Author: PolitCens

SAN FRANCISCO — The man convicted of attempting to kidnap then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and attacking her husband with a hammer was sentenced Friday to 30 years in prison. 

Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley handed down the sentence for David DePape, 44, whom jurors found guilty last November of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official. Prosecutors had asked for a 40-year prison term. 

DePape was given 20 years for one count and 30 years for another count. The sentences will run concurrently. He was also given credit for the 18 months that he’s been in custody. 

DePape stood silently as Corley handed in the sentence and looked down at times. His public defense attorneys had asked the judge to sentence him to 14 years, pointing out that he was going through a difficult time in his life and had no prior criminal history. 

Corley said she took into account when giving DePape’s sentence the fact that he broke into the home of a public official, an unprecedented act in the history of the country. 

“He actually went to the home. That is completely, completely unprecedented,” she said. 

Proud of ‘Pop’

Before sentencing, Christine Pelosi read victim statements on behalf of her father and mother, explaining how the violent attack changed their lives. 

“The Pelosi family couldn’t be prouder of their Pop and his tremendous courage in saving his own life on the night of the attack and in testifying in this case,” Aaron Bennett, a spokesperson for Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement. “Speaker Pelosi and her family are immensely grateful to all who have sent love and prayers over the last eighteen months, as Mr. Pelosi continues his recovery.” 

DePape admitted during trial testimony that he broke into the Pelosis’ San Francisco home October 28, 2022, intending to hold the speaker hostage and “break her kneecaps” if she lied to him. He also admitted to bludgeoning Paul Pelosi with a hammer after police showed up, saying his plan to end what he viewed as government corruption was unraveling. 

The attack on Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, was captured on police body camera video just days before the midterm elections. 

Defense attorneys argued DePape was motivated by his political beliefs, not because he wanted to interfere with Nancy Pelosi’s official duties as a member of Congress, making the charges against him invalid. 

One of his attorneys, Angela Chuang, said during closing arguments that DePape was caught up in conspiracy theories. 

At trial DePape, a Canadian who moved to the U.S. more than 20 years ago, testified that he believed news outlets repeatedly lied about former President Donald Trump. In rants posted on a blog and online forum that were taken down after his arrest, DePape echoed the baseless, right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles runs the U.S. government. 

DePape also told jurors he had planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and record his interrogation of the Democratic speaker, who was not at the home at the time of the attack, to upload it online. 

Prosecutors said he had rope and zip ties with him, and detectives found body cameras, a computer and a tablet. 

Paul Pelosi also testified at the trial, recalling how he was awakened by a large man bursting into the bedroom and asking, “Where’s Nancy?” He said that when he responded that his wife was in Washington, DePape said he would tie him up while they waited for her. 

“It was a tremendous sense of shock to recognize that somebody had broken into the house, and looking at him and looking at the hammer and the ties, I recognized that I was in serious danger, so I tried to stay as calm as possible,” Pelosi told jurors. 

DePape is also charged in state court with assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. Jury selection in that trial is expected to start Wednesday. 

Paul Pelosi suffered two head wounds in the attack, including a skull fracture that was mended with plates and screws he will have for the rest of his life. His right arm and hand were also injured. 
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White House — President Joe Biden continues his outreach effort among Black voters this week with a string of events to commemorate civil rights milestones and address the next generation of leaders.

Ahead of the November presidential election, his campaign is aiming to address an apparent erosion of support among a group that historically backs Democratic Party candidates.

On Friday, Biden delivered an address at the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, where he targeted his likely opponent, presumptive Republican nominee former President Donald Trump.

“My predecessor and his extreme MAGA friends are responsible for taking away our fundamental freedoms, from the freedom to vote to the freedom to choose,” Biden said, referring to Make America Great Again Trump supporters, and Republican efforts to restrict voting and abortion rights.

The Trump campaign said their candidate is “surging with Black and Hispanic Americans” despite Biden’s “persistent gaslighting and the multimillion-dollar ad buys he is forced to make.”

“Black and Hispanic voters, like all Americans, are worse-off now than they were under President Trump — by a lot — and every poll reflects that reality,” Trump campaign press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement sent to VOA.

“They have less money and higher prices for everything while being forced to live under a weak president who puts illegal immigrants’ interests ahead of theirs,” she said.

Trump has been courting Black voters, including by using his legal troubles to appeal to them on the theme of unfair persecution by the criminal justice system.

“I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time, and a lot of people said that that’s why the Black people like me, because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against, and they actually viewed me as I’m being discriminated against,” Trump said during a February speech at the Black Conservative Federation’s annual gala, at which he received the “Champion of Black America” award.

