President Joe Biden’s poor performance during the debate against Donald Trump in June led to his withdrawal from the race and the elevation of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee. Here’s a look at other presidential debates in history that shifted the direction of the campaign.
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WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Sunday issued a scathing report on their investigation into the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, blaming the disastrous end of America’s longest war on President Joe Biden’s administration and minimizing the role of former President Donald Trump, who had signed the withdrawal deal with the Taliban.

The partisan review lays out the final months of military and civilian failures, following Trump’s February 2020 withdrawal deal, that allowed the Taliban to sweep through and conquer all of the country even before the last U.S. officials flew out on Aug. 30, 2021. The chaotic exit left behind many American citizens, Afghan battlefield allies, women activists and others at risk from the Taliban.

But House Republicans’ report breaks little new ground as the withdrawal has been exhaustively litigated through several independent reviews. Previous investigations and analyses have pointed to a systemic failure spanning the last four presidential administrations and concluded that Trump and Biden share the heaviest blame.

Texas Republican Rep. Michael McCaul, who led the investigation as chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the Republican review reveals that the Biden administration “had the information and opportunity to take necessary steps to plan for the inevitable collapse of the Afghan government, so we could safely evacuate U.S. personnel, American citizens, green card holders, and our brave Afghan allies.”

“At each step of the way, however, the administration picked optics over security,” he said in a statement.

McCaul earlier in the day denied that the timing of the report’s release ahead of the presidential election was political, or that Republicans ignored Trump’s mistakes in the U.S. withdrawal.

Defending the administration after release of the report, a State Department spokesman said that Biden acted in the U.S.’s best interest in finally ending the country’s deployment in Afghanistan.

The spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that Republicans produced a narrative “meant only to harm the Administration, instead of seeking to actually inform Americans on how our longest war came to an end.”

House Democrats in a statement said the report by their Republican colleagues “cherry-picked witness testimony to exclude anything unhelpful to a predetermined, partisan narrative about the Afghanistan withdrawal” and ignored facts about Trump’s role.

The more than 18-month investigation by Republicans on the House Foreign Affairs Committee zeroed in on the months leading up to the removal of U.S. troops, saying that Biden and his administration undermined high-ranking officials and ignored warnings as the Taliban seized key cities far faster than most U.S. officials had expected or prepared for.

“I called their advance ‘the Red Blob,”’ retired Col. Seth Krummrich said of the Taliban, telling the committee that at the special operations’ central command where he was chief of staff, “we tracked the Taliban advance daily, looking like a red blob gobbling up terrain.”

“I don’t think we ever thought — you know, nobody ever talked about, ‘Well, what’s going to happen when the Taliban come over the wall?”’ Carol Perez, the State Department’s acting undersecretary for management at the time of the withdrawal, said of what House Republicans said was minimal State Department planning before abandoning the embassy in mid-August 2021 when the Taliban swept into Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital.

The withdrawal ended a nearly two-decade occupation by U.S. and allied forces begun to rout out the al-Qaida militants responsible for the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. The Taliban had allowed al-Qaida’s leader, Osama bin Laden, to shelter in Afghanistan. Committee staffers noted reports since the U.S. withdrawal of the group rebuilding in Afghanistan, such as a U.N. report of up to eight al-Qaida training camps there.

The Taliban overthrew an Afghan government and military that the U.S. had spent nearly 20 years and trillions of dollars building in hopes of keeping the country from again becoming a base for anti-Western extremists.

A 2023 report by the U.S. government watchdog for the U.S. in Afghanistan singles out Trump’s February 2020 deal with the Taliban agreeing to withdraw all American forces and military contractors by the spring of the next year, and both Trump’s and Biden’s determination to keep pulling out U.S. forces despite the Taliban breaking key commitments in the withdrawal deal.

House Republicans’ more than 350-page document is the product of hours of testimony — including with former Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, U.S. Central Command retired Gen. Frank McKenzie and others who were senior officials at the time — seven public hearings and round tables, as well as more than 20,000 pages of State Department documents reviewed by the committees.

With Biden no longer running for reelection, Trump and his Republican allies have tried to elevate the withdrawal as a campaign issue against Vice President Kamala Harris, who is now Trump’s Democratic opponent in the presidential race.

The report by House Republicans cites Harris’ overall responsibility as an adviser to Biden but doesn’t point to specific counsel or action by Harris that contributed to the many failures.

Some highlights of the report:

Decision to withdraw

Republicans point to testimony and records that claim the Biden administration’s reliance on input from military and civilian leaders on the ground in Afghanistan in the months before the withdrawal was “severely limited,” with most of the decision-making taking place by national security adviser Jake Sullivan without consultation with key stakeholders.

The report says Biden proceeded with the withdrawal even though the Taliban was failing to keep some of its agreements under the deal, including breaking its promise to enter talks with the then-U.S.-backed Afghan government.

Former State Department spokesperson Ned Price testified to the committee that adherence to the Doha Agreement was “immaterial” to Biden’s decision to withdraw, according to the report.

Earlier reviews have said Trump also carried out his early steps of the withdrawal deal, cutting the U.S. troop presence from about 13,000 to an eventual 2,500 despite early Taliban noncompliance with some parts of the deal, and despite the Taliban escalating attacks on Afghan forces.

The House report faults a longtime U.S. diplomat for Afghanistan, former Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad, not Trump, for Trump administration actions in its negotiations with the Taliban. The new report says that Trump was following recommendations of American military leaders in making sharp cuts in U.S. troop numbers in Afghanistan after the signing.

‘We were still in planning’ when Kabul fell

The report also goes into the vulnerability of U.S. embassy staff in Kabul as the Biden administration planned its exit. Republicans claim there was a “dogmatic insistence” by the Biden administration to maintain a large diplomatic footprint despite concerns about the lack of security afforded to personnel once U.S. forces left.

