![“In reality, it hasn’t really
helped me that much.” He
currently works security at a
corporate facility in the Cin-
cinnati area. Getting stuck
early on in such jobs can rip-
ple across a lifetime of earn-
ings.
In their 20s, bachelor’s de-
gree holders working college-
level jobs earn nearly 90%
more than people with just a
high-school diploma, accord-
Roughly half of college
graduates end up in jobs
where their degrees aren’t
needed, and that underem-
ployment has lasting implica-
tions for their earnings and
career paths.
A new study tracking more
than 10 million people who
entered the job market over
the past decade suggests that
the portion of graduates in
jobs that don’t make use of
their skills or creden-
tials—52%—is larger than
previously thought, and un-
derscores the lasting impor-
tance of that first job after
graduation.
Most of the graduates who
held non-college-level jobs a
year after leaving college re-
mained underemployed a de-
cade later, according to re-
searchers at labor analytics
firm Burning Glass Institute
and nonprofit Strada Educa-
tion Foundation, which ana-
lyzed the résumés of workers
who graduated between 2012
and 2021.
More than any other factor
analyzed—including race,
gender and choice of univer-
sity—what a person studies
determines the odds of get-
ting on a college-level career
track. Internships are also
critical.
The findings add fuel to
the debate over the value of a
college education as its cost
has soared.
“You’re told your entire
life, ‘Go to college, get a bach-
elor’s degree and your life is
gonna be gravy after that,’”
said Alexander Wolfe, 29
years old, a 2018 graduate of
Northern Kentucky University.
BY VANESSA FUHRMANS
AND LINDSAY ELLIS
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
(USPS 664-880) (Eastern Edition ISSN 0099-9660)
(Central Edition ISSN 1092-0935) (Western Edition ISSN 0193-2241)
Editorial and publication headquarters: 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036
Published daily except Sundays and general legal holidays.
Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and other mailing offices.
Postmaster: Send address changes to The Wall Street Journal, 200 Burnett Rd., Chicopee, MA 01020.
All Advertising published in The Wall Street Journal is subject to the applicable rate card, copies of which are
available from the Advertising Services Department, Dow Jones & Co. Inc., 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New
York, N.Y. 10036. The Journal reserves the right not to accept an advertiser’s order. Only publication of an
advertisement shall constitute final acceptance of the advertiser’s order.
Letters to the Editor: Fax: 212-416-2891; email: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com
Need assistance with your subscription?
By web: customercenter.wsj.com; By email: support@wsj.com | By phone: 1-800-JOURNAL (1-800-568-7625)
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WSJ back issues and framed pages: wsjshop.com
Our newspapers are 100% sourced from sustainably certified mills.
GOT A TIP FOR US? SUBMIT IT AT WSJ.COM/TIPS
A Hong Kong-registered
ship carrying tanks of lique-
fied natural gas was misiden-
tified as a Chinese LNG tanker
in a Feb. 15 photo caption with
a Business & Finance article
about Shell’s expectations for
global gas demand.
Readers can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by
emailing wsjcontact@wsj.com or by calling 888-410-2667.
CORRECTIONS AMPLIFICATIONS
Newer college graduates
face other challenges land-
ing a first job as the mar-
ket for white-collar work
cools. Artificial intelligence
promises to revamp some
of the entry-level work
grads do, business leaders
and researchers say. And
many recent graduates say
the pandemic wreaked last-
ing havoc on their transi-
tion into the workforce.
Maroua Ouadani, 24,
says she struggled in her
postgraduation job in sales
at a travel company in
2021. Working remotely,
she couldn’t listen to and
learn from colleagues as
they closed deals, and a
move to a front-desk recep-
tion role was also unfulfill-
ing because most of her
colleagues worked from
home. She left to work as
an executive assistant for a
social-media influencer, but
the job ended months later.
After that, Ouadani
couldn’t find work for more
than a year. Eventually a
staffing agency helped her
land an administrative-assis-
tant position. In her future
career, she said, she expects
to rely on her connections
and entrepreneurship, instead
of her degree in hospitality.
“This job market shows
how replaceable you are,”
she said.
The Shifting White-Collar Job Market
EDUCATION
Colleges Settle
Price-Fixing Suit
Dartmouth College, North-
western University, Rice Uni-
versity and Vanderbilt Univer-
sity agreed Friday to pay
$166 million to settle a law-
suit accusing them and other
schools of colluding on stu-
dents’ financial-aid packages.
They were part of a group
of 17 highly selective schools
accused in 2022 of illegal
price-fixing; 10 have now set-
tled or agreed to do so.
Dartmouth and Rice will
each pay $33.75 million,
Northwestern $43.5 million
and Vanderbilt $55 million,
according to filings in an Illi-
nois federal court Friday. The
payments will be directed to
a fund for students harmed
by the alleged collusion.
The colleges were allowed
under a federal antitrust ex-
emption to collaborate on aid
calculations, but only if they
didn’t take financial need into
consideration when reviewing
applicants and didn’t discuss
aid offers for individual stu-
dents. The suit alleged that
the schools did consider fi-
nances in some circumstances.
Northwestern and Vander-
bilt said Friday evening that
though they denied wrongdo-
ing, by settling they would
avoid the distraction and cost
of continued litigation. They
also highlighted their finan-
cial-aid programs currently
available to students. Repre-
sentatives from Dartmouth
and Rice didn’t respond to re-
quests for comment.
—Melissa Korn
NCAA
Judge’s Decision
Voids NIL Rules
A federal judge on Friday
barred the NCAA from en-
forcing its rules prohibiting
name, image and likeness
compensation from being
used to recruit athletes,
granting a request for a pre-
liminary injunction from the
states of Tennessee and Vir-
ginia and dealing another
blow to the association’s abil-
ity to govern college sports.
The ruling by U.S. District
Judge Clifton Corker in the
Eastern District of Tennessee
undercuts what has been a
fundamental principle of the
National Collegiate Athletic
Association’s model of ama-
teurism for decades: Third
parties cannot pay recruits to
attend a particular school.
“The NCAA’s prohibition
likely violates federal anti-
trust law and ha[r]ms stu-
dent-athletes,” Corker wrote
in granting the injunction.
The plaintiffs’ arguments
in asking for the injunction
suggest that since the NCAA
lifted its ban on athletes’
cashing in on their fame in
2021, recruits are already fac-
toring in name, image and
likeness opportunities when
they choose a school.
The attorneys general of
Tennessee and Virginia filed
a federal lawsuit on Jan. 31
that challenged the NCAA’s
rules after it was revealed
that the association was in-
vestigating the University of
Tennessee for potential in-
fractions.
—Associated Press
ing to a Burning Glass analy-
sis of 2022 U.S. Census Bu-
reau data. By comparison,
underemployed college gradu-
ates earn 25% more than
high-school graduates.
“It’s not that a degree isn’t
worth it,” said Burning Glass
President Matt Sigelman. “It’s
worth it to too few people.”
Wolfe thought completing
his degree—in integrative
studies, combining credits in
education, history and psy-
chology—would help him
dodge the kinds of career
roadblocks that relatives of
his who didn’t finish college
ran into. Instead he has held a
string of jobs in sales, retail
and food service, including
one that ended in a layoff.
Looking back, he said he
wishes he’d taken time off be-
fore college to explore career
options, and worries his de-
Source: Burning Glass Institute analysis of Lightcast Career Histories Database
Share of graduates who are underemployed five years after leaving college, by area of study
Biological and
biomedical sciences
Public administration
and social services
Computer science
Physical sciences
Mathematics
and statistics
Architecture
Education
and planning
Business
(math intensive)
Health professions
Engineering
and related programs
Public safety
and security
Recreation and
wellness
Business
Other
(management,
marketing, HR)
Humanities and
cultural studies
Visual and
performing arts
Psychology
Communication
and journalism
Interdisciplinary
Social sciences
studies
45%
of college graduates
don’t have a job that
requires a degree or
college-level skills
Graduation 45%
45%
52%
55%
55%
48%
Underemployed
College-level jobs
5 YEARS 10 YEARS
1 YEAR POST-GRAD
Rate of underemployment among graduates who
did an internship in college vs. those who didn't
Public safety and security
Recreation and wellness
Business (management,
marketing, HR)
Other
Humanities and cultural
studies
Overall average
Communication, journalism
Psychology
Interdisciplinary studies
Biological and
biomedical sciences
Physical sciences
Public administration
and social services
Mathematics and statistics
Computer science
Education
Architecture and planning
Business (math intensive)
Engineering
70
60
50
40
30
20
10
0%
Underemployment rate
for graduates with
an internship
Underemployment rate for
graduates without an internship
Visual and performing arts
Social sciences
23%
26%
29%
30%
34%
35%
36%
44% 44%
47%
51%
53% 53%
54%
55%
57%
57%
60%
68%
49%
Overall average
gree doesn’t stand out.
He also regrets taking an
entry-level sales job in logis-
tics after months of fruitless
job hunting following gradua-
tion. He thought it was better
than working reception jobs
or serving food at a local
country club, but now sus-
pects settling into a specific
industry made it harder for
him to find work elsewhere.
“I would stress to anyone
out there, hold out as long as
you can” for the right first
job, he said. “You don’t want
to pigeonhole yourself into
something you don’t want to
do.”
Once a graduate’s first two
or three jobs are clustered
around one industry or set of
tasks—say, if an aspiring mar-
keting strategist takes food-
service-supervisor roles to
pay the bills—it is harder to
hop into another career lane,
said Joseph Fuller, a manage-
ment professor who co-leads
the Managing the Future of
Work initiative at Harvard
Business School.
Contrary to conventional
wisdom, not all degrees in
STEM disciplines—science,
technology, engineering and
math—are a sure bet to land-
ing a job that reflects a col-
lege education, the study
found. Nearly half of people
who majored in biology and
biomedical sciences—47%—
remained underemployed five
years after graduating.
The Burning Glass/Strada
study found that most of the
graduates who don’t find
work reflecting their degrees
are “severely underem-
ployed,” meaning in jobs that
only require a high-school ed-
ucation or less. Five years af-
ter graduation, 88% of under-
employed graduates remained
in this category, working jobs
such as office support, retail
sales and food service.
“We all need to be thinking
of that first post-college job
as a high-stakes milestone,
and give it the attention it de-
serves,” said Stephen Moret,
Strada’s president and chief
executive.
Securing even one intern-
ship during college signifi-
cantly improves the odds of
landing a college-level job
upon graduation, according to
the study. For humanities and
psychology majors, the rate of
underemployment five years
after college dropped by a
quarter with an internship.
