The U.S. recently rejoined the U.N. Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization after a five-year hiatus initiated by Biden’s immediate predecessor in the White House, Donald Trump.

The Democratic president’s choice to become the U.S. permanent representative to the Paris-based UNESCO, with the rank of ambassador, is longtime aide Courtney O’Donnell, according to the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the nomination before a formal announcement.

O’Donnell currently wears two hats in the administration: She’s a senior adviser in Harris’ office and acting chief of staff for Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, and lends her expertise to a range of national and global issues, including gender equity and countering antisemitism, a top issue for Emhoff, who is Jewish.

O’Donnell also was communications director for Jill Biden, when she was second lady during Joe Biden’s vice presidency when Barack Obama was president. O’Donnell helped Jill Biden raise awareness and support for U.S. military families and promote community colleges.

She has extensive experience in developing global partnerships, public affairs and strategic communications, having held senior roles in two presidential administrations, nonprofit and philanthropic organizations, national political campaigns and the private sector, according to her official bio.

O’Donnell most recently oversaw global partnerships at Airbnb.

Former White House chief of staff Ron Klain said O’Donnell is trusted by colleagues worldwide.

“This is a fantastic pick and she will do a fantastic job at UNESCO,” he said in a statement.

Cathy Russell worked with O’Donnell in the second lady’s office and said she is skilled at developing global partnerships, creating social impact campaigns and providing strategic counsel on a range of issues.

“Everyone who knows Courtney knows she is committed to the value of global engagement and strengthening American leadership around the world,” Russell said.

The Senate must vote on O’Donnell’s nomination.

The first lady attended a ceremony in late July at UNESCO headquarters in Paris, where the U.S. flag was raised to mark Washington’s official reentry into the U.N. agency after the absence initiated by Trump, a Republican. She spoke about the importance of American leadership in preserving cultural heritage and empowering education and science across the globe.

The United States announced its intention to rejoin UNESCO in June, and the organization’s 193 member states voted in July to approve the U.S. reentry. The ceremony formally signified the U.S. becoming the 194th member — and flag proprietor — at the agency.

The U.S. decision to return was based mainly on concerns that China has filled a leadership gap since Washington withdrew, underscoring the broader geopolitical dynamics at play, particularly the growing influence of China in international institutions.

The U.S. exit from UNESCO in 2017 cited an alleged anti-Israel bias within the organization. The decision followed a 2011 move by UNESCO to include Palestine as a member state, which led the U.S. and Israel to cease financing the agency. The U.S. withdrawal became official in 2018.

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The State Department said Wednesday it had signed off on the sale of infrared search tracking systems along with related equipment for advanced F-16 fighter jets. The sale includes the infrared systems as well as test support and equipment, computer software and spare parts, it said.

Although the deal is modest in comparison to previous weapons sales, the move is likely to draw fierce criticism from Beijing, which regards self-governing Taiwan as a renegade province and refuses to rule out the use of force to reunify it with the mainland.

“This proposed sale serves U.S. national, economic, and security interests by supporting the recipient’s continuing efforts to modernize its armed forces and to maintain a credible defensive capability,” the State Department said in a statement.

“The proposed sale will improve the recipient’s capability to meet current and future threats by contributing to the recipient’s abilities to defend its airspace, provide regional security, and increase interoperability with the United States through its F-16 program,” it said.

The announcement came just hours after Taiwan’s President Tsai Ing-wen renewed a pledge to strengthen Taiwan’s self-defense as she visited a war memorial from the last time Taiwan and China battled. Tsai, visited the outlying islands of Kinmen where the conflict was fought 65 years ago, commemorated those who died.

Wednesday’s State Department announcement also follows an angry Chinese reaction to the transit through the United States of Taiwanese Vice President William Lai on his way to and from an official visit in Paraguay last week.

In recent years, China has stepped up its military activity in the waters and skies around Taiwan, sending fighter jets and navy vessels near the island or to encircle it.

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It was not immediately clear when the first F-16s might enter the conflict, but Ukrainian pilots will first have to undertake at least six months of training on the aircraft, according to officials.

Ukraine has long pleaded for the sophisticated fighter to give it a combat edge. It recently launched a long-anticipated counteroffensive against the Kremlin’s forces without air cover, placing its troops at the mercy of Russian aviation and artillery.

Even so, Air Force Gen. James Hecker, commander of U.S. air forces in Europe and Africa, told reporters in Washington he did not expect the F-16s to be a game-changer for Ukraine. Getting F-16 squadrons ready for battle could take “four or five years,” he said.

But in eastern Ukraine, attack helicopter pilots welcomed the news. They said Russia has a clear advantage in the skies, but the introduction of better fighter jets could dramatically shift the balance of power Kyiv’s way.

Ukrainian air forces supporting infantry are using decades-old Soviet-era planes, which are vulnerable to air-to-air missile attacks from Russian fighter jets, Capt. Yevgen Rakita, a spokesman for the 18th Army Aviation Brigade, told The Associated Press.

“A modern war cannot be won without aviation” capabilities, Rakita said.

In making the decision on F-16 deliveries, Washington aims to ensure warplanes can be provided to Ukraine as soon as its pilots complete training, according to a U.S. administration official who was not authorized to comment and spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity.

U.S. national security adviser Jake Sullivan said U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken sent a letter to his Dutch and Danish counterparts earlier this week, offering formal assurance that the U.S. would fast-track approval of all requests from third parties to transfer F-16s to Ukraine.

Danish Defense Minister Jakob Ellemann-Jensen said Friday that the training of Ukrainian pilots is starting this month.

A coalition of 11 Western countries — the Netherlands, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom — pledged in July to train Ukrainian pilots to fly F-16s.

Denmark will hand over some of its F-16s only after receiving its new F-35 jet fighters. The first four F-35s are due to be delivered on Oct. 1.

Washington’s blessing for the plane donations to other countries is needed because the aircraft are made in the United States.

Ukraine’s Western allies have at times moved slowly on granting Kyiv the military support it has requested.

President Joe Biden’s authorization last May for allies to train Ukrainian forces on how to operate the warplanes, and eventually to provide the aircraft themselves, was preceded by months of debate in Washington and quiet talks with allies, officials said.

The administration had concerns that the move might escalate tensions with Russia. Also, U.S. officials argued that learning to fly and logistically support the advanced F-16 would be difficult.

Though delivery is likely months away, Washington says the F-16s — like the advanced U.S. Abrams tanks — will be crucial for Ukraine’s long-term security.

Ukraine has been relying on older aircraft, such as Russian-made MiG-29 and Sukhoi jets. F-16s have newer technology and targeting capabilities. They are also more versatile, experts say.

In other developments:

— Russian air defenses stopped drone attacks on central Moscow and on the country’s ships in the Black Sea, officials said Friday, blaming the attempted strikes on Ukraine. It was not possible to verify the claims.

— A Hong Kong-flagged cargo ship that set sail this week along a temporary Black Sea corridor established by Ukraine for merchant shipping safely reached the coast of Istanbul on Friday. The voyage was closely watched to see whether the Russian navy would allow the Joseph Schulte container vessel to pass unmolested.

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Kullab reported from eastern Ukraine and Olsen from Copenhagen. Aamer Madhani and Ellen Knickmeyer contributed from Washington and Jim Heintz from Tallinn, Estonia.

