ЦІКАВЕ

The United Auto Workers expanded its strike against major automakers Friday, walking out of 38 General Motors and Stellantis parts distribution centers in 20 states. 

Another 5,600 workers joined the strike on top of the 13,000 of the 146,000 members that began the strike one week ago. 

Ford was spared additional strikes because the company has met some of the union’s demands during negotiations over the past week, said UAW President Shawn Fain. 

“We’ve made some real progress at Ford,” Fain said during an online presentation to union members. “We still have serious issues to work through, but we do want to recognize that Ford is showing that they are serious about reaching a deal.” 

“At GM and Stellantis, it’s a different story,” he said. Those companies, he said, have rejected the union’s proposals for cost-of-living increases, profit sharing and job security. 

The union is pointing to the companies’ huge recent profits as it seeks wage increases of 36% over four years. The companies have offered a little over half that amount. The UAW has other demands, including a 32-hour work week for 40 hours of pay and a restoration of traditional pension plans for newer workers. 

The companies say they can’t afford to meet the union’s demands because they need to invest profits in a costly transition from gas-powered cars to electric vehicles. 

The UAW’s contract with the automakers expired at midnight on September 14, and workers walked out of a Ford assembly plant near Detroit, a GM factory in Wentzville, Missouri, and a Jeep plant run by Stellantis in Toledo, Ohio. 

Fain said earlier this week he would call on workers at more plants to strike unless there was significant progress in contract negotiations with the carmakers. Bargaining continued Thursday, although neither side reported any breakthroughs, and they remained far apart on wage increases. 

The companies have laid off thousands of workers, saying some factories are running short on parts because of the strike. 

Still, the impact is not yet being felt on car lots around the country – it will probably take a few weeks before the strike causes a significant shortage of new vehicles, according to analysts. Prices could rise even sooner, however, if the prospect of a prolonged strike triggers panic buying. 

One week ago, workers went on strike a week ago at three assembly plants — a Ford factory near Detroit, a GM plant outside St. Louis, and a Jeep plant owned by Stellantis in Toledo, Ohio. 

The Detroit News reported Thursday that a spokesman for Fain wrote on a private group chat on X, formerly Twitter, that union negotiators aimed to inflict “recurring reputations damage and operational chaos” on the carmakers, and “if we can keep them wounded for months they don’t know what to do.” 

Ford and GM seized on the messages as a sign of bad faith by the UAW. 

“It’s now clear that the UAW leadership has always intended to cause months-long disruption, regardless of the harm it causes to its members and their communities,” GM said in a statement. 

Ford spokesman Mark Truby called the messages “disappointing, to say the least, given what is at stake for our employees, the companies and this region.” 

The UAW spokesman, Jonah Furman, did not confirm writing the messages, which were linked to the same picture as his X account, and called them “private messages,” the newspaper reported. 
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The U.S. has committed to providing an additional $116 million in aid to people impacted by humanitarian crises in Myanmar, Bangladesh and the surrounding region.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement on Thursday that the package aims to provide critical resources to nearly one million Rohingya refugees living in Bangladesh, many of whom fled genocide in Myanmar, and to more than a million of their Bangladeshi hosts.

According to ACLED, an international data mapping group, Myanmar in 2022 was by far the worst country in terms of state-sponsored political violence against civilians, with 1,639 reported instances. The aid will help those displaced and endangered by Myanmar’s junta, which seized power in 2021.

Over the past two years, Myanmar’s regime has been cracking down on dissidents and ousting democratic politicians and diplomats left over from the previous government. 

Myanmar’s U.N. ambassador Kyaw Moe Tun, who had been appointed before the 2021 coup, says he intends to remain in his role for another year. The junta has accused him of betraying national interests and claims he no longer represents the country.

The dispute spotlights widespread political upheaval in Myanmar as the General Assembly convenes this week in New York City, with Tun in attendance on behalf of the dismantled democracy.

Accounting for the latest funding, the U.S., since 2017, has provided $2.2 billion in humanitarian support to Myanmar, Bangladesh and other nations in the region. 
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A storm churning in waters off the eastern U.S. has increased to tropical storm strength and is forecast to reach the North Carolina coast Friday morning, the National Hurricane Center said.