McKenzie, who was one of the two U.S. generals who oversaw the evacuation, told lawmakers that the administration’s insistence at keeping the embassy open and fully operational was the “fatal flaw that created what happened in August,” according to the report.

The committee report claims that State Department officials went as far as watering down or “even completely rewriting reports” from heads of diplomatic security and the Department of Defense that had warned of the threats to U.S. personnel as the withdrawal date got closer.

“We were still in planning” when Kabul fell, Perez, the senior U.S. diplomat, testified to the committee.
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Houston, Texas — A tropical disturbance in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico was forecast to bring significant rainfall to parts of Texas and Louisiana this week and was expected to develop into a tropical storm and possibly even a hurricane, the National Weather Service says.

The system was forecast to drift slowly northwestward during the next couple of days, moving near and along the Gulf coasts of Mexico and Texas, the weather service said Sunday.

“A tropical storm is expected to form during the next day or so,” the weather service said Sunday afternoon.

Donald Jones, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles, Louisiana, said during a weather briefing Saturday night that parts of Southeast Texas and southwest Louisiana should expect a “whole lot” of rain in the middle and later part of this week.

“Definitely want to continue to keep a very close eye on the forecast here in the coming days because this is something that could develop and evolve fairly rapidly. We’re looking at anything from a non-named just tropical moisture air mass all the way up to the potential for a hurricane,” Jones said.

Warm water temperatures and other conditions in the Gulf of Mexico are favorable for storm development, Jones said.

“We’ve seen it before, where we have these rapid spin-up hurricanes in just a couple of days or even less. So that is not out of the realm of possibility here,” Jones said.

An Air Force Reserve hurricane hunter aircraft was scheduled to investigate the tropical disturbance later Sunday and gather more data.

The tropical disturbance comes after an unusually quiet August and early September in the current Atlantic hurricane season, which runs through Nov. 30. The season was set to peak Tuesday, Jones said.

So far, there have been five named storms this hurricane season, including Hurricane Beryl, which knocked out power to nearly 3 million homes and businesses in Texas — mostly in the Houston area — in July. Experts had predicted one of the busiest Atlantic hurricane seasons on record.

In a report issued last week, researchers at Colorado State University cited several reasons for the lull in activity during the current hurricane season, including extremely warm upper-level temperatures resulting in stabilization of the atmosphere and too much easterly wind shear in the eastern Atlantic.

“We still do anticipate an above-normal season overall, however, given that large-scale conditions appear to become more favorable around the middle of September,” according to the report.

Last month, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration updated its outlook but still predicted a highly active Atlantic hurricane season. Forecasters tweaked the number of expected named storms from 17 to 25 to 17 to 24.
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The Israel-Hamas war continues to claim lives as analysts warn that the suffering won’t end unless a cease-fire deal is achieved. Although a truce is still elusive, the United States hinted that a more detailed peace proposal will be made in the coming days. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports.
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American Benjamin Hoerber says he has discovered his calling helping Ukraine’s military. He initially helped transport humanitarian aid. Now he also volunteers at a forge, making supports for trenches. Tetiana Kukurika has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. Camera: Sergiy Rybchynski      
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TOKYO — One by one, the students, lawyers and others filed into a classroom in a central Tokyo university for a lecture by a Chinese journalist on Taiwan and democracy — taboo topics that can’t be discussed publicly back home in China.

“Taiwan’s modern-day democracy took struggle and bloodshed, there’s no question about that,” said Jia Jia, a columnist and guest lecturer at the University of Tokyo who was briefly detained in China eight years ago on suspicion of penning a call for China’s top leader to resign.

He is one of tens of thousands of intellectuals, investors and other Chinese who have relocated to Japan in recent years, part of a larger exodus of people from China.

Their backgrounds vary widely, and they’re leaving for all sorts of reasons. Some are very poor, others are very rich. Some leave for economic reasons, as opportunities dry up with the end of China’s boom. Some flee for personal reasons, as even limited freedoms are eroded.

Chinese migrants are flowing to all corners of the world, from workers seeking to start businesses of their own in Mexico to burned-out students heading to Thailand. Those choosing Japan tend to be well-off or highly educated, drawn to the country’s ease of living, rich culture and immigration policies that favor highly skilled professionals, with less of the sharp anti-immigrant backlash sometimes seen in Western countries.

Jia initially intended to move to the U.S., not Japan. But after experiencing the coronavirus outbreak in China, he was anxious to leave and his American visa application was stuck in processing. So he chose Japan instead.

“In the United States, illegal immigration is particularly controversial. When I went to Japan, I was a little surprised. I found that their immigration policy is actually more relaxed than I thought,” Jia told The Associated Press. “I found that Japan is better than the U.S.”

It’s tough to enter the U.S. these days. Tens of thousands of Chinese were arrested at the U.S.-Mexico border over the past year, and Chinese students have been grilled at customs as trade frictions fan suspicions of possible industrial espionage. Some U.S. states passed legislation that restricts Chinese citizens from owning property.

“The U.S. is shutting out those Chinese that are friendliest to them, that most share its values,” said Li Jinxing, a Christian human rights lawyer who moved to Japan in 2022.

Li sees parallels to about a century ago, when Chinese intellectuals such as Sun Yat-sen, the founding father of modern China, moved to Japan to study how the country modernized so quickly.

“On one hand, we hope to find inspiration and direction in history,” Li said of himself and like-minded Chinese in Japan. “On the other hand, we also want to observe what a democratic country with rule of law is like. We’re studying Japan. How does its economy work, its government work?”

