The US is worried about an invasion, but China could take control of Taiwan without firing a shot, war experts warn

Chris Panella
Thu, May 16, 2024

The US is worried about an invasion, but China could take control of Taiwan without firing a shot, war experts warn


The US and its allies are focused on preventing a Chinese invasion of Taiwan.


A new report argues there's a lack of readiness for other ways China could take control of Taiwan.


An aggressive Chinese coercion campaign is far more likely than an invasion and already happening, experts warn.

With the US and its allies focused on what a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could look like, and how American forces could defend Taiwan if necessary, they're missing a glaring alternative strategy China could employ to capture Taiwan, a new report argues.

Defense experts say that an aggressive Chinese coercion campaign, short of war but still threatening, is more likely than a full-scale invasion and the US needs to prepare for such an event.

A new report co-authored by war experts from the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War explores a scenario where China undergoes a "coercion campaign that remains far short of invasion but nevertheless brings Taiwan under Beijing's control," identifying such an event as a "significant gap in US strategic thought."


Elements of such a campaign are already underway and include China's military exercises both in the Taiwan Strait and around the island, which are growing in scale and raising worries about escalation. Economic and diplomatic pressure is notable, and Chinese misinformation operations and the potential to slowly set up a blockade of Taiwan are also concerns.

The increasing Chinese military presence around Taiwan, the report says, could exhaust and overwhelm Taiwan's military and fuel a narrative that it is unable to defend the island, decreasing "trust in the military and feelings of security among the Taiwanese populace."

Taiwan's AAV7 amphibious assault vehicle maneuvers across the sea during the Han Kuang military exercise, which simulates China's People's Liberation Army (PLA) invading the island, on July 28, 2022 in Pingtung, Taiwan.Annabelle Chih/Getty Images

The report identifies four things key to resisting Chinese coercion. The first is a US-Taiwanese strategic relationship that foregoes concerns that "cooperation directly precipitates further escalation, whereas peace and prosperity are just around the corner if this partnership is halted."

Second, Taiwan's government must function despite Chinese efforts to undermine it in the eyes of the Taiwanese people through things like "economic warfare, cyber warfare, sabotage, rigorous (and pseudo-legal) inspections of ships carrying goods to Taiwan, air and sea closures, electronic warfare, and propaganda critical of government mismanagement."

These efforts include significantly degrading Taiwan's essential services, like clean water and electricity.

The third point is that Taiwanese people must resist Chinese "cognitive and psychological campaigns" aimed at breaking their rejection of the Chinese government, including "intimidating supporters of resistance, sowing doubt and fear among the population, and generating demands to trade political concessions for peace."

And lastly, there has to be resistance against "widespread information campaigns" that "aim to decrease the US public's and political leadership's willingness to support Taiwan." Such campaigns are already occurring, prompting anxiety that the US public and government may see getting involved in defending Taiwan as heightening risks of war at a significant cost with little to gain. The AEI and ISW experts argue that is not the case.

Notably, the report says that "Taiwan is strategically vital to the larger US-led coalition to contain" China, arguing that a US-friendly Taiwan links America's allies in the northwestern Pacific with US partners and allies to the south."

A China-controlled Taiwan, however, "would become a springboard for further PRC aggression and would seriously compromise the US-led coalition's ability to operate cohesively."

A US-made AH-1W Super Cobra helicopter launches flares during an annual drill at the a military base in the eastern city of Hualien on January 30, 2018.MANDY CHENG/AFP via Getty Images

The authors of the new report present coordinated actions China could pursue to prompt Taiwan and its partners to accept reunification, referring to it as a "short-of-war coercion course of action."

Some of Beijing's biggest problems are Taiwanese resistance to China, which continues to grow, especially after the historic election of Democratic Progressive Party candidate Lai Ching-te, who is currently the vice president, in January, and continued support from the US and its regional allies.

The new report looks at a hypothetical timeline that begins with the inauguration of Lai this month and leads into 2028, imaging how China and Taiwan could, by that point, come to a "peace" agreement. China could ultimately be successful in such a campaign, the authors say, if the US and its allies fail to recognize Beijing's coercive tactics or strategically plan to deter them.

The US must clearly "recognize the possibility and danger of a coercion campaign that is far more intense than the one currently ongoing against Taiwan and develop ways to prevent Taiwan's isolation through means short of war," they write.

The report's authors argue that "increased efforts in the information domain will be key to ensuring that the US government and friendly international audiences do not fall prey to [Chinese] information operations intended to reshape the way Americans and key international actors think."

CM-11 tanks fire artillery during the 2-day live-fire drill, amid intensifying threats military from China, in Pingtung county, Taiwan, 7 September 2022.Ceng Shou Yi/NurPhoto via Getty Images

US-Taiwanese relations and concerns about an aggressive China in the Pacific region are often at the forefront of the minds of US officials and experts, but the focus is frequently on hard power elements, even if there is recognition of some of the coercive aspects of Chinese behavior.

In March, US Navy Adm. John Aquilano, then the commander of US Indo-Pacific Command, stressed that China was pursuing a massive military build-up not seen since World War II and "all indications" pointed to it "meeting President Xi Jinping's directive to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027." He also told the US Armed Services House Committee China's actions indicated it would ready to unify Taiwan by force, if necessary.

Aquilano urged lawmakers to intensify the US' military development and posturing in the Pacific in order to deter such a fight.

And, earlier this month, over a dozen US lawmakers wrote to US Navy Secretary Carlos Del Toro and Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, raising concerns about what preparations were being made to harden the US presence in the Pacific and deter military action from China.

Of the lawmakers' concerns, the most prominent appeared to be the lack of active and passive defenses protecting US bases in the area, specifically on Guam and in Japan. "We are concerned about the alarming lack of urgency by the Department of Defense in adopting such defensive measures," they wrote, adding that "it is apparent that the Pentagon is not urgently pursuing needed passive defenses" to harden US bases and airfields from a vicious, preemptive strike by China's threatening missile force


Tracking China's 'grey zone' balloon flights over Taiwan

Thu, May 16, 2024 

Illustration shows Chinese and Taiwanese flags

By Jackie Gu and Yimou Lee

TAIPEI (Reuters) - About a month before Taiwan's January presidential election, China began sending intruders over the Taiwan Strait: more than 100 balloons, some of which passed through the island's airspace or busy, Taipei-controlled air corridors for civil aviation.

Experts say the balloons could be psychological warfare, carry surveillance tools or simply gather meteorological data. On some days, as many as eight were detected within a few hours; at other times, weeks passed without any balloons at all. In the week leading up to Taiwan's presidential election on Jan. 13, an average of three balloons were spotted each day.

Then on April 11, they stopped altogether.

The increased frequency has raised alarms both domestically and abroad.

