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SACRAMENTO — “This is one of the most obscure issues the California voter has ever been asked to decide.”

That was how Fred Main, vice president and general counsel for the California Chamber of Commerce, described Proposition 162 on the Nov. 3 ballot, a measure that would give governing boards of public employees retirement systems more authority and independence.

Obscure though the initiative may be, supporters say it is needed to protect the $70-billion Public Employees Retirement System (PERS) fund and other public employee pension funds from political “raids.”

They cite the deal that allowed Gov. Pete Wilson and the Legislature to use $1.9 billion in supplemental pension funds to balance the 1991-92 state budget and also to Wilson’s attempt last year to place more gubernatorial appointees on the PERS governing board.

However, opponents argue that the measure does little to prevent raids but instead makes pension fund governing boards more autonomous and less accountable to the Legislature and other elected bodies.

Proposition 162 would change the state Constitution to:

* Give the governing board of a public employee pension fund “sole and exclusive authority” over investment decisions and management of the system.

* Require governing boards to place more emphasis on providing benefits to the system’s participants and less on the costs to taxpayers. The state, using taxpayer funds, makes an annual contribution to PERS.

* Allow the PERS board to hire its own actuaries–experts who calculate the contributions needed to keep the fund sound–instead of using those named by the governor, as state law requires.

* Maintain the present composition of PERS and other public pension fund governing boards.

The measure is supported by the California State Employees Assn., the state School Employees Assn. and other public employee unions. It is opposed by the California Taxpayers Assn., the state Chamber of Commerce and the League of California Cities.

Backers of the initiative raised $1.6 million by Sept. 30, Common Cause reported, while there is no organized financial effort in opposition.

Although there are more than 100 public employee pension systems in the state, most attention is focused on PERS because of last year’s budget maneuvering.

Jeff Raimundo, communications director for Californians for Pension Protection, said giving governing boards sole authority to manage the funds would “keep it away from the Legislature, keep their hands out of the cookie jar.”

Raimundo acknowledged that future governors, Legislatures and PERS governing boards still could reach agreements similar to last year’s $1.9-billion deal but said the Legislature “won’t be able to grab these funds unilaterally. They’ll have to negotiate with the governing board whether this use of the money is in the best interests of the trust fund.”

Ron Roach of the California Taxpayers Assn. said the change would “create a lack of accountability and give public employee pension boards–which often are dominated by public employee unions–control over the amount of taxpayer contributions, which are in fact taxpayer dollars.”

Wilma Krebs, a retired economics professor and a supporter of the initiative, said restoring the PERS board’s right to name its actuaries was important because “if the governor makes the appointment, we feel that spells political control.”

The actuaries study the pension system’s assets and liabilities each year and determine what the state contribution to the fund should be.

Wilson was given the authority, subject to approval by the Legislature, to name the PERS actuaries in legislation passed last year. Wilson’s nominees were approved by the Senate but rejected by the Assembly, and the pension system has continued to use its own actuaries.

“Over time, there could be a big cost to taxpayers” if PERS names the actuaries, Roach said. “The fund is so large that a change in the estimate (of state contributions) by one-half of 1% could mean hundreds of millions of dollars.”

Leaders welcome deal reached at UN climate summit as step forward but say ‘more ambition’ needed to tackle the crisis.

World leaders have put forward a draft text at the United Nations climate conference in Brazil that seeks to address the crisis, but the agreement does not include any mention of phasing out the fossil fuels driving climate change.

The text was published on Saturday after negotiations stretched through the night, well beyond the expected close of the two-week COP30 summit in the Brazilian city of Belem, amid deep divisions over the fossil fuel phase-out.

The draft, which must be approved by consensus by nearly 200 nations, pledges to review climate-related trade barriers and calls on developed nations to “at least triple” the money given to developing countries to help them withstand extreme weather events.

It also urges “all actors to work together to significantly accelerate and scale up climate action worldwide” with the aim of keeping the 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) mark for global warming – an internationally agreed-upon target set under the Paris Agreement – “within reach”.

