The SACRED Act is endorsed by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the American Jewish Committee (AJC), the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America (OU), Hadassah, Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). (Representational image)
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Image used for representational purposes. File
| Photo Credit: Reuters

Washington DC:

In a first legislative win to President Donald Trump, the US Congress on Wednesday gave the final approval to a GOP-led bill that would require the detention and deportation of undocumented migrants who enter the country without authorization and are charged with certain crimes. The bill – titled the Laken Riley Act –  capped the opening salvo in a broader crackdown on immigration that the President has promised.

The legislation received 263 to 156 with 46 Democrats voting in its favour, a sign of the growing cross-party consensus around taking a hard-line approach against those who enter the US illegally.

The bill is named after a 22-year-old Georgia student who was killed last year while out for a run. An undocumented migrant from Venezuela was convicted and sentenced to life without parole. The convict had previously been arrested in a shoplifting case but had not been detained. Laken Riley’s case reignited a debate over immigration and crime in America. 

Under the provisions of the bill, the Department of Homeland Security is required to detain undocumented migrants– people who are in the US unlawfully or without legal status– if they have been charged with, arrested for, convicted of, or have admitted to certain criminal offences, including theft and burglary, according to a report by The New York Times. 

The House of Representatives passed the bill after the Senate debated changes to it last week, where amendments were adopted to reportedly expand the list of criminal offences covered under the bill to include assault on law enforcement officers and crimes resulting in death or serious bodily injury.

Republicans made the legislation their top priority after winning the government trifecta. Still, it would not have been able to advance to final passage without support from key Democrats as Republicans control only a narrow majority.

Democrats who opposed the legislation reportedly argued that the bill could undercut US foreign policy by giving state attorney generals and federal judges overly expansive power with respect to blocking visas. Though it is passed out of Congress to reach President Trump’s office– who on Monday started his second term by issuing a raft of executive orders that kicked off his immigration crackdown– there are still hurdles ahead for its implementation.

Per a CNN report, the Laken Riley Act will require a ramp-up period and a boost in funding. “Full implementation would be impossible for ICE to execute within existing resources,” Immigration and Customs Enforcement said in a memo to lawmakers this month.

According to the agency’s estimate, it would need an additional 110,000 beds to support the population of people the new act covers, far exceeding its current inventory. ICE is funded for 41,500 detention beds and already had over 39,000 people in its custody till December.

The agency said that its initial cost estimate of $3.2 billion to execute the act “does not represent the full cost of implementation.”

“If additional resources are provided, a ramp-up period would be needed due to implementation challenges such as hiring, detention bed availability, and contracting/ acquisition timelines,” the memo said.

President-elect Donald Trump criticised the bill in his statement with Vice President-elect Vance and advocated for extending the debt ceiling with President Joe Biden in office. File
| Photo Credit: AP

President-elect Donald Trump delivered a likely death blow to bipartisan congressional budget negotiations on Wednesday (December 18, 2024), rejecting the measure as full of giveaways to Democrats as billionaire ally Elon Musk whipped up outrage toward the bill and cheered on Republican lawmakers who announced their opposition.

Mr. Trump’s joint statement with Vice President-elect JD Vance, which stopped the bill in its tracks, punctuated a daylong torrent of social media posts by Mr. Musk attacking the budget legislation as full of excessive spending.

“Kill the Bill!” Mr. Musk wrote on his social media platform X as he dangled primary challenges against anyone who voted for the budget deal, a threat Mr. Trump later echoed in a post of his own.

The episode showcased the growing political influence of Mr. Musk, whom Mr. Trump has selected alongside entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to spearhead the Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental task force formed to find ways to fire federal workers, cut programmes and slash federal regulations. Mr. Musk, the world’s richest man, spent around $200 million to support Mr. Trump’s candidacy this year.

In his statement with Vance, Mr. Trump criticised the bill and advocated for extending the debt ceiling with President Joe Biden in office.

“Increasing the debt ceiling is not great but we’d rather do it on Mr. Biden’s watch. If Democrats won’t cooperate on a debt ceiling increase now, what makes anyone think they would do it in June during our administration? Let’s have this debate over the debt ceiling now.” Mr. Trump’s opposition to what was considered must-pass legislation reinjected a sense of chaos and political brinkmanship that was reminiscent of his first term in office. It was a dramatic turn of events for House Speaker Mike Johnson, who negotiated the bill and has been undermined by Mr. Trump as he faces reelection for his post in just a couple of weeks. Republicans have a slim majority, raising the possibility of a replay of leadership disputes that paralysed the House a year ago.

