Jan. 6 defendant fired on deputies ahead of expected arrest, court records show

A Jan. 6 defendant wanted on misdemeanor charges opened fire at sheriff’s deputies last week as they checked on him ahead of his expected arrest, triggering a lengthy standoff, according to newly unsealed court filings.

Deputies from the Dallas-area Hunt County Sheriff’s Office indicated that they were dispatched to the home of Nathan Pelham on April 12 for a “wellness check” after his father warned he was a suicide risk and possessed a gun. After trying to coax Pelham to stand down for hours, sheriff’s deputies and the FBI were unable to arrest him that day. He was instead arrested on Tuesday.

Prior to the standoff, Pelham faced charges for his role in the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol. Charging documents in that matter depict Pelham wearing goggles and a neck gaiter before entering the Capitol for about seven minutes on Jan. 6, 2021. Two months later, he was stopped at the Canadian border in Michigan and admitted to authorities that he had been in the Capitol.

Now, Pelham is facing a felony charge that could result in years of jail time for allegedly firing a 9mm pistol in the direction of deputies.

The sheriff’s deputies indicated that when they arrived at his house, Pelham sent his young daughter outside before he began firing gunshots.

“After putting the child in the patrol car, Deputy J.W. heard gunshots coming from inside the residence,” according to the newly revealed charging documents. “Deputy J.W. reported that the gunshots were spread out in time and that they were not towards the HCSO personnel. Deputy J.W. moved his patrol car away from the front of the residence for additional safety.”

The deputy who first said he shielded Pelham’s daughter arrived at about 8:40 p.m. An hour later, according to the filings, Pelham’s father arrived on the scene and another shot was fired.

“[T]he bullet from this gunshot came in so close proximity to myself that I could hear the distinct whistling sound as the bullet traveled by me and then strike a metal object to my right side,” one of the deputies, identified only as J.W., reported.

An FBI agent arrived on the scene at about 10:40 p.m. to help put Pelham under arrest. He said he heard another six to seven gunshots fired.

The court documents indicate that Pelham has a 2003 Texas felony conviction, which barred him from being in possession of a firearm.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/f1NKcmq
via IFTTT

Read More

Manchin grills Granholm over 'budget busting' electric vehicle rules

Sen. Joe Manchin accused the Biden administration Thursday of "liberalizing" Congress' efforts to stimulate sales of electric vehicles — and warned Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm that the president's approach could send money and jobs to China.

It was the West Virginia Democrat's latest attack on the administration's handling of the sweeping climate bill that Manchin helped write.

Manchin, who chairs the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, told Granholm at a hearing that President Joe Biden's implementation of the Inflation Reduction Act could "bust the budget" and go far beyond the spending forecast that Congress relied on last year.

He specifically accused the administration of loosening Congress' mandate that electric vehicles must be made with domestically produced parts and minerals to receive $7,500 tax incentives. As a result, he said, many more EVs with foreign-sourced parts will claim the tax break, and jobs will go overseas.

Manchin told Granholm he had not believed that Congress needed to include the EV tax credit in Democrats' climate law at all. But "if we're going to do it, let's get something for it," he said, referring to the law's incentives for automakers to move their supply chains to the United States or its trading partners.

"If they don't have to come, they're going to take it somewhere else cheaper and easier to get," Manchin said. He added, "[It] could probably be China coming through the back doors."

Granholm denied that would happen, saying the administration is likely to include China in a list of "foreign entities of concern" whose vehicle parts and components would not be allowed to qualify for the tax credit.

The Treasury Department is expected to decide later this year which countries to place on the list.

Manchin also took particular aim at the Biden administration's classification of certain foils, powders and other components as processing under Treasury's guidance. By classifying the powders as “critical minerals,” rather than “battery components,” the Treasury has avoided placing even more severe restrictions on vehicles eligible for the tax credit.

Granholm said the Energy Department had advised Treasury on issues relating to energy definitions, including for the EV tax credit. But she said DOE applied the "exact" definition for processing that Congress has used in the bipartisan infrastructure law passed in 2021.

"They didn't want to go back and re-do what Congress had just passed," she added.

But Manchin responded that the IRA has specific language on the issue, and that DOE should not have turned to the earlier infrastructure bill.

"Y'all broke the law by advising, referring back to the bipartisan infrastructure bill. It had nothing to do [with it]. This is the IRA we passed," said Manchin, who has threatened to sue the administration over its implementation of the tax credit.

"I think there is a difference of opinion among the lawyers about what the actual definition [is]," Granholm replied.

"Depends on who's paying the lawyers," Manchin quipped.

