MASSENA — Nearly $6,700 in unclaimed funds are coming back to the town of Massena.

To date, the town has received $50 on behalf of the Massena Rescue Squad, with one claim still outstanding, and more than $6,600 on behalf of Massena Memorial Hospital.

Banks, insurance companies, corporations and courts are among the organizations that must by law report dormant accounts to the state Comptroller’s Office, which attempts to return the funds to their owners. However, many funds remain unclaimed and must be turned over to the Comptroller’s Office, and the town of Massena was one of those owners.

Town Supervisor Steve D. O’Shaughnessy said Councilman Samuel D. Carbone Jr. had indicated in the past that funds were owed to Massena Memorial Hospital. Part of the funds returned to Massena Memorial Hospital were insurance-related and equipment rebates.

“We didn’t even think there was that much in there,” Mr. O’Shaughnessy said.

In the case of the Massena Rescue Squad, they had received a rebate for some equipment that had been ordered.

“For some reason they didn’t send it to the rescue squad,” he said.

Since the rebate wasn’t sent directly to the Rescue Squad, the company was required by law to turn it over to the Comptroller’s Office.

Mr. O’Shaughnessy said Natalie Sweatland, the 2nd deputy town clerk, checked the unclaimed funds database at www.osc.state.ny.us, something that’s done regularly, to see if there were funds that should be returned to the town of Massena or any of its organizations such as the Massena Rescue Squad or Massena Memorial Hospital. When they learned that funds were due to the town, the staff applied for the return of those funds in January.

“Natalie Sweatland brought it to me. There were some from the Rescue Squad, one from the town and several from the hospital. We passed a resolution authorizing her to go for it. I had to sign a few documents,” he said.

The funds were returned to the rescue squad and hospital, Mr. O’Shaughnessy said.

“We are excited to receive these unexpected funds and I applaud our employees’ efforts to secure them. I also encourage individuals, municipalities and businesses to search the Comptroller’s Unclaimed Funds database to see if they have any unclaimed funds,” he said.

Anyone can check to see if they’re owed any unclaimed funds on the database.

Erie County Republican Chairman Nicholas Langworthy announced Saturday that he would be challenging state Republican Chairman Edward F. Cox in September.

Like many things in politics in 2019, the announcement came by Tweet, with Mr. Langworthy sharing a video announcing his run for state chair.

“Sadly, defeat has become a habit for New York Republicans,” Mr. Langworthy said in the video. “We must re-tool, revitalize and rebuild the Republican party in New York.”

The announcement comes several months after the chairs of 11 mostly north country Republican county committees signed a letter asking Mr. Cox to resign, including Thomas L. Jenison, chair of the St. Lawrence County committee. The Republican chairman of Onondaga County, Thomas V. Dadey, has already endorsed Mr. Langworthy.

Asked about Mr. Langworthy’s run, however, Mr. Jenison said he remained undecided about who he would support for state chair.

“That was after the massive type of losses we took,” Mr. Jenison said of the letter. “(Mr. Cox) said here are the things we need to change and here’s how we’re going to do it.”

Mr. Jenison also highlighted Mr. Langworthy’s youth as a positive — he was the youngest ever county chair when he was elected at 29, in 2010.

“Nick basically is a young guy who has a lot of energy,” he said.

Don Coon, chairman of Jefferson County, said he was not endorsing anyone at the moment, either.

“Still gathering information,” he said.

Mr. Langworthy could not be reached for comment.

Mr. Cox said there were too many changes happening in New York state to change state chairs now. He acknowledged the state Democratic gains — the Republicans lost eight State Senate seats, giving control of the Senate fully to Democrats for the first time in years — but said it was part of a nationwide pattern, not a state-level failure.

“They were all in the suburbs,” he said of the losing GOP state senators. “That was part of a nationwide wipeout of Republican candidates.”

At least one of these suburban losses was Republican Assemblyman Ray Walter, who lost in the Erie County suburb of Amherst, but Mr. Cox said it was an issue across the country — all the way out to Orange County, California.

With Democratic control of Albany, there has been a wave of changes — the state primary being moved from September to June, early voting, a move toward public election funding, and an upcoming redistricting, according to new rules, which requires a two-thirds majority for new districts if one party controls both the Senate and Assembly.

“I took a look at all the complications and said, ‘this is not the time to leave,’” Mr. Cox said. “I know what we have to do.”

Mr. Cox has a detailed plan for winning in the future, including a focus on voter registration, small dollar donations, and a focus on recruiting candidates early — particularly center right candidates who may play better in suburbs. He wants to secure a “strong minority” in both the Assembly and Senate to block nakedly partisan redistricting.

“We have to keep right on job,” he said. “Rhetoric is cheap, getting the job done is hard.”

Mr. Cox has been endorsed already by the chairs of Nassau and Suffolk counties, and expects to gain support along the Southern Tier and Hudson Valley, along with other areas.

“This is a time to unify the party, not to divide it,” he said.

SYRACUSE — A state-funded Syracuse clinic that diagnoses autism and other developmental disabilities is under pressure to move due to a lease expiration in September, limiting its new patient intake.

The Margaret L. Williams Developmental Evaluation Center, which evaluates about 300 children a year from a 15-county area, does not have a new location yet. The center, as of last week, was not taking new patients to focus on completing evaluations of children on its seven-month waiting list before it moves. However, the center now said it will take in an undetermined number of new patients before its lease expires Sept. 30.

The center has known for nearly two years it had to leave its space in the former Sumner school owned by Peace Inc. The agency runs a Head Start pre-school program in the building and plans to expand it into the space occupied by the center.

Joe O’Hara, executive director of Peace, said his agency notified the center in May 2017 it would not be renewing the center’s lease.

“We’ve given them ample time,” Mr. O’Hara said.

The center, jointly funded by SUNY Upstate Medical University and the New York State Office for People with Development Disabilities, provides in-depth evaluations for children up to age 7 by an interdisciplinary team of medical doctors, psychologists, speech pathologists and other specialists who perform an extensive battery of tests. The evaluations usually are paid for by publicly funded early intervention programs.

The state agency said in a prepared statement that “closure of the center is not being considered at this time.” Without the evaluations, children often cannot get the extra services they need in school such as speech and occupational therapy, according to Kathy L. Connor, program director of family support services at Northern Regional Center for Independent Living.

“For many of the children who have autism or autism spectrum delays, it includes speech,” Ms. Connor said. “By not getting the intervention that you need early, your outcomes aren’t quite as successful.”

The center diagnosed Adriana Campany’s 5-year-old twin daughters last year with autism.

Autism is a disorder which can lead to problems with communication, social interaction and behavior. Symptoms can vary in intensity for each child. Autism affects about 1 in 59 children.

Ms. Campany, who lives in St. Lawrence County, was concerned because the girls did not make eye contact, respond when called by name, had limited speech skills and behavior problems.

After getting the evaluation from the center, the district provided the girls applied behavioral analysis, a therapy that improves or changes certain behaviors, Ms. Campany said. The district also provided teacher’s aides and other services.

“All these things would not have been accessible to us without the evaluation,” Ms. Campany said.

This delay in service comes at a time when autism diagnoses in children are soaring.

The number of special education students statewide with autism grew from 6,752 in 2000 to 37,435 in 2016, a nearly six-fold increase, according to the state Education Department. In north country public schools, 17 percent enrolled are special education students in Jefferson County, 19 percent in Lewis County and 16 percent in St. Lawrence County.

“It’s very concerning — we don’t have a lot of options in the north country for developmental evaluations,” Ms. Connor said. “Primarily with autism, they are being assessed through [the center], so it’ll create a void.”

At the Northern Regional Center for Independent Living, Ms. Connor said of the roughly 500 children they serve, about 25 percent are on the autism spectrum.

The center has always been the organization’s first referral suggestion for parents, but Ms. Connor said now they will refer them to a pediatrician. The next option is a referral to Davis Psychological Services and Consulting, with locations in Carthage and Boonville, which also does evaluations.

