Politics

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday announced new grants aimed at further desegregating magnet schools, as he marked the 70th anniversary of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling that desegregated America’s public schools.

“My Department of Education is investing $300 million, including another $20 million announced today to support diversity in our schools,” Biden said in remarks at an NAACP event at the National Museum of African American History and Culture.

The $20 million in new grants is for school districts in Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, North Carolina and Texas, to create magnet programs geared toward “attracting students from different social, economic, ethnic and racial backgrounds,” the White House said.

The Education Department earlier this week released a report that found there remain gaps in education among Black and Latino students and their white counterparts in high school math, science and computer science.

The White House frames these steps as an effort to “continue the work” of the landmark Supreme Court ruling.

“After [the] Brown vs. Board [of Education] decision, the public schools gradually — and often much too slowly — were integrated. Graduation rates for Black and Latino students increased significantly though,” Biden said. “The Brown decision proves a simple idea: we learn better when we learn together.”

Biden used his speech to take on political rival, former President Donald Trump, whom he referenced simply as “my predecessor.”

“My predecessor, and his extreme MAGA friends, are now going after diversity, equity and inclusion all across America. They want a country for some, not for all,” the president said.

Biden sought to draw a contrast between himself and Trump.

“I’ve always believed that the promise of America is big enough for everyone to succeed, and I mean that, everyone to succeed,” Biden said. “That’s what Brown is all about. That’s what we’re all about. That’s what America’s about.”

The grant announcement is part of a larger multi-day push by the Biden administration to make inroads with Black voters who his campaign is counting on in November’s presidential election.

On Thursday, the administration announced it is taking formal next steps to reclassify marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule III. Also, Biden met with plaintiffs from the landmark Brown case and their families on Thursday.

“Once upon a time, they were excluded from certain classrooms. But 70 years later, they’re inside the most important room of all, the Oval Office, where they belong,” Biden said. “They’re a living reminder that once upon a time, wasn’t that long ago.”

Biden added that despite this progress, there is more to do.

Biden also said that before his remarks on Friday he met with the “Little Rock Nine,” the children who first integrated their district’s public schools in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Later Friday, Biden was set to meet privately with the leaders of the historically Black “Divine Nine” fraternities and sororities, before traveling this weekend to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College in Atlanta.

“The founders of Morehouse understood something fundamental: education is linked to freedom,” Biden said. “Because to be free means to have something that no one can ever take away from you. And that’s the power of an education. That’s why the Brown decision to commemorate today is so important.”

Biden also used his remarks to tout the work his administration is doing in higher education to ease the economic toll on young people.

“While college degrees are still a ticket to the middle class, that ticket is becoming too expensive,” Biden said. “Too many, too many young people, Black students are dealing with unsustainable debts in exchange for a college degree.”

Michelle Stoddart contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday said he is disappointed in the chaos and name-calling that happened during a raucous House Oversight Committee markup on Thursday night when Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez clashed over Greene’s comments that Rep. Jasmine Crockett wore “fake eyelashes.”

“It was not a good look for Congress,” the speaker told ABC News. “We all — I think — need to control the emotions better and get the job done.”

Tension flared Thursday night during the committee’s markup of a resolution to hold Attorney General Merrick Garland in contempt of Congress for refusing to turn over the audio recording of President Biden’s interview with Special Counsel Robert Hur. However, the drama had nothing to do with that, and led to a nearly hourlong disruption where lawmakers shouted over eachother.

“I think the decorum in the house is an important tradition to maintain,” said Johnson, the top Republican in Congress who is known for his civility. “So we’ll be talking about that with our members. I think Hakeem Jeffries needs to do the same on the Democrat side.”

It all began when the Georgia Republican made a crack about the Texas Democrat’s eyelashes — “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading” — which was made when Crockett pushed back to a line of questioning from Greene.

Democrats called for Greene’s eyelash comment to Crockett to be stricken from the record and the congresswoman to be barred from speaking for the rest of the proceedings. Greene repeatedly shouted she was “not apologizing.”

