USA
Biden’s test: Sustaining unity as Ukraine war enters Year 2
One year ago, President Joe Biden was bracing for the worst as Russia massed troops in preparation to invade Ukraine.
As many in the West and even in Ukraine doubted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s intentions, the White House was adamant: War was coming and Kyiv was woefully outgunned.
In Washington, Biden’s aides prepared contingency plans and even drafts of what the president would say should Ukraine’s capital quickly fall to Russian forces — a scenario deemed likely by most U.S. officials. Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, was offered help getting out of his country if he wanted it.
Yet as Russia’s invasion reaches the one-year mark, the city stands and Ukraine has beaten even its own expectations, buoyed by a U.S.-led alliance that has agreed to equip Ukrainian forces with tanks, advanced air defense systems, and more, while keeping the Kyiv government afloat with tens of billions of dollars in direct assistance.
For Biden, Ukraine was an unexpected crisis, but one that fits squarely into his larger foreign policy outlook that the United States and like-minded allies are in the midst of a generational conflict to demonstrate that liberal democracies such as the U.S. can out-deliver autocracies.
In the estimation of the White House, the war transformed what had been Biden’s rhetorical warnings — a staple of his 2020 campaign speeches — into an urgent call to action.
Also Read: Russia’s year of war: Purge of critics, surge of nationalism
Now, as Biden prepares to travel to Poland to mark the anniversary of the war, he faces a legacy-defining moment.
“President Biden’s task is to make the case for sustained free world support for Ukraine,” said Daniel Fried, a U.S. ambassador to Poland during the Clinton administration and now a distinguished fellow at the Atlantic Council. “This is an important trip. And really, Biden can define the role of the free world in turning back tyranny.”
Biden administration officials are quick to direct primary credit for Ukraine’s staying power to the courage of its armed forces, with a supporting role to the Russian military’s ineptitude. But they also believe that without their early warnings and the massive support they orchestrated, Ukraine would have been all but wiped off the map by now.
Sustaining Ukraine’s fight, while keeping the war from escalating into a potentially catastrophic wider conflict with NATO, will go down as one of Biden’s enduring foreign policy accomplishments, they argue.
In Poland, Biden is set to meet with allies to reassure them of the U.S. commitment to the region and to helping Ukraine “as long as it takes.” It’s a pledge that is met with skepticism both at home and abroad as the invasion enters its second year, and as Putin shows no signs of retreating from an invasion that has left more than 100,000 of his own forces killed or wounded, along with tens of thousands of Ukrainian service members and civilians — and millions of refugees.
Biden’s job now is, in part, to persuade Americans — and a worldwide audience — that it’s more important than ever to stay in the fight, while cautioning that an endgame is unlikely to come quickly.
His visit to Poland is an opportunity to make the case to “countries that repudiate archaic notions of imperial conquest and wars of aggression about the need to continue to support Ukraine and oppose Russia,” said John Sullivan, who stepped down as the U.S. ambassador to Moscow in September. “We always preach, we are seeking to protect a rules-based international order. It’s completely done if Russia gets away with this.”
The U.S. resolve to stand up to Russia is also being tested by domestic concerns and economic uncertainty.
Forty-eight percent of the U.S. public say they favor the U.S. providing weapons to Ukraine, with 29% opposed and 22% saying they’re neither in favor nor opposed, according to a poll published this past week by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. It’s evidence of slipping support since May 2022, less than three months into the war, when 60% of U.S. adults said they were in favor of sending Ukraine weapons.
Further, Americans are about evenly divided on sending government funds directly to Ukraine, with 37% in favor and 38% opposed, with 23% saying neither, according to the AP-NORC poll.
This month, 11 House Republicans introduced what they called the “Ukraine fatigue” resolution urging Biden to end military and financial aid to Ukraine, while pushing Ukraine and Russia to come to a peace agreement. Meanwhile, the more traditionalist national security wing of the GOP, including just-announced 2024 presidential candidate Nikki Haley, a former U.N. envoy, has critiqued the pace of U.S. assistance, pressing for the quicker transfer of more advanced weaponry.
“Don’t look at Twitter, look at people in power,” Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell told the Munich Security Conference on Friday. “We are committed to helping Ukraine.”
But Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, said he wants the president and his administration to impress on allies the need to share the burden as Americans grow weary of current levels of U.S. spending to assist Ukraine and Baltic allies.
Sullivan said he hears from Alaskans, “Hey, senator, why are we spending all this? And how come the Europeans aren’t?”
The U.S. has provided more economic and military aid than any country since the start of the war, but European nations and other allies have collectively committed tens of billions of dollars to back Ukraine and have taken in millions of refugees fleeing the conflict.