Davis Psychological Services and Consulting didn’t respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Outside of the area, children can be evaluated at Upstate Golisano Children’s Hospital, Syracuse, which has a 17-month waiting list. Other clinics will take parents as far as Rochester or Albany.

Ms. Connor said the community needs to look at more options, with seemingly never ending wait lists at most extensive evaluation facilities.

“It was a problem before this situation, and it’s an even bigger problem now,” Ms. Connor said.

Tribune News Service contributed to this report.

CLAYTON — The lowest bidding contractor for reconstructing most of Riverside Drive and portions of James and Webb streets offered an estimated cost that fell below state officials’ budget.

Luck Bros. Inc., Plattsburgh, placed a bid for the historic district project, which will allow overhead cables to be replaced with underground ones, with an estimated cost of $9.3 million. The company’s first offer for undertaking the project in November had a projected cost exceeding the department’s budget, but DOT regional spokesman Michael R. Flick said in an email the new offer was below the $9.9 million in expected costs from department engineers. Village costs for the project could also decrease if the department gives the firm a contract, he said.

The village previously budgeted $3.31 million for workers to install a few new water and sewer lines and conduits and vaults beneath the streets so National Grid, Verizon, Spectrum and Westelcom could replace overhead cables with ones underground. Mayor Norma J. Zimmer, however, said costs are expected to drop almost $696,841.28.

“And that’s good news,” she said.

The department’s road construction will encompass much of Riverside Drive, the section of James Street between Riverside Drive and Mary Street and the section of Webb Street between Riverside Drive and Hugunin Street. Once workers complete the project, the DOT will transfer ownership of the three streets, which make up Route 970L, to the village.

The department previously planned to award the bid for the project in mid-June, but construction would not begin until after Labor Day. Roadwork for Riverside Drive, the portion of James Street between Riverside Drive and Hugunin Street has been scheduled for the 2020 construction season. The rest will be completed in the 2021 construction season.

The department rejected offers to rebuild the streets from four contractors, including Luck Bros., in December due to a lack of information, pricing issues and other unspecified project requirements.

WASHINGTON - More than a third of Americans say that illegal immigration at the U.S.-Mexico border is at a “crisis,” up 11 percentage points since January as Democrats have grown sharply more concerned about the issue, according to a Washington Post-ABC News poll.

At the same time, Americans assign a similar level of blame to congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump for the situation, the survey finds, signaling that both political parties face challenges on immigration heading into the 2020 presidential election cycle.

The Trump administration is struggling to handle a surge of migrant families arriving at the southern border with Mexico, where the number of apprehensions by Customs and Border Protection topped 100,000 in March, the largest monthly total in a dozen years, according to federal data. Although Trump responded by installing new leadership at the Department of Homeland Security three weeks ago, the number of migrants was on pace to reach a similar level in April, authorities said.

The poll, conducted by cellular and landline telephone between April 22 and 25, finds that 35 percent of Americans believe the situation is a crisis, up from 24 percent in January. While that figure included a modest increase among Republicans and independents, the percentage of Democrats who agree jumped from 7 percent to 24 percent, nearly a quarter of the party.

A still-larger 45 percent plurality of the public overall says illegal immigration across the southern border is a serious problem but not a crisis, while 18 percent say it is not a serious problem.

The shifting views have altered the political calculus for Democrats, including the 20 candidates already in the race for the party’s presidential nomination, who have sought to challenge Trump’s hard-line rhetoric on immigration. Having once accused the president of falsely fanning public fears over a nonexistent crisis, Democrats have shifted to emphasizing the humanitarian challenges at the border, while still accusing Trump of demonizing immigrants and pursuing policies that have exacerbated the problems.

Trump’s policies “have been an absolute failure for our country,” former San Antonio mayor Julián Castro, campaigning for the 2020 Democratic nomination, said at a rally in that city this month. He has released an immigration plan that would decriminalize unauthorized border crossings.

But Trump has countered by trying to pin blame on Democrats for opposing hard-line policies that, he argues, would send a deterrence message to the record number of Central American families seeking asylum in the United States. In an interview with Fox News on Sunday, Trump noted that he reversed his administration’s “no tolerance” policy of separating immigrant families last summer amid a political backlash - only to see the number of families increase sixfold since then, according to federal data.

“The problem is you have 10 times more people coming up with their families,” Trump said in the interview, exaggerating the numbers. “It’s like Disneyland now.”

The Post-ABC poll finds that 64 percent of Americans oppose Trump’s use of an emergency declaration in February to divert billions of dollars in federal funds from other programs to build a border wall - with 55 percent saying they “strongly oppose.”

More women (71 percent) than men (57 percent) are opposed to Trump’s declaration, and while a majority of all age groups oppose it, a larger share of younger Americans are opposed to it than older Americans.

A larger share of nonwhite Americans (82 percent), including 92 percent of African Americans, oppose the move, while a slim 54 percent majority of whites also oppose it.

More broadly, 57 percent of all adults disapprove of the way Trump is handling immigration in general, similar to the 54 percent who disapprove of his overall job performance. But 39 percent approve of Trump’s handling of immigration, up slightly from 35 percent in 2017. That includes 74 percent of Republicans, a sign that the president’s conservative base is sticking with him.

The poll shows a sharp divide among Americans over who is to blame for the growing numbers at the border. Thirty-five percent blame congressional Democrats, while 32 percent blame Trump, a breakdown driven largely along party lines.

A majority of Democrats blame Trump (62 percent) while a majority of Republicans blame congressional Democrats (71 percent). Independents are split about evenly.

The intensity of feelings about Trump’s immigration agenda could be a liability for the president for his 2020 campaign. A 42 percent plurality of registered voters say Trump’s handling of illegal immigration makes them more likely to oppose his reelection. An additional 34 percent say it makes them more likely to support him, while 22 percent say his handling of the issue is not a factor in their vote.

The president, who made stopping illegal immigration the centerpiece of his 2016 campaign, has continued to count the issue as central to his chances for reelection, and he has played to his conservative base even amid concerns in the White House that the rising level of border crossings threatens to undercut his message that his administration has been effective.

At a campaign rally in Green Bay, Wis., on Saturday, Trump boasted about a secret White House plan that aimed to have Immigration and Customs Enforcement release undocumented immigrants into “sanctuary cities” that do not always cooperate with federal enforcement efforts, as a way to target Trump’s political opponents, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who represents San Francisco.

“I’m proud to tell you that was my sick idea,” Trump told the crowd, referring to the plan. The idea was rejected in November and again in February by ICE, whose lawyers deemed it to be inappropriate. The Post first disclosed the existence of the plan in a report three weeks ago.

Americans are roughly equally divided between how the country should handle asylum protections for migrants - a major priority for the Trump White House, which has attempted to implement policies, blocked by federal courts, that would ban Central Americans from applying.

Trump aides have argued the asylum system makes it too difficult to quickly deport Central American migrants, especially families and children, who are usually released into the United States to await immigration court hearings, a process that can take more than a year amid huge backlogs.

The poll finds Americans in nearly a three-way divide over asylum protection laws, with 30 percent saying it should be harder for undocumented immigrants to request asylum, 27 percent saying it should be easier and 34 percent saying asylum protection should be left as it is now.

A 46 percent plurality of Republicans say asylum should be harder to claim, while Democrats are split between whether it should be left as it is now (40 percent) or made easier (38 percent).

The Post-ABC poll was conducted among a random national sample of 1,001 adults, with 65 percent reached on cellphones and 35 percent on landlines. Results have a margin of error of plus or minus 3.5 percentage points for the full sample.

President Donald Trump and his family, as well as the Trump Organization, filed suit against one of their lenders and one of their banks late Monday, seeking to stop the financial firms from complying with subpoenas from congressional committees.

The lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump more than $360 million in recent years, and Capital One are designed to prevent the two institutions from providing records to the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees. The panels are led by Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., respectively.

