America’s employers added a robust 517,000 jobs in January, a surprisingly strong gain in the face of the Federal Reserve’s aggressive drive to slow growth and tame inflation with higher interest rates.

The unemployment rate dipped to 3.4%, a new half-century low.

Friday’s government report added to the picture of a resilient labor market, with low unemployment, relatively few layoffs and many job openings even as most economists foresee a recession nearing. Though good for workers, employers’ steady demand for labor has also helped accelerate wage growth and contributed to high inflation.

January’s job growth, which far exceeded December’s 269,000 gain, could raise doubts about whether inflation pressures will ease further in the months ahead. The Fed has raised its key rate eight times since March to try to contain inflation, which hit a four-decade high last year but has slowed since then.

Companies are still seeking more workers and are hanging tightly onto the ones they have. Putting aside some high-profile layoffs at big tech companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and others, most workers are enjoying an unusual level of job security even at a time when many economists foresee a recession approaching.

For all of 2022, the economy had added a sizzling average of 375,000 jobs a month. That was a pace vigorous enough to have contributed to the painful inflation Americans have endured, the worst such bout in 40 years. A tight job market tends to put upward pressure on wages, which, in turn, feed into inflation.

The Fed, hoping to cool the job market and the economy — and, as a consequence, inflation — has steadily raised borrowing rates, most recently on Wednesday. Year-over-year measures of consumer inflation have steadily eased since peaking at 9.1% in June. But at 6.5% in December, inflation remains far above the Fed’s 2% target, which is why the central bank’s policymakers have reiterated their intent to keep raising borrowing rates for at least a few more months.

The Fed is aiming to achieve a “soft landing” — a pullback in the economy that is just enough to tame high inflation without triggering a recession. The policymakers hope that employers can slow wage increases and inflationary pressures by reducing job openings but not necessarily by laying off many employees.

But the job market’s resilience isn’t making that hoped-for outcome any easier. On Wednesday, the Labor Department reported that employers posted 11 million job openings in December, an unexpected jump from 10.4 million in November and the largest number since July. There are now about two job vacancies, on average, for every unemployed American.

The Labor Department’s monthly count of layoffs has amounted to fewer than 1.5 million for 21 straight months. Until 2021, that figure had never dropped so low in records dating back two decades.

Yet another sign that workers are benefiting from unusual job security is the weekly number of people who apply for unemployment benefits. That figure is a proxy for layoffs, one that economists monitor for clues about where the job market might be headed. The government said Thursday that the number of jobless claims fell last week to its lowest level since April.

The pace of applications for unemployment aid has remained rock-bottom despite a steady stream of headline-making layoff announcements. Facebook parent Meta is cutting 11,000 jobs, Amazon 18,000, Microsoft 10,000, Google 12,000. Some economists suspect that many laid-off workers might not be showing up at the unemployment line because they can still find new jobs easily.
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The northeastern region of the U.S. is experiencing an Artic blast and the frigid temperatures are expected to last into Saturday.  

The National Weather Service said numerous low temperature records could be set in the New England area.  

Weather forecasters predict the temperature Saturday in the city of Worcester, Massachusetts, could get as low as 23 degrees below zero Celsius, which would set a new low record for the date.  

Meteorologists are predicting 21 degrees below zero Celsius for Boston, which would also set a low record for the date.

The NWS said wind chill warnings and advisories are already in effect for all of the New England region.  
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On a freezing, windy day in eastern Romania, U.S. Army Sergeant Chase Williams is urging a team of soldiers to jump out of a hovering Blackhawk and rappel 25 meters to the snow-covered ground below.

“You know you just got to get over that fear. You just got to get over that ledge the first time,” Williams says of the 101st Airborne Division’s Air Assault course, a grueling program that some soldiers refer to as “the 10 toughest days in the Army.”

Williams and his fellow trainers have taught the 10-day program several times since last summer when 4,700 troops with the 101st Airborne Division deployed across eastern Europe, but the iteration completed this week was unique. For the first time ever, soldiers in the division offered their punishing air assault course to partners on European soil.

Graduates from the course at Mihail Kogalniceanu Air Base included U.S., Romanian, Dutch, French and Slovak soldiers.

It’s the latest example of how the division, deployed to Europe for the first time since World War II, is bolstering NATO’s eastern flank in response to Russia’s war in Ukraine.

In Romania, U.S. troop numbers have tripled from approximately 1,000 troops in January 2022 to about 3,000 today. A high-end missile launched from Russian-controlled Crimea could reach the soldiers based along the Black Sea in about seven minutes, according to U.S. Army Colonel Ed Matthaidess, commander of the 101st’s 2nd Brigade Combat Team.

“We are the closest U.S. Army formation to the fight in Ukraine right now,” Matthaidess told VOA.

Since their arrival, the 101st has spread out to fortify its positions across the country, and in other nations on NATO’s eastern flank.

“We’ve prepared our force for whatever eventuality, so we’ve reinforced protection around Mihail Kogalniceanu. We’ve dispersed our forces so we’re not a single target,” Matthaidess said.

During a helicopter ride along Romania’s coastline to the border with Ukraine, Matthaidess showed VOA how U.S. forces are holding the line with NATO allies.

“We’re taking it as close as we can to combat, right? So, we’re preparing for large-scale operations,” he said. “We’re exercising on the ground with which we might fight if we have to defend NATO.”

At a forward operating post just a few kilometers away from Ukrainian territory, several Humvees — some capable of carrying TOW antitank missiles, others equipped with a heavy machine gun or heavy grenade launcher — were gathering at a range for target practice.

Further south at an outpost filled with old farm buildings, U.S. soldiers trained Romanians on how to maneuver in urban terrain, going door-to-door clearing the area.

Matthaidess said the U.S. team has been watching Russian tactics in neighboring Ukraine “closely” and has adapted their training with partners to better suit what they see on the battlefield.

“We just got done with a big series of live fires, where we were attacking some trench lines that look very similar to what you might see across the border,” he told VOA.

The team also started incorporating small drones in some exercises, shooting down systems “very similar to what’s flooding the battlefield right now” in Ukraine, he added.

