Since winning the election, President-elect Donald Trump has begun a complex transition process involving a carefully selected team to ensure an orderly handover. Members of this group are tasked with assisting in making key appointments, identifying candidates for top Cabinet and federal agency positions and defining public policy priorities.
See the full story here.
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The Biden administration is shoring up its CHIPS Act funding agreements before President-elect Donald Trump takes office on January 20. Trump has previously disparaged the CHIPS Act and called for higher tariffs instead of subsidies to incentivize companies to build semiconductor factories. What would be the future of TSMC under the Trump administration?
See the full story here.
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The results of the 2024 U.S. presidential election rattled the country and sent shockwaves across the world — or were cause for celebration, depending on who you ask. Is it any surprise then that the Merriam-Webster word of the year is “polarization”?
“Polarization means division, but it’s a very specific kind of division,” said Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press ahead of Monday’s announcement. “Polarization means that we are tending toward the extremes rather than toward the center.”
The election was so divisive, many American voters went to the polls with a feeling that the opposing candidate was an existential threat to the nation. According to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters, about 8 in 10 Kamala Harris voters were very or somewhat concerned that Donald Trump’s views — but not Harris’ — were too extreme, while about 7 in 10 Trump voters felt the same way about Harris — but not Trump.
The Merriam-Webster entry for “polarization” reflects scientific and metaphorical definitions. It’s most commonly used to mean “causing strong disagreement between opposing factions or groupings.”
Merriam-Webster, which logs 100 million pageviews a month on its site, chooses its word of the year based on data, tracking a rise in search and usage.
Last year’s pick was “authentic.” This year’s comes as large swaths of the U.S. struggle to reach consensus on what is real.
“It’s always been important to me that the dictionary serve as a kind of neutral and objective arbiter of meaning for everybody,” Sokolowski said. “It’s a kind of backstop for meaning in an era of fake news, alternative facts, whatever you want to say about the value of a word’s meaning in the culture.”
It’s notable that “polarization” originated in the early 1800s — and not during the Renaissance, as did most words with Latin roots about science, Sokolowski said. He called it a “pretty young word,” in the scheme of the English language. “Polarized is a term that brings intensity to another word,” he continued, most frequently used in the U.S. to describe race relations, politics and ideology.
“The basic job of the dictionary is to tell the truth about words,” the Merriam-Webster editor continued. “We’ve had dictionaries of English for 420 years and it’s only been in the last 20 years or so that we’ve actually known which words people look up.”
“Polarization” extends beyond political connotations. It’s used to highlight fresh cracks and deep rifts alike in pop culture, tech trends and other industries.
All the scrutiny over Taylor Swift’s private jet usage? Polarizing. Beef between rappers Kendrick Lamar and Drake? Polarizing. The International Olympic Committee’s decision to strip American gymnast Jordan Chiles of her bronze medal after the Paris Games? You guessed it: polarizing.
Even lighthearted memes — like those making fun of Australian breakdancer Rachael “Raygun” Gunn’s performance — or the proliferation of look-alike contests, or who counts as a nepo baby proved polarizing.
Paradoxically though, people tend to see eye to eye on the word itself. Sokolowski cited its frequent use among people across the political spectrum, including commentators on Fox News, MSNBC and CNN.
“It’s used by both sides,” he said, “and in a little bit ironic twist to the word, it’s something that actually everyone agrees on.”
Rounding out Merriam-Webster’s top 10 words of 2024:
Demure
TikToker Jools Lebron’s 38-second video describing her workday makeup routine as “very demure, very mindful” lit up the summer with memes. The video has been viewed more than 50 million times, yielding “huge spikes” in lookups, Sokolowski said, and prompting many to learn it means reserved or modest.
Fortnight
Taylor Swift’s song “Fortnight,” featuring rapper Post Malone, undoubtedly spurred many searches for this word, which means two weeks. “Music can still send people to the dictionary,” Sokolowski said.
Totality
The solar eclipse in April inspired awe and much travel. There are tens of millions of people who live along a narrow stretch from Mexico’s Pacific coast to eastern Canada, otherwise known as the path of totality, where locals and travelers gazed skyward to see the moon fully blot out the sun. Generally, the word refers to a sum or aggregate amount — or wholeness.
Resonate
“Texts developed by AI have a disproportionate percentage of use of the word ‘resonate,'” Sokolowski said. This may be because the word, which means to affect or appeal to someone in a personal or emotional way, can add gravitas to writing. But, paradoxically, artificial intelligence “also betrays itself to be a robot because it’s using that word too much.”
Allision
The word was looked up 60 times more often than usual when, in March, a ship crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore. “When you have one moving object into a fixed object, that’s an allision, not a collision. You’re showing that one of the two objects struck was not, in fact, in motion,” Sokolowski said.
Weird
This summer on the TV news show “Morning Joe,” Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz called Republican leaders “weird.” It may have been what launched his national career, landing him as the Democratic vice presidential nominee. Though it’s a word that people typically misspell — is it “ei” or “ie”? — and search for that reason, its rise in use was notable, Sokolowski said.
