The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said it would reinstate a decades-old regulation that mandates blanket protections for species newly classified as threatened.

The blanket protections regulation was dropped in 2019 as part of a suite of changes to the application of the species law that were encouraged by industry, even as extinctions accelerate globally due to habitat loss and other pressures.

Officials also would no longer consider economic impacts when deciding if animals and plants need protection. And the rules make it easier to designate areas as critical for a species’ survival, even if it is no longer found in those locations.

That could help with the recovery of imperiled fish and freshwater mussels in the Southeast, where the aquatic animals in many cases are absent from portions of their historical range, said Fish and Wildlife Service Assistant Director Gary Frazer.

Frazer said Wednesday’s proposal would restore “baseline” protections so species don’t get pushed further toward extinction.

“We have the opportunity to try to improve the status of species before they get to the brink,” he said.

Details on the proposed rules, which could take a year to finalize, were obtained by The Associated Press in advance of their public release.

They’ll face strong pushback from Republican lawmakers, who say President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration has hampered oil, gas and coal development, and favors conservation over development.

“These proposed rules take us in the wrong direction and are entirely unnecessary given the proven track record of success from private conservationists and state and local land managers,” said House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Bruce Westerman, a Republican from Arkansas.

Industry groups have long viewed the 1973 Endangered Species Act as an impediment. Under Trump they successfully lobbied to weaken the law’s regulations as part of a broad dismantling of environmental safeguards. Trump officials rolled back endangered species rules and protections for the northern spotted owl, gray wolves and other species.

The spotted owl decision was reversed in 2021 after officials said Trump’s political appointees used faulty science to justify opening millions of acres of West Coast forest to potential logging. Protections for wolves across most of the U.S. were restored by a federal court last year and the Biden administration has said it will decide by next February if they should remain in place.

Many of the changes under Trump were finalized during his last weeks in office.

Since then, officials imposed less restrictive protections for more than a dozen animals and plants compared to what they would have received, said Jonathan Wood with the Property and Environment Research Center, a free-market policy group based in Bozeman, Montana.

Wood said the Biden proposal could hurt state and private landowner efforts to recover species, by imposing more punitive regulations that undermine voluntary conservation incentives.

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Director Martha Williams said in a statement that the changes “reaffirm our commitment to conserving America’s wildlife and ensuring the Endangered Species Act works for both species and people.”

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Fisheries Assistant Administrator Janet Coit said the rules would ensure the species law remains effective as climate change alters habitats around the globe, and plants and animals become extinct.

The Biden administration had earlier withdrawn a 2020 rule that limited which lands and waters could be designated as places where imperiled animals and plants could receive federal protection. It also reversed Trump’s decision to weaken enforcement of the century-old Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which made it harder to prosecute bird deaths caused by the energy industry.

But environmentalists have been frustrated that it’s taken more than two years for Biden to act on some of the Trump-era rollbacks. Stoking their urgency is the prospect of a new Republican administration following the 2024 election that could yet again ease protections.

“These are promising steps to get us back to the Endangered Species Act’s purpose, its power to protect,” attorney Kristen Boyles with Earthjustice said of the new rules. The group sued on behalf of environmental groups to block the Trump rules and prevailed in U.S. District Court then lost on appeal.

Other environmentalists complained that some Trump-era changes would remain intact.

One requires agencies to protect living spaces for imperiled species only when development would harm an entire habitat and not just part of it. That could remove obligations to fix damage from logging trees that are needed by spotted owls unless all of their 9-million-acre habitat zone were affected, said Stephanie Kurose at the Center for Biological Diversity.

Biden’s proposal also retains a Trump change allowing agencies to approve projects without guarantees habitat harms will be reduced.

“This makes it easier to authorize piecemeal destruction of critical habitat,” said McCrystie Adams with Defenders of Wildlife.

An array of industry groups have long maintained that economic impacts are not given enough consideration in U.S. government wildlife decisions. Those groups range from livestock and ranching organizations to trade associations representing oil, gas and mining interests.

The Endangered Species Act is credited with helping save the bald eagle, California condor and scores more animals and plants from extinction since President Richard Nixon signed it into law. It currently protects more than 1,600 species in the United States and its territories.

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Flesher reported from Traverse City, Michigan.

Within two weeks, the Supreme Court justices should break for their summer recess. And yet there’s been no ruling on President Joe Biden’s sweeping student loan forgiveness plan.

For many borrowers, it’s been an anxious wait.

“Waiting to hear whether or not it will pass is nerve-wracking at best, debilitating at worst,” said Richelle Brooks, 35, a single mother in Los Angeles whose monthly student loan payment was as high as $1,200 at one point. “We’re all staying tied to our phones each week.”

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However, legal experts said it makes sense that this ruling is taking time.

“Given all the moving pieces — and given the case’s significance — I’m not surprised to see it come so late in the term,” said Steven Schwinn, a law professor at the University of Illinois Chicago.

Northeastern University law professor Dan Urman agreed. “The more complicated, difficult cases tend to take longer,” he said.

Justices considering ‘several thorny issues’

There’s no precedent for the kind of sweeping debt forgiveness the Biden administration is trying to carry out. And at an estimated cost of $400 billion, the policy would be among the most expensive executive actions in U.S. history.

As a result, Biden’s plan “raises several thorny issues,” Schwinn said.

“This case is a little tricky — trickier than we might think at first glance,” he said.

There is the core issue of whether or not Biden has the power to forgive so much student debt without authorization from Congress.

Administration officials insist that he’s acting within the law, pointing out that the Heroes Act of 2003 grants the U.S. secretary of education the authority to make changes to the federal student loan system during national emergencies. The country was operating under an emergency declaration due to Covid-19 when the president rolled out his plan to cancel up to $20,000 in debt for borrowers.

Yet the plaintiffs trying to block forgiveness say the president is incorrectly using the law, which they argue allows only for narrow applications of relief and not the kind of across-the-board loan cancellation the president wants to deliver. Around 37 million people would benefit from Biden’s program.

Plaintiffs left some justices unconvinced

The justices also have to consider if the plaintiffs against the Biden administration have successfully shown they’d be harmed by the president’s policy, which is typically a requirement to gain the right to sue. The need to prove so-called legal standing is designed to prevent people from suing against different policies and programs simply because they disagree with them.

Two legal challenges against the program made it to the high court: one brought by six GOP-led states — Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska and South Carolina — and another backed by the Job Creators Network Foundation, a conservative advocacy organization.

The states argue that a reduction in loan business for the companies in their states that service federal student loans would hurt their bottom line. Meanwhile, the complaint by the Job Creators Network Foundation centers on two student loan borrowers who would be partially or fully excluded from the aid.

Before the justices considered these challenges during oral arguments at the end of February, most legal experts expected the conservative justices to side with the plaintiffs.

However, several pundits changed their tune afterward.

Conservative justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed especially unconvinced that the plaintiffs proved injury, said Jed Shugerman, a law professor at Fordham University and Boston University.

“Barrett was vocally and deeply uncomfortable about ruling that any of the plaintiffs had standing,” Shugerman said.

At least one or two other conservative justices also seemed conflicted over the question of standing, Shugerman said, adding more reason to why the deliberation is taking time.

Decision still expected before end of term

In high-profile cases that attract a lot of political attention such as Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, the justices also tend to write lengthier decisions that try to show they arrived at their conclusion through legal rather than partisan reasoning, Shugerman said. And longer opinions take more time to write.

Still, anxious borrowers can take some relief in knowing the high court is most likely to announce their ruling by early July, Schwinn said: “It’ll almost surely come before the end of the term.”

Shugerman said the same: “The justices preserve July and August for getting out of town.”

Still, there is a small possibility that the court wants to hear another round of oral arguments before it issues its decision, he added. In that case, borrowers would have to wait until October, when the justices begin their next session, or later for their answer.

Unlike the last two people to serve as head of the nation’s top federal public health agency, Cohen has prior experience running a government agency: She was secretary of the North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services from 2017 until last year. Before that, she held health-related jobs at two federal agencies.

“Dr. Cohen is one of the nation’s top physicians and health leaders with experience leading large and complex organizations, and a proven track-record protecting Americans’ health and safety,” President Joe Biden said in a statement.

She succeeds Dr. Rochelle Walensky, 54, who last month announced she was leaving at the end of June. Cohen’s starting date has not been announced. Her appointment does not require Senate confirmation.

Walensky, a former infectious disease expert at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, took over at the CDC in 2021 — about a year after the pandemic began.

Cohen, 44, will take over after some rough years at the CDC, whose 12,000-plus employees are charged with protecting Americans from disease outbreaks and other public health threats.

The Atlanta-based federal agency had long been seen as a global leader on disease control and a reliable source of health information. But polls showed the public trust eroded, partly as a result of the CDC’s missteps in dealing with COVID-19 and partly due to political attacks and misinformation campaigns.

Walensky started a reorganization effort that is designed to make the agency more nimble and to improve its communications.

Cohen was raised on Long Island, New York. Her mom was a nurse practitioner. Cohen has a medical degree from Yale and a master’s in public health from Harvard.

She also has been an advocate. She was a founding member and former executive director of Doctors for America, which pushes to expand health insurance coverage and address racial and ethnic disparities. Another founder was Dr. Vivek Murthy, the U.S. surgeon general. The group formed in the midst of an effort to organize doctors into political action and support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president.

Cohen started working for the federal government in 2008 at the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, where she served as deputy director for women’s health services. She later held a series of federal jobs, many of them with the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, rising to chief operating officer.

In 2017, she took the health and human services job in North Carolina. A top adviser to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper, Cohen was the face of her state’s response to the coronavirus, explaining risks and precautions while wearing a gold chain adorned with a charm of the Hebrew word for “life.”

Some residents dubbed her the “3 W’s lady” for her constant reminders to wear a mask, wash hands frequently, and watch the distance from other people. One man even wrote a country-rock ballad praising her with the refrain: “Hang on Mandy, Mandy hang on.”

In 2020, Cohen refused to support President Donald Trump’s demands for a full-capacity Republican convention in Charlotte with no mask wearing. Her office later said it would accommodate the GOP by relaxing the state’s 10-person indoor gathering limit, but it remained adamant about masks and social distancing. Trump ultimately moved the main events from Charlotte.

Cohen resigned the state post in late 2021, saying she wanted to spend more time with her family and pursue new opportunities. She then took a leadership post at Aledade Inc., a Maryland-based consulting company.

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Former AP writers Bryan Anderson and Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

The official, who was not authorized to comment publicly and spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the U.S. intelligence community has been aware of China’s spying from Cuba and a larger effort to set up intelligence-gathering operations around the globe for some time.

The Biden administration has stepped up efforts to thwart the Chinese push to expand its spying operations and believes it has made some progress through diplomacy and other unspecified action, according to the official, who was familiar with U.S. intelligence on the matter.

The existence of the Chinese spy base was confirmed after The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that China and Cuba had reached an agreement in principle to build an electronic eavesdropping station on the island. The Journal reported that China planned to pay a cash-strapped Cuba billions of dollars as part of the negotiations.

The White House and Cuban officials, however, called the report inaccurate.

“I’ve seen that press report, it’s not accurate,” White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said in an MSNBC interview on Thursday. “What I can tell you is that we have been concerned since day one of this administration about China’s influence activities around the world; certainly in this hemisphere and in this region, we’re watching this very, very closely.”

The U.S. intelligence community had determined that Chinese spying from Cuba has been an “ongoing” matter and is “not a new development,” the administration official said.

President Joe Biden’s national security team was briefed by the intelligence community soon after he took office in January 2021 about a number of sensitive Chinese efforts around the globe where Beijing was weighing expanding logistics, basing and collection infrastructure as part of the People’s Liberation Army’s attempt to further its influence, the official said.

Chinese officials looked at sites that spanned the Atlantic Ocean, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and the Indo-Pacific. The effort included looking at existing collection facilities in Cuba, and China conducted an upgrade of its spying operation on the island in 2019, the official said.

Tensions between the U.S. and China have been fraught throughout Biden’s term.

The relationship may have hit a nadir last year after then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to democratically governed Taiwan. That visit, the first by a sitting House speaker since Newt Gingrich in 1997, led China, which claims the island as its territory, to launch military exercises around Taiwan.

U.S.-China relations became further strained early this year after the U.S. shot down a Chinese spy balloon that had crossed the United States.

Beijing also was angered by Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen’s stopover in the U.S. last month that included an encounter with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. The speaker hosted the Taiwanese leader at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in southern California.

Still, the White House has been eager to resume high-level communications between the two sides.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken is planning to travel to China next week, a trip that was canceled as the balloon was flying over the U.S. Blinken expects to be in Beijing on June 18 for meetings with senior Chinese officials, according to U.S. officials, who spoke Friday on condition of anonymity because neither the State Department nor the Chinese foreign ministry has yet confirmed the trip.

CIA Director William Burns met in Beijing with his counterpart last month. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan met with his Chinese counterpart in Vienna over two days in May and made clear that the administration wanted to improve high-level communications with the Chinese side.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently spoke briefly with Li Shangfu, China’s minister of national defense, at the opening dinner of a security forum in Singapore. China had earlier rejected Austin’s request for a meeting on the sidelines of the forum.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden on Tuesday assured Americans the government was aiding Canada in fighting the wildfires that have cloaked the East Coast and Midwest in unhealthy levels of smoke and haze.

“Since May, more than 600 U.S. firefighters, support personnel, and firefighting assets have been deployed, working alongside Canadian firefighters to tackle what is likely to be the worst fire season in Canadian history, and one that has huge impacts here in the United States,” Biden said in a statement.

The president spoke with Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday and offered additional assistance to beat back the fires, particularly in Quebec, where 150 fires are burning. The president said he directed the National Interagency Fire Center to help as well.

In a statement, Trudeau thanked Biden for the aid, adding that the countries must “work together to address the devastating impacts of climate change.”

There were 437 active wildfires across Canada early Thursday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center. Nearly 250 were labeled as out of control. 

As of Wednesday, roughly 9.4 million acres have burned and more than 20,000 people have been evacuated, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said during a briefing with Trudeau. Canadian officials anticipate the higher-than-normal wildfire activity to persist due to drought conditions and high temperatures.

Americans on the East Coast are being advised to mask up amid air quality alerts that are expected to stay in effect through Friday. Hundreds of flights have been delayed and several Major League Baseball games were postponed due to the haze.

Biden addressed the wildfires from the White House, speaking before a press conference.

“It’s very important that affected communities listen to the guidance of their state and local officials from this point forward,” Biden said. He urged Americans to go to airnow.gov for information on air quality in their area.

“I don’t even know where I would begin to budget that money,” said Chanthanouvong, who works in marketing in San Francisco.

Now, after more than three years, the lifeline is being pulled away.

More than 40 million Americans will be on the hook for federal student loan payments starting in late August under the terms of a debt ceiling deal approved by Congress last week. The Biden administration has been targeting that timeline for months, but the deal ends any hope of a further extension of the pause, which has been prolonged while the Supreme Court decides the president’s debt cancellation.

A Republican measure overturning Biden’s student loan cancellation plan passed the Senate last week, but the president vetoed the bill Wednesday.

Without cancellation, the Education Department predicts borrowers will fall behind on their loans at historic rates. Among the most vulnerable are those who finished college during the pandemic. Millions have never had to make a loan payment, and their bills will soon come amid soaring inflation and forecasts of economic recession.

Advocates fear it will add a financial burden that younger borrowers can’t afford.

“I worry that we’re going to see levels of default of new graduates that we’ve never seen before,” said Natalia Abrams, president of the nonprofit Student Debt Crisis Center.

Chanthanouvong earned a bachelor’s in sociology from the University of California-Merced in 2019. She couldn’t find a job for a year, leaving her to rely on odd jobs for income. She found a full-time job last year, but at $70,000, her salary barely covers the cost of living in the Bay Area.

“I’m not going out. I don’t buy Starbucks every day. I’m cooking at home,” she said. “And sometimes, I don’t even have $100 after everything.”

Under President Joe Biden’s cancellation plan, Chanthanouvong would be eligible to get $20,000 of her debt erased, leaving her owing $5,000. But she isn’t banking on the relief. Instead, she invited her partner to move in and split rent. The financial pinch has them postponing or rethinking major life milestones.

“My partner and I agreed, maybe we don’t want kids,” she said. “Not because we don’t want them, but because it would be financially irresponsible for us to bring a human being into this world.”

Out of the more than 44 million federal student loan borrowers, about 7 million are below the age of 25, according to data from the Education Department. Their average loan balance is less than $14,000, lower than any other age group.

Yet borrowers with lower balances are the most likely to default. It’s fueled by millions who drop out before graduating, along with others who graduate but struggle to find good jobs. Among those who defaulted in 2021, the median loan balance was $15,300, and the vast majority had balances under $40,000, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Resuming student loan payments will cost U.S. consumers $18 billion a month, the investment firm Jefferies has estimated. The hit to household budgets is ill-timed for the overall economy, Jefferies says, because the United States is widely believed to be on the brink of a recession.

Despite the student loan moratorium, Americans mostly didn’t bank their savings, according to Jefferies economist Thomas Simons. So they’ll likely have to cut back on other things — travel, restaurants — to fit resumed loan payments into their budgets. Belt-tightening could hurt an economy that relies heavily on consumer spending.

Noshin Hoque graduated from Stony Brook University early in the pandemic with about $20,000 in federal student loans. Instead of testing the 2020 job market, she enrolled at a master’s program in social work at Columbia University, borrowing $34,000 more.

With the payments paused, she felt a new level of financial security. She cut costs by living with her parents in New York City and her job at a nonprofit paid enough to save money and help her parents.

She recalls splurging on a $110 polo shirt as a Father’s Day gift for her dad.

“Being able to do stuff for my parents and having them experience that luxury with me has just been such a plus,” said Hoque, who works for Young Invincibles, a nonprofit that supports student debt cancellation.

It gave her the comfort to enter a new stage of life. She got married to a recent medical school graduate, and they’re expecting their first child in November. At the same time, they’re bracing for the crush of loan payments, which will cost at least $400 a month combined. They hope to pay more to avoid interest, which is prohibited for them as practicing Muslims.

To prepare, they stopped eating at restaurants. They canceled a vacation to Italy. Money they wanted to put toward their child’s education fund will go to their loans instead.

“We’re back to square one of planning our finances,” she said. “I feel that so deeply.”

Even the logistics of making payments will be a hurdle for newer borrowers, said Rachel Rotunda, director of government relations at National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. They’ll need to find out who their loan servicers are, choose a repayment plan and learn to navigate the payment system.

“The volume of borrowers going back on the system at the same time — this has never happened before,” Rotunda said. “It’s fair to say it’s going to be bumpy.”

The Education Department has promised to make the restart of payments as smooth as possible. In a statement, the agency said it will continue to push for Biden’s debt cancellation as a way to reduce borrowers’ debt load and ease the transition.

For Beka Favela, 30, the payment pause provided independence. She earned a master’s in counseling last year, and her job as a therapist allowed her to move out of her parents’ house.

Without making payments on her $80,000 in student loans, she started saving. She bought furniture. She chipped away at credit card debt. But once the pause ends, she expects to pay about $500 a month. It will consume most of her disposable income, leaving little for surprise costs. If finances get tighter, she wonders if she’ll have to move back home.