“That is absolutely unacceptable, how dare you attack the physical appearance of another person,” Ocasio-Cortez, a New York Democrat, said.

“Are your feelings hurt?” Greene responded.

“Oh baby girl … don’t even play,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back.

The proceedings devolved then into further chaos with lawmakers shouting over each other and Democrats repeatedly trying to force Greene to apologize. At times, House Oversight Committee chair James Comer said he struggled to hear over the shouting and repeatedly worked to bring order to the proceedings. Comer even called a brief recess to figure out how to parliamentary respond to Greene’s remarks.

“Why don’t you debate me … you don’t have enough intelligence,” Greene said to Ocasio-Cortez during the exchange.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., made a crack about Democrats on the committee not wanting to work.

Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., shot back, “like showing up for a vote?” — presumably a jab at the fact that Luna and several other members missed much of Thursday on Capitol Hill attending former President Donald Trump’s criminal trial in New York.

“You have a lot to say being that you’re on retainer for the judge’s daughter. Sorry trust fund kid,” Luna replied — a reference to the daughter of Judge Juan Merchan, who is overseeing Trump’s trial. The judge’s daughter has been the target of Trump and Republican’s criticism over her work for a digital consulting firm that they claim creates an “ongoing financial interest” tied to the former president’s criminal trial.

Luna also said Democrats should be disciplined for making unspecified cracks about “Marjorie’s body.”

“I hope you brought your popcorn,” Greene added, then moved on to talking about how her “body is pretty good” given how she is “going to turn 50 this month.”

After a vote to strike Greene’s comments failed along party lines, Greene eventually continued her remarks and the hearing continued.

Despite the chaos and disorder that unraveled during the markup, the GOP-led House Oversight Committee ultimately voted 24-20 late Thursday to approve a report recommending a contempt of Congress resolution against Attorney General Merrick Garland for his failure to turn over audio recordings of the Special Counsel Robert Hur interview with President Joe Biden.

The Garland contempt resolutions now head to the full House for a vote.

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(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon’s temporary floating pier system was anchored onto a beach in Gaza on Thursday amid the Israel-Hamas war, and U.S. officials say humanitarian aid will begin flowing “in the coming days.”

Officials did, however, stress that while the pier — formally called the Joint Logistics Over-the-Shore, or JLOTS, capability — will help bring aid to the strip, the real long-term solution in Gaza is to fully open the land routes so more aid can flow in.

Pentagon officials said aid will begin flowing quickly, though initially it will be at a slow pace to ensure the system is working properly before operations are scaled up.

“This morning, just a few hours ago, the pier was successfully affixed to the beach in Gaza, and in the coming days, we will commence the delivery of aid,” Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, deputy commander of U.S. Central Command, told reporters Thursday.

“The pier is temporary in nature,” he added. “This maritime route is additive and is not meant to replace land routes into Gaza.”

Several aid organizations, including United Nations organizations, have warned Gaza is experiencing “catastrophic” levels of hunger and need, and a top U.N. official recently warned northern Gaza is experiencing a “full-blown famine.”

Cooper said there are currently 500 tons of aid waiting to be transported ashore via JLOTS, a complex operation involving a floating platform, small ships and an 1,800-foot pier or causeway where food aid will be offloaded for distribution by nongovernmental aid agencies inside Gaza.

Located a few miles offshore, the floating platform is a way station for aid as it’s unloaded off cargo ships onto trucks that are then carried aboard small vessels that will take them to the causeway, which is attached to land. It enables the U.S. to deliver aid without having troops on the ground in Gaza.

While U.S. officials said the flow of aid would begin “in the coming days,” the Pentagon’s deputy press secretary, Sabrina Singh, told reporters Thursday the process will play out slowly at first.

“We have to we have to make sure that everything operates in a seamless [way], so you’re gonna see us again, go from that crawl, walk, run,” Singh said during a Pentagon press conference. “It’s going to start off small and scale up.”