Cognitive
Whether the word was used to raise questions about President Joe Biden’s debate performance or Trump’s own age, it cropped up often. It refers to conscious intellectual activity — such as thinking, reasoning, or remembering.
Pander
Pander was used widely in political commentary, Sokolowski said. “Conservative news outlets accused Kamala Harris of pandering to different groups, especially young voters, Black voters, gun rights supporters.” Whereas Walz said Trump’s visit to a McDonald’s kitchen pandered to hourly wage workers. It means to say, do, or provide what someone — such as an audience — wants or demands even though it is not “good, proper, reasonable, etc.”
Democracy
In 2003, Merriam-Webster decided to make “democracy” its first word of the year. Since then, the word — which, of course, means a form of government in which the people elect representatives to make decisions, policies and laws — is consistently one of the dictionary’s most looked up. “There’s a poignancy to that, that people are checking up on it,” Sokolowski said. “Maybe the most hopeful thing that the curiosity of the public shows, is that they’re paying attention.”
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Both U.S. President Joe Biden and President-elect Donald Trump reacted Sunday to the collapse of Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria. Given its strategic interests in the Middle East, the U.S. is expected to keep a close eye on what lies ahead in Syria. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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Washington — Celebrities, cultural icons and a few surprise guests are gathering for the annual Kennedy Center Honors celebration Sunday evening in Washington.
This year’s recipients of the lifetime achievement award for artistic accomplishment are director and filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola, the Grateful Dead, jazz trumpeter Arturo Sandoval, and singer-songwriter Bonnie Raitt. In addition, the venerable Harlem theater The Apollo, which has launched generations of Black artists, is being recognized.
There will be personalized tributes with performances and testimonials from fellow artists during the gala at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Medallions were presented during the traditional Saturday night ceremony at the State Department.
The tribute performances are often kept secret from the recipients themselves, most notably in 2018 when Cyndi Lauper flat out lied to her longtime friend Cher about being unable to attend. Lauper appeared on stage to perform Cher’s hit, “If I Could Turn Back Time.”
Several of the latest honorees have themselves participated in past tributes to friends and colleagues at the Kennedy Center.
Coppola spoke during fellow director Martin Scorsese’s induction in 2007. Sandoval performed in the tribute to his mentor, jazz trumpet legend Dizzy Gillespie. Raitt has taken part in tributes to Buddy Guy and Mavis Staples. Raitt even attended the Kennedy Center Honors in the 1970s when her father, Broadway performer John Raitt, was taking part in a tribute to composer Richard Rogers.
The tribute to the Grateful Dead is expected to double as a memorial to the band’s founding bass player Phil Lesh, who died in October at age 84.
This could also be the last Kennedy Center Honors ceremony without political intrigue for a while.
During Republican Donald Trump’s first four years in office, Kennedy Center officials were forced to walk a public tightrope between the tradition of the president attending the ceremony and the open antipathy toward Trump from multiple honorees. In 2017, recipient Norman Lear threatened to boycott his own ceremony if Trump attended. Trump, who takes office in January, skipped the ceremony for the entirety of his first term.
Democratic President Joe Biden is scheduled to host a reception for the honorees at the White House and plans to attend the Kennedy Center ceremony afterward.
The show will air on CBS on Dec. 22.
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U.S. President Joe Biden declared Sunday that the sudden demise of the Syrian government under Bashar Assad was a “fundamental act of justice,” but that it was “a moment of uncertainty” for the Mideast.
Biden, speaking at the White House, said the collapse of the decades-long iron rule by the Assad family was “the best opportunity in a generation for the Syrian people to forge their own destiny.”
Biden said that action by the U.S. and its allies over the last two years weakened Syria’s backers — Russia, Iran and Iran-supported Hezbollah militants in Lebanon — to the extent that “for the first time” they could no longer defend the Assad government.
“Our approach has shifted the balance of power in the Middle East,” Biden said, after a meeting with his national security advisers at the White House.
U.S. President-elect Donald Trump said Sunday that Assad had fled his country, which his family had ruled for decades, because close ally Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, “was not interested in protecting him any longer.”
Trump’s comments on his social media platform came a day after he decried the possibility that the U.S. might intervene militarily in Syria to aid the rebels as they moved to oust Assad, declaring, “THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT.”
The Biden administration had no intention of intervening, according to Biden’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan.
The U.S has about 900 troops in Syria, including forces working with Kurdish allies in the opposition-held northeast to prevent any resurgence of the Islamic State group.
Biden said he intends for those troops to remain, adding that U.S. forces on Sunday conducted “dozens” of what he called “precision airstrikes” on Islamic State camps and operations in Syria.
Biden said the U.S. is “clear eyed” that ISIS will try to take advantage of the situation in Syria.