“I don’t want to feel like I’m regressing in order to make ends meet,” said Favela, of Westmont, Illinois. “I just want to keep moving forward. I’m worried, is that going to be possible?”

The measure had been pushed by Republicans, but it garnered a handful of Democratic votes in the Senate as well.

“It is a shame for working families across the country that lawmakers continue to pursue this unprecedented attempt to deny critical relief to millions of their own constituents,” Biden said in a statement when announcing his veto.

Despite the veto, Biden’s plan still isn’t secure. The U.S. Supreme Court, which is dominated by a conservative majority, is reviewing a legal challenge that could eliminate the program. A decision is expected this summer.

If enacted, Biden’s plan would forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt for borrowers making less than $125,000 per year.

Student loan payments were paused at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, they will resume in August for anyone whose debt is not wiped out by Biden’s plan.

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In a statement, the FBI said it would produce the document in a secure location inside the U.S. Capitol for the Republican chairman of the House Oversight Committee, Rep. James Comer, and the panel’s top Democrat, Jamie Raskin of Maryland.

At issue is an internal FBI document known as an FD-1023, which agents use to record unverified tips and information they receive from confidential human sources. The FBI says such documents can contain uncorroborated and incomplete information, and that documenting the tip does not validate it.

“By offering to provide access to the requested document in combination with a briefing to offer context, the FBI has agreed in good faith to give the Committee all of the information it originally asked for and more,” the FBI said. “The commonsense protections the FBI has requested to maintain the confidentiality of that sensitive information are routinely employed both in response to congressional requests and in court in criminal proceedings to protect the physical safety of sources and the integrity of investigations.”

Comer responded to the FBI concession by suggesting it would not be sufficient to prevent him from moving forward with contempt, saying “anything short” of producing the document to the committee would not be in compliance with the subpoena. A contempt of Congress charge would require a full committee vote before going to the House floor.

Comer subpoenaed Wray earlier this month seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020.

In a May 3 letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, Comer said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

The White House has called the subpoena effort further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Biden family “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

There has been no suggestion that U.S.-made drones or munitions were used in the recent attacks on Moscow, and U.S. officials have repeatedly said that Ukraine has agreed not to use any American-provided weapons for attacks on Russian soil. The Kremlin blamed Kyiv for Tuesday’s attack, but Ukrainian officials had no direct comment.

But the new aid package comes at a tense moment in the war. The latest drone attack on Moscow follows Russia’s seizure of the eastern Ukrainian city Bakhmut after a nine-month battle that killed tens of thousands of people. Ukraine is also showing signs that its long-awaited spring counteroffensive may already be underway.

The Russian Defense Ministry said five drones were shot down in Moscow and the systems of three others were jammed, causing them to veer off course. President Vladimir Putin called it a “terrorist” act by Kyiv.

A U.S. defense official said the drone strikes would not affect the weapons aid packages the U.S. is providing Ukraine, to include drone ammunition. The official said the U.S. has committed to supporting Ukraine in its effort to defend the country and Ukraine had committed to not using the systems inside Russia, so the aid would likely continue unchanged.

All of the U.S. officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because the latest aid package has not yet been publicly announced.

U.S. officials did not provide details on the drone munitions in the new aid package or specify which unmanned aircraft would use them. The Defense Department has given Ukraine a variety of unmanned aircraft over the last year, for both surveillance and attacks, including at least two versions of the Switchblade, a so-called kamikaze drone that can loiter in the air and then explode into a target.

Other more sophisticated drones can drop munitions, but the U.S. has been reluctant to publicly share details about those.

Also included in the newest package will be munitions for Patriot missile batteries and the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), Stinger missiles for the Avenger system, mine-clearing equipment, anti-armor rounds, unguided Zuni aircraft rockets, night vision goggles, and about 30 million rounds of small arms ammunition, said the U.S. officials.

The aid greatly resembles other recent U.S. packages, which have focused on providing Ukraine more ammunition for the weapons systems it has and helping it prepare for a counteroffensive to push back against Russian gains over the past year. Ukrainian officials have not formally announced the launch of their much-anticipated counteroffensive, although some say it has already begun and the pace of attacks suggests that it’s underway.

Including the latest aid, the U.S. has committed more than $37.6 billion in weapons and other equipment to Ukraine since Russia attacked on Feb. 24, 2022. This latest package will be done under presidential drawdown authority, which allows the Pentagon to take weapons from its own stocks and quickly ship them to Ukraine, officials said.

Officials said the U.S. is expected to announce the aid as soon as Wednesday.

Tuesday’s strikes on Moscow were the second drone strikes on the city since May 3, when Russian officials said two drones targeted the Kremlin in what they portrayed as an attempt on Putin’s life. Ukraine denied it was behind that attack.

U.S. intelligence officials were still trying to ascertain if Ukraine had any involvement in or prior knowledge of Tuesday’s drone attack in Moscow, according to a U.S. official familiar with the matter who was not authorized to comment and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Last week, the Russian border region of Belgorod was the target of one of the most serious cross-border raids since the war began, with two far-right pro-Ukrainian paramilitary groups claiming responsibility.

The U.S. conveyed after that incident that American-made weaponry must not be used inside Russia, according to a U.S. official familiar with the sensitive communications. The message was “very clearly understood,” according to the official.

Officials in the southern Russian city of Krasnodar, near annexed Crimea, said two drones struck there on Friday, damaging residential buildings. Other drones have reportedly flown deep into Russia multiple times.

Ukrainian military analysts, though unable to confirm Kyiv had launched the drones against Moscow, said the attack may have involved UJ-22 drones, which are produced in Ukraine and have a maximum range of about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).

U.S. officials struck a delicate balance in responding to the drone strikes, reiterating support for Ukraine while stressing that the U.S. opposes Ukrainians using American weapons in Russia. They noted that Russia’s bombardment of Kyiv on Tuesday was the 17th round of attacks this month, “many of which have devastated civilian areas.”

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Lee reported from Oslo. Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani and Tara Copp contributed to this report.

Negotiators are now racing to finalize the bill’s text. McCarthy said the House will vote on the legislation on Wednesday, giving the Senate time to consider it ahead of the June 5 deadline to avoid a possible default.

While many details are unknown, both sides will be able to point to some victories. But some conservatives expressed early concerns that the deal doesn’t cut future deficits enough, while Democrats have been worried about proposed changes to work requirements in programs such as food stamps.

A look at what’s in and out of the deal, based on what’s known so far:

Two-Year Debt Increase, Spending Limits

The agreement would keep non-defense spending roughly flat in the 2024 fiscal year and increase it by 1% the following year, as well as provide for a two-year debt-limit increase — past the next presidential election in 2024. That’s according to a source familiar with the deal who provided details on the condition of anonymity.

Veterans Care

The agreement will fully fund medical care for veterans at the levels included in Biden’s proposed 2024 budget blueprint, including for a fund dedicated to veterans who have been exposed to toxic substances or environmental hazards. Biden sought $20.3 billion for the toxic exposure fund in his budget.

Work Requirements

Republicans had proposed boosting work requirements for able-bodied adults without dependents in certain government assistance programs. They said it would bring more people into the workforce, who would then pay taxes and help shore up key entitlement programs, namely Social Security and Medicare.

Democrats had roundly criticized the proposed changes, saying they would lead to fewer people able to afford food or health care without actually increasing job participation.

House Republicans had passed legislation that would create new work requirements for some Medicaid recipients, but that was left out of the final agreement.

However, the agreement would expand some work requirements for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, formerly known as food stamps. The agreement would raise the age for existing work requirements from 49 to 54, similar to the Republican proposal, but those changes would expire in 2030. And the White House said it would at the same time reduce the number of vulnerable people at all ages who are subject to the requirements

Speeding up Energy Projects

The deal puts in place changes in the the National Environmental Policy Act that will designate “a single lead agency” to develop environmental reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.

What Was Left Out

Republicans had sought to repeal Biden’s efforts to waive $10,000 to $20,000 in debt for nearly all borrowers who took out student loans. But the provision was a nonstarter for Democrats. The budget agreement keeps Biden’s student loan relief in place, though the Supreme Court will have the ultimate say on the matter.

The Supreme Court is dominated 6-3 by conservatives, and those justices’ questions in oral arguments showed skepticism about the legality of Biden’s student loans plan. A decision is expected before the end of June.

However, the agreement risks angering both Democratic and Republican sides with the concessions made to reach it. Negotiators agreed to some Republican demands for increased work requirements for recipients of food stamps that had sparked an uproar from House Democrats as a nonstarter.

Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval next week before a June 5 deadline.

The Democratic president and Republican speaker reached the agreement after the two spoke earlier Saturday evening by phone, said McCarthy. The country and the world have been watching and waiting for a resolution to a political standoff that threatened the U.S. and global economies.

“The agreement represents a compromise, which means not everyone gets what they want,” Biden said in a statement late Saturday night. “That’s the responsibility of governing,” he said.

Biden called the agreement “good news for the American people, because it prevents what could have been a catastrophic default and would have led to an economic recession, retirement accounts devastated, and millions of jobs lost.”

McCarthy in brief remarks at the Capitol, said that “we still have a lot of work to do.”

But the Republican speaker said: “I believe this is an agreement in principle that’s worthy of the American people.”

With the outlines of a deal in place, the legislative package could be drafted and shared with lawmakers in time for votes early next week in the House and later in the Senate.

Central to the package is a two-year budget deal that would hold spending flat for 2024 and impose limits for 2025 in exchange for raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.

The agreement would limit food stamp eligibility for able-bodied adults up to age 54, but Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and the homeless.

The two sides had also reached for an ambitious overhaul of federal permitting to ease development of energy projects and transmission lines. Instead, the agreement puts in place changes in the the National Environmental Policy Act that will designate “a single lead agency” to develop economic reviews, in hopes of streamlining the process.

The deal came together after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Congress that the United States could default on its debt obligations by June 5 — four days later than previously estimated — if lawmakers did not act in time to raise the federal debt ceiling. The extended “X-date” gave the two sides a bit of extra time as they scrambled for a deal.

Biden also spoke earlier in the day with Democratic leaders in Congress to discuss the status of the talks.

The Republican House speaker had gathered top allies behind closed doors at the Capitol as negotiators pushed for a deal that would avoid a first-ever government default while also making spending cuts that House Republicans are demanding.

But as another day dragged on with financial disaster looming closer, it had appeared some of the problems over policy issues that dogged talks all week remained unresolved.

Both sides have suggested one of the main holdups was a GOP effort to expand work requirements for recipients of food stamps and other federal aid programs, a longtime Republican goal that Democrats have strenuously opposed. The White House said the Republican proposals were “cruel and senseless.”

Biden has said the work requirements for Medicaid would be a nonstarter. He seemed potentially open to negotiating minor changes on food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, despite objections from rank-and-file Democrats.

McCarthy, who dashed out before the lunch hour Saturday and arrived back at the Capitol with a big box of takeout, declined to elaborate on those discussions. One of his negotiators, Louisiana Rep. Garret Graves, said there was “not a chance” that Republicans might relent on the work requirements issue.

Americans and the world were uneasily watching the negotiating brinkmanship that could throw the U.S. economy into chaos and sap world confidence in the nation’s leadership.

Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due next week.

Yellen said failure to act by the new date would “cause severe hardship to American families, harm our global leadership position and raise questions about our ability to defend our national security interests.”

The president, spending part of the weekend at Camp David, continued to talk with his negotiating team multiple times a day, signing off on offers and counteroffers.

Any deal would need to be a political compromise in a divided Congress. Many of the hard-right Trump-aligned Republicans in Congress have long been skeptical of the Treasury’s projections, and they are pressing McCarthy to hold out.

Lawmakers are not expected to return to work from the Memorial Day weekend before Tuesday, at the earliest, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting.

The Democratic-held Senate has largely stayed out of the negotiations, leaving the talks to Biden and McCarthy. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York has pledged to move quickly to send a compromise package to Biden’s desk.

Weeks of talks have failed to produce a deal in part because the Biden administration resisted for months on negotiating with McCarthy, arguing that the country’s full faith and credit should not be used as leverage to extract other partisan priorities.

But House Republicans united behind a plan to cut spending, narrowly passing legislation in late April that would raise the debt ceiling in exchange for the spending reductions.

Air Force Lt. Gen. Timothy Haugh, the current deputy commander of Cyber Command, would replace Army Gen. Paul Nakasone, who has led both organizations since May 2018 and was expected to step down this year, according to a notice sent by the Air Force this week and confirmed by a person familiar with the announcement. The person spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel matters not yet made public.

If confirmed, Haugh will take charge of highly influential U.S. efforts to bolster Ukraine’s cybersecurity and share information with Ukrainian forces fighting Russia’s invasion. He will also oversee programs to detect and stop foreign influence and interference in American elections, as well as those targeting criminals behind ransomware attacks that have shut down hospital systems and at one point a key U.S. fuel pipeline.

Politico first reported that Haugh was picked.

Haugh’s nomination to lead both NSA and Cyber Command reflects the White House’s intention to keep one person in charge of both organizations. That arrangement is known as a “dual-hat” posting.

Some key Republicans have long wanted to split the leadership, saying each organization is important enough to require a full-time leader. Nakasone has long advocated for keeping the dual hat, saying it gives him and future leaders access to more powers more efficiently.

The Biden administration established a small study group last year to review the leadership structure. The review signaled support for keeping the position as is.

An official familiar with the matter said the group’s review found that having a single head in charge of both agencies better mirrored how U.S. allies’ cyber and intelligence operations were structured and made it easier to act quickly on information — a critical aspect of countering cyberwarfare. The official spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity to be able to discuss sensitive matters.

The group also found that within the U.S., having a single head also streamlined decisions and enabled the U.S. to more quickly act on intelligence, rather than have the information move through the leadership of both structures before recommendations could be made on a response.

The group reviewed case studies of intelligence and cyber operations to determine whether the dual hat structure was necessary and briefed the defense secretary, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and relevant congressional committees on its findings, the official said.

According to a service biography, Haugh is a career signals intelligence officer and recipient of the Bronze Star, given to service members for heroism or outstanding achievement in a combat theater. He has been deputy commander at U.S. Cyber Command since August.

So Podesta was shocked to learn last year, as he reentered the federal government to work on climate issues for President Joe Biden, that the lines had never been built. They still hadn’t even received final regulatory approval.

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“These things get stuck and they don’t get unstuck,” Podesta said in an interview with The Associated Press.

Podesta is now the point person for untangling one of Biden’s most vexing challenges as he pursues ambitious reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. If the president cannot streamline the permitting process for power plants, transmission lines and other projects, the country is unlikely to have the infrastructure needed for a future powered by carbon-free electricity.

The issue has become an unlikely feature of high-stakes budget talks underway between the White House and House Republicans as they try to avoid a first-ever default on the country’s debt by the end of the month.

Whether a deal on permitting can be reached in time is unclear, with Republicans looking for ways to boost oil drilling and Democrats focused on clean energy. But its mere presence on the negotiating table is a sign of how political battle lines are shifting. Although American industry and labor unions have long chafed at these kinds of regulations, some environmentalists have now grown exasperated by red tape as well.

That represents a stark change for a movement that has been more dedicated to slowing development than championing it, and it has caused unease among longtime allies even as it creates the potential for new partnerships. Still, this transformation is core to Biden’s vision of hard-hat environmentalism, which promises that shifting away from fossil fuels will generate blue-collar jobs.

“We have to start building things again in America,” Podesta said. “We got too good at stopping things, and not good enough at building things.”

What gets built, of course, is the question that’s the central hurdle for any agreement.

The issue of permitting emerged last year during negotiations with Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat who was a key vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, far-reaching legislation that includes financial incentives for clean energy.

Manchin pushed a separate proposal that would make it easier to build infrastructure for renewable energy and fossil fuels. His focus has been the Mountain Valley Pipeline, which would carry natural gas through his home state.

Republicans called the legislation a “political payoff.” Liberal Democrats described it as a “dirty side deal.” Manchin’s idea stalled.

Nonetheless, Elizabeth Gore, senior vice president for political affairs at the Environmental Defense Fund, said the senator “gets a lot of credit for really elevating this.”

“It was his effort that really put this issue on the map,” she said.

Since then, the Capitol has been awash in proposals to alleviate permitting bottlenecks. House Republicans passed their own as part of budget legislation last month, aiming to increase production of oil, natural gas and coal. Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., recently introduced another proposal geared toward clean energy.

“I think there is a path forward,” Gore said, describing all the ideas “as stepping stones.”

Neil Bradley, executive vice president of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, was also optimistic.

“The hurdle isn’t whether people think it’s a good idea or not,” he said. “The hurdle is getting the details worked out.”

Despite broad interest in permitting changes, reaching a deal will likely involve trade-offs that are difficult for Democrats and environmentalists to stomach.

Republicans want to see more fossil fuels and, now that they control the House, no proposal will advance without their consent. But too many concessions to Republicans in the House could jeopardize support in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

Biden has frustrated environmentalists by approving Willow, an oil drilling project in an untouched swath of Alaskan wilderness. After Podesta finished a speech on permitting at a Washington think tank this month, activists rushed to block his vehicle with a white banner that said “end fossil fuels” in bold black letters.

Podesta argues that it’s impossible to immediately phase out oil and gas, and he said the status quo won’t suffice when it comes to building clean energy infrastructure. He points to federal data analyzed by the Brookings Institution that found permitting transmission lines can take seven years, while natural gas pipelines take less than half that time.

He was circumspect when asked about where the negotiations may lead.

“There is bipartisan interest in the topic,” Podesta said. “Where any of that ends, I can’t predict.”

A deal could bolster Biden’s political coalition by easing tension between between environmentalists and labor unions, which have often been frustrated by objections to projects that would lead to jobs.

“They’ve unnecessarily taken food off the table of my members,” said Sean McGarvey, president of the North America’s Building Trades Unions.

The relationship with environmentalists “could turn into an alliance depending on how this process ends,” he said, but “we’ve got to do some good business to see if we’re inviting each other for barbecues and crab picks.”

Other factions of the green movement have already expressed frustration.

Brett Hartl, government affairs director for the Center for Biological Diversity, said the administration made a mistake by allowing Manchin’s proposal to be a starting point. The White House, he said, “negotiated away the game at the beginning and put the football on the 2-yard line.”

He also criticized Podesta’s approach to permitting.

“He’s dogmatically saying that environmentalists are the problem here,” he said. “It’s easy to caricature environmental legislation as the boogeyman.”

Historians trace the American regulatory system to a backlash against massive infrastructure initiatives in the middle of the 20th century, such as the interstate highway system and a series of dams. The projects raised concerns about environmental impacts and left local communities feeling steamrolled. More fears about ecological damage were sparked by an oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, and fires on the polluted Cuyahoga River in Ohio.

The result was the National Environmental Policy Act, signed by President Richard Nixon in 1970 to require federal agencies to consider the environmental ramifications of their decisions. State-level laws, such as the California Environmental Quality Act, proliferated at the same time.

