal 2023, which ends October 1, DHS had to agree to work with the White House and Congress “to develop a plan and implement solutions to staffing and funding shortfalls to maintain border security and the safe, orderly, and humane processing of migrants that do not involve the continued use of DOD personnel and resources after FY2023,” said Pentagon spokesman Air Force Lt. Col. Devin Robinson. 

As part of the agreement, DOD requested quarterly updates from DHS on how it would staff its border mission without service members throughout this fiscal year; it was not immediately clear if those updates have happened or if DHS will be able to meet its terms of the agreement — particularly under the strain of another migrant surge. 

For Biden, who announced his Democratic reelection campaign a week ago, the decision signals his administration is taking seriously an effort to tamp down the number of illegal crossings, a potent source of Republican attacks, and sends a message to potential border crossers not to attempt the journey. But it also draws potentially unwelcome comparisons to Biden’s Republican predecessor, whose policies Biden frequently criticized. Congress, meanwhile, has refused to take any substantial immigration-related actions. 

It’s another line of defense in an effort to manage overcrowding and other possible issues that might arise as border officials move away from the COVID-19 restrictions. Last week, administration officials announced they would work to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalize people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border. 

They will also open centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow. 
…

The search for a gunman in Texas who killed five neighbors from Honduras dragged into a third day Monday with false alarms and few apparent leads, while Republican Gov. Greg Abbott faced backlash over drawing attention to the victims’ immigration status.

An FBI agent on the scene near Houston acknowledged they have little to go on in the widening manhunt for 38-year-old Francisco Oropeza, who has been deported four times since 2009, but who neighbors say lived on their street for years prior to Friday night’s shooting in the rural town of Cleveland.

Twice on Monday, a sheriff’s office in a neighboring county alerted the public about possible sightings, but neither turned up Oropeza.

Abbott offered a $50,000 reward over the weekend for any tips that might lead to the gunman, and while doing so, the three-term governor described all the victims as “illegal immigrants” — a potentially false statement that his office walked back and apologized for Monday. Critics accused Abbott, who has made hardline immigration measures a signature issue in Texas, of putting politics into the shooting.

“We’ve since learned that at least one of the victims may have been in the United States legally,” Abbott spokesperson Renae Eze said in a statement. “We regret if the information was incorrect and detracted from the important goal of finding and arresting the criminal.”

Eze said information provided by federal officials after the shooting had indicated that the suspect and victims were in the country illegally. Her statement did not address why Abbott mentioned their status and she did not immediately respond to questions about the criticism.

More than 250 law enforcement officers from multiple agencies, including the U.S. Marshals, are now part of a growing search that has come up empty despite additional manpower, scent-tracking dogs, drones and a total of $80,000 in reward money on the table. On Monday, a heavy presence of police converged in Montgomery County after a possible sighting, but the sheriff’s office later said none of the persons were found to be Oropeza.

A few hours later, the department reported another possible sighting, tweeting that several schools had “secured their campuses” and again asked residents to avoid the area. But that search, too, turned up nothing.

Both were among the first times since the shooting that authorities had announced a possible sighting.

“I can tell you right now, we have zero leads,” James Smith, the FBI special agent in charge, said Sunday.

The FBI in Houston said in a tweet on Sunday that it was referring to the suspect as Oropesa, not Oropeza, to “better reflect his identity in law enforcement systems.” His family lists their name as Oropeza on a sign outside their yard, as well as in public records.

Oropeza is considered armed and dangerous after fleeing the area Friday night, likely on foot. San Jacinto County Sheriff Greg Capers said authorities had widened the search area beyond the scene of the shooting, which occurred after the suspect’s neighbors asked him to stop firing off rounds in his yard late at night because a baby was trying to sleep.

At a Sunday vigil in Cleveland, Wilson Garcia, the father of the 1-month-old, described the terrifying efforts inside his home by friends and family that night to escape, hide and shield themselves and children after Oropeza walked up to the home and began firing, killing his wife first at the front door.

Police recovered the AR-15-style rifle that they said Oropeza used in the shootings. Authorities were not sure if Oropeza was carrying another weapon after others were found in his home.

The alleged shooter is a Mexican national who has been deported four times, according to a U.S. official with direct knowledge of the case who spoke on condition of anonymity because public disclosure was not authorized.

The official said the gunman was first deported in March 2009 and last in July 2016. He was also deported in September 2009 and January 2012.

Law enforcement on the scene have not confirmed the citizenship status of the victims. By describing them as “illegal immigrants” on Sunday in his first public statement about the shooting — and perhaps incorrectly — Abbott came under criticism from immigrant rights groups and Democrats.

“It is indefensible to any right-hearted Texan to use divisive language to smear innocent victims,” said Domingo Garcia, president of the League of United Latin American Citizens.

The victims were identified as Diana Velazquez Alvarado, 21; Julisa Molina Rivera, 31; Jose Jonathan Casarez, 18; Sonia Argentina Guzman, 25; and Daniel Enrique Laso, 9.

Capers said he hoped the reward money would motivate people to provide information and that there were plans to put up billboards in Spanish to spread the word.

Veronica Pineda, who lives across the street from the suspect’s home, said authorities had stopped by her house over the weekend to ask if they could search her property to see if the gunman might be hiding there. She said she was fearful that the gunman had not yet been captured.

 
…

The union that represents U.S. film and television writers sent their members on strike Tuesday after failing to reach an agreement with studios and production companies over a new labor contract. 

