The U.S. is committed to removing landmines and other explosive remnants of the war in Vietnam throughout Southeast Asia, according to an annual report released by the State Department.

According to the report, To Walk the Earth in Safety, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia all face challenges in the safe removal of explosive remnants of war.

Iraq is the largest recipient of the U.S. government’s global program, having received more than $675 million since 1993. It is followed in the top five recipients by Afghanistan with nearly $574 million, then Laos with more than $355 million, Vietnam with over $206 million and Cambodia with nearly $192 million.

One of the biggest challenges to the implementation of the conventional weapons destruction (CWD) programs in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia is the impact of climate change that causes hotter weather, flooding, landslides and droughts, according to the report.

Karen Chandler, deputy assistant secretary of state for the Bureau of Political-Military Affairs at the State Department, told VOA Vietnamese on Tuesday, “There are two effects: One is that unexploded ordnance that previously has been hidden becomes exposed … and suddenly you see all of this new contamination that’s been laid bare by these landslides. … Another aspect of it is that it slows down the work and makes it more difficult.”

Difficult job, but ‘big payoff’

Chandler described the work of removing unexploded ordnance as “a hard job, but one with a big payoff of people’s lives and well-being.” To leave ordnance behind had “catastrophic consequences for civilians living in proximity to these dangerous depots.” Removing the lethal leftovers also boosts food security by making the land safe for cultivation.

The U.S. is the world’s single largest financial supporter of CWD programs. Since 1993, the U.S. has spent more than $4.6 billion for the safe clearance of landmines and explosive weapons of war, as well as for securing and safely disposing of excess small arms and light weapons and munitions in more than 120 countries and areas, according to the report.

In fiscal 2022, the U.S. supported conventional weapons destruction in more than 65 countries and areas with more than $376 million.

The U.S. has provided nearly $753 million over the past three decades for conventional weapons destruction in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. They receive the largest amounts of U.S. funding for CWD in the East Asia and Pacific region. The three countries received almost $75 million in the past fiscal year. Laos received just over $45 million, Vietnam received more than $20.2 million and Cambodia received the rest, or just over $9.5 million, according to the report.

“Vietnam is one of our longest and strongest programs,” Chandler told VOA Vietnamese when referring to the CWD program the U.S. is implementing in more than 120 countries around the world. “Our assistance in the East Asia Pacific region overall spans about $822 million since 1993, and about $168 million of that has been assistance between the United States and the government of Vietnam.”

Nguyen Hanh Phuc, deputy director of the Vietnam National Mine Action Center, which partners with the State Department for the CWD programs in Vietnam, told a conference in Hanoi commemorating the International Day for Mine Awareness on April 4 that the unexploded ordnance contaminates 6.1 million hectares. Most of the ordnance is lethal cluster munitions concentrated in the central provinces near the former Demilitarized Zone, according to the report.

Chandler said removal efforts are focused on “addressing the contamination in Quang Binh and Quang Tri provinces. … Those are the central provinces where we see the highest amount of, or the highest density of, legacy contamination from the Vietnam War.”

The report said that significant concentrations of unexploded ordnance also remain in parts of southern Vietnam as well as landmine contamination along the country’s northern border with China, where the neighboring countries fought in 1979.

40,000 deaths

Vietnamese Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh said last April that bombs and mines left behind by the U.S. and its allies after the Vietnam War had killed more than 40,000 people and injured 60,000 since 1975.

In Laos, most of the explosive remnants of war are from U.S. aerial bombing campaigns against the communist Pathet Lao conducted during the Vietnam War, according to a 2019 report by the Congressional Research Service, War Legacy Issues in Southeast Asia: Unexploded Ordnance (UXO). Unexploded cluster munitions, referred to locally as “bombies,” remain in most of the country’s provinces.

Laos received more than $355 million in 1995 from the U.S. for CWD. During the so-called “shadow war” from 1964 to 1973, the U.S. dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on Laos, making it, per capita, the most heavily bombed country in history.

In Cambodia, according to the report, in addition to the explosive remnants of war from the Vietnam War, internal conflicts that ended in 1999 also left behind unexploded ordnance. The report said extensive minefields were laid by the Khmer Rouge, Royal Cambodian Armed Forces, and Vietnamese and Thai militaries during fighting and occupations.

“We’ve provided approximately $191.5 million for clearance operations in Cambodia and about $9 million of that was just this year,” said Chandler, adding that the Cambodia Mine Action Center has sent some of its people to train Ukrainian deminers because Cambodians are expert in using a “very specific type of landmine detector that Japan has provided.” It is more modern than the aging Russian-built detectors Ukrainians are using as they fight invading Russian forces.

