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Biden to Discuss Israel, Ukraine in Thursday Address

U.S. President Joe Biden is set to address the nation Thursday night and discuss the U.S. response to the recent Hamas attack on Israel as well as Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Biden visited Israel Wednesday, bringing a message of support to Israelis while also working to secure humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.

The U.S. announced $100 million in aid for Gaza and the West Bank, and the Biden administration is expected to propose $100 billion in supplemental assistance for Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and security along the U.S.-Mexico border.

“My administration was in close touch with the leadership from the first moments of this attack,” Biden said Wednesday in Tel Aviv.  “We’re going to make sure we have what you have, what you need to protect your people, to defend your nation. For decades, we’ve ensured Israel’s qualitative military edge. And later this week, I’m going to ask the United States Congress for an unprecedented support package for Israel’s defense.”

Some information for this report came from The Associated Press and Reuters.
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Republican Jeff Landry Wins Louisiana Governor’s Race, Reclaims Office for GOP

Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican backed by former President Donald Trump, has won the Louisiana governor’s race, holding off a crowded field of candidates.

The win is a major victory for the GOP as they reclaim the governor’s mansion for the first time in eight years. Landry will replace current Gov. John Bel Edwards, who was unable to seek reelection due to consecutive term limits. Edwards is the only Democratic governor in the Deep South.

“Today’s election says that our state is united,” Landry said during his victory speech Saturday night. “It’s a wake up call and it’s a message that everyone should hear loud and clear, that we the people in this state are going to expect more out of our government from here on out.”

By garnering more than half of the votes, Landry avoided an expected runoff under the state’s “jungle primary” system. The last time there wasn’t a gubernatorial runoff in Louisiana was in 2011 and 2007, when Bobby Jindal, a Republican, won the state’s top position.

The governor-elect, who celebrated with supporters during a watch party in Broussard, Louisiana, described the election as “historic.” 

Landry, 52, has raised the profile of attorney general since taking office in 2016. He has used his office to champion conservative policy positions. More recently, Landry has been in the spotlight over his involvement and staunch support of Louisiana laws that have drawn much debate, including banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, the state’s near-total abortion ban that doesn’t have exceptions for cases of rape and incest, and a law restricting youths’ access to “sexually explicit material” in libraries, which opponents fear will target LGBTQ+ books.

Landry has repeatedly clashed with Edwards over matters in the state, including LGBTQ rights, state finances and the death penalty. However the Republican has also repeatedly put Louisiana in national fights, including over President Joe Biden’s policies that limit oil and gas production and COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

Landry spent two years on Capitol Hill, beginning in 2011, where he represented Louisiana’s 3rd U.S. Congressional District. Prior to his political career, Landry served 11 years in the Louisiana Army National Guard, was a local police officer, sheriff’s deputy and attorney.

During the gubernatorial election season, Landry had long been considered the early frontrunner, winning the endorsement of high profile Republicans — Trump and U.S. Rep Steve Scalise — and a controversial early endorsement from the state GOP. In addition, Landry has enjoyed a sizable fundraising advantage over the rest of the field throughout the race.

Landry has made clear that one of his top priorities as governor would be addressing crime in urban areas. The Republican has pushed a tough-on-crime rhetoric, calling for more “transparency” in the justice system and continuing to support capital punishment. Louisiana has the nation’s second-highest murder rate per capita.

Along the campaign trail, Landry faced political attacks from opponents on social media and in interviews, calling him a bully and making accusations of backroom deals to gain support. He also faced scrutiny for skipping all but one of the major-televised debates. 

Among other gubernatorial candidates on the ballot were GOP state Sen. Sharon Hewitt; Hunter Lundy, a Lake Charles-based attorney running as an independent; Republican state Treasurer John Schroder; Stephen Waguespack, the Republican former head of a powerful business group and former senior aide to then-Gov. Jindal; and Shawn Wilson, the former head of Louisiana’s Transportation and Development Department and sole major Democratic candidate.

Wilson, who was the runner-up, said during his concession speech that he had called Landry to congratulate him on his victory. The Democrat said during their phone call, he asked the governor-elect to keep Medicaid expansion, increase teacher pay and “educate our children the way they need to be educated.”

“The citizens of Louisiana spoke, or didn’t speak, and made a decision,” Wilson said.

Also on Saturday’s ballot were five other statewide contests and four ballot measures.

Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser won reelection Saturday night, but other races won’t be decided until November.

One closely watched race is for attorney general, which holds the highest legal authority in the state’s executive branch. Liz Baker Murrill, a Republican who currently works at the Attorney General’s Office and Lindsey Cheek, a Democrat and trial attorney, have advanced to a November runoff.

Also advancing to a runoff in the state treasurer race is John Fleming, Republican, and Dustin Granger, Democrat.

In the secretary of state race, First Assistant Secretary of State Nancy Landry, a Republican, and Gwen Collins-Greenup, a Democrat and attorney, will advance to a runoff. The winner in November will have the task of replacing Louisiana’s outdated voting machines, which do not produce the paper ballots critical to ensuring accurate election results.

There are hundreds of additional localized races, including all 39 Senate seats and 105 House seats, however a significant number of incumbents are running unopposed. 
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Black Queer Leaders Rise to Prominence in US Congress, Activism

On the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington this summer, a few Black queer advocates spoke passionately before the main program about the ongoing struggle for LGBTQ+ rights. As some of them got up to speak, the crowd was still noticeably small.

Hope Giselle, a speaker who is Black and trans, said she felt the event’s programming echoed the historical marginalization and erasure of Black queer activists in the Civil Rights Movement. However, she was buoyed by the fact that prominent speakers drew attention to recent efforts to turn back the clock on LGBTQ+ rights, like the attacks on gender-affirming care for minors.

And despite valid concerns around the visibility of Black queer advocates in activist movements, progress is being made in elected office. This month, Sen. Laphonza Butler made history as the first Black and openly lesbian senator in Congress, when California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed her to fill the seat held by the late Dianne Feinstein.

Rectifying the erasure of Black queer civil rights giants requires a full-throated acknowledgment of their legacies, and an increase of Black LGBTQ+ representation in advocacy and politics, several activists and lawmakers told The Associated Press.

“One of the things that I need for people to understand is that the Black queer community is still Black,” and face anti-Black racism as well as homophobia and transphobia, said Giselle, communications director for the GSA Network, a nonprofit that helps students form gay-straight alliance clubs in schools.

“On top of being Black and queer, we have to also then distinguish what it means to be queer in a world that thinks that queerness is adjacent to whiteness — and that queerness saves you from racism. It does not,” she said.

In an interview with the AP, Butler said she hopes that her appointment points toward progress in the larger cause of representation.

“It’s too early to tell. But what I know is that history will be recorded in our National Archives, the representation that I bring to the United States Senate,” she said last week. “I am not shy or bashful about who I am and who my family is. So, my hope is that I have lived out loud enough to overcome the tactics of today.”

“But we don’t know yet what the tactics of erasure are for tomorrow,” Butler said.

Butler is a bellwether of increased visibility of queer communities in politics in recent years. In fact Black LGBTQ+ political representation has grown by 186% since 2019, according to a 2023 report by the LGBTQ+ Victory Institute. That included the election of former Rep. Mondaire Jones and Rep. Ritchie Torres, both of New York, who were the first openly gay Black and Afro-Latino congressmen after the 2020 election, as well as former Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot.

These leaders stand on the shoulders of civil rights heroes such as Bayard Rustin, Pauli Murray, and Audre Lorde. In accounts of their contributions to the Civil Rights and feminist movements, their Blackness is typically amplified while their queer identities are often minimized or even erased, said David Johns, executive director of the National Black Justice Coalition, a LGBTQ+ civil rights group.

