There has been some good news on climate change. Not enough. But good news nonetheless.
First of all, over the past decade or so, several major economies including the United States have shifted away from burning coal to generate electricity. Coal is the dirtiest of fossil fuels, and historically speaking a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions.
There are still coal power plants being built in the world, but the overall trend away from coal toward cleaner options, like solar, is progress. The cost to build solar power plants has fallen enough that, in some cases, it is now one of the most price-competitive options for generating electricity. This is a significant financial milestone.
Cars that burn gas are a major contributor to planet-warming greenhouse emissions, but in the past few years some of the world’s largest automakers have launched aggressive efforts to pivot to making more electric vehicles while phasing out gasoline models. The importance of a significant polluting industry embracing this change, and competing with one another to be better at it, can’t be underestimated.
Car buyers have been responding. As recently as a half-decade or so ago, electric-car sales were negligible in many parts of the world, but have risen rapidly since. Electric vehicles aren’t perfect of course, but as a general rule they’re cleaner than gasoline cars. (If you’re interested in reading more about that, try searching this F.A.Q. for “How green are electric cars?”)
The spread of electric vehicles also means that some of the difficulties of owning one (for example, finding charging stations nearby) will likely resolve themselves more quickly as demand grows from drivers. That, in turn, could encourage sales.
In 2022 the United States passed new legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, that is widely considered the most important legislative effort to fight climate change in the nation’s history by encouraging a transition to cleaner energy and offering a range of incentives to businesses and individuals to clean up their act.
(This Times guide explains how you might be able to claim some of that money by, for instance, buying an electric car or installing a heat pump.)
Lastly, here’s a big one: For reasons like the above, in the past decade or so the world has made significant progress toward slowing global warming and avoiding particularly extreme consequences from climate change. Not nearly enough progress, mind you, but significant nonetheless.
Specifically, before the 2015 Paris Agreement, some estimates put the world on track to warm in the range of 3.6 degrees Celsius above preindustrial times. Scientists widely agree that if average global temperatures were to increase that much, it would be devastating socially and economically. Now, however, according to a United Nations report in 2022, the world is on track to heat between 2.1 degrees and 2.9 degrees by 2100.
That’s still very dangerous.
However, if the nations of the world act as aggressively as they promise, there remains a chance to hold that increase to below 2 degrees Celsius, according to scientists. That’s a big “if,” of course. It would require a tremendous amount of work by the nations of the world, on an extremely swift timetable over the next decade or two, to hit the lower targets for limiting global warming.
However, since you asked about good news, let’s keep it positive. Even if there’s a lot of hard work to do, progress has been made on important fronts.
There’s now even a movement, “OK Doomer,” that basically says, stop it with the gloomy takes and focus on things that will fix the problem.
WASHINGTON D.C. — The Acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) faced a Senate committee Wednesday to answer questions about the January system failure that led to thousands of flights being delayed or canceled.
Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said the agency is now working to upgrade its systems but said most of that work isn’t expected to be finished until mid-2025.
In his opening remarks, he explained why the meltdown occurred.
“The FAA’s preliminary findings are that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization issues between the live primary database and the backup database,” said Nolen. “We have found no evidence of a cyber-attack or other malicious intent.”
The discussion mainly focused on the Notice to Air Missions, also known as NOTAM.
A NOTAM notice is important because it gives essential information about flight operations to pilots, dispatchers, and other air traffic personnel.
That’s why flights were temporarily grounded last month following the NOTAM failure.
It was the first national ground stop since the September 11th terror attacks.
“What can we do now to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” asked Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
“Number one, we have instituted a one-hour synchronization delay between the primary database and the backup database,” said Nolen. “Secondly, we’ve increased the level of oversight to ensure more than one person is available when work or updates are being done on the live database.”
Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned why the system upgrades still haven’t been completed since the agency first started the transition a decade ago.
“Why is it taking ten years and why is it still not done?” asked Cruz.
“It does take a while,” Nolen responded.
When pressed about the effectiveness of the changes, Nolen admitted he cannot ensure it will prevent another error but defended the efforts underway.
“Is there redundancy being built into it or can a single screwup ground air traffic nationwide?” asked Cruz.
“Could I sit here today and tell you there will never be another issue on the NOTAM system? No sir, I cannot. What I can say is that we’re making every effort to modernize and look at our procedures,” said Nolen.
Nolen said he has ordered a sweeping safety review of the agency because of the recent problems.
