By Niels Lesniewski, CQ-Roll Call

WASHINGTON — The White House on Tuesday announced the release of roughly $3.7 billion in funding to help lower-income households afford their home heating costs.

The funding, according to a senior administration official, represents 90% of the allocated funding for the program known as the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program for fiscal 2024, with the balance being held back in case there is a budgetary adjustment in the final full-year appropriation for the program, which is run by the Department of Health and Human Services.

“We’ve got news because the president worked so hard to get a bipartisan infrastructure law passed,” HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said on a call with reporters. “We know that in the next several weeks — we’re beginning to figure out how people need to be able to stay warm.”

Six million families were reliant on LIHEAP for heating or cooling last year, the secretary said. The funding largely comes from regular appropriations through the current continuing resolution, with an additional $100 million from the Biden administration’s bipartisan infrastructure law. The funding released Tuesday (and the overall allocation) does not match last year’s level, however, because that included emergency supplemental funding.

“In addition, the Biden-Harris administration is looking at every avenue to increase support to the American people, and we’re also looking at opportunities to potentially increase LIHEAP funding as well,” a senior administration official said in response to a question about the allocation at this point last year being $4.5 billion.

In the Northeast, home heating oil prices are running 26% below levels at this time last year, according to data from the Massachusetts Department of Energy Resources, with retail propane down about 5%.

How to see if you’re eligible

In conjunction with the announcement, the administration released a new online tool to help people determine their eligibility for funds, which HHS Office of Community Services Director Lanikque Howard said was an important advancement because eligibility requirements vary.

“As a block grant, LIHEAP grant recipients have flexibility in establishing program eligibility requirements. And with varying income eligibility requirements all across the country, it can be difficult for individuals and households to determine if they might be eligible for the program and whether they should invest the time and energy to apply,” Howard said.

Mitch Landrieu, the White House infrastructure coordinator, put the funding in the context of President Joe Biden’s broader economic agenda.

By JENNIFER PELTZ and JAKE OFFENHARTZ (Associated Press)

NEW YORK (AP) — Michael Cohen returned to the witness stand Wednesday in his ex-boss Donald Trump’s civil business fraud trial as the former president’s defense team tried to undermine the credibility and question the motives of his onetime personal attorney turned adversary.

Outside the courtroom, Trump’s commentary led the judge to weigh whether Trump had violated a limited gag order imposed earlier in the case.

With Trump at the defense table, his lawyer Alina Habba confronted Cohen with comments he had made praising Trump, before turning on him when Cohen’s legal problems started in 2018.

Habba tried to suggest that Cohen had angled unsuccessfully for a job in Trump’s White House — Cohen insisted he never sought one — and asked whether he had “significant animosity” toward Trump.

“Do I have animosity toward him? Yes I do,” Cohen replied.

“You have made a career out of publicly attacking President Trump, haven’t you?” Habba asked.

After a long pause, Cohen said, “Yes.”

Cohen worked as Trump’s lawyer and fixer for many years, before Cohen’s 2018 federal prosecution, guilty pleas and prison sentence for tax evasion, making false statements on a bank loan application, lying to Congress and making illegal contributions to Trump’s campaign. The contributions were in the form of payouts to women who said they had extramarital sexual encounters with Trump, who said the women’s stories were false.

Cohen is now a key witness in New York Attorney General Letitia James’ civil case against Trump. James alleges that Trump habitually exaggerated the value of his real estate holdings on financial documents that helped him get loans and insurance and make deals.

Trump denies any wrongdoing and says James, a Democrat, is targeting the leading Republican presidential candidate in 2024 for partisan reasons.

During a break in the testimony Wednesday, Trump complained that Judge Arthur Engoron, a Democrat, is “a very partisan judge, with a person who’s very partisan sitting along side of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

That remark came weeks after a Trump social media post about Engoron’s law clerk, who sits beside the judge, prompted Engoron to issue the narrow gag order and tell Trump to take down the post. That order bars all participants in the case from commenting about any members of the judge’s staff.