The Syrian opposition that brought down Assad is led by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham. The Biden administration has designated the group as a terrorist organization and says it has links to al-Qaida, although Hayat Tahrir al-Sham says it has since broken ties with al-Qaida.
“We will remain vigilant,” Biden said. “Make no mistake, some of the rebel groups that took down Assad have their own grim record of terrorism and human rights abuses.” He added that the groups are “saying the right things now.”
“But as they take on greater responsibility, we will assess not just their words, but their actions,” Biden said.
Trump, who takes office January 20, linked the upheaval in Syria and Russia’s war in Ukraine, noting that Assad’s allies in Moscow, as well as in Iran, the main sponsor of Hamas and Hezbollah, “are in a weakened state right now.”
Vice President-elect JD Vance, a veteran of the U.S.-led war in Iraq, wrote on his own social media Sunday to express skepticism about the insurgents.
“Many of ‘the rebels’ are a literal offshoot of ISIS. One can hope they’ve moderated. Time will tell,” he said.
With the collapse of the Assad regime, the family of missing U.S. journalist Austin Tice renewed calls to find him.
“To everyone in Syria that hears this, please remind people that we’re waiting for Austin,” Tice’s mother, Debra, said in comments that hostage advocacy groups spread on social media. “We know that when he comes out, he’s going to be fairly dazed & he’s going to need lots of care & direction. Direct him to his family please!”
Tice disappeared in 2012 outside Damascus.
“We’ve remained committed to returning him to his family,” Biden told reporters. “We believe he’s alive, we think we can get him back, but we have no direct evidence to that yet. And Assad should be held accountable.”
The president added: “We have to identify where he [Tice] is.”
Some material in this report came from The Associated Press.
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The FBI is offering a 50-thousand-dollar reward for information that leads to the arrest of the assassin of a health-care CEO in New York City. Law enforcement took the unusual step of identifying a suspect without naming him as the search for the killer continues. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has the story.
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KYIV — U.S. President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday called for an immediate ceasefire in Ukraine, shortly after a meeting in Paris with French and Ukrainian leaders, claiming Kyiv “would like to make a deal” to end the more than 1,000-day war.
In a post on his Truth Social platform, Trump claimed that Moscow and Kyiv have both lost hundreds of thousands of soldiers in a war that “should never have started.”
“There should be an immediate ceasefire and negotiations should begin. Too many lives are being needlessly wasted, too many families destroyed,” he said, as he called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to act to bring the fighting to an end.
Trump’s remarks came after a meeting Saturday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his French counterpart, Emmanuel Macron, that Zelenskyy later described as “constructive”.
Speaking to reporters later that day, Zelenskyy insisted that any peace deal “should be just” for Ukrainians, “so that Russia and Putin or any other aggressors will not have the opportunity to return.”
In a separate social media update Sunday, Zelenskyy asserted that Kyiv has so far lost 43,000 soldiers since Moscow’s all-out invasion on Feb. 24, 2022, while a further 370,000 have been wounded.
Both Russia and Ukraine have been reluctant to publish official casualty figures, but Western officials have said that the past few months of grinding positional warfare in eastern Ukraine have meant record losses for both sides, with tens of thousands killed and wounded each month.
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The oldest known wild bird in the world has laid an egg at the ripe age of about 74, her first in four years, U.S. wildlife officials said.
The long-winged seabird named Wisdom, a Laysan albatross, returned to Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge at the northwestern edge of the Hawaiian Archipelago and laid what experts estimate may be her 60th egg, the Pacific Region of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service said in a Facebook post this week.
Wisdom and her mate, Akeakamai, had returned to the atoll in the Pacific Ocean to lay and hatch eggs since 2006. Laysan albatrosses mate for life and lay one egg per year. But Akeakamai has not been seen for several years, and Wisdom began interacting with another male when she returned last week, officials said.
“We are optimistic that the egg will hatch,” Jonathan Plissner, supervisory wildlife biologist at Midway Atoll National Wildlife Refuge, said in a statement. Every year, millions of seabirds return to the refuge to nest and raise their young.
Albatross parents take turns incubating an egg for about two months. Chicks fly out to sea about five to six months after hatching. They spend most of their lives flying over the ocean and feeding on squid and fish eggs.
Wisdom was first banded as an adult in 1956 and has raised as many as 30 chicks, Plissner said.
The typical lifespan of a Laysan albatross is 68 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
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WASHINGTON — The United States on Saturday announced a new $988 million military assistance package for Ukraine as Washington races to provide aid to Kyiv before President-elect Donald Trump takes office.
It nearly halves the available $2.21 billion remaining in Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative (USAI) as the Biden administration works to commit to buying weapons from industry, rather than pull from U.S. weapons stocks.
Trump’s victory in the November election has cast doubt on the future of American aid for Ukraine, providing a limited window for billions of dollars in already authorized assistance to be provided before he is sworn in next month.
The package features drones, ammunition for precision HIMARS rocket launchers, and equipment and spare parts for artillery systems, tanks and armored vehicles, the Pentagon said in a statement.