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The communist government in China heavily surveils its own citizens. It has detained members of a religious and ethnic minority group in de-facto forced labor camps as part of what some in the international community have described as genocide. It has repeatedly been deemed the top threat by U.S. military officials.
So the idea that the Chinese Communist Party would seek to spy on the U.S. and our infrastructure should not really be a surprise. An outrage and an aggressive violation of our sovereignty, yes, but sadly not a surprise. The idea of a slow-moving surveillance balloon drifting across the U.S. might seem like dystopian fiction but it is no great stretch of the imagination that China would explore all sorts of options to spy on this and other countries.
The U.S. government and military, therefore, should not have been surprised by such a scenario. Thus far, it remains unclear whether defense and civil leaders had a sufficient plan in place for this or future events like it. That needs to get cleared up, and fast.
Some of the gut reaction outrage over this incident has been over the top and unproductive, but there is a long list of questions that must be answered more fully.
We of course won’t pretend that the U.S. is without its own espionage apparatus, but once more, we must all avoid false equivalencies. For all the social media bluster, this was a serious act. It requires serious oversight from Congress and continued explanation and action from the White House and Pentagon — not to become a plaything of domestic politics but to bolster national security.
That oversight kicked off publicly on Thursday with a Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing with several defense officials. The subcommittee dealing with defense spending is led by Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester of Montana, where the public first became aware of the balloon’s presence here in the country. U.S. Sen. Susan Collins of Maine is the top Republican on the panel.
“Last week was a sober reminder of just how petty and divided our politics have become. Make no mistake about it, what China did last week was completely unacceptable and a real threat to American sovereignty. It deserves a real response from a united America,” Tester said. “I was very discouraged by some of the responses from elected officials, in the House and the Senate, [who] decided this was a great opportunity to score some cheap political points and get attention on social media. China is a real threat and one we need to take seriously, which is exactly why we are here today.”
He did not hesitate to press the witnesses for answers, however. And he highlighted how he and Collins communicated amid the balloon news as it broke last week and committed to taking action.
“This incident highlights the ongoing and increasingly blatant threat to the United States posed by the People’s Republic of China, which is the pacing threat not just for today, but for the foreseeable future,” Collins said Thursday. “Ultimately, our subcommittee is responsible for making sure that the Department of Defense has the resources needed to keep America safe.”
The senators’ questions during the Thursday hearing were more compelling than the answers provided by the witnesses. That speaks to the work remaining for the Joe Biden administration and the Department of Defense to clear things up, and demonstrate a clear plan moving forward for future incidents like this.
More information was released separately by the State Department on Thursday, and senators were set to get more details in a classified briefing later that day. We of course understand the need to have some of these discussions behind closed doors to protect certain information from finding its way to the Chinese government. They certainly are watching and assessing how the U.S. continues to respond to this airspace incursion, as well. We need to be careful about accidentally rewarding them with more information. But don’t forget, the free exchange of information and ability to question the government are things that distinguish us from authoritarian countries like China.
“I respect the need to keep some of this classified,” Democratic U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said at the hearing. “But we all understand that some of the desire to keep things classified has to do with not wanting to disclose to the public things that might be inconvenient politically for the department.”
Congress must respond to the spy balloon incident, not with trolling, but with thoughtful and forceful oversight. Not because it gets headlines or makes a political opponent look weak, but because it makes America stronger.
As House Republicans finalize the rosters for committees and announce initial hearings for the 118th Congress, it’s clear that the House GOP is gearing up for aggressive oversight of the Biden administration’s actions over its first two years — specifically the partisan weaponization of the federal government — and the Biden family’s business deals.
That means a natural extension of their announced oversight should be a prompt investigation of the National Archives. Of late, it seems that the Archives crew is not great at ensuring records subject to the Presidential Records Act — classified or otherwise — are properly maintained.
More than that, Biden’s document scandal has provided new evidence that the Archives operation follows two different standards for ensuring proper document retention in which it abides by the same partisan political bias often apparent in other agencies within the bloated federal bureaucracy.
As we now know, President Biden kept classified documents from his time as vice president in the Obama administration, as well as classified documents from his time as a U.S. senator. Some basic math concludes that it has been six years since Biden left his vice presidential office, meaning he’s had those classified items for at least six years. It’s been even longer — 14 years — since he resigned his Senate seat to become Obama’s VP.
