Grief over Gaza and qualms over US election add up to anguish for many Palestinian Americans - By Mariam Fam, Associated Press
Demoralized by the Biden administration's handling of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian American Samia Assed found in Vice President Kamala Harris' ascension — and her running mate pick — "a little ray of hope."
That hope, she said, shattered during last month's Democratic National Convention, where a request for a Palestinian American speaker was denied and listening to Harris left her feeling like the Democratic presidential nominee will continue the U.S. policies that have outraged many in the anti-war camp.
"I couldn't breathe because I felt unseen and erased," said Assed, a community organizer in New Mexico.
Under different circumstances, Assed would have reveled in the groundbreaking rise of a woman of color as her party's nominee. Instead, she agonizes over her ballot box options.
For months, many Palestinian Americans have been contending with the double whammy of the rising Palestinian death toll and suffering in Gaza and their own government's support for Israel in the war. Alongside pro-Palestinian allies, they've grieved, organized, lobbied and protested as the killings and destruction unfolded on their screens or touched their own families. Now, they also wrestle with tough, deeply personal voting decisions, including in battleground states.
"It's a very hard time for Palestinian youth and Palestinian Americans," Assed said. "There's a lot of pain."
Without a meaningful change, voting for Harris would feel for her "like a jab in the heart," she said. At the same time, Assed, a lifelong Democrat and feminist, would like to help block another Donald Trump presidency and remain engaged with the Democrats "to hold them liable," she said.
"It's really a difficult place to be in."
She's not alone.
In Georgia, the Gaza bloodshed has been haunting Ghada Elnajjar. She said the war claimed the lives of more than 100 members of her extended family in Gaza, where her parents were born.
She saw missed opportunities at the DNC to connect with voters like her. Besides the rejection of the request for a Palestinian speaker, Elnajjar found a disconnect between U.S. policies and Harris' assertion that she and President Joe Biden were working to accomplish a cease-fire and hostage deal.
"Without stopping U.S. financial support and military support to Israel, this will not stop," said Elnajjar who in 2020 campaigned for Biden. "I'm a U.S. citizen. I'm a taxpayer ... and I feel betrayed and neglected."
She'll keep looking for policy changes, but, if necessary, remain "uncommitted," potentially leaving the top of the ticket blank. Harris must earn her vote, she said.
Harris, in her DNC speech, said she and Biden were working to end the war such that "Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination."
She said she "will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself," while describing the suffering in Gaza as "heartbreaking."
While her recent rhetoric on Palestinian suffering has been viewed as empathetic by some who had soured on Biden over the war, the lack of a concrete policy shift appears to have increasingly frustrated many of those who want the war to end. Activists demanding a permanent cease-fire have urged an embargo on U.S. weapons to Israel, whose military campaign in Gaza has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.
The war was sparked by an Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas-led militants killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages.
Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American and co-director of the Uncommitted National Movement, said the demand for a policy shift remains. Nationally, "uncommitted" has garnered hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries.
Elabed said Harris and her team have been invited to meet before Sept. 15 with "uncommitted" movement leaders from key swing states and with Palestinian families with relatives killed in Gaza. After that date, she said, "we will need to make the decision if we can actually mobilize our base" to vote for Harris.
Without a policy change, "we can't do an endorsement," and will, instead, continue talking about the "dangers" of a Trump presidency, leaving voters to vote their conscience, she added.
Some other anti-war activists are taking it further, advocating for withholding votes from Harris in the absence of a change.
"There's pressure to punish the Democratic Party," Elabed said. "Our position is continue taking up space within the Democratic Party," and push for change from the inside.
Some of the tensions surfaced at an August rally in Michigan when anti-war protesters interrupted Harris. Initially, Harris said everybody's voice matters. As the shouting continued, with demonstrators chanting that they "won't vote for genocide," she took a sharper tone.
"If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that," she said.
Nada Al-Hanooti, national deputy organizing director with the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, rejects as unfair the argument by some that traditionally Democratic voters who withhold votes from Harris are in effect helping Trump. She said the burden should be on Harris and her party.
