(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday will attend the dignified transfer at Dover Air Force Base of the three U.S. Army reservists killed Sunday in a drone strike in Jordan.
Accompanying him will be first lady Jill Biden, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. CQ Brown.
They will meet with the families privately before receiving the remains, the White House said.
The Pentagon announced on Monday that Sgt. William Jerome Rivers, 46, of Carrollton, Georgia; Spc. Kennedy Ladon Sanders, 24, of Waycross, Georgia; and Spc. Breonna Alexsondria Moffett, 23, of Savannah, Georgia, were killed in a drone attack over the weekend on the U.S. base in Jordan near the border with Syria and Iraq.
In a press briefing on Tuesday, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby confirmed that Biden had spoken with families of the fallen.
“He expressed to them how proud we all are of their service, how we mourn and feel sorrow over their loss, made sure that those families knew that, not only was that service and sacrifice, going to be honored and respected, but that they would continue to get the support that they need as they work through what no family wants to have to go through,” he said.
Kirby said that during those phone calls Biden gauged the families’ feelings about his attending the dignified transfer at Dover.
“All of them supported his presence there and so the president will be going to the dignified transfer on Friday,” he said.
Deputy press secretary Olivia Dalton said Thursday that it is protocol for the president to ask Gold Star families for their permission to attend a dignified transfer.
This will be Biden’s second time attending the somber occasion since taking office.
He last attended a dignified transfer in August 2021 to receive the remains of service members killed in the Kabul airport bombing in Afghanistan.
(WASHINGTON) — The 2024 presidential election is likely to face a complicated array of threats, from voter manipulation to physical violence, according to a new federal assessment — and authorities are already trying to figure out how to handle them.
The confidential analysis, compiled by the Department of Homeland Security, outlines concerns about online activity that could threaten the election’s legitimacy, potential real-world plots that could result in attacks — and the urgent need to thwart them in time.
“Threat actors intent on harming Americans through the use of violence may become more aggressive as Election Day approaches and may seek to engage in or provoke violence at voting locations, government facilities, public meetings, ballot drop box locations, or private-sector vendor locations that support elections,” according to the Jan. 2 DHS bulletin, obtained by ABC News.
The risk looms far beyond the security at local polling places, the document notes, from attempts to “intimidate election workers or election officials,” to potential cyber attacks on “election infrastructure, campaigns, candidates, public officials or political organizations,” to foreign influence operations “designed to undermine” the democratic “processes and institutions, steer policy, sway public opinion or sow division.”
The new assessment comes more than nine months before Election Day, as partisan tensions at home are already at a fever pitch, multiple wars are being waged abroad and political violence has already broken out overseas.
“We are heading into a highly dangerous, perfect storm,” said John Cohen, the former intelligence chief at the Department of Homeland Security, now an ABC News contributor.
“It’s not simply due to the fact that foreign and domestic threat actors will seek to exploit this election to achieve their ideological and geopolitical objectives. We can also expect the political discourse associated with this election will become even more polarized, more angry and more divisive. And all those factors together is what has law enforcement concerned.”
The 2024 race has been marked by increasingly toxic rhetoric, the intermingling of inflammatory campaign trail hyperbole and courtroom theatrics as former President Donald Trump faces four criminal trials, and the continued conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine. In addition, hate speech, misinformation and disinformation are running rampant on social media, and rapidly evolving technology remains vulnerable, experts say.
Domestic extremists “likely remain emboldened” following the last presidential election, which was punctuated on Jan. 6, 2021, with the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, the bulletin notes.
And on both sides of the aisle, leading candidates are running on some of the most divisive issues – from abortion, to culture wars, to immigration at the Southern border – which authorities note could prove to be flashpoints.
“Elections that involve candidates connected to issues that historically have prompted violence — including COVID-19 mandates, firearms restrictions, or abortion access — face a heightened threat environment,” the analysis said. “DHS is concerned with identifying and disrupting possible violent acts perpetrated by entities or individuals as retribution for perceived unfavorable outcomes before or following the elections.”
