(NEW YORK) — Just before Thanksgiving, about 9 million people who applied for student debt relief from the federal government got an email from the Department of Education with a subject line indicating their application had been “approved,” according to a copy of the email obtained by ABC News.
But that was misleading as the Biden administration’s student loan program was halted in mid-November by Republican-led lawsuits — weeks before the email was sent informing borrowers of their “approved” status.
The email explained as much in the email body, informing borrowers that “lawsuits are preventing the Department of Education from implementing its one-time student loan debt relief program.”
The program will remain in limbo until the Supreme Court makes the final call on the program sometime before late June. But the subject line left many borrowers confused.
Acknowledging the misfire this week — about two weeks later — the Department of Education told ABC News that borrowers will get an updated email soon that corrects the subject line and clarifies the state of the program. (The Department of Education said that some people did get emails with the correct subject line.)
A spokesperson said Accenture Federal Services, a contractor that does digital work for the federal government, is primarily responsible.
“Communicating clearly and accurately with borrowers is a top priority of the Department. We are in close touch with Accenture Federal Services as they take corrective action to ensure all borrowers and those affected have accurate information about debt relief,” a spokesperson for the Education Department said.
Accenture Federal Services has not returned a request for comment from ABC News, but the Education Department said the company is expected to review quality control measures for future email messages having to do with the program.
On the whole, the erroneous email is just one of multiple twists and turns for the debt relief proposal, which the White House announced in late August.
Around 26 million Americans applied for forgiveness by early November — nearly half of the people who were eligible. About 43 million Americans qualify in total, according to the Biden administration.
President Joe Biden and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona have said they remain confident the program will prevail through the legal challenges, though its challengers maintain the president has overreached his authority.
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump had an outside team conduct a deeper search for any government documents at four properties which turned up at least two more documents marked classified, ABC News has confirmed according to sources familiar with the matter.
The documents were recovered at a storage unit that is owned by the federal government, and maintained by the General Services Administration (GSA) in West Palm Beach, Florida, the sources told ABC News.
The Department of Justice has been notified of the documents’ existence.
The news of the search and discovery was first reported by The Washington Post.
In August, federal agents searching Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate recovered hundreds of classified documents that had been taken there when Trump left the White House.
The search of the storage unit was conducted after a federal judge pushed Trump’s lawyers to search for any further documents that were taken by the former president and his allies.
A spokesperson for Trump told ABC News in a statement, “President Trump and his counsel continue to be cooperative and transparent, despite the unprecedented, illegal, and unwarranted attack against President Trump and his family by the weaponized Department of Justice.”
“President Trump will keep fighting against the outrageous politicization of law enforcement and will always stand for America and all Americans,” the statement said.
(WASHINGTON) — Republicans are celebrating a major political win as they head into the new Congress with a House majority — forcing Democrats to concede on ending the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate in order to get the must-pass national defense bill across the finish line.
The move would be a major concession for Democrats and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy took a victory lap on Tuesday night when the National Defense Authorization Act was revealed to have included a provision to get rid of the mandate, writing on Twitter, “Last week I told Biden directly: it’s time to end your COVID vaccine mandate on our military & rehire our service members.”
“The end of the mandate is a victory for our military & for common sense,” said McCarthy, who is currently in a heated effort to secure support from his conference to become speaker in January.
The White House called the provision being included a “mistake” but didn’t say whether or not Biden would sign the bill once it’s passed. “We continue to believe that repealing the vaccine mandate is a mistake. Making sure our troops are ready to defend this country and prepared to do so that remains the president’s priority and the vaccine requirement for COVID does just that,” National Security Council coordinator for strategic communications John Kirby said Wednesday.
The White House and Pentagon argue that service members have long been required to get multiples vaccinations other than the COVID vaccine.
A vote on the military funding bill is expected as early as Wednesday.
Democrat House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said on Tuesday that Democrats needed to agree to the provision in order to get the policy bill passed, calling it “a question of how can we get something done?”
“We are willing to compromise because we want to make sure we fund government. We want to make sure that we get that national defense bill passed. This is a small part of it,” Hoyer said.
The mandate was imposed in August 2021 and requires all U.S. service members to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
Other Republicans celebrated the added provision, arguing that the move would particularly help with difficulty in recruiting and retaining service members.
Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell praised the mandate’s repeal, calling it “a policy which this Democratic administration had stubbornly clung to even as it has clearly undermined readiness and hurt retention.”
Including a repeal of the mandate in House bill may well save the NDAA from procedural calamity when it heads to the Senate. Last week, a large contingent of Senate Republicans threatened to slow or even block the bill over the provision.