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team will leave Romania in a couple of months, but the Pentagon recently confirmed that the U.S. military’s increased presence in the country will continue at least through this year. The 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team is set to replace Matthaidess’ team in what is expected to be a nine-month deployment.

That’s reassuring to Major General Ciprian Marin, chief of the Romanian military’s Operations Directorate, who says he wants more U.S. troops and more partnered training.

During the 101st Airborne Division’s deployment, Romanian forces have been honing their existing defense skills with the Americans, while in the case of the air assault course, acquiring a new capability that Romanian ground forces didn’t have before this week.

“With war, it’s about life and death, and [working together] makes the difference between failure and success. So, if you want to be successful, we are to be together, to stick together, and build this interoperability,” Marin said.
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The president of Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan is calling China’s response to the possibility of U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s visiting Taiwan “excessive,” saying that exchanges between Taiwan’s unicameral legislature and the legislatures of the United States, Europe, Japan and other countries are the norm in democracies.

Washington’s Punchbowl News, which specializes in political news, reported on Jan. 23, citing officials familiar with the matter, that the Pentagon was making preliminary preparations for McCarthy’s travels this year, including a visit to Taiwan this spring. Because former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taipei in August triggered China’s large-scale military drill focused on Taiwan, planning for McCarthy’s visit would need to consider China’s possible response as well as more routine security and logistical arrangements.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning said Monday, “China opposes any form of official interaction between its Taiwan region and countries having diplomatic ties with China. We hope U.S. lawmakers will abide by the one-China principle and the three China-US joint communiqués and refrain from doing things detrimental to China-US relations and peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” China sees self-governing Taiwan as a rebellious province.

You Si-kun, who was in Washington to deliver a speech on Taiwan’s democratic journey at the 2023 International Religious Freedom Summit (IRFS) on Wednesday and the National Prayer Breakfast on Thursday said after the first event that Beijing’s reactions “are very excessive. Sometimes they [China] say they are a democratic country, but in a democratic country, congressional exchanges are very normal. Their reaction, on the contrary, proves that they are not a democratic country.”

He continued, “Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan maintains very close communication with the U.S. Congress and American executive officials. Not only that, but Taiwan also maintains close communication with the European Congress and Japan. Any communication or visits by U.S. congressional members or the speaker to Taiwan is very normal in democratic politics.”

He also stressed Taiwan’s strategic importance at the center of key global sea lanes and as an important producer of semiconductors.

“So it’s very important to safeguard Taiwan, especially its democracy,” he said.

“If Taiwan falls into the sphere of influence of CCP, then the beacon of democracy will be destroyed. And China may invade the first island chain, and will cause a threat to the entire world,” You said, referring to the Chinese Communist Party and its ambitions in the Pacific region.

You said China will react to whatever Taiwan does. He said during a recent visit to Europe, the Chinese embassies protested his presence at each stop because if they hadn’t, they would “be unable to survive or get promoted.”

You told VOA Mandarin that he will continue, as he has since 2018, to advocate in favor of the U.S. recognizing Taiwan and establishing diplomatic relations with Taiwan. He said this idea is gaining ground among members of Congress.

There is growing bipartisan support for the United States to sign a bilateral trade agreement with Taiwan, and in September, President Joe Biden approved $1.1 billion in arms sales to Taiwan, a move that China condemned.

At the religious freedom summit, You said Taiwan’s political development has made the island a “beacon of democracy for Chinese-speaking peoples.” He contrasted that with sentiment attributed to former Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, holding that “human rights and democracy are imported from the West and not suitable for Asian countries.”

“Taiwan has shown that democracy, born of the West, can indeed flourish in Chinese-speaking regions,” You said.

During his speech, You criticized the CCP’s persecution of religious minorities and said the international community should pay attention to China’s lack of religious freedom, because it’s the cornerstone of human rights and the core of democratic values.

Bi-khim Hsiao, Taiwan’s representative to the U.S. who accompanied You, said exchanges between Taiwan’s Yuan and other countries’ legislatures have been going on for decades, and are in line with international standards.

Hsiao also said it is important to keep peace in the Taiwan Strait.

“The people of Taiwan — and I believe the people of the U.S. as well — feel strongly that our freedom and democracy must be guaranteed. We need an environment of peace, an environment that does not allow the use of force to change the status quo. I think that is a very important part in our common interest.”
…

A Biden administration task force designed to reunite children separated from their families during the Trump administration has reconnected nearly 700 children with their families, officials said Thursday.

President Joe Biden issued an executive order on his first day in office to reunite families that were split up under Trump’s widely condemned practice of forcibly separating parents and children at the U.S.-Mexico border to discourage illegal immigration. Thursday marked the two-year anniversary of the task force.

According to figures released by the Department of Homeland Security, 3,881 children were separated from their families from 2017 to 2021. About 74% of those have been reunited with their families: 2,176 before the task force was created and 689 afterward.

But that still leaves nearly 1,000 children. Of those, 148 are in the reunification process. The department pledged to continue the work until all separated families that can be found have the opportunity to reunite with their children.

The Trump administration separated thousands of migrant parents from their children as it moved to criminally prosecute people for illegally crossing the southwestern border. Minors, who could not be held in criminal custody with their parents, were transferred to the Department of Health and Human Services. They were then typically sent to live with a sponsor, often a relative or someone else with a connection to the family.

Hundreds of families have sued the federal government.

Families can register for reunification services through a website and can get help with steps such as applying for humanitarian parole that would allow them to come to the U.S., as well as for behavioral health services to help them.

During a meeting Thursday with reporters, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas discussed efforts to address “the wounds” the separations had caused.

He described meeting the mother of a teenager who had been separated from her mom when she was 13 and then reunited with her when she was 16. But Mayorkas said, the woman relayed how her teenage daughter “still could not understand how her mother would let her be separated. She didn’t understand the force behind the separation.”
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CIA Director William Burns said Thursday that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s ambitions toward Taiwan should not be underestimated, despite him likely being sobered by the performance of Russia’s military in Ukraine.

Burns said that the United States knew “as a matter of intelligence” that Xi had ordered his military to be ready to conduct an invasion of self-governed Taiwan by 2027.

“Now, that does not mean that he’s decided to conduct an invasion in 2027, or any other year, but it’s a reminder of the seriousness of his focus and his ambition,” Burns told an event at Georgetown University in Washington.