The Biden administration has often used Presidential Drawdown Authority, which authorizes President Joe Biden to transfer excess articles and services from U.S. stocks without congressional approval during an emergency.
The USAI funds are separate and will go to purchase new weapons from the defense industry or partners rather than drawn from American stocks, meaning it will not immediately arrive on the battlefield.
It follows a $725 million package announced Monday that included a second tranche of landmines as well as anti-air and anti-armor weapons.
The outgoing U.S. administration is working to get as much aid as possible to Ukraine before Trump — who has repeatedly criticized U.S. assistance for Kyiv and claimed he could secure a ceasefire within hours — takes over.
Trump’s comments have triggered fears in Kyiv and Europe about the future of U.S. aid, and Ukraine’s ability to withstand Russian attacks in the absence of further American support.
The United States has spearheaded the push for international support for Ukraine, quickly forging a coalition to back Kyiv after Russia launched its full-scale invasion in 2022 and coordinating aid from dozens of countries.
Ukraine’s international supporters have since then provided tens of billions of dollars in weapons, ammunition, training and other security aid that has been key to helping Kyiv resist Russian forces.
The Biden administration still has about $6 billion of congressionally granted presidential drawdown authority, including funds authorized in 2024 and funds discovered by the Pentagon after overestimating the value of arms shipped to Ukraine.
Since the Russian invasion in February 2022 the U.S. has committed more than $62 billion worth of security assistance to Ukraine.
Some material in this report is from Reuters.
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NEW YORK — New York’s mayor said Saturday “the net is tightening” on the man suspected of gunning down a top health insurance executive before fleeing the city.
Mayor Eric Adams said detectives knew the name of the fresh-faced suspect, an image of whom was released by investigators Thursday and who has now been on the run for almost four days.
Adams praised “the manner in which (investigators) were able to follow his footsteps to recover evidence — some of it is known, some of it is unknown — but the net is tightening and we’re going to bring this person to justice,” he said, the New York Post reported.
Adams was quoted by the Post as saying the police were withholding the suspect’s name for now.
“We don’t want to release that,” the mayor said. “If you do, you are basically giving a tip to the person we are seeking, and we do not want to give him an upper hand at all. Let him continue to believe he can hide behind the mask.”
“We revealed his face,” the mayor continued, referring to numerous security camera photos and video released after Brian Thompson, CEO of UnitedHealthcare was gunned down. And eventually, “we’re going to reveal who he is and we’re going to bring him to justice,” Adams said.
The masked assailant was caught on camera entering a bus station in a northern neighborhood of Manhattan in the wake of Wednesday’s slaying, but he could not be identified exiting the facility on foot, a police spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse.
“They believe he’s not in New York City,” the spokesperson added.
The image of the smiling suspect was obtained from a youth hostel where the gunman apparently stayed before the hit, detectives said, with media reporting he lowered his mask to flirt with a receptionist.
The FBI, which said it was assisting the New York police, offered a reward of up to $50,000 for information leading to his capture.
‘Delay’ and ‘deny’
The gunman on Wednesday sprayed Thompson of United Healthcare — one of the country’s largest medical insurers — with bullets in front of bystanders, in an audacious attack captured by a surveillance camera and now seen by millions.
Thompson was attending an investor conference in the Midtown business district.
Police have yet to suggest a motive and would not confirm media reports that the words “delay” and “deny” — often used by insurance companies to reject claims — were written on shell casings found at the scene.
Video footage shows Thompson on the sidewalk outside the New York Hilton Midtown when a man in a hooded top, his lower face covered, approaches from behind, then fires several shots at his 50-year-old victim, who crumples to the ground.
Camera footage showed the suspect fleeing on foot, before getting on a bicycle, with police revealing he headed to Central Park.
Officers have confirmed that a cell phone as well as DNA from a coffee cup were recovered from near the murder scene.
In the absence of an arrest, speculation has been rife that the gunman may have sought revenge for adverse medical coverage decisions made by the insurer.
UnitedHealthcare is a major player in the lucrative American health care market; the parent group had revenues of $100.8 billion in the third quarter of the year.
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PARIS — French President Emmanuel Macron welcomed Donald Trump to Paris on Saturday with a full a dose of presidential pomp, and they held an impromptu meeting with Ukraine’s Volodymr Zelenskyy on a day that mixed pageantry with attention to pressing global problems.
U.S. President-elect Trump said when he arrived at the Elysee Palace for a face-to-face meeting with Macron — which soon expanded to include Zelenskyy — that the two would be discussing a world that’s gone “a little crazy.”
Trump’s visit to France, part of a global celebration of the reopening of Notre Dame Cathedral five years after a devastating fire, came as Macron and other European leaders are trying to win Trump’s favor and persuade him to maintain support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s invasion. Macron’s office said that would be discussed as well as the wars in the Middle East.