The storm was off the coast of South Carolina and North Carolina late Thursday with top sustained winds of 65 kph. A storm surge watch was in effect, with surges between 91 centimeters and 1.5 meters forecast for parts of North Carolina, the center reported.

As of Thursday night, the storm was located about 570 kilometers southeast of Charleston, South Carolina, and about 635 kilometers south Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and moving north at 6 kph, the center said.

Though the system had reached tropical storm strength, it was yet to be given a name and the center was still referring to it as Potential Tropical Cyclone 16 on Thursday night. The hurricane center defines a potential tropical cyclone as a disturbance posing a threat of tropical storm or hurricane conditions to land within 48 hours.

Meteorologist Maria Torres, a public affairs officer with the Miami-based center, said people along the Atlantic coast need to watch the storm’s progress, gather supplies and make preparations for its arrival.

“This will bring some tropical storm force winds and storm surge along with the high winds to the East Coast through the weekend, mainly from the Southeast to the Mid-Atlantic states,” she told The Associated Press.

The tropical storm warning was in effect from Cape Fear, North Carolina, to Fenwick Island, Delaware. It also includes the Chesapeake Bay south of North Beach, Tidal Potomac south of Cobb Island and Albemarle and Pamlico Sounds. Storm surge warnings were in effect for areas throughout the region, the hurricane center said.

Virginia emergency management officials warned of heavy rain, high winds and flooding in the next few days.

The Virginia Department of Emergency Management said on social media Thursday that officials are coordinating with local weather service offices to watch the system developing off the coast. Officials called on residents to prepare for the storm and impacts on the region throughout the weekend.

North Carolina Emergency Management warned large swells from distant Hurricane Nigel also would reach the state’s coast on Thursday, boosting the rip current risk. The combination of those swells and the low-pressure system could mean additional ocean overwash, beach erosion and coastal flooding.

The hurricane center said storm surge between 0.6 and 1.2 meters was expected.

A storm surge warning was in effect from Duck, North Carolina, to Chincoteague, Virginia.

Meanwhile, Hurricane Nigel was headed toward cooler North Atlantic waters as a Category 1 storm. The hurricane center said Nigel was expected to become “extratropical” and was centered about 1,125 kilometers northwest of the Azores.

Nigel’s maximum sustained winds reported in the center’s most recent update late Thursday were 120 kph. There were no coastal watches or warnings associated with Nigel.
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Soon after one of Maui’s Japanese Buddhist temples, the Lahaina Hongwanji Mission, burned in the deadliest U.S. wildfire in more than a century, its resident minister was desperate to go back and see what remained.

Six weeks later, he’s more hesitant.

“Now I feel like I have to have mental preparation to go there,” the Rev. Ai Hironaka said. “I’m kind of afraid.”

Hironaka and other Lahaina residents are grappling with a range of emotions as Maui authorities plan next week to begin allowing some on supervised visits back into the areas devastated by the Aug. 8 fire, which killed at least 97 people and demolished thousands of buildings.

Lana Vierra is bracing to see the ruins of the home where she raised five children, a house that started with three bedrooms in 1991 and was expanded to six to accommodate her extended family as the cost of living in Hawaii soared.

She’s been telling her family to be ready when it’s their turn, so that they can all visit together.

“We’re preparing our minds for that,” she said. “I don’t know know if our hearts are prepared for that.”

Authorities have divided the burned area into 17 zones and dozens of sub-zones. Residents or property owners of the first to be cleared for reentry — known as Zone 1C, along Kaniau Road in the north part of Lahaina — will be allowed to return Monday and Tuesday on supervised visits.

Government agencies including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and Maui County’s highways division are involved in clearing the zones for reentry by, among other things, removing any hazardous materials, checking buildings for structural safety and ensuring safe road access.

Those returning will be provided water, shade, washing stations, portable toilets, medical and mental health care, and transportation assistance if needed, said Darryl Oliveira, Maui Emergency Management Agency interim administrator.

Authorities are also offering personal protective equipment, including respirator masks and coveralls. Officials have warned that ash could contain asbestos, lead, arsenic or other toxins. There are other hazards, too, Oliveira said, such as burned out cars along roads and chunks of metal or concrete in the ruins.