Rustin, who was an adviser to the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and a pivotal architect of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, is a glaring example. The march he helped lead tilled the ground for the passage of federal civil rights and voting rights legislation in the next few years.

But the fact that he was gay is often reduced to a footnote rather than treated as a key part of his involvement, Johns said.

“We need to teach our public school students history, herstory, our beautifully diverse ways of being, without censorship,” he said.

An upcoming biopic of Rustin’s life will undoubtedly help thrust the topic of Black LGBTQ+ political representation into the public conversation, said Shay Franco-Clausen, a city planning commissioner in Hayward, California.

“I didn’t even learn about those same leaders, Black leaders, Black queer leaders until I got to college,” she said.

The film, titled Rustin, debuts in select theaters Nov. 3 and on Netflix on Nov. 17.

Some believe the erasure of Black LGBTQ+ leaders stems from respectability politics, a strategy in some marginalized communities of ostracizing or punishing members who don’t assimilate into the dominant culture.

White supremacist ideology in Christianity, which has been used more broadly to justify racism and systemic oppression, has also promoted the erasure of Black queer history. The Black Christian church was integral to the success of the Civil Rights Movement, but it is also “theologically hostile” to LGBTQ+ communities, said Don Abram, executive director of Pride in the Pews.

“I think it’s the co-optation of religious practices by white supremacists to actually subjugate Black, queer, and trans folk,” Abram said. “They are largely using moralistic language, theological language, religious language to justify them oppressing queer and trans folk.”

Not all queer advocacy communities have been welcoming to Black LGBTQ+ voices. Minneapolis City Council President Andrea Jenkins said she is just as intentional in amplifying queer visibility in Black spaces as she is amplifying Blackness in majority white, queer spaces.

“We need to have more Black, queer, transgender, nonconforming identified people in these political spaces to aid and bridge those gaps,” Jenkins said. “It’s important to be able to create the kinds of awareness on both sides of the issue that can bring people together and that can ensure that we do have full participation from our community.”

Black LGBTQ+ leaders are also using their platforms to create awareness about groundbreaking historical figures, especially Rustin. Maryland Delegate Gabriel Acevero and several LGBTQ+ advocates fought to get the only elementary school in his district named after Rustin in 2018. He has also urged Congress to pass legislation to create a U.S. Postal Service stamp depicting Rustin.

“Black queer folks have contributed to so many movements that we do not get acknowledgment for,” Acevero said. “And this is why we should not only ensure that our elders get their flowers, but we should push to have their names and statues built … so that they are not forgotten.”
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Republicans Pick Jim Jordan as Nominee for House Speaker

Republicans chose Representative Jim Jordan as their new nominee for House speaker on Friday during internal voting, putting the gavel within reach of the staunch ally of Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump. 

Jordan will now try to unite colleagues from the deeply divided House GOP majority around his bid ahead of a floor vote, which could push to next week. 

Frustrated House Republicans have been fighting bitterly over whom they should elect to replace the speaker they ousted, Representative Kevin McCarthy, and the future direction of their party. The stalemate, now in its second week, has thrown the House into chaos, grinding all other business to a halt. 

Attention swiftly turned to Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman and founder of the hard-line Freedom Caucus, as the next potential candidate after Majority Leader Steve Scalise abruptly ended his bid when it became clear holdouts would refuse to back him. 

But not all Republicans want to see Jordan as speaker, second in line to the presidency. Overwhelmed and exhausted, anxious GOP lawmakers worry their House majority is being frittered away to countless rounds of infighting, and some don’t want to reward Jordan’s wing, which sparked the turmoil. 

“If we’re going to be the majority party, we have to act like the majority party,” said Representative Austin Scott, who posed a last-ditch challenge to Jordan. 

While the firebrand Jordan has a long list of detractors who started making their opposition known, Jordan’s supporters said voting against the Trump ally during a public vote on the House floor would be tougher because he is so popular and well known among more conservative Republican voters. 

Heading into a morning meeting, Jordan said, “I feel real good.” 

Other potential speaker choices were also being floated. Some Republicans proposed simply giving Representative Patrick McHenry, who was appointed interim speaker pro tempore, greater authority to lead the House for some time. 

The House, without a speaker, is essentially unable to function during a time of turmoil in the United States and wars overseas. The political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control, and govern in Congress. 

With the House narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, any nominee can lose just a few Republicans before they fail to reach the 217 majority needed in the face of opposition from Democrats, who will most certainly back their own leader, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries. 

Absences heading into the weekend could lower the majority threshold needed, and Republicans said they were down about a dozen lawmakers as of midday Friday. No floor votes were scheduled as attendance thinned before the weekend. 

In announcing his decision to withdraw from the nomination, Scalise said late Thursday the Republican majority still has to come together and “open up the House again. But clearly not everybody is there.” 

Jordan received an important nod Friday from the Republican party’s campaign chairman, Representative Richard Hudson, who made an attempt to unify the fighting factions. 

“Removing Speaker Kevin McCarthy was a mistake,” Hudson wrote on social media, saying the party found itself at a crossroads also blocking Scalise. “We must unite around one leader.” 

Earlier in the week, Jordan had nominally dropped out of the race he initially lost to Scalise, 113-99, during internal balloting. 

Scalise had been laboring to peel off more than 100 votes, mostly from those who backed Jordan. But many hard-liners taking their cues from Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job. 

The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall. 

But the math this time is even more daunting, and the problematic political dynamic is only worsening. 

Exasperated Democrats, who have been waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out. 

“The House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,” Jeffries said, including doing away with the rule that allows a single lawmaker to force a vote against the speaker. “But we need traditional Republicans to break from the extremists and partner with us.”
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US House Deadlocked Over Speaker Vote

Republicans nominated conservative Representative Jim Jordan by a vote of 124-81 Friday in a chaotic third day of attempting to elect a speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. As VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports, Jordan needs substantially more support to win a full floor vote next week to become the person who will be second in the presidential line of succession.
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US House Deadlocked Over Leadership Debate

Republican Representative Steve Scalise dropped his bid to become speaker of the US House of Representatives late Thursday, after failing to secure enough votes to win election. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has more on how the US Congress is unable to act on Ukraine and Israel until a new leader is chosen.
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Scalise Ends Bid to Become House Speaker After Failing to Secure Enough Votes

U.S. Representative Steve Scalise has ended his bid to become House speaker after failing to secure enough votes to win the gavel. 

Scalise told Republican colleagues of his decision during a closed-door meeting late Thursday.

The next steps are uncertain as the House is essentially closed while Republicans try to elect a speaker after ousting Kevin McCarthy from the job. 

“I just shared with my colleagues that I’m withdrawing my name as a candidate for speaker-designee,” Scalise said as he emerged from the closed-door meeting at the Capitol. 

Scalise said the Republican majority “still has to come together and is not there.” 

He had been working furiously to secure the votes after being nominated by a majority of his colleagues, but after hours of private meetings over two days and late into the evening at the Capitol,it was clear lawmakers were not budging from their refusal to support him. 

“There are still some people that have their own agendas,” Scalise said. “And I was very clear, we have to have everybody put their agendas on the side and focus on what this country needs.” 

Frustrations mounted as the crisis deepened and Republicans lost another day without a House speaker. Scalise was trying to peel off more than 100 votes, mostly from those who backed his chief rival, Representative Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman favored by hard-liners, who announced he was no longer in the running and tossed his vote to Scalise. 

