Month: September 2023

The United States is on the brink of a federal government shutdown after hard-right Republicans in Congress rejected a longshot effort to keep offices open as they fight for steep spending cuts and strict border security measures that Democrats and the White House say are too extreme.

With no deal in place by midnight Saturday, federal workers will face furloughs, more than 2 million active-duty and reserve military troops will work without pay and programs and services that Americans rely on from coast to coast will begin to face shutdown disruptions.

The Senate will be in for a rare Saturday session to advance its own bipartisan package that is supported by Democrats and Republicans and would fund the government for the short-term, through November 17.

But even if the Senate can rush to wrap up its work this weekend to pass the bill, which also includes money for Ukraine aid and U.S. disaster assistance, it won’t prevent an almost certain shutdown amid the chaos in the House. On Friday, a massive hard-right revolt left Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s latest plan to collapse.

“Congress has only one option to avoid a shutdown — bipartisanship,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, a Democrat from New York.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky echoed the sentiment, warning his own hard-right colleagues there is nothing to gain by shutting down the federal government.

“It heaps unnecessary hardships on the American people, as well as the brave men and women who keep us safe,” McConnell said.

The federal government is heading straight into a shutdown that poses grave uncertainty for federal workers in states all across America and the people who depend on them — from troops to border control agents to office workers, scientists and others.

Families that rely on Head Start for children, food benefits and countless other programs large and small are confronting potential interruptions or outright closures. At the airports, Transportation Security Administration officers and air traffic controllers are expected to work without pay, but travelers could face delays in updating their U.S. passports or other travel documents.

Congress has been unable to fund the federal agencies or pass a temporary bill in time to keep offices open for the start of the new budget year Sunday in large part because McCarthy, a Republican from California, has faced unsurmountable resistance from right-flank Republicans who are refusing to run government as usual.

McCarthy’s last-ditch plan to keep the federal government temporarily open collapsed in dramatic fashion Friday as a robust faction of 21 hard-right holdouts opposed the package, despite steep spending cuts of nearly 30% to many agencies and severe border security provisions, calling it insufficient.

The White House and Democrats rejected the Republican approach as too extreme. The Democrats voted against it.

The House bill’s failure a day before Saturday’s deadline to fund the government leaves few options to prevent a shutdown.

“It’s not the end yet; I’ve got other ideas,” McCarthy told reporters.

Later Friday, after a heated closed-door meeting of House Republicans that pushed into the evening, McCarthy said he was considering options — among them, a two-week stopgap funding measure similar to the effort from hard-right senators that would be certain to exclude any help for Ukraine in the war against Russia.

Even though the House bill already cut routine Ukraine aid, an intensifying Republican resistance to the war effort means the Senate’s plan to attach $6 billion that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is seeking from the U.S. may have support from Democrats but not from most of McCarthy’s Republicans.

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky is working to stop that aid in the Senate package.

The White House has brushed aside McCarthy’s overtures to meet with President Joe Biden after the speaker walked away from the debt deal they brokered earlier this year that set budget levels.

Catering to his hard-right flank, McCarthy had returned to the spending limits the conservatives demanded back in January as part of the deal-making to help him become the House speaker.

The House package would not have cut the Defense, Veterans or Homeland Security departments but would have slashed almost all other agencies by up to 30% — steep hits to a vast array of programs, services and departments Americans routinely depend on.

It also added strict new border security provisions that would kickstart building a wall at the southern border with Mexico, among other measures. Additionally, the package would have set up a bipartisan debt commission to address the nation’s mounting debt load.

As soon as the floor debate began, McCarthy’s chief Republican critic, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, announced he would vote against the package, urging his colleagues to “not surrender.”

Gaetz said afterward that the speaker’s bill “went down in flames as I’ve told you all week it would.”

He and others rejecting the temporary measure want the House to keep pushing through the 12 individual spending bills needed to fund the government, typically a weekslong process, as they pursue their conservative priorities.

Republican leaders announced later Friday that the House would stay in session next week, rather than return home, to keep working on some of the 12 spending bills.

Some of the Republican holdouts, including Gaetz, are allies of former President Donald Trump, who is Biden’s chief rival in the 2024 race. Trump has been encouraging the Republicans to fight hard for their priorities and even to “shut it down.”

The hard right, led by Gaetz, has been threatening McCarthy’s ouster, with a looming vote to try to remove him from the speaker’s office unless he meets the conservative demands. Still, it’s unclear if any other Republican would have support from the House majority to lead the party.

Late Friday, Trump turned his ire to McConnell on social media, complaining the Republican leader and other GOP senators are “weak and ineffective” and making compromises with Democrats. He urged them, “Don’t do it!”
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Pope Francis created 21 new cardinals at a ritual-filled ceremony Saturday, including key figures at the Vatican and in the field who will help enact his reforms and cement his legacy as he enters a crucial new phase in running the Roman Catholic Church.

On a crisp sunny morning filled with cheers from St. Peter’s Square, Francis further expanded his influence on the College of Cardinals who will help him govern and one day elect his successor: With Saturday’s additions, nearly three-quarters of the voting-age “princes of the church” owe their red hats to the Argentine Jesuit.