“You’re going to kick somebody out of the military who is willing to get shot because they won’t take a shot,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who lead the Senate Republican effort with Kentucky Republican Rand Paul, said at a press conference.
Graham and Braun said they had assembled a coalition of over 20 Republicans who would insist on the opportunity to vote on an amendment to repeal the mandate if a repeal wasn’t included in the bill. A group of this size wouldn’t have been able to block the NDAA, but they could have derailed it for days.
“It ought to be your body and your choice whether you get the vaccine,” Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, who joined the group, said.
It’s likely that if the Senate had brought the vaccine mandate up for a vote it would have passed. There are several conservative Democrats who support repeal of the vaccine mandates.
(WASHINGTON) — In an extraordinary and tense debate stretching three hours on Wednesday, the U.S. Supreme Court entertained an unprecedented call to give state legislatures nearly unchecked power to dictate when, where and how Americans vote for president and Congress.
While a majority of justices appeared skeptical of entirely removing state courts from the process of reviewing state election laws, a majority did seem willing to impose new limits on the role judges can play in election policy. There was no clear consensus on scope or approach.
North Carolina Republicans were asking the high court to reinstate a gerrymandered election map drawn by the GOP-controlled state legislature after it was thrown out by the state supreme court for violating the state constitution. A court-appointed panel drew a new map which was used during the 2022 midterm election.
The plaintiffs argue that the U.S. Constitution’s elections clause expressly empowers the state legislature, and legislature alone, to dictate the “time, places and manner” of federal elections — free from substantive review by state courts. The view is based on a fringe theory known as the independent state legislature theory, which the court has never adopted.
“States lack the authority to restrict the legislatures’ substantive discretion when performing this federal function,” argued attorney David Thompson, representing the Republicans.
A group of North Carolina voters and pro-democracy advocates, backed by the Biden administration, opposes the move as contrary to the nation’s history and tradition and has warned that it would invalidate hundreds of election laws in every state.
“The blast radius from their theory would sow elections chaos,” said attorney Neal Katyal, the former Obama administration solicitor general representing the voters. “For 233 years, “This court has never second-guessed a state court interpretation of its own constitution in any context.”
Of the supposed historical underpinning of the theory, Katyal said: “The dog never barked … Not a person said anything like that they were trying to create this strange animal.”
On the left and the right, the justices echoed skepticism of the theory.
“This is a theory with big consequences,” said Justice Elena Kagan. “It would say that if a legislature engages in the most extreme forms of gerrymandering, there is no state constitutional remedy for that, even if the courts think that that’s a violation of the constitution. It would say that legislatures could enact all manner of restrictions on voting, get rid of all kinds of voter protections that the state constitution in fact prohibits. It might allow the legislatures to insert themselves, to give them a role, in the certification of elections and the way election results are calculated.”
“This is a proposal that gets rid of the normal checks and balances on the way big governmental decisions are made in this country, Kagan said. “And you might think that it gets rid of all those checks and balances at exactly the time when they are needed most.”
Justice Amy Coney Barrett seemed to call out inconsistencies in how the theory would be applied. “You do have a problem explaining why these procedural limitations [i.e. a governor’s veto] are okay, but substantive [i.e. a state court ruling] are not,” she told Thompson.
“We ground it in precedent, your honor, and text and structure and history,” Thompson replied.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor repeatedly sought to poke holes in North Carolina Republicans’ view of the history. “It seems that every answer you give is to get you what you want, but it makes little sense,” she told Thompson.
Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch appeared most inclined to embrace a broad application of the independent legislature theory, appearing to side with the Republican challengers.
“The question before us is whether the rule, the time, place and manner regulation has been prescribed by the legislature,” said Justice Neil Gorsuch. He voiced skepticism of a state court saying “we’re not going to enforce the rules of the legislature for any reason.”
Katyal argued that U.S. Constitution’s references to ‘legislature’ were always understood to mean the “lawmaking ‘system,’ subject to constraints.”
“What’s the check on an appointed state supreme court?” quipped Justice Alito, who probed “boundaries” on state courts that might wade into policymaking. “Many state supreme courts are not elected.”
Chief Justice John Roberts followed with concern about the practice of some state courts appointing a special master to draw election maps after a dispute.
“The judges don’t sit in the back room with lines drawing the districts, but other people do,” Roberts said. “And I wonder if there’s a disconnect between the level of the grant of authority…and how it’s actually practiced on the ground.”