Wopke Hoekstra, the European Union’s climate commissioner, said the outcome was a step in the right direction, but the bloc would have liked more.

“We’re not going to hide the fact that we would have preferred to have more, to have more ambition on everything,” Hoekstra told reporters. “We should support it because at least it is going in the right direction,” he said.

France’s ecological transition minister, Monique Barbut, also said it was a “rather flat text” but Europeans would not oppose it because “there is nothing extraordinarily bad in it”.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez Parrilla also said in a social media post that while the outcome “fell short of expectations”, COP30 demonstrated the importance of multilateralism to tackle global challenges such as climate change.

‘Needed a giant leap’

Countries had been divided on a number of issues in Belem, including a push to phase out fossil fuels – the largest drivers of the climate crisis – that drew opposition from oil-producing countries and nations that depend on oil, gas and coal.

Questions of climate finance also sparked heated debates, with developing nations demanding that richer countries bear a greater share of the financial burden.

But COP30 host Brazil had pushed for a show of unity, as the annual conference is largely viewed as a test of the world’s resolve to address a deepening crisis.

“We need to show society that we want this without imposing anything on anyone, without setting deadlines for each country to decide what it can do within its own time, within its own possibilities,” Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva said earlier this week.

Earlier on Saturday, COP30 President Andre Aranha Correa do Lago said the presidency would publish “roadmaps” on fossil fuels and forests as there had been no consensus on those issues at the talks.

Speaking to Al Jazeera before the draft text was released, Asad Rehman, chief executive director of Friends of the Earth, said richer countries “had to be dragged – really kicking and screaming – to the table” at COP30.

“They have tried to bully developing countries and have weakened the text … But I would say that, overall, from what we’re hearing, we will have taken a step forward,” Rehman said in an interview from Belem.

“This will be welcomed by the millions of people for whom these talks are a matter of life and death. However, in the scale of the crisis that we face, we of course needed a giant leap forward.”

MIAMI — U.S. Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick of Florida has been indicted on charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in federal disaster funds and using some of the money to aid her 2021 campaign, the Justice Department said Wednesday.

The Democrat is accused of stealing Federal Emergency Management Agency overpayments that her family healthcare company had received through a federally funded COVID-19 vaccination staffing contract, federal prosecutors said. A portion of the money was then funneled to support her campaign through candidate contributions, prosecutors allege.

“Using disaster relief funds for self-enrichment is a particularly selfish, cynical crime,” Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi said in a statement. “No one is above the law, least of all powerful people who rob taxpayers for personal gain. We will follow the facts in this case and deliver justice.”

A phone message left at Cherfilus-McCormick’s Washington office was not immediately returned.

Cherfilus-McCormick was first elected to Congress in 2022 in the 20th District, representing parts of Broward and Palm Beach counties, in a special election after Rep. Alcee Hastings died in 2021.

In December 2024, a Florida state agency sued a company owned by Cherfilus-McCormick’s family, saying it overcharged the state by nearly $5.8 million for work done during the pandemic and wouldn’t give the money back.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management said it made a series of overpayments to Trinity Healthcare Services after hiring it in 2021 to register people for COVID-19 vaccinations. The agency says it discovered the problem after a single $5-million overpayment drew attention.

Cherfilus-McCormick was the chief executive of Trinity at the time.

The Office of Congressional Ethics said in a January report that Cherfilus-McCormick’s income in 2021 was more than $6 million higher than in 2020, driven by nearly $5.75 million in consulting and profit-sharing fees received from Trinity Healthcare Services.

In July, the House Ethics Committee unanimously voted to reauthorize an investigative subcommittee to examine allegations involving Cherfilus-McCormick.

WASHINGTON — National Public Radio will receive approximately $36 million in grant money to operate the nation’s public radio interconnection system under the terms of a court settlement with the federal government’s steward of funding for public broadcasting stations.

