Dem Senate plots move amid spending clash with House GOP

The Senate is preparing its first big move in the fall spending fight.

Chuck Schumer is tentatively planning to bring up several spending bills for floor votes in mid-September, as the Senate majority leader works with Appropriations Chair Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and ranking member Susan Collins (R-Maine) to prepare the bills for prime time. Democrats hope it will set up a stark bipartisan contrast with the House, which has already struggled to pass GOP-backed funding bills ahead of the Sept. 30 shutdown deadline.

The votes could help the chamber advance its spending priorities in coming fiscal clashes with the House Republican majority, which hit some speed bumps before it passed a military construction bill in July and deferred action on an agriculture spending bill. The Senate will consider nominees when it returns from recess next week and likely move to the spending bills the following week.

Schumer and the two spending chiefs are leaning toward floor action on bills funding military construction, transportation and housing, as well as agriculture spending legislation, according to three people familiar with the matter. No final decision has been made, and it’s not clear whether the bills would be rolled together or considered separately; Senate rules mean individual bills take roughly a week to process.

“The Senate Appropriations Committee has passed all 12 bills to fund the government with strong — sometimes unanimous — bipartisan support. The Senate will work to get as much done as possible in September. To avoid a government shutdown, the House should follow the Senate’s lead and pass their appropriations bills in a bipartisan way,” Schumer said in a statement for this story.

Schumer's plans mark the latest move in a larger conflict with House Republicans, who are seeking to slow Ukraine funding and restrict government spending at large. Without regular funding bills, the federal government risks 1 percent spending cuts if Congress continues operating on a stopgap spending bill into January.

Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his House Republican majority do not want a catch-all spending bill, also known as an omnibus, and both chambers of Congress are urgently working to instead pass all 12 spending bills. Last year, McCarthy pilloried the sweeping spending bill devised by House Democrats and bipartisan Senate leaders, sitting out the talks and warning the episode wouldn't be repeated under his leadership.

Yet Congress is nowhere close to having all 12 departments funded under regular order. The House doesn't return from recess until the second week of September, and both chambers have a long way to go before they even pass their own versions of spending bills — let alone reconcile their different spending visions.

House Republican leaders are readying two of their own spending bills for September floor action, on Homeland Security and the Pentagon, though they are keeping their appropriations plans tentative, telling lawmakers that they “may” tee up floor action next month.

Both the House and Senate are working to pass short-term spending bills into December to give the two chambers more time to work out those issues.

Even that could be fraught with challenges. This summer, the Biden administration requested an additional $24 billion for Ukraine funding, $12 billion for disaster relief and about $4 billion for border security and shelter money. Some of that money could ride on the stopgap spending bill, also known as a continuing resolution.

The situation is further complicated by Hurricane Idalia, which hit Florida on Wednesday. Already, the state's Republicans are making noise about immediate disaster relief, with Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) saying he will try to approve new legislation when the Senate reconvenes next week.

“Floridians are doing their part and getting ready, and I will not allow Washington to continue playing games with disaster aid and the lives of those needing our help,” Scott said.

Still, Republicans will have to balance their request for more disaster money alongside the Biden administration’s Ukraine aid request. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell supports continuing to fund Ukraine’s defense against Russia, but many House conservatives and some Senate Republicans are more skeptical. At the same time, Schumer and spending leaders are working closely with Hawaii’s congressional delegation to help Maui recover from wildfires.

So it’s against that backdrop the Senate plans to begin the larger task of fully funding the government before the end of the calendar year while also juggling the more immediate Sept. 30 deadline, as well as tricky supplemental funding requests. Once each chamber has passed spending bills, like the military construction legislation, the House and Senate can enter into a conference to resolve their differences.

Jennifer Scholtes contributed to this report.

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China behind ‘largest ever’ digital influence operation

Groups linked with China’s law enforcement peppered more than 50 social media platforms with pro-Beijing messages, Meta says.