"Right now, it's a struggle being a Palestinian American," she said. "I don't want a Trump presidency, but, at the same time, the Democratic Party needs to win our vote."
Though dismayed that no Palestinian speaker was allowed on the DNC stage, Al-Hanooti said she felt inspired by how "uncommitted" activists made Palestinians part of the conversation at the convention. Activists were given space there to hold a forum discussing the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
"We in the community still need to continue to push Harris on conditioning aid, on a cease-fire," she said. "The fight is not over."
She said she's never known grief like that she has experienced over the past year. In the girls of Gaza, she sees her late grandmother who, at 10, was displaced from her home during the 1948 war surrounding Israel's creation and lived in a Syrian refugee camp, dreaming of returning home.
"It just completely tears me apart," Al-Hanooti said.
She tries to channel her pain into putting pressure on elected officials and encouraging community members to vote, despite encountering what she said was increased apathy, with many feeling that their vote won't matter. "Our job at Emgage is simply right now to get our Muslim community to vote because our power is in the collective."
In 2020, Emgage — whose political action committee then endorsed Biden — and other groups worked to maximize Muslim American turnout, especially in battleground states. Muslims make up a small percentage of Americans overall, but activists hope that in states with notable Muslim populations, such as Michigan, energizing more of them makes a difference in close races — and demonstrates the community's political power.
Some voters want to send a message.
"Our community has given our votes away cheaply," argued Omar Abuattieh, a pharmacy major at Rutgers University in New Jersey. "Once we can start to understand our votes as a bargaining tool, we'll have more power."
For Abuattieh, whose mother was born in Gaza, that means planning to vote third party "to demonstrate the power in numbers of a newly activated community that deserves future consultation."
A Pew Research Center survey in February found that U.S. Muslims are more sympathetic to the Palestinian people than many other Americans are and that only 6% of Muslim American adults believe the U.S. is striking the right balance between the Israelis and Palestinians. Nearly two-thirds of Muslim registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, according to the survey.
But U.S. Muslims, who are racially and ethnically diverse, are not monolithic in their political behavior; some have publicly supported Harris in this election cycle. In 2020, among Muslim voters, 64% supported Biden and 35% supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast.
The Harris campaign said it has appointed two people for Muslim and Arab outreach.
Harris "will continue to meet with leaders from Palestinian, Muslim, Israeli and Jewish communities, as she has throughout her vice presidency," the campaign said in response to questions, without specifically commenting on the uncommitted movement's request for a meeting before Sept. 15.
Harris is being scrutinized by those who say the Biden-Harris administration hasn't done enough to pressure Israel to end the war and by Republicans looking to brand her as insufficient in her support for Israel.
Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign's national press secretary, said Trump "will once again deliver peace through strength to rebuild and expand the peace coalition he built in his first term to create long-term safety and security for both the Israeli and Palestinian people."
Many Arab and Muslim Americans were angered by Trump's ban, while in office, that affected travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, which Biden rescinded.
In Michigan, Ali Ramlawi, who owns a restaurant in Ann Arbor, said Harris' nomination initially gave him relief on various domestic issues, but the DNC left him disappointed on the Palestinian question.
Before the convention, he expected to vote Democratic, but now says he's considering backing the Green Party for the top of the ticket or leaving that blank.
"Our vote shouldn't be taken for granted," he said. "I won't vote for the lesser of two evils."
Former director of Los Alamos National Laboratory dead after car crash in New Mexico - Associated Press
A former top official in U.S. nuclear weapons research at Lawrence Livermore and Los Alamos national laboratories has died from injuries after an automobile crash in New Mexico, authorities said. He was 69.
Charles McMillan, an experimental physicist, spent nearly 23 years in various positions at Livermore in California and about 18 years at Los Alamos, where he was director for six years before retiring in 2017.
He died at a hospital after a two-vehicle crash early Friday on a stretch of road known as Main Hill, not far from the laboratory, police and the current lab director said.
"On behalf of the entire Laboratory, I would like to express deepest sympathies to the McMillan family and to the many current and former employees who worked closely with Charlie and knew him well," lab Director Thom Mason said in a statement reported by the Santa Fe New Mexican.