Election officials like Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, as well as the head of the federal government’s election security agency, Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Director Jen Easterly, have already been victims of swatting incidents, as have some officials overseeing and involved in Trump’s cases. Separately, the FBI fielded “numerous” fake bomb threats in early January sent to various secretaries of state and state legislatures.
“We’re constantly being vigilant for – what’s the tipping point?” said Elizabeth Neumann, who was a DHS assistant secretary during the first years of Trump’s presidency and is now an ABC News contributor. “There are barrages of threats coming from multiple vectors – and multiple components of election infrastructure. It’s not just the voting machine – there’s multiple pieces that you’re worried about.”
The complex interplay of state and local election systems also means “different potential threat vectors and areas for protection,” the DHS bulletin said.
Online threat actors “seek to undermine the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of US election infrastructure,” the bulletin said – through phishing, IT disruptions, credential harvesting, supply chain compromise or brute force attacks.
Cyber attacks on local election infrastructure “have the potential for the greatest impact on the ability of jurisdictions to conduct elections,” the document said – attacks “on the integrity of state-level voter registration, poll books, and election websites, as well as on the preparation of ballots, voting machines, and tabulation systems.”
Threats may also target “agencies or civic organizations responsible for registering voters” or whose “infrastructure may feed into” those systems, the analysis said.
“These threats are not hypothetical. We’ve seen them occur. It may not have been such that it disrupted the election. But they still can have deep impacts,” Neumann said.
During the 2022 election cycle, the Elections Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center received at least 85 reports of malicious cyber activity from election offices across 56 state, local, tribal and territorial entities, attempting to “find and exploit cybersecurity vulnerabilities,” the bulletin said.
“Just because we’ve shored up important vulnerabilities doesn’t mean new vulnerabilities can’t be introduced,” Neumann said. “The spectrum here is wide, and exponentially expanding.”
Would-be hackers’ incursion into election infrastructure is not the only threat lurking online: the mushrooming influence of false and misleading information on the internet could sway voters’ minds even before they reach the ballot box, the document warns.
Foreign governments could attempt “to influence US policy, distort political sentiment and public discourse, sow division, or undermine confidence in democratic processes and values to achieve strategic objectives,” the bulletin said – advising to look out for “indications that entities are producing or amplifying misleading information about the time, manner, or place of voting, including providing inaccurate election dates or false claims about voting qualifications or methods.”
Foreign actors could try to “influence US voters through psychological operations, the infiltration of political parties, or the covert dissemination of false or misleading information through social media or other means,” the document said.
Just before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary earlier this month, a fake robocall appearing to impersonate the voice of President Joe Biden began circulating, encouraging voters not to go to the primary polls and to “save your vote” for the general election.
“Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday,” the recording said – prompting a criminal investigation by New Hampshire’s Attorney General.
“You don’t have to hack into voter tabulation systems to disrupt an election,” Cohen said. “If a foreign adversary, or a terrorist group, can misinform voters, in a way that influences their opinions and decision-making before they enter or as they enter the ballot box, then these adversaries can influence the outcome of the election.”
Firemen fight a blaze following a series of explosions in the Embakasi area of Nairobi, Kenya on February 2, 2024. (Photo by LUIS TATO/AFP via Getty Images)
(LONDON) — At least three people were killed and 298 others were injured late Thursday when a gas explosion sparked an inferno in Kenya’s capital as residents were asleep, authorities said.
A fire resulting from a gas explosion was reported in the Mradi area of Nairobi’s Embakasi neighborhood at 11:30 p.m. local time. The wounded were evacuated and transported to various hospitals across the city, according to a statement from the Kenya Police Service.
Dozens of others received medical treatment on site, according to Emergency Plus Medical Services, a private ambulance service owned by the Kenya Red Cross Society.
The blaze, which burned homes and warehouses, has since been contained and the scene secured, police said.
Kenya Police Service Deputy Inspector General Douglas Kanja visited the site Friday morning and a multi-agency team remains on scene, according to police.
The Kenya Red Cross said in a statement Friday that its staff were currently at the site “providing first aid and psychosocial support services to those affected.” The organization also said it had set up a “tracing desk” and was assisting with search and rescue efforts. So far, 21 children who were separated from their families in the aftermath of the explosion have been reunited with their parents, according to the Kenya Red Cross.
