Author: PolitCens

President Joe Biden laid out his foreign policy doctrine Monday in a sweeping speech just a week before he leaves office. He laid out his argument for staying the course just days before the return of President-elect Donald Trump, who has vowed to steer the ship in a different direction. VOA’s Anita Powell reports from the White House.
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WASHINGTON — Despite failing to deliver his promise for broad student loan forgiveness, President Joe Biden has now overseen the cancellation of student loans for more than 5 million Americans — more than any other president in U.S. history.

In a last-minute action on Monday, the Education Department canceled loans for 150,000 borrowers through programs that existed before Biden took office. His administration expanded those programs and used them to their fullest extent, pressing on with cancellation even after the Supreme Court rejected Biden’s plan for a new forgiveness policy.

“My Administration has taken historic action to reduce the burden of student debt, hold bad actors accountable, and fight on behalf of students across the country,” Biden said in a written statement.

In total, the administration says it has waived $183.6 billion in student loans.

The wave of cancellations could dry up when President-elect Donald Trump takes office. Trump hasn’t detailed his student loan policies but previously called cancellation “vile” and illegal. Republicans have fought relentlessly against Biden’s plans, saying cancellation is ultimately shouldered by taxpayers who never attended college or already repaid their loans.

Biden loosened rules for debt forgiveness

The latest round of relief mostly comes through a program known as borrower defense, which allows students to get their loans canceled if they’re cheated or misled by their colleges. It was created in 1994 but rarely used until a wave of high-profile for-profit college scandals during the Obama administration.

A smaller share of the relief came through a program for borrowers with disabilities and through Public Service Loan Forgiveness, which was created in 2007 and offers to erase all remaining debt for borrowers in a government or nonprofit job who make 10 years of monthly payments.

Most of Monday’s borrower defense cancellations were for students who attended several defunct colleges owned by Center for Excellence in Higher Education, including CollegeAmerica, Stevens-Henager College, and Independence University. They are based on past findings that the schools lied to prospective students about their employment prospects and the terms of private loans.

Before Biden took office, those programs were criticized by advocates who said complex rules made it difficult for borrowers to get relief. The Biden administration loosened some of the rules using its regulatory power, a maneuver that expanded eligibility without going through Congress.

As an example, just 7,000 borrowers had gotten their loans canceled through Public Service Loan Forgiveness before the Biden administration took office. Widespread confusion about eligibility, along with errors by loan servicers, resulted in a 99% rejection rate for applicants.

Huge numbers of borrowers made years of payments only to find out they were in an ineligible repayment plan. Some were improperly put into forbearance — a pause on payments — by their loan servicers. Those periods didn’t end up counting toward the 10 years of payments needed for cancellation.

The Biden administration temporarily relaxed the eligibility rules during the pandemic and then made it more permanent in 2023. As a result, more than 1 million public servants have now had their balances zeroed out through the program.

All those rule changes were meant to be a companion to Biden’s marquee policy for student debt, which proposed up to $20,000 in relief for more than 40 million Americans.

But after the Supreme Court blocked the move, the Biden administration shifted its focus to maximizing relief through existing mechanisms.

Republicans have called for a different approach

Announcements of new cancellation became routine, even as conservatives in Congress accused Biden of overstepping his power. Republican states fought off Biden’s later attempts at mass forgiveness, but the smaller batches of relief continued without any major legal challenge.

As Republicans take hold of both chambers of Congress and the White House, Biden’s changes could be targeted for a rollback. But it’s unclear how far the next administration will go to tighten the cancellation spigot.

Trump proposed eliminating PSLF during his first term in office, but Congress rejected the idea. Project 2025, a blueprint created by the Heritage Foundation for a second Trump term, proposes ending PSLF, and narrowing borrower defense and making repayment plans less generous than existing ones.
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Elon Musk said a third person has received an implant from his brain-computer interface company Neuralink, one of many groups working to connect the nervous system to machines.

“We’ve got … three humans with Neuralinks and all are working well,” he said during a recent wide-ranging interview at a Las Vegas event streamed on his social media platform X.

Since the first brain implant about a year ago, Musk said the company has upgraded the devices with more electrodes, higher bandwidth and longer battery life. Musk also said Neuralink hopes to implant the experimental devices in 20 to 30 more people this year.