“We have a system that works for what it was designed to do,” said Christy Goldfuss, chief policy impact officer at the Natural Resource Defense Council. “What we’re looking at doing is optimizing that system for the future we need. And that’s a fundamentally different conversation than anything we’ve had before.”

“It’s an incredibly difficult shift to make for the environmental movement,” she added. “And I don’t think everybody is going to make it. Some organizations are going to continue to stand in the way of development.”

And what about that transmission lines in the Southwest that Podesta was counting on?

The goal is to span about 520 miles, carrying electricity from a series of turbines in New Mexico that’s being billed as the largest wind project in the hemisphere. The lines were rerouted to satisfy the Department of Defense, which tests weapons in the area, but local conservationists still say that natural habitats will be threatened by construction.

On Thursday, nearly two decades after the initial proposal, the federal government announced it had approved the project.

Hoping to avert an outcome that would rattle the global economy and prove to be a boon to Beijing, Biden began his third day in Japan at the annual meeting of the world’s most powerful democracies with a briefing by staff on the latest fits and starts in the showdown over how to raise the federal debt limit.

The president on Saturday was also squeezing in meetings aimed at challenging China’s buildout across the Indo-Pacific, including with the so-called Quad partnership made up of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India.

The Quad members originally had been scheduled to meet in Sydney next week, but rescheduled their meeting for the sidelines of the G7 to allow Biden to return to Washington earlier on Sunday in hopes of finalizing a deal to increase the debt ceiling before the U.S. runs out of cash to pay its bills.

The shortened trip has reinforced a fundamental tension shaping Biden’s presidency: As he has tried to signal to the world that the U.S. is reclaiming the mantle of global leadership, at key moments, domestic dramas keep getting in the way.

The president has largely stayed out of the public eye at the summit, forgoing big public statements and leaving Friday’s leader dinner early. He’s been spending time instead by a video monitor in a room next to his hotel suite, where aides in Washington have been keeping him apprised of the back and forth of debt limit talks.

National security adviser Jake Sullivan acknowledged that world leaders have been pressing Biden about the debt limit standoff in Washington. But press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that while there was intense interest in how the president would resolve a domestic showdown that has geopolitical ramifications, there was no panic — at least not yet.

“It’s not a hair-on-fire type of situation,” she said.

Also on the margins of the summit, Biden met with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in lieu of what had been a planned visit to his country later this week for the Quad summit. U.S. officials said the trip would be rescheduled, and Biden has invited Albanese to Washington for a state visit as consolation for change-up.

Biden apologized for skipping Australia but Albanese said he understood the circumstances.

“I would have done exactly the same thing,” he told Biden, adding, “I’m very much looking forward to the state visit.”

The leaders signed a compact pledging to deepen their partnership on developing the raw materials used in clean energy technologies — as they each seek to move supply away from reliance on China. They also issued a joint statement outlining new areas of cooperation in space, trade and defense.

The president was also dispatching Secretary of State Antony Blinken to fill his spot at a summit of Pacific Island nations in Papua New Guinea on Monday. That presidential stop, too, was scrapped in order to get Biden back to Washington more quickly.

Biden’s visit would have been the first by an American president to the country. Pacific island nations are being aggressively courted by the U.S. and China as the two superpowers compete for influence in parts of the world where shipping lanes are vital.

In Hiroshima, Biden and other world leaders were set to agree on a shared framework for improving their own economic resilience — a recognition that high levels of trade with China have become more of a risk than an opportunity for mature economies.

Sullivan said that the G7 leaders would acknowledge that “we do seek to cooperate with China on matters of mutual interest. And also that we will work to address our significant concerns that we have with China in a range of areas.” He repeated a phrase often used by G7 leaders that the group is looking to “de-risk, not decouple from China.

“The belief is they are delaying any move because of the abortion issue,” one U.S. official said, referring to the White House.

Another U.S. official said, “This is all about abortion politics.”

The White House directed the Air Force last December to conduct a review of the process that led to the Trump administration’s decision to move Space Command’s headquarters from Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama. The review was ordered up in the months after Alabama’s law banning nearly all abortions, including in cases of rape and incest, went into effect last summer. The law is considered among the most restrictive in the U.S.

It followed two previous, extensive reviews that took place after President Joe Biden took office that found there was no improper political influence on the process that awarded the headquarters to Alabama. Just days before leaving office, Donald Trump had announced Alabama would be home to Spacecom’s headquarters. He later said he was “single-handedly” responsible for the state’s selection over others that were under consideration, but the review did not support that claim.

Biden administration officials have signaled privately to Pentagon officials and lawmakers that they’re looking to reverse the Alabama decision over concerns about operational disruptions that moving Spacecom’s headquarters, which is currently located in Colorado Springs, Colorado, could bring.

The White House said Alabama’s abortion ban was not a factor in its ongoing review of the decision to build Spacecom’s permanent headquarters there. A White House official said that access to reproductive health care does not weigh in to making the decision about location.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.

The mobile app CBP One was launched by the Biden administration in October 2020 and allowed migrants to seek humanitarian exceptions to Title 42 — the COVID-era public health order that allowed federal health officials the authority to turn away asylum-seekers due to the pandemic. 

The app also allowed people from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela with sponsors in the U.S. to begin the process to get paroled into the country for two years.

In February, the Biden administration announced that migrants seeking asylum would now be required to use the app to book appointments online with an immigration officer before they can make an asylum claim psychically at the border.

What is CBP One App?

According to CBP, the app was launched on October 28, 2020, and allowed users to book appointments to seek asylum in the U.S. Applications are available in English and Spanish.

The app cannot be used within the U.S., but users must be near a U.S. border crossing to access its features.

Such GPS features have raised concerns among immigration rights activists, although the federal government has said it will not use the data for surveillance. The app also has facial recognition capabilities.

Since its launch, the app has been plagued with technical issues as thousands of migrants seeking appointments all at once quickly overloaded the system, causing many to be unable to log in, enter their information and select appointment dates.

What Changes Will the App Have Once Title 42 Expires

Beginning May 10, CBP will allow users to book appointments in the app anytime between 12 p.m. and 11 a.m. (EST) the next day, instead of only at 6 a.m. each day in the older version.

Once notified that the appointment has been booked, users will have 23 hours to confirm the appointment.

Beginning May 12, the app will also increase the total number of appointments available each day to around 1,000, CBP said. The agency will also gradually increase the number of appointments available as operations become more efficient.

The president is showing an increased willingness to discuss possible budget restraints, yet he insisted anew that any talks on that should occur without the risk of the federal government being unable to pay its bills. As he spoke, negotiators from the White House and Congress met for two hours privately at the Capitol to discuss a path forward.

“America is the strongest economy in the world, but we should be cutting spending and lowering the deficit without a needless crisis,” Biden said Wednesday.

His words were a challenge to House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who met Tuesday with Biden at the White House, declaring afterward that sharp spending cuts were required for House Republicans to increase the debt limit and stave off the risk of default.

Biden laid into that GOP proposal on Wednesday in Valhalla, New York, saying spending cuts recently passed by the Republican House could hurt schools and the country’s “sacred” obligations to military veterans.

The faceoff comes as the government is rapidly bumping up against its legal borrowing authority, meaning that it may not be able to pay its bills as early as the start of next month unless lawmakers agree to lift the limit.

Wednesday’s events marked a preview of what the coming 18 months will look like for Biden as he performs his presidential duties while also trying to campaign in the 2024 election. He went to a region represented by first-term Republican Rep. Mike Lawler, whose district Biden won in 2020. Yet the president was gracious to the congressman, saying that Lawler is “the kind of Republican I was used to dealing with.”

Biden used the trip to trumpet recent economic progress — pointing to the 12.7 million jobs created during his term and a fresh focus on domestic manufacturing — while warning that an unprecedented debt default would threaten millions of jobs and raise the prospect of a recession. Yet GOP lawmakers blame his coronavirus relief spending for the high inflation that has many voters already worrying about the U.S. economy.

Back in Washington, senior White House officials and congressional aides were starting to discuss a path to avert a painful debt default that could come as soon as June 1. Negotiators are racing to strike a budget deal that could unlock a vote on separate debt ceiling legislation. Biden and Capitol Hill leaders are to meet again on Friday.

But McCarthy has shown few signs that he and other House Republicans were willing to budge from their debt limit proposal, leaving Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to warn the speaker is being “reckless.”

Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who has stepped aside as McCarthy tries to negotiate with the White House, has assured, “America is not going to default.”

McConnell has said that the past several times the debt ceiling has been raised, Congress has attached priorities that were agreed to with the White House, including a deal negotiated between then-President Donald Trump and former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“There has to be an agreement between the speaker and the president — and there will be,” McConnell said.

In his remarks Tuesday, Biden raised the specter of cuts to veterans’ care, an issue that has become particularly sensitive in the back-and-forth rhetoric between the White House and congressional Republicans. When the president suggested during the meeting on Tuesday that the House GOP plan could end up cutting benefits to veterans, McCarthy told reporters that he shot back that was a “lie.” But Biden disputed that it was a lie, saying that the across-the-board cuts would affect veterans’ care and other vital domestic programs.

The president has countered the GOP plan with his own budget proposal, which could save $800 billion through changes to government programs. Of that sum, Biden said that $200 billion over 10 years would come from expanding Medicare’s ability to negotiate on prescription drug prices. He said by contrast that the House Republican bill could jeopardize medical care for U.S. families, while his deficit savings would lower costs.

“Would you rather cut Big Pharma or cut health care for Americans?” Biden asked. “These are real world choices.”

After his speech, Biden told reporters he was still holding out hope for a long term debt limit increase. He said he hadn’t been briefed yet on what lawmakers were discussing on the budget. But when he meets with them on Friday, he said he wants specifics of what spending cuts Republicans hope to make. “What are they going to cut?” he asked.

Biden is also scheduled to spend a week abroad on a trip to Japan, Australia and Papua New Guinea later this month. He said postponing his travel is “possible but not likely.”

With debt talks showing minimal progress, the White House hopes that Biden’s public outreach — starting in a congressional district that will be key for Democrats seeking to wrest House control back from Republicans next year — increases pressure on GOP lawmakers who can’t afford politically to alienate moderate voters.

Rep. Lawler, as one of 18 House Republicans hailing from a congressional district won by Biden, is a prime target for the White House.

Still, Lawler accepted the invitation from the White House, “maybe to their surprise,” the lawmaker said in an interview Tuesday. He said it was a “little disappointing” that Biden was spending his time traveling to his district rather than negotiating with other leaders in Washington.

“He told me he wasn’t here to put any pressure on me,” Lawler told reporters after the president spoke. “Look, I showed up because I believe very strongly that we all have an obligation to work together.”

House Republicans, in their debt measure that passed in April, are aiming for $4.5 trillion in deficit savings through cuts in spending, eliminating tax breaks for investing in clean energy, and undoing the Biden administration’s proposal that would forgive student loan debt. The White House has made it clear that Biden would veto that legislation.

Democrats, who control the Senate by 51-49, are calling for a “clean” debt limit hike without any conditions such as spending cuts, but any such measure would require the support of at least nine Republican senators, and most of them say they will oppose doing so.

While in New York on Wednesday, Biden, who formalized his reelection campaign on April 25, also was holding a pair of fundraisers.

The forces will mainly be used to help monitor and watch the border as pandemic-era restrictions on asylum end, and will have no contact with the migrants.

More than 900 more soldiers, Marines and airmen will follow around the end of the month, as the Biden administration bolsters efforts to monitor the border and process incoming migrants. The initial plan calls for a 90-day deployment of the active duty forces, because they can be moved much more quickly to the border than National Guard or Reserve troops.

The Pentagon has said that some of the active duty forces could be replaced over time by reservists, who need more time to deploy.

According to a defense official, most of the active duty troops will be doing monitoring and detection, which are done from trucks positioned along the border. They will replace border agents who normally do those jobs, freeing them up for enforcement and other tasks. In addition to monitoring the border, the troops will also do data entry and warehousing support.

The defense official spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet made public.

U.S. and international law give migrants the right to seek asylum, but the U.S. has used Title 42 of a public health law to expel migrants 2.8 million times since March 2020 on the grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Those restrictions are set to expire Thursday.

Nearly all of the troops arriving at the border this week are Army soldiers, according to the official. The second group of more than 900, which will arrive later, will include about 300 soldiers, 550 Marines and 75 airmen, the official said. The soldiers will include military police units.

The Marine Corps contingent will come from Camp Pendleton, California, and Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, said Marine Maj. Jim Stenger. The exact timing of their arrival was not given.

Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder, Pentagon press secretary, said that at least some of the troops will be used near El Paso, Texas.

Roughly 2,500 National Guard members are already spread across all sectors of the border, providing an array of support to Customs and Border Protection, including monitoring, detection and air transportation. The new infusion of troops will be doing some of that, as well as administrative and data-entry duties to free up border agents to deal more directly with the migrants. The military troops do not do any law enforcement activities.

Even with the COVID-19 asylum restrictions still in place, the administration has seen record numbers of people crossing the border, and President Joe Biden has responded by cracking down on those who cross illegally and by creating new pathways meant to offer alternatives to a dangerous and often deadly journey.

The Transportation Department said it will let Chinese airlines increase from eight to 12 U.S.-China round trips per week. That is still a fraction of the flights that were allowed between the two countries before the pandemic.

The Transportation Department said in a filing Wednesday that it was acting in response to China’s announcement in late December that it would lift certain restrictions on international passenger flights.

China’s move allowed American Airlines to add two weekly flights in March between Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport and Shanghai, raising the combined total of round trips between the countries by U.S. carriers to 12 per week.

China announced in March that after a three-year hiatus it was reopening its borders to revive tourism and boost its economy. China also relaxed visa rules to allow more outbound group tours by Chinese citizens.

American, United Airlines and Delta Air Lines operate flights to China.

Airlines for America, a trade group representing the major U.S. carriers, declined to comment.

The White House said it was the latest example in the yearslong series of “unfounded, unproven” political attacks against Biden by Republicans ”floating anonymous innuendo.”

Kentucky Rep. James Comer, chairman of the House Oversight Committee and Accountability, is seeking a specific FBI form from June 2020 that is a report of conversations or interactions with a confidential source. Comer, in a letter to Wray with Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, said that “it has come to our attention” that the bureau has such a document that “describes an alleged criminal scheme” involving Biden and a foreign national “relating to the exchange of money for policy decisions” when Biden was vice president and includes “a precise description” about it.

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The subpoena seeks all so-called FD-1023 forms and accompanying attachments and documents.

The lawmakers used the word “alleged” three times in the opening paragraph of the letter and offered no evidence of the veracity of the accusations or any details about what they contend are “highly credible unclassified whistleblower disclosures.”

Comer and Grassley said those “disclosures” demand further investigation, and they want to know whether the FBI investigated and, if so, what agents found.

To the White House, the subpoena is further evidence of how congressional Republicans long “have been lobbing unfounded, unproven, politically motivated attacks” against the Bidens “without offering evidence for their claims or evidence of decisions influenced by anything other than U.S. interests.”

A White House spokesperson, Ian Sams, said Biden “has offered an unprecedented level of transparency” about his personal finances with the public release of a total of 25 years of tax returns.

The FBI and Justice Department confirmed receiving the subpoena but declined to comment further. The president’s personal lawyers had no comment.

Republicans claim they have amassed evidence in recent years that raise questions about whether Biden and his family have used their public positions for private gain.

House Republicans have used the power of their new majority to aggressively investigate Joe Biden and Hunter Biden’s business dealings, including examining foreign payments and other aspects of the family’s finances. Comer has obtained thousands of pages of the Biden family’s financial records through subpoenas to the Treasury Department and various financial institutions since January.

Comer has not revealed much about the findings of his investigation so far. Most recently, Comer claimed one deal involving the Biden family resulted in a profit of over $1 million in more than 15 incremental payments from a Chinese company through a third party.

Both Comer and Grassley have accused both the FBI and Justice Department of stonewalling their investigations and politicizing the agency’s yearslong investigation into Hunter Biden’s taxes.

Last month, an IRS special agent sought whistleblower protections from Congress to disclose a “failure to mitigate clear conflicts of interest in the ultimate disposition” of a criminal investigation related to the younger Biden’s taxes and whether he made a false statement in connection with a gun purchase.

The Democratic administration plans to announce an investment of $140 million to establish seven new AI research institutes, administration officials told reporters in previewing the effort.

In addition, the White House Office of Management and Budget is expected to issue guidance in the next few months on how federal agencies can use AI tools. There will also be an independent commitment by top AI developers to participate in a public evaluation of their systems in August at the Las Vegas hacker convention DEF CON.

Harris and administration officials on Thursday plan to discuss the risks they see in current AI development with the CEOs of Alphabet, Anthropic, Microsoft and OpenAI. The government leaders’ message to the companies is that they have a role to play in reducing the risks and that they can work together with the government.

Authorities in the United Kingdom also are looking at the risks associated with AI. Britain’s competition watchdog said it’s opening a review of the AI market, focusing on the technology underpinning chatbots like ChatGPT, which was developed by OpenAI.

President Joe Biden noted last month that AI can help to address disease and climate change but also could harm national security and disrupt the economy in destabilizing ways.

The release of the ChatGPT chatbot this year has led to increased debate about AI and the government’s role with the technology. Because AI can generate human-like writing and fake images, there are ethical and societal concerns.

OpenAI has been secretive about the data its AI systems have been trained upon. That makes it hard for those outside the company to understand why its ChatGPT is producing biased or false answers to requests or to address concerns about whether it’s stealing from copyrighted works.

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Companies worried about being liable for something in their training data might also not have incentives to properly track it, said Margaret Mitchell, chief ethics scientist at AI startup Hugging Face.

“I think it might not be possible for OpenAI to actually detail all of its training data at a level of detail that would be really useful in terms of some of the concerns around consent and privacy and licensing,” Mitchell said in an interview Tuesday. “From what I know of tech culture, that just isn’t done.”

Theoretically, at least, some kind of disclosure law could force AI providers to open up their systems to more third-party scrutiny. But with AI systems being built atop previous models, it won’t be easy for companies to provide greater transparency after the fact.

“I think it’s really going to be up to the governments to decide whether this means that you have to trash all the work you’ve done or not,” Mitchell said. “Of course, I kind of imagine that at least in the U.S., the decisions will lean towards the corporations and be supportive of the fact that it’s already been done. It would have such massive ramifications if all these companies had to essentially trash all of this work and start over.”

About an hour before Prospect Park Mayor Mohamed Khairullah was set to arrive at the White House for the Eid-al-Fitr celebration marking the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, he got a call from the White House stating that he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the event where President Joe Biden delivered remarks to hundreds of guests, according to the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).

“I received a call from a gentleman by the name of Evans from the White House social office. We started with small talk, then he informed me that the Secret Service did not clear me to attend the White House Eid celebration,” said Khairullah at a Tuesday press conference.

It was a shock to the Syrian-born mayor of the Passaic County town, who Gov. Phil Murphy described as a dear friend. The pair was seen in a picture from over the weekend at the governor’s mansion for a state Eid celebration.

“I hope this was a misunderstanding. I hope this says nothing about our Muslim community,” Murphy said, adding that he has reached out to the White House to try and get to the bottom of what happened.

