WOODSIDE, Calif. (AP) — President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping opened their first face-to-face meeting in more than a year Wednesday with a solid handshake ahead of talks with far-reaching implications for a world grappling with economic cross currents, wars in the Middle East and Europe, tensions in Taiwan and more.

The two leaders, meeting at a bucolic country estate outside San Francisco, are looking to get communication back on track after a tumultuous year and to show the world that while they are global economic competitors, they’re not locked in a winner-take-all faceoff.

Biden arrived first and awaited Xi, who got out of a black car and took Biden’s hand in a warm, hand-over-hand clasp before the two leaders walked a red carpet through the estate’s grand entrance with a China flag on one side and a U.S. flag on the other. Five Marines stood in formation.

The two kicked off talks discussing how important and necessary the relationship is between the two nations, particularly as the world recovers from the global pandemic. Biden said the goal of the summit was for the leaders to “understand each other,” and Xi said they bear “heavy responsibilities” for the world.

“For two large countries like China, United States, turning their back on each other is not an option,” Xi said through a translator. “Planet Earth is big enough for the two countries to succeed.”

Biden noted that the two leaders have known each other for years but haven’t always agreed, and stressed how important their in-person meeting was Wednesday.

“It’s paramount that you and I understand each other clearly, leader-to-leader, with no misconceptions or miscommunication,” Biden said.

Since they last met, already fraught ties have been further strained by the U.S. downing of a Chinese spy balloon that had traversed the continental U.S. and by differences on the self-ruled island of Taiwan, China’s hacking of a Biden official’s emails and other incidents.

Biden is expected to let Xi know that he would like China to use its sway over Iran to make clear that Tehran or its proxies should not take action that could lead to expansion of the Israel-Hamas war. The Biden administration also sees the Chinese, a big buyer of Iranian oil, as having considerable leverage with Iran, which is a major backer of Hamas.

Ahead of the meeting, senior White House officials said Biden would walk away with better, more concrete outcomes compared with their last meeting, in November 2022 in Bali, Indonesia on the sidelines of the Group of 20 leaders summit. There will be agreements from China to help stop the flow of chemicals used in the production of illicit fentanyl, and to revive communications between the militaries – increasingly important particularly as unsafe or unprofessional incidents between the two nations’ ships and aircraft have spiked.

Biden on Tuesday billed the meeting as a chance to get Washington and Beijing back “on a normal course corresponding” once again.

But White House National Council spokesman John Kirby said Biden was “not going to be afraid to confront where confrontation is needed on issues where we don’t see eye to eye.”

“We’re also not going to be afraid, nor should we be afraid, as a confident nation, to engage in diplomacy on ways which we can cooperate with China — on climate change, for instance, and clean energy technology,” Kirby said.

Biden will be focused on managing the countries’ increasingly fierce economic competition and keeping open lines of communication to prevent misunderstandings that could lead to direct conflict between the two powers.

While he’s expected to defend U.S. expansion of export controls on semiconductor chips, he also will assure Xi that the U.S. is not trying to wage economic war with Beijing amid continuing signs that China’s economy is struggling to recover from the disruptions of the pandemic.

Xi, meanwhile, is looking for assurances from Biden that the U.S. will not support Taiwan independence, start a new cold war or suppress China’s economic growth. He’s also keen to show the U.S. that China is still a good place to invest.

Even before their meeting, there were some signs of a thaw: The State Department on Tuesday announced that the U.S. and China — two of the world’s biggest polluters — had agreed to pursue efforts to triple renewable energy capacity globally by 2030, through wind, solar and other renewables.

They are in California for the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, but they met one-on-one at Filoli Estate, a country house and museum about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco.

The APEC summit events already have attracted considerable demonstrations and more were expected Wednesday, including protests against Xi and against multinational corporations focused on profits.

In the hours before the meeting, White House officials said Biden was coming into the talks bolstered by signs the U.S. economy is in a stronger position than China’s, and that the U.S. is building stronger stronger alliances throughout the Pacific.

The U.S. president, speaking at a campaign fundraiser on Tuesday evening, pointed to his upcoming meeting as an example of how “reestablished American leadership in the world is taking hold.” As for China, the president told donors, it has ”real problems.”

The International Monetary Fund recently cut growth forecasts for China, predicting economic growth of 5% this year and 4.2% in 2024, down slightly from previous forecasts. Last month, Beijing released economic data that showed prices falling due to slack demand from consumers and businesses.

Biden, meanwhile, has taken pride in proving wrong a large swath of economists who predicted that millions of layoffs and a recession might be needed to bring down inflation. The Labor Department said Tuesday that consumer prices rose at an annual pace of 3.2% annually, down from a June 2022 peak of 9.1%. Meanwhile, employers keep hiring and the unemployment rate has held below 4% for nearly two years.

Xi, after his meeting with Biden on Wednesday, will address American business executives at a $2,000-per-plate dinner that will be a rare opportunity for U.S. business leaders to hear directly from the Chinese leader as they seek clarification on Beijing’s expanding security rules that may choke foreign investment.