But many hard-liners taking their cues from Donald Trump have dug in for a prolonged fight to replace McCarthy after his historic ouster from the job. They argue that Majority Leader Scalise is no better choice, that he should be focusing on his health as he battles cancer and that he is not the leader they will support. No House votes were scheduled. 

“We’re going to get this done,” Scalise had said after an earlier closed-door meeting at the Capitol. 

Scalise said he took every question thrown his way and pledged during the two-hour session to work through the issues raised. But there is no easy endgame in sight. 

“Time is of the essence,” McCarthy said Thursday when he arrived at the Capitol. 

Asked if it was still possible for Scalise to find enough support, McCarthy said, “It’s possible — it’s a big hill, though.” 

The House is entering its second week without a speaker and is essentially unable to function, and the political pressure increasingly is on Republicans to reverse course, reassert majority control and govern in Congress. 

Action is needed to fund the government or face the threat of a federal shutdown in a month. Lawmakers also want Congress to deliver a strong statement of support for Israel in the war with Hamas, but a bipartisan resolution has been sidelined by the stalemate in the House. The White House is expected to soon ask for money for Israel, Ukraine and the backfill of the U.S. weapons stockpile. 

The situation is not fully different from the start of the year, when McCarthy faced a similar backlash from a different group of far-right holdouts who ultimately gave their votes to elect him speaker, then engineered his historic downfall. 

But the math this time is even more daunting. Scalise, who is seen by some colleagues as a hero for surviving a 2017 shooting on lawmakers at a congressional baseball game practice, won the closed-door Republican vote 113-99. But McCarthy noted that Scalise, a longtime rival, had indicated he would have 150 votes behind closed doors but missed that mark. 

Scalise would have needed 217 votes to reach a majority that likely would be needed in a floor battle with Democrats. The chamber is narrowly split 221-212, with two vacancies, meaning Scalise could lose just a few Republicans in the face of opposition from Democrats who will most certainly back their own leader, New York Representative Hakeem Jeffries. Absences heading into the weekend could lower the majority threshold needed. 

Exasperated Democrats, who have been watching and waiting for the Republican majority to recover from McCarthy’s ouster, urged them to figure it out, warning the world is watching. 

“The House Republicans need to end the GOP Civil War, now,” Jeffries said, using the abbreviation for the Republican party’s nickname, Grand Old Party.

“The House Democrats have continued to make clear that we are ready, willing and able to find a bipartisan path forward,” he said, urging that the House reopen and change Republican-led rules that allowed a single lawmaker to put in motion the process to remove the speaker. 

As Congress sat idle, the Republicans spent a second day behind closed doors, arguing and airing grievances but failing to follow their own party rules and unite behind the nominee. 

Representative Dan Crenshaw said the meetings had been marked by “emotional” objections to voting for Scalise. 

“It’s not for your personal grievances, but that’s unfortunately what I keep seeing,” he said. 

Some Republicans simply took their Chick-fil-A lunches to go. 

Jordan, a founding member of the House Freedom Caucus who was backed by Trump in the speaker’s race, announced he did not plan to continue running for the leadership position. 

“We need to come together and support Steve,” Jordan told reporters before the closed session. 

It was the most vocal endorsement yet from Jordan, who had earlier offered to give his rival a nominating speech on the floor, and privately was telling lawmakers he would vote for Scalise and was encouraging his colleagues to do the same. 

But it was not enough to sway the holdouts. 
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Biden Campaign Courting Black, Hispanic Voters Amid Drop in Polls

Recent polls show softening support for U.S. President Joe Biden and his 2024 reelection bid among Black and Hispanic voters. While analysts stress that the shifts aren’t extreme, in a close election they could be pivotal. The Biden campaign told VOA it’s not taking any votes for granted. Veronica Balderas Iglesias has the story.
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Republican Scalise Seeks Votes from Party in Bid for House Speaker

Lawmakers in the U.S. House of Representatives are set to meet Thursday as Republican Steve Scalise faces a test of whether he can get enough support from his party to become the next House speaker.

Republicans nominated Scalise in a closed-door vote Wednesday to be their choice to replace former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who was ousted last week.

He won the internal party ballot 113-99, beating out House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan.

The 58-year-old Scalise won the backing of Republicans with support primarily coming from long-time and establishment party members.

Scalise must now gain approval of the full House, where Republicans hold a slim 221-212 majority, meaning they will need to unite behind a candidate in order to reach the required simple majority threshold to elect a speaker.

It is not clear whether Jordan’s supporters will back Scalise, although both men stated that following the closed-door vote, they would support the Republican Party’s nominee.

McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting to win in January as Democrats fully backed their candidate, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries. Some Republicans held out until McCarthy made certain concessions.

Among the concessions was allowing any single member to file a motion to vacate and force a vote on whether to remove the speaker. Republican Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion after McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown.

This motion saw McCarthy become the first speaker to be formally voted out of his position.

The speaker vacancy has brought work in the House to a halt, with a mid-November deadline pending to finish work on multiple funding bills or else again face the prospect of a government shutdown. Aid for Ukraine is also waiting for approval. 

Additionally, the urgent need for a resolution based on the recent developments in Israel has prompted Republican lawmakers to reiterate the need to swiftly elect a new speaker, allowing the House to return to work.

“It’s really, really important that this Congress get back to work,” Scalise said. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Republicans Nominate Steve Scalise for US House Speaker

U.S. House Republicans voted 113-99 Wednesday to nominate Representative Steve Scalise to serve as speaker. But their narrow majority in the lower chamber of Congress and divisions within their own party leave it uncertain when and if Scalise will ascend to the leadership post. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson reports.
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Republicans to Start Voting on House Speaker Candidate

Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives are set to meet Wednesday to start closed-door, internal voting to try to agree on a nominee to be the next House speaker.

The two leading candidates, Representatives Jim Jordan and Steve Scalise, addressed members of their party at a forum late Tuesday seeking to make their case to take the job following last week’s ouster of former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy.

McCarthy told colleagues not to nominate him to reclaim the post.

Republicans hold a slim 221-212 majority in the House, meaning they will need to unite behind a candidate in order to reach the required simple majority threshold to elect a speaker.

McCarthy needed 15 rounds of voting to win in January as Democrats fully backed their candidate, House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, as some Republicans held out until McCarthy made certain concessions.

Among the concessions was allowing any single member to file a motion to vacate and force a vote on whether to remove the speaker.  Republican Representative Matt Gaetz filed a motion after McCarthy relied on Democratic votes to avert a government shutdown.

The speaker vacancy has brought work in the House to a halt, with a mid-November deadline pending to finish work on multiple funding bills or else again face the prospect of a government shutdown. Aid for Ukraine is also waiting for approval. 

Some information for this story came from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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VOA Immigration Weekly Recap, Oct. 1–7

Editor’s note: Here is a look at immigration-related news around the U.S. this week. Questions? Tips? Comments? Email the VOA immigration team: ImmigrationUnit@voanews.com. 

US Government to Resume Deportations to Venezuela

The Biden administration announced Thursday it will resume the deportation of migrants back to Venezuela in hopes of decreasing the numbers of Venezuelans arriving at the U.S.-Mexico border. On a background call with reporters — a method often used by U.S. authorities to share information with reporters without being identified — Biden officials said Venezuelan nationals who cross into the United States unlawfully will still be processed. But if it is found they do not have a legal basis to remain in the country, they will be “swiftly removed” back to Venezuela. The U.S. has not carried out regular deportations to Venezuela for years. VOA’s Immigration reporter Aline Barros.