Among social-sciences ma-
jors, it fell by 40%.
Colleges are recognizing
this. At Tufts University, envi-
ronmental studies majors
complete at least 100 hours of
internship experience.
Roughly 50% to 70% of its
students go into environmen-
tal work after graduation.
Other institutions have set up
scholarship funds to subsidize
students who take unpaid in-
ternships.
Nearly all undergrads at
Northeastern University in
Boston complete at least one
six-month internship. Six
months after graduation, 91%
of working graduates report
having jobs related to their
major, according to the
school’s most recent data.
Brennan Bence, 23, says he
wished he’d gotten more in-
ternship experience while at
Dakota Wesleyan University
in South Dakota. The 2022
graduate majored in theater
with a minor in business, re-
alizing later in his studies
that he wanted to go into
marketing in tech or online
gaming.
By then, the pandemic had
winnowed his internship pos-
sibilities, and he’d devoted
much of his summers to stock
theater. It took months and
more than 500 rejection
emails to land a decent-pay-
ing job as an office adminis-
trator. He still aspires to work
in tech or gaming but says he
may have to pursue an M.B.A.
to reset his career path.
Half of College Grads Are Underemployed
Their jobs don’t use
their credentials or
skills, study finds;
lasting implications
Alexander Wolfe, 29, worries that his first job after college pigeonholed him into a career he
didn’t want. Maroua Ouadani, 24, couldn’t find work for more than a year after a layoff.
FROM
LEFT:
JOHN
CASABLANCAS
MODELING,
MAROUA
OUADANI
U.S.WATCH
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- 2. “In reality, it hasn’t really helped me that much.” He currently works security at a corporate facility in the Cin- cinnati area. Getting stuck early on in such jobs can rip- ple across a lifetime of earn- ings. In their 20s, bachelor’s de- gree holders working college- level jobs earn nearly 90% more than people with just a high-school diploma, accord- Roughly half of college graduates end up in jobs where their degrees aren’t needed, and that underem- ployment has lasting implica- tions for their earnings and career paths. A new study tracking more than 10 million people who entered the job market over the past decade suggests that the portion of graduates in jobs that don’t make use of their skills or creden- tials—52%—is larger than previously thought, and un- derscores the lasting impor- tance of that first job after graduation. Most of the graduates who held non-college-level jobs a year after leaving college re- mained underemployed a de- cade later, according to re- searchers at labor analytics firm Burning Glass Institute and nonprofit Strada Educa- tion Foundation, which ana- lyzed the résumés of workers who graduated between 2012 and 2021. More than any other factor analyzed—including race, gender and choice of univer- sity—what a person studies determines the odds of get- ting on a college-level career track. Internships are also critical. The findings add fuel to the debate over the value of a college education as its cost has soared. “You’re told your entire life, ‘Go to college, get a bach- elor’s degree and your life is gonna be gravy after that,’” said Alexander Wolfe, 29 years old, a 2018 graduate of Northern Kentucky University. BY VANESSA FUHRMANS AND LINDSAY ELLIS THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (USPS 664-880) (Eastern Edition ISSN 0099-9660) (Central Edition ISSN 1092-0935) (Western Edition ISSN 0193-2241) Editorial and publication headquarters: 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036 Published daily except Sundays and general legal holidays. Periodicals postage paid at New York, N.Y., and other mailing offices. Postmaster: Send address changes to The Wall Street Journal, 200 Burnett Rd., Chicopee, MA 01020. All Advertising published in The Wall Street Journal is subject to the applicable rate card, copies of which are available from the Advertising Services Department, Dow Jones & Co. Inc., 1211 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036. The Journal reserves the right not to accept an advertiser’s order. Only publication of an advertisement shall constitute final acceptance of the advertiser’s order. Letters to the Editor: Fax: 212-416-2891; email: wsj.ltrs@wsj.com Need assistance with your subscription? By web: customercenter.wsj.com; By email: support@wsj.com | By phone: 1-800-JOURNAL (1-800-568-7625) Reprints & licensing: By email: customreprints@dowjones.com | By phone: 1-800-843-0008 WSJ back issues and framed pages: wsjshop.com Our newspapers are 100% sourced from sustainably certified mills. GOT A TIP FOR US? SUBMIT IT AT WSJ.COM/TIPS A Hong Kong-registered ship carrying tanks of lique- fied natural gas was misiden- tified as a Chinese LNG tanker in a Feb. 15 photo caption with a Business & Finance article about Shell’s expectations for global gas demand. Readers can alert The Wall Street Journal to any errors in news articles by emailing wsjcontact@wsj.com or by calling 888-410-2667. CORRECTIONS AMPLIFICATIONS Newer college graduates face other challenges land- ing a first job as the mar- ket for white-collar work cools. Artificial intelligence promises to revamp some of the entry-level work grads do, business leaders and researchers say. And many recent graduates say the pandemic wreaked last- ing havoc on their transi- tion into the workforce. Maroua Ouadani, 24, says she struggled in her postgraduation job in sales at a travel company in 2021. Working remotely, she couldn’t listen to and learn from colleagues as they closed deals, and a move to a front-desk recep- tion role was also unfulfill- ing because most of her colleagues worked from home. She left to work as an executive assistant for a social-media influencer, but the job ended months later. After that, Ouadani couldn’t find work for more than a year. Eventually a staffing agency helped her land an administrative-assis- tant position. In her future career, she said, she expects to rely on her connections and entrepreneurship, instead of her degree in hospitality. “This job market shows how replaceable you are,” she said. The Shifting White-Collar Job Market EDUCATION Colleges Settle Price-Fixing Suit Dartmouth College, North- western University, Rice Uni- versity and Vanderbilt Univer- sity agreed Friday to pay $166 million to settle a law- suit accusing them and other schools of colluding on stu- dents’ financial-aid packages. They were part of a group of 17 highly selective schools accused in 2022 of illegal price-fixing; 10 have now set- tled or agreed to do so. Dartmouth and Rice will each pay $33.75 million, Northwestern $43.5 million and Vanderbilt $55 million, according to filings in an Illi- nois federal court Friday. The payments will be directed to a fund for students harmed by the alleged collusion. The colleges were allowed under a federal antitrust ex- emption to collaborate on aid calculations, but only if they didn’t take financial need into consideration when reviewing applicants and didn’t discuss aid offers for individual stu- dents. The suit alleged that the schools did consider fi- nances in some circumstances. Northwestern and Vander- bilt said Friday evening that though they denied wrongdo- ing, by settling they would avoid the distraction and cost of continued litigation. They also highlighted their finan- cial-aid programs currently available to students. Repre- sentatives from Dartmouth and Rice didn’t respond to re- quests for comment. —Melissa Korn NCAA Judge’s Decision Voids NIL Rules A federal judge on Friday barred the NCAA from en- forcing its rules prohibiting name, image and likeness compensation from being used to recruit athletes, granting a request for a pre- liminary injunction from the states of Tennessee and Vir- ginia and dealing another blow to the association’s abil- ity to govern college sports. The ruling by U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker in the Eastern District of Tennessee undercuts what has been a fundamental principle of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s model of ama- teurism for decades: Third parties cannot pay recruits to attend a particular school. “The NCAA’s prohibition likely violates federal anti- trust law and ha[r]ms stu- dent-athletes,” Corker wrote in granting the injunction. The plaintiffs’ arguments in asking for the injunction suggest that since the NCAA lifted its ban on athletes’ cashing in on their fame in 2021, recruits are already fac- toring in name, image and likeness opportunities when they choose a school. The attorneys general of Tennessee and Virginia filed a federal lawsuit on Jan. 31 that challenged the NCAA’s rules after it was revealed that the association was in- vestigating the University of Tennessee for potential in- fractions. —Associated Press ing to a Burning Glass analy- sis of 2022 U.S. Census Bu- reau data. By comparison, underemployed college gradu- ates earn 25% more than high-school graduates. “It’s not that a degree isn’t worth it,” said Burning Glass President Matt Sigelman. “It’s worth it to too few people.” Wolfe thought completing his degree—in integrative studies, combining credits in education, history and psy- chology—would help him dodge the kinds of career roadblocks that relatives of his who didn’t finish college ran into. Instead he has held a string of jobs in sales, retail and food service, including one that ended in a layoff. Looking back, he said he wishes he’d taken time off be- fore college to explore career options, and worries his de- Source: Burning Glass Institute analysis of Lightcast Career Histories Database Share of graduates who are underemployed five years after leaving college, by area of study Biological and biomedical sciences Public administration and social services Computer science Physical sciences Mathematics and statistics Architecture Education and planning Business (math intensive) Health professions Engineering and related programs Public safety and security Recreation and wellness Business Other (management, marketing, HR) Humanities and cultural studies Visual and performing arts Psychology Communication and journalism Interdisciplinary Social sciences studies 45% of college graduates don’t have a job that requires a degree or college-level skills Graduation 45% 45% 52% 55% 55% 48% Underemployed College-level jobs 5 YEARS 10 YEARS 1 YEAR POST-GRAD Rate of underemployment among graduates who did an internship in college vs. those who didn't Public safety and security Recreation and wellness Business (management, marketing, HR) Other Humanities and cultural studies Overall average Communication, journalism Psychology Interdisciplinary studies Biological and biomedical sciences Physical sciences Public administration and social services Mathematics and statistics Computer science Education Architecture and planning Business (math intensive) Engineering 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0% Underemployment rate for graduates with an internship Underemployment rate for graduates without an internship Visual and performing arts Social sciences 23% 26% 29% 30% 34% 35% 36% 44% 44% 47% 51% 53% 53% 54% 55% 57% 57% 60% 68% 49% Overall average gree doesn’t stand out. He also regrets taking an entry-level sales job in logis- tics after months of fruitless job hunting following gradua- tion. He thought it was better than working reception jobs or serving food at a local country club, but now sus- pects settling into a specific industry made it harder for him to find work elsewhere. “I would stress to anyone out there, hold out as long as you can” for the right first job, he said. “You don’t want to pigeonhole yourself into something you don’t want to do.” Once a graduate’s first two or three jobs are clustered around one industry or set of tasks—say, if an aspiring mar- keting strategist takes food- service-supervisor roles to pay the bills—it is harder to hop into another career lane, said Joseph Fuller, a manage- ment professor who co-leads the Managing the Future of Work initiative at Harvard Business School. Contrary to conventional wisdom, not all degrees in STEM disciplines—science, technology, engineering and math—are a sure bet to land- ing a job that reflects a col- lege education, the study found. Nearly half of people who majored in biology and biomedical sciences—47%— remained underemployed five years after graduating. The Burning Glass/Strada study found that most of the graduates who don’t find work reflecting their degrees are “severely underem- ployed,” meaning in jobs that only require a high-school ed- ucation or less. Five years af- ter