Black smoke rises at the front line in southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast on Aug. 30 amid Russia’s military invasion of the country. Ukraine has begun a major counteroffensive to retake areas in the south that Russia seized early in the war.
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Black smoke rises at the front line in southern Ukraine’s Mykolaiv Oblast on Aug. 30 amid Russia’s military invasion of the country. Ukraine has begun a major counteroffensive to retake areas in the south that Russia seized early in the war.
Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
MYKOLAIV REGION, Ukraine — Rockets roar out of a farm field here near the front lines of the war against Russia. They leave long, white contrails against Ukraine’s famously big, blue sky as they head toward Russian military targets. These are U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems, known as HIMARS.
“Thanks for this present,” says a Ukrainian reconnaissance soldier nicknamed Fox, who is watching in his green body armor with a knife and a walkie-talkie strapped to its front. Fox did not wish to give his name to protect family members living in Russian-occupied territory.
Fox directs fire for artillery and long-range weapons such as HIMARS onto Russian targets. Like most soldiers here along the southern front, Fox raves about the HIMARS.
“Yesterday, we had one job and it hit exactly on point from long distance,” says Fox, who is describing a strike of about 24 miles.
In this Ukraine General Staff handout image, Ukrainian forces purportedly use U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to attack Russian targets in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, on July 4.
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In this Ukraine General Staff handout image, Ukrainian forces purportedly use U.S.-provided High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) to attack Russian targets in southern Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia region, on July 4.
Armed Forces of Ukraine/Cover Images
In fact, the HIMARS deployed here can hit at more than twice that distance. When NPR visited the southern front four months ago, the Ukrainians had nowhere near that range.
Ukraine launched a counteroffensive this week in the south to take back territory from the Russians and break a stalemate in the region. More sophisticated Western weapons such as HIMARS are crucial to that fight.
Ukraine reaches deeper behind enemy lines
Col. Roman Kostenko says HIMARS have already helped a lot. Kostenko, a Ukrainian lawmaker who has been working as a commander in the south since the Russian invasion, says the HIMARS’ range and precision allow the Ukrainians to strike deep behind enemy lines.
“After these systems hit the Russians’ arms depots and bridges that connect to the city of Kherson, the enemy was forced to reduce the density of their fire on our positions,” says Kostenko.
Ukrainian Col. Roman Kostenko in April.
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Ukrainian Col. Roman Kostenko in April.
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He’s referring to key bridges the Russians use to supply their soldiers in Kherson, a strategic port city that fell to the Russians in March.
The problem, Kostenko says, is the Ukrainian armed forces simply don’t possess enough of these weapons to help them really turn the tide.
Kostenko first met with NPR here in April. Asked how much territory the Ukrainian military has taken back since then, he says: “Not a lot.”
Progress has been slow, sometimes an average of a mile or so a month. A soldier who operates an anti-tank missile tells NPR it took three months to take one village, because the Russians were so well dug into their defensive positions.
The U.S. has sent more weapons more quickly to Ukraine — committing over $13.5 billion in security aid to the country since January 2021 — than it has to any other country in decades, according to U.S. government historians. Kostenko says he’s grateful for that. But he also says the army here needs much more to make a big push in the south.
Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, July 14. Supplies of Western weapons have significantly boosted the Ukrainian military’s capability, allowing it to target Russian munitions depots, bridges and other key facilities with precision.
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Ukrainian servicemen prepare to fire at Russian positions from a U.S.-supplied M777 howitzer in northeastern Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, July 14. Supplies of Western weapons have significantly boosted the Ukrainian military’s capability, allowing it to target Russian munitions depots, bridges and other key facilities with precision.
Evgeniy Maloletka/AP
“Russia is very resourceful,” he says. “What we have now is probably 30% of what we really need in order to carry out successful offensive actions to liberate our territories.”
Soldiers use flippers to cross a mined river
Kostenko says the troops here have had successes. He says soldiers recently took back a nearby village from the Russians. Kostenko cites the ingenuity of a special forces team and the element of surprise.
“They left at 3 in the morning and arrived at a river,” Kostenko recalls. “The enemy mined the river bottom and, to avoid stepping on the mines, our soldiers used flippers.”
Kostenko also says Western long-range weapons helped batter the Russians holding the village. He pulls up a video on his cellphone of a public school building where the Russians were holed up. There is a giant crater in front of it. Kostenko says that strike killed at least 20 Russian soldiers. He won’t name the weapon, and only says it came from what he calls “our Western partners.”
The Ukrainians still rely on older weapons with less range to do a lot of their shelling. One morning, a Ukrainian soldier led an NPR reporter through a field of dandelions. We passed part of a Russian cluster bomb jammed halfway into the side of a hill. Around the corner sat a rusting howitzer, partly caked in mud.
A small team was cleaning the cannon’s firing mechanism with water and lubricant spray. Nearby stood a truck filled with pointy shells of different sizes that looked like giant bullets. The team lives in a big hut they’ve built out of wooden ammunition crates. A member of the crew named Artem, who wears a black Reebok T-shirt, says the Ukrainians captured the howitzer from the Russians earlier in the war. He doesn’t want to use his full name for security reasons.
Artem, 24, helps operate a Soviet-era howitzer that the Ukrainian army seized from the Russians, in the Mykolaiv region on Aug. 23. He is seated in a truck filled with howitzer shells but he says the Cold War relic will have to be retired in a few weeks because they are running out of ammunition for it.
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Artem, 24, helps operate a Soviet-era howitzer that the Ukrainian army seized from the Russians, in the Mykolaiv region on Aug. 23. He is seated in a truck filled with howitzer shells but he says the Cold War relic will have to be retired in a few weeks because they are running out of ammunition for it.
Frank Langfitt/NPR
It dates to 1989 and has a range of just over 12 miles. The howitzer is entirely manual. Artem shows how to aim it by spinning wheels that move the barrel up and down and from side to side.
“This is a good weapon,” says Artem, who is 24. “But it is an old weapon. I would like something newer. But we have what we have.”
In fact, the weapon is so old, the team is running out of ammunition for it. Artem says in a few weeks they will have to retire the Cold War relic.
Turning ordinary civilians into a fighting force isn’t easy
Weapons are just one challenge the Ukrainian army faces. Another is continuing to train civilians to form a capable fighting force.
Maj. Roman Kovalyov oversees a battalion in the Kherson region. Ninety percent of his troops had no previous military experience.
“They have passionate hearts, they are ready to go into battle,” says Kovalyov. “However, they don’t realize how little they know.”
Major Roman Kovalyov in the Kherson region on Aug. 22. He says he is worried that some Western countries do not want Russia to lose the war. “I have a clear feeling lately that we are being kept on artificial respiration,” says Kovalyov. “We are given just enough [weapons] so that we do not lose, and don’t win.”
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Major Roman Kovalyov in the Kherson region on Aug. 22. He says he is worried that some Western countries do not want Russia to lose the war. “I have a clear feeling lately that we are being kept on artificial respiration,” says Kovalyov. “We are given just enough [weapons] so that we do not lose, and don’t win.”
Frank Langfitt/NPR
The major says the biggest challenge in the first couple of months of the war was instilling discipline. For instance, he sent one group of soldiers out to provide cover for another one.