Targeting young Black voters

Aiming to win over young Black voters, Biden met Friday with leaders of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities, social organizations in colleges and universities.

His engagements followed a private meeting Thursday with plaintiffs and family members from Brown vs. Board of Education, the landmark 1954 Supreme Court decision that found laws promoting segregation are unconstitutional.

Biden is set to cap his outreach with a commencement address at Martin Luther King Jr.’s alma mater, the historically Black, all-male Morehouse College in Atlanta on Sunday. Biden will focus his remarks on the next generation of Black men, a group whose support for the president has been slipping.

His speech comes in the wake of campus protests across the country, where young progressives voice their frustration with Biden’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war.

Many of those protesting have linked Palestinian activism with other global injustices, including racism toward Black Americans.

“Black people who are concerned about social justice in spaces that are not in the U.S. are similarly thinking about social justice in the U.S.,” said Dana Williams, dean of the Howard University Graduate School and part of the Howard Initiative on Public Opinion, the school’s research arm.

“That kind of affinity towards justice, a pushback against oppression, an expectation for democracy to be enacted with fairness, and an anticipation for democracy to be enacted in earnest, I think are some of the things that link those causes,” she told VOA.

Asked whether Biden is sympathetic to Black students who see a parallel of their experience of discrimination with that of Palestinians, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told VOA that Biden is “sympathetic to the fact that many communities are in pain.”

“He knows that it is a difficult time, and he respects that,” she said during Friday’s briefing.

Biden is set to end the weekend with an address at a dinner in Detroit for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a leading civil rights organization, and a visit to a Black-owned small business in the city.

The Biden campaign said the engagement was a signal of how the administration is working to earn the support of Black voters and addressing their key priorities.

“We are not, and will not, parachute into these communities at the last minute, expecting their vote,” Trey Baker, a senior adviser to the campaign, said in a statement.

Polls slipping

Black voters have long been the backbone of the Democratic Party and helped ensure Biden’s win in 2020. Ahead of the November election, a Washington Post/Ipsos poll shows Biden continues to enjoy the support of the majority of the Black community.

However, lower stated interest in voting relative to 2020 and a slightly narrower gap in standing present some warning signs for the Biden campaign. Only 62% of Black voters said that they are absolutely certain to vote this year, compared to 74% this time in 2020.

Meanwhile, Black voter support in national and state polls for Trump has been “surprisingly robust,” according to research by the University of Virginia’s Center for Politics.

“Older Black voters have far fewer concerns with Biden. They remember the first Trump term, and it’s a pretty simple choice for them — Biden, of course,” said Larry Sabato, the center’s director. “It’s younger Blacks who were expecting more from Biden.”

Many young Black voters are frustrated by what they see as Biden’s inaction on their top priorities and angered by his handling of the economy and the Israel-Hamas war.

Sabato predicted that no more than 13% of Black Americans will end up voting for Trump. He said that for Blacks it is a choice between Biden and not voting.

“Black turnout,” he added, “is key.”
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washington — The co-founder of a local reporting initiative in California is being recognized for her work mentoring young reporters and improving community news.

Tasneem Raja, who helped set up the Cityside Journalism Initiative in the San Francisco Bay Area, has a long career mentoring reporters and reaching groups typically under-covered by media outlets.

The nonpartisan, nonprofit Cityside Journalism Initiative launched at a time when the news media industry was shedding jobs. Its mission statement: to create a newsroom that “amplifies community voices, shares the power of real information, and investigates systems, not just symptoms.”

The organization is now running Berkeleyside, which was founded in 2009, and The Oaklandside, which launched in 2020.

“We also try to go a step further and say, you know, ‘We’re not just here in some cases, to report on what’s going on. We’re also here to help people,’” Raja told VOA.

As editor-in-chief of The Oaklandside, Raja sees her role as creating opportunities for people who reflect the demographics and concerns of her outlet’s community.

Those efforts led to her being given the 2024 Gwen Ifill Award. Presented by the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF) in memory of PBS journalist Ifill, the award honors the work each year of a female journalist of color.

“What particularly struck us about Tasneem’s work is her dedication to creating spaces [and] making news by and about the communities on which they’re reporting,” said IWMF Executive Director Elisa Lees Munoz. “Local news is vital to covering underreported issues and marginalized populations; Tasneem’s career has been spent advancing that much needed coverage.”

Another area that stood out in Raja’s career is her efforts to support new journalists.

