Cheatle was berated for hours by Republicans and Democrats, repeatedly angering lawmakers by evading questions about the investigation during the first hearing over the July 13 assassination attempt. Cheatle called the attempt on Trump’s life the Secret Service’s “most significant operational failure” in decades, and vowed to “move heaven and earth” to get to the bottom of what went wrong and make sure there’s no repeat of it.

“The Secret Service’s solemn mission is to protect our nation’s leaders. On July 13th, we failed,” she told lawmakers on the House Oversight and Accountability Committee.

Cheatle acknowledged that the Secret Service was told about a suspicious person two to five times before the shooting at the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally. She also revealed that the roof from which Thomas Matthew Crooks opened fire had been identified as a potential vulnerability days before the rally. Cheatle said she apologized to Trump in a phone call after the assassination attempt.

Yet Cheatle remained defiant that she was the “right person” to lead the Secret Service, even as she said she takes full responsibility the security lapses. When Republican Rep. Nancy Mace suggested Cheatle begin drafting her resignation letter from the hearing room, Cheatle responded, “No, thank you.”

In a rare moment of unity for the often divided committee, the Republican chairman, Rep. James Comer, and its top Democrat, Rep. Jamie Raskin, issued a letter calling on Cheatle to step down.

The White House didn’t immediately comment on whether President Joe Biden still has confidence in Cheatle after her testimony.

Democrats and Republicans were united in their exasperation as Cheatle said she didn’t know or couldn’t answer numerous questions more than a week after the shooting that left one spectator dead. At one point, Mace used profanity as she accused Cheatle of lying and dodging questions, prompting calls for lawmakers to show “decorum.”

Lawmakers pressed Cheatle on how the gunman could get so close to the Republican presidential nominee when he was supposed to be carefully guarded, and why Trump was allowed to take the stage after local law enforcement had identified Crooks as suspicious.

“It has been 10 days since an assassination attempt on a former president of the United States. Regardless of party, there need to be answers,” said Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-New York.

Cheatle acknowledged that Crooks had been seen by local law enforcement before the shooting with a rangefinder, a small device resembling binoculars that hunters use to measure distance from a target. She said the Secret Service would never have taken Trump onto the stage if it had known there was an “actual threat.” Local law enforcement took a photo of Crooks and shared it after seeing him acting suspiciously, but he wasn’t deemed to be a “threat” until seconds before he opened fire, she said.

“An individual with a backpack is not a threat,” Cheatle said. “An individual with a rangefinder is not a threat.”

Cheatle said local enforcement officers were inside the building from which Crooks fired. But when asked why there were no agents on the roof or if the Secret Service used drones to monitor the area, Cheatle said she is still waiting for the investigation to play out, prompting groans and outbursts from members on the committee.

“Director Cheatle, because Donald Trump is alive, and thank God he is, you look incompetent,” said Rep. Mike Turner, R-Ohio. “If he were killed, you would look culpable.”

Rep. Ro Khanna, one of the Democrats who joined the calls for Cheatle to resign, noted that the Secret Service director who presided over the agency when there was an attempted assassination of former Republican President Ronald Reagan later stepped down.

“The one thing we have to have in this country are agencies that transcend politics and have the confidence of independents, Democrats, Republicans, progressives and conservatives,” Khanna said, adding that the Secret Service was no longer one of those agencies.

Trump was wounded in the ear, a former Pennsylvania fire chief was killed and two other attendees were injured when Crooks opened fire with an AR-style rifle shortly after Trump began speaking.

Cheatle said the agency hopes to have its internal investigation completed in 60 days. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has separately appointed a bipartisan, independent panel to review the assassination attempt, while the department’s inspector general has opened three investigations.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan delegation of about a dozen members of the House Committee on Homeland Security toured the shooting site Monday. The lawmakers said they were the first group outside law enforcement to climb onto the roof where the shooter positioned himself.

Authorities have been hunting for clues into what motivated Crooks but have not found any ideological bent that could help explain his actions. Investigators who searched his phone found photos of Trump, Biden and other senior government officials and found that he had looked up the dates for the Democratic National Conventional as well as Trump’s appearances. He also searched for information about major depressive order.

The attack on Trump was the most serious attempt to assassinate a president or presidential candidate since Reagan was shot in 1981. It was the latest in a series of security lapses by the agency that has drawn investigations and public scrutiny over the years.

Cheatle took over two years ago as head of the Secret Service’s 7,800 special agents, uniformed officers and other staffers whose main purpose is protecting presidents, vice presidents, their families, former presidents and others. In announcing her appointment, Biden said Cheatle had served on his vice presidential detail and called her a “distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills” who had his “complete trust.”

Cheatle took the reins from James M. Murray as multiple congressional committees and an internal watchdog investigated missing text messages from when Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The Secret Service says they were purged during a technology transition.

___

Lauer reported from Philadelphia. Associated Press reporters Michael Kunzelman and Zeke Miller in Washington contributed.

___

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Secret Service at https://apnews.com/hub/us-secret-service.