“They forgot water, night vision goggles, backpacks,” Kovalyov recalls. “They were half an hour late. And, because of that, the second unit came under heavy fire. Thank God no one was hurt.”
Afterward, the team that got shelled punched out the latecomers. Kovalyov says his soldiers have improved significantly since then, but he also says an improved army can only do so much against a better armed one such as the Russians.
“I have a clear feeling lately that we are being kept on artificial respiration,” says Kovalyov. “We are given just enough so that we do not lose, and don’t win.
People in Mykolaiv wait for an evacuation organized by local authorities to the city of Odesa, days after Kyiv announced the start of a southern counteroffensive to retake Russian-occupied territory, on Thursday.
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People in Mykolaiv wait for an evacuation organized by local authorities to the city of Odesa, days after Kyiv announced the start of a southern counteroffensive to retake Russian-occupied territory, on Thursday.
Umit Bektas/Reuters
Ukraine’s military calls on the West for more help
Standing in a village in the Kherson region, which Russia mostly occupies, he addresses political leaders thousands of miles away in Washington, London, Paris and Berlin:
“Give us enough weapons, please. And we give you our word, we will knock the enemy out of our land.”
But Kovalyov worries the West does not share Ukraine’s goal of total victory, of taking back the 20% or so of the country Russia has seized since its illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014.
He says the U.S. and NATO allies have various other geopolitical interests such as China, and in the case of Washington, the future of Taiwan.
“Politics is a complicated thing,” Kovalyov says. “I think they don’t want Russia to lose.”
But Major Kovalyov also says he thinks the future world order is being decided here and now in his homeland.
A classroom in a damaged school in a southern Ukrainian village in the Mykolaiv region, amid Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday.
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A classroom in a damaged school in a southern Ukrainian village in the Mykolaiv region, amid Russia’s military invasion of Ukraine, on Wednesday.
Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP via Getty Images
Producer Kateryna Malofieieva contributed to this story.
Biden, speaking at Independence Hall in Philadelphia on Thursday night, said that democracy and equality are under assault, and that he wanted to “speak as plainly as I can to the nation” about threats to them. Trump and his allies represent a form of extremism that “threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said, adding that while “mainstream” Republicans respect the rule of law, the former president does not.
The inventory listed seven batches of materials taken by the F.B.I. from Mr. Trump’s personal office at Mar-a-Lago that contained government-owned documents and photographs, some marked with classification levels up to “top secret” and some that were not marked as classified. The list also included batches of government records that had been in 26 boxes or containers in a storage room at the compound.
In all, the list said, the F.B.I. retrieved 18 documents marked as top secret, 54 marked as secret, 31 marked as confidential, and 11,179 government documents or photographs without classification markings.
A federal judge in Florida, Aileen M. Cannon, ordered the inventory list to be released during a hearing on Thursday to determine whether to appoint an outside expert known as a special master to review the government records for any that could be privileged. Judge Cannon said that she would issue a written decision on the matter “in due course.”
Mr. Trump appeared to acknowledge on social media this week that he knew that much of this material was at his estate, complaining about a photograph that the Justice Department released on Tuesday night cataloging some of the evidence that had been recovered.
The photograph showed several folders with “top secret” markings and some files with classification markings visible. All the material was arrayed on a carpet near a placard labeled “2A,” presumably to document what was in a box of that number before the F.B.I. removed it from Mar-a-Lago.
A shorter inventory, released earlier, said Box 2A contained materials found in Mr. Trump’s personal office. In a social media post, the former president declared that the folders had been kept in “cartons” rather than “sloppily” left on the floor, suggesting that he had been aware of the presence of the materials.
Treasury Department officials said on Friday that the gathering momentum behind the idea was already working to suppress prices, pointing out that Russia has already been selling oil to countries such as Indonesia at a 30 percent discount and is trying to lock in long-term contracts before the price cap is in place.
Oil prices rose on Friday, with West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, gaining more than 3 percent, to just over $89 per barrel. Still, prices are down for the week, and well off the highs of around $120 a barrel in mid-June.
In recent months, Treasury Secretary Janet L. Yellen and her team have been traveling the globe to solidify support for the price cap idea. A central component of those discussions has been how the price would be set, and how it would be enforced.
The finance ministers have not yet agreed on the price at which Russian oil can be sold, but said in a joint statement that it would be “set at a level based on a range of technical inputs and will be decided by the full coalition in advance of implementation in each jurisdiction.” Treasury officials have said that price will be higher than Russia’s cost of production, to ensure that it still has incentives to pump oil, but much lower than global market rates.
The success of the plan could determine whether oil prices surge above $100 a barrel this winter after the European embargo and insurance bans go into force and the weather turns cold.
Ms. Yellen said in a statement on Friday that a price cap would be a critical tool for fighting inflation and protecting Americans from future energy price surges. She acknowledged that although energy prices in the United States had eased recently, they remained a looming problem.
President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park September 1, 2022 in Philadelphia.
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President Joe Biden delivers a primetime speech at Independence National Historical Park September 1, 2022 in Philadelphia.
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Democrats have picked up some momentum this election cycle with wins in multiple special elections, following the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade.
And the FBI search of former President Trump’s Florida home has thrust Trump back into the spotlight, front and center. Lots of his candidates have won contentious primaries; he’s consolidated his base; and his renewed presence has threatened to make the November elections a choice rather than a referendum on President Biden.
Biden and the White House leaned into that Thursday night with an unusual prime-time address that broke no news or made any big announcements. Instead, Biden took the opportunity to elevate Trump and make it a choice between what Biden and Democrats stand for and MAGA Republican extremism, as he sees it, and their rising influence in positions of power throughout the country.
“I believe America is at an inflection point,” the president said in front of Independence Hall in Philadelphia, the same city, where he launched his 2020 presidential campaign, “one of those moments that determine the shape of everything that’s to come after. And now America must choose to move forward or to move backwards.”
On the eve of Labor Day weekend, the traditional pivot to the final sprint of general elections across the country, here are three takeaways from Biden’s speech:
1. Biden tried to reinforce the idea that this election is a choice, not a referendum… on him
Elections, especially midterm elections, are traditionally a check on the president. Inflation is high, Biden is unpopular and people are pessimistic about the direction of the country. That usually would mean a wipeout in a president’s first midterm.
So this gave Biden an opportunity to deflect from that – and lay out a choice.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards,” Biden said, “backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
He highlighted threats to democracy as being urgent and instigated by Trump. Biden doesn’t often use Trump’s name, but he name-checked him three times in this speech. And when you do that, it’s going to look and sound political. And that was obviously intentional.
With Trump back in the news, it offered Biden a way to elevate him, hold him up as the standard-bearer of the GOP, what it stands for, and draw a line in the sand.
“It’s pretty clear they want to amplify the MAGA message,” said Democratic strategist Joel Payne. “Almost feels like a pre-argument against what a Republican House might be pushing for the next two years, setting up a broader narrative about how he is fighting to stop Republicans from anti-democratic moves.”
2. This may have been a political speech, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t real threats
You’d be forgiven if you confused Biden’s address for a convention speech, because that’s where you draw contrasts with your opponent and lay out a vision for the country.
But that’s not to say there aren’t real or urgent threats. Election deniers are closer to controlling elections in key places, and as we’ve said many times watching the Jan. 6 hearings, the institutions of democracy may have held in 2020, but only because of the people who were running them.