In his instructions to the new cardinals at the start of the service, Francis said their variety and geographic diversity would serve the church like musicians in an orchestra, where sometimes they play solos, sometimes as an ensemble.

“Diversity is necessary; it is indispensable. However, each sound must contribute to the common design,” Francis told them. “This is why mutual listening is essential: Each musician must listen to the others.”

Among the new cardinals was the controversial new head of the Vatican’s doctrine office, Victor Manuel Fernandez, and the Chicago-born missionary now responsible for vetting bishop candidates around the globe, Robert Prevost.

Also entering the exclusive club were the Vatican’s ambassadors to the United States and Italy, two important diplomatic posts where the Holy See has a keen interest in reforming the church hierarchy. Leaders of the church in geopolitical hotspots like Hong Kong and Jerusalem, fragile communities like Juba, South Sudan, and sentimental favorites like Cordoba, Argentina, filled out the roster.

Francis’ promotions of Prevost and his ambassador to Washington, French Cardinal Christophe Pierre, were clear signs that he has his eye on shifting the balance of power in the U.S. hierarchy, where some conservative bishops have strongly resisted his reforms. Between them, Pierre and Prevost are responsible for proposing new bishop candidates and overseeing any investigations into problem ones already in place.

“I think I do have some insights into the church in the United States,” Prevost said after the ceremony during a welcome reception in the Apostolic Palace. “So, the need to be able to advise, work with Pope Francis and to look at the challenges that the church in the United States is facing, I hope to be able to respond to them with a healthy dialogue.”

The ceremony took place days before Francis opens a big meeting of bishops and lay Catholics on charting the church’s future, where hot-button issues such as women’s roles in the church, LGBTQ+ Catholics and priestly celibacy are up for discussion.

The October 4-29 synod is the first of two sessions — the second one comes next year — that in many ways could cement Francis’ legacy as he seeks to make the church a place where all are welcomed, where pastors listen to their flocks and accompany them rather than judge them.

Several of the new cardinals are voting members of the synod and have made clear they share Francis’ vision of a church that is more about the people in the pews than the hierarchy, and that creative change is necessary. Among them is Fernandez, known as the “pope’s theologian” and perhaps Francis’ most consequential Vatican appointment in his 10-year pontificate.

In his letter naming Fernandez as prefect of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, Francis made clear he wanted his fellow Argentine to oversee a radical break from the past, saying the former Holy Office often resorted to “immoral methods” to enforce its will.

Rather than condemn and judge, Francis said, he wanted a doctrine office that guards the faith and gives people hope. He also made clear Fernandez wouldn’t have to deal with sex abuse cases, saying the office’s discipline section could handle that dossier.

It was a much-debated decision given that Fernandez himself has admitted he made mistakes handling a case while he was bishop in La Plata, Argentina, and that the scale of the problem globally has long cried out for authoritative, high-ranking leadership.

On the eve of the consistory to make Fernandez a cardinal, clergy abuse survivors, including a La Plata victim, rallied near the Vatican, calling on Francis to rescind the nomination.

“No bishop who has covered up child sex crimes and ignored and dismissed victims of clergy abuse in his diocese should be running the office that oversees, investigates and prosecutes clergy sex offenders from around the world, or be made a cardinal,” said Julieta Añazco, the La Plata survivor, according to a statement from the End Clergy Abuse.

With Saturday’s ceremony, Francis will have named 99 of the 137 cardinals who are under age 80 and thus eligible to vote in a future conclave to elect his successor. While not all are cookie-cutter proteges of the 86-year-old reigning pontiff, many share Francis’ pastoral emphasis as opposed to the doctrinaire-minded cardinals often selected by Popes John Paul II and Benedict XVI.

Such a huge proportion of Francis-nominated cardinals almost ensures that a future pope will either be one of his own cardinals or one who managed to secure Franciscan cardinal votes to lead the church after he is gone, suggesting a certain continuity in priorities.
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Former President Jimmy Carter is set to mark his 99th birthday on October 1 while in hospice care. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh reports on an outpouring of admiration and well wishes for the onetime peanut farmer and Georgia governor who promoted peace and fought tropical diseases after leaving the White House.
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The U.S. West Coast produces over 90% of America’s wine, but the region is also prone to wildfires — a combustible combination that spelled disaster for the industry in 2020 and one that scientists are scrambling to neutralize.

Sample a good wine and you might get notes of oak or red fruit. But sip on wine made from grapes that were penetrated by smoke, and it could taste like someone dumped the contents of an ashtray into your glass.

Wine experts from three West Coast universities are working together to meet the threat, including developing spray coatings to protect grapes, pinpointing the elusive compounds that create that nasty ashy taste, and deploying smoke sensors to vineyards to better understand smoke behavior.

The U.S. government is funding their research with millions of dollars.

Wineries are also taking steps to protect their product and brand.

The risk to America’s premier wine-making regions — where wildfires caused billions of dollars in losses in 2020 — is growing, with climate change deepening drought and overgrown forests becoming tinderboxes.

According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, grapes are the highest-value crop in the United States, with 1 million acres (405,000 hectares) of grape-bearing land, 96% of it on the West Coast.

