(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy denied a report claiming he promised former President Donald Trump that the House will hold a vote before August recess on expunging Trump’s past impeachments.
“There’s no deal, but I’ve been very clear from long before — when I voted against impeachments — that they put them in for purely political purposes. I support expungement but there’s no deal out there,” McCarthy said.
Politico reported McCarthy had made a promise to Trump.
The symbolic measure is not likely to come to the floor before recess because it lacks enough GOP votes to pass. House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told reporters, “I don’t think full membership has chimed in yet” on these resolutions and mentioned the focus next week is appropriation bills.
McCarthy has previously backed the symbolic resolutions, which were introduced by top Trump defenders on Capitol Hill Reps. Elise Stefanik and Marjorie Taylor Greene in June.
“I support that,” McCarthy said about both resolutions in June. “You should expunge it because it never should have gone through.”
Stefanik, who serves as the Republican conference chairwoman and is widely viewed as a top candidate to become Trump’s running mate should he win the nomination, said she speaks to the former president often.
Greene’s resolution seeks to expunge Trump’s first impeachment stemming from a call he made to Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
Stefanik’s resolution focuses on the second impeachment, downplaying the events of the Jan. 6 Capitol riot and Trump’s role.
Stefanik said in a statement that the resolutions would “expunge the unconstitutional impeachments of President Trump as if such Articles of Impeachment had never passed the full House of Representatives,” but there is no explicit consequence of an expungement resolution, according to the House Parliamentarian’s office. The effort seemingly cannot undo the impeachment votes because they would still live in the congressional record.
While McCarthy has defended Trump throughout his legal troubles, the speaker has not yet endorsed Trump out of a desire to remain neutral — a sticking point for the former president, who touts his own role in securing McCarthy the gavel after 15 rounds of contentious voting earlier this year, Politico reported. McCarthy has openly questioned whether Trump is “the strongest to win the [general] election,” comments he later walked back.
(UPPER MAKEFIELD, Pa.) — Divers were poised Thursday to search for a 2-year-old girl and her 9-month-old brother who were washed away with their mother in a flash flood in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, after severe weather on Wednesday halted efforts to find the children, officials said.
Rescue crews were attempting to resume the search for 2-year-old Matilda “Mattie” Sheils and her 9-month-old brother, Conrad Sheils, who have been missing since their family was caught in the deluge over the weekend while driving near Upper Makefield Township, authorities said.
“We are in the process of getting dog teams and having the dive unit check the conditions of the river to see if they can get into the water today,” the Upper Makefield Township Police Department said in a statement released Thursday morning.
Crews will also be attempting to bring heavy equipment to the area to help thoroughly comb through what police described as “extremely large debris piles.”
Severe weather in the search area prevented rescue crews from resuming efforts on Wednesday to locate the children, officials said.
The children have been missing since Saturday afternoon when they and their family were caught in the flash flood while driving on Route 532 to a barbecue, authorities said.
The children’s mother, 32-year-old Katie Seley, died after she grabbed Mattie and Conrad and tried to escape their vehicle but ended up being swept away in the violent weather event, officials said.
Seley was among five people killed in the storm. Her body was recovered on Sunday.
Rescue crews are expected to scale back the search after more than 100 emergency personnel scoured the flooded area along Hough’s Creek between Saturday afternoon when the children and their mother were reported missing to Tuesday evening, Chief Tim Brewer of the Upper Makefield Fire Company said. He said crews have used cadaver dogs in ground searches of the creek’s banks and have deployed sonar equipment and drones to search the creek, a tributary that leads to the Delaware River.
“We have searched the entire flood zone more than a dozen times,” Brewer said at a news conference Tuesday afternoon, adding that the search covered roughly 117 acres.
Brewer said the focus of the search is switching to a “dive rescue operation.”
“That will mean underwater assets mainly in the creek and we will work out from there. We still have K-9 assets in place, but we are going to begin to scale down,” said Brewer, adding that crews have searched and re-searched the area.