Musk didn’t provide any details about the latest patient, but there are updates on the previous ones.

The second recipient — who has a spinal cord injury and got the implant last summer — was playing video games with the help of the device and learning how to use computer-aided design software to create 3-D objects. The first patient, also paralyzed after a spinal cord injury, described how it helped him play video games and chess.

But while such developments at Neuralink often attract notice, many other companies and research groups are working on similar projects. Two studies last year in the New England Journal of Medicine described how brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, helped people with ALS communicate better.

Who’s working on brain-computer interface technology?

More than 45 trials involving brain-computer interfaces are underway, according to a U.S. database of studies. The efforts are aimed at helping treat brain disorders, overcoming brain injuries and other uses.

Many research labs have already shown that humans can accurately control computer cursors using BCIs, said Rajesh Rao, co-director of the Center for Neurotechnology at the University of Washington.

Rao said Neuralink may be unique in two ways: The surgery to implant the device is the first time a robot has been used to implant flexible electrode threads into a human brain to record neural activity and control devices. And those threads may record from more neurons than other interfaces.

Still, he said, the advantages of Neuralink’s approach have yet to be shown, and some competitors have eclipsed the company in other ways. For example, Rao said companies such as Synchron, Blackrock Neurotech and Onward Medical are already conducting BCI trials on people “using either less invasive methods or more versatile approaches” that combine neural recording with stimulation.

What are the benefits of BCIs?

Marco Baptista, chief scientific officer of the Christopher & Dana Reeve Foundation, called BCI technology “very exciting” with potential benefits to people with paralysis.

Through clinical trials, “we’ll be able to see what’s going to be the winning approach,” he said. “It’s a little early to know.”

Baptista said his foundation generally tries to support research teams financially and with expert help – though it hasn’t given any money to Neuralink.

“We need to really support high-risk, high-reward endeavors. This is clearly high-risk, high-reward. We don’t know how safe it’s going to be. We don’t know how feasible it’s going to be,” he said.

How are BCIs tested and regulated?

Neuralink announced in 2023 that it had gotten permission from U.S. regulators to begin testing its device in people.

While most medical devices go on the market without clinical studies, high-risk ones that undergo pre-market approval need what’s called an “investigational device exemption” from the Food and Drug Administration, said Dr. Rita Redberg, a cardiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies high-risk devices.

Neuralink says it has this exemption, but the FDA said it can’t confirm or disclose information about a particular study.

Redberg said the FDA tends to be involved in all steps from recruiting patients to testing devices to analyzing data. She said this regulatory process prioritizes safety.

She also pointed to another layer of protection: All research involving people needs an institutional review board, or IRB. It can also be known as an ethical review board or an independent ethics committee. Members must include at least one non-scientist as well as someone not affiliated with the institution or organization forming the board.

The role of such boards “is to assume there is reasonable risk and reasonable chance of benefit and that patients are informed of those before they enroll,” said Redberg.
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WASHINGTON — The Justice Department can publicly release its investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump’s 2020 election interference case, a federal judge said Monday — the latest ruling in a court dispute over the highly anticipated document days before Trump is set to take office again. 

But a temporary injunction barring the immediate release of the report remains in effect until Tuesday, and it’s unlikely U.S. District Court Judge Aileen Cannon’s order will be the last word on the matter. Defense lawyers may seek to challenge it all the way up to the Supreme Court. 

Cannon had earlier temporarily blocked the department from releasing the entire report on former Special Counsel Jack Smith’s investigations into Trump that led to two separate criminal cases. Cannon’s latest order on Monday cleared the way for the release of the volume on Trump’s 2020 election interference case. 

She set a hearing for Friday on whether the department can release to lawmakers the volume on Trump’s classified documents case. The department has said it will not publicly disclose that volume as long as criminal proceedings against two of Trump’s co-defendants remain pending. 

Smith resigned his position on Friday after transmitting his report to Attorney General Merrick Garland, the Justice Department revealed in a footnote in a court filing over the weekend. 

The ruling, if it stands, could open the door for the public to learn additional details in the coming days about Trump’s frantic but ultimately failed effort to cling to power in the run-up to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the Capitol. 