When asked if the state police vets visitors to the governor’s mansion, Murphy confirmed they do if they think it necessary — but the governor said he never felt as if he needed to do so with Khairullah.

The New Jersey chapter of CAIR pointed to a heavily redacted document from the federal government that was leaked several years ago, which has Khairullah’s name on it. It may stem from an incident four years ago, in which Khairullah and his young son were detained for three hours at JFK Airport — and his phone confiscated for nearly two weeks — after returning from a family visit to Turkey.

While it was not clear how he got on the supposed watch list, Khairullah went several times to Syria to help family members and others who were made refugees by the Arab Spring revolt in that country. Since that time, the mayor has helped other groups in the U.S. involved in humanitarian aid as well.

Khairullah was elected to a fifth term as the borough’s mayor in January.

“Our crimes are our names, our ethnicities and religion. I call on President Biden to correct the injustices from the previous administrations by disbanding this illegal list and correcting ill-advised and racist policies,” said Khairullah. “I have no reason to believe I am an unsafe person…Incidents like this make me question our progress.”

CAIR is asking for the White House and the Secret Service to apologize for what occurred.

Secret Service said in a statement to NBC New York that it regretted the inconvenience, and added it cannot comment on specific protective methods used to conduct White House security. A source familiar with the federal watch list told NBC New York that the Secret Service does have discretion on whether to allow visitors there, even if they have a red flag. However, there may be classified information on file that gives the agency no other choice under its rules but to block them.

Selaedin Maksut, CAIR-NJ executive director, called the move “wholly unacceptable and insulting.”

“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut said.

The group said Khairullah helped the New Jersey Democratic Party compile names of local Muslim leadership to invite to the White House Eid celebration and over the weekend was a guest at event at the New Jersey governor’s mansion.

The White House declined to comment.

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Shortly before Mayor Mohamed Khairullah was set to arrive at the White House for the Eid-al-Fitr celebration, he received a call from the White House stating that he had not been cleared for entry by the Secret Service and could not attend the celebration where Biden delivered remarks to hundreds of guests, according to the New Jersey chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

U.S. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi confirmed that Khairullah was not allowed into the White House complex, but declined to detail why. Khairullah was elected to a fifth term as the borough’s mayor in January.

“While we regret any inconvenience this may have caused, the mayor was not allowed to enter the White House complex this evening,” Guglielmi said in a statement. “Unfortunately we are not able to comment further on the specific protective means and methods used to conduct our security operations at the White House.”

Selaedin Maksut, CAIR-NJ executive director, called the move “wholly unacceptable and insulting.”

“If these such incidents are happening to high-profile and well-respected American-Muslim figures like Mayor Khairullah, this then begs the question: what is happening to Muslims who do not have the access and visibility that the mayor has?” Maksut said.

Khairullah, who has previously done humanitarian work in Syria and Bangladesh, was previously stopped by authorities and interrogated at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York for three hours and questioned about whether he knew any terrorists, according to Dina Sayedahmed, a spokesman for CAIR-NJ.

The group said Khairullah helped the New Jersey Democratic Party compile names of local Muslim leadership to invite to the White House Eid celebration and over the weekend was a guest at event at the New Jersey governor’s mansion.

The White House declined to comment.

Kim Yo Jong also lobbed personal insults toward U.S. President Joe Biden, who after a summit with South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol on Wednesday stated that any North Korean nuclear attack on the U.S. or its allies would “result in the end of whatever regime” took such action.

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Biden’s meeting with Yoon in Washington came amid heightened tensions in the Korean Peninsula as the pace of both the North Korean weapons demonstrations and the combined U.S.-South Korean military exercises have increased in a cycle of tit-for-tat.

Since the start of 2022, North Korea has test-fired around 100 missiles, including multiple demonstrations of intercontinental ballistic missiles designed to reach the U.S. mainland and a slew of short-range launches the North described as simulated nuclear strikes on South Korea.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is widely expected to up the ante in coming weeks or months as he continues to accelerate a campaign aimed at cementing the North’s status as a nuclear power and eventually negotiating U.S. economic and security concessions from a position of strength.

During their summit, Biden and Yoon announced new nuclear deterrence efforts that call for periodically docking U.S. nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades and bolstering training between the two countries. They also committed to plans for bilateral presidential consultations in the event of a North Korean nuclear attack, the establishment of a nuclear consultative group and improved sharing of information on nuclear and strategic weapons operation plans.

In her comments published on state media, Kim Yo Jong said the U.S.-South Korean agreement reflected the allies’ “most hostile and aggressive will of action” against the North and will push regional peace and security into “more serious danger.”

Kim, who is one of her brother’s top foreign policy officials, said the summit further strengthened the North’s conviction to enhance its nuclear arms capabilities. She said it would be especially important for the North to perfect the “second mission of the nuclear war deterrent,” in an apparent reference to the country’s escalatory nuclear doctrine that calls for preemptive nuclear strikes over a broad range of scenarios where it may perceive its leadership as under threat.

She lashed out at Biden over his blunt warning that North Korean nuclear aggression would result in the end of its regime, calling him senile and “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.” However, she said the North wouldn’t simply dismiss his words as a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”

“When we consider that this expression was personally used by the president of the U.S., our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an after-storm,” she said.

“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become in direct proportion to them.”

She called Yoon a “fool” over his efforts to strengthen South Korea’s defense in conjunction with its alliance with the United States and bolster the South’s own conventional missile capabilities, saying he was putting his absolute trust in the U.S. despite getting only “nominal” promises in return.

“The pipe dream of the U.S. and (South) Korea will henceforth be faced with the entity of more powerful strength,” she said.

South Korea’s Unification Ministry, which handles inter-Korean affairs, described her comments as “absurd” and insisted that they convey the North’s “nervousness and frustration” over the allies’ efforts to strengthen nuclear deterrence.

Kim Yo Jong’s comments toward Biden were reminiscent of when her brother called former U.S. President Donald Trump a “mentally deranged U.S. dotard” while they exchanged verbal threats during a North Korean testing spree in 2017 that included flight tests of ICBMs and the North’s sixth nuclear test.

Kim Jong Un later shifted toward diplomacy and held his first summit with Trump in Singapore in June 2018, where they issued aspirational goals for a nuclear-free Korean Peninsula without describing when and how it would occur.

But their diplomacy never recovered from the collapse of their second summit in February 2019 in Vietnam, where the Americans rejected North Korean demands for major sanctions relief in exchange for a limited surrender of their nuclear capabilities.

Kim Yo Jong did not specify the actions the North is planning to take in response to the outcome of the U.S.-South Korea summit.

Kim Dong-yub, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, said the North will likely dial up military exercises involving its purported nuclear-capable missiles to demonstrate pre-emptive strike capabilities. The North may also stage tests of submarine-launched ballistic missile systems in response to the U.S. plans to send nuclear-armed submarines to the South, he said.

Kim Jong Un said this month that the country has built its first military spy satellite, which will be launched at an unspecified date. The launch would almost certainly be seen by its rivals as a banned test of long-range missile technology.

In March, he called for his nuclear scientists to increase production of weapons-grade material to make bombs to put on his increasing range of nuclear-capable missiles, as the North unveiled what appeared to be a new warhead possibly designed to fit on a variety of delivery systems. That raised questions on whether the North was moving closer to its next nuclear test, which U.S. and South Korean officials have been predicting for months.

North Korea has long described the United States’ regular military exercises with South Korea as invasion rehearsals, although the allies described those drills as defensive. Many experts say Kim likely uses his rivals’ military drills as a pretext to advance his weapons programs and solidify his domestic leadership amid economic troubles.

Facing growing North Korean threats, Yoon has been seeking stronger reassurances from the United States that it would swiftly and decisively use its nuclear weapons if the South comes under a North Korean nuclear attack.

His government has also been expanding military training with the U.S., which included the allies’ biggest field exercises in years last month and separate drills involving a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group and advanced warplanes, including nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and F-35 fighter jets.

The effort includes opening processing centers outside the United States for people fleeing violence and poverty to apply to fly in legally and settle in the United States, Spain or Canada. The first processing centers will open in Guatemala and Colombia, with others expected to follow.

The administration also plans to swiftly screen migrants seeking asylum at the border itself, quickly deport those deemed as not being qualified, and penalizing people who cross illegally into the U.S. or illegally through another country on their way to the U.S. border.

But it is unclear whether the measures will do much to slow the tide of migrants fleeing countries marred by political and economic strife. Further increasing the pressure is the looming end of public health rules instituted amid the pandemic that allowed for quickly expelling many migrants and set to expire on May 11.

“This is a hemispheric challenge that demands hemispheric solutions,” said Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas during a news conference as he laid out how the U.S. is working with other countries in the region.

Mayorkas also warned that migrants and human smugglers should not interpret the upcoming deadline to mean that everyone should come: ”Let me be clear, our border is not open and will not be open after May 11.”

Immigration has vexed Biden throughout his presidency, with top GOP leaders hammering him as soft on border security. Immigrant advocates, meanwhile, argue that the president is abandoning humanitarian efforts with stricter measures meant to keep migrants from coming illegally.

The topic isn’t going away. As he announces his 2024 reelection bid, Biden is trying to strike a balance that could be difficult to achieve, particularly if crowds of migrants end up in border facilities after May 11.

The administration has also repeatedly pointed to Congress, saying it has been unable to come to an agreement on comprehensive immigration reform.

The efforts announced Thursday build on a carrot-and-stick approach to immigration that the administration has been increasingly using, whereby they offer incentives like humanitarian parole visas for hundreds of thousands of people and harsh consequences for many who come to the border. Those have so far included:

— Processing centers: The administration will open migration centers in numerous countries starting with Guatemala and Colombia to be run by the International Organization of Migration and the U.N. agency tasked with helping refugees. There potential migrants can get information on various ways they can migrate to the United States, such as applying for refugee status or a worker program. The administration said both Canada and Spain have said they’d take migrants referred from these centers, although no specific numbers were given. The U.S. also said it would double the number of refugees taken from Central and South America. No specific number was given there, either, but during fiscal year 2023 the U.S. pledged to accept 15,000 refugees from Latin America and the Caribbean.

— Stiffer, faster penalties: The administration says it will process asylum-seekers who come to the southern border faster — in days, not weeks — with the goal of sending people back quickly who don’t clear initial screenings. Those removed from the country would be barred from entering the U.S. for five years. The administration says it aims to dramatically increase flights on which migrants are sent home from the U.S. Officials also said a previously announced rule which would limit asylum for those who pass through another country without first seeking protection there, or who enter the U.S. illegally, is also set to go into effect before the May 11 deadline passes.

— No family detention: The administration stopped short of saying they’d detain families crossing the border illegally. That step would have sparked widespread condemnation from immigration advocates and Biden allies. But they said they’d monitor families through things like curfews and GPS monitoring and stressed that families would be removed if found unqualified to stay in the U.S.

— Family reunification: DHS is creating a new family reunification parole process for people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Colombia. And the agency is “modernizing” the existing family reunification process for people from Cuba and Haiti.

— Smuggler crackdown: Mayorkas stressed efforts to more strictly combat smuggling networks that facilitate travel from across the region to the U.S. border.

Andrew Selee, who heads the Migration Policy Institute, said the plans announced are the “clearest we’ve seen of a strategy” from the administration on how to deal with immigration. But he cautioned that it would still require a lot of time and commitment for the plan to be successful.

“I think it’s the closest we’ve seen to a comprehensive plan,” Selee said. He said the administration was betting a lot on the processing centers, and said potentially they can serve to give people information about migration options in a way that a U.S. Embassy, for example, cannot.

But Selee said they would have to be closely linked to local networks in various countries so prospective migrants know about them, and so local organization who know the people who are most desperate to flee can refer them to the centers.

Thursday’s announcement was met with criticism by many immigration advocates, including members of the president’s own party who have been troubled by Biden’s increasing efforts to make it harder to access asylum at the border.

Sen. Bob Menendez, a New Jersey Democrat, said he was “disappointed” in the plan, especially after spending recent weeks urging the White House to adopt a different immigration strategy, including extending temporary protected status to people from several Central American countries. He also cast doubt on how parts of the plan would be implemented.

“The question is, how are we going to set up those processing centers? What are the entities that will be there to make sure that a person is being processed in the appropriate way? What are we doing with third countries to be able to accept individuals and make sure that they are safe?” said Menendez.

Many groups that work to assist refugees and other migrants said they welcomed some aspects of the president’s plan, such as allowing in more refugees from South and Central America and speeding up family reunification efforts. But they said that shouldn’t come at the expense of people applying for asylum at the border.

The International Refugee Assistance Project said in a statement that it is concerned at the lack of details in the plan, how it will be implemented and where the money will come from. The group also said that the U.S.’s refugee resettlement program is still struggling to recover after cuts during the Trump administration.

“We have more questions than answers,” said Lacy Broemel, a project policy analyst.

Others, including right-leaning groups already intensely critical of Biden, lambasted the plan, saying that faster processing of migrants simply means they’re entering the country faster. The Federation for American Immigration Reform said the initiatives amount ”to a massive and illegal scheme designed to accommodate unlimited numbers of migrants.”

___

Spagat reported from San Diego. Stephen Groves in Washington and Valeria Gonzales in McAllen, Texas, contributed to this report.

___

This story was first published on April 27, 2023. It was published again on April 28, 2023, to correct the name of an organization to the International Refugee Assistance Project, not the International Refugee Assistance Program.

WASHINGTON —  The Biden administration on Thursday announced a first round of sanctions targeting Russia and Iran for engaging in hostage-taking and the wrongful detention of U.S. citizens abroad.

The U.S. sanctions take aim at Russia’s Federal Security Service, often known as the FSB, and Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Intelligence Organization, or IRGC-IO, for “being responsible for or complicit in, directly or indirectly engaged in or responsible for ordering, controlling or otherwise directing the wrongful detention of a U.S. national abroad.”

Two senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity per ground rules established by the White House, said Thursday’s sanctions were underway before Russian authorities detained American citizen Evan Gershkovich last month.

Gershkovich, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, was arrested in late March on allegations of espionage. The State Department has formally moved to declare Gershkovich’s detention a wrongful one, which opens up additional resources to secure his release.

The Biden administration and leadership at The Wall Street Journal have denied Russian claims that Gershkovich is a spy.

The administration has identified at least two American citizens who are wrongfully detained in Russia and three in Iran, along with one legal permanent U.S. resident.

One administration official said relevant families were briefed on the new sanctions ahead of Thursday’s announcement.

The Department of Treasury also announced sanctions on the following individuals in Iran:

• Ruhollah Bazghandi, an IRGC-IO counterintelligence official, has been involved in the detention of foreign prisoners held in Iran. The department says his work for the IRGC-IO includes assassination plots against journalists, Israeli citizens and others deemed enemies of Iran.
• Mohammad Kazemi, commander of the IRGC-IO, oversees operations suppressing civil society in Iran, including the regime’s crackdown against protests across the country in response to the killing of Mahsa Amini, according to the department. He was previously designated by the Office of Foreign Assets Control in October.
• Mohamad Mehdi Sayyari, co-deputy chief of the IRGC-IO, has been directly involved in arranging logistics for prisoners in Iran.
• Mohammad Hasan Mohagheghi, co-deputy chief of the IRGC-IO, serves as a liaison between senior IRGC officials and IRGC-IO officials on counterespionage operations in Syria, the department said.

“Our action is a warning to those around the world who would wrongfully detain U.S. nationals, the potential consequences of their actions,” a senior administration official said on a call with reporters.

“These actors in Russia and Iran have tried to use Americans for political leverage or to seek concessions from the United States. These actions threaten the stability and integrity of the international political system. It also threatens the safety of U.S. nationals and other persons abroad,” the person added.

“Sanctions are meant to change behavior and to incentivize better behavior and we hope that these can contribute to doing that now and into the future,” the second official said.

‘I no longer know what my brother looks like’

Russia has detained several American citizens in high-profile incidents in recent years.

Former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was arrested by Russian authorities in 2018 on charges of acting as a spy for the United States. At the time he was arrested, Whelan was visiting Moscow to attend a wedding, according to his brother, David Whelan. 

Paul Whelan was convicted in 2020 and sentenced to 16 years of hard labor in a Russian camp in the remote province of Mordovia.

During opening remarks before Monday’s U.N. Security Council meeting, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield spoke directly to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and called for the immediate release of Gershkovich and Whelan, who are both detained in Russia.

Thomas-Greenfield invited Elizabeth Whelan, the sister of Paul Whelan, to attend a U.N. Security Council meeting.

“I want minister Lavrov to look into her eyes and see her suffering,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “I want you to see what it’s like to miss your brother for four years. To know he is locked up, in a Russian penal colony, simply because you want to use him for your own ends.”

“I no longer know what my brother looks like. The images that we see on television and in the news? That’s Paul Whelan in the life he was living before he was taken captive. No one has been allowed to take a photo of him since his trial almost three years ago,” Elizabeth Whelan told reporters at the United Nations.

She drew several similarities between her brother and Gershkovich, including the espionage charges levied against them and their subsequent detainments at Lefortovo prison.

“This Russian playbook is so lazy that even Evan has the same investigator, a man who harassed and interrogated my brother until Paul’s sham trial in June of 2020,” she added.

In December, President Joe Biden signed off on a prisoner swap that would release WNBA star Brittney Griner in exchange for a Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Bout, known as the “Merchant of Death” because he was considered one of the world’s largest illicit arms dealers, was sentenced to 25 years in federal prison in 2012.

The negotiations for Griner’s release originally included Whelan as well.

“I’m proud that today we have made one more family whole,” Biden said at the time, adding that he would continue to work to free Whelan. “We’ll keep negotiating for Paul’s relief. I guarantee it.”

Griner, who played professional basketball in Russia during the WNBA offseason, was arrested in February 2022 at a Russian airport on accusations that she was smuggling vape cartridges with cannabis oil. The two-time Olympic gold medalist was sentenced to nine years in a Russian penal colony before her release.

Last April, Russia agreed to release former U.S. Marine Trevor Reed in a prisoner exchange with the United States.

Reed was accused of assaulting a Russian officer and detained by authorities there in 2019. He was later sentenced to nine years in a Russian prison. Reed and his family have maintained his innocence, and the U.S. government has described him as unjustly imprisoned.

For Reed’s release, Biden agreed to free Konstantin Yaroshenko, a Russian pilot serving a 20-year federal prison sentence for conspiracy to smuggle cocaine into the United States.

At the time, Reed’s family thanked Biden and also said they would continue to advocate on behalf of Whelan.

Biden, who did not specifically mention the prisoner exchange in a statement, said his administration would not “stop until Paul Whelan and others join Trevor in the loving arms of family and friends.”

The celebration includes an official state dinner, with food from celebrity chef Edward Lee and performances from at least three Broadway stars, according to the Associated Press.

But what actually happens at a state dinner, and what’s the reason for all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding them?

What Is a State Dinner?

Nowadays, the term “state dinner” is used exclusively to refer to dinners hosted by the White House in honor of foreign heads of state when they visit the U.S. — and they’re huge diplomatic events.