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Follow AP’s coverage of the war in Ukraine at https://apnews.com/hub/russia-ukraine

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Since 2019, Iran has seized a series of ships in the strait, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf, as part of its efforts to pressure the West over negotiations regarding its collapsed nuclear deal with world powers. Putting U.S. troops on commercial ships could further deter Iran from seizing vessels — or escalate tensions further.

The contemplated move also would represent an extraordinary commitment in the Mideast by U.S. forces as the Pentagon tries to focus on Russia and China. America didn’t even take the step during the so-called “Tanker War,” which culminated with the U.S. Navy and Iran fighting a one-day naval battle in 1988 that was the Navy’s largest since World War II.

While officials offered few details of the plan, it comes as thousands of Marines and sailors on both the amphibious assault ship USS Bataan and the USS Carter Hall, a landing ship, are on their way to the Persian Gulf. Those Marines and sailors could provide the backbone for any armed guard mission in the strait, through which 20% of the world’s crude oil passes.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations did not respond to a request for comment from AP about the U.S. proposal. Hours later, however, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency acknowledged the proposal, citing this AP report.

Five U.S. officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the proposal, acknowledged its broad details. The officials stressed no final decision had been made and that discussions continue between U.S. military officials and America’s Gulf Arab allies in the region.

Officials said the Marines and Navy sailors would provide the security only at the request of the ships involved. One official described the process as complex, saying any deployment likely also would require approval of the country under which the ship is flagged and the country under which the owner is registered. So far, that has yet to happen and it might not for some time, the official said.

At the Pentagon, Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder was asked about the plans and would only say that he has no announcements to make on the matter. More broadly, however, he noted that additional ships, aircraft and Marines have been deployed to the Gulf region, making it easier to respond more quickly to any Iranian provocations.

That effort by U.S. and partners, he said, is aimed at ensuring “the Strait of Hormuz remains open, there’s freedom of navigation, and that we’re deterring any type of malign activity.”

And White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby, speaking to reporters, underscored the importance of the strait and U.S. concerns about Iranian harassment of vessels there.

“The Strait of Hormuz is a vital seaway that has a huge impact on seaborne trade around the world,” Kirby said. “It’s a critical chokepoint in the maritime world. And we have seen threats by Iran to affect that chokepoint.”

Earlier Thursday, Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, the head of the Navy’s Mideast-based 5th Fleet, met with the head of the Gulf Cooperation Council. The six-nation bloc includes Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

While a statement from the GCC about the meeting did not hint at the proposal, it did say that Cooper and officials discussed “strengthening GCC-U.S. cooperation and working with international and regional partners.”

The Bataan and Carter Hall left Norfolk, Virginia, on July 10 on a mission the Pentagon described as being “in response to recent attempts by Iran to threaten the free flow of commerce in the Strait of Hormuz and its surrounding waters.” The ships made a port visit earlier this week at Souda Bay, Greece, drawing closer to the Mideast, according to photographs released by the Navy.

Already, the U.S. has sent A-10 Thunderbolt II warplanes, F-16 and F-35 fighters, as well as the destroyer USS Thomas Hudner, and other warships to the region over Iran’s actions at sea.

The deployment has captured Iran’s attention, with its chief diplomat telling neighboring nations that the region doesn’t need “foreigners” providing security. On Wednesday, Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard launched a surprise military drill on disputed islands in the Persian Gulf, with swarms of small fast boats, paratroopers and missile units taking part.

The renewed hostilities come as Iran now enriches uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels after the collapse of its 2015 nuclear deal. International inspectors also believe it has enough enriched uranium for “several” nuclear bombs if it chose to build them. Iran maintains its program is for peaceful purposes, and U.S. intelligence agencies assess Tehran is not pursuing an atomic bomb.

The U.S. also has pursued ships across the world believed to be carrying sanctioned Iranian oil. Oil industry worries over another seizure by Iran likely has left a ship allegedly carrying Iranian oil stranded off Texas as no company has yet to unload it.

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Baldor reported from Washington. Associated Press writers Tara Copp and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.

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Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin approved the deployment of a total of 1,500 active duty troops for a temporary 90-day military presence surge at the border in May. At the time, illegal border crossings were swiftly escalating with concerns they’d go even higher after the restrictions ended but instead the numbers have fallen.

The 1,100 troops will conclude their 90-day mission by Aug. 8; the remaining 400 will be extended through August 31, a defense official said on the condition of anonymity to discuss details ahead of an announcement.

At the time the troop movements were made public officials stressed that the active-duty troops would not be taking front-line positions on the border or interacting with migrants but instead doing tasks like data entry or warehouse support with the goal of freeing up Customs and Border Protection personnel to be out in the field.

The troops were intended to help back up border officials dealing with the end of Title 42. That rule allowed the government to quickly expel tens of thousands of migrants from the country in the name of protecting America from COVID-19.

In the days leading up to the end of Title 42, border agents were encountering 10,000 migrants a day and at one point had 27,000 migrants in custody. But immediately after Title 42 expired, the numbers dropped sharply to about 5,000 encounters a day, and have stayed low, according to the agency’s data.

But it’s far from clear how permanent these drops are. Already the number of people crossing the Darien Gap, a key route for migrants headed to the U.S. from South America, during the first seven months of the year is more than all of 2022 combined.

The active duty military troops’ departure is also happening as much of the Biden administration’s immigration agenda is subject to court challenges. Last week a federal judge ruled that an administration rule limiting asylum access at the southern border was against the law. The administration is appealing that ruling, arguing that it’s a key part of their efforts to maintain order on the border.

Separately the Justice Department last week announced it has sued Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to force the state to remove floating buoys in the Rio Grande that the federal government says present a humanitarian and environmental concern.

The departures also do not impact an additional 2,300 National Guard troops under federal orders who remain at the border in similar supporting roles, National Guard chief Gen. Dan Hokanson said last week. Those troops will not be extended, but other units will be rotated in to replace them when their deployments end.

Austin has tried to get the Department of Homeland Security to fully assume the border protection role instead of continually relying on military troops. As a condition for Austin’s previous approval of National Guard troops to the border through Oct. 1, Homeland Security had to agree to work with the White House and Congress to develop a plan for longer-term staffing solutions and funding shortfalls.

In a response to the AP, the Pentagon said DHS has outlined a plan to increase personnel and technology investments to meet future surges.

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The Pentagon said Monday that the USS Thomas Hudner, a destroyer, and a number of F-35 fighter jets will be heading to the area. The Hudner had been in the Red Sea.

Defense officials last week announced the deployment of F-16s to the area over the past weekend, and there have been A-10 attack aircraft there for nearly two weeks in response to the Iranian activity.

The latest deployments come after Iran tried to seize two oil tankers near the strait early this month, opening fire on one of them. The aircraft are intended to give air cover for the commercial ships moving through the waterway and increase the military’s visibility in the area, as a deterrent to Iran.

The U.S. Navy said in both instances the Iranian naval vessels backed off when the USS McFaul, a guided-missile destroyer, arrived on the scene. The Navy said the McFaul remains in the Gulf region to continue protection of the shipping lanes.

Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokeswoman, said it is not clear how long the ship and the aircraft will remain in the region.

“In light of this continued threat and in coordination with our partners and allies, the department is increasing our presence and ability to monitor the strait and surrounding waters,” Singh told Pentagon reporters during a briefing.

The U.S. Navy says Iran has seized at least five commercial vessels in the last two years and has harassed more than a dozen others. Many of the incidents have occurred in and around the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which 20% of all crude oil passes.