But even as Cannon permitted the release of the volume on election interference, she halted the Justice Department from immediately sharing with congressional officials a separate volume related to Trump’s hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida. Lawyers for the Republican president-elect’s two co-defendants, Trump valet Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira, had argued that the release of the report would prejudice them given that criminal proceedings remain ongoing against them in the form of a Justice Department appeal of Cannon’s dismissal of charges. 

As a compromise, the Justice Department said that it would not make that document public but would instead share it with select congressional officials for their private review. But Cannon halted those plans and instead scheduled a hearing for Friday afternoon. 

“All parties agree that Volume II expressly and directly concerns this criminal proceeding,” she wrote. “All parties also appear to agree that public release of Volume II would be inconsistent with the fair trial rights of Defendants Nauta and De Oliveira and with Department of Justice Policy governing the release of information during the pendency of criminal proceedings.” 
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WASHINGTON — The U.S. on Monday imposed sanctions on an extreme right-wing online network, designating the “Terrorgram” collective a terrorist group and accusing it of promoting violent white supremacy. 

The U.S. State Department said in a statement that it had designated the group, which primarily operates on the Telegram social media site, and three of its leaders as Specially Designated Global Terrorists. 

The State Department said the group has motivated and facilitated attacks and attempted attacks by users, including a 2022 shooting outside an LGBTQ bar in Slovakia, a planned attack in 2024 on energy facilities in New Jersey and an August knife attack at a mosque in Turkey. 

“The group promotes violent white supremacism, solicits attacks on perceived adversaries, and provides guidance and instructional materials on tactics, methods, and targets for attacks, including on critical infrastructure and government officials,” the State Department said. 

The action freezes any of the group’s U.S. assets and bars Americans from dealing with it. 

The leaders targeted on Monday with sanctions were based in Brazil, Croatia and South Africa, according to the statement. 

In September, U.S. prosecutors unveiled criminal charges against two alleged leaders of the group, saying they used Telegram to solicit attacks on Black, Jewish, LGBTQ people and immigrants with the aim of inciting a race war. 

Britain in April said it would proscribe the Terrorgram collective as a terrorist organization, meaning it would become a criminal offense in the country to belong to or promote the group. 

U.S. President Joe Biden has railed against white supremacy while in office. 

In 2021, Biden launched the first-ever U.S. National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism, which included resources to identify and prosecute threats and new deterrents to prevent Americans from joining dangerous groups.
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President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Federal Trade Commission has vowed to continue the agency’s drive to break up Big Tech monopolies while adding a new focus: free speech. VOA’s Matt Dibble has the story.
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President-elect Donald Trump pledges to reduce government spending when he takes office. He has tasked billionaire businessman Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, who’s worth an estimated $950 million, to lead the Department of Government Efficiency, a proposed presidential advisory commission. It’s not a new concept. U.S. leaders have tried to reduce the role of government since the founding of the republic.
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Philadelphia, Pennsylvania — The Philadelphia 76ers have decided not to build a $1.3 billion downtown arena, a surprising move that comes just weeks after the team received approval for the controversial project from the city council.

The Philadelphia Inquirer reported Sunday that multiple council members had confirmed the change in plans. The team has struck a deal with Comcast Spectacor to remain in the city’s sports stadium district, the newspaper said, but further details about the new proposal have not been released.

The 76ers, the mayor’s office and Comcast Spectacor — which owns the Wells Fargo Center, where the team currently plays — did not respond Sunday to requests for comment. The team rents the arena from Comcast Spectacor, which also owns the Philadelphia Flyers of the NHL, who also play there.

The council had voted on Dec. 19 to approve the downtown arena after more than two years of heated debate over the proposal, and the owners of the NBA team had hoped to move into what would be called 76 Place by 2031. The council vote came despite vocal opposition from nearby Chinatown residents and other activists.

“I’m so livid right now I don’t even know what to do,” Jimmy Harrity, an at-large member of the council, told the newspaper. Harrity, who supported the team’s move, said, “I feel as though I was used as a pawn.”

Mayor Cherelle Parker, a Democrat who had championed the plan, has said the entire city will benefit from what she called a “historic game-changing economic development project.” Supporters had hoped the 18,500-seat arena would help revive a distressed retail corridor called Market East, which runs from City Hall to the Liberty Bell. The area has struggled for years despite several redevelopment efforts.