Over the past decade, Tokyo has softened its once-rigid stance against immigration, driven by low birthrates and an aging population. Foreigners now make up about 2% of its population of 125 million. That’s expected to jump to 12% by 2070, according to the Tokyo-based National Institute of Population and Social Security Research.

Chinese are the most numerous newcomers, at 822,000 last year among more than 3 million foreigners living in Japan, according to government data. That’s up from 762,000 a year ago and 649,000 a decade ago.

In 2022, the lockdowns under China’s “zero COVID” policies led many of the country’s youth or most affluent citizens to hit the exits. There’s even a buzzword for that: “runxue,” using the English word “run” to evoke “running away” to places seen as safer and more prosperous.

For intellectuals like Li and Jia, Japan offers greater freedoms than under Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s increasingly repressive rule. But for others, such as wealthy investors and business people, Japan offers something else: property protections.

A report by investment migration firm Henley & Partners says nearly 14,000 millionaires left China last year, the most of any country in the world, with Japan a popular destination. A major driver is worries about the security of their wealth in China or Hong Kong, said Q. Edward Wang, a professor of Asian studies at Rowan University in Glassboro, New Jersey.

“Protection of private property, which is the cornerstone of a capitalist society, that piece is missing in China,” Wang said.

The weakening yen makes buying property and other local assets in Japan a bargain.

And while the Japanese economy has stagnated, China’s once-sizzling economy is also in a rut, with the property sector in crisis and stock prices stuck at the level they were in the late 2000s.

“If you are just going to Japan to preserve your money,” Wang said, “then definitely you will enjoy your time in Japan.”

Dot.com entrepreneurs are among those leaving China after Communist Party crackdowns on the technology industry, including billionaire Jack Ma, a founder of e-commerce giant Alibaba, who took a professorship at Tokyo College, part of the prestigious University of Tokyo.

So many wealthy Chinese have bought apartments in Tokyo’s luxury high-rises that some areas have been dubbed “Chinatowns,” or “Digital Chinatowns” — a nod to the many owners’ work in high-tech industries.

“Life in Japan is good,” said Guo Yu, an engineer who retired early after working at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok.

Guo doesn’t concern himself with politics. He’s keen on Japan’s powdery snow in the winter and is a “superfan” of its beautiful hot springs. He owns homes in Tokyo, as well as near a ski resort and a hot spring. He owns several cars, including a Porsche, a Mercedes, a Tesla and a Toyota.

Guo keeps busy with a new social media startup in Tokyo and a travel agency specializing in “onsen,” Japan’s hot springs. Most of his employees are Chinese, he said.

Like Guo, many Chinese moving to Japan are wealthy and educated. That’s for good reason: Japan remains unwelcoming to refugees and many other types of foreigners. The government has been strategic about who it allows to stay, generally focusing on people to fill labor shortages for factories, construction and elder care.

“It is crucial that Japan becomes an attractive country for foreign talent so they will choose to work here,” Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said earlier this year, announcing efforts to relax Japan’s stringent immigration restrictions.

That kind of opportunity is exactly what Chinese ballet dancer Du Hai said he has found. Leading a class of a dozen Japanese students in a suburban Tokyo studio one recent weekend, Du demonstrated positions and spins to the women dressed in leotards and toe shoes.

Du was drawn to Japan’s huge ballet scene, filled with professional troupes and talented dancers, he said, but worried about warnings he got about unfriendly Japanese.

That turned out to be false, he said with a laugh. Now, Du is considering getting Japanese citizenship.

“Of course, I enjoy living in Japan very much now,” he said.
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NEW YORK — Belarusian Aryna Sabalenka beat American sixth seed Jessica Pegula 7-5, 7-5 in the U.S. Open women’s final on Saturday.

Sabalenka blocked out the wild cheers of the home crowd in Arthur Ashe Stadium to break Pegula in the final game and win her first title at Flushing Meadows.

A year after coming up short in the final, the second seed fought back from a break down in both sets to claim victory and fell to the court in her moment of triumph.

The 30-year-old Pegula had waited a long time to reach her first major final but could not match her opponent’s raw power despite the noisy backing of the New York crowd.

The roof on Arthur Ashe Stadium was closed because of heavy rain, and the players traded breaks twice as they settled into the stormy affair in front of a celebrity-packed house.

Sabalenka held her serve through a four-deuce 11th game and fought through a spine-tingling 12th, mixing precision at the net with her usual power from the baseline before breaking her opponent on the fifth set point.

Pegula struggled with her rackets throughout the match, complaining to her coaches as she seemed unable to find the right tension on her strings, and it looked as though she would not put up a fight in the second set when Sabalenka went 3-0 up.

But the American found another level and brought the fans to their feet when she won the next five games in a furious fight back.

Sabalenka leveled when she sent over a forehand winner that just kissed the line on break point in the 10th game and sought to bring a swift end to the contest, holding serve and then applying pressure from the baseline in the final game.

The tears flowed immediately for Sabalenka as she claimed her third Grand Slam title after winning the Australian Open twice, and she high-fived fans as she ran up the stands to share a joyful celebration with her team.
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WASHINGTON — Chrysler parent Stellantis said Saturday it is recalling 1.46 million vehicles worldwide due to a software malfunction in the anti-lock brake system that can increase the risk of a crash.

The recall includes nearly 1.23 million Ram 1500 trucks from the 2019 and 2021-2024 model years in the United States, as well as about 159,000 vehicles in Canada, 13,000 in Mexico and 61,000 outside North America.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said a software malfunction might result in the anti-lock brake system control module disabling the electronic stability control system.

The issue means the vehicles do not comply with a federal motor vehicle safety standard on electric stability control systems.