Biden Says He Can’t Stop New Border Barrier Plan

President Joe Biden said Thursday he was unable to legally divert money away from a plan to build several miles of new barriers along the southern border — directly contradicting his campaign vow to build “not another foot of wall” and drawing harsh criticism from Mexico’s president. A notice to allow construction in Texas was released Wednesday night in the Federal Register, the official U.S. government gazette. Story by VOA’s White House correspondent Anita Powell and VOA’s Immigration reporter Aline Barros.

UN Agency: US-Mexico Border, World’s Deadliest Land Crossing for Migrants

The U.S.-Mexico border is the world’s deadliest land migration route, according to the United Nations migration agency. The most recent report from the International Organization for Migration shows hundreds of people die each year attempting to get to the United States through the dangerous deserts. VOA’s Immigration reporter Aline Barros.

Chicago Keeps Hundreds of Migrants at Airports While Waiting on Shelters and Tents

Hidden behind a heavy black curtain in one of the nation’s busiest airports is Chicago’s unsettling response to a growing population of asylum-seekers arriving by plane. Hundreds of migrants, from babies to the elderly, live inside a shuttle bus center at O’Hare International Airport’s Terminal 1. They sleep on cardboard pads on the floor and share airport bathrooms. A private firm monitors their movements. The Associated Press reports.

Migrants Being Raped at Mexico Border as They Await Entry to US  

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. Reported by Reuters.

US Officials in Mexico to Discuss Fentanyl, Human Migration

Senior U.S. officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were in Mexico for talks Wednesday with Mexican officials on the drug trade and a humanitarian crisis at the U.S. southern border. Blinken will be joined by Attorney General Merrick B. Garland and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. The U.S. delegation is set to meet with Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and Rosa Icela Rodriguez, secretary for Security and Citizen Protection. Reported by Rob Garver.

Immigration around the world

Reporter’s Notebook: The End of Artsakh

The dog’s ribs are visible and her owner’s skeletal shoulders poke through a gray sweater. The dog’s name is Chalo, essentially “Spot” in Armenian, and the owner, 69, tells us to call her Tamar. She is a refugee in Armenia and wants her real name withheld for security reasons. We meet her in a park hours after she arrives in Goris, Armenia, where workers staff humanitarian tents in the last days of September for the 100,000-plus people fleeing Nagorno-Karabakh. By VOA’s Middle East correspondent Heather Murdock.

Pakistan to Begin Deportation of 1.7 Million Undocumented Afghans

Pakistan has ordered all undocumented immigrants, including 1.7 million Afghans, to leave the country by November 1, vowing mass deportations for those who stay. Caretaker Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar approved the plan Tuesday at a high-level meeting of his top civilian and military officials in Islamabad. Reported by Ayaz Gul and VOA Pakistan Bureau Chief Sarah Zaman.

Afghans Seeking Refuge in Pakistan Face New Uncertainties

Pakistan has ordered all undocumented immigrants to leave voluntarily by November 1 or face deportation. The new order primarily affects Afghans, many of whom fled their country after the Taliban took over in August 2021. VOA Pakistan Bureau Chief Sarah Zaman met with some Afghan women who once again are facing an uncertain future. VOA footage by Wajid Asad, Malik Waqar Ahmad and Wajid Shah.

New IOM Chief Seeks More Regular Pathways for Migration

On assuming her post as the new director general of the International Organization for Migration, Amy Pope said that one of her main priorities was to build more regular pathways for migration for people who have lost hope for a viable future and cannot stay home. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Ethiopian Entrepreneur Awarded for App That Helps Refugees Find Work

An Ethiopian digital app inventor has been given a prestigious award from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for creating an application designed to link refugees with employers. Last week in New York, Eden Tadesse accepted a Goalkeepers Global Goals Award at a ceremony attended by Kenyan President William Ruto, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Bill and Melinda Gates, among others. Maya Misikir reports for VOA from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia.

Pakistan Turns Up Heat Over Cross-Border Attacks

A senior Pakistani diplomat said Thursday that while the Taliban had brought peace and security to Afghanistan, increased terrorist attacks from the neighboring country threatened stability in Pakistan, putting strains on an already difficult bilateral relationship. Ayaz Gul reports for VOA from Islamabad, Pakistan.

VOA60 Africa — Hundreds of Thousands of South Sudanese Refugees Face Hunger

The World Food Program says hundreds of thousands of South Sudanese refugees fleeing Sudan’s five-month-long war are facing hunger, with 90% of families going days without meals. The fighting has forced out nearly 300,000 South Sudanese.

Taliban, Rights Groups Decry Pakistan’s Decision to Evict Afghan Immigrants

Afghanistan’s Taliban Wednesday urged Pakistan to review its plans to expel Afghan immigrants, rejecting charges the displaced community is involved in the security problems facing the neighboring country. Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid released the statement a day after the Pakistani government ordered undocumented immigrants, including more than 1.7 million Afghans, to leave the country by November 1. Ayaz Gul reports for VOA from Islamabad, Pakistan.

Officials Describe ‘Surreal’ Scenes as Nagorno-Karabakh’s Aid, Health Crisis Grows

The unprecedented influx of more than 100,000 refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh into Armenia in less than a week has triggered a humanitarian and health crisis that will require a large-scale, longtime international effort and support to resolve, aid officials warned Tuesday. Lisa Schlein reports for VOA from Geneva.

Armenian Refugees Say No Hope of Return to Nagorno-Karabakh

Nearly the entire population of ethnic Armenians in Nagorno-Karabakh have fled to Armenia, and the one-time residents of the self-declared Republic of Artsakh are scattered. But as VOA’s Heather Murdock reports from Ishkhanasar and Kornidzor near the Armenia border with Azerbaijan, many fear the war that drove them out is not over. Camerman Yan Boechat contributed.

Lebanon Reacts to Surge in Migration from Syria 

Lebanon is pushing back on the European Union’s calls for the country to assist migrants and refugees from Syria. There are growing concerns that Lebanon’s collapsing economy is fueling anti-immigrant sentiment and putting the country on a dangerous course. Lebanon’s caretaker interior minister, Bassam Mawlawi, has accused Syrian refugees and migrants of committing crimes, taking away jobs from Lebanese and potentially creating a demographic imbalance along sectarian lines, saying their numbers must be “limited.” Produced by Dale Gavlak.

News brief

— U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas announced Friday “the extension and redesignation of Cameroon for Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for 18 months, from December 8, 2023, through June 7, 2025, due to ongoing armed conflict and extraordinary and temporary conditions in Cameroon that prevent individuals from safely returning.”
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Biden Says He Can’t Stop New Border Barrier Plan

President Joe Biden said Thursday he was unable to legally divert money away from a plan to build several miles of new barriers along the southern border – directly contradicting his campaign vow to build “not another foot of wall” and drawing harsh criticism from Mexico’s president.

A notice to allow construction in Texas was released Wednesday night in the Federal Register, the official U.S. government gazette.

“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border,” Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in the notice.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection counted 232,972 encounters on the Southwest border in August, the last month for which figures are available. Most migrants crossing overland come from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras.

Mexico’s president swiftly decried the move.

“This authorization for the construction of the wall is a step backwards,” President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said during his daily press conference. “That does not solve the problem, that does not solve the problem. We have to address the causes.”

In order to allow construction, the administration had to waive a number of federal regulations relating to environmental, historical and Indigenous issues. Biden also argued that the funds had been appropriated in 2019 by the previous administration.

“The money was appropriated for the border wall,” Biden said Thursday, when asked by reporters about what appeared to be a reversal in the administration’s border policy. “I tried to get them to reappropriate it, to redirect that money. They didn’t. They wouldn’t. And in the meantime, there’s nothing under the law other than they have to use the money for what it was appropriated. I can’t stop that.”