Meanwhile, Nairobi City County has waived the hospital bills for all victims and begun distributing essential food and non-food items to the affected families, according to a statement from Kenyan government spokesperson Isaac Mwaura.
The incident remains under investigation and the government is calling on people to donate blood and items to support the victims, Mwaura said.
The explosion apparently occurred at an illegal liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) plant. Kenya’s Energy and Petroleum Regulatory Authority (EPRA) confirmed that it had rejected applications for construction permits for an LPG storage and filling plant at the site in 2023.
The main reason for the rejection was failure of the designs to meet the safety distances stipulated in the Kenya Standard,” the agency said in a statement Friday. “EPRA noted the high population density around the proposed site and the applicant was requested to submit a Qualitative Risk Assessment clearly indicating the radiation blast profiles in the unfortunate case of an explosion like the one that happened yesterday.”
“The applicant never provided the requested QRA resulting in the rejection of the applications,” EPRA added. “Email correspondences providing reasons for the rejection were sent to the applicant.”
EPRA said it takes actions to “ensure that operating licenses for all plants rated below the high safety integrity status are revoked” and that “illegal plants operating across the country” are demolished.
(NEW YORK) — Elementary and middle school students have only made up some of the losses in math and reading they experienced during the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report finds.
For the report, published Wednesday, a collaborative team at the Center for Education Policy Research at Harvard University and The Educational Opportunity Project at Stanford University, looked at the first year of regular testing between spring 2022 and spring 2023 for school districts in 30 states.
Overall, students managed to recover about one-third of the original loss in math and one-quarter of the loss in reading. While these gains are historic, students are still not where they should be, the researchers found.
“Both of those gains were large by historical standards, but the gains in average achievement are masking the dramatic widening in achievement that happened between 2019 and 2022, and just the failure of many of the high poverty districts to catch up,” Dr. Thomas Kane, co-author of the report and faculty director of the Center for Education Policy Research, told ABC News.
When broken down by subject, only students in Alabama returned to pre-pandemic achievement levels in math, meaning levels seen in 2019, the report found. However, students in 17 states are still one-third behind 2019 levels in math.
Meanwhile, students in three states — Illinois, Louisiana and Mississippi — returned to 2019 reading achievement levels while students in 14 states remain more than one-third of a grade level behind in reading.
The report’s authors say that districts would need at least another year of recovery in math and two more years in reading for students to catch up to pre-pandemic level achievements.
However, even if last year’s pace could be maintained, students will not be caught up by the time federal relief expires in September.
K-12 schools received $190 billion in federal aid from Congress during the pandemic, most of which went to high-poverty districts. Currently, $51 billion of aid remains, which must be returned to the federal government if unused by September. The authors say states and districts should use the remaining funds to help students catch up academically.
The report also found that in many states, the recovery of math and reading losses has been led by wealthier districts, including those in Massachusetts and Connecticut.
Kane said in Massachusetts, high-poverty districts didn’t just fail to catch up but lost further ground between spring 2022 and spring 2023 so the improvement came from the higher-income suburbs, which he called “disappointing” and “concerning.”
Nilesh Patel, a high school principal at Kairos Academies in St. Louis, has seen the advantages families in wealthier districts had during the pandemic.
“During the pandemic, many high-income families relied on private tutors to maintain their students’ achievement while lower-income families didn’t have the resources to do the same,” he told ABC News. “A lot of school-based interventions meant to close the gap were too little, too late. What we really need are strong early childhood interventions.”
Dr. Jade Cobern, a pediatrician at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center, told ABC News that disparities between high and low-income areas mostly affect racial and ethnic minorities.
“Not only do some disparities still exist, but in some places are getting worse for these groups of kids. It’s essential for these kids that we focus more research and resources to close these gaps,” she said.
Dr. John Brownstein, chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, added that educational disparities could lead to broader health inequalities in the future.
To recover pre-pandemic losses, the researchers recommend schools take several steps including informing parents if their child is below grade level in math or reading so parents have time to enroll their kids in summer learning and for schools to expand summer learning in 2024.