Singh emphasized that once ashore, the food aid will be distributed inside Gaza and will not be warehoused in the area where the pier is attached to land.

“We believe that aid should flow without any stoppage,” Singh said.

The expectation is that the JLOTS system will be able to bring between 90 and 150 truckloads a day of aid, equivalent to 2 million meals, but U.S. officials said it was more accurate to focus on the number of tons of aid that will be flowing into Gaza instead of the “imperfect measure” of truckloads.

“The real measure that we’re striving toward getting at and understanding is what is reaching the people and communities in need and making sure it’s the right assistance,” said Sonali Korde, assistant to the administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Bureau for Humanitarian Assistance.

Security for U.S. forces and nongovernmental organizations participating in the JLOTS system is a top priority, officials said, adding the Israel Defense Forces will provide security at the point where the aid will arrive and be transferred to the United Nations and other NGOs.

But officials said the security for those working on bringing aid ashore could still be improved.

“The deconfliction measures are not where they need to be at, given the complexity of the environment,” Korde said. “So those conversations are ongoing. They need to continue and they need to get to a place where humanitarian aid workers feel safe and secure and able to operate safely, and I don’t think we’re there yet.”

Weather conditions that caused high sea states delayed the anchoring of the JLOTS system by more than a week, and Cooper acknowledged weather conditions may affect JLOTS operations in the future.

“There are light storms, medium storms, heavy storms. One … variable we cannot control here is the weather. So we’ll just see what that looks like,” Cooper said. “It’s very favorable here in the coming days and week or so. And our goal is to move as much humanitarian assistance as possible during that period, and then we’ll make assessments going forward as we would with any military operation and the weather.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris has accepted an offer from CBS News to participate in a vice-presidential debate this summer, the Biden campaign said Thursday.

Harris accepted CBS News’ proposed dates of July 23 or Aug. 13, the campaign said.

“The Biden-Harris campaign has informed CBS News that we accept the network’s invitation to participate in a Vice Presidential debate, in studio, on either of two dates,” the campaign said.

Trump has not yet made his vice-presidential pick, thought several potential hopefuls appear to be working to get in the former president’s good graces through participation in his fundraisers and attending his New York criminal trial.

The news of the vice-presidential debate came a day after President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, agreed to two debates before the general election. One will be a prime-time debate at ABC News studios on Sept. 10. The debate will air on ABC News, ABC News Live and Hulu. Before that, they will participate in a CNN debate on June 27 in Atlanta.

The vice presidential debate would have the same guidelines that the Biden campaign outlined on Wednesday — including that it would not have an in-person audience, that there be firm time limits for answers, alternate turns to speak and candidate’s microphone should only be on when it is their turn to speak.

As part of the debate negotiations, the Biden campaign proposed a vice-presidential debate in late July after the Republican National Convention. The former president has said he doesn’t plan to make an announcement about his vice-presidential pick until closer to the RNC.

“Well, I’m not in a rush and we’ll do it sometime around the convention, but we have a lot of great people in the Republican Party,” Trump said in an interview with ABC affiliate WPVI in April, when asked about a potential vice presidential candidate.

“We look forward to the Trump campaign accepting one of these dates so that the full debate calendar for this campaign can be set,” the Biden campaign said.

Like the presidential debates, the vice-presidential debates are happening on an accelerated timeline.

Vice presidential debates have traditionally been held within the first two weeks of October. Harris and former Vice President Mike Pence squared off on Oct. 7, 2020.

ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley, Lalee Ibsaa and Soorin Kim contributed to this report.

 

 

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Thursday informed House Republicans that President Joe Biden has formally asserted executive privilege over the audio of his interview with special counsel Robert Hur, a move that DOJ says effectively shields Attorney General Merrick Garland from any criminal exposure as the Republican lawmakers move toward trying to hold him in contempt of Congress.