The settlement, announced Monday, partially resolves a legal dispute in which NPR accused the Corporation for Public Broadcasting of bowing to pressure from President Trump to cut off its funding.

On March 25, Trump said at a news conference that he would “love to” defund NPR and PBS because he believes they are biased in favor of Democrats.

NPR accused the CPB of violating its 1st Amendment free speech rights when it moved to cut off its access to grant money appropriated by Congress. NPR also claims Trump, a Republican, wants to punish it for the content of its journalism.

On April 2, the CPB’s board initially approved a three-year, roughly $36-million extension of a grant for NPR to operate the “interconnection” satellite system for public radio. NPR has been operating and managing the Public Radio Satellite System since 1985.

But corporation officials reversed course and announced that the federal funds would go to an entity called Public Media Infrastructure. NPR claimed the CPB was under mounting pressure from the Trump administration when the agency redirected the money to PMI, a media coalition that didn’t exist and wasn’t statutorily authorized to receive the funds.

CPB attorneys denied that the agency retaliated against NPR to appease Trump. They had argued that NPR’s claims are factually and legally meritless.

On May 1, Trump issued an executive order that called for federal agencies to stop funding for NPR and PBS. The settlement doesn’t end a lawsuit in which NPR seeks to block any implementation or enforcement of Trump’s executive order. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss is scheduled to preside over another hearing for the case on Dec. 4.

The settlement says NPR and CPB agree that the executive order is unconstitutional and that CPB won’t enforce it unless a court orders it to do so.

NPR, meanwhile, agreed to drop its request for a court order blocking CPB from disbursing funds to PMI under a separate grant agreement.

Katherine Maher, NPR’s president and CEO, said the settlement is “a victory for editorial independence and a step toward upholding the 1st Amendment rights of NPR and the public media system.”

Patricia Harrison, the corporation’s CEO, said CPB is pleased that the litigation is over “and that our investment in the future through PMI marks an exciting new era for public media.”

On Aug. 1, CPB announced it would take steps toward closing itself down after being defunded by Congress.

Kunzelman writes for the Associated Press.

San Francisco, United States – Just weeks ago, Brandon Praileau, a pastor from Norfolk, Virginia, was speaking to families in his community about a federally funded programme that would help them install rooftop solar units in their homes. The government funds would take care of their installation costs, and once installed, lower the burden of rising electricity costs, a pressing concern.

Then, Praileau heard the federal government had scrapped the $7bn Solar For All programme through which his project and other solar projects across the country were to be funded, leaving them stranded.

It is one of several federally funded renewable energy projects that have been scrapped or will end early, veering off the country’s planned shift to renewable energy, also making it harder to meet climate goals.

Praileau, Virginia programme director for Solar United Neighbors, had been helping roll out the project that received $156m in federal funds to support 7,500 low- and middle-income families with solar installation. Praileau say he was “mind blown” by the sudden withdrawal.

The federal government will also end the 30 percent tax credit for solar rooftop installation in homes this December. For businesses, these tax credits will only be available if they start construction of factories, malls or other businesses, for which the solar installations are meant, by June 2026.

The Department of Energy also withdrew $13bn in funding from a range of other renewable energy projects, including upgrading power grids, carbon-neutral cement production, and battery energy storage. The administration also ended several funding initiatives for wind energy.

President Trump has said, “We’re not going to be approving windmills unless something happens that’s an emergency.”

This could lead to a $114bn loss in delays or cancellation of wind energy projects, according to an April 2025 report by BloombergNEF.

In Florida, intake forms for 10,000 low- and middle-income households to enrol for federal subsidies to get solar units installed on their rooftops were ready when the $156m project was scrapped in August.

A resident of Miami-Dade County had told volunteers who were helping her fill in the forms to enrol for the grant that she was “scared to use power. I am scared to put on air conditioning”, because the steep rise in power costs in the state had put it out of reach for her.

Power costs in the state are up 60 percent for some residents since 2019, Heaven Campbell, Florida programme director of Solar United Neighbors, which was working on implementing the project, told Al Jazeera.