President Joe Biden’s administration criticised the possibility of a shutdown.

“Republicans need to stop playing politics with this bipartisan agreement or they will hurt hardworking Americans and create instability across the country,” said White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.

Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform and a veteran of Washington’s budget battles, was concerned about the lack of a clear plan for how to resolve the dispute.

“There’s got to be a second part of the strategy,” he said.

But others were thrilled, particularly with Mr. Musk’s involvement.

“In five years in Congress, I’ve been awaiting a fundamental change in the dynamic,” posted Rep. Dan Bishop, a Republican from North Carolina. “It has arrived.” Mr. Musk began criticising the measure as soon as it was released on Tuesday (December 17, 2024) evening, and he continuously posted about it on Wednesday (December 18, 2024).

“Stop the steal of your tax dollars!” he wrote. He also called it “one of the worst bills ever written”.

Sometimes he amplified false claims, such as the idea that the legislation included $3 billion for a new football stadium in Washington. In reality, the legislation would transfer ownership of the land from the federal government to the city, paving the way for eventual development.

Mr. Musk appeared emboldened by the experience.

“The voice of the people was heard,” Mr. Musk wrote. “This was a good day for America.” Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries said the fallout would be Republicans’ fault.

“You break the bipartisan agreement, you own the consequences that follow,” he wrote on X.

File photo of Brad Wenstrup, House Select Coronavirus Pandemic Subcommittee Chairman during a hearing with experts from the U.S. National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Food and Drug Administration in the Rayburn House Office Building on Capitol Hill on November 14, 2024 in Washington, DC.
| Photo Credit: Getty Images via AFP/Chip Somodevilla

The story so far: A U.S. Congressional committee led by Republican Brad Wenstrup has concluded that the COVID-19 pandemic was the result of the spread of a virus that likely leaked from a research facility in Wuhan, China.

The final report of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, established in February 2023, was published on December 2, 2024. The report runs over 500 pages and, according to committee members, will serve as a roadmap for government action during future pandemics.

“A future pandemic requires a whole-of-America response managed by those without personal benefit or bias,” Mr. Wenstrup wrote. “We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must.”

The lab-leak theory

The report’s highlight is that SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic, possibly emerged from a laboratory leak. The report finds this conclusion on inferred or circumstantial claims made early during the pandemic.

For example, it quotes an unclassified factsheet from January 2021 published by the U.S. State Department that said: “The U.S. government has reason to believe that several researchers inside the WIV [Wuhan Institute of Virology] became sick in autumn 2019, before the first identified case of the outbreak, with symptoms consistent with both COVID-19 and common seasonal illness.” The report itself does not directly prove the lab-leak theory, however.

The report also quotes previous statements by Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, in June 2024 in support of the lab-leak theory. In one of these statements, Dr. Chan says the virus emerged in Wuhan, which is also home to China’s “foremost research lab for SARS-like viruses”, and that Shi Zhengli, a senior virologist at WIV, “has been researching SARS-like viruses for over a decade and even initially wondered if the outbreak came from the WIV”.

But at a conference called ‘Preparing for the Next Pandemic: Evolution, Pathogenesis and Virology of Coronaviruses’ in Japan on December 4, Dr. Shi reportedly refuted the claim that the viruses she was studying were ancestors of the SARS-CoV-2 pathogen. She had earlier promised to sequence the genomes of 56 betacoronaviruses she and her team had collected between 2004 and 2021 and were studying. She presented the sequencing data and its analyses at the conference. (The latter have yet to be peer-reviewed.)

The Select Subcommittee report also noted an observation by Nicholas Wade, former science editor at The New York Times, in January 2024, that SARS-CoV-2 “possesses a furin cleavage site, found in none of the other 871 known members of its viral family, so it cannot have gained such a site through the ordinary evolutionary swaps of genetic material within a family.”

A furin cleavage is the process by which the furin enzyme breaks up specific proteins to activate them. The furin cleavage site in SARS-CoV-2 controls how it interacts with human cells to cause the disease. A letter published in The Lancet in August 2023 by researchers from Cornell University refuted Mr. Wade’s idea and said the site could have evolved naturally, as opposed to being genetically engineered.

What else does the report say?