graduation, 88% of under- employed graduates remained in this category, working jobs such as office support, retail sales and food service. “We all need to be thinking of that first post-college job as a high-stakes milestone, and give it the attention it de- serves,” said Stephen Moret, Strada’s president and chief executive. Securing even one intern- ship during college signifi- cantly improves the odds of landing a college-level job upon graduation, according to the study. For humanities and psychology majors, the rate of underemployment five years after college dropped by a quarter with an internship. Among social-sciences ma- jors, it fell by 40%. Colleges are recognizing this. At Tufts University, envi- ronmental studies majors complete at least 100 hours of internship experience. Roughly 50% to 70% of its students go into environmen- tal work after graduation. Other institutions have set up scholarship funds to subsidize students who take unpaid in- ternships. Nearly all undergrads at Northeastern University in Boston complete at least one six-month internship. Six months after graduation, 91% of working graduates report having jobs related to their major, according to the school’s most recent data. Brennan Bence, 23, says he wished he’d gotten more in- ternship experience while at Dakota Wesleyan University in South Dakota. The 2022 graduate majored in theater with a minor in business, re- alizing later in his studies that he wanted to go into marketing in tech or online gaming. By then, the pandemic had winnowed his internship pos- sibilities, and he’d devoted much of his summers to stock theater. It took months and more than 500 rejection emails to land a decent-pay- ing job as an office adminis- trator. He still aspires to work in tech or gaming but says he may have to pursue an M.B.A. to reset his career path. Half of College Grads Are Underemployed Their jobs don’t use their credentials or skills, study finds; lasting implications Alexander Wolfe, 29, worries that his first job after college pigeonholed him into a career he didn’t want. Maroua Ouadani, 24, couldn’t find work for more than a year after a layoff. FROM LEFT: JOHN CASABLANCAS MODELING, MAROUA OUADANI U.S.WATCH A2 | Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 * * * * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. U.S. NEWS
- 3. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 | A3 U.S. NEWS A surveillance image provided by the U.S. Border Patrol shows two people it said were illegally crossing the border from Canada in January 2023. U.S. BORDER PATROL SWANTON SECTOR/AP IRVINE, Calif.—Sharon Landers and Joseph Gagliano never expected to spend years in court fighting their public- school system. But when the Irvine Unified School District disputed their daughter had dyslexia and de- nied her the special-education assistance they felt she needed to graduate, they hired a lawyer. They hoped for a quick settlement. Instead, the district ap- pealed every ruling that went in the family’s favor, taking the case to one step below the U.S. Supreme Court. Irvine Unified has now spent more than $1 million in legal fees fighting Landers and Gagliano, who had requested that the district pay about $40,000 a year for their daughter to at- tend a specialized private school to address her learning disabilities if it wouldn’t pro- vide the help itself. “What caused this to con- tinue was the sense of justice and fairness, both for our daughter and for other kids,” Landers said. The district said it some- times must litigate against parents out of caution about establishing costly new prece- dents. Roughly 10% of the dis- trict’s 38,000 students have a learning disability. Nation- wide, special-education dis- putes generated nearly 46,500 formal complaints or media- tion requests in 2021-22, the most recent federal data, up model of the spacecraft to demonstrate how the company believes it is situated. The spacecraft, called Odysseus, is a roughly 14-foot- tall vehicle designed to auton- omously make its way down to the surface of the moon from a lunar orbit, and touch down on an array of legs. “We have quite a bit of op- erational capability even though we’re tipped over,” Al- temus said. Before Thursday’s landing, the U.S. hadn’t landed on the moon since the final Apollo astronaut mission in 1972. Landing on the moon is diffi- cult, requiring a dramatic slowdown for vehicles to softly touch down. The moon’s craggy surface poses another challenge. The first U.S. moon landing in more than 50 years fea- tured an on-the-fly software fix and a vehicle that tipped over after it touched down. Executives at Intuitive Ma- chines, the company behind the vehicle now on the moon, said late Friday the spacecraft is on its side, apparently held up by a rock. That orientation leaves some antennas facing the lunar surface, meaning they can’t be used, though sci- entific devices the lander car- ried are still usable, they said. Stephen Altemus, chief ex- ecutive of Intuitive Machines, said the company was still an- alyzing what caused the vehi- cle to end up on its side. Dur- ing a press briefing he used a BY MICAH MAIDENBERG U.S. Moon Lander Is Safe— But Resting on Its Side A New York jury on Friday ordered the National Rifle As- sociation’s former longtime leader Wayne LaPierre to pay more than $4.3 million back to the gun-rights group for mis- spending its charitable funds. A six-person jury in Man- hattan deliberated for five days before finding the NRA, LaPierre and two other execu- tives liable for violating state charity laws. New York Attorney General Letitia James sued the NRA and the executives in 2020, al- leging that company insiders used the nonprofit as their own “personal piggy bank.” James’s office has alleged that LaPierre spent millions of dollars in NRA charitable assets on pri- vate plane trips for himself and his family and vacationed mul- tiple times in the Bahamas on the yacht of an NRA vendor. In addition, prosecutors said he arranged lucrative financial deals with company insiders that didn’t benefit the NRA. LaPierre maintained that he had acted in the best interests of his organization. On the eve of the six-week trial in state court, he announced his resig- nation from the NRA, citing health reasons. LaPierre, 74 years old, had run the NRA since 1991, ex- panding it into a lobbying powerhouse and formidable force for gun rights. A rash of national mass shootings made him a polarizing figure, loathed by gun-control activ- ists. In more recent years, the group’s influence and reve- nues have diminished as a re- sult of its corruption scandal. LaPierre and the NRA have said the group has embarked on a major “course correction” by terminating certain ven- dors, promoting a whistle- blower to its top financial job and eliminating virtually all related-party transactions with board members. The jury ordered LaPierre to pay back $5.4 million, mi- nus what he had already reim- bursed the group, which they calculated at just more than $1 million. The group’s former chief financial officer, Wilson “Woody” Phillips, was ordered to pay the NRA $2 million. The NRA has claimed the civil lawsuit is politically mo- tivated and retaliation for its views. James—a Democrat who as a candidate once called the NRA a terrorist or- ganization—initially sought to dissolve the nonprofit. State Supreme Court Justice Joel Cohen rejected her efforts. BY JACOB GERSHMAN Ex-NRA Chief Must Pay Back $4 Million The U.S. is pushing Canada to impose visa requirements on Mexican visitors, aiming to stem a surge in illegal cross- ings at the northern border as immigration shapes up as an election-defining issue across North America. Officials in the U.S. say that Mexican migrants are using the Canadian border as a back door into the U.S., avoiding the busy and more closely guarded southwestern border and gain- ing the attention of some pres- idential candidates. Nikki Ha- ley, who is vying for the Republican nomination against Donald Trump, in December called for more attention on the northern crossing during a visit to New Hampshire, and the number of migrants inter- cepted at the northern border is quickly growing. Now Washington is increas- ing the pressure on Canada to require Mexican visitors to ob- tain visas, according to a U.S. official familiar with the dis- cussions and government offi- cials in Mexico. Homeland Se- curity Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said during a visit to Ottawa last year that the U.S. had been speaking to Canada about the matter. A spokeswoman for Can- ada’s immigration depart- By Vipal Monga, Michelle Hackman and Santiago Pérez ment declined to comment. Canada’s Public Safety Min- ister Dominic LeBlanc has said Ottawa is considering a range of options to curb the number of Mexican asylum seekers, in- cluding reimposing a visa. One government official said Canada is wary of an- nouncing any new travel re- strictions before they are im- plemented to avoid triggering a rush to the border that could overwhelm customs officials. Last year, rumors that Can- ada and the U.S. were about to close unofficial border cross- ings created a surge of cross- ings at Roxham Road, a path between New York state and Quebec. The U.S. Border Patrol de- tained more than 10,000 mi- grants at the northern border during the fiscal year that ended in September, five times as many as in 2022. Almost half of them were Mexican na- tionals, according to U.S. gov- ernment data. Canada itself is struggling with a jump in Mex- ican asylum seekers, whose numbers have more than dou- bled in the past year. “It’s not a number like those we see along the U.S.- Mexico border, but it’s some- thing that we want to ad- dress,” said Roberto Velasco, head of North American affairs at Mexico’s Foreign Ministry. Over half a million Mexicans were apprehended in the last fiscal year at the U.S.’s south- western border. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau lifted the visa requirement for Mexican visi- tors in 2016 as part of efforts to deepen ties with one of Canada’s largest trading part- ners. They can get an elec- tronic travel authorization by filling out an online applica- tion, which costs the equiva- lent of about $5. Last week, Trudeau said Ca- nadian officials are in discus- sions with Mexican counter- parts to find ways to reduce the flow of asylum seekers. Both countries say that orga- nized-crime groups arrange travel to Canada for Mexicans looking for work. Some are of- ten trapped in forced-labor schemes, Velasco said. Others are transported to the U.S. border. Canada’s federal police force, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, last week said it had charged two Mexican cit- izens with conspiring to trans- port 11 people from Quebec to the U.S. The Mexican government says it is working with Can- ada’s immigration authorities to strengthen screening of trav- elers and cut down on bogus asylum claims. That effort led to a decrease in applications at Canadian airports in December. Mexico is also starting informa- tion campaigns in some com- munities with significant emi- gration to Canada to prevent would-be guest workers falling victim to trafficking rings. About half a million Mexi- can tourists visited Canada last year, spending about $750 million, according to Mexican government estimates. There are about 150,000 Mexicans legally residing in the country. “We believe that reimpos- ing visas would have an im- pact on the flow of tourists and business travel mobility in both countries,” Velasco said. Illegal crossings from the north are becoming more fre- quent along a 295-mile stretch of border that separates New York, New Hampshire and Vermont from the Canadian provinces of Quebec and On- tario. The area, known as the Swanton Sector, is thinly staffed by U.S. Border Patrol agents. There is no fencing to deter interlopers, who cross the border by tramping through snow-covered fields, making treacherous crossings of the St. Lawrence River, or cutting through thick forests and wetlands. Canadian officials say that the number of Mexican asy- lum seekers has more than doubled in the past year, straining budgets and welfare resources in provinces such as Quebec, which receives more than half of Mexican asylum seekers. Many arrivals ask for asylum as soon as they disem- bark from commercial flights. The increase in migration is straining Canada’s housing markets, public healthcare services and social safety net. On Tuesday, Quebec provin- cial ministers demanded $750 million to reimburse the prov- ince for the cost of providing for asylum seekers. U.S.AimstoStemIllegalCrossingsFromNorth Officials are pressing Canada to impose visa requirements on Mexican visitors 2016 ’17 ’18 ’19 ’20 ’21 ’22 ’23 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 thousand Number of asylum seekers from Mexico at the Canadian border* Sources: Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada (asylum seekers); U.S. Customs and Border Protection (encounters) *2023 data as of Sept. 30 †For fiscal year ending Sept. 30 Oct. Jan. April July Sept. 