As Trump arrived at the official residence of the French president, Macron went out of his way to project an image of close ties, posing for multiple handshakes interspersed with plenty of back-patting. Trump said it was “a great honor” and talked about the “great relationship” they have had. A grand red carpet was rolled in the same way the French welcome sitting American presidents.
Before they went inside, Trump said, “It certainly seems like the world is going a little crazy right now. And we’ll be talking about that.”
Zelenskyy arrived at the palace about 45 minutes after Trump.
Macron had planned to meet with Zelenskyy, and the French president’s office said the three-way meeting was proposed by Macron and arranged shortly before Trump’s arrival. Trump has pledged to end the war in Ukraine swiftly but has not specified how, raising concerns in Kyiv about what terms may be laid out for any future negotiations.
Macron, who has had an up-and-down relationship with Trump, has made a point of cultivating a relationship since the Republican defeated Democrat Kamala Harris last month. But Macron’s office nonetheless played down the significance of the invitation, saying other politicians not now in office had been invited as well.
Trump was invited as president-elect of a “friendly nation,” Macron’s office said, adding, “This is in no way exceptional, we’ve done it before.”
The red-carpet treatment, however, was a sign of how eager Macron and other European leaders are to win Trump’s favor even before he takes office.
During one of Trump’s first trips as president during his first term was to Paris, where Macron made him the guest of honor at Bastille Day events. Trump later said he wanted to replicate the grand military parade back in the United States.
President Joe Biden also was invited but will not attend. White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre cited a scheduling conflict and said first lady Jill Biden will represent the United States.
The meeting with the French president is taking place before the Notre Dame event, as will the get-together with Prince William, who’s also scheduled to meet with Jill Biden, according to the British royal palace.
To build trust with the incoming U.S. administration, Zelenskyy’s top aide, Andriy Yermak, met key members of Trump’s team on a two-day trip earlier this week. A senior Ukrainian official, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to speak publicly, described the meetings as productive but declined to disclose details.
Relations between France and the United States during Trump’s first term began warmly enough but grew increasingly strained over time.
Macron was the guest of honor at Trump’s first state dinner, and Trump traveled to France several times. But the relationship suffered after Macron criticized Trump for questioning the need for NATO and raising doubts about America’s commitment to the mutual defense pact.
During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump often mocked Macron, imitating his accent and threatening to impose steep tariffs on wine and champagne bottles shipped to the U.S. if France tried to tax American companies.
But Macron was one of the first global leaders to congratulate Trump last month after the election.
When he accepted the invitation to travel to Paris, Trump said Macron had done “a wonderful job ensuring that Notre Dame has been restored to its full level of glory, and even more so. It will be a very special day for all!”
A fire in 2019 nearly destroyed the 861-year-old landmark.
More than 20 French government security agents were helping ensure Trump’s safety alongside the Secret Service, according to French national police. A special French police van provided anti-drone protection for Trump’s convoy.
Security was tighter than usual outside the U.S. Embassy and other sites around Paris for the Notre Dame reopening, where dozens of international VIPs were expected.
Trump was president in 2019 when the fire engulfed Notre Dame, collapsing its spire and threatening to destroy one of the world’s greatest architectural treasures, known for its mesmerizing stained glass.
“So horrible to watch the massive fire at Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris,” he wrote at the time on what was then Twitter.
Last weekend, Trump announced that he intends to nominate real estate developer Charles Kushner, the father of his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to serve as ambassador to France. Predecessors in that prestigious role include Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
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WASHINGTON — President-elect Donald Trump said on Saturday the U.S. should not be involved in the conflict in Syria, where rebel forces are threatening the government of President Bashar Assad.
“Syria is a mess, but is not our friend, & THE UNITED STATES SHOULD HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. THIS IS NOT OUR FIGHT. LET IT PLAY OUT. DO NOT GET INVOLVED!,” Trump said in a post on his social media platform Truth Social.
Trump said because Russia, an Assad ally, is tied up fighting a war with Ukraine, it “seems incapable of stopping this literal march through Syria, a country they have protected for years.”
If Russia were forced out of Syria, it “may actually be the best thing that can happen to them” because “there was never much of a benefit in Syria for Russia,” Trump said.
Trump’s comments appeared to reflect his opposition to the presence of some 900 U.S. troops in Syria, mostly of them in the northeast, where they have backed a Syrian Kurd-led alliance in preventing a resurgence of Islamic State militants.
Trump announced in 2018 during his first term that he wanted to withdraw the U.S. troops because he said Islamic State was near defeat.
But he held off as advisers warned that a pullout would leave a void that would be filled by Iran and Russia.
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Pearl Harbor “changed the future of the world,” U.S. President Joe Biden said at a White House event for veterans and their families on Friday, the eve of the anniversary of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
The president recalled that he “heard so much” about Pearl Harbor when he was growing up and talked about his uncles who enlisted in the military after the attack.