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The surgical, targeted espionage accessed the email of a small number of individuals at an unspecified number of U.S. agencies and was discovered in mid-June by the State Department, U.S. officials said. They said none of the breached systems were classified, nor was any of the stolen data.

The hacked officials included Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo, The Washington Post reported, citing anonymous U.S. officials. Export controls imposed by her agency have stung multiple Chinese companies.

One person familiar with the investigation said U.S. military and intelligence agencies were not among the agencies impacted in the monthlong spying campaign, which also affected unnamed foreign governments.

The officials spoke on condition they not be further identified.

In a technical advisory Wednesday and a call with reporters, the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency and the FBI said Microsoft determined the hackers gained access by impersonating authorized users.

Officials did not specify the nature of the stolen data. But one U.S. official said the intrusion was “directly targeted” at diplomats and others who deal with the China portfolio at the State Department and other agencies. The official added that it was not yet clear if there had been any significant compromise of information.

The Blinken trip went ahead as planned, although with customary information security procedures in place, which required his delegation to use “burner” phones and computers in China.

The hack was disclosed late Tuesday by Microsoft in a blog post. It said it was alerted to the breach, which it blamed on a state-backed, espionage-focused Chinese hacking group “known to target government agencies in Western Europe,” on June 16. Microsoft said the group, which it calls Storm-0558, had gained access to email accounts affecting about 25 organizations, including government agencies, since mid-May as well as to consumer accounts of individuals likely associated with those agencies.

Neither Microsoft nor U.S. officials would identify the agencies or governments impacted. A senior CISA official told reporters in a press call that the number of affected organizations in the United States is in the single digits.

While the official declined to say whether U.S. officials are displeased with Microsoft over the breach, U.S. National Security Council spokesman Adam Hodge noted that it was “government safeguards” that detected the intrusion and added, “We continue to hold the procurement providers of the U.S. Government to a high security threshold.”

In fact, those safeguards consist of a data-logging feature for which Microsoft charges a premium. The CISA official noted that some of the victims lacked the data-logging feature and, unable to detect the breach, learned of it from Microsoft.

But of greater concern to cybersecurity experts is that The Storm-0558 hackers broke in using forged authentication tokens — which are used to verify the identity of a user. Microsoft’s executive vice president for security, Charlie Bell, said on the company’s website that the hackers had done that by acquiring a “consumer signing key.”

Cybersecurity researcher Jake Williams, a former National Security Agency offensive hacker, said it remains unclear how the hackers accomplished that. Microsoft did not immediately respond to emailed questions, including whether it was breached by the hackers to obtain the signing key.

Williams was concerned the hackers could have forged tokens for wide use to hack any number of non-enterprise Microsoft users. “I can’t imagine China didn’t also use this access to target dissidents on personal subscriptions, too.”

The head of intelligence for the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, Adam Meyers, said in a statement that the incident highlights the systemic risk of relying on a single technology provider in Microsoft. He said “having one monolithic vendor that is responsible for all of your technology, products, services and security – can end in disaster.”

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, called the U.S. accusation of hacking “disinformation” aimed at diverting attention from U.S. cyberespionage against China.

“No matter which agency issued this information, it will never change the fact that the United States is the world’s largest hacker empire conducting the most cyber theft,” Wang said in a routine briefing.

U.S. intelligence agencies also use hacking as a critical espionage tool and it is not a violation of international law.

Last month, Google-owned cybersecurity firm Mandiant said suspected state-backed Chinese hackers broke into the networks of hundreds of public and private sector organizations globally exploiting a vulnerability in a popular email security tool.

Earlier this year, Microsoft said state-backed Chinese hackers were targeting U.S. critical infrastructure and could be laying the technical groundwork to disrupt critical communications between the U.S. and Asia during future crises.

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Associated Press writers Aamer Madhani in Washington and Zen Soo in Hong Kong contributed to this report. Bajak reported from Boston.

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Barely a dozen Republicans, mainly members of the House Freedom Caucus, shuttered House business for a second day Wednesday in protest of McCarthy’s leadership. Routine votes could not be taken, and a pair of pro-gas stove bills important to GOP activists stalled out. Some lawmakers asked if they could simply go home — and eventually they could. By evening, the rest of week’s schedule was called off.

McCarthy brushed off the disruption as healthy political debate, part of his “risk taker” way of being a leader — not too different, he said, from the 15-vote spectacle it took in January for him to finally convince his colleagues to elect him as speaker. With a paper-thin GOP majority, any few Republicans have outsized sway.

But the aftermath of the debt ceiling deal is coming into focus: The hard-right flank that helped put the speaker in power five months ago is not done with McCarthy yet.

“I enjoy this conflict,” the speaker bantered Wednesday at the Capitol, saying he feels like Goldilocks being pushed from all sides. “Conflict makes you stronger if you deal with it.”

At its core, the standoff between the House conservatives and the speaker revolves around the budget levels McCarthy agreed to in the debt-ceiling bill with Biden that the right flank of his conference strenuously opposed. The agreement restricted spending, but not as much as the Freedom Caucus and others demanded. Unable to stop the debt bill’s passage last week, the conservatives are now digging in and preparing for a longer fight to prevent it from taking hold.

It’s all setting the stage for a potentially disastrous showdown ahead, when Congress will need to pass spending bills to fund the government at the levels set by the McCarthy-Biden debt package, or risk a shutdown in federal government operations when the new fiscal year starts Oct. 1.

The test will likely come even sooner, this summer, when the Biden administration is expected to ask Congress to approve supplemental funding for Ukraine to fight the war against Russia. It’s an issue that splits the Republicans between those who want to cut budgets and those insisting on a strong military.

Aligning with the defense hawks, Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell raised his own concerns Wednesday about the cap on military spending: “I’m not sure at this point how to fix it, but it’s a problem, a serious problem.”

While the conservatives have aired a long list of grievances, the debt deal looms largest.

The McCarthy-Biden compromise set overall federal budget caps — holding spending flat for 2024, and with a 1% growth for 2025 — and Congress still needs to pass appropriations bills to fund the various federal agencies at the agreed-to amounts. That’s typically done by Oct. 1. After Biden signed the debt deal into law last weekend, lawmakers have been fast at work on the agency-spending bills ahead of votes this summer to meet the deadline.

Not only did the conservatives object to the deal with Biden as insufficient, they claim it violated the terms of an agreement they had reached with McCarthy to roll back spending even further, to 2022 levels, to make him speaker.

“There was an agreement in January,” Rep. Ken Buck, R-Colo., told reporters after he left the speaker’s office Wednesday morning. “And it was violated in the debt-ceiling bill.”

McCarthy insists the agreement he made during the speakers race to roll back spending to 2022 was not a guaranteed outcome, only a goal. Besides, the debt deal has a provision that would automatically return spending to the 2022 level if Congress fails to put in place all the funding bills by January.

“We never promised we’re going to be all at ‘22 levels —I said we would strive to get to the ’22 level or the equivalent amount,” McCarthy said Wednesday. “We’ve met all that criteria.”

McCarthy also said he’s not opposed to more funding for Ukraine, but he wants to see exactly what’s needed rather than simply agree to undoing the spending caps that he negotiated with Biden and that were just signed into law.

Democrats watching the fallout from the debt-ceiling deal are mindful of the challenges ahead.

“I think it’s going to be tough,” said Rep. Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut, the top Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee.