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 700 2021 2022 FY2023 U.S. encounters from Mexico at the northern border, monthly† 27% from the prior year. Many parents and educa- tors say the system is inacces- sible to all but the most savvy and well-resourced families. “This is a broken system,” said Sasha Pudelski, director of advocacy with AASA, the school superintendents associ- ation. “It’s truly nightmarish and doesn’t work for anyone.” Children with disabilities are entitled to what is known as a free appropriate public education under a 1970s fed- eral law. Nationally, 8.4 mil- lion students from ages 3 to 21—17% of all public-school students—are classified as needing special education. Landers and Gagliano said that for years they trusted the school sys- tem in Irvine. Their daughter first became el- igible for spe- cial education in early elemen- tary school. By sixth grade, they noticed she was still reading at a third-grade level. They pushed the district for more special- ized services for dyslexia, but the school initially wouldn’t recognize the diagnosis. “There was no effort to catch her up,” said Landers, a lawyer who has worked as an executive in government agen- cies. By 2018, the parents de- cided to move their daughter to a private school for chil- dren with dyslexia. They filed what is known as a due-pro- cess case seeking reimburse- ment. The district argued pri- vate school was unwarranted. After a 10-day hearing that resembled a courtroom trial, an administrative law judge in 2019 found the district re- sponsible for the tuition and services the family requested. In a mixed decision, the judge ultimately concluded Irvine Unified improperly modified the student’s curriculum so much that she wasn’t on track to graduate from high school. Both sides appealed aspects of the decision. For five years, they criss- crossed from federal district court, back to the administra- tive law judge and, ultimately, to the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. A large part of the bat- tle became about how much Tim Adams, the family’s attor- ney, would be paid. The Ninth Circuit issued a ruling the day after Christmas upholding the family’s initial win. The court also said Ad- ams’s fees, which have grown to $406,420, should be paid by Irvine Unified. The district’s bills, from law firm Littler Mendelson, have reached $1.13 million, public records show. An Irvine Unified spokes- woman said the district has an obligation to defend itself— even if it involves many ap- peals—if administrators feel they can meet a student’s needs. Requests for private school can top $100,000 a stu- dent a year, she said. Most due process cases in the district settle, the spokes- woman said. Irvine Unified typically spends $500,000 to $1 million a year to reimburse families for private schools. Nationally, such reimburse- ments are often doled out un- evenly. “The squeaky wheel gets the oil,” said Amy Brandt, a San Francisco lawyer who represents school districts. “The families who can squeak the loudest generally have more resources.” Many working in special education want a less adver- sarial path, and some states are investing in finding one. “When conflict escalates, people become emotionally in- volved, positions polarize, and our motivations change—we want to prove something,” said Melanie Reese, director of the federally funded Center for Appropriate Dispute Reso- lution in Special Education. Landers and Gagliano con- tinue to seek reimbursement for further years of private school. They have spent tens of thousands of dollars in ex- pert fees, retainer agreements and some legal fees that won’t be reimbursed. Their daugh- ter, now 17, will likely gradu- ate after an extra year of high school. She is at a 7th-grade reading level, Landers said, but is progressing with help. BY SARA RANDAZZO Special-Ed Suit Spotlights Tension Over Cost 17% of public- school students are classified as needing special education. CEO Steve Altemus says the craft likely tipped over. NASA/ASSOCIATED PRESS
- 4. A4 | Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 P W L C 10 11 12 H T G K R F A M 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 O I X X * * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. work Summit this month. On Wednesday, after Nvidia turned in a third straight quarter of forecast-beating re- sults, company executives said that supplies were still tight and that a new generation of AI chips that is expected to be launched this year will be supply-constrained. The design of the chips makes them critical parts for training the giant language models that underpin genera- tive AI bots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Much of the AI spending by such tech compa- nies as Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon.com has gone to GPUs. Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive officer and co- founder, said generative AI is kicking off a wave of invest- ment worth trillions of dollars, which he believed would dou- ble the amount of data centers in the world in the next five years and deliver market op- portunities for Nvidia. “A whole new industry is being formed, and that’s driv- ing our growth,” he said on ContinuedfromPageOne Abortion was already one of Republicans’ biggest liabili- ties heading into the Novem- ber election. A state-court rul- ing that prompted some health clinics to halt in vitro fertilization treatments this week is making it an even big- ger problem for the party. The Alabama Supreme Court ruled that frozen em- bryos qualify as children and are therefore protected by a state law that allows parents to recover punitive damages in the event of a child’s death. Because the process of in vitro fertilization can include de- stroying embryos, some IVF providers in the state said they were suspending the treatments because it may ex- pose them to lawsuits. The Republican Party has struggled to coalesce around an abortion stance that ap- peals broadly to voters ever since the Supreme Court over- turned Roe v. Wade in 2022 and ended the constitutional right to an abortion. State- By Stephanie Armour, Annie Linskey and Natalie Andrews U.S. NEWS level ballot measures to pro- tect abortion access drove turnout in the midterms that year that favored Democrats, even in red states. With polls showing strong support for fertility services such as in vitro fertilization, Republicans risk losing vot- ers—especially suburban women, a key bloc for both parties—as Democrats portray the Alabama ruling as extreme. Donald Trump, the GOP presidential front-runner, said Friday that he was calling on the Alabama legislature to find an immediate solution to pre- serve IVF access in the state. “Under my leadership, the Republican party will always support the creation of strong, thriving, healthy American families,” he said on Truth So- cial, meaning IVF availability in every state. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, which works to elect Republicans in the Senate, on Friday urged candidates to “clearly and concisely reject efforts by the government to restrict” in vitro fertilization, according to a memo from the committee’s executive director, Jason Thielman. “When responding to the Alabama Supreme Court rul- ing, it is imperative that our candidates align with the pub- lic’s overwhelming support for IVF and fertility treatments,” the memo reads. Rep. Nancy Mace (R., S.C.) said Republicans need to be more outspoken on the issue. Though Republicans won the House majority in 2022, the margin was narrow, and Dem- ocrats were able to mobilize voters around resolutions to enshrine abortion access. “I’m going to file a resolu- tion next week supporting protecting IVF access for women everywhere,” Mace said in an interview. GOP candidates seemed to be caught off guard in re- sponding to the ruling. Nikki Haley, who is challenging Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, told CNN on Wednesday that an embryo is an unborn baby. The former South Carolina governor later tempered her stance, saying Thursday on CNN that “we don’t want fer- tility treatment to shut down.” Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, a potential running mate for Trump, said in a press conference and on CNN, “I haven’t studied the issue.” In Alabama, House and Senate members are working on a legislative solution to preserve access to in vitro fer- tilization services, and Repub- lican Gov. Kay Ivey has sig- naled her support. Democrats are seizing on the Alabama decision to turn up the heat on Republicans, portraying it as a threat to in vitro fertilization. IVF accounts for some 2% of U.S. births. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, said he believes voters of both parties are “deeply offended” by the Alabama decision. President Biden on Thurs- day derided the Alabama court decision as “outrageous and unacceptable.” Democrats are pointing to the ruling as fruition of their warning that the reversal of constitutional access to abortion would limit fertility treatments. The effort by GOP lawmak- ers to distance themselves from the ruling is a tricky bal- ancing act because the deci- sion has been praised by a number of antiabortion groups whose support is also critical to Republican candidates. Katie Daniel, state policy director for SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement that “the Alabama Court rec- ognized what is obvious and a scientific fact—life begins at conception.” She said it doesn’t mean a prohibition on fertility treatment, but it does mean treatments shouldn’t “carelessly or intentionally de- stroy the new life created.” But some antiabortion groups say in vitro fertiliza- tion is unethical and immoral. “Everyone is very thankful about the decision,” said Judie Brown, president and co- founder of American Life League, a Catholic antiabor- tion group. “There should be no IVF.” Lila Rose, president and founder of the antiabortion organization Live Action, also supported the decision. IVF Ruling Puts Republicans in Tight Spot Abortion foes back Alabama decision as Democrats try to turn up heat on GOP In vitro fertilization accounts for some 2% of U.S. births, and polls show it has strong support. KAYANA SZYMCZAK FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL the company’s earnings call. Nvidia on Wednesday reported quarterly sales of $22.1 billion and forecast an additional $24 billion for its current quarter, each more than triple what was posted a year earlier and ahead of Wall Street’s bullish expectations. The results have propelled Nvidia shares to their lofty heights. The stock opened Fri- day at $807.90, valuing the company at $2.02 trillion. Shares later retreated and closed at $788.17, up 0.4% on the day. The stock needs a price of $800 for the company to be valued at $2 trillion. Nvidia shares are up 59% so far this year after more than tripling in 2023. Founded more than 30 years ago with an initial focus on computer graphics chips for PC gaming, Nvidia latched on early to AI. Huang owns 86.6 million Nvidia shares, according to FactSet, valued at about $68 billion. Huang laid the groundwork for Nvidia’s AI rise in 2006 when he opened up its chips for purposes beyond computer graphics. Engineers soon started to use them for AI cal- culations, where they proved to be especially proficient. Tens of thousands of Nvidia’s most advanced GPUs, called H100s, are commonly used in the creation of the most sophisticated AI systems. And they are pricey, going for around $25,000 each, accord- ing to analyst estimates. Analysts estimate Nvidia can make around 1.2 million of the chips a year, but meeting de- mand has become difficult. Nvidia designs the chips and contracts out their production to Taiwan Semiconductor Man- ufacturing Co., which has run into a bottleneck in later steps of the chip-making process where pieces of silicon are as- sembled into a final chip. TSMC is aiming to double capacity in these later steps this year. Surging demand has led competitors to develop their own AI-focused chips. Ad- vanced Micro Devices has started selling chips that aim to compete with Nvidia’s of- ferings and projects sales of those chips at more than $3.5 billion this year. The Brit- ish chip designer Arm Hold- ings