Foreign companies operating in China say tensions with Washington over technology, trade and other issues and uncertainty over Chinese policies are damaging the business environment and causing some to reassess their plans for investing in the giant market.

A senior Biden administration official who briefed reporters ahead of the meeting said one big reason why Xi decided to make the trip to the U.S. was to send the message to American CEOs that China was still a good place to invest. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Robert Moritz, global chairman for the consulting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers, said business leaders will be looking for signs of more cooperation and a firmer commitment to free trade between the world’s two largest economies following Wednesday’s meeting between Biden and Xi.

“What we are looking for is a de-escalation and a bringing of the temperature down,” Mortiz said during a CEO summit in conjunction with APEC.

“Discussion isn’t good enough, it’s the execution on getting things done” that will matter, Moritz said.

___

Long and Tang reported from San Francisco. Associated Press journalist Sagar Meghani in Washington and Michael Liedtke in San Francisco contributed to this report.

WASHINGTON (AP) — With less than two months until the end of the year, the Biden administration is running out of time to win the reauthorization of a spy program it says is vital to preventing terrorism, catching spies and disrupting cyberattacks.

The tool, Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, will expire at the end of December unless the White House and Congress can cut a deal and resolve an unusually vexing debate that has yielded unlikely alliances at the intersection of privacy and national security.

Without the program, administration officials warn, the government won’t be able to collect crucial intelligence overseas. But civil liberties advocates from across the political spectrum say the law as it stands now infringes on the privacy of ordinary Americans, and insist that changes are needed before the program is reauthorized.

“Just imagine if some foreign terrorist organization overseas shifts its intentions and directs an operative here who’d been contingency planning to carry out an attack in our own backyard — and imagine if we’re not able to disrupt the threat because the FBI’s 702 authorities have been so watered down,” FBI Director Christopher Wray told lawmakers Wednesday on the House Homeland Security Committee.

The law, enacted in 2008, permits the U.S. intelligence community to collect without a warrant the communications of foreigners overseas suspected of posing a national security threat. Importantly, the government also captures the communications of American citizens and others in the U.S. when they’re in contact with those targeted foreigners.

In making the case for the law’s renewal, the Biden administration over the last year has cited numerous instances in which intelligence derived from Section 702 has helped thwart an attack, including an assassination plot on U.S. soil, or contributed to a successful operation, such as the strike last year that killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahri.

National security officials have also said 59% of articles in the president’s daily brief contain Section 702 information, and point to the need for the program at a time when Israel’s war with Hamas has led to elevated concerns about attacks inside the U.S.

But while both sides of the debate are in broad agreement that the program is valuable, they differ in key ways on how it should be structured, creating a stalemate as the deadline approaches and as Congress is consumed by a busy year-end agenda, including working to prevent a government shutdown and disputes over border security and war spending.

The White House has already dismissed as unworkable the one known legislative proposal that’s been advanced, though additional bills are expected to be introduced.

Another complicating factor for the administration to navigate: the coalition of lawmakers skeptical of government surveillance includes both privacy-minded liberal Democrats and Republicans deeply supportive of former President Donald Trump who still regard the intelligence community with suspicion over the investigation of ties between Russia and the 2016 Trump campaign.

Despite the clear challenges in reaching a compromise, the last-minute scramble between the White House and Congress has come to be expected each time the government’s surveillance powers are up for renewal. This particular program was last renewed in January 2018 following a splintered vote in Congress and signed into law by Trump, who in a statement praised the tool’s value for having “saved lives” but also cheered a new requirement that was meant to protect privacy.

“A lot of these in the past have gone up to the brink. There is a history here of this brinksmanship when you have these statutory sunsets,” said Jamil Jaffer, founder and executive director of the National Security Institute at George Mason University’s law school and a senior Justice Department official at the time the law was created.

This year, a key point of contention is the insistence by some in Congress, over the strong objection of the White House, that federal agencies be required to get a warrant before they can access the communications of people in the U.S.

That’s been a priority for civil liberties advocates in light of revelations over the past year about improper searches of the intelligence database by FBI analysts for information related to the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the Capitol and the racial justice protests of 2020, as well as about state and federal political figures.

The Biden administration has said compliance errors by the FBI are exceedingly rare given the massive number of overall database queries and that the bureau has made important reforms to minimize the prospect for civil liberties intrusions.

A senior administration official has said that a warrant requirement included in a legislative proposal announced last week would cross a “red line” for the White House given that it would limit officials’ ability to detect, and act on, potentially vital intelligence in real time.

The official, who briefed reporters on condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House, said such a mandate would not only be operationally unworkable but also legally unnecessary because it would force officials to get a warrant to examine intelligence that was already lawfully collected.

Wray, in prepared remarks to the House homeland panel, said a warrant requirement would amount to a “de facto ban” in part because of the length of time and amount of resources needed to prepare an application for a court order.