“We really want to help guide them, provide them the support, but also provide them the privacy, that space and quiet, so they can get the closure they’re looking for,” Oliveira said in a video message Thursday.

Some people might want to sift through the ashes for any belongings or mementos that survived, but officials are urging them not to, for fear of stirring up toxic dust that could endanger them or their neighbors downwind. Other residents said they didn’t immediately have plans to return to the properties because jobs or the hassle of obtaining a pass to reenter the burn zone would keep them away.

Melody Lukela-Singh plans to take a hazardous materials course before visiting the Front Street property where the house she lived in with about a dozen relatives once stood.

“I’m hoping to learn what we’re going to encounter as far as exposure to things we know nothing about,” she said. “The winds pick up and it’s going to be all in the air. It’s going be a while before all of that is gone.”

Hironaka reflected on how his feelings toward reentry have changed as the weeks have passed — and as the magnitude of losing the temple, along with his home on the temple grounds, has set in.

“After a week, I feel like I still have energy, like a car with full tank of gas,” Hironaka said. “After I use all the gasoline, I don’t know where to fill it up, what to fill it up. No gas. I feel like I’m pushing the empty-gas car only by myself. Pushing from the back.”

He, his wife, their four children and their French bulldog piled into his Honda Civic to escape the flames. As they drove off, he said, he imagined the temple as protecting their home.

In a phone interview, he said he initially intended not to cry until he could return to thank the temple and apologize to the Buddha statue that had been at its main altar. But he became emotional and sobbed as he spoke, saying, “The temple building, I was supposed to protect as resident minister.”

He has found solace, he said, in Buddhism’s teachings of wisdom and compassion, that Buddha has no judgment and allows him to feel whatever he feels in the moment.

Hironaka said he often sees a photo taken by The Maui News and distributed worldwide by The Associated Press that shows the temple burning alongside Waiola Church next door. He considered the temple, built in 1933, to be like a family member, he said.

“That’s the end-of-life picture to me,” he said.

Lahaina’s two other Japanese Buddhist temples also burned down.

Jarom Ayoso is eager to get back to the property where he and his wife rented a house for nearly 15 years. His son was able to get in the day after the fire and took video of the destruction.

“I want closure for my end,” he said. “The only way I going get that is if I go and see it.”

Ayoso wants to see what’s left of the vehicles he lovingly rebuilt, including his 1986 GMC Sierra pickup truck. There were also motors he built on the property, including one that cost more than $13,000. He was just about to install it, he said, and “poof — gone.”
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U.S. immigration authorities reported a significant uptick in unauthorized border crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday, particularly in areas like Eagle Pass, Texas, where the mayor has issued a state of emergency.

U.S. Border Patrol officers apprehended about 9,000 migrants along the entire border in a 24-hour period, according to media reports on Wednesday. VOA asked Border Patrol to confirm the number of apprehensions, but an official, who spoke on background, said they were waiting to release monthly migrant encounter numbers.

The noticeable rise in migrant arrivals in Eagle Pass strained local resources and overwhelmed already crowded facilities.

On Wednesday evening between 500 and 800 migrants, mostly from Venezuela, were waiting to be processed by Border Patrol officials under the Eagle Pass-Piedras Negras International Bridge, one of the two bridges in Eagle Pass.

A U.S. Customs and Border Protection official told VOA on background — a method often used by U.S. officials to share information with reporters without being identified — that CBP suspended crossings at Eagle Pass to help with the influx of migrants over the last few days.

“But we anticipate reopening it once they [border officers] are done dealing with [migrants] today,” the official said by phone, adding that traffic was being diverted to another bridge in the same area.

“There are times that we have to close the ports. We just simply divert traffic to other ports of entry,” the spokesperson said.

After the increased number of unauthorized crossings, Eagle Pass Mayor Rolando Salinas Jr. signed an emergency declaration. In recent years, the region has become accustomed to regulating migration as it became a heavily used point for newcomers to cross into the U.S.

“The emergency declaration grants us the ability to request financial resources to provide additional services caused by the influx of undocumented immigrants,” Salinas wrote in Wednesday’s emergency declaration.