A reporter then asked him, “Do you believe the border wall works?”

“No,” he said.

In a call with reporters, administration officials noted that the structures will be on “moveable foundations.”

Former President Donald Trump was quick to react to the news.

“As I have stated often, over thousands of years, there are only two things that have consistently worked, wheels, and walls!” Trump said on his social media platform, Truth Social. He added that he was awaiting an apology from Biden “for taking so long to get moving, and allowing our country to be flooded” with illegal immigrants.

But in condemning Biden, Lopez Obrador alluded to a backstory.

“It is contrary to what President Biden has said,” he said. “He has been the only president so far who has not built the wall.”

But then he added: “I understand that there are strong pressures.”

Also Thursday, Lopez Obrador hosted U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Mayorkas in Mexico City for a high-level discussion on security.

Washington is currently in turmoil over a stunning turn of political events. Before being  ousted earlier this week, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy appeared to tie the legislative body’s approval of Biden’s request for $24 billion in Ukraine funding to a request by Republicans for more border security.

“I support being able to make sure Ukraine has the weapons that they need,” McCarthy said before he was voted out. “But I firmly support the border first.”

The Biden administration was also quick to dispute reports that they are deviating from existing policy. In 2021, a Biden executive order described a border wall “a waste of money that diverts attention from genuine threats to our homeland security,” while declaring they would not allocate military funds for border-wall construction – only congressional funds.

“There is no new Administration policy with respect to border walls,” Mayorkas said in a statement Thursday. “From day one, this administration has made clear that a border wall is not the answer. That remains our position and our position has never wavered. The language in the Federal Register notice is being taken out of context and it does not signify any change in policy whatsoever.”

Texas-based advocates with Voces Unidas, which promotes immigrant rights, condemned the administration’s move. “We are confused and angered by the decision to further punish the most innocent, most vulnerable people in our communities, people who are already underserved and ignored across regional and state governments, with this increase in border walls.”
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Trump Fights for Real Estate Empire in Civil Fraud Trial

Donald Trump is fighting a $250 million civil fraud lawsuit that claims the former president provided false information regarding the value of his real estate empire. New York Attorney General Letitia James filed the lawsuit against Trump, his two adult sons and his company. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
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What Are the Next Steps as US House Searches for New Speaker?

The U.S. House of Representatives for the first time in its history has booted its speaker out of the job, as infighting in the narrow and bitterly divided Republican majority toppled Kevin McCarthy from the position. 

Here is a look at what comes next: 

Is there an acting speaker? 

Immediately following Tuesday’s 216-210 ouster vote, Republican Representative Patrick McHenry, a McCarthy ally, was appointed acting speaker pro tempore. He can serve for only a very limited time — up to three legislative days in this case. 

The acting speaker pro tempore’s duties are vague, according to a guide to the chamber’s rules and procedures: That person “may exercise such authorities of the office of speaker as may be necessary and appropriate pending the election of a speaker or speaker pro tempore.” 

While the speaker sets the overall legislative agenda in the House, it is the House majority leader who schedules specific bills to debated and voted upon in the chamber.   

Republican Representative Kelly Armstrong told reporters that McHenry’s main task will be to “get us a new speaker.” Anything further, he said, would spark a move to oust McHenry.   

A freeze on legislating? 

Until a House speaker is installed, it is unlikely that further action will be taken on bills to fund the government, with lawmakers facing a November 17 deadline to provide more money or face a partial government shutdown. 

Battles over those bills and anger over McCarthy’s failure to win extremely deep spending cuts sought by hard-right conservatives sparked the successful move by Representative Matt Gaetz to unseat him. 

What are House Republicans, Democrats doing? 

The House’s 221 Republicans and 212 Democrats huddled privately to figure out their next steps — both political and legislative. 

Each party was expected to try to settle on a candidate for speaker. That’s fairly easy for Democrats as they are solidly behind Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, who ran for speaker in January against McCarthy and other candidates. 

Republicans, because of their obvious divisions, especially among a small group of hard-line conservatives seeking very deep cuts in federal spending, could have a harder time settling on a candidate. 

McHenry could have an advantage now that he is acting speaker. It was unclear whether he wants the job. McCarthy is not barred from running again, although he said later Tuesday he would not seek it. 

The House finds itself in an unprecedented moment and so it was unclear exactly how quickly an election will be held in the full House. Normally, the elections for speaker are scheduled at the start of the new Congress every two years. 

When will the next speaker election be? 

The leaders of both parties will have to decide when they are ready to enter into the process of electing a speaker. 

The January endeavor was sloppy as McCarthy for days could not get enough votes to win and had to endure 15 ballots. 

It could be at least as chaotic this time around for Republicans, unless they conclude that such chaos is creating a public backlash that could doom their election prospects in 2024 and they unite. 

Who can run for speaker?  

Under the U.S. Constitution, the House speaker does not have to be a member of Congress. That is the reason some Republicans have floated the name of former President Donald Trump for the job, even though he is running for president and has said he does not want the job. 
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7 Months After Entering Hospice, Former President Jimmy Carter Celebrates 99th Birthday

Seven months after the Carter Center announced he was entering end of life hospice care, former President Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn made a rare, surprise appearance during a peanut festival in their hometown of Plains, Georgia.

As they waved to bystanders while riding in an SUV that proceeded down the main street of Plains, it marked the beginning of a week celebrating Jimmy Carter’s 99th birthday on Sunday – a milestone few thought the longest living U.S. President might reach.

“I think there is a misunderstanding about hospice that its only for people who are days away from death,” explains author Jonathan Alter. “That’s not what the hospice movements says.”

Alter, who wrote a biography about Jimmy Carter titled His Very Best, says the Carters are choosing to spend the end of their lives in much the same way as the rest of it. “Do as much as you can for as many as you can for as long as you can,” he says.

While retired from public life, Alter says announcing Carter’s transition to hospice, and revealing that Rosalynn Carter has dementia, provides the former president and first lady the opportunity to use their journey as another teachable moment for others.

“It was very intentional on their part to do some good for the world by sending a message that you don’t have to shrink from these end-of-life decisions, and there are other options for letting go,” he says.

While they have let go of the day-to-day operations of the global non-profit they founded in 1982, Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander says thousands of employees and volunteers around the world continue their work without interruption promoting peace and combating neglected tropical diseases.

“The last time we talked, he didn’t ask me about politics, he didn’t ask me about anything except guinea worm numbers,” Alexander told VOA during a recent Skype interview.

In a 2015 press conference announcing he was battling life threatening cancer, which he recovered from, Carter expressed his greatest wish: “I want the last guinea worm to die before I do,” he told the assembled crowd.

When the Carter Center took on guinea worm in the 1980s, there were 3.5 million cases in 21 countries. Alexander says the complete eradication of the neglected tropical disease is now closer than ever. “We’re down to six human cases in two countries,” she says.

Alexander told VOA she continues to have occasional phone conversations with President Carter.

“When I spoke to him last to wish him a happy birthday early, he said ‘I’m not quite sure how happy it is to be turning 99.’ His body is failing him. He doesn’t have the same physical abilities he used to have, but mentally, he remains pretty sharp, and I think that keeps him going,” Alexander said.

She notes that Carter is aware, and appreciative of the continued outpouring of support and admiration, most recently the stream of happy birthday wishes by video and photos the Carter Center is collecting for an interactive online mosaic.

“I think it might be the special sauce of what keeps him going right now. That and peanut butter ice cream,” she said.