Her mentoring, Munoz told VOA, “builds a new generation of women of color in media and news leadership.”

“Tasneem brings this mentality into her newsrooms as well, seeing the value of diverse perspectives and lived experiences to cultivate ‘green’ [inexperienced] employees into skilled journalists,” Munoz added.

Among those efforts is Raja’s work to create a policy that allocates an annual stipend for each employee to use for professional development.

“For me, it starts with creating a healthy newsroom that is going to empower people to do their best work, hiring great talents, creating a space where they feel supported and they have opportunities to learn and grow,” Raja said. “Gwen was somebody who was really ahead of the curve of that, really modeling what healthy, thoughtful, empowering inclusive mentorship was like.”

That supportive process is also reflected in the Cityside Journalism Initiative’s work.

During the pandemic, Cityside set up a hotline where reporters would answer questions and provide information. Actions like that, Raja said, underscore Cityside’s mission of not only reporting on the community but actively and tangibly helping it.

“We want to be part of the solution. We can’t do everything, we aren’t setting out to do everything, but we are setting out to just talk to community members in Oakland, Berkeley and now Richmond,” said Raja, referring to a third media outlet they are setting up.

Before moving to the Bay Area in 2019, Raja was co-founder of The Tyler Loop, a nonprofit news startup in eastern Texas. She has also worked for NPR’s “Code Switch,” focusing on stories on race, culture and identity in America and the nonprofit, politically progressive Mother Jones, where she led a data team that built a database of mass shootings in America.

Alongside her work for Cityside, Raja is on the board of directors of The 19th, a nonprofit newsroom focused on women and the LGBTQ community.

Similar to media outlets across the U.S., the Cityside Journalism Initiative is currently focused on elections. Oaklandside in particular is looking to engage with the community in its coverage.

Among those they are keen to connect with, said Raja, are “casual” voters and those who are new to voting.

“By starting with those conversations, we’re looking forward to building a solid foundation upon which we’re going to shape all our coverage,” said Raja. “Ultimately, we hope to be part of moving the needle in empowering more people to feel like they want to and can exercise that big civic right that we have.”
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This week, President Joe Biden drastically increased tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles, steel and aluminum products, and semiconductors. The move follows his administration’s review of former President Donald Trump’s trade policies toward China. White House bureau chief Patsy Widakuswara looks at how the two presidential candidates differ in their approach.
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Gigantic metal sculptures made by Kosovo-born artist Petrit Halilaj adorn the rooftop of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art in an ode to a childhood affected by war. Garentina Kraja has the story. Camera: Vladimir Badikov 
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HOUSTON — Fast-moving thunderstorms pummeled southeastern Texas on Thursday for the second time this month, killing at least four people, blowing out windows in high-rise buildings, downing trees and knocking out power to more than 900,000 homes and businesses in the Houston area.

Officials urged residents to keep off roads, as many were impassable and traffic lights were expected to be out for much of the night.

“Stay at home tonight. Do not go to work tomorrow, unless you’re an essential worker. Stay home, take care of your children,” Houston Mayor John Whitmire said in an evening briefing. “Our first responders will be working around the clock.”

The mayor said four people died during the severe weather. At least two of the deaths were caused by falling trees, and another happened when a crane blew over in strong winds, officials said.

Streets were flooded, and trees and power lines were down across the region. Whitmire said wind speeds reached 160 kph, “with some twisters.” He said the powerful gusts were reminiscent of 2008’s Hurricane Ike, which pounded the city.

Hundreds of windows were shattered at downtown hotels and office buildings, with glass littering the streets below, and the state was sending Department of Public Safety officers to secure the area.

“Downtown is a mess,” Whitmire said.

There was a backlog of 911 calls that first responders were working through, he added.

At Minute Maid Park, home of the Houston Astros, the retractable roof was closed due to the storm. But the wind was so powerful it still blew rain into the stadium. Puddles formed on the outfield warning track, but the game against the Oakland Athletics still was played.

The Houston Independent School District canceled classes Friday for some 400,000 students at all its 274 campuses.

The storm system moved through swiftly, but flood watches and warnings remained for Houston and areas to the east. The ferocious storms moved into neighboring Louisiana and left more than 215,000 customers without power.

Flights were briefly grounded at Houston’s two major airports. Sustained winds topping 96 kph were recorded at Bush Intercontinental Airport.

About 900,000 customers were without electricity in and around Harris County, which contains Houston, according to poweroutage.us. The county is home to more than 4.7 million people.