“Our assessment at CIA is that I wouldn’t underestimate President Xi’s ambitions with regard to Taiwan,” he said, adding that the Chinese leader was likely “surprised and unsettled” and trying to draw lessons by the “very poor performance” of the Russian military and its weapons systems in Ukraine.

Russia and China signed a “no limits” partnership last February shortly before Russian forces invaded Ukraine, and their economic links have boomed as Russia’s connections with the West have shriveled.

The Russian invasion had fueled concerns in the West of China possibly making a similar move on Taiwan, a democratic island Beijing claims as its territory.

China has refrained from condemning Russia’s operation against Ukraine, but it has been careful not to provide the sort of direct material support that could provoke Western sanctions like those imposed on Moscow.

“I think it’s a mistake to underestimate the mutual commitment to that partnership, but it’s not a friendship totally without limits,” Burns said.

As Burns spoke, news came from U.S. officials that a suspected Chinese spy balloon had been flying over the United States for a few days, and that senior U.S. officials had advised President Joe Biden against shooting it down for fear the debris could pose a safety threat.

Burns made no mention of the episode but called China the “biggest geopolitical challenge” currently faced by the United States.

“Competition with China is unique in its scale, and that it really, you know, unfolds over just about every domain, not just military, and ideological, but economic, technological, everything from cyberspace, to space itself as well. It’s a global competition in ways that could be even more intense than competition with the Soviets was,” he said.

There was no immediate comment from China’s Washington embassy about the remarks from Burns or the balloon flight.

On other topics, Burns said the next six months will be critical for Ukraine, where Moscow has been making incremental gains in recent weeks.

He also said Iran’s government was increasingly unsettled by affairs within the country, citing the courage of what he described as “fed up” Iranian women. 
…

The U.S. is tracking a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that has been spotted over U.S. airspace for a couple days, but the Pentagon decided not to shoot it down because of the risk it could harm people on the ground, officials said Thursday.

A senior defense official told Pentagon reporters that the U.S. has “very high confidence” it is a Chinese high-altitude balloon flying over sensitive sites to collect information. One of the places the balloon was spotted was Montana, which is home to one of the nation’s three nuclear missile silo fields at Malmstrom Air Force Base. The official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive information.

Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, provided a brief statement on the issue, saying the government continues to track the balloon. He said it is “currently traveling at an altitude well above commercial air traffic and does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground.”

He said similar balloon activity has been seen in the past several years. He added that the U.S. took steps to ensure it did not collect sensitive information.

The defense official said the U.S. has “engaged” Chinese officials through multiple channels and communicated the seriousness of the matter.

The Pentagon announcement comes days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is expected to travel to China. It’s not clear if this will affect his travel plans, which the State Department has not formally announced.
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A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declared unconstitutional a federal law making it a crime for people under domestic violence restraining orders to own firearms.

The decision by a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is the latest victory for gun rights advocates since a Supreme Court decision last June granting a broad right for people to carry firearms outside the home.

That decision, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, announced a new test for assessing firearms laws, saying restrictions must be “consistent with this nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation,” and not simply advance an important government interest.

In Thursday’s decision, U.S. Circuit Judge Cory Wilson said banning people under domestic violence restraining orders from owning firearms “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society.”

But the judge, appointed by Donald Trump, said Bruen made such a consideration irrelevant, and that from a historical perspective the ban was “an outlier that our ancestors would never have accepted.”

Prison sentence thrown out

The court threw out the guilty plea and six-year prison sentence for Zackey Rahimi, who admitted to possessing guns found in his Kennedale, Texas, home after prosecutors said he participated in five shootings in December 2020 and January 2021.

Rahimi had been under a restraining order since February 2020, following his alleged assault of a former girlfriend.

The office of U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton in Dallas, which prosecuted Rahimi, had no immediate comment.

A federal public defender representing Rahimi did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Ruling affects three states

The 5th Circuit is based in New Orleans, and its decision applies in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.

It had upheld the federal law last June 8, just over two weeks before the Bruen decision, but withdrew its opinion and ordered additional briefing.

In a concurrence, U.S. Circuit Judge James Ho, also a Trump appointee, said the nation’s founders “firmly believed” in the government’s role in protecting people from violence and the right of individuals to bear arms, and that these principles “are not inconsistent but entirely compatible with one another.”
…

Aviation history was made this week when U.S. aerospace company Boeing delivered the last of its iconic 747 airliners. Natasha Mozgovaya has our story from Washington state. Video editing by Bakhtiyar Zamanov and Jason Godman.
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The United States and the Philippines announced an agreement Thursday that will give the U.S. military access to four new Philippine military sites. 

In a joint statement, the two countries did not give specific locations, saying they were in “strategic areas of the country.” 

The expansion is part of the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which includes five existing sites. 

“The addition of these new EDCA locations will allow more rapid support for humanitarian and climate-related disasters in the Philippines, and respond to other shared challenges,” the statement said. 

The new agreement comes as the two longtime allies seek to counter China’s increasing assertiveness toward Taiwan and its actions in the South China Sea. 

Ahead of the announcement, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. that the U.S. goal is to strengthen the relationship with the Philippines “in every way possible,” and to boost the Philippines’ military capabilities. 

Marcos said the future of the Philippines and the Asia-Pacific region “will always have to involve the United States simply because those partnership are so strong.” 

VOA’s National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report. 

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

Vice President Kamala Harris paid her respects Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, a 29-year-old Black man who died last month after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers. Activists say more needs to be done to strengthen laws to prevent police brutality, which disproportionately affects people of color. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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Vice President Kamala Harris paid her respects Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, a young Black man who died last month after a brutal beating by Memphis police officers, and demanded that Congress pass stalled legislation aimed at holding police accountable after a high-profile police killing in 2020 sparked protests in the U.S. and around the world.

“As vice president of the United States, we demand that Congress pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act — Joe Biden will sign it,” Harris said, referring to President Biden while speaking at Nichols’ funeral in Memphis, Tennessee. “And we should not delay, and we will not be denied. It is non-negotiable.”

