Arizona, Nevada and California said Monday they’re willing to cut back on their use of the dwindling Colorado River in exchange for money from the federal government — and to avoid forced cuts as drought threatens the key water supply for the U.S. West.

The $1.2 billion plan, a potential breakthrough in a year-long stalemate, would conserve an additional 3 million acre-feet of water through 2026, when current guidelines for how the river is shared expire. About half the cuts would come by the end of 2024.

That’s less than what federal officials said last year would be needed to stave off crisis in the river but still marks a notable step in long and difficult negotiations between the three states.

The 2,334-kilometer river provides water to 40 million people in seven U.S. states, parts of Mexico and more than two dozen Native American tribes. It produces hydropower and supplies water to farms that grow most of the nation’s winter vegetables.

In exchange for temporarily using less water, cities, irrigation districts and Native American tribes in the three states will be paid. The federal government plans to spend $1.2 billion, said Lauren Wodarski, a spokesperson to U.S. Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Nevada Democrat.

Though adoption of the plan isn’t certain, U.S. Bureau of Reclamation Commissioner Camille Touton called it an “important step forward.” She said the bureau will pull back its proposal from last month that could have resulted in sidestepping the existing water priority system to force cuts while it analyzes the three-state plan. The bureau’s earlier proposal, if adopted, could have led to a messy legal battle.

“At least they’re still talking. But money helps you keep talking,” said Terry Fulp, former regional director of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin region. He noted the agreement is a “short-term, three-year deal” and that because the Upper Basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah and Wyoming didn’t face immediate cuts, they were not part of the pact.

The three Lower Basin states are entitled to 7.5 million acre-feet of water altogether from the river. An acre-foot of water is roughly enough to serve two to three U.S. households annually.

California gets the most, based on a century-old water rights priority system. Most of that goes to farmers in the Imperial Irrigation District, though some also goes to smaller water districts and cities across Southern California. Arizona and Nevada have already faced cuts in recent years as key reservoir levels dropped based on prior agreements. But California has been spared.

Under the new proposal, California would give up about 1.6 million acre-feet of water through 2026 — a little more than half of the total. That’s roughly the same amount the state first offered six months ago. It wasn’t clear why the other states agreed to a deal now when California didn’t offer further cuts. Leaders in Arizona and Nevada didn’t immediately say how they’d divide the other 1.4 million acre-feet.

The Imperial Irrigation District would account for more than half of California’s cuts. J.B. Hamby, chairman of the Colorado River Board of California, said the district has already taken measures to improve water efficiency and will need to do more. He said the district is working on a pilot summer idling program where farmers would sign up to turn off their water for 60 days for forage crops. During that time of year, yields are already down and more water is required, he said.

Bill Hasencamp, manager of Colorado River resources for the Metropolitan Water District of California, which supplies water to 19 million people in southern California, said the wet winter means the state simply needs less water. His district is planning on leaving 250,000 acre-feet this year in Lake Mead and won’t withdraw it until after 2026.

The district will also turn over to the federal government a program that pays farmers to fallow land that typically nets them about 130,000 acre-feet of water a year, he said.

The Colorado River has been in crisis for years due to a multi-decade drought in the West intensified by climate change, rising demand and overuse. Water levels at key reservoirs dipped to unprecedented lows, though they have rebounded somewhat thanks to heavy precipitation this winter.

In recent years, the federal government has cut some water allocations and offered billions of dollars to pay farmers, cities and others to cut back. But key water officials didn’t see those efforts as enough to prevent the system from collapsing.

Michael Cohen, a senior researcher at the Pacific Institute focused on the Colorado River, called the amount of cuts the three states have proposed a “huge, huge lift” and a significant step forward.

“It does buy us a little additional time,” he said. But if more dry years are ahead, “this agreement will not solve that problem.”

A group of Chinese citizens living and working in the southern U.S. state of Florida sued the state Monday over a new law that bans Chinese nationals from purchasing property in large swaths of the state. 

The law applies to properties within 16 kilometers of military installations and other “critical infrastructure” and also affects citizens of Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, Russia, and North Korea. But Chinese citizens and those selling property to them face the harshest penalties. The prohibition also applies to agricultural land. 

The American Civil Liberties Union says the law will have a substantial chilling effect on sales to Chinese and Asian people who can legally buy property. The suit says the law unfairly equates Chinese people with the actions of their government and says there is no evidence of national security risks from Chinese citizens buying Florida property. 