Chandler told VOA Khmer after the briefing that “with the Cambodian government, it’s absolutely a priority for us to be able to continue to help Cambodia remove landmines and explosive remnants of war as a way to return lands to Cambodian people and promote economic prosperity and food security.”

VOA Khmer’s Khemara Pov Sok contributed to this report.
…

Russian Federal Security Service investigators have formally charged Evan Gershkovich with espionage, but The Wall Street Journal reporter denied the charges and said he was working as a journalist, Russian news agencies reported on Friday.

Russia’s Federal Security Service, the main successor to the Soviet-era KGB, said on March 30 that it had detained Gershkovich in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg and had opened an espionage case against the 31-year-old for collecting what it said were state secrets about the military industrial complex.

“Gershkovich has been charged,” Interfax quoted a source as saying.

TASS reported that FSB investigators had formally charged Gershkovich with carrying out espionage in the interests of the United States but that Gershkovich had denied the charge.

“He categorically denied all the accusations and stated that he was engaged in journalistic activities in Russia,” TASS cited an unidentified source as saying.

The TASS source declined further comment citing the classified nature of the case.

Gershkovich is the first American journalist detained in Russia on espionage charges since the end of the Cold War.

The Journal has denied that Gershkovich was spying and demanded the immediate release of its “trusted and dedicated reporter.” The Journal said his arrest was “a vicious affront to a free press and should spur outrage in all free people and governments throughout the world.”

The Kremlin said that Gershkovich had been carrying out espionage “under the cover” of journalism. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has told the United States that Gershkovich was caught red handed while trying to obtain secrets.

The United States has urged Russia to release Gershkovich and cast the Russian claims of espionage as ridiculous. U.S. President Joe Biden has called for Gershkovich’s release.

Russian President Vladimir Putin has yet to comment publicly on the case.

A fluent Russian speaker born to Soviet emigres and raised in New Jersey, Gershkovich moved to Moscow in late 2017 to join the English-language Moscow Times and subsequently worked for the French national news agency Agence France-Presse.

Russia announced the start of its “special military operation” in February 2022, just as Gershkovich was in London, about to return to Russia to join The Journal’s Moscow bureau.

It was decided that he would live in London but travel to Russia frequently for reporting trips, as a correspondent accredited with the Foreign Ministry.
…

South Korea, the U.S. and Japan called for stronger international support of efforts to ban North Korea from sending workers abroad and curb the North’s cybercrimes as a way to block the country’s means to fund its nuclear program. 

The top South Korean, U.S. and Japanese nuclear envoys met in Seoul on Friday in their first gathering in four months to discuss how to cope with North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal. The North’s recent weapons tests show it is intent on acquiring more advanced missiles designed to attack the U.S. and its allies, rather than returning to talks. 

Despite 11 rounds of U.N. sanctions and pandemic-related hardships that have worsened its economic and food problems, North Korea still devotes much of its scarce resources to its nuclear and missile programs. Contributing to financing its weapons program is also likely the North’s crypto hacking and other illicit cyber activities and the wages sent by North Korean workers remaining in China, Russia and elsewhere, despite an earlier U.N. order to repatriate them by the end of 2019, experts say. 

In a joint statement, the South Korean, U.S. and Japanese envoys urged the international community to thoroughly abide by U.N. resolutions on the banning of North Korean workers overseas, according to Seoul’s Foreign Ministry. 

The ministry said a large number of North Korean workers remains engaged in economic activities around the world and transmits money that is used in the North’s weapons programs. It said the three envoys tried to call attention to the North Korean workers because the North may further reopen its international borders as the global COVID-19 situation improves. 

It is not known exactly how many North Korean workers remain abroad. But before the 2019 U.N. deadline passed, the U.S. State Department had estimated there were about 100,000 North Koreans working in factories, construction sites, logging industries and other places worldwide. Civilian experts had said that those workers brought North Korea an estimated $200 million to $500 million in revenue each year. 

“We need to make sure that its provocations never go unpunished. We will effectively counter North Korea’s future provocations and cut their revenue streams that fund these illegal activities,” Kim Gunn, the South Korean envoy, said in televised comments at the start of the meeting. 

Sung Kim, the U.S. envoy, said that with its nuclear and missile programs and “malicious cyber program that targets countries and individuals around the globe,” North Korea threatens the security and prosperity of the entire international community. 

South Korea’s spy agency said in December that North Korean hackers had stolen an estimated $1.2 billion in cryptocurrency and other virtual assets in the past five years, more than half of it last year alone. The National Intelligence Service said North Korea’s capacity to steal digital assets was considered among the best in the world because it has focused on cybercrimes since U.N. economic sanctions were toughened in 2017 in response to its earlier nuclear and missile tests. 