On Wednesday, the family of Nichols, 29, remembered him as a loving father, keen photographer and an eager skateboarder – the kind of guy, his brother said, who “never lifted a finger to nobody.”

But after his brutal beating on January 7 by five Black police officers, captured on video, America remembers him differently: as another young Black man felled by what some see as an epidemic of violent racism in American policing. All five officers involved in the beating of Nichols, who died on January 10, have been charged with murder.

Black Americans are 12% of the population but accounted for 26% of victims killed by police in 2022, according to monitoring group Mapping Police Violence. And statistics show that Black people are three times more likely to die during police encounters than their white counterparts.

Harris said Nichols’ death was counterproductive.

“This violent act was not in pursuit of public safety,” she said. “It was not in the interest of keeping the public safe because one must ask, was not it in the interest of keeping the public safe that Tyre Nichols would be with us here today?”

But activists want more than words. They want legal change, and for police officers to be held legally accountable through a federal law, like the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which did not pass when it was proposed in 2021.

“It has to be federal law,” longtime civil rights activist the Reverend Al Sharpton said ahead of Nichols’ funeral. “Let me tell you, until police know they have skin in the game, which is why you heard them say about the George Floyd bill, you heard the sister say about the legislation here, you must get rid of qualified immunity. Where police know that they can lose their house, their car and everything else.”

But some activists, like Leslie Mac, communications director for the Frontline, an advocacy group, want the government to send resources elsewhere. She spoke to VOA via Zoom.

“President Biden just last week was talking about needing to fund the police, and I would push back and just let him know that taking funds away from violent enterprises and putting them into the hands of services that actually meet the needs of communities is not just smart, from a federal level, but it’s a smart play for us as human beings in this society,” Mac said.

VOA asked White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre what the administration is doing to combat perceptions that systemic racism is a problem in America.

“The president has made it a priority in his administration to make sure that it looks like America, to make sure that we see the diversity in this administration and throughout different committees,” she said. “And you see that over and over again, when you look at the different agencies, when you look to the White House. And this is … historically the most diverse administration in history. And that matters.”

The Congressional Black Caucus has invited Nichols’ parents to attend Biden’s State of the Union address next week, where he is expected to address a range of topics, including police reform.

Last year, during that address before a joint session of Congress, Biden said, “The answer is not to defund the police. The answer is to fund the police with the resources and training they need to protect our communities.”
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President Joe Biden’s administration said on Wednesday it would support a scaled-back version of ConocoPhillips’ planned $6 billion Willow oil and gas drilling project in Alaska but has not yet made a final decision on the contentious proposal.

The Willow project’s fate is being closely watched by both the oil and gas industry and environmental groups as Biden seeks to balance his goal of fighting climate change with calls to increase domestic fuel supplies to keep prices down.

The Willow project area holds an estimated 600 million barrels of oil, or more than the amount currently held in the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve, the country’s emergency supply. The project is important to Alaska’s elected officials, who are hoping it will help offset oil production declines in a state whose economy relies heavily on the drilling industry.

Meanwhile, extreme weather across the globe has intensified calls from activists to move rapidly away from burning fossil fuels because of their contribution to warming the planet. Biden vowed during his 2020 election campaign to end federal oil and gas drilling as part of a pledge to decarbonize the U.S. economy by 2050. But that plan faced lawsuits from drilling states and pressure to boost production as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine caused a spike in energy prices.’

‘A viable path forward’

The U.S. Bureau of Land Management published the project’s final environmental review, selecting a “preferred alternative” that would include three drill sites and less surface infrastructure than originally proposed. ConocoPhillips had initially wanted to build up to five drill sites, dozens of kilometers of roads, seven bridges and pipelines.

According to BLM’s analysis, the design it endorsed would reduce the project’s impact on habitats for species like polar bears and yellow-billed loons. Alaska officials and ConocoPhillips backed that option in letters submitted to the agency in recent months.

In a statement, ConocoPhillips said the design represented “a viable path forward” for Willow and said it was ready to begin construction immediately upon approval. The company said the project would deliver up to $17 billion in revenue for federal and state governments and local Alaska communities.

The release of the document comes after a string of actions by the administration in recent weeks to protect wilderness areas from development, including Alaska’s Tongass National Forest and Bristol Bay, and the Boundary Waters area in Minnesota.

‘Closer to the edge’

Environmental groups criticized the analysis and called on Biden to reject the project.

“Our window to act is rapidly closing to avert catastrophic climate change, and this plan only takes us one giant step closer to the edge,” Kristen Miller, executive director of Alaska Wilderness League, said in a statement.

BLM’s parent agency, the Interior Department, said in a statement that the selection of the preferred alternative was not a final decision on approval of the project, adding that it had “substantial concerns” about Willow’s impact on greenhouse gas emissions and wildlife.

A final decision will be made no sooner than 30 days after the review’s publication, the department said.

Willow would be located inside the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, a 93 million-hectare area on the state’s North Slope that is the largest tract of undisturbed public land in the United States.

It was initially approved by the Trump administration, but a federal judge in Alaska in 2021 reversed that decision, saying the environmental analysis was flawed.
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For years, David Leung’s grandfather and father worked each night at Wo Hop restaurant. Considered a New York City institution by some, the Chinese restaurant opened in 1938 and is said to be the second oldest in Manhattan’s Chinatown. But Leung’s appreciation for Wo Hop didn’t develop until much later, when he realized the extent of his family’s involvement. Tina Trinh reports.
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President Joe Biden is meeting with Speaker Kevin McCarthy at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, the first in-person sit-down between the two leaders since Republicans assumed control of the House of Representatives following the November midterm elections. 

The pair is set to discuss a range of issues including the urgent need to raise the nation’s debt ceiling, the amount of money authorized by Congress for the government to borrow to meet existing spending obligations. 

The United States hit the $31.4 trillion ceiling on January 19. Without an agreement, the country will for the first time go into default, potentially plunging the economy into a crisis.

Expectations of a breakthrough are low. The White House has drawn a hard line on negotiations, maintaining that debt ceilings should be lifted without conditions. The ceiling has been raised 78 times since 1960, including 49 times under Republican presidents and 29 times under Democratic presidents.