Manchin has also targeted EPA's new proposed tailpipe emissions rules, which the Biden administration says will drive a dramatic increase in EV sales in the next nine years. Manchin said in a statement this week that the proposed rules were a “Trojan horse" whose timelines would increase the United States' reliance on minerals and technologies controlled by China, and he said that he would support Congress overturning them.

House Republicans introduced legislation Wednesday that would raise the federal debt limit in conjunction with a series of policy changes — including cutting the IRA's green energy tax credits.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/th01fS4
via IFTTT

Read More

The global confusion over new AI rules

The lightning-fast arrival of chatbots and other eerily human AI tools is triggering a sudden, anxious call for new rules to rein in a technology that's freaking a lot of people out.

Right on cue, these proposals — many of which span national borders — are arriving. But they are also raising a big global question: Can any of them work together?

This week, European politicians called for new rules for so-called generative AI— the technology behind the likes of ChatGPT and Google's Bard — and also urged President Joe Biden and Ursula von der Leyen, his European Commission counterpart, to set up a global summit to develop global standards.

In the U.S. Senate, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced plans last week to create a so-called "AI Framework" to boost oversight over the fast-evolving technology — all while giving companies the freedom to keep innovating.

They’re joining a cavalcade of existing AI rulebooks that range from UNESCO's Ethics of AI agreement to the Council of Europe's Convention of AI to more focused proposals like last year's White House "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights," as well as the European Union's AI Act.

There are now more national AI strategies than you can shake a stick at, including China's burgeoning AI rulebook. And the voluntary AI Principles from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) are now almost five years old — a lifetime in terms of how artificial intelligence is developing.

Not to be outdone, American and European officials, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo and EU Commissioner for Competition Margrethe Vestager, will gather next month to promote shared guardrails for so-called "trustworthy AI," or an acknowledgement that Western democracies must work together when defining how this technology should be used.

The policymakers behind this effort are trying to sound reassuring that some kind of global, or at least Western, harmony on artificial intelligence rules will prevail.

"Companies on both sides of the Atlantic can use these tools to ensure that they can comply with requirements on both sides," Alejandro Cainzos, a senior aide to Vestager, Europe's digital chief, said in an interview soon after U.S. and EU officials met in Washington late last year to discuss the AI rules. "We have different systems, but the underlying principles will be well-aligned."

“You’ve got people still fighting around the edges”

But as quickly as such proposals are published, doubts are arising about whether any kind of international standard for AI is even possible. The answer is important — and will likely define the geopolitics engulfing technology in the decade to come.

Artificial intelligence, like many new technologies, crosses borders as easily as the internet does, and is already embedded across society in ways that were unthinkable years, if not months, ago.

Yet countries' laws and rulebooks aren't so jet-setting. That's leading to increased tension in how leaders grapple with the rise of AI that is playing out — in real time — in efforts to create a global consensus about what rules are needed to calm everyone's nerves.

"I'm just really afraid that the OECD countries need to get past arguing about small things and look at the bigger picture," said Audrey Plonk, head of the OECD's digital economy policy division, whose team developed the group's AI Principles, arguably the most comprehensive Western playbook for how to approach the technology.

Many countries, the OECD official told POLITICO, have different views on how to regulate AI, and such friction — some want immediate government intervention before the technology is rolled out, others want to see how the market develops before stepping in — is slowing down coordination on what should be done now.

"If we don't move in the same direction on something as important as this, we're all going to suffer," added Plonk, whose team just created a multi-stakeholder group to address the future policymaking implications of AI. "You've got people still fighting around the edges."

Shared language, different approach

Fortunately for the rulemakers, many of the existing, most voluntary, AI rulebooks have a lot in common. Most call for greater transparency in how AI decision-making is made. They demand stronger data protection rights for people. They require independent oversight of automated decision-making. The goal is to let people know when they are interacting with AI, and give policymakers and the general public greater clarity about how these systems work.

But some, including the EU's AI Act, which has been engulfed in political wrangling for more than two years, outlaw specific — and ill-defined — "harmful" use cases for the technology. The European Parliament is still finalizing its draft of those rules, and then monthslong, if not yearslong, negotiations will be needed before the legislation is complete. Officials warn a deal won't be done well into 2024.

Others like proposals from the United States, United Kingdom and Japan, which plans to use its G-7 presidency this year to push for greater collaboration on AI rulemaking, prefer a more hands-off approach.

Such differences mean that while most countries agree that the likes of accountability, transparency, human rights and privacy should be built into AI rulemaking, what that actually looks like, in practice, still varies widely.

The problem comes down to two main points. 

