lawmaker

Hezbollah MP, Hassan Fadlallah said that Hezbollah will eliminate the “yellow line” declared by Israel in southern Lebanon, stressing that “no one will be able to disarm the party.”

In an interview with Agence France-Presse, Fadlallah said: “We will topple this yellow line through resistance, through our insistence on our legitimate right to defend ourselves and our country.”

He added: “The Israeli army’s attempt to establish a buffer zone, under the guise of a front line, a yellow line, and a green line—we will break all these lines. We will not accept any of them, and we will reach our villages on the internationally recognized borders, no matter the sacrifices, no matter the cost.”

“There will be no disarmament of the resistance, and no one in Lebanon or abroad will be able to disarm it”, he added.

He said that “it is in the interest of the President of the Republic to withdraw from the path of direct negotiations with Israel,” adding that Hezbollah wants the ceasefire to continue.

“It is in the interest of Lebanon, the President of the Republic, and the government to withdraw from the path of direct negotiations and return to a national consensus on the best option for Lebanon,” he said, describing the move toward direct negotiations as “a unilateral decision on a fateful matter related to Lebanon’s future.”

He added: “We will reject and confront any attempt to impose political prices on Lebanon through concessions offered to this Israeli enemy.”

Fadlallah added he wants the ceasefire to continue, alongside efforts to ensure the withdrawal of the occupation army, the return of displaced persons to their villages, the release of prisoners, and the launch of a reconstruction program.

WASHINGTON — Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick is resigning from Congress rather than be formally disciplined by the House as part of an ethics investigation into her use of campaign funds.

Explaining her decision in an extended social media statement on Tuesday, the Florida Democrat decried the internal investigation process as unfair. She said the House Committee denied her and her new attorney adequate time to prepare a defense.

“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away,” she wrote.

Members of the House Ethics Committee on Tuesday had been set to weigh what punishment to recommend after they found she committed 25 violations of House rules and ethical standards, including breaking campaign finance laws.

Republicans had already called for the expulsion of Cherfilus-McCormick, who was in her third term and was running for reelection in a southeastern Florida district. She is also facing federal criminal charges accusing her of stealing $5 million in coronavirus disaster relief funds and using the money to buy items such as a 3-carat yellow diamond ring.

Cherfilus-McCormick has pleaded not guilty to the criminal charges and says she is not guilty of ethics violations, either.

The allegations against the congresswoman center on how she received millions of dollars from her family’s healthcare business after Florida mistakenly overpaid the business by roughly $5 million with COVID-19 disaster relief funds. She is accused of using that money to fund her 2022 congressional campaign through a network of businesses and family members.

Cherfilus-McCormick declined to testify during a previous Ethics Committee hearing, citing her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Her attorney, William Barzee, sparred with some of the lawmakers and argued that they should have allowed a thorough ethics trial, at which he could present witnesses and evidence to counter the conclusions of House investigators.

A group of supporters in Cherfilus-McCormick’s congressional district had weighed in on her behalf with the lawmakers who lead the Ethics Committee, urging committee leaders to proceed with caution.

“Our communities deserve stability. Our voices deserve to be heard. And our right to representation must be protected,” said one of the letters sent to the committee signed by about a dozen local faith leaders, union officials and others.

In all, the panel’s two-year investigation led to the issuance of 59 subpoenas, 28 witness interviews and a review of more than 33,000 pages of documents.

Rep. Greg Steube, a Florida Republican, had said he would move to expel Cherfilus-McCormick once the Ethics Committee made a determination on what punishment it would recommend.

That move could in turn prompt Democrats to seek the expulsion of Rep. Cory Mills, a Florida Republican who is the subject of a wide-ranging investigation by the Ethics Committee that includes whether he violated campaign finance laws, misused congressional resources and engaged in sexual misconduct or dating violence. That investigation is ongoing. Mills has denied any wrongdoing.

The focus on lawmaker wrongdoing comes just one week after two lawmakers resigned during ethics investigations into alleged sexual misconduct. Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell of California and Republican Rep. Tony Gonzales of Texas headed off possible expulsion votes with their resignations.

House Democratic leaders had declined to condemn Cherfilus-McCormick, saying they wanted to see the ethics process play out. Potential punishments included a reprimand or a censure, which serve as forms of public rebuke. The committee could also have recommended a fine. The most severe form of punishment was expulsion, but the House has historically been reluctant to serve as the final arbiter of a lawmaker’s career, preferring to give that final say to the voters.

Only six members of the House have been expelled. The first three fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War and were expelled for disloyalty. The next two had been convicted of crimes. The final one was George Santos, the scandal-plagued freshman who was the subject of a blistering ethics report on his conduct as well as federal indictment. Santos, a New York Republican, served time in prison for ripping off his campaign donors before President Trump granted him clemency, and he has apologized to his former constituents.