“During World War II, we stood at an inflection point,” the president said. “We still stand at an inflection point. The decisions we make now in the next four to five years will determine the course of our future for decades to come. … We owe it to the next generation to set that course on a more free, more secure and more just path.”
Saturday, December 7, marks the 83rd anniversary of Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, a U.S. naval base on the island of Oahu, Hawaii, near Honolulu.
Hundreds of Japanese fighter planes unleashed bombs, bullets and aerial torpedoes on America’s Pacific Fleet in the Sunday morning attack.
More than 2,400 U.S. sailors, soldiers and civilians were killed that day. About half of them died on the USS Arizona battleship.
The Japanese succeeded in sinking four of the eight U.S. battleships at Pearl Harbor and damaging the remaining four.
According to the Naval History and History Command website, “That more Japanese aircraft were not shot down had nothing to do with the skill, training or bravery of our Sailors and other servicemembers.
“Rather, U.S. antiaircraft weapons were inadequate in number and capability, for not only had the Japanese achieved tactical surprise, they achieved technological surprise with aircraft and weapons far better than anticipated — a lesson in the danger of underestimating the enemy that resonates to this day.”
The day after the attack, U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt appeared before a joint session of Congress, seeking a declaration of war. After he delivered his famous “Day of Infamy” speech, the Senate unanimously supported the declaration. In the House, there was one dissenter, Montana’s Representative Jeanette Rankin, a pacifist.
Roosevelt signed the declaration Monday afternoon. The United States had now been officially drawn into World War II.
Before the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States had imposed economic sanctions on Japan as a way of stopping Japan’s expansion goals in Asia. The sanctions affected Japan’s access to aircraft exports.
The attack on the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor was part of Japan’s plan to prevent any challenges to those goals in Asia.
There is now a USS Arizona Memorial that expands over the hull of the sunken vessel without touching it.
Earlier this week, a 104-year-old survivor of Pearl Harbor returned to Hawaii to participate in this year’s commemorations. Ira “Ike” Schab Jr. of Portland, Oregon, who was a Navy musician, was greeted at the airport in Honolulu with a water cannon salute and music from the U.S. Pacific Fleet Band.
When asked what he remembers about that day, Schab told the Hawaii News Now website, “Being scared, more than anything else.” Schab said he made the trip because he is one of the Pacific Fleet’s “very few” survivors remaining from that day.
He said, “They deserve to be recognized and honored.”
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Efforts to reduce the nation’s persistently high maternal mortality rates involve state panels of experts that investigate and learn from each mother’s death.
The panels — called maternal mortality review committees — usually do their work quietly and out of the public eye. But that’s not been the case recently in three states with strict abortion laws.
Georgia dismissed all members of its committee in November after information about deaths being reviewed leaked to the news organization ProPublica. Days later, The Washington Post reported that Texas’ committee won’t review cases from 2022 and 2023, the first two years after the state banned nearly all abortions. In Idaho, the state let its panel disband in 2023 only to reinstate it earlier this year.
“They’ve become more of a lightning rod than they were before,” said epidemiologist Michael Kramer, director of the Center for Rural Health and Health Disparities at Mercer University in Georgia.
Here’s what maternal mortality review committees across the nation do and what might happen next:
What are they?
“Maternal mortality review committees are important because they are the most comprehensive source of information about maternal mortality that we have,” said David Goodman, who leads the maternal mortality prevention team at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The panels review deaths that occur during pregnancy or within a year after it ends, whether directly related to the pregnancy or not. Causes of death can range from hemorrhage during childbirth to drug overdoses to traffic accidents.
The goal, Kramer said, is to examine maternal deaths and help “decide what we can do about them.”
All states, a few cities and Puerto Rico have these committees. Their membership varies and may include OB-GYNs, maternal-fetal medicine doctors, nurses, midwives, mental and public health experts and members of patient advocacy groups. Most have representatives from several areas of expertise, which the CDC recommends.
How members are selected also varies; people may apply, submit letters of interest or be invited to serve.
The selection shouldn’t be politically motivated, Kramer said, because “if there’s a systematic exclusion of certain data or certain perspectives” it’s difficult to truly understand what’s happening.
How do they look at deaths?
First, the panels work with state vital statistics offices and epidemiologists to identify deaths associated with pregnancy by examining death certificates and looking for a pregnancy checkbox or a related cause of death. They may also search for links to birth and fetal death records, or delve into hospital discharge data, media reports and obituaries.
Once they identify cases, they collect as much information as possible, such as prenatal care records, hospital and social service records, autopsy reports and interviews with family members. Professional “abstractors” distill all this into case narratives, which committee members pore over. Most use a standardized review process developed by the CDC — and all panels can get help and guidance from the agency.
They consider questions such as: Was the death pregnancy-related? What was the underlying cause? Was it preventable? What factors contributed?
States generally have privacy rules that protect committee members and people who provide information on the deaths.
The groups then issue public reports that don’t name moms or hospitals but include overall findings, trends and recommendations. Some come out a couple of years or more after the deaths.