It is a special dessert Alexander says the Carters enjoy together, sometimes surrounded by family, in the small community they have called home since the 1920s.

“They are exactly where they want to be – together … in their hometown of Plains, Georgia,” says Alexander. 
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Biden Signs Bill to Fund US Government, Avoid Shutdown

President Joe Biden has signed a bill to fund the U.S. government through mid-November and avoid a shutdown, less than an hour before money for federal agencies was set to run out.

Biden posted a picture of himself signing the bill on X, the social media platform previously known as Twitter, late Saturday night. In the message, he urged Congress to get to work immediately to pass funding bills for the full fiscal year.

The U.S. Senate, in a rare weekend meeting, approved a funding bill Saturday night, sending it to President Joe Biden for his signature and averting a widely dreaded shutdown of the federal government.

The bill, which passed the Senate 88-9 after winning approval in the House of Representatives, would fund the federal government through Nov. 17. The bill contains $16 billion in disaster aid sought by Biden but did not include money to help Ukraine in its war against Russia’s invasion.

After the vote, Biden released a statement saying the bill’s passage prevented “an unnecessary crisis that would have inflicted needless pain on millions of hardworking Americans.”

“We will have avoided a shutdown,” Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said in a statement after the vote. “Bipartisanship, which has been the trademark of the Senate, has prevailed. And the American people can breathe a sigh of relief.”

Had the bill not been approved by Congress and signed by the president by midnight Saturday, the federal government would have shut down.

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.

For days all of that seemed inevitable.

The abrupt turn of events began Saturday when Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy changed tactics and put forward the funding bill that hard-line members of his Republican caucus opposed.

The House passed the bill, 335-91. More Democrats supported it than Republicans, even though it does not contain aid for Ukraine, a priority for Biden, Democrats and many Senate Republicans.

“Extreme MAGA Republicans have lost, the American people have won,” top House Democrat Hakeem Jeffries told reporters ahead of the vote.

Republican Representative Lauren Boebert criticized the passage of the short-term stopgap bill.

“We should have forced the Senate to take up the four appropriations bills that the House has passed. That should have been our play,” she told CNN. “We should have forced them to come to the negotiating table, to come to conference, to hash out our differences.”

McCarthy is likely to face a motion from the right-wing members of his party to remove him as speaker.

“If somebody wants to remove me because I want to be the adult in the room, go ahead and try,” McCarthy said of the threat to oust him. “But I think this country is too important.”

Ukraine aid still likely

In his statement, Biden noted the lack of funding for Ukraine in the bill and said, “We cannot under any circumstances allow American support for Ukraine to be interrupted.”

Support for Ukraine remains strong in Congress and late Saturday night, a bipartisan group of Senate leadership members, led by Schumer and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, released a statement vowing to ensure the United States continues “to provide critical and sustained security and economic support for Ukraine.”

NBC News quoted an unnamed U.S. official as saying Biden and the Defense Department have funds to meet Ukraine’s battlefield needs “for a bit longer,” but it is “imperative” that Congress pass a Ukraine funding bill soon.

In the House, the lone Democrat to vote against the funding bill was Representative Mike Quigley of Illinois, the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. “Protecting Ukraine is in our national interest,” he said.

“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 The 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.”

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 reach 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.
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California Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s Body Returns to San Francisco

U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein returned Saturday to her hometown for the final time when a military jet carrying the late Democratic senator’s body landed at San Francisco International Airport.

The long-serving senator and political trailblazer died Thursday at her home in Washington, D.C., after a series of illnesses. At 90, she was the oldest member of Congress after first being elected to the Senate in 1992.

The arrival of her body was not open to the public. No details have been shared about services.

The former San Francisco mayor was a passionate advocate for priorities important to her state, including environmental protection, reproductive rights and gun control. But she also was known as a pragmatic, centrist lawmaker who reached out to Republicans and sought middle ground.

Her death was followed by a stream of tributes from around the nation, including from President Joe Biden, who served with Feinstein for years in the Senate and called her “a pioneering American” and a “cherished friend.”

California’s junior senator, Democrat Alex Padilla, called her “a towering figure — not just in modern California history, but in the history of our state and our nation.”

Democratic Rep. Maxine Waters said Feinstein “spent her entire career breaking glass ceilings and opening doors into areas that had been perpetually dominated by men.”

Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to soon appoint a replacement for the vacant Senate seat.
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US Supreme Court Will Take Up Abortion, Gun Cases in New Term

The Supreme Court is returning to a new term to take up some familiar topics — guns and abortion — while concerns about ethics swirl around the justices.

The year also will have a heavy focus on social media and how free speech protections apply online. A big unknown is whether the court will be asked to weigh in on any aspect of the criminal cases against former President Donald Trump and others or efforts in some states to keep the Republican off the 2024 presidential ballot because of his role in trying to overturn the results of the 2020 election that he lost to Democrat Joe Biden.

Lower profile but vitally important, several cases in the term that begins Monday ask the justices to constrict the power of regulatory agencies.

“I can’t remember a term where the court was poised to say so much about the power of federal administrative agencies,” said Jeffrey Wall, who served as the deputy solicitor general in the Trump administration.

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

One of those cases, to be argued Tuesday, threatens the ability of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, to function. Unlike most agencies, the bureau is not dependent on annual appropriations from Congress, but instead gets its funding directly from the Federal Reserve. The idea when the agency was created following the recession in 2007-08 was to shield it from politics.

But the federal appeals court in New Orleans struck down the funding mechanism. The ruling would cause “profound disruption by calling into question virtually every action the CFPB has taken” since its creation, the Biden administration said in a court filing.

Gun availability

The same federal appeals court also produced the ruling that struck down a federal law that aims to keep guns away from people facing domestic violence restraining orders from having firearms.

The three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said its decision was compelled by the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling expanding gun rights and directing judges to evaluate restrictions based on history and tradition. Judges also have invalidated other long-standing gun control laws.

The justices will hear the Texas case, in November, in what is their first chance to elaborate on the meaning of that decision in the earlier case, which has come to be known as Bruen.

Abortion

The abortion case likely to be heard by the justices also would be the court’s first word on the topic since it reversed Roe v. Wade’s right to abortion. The new case stems from a ruling, also by the 5th Circuit, to limit the availability of mifepristone, a medication used in the most common method of abortion in the United States.

The administration already won an order from the high court blocking the appellate ruling while the case continues. The justices could decide later in the fall to take up the mifepristone case this term.

Ideological differences

The assortment of cases from the 5th Circuit could offer Chief Justice John Roberts more opportunities to forge alliances in major cases that cross ideological lines. In those cases, the conservative-dominated appeals court, which includes six Trump appointees, took aggressive legal positions, said Irv Gornstein, executive director of the Georgetown law school’s Supreme Court Institute.

“The 5th Circuit is ready to adopt the politically most-conservative position on almost any issue, no matter how implausible or how much defiling of precedent it takes,” Gornstein said.

The three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump — Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh — have been together in the majority of some of the biggest cases in the past two years, including on guns, abortion and ending affirmative action in college admissions.

But in some important cases last term, the court split in unusual ways. In the most notable of those, Kavanaugh joined with Roberts and the court’s three liberal justices to rule that Alabama had not done enough to reflect the political power of Black voters in its congressional redistricting.

Roberts and Kavanaugh, this time joined by Barrett, also were in the majority with the liberal justices in a case that rejected a conservative legal effort to cut out state courts from oversight of elections for Congress and president.

Those outcomes have yet to do much to ameliorate the court’s image in the public’s mind. The most recent Gallup Poll, released last week, found Americans’ approval of and trust in the court hovering near record lows.