The idea of requiring a warrant or probable cause to access information about people in the U.S. has been advocated by Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee and one of the most pro-Trump members of Congress, and Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, a reliable champion of civil liberties and liberal standard bearer for decades.

Wyden last week released a bill with a bipartisan group of lawmakers — including Republican Rep. Andy Biggs, a vocal Trump supporter — that would mandate a warrant except for limited exemptions, such as when officials need to stop an imminent threat or if the subject of the query has consented to the search.

In an interview, Wyden said that though he felt strongly about the need for warrants — they’re “important because the Founding Fathers thought they were important” — he also believed that his team had adopted a measured approach by including significant exceptions to the warrant requirement.

“We’re not negotiating with ourselves,” Wyden said. “We’ve got an open-door policy. If there are concerns from the administration, they ought to come up, make the case and talk them through.”

___

Associated Press writer Farnoush Amiri contributed to this report.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — U.S. President Joe Biden and China’s Xi Jinping will meet at a historic country house and museum with lavish gardens for one-on-one talks aimed at improving relations between the two superpowers.

The two leaders will meet Wednesday at Filoli, a secluded estate along Northern California’s coastal range. It was built in 1917 as a private residence and later became a National Trust for Historic Preservation site. The estate is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) south of San Francisco, where leaders are gathering for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation leaders’ conference this week.

The location for the meeting was disclosed by three senior administration officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss a matter with security implications.

Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund, said the location likely has met Xi’s expectations for a private meeting with Biden away from the main summit venue.

“It appears to be a quiet, secluded estate, where Biden and Xi can have an intimate conversation in a relaxed environment,” Glaser said. “Importantly, the venue is not connected to the APEC summit, so it provides the appearance that the two leaders are having a bilateral summit that is distinct from the multilateral APEC summit.”

Observers of China’s elite politics have said Xi wants to project himself to his domestic audience as equal with Biden and as commanding the respect of a U.S. president.

The estate has more than 650 acres (2.6 square kilometers), including a Georgian revival-style mansion and a formal, English Renaissance-style garden. The mansion and grounds are open daily, but the site is currently closed for three days for holiday decorating, its website says.

“A place like this allows them to get away, not just from the media, but from a lot of the other things that encourage conflict,” said Jeremi Suri, a professor of public affairs and history at the University of Texas at Austin. “If they like each other, they are likely to start trusting each other and to communicate better.”

Suri says this is what happened with U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union before it was dissolved. The two met at a secluded chateau in Reykjavik in 1986, sat by a fireplace and walked outdoors wearing heavy coats, forging a relationship, Suri said.

“We need leaders who can break through the fear,” he said.

San Francisco socialite William Bowers Bourn II named Filoli by taking the first two letters of key words of his personal credo, according to the estate’s website: “Fight for a just cause. Love your Fellow Man. Live a Good Life.”

The venue is available for private events, weddings and commercial filming and photography. The gardens feature in Jennifer Lopez’s film “The Wedding Planner.”

——

AP writers Didi Tang and Colleen Long in San Francisco, and Zeke Miller and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

Johnson’s proposal to temporarily fund the government into the new year passed on a bipartisan 336-95 tally, but 93 Republicans voted against it. It was the first time the new speaker had to force vital legislation through the House, and he showed a willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

This time, Johnson of Louisiana appeared on track for a temporarily better outcome. His approach, which the Senate is expected to approve by week’s end, effectively pushes a final showdown over government funding to the new year.

“Making sure that government stays in operation is a matter of conscience for all of us. We owe that to the American people,” Johnson said earlier Tuesday at a news conference at the Capitol.

The new Republican leader faced the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster — angry, frustrated, hard-right GOP lawmakers rejected his approach, demanded budget cuts and voted against the plan. Rather than the applause and handshakes that usually follow passage of a bill, several hardline conservatives animatedly confronted the speaker as they exited the chamber.

Without enough support from his Republican majority, Johnson had little choice but to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running.

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Johnson’s proposal puts forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives have demanded all year. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“We’re not surrendering,” Johnson assured after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning, vowing he would not support another stopgap. “But you have to choose fights you can win.”

Johnson, who announced his endorsement Tuesday of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, hit the airwaves to sell his approach and met privately Monday night with the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Johnson says the innovative approach would position House Republicans to “go into the fight” for deeper spending cuts in the new year, but many Republicans are skeptical there will be any better outcome in January.

Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is part of the House Freedom Caucus, threatened to take the House floor hostage if the chamber doesn’t pass all of the appropriations bills by the deadlines.

He said he would give “a little bit of room” to Johnson, who is three weeks into the job of speaker. But Roy did not hold back on his opinion of the funding bill: “It’s crap.”

The opposition from hardline conservatives left Johnson with few other options than to skip what’s typically a party-only procedural vote, and rely on another process that requires a two-thirds tally with Democrats for passage.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries noted in a letter to colleagues that the GOP package met Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

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In a statement alongside other Democratic leaders, Jeffries said they would try to find common ground with Republicans whenever possible and pointed out that a federal shutdown “would hurt the economy, our national security and everyday Americans.”

