Aid groups tell judge that Trump’s pause on foreign aid has ‘devastated’ their operations
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(WASHINGTON) — A coalition of nonprofit aid groups said Wednesday at an emergency hearing that the Trump administration’s “opaque and chaotic” 90-day pause on foreign aid had already “devastated” their operations — consequences they said justified a judicial order halting the administration’s sweeping executive order.
The aid groups filed suit Tuesday against President Donald Trump, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Acting USAID Administrator Peter Marocco, Office of Management and Budget Director Russ Vought, the State Department, USAID, and OMB.
Stephen Wirth, an attorney representing the nonprofits, argued at Wednesday’s hearing that his clients’ “businesses are shuttering” while the administration sifts through its foreign aid priorities.
“Food is rotting,” Wirth said. “Medical supplies are expiring and community relationships that took decades to build are crumbling.”
Wirth and his co-counsel noted that the payment portal for government contracts and grants is “completely frozen,” preventing groups from completing projects that have already been appropriated funds.
Eric Hamilton, a Justice Department attorney, replied by arguing that the nonprofits’ lawsuit amounts to a “one-size-fits-all vehicle to litigate highly fact-dependent issues,” and that it should instead be addressed “case by case, contract by contract,” in contrast to the broad relief the plaintiffs are seeking.
Hamilton said waivers that have been put in place to rescue programs deemed to be critical to the “national interest” are sufficient to allow the 90-day pause to continue unimpeded — even through he acknowledged that “there might be some hiccups in implementing” the waivers.
“The policy we’re talking about is just a 90-day pause in funding,” Hamilton argued.
But Nicolas Sansone, an attorney for Public Citizen, another group suing the government, said some of the aid groups “may well not be able to survive the 90 days.”
U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, the Biden-era appointee who convened the emergency telephone hearing, said he would issue a written ruling at some point in the future and asked that plaintiffs file a “more tailored” proposed order by 7:30 p.m. ET.
The aid groups accuse several U.S. government entities, including the president and secretary of state, of breaking multiple federal laws and violating the Constitution by failing to administer funds appropriated by Congress.
The groups claimed on Wednesday morning that contract terminations from the administration had “accelerated” in the 24 hours since they filed their lawsuits, and asked Judge Ali to issue a temporary restraining order to prevent further actions from the administration.
(LOS ANGELES) — The power of the ocean could soon be used to power homes in the U.S. as scientists prepare to test an untapped form of renewable energy.
The U.S. Department of Energy has invested $112.5 million to advance the commercial readiness of wave energy technologies by harnessing the powerful waves of the Pacific Northwest.
The first-ever facility, equipped with open water testing is set to begin operations off a seaside Oregon town next summer, Burke Hales, a professor of oceanography at Oregon State University who has involved in the launch, told ABC News.
Named Pacwave, PacWave the facility was built with the infrastructure to house four separate test berths, each with its own dedicated cable that leads from about 7 miles offshore back to the coastal facility, Matthew Grosso, director of the Department of Energy’s Water Power Technologies Office, told ABC News.
It’s a project that was more than a decade, requiring years of permit approvals with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and input from all of the federal ocean agencies, including the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, the National Fisheries Service and the Marine Mammal Commission, Hales said.
The five-year investment from the federal government will involve testing by companies to accelerate the design, fabrication and testing of wave energy converters (WECs), which will harness power from ocean waves, which will then be converted at PacWave into energy that will supply the power grid.
Ocean wave energy could soon become synonymous with other natural sources of power like wind, solar and geothermal. In the U.S., there’s enough marine energy resources, including waves, tides, rivers and ocean currents to power over half of the country’s energy demands, Grosso said.
The renewable could prove to be even be more abundant, unlike solar, which ends when the sun sets, and wind, which isn’t always available, Hales said. The biggest challenge marine energy presents is how new it is compared to the other renewables, which have extensive existing infrastructure, Grosso said.
“Wave is this great complement to the other renewables, because it’s sort of slow and steady, he said. “There are basically always waves on the ocean.”
How is it possible to collect energy from ocean waves?
Using water to create energy is nothing new, the experts said. Traditional water mills were found in China as early as 30 A.D., and humans have been extracting power from the flow of water ever since.
But while water mills rely on the movement of the tide, PacWave will be focusing on surface waves in the open ocean, Hales said.
Devices bobbing up and down on the ocean surface like a buoy harness the natural movement of the water and send the captured energy back to shore via underwater pipes, Grosso said. The devices are located about 7 miles offshore.
One of the challenges is the waves can arrive erratically, so building devices that can withstand a challenging environment is key, Maha Haji, an assistant professor of mechanical, aerospace and systems engineering at Cornell University, told ABC News.
From its shoreside facility, PacWave then takes the power that comes from the wave generation devices and makes it compatible to enter the Central Lincoln Public Utility District, Grosso said.
The PacWave facility is currently in its commissioning phase, Hales said.
“We have to run the system through a number of tests to make certain that we don’t have a short circuit out there miles into the ocean that we have to go fix,” he said.
These US locations are best suited for harnessing ocean energy
While the U.S. is surrounded by coastlines, there are only a few regions where the generation of ocean wave power is viable.
Places with the biggest waves — Hawaii, Alaska and the Pacific coast — are the best locations to utilize wave energy converters due to the strength and consistency of the waves, the experts said.
