Author: PolitCens

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Congress early Saturday overwhelmingly passed a $1.2 trillion budget bill, keeping the government funded through a fiscal year that began six months ago and sending it to President Joe Biden to sign into law and avert a partial shutdown.

The vote on passage was 74-24.

Key federal agencies including the departments of Homeland Security, Justice, State and Treasury, which houses the Internal Revenue Service, will remain funded through September 30 after the bill was passed in the Democratic-majority Senate.

But the measure did not include funding for mostly military aid to Ukraine, Taiwan or Israel, which are included in a different Senate-passed bill that the Republican-led House of Representatives has ignored.

Senate leaders spent hours Friday negotiating a number of amendments to the budget bill that ultimately were defeated. The delay pushed passage beyond a Friday midnight deadline.

But the White House Office of Management and Budget issued a statement saying agencies would not be ordered to shut, expressing confidence that the Senate would promptly pass the bill, which it did.

While Congress got the job done, deep partisan divides were on display again, as well as bitter disagreement within the House’s narrow and fractious Republican majority. Conservative firebrand Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene threatened to force a vote to remove Speaker Mike Johnson, a fellow Republican, for allowing the measure to pass.

The 1,012-page bill provides $886 billion in funding for the Defense Department, including a raise for U.S. troops. Biden, a Democrat, has indicated he will sign it.

Johnson, as he has done more than 60 times since succeeding his ousted predecessor Kevin McCarthy in October, relied on a parliamentary maneuver on Friday to bypass hardliners within his own party, allowing the measure to pass by a 286-134 vote that had substantially more Democratic support than Republican.

For most of the past six months, the government was funded with four short-term stopgap measures, a sign of the repeated brinkmanship that ratings agencies have warned could hurt the creditworthiness of a federal government that has nearly $34.6 trillion in debt.

“This legislation is truly a national security bill 70% of the funding in this package is for our national defense, including investments that strengthen our military readiness and industrial base, provide pay and benefit increases for our brave servicemembers and support our closest allies,” said Republican Senator Susan Collins, one of the main negotiators.

Opponents cast the bill as too expensive.

“It’s reckless. It leads to inflation. It’s a direct vote to steal your paycheck,” said Senator Rand Paul, part of a band of Republicans who generally oppose most spending bills.

The last partial federal government shutdown occurred during Donald Trump’s presidency, from December 22, 2018, until January 25, 2019. The record-long interruption in government services came as the Republican insisted on money to build a wall along the U.S. border with Mexico and was unable to broker a deal with Democrats.

Greene lashes out

The new budget bill passed the House with 185 Democratic and 101 Republican votes, which led Greene, a hardline conservative, to introduce her measure to oust Johnson.

That move had echoes of October, when a small band of hardliners engineered a vote that removed McCarthy for relying on Democrats to pass a stopgap measure to avert another partial government shutdown. They had been angry at McCarthy since June, when he agreed with Biden on the outlines of the fiscal 2024 spending that were passed on Friday.

McCarthy’s ouster brought the House to a halt for three weeks as Republicans struggled to agree on a new leader, an experience many in the party said they did not want to repeat as the November election draws nearer.

And Greene said she would not push for an immediate vote on her move to force Johnson out.

“I filed a motion to vacate today. But it’s more of a warning than a pink slip,” the Georgia Republican told reporters.

Indeed, some Democrats said on Friday that they would vote to keep Johnson, if he were to call a vote on a $95 billion security assistance package already approved by the Senate for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan.

That measure is unlikely to come up anytime soon, as lawmakers will now leave Washington for a two-week break.

Pockets of Republican opposition to more funding for Ukraine have led to fears that Russia could seriously erode Kyiv’s ability to continue defending itself.

Life is unlikely to become easier for Johnson anytime soon, with the looming departure of two members of his caucus — Ken Buck and Mike Gallagher — set to whittle his majority to a mere 217-213 in a month’s time. At that point, Johnson could afford to lose only one vote from his party on any measure that Democrats unite to oppose.
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washington — The sun is setting on Stumpy, the gnarled old cherry tree that has become a social media phenom. This year’s cherry blossom festivities in Washington will be the last for Stumpy and more than 100 other cherry trees that will be cut down as part of a multiyear restoration of their Tidal Basin home.

Starting in early summer, crews will begin working to replace the crumbling seawall around the Tidal Basin, the area around the Jefferson Memorial with the highest concentration of cherry trees. The work has been long overdue, as the deterioration, combined with rising sea levels, has resulted in Potomac waters regularly surging over the barriers.

The twice-daily floods at high tide not only cover some of the pedestrian paths, they regularly soak some of the cherry trees’ roots. The $133 million project to rebuild and reinforce the sea wall will take about three years, said Mike Litterst, National Park Service spokesperson for the National Mall.