The filing, submitted late Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, claims that the subpoenas were issued to “harass” the president - “to rummage through every aspect of his personal finances, his businesses, and the private information of the President and his family, and to ferret about for any material that might be used to cause him political damage.”

“No grounds exist to establish any purpose other than a political one,” the lawsuit asserts.

In a joint statement, Trump lawyers William Consovoy, Patrick Strawbridge and Marc Mukasey called the subpoenas “unlawful and illegitimate.”

“Every citizen should be concerned about this sweeping, lawless, invasion of privacy,” they said. “We look forward to vindicating our clients’ rights in this matter.”

Their clients, in this case, include not just the president but his three eldest children, as well as the business conglomerate that bears their name.

But legal experts predicted that the courts would be unwilling to stand in the way of congressional oversight. If nothing else, however, the lawsuit could delay the committees’ investigations into Trump’s finances and business dealings.

“This isn’t a close legal question,” said David Alan Sklansky, a professor at Stanford Law School. “I’m quite confident there has never been a situation where a congressional subpoena has been quashed without a finding that it violates a constitutional right.”

The claim that there is no legitimate need for the subpoena, or that it is politically motivated, is a “frivolous argument, even if it’s true,” he said. “That is not a basis for quashing a subpoena.”

Nor is the claim that the inquest violates the privacy of the president or his family members, the law professor said.

“That’s how subpoena power works - it’s about getting information that people would like to be kept private,” he said.

Schiff and Waters, who issued the subpoenas two weeks ago, condemned the lawsuit in a joint statement, calling it a ploy to “put off meaningful accountability as long as possible.”

“The meritless lawsuit filed today by President Trump to block duly authorized subpoenas to nongovernmental entities is another demonstration of the depths to which President Trump will go to obstruct Congress’s constitutional oversight authority,” the Democrats said. “As a private businessman, Trump routinely used his well-known litigiousness and the threat of lawsuits to intimidate others, but he will find that Congress will not be deterred from carrying out its constitutional responsibilities.”

They added, “This unprecedented stonewalling will not work, and the American people deserve better.”

The lawsuit is the latest salvo by Trump in a deepening battle over congressional inquiries with aims ranging from obtaining the president’s personal and corporate tax returns to bringing Attorney General William P. Barr before the House Judiciary Committee. The White House’s intransigence has led some House Democrats to look with new interest at the possibility of impeachment proceedings.

The 13-page filing offered a window into the legal approach pursued by Trump and his business organization, showing how lawyers for the president will contend that congressional investigators are overreaching their authority.

So, too, it revealed new details about the subpoenas, and about the information being sought by Democrats. According to the suit, the request to Deutsche Bank - the president’s largest creditor - includes account records and other information related to “parents, subsidiaries, affiliates, branches, divisions, partnerships, properties, groups, special purpose entities, joint ventures, predecessors, successors or any other entity in which they have or had a controlling interest.”

The suit claims that lawyers for the president and his associates requested copies of the subpoenas from committee officials, but that Democrats on Capitol Hill refused. They instead learned the details of the requests from the banks, which informed the attorneys that they had intended to begin producing documents on May 6, according to the legal filing.

The suit appeared similar to another filed by Trump earlier this month against his own accounting firm, Mazars USA, to stop it from complying with a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee. In that case, the committee was seeking documents related to “Statements of Financial Condition” that the firm prepared for Trump to convince lenders he was wealthy enough to be a good credit risk.

The congressional committees have also demanded documents from a handful of other financial institutions, such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and Citigroup. The requests are part of Democratic probes into possible Russian money-laundering.

In a statement, a Deutsche Bank spokeswoman said, “We remain committed to providing appropriate information to all authorized investigations and will abide by a court order regarding such investigations.”

Congress is not alone in probing the relationship between Trump and the German lender, which agreed to pay $630 million in fines in 2017 for a scheme that regulators said allowed Russian investors to launder $10 billion through the bank over four years.

Last month, New York Attorney General Letitia James, D, subpoenaed records related to several large loans the bank had extended to Trump in recent years. That request came on the heels of congressional testimony from Michael Cohen, the president’s former attorney and “fixer,” that Trump had inflated his net worth in material sent to the multinational company, which is headquartered in Frankfurt, Germany.

Capital One is headquartered in McLean, Virginia, with numerous offices in Manhattan. The bank didn’t immediately return a request for comment.

WASHINGTON — The Trump administration is pushing to issue an order that would designate the Muslim Brotherhood a foreign terrorist organization, bringing the weight of U.S. sanctions against a storied and influential Islamist political movement with millions of members across the Middle East, according to officials familiar with the matter.

The White House directed national security and diplomatic officials to find a way to place sanctions on the group after a White House visit April 9 by President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi of Egypt, for whom the Brotherhood represents a source of political opposition. In a private meeting without reporters and photographers, el-Sissi urged President Donald Trump to take that step and join Egypt in branding the movement a terrorist organization.

Such a designation imposes wide-ranging economic and travel sanctions on companies and individuals who interact with the targeted group. The president responded affirmatively to el-Sissi, saying it would make sense. Some of Trump’s advisers have interpreted that as a commitment, officials said.

But the proposal has prompted fierce debate within the administration, including at a senior-level meeting of policymakers from various departments convened last week by the White House’s National Security Council, the officials said.

In a statement, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, acknowledged that the administration was working on designating the Muslim Brotherhood terrorists.

“The president has consulted with his national security team and leaders in the region who share his concern, and this designation is working its way through the internal process,” Sanders said.

John Bolton, the national security adviser, and Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, support the idea, officials said. But the Pentagon, career national security staff, government lawyers and diplomatic officials have voiced legal and policy objections, and have been scrambling to find a more limited step that would satisfy the White House.

As a matter of law, officials have argued that the criteria for designating a terrorist organization are not a good fit for the Muslim Brotherhood, which is less a coherent body than a loose-knit movement with chapters in different countries that either use that moniker or have strong historical ties to it. Several political parties in places like Tunisia and Jordan consider themselves Muslim Brotherhood or have ties to it, but eschew violent extremism.

As a matter of policy, such a designation could have rippling consequences, including further stressing relations with Turkey, whose president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a staunch Brotherhood supporter. It is also unclear what the consequences would be for Americans and American humanitarian organizations with links to the group, and human rights officials have worried that el-Sissi might use it to try to justify an even harsher crackdown against his opponents.

Among the alternative ideas raised at the meeting last week were trying to identify and target a terrorist-linked group with ties to the Brotherhood that has not yet been designated or limiting any designation’s scope to the Egyptian branch, officials said.

A former general, el-Sissi helped lead a coup in 2013 that deposed Mohammed Morsi, Egypt’s first democratically elected president and a former Brotherhood leader, and has reimposed strongman rule on Egypt. The Egyptian government deemed the Brotherhood a terrorist organization several years ago as part of a brutal crackdown on its supporters, and el-Sissi repeatedly pressed the Obama administration to follow suit. But the Obama team refused, for both legal and policy reasons.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in 1928 in Egypt and for decades it used violence as a means to pursue its goal of a society governed by Islamic law. It renounced violence in the 1970s and embraced democracy instead, although some offshoots and former members have engaged in terrorism.

The push for sanctions on the Brotherhood is the latest of several significant foreign policy decisions by Trump that appear to have been heavily influenced by talking to autocratic foreign leaders without first being fully vetted by career government professionals — such as his abrupt choice, since partly reversed, to swiftly pull U.S. troops out of Syria.

The Trump administration had weighed whether to designate both the Muslim Brotherhood and an arm of Iran’s military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, as terrorist organizations during its chaotic first weeks in 2017. But the ideas lapsed amid objections from career professionals and the fallout from other capricious early steps, like Trump’s ban on visitors from several predominantly Muslim countries.

But this spring, the administration abruptly pushed through the terrorist designation for the Revolutionary Guards. Pompeo, who has the most important voice in the debate besides Trump’s because the secretary of state controls the list of designated terrorist organizations, announced sanctions on the Iranian military arm April 8, the day before el-Sissi visited the White House.