Putting the mishandling of specifically classified documents aside for a moment, the timeline here means the Archives didn’t know — or didn’t do anything about the fact — Biden had items subject to the Presidential Records Act for nearly a decade. There were no statements about Biden improperly taking documents from the Obama administration with him to the Penn Biden Center or to his residence in Wilmington, Delaware, after he was no longer vice president.
And Americans haven’t heard much from the Archives since it was discovered Biden had indeed mishandled classified documents from his time as VP, with the most glaring example being the Archives' failure to issue a statement saying it had learned of documents in Biden’s D.C. office before the 2022 midterm elections.
So silence is the standard used by the Archives when Biden took documents he wasn’t supposed to have. What standard did the Archives follow when Trump took documents from his administration to Mar-a-Lago?
Well, just a few months after Trump left office in January 2021, the Archives requested Trump return documents from his time in office. Then, beginning in early 2022, the Archives issued a series of public releases and statement making it known that Trump had documents in his possession that it claim belonged with the Archives.
As far as we know, no request for missing documents was ever issued from the Archives to Biden over the course of the last six years since he left office. And as mentioned previously, there was no press release when the Archives took possession of the documents found in the Penn Biden Center office.
So why the disparity in the handling of documents? And why did six years go by with Biden being allegedly unaware that he had mishandled classified documents while Trump had been out of office for just a few months when the Archives launched its crusade to reclaim the items, a quest that culminated in an armed FBI raid of Mar-a-Lago?
Those are just a few questions that the Archives’ leaders should answer, under oath, before a House committee. Perhaps the newly created Select Subcommittee on Weaponization of the Federal Government would be a fitting body to call such a hearing?
Archives administrators should also explain their methodology for identifying missing documents, seeking to reclaim them, and how they determine what information to make available to the American people. Not to mention an explanation of how many other documents — especially classified ones — they know or suspect are currently in the wind and not in secure storage facilities.
Joe Biden somehow passed six years with classified documents from his time as vice president scattered around his office in D.C. and his residence and garage in Wilmington, so there’s no telling how many other past leaders could have, purposely or accidentally, mishandled documents of varying classifications around their homes or offices.
If this is a serious national security issue — as the mainstream media and Democrats initially argued when Trump was found to be in possession of documents with classified markings — then Americans should know the extent of the threat and what the government is doing to prevent the situation from being weaponized along political lines in the future.
© Provided by Washington Examiner White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre deflected questions for a third consecutive day about the ongoing investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified materials Friday but did say that Biden did not receive an advance warning on the appointment of a special counsel in the matter.
What do we know — so far, at least — about the Biden classified documents situation?
The information provided to the public has come from people who work for, or are otherwise close to, President Joe Biden and has been filtered selectively through a media largely predisposed to protect the president.
According to Bob Bauer, who is Biden’s personal attorney and a former White House counsel and longtime Democratic power broker whose wife (Anita Dunn) is a senior adviser to the president, the classified documents were “unexpectedly discovered” on Nov. 2 (six days before the midterm elections) by one or more members of the president’s team of personal lawyers.
The documents were supposedly found in a closet in Biden’s former office at the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement, a think tank located in Washington, D.C., and affiliated with the University of Pennsylvania.
Bauer claims that Biden’s lawyers immediately notified the National Archives and Records Administration of the discovery.
Each of the attorneys or non-lawyers who discovered those documents is now a fact witness in the investigation, which itself could become awkward if not legally troubling for Biden, depending on what the special counsel recommends.
It’s been reported that the University of Pennsylvania received more than $30 million in donations from anonymous Chinese donors shortly after the Penn Biden Center was established in 2017.
On Nov. 4, the National Archives Office of Inspector General notified the Department of Justice of the discovery. The FBI commenced an investigation five days later, and the day after that, the Justice Department notified Biden’s lawyers that it is looking into the matter.
On Nov. 14, John Lausch, the U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois and an appointee of former President Donald Trump, was tasked by Attorney General Merrick Garland with conducting a preliminary investigation.
On Dec. 20, Biden’s lawyers informed Lausch that they had found a “small number” of additional classified documents in a storage space in the garage of Biden’s private home in Wilmington, Delaware, where he keeps his 1967 Corvette Stingray. According to Bauer, the Justice Department took possession of those documents the next day.
On Jan. 5, Lausch briefed Garland about his preliminary conclusions and recommended the appointment of a special counsel.