Stellantis said if the issue occurs, the ABS, ESC, adaptive cruise control and forward collision warning indicator lights will be illuminated at vehicle start up, indicating the systems are not working. Foundational braking would be working, it added.

The company said it is unaware of any related injuries or crashes.

Stellantis also said Saturday it is recalling about 33,000 Jeep Gladiator models from 2020-2024 and Jeep Wrangler vehicles from 2018-2024 due to a potential internal short circuit issue in the instrument panel cluster.
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Close to the U.S. capital of Washington, the rural state of West Virginia was solidly Democratic for most of the 20th century. But now it’s a Republican stronghold, delivering overwhelming wins for former President Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020. VOA’s congressional correspondent, Katherine Gypson, went to Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, to see how the 2024 election season is playing out. Videographers: Adam Greenbaum, Henry Hernandez and Mary Cieslak
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Jerusalem — The family of a Turkish-American woman shot dead while demonstrating against Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank demanded an independent investigation into her death on Saturday, accusing the Israeli military of killing her “violently.”

Aysenur Ezgi Eygi, 26, was “shot in the head” while participating in a demonstration in Beita in the West Bank on Friday.

“Her presence in our lives was taken needlessly, unlawfully, and violently by the Israeli military,” Eygi’s family said in a statement.

“A U.S. citizen, Aysenur was peacefully standing for justice when she was killed by a bullet that video shows came from an Israeli military shooter.

“We call on President (Joe) Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and Secretary of State (Antony) Blinken to order an independent investigation into the unlawful killing of a U.S. citizen and to ensure full accountability for the guilty parties.”

The Israeli military said its forces “responded with fire toward a main instigator of violent activity who hurled rocks at the forces and posed a threat to them” during the protest.

Eygi was a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM), a pro-Palestinian organization, and was in Beita on Friday for a weekly demonstration against Israeli settlements, according to ISM.

In recent years, pro-Palestinian demonstrators have frequently held weekly protests against the Eviatar settlement outpost overlooking Beita, which is backed by far-right Israeli ministers.

During Friday’s protest, Eygi was shot in the head, according to the U.N. rights office and Rafidia hospital where she was pronounced dead.

Turkey said she was killed by “Israeli occupation soldiers,” with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan condemning the Israeli action as “barbaric.”

Washington called it a “tragic” event and has pressed its close ally Israel to investigate.

But her family has demanded an independent probe.

“Given the circumstances of Aysenur’s killing, an Israeli investigation is not adequate,” her family said.

Her family said Eygi always advocated “an end to the violence against the people of Palestine.”

Israeli settlements in the West Bank, where about 490,000 people live, are illegal under international law.

Since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel which triggered the war in Gaza, Israeli troops or settlers have killed more than 690 Palestinians in the West Bank, according to the Palestinian health ministry.

At least 23 Israelis, including security forces, have been killed in Palestinian attacks during the same period, according to Israeli officials.
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WASHINGTON — Boeing’s beleaguered Starliner made its long-awaited return to Earth on Saturday without the astronauts who rode it up to the International Space Station, after NASA ruled the trip back too risky.

After years of delays, Starliner launched in June for what was meant to be a roughly weeklong test mission — a final shakedown before it could be certified to rotate crew to and from the orbital laboratory.

But unexpected thruster malfunctions and helium leaks en route to the ISS derailed those plans, and NASA ultimately decided it was safer to bring crewmates Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams back on a rival SpaceX Crew Dragon — though they’ll have to wait until February 2025.

The gumdrop-shaped Boeing capsule touched down softly at the White Sands Space Harbor in New Mexico, its descent slowed by parachutes and cushioned by airbags, having departed the ISS around six hours earlier.

As it streaked red-hot across the night sky, ground teams reported hearing sonic booms. The spacecraft endured temperatures of 1,650 degrees Celsius during atmospheric reentry.

NASA lavished praise on Boeing during a post-flight press conference where representatives from the company were conspicuously absent.

“It was a bullseye landing,” said Steve Stich, program manager for NASA’s commercial crew program. “The entry in particular has been darn near flawless.”

Still, he acknowledged that certain new issues had come to light, including the failure of a new thruster and the temporary loss of the guidance system.

He added it was too early to talk about whether Starliner’s next flight, scheduled for August next year, would be crewed, instead stressing NASA needed time to analyze the data they had gathered and assess what changes were required to both the design of the ship and the way it is flown.

Ahead of the return leg, Boeing carried out extensive ground testing to address the technical hitches encountered during Starliner’s ascent, then promised — both publicly and behind closed doors — that it could safely bring the astronauts home. In the end, NASA disagreed.

Asked whether he stood by that decision, NASA’s Stich said: “It’s always hard to have that retrospective look. We made the decision to have an uncrewed flight based on what we knew at the time and based on our knowledge of the thrusters and based on the modeling that we had.”

History of setbacks

Even without crew aboard, the stakes were high for Boeing, a century-old aerospace giant.

With its reputation already battered by safety concerns surrounding its commercial jets, its long-term prospects for crewed space missions hung in the balance.

Shortly after undocking, Starliner executed a powerful “breakout burn” to swiftly clear it from the station and prevent any risk of collision — a maneuver that would have been unnecessary if crew were aboard to take manual control if needed.

Mission teams then conducted thorough checks of the thrusters required for the critical “deorbit burn” that guided the capsule onto its reentry path around 40 minutes before touchdown.

Though it was widely expected that Starliner would stick the landing, as it had on two previous uncrewed tests, Boeing’s program continues to languish behind schedule.

In 2014, NASA awarded both Boeing and SpaceX multibillion-dollar contracts to develop spacecraft to taxi astronauts to and from the ISS, after the end of the Space Shuttle program left the US space agency reliant on Russian rockets.