The team owners, Harris Blitzer Sports & Entertainment, had pushed for city approval by year’s end so they could meet their target opening date. They had vowed not to ask the city for any construction funding, although they were free to seek state and federal funds. Instead of property taxes, they would have paid about $6 million in annual payments in lieu of taxes.

Opponents feared the arena would bring gridlock on game days as well as gentrification and rising rents to the area.

The Chinatown community has fought a series of proposed developments since the 1960s, including casinos, a prison, a baseball stadium and a highway, the last of which dissected the neighborhood when it opened in 1991.
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For Irina Contreras, a program manager for Los Angeles County’s Department of Arts and Culture, outdoor education was a refuge for both her and her daughter during the pandemic.

Now, much of that refuge has been burned in the raging wildfires around Los Angeles.

Her 7-year-old daughter, Ceiba, hikes with a kid’s adventure group called Hawks and attended Matilija, a bilingual forest school for preschool and kindergarten. Rain or shine, she and her friends would spend their days climbing, jumping, hiking, and swimming in places like Eaton Canyon Nature Area, a 77-hectare (190-acre) preserve near Altadena, now destroyed by fire.

Ceiba learned to ask plants for permission before taking samples to glue into her nature journal. Once, her group discovered a hidden path that led behind a waterfall. Ceiba couldn’t stop talking about it for days.

For parents like Contreras, the wildfires have been devastating not just because of the loss of life and thousands of homes. They are mourning natural and educational areas that served as sanctuaries and learning spaces for local families, especially in the years since the pandemic. The fires have torn through natural areas that served every type of educational setting: public and private schools, nature-based preschools, homeschool groups, summer camps and more.

“It’s about so much more than what she’s been learning,” Contreras said. “I can speak with absolute confidence that it totally affected me, personally.”

The fires have burned school buildings, too, including Odyssey Charter School in Altadena, which Miguel Ordenana’s children attend.

“The community has been devastated by the fire,” said Ordenana, senior manager of community science at the Natural History Museum. “It’s been a challenge to carefully share that news with my children and help them work through their emotions. A lot of their friends lost their homes. And we don’t know the impact to school staff, like their teachers, but a lot of them live in that area as well and have lost their homes.”

Some areas untouched by fire were inaccessible because of poor air quality. Griffith Park, home of the Hollywood sign, had not been affected by the end of the week but it’s not clear when the air quality there will be good enough to resume outdoor programs, said Ordenana, who was the first to capture on camera a late puma in the nearby area that gained fame under the name P-22.

Ordenana said his family was able to connect with some other families from Odyssey Charter School for pizza and an indoor playdate, but he is uncertain what the days will look like for them with school closures already extending through next week.

All schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s second largest, were closed Friday because of heavy smoke and ash over the city. Classes will not resume until conditions improve, officials said. Pasadena Unified School District also closed schools and several of its campuses sustained damage, including Eliot Arts Magnet Middle School.

The California Department of Education released a statement Wednesday saying 335 schools from Los Angeles, San Bernardino, Riverside, Ventura, and San Diego counties were closed. It was unclear how many would be closed Monday.

During the pandemic, Contreras felt like she was stuck on a screen. She devoted much of her energy to working, writing and organizing, but her daughter’s outdoor education helped her better understand the value of stepping away from the grind.

Contreras feels confident the outdoor programs will return, although it’s unclear when it will be safe for people to hike around areas like Eaton Canyon.

“The nature center is gone,” Richard Smart, superintendent of the Eaton Canyon Natural Area in Pasadena, said Thursday. “The wildflowers, the shrubs are gone.” The park hosted dozens of school field trips a year and Smart estimates more than a thousand students visited yearly.

“Teachers liked it because it was also free, it was local, it was nearby. And it was a place to see nature — wild nature but also in a friendly, safe environment,” he said.

Only a few exterior walls of the Eaton Canyon Nature Center were left standing, he said.

“For many of the local school districts, we truly were in their backyard, and now they won’t be able to use it for the foreseeable future,” he said. “The park is such a touchstone for people in the community, and so to lose that is just, devastating is not even the right word. It feels indescribable.”

Many parents and teachers are likely wondering what to do and where to take their children as fires continue to burn across Los Angeles, said Lila Higgins, a senior manager for community science at the Natural History Museum and author of “Wild L.A,” a field trip and nature guidebook.