Other states have also seen varying power cost hikes due to hurricanes and the war in Ukraine, which made Russian natural gas more expensive.

Florida Power and Light, the utilities provider, has also currently made a case to increase rates further to raise nearly $10bn over the next four years, according to Florida’s Office of Public Counsel.

Solar United’s staff has tried to educate residents that not using power could get them disconnected, and reconnecting comes with a fee.

Early ending of the tax credit will mean “consumers are stuck at the mercy of utilities”, and their rising rates, says Bernadette Del Chiaro, senior vice president for California at the Environmental Working Group.

‘Rain shadow impact’

With the solar rooftop tax credits set to expire in December, there has been a scramble to install, and some solar installers say they are having to turn away customers.

“We will see the rain shadow impact of this in 2026,” Del Chiaro says, referring to a sharp drop in business and jobs that the industry is steeling itself for next year.

“This is a big plunge on the solar coaster,” says Barry Cinnamon, chief executive of Cinnamon Energy Systems, a San Francisco-based solar installation company.

Ed Murray, president of the California Solar and Storage Association, told Al Jazeera he expects the elimination of tax credits to double the payback time for installation and other costs associated with the solar units to up to 12 years.

It would also lead to job losses for thousands of skilled workers in the sector, Murray said, even as the air quality is likely to worsen and the state is expected to fail to meet its climate goals.

In its announcement withdrawing from these projects, the Department of Energy notification said the projects “advance the previous Administration’s wasteful Green New Scam agenda”.

In the statement, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said that, “By returning these funds to the American taxpayer, the Trump administration is affirming its commitment to advancing more affordable, reliable and secure American energy and being more responsible stewards of taxpayer dollars.”

Critics of solar projects have said they drive up costs for households still on the power grid because solar customers pay less to utilities but still use that power when needed.

The Trump administration has, instead, supported oil and gas production through several measures, including plans to open up the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil and gas leasing recently. It has also eased permitting for drilling on federal lands.

Rising costs

The Biden administration had funded renewable energy projects under what it called the Green New Deal, a programme to accelerate economic growth and job creation while having a positive climate impact.

But even as these projects began rolling out, power costs have risen sharply in many states, including Virginia.

A recent study by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory found that the rise in power costs had outpaced inflation in 26 states and listed a range of factors for it, including the Ukraine war and extreme weather factors such as wildfires and hurricanes that have damaged an already ageing electric poles and grid.

For instance, prices in California have risen more than 34 percent since 2019, the study says, in part because the record-breaking wildfires forced utilities to replace and strengthen their power lines. Federal funding of $630m to strengthen grids in California was among the projects scrapped by the Department of Energy.

“A majority of the projects that were scrapped were mid-implementation,” says Ryan Schleeter, communications director of The Climate Center, a California-based think tank.

Federal incentives also meant that more than 20 percent of the cars sold in the state over the last two years had been electric vehicles (EVs). These allowed middle-income families to buy EVs, Schleeter says. With incentives having ended on September 30, “the central challenge will be how to be equitable,” he says.

Susan Stephenson, executive director of California Power and Light, which supports places of worship to have renewable energy, says several places of worship that had planned to move to solar energy or install EV charging stations are now struggling to find installers and have seen costs going up beyond their initial budget due to federal cuts.

In Virginia, Praileau says power costs came up as one of the greatest concerns in his interactions with his congregants. The state has among the most data centres in the country, and Praileau believes that could be a reason for rising costs.

Voter dissatisfaction over rising power costs has been among the top issues in the governor’s elections in the state that went to the polls on November 4. One of the promises that Abigail Spanberger, the Democrat candidate who won, had made was to reduce power costs by increasing energy production and getting data centres to pay a higher share of power costs.

Praileau hopes the solar project, the cuts to which are already being litigated, can also be revived by the new governor. In Florida, too, there is ongoing litigation on the federal funding cuts.