Citing what it describes as as “extraordinary” cooperation and “good faith” efforts to provide Republicans will all relevant materials from Hur’s investigation into President Biden’s handling of classified documents while out of office, the department argued disclosing the audio would set an untenable precedent where high-profile figures under criminal scrutiny would second-guess cooperating with the government in the future.

“The Attorney General must draw a line that safeguards the Department from improper political influence and protects our principles, our law enforcement work, and the people who carry out that work independently, without fear or favor,” Assistant Attorney General Carlos Uriarte wrote in the letter. “The Committees seek to hold the Attorney General in contempt not for failing in his duties, but for upholding them.”

Uriarte further details in his letter how the department previously made available the transcript of Biden’s interview with Hur, and argues Republicans have failed to provide any reason that the audio would add further value to their efforts to investigate Biden.

In explaining the move to have Biden formally assert executive privilege over the remaining materials sought by Republicans — which includes the audio of the interview with Biden’s ghostwriter Mark Zwonitzer — Uriarte points to longstanding DOJ policy “held by administrations of both parties that an official who asserts the President’s claim of executive privilege cannot be prosecuted for criminal contempt of Congress.”

“With the information you now have, the Committees ought not to proceed with contempt and should instead avoid unnecessary and unwarranted conflict,” Uriarte said.

The Republican-led House Judiciary Committee planned to meet Thursday morning to move forward on recommending contempt proceedings against Garland.

The Justice Department had previously provided a transcript of Biden’s interview to House Republicans.

Hur’s yearlong probe into Biden’s handling of classified documents ended with no criminal charges being recommended because the evidence wasn’t sufficient to support a conviction. However, the 388-page report Hur released a political firestorm as the special counsel described Biden as someone who could appeal to a jury as an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

White House Counsel Ed Siskel also wrote a letter to House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and House Oversight Chairman James Comer explaining the decision to assert executive privilege over the recordings.

In it, Siskel argued Biden has a responsibility to protect the executive branch’s law enforcement agencies from “undue partisan interference.”

“The absence of a legitimate need for the audio recordings lays bare your likely goal—to chop them up, distort them, and use them for partisan political purposes,” Siskel wrote.

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(WASHINGTON) — Soon to be released Pentagon figures will show a significant almost 19% reduction in the number of service members who say they have experienced some type of unwanted sexual contact over the previous survey conducted two years ago, according to a U.S. official.

There was also a drop in the number of sexual assault reports involving service members filed last year, according to the official.

Every two years, the U.S. military carries out an anonymous survey that Defense Department officials believe is a better indicator of the prevalence of sexual assault in the military than the annual reports where victims may be reluctant to step forward to report a sexual assault.

This year’s survey indicated close to 29,000 reported unwanted sexual contacts, an almost 19% reduction from the 35,800 reported in the survey carried out in 2021.

The Pentagon survey defines unwanted sexual contact as ranging from unwanted touching to rape.

The reduction was the first in over eight years and drew comments from President Joe Biden as he met with senior U.S. military leaders at the White House on Wednesday.

“I’m proud that for the first time in nearly a decade, rates of sexual assault and harassment … within active duty forces are down — are down because of your leadership,” he said.

Separately, the number of reports of sexual assault also decreased in 2023 to 8,515 from 8,942 in 2022, according to the official.

The Pentagon has increased the support and care it provides to victims of sexual assault and has raised the awareness encouraging victims to step forward with what is often underreported.

But numbers of incidents and reports have gone up in years that those efforts have increased, so it’s unclear what might be behind the new drop in numbers.

The previous survey of sexual prevalence in the military showed a dramatic increase from 20,000 to 35,800, but defense officials noted that was because of changes in how the survey was carried out.

That made full comparisons between those two surveys impossible until the upcoming release of this year’s survey.

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(AUSTIN, Texas) — Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. spent a week dogged by self-damaging rhetoric, leaving him to defend the state of his health and scramble to rework his position on abortion after facing dissent from within his own campaign.