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• The Defense Department generally escaped the effects of Friday’s global internet problems. That’s according to Gen. C.Q. Brown, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He told an audience at the Aspen Security Forum that the botched Crowdstrike update didn’t impact DoD operations, but that it’s a reminder that the department needs to be ready to respond to cyber incidents.
  (Aspen Security Forum - YouTube)
• A worldwide IT outage on Friday struck multiple government agencies. The Social Security Administration plans to reopen field offices on Monday after a global IT outage forced SSA to close all local operations Friday. The outage is linked to a faulty software update from cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike. U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services also warned some callers to expect long wait times due to the outage. The White House is convening agencies to better understand the impacts of the incident across government.
  (Crowdstrike outage: SSA shutters offices, other agency impacts - Federal News Network)
• The governmentwide Technology Modernization Fund is awarding more money to agency AI projects. The TMF is giving $10 million to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to support the growth of its recently launched AI Safety Institute. The TMF board also granted nearly $4 million to the Energy Department to modernize its critical nuclear emergency response infrastructure.
  (Technology Modernization Fund announces investments in nuclear safety and AI governance - General Services Administration)
• The Army’s new memo on generative artificial intelligence provides guidance for developers, system owners, users, and commands on how to use GenAI tools. The document instructs system owners and developers to ensure that users can easily determine if their systems rely on GenAI and have the option of accepting or rejecting Gen AI-generated outputs. The guidance encourages the commands to use Gen AI tools and puts the onus on them to identify their GenAI developers, system owners and users to mitigate risk when introducing AI tools into their workflows. The guidance is effective immediately. The Pentagon’s chief information officer office will review this guidance annually.
  (Army’s memo on GenAI setting guardrails around technology - Army Publishing Directorate (APD))
• Higher pay rates could be coming soon for some blue-collar federal employees. A proposal to reform the Federal Wage System is entering the early stages of the government’s rulemaking process. The pay system was first created to improve pay rates of nearly 200,000 blue-collar feds. But now decades after its creation, three-quarters of the pay system’s localities have fallen out of step with the private sector. Proposed regulations to fix the issue by re-mapping the Federal Wage System are expected to be published to the Federal Register this October.
  (Blue-collar federal pay reform heading toward rulemaking process - Federal News Network)
• Federal employees can now donate their unused annual leave to feds impacted by Hurricane Beryl. The Office of Personnel Management program lets feds offer any leave hours that they haven’t used, to those who may need additional time off during emergencies. Launching the program for Hurricane Beryl is the most recent instance, but OPM’s use of the emergency leave transfer program has grown in recent years. In 2023, there were seven emergencies that led to OPM initiating a new leave transfer opportunity.
  (Emergency leave transfer for feds affected by Hurricane Beryl - Office of Personnel Management)
• The Defense Innovation Board said the Pentagon continues to overclassify information. The advisory board wants the Pentagon to revisit the issue of classification when working with allies and partners. Board members said the Pentagon defaults to no foreign dissemination protocols. The Defense Department even failed to develop processes for communicating controlled unclassified information in an environment where information sharing is important from the earliest stages of projects.
  (Defense Innovation Board wants DoD to address overclassification - Defense Department)
• A longtime intelligence official is taking the reins at the National Counterterrorism Center. Brett Holmgren has been named acting director of the NCTC. He replaces Christine Abizaid, who had served as NCTC director for the past three years. Holmgren previously served at the State Department as assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. He spearheaded a new digital modernization strategy at the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. Holmgren started out his career as an analyst at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
  (DNI Haines thanks NCTC Director Christy Abizaid, welcomes acting Director Brett Holmgren - Office of the Director of National Intelligence)

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“In the coming days, the party will undertake a transparent and orderly process to move forward,” Harrison said in a statement. “This process will be governed by established rules and procedures of the party. Our delegates are prepared to take seriously their responsibility in swiftly delivering a candidate to the American people.“

The comment reflected the reality that while Vice President Kamala Harris is emerging as the prohibitive favorite to become the party’s nominee, it’s not so simple. And, for now, the party isn’t offering many details on what happens next.

Some DNC members had already begun privately discussing contingency plans for the possibility that Biden would step aside prior to his decision to do so on Sunday. A committee setting the party’s rules for the Democratic National Convention, which opens Aug. 19 in Chicago, will gather virtually on Wednesday to discuss the next steps.

Harris has to formally secure the nomination from the around 4,700 Democratic convention delegates — including those pledged to Biden, as well as the elected officials, former presidents and other party elders known as superdelegates.

Wearing sweats and having a dinner of anchovy pizza with staff members at the vice president’s residence on Sunday, Harris spent 10-plus hours calling more than 100 party leaders, members of Congress, governors, labor leaders and leaders of advocacy and civil rights organizations. She was spreading the message she intends to earn the Democratic nomination, aides say.

Biden won Democratic primaries in every state, and Harris was on the ticket as his running mate. His tapping her as his successor while bowing out of the race further strengthens her case, as does the endorsements of party heavyweights. Other top Democrats openly backed the vice president even before Biden abandoned his reelection bid, urging him to “pass the torch” to her in the wake of his dismal debate performance against Republican nominee Donald Trump last month.

“Folks will be weighing in and they should. I think we’re seeing a lot of coalescing behind the vice president,” said Rahna Epting, executive director of the progressive organization MoveOn. “And that’s important because, as we saw throughout the Biden debate fallout, there is momentum that can be built one way or the other, and it is important for us to build momentum toward unity.”

Ken Martin, president of the Association of State Democratic Committees, which represents the 57 parties in the states and territories, said Harris was the obvious choice: “Having served alongside President Biden, she is ready on day one as a candidate and as our next president.” She was also endorsed by the 1.75-million-member American Federation of Teachers union.

But Democratic rules state only that delegates “in all good conscience” vote for the candidate they were elected to represent, with no mechanism for defectors. And some in the party have endorsed an open nominating process.

There’s been active debate about how to proceed among lawmakers, major donors and former high-ranking officials of the Biden, Obama and Clinton administrations, said a Democrat with deep ties to the Biden administration.

The person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal conversations, argued that Harris would benefit from a competitive mini-primary ahead of the Democratic convention, because it would help solidify her as a strong candidate and diminish criticism that she’s been undemocratically anointed. That’s a charge the Trump campaign has already sought to use against her, and could loom large in the battle for undecided voters in battleground states.

Such a scenario might leave Democrats heading into their convention without a clear nominee, though, and perhaps choosing one via a series of potentially messy floor votes. That could mean top Democratic candidates looking to replace Biden resorting to visiting individual state delegations to lobby — a process unseen since 1960, when Lyndon B. Johnson and John F. Kennedy jockeyed for support during their party’s convention in Los Angeles.

If that happened, in addition to Harris, many other leading Democrats could vie for the nomination, including the likes of California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro and California Rep. Ro Khanna — though many say they’re endorsing Harris.

Inside the White House, meanwhile, there’s low expectation that Harris will get a serious challenge, according to a person familiar with deliberations who requested anonymity to discuss the private conversations.

Others who have been mentioned as viable contenders — including Shapiro and North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper — have also both endorsed Harris and would seem unlikely to run in light of Biden’s backing her, and the expected fundraising advantage she would hold over anyone who’d enter the field.

The DNC had planned to hold a virtual roll call to choose its nominee ahead of the convention, in order to meet Ohio ballot eligibility rules. That state’s original ballot deadline was Aug. 7, and though the Legislature has since approved a law nullifying that, it doesn’t take effect until Sept. 1.