“Tracking logs are over 160 miles, meaning we have backtracked several times,” Brewer said.
The tragedy unfolded around 5:30 p.m. Saturday when more than 7 inches of rain fell within 45 minutes, causing Hough’s Creek to spill its banks and generating a “wall of water” that took drivers on Route 532, also known as Washington Crossing Road, by surprise, Brewer said. He said 11 cars were washed away in the flash flood and at least one was found 1.5 miles from where it was swept into the creek.
The missing children and their family are from South Carolina and were in Pennsylvania visiting friends and relatives when disaster struck.
Mattie and Conrad’s father, Jim Sheils, and their grandmother grabbed ahold of the missing siblings’ 4-year-old brother and escaped their car as it and other vehicles were being washed away, according to officials. The father, grandmother and 4-year-old were found alive, officials said.
“They were caught in a flash flood,” Brewer said. “The wall of water came to them, not the other way around.”
Besides Katie Seley, four other people were confirmed dead in the Bucks County flooding. They were identified by the Bucks County Coroner’s Office as Enzo Depiero, 78, and Linda Depiero, 74, both of Newtown Township, Pennsylvania; Susan Barnhardt, 53, of Titusville, New Jersey; and Yuko Love, 64, of Newtown Township.
The coroner’s office said all of the victims died from drowning.
(WASHINGTON) — The Senate Judiciary Committee on Thursday — for the first time — voted to advance legislation that would require the U.S. Supreme Court to adopt a binding code of ethics more stringent disclosure requirements and explain recusal decisions to the public.
The vote was 11-10 along party lines, with all Democrats in support and all Republicans opposed. The bill — “Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act” — is now cleared for a full Senate vote.
“We are here because the highest court in the land has the lowest standards for ethics anywhere in the federal government,” said Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., who sponsored the measure.
The move follows a wave of news reports that Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito failed to disclose ties to wealthy businessmen and political donors, including acceptance of luxury travel and accommodations, and that Justice Sonia Sotomayor used taxpayer-funded court staff to help sell her books.
Alito personally defended himself — arguing, in a rare op-ed published in The Wall Street Journal, that he acted appropriately. In Thomas’ case, he maintained that he thought he didn’t have to disclose those ties; while in Sotomayor’s case, the court said she and the others had been urged to follow proper protocols.
“This is a bill not designed to make the court stronger or more ethical, but to destroy a conservative court,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., ahead of the vote. “It’s a bill to rearrange the makeup of how the court governs itself.”
The bill would mandate greater oversight of the justices — binding them to the same disclosure rules for gifts, travel and income as apply to lower court judges — and create a system to investigate complaints about their behavior.
It would also boost transparency around the process by which justices determine potential conflicts of interest with parties before the court and require them to explain recusal decisions, which are now entirely at their discretion.
In a rare joint statement released in April, all nine current justices said they voluntarily adhere to a code of “ethics principles and practices” and oppose the push for independent oversight.
“I want to assure people that I am committed to making certain that we as a court adhere to the highest standards of conduct,” Chief Justice John Roberts said in May during his first public remarks since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Roberts declined an invitation to testify before the Judiciary Committee to answer questions about the court’s ethics process and lawmakers’ proposal for an overhaul, citing separation of powers concerns.
The justices are already subject to a federal disclosure law — applying to all federal employees — that requires them to file annual public reports on outside income and gifts; but “personal hospitality” is generally exempt.
“If I or any member of the Senate failed to report an all-expense paid luxury getaway or if we used our government staff to help sell books we wrote, we’d be in big trouble. The same would be true for members of the House or Cabinet officials in any presidential administration,” Durbin said Wednesday. “But the same, sadly, is not true for the nine justices across the street.”
The justices argued in their joint statement in May that proposals to force members of the court to recuse themselves under specified circumstances, publicly elaborate on the recusal process and subject their decisions to review could create more harm than good.