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Officials unveil “unprecedented” cybercrime takedown

Senior Justice Department officials on Tuesday revealed a major digital sting they carried out to quash malware cybercriminals have used for decades to launch ransomware attacks, break into corporate networks, and filch sensitive consumer data across the globe.

The operation, which they called “unprecedented,” involved FBI agents and law enforcement partners in six other countries — France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Netherlands, Romania and Latvia — slipping unnoticed onto the computer servers where criminals controlled the notorious QakBot malware. They issued commands to self-destruct it and then seized roughly $9 million worth of cryptocurrency from those behind the malware, United States Attorney Martin Estrada said Tuesday.

The campaign, which U.S. law enforcement planned over 18 months and then brought to a head over three furious days this weekend, amounts to “the most significant technological and financial operation ever led by the DOJ against a botnet,” Estrada said from a U.S. attorney’s office in Los Angeles.

Botnets — short for robot networks — refer to vast webs of computers that are infected with a common piece of malicious software. Cybercriminals control the botnets via a hub-and-spoke-like web of computer servers, which can then issue commands to the infected machines, harnessing their combined computing power to stage cyber attacks, breach corporate networks or illicitly harvest data.

The operators of botnets also tend to rent access to other cybercriminals via the dark-web, and QakBot’s enormous size made it “the botnet of choice for cyber gangs throughout the world,” Estrada said.

Over the course of the 18 month operation, U.S. and international law enforcement clandestinely gained access to the 52 servers controlling QakBot. That gave them a unique, behind-the-curtain look at how much damage the malware caused.

Cybercriminals infected 700,000 new victims with the malware over the past year alone, roughly 200,000 of which were in the U.S., according to U.S. law enforcement. They also used it to launch 40 different ransomware attacks, causing $58 million in damages.

“You can imagine that the losses have been many millions throughout the life of QakBot,” which has been active since 2008, said Estrada.

U.S. law enforcement did not announce any arrests on Tuesday. When asked who they believed to be responsible for the botnet, Estrada declined to say, citing the ongoing nature of the investigation.

U.S. officials have repeatedly warned that a large percentage of global cybercrime and ransomware activity comes from Russia. They accuse the Kremlin of turning a blind eye to digital crooks as long as they focus their activity abroad — a claim Russia denies. China also accounts for significant hacking activity within the United States, but authorities say a majority of it is state-sponsored. The Chinese government also denies sanctioning hacking efforts.

Given how long it has been operating and the financial nature of the crimes QakBot is associated with, it is likely that many cybercriminals from across the world have contributed to or rented services from the botnet.

The operation follows a string of recent digital takedown operations from the Justice Department, which has made a concerted push over the last three years to find new ways to stem a growing wave of cybercrime.

Because much computer crime occurs abroad, cybercriminals rarely face punishment, even if charged with a crime.

Donald Alway, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles field office, which spearheaded the case, said that the operation had dealt a major blow to cybercrime.

“We believe that this will effectively put the QakBot criminal groups out of business,” he said, and put an end to “one of the most devastating cyber criminal tools in history.”

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Record warm waters power Hurricane Idalia's path to the coast

Hurricane Idalia is gathering strength as it churns toward Florida’s northern Gulf Coast, fueled by a sizzling marine heat wave that has gripped the Gulf of Mexico all summer.

The storm could surge into a catastrophic Category 4 cyclone before making landfall Wednesday morning, National Hurricane Center forecasters warned.

Its path toward Florida’s Big Bend region includes waters where sea surface temperatures are hitting 90 degrees. The Gulf is warm under normal circumstances — water temperatures tend to hover in the 80s this time of year — but those extra few degrees are hurricane juice, researchers and meteorologists say.

“It just makes rapid intensification more likely,” said Brian McNoldy, a hurricane expert at the University of Miami.

Though much remains unknown about what causes hurricanes to strengthen swiftly, a few factors can help. Warm waters and low wind shear — a measurement of the way winds change speed or direction as they move over the ocean — are key.

