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WASHINGTON (AP) — The Commerce Department’s efforts to curb China’s and Russia’s access to American-made advanced computer chips have been “inadequate” and will need more funding to stymie their ability to manufacture advanced weapons, according to a report published Wednesday by the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations.

The Biden administration imposed export controls to limit the ability of China and Russia to access U.S.-made chips after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly three years ago.

The agency’s Bureau of Industry and Security, according to the report, does not have the resources to enforce export controls and has been too reliant on U.S. chip makers voluntarily complying with the rules.

But the push for bolstering Commerce’s export control enforcement comes as the incoming Trump administration says it is looking to dramatically reduce the size and scope of federal government. President-elect Donald Trump has tapped entrepreneurs Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy to lead a new “Department of Government Efficiency” to dismantle parts of the federal government.

The Trump transition team did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report.

BIS’s budget, about $191 million, has remained essentially flat since 2010 when adjusted for inflation.

“While BIS’ budget has been stagnant for a decade, the bureau works diligently around the clock to meet its mission and safeguard U.S. national security,” Commerce Department spokesperson Charlie Andrews said in a statement in response to the report.

Andrews added that with “necessary resources from Congress” the agency would be “better equipped to address the challenges that come with our evolving national security environment.”

In a letter to Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, chair of the subcommittee, pointed to news reports of the Russian military continuing to acquire components from Texas Instruments through front companies in Hong Kong to illustrate how the export controls are failing as an effective tool.

Blumenthal in a statement called on “Commerce to take immediate action and crack down on the companies allowing U.S.-made semiconductors to power Russian weapons and Chinese ambition.”

Texas Instruments said it opposes the use of its chips in Russian military equipment and the illicit diversion of its products to Russia.

“It is our policy to comply with export control laws, and any shipments of TI chips into Russia are illicit and unauthorized,” the company said in a statement. “If we find evidence indicating product diversion, we investigate and take action.”

It’s not just Texas Instruments that’s the issue. The subcommittee in September published a report that found aggregated exports from four major U.S. advanced chip manufacturers nearly doubled from 2021 to 2022 to Armenia and Georgia.

Both of those countries are home to front companies known to assist Russia in acquiring advanced chips made in the U.S. despite export controls.

China, meanwhile, has created “vast, barely disguised smuggling networks which enable it to continue to harness U.S. technology,” the subcommittee report asserts.

Washington has been gradually expanding the number of companies affected by such export controls in China, as President Joe Biden’s administration has encouraged an expansion of investments in and manufacturing of chips in the U.S.

But Chinese companies have found ways to evade export controls in part because of a lack of China subject matter experts and Chinese speakers assigned to Commerce’s export control enforcement.

The agency’s current budget limits the number of international end-use checks, or physical verification overseas of distributors or companies receiving American-made chips that are the supposed end users of products. Currently, Commerce has only 11 export control officers spread around the globe to conduct such checks, the report said.

The committee made several recommendations in its report, including Congress allocating more money for hiring additional personnel to enforce export controls, imposing larger fines on companies that violate controls and requiring periodic reviews of advanced chip companies’ export control plans by outside entities.

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Boak reported from West Palm Beach, Florida.

UVALDE, Texas (AP) — The former schools police chief in Uvalde, Texas, who has asked a judge to throw out charges accusing him of failing to take action during the 2022 Robb Elementary School shooting, is expected back in court Thursday.

Pete Arredondo, 52, has pleaded not guilty to charges of child endangerment and abandonment. U.S. law enforcement officers rarely face a criminal trial over their actions during a school shooting.

The May 24, 2022, attack on Robb Elementary that killed 19 students and two teachers was one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history. The law enforcement response, which included nearly 400 federal, state and local officers, has been widely condemned as a massive failure.

Arredondo’s attorneys argue he is being prosecuted for trying to save lives, including ordering the evacuation of other areas of the school. They argue the indictment would open many future law enforcement actions to similar charges.

“It cannot possibly be an offense that Mr. Arredondo evacuated some children before others could be saved,” his attorneys wrote in a court filing. “If the state is allowed to proceed in this manner, all Texas peace officers should be terrified.”