But state dinners are a tradition going back to the early 1800s, when the term used to refer to any large dinner honoring federal government officials or foreign dignitaries, according to the White House Historical Association.

By the late 1800s, it referred to an annual winter event held to honor Congress, the Supreme Court and diplomats. In 1874, King Kalakaua of Hawaii became the first ruling monarch to attend one such dinner, according to the WHHA.

State dinners remain a big deal to this day.

Washington Post Style reporter and columnist Roxanne Roberts has seen her fair share of state dinners.

“A state dinner is a way for a nation to acknowledge an ally,” Roberts told News4. “It’s a way of making a very formal proclamation of friendship.”

It can be in honor of an international ally that the U.S. has had for many years, like the Republic of Korea, or it can be to reward an emerging democracy, Roberts said. But in both cases, it’s a way of honoring a friend.

“The emphasis should be not on the dinner party, but the symbolism of … the United States is saying to all of Korea, ‘We want to honor you,'” Roberts said. “‘We want to show you that we think that you’re important. We want to showcase and give you the best that we have to offer.’ Which is why the traditional hospitality is always a meal.”

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State dinners are typically carried out in black-tie formal attire, with official speeches and toasts, elaborate food, and notable celebrity guests.

“A state dinner honoring a visiting head of government or reigning monarch is one of the grandest and most glamorous of White House affairs,” according to the WHHA’s website.

It also serves as a more festive setting than, say, Congress or an embassy, for conversations about “the important business of government,” the WHHA says.

“Information is gathered, opinions are exchanged, powerful connections are made, and appearances are upheld,” the WHHA says. “For these reasons, White House invitations are the most important and the most sought after in the nation’s social whirl.”

What Happens at State Dinners?

To achieve the White House’s overarching diplomatic goals, state dinners usually feature toasts, top-tier entertainment and food, and elaborate table settings and decorations.

“It’s a way of highlighting American food and culture, because there’s always entertainment afterward,” Roberts said.

The evening also begins with music. The United States Marine Band is “a longtime fixture of state dinners and official White House events,” according to the WHHA, and typically plays “Hail to the Chief” for the grand entrance of the president and first lady. The band also typically plays the anthem of the visiting nation or nations when their leaders enter.

After the president of the United States receives the guests, the group goes to the State Dining Room — or whichever dining room is set up for the event. Depending on the number of guests and the time of year, the dinner may even take place outside on White House grounds, according to the WHHA.

Wednesday’s state dinner with the South Korean president and first lady will take place in the East Room, and about 200 guests will be in attendance, according to White House social secretary Carlos Elizondo.

Roberts expects Wednesday’s dinner to be very optimistic and forward-looking in tone.

“What I’ve been thinking about is the fact that President Biden announced that he is running for reelection,” Roberts said, referring to the official Tuesday morning announcement. “I think that this is going to be very optimistic. It’s spring, so it’s going to be beautiful. And I think there’s just this general sense of looking forward, of the future, of optimism — that we have better days ahead.”

Decorations

Like other state dinners before it, the place settings and decorations will be inspired by the visiting nation and the purpose of its leaders’ visit, as seen by White House pool reporters during a media preview of the decor on Monday afternoon.

The decorations are often highly symbolic.

For Wednesday’s event, many of the design elements were inspired by the Taeguk, the symbol in the middle of the ROK flag, “which represents balance, harmony and peace,” according to Monday’s briefing. The background design that will be featured in the dining room “is inspired by Dancheong, the Korean traditional coloring in architecture.”

“When each president speaks, he will be framed by the vibrant colors and designs you may expect to see at an ancient Korean temple along with the historic architecture of this storied house, symbolizing our nation’s powerful history together and our flourishing future,” said Elizondo of Wednesday’s setup.

The dinner with South Korea will feature round tables covered by platinum table cloths that honor the 70th anniversary of the ROK alliance, square tables made of teal blue plexiglass, and bamboo chairs with designs inspired by sumukhwa — Korean ink brush paintings. Each table seats 10 people.

The place settings will use the President George W. Bush china, which includes a plate with a gold eagle in the center.

The centerpieces contain large cherry stems and blossoms, and smaller vases of flowers will contain peonies, orchids, more cherry blossoms, and azaleas in pink, red and white. Azaleas in particular are a native Korean flower, and the colors were chosen to complement the blue of the table.

The setting for Wednesday’s dinner aims “to showcase the harmony of our cultures and our people intertwined,” Jill Biden told reporters at the preview event.

Once they arrive in the dining room and the dinner begins, each nation’s leader will offer a toast, according to the WHHA. The toasts often include “personal or historic stories, but also reflect how well the state visit and diplomatic talks have gone.”

Then, guests finally get to eat.

Food

One of the most-anticipated parts of any state dinner is the menu. Like everything else, the menu is selected with diplomacy in mind, meaning the food is often influenced by the culture and cuisine of the visiting country.

“When Jacqueline Kennedy was first lady, they served French wines, because those were the best wines,” Roberts said. “And then American vineyards were like, hey, wait a minute, what about us?”

“Since then, pretty much, it’s all been the very best that America has to offer,” Roberts said. “In this case, they brought in a Korean American chef so that the menu will reflect both cultures and the friendship of both countries.”

Edward Lee, the chef for Wednesday’s event and culinary director for D.C. restaurant Succotash, is Korean American and on Monday told reporters that he grew up fusing American and Korean food.

“I’ve always loved and promoted the intersection of American cuisine with Korean flavors,” Lee said. “As a kid, Thanksgiving dinners were my family’s favorite meals. And it was very traditional with turkey and sides and stuffing. But being Korean, we always had to put soy sauce and kimchi on everything. And I’ve kept that spirit throughout my whole culinary career.”

The former “Top Chef” contestant was selected by Elizondo roughly two months before the event.

Lee told reporters that he came up with “a number of dishes,” then “did a tasting with Dr. Jill Biden and her staff, and we tasted through, oh, I don’t know, 10, 12, 13 different courses of food” before settling on the final menu.

“I wanted to showcase the best of American cuisine merged with a touch of Korean flavors,” Lee said.

On Monday afternoon, the White House released that final menu. The mouth-watering options include fresh veggies for spring, Korean and southern U.S. flavors, and President Biden’s favorite for dessert — ice cream. Take a look:

First Course

• Maryland Crab Cake  
• Cabbage, Kohlrabi, Fennel, and Cucumber Slaw  
• Gochujang Vinaigrette  
• Yellow Squash Soup  
• Cured Strawberries, Perilla Leaf Oil  
• Ferdinand Albariño “Vista Luna Vineyard” 2020 

Main Course  

• Braised Beef Short Ribs  
• Butter Bean Grits, Sorghum–Glazed Carrots, Pine Nuts 
• Januik Merlot “Red Mountain” 2020 

Dessert 

• Banana Split 
• Lemon Bar Ice Cream, Fresh Berries, Mint Ginger Snap Cookie Crumble, Doenjang Caramel  
• Schramsberg Blanc de Blancs 2019 

Entertainment

Dinner is typically followed by “performances of some kind,” according to the WHHA. On Wednesday, three Broadway stars will perform, to showcase “a quintessentially American art form” on “the world stage,” the White House said.

Those performers include Norm Lewis, Jessica Vosk, and Lea Salonga.

Lewis appeared in “Miss Saigon,” “Les Miserables,” “Porgy and Bess” and “The Little Mermaid” on Broadway. He made history in 2014 as the first Black man to play the phantom in “Phantom of the Opera” on Broadway and has appeared in several well-known TV shows and movies.

Vosk appeared in the San Francisco Symphony’s rendition of “West Side Story” as Anita, in the most recent Broadway revival of “Fiddler on the Roof,” as Elphaba in “Wicked” on Broadway, and as the Narrator in the 50th anniversary production of “Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat” at Lincoln Center in New York City.

Salonga appeared in “Miss Saigon” as Kim, winning a Tony, an Olivier Award, a Drama Desk award and an Outer Critics Circle Award. She has played both Eponine and Fantine in “Les Miserables” on Broadway and was the iconic singing voice for two Disney princesses: Mulan and Jasmine.

Their performances will take place with the help of director Michael Arden and musical director Ted Arthur.

Who’s In Attendance at Wednesday’s State Dinner for South Korea?

In the past, the White House has released a complete guest list for state dinners the day before or the morning of the event. As of this writing, no guest list has been released for Wednesday.

But there are a few known invitees. The headliners are the hosts, President Biden and the first lady, and the guests of honor, South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and first lady Kim Keon Hee.

Chef Lee, and the three performers and two directors, will also be in attendance.

“Courage is something that can be contagious,” said Rep. Justin Jones after an Oval Office meeting with President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris.

Although Biden and Harris have sought stronger gun control, including a renewed assault weapons ban, Jones suggested that he prodded the administration to take firmer action during their private conversation. He described seeing busts of Dr. Martin Luther King, Rosa Parks and Cesar Chavez in the Oval Office, describing them as people who “acted outside of the political paradigm of what was possible, and they changed political realities.”

Jones said “sometimes we have to do something out of the ordinary.”

During brief public remarks as they began their meeting, Biden thanked the lawmakers who have become known as the “Tennessee three” for their advocacy.

“You’re standing up for our kids, you’re standing up for our communities,” Biden told Jones, Rep. Justin Pearson and Rep. Gloria Johnson.

Biden described the expulsion votes as “shocking” and “undemocratic.”

“Nothing is guaranteed about our democracy — every generation has to fight for it,” he said.

The episode has turned the lawmakers, known as the “Tennessee three,” into Democratic heroes. Harris already visited Nashville earlier this month to show her support.

The statehouse protest took place days after the shooting at the Covenant School, a private Christian school where three children and three adults were killed. The three lawmakers — Rep. Justin Pearson, Rep. Justin Jones and Rep. Gloria Johnson — approached the front of the House chamber with a bullhorn as protesters filled the galleries.

The Republicans who control the Tennessee legislature called for their expulsion because they disrupted House proceedings. Pearson and Jones, both Black, were expelled, while Johnson was not.

Pearson and Jones were later reinstated on an interim basis by local officials, and they plan to run in a special election to finish their terms.

“You cannot expel hope and you can’t expel a movement,” Pearson said outside the White House on Monday.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said last week that Biden was “proud” and “appreciative” to see the three state representatives calling for stronger gun restrictions, particularly a ban on so-called assault weapons.

During a phone call earlier this month, Biden thanked them “for speaking out and for standing their ground, and being very clear about what’s needed to protect their communities,” Jean-Pierre said.

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The White House said it wants to ensure that poverty, race and ethnic status do not lead to worse exposure to pollution and environmental harm. Biden tried to draw a contrast between his agenda and that of Republican House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. GOP lawmakers have called for less regulation of oil production to lower energy prices, while the Biden administration says the GOP policies would give benefits to highly profitable oil companies and surrender the renewable energy sector to the Chinese.

“Environmental justice will be the mission of the entire government woven directly into how we work with state, local, tribal and territorial governments,” Biden said in remarks at the White House.

The order tells executive branch agencies to use data and scientific research to understand how pollution hurts people’s health, so that work can be done to limit any damage. Under the order, executive agencies would be required to inform nearby communities if toxic substances were released from a federal facility.

As part of the announcement, Vice President Kamala Harris is separately traveling to Miami, Florida, to announce $562 million to help protect communities against the impacts of climate change.

The EPA last year formed its own Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights, merging three existing EPA programs to oversee a portion of Democrats’ $60 billion investment in environmental justice initiatives created by last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.

The order puts more pressure on federal agencies — and the White House itself — to deliver on promises the Biden administration has made to clean up the environment in communities of color and poor communities and prepare them for the effects of climate change.

The administration has had mixed results in fulfilling this promise. There has been unprecedented spending on environmental and climate justice issues. But there have also been disagreements over how to gauge which communities are most in need of the funding and the administration’s greenlighting of controversial drilling projects as Republicans have criticized Biden for high gasoline prices.

“Like so many countries around the world, though perhaps more than most, the United States was shaped by Ireland,” Biden said in address to a joint sitting of the Oireachtas in Leinster House. “And the values we share remain to this day the core of the historic partnership between our people and our governments.”

Biden stressed the importance of economic ties, a Fearghaíl,united front on the war in Ukraine and a shared urgency to manage climate change. Biden addressed parliament as part of his four-day trip to Ireland and Northern Ireland, where he also met with political leaders and took a whirlwind tour of his ancestral homeland.

Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl, speaker of the Dail, parliament’s lower chamber, told Biden that Ireland has benefitted “immensely” from American investment, and noted that it goes both ways — Ireland is the ninth-largest source of foreign direct investment in the U.S.

“Long may this bilateral investment continue,” Ó Fearghaíl said to cheers. He welcomed Biden “home” as he introduced him. Biden was the fourth U.S. president to address the Irish parliament, after John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton.

For Biden, Ireland has been the backdrop for discussion about his favorite themes, like dignity, “possibilities,” democracy — and poetry. He addressed parliament on what would have been the 84th birthday of his favorite poet, Seamus Heaney. Ó Fearghaíl gave Biden a signed copy of Heaney’s poems, and Heaney’s widow was present for the speech, watching as Biden quoted “The Cure at Troy.”

The president spoke with poetic flourishes about how the two nations could “dream together over horizons we can’t see.” He talked about visiting County Louth this week, gazing out at the sea from the stone balcony of Carlingford Castle, which would have been the last Irish landmark that Owen Finnegan, Biden’s maternal great-great-grandfather, saw before sailing for New York in 1849.

“These stories are at the very heart of what binds Ireland and America together,” he said. “They speak to a history, defined by our dreams.”

The 80-year-old Biden also reflected on his age, something he rarely does publicly. He said was “at the end of my career, not the beginning.” He told the Irish lawmakers “you can see how old I am,” saying he comes to the job more experienced than any other president in American history.

“It doesn’t make me better or worse, but it gives me few excuses,” he said. Biden is expected to run for reelection, and would be 82 were he to start a second term.

Earlier Thursday, Biden met with Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, Ireland’s prime minister, praising the nation for its humanitarian work welcoming Ukrainian refugees. Ireland has hosted nearly 80,000 refugees from Ukraine following Russia’s invasion, and it has been staunchly supportive of U.S.-led efforts on the war. Biden said he was impressed by Ireland’s commitment.

“I think our values are the same,” Biden told Varadkar. “And I think our concerns are the same. So I’m really looking forward to continuing to work with you.”

Biden also met with with Irish President Michael D. Higgins at his grand Dublin residence. The two octogenarian leaders clasped hands and laughed as they walked inside along a red carpet. Biden signed the guest book with a writerly missive for Ireland’s poet-president: “As the Irish saying goes, your feet will bring you where your heart is. It’s an honor to return.”

Biden helped shovel dirt around a freshly planted Irish oak, not far from one planted years earlier by then-President Barack Obama. He also rang the Peace Bell, unveiled in 2008 to mark the 10th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland. Biden clanged the bell four times, including one “for all my Irish ancestors, and a fourth one for peace.”

Then he thanked Higgins, who turns 82 next week.

“I’m feeling great, and I’m learning a lot,” Biden said at Higgins’ estate. “I know it sounds silly, but there’s many Irish-Americans, like my relatives, who’ve never come back here.”

Varadkar and Biden also exchanged toasts at a dinner banquet at Dublin Castle.

Biden opened the trip earlier this week in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where he marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that ended years of sectarian violence. The U.S.-brokered deal brought peace to a region of the United Kingdom where “the Troubles” left some 3,600 people dead in bombings and other attacks.

Addressing parliament Thursday, Biden said the United Kingdom “should be working closer” with Ireland to support Northern Ireland. His reminder of the importance of maintaining a quarter century of peace in Northern Ireland was likely to irk some British Conservatives and Northern Ireland unionists, who are suspicious of U.S. interference.

Biden arrived in the Republic of Ireland on Wednesday, a day after he landed in Northern Ireland. Crowds lined five-deep and waited for eight hours to catch a glimpse of Biden in County Louth, where his mother’s family is from. In the town of Carlingford, the Democratic president toured a castle, gazing out over the sea where his ancestors sailed toward America.

From inside a packed old pub with a sticky wooden floor, Biden acknowledged that his ancestors emigrated to the United States to escape famine, but he added, “When you’re here, you wonder why anyone would ever want to leave.”

The president was elated by the dive into his Irish heritage, which he often cites as a driving force in his public and private life. According to the Irish Family History Centre, Biden “is among the most ‘Irish’ of all U.S. Presidents.” Ten of his 16 great-great-grandparents were from the Emerald Isle.

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Associated Press writer Jill Lawless in London contributed to this report.

The proposed regulation, announced Wednesday by the Environmental Protection Agency, would set tailpipe emissions limits for the 2027 through 2032 model years that are the strictest ever imposed — and call for far more new EV sales than the auto industry agreed to less than two years ago.

If finalized next year as expected, the plan would represent the strongest push yet toward a once almost unthinkable shift from gasoline-powered cars and trucks to battery-powered vehicles.

A look at what the EPA is proposing, how the plan serves President Joe Biden’s ambitious goal to cut America’s planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2030, and whether the auto industry can meet the new EV targets:

What is the EPA proposing?

The proposed tailpipe pollution limits don’t require a specific number of electric vehicles to be sold every year, but instead they mandate limits on greenhouse gas emissions. Depending on how automakers comply, the EPA projects that at least 60% of new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. would be electric by 2030 and up to 67% by 2032.

For slightly larger, medium-duty trucks, the EPA projects 46% of new vehicle sales will be EVs in 2032.

EPA Administrator Michael Regan called the proposal “the most ambitious pollution standards ever for cars and trucks,” and he said it would reduce dangerous air and climate pollution and lower fuel and maintenance costs for families.

The agency will select from a range of options after a public comment period, Regan said. The rule is expected to become final next year.

What is the auto industry saying about the proposed rules?

John Bozzella, CEO of the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, a trade group representing most automakers, called the EPA proposal “aggressive by any measure” and wrote in a statement that it exceeds the Biden administration’s 50% electric vehicle sales target for 2030 announced less than two years ago.

Reaching half was always a “stretch goal,” contingent on manufacturing incentives and tax credits to make EVs more affordable, he wrote. It remains to be seen whether those provisions are enough to support electric vehicle sales at the level the EPA has proposed, he wrote.

“The question isn’t can this be done, it’s how fast can it be done,” Bozzella wrote. “How fast will depend almost exclusively on having the right policies and market conditions in place.”

How will the proposal benefit the environment?

The proposed standards for light-duty cars and trucks are projected to result in a 56% reduction in projected greenhouse gas emissions compared with existing standards for model year 2026, the EPA said. The proposals would improve air quality for communities across the nation, avoiding nearly 10 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions, more than twice the total U.S. CO2 emissions last year, the EPA said.

The plan also would save thousands of dollars over the lives of the vehicles sold and reduce U.S. reliance on approximately 20 billion barrels of oil imports, the agency said.

Is the EPA proposal realistic?

With electric vehicles accounting for just 7.2% of U.S. vehicle sales in the first quarter of this year, the industry has a long way to go to even approach the Biden administration’s targets. However, the percentage of EV sales is growing. Last year it was 5.8% of new vehicles sales.