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a McCarthy ally who opposed his ouster, said Johnson should be held to the same standard. “What’s the point in throwing out one speaker if nothing changes? The only way to make sure that real changes happen is make the red line stay the same for every speaker.”

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House package “a solution” and said he expected it to pass Congress with bipartisan support.

“It’s nice to see us working together to avoid a government shutdown,” he said.

But McConnell, R-Ky., has noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine and Israel and for other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and to bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of the continuing resolution would be a less-than-triumphant capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but the two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress failed to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

The legislation also extends farm bill programs through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That addition was an important win for some farm-state lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., for example, warned that without the extension, milk prices would have soared and hurt producers back in his home state.

“The farm bill extension was the biggest sweetener for me,” said Pocan.

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Former Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin is making another attempt to overturn his federal civil rights conviction in the 2020 murder of George Floyd, saying new evidence shows that he didn’t cause Floyd’s death.

In a motion filed in federal court Monday, Chauvin said he never would have pleaded guilty to the charge in 2021 if he had known about the theories of a Kansas forensic pathologist with whom he began corresponding in February. Chauvin is asking the judge who presided over his trial to throw out his conviction and order a new trial, or at least an evidentiary hearing.

Floyd, who was Black, died on May 25, 2020 after Chauvin, who is white, kneeled on his neck for 9 1/2 minutes on the street outside a convenience store where Floyd tried to pass a counterfeit $20 bill. A bystander video captured Floyd’s fading cries of “I can’t breathe.” Floyd’s death touched off protests worldwide, some of which turned violent, and forced a national reckoning with police brutality and racism.

Chauvin, who is serving a 21-year sentence at a federal prison in Arizona, filed the request without a lawyer. He says Dr. William Schaetzel, of Topeka, Kansas, told him that he believes Floyd died not from asphyxia from Chauvin’s actions, but from complications of a rare tumor called a paraganglioma that can cause a fatal surge of adrenaline. The pathologist did not examine Floyd’s body but reviewed autopsy reports.

“I can’t go to my grave with what I know,” Schaetzel told The Associated Press by phone on Monday, explaining why he reached out to Chauvin. He went on to say, “I just want the truth.”

Chauvin further alleges that Schaetzel reached out to his trial attorney, Eric Nelson, in 2021, as well as the judge and prosecution in his state-court murder trial, but that Nelson never told him about the pathologist or his ideas. He also alleges that Nelson failed to challenge the constitutionality of the federal charge.

But Chauvin claims in his motion that no jury would have convicted him if it had heard the pathologist’s evidence

Nelson declined to comment Monday.

When Chauvin pleaded guilty to the federal charge in December 2021, he waived his rights to appeal except on the basis of a claim of ineffective counsel.

A federal appeals court has rejected Chauvin’s requests for a rehearing twice. He’s still waiting for the U.S. Supreme Court to decide whether it will hear his appeal of his state court murder conviction.

Three other former officers who were at the scene received lesser state and federal sentences for their roles in Floyd’s death.

ATLANTA (AP) — The Georgia district attorney who charged former President Donald Trump over his efforts to overturn the state’s 2020 election said Tuesday that she expects his trial will be underway through Election Day next year and could possibly stretch past the inauguration in 2025.

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis made the comments at an event sponsored by The Washington Post. Her remarks came shortly after Willis asked a judge for an emergency protective order to prevent evidence in the case from being leaked, just a day after news outlets reported on prosecutors’ video interviews with four co-defendants who have pleaded guilty in the case.

Trump was indicted along with 18 others in Fulton County in August on charges they participated in a wide-ranging conspiracy to keep the Republican incumbent in power after he lost to Democrat Joe Biden. Trump and the remaining defendants — including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows — have all pleaded not guilty.

“I believe in that case there will be a trial. I believe the trial will take many months. And I don’t expect that we will conclude until the winter or the very early part of 2025,” Willis told the newspaper at the The Washington Post’s Global Women’s Summit.

Trump is the early front-runner for the 2024 Republican nominee for president. The timing suggested by Willis would make the Georgia prosecution the last of his four criminal cases to go to trial. Ultimately, it will be up to Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee to set the trial date.

“I don’t, when making decisions about cases to bring, consider any election cycle or an election season. That does not go into the calculus. What goes into the calculus is: This is the law. These are the facts. And the facts show you violated the law. Then charges are brought,” Willis said.

Steve Sadow, Trump’s lead attorney in the Georgia case, declined to comment on Willis’ remarks.

Willis’ team on Tuesday filed an emergency request asking McAfee to issue a protective order to prevent any leaks of evidence, known as discovery, that the prosecution shares with the defense ahead of trial. McAfee has set a hearing on the motion for Wednesday afternoon.