In response to the surge in encounters, the CBP spokesperson said officials expect to see more fluctuations, knowing that smugglers will continue to use misinformation to prey on vulnerable individuals.

U.S. authorities could not provide a specific reason for the recent increase in crossings. However, they said it is usually a combination of misinformation spread by smugglers, economic hardships in migrants’ home countries and migrants running from authoritative regimes.

The CBP officer told VOA that often individuals pay a smuggler but end up traveling in groups and arrive all at once at a specific part of the border.

“The big thing that we want people to know is that, ‘Look, if you come to the border and you don’t use CBP One app, and you didn’t take advantage of those lawful pathways that the administration has set up, it’s going to be presumed that you’re ineligible for asylum,’” the official said.

The CBP official also said the border continues to be closed to irregular migration and that without a legal basis to stay in the country, migrants will be processed for removal and face consequences that include “a minimum five-year bar on re-entry, loss of eligibility to access lawful pathways, and prosecution for repeat offenders.”

In May, just before the expiration of the COVID-era restriction known as Title 42, border officials encountered more than 8,000 people a day along the entire border. After the end of Title 42, these numbers decreased significantly, with daily encounters averaging 3,500 illegal crossings.

Increase border enforcement

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday announced plans to increase enforcement across the U.S.-Mexico border, including additional military personnel — on top of the 2,500 state National Guard personnel — to support border officers on the ground.

The CBP official who spoke to VOA on background said military personnel do things that do not involve contact with migrants, such as watching surveillance cameras, and other collateral duties.

Immigration authorities have not released the August migrant encounter numbers at the U.S.-Mexico border, but the last available data showed about 183,000 migrants were apprehended in July. At the same time in 2022, that number was 200,162.

“So the [Border Patrol] agents and processing coordinators can fully concentrate on the situation they have to deal with … we have a plan and we’re executing that plan. We remain on the lookout for fluctuations,” the official said.
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Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy made an urgent plea Thursday to U.S. lawmakers on Capitol Hill, telling them that without a new tranche of funding to combat Russian aggression, Ukraine will lose the war.

The White House requested $24 billion in supplemental funding for Ukraine earlier this year. But there is growing Republican concern about providing U.S. aid to Ukraine, combined with broader difficulties passing either a short-term continuing resolution or a full 2024 budget funding the U.S. government past a September 30 deadline.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer summed up the meeting with Zelenskyy, telling the members, “If we don’t get the aid, we will lose the war.”

Later in a statement, Schumer emphasized the danger of not passing the supplemental funding request, saying, “It is very clear that if we were to have a government shutdown, or pass a CR without Ukrainian aid, the damage that would occur on Ukraine’s campaign would be devastating.”

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a major supporter of U.S. aid to Ukraine in the Senate, was tight-lipped afterwards, only telling reporters it was “a good meeting.”

On Wednesday, McConnell applauded the appointment of an inspector general for the oversight of Ukraine aid.

“Thanks in large part to the requirements Senate Republicans have attached to our aid since the beginning of Russia’s escalation, the United States has unprecedented visibility into how Ukraine is using American weapons,” McConnell said in a statement.

Zelenskyy also met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin on Thursday ahead of a Pentagon announcement of a new security package of more air defense and artillery capabilities for Ukraine.

Pentagon press secretary, Brigadier General Patrick Ryder, told reporters Thursday that “everything is on schedule” with the delivery of M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine and that if there is a government shutdown, F-16 training in the U.S. for Ukrainian pilots would still take place.

From the beginning of hostilities in February 2022 to May 2023, the U.S. has provided more than $76.8 billion in assistance, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The share of Americans who say the U.S. is providing too much aid to Ukraine has steadily increased since the start of the war in February 2022, according to a June 2023 Pew Research Center survey.

Just 14% of Democratic and Democratic-leaning voters said the amount of U.S. aid to Ukraine was excessive but more than 44% of Republican and Republican-leaning voters said the amount of aid was too high. One-third of all Americans told Pew that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was a threat to U.S. interests.

On the House side of the U.S. Capitol, where concerns are growing in the Republican majority about continuing U.S. aid to Ukraine, the reception for Zelenskyy was far more muted. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries met with the Ukrainian president behind closed doors, but the speaker’s office did not release any photographs of the meeting.