Now many of those structures are run by people who support Trump and his election lies all the way.
We’ve seen political violence, the FBI is facing threats, as are poll workers and local election officials. There is no doubt that conspiratorial elements of Trumpism are more potentially operational now than they were before the 2020 presidential election.
“Democracy cannot survive when one side believes there are only two outcomes to an election – either they win or they were cheated,” Biden said.
And with the election two months away, the White House would argue highlighting that threat is key.
3. There is a degree of risk in Biden’s strategy
Democrats’ recent momentum in multiple special elections has largely been due to abortion rights, not necessarily about threats ts to democracy.
Yes, a recent NBC poll showed threats to democracy rising to the No. 1 issue, and that is significant, as it overtook cost of living, which was second. But it was only with 21% of respondents. Economic-related items when combined – cost of living and jobs and the economy – were 30%, higher than threats to democracy.
What’s more, when you break down those who said threats to democracy were their top issue, 53% were Democrats, while 32% of Republicans and 11% of independents did. And Democrats and Republicans certainly view the “threats to democracy” very differently. Democrats obviously see Trump and “MAGA extremism” as the threat, while many Republicans, who have believed Trump’s election lies, believe Democrats and (not) rigged elections are the problems.
So the White House might be overreading polls here.
Republicans, many of whom are now aligned with Trump, are incensed.
House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy gave a speech before Biden spoke and said the president needed to apologize for what he saw as insulting the millions of Americans who voted for Trump.
It certainly shows the 180-degree shift McCarthy has made since after Jan. 6 in his quest to become House speaker. But it also highlights the high bar Biden has in trying to make clear he is talking about Republican elected officials and not voters.
“Not even a majority of Republicans are MAGA Republicans,” Biden said. “Not every Republican embraces their extreme ideology. I know because I’ve been able to work with these mainstream Republicans. But there’s no question that the Republican Party today is dominated, driven, intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans. And that is a threat to this country.”
That is a very fine line for a president, who isn’t always artful with his words, to walk and stick to. The GOP will obviously use this to fire up their base against Democrats and Biden in these midterms, but the White House is gambling that conservatives who dislike him are already fired up – and Democrats need to keep their base engaged.
“There is a risk of overreaching on this,” Payne said, “especially at a point when Republicans are on their heels trying to protect some anticipated gains in the ’22 midterms.”
But, he added, “I think it also helps juice the base [with] moral clarity on saving the democracy.”
The West’s biggest economies on Friday agreed to impose a price cap on Russian oil in an attempt to reduce Moscow’s ability to fund its war in Ukraine without further stoking global inflation.
Finance ministers from the G7 group of countries — the United States, Japan, Canada, Germany, France, Italy and the United Kingdom — said they would ban the provision of “services which enable maritime transportation of Russian-origin crude oil and petroleum products globally” above the price cap. That could block insurance cover or finance for oil shipments.
The maximum price would be set by “a broad coalition” of countries, they said in a joint statement. It would take effect alongside the European Union’s next batch of sanctions, which include a ban on seaborne imports of Russian oil starting in December.
Russia had already threatened to retaliate by banning oil exports to countries that implement a price cap.
“We will simply not supply oil and petroleum products to such companies or states that impose restrictions, as we will not work non-competitively,” Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak told reporters Thursday, according to state news agency TASS.
The Biden administration has been pushing for governments to introduce a price cap for months. The West has already sanctioned many Russian energy exports, but Moscow has continued to earn billions of dollars a month by diverting oil to China and Asia.
“The price cap is specifically designed to reduce Russian revenues and Russia’s ability to fund its war of aggression whilst limiting the impact of Russia ́s war on global energy prices, particularly for low and middle-income countries,” the G7 finance ministers said.
But the measure still needs work and will be extremely complex to manage. How, when and by how much the price of Russian oil could be capped remains to be seen. It would also need wider international support to be effective.
“[We] urge all countries that still seek to import Russian oil and petroleum products to commit to doing so only at prices at or below the price cap,” the finance ministers said.
Since the beginning of July, oil prices have fallen roughly 18% in anticipation that recession will reduce demand, but they’re still about 20% higher than they were one year ago.
“While we’ve seen energy prices ease in the United States, energy costs remain a concern for Americans and continue to be elevated globally,” US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement. “This price cap is one of the most powerful tools we have to fight inflation and protect workers and businesses in the United States and globally from future price spikes caused by global disruptions.”
Novak has called the proposals to impose restrictions “completely absurd” and said they could destroy the global oil market, TASS reported.
“Such attempts will only destabilize the oil industry, the oil market,” he said.
Flows of crude oil and other oil products to the United States, United Kingdom, European Union, Japan and South Korea have dropped by nearly 2.2 million barrels per day since the start of the war in Ukraine, according to the International Energy Agency.
But two-thirds of this decline has been rerouted to other markets, helping pad Moscow’s coffers. Export revenues in July were about $19 billion, the IEA said.
Russia’s control of large swaths of global energy supplies remains a majorchallenge six months since its invasion of Ukraine. This week, Russia temporarily halted natural gas deliveries to the region through a vital pipeline and cut off all supplies to a French utility, exacerbating problems that have sent European inflation to a record high of 9%.
Russian state energy giant Gazprom said that the cut in deliveries through the Nord Stream 1 pipeline was due to a planned shutdown for a few days for maintenance work. It is supposed to reopen on Saturday.
— Chris Liakos, Anna Cooban and Manveena Suri contributed to this report.
First Washington D.C., then New York City. Now Chicago.
Officials from Texas and Arizona have been sending busloads of asylum seekers to those cities to the east for months. On Wednesday, Chicago joined New York and Washington when the first busloads of migrants from Texas arrived there.
“President Biden’s inaction at our southern border continues putting the lives of Texans — and Americans — at risk and is overwhelming our communities,” Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said in a statement late Wednesday. “To continue providing much-needed relief to our small, overrun border towns, Chicago will join fellow sanctuary cities Washington, D.C. and New York City as an additional drop-off location.”
In a statement, Ryan Johnson, spokesman for Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, said Abbott is “without shame or humanity” for busing in asylum-seekers but welcomed the migrants. “As a city, we are doing everything we can to ensure these immigrants and their families can receive shelter, food and most importantly protection,” it said.
The migrant families don’t always have contacts in the cities and wind up sleeping in bus stations, park benches, homeless shelters and hotels, according to immigrant advocates. Their numbers – from Venezuela, Colombia, Africa and elsewhere – are rising at such alarming rates that Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser last month requested a National Guard deployment to help receive them.
The Pentagon denied the request but Bowser’s appeal for help underscores the growing tension of what many call a political battle between clashing parties: Republican governors from Texas and Arizona busing asylum-seekers from the U.S.-Mexico border to Democrat-led cities.
The busing efforts also reveal a disconnect in how states describe their intention: State governors say the destination cities are targeted because of their “sanctuary city” policies, while also saying the bus rides are voluntary and migrants choose where they want to go.
Advocates say this is sowing uncertainty and raises concerns that states are disrupting the asylum process.
“It’s creating unnecessary confusion and leaving the asylum-seekers in a really vulnerable place,” said Kennji Kizuka, associate director for research & analysis for refugee protection at New York-based Human Rights First. “And it’s all for political show.”
How many asylum-seekers have been bused from the border to New York and Washington?