Uvalde County prosecutors have urged the judge to reject Arredondo’s claim.

Another Uvalde schools officer who was on the scene that day, Adrian Gonzales, 51, was indicted on similar charges and has also pleaded not guilty. They are the only two officers facing charges over the police response. Gonzales is also expected to attend the hearing in Uvalde.

It is unclear if Judge Sid Harle will rule on Arredondo’s request on Thursday or later. The hearing is also expected to cover defense requests for access to evidence and witnesses, and other pretrial matters.

While terrified students and teachers called 911 from inside classrooms, dozens of officers stood in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. More than an hour later, a team breached the classroom and killed the gunman.

The indictment against Arredondo accuses the former chief of ignoring his active shooter training, and delaying the police response while the shooter was “hunting victims,” despite being told that injured children were in the classrooms and that a teacher had been shot.

Instead of immediately confronting the 18-year-old gunman, Arredondo called for a SWAT team, ordered the initial responding officers to leave the building, and briefly attempted to negotiate with the shooter, the indictment said.

Once Arredondo knew of the shooter and the imminent danger to students in the classroom, “Texas law demands urgent intervention to remove the child from the danger,” prosecutors argued.

Gonzales faces similar charges in a 29-count, separate indictment that accuses him of failing to protect victims who were killed, as well as those who survived. Gonzales’ legal team has not yet asked the court to throw out his charges, but could at a later date.

Each charge against the officers carries up to two years in jail. Both men have pleaded not guilty.

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Associated Press reporter Jim Vertuno contributed from Austin, Texas.

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Lathan is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues.

WASHINGTON (AP) – After a yearslong legal battle, federal officials are asking Texas schools that used a Medicaid reimbursement program for special education services to return $16 million that they say were billed incorrectly.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General sent an email this month to 572 school districts statewide informing officials they would need to pay anywhere from $100 to $800,000 back to the department for services billed in 2011. The charges stem from a 2017 federal health agency audit that found Texas had improperly billed the agency 238 times for services under the School Health and Related Services program.

The SHARS program reimburses schools for providing services to Medicaid-eligible students, including mental and physical therapy, nursing and screenings. Almost 950 of the state’s more than 1,200 school districts are currently enrolled in SHARS programming, according to the Texas Association of School Boards.

The 238 errors the federal government identified were for services that were deemed ineligible for reimbursement. The Inspector General’s Office also found over 94% of the services billed — including some that were eligible — did not have the required documentation.

The audit warned the Texas Health and Human Services Commission that districts would be asked to return the money paid out for ineligible services, but a series of attempted appeals postponed the repayments. School districts would have had to return more funds, but Texas’ appeals and a review by the Center for Medicaid and Medicare Services lowered the number of billings considered ineligible.

The state has six weeks to decide how they want to pay back the $16 million, according to the federal agency. The federal agency is not requiring the state to recoup the money directly from school districts, leaving the option of using state funding to pay the bill.

“It is up to the state to recoup from individual school districts, if it chooses to do so,” according to a spokesperson with the Health and Human Services Office of the Inspector General.

A statement from Texas’ Health and Human Services Commission said the department has already paid the $16 million to the federal government, and that it is required by law to recoup its costs. The statement added HHSC “submitted every possible denial and request” to contest the charges.

With school budgets set for the year, Texas districts say they have little room to move around funds to pay the money back.

“Because this comes in the middle of a budget year, it makes planning for schools virtually impossible,” said Brian Woods, director of advocacy at the Texas Association of School Administrators. “Had this clawback been known prior to schools approving their budgets in the summer of 2024, then at least it could have been planned for, right?”

Pete Pape, chief financial officer for the Leander school district, called the charge “the tip of the iceberg” and expressed frustration with the Texas health agency’s lack of support for districts and their programs. Federal appeals officers said in 2023 that Texas produced “nothing at all” to dispute investigators’ findings, noting the only evidence Texas submitted in its appeal was a spreadsheet created by CMS listing the improperly billed services.

“If we acted like this as a school district, we would get blasted,” Pape said. “It’s like they just want to check off a box, they could tell the community and the legislature, ‘Yeah, we appealed it.’ So it’s frustrating.”