Additionally, they recommend districts contract “high-quality” tutoring and after-school programs before September for the 2024-25 school year.
“For next school year, because under the federal law, they can’t spend the money on their own employees’ salaries after September, but they can make payment payments on, you know, contracts as long as those contracts were signed before September,” Kane said.
ABC News’ Dr. John Brownstein contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Warning that the Middle East is facing a “dangerous moment” in time, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin on Thursday defended America’s seeming delay in responding to Sunday’s enemy drone attack that killed three American service members four days ago.
The remains of three Army reservists killed in the base attack were expected to arrive stateside on Friday, with Austin joining President Joe Biden and the families at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware.
In a press briefing, Austin said the U.S. is preparing a “multi-tiered response” to the attack that also minimizes collateral damage.
The goal, he said, would be to degrade the capabilities of Iran-backed militants without plunging the region into a broader war.
“There are ways to manage this so it doesn’t spiral out of control. And that’s been our focus throughout,” he said.
The Pentagon has declined to discuss operational details of the pending strikes, citing security concerns. A U.S. official familiar with the plan, but speaking on condition of anonymity, said the strikes will unfold across several days and hit multiple countries including Iraq and Syria and possibly Yemen.
Since the start of the Israeli-Gaza war, the U.S. has found itself under near-constant attack from Iran-backed militants targeting commercial ships along the Red Sea and U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria. The tit-for-tat attacks have dragged on since fall, and U.S. officials say Iran is supplying the groups targeting U.S. assets.
On Wednesday, U.S. Central Command said it stuck down a ground-based drone control station and 10 one-way attack drones in Yemen.
Hours later, on Thursday, Houthi rebels launched two missiles but missed a nearby cargo ship, according to Central Command. The U.S. also reported striking down a drone and an explosive uncrewed surface vehicle.
According to a U.S. official, the drone that successfully hit a U.S. base in Jordan last weekend was an Iranian-made Shahed drone, similar to those used by the Russians on the battlefield in Ukraine.
Reuters first reported that the drone that killed the Americans was Iranian made. Austin confirmed that most of the drones used in the region come from Iran.
When asked why the U.S. is pursuing a multi-tiered response, Austin said U.S. adversaries don’t have a “one-and-done mindset.”
He noted, “they have a lot of capability.” He added: “I have a lot more.”
(WASHINGTON) — Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley insisted on Thursday that she won’t actually have to win in her home state in order to achieve victory there — after two huge losses in the first two states to vote in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.
Speaking with reporters after a campaign event in South Carolina, Haley was asked what winning looks like for her in the state’s Republican primary on Feb. 24.
“I think making sure it’s a competitive race, making sure that it looks close. If we do that — that’ll head us on into Michigan and Super Tuesday and that’s what we’re looking at,” she said.
Asked if she would stay in the race with a second-place finish, she asserted that she’s “not going anywhere.”
“This is about just closing that gap,” she said.
Her campaign was not, she said, “an anti-Trump movement.”
“At the end of the day, I’m doing this because the party that comes out with a new generational leader is the party that’s gonna win,” she said. “I’m doing this because I don’t want my kids to live like this.”
Haley has emerged as the last remaining major alternative to former President Donald Trump in the GOP’s nominating race after rival Ron DeSantis ended his campaign in January in the wake of a distant second-place finish in the Iowa caucuses.
Haley came in third in Iowa, just behind DeSantis, but quickly celebrated a stronger showing in the New Hampshire primary where she trailed Trump by roughly 11 points.
She has argued, as she did again on Thursday, that her strategy is to lose by less and less to Trump and then, at some point around Super Tuesday in March, when many states vote at once, begin to overtake him.
“We went from 2% to 20% in Iowa. Then we went, we got 43% [in] New Hampshire. But you know what the tall tale of that is? Donald Trump didn’t get 43% of the vote. That should scare you,” Haley told voters in Columbia, South Carolina, on Thursday.
She currently trails Trump by about 31 points in the polling in South Carolina, according to 538. While her support has recently increased, so has Trump’s.
Trump has targeted her for not leaving the race after her initial defeats in the first two states to vote in the race.