“It was a very candid, open, forward-looking discussion,” Jeffries said in his weekly press conference Thursday.

Jeffries said the war between Ukraine and Russia is “a struggle on the global stage between democracy and autocracy, between freedom and tyranny, between truth and propaganda, between good and evil.”

More-conservative members of the Republican majority have objected to passing the Ukraine supplemental request along with funding for the U.S. government.

In an opinion piece published earlier this week by news network Fox, Republican Representative Mike Waltz wrote that “while most Americans are sympathetic to Ukraine and understand that Russian President Vladimir Putin must be prevented from his goal of recreating the old Soviet Union, President Joe Biden has not been a good-faith partner. The Biden administration has neither explained the American objective in Ukraine nor his strategy to achieve it.”

Waltz went on to call for greater burden sharing of aid to Ukraine by European countries and said “the United States must invest its savings in its own security. It should match the dollar value of any aid it gives to Ukraine with securing our southern border.”

According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, the U.S. is in the top tier of countries providing aid to Ukraine, giving from 0.25% to 0.45% of its annual gross domestic product to aiding Ukraine, while Scandinavian countries such as Sweden provide slightly more at 0.75%.

But most Republicans recognize the need to include more aid.

“They need it and they’re going to get it,” Republican Representative Michael McCaul, chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, told reporters after Zelenskyy’s meeting Thursday morning with lawmakers.

“The majority support this. I know there’s some dissension on both sides, but as I said, war of attrition is not going to win. That’s what Putin wants because he wants to break the will of the American people and the Europeans. We can’t afford a war of attrition. We need a plan for victory.”

McCaul went on to say that lawmakers pressed Zelenskyy on several issues, including “accountability, speed of weapons [delivery] and a plan for victory.”

Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.
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A contractor for the U.S. government has been arrested on espionage charges, accused of providing a foreign country classified information that he downloaded and printed from his work computer system, the Justice Department said Thursday.

Abraham Teklu Lemma, who is originally from Ethiopia, had a top secret security clearance and access to classified information through contracting positions with the departments of State and Justice.

He is accused of using an encrypted messaging application to transmit maps, photographs and satellite imagery to the foreign government, according to court documents.

Court papers do not identify the country Lemma is accused of spying for, and a Justice Department spokesman declined to comment. But the documents do refer to travel back and forth over the past year and a half to a country where he has family ties.

The New York Times, which first reported the arrest, identified Ethiopia as the country for which Lemma is alleged to have spied.

Prosecutors say he accessed dozens of intelligence reports, copying information from them and downloading it to CDs and DVDs.

Lemma faces charges of delivering national defense information to aid a foreign government and conspiring to do so, as well as the willful retention of national defense information. It was not immediately clear if he had a lawyer who could speak on his behalf.

Lemma, 50, of Silver Spring, Maryland, is a naturalized U.S. citizen, the Justice Department said.

Besides the material that prosecutors say Lemma provided, he also communicated with a foreign official who tasked him with supplying information on certain subjects of interest to the country. They discussed military issues, such as command centers and the activities of rebels who were fighting against the government, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.

When the official told Lemma last September that it was time for him to continue his support, the affidavit says, Lemma responded, “Roger that!”

The State Department said in a statement that it learned that Lemma may have improperly removed classified information from its systems during an internal 60-day security review prompted by the April arrest of a Massachusetts Air National Guardsman accused of leaking highly classified military documents on a social media platform.

The department said it would continue to implement recommendations from that review to improve its protection of classified information.
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Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old media magnate who created Fox News, is stepping down as leader of both Fox’s parent company and his News Corp. media holdings.

Fox said Thursday that Murdoch would become chairman emeritus of both companies. His son, Lachlan, will become News Corp. chairman and continue as chief executive officer of Fox Corp.

Lachlan Murdoch said that “we are grateful that he will serve as chairman emeritus and know he will continue to provide valued counsel to both companies.”

Besides Fox News, Murdoch started the Fox broadcast network, the first to successfully challenge the Big Three of ABC, CBS and NBC. He is owner of the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post.