Nearly 11,000 migrants have been bused from both states to New York and Washington, according to the governor’s offices of each state. Texas has shipped over 7,500 to Washington and more than 1,800 to New York City since April. Arizona has bused more than 1,500 just to Washington.
Two buses filled with around 60 asylum-seekers, mostly from Venezuela, arrived in Chicago late Wednesday.
Who are the asylum-seekers?
Those arriving in New York from Texas have been overwhelmingly Venezuelan, though many Colombians and some Africans are also arriving, said Camille Mackler,founder and executive director of the Immigrant Advocates Response Collaborative, a New York-based coalition of attorneys and legal groups, who has interacted with the migrants.
Those taking the 40-hour bus ride from Yuma, Ariz., to Washington have been from Colombia (55%), Peru (16%) and Venezuela (13%), as well as Cuba and other countries, said C.J. Karamargin, spokesman to Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey.
Is it legal for a state to bus asylum-seekers from the Southwest border to other U.S. cities?
Yes – if migrants are takingthe bus rides voluntarily, said Denise Gilman, co-director of the Immigration Clinic at the University of Texas School of Law in Austin. The migrants from Texas have arrived to the Northeast cities with signed releases stating they are, in fact, agreeing to the rides.
But Gilman said some of the asylum-seekers may have been directed to sign and take the bus or may not have understood what they were getting into. Texas officials have not revealed exactly how the migrants end up on the buses, she said.
In a statement, Abbott spokeswoman Renae Eze said: “These migrants willingly chose to go to New York City or our nation’s capital, having signed a voluntary consent waiver available in multiple languages, upon boarding that they agreed on the destination. Migrants are allowed to disembark at any of these stops, as they have been processed and released by the federal government.”
In Arizona, when migrants cross between ports of entry and are picked up by Border Patrol, they’re processed by the federal agency, then released to a non-governmental organization in Yuma, where they’re offered the bus rides, Karamargin said. Most of the migrants want to go to either New York, New Jersey or Florida — but all are bused to Washington, he said.
“Washington is the source of this problem,” Karamargin said. “That’s where we’re taking these migrants.”
The bus rides call into question the states’ role in immigration enforcement and processing – a task assigned to the federal government under the U.S. Constitution and something for which Texas has been repeatedly criticized since launching Operation Lone Star last year, Gilman said.
Under that operation, Abbott deployed hundreds of National Guardsmen and state troopers to the border to arrest migrants who slip past Border Patrol. Critics have complained that it’s led to racial profiling and other civil rights violations.
The Texas bus rides are an extension of that operation, Gilman said. “We need the federal government, who should have control over immigration, to re-exert its control,” she said.
Why are Texas and Arizona busing migrants away from the border?
Abbott has criticized first Biden, for what he calls lax border policies, then New York City Mayor Eric Adams for claiming that New York was a “sanctuary city,” where migrants should feel safe.
On Wednesday, he took aim at Lightfoot.
“Mayor Lightfoot loves to tout the responsibility of her city to welcome all regardless of legal status, and I look forward to seeing this responsibility in action as these migrants receive resources from a sanctuary city with the capacity to serve them,” he said in a statement.
In Arizona, busing migrants from Yuma to Washington spares the small border community from dealing with a steady crush of migrants released from federal custody but also sends a message to the White House, Karamargin said.
“It is partially a statement,” he said. “Arizona will not stand by and do nothing while a border security and humanitarian crisis plays out in our community.”
How much do the bus rides cost and who’s paying for them?
Texas’s migrant busing program has cost $12 million since it began, or an average of about $1,300 per person per ride to the East Coast destinations, according to the El Paso Times.
Arizona has paid more than $3.5 million to take 1,574 asylum-seekers on 43 bus rides so far, according to Ducey’s office. That comes out to about $2,200 per person per ride.
State taxpayers foot the bills.
Are the bus rides disrupting the migrants’ asylum claims process?
Immigrant advocates and attorneys said it’s hard to tell because of the lack of information so far arising about the how the migrants get to the buses.
Karamargin said the migrants leaving from Yuma have agreed to be bused to Washington and will likely have an immigration court date in their final destination, whether it’s Washington, New York or some other place.
But Abel Nuñez, executive director of the Central American Resource Center, which has provided services to the migrants, said around 10% of the migrants arriving in Washington don’t have any contact in the U.S. Some of the addresses on their paperwork were scribbled in by Border Patrol agents.
Nuñez said some of the migrants didn’t want to be in Washington and his organization coordinated transportation for them back to Texas. As a whole, Arizona buses have been better coordinated than the Texas ones, which often arrive with little or no notice, he said.
“If Texas wants to continue doing [bus rides] in a coordinated way, it’s a win-win,” Nuñez said. “But the way they’re approaching it is really detrimental.”
Most of the migrants he’s dealt with have been paroled into the United States, meaning they usually have 90 days to apply for asylum and need to check in with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement at their final destination, he said. But the destination listed on their paperwork is often not Washington, creating a hurdle for the asylum-seeker, Nuñez said.
Many of the migrants bused to New York City from Texas also didn’t know anyone there and were forced to navigate the city and the complex immigration procedure on their own, Mackler said.
Those without a place to go were taken to city homeless shelters but some promptly left and ended up on park benches, she said. Others were continuing to Chicago, Georgia and other destinations. Without a good address for them, immigration officials will have a tough time tracking them and they may miss court appearances or mandatory check-ins, Mackler said.
And with New York’s immigration backlog, it often takes more than 1½ years for qualifying asylum seekers to receive permission to work, she said.
“They arrive here and they have no place to go,” Mackler said. “They have no phones, no access to the internet, don’t speak English. We really don’t know how this is going to play out.”
Nuñez said Abbott’s plan could backfire: He expects the number of migrants crossing into Texas to grow.
“Everybody in Venezuela now knows: If you cross in Texas, you get a free bus ride.”
WASHINGTON — The death of Ravil Maganov, chairman of the Russian oil giant Lukoil, at a hospital in Moscow on Thursday appears to mark the eighth time this year that a Russian energy executive has died suddenly and under unusual circumstances.
Maganov died after falling out of the window of the capital’s Central Clinical Hospital, according to the Russian state-sponsored news outlet Interfax. The circumstances of Maganov’s death were confirmed by Reuters, citing two anonymous sources. The oil firm, and its chairman, had been critical of the Ukraine war, expressing disapproval in a statement on March 3.
But Lukoil, the company that Maganov helped to build, said the 67 year old had “passed away following a serious illness” in a press statement. The Russian embassy in Washington did not respond to a request from CNBC for an official statement.
The circumstances surrounding Maganov’s sudden death have drawn international attention, in part, because seven other top Russian energy executives have been victims of untimely deaths since January, according to reports by Russian and international news agencies.
Below is a list of these cases, in chronological order.
In late January, Leonid Shulman, a top executive at the Russian natural gas giant Gazprom, was found dead in the bathroom of a cottage in the village of Leninsky. The Russian media group RBC reported his death, but did not cite a cause.
On Feb. 28, three days after Tyulakov died, a Russian oil and gas billionaire living in England, Mikhail Watford, was found hanged in the garage of his country estate. At the time, investigators reportedly said Watford’s death was “unexplained,” but did not appear suspicious.