Under the Constitution, at least two-thirds of the House has to vote for expulsion for it to occur, a high threshold that requires enormous bipartisan support.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) told reporters last week he believes the House will move to expel Cherfilus-McCormick.

“The facts are indisputable at this point, and so I believe it’ll be the consensus of this body that she should be expelled,” Johnson said.

Freking and Groves write for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The Senate approved a short-term renewal until April 30 of a controversial surveillance program used by U.S. spy agencies, following a chaotic, post-midnight scramble in the House to keep the authority from expiring.

The measure cleared the Senate by voice vote, without a formal roll call, as Congress raced to meet a Monday deadline. It now heads to President Trump, who had pushed for a clean 18-month extension, for his signature.

GOP leaders in the House rushed lawmakers back into session late Thursday with a series of back-to-back votes that collapsed in dramatic failure, before they quickly pushed ahead the stopgap measure as they race to keep the surveillance program running past Monday’s expiration date.

First they unveiled a new plan that would have extended the program for five years, with revisions. Then they tried to salvage a shorter 18-month renewal that Trump had demanded and Speaker Mike Johnson had previously backed. Some 20 Republicans joined most Democrats in blocking its advance.

Shortly after 2 a.m. they quickly agreed to the 10-day extension, which was agreed to on a voice vote without a formal roll call. It next goes to the Senate, which is gaveling for a rare Friday session, as Congress races to keep the surveillance program running.

“We were very close tonight,” said Johnson after the late-night action.

But Democrats blasted the middle-of-the-night voting as amateur hour. “Are you kidding me? Who the hell is running this place?” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., during a fiery floor debate.

At the center of the standoff that has stretched throughout the week is Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which permits the CIA, National Security Agency, FBI and other agencies to collect and analyze vast amounts of overseas communications without a warrant. In doing so, they can incidentally sweep up communications involving Americans who interact with foreign targets.

U.S. officials say the authority is critical to disrupting terrorist plots, cyber intrusions and foreign espionage.

Surveillance program fight is a debate over privacy and security

Its path to passage has teetered all week in a familiar fight, as lawmakers weigh civil liberties concerns against intelligence officials’ warnings about national security risks.

Opponents of the surveillance tool point to past misuses. FBI officials repeatedly violated their own standards when searching intelligence related to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and racial justice protests in 2020, according to a 2024 court order.

Trump and his allies had lobbied aggressively all week for a clean renewal of the program, without changes.

A group of Republicans traveled to the White House on Tuesday, and on Wednesday CIA Director John Ratcliffe spoke directly with GOP lawmakers. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise said Thursday there had “been negotiations late into the night with the White House and some of our members.”

“I am asking Republicans to UNIFY, and vote together on the test vote to bring a clean Bill to the floor,” Trump wrote on Truth Social this week. “We need to stick together.”

The result of days of negotiations

Thursday’s proceedings came to a standstill as lawmakers retreated behind closed doors and Johnson reached for an agreement to resolve the standoff.

Shortly before midnight GOP leaders announced a new proposal, a five-year extension, with revisions. The changes were designed to win over skeptics of the surveillance program who have demanded greater oversight to protect Americans’ privacy.

Among the changes are new provisions to ensure that only FBI attorneys can authorize queries on U.S. persons, and to require the Office of the Director of National Intelligence to review such cases, said Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., during the debate.

But the final product, a 14-page amendment, did not go far enough for some holdouts in either party.

With Johnson controlling a slim majority, he has little room for dissent. As the Republicans fell short on both efforts before the short extension, a handful of Democrats stepped in to try to help them advance the longer extensions, but most Democrats were opposed.

“We just defeated Johnson’s efforts to sneak through a 5-year FISA authorization tonight,” said Democratic Rep, Ro Khanna of California. “Now, they will have to fight in daylight.”

Cappelletti and Mascaro write for the Associated Press.

A powerful dust storm disrupted the first weekend of the Coachella music festival as blustery winds swept over the sprawling grounds and enveloped concertgoers in a whirlwind of desert sand.

Several social media videos from last Friday night showed attendees navigating the festival grounds amid wind-tossed tents and wearing face masks to guard against the airborne dust.

The weather conditions prompted the South Coast Air District to issue dust advisories for parts of the Coachella Valley, warning that strong winds could expose people to unhealthy dust levels. The dust storm caused festival organizers to cancel a highly anticipated performance by Italian EDM artist Anyma, who had been scheduled to perform Friday at midnight on the main stage.

“I don’t have many words other than to say I’m truly devastated and deeply sorry to everyone who showed up to the main stage, and to those watching the livestream at home,” he posted on X. “The dangerous winds not only prevented us and Coachella from building our stage, but also made it impossible for my entire live setup and performance to operate safely.”

It was the latest instance in which dusty conditions hampered one of the nation’s largest and most profitable music festival, which has been called “Dustchella.” But it is just one fragment of the economy disrupted by this natural phenomenon.