DNC lawyers say that means the party could face legal challenges in Ohio if it fails to name their party’s nominee prior to the state’s original deadline. But the convention rules committee has said it won’t set a date for the virtual roll call — which could take place over several days — before Aug. 1.

Some Democrats fear a host of other GOP legal challenges, including New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who had defended Biden staying in the race by arguing that replacing him might trigger “a presidential election being decided by Clarence Thomas and the Supreme Court” — like what happened during the 2000 presidential election and the disputed recount in Florida.

At Wednesday’s conventions rules committee meeting, members could establish virtual roll call rules and a process to nominate Harris or create a more open process for choosing a nominee, according to a person familiar with the process who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal deliberations.

Harrison, the DNC chair, refrained from endorsing Harris in a statement, saying only, “In short order, the American people will hear from the Democratic Party on next steps and the path forward for the nomination process.”

A somber Harrison also joined a virtual meeting of the convention credentials committee on Sunday, telling members, “I’m emotional.”

“I still support my president,” Harrison said of Biden. “And we will get through this, my friends, as we always do.”

___

Associated Press writer Colleen Long contributed to this report.

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Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the Guard Bureau, will retire at the beginning of August and Lt. Gen. Marc Sasseville, who was the vice chief, has already retired. Lt. Gen. Jon Jensen, who is chief of the Army Guard but has been serving as acting vice chief, will also retire in early August.

The lack of progress on the nominations has become a source of concern to the bureau, which oversees the training and oversight of the Guard and Reserve forces who deploy on federal duty for overseas combat and to protect the homeland. The Guard chief is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and serves as a key link to the adjutant generals who command the state Guard units across the country and its territories.

As an example, Guard troops from a number of states were called to Washington, D.C. to help secure the city after rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2020. They also, in their state active duty status, routinely respond to hurricanes, fires and other disasters, including during the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the retirements loom, the National Guard Association of the United States sent a letter to the leaders of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Retired Maj. Gen. Francis M. McGinn, president of the association, said Friday that they are “shocked and disappointed in the process” and the fact that the White House hasn’t gotten nominations to the Senate.

He said that with the busy months ahead, having other officers serving temporarily in acting positions isn’t as effective as having a confirmed leaders in the job. In some cases, he said, they don’t have all the same authorities as those who are confirmed.

“A key part of having our chief on the Joint Chiefs is that direct line right to the secretary of defense. And that’s one of the benefits of having him in that room and in those discussions,” said McGinn.

The administration, he said, has known for several years that all four leaders – the chief, vice chief, Air Guard director and Army Guard director — would all be retiring this summer. The prospect has forced the bureau to juggle people around to cover the jobs, while nominations languish.

In March, the nomination of Maj. Gen. Duke Pirak to become the next Air Guard director was sent to the Senate to replace Lt. Gen. Michael A. Loh. Early last month, Loh retired, and Pirak has been serving as the acting director.

Just last week, the Senate received the nomination of Maj. Gen. Jonathan Stubbs, currently the adjutant general in Arkansas, to be the next director of the Army Guard, to replace Jensen.

No hearings or votes have been scheduled for either Stubbs or Pirak.

Meanwhile, the nominations for the top two slots — the chief and vice chief of the Guard – have not yet left the White House.

“Delays in the confirmation process can lead to gaps in leadership, disrupting operational continuity and potentially compromising our military’s ability to respond swiftly and effectively to emerging threats,” wrote McGinn in the letter to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Jack Reed, D-Rhode Island, and the ranking Republican, Sen. Roger Wicker of Mississippi.

According to officials, the Pentagon has recommended Air Force Lt. Gen. Steven Nordhaus as the next chief, and Army Maj. Gen. Joseph Jarrard as the vice chief. But their names haven’t been sent to the Senate. Officials spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel movements.

Nordhaus is currently the commander of 1st Air Force and the North American Aerospace Defense Command’s (NORAD) continental U.S. region, which provides and controls airspace surveillance and activities for the U.S.

Jarrard has been serving as the director of operations for the Guard bureau.

Officials said that if Pirak is confirmed in the next week or two, he would likely serve as acting chief.

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Teixeira admitted to illegally collecting some of the nation’s most sensitive secrets and sharing them on the social media platform Discord. He is facing military charges of disobeying orders and obstructing justice.

The U.S. Air Force said in a statement Wednesday that he will be tried at Hanscom Air Force Base in Massachusetts but no date has been set. An attorney for Teixeira didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

At a May hearing, military prosecutors said a court-martial is appropriate given that obeying orders is the “absolute core” of the military. But Teixeira’s lawyers argued that further action would amount to prosecuting him twice for the same offense.

Teixeira, who was part of the 102nd Intelligence Wing at Otis Air National Guard Base in Massachusetts, worked as a cyber transport systems specialist, essentially an information technology specialist responsible for military communications networks.

Teixeira was arrested just over a year ago in the most consequential national security leak in years.

He pleaded guilty on March 4 to six counts of willful retention and transmission of national defense information under a deal with prosecutors that calls for him to serve at least 11 years in prison. He’s scheduled to be sentenced in that case in September.

Authorities in the criminal case said Teixeira first typed out classified documents he accessed and then began sharing photographs of files that bore SECRET and TOP SECRET markings. The leak exposed to the world unvarnished secret assessments of Russia’s war in Ukraine, including information about troop movements in Ukraine and the provision of supplies and equipment to Ukrainian troops. Teixeira also admitted to posting information about a U.S. adversary’s plans to harm U.S. forces serving overseas.

The stunning security breach raised alarm over America’s ability to protect its most closely guarded secrets and forced President Joe Biden’s administration to scramble to try to contain the diplomatic and military fallout. The leaks embarrassed the Pentagon, which tightened controls to safeguard classified information and disciplined members it found had intentionally failed to take required action about Teixeira’s suspicious behavior.

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Inhofe, a powerful fixture in Oklahoma politics for over six decades, died Tuesday morning after suffering a stroke during the July Fourth holiday, his family said in a statement.

Inhofe, a Republican who underwent quadruple bypass heart surgery in 2013 before being elected to a fourth term, was elected to a fifth Senate term in 2020, before stepping down in early 2023.