But on Monday, he had something to celebrate: the prospect that he had earned a spot on the ballot in Texas, a coup for an independent candidate in a state that forces independents to gather at least 113,000 signatures from registered voters across the state, a much larger haul than required in most states. The campaign delivered boxes of signatures to the Texas Secretary of State’s Office, a spokeswoman for whom told ABC News the campaign’s petition is “under review.”

Kennedy touted the accomplishment at an Austin rally alongside his running mate, Nicole Shanahan, whose appearance itself was noteworthy, as the California lawyer had maintained a reclusive approach to the campaign trail since she was announced as Kennedy’s running mate in late March.

Texas is the 14th state in which the Kennedy campaign says it has met the criteria for ballot access. The signature requirement also made it the most grueling.

“If you can get on in Texas, you can get on everywhere,” Kennedy said on stage in Austin.

Yet the campaign still faces hurdles to gain ballot access in each state, a goal Kennedy and his aides say they will achieve.

Already, they face the prospect of starting their signature-gathering from scratch in Nevada after they submitted petition forms that lacked the name of a vice presidential candidate, violating the state’s rules.

And Democrats will likely try to obstruct Kennedy’s progress, as they already attempted in Hawaii, where the state ruled against the Hawaii Democratic Party after it challenged the ballot access petition of a new political party created just for Kennedy.

Shanahan makes trail debut, but some Kennedy voters still skeptical

Much of the spotlight this weekend was on Shanahan, who made her debut on the campaign trail in Houston on Saturday before accompanying Kennedy at the Austin rally two days later.

The Houston event was an intimate panel-like forum that focused on criminal justice reform and allowed Shanahan, who has invested time and money into addressing issues in the justice system, to showcase what appears to be her most tangible attribute: her authenticity and passion for the things she cares about.

Before she addressed the audience in Houston, she turned to each panelist, all of whom had described scarring experiences with the law, and thanked them one by one. She then fought tears during her remarks as she discussed the “legacy of the ruthlessness of the American psyche.”

She even came prepared with a quote from the psychologist Carl Jung, reading it with dramatic effect.

But at times during her Texas appearances, her delivery felt dissonant with the desires of her audience, especially among attendees of the Austin rally, who seemed more eager for an injection of energy than a perfectly woven soliloquy.

The crowd of about 800 cheered loudly when Shanahan was introduced, but soon fell quiet when the candidate, whose appearance marked one of her first public events, opened her speech by saying, “I want to talk about soil,” prompting a minuteslong metaphor about the need to fix America’s “foundation.”

Shanahan eventually hit the populist and anti-establishment themes that tie together many of Kennedy’s supporters, criticizing Democrats and Republicans and painting politicians as out for themselves. But her appearance left some Kennedy supporters still trying to figure her out.

“I don’t know much about her,” Tammy Markham, a 54-year-old entrepreneur, told ABC News after leaving the event. “So I want to find out more about her. I just know that when he announced that he was going to have her as vice president, I know a lot of us supporters were like, woah, OK, who is this?”

Markham said she was impressed with Shanahan’s speech in Austin, but, she cautioned, “it takes more foundation and rock-solid knowledge for me to be impressed than just the brouhaha.”

A week of damage control

Though they were a united front on Monday, Kennedy and Shanahan seemed confused last week about Kennedy’s abortion stance.

Kennedy told podcast host Sage Steele in an interview released last week that “we should leave it to the woman” to choose to have the procedure, “even if it’s full term.”

When Steele relayed Kennedy’s position in a separate conversation with Shanahan, the running mate appeared visibly surprised.

“My understanding is that he absolutely believes in the limits on abortion,” she told Steele. “And we’ve talked about this. I don’t know where that came from.”

At the same time, Angela King, a Kennedy staffer and anti-abortion activist, aired her dissent to Kennedy’s “full term” comments on social media, an embarrassingly public undressing of the candidate she advises, which led Kennedy to walk back the abortion comments in a lengthy X post Friday night.

“I support the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point,” he wrote, in part. “I believe that point should be when the baby is viable outside the womb.”