On April 18, a former vice president of Gazprombank, Vladislav Avayev, was found dead in his Moscow apartment, alongside his wife and daughter, who also died. Authorities treated the case as a murder-suicide, Radio Free Europe reported at the time. Gazprombank is Russia’s third largest bank and has close ties to the energy sector.
On April 19, a former deputy chairman of Novatek, Russia’s largest liquefied natural gas producer, was found dead in a vacation home in Spain. Like Avayev in Moscow, Sergei Protosenya was found with his wife and daughter, who were also deceased. And like Avayev, police investigating the scene said they believed it was a murder-suicide, a theory that Avayev’s surviving son has publicly rejected.
In May, the body of billionaire and former Lukoil executive Alexander Subbotin was discovered in the basement of a country house in the Moscow region. The room where Subbotin died was allegedly used for “Jamaican voodoo rituals,” the Russian state media outlet TASS reported, quoting local authorities.
In July, Yury Voronov, the CEO and founder of a shipping contractor that services Gazprom’s Arctic projects was found dead of an apparent gunshot wound in a swimming pool at his home in Leninsky, the same elite St. Petersburg gated community where Shulman and Tyulakov died earlier in the year.
MIAMI — Tropical Storm Danielle picked up strength in the Atlantic and was forecast to become the first hurricane of an unusually quiet storm season on Friday morning.
The storm is not currently a threat to any land.
The storm’s maximum sustained winds were near 70 mph (110 kph). Additional strengthening is forecast, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The storm is centered about 890 miles (1,435 kilometers) west of the Azores and is moving east near 3 mph (6 kph). The hurricane center said the storm is expected to meander in the Atlantic over the next few days.
The tropical storm comes amid what had been a calm hurricane season. It is the first time since 1941 that the Atlantic has gone from July 3 to the end of August with no named storm, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach had told The Associated Press earlier.
In the north Pacific, Tropical Storm Javier formed overnight. Forecasters said that late Thursday it was 380 kilometers south-southwest of Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, with maximum sustained winds of 40 mph (65 kph).
Javier is moving northwest at 10 mph (17 kph). It is expected to pick up speed and turn westward over the coming days.
PHILADELPHIA, Sept 1 (Reuters) – U.S. President Joe Biden charged Republican allies of Donald Trump with undermining the country’s democracy and urged voters on Thursday to reject extremism ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Biden accused lawmakers and others devoted to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) agenda led by former U.S. President Trump as willing to overturn democratic elections, ignore the Constitution and “determined to take this country backwards” to a time without rights to abortion, privacy, contraception or same-sex marriage.
“Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said. “As I stand here tonight, equality and democracy are under assault. We do ourselves no favor to pretend otherwise.”
The prime-time speech in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American democracy, marked a sharp turn for Biden as midterm congressional elections approach.
Aides say the president is increasingly concerned about anti-democratic trends in the Republican Party, and sees a need to jump into this year’s election fight and recast the stakes of his own 2024 re-election bid.
After spending much of 2022 trying to combat high inflation at home and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and enduring two bouts of COVID-19 over the summer, Biden has in recent days repeatedly lashed out at Trump-aligned Republicans. read more
His remarks on Thursday denouncing political violence and urging bipartisan compromise came after speeches in recent days where he condemned MAGA philosophy as “semi-fascism” and assailed Republican threats against the FBI after a search of Trump’s Florida home as “sickening.”
House of Representatives Republican leader Kevin McCarthy on Thursday accused Biden of ignoring crime and inflation to criticize his fellow citizens.
“Instead of trying to bring our country together to solve these challenges, President Biden has chosen to divide, demean and disparage his fellow Americans,” McCarthy said in Biden’s hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. “Why? Simply because they disagree with his policies.”
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U.S. President Joe Biden delivers remarks on what he calls the “continued battle for the Soul of the Nation” in front of Independence Hall at Independence National Historical Park, Philadelphia, U.S., September 1, 2022. REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
A Democratic fundraiser said donors are closely watching Biden’s performance over the next few months to gauge whether to back him in a 2024 presidential run.
Some have already decided that Biden, 79, should step aside to make way for fresh leadership, while others want to see if he can lead the party effectively.
“If we can pull it off and retain the Senate, then there will be enough voices saying he has earned it and pave the way for re-election,” said a senior Democratic official. “If we don’t, the overwhelming sentiment will be ‘Pass the torch.'”
FREE ELECTIONS IN DANGER?
Biden spoke in Philadelphia from behind bullet-proof glass and within earshot of chanting Trump-supporting protesters. He made his remarks at a venue meant to signal the historical significance of his appeal, near Independence Hall, where the U.S. Declaration of Independence and Constitution were adopted.
Some historians and legal scholars have cast the stakes in starker terms than Biden’s political future, saying free elections and commitment to the rule of law hang in the balance.
They say losing Congress would not only make Biden a lame-duck president, but also turn over control of certifying the results of the next presidential election to Trump sympathizers, some of whom never accepted Biden’s 2020 victory and who have pledged to overhaul voting systems.
Biden alluded to the concerns, saying “I will not stand by and watch elections in this country be stolen by people who simply refuse to accept that they lost.”
The speech echoed Biden’s signature 2020 campaign pledge to restore the “soul of the nation” and, by implication, purge the values associated with Trump. In the nearly two years since Biden was elected, Republican voters have mostly backed candidates aligned with the former president; more than half say they believe Trump rightfully won the election.
Confronted by threats after Trump’s loss, one in five election workers polled this year said they may quit before the next presidential election. read more
This is CNBC’s live blog tracking Friday’s developments on the war in Ukraine. See below for the latest updates.
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, says the team of inspectors at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant in Ukraine will stay at the facility.
“We are not going anywhere,” Grossi told reporters. “The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving. It is going to stay there.”
Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned Moldova that any threat against the security of Russian forces in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack against Moscow.
His comments have renewed fears that the region could be at risk of being drawn into the Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Russia warns Moldova not to threaten troops
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov warned the eastern European country of Moldova that any threat against the security of Russian forces in the breakaway region of Transnistria would be considered an attack against Moscow.
“Everyone should understand that any kind of actions that will raise a threat to the security of our servicemen will be considered in accordance with international law as an attack on the Russian Federation,” Lavrov said, according to the Associated Press.
Internationally recognized as part of Moldova, Transnistria is situated on Ukraine’s southwestern border and is home to a sizeable pro-Russian separatist population.
Lavrov’s comments have renewed fears that the region could be at risk of being drawn into the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Moldova’s foreign ministry reportedly summoned the acting Russian ambassador to clarify the situation.
— Sam Meredith
UN inspectors at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant ‘not going anywhere’
The head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, the U.N.’s nuclear watchdog, is adamant that the team will maintain a continued presence at the Russian-occupied Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant in Ukraine.
His comments come as both Russia and Ukraine say they fear a possible radiation disaster as a result of intense shelling at Europe’s largest nuclear power plant. The IAEA was finally able to visit the site on Thursday after a delay of several hours.
“We are not going anywhere,” Grossi told reporters. “The IAEA is now there, it is at the plant and it is not moving. It is going to stay there. We are going to have a continued presence there at the plant.”
Asked whether the world should be concerned about the Zaporizhzhia plant, Grossi replied: “I did not need to come here to worry about the plant. I worried, I worry and I will continue to be worried about the plant until we have a situation that is more stable, that is more predictable.”