A senior Taiwanese security official briefed on the matter said Chinese balloon flights near Taiwan took place on an "unprecedented scale" in the weeks leading up to Taiwan's elections and described the incidents as part of a Chinese pressure campaign – so-called grey-zone warfare designed to exhaust a foe using irregular tactics without open combat.

Taiwan inaugurates its new president, Lai Ching-te, on May 20. China, which views democratically governed Taiwan as its own territory despite the island's objections, has a strong dislike of Lai, believing him to be a dangerous "separatist", whose repeated offers of talks it has rejected, including one in May.

China's defence ministry did not respond to a request for comment.

China's Taiwan Affairs Office referred Reuters to its comment on Jan. 31, in which it dismissed complaints about the balloons, saying they were for meteorological purposes and should not be hyped up for political reasons.

Before Dec. 8, balloon data was not public, making historical comparisons impossible.

But Jan Jyh-horng, the deputy head and spokesperson of the Mainland Affairs Council, Taiwan's top China policy-making body, told Reuters that in the past, a balloon would be spotted "maybe once a month".

Between December 2023 and April 2024, more than four balloons were detected on eight separate days. In total, just over a hundred balloons were flown during that period.

Three Taiwanese officials briefed on the matter confirmed that the number of Chinese balloons had increased significantly in recent months. The majority are weather balloons collecting atmospheric data, including wind, temperature and humidity, they said, but Taiwan still sees them as Chinese harassment.

The balloons have flown at an altitude of 11,000 to 38,000 feet, with a mean altitude of 22,294 feet – well under the usual altitude for meteorological balloons. According to the U.S. National Weather Service, weather balloons typically reach altitudes of more than 100,000 feet.

"Sending them over at that kind of altitude is dangerous," said Alexander Neill, strategic adviser on Indo-Pacific geopolitics formerly at the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Royal United Services Institute. "You are within air traffic corridors, and the potential for a collision is concerning."

Jan agreed, saying the balloons are threats to aviation safety.

"They fly very slowly while planes move speedily," he said. "It could be too late when they were spotted, if they were sucked into the engines."

China's most frequent form of "grey zone" activity has been the almost daily air force and navy missions in the waters and skies around Taiwan, forcing the island's armed forces to repeatedly scramble to see off the intruders.

Other tactics Taiwanese officials have expressed concern about include sand dredging close to the Taiwan-controlled Matsu islands, which sit near the Chinese coast.

(For an interactive graphic tracking balloon’s over Taiwan, click )

A second senior Taiwanese senior security official said, citing intelligence gathered by Taiwan, that the data potentially collected by the balloons would be useful for the PLA's rocket forces, because atmospheric factors could affect missile launches.

"If China was planning to mount an air assault onto Taiwan, they would need to understand the meteorological conditions and wind patterns of the island," Neill said.

Wang Ting-yu, a senior lawmaker for Taiwan's ruling Democratic Progressive Party and chair of parliament's foreign affairs and defence committee, told Reuters balloons are hard for military radars to detect unless their sensitivity is set to high levels.

But ultra-sensitive radars are likely to spot objects such as birds, and as a result, Taiwan's military might miss other vital targets such as incoming missiles.

"It's a challenging task," he said.

Raymond Kuo, director of the RAND Corporation's Taiwan Policy Initiative, says he thinks the purpose of the balloons is primarily psychological.

"I personally am sceptical of what additional intelligence China could get from balloons that they couldn't get from other platforms," Kuo said. "I think they're mostly meant to signal to Taiwan that they can't even defend their airspace."

(Reporting by Jackie Gu and Yimou Lee; Additional reporting by Ben Blanchard, and Ryan Woo in Beijing. Editing by Gerry Doyle)

BLUE H2

CNX plans $1.5B hydrogen fuels plant at Pittsburgh airport, but wants federal tax credit to build it

ALL CAPITALI$M IS STATE CAPITALI$M

Wed, May 15, 2024 

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Natural gas producer CNX Resources said it plans to build a $1.5 billion facility at Pittsburgh's airport to make hydrogen-based fuels, but only if President Joe Biden’s administration allows coal mine methane to qualify for tax credits that are central to the Democrat's plan to fight climate change.

The proposed facility has the backing of Pittsburgh-area labor unions, which hope to fill thousands of construction jobs, and top Pennsylvania officials, including U.S. Sen. Bob Casey. But it is likely to face scrutiny from clean energy and climate change activists.

The announcement comes as Biden's administration decides how to tailor billions of dollars in tax credits in a massive effort to build out a hydrogen industry to be a cleaner alternative to fossil fueled energy and slash planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

CNX said the facility would remove a potent greenhouse gas from the atmosphere — methane vented from coal mines — and blend it with natural gas to produce enough hydrogen-based airline fuel to supplant almost all of the jet fuel consumption at Pittsburgh International Airport.

“We want to produce our gas here, use it here to solve complex problems and this is one of those that addresses a really hard problem to solve: decarbonizing aviation is a challenge," said Ravi Srivastava, CNX's president of new technologies.

CNX's partners include the airport and KeyState Energy, which is building a facility in northern Pennsylvania to produce hydrogen from natural gas.

Darrin Kelly, president of the Allegheny/Fayette Central Labor Council, called it the “most significant energy project" in years in a region where many boosters have hoped a natural gas boom would reindustrialize an economy battered by the collapse of coal and steel.

Climate change activists don't want coal mine methane and other fossil fuels to qualify for the tax credits.

They don't like coal mine methane escaping into the atmosphere, but producing hydrogen from fossil fuels, instead of from carbon-free electricity, would undermine the purpose of the entire hydrogen program to displace fossil fuels, they say.

“I fear that if we take this path, we’ll look up a decade down the line and see we’ll have just poured hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars into something that is not clean and does not move us in the right direction," said Julie McNamara, a senior energy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

Lobbying is heavy over the final rule, giving Biden a political hot potato in a premier battleground state with fewer than six months until November's election.

The Treasury Department hasn’t said when it will publish a final rule, and nothing may happen before the election.

A final rule could determine how qualifying hydrogen projects must calculate their emissions and direct billions of public tax dollars on a sliding scale. Qualifying projects with the lowest emissions scores would get bigger tax credits.

As part of that, the department could determine whether a project can use coal mine methane as a feedstock. The federal government considers methane capture to have a negative emissions score, which helps lower the emissions score of a project that also uses natural gas a feedstock.

CNX could draw natural gas from below the airport and it has the rights to capture methane from coal mines in northern Appalachia.

Methane from operating and shuttered coal mines is normally vented straight into the atmosphere. Capturing it requires expensive equipment and there are no regulatory requirements or incentives to capture it.

The tax credit, however, makes methane capture economically viable as part of a project "that is checking all the boxes when it comes to economy, jobs and climate that the law was intending to check,” CNX’s CEO Nicholas DeIuliis said.