It is not clear whether those numbers would improve if the court were to adopt a code of conduct.

Questions about ethics

Several justices have publicly recognized the ethics issues, spurred by a series of stories questioning some of their practices. Many of those stories focused on Justice Clarence Thomas and his failure to disclose travel and other financial ties with wealthy conservative donors, including Harlan Crow and the Koch brothers. But Justices Samuel Alito and Sonia Sotomayor also have been under scrutiny.

Behind the scenes, the justices are talking about an ethics code, and Kavanaugh has said he is hopeful the court would soon take “concrete steps.”

Justice Elena Kagan, who backs a high court code of ethics, said in an appearance at the University of Notre Dame that her colleagues are trying to work through their differences.

“There are, you know, totally good-faith disagreements or concerns, if you will. There are some things to be worked out. I hope we can get them worked out,” Kagan said. There’s no timetable for the court to act.

Democratic lawmakers and progressive critics of Alito and Thomas said those justices’ impartiality in some cases is in doubt because of financial ties, joint travel or friendships with people involved in the cases.

Alito has rejected calls to step aside from a tax case, and Thomas, who has been silent in the past about recusals, seems exceedingly unlikely to bow to his critics’ wishes now.
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On Brink of Government Shutdown, US Senate Tries to Approve Funding

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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7 Months Into Hospice Care, Jimmy Carter to Celebrate 99th Birthday

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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Vowing to Defend Democracy, Biden Hits Hard at Trump

US President Joe Biden sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump on Thursday, delivering a forceful assertion that the former president and Republican front-runner represents an existential threat to the country’s democratic values and institutions. White House Bureau Chief Patsy Widakuswara has this report.
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Vowing to Defend Democracy, Biden Hits Hard at Trump

U.S. President Joe Biden sharpened his attacks against Donald Trump on Thursday, delivering his most forceful assertion to date that the former president and Republican front-runner represents an existential threat to the country’s democratic values and institutions.

In a speech in the western state of Arizona, Biden charged that Trump holds the “dangerous notion” that he has unchecked power and is above the law.

“Trump says the Constitution gave him, quote, the right to do whatever he wants as president, end of quote. I’ve never heard a president say that even in jest,” Biden said. “Not guided by the Constitution or by common service and decency toward our fellow Americans, but by vengeance and vindictiveness.”

Trump in 2019 said he has such rights under Article II of the Constitution, which describes the powers of the president. In March, he told supporters, “I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution.”

“There’s something dangerous happening in America right now,” Biden declared in Arizona, adding that American democracy is “still at risk.”

The speech is his fourth in a series of presidential addresses that lays out what he sees as the dangers of election denialism and political violence that have loomed over the country since thousands of Trump supporters attacked Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021, seeking to overturn Biden’s electoral victory.

“There is an extremist movement that does not share the basic beliefs in our democracy — the MAGA movement,” the president said, referring to his predecessor’s slogan, “Make America Great Again.” He warned that their “extreme agenda, if carried out, would fundamentally alter the institutions of American democracy.”

“They’re not hiding their attacks,” Biden said. “They’re openly promoting them, attacking the free press as the enemy of the people. Attacking the rule of law as an impediment. Fomenting voter suppression and election subversion.”

Biden has until now avoiding painting mainstream Republicans with the same brush as Trump’s most ardent supporters, whom he describes as MAGA Republicans. But this time Biden suggested that they are complicit.

“Although I don’t believe even a majority of Republicans think that, the silence is deafening,” he said, pointing to Republican reaction to Trump’s recent suggestion that General Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs who will soon step down from his post should be executed for allegedly betraying the former president.

Biden’s speech came the same day that House Republicans held their first hearing in a Biden impeachment inquiry, over allegations of corruption in relation to his son Hunter’s business dealings. The Republicans detailed foreign payments to members of the Biden family but did not provide evidence that the president had benefited from the funds.

The White House denies any wrongdoing and dismisses the investigation as politically motivated.

Harshest rhetoric

While Biden has long branded the MAGA movement as an existential threat to democracy, Thursday’s speech contained some of his harshest rhetoric against Trump, who is facing four criminal indictments with a total of 91 charges ranging from falsifying business records to seeking to subvert the 2020 presidential election.

Trump has denied wrongdoing in all charges.

For months, Biden had remained mostly silent about his predecessor, likely to avoid giving credence to Trump’s assertions that the charges against him are evidence that Biden is weaponizing the justice system against a political opponent. The White House denies the allegation.

Biden did not mention any of Trump’s legal troubles in his speech, a sound strategy according to some observers.

“There’s plenty about Trump’s behavior in office and statements of what he will do if he wins in 2024 that Biden can point toward without having to say, ‘Oh, and by the way, he’s facing jail time,'” said William Howell, a professor in American politics at the University of Chicago.

Warnings of a threat to democracy posed by Trump’s MAGA movement could resonate in Arizona, a former Republican stronghold that in recent years turned into a swing state and has seen its share of efforts by Trump supporters to discredit 2020 election results.

The White House selected the state as the speech venue precisely for those reasons, as well as to honor the late Arizona Senator John McCain, the 2008 Republican presidential nominee who died in 2018, whom Biden referred to as a “brother.”

Biden announced federal funding to construct the McCain Library at Arizona State University, using the American Rescue Plan Act, the $1.9 trillion COVID relief package passed in 2021.

Speaking before Biden, former Ambassador Cindy McCain said Biden and her late husband maintained decades of friendship despite deep political differences.

Biden contrasted McCain’s legacy and the late senator’s principle to “put partisanship aside and put country first,” to those espousing political violence.

“Democracy means rejecting and repudiating political violence,” he said. “Regardless of party, such violence is never, never, never acceptable in America.”

Do Americans care?

As Biden gears up to fight for a second term, his campaign strategists believe that defending democratic institutions and values remains a resonant theme for voters — a reason that the video announcing the president’s reelection run opened with footage of the Jan. 6 attack.

However, polls show the economy is the issue that weighs most on voters’ mind. According to a recent Reuters/Ipsos survey, 49% of Americans say inflation or price increases are the most important issues facing the country; 9% cite unemployment, and 10% cite economic inequality.

Various polls show Biden’s public approval rating stagnating below 50% since August 2021, largely due to concerns over his handling of the economy.

Attacks on American democracy may not be the No. 1 concern among voters, Chicago University’s Howell told VOA, but it’s not trivial, either, so it’s no surprise that Biden is homing in on the issue.

“If you think about democracy as a kind of a catchall category, not just for concerns about rising authoritarianism but also just the ability for our country to govern itself, concerns about rising polarization, whether or not we’re going to have another government shutdown — these kinds of things … will resonate with some voters,” Howell said.

As Biden spoke, his White House blasted out messages counting down the hours until Oct. 1, the day of a potential partial government shutdown should Congress fail to approve funding for federal agencies. The administration blames the impasse on “extreme House Republicans’ chaos and inability to govern.”

Republican front-runner

Despite his legal woes, Trump remains the dominant force in his party. A recent Ipsos/Reuters poll shows the former president is supported by 47% of Republican primary voters, a group that amounts to roughly a third of the American electorate.

Trump’s position with Republican primary voters has only strengthened over the year as various indictments have rolled out, said Chris Jackson, a senior vice president at Ipsos.

“That’s happening at the same time that his position with the general public is not necessarily strengthening the same way,” Jackson told VOA.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that Biden and Trump are tied in a hypothetical November 2024 election, with both receiving 39% of the vote and one in five voters undecided.
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US Senator Menendez Pleads Not Guilty to Corruption Charges

U.S. Senator Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to charges of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessman, as calls for his resignation from his fellow Democrats escalated.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last week accused Menendez, 69, and his wife of accepting gold bars and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash in exchange for the senator using his influence to aid Egypt’s government and interfere with law enforcement investigations of the businessmen.