First: different countries are approaching AI rulemaking in legitimately different ways. The European Union mostly wants a top-down government-led approach to mitigate harms (hence the AI Act). The U.S. would prefer an industry-led approach to give the technology a chance to grow. Complicating matters is China, whose fast-paced AI rulemaking — mostly to give the Chinese Communist Party final say over how the technology develops — is based on the prism of national and economic security.

Second: ChatGPT and its rivals have set off a separate, but related, call for new oversight specifically aimed at generative AI — in ways that overlap with existing regulation that could hold this technology to account without the need for additional rulemaking.

Case in point: Schumer's proposed AI framework and the open letter from European politicians leading on the bloc's AI Act.

Both efforts name-checked the current AI craze as a reason to do something to rein in the technology's potential excesses. But given there are already too many international proposals on what to do with the technology, what's missing, still, are the finer points of policymaking required to go beyond platitudes around accountability, transparency and bias to figure out how that actually plays out into a cross-border set of enforceable rules.

What about ChatGPT?

Others even question if generative AI needs new rules in the first place.

For Suresh Venkatasubramanian, director of Brown University's Center for Tech Responsibility and co-author of the White House's "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights," it's unlikely ChatGPT would pass existing standards — either domestic, regional or international rules — for AI because of the lack of transparency about how its so-called natural language processing, or complex data crunching, actually works.

Instead, policymakers should focus on building out the specifics of existing rulebooks, and work on greater international collaboration that can provide at least some form of baseline rulebook — and not get caught up in the latest ChatGPT hype train.

"If we focus on the point of impact, focus on where the systems are being used, and make sure we have governance in place there — just like we have wanted all this time — then, automatically, generative AI systems will have to be subject to those same rules," said Venkatasubramanian.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/yFsk04E
via IFTTT

Read More

House GOP debt limit plan would block Biden’s student loan agenda, prohibit future relief

House Republicans’ plan to raise the debt limit would block President Joe Biden’s signature student debt cancellation program and take a hammer to his administration’s other student loan policies.

The bill unveiled on Monday by Speaker Kevin McCarthy and GOP leaders would nullify Biden’s plan to cancel up to $20,000 of debt per borrower and end the freeze on monthly payments and interest.

McCarthy, speaking on the House floor on Wednesday, touted the plan as blocking Biden’s “student loan giveaway for the wealthy.” He said the repeal of student debt relief “will protect the 87% of adults without student loans for paying the loans of the 13% who do.”

The legislation would also bar the Biden administration from moving forward with a new income-driven repayment plan that cuts monthly payments for most borrowers and shortens the timeline to loan forgiveness for some borrowers.

In addition, the GOP plan would permanently prohibit the Education Department from issuing any significant regulation or executive action that would increase the long-term cost to the government of operating the federal student loan programs.

Such a sweeping prohibition would imperil efforts by the administration to provide additional relief or benefits to student loan borrowers. That would include any backup option for canceling large amounts of student debt if the Supreme Court rejects Biden’s student debt relief plan in the coming months.

Key context: The provisions are among dozens of policy changes and spending caps that House Republicans included in their 320-page legislation to raise the debt limit by $1.5 trillion or until March of next year, whichever comes first.

Republicans have argued that they want concessions from the administration that lower the federal deficit and reduce spending in exchange for their votes to raise the nation’s borrowing limit.

McCarthy said he hopes to pass it in the House next week. But the proposal stands no chance of passing the Democrat-controlled Senate.

Biden swiftly dismissed McCarthy’s proposal as a nonstarter. “That’s the MAGA economic agenda: spending cuts for working and middle class folks,” Biden said of the plan on Wednesday. “It’s not about fiscal discipline, it’s about cutting benefits for folks that they don’t seem to care much about.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/QjL3gZy
via IFTTT

Read More

Anatomy of a smashed window: Pezzola tells his Jan. 6 story

Few events on Jan. 6 symbolized the fragility of American democracy more clearly than the moment Dominic Pezzola — a Proud Boy from upstate New York — smashed a Senate window with a stolen police riot shield, paving the way for a pro-Trump mob to enter the Capitol.

On Wednesday, Pezzola tried to rewrite that history, telling a jury that the shield smash — which coincided with the frantic evacuation of Congress and then-Vice President Mike Pence — was the result of adrenaline, fear and confusion, not the carefully executed plot of an insurrectionist.

It was, he said at the federal courthouse in Washington D.C., “just more of being caught up in the confusion, panic, chaos, mayhem that happened that day. It was stupid. I’m sorry I did it. It wasn’t anything I’m proud of. But it happened. What can I say?”