Winemakers around the world are already adapting to climate change, including by moving their vineyards to cooler zones and planting varieties that do better in drought and heat. Wildfires pose an additional and more immediate risk being tackled by scientists from Oregon State University, Washington State University and the University of California, Davis.

“What’s at stake is the ability to continue to make wine in areas where smoke exposures might be more common,” said Tom Collins, a wine scientist at Washington State University.

Researcher Cole Cerrato recently stood in Oregon State University’s vineyard, nestled below forested hills near the village of Alpine, as he turned on a fan to push smoke from a Weber grill through a dryer vent hose. The smoke emerged onto a row of grapes enclosed in a makeshift greenhouse made of taped-together plastic sheets.

Previously, grapes exposed to smoke in that setup were made into wine by Elizabeth Tomasino, an associate professor leading Oregon State’s efforts, and her researchers.

They found sulfur-containing compounds, thiophenols, in the smoke-impacted wine and determined they contributed to the ashy flavor, along with “volatile phenols,” which Australian researchers identified as factors more than a decade ago. Bush fires have long impacted Australia’s wine industry. Up in Washington state, Collins confirmed that the sulfur compounds were found in the wine that had been exposed to smoke in the Oregon vineyard but weren’t in samples that had no smoke exposure.

The scientists want to find out how thiophenols, which aren’t detectable in wildfire smoke, appear in smoke-impacted wine, and learn how to eliminate them.

“There’s still a lot of very interesting chemistry and very interesting research, to start looking more into these new compounds,” Cerrato said. “We just don’t have the answers yet.”

Wine made with tainted grapes can be so awful that it can’t be marketed. If it does go on shelves, a winemaker’s reputation could be ruined — a risk that few are willing to take.

When record wildfires in 2020 blanketed the West Coast in brown smoke, some California wineries refused to accept grapes unless they had been tested. But most growers couldn’t find places to analyze their grapes because the laboratories were overwhelmed.

The damage to the industry in California alone was $3.7 billion, according to an analysis that Jon Moramarco of the consulting firm bw166 conducted for industry groups. The losses stemmed mostly from wineries having to forego future wine sales.

“But really what drove it was, you know, a lot of the impact was in Napa [Valley], an area of some of the highest priced grapes, highest priced wines in the U.S.,” Moramarco said, adding that if a ton of cabernet sauvignon grapes is ruined, “you lose probably 720 bottles of wine. If it is worth $100 a bottle, it adds up very quickly.”

Between 165,000 to 325,000 tons of California wine grapes were left to wither on the vine in 2020 due to actual or perceived wildfire smoke exposure, said Natalie Collins, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers.

She said she hasn’t heard of any growers quitting the business due to wildfire impacts, but, “Many of our members are having an extremely difficult time securing insurance due to the fire risk in their region, and if they are able to secure insurance, the rate is astronomically high.”

Some winemakers are trying techniques to reduce smoke impact, such as passing the wine through a membrane or treating it with carbon, but that can also rob a wine of its appealing nuances. Blending impacted grapes with other grapes is another option. Limiting skin contact by making rosé wine instead of red can lower the concentration of smoke flavor compounds.

Collins, over at Washington State University, has been experimenting with spraying fine-powdered kaolin or bentonite, which are clays, mixed with water onto wine grapes so it absorbs materials that are in smoke. The substance would then be washed off before harvest. Oregon State University is developing a spray-on coating.

Meanwhile, dozens of smoke sensors have been installed in vineyards in the three states, financed in part by a $7.65 million USDA grant.

“The instruments will be used to measure for smoke marker compounds,” said Anita Oberholster, leader of UC Davis’ efforts. She said such measurements are essential to develop mitigation strategies and determine smoke exposure risk.

Greg Jones, who runs his family’s Abacela winery in southern Oregon’s Umpqua Valley and is a director of the Oregon Wine Board, applauds the scientists’ efforts.

“This research has really gone a long way to help us try to find: Are there ways in which we can take fruit from the vineyard and quickly find out if it has the potential compounds that would lead to smoke-impacted wine?” Jones said.

Collins predicts success.

“I think it’s increasingly clear that we’re not likely to find a magic bullet,” he said. “But we will find a set of strategies.”
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When Carolina’s captors arrived at dawn to pull her out of the stash house in the Mexican border city of Reynosa in late May, she thought they were going to force her to call her family in Venezuela again to beg them to pay $2,000 ransom.

Instead, one of the men shoved her onto a broken-down bus parked outside and raped her, she told Reuters. “It’s the saddest, most horrible thing that can happen to a person,” Carolina said.

A migrant advocate who assisted Carolina after the kidnapping, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity due to security concerns, confirmed all the details of her account.

The attack came amid an increase in sexual violence against migrants in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros, both major transit routes for immigrants seeking to enter the U.S., according to data from the Mexican government and humanitarian groups, as well as interviews with eight sexual assault survivors and more than a dozen local aid workers.

“The inhumane way smugglers abuse, extort, and perpetrate violence against migrants for profit is criminal and morally reprehensible,” U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) spokesperson Luis Miranda said in response to questions about the rise in reported rapes.