Friday’s trilateral meeting will likely infuriate North Korea, which has previously warned that the three countries’ moves to boost their security cooperation prompted urgent calls to reinforce its own military capability. 

North Korea has long argued the U.N. sanctions and U.S.-led military exercises in the region are proof of Washington’s hostility against Pyongyang. The North has said it was compelled to develop nuclear weapons to deal with U.S. military threats, though U.S. and South Korean officials have steadfastly said they have no intention of invading the North. 

Earlier this week, the United States conducted anti-submarine naval drills with South Korean and Japanese forces in their first such training in six months. The U.S. also flew nuclear-capable bombers for separate, bilateral aerial training with South Korean warplanes. 

North Korea hasn’t performed weapons tests in reaction to those U.S.-involved drills. But last month, it carried out a barrage of missile tests to protest the earlier South Korean-U.S. military training that it sees as an invasion rehearsal. 

Takehiro Funakoshi, the Japanese envoy, said North Korea’s recent weapons tests and fiery rhetoric pose a grave threat to the region and beyond. “Under such circumstances, our three countries have significantly deepened our coordination,” he said. 

Sung Kim reiterated that Washington seeks diplomacy with Pyongyang without preconditions. North Korea has previously rejected such overtures, saying it won’t restart talks unless Washington first drops its hostile policies, in an apparent reference to the sanctions and U.S.-South Korean military drills. Many experts say North Korea would still eventually use its enlarged weapons arsenal to seek U.S. concessions such as the lifting of the sanctions in future negotiations. 

There are concerns that North Korea could conduct its first nuclear test in more than five years, since it unveiled a new type of nuclear warhead last week. Foreign experts debate whether North Korea has developed warheads small and light enough to fit on missiles. 
…

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has for more than two decades accepted luxury trips nearly every year from Republican megadonor Harlan Crow without reporting them on financial disclosure forms, ProPublica reports.

In a lengthy story published Thursday, the nonprofit investigative journalism organization catalogs various trips Thomas has taken aboard Crow’s yacht and private jet as well as to Crow’s private resort in the Adirondacks. A 2019 trip to Indonesia the story detailed could have cost more than $500,000 had Thomas chartered the plane and yacht himself, ProPublica reported.

Supreme Court justices, like other federal judges, are required to file an annual financial disclosure report that asks them to list gifts they have received. It was not clear why Thomas omitted the trips, but under a judiciary policy guide consulted by The Associated Press, food, lodging or entertainment received as “personal hospitality of any individual” does not need to be reported if it is at the personal residence of that individual or the individual’s family. That said, the exception to reporting is not supposed to cover “transportation that substitutes for commercial transportation” and properties owned by an entity.

A Supreme Court spokeswoman acknowledged an email from the AP seeking comment from Thomas but did not provide any additional information. ProPublica wrote that Thomas did not respond to a detailed list of questions from the organization.

Last month, the federal judiciary beefed up disclosure requirements for all judges, including the high court justices, although overnight stays at personal vacation homes owned by friends remain exempt from disclosure.

Last year, questions about Thomas’ ethics arose when it was disclosed that he did not step away from election cases following the 2020 election despite the fact that his wife, conservative activist Virginia Thomas, reached out to lawmakers and the White House to urge defiance of the election results. The latest story will likely increase calls for the justices to adopt an ethics code and enhance disclosure of travel and other gifts.

In a statement, Crow told ProPublica that he and his wife have been friends of Thomas and his wife since 1996, five years after Thomas joined the high court. Crow said that the “hospitality we have extended to the Thomases over the years is no different from the hospitality we have extended to our many other dear friends” and that the couple “never asked for any of this hospitality.”

He said they have “never asked about a pending or lower court case, and Justice Thomas has never discussed one, and we have never sought to influence Justice Thomas on any legal or political issue.”

ProPublica’s story says that Thomas has been vacationing at Crow’s lavish Topridge resort virtually every summer for more than two decades. During one trip in 2017, other guests included executives at “Verizon and PricewaterhouseCoopers, major Republican donors and one of the leaders of the American Enterprise Institute, a pro-business conservative think tank,” ProPublica reported.

Crow wrote that he is “unaware of any of our friends ever lobbying or seeking to influence Justice Thomas on any case, and I would never invite anyone who I believe had any intention of doing that.”