“I should’ve stopped. I should’ve turned and went home,” he continued. “For some reason I felt I didn’t have total control of my actions.“

Pezzola took the stand Wednesday to fend off charges that he and four Proud Boys leaders plotted to forcefully derail the transfer of power from Donald Trump to Joe Biden. The seditious conspiracy charges he and his four codefendants face are the gravest leveled by prosecutors in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack.

Prosecutors are expected to cross-examine Pezzola Thursday and are sure to challenge many of the claims he made.

Pezzola is expected to be the final witness in a trial that has stretched more than four months and been marked by interminable delays, intense legal quarrels and high stakes testimony from cooperating witnesses and defendants. Alongside Pezzola, prosecutors have charged Proud Boys leaders Enrique Tarrio, Ethan Nordean, Joe Biggs and Zachary Rehl with joining the alleged seditious conspiracy.

Pezzola’s testimony, like the riot itself, was chaotic. He described feeling in mortal danger from police crowd-control measures, the resolve to face down the “enemy” that he drew from his military training, an intensifying fear that he might not live to see his wife and daughters, fury at police for lobbing flashbangs in the area of women in the crowd and an “autopilot” that he said took over just before he smashed the window.

Pezzola told jurors he had no inkling of any plan to topple the government and was irritated at his Proud Boys allies for diverting the group away from Trump’s speech that morning for a march to the Capitol. But when he arrived, he nevertheless made his way toward the front of the gathering mob — a decision he attributed to “car crash syndrome.”

“Why I moved over there was basically out of curiosity,” he said.

That’s when the rubber bullets started raining down, Pezzola said, including one that cut through the cheek of rioter Joshua Black, spraying blood all over the ground at the front of the police line. Though Pezzola said he considered the crowd to have been passive at that moment, video of the scene shows skirmishes along the police line, which officers positioned on a nearby overhang were witnessing with a birds eye view.

“It felt like being under sniper fire,” Pezzola said, adding, “In my mind, this is pretty much what I felt like combat would be like, being shot at by the enemy.”

Pezzola, who was right behind Black, said the barrage of less-lethal munitions aimed at the crowd infuriated him and he attempted to engage officers in an argument about the appropriate use of force. He also lunged to grab a shield from a nearby Capitol Police officer — which he said was meant for self-protection — but came away empty-handed. Eventually, the swell of the crowd knocked him down, he said, and in the chaos, he observed another rioter wrest a shield from the same officer, and Pezzola managed to grab the loose shield for himself.

Pezzola’s lawyer, Steve Metcalf, repeatedly asked Pezzola why he didn’t just turn around and leave amid the chaos. He said he refused to leave the Capitol grounds even after police began firing rubber bullets in his direction because his “military training” had conditioned him to “keep your eye on where the threat is coming from.”

“I’m pissed off Steve, that’s all I can really say,” Pezzola said. “The adrenaline is so high at that point. You’re on autopilot. I guess I’m just programmed to charge toward danger.”

Pezzola later added that he was particularly infuriated when he saw munitions landing in the crowd near women, and he repeatedly asked his lawyer to pause video of those moments so he could highlight women who were visible in the crowd to the jurors.

Pezzola would take the shield back to fellow members of the Proud Boys and pose for a picture before returning to the front of the mob, surging to the foot of the Capitol and destroying a window leading to the Senate wing of the building. That breach, which prosecutors have described as the first time the Capitol was breached by hostile actors since the war of 1812, came at the precise minute the Senate shut down its effort to certify the results of the election.

Pezzola said that when he got inside, he had no plan and no knowledge of the Capitol’s layout, so he basically wandered around and followed the crowd while taking pictures and videos. POLITICO recently identified footage of Pezzola encountering the evacuation of Sen. Chuck Grassley, who had been presiding over the Senate just moments before.

He would soon shoot a celebratory selfie video that prosecutors view as a key piece of evidence in the case. “Victory smoke in the Capitol, boys. This is fucking awesome,” he said in the video while smoking a cigar. “I knew we could take this motherfucker over [if we] just tried hard enough.” Pezzola told jurors he took the video because he wanted to say something “profound” on a day he believed would be “historic.”

Moments later, Pezzola joined the portion of the mob that chased Capitol Police officer Eugene Goodman to the edge of the Senate chamber, where a standoff ensued. All told, Pezzola said he was inside the building for about 20 minutes, and he handed the shield back to a police officer as he exited.

Asked by Metcalf to characterize his actions, Pezzola called it, “A bad reaction to a bad situation.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/ZqxscEz
via IFTTT

Read More

Elton John joins Senate hearing in support of AIDS relief program

"There is no better symbol of American greatness than PEPFAR," John said during his opening remarks.