— Sam Meredith
Russia’s energy influence over Europe may be coming to an end
Russia’s energy influence over Europe appears to be coming to an end, energy and political analysts say, potentially alleviating the risk of further supply disruptions.
Europe in recent months has endured a sharp drop in gas exports from Russia, traditionally its largest energy supplier.
A bitter gas dispute between Brussels and Moscow following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has exacerbated the risk of recession and a winter gas shortage. What’s more, many fear Russia could soon turn off the taps completely.
Asked whether Russia’s energy influence over Europe may be coming to an end, Agathe Demarais, global forecasting director at The Economist Intelligence Unit, told CNBC, “Yes. Actually, very much so.”
“Europe is heading towards a very difficult winter, probably two years of a very difficult adjustment with a lot of economic pain. But then Europe is essentially going to become more independent with a more diversified mix,” Demarais said.
“And what that means is that Russia’s energy weapon is going to become moot,” she added.
Reuters reported that an unnamed European G-7 official said “a deal is likely,” adding the extent of the specifics that will be publicized remains unclear.
More than 7 million Ukrainians have become refugees from Russia’s war
More 7 million Ukrainians have become refugees and moved to neighboring countries since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, the U.N. Refugee Agency estimates.
Nearly 4 million of those people have applied for temporary resident status in neighboring Western countries, according to data collected by the agency.
“The escalation of conflict in Ukraine has caused civilian casualties and destruction of civilian infrastructure, forcing people to flee their homes seeking safety, protection and assistance,” the U.N. Refugee Agency wrote.
— Amanda Macias
Zelenskyy said that journalists were barred from touring Zaporizhzhia plant with IAEA inspectors
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a nightly address that both Ukrainian and international journalists were not allowed to tour the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant with IAEA representatives.
“Today, the IAEA mission arrived at Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. It is good that it happened, the fact itself, despite all the provocations of the Russian military and the cynical shelling of Enerhodar and the territory of the station,” said in an update on the Telegram messaging app, according to an NBC News translation.
Zelenskyy added that the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Rafael Grossi, promised him that independent journalists would accompany the inspectors.
“Unfortunately, IAEA representatives did not protect representatives of independent media,” Zelenskyy added.
A monster came to life in the rolling hills of northwestern Los Angeles County, belching smoke and flames amid triple-digit heat that has forced officials to call for voluntary energy conservation across California in hopes of preventing rolling blackouts.
In less than 24 hours, the Route fire charred more than 5,000 acres near Castaic, though it appeared that crews were beginning to turn a corner Thursday.
The blaze, which ignited Wednesday afternoon, was holding at 5,208 acres Thursday night, according to the L.A. County Fire Department. Containment increased from 12% in the morning to 27% around 7:30 p.m.
By 1 p.m., all evacuation orders were lifted and residents were allowed to return to their homes.
Crews also made progress on a second major blaze, the Border 32 fire in San Diego County, which remained at 4,438 acres and was 14% contained Thursday night, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Near the Route fire, temperatures soared to 111 degrees Thursday, said Tom Fisher, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Oxnard, citing data from a Southern California Edison gauge near Castaic Lake.
The heat pummeled fire crews working to contain the blaze.
Officials took the unusual step Thursday of pulling back some of the firefighters on the front lines after seven crew members were taken to hospitals for heat-related illness.
The high-pressure system over most of California is expected to bring record-breaking temperatures, part of a “self-perpetuating” system that is becoming more extreme as climate change worsens.
Fire officials said all of the firefighters had been treated and released as of Thursday morning.
The order to pull back, a fire official said, was to reduce the risk to firefighters tackling the most grueling tasks as temperatures soared. Instead, crews would focus on an aerial assault.
“It’s a tactical pause for the crews that are experiencing the greatest heat impact,” Los Angeles County Deputy Fire Chief Thomas C. Ewald said. “We’re just trying to reduce the strain being placed on line firefighters.”
As of Thursday night, the Route fire had destroyed two structures and was threatening 550 more, fire officials said.
The heat wave is expected to last into next week, perhaps as late as Wednesday, bringing high temperatures to both inland and coastal areas and heightening fire dangers.
“It should be a wake-up call to us all,” said U.S. Forest Service Fire Chief Robert Garcia. “The days ahead are going to be very challenging.”
It’s rare for fire officials to pull back resources, especially when high temperatures increase the threat of fires, but Ewald said that “the No. 1 threat right now is to our firefighters. We want to back off the intensity a little bit.”
“For our folks that are out there, they don’t have the opportunity to go into an air-conditioned environment,” Ewald said. “They’re on the line, they’re not in the shade. Their No. 1 tool is hydration and preparation.”
Evacuations have been ordered for Paradise Mobile Home Park as firefighters work to build a containment line.
More than 500 personnel were assigned to the Route fire as of Thursday night, fire officials said. There were 11 hand crews, 58 fire engines, 10 bulldozers, eight helicopters and two fixed-wing aircraft.
When the state calls for a Flex Alert, you should try to conserve as much power as possible. Here are some ideas for saving energy.
Low humidity, excessive heat and steep terrain also threatened responders’ efforts.
The Route fire was first reported along the 5 Freeway near Lake Hughes Road just after noon Wednesday, leading to full lane closures in both directions.
As of Thursday night, two northbound lanes between Lake Hughes Road and Templin Highway had reopened and two remained closed, according to the California Department of Transportation. On the freeway’s southbound side, three lanes were open and one lane was closed.
The blaze also led to evacuation orders for north of Northlake Hills Elementary School and south of Templin Highway. The orders were lifted by Thursday afternoon, welcomed news for residents fleeing the fire and looking to still escape the scorching heat.
There are 150 L.A. Unified schools in “very high need” of green space and shade, mostly in South and East Los Angeles, where parks are scarce.
Cesar Constantino, 48, and his wife weren’t in their Paradise Ranch Estates mobile home when the fire started Wednesday, but their phones started ringing with calls from neighbors warning them about the approaching flames.
Their three kids grabbed the family’s important documents, their dog, Jokey, and their two Guinea pigs and headed to the Red Cross evacuation center at West Ranch High School for the night.
Constantino and nearly 40 others spent the night in the gym, where they struggled with no air conditioning. On Thursday afternoon, he sat near the front of the gym where residents were to check in, the only place with a working air-conditioning unit.
Instead, the shelter is equipped with four large fans to keep people cool. Some residents opted to sleep in their cars in the parking lot.
On Thursday morning, the property manager warned Constantino electricity and water were still off at the mobile home park.
“We need air conditioning,” he said. “Maybe we’ll get to go back tonight.”
The extreme heat scorching Southern California can be especially dangerous for unhoused people. If you have the means, here are some ways to help.
Capt. Mark McCurdy with Los Angeles County Station 149 and his crew were the first on the scene of the fire Wednesday when they saw it quickly spreading on grass on the northbound side of the 5 Freeway.
Even then, the heat took a toll on the firefighters.
“I’ve done this for a little while now and yesterday was even tough on me,” he said. “A day like yesterday, you still push as hard as you would on a regular day, but it just makes it tougher.”
The punishing heat, meanwhile, continued to bear down on communities around the Southland.