The project isn't financially viable without a tax credit to price the aviation fuel competitively, CNX officials said.

The draft regulation for the tax credits — part of Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 — was published in December. At the time, the Treasury Department said it anticipated a final rule would allow “hydrogen production pathways” using coal mine methane.

Administration officials estimate the hydrogen production credits will help the U.S. produce 50 million metric tons of hydrogen by 2050.

Hydrogen is being developed around the world as an energy source and can be made by splitting water with solar, wind, nuclear or geothermal electricity, yielding little if any greenhouse gases.

Most hydrogen today is made from natural gas. About 10 million metric tons of hydrogen is currently produced in the United States each year, primarily for petroleum refining and ammonia production.

___

Follow Marc Levy at twitter.com/timelywriter.

Marc Levy, The Associated Press

Pembina.orgwww.pembina.org/pub/carbon-intensity-blue-hydrogen-production

Carbon intensity of blue hydrogen production | Pembina Institute

Carbon intensity of blue hydrogen productionAccounting for technology and upstream emissions ... There is significant interest in blue hydrogen right now, as ...

Shell.comwww.shell.com/business-customers/catalysts-technologies/licensed-technologies/refinery-technology/shell-blue-hydrogen-process.html

Blue Hydrogen Production - Shell Global

The Shell Blue Hydrogen Process is an end-to-end lineup that enables affordable responsible hydrogen production. By applying proven carbon capture technologies, ...

Petrofac.comwww.petrofac.com/media/stories-and-opinion/the-difference-between-green-hydrogen-and-blue-hydrogen/

The difference between green hydrogen and blue hydrogen - Petrofac

Green hydrogen is hydrogen produced by splitting water by electrolysis. This produces only hydrogen and oxygen. We can use the hydrogen and vent the oxygen to ...

Cnbc.comwww.cnbc.com/2022/01/06/what-is-green-hydrogen-vs-blue-hydrogen-and-why-it-matters.html

What is green hydrogen vs. blue hydrogen and why it matters - CNBC

Jan 6, 2022 ... Blue hydrogen is hydrogen produced from natural gas with a process of steam methane reforming, where natural gas is mixed with very hot steam ...

Iberdrola.comwww.iberdrola.com/about-us/what-we-do/green-hydrogen/difference-hydrogen-green-blue

Difference between green and blue hydrogen - Iberdrola

The main difference between green and blue hydrogen lies in the process of obtaining the hydrogen, and in its environmental impact. Blue hydrogen does not ...

Biden signs sweeping aviation safety, reform bill into law

Updated Thu, May 16, 2024 

Thanksgivng Holiday travel at Washington Dulles Airport in Virginia


By David Shepardson

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -President Joe Biden signed on Thursday sweeping aviation legislation that will boost U.S. air traffic controller staffing, increase funding to avert runway close-call incidents and speed up refunds for canceled flights.

The $105 billion, five-year measure reauthorizes the Federal Aviation Administration. It prohibits airlines from charging fees for families to sit together, requires airplanes to be equipped with 25-hour cockpit recording devices, raises maximum civil penalties for airline consumer violations from $25,000 per violation to $75,000 and boosts aircraft production scrutiny.


"Following flight disruptions, runway close calls and consumer frustrations, this law is set to deliver the safest, most reliable aviation system in the world," said Senate Commerce Committee Chair Maria Cantwell. "Plane manufacturers will see more safety inspectors on factory floors and tougher safety standards from the FAA."

Biden has repeatedly clashed with air carriers, calling for new stricter consumer rules and harshly criticizing them for imposing fees. His administration has also aggressively moved to block further consolidation in the passenger airline industry, including successfully blocking a tie-up between JetBlue Airways and Spirit Airlines and quashing an alliance between JetBlue and American Airlines.

The law also adds five daily round-trip takeoff and landing slots at busy Washington National Airport, which Delta Air Lines had lobbied for. The bill also directs the FAA to deploy advanced airport surface technology to help prevent collisions.

Efforts to boost aviation safety in the United States have taken on new urgency after a series of near-miss incidents, as well as January's door plug mid-air emergency on an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 9 flight.

FAA Administrator Mike Whitaker said the bill "allows for more runway safety technology, more air traffic controllers and stronger oversight of aircraft production."

The bill also will allow Boeing to continue to produce its 767 freighter for another five years through 2033 in the United States, giving it an exemption from efficiency rules taking effect in 2028.

The bill aims to address a shortage of 3,000 air traffic controllers by directing the FAA to implement improved staffing standards and to hire more inspectors, engineers and technical specialists.

The bill does not raise the mandatory pilot retirement age to 67 as House lawmakers had sought to do last year and retains pilot training requirements.

Congress will not establish minimum seat size requirements, leaving that instead to the FAA. The bill requires the Transportation Department to create a dashboard that shows consumers the minimum seat size for each U.S. airline.

Lawmakers also rejected many other consumer provisions the Biden administration had sought, including requiring compensation for lengthy airline-caused delays as is the case in Europe.

The bill reauthorizes the National Transportation Safety Board and boosts staffing at the safety investigation agency. It also seeks to boost adoption of drones and flying air taxis into the national airspace and extends through Oct. 1 existing government counter-drone authority.

(Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by Susan Heavey, Brendan O'Boyle and Jamie Freed)

House signs off on FAA bill that addresses aircraft safety and and refund rights of passengers

DAVID KOENIG
Wed, May 15, 2024 

 A Federal Aviation Administration sign hangs in the tower at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York. Congressional negotiators have agreed on a $105 billion bill designed to improve the safety of air travel after a series of close calls between planes at the nation’s airports. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)


Congress gave final approval Wednesday to a $105 billion bill designed to increase the number of air traffic controllers, add more safety inspectors at aircraft factories, and require airlines to automatically pay refunds to travelers whose flights are canceled or significantly delayed.

The House passed the measure to reauthorize Federal Aviation Administration programs by a 387-26 margin and sent it to President Joe Biden. The Senate passed the measure last week.

Supporters called the provisions of the legislation a key step in improving aviation safety after a number of close calls between planes at U.S. airports in the last two years.

“This bill recognizes while our aviation system is safe, we have to continue raising the bar for safety,” said Rep. Sam Graves, R-Mo., chairman of the House Transportation Committee, which produced the first version of the legislation 10 months ago.

The Republicans and Democrats who lead the key aviation committees in the House and Senate negotiated over the bill's final shape last month, then fought off amendments that might have slowed the measure's passage.

One of the most contentious issues turned out to be the addition of 10 long-haul flights a day to and from Reagan National Airport outside Washington, D.C. Lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland tried to kill the provision.

Rep. Donald Beyer, D-Va., said the extra flights would “aggravate dangerous conditions” and cause more flight delays at the busy airport across the Potomac River from the nation's capital. But lawmakers from Western states, including Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, fought for the flights, as did Delta Air Lines.