“You’ve got a whole bunch of people who want to cut back,” she said of the Republicans. “Potentially they could hold up appropriations.”

If Congress fails to pass the spending bills by fall it risks a federal government shutdown — an outcome conservatives have forced multiple times before, starting in the Clinton era when then-Speaker Newt Gingrich led the House into a budget standoff, and again in 2013 when conservatives shut down the government as they tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

The longest federal shutdown in history was during the Trump era when Congress refused his demands for money to build the border wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

For now, McCarthy and his leadership team need to just figure out how to bring the House chamber back into session.

“This is insane,” said Republican Rep. Steve Womack of Arkansas. “This is not the way a governing majority is expected to behave, and frankly, I think there will be a political cost to it.”

The bills on tap this week were not the most pressing on the agenda, but are popular among Republicans and carry important political messages even if they have no chance of becoming law.

Among them is a pair of bills related to gas stoves, including one that would prohibit the use of federal funds to regulate gas stoves as a hazardous product.

House action came to a sudden halt midday Tuesday when the band of conservatives refused to support a routine procedural vote to set the rules schedule for the day’s debate. It was the first time in some 20 years a routine rules vote was defeated.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Stephen Groves, Mary Clare Jalonick and Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

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The Democratic president and Republican speaker spoke late in the day as negotiators rushed to draft and post the bill text for review, with compromises that neither the hard-right or left flank is likely to support. Instead, the leaders are working to gather backing from the political middle as Congress hurries toward votes before a June 5 deadline to avert a damaging federal default.

“Good news,” Biden declared Sunday evening at the White House.

“The agreement prevents the worst possible crisis, a default, for the first time in our nation’s history,” he said. “Takes the threat of a catastrophic default off the table.”

The president urged both parties in Congress to come together for swift passage. “The speaker and I made clear from the start that the only way forward was a bipartisan agreement,” he said.

The final product includes spending cuts but risks angering some lawmakers as they take a closer look at the concessions. Biden told reporters at the White House upon his return from Delaware that he was confident the plan will make it to his desk.

McCarthy, too, was confident in remarks at the Capitol: “At the end of the day, people can look together to be able to pass this.”

The days ahead will determine whether Washington is again able to narrowly avoid a default on U.S. debt, as it has done many times before, or whether the global economy enters a potential crisis.

In the United States, a default could cause financial markets to freeze up and spark an international financial crisis. Analysts say millions of jobs would vanish, borrowing and unemployment rates would jump, and a stock-market plunge could erase trillions of dollars in household wealth. It would all but shatter the $24 trillion market for Treasury debt.

Anxious retirees and others were already making contingency plans for missed checks, with the next Social Security payments due soon as the world watches American leadership at stake.

McCarthy and his negotiators portrayed the deal as delivering for Republicans though it fell well short of the sweeping spending cuts they sought. Top White House officials were briefing Democratic lawmakers and phoning some directly to try to shore up support.

One surprise was a provision important to influential Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., giving congressional backing for the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline, a natural gas project, that is certain to raise questions.

Negotiators also agreed to some Republican demands for increased work requirements for food stamps recipients that Democrats had called a nonstarter.

McCarthy told reporters at the Capitol on Sunday that the agreement “doesn’t get everything everybody wanted,” but that was to be expected in a divided government. Privately, he told lawmakers on a conference call that Democrats “got nothing.”

Weeks of negotiations came together when Biden and McCarthy spoke by phone Saturday evening and agreed in principle to the deal, finishing it up Sunday with the 99-page legislative text made public.

Support from both parties will be needed to win congressional approval before the projected June 5 government default on U.S. debts. Lawmakers are expected to return Tuesday from the Memorial Day weekend, and McCarthy has promised lawmakers he will abide by the rule to post any bill for 72 hours before voting in the House, as soon as Wednesday.

The package would next go to the Senate, where Republican leader Mitch McConnell said senators “must act swiftly and pass this agreement without unnecessary delay.”

Central to the compromise is a two-year budget deal that would essentially hold spending flat for 2024, while boosting it for defense and veterans, and capping increases at 1% for 2025. That’s alongside raising the debt limit for two years, pushing the volatile political issue past the next presidential election.

Driving hard to impose tougher work requirements on government aid recipients, Republicans achieved some of what they wanted. It ensures people ages 49 to 54 with food stamp aid would have to meet work requirements if they are able-bodied and without dependents. Biden was able to secure waivers for veterans and homeless people.

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

It halts some funds to hire new Internal Revenue Service agents as Republicans demanded, and rescinds some $30 billion for coronavirus relief, keeping $5 billion for developing the next generation of COVID-19 vaccines.

The deal would suspend the debt limit until January 2025. It 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. Lifting the nation’s debt limit, now at $31 trillion, allows more borrowing to pay bills already incurred.

McCarthy commands only a slim Republican majority in the House, where hard-right conservatives may resist any deal as insufficient as they try to slash spending. By compromising with Democrats, he risks angering his own members, setting up a career-challenging moment for the new speaker.

“I think you’re going to get a majority of Republicans voting for this bill,” McCarthy said on “Fox News Sunday,” adding that because Biden backed it, “I think there’s going to be a lot of Democrats that will vote for it, too.”

House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries of New York said on CBS’ “Face the Nation” that he expected there will be Democratic support but he declined to provide a number. Asked whether he could guarantee there would not be a default, he said, “Yes.”

A 100-strong group of moderates in the New Democratic Coalition gave a crucial nod of support Sunday, saying in a statement it was confident that Biden and his team “delivered a viable, bipartisan solution to end this crisis.”

The coalition could provide enough support for McCarthy to make up for members in the right flank of his party who have expressed opposition before the bill’s wording was even released.

It also takes pressure off Biden, facing criticism from progressives for giving into what they call hostage-taking by Republicans.

Democratic Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington state, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told CBS that the White House and Jeffries should worry about whether caucus members will support the agreement.

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Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Seung Min Kim and Stephen Groves contributed to this report.

The post Biden and McCarthy reach a final deal to avoid US default and now must sell it to Congress first appeared on Federal News Network.