“If the full Court or any subset of the Court were to review the recusal decisions of individual justices,” they wrote, “it would create an undesirable situation in which the Court could affect the outcome of a case by selecting who among its members may participate.”
Later, they added that public disclosure of the basis for recusal could “encourage strategic behavior by lawyers who may seek to prompt recusals in future cases” by framing them a certain way in an attempt to disqualify a particular member of the court.
Many conservative lawmakers and legal scholars point out that justices already face the prospect of discipline for misbehavior: impeachment. It remains the only constitutionally authorized mechanism for removing a life-appointed justice accused of wrongdoing.
Many Republicans have viewed court reform proposals as a partisan attempt to delegitimize the court.
If the legislation is scheduled for a full Senate vote, it would need some Republican support to pass, given Democrats only hold the chamber with 51 votes.
The Republican-led House has shown no interest in taking up the issue, rendering enactment of any Supreme Court ethics legislation unlikely in this Congress.
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Thursday appeared before a House subcommittee to testify at a hearing on censorship — but it was his past comments that drew sharp rebuke from Democrats as Kennedy sought to defend himself.
Testifying in front of the GOP-led House Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on alleged government “weaponization,” Kennedy denied that he is racist or antisemitic following comments that leaked over the weekend where he appeared to be citing a false conspiracy theory that COVID-19 was “targeted to” certain ethnicities while Chinese people and Ashkenazi Jews were more immune.
Kennedy said that he had “never uttered a phrase that was either racist or anti-semitic” and, despite repeatedly spreading conspiracy theories and misinformation on public health issues in the past, insisted that he was not anti-vaccination.
“I’m subjected to this new form of censorship, which is called targeted propaganda, where people apply pejoratives like ‘anti-vax.’ I’ve never been anti-vaccine,” he argued. “But everybody in this room probably believes that I have been because that’s the prevailing narrative.”
Kennedy’s testimony comes after 102 Democratic representatives signed a letter earlier this week opposing his appearance before the panel, citing his comments that were recorded on video and published by The New York Post on Saturday, during what the paper described as a press dinner in New York City last week.
In the video obtained by the Post, Kennedy can be heard making a series of false and misleading claims, including saying, “We don’t know whether it [COVID-19] was deliberately targeted or not, but there are papers out there that show the racial or ethnic differential and impact.”
“There is an argument that it is ethnically targeted,” specifically against Caucasian and Black people, Kennedy can be heard saying in the video.
Health officials worldwide have determined the virus disproportionally killed some groups of people not because of their race but because of underlying health inequities
U.S. Virgin Islands Del. Stacey Plaskett, the ranking member on the subcommittee, on Thursday blasted Speaker Kevin McCarthy and the subcommittee’s chair, Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan, for allowing Kennedy to testify in the wake of his recent remarks.
“They intentionally chose to elevate this rhetoric to give these harmful, dangerous views a platform in the halls of the United States Congress,” Plaskett said. “That’s endorsing that speech. That’s not just supporting free speech. They have co-signed on idiotic, bigoted messaging.”
“It’s a free country. You absolutely have a right to say what you believe,” Plaskett said. “But you don’t have the right to a platform, public or private. We don’t have to give one of the largest platforms of our democracy — Congress, this hearing. Our right does not mean that we as Americans are not free from accountability.”
Earlier this week, McCarthy said of Kennedy, “I disagree with everything he said. The hearing that we have this week is about censorship. I don’t think censoring somebody is actually the answer here.”
In his testimony, Kennedy claimed that other Democrats were seeking to silence him based on his views.
“‘I’ve spent my life in this party. I’ve devoted my life to the values of this party,” he said. “This — 102 people signed this. This itself is evidence of the problem that this hearing was convened to address. This is an attempt to censor a censorship hearing.”
