A U.S. appellate court in Washington on Tuesday blocked the new chief executive of the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) from installing his appointees to oversee a government-funded organization that advances technology to promote internet freedom across the world. The U.S Court of Appeals overturned a lower court ruling, enjoining the USAGM leader, Michael Pack, from replacing the previously existing leadership of the Open Technology Fund, one of several global media agencies he oversees. Voice of America is one of the USAGM entities but is not affected by the new ruling. The appellate decision is temporary, pending further consideration of the merits of the case against Pack’s attempt to reconfigure the Open Technology Fund’s board. But it appears to reinstate the OTF’s previous board while a lawsuit over the matter proceeds in court.  The decision was the first legal setback for Pack’s effort to assert control of USAGM since he assumed office in June. Earlier this month, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell rejected a request by the OTF’s existing board members to block Pack’s move to replace them. Howell ruled that Congress gave the USAGM chief executive officer definitive authority to control USAGM’s entities and that if Congress did not like Pack’s actions, it could limit his authority through further legislation. Howell noted, “Congress has decided to concentrate unilateral power in the USAGM CEO, and the court cannot override that determination.” The appellate court, however, said Pack seems to lack the same authority over the internet-focused nonprofit Open Technology Fund that he has over the other government-funded global media organizations. “OTF is not a broadcaster … and is not sufficiently similar to the broadcast entities expressly listed” in the law that controls the USAGM chief executive’s actions, a three-judge panel ruled. Pack’s “statutory authority … does not seem to include control of OTF’s board or operations.”The U.S. Agency for Global Media logo at Voice of America, in Washington, D.C., Nov. 22, 2019. (VOA)Howell dismissed concerns about Pack’s replacement of the board, but the appellate panel disagreed and said the OTF board members contesting their ouster were likely to eventually win their case. “The government’s actions have jeopardized OTF’s relationships with its partner organizations, leading its partner organizations to fear for their safety,” the court order said. “Further, absent an injunction during the appellate process, OTF faces an increasing risk that its decision-making will be taken over by the government, that it will suffer reputational harm, and that it will lose the ability to effectively operate in light of the two dueling boards that presently exist.” Neither Pack nor USAGM responded to a VOA inquiry Tuesday for comment on the ruling. A legal representative for the OTF board members who brought the suit did not respond to VOA questions about the verdict. Pack, a conservative filmmaker, won Senate confirmation last month after his nomination lingered for nearly two years in Congress over objections from Democrats. In his first weeks in office, Pack fired the leadership of the entities he oversees, mostly replacing them with career officials. He appointed outsiders to leadership posts at OTF and Radio Marti.  Critics of the Pack’s appointment say Trump named him in an effort to garner more favorable coverage of his administration and that Pack’s replacement of key officials has undermined the media entities’ effectiveness.  Pack has defended the moves as part of his legislative powers aimed at improving and modernizing the U.S.-funded agencies. He has also defended the editorial independence of the network’s journalists and vowed to uphold the VOA Charter. The VOA Charter, signed into law in 1976, requires VOA to be “accurate, objective, and comprehensive” in its reporting; to provide “a balanced and comprehensive” account of American opinion, and to describe U.S. government policies “clearly and effectively.” Pack is the first Senate-confirmed CEO of USAGM following a major overhaul of the agency’s leadership structure that Congress approved in late 2016 and former President Barack Obama signed into law. The changes gave expansive new powers to the CEO over all of the U.S. government-funded civilian broadcasters, including the power to set budgets and terminate funding for agencies the CEO no longer sees as effective. The federal court ruling came a day after Karl Racine, the attorney general in the city of Washington, filed his own lawsuit in D.C. Superior Court, claiming that Pack’s attempted takeover of the OTF board violated city law on governance of nonprofit organizations. 