Inhofe frequently criticized the mainstream science that human activity contributed to changes in the Earth’s climate, once calling it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people.”

In February 2015, with temperatures in the nation’s capital below freezing, Inhofe brought a snowball on to the Senate floor. He tossed it before claiming that environmentalists focus attention on global warming as it kept getting cold.

As Oklahoma’s senior U.S. senator, Inhofe was a staunch supporter of the state’s five military installations and a vocal fan of congressional earmarks. The Army veteran and licensed pilot, who would fly himself to and from Washington, secured federal money to fund local road and bridge projects, and criticized House Republicans who wanted a one-year moratorium on such pet projects in 2010.

“Defeating an earmark doesn’t save a nickel,” Inhofe told the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce that August. “It merely means that within the budget process, it goes right back to the bureaucracy.”

He was a strong backer of President Donald Trump, who praised him for his “incredible support of our #MAGA agenda” while endorsing the senator’s 2020 reelection bid. During the Trump administration, Inhofe served as chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee following the death of Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

U.S. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called Inhofe a good friend whose work benefited all the nation.

“Jim’s diligent stewardship of massive infrastructure projects transformed life across the Heartland,” McConnell said in a statement. “His relentless advocacy for American energy dominance unlocked new prosperity across the country and his laser focus on growing and modernizing the U.S. military strengthened the security of the entire free world.”

Republican Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford called Inhofe a “true patriot” and an “institution.

“His passion for our military, aviation, energy, infrastructure, Africa, and our personal freedom was vital for our state and our nation,” Lankford said in a statement.

In Oklahoma, Inhofe helped secure millions of dollars to clean up a former mining hub that spent decades on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Superfund list. In a massive buyout program, the federal government purchased homes and businesses within the 40-square-mile (104-square-kilometer) region of Tar Creek, where children consistently tested for dangerous levels of lead in their blood.

Inhofe championed veterans and firmly believed in the “American Dream,” said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, a Republican, who ordered flags on state property to fly at half staff through Wednesday.

In 2021, Inhofe defied some in his party by voting to certify Democrat Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election, saying that to do otherwise would violate his oath of office to support and defend the Constitution. He voted against convicting Trump at both of his impeachment trials.

Born James Mountain Inhofe on Nov. 17, 1934, in Des Moines, Iowa, Inhofe grew up in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and received a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of Tulsa in 1959. He served in the Army between 1956 and 1958, and was a businessman for three decades.

He won legislative seats in the ’60s and unsuccessfully ran for governor and Congress in the ’70s. In 1978, he became Tulsa’s mayor, and held the job for three terms.

Inhofe went on to win two terms in the U.S. House in the 1980s before winning a bitter U.S. Senate race in 1994. He would be reelected five times.

Former longtime Democratic Sen. David Boren said he and Inhofe worked together in a bipartisan manner when both were in the state Legislature. He later defeated Inhofe in a race for governor.

“While we ran against each other for governor, we were opponents but never enemies and remained friends,” Boren said in a statement. “I hope we can rebuild that spirit in American politics.”

Inhofe lived up to his reputation as a tough campaigner in his 2008 reelection bid against Democrat Andrew Rice, a 35-year-old state senator and former missionary. Inhofe claimed Rice was “too liberal” for Oklahoma and ran television ads that critics said contained anti-gay overtones, including one that showed a wedding cake topped by two plastic grooms.

Inhofe’s bullish personality also was apparent outside politics. He was a commercial-rated pilot and flight instructor with more than 50 years of flying experience.

He made an emergency landing in Claremore in 1999, after his plane lost a propeller, an incident later blamed on an installation error. In 2006, his plane spun out of control upon landing in Tulsa; he and an aide escaped injury, though the plane was severely damaged.

In 2010, Inhofe landed his small plane on a closed runway at a rural South Texas airport while flying himself and others to South Padre Island. Runway workers scrambled, and Inhofe agreed to complete a remedial training program rather than face possible legal action.

“I’m 75 years old, but I still fly airplanes upside down,” Inhofe said in August 2010.

He later sponsored legislation that expanded the rights of pilots when dealing with Federal Aviation Administration disciplinary proceedings.

In 2016 Inhofe, then 81, walked away from a forced landing during severe weather in northeastern Oklahoma.

Inhofe is survived by his wife, Kay, three children and several grandchildren. A son, Dr. Perry Dyson Inhofe II, died in November 2013, when the twin-engine aircraft he was flying crashed near Tulsa International Airport.

___

Retired Associated Press journalist Tim Talley was the principal writer of this obituary.

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The justices ruled in a 6-3 vote that people accused of fraud by the SEC, which regulates securities markets, have the right to a jury trial in federal court. The in-house proceedings the SEC has used in some civil fraud complaints, including against Houston hedge fund manager George Jarkesy, violate the Constitution, the court said.

“A defendant facing a fraud suit has the right to be tried by a jury of his peers before a neutral adjudicator,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court’s conservative majority.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who read from her dissent in the courtroom, said that “litigants who seek to dismantle the administrative state” would rejoice in the decision.

Federal agencies that oversee safety in mines and other workplaces are among many that can only impose civil penalties in in-house, administrative proceedings, Sotomayor wrote, joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan.

“For those and countless other agencies, all the majority can say is tough luck; get a new statute from Congress,” she wrote.

The case is among several this term in which conservative and business interests are urging the nine-member court to constrict federal regulators. The court’s six conservatives already have done so, including in a decision last year that sharply limited environmental regulators’ ability to police water pollution in wetlands.

Still awaiting decision are cases calling on the court to overturn the 40-year-old ruling colloquially known as Chevron, which has made it easier to sustain regulation of the environment, public, health, worker safety and consumer protection. Some of the same parties that supported Jarkesy at the Supreme Court are calling for Chevron to be overturned.

The SEC was awarded more than $5 billion in civil penalties in the 2023 government spending year that ended Sept. 30, the agency said in a news release. It was unclear how much of that money came through in-house proceedings or lawsuits in federal court.

The agency had already reduced the number of cases it brings in administrative proceedings pending the Supreme Court’s resolution of the case.

The high court rejected arguments advanced by President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration that relied on a 50-year-old decision in which the court ruled that in-house proceedings did not violate the Constitution’s right to a jury trial in civil lawsuits.