The final version of the law authorizing FAA and National Transportation Safety Board programs for the next five years checked in at more than 1,000 pages. Congress has been critical of the FAA since it approved Boeing 737 Max jets that were involved in two deadly crashes in 2018 and 2019.

The bill's major provisions include directing the FAA to hire more air traffic controllers and safety inspectors, to increase the use of collision-avoidance technology at airports and to improve access for passengers with disabilities.

It also bans airlines from charging fees to let families sit together and requires them to issue automatic refunds when flights are canceled or delayed for several hours.

Airlines are suing the Biden administration to block a new Transportation Department rule on the automatic refunds, and inclusion of the provision in law could help the administration's legal case. Graves said the issue could lead to higher fares or result in refunds to travelers who would prefer being booked on another flight, but it didn't prevent him from supporting the bill.


House passes Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bill

Clare Foran, Gregory Wallace, Tami Luhby and Haley Talbot

CNN
Wed, May 15, 2024 



The House has passed a major federal aviation bill that aims to improve aviation safety, enhance protections for passengers and airline workers and invest in airport and air travel infrastructure nationwide.

The bill renewing the Federal Aviation Administration’s authority for five years will next head to President Joe Biden to be signed into law. The legislation passed the Senate last week. The House vote was 387 to 26.

The bill would authorize more than $105 billion in funding for the FAA, as well as $738 million for the National Transportation Safety Board for fiscal years 2024 through 2028.

Although the package has drawn broad bipartisan support, it touched off contentious debate over certain policy issues.

One flashpoint centered on a provision to add longer-distance flights at Reagan National Airport, just outside of Washington, DC. A group of Washington-area Democratic senators pressed to strip the provision from the package, though the chamber didn’t ultimately move to do so.

Some lawmakers argue additional flights would give consumers more choices and bring down prices, while others say it would increase congestion and delays at the airport, as well as create safety issues. Lawmakers commute most weeks between their home states and Washington, and many could benefit from more convenient flights back and forth.

Other key provisions of the legislation include:

Hiring more air traffic controllers

The bill would require the FAA to hire and train as many air traffic controllers as possible to close a gap of 3,000 vacancies. It would also mandate more research into how many controllers are needed at each tower and center and would increase access to training simulators in more air traffic control towers nationwide.

Improving runway safety

To reduce the number of collisions and near-collisions on runways, the FAA would be required to install additional runway technology at medium and large hub airports.

The technology is only installed at about three dozen US airports, according to the FAA, and played a role in alerting controllers that American Airlines and Delta Air Lines passenger jets were about to collide on a John F. Kennedy airport runway in New York City in January 2023.

Passenger protections

In April, the Department of Transportation finalized a new rule on airline refunds: They’re due in cash – rather than vouchers – within a few days, and come automatically. That means no requirement to call the airline and complain when your flight is canceled or substantially delayed.

The compromise FAA bill as proposed originally did not go as far as the new DOT rule, which raised the possibility that a future DOT leadership could strip the automatic refund rule. After an outcry – including from an alliance of Republican Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts – the bill’s negotiators returned to the drawing board and added the automatic component into the bill. Under the new language, if a passenger declines an airline’s rebooking request or does not respond to the request, the airline must issue an automatic refund.
Enhancing protections for airline workers

The legislation would put more teeth behind rules against attacks on aviation workers, which spiked during the Covid-19 pandemic, by expanding legal protections to ground-based employees like gate and check-in agents.

It would also enhance Transportation Security Administration-taught self-defense training for flight attendants so they can better protect themselves and respond to unruly passengers and other threats.

Setting a standard for travel credits

Under the bill, travel credits issued by airlines in lieu of refunds would have to be useable for at least five years.

Increasing cockpit voice recording

Commercial aircraft would have to carry 25-hour cockpit voice recorders under the legislation. That was a top ask of the NTSB and a substantial increase from the current two-hour standard.

The cockpit voice recorder is one of the two black boxes and is currently only required to capture two hours of sound from the cockpit. The NTSB says recordings that would be key to investigations have fallen outside the two-hour window and been overwritten.

Six Ways Congress Plans to Make Flying Better With the FAA Bill

Sana Pashankar
Wed, May 15, 2024 


(Bloomberg) -- Congress is aiming to make US airlines quicker to issue refunds and more transparent about their fees.

The House is on the verge of passing legislation to improve consumer protections and flying standards when it comes to buying, boarding and changing flights.

The Senate passed the same measure, a five-year authorization for the Federal Aviation Administration, last week. President Joe Biden is expected to sign the legislation ahead of a May 17 deadline.

Here’s how the reauthorization bill will affect travel:

Automatic Refunds

The legislation would allow passengers to receive full, automatic refunds for flights that are significantly delayed or canceled if the passenger chooses not to take that flight or accept a rebooking, voucher, credit or compensation.

This would apply to domestic flights that arrive three or more hours late and international flights that arrive six or more hours late.

Airline Vouchers

The lifespan of a flight voucher today depends on the airline, but typically these forms of coupons expire one to two years after they’re issued. The FAA bill would require airlines to accept vouchers, airline credits and other forms of flight compensation for at least five years.

Customer Service

In December 2022, Southwest Airlines’ software systems crashed during a winter storm. Millions of passengers across the nation were stranded in airports during the Christmas holiday and faced excessive wait times from customer service and little communication from the airline.

The reauthorization bill requires airlines provide free, 24/7 access to customer service agents by phone, text message, or live chat, partially as a reaction to Southwest’s holiday fiasco. Lawmakers emphasized that these forms of communication should be “without an excessive wait time, particularly during times of massive disruptions.”

Transparent Fees

Seemingly cheap flights can become exponentially more expensive between the ticket purchase and takeoff. The bill would require airlines to clearly show additional fees, such as for checking baggage or changing a reservation, before booking the flight.

Improved Accessibility

The legislation would mandate airlines accommodate specific seating requests for passengers with disabilities, such as a seat near the bathroom or one with more legroom. Airlines would also be required to provide information, upon request and on their public website, about reservations for an on-board wheelchair.

The legislation also would create a grant program to incentivize US airports to upgrade their accessibility standards.

Washington Flights

Perhaps the most contentious component of the bill is one that allows five additional round-trip flights to operate through Ronald Reagan Washington International, the closest airport to downtown DC

Opponents of the measure, including United Airlines and lawmakers from Virginia and Maryland, argue that allowing more flights would worsen delays and noise pollution, along with potentially jeopardizing passenger safety.

Proponents of the measure include lawmakers who live in states further from DC and want more convenient and frequent ways to travel home. Delta Airlines, which argued that the airport is underused, is also in favor of the expansion.