On Jan. 9, after the story broke about the discovery of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center, the White House acknowledged the matter, and Biden stated that he was “surprised” to learn about the discovery and claimed not to know what was in the documents.
Neither Biden nor the White House mentioned the classified records that were found in his home until Jan. 12 after media outlets began reporting on that discovery.
At that time, the White House acknowledged the discovery and added an additional page with classified information that it said was “discovered among stored materials in an adjacent room” to the garage at the home. The same day, in response to a reporter’s question, Biden said, “by the way, my Corvette is in a locked garage. It’s not like it’s sitting out in the street.”
Also that same day, Garland appointed Robert Hur, whose legal career is detailed below, as a special counsel to lead the investigation into the matter.
On Jan. 14, the White House issued a statement that yet another five pages of classified information had been discovered in a storage room adjacent to Biden’s garage within hours after the statement it had issued on Jan 12. Biden has described the adjacent room as his “personal library.”
Robert Sauber, another attorney working for Biden who claims to have the requisite security clearances, has stated that he made this subsequent discovery and that the attorneys who made the initial discovery in the storage closet stopped their search immediately after they found the documents because they did not have the requisite security clearances to review classified material.
Sauber also claims that all of the recently discovered documents “were not the subject of any previous request or inquiry by the Archives.”
Biden’s attorneys further claim that they also searched Biden’s second home in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, but did not find any classified documents at that location.
It has been reported that some of the documents are labeled “Top Secret” and include briefing documents and intelligence reports involving Ukraine, Iran, and the United Kingdom.
Assuming that all of that is true, there are still a lot of unanswered questions. Not only should the special counsel delve into these questions, but Congress should as well.
Those questions fall into three broad categories: timing, access, and damage assessment.
Timing
- When the first set of classified documents were found before the election, why wasn’t the press notified immediately?
- Who decided not to inform the press that classified documents were found before the election, and why?
- What role did the midterm elections held on Nov. 8 play in the decision not to inform the press of the existence of the classified documents that were found on Nov. 2?
- Did any attorneys working for Biden, in an official or unofficial capacity, notify the press, on deep background, off the record, or otherwise, about the discovery of the classified documents before the election, and, if so, who told whom what and when?
- When was the president notified that the first set of classified documents was found, and who notified him?
- Who did the attorneys who first discovered the documents notify? By what means did they notify the person(s)?
- How many White House personnel knew about the discovery of the classified documents before the elections, and who are they?
- Why did it take the National Archives two days to notify the FBI? Who at the National Archives was first notified on Nov. 2 of the discovery of the documents, and who else did that person notify at the National Archives? What happened between Nov. 2 and Nov. 4 at the National Archives related to this topic?
- When did Garland find out about the existence of classified documents at the Penn Biden Center?
- Why did it take the Department of Justice five days to commence an investigation after it learned on Nov. 4 from the inspector general at the National Archives that classified documents were found at the Penn Biden Center?
- Who at the Department of Justice was involved in the discussions about the classified documents between Nov. 4 and Nov. 9?
- Who at Justice decided to commence an investigation on Nov. 9?
- Why did the attorney general delay appointing Lausch until Nov. 14?
- What happened at Justice between Nov. 9 and Nov. 14 related to this case?
Access
- Who packed up Vice President Joe Biden’s office when he was the vice president?
- Name every single person who had access to, or could have had access to, those documents while Biden was the vice president.
- How did these documents end up in the locations where they were found and what led to this discovery? Since Biden left office as vice president in January 2017 but the Biden Center did not open until February 2018 (although other reports say Biden started using an office there in 2017), it seems that the documents located there had been moved. Who moved them and how did that happen?
- Who had access to the Penn Biden Center from the time it was established until the day the documents were found?
- Who had a key to the room and/or closet where the documents were found in the Penn Biden Center?
- Name every foreign national who entered the Penn Biden Center, when they were there, the amount of time they were there, and the purpose for their visit. Which foreign nationals entered the room where the documents were found, when, and for what purpose?
- Who had access to the Biden residence from the time Biden left office as vice president until the day the documents were found in his garage or storage room in the house?
- Even though the president does not have visitor logs for his personal residences in Delaware, the U.S. Secret Service must “clear” anyone who visits the home while Biden was/is president. Is the president willing to order the Secret Service to disclose the list of all persons cleared for entrance into his homes, and the dates of those entrances?