Although initially considered the underdog, Elon Musk’s SpaceX surged ahead of Boeing, and has successfully flown dozens of astronauts since 2020.

The Starliner program, meanwhile, has faced numerous setbacks — from a software glitch that prevented the capsule from rendezvousing with the ISS during its first uncrewed test flight in 2019, to the discovery of flammable tape in the cabin after its second test in 2022, to the current troubles.

With the ISS scheduled to be decommissioned in 2030, the longer Starliner takes to become fully operational, the less time it will have to prove its worth.
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washington — House Republicans unveiled on Friday their legislation to avoid a partial government shutdown at the end of the month and fund the government into late March, when a new president and Congress would make the final decision on agency spending and priorities for fiscal 2025.

Republicans also added a hot-button immigration issue to the measure by requiring states to obtain proof of citizenship, such as a birth certificate or passport, when someone registers to vote. Inclusion of the citizenship requirement is a nonstarter in the Senate, complicating prospects for the spending bill’s passage.

Lawmakers are returning to Washington next week following a traditional August recess spent mostly in their home states and districts. They are not close to completing work on the dozen annual appropriations bills that will fund the agencies during the next fiscal year, so they’ll need to approve a stopgap measure to prevent a shutdown when the new fiscal year begins October 1.

“Today, House Republicans are taking a critically important step to keep the federal government funded and to secure our federal election process,” Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement. “Congress has a responsibility to do both, and we must ensure that only American citizens can decide American elections.”

Bipartisanship urged

But in a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Appropriations Committee Chair Patty Murray said avoiding a shutdown requires bipartisanship, not a bill drawn up by one party.

“If Speaker Johnson drives House Republicans down this highly partisan path, the odds of a shutdown go way up, and Americans will know that the responsibility of a shutdown will be on the House Republicans’ hands,” Schumer and Murray said.

It is a crime under federal law for a noncitizen to vote, or even register to vote, in a federal election, according to the Brennan Center for Justice.

Johnson’s decision to add the proof of citizenship requirement to the spending measure comes after the House Freedom Caucus called for it in a position statement last month. The group of conservatives, banking on a win by Republican nominee Donald Trump, also urged that the measure fund the government into early next year so Republicans could get more of their priorities in legislation.

Some Republican leaders had wanted to pass the final spending bills by the end of this Congress so that the new president, whether it be Trump or Democratic nominee Kamala Harris, could focus more on getting staffed and pursuing their own top priorities rather than dealing with spending disagreements.

Republicans say requiring proof of citizenship would ensure American elections are only for American citizens, improving confidence in the nation’s federal election system. But opponents say the available evidence shows that noncitizen voting in federal elections is incredibly rare and such a requirement would disenfranchise millions of Americans who don’t have the necessary documents readily available when they want to register.

What remains to be seen is what happens if the bill passes the House this week and the Senate declines to take it up or votes it down.

The bill would fund agencies at current levels until March 28, though there’s also money to help cover additional security costs associated with Inauguration Day and $10 billion for the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s disaster relief fund.
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ASHEVILLE, north carolina — Seth Kaller, an appraiser and collector of historic documents, spreads a broad sheet of paper across a desk. It’s in good enough condition that he can handle it, carefully, with clean, bare hands. There are just a few creases and tiny discolorations, even though it’s just a few weeks shy of 237 years old and has spent who knows how long inside a filing cabinet in North Carolina. 

At the top of the first page are familiar words but in regular type instead of the sweeping Gothic script readers are accustomed to seeing: “WE the People.” 

And the people will get a chance to bid for this copy of the U.S. Constitution — the only one of its type thought to be in private hands — at a sale by Brunk Auctions on September 28 in Asheville, North Carolina. 

The minimum bid for the auction of $1 million has already been made. There is no minimum price that must be reached. 

This copy was printed after the Constitutional Convention finished drafting the proposed framework of the nation’s government in 1787 and sent it to the Congress of the ineffective first American government under the Articles of Confederation, requesting that it be sent to the states to be ratified by the people.

Few copies remain 

It’s one of about 100 copies printed by the secretary of that Congress, Charles Thomson. Just eight are known to still exist and the other seven are publicly owned. 

Thomson likely signed two copies for each of the original 13 states, essentially certifying them. They were sent to special ratifying conventions, where representatives, all white and male, wrangled for months before accepting the structure of the U.S. government that continues today. 

“This is the point of connection between the government and the people. The Preamble — ‘we, the people’ — this is the moment the government is asking the people to empower them,” auctioneer Andrew Brunk said. 

What happened to the document up for auction between Thomson’s signature and 2022 isn’t known. 

Two years ago, a property was being cleared out in Edenton in eastern North Carolina that was once owned by Samuel Johnston. He was the governor of North Carolina from 1787 to 1789 and he oversaw the state convention during his last year in office that ratified the Constitution. 

The copy was found inside a squat, two-drawer metal filing cabinet with a can of stain on top, in a long-neglected room piled high with old chairs and a dusty bookcase, before the old Johnston house was preserved. The document was a broad sheet that could be folded one time like a book. 

“I get calls every week from people who think they have a Declaration of Independence or a Gettysburg Address and most of the time it is just a replica, but every so often something important gets found,” said Kaller, who appraises, buys and sells historic documents. 

“This is a whole other level of importance,” he added. 

Washington letter

Along with the Constitution on the broad sheet printed front and back is a letter from George Washington asking for ratification. He acknowledged there would have to be compromise and that rights the states enjoyed would have to be given up for the nation’s long-term health. 

“To secure all rights of independent sovereignty to each and yet provide for the interest and safety for all — individuals entering into society must give up a share of liberty to preserve the rest,” wrote the man who would become the first U.S. president. 