“Who the hell was the imposter that went up on the stage before and like claimed a victory? She did very poorly,” Trump said on primary night in New Hampshire.
“She’s doing like a speech like she won,” Trump said then. “She didn’t win. She lost.”
(NEW YORK) — Former Trump Org. Chief Financial Officer Allen Weisselberg is in plea talks with the Manhattan district attorney’s office to resolve a potential perjury charge, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
If the negotiations succeed, Weisselberg would plead guilty to lying on the witness stand when he testified in October at the civil fraud trial that names him, his former boss — former President Donald Trump — and others as defendants, the sources said.
The plea negotiations, which the sources described as being in the early stages, were first reported by The New York Times. A spokesperson for Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg declined to comment. An attorney for Weisselberg did not respond to a request for comment.
During his testimony, Weisselberg struggled to explain why former President Trump’s 5th Ave. triplex, which is less than 11,000 square feet, was listed on statements of financial condition as 30,000 square feet.
“It was almost de minimis relative to his net worth, so I didn’t really focus on it,” Weisselberg said during the trial. “I never even thought about the apartment.”
But Forbes published an article following Weisselberg’s appearance that accused him of lying under oath and suggested Weisselberg did think about the apartment because he played a key role in trying to convince the magazine the apartment was as big as Trump’s financial statements said.
At trial, a lawyer with the New York attorney general’s office, Louis Solomon, confronted Weisselberg with emails from Forbes magazine seeking clarity about the apartment’s size and a letter signed by Weisselberg certifying the excessive square footage to the Trump Organization’s accountant, Mazars USA.
“Forbes was right; the triplex was actually only 10,996, right?” Solomon asked. “Right,” Weisselberg finally conceded.
If Weisselberg ends up pleading guilty to a perjury charge it would mark his second criminal conviction. He previously pleaded guilty to criminal charges and testified against the Trump Organization, which was convicted in 2022 of tax evasion.
His testimony was careful not to implicate Trump and Weisselberg is not expected to be called as a witness in the Manhattan DA’s criminal case against Trump that accuses him of falsifying business records in connection with a hush payment to porn actress.
Trump is on trial in New York in a $370 million civil lawsuit that could alter the personal fortune and real estate empire that helped propel Trump to the White House.
Trump, his sons Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., and other top Trump Organization executives are accused by New York Attorney General Letitia James of engaging in a decade-long scheme in which they used “numerous acts of fraud and misrepresentation” to inflate Trump’s net worth in order get more favorable loan terms. The trial comes after the judge in the case ruled in a partial summary judgment that Trump had submitted “fraudulent valuations” for his assets, leaving the trial to determine additional actions and what penalty, if any, the defendants should receive.
The former president has denied all wrongdoing and his attorneys have argued that Trump’s alleged inflated valuations were a product of his business skill.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly 140 people have fallen sick during a gastrointestinal illness outbreak on a three-week Queen Victoria cruise, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The Cunard Cruise Line ship departed Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on Jan. 22.
Overall, 123 passengers and 16 crew members have reported being ill during the voyage as of Thursday, according to the CDC. The cases are for the entire voyage and do not represent the number of active cases, the agency said.
The predominant symptoms include diarrhea and vomiting, the CDC said. The cause of the outbreak is unknown, according to the CDC.
There are 1,824 passengers and 967 crew members on the ship in total, according to the CDC.
In response to the outbreak, the cruise line and crew have isolated ill passengers and crew and increased cleaning and disinfection procedures “according to the ship’s outbreak prevention and response plan,” the CDC said.
“Cunard confirmed that a small number of guests had reported symptoms of gastrointestinal illness on board Queen Victoria,” Cunard said in a statement. “They immediately activated their enhanced health and safety protocols to ensure the wellbeing of all guests and crew on board.”
“Measures have been effective,” the statement continued.
The cruise is scheduled to go to San Francisco before ending in Honolulu on Feb. 12.
The CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program is monitoring the situation remotely, including “reviewing the ship’s outbreak response and sanitation procedures,” the agency said.
This is the second cruise outbreak reported by the CDC so far this year. Last month, 100 people — including 92 passengers and eight crew members — were reported ill during a Celebrity Cruises’ Celebrity Constellation cruise that sailed from Jan. 3 to Jan. 12. The cause was norovirus, the CDC said.