The law “will codify and expand housing discrimination against people of Asian descent in violation of the Constitution and the Fair Housing Act,” the ACLU said in a news release announcing the suit. “It will also cast an undue burden of suspicion on anyone seeking to buy property whose name sounds remotely Asian, Russian, Iranian, Cuban, Venezuelan, or Syrian.” 

U.S.-China ties are strained amid growing tensions over security and trade. In nearly a dozen statehouses and Congress, a decades-old worry about foreign land ownership has spiked since a Chinese spy balloon traversed the skies from Alaska to South Carolina last month. 

Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, who is expected to launch a presidential campaign this week, signed the bill May 8. His office didn’t immediately respond to an email seeking comment. 

The law is set to take affect July 1. Under the new regulation, it will be a felony for Chinese people to buy property in restricted areas or for any person or real estate company to knowingly sell to restricted people. For the other targeted nationals, the penalty is a misdemeanor for buyers and sellers. 

It applies to land near military instillations as well as land near infrastructure like airports and seaports, water and wastewater treatment plants, natural gas and oil processing facilities, power plants, spaceports, and telecommunications central switching offices. 

The ACLU says the law “will have the net effect of creating ‘Chinese exclusion zones’ that will cover immense portions of Florida, including many of the state’s most densely populated and developed areas.” 

“This impact is exactly what laws like the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and the California Alien Land Law of 1913 did more than a hundred years ago,” the lawsuit says. 

Those on the restricted list that already own property near critical infrastructure must register with the state or face fines of up to $1,000 a day. They’re also prohibited from acquiring additional property. The law has provisions to allow the state to seize property from violators. 

The number of states restricting foreign ownership of agricultural land has risen by 50% this year. 

Heading into 2023, 14 states had laws restricting foreign ownership or investments in private agricultural land. So far this year, restrictive laws also have been enacted in Arkansas, Idaho, Montana, Tennessee, Utah and Virginia. 

Foreign land ownership has become “a political flashpoint,” said Micah Brown, a staff attorney for the National Agricultural Law Center at the University of Arkansas. 

Brown said the recent surge in state laws targeting land ownership by foreign entities stems from some highly publicized cases of Chinese-connected companies purchasing land near military bases. Earlier this year, the U.S. Air Force said that the Fufeng Group’s planned $700 million wet corn milling plant near a base in Grand Forks, North Dakota, poses a “significant threat to national security.” 

After a Chinese army veteran and real estate tycoon bought a wind farm near an Air Force base in Texas, that state responded in 2021 by banning infrastructure deals with individuals tied to hostile governments, including China. 

The United States is not considering lifting current sanctions on China’s defense chief, Li Shangfu, the State Department said Monday.

U.S. officials had said sanctions on Li do not prevent him from conducting official meetings with his American counterparts, nor should sanctions be hurdles for military talks between Washington and Beijing.

Over the weekend, U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters that he would not consider easing sanctions on Chinese officials to improve relations. He later suggested that lifting sanctions on the defense chief is “under negotiation right now.”

The State Department clarified the U.S. position Monday.

“No, we are not,” State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller told VOA on Monday during his first on-camera briefing. Miller was asked if the U.S. is considering or entertaining the idea of whether to ease sanctions on the top Chinese military official for negotiation purposes.

The People’s Republic of China named General Li Shangfu as its minister of national defense in mid-March. In 2018, the U.S. sanctioned Li under the so-called Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) when he headed the Equipment Development Department of the Chinese military.

The sanctions were related to China’s purchase of ten SU-35 combat aircrafts in 2017 and S-400 surface-to-air missile system-related equipment in 2018, according to the State Department.

U.S. officials have been eager to resume talks with their Chinese counterparts. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Li are both expected to attend next month’s Shangri-La Dialogue, a high-level Asia security summit in Singapore.

The Chinese military has not accepted the U.S. proposal for a meeting between their defense chiefs on the margins of this annual gathering.

In Beijing, Chinese officials questioned Washington’s “sincerity” in its outreach for communications.

“China always firmly opposes illegal unilateral sanctions and has made clear its stern position to the U.S. side. The U.S. side should immediately lift sanctions and take concrete actions to remove obstacles, create favorable atmosphere and conditions for dialogue and communication,” said Mao Ning, the spokesperson of China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Monday.