The report also said the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded gain-of-function research at WIV. Gain-of-function research refers to studies where researchers genetically alter organisms to give them additional functions, like enhanced transmissibility or infectivity.

At one of the hearings of the Select Subcommittee, Lawrence Tabak, who served as the acting director of NIH from December 20, 2021, to November 8, 2023, agreed the NIH funded “gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through EcoHealth”.

EcoHealth Alliance is a U.S.-based NGO that had received federal funding and later came under fire for its work with the WIV to study wild animal viruses. The U.S. government suspended the group’s federal funding in May 2024 as the lab-leak theory gained in popularity.

Mr. Wenstrup’s report also criticised EcoHealth for delaying the submission of its fifth annual progress report from September 2019 to August 2021. (Organisations that receive government funds are required to provide annual reports on the status of their research to the funding agency.) The Select Subcommittee report has claimed EcoHealth Alliance president Peter Daszak obstructed a congressional investigation into the matter.

The report also blamed the World Health Organisation for pandering to the Chinese Communist Party and concealing important information related to the virus when the cases were being reported.

Economic losses

The Select Subcommittee also delved into COVID-19 relief funding, alleging “significant lapses” in allocation. The Paycheck Protection Programme was created in March 2020 to help small businesses, individuals, and nonprofit organisations by providing them relief loans. According to the report, the programme received multiple fraudulent claims that resulted in the loss of at least $64 billion.

Another area where the U.S. reportedly suffered heavy losses was the fraudulent unemployment insurance payments, which were valued at more than $191 billion by the Select Subcommittee.

The report alleged the lockdowns during the epidemic spread of COVID-19 in the country were “unscientific”. However, it also praised travel restrictions imposed by Republican leader Donald Trump, who was the U.S. President until January 2021 before Joe Biden took over. It said the restrictions weren’t “xenophobic”, as his detractors, including Mr. Biden, had alleged.

The Select Subcommittee report also said vaccine passports — the practice of allowing people to access most public areas like restaurants and sports stadiums only if they had been vaccinated — lacked “scientific basis” and blamed Biden administration and public health officials for exaggerating the “power of COVID-19 vaccines”.

OpenAI, responding to questions from US lawmakers, said it’s dedicated to making sure its powerful AI tools don’t cause harm, and that employees have ways to raise concerns about safety practices.

The startup sought to reassure lawmakers of its commitment to safety after five senators including Senator Brian Schatz, a Democrat from Hawaii, raised questions about OpenAI’s policies in a letter addressed to Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman.

“Our mission is to ensure artificial intelligence benefits all of humanity, and we are dedicated to implementing rigorous safety protocols at every stage of our process,” Chief Strategy Officer Jason Kwon said Wednesday in a letter to the lawmakers.

Specifically, OpenAI said it will continue to uphold its promise to allocate 20% of its computing resources toward safety-related research over multiple years.

The company, in its letter, also pledged that it won’t enforce non-disparagement agreements for current and former employees, except in specific cases of a mutual non-disparagement agreement. OpenAI’s former limits on employees who left the company have come under scrutiny for being unusually restrictive. OpenAI has since said it has changed its policies.

Altman later elaborated on its strategy on social media.

a few quick updates about safety at openai:

as we said last july, we’re committed to allocating at least 20% of the computing resources to safety efforts across the entire company.

our team has been working with the US AI Safety Institute on an agreement where we would provide…

— Sam Altman (@sama) August 1, 2024

“Our team has been working with the US AI Safety Institute on an agreement where we would provide early access to our next foundation model so that we can work together to push forward the science of AI evaluations,” he wrote on X.

Kwon, in his letter, also cited the recent creation of a safety and security committee, which is currently undergoing a review of OpenAI’s processes and policies.

In recent months, OpenAI has faced a series of controversies around its commitment to safety and ability for employees to speak out on the topic. Several key members of its safety-related teams, including former co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, resigned, along with another leader of the company’s team devoted to assessing long-term safety risks, Jan Leike, who publicly shared concerns that the company was prioritizing product development over safety.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Cairo/ Gaza:

Israeli forces carried out new raids in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, hours before Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was due to address the U.S. Congress.

The latest Israeli attacks destroyed homes in towns east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza and thousands of people were forced to head west to seek shelter, residents said.

The Palestinian Civil Emergency Service said it had received distress calls from residents trapped in their homes in Bani Suhaila, east of Khan Younis, but were unable to reach the town.