Idalia tussled with some wind shear as it churned slowly through the Caribbean over the weekend, but conditions turned more favorable as it pushed past Cuba and entered the Gulf late Monday night. Wind shear is lower, and the waters are as warm as a bathtub. The National Hurricane Center’s latest forecast predicts it will hit the coast as at least a Category 3 storm, with winds around 125 mph, but the National Hurricane Center warned that some models had winds reaching as much as 138 mph.

By the time it makes landfall, experts expect Idalia will meet the threshold for what scientists call rapid intensification — that’s when a storm’s wind speeds increase by at least 35 mph within a 24-hour period.

That would make it the second storm this season to rapidly intensify. Hurricane Franklin, now churning toward Bermuda in the Atlantic Ocean, became the strongest storm of the summer so far after ballooning Monday into a Category 4 hurricane.

Last year’s devastating Hurricane Ian swelled from a weak Category 1 to Category 3 in a single day, before ultimately making landfall as a Category 4 storm along the state’s southwest coast.

The phenomenon is growing more common as the climate warms, research suggests. A 2019 study found that the proportion of cyclones undergoing rapid intensification is increasing across the Atlantic Basin, and that intensification rates are rising. A 2018 study also found that hurricanes are intensifying faster than they used to.

Rapid intensification can cause problems for communities in a storm’s path. It can sometimes cause forecasts to underestimate a storm’s intensity when it makes landfall, leaving people with little time to prepare for a major hurricane.

Models are getting better at predicting rapid intensification events, said Philip Klotzbach, a hurricane expert at Colorado State University. In Idalia’s case, scientists saw the burst of intensity coming days in advance. But it’s still a tricky business.

“It’s still hard — sometimes these storms really explode,” he said. “There’s still a challenge there.”

A summer of record-breaking heat

This summer’s unusual water temperatures are part of an ongoing pattern, experts say. The Gulf of Mexico has been warming for decades — and the warming has accelerated in recent years. One recent study found that temperatures there have risen swiftly since 2010.

Human-caused climate change has a clear influence on Gulf temperatures. But other factors may also be at play, said Mark Bourassa, associate director of Florida State University’s Center for Ocean-Atmosphere Prediction Studies.

“We know it’s warming, we know it has been warming, but in the last few years we’ve seen it warm up a lot more than we would expect from [human-caused] warming,” he said. “It’s not clear what’s doing it.”

There are a few theories about what’s going on this summer, said Zhankun Wang, an oceanographer at Mississippi State University and lead author of the recent study on rising Gulf water temperatures.

The Gulf Coast has experienced record-breaking air temperatures this summer — New Orleans just felt its hottest weather on record at 105 degrees Sunday. Extreme air temperatures may be funneling extra heat into the upper water layers of the Gulf of Mexico, Wang suggested.

That’s likely to happen more often in the future, as climate change drives more frequent and intense heat waves.

Some scientists also believe that the much-feared weakening of a major Atlantic Ocean current, which among other things carries warm water from the tropics toward Western Europe and the U.S. East Coast, could be causing more heat to build up in the Gulf over the long term, Wang added. Studies indicate that the current has been slowing for decades and climate change is likely at least partly to blame.

Record heat in the larger Atlantic Ocean basin likely has had at least some influence on Gulf temperatures this summer, too, Klotzbach added. The North Atlantic, in general, has experienced some of its hottest temperatures ever recorded over the last few months.

The long-term influence of climate change is steadily increasing ocean temperatures over time. The world’s oceans hit their hottest temperatures on record in 2022 for the fourth year in a row, scientists announced in January.

But a few additional factors have probably contributed to this year’s extreme heat. Trade winds over the Atlantic have been weaker than usual, and they haven’t churned up the ocean as much as they would in a normal year. That’s allowed the water to sit relatively stagnant and soak up heat.

In a typical year, winds also sweep large volumes of dust from the Sahara Desert in Africa out over the ocean. This dust has a slight cooling effect on local temperatures. But this year’s weaker winds have carried less dust, contributing to even faster warming.

Under ordinary conditions, scientists would expect above-average hurricane activity from such extreme ocean heat. But it’s been an unusual summer for another reason, too.