From the beginning of his administration, Biden has argued the world is at a crucial moment pitting autocracies against democracies.
The argument was originally framed with China in mind as America’s greatest economic and military adversary, and with Biden looking to reorient U.S. foreign policy toward the Pacific. The pivot toward Asia is an effort that each of his recent predecessors tried and failed to complete as war and foreign policy crises elsewhere shifted their attention.
With that goal, Biden sought to quickly end the U.S. military’s presence in Afghanistan seven months into his term. The end to America’s longest war was darkened by a chaotic withdrawal as 13 U.S. troops and 169 Afghan civilians looking to flee the country were killed by a bombing near Kabul’s international airport carried out by the Islamic State group’s Afghanistan affiliate.
U.S. officials say the decision to withdraw from Afghanistan has given the administration the bandwidth and resources to focus on assisting Ukraine in the first land war in Europe since World War II while putting increased focus on countering China’s assertive actions in the Indo-Pacific.
While the war in Ukraine caused large price increases in energy and food markets -– exacerbating rampant and persistent inflation — Biden aides saw domestic benefits to the president. The war, they argued, allowed Biden to showcase his ability to work across the aisle to maintain funding for Ukraine and showcase his leadership on the global stage.
However the months ahead unfold, it’s almost certain to be messy.
While Biden last year had to walk back a public call for regime change in Russia that he had delivered off the cuff from Poland just weeks after the war began, U.S. officials increasingly see internal discontent and domestic pressures on Putin as key to ending the conflict.
“So how does it end?” Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland said at an event this past week in Washington to mark the coming anniversary. “It ends with a safe, viable Ukraine. It ends with Putin limping back off the battlefield. I hope it ends eventually with a Russian citizenry, who also says, ‘That was a bad deal for us and we want a better future.’”
When Biden hosted Zelenskyy in Washington in December, the U.S. president encouraged him to pursue a “just peace” — a framing that the Ukrainian leader chafed against.
“For me as a president, ‘just peace’ is no compromises,” Zelenskyy said. He said the war would end once Ukraine’s sovereignty, freedom and territorial integrity were restored, and Russia had paid back Ukraine for all the damage inflicted by its forces.
“There can’t be any ‘just peace’ in the war that was imposed on us,” he added.
Blinken: China’s balloon incursion ‘must never happen again’
The top diplomats from the United States and China met on Saturday in the first high-level contact between their countries since the U.S. shot down an alleged Chinese spy balloon two weeks ago, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken sending the message that Beijing’s surveillance program had been “exposed to the world.”
Blinken and Wang Yi, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, held the hourlong talks in Munich, where they were attending an international security conference, according to the U.S. State Department.
“I made very clear to him that China sending its surveillance balloon over the United States in violation of our sovereignty, in violation of international law, was unacceptable and must never happen again,” Blinken said Saturday in an interview for CBS’ “Face the Nation.”
His spokesman, Ned Price, said in a statement that Blinken also told the Chinese official that his nation’s “high-altitude surveillance balloon program — which has intruded into the airspace of over 40 countries across five continents — has been exposed to the world.”
Blinken had canceled a trip to Beijing earlier this month due to the balloon incident, which has become a major issue of contention between the two countries. A meeting at the conference in Germany had been widely anticipated.
Blinken also told Wang that the U.S. does not seek conflict with China, repeating a standard talking point that the Biden administration has provided since it has come into office.
“The United States will compete and will unapologetically stand up for our values and interests, but that we do not want conflict with the PRC and are not looking for a new Cold War,” Price said. Blinken “underscored the importance of maintaining diplomatic dialogue and open lines of communication at all times.”
In addition to the balloon incident, Price said Blinken had reiterated a warning to China on providing assistance to Russia to help with its war against Ukraine, including assisting Moscow with evading sanctions the West has imposed on Russia.
“I warned China against providing materiel support to Russia,” Blinken said in a tweet. “I also emphasized the importance of keeping open lines of communication.”
Earlier Saturday, Wang had renewed Beijing’s criticism of the United States for shooting down the balloon, arguing that the move did not point to U.S. strength.
Beijing insists the white orb shot down off the Carolina coast on Feb. 4 was just an errant civilian airship used mainly for meteorological research that went off course due to winds and had only limited “self-steering” capabilities.
Wang, the director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, repeated that insistence in a speech at the conference and accused the U.S. of violating international legal norms in destroying the object with a missile fired from an U.S. fighter jet.
“The actions don’t show that the U.S. is big and strong, but describe the exact opposite,” Wang said.
Wang also accused the U.S. of denying China’s economic advances and seeking to impede its further development.