The problems extended to the city’s suburbs, with emergency officials in neighboring Montgomery County describing the damage to transmission lines as “catastrophic” and warning that power could be impacted for several days.

Heavy storms slammed the region during the first week of May, leading to numerous high-water rescues, including some from the rooftops of flooded homes.
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WASHINGTON — U.S. prosecutors on Thursday announced the arrests of an American woman and a Ukrainian man they say helped North Korea-linked IT workers posing as Americans to obtain remote-work jobs at hundreds of U.S. companies.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) said the elaborate scheme, aimed at generating revenue for North Korea in contravention of international sanctions, involved the infiltration of more than 300 U.S. firms, including Fortune 500 companies and banks, and the theft of the identities of more than 60 Americans.

A DoJ statement said the overseas IT workers also attempted to gain employment and access to information at two U.S. government agencies, although these efforts were “generally unsuccessful.”

An earlier State Department statement said the scheme had generated at least $6.8 million for North Korea. It said the North Koreans involved were linked to North Korea’s Munitions Industry Department, which oversees development of the country’s ballistic missiles, weapons production, and research and development programs.

An indictment filed in federal court in Washington last week and unsealed on Thursday said charges had been filed against Christina Marie Chapman, 49, of Litchfield Park, Arizona; Ukrainian Oleksandr Didenko, 27, of Kyiv; and three other foreign nationals.

A Justice Department statement said Chapman was arrested on Wednesday, while Didenko was arrested on May 7 by Polish authorities at the request of the United States, which is seeking his extradition.

The State Department announced a reward of up to $5 million for information related to Chapman’s alleged co-conspirators, who used the aliases Jiho Han, Haoran Xu and Chunji Jin, and another unindicted individual using the aliases Zhonghua and Venechor S.

Court records did not list lawyers for those arrested and it was not immediately clear whether they had legal representation.

The head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, Nicole Argentieri, said the alleged crimes “benefited the North Korean government, giving it a revenue stream and, in some instances, proprietary information stolen by the co-conspirators.”

The charges “should be a wakeup call for American companies and government agencies that employ remote IT workers,” she said in the statement.

It said the scheme “defrauded U.S. companies across myriad industries, including multiple well-known Fortune 500 companies, U.S. banks, and other financial service providers.”

The DoJ said Didenko was accused of creating fake accounts at U.S. IT job search platforms, selling them to overseas IT workers, some of whom he believed were North Korean. It said overseas IT workers using Didenko’s services were also working with Chapman.

Didenko’s online domain, upworksell.com, was seized Thursday by the Justice Department, the statement said.

The DOJ statement said the FBI executed search warrants for U.S.-based “laptop farms” – residences that hosted multiple laptops for overseas IT workers.

It said that through these farms, including one Chapman hosted from her home, U.S.-based facilitators logged onto U.S. company computer networks and allowed the overseas IT workers to remotely access the laptops, using U.S. IP addresses to make it appear they were in the United States.

The statement said search warrants for four U.S. residences associated with laptop farms controlled by Didenko were issued in the Southern District of California, the Eastern District of Tennessee, and Eastern District of Virginia, and executed between May 8 and May 10.

North Korea is under U.N. sanctions aimed at cutting funding for its missile and nuclear weapons programs and experts say it has sought to generate income illicitly, including through IT workers.

Confidential research by a now-disbanded U.N. sanctions monitoring panel seen by Reuters on Tuesday showed they had been investigating 97 suspected North Korean cyberattacks on cryptocurrency companies between 2017 and 2024, valued at some $3.6 billion.

The U.N. sanctions monitors were disbanded at the end of April after Russia vetoed renewal of their mandate.

A research report from a Washington think tank in April said North Korean animators may have helped create popular television cartoons for big Western firms despite international sanctions. 
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white house — International and domestic pressure is mounting on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to establish a strategic endgame for the Israel-Hamas war that would tie Israeli military gains to a political solution for the Palestinian enclave.

In his harshest public rebuke yet to Netanyahu, Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant gave televised remarks Wednesday, urging the prime minister to make “tough decisions” on postwar Gaza at whatever political cost. Gallant warned Israelis that inaction will erode war gains and put the nation’s long-term security at stake.

Gallant criticized Netanyahu for his lack of postwar plans to replace Hamas rule.

“Since October, I have been raising this issue consistently in the Cabinet and have received no response,” he said.

Gallant’s comments echoed earlier remarks by White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, who told reporters Monday that Israel had yet to “connect their military operations” to a political plan on who will govern the Palestinian territory once fighting ends.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken reiterated the message Wednesday, saying Israel needs a “clear and concrete plan” for the future of Gaza to avoid a power vacuum that could become filled by chaos.