- Who had a key to Biden’s house, or was granted access to the house, even once? When did they enter, for how long, and for what purpose?
- Assuming there are security cameras at Biden’s residence, have the tapes been secured? How long do the tapes go back in time? Are there any gaps or unexplained malfunctions of the videotapes during all the time recordings were taking place?
- How did the documents get to the Penn Biden Center and Biden’s home? When did they get there? Who brought them there? How many times have they been moved? By whom?
- Were any of the classified documents copied, and if so, when and by whom? Why were they copied, and where are the copies?
Damage Assessment
- How sensitive is the information in each of the documents? In addition to “Top Secret” information, do any of the documents contain sensitive compartmented information (SCI); that is, code-word-protected information with strict controls on need-to-know access, which often includes the most sensitive information about classified programs and the sources and methods of intelligence gathering?
- Has the Justice Department started a damage assessment? When was it started? Who is conducting it, and when will it be completed? Will the outcome of the damage assessment be released to the public in an unclassified format?
Other Issues
- While working at the Penn Biden Center, Biden was conducting research for a book that covered Ukraine, among other topics. Is there any evidence that he examined any of these classified documents during the course of his research?
- What were the classified documents near and were they stored in envelopes that clearly identified the contents as classified?
- Why were/are lawyers conducting these searches, rather than FBI agents or national security officials?
- Did the lawyers have the requisite security clearances?
- Why were Biden’s lawyers searching for this material six years after Biden’s tenure as vice president ended and two years into his presidency?
- Why did the FBI or national security officials not conduct their own search after the documents were initially discovered?
- How many other cases where there is a Checked breach of national security protocols where a former government employee is found in possession of classified document has the FBI allowed the violator or his designees to conduct their own investigation?
- Are there more classified documents out there, and if so, where and how many?
- Is there any basis to suggest that the information was, in fact, divulged to others—either intentionally or inadvertently—who did not have the requisite clearances or the “need to know” the contents of those documents?
The biggest question in terms of a potential criminal prosecution, of course, is whether Biden knew the documents were there, the same question that was asked about former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the information residing on the server that was installed at the home she shared with former President Bill Clinton in Chappaqua, N.Y.
So far, Biden is denying this.
Congress can, and should, conduct vigorous oversight hearings. While they may be stymied, Congress should do its level best to unearth exactly what happened, how it happened, why it happened, and if there should be any consequences. Congress should, at the very least, review how classified documents were handled at the end of the Obama-Biden administration in order to minimize the risks to our national security in the future.
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This article originally appeared in the Daily Signal and is reprinted with kind permission from the Heritage Foundation.
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Tags: Opinion, Beltway Confidential, Think Tanks, Opinion, Joe Biden, Classified, National Security
Original Author: John G. Malcolm, Charles "Cully" Stimson
Original Location: The Biden classified documents fiasco: Questions that need answers
Clifford Tatum said he couldn't answer specific questions about the ballot paper shortage due to a pending lawsuit filed by the Harris County Republican Party.
HARRIS COUNTY, Texas — Some Harris County commissioners on Tuesday questioned the lack of details and conclusive findings about ballot paper shortages in a post-election report from the Harris County Elections Administration Office.
The analysis from Election Administrator Clifford Tatum’s office was “largely inconclusive” about the extent of the shortage, citing conflicting accounts from election presiding and alternate judges. The report did not provide any information about county technician activity logs, such as what voting centers were visited and what supplies were delivered on election day.
“Right now, there's more mock test in terms of that election,” Precinct 3 Harris County Commissioner Tom Ramsey said.
Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo echoed the need for more specifics.
“Would I have liked to know exactly what happened? Of course, of course, I would have,” Hidalgo said.
KHOU 11 Investigates did its own analysis using the county’s own records comparing paper ballot allocations for each voting center with the total number of votes cast at those respective locations. We found when the polls opened, 121 voting centers were not given enough paper to cover election day turnout. For instance, Salyards Middle School in Cypress initially received 600 paper ballots, but more than 1,000 total votes were cast at that location.
Tatum told county commissioners he could not answer specific questions about the ballot paper shortage due to a pending lawsuit filed by the Harris County Republican Party. But the elections administrator did take issue with the KHOU report.
“The implications of your article cast the cloud into the community that those locations ran out of paper,” Tatum said outside the commissioners court meeting.