“What we hope for from the U.S. is a pragmatic and positive approach to China that allows us to work together,” Wang said.
His comments came shortly before an address to the conference by Vice President Kamala Harris, who didn’t mention the balloon controversy or respond to Wang’s comments. She stressed the importance of upholding the “international rules-based order.”
She said Washington is “troubled that Beijing has deepened its relationship with Moscow since the war began” in Ukraine and that “looking ahead, any steps by China to provide lethal support to Russia would only reward aggression, continue the killing and further undermine a rules-based order.”
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Lee reported from Washington.
Ukraine in mind, US frantic to avert Mideast showdown at UN
The Biden administration is scrambling to avert a diplomatic crisis over Israeli settlement activity this week at the United Nations that threatens to overshadow and perhaps derail what the U.S. hopes will be a solid five days of focus on condemning Russia’s war with Ukraine.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken made two emergency calls on Saturday from the Munich Security Conference, which he is attending in an as-yet unsuccessful bid to avoid or forestall such a showdown. It remained unclear whether another last-minute intervention might salvage the situation, according to diplomats familiar with the ongoing discussions who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.
Without giving details, the State Department said in nearly identical statements that Blinken had spoken to Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu from Munich to “reaffirm the U.S. commitment to a negotiated two-state solution and opposition to policies that endanger its viability.”
“The secretary underscored the urgent need for Israelis and Palestinians to take steps that restore calm and our strong opposition to unilateral measures that would further escalate tensions,” the statements said.
Neither statement mentioned the proposed U.N. Security Council resolution demanding an immediate halt to Israeli settlements. The Palestinians want to bring that resolution to a vote on Monday. And neither statement gave any indication as to how the calls ended.
But diplomats familiar with the conversations said that in his call to Abbas, Blinken reiterated an offer to the Palestinians for a U.S. package of incentives to entice them to drop or at least delay the resolution.
Those incentives included a White House meeting for Abbas with President Joe Biden, movement on reopening the American consulate in Jerusalem, and a significant aid package, the diplomats said.
Abbas was noncommittal, the diplomats said, but also suggested he would not be amenable unless the Israelis agreed to a six-month freeze on settlement expansion on land the Palestinians claim for a future state.
Blinken then called Netanyahu, who, according to the diplomats, was similarly noncommittal about the six-month settlement freeze. Netanyahu also repeated Israeli opposition to reopening the consulate, which was closed during President Donald Trump's administration, they said.
The U.S. and others were hoping to resolve the deadlock on Sunday, but the diplomats said it was unclear if that was possible,
The drama arose just ahead of the one-year anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which will be the subject of special U.N. General Assembly and Security Council sessions on Thursday and Friday.
The U.S. opposes the Palestinian resolution and is almost certain to veto it. Not vetoing would carry considerable domestic political risk for Biden on the cusp of the 2024 presidential race and top House Republicans have already warned against it.
But the administration also fears that using its veto to protect Israel risks losing support at the world body for measures condemning Russia's war in Ukraine.
Senior officials from the White House, the State Department and the U.S. Mission to the U.N. have already engaged frantic but fruitless diplomacy to try to persuade the Palestinians to back down. The dire nature of the situation prompted Blinken's calls on Saturday, the diplomats said.
The Biden administration has already said publicly that it does not support the resolution, calling it “unhelpful." But it has also said the same about recent Israeli settlement expansion announcements.
U.N. diplomats say the U.S wants to replace the Palestinian resolution, which would be legally binding, with a weaker presidential statement, or at least delay a vote on the resolution until after the Ukraine war anniversary.
The Palestinian push comes as Israel’s new right-wing government has reaffirmed its commitment to construct new settlements in the West Bank and expand its authority on land the Palestinians seek for a future state.
Israel captured the West Bank, along with east Jerusalem and the Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. The United Nations and most of the international community consider Israeli settlements illegal and an obstacle to ending the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Some 700,000 Israeli settlers live in the West Bank and Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem.
Ultranationalists who oppose Palestinian statehood comprise a majority of Israel’s new government, which has declared settlement construction a top priority.
The draft resolution, circulated by the United Arab Emirates, the Arab representative on the council, would reaffirm the Security Council’s “unwavering commitment” to a two-state solution with Israel and Palestine living side-by-side in peace as democratic states.
It would also reaffirm the U.N. Charter’s provision against acquiring territory by force and reaffirm that any such acquisition is illegal.
Last Tuesday, Blinken and the top diplomats from Britain, France, Germany and Italy condemned Israel’s plans to build 10,000 new homes in existing settlements in the West Bank and retroactively legalize nine outposts. Netanyahu’s Cabinet had announced the measure two days earlier, following a surge in violence in Jerusalem.