Across the nation in 2023, Goodman said, 151 recommendations from those reports were implemented by communities, hospitals, medical professionals and policymakers.
What about Georgia, Texas and Idaho?
Georgia will rebuild its committee through a new application process, the state public health commissioner said.
Texas’ committee has been reviewing 2021 deaths and will start on 2024 cases at its next meeting, Texas Department of State Health Services spokesperson Lara Anton said in an email to The Associated Press.
“Reviewing cases is a lengthy process and legislators have asked for more recent data. Starting the next review cycle with 2024 cases will allow us to provide that in the next report,” Anton said, adding that maternal and child health epidemiologists will continue to analyze and publish data for 2022 and 2023.
In Idaho, the reconstituted review committee now falls under the state board of medicine, which licenses doctors, instead of the state’s health and welfare department. It will operate like it always has, said Bob McLaughlin, spokesperson for the medical board. Members met for the first time in November and plan to issue a report by Jan. 31. Because the legislature wanted the most up-to-date information, McLaughlin said the first report will cover only 2023 cases, and the group will review 2022 deaths next.
Goodman said he’s encouraged that every state has a review committee now — only 20 had them in 2015.
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WASHINGTON — A retired Washington, D.C., police officer charged with lying about his private communications with former Proud Boys national leader Enrique Tarrio testified Friday that he never leaked sensitive police information to the far-right extremist group leader.
Taking the witness stand at his federal trial, former Metropolitan Police Department Lieutenant Shane Lamond said he was upset that a prosecutor labeled him as a Proud Boys “sympathizer” who acted as a “double agent” for the group after Tarrio burned a stolen Black Lives Matter banner in December 2020.
“I don’t support the Proud Boys, and I’m not a Proud Boys sympathizer,” said Lamond, whose bench trial started Monday and continues next week.
Tarrio, who testified Thursday as a witness for Lamond’s defense, is serving a 22-year prison sentence for his role in a plot to use force to keep Donald Trump in the White House after the 2020 election. Tarrio previously was sentenced to more than five months in jail for burning the banner stolen from a historic Black church in downtown Washington and for bringing two high-capacity firearm magazines into the district.
Lamond said Tarrio never confessed to him that he burned the banner. He also denies tipping off Tarrio that a warrant for his arrest had been signed before he arrived in Washington on January 4, 2021 — two days before other Proud Boys joined a mob’s attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Lamond’s indictment says he and Tarrio exchanged messages about the January 6 riot and discussed whether Proud Boys members were in danger of being charged in the attack.
“Of course I can’t say it officially, but personally I support you all and don’t want to see your group’s name and reputation dragged through the mud,” Lamond wrote.
Lamond said he considered Tarrio to be a source, not a friend. But he said he tried to build a friendly rapport with the group leader to gain his trust.
Justice Department prosecutor Joshua Rothstein pointed to other messages that suggest Lamond provided Tarrio with “real-time updates” on the police investigation of the December 12, 2020, banner burning.
Lamond is charged with one count of obstruction of justice and three counts of making false statements. U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson will decide the case after hearing testimony without a jury.
Lamond, who met Tarrio in 2019, had supervised the intelligence branch of the police department’s Homeland Security Bureau. He was responsible for monitoring groups like the Proud Boys when they came to Washington.
The men exchanged hundreds of messages across several platforms, with Lamond frequently greeting Tarrio as “brother.” However, Lamond acknowledged that he only sent encrypted messages to Tarrio or met him in person after the banner burning.
On the day of his arrest, Tarrio posted a message to other Proud Boys leaders that said, “The warrant was just signed.” Tarrio testified Thursday that he didn’t confess to Lamond or receive any confidential information from him.
After the banner burning but before Tarrio’s arrest, Lamond told him that the FBI and U.S. Secret Service was “all spun up” by chatter that Proud Boys planned to dress up as supporters of President Joe Biden for the Democrat’s inauguration in January 2021.
“I’m just going to let them get all freaked out. They’re idiots,” Lamond wrote of his federal colleagues.
“Lol,” Tarrio responded.
Lamond, 48, of Colonial Beach, Virginia, retired in May 2023 after 23 years of service to the police department.
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A federal appeals court in Washington on Friday upheld a law requiring the wildly popular social media app TikTok to be sold to a non-Chinese owner or face closure in the United States by next month. The court cited “persuasive” and “compelling” arguments presented by the federal government that TikTok poses a risk to national security.
The ruling could leave the 170 million Americans who regularly use TikTok without access to a social media platform that has enjoyed explosive global growth in recent years. It could also mean that the millions of Americans who create content for TikTok — some of whom rely on monetizing that content for their livelihood — could be cut off from their audiences.
The government has argued that TikTok presents a unique danger to national security because it collects vast amounts of information about its users, and because the Chinese government ultimately exercises control over its parent company, ByteDance, and over the algorithm that determines what content TikTok users see.