In a memo released earlier this week, National Economic Council Director Brian Deese and Office of Management and Budget Director Shalanda Young said that in the meeting with McCarthy, Biden will “seek a clear commitment” that defaulting on the nation’s debt is off the table. They called on Republicans to present a detailed budget proposal specifying the spending cuts they target.

McCarthy and House Republicans say they are aiming to slash “wasteful spending in Washington” as part of a deal to raise the debt ceiling but have not formally identified the programs they want cut. Republicans broadly say they are aiming to slash domestic programs and reduce some defense spending while avoiding cuts to two social programs that voters from both sides of the aisle want protected: Medicare, the health insurance program for seniors, and Social Security, which provides payments to retirees and the disabled.

Under pressure 

McCarthy is under pressure from members of the ultraconservative Republican Freedom Caucus who want to drastically limit the size, scope and reach of the federal government and budget, and reform Congress to make it easier to do so. Twenty lawmakers, most of whom are members of the caucus, withheld their votes for McCarthy’s speakership through all or most of 15 ballot rounds earlier in January until he pledged to fulfil their procedural and policy demands, including enabling just one member to call for a vote seeking his ouster. 

For many in Washington, the debt brinkmanship feels familiar. Republicans in Congress voted against increasing the ceiling under Democratic President Barack Obama in 2011 and 2013 but raised it three times under Republican President Donald Trump.

The government is expected to be able to keep operating until at least early June but it’s not clear how long the Treasury Department can avoid defaulting on the debt. A default could lead to a global economic crisis, as many companies and foreign governments hold their capital reserves in U.S. Treasury notes. 

In 2011, the threat of default downgraded the U.S. government’s credit worthiness and led to major stock market crashes around the world. 
…

FBI agents on Wednesday searched for classified documents at U.S. President Joe Biden’s vacation retreat in the city of Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, as part of its investigation into Biden’s handling of government security materials after he left the vice presidency in 2017, his personal lawyer said.

In a statement, the lawyer, Bob Bauer, said the search at the blue-and-white, three-story home was “planned” and being conducted with Biden’s “full support and cooperation.”

Bauer said under the Department of Justice’s “standard procedures, in the interests of operational security and integrity, it sought to do this work without advance public notice, and we agreed to cooperate. The search [Wednesday] is a further step in a thorough and timely DOJ process we will continue to fully support and facilitate. We will have further information at the conclusion of today’s search.”

The search at the home near the Atlantic Ocean follows earlier ones in which Biden aides late last year found a collection of documents with classified markings at a Washington research organization, the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, where Biden occasionally worked after his vice presidential term ended, and at his primary private residence in Wilmington, Delaware.  

The White House said at the time that no more classified documents were found at the Rehoboth Beach home.  

The FBI’s search of the vacation property comes after an intensive, 13-hour search on January 20 at the Wilmington residence, where agents found documents with classified markings and took possession of some of Biden’s handwritten notes.

Altogether, some 20 or more classified documents have been recovered by Biden’s lawyers or the FBI agents at the Washington office and Wilmington home.   

The January search came after U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland named a career prosecutor, Robert Hur, to investigate Biden’s handling of the classified material, months after naming another prosecutor, Jack Smith, to investigate about 320 documents with classified markings found at Mar-a-Lago, former President Donald Trump’s Atlantic Ocean retreat in Florida.

Last month, Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, said some classified material was found at his home in Indiana.

Under U.S. law, all three officials were required to turn over the documents to the National Archives and Records Administration when their terms in office ended.

Biden and his lawyers have sought to downplay the probe, suggesting that a small number of documents was retained inadvertently.

Trump only reluctantly turned over dozens of documents after taking them to Mar-a-Lago when he left office two years ago, eventually forcing the government to secure a warrant for a court-approved search because it suspected Trump had not turned over all the materials in his possession. Agents recovered about 100 more in a search last August.

 
…

Tom Brady, who won a record seven Super Bowls for New England and Tampa, has announced his retirement from the U.S. National Football League.

Brady — the most successful quarterback in NFL history, and one of the greatest athletes in team sports — posted the announcement on social media Wednesday morning, a brief video lasting just under one minute.

“Good morning guys. I’ll get to the point right away,” Brady says as the message begins. “I’m retiring. For good.”

He briefly retired after the 2021 season, but wound up coming back for one more year with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. He retires at age 45, the owner of numerous passing records in an unprecedented 23-year career.

A year ago when he retired, it was in the form of a long Instagram post. But about six weeks later, he decided to come back for one more run. The Buccaneers — with whom he won a Super Bowl two seasons ago — made the playoffs again this season, losing in their playoff opener. And at the time, it begged the question about whether Brady would play again.

Only a couple weeks later, he has given the answer.

“I know the process was a pretty big deal last time, so when I woke up this morning, I figured I’d just press record and let you guys know first,” Brady says in the video. “I won’t be long-winded. You only get one super emotional retirement essay and I used mine up last year.

“I really thank you guys so much, to every single one of you for supporting me. My family, my friends, teammates, my competitors. I could go on forever. There’s too many. Thank you guys for allowing me to live my absolute dream. I wouldn’t change a thing. Love you all.”

Brady is the NFL’s career leader in yards passing (89,214) and touchdowns (649). He’s the only player to win more than five Super Bowls and has been MVP of the game five times.

Brady has won three NFL MVP awards, been a first-team All-Pro three times and selected to the Pro Bowl 15 times.

Brady and supermodel Gisele Bündchen finalized their divorce this past fall, during the Bucs’ season. It ended a 13-year marriage between two superstars who respectively reached the pinnacles of football and fashion.

It was announced last year that when Brady retires from playing, he would join Fox Sports as a television analyst in a 10-year, $375 million deal.
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The nomination of the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea, along with new legislation, has revived hopes for Korean Americans who want to see family in North Korea whom they have not seen since their separation during the Korean War.

President Joe Biden nominated Julie Turner, a long-time State Department official, as the U.S. special envoy for human rights in North Korea on January 23. The position has been vacant for the past six years.

The Divided Families Reunification Act authorizes the special envoy to consult regularly with Korean Americans to make “efforts to reunite” them with their families in North Korea.

The Reunification Act was included in the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2023, which Biden signed into law on December 23. The envoy is to create “potential opportunities” for reunions including video meetings.