• The top Republican on the House Foreign Affairs Committee is threatening to hold Secretary of State Antony Blinken in contempt of Congress for not turning over confidential messages from career diplomats. Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-Texas) said Blinken hasn’t complied with a subpoena demanding access to so-called dissent channel cables from State Department personnel during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan. The dissent channel serves as a forum for diplomats to critique department policy decisions. McCaul said a State Department briefing last month on the content of those cables fell short of what the committee sought in its subpoena.
  (McCaul Threatens to Hold Blinken in Contempt if State Continues to Withhold Dissent Cable - House Foreign Affairs Committee )
• Agencies are spending record amounts on small-business contracts, but among fewer companies. The Biden administration is looking to reverse that trend and get more small businesses into federal contracting. The Office of Management and Budget and the General Services Administration are launching a governmentwide procurement equity tool and supplier-base dashboard to help agencies track how much of their contract spending is going to small businesses that are new or recent entrants to the federal marketplace. A record $154 billion in federal contracts went to small businesses in fiscal 2021. But the number of small firms doing business with the federal government for the first time dropped by 80% over the past 15 years.
  (SBA seeks to grow shrinking pool of small businesses getting federal contracts - Federal News Network)
• Agencies can start planning now for the 2023 Combined Federal Campaign (CFC). The Office of Personnel Management is asking agencies to name a lead person for the governmentwide charity donation campaign, which kicks off this fall. OPM said agency executives should encourage their employees to become CFC leaders, as employees are most likely to participate in CFC if they are asked by someone they know. The planning is underway now, and this year’s Combined Federal Campaign will run from Sept. 1, 2023 through Jan. 15, 2024.
  (Combined Federal Campaign Update - Office of Personnel Management)
• Military ground forces increased their level of readiness, while forces at sea have seen a decline, according to the Government Accountability Office. GAO blames a severe backlog in maintenance for the Navy's readiness problems, in a report that looked at the issue in the years between fiscal 2017 and 2021. Readiness of aviation and space forces increased in some areas and declined in others. GAO said DoD needs to balance rebuilding the readiness of its existing force with its desire to modernize.
  (Military Readiness: Improvement in Some Areas, but Sustainment and Other Challenges Persist - GAO)
• Artificial intelligence isn't new for the CIA, but the intelligence agency is finally bringing all of its various efforts together in one place. CIA's Chief Information Officer La'Naia Jones, said the agency has created an Office of AI to consolidate and standardize initiatives. The CIA's new AI strategy will guide the office's current and future work across three main focus areas. These include expanding AI as a topic of importance across the CIA, aligning, integrating and synchronizing resources, and ensuring trust, transparency and accountability through the AI initiatives.
  (ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference - ACT-IAC)
• The IRS plans an initiative to improve taxpayer service on mobile devices. Harrison Smith, the director of IRS enterprise digitization, said the number of visits the agency gets from smart phones is on the rise, and that smart phones are many people's main form of computing. He said an earlier project, the digital intake program, has grown by 120 times over the past year. It ingests paper documents from taxpayers and converts them to machine-readable data. Speaking at the ACT-IAC emerging technology conference, Harrison said his office will get $1.2 billion of the extra money Congress promised under infrastructure legislation.
  ( - FNN Federal Newscast)
• Generative artificial intelligence has taken root at several federal agencies. The State Department finds it can translate documents written by foreign nationals into English, or English into many languages. But the State Department's Chief Technology Officer Glen Johnson cautions users about putting sensitive data into an AI cloud. He said the State Department is a week away from issuing policy on the use of generative AI. The Chief Information Officer of the International Trade Administration Gerry Caron said a generative program found anomalies leading to a fraud takedown. Johnson and Caron were speakers at the ACT-IAC emerging technology conference this week in Cambridge, Maryland.
  ( - FNN Federal Newscast)
• The Office of Personnel Management's transition to the new telecommunications contract is almost complete. Guy Cavallo, OPM's Chief Information Officer, said the agency is down to about a half a dozen systems that need to be moved off of the Networx contract and onto the Enterprise Infrastructure Solutions contract (EIS). Cavallo said OPM has dropped all of its analog telecommunications lines and upgraded all of its circuits as part of this transition. One of the last things OPM still needs to do is complete the transition of its telecommunications services out of its data centers and into the cloud. Only six medium agencies have completed their transition to EIS as of March 31.
  (ACT-IAC Emerging Technology and Innovation Conference - ACT-IAC)
• The American Federation of Government Employees said limited remote work is to blame for staff attrition at the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The federal union is calling for more flexibility, after already starting the arbitration process with the Federal Labor Relations Authority last year. HUD leadership said its “flexiplace” program does offer telework and remote work options to eligible employees. The agency added that it’s looking for more ways to improve attrition rates and employee engagement, in part by regularly gathering feedback from HUD’s workforce.
  (HUD attrition - American Federation of Government Employees )
• Small businesses will at least temporarily get to keep their COVID-era progress payment rate of 95% with the Defense Department. Large businesses will revert to their pre-COVID rate of 80%. DoD said Monday that the big business rates would apply to solicitations for contracts issued on or after July 7, 2023 and resulting contracts. Existing contracts, task orders and delivery orders with large business contractors will retain the higher 90% rate for the life of the contract. The progress payments represent advance payments for contracts in progress before they are completely fulfilled.
  (DoD Issues Progress Payment Update - DoD)

The post Chairman McCaul threatens to hold Secretary of State Blinken in contempt of Congress first appeared on Federal News Network.

The agreement was reached as U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in the country for talks about deploying U.S. forces and weapons in more Philippine military camps.

In a joint announcement by the Philippines and the U.S., the two said they had decided to accelerate the full implementation of their so-called Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement, which aims to support combined training, exercises and interoperability.

As part of the agreement, the U.S. has allocated $82 million toward infrastructure improvements at five current EDCA sites, and expand its military presence to four new sites in “strategic areas of the country,” according to the statement.

Austin arrived in the Philippines on Tuesday from South Korea, where he said the U.S. would increase its deployment of advanced weapons such as fighter jets and bombers to the Korean Peninsula to bolster joint training with South Korean forces in response to North Korea’s growing nuclear threat.

In the Philippines, Washington’s oldest treaty ally in Asia and a key front in the U.S. battle against terrorism, Austin visited southern Zamboanga city and met Filipino generals and a small contingent of U.S. counterterrorism forces based in a local military camp, regional Philippine military commander Lt. Gen. Roy Galido said. The more than 100 U.S. military personnel have provided intelligence and combat advice for years to Filipino troops battling a decades-long Muslim insurgency, which has considerably eased but remains a key threat.

More recently, U.S. forces have intensified and broadened joint training focusing on combat readiness and disaster response with Filipino troops on the nation’s western coast, which faces the South China Sea, and in its northern Luzon region across the sea from the Taiwan Strait.

American forces were granted access to five Philippine military camps, where they could rotate indefinitely under the 2014 EDCA defense pact.

In October, the U.S. sought access for a larger number of its forces and weapons in an additional five military camps, mostly in the north. That request would be high on the agenda in Austin’s meetings, according to Philippine officials.

“The visit of Secretary Austin definitely, obviously will have to do with many of the ongoing discussions on the EDCA sites,” Philippine Ambassador to Washington Jose Romualdez said at a news briefing.

Austin was scheduled to hold talks Thursday with his Philippine counterpart, Carlito Galvez Jr., and National Security Adviser Eduardo Ano, Romualdez said. Austin will separately call on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr., who took office in June and has since taken steps to boost relations with Washington.

The U.S. defense chief is the latest senior official to visit the Philippines after Vice President Kamala Harris in November in a sign of warming ties after a strained period under Marcos’s predecessor, Rodrigo Duterte.

Duterte had nurtured cozy ties with China and Russia and at one point threatened to sever ties with Washington, kick visiting American forces out and abrogate a major defense pact.

Romualdez said the Philippines needed to cooperate with Washington to deter any escalation of tensions between China and self-ruled Taiwan — not only because of the treaty alliance but to help prevent a major conflict.

“We’re in a Catch-22 situation. If China makes a move on Taiwan militarily, we’ll be affected — and all ASEAN region, but mostly us, Japan and South Korea,” Romualdez told The Associated Press, referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, the 10-nation regional bloc that includes the Philippines.

The Philippines and ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam, along with Taiwan, have been locked in increasingly tense territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. The U.S. has been regarded as a crucial counterweight to China in the region and has pledged to come to the defense of the Philippines if Filipino forces, ships or aircraft come under attack in the contested waters.

The Philippines used to host two of the largest U.S. Navy and Air Force bases outside the American mainland. The bases were shut down in the early 1990s after the Philippine Senate rejected an extension, but American forces returned for large-scale combat exercises with Filipino troops under a 1999 Visiting Forces Agreement.