The request came a day after the Post reported the details of video interviews with four people who have already pleaded guilty in the case — attorneys Sidney Powell, Kenneth Chesebro and Jenna Ellis, and bail bondsman and Trump supporter Scott Hall. ABC News first published details and clips of the interviews with Powell and Ellis.

Prosecutors, who had previously requested a protective order to prevent the release of discovery in September, said the release of the recordings “is clearly intended to intimidate witnesses in this case.”

Former Georgia Republican Party chair David Shafer, joined by Trump and four other defendants, objected to prosecutors’ request, saying prosecutors had failed to show how it would “allegedly serve the purpose of protecting witnesses from alleged harm.” If the judge plans to impose a protective order, it should be limited to evidence considered “Sensitive Materials,” and defense attorneys should be able to contest that designation, Shafer’s attorneys wrote in a filing Tuesday.

The recorded statements had been shared with all remaining defense attorneys in the case. Going forward, prosecutors wrote, defendants and their lawyers will not receive copies of such recordings but will be able to watch them and take notes at the district attorney’s office.

Ellis told prosecutors that Dan Scavino, then Trump’s deputy chief of staff, told her in December 2020 that “the boss” didn’t plan to leave the White House after she expressed sorrow that none of the legal challenges to the election seemed to be panning out, according to news reports.

Chesebro told prosecutors about a previously unreported meeting at the White House during which he briefed the then-president on election challenges in Arizona and summarized his advice on a plan to assemble Republican slates of electors in several swing states that Biden had won, the Post reported.

Asked by prosecutors why Trump kept asking her for legal advice, Powell said, “Because we were the only ones willing to support his effort to sustain the White House. I mean, everybody else was telling him to pack up and go.”

Trump attorney Sadow dismissed the relevance of the recorded interviews and called for the case to be dismissed.

“Any purported private conversation is absolutely meaningless,” he said in an emailed statement. “The only salient and telling fact is that President Trump left the White House on January 20, 2021 and returned to Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Florida.”

WASHINGTON (AP) — Supporters of Israel rallied by the tens of thousands on the National Mall under heavy security Tuesday, voicing solidarity in the fight against Hamas and crying “never again.”

The “March for Israel” offered a resounding and bipartisan endorsement of one of America’s closest allies as criticism has intensified over Israel’s offensive in Gaza, set off by the bloody Hamas incursion on Oct. 7.

Overlooking a sea of Israeli and U.S. flags, the top Democrats in Congress — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Democratic leader Hakeem Jefferies — came together on the stage with Republicans Mike Johnson, the House speaker, and Sen. Joni Ernst of Iowa. They joined hands as Schumer chanted, “We stand with Israel.”

Yet underneath that projection of unity, Democrats are sharply divided over Israel’s course and its treatment of Palestinians. President Joe Biden now is urging Israel to restrain some of its tactics to ease civilian suffering in Gaza after voicing full-throated solidarity with the Israelis in the war’s early weeks.

A succession of speakers took the stage to denounce the Hamas attack and what they said was a virulent spread of antisemitism internationally, “an embarrassment to all civilized people and nations,” in the words of Israeli President Isaac Herzog, who addressed the crowd by video from the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

After “the largest massacre since the Holocaust,” he said, “let us call out together, never again.”

“No one will break us,” he vowed. “We will rise again. … There is no greater and just cause than this.”

Ernst said Hamas’ brutality cannot be overstated. “They murder babies,” she said. “They rape women. They abuse the elderly. How anyone in America could sympathize with these terrorists is unfathomable.”

Hamas militants stormed into Israel from Gaza in the surprise incursion Oct. 7, killing more than 1,200 people and taking more than 200 hostages. Israel has responded with weeks of attacks in Gaza, which have killed more than 11,000 Palestinians, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry.

Rachel Goldberg, mother of Hersh Goldberg-Polin, who was taken hostage while attending a music festival attacked by Hamas, said the days since the attack have been “slow motion torment.”

“These children of God range in age from 9 months to 87 years,” Goldberg said of the hostages taken to Gaza. “They are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists and Hindu. Why are they being left underground in the dirt?”

The Homeland Security Department designated the march a “level 1” security event, the highest classification in its system and one usually used for the Super Bowl and other major events, two law enforcement officials told The Associated Press. The designation means the event required substantial law enforcement assistance from federal agencies, the officials said.

The FBI and Homeland Security sent a joint bulletin to law enforcement officials in Washington warning about the potential for violence or an attack inspired by the Israel-Hamas war, the officials said. But the bulletin said clearly that federal officials haven’t identified any “specific, actionable threat” to the march, they said.

The officials were not authorized to discuss details of the law enforcement bulletin publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Many of the demonstrators wore Israeli flags wrapped around their shoulders, flowing behind them, or held small Israeli flags in their hands. They also held placards with names and photos of the people who had been taken hostage in Gaza, often holding them up as the crowd shouted, “Bring them home!” Security was tight, with dump trucks blocking access to the mall and police dispersed throughout the area and on horseback.