Menendez entered the plea at a hearing before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ona Wang in Manhattan.

His wife, Nadine Menendez, 56, and businessmen Jose Uribe, 56, and Fred Daibes, 66, also pleaded not guilty. A third businessman, Wael Hana, 40, pleaded not guilty on Tuesday.

Menendez, one of two senators representing New Jersey, stepped down from his role as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, as required under his party’s rules. But on Monday he said he would stay in the Senate and fight the charges.

More than half of all U.S. Democratic senators — including Cory Booker, the junior senator from New Jersey — have called on Menendez, a powerful voice on foreign policy who has at times bucked his own party, to resign since the charges were unveiled on Friday.

Democrats narrowly control the Senate with 51 seats, including three independents who normally vote with them, to the Republicans’ 49. Democratic New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, who would appoint a temporary replacement should Menendez step aside, has also called for him to resign.

The indictment contained images of gold bars and cash that investigators seized from Menendez’s home. Prosecutors say Hana arranged meetings between the senator and Egyptian officials — who pressed him to sign off on military aid — and in return put his wife on the payroll of a company he controlled.

The probe marks the third time Menendez has been under investigation by federal prosecutors. He has never been convicted.
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Republicans Appeal to Far-Right Conservatives to Avert US Government Shutdown

With just a week before Washington runs out of money to keep the federal government fully operating, warring factions within the Republican Party in the U.S. Congress on Sunday showed no signs of coming together to pass a stopgap funding bill.

Congress so far has failed to finish any of the 12 regular spending bills to fund federal agency programs in the fiscal year starting on Oct. 1.

House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy will push an ambitious plan this week to win approval of four large bills, including military and homeland security funding, that he hopes would demonstrate enough progress to far-right Republicans to win their support for a stop-gap spending bill, known as a continuing resolution, or CR, as well.

Republican Representative Michael McCaul, a 19-year veteran of Congress who chairs the House Intelligence Committee, urged the group of party “holdouts” to stop blocking Republican-backed spending bills while at the same time “saying don’t bring bipartisan bills to the floor.”

“Republicans need to vote for Republican bills” to avert a shutdown, McCaul said on ABC’s “This Week” broadcast.

But some of those “holdouts,” who want deep spending cuts that go beyond a deal passed earlier this year, showed no sign of relenting.

“Continuing resolutions don’t solve the problem. They just kick the can down the road,” Republican Representative Tony Gonzalez told CBS News’ “Face the Nation.”

In June, President Joe Biden signed into law an increase in U.S. borrowing authority that he brokered with McCarthy, which also came with around $1.5 trillion in spending cuts over 10 years.

Ultra-right House Republicans want to go further with around $120 billion in additional cuts just for the new fiscal year, which could hit programs ranging from education and environmental protection to Internal Revenue Service enforcement and medical research.

Similarly, Republican Representative Tim Burchett told CNN’s “State of the Union” that he has never voted for a temporary funding bill and won’t this time around.

He warned that if McCarthy allows legislation to pass the House with Democratic support, “I would look strongly at” a move to strip McCarthy of his speakership.

“This dysfunctional Washington cannot continue,” Burchett said, referring to the way Congress handles the federal budget, which is on a path to a $1.5 trillion deficit for the fiscal year that ends on Saturday.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg warned in an ABC interview that a government shutdown will require his agency to immediately suspend air traffic controller training courses at a time when air travel is “getting back to normal” following a high volume of flight delays and disruptions last year.

Aides to McCarthy were not immediately available for comment on whether negotiations over a CR were continuing on Sunday.

But he has been pushing for a 30-day bill to keep federal offices open, coupled with a strict border security plan that would basically suspend most immigration into the United States at a time of record numbers of people seeking asylum on the border with Mexico.

Even some of the Senate’s most conservative Republicans on Sunday appealed to House counterparts to stop blocking a stop-gap bill.

“We would like for the House to begin that process of sending us a CR to keep the government open and functioning,” Senator Marsha Blackburn told Fox Business News.

Appealing to those conservatives’ eagerness for conducting investigations into Biden and some other top administration officials, Blackburn added: “If you shut down the government you can’t continue that.”
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Flamethrower, Comments About Book Burning Ignite Political Firestorm in US

A longshot candidate for governor in the U.S. state of Missouri and his supporters describe his use of a flamethrower at a recent “Freedom Fest” event outside St. Louis as no big deal. They said it was a fun moment for fellow Republicans who attended, and that no one talked about burning books as he torched a pile of cardboard boxes.

But after the video gained attention on social media, State Sen. Bill Eigel said he would burn books he found objectionable, and that he’d do it on the lawn outside the governor’s mansion. He later said it was all a metaphor for how he would attack the “woke liberal agenda.”

“From a dramatic sense, if the only thing in between the children in the state of Missouri and vulgar pornographic material like that getting in their hands is me burning, bulldozing or launching (books) into outer space, I’m going to do that,” Eigel said in an interview with The Associated Press. “However, I would I make the point that I don’t believe it’s going to come to that.”

Experts say Eigel’s use of the flamethrower is a sign that rhetoric and imagery previously considered extreme are now being treated as normal in American politics. While Eigel didn’t actually destroy books, his later statement about burning ones he deemed offensive ratcheted up fears that the video’s circulation and his words on social media could help take the U.S. to a darker place.

“The slippery slope is that everything is a joke — everything can be kind of waved away,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of public communications at American University in Washington. “Everything can be seen as just rhetoric until it can’t anymore and people start using it as an excuse to actually hurt people.”

The 30-second video that put Eigel at the center of a social media storm is from a Sept. 15 event for Republicans at a winery near tiny Defiance, Missouri, about 48 kilometers west of St. Louis. He and another state senator shot long streams of flame onto a pile of cardboard in front of an appreciative crowd.

The video posted on the X platform, formerly known as Twitter, caught the attention of Jonathan Riley, a liberal activist in Durham, North Carolina, who posted Sunday that it showed “Missouri Republicans at a literal book burning,” though he’d later walk that statement back to a “metaphorical” book burning.

“It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books. “It just didn’t happen to be the truth.”

Some of Republicans’ skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel’s status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited Republican Gov. Mike Parson. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe.

The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel’s follow-up statement. Kehoe’s campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a Republican consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.”

He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.

Eigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too — on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.”

Republicans across the U.S. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation.

The outcry also comes after Missouri’s Republican-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.

Aggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. It can sometimes backfire.

Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the Republican nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. He finished last.

In Missouri in 2016, Republican candidate and ex-Navy SEAL Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. He finished third in the primary.

Flamethowers also have popped up previously. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. She finished third in the primary. And in South Dakota, Gov. Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.

Experts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.

Evan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it’s been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.”

“We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”

Experts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence.

Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who’s now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. He said the sheer volume of social media postings means, “Sometimes, you almost have to get lucky in order to stop it.”

Braddock, the American University professor, said that after portraying a flamethrower as a weapon against “the woke agenda,” Eigel’s supporters don’t need “that big a leap of logic” to see it as a tool for settling actual political grievances. Talking about book burning enough can plant the idea in people’s minds so that “people think it’s actually a righteous thing to do.”

Ali added: “That’s a pretty dangerous game to play.”

Eigel said he’s not worried the video will inspire violence in “reasonable, everyday Missourians,” which he said is the majority of people. But he said he’s concerned about the number of threats he, his family and his staff have received as a result.
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