“It’s certainly going to benefit the visitor experience, and that’s very important to us,” Litterst said. “But most of all, it’s going to benefit the cherry trees, who right now are every day, twice a day, seeing their roots inundated with the brackish water of the Tidal Basin.” Litterst said entire stretches of trees to the water, as wide as 100 yards, or 90 meters, have been lost and can’t be replaced “until we fix the underlying cause of what killed them in the first place.”

Stumpy still alive

Stumpy remains alive, if in rough shape.

Plans call for 140 cherry trees — and 300 trees total — to be removed and turned into mulch. When the project is concluded, 277 cherry trees will be planted as replacements.

The mulch will protect the roots of surviving trees from foot traffic and break down over time into nutrient-rich soil, “so it’s a good second life” for the trees being cut down, Litterst said.

The National Cherry Blossom Festival is widely considered to be the start of the tourist season in the nation’s capital. Organizers expect 1.5 million people to view the pink and white blossoms this year, the most since the coronavirus pandemic. Large numbers of cherry blossom fans have already been drawn to the area as the trees entered peak bloom on March 17, several days earlier than expected.

Tree becomes social star

Stumpy became a social media star during the pandemic of 2020. Its legacy has spawned T-shirts, a calendar and a fanbase. News of Stumpy’s final spring has prompted people to leave flowers and bourbon and had one Reddit user threatening to chain themselves to the trunk to save the tree.

The good news on Stumpy is that the National Arboretum plans to take parts of the tree’s genetic material and create clones, some of which will eventually be replanted at the Tidal Basin.

The regular flooding at the Tidal Basin — sea levels have risen about a foot since the the seawall was built in the early 1990s — is just one of the ways climate change has impacted the cherry trees. Rising global temperatures and warmer winters have caused peak bloom to creep earlier in the calendar.

This year’s peak bloom, when 70% of the city’s 3,700 cherry trees will be flowering, was originally predicted to start around Saturday but ended up being declared on March 17. By comparison, the 2013 peak bloom began on April 9.

Leslie Frattaroli, national resources program manager for the Park Service, told The Associated Press in February that peak bloom could regularly come in the middle of March by 2050.

“All the timing is off.” he said. “It’s a huge cascading effect.”

Another weather side effect: A mid-March cold snap in the D.C. area should actually extend this year’s bloom past the predicted April 9 ending.

For visitors and cherry blossom enthusiasts, the annual tradition of a stroll on the Tidal Basin under the flowers is a core Washington experience.

Jorge and Sandra Perez make a point of coming every year from Stafford, Virginia.

“Yes, we have cherry blossoms in my community, but it’s a completely different feel when you see all of them bloom together,” Sandra Perez said. “And you can walk through, you know, the trees under it and smell it. And it’s just, it’s a beautiful view.”

They also came looking for Stumpy, having heard the legend and knowing this would be its final spring.

“It’s actually beautiful,” Jorge Perez said. “So, it’s sad to see him leave.”
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US President Joe Biden is putting women’s health and reproductive rights at the center of his campaign in the run-up to the November 5th election. Biden, a Democrat, will face the Republican challenger, former President Donald Trump, who has spoken about abortion but has not fully clarified his position. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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A new Texas law prohibits public universities from having special programs supporting minority and LGBTQ students. Critics say these diversity, equity and inclusion programs are discriminatory and divisive. But many students say they are needed. Deana Mitchell has the story from the Texas capital.
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Maputo, Mozambique — U.S. officials pledged $22 million in new funding Thursday to help Mozambique fight Islamist militants in the country’s troubled, oil-rich Cabo Delgado, where an insurgency has intensified in recent weeks.

The United States already had pledged $100 million.

At the end of a five-day visit to Maputo, Anne Witkowsky, U.S. assistant secretary of state for conflict and stabilization operations, said the funding aims to help Mozambique with stabilizing and peacebuilding efforts in its northern provinces.

Calling security in north Mozambique critical, Witkowsky told VOA that the U.S.-financed programs provide training for local government officials to deliver services; promote social cohesion through peace clubs, sports and the arts; and increase educational and employment opportunities for youth.

“Mozambique is a priority partner country under our strategy to prevent conflict and promote stability,” she said. “So, the U.S. supports a Mozambique that is more prosperous, more secure, more resilient and more democratic for all.”

Since 2017, Mozambique’s province of Cabo Delgado has faced an armed insurgency, with some attacks claimed by an extremist group calling itself Islamic State.

On Monday, Mozambican President Filipe Nyusi warned that terrorism could divide the country, advocating that citizens unite to fight rebel groups in the province.