A certified forest therapy guide, Higgins says time in nature lowers heart rates, lowers blood pressure and helps children with attention deficit disorder feel more calm and relaxed.

“For children’s cognitive development, time in nature and time spent connecting with nature is so important,” Higgins said. Outdoor spaces also can help children learn how to develop relationships through connections with animals, understand orientation through space by following trails and map-reading and understand human impact on wildlife.

“A lot of the places that we’re talking about are really popular with homeschoolers, but they also are a destination for some field trips, certainly places like Eaton Canyon,” said Greg Pauly, co-author of “Wild L.A.” and director of the Urban Nature Research Center at the museum. “I do think it’s safe to say that people are going to continue to be interacting with those landscapes and it will hopefully still be a field trip destination in the future. But it’s certainly going to be a while before that happens.”

“This is the reality of modern Southern California,” he said. “Fire changes the landscape and people’s lives shockingly often.”
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New York — On a quiet weekend in movie theaters, while much of Hollywood’s attention was on the wildfires that continue to rage in Los Angeles, Lionsgate’s “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” debuted atop the box office with $15.5 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Mid-January is often a slow moviegoing period, and that was slightly exacerbated by the closures of about 10 theaters in Los Angeles, the country’s top box-office market.

A sequel to the Gerard Butler 2018 heist thriller, “Den of Thieves 2” performed similarly to the original. The first installment, released by STX, opened with $15.2 million seven years ago. O’Shea Jackson Jr. co-stars in the sequel, which debuted in 3,008 North American theaters.

Butler’s films are becoming something of a regular feature in January. He also starred in “Plane,” which managed $32.1 million after launching on Jan. 13 in 2023.

“Den of Thieves 2,” made for about $40 million, was a bit more costly to make. Audiences liked it well enough, giving it a “B+” CinemaScore. Reviews (58% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) weren’t particularly good. But it counted as Lionsgate’s first No.1 opening since “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” in November 2023.

Also entering wide release over the weekend was the Robbie Williams movie “Better Man,” one of the more audacious spins on the music biopic in recent years. Rather than going the more tradition routes of Elton John (“Rocketman”) or Elvis Presley (“Elvis”), the British popstar is portrayed by a CGI chimpanzee in Michael Gracey’s film.

The Paramount Pictures release, produced for $110 million and acquired by Paramount for $25 million, didn’t catch on much better than Williams’ previous forays into the United States. It tanked, with $1.1 million in ticket sales from 1,291 locations. Gracey’s previous feature, 2017’s “The Greatest Showman” ($459 million worldwide), fared far better in theaters. Reviews, however, have been very good for “Better Man.”

It was bested by “The Last Showgirl,” the Las Vegas drama starring Pamela Anderson. The Roadside Attractions release expanded to 870 theaters and collected $1.5 million.

Also outdoing “Better Man” was Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist.” Coming off winning best drama at the Golden Globes, the A24 postwar epic grossed a hefty $1.4 million from just 68 locations. It will expand wider in the coming weeks.

The weekend’s lion share of business went to holiday holdovers, including “Mufasa: The Lion King,” “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Nosferatu” and “Moana 2.”

In its fourth week of release, Barry Jenkins “Mufasa” continued to do well, adding $13.2 million to bring its total to $539.7 million worldwide. Also on its fourth weekend, “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” padded its $384.8 million global total with $11 million. Robert Eggers’ “Nosferatu,” the surprise hit of the Christmas period, collected $6.8 million in ticket sales, bringing the vampire tale to $81.1 million domestically.

The Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” in its seventh week of release, added $6.5 million to bring its global tally to $989.8 million. In the coming days, it will become the third Disney film released in 2024 to notch $1 billion, joining “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool and Wolverine.”

Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:

1. “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera,” $15.5 million.

2. “Mufasa: The Lion King,” $13.2 million.

3. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” $11 million.

4. “Nosferatu,” $6.8 million.

5. “Moana 2,” $6.5 million.

6. “A Complete Unknown,” $5 million.

7. “Wicked,” $5 million.

8. “Babygirl,” $3.1 million.

9. “Game Changer,” $1.9 million.

10. “The Last Showgirl,” $1.5 million.
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Donald Trump will become the 47th president of the United States later this month. U.S. voters have differing expectations for their next president. VOA Correspondent Scott Stearns has the story.
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New York — In a singular moment in U.S. history, President-elect Donald Trump faces sentencing Friday for his New York hush money conviction after the nation’s highest court refused to intervene.