The Writers Guild of America announced late Monday that their 11,500 members would put down their pens and turn off their computers at midnight Los Angeles time ((Tuesday 3:00 a.m. Washington time, 0700 GMT)) when their current contract expires.  

The union has been negotiating with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers for increased pay and stronger employment guarantees on episodic television shows as more and more scripted series are being shown on Internet-based or “streaming” platforms.   

In a statement announcing the strike, the WGA said major studios such as Walt Disney and Netflix have “created a gig economy inside a union workforce,” a reference to the growing trend of people taking on freelance jobs as opposed to permanent, full-time work.  

Streaming television platforms have transformed the entertainment industry in recent years, offering more opportunities for writers but for lesser pay on shows that run fewer episodes per season than traditional broadcast networks.  

Artificial intelligence is another issue for WGA members. The union wants to prevent studios from using AI to create scripts based on writers’ previous work. It also doesn’t want writers to be asked to work on scripts generated by AI. 

SEE ALSO: A related video by VOA’s Mike O’Sullivan

The AMPTP issued a statement saying it was prepared to offer higher pay and better royalty payments for writers for streaming shows, but that it was “unwilling to do so because of the magnitude of other proposals still on the table.” The alliance says a major point of contention is a union proposal for a show to maintain a certain number of staff writers “whether needed or not.” 

The strike is the first by the WGA in 15 years. The last walkout began in late 2007 and stretched 100 days into the next year, costing the California economy an estimated $2.1 billion. Late night talk and variety shows such as “The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon” and “Saturday Night Live” will go off the air immediately as their writing staffs are members of the WGA.  

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse.  
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U.S. President Joe Biden assured his Philippine counterpart Monday of the the United States’ commitment to the Southeast Asian archipelago as tensions rise with China.

“The United States also remains ironclad in our commitment to the defense of the Philippines, including in the South China Sea, and we will continue to support the Philippines military modernization goals,” Biden said.

The two leaders signed a new defense cooperation agreement Monday to strengthen Philippine security and support military modernization.

That agreement builds on the conclusion last week of the largest-ever war drills between the two nations as well as an agreement earlier this year in which the Philippines agreed to give the U.S. access to four more bases on the islands.

Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., known in his country as “Bongbong,” is the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos. On Monday, he said the archipelago nation has had a front-row seat to increased tensions in the South China Sea.

“There are also the issues, geopolitical issues that have made the region where the Philippines is possibly, arguably the most complicated geopolitical situation in — in the world right now,” Marcos said. “And so it is only natural that — for the Philippines to look to its sole treaty partner in the world to strengthen and to redefine the relationship that we have and the roles that we play in the face of those rising tensions that we see now around the South China Sea and Asia Pacific and Indo-Pacific regions.”

China has repeatedly harassed Philippine navy and coast guard patrols and disagrees with Manila’s approach.

“The key to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region lies in the fact that regional countries adhere to mutual trust, unity and cooperation and firmly hold the lifeline of their security in their own hands,” Wang Wenbin, a spokesperson for China’s Foreign Ministry, said last month at a ministry briefing. “We once again remind the relevant regional country that blindly catering to nonregional forces will not only fail to safeguard their own security but will exacerbate tensions, endanger regional peace and stability, and will inevitably harm themselves in the end.”

Analysts say this reflects a shift in the relationship.

“It’s been a dramatic turnaround over the last eight months, a real quick pace of deepening and institutionalizing the defense relationship,” said Brian Harding, who studies Southeast Asia at the U.S. Institute of Peace.

Southeast Asia experts say this is not an either-or situation for the Philippines. Beijing recently sent its foreign minister to Manila to meet with his counterpart, indicating a strong partnership.

“I think the Philippines and this President Marcos is probably navigating those dual strategic or national interests: security on one side, perhaps with the United States, trade and investment on the other side,” Marc Mealy, senior vice president for policy at the US-ASEAN Business Council, told VOA on Monday. “China is the number one trade partner for all of the countries in Southeast Asia, including the Philippines.”

In a joint statement, the leaders of the U.S. and Philippines leaders also said they would work together as allies on such efforts as promoting “inclusive and broad-based prosperity,” investing in “the clean energy transition,” fighting climate change, upholding international peace and stability, and ensuring respect for human rights and the rule of law.

The leaders’ joint statement did not mention that Marcos was visiting the U.S. under diplomatic immunity, despite a 2012 U.S. contempt order against him over his father’s estate, which was to be used to pay damages to human rights victims of martial law under the senior Marcos’ rule.

Prior to Marcos’ visit, a group, identifying its makeup as “concerned Filipinos and US Citizens,” released late last month an open letter to the White House that raised issues over what they described as “inconvenient realities stashed in Mr. Marcos’ political baggage,” such as his moves to silence critics and his approach to human rights.

“His official visit to the United States is as good a time as any to remind the U.S. public that his rise to the presidency is the fruit of at least three decades of his family’s efforts to recast his father’s dictatorship as ‘a golden age’ for Filipinos,” the group said, raising his father’s record of imprisoning political opponents and torturing dissidents.

“We understand that in advancing the United States’ diplomatic agenda President Biden must deal with his official counterpart in the Philippines as a matter of course,” read the letter, signed by leaders of seven organizations. “Nonetheless, we hope that America’s ‘ironclad commitment to the defense of the Philippines’ will not devolve into an uncritical engagement with the Marcos administration.”

Nike Ching contributed to this report. 
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