has touted the usefulness of its chips for AI, and Intel has started selling central pro- cessing units that can handle AI calculations. There are also a raft of startups making AI chips. And big cloud-computing compa- nies such as Google and Ama- zon are building up internal AI chip development efforts. Mi- crosoft unveiled its first AI chip, called the Maia 100, in November. Meanwhile, startups and big tech companies alike have been touting how many of Nvidia’s chips they have amassed. Last month, Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zucker- berg said on Instagram that his company plans to have 350,000 of Nvidia’s H100 chips by the end of this year. CoreWeave, which counts Nvidia as an investor, in Au- gust secured $2.3 billion of fi- nancing backed by its Nvidia H100s. The effective interest rate was high, reflecting its risk, according to a person fa- miliar with the deal. Even some universities are touting H100 inventories for recruiting and bragging rights. Princeton’s Language and Intelligence Initiative has “state-of-the-art computa- tional infrastructure with 300 Nvidia H100 GPUs,” its direc- tor, Sanjeev Arora, said last year on the website for the group, which was recruiting a software engineer and re- search scientist. Google has set up an execu- tive committee to decide on how to divide computing re- sources between the com- pany’s internal and external users. Microsoft has instituted a similar rationing program, called GPU councils, where ex- ecutives determine how the re- maining computing resources are divided up between Micro- soft’s internal projects. Many analysts and industry executives say Nvidia’s advan- tages can’t easily be eroded by the competition, thanks to the depth and complexity of the software it has spent years building around its chips. But Andrew Ng, an artifi- cial-intelligence pioneer who runs AI Fund, said AMD and Intel have made significant headway in developing com- peting software systems to go with AI-powering chips. “I think in a year or so the semiconductor shortage will feel much better,” he said at the Journal’s CIO conference. 3 years ago 2 years ago 1 year ago Latest fiscal year 0% 25 50 75 100 125 Microsoft Meta Tesla Nvidia Revenue growth, change from a year earlier* *Annual revenue growth over past four fiscal years †Data through Friday’s close Source: FactSet Microsoft Apple Nvidia Alphabet Amazon.com Meta Tesla Market value† 0.2% $3.05 trillion 2.82 1.97 1.82 1.80 1.23 0.61 Nvidia Hits $2 Trillion Valuation Experience a city full of avors and cultures. A city where you can be yourself and belong to something bigger. When you’re in Houston, you’re one of us. VisitHouston.com
- 5. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 | A5 U.S. NEWS Meta could have banned sub- scriptions to accounts that fea- ture child models, as rival Tik- Tok and paid-content platforms Patreon and Only- Fans do, those people said. The staffers formally recommended that Meta could require ac- counts selling subscriptions to child-focused content to regis- ter themselves so the company could monitor them. Meta didn’t pursue those proposals, the people said, and instead chose to build an au- tomated system to prevent suspected pedophiles from be- ing given the option to sub- scribe to parent-run accounts. The technology didn’t always work, and the subscription ban could be evaded by set- ting up a new account. While building the auto- mated system, Meta expanded the subscriptions program as well as the tipping feature, called “gifts,” to new markets. A Wall Street Journal exami- nation also found instances of misuse involving the gifts tool. Meta said such programs are well-monitored, and de- fended its decision to proceed with expanding subscriptions before the planned safety fea- tures were ready. The com- pany noted that it doesn’t col- lect commissions or fees on the payments to subscription accounts, giving it no financial incentive to encourage users to subscribe. The company does collect a commission on the gifts to such creators. “We launched creator mon- etization tools with a robust set of safety measures and multiple checks on both cre- ators and their content,” spokesman Andy Stone said. He called the company’s plans to limit likely pedophiles from subscribing to children “part of our ongoing safety work.” A review by the Journal of some of the most popular par- ent-run modeling accounts on Instagram and Facebook re- vealed obvious failures of en- forcement. One parent-run ac- count banned last year for child exploitation had re- turned to the platforms, re- ceived official Meta verifica- tion and gained hundreds of thousands of followers. Other parent-run accounts previ- ously banned on Instagram for exploitative behavior contin- ued selling child-modeling content via Facebook. In two instances, the Jour- nal found that parent-run ac- counts were cross-promoting pinup-style photos of children to a 200,000-follower Face- book page devoted to adult- sex content creators and preg- nancy fetishization. Meta took down those ac- counts and acknowledged en- forcement errors after the Journal flagged their activities and the company’s own past removals to Meta’s communi- cations staff. The company of- ten failed, however, to remove “backup” Instagram and Face- book profiles promoted in their bios. Those redundant accounts then continued promoting or selling material that Meta had sought to ban until the Journal inquired about them. After the Journal last year revealed that Meta’s algorithms connect and promote a vast network of accounts openly de- voted to underage-sex content, the company in June estab- lished a task force to address child sexualization on its plat- forms. That work has been lim- ited in its effectiveness, the Journal reported last year. in Saturday’s primary. John Lush, a retired carpenter, was a Democrat in New York but felt the state’s Democratic leader- ship was getting too aggres- sive—he cited environmental restrictions, including a gas stove ban, and higher taxes— and recently registered as a Republican. “When you’re younger you can afford to be a liberal—now you can’t,” he said. John Lush, who is no fan of Trump and will vote for Haley on Saturday, has enjoyed living under South Carolina’s conservative govern- ment. “The state politics are very nice. It’s agreeable,” he said. The four-county Greenville metro area—where Greer is lo- cated—grew 4.2% between 2019 and 2021, faster than South Carolina as a whole, which grew 2.6% during that time. While South Carolina’s sales- tax rates rival those of north- ern states, its top income-tax rates are often lower, and its property taxes are significantly lower. The median property tax bill in South Carolina—$1,185 in 2022, according to census data—is about a fifth of the median in New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts. Amanda McDougald Scott, chair of the Greenville County Democratic Party, said that people who moved from higher-tax states discover the downsides of lower levies. “They quickly realize they don’t have all the same services, amenities, nice things that they had in blue states” without the same taxes, she said. McDougald Scott and other South Carolina Democratic of- ficials are working to target these new voters and persuade them to vote Democratic by focusing on issues like educa- tion, infrastructure and healthcare, which she believes the Republicans are neglect- ing. She said South Carolina’s limited access to abortion— which is banned at six weeks of pregnancy—is also some- thing that crosses party lines. South Carolina’s Newcomers Lean Toward the GOP Conservatives who leave blue states often seek politically favorable new home Sandy Zal, left, and her husband, Dave Zal, moved to Greer, S.C. three years ago because of its Republican tilt. JUAN DIEGO REYES FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL MONCKS CORNER, S.C.— Nikki Haley called for a re- turn to normalcy in Ameri- can politics as she portrayed Donald Trump as a major drag on the Repub- lican Party while seeking to avoid a landslide drubbing in her home state’s presi- dential primary on Saturday. “Donald Trump cannot win a general election,” the former South Carolina gov- ernor and United Nations ambassador told several hundred supporters here Friday, after saying the GOP needs to select some- one with “moral clarity” who knows “the difference between right and wrong.” Trump appeared before thousands of people at a rally in Rock Hill on Friday and focused on the general election. “We’re going to show crooked Joe Biden and the radical left Demo- crats that we are coming like a freight train in No- vember,” he said. Haley, he said, is relying on Democrats to fuel her campaign. Haley is the last candi- date standing between Trump and the GOP nomina- tion, and she has said she refuses to “kiss the ring.” Her prospects of knocking Trump off course appear slim, but she insisted Friday she isn’t backing down. “I think South Carolina is going to show up strong and proud tomorrow,” she said on the eve of the primary. —John McCormick Haley Tries to Hold Back Trump Onslaught in Primary some parents understood they were producing content for other adults’ sexual gratifica- tion. Sometimes parents en- gaged in sexual banter about their own children or had their daughters interact with subscribers’ sexual messages. Meta last year began a broad rollout of tipping and paid-subscription services, part of an effort to give influencers a financial incentive for pro- ducing content. Only accounts belonging to adults are eligible to sell content or solicit dona- tions, but the platform allows adults to run or co-manage ac- counts in a child’s name. Such child-modeling ac- counts drew untoward interest from adults. After Sarah Ad- ams, a Canadian mother and social-media activist, brought attention to a group of Insta- gram accounts selling bikini photos of teen and tween girls last spring, Meta’s own re- views confirmed that parent- run modeling accounts were catering to users who had demonstrated pedophilic inter- ests elsewhere on the platform and regularly used sexualized language when discussing the models. According to the re- views, Meta’s recommendation systems were actively promot- ing such underage modeling accounts to users suspected of behaving inappropriately on- line toward children. The reviews didn’t find that all parent-run accounts were intentionally appealing to pe- dophilic users, and some par- ents of prominent young mod- els have said that they viewed subscriptions as part of a valuable online profile even if some of the interest they drew was inappropriate. The Meta staffers found that its algorithms promoted child-modeling subscriptions to likely pedophiles, and in some cases parents discussed offering additional content on other platforms, according to some people familiar with the investigations. To address the problems, ContinuedfromPageOne GREER, S.C.