The move against the Iranian military was the first time the United States had interpreted its counterterrorism laws as permitting an entity of a nation-state government to count as terrorists.

That novel use by the Trump administration of the power Congress has granted the executive branch to make such a determination prompted alarm among U.S. military, intelligence and diplomatic professionals, who worried that the administration was moving forward without thinking through potential consequences and working out policy details to deal with them.

The potential problems included creating a need to grant huge numbers of visa waivers for Iraqi officials who interact with the Iranian military agency; raising the question of whether U.S. officials should start denying visas to members of other countries’ intelligence services that use violence, including Israel, Pakistan and Russia; and risking retaliation against U.S. troops and intelligence officials.

LAKE PLACID — This village made animation history for the second time Sunday night. That’s right: Lake Placid, among many other upstate New York communities, was referenced in “The Simpsons.”

America’s longest-running prime-time television family took a trip to Niagara Falls in their latest episode, “D’oh Canada.” Along the way, Bart and Homer laugh at tired towns and empty storefronts. Lisa asks how they can be so enthusiastic about a declining country.

“Cheer up, honey,” Homer says. “We’re heading to the one place that can never decline because it was never that great: Upstate New York.”

Homer then sings about the lovable mediocrity of upstate New York to the tune of Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York.” As he highlights upstaters’ affinity for Fox News, hot wings and booze, he stops by the Anchor Bar in Buffalo for some wings, gets his degree at Mohawk Valley Community College and becomes mayor of Oriskany, a village of 0.8 square miles in Oneida County.

At one point, Roni the Raccoon, the mascot for the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid, dances in a kick line along with a lotto ticket, an opioid pill, a jar of borscht, a dime (FDR was from Hyde Park) and Otto the Orange from Syracuse University.

Other gags include Homer sitting in a nearly empty New Era Field home of the Buffalo Bills and a scene of the Kodak Park in Rochester getting demolished. However, the logic of Homer’s montage through upstate New York comes into question when he’s seen drinking a Duff beer with the Headless Horseman of Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.” Sleepy Hollow a village in Westchester County, only about a 45-minute train ride to Yankee Stadium — downstate in many people’s minds.

This isn’t the first time “The Simpsons” referenced Lake Placid. In the 2004 episode “She Used to Be My Girl,” Marge imagines what her life would be like if she pursued her dream of journalism, reporting on the “Miracle on Ice” that never happened.

Emmy winner Tim Long of Ontario co-wrote Sunday’s episode with his wife Miranda Thompson. According to the Canadian Press, Long said for years the show has been making fun of Canada.

“I remember the day when we taught them that the Canadian one-dollar coin was called a loonie and the two-dollar coin was called a toonie. Oh, that shut down work for several hours because nobody could believe it,” Long told the Canadian Press. “So you’ll often find that the references on the show to Canada haven’t been written by Canadians, but they’ve been written by Americans looking across the table at a Canadian and thinking, ‘What the hell is with that guy?’”

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s senior adviser Rich Azzopardi responded to the episode on Twitter.

“There always remains work to be done but — dumb cheap shots aside — facts are facts: jobs are up, unemployment is down, millennials are coming back and it’s clear that Poochie was an uncredited writer on that episode,” he said. “However, I still want a Fighting Hellfish tattoo.”

Any seasoned “Simpsons” fan would know Poochie is the cartoon dog Homer voiced in the season 8 episode “The Itchy & Scratchy & Poochie Show.” He was a joke on the influx of radical, edgy and extreme comic book and cartoon characters that wound up being way less cool than intended.

Azzopardi mistakenly wrote “Fighting Hellfish” in his tweet when it’s actually “Flying Hellfish” that was Abraham Simpson’s military unit in World War II.

Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism CEO and President Jim McKenna laughed at the idea of “The Simpsons” spoofing Lake Placid, but he didn’t want to comment until he’s seen the episode.

One of “The Simpsons’” more popular upstate New York references was in season 7 when Principal Skinner served a plate of Krusty Burgers to Superintendent Chalmers and called them “steamed hams,” despite the fact that they were obviously grilled. Skinner claimed the expression is from upstate New York. Chalmers, a Utica native, says he’s never heard it before. Skinner replies that it’s an Albany phrase. It’s since become an internet meme.

TUPPER LAKE — A study conducted by faculty at Clarkson University in Potsdam will determine if the villages of Tupper Lake and Lake Placid could use batteries to reduce electricity costs by staying within their municipal departments’ state energy allotment through “peak shaving.”

Thomas Ortmeyer, a Clarkson professor and lead researcher for the project, said the $75,000 study was made possible by the villages’ rare municipal electric department contracts and increasing technology around lithium ion batteries.

Both municipalities own their electric departments, and New York State Power Authority gives them a fixed amount of hydropower, which, when surpassed, is purchased on the open market for substantially higher prices.

Ortmeyer said the batteries, if installed, would ideally reduce the number of instances where the villages exceed their hydropower allotment, thus saving customers money.

“This is one of the reasons this study is unique,” said Adirondack North Country Association Energy Circuit Rider Nancy Bernstein, who will facilitate the study. “Often, communities with municipal electric utilities don’t benefit from renewable technologies such as solar or wind because their electricity costs are already very low. But it’s possible they may benefit from energy storage opportunities like this.”

ANCA energy circuit riders serve as field agents for the grant-funded nonprofit group’s Clean Energy Program. They help communities plan, finance and implement energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. In this case they worked with Lake Placid and Tupper Lake municipal leaders to identify their initial interest in using batteries to peak shave.

Ortmeyer said the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will fund around 80% of the project, with Clarkson and the municipalities covering the 20% left. The college will pay for a larger portion of that 20% share.

Hydro contract renewed

Last week, Tupper Lake municipal electric department Superintendent Mike Dominie told the village board that the Municipal Electric Utilities Association and NYPA had reached an agreement, extending the contract for the village’s allotment of hydropower through 2040. It had been set to expire in 2025

The agreement extension impacts Lake Placid, too.

“Without threat of outside interest, both the MEUA and the New York Power Authority … worked diligently throughout the contract process to ensure all key players had a fair and equitable agreement moving into the future for all of our municipal member systems,” retired Tupper Lake municipal electric department Superintendent Marc Staves wrote in a message to the Enterprise.

Batteries

Ortmeyer said the batteries would store energy at night when the draw is low and put that energy to use during the day when draw is high, shifting the source of energy usage.

He said he and his research partner, professor Tuyen Vu, would primarily look at the average 15-minute demand data to determine when to store and use energy.

The batteries come in shipping containers, may be used to store between one and 10 megawatts per hour, and may cost $1 million or more. Ortmeyer said that due to demand from the automobile industry for electric cars, there have been “significant performance improvements” in lithium ion batteries over recent years, as they have become safer, cheaper and longer lasting.

Last December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the deployment of 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030 to help New York meet his Green New Deal, a clean energy and jobs agenda with a goal of putting New York state on a path to a carbon-neutral economy.

NYSERDA announced last week that the state will invest in energy storage and that developers of large-scale projects can apply for a piece of the funds to reduce the cost of energy storage systems.

The state is preparing for potential future flooding along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River by sending out sandbags to communities waiting to see what the weather brings.

The International Joint Commission, which oversees regulations of the Great Lakes, predicted Friday that Lake Ontario levels will “keep rising significantly this week” due to predicted rainfall across the lake basin and the excessive inflow of water from Lake Erie.

Lake Ontario reached 246.94 feet last week, about a foot higher than the historic average for that time, which is 245.87 feet, according to commission data.

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo announced Monday the Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Services deployed 216,000 sandbags and multiple sandbaggers to several locations along the lake this weekend. An additional 30,000 unfilled sandbags and 6,000 sandbags were allocated to the village of Sodus Point Monday. Municipalities can request additional sandbags, sandbaggers and aquadam, or temporary barriers that can halt and redirect water.