Kennedy also found himself last week responding to unearthed comments where he claimed a doctor told him that a parasitic worm was found in his brain more than a decade ago. Also, that he suffered from mercury poisoning — both of which he said gave him “cognitive problems.”

Kennedy assured he has made a full recovery from each issue and even tried to lean into the worm issue, which garnered significant media attention: making a surprise appearance at a Los Angeles comedy show on Friday, he cracked, “My brain worm wrote some jokes for me.” He also joked last week on X that he would “offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate.”

On Friday, the candidate issued an explanation for an admission he made on a podcast that he offered his children fake vaccine cards during the COVID-19 pandemic so they could attend universities, which required the shot without actually getting one (he said his children did not accept his offer since “they didn’t want to lie.”)

“Coercion to force submission to illegal vaccine mandates became the norm during Covid,” Kennedy wrote on X. “As Martin Luther King, Jr. observed, ‘One has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.’ I acted accordingly.”

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(WASHINGTON) — A bipartisan group of senators, led by Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, on Wednesday unveiled a “roadmap” for lawmakers aimed at guiding Congress on regulating artificial intelligence.

They said the recommendations are a critical step as Congress considers legislation to increase innovation and safeguard against negative uses of the rapidly-evolving technology.

The document called for a hefty increase in funding for AI innovation to be worked into Congress’ annual funding process — funding to the tune of $32 billion over several years, an amount recommended by the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence.

That money, Schumer said during a news conference will help to “cement America’s dominance in AI.”

Schumer said that separate funding, perhaps additional billions, will likely also be needed in coming years to address defense and national security concerns related to artificial intelligence.

“Congress faced a momentous choice: We could either watch from the sidelines as AI reshape our world or make a novel earnest bipartisan effort to harness and regulate this industry,” Schumer said. “We knew if we did nothing real problems could merge in terms of the lack of maximizing the benefits of AI and the lack of minimizing the detriments of AI.”

He said he’ll strive to make the effort not only bipartisan but bicameral and that he would soon meet with House Speaker Mike Johnson to discuss AI policy. Schumer said he thinks Johnson is “very interested” in moving forward.

The working group of senators has been focused on artificial intelligence in recent months and it includes Schumer, Sen. Todd Young, R-Ind., Sen. Mike Rounds, R-S.D, and Sen. Martin Heinrich, D-N.M.

Before releasing the “roadmap” Wednesday, the group convened a series of “AI insight forums” over the last several months that featured high-profile names in tech as well as stakeholders across a number of industries. More than 150 experts participated across the nine forums.

The document is the end result of that work. It does not include legislative text, but is meant to help inform lawmakers as they continue to grapple with how best to pass legislation to reign in artificial intelligence. Senate committees have been holding hearings on a number of AI topics relevant to their specific committees and the document encourages the continuation of those discussions.

“We always knew we would have to go to the committees to get the specifics done. There’s so many different aspects of AI in so many different areas, that it would take many committees to do it,” Schumer said. “We are very now hopeful that the bipartisan momentum that we fostered and the recommendations we made will extend into the committees and their process.”

There are a vast number of policy priorities that committees can seize upon, and Schumer said he’s hopeful some AI-oriented legislation will be approved by the Senate before the year is out. The Senate, Schumer said, will advance AI legislation as it is ready, and will not wait for a massive package of AI bills to be voted on at one time.

In a major boon to that effort, the Senate Rules Committee on Wednesday advanced several pieces of bipartisan legislation aimed at safeguarding elections from challenges posed by artificial intelligence, including a bill that would ban the use of AI to generate “materially deceptive content” depicting federal candidates.

These so-called “deepfakes” are a focus of the bipartisan report released Wednesday. In addition to backing efforts to regulate fake content concerning elections, the senators also identify a need to regulate destruction of “non-consensual” “intimate” images generated on AI. This issue came into particular focus in January when a sexually explicit AI-generated images of Taylor Swift made the rounds on the internet.