Gallant ruled out any form of Israeli governance of postwar Gaza, saying that the territory should be led by “Palestinian entities” with international support, a position that has been long supported by the Biden administration.

The administration would not confirm it coordinated Gallant’s statements with those of its top officials.

“I’m not going to speak to timing. I’m not going to give an analysis on it,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in response to VOA’s question during her briefing on Thursday.

“We’ve made our point,” she added, underscoring ongoing conversations with the Israeli government.

A senior administration official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters said the administration shares Gallant’s concern that Israel has not developed any plans for holding and governing territory that the Israel Defense Forces have cleared, thereby allowing Hamas to regenerate in those areas.

“Our objective is to see Hamas defeated,” the official said in a statement sent to VOA.

Netanyahu focuses on destroying Hamas

Netanyahu maintains that postwar planning is impossible without first destroying Hamas.

While his government and Washington agree that Hamas cannot continue to run Gaza, they differ on who should be in charge after the war that began with the militant group’s October 7 cross-border attack on Israel.

“We do not support and will not support an Israeli occupation,” Blinken reiterated Wednesday.

Gallant’s statement reflects comments by other current and former Israeli officials and frustration of a war-weary Israeli public, said Mairav Zonszein, a senior analyst on Israel-Palestine at the International Crisis Group.

“It’s not surprising. It’s not new,” she told VOA. “But I think it’s reaching an inflection point for certain people in the government, because the hostage deal and cease-fire is at an impasse because decisions are not being made about how much longer this war is going to go.”

Netanyahu told reporters Thursday he is planning to summon his defense minister for “a conversation” following Gallant’s public criticism.

Chances of cease-fire faint

Meanwhile, prospects for a cease-fire deal appear dim since talks in Cairo broke down earlier this month.

“Any efforts or agreement must secure a permanent cease-fire, a comprehensive pullout from all of the Gaza Strip, a real prisoner swap deal, the return of the displaced, reconstruction and lifting the blockade,” Hamas chief Ismail Haniyeh said Wednesday.

Israel has so far refused to provide any commitment to end its military campaign in Gaza. So fundamentally, the strategic endgames of the warring parties are “almost as far as possible from each other,” said Nimrod Goren, senior fellow for Israeli affairs at the Middle East Institute.

The mediators — the United States, Egypt and Qatar — don’t see any way forward at the moment, Goren told VOA, even as reaching a cease-fire deal “becomes more urgent, not only because of Gaza, but because of Lebanon.”

Cross-border bombardments between Israel and Hezbollah, another Iran-backed group, have escalated since Israel’s campaign in Gaza, displacing tens of thousands of people along Israel’s border with Lebanon.

While a comprehensive and permanent truce may be out of reach at this point, there is yet hope to accomplish the first phase of the cease-fire deal that is currently structured under three phases, Goren said.

Put simply, that means a six-week pause in fighting, a swap of hostages held by Hamas for Palestinian prisoners detained in Israeli jails, and an increase in humanitarian aid flowing into Gaza.

However, a longer-term cease-fire has not appeared viable since negotiations began.

“There’s just been mutually exclusive demands,” Zonszein said. “Hamas wants an end to the war and full withdrawal of [Israeli] troops, and Israel’s not willing to do that.”

Israel also wants Hamas completely dismantled and its leaders killed, while Haniyeh declared Wednesday that he would reject any proposal that excludes the group’s role in postwar Gaza.

US still seeks 2-state solution

As bleak as immediate prospects may appear, the Biden administration is keeping its eye on the long-term political horizon: the two-state solution — the establishment of an independent Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Sullivan is traveling to Saudi Arabia this weekend to further talks on securing a major agreement that would see Riyadh establishing diplomatic ties with Tel Aviv, a key element to achieving the two-state solution.

Normalization with the leading Sunni kingdom would likely lead to diplomatic recognition of Israel from other Arab countries and Muslim-majority countries in other parts of the world.

At the same time, Sullivan is set to urge Israel to refrain from an all-out ground invasion of Rafah, where more than a million displaced Palestinians are sheltering. Washington believes a wider operation in Rafah would threaten a normalization deal with the Saudis.

“Israel’s long-term security depends on being integrated into the region and enjoying normal relations with the Arab states, including Saudi Arabia,” Sullivan said Monday.

He said he will be meeting with Israeli officials “in a matter of days” and signaled that the U.S. expects Israel will not move into Rafah until then.