—Fed up with pandemic restrictions, Sandy Zal uprooted her family from Schenectady, N.Y., three years ago and moved here because of its Republican tilt. She and her husband named their new com- pany Freedom Window Tinting, a nod to South Carolina’s ethos. “We knew that we’d have freedom to make choices for our kids and our family that were taken away in New York,” said Zal, 47 years old. On Satur- day, she will vote for former President Donald Trump in the South Carolina Republican pri- mary because “he’s definitely for the freedom that we enjoy.” The Zals are part of a migra- tion wave that has kept South Carolina ruby red despite an in- flux of newcomers from blue states. A Wall Street Journal analysis of census data found that a third of the state’s new residents between 2017 and 2021 hailed from blue states and a quarter from red ones, according to census data. The remainder came from closely divided states, including nearby Georgia and North Carolina, or are immigrants. Yet the new arrivals are dis- proportionately Republican. Es- timates from the nonpartisan voter file vendor L2 suggest about 57% of voters who moved to South Carolina during that time are Republicans, while about 36% are Democrats and 7% are independents. That places them roughly in line with recent statewide votes in South Carolina. Current Repub- lican Gov. Henry McMaster took 58% of the vote in 2022, and Trump had a 12-point mar- gin over President Biden in 2020. Trump is expected to easily beat Nikki Haley, the state’s former governor, in the Satur- day primary, according to poll- ing. He is on track to secure the GOP presidential nomination as early as next month. The Palmetto State is a prime example of why a years- long wave of migration to the South has largely failed to change its partisan tint. Many people who leave blue states are Republicans gravitating to- ward a more politically favor- able new home. In Florida, for instance, 48% of people who moved there be- tween 2017 and 2021 came from blue states while 29% came from red states, Census figures show. Among those who registered to vote, 44% are Re- publicans, 25% are Democrats and 28% are nonpartisan, ac- cording to L2 data. Texas also has a heavier flow of newcom- ers from blue states but a greater share who L2 data esti- mates are Republican. “People do look for their own cohorts,” said Paul West- cott, L2’s executive vice presi- dent. In South Carolina, he said, “People see a lower cost of living, lower taxes, and are looking for that cohort that matches their own. Maybe they’re not thinking about it consciously, but they are find- ing themselves among other conservatives there.” The growth of Sunbelt states has been fueled by retirees seeking lower taxes and warmer weather, families searching for a lower cost of living, and business-friendly practices drawing in corpora- tions. Terry Lush, 61, and her hus- band, John Lush, 62, moved to Anderson, S.C., from Buffalo, N.Y., about two years ago in search of milder temperatures. They were able to retire and live comfortably by moving, thanks to what they said was cheaper housing and dramati- cally lower taxes. Terry Lush, who previously worked for a major bank, is a longtime Republican who will enthusiastically vote for Trump By Eliza Collins, Paul Overberg and Anthony DeBarros Safety staff flagged misuse of subscription tools by parents. DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS Meta Bypassed Warnings 622 Royal Street, New Orleans, LA • 888-767-9190 • ws@rauantiques.com • msrau.com Since 1912, M.S. 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- 6. A6 | Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 * * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. U.S. NEWS FORT WASHINGTON, Md.— Billions in potential American aid to Ukraine is stuck in monthslong limbo on Capitol Hill, and to the Trump-loving partisans at this year’s Con- servative Political Action Con- ference, that is as it should be. “We need to take care of ourselves first,” said Sue Er- rera, a 70-year-old retired jew- eler from Seneca, Pa. “I don’t agree with Putin, he’s definitely a dictator, but I don’t think he’s causing all the problems.” Mark Weyermuller, a 63- year-old Chicagoan retired from the real-estate business, offered a similar assessment. “I don’t want to fund the war in Ukraine. The whole thing seems shady,” he said, adding an unsupported charge: “We don’t even know who the good guys and bad guys are, and we know Joe Biden’s getting paid off by Ukraine.” It was a message echoed from the conference stage. “Decide, Joe Biden, which country matters more to you: the border of the United States or the border of Ukraine,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, a Florida Republican whom former President Donald Trump re- cently said he was considering as a running mate. “I haven’t voted for any money to go to Ukraine be- cause I know they can’t win,” said Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R., Ala.), one of 26 Republi- cans to vote against the aid package that passed the Sen- ate on Feb. 13. “Donald Trump’ll stop it when he first gets in. He knows there’s no winning for Ukraine. He can work a deal with Putin.” Russia card This year’s CPAC vividly displayed a GOP base that has embraced Trump’s stance to- ward Russia—and led congres- sional Republicans to move away from support for military assistance to a beleaguered American ally. Prospects for the Ukraine aid package, which also includes military assis- tance to Israel and Taiwan and humanitarian aid for Gaza, look shaky in the Republican- led House, out of session until the end of the month. House Speaker Mike John- son (R., La.) has said the chamber won’t take up the Senate bill. He acknowledges it would likely pass the House because most Democrats and many Republicans support it. But opposition from Trump and a growing share of the grassroots GOP base has made CPAC on Friday, reject that ar- gument and instead embrace Trump’s America First views. Once-hawkish senators such as Lindsey Graham and Marco Rubio followed Vance’s lead rather than joining McConnell on the foreign-aid vote. A pair of Wall Street Jour- nal polls, one taken last De- cember and one in March 2022, shortly after the war be- gan, illustrate the shift. The portion of Republicans saying the U.S. was doing “too much” to help Ukraine rose to 56% from 6%, while the portion saying it wasn’t doing enough fell to 11% from 61%. Putin play Trump’s relationship with Russia and its autocratic leader has long been contro- versial. U.S. intelligence agen- cies concluded he benefited from Russian election interfer- ence in the 2016 election. In Helsinki in 2018, he stood be- side Putin and declared that he trusted the Russian leader’s word over that of the Ameri- can intelligence community. In 2019, Trump was im- peached for the first time for allegedly threatening to with- hold military assistance from Ukraine unless it provided evi- dence of what he insisted were President Biden’s corrupt ac- tivities there. House Republi- cans have continued to pursue those corruption allegations in an impeachment inquiry that suffered a severe blow when a key witness was accused of fabricating his claims on be- half of Russian intelligence. Now, as Putin’s full-scale in- vasion of Ukraine nears its sec- ond anniversary, the conflict is mired in a bitter stalemate, and President Volodymyr Zel- ensky says further aid is des- perately needed. The Ukrainian city of Avdiivka recently fell to the Russians in what experts called a direct result of the ammunition shortage. Ukrai- nian front-line soldiers have reportedly been spotted scroll- ing American political news on their phones, tracking the con- gressional debate. “There’s only one country in the world that can provide the military aid the Ukrainians desperately need right now, and that’s the United States of America,” said former U.S. Am- bassador to Russia Michael McFaul, who added, in con- trast to claims that allies ha- ven’t done their share, that Eu- ropean nations have provided more assistance per capita. “It’s about American national- security interests. If we allow this to continue because we’ve decided it’s not our problem anymore, Putin is going to con- tinue to threaten our NATO al- lies for years down the road.” At CPAC, numerous attend- ees said they had watched and been impressed by former Fox News host Tucker Carlson’s recent friendly interview with Putin, which prompted North Carolina GOP Sen. Thom Tillis to call Carlson a “useful idiot.” “We got to hear his side, his motives—he’s like a teacher,” Kristin Bocanegra of Ashburn, Va., said of Putin. The 35-year- old staffer for a long-shot GOP Senate candidate added, “We’re told by the media that Russia is really bad, but young people today are doing our own research, not just believing what we’re being told. I know Trump had good relations with him. This administration, it’s like, what happened?” Many attendees argued that Putin was provoked by NATO’s push to add Ukraine to the alli- ance. “Mitch McConnell is not a real Republican. He needs to go. He’s too old, he’s compro- mised, he does not represent the ideology of most Republi- cans,” said Pat O’Brien of Fair- fax, Va., a 67-year-old retiree. “The war is the fault of the U.S. We have no business encourag- ing Ukraine to join NATO.” The conference’s slogan this year is “Where Globalism Goes to Die,” yet it had an unusu- ally global flavor, with main- stage speeches by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Ar- gentine President Javier Milei, former U.K. Prime Minister Liz Truss and the leader of Spain’s right-wing Vox party. Addressing the crowd Thurs- day evening, Bukele—a bitcoin enthusiast re-elected this month on a tough anti-gang platform—decried George So- ros and the media and boasted of “defying the global elites.” CPAC has held conferences in recent years in Hungary, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil. The gather- ing kicked off Wednesday with its first-ever “international summit,” in which CPAC Chairman Matt Schlapp intro- duced a resolution condemn- ing “the police state tactics” of Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Putin, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and Biden. Schlapp sat at a table flanked by Richard Grenell, Trump’s former acting direc- tor of national intelligence, whom he touted as a potential secretary of state; and the for- mer presidential adviser Steve Bannon, who has traveled the world stoking a “global popu- list nationalist movement.” On Russian state television earlier this month, Putin said—sincerely or not—that he would prefer that Biden win this year’s election, calling him “more experienced, predict- able, an old-school politician.” As the international summit concluded, Grenell emphasized that assessment. “Remember,” he said, “Vladimir Putin wants Joe Bi- den to win.” the issue toxic and divisive within the party. House Demo- crats are working to force the bill to the floor through a rarely used procedural gambit, The Wall Street Journal re- ported Wednesday. A group called Republicans for Ukraine this week launched a six-figure digital ad campaign in the districts of 10 House Republicans it hopes would support the gambit. A 60-second ad features rank and file GOP voters who argue that not doing so puts Ameri- can national security at risk. “Trump’s always been in love with Putin, but now a big chunk of the Republican Party is as well,” anti-Trump GOP consultant Sarah Longwell, the group’s executive director, la- mented in an interview. “If you grew up with the Cold War as a backdrop, to watch what’s hap- pening to the Republican Party right now is absolutely stagger- ing. Ronald Reagan would be spinning in his grave.” In recent weeks, Trump has declined to condemn Russian President Vladimir Putin for the Feb. 16 death in prison of opposition leader Alexei Na- valny, instead using the occa- sion to bring up his own multi- farious legal issues. He has said he wouldn’t defend NATO countries that don’t meet their financial commitments to the alliance but would instead en- courage Russia “to do what- ever the hell they want.” In a CNN town hall in May, he re- fused to say which side he hoped wins the war in Ukraine. “Trump is siding with a dic- tator who kills his political op- ponents,” said Trump’s remain- ing primary opponent, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, at a campaign ap- pearance. “Trump sided with an evil man over our allies who stood with us on 9/11.” But Haley has yet to win a primary and is polling about 30 points behind Trump in her home state, South Carolina, holding its primary Saturday— demonstrating that her views are in the minority in today’s GOP, skeptical of foreign aid and unmoved by warnings that Western democracy is at stake. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who once held his GOP flock in near-una- nimity, now finds himself simi- larly outnumbered on an issue he has championed as crucial to his political legacy. “We don’t wield American strength frivolously,” he said on the Senate floor. “We do it because it is in our own interest.” Younger Republican sena- tors led by J.D. Vance of Ohio, who was scheduled to speak at BY MOLLY BALL How Trump Flipped GOP On Ukraine Aid A person signs a bus wrapped with an image of Trump during a general session of the Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor in Maryland on Thursday. Below, people shop for memorabilia at the conference. 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- 7. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. * * * * * * Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 | A7 tions, and the European Union was preparing punitive mea- sures as well. Cameron said any Russian success will only embolden America’s challengers, includ- ing Beijing. “The Chinese are watching this,” he said, refer- ring to leader Xi Jinping’s de- signs on the democratic island of Taiwan. Sikorski added that China is the one country with influence over Russia, and said he re- cently delivered a message to the country’s foreign minister that “we would all be grateful to China if China helped to end this war.” China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, remained “inscrutable,” Sikorski said. While declining to delve into the U.S. politics over aid, Cameron said all countries have their domestic politics to consider and problems to ad- dress. On Trump, Cameron said the war has rallied Euro- pean nations to raise their commitments to the North At- lantic Treaty Organization, a longtime request from Trump, who has been cool to the alli- ance. “He likes winners, and NATO is looking like a win- ner,” Cameron said. A $95 billion bill to help U.S. allies Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan and replenish depleted U.S. weapons stocks hangs in the balance. Europe is facing a critical moment in its support for Ukraine if the U.S. doesn’t send additional aid. Since Russia in- vaded two years ago, the U.S. has donated around 44% of all foreign military assistance to Ukraine, according to the Kiel Institute research group in Germany—equivalent to around $44.2 billion, by the De- fense Department’s latest tally. Germany said late last year it would double its military aid to Ukraine in 2024 to €8 BY JAMES T. AREDDY WORLD NEWS billion, equivalent to $8.66 bil- lion—placing it far ahead of other European countries— with a total €17.7 billion pledged in arms since the war began, second only to the U.S., according to the Kiel Institute. But there have been limits. Berlin so far hasn’t provided powerful long-range Taurus missiles to Kyiv, which wants them to strike deep in Russia’s rear. The U.K. has often been out ahead of allies in terms of sys- tems it provides, becoming the first to give Western main battle tanks and long-range missiles. But constrained pub- lic finances and military stocks make it hard for Lon- don to increase support. Poland has been a key backer of Ukraine since the start of the war, taking in ref- ugees and providing weapons. New Prime Minister Donald Tusk has vocally backed the war, calling it a fight between good and evil, but tensions have emerged amid protests by Polish farmers who are blockading the border and de- manding tighter restrictions on Ukrainian food imports. “The Ukrainians are fight- ing like lions but cannot fight with their hands,” Sikorski said, arguing that more mili- tary aid is critical. At the Journal event, the foreign ministers recalled how Baerbock confronted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lav- rov in Brazil during dinner for a Group of 20 meeting re- cently, telling him that the whole world has suffered be- cause of the Ukraine war. The Russian official ap- peared “shame faced,” Cameron said, adding that “he mumbled through his script about what was happening in the world without any confidence at all.” European Ministers Press U.S. on Ukraine Conflict represents a battle between democracies and autocracies, they say Residents in Dnipro, Ukraine, stood in shock after a Russian drone struck a nine-story residential building Friday. SERHII KOROVAYNY FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Navalny should die in Russian custody. “I made it clear to him that the consequences of that will be devastating for Russia,” Biden said. But officials say the U.S. has been hobbled in its financial war against Russia by its quest to avoid damage to Western economies. Fearing a rise in energy prices, the U.S. and its allies have avoided an all-out embargo on Russian oil, the Kremlin’s chief revenue source. “We are giving huge sanc- tions relief to Russia’s war machine,” Rep. Andy Barr (R., Ky.) told senior Treasury offi- cials before the House Finan- cial Services Committee last week, referring to the oil sales. Administration officials say the price cap on Russian oil is working. Russian energy reve- nues are, in fact, down from prewar levels, but total govern- ment revenues last year hit a record high, according to Rus- sian Ministry of Finance data. Russian companies have found workarounds for sanc- tioned goods and services, say current and former U.S. and European officials. Sanctions targeting individuals have punished officials with lives or property outside Russia, but inside the country, being sanc- tioned has been touted as a sign of loyalty to Putin. While Friday’s sanctions tar- get some of those the U.S. be- lieves responsible for Navalny’s death, most of the entities added to the sanction rosters have been vetted for months, former Treasury officials said. The administration’s focus in its financial war is now mostly on filling holes in the sanctions dragnet—exposing networks of companies help- ing Russia evade prohibited trade and finance, and arm- twisting foreign governments to disrupt those operations within their borders. “We all need to acknowledge that two years in the sanctions regime has been more porous than we had hoped,” Sen. Mark Warner (D., Va.) said. Some proponents of tougher sanctions also call for the U.S. to seize frozen Russian assets. Warner said seizures involve a “tricky legal road,” but he hopes they might work out since they are far more likely to sting Moscow. Treasury has said such seizures aren’t cur- rently planned as the U.S. and its allies work through the le- gal complexities. Moscow has threatened to retaliate with seizures of its own. Elaine Dezenski, a former senior Department of Home- land Security official, said there is value in sanctioning Russia’s military trade, but suggests the U.S. and its allies could cut in half the oil price cap, and take more aggressive action to disrupt the shadow fleet of ships exporting petro- leum outside that cap. Allies could also transfer Russia’s frozen foreign-cur- rency reserves and other sover- eign assets to Kyiv to help fund Ukraine’s war efforts, said Dezenski, now head of the Cen- ter on Economic and Financial Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington-based think tank. While the administration has managed to build a coali- tion of allies to support Ukraine and pressure Russia through sanctions, Ukraine’s losses on the battlefield and political divisions in the U.S. over war funding have lately overshadowed success. detention of a Russian-Ameri- can citizen. Unable for months to get supplemental aid for Ukraine through Congress, fearful of the economic conse- quences a full oil embargo against Russia would unleash in an election year, and un- willing to risk the potential tit-for-tat likely to result from seizing Russian assets, the White House is left with im- posing yet more narrowly tar- geted sanctions. Some administration offi- cials have privately played down the potential impact of the new measures, and indi- cated the package focuses mostly on eroding Moscow’s ability to sidestep existing sanctions. Analysts also ex- press doubt that the latest round will have much impact. Critics of the U.S. sanctions policy say it only creates an il- lusion of decisive U.S. actions as Ukraine’s defenses crumble. “On the one hand, this next turn of the crank is inevitable because the U.S. needs to take concrete steps to respond to Navalny’s death,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. But the package “has fallen far short of expectations.” When the Biden administra- tion unveiled unprecedented sanctions in 2022 in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, officials predicted a devastat- ing impact. Russia’s economy initially contracted as exports plummeted and the country struggled to get the financing, goods and services it needed to run. But by the end of last year, the economy was expanding again, slowly, and Russia sig- naled it was ready for a long war of attrition in Ukraine. The U.S. has levied several rounds of sanctions on Russia related to Navalny since ac- cusing the Kremlin of trying to assassinate him by poison- ing in 2020. In June 2021, af- ter meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at a summit in Geneva, Biden was asked what would happen if ContinuedfromPageOne NEW YORK—European for- eign ministers warned that the outcome of the Ukraine war is critical to American strategic and security inter- ests as Russia presses its of- fensive and U.S. military assis- tance is hung up in Congress. On the eve of the second anniversary of Russia’s inva- sion of Ukraine, U.K. Foreign Secretary David Cameron, Pol- ish Foreign Minister Radosław Sikorski and German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said that U.S. support is essen- tial in a conflict that reflects a broader fight between liberal democracies and autocracies. “American security and the future of American security is very much on the line,” Cam- eron said Friday at an event hosted by The Wall Street Journal in New York, on the sidelines of a special United Nations plenary session dedi- cated to Ukraine. The war has left a toll of hundreds of thousands of dead and injured and deep- ened a political split between Western democracies like the U.S. and in Western Europe, and autocracies, like Vladimir Putin’s Russia. Washington’s monthslong struggle to pro- vide new aid reflects the splintered U.S. political estab- lishment, with President Biden and his prospective rival Don- ald Trump standing on oppo- site sides of the issue. Assembled at a university hall in Midtown Manhattan, the officials said values held by the U.S. and American credibility are on the line in the European battlefield. If Putin’s aggression isn’t stopped, “this will touch every state in the United States,” Baerbock said. “We’re in a sit- uation of a fight between lib- eral democracies and autocra- cies” that want to destroy the liberal world order, she said. Ukraine’s front line has been under intense pressure for months. Russian troops captured the eastern city of Avdiivka last weekend after a Ukrainian withdrawal. Ukrai- nian soldiers said that a se- vere lack of artillery shells has hampered efforts to hold back Russian invaders. “This happened in large part because Ukraine is run- ning out of weapons due to congressional inaction,” Jake Sullivan, national security ad- viser to President Biden, warned in a briefing this week. “And Ukrainian troops didn’t have the supplies and ammunition they needed to stop the Russian advance.” Speaking from Ukraine on Friday, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.) made the same point: “If we don’t get it over the finish line, it says to Putin, ‘You’re going to win, stick with it, and Ukraine will be abandoned,’ ” he said by telephone. Poland’s Sikorski said the U.S. support so far, some 3% or 4% of the U.S. defense bud- get, has been a “good value” for America that has allowed Ukraine to destroy half of Rus- sia’s military. “It’s a good deal for the United States,” he said. Biden has publicly blamed Putin for the death in Russian custody of dissident Alexei Navalny. On Friday, the White House announced a bevy of new sanctions in response to Navalny’s death, and to mark the war’s anniversary. The 600 new targets are designed to hit major financial institutions, government offi- cials, business executives, shipping companies and man- ufacturers. The U.K. this week announced its own new sanc- A Navalny tribute outside the Russian Embassy in Washington. Symbolic Sanctions On Russia SHAWN THEW/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK Watch a Video Scan this code for a video on Europe urging more U.S. aid for Ukraine. 20% SILK LIMITED TIME READERS SPECIAL OFFER FREE UPS EXPRESS SHIPPING* from the UK to the US + Free Exchanges** use code 53L8 Tan *Free UPS Express shipping (normally $40) from the UK to the US (Canadian orders do not apply), of 3-4 working days, ends midnight GMT 04/24/24. $145 minimum spend applies. 