Earlier, Tatum told county commissioners that at some voting locations, his office sent supplemental paper supplies throughout election day. But when pressed by KHOU 11 Investigates, the elections administrator could not provide details on where those supplies were sent or where they weren’t.
- Tatum: “There were over 4 million sheets of paper in the street on election day.”
- KHOU 11: “Do you know how much supplemental paper was delivered on election day?”
- Tatum: “Did you hear what I said? There were over 4 million sheets of paper in the street on election day.”
- KHOU 11: “That doesn't answer the question. The question is real simple. Where did you send the paper?”
- Tatum: “Yes, it does.”
A classified briefing on the three unidentified flying objects (UFO) that were shot down over North America left senators with more questions than answers Tuesday, and led both Republicans and Democrats to call for more transparency from the Biden administration.
Senators were briefed Tuesday morning by top officials from the Department of Defense (DOD), Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) on the three objects over Alaska and Canada that were shot down. The briefing was classified, but lawmakers from both sides of the aisle said it left several questions unanswered, and that most of what was discussed could be shared safely with the public.
Senator Marco Rubio, R-Fla., ranking member on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said that "99% of what was discussed in that room today can be made public without compromising security in this country."
"My timeline is immediate," Rubio said when asked how soon the public should be privy to some of the details discussed in the briefings.
TIMELINE: FOURTH FLYING OBJECT DOWNED BY US MILITARY IN 8 DAYS
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla. (Photo by Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
"We have to know what we're talking about. But I do think that when you shoot things down over the airspace of this country for the first time, in the 65-year history of NORAD … you owe the American people more than some hurriedly called press conference in the middle of the Super Bowl," Rubio said.
"The American people need and deserve to know more," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn. "There is a lot of information presented to us this morning that could be told to the American people without any harm to sources or methods or national security, and the American people need to know more so they'll have more confidence in our national security."
Several senators noted that much is still unknown about the three objects that military missiles shot down last week, including their country of origin and the extent of their capabilities. So far, no debris has been recovered, and search efforts are still ongoing.
Senator John Kennedy, R-La., said the briefing left him with "more questions" than answers, but he noted that the biggest takeaway from the briefing is that those types of flying objects discovered last week have been "flying over us for years" with U.S. government knowledge.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
"Many people, intentionally or otherwise, had been given the impression that a couple of weeks ago our skies were clear. And then all of a sudden we have spy balloons and other Unidentified Flying Objects raining down on us like confetti. That is not accurate," Kennedy said.
"These objects have been flying over us for years, many years. We've known about those objects for many years. We're not sure that we've known about all of them, but we've known about many of them. Except for the Chinese spy balloon, we don't know what they are. What's different about the last two weeks is that we've started shooting them down. But we can't find the remnants. Except for the spy balloon," Kennedy said.
Speaking of the debris from the objects, Kennedy confirmed, "they are lost. They can't find them. The remnants are in very difficult terrain, low temperature, lots of inclement weather, and they're looking, but they haven't been able to find them."
"What bothers me the most is, everyone's acting like this is the first time we've ever seen these things. And so we reacted that way. No, it isn't," Rubio agreed. "We've had hundreds and hundreds of cases reported by military personnel, we've been talking about it for years."
What is new, Rubio said, is shooting down such objects. "I don't think there's any indication that the objects were here to launch weapons against us," Rubio said.
Search for the Chinese surveillance balloon debris. (NORAD/NORTHCOM - DVIDS)
"But if one of these things, you know, if an airplane sucks a vulture into its engine, it's going to go down, could go down. So it most certainly if it takes an object the size of an ATV or a car, or a barrel collides with, with an airplane, we're going to have a catastrophic event," he said.
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"So that's a danger because not only is it going to kill the people on that plane, it's going to kill the people on the ground where that plane crashes. So that if it's not a danger, then why they shoot these things?" he asked.
"Now, they shot it down because they felt it was operating at an altitude that posed a threat to commercial aviation. There is a reason why we restrict who can fly where and when. So things don't crash into each other. If we have things flying over our airspace that is not ours, did not coordinate with us and doesn't belong there. That is the definition of danger. A new policy to just shoot it down," he said.
Two top Republican congresswomen from New York are demanding that the Biden administration answer questions about secretly transporting migrants across the US — after dozens of Colombian immigrants recently arrived in the small upstate community of Jamestown.
“We write following reports that your administration is actively settling migrants in Upstate New York communities,” upstate Reps. Claudia Tenney and Elise Stefanik — the number three Republican in the US House of Representatives — wrote in a Wednesday letter obtained by The Post.