The CDC logged 14 outbreaks on cruise ships in 2023, mostly caused by norovirus.
Medical staff on cruise ships under U.S. jurisdiction must report gastrointestinal illness cases to the CDC’s Vessel Sanitation Program when at least 2% of passengers or crew have a gastrointestinal illness.
(ATLANTA) — Authorities in Georgia are searching for 30-year-old murder suspect Zion River Shaka, who was mistakenly released by Clayton County authorities last week, according to ABC affiliate WSB in Atlanta.
Last week, Shaka was transferred from the Fulton County Jail and sent to the custody of the Clayton County Sheriff’s Office for a scheduled hearing with instructions to return to the Fulton County Jail afterward, however, he was mistakenly released after the hearing, according to WSB.
Shaka has been in Fulton County Jail since 2020, ABC News confirmed, though details of his case have not been released.
Deputies are reportedly actively searching for Shaka’s whereabouts.
This week, officials in Fulton County said court and other systems in Georgia’s most populous county were hacked over the weekend, interrupting routine operations.
Fulton County, which includes most of Atlanta, was experiencing a “widespread system outage” from a “cybersecurity incident,” County Commission Chair Robb Pitts said Monday in a video posted on social media. Notably, he said, the outage is affecting the county’s phone, court and tax systems.
(NEW YORK) — Prescription drug prices have long been a back-and-forth issue between insurers and pharmaceutical companies.
Those who aren’t covered by insurance are usually left with a high bill for much-needed medicines.
The Biden administration has pushed a solution through the Inflation Reduction Act and gave Medicare the power to negotiate prescription drug prices directly with drug companies.
ABC News’ “Start Here” spoke with United States Secretary of Health and Human Services Xavier Becerra about the negotiations, which started Thursday.
START HERE: Secretary Becerra, thanks for being with us. How is this about to work?
HHS SEC. XAVIER BECERRA: Brad, you hit it right on the money. It’s incredible to believe that for 65 million Americans, we could not try to get the best price. It’s one of those, take it or leave it. The drug company sets the price. And lo and behold, Americans today pay two or three times more than they probably should for those prescription drugs that folks around the world are paying so much less for. So it is now time. And the Inflation Reduction Act, as you said, now gives us a chance.
The president fought for that law and now we’re going to start negotiations. We have submitted our offer to the nine companies that have the 10 drugs that are the first to be negotiated, and we’ll have an out now have a chance to have a back and forth and negotiations.
START HERE: What types of drugs are we talking about?
BECERRA: These are drugs that cover cancer, diabetes, [and] heart disease. [They are] the types of chronic conditions that you and I know that affect so many Americans and cost us so much. These drugs, these 10 drugs alone cost us, the federal government, [and] taxpayers $46 billion in 2022, and they cost folks on Medicare, who are the ones that are getting the drugs, about $3.5 billion out of their own pocket.
START HERE: And these are, like you said, like the 10 most-used drugs in the Medicare system. What is the timeline for how this actually plays out? You guys start talking today. You said you submit your offers today; then what happens?
BECERRA: So the companies have about a month to give us a counteroffer. We then engage them as well and respond to what they’ve said. But by August 1, we have to finish the negotiations and have a price, a negotiated price. That price will then take effect the beginning of January 2026.
START HERE: You mentioned how expensive our drugs are compared to other countries; two and three times higher. Why is that? Is it just because the government can’t negotiate via Medicare, that’s the reason?
BECERRA: Well, I think of it this way. You go into a car dealership to buy a car. Do you pay the price you see on the sticker? Right? Of course, you don’t. You go in there saying, “That sticker price. I know you paid a lot less. Hey. And I also read Consumer Reports. I know that [it] really only costs you this much. And I know that the actual manufacturer gave you, the dealer, a further discount the more you sell, etc., etc. So this is the price I’ll offer you.” Then of course they go into that back room and they come back, and then they offer you a different price and you haggle back and forth until you get a price that you’re willing to live with. And if you say, “I don’t like the price, I’m going to go to the dealer down, down the street.” You try to get the best bargain you can. We could not do that. By law, we were restricted. Now we can do it. That’s why we think we’re going to drive the prices down.