Criminal investigations into the rape of foreign nationals, excluding Americans, were the highest on record in the two cities this year, according to state data from 2014 to 2023 obtained by Reuters through freedom of information requests.

The U.S. State Department considers Tamaulipas, where the two cities are located, to be the most dangerous state along the U.S.-Mexico border.

‘Torture process’

Facing record illegal border crossings, U.S. President Joe Biden’s administration in May moved to a new system that required migrants to secure an appointment — via an app known as CBP One — to present themselves at a legal border crossing to enter the United States.

Nine experts, including lawyers, medical professionals, and aid workers, told Reuters the new system has had unintended consequences in the two cities, contributing to a spike in violence.

The high risk of kidnapping and sexual assault in Reynosa and Matamoros is one of the factors pushing migrants to cross illegally, four advocates said. Crossings border-wide surged in September.

Biden officials say the new CBP policy is more humane because it reduces the need for migrants to pay smugglers and criminal groups to ferry them across the border illegally.

The experts said many asylum seekers are no longer paying smugglers to get them across the border – instead traveling towards the frontier on their own, hoping to make an appointment on the app.

But criminal groups are still demanding these migrants pay to enter their territory, the experts said.

“Rape is part of the torture process to get the money,” said Bertha Bermúdez Tapia, a sociologist at New Mexico State University researching the impacts of Biden’s policy on migrants in Tamaulipas.

The Gulf Cartel and the Northeast Cartel are both active in the region and kidnap migrants for ransom, particularly those who arrive without smugglers’ protection, according to security analysts. Reuters was unable to contact the two groups.

Some migrants are also spending more time in the dangerous region, waiting to secure an appointment on the app. Tens of thousands of people a day are competing for 1,450 slots, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

A senior CBP official based in Washington said CBP was troubled by reports of migrants sexually assaulted in the two cities.

“It’s absolutely something that we’re concerned about,” said the official, who requested anonymity as a condition of the interview.

U.S. authorities temporarily suspended CBP One appointments in June in another Tamaulipas border city, Nuevo Laredo, due to “extortion and kidnapping concerns,” the official said.

However, Miranda, the DHS spokesperson, said the administration’s policies made it unnecessary to wait at the border since migrants could book an appointment from other parts of Central and Northern Mexico.

More than 250,000 migrants have scheduled appointments on the CBP One app, and over 200,000 Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans have entered the United States by air under a separate Biden humanitarian program, according to CBP statistics.

‘Take her’

Carolina said she arrived in Reynosa the night of May 26 on a commercial bus with her 13-year-old son. Men began trailing them as soon as they arrived at the bus station, she said.

“They said we couldn’t be there without their permission,” she said, speaking from Chicago.

The U.S. State Department warns that criminal groups in Tamaulipas target buses “often taking passengers and demanding ransom payments.”

The men whisked Carolina away to a house where she said she and other migrants were raped.

She said she was freed after family members paid $3,100 in ransom. Reuters was unable to independently verify the payment. She did not report the attack to police, saying she saw no point.

An Ecuadoran woman said that while in captivity in Reynosa her kidnappers repeatedly allowed a drug dealer to rape her in exchange for his deliveries of a white powder, which she suspected was cocaine.

One night, she clutched her figurine of the Christ child, tiptoed past her sleeping captors, and escaped through the window. “I still have nightmares,” she said, speaking from New Jersey in August.

Reuters is withholding the full names of the survivors at their request. To corroborate their accounts, Reuters reviewed medical and psychological reports; criminal complaints and legal declarations; financial records, photos and videos supplied by the survivors, attorneys and advocates.

The state attorney general’s office has opened seven rape investigations of foreign women in the first half of 2023. Four were opened in June alone.

Only one of the eight survivors Reuters interviewed reported the attack to authorities: a Honduran woman who said she was raped inside a migrant camp in Matamoros in late May. No one has been arrested, authorities said.

Olivia Lemus, head of Tamaulipas’ human rights commission, said official data represents a fraction of the cases. “Migrants are afraid to file reports,” Lemus said. “The fact that there aren’t more reports doesn’t mean that this crime isn’t occurring.”

Mexico’s national migration agency, Tamaulipas’ security agency, and Mexico’s foreign ministry did not answer questions about sexual violence against migrants.

Juan Rodriguez, head of the Tamaulipas migrant services agency, said the agency was “attentive” to the issue.

“Unfortunately, sometimes things happen. We can’t deny it.”

A Venezuelan migrant said he was kidnapped in May in Reynosa by a cartel while traveling to the border for his confirmed CBP One appointment. He couldn’t raise the full $800 ransom, so he was forced to work for two months to pay off the remaining $200, he said.

Two other migrants who said they were held at the house during the same time period confirmed the man was forced to work against his will, and that they heard female migrants being raped.

On the nights the Venezuelan man was tasked with standing guard over the other migrants, he said he watched the cartel members ask the man in charge of the house for permission to rape the women of their choosing.

He said the answer was always the same: “Take her.”
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The United States called on Belgrade to pull its forces back from the border with Kosovo on Friday after detecting what it called an unprecedented Serbian military buildup.