Lancaster saw a high of 112 degrees Thursday, surpassing the previous daily high of 110 set in 1950; Sandberg’s high of 99 broke the 1996 record of 97 degrees; and Palmdale matched its daily record of 109, originally set in 1947.
Meteorologists with the National Weather Service in Oxnard said temperatures could dip by 5 to 10 degrees Friday, but the reprieve will be brief; daily records could be set Sunday in the Los Angeles County valleys, the Antelope Valley and San Luis Obispo County mountains, the weather service said.
It was the second day of record-setting heat in the Los Angeles area.
On Wednesday, Woodland Hills reached 112 degrees, breaking the previous record for the date of 111 degrees set in 1998, according to the National Weather Service.
Burbank’s high of 112 for Wednesday broke the previous daily record of 108 degrees set in 2017, and Sandberg reached 100 degrees that day, exceeding the previous high of 98 degrees, also in 2017, the weather service said.
Faced with increased demand for electricity, the California Independent System Operator, which manages the power grid, extended a Flex Alert into Friday.
During a Flex Alert, consumers are urged to reduce their electricity use from 4 to 9 p.m., when the grid is most stressed because of high demand and less available energy from solar panels.
Flex Alerts were also issued Wednesday and Thursday. The heat wave is expected to extend well into next week.
Authorities are worried about power capacity in part because high temperatures are forecast not just across inland regions that typically broil this time of year, but also along many parts of the coast.
That could mean many more people turning on their air conditioners during peak hours.
Officials are asking Californians to limit electricity use when possible to minimize strain on the state’s energy providers, otherwise risking rolling blackouts. Losing power during such extreme heat can be highly dangerous, if not deadly, especially for the most vulnerable.
Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.
Democrat Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said that she’d be “happy to drain Texas of all its residents” and welcome them to Chicago after Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent two buses with migrants onboard to Chicago’s Union Station.
Lightfoot made the comments during a Thursday press conference after the migrants’ arrival.
“I’m happy to take and drain Texas, of all of its residents,” Lightfoot said. “I wouldn’t want to live in a state with a governor like that. I certainly wouldn’t want to live in a state where they are doing everything they can to strip people of their basic rights. And let’s not forget about what they’ve done to women and others who were seeking reproductive health care.”
Lightfoot added that she welcomes “Texans to Chicago” and said that “we’ll rent the buses next time to bring them here.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot introduces Jazmine Sullivan during 2022 Lollapalooza day one at Grant Park on July 28, 2022 in Chicago, Illinois (Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images)
However, data show that people living in Illinois are moving away toward states like Texas.
According to Forbes, citing USPS change-of-address data, Illinois ranks No. 3 for states where residents are leaving, and Texas ranks No. 1 for where people are moving to.
Abbott sent two buses from Texas to Chicago on Wednesday, which arrived at Union Station at 7:30 p.m., carrying migrants who illegally crossed the southern border.
The mayor says that 75 migrants were on the two buses and added that many of them were from Venezuela.
In a statement after the buses’ arrival on Wednesday, Abbott said that Chicago is being added as a “drop-off location” for future migrant buses in response to “President Biden’s open border policies overwhelming border communities in Texas,” joining the existing locations of New York City and Washington, D.C.
Lightfoot harshly criticized Abbott on Thursday, saying he is a “man without any morals”
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott speaks at a news conference in Austin, Texas. (AP Photo/Eric Gay, File)
“Let me say loud and clear to Greg Abbott and his enablers in Texas with these continued political stunts, Gov. Abbott has confirmed what unfortunately many of us had known already, that he is a man without any morals, humanity or shame,” Lightfoot said.
She also said that it is “my prayer” that Abbott “finds some humanity” and doesn’t continue to send buses of migrants to Chicago, but said if he does, “we’re ready.”
Abbott’s office responded to her claims, stating that Lightfoot is being an “absolute hypocrite.”
“Where was her outrage and condemnation of President Biden as he flew planeloads of migrants across the country and dropped them in communities in the cover of night? Mayor Lightfoot knows nothing about Texas’ busing strategy and needs to stop with the baseless lies and fearmongering. Texas continues stepping up and responding to the Biden-made border crisis, taking unprecedented action to address the historic levels of illegal immigrants, terrorists, and deadly drugs like fentanyl that are surging into our communities and overwhelming border towns,” Abbott’s press secretary Renea Eze said.
“If the mayor wants a solution to this humanitarian crisis, she should stop complaining and call on President Biden to take immediate action to secure the border—something the President continues failing to do,” Eze added.
Fox News’ Timothy Nerozzi, Emma Colton, Liz Friden, Grady Trimble, Paul Best, and Bill Melugin contributed to this report.
Adam Sabes is a writer for Fox News Digital. Story tips can be sent to Adam.Sabes@fox.com and on Twitter @asabes10.
Californians are being asked to conserve power for a third day in a row as the state’s grid operator expects another strain on the energy grid.
Video above: Weather forecast for September 1, 2022
The California Independent System Operator, or Cal ISO, announced on Thursday that a Flex Alert was issued for Friday, which is forecast to be hotter than Thursday’s high temperature.
With a Flex Alert, residents are urged to conserve electricity from 4 p.m. to 9 p.m. as energy use is expected to increase amid a long stretch of high temperatures, the California Independent System Operator said in a release.
The Flex Alert was issued to avoid power disruptions due to the increased strain on the power grid due to more people using electricity to keep cool.
On Wednesday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order intended to temporarily increase the state’s energy supply.
So far this week, there have not been any unplanned outages reported in relation to excessive use of energy. In 2020, multiple factors including high temperatures and an Oregon wildfire led to several days of rolling blackouts for millions of Californians.
Here are things you can do to conserve energy during a flex alert
Set the thermostat at 78 degrees or higher, if health permits
Avoid using major appliances
Turn off unnecessary lights
Use fans for cooling
Unplug unused items
The heat is expected to continue through Tuesday. On Wednesday, Cal ISO said more Flex Alerts are possible through the weekend.
KCRA 3’s weather team is calling Saturday through Tuesday heat impact days with highs forecast in the 108-111 range in the Valley. That means people should plan around the heat in the afternoons, especially students with after-school activities.
(Click through below for the 7-day forecast, more.)
PHOTO: KCRA
PHOTO: KCRA
PHOTO: KCRA
PHOTO: KCRA
PHOTO: KCRA
Here’s how to find NorCal cooling centers
Cooling centers across Northern California are set to open this week to allow some residents to get a break from the forecasted week of triple-digit heat.
President Joe Biden on Thursday delivered a speech on the “battle for the soul of the nation.”
The president assailed “MAGA Republicans,” who he said are determined to take the country backwards.
“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed,” he said. “But it is not.
With some of his strongest statements yet, President Joe Biden assailed “MAGA Republicans” in a rare prime-time speech on Thursday evening, as he spoke of an impending “battle for the soul of the nation,” just two months ahead of the November midterm elections.
Though his administration advertised the speech as an official White House event and not a campaign event, Biden’s televised comments come as he works to drum up support for Democratic lawmakers in an effort to help his party maintain control of Congress.
Biden delivered his remarks from the Independence National Historical Park in Philadelphia at 8 p.m. ET on Thursday night, channeling the venue’s “sacred” history in his early statements.
“Tonight I have come here to the place where it all began to speak plainly as I can to the nation about the threats we face, about the power we have in our hands to meet these threats,” he said. “And about the incredible future that lies in front of us if only we choose it.”