Many auto industry analysts say it will be difficult for automakers to meet the projected sales percentage. The consulting firm LMC Automotive, for instance, said new EV sales could reach 49% in 2032 but are unlikely to go above that, citing high prices for EVs compared with gas-powered cars.

A new poll released Tuesday shows that many Americans aren’t yet sold on going electric for their next cars, with high prices and too few charging stations the main deterrents. Only 19% of U.S. adults say it’s “very” or “extremely” likely they will purchase an EV the next time they buy a car, while 22% say it’s somewhat likely. About half, 47%, say they are unlikely to go electric, according to the poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research and the Energy Policy Institute at the University of Chicago.

White House climate adviser Ali Zaidi said EV sales have tripled since Biden took office and the number of available EV models has doubled. Analysts have repeatedly revised their forecasts upward since Biden, a Democrat, took office, and the industry announced over $100 billion in EV investments, Zaidi told reporters Tuesday.

“The automakers have … technology and the infrastructure and supply chain to be able to achieve this with the lead time they’ve got,” Zaidi said.

Why is the tailpipe rule so important?

Transportation is the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., accounting for about 27% of greenhouse gas emissions in the U.S. in 2020, according to the EPA. Electric power generates the second largest share of greenhouse gas emissions at 25%.

Environmental groups say stricter tailpipe pollution standards are needed to clean the air we breathe and slow the impacts of severe weather events such as hurricanes, tornados and wildfires.

“Done right, these (new rules) will put the U.S. on the path to end pollution from vehicle tailpipes — while also slashing our dependence on oil, creating good domestic jobs and saving consumers money on fuel,” said Manish Bapna, president and CEO of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

What else is the Biden administration doing to promote EVs?

Besides stricter pollution rules, tax credits for EV manufacturing and purchases included in the sweeping Inflation Reduction Act passed last year will help reach the tougher requirements, the White House and its allies said.

At present, many new EVs manufactured in North America are eligible for a $7,500 tax credit, while used EVs can get up to $4,000. However, there are price and purchaser income limits that make some vehicles ineligible. And starting April 18, new requirements by the Treasury Department will result in fewer new electric vehicles qualifying for a full $7,500 federal tax credit.

A smaller credit may not be enough to attract new buyers for EVs that now cost an average of $58,600 according to Kelley Blue Book.

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Krisher reported from Detroit.

Biden arrived in Belfast on Tuesday night and was greeted at the airport by United Kingdom Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. He will spend about half a day in the city on Wednesday, holding talks with Sunak before going to Ulster University to mark the Good Friday accord anniversary.

The president will also “engage” with the leaders of Northern Ireland’s five main political parties but not as a group, the White House said.

Monday marked a quarter-century since the Good Friday Agreement, signed on that day in April 1998, ended decades of violence in Northern Ireland that killed 3,600 people. Northern Ireland, which is part of the United Kingdom, is observing the milestone anniversary with a reunion of key players in the peace process along with Biden’s visit.

Deep divisions remain over the conflict’s legacy, and U.K. authorities in March raised the terrorism threat level in Northern Ireland to “severe,” warning of IRA dissidents opposed to the peace process and set on attacks. Youths threw gasoline bombs and set a police vehicle on fire during a dissident march in Londonderry on Monday.

Biden said last month that nothing would change his travel plans.

“They can’t keep me out,” he said.

The Democratic president will spend four days on the trip in all, including appearances in Belfast, the capital and largest city in Northern Ireland; in Dublin, the capital of the Republic of Ireland, and in County Louth and County Mayo, on Ireland’s East and West coasts, respectively. He will also address Ireland’s Parliament.

In County Louth the 80-year-old will dive into the Irish ancestry of which he is immensely proud and speaks about often.

Biden will hold separate meetings Thursday in Dublin with Irish President Michael Higgins and Prime Minister Leo Varadkar before the address to Parliament and a dinner banquet. Varadkar visited Biden in the Oval Office last month on St. Patrick’s Day.

The president will spend Friday, the final day of the trip, in County Mayo, exploring family genealogy and giving a speech about ties between the U.S. and Ireland in front of a 19th century cathedral that the White House said was partly built using bricks supplied by his great-great-great-grandfather, Edward Blewitt, a brickmaker and civil engineer.

“The president is very much looking forward to that trip and to celebrating the deep historic ties that our two countries and our two people continue to share,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said.

Ending decades of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland, a period referred to as “the Troubles,” meant balancing competing identities in the country, which remained in the United Kingdom when the rest of Ireland won independence a century ago. Irish nationalists in the north — most of them Catholic — seek union with the Republic of Ireland, while largely Protestant unionists want to stay with the U.K.

The Good Friday Agreement, struck on April 10, 1998, after almost two years of U.S.-backed talks, committed armed groups to stop fighting, ended direct British rule and set up a Northern Ireland legislature and government with power shared between unionist and nationalist parties.

But Britain’s exit from the European Union, which left Northern Ireland poised uneasily between the rest of Britain and EU member Ireland, has upset a delicate political balance, including the power-sharing system set up by the peace accord.

The Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat for more than a year, after the main unionist party pulled out of the government to protest new trade rules for Northern Ireland brought in after Brexit.

A more recent accord between the U.K. and the EU, known as the Windsor Framework, addresses some of the issues that arose around commerce and goods sent across the Irish Sea from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. Biden has praised the framework as an important step in maintaining the peace, though Northern Ireland’s political leaders have called for changes.

Asked as he prepared to leave Washington about his priorities for the trip, Biden said, “Make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor agreement stay in place. Keep the peace. That’s the main thing.”

Max Bergmann, director of the Europe, Russia and Eurasia program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies think tank in Washington, said he would expect Biden to use the anniversary to highlight the positive role the U.S. can play in forging peace around the world.

“This is a real success, 25 years later, of U.S. diplomacy, where the U.S. was asked and then played a very critical role in bridging the divide between two of its friends and partners,” Bergmann said in an interview. “I think this is a moment to mark that progress can happen in the world and the United States can play a central role in it.”

Excitement over Biden’s trip has been growing in the town of Ballina, from which one of the president’s great-great-grandfathers left for the United States in 1850.

Buildings are getting fresh coats of paint and American flags are being hung from shopfronts in Ballina, a bustling agricultural town of about 10,000 residents at the mouth of the River Moy in western Ireland. The center of town already has a mural of a beaming Biden, erected in 2020.

Many people from Ballina and the surrounding County Mayo moved to Pennsylvania in the 19th century, and Ballina is twinned with Scranton, Biden’s hometown.

Joe Blewitt, a distant cousin who first met Biden when he visited Ballina as vice president in 2016, told The Associated Press that the U.S. leader pledged to return once he’d won the presidency.

“He said, ‘I’m going to come back into Ballina.’ And sure to God he’s going to come back into Ballina,” Blewitt said. “His Irish roots are really deep in his heart.”

The 43-year-old plumber was among Biden relations invited to the White House for St. Patrick’s Day last month. Blewitt said it was a “surreal” experience; it included a half-hour private meeting with Biden.

Biden, who was accompanied on the trip by his sister Valerie and son Hunter, often peppers his public remarks with sayings from his late mother and father, and he regularly quotes Irish poets, including Seamus Heaney and William Butler Yeats. He recently boasted to White House guests that the mansion was designed and built by an Irish American, James Hoban.

Ireland’s Irish Family History Centre says Biden “is among the most ‘Irish’ of all U.S. Presidents” — 10 of his 16 great-great-grandparents were from the Emerald Isle. All left for the U.S. during the Great Famine of the mid-19th century, which killed an estimated 1 million people.

The new approach will start with a tiny number of migrants next week. Officials said the trial run is part of preparations for the end of a pandemic-related rule expected on May 11 that has suspended rights to seek asylum for many.

If expanded, the new screening could bring major change to how people are processed upon reaching U.S. soil to seek asylum.

Homeland Security officials said they will begin working with a legal services provider they declined to name that will represent asylum-seekers at initial screenings, known as “credible fear hearings.” Access to legal representation will be critical to the plan moving ahead, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that have not been publicly announced.

The screening interviews will be conducted in large U.S. Customs and Border Protection temporary facilities stocked with phone lines that will be used for the hearings, officials said. CBP policy limits detention to 72 hours, which will be the target to complete the screenings.

President Donald Trump introduced expedited screening while in CBP custody but his successor, Joe Biden, scrapped it his first week in office. Biden administration officials say the new attempt differs by ensuring access to legal counsel and requiring that screenings be done by U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services asylum officers, not Border Patrol agents, as happened under Trump.

Currently, it takes about four weeks to conduct a screening interview and, if someone fails to meet the criteria, another four to five weeks for air transportation back to their countries, officials said. The new tack aims to shorten that time to less than 72 hours, the maximum allowed to hold someone in a CBP facility under agency policy.

“This Administration will continue to look at every tool available to make asylum processing more efficient, while upholding due process and other protections, as Congress refuses to act to fix our decades-old broken immigration system,” Homeland Security said in a statement.

The administration has expelled migrants 2.7 million times under a rule in effect since March 2020 that denies rights to seek asylum under U.S. and international law on grounds of preventing the spread of COVID-19. Title 42, as the public health rule is known, is scheduled to end May 11 when the U.S. lifts its last COVID-related restrictions.

Homeland Security officials have estimated illegal entries from Mexico could rise to 13,000 a day after Title 42 expires, compared to about 5,500 in February.

Currently, few migrants are screened at the border if they express fear of being returned home and are often released to pursue asylum in backlogged U.S. immigration courts, which takes years.

The initial screening establishes a relatively low bar, with 77% passing in March, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services. The final approval rate for asylum is much lower.

The White House publicly released a 12-page summary of the results of the so-called “ hotwash ” of U.S. policies around the ending of the nation’s longest war, taking little responsibility for its own actions and asserting that Biden was “severely constrained” by Trump’s decisions.

It does acknowledge that the evacuation of Americans and allies from Afghanistan should have started sooner, but blames the delays on the Afghan government and military, and on U.S. military and intelligence community assessments.

The brief document was drafted by the National Security Council, rather than by an independent entity, with input from Biden himself. The administration said detailed reviews conducted by the State Department and the Pentagon, which the White House said would be transmitted privately to Congress on Thursday, were highly classified and would not be released publicly.

“President Biden’s choices for how to execute a withdrawal from Afghanistan were severely constrained by conditions created by his predecessor,” the White House summary states, noting that when Biden entered office, “the Taliban were in the strongest military position that they had been in since 2001, controlling or contesting nearly half of the country.”

Trump responded by accusing the Biden administration of playing “a new disinformation game” to distract from “their grossly incompetent SURRENDER in Afghanistan.” On his social media site, he said, “Biden is responsible, no one else!”

The report does fault overly optimistic intelligence community assessments about the Afghan army’s willingness to fight, and says Biden followed military commanders’ recommendations for the pacing of the drawdown of U.S. forces.

“Clearly we didn’t get it right,” National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Thursday, but sidestepped questions about whether Biden has any regrets for his decisions and actions leading up to the withdrawal.

Kirby said of the report that “the purpose of it is not accountability,” but rather ”understanding” what happened to inform future decisions.

The White House asserts the mistakes of Afghanistan informed its handling of Ukraine, where the Biden administration has been credited for supporting Kyiv’s defense against Russia’s invasion. The White House says it simulated worst-case scenarios prior to the February 2022 invasion and moved to release intelligence about Moscow’s intentions months beforehand.

“We now prioritize earlier evacuations when faced with a degrading security situation,” the White House said.

In an apparent attempt to defend its national security decision-making, the Biden administration also notes that it released pre-war warnings over “strong objections from senior officials in the Ukrainian government.”

Republicans in Congress have sharply criticized the Afghanistan withdrawal, focusing on the deaths of 13 service members in a suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport, which also killed more than 100 Afghans.

Shawn Vandiver, a Navy veteran and founder of #AfghanEvac, an effort to resettle Afghans fleeing the country, called the NSC report an “important next step.”

“We are glad to see acknowledgement of lessons learned and are laser focused on continuing relocation and resettlement operations,” Vandiver said in a statement.

But Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., tweeted Thursday that the withdrawal was “an unmitigated fiasco,” adding, “Passing the buck in a blame-shifting report won’t change that.”

The administration’s report appears to shift any blame in the Aug. 26, 2021, suicide bombing at Hamid Karzai International Airport, saying it was the U.S. military that made one possibly key decision.

“To manage the potential threat of a terrorist attack, the President repeatedly asked whether the military required additional support to carry out their mission at HKIA,” the report said, adding, “Senior military officials confirmed that they had sufficient resources and authorities to mitigate threats.”

Kirby credited U.S. forces for their actions in running the largest airborne evacuation of noncombatants in history during the chaos of Kabul’s fall.

“They ended our nation’s longest war,” he told reporters. “That was never going to be an easy thing to do. And as the president himself has said, it was never going to be low grade or low risk or low cost.”

Since the U.S. withdrawal, Biden has blamed the February 2020 agreement Trump reached with the Taliban in Doha, Qatar, saying it boxed the U.S. into leaving the country. The agreement has been blamed by analysts for undercutting the U.S.-backed government, which collapsed the following year.

Under the Doha agreement, roughly 5,000 Taliban prisoners were released as a condition of peace talks between the Kabul government and the Taliban. Kirby noted that release and other examples of what he said was a “general sense of degradation and neglect” inherited by Biden.

But the agreement also gave the U.S. the right to withdraw from the accord if Afghan peace talks failed — which they did.

The U.S. was to remove all forces by May 1, 2021. Biden pushed a full withdrawal to September but declined to delay further, saying it would prolong a war that had long needed to end.

Since the withdrawal, the U.S. carried out a successful operation to kill al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri — the group’s No. 2 leader during the Sept. 11 attacks — which the White House has argued is proof it can still deter terrorist groups in Afghanistan.

But the images of disorder and violence during the fall of Kabul still reverberate, including scenes of Afghans falling from the undercarriages of American planes, Afghan families handing infants over airport gates to save them from the crush and violence of the crowd, and the devastation after the suicide bombing at the Abbey Gate.

A February report by the U.S. government’s special inspector general for Afghanistan placed the most immediate blame for the Afghan military’s collapse on both the Trump and Biden administrations, and cited the speed with which Biden insisted on carrying out the withdrawal: “Due to the (Afghan security force’s) dependency on U.S. military forces, the decision to withdraw all U.S. military personnel and dramatically reduce U.S. support to the (Afghan security forces) destroyed the morale of Afghan soldiers and police.”

Pressed by reporters Thursday afternoon, Kirby repeatedly defended the U.S. response and effort to evacuate American citizens and argued with reporters who referred to the withdrawal as chaotic. At one point, he paused in what appeared to be an effort to gather his emotions.

“For all this talk of chaos, I just didn’t see it, not from my perch,” said Kirby, who was the Pentagon spokesman during the withdrawal. “At one point during the evacuation, there was an aircraft taking off full of people, Americans and Afghans alike, every 48 minutes, and not one single mission was missed. So I’m sorry, I just won’t buy the whole argument of chaos.”

The release of the NSC review comes as the State Department and House Republicans battle over documents for classified cables related to the Afghanistan withdrawal. Rep. Michael McCaul, the Texas Republican who chairs the House Foreign Affairs Committee, called Kirby’s comments “disgraceful and insulting.”

However, Blinken said a formal determination of Evan Gershkovich’s wrongful detention has not yet been made, something that would elevate the priority of his case within the U.S. government. Blinken said the legal process for such a determination would be completed soon.

“In Evan’s case, we are working through the determination on wrongful detention and there’s a process to do that and it’s something that we’re working through very deliberately, but expeditiously as well,” he said. “And I’ll let that process play out.”

“In my own mind, there’s no doubt that he’s being wrongfully detained by Russia and that’s exactly what I said to Foreign Minister (Sergey) Lavrov when I spoke to him over the weekend and insisted that Evan be released immediately,” Blinken told reporters at NATO headquarters in Brussels. “But I want to make sure, as always, because there is a formal process that we go through it and we will and I expect that to be completed soon.”

In what was a rare call with Lavrov since Russia invaded Ukraine early last year, Blinken also urged him to immediately release another imprisoned American, Paul Whelan, who had already been determined to have been wrongfully detained.

When the U.S. government formally designates an American as wrongfully detained, it shifts supervision of the person’s case to a specialized State Department section — the Office of the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs — that is focused on negotiating for the release of captives.

The designation empowers the government to use a variety of tools, including diplomacy, to secure the release of a captured American rather than simply waiting for a criminal case to make its way through the system.

“From my perspective, from the department’s perspective there is no higher priority than the safety and security of American citizens around the world,” Blinken said Wednesday.

Lawyers for Gershkovich, the son of immigrants from the Soviet Union who grew up speaking Russian at home in Princeton, New Jersey, have appealed his arrest. The Journal has adamantly denied the allegations and demanded his release. U.S. officials have also called on Russia to free him, with President Joe Biden telling reporters on Friday that his message to Russia was: “Let him go.”

The FSB, Russia’s top security agency and a successor to the KGB, said Gershkovich was trying to obtain classified information about a Russian arms factory. He is the first U.S. correspondent to be held on spying accusations since the Cold War.

In its summary of Sunday’s phone call, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said Lavrov “drew Blinken’s attention to the need to respect the decisions of the Russian authorities” about Gershkovich, who Moscow claims, without evidence, “was caught red-handed.”

The Kremlin said Lavrov also told Blinken it was unacceptable for U.S. officials and Western news media to continue “whipping up excitement” and politicizing the journalist’s detention. “His further fate will be determined by the court,” Lavrov said.

Emma Tucker, the Journal’s editor-in-chief, said it was “gratifying” and “reassuring” to learn of Blinken’s call with Lavrov because it shows the U.S. government is taking the case “right up to the top.”

U.S. consular officials have requested a visit with Gershkovich and said they were hopeful consular access could be arranged soon. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said Wednesday the request is being considered and a decision will be made “taking into account existing consular practice and Russian legislation.” She gave no indication of when a decision would be made.

Lawyers for Gershkovich met with him in a Moscow prison on Tuesday for the first time since his detention. They said “his health is good,” according to The Journal.

Rep. Mike Turner, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, noted on Sunday that the government has advised U.S. citizens to leave Russia. “This is not unexpected, in that Russia is acting as an illegal state at this point. There are no laws or rules or no international norms that they are following,” Turner, R-Ohio, told CNN’s “State of the Union.”

In alleging that U.S. officials and news media are hyping Gershkovich’s detention, Russian officials are reprising a theme they used in the apprehensions of basketball star Brittney Griner and other U.S. citizens.

The Kremlin has said it prefers to resolve such cases quietly and has emphasized the need to follow Russia’s judicial process. Often, that means the chance of progress in U.S. efforts to free its detained citizens isn’t likely until formal charges are filed, a trial is held, a conviction is obtained and sentencing and appeals are completed.

Griner, who plays for the WNBA’s Phoenix Mercury, was detained in February 2022 but was not classified as wrongfully held by the State Department until early that May. She was released in December in a prisoner swap.

More than 30 news organizations and press freedom advocates have written the Russian ambassador in the United States to express concern Russia is sending the message that reporting inside the country is criminalized.