“I hope that it shows solidarity” with Israel, said Jackie Seley of Rockville, Maryland, who came with friends from New York. “And I hope that it raises awareness for the hostages that are currently in danger.”

Melanie Lubin of Olney, Maryland, wore a flag half made up with the Stars and Stripes and half with Israel’s blue and white Star of David. Asked about the death toll in Gaza and criticism of the way Israel has conducted its military campaign, she said: “I think everyone is concerned about what is happening in Gaza and to civilians in Israel. Israel is doing its best. This is a war. Israel did not start this war.”

At one point during the rally, organizers played a video with Jewish students talking about antisemitism, reflecting how the conflict is playing out on college campuses.

Noa Fay, a Columbia University student, said many of her peers were feeling helpless about antisemitism they were seeing on campus, but she vowed not to be silenced.

“I will continue to shout,” she said. “We should not have to do this. But we can do this, we must do this.”

The glut of deals suggests that the airline industry’s supercharged pandemic recovery may finally be slowing as the supply of tickets catches up and, on some routes, overtakes demand, which appears relatively robust.

Consider the fares that Denise Diorio, a retired teacher in Tampa, Florida, recently scored. She spent less than $40 on flights to and from Chicago and paid just $230 for a round-trip ticket from New York to Paris and back, a trip she plans to take this month.

“I’ve been telling all my friends, ‘If you want to go somewhere, get your tickets now,’” she said.

The bargains she found may be exceptional, but Diorio is right that deals abound.

Early this month, the average price for a domestic flight around Thanksgiving was down about 9% from a year ago. And flights around Christmas were about 18% cheaper, according to Hopper, a booking and price-tracking app. Kayak, the travel search engine, looked at a wider range of dates around the holidays and found that domestic flight prices were down about 18% around Thanksgiving and 23% around Christmas.

“In a lot of cases, we’re seeing some of the lowest fares that we’ve seen really since travel started coming back after the drop-off in 2020,” said Kyle Potter, executive editor of Thrifty Traveler, a travel blog and deal-watching service.

Domestic ticket prices fell over the summer, Potter said, and deals on international travel, particularly to Europe, have become more common recently.

Airlines lower their fares when they are trying to get more people to book tickets as demand is slowing or they are facing stiffer competition. There’s little question that competition has intensified on some routes, but travel experts say it’s not clear whether demand is waning.

Thanksgiving this year is expected to set a record for air travel, with nearly 30 million passengers forecast, according to Airlines for America, an industry group. That would be about 9% more than last year and 6% more than in 2019, before the pandemic.

But some airlines say demand is slowing outside of holiday and other peak travel periods. In addition, some airports have been so flooded with flights that carriers have been forced to cut fares to fill planes.

That hadn’t been much of a problem for most of the recovery from the pandemic. Weather and other disruptions limited the supply of flights last year and in 2021, as did shortages of trained pilots, parts and planes, among other factors. That drove up ticket prices, kept planes full and helped airlines take in strong profits.

“The airline industry has never delivered the types of profit margins and return on capital that it has done over the last 2.5 years,” said John Grant, chief analyst with OAG, an aviation advisory and data firm. “We’re getting back to a more normal industry.”

For the largest U.S. airlines, the good times have continued, fueled in particular by thriving demand for international travel. But smaller and low-fare carriers have started to suffer. Several reported disappointing financial results for the three months that ended in September. Executives at those airlines have said demand is weakening, fares are falling and costs remain high. They also say bad weather and a shortage of air traffic controllers have made flying more difficult.

JetBlue Airways, for example, lost $153 million in the third quarter, compared with a $57 million profit in the same period last year. The company said recently that it was moving flights away from crowded markets, such as New York, to those where it expected stronger performance, such as the Caribbean. The budget carriers Spirit Airlines and Frontier Airlines recently told investors that they were looking to cut costs by tens of millions of dollars.

Competition has been fierce in some important markets, driving down fares and profits.

In Denver, where Frontier is based, about 14% more seats were available on flights this summer than in the summer of 2019, according to Cirium, an aviation data provider. Miami and Orlando, Florida, two popular destinations served by many budget carriers, saw even larger increases in capacity.

But while airlines added flights in popular markets as they chased passengers, airports in other cities, including Los Angeles, a hub for several major airlines, had large declines in capacity from the summer of 2019.

“You’ll find that there’s a large correlation between the airlines that are doing well and the ones that are struggling, margin-wise, when you compare where their concentrations are,” Barry Biffle, Frontier’s CEO, said last month on a conference call to discuss the airline’s third-quarter results.

When it comes to international routes, analysts are less certain of why fares are falling and whether they will remain low. The kinds of deals that Diorio got for her Paris trip could mean that larger airlines soon find themselves facing a financial squeeze or merely that the industry is returning to a pre-pandemic normal.

“Historically, demand to Europe softens in the winter,” said Steve Hafner, Kayak’s CEO. “So I think that reflects normal trends.”