“Our concern is the people and properties in the state of New York, and flooding is a real possibility, so we are preparing for the worst case scenario,” Gov. Cuomo said in a statement. “We have to accept that flooding and increased water flow is a new reality, and we need to start building for that new reality instead of just responding to these continued emergencies.”

The distribution of the sandbags is being coordinated through the state Department of Transportation. The department is storing and filling the sandbags in central locations in each county, ready for local highway departments to retrieve and use as needed in the towns and villages, according to Jefferson County Deputy Director of Fire and Emergency Management Chuck Ruggiero.

The state has already provided 30,000 sandbags to St. Lawrence County in response to rising St. Lawrence and Raquette River water levels, which has caused some flooding in the communities along them. Jefferson County has received 10,000 sandbags from the state at the moment and may get as many as 25,000.

“As requested or required, they will go out to where there is a need,” Mr. Ruggiero said. “We’re going to get all the supplies we need.”

Waterfront communities along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River suffered shoreline damage from flooding and abnormally high water levels in 2017, and officials from the affected areas have been watching weather forecasts and water levels in hopes that they won’t climb.

The height of the lake last week, was about a foot lower than the same time in 2017, which was 247.6 feet. Thomas E. Brown, a member of the IJC’s subagency tasked with monitoring lake and river levels, the International Lake Ontario-St. Lawrence River Board, however, said levels could reach as high as in 2017 in the next two to three weeks if current weather and precipitation forecasts prove true.

“We’re pretty close to where we were in 2017,” Mr. Brown said.

Lake Ontario and St. Lawrence River levels are regulated through releases of water at the Robert Moses-Robert H. Saunders Power Dam in Massena and Cornwall, Ontario.

In addition to dealing with excessive water flowing in from Lake Erie, regulators have also been trying to mitigate flooding in the lower St. Lawrence River and Lake St. Louis caused by inflows from the Ottawa River. The height of the river near Montreal is about a foot higher than it was in 2017, Mr. Brown said areas along the lake and near Montreal have already experience flooding. Heavy precipitation and increasing surface runoff will cause the Ottawa River “to reach unprecedented outflows,” according to the commission, which has decreased outflows from the power dam in response.

The dam is the only control measure the IJC has for the entire Great Lakes system, Mr. Brown said, adding that the group cannot control how much water enters Lake Ontario.

“It’s due time legislators, government officials and all shoreline interests recognize that neither the IJC nor can any other body prevent shoreline flooding in cases of” excessive precipitation, he said.

While water levels in the lake and river have not reached 2017 heights, local officials in Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties have been monitoring them in preparation for possible spikes.

Keith J. Zimmerman, interim emergency services director for St. Lawrence County, said the above average level of the river has already caused flooding over docks and some damage in waterfront towns, although the water receded a bit between Saturday and Sunday. The county has reached out to emergency and fire departments in communities such as Ogdensburg, Morristown, Lisbon and Oswegatchie.

St. Lawrence County Chairman Joseph R. Lightfoot, R-Ogdensburg, said county officials are closely monitoring the situation and will deploy assistance where needed, adding that conditions “could turn into a real catastrophe” like in 2017.

“Residents of Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties shouldn’t have to worry about taking on the chin every year because of the IJC’s inability to address this in a way that will minimize any possible damage to U.S. and Canadian residents,” said Assemblyman Mark C. Walczyk, R-Watertown, in a statement Saturday. “I promise that I’ll be working day and night to ensure those who need help receive it and residents and businesses don’t see a repeat performance of 2017.”

Mr. Walczyk thanked Gov. Cuomo for the state’s assistance in a tweet Monday.

Jefferson County Legislator Philip N. Reed Sr. said while the water in the areas between Clayton and Alexandria Bay have exceeded their historic averages, he received no calls of panic during the weekend and the water remained below the tops of docks. He said the county will continue monitoring water levels, adding that “the next two weeks will be critical” for U.S. and Canadian communities.

Mr. Ruggiero acknowledged concerns, but said he had traveled all along the waterfront of the entire county and did not see any homes under immediate threat, although some docks and properties were underwater. He thinks that they will be able to avoid a repeat of the damage from 2017.

Cape Vincent Mayor Jerry C. Golden said the water has risen closer to the tops of the public docks, which still exhibit damage from the 2017 flooding, and reached four to five inches shy of where they were in 2017. Lyme Town Supervisor Scott G. Aubertine said water levels are eight to 12 inches below what they were in 2017, and while some residents expressed concerns about their homes, he wasn’t concerned about it affecting any structures unless it rises further.

“We’re obviously carefully watching it,” said Henderson Town Supervisor John J. Culkin, “I’m concerned, for sure, but am I in panic? I don’t think it’s ready for that time yet.”

The IJC sent a letter to municipalities along Lake Ontario and the St. Lawrence River in December warning them that water levels may continue to exceed and fall below historic averages because of extreme weather events. Officials encouraged them in the letter and property owners to research previous conditions and prepare for repeat events.

Mr. Brown said cities, towns and villages should implement zoning regulations that establish farther setbacks from the water, as well as build or reinforce protective structures like break walls in preparation for future spikes in water levels.

“The only defense against high water issues is store resiliency measures,” he said.

WATERTOWN — City Manager Rick Finn got high marks from City Council members after he proposed a 2019-20 budget that carries a 1.66 percent tax rate increase.

City Council members met in a work session for about an hour on Monday night to discuss their first look at the $44,198,031 spending plan.

Councilman Cody J. Horbacz was relieved that they weren’t facing a proposed budget with a 8.7 percent tax rate increase, like they were last year.

“This is the best budget rollout I’ve seen,” he said afterward. “We’re going in the right direction.”

Councilwoman Lisa A. Ruggiero not only liked the small tax rate increase but also the way Mr. Finn and staff showed where there would be increases and decreases from the existing budget.

“I’m impressed,” she said.

Mayor Joseph M. Butler Jr., in his last budget deliberations in office, doesn’t see a need for a lot of meetings to discuss the budget plan.

“I think it’s going to be a lot easier,” he said.

Mr. Finn describes the spending plan as “fiscally conservative.”

The proposed $44.2 million budget is $200,000 less than the current budget. The 1.66 percent increase would be under the state’s tax cap.

The proposed tax rate is $8.78 per $1,000 of assessed evaluation, up 14 cents per $1,000 from $8.64 per $1,000 in the current budget.

Mr. Finn plans to use $500,000 from the fund budget, down from the $2 million that was incorporated in the current budget and $1 million in the prior one.

Mr. Finn expects that hydroelectric revenues could go down in the coming year, as the Marble Avenue plant will again be shut down for a few months while additional maintenance is completed.

But he told council members the maintenance project could be delayed a year if it looks like it’s going to be a rainy spring, summer and fall, leading to hydro revenues doing well.

The spending plan has an $805,000 projected increase in sales tax.

The large increase in health insurance expenses of the past two years are not expected to happen. Mr. Finn has health insurance costs going down about $1.1 million.

Three vacant positions — deputy city comptroller, a maintenance worker and a refuse collector — will not be filled and would save $189,017.

City water and sewer rates would remain unchanged.

The budget also includes $5,000 that would be used to determine where a dog park could be located and develop concept designs and estimated costs.

The goal would be to identify an acceptable location and have a design and cost estimate so that a fundraising and grant-writing can begin on this potential project,” Mr. Finn wrote in his budget message.

Mr. Finn proposes spending $20,000 to purchase an agenda software program, allowing all council agendas to be developed entirely on an electronic format. Each council member would receive an I-Pad that would be used for council agenda and city business.

Mr. Finn put together the proposed budget on the goals using guidelines from the draft of the strategic plan that city officials have been working on for several months, Mr. Finn said.

Council members will scheduled dates on Monday for budget deliberation meetings.

CARTHAGE — Carthage Central School District was alerted to a scam Monday afternoon.

Miller’s Meat Market, Lowville, informed the district athletic department that operations manager Darrell Miller had received a telephone call about advertising on a sports calendar.

The number on his caller ID was that of the Carthage school.