Michael Drake, president of the University of California system, issued a statement calling McMillan "an extraordinary leader, scientist and human being who made far-reaching contributions to science and technology in service to national security and the greater good."
The Livermore laboratory, east of San Francisco, was established as a university offshoot in 1952 and is now operated by the federal government. It maintains a close relationship with campuses and Drake's office.
McMillan joined Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2006 after his friend and mentor, Michael Anastasio, became director. McMillan served as the principal associate director for weapons programs before becoming director in 2011, the New Mexican reported.
He oversaw the lab during expansion and safety incidents, including a 2014 radiation leak at the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant in southern New Mexico attributed to a waste drum that was improperly packaged at the lab. The National Nuclear Security Administration found in 2015 that the lab violated health and safety rules and docked it more than $10 million in performance awards.
Mason pointed to McMillan's work to develop a vaccine for HIV and new modeling to better understand climate change.
Democratic U.S. Sen. Martin Heinrich of New Mexico credited McMillan with "invaluable contributions to our state, to science, and to our national security" and cited his work on supercomputing and artificial intelligence.
Nella Domenici, Heinrich's Republican challenger for U.S. Senate, called McMillan's death "a great loss to the scientific community and his family."
Los Alamos police and fire officials said three people were treated for injuries and McMillan and a 22-year-old woman were hospitalized after the crash, which occurred about 5 a.m. The cause was being investigated.
State issues recall notice for cannabis that tested positive for banned pesticide - Patrick Lohmann, Source New Mexico
New Mexico’s cannabis regulator has issued a recall notice after a wholesaler shipped contaminated product to retailers across the state.
The contaminated product was cannabis flower, not concentrated products like gummies,, and came from WH Agriculture, known as Maggie’s Farm, according to the New Mexico Cannabis Control Division.
The product was shipped to more than 30 retailers between March 6 and August 1, according to state regulators.
A Sept. 4 notice to Maggie’s Farms notes that the state was notified in November 2023 that the company’s product tested positive for a pesticide called pyrethrins. On Aug. 30, the state asked the company to prove it was using a permissible level of the pesticide, which the company was unable to do, according to the letter.
The notice requires the company to remove and destroy all of the product that’s made it to dispensaries, and to alert all retailers who may have bought it.
The state released a list of 32 shipments to 11 dispensaries that received the product, 23 of which are in Albuquerque. Other retailers are in Los Lunas, Sunland Park, Alamogordo and elsewhere.
The retailers that are on the list are R. Greenleaf Organics, Everest Apothecary, Loud Cloud and House of Blaze.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division is asking people to review the list and pay attention to the package identification number. They’re advised to destroy the product or return it to the retailer to be destroyed.
No health-related complaints have been reported, according to a news release. But the state says anyone with concerns can call the state poison control hotline at (800) 222-1222.
According to the division’s website, this is the second time it has issued a mandatory recall notice. In March, an Albuquerque retailer was ordered to destroy cannabis concentrates that tested positive with the banned pesticide called malathion.
CYFD sees large increase in state liability premiums - Albuquerque Journal, KUNM News
After seeing a whopping $13.8 million in legal settlements so far this year, the state Children, Youth and Families Department will now be dinged with a 36% increase in state liability premiums.
As the Albuquerque Journal reports, data from the state Legislative Finance Committee shows the cost of CYFD’s liability insurance coverage increased $1.4 million this fiscal year – ringing in around $5.5 million in total.
Those premiums are set by the state General Services Department, who front the costs of attorneys. Liability insurance premiums are largely based on an agency’s financial loss history.
The data comes from a new interactive dashboard, which shows that since July 2021, the state has paid out more than $90 million to settle claims against state agencies. That includes civil rights and medical malpractice cases.
The latest settlements at CYFD involve a $1.4 million payout on behalf of two foster children who spent eight months in a Raton home of a licensed foster parent who is accused of sexually molesting one of the children under their care.
Two astronauts are left behind in space as Boeing's troubled capsule returns to Earth empty - By Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer
Boeing's first astronaut mission ended Friday night with an empty capsule landing and two test pilots still in space, left behind until next year because NASA judged their return too risky.