Nyusi spoke after missionaries, priests and religious sisters were forced to flee from remote towns and villages to Pemba and other large cities, which are overwhelmed with persons displaced by the conflict.

Nyusi said resolution of the problem depends on the unity of Mozambicans and foreign forces supporting them.

The Reverend Marcos Macamo, a scholar of African theology and religious sciences, is part of a coalition of religious and civic advocacy groups that are urging the government to open negotiations with the militants. But, he said, even diplomacy has its own challenges.

“The terrorists … wouldn’t have power unless local people give them information,” Macamo said. “They [locals] open the doors slightly so that the enemy can enter.”

The insurgency in northern Mozambique began in 2017 but has seen an increase in attacks since the beginning of this year. In the last few days alone, there have been several raids on towns and villages, and people have been killed or kidnapped.

According to humanitarian agencies, the insurgency has killed at least 5,000 people and displaced more than 1 million.

Oil giants Exxon Mobil and Total are among international energy companies developing natural gas projects offshore of northern Mozambique.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection has set up temporary centers to help expedite the processing of migrants entering the country. Cesar Contreras toured one of the facilities opened last year in El Paso, Texas, in this story narrated by Veronica Villafañe.
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Guatemala city — U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said Thursday that a Texas law giving state authorities the power to arrest and deport migrants who have entered the country illegally is unconstitutional.

“It is our strongly held view as a matter of law that SB4 [the Texas law] … is unconstitutional and it is our hope and confidence that the courts will strike it down with finality,” Mayorkas said during a joint news conference with Guatemala President Bernardo Arevalo in the Guatemalan capital.

A three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments on the Texas law Wednesday but did not rule. The law is on hold for now.

Mayorkas was in Guatemala to work on the U.S.-led regional strategy toward immigration. He described it as seeking to “build lawful, safe and orderly pathways for people to reach safety from their place of persecution and, at the same time, returning people to their countries as a consequence when they do not take advantage of those lawful pathways.”

Among those safe pathways is a U.S. effort to streamline the process for those seeking U.S. asylum in the region through so-called safe mobility offices. They allow migrants to start the process where they are rather than making the dangerous and costly journey to the U.S. border.

Guatemala’s safe mobility office, unlike some others like Colombia’s, is only open to Guatemalans seeking U.S. protection. One of the requests made by Mayorkas’ delegation was that Guatemala allow the safe mobility office to process requests for migrants from other countries, according to a Guatemalan official who requested anonymity because the issue was still under discussion.

Asked during the joint news conference if the U.S. government had asked Guatemala to sign a safe third country agreement, which Guatemala’s previous president had agreed to during the Trump administration, Mayorkas did not directly answer. Such an agreement would require migrants from other countries passing through Guatemala to seek protection from the Guatemalan government rather than at the U.S. border.

Asked again in the interview with the AP, Mayorkas said that Guatemala could be a safe destination for some migrants, but that he deferred to Arevalo’s administration on that.

The U.S. has sought to improve cooperation with countries along the migrant route, including Guatemala, Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia and Ecuador, but Mayorkas acknowledged that it has been more challenging in Nicaragua and Venezuela, where the U.S. has strained relations with those governments.

Arévalo explained the talks in similar terms.

“We are operating under the principle that the immigration phenomenon is a regional phenomenon and that for that reason has to have answers framed in the collaborative efforts of different countries,” he said.

Mayorkas also offered words of support for the Guatemalan leader, whose election victory last year was challenged and whose party still faces prosecution from Guatemala’s attorney general.

“We know that the forces of corruption continue to seek to threaten democracy and the well-being of the people of Guatemala and beyond,” Mayorkas said. “The United States stands with President Arevalo and his fight for democracy against the forces of corruption and for the people of Guatemala.”
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Sacramento, California — The California Legislature on Thursday voted to give prospective college students more time to apply for two of the state’s largest financial aid programs after a glitch in the federal government’s application system threatened to block up to 100,000 people from getting help.

California had already extended the deadline for its financial aid programs from March 2 to April 2. On Thursday, the state Senate gave final approval to a bill that would extend it again until May 2. The bill now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom.

“Clearly, our students need our help,” Assemblymember Sabrina Cervantes, a Democrat from Riverside who authored the bill, told lawmakers during a public hearing earlier this week.

California has multiple programs to help people pay for college. The biggest is the Cal Grant program, which gives money to people who meet certain income requirements. The state also has a Middle Class Scholarship for people with slightly higher incomes.

Students can apply for these state aid programs only if they first complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, commonly known as FAFSA.

This year, a computer glitch prevented parents from filling out the form if they did not have a Social Security number. That meant many students who are U.S. citizens or permanent residents but whose parents are not were blocked from completing the form and thus could not apply for California’s aid programs.