This year has been marked by a strong El Niño event, a natural climate pattern that causes temporary warming in the eastern and central Pacific. Because the world’s oceans are so closely connected, El Niños can influence weather all over the globe. El Niño years also tend to see drops in Atlantic hurricane activity, because of higher wind shear.

Scientists weren’t totally sure what to expect at the beginning of this season, said Klotzbach, the Colorado State University scientist. This combination of conditions is largely uncharted territory.

“We’ve never had a strong El Niño with a record warm Atlantic at the same time,” he said. “So we’re kind of off in a spectrum that we haven’t seen, which makes forecasting extra challenging.”

Colorado State University and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration each issue an annual hurricane forecast at the beginning of the season. Both institutions predicted an average season this year, assuming that the influence of El Niño and the extreme warm waters would essentially cancel each other out.

But Atlantic wind shear hasn’t been too extreme so far this year. That may be partly because El Niño is still gathering strength, said McNoldy, the University of Miami scientist.

And the warm waters have helped some storms battle through the wind shear that does exist, Klotzbach added. Rapidly intensifying Franklin is a prime example.

“It did get torn apart by shear, but managed to hang on,” Klotzbach said. “And then it got into a much more conducive environment, and now it’s exploded.”

Scientists measure seasonal hurricane activity in a few different ways. One is the total number of storms that form. Another is the total accumulated cyclone energy, which measures the cumulative wind speed and strength of all the storms that form throughout the season.

Thanks to the combination of Franklin and Idalia, this season already is approaching the average level of total accumulated energy for a typical season, Klotzbach said — and the season is only half over. That means there’s a good chance it will end as an above-average season after all, with the record warm waters largely to blame.

This summer’s unusual confluence of conditions may have been a first, but it likely won’t be the last. Studies suggest that El Niño events may grow more severe as the Earth continues to warm. The oceans also will keep warming as long as humans continue to pour greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and scientists expect marine heat waves will grow more frequent and severe.

“Next time we have a season that looks like this, 2023 will be a great analog,” Klotzbach said. “But we’re a little bit flying blind in 2023.”

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'A big f-ing deal': Dem convention delegates will stay within Chicago city limits

CHICAGO — State delegations attending the 2024 Democratic National Convention will get to do something almost unheard of: Stay in a hotel within the city limits.

Hotels for next year's Democratic convention delegates are all in downtown Chicago and all within close proximity of each other, allowing high-profile speakers to travel quickly from one hotel to another for the Aug. 19-22, 2024 event.

“It means we’ll be able to conduct joint activities together whether it's nighttime fundraisers or events. You name it,” Ken Martin, chair of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party for the past 13 years and vice chair of the Democratic National Committee, told POLITICO.

Conventions often overwhelm cities with demand for hotel space, and delegations wind up in far-flung suburbs with long commutes. The Chicago convention could be a significant quality of life improvement for the 2024 convention delegates.

Martin recalled hotels for Democratic conventions in Philadelphia and Charlotte “so far spread out that it made it virtually impossible for state party delegations to actually do joint activities together.”

He called the improved logistics “a big f-ing deal.”

The Chicago hotels designated for the convention are within a five-mile radius of official convention venues — including McCormick Place, where the party plans to conduct daytime meetings, and the United Center, where evening proceedings will be broadcast nationwide.

State party chairs and executive directors have already been notified about where they’ll be staying. Delegates will travel to Chicago in a few weeks for a Sept. 12 preview day that will include convention site visits and tours of their respective hotels.

The Biden Victory Fund also has a meeting scheduled in Chicago as part of the visit.

State Sen. Bill DeMora, a delegate director for Ohio Democrats, said he has found the logistics to be so smooth he would love to see all the Democratic conventions hosted in Chicago.

“I remember staying about an hour away at the convention in Charlotte. Our delegation was split up between multiple hotels,” he told POLITICO, referring to the North Carolina convention in 2012, one of the seven conventions he's been to over the years. Next year, the entire Ohio delegation will all stay at one hotel, the Fairmont, and will be housed with four other state delegations, he said.