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/kN7sr9a
via IFTTT

Read More

House GOP plows ahead on risky immigration plan

House Republicans dug in Wednesday on a two-track strategy to project commitment to border security. Both tracks seem headed toward failure.

On one side, Judiciary Committee Republicans are in the midst of an hourslong debate on a sweeping border and immigration plan they'll vote to advance Wednesday afternoon after weeks of closed-door negotiations.

Meanwhile, Republicans are also quietly laying the groundwork to potentially impeach Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas as he appears before the Homeland Security panel —ostensibly to talk about his department's budget request but instead facing a cascade of GOP fury over his handling of the border.

The border bill and Mayorkas impeachment already faced heavy skepticism from a coalition of GOP centrists that's showing no signs of fading. Centrists have raised fears that the immigration plan goes too far in limiting asylum claims, while also blanching at conservative demands to take the historic step of impeaching a Cabinet official.

Though neither House GOP effort has a chance at success in the Democratic-controlled Senate, a failure to get border security measures through the one chamber of Congress they control would mark a significant stumble for Republicans on an issue highly important to their base.

“I am confident leadership will not bring anything to the floor that does not have the votes to pass. … However long that takes, that’s what you want,” said Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas), a vocal critic of the Judiciary Committee's bill.

Criticism from purple-district Republicans amounts to a political tee-ball pitch for Democrats, who are all too happy to cite their GOP colleagues in making their case against the immigration legislation.

“This bill has no chance of being enacted into law, and most of its provisions cannot even pass on the House floor because of opposition from Republicans,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.), his party's top member on the Judiciary panel.

In a nod toward Gonzales, Nadler added that Republicans “should heed the advice of one of their own.”

While the intra-GOP fight has blasted to the forefront, given the Judiciary Committee's advancement of the border security bill Wednesday, Gonzales remains locked in a monthslong public spat with Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas), who has vocally pushed more conservative immigration measures.

Though Roy’s bill isn’t in the Judiciary package, pieces of the committee’s proposed changes to asylum laws closely reflect sections of the Texas Republican's plan.

Many Republicans defended the Judiciary Committee bill, arguing it was needed to push back against more than two years of Biden administration policies and, Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) added, “to restore the successful Trump policy.” Republicans argue the border influx was much more manageable under the former president, when the Trump administration placed drastic limits on migrants' ability to claim asylum.

Meanwhile, Democrats aren't making it easy for Republicans to pass the legislation, offering a slew of potential changes that could appeal to skeptical centrists.

The first Democratic amendment would have stripped out so-called e-verify requirements, which require that certain businesses check the citizenship status of their employees — a bid to turn agriculture-minded Republicans like Reps. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) and Don Bacon (R-Neb.) against the broader bill.

That failed in the Judiciary Committee along party lines. A second amendment from Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) that would have delayed the implementation of the e-verify mandate also failed.

“I’m surprised that this bill is in here, frankly. … It’s never been able to pass on the House floor,” Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) said.

The immigration package is likely to clear the Judiciary Committee on Wednesday without getting tangled in GOP infighting, in part because the panel is stocked with conservatives. But what can clear that panel, Republicans acknowledge, isn’t automatically reflective of what could get 218 votes on the House floor.

And Republicans have set an ambitious goal to clear legislation through the chamber by the middle of next month.

In the meantime, the House Homeland Security Committee will hold a vote on its own border bill next week. The Rules Committee is then expected to merge the two proposals, allowing Republicans to make more changes before a final product gets to the floor.

The Homeland Security panel had initially been expected to hold a vote on its proposal this week, but that was delayed by Mayorkas' scheduled testimony. And Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.), the panel’s chair, reportedly told donors this month that he believed his committee was making the case for Mayorkas' impeachment — a move that would require near-total House GOP unity to succeed.

Republicans have so far rolled out two impeachment resolutions against Mayorkas, and neither has won over even close to a majority of the House GOP conference.

One, from Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas), currently has 42 cosponsors, while a separate resolution from Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) has 32. Democrats, and some GOP lawmakers, have warned that their colleagues are equating a policy disagreement — namely, that Mayorkas isn't appropriately handling increased migration levels — to a high crime or misdemeanor.

“I was dismayed to see that, speaking to a group of campaign contributors last week about today’s hearing, the chairman said, and I quote, ‘Get the popcorn, it’s going to be fun.’ I think that tells Americans all they need to know,” said Mississippi Rep. Bennie Thompson, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee.

During Wednesday's hearing, Green zeroed in on the GOP's argument for impeachment, telling Mayorkas that “you have not secured our borders, and I believe you’ve done so intentionally.”

from Politics, Policy, Political News Top Stories https://ift.tt/SgnxsGv
via IFTTT

Read More