California has a large population of adults who are living in the country without legal permission. The California Student Aid Commission, the state agency in charge of California’s financial aid programs, estimates as many as 100,000 students could be affected by this glitch.

The U.S. Department of Education says it fixed the problem last week, but those families are now a step behind. Democrats in Congress raised alarms last month, noting that the delay could particularly hurt students in states where financial aid is awarded on a first-come, first-served basis, including Illinois, Kentucky, Missouri, Oregon and Texas.

Advocates fear that the chaos of this year’s process could deter students from going to college at all, especially those for whom finances are a key part of the decision.

The computer glitch is just one part of larger problems affecting FAFSA.

The notoriously time-consuming form was overhauled in 2020 through a bipartisan bill in Congress. It promised to simplify the form, going from 100 questions to fewer than 40, and it also changed the underlying formula for student aid, promising to expand it to more low-income students.

But the update has been marred by delays, leaving families across the country in limbo as they figure out how much college will cost.

The form is typically available to fill out in October, but the Education Department didn’t have it ready until late December. Even then, the agency wasn’t ready to begin processing the forms and sending them to states and colleges, which only started to happen this month.

The problems appear to have already reduced California’s application numbers. Through March 8, the number of California students who had completed FAFSA was 43% lower than it was at the same time last year.

“The data most concerning me seems to suggest that these drops are more acute at the schools that serve low-income students or large populations of students of color,” Jake Brymner, deputy chief of policy and public affairs for the California Student Aid Commission, told lawmakers in a public hearing earlier this week.

The issue has caused problems for colleges and universities, too. The University of California and California State University systems both delayed their admissions deadlines because so many prospective students were having trouble with FAFSA.
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Washington — After days of delay, U.S. congressional leaders unveiled a $1.1 trillion bipartisan spending measure for defense, homeland security and other programs early on Thursday, giving lawmakers less than two days to avert a partial government shutdown.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives will vote on the sprawling package on Friday, leaving the Democratic-majority Senate only hours to pass the package of six bills that covers about two-thirds of the $1.66 trillion in discretionary government spending for the fiscal year that began on Oct. 1.

“These final six bills represent a bipartisan and bicameral compromise,” the two top Senate negotiators – Patty Murray, a Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Republican – said in a statement.

“They will invest in the American people, build a stronger economy, help keep our communities safe, and strengthen our national security and global leadership.”

The Congressional Budget Office warned that U.S. deficits and debt will grow considerably over the next 30 years, forecasting that the nation’s $34.5 trillion national debt, which currently represents about 99% of GDP, could grow and rise to 166% of GDP by 2054.

Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said he is “hopeful” Congress can avert a shutdown if Democrats and Republicans in his chamber work together.

The compressed schedule raised the risk of at least a brief partial shutdown after a Friday midnight deadline, unless Schumer can reach agreement with Senate Republicans to expedite the bill.

House Speaker Mike Johnson touted what he called a series of wins for Republicans, from higher spending for U.S. defense and border security to a cutoff of U.S. funding for the main United Nations relief agency that provides humanitarian assistance to Palestinians in Gaza.

“This FY24 appropriations legislation is a serious commitment to strengthening our national defense by moving the Pentagon toward a focus on its core mission,” Johnson said in a statement released along with the text of the legislation.

Democrats said they blocked some Republican cuts and policy measures and touted funds aimed at lowering childcare costs, supporting small businesses and fighting the flow of the opioid fentanyl.

“We defeated outlandish cuts that would have been a gut punch for American families and our economy – and we fought off scores of extreme policies that would have restricted Americans’ fundamental freedoms, hurt consumers while giving giant corporations an unfair advantage, and turned back the clock on historic climate action,” said Murray, the Democratic chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

Two weeks ago, Congress narrowly avoided a shutdown that would have affected agricultural, transportation and environmental programs.

The text unveiled on Thursday fills in the details of an agreement in principle between Johnson and Schumer, which Democratic President Joe Biden has pledged to sign into law.

With a slim 219-213 House Republican majority, Johnson will have to rely on Democratic votes to get the spending bill to the Senate.

Many House Republicans are still expected to oppose the legislation, including hardliners who want steeper spending cuts.

Besides the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the bill would fund agencies including the State Department and the Internal Revenue Service as it girds for its April 15 taxpayer filing deadline.
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Thousands of Haitians fled their country’s economic and political instability even before the latest outbreak of violence. The first stop for many is South America, where some try to work before heading for the United States. VOA’s Austin Landis met with one man on the Columbia-Panama border preparing to cross the treacherous Darien Gap. Camera: Jorge Calle
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