The justices ruled in favor of Jarkesy after the SEC appealed a decision in which the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals threw out stiff financial penalties against Jarkesy and his Patriot28 investment adviser.

The appeals court found that the SEC’s case against Jarkesy, resulting in a $300,000 civil fine and the repayment of $680,000 in allegedly ill-gotten gains, should have been heard in a federal court instead of before one of the SEC’s administrative law judges.

Jarkesy’s lawyers noted that the SEC wins almost all the cases it brings in front of the administrative law judges but only about 60% of cases tried in federal court.

The appeals court also said Congress unconstitutionally granted the SEC “unfettered authority” to decide whether the case should be tried in a court of law or handled within the executive branch agency. And it said laws shielding the commission’s administrative law judges from being fired by the president are unconstitutional.

Those issues got virtually no attention during arguments in November, and the court chose to resolve the case only on the right to a jury trial.

___

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By a 6-3 vote, the justices threw out lower-court rulings that favored Louisiana, Missouri and other parties in their claims that federal officials leaned on the social media platforms to unconstitutionally squelch conservative points of view.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett wrote for the court that the states and other parties did not have the legal right, or standing, to sue. Justices Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch and Clarence Thomas dissented.

The decision should not affect typical social media users or their posts.

The case is among several before the court this term that affect social media companies in the context of free speech. In February, the court heard arguments over Republican-passed laws in Florida and Texas that prohibit large social media companies from taking down posts because of the views they express. In March, the court laid out standards for when public officials can block their social media followers.

The cases over state laws and the one that was decided Wednesday are variations on the same theme, complaints that the platforms are censoring conservative viewpoints.

The states had argued that White House communications staffers, the surgeon general, the FBI and the U.S. cybersecurity agency are among those who applied “unrelenting pressure” to coerce changes in online content on social media platforms.

The justices appeared broadly skeptical of those claims during arguments in March and several worried that common interactions between government officials and the platforms could be affected by a ruling for the states.

The Biden administration underscored those concerns when it noted that the government would lose its ability to communicate with the social media companies about antisemitic and anti-Muslim posts, as well as on issues of national security, public health and election integrity.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the court reached the right outcome because “it helps ensure the Biden Administration can continue our important work with technology companies to protect the safety and security of the American people, after years of extreme and unfounded Republican attacks on public officials who engaged in critical work to keep Americans safe.

Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill called the decision “unfortunate and disappointing.” The court majority, Murrill said in a statement, “gives a free pass to the federal government to threaten tech platforms into censorship and suppression of speech that is indisputably protected by the First Amendment. The majority waves off the worst government coercion scheme in history.”

The justices did not weigh in on the substance of the states’ claims or the administration’s response in their decision Wednesday.

“We begin — and end — with standing,” Barrett wrote. “At this stage, neither the individual nor the state plaintiffs have established standing to seek an injunction against any defendant. We therefore lack jurisdiction to reach the merits of the dispute.”

In dissent, Alito wrote that the states amply demonstrated their right to sue. “For months, high-ranking government officials placed unrelenting pressure on Facebook to suppress Americans’ free speech. Because the court unjustifiably refuses to address this serious threat to the First Amendment, I respectfully dissent,” he wrote for the three justices in the minority.

Jen Easterly, director of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, said she was pleased with the decision and reiterated the agency “does not and has never censored speech.”

“Every day, the men and women of CISA execute the agency’s mission of reducing risk to U.S. critical infrastructure in a way that protects Americans’ freedom of speech, civil rights, civil liberties, and privacy,” Easterly said in a statement.

Some free speech advocates praised the result, but lamented how little guidance the court provided.

“The platforms are attractive targets for official pressure, and so it’s crucial that the Supreme Court clarify the line between permissible attempts to persuade and impermissible attempts to coerce,” said Alex Abdo, litigation director of the Knight First Amendment Institute. “This guidance would have been especially valuable in the months leading up to the election.”

Nina Jankowicz was named in the original lawsuit after being appointed in 2022 to lead a new board within the Department of Homeland Security to tackle disinformation. The board was dissolved within weeks amid conspiracy theories and criticism from Republicans and conservative activists who saw the effort as a political tool to regulate free speech.

Jankowicz, an expert in disinformation, said the Supreme Court had done what she had expected. But she said the damage from the lawsuit is not easily fixed.

“Unfortunately, there is an entire class of people that now believes the government, in coordination with independent researchers, is censoring some part of the American population,” she said. “I don’t think that’s going to go away anytime soon.”

The court’s ruling comes as many social media companies have removed guardrails against hate and disinformation.

The social media platform X, under the leadership of owner Elon Musk, has restored the accounts of conspiracy theorists and extremists who were previously banned. It also has gutted teams that once fought misinformation on the platform, leaving the community of users to moderate itself.

Experts say the shrinking of such teams, a development that many blame on political pressure, could make election-related disinformation across social media worse in 2024 than it was in 2020.

Meanwhile, Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has pivoted away from emphasizing news and political content on its platforms after facing years of accusations that it mishandles misinformation and contributes to political polarization.

A panel of three judges on the New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled earlier that the administration had probably brought unconstitutional pressure on the media platforms. The appellate panel said officials cannot attempt to “coerce or significantly encourage” changes in online content.

The decision was the sixth this term in which the court threw out rulings by the 5th Circuit, one of the nation’s most conservative appeals courts. Last week, the court upheld a gun restriction aimed at protecting domestic violence victims, overturning a 5th Circuit panel.

Earlier in June, the court unanimously ruled that anti-abortion doctors lacked standing to challenge Food and Drug Administration decisions to ease access to the abortion drug mifepristone.

The case is Murthy v. Missouri, 23-411.

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Associated Press writers Christina A. Cassidy in Atlanta and Ali Swenson in New York contributed to this report.

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Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court

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The proposed rule stems from President Joe Biden’s August 2023 executive order regarding the access that “countries of concern” have to American dollars that fund advanced technologies, which the U.S. government says would enhance their military, intelligence, surveillance and cyber capabilities. The order identified China, Hong Kong and Macau as countries of concern.

The Biden administration has sought to stymie the development of technologies by China, the world’s second-largest economy, that could give it a military edge or enable it to dominate emerging sectors such as electric vehicles.