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- 8. A8 | Saturday/Sunday, February 24 - 25, 2024 * * * * THE WALL STREET JOURNAL. WORLD NEWS GAME TIME: Children played Friday among hundreds of giant bamboo cones that are used to protect and keep dry recently harvested rice in Brahmanbaria, Bangladesh. JOY SAHA/ZUMA PRESS SEOUL—At a hospital just outside Seoul, Kim Jung-geun, an internal medicine resident, wrapped up a recent 34-hour shift, downed a coffee and crashed. He hasn’t gone back to work since. Kim isn’t switching careers. He is on the front lines of a spectacular showdown be- tween South Korea’s govern- ment and the country’s physi- cians over attempts to reverse one of the industrialized world’s worst doctor shortages. Government officials plan to expand the ranks of medi- cal school students starting next year. That has drawn the ire of doctors, who argue what they need first is better work- ing conditions and higher pay—not more competition. “It would make more sense if the government pursued ex- panding medical school ad- mission after improving work- ing conditions,” said Kim, 31 years old. Since Tuesday, Kim along with thousands of other young South Korean doctors have submitted resignation letters and walked off the job. Only about one-fifth of the nation’s roughly 13,000 medical resi- dents are left working, the country’s health ministry said. The Korean Medical Associa- tion, the country’s largest phy- sicians group, is holding a vote March 3 on whether practicing doctors will also take action. The work stoppages have already proved disruptive. On Friday, South Korea declared in effect a healthcare emer- gency, raising its alert level to the highest threshold. Tele- medicine can be practiced na- tionally for now. Some of the country’s biggest hospitals have pared back surgeries by half. Military hospitals have been opened to civilians. Nearly 200 individuals have lodged complaints to the gov- ernment about the abrupt walkout. In an online platform for cancer patients, one user said their surgery had been canceled. An elderly man, who had been rushed to the emer- gency room for necrosis, had to be transported to a hospital about 80 miles away, local me- dia reported. The country’s young doc- tors “who are key players in future medicine should not take collective action by taking the people’s lives and health hostage,” South Korean Presi- dent Yoon Suk Yeol said dur- ing a recent cabinet meeting. South Korea’s government has threatened to arrest and revoke the licenses of young doctors who have effectively Doctor Shortage Prompts Walkouts In South Korea gone on strike, citing medical laws that ban essential work- ers from leaving their posts. “Why are we being treated as the villains after dedicating our time and energy into sav- ing people?” Kim said. “We’re scared, too, that the rapport with patients will be ruined.” The blowback in South Ko- rea shows the challenges and risks governments can face when undertaking changes to their medical system. In the past year, doctors or medical residents have gone on strike in the U.K., Germany and in New York City’s borough of Queens. But South Korea faces a particularly acute problem: It has a rapidly aging popula- tion and a low number of phy- sicians. Only Mexico has fewer doc- tors relative to the population among Organization for Eco- nomic Cooperation and Devel- opment members. South Korea also has universal healthcare, with low out-of-pocket costs, leading Koreans to visit the doctor’s office more than citi- zens in any other advanced nation—more than two times the OECD average. South Korea has about 140,000 doctors. Within the next decade or so, the country is projected to have a shortfall of 15,000 physicians, accord- ing to government estimates. The most controversial facet of the Yoon administra- tion’s solution was to sharply boost the incoming ranks of medical students. The quota, which currently stands at roughly 3,000 medical stu- dents a year, will rise to 5,000 applicants starting next year. As a part of the overhaul, South Korea would also in- crease medical costs at hospi- tals outside the Seoul metro- politan area—where roughly half of the country’s 52 million people live—and for in-de- mand fields, such as pediatrics and gynecology. Rural hospi- tals would be improved, too. The Korean Medical Associ- ation argues there are already enough doctors, given the country’s declining birthrate— the lowest in the world. The organization says boosting the number of doctors will de- grade the quality of medical care and intensify competition at the top hospitals where there are limited spots for specialized fields. They also want more legal protections for medical malpractice. “Doctors are quitting be- cause of legal threats and the lack of adequate compensation despite harsh working condi- tions,” said Joo Su-ho, a spokesman for the Korean Medical Association. BY DASL YOON WORLDWATCH SPAIN Apartment Fire Death Toll Hits 9 The death toll in a fire that engulfed an apartment block in the Spanish city of Valencia rose Friday to nine as questions were raised about whether construction materials caused the fire to spread so rapidly. One person remained missing, forensic police said. The fire started Thursday and quickly engulfed the two residential buildings. Neigh- bors described seeing the rapid spread of the blaze, res- idents stuck on balconies and hearing children screaming. “I have no words to de- scribe the suffering of those poor people,” said Sara Plaza. Alejandra Alarcón said it took 15 minutes for the fire to engulf an entire building, as questions abounded as to how the fire spread so rap- idly. —Associated Press AUSTRIA Ex-Leader Given Suspended Term Former Austrian Chancel- lor Sebastian Kurz was con- victed Friday of making false statements to a parliamen- tary inquiry into alleged cor- ruption in his government. He was given an eight-month suspended sentence. The verdict in Vienna fol- lowed a four-month trial. The case marked the first time in more than 30 years that a for- mer chancellor had stood trial. Prosecutors accused him of having given false evi- dence in 2020, regarding his role in the setting up of a holding company, OeBAG, which administers the state’s role in some companies. Judge Michael Radasztics found Kurz guilty of making false statements about the appointment of the com- pany’s supervisory board. —Associated Press AFGHANISTAN Public Execution Held for Two Men Afghanistan’s ruling Tali- ban carried out a double pub- lic execution Thursday at a stadium in the country’s southeast, where relatives of the victims of stabbing deaths fired guns at two con- victed men while thousands of people watched. The Taliban’s Supreme Court ruled that the two men were responsible for the stabbing deaths of two vic- tims in separate attacks, ac- cording to a court statement. It identified the two as Syed Jamal from central Wardak province and Gul Khan from Ghazni—though it was un- clear who carried out the stabbings, the two convicted men or others. On Thursday, people crowded outside the stadium in Ghazni, clambering to get in. —Associated Press TEL AVIV—Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan- yahu outlined a blueprint for postwar Gaza that calls for it to be administered by local Palestinian officials free of links to militant groups and for Israel to conduct security operations in the strip indefi- nitely. Most of the ideas have been publicly discussed by Netan- yahu and other Israeli officials before, and, though few new details were provided, the blueprint appears at odds in significant ways with both U.S. plans and those of Arab governments in the region. It was presented for the first time to Israel’s secu- rity cabinet Thursday night. Taken together, Netan- yahu’s ideas describe a demili- tarized Gaza that would face a continued heavy Israeli secu- rity presence after combat op- erations end, with a buffer zone off limits to Palestin- ians along Gaza’s perimeter and Israeli control of the Egypt-Gaza border that would seek to seal off the strip in the south. The plan underscores the wide gap between Netanyahu’s government and the Biden ad- ministration, which has backed Israel’s war goals in Gaza but warned repeatedly against making changes in its territorial boundaries. Its lack of specificity also leaves open the possibility that Netanyahu will move closer to Washing- ton on key issues if Israel achieves its initial goals of de- feating Hamas and bringing home an estimated 130 hos- tages. “Israel will maintain opera- tional freedom of action in the entire Gaza Strip, without a time limit, for the purpose of preventing the renewal of ter- rorism and thwarting threats from Gaza,” the document says, adding that Israel in- tends to continue the war un- til Hamas and other militant groups are defeated in Gaza. There are signs of growing tensions between Israel and the White House. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said an Israeli announcement this week that it intends to build new housing in the occupied West Bank “is inconsistent with international law.” It was a shift back to a four-decade-old formulation for the U.S. The Trump admin- istration said in 2020 that it no longer viewed Israeli set- tlement building in the West Bank as a violation of interna- tional law. “Our administration main- tains a firm opposition to set- tlement expansion, and in our judgment this only weakens, doesn’t strengthen, Israel’s se- curity,” Blinken said at a news conference in Buenos Aires. Netanyahu has said that Is- rael has no interest in occupy- ing Gaza once the combat phase of the war is over, but he is under political pressure from far-right members of his government. Some have called for ejecting Palestinian resi- dents from the strip and for re-establishing Israeli settle- ments there. The Israeli prime minister presented the blueprint to his security cabinet ahead of a crucial meeting in Paris among intelligence chiefs from Israel, Egypt and the U.S., and the prime minister of Qatar. The officials are racing to ne- gotiate a deal that would im- plement a cease-fire in Gaza and free Israeli hostages held by Hamas in exchange for Pal- estinian prisoners. Israeli officials have set a deadline of the start of the Muslim holy month of Rama- dan on March 10 for Hamas to release hostages the group seized during the Oct. 7 at- tack, or else Israel will launch a military operation in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip, where more than a million Palestinian civilians are shel- tering. The meeting in Paris on Friday came after Israeli offi- cials said there was a chance of progress in the talks. Egyp- tian officials said Thursday that Hamas had indicated po- tential flexibility in its de- mands for the release of Pal- estinian prisoners in return for Israeli hostages. Saudi Arabia has said that agreement on a renewed dip- lomatic pathway toward a Pal- estinian state is a key precon- dition before it would agree to seriously consider postwar plans, including possible dip- lomatic normalization with Is- rael. But the blueprint offers little indication Netanyahu is prepared to move ahead with talks on a Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank soon. The plan doesn’t mention a role for the Palestinian Au- thority, which currently gov- erns the West Bank. It says, “civil administration and re- sponsibility for public order in the Gaza Strip will be based as much as possible on local offi- cials” and “will not be identi- fied with countries or entities that support terrorism.” Israeli officials say they are exploring whether they can establish interim government bodies headed by residents not linked to Hamas who would assume responsibility for distributing aid and other limited functions in small ar- eas of Gaza. Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group that ran Gaza and whose deadly attacks in southern Israel on Oct. 7 sparked the war, received fi- nancial backing from Qatar and weapons and other assis- tance from Iran. Hamas took over Gaza in 2007, ejecting the Palestinian Authority. Netan- yahu and other Israeli officials also accuse the Palestinian Authority of inciting terror- ism. The Palestinian Authority’s foreign ministry called the re- lease of the Netanyahu plan “official recognition of the re- occupation of the Gaza Strip and the imposition of Israeli control over it.” The blueprint says recon- struction of the shattered strip would be possible only after the defeat of Hamas and “a comprehensive deradical- ization program” involving as- sistance from Arab countries, which have so far shown little interest in helping Israel in Gaza. The Biden administration has been pushing its own postwar plan, built around giving a governing role in Gaza to the Palestinian Au- thority once it agrees to bring in new leadership, retrain se- curity forces and address cor- ruption. Netanyahu has pub- licly rejected turning over Gaza to the Palestinian Au- thority, though he has left open the possibility he could accept its revamped version. In the Biden administra- tion’s thinking, a return of the Palestinian Authority to Gaza would lay the groundwork for more sweeping long-term changes in the region. Key fea- tures of Washington’s propos- als include a revived process to create a Palestinian state, security guarantees for Israel and the normalization of Saudi-Israeli relations. U.S. officials are hopeful the prize of Saudi recognition of Israel will help move Netan- yahu closer to their own post- war blueprint. —Jared Malsin and Vivian Salama contributed to this article. BY DAVID S. CLOUD AND ANAT PELED Israel Outlines a Postwar Plan; Palestinians Call It Occupation Palestinians injured by an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in Deir Al-Balah, central Gaza, sought medical care. MAJDI FATHI/NUR PHOTO/ZUMA PRESS (2) Resident Kim Jung-geun is among those protesting conditions. JEAN CHUNG FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL Palestinians stood amid the rubble in Deir Al-Balah, Gaza.