“This bill is our last hope because most of the divided family members are in their late 80s and 90s, and probably this is our last chance for the reunion,” said Chahee Lee Stanfield, executive director of the National Coalition for the Divided Families (DFUSA).

Stanfield, 82, has not seen her father and brother in North Korea for more than 70 years. She began a grassroots effort in America in the mid-1990s to help Korean families living in the U.S. reunite with loved ones in North Korea.

“Every day counts for us, and we are hoping that the special envoy will prioritize our issue and seek the reunion process including the video reunion as soon as possible,” Stanfield said.

No travel after war

The Korean War, which began in June 1950, separated more than 10 million individuals from their families. The fighting ended in July 1953 with the signing of the Armistice Agreement ordering a temporary cease-fire and the division of the peninsula between North and South Korea.

Since their separation, families divided by the 38th parallel have been unable to travel to see each other due to the differences between the democratic Republic of Korea (ROK), as South Korea is known, and socialist North Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK).

From 1985 to 2018, the governments of the North and South authorized 21 family reunion programs. These allowed more than 24,500 divided families in both countries to meet either in person in Seoul, Pyongyang and Mount Kumgang or virtually.

However people like Stanfield, who moved from South Korea to America and became U.S. citizens, were unable to participate in the programs because diplomatic ties between Washington and Pyongyang do not exist.

There are more than 1.7 million people of Korean descent living in the U.S. As many as 10,000 Korean Americans were separated from their families in North Korea during the war, according to Wonseok Song, executive director of Korean American Grassroots Conference (KAGC).

“Unfortunately, there is no reported information of the exact number of divided families residing in the United States,” Song said. “There are no mechanisms in the United States that formally track these families, and no terms that clearly define who may be considered family either.”

California Republican Representative Young Kim, who cosponsored the bipartisan Reunification Act, is pushing for a system of identifying Korean Americans divided from their families in North Korea.

“I want the special envoy … to identify the Korean Americans, some 10,000 of those still living in the United States, to coordinate better with our U.S. State Department and the South Korean government to include them in the next round of family reunification,” said Kim during an interview with the VOA Korean Service this week.

The number is shrinking yearly due to deaths among the aging population who have now waited much of their lives to see their families in North Korea. About 3,000 elderly South Koreans with family ties to North Korea die each year, according to the Reunification Act.

A lifetime of hoping

Even though inter-Korean family reunion programs were temporary and held under strict surveillance by North Korean officials, Korean Americans have long hoped that similar programs would unite them with their families in the North.

Some, like Song Yoonchae, a white-haired 90-year-old in Los Angeles, thought he would return home when he boarded the SS Meredith Victory. He thought he was taking a brief voyage to escape the ravages of the war.

He recalled leaving behind his sister and two brothers to board the U.S. merchant freighter turned rescue vessel docked at the port of Hungnam in North Korea in December 1950.

“My family and I were told we just need to stay on the ship for three days,” said Song, who was 17 years old at the time, in “The Three Days Is a Lifetime,” a documentary produced by the VOA Korean Service. It captures the wrenching stories of Korean Americans yearning to meet their families in the North.

The ship carried tens of thousands of densely packed refugees to Port Jangseungpo on Geoje Island off the southern tip of South Korea. The rescue operation became known as “the Miracle of Christmas” as the ship unloaded the refugees on Christmas Eve.

Displaced by the war, Yoonchae began a new life in the South before moving to the U.S.

“I consider the issue of bringing divided Korean American families together to be a human rights issue,” said Robert King, who served as the U.S. special envoy for North Korea’s human rights under the Obama administration. He was the last person to serve in the position.

“The first step will be to get North Korea to talk with the United States,” King continued.

An opening for dialog

Dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang has remained stalled since October 2019. Even though the Biden administration said efforts were made to engage in talks, North Korea has refused.

Evans Revere, a former State Department official with extensive experience negotiating with North Korea, said, “In the absence of any dialogue with North Korea, with tensions rising on the Korean Peninsula because of Pyongyang’s pursuit of weapons of mass destruction and with U.S.-DPRK and ROK-DPRK relations in a bad state, it is hard to imagine that there is any real prospect for progress in this important area.”

Revere continued, “Nevertheless, the existence of this legislation keeps open a potential area for U.S.-ROK-DPRK dialogue and cooperation if and when circumstances allow in the future.”

North Korea launched more than 90 ballistic and cruise missiles last year while dismissing any prospects for talks with the U.S.

Wonseok Song of the KAGC said, “While tensions do remain unfavorable between the two countries” of the U.S. and North Korea, “we at KAGC are hopeful” that talks focusing on reunions will open. He added, “The issue is dire to an aging population eager to make peace with their estranged loved ones.”

Joeun Lee contributed to this report.
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Winter weather warnings and advisories were in effect across a string of U.S. states from Texas to Maryland on Wednesday with forecasters expecting freezing rain and sleet to affect many areas. 

The storm was blamed for at least two deaths on slick roads in Texas on Tuesday as authorities reported numerous crashes. 

The weather also forced the cancelation of hundreds of flights and knocked out power to thousands of homes. 

As the storm moved to the east, watches and warnings were in effect in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Tennessee, Mississippi, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia and Maryland. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press. 
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris and civil rights leader the Rev. Al Sharpton will be among the mourners Wednesday at the funeral of Tyre Nichols, whose death earlier this month after being beaten by police once again focused attention on police brutality. 

Nichols’ mother and stepfather, RowVaughn Wells and Rodney Wells, invited Harris to attend the service at Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee. She expressed her condolences in a phone call with the family on Tuesday. 

“The persistent issue of police misconduct and use of excessive force in America must end now,” Harris said in a statement Friday, the same day police released video of the January 7 traffic stop and beating that led to his death. 

Sharpton is set to give the eulogy at Wednesday’s funeral. He gathered with family members late Tuesday at the Mason Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his final speech the night before he was assassinated in 1968. 

“This is holy ground. And this family now is ours and they’re in the hands of history,” Sharpton said. 

Also expected to attend Wednesday were Tamika Palmer, the mother of Breonna Taylor, and Philonise Floyd, the brother of George Floyd. The deaths of Taylor and Floyd at the hands of police in 2020 sparked widespread protests in the United States about racial injustice. 