Bloomberg Businessweek

It’s been 70 years since Brown v. Board of Education. The US is still trying to achieve the promise of integration.

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court laid out a new precedent: Separate but equal has no place in American schools.

Chandelis Duster, Nicquel Terry Ellis and Alex Leeds Matthews

 CNN
Thu, May 16, 2024 

Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas – the landmark Supreme Court decision that declared “separate but equal” education unconstitutional in the United States – remains one of the most consequential court cases in American history.

As the nation commemorates the ruling’s 70th anniversary, civil rights leaders and advocates tell CNN the case may have paved the way for more equal and integrated schools, but fierce – and continued – opposition to integration means the ruling in no way assured the end of segregated education in the United States.

Although progress has undoubtedly been made over the decades, research shows many school districts today are racially segregated because they are divided along residential and economic lines. At times, federal courts have intervened, ordering some school districts to execute plans to integrate Black and Latino students with their White counterparts to improve educational opportunities.

Gary Orfield, a professor at UCLA and co-director of the university’s Civil Rights Project, said although there’s been a steady increase in enrollment of non-White students in public schools, his research shows more students attend schools that are “intensely segregated” now than they did 30 years ago.

That’s when the Supreme Court ruled in Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell that court-ordered desegregation plans were “not intended to operate in perpetuity,” allowing more segregation to take place over time as school districts reverted to neighborhood zoning.

De facto segregation persists today, Orfield said, because many states have abandoned efforts to enforce integration.

“There are many places where courts ended desegregation orders that had been accepted. A great many of the magnet schools that had been integrated for decades under court orders were resegregated,” he said. “These were such tragic changes, throwing away real successes in a very polarized country.”
A ‘massive resistance’ to integration

Historically, efforts to desegregate schools were at times met with violent resistance from White Americans.

In response to the Brown decision, 101 southern lawmakers – roughly a fifth of Congress – signed what would become known as the “Southern Manifesto,” which encouraged states to “resist forced integration by any lawful means.”

Hazel Bryan, center left, and other students of Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas, shout insults at Elizabeth Eckford as she calmly walks to a line of National Guardsmen who blocked the main entrance and would not let her enter on September 4, 1957. - Will Counts/Arkansas Democrat Gazette via AP

“If we can organize the Southern States for massive resistance to this order, I think that in time the rest of the country will realize that racial integration is not going to be accepted in the South,” Virginia Sen. Harry Flood Byrd said in the days after the ruling was announced.

That “massive resistance” campaign spread throughout southern states.

In 1957, three years after the Brown ruling, all eyes turned to Little Rock Central High in Arkansas as nine Black students were escorted into the school by soldiers in the US Army’s 101st Airborne Division. The students are known today as the Little Rock Nine.

Then, in 1965, a legal battle over integration in Mississippi began that would last more than 50 years.

That year, Dianna Cowan White’s parents listed her as the plaintiff in a lawsuit against the Bolivar County Board of Education, now the Cleveland School District, in Cleveland, Mississippi, because the district still forced Black students to attend an all-Black school.

The district fought the lawsuit for more than five decades and in 2016, it would become one of the last in the country to officially desegregate, CNN previously reported.

That ruling, advocates say, signaled that the fight to integrate schools was far from over.

According to Orfield’s research, which examines school integration across the country, desegregation efforts peaked in the 1980s and there’s since been a decline in the percentage of Black students attending majority-White schools.

Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall – who argued the original Brown v. Board of Education case as a lawyer – wrote the dissenting opinion in Board of Education of Oklahoma City v. Dowell, the 1991 Supreme Court decision that released school districts from desegregation orders.

“The majority today suggests that 13 years of desegregation was enough,” Marshall wrote, adding that in his view, an order to lift any desegregation decree “must take into account the unique harm” associated with racially segregated schools and “must expressly demand the elimination of such schools.”

But even in schools that are integrated, racist bullying and discrimination persists. From 2018 to 2022, more than 4,300 hate crimes were reported in schools, with the largest number of alleged offenses being motivated by anti-Black bias, according to a report from the Department of Justice released in January.
‘Vestiges of segregation’

As of 2020, more than 700 school districts and charter schools were under a legal desegregation order or voluntary agreement to desegregate, according to the Century Foundation, an independent think tank that works toward equity in education, among other goals.

Leslie Fenwick, dean emeritus and professor at the Howard University School of Education, told CNN the decades of opposition to integration efforts has also led to a decrease in the number of Black educators. She explores the unintended consequences to the Brown decision in her book, “Jim Crow’s Pink Slip: The Untold Story of Black Principal and Teacher Leadership.”

“We never define segregation the right way. In everybody’s mind still, when we say segregation, we’re only focused on students,” she told CNN. “The great failing, not of the decision, but of massive resistance to the decision, was that we wiped out 100,000 Black principals and teachers who were fired, dismissed and demoted.”

The original Brown v. Board of Education case was also litigated by lawyers with the NAACP’s Legal Defense Fund, the nation’s first civil rights law firm, which Marshall founded in 1940.

Since the Brown ruling, the civil rights legal group says it has “sued hundreds of school districts across the country to vindicate the promise of Brown.”

Today, there are more than 200 open school desegregation cases currently on the federal dockets, according to the LDF, which estimates its lawyers are handling about a hundred of those cases.

Michaele Turnage Young, senior counsel and co-manager of the Equal Protection Initiative at the LDF, said these lawsuits are necessary because the “vestiges of school segregation” still exist today.

Young said many majority-White schools are often better equipped with educational resources and better trained staff than majority-Black schools in the same school district. She noted other disparities include a lack of screenings for gifted programs, college prep programs and extracurricular activity offerings, and lower graduation rates.

The anniversary of Brown v. Board of Education comes nearly a year after the Supreme Court gutted affirmative action in higher education, which sparked a conservative-led movement to outlaw diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs at public colleges and universities.

Some critics of DEI say the programs are discriminatory against White Americans. But civil rights advocates and legal scholars tell CNN that arguments to end affirmative action and curb DEI are often premised on the idea that America has already achieved racial equality in education – a notion they say is far from the truth.

Demonstrators for and against the U.S. Supreme Court decision to strike down race-conscious student admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina confront each other. - Evelyn Hockstein/Reuters/File

NAACP President and CEO Derrick Johnson said he hasn’t been surprised by the culture war that’s now playing out in school districts across the country because “history has taught us that progress is not made in a straight line.”

“We will continue to see these reactions until more citizens realize that equal protection under the law, our ability to grow and prosper as a nation, will be based on our diversity and not on a single culture or racial identity,” Johnson said.

Dianna Cowan White told CNN her parents were able to enroll her in an all-White school while their legal case against the Bolivar School District wound through the courts.

More than 50 years later, she says she can still recall how her 6th grade classmates taunted her, often saying “go back to where you came from” or, “did you paint your skin black?”