Serbia deployed sophisticated tanks and artillery on the frontier after deadly clashes erupted at a monastery in northern Kosovo last week, the White House said.

The violence in which a Kosovo policeman and three Serb gunmen were killed marked one of the gravest escalations for years in Kosovo, a former Serbian breakaway province.

“We are monitoring a large Serbian military deployment along the border with Kosovo,” White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters. “That includes an unprecedented staging of advanced Serbian artillery, tanks, mechanized infantry units.”

“We believe that this is a very destabilizing development,” he said. “We are calling on Serbia to withdraw those forces from the border.”

The buildup happened within the past week, but its purpose was not yet clear, Kirby said.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken had telephoned Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic to urge an “immediate de-escalation and a return to dialogue.”

And White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan spoke to Kosovo’s prime minister.

Serbia’s Vucic did not directly deny there had been a recent buildup but rejected claims that his country’s forces were on alert.

“I have denied untruths where they talk about the highest level of combat readiness of our forces, because I simply did not sign that and it is not accurate,” Vucic told reporters. “We don’t even have half the troops we had two or three months ago.”

‘Worrisome’

Serbia said on Wednesday that the defense minister and head of the armed forces had gone to visit a “deployment zone” but gave no further details.

The clashes on Sunday began when heavily armed Serb gunmen ambushed a patrol a few kilometers from the Serbian border, killing a Kosovo police officer.

Several dozen assailants then barricaded themselves at an Orthodox monastery, sparking an hourlong firefight in which three gunmen were killed and three were arrested.

Kosovo’s government has accused Belgrade of backing the entire operation. A member of a major Kosovo Serb political party admitted to leading the gunmen, his lawyer said Friday.

Kirby said the attack had a “very high level of sophistication,” involving around 20 vehicles, “military-grade” weapons, equipment and training.

“It’s worrisome,” he said. “It doesn’t look like just a bunch of guys who got together to do this.”

Peacekeeping force expected to grow

NATO would be “increasing its presence” of its peacekeeping force known as KFOR following the attack, Kirby added.

In Brussels, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg confirmed that the U.S.-led alliance was ready to boost the force to deal with the situation.

Kosovo broke away from Serbia in a bloody war in 1998-99 and declared independence in 2008 — a status Belgrade and Moscow have refused to recognize.

It has long seen strained relations between its ethnic Albanian majority and Serb minority, which have escalated in recent months in northern Kosovo.
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Five years ago Monday, journalist Jamal Khashoggi was killed in Istanbul. U.S. intelligence has pointed to Saudi leadership as being responsible. Meanwhile, U.S.-Saudi ties continue to normalize, disappointing some press freedom and rule-of-law advocates. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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U.S. and Mexican officials met in Washington Friday to discuss a variety of shared issues including trade, economic growth and border security as part of the third U.S.-Mexico high-level economic dialogue. 

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, along with the Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, and U.S. Trade Representative Katherine Tai co-hosted meetings with their Mexican counterparts at the U.S. State Department headquarters.  

Next week, Blinken, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland, and other U.S. officials will travel to Mexico to continue the high-level security dialogue. The state department describes the two meetings as “the scaffolding” for the economic and security cooperation between the two nations. 

At a joint news conference following their talks, Blinken and his Mexican counterpart, Foreign Secretary Alicia Barcena, both said the two countries share the objective of making North America the most dynamic, competitive, and prosperous economic region in the world.   

Mexico has become the top U.S. trading partner, last year exchanging more than $860 billion in goods and services, an all-time high.  

In their comments, both Blinken and Barcena said they discussed how that prosperity can be shared through social economic growth and development in other areas of the Americas, to address some of the root causes of irregular migration in the region.  

“When people can make a living, when they have confidence in their economic security … when they can build a future at home, that’s where they’ll stay,” said Blinken.  

Both Blinken and Barcena said the meeting included the development of a very clear strategy to attract new investment that could make the region one of the most powerful producers of conductors and semi-conductors in the world, along with other emerging technologies.  

Strengthening border infrastructure and coordination was also a key topic at their meeting, which is as much an economic issue as it is a security issue. Blinken said coordination at the border can streamline wait times to allow people and goods to cross legally, while strengthening the capacity to deal with drug trafficking. 

Looking ahead to next week’s meeting in Mexico City, the U.S. secretary of state said addressing the illegal drug trade will be a top priority, as fentanyl and other synthetic drugs have become the number one killer of U.S. residents between the ages of 18 and 49.  

He also noted that the U.S. must take responsibility for guns heading into Mexico, arming drug cartels. Mexican officials say some 200,000 guns come into Mexico from the U.S. each year. 
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Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives failed to pass a short-term spending measure Friday, increasing the chances of a government shutdown when funding runs out on October 1.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said Friday that passing a short-term funding deal was critical to maintaining security at the U.S.- Mexico border and would buy lawmakers crucial time to negotiate spending priorities, but the measure was defeated by the most conservative members of his Republican Party.

“President Biden and congressional Democrats continue to ignore the border and ignore their own leaders. That is why I’m putting on the floor a stopgap measure that will fund the government and secure the border. No longer can the president ignore a problem he created,” McCarthy told reporters on Capitol Hill earlier in the day.