Several states, including California, have announced their own rollbacks on renewable energy incentives.

But with funding withdrawals hurting residents, Steve Larson, a former executive director of the California Public Utilities Commission, expects more litigation to restore programmes and mastering “techniques of delay”, for federal cuts in grants and to allow renewable energy projects to keep going.

Nov. 7 (UPI) — Cornell University on Friday reached an agreement with the Trump administration to allocate $60 million that would end government investigations and restore several hundred million dollars in research funding for the private school.

Cornell has now joined four other elite universities in making deals.

The allegations stem from accusations of anti-Semitism and admissions discrimination. Cornell, located in Ithaca, N.Y., settled after Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Virginia.

Cornell reached the deal with the Department of Justice, Department of Education and Department of Health and Human Services that “will protect Cornell’s students from violations of federal civil rights laws, including from discrimination based on race, sex, or national origin, and promote America’s hardworking farming and rural communities,” according to a DOJ news release.

The Ivy League school agreed to pay a $30 million fine and to invest another $30 million for programs to improve efficiency and lower costs in agriculture and farming. Cornell is a land-grant school that conducts agricultural research. The money will be spread out over three years.

The Trump administration froze more than $1 billion in research funding at the school.

Cornell’s president, Michael Kotlikoff, during his State of the University address in September, said officials didn’t know how the government reached that figure.

He said Cornell had accounted for “nearly $250 million in canceled or unpaid research funds.”

Kotlikoff had said he didn’t want the government to “dictate our institution’s policies.”

“The months of stop-work orders, grant terminations and funding freezes have stalled cutting-edge research, upended lives and careers, and threatened the future of academic programs at Cornell,” he said in a statement to the Cornell community.

“With this resolution. Cornell looks forward to resuming the long and fruitful partnership with the federal government that has yielded, for so many years, so much progress and well-being for our nation and our world.”

The five-page document reads: “This agreement is not an admission in whole or in part by either party. Cornell denies liability with respect to the subject matter of the Investigations.” The deal goes through Dec. 31, 2028.

“Both parties affirm the importance of and their support for academic freedom,” the agreement said. “The United States does not aim to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula, and no provision of this agreement, individually or taken together, shall be construed as giving the United States authority to dictate the content of academic speech or curricula.”

In the agreement, the school and government “affirm the importance of and their support for civil rights, and Cornell has a “commitment to complying with federal civil rights laws and agrees to include the Department of Justice’s ‘Guidance for Recipients of Federal Funding Regarding Unlawful Discrimination.”

Cornell agreed to provide discrimination training to faculty and staff members.

“The Trump administration has secured another transformative commitment from an Ivy League institution to end divisive DEl policies,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said.

“Thanks to this deal with Cornell and the ongoing work of DOJ, HHS, and the team at ED, U.S. universities are refocusing their attention on merit, rigor, and truth seeking — not ideology. These reforms are a huge win in the fight to restore excellence to American higher education and make our schools the greatest in the world.”

Attorney General Pam Bondi also praised the deal, saying, “Recipients of federal funding must fully adhere to federal civil rights laws and ensure that harmful DEI policies [diversity, equity and inclusion] do not discriminate against students.

“Today’s deal is a positive outcome that illustrates the value of universities working with this administration — we are grateful to Cornell for working toward this agreement.”

“The Trump Administration is actively dismantling the ability of elite universities to discriminate based on race or religion,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said. “The DOJ’s agreement with Cornell strengthens protections for students against anti-Semitism and all other forms of discrimination.”

The investigations into Cornell centered on campus demonstrations against Israel in the war with Hamas that began on Oct. 7, 2023, and demands to diversify from weapons manufacturers that supplied the Israeli military.

McMahon had said the protests “severely disrupted campus life” and Jewish students were fearful on campus.

Despite a nearly $12 billion endowment, university officials warned about layoffs and “a comprehensive review of programs and head count across the university.”