Last week, the IDF launched what it calls a “targeted operation” in eastern Rafah, even as the Biden administration announced it is pausing the shipment of 3,500 massive-sized bombs for fear that Israel might use it in the densely populated city.
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WASHINGTON — The Biden administration is creating a new process aimed at cutting the time it takes to decide the fates of newly arrived migrants in immigration courts from years to roughly six months at a time when immigration is increasingly a concern among voters. 

Under the initiative announced Thursday, single adult migrants who have just entered the country and are going to five specific cities would have their cases overseen by a select group of judges with the aim of having them decided within 180 days. 

That would mark a vastly quicker turnaround time than most cases in the country’s overburdened immigration system, which can average four years from beginning to end. And by deciding the cases faster, authorities can more quickly remove people who don’t qualify to stay. 

But it’s unclear how many migrants would go through this new docket, raising questions about how effective it will be. The details were laid out by senior administration officials during a call with reporters Thursday. They spoke on condition of anonymity in line with guidelines set by the administration. 

The new docket will be in Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York. The officials said those cities were chosen because judges there had some availability to hear the cases and because they were big destination cities for migrants. 

Right now, when migrants arrive, particularly families, they are almost always released legally into the country, where they wait out their asylum court dates in a process that takes years.  

Detractors say this essentially serves as an impetus for migrants to come because they know they’ll be able to stay in America and often work while they’re here. The longer they’re in the United States and have established families or community ties, the more opposition there is to eventually send them back to their home country. 

The goal of quickly processing migrants who have just arrived is that by swiftly sending new arrivals back who don’t qualify to stay, it sends a message to other people thinking of migrating north that they can’t count on living in America for years while their case plays out in court. 

A record 3 million cases right now are clogging the nation’s immigration court. There are roughly 600 judges. The plan announced Thursday would not include money for more judges. 

A bipartisan border agreement endorsed by President Joe Biden earlier this year offered funding for 100 new immigration judges and aides. But Donald Trump, the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, urged fellow Republicans to kill the deal, and it quickly died. 

The administration has tried for years to move more new arrivals to the front of the line for asylum decisions, hoping to deport those whose claims are denied within months instead of years. The Obama and Trump administrations also tried to accelerate the process, going back to 2014. In 2022, the Biden administration introduced a plan to have asylum officers, not immigration judges, decide a limited number of family claims in nine cities. 
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Russian forces are expanding their attacks on Ukrainian border settlements close to the northeastern city of Kharkiv, opening up a new front in the war. With U.S. and European weapons finally due to arrive on the front lines in the coming weeks following delays, can Ukraine hold back Moscow’s invading troops? Henry Ridgwell has more
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the funding mechanism for the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is constitutional, fending off a conservative attack on the agency.

The vote in the nation’s high court was 7-2, with four conservative justices siding with the three liberals and two conservatives dissenting.

The CFPB was created by Congress in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and serves as a watchdog over a variety of consumer issues ranging from mortgages to credit cards to student loans.

The plaintiffs in the case — payday lending groups — had argued that the funding structure for the agency was unconstitutional.

The CFPB receives its funding, currently around $600 million a year, from the U.S. Federal Reserve instead of through annual appropriations from Congress.

The case ended up in the Supreme Court after conservative judges on a lower court ruled the funding mechanism violated the appropriations clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the power of the purse to Congress.

Justice Clarence Thomas, who wrote the majority opinion, disagreed.

“Under the Appropriations Clause, an appropriation is simply a law that authorizes expenditures from a specified source of public money for designated purposes,” Thomas said. “The statute that provides the bureau’s funding meets these requirements. We therefore conclude that the bureau’s funding mechanism does not violate the Appropriations Clause.”

President Joe Biden welcomed the court’s ruling, calling it an “unmistakable win for American consumers” and an agency that has “worked to protect consumers from abusive practices by lenders, servicers and special interests.”

“In the face of years of attacks from extreme Republicans and special interests, the Court made clear that the CFPB’s funding authority is constitutional and that its strong record of consumer protection will not be undone,” Biden said in a statement.

The CFPB case was one of three the court heard during its current term that challenge the regulatory authority of federal agencies when it comes to banking, business, industry or the environment.

One of the other cases stems from a requirement that herring fishermen in New England provide space onboard their vessels for observers from the National Marine Fisheries Service, or NMFS.

Several fishing companies complained that they are being effectively forced to pay for the federal observers who are monitoring their operations.