But the short-term continuing resolution was defeated 232-198, with 20 Republicans joining a united Democratic opposition.

Even if a measure passed the Republican-majority House, it would face little chance of passage in the Democratic-majority Senate. Lawmakers remain at odds over the size of the U.S. budget for the next 12 months, continued aid for Ukraine to fight Russia, immigration controls at the U.S.-Mexico border, and social welfare programs to help impoverished Americans.

“They tried a partisan continuing resolution and they failed,” House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters after Friday’s vote. “And there was no way out of their Republican civil war. The only path forward is to partner with House Democrats in a bipartisan way. And we’re prepared to do just that.”

The Democratic-controlled Senate is working on a seven-week funding plan that would keep the government fully open through mid-November to give lawmakers more time to set spending levels through September 2024.  The bipartisan legislation allocates $6 billion in supplemental aid for the war in Ukraine and for disaster relief in the United States, two sticking points for conservatives in the U.S. House.

Government agencies Thursday morning began notifying workers a shutdown could be in the offing.

‘Manufactured shutdown’

Shalanda Young, director of the Office of Management and Budget, told White House reporters Friday that a government shutdown could cost the U.S. economy $26 billion.

“The hope is though during a shutdown, if that happens, the economy would be able to pick that GDP loss up in the next quarter. So, it may not be a permanent loss, but why risk our economy for a manufactured shutdown? All a problem within one conference in Congress.” she said.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell warned lawmakers earlier this week about the dire effects of shutting down part of the government, especially difficulties in controlling the influx of migrants at the country’s southern border with Mexico.

“Shutting down the government is not like pressing pause,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Thursday. “It’s not an interlude that lets us pick up where we left off. It’s an actively harmful proposition. And instead of producing any meaningful policy outcomes, it would actually take the important progress being made on a number of key issues and drag it backward.”

If a short-term funding deal cannot be reached, more than 4 million U.S. military service personnel and government workers would not be paid, although essential services such as air traffic control and official border entry points would still be staffed. Pensioners might not get their monthly government payments in time to pay bills and buy groceries, and national parks could be closed.

Such shutdowns have occurred four times in the last decade in the U.S., but often have lasted just a day or two until lawmakers reached a compromise to fully restart government operations. However, one shutdown that occurred during the administration of former President Donald Trump lasted 35 days, as he unsuccessfully sought funding to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border.

“This does look very chaotic, but this is not the first time it’s happened,” Todd Belt, director of the school of political management at George Washington University, told VOA. “There is a price that has to be paid here. But that is the price of democracy. It does seem very messy sometimes. But eventually, usually you get some compromise.”

McCarthy reached a deal in May with Democratic President Joe Biden on spending levels for fiscal 2024, but a small faction of far-right House Republicans rejected the deal and now is demanding further spending cuts.

The McCarthy-Biden deal called for $1.59 trillion in discretionary spending in fiscal 2024, but some members of the House Freedom Caucus are demanding another $120 billion in cuts and further border controls.

The cuts would be a relatively small portion of the overall $6.4 trillion U.S. budget and would not affect pension payments or government-provided health insurance for older Americans.

Democratic votes needed

The Senate’s short-term spending plan through mid-November could win passage in the House, but only with a mix of Republican and Democratic votes, jeopardizing McCarthy’s speakership.

“Many of these hard-right Republicans who are opposed to any sort of deal or bipartisanship are likely not going to get what they want, because they keep asking for more,” Belt told VOA.

“Ultimately, I think that McCarthy is going to have to make a deal with House Democrats in order to pass these deals. And if he does that — and he did that once to get the spending limit set — when he did these initial negotiations, those Republicans were very angry with him. They’d be angry with him again.”

Biden told a group of donors at a fundraiser in San Francisco on Wednesday, “I think that the speaker is making a choice between [retaining] the speakership and American interests.”
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Galina Zhalybina and her husband left Russia after the country invaded Ukraine. Like many Russian families, they crossed from Mexico into the U.S. and eventually landed in New York City. Despite challenging conditions in their new home, Zhalybina says she is not planning to go back to Russia anytime soon. Elena Wolf has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. VOA footage by Max Avloshenko.
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The federal government is just days away from a shutdown that will disrupt many services, squeeze workers and roil politics as Republicans in the House, fueled by hard-right demands, force a confrontation over federal spending.

While some government entities will be exempt — Social Security checks, for example, will still go out — other functions will be severely curtailed. Federal agencies will stop all actions deemed non-essential, and millions of federal employees, including members of the military, won’t receive paychecks.

A look at what’s ahead if the government shuts down on Sunday.

What is a government shutdown?

A shutdown happens when Congress fails to pass some type of funding legislation that is signed into law by the president. Lawmakers are supposed to pass 12 different spending bills to fund agencies across the government, but the process is time-consuming. They often resort to passing a temporary extension, called a continuing resolution or CR, to allow the government to keep operating.

When no funding legislation is enacted, federal agencies have to stop all nonessential work and will not send paychecks as long as the shutdown lasts.