The letter was initiated by Democratic Reps. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz and Dan Goldman of New York, who are Jewish, and Rep. Judy Chu, who is Chinese American.
“If you think I said something that’s antisemitic, let’s talk about the details,” Kennedy maintained in his testimony. “I’m telling you, all the things that I’m accused of right now, by you and in this letter, are distortions, they’re misrepresentations.”
(NEW YORK) — With the Women’s World Cup kicking off this week, the focus of the sports world turns to soccer — the most popular sport in the world and one continuing to grow in the United States. However, new research is calling attention to one of the risks of the game, heading the ball, which studies find may be linked to brain problems later in life.
The newly released study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open, found that professional male soccer players who headed the ball more frequently during their career were more likely to develop memory issues. The study builds on prior studies from Scotland and France that also showed a link between playing soccer and the development of dementia.
The research was done on professional male athletes, but can guide how athletes at all levels approach the sport, Dr. Joel Salinas, an assistant professor of neurology at NYU Langone and chief medical officer of Isaac Clinic, an online memory clinic, told ABC News. It may be especially important for children, he says. “If you have a child, especially a child whose brain is still in the early developing phases, maybe hold off on how often you head the ball.”
The new study included over 400 retired professional male soccer players that were an average of 63 years old. The athletes played soccer for an average of 14 years. Those that reported heading a soccer ball six to 15 times a game were found to have a 2.71 increased risk for memory issues, such as those seen with dementia. Players who reported heading the ball greater than 15 times a game were found to have a 3.53 increased risk of memory issues, the highest among all studied players.
The researchers said that may be because repeated headers can cause sub-concussive injuries, which are low-grade injuries that don’t lead to the symptoms of a concussion but can build up over time and cause problems later in life.
“I think information like this is increasingly valuable for players and their parents,” says Dr. Leah Croll, an assistant professor of neurology at the Lewis Katz School of Medicine at Temple University.
Croll says she thinks research such as this will continue to shape the rules and regulations of the game at every level.
“Some leagues have introduced policies where they restrict heading the ball for this reason, and that may be something that becomes increasingly prevalent as we learn more and more about the risk of dementia and minor traumatic brain injuries earlier in life,” she says.
For example, the U.S. Soccer Federation, the governing body for soccer in the U.S., banned heading for players 10 and under in 2015.
This new study revealed that certain positions on the field had more significant risks for the development of memory issues when compared to others. Goalkeepers had the lowest risk, while defenders had the highest risk of developing memory issues. That may be because defenders head the ball more frequently than other positions on the field, the researchers said in the study.
Most research studies on headers and risk to the brain have been done on male athletes, which is a significant limitation to the data, and reflects longstanding gaps in sports medicine research around female athletes. Additionally, experts believe that female athletes face similar risks — or maybe higher risks, according to some research — from heading the ball. “There is some research to suggest that women might be more likely to have concussions and might have more severe symptoms from concussions, but we just don’t have enough information to say anything definitive at this point,” Croll says.
There’s still more to learn about headers and dementia risks, including the risks to athletes who may not play soccer for as many years as the professionals. But for now, experts say athletes at all ages should learn proper heading technique and take a break from playing if they’re having any concussion-like symptoms after headers, including headaches, dizziness, or confusion.
Despite the mounting evidence linking head impacts to the development of issues with the brain, Croll says there is a lot left to understand, especially around how we can help people who have already developed issues. “Looking into treatments could potentially be a very, very exciting future direction,” she says.
Alexander Garcia, D.O., is an internal medicine resident at Cooper University Hospital in Camden, New Jersey, and a member of the ABC News Medical Unit.
(NEW YORK) — As long-standing recession alarms continue to blare from some forecasters, investors don’t appear to hear them.
The S&P 500 — the index that most people’s 401(k)s track — has climbed more than 18% since the start of this year, while the tech-heavy Nasdaq has jumped a staggering 35%. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which has jumped some 6% this year, notched its eighth consecutive day of gains on Wednesday, the longest such streak since 2019.