The Philippine Constitution prohibits the permanent basing of foreign troops and their involvement in local combat.

The post US, Philippines agree to larger American military presence first appeared on Federal News Network.

Best listening experience is on Chrome, Firefox or Safari. Subscribe to Federal Drive’s daily audio interviews on Apple Podcasts or PodcastOne.

The ongoing aggression by Vladimir Putin and his Russian armed forces has provoked a nearly all-of-government response from the United States, no less than nations geographically closer to Ukraine. That includes the State Department. For a view from the inside, the Federal Drive with Tom Temin turned to the president of the American Foreign Service Association, Eric Rubin.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Ambassador Rubin, good to have you back.

Eric Rubin: Thank you very much, Tom, good to be here.

Tom Temin: And I want to start with your own background, because you served the State Department earlier in your career in Moscow and also in Ukraine. So you’re one of their Eastern European go to people.

Eric Rubin: I am. I’ve been working actually on relations with the Soviet Union in the former Soviet Union for almost 40 years.

Tom Temin: What’s your feeling? What’s your sense of all this? What are you going through personally watching this drama unfold?

Eric Rubin: Well, for me, and for my colleagues who’ve been working on this set of issues since the end of the Cold War, since the end of the Soviet Union, it’s a very, very emotionally painful time, partly because we all have friends and colleagues, people we work with, their families whom we know and what people in Ukraine are going through now is like nothing except maybe what happened in Bosnia, to the people of Sarajevo. But it’s the only other example I can think of in Europe since World War II. And this is on a much bigger scale on a much bigger country. And it’s also for those of us who’ve been working to have a better relationship with Russia, and in the hope that Russia would be democratic and European and free. It’s also very painful time.

Tom Temin: I imagine it must seem like there’s a chasm between Putin, his military, and the oligarchs, and everybody else in Russia, which as we’re seeing from protests, it’s not clear the Russians, as a people, believe in this or think this makes any sense?

Eric Rubin: Well, I think the regime there is working very hard to make sure that people don’t find out what they’re doing in Ukraine. And they’re putting out a lot of false news. They’re saying Jewish President of Ukraine who lost three great uncles in World War II who lost much of his family in the Holocaust, that he’s a Nazi somehow. He’s also a Russian speaker, a native Russian speaker who’s learned Ukrainian. So the idea that he’s some kind of Ukrainian nationalist Nazi is insane. But they want to be sure their people don’t know. So they’ve been shutting down social media platforms, they’ve been jamming Western media, it’s shades of the Cold War.

Tom Temin: And again, before we get to the State Department, that’s an interesting theme, because yes, Putin is calling, you know, whatever his imagined threats in Ukraine as Neo Nazis. And he said something similar during the invasion of the Crimea a few years back that it was inhabited by anti-Semites, which struck my ears is really odd coming from a guy like Vladimir Putin.

Eric Rubin: It’s completely false. It’s completely ridiculous. But you know, they’re heirs to the great Bolshevik tradition. And Putin was educated by the KGB. So the relationship between what they say and the truth is two completely separate things.

Tom Temin: All right, so let’s talk about the State Department. Now, what does it look like inside when things are this tense in the world, when there’s an outbreak of just extraordinary change and violence, really, that involves, in some ways, the interests of the whole planet?

Eric Rubin: Well, I think the first thing is is concern for our people, our Americans and their families who are serving in this part of the world, many of whom have since been evacuated from certainly Ukraine, and the war zone. But now we’re also being evacuated from Belarus, and in part from Russia. A second is our local employees, our what we call Foreign Service nationals in all of these countries, but particularly again, Ukraine, the people who are under fire, many of them left, but some of them were not able to, and they’re now sheltering in basements and cellars and metro stations with their kids. Food is running low in a lot of neighborhoods. And it’s very scary, and a lot of them are friends and former colleagues. Beyond that, obviously, the human toll is enormous. And it’s wrenching for us to see. And obviously, we hope that our country together with the allies are able to put enough pressure on Russia to stop this outrageous invasion. But it’s also hard to see Russia like this. This is not the vision that we had at the end of the Cold War for a relationship with Russia that was based on some shared values. Not all, certainly, but some. And that’s gone for the moment.

Tom Temin: And just getting back to the Foreign Service nationals that work in Russia, that were in the U.S. facilities before they were, you know, evacuated. And also the other places where Russian Army members, Russian military members might get close to in Ukraine and some of the even perhaps adjacent nations. Are those people in danger. Do you feel?

Eric Rubin: Well in Russia, they forced us to fire or lay off all of our Russian employees. We had close to 1,000 in what used to be four diplomatic posts in Russia, which is now down just to the embassy in Moscow. I don’t think any of them are in danger, but they’ve been harassed. They’ve had a hard time, for example, getting new jobs. The Russian government tries very hard to make sure no one will employ them. Their kids have been drafted in the army, so it’s not pleasant. But in Ukraine, there is real reason to think that the people who worked for us could be in very great danger if the Russians succeed in capturing Kyiv and have a list, which they assuredly do. I can assure you they have the embassy phonebook and the names of all the Ukrainians who’d worked for us, many of them for decades. So I think there’s reason to be concerned for their safety, yes.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Ambassador Eric Rubin. He’s president of the American Foreign Service Association, also served in Moscow and Ukraine earlier in his career. What is the planning look like inside the State Department? I mean, who do they involve? What kinds of meetings are going on? Are they going in late to the night? Does it involve the career people on the desks for these regions as well as the political appointees?

Eric Rubin: Yes, absolutely. So in a crisis like this, it’s all hands and obviously, the leadership of our agencies, primarily the State Department and USAID but all of our foreign affairs agencies are working around the clock. Most of the people staffing this are career, either Foreign Service or civil service. And both categories of employees are involved. The people who we brought back from our embassy in Kyiv are mostly working in Washington now on the emergency task force that’s been set up. It is around the clock 24/7. And there are various pieces. One is the diplomatic piece, but the other is trying to help people both American citizens, but also USAID is focused on helping Ukrainians in terms of getting them food and medicine and other things that are running short. So it’s a whole of government effort. And our members are in the middle of it.

Tom Temin: I imagine there’s a lot of interagency interaction going on, too. Homeland Security has been designated, not surprisingly, as the agency to protect U.S. homeland. And then you’ve got the U.N. whole staff and the in the National Security Council involved here, too. So are there collaborations across agency like that?

Eric Rubin: Yeah, no. And the coordination is led from the White House by the National Security Council. And there are more than daily coordination meetings going on. I can’t share details. But, you know, this is a constant effort at coordination, information sharing, as you mentioned, that the United Nations, our mission there is staffed by our career people, as well as political appointees. And at AIB, it’s mostly career people, also with some political appointees. So it’s everyone. And the goal, obviously, is to also make clear with our allies and partners around the world to Russia, that the costs are going to be very high if they don’t pull back and stop this illegal, outrageous assault.