Senators also highlighted in the report the need to consider how to create a federal data privacy framework, how to lead in the adoption of these new technologies in a way that will build up national security, and how ensure that existing laws regulating AI are fully enforced.

They’re also said they were excited by the innovative possibilities of AI. Young and Rounds both highlighted the impact that artificial intelligence could have in curing illnesses like cancer and Alzheimer’s, and said Congress needs to invest in the innovative technology to avoid medical costs to taxpayers down the line.

“Imagine a world in which we cure cancer, Alzheimer’s and other crippling diseases in just a few years’ time,” Young said. “Imagine a world in which government can be far more efficient, in which we actually figure out how to dramatically cut the healthcare cost curve down.”

The senators also say it’s important for Congress to consider growing concerns about the impact AI could have on the workforce, including the possibility that workers could be displaced from their jobs by artificial intelligence. They encourage the lawmakers to engage stakeholders across unions and civil society to ensure that workers are trained and retrained to work with AI rather than be displaced by it.

There has not yet been a major piece of legislation regulating AI to pass Congress. While early efforts have seen some evidence of bipartisanship, it’s not yet clear what sort of support large scale regulatory efforts would ultimately receive.

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(NEW YORK) — A jury was selected and sworn in Wednesday for the bribery trial of Sen. Bob Menendez.

Federal prosecutors in New York have alleged that the New Jersey Democrat accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes in the form of cash, gold bars, mortgage payments and a luxury convertible in exchange for the senator’s political clout. Three New Jersey businessmen who were also charged, along with the governments of Egypt and Qatar, were the alleged recipients.

Menendez has pleaded not guilty to 16 federal charges including bribery, fraud, acting as a foreign agent and obstruction.

The seated jury includes a retired economist, an occupational therapist who likes “hanging out with my dog,” an attorney originally from Michigan and someone who “had a nephew locked up for molestation.” All pledged to be fair.

“I’m going to ask, to the extent you feel comfortable, to minimize your news intake,” Judge Sidney Stein told prospective jurors at one point.

Menendez, 70, remained seated at the defense table in a navy suit and dark pink tie, occupying himself by reading or merely sitting with his hand on his chin, while his attorneys decided which prospective jurors to accept and reject. Two co-defendants were seated behind him in the Manhattan federal courtroom.

A third co-defendant pleaded guilty ahead of the trial.

The senator’s wife, who was also charged in the case, will be tried separately in July due to a medical condition.

Opening statements in Menendez’s trial are scheduled to begin Wednesday afternoon.

Before opening statements, the judge precluded testimony from a psychiatrist the defense hoped would bolster Menendez’s claim that he stashed cash in his home as a result of a “fear of scarcity.” Menendez, the son of Cuban immigrants, has said it was part of his upbringing to keep cash lying around, but Stein said the psychiatrist’s testimony “just doesn’t stand up.”

Menendez is the first sitting member of Congress to be charged with conspiracy by a public official to act as a foreign agent.

The senator has maintained his innocence since his initial indictment last year.

In March, he announced that will not seek another term as a Democrat but he left open the possibility of running in November as an independent.

 

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden and Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, are set to face off in an ABC News presidential debate in September.

Trump and Biden said they have both agreed to a prime-time debate at ABC News studios on Sept. 10.

Before that, they will participate in a CNN debate on June 27 in Atlanta. The debates were scheduled hours after Biden on Wednesday challenged the former president to two debates, which Trump said he was “ready and willing” to do, but pushed for more than two.

“We propose a debate in June, a debate in July, a debate in August, and a debate in September, in addition to the Vice Presidential debate,” said Chris LaCivita and Susie Wiles, with the Trump campaign, said in a memo. “Additional dates will allow voters to have maximum exposure to the records and future visions of each candidate.”

Biden announced Wednesday morning through his campaign that he is bucking the decades-old tradition of fall meetings organized by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates — and instead called on Trump to join him for two televised presidential debates in June and September organized by news organizations.

“Donald Trump lost two debates to me in 2020. Since then, he hasn’t shown up for a debate,” Biden said in a video message his campaign posted to social media. “Now he’s acting like he wants to debate me again. Well, make my day, pal.”