Six hours after departing the International Space Station, Starliner parachuted into New Mexico's White Sands Missile Range, descending on autopilot through the desert darkness.
It was an uneventful close to a drama that began with the June launch of Boeing's long-delayed crew debut and quickly escalated into a dragged-out cliffhanger of a mission stricken by thruster failures and helium leaks. For months, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams' return was in question as engineers struggled to understand the capsule's problems.
Boeing insisted after extensive testing that Starliner was safe to bring the two home, but NASA disagreed and booked a flight with SpaceX instead. Their SpaceX ride won't launch until the end of this month, which means they'll be up there until February — more than eight months after blasting off on what should have been a quick trip.
Wilmore and Williams should have flown Starliner back to Earth by mid-June, a week after launching in it. But their ride to the space station was marred by the cascade of thruster trouble and helium loss, and NASA ultimately decided it was too risky to return them on Starliner.
So with fresh software updates, the fully automated capsule left with their empty seats and blue spacesuits along with some old station equipment.
"She's on her way home," Williams radioed as the white and blue-trimmed capsule undocked from the space station 260 miles (420 kilometers) over China and disappeared into the black void.
Williams stayed up late to see how everything turned out. "A good landing, pretty awesome," said Boeing's Mission Control.
Cameras on the space station and a pair of NASA planes caught the capsule as a white streak coming in for the touchdown, which drew cheer.
There were some snags during reentry, including more thruster issues, but Starliner made a "bull's-eye landing," said NASA's commercial crew program manager Steve Stich.
Even with the safe return, "I think we made the right decision not to have Butch and Suni on board," Stich said at a news conference early Saturday. "All of us feel happy about the successful landing. But then there's a piece of us, all of us, that we wish it would have been the way we had planned it."
Boeing did not participate in the Houston news briefing. But two of the company's top space and defense officials, Ted Colbert and Kay Sears, told employees in a note that they backed NASA's ruling.
"While this may not have been how we originally envisioned the test flight concluding, we support NASA's decision for Starliner and are proud of how our team and spacecraft performed," the executives wrote.
Starliner's crew demo capped a journey filled with delays and setbacks. After the space shuttles retired more than a decade ago, NASA hired Boeing and SpaceX for orbital taxi service. Boeing ran into so many problems on its first test flight with no one aboard in 2019 that it had to repeat it. The 2022 do-over uncovered even more flaws and the repair bill topped $1 billion.
SpaceX's crew ferry flight later this month will be its 10th for NASA since 2020. The Dragon capsule will launch on the half-year expedition with only two astronauts since two seats are reserved for Wilmore and Williams for the return leg.
As veteran astronauts and retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams anticipated hurdles on the test flight. They've kept busy in space, helping with repairs and experiments. The two are now full-time station crew members along with the seven others on board.
Even before the pair launched on June 5 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Starliner's propulsion system was leaking helium. The leak was small and thought to be isolated, but four more cropped up after liftoff. Then five thrusters failed. Although four of the thrusters were recovered, it gave NASA pause as to whether more malfunctions might hamper the capsule's descent from orbit.
Boeing conducted numerous thruster tests in space and on the ground over the summer, and was convinced its spacecraft could safely bring the astronauts back. But NASA could not get comfortable with the thruster situation and went with SpaceX.
Flight controllers conducted more test firings of the capsule's thrusters following undocking; one failed to ignite. Engineers suspect the more the thrusters are fired, the hotter they become, causing protective seals to swell and obstruct the flow of propellant. They won't be able to examine any of the parts; the section holding the thrusters was ditched just before reentry.
Starliner will be transported in a couple weeks back to NASA's Kennedy Space Center, where the analyses will unfold.
NASA officials stressed that the space agency remains committed to having two competing U.S. companies transporting astronauts. The goal is for SpaceX and Boeing to take turns launching crews — one a year per company — until the space station is abandoned in 2030 right before its fiery reentry. That doesn't give Boeing much time to catch up, but the company intends to push forward with Starliner, according to NASA.
Stich said post-landing it's too early to know when the next Starliner flight with astronauts might occur.
"It will take a little time to determine the path forward," he said.