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Top congressional Democrats met with White House officials Tuesday, as lawmakers and President Donald Trump face down an end-of-month deadline to pass a new funding package combating the vast health and economic effects of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States.  Tuesday’s private talks brought together Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting Chief of Staff Mark Meadows with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.  Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and White House Chief of Staff Meadows attend meeting to discuss coronavirus aid legislation at the White House in Washington.The push for action comes with the country adding on average more than 66,000 new cases per day during the past week, and with federal payments of $600 per week to millions of unemployed workers set to expire at the end of July.  Mnuchin and Meadows have set an unofficial deadline of July 31 to pass the new round of funding. But Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell downplayed that possibility when asked by reporters Tuesday, saying Senate Republicans’ proposal would be introduced by the end of this week.  Months ago, the White House and Congress approved a package of bills totaling more than $3 trillion, with unusual bipartisan agreement. Now Trump, Republican lawmakers and Democrats are voicing an array of coronavirus priorities they need to tackle before Congress leaves Washington in three weeks for its annual August recess. Lawmakers will not return until September.   McConnell said he will not bring a bill to the Senate floor unless it includes provisions curbing the legal liability of businesses and schools if their workers, customers or students contract the coronavirus.  Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) listens during a press conference on Capitol Hill on July 21, 2020 in Washington.Democratic Sen. Dick Durbin said Tuesday there have been only a handful of lawsuits nationwide relating to the pandemic.  “There is no tsunami, there is no flood, but Senator McConnell is trying to capitalize on this moment of uncertainty in America to close down the responsibility of businesses to make certain they do everything reasonably possible to protect their customers and their employees,” Durbin told reporters.  Trump has also called for the measure to include a temporary end to the 7.65% payroll tax on workers’ salaries that would benefit those who are working, but not the more than 17 million unemployed U.S. workers who currently have no paychecks to tax.   Lawmakers of both parties have shown little interest in the president’s payroll tax cut proposal.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell speaks about legislation for additional coronavirus aid during a meeting with President Donald Trump in the Oval Office, July 20, 2020.McConnell said Tuesday his party would focus on passing $105 billion in funding to return U.S. schoolchildren to in-person instruction when the school year begins in the fall, as well as new rounds of funding to address historic levels of unemployment.  “We’ll also be proposing a targeted second round of the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) with a special eye toward hard-hit businesses,” McConnell said on the Senate floor Tuesday. “And speaking of building on what worked in the CARES Act, we want another round of direct payments to help American families keep driving our national comeback.”  Senate Democrats released a proposal Tuesday that would send $430 billion in funding to state and local school districts to help them teach grade-school students in person, online or in a hybrid model. McConnell said Tuesday that Republicans were proposing $105 billion in funding for schools. Trump has suggested withholding federal funding to school districts if they do not reopen fully when the school year resumes.  Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., speaks about the coronavirus during a media availability on Capitol Hill, March 3, 2020 in Washington.“Bullying schools with a one-size-fits-all demand is not the road to get back to in-person learning. It is the road to chaos, more infections and would put families and school staff at risk,” Democratic Sen. Patty Murray, author of the proposal, told reporters in a conference call Tuesday.  Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers want to extend the $600-a-week federal boost to less-generous state unemployment benefits through the end of 2020 and provide more aid for state and local governments to weather the coronavirus crisis.   Some Republicans want to end the extra federal unemployment payments, saying they are a disincentive to push employees back to their jobs because some employees have made more money unemployed than when they were working.   One possible compromise would extend the jobless benefits but cut them to between $200 and $400 a week or limit them to the workers who were paid the least before being laid off.  House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., speaks during a news conference on Capitol Hill, Feb. 4, 2020 in Washington.In a call with reporters Tuesday, House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said there was no magic number for the amount of unemployment benefits, suggesting, “It is not irrational to talk about making sure the neediest are taken care of, and neediest is in the eye of the beholder. “  McConnell has said a new coronavirus spending deal could total about $1 trillion, but Democrats want a much bigger plan, more in line with the $3 trillion measure the Democratic-controlled House of Representatives approved in mid-May. That package, however, has languished in the Republican-controlled Senate as Democrats have called for its passage.  