But the chief justice stopped short of suggesting there should be no limits, whatsoever, on state lawmakers when it comes to elections. “State legislative action under the Elections Clause is subject to a governor’s veto, right?”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson suggested the case against the independent state legislature theory is a simple one. Since a state’s constitution creates the legislature and lays out its power, lawmakers must inherently be subject to the charter’s terms as interpreted by a court.
“What I don’t understand is how you can cut the state constitution out of the equation when it’s giving the state legislature the authority to exercise legislative power,” she said. “It’s the state constitution that is telling the legislature when and under what circumstances it can actually act as the legislature.”
Kagan repeatedly turned the argument back to the big-picture stakes for a country exhausted by partisanship.
“There’s a great deal of sentiment in this country about the problems with extreme partisan gerrymandering,” she said. “And states have responded to that in nonpartisan ways…State constitutions have been amended by the work of the people.”
“In all recent [Supreme Court] cases,” Kagan said, “we’ve said: of course, state courts applying state constitutions typically constrain state legislatures when they redistrict, when they enact election laws…. We’ve understood this to be an established idea of law.”
The court is expected to hand down a decision before the end of June.
(BEIJING) — China loosened some key COVID-19 controls on Wednesday after residents began protesting against the strict measures in November.
Authorities did not acknowledge the unrest in their decision but the sudden announcement by China’s State Council Joint Prevention and Control Mechanism directly addresses some of the key concerns of the demonstrators, including relaxing quarantine rules and allowing for home quarantine for mild and asymptomatic cases. Previously, residents who tested positive were sent to a central quarantine facility. People who been in close contact with sick individuals can now self-isolate at home for five days.
Local authorities were in charge of enforcing their own preventative measures and usually erred on the side on excessive curbs, locking down entire neighborhoods, towns and even cities.
Lockdowns are now dependent on individual “buildings, units, floors and households, instead of residential compounds, communities and subdistricts,” according to authorities.
Moreover, quarantine measures will now be lifted if no new infections are reported for five consecutive days.
Authorities will also move away from relying on mass nucleic acid PCR testing and expand the use of rapid antigen tests. Since the Shanghai lockdown in April and May, PCR testing was required in most Chinese cities, with residents needing to have a negative test every 48-72 hours in order to access places including school and offices. Long lines around testing booths became a normal sight across the country throughout the summer and the fall. PCR tests will now only be used for high-risk areas and occupations.
People no longer need to show a valid negative test or a health code to enter public venues or to travel, except when entering hospitals, schools and elderly homes.
While China has relaxed its measures, the ruling Communist Party still intends to control the spread of virus. International borders remain mostly closed and likely will be for the near future. Beijing has not allowed foreign vaccines from Moderna and Pfizer to be used on its population, holding out for its own mRNA technology vaccines, which have been delayed.
According to a new study from predictive health analytics firms Airfinity, at least 1.3 million residents could die if China opened its borders today.
While cases across China have been dropping from a peak of just over 40,000 daily infections, it remains unclear how the easing of restrictions will pan out.
The annual Lunar New Year travel period, which begins the first weekend of January, could be a challenge for controlling a larger outbreak. Hundreds of millions will be traveling back and forth to their hometowns, increasing their potential risk to the virus.
(RICHMOND CITY, Calif.) — After his race for a Northern California city council seat ended in a tie, candidate Cesar Zepeda wore several good luck charms to the drawing that would determine the winner — including a pocket square pin and “love is love” socks.
Luck ended up being on his side: Zepeda won the Richmond City Council District 2 race after his name was drawn out of a red gift bag on Tuesday.
After completing its ballot counting and audit last week, the Contra Costa County Elections Office determined that Zepeda and his opponent, Andrew Butt, had both received exactly 1,921 votes in November’s election.
To break the tie, the Richmond City Clerk’s Office instructed them to write their names in Sharpie on a piece of paper, place it in an identical unmarked envelope, seal it and each take turns shaking the bag in a process that was livestreamed on the city’s website.
After the first attempt saw Richmond City Clerk Pamela Christian draw both envelopes, the bag was vigorously shaken again before she drew out one lime green envelope — Zepeda’s.
“I am the first openly gay man to serve on our council,” Zepeda told reporters in emotional remarks following the draw.
“I want to be able to lead the community with that mindset that we could be different, but if our goals are to make our community better, we can, whether you’re a gay man, whether you’re a straight person, we can do it together,” Zepeda, a health and benefits consultant, said.
Meanwhile, his opponent was wishing for a different outcome.
“Yeah, the one where I won,” Butt said.