In December 2016, the Security Council demanded that Israel “immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem.” It stressed that halting settlement activities “is essential for salvaging the two-state solution.”
That resolution was adopted after President Barack Obama’s administration abstained in the vote, a reversal of the United States’ longstanding practice of protecting its close ally Israel from action at the United Nations, including by vetoing Arab-supported resolutions.
The draft resolution before the council now is much shorter than the 2016 document, though it reiterates its key points and much of what the U.S. and Europeans already said last week.
Complicating the matter for the U.S., the Security Council resolution was introduced and is supported by the UAE, an Arab partner of the United States that has also normalized relations with Israel, even as it has taken a tepid stance on opposing Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
The U.S. will be looking to the UAE and other council members sympathetic to the Palestinians to vote in favor of resolutions condemning Russia for invading Ukraine and calling for a cessation of hostilities and the immediate withdrawal of all Russian forces.
Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine: US
The United States has determined that Russia has committed crimes against humanity in Ukraine, Vice President Kamala Harris said Saturday, insisting that “justice must be served” to the perpetrators.
Speaking at the Munich Security Conference, Harris said the international community has both a moral and a strategic interest in pursuing those crimes, pointing to a danger of other authoritarian governments taking advantage if international rules are undermined.
“Russian forces have pursued a widespread and systemic attack against a civilian population — gruesome acts of murder, torture, rape, and deportation,” Harris said. She also cited “execution-style killings, beatings, and electrocution.”
The Biden administration formally determined last March that Russian troops had committed war crimes in Ukraine and said it would work with others to prosecute offenders. A determination of crimes against humanity goes a step further, indicating that attacks against civilians are being carried out in a widespread and systematic manner.
“Russian authorities have forcibly deported hundreds of thousands of people, from Ukraine to Russia, including children,” Harris said. “They have cruelly separated children from their families.”
She also pointed to the attack in mid-March on a theater in the strategic port city of Mariupol where civilians had been sheltering, which killed hundreds, and to the images of civilians’ bodies left on the streets of Bucha after the Russian pullback from the Kyiv area last spring.
Harris said that, as a former prosecutor and former head of California’s Department of Justice, she knows “the importance of gathering facts and holding them up against the law.”
“In the case of Russia’s actions in Ukraine, we have examined the evidence, we know the legal standards, and there is no doubt,” she said. “These are crimes against humanity.”
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who also was attending the Munich conference, said in a statement issued as Harris spoke that “we reserve crimes against humanity determinations for the most egregious crimes.”
The new determination underlines the “staggering extent” of suffering inflicted on Ukrainian civilians and “also reflects the deep commitment of the United States to holding members of Russia’s forces and other Russian officials accountable for their atrocities,” he said.
Russia’s nearly yearlong invasion of Ukraine, has dominated discussions at the Munich conference, an annual gathering of security and defense officials from around the world. Harris told the assembled participants: “Let us all agree — on behalf of all the victims, both known and unknown, justice must be served.”
“Such is our moral interest,” she said. “We also have a significant strategic interest.”
“No nation is safe in a world where one country can violate the sovereignty and territorial integrity of another, where crimes against humanity are committed with impunity, where a country with imperialist ambitions can go unchecked,” Harris added.
If Russian President Vladimir Putin succeeds in attacking international rules and norms, “other nations could feel emboldened to follow his violent example,” she said. “Other authoritarian powers could seek to bend the world to their will, through coercion, disinformation and even brute force.”
Harris’ audience Saturday didn’t include any Russian officials. Conference organizers decided not to invite them this year.
Amid the Western officials defending arms supplies to Ukraine, China’s top diplomat, Wang Yi, stood out by calling for an end to the war through peace talks, saying Beijing was “deeply worried about the expansion and long-term effect of this war.”
China has refused to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or to impose sanctions on Moscow like Western nations have done. Without naming any countries, Wang said “there may be forces” that don’t want the war to stop anytime soon.
“What they care about is not the life and death of the Ukrainian people, nor the increasing damage to Europe. They probably have bigger strategic goals than Ukraine,” he said.
Asked on the sidelines of the event about the U.S. determination of crimes against humanity, Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba replied that “Russia waged a genocidal war against Ukrainians because they do not recognize our identity and they do not think we deserve to exist as a sovereign nation.”
“Everything that stems from that is crimes against humanity, war crimes and various other atrocities committed by the Russian army in the territory of Ukraine,” he said. “Let lawyers sort out specifically which act belongs where in terms of legal qualification.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy urged Western allies in a video address to the Munich conference on Friday to quicken their military support for Ukraine, declaring that “it’s speed that life depends on.”