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Mardy Widman has watched protests against racial injustice unfold in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, for more than seven weeks but stayed away because, at age 79, she feared contracting the coronavirus.But that calculus changed for Widman when President Donald Trump sent federal law enforcement agents to the liberal city to quell violent demonstrations that he said were fueled by “anarchists and agitators.” On Monday, a masked Widman was in the street with more than 1,000 other Portlanders — a far larger crowd than the city had seen in recent days, as it entered its eighth week of nightly protests.  “It’s like a dictatorship,” Widman, a grandmother of five, said, holding up a sign that read: “Grammy says: Please feds, leave Portland.”  “I mean, that he can pick on our city mostly because of the way we vote and make an example of it for his base is very frightening,” she said.Far from tamping down the unrest, the presence of federal agents on the streets of Portland — and particularly allegations they have whisked people away in unmarked cars without probable cause — has given new momentum and a renewed, laser-sharp focus to protests that had begun to devolve into smaller, chaotic crowds. The use of federal agents against the will of local officials has also set up the potential for a constitutional crisis — and one that could escalate as Trump says he plans to send federal agents to other cities.Federal agents disperse Black Lives Matter protesters near the Mark O. Hatfield United States Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 20, 2020.Federal forces were deployed to Portland in early July, and tensions have grown since then: first, on July 11, when a protester was hospitalized with critical injuries after a U.S. Marshals Service officer struck him in the head with a round of what’s known as less-lethal ammunition. Then, anger flared again over the weekend after video surfaced of a federal agent hitting a U.S. Navy veteran repeatedly with a baton while another agent sprays him in the face with pepper spray.Crowds had recently numbered fewer than 100 people but swelled to more than 1,000 over the weekend — and they are once again attracting a broader base in a city that’s increasingly unified and outraged.  Federal agents again used force to scatter protesters early Tuesday and deployed smoke bombs and rubber bullets as some in the crowd banged on the doors of the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse and attempted to pull plywood off the shuttered entryway.”It is time for the Trump troops to go home and focus their attention on other activities,” Oregon Gov. Kate Brown, a Democrat, said on MSNBC.Larry Cosme, president of the Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association, said the federal agents were necessary because local forces have “refused to restore order to the city or cooperate with federal law enforcement attempting to protect federal property, personnel, and regain control.”  “At the end of the day, we all have the same mission: to protect and defend the U.S. Constitution and the American people,” he said in a statement. “State and local officials are failing at that mission.”But constitutional law experts said federal officers’ actions are “unprecedented” and a “red flag” in what could become a test case of states’ rights as the Trump administration expands federal policing.  Elsewhere, the Department of Homeland Security said Monday it plans to deploy about 150 of its agents to Chicago to help local law enforcement deal with a spike in crime, according to an official with direct knowledge of the plans who was not authorized to speak publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity. The Trump administration also sent more than 100 federal law enforcement officers to Kansas City to help quell a rise in violence after the shooting death of a young boy there.”We’re going to have more federal law enforcement, that I can tell you,” Trump said Monday. “In Portland, they’ve done a fantastic job.”Mardy Widman, a 79-year-old grandmother of five, protests the presence of federal agents outside the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse in Portland, Oregon, July 20, 2020.For days after the death of George Floyd — a Black man who died after a white Minneapolis police officer pressed a knee into his neck — protests against police brutality and racial injustice in Portland attracted thousands and were largely peaceful. But smaller groups of up to several hundred people have vandalized federal property and local law enforcement buildings, at times setting fires to police precincts and smashing windows. They have also clashed violently with local police.A constant focus of protesters has been the federal courthouse, which sits in the heart of downtown and is now covered with graffiti and completely boarded up, with only thin slits cut into the plywood for federal agents to use as peepholes.Portland police used tear gas on multiple occasions until a federal court order banned its officers from doing so without declaring a riot. Now, anger is building as federal officers deploy tear gas.State and local authorities, who didn’t ask for federal help, are awaiting a decision in a lawsuit that seeks to restrain the federal agents’ actions. State Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said in court papers that masked federal agents have arrested people on the street, far from the courthouse, with no probable cause and whisked them away in unmarked cars.Court documents filed in cases against protesters show that federal officers have posted lookouts on the upper stories of the courthouse and have plainclothes officers circulating in the crowd.  The federal government faces also another lawsuit, filed Tuesday in federal court. In it, The Western States Center, two state representatives and others argue federal agents violated protesters’ 10th Amendment rights because they engaged in police activities that are designated to local and state governments. The Western States Center, based in Portland, helps organize and promote the rights of minority and low-income communities.Homeland Security has not responded to repeated requests to comment on these allegations against them, though the department has said the city is “is rife with violent anarchists assaulting federal officers and federal buildings.”Officials in Illinois and Chicago have also pushed back on the planned deployment there. On Tuesday, Gov. J.B. Pritzker called it a “wrongheaded move.”Pritzker, a Democrat who has also been among the harshest critics of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, said he had contacted Homeland Security for information about the plan with no immediate response.As crowds have swelled again in Portland, most prominent among them now are the Wall of Moms and PDX Dad Pod, self-described parents who have shown up each night since the weekend by the hundreds, wearing yellow T-shirts and bicycle helmets and ski goggles for protection and carrying sunflowers.  Some wielded leaf blowers Monday night to help disperse tear gas as they marched down a major downtown street and joined up with several hundred Black Lives Matter protesters in front of the federal courthouse.”It’s appalling to me, and it’s a unifying thing. Nobody wants them here,” said Eryn Hoerster, a mother of two children, ages 4 and 8, who was attending her first nighttime protest. “It’s bringing a lot of people downtown.” 