The blockbuster stock market performance this year owes much to a significant cooldown of inflation that has bolstered expectations that the Federal Reserve can bring price hikes to normal levels without causing a severe downturn, analysts told ABC News.
Those analysts also noted that enthusiasm about artificial intelligence has provided a boost for major tech stocks that are disproportionately reflected in the gains of major indices weighted toward the biggest firms.
Analysts differed, however, in their opinions regarding whether the strong performance will last. Some said that in the coming months, investors will sour on the sky-high stock prices, while others said room for growth remains.
“It’s pretty amazing that we’re seeing such robust market returns this year, especially in the face of a looming recession,” said Amanda Agati, chief investment officer at PNC Financial Services. “You have to claim victory and be thrilled.”
The U.S. economy has proven more resilient than many expected amid an aggressive series of interest rate hikes at the Federal Reserve that are intended to fight price increases by slowing the economy and slashing demand, analysts said.
Consumer prices rose 3% in June compared to a year ago, marking a significant slowdown from a peak inflation rate last summer of more than 9%, data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics showed.
Some key economic indicators, meanwhile, have demonstrated robust performance. A jobs report earlier this month showed that the labor market slowed but still grew at a solid clip in June, adding 209,000 jobs.
The growing possibility of a ”soft landing” has cheered markets, John Stoltzfus, managing director and chief investment strategist at Oppenheimer Asset Management, told ABC News.
“What we think is happening here is primarily recognition by the market that indeed the Fed is having real progress against inflation,” Stoltzfus said.
Meanwhile, an upswell of optimism about the benefits of AI has compounded that positive market outlook, Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at broker OANDA, told ABC News.
“It has been resilient because of the AI movement,” Moya said. “There needed to be a fresh catalyst.”
Major indices like the S&P 500 are weighted proportionately toward the largest firms, made up mostly of big tech companies, which have delivered better-than-average returns amid the ongoing AI fervor and consequently buoyed the performance of the overall indices, Moya added.
Shares of Google, which unveiled its generative AI product, Bard, in February, have climbed roughly 36% in value this year. Microsoft, which owns a major stake in ChatGPT-maker OpenAI, has seen its share price jump 46%.
“There’s been a huge disconnect between the top 10 biggest names driving price returns and what everybody else is doing,” Agati said, noting that performance of the S&P 500 this year, when excluding the ten largest companies, stands at single-digit gains.
Looking ahead, Agati and Moya said they expect the stock market to decline over the remainder of the year, ending 2023 with positive but modest returns. The full economic cooling-off effects of central bank rate hikes have yet to take hold, they said, adding that inflation may not return to normal levels as soon as investors hope.
“The rally will stall out here,” Moya said.
Stoltzfus, however, said there’s a “good chance” the stock market will end the year higher than it currently stands.
“We have maintained a fairly bullish posture,” he said. “Where the market is trading right now would suggest to us that it has further to go this year.”
(LONDON) — A small spelling error has resulted in thousands of emails intended for the U.S. military being sent instead to Mali, an issue that Pentagon officials said they’ve taken steps to mitigate.
The suffix used for U.S. military emails is .mil, but leaving the “i” out by mistake would result in the email being redirected to .ml — the domain used by government of the West African nation Mali.
“Since 2015, the Department of Defense has been aware that typographical errors could result in the misdirection of unclassified emails intended for a ‘.mil’ recipient to the ‘.ml’ domain,” Lt. Cmdr. Tim Gorman, a U.S. Department of Defense spokesperson, told ABC News.
Some of the emails sent to Mali reportedly contained sensitive Pentagon information such as diplomatic documents, passwords and the travel itinerary of top defense officers.
U.S. officials are “aware of these unauthorized disclosures of controlled national security information,” Sabrina Singh, a Pentagon spokesperson, said on Monday.