Although employees deemed essential to public safety such as air traffic controllers and law enforcement officers still have to report to work, other federal employees are furloughed. Under a 2019 law, those same workers are slated to receive backpay once the funding impasse is resolved.

When would a shutdown begin and how long will it last?

Government funding expires October 1, the start of the federal budget year. A shutdown will effectively begin at 12:01 a.m. Sunday if Congress is unable to pass a funding plan that the president signs into law.

It is impossible to predict how long a shutdown would last. The Democratic-held Senate and Republican-controlled House are working on vastly different plans to avert a shutdown, and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy is struggling to win any support from hard-right conservatives to keep the government open.

Many are bracing for a stoppage that could last weeks.

Who does a shutdown affect?

Millions of federal workers face delayed paychecks when the government shuts down, including many of the roughly 2 million military personnel and more than 2 million civilian workers across the nation.

Nearly 60% of federal workers are stationed in the Department of Defense, Veterans Affairs and Homeland Security.

While all of the military’s active-duty troops and reservists would continue to work, more than half of the Department of Defense’s civilian workforce, which is roughly 440,000 people, would be furloughed.

Across federal agencies, workers are stationed in all 50 states and have direct interaction with taxpayers — from Transportation Security Administration agents who operate security at airports to Postal Service workers who deliver mail.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg has said new training for air traffic controllers will be halted and another 1,000 controllers in the midst of training will be furloughed. Even a shutdown that lasts a few days will mean the department won’t hit its hiring and staffing targets for next year, he said.

“Imagine the pressure that a controller is already under every time they take their position at work, and then imagine the added stress of coming to that job from a household with a family that can no longer count on that paycheck,” Buttigieg said.

Beyond federal workers, a shutdown could have far-reaching effects on government services. People applying for government services like clinical trials, firearm permits and passports could see delays.

Some federal offices will also have to close or face shortened hours during a shutdown.

Businesses closely connected to the federal government, such as federal contractors or tourist services around national parks, could see disruptions and downturns. The travel sector could lose $140 million daily in a shutdown, according to the U.S. Travel Industry Association.

Lawmakers also warn that a shutdown could rattle financial markets. Goldman Sachs has estimated that a shutdown would reduce economic growth by 0.2% every week it lasted, but growth would then bounce back after the government reopens.

Others say the disruption in government services has far-reaching impacts because it shakes confidence in the government to fulfill its basic duties. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce warned, “A well-functioning economy requires a functioning government.”

What about court cases, the work of congress and presidential pay?

The president and members of Congress will continue to work and get paid. However, any members of their staff who are not deemed essential will be furloughed.

The Supreme Court, which begins its new term Monday, would be unaffected by a short shutdown because it can draw on a pot of money provided by court fees, including charges for filing lawsuits and other documents, court spokeswoman Patricia McCabe said.

The rest of the federal judiciary also would operate normally for at least the first two weeks of October, said Peter Kaplan, a spokesman for the judiciary.

Even in a longer shutdown, the entire judiciary would not shut down, and decisions about what activities would continue would be made by each court around the country. The justices and all federal judges would continue to be paid because of the constitutional prohibition on reducing judges’ pay during their tenure, according to the Congressional Research Service.

Notably, funding for the three special counsels appointed by Attorney General Merrick Garland would not be affected by a government shutdown because they are paid for through a permanent, indefinite appropriation, an area that’s been exempted from shutdowns in the past.

That means the two federal cases against Donald Trump, the former president, as well as the case against Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden, would not be interrupted. Trump has demanded that Republicans defund the prosecutions against him as a condition of funding the government, declaring it their “last chance” to act.

Has this happened before?

Prior to the 1980s, lapses in government funding did not result in government operations significantly shuttering. But then-U.S. Attorney General Benjamin Civiletti, in a series of legal opinions in 1980 and 1981, argued that government agencies cannot legally operate during a funding gap.

Federal officials have since operated under an understanding they can make exemptions for functions that are “essential” for public safety and constitutional duties.

Since 1976, there have been 22 funding gaps, with 10 of them leading to workers being furloughed. But most of the significant shutdowns have taken place since Bill Clinton’s presidency, when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich and his conservative House majority demanded budget cuts.

The longest government shutdown happened between 2018 and 2019 when then-President Trump and congressional Democrats entered a standoff over his demand for funding for a border wall. The disruption lasted 35 days, through the holiday season, but was also only a partial government shutdown because Congress had passed some appropriations bills to fund parts of the government.

What does it take to end a shutdown?

It’s the responsibility of Congress to fund the government. The House and Senate have to agree to fund the government in some way, and the president has to sign the legislation into law.

The two sides are deeply entrenched and nowhere near reaching a deal to avert a shutdown.

But if the shutdown lasts for weeks, pressure will build to end the impasse, particularly if active-duty military members miss pay dates on October 13 or November 1. If the wider public starts seeing disruptions in air travel or border security as workers go unpaid, it will further goad Congress to act.

Congress often relies on a so-called continuing resolution, or CR, to provide stopgap money to open government offices at current levels as budget talks are underway. Money for pressing national priorities, such as emergency assistance for victims of natural disasters, is often attached to a short-term bill.