Like so much else in the criminal case and the current American political landscape, the scenario set to unfold in an austere Manhattan courtroom was unimaginable only a few years ago. A state judge is to say what consequences, if any, the country’s former and soon-to-be leader will face for felonies that a jury found he committed.

With Trump 10 days from inauguration, Judge Juan M. Merchan has indicated he plans a no-penalty sentence called an unconditional discharge, and prosecutors aren’t opposing it. That would mean no jail time, no probation and no fines would be imposed, but nothing is final until Friday’s proceeding is done.

Regardless of the outcome, Trump, a Republican, will become the first person convicted of a felony to assume the presidency.

Trump, who is expected to appear by video from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, will have the opportunity to speak. He has pilloried the case, the only one of his four criminal indictments that has gone to trial and possibly the only one that ever will.

The judge has indicated that he plans the unconditional discharge — a rarity in felony convictions — partly to avoid complicated constitutional issues that would arise if he imposed a penalty that overlapped with Trump’s presidency.

The hush money case accused Trump of fudging his business’ records to veil a $130,000 payoff to porn actor Stormy Daniels. She was paid, late in Trump’s 2016 campaign, not to tell the public about a sexual encounter she maintains the two had a decade earlier. He says nothing sexual happened between them, and he contends that his political adversaries spun up a bogus prosecution to try to damage him.

“I never falsified business records. It is a fake, made up charge,” the Republican president-elect wrote on his Truth Social platform last week. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, whose office brought the charges, is a Democrat.

Bragg’s office said in a court filing Monday that Trump committed “serious offenses that caused extensive harm to the sanctity of the electoral process and to the integrity of New York’s financial marketplace.”

While the specific charges were about checks and ledgers, the underlying accusations were seamy and deeply entangled with Trump’s political rise. Prosecutors said Daniels was paid off — through Trump’s personal attorney at the time, Michael Cohen — as part of a wider effort to keep voters from hearing about Trump’s alleged extramarital escapades.

Trump denies the alleged encounters occurred. His lawyers said he wanted to squelch the stories to protect his family, not his campaign. And while prosecutors said Cohen’s reimbursements for paying Daniels were deceptively logged as legal expenses, Trump says that’s simply what they were.

“There was nothing else it could have been called,” he wrote on Truth Social last week, adding, “I was hiding nothing.”

Trump’s lawyers tried unsuccessfully to forestall a trial. Since his May conviction on 34 counts of falsifying business records, they have pulled virtually every legal lever within reach to try to get the conviction overturned, the case dismissed or at least the sentencing postponed.

They have made various arguments to Merchan, New York appeals judges, and federal courts including the Supreme Court. The Trump attorneys have leaned heavily into assertions of presidential immunity from prosecution, and they got a boost in July from a Supreme Court decision that affords former commanders-in-chief considerable immunity.

Trump was a private citizen and presidential candidate when Daniels was paid in 2016. He was president when the reimbursements to Cohen were made and recorded the following year.

On one hand, Trump’s defense argued that immunity should have kept jurors from hearing some evidence, such as testimony about some of his conversations with then-White House communications director Hope Hicks.

And after Trump won this past November’s election, his lawyers argued that the case had to be scrapped to avoid impinging on his upcoming presidency and his transition to the Oval Office.

Merchan, a Democrat, repeatedly postponed the sentencing, initially set for July. But last week, he set Friday’s date, citing a need for “finality.” He wrote that he strove to balance Trump’s need to govern, the Supreme Court’s immunity ruling, the respect due a jury verdict and the public’s expectation that “no one is above the law.”

Trump’s lawyers then launched a flurry of last-minute efforts to block the sentencing. Their last hope vanished Thursday night with a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that declined to delay the sentencing.

Meanwhile, the other criminal cases that once loomed over Trump have ended or stalled ahead of trial.

After Trump’s election, special counsel Jack Smith closed out the federal prosecutions over Trump’s handling of classified documents and his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden. A state-level Georgia election interference case is locked in uncertainty after prosecutor Fani Willis was removed from it.
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Six days of official funeral ceremonies honoring the life and legacy of US President Jimmy Carter concluded in his home state of Georgia, where VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more.
Camera: Kane Farabaugh
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Authorities in the western U.S. state of California say at least 10 people have been killed in massive wildfires that have ravaged the city of Los Angeles.