Five Black officers have been fired and charged in connection with the death of Nichols, who was also Black. Two other officers have been disciplined, while three emergency responders have been fired. 

The Memphis Police Department also disbanded a special unit that targeted violent criminals in high-crime areas that included six of the officers involved. 

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Boeing bid farewell to an icon on Tuesday, delivering its final 747 jumbo jet as thousands of workers who helped build the planes over the past 55 years looked on. 

Since its first flight in 1969, the giant yet graceful 747 has served as a cargo plane, a commercial aircraft capable of carrying nearly 500 passengers, a transport for NASA’s space shuttles, and the Air Force One presidential aircraft. It revolutionized travel, connecting international cities that had never before had direct routes and helping democratize passenger flight. 

But over about the past 15 years, Boeing and its European rival Airbus have introduced more profitable and fuel efficient wide-body planes, with only two engines to maintain instead of the 747’s four. The final plane is the 1,574th built by Boeing in the Puget Sound region of Washington state. 

Thousands of workers joined Boeing and other industry executives from around the world — as well as actor and pilot John Travolta, who has flown 747s — Tuesday for a ceremony in the company’s massive factory north of Seattle, marking the delivery of the last one to cargo carrier Atlas Air. 

“If you love this business, you’ve been dreading this moment,” said longtime aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia. “Nobody wants a four-engine airliner anymore, but that doesn’t erase the tremendous contribution the aircraft made to the development of the industry or its remarkable legacy.” 

Boeing set out to build the 747 after losing a contract for a huge military transport, the C-5A. The idea was to take advantage of the new engines developed for the transport — high-bypass turbofan engines, which burned less fuel by passing air around the engine core, enabling a farther flight range — and to use them for a newly imagined civilian aircraft. 

It took more than 50,000 Boeing workers less than 16 months to churn out the first 747 — a Herculean effort that earned them the nickname “The Incredibles.” The jumbo jet’s production required the construction of a massive factory in Everett, north of Seattle — the world’s largest building by volume. The factory wasn’t even completed when the first planes were finished. 

Among those in attendance was Desi Evans, 92, who joined Boeing at its factory in Renton, south of Seattle, in 1957 and went on to spend 38 years at the company before retiring. One day in 1967, his boss told him he’d be joining the 747 program in Everett — the next morning. 

“They told me, ‘Wear rubber boots, a hard hat and dress warm, because it’s a sea of mud,'” Evans recalled. “And it was — they were getting ready for the erection of the factory.” 

He was assigned as a supervisor to help figure out how the interior of the passenger cabin would be installed and later oversaw crews that worked on sealing and painting the planes. 

“When that very first 747 rolled out, it was an incredible time,” he said as he stood before the last plane, parked outside the factory. “You felt elated — like you’re making history. You’re part of something big, and it’s still big, even if this is the last one.” 

The plane’s fuselage was 225 feet (68.5 meters) long and the tail stood as tall as a six-story building. The plane’s design included a second deck extending from the cockpit back over the first third of the plane, giving it a distinctive hump and inspiring a nickname, the Whale. More romantically, the 747 became known as the Queen of the Skies. 

Some airlines turned the second deck into a first-class cocktail lounge, while even the lower deck sometimes featured lounges or even a piano bar. One decommissioned 747, originally built for Singapore Airlines in 1976, has been converted into a 33-room hotel near the airport in Stockholm. 

“It was the first big carrier, the first widebody, so it set a new standard for airlines to figure out what to do with it, and how to fill it,” said Guillaume de Syon, a history professor at Pennsylvania’s Albright College who specializes in aviation and mobility. “It became the essence of mass air travel: You couldn’t fill it with people paying full price, so you need to lower prices to get people onboard. It contributed to what happened in the late 1970s with the deregulation of air travel.” 

The first 747 entered service in 1970 on Pan Am’s New York-London route, and its timing was terrible, Aboulafia said. It debuted shortly before the oil crisis of 1973, amid a recession that saw Boeing’s employment fall from 100,800 employees in 1967 to a low of 38,690 in April 1971. The “Boeing bust” was infamously marked by a billboard near the Seattle-Tacoma International Airport that read, “Will the last person leaving SEATTLE — Turn out the lights.” 

An updated model — the 747-400 series — arrived in the late 1980s and had much better timing, coinciding with the Asian economic boom of the early 1990s, Aboulafia said. He took a Cathay Pacific 747 from Los Angeles to Hong Kong as a twentysomething backpacker in 1991. 

“Even people like me could go see Asia,” Aboulafia said. “Before, you had to stop for fuel in Alaska or Hawaii and it cost a lot more. This was a straight shot — and reasonably priced.” 

Delta was the last U.S. airline to use the 747 for passenger flights, which ended in 2017, although some other international carriers continue to fly it, including the German airline Lufthansa. 

Lufthansa CEO Carsten Spohr recalled traveling in a 747 as a young exchange student and said that when he realized he’d be traveling to the West Coast of the U.S. for Tuesday’s event, there was only one way to go: riding first-class in the nose of a Lufthansa 747 from Frankfurt to San Francisco. He promised the crowd Lufthansa would keep flying the 747 for many years to come. 

“We just love the airplane,” he said. 

Atlas Air ordered four 747-8 freighters early last year, with the final one — emblazoned with an image of Joe Sutter, the engineer who oversaw the 747’s original design team — delivered Tuesday. Atlas CEO John Dietrich called the 747 the greatest air freighter, thanks in part to its unique capacity to load through the nose cone. 
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The United States on Tuesday put new trade restrictions on seven Iranian entities for producing drones that Russia has used to attack Ukraine, the U.S. Department of Commerce said. 

The firms and other organizations were added to a U.S. export control list for those engaged in activities contrary to U.S. national security and foreign policy interests. 

The additions to the Commerce Department’s “entities list” were posted in a preliminary filing in the U.S. Federal Register, the government’s daily journal, and will be officially published on Wednesday. 

Since Russia launched its war against Ukraine in February 2022, the United States and more than 30 other countries have sought to degrade its military and defense industrial base by using export controls to restrict its access to technology. 