A split appellate court ruled that the NMFS program was authorized under a 1984 Supreme Court ruling known as the “Chevron Doctrine” that says courts should defer to government agencies’ interpretation of ambiguous federal laws.

The other case on the docket would curtail the power of the Securities and Exchange Commission to adjudicate violations of federal securities laws.

The Supreme Court will issue its rulings in those cases by the end of June.

The conservative-majority court has previously ruled that the government’s key environmental agency cannot issue broad limits on greenhouse gases, sharply curtailing powers of the Biden administration to battle climate change.
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Washington — President Joe Biden has asserted executive privilege over audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur that’s at the center a Republican effort to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress, the Justice Department told lawmakers on Thursday.

It comes as the House Oversight and Accountability Committee and the Judiciary Committee are each expected to hold a hearing to recommend that the full House refer Garland to the Justice Department for the contempt charges over the department’s refusal to hand over the audio.

Garland advised Biden in a letter on Thursday that the audio falls within the scope of executive privilege. Garland told the Democratic president that the “committee’s needs are plainly insufficient to outweigh the deleterious effects that the production of the recordings would have on the integrity and effectiveness of similar law enforcement investigations in the future.”

Assistant Attorney General Carlos Felipe Uriarte urged lawmakers not to proceed with the contempt effort to avoid “unnecessary and unwarranted conflict.”

“It is the longstanding position of the executive branch held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the president’s claim of executive privilege cannot be held in contempt of Congress,” Uriarte wrote.

White House Counsel Ed Siskel wrote in a separate, scathing letter to Congress on Thursday that lawmakers’ effort to obtain the recording was absent any legitimate purpose and lays bare their likely goal — “to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes.”

The White House memo is a tacit admission that there are moments from the interview it fears portray Biden in a negative light in an election year — and that could be exacerbated by the release, or selective release, of the audio.

The transcript of the Hur interview showed Biden struggling to recall some dates and occasionally confusing some details — something longtime aides says he’s done for years in both public and private — but otherwise showing deep recall in other areas. Biden and his aides are particularly sensitive to questions about his age. At 81, he’s the oldest ever president, and he’s seeking another four year term.

Hur found some evidence that Biden had willfully retained classified information and disclosed it to a ghostwriter but concluded that it was insufficient for criminal charges.
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TAIPAI, TAIWAN — Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC said Thursday there was no damage to its facilities after an incident at its Arizona factory construction site where

a waste disposal truck driver was transported to a hospital.

Firefighters responded to a reported explosion Wednesday afternoon at the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company plant in Phoenix, the Arizona Republic reported, citing the local fire department.

TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker whose clients include Apple and Nvidia, said in a statement none of its employees or onsite construction workers had reported any related injuries.

“This is an active investigation with no additional details that can be shared at this time,” it added.

TSMC’s Taipei-listed shares pared earlier gains after the news and were last up around 0.8% on Thursday morning. TSMC last month agreed to expand its planned investment by $25 billion to $65 billion and to add a third Arizona plant by 2030.

The company will produce the world’s most advanced 2 nanometer technology at its second Arizona facility expected to begin production in 2028.
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General public gets to visit White House grounds in spring and fall
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Pentagon — After nearly a two-week delay, U.S. and Nigerien officials are holding high-level follow-on meetings to coordinate the withdrawal of American troops from the country.

Christopher Maier, assistant secretary of defense for special operations and low-intensity conflict, and Lieutenant General Dagvin Anderson, joint staff director for joint force development, are meeting Wednesday and Thursday in Niamey with members of Niger’s new government, known as the National Council for Safeguarding the Homeland, or CNSP, two U.S. officials told VOA.

The CNSP posted on the social platform X Wednesday that Maier and Anderson met Wednesday with Lieutenant General Salifou Mody, one of the military coup members who was named minister of national defense. 

The CNSP noted that the meeting comes two months after Niger denounced its military basing agreements with the United States and aims to “ensure that this withdrawal takes place in the best possible conditions, guaranteeing order, security and compliance with set deadlines.”

There are about 900 U.S. military personnel in Niger, including active duty, civilians and contractors, according to the U.S. officials, who spoke to VOA on condition of anonymity ahead of the conclusion of the talks. Most of the U.S. military personnel have stayed in the country past their deployment’s planned end dates, as details for their withdrawal are ironed out.

“We’re still in a bit of a holding pattern,” Pentagon deputy press secretary Sabrina Singh said last week.

Counterterrorism in ‘disarray’

The U.S. has had two military bases — Air Base 101 in Niamey and Air Base 201 in Agadez —to monitor terror groups in the region. Officials say most U.S. forces are based in the latter, which cost the U.S. $110 million to build, and began drone operations in 2019.