Both U.S. and Chinese officials have said there is a need to stabilize fraught relations between the world’s two largest economies. Ties that have been increasingly strained in recent months over security, trade and technology issues, Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Chinese officials have signaled a willingness to stabilize relations with the U.S., but at the same time they demand that the U.S. stop harming Chinese interests by strengthening ties with Taiwan and imposing technology restrictions on China.

Experts told VOA the ball is in China’s court.

“It’s unclear whether Beijing will proceed to take steps toward stabilizing ties unless the U.S. rolls back some of the measures it has taken that China objects to,” said Bonnie Glaser, managing director of the Indo-Pacific program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States.

Diplomatic visits to Beijing

Biden also said a “thaw” in the bilateral relationship would begin “very shortly.”

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry’s visit to Beijing for talks with his Chinese counterpart Xie Zhenhua would come after Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other U.S. cabinet members’ planned visits to Beijing, which was agreed during a recent phone call between Kerry and Xie, a diplomatic source who wishes not to be named told VOA.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo had also indicated their plans to visit China.

British stage, television and film star Ray Stevenson has died at 58 years old.

A criminal investigation in the southern U.S. state of Texas over the hesitant police response to the Robb Elementary School shooting is still ongoing as Wednesday marks one year since a gunman killed 19 children and two teachers inside a fourth-grade classroom in Uvalde.

The continuing probe underlines the lasting fallout over Texas’ deadliest school shooting and how the days after the attack were marred by authorities giving inaccurate and conflicting accounts about efforts made to stop a teenage gunman armed with an AR-style rifle.

The investigation has run parallel to a new wave of public anger in the U.S. over gun violence, renewed calls for stricter firearm regulations and legal challenges over authorities in Uvalde continuing to withhold public records related to the shooting as well as the police response.

Here’s a look at what has happened in the year since one of America’s deadliest mass shootings:

Police scrutiny

A damning report by Texas lawmakers put nearly 400 officers on the scene of the shooting, including from an array of federal, state and local agencies. The findings laid out how heavily armed officers waited more than an hour to confront and kill the 18-year-old gunman. It also accused police of failing “to prioritize saving innocent lives over their own safety.”

All of the students killed were between the ages of 9 and 11 years old.

At least five officers who were put under investigation after the shooting were either fired or resigned, although a full accounting is unclear. The head of the Texas Department of Public Safety, Col. Steve McCraw, put much of the blame after the attack on Uvalde’s school police chief, who was later fired by trustees.

McCraw had more than 90 of his own officers at the school — more than any other agency — and has rebuffed calls by some Uvalde families and lawmakers to also resign.

Uvalde County District Attorney Christina Mitchell said last week that Texas Rangers are still investigating the police response and that her office will ultimately present the findings to a grand jury. She said she did not have a timeline for when the investigation would be finished.

On Monday, Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin said he was frustrated by the pace of the investigations a year later.

“They don’t have answers to simple questions they should have,” McLaughlin said of the families.

Calls for gun control intensify

President Joe Biden signed the nation’s most sweeping gun violence bill in decades a month after the shooting. It included tougher background checks for the youngest gun buyers and added more funding for mental health programs and aid to schools.

It did not go as far as restrictions sought by some Uvalde families who have called on lawmakers to raise the purchase age for AR-style rifles. In the GOP-controlled Texas Capitol, Republicans this year rejected virtually all proposals to tighten gun laws over the protests of the families and Democrats.

Republican Texas Governor Greg Abbott has also waved off calls for tougher gun laws, just as he did after mass shootings at a Sutherland Springs church in 2017 and an El Paso Walmart in 2018. The issue has not turned Texas voters away from Abbott, who easily won a third term months after the Uvalde shooting.

Uvalde grieves

The Uvalde school district permanently closed the Robb Elementary campus and plans for a new school are in the works. Schools in Uvalde will be closed Wednesday.

About a dozen students in the classroom where the shooting unfolded survived the attack. Some returned to class in person last fall. Others attended school virtually, including a girl who spent more than two months in the hospital after being shot multiple times.

Veronica Mata, a kindergarten teacher in Uvalde, also returned to class this year after her 10-daughter Tess was among those killed in the attack.

Some Uvalde families have filed lawsuits against the gun maker and law enforcement.