“She said we did it last year which didn’t surprise me, but Dad didn’t remember doing it,” said Mr. Miller.

After he agreed to advertise he was transferred to another representative.

“That seemed strange,” he said, noting the second caller verified his address and pressed him to pay by credit card.

Instead he requested an invoice in order to pay by check.

He received a faxed invoice from Sports Media of Memphis, Tenn. Wanting to see the advertisement before publication, Mr. Miller called Sports Media but there was no answer at the phone number listed on the invoice.

Then they called Carthage school and were informed the school had no such promotion.

“I’m glad we didn’t pay,” said Mr. Miller.

“The Carthage Central District wants community members to be aware that Sports Media has no affiliation with the district for a fall sports poster,” said Superintendent of Schools Peter J. Turner. “Any solicitations from this organization should be ignored. It is unfortunate that an organization would use the school name to steal from unsuspecting individuals who support the school.”

TUPPER LAKE — A study conducted by faculty at Clarkson University in Potsdam will determine if the villages of Tupper Lake and Lake Placid could use batteries to reduce electricity costs by staying within their municipal departments’ state energy allotment through “peak shaving.”

Thomas Ortmeyer, a Clarkson professor and lead researcher for the project, said the $75,000 study was made possible by the villages’ rare municipal electric department contracts and increasing technology around lithium ion batteries.

Both municipalities own their electric departments, and New York State Power Authority gives them a fixed amount of hydropower, which, when surpassed, is purchased on the open market for substantially higher prices.

Ortmeyer said the batteries, if installed, would ideally reduce the number of instances where the villages exceed their hydropower allotment, thus saving customers money.

“This is one of the reasons this study is unique,” said Adirondack North Country Association Energy Circuit Rider Nancy Bernstein, who will facilitate the study. “Often, communities with municipal electric utilities don’t benefit from renewable technologies such as solar or wind because their electricity costs are already very low. But it’s possible they may benefit from energy storage opportunities like this.”

ANCA energy circuit riders serve as field agents for the grant-funded nonprofit group’s Clean Energy Program. They help communities plan, finance and implement energy efficiency and renewable energy projects. In this case they worked with Lake Placid and Tupper Lake municipal leaders to identify their initial interest in using batteries to peak shave.

Ortmeyer said the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority will fund around 80% of the project, with Clarkson and the municipalities covering the 20% left. The college will pay for a larger portion of that 20% share.

Hydro contract renewed

Last week, Tupper Lake municipal electric department Superintendent Mike Dominie told the village board that the Municipal Electric Utilities Association and NYPA had reached an agreement, extending the contract for the village’s allotment of hydropower through 2040. It had been set to expire in 2025

The agreement extension impacts Lake Placid, too.

“Without threat of outside interest, both the MEUA and the New York Power Authority … worked diligently throughout the contract process to ensure all key players had a fair and equitable agreement moving into the future for all of our municipal member systems,” retired Tupper Lake municipal electric department Superintendent Marc Staves wrote in a message to the Enterprise.

Batteries

Ortmeyer said the batteries would store energy at night when the draw is low and put that energy to use during the day when draw is high, shifting the source of energy usage.

He said he and his research partner, professor Tuyen Vu, would primarily look at the average 15-minute demand data to determine when to store and use energy.

The batteries come in shipping containers, may be used to store between one and 10 megawatts per hour, and may cost $1 million or more. Ortmeyer said that due to demand from the automobile industry for electric cars, there have been “significant performance improvements” in lithium ion batteries over recent years, as they have become safer, cheaper and longer lasting.

Last December, Gov. Andrew Cuomo called for the deployment of 3,000 megawatts of energy storage by 2030 to help New York meet his Green New Deal, a clean energy and jobs agenda with a goal of putting New York state on a path to a carbon-neutral economy.

NYSERDA announced last week that the state will invest in energy storage and that developers of large-scale projects can apply for a piece of the funds to reduce the cost of energy storage systems.

Stacey Abrams, the Georgia Democrat who garnered national attention after narrowly losing her bid for governor last year, announced Tuesday that she will not run for Senate, despite a fierce lobbying effort by party leaders.

Abrams, 45, who in recent months has said she also was considering a presidential bid, did not say in a video statement what her next political move would be. She did vow to continue her fight against voter suppression, which she has said played a factor in her gubernatorial race against Republican Brian Kemp.

“I am so grateful for all of the support and encouragement I have received, from fellow Georgians to leaders of Congress and beyond,” Abrams said in a two-minute video posted to Twitter early Tuesday. “However the fights to be waged require a deep commitment to the job and I do not see the U.S. Senate as the best role for me in this battle for our nation’s future.”

Georgia has been a reliably Republican state, but shifting demographics there have convinced Democrats that they have a chance of winning a Senate seat. Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., recruited Abrams for the seat, held by first-term Republican Sen. David Perdue, seeing it as a prime opportunity if Abrams were the Democratic candidate.

Although her decision leaves party leaders without a candidate who has run statewide in Georgia, Abrams said she would “do everything in my power to ensure Georgia elects a Democrat to the United States Senate in 2020.”

WASHINGTON - Rep. Al Green, a longtime proponent of impeaching President Donald Trump, said Tuesday that he plans to force a vote to oust the president, though he offered no timetable on when he would act.

The Texas Democrat, who has been pushing the effort for more than a year, stood on the House floor and held up a copy of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to argue that “this Congress has a date with destiny” and must impeach Trump for obstructing justice.

“The bells of history are reminding us that we have a responsibility to our country that we must take up,” Green said, saying did not want to force the vote but that he had a duty to do so. “I will not put party above people. I will not put politics above principle. And I will not put this president above the law.”

He added: “I will not allow history to show that this Congress did not take a vote on the impeachment of a reckless, ruthless, lawless president. I absolutely believe that we must honor our date with history.”

The development, while perhaps not surprising, comes amid a renewed drive for impeachment in the House as divided Democrats simmer over Trump’s refusal to cooperate with their investigations. Trump last week declared that he would block all subpoenas while instructing administration officials to ignore requests for testimony and documents.

Further escalating the clash with Congress, Trump and his family, as well as the Trump Organization, filed suit Monday against one of their lenders and one of their banks late Monday, seeking to stop the financial firms from complying with subpoenas from congressional committees.

The lawsuit against Deutsche Bank, which has loaned Trump more than $360 million in recent years, and Capital One are designed to prevent the two institutions from providing records to the House Intelligence and Financial Services committees. The panels are led by Reps. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Maxine Waters, D-Calif., respectively.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., remains opposed to initiating impeachment proceedings, telling her fellow leaders on Monday night that they must stay focused on the legislative agenda ahead of the 2020 election. The California Democrat has said impeachment is “divisive” and that Trump is “not worth it.”

House Democrats remain divided over whether to move ahead on impeachment, with no chance that the Republican-led Senate would convict Trump and force him out despite Trump’s refusal to comply with Congress.

“We know it’s not going to be easy, and we recognize that all the effort he’s putting into denying us access for information is just an affirmation that he’s done something wrong,” said Rep. Bonnie Watson Coleman, D-N.J. “He’s hiding from the American people, and that is a communication that we’re gonna have to share with the American people: Talk to this president, tell the president you need to share the information that everyone is entitled to know.”

She said the decision rests with the leadership of the committees “when they feel they cannot go any further and the leadership of our caucus when they’ve tried everything they can to get answers to their questions. But I live in the real world. And the real world is that there is a Senate that has no desire to do the right thing so long as Republicans are in charge. So we need to figure out: How do we keep the fire on the president?”

Trump’s no-cooperation strategy comes in the aftermath of Mueller’s report that found 10 potential areas of obstruction by the president. While Mueller did not charge Trump with conspiring with Russia or obstructing justice, he appeared to defer to Congress on the latter, noting Justice rules bar a sitting president from prosecution.

More and more Democrats are fed up with Trump’s flagrant move to block their investigations, creating a divide in the caucus that is only likely to worsen over time.