In addition to the proposed rule, Democrat Biden has also placed a stiff tariff on Chinese EVs, an issue with political implications as the president and Republican Donald Trump are both trying to show voters who can best stand up to China, a geopolitical rival and major trading partner.

The proposed rule outlines the required information that U.S. citizens and permanent residents must provide when engaging in transactions in this area, as well as what would be considered a violation of the restrictions.

It specifically would prohibit American investors from funding AI systems in China that could be used for weapons targeting, combat and location tracking, among other military applications, according to a senior Treasury official who previewed the rule for reporters on the condition of anonymity.

J. Philip Ludvigson, a partner at King & Spalding and a former Treasury official for Investment Security, said “companies and investors are now getting a much better look at what will be expected of them” under the new outbound investment program. “These added details are particularly important because the private sector will be shouldering the many due diligence and compliance burdens associated with making new investments,” he said.

Craig Allen, president of the U.S.-China Business Council, a nonprofit organization of American firms that do business in China, said his organization “supports the Biden administration’s efforts to protect U.S. national security while also ensuring robust commercial exchange with China for the benefit of American companies, workers and our economy.”

Treasury is seeking comment on the proposal through Aug. 4, 2024, and after that is expected to issue a final rule.

Biden administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, have insisted that they have no interest in “decoupling” from China — however, tensions between the two nations have increased in recent years.

After the U.S. military in February 2023 shot down a suspected Chinese spy balloon off the Carolina coast after it traversed sensitive military sites across North America, China threatened repercussions.

Since then, incidents between the two nations based on national security concerns have regularly occurred.

For instance, Biden in May issued an order blocking a Chinese-backed cryptocurrency mining firm from owning land near a Wyoming nuclear missile base, calling its proximity to the base a “national security risk.”

The post US proposes rules to stop Americans from investing in Chinese technology with military uses first appeared on Federal News Network.

The company also said Thursday that it expects to begin notifying individuals or patients in late July.

Change Healthcare, a subsidiary of health care giant UnitedHealth Group, provides technology used to submit and process billions of insurance claims a year. Hackers gained access in February to its system and unleashed a ransomware attack that encrypted and froze large parts of it.

The attack triggered a disruption of payment and claims processing around the country, stressing doctor’s offices and health care systems by interfering with their ability to file claims and get paid.

Change says names, addresses, health insurance information and personal information like Social Security numbers may have been exposed in the attack. The company is still investigating.

It said Thursday that it has reviewed more than 90% of impacted files and has seen no signs that doctors’ charts or full medical histories were taken.

After the attack, UnitedHealth paid a $22 million ransom in bitcoin, CEO Andrew Witty has said.

Witty said during Congressional hearings last month that all of the company’s core systems, including claims payment and pharmacy processing, were functional.

The company has been offering to pay for two years of credit monitoring and identity theft protection for people worried that their information may have been exposed in the attack.

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

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The announcement from the White House on Thursday came after Gruenberg’s tenure became marred by allegations of workplace abuse that led to him to resign.

A longtime financial regulator, Goldsmith Romero is currently a commissioner at the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the nation’s financial derivatives regulator. She previously worked with the Department of Treasury and was part of the team that handled the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which lent $700 billion to troubled banks during the 2008 financial crisis. She also is a law professor at Georgetown University.

Her previous nominations to the nation’s financial regulators were unanimously confirmed by the Senate.

“She has proven herself to be a strong, independent, and fair regulator who is not afraid to do what’s right,” said Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio and chair of the Senate Banking Committee, in a statement.

Gruenberg last month said he would resign from the FDIC, after an independent report by law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton found incidents of stalking, harassment, homophobia and other violations of employment regulations, based on more than 500 complaints from employees.

Complaints included a woman who said she was stalked by a coworker and continually harassed even after complaining about his behavior; a field office supervisor referring to gay men as “little girls;” and a female field examiner who described receiving a picture of an FDIC senior examiner’s private parts.

Republicans have been calling for Gruenberg to step down since the allegations emerged late last year. The White House and Gruenberg resisted those calls partly because the FDIC is led by a five member board, and his resignation would pass control of the agency to the FDIC’s vice chair, who is a Republican. Gruenberg’s resignation would not be official until Goldsmith Romero nomination is finalized.

“FDIC employees deserve a safe workplace that allows them to focus on their important mission to safeguard our country’s financial security. Unfortunately, under the leadership of Chairman Gruenberg, that hasn’t been the case,” said Sen. Tim Scott, the ranking Republican on the Banking Committee, in a statement.

The FDIC is one of several U.S. banking system regulators. The Great Depression-era agency is best known for running the nation’s deposit insurance program, which insures Americans’ deposits up to $250,000 in case their bank fails.

The post Biden to nominate Christy Goldsmith Romero as FDIC chair after abrupt departure of predecessor first appeared on Federal News Network.

Vice Adm. Carl Chebi, head of U.S. Naval Air Systems Command, which has responsibility for the aircraft military-wide, told lawmakers at a House oversight hearing into a series of recent crashes that it will be at least another six to nine months before the command will be able to complete all of the safety and performance assessments for the Osprey.

Over the lifespan of the program, Chebi said a total of 64 service members have been killed in air and ground accidents, and 93 have been injured. In the last two years, four separate crashes killed a total of 20 service members, and two of those crashes involved catastrophic materiel or mechanical failures the program had not experienced before.

Following a November crash off the coast of Japan that killed eight service members, the fleet was grounded for months. The Ospreys started flying again in a very limited format in March and do not perform the full range of missions, including carrier operations, that the aircraft was made to carry out.

In use since only 2007, the Osprey can fly like an airplane and land like a helicopter. Critics say its innovative design has systemic flaws that are driving the unexpected failures.

One of the reasons for the extension of restricted flight: The military is still working to fix a clutch failure that was identified as one of the primary factors in a June 2022 crash that killed five Marines in California.

The clutch component, like many other parts of the aircraft, has been wearing out far faster than expected. This led to an unprecedented dual hard clutch engagement in the 2022 crash, creating a situation in which the pilots had no way to save the aircraft.

The military has not yet said what exact part failed in the November crash, but Chebi told the panel Wednesday that the cause was something “we’d never seen before.”