The disclosure of the lavish trips stands in contrast to what Thomas has said about his preferred methods of travel. Thomas, who grew up poor in Georgia, has talked about enjoying traveling in his motorcoach and preferring “Walmart parking lots to the beaches.”
…

Republican lawmakers in the Southern U.S. state of Tennessee made the rare move of expelling two Democratic lawmakers Thursday from the state legislature because they participated in a protest last week at the State Capitol calling for more gun control, following the recent deadly school shooting in Nashville that killed three adults and three 9-year-old students.

A third lawmaker avoided the ouster by one vote.

“We called for you all to ban assault weapons, and you respond with an assault on democracy,” Justin Jones, one of the ousted politicians said.

U.S. President Joe Biden posted on Twitter: “Three kids and three officials gunned down in yet another mass shooting. And what are GOP officials focused on? Punishing lawmakers who joined thousands of peaceful protesters calling for action. It’s shocking, undemocratic, and without precedent.”  

The expelled lawmakers –  Jones and Justin Pearson – are African American men.  The third lawmaker – Gloria Johnson – is a white woman.  Republican leaders, however, have denied that race had anything to do with the expulsions. 

“You cannot ignore the racial dynamic of what happened today. Two young Black lawmakers get expelled and the one white woman does not. That’s a statement in and of itself,” Pearson said. 

Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press and Reuters.
…

Twitter has labeled National Public Radio as “state-affiliated media” on the social media site, a move some worried could undermine public confidence in the news organization.

NPR said it was disturbed to see the description added to all of the tweets that it sends out, with president and CEO John Lansing on Wednesday calling it “unacceptable for Twitter to label us this way.”

It was unclear why Twitter made the move. Twitter’s owner, Elon Musk, quoted a definition of state-affiliated media in the company’s guidelines as “outlets where the state exercises control over editorial content through financial resources, direct or indirect political pressures, and/or control over production and distribution.”

“Seems accurate,” Musk tweeted in a reply to NPR.

NPR does receive U.S. government funding through grants from federal agencies and departments, along with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. The company said it accounts for less than 1% of NPR’s annual operating budget.

But until Wednesday, the same Twitter guidelines said that “state-financed media organizations with editorial independence, like the BBC in the U.K. or NPR in the United States, are not defined as state-affiliated media for the purposes of this policy.”

NPR has now been removed from that sentence on Twitter’s website.

Asked for comment, Twitter’s press office responded with an automated poop emoji.

The move came just days after Twitter stripped The New York Times of its verification check mark.

“NPR and our member stations are supported by millions of listeners who depend on us for the independent, fact-based journalism we provide,” Lansing said. “NPR stands for freedom of speech and holding the powerful accountable.”

The literary organization PEN America, in calling for Twitter to reverse the move, underlined that NPR “assiduously maintains editorial independence.”

Liz Woolery, PEN America’s digital policy leader, said Twitter’s decision was “a dangerous move that could further undermine public confidence in reliable news sources.”
…

China vowed reprisals against Taiwan after a meeting between the United States House speaker and the island’s president, saying Thursday that the U.S. was on a “wrong and dangerous road.”

Speaker Kevin McCarthy hosted Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Wednesday in a show of U.S. support for the self-ruled island, which China claims as its own, along with a bipartisan delegation of more than a dozen U.S. lawmakers.

The Biden administration maintains there is nothing provocative about the visit by Tsai, which is the latest of a half-dozen to the U.S. Yet, it comes as the U.S.-China relationship has fallen to historic lows, with U.S. support for Taiwan becoming one of the main points of difference between the two powers.

But the formal trappings of the meeting, and the senior rank of some of the elected officials in the delegation from Congress, could lead China to view it as an escalation. No speaker is known to have met with a Taiwan president on U.S. soil since the U.S. broke off formal diplomatic relations in 1979.

In response to the meeting, Beijing said it would take “resolute and forceful measures to defend national sovereignty and territorial integrity,” in a statement issued early Thursday morning by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

It urged the U.S. “not to walk further down a wrong and dangerous road.”

In December, China’s military sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan in a 24-hour display of force directed at the self-ruled island after China expressed anger at Taiwan-related provisions in a U.S. annual defense spending bill. China’s military pressure campaign on Taiwan has intensified in recent years, and the Communist Party has sent planes or ships toward the island on a near-daily basis.

But as of Thursday afternoon, there was no overt sign of a large-scale military response.

“We will take resolute measures to punish the ‘Taiwan independence’ separatist forces and their actions, and resolutely safeguard our country’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” said a statement from China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Thursday morning, referring to Tsai and her political party as separatists.

Chinese vessels were engaged in a joint patrol and inspection operation in the Taiwan Strait that will last three days, state media said Thursday morning. The Fujian Maritime Safety Administration said its ship, the Haixun 06, would inspect cargo ships and others in the waters that run between Taiwan and China as part of the operation.

Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense said Wednesday evening it had tracked China’s Shandong aircraft carrier passing southeast of Taiwan through the Bashi Strait. On Thursday morning, it tracked three People’s Liberation Army navy vessels and one warplane in the area around the island.

U.S. Congressional visits to Taiwan have stepped up in frequency in the past year, and the American Institute in Taipei, the de facto embassy, announced the arrival of another delegation Thursday. House Foreign Affairs Committee head Michael McCaul of Texas is leading a delegation of eight other lawmakers for a three-day visit to discuss regional security and trade, according to a statement from AIT.

At their meeting Wednesday, Tsai and McCarthy spoke carefully to avoid unnecessarily escalating tensions with Beijing. Standing side by side at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California, the two acknowledged China’s threats against the island government.

“America’s support for the people of Taiwan will remain resolute, unwavering and bipartisan,” McCarthy said at a news conference later. He also said U.S.-Taiwan ties are stronger than at any other point in his life.

Tsai said the “unwavering support reassures the people of Taiwan that we are not isolated.”

More than a dozen Democratic and Republican lawmakers, including the House’s third-ranking Democrat, had joined the meeting.

Tsai said she and McCarthy spoke of the importance of Taiwan’s self-defense, of fostering robust trade and economic ties and supporting the island government’s ability to participate in the international community.

But she also warned, “It is no secret that today the peace that we have maintained and the democracy which we have worked hard to build are facing unprecedented challenges.”

“We once again find ourselves in a world where democracy is under threat and the urgency of keeping the beacon of freedom shining cannot be understated,” she said.

The United States broke off official ties with Taiwan in 1979 while formally establishing diplomatic relations with the Beijing government. As part of its recognition of China, the U.S. “One China” policy acknowledges that Beijing lays claim to Taiwan, but does not endorse China’s claim, and the U.S. remains Taiwan’s key provider of military and defense assistance.

Washington also has a policy of strategic ambiguity, where it does not explicitly say whether it will come to Taiwan’s aid in the case of a conflict with China.

In Taiwan, Tsai’s visit did not make a huge splash, though fellow politicians paid close attention.

Ko Wen-je, the former Taipei city mayor who’s thought to have presidential aspirations, said he welcomed any exchange between Taiwan and international leaders.

“Taiwan hopes to have a greater space to operate globally, and the mainland shouldn’t get flustered because of this,” Ko wrote on his Facebook page. “It should show the attitude of a civilized nation and stop its suppression by military force.”

Opposition lawmaker Johnny Chiang of the Nationalist party said that Tsai’s meeting with McCarthy was still within the guardrails of the “One China” policy because it showed that while Congress was relatively free to support Taiwan, the White House was more constrained, according to local media.

In August, then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi traveled to Taiwan to meet with Tsai. China responded with its largest live-fire drills in decades, including firing a missile over the island.

Taiwan and China split in 1949 after a civil war and have no official relations, although they are linked by billions of dollars in trade and investment.
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fragile democracy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Turkey

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But that achievement has limits, some analysts say.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Few prosecutions

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

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

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

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

History

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abrams will still live in Atlanta. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bipartisan affiliations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Unity’ ticket

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

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

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

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

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

Funding secret

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

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

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

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

Political scientists dubious

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The reasons, Masket said, are structural.

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

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

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

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

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

Lawmakers said there would be no change in their plans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 
…

Cambodian communities in California organized a parade and cultural festival ahead of this month’s solar new year. For VOA, Genia Dulot has our story from Long Beach.
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For many people in the U.S. holidays mean enormous lawn decorations. But generally, these decorations coincide with Western holidays. Now, some Muslim families are finding unique ways to celebrate Ramadan. VOA’s Dhania Iman reports. Videographer: Andri Tambunan 
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Investing in self-reliance

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

EV batteries as leverage

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The threat of fire danger is expected to remain high Tuesday across portions of far western Oklahoma, the Texas Panhandle, northeastern New Mexico and far southeastern Colorado, with low humidity, dry vegetation and wind gusts as high as 110 kph, according to the National Weather Service. 
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President Joe Biden’s administration is making $450 million available for solar farms and other clean energy projects across the country at the site of current or former coal mines, part of his ongoing efforts to combat climate change.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said Monday that Biden believes U.S. leaders “need to be bold” in combating climate change “and that includes helping revitalize the economies of coal, oil and gas and power-plant communities.”
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The University of Connecticut earned its fifth U.S. men’s college basketball championship Monday with a 76-59 victory over San Diego State. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
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