Trump, who skipped all four Republican National Committee-sanctioned 2024 primary election debates and pulled out of one of his three debates with Biden in 2020, said in response that he was willing to debate Biden during the proposed dates, but said there should be more than two debates.

“I am Ready and Willing to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September. I would strongly recommend more than two debates,” Trump posted on his social media platform.

He added, “Just tell me when, I’ll be there. ‘Let’s get ready to Rumble!!!'”

The Biden campaign outlined some conditions for the debates.

The campaign said that the first debate should be hosted by “any broadcast organization that hosted a Republican Primary debate in 2016 in which Donald Trump participated, and a Democratic primary debate in 2020 in which President Biden participated — so neither campaign can assert that the sponsoring organization is obviously unacceptable,” Biden Campaign Chair Jen O’Malley Dillon wrote in a letter to the Commission on Presidential Debates, obtained by ABC News.

Also, “the moderator(s) should be selected by the broadcast host from among their regular personnel, so as to avoid a ‘ringer’ or partisan.”

The Biden campaign said debates have been “structured like an entertainment spectacle and not a serious exchange of ideas that reflect the enormous stakes of the election.” With that in mind, the campaign said the debate should not have an in-person audience full of “raucous or disruptive partisans and donors, who consume valuable debate time with noisy spectacles of approval or jeering,” Dillon wrote in the letter.

“As was the case with the original televised debates in 1960, a television studio with just the candidates and moderators is a better, more cost-efficient way to proceed: focused solely on the interests of voters,” Dillon wrote.

The Biden campaign said all debates should be just between Trump and Biden — meaning it would bar Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an independent candidate, from participating.

Kennedy criticized the move, accusing Biden and Trump from “colluding” to keep him from debating.

“They are trying to exclude me from their debate because they are afraid I would win,” Kennedy wrote in a statement on X. “Keeping viable candidates off the debate stage undermines democracy.”

Kennedy has been vocal about his desire to debate both candidates. But the early date of the CNN debate makes it incredibly unlikely Kennedy will meet that debate’s qualifications, which include registering at least 15% in certain national polls and having his name on the ballot in enough state ballots to reach the 270 electoral college threshold.

Addressing one of the cited issues with the Commission on Presidential Debates, the Biden campaign said, “There should be firm time limits for answers, and alternate turns to speak — so that the time is evenly divided and we have an exchange of views, not a spectacle of mutual interruption,” and that a candidate’s microphone should only be on when it is their turn to speak.

Both the Trump and Biden campaigns has expressed concerns with the organization of the debates by the Commission on Presidential Debates — one slated for September and two planned for October — saying that the scheduled debates don’t conclude until well after early voting has already started.

Earlier this month, the Commission on Presidential Debates pushed back, saying that, “as it always does, the CPD considered multiple factors in selecting debate dates in order to make them accessible by the American public,” including religious and federal holidays, early voting, and the dates on which individual states close their ballots.

On Sept. 16, the day of the first debate, Pennsylvania voters can receive, complete and return ballots at their county boards of elections, the commission noted. Minnesota is one of the first states to offer in-person early voting, and voters there can begin to cast ballots on Friday, Sept. 20.

In a statement to ABC News, the CPD said it will proceed with its scheduled debates.

“Our 2024 sites, all locations of higher learning, are prepared to host debates on dates chosen to accommodate early voters. We will continue to be ready to execute this plan,” the statement reads.

CPD had announced it plans to hold the first debate on Sep. 16 at Texas State University, the second on Oct. 1 at Virginia State University and the third on Oct. 9 at The University of Utah, Salt Lake City. It plans to hold a vice presidential debate on Sept. 25 at Lafayette College in Pennsylvania.

The Biden campaign proposed a vice-presidential debate in late July after the Republican National Convention.

ABC News’ Sarah Beth Hensley, Isabella Murray and Will McDuffie contributed to this report.

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