Speaking to the Financial Times, Johannes Zuurbier, a Dutch internet entrepreneur who has a contract to manage Mali’s county domain, said he identified the problem almost a decade ago. Zuurbier, who said he has been collecting misdirected emails since January in effort to flag the issue to U.S. authorities, said he has close to 117,000 misdirected messages.
In one day, Zuurbier receiving 1,000 misdirected emails arrived as a result of the typo, he told the newspaper.
None of the redirected emails were marked as “classified,” however some are reported to have contained “highly sensitive” data including information on serving U.S. military personnel, official itineraries, contracts, maps and images of bases, he said.
The Pentagon said it’s taken steps to stop outgoing emails from being sent to the incorrect domain.
“The Department takes all disclosures of Controlled National Security Information or Controlled Unclassified Information seriously and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) began blocking .ml lookalike domains immediately,” Gorman said.
He added, “By 2023, the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) was blocking outbound emails to 135 .ml domains and subdomains. In July 2023, DISA began blocking outbound email to the entire .ml domain with the ability to allow legitimate emails.”
The Department of Defense says it is coordinating with interagency, industry partners and international allies to alert them to the possibility of unauthorized disclosure of information due to the typographical error.
Mali’s government did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(NEW YORK) — A powerful tornado ripped through central North Carolina for more than a dozen miles on Wednesday, destroying homes and injuring residents, according to officials.
The National Weather Service said early Thursday that a preliminary damage survey indicates the tornado was an EF3, with peak winds up to 150 miles per hour. It’s the first EF3 tornado ever observed in central North Carolina in the month of July and the strongest twister for this time of year on record in the state.
The National Weather Service currently uses the Enhanced Fujita scale to rate tornado intensity based on wind speeds and the severity of the damage caused. The scale has six intensity categories from zero to five (EF0, EF1, EF2, EF3, EF4 and EF5), representing increasing wind speeds and degrees of damage. There is also an unknown category (EFU) for tornadoes that cannot be rated due to a lack of evidence.
The 600-yard-wide tornado touched down Wednesday afternoon at around 12:30 ET near Dortches, a tiny town in North Carolina’s Nash County, just outside the city of Rocky Mount. From there, the twister traversed 16.5 miles over a period of about 30 minutes before lifting near the Battleboro neighborhood of Rocky Mount in North Carolina’s Edgecombe County, according to the National Weather Service.
While on the ground, the tornado snapped power poles, uprooted trees and damaged buildings. Multiple mobile homes in the Dortches area were completely destroyed and removed 20 to 30 yards from their foundations. Farther northeast, a residence building suffered major damage as all exterior walls collapsed with only interior walls and a brick fireplace still standing. The twister also flattened a metal truss tower connected to the electrical transmission line as well as caused significant damage to a metal warehouse building near the Belmont Lake Golf Club in Rocky Mount, according to the National Weather Service.
Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer said its facility in Rocky Mount was damaged by the tornado but that all staff “are safe and accounted for” after evacuating the building.
Citing media reports, the National Weather Service said there were 16 storm-related injures in the affected area — including two life-threatening — and no fatalities. The Edgecombe County Sheriff’s Office confirmed it had received reports of two life-threatening injuries and one non-life-threatening injury related to the storm.
The tornado is part of a system of severe weather threatening some 57 million Americans. The latest forecast for Thursday shows destructive winds, large hail and an isolated tornado are the main threats from Denver, Colorado, to north-central Oklahoma. And from Michigan to South Carolina, the main threat will be large hail — especially from Fort Wayne, Indiana, to Detroit, Michigan — along with damaging winds and isolated tornadoes. There is also a risk for flash flooding at all locations.
Meanwhile, extreme heat continues to plague a swath of the United States with no end in sight. More than 100 million Americans across 16 states — from California to Florida — are on alert for dangerous heat on Thursday, with the latest forecast showing temperatures at or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit in the Southwest and heat index values in the 100s in the Southeast.