The promise of close hotels to convention events was a big reason Chicago was chosen to host the convention, according to party leaders who spoke to POLITICO. And it helped that all the hotels the convention will use are unionized, since unions are an important constituency for the Democratic base.

While many of the hotels are within walking distance from each other, delegates will be bused back and forth to McCormick Place for official meetings. The trek will take them along a two-and-a-half-mile restricted access route used only by Chicago’s mayor, the Cook County Board president and special buses with security clearance. Officials taking part in the 2012 NATO G-8 Summit in Chicago also used the route.

Former Mayor Rahm Emanuel liked to call it the “bat cave” because a large portion of the route is underground.

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Hawaii power utility takes responsibility for first fire on Maui, but faults firefighters

HONOLULU — Hawaii’s electric utility acknowledged its power lines started a wildfire on Maui but faulted county firefighters for declaring the blaze contained and leaving the scene, only to have a second wildfire break out nearby and become the deadliest in the U.S. in more than a century.

Hawaiian Electric Company released a statement Sunday night in response to Maui County’s lawsuit blaming the utility for failing to shut off power despite exceptionally high winds and dry conditions. Hawaiian Electric called that complaint “factually and legally irresponsible,” and said its power lines in West Maui had been de-energized for more than six hours when the second blaze started.

In its statement, the utility addressed the cause for the first time. It said the fire on the morning of Aug. 8 “appears to have been caused by power lines that fell in high winds.” The Associated Press reported Saturday that bare electrical wire that could spark on contact and leaning poles on Maui were the possible cause.

But Hawaiian Electric appeared to blame Maui County for most of the devastation — the fact that the fire appeared to reignite that afternoon and tore through downtown Lahaina, killing at least 115 people and destroying 2,000 structures.

Richard Fried, a Honolulu attorney working as co-counsel on Maui County’s lawsuit, countered that if their power lines hadn’t caused the initial fire, “this all would be moot.”

“That’s the biggest problem,” Fried said Monday. “They can dance around this all they want. But there’s no explanation for that.”

Mike Morgan, an Orlando attorney who’s currently on Maui to work on wildfire litigation for his firm, Morgan & Morgan, said he thinks Hawaiian Electric’s statement was an attempt to shift liability and total responsibility.

“By taking responsibility for causing the first fire, then pointing the finger on a fire that started 75 yards away and saying, ‘That’s not our fault, we started it but they should’ve put it out,’ I’m not sure how that will hold up,” Morgan, who manages complex litigation, said Monday. “It’s also so premature because there are ongoing investigations.”

Officials with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives who are investigating the cause and origin of the fire, and lawyers involved in the litigation, were at a warehouse Monday to inspect electrical equipment taken from the neighborhood where the fire is thought to have originated. The utility took down the burnt poles and removed fallen wires from the site.

Videos and images analyzed by AP confirmed that the wires that started the morning fire were among miles of line that the utility left naked to the weather and often-thick foliage, despite a recent push by utilities in other wildfire- and hurricane-prone areas to cover up their lines or bury them.

Compounding the problem is that many of the utility’s 60,000, mostly wooden power poles, which its own documents described as built to “an obsolete 1960s standard,” were leaning and near the end of their projected lifespan. They were nowhere close to meeting a 2002 national standard that key components of Hawaii’s electrical grid be able to withstand 105 mile per hour winds.

As Hurricane Dora passed roughly 500 miles (800 kilometers) south of Hawaii Aug. 8, Lahaina resident Shane Treu heard a utility pole snap next to Lahainaluna Road. He saw a downed power line ignite the grass and called 911 at 6:37 a.m. to report the fire. Small brush fires aren’t unusual for Lahaina, and a drought in the region had left plants, including invasive grasses, dangerously dry. The Maui County Fire Department declared that fire 100% contained by 9:55 a.m. Firefighters then left to attend to other calls.

Hawaiian Electric said its own crews then went to the scene that afternoon to make repairs and did not see fire, smoke or embers. The power to the area was off. Shortly before 3 p.m., those crews saw a small fire in a nearby field and called 911, the utility said.