The judge fined Trump $5,000 on Friday after learning that the post had lingered on Trump’s campaign website for weeks, though it had been removed from his Truth Social platform.

After learning of Trump’s latest comment, Engoron asked “why should there not be severe sanctions for this blatant, dangerous disobeyal of a clear court order.”

In response, defense lawyer Christopher Kise insisted that Trump was talking about Cohen, not the judge’s law clerk. Engoron said he would take the matter “under advisement,” and testimony resumed.

When the trial broke for lunch, the judge held a closed-door meeting that included Trump and his lawyers. When Trump emerged, he declined to disclose what was discussed, but told reporters that he had not violated the gag order, saying his earlier comment was not directed at Engoron’s clerk. Trump ignored questions about whom he was targeting.

During his first day of testimony Tuesday, Cohen said he and key executives at Trump’s company worked to inflate the estimated values of their employer’s holdings so documents given to banks and others would match a net worth that Trump had set “arbitrarily.”

In cross-examining Cohen, Habba emphasized his federal criminal convictions and worked to portray him as a liar, especially after he said Tuesday he had lied when he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and loan application lies. Cohen asserted that he did not really commit those crimes and he sought to portray his conduct as a matter of omissions and failure to correct paperwork.

Habba returned to those themes Wednesday, underscoring that Cohen had admitted in open court to lying under oath in a federal courthouse next door.

Outside court, Trump said the trial was “very unfair” and a “pure political witch hunt.” Nonetheless, he said, “We’re happy with the way it’s going.”

“We have the facts on our side,” Trump said. He’s expected to testify later in the trial but meanwhile has voluntarily attended several days of the proceedings.

Cohen is also expected to be an important prosecution witness in a criminal trial scheduled for next spring in which Trump is accused of falsifying business records. That case is one of four criminal prosecutions Trump faces in New York, Florida, Georgia and Washington.

___

Associated Press writer Jill Colvin contributed to this report.

NEW YORK — The judge overseeing Donald Trump’s civil fraud trial accused the former president Wednesday of potentially violating the judge’s gag order a second time, threatening Trump with “severe sanctions” for apparently disparaging the judge’s law clerk.

During a break in the proceedings, Trump told reporters in the hallway outside the courtroom that “this judge is a very partisan judge with a person who’s very partisan sitting alongside of him, perhaps even much more partisan than he is.”

Shortly after Trump made that comment, Justice Arthur Engoron indicated he believed Trump was referring to his law clerk, Allison Greenfield, who sits directly to the judge’s right on the bench. Trump lawyer Chris Kise told Engoron that Trump’s comment referred not to the clerk but to Trump’s former personal lawyer and fixer, Michael Cohen, who sat a few feet away in the witness box to the judge’s left while testifying against Trump on Wednesday.

The judge initially imposed the gag order on Oct. 3 barring Trump from making comments about court staff after the former president posted a picture of Greenfield on his Truth Social platform. The post claimed that Greenfield was “running this case” and was “Schumer’s girlfriend.” The post was also sent to Trump’s campaign email list.

“I am very protective of my staff, as I should be,” Engoron said Wednesday, appearing agitated. “I don’t want anybody killed.”

“I stated the last time that any future violations would be severely punished,” Engoron said. “Why should there not be severe sanctions for this blatant, dangerous disobeyal of a court order?”

Engoron said he would take the matter under advisement, indicating that he would decide how to proceed after further considering Trump’s comment.

Last week, Engoron fined Trump $5,000 after finding that the former president’s campaign website continued to display the Oct. 3 Truth Social post despite the judge’s order that the post be taken down. (Trump’s lawyers said the violation was inadvertent.)

Engoron also indicated last week that he would consider jailing Trump for future violations of the gag order.

In his two-page order imposing the fine, he wrote. “Make no mistake: future violations, whether intentional or unintentional, will subject the violator to far more severe sanctions, which may include, but are not limited to, steeper financial penalties, holding Donald Trump in contempt of court, and possibly imprisoning him.”