“They did not want me there,” White told CNN. “I felt like I was alone.”

But she also recalled the all-White school had better quality books, and was teaching a curriculum that was far more advanced than the Black school she had previously attended in the same district.

The experience ultimately influenced her decision to send her children to racially diverse schools, despite the racism she encountered, because she felt they would have better opportunities.

White said when she learned of the judge’s ruling to desegregate the school district in 2016 her first reaction was, “it was about time.”

“We are in the 21st century, when do you let it go?”

Topeka was at the center of Brown v. Board. Decades later, segregation of another sort lingers

HEATHER HOLLINGSWORTH
Wed, May 15, 2024 at 10:11 p.m. MDT·5 min read












Fifth grader Malaya Webster, right, plays a game with other students at Williams Science and Arts Magnet school Friday, May 10, 2024, in Topeka, Kan. The school is just a block from the former Monroe school which was at the center of the Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court ruling ending segregation in public schools 70 years ago. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel)

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — The lesson on diversity started slowly in a first-grade classroom in Topeka, where schools were at the center of a case that struck down segregated education.

“I like broccoli. Do you like broccoli?” Marie Carter, a Black school library worker, asked broccoli-hating librarian Amy Gugelman, who is white.

The students were comparing what makes them the same and what makes them different. It’s part of their introduction to Brown v. Board of Education, a ruling commemorated at a national historic site in a former all-Black school just down the street. Linda Brown, whose father Oliver Brown was the lead plaintiff in the case, was a student there.

Within a few questions, the first-graders at Williams Science & Fine Arts Magnet school watched the two women hold their arms next to each other. “My skin is brown,” Carter observed, “and Mrs. Gugelman’s skin is not.”

And then Gugelman reached the heart of the lesson. “Can we still be friends?”

The students, themselves a range of ethnicities, screamed out “yes!” oblivious to the messiness of the question, to the history of this place, to the struggles with race and equity that continue even now.

In school lessons, memorials and ceremonies, Topeka is marking its ties to the 1954 ruling that struck down “separate but equal.” But just as clear to many is the legacy of discrimination that stands in the way of its promise of equity in Topeka and elsewhere.

The district is now 36% white, down from 72% in 1987. The changes coincide with the nation growing more diverse. Yet none of Topeka’s neighboring districts have a white enrollment below 64%; one district has a 94% white enrollment.

This concentration of students of color in districts with higher numbers of poor students partially reflects historic redlining and that poorer families couldn’t afford to move to suburban districts with more costly homes, said Frank Henderson, who has served on the state and national school board associations.

Four years ago, the largely white suburban district of Seaman, north of Topeka, where Henderson was the first Black school board member, was forced to confront the darker aspects of its past.

In 2020, student journalists confirmed the district’s namesake, Fred Seaman, was a regional leader of the Ku Klux Klan a century ago. The school board ultimately voted unanimously to renounce Seaman and his KKK activities but to keep the name.

“I felt it was probably the best that could be done to be able to address this hot issue,” said Henderson, whose 16 1/2-year school board term ended in January.

Madeline Gearhart, who was co-editor-in-chief of the high school newspaper, was disappointed. But now she thinks the student journalists who broke the story laid the groundwork for the issue to be taken up later in a district that is 80% white.

“I just think it’s so ironic that in a world where Topeka was a part of Brown v. Board, we still are maintaining the namesake of the district and not trying to disassociate,” said Gearhart, who is white and now a junior at the University of Kansas.

Seven years after the historic ruling, Beryl New began attending the all-Black school, Monroe Elementary, where Linda Brown and another plaintiff child were students. It was still largely segregated, not by district policy, but by redlining.

Her family was friends with the president of the Topeka chapter of the NAACP who recruited the 13 families that sued the Topeka district. Their case was eventually joined by school desegregation cases from Virginia, South Carolina and Delaware. On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court overturned the doctrine of “separate but equal” in the case that bore Oliver Brown’s name. A similar case from Washington, D.C., was decided at the same time in a separate ruling.

The ruling embarrassed city leaders because they believed they had built equitable schools for white and Black students, said New, who serves on the African Affairs Commission for Kansas and is a former principal and district administrator.

“But of course, there were issues that were deeper than just what a building looks like,” she said.

For New, the mission now is to diversify the district’s workforce. Nationally, only about 45% of public school students are now white, but around 80% of teachers are, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

The district is handing out symbolic teaching contracts to high schoolers and vowing to hire them when they graduate from college. And to clear roadblocks for Black aides who want to become full-fledged teachers, it sometimes pays their salaries while they student teach.

That is what allowed teacher Jolene Tyree, who is Black, to finish her degree. The longtime-aide, hopes it makes a difference to her students to have someone who looks like them. Growing up, she recalls having very few Black teachers.

“You just feel somewhat on the outer side,” said Tyree, whose mother also attended Monroe and whose first-graders are now learning about the desegregation case.

Back in the library, Tyree’s students’ lesson was ending. Tiffany Anderson, Topeka’s first Black female superintendent, strode to the front of the room, quizzing the children on whether they wanted to be teachers, doctors or even the president of the United States someday.

Hands shot into the air. Anderson said many of the kids wouldn’t have done so in the past because they hadn’t seen anyone who looked like them in those roles.

“So, boys and girls,” Anderson said, “as I’m looking out at the sea of differences that make you all special, ... I just want to remind you, do differences really matter?”

The children shouted “no” before trickling out of the room.

Seven-year-old Jamari Lyons stayed behind.

“It’s OK to be white. And it’s OK to be Black. You can still be friends. You can still be neighbors. You can still love each other,” Jamari said, spreading his arms out wide.

Then he asked: “Right?”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

70 years after Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated

SHARON LURYE
Thu, May 16, 2024 





















 School backpacks hang on a rack at West Orange Elementary School in Orange, Calif., March 18, 2021. Seventy years after the Supreme Court's Brown v. Board, America is both more diverse — and more segregated. 

(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong, File)

On May 17, 1954, the Supreme Court laid out a new precedent: Separate but equal has no place in American schools.

The message of Brown v. Board of Education was clear. But 70 years later, the impact of the decision is still up for debate. Have Americans truly ended segregation in fact, not just in law?

The answer is complicated. U.S. schools in recent decades have grown far more diverse and, by some measures, more segregated, according to an Associated Press analysis.

On one hand, the number of Black and white students who go to school almost exclusively with students of the same race is at an all-time low.

On the other hand, huge shares of students of color still go to schools with almost no white students. Hispanic segregation is worse now than in the 1960s. The nation’s largest school districts, in particular, have seen a surge in segregation since the 1990s, according to research from Stanford University’s Educational Opportunity Project.

The history of school desegregation efforts, from Brown v. Board to today, shows how far the U.S. has come – and how far it has to go.