But demand for international travel could face challenges, partly because of the wars in the Middle East and Ukraine. Analysts also warn that many consumers may be less willing or able to splurge on travel than they were in the last couple of years, when they had pandemic savings to draw from. Even if demand remains strong, airlines risk offering too many seats on popular overseas routes.

(STORY CAN END HERE. OPTIONAL MATERIAL FOLLOWS.)

Whatever the cause of the recent drop in fares, the deals are a welcome break to travelers from years of high prices, Potter said.

“Either way the recipe is there for cheap flights,” he said. “If it’s just a little bit of overcapacity, that’s a win for consumers. If travel demand is dropping, in some ways that’s an even bigger win for people who are never going to give up on travel.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — The man accused of attacking former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer apologized Tuesday, echoing right-wing conspiracy theories to explain to jurors that he went to the Pelosis’ home as part of a bigger plot to end what he viewed as government corruption.

David DePape spoke for more than an hour in which he tearfully recounted about how his political leanings went from leftist to right wing after reading a comment on a YouTube video about former President Donald Trump. He said he bludgeoned Paul Pelosi after realizing his larger plan might be unraveling.

Testimony wrapped up later Tuesday, with closing arguments expected Wednesday. DePape has pleaded not guilty to attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate against the official for performance of their duties. His attorneys argue that he was not seeking to go after Nancy Pelosi because of her official duties as a member of Congress and so the charges do not fit.

The attack happened in the early hours of Oct. 28, 2022, just days before the midterm elections.

DePape, 43, said he went to the Pelosis’ home to talk to Nancy Pelosi about Russian involvement in the 2016 election, and that he planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and upload his interrogation of her online. Prosecutors say he had rope and zip ties with him.

DePape testified that his plan was to get Nancy Pelosi and other targets to admit to their corruption. “If she lied, I would break her kneecaps,” he said. “The choice is on her.”

He then wanted President Joe Biden to pardon the targets “so we can move forward as a country,” he said.

In testimony Monday, Paul Pelosi recounted the attack publicly for the first time. He recalled being awakened by a man bursting into the bedroom door and asking, “Where’s Nancy?” He said that when he responded that his wife was in Washington, DePape said he would tie him up while they waited for her.

Paul Pelosi said he managed to call police, but when officers arrived, DePape hit him with a hammer. He said DePape told him he was going to have “to take you out.”

DePape said that he felt bad for Pelosi after hearing testimony from a neurosurgeon who operated on him after the attack and testified Pelosi had two wounds on his head, including a fracture to his skull that had to be mended with plates and screws. Pelosi also needed stitches on injuries to his right arm and hand.

“He was never my target and I’m sorry that he got hurt,” DePape said.

“I reacted because my plan was basically ruined,” he said when asked why he hit Pelosi.

DePape testified he first was drawn to right-wing conspiracies after learning about “Gamergate,” an online harassment campaign against women in the video gaming community that took place about a decade ago. He said he often played videogames for up to six hours a day while listening to political podcasts.

He said he believed news outlets repeatedly lied about Trump, and specifically mentioned CNN. In rants posted on a blog and online forum that were taken down after his arrest, DePape echoed the baseless, right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims the U.S. government is run by a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles, but he did not mention that Tuesday.

He allegedly told authorities his other targets included a women’s and queer studies professor at the University of Michigan, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, actor Tom Hanks and President Joe Biden’s son Hunter. He told jurors that he heard about the professor while listening to conservative commentator James Lindsay.

“The takeaway I got is that she wants to turn our schools into pedophile molestation factories,” said DePape, a Canadian citizen who moved to the U.S. more than 20 years ago.

The professor testified that some of her writings have been misconstrued to fit a narrative against the gay movement. U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Scott Corley ordered her name not be put in the public record because of threats against her.

Asked by DePape’s defense attorney if she supported the abuse of children, the professor responded, “Absolutely not.”

She said that after Paul Pelosi was attacked, the FBI informed her that she was DePape’s main target. She said that she told university administrators and that they have taken measures to protect her, her students, and other staff.

Other witnesses who testified Tuesday included Daniel Bernal, Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco chief of staff, and DePape neighbor Elizabeth Yates, who said she allowed him to shower at her home once a week.

If convicted, DePape faces life in prison. He has pleaded not guilty to charges in state court of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary and other felonies. A state trial has not been scheduled.

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This story has been corrected to reflect that defense witness Elizabeth Yates is a neighbor of DePape, not an extremism and antisemitism researcher.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The House voted overwhelmingly Tuesday to prevent a government shutdown after new Republican Speaker Mike Johnson was forced to reach across the aisle to Democrats when hard-right conservatives revolted against his plan.

Johnson’s proposal to temporarily fund the government into the new year passed on a bipartisan 336-95 tally, but 93 Republicans voted against it. It was the first time the new speaker had to force vital legislation through the House, and he showed a willingness to leave his right-flank Republicans behind and work with Democrats — the same political move that cost the last House speaker, Kevin McCarthy, his job just weeks ago.