START HERE: By the way, in any real negotiation, like the one you just mentioned, you have to be willing to get up and walk away, right? Is that, is that the case with drugs, though? I mean, is there a chance that there’s going to be a drug no longer covered by Medicare because you guys couldn’t agree on a price?
BECERRA: Well, see, that’s the interesting part. Up until the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act, we didn’t have a choice. We had to accept the price that those manufacturers put on the drug, or we wouldn’t have access to it for the millions of Americans who get Medicare. And so now we have a chance to try to negotiate, to get the best price. And by the way, the drug companies aren’t forced to negotiate. They have a choice.
If they want to participate in the Medicare program, they get to continue to sell the drug to anyone they’d like. But if they want to do it through the Medicare program, they have to engage in negotiations with us now on these ten drugs.
START HERE: No, I get it. But say they’re like, it’s this much. And you guys are like, “Well, we’re not paying that.” Is there a chance drugs stop getting covered because you guys didn’t get the deal you wanted?
BECERRA: Well, we believe that by engaging in good faith upfront, negotiations will settle on a good price.
START HERE: Who saves money at the end of all this? This is not the average consumer, right? I’m not on Medicare. Uncle Sam’s not going to negotiate on my behalf. I assume Medicare folks would pay the same amount, maybe out of pocket. They don’t see a sticker price difference. So who actually saves money? Is it taxpayers writ large or something?
BECERRA: So, directly, folks who are on Medicare will benefit by Medicare being able to negotiate for the best fair price, on these drugs. The lower the price is, the more that the Medicare program and many Medicare beneficiaries spend. When the Medicare program saves money, taxpayers save money because taxpayers help cover the cost of the Medicare program for Medicare beneficiaries.
And so at the end of the day, all Americans will benefit by having lower cost on drugs under Medicare. But remember what happened with insulin, which was part of the Inflation Reduction Act, efforts. It has now been lowered to $35 at most per month for the insulin that a Medicare beneficiary needs. It could have been three or four times that amount before Jan. 1 of this year.
Now that the law has kicked in, it’s only $35 a month. But guess what? The manufacturers of insulin have also now moved to reduce the price of insulin for people who aren’t on Medicare, for whom the law didn’t reach.
START HERE: Oh so it changes the ecosystem kind of changes the expectation?
BECERRA: That’s right, that’s right.
START HERE: When do you see that happening? When would the average American actually see a difference? If you think.
BECERRA: Well, they’re already beginning to see the difference right now on insulin. While the price on these drugs that we’re negotiating now won’t actually take effect until the beginning of 2026, everyone will see what happens as of August of this year. And so we’ll see what goes on, but negotiation competition that’s as American as apple pie. And who would be against you trying to negotiate for the best price for your vehicle that you’re going to buy from that dealer?
START HERE: Who would argue with that? Maybe the pharma companies, right? They have said that this will hurt their chances to be competitive. They said it could hurt them having medical breakthroughs. They’ve sued the Biden administration to say that this is unconstitutional. You’ve got GOP, you got Republicans saying that this should not be the way the U.S. does business. What’s your response to that?
BECERRA: You know, I used to be the attorney general of California. I’d say that the fact that I’m being sued probably means I’m doing something right.
START HERE: So you don’t think it’s unconstitutional, though?
BECERRA: Oh, not at all. No, no, no, We see negotiations occurring in the federal government already. The Veterans Administration negotiates drug prices already. Indian Health Services, which is under the Department of Health and Human Services and provides direct care and also purchases drugs, goes through the same process of negotiating for prices. This is not new.
START HERE: And you don’t think that hurts the ability to innovate and be competitive and create the next new huge cancer drug that could affect millions of lives, that this doesn’t actually hinder companies from doing that.
BECERRA: Think of it this way: If we’re now negotiating to get the best price, there will be companies who know they’ll be able to compete with some of the brand-name pharma companies who are able to somehow muscle everyone out of the market. The more competition, the more innovation. The more innovation, the better the price for everyone.