“In a perfect world, there would be an opportunity to have another vote, you know, a runoff or something like that,” Butt, a local architect, told reporters. “But you know the reality is that takes time and money and you know we’re short on both. … I don’t know what else to, do honestly.”
California election law stipulates that tied elections be determined by lot — or chance. In Richmond, the city council previously established that process, with a June 2022 resolution stating that the “City Clerk shall place the name of each candidate in a sealed unmarked envelope.”
Prior to the draw, the candidates joked they should resolve the tie by literally racing, or in a dance-off.
“In some ways, it’s interesting and exciting to be a part of it, right, because there’s sort of history being made here. But obviously it’s incredibly nerve-wracking,” Butt told ABC San Francisco station KGO, calling the process “surreal” and “insane.”
Richmond could hold a runoff in a future election, if the city changes its rules before then, according to Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia.
Contra Costa County has had to resolve ties through chance in the past. In 2018, a race for the director of the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District was decided by rolls of a 20-sided die.
California isn’t the only state to decide elections by lot. Twenty-eight states determine winners by drawing of lots “or similar random methods,” according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.
Just last month, a tied mayoral race in Butler, Kentucky was decided by a coin toss. Last year, the winner of a tied city council race in Portland, Maine, was determined by drawing a name out of a wooden bowl.
(WASHINGTON) — An attorney for former President Donald Trump told a federal appeals court on Wednesday that Trump’s fiery speech on the Ellipse prior to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was within his official responsibilities and, as a result, he is immune from lawsuits filed by 11 Democratic members of Congress and two Capitol police officers seeking to hold him responsible for the attack.
Washington, D.C., district judge Amit Mehta in February rejected Trump’s bid to have the suits dismissed, prompting Trump’s attorneys to appeal the decision to the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals.
The three lawsuits allege violations of the Ku Klux Klan Act that safeguards federal officials and employees against conspiratorial acts directed at preventing them from performing their duties.
The three-judge appeals panel seemed skeptical that Trump’s rhetoric at the rally fell within his official responsibilities, asking his attorney, Jesse Binnall, what power Trump was acting under when he told rally-goers, “We fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
“I don’t know what work the speech-making is doing,” Judge Sri Srinivasan said. “What I’m worried about is whether it actually falls within official presidential responsibility when what’s going on is campaigning for office.”
Judge Greg Katsas asked, more pointedly, “When the president gets involved in electoral counting, what enumerated power of Article II is he acting on?”
Plaintiffs’ attorney Joseph Sellers argued that “President Trump is not entitled to the immunity he seeks because his conduct interrupted the peaceful transfer of power.”
But Binnall cautioned that allowing the lawsuits to go forward would “open the floodgates” to civil litigation against U.S. presidents.
“I think it is difficult on any speech the president gives to decide that it’s outside the bully pulpit of the presidency,” Binnall said.
Binnell had argued that a 1982 Supreme Court decision shields presidents from civil lawsuits over their official acts, but Mehta’s decision earlier this year allowed the Jan. 6 suits to go forward.
“Absolute immunity does not shield President Trump from suit,” Mehta said in his ruling. “To deny a President immunity from civil damages is no small step. The court well understands the gravity of its decision. But the alleged facts of this case are without precedent, and the court believes that its decision is consistent with the purposes behind such immunity.”
(NEW YORK) — A sanctioned Ukrainian politician who U.S. authorities said has ties to Russian intelligence services was hit with new criminal charges Wednesday over his alleged purchase of two condominiums in Beverly Hills, California.
The charges were announced by federal prosecutors in Brooklyn and the Justice Department’s KleptoCapture task force against Andrii Derkach, a member of Ukraine’s parliament who has been labeled by the United States as a Russian agent and who allegedly sought to influence the 2020 presidential election by meeting with and funneling disinformation about Joe Biden to Rudy Giuliani.
Derkach is charged in a seven-count indictment with conspiracy to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, bank fraud conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy and four counts of money laundering. Derkach allegedly purchased the two California properties in violation of new U.S. sanctions imposed earlier this year and concealed his interest in the transactions.
“The conduct of this Kremlin asset, who was sanctioned for trying to poison our democracy, has shown he is ready, willing, and capable of exploiting banking system in order to advance his illicit goals. The U.S. will not be a safe haven where criminals, oligarchs or sanctioned entities can hide their ill-gotten gains or influence our elections,” said U.S. Attorney Breon Peace in a statement announcing the charges.