Kuleba voiced confidence that Ukraine would eventually receive fighter jets from its partners, despite their current reluctance. He noted that they initially pushed back on providing other heavy weapons that were later delivered or promised, “so the only outstanding type of weapon is planes.”
In Munch on Friday, a Ukrainian deputy prime minister, Oleksandr Kubrakov, called for cluster munitions and phosphorous bombs, German media reported. Cluster munitions are banned by an international treaty.
Asked whether he supported calling for such weapons, Kuleba said Ukraine has evidence that Russia uses them.
“We are not party to the convention on the prohibition of cluster ammunition, so legally there are no obstacles for that,” he said. “And if we receive one, we will be using it exclusively against military forces of the Russian Federation.”
Turmoil in courts on gun laws in wake of justices’ ruling
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision on the Second Amendment is upending gun laws across the country, dividing judges and sowing confusion over what firearm restrictions can remain on the books.
The high court's ruling that set new standards for evaluating gun laws left open many questions, experts say, resulting in an increasing number of conflicting decisions as lower court judges struggle to figure out how to apply it.
The Supreme Court’s so-called Bruen decision changed the test that lower courts had long used for evaluating challenges to firearm restrictions. Judges should no longer consider whether the law serves public interests like enhancing public safety, the justices said.
Under the Supreme Court's new test, the government that wants to uphold a gun restriction must look back into history to show it is consistent with the country’s “historical tradition of firearm regulation."
Courts in recent months have declared unconstitutional federal laws designed to keep guns out of the hands of domestic abusers,felony defendants and people who use marijuana. Judges have shot down a federal ban on possessing guns with serial numbers removed and gun restrictions for young adults in Texas and have blocked the enforcement of Delaware's ban on the possession of homemade “ghost guns."
In several instances, judges looking at the same laws have come down on opposite sides on whether they are constitutional in the wake of the conservative Supreme Court majority's ruling. The legal turmoil caused by the first major gun ruling in a decade will likely force the Supreme Court to step in again soon to provide more guidance for judges.
"There’s confusion and disarray in the lower courts because not only are they not reaching the same conclusions, they’re just applying different methods or applying Bruen's method differently," said Jacob Charles, a professor at Pepperdine University's law school who focuses on firearms law.
“What it means is that not only are new laws being struck down ... but also laws that have been on the books for over 60 years, 40 years in some cases, those are being struck down — where prior to Bruen — courts were unanimous that those were constitutional," he said.
The legal wrangling is playing out as mass shootings continue to plague the country awash in guns and as law enforcement officials across the U.S. work to combat an uptick in violent crime.
This week, six people were fatally shot at multiple locations in a small town in rural Mississippi and a gunman killed three students and critically wounded five others at Michigan State University before killing himself.
Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, including in California, where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans. Last year, more than 600 mass shootings occurred in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
The decision opened the door to a wave of legal challenges from gun-rights activists who saw an opportunity to undo laws on everything from age limits to AR-15-style semi-automatic weapons. For gun rights supporters, the Bruen decision was a welcome development that removed what they see as unconstitutional restraints on Second Amendment rights.
“It’s a true reading of what the Constitution and the Bill of Rights tells us,” said Mark Oliva, a spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation. “It absolutely does provide clarity to the lower courts on how the constitution should be applied when it comes to our fundamental rights."
Gun control groups are raising alarm after a federal appeals court this month said that under the Supreme Court's new standards, the government can’t stop people who have domestic violence restraining orders against them from owning guns.
The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the law “embodies salutary policy goals meant to protect vulnerable people in our society." But the judges concluded that the government failed to point to a precursor from early American history that is comparable enough to the modern law. Attorney General Merrick Garland has said the government will seek further review of that decision.
Gun control activists have decried the Supreme Court's historical test, but say they remain confident that many gun restrictions will survive challenges. Since the decision, for example, judges have consistently upheld the federal ban on convicted felons from possessing guns.
The Supreme Court noted that cases dealing with “unprecedented societal concerns or dramatic technological changes may require a more nuanced approach.” And the justices clearly emphasized that the right to bear arms is limited to law-abiding citizens, said Shira Feldman, litigation counsel for Brady, the gun control group.
The Supreme Court's test has raised questions about whether judges are suited to be poring over history and whether it makes sense to judge modern laws based on regulations — or a lack thereof— from the past.
“We are not experts in what white, wealthy, and male property owners thought about firearms regulation in 1791. Yet we are now expected to play historian in the name of constitutional adjudication,” wrote Mississippi U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, who was appointed by President Barack Obama.