1954-1964: THE SOUTH DRAGS ITS FEET

The Brown v. Board decision declared white and Black students could not be forced to attend separate schools, even if those schools were allegedly equal in quality.

A few states such as Kansas and Delaware made some effort to comply with the order. But leaders in the Deep South immediately declared what U.S. Sen. Harry Byrd of Virginia called ” massive resistance ″ to integration.

In all, segregation levels changed little over the next decade, despite the bravery of Black students like the Little Rock Nine in 1957 and 6-year-old Ruby Bridges in New Orleans in 1960, who faced violent, racist mobs when they tried to desegregate their local schools.

1964-1986: DESEGREGATION GETS SERIOUS

By the mid-1960s, the federal courts lost patience with the South. They started to mete out desegregation orders with teeth, requiring busing if necessary. Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan Jr. declared segregation must be ripped out “root and branch.”

At the same time, civil rights legislation of the 1960s reshaped schools in far-reaching ways. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 banned discrimination in education; the Voting Rights Act gave Black voters more power to choose school boards; and the Elementary and Secondary Education Act offered schools federal cash if they desegregated. Meanwhile, the Immigration and Nationality Act opened the country to more immigrants from Asia, Africa and Latin America, leading to far more diverse schools.

From there, segregation decreased quickly. Almost every Black student in the South went to school only with people of color in 1963; only one-fourth of Black students did in 1968.

But desegregation came with a price: Thousands of qualified Black teachers were laid off, even though they were often more credentialed and qualified than white teachers.

“Integration has never been equitable,” said Ivory Toldson, a professor at Howard University.

Courts also began pushing desegregation in other parts of the country. Denver was one of the first cities outside the South called out for segregation in a 1973 Supreme Court case. Places like San Francisco and Cleveland were subject to desegregation orders, and riots broke out in 1974 over busing orders in Boston.

The momentum was short-lived. In 1974, the Supreme Court in Milliken v. Bradley struck down a desegregation plan that involved multiple school districts in and around Detroit. That meant metropolitan areas, with rare exceptions, could not be forced to bus students across school district lines.

The era saw massive white flight from urban school districts, in places where busing was required and where it was not. Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City collectively lost over half a million white public school students from 1968 to 1980. In just twelve years, the number of white students fell 71% in New Orleans, 78% in Detroit and 86% in Atlanta.

Still, federal court orders had succeeded in reducing Black segregation to its lowest level ever by 1986.

After that, progress began to stall.

1986-TODAY: DIVERSITY GROWS, DESEGREGATION LOSES STEAM

The courts gradually began to focus less on achieving racially balanced schools and more on other ways to promote desegregation, such as magnet schools. It became easier for school districts to argue they had made enough progress to be released from desegregation orders, and most of them were lifted by the early 2000s. A few hundred are still active today, but usually unenforced; school district leaders often don’t know they’re still under desegregation orders.

The segregation of Black students changed little after the 1980s. As Latino immigration soared, so did the segregation of Latino students.

The effects of isolation are particularly pernicious for students who come from an immigrant background, said Patricia Gándara, co-director of UCLA’s Civil Rights Project. These families are less likely to speak English or know the unspoken rules of the American education system, like how to apply for college.

More court cases chipped away at policy tools to address desegregation, turning toward the conservative idea that setting targets by race is itself a form of racial discrimination.

Nevertheless, classrooms became more diverse, reflecting the country’s changing demographics. A historic milestone came in 2014, when for the first time the majority of U.S. students were children of color.

Students of color may be more exposed to each other, but they’re still often in separate schools from white students. Around 4 out of 10 Black and Hispanic students go to schools made up almost entirely of other students of color.

Racial imbalance is particularly acute in the nation’s 100 largest districts, according to researchers from Stanford’s Educational Opportunity Project. Using segregation scores of 0 to 100, they found Black-white segregation grew over 40% from 1991 to 2019, from 21 to 30 points, while Hispanic-white segregation grew from 15 to 24.

That’s both because the government moved away from desegregation orders in the 1990s and because parents took advantage of the school choice movement in the 2000s.

Even before school choice, racial isolation was extreme in many large urban school districts. This is one of the reasons that many states with large cities outside the South, such as Illinois, Michigan, New York and California, have been among the most segregated in America since at least the 1980s.

This segregation matters, because concentration in high-poverty, racially segregated schools is strongly correlated with poorer outcomes for students.

“Segregation is at the core of an awful lot of the problems that we have,” Gándara said. “No matter how much money you throw at it, if you’re going to cluster poor kids and kids without family resources to support them in school, you’re going to continue to have these uneven outcomes.”

___

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.


Biden marks Brown v. Board of Education anniversary amid signs of erosion in Black voter support

AAMER MADHANI
Updated Thu, May 16, 2024





NAACP President Derrick Johnson, second from left, speaks to reporters outside the White House in Washington, Thursday, May 16, 2024, after meeting with President Joe Biden to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic Supreme Court decision. Johnson is joined by, from left, Brown v. Board of Education plaintiff and veteran John Stokes, Nathaniel Briggs, son of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Harry Briggs Jr., and Cheryl Brown Henderson, daughter of Brown v. Board of Education named plaintiff Oliver Brown. (AP Photo/Susan Walsh)
ASSOCIATED PRESSMore


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Joe Biden marked this week's 70th anniversary of the Supreme Court decision that struck down institutionalized racial segregation in public schools by welcoming plaintiffs and family members in the landmark case to the White House.

The Oval Office visit Thursday to commemorate the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision to desegregate schools comes with Biden stepping up efforts to highlight his administration's commitment to racial equity.

The president courted Black voters in Atlanta and Milwaukee this week with a pair of Black radio interviews in which he promoted his record on jobs, health care and infrastructure and attacked Republican Donald Trump.

Biden is scheduled Friday to deliver remarks at the National Museum of African American History and Culture and — along with Vice President Kamala Harris — meet with the leaders of the Divine Nine, a group of historically Black sororities and fraternities. And the president on Sunday is set to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse College, the historically Black college in Atlanta, and speak at an NAACP gala in Detroit.

During Thursday's visit by litigants and their families, the conversation was largely focused on honoring the plaintiffs and the ongoing battle to bolster education in Black communities, according to the participants.

“He commended them for changing our nation for the better and committed to continue his fight to move us closer to the promise of America,” White House senior adviser Stephen Benjamin told reporters following the meeting.

Biden faces a difficult reelection battle in November and is looking to repeat his 2020 success with Black voters, a key bloc in helping him beat Trump. But the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research's polling from throughout Biden’s time in office reveals a widespread sense of disappointment with his performance as president, even among some of his most stalwart supporters, including Black adults.

“I don’t accept the premise that there’s any erosion of Black support” for Biden, said NAACP President Derrick Johnson, who took part in the Oval Office visit. "This election is not about candidate A vs. candidate B. It’s about whether we have a functioning democracy or something less than that."