The Los Angeles County medical examiner late Thursday announced the new death toll, which doubled from earlier reports. Officials warn that number could increase once the fires have been brought under control and workers can comb through the ruins.

Firefighting operations continued into the night, with water-dropping helicopters taking advantage of a temporary lull in winds.

President Joe Biden told a White House briefing Thursday afternoon that federal resources and additional funding have been made available to California to fight the wildfires that he described as the “worst fires to ever hit Los Angeles.”

The money will be used, the president said, to cover all of the costs for 180 days for temporary shelters, the removal of hazardous materials, first responder salaries and measures to protect life.

Vice President Kamala Harris, a former U.S. senator for California, also spoke at the briefing.

Harris described the situation in California as “apocalyptic” and “something that is going to have an impact for months and years to come.”

The vice president has a home in an evacuation zone, but it was not immediately clear whether her house sustained any damage.

While the death toll from the Los Angeles wildfires stands at five, Southern California officials say that number will likely increase once the fires have been brought under control and workers can comb through the ruins.

Authorities said the wildfires burning in and around the city of Los Angeles have prompted the evacuation of nearly 180,000 people, destroyed thousands of homes, and burned tens of thousands of hectares of land.

“This is absolutely an unprecedented, historic firestorm,” Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass said.

At a news briefing Thursday, Los Angeles city and county officials provided an update on the fires and the efforts to bring them under control.

Los Angeles Fire Chief Kristin Crowley told reporters the fierce winds that had driven the fires calmed enough to allow firefighters to increase containment and air operations to resume.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said it is fighting five active wildfires in the Los Angeles area: the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst, Lidia and Sunset fires, with the Palisades and Eaton fires being the largest.

The sparking of a sixth fire — the Kenneth Fire, near Woodland Hills — was announced Thursday, and a mandatory evacuation order was in effect for that area, according to the Los Angeles Fire Department.

The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said in its last report that the fires had burned more than 11,750 hectares of land, an announcement made before the addition of the Kenneth Fire.

Some people are apparently preying on the devastated neighborhoods, and at least 20 people have been arrested in recent days for looting.

“I promise you, you will be held accountable,” Los Angeles Supervisor Kathryn Barger said at a press conference Thursday.

“Shame on those who are preying on our residents during this time of crisis,” Barger said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the Palisades, Eaton, Hurst and Lidia fires have prompted the evacuation of nearly 180,000 residents, and another 200,000 residents are under evacuation orders.

Fire Chief Crowley called the Palisades Fire alone “one of the most destructive natural disasters in the history of Los Angeles.” Officials said Thursday that more than 5,000 homes and other structures have been lost in Palisades.

A leading national credit rating service echoed that view. In a statement Thursday, Morningstar-DBRS credit service said preliminary estimates show the fires could result in more than $8 billion in property losses.

Citing local fire officials, Morningstar-DBRS said the fires have already destroyed more than 1,100 homes and threaten more than 28,000 structures. The organization, which monitors and evaluates risk, said it expects the wildfires to have an adverse but manageable impact on California property insurers.

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Technology companies, industry executives and entrepreneurs are in Las Vegas, Nevada, this week for CES, the consumer electronics show featuring the latest advancements in artificial intelligence, vehicle technology, robotics and more. Tina Trinh reports from Las Vegas.
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A U.S. appeals court on Thursday declined to block the U.S. Justice Department from releasing a special counsel’s investigative report on President-elect Donald Trump’s attempts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 election.

The ruling from the Atlanta-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit appeared to clear the way for the release of the report as early as next week.

The appeals court’s decision did not immediately lift an order from U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon earlier this week pausing the release of the report. But Cannon set her order to expire three days after the appeals court ruled on the issue.

The appeals court invited the Justice Department to bring a separate appeal if it wished to reverse that ruling.

The report is likely to be the final act from special counsel Jack Smith, who brought two historic cases against Trump for attempting to subvert the 2020 election results and for mishandling classified documents.

Smith dropped both cases after Trump’s election victory and neither reached a trial.

Thursday’s ruling came after Trump’s two former co-defendants in the classified documents case, Walt Nauta and Carlos De Oliveira, asked the appeals court to block the release of the report, arguing it would interfere with their ongoing prosecution.