Green’s move to force a vote in the House may exacerbate those divisions, forcing Democrats to cast a tough vote: with the base, which supports impeachment, or with the nation, which overall does not, according to recent polling.

Green said he is not lobbying lawmakers to join his cause but merely asked that they vote their conscience. Waters and Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., two other vocal impeachment backers, similarly said Tuesday morning that they were not organizing at the moment to push leadership on the matter.

The Maryland man charged in the Capital Gazette newspaper shooting that left five staff members dead has entered a plea of not criminally responsible to all charges in the case, citing a “mental disorder” that prevented him from conforming to the law.

Public defenders representing Jarrod Ramos did not detail the nature of the mental health issues they believe are involved but said that he “lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct,” according to court filings submitted Monday.

The plea comes after attorneys have spent months sparring over whether prosecutors have provided the defense team enough details about the 23 counts Ramos faces.

Ramos, 39, of Laurel, has been charged with first-degree murder and other offenses in the June 28, 2018, mass shooting.

Police say Ramos blasted through the doors of the newspaper’s office in the Annapolis area with a 12-gauge pump-action shotgun, killing five: editorial editor Gerald Fischman, 61; assistant editor Rob Hiaasen, 59; sportswriter and editor John McNamara, 56; sales assistant Rebecca Smith, 34; and reporter Wendi Winters, 65.

Ramos barricaded the office’s back doors, employed smoke grenades and planned the attack in the midst of a long-standing grudge with the daily newspaper, prosecutors said. Ramos began threatening the newspaper in letters and social media after it published a column about him pleading guilty to harassing a former high school classmate through social media, police and prosecutors said.

Ramos’ trial is scheduled to begin in November and expected to last two weeks.

WASHINGTON — Democratic congressional leaders emerged from a meeting at the White House on Tuesday and announced that President Donald Trump had agreed to pursue a $2 trillion infrastructure plan to upgrade the nation’s highways, railroads, bridges and broadband.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., the minority leader, said that there had been “goodwill” in the meeting and that it was “different from some of the other meetings that we’ve had.” Speaking alongside House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., he said the group planned to meet again in three weeks, when Trump was expected to tell them how he planned to actually pay for the ambitious project.

The first substantive sit-down between Trump and Democratic leadership since the 35-day government shutdown last winter unfolded at a tense moment.

Since their last face-to-face meeting at the White House, the special counsel released his 448-page report detailing Trump’s monthslong effort to thwart an investigation that loomed over his presidency. Pelosi, since then, has tried to caution her colleagues against impeaching the president, while facing growing pressure from her caucus and from 2020 Democratic presidential contenders to do so.

Trump is also going to great lengths to stonewall expanding investigations by House Democrats, resisting efforts to obtain his tax returns, preventing former aides from testifying and even pursuing legal action against Deutsche Bank, a longtime lender to the Trump Organization, and another bank to stop them from responding to congressional subpoenas.

But speaking to reporters on the driveway outside of the West Wing, Schumer told reporters there was no issue with pursuing both oversight and legislation along parallel tracks.

“In previous meetings, the president has said if these investigations continue, I can’t work with you,” Schumer said of the president.

“He didn’t bring it up. I believe we can do both at once,” Schumer added. “The two are not mutually exclusive and we were glad he didn’t make it that way.”

“Infrastructure Week” has become a recurring theme of the Trump presidency. A $1 trillion infrastructure plan remains one of Trump’s unfulfilled promises from his 2016 campaign. The effort took a back seat to the administration’s failed attempt to repeal the health care law and then to its successful passage of a tax overhaul in 2017.

The original plan was also one that everyone rejected from the beginning — Trump even criticized public-private partnerships, which were key to the plan’s financing — and there has not been a new plan put forward since.

But Democrats went to the White House for a meeting, intent to play along as if there was a chance.

Pelosi requested the White House meeting in April, in part to change the conversation from impeachment to infrastructure and to demonstrate that Democrats want to proceed with a policy agenda and not merely with oversight investigations of the president.

Democrats arrived Tuesday with a dozen members of Congress. Trump was accompanied in the meeting by Elaine Chao, the transportation secretary, as well as seven White House aides, including his daughter Ivanka Trump, who is also a presidential adviser; Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council; and Pat Cipollone, White House counsel.

The meeting took place behind closed doors. But the tactic of trying to stage-manage Oval Office meetings with Trump struck some as out of step.

“We’re in the middle of a constitutional crisis here,” said Brian Fallon, a former aide to Schumer. “The most important job the Democrats have right now is to uphold the rule of law against a president who thinks the law doesn’t apply to him. We have bigger fish to fry than trying to look like we gave it a shot on infrastructure. This was the play in 2016. It strikes me as a very pre-Trump approach for how to manage.”

Speaking at the Milken Institute Global Conference in Los Angeles on Tuesday, Mick Mulvaney, the acting White House chief of staff, expressed deep skepticism about the possibility of an infrastructure deal with Democrats. He said the two parties had major differences on the scope and timing of a plan, and he questioned the intentions of Democrats.

Mulvaney said he had advised the president that Republicans must push for environmental deregulation so that new projects could get built within two years. He suggested that under current regulations, a trillion dollars’ worth of spending might not lead to new roads or bridges being built for 10 years.

“I want to change the environmental laws, how do you feel about that as a Democrat?” Mulvaney said. “It’s going to be a very difficult place for them to go. I think that may be the place where the discussions break down.”

Mulvaney said it was possible that Republicans and Democrats really did agree on the need to invest in the nation’s infrastructure, but he questioned whether Democrats were coming to the table in good faith or if they were trying to make a “show” out of the talks.

“The mantra we use around the office is: They either have to choose to legislate or litigate, you can’t have it both ways,” he said.

For most Americans, robocalls are an inescapable annoyance, thanks to scammers, telemarketers and debt-collectors that target smartphones and landlines at all hours of the day.

For a cancer center in Tampa, Florida, though, these auto-dialed calls are a danger to doctors and patients alike - one that should prompt Congress to take action.

The plea for help came Tuesday as House lawmakers embarked on a new effort to crack down on robocalls that rang consumers’ mobile phones roughly 26 billion times in 2018, according to one industry estimate. The calls largely are the work of fraudsters who mask their identities by using phone numbers that resemble those that they’re trying to contact, a tactic known as spoofing that’s meant to dupe consumers into answering the phone and then surrendering personal information.

The robocall deluge has proven especially alarming for hospitals, treatment centers and other health-related organizations, said Dave Summitt, the chief information security officer at the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute. Testifying at a before the House Energy and Commerce Committee, he said the institute received roughly 6,600 external calls over a recent 90-day period that “were either malicious intent, or identified themselves as someone they’re not,” using numbers that appeared to be coming from within the cancer center itself.

Other robocalls misrepresented themselves as federal agencies - including the U.S. Justice Department - and sought to deceive the center’s doctors into surrendering information about their medical license, according to Summitt’s testimony. In other cases, scammers spoofed the cancer center’s number and targeted some of its nearly 60,000 patients. And the Moffitt institute said it struggled to solicit help from its telecommunications carrier, which it declined to name in testimony. At times, the carrier prevented officials from filing a complaint or obtaining the source of the unwanted calls so it could take action, Summitt said.

“When you’re sitting here, and you’re in a healthcare situation, and you’re seeing a phone call coming from inside the organization, you’re going to pick the thing up,” he said. “If they happen to get a hold of one of our patients... they are absolutely going to answer that phone.”

“They are making money, and they’re doing it on the backs of patients and other consumers,” Summitt added. “And in the process, they’re hurting us very badly.”

Summitt’s call to action illustrates the broad array of issues facing lawmakers as they consider updating the government’s decades-old anti-robocall rules. The House hearing Tuesday focused on seven potential reforms, including a bill to toughen criminal penalties for scammers and another that would outlaw a broader array of automated calls, including those from debt collectors.

At a moment when Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill are viciously divided, often unable even to address issues on which they agree, lawmakers from both parties expressed hope that they could find a common foe in robocalls.