Rep. Stephen Lynch, a Massachusetts Democrat, told Chebi to reground the entire fleet until all safety issues were fixed.

“What do you think the consequences will be if we have another V-22 go down and we lose more brave Marines or Airmen between now and the time?” Lynch said. “Your whole program’s done. It’s done. If another Osprey goes down, we’re done. This program’s done. So why don’t we ground this now?”

Families of service members killed in Osprey accidents sat behind Chebi as he testified. Each held a photograph of their family member killed, and after the hearing, he stayed to listen as they told him their concerns.

“We’re afraid that they’re aging out, and now we are having all these crashes,” said Bart Collart, whose son Marine Corps Cpl. Spencer Collart was killed in a 2023 Osprey crash off the coast of Australia.

The committee is looking into whether the program has adequate oversight, but to date, it has not received the data and documents it has requested, members said at the hearing.

Among the information that the House Oversight Committee’s Subcommittee on National Security, the Border and Foreign Affairs has requested but has yet to receive is the wear and replacement rates on Osprey proprotor gearboxes, a component that was a factor in the crash off Japan.

Committee members also have asked for internal crash reports that the military conducts with surviving air and ground crews and witnesses. The reports aren’t available to the public and cannot be used to punish a crew — they are in place to identify and quickly share any safety issues among the fleet.

To date, the staffers said they had received about 3,500 pages of documents, but information was redacted, leaving them unable to conduct oversight. The committee staffers spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

The staffers said the documents they have reviewed left them concerned about whether Pentagon leadership has maintained a close watch on the Osprey program. Some of the problems with the aircraft date back a decade or more but still haven’t been fixed.

After mechanical and material failures led to the 2022 Osprey crash in California, the military said it had instituted changes to prevent the issue from happening again.

“However, the recent fatal crash and ongoing investigations suggest that more transparency and rigorous testing is needed to verify these claims,” Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Wisconsin Republican who chairs the committee, said in a statement to the AP ahead of the hearing.

The Marine Corps is planning on using the Osprey through 2050, while Air Force Special Operations Command has already begun to talk publicly about finding another type of aircraft to conduct missions.

Osprey producers Bell Flight, the Boeing Co. and Rolls-Royce, which supplies the engines, are facing a new lawsuit from families of the five Marines killed in the 2022 California crash. The lawsuit alleges that the companies did not address known parts failures or safety issues that were a factor in the crash.

Boeing and Bell have declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.

The staffers say the Pentagon has not provided details on what the restrictions are as the aircraft returns to operations.

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The proposed Lava Ridge wind farm has drawn opposition from government leaders, local ranchers, and people who have said, among other things, that the project endangers the Minidoka National Historic Site, where Japanese Americans were detained during World War II.

The agency detailed its preferred alternative to the original plan in its final environmental review released last week. It would decrease the number of wind turbines to 241 from 400 and cap the maximum height of the electricity-generating turbines at 660 feet (201 meters), KTVB-TV reported.

The plan also places the closest turbine to the historic site at 9 miles (14 kilometers) away. The agency said adjusting the corridor configuration aims to help “preserve the visitor experience of the remote nature of the former incarceration site.”

As proposed in 2020, it would have been built within about 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) of the visitor center for the historic site. Nonprofit organization, Friends of the Minidoka, is one group that has been concerned the project could destroy the the experience they want to preserve at the site.

Robyn Achilles, the organization’s executive director, said in a statement that most of the detailed historical research provided by the group to the Biden administration to enable them to better protect the historic site was disregarded in this decision.

The Biden administration “needs to do a better job and make a real commitment to protect Minidoka and our heritage, or we will be dealing with Lava Ridge and other projects forever,” Achilles said.

Idaho Republicans U.S. Rep. Mike Simpson and U.S. Sen. Jim Risch both expressed their continued opposition to the project in social media posts last week.

Risch said he would continue to fight what he called an “unnecessary and ill-begotten project.”

The Biden Administration has prioritized permitting renewable energy projects on public lands by 2025 as part of its response to climate change. Magic Valley Energy, which is a subsidiary of New York-based LS Power, proposed the Lava Ridge energy project and has said it would increase economic activity in the area in part by creating jobs and increasing local government tax revenues.

Luke Papez, senior director of project development for LS Power, said in a statement that the agency’s new preferred alternative appears to strike an appropriate balance between the protection of environmental resources and the need for additional domestic energy production.

The Bureau of Land Management released its draft environmental impact statement in early 2023 with two preferred alternatives. A 90-day comment period then generated more than 11,000 public comments and 1,400 scoping comments, officials said.

The final environmental review’s preferred alternative decreases the “area disturbed” by nearly 50%, from 8,395 acres to 4,492 acres (3,397 hectares to 1,817 hectares).

“The preferred alternative also reduces potential impacts to sage grouse, large wildlife migration routes and winter concentration areas, cultural resources, Jerome County Airport and agricultural aviation uses, public land ranchers, and adjacent private landowners,” BLM’s news release said.

If the new preferred alternative is selected, BLM estimates the project’s construction to generate $21.9 million in tax revenue annually and contribute $138.9 million in total economic output.

The BLM said the preferred alternative was created through engagement with landowners, ranchers, Tribal Nations, federal, state and county elected leaders, organizations, the BLM’s Resource Advisory Council for the area and the National Park Service.

Without any changes, the Bureau of Land Management’s preferred alternative would be finalized in July.

The post Bureau of Land Management shrinks proposed size of controversial Idaho wind farm project first appeared on Federal News Network.

Robert Burke, who served as vice chief of naval operations, faces federal charges including bribery and conspiracy for what prosecutors allege was a corrupt scheme that led to the company hiring him after his retirement in 2022 with a starting annual salary of $500,000. He oversaw naval operations in Europe, Russia, and most of Africa.

Also charged in the case are Yongchul “Charlie” Kim and Meghan Messenger, who are co-chief executive officers of the company. The company is not named in court papers, but Kim and Messenger are named as the CEOs on the website for a company called NextJump, which provides training programs.

“The law does not make exceptions for admirals or CEOs. Those who pay and receive bribes must be held accountable,” said Matthew Graves, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. “The urgency is at its greatest when, as here, senior government officials and senior executives are allegedly involved in the corruption.”