Tom Temin: Now, as President of the American Foreign Service Association, you’re not posted by the State Department at the moment. Your post, if you will, is with the association. But are they asking you questions, anyhow? Is the association involved and your history of experience in that region? Is that something they’re calling? Hey, Eric, we know you’re at the association, but…

Eric Rubin: Yeah, so there’s a whole network of current and former diplomats, Foreign Service officers, civil servants, people who’ve worked on these issues for years, who are in regular contact. Some of it is just sharing ideas and some of it is just those of us who are not in the middle of it doing what we can to support our colleagues who are. But then our association union, AFSA, is very involved in a couple of pieces. One is trying to support the American employees and their families who’ve been evacuated, many of whom had to leave under very difficult conditions. Sometimes they had to leave behind pets, because it was all done by commercial flights, and they couldn’t get space for their pets. Their kids were yanked out of school and are now trying to start school, at least temporarily here in the U.S. Some of them are scattered, the families are allowed to go anywhere they want, employees are here in Washington, so we’re trying to support them. And then we’re trying to support our local employees in Ukraine, the Foreign Service national employees who, who aren’t members of our union, but they are part of the Foreign Service family. And they have been working for our embassy and for our country and for shared goals and values and for their country, as well. And there, a lot of them are in basements and cellars. And a lot of them have volunteered for the Ukrainian military or been drafted or they have husbands and fathers and brothers who have and it’s a very scary time. So we’re doing what we can to help efforts to support them, raise funds for them. There’s a bunch of GoFundMe efforts going on in a couple of other things. So we’re trying to support that, as well.

Tom Temin: So you have financial and physical danger to people in one form or another.

Eric Rubin: Well, yes, I mean, in Ukraine, now the banking system has shut down, the economy has shut down, the roads are mostly closed, it’s almost impossible to get out from central and eastern Ukraine. So people now, if they haven’t left, it’s very hard to go anywhere other than the basement or the metro station. And the scenes are reminiscent of London during the Blitz. It’s horrifying.

Tom Temin: And just on a personal note, again, have you felt the cold finger of Russian cyber hacking?

Eric Rubin: All of us who’ve worked on these issues have been hacked before, had been attacked before. I can’t go into details except to say that I think cyber is a very important part of this and I know that our country and our allies in NATO and others are completely focused on that. But all of us in America have felt the effects of Russian interference and hacking. We know about our elections. But it’s obviously a very big concern. And it’s something I think everybody needs to be aware of is a huge danger to our society.

Tom Temin: All right. Well, we wish you and your associates at the State Department the best here. Ambassador Eric Rubin is president of the American Foreign Service Association. Thanks so much for joining me.

Eric Rubin: Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure to be here.

The post An inside look at the State Department during a war in Europe first appeared on Federal News Network.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken appointed a high-ranking deputy, Jonathan Moore, to coordinate the department’s task force on the cases. He replaces Pamela Spratlen, a retired diplomat temporarily called back into service by Blinken before leaving in September. She had faced criticism from some victims.

Blinken also appointed retired ambassador Margaret Uyehara to lead efforts to directly support care for State Department employees.

Investigators have been studying a growing number of reported cases by U.S. personnel around the world and whether they are caused by exposure to microwaves or other forms of directed energy. People affected have reported headaches, dizziness, nausea, and other symptoms consistent with traumatic brain injuries.

Possibilities under consideration include the usage of a surveillance tool or a device intended to harm. The cases are known as “Havana Syndrome” dating to a series of reported brain injuries in 2016 at the U.S. Embassy in Cuba.

After years of investigation, the U.S. government has still not publicly identified what or who might be behind the incidents or whether they are, in fact, attacks. But leaders in the State and Defense departments and at the CIA have pushed employees to report possible brain injuries and in some cases removed leaders who were seen as unsympathetic to the cases.

“This is about the health and security of our people and there’s nothing we take more seriously,” Blinken said Friday.

Several hundred cases are under investigation. There have been multiple reports in recent weeks of potential incidents linked to visits by high-profile U.S. officials, including a case involving a member of CIA Director William Burns’ traveling party in India and incidents at the U.S. Embassy in Bogotá, Colombia, prior to a visit by Blinken.

The State Department said Friday that Deputy Secretary Brian McKeon had met with diplomats in Vienna to discuss possible cases reported this year in Austria. The department said it had taken a “number of important steps, none of which we can detail publicly, to protect our personnel.”

Both Democrats and Republicans have pressed President Joe Biden’s administration to determine who and what might be responsible for the cases and improve treatment for victims, many of whom have long said government officials aren’t taking their cases seriously. Biden earlier this month signed a bill intended to improve medical care for victims.

Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, D-N.H., said at a recent hearing that after speaking to victims, there was still “clearly a disconnect as to what is happening at the top levels of the State Department and how victims are being treated in some cases.”

Shaheen has introduced new legislation to fix what she described as differences in how various agencies are investigating and treating cases.

“There’s still not enough information that’s being shared, not enough coordination that’s being done,” she said in an interview. “There’s not a unanimity of response on how to deal with it.”

CIA Director Burns, pressed on Havana Syndrome cases at a separate hearing last week, noted that the agency’s investigation into the cases is led by a key leader responsible for the operation to find Osama Bin Laden. He did not refer to the cases as “attacks” after being asked by Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., whether he would use that word.

“We’ve worked very hard to improve care, the care that our officers and sometimes their family members deserve,” Burns said. “And we have mounted an extraordinarily vigorous effort to get to the bottom of the questions of who and what may be causing these as well.”

Dr. James Giordano, a scientist working on investigations into the cases, said the incidents were being viewed as “an intentional engagement” by a U.S. adversary or proxies, though he declined to specify suspected countries.

“Speaking about attribution at this point in time is a very delicate matter because of the intelligence, military, and political ramifications,” said Giordano, executive director of the Institute for Biodefense Research in Washington.

Writing for the Cipher Brief, a publication focused on intelligence, a group of former CIA officers said they had “few doubts” that Russia was responsible and expected the U.S. to eventually blame Moscow. The officers called for the U.S. to bolster its military presence in Eastern Europe, limit Russian business and tourist travel, and seek collective defense through NATO.

“For at least a decade, Russia has conducted itself as in a state of conflict with the West in general and the United States in particular,” the group said.

The post State Dept. names new coordinator on ‘Havana Syndrome’ cases first appeared on Federal News Network.

In announcing the resignation, Defense Secretary Mark Esper said Modly quit on his own accord, “putting the Navy and the sailors above self,” so the Navy and the Roosevelt can move forward. The Roosevelt is sidelined in port at Guam as members of the crew are tested for the coronavirus and moved ashore.

“His care for the sailors was genuine,” Esper said.

Esper said he briefed President Donald Trump on his conversation with Modly, and with the president’s approval he is appointing James McPherson as acting Navy secretary. McPherson, a Navy veteran, is currently serving as undersecretary of the Army. He was confirmed in that position by the Senate last month.

Esper called McPherson a “smart, capable and professional leader who will restore confidence and stability in the Navy during these challenging times.”

Esper said he also met with Navy leaders and emphasized three priorities, including putting the health, safety and welfare of the Roosevelt crew first, and working to get the ship back out to sea as soon as safely possible.

Modly had created a combustible controversy by firing the Roosevelt’s skipper, Capt. Brett E. Crozier, last week, saying Crozier had shown “extremely poor judgment” in widely distributing by email a letter calling for urgent help with the COVID-19 outbreak aboard his ship.

Modly then flew to the ship, at port in Guam, and delivered a speech to the crew Sunday in which he lambasted Crozier, saying he was either “too naive or too stupid” to be in charge of an aircraft carrier.