“Regulators and industry need better tools to protect consumers, and once again, it is time for Congress to act,” said New Jersey Rep. Frank Pallone, the Energy and Commerce Committee chairman.

But House lawmakers on Tuesday opted against considering a bill meant to prod the country’s telecom carriers into adopting the latest anti-robocall technology. The so-called Traced Act received early support in the Republican-controlled Senate last month, and its omission could foreshadow political disagreements between the two chambers that could prevent reform this year.

For its part, a lobbying organization that represents companies including AT&T and Verizon stressed the industry’s recent work to implement new technology that would flag consumers to potential spam calls. “There is no single solution to ending the scourge of robocalls, but progress is being made every day,” Patrick Halley, a senior vice president at the industry association USTelecom, told the committee.

Summitt, the chief information security officer at Moffitt, said those changes had not come fast enough.

“Our technology today can do things to help put this down,” he said, “and I’m asking for that to be pushed forward faster than it is.”

LOS ANGELES — The targets kept changing, but investigators say Mark Steven Domingo’s mission remained as bloody as it was simple.

In one conversation, prosecutors said, the 26-year-old U.S. Army veteran spoke of spraying a Los Angeles police cruiser with bullets. Other times, his rage allegedly redirected toward a nearby synagogue. Sometimes he wanted to kill Christians, authorities said, and at least once, he considered bombing the Santa Monica Pier.

Domingo believed he should “start small,” considering one killing practice for the next, according to court documents. He hoped to learn about police response times and build toward a large-scale attack, possibly an explosion that would end with “hundreds and maybe thousands of U.S. citizens injured.”

“And then what?” an informant asked Domingo.

“Then the fun starts,” Domingo responded.

Domingo finally set his sights on a right-wing rally that was scheduled to take place Sunday in Long Beach’s Bluff Park, authorities said; he hoped to detonate an explosive device and gain vengeance for Muslims killed in other corners of the globe. But after receiving what he believed to be a pressure-cooker bomb while scouting the attack site, Domingo was arrested Friday by the FBI before his violent fantasies could become reality.

Federal investigators and local law enforcement leaders announced Domingo’s capture Monday, expressing relief that they were able to intercept a terror suspect they described as “consumed with hate, and hell-bent on mass murder.”

“It’s not inconceivable that I’d be standing here today, beginning my remarks by offering condolences to victims of a horrific attack,” said Ryan Young, special agent in charge of counterterrorism for the FBI’s Los Angeles field office. “But not today.”

An Army infantryman who once served in Afghanistan, Domingo was charged with attempting to provide material support to terrorists. If convicted as charged, he faces 15 years in prison and remains in federal custody pending a May 31 court hearing.

News of the thwarted attacks comes as Southern California is still reeling from an eruption of gunfire that left one woman dead and three others injured inside a synagogue near San Diego on Saturday. That attack is being investigated as an anti-Semitic hate crime, and federal investigators said Monday that religion was at the heart of Domingo’s motivations as well.

Domingo, who recently converted to Islam, had been under surveillance for weeks after he expressed a desire in an online post to commit acts of violence, according to a 30-page affidavit unsealed Monday. Specifically, he wanted revenge for Muslims killed during a mass shooting in New Zealand last month, according to court documents.

“I feel like I should make a christians life miserable tomorrow for our fallen bros n sis in new zealand ... maybe a jews life (I don’t know) ... they shed our blood,” he wrote in a post after the shooting, according to the affidavit. “no Muslim should have to experience this, a message needs to be sent.”

After weeks of online chats and recorded conversations with an undercover law enforcement officer and an FBI informant, Domingo settled on a target, which he described as a “white nationalist” rally scheduled for Bluff Park in Long Beach on Sunday. The event had been organized by United Patriots National Front, whom extremism experts describe as a far-right organization with a dozen members, though they are not explicitly considered white nationalists.

Days before the rally, Domingo purchased 8 pounds of 3 ½-inch-long nails and asked an FBI informant to connect him with a bomb-maker who could build an explosive device similar to the pressure cooker bombs that maimed dozens of people at the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. According to the affidavit, Domingo chose nails that “would be long enough to penetrate the human body and puncture internal organs.”

Rumors that the rally might be canceled unnerved Domingo, according to court records. He considered two alternative targets: a Saturday demonstration against California’s so-called sanctuary state law in Huntington Beach, and an attack on the Santa Monica Pier where he would set off an explosive and then spray survivors with gunfire before he died a martyr.

Ultimately, records show, Domingo settled on the Long Beach event. He drove to Bluff Park on Friday with the informant and an undercover officer, whom he believed to be the bomb-maker. After scouting the park, he took possession of an inert device which he thought was a “weapon of mass destruction” and was arrested by FBI agents.

Law enforcement officials did not warn organizers at either rally because they believed Domingo was the only credible threat to either event. The far-right group did not show up at Bluff Park, according to Long Beach Police Chief Robert Luna, who said about 200 counterprotesters descended on the park without incident Sunday.

Federal investigators said the rapidly evolving nature of Domingo’s plans concerned them.

“Our biggest fear is this is what we call a rapid radicalization, a rapid mobilization, to violence,” the FBI’s Young said. “Sometimes, we get asked what keeps you up at night? This is a case that keeps us up at night.”

Domingo, who lives in Reseda, had been assigned to Fort Campbell in Kentucky and served in Afghanistan from September 2012 to January 2013. Authorities said he left the armed forces shortly after. A Department of Defense representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said Domingo did not receive an honorable discharge.

It was unclear when Domingo converted to Islam. According to the affidavit, he first posted a video declaring his faith on March 2. He began expressing a desire to see Americans killed a short time after.

“america needs another vegas event (to be honest) something to kick off civil unrest,” he wrote on March 3, referencing the 2017 mass shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas. “its not about winning the civil war its about weakening America and giving them a taste of the terror they gladly spread all over the world.”

The FBI made contact with Domingo online within the next two weeks, and he was under near constant surveillance until his arrest, officials said. During discussions with the informant, Domingo repeatedly suggested using one of the three rifles he owned to carry out a violent attack.

Hussam Ayloush, executive director of the Greater Los Angeles Area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement that the group is “grateful the alleged plans to hurt and kill innocent people were foiled. There is absolutely no justification for such murderous intent.”

But, Ayloush noted, he was “concerned by the FBI informant’s tactics, which seemed to encourage and spur this veteran to plot these attacks.”

His comment echoes those who have criticized the FBI’s online terror stings in the past, believing agents prod mentally ill suspects into involving themselves in plots they would otherwise have been unable to carry out. But court records show the informant repeatedly tried to talk Domingo out of his plans.

“You don’t need to, like, you don’t have to do this. You know that, right?” the informant told Domingo on March 22.

But in each conversation, Domingo’s violent desires seemed to escalate. He showed up to an April 19 meeting wearing camouflage and carrying a semi-automatic rifle, according to court records. When discussing the potential bombing, Domingo seemed to find joy in possible carnage.

“The human body is very easy to break. A grenade can do a lot of damage but a big (improvised explosive device) in a backpack, in a crowd?” he said, according to the affidavit. “You’re looking at least 20 people dead, maybe 30 people injured. ... If we do this L.A. is going to be locked down.”

OGDENSBURG — St. Lawrence County sheriff’s deputies on Monday charged Michelle R. Parker, 28, of 9043 Route 58, with animal cruelty.

Deputies charge on Jan. 7 at her residence, Ms. Parker failed to provide proper sustenance to her dog, Ace, in the form of food, water or veterinary care, causing him to become malnourished.

Ms. Parker adopted Ace on May 4 from the Jefferson County SPCA and deputies said the complaint originated from the Jefferson County Animal Cruelty Task Force.

Ms. Parker was issued a ticket returnable to Morristown Town Court.

St. Lawrence County Animal Control, the Jefferson County Animal Cruelty Task Force, Friends 4 Paws Inc. and Northland Veterinary Hospital assisted in the case.