Murdoch is a force in the conservative world, where Fox News Channel has profoundly influenced television and the nation’s politics since its start in 1996.

Murdoch vowed in a letter to employees that he would remain engaged at Fox.

“In my new role, I can guarantee you that I will be involved every day in the contest of ideas, Murdoch wrote. “Our companies are communities, and I will be an active member of our community. I will be watching our broadcasts with a critical eye, reading our newspapers and websites and books with much interest.”

There was no immediate word on why Murdoch’s announcement came now. Ironically, it is the week author and Murdoch biographer Michael Wolff is publishing a book, “The End of Fox News,” speculating on what will happen to the network when the patriarch is gone.
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U.S. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy’s attempt to restart his stalled spending agenda failed on Thursday when Republicans for a third time blocked a procedural vote on defense spending, raising the risk of a government shutdown in just 10 days. 

The House of Representatives voted 216-212 against beginning debate on an $886 billion defense appropriations bill amid opposition from a small group of hardline conservative Republicans. 

It represented a setback for McCarthy the morning after his fractious 221-212 majority met for 2-1/2 hours seeking common ground on legislation to avert the fourth government shutdown in a decade beginning October 1.  

As the vote failed, McCarthy told reporters that he will pursue the “same strategy I had from January: just keep working; never give up.” 

Federal agencies will begin to shut down on October 1 unless Congress passes either a short-term continuing resolution, known as a CR, or a full-year funding bill. So far House Republicans have failed to unify around either possibility, and the ideas they have considered have only Republican support, making them unlikely to win support in the Democratic-majority Senate or be signed into law by President Joe Biden. 

“Instead of decreasing the chance of a shutdown, Speaker McCarthy is actually increasing it by wasting time on extremist proposals that cannot become law in the Senate,” top Senate Democrat Chuck Schumer said. 

The bill had been scheduled for a five-minute vote that Republicans kept open for over a half hour in a vain hope of winning additional votes. 

Republican Representative Keith Self, who had voted to advance the bill, said the motion’s failure showed a lack of trust in McCarthy’s leadership. 

“It’s a matter of trust,” Self told reporters while declining to elaborate. Asked about the mood in the chamber, Self said: “There were emotions running high.” 

Donald Trump, the front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, added to McCarthy’s distractions with a call to shut the government, as occurred three times during his four years in the White House. 

“Republicans in Congress can and must defund all aspects of Crooked Joe Biden’s weaponized Government that refuses to close the Border, and treats half the Country as Enemies of the State,” the former president said on his Truth Social platform. 

Trump is awaiting four criminal trials, including two brought by federal prosecutors, over charges including his attempts to overturn his 2020 election defeat. He has claimed without evidence that all four prosecutions are politically motivated. 

Political brinkmanship has begun to attract the attention of Wall Street, with rating agency Fitch citing repeated down-to-the-wire negotiations that threaten the government’s ability to pay its bills when it downgraded U.S. debt rating to AA+ from its top-notch AAA designation earlier this year. 

“The unpredictability is sad for the country,” said Representative Rosa DeLauro, top Democrat on the House appropriations panel. “They have stopped our ability to respond to the needs of the American people.” 

The Republican spending agenda has run afoul of a small group of Republican hardline conservatives, who want assurances that fiscal 2024 appropriations will not exceed a 2022 top line of $1.47 trillion, $120 billion less than McCarthy and Biden agreed to in May. 

A bipartisan group of 64 lawmakers known as the “Problem Solvers Caucus” proposed a measure that would fund the government through January 11, though without McCarthy’s support it is unclear how the measure would advance. 

McCarthy on Tuesday had to pull a procedural vote on a proposed 30-day CR. Then a vote to open floor debate on the defense appropriations bill failed. The defense bill had already been delayed earlier in the month. 

McCarthy has proposed a 30-day CR that would cut spending to the 2022 level, according to two sources familiar with the discussion. The CR would include a commission to tackle the federal debt and conservative restrictions on immigration and the border. 

McCarthy’s proposal would also set a top line for full-year fiscal 2024 spending at just under $1.53 trillion, the sources said. That is still $60 billion less than he agreed to with Biden in May. 

It was not clear how much support the CR or the 2024 top line would draw from House Republicans. 
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