But hardline Republicans say any temporary bill is a non-starter for them. They are pushing to keep the government shut down until Congress negotiates all 12 bills that fund the government, which is historically a laborious undertaking that isn’t resolved until December, at the earliest.

Trump, who is Biden’s top rival heading into the 2024 election, is urging on the Republican hardliners.

If they are successful, the shutdown could last weeks, perhaps even longer.

 
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China is pouring billions of dollars into efforts to reshape the global information environment and, eventually, bend the will of multiple nations to Beijing’s advantage, according to a new assessment from U.S. officials.

The report, released Thursday by the State Department’s Global Engagement Center, accuses the Chinese government of using a combination of tactics in a bid to create a world in which Beijing, either explicitly or implicitly, controls the flow of critical information.

China’s goal is to “construct an information ecosystem in which PRC propaganda and disinformation gain traction and become dominant,” the report states. “Unchecked, the PRC’s [People’s Republic of China’s] efforts will reshape the global information landscape, creating biases and gaps that could even lead nations to make decisions that subordinate their economic and security interests to Beijing’s.”

This is not the first time U.S. officials have warned of China’s attempts to seed the information environment to the detriment of the United States and its allies.

U.S. officials said during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic that China was making greater use of social media to spread disinformation about the origins of the virus.

Just a year later, in its annual threat assessment, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said Beijing would “continue its whole-of-government efforts to spread China’s influence … and foster new international norms that favor the authoritarian Chinese system.”

And U.S. officials have warned repeatedly about Chinese influence campaigns aimed at fostering doubts about U.S. elections, with some raising concerns about Chinese attempts to influence the outcomes

But the new State Department report contends what U.S. officials are seeing now is different, that China’s information manipulation efforts have matured beyond specific campaigns centered around a specific topic or event.

Instead, it argues that Beijing’s efforts have a grander ambition.

If successful, “Beijing would develop a surgical capability to shape the information particular groups and even individuals consume,” the report states. “In this possible future, the information available to publics, media, civil society, academia, and governments as they engage with the PRC would be distorted.”

‘Another tool to keep China down’

Chinese government officials declined to comment on details of the State Department report. But in an email to VOA, Chinese Embassy spokesperson Liu Pengyu called the report, “just another tool to keep China down and buttress American hegemony.”

“A quick look at its [the report’s] summary is enough to know what it is about: heightening ideological confrontation, spreading disinformation, and smearing China’s domestic and foreign policies,” Liu said. “We urge the U.S. to reflect on itself, stop framing China for the so-called ‘information manipulation.'”

The State Department report said its conclusions are based on publicly available information as well as “newly acquired government information.”

“As the PRC has grown more confident in its power, it appears to have calculated that it can more aggressively pursue its interests,” it says.

Specifically, the State Department report points to a multipronged approach combining its expansive state-run media, surveillance technologies, financial and political coercion and Chinese-language media.

The result is an information ecosystem in which bots and trolls, and even officials, amplify pro-Beijing voices while drowning out or suppressing opponents.

Yet the report cautions that China’s considerable efforts have struggled, so far, to achieve the desired impact in Western and Western-leaning nations.

“When targeting democratic countries, Beijing has encountered major setbacks, often due to pushback from local media and civil society,” the report states. “Although backed by unprecedented resources, the PRC’s propaganda and censorship have, to date, yielded mixed results.”

That assessment tracks with conclusions from Meta, the social media company behind Facebook and Instagram, which in August announced the takedown of a Chinese-linked disinformation operation known as Spamouflage.

Meta said that while Spamouflage was “the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” Beijing got little bang for its buck.

“Despite the very large number of accounts and platforms it used, Spamouflage consistently struggled to reach beyond its own (fake) echo chamber,” Meta said. “Only a few instances have been reported when Spamouflage content on Twitter and YouTube was amplified by real-world influencers.”

‘Good wake-up call’

Some researchers say that Beijing has made some inroads in the West.

“China’s most successful influence efforts have always been smaller in scale and more targeted, like the effort to harass dissidents and critics,” Bret Schafer, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Alliance for Securing Democracy, told VOA via email.

Schafer further described Spamouflage as a “good wake-up call.”

“It reminded the world that China is investing time and resources to manipulate the information environment,” he said.

And there are indications that China has become more sophisticated.

A report earlier this month from Microsoft suggests that Chinese disinformation efforts successfully used artificial intelligence to produce “eye-catching content.”

“This relatively high-quality visual content has already drawn higher levels of engagement from authentic social media users,” Microsoft said in its report. “Users have more frequently reposted these visuals, despite common indicators of AI-generation.”

Such use of artificial intelligence has U.S. intelligence officials especially concerned.

“Russia, China, others are going to try to use this technology,” General Paul Nakasone told an audience at the National Press Club in Washington on Thursday, when asked about AI and the upcoming U.S. presidential election. Nakasone heads U.S. Cyber Command and the National Security Agency.

Others at the NSA see China gaining ground and influence, and preparing to wield that influence if necessary.

“They have growing leverage in the global social media environment,” said David Frederick, the NSA’s assistant deputy director for China, during a webinar earlier this month.”That could enable them to conduct very broad information operations at a very large scale in the case of conflict.”
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