Brunk isn’t sure what the document might go for because there is so little to compare it to. The last time a copy of the Constitution like this sold, it went for $400 – in 1891. In 2021, Sotheby’s of New York sold one of only 14 remaining copies of the Constitution printed for the Continental Congress and delegates to the Constitutional Convention for $43.2 million, a record for a book or document. 

But that document was meant to be distributed to the Founding Fathers as delegates to the Constitutional Convention. The signed copy being sold later this month was one meant to be sent to leaders in every state so people all around the country could review and decide if that’s how they wanted to be governed, connecting the writers of the Constitution to the people in the states who would provide its power and legitimacy. 

The auction listing doesn’t identify the seller, saying it’s part of a collection that is in private hands. 

Other items up for auction in Asheville include a 1776 first draft of the Articles of Confederation and a 1788 Journal of the Convention of North Carolina at Hillsborough, where representatives spent two weeks debating if ratifying the Constitution would put too much power with the nation instead of the states.
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washington — A South Korean senior official has rekindled debate over the U.S. commitment to that nation’s defense, bringing up the possibility of the U.S. rolling back its nuclear umbrella if former President Donald Trump is reelected.

Kim Tae-hyo, South Korea’s deputy national security director, said in a Seoul forum Tuesday the reelection of Trump could “weaken a U.S. nuclear umbrella” designed to protect South Korea from North Korean aggression.

“Trump as candidate can be seen as pursuing transactional benefits in terms of the South Korea-U.S. alliance,” Kim said, according to news reports. “It is not unlikely that he would suggest negotiating defense cost-sharing or the deployment of U.S. strategic assets from a cost perspective.”

Skepticism about America’s willingness and capability to protect South Korea from a North Korean nuclear attack has grown among South Koreans as North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs become increasingly sophisticated. A recent poll by South Korea’s Institute of National Unification revealed that 66% of respondents supported the country having its own nuclear weapons.

Concern over commitment

Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said Kim’s remarks reflect widespread concern among U.S. allies.

There is a concern that “Trump, if reelected, would pursue policies that will weaken U.S. alliances around the world, including in Europe and East Asia,” Samore told VOA Korean Wednesday via email.

“In the case of Korea, Trump might seek to resume summit diplomacy with Kim Jong Un and make concessions that weaken the U.S.-ROK alliance, as he did at the Singapore summit in June 2018,” Samore said. ROK stands for Republic of Korea, the official name for South Korea.

According to the joint statement released after the 2018 summit, Trump “committed to provide security guarantees” to North Korea, while the North Korean leader reaffirmed “commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

“However, I think it’s premature to predict exactly what policies President Trump will adopt toward Korea if he is reelected,” Samore added. “There are too many uncertainties, including, for example, who President Trump appoints for his top foreign policy and defense positions.”

Michael O’Hanlon, director of foreign policy research at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA Korean Tuesday via email the South Korean official’s assessment of Trump is justifiable.

“I think the official is correct,” O’Hanlon said, adding Trump could take steps to address this concern. “I do not know if he will.”

‘Treat us properly,’ says Trump

Trump has often complained that U.S. allies do not pay the U.S. enough for bases and troops used in their defense. In an April interview with Time magazine, Trump said, “I want South Korea to treat us properly,” suggesting he would demand that South Korea pay more for the American troops stationed there.

But Frederick Fleitz, who served as chief of staff of the National Security Council in the Trump White House, told VOA Korean by phone Tuesday that Trump’s reelection is not likely to affect the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

Making clear that he was speaking for himself, not for Trump, Fleitz said the former president “was a strong friend of Japan, South Korea and Taiwan when he was in office last time and he’ll be a strong friend again.”

“Why would there be such a big change in a second Trump term when he didn’t do that in the first term?” Fleitz asked. “The second Trump administration, concerning South Korea, will be countering the threat from North Korea and this new axis relationship between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran.”

Fleitz stressed there is no evidence to suggest Trump would link the defense cost-sharing with offering a nuclear umbrella, adding discussions on how much South Korea pays for U.S. troops in South Korea will not be a “deal breaker” for the second Trump administration.

“It is an issue that will be resolved among friends,” he said. “The security threats in the region are so severe — I think that’s what the U.S. will focus on.”

Redeployment of nukes

Robert Peters, a fellow for nuclear deterrence and missile defense at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA Korean Tuesday via email it is “far more likely” that America’s extended deterrence commitment to South Korea would strengthen during a second Trump term.

Peters said a second Trump administration could consider redeploying U.S. tactical nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula, due to the threats coming from North Korea and China.

“I think a second Trump administration would field SLCM-N [nuclear-armed, sea-launched cruise missiles] in the near term and potentially reintroduce American nuclear weapons to South Korea as a means to assure the ROK, deter North Korea and strengthen regional stability,” said Peters.

Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, is widely expected to inherit incumbent President Joe Biden’s Asia policies should she win the election.

The Biden administration is not considering the redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons to South Korea. In 1991, the U.S. withdrew from South Korea all its nuclear weapons, roughly 100 in number, according to some studies.

“The United States does not assess returning nuclear weapons to the Indo-Pacific as necessary at this time,” a State Department spokesperson said in an emailed statement on May 31 in response to a VOA Korean inquiry. “The United States has no plans to forward deploy nuclear weapons to the Korean Peninsula.”

In April 2023, Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol adopted the Washington Declaration, in which the U.S. declared that its commitment to the defense of South Korea will be backed by the full range of U.S. capabilities, including nuclear.

During this week’s high-level security talks between the U.S. and South Korea, the Biden administration reiterated its commitment to defend South Korea with nuclear weapons if necessary to deter attacks from North Korea.