Interactions between the top U.S. and Russian diplomats have been rare since Russia began its war in Ukraine in February 2022, though they did have a brief conversation last month on the sidelines of the Group of 20 conference of foreign ministers in India. It was the highest-level in-person talk between the two countries since the war began.

That interaction was their first contact since last summer, when Blinken talked to Lavrov by phone about a U.S. proposal for Russia to release Griner and Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive. Though Whelan was not included in the one-for-one swap that resulted in the release of Griner, U.S. officials said they remained committed to bringing him home.

Bruce Springsteen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling and Gladys Knight were among the 22 people and organizations being honored. When author Colson Whitehead’s award was announced, Biden noted that the author of “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys” has already won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes.

The president, who is expected to announce for reelection this spring, quickly picked up on that and joked that he was looking “for a back-to-back myself,” drawing a laugh from the audience.

It was a feel-good event in the East Room, as the honorees stepped forward to receive their awards one by one. Louis-Dreyfus, who channeled Biden’s resume when she starred in “Veep,” jokingly sagged under the weight when the president placed the medal for the arts around her neck. Springsteen, with his everyman persona, looked incongruous in a black suit. Poet and author Richard Blanco stunned in a teal tuxedo. Knight, the “empress of soul,” gave the president a giant hug when he put the medal around her neck.

Biden joked that he opens his closet to find designer Vera Wang inside — her clothes, anyway — then said, “Your dresses always look beautiful on my wife.”

The medals are Biden’s first batch of awards for the arts and humanities and were delayed by the pandemic. The president surprised Sir Elton John with a National Humanities Medal during a White House musical event last September.

Recipients of the 2021 National Medal of Arts:

— Judith Francisca Baca, artist.

— Fred Eychaner, businessman and philanthropist.

— Jose Feliciano, singer.

— Mindy Kaling, actress.

— Gladys Knight, singer.

— Julia Louis-Dreyfus, actor.

— Antonio Martorell-Cardona, painter.

— Joan Shigekawa, film producer.

— Bruce Springsteen.

— Vera Wang, fashion designer.

— The Billie Holiday Theatre.

— The International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Recipients of the 2021 National Humanities Medal:

— Richard Blanco, poet and author.

— Johnnetta Betsch Cole, anthropologist.

— Walter Isaacson, writer.

— Earl Lewis, social historian.

— Henrietta Mann, academic.

— Ann Patchett, author.

— Bryan Stevenson, advocate for the poor.

— Amy Tan, author.

— Tara Westover, author.

— Colson Whitehead, author.

— Native America Calling.

Bruce Springsteen, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Mindy Kaling and Gladys Knight were among the 22 people and organizations being honored. When novelist Colson Whitehead’s award was announced, Biden noted that the author of “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys” has already won back-to-back Pulitzer Prizes.

The president, who is expected to announce for reelection this spring, quickly picked it up

“Pretty good man,” he told Whitehead. “I’m kind of looking for a back-to-back myself,” he added, drawing a laugh from the audience.

It was a feel-good event in the East Room, as the honorees stepped forward to receive their awards one by one. Louis-Dreyfus, who channeled Biden’s resume when she starred in “Veep,” jokingly sagged under the weight when the president placed the medal for the arts around her neck. “Wow!” she exclaimed.

Springsteen, with his everyman persona, looked incongruous in a black suit. He was lauded for “his extraordinary contributions to the American songbook, and for being ‘The Boss.’” Poet and author Richard Blanco stunned in a teal tuxedo.

Knight, the “empress of soul,” gave the president a giant hug when he put the medal around her neck. Jaclyn Sallee, who received the medal on behalf of Native America Calling, a podcast and radio show, beamed with pride. So did social historian Earl Lewis, who, according to the president, chronicles African American history and “explores how diversity strengthens our nation.”

Biden joked that he opens his closet to find one honoree, designer Vera Wang, inside — her clothes, anyway — then said, “Your dresses always look beautiful on my wife.”

The medals are Biden’s first batch of awards for the arts and humanities and were delayed by the pandemic. The president surprised Sir Elton John with a National Humanities Medal during a White House musical event last September. He told the crowd how important their work was, in keeping American culture alive and reminding people of our history – even the parts we’d like to forget. The honorees work includes dance, art, design, history as well as music, writing and philanthropy.

“You do make the country better, you make it a better place,” Biden told the crowd before they departed for a White House reception.

The honorees did not perform or speak to the crowd after they received their awards. But the U.S. Marine Corps band that often plays for East Room ceremonies did orchestral numbers of Springsteen hits “Born to Run” and ”Born in the U.S.A.”

Recipients of the 2021 National Medal of Arts:

— Judith Francisca Baca, artist.

— Fred Eychaner, businessman and philanthropist.

— Jose Feliciano, singer.

— Mindy Kaling, actress.

— Gladys Knight, singer.

— Julia Louis-Dreyfus, actor.

— Antonio Martorell-Cardona, painter.

— Joan Shigekawa, film producer.

— Bruce Springsteen.

— Vera Wang, fashion designer.

— The Billie Holiday Theatre.

— The International Association of Blacks in Dance.

Recipients of the 2021 National Humanities Medal:

— Richard Blanco, poet and author.

— Johnnetta Betsch Cole, anthropologist.

— Walter Isaacson, writer.

— Earl Lewis, social historian.

— Henrietta Mann, academic.

— Ann Patchett, author.

— Bryan Stevenson, advocate for the poor.

— Amy Tan, author.

— Tara Westover, author.

— Colson Whitehead, author.

— Native America Calling.

President Joe Biden on Monday signed legislation requiring the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to declassify information on any possible links between a lab in China and the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The House and the Senate unanimously passed the legislation earlier this month. The push to make public classified information on the origins of the pandemic comes after the Energy Department concluded with “low confidence” that the virus is likely the result of an accidental laboratory leak in China.

“In implementing this legislation, my Administration will declassify and share as much of that information as possible, consistent with my constitutional authority to protect against the disclosure of information that would harm national security,” Biden said in a statement.

Under the legislation, Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines has 90 days to declassify all information on possible links between the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of Covid. The Wuhan Institute of Virology has been a major center of coronavirus research.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation has also concluded that the pandemic likely began with a lab incident in Wuhan, China, the agency’s director Christopher Wray told Fox News earlier this month.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News. “Here you are talking about a potential leak from a Chinese government-controlled lab.” 

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The Wall Street Journal first reported the Energy Department’s assessment, citing people who had read a classified report. White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan would not confirm or deny the report, but said Biden had specifically requested that national labs under the Energy Department participate in a review of how the pandemic started.

The pandemic began three years ago in Wuhan, China, though it’s still unknown how Covid spread to people. The intelligence community was divided in a 2021 report ordered by Biden that reviewed information on the pandemic’s origins. The intel agencies agreed that an infected animal and a lab accident were both plausible hypotheses.

Four unnamed agencies in the 2021 report concluded with low confidence that an infected animal spread the virus to people.

A recent analysis conducted by international scientists found genetic material from racoon dogs in samples from the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market that tested positive for Covid. Though the analysis doesn’t prove the racoon dogs were infected with virus, it provides some additional data that is consistent with a possible virus spillover from animals to people.

The scientists pulled the samples from an international database. The samples subsequently disappeared from that database. The World Health Organization on Friday called on Beijing to release those samples.

“These data could have – and should have – been shared three years ago,” said WHO Director Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. “We continue to call on China to be transparent in sharing data, and to conduct the necessary investigations and share the results.” 

Jason Sudeikis, who plays the title character — an American coaching a soccer team in London — and other members of the cast will meet with the Bidens “to discuss the importance of addressing your mental health to promote overall wellbeing,” the White House said. The third season of the Emmy-winning, feel-good Apple TV+ series began streaming last week.

A White House official said the Bidens had seen some of the show and are familiar with its “message of positivity, hope, kindness, and empathy.” Cast members expected to be in attendance include: Hannah Waddingham, Jeremy Swift, Phil Dunster, Brett Goldstein, Brendan Hunt, Toheeb Jimoh, Cristo Fernandez, Kola Bokinni, Billy Harris, and James Lance.

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Biden has previously called on lawmakers in both parties to expand resources to fight the “mental health crisis” in the nation as part of his “ unity agenda.” His administration has surged funding to bolster the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline and expand school-based mental health professionals.

The company was responding to a report in The Wall Street Journal that said the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S., part of the Treasury Department, was threatening a U.S. ban on the app unless its owners, Beijing-based ByteDance Ltd., divested.

“If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access,” TikTok spokesperson Maureen Shanahan said. “The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

A source close to the company confirmed the report to NBC News on Thursday. The source cautioned that TikTok did not see the administration’s move as a final order. 

The Journal report cited anonymous “people familiar with the matter.” The Treasury Department and the White House’s National Security Council declined to comment.

Late last month, the White House gave all federal agencies 30 days to wipe TikTok off all government devices.

The Office of Management and Budget called the guidance a “critical step forward in addressing the risks presented by the app to sensitive government data.” Some agencies, including the Departments of Defense, Homeland Security and State, already have restrictions in place. The White House already does not allow TikTok on its devices.

Congress passed the “No TikTok on Government Devices Act” in December as part of a sweeping government funding package. The legislation does allow for TikTok use in certain cases, including for national security, law enforcement and research purposes.

Meanwhile, lawmakers in both the House and Senate have been moving forward with legislation that would give the Biden administration more power to clamp down on TikTok.

Rep. Mike McCaul, the chairman of the House Foreign Relations Committee, has been a vocal critic of the app, saying the Chinese Communist Party is using it to “manipulate and monitor its users while it gobbles up Americans’ data to be used for their malign activities.”

“Anyone with TikTok downloaded on their device has given the CCP a backdoor to all their personal information. It’s a spy balloon into your phone,” the Texas Republican said.

TikTok remains extremely popular and is used by two-thirds of teens in the U.S. But there is increasing concern that Beijing could obtain control of American user data that the app has obtained.

The company has been dismissive of the ban for federal devices and has noted that it is developing security and data privacy plans as part of the Biden administration’s ongoing national security review.

Shares in social media companies Snap and Meta jumped in after-hours trading on Wednesday after the Biden administration was reported to be considering banning TikTok in the U.S. unless Chinese tech giant ByteDance divests its stake.

Snap shares surged nearly 7% while Meta shares rose more than 2% after The Wall Street Journal reported that TikTok faces a possible ban in the U.S. if ByteDance fails to comply with the Biden Administration’s proposition.

Both Snap and Meta face fierce competition for user attention from TikTok, and have introduced their own short-form video products to compete. In 2023, adults in the U.S. are predicted to spend an average of 55.8 minutes per day on TikTok, versus 30.8 minutes on Snapchat, 30.6 minutes on Meta-owned Instagram, and 30.2 minutes on Meta-owned Facebook, according to research from Insider Intelligence.

Last week, the White House voiced support for a recent Senate bill that would grant the Biden Administration the ability to ban TikTok in the U.S.

U.S. lawmakers have expressed concern that TikTok, by virtue of its Chinese ownership, poses a potential national security threat, with U.S. Senator Mark Warner, D-Va., recently saying that “This competition with China around who dominates technology domains, that really is where the nexus of national security lies going forward.”

ByteDance has pushed backed against those allegations, and said in a statement on Wednesday, “If protecting national security is the objective, divestment doesn’t solve the problem: a change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access.”

The statement argued, “The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, U.S.-based protection of U.S. user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”

Watch: U.S. banks are safe, SVB was flawed, but not a contagion

Biden flew to San Diego to appear with Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak as they hailed an 18-month-old nuclear partnership given the acronym AUKUS — for Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States.

The partnership, announced in 2021, enables Australia to access nuclear-powered submarines, which are stealthier and more capable than conventionally powered vessels, as a counterweight to China’s military buildup.

Biden, appearing sensitive to tensions with China and its criticism of the deal, stressed that the submarines are “nuclear powered, not nuclear armed.”

“These boats will not have any nuclear weapons of any kind of them,” he said at an outdoor ceremony at Naval Base Point Loma in San Diego, where he was flanked by Albanese and Sunak. Two submarines, the USS Missouri and the USS Charlotte, were tied up at the next pier in the Pacific Ocean behind the leaders.

Albanese said the agreement “represents the biggest single investment in Australia’s defense capability in all of our history.” It’s also the first time in 65 years that the U.S. has shared its nuclear propulsion technology, ”and we thank you for it,” he said.

Sunak called AUKUS “the most significant multilateral defense partnership in generations.” He said the U.K. also will share its 60 years of experience running its own submarine fleet with Australian engineers “so they can build their own fleet.”

In a joint statement before the formal announcement, the leaders said their countries have worked for decades to sustain peace, stability and prosperity around the world, including in the Indo-Pacific.

“We believe in a world that protects freedom and respects human rights, the rule of law, the independence of sovereign states, and the rules-based international order,” they said in the statement, released before their joint appearance in San Diego.

“The steps we are announcing today will help us to advance these mutually beneficial objectives in the decades to come,” they said.

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San Diego is Biden’s first stop on a three-day trip to California and Nevada. He will discuss gun violence prevention in Monterey Park, California, where 11 people were killed in a January mass shooting, and his plans to lower prescription drug costs in Las Vegas. The trip will include fundraising stops as Biden steps up his political activity before an expected reelection announcement next month.

A fundraiser in Rancho Santa Fe, California, on Monday night is expected to include about 40 attendees and raise $1 million for Democrats, according to a Democratic National Committee official.

Australia is buying three, and possibly up to five, Virginia-class boats as part of AUKUS. A future generation of submarines will be built in the U.K. and in Australia with U.S. technology and support.

The U.S. will also increase its port visits in Australia to provide it with more familiarity with the nuclear-powered technology before it has such subs of its own. The USS Asheville was docked in Perth, Australia, on Monday, Biden said.

Biden also met individually with Sunak and Albanese, an opportunity to coordinate strategy on Russia’s war in Ukraine, the global economy and more.

Sunak invited Biden, who is of Irish descent, to visit Northern Ireland in April to help celebrate the 25th anniversary of its peace accord, the 1998 Good Friday agreement. Biden replied that it is his “intention” to go to both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.

During a subsequent meeting with Albanese, Biden said he planned to visit Australia in May for meetings that will include the leaders of Japan and India.

Biden views the partnerships and alliances in the region as cornerstones for U.S. strategy for years to come. Asked if AUKUS would survive if a new, more isolationist president was elected — a veiled reference to Donald Trump, who is running for another term — Biden said yes.

The secretly brokered AUKUS deal included the Australian government’s cancellation of a $66 billion contract for a French-built fleet of conventional submarines, which sparked a diplomatic row within the Western alliance that took months to mend.

China has argued that the AUKUS deal violates the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. It contends that the transfer of nuclear weapons materials from a nuclear-weapon state to a non-nuclear-weapon state is a “blatant” violation of the spirit of the pact. Australian officials have pushed back against the criticism, arguing that they are working to acquire nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed, submarines.

“The question is really how does China choose to respond because Australia is not backing away from what it — what it sees to be doing in its own interests here,” said Charles Edel, a senior adviser and Australia chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “I think that probably from Beijing’s perspective they’ve already counted out Australia as a wooable mid country. It seemed to have fully gone into the U.S. camp.”

Biden downplayed the rivalry with China during his meeting with Albanese.

“I don’t view what we’re doing as a challenge to anybody,” he said.

Before he departed for California, Biden spoke at the White House about steps the administration is taking to safeguard depositors and protect against broader economic hardship after the second- and third-largest bank failures in U.S. history.

Biden said the nation’s financial systems are safe. He said he’d seek to hold accountable those responsible for the bank failures, called for better oversight and regulation of larger banks, and promised that taxpayers would not pay for any losses.

The Homeland Security Department said the extension is for certain Ukrainian nationals and their immediate family members who were let into the U.S. before the Uniting for Ukraine program started.

Ukrainians who came in under the Uniting for Ukraine program generally got two years of humanitarian “parole” in the U.S. whereas those who arrived before them generally got permission to stay only for one year.

Thousands of Ukrainians came to America last year fleeing the war.

The U.S. government used a program called humanitarian parole to admit them into the country. That program is a way to allow people from other countries to enter the United States on an emergency basis due to an urgent humanitarian situation. But it is usually for a finite amount of time, like a year or two years, and must be renewed for people to stay longer.

In recent years, humanitarian parole has been employed as a quick fix to deal with the fallout from the many world crises that have occurred as the U.S. refugee system that was dismantled by the previous administration was being built back up.

Now numerous groups are seeing their permission to remain in the United States expiring in coming months, including tens of thousands of Afghans.

That has led to intense anxiety for thousands of people who fled war in their homeland and don’t know whether they’ll be kicked out of the U.S. when their humanitarian parole status expires. The uncertainty can also be difficult for the businesses that employ them and need to make sure their employees are properly authorized to remain in the country.

Ukraine and immigration have both been hot button topics among Republican politicians who aren’t enthusiastic about continuing aid to the war and have accused the Biden administration of not doing enough to control migration at the southern border. But even in that toxic political environment, there’s been little movement to force Ukrainians to return home, reflecting widespread acceptance that it’s still too dangerous for them there.

The announcement came a day after the administration, in a move in the other direction toward conservation, said it would bar or limit drilling in some other areas of Alaska and the Arctic Ocean.

The Willow approval by the Bureau of Land Management would allow three drill sites, which would include up to 199 total wells. Two other drill sites proposed for the project would be denied. Project developer ConocoPhillips has said it considers the three-site option workable, “the right decision for Alaska and our nation” in the words of company chairman and CEO Ryan Lance.

Houston-based ConocoPhillips will relinquish rights to about 68,000 acres of existing leases in the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

The order, one of the most significant of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s tenure, was not signed by her but rather by her deputy, Tommy Beaudreau, who grew up in Alaska and has a close relationship with state lawmakers. She was notably silent on the project, which she had opposed as a New Mexico congresswoman before becoming Interior secretary two years ago.

Climate activists were outraged that Biden greenlighted the project, which they say put his climate legacy at risk. Allowing the drilling plan to go forward also would break Biden’s campaign promise to stop new oil drilling on public lands, they say.

However, administration officials were concerned that ConocoPhillips’ decades-old leases limited the government’s legal ability to block the project and that courts might have ruled in the company’s favor.

Monday’s announcement is not likely to be the last word, with litigation expected from environmental groups.

The Willow project could produce up to 180,000 barrels of oil a day, create up to 2,500 jobs during construction and 300 long-term jobs, and generate billions of dollars in royalties and tax revenues for the federal, state and local governments, the company said.

The project, located in the federally designated National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska, enjoys widespread political support in the state. Alaska Native state lawmakers recently met with Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to urge support for Willow.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said Monday the decision was “very good news for the country.”

“Not only will this mean jobs and revenue for Alaska, it will be resources that are needed for the country and for our friends and allies,” Murkowski said. “The administration listened to Alaska voices. They listed to the delegation as we pressed the case for energy security and national security.”

Fellow Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan said conditions attached to the project should not reduce Willow’s ability to produce up to 180,000 barrels of crude a day. But he said it was “infuriating” that Biden also moved to prevent or limit oil drilling elsewhere in Alaska.