Niger’s natural resources have increased its importance to global powers, and Niger’s location had provided the U.S. with the ability to conduct counterterror operations throughout much of West Africa.

“We’re in a different position now, and we’re going to continue to consult with the Nigeriens in terms of the orderly withdrawal of U.S. forces. We’re going to continue to stay engaged with the partners in the region when it comes to terrorism and countering the terrorist threat,” Pentagon press secretary Major General Pat Ryder told reporters on Tuesday.

Countries in the region, including Niger, Mali, Nigeria and Burkina Faso, have seen an expansive rise in jihadist movements. 

According to the Global Terrorism Index, an annual report covering terrorist incidents worldwide, more than half of the deaths caused by terrorism last year were in the Sahel. 

Niger’s neighbor, Burkina Faso, suffered the worst, with 1,907 fatalities from terrorism in 2023. 

“These are some of the most dangerous areas in the world,” Bill Roggio, editor of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Long War Journal, told VOA. “These countries are in dire threat of being overrun by jihadist groups.”

Now, Niger’s coup has put the West’s ability to monitor terrorists like the Islamic State and al-Qaida in the Sahel in “complete disarray,” according to Roggio. 

The United States’ intelligence-gathering capacity was limited before, “but we’re approaching the point where intelligence-gathering is practically at zero,” he said.

A U.S. defense official told VOA that “basically every flight,” even intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drone flights, must be approved by the junta. 

“The beginning of April is when things started getting slower,” the official told VOA. The junta began delaying and canceling the types of U.S. military flights that had been quickly approved before then.

Carla Martinez Machain, a political science professor at the University of Buffalo, believes the Pentagon will try to negotiate with Chad for a more significant American troop presence, as the U.S. struggles to find allies in what she called the “coup belt” — a reference to the recent coups in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger. 

However, most U.S. forces have temporarily left from Chad for Germany in recent weeks, a move the Pentagon called a “temporary step” as part of an ongoing review of its security cooperation with Chad, which would resume after the country’s May 6 presidential election. 

Only a small group of service members remain in Chad as part of a multinational task force, officials tell VOA.

“Niger was somewhat of a rarity in the sense that it had one of the few democratically elected governments in the region, and also a democratically elected government that was friendly to the U.S. and willing to host a U.S. military presence,” Martinez Machain told VOA. “And so, finding a replacement for that for a military base is going to be somewhat difficult.” 

Unless the U.S. can find another base to use in West Africa, counterterror drones will likely have to spend most of their fuel supply flying thousands of kilometers from U.S. bases in Italy or Djibouti, severely limiting their time over the targets and their ability to gather intelligence.

“The beauty of having drones based in Niger was that they were in the thick of the fight. They were in the middle of where jihadist groups are operating. So, once you launch the drones, they’re in the midst of it, and all of the flight time being used can be used to gather information,” Roggio said.

Resupply concerns

Amid the negotiations and flight cancellations, U.S. troops in Niger began raising concerns about their supply chain. Service members in Niamey told the office of Representative Matt Gaetz that blood for the blood bank, hygiene supplies, malaria pills and other medications were running low. 

A U.S. defense official acknowledged to VOA that “they were concerned about medication levels.” The official also said that troops in Niamey had gone through April without a resupply flight but had received food and water supplies through ground-based transportation.

A flight with medical supplies finally went from Agadez to Niamey last week, the defense official told VOA.

Coup forced withdrawal

Tensions between the U.S. and Niger began in 2023 when Niger’s military junta removed the democratically elected president from power. 

After months of delay, the Biden administration formally declared in October that the military takeover in Niger was a coup, a determination that prevented Niger from receiving a significant amount of U.S. military and foreign assistance.

In March, after tense meetings between U.S. representatives and the CNSP, the junta called the U.S. military presence “illegal” and announced it was ending an agreement that allowed American forces to be based in the country.

During that meeting, the U.S. and Niger fundamentally disagreed about Niger’s desire to supply Iran with uranium and work more closely with Russian military forces.

“They [Niger] saw this as kind of an imperialistic move, and this was seen negatively and was part of the reason why the U.S. was told to leave the country,” Martinez Machain said.

Russia has made significant military inroads across the African continent, Martinez Machain added, because human rights violators are able to obtain military training, assistance and defense systems “without the conditions that the U.S. would attach them.”

“Especially for nondemocratic countries, this can seem very appealing,” she said.
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