Among those who took part in the meeting were John Stokes, a Brown plaintiff; Cheryl Brown Henderson, whose father, Oliver Brown, was the lead plaintiff in the Brown case; and Adrienne Jennings Bennett, a plaintiff in Boiling v. Sharpe, which was argued at the same time and outlawed segregation of schools in Washington, DC. Plaintiffs and family members of litigants of five cases that were consolidated into the historic Brown case took part in the meeting.

The Brown decision struck down an 1896 decision that institutionalized racial segregation with so-called “separate but equal” schools for Black and white students, by ruling that such accommodations were anything but equal.

Brown Henderson said one of the meeting participants called on the president to make May 17, the day the decision was delivered, an annual federal holiday. She said Biden also recognized the courage of the litigants.

“He recognized that back in the fifties and the forties, when Jim Crow was still running rampant, that the folks that you see here were taking a risk when they signed on to be part of this case,” she said. “Any time you pushed back on Jim Crow and segregation, you know, your life, your livelihood, your homes, you were taking a risk. He thanked them for taking that risk.”

The announcement last month that Biden had accepted an invitation to deliver the Morehouse graduation address triggered peaceful student protests and calls for the university administration to cancel over Biden’s handling of the war between Israel and Hamas.

Biden in recent days dispatched Benjamin to meet with Morehouse students and faculty.

Benjamin told reporters Thursday that the situation in the Middle East was among the issues he discussed with students and faculty during the visit.

France imposes emergency in Pacific territory of New Caledonia as violent unrest turns deadly

Thu, May 16, 2024 



PARIS (AP) — France imposed an emergency Wednesday in the French Pacific territory of New Caledonia for at least 12 days, boosting security forces’ powers to quell deadly unrest in the archipelago where indigenous people have long sought independence.

Armed clashes and other violence that erupted Monday following protests over voting reforms have left four people dead, including a gendarme, and injured more than 300, French authorities said.

French military forces were being deployed to protect ports and airports, to free up police and security forces battling looting, arson and other violence, Prime Minister Gabriel Attal announced as the emergency measures kicked in at 8 p.m. Paris time, which was 5 a.m. Thursday in New Caledonia.


“Nothing can ever justify violence,” Attal said. “Our absolute priority for the next few hours is the return to order and calm.”

The emergency measures give authorities greater powers to tackle the violence, including the possibility of house detention for people deemed a threat to public order and expanded powers to conduct searches, seize weapons and restrict movements, with possible jail time for violators. The last time France imposed such measures on one of its overseas territories was in 1985, also in New Caledonia, the Interior Ministry said.

France's government also rushed hundreds of police reinforcements to the island, where pro-independence supporters have long pushed to break free from France. The Interior Ministry said 500 additional officers were expected within hours on the archipelago to bolster 1,800 police and gendarmes already there.

There have been more than 130 arrests so far, French authorities said.

Speaking to broadcaster France Info on Wednesday, Anne Clément, a resident of the capital, Noumea, hailed security forces reinforcements because the unrest has morphed into “a real urban guerrilla war.”

People have been confined to their homes for two days, terrified by “shooting from all sides,” Clément, a nursery director, told the French broadcaster. “We’ve stopped eating, we’ve stopped living, we’ve stopped sleeping,” she added.

“I don’t see how we could get out of the situation without the state of emergency,” she said.

There have been decades of tensions on the archipelago between Indigenous Kanaks seeking independence and descendants of colonizers who want to remain part of France.

After a two-hour security meeting Wednesday with French President Emmanuel Macron and top ministers, Attal told parliament in Paris that the state of emergency would aim “to restore order in the shortest time possible.”

This week’s unrest erupted as the French legislature in Paris debated amending the French constitution to make changes to voter lists in New Caledonia. The National Assembly on Wednesday approved a bill that will, among other changes, allow residents who have lived in New Caledonia for 10 years to cast ballots in provincial elections.

Opponents say the measure will benefit pro-France politicians in New Caledonia and further marginalize indigenous Kanak people. They once suffered from strict segregation policies and widespread discrimination. The vast archipelago of about 270,000 people east of Australia is 10 time zones ahead of Paris.

From Macron down, France's government made repeated calls for an end to the violence.

The territory’s top French official, High Commissioner Louis Le Franc, warned of the possibility of “many deaths” if calm isn't restored. A police station was among dozens of places that were attacked, with shots fired, Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin said. Posting on X, he said a gendarme who had been shot was among the dead.

In Paris, Macron emphasized the need for political dialogue. Rival political parties in New Caledonia also jointly called for calm, saying in a statement: “We have to continue to live together.”

An overnight curfew in New Caledonia was extended to Thursday. Schools and the main airport remained closed, Le Franc said.

“The situation is not serious, it is very serious," Le Franc said. “We have entered a dangerous spiral, a deadly spiral.”

He said some residents in the capital and neighboring municipalities formed “self-defense groups” to protect their homes and businesses.

New Caledonia became French in 1853 under Emperor Napoleon III, Napoleon’s nephew and heir. It became an overseas territory after World War II, with French citizenship granted to all Kanaks in 1957.

A peace deal between rival factions was reached in 1988. A decade later, France promised to grant New Caledonia political power and broad autonomy and hold up to three successive referendums.

The three referendums were organized between 2018 to 2021 and a majority of voters chose to remain part of France instead of backing independence. The pro-independence Kanak people rejected the results of the last referendum in 2021, which they boycotted because it was held at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

___

Barbara Surk reported from Nice. AP Journalist Jeffrey Schaeffer contributed from Paris

John Leicester And Barbara Surk, The Associated Press




Hundreds arrested in New Caledonia amid state of emergency

FRANCE 24
Wed, May 15, 2024 

Armed forces were protecting New Caledonia's two airports and port after a third night of violent riots that have killed five people, the Pacific Island's top French official said on Thursday morning, adding at least four alleged instigators were under house arrest.

A gendarme was killed on Thursday in France's riot-struck Pacific territory of New Caledonia by an "accidental gunshot", Interior Minister Gérald Darmanin told AFP. "It was not a hostile shot" that killed the officer, added a source informed about the incident, which brings to five the number of deaths in unrest since Monday, including two gendarmes.

The unrest flared after lawmakers in Paris approved a bill extending voting rights in New Caledonia’s provincial elections to residents arriving from mainland France – a change critics fear could marginalise Indigenous people and benefit pro-France politicians.

The National Assembly (lower house) adopted the reform shortly after midnight early on Wednesday.

Locals fear that expanding voter lists would benefit pro-France politicians and reduce the weight of the Kanaks.

Police reinforcements adding 500 officers to the 1,800 usually present on the island, have been sent after rioters torched vehicles and businesses and looted stores.