Derkach, who remains at large, was sanctioned for his alleged efforts to influence the 2020 U.S. presidential election on behalf of the Russian intelligence services while prosecutors said he simultaneously conspired to fraudulently benefit from a comfortable life in the U.S.
“Attempting to enjoy the safety, security, and freedoms of an open society, while secretly working to undermine that very society, is a hypocrisy that runs through every sanctions charge announced by the Task Force. It is a particularly egregious hypocrisy in the case of Andrii Derkach – sanctioned for attempts to undermine American democracy, while corruptly seeking to benefit from its protections,” said KleptoCapture Director Andrew C. Adams.
Derkach, a member of a pro-Russian political party, allegedly schemed to purchase and maintain two luxury condominiums in Beverly Hills while concealing his interest in the transactions from U.S. financial institutions, according to the complaint. He faces up to 30 years in prison if convicted.
Treasury officials previously said Derkach controlled two websites that helped spread disinformation about U.S. officials.
Giuliani traveled to Ukraine in 2019 with OAN news anchor Chanel Rion where the two met with Derkach for an interview and took documents from him. Federal prosecutors in New York investigated Giuliani’s activities in Ukraine but decided earlier this year not to file criminal charges.
(WASHINGTON) — An off-duty FBI agent appeared to fatally shoot a person at a metro station in Washington, D.C., Wednesday night, police said.
Police responded to reports of multiple shots fired on the Red Line platform at the Metro Center station shortly before 6:30 p.m. Wednesday, D.C. Metro Transit Police said.
Based on preliminary reports, the federal officer opened fire, fatally striking one individual, police said. The officer was also transported to a local hospital with “unknown injuries,” police said.
Ashan Benedict, Metropolitan Police Department executive assistant chief of police, later said it appeared two individuals, including the agent, were involved in an altercation, where one apparently grabbed the other and both went over a side wall, away from the tracks, which was an 8-foot drop.
The struggle continued and shots were fired, Benedict said.
The FBI agent was transported to an area hospital with minor injures, he added.
Multiple sources told ABC News there is no ongoing threat to the public.
Red Line service has been suspended between Farragut North and Gallery Place amid the investigation and delays are expected in both directions.
ABC News’ Jack Date and Sam Sweeney contributed to this report.
(AUSTIN) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott directed state agencies on Wednesday to ban the use of social media platform TikTok on government-issued devices over concerns about how the China-owned app handles data on American infrastructure and other sensitive information.
“TikTok harvests vast amounts of data from its users’ devices — including when, where and how they conduct internet activity — and offers this trove of potentially sensitive information to the Chinese government,” Abbott said in a letter to state officials on Wednesday.
TikTok has faced growing scrutiny from state and federal officials over fears that American data could fall into the possession of the Chinese government.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita sued TikTok on Wednesday for allegedly misleading users about the Chinese government’s capacity to access their data and showing mature content to minors. It marks the first state lawsuit against the app.
TikTok provided ABC News with a statement after Indiana sued the company.
“While we don’t comment on pending litigation, the safety, privacy and security of our community is our top priority. We build youth well-being into our policies, limit features by age, empower parents with tools and resources, and continue to invest in new ways to enjoy content based on age-appropriateness or family comfort. We are also confident that we’re on a path in our negotiations with the U.S. Government to fully satisfy all reasonable U.S. national security concerns, and we have already made significant strides toward implementing those solutions,” the statement read.
On Tuesday, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan announced a similar prohibition on TikTok, as well as Chinese technology makers like Huawei and ZTE, from use on state business.
In a statement a response to Hogan’s ban, TikTok said in a statement to ABC News: “We believe the concerns driving these decisions are largely fueled by misinformation about our company. We are happy to continue having constructive meetings with state policymakers to discuss our privacy and security practices. We are disappointed that many state agencies, offices, and universities will no longer be able to use TikTok to build communities and connect with constituents.”
Last month, a commissioner at the Federal Communications Commission called on the U.S. government to ban the social media platform.
The Biden administration and TikTok wrote up a preliminary agreement to address national security concerns posed by the app but obstacles remain in the negotiations, The New York Times reported in September.
TikTok says that it stores the data of U.S. users outside of China, and has never removed U.S. posts from the platform at the request of the Chinese government.
Recent news stories have called into question the security of user data.
Buzzfeed reported in June that TikTok engineers based in China gained access to intimate information on U.S. users, such as phone numbers. Forbes reported in October that ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, intended to use the app to access information on some users.
The Trump administration tried to ban TikTok in 2020, eventually calling on ByteDance to sell the app to a U.S. company. However, the sale never took place.
ABC News’ Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.