The Iranian entities are Design and Manufacturing of Aircraft Engines, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Research and Self-Sufficiency Jihad Organization, Oje Parvaz Mado Nafar Company, Paravar Pars Company, Qods Aviation Industry and Shahed Aviation Industries. 

Any suppliers to the entities are required to have licenses to ship goods and technology, but these are expected to be denied, apart from those for food and medicine. The licenses will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. 

Iran’s mission to the United Nations in New York said: “Sanctions have no effect on Iran’s drone production capacity because its drones are all produced domestically. This is a strong indication that the drones shot down in Ukraine and using parts made by Western countries don’t belong to Iran.” 

In January, Canada announced it would buy a U.S.-made National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS) for Ukraine. NASAMS is a short- to medium-range ground-based air defense system that protects against drone, missile and aircraft attacks. The United States has provided two NASAMS to Ukraine, and more are on the way. 

Other ground-based air defense systems such as Raytheon Technology Corp.’s Patriot have been pledged to Ukraine by the United Kingdom, the United States and the Netherlands as allies hope to stave off further power disruptions. 
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Anti-corruption efforts in seemingly “clean” advanced economies have stalled even as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has brought to the fore that nation’s role in fostering kleptocracy in recent decades, Transparency International said in a report on Tuesday.

While painting a grim picture of the global fight against corruption, the Berlin-based watchdog put the spotlight on countries that have historically scored high, meaning favorably, on its annual Corruption Perceptions Index.

Those countries remain among the “cleanest” in the world. But from Germany to France to Switzerland, most saw their CPI scores drop or stagnate last year.

Five traditionally top-scoring countries — Australia, Austria, Canada, Luxembourg and the United Kingdom — saw a significant decline in their assessments, Transparency International said.

The U.S. scored 69, a “negligible” increase of 2 points, but a Transparency International expert called the rating “troubling.”

Even Denmark, ranked No. 1, was relegated to the “little or no enforcement” category in the fight against foreign bribery.

Cross-border corruption takes many forms, from countries allowing corrupt foreign actors to launder stolen funds through their economies to governments failing to punish companies that bribe foreign officials.

In recent years, investigators have uncovered myriad instances of corrupt money finding its way into Western economies, from nearly $2 billion worth of U.K. property owned by Russians accused of financial crime or with links to the Kremlin, to tens of billions of dollars laundered into Canada each year. 

Transparency International said that while its Corruption Perceptions Index does not capture transnational graft, that form of corruption remains the advanced economies’ “biggest weaknesses.”

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine “made it painfully apparent how inaction on transnational corruption can have catastrophic consequences,” the report says. “Not only have advanced economies helped to perpetuate corruption elsewhere, but they have also enabled kleptocracies to consolidate, threatening global peace and security.”

Gary Kalman, executive director of Transparency International U.S., said the U.S., thanks to the sheer size of its economy and financial secrecy rules, remains a “major facilitator of corruption internationally.”

“If you take a bribe for a thousand dollars, you put that in your pocket. If you’re trying to steal millions or billions, you need to find, as they say, ‘a more sophisticated investment strategy,’ and hiding it in an economy that’s over 20 trillion dollars makes it a little bit easier to hide,” Kalman said.

Transparency International is not the first organization to call out Western nations for aiding kleptocracy.

Last year, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the United States was arguably “the best place to hide and launder ill-gotten gains.”

“And that’s because of the way we allow people to establish shell companies,” Yellen said. 

Transparency International said there are signs that the U.S. and other nations are taking the problem seriously but more needs to be done.

In 2021, the U.S. Congress enacted the Corporate Transparency Act, which aims to end the use of anonymously owned companies for money laundering.

Facilitating the transnational corruption, Kalman said, are financial service providers who are not currently subject to anti-money laundering reporting obligations.

“These are the lawyers, the accountants, the money managers, the corporate formation agents, those that create trusts for wealthy people, investment advisers who are currently not covered by any anti-money laundering responsibilities,” Kalman said.

To close the loophole, he said Congress should pass the Enablers Act, which was approved by the House of Representatives last year but fell short in the Senate.

A Justice Department task force created to seize Russian assets following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is increasingly targeting enablers and facilitators of sanctions evasions.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department announced criminal charges against two businessmen, one of them Russian and the other British, for facilitating the ownership and operation of a luxury yacht owned by a sanctioned Russian oligarch.

The $90 million, 255-foot yacht, owned by Viktor Vekselberg, was previously seized by Spanish authorities at the request of the U.S.

The U.S. is also a member of the multinational Russian Elites, Proxies, and Oligarchs (REPO) Task Force, which has seized billions of dollars in Russian assets.

“While some governments appear to have finally woken up to the problem that they had helped create, ending top-scoring countries’ complicity in cross-border corruption —originating from Russia and beyond — requires a long-term, concerted effort,” Transparency International said.
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The U.S. accused Russia on Tuesday of violating the nuclear arms control START treaty, contending that Moscow was refusing to allow inspection activities inside Russia.

The treaty, the last major pillar of post-Cold War nuclear arms control efforts, took effect in 2011 and was extended in 2021 for five more years. It sets a limit on the number of strategic nuclear warheads that the United States and Russia can deploy and the deployment of land- and submarine-based missiles and bombers to deliver them.

Together, the two countries still account for about 90% of the world’s nuclear warheads.

Washington has been trying to preserve the treaty, but ties with Moscow are the worst they have been in decades, the result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly a year ago. The U.S. has led Western allies in supplying munitions to Ukraine to help fend off the Russian attack.

“Russia’s refusal to facilitate inspection activities prevents the United States from exercising important rights under the treaty and threatens the viability of U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control,” the State Department said.

In August, Moscow suspended cooperation with inspections under the treaty. It blamed travel restrictions imposed by Washington and its allies after Russia invaded Ukraine but said it was still committed to complying with the provisions of the treaty.

The State Department said Russia had a “clear path” to comply with the treaty by permitting inspections to continue.

On Monday, Russia told the United States that the treaty could expire in 2026 without a replacement, claiming that Washington was trying to inflict “strategic defeat” on Moscow in Ukraine.

Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told the RIA state news agency that it “is quite a possible scenario” there will be no nuclear arms control treaty after 2026.
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