According to a senior defense official, Esper spoke to Modly Monday evening, directing him to apologize for his remarks about Crozier and setting a phone meeting for Tuesday morning. The official said Esper did not request or demand Modly’s resignation, but instead discussed the situation and the way forward. The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Modly came to his own conclusion and offered his resignation. Modly’s options were few. Officials said it would have been difficult for him to rebuild his relationship with sailors in the fleet, and equally hard to restore his reputation among senior military leaders and retired naval officers who believed his sharp remarks on the Roosevelt crossed a line.

Asked about the resignation, Trump said Tuesday that he didn’t know him or speak to him but credited Modly for resigning “to end that problem.” It was, he said, an “unselfish thing to do.”

By the time Modly issued his public apology Monday night, the calls among Democrats in Congress for his resignation were mounting. On Tuesday morning, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Modly must go.

“Sadly, Acting Secretary Modly’s actions and words demonstrate his failure to prioritize the force protection of our troops,” Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a written statement. “He showed a serious lack of the sound judgment and strong leadership needed during this time. Acting Secretary Modly must be removed from his position or resign.”

Sen. Jack Reed, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said Modly had fired Crozier against the advice of Navy military leaders.

“The new leadership of the Navy must do better in leading and protecting sailors, Marines and their families in this unprecedented crisis,” Reed said.

As of Tuesday, the Navy said 79% of the Roosevelt crew had been tested for the coronavirus, and 230 of them were positive. About 2,000 of the 4,865 crew members had been taken off the ship.

The episode began when the Roosevelt reported its first COVID-19 case among the crew on March 22, two weeks after making a port visit in Vietnam. The outbreak has sidelined the warship indefinitely and created conflict at the highest levels of the Pentagon.

Esper had publicly expressed his support for Modly’s decision to fire Crozier, but after Modly’s speech aboard the ship, Esper grew unsettled. Just hours after Modly issued a statement Monday defending his words, Esper compelled Modly to reverse course and issue a public apology.

“I want to apologize for any confusion this choice of words may have caused,” he wrote, referring to his speech aboard the Roosevelt. “I also want to apologize directly to Captain Crozier, his family, and the entire crew of the Theodore Roosevelt for any pain my remarks may have caused.”

Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that he might get involved, agreeing that Modly’s criticism of Crozier was “a rough statement.” He said Crozier made a mistake when he sent a memo to several people laying out his concerns about the crew and the virus. In the memo, which was leaked to the media, Crozier said: “We are not at war. Sailors do not need to die.”

Trump said Crozier had a good career prior to this incident, adding, “I don’t want to destroy somebody for having a bad day.”

Modly, in his apology, reframed his earlier remarks that Crozier was “too naive or too stupid” to command. Instead, he said he believes Crozier is “smart and passionate.”

“I believe, precisely because he is not naive and stupid, that he sent his alarming email with the intention of getting it into the public domain in an effort to draw public attention to the situation on his ship,” Modly wrote.

Aboard the ship, Modly had urged the crew to stop complaining.

“It is the mission of the ship that matters,” he said. “You all know this, but in my view your Captain lost sight of this and he compromised critical information about your status intentionally to draw greater attention to your situation.”

Modly, a 1983 Naval Academy graduate, became the acting Navy secretary last November after Richard Spencer was ousted from the position. Trump last month nominated retired Rear Adm. Kenneth Braithwaite, the current ambassador to Norway, to be the next Navy secretary.

The post Navy boss resigns amid uproar over firing of ship captain first appeared on Federal News Network.

The Department of Homeland Security said waiving procurement regulations will allow 177 miles (283 kilometers) of wall to be built more quickly in California, Arizona, New Mexico and Texas. The 10 waived laws include a requirement for open competition and giving losing bidders a chance to protest decisions.

The acting Homeland Security secretary, Chad Wolf, is exercising authority under a 2005 law that gives him sweeping powers to waive laws for building border barriers.

“We hope that will accelerate some of the construction that’s going along the southwest border,” Wolf told Fox News Channel’s “Fox & Friends.”

Secretaries under President Donald Trump have issued 16 waivers, and President George W. Bush issued five, but Tuesday’s announcement marks the first time that waivers have applied to federal procurement rules. Previously they were used to waive environmental impact reviews.

The Trump administration said the waivers will allow at least 94 miles (150 kilometers) of wall to be built this year, bringing the Republican leader closer to his goal of about 450 miles (720 kilometers) since he took office and made it one of his top domestic priorities. It said the other 83 miles (133 kilometers) covered by the waivers may get built this year.

“Under the president’s leadership, we are building more wall, faster than ever before,” the department said in a statement.

Critics say the waivers do away with key taxpayer safeguards. U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, said the president’s “cronies are likely to be the beneficiaries.”

Charles Tiefer a professor at University of Baltimore School of Law who specializes in government contracts, said the government “can just pick the contractor you want and and you just ram it through … The sky’s the limit on what they bill.”

Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said waiving a law for contractors to provide the government with certified cost data — such as how much they pay for labor or parts — could lead to grossly inflated prices.

“It’s equivalent to buying a car without seeing a sticker price,” Amey said. “This could be a recipe for shoddy work and paying a much higher price than they should.”

Administration officials say providing cost data can be onerous and difficult.

Congress gave the secretary power to waive laws in areas of high illegal activity in 2005 in legislation that included emergency spending for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and minimum standards for state-issued identification cards. The Senate approved it unanimously, with support from Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The House passed it with strong bipartisan support; then-Rep. Bernie Sanders voted against it.

The waiver authority has survived legal challenges. In 2018, a federal judge in San Diego rejected arguments by California and environmental advocacy groups that the secretary’s broad powers should have an expiration date. An appeals court upheld the ruling last year.

The waivers, to be published in the Federal Register, apply to projects that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will award in six Border Patrol sectors: San Diego and El Centro in California; Yuma and Tucson in Arizona; El Paso, which spans New Mexico and west Texas, and Del Rio, Texas.

The move came five days after Defense Secretary Mark Esper approved a $3.8 billion request from Homeland Security to pay for walls in those same areas, and the Pentagon acknowledged that more cuts could be coming to provide additional funding. The Pentagon’s decision stripped money from major aircraft and procurement programs that touch Republican and Democratic districts and states.

The Defense Department transferred $6.1 billion to wall construction from its counter-narcotics and construction budgets after Congress gave Trump only a portion of what he wanted. The administration has been able to spend Pentagon money during legal challenges.

The administration said the waivers will apply to contractors that have already been vetted. In May, the Army Corps named 12 companies to compete for Pentagon-funded contracts.

Those shortlisted companies are Fisher Sand & Gravel Co. of Dickinson, North Dakota, whose leader has sought publicity on conservative media; Texas Sterling Construction Co., of Houston, a unit of Sterling Construction Co.; a joint venture Caddell Construction Co., of Montgomery, Alabama, and Gibraltar Construction Co. of Annapolis, Maryland; Barnard Construction Co. of Bozeman, Montana; West Point Contractors Inc. of Tucson, Arizona; Southwest Valley Constructors Co. of Albuquerque, New Mexico, a unit of Kiewit Corp.; Bristol Construction Services LLC of Anchorage, Alaska; Randy Kinder Excavating Inc. of Dexter, Missouri; CJW Construction Inc., of Santa Ana, California; Burgos Group LLC of Albuquerque, New Mexico; Posillico Civil Inc. / Coastal Environmental Group Inc. of Farmingdale, New York; and Martin Brothers Construction Co. of Sacramento, California.

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