In the other deals, Penn and Virginia had no financial penalties, while Columbia agreed to a $200 million fine and Brown committed to spend $50 million on workforce development programs.

Harvard hasn’t reached a deal and individually sued in April. The federal government said it would freeze more than $2.2 billion in grants and $60 million in contracts after Harvard refused to agree to demands, including eliminating DEI programs.

Also, another $1 billion in federal health research contracts to Harvard could be withheld. The IRS is considering rescinding the tax-exempt status of the university. And the administration has threatened Harvard’s ability to enroll foreign students.

A Justice Department lawyer told a federal judge Thursday that the University of California system wasn’t close to reaching an agreement. The schools include UCLA.

United States Republican President Donald Trump says he will restrict federal funds for New York City if Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani wins the city’s mayoral elections, to be held on Tuesday.

Trump said on his Truth Social platform on Monday that “it is highly unlikely that I will be contributing Federal Funds, other than the very minimum as required”, if Mamdani wins the race.

Polls show Mamdani leading against former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, who is running as an independent after losing to Mamdani in the Democratic primary, and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa, who is the Republican nominee.

According to the latest RealClearPolitics polls on Monday, Mamdani led with 45.8 percent, maintaining a 14.7-point advantage over Cuomo’s 31.1 percent and a 28.5-point lead over Sliwa’s 17.3 percent.

On the final day of campaigning on Monday, the mayoral candidates raced across New York City’s five boroughs after months of back-and-forth barbs, social media hits and saucy debates.

As the closely-watched election day edged closer, Mamdani led a sunrise walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, flanked by hundreds of supporters, before kicking off the day with a speech at City Hall.

Cuomo, on his part, denounced socialism in the Bronx, visited seniors in Chinatown, and popped off an X post calling Mamdani a “poser”.

And Republican candidate Sliwa greeted supporters in the Coney Island neighbourhood of Brooklyn in his signature red hat, as he spoke at a subway station where a woman was killed on a train last year.

Mamdani and Cuomo’s duelling campaigns have reflected their positions in the New York race: the son of another former New York governor, steeped in the liberal Democratic political establishment, versus a young and little-known assemblyman who would be the city’s first Muslim, first person born in Africa and the first person of South Asian descent to lead New York City.

The mayoral race, which has captured outsized global attention, has seen a record 735,317 early votes cast over the past nine days, more than four times the total for the 2021 election, according to the New York City Board of Elections.

‘Our time is now’

Mamdani, a 34-year-old New York state assemblyman, has galvanised New Yorkers with an optimistic, multilingual campaign that promised free buses, rent freezes and universal childcare, partially paid for by taxing the city’s wealthiest residents.

He reiterated that Trump had signalled his support for Cuomo in a 60 Minutes interview. In recent weeks, Cuomo has appealed to conservatives as a way to up his polling numbers.

“If [Cuomo is] elected as mayor, our city will descend deeper into the darkness that has forced too many of our neighbours to flee, and made it impossible for working people to live lives of dignity,” Mamdani said.

In his City Hall speech on Monday, Mamdani seemed to embrace the seismic shift that his campaign has represented for New York’s politics.

“There were few in this city who dared to imagine that we could win, and what it would mean for a city that has – for too long – served only the wealthy and powerful, at the expense of those who work through sunrises and sunsets,” Mamdani said.

Moments later, the crowd broke out in cheers of, “Our time is now!”

Cuomo, who resigned as governor in 2021 after an independent state probe found he had engaged in a pattern of sexually harassing women, took aim at Mamdani’s democratic socialist promises in his final hours of campaigning, likening them to left-wing governments in Latin America.

“Socialism didn’t work in Venezuela. Socialism didn’t work in Cuba. Socialism is not going to work in New York City,” Cuomo said. Mamdani, however, is a self-described “democratic socialist”.

New York’s most prominent billionaires, including hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, have supported Cuomo’s campaign, with Ackman doling out a total of $750,000 through donation vehicles known as super PACs, CNBC reported last week.