However, wave energy can also be combined with other renewables, so there are benefits to combining wind, wave and solar together — making Texas another viable option, due to its existing renewable infrastructure, despite the Gulf of Mexico being in calmer waters, Haji said.
When it came time to selecting the best location to put the test facility, Northern California and central Oregon were deemed best suited, Hales said.
Southeast Alaska also has energetic waves, but the coastline is challenging, and the region is not equipped with the necessary infrastructure to connect the collected energy to the local grid.
Input from local communities played a big role in planning
PacWave will be operating out of two different sites — each located near Newport, Oregon, a deepwater port. The inception of the project was devised “hand-in-hand” with the local community, Grosso said.
The exact locations of the sites were picked by local fishers, who made the determination based on the location of the tow lanes that access the port, depth conditions, strength of the waves and whether the local community would be supportive, Hales said.
That level of consideration for the local ecology and economy continues to impact the PacWave project, the energy experts said.
Application documents included fine details on the regional ecosystem, including what kind of shrimp burrow in the nearby sand, fish that are attracted to the region and the marine mammals that could possibly be impacted by the presence of the devices, Hales said. The permits contain a requirement for acoustic monitoring to make certain the devices aren’t changing the underwater noise distributions and ways that impact marine mammals.
This was all done to minimize the impacts on the environment, Hales said, adding that community members have been concerned about the potential hazard to wildlife and the presence of offshore wind infrastructure.
“It was an exhaustive effort to identify where the problem might be, avoid those problems, and, if they’re unavoidable, talk about mitigating them,”
Engaging the community has resulted in “very little footprint” in the construction of the sites, Grosso said.
“It’s hard to tell that there’s anything there,” he said.
The event will be on Sunday, March 2, at 3 p.m. at Capital One Arena in Washington, D.C.
Olympians Tara Lipinski, Kristi Yamaguchi, Scott Hamilton and Johnny Weir are among those participating. The show will raise funds to support victims’ families, first responders and aviation professionals, U.S. Figure Skating said.
More than a dozen of the victims killed in the Jan. 29 plane crash were young skaters, their parents and coaches returning home from a national figure skating development camp in Wichita, Kansas.
The plane, which departed from Wichita, was about to land at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Washington, D.C., when it collided with a U.S. Army Black Hawk helicopter, sending both aircraft plunging into the Potomac River.
Sixty-four people were on board the plane and three soldiers were on the helicopter. No one survived.
“As we begin to heal from this devastating loss, we look forward to honoring the enduring memories of these athletes, coaches and family members who represented the best of the figure skating community,” U.S. Figure Skating interim-CEO Samuel Auxier said in a Wednesday statement announcing the tribute show.
“We can think of no better way of celebrating their legacies than through the sport they loved,” Auxier said.
Tickets will go on sale on Monday, Feb. 10, on Ticketmaster.
Photo by Pennsylvania Department of Corrections via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Luigi Mangione, who is accused of second-degree murder for allegedly gunning down UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York City, could face additional charges, according to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg.
Asked why Mangione was charged with second-degree murder, Bragg told ABC News that prosecutors wanted to bring charges quickly and first-degree murder “has a number of delineated circumstances.”
“Murder 2 is the intentional killing of a person, punishable by 25 years to life under New York law,” Bragg said Wednesday.
“Murder 1 has a number of delineated circumstances, including, for example, a serial murder, murder of a witness, murder of a police officer,” he explained.
“As we learn more about motives and other things like that … there may be additional charges,” Bragg said.
Mangione is also charged in New York with criminal possession of a forged instrument and several counts of criminal possession of a weapon.
Mangione, a 26-year-old Ivy League graduate, is accused of shooting Thompson outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel on Dec. 4 while the CEO was heading to an investors conference.
Thompson’s murder ignited online anger at the health insurance industry and some people online have celebrated the suspect.
“Celebrating murder is abhorrent,” Bragg said. “I sit across the table from families who’ve had a loved one killed. And to think of people celebrating that … is beyond comprehension to me.”
“What I would say to members of the public … [who are] celebrating this and maybe contemplating other action: We will be vigilant and we will hold people accountable,” Bragg said.
The ghost gun allegedly in Mangione’s possession when he was arrested has been matched to three shell casings recovered at the murder scene, according to the NYPD.
Bragg, who has focused on cracking down on ghost guns during his time as DA, stressed, “They are lethal in the same way as a traditional gun. What is so scary about them is you can buy a 3D printer and you can print them right from your kitchen table.”
“[It’s] something we’re seeing more and more in use,” he said.
Fingerprints recovered from a water bottle and a Kind bar near the crime scene have also been matched to Mangione, police said.
Mangione was apprehended in Altoona, Pennsylvania, on Monday after nearly one week on the run. He’s also facing charges in Pennsylvania, including allegedly possessing an untraceable ghost gun.
Mangione plans to challenge his extradition to New York.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said it will seek a governor’s warrant to try to force Mangione’s extradition. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a statement that she’ll sign a request for the governor’s warrant “to ensure this individual is tried and held accountable.”
Bragg said, “We will get the defendant here and bring him to justice through our court proceeding.”
“We’re prepared to go forward,” he said. “We’re on the path to accountability and justice.”