Because ByteDance is in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) it is subject to that country’s laws, including measures requiring private companies to cooperate with government intelligence agencies.
The three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit found that the government has a compelling interest in taking steps “to counter the PRC’s efforts to collect great quantities of data about tens of millions of Americans” and “to limit the PRC’s ability to manipulate content covertly on the TikTok platform.”
TikTok signals an appeal
TikTok immediately signaled that it would appeal the circuit court’s ruling to the Supreme Court.
In a statement posted to its website, the company said, “The Supreme Court has an established historical record of protecting Americans’ right to free speech, and we expect they will do just that on this important constitutional issue.”
The company said that the law underlying the case “was conceived and pushed through based on inaccurate, flawed and hypothetical information, resulting in outright censorship of the American people,” and warned that it “will silence the voices of over 170 million Americans here in the U.S. and around the world.”
The Supreme Court is not obligated to hear the company’s appeal, and it was not immediately clear that it would do so. If the high court accepts the case, it is possible that it would block the government from enforcing the law until the case is decided.
President-elect Donald Trump, who once supported a TikTok ban before changing his mind during the recent presidential election, has suggested that he will act to save the app when he takes office. However, it is unclear what options he might have for doing that.
Lack of trust
In April, President Joe Biden signed the Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act into law. The measure gave TikTok 270 days to find a way to separate itself from ByteDance before a ban on the application would kick in on January 19, 2025.
The federal government made it clear that the only kind of divestiture that it would accept was a complete separation of TikTok from its Chinese parent. The company offered alternatives, and established TikTok U.S. Data Security Inc. (TTUSDS) as a subsidiary in Delaware, to wall off U.S. user data from ByteDance.
However, the government cited instances in which U.S. user data that the company claimed to have shielded from the PRC was, in fact, accessible to ByteDance employees in mainland China. It told the court that it lacked “the requisite trust” that “ByteDance and TTUSDS would comply in good faith” with any arrangement other than complete separation of TikTok and ByteDance.
In Friday’s ruling, the judges wrote, “The court can neither fault nor second-guess the government on these crucial points.”
First Amendment concerns
TikTok and its supporters have claimed that severing TikTok from ByteDance is both practically impossible for technological reasons and legally impossible because the Chinese government will block the sale of the company. Therefore, they claim, the law constitutes a de facto ban and a violation of the guarantee of free speech enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution.
In a sign of how seriously the court took the First Amendment arguments, the panel of judges agreed that the law should be subject to “heightened scrutiny,” which the Supreme Court has applied to measures restricting fundamental rights.
In the end, the panel determined that the law satisfies even the most stringent form of “strict scrutiny,” which requires that the government “prove that the restriction furthers a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.”
Free speech advocates respond
The decision came under immediate criticism from free speech advocates.
“Although we’re still analyzing the decision, we find it deeply disappointing,” David Greene, civil liberties director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, said in a statement emailed to VOA. “The court appropriately applied strict scrutiny as we have urged it to. But the strict-scrutiny analysis is lacking, relying heavily on speculation about possible future harms.
“Restricting the free flow of information, even from foreign adversaries, is fundamentally undemocratic,” Greene said. “Until now, the U.S. has championed the free flow of information and called out other nations when they have shut down internet access or banned online communications tools like social media apps.”
George Wang, a staff attorney at the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, told VOA that the court accorded “a shocking amount of deference” to the government’s claims about the danger TikTok poses to national security.
“We should be really wary whenever we allow the government to use vague national security arguments as a justification to shut down speech,” Wang said. “That’s a tactic of authoritarian regimes, not democracies. It’s usually the job of courts to stand up to the government when it infringes on the constitutional rights of millions of Americans, and I think the D.C. Circuit really didn’t do that today.”
‘A victory for the American people’
Representative Raja Krishnamoorthi, the senior Democrat on the House Select Committee on the Strategic Competition Between the United States and the Chinese Communist Party, and one of the original sponsors of the law requiring TikTok’s divestiture or ban, released a statement Friday praising the court’s decision.
“With today’s opinion, all three branches of government have reached the same conclusion: ByteDance is controlled by the Chinese Communist Party, and TikTok’s ownership by ByteDance is a national security threat that cannot be mitigated through any other means than divestiture,” Krishnamoorthi said.
“Every day that TikTok remains under the Chinese Communist Party’s control is a day that our security is at risk,” Krishnamoorthi added.
Representative John Moolenaar, the committee’s Republican chairman, said in a statement that the ruling was “a victory for the American people and TikTok users, and a loss for the Chinese Communist Party, which will no longer be able to exploit ByteDance’s control over TikTok to undermine our sovereignty, surveil our citizens and threaten our national security.”
Moolenaar also held out hope to the app’s users that access to it may, in the end, be preserved under a Trump presidency.
“I am optimistic that President Trump will facilitate an American takeover of TikTok to allow its continued use in the United States and I look forward to welcoming the app in America under new ownership,” Moolenaar said.
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