Burke, 62, of Coconut Creek, Florida, made his initial appearance in Miami on Friday but didn’t enter a plea during the hearing, according to defense attorney Timothy Parlatore. The lawyer said Burke will plead not guilty and intends to clear his name at trial.

“I think a jury will see through this,” Parlatore said.

Burke conditionally retired from the Navy on July 31, 2022. Senior officers will often conditionally retire if there are administrative matters pending.

Rear Adm. Ryan Perry said the Department of the Navy has fully cooperated with the investigation.

“We take this matter very seriously and will continue to cooperate with the Department of Justice,” Perry said in a statement.

Kim and Messenger’s company provided a workforce training pilot program to a component of the Navy from August 2018 through July 2019. The Navy terminated the pilot program in late 2019 and directed the company not to contact Burke.

But the two company executives arranged to meet with Burke in Washington, D.C., in July 2021. During the meeting, Kim and Messenger proposed that Burke use his Navy position to steer them a contract in exchange for future employment at the company, the indictment alleges.

In December 2021, Burke ordered his staff to award a $355,000 contract to train personnel under Burke’s command in Italy and Spain, according to the indictment. Burke began working at the company in October 2022.

Parlatore noted that the value of that contract was smaller than Burke’s starting salary.

“There was no connection between this contract and his employment.” Parlatore said. “The math just doesn’t make sense that he would give them this relatively small contract for that type of a job offer.”

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Associated Press writer Lolita C, Baldor in Washington contributed to this report.

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Sen. Roger Wicker told The Associated Press that he will seek an additional $55 billion in defense spending over the limits that were forged in the deal to suspend the nation’s debt limit a year ago. Wicker explained his position in global terms, saying there has “never been such a level of cooperation and coordination among an axis of aggressors” that aims to challenge U.S. dominance.

The plan lays down a significant marker for Senate Republicans as they enter into a new round of budget fights with Democrats in the heat of a closely fought election year. The White House has proposed $850 billion in defense spending, adhering to the debt limit deal by proposing a 1% increase from the previous year. That plan is unlikely to keep pace with inflation and would seek to reduce the military’s costs by retiring older ships and aircraft.

Wicker acknowledged it would be “a hill to climb” to convince Congress to break from the spending caps at a time of deep political upheaval. Washington is still grappling with divisions over support for Ukraine, the aftershocks of two long wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a presidential election between two presumptive candidates — Biden and Republican Donald Trump — who espouse vastly different visions of America’s role abroad.

But Wicker, R-Miss., said the U.S. has no choice. “We would be very foolish on a national survival basis to adhere to that when it comes to national defense,” said Wicker, the ranking member on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

While GOP defense hawks have long advocated for robust defense spending, Wicker’s plan goes a step further, calling for a broad shift in the U.S. defense posture that would amount to a reshuffling of national priorities. Under his proposal, the military would eventually consume 5% of America’s gross domestic product, or total economic output.

Defense spending when measured as a portion of GDP is currently about 3% and has been declining since the height of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. It has not reached above 5% since the early 1990s.

Back in the 1980s and early 1990s, Wicker said, “nobody took a chance against the United States because we were powerful enough to keep the peace. We are simply not anywhere near that right now.”

“I think that the fact that we’re in a new Cold War is self-evident,” he said.

Wicker’s full plan is laid out in a 52-page paper he has been working on for the past year. In it, he makes the case for a new generation of weapons, pointing to an aging American arsenal as Russia moves to expand its territory in Europe and China tries to show increasing dominance in parts of the Pacific.

Closer ties between China and Russia were underscored earlier this month by a visit between leaders Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping. The two-day visit — Putin’s first trip abroad after being inaugurated to a fifth term in office — reflected a growing partnership between the two nations, an alliance grounded in support for authoritarian regimes and dominance in their respective regions.

China has given diplomatic support to Moscow after its invasion of Ukraine and emerged as a top export market for Russian oil and gas, helping fill the Kremlin’s war coffers for the ongoing offensive.

Wicker said the high-level meeting between Putin and Xi “ought to be a wake up call.”

He said in his proposal that the U.S. faces “the most dangerous threat environment since World War II” and urges a national war footing appropriate for a long, drawn-out conflict with a major world power. For Wicker, that encompasses everything from addressing deferred maintenance on U.S. military facilities that don’t have the right voltage on power outlets to preparing for nuclear weaponry in space.

Still, the spending increases are likely to be viewed skeptically by lawmakers wary of growing the defense budget, which already dominates annual discretionary funding. The legislation to suspend the nation’s debt limit passed Congress with strong bipartisan support and aimed to limit federal budget growth to 1% for the next six years, although the spending caps were only mandatory through this year’s budget.

The House Armed Services Committee this month approved with near-unanimous support an $884 billion proposal for the annual defense authorization bill, keeping within the spending caps but shifting funding towards specific military programs. Yet Senate Democrats are likely to resist further spending cuts to other government programs.

The Senate committee is set to craft the annual military authorization bill next month, but the chairman, Democratic Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, has not publicly released the spending amount that he will propose. Wicker said that he had been in contact with Reed, as well as top Democratic appropriators, about the plan, but their level of support was not clear.

At the same time, defense hawks like Wicker are navigating the shifting politics of defense spending in their own party under Trump’s “America First” brand of foreign policy. Earlier this year, a $95 billion package of foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan faced heavy resistance from a large portion of congressional Republicans, even though much of the funds would be spent buying equipment and ammunition from U.S.-based defense manufacturers.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has been vocal about countering those within his party who want to push the U.S. towards a more isolationist stance. And Wicker said there was “an opportunity” to win broad support for redoubling U.S. efforts in the Pacific because congressional Republicans are still supportive of countering China.

As he works to convince Congress to rethink defense spending, Wicker said he was modeling his effort on the push that former Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican, made in 2017 as he tried to dramatically increase defense spending. That effort was mostly unsuccessful.

But Wicker expressed confidence that this time can be different.

With China’s military strength dramatically growing and Russia launching the largest land invasion in Europe since World War II, the difference between 2017 and now is “the reality on the ground,” he said.

The post Key Republican calls for ‘generational’ increase in defense spending to counter US adversaries first appeared on Federal News Network.