Medics later said two Palestinians had been killed in an airstrike on Bani Suhaila, where the armed wing of the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas said fighters had detonated a bomb against an Israeli army personnel carrier.

Israel’s military, which is trying to eradicate Hamas after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, said it had been operating in areas from which fighters had been able to fire rockets into Israel and attack Israeli troops.

Gaza health officials said Israeli military strikes in the past 24 hours had killed at least 55 people, the latest casualties in a war that health authorities in the enclave say has killed more than 39,000 Palestinians.

“Where should we go? Shall we cross into the sea?” said Ghada, who has been displaced with her family six times during the war, via a chat app from Hamad City in northwestern Khan Younis.

“We are exhausted, starved, and want the war to end now, now not an hour later.”

Residents said they had been ordered to head west towards a designated humanitarian area, but that the area was now unsafe. The Israeli military issued the evacuation orders on social media, and some residents received orders to leave by phone.

Israeli forces also launched airstrikes on several areas of central and northern Gaza, including one on Al-Bureij camp in central Gaza which health officials said killed nine people.

PALESTINIANS CRITICISE US

Hamas-led fighters triggered the war on Oct. 7 by storming into southern Israel, killing 1,200 people and taking 250 captives, according to Israeli tallies. Some 120 hostages are still being held though Israel believes one in three are dead.

Some Palestinians who gathered at a hospital in Khan Younis before funerals criticised the United States, Israel’s most important international ally, for welcoming Netanyahu.

He was due to address Congress later on Wednesday and to meet President Joe Biden at the White House on Thursday. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said he would meet Netanyahu in Florida on Friday.

“The United States is a main partner in what is happening in Gaza. We are being killed because of the United States. We are being slaughtered by American planes, American ships, American tanks, and American troops,” said Kazem Abu Taha, a displaced resident from Rafah.

A senior Hamas official, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters: “The Congress invitation to Netanyahu to make a speech gives legitimacy to the crimes of the war of genocide in Gaza. Receiving a war criminal is a shame to all Americans.”

Israel has rejected accusations brought by South Africa at the U.N.’s top court that its military operation in Gaza is a state-led genocide campaign against Palestinians. It has reacted angrily to a decision by the International Criminal Court’s prosecutor to seek an arrest warrant against Netanyahu.

Netanyahu says a deal to release Israelis from captivity in Gaza could be near, but Hamas officials say they see no change in Israel’s stance.

Hamas wants a ceasefire agreement to end the war in Gaza. Netanyahu says the war cannot end before Hamas is eradicated.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

The leaders of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives have invited Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address a joint meeting of Congress, House Speaker Mike Johnson announced on Friday, though the date of the speech has not been set.

The letter inviting Netanyahu was signed by Johnson, Democratic Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

It was first reported by The Hill news website.

Johnson had said the Israeli leader would soon address a joint meeting of Congress, amid heightened tensions with President Joe Biden’s administration over Netanyahu’s handling of the war in Gaza.

The Republican speaker, a critic of the Democratic president’s Israel policy, had said he would invite Netanyahu whether or not congressional Democratic leaders signed onto the letter.

Netanyahu, who has long aligned himself with U.S. Republicans, in March addressed members of the party in the Senate via a video link, nearly a week after Schumer gave a Senate speech branding the prime minister an obstacle to peace and urging new elections in Israel.

Addresses to joint meetings of Congress by foreign leaders are a rare honor generally reserved for the closest U.S. allies or major world figures. Netanyahu has already given three such addresses, most recently in 2015.

This speech would make Netanyahu the first foreign leader to address joint meetings of Congress four times. He is currently tied at three with Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington:

 The Republican leader of the U.S. House of Representatives said on Tuesday he was close to inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address lawmakers even if the Senate’s Democratic leader did not go along.

House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters at the Capitol he had given Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer until Tuesday to sign a letter inviting Netanyahu to address a joint meeting.

“If not, we’re going to proceed and invite Netanyahu just to the House,” Johnson said.

Schumer confirmed that he was talking to Johnson. “I’m discussing that now with the speaker of the House and, as I’ve always said, our relationship with Israel is ironclad. It transcends any one prime minister or president,” Schumer told reporters at his weekly news conference.

The possible divide between the two parties over the issue underscored the politicization of Israel policy, months before a November presidential election in which Democratic President Joe Biden is running against Republican former President Donald Trump.