Residents said the embers from the morning fire had reignited and the fire raced toward downtown Lahaina. Treu’s neighbor Robert Arconado recorded video of it spreading at 3:06 p.m., as large plumes of smoke rise near Lahainaluna Road and are carried downtown by the wind.

Hawaiian Electric is a for-profit, investor-owned, publicly traded utility that serves 95% of Hawaii’s electric customers. CEO Shelee Kimura said there are important lessons to be learned from this tragedy, and resolved to “figure out what we need to do to keep our communities safe as climate issues rapidly intensify here and around the globe.”

The utility faces a spate of new lawsuits that seek to hold it responsible. Wailuku attorney Paul Starita, lead counsel on three lawsuits by Singleton Schreiber, called it a “preventable tragedy of epic proportions.”

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Police search for suspected shooter at University of North Carolina; students warned to stay inside

CHAPEL HILL, N.C. — An apparent shooting at the University of North Carolina flagship campus on Monday led to a school-wide alert warning of an “armed, dangerous person on or near campus” and urging people to go inside and avoid windows.

Authorities didn’t immediately provide details of the alleged shooting on the Chapel Hill campus, including whether anyone had been shot. But Gov. Roy Cooper posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that he had spoken to the Orange County sheriff and the state’s public safety secretary and “pledged all state resources needed to capture the shooter and protect the UNC campus.”

Cooper didn’t provide further information. School officials said as soon as they had verified information, they would share it. They didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking further details.

The school’s first alert was sent out just after 1 p.m. At 1:50 p.m., officials posted on X that the shelter-in-place order remained in effect and that it was “an ongoing situation.” About 40 minutes later, the school added a post saying: “Remain sheltered in place. This is an ongoing situation. Suspect at large.”

About two hours after the first alert went out, officers were still arriving in droves, with about 30 police vehicles at the scene and multiple helicopters circling over the school, where the fall semester started last week.

An officer admonished two people who tried to exit the student center, yelling, “Inside, now!”

About 10 minutes later, law enforcement escorted a group of students out of one of the science buildings, with everyone walking in an orderly line with their hands up.

A student told TV station WTVD that she had barricaded her dormitory door with her furniture. Another student, speaking softly, described hiding in fear with others in a dark bathroom.

The report of the shooting and subsequent lockdown paralyzed campus and parts of the surrounding town of Chapel Hill a week after classes began at the state’s flagship public university. The university has approximately 20,000 undergraduate students and 12,000 graduate students.

Noel T. Brewer, a professor of health behavior, said that he was once held at gunpoint in his mother’s jewelry store, but that Monday’s apparent shooting and lockdown was “far more stressful.”

Speaking from his locked office where he hid with other colleagues, Brewer, 57, said by phone that he was getting little information.

Brewer, a married father of two young kids, said he felt for anyone who might have been shot.

“But even in our own building, the students who are locked down and what they’re thinking about — it’s just a lot. It’s a terrible situation,” said Brewer, a married father of two young children.

It was also the first day of kindergarten for Brewer’s 5-year-old son. His elementary school was also on lockdown.

“He doesn’t know what’s going on. And at some point, he’s going to realize that he hasn’t gotten on the bus when he’s supposed to,” he said.

Brewer, who also has a 2-year-old added: “My husband and I have been trading texts and trying to figure out what to do … Just wondering how our kids are feeling. It’s a lot.”

One of Brewer’s colleagues is visiting from Africa and staying in the U.S. for the first time.

“She said her one concern was guns and possibly something happening at the university,” Brewer said. “And this was her first faculty meeting, and her worst nightmare came true.”

As he and his colleagues waited in locked offices, they texted each other about whether it was safe to walk to the bathroom.

“We’re trying to tell each other stories and talk about cooking and trying to not get worked up,” he said. “But at the same time, we’re fielding lots of texts and calls from friends and family and colleagues.”

Nearby Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools posted on social media that all doors would be locked at its schools and offices until authorities say it’s safe.

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