Biden has mostly avoided using Trump’s name in recent speeches, but by naming him Thursday, he offered a more pointed attack at the former president and his supporters, accusing them of embracing extremism.
“MAGA forces are determined to take this country backwards. Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love,” Biden said.“They promote authoritarian leaders and fan the flames of political violence.”
The president acknowledged that the majority of Republicans are not the type of people about which he was talking, but said the current Republican Party is undoubtedly “dominated, driven, and intimidated by MAGA Republicans,” and called it a threat to our country.
“For a long time, we’ve told ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not. We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us,” the president said.
Biden went off-script at one point to describe “darkness like you’re hearing in that bullhorn,” referring to protests outside the hall.
He urged the country to come together and unite behind a single purpose in rejecting MAGA ideology, while castigating insurrectionists and stressing the danger of undermining election integrity.
“There’s no place for political violence in America,” he said to applause from the crowd.
In a statement shared with Insider, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said Biden’s “wretched attacks” on millions of Americans are fueling division in the country.
“His agenda has pitted neighbors against each other, rewarded the wealthy while punishing working families, and trampled on the rights and freedoms of Americans,” McDaniel said. “Joe Biden is the divider-in-chief and epitomizes the current state of the Democrat Party: one of divisiveness, disgust, and hostility towards half the country.”
The president’s comments come just days after he suggested at a Democratic fundraiser that the ideology of the MAGA Republicans who have embraced former President Donald Trump’s worldview have paved the way for “semi-fascism” in the country.
Biden also took time during the speech to highlight some of his legislative successes, including a gun safety law and a recent healthcare reform and climate package, and made promises for the future, including ending cancer and providing more clean jobs.
“Democracy must be defended, for democracy makes all these things possible,” he said.
The president ended his speech by encouraging people to “vote, vote, vote,” and made mention of doing “our duty” in 2022 and beyond.
But whether or not most Americans heard Biden’s plea remains unclear. The three primary broadcasting networks chose not to carry his speech, opting to show their regular-scheduled programming instead.
Joe Biden warned that American democracy was in grave peril by Republican forces loyal to Donald Trump who “fan the flames” of political violence in pursuit of power at any cost.
In a primetime address from Philadelphia, the city where American democracy was born, the US president said the United States was in a continued battle for the “soul of the nation.”
It was reprising a theme that animated his campaign for the White House in 2020 to frame the stakes of the November elections as an existential choice between his party’s agenda and Republicans’ “extreme Maga ideology”.
“Donald Trump and the Maga Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic,” Biden said in remarks delivered at Independence Hall.
Maga is short hand for “Make America great again” – a slogan from Trump’s 2016 election campaign.
Biden emphasized that not all, not even most, Republicans are “Maga extremists” but there was not a question, he said, that the party was “dominated, driven and intimidated” by his White House predecessor – and perhaps would-be successor.
These Trump Republicans, he said, “thrive on chaos” and “don’t respect the constitution” or the rule of law. They “promote authoritarian leaders and they fan the flames of political violence”, he continued, adding that they believe there are only two possible outcomes to an election: either they win or they were cheated.
“You can’t love your country when only you win,” Biden said to thundering applause.
‘Democracy is under assault’, Biden warns in primetime speech – video
The unsparing speech was part of a newly aggressive line of attack Biden has unleashed on Republicans ahead of the midterm elections, as his party enjoys a brightening political outlook helped by a string of significant legislative wins and building public backlash to the supreme court’s decision to end the constitutional right to abortion.
It also comes as Trump, once again at the center of a criminal investigation – this one involving classified documents – lays the the groundwork for a potential 2024 presidential run.
“Maga forces are determined to take this country backwards,” he said. “Backwards to an America where there is no right to choose, no right to privacy, no right to contraception, no right to marry who you love.”
Biden also lashed Republicans for amplifying violent political rhetoric, including language targeting federal agents after the FBI seized boxes of classified documents from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate last month.
The protection of democracy has been a through line of Biden’s rise to the White House, which he has said was motivated by the racist violence in Charlottesville. Though he pledged to build national unity as president, the forces unleashed by Trump’s lie of a stolen 2020 election have only gained strength in the nearly two years that Biden has been in office.
Polls suggest that a majority of Republicans do not believe Biden is the legitimately elected president. Election deniers are running for office, securing the nominations for key posts with power over how future elections will be conducted. State and local elections officials have become targets of harassment and threats.
“History tells us blind loyalty to a single leader and a willingness to engage in political violence is fatal to democracy,” Biden said, vowing to defend the nation’s system of government with “every fiber of my being”.
Thursday’s primetime speech was the second of three visits by the president in less than a week to battleground Pennsylvania, which will play host to several consequential races this election season.
Among the most concerning, democracy experts warn, is the nomination of Doug Mastriano, the far-right Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania who was a leading figure in Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election in the state and helped shuttle people to Trump’s rally in Washington on 6 January that preceded the attack on the US Capitol.
In Pennsylvania, the governor appoints the secretary of state, giving the next governor enormous sway over how the 2024 presidential election is conducted in the state.
Without mentioning any candidates by name, Biden said the election deniers running for office saw their failure to prevent the peaceful transfer of power in 2020 as “preparation” for future elections.
Yet Biden sought to avoid casting this fight as partisan, arguing that it was his “duty” as president to speak plainly about the threats facing the nation, no matter their origin. Instead he hoped that his remarks would serve as a call to arms for the majority of Americans who reject Trumpism, and urged them not to be “bystanders in this ongoing attack on democracy”.
“For a long time, we’ve reassured ourselves that American democracy is guaranteed. But it is not,” Biden said. “We have to defend it. Protect it. Stand up for it. Each and every one of us.”
Joe Biden speaks outside Independence Hall in Philadelphia. Photograph: Evan Vucci/AP
Congressman Kevin McCarthy, the House Republican leader and a staunch Trump ally, delivered a “pre-buttal” to the president’s address from Biden’s birthplace of Scranton, Pennsylvania. In his remarks, McCarthy accused Biden of “doing everything in his power to crush America’s soul” and demanded an apology from the president for accusing Republicans of being beholden to a philosophy of “semi-fascism”.
McCarthy made no mention of the 6 January assault or the widespread election denialism embraced by most of his party’s supporters and many of their nominees for public office.
Rather it was Trump who addressed the events of 6 January on Thursday, promising pardons and apologies for those who participated in the deadly attack on the US Capitol if he were elected to the White House again.
“I mean full pardons with an apology to many,” he told Wendy Bell, a conservative radio host on Thursday. “I will be looking very, very strongly about pardons, full pardons.”
Trump is scheduled to hold a rally in Scranton on Saturday.
Critics say the president’s combative rhetoric shows that he has failed in his promise to bring the nation together. Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, called Biden the “divider-in-chief” who has “pitted neighbors against each other” with his divisive agenda.
White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said it was clear Biden had “hit a nerve” and was making Republicans uncomfortable with his urgent appeal for Americans to reject Trumpism.
But America’s political divisions run deep. As Biden spoke outside at Independence Hall, he was interrupted repeatedly by a heckler yelling profanities. Biden said it was his right to be “outrageous” because “this is a democracy”.
“We are still a democracy at our core,” Biden said, ending his speech with the rallying cry: “Democracy!”
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