The report for now is set to detail only the 2020 election probe after Attorney General Merrick Garland, who appointed Smith, decided not to publicly release the portion focused on the classified documents while legal proceedings against Trump’s two former co-defendants continue.

The Justice Department plans to allow only certain senior members of Congress to review that section of the report, the department said in a court filing.

Nauta and De Oliveira argued that even the limited release of the documents section of the report to Congress could harm their defense against obstruction charges. Both have pleaded not guilty.

It is unclear how much new information the public portion of the report will contain. Smith and a House of Representatives panel have already released detailed accounts of Trump’s actions surrounding the 2020 election, including during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump pleaded not guilty to all charges and claimed the cases against him were part of an effort to damage his political campaign.
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WASHINGTON — As they filed into the front pews at the National Cathedral, wearing dark suits and mostly solemn faces, one current and four former presidents came together for Jimmy Carter’s funeral. For a service that stretched more than an hour, the feuding, grievances and enmity that had marked their rival campaigns and divergent politics gave way to a reverential moment for one of their own.

Barack Obama and Donald Trump, the first two of the group to take their seats Thursday, shook hands and chatted at length. Trump, the former president who will retake the Oval Office in 11 days, leaned in and listened intently to his predecessor. At times, the two flashed smiles.

Obama, who attended without his wife, Michelle, shared a second-row pew with former Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, along with their spouses. President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden arrived last and sat in the pew just in front of them.

Members of the exclusive presidents’ club were on their best behavior. Bonded by the presidency, they rarely criticize one another or the White House’s current occupant — although Trump has flouted those rules frequently. He has praised and criticized Carter in recent days, and he complained that flags will still be at half-staff to honor the deceased president during his inauguration.

Trump looked up when Vice President Kamala Harris — whom he defeated in November’s hard-fought election — entered the cathedral, but he didn’t move to greet her as she and husband Doug Emhoff took seats directly in front of him and Melania Trump. Nor did Harris acknowledge him.

After the service, Emhoff turned around to shake hands with Trump.

Obama, with Trump on his left, also turned to his right to chat with Bush. Clinton, with wife Hillary, was the last of the ex-presidents to take a seat and got in some chatter with Bush as well.

The White House said the former presidents also met privately before taking their seats.

Funerals are among the few events that bring members of the presidents’ club together. In a way, former President Gerald Ford was there, too: Ford’s son Steven read a eulogy for Carter that Ford had written before he died in 2006.

Busy with personal pursuits, charitable endeavors and sometimes lucrative speaking gigs, the former leaders don’t mingle often. They all know the protocol of state funerals well — each has been involved in planning his own.

During the 2018 funeral for George H.W. Bush, then-President Trump sat with his predecessors and their spouses, including the Carters, and the interactions were stiff and sometimes awkward.

This time, Trump also didn’t appear to interact with Hillary Clinton, whom he defeated in the 2016 election.

Trump was seated in the pew in front of his former vice president, Mike Pence — one of the few times they have coincided at events since Pence refused to overturn the results of the 2020 election after Trump lost to Biden. The two shook hands but didn’t speak much beyond that.

Trump, who largely avoided contact with the former presidents during his first term — and pointedly did not seek their advice — has been critical of Republican former presidents, particularly the Bush family, which made him an uneasy member of the former presidents’ club. Carter himself didn’t particularly relish being a member of the club, at times criticizing its staid traditions.

Many past presidents have built relationships with their predecessors, including Bill Clinton, who reached out to Richard Nixon for advice on Russian policy, and Harry Truman, who sought counsel from Herbert Hoover.

One of the first calls Obama made after U.S. forces killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 was to George W. Bush to spread the word that the mission had been accomplished, said Kate Andersen Brower, author of Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump.

“It’s the loneliest job in the world, so usually they reach out and rely on each other,” said Andersen Brower. “But Trump didn’t have that the first term, so this will just be another four years where he doesn’t depend on anyone who came before him.”

She noted that Carter spent years as a proud Washington outsider and skipped the unveiling of his own portrait to avoid being in the same room with the man who beat him in 1980, President Ronald Reagan.

“Carter and Trump, even though they have the least in common about everything else, are similar,” Andersen Brower said, “in just how they approach telling what they actually think.”
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