Some judges are “really parsing the history very closely and saying ‘these laws aren’t analogous because the historical law worked in a slightly different fashion than the modern law’,” said Andrew Willinger, executive director of the Duke Center for Firearms Law.
Others, he said, "have done a much more flexible inquiry and are trying to say ‘look, what is the purpose of this historical law as best I can understand it?'"
Firearm rights and gun control groups are closely watching many pending cases, including several challenging state laws banning certain semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. Already, some gun laws passed in the wake of the Supreme Court decision have been shot down.
A judge declared multiple portions of New York’s new gun law unconstitutional, including rules that restrict carrying firearms in public parks and places of worship. An appeals court later put that ruling on hold while it considers the case. And the Supreme Court has allowed New York to enforce the law for now.
Some judges have upheld a law banning people under indictment for felonies from buying guns while others have declared it unconstitutional.
A federal judge issued an order barring Delaware from enforcing provisions of a new law outlawing the manufacture and possession of so-called “ghost guns" that don't have serial numbers and can be nearly impossible for law enforcement officials to trace. But another judge rejected a challenge to California's “ghost gun" regulations.
In the California case, U.S. District Judge George Wu, who was nominated by President George W. Bush, appeared to take a dig at how other judges are interpreting the Supreme Court's guidance.
The company that brought the challenge —“and apparently certain other courts" — would like to treat the Supreme Court’s decision “as a ‘word salad,’ choosing an ingredient from one side of the ‘plate’ and an entirely-separate ingredient from the other, until there is nothing left whatsoever other than an entirely-bulletproof and unrestrained Second Amendment,” Wu wrote in his ruling.
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Richer reported from Boston.
Military finishes recovering Chinese balloon debris
The U.S. has finished efforts to recover the remnants of the large balloon that was shot down off the coast of South Carolina, and analysis of the debris so far reinforces conclusions that it was a Chinese spy balloon, U.S. officials said Friday.
Officials said the U.S. believes that Navy, Coast Guard and FBI personnel collected all of the balloon debris off the ocean floor, which included key equipment from the payload that could reveal what information it was able to monitor and collect.
U.S. Northern Command said in a statement that the recovery operations ended Thursday and the final pieces are on their way to the FBI lab in Virginia for analysis. It said air and maritime restrictions off South Carolina have been lifted.
The announcement capped three dramatic weeks that saw U.S. fighter jets shoot down four airborne objects — the large Chinese balloon on Feb. 4 and three much smaller objects about a week later over Canada, Alaska and Lake Huron. They are the first known peacetime shootdowns of unauthorized objects in U.S. airspace.
The officials also said the search for the small airborne object that was shot down over Lake Huron has stopped, and nothing has been recovered. U.S. officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss military operations. The U.S. and Canada have also failed to recover any debris so far from the other two objects which were shot down over the Yukon and northern Alaska.
While the military is confident the balloon shot down off South Carolina was a surveillance airship operated by China, the Biden administration has admitted that the three smaller objects were likely civilian-owned balloons that were targeted during the heightened response, after U.S. homeland defense radars were recalibrated to detect slower moving airborne items.
Due to their small size and the remote areas where they were shot down, officials acknowledge that recovering any debris is difficult and probably unlikely. Those last two searches, however, have not been formally called off.
Much of the Chinese balloon fell into about 50 feet (15 meters) of water, and the Navy was able to collect remnants floating on the surface, and divers and unmanned naval vessels pulled up the rest from the bottom of the ocean. Northern Command said Friday that all of the Navy and Coast Guard ships have left the area.
On Thursday, President Joe Biden directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an interagency team to establish “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects.
Meanwhile, key questions about the Chinese balloon remain unanswered, including what, if any, intelligence it was able to collect as it flew over sensitive military sites in the United States, and whether it was able to transmit anything back to China.
The U.S. tracked it for several days after it left China, said a U.S. official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory, which was toward the U.S. territory of Guam, and ultimately flew over the continental U.S., the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory. A second U.S. official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it’s unclear whether Chinese forces did so.
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Copp reported from aboard a U.S. military aircraft.
Bruce Willis has frontotemporal dementia, condition worsens
Nearly a year after Bruce Willis' family announced that he would step away from acting after being diagnosed with aphasia, his family says his “condition has progressed.”
In a statement posted Thursday, the 67-year-old actor's family said Willis has a more specific diagnosis of frontotemporal dementia.
“While this is painful, it is a relief to finally have a clear diagnosis,” the statement read. “FTD is a cruel disease that many of us have never heard of and can strike anyone.”
Last March, Willis' family said his aphasia had affected his cognitive abilities. The condition causes loss of the ability to understand or express speech.
In Thursday's statement, his family said communication challenges were just one symptom of frontotemporal dementia.
The Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration describes FTD as a group of brain disorders caused by degeneration of the frontal and/or temporal lobes of the brain that affects behavior, language and movement. Aphasia can be a symptom of it. The association describes frontotemporal degeneration as “an inevitable decline in functioning," with an average life expectancy of seven to 13 years after the onset of symptoms.
“Today there are no treatments for the disease, a reality that we hope can change in the years ahead,” the family's statement read, adding that it can take years to get a proper diagnosis. “As Bruce’s condition advances, we hope that any media attention can be focused on shining a light on this disease that needs far more awareness and research.”
The statement was posted on the website for the Association for Frontotemporal Degeneration and signed by Willis’ wife, Emma Heming Willis, his ex-wife Demi Moore, and his five children, Rumer, Scout, Tallulah, Mabel and Evelyn.
Over a four-decade career, Willis' movies had earned more than $5 billion at the worldwide box office. While beloved for hits like “Die Hard” and “The Sixth Sense,” the prolific actor had in recent years primarily featured in direct-to-video thrillers.
“Bruce has always found joy in life — and has helped everyone he knows to do the same,” the family said Thursday. “It has meant the world to see that sense of care echoed back to him and to all of us. We have been so moved by the love you have all shared for our dear husband, father, and friend during this difficult time. Your continued compassion, understanding, and respect will enable us to help Bruce live as full a life as possible.”
Biden wants 'sharper rules' on unknown aerial objects
President Joe Biden said Thursday that the U.S. is developing “sharper rules” to track, monitor and potentially shoot down unknown aerial objects, following three weeks of high-stakes drama sparked by the discovery of a suspected Chinese spy balloon transiting much of the country.
The president has directed national security adviser Jake Sullivan to lead an “interagency team” to review U.S. procedures after the U.S. shot down the Chinese balloon, as well as three other objects that Biden said the U.S. now believes are most likely “benign” objects launched by private companies or research institutions.
While not expressing regret for downing the three still-unidentified objects, Biden said he hoped the new rules would help “distinguish between those that are likely to pose safety and security risks that necessitate action and those that do not.”
“Make no mistake, if any object presents a threat to the safety and security of the American people I will take it down,” he added, repeating the legal justification cited for the downings — that the objects, flying between 20,000 and 40,000 feet posed a remote risk to civilian planes.
The downing of the Chinese surveillance craft was the first known peacetime shootdown of an unauthorized object in U.S. airspace — a feat repeated three times a week later.
Biden sharply criticized China's surveillance program, saying the shootdown sent a “clear message, the violation of our sovereignty is unacceptable," but said he looks to maintain open lines of communication with Beijing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken postponed his first planned trip to China as the balloon was flying over the U.S., and a new meeting with his Chinese counterpart has yet to be scheduled.
“I expect to be speaking with President Xi and I hope we can get to the bottom of this,” Biden said, adding, “But I make no apologies for taking down that balloon.”
Biden said the rules would remain classified so as not to “give a roadmap to our enemies to try to evade our defenses.”
Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said he expected the U.S. would keep its radar systems set going forward to detect slow-moving balloons as well as fast-moving aircraft and other possible intruders. But he said he had impressed on White House officials late Tuesday that security forces would have to fine-tune their response for when they spot balloons of unknown provenance.
“The White House scrambling fighters and tankers” and special forces, he said, “is not going to be a scalable solution to every bit of airborne junk.”
The Chinese balloon has escalated tensions between the U.S. and China. Blinken travels Thursday to the Munich Security Conference and there is speculation he might use the opportunity to meet top Chinese foreign policy official Wang Yi, who will also be attending the conference.
Biden had remained largely silent on the objects downed Friday off the coast of Alaska, Saturday over Canada and Sunday over Lake Huron. On Monday, the White House announced earnestly there was no indication of “aliens or extraterrestrial activity.” By Wednesday, U.S. officials said they were still working to locate the wreckage from the objects, but that they expected all three to be unrelated to surveillance efforts.
“The intelligence community is considering as a leading explanation that these could just be balloons tied to some commercial or benign purpose,” said White House national security spokesman John Kirby. No country or private company has come forward to claim any of the objects, Kirby said. They do not appear to have been operated by the U.S. government.
Still unaddressed are questions about the original balloon, including what spying capabilities it had and whether it was transmitting signals as it flew over sensitive military sites in the United States. It was believed by American intelligence to have initially been on a track toward the U.S. territory of Guam, according to a U.S. official.
The U.S. tracked it for several days after it left China, said the official, who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence. It appears to have been blown off its initial trajectory and ultimately flew over the continental U.S., the official said.