Environmental activists who have promoted a #StopWillow campaign on social media were fuming at the approval, which they called a betrayal.

“We are too late in the climate crisis to approve massive oil and gas projects that directly undermine the new clean economy that the Biden administration committed to advancing,” said Earthjustice President Abigail Dillen. “We know President Biden understands the existential threat of climate, but he is approving a project that derails his own climate goals.”

Christy Goldfuss, a former Obama White House official who now is a policy chief at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said she was “deeply disappointed” at Biden’s decision to approve Willow, which NRDC estimates would generate planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to more than 1 million homes.

“This decision is bad for the climate, bad for the environment and bad for the Native Alaska communities who oppose this and feel their voices were not heard,” Goldfuss said.

Anticipating that reaction among environmental groups, the White House announced on Sunday that Biden will prevent or limit oil drilling in 16 million acres in Alaska and the Arctic Ocean. The plan would bar drilling in nearly 3 million acres of the Beaufort Sea — closing it off from oil exploration — and limit drilling in more than 13 million acres in the National Petroleum Reserve.

The withdrawal of the offshore area ensures that important habitat for whales, seals, polar bears and other wildlife “will be protected in perpetuity from extractive development,″ the White House said in a statement.

The conservation announcement did little to mollify activists.

“It’s a performative action to make the Willow project not look as bad,” said Elise Joshi, the acting executive director of Gen-Z for Change, an advocacy organization. Alaska’s bipartisan congressional delegation met with Biden and his advisers in early March to plead their case for the project, while environmental groups rallied opposition and urged project opponents to place pressure on the administration.

City of Nuiqsut Mayor Rosemary Ahtuangaruak, whose community of about 525 people is closest to the proposed development, has been outspoken in her opposition, worried about impacts to caribou and her residents’ subsistence lifestyles. The Naqsragmiut Tribal Council, in another North Slope community, also raised concerns with the project.

But there is “majority consensus” in the North Slope region supporting the project, said Nagruk Harcharek, president of the group Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, whose members include leaders from across much of that region.

The conservation actions announced Sunday complete protections for the entire Beaufort Sea Planning Area, building upon President Barack Obama’s 2016 action on the Chukchi Sea Planning Area and the majority of the Beaufort Sea, the White House said.

Separately, the administration moved to protect more than 13 million acres within the petroleum reserve, a 23-million acre chunk of land on Alaska’s North Slope set aside a century ago for future oil production.

The Willow project is within the reserve, and ConocoPhillips has long held leases for the site. About half the reserve is off limits to oil and gas leasing under an Obama-era rule reinstated by the Biden administration last year.

Areas to be protected include the Teshekpuk Lake, Utukok Uplands, Colville River, Kasegaluk Lagoon and Peard Bay Special Areas, collectively known for their globally significant habitat for grizzly and polar bears, caribou and hundreds of thousands of migratory birds.

___

Associated Press writers Becky Bohrer in Juneau, Alaska and Matthew Brown in Billings, Montana contributed to this story.

More than half of the money, $1.7 billion, would go to the Department of Health and Human Services to support the Democratic president’s cancer initiatives across an array of departments and agencies.

The funding request would support a “cancer moonshot’ initiative Biden announced last year with the goal of cutting cancer death rates in half over the next 25 years. Biden aims to help close gaps in cancer screenings, better understand and address environmental and toxic exposures associated with certain cancers, and reduce the effects of preventable cancers, such as those linked to tobacco and poor nutrition. The initiative also spends money on cutting-edge research and resources to support patients and their caregivers.

The “moonshot” program was launched in 2016 by President Barack Obama and led by his vice president — Biden. As president, Biden resurrected the initiative last year.

Cancer is personal for Biden and his wife, Jill, as the disease is for millions of people in the United States who have been diagnosed with cancer or have lost loved ones to various forms of the disease. Both the president and the first lady this year had lesions removed from their skin that were determined to be basal cell carcinoma, a common and easily treated form of cancer.

In 2015, the Bidens’ eldest son, Beau, died of an aggressive brain cancer at age 46.

While Biden’s budget is unlikely to clear Congress untouched, fighting cancer is an issue that Biden hopes can find bipartisan support.

Cancer is among four issues that Biden made part of a “unity agenda” he announced in his 2022 State of the Union address. Veterans, drug abuse and mental health are the other issues. Congress last year passed numerous pieces of legislation to address aspects of the agenda.

In recognition of March as National Colorectal Cancer Awareness Month, the White House on Friday was hosting a discussion with government officials and others on improving outcomes for this particular form of cancer.

Excluding some skin cancers, colorectal cancer is the fourth most-common cancer in men and women and the fourth leading cause of cancer-related deaths in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Featured speakers will include Simone Ledward Boseman, the widow of “Black Panther” star Chadwick Boseman, who died in 2020 at age 43 after a four-year battle with colon cancer, and NBC News anchor Craig Melvin, who lost an older brother to the same disease, also at age 43.

Separately on Friday, Jill Biden was scheduled to visit the Louisiana Cancer Research Center in New Orleans with U.S. Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., and his wife, Laura, to talk about the president’s cancer budget request and highlight the importance of colorectal cancer screenings. The Cassidys are medical doctors.

The order won’t take effect for a week to give the government time to appeal. The Homeland Security and Justice departments had no immediate comment.

In declaring a key administration tool illegal, U.S. District Judge T. Kent Wetherell II offered a scathing review of President Joe Biden’s border policies in a 109-page opinion, which followed a January trial in Pensacola, Florida.

The administration has “effectively turned the Southwest Border into a meaningless line in the sand and little more than a speedbump for aliens flooding into the country,” he wrote.

Wetherell, an appointee of President Donald Trump, criticized a decision to stop building a border wall, end a policy to make asylum-seekers wait in Mexico for hearings in U.S. immigration court and shift enforcement priorities. He also faulted the administration for ending family detention at the border, a decision that officials have begun to reconsider.

“Collectively, these actions were akin to posting a flashing ‘Come In, We’re Open’ sign on the southern border,” Wetherell wrote.

Wetherell’s language echoed Republican talking points heaping blame for all the border’s ills on Biden. While numbers have soared in the last two years, similar challenges dogged his predecessors, Trump and Barack Obama.

“Today’s ruling affirms what we have known all along, President Biden is responsible for the border crisis and his unlawful immigration policies make this country less safe,” said Ashley Moody, Florida’s Republican attorney general, who sued on behalf of the state in 2021. “A federal judge is now ordering Biden to follow the law, and his administration should immediately begin securing the border to protect the American people.”

At issue is the administration’s growing use of parole to quickly remove migrants from Border Patrol custody to pursue their immigration cases. They are typically told to report to immigration authorities in two months and tracked with a mobile device.

The Border Patrol paroled 572,575 migrants last year, including a record-high 130,563 in December. Parole plunged 96% to 5,225 migrants in January after the administration announced measures aimed at deterring Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans and Venezuelans from crossing the border illegally and instead seek protection by applying online, finding a financial sponsor and entering the U.S. at an airport.

Parole is far faster than the time-consuming job of agents issuing notices to appear in immigration court. It has dramatically alleviated overcrowding at Border Patrol facilities, which hovered around 12,000 toward the end of last year but fell below 5,000 in January.

Immigration advocates warned that Wetherell’s ruling could exacerbate conditions.

“Should it take effect, this decision will mean greater health and safety risks for detained migrants and greater pressure on our agents at the border,” said Jennie Murray, president of the National Immigration Forum.

___

Spagat reported from San Diego.

The Justice Department said the tie-up would especially hurt cost-conscious travelers who depend on Spirit to find cheaper options than they can find on JetBlue and other airlines.

Attorney General Merrick Garland held a news conference to announce the antitrust lawsuit — a sign of the importance that the administration places on stopping further consolidation in the airline industry.

“If allowed to proceed, this merger will limit choices and drive up ticket prices for passengers across the country” and “eliminate Spirit’s unique and disruptive role in the industry,” he said.

The Justice Department lawsuit, filed in federal district court in Boston, stressed that the deal would mean the end of the nation’s biggest “ultra-low-cost carrier.” Those are airlines that generally provide the cheapest fares but also tend to charge more fees.

The Justice Department lawyers said Spirit’s demise would eliminate about half of all ultra-low-cost seats in the market.

New York, Massachusetts and the District of Columbia joined the lawsuit. JetBlue and Spirit vowed to continue fighting to salvage their agreement.

JetBlue and Spirit have anticipated a legal challenge for weeks. The Justice Department had previously requested additional documents and depositions about JetBlue’s proposal to buy Spirit, the nation’s biggest budget airline. Negotiations over a possible settlement failed.

As signals grew that the government would challenge the tie-up, JetBlue CEO Robin Hayes and other company executives launched a pre-emptive campaign to make their argument that the deal would help consumers by creating a stronger competitor to the four carriers that control about 80% of the domestic air-travel market.

Hayes said Tuesday that he was disappointed but not surprised at the lawsuit.

“We said when we got the offer approved by the Spirit shareholders last year that we didn’t think we would close until the first half of 2024, expecting a trial,” he said on “CBS Mornings.”

The lawsuit is the latest by the Biden administration to seek to block mergers in industries including video gaming, publishing and sugar refining.

In the JetBlue case, the Justice Department was under pressure from Democratic lawmakers and consumer advocates who have complained about a wave of earlier mergers that left fewer airlines holding a greater share of the market.

The administration’s concern about airline consolidation surfaced in 2021, when the Justice Department sued to kill a limited partnership between JetBlue and American Airlines in the Northeast. A federal judge in Boston is expected to issue a ruling soon, after a non-jury trial last fall.

JetBlue held on to hope that the administration would come around to its argument that the combination with Spirit would be far smaller than other deals and would help consumers by putting pressure on the bigger airlines.

JetBlue and Spirit together would control a little over 9% of the domestic air-travel market, far smaller than American, Delta, United and Southwest. JetBlue executives repeatedly said their deal was not like Pepsi buying Coca-Cola — a line that Hayes repeated Tuesday.

They said the Justice Department created the environment of four airlines dominating the market, and JetBlue merely wanted a better chance at competing with the giants — all of whom grew through mergers and acquisitions between 2008 and 2013.

The Justice Department sued to block the last megadeal, American’s merger with US Airways, then reached a settlement that required the carriers to give up some gates and takeoff and landing slots at several major airports. Before that, the government allowed Delta to buy Northwest, United to merge with Continental, and it later let Southwest buy AirTran.

Last year, JetBlue torpedoed a deal between Spirit and Frontier Airlines, then beat Frontier in a bidding war. Frontier CEO Barry Biffle argued that regulators would block a JetBlue-Spirit deal but not a tie-up with his airline, a similar discount carrier.

The largest union for flight attendants, the Association of Flight Attendants, reiterated its support for the merger Tuesday, which it said would lift pay and benefits for Spirit crews that it represents.

But the American Economic Liberties Project, which opposes corporate consolidation, praised the Justice Department for seeking to block the deal, saying it would let JetBlue “gobble up a low-cost competitor” and boost prices.

After a crowded White House ceremony, a grateful Davis emphasized the positive of the honor rather than negative of the delay, saying, “It is in the best interests of America that we do things like this.”

Thanking President Joe Biden, who draped a ribbon with the medal around his neck, he said, “God bless you, God bless all, God bless America.”

The belated recognition for the 83-year-old Virginia resident came after the recommendation for his medal was lost, resubmitted — and then lost again.

It wasn’t until 2016 — half a century after Davis risked his life to save some of his men under fire — that advocates painstakingly recreated and resubmitted the paperwork.

Biden described Davis as a “true hero” for risking his life amid heavy enemy fire to haul injured soldiers under his command to safety. When a superior ordered him to safety, according to Biden, Davis replied, “Sir, I’m just not going to leave. I still have an American out there.” He went back into the firefight to retrieve an injured medic.

“You are everything this medal means,” Biden told Davis. “You’re everything our nation is at our best. Brave and big hearted, determined and devoted, selfless and steadfast.”

Biden said Davis should have received the honor years ago, describing segregation in the U.S. when he returned home and questioning the delay in awarding him the medal.

“Somehow the paperwork was never processed,” Biden said. “Not just once. But twice.”

Davis doesn’t dwell on the delayed honor and says he doesn’t know why decades had to pass before it finally arrived.

“Right now I’m overwhelmed,” he told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday, the eve of the medal ceremony.

“When you’re fighting, you’re not thinking about this moment,” Davis said. “You’re just trying to get through that moment.”

“That moment” stretched over nearly 19 hours and two days in mid-June 1965.

Davis, then a captain and commander with the 5th Special Forces Group, engaged in nearly continuous combat during a pre-dawn raid on a North Vietnamese army camp in the village of Bong Son in Binh Dinh province.

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He engaged in hand-to-hand combat with the North Vietnamese, called for precision artillery fire and thwarted the capture of three American soldiers — all while suffering wounds from gunshots and grenade fragments. He used his pinkie finger to fire his rifle after his hand was shattered by an enemy grenade, according to reports.

Davis repeatedly sprinted into an open rice paddy to rescue members of his team, according to the ArmyTimes. His entire team survived.

“That word ‘gallantry’ is not much used these days,” Biden said. “But I can think of no better word to describe Paris.”

Davis, from Cleveland, retired in 1985 at the rank of colonel and now lives in Alexandria, Virginia, just outside Washington. Biden called him several weeks ago to deliver the news.

He says the wait in no way lessens the honor.

“It heightens the thing, if you’ve got to wait that long,” he said. “It’s like someone promised you an ice cream cone. You know what it looks like, what it smells like. You just haven’t licked it.”

Davis’ commanding officer recommended him for the military’s top honor, but the paperwork disappeared. He eventually was awarded a Silver Star, the military’s third-highest combat medal, but members of Davis’ team have argued that his skin color was a factor in the disappearance of his Medal of Honor recommendation.

“I believe that someone purposely lost the paperwork,” Ron Deis, a junior member of Davis’ team in Bong Son, told the AP in a separate interview.

Deis, now 79, helped compile the recommendation that was submitted in 2016. He said he knew Davis had been recommended for the Medal of Honor shortly after the battle in 1965, and he spent years wondering why it hadn’t been awarded. Nine years ago he learned that a second nomination had been submitted “and that also was somehow, quote, lost.”

“But I don’t believe they were lost,” Deis said. “I believe they were intentionally discarded. They were discarded because he was Black, and that’s the only conclusion that I can come to.”

Army officials say there is no evidence of racism in Davis’ case.

“We’re here to celebrate the fact that he got the award, long time coming,” Maj. Gen. Patrick Roberson, deputy commanding general, U.S. Army Special Operations Command, told the AP. “We, the Army, you know, we haven’t been able to see anything that would say, ‘Hey, this is racism.'”

“We can’t know that,” Roberson said.

In early 2021, Christopher Miller, then the acting defense secretary, ordered an expedited review of Davis’ case. He argued in an opinion column later that year that awarding Davis the Medal of Honor would address an injustice.

“Some issues in our nation rise above partisanship,” Miller wrote. “The Davis case meets that standard.”

Davis’ daughter, Regan Davis Hopper, a mom of two teenage sons, told the AP that she only learned of her dad’s heroism in 2019. Like him, she said she tries not to dwell on her disappointment over how the situation was handled.

“I try not to think about that. I try not to let that weigh me down and make me lose the thrill and excitement of the moment,” Hopper said. “I think that’s most important, to just look ahead and think about how exciting it is for America to meet my dad for the first time. I’m just proud of him.”

The National Medal of Honor Museum released a statement saying it was “thrilled that Colonel Davis is being recognized as a true American hero.”

“His displayed immense bravery and courage on the battlefield in Vietnam— nearly six decades ago—repeatedly risking his own life to save others and demonstrating every value associated with the Medal,” it said. “As one of first Black officers to lead a Special Forces team in combat, he is an inspiration and a role model to generations of Green Berets. We are eager to preserve and share his story alongside his fellow Medal of Honor recipients so that every American may learn from his example.”

In a strategy announced Thursday, the administration called for money and more time to prosecute cases, to put into place new ways to prevent identity theft and to help people whose identities were stolen.

On a call with reporters, White House American Rescue Plan coordinator Gene Sperling had hope that Congress, including the GOP-controlled House that is often hostile to the Democratic administration, would see the spending as an investment.

“It’s just so clear and the evidence is so strong that a dollar smartly spent here will return to the taxpayers, or save, at least $10,” Sperling said, pointing to recoveries that have already happened. The U.S. Secret Service last year got back $286 million sent out in fraudulently obtained loans through the Small Business Administration.

Sperling said the request would be part of the budget proposal Biden is scheduled to make March 9 — but the bulk of it will be separate from the one-year appropriation request. Details would need to be ironed out with Congress.

Soon after the swaths of the U.S. economy were shut down after the coronavirus hit the country in 2020, Congress began authorizing massive relief measures to help governments, businesses and individuals who were impacted. Relief measures — some signed by Biden and some by his predecessor, Donald Trump — totaled nearly $6 trillion. That’s more than the government spent annually before the pandemic.

Money went to boost unemployment insurance programs, help those in the gig economy who lost work, cover government costs and keep businesses afloat.

“On the whole, those programs did enormous good,” Sperling said. “There were also cases where guardrails were unnecessarily lowered, which led to unnecessary and massive fraud.”

A congressional committee found that financial technology companies did not properly screen applicants for the giant Paycheck Protection Program. Fraudulent claims for unemployment benefits overwhelmed state computer systems, which sometimes had trouble identifying the fake ones while slowing down many legitimate filings. The Labor Department estimated there was $164 billion in improper unemployment fraud payments alone — much of it to fraudsters

Many of the scams relied on fake or stolen personal information.

Biden’s plans aim to deal with prosecutions and prevention. He’s asking for $600 million for prosecution, including funds to create at least 10 new Justice Department strike forces in addition to the three that already exist to go after criminal syndicates and other fraudsters. He’s also calling on increasing the statute of limitations for such crimes to 10 years from the current five, giving more time to investigate and prosecute cases.

And he’s calling for policy changes to make sure that the Labor Department Inspector General’s Office has ongoing access to data showing where the same identity was used to apply for benefits in multiple states. That office and other inspector general offices would share at least $300 million to hire investigators.

Biden is also planning eventually to issue an executive order directing federal agencies on how to take action on identity fraud, including modernizing government systems to prevent identity theft.

A portion of the money would go to improve a Federal Trade Commission website, IdentityTheft.gov, a place for people to report identity theft and get help.

The proposal also notes that $1.6 billion from the American Rescue Plan — the last of the big relief measures, adopted in 2021 — will be made available by June to help states improve their anti-identity theft measures.

In an interview with Fox News, Wray said the FBI believes Covid probably originated from a “potential lab incident” in Wuhan, but that the Chinese government has essentially interfered with the agency’s ongoing probe.

“The FBI has for quite some time now assessed that the origins of the pandemic are most likely a potential lab incident in Wuhan,” Wray told Fox News host Bret Baier.

“I will just make the observation that the Chinese government, it seems to me, has been doing its best to try to thwart and obfuscate the work here, the work that we’re doing, the work that our U.S. government and close foreign partners are doing, and that’s unfortunate for everybody,” Wray added.

For more on this story, go to NBC News.