“We reaffirm the U.S. extended deterrence commitment to the ROK using the full range of U.S. defense capabilities, and that any DPRK [North Korea] nuclear attack on the United States or its allies and partners is unacceptable and will result in the end of that regime,” Bonnie Jenkins, U.S. undersecretary of state for arms control and international security,  told reporters after Wednesday’s talks.

VOA Korean contacted the Trump campaign and asked what Trump’s stance is on the U.S. nuclear umbrella offered to South Korea, but did not receive a reply by the time this article was published.
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washington — Shortly after appearing in court for an appeal of a decision that found him liable for sexual abuse, Donald Trump stepped Friday in front of television cameras and brought up a string of past allegations of other acts of sexual misconduct, potentially reminding voters of incidents that were little-known or forgotten. 

The former president has made hitting back at opponents and accusers a centerpiece of his political identity, but his performance at his namesake Manhattan office tower was startling even by Trump’s own combative standards. At times he seemed to relish using graphic language and characterizations of the case, which could expose the former president to further legal challenges. 

Trump’s remarks came just four days before he will debate Vice President Kamala Harris, with early voting about to begin in some parts of the country and Election Day just two months away. 

Trump is staying in the public eye while Harris prepares for the debate in private with her advisers in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. That’s a reflection of their divergent campaign styles, with Trump frequently engaging with reporters — often in friendly settings — while Harris has done just one interview and no news conferences since taking President Joe Biden’s place atop the Democratic ticket. 

Trump on Friday repeatedly brought up Harris’ lack of news conferences. But his own comments — in which he talked about the cases against him for more than half an hour without mentioning any campaign issues — threatened to cause him more legal jeopardy. And after convening reporters for what his campaign said was a news conference, Trump walked off without taking any questions. 

Legal team makes arguments

A jury returned a $5 million verdict finding Trump liable of sexually abusing advice columnist E. Jean Carroll in 1996. His legal team made its appeal arguments Friday morning. 

Juries now have twice now awarded Carroll huge sums for Trump’s claiming she made up a story about him attacking her in a department store dressing room in 1996 to help her sell a memoir. 

But that hasn’t stopped Trump from continuing to make nearly identical statements to reporters. At his news briefing Friday, he said again that Carroll was telling a “made up, fabricated story.” 

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, warned in March after a jury awarded Carroll another $83 million that she would continue to monitor Trump’s comments and would consider suing again if he kept it up. 

Earlier in court, he walked in quietly and passed in front of Carroll without acknowledging or looking at her. 

The former president reacted at times during the proceedings, such as shaking his head when Carroll’s attorney said that Trump sexually abused her client. He periodically tilted his head from side to side, but otherwise sat still and mostly alone. 

A Manhattan jury in May found Trump responsible for sexual abuse. Carroll says Trump attacked her in a department store dressing room, but the former president’s legal team says the verdict should be overturned because some evidence that was allowed during the trial should have been excluded while other evidence that should be excluded was allowed. He denies guilt. 

In the midst of running for president and facing a series of other legal cases against him, Trump did not attend the Carroll trial and wasn’t there when the charges were read — though he assailed the verdict as “a disgrace” on his social media site. 

Later Friday, he’s traveling to Charlotte, North Carolina, to address the Fraternal Order of Police. 

More than 12 women make accusations

Carroll is one of more than a dozen women who have accused Trump of sexual assault or harassment. She went public in a 2019 memoir. Trump denied it, saying he never encountered Carroll at the store and did not know her. He has called her a “nut job” who invented her story to sell a memoir. 

Trump faces unprecedented criminal and civil jeopardy for a major-party nominee. 

He has separately been convicted on 34 felony counts in a New York state case related to hush money payments allegedly made to a porn actor. The judge in that case is expected to decide Friday whether to postpone Trump’s sentencing. 

Trump has also been ordered to pay steep civil fines for lying about his wealth for years. 

And he’s still contending with cases alleging his mishandling of classified documents, his actions after the 2020 election, and his activities during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — though none are likely to go to trial prior to Election Day. 
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Winder, Georgia — The 14-year-old suspect in a shooting that killed four people at a Georgia high school and his father, who was arrested for allowing his son to have a weapon, will stay in custody after their lawyers decided not to seek bail Friday. 

Colt Gray, who has been charged with four counts of murder, is accused of using a semiautomatic assault-style rifle to kill two fellow students and two teachers Wednesday at Apalachee High School in Winder, outside Atlanta. His father, Colin Gray, faces related charges in the latest attempt by prosecutors to hold parents responsible for their children’s actions in school shootings. 

The two appeared in back-to-back hearings Friday morning with about 50 onlookers in the courtroom, where workers had set out boxes of tissue along the benches, in addition to members of the media and sheriff’s deputies. Some victims’ family members in the front row hugged each other and one woman clutched a stuffed animal. 

During his hearing, Colt Gray, wearing khaki pants and a green shirt, was advised of his rights as well as the charges and penalties he faced for the shooting at the school where he was a student. 

After the hearing, he was escorted out in shackles at the wrists and ankles. The judge then called the teen back to the courtroom to correct an earlier misstatement that his crimes could be punishable by death. Because he’s a juvenile, the maximum penalty he would face is life without parole. The judge also set another hearing for December 4.

Shortly afterward, Colin Gray was brought into court dressed in a gray-striped jail uniform. Colin Gray, 54, was charged Thursday in connection with the shooting and answered questions in a barely audible croak, giving his age and saying he finished 11th grade, earning a high school equivalency diploma. 

Colin Gray has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and second-degree murder related to the shooting, Georgia Bureau of Investigation Director Chris Hosey said. 