Balloons and other unidentified objects have been previously spotted over Guam, a strategic hub for the U.S. Navy and Air Force in the western Pacific.
It’s unclear how much control China retained over the balloon once it veered from its original trajectory. A second U.S. official said the balloon could have been externally maneuvered or directed to loiter over a specific target, but it’s unclear whether Chinese forces did so.
After the balloon was shot down, the White House revealed that such balloons had traversed U.S. territory at least three times during President Donald Trump’s administration unknown to Trump or his aides — and that others have flown over dozens of nations across five continents. Kirby emphasized Monday that they were only detected by the Biden administration.
1 killed, 3 hurt in shooting at El Paso, Texas shopping mall
Police in El Paso, Texas, say one person was killed and three other people were wounded in a shooting Wednesday in a shopping mall.
One person has been taken into custody, El Paso police spokesperson Sgt. Robert Gomez said. No immediate information was given about that person.
“It’s too early to speculate on motive,” Gomez said.
The three who were wounded were hospitalized, Gomez said. Their conditions were not known.
Gomez said police believe the scene is secure and that officers are sweeping through the whole mall to verify that.
Authorities have set up a reunification center at a nearby high school.
Also read: Police say 3 dead, 4 hurt in latest California shooting
Police earlier said the shooting was reported at the shopping mall’s food court.
Wednesday’s shooting at the Cielo Vista Mall happened in a busy shopping area and across a large parking lot from a Walmart where 23 people were killed in a racist attack in 2019.
Gunman kills 3, then himself at Michigan State University
A gunman who opened fire at Michigan State University killed three people and wounded five, setting off an hourslong manhunt as frightened students hid in classrooms and cars. The shooter eventually killed himself, police announced early Tuesday.
Officials do not know why the 43-year-old man, whose name was not immediately released, targeted the campus. He was not a student or employee and had no affiliation with the university, according to campus police.
The shooting began Monday night at an academic building and later moved to the nearby student union, a popular gathering spot for students to eat or study. As hundreds of officers scoured the East Lansing campus, about 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Detroit, students hid where they could. Four hours after the first shots were reported, police announced the man’s death.
“This truly has been a nightmare we’re living tonight,” said Chris Rozman, interim deputy chief of the campus police department.
Ryan Kunkel, 22, was attending a class in the Engineering Building when he became aware of the shooting from a university email. Kunkel and about 13 other students turned off the lights and acted like there “was a shooter right outside the door,” he said.
“Nothing came out of anyone’s mouth” for over four hours, he said.
“I wasn’t ready to accept that this is really going on next door,” Kunkel said. “This is supposed to be a place where I’m coming, learning and bettering myself. And instead, students are getting hurt.”
The shooting at Michigan State is the latest in what has become a deadly new year in the U.S. Dozens of people have died in mass shootings so far in 2023, most notably in California where 11 people were killed as they welcomed the Lunar New Year at a dance hall popular with older Asian Americans.
In 2022, there were more than 600 mass shootings in the U.S. in which at least four people were killed or wounded, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
“This is a uniquely American problem,” Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer lamented.
Rozman, of the campus police, said two people were killed at Berkey Hall and another was killed at the MSU Union, while five people were in critical condition at Sparrow Hospital.
Police eventually confronted the shooter, who then died by a “self-inflicted gunshot wound,” Rozman said.
“We have no idea why he came to campus to do this tonight. That is part of our ongoing investigation,” the deputy chief said.
Ted Zimbo said he was walking to his residence hall when he encountered a woman with a “ton of blood on her.”
“She told me, ‘Someone came in our classroom and started shooting,’” Zimbo told The Associated Press. “Her hands were completely covered in blood. It was on her pants and her shoes. She said, ‘It’s my friend’s blood.’”
Zimbo said the woman left to find a friend’s car while he returned to his SUV and threw a blanket over himself to hide for three hours.
During the manhunt, WDIV-TV meteorologist Kim Adams, whose daughter attends Michigan State, told viewers that students were worn down by the hourslong saga.
“They’ve been hiding, all the lights off in a dark room,” Adams said.
Aedan Kelley, a junior who lives a half-mile (less than a kilometer) east of campus, said he locked his doors and covered his windows “just in case.” Sirens were constant, and a helicopter hovered overhead.
“It’s all very frightening,” Kelley said. “And then I have all these people texting me wondering if I’m OK, which is overwhelming.”
Michigan State has about 50,000 students, including 19,000 who live on campus. All classes, sports and other activities were canceled for 48 hours.
Interim university President Teresa Woodruff said it would be a time “to think and grieve and come together.”
“This Spartan community — this family — will come back together,” Woodruff said.