Wind-driven dust is an overlooked environmental hazard — and one that carries a hefty price tag. A recent study estimated that dust storms cost more than $154 billion in the U.S. in 2017, alone. The evaluation puts dust events on par with natural disasters in terms of economic costs, eclipsing, for example, the 2017 wildfire season but shy of that year’s hurricane season, according to Irene Feng, the lead author of the 2024 study, who researched dust at the University of Texas at El Paso.

“Dust is kind of a big deal,” said Feng, now a post-graduate student at George Mason University. “The fact that it was even comparable to hurricanes … was a huge surprise to me.”

Since researchers last attempted to calculate the costs associated with dust pollution in the 1990s, the numbers overall numbers essentially quadrupled.

Some of the greatest costs calculated in the new study include:

• $100 billion related to dust-related deaths and lost productivity from health issues, as inhaling dust particles can lead to serious respiratory illness and trigger heart attacks.
• $40 billion from additional household costs from cleaning, painting and property damage.
• $9.6 billion for damages to agriculture from lost water and weaker crop yields.
• $4 billion in lost value of weakened renewable energy generation, because dust obscures solar panels and gum up wind turbines.
• $280 million for traffic crashes caused by reduced visibility due to dust storms.

Among one of the most grave conditions Feng analyzed was a potentially life-threatening respiratory infection known as “valley fever.” Throughout much of Southwest, desert soil can be laced with Coccidioides fungus spores. When inhaled, this fungus can propagate in the lungs, potentially causing scarring and collapse of lungs.

In many cases, valley fever symptoms can mirror the flu or COVID, leading doctors to misdiagnose patients, and to not provide proper treatment.

Coachella, which is hosted at an irrigated polo field surrounded by desert, is particularly susceptible.

“When I heard that there was a dust event at Coachella, I was actually really concerned about the valley fever cases that might come out of that,” Feng said. “Because there’s so many people traveling from outside the state, and they don’t necessarily know what valley fever is.”

But devastating dust-related effects, like valley fever, can be mitigated, at least to some degree, according to environmental experts.

In California, state and local government agencies have launched dust-mitigation efforts by installing windbreaks, such as cultivating native plants or reshaping the topography with more ridges. About 200 miles north of Los Angeles, at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountains, Owens Lake, a critical and controversial source of water for Angelenos, city officials say they have drastically reduced dust near the dry, exposed lake bed in recent years after implementing some of these measures.

Scientists say global warming is causing warmer temperatures and more intense droughts, paving the way for more dust emissions. Feng said that could require more innovative solution, more action and more money.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s projected to be dustier in the future,” Feng said. “So, all these effects, all these costs, they’re just only going to get worse.”

More recent air news

The NAACP sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company this week, claiming xAI (the creator of Grok) violated federal clean air laws. The lawsuit, reported by CNBC’s climate tech reporter Lora Kolodny, accuses the company of installing and operating 27 natural gas-fired turbines to power its data center in Memphis without the necessary air permits.

Recent far-flung wildfire smoke has led to air quality risks in unlikely places. Now, Michigan, my beloved home state, is overhauling its air quality alerts system after having endured heavy smoke from Canadian wildfires in 2023 and 2025, per Planet Detroit’s senior reporter Brian Allnutt.

New research suggests methane emissions have been drastically underestimated in the country’s largest cities. An satellite analysis of 12 urban areas, including New York City and Los Angeles, found up to 80% more methane emissions than previously thought, according to ABC reporter Julia Jacobo.

Because methane warms the atmosphere far more than carbon dioxide, the findings underscore the need to investigate large emitters, such as landfills, gas pipelines and wastewater treatment facilities. One other, underreported source is California’s man-made lakes that we tap for drinking water, L.A. Times water reporter Ian James writes. Environmental groups are urging environmental regulators to investigate why.

A few last things in climate news

Sales of new electric vehicles have slumped as Trump has eliminated federal incentives for car buyers. But, as oil prices have spiked due to the war in Iran, used EV sales have jumped 20%, signaling a renewed willingness by Americans to ween themselves off fossil fuels, according to Bloomberg senior correspondent Kyle Stock.

Stingrays injuries in Southern California have been on the rise. LAist climate reporter Erin Stone, who was recently wounded by stingray’s barb herself, writes that warming waters attract more rays and make these painful encounters more likely.

Under an ambitious proposal, the Bay Area could host the world’s largest floating wind farm, taking California closer to its 100% renewable energy goal, L.A. Times climate reporter Hayley Smith writes. The plan would involve building hundreds of Eiffel Tower-sized wind turbines and towing them into the deep, breezy waters of the Humboldt Bay, where they could generate up to 15% of the state’s electricity.

This is the latest edition of Boiling Point, a newsletter about climate change and the environment in the American West. Sign up here to get it in your inbox. And listen to our Boiling Point podcast here.

For more air quality news, follow me at @_TonyBriscoe on X and on LinkedIn.