“His charges are directly connected with the actions of his son and allowing him to possess a weapon,” Hosey said. 

The charges come five months after Michigan parents Jennifer and James Crumbley were the first convicted in a U.S. mass school shooting. They were sentenced to at least 10 years in prison for not securing a firearm at home and acting indifferently to signs of their son’s deteriorating mental health before he killed four students in 2021. 

The Georgia shootings have also renewed debate about safe storage laws for guns and have parents wondering how to talk to their children about school shootings and trauma. 

The Barrow County hearings for the father and son came as police in the Atlanta suburb of Dunwoody said schools there and nationwide have received threats of violence since the Apalachee High School shooting, police said in a statement. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation also noted that numerous threats have been made to schools across the state this week. 

Before Colin Gray’s arrest was reported, the AP knocked on the door of a home listed as his address seeking comment about his son’s arrest. 

According to arrest warrants obtained by The Associated Press, Colt Gray is accused of using a “black semi-automatic AR-15 style rifle” to kill the two students and two teachers. Authorities have not offered any motive or explained how he obtained the gun or got it into the school. 

He was charged as an adult in the deaths of Mason Schermerhorn and Christian Angulo, both 14, Richard Aspinwall, 39, and Cristina Irimie, 53. Nine people were also hurt in Wednesday’s attack. 

A neighbor remembered Schermerhorn as inquisitive when he was a little boy. Aspinwall and Irimie were both math teachers, and Aspinwall also helped coach the school’s football team. Irimie, who immigrated from Romania, volunteered at a local church, where she taught dance. 

Colt Gray denied threatening to carry out a school shooting when authorities interviewed him last year about a menacing post on social media, according to a sheriff’s report obtained Thursday. Conflicting evidence on the post’s origin left investigators unable to arrest anyone, the report said. Jackson County Sheriff Janis Mangum said she reviewed the report from May 2023 and found nothing that would have justified bringing charges at the time. 

The attack was the latest among dozens of school shootings across the U.S. in recent years, including especially deadly ones in Newtown, Connecticut; Parkland, Florida; and Uvalde, Texas. The classroom killings have set off fervent debates about gun control but there has been little change to national gun laws. 

It was the 30th mass killing in the U.S. this year, according to a database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University. At least 127 people have died in those killings, which are defined as events in which four or more people die within a 24-hour period, not including the killer — the same definition used by the FBI.
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Music cassette tapes are making a comeback in the U.S, with more than 430,000 sold in 2023 – about five times the number sold just a decade ago. Cassette tapes are especially popular with younger generations who grew up with digital music. Karina Bafradzhian has the story. Videographer: Sergii Dogotar
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Moscow — The Kremlin on Friday accused the United States of applying unacceptable pressure on Russian media after the U.S. Justice Department charged Russian TV contributor Dimitri Simes and his wife with schemes to violate U.S. sanctions. 

The two indictments were announced just one day after the U.S. took several legal actions against Russia to combat alleged efforts to meddle in the 2024 presidential elections, including charging two employees of the Russian state media network RT and sanctioning RT and its top network editor. 

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov, who has said Russia is not seeking to interfere in the U.S. presidential election, told reporters that Washington was trying to ensure that Moscow’s own perspective on world affairs was not available to people. 

“Washington continues to try to put pressure on Russia, on Russian citizens, and even on the Russian media, which is engaged in informing both citizens inside our country and world public opinion about what is happening, from our perspective,” said Peskov. 

“Washington does not even accept that there should be options out there for anyone to get news from our perspective.  

This is nothing other than blatant pressure. We strongly condemn this stance as unacceptable,” he said. 

Moscow still grants accreditation to Western journalists to work in Russia, though many have left since the start of the Ukraine war in 2022 and the arrest of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on spying charges in March 2023. 

Gershkovich, who denied the charges, was freed in a prisoner swap last month. 

Russia has said it will take retaliatory measures against U.S. media in response to Washington’s moves against RT. 

Asked what those measures would be, Peskov said Russia carefully evaluated the editorial policies of various foreign media outlets and would take those factors into account when making any decisions, on what he suggested would be a case-by-case basis. 

 
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Caracas, Venezuela — A U.S. Navy sailor held in Venezuela since late last month was arrested for entering “without any type of document,” the South American country’s attorney general said Thursday.

An American official on Wednesday announced the sailor had been detained at a time of soaring tensions between Washington and Caracas in the aftermath of disputed elections in Venezuela, with the opposition party claiming it can prove were stolen.

In his first comments on the matter, Venezuelan Attorney General Tarek William Saab said the sailor “entered without any type of document, without any means of subsistence for what he came to do in the country.”

He said the sailor held dual U.S. and Mexican nationalities.

For its part, the Pentagon said the sailor had been in Venezuela on “personal travel.”

“This wasn’t something that was authorized,” Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Sabrina Singh told reporters.

“The U.S. Navy is looking into this. We’re working with the State Department,” she said, adding that: “Of course, we’d like to see the sailor returned home.”

Venezuela was rocked by protests after President Nicolas Maduro was declared the winner of a disputed July 28 election, with 25 civilians and two soldiers killed and more than 2,400 people arrested.

The opposition claims it won by a landslide, and the United States, the European Union and several Latin American countries have refused to recognize Maduro’s claimed victory without seeing detailed voting results.

On Monday, Washington seized Maduro’s plane in the Dominican Republic and flew it to Florida, a move the Venezuelan leader condemned as “piracy” but which Washington said was necessary due to sanctions violations.

The following day, Washington denounced an arrest warrant issued for opposition presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez Urrutia and warned of further action against Maduro.

The U.S. State Department has warned Americans against traveling to Venezuela for reasons including crime, unrest and wrongful detention.
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