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The U.S. government has charged a visiting Stanford University researcher of  visa fraud in connection with a plan to conceal her membership in the Chinese military. Federal prosecutors said Monday 38-year-old Song Chen lied on her visa application in 2018 to work at Stanford as a neurologist. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California said Song indicated on the application that she served in the Chinese military from September 2000 to June 2011 and worked at a Beijing hospital. Prosecutors said, however, she was a member of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) when she entered the U.S. in December 2018 and that her claim of working in a Chinese hospital “was a cover for her true employer, the PLA.” According to the complaint, Song said she disassociated from the Chinese military after graduating from Fourth Military Medical University, which is associated with the PLA.  The U.S. attorney’s office said Song faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted. 
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Crystal and Chris Martin put off some payments on their home in this blue-collar town near Flint and are pinching pennies to make ends meet until they return to work. In Windsor, Connecticut, Anne Druce’s family canceled home improvement projects out of an abundance of caution but remains financially secure.
As the coronavirus pandemic drags on, a new poll finds it is having different effects on Americans’ economic well-being. For some, the virus has meant lost income or struggles to pay bills on time — particularly among Hispanic, Black and younger Americans. Others, most notably college-educated and older Americans, have transitioned to working from home or have experienced the nation’s economic decline through a dip in the value of their investments.
“It’s just all been kind of frustrating,” said Crystal Martin, who lost her job managing a roller skating rink in March and waited 10 weeks for her first unemployment check. Her husband, an X-ray technician at a Flint hospital, was laid off for about month, then took parental leave after Crystal had a baby in July, to reduce the chances of bringing home the virus.
“We had to go into our savings, and we were crunching numbers to see how long it would last,” said Martin, adding that the couple, who have six children in their blended family, still aren’t sure if their mortgage company will add the deferred house payments to the end of their loan or demand the money all at once later this year.
Overall, roughly a quarter of Americans say they have lost savings and about as many have lost income, according to the latest COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago. About 2 in 10 report losing a job and roughly another 2 in 10 say they have put themselves at risk of exposure to the virus for work.
Meanwhile, the survey also finds about a third of Americans say their investments were negatively impacted during the pandemic. About a quarter say they have had to change their work routine, including having to work from home.
 
That includes Druce, who said she and her husband, James, are fortunate to have well-paying jobs — she’s a process engineering consultant for an insurance company and he works for a mutual fund company — that allow working from home.
While feeling financially stable, they’re saving as much money as possible — aside from spending to take a beach vacation in August with their two young boys — because “anything can change,” Druce said.
“I know it sounds insanely privileged,” said Druce, “but I 1,000% feel fortunate.”
The poll finds that disparities of economic experience during the pandemic by race and ethnicity, age and education are stark.
— More college-educated Americans have lost investments, 45%, compared with 28% of those without a college degree. By contrast, Americans without a degree were more likely to have delayed paying bills — 26%, compared with 10% of college graduates.
— Hispanic and Black Americans were more likely than white Americans to have lost income (42% and 32% vs. 21%) and to have delayed paying bills (38% and 35% vs. 14%).  
— Thirty-one percent of Hispanics say they have put themselves at risk of exposure for work, compared with 19% of white Americans.
— Younger Americans were more likely to have lost a job, put themselves at risk of exposure or delayed paying bills, while more older Americans lost investments.  
Beyond the dollars-and-cents impacts of the pandemic, the survey found the economic effects taking a toll on Americans’ mental health, with stress rising among those who report a loss of income, a loss of savings and trouble paying bills.
Tom W. Smith, director of the Center for the Study of Politics and Society at NORC and the study’s lead investigator, said people are also feeling more lonely than might be expected given the recent easing of restrictions and the reopening of businesses. That could be because people still are severely restricting normal activities, perhaps because of finances or because they’re “not willing to take the chance yet” on potentially exposing themselves to the virus.
Adding to the uncertainty and anxiety: Some initiatives meant to help people get through the crisis — including extra unemployment compensation and moratoriums on evictions and utility shut-offs — are set to expire soon, said Joy Peterman, development director at the Salvation Army in Flint.
Her organization has seen a 25% increase in requests for assistance during the pandemic, mostly from people who were forced to seek help for the first time and many of whom were still working.
“They just didn’t have enough money to continue to pay their bills (because of) shorter hours and less pay,” said Peterman, who believes needs will increase in coming months. “You still have rent, you still have utilities, you still have a car payment, insurance and the phone bill. And you still have to feed your children.”
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