Republicans have criticized Biden for holding up a weapons shipment to Israel, although other U.S. arms shipments to the Middle East country remain in the pipeline.

Israel launched an assault on Gaza after Hamas militants attacked Israel in October, killing 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in the war, according to the Gaza health ministry. Malnutrition is widespread and much of the coastal enclave’s population has been left homeless, while much of its infrastructure has been destroyed.

Biden’s handling of the war has sparked protests from many of his fellow Democrats and at college campuses across the U.S. Biden has urged Netanyahu to minimized civilian casualties in Gaza and has opposed a large-scale attack on Gaza’s southernmost city, Rafah.

Netanyahu, who has long aligned himself with U.S. Republicans, in March addressed party members in the Senate via a video link, nearly a week after Schumer gave a Senate speech branding the prime minister an obstacle to peace and urging new elections in Israel.

Addresses to joint meetings of Congress by foreign leaders are a rare honor generally reserved for the closest U.S. allies, or major world figures. Netanyahu has already given such addresses three times, most recently in 2015.

That year, Republican congressional leaders invited Netanyahu to address a joint meeting without consulting Democratic then-President Barack Obama, as Netanyahu joined Republicans in opposition to Obama’s international nuclear deal with Iran.

Netanyahu would be the first foreign leader ever to address joint meetings of Congress four times. He is currently tied at three with Britain’s wartime prime minister, Winston Churchill.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

Washington, United States:

The US House of Representatives on Saturday will vote on a major aid package for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, and on a possible ban of TikTok.

Here is a breakdown of the $95 billion package made up of four bills and some odd amendments that lawmakers are trying to attach to it.

Ukraine

The majority of funds in the package, nearly $61 billion, are earmarked for Ukraine’s war effort against the Russian invasion. President Volodymyr Zelensky has been pleading for this money for months, warning that “if Congress does not help Ukraine, Ukraine will lose the war.”

Washington is Kyiv’s main military supporter, but Congress has not passed a major aid package for its ally since December 2022 due to partisan squabbling. 

The bill introduced Wednesday would provide nearly $14 billion to train, equip and finance the needs of the Ukrainian army.

Ukraine would also receive $10 billion in “forgivable loans” for vital economic and budgetary support, including for the energy and infrastructure sectors.

The idea of a loan, rather than a grant, was suggested by former president Donald Trump, who believes the United States should stop handing out money without any payback. A “forgivable loan” can be partly or fully forgiven or deferred under certain conditions.

A large chunk of this money will also go to replenishing US military stockpiles.

The bill also authorizes the US president to confiscate and sell Russian assets in order to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine, an idea that is also gaining traction with other G7 countries.

Israel

The United States’ historic ally Israel will receive $13 billion in military assistance as it fights Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip.

These funds will be used in particular to strengthen Israel’s Iron Dome air defense system.

More than $9 billion will be spent to address “the dire need for humanitarian assistance for Gaza as well as other vulnerable populations around the world.”

The measure, however, would prohibit any direct US funding of the UN crisis-hit Palestinian refugee agency (UNRWA). Israel has accused some of the agency employees in Gaza of involvement in the shocking October 7 attack on southern Israel by Hamas, which triggered the war.

Taiwan, TikTok

The bill would provide some $8 billion to counter China through investment in submarine infrastructure and boosting competition with Chinese projects in developing countries.

The bill also earmarks several billion dollars in weapons funding for Taiwan, a self-ruled island that is claimed by China.

It also includes a provision that would force TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company ByteDance or face a nationwide ban in the United States.

Western officials have voiced alarm over the popularity of TikTok with young people, alleging that it is subservient to Beijing and a conduit to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and Beijing.

Troll amendments

The massive package, a result of a delicate compromise between Democrats and Republicans, was met with backlash from the far-right wing of the Republican Party.

In protest, its members introduced a series of quirky provisions, which have generated some buzz but have no chance of being adopted.

Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene proposed an amendment to a foreign aid bill that would require members of Congress who vote in favor of providing aid to Ukraine to join the country’s military.

“If you want to fund the endless foreign wars, you should have to go fight them,” Greene, a hardline Trump supporter, said on the social media platform X. 

In response, Democrat Jared Moskowitz introduced his own amendment that would rename Greene’s office in Congress into “Neville Chamberlain Room” — a reference to the British prime minister who pursued a policy of appeasement toward Nazi Germany, which ultimately failed to avert World War II.

(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)