New York GOP Congressmen Nick Langworthy, Michael Lawler and Marc Molinaro also signed the message.
The lawmakers cited a shocking Post report that over 30 migrants have been living in the city of Jamestown, located in rural Chautauqua County, since late last year.
Most of the migrants traveled to Jamestown on their own after learning about the safety of the city from fellow border-crossers in El Paso, Texas, several had previously told The Post.
But leaders of the city — which only has a reported population of 28,393 people — are thinking that the influx of immigrants will quickly overwhelm Jamestown’s local services and infrastructure, especially because neither the migrants nor the city has received additional state or federal aid.
“[W]e wish to express our outrage at the secrecy with which your administration has and continues to carry out these national relocation operations,” the lawmakers wrote. “This unprecedented influx of migrants into the United States is an obvious sign of your administration’s failed policies at the Southern Border.”
Tenney and Stefanik submitted a list of six demands:
- The number of illegal migrants who were apprehended at the southern border and relocated to New York by the government since January 2021.
- A full list of which New York counties and municipalities the migrants were sent to and which areas can expect migrants to be sent there in the future.
- Documentation proving executive branch agencies notified those counties, municipalities and local law enforcement that migrants would be coming, or an explanation of why the government chose not to do so.
- Information on how the White House is monitoring the status and locations of the migrants it’s relocated since January 2021.
- The whereabouts of every migrant who has been relocated by the government to New York state since January 2021.
- A promise that the Biden administration will commit to notifying Tenney and Stefanik’s offices and local officials whenever illegal migrants are relocated to the state.
The pols requested a response from the White House by the end of the month and threatened to take action against the administration if it failed to do so, “including but not limited to withholding additional federal funding.”
“Rather than shifting the burden to the small communities we represent, that are not equipped to handle the influx, the answer is to secure the border,” they said.
“Already, your current policies have created a humanitarian and national security catastrophe which undermines the rule of law and empowers human traffickers and criminal gangs.”
The White House did not return an immediate request for comment.
The missive comes almost exactly one year after Stefanik submitted a letter to Biden demanding that he stop sending migrants to New York.
The crisis has only accelerated in the past year, especially in New York City.
At least 41,000 migrants have arrived in the Big Apple from the southern border since the spring, according to City Hall.
Mayor Eric Adams has said that housing and providing services to incoming migrants may cost the Big Apple as much as $2 billion as the city planned to open a sixth emergency shelter in Midtown for migrants.
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The Acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) faced a Senate committee Wednesday to answer questions about the January system failure that led to thousands of flights being delayed or canceled.
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Acting FAA Administrator Billy Nolen said the agency is now working to upgrade its systems but said most of that work isn’t expected to be finished until mid-2025.
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In his opening remarks, he explained why the meltdown occurred.
“The FAA’s preliminary findings are that contract personnel unintentionally deleted files while working to correct synchronization issues between the live primary database and the backup database,” said Nolen. “We have found no evidence of a cyber-attack or other malicious intent.”
The discussion mainly focused on the Notice to Air Missions, also known as NOTAM.
A NOTAM notice is important because it gives essential information about flight operations to pilots, dispatchers, and other air traffic personnel. That’s why flights were temporarily grounded last month following the NOTAM failure.
It was the first national ground stop since the September 11th terror attacks.
“What can we do now to make sure this doesn’t happen again?” asked Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-WA), Chair of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.
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“Number one, we have instituted a one-hour synchronization delay between the primary database and the backup database,” said Nolen. “Secondly, we’ve increased the level of oversight to ensure more than one person is available when work or updates are being done on the live database.”
Ranking Member Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) questioned why the system upgrades still haven’t been completed since the agency first started the transition a decade ago.
“Why is it taking ten years and why is it still not done?” asked Cruz.
“It does take a while,” Nolen responded.
When pressed about the effectiveness of the changes, Nolen admitted he cannot ensure it will prevent another error but defended the efforts underway.
“Is there redundancy being built into it or can a single screwup ground air traffic nationwide?” asked Cruz.
READ: FAA head defends safety of US air travel after close calls
“Could I sit here today and tell you there will never be another issue on the NOTAM system? No sir, I cannot. What I can say is that we’re making every effort to modernize and look at our procedures,” said Nolen.
Nolen said he has ordered a sweeping safety review of the agency because of the recent problems.
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