This time, Johnson of Louisiana appeared on track for a temporarily better outcome. His approach, which the Senate is expected to approve by week’s end, effectively pushes a final showdown over government funding to the new year.

“Making sure that government stays in operation is a matter of conscience for all of us. We owe that to the American people,” Johnson said earlier Tuesday at a news conference at the Capitol.

The new Republican leader faced the same political problem that led to McCarthy’s ouster — angry, frustrated, hard-right GOP lawmakers rejected his approach, demanded budget cuts and voted against the plan. Rather than the applause and handshakes that usually follow passage of a bill, several hardline conservatives animatedly confronted the speaker as they exited the chamber.

Without enough support from his Republican majority, Johnson had little choice but to rely on Democrats to ensure passage to keep the federal government running.

Johnson’s proposal puts forward a unique — critics say bizarre — two-part process that temporarily funds some federal agencies to Jan. 19 and others to Feb. 2. It’s a continuing resolution, or CR, that comes without any of the deep cuts conservatives have demanded all year. It also fails to include President Joe Biden’s request for nearly $106 billion for Ukraine, Israel, border security and other supplemental funds.

“We’re not surrendering,” Johnson assured after a closed-door meeting of House Republicans Tuesday morning, vowing he would not support another stopgap. “But you have to choose fights you can win.”

Johnson, who announced his endorsement Tuesday of Donald Trump as the Republican nominee for president, hit the airwaves to sell his approach and met privately Monday night with the conservative Freedom Caucus.

Johnson says the innovative approach would position House Republicans to “go into the fight” for deeper spending cuts in the new year, but many Republicans are skeptical there will be any better outcome in January.

Rep. Chip Roy, a Texas Republican who is part of the House Freedom Caucus, threatened to take the House floor hostage if the chamber doesn’t pass all of the appropriations bills by the deadlines.

He said he would give “a little bit of room” to Johnson, who is three weeks into the job of speaker. But Roy did not hold back on his opinion of the funding bill: “It’s crap.”

The opposition from hardline conservatives left Johnson with few other options than to skip what’s typically a party-only procedural vote, and rely on another process that requires a two-thirds tally with Democrats for passage.

Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries noted in a letter to colleagues that the GOP package met Democratic demands to keep funding at current levels without steep reductions or divisive Republican policy priorities.

In a statement alongside other Democratic leaders, Jeffries said they would try to find common ground with Republicans whenever possible and pointed out that a federal shutdown “would hurt the economy, our national security and everyday Americans.”

Winning bipartisan approval of a continuing resolution is the same move that led McCarthy’s hard-right flank to oust him in October, days after the Sept. 30 vote to avert a federal shutdown. For now, Johnson appears to be benefiting from a political honeymoon in one of his first big tests on the job.

“Look, we’re going to trust the speaker’s move here,” said Rep. Drew Ferguson, R-Ga.

But Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., a McCarthy ally who opposed his ouster, said Johnson should be held to the same standard. “What’s the point in throwing out one speaker if nothing changes? The only way to make sure that real changes happen is make the red line stay the same for every speaker.”

The Senate, where Democrats have a slim majority, has signaled its willingness to accept Johnson’s package ahead of Friday’s deadline to fund the government.

Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell called the House package “a solution” and said he expected it to pass Congress with bipartisan support.

“It’s nice to see us working together to avoid a government shutdown,” he said.

But McConnell, R-Ky., has noted that Congress still has work to do toward Biden’s request to provide U.S. military aid for Ukraine and Israel and for other needs. Senators are trying to devise a separate package to fund U.S. supplies for the overseas wars and to bolster border security, but it remains a work in progress.

If approved, passage of the continuing resolution would be a less-than-triumphant capstone to the House GOP’s first year in the majority. The Republicans have worked tirelessly to cut federal government spending only to find their own GOP colleagues unwilling to go along with the most conservative priorities. Two of the Republican bills collapsed last week as moderates revolted.

Instead, the Republicans are left funding the government essentially on autopilot at the levels that were set in bipartisan fashion at the end of 2022, when Democrats had control of Congress but the two parties came together to agree on budget terms.

All that could change in the new year when 1% cuts across the board to all departments would be triggered if Congress failed to agree to new budget terms and pass the traditional appropriation bills to fund the government by springtime.

The 1% automatic cuts, which would take hold in April, are despised by all sides — Republicans say they are not enough, Democrats say they are too steep and many lawmakers prefer to boost defense funds. But they are part of the debt deal McCarthy and Biden struck earlier this year. The idea was to push Congress to do better.

The legislation also extends farm bill programs through September, the end of the current fiscal year. That addition was an important win for some farm-state lawmakers. Rep. Mark Pocan, D-Wis., for example, warned that without the extension, milk prices would have soared and hurt producers back in his home state.

“The farm bill extension was the biggest sweetener for me,” said Pocan.

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Associated Press writers Kevin Freking, Farnoush Amiri and Mary Clare Jalonick contributed to this report.