The Leander district owes about $99,000. Pape said he plans to appeal the charge, although the repayment notice the district received did not say if it could be appealed.

The $16 million repayment request comes after Texas slashed more than $607 million for SHARS funding as the state imposed strict limitations on the kinds of services school districts could get reimbursed for. The move, which some school staff consider overcorrection on the state’s part in reaction to the errors made in 2011, have forced some smaller schools to exit the program entirely.

Woods, the former superintendent of the Northside school district in San Antonio, said the repayments are “substantial” even for the largest districts because they are already so strapped for funding.

Northside ISD is set to return more than $420,000, one of the highest repayments the federal government is asking for.

Over 40 schools owe more than $100,000; however, more than half the schools listed owe less than $10,000. The Houston and Austin school districts are set to pay the most, with over $780,000 each.

For many districts, the notice comes as officials grapple with budget shortfalls worsened by inflation, expiring pandemic relief funds and five years without a significant raise in public school spending from the state.

“I don’t think that I’ve heard a consistent, programmatic-type plan. Most of what I hear is, ‘You got to be kidding me, right?’” Woods said of districts’ reactions. “This is on top of the multimillion-dollar cuts that we spent most of the fall talking about, and here we are with another.”

District officials hope lawmakers will provide relief after the SHARS cuts. Several special education funding bills have already been filed ahead of the state legislative session that starts next month. Woods said there is no lawmaker who serves the role of a “designated advocate” for special education funding but added that there is still time to highlight the issue before the Legislature starts.

“Concerned parents and concerned citizens just need to contact their representatives and indicate that they believe there’s a need to rectify that situation,” Woods said.

FORT WORTH – The Fort Worth Star-Telegram reports that Bell Textron Inc., already one the largest employers in the Metroplex, has chosen its hometown of Fort Worth to build components for the next generation of military assault helicopters. The news, announced Tuesday by Bell CEO Lisa Atherton and Gov. Greg Abbott at a Bell facility in northern Fort Worth, represents an investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in North Texas. The company’s new facility in Alliance is expected to create more than 500 high-paying jobs after it opens in 2025. “We are truly a Texas company,” Atherton said. Bell considered at least two other locations in other states for its $632 million plant. It will produce parts for the company’s V-280 Valor to replace the Army’s fleet of UH-60 Black Hawks, developed in the 1970s by the Lockheed Martin company Sikorsky.

Bell won the coveted defense contract in 2022 for its design of the V-280, a tiltrotor aircraft that can take off or land vertically and fly at over 300 mph. The contract could be worth up to $70 billion over many years, depending on how many aircraft the Army and foreign governments purchase. Lockheed Martin and Boeing had competed during the Army’s years-long selection process. The 34-acre site that Bell chose is at 15100 N. Beach St., off Interstate 35W across the Denton County line but within the Fort Worth city limits. The site was formerly home to a Stanley Black & Decker facility. Brian Chase, vice president of international government affairs at Bell Flight, said selecting the facility was about a three-year process. He declined to name the other sites Bell considered. Jobs at the new location will be a mix of support and traditional manufacturing roles, like engineering and operations positions. It’s unclear how many roles will require security clearance. Bell is still designing the manufacturing flow of the facility, and does not yet have a timeline for when hiring could begin. Chase said Tuesday’s announcement was likely the last major site selection for the FLRAA manufacturing. The aircraft will be assembled in Amarillo and testing will be done in Grand Prairie and Arlington. Chase said locals may see aircraft flying near the testing facilities in the coming years.

AUSTIN – After extensive reviews of public comments and stakeholder input, the Railroad Commission of Texas has adopted a significant overhaul of rules regulating oil and gas waste management facilities in Texas. RRC Commissioners voted to adopt the new regulations at their open meeting today.

The regulations cover waste from oil and gas operations, such as rock and other material pulled up from the ground during drilling, as well as waste from other operations for which the Legislature has given the RRC jurisdiction including geothermal, carbon sequestration and brine mining wells.

It is the first overhaul of RRC’s waste management rules in four decades. The new rules help the RRC continue to safeguard groundwater and surface water while adapting to modern waste management practices, such as recycling produced water, and recent advancements in production methods.