Arizona’s capital had it’s all-time hottest day on record on Wednesday, with a high temperature of 119 degrees and a low of 97 degrees. Temperatures in Phoenix have now been at or above 110 degrees for the past 20 days and haven’t dropped below 90 degrees for 10 straight days.
A 71-year-old man from the Los Angeles area collapsed and died at the Golden Canyon trailhead in Death Valley National Park in California on Tuesday afternoon as temperatures soared to 121 degrees, according to the National Park Service. While the Inyo County Coroner’s Office has not yet determined the cause of death, park rangers suspect heat was a factor.
It’s possibly the second heat-related fatality in Death Valley this summer. A 65-year-old man died on July 3, the National Park Service said.
(NEW YORK) — Texas authorities are doubling down and pushing back on disturbing allegations of migrant abuse along the United States-Mexico border.
A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Public Safety, Lt. Christopher Olivarez, told ABC News during an interview on Wednesday that leadership consciences are clear over how migrants are treated by the agency.
Olivarez disputed or attempted to clear up a number of allegations that were made in an email a state trooper had sent to his superior earlier this month about what he called “inhumane” treatment of migrants attempting to enter the U.S. from the southern border in Texas. ABC News has learned that the trooper in question has been on the job for more than five years and is not permanently stationed at the border but rather was there on a rotation.
One of the key claims in the email was that troopers were directed by command to “push back” migrants attempting to cross the Rio Grande, a river that flows about 1,900 miles from Colorado to the Gulf of Mexico. The trooper said in the email that commanders only reiterated the order when concerns about drowning were raised.
Olivarez told ABC News that the trooper “misinterpreted” the order. He said that when commanders order troopers to “push back” migrants, they are directing them to verbally tell the migrants to go to a port of entry and not cross illegally. When pressed why the trooper would be so clear in his understanding that the order meant to physically push migrants into the river, Olivarez said the trooper had misunderstood and that it is not the Texas Department of Public Safety’s policy to physically push back migrants.
The trooper also alleged in the email that commanders told them not to distribute water to migrants amid extreme heat. Olivarez categorically denied that claim, telling ABC News that while it’s not their job to be a welcome committee to those attempting to cross the border, they would and have never denied water to anyone in need.
In regards to the email’s litany of alleged injuries to migrants crossing, including to a pregnant woman and children, Olivarez said there is no question that the barriers the Texas Department of Public Safety have put up along the border are dangerous. That is essentially the point, he argued, telling ABC News that the idea is to put these things in place to deter crossings.
When asked if, given the email, there should be concerns about the systemic abuse of migrants along the border, Olivarez said “no.” He said the trooper’s allegations are being investigated but that, at least initially, the email has prompted no widespread soul-searching at the Texas Department of Public Safety and will not change the scope or goals of the agency’s mission.
ABC News has obtained the original email, dated July 3, and has reached out to the trooper directly as well as the Texas State Troopers Association, the union representing the troopers, but requests for comment were not returned.
The U.S. Department of Justice “is aware of the troubling reports” and is working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security “and other relevant agencies to assess the situation,” spokesperson Xochitl Hinojosa told ABC News in a statement on Wednesday.
The Inspector General of the Texas Department of Public Safety is conducting a full investigation into the allegations.
(NEW YORK) — The virus lab at the heart of the contentious debate around COVID-19’s origins has been cut off from U.S. funding opportunities for likely violating National Institutes of Health’s biosafety rules, according to a memo shared with ABC News.
The Department of Health and Human Services has suspended the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s access to federal funding, and proposed banning them longer-term after the lab failed to provide sufficient documentation on their biosafety protocols and security measures, despite repeated requests from the NIH for their lab notebooks, files, financials and other records of their research, the memo, signed by an HHS official, states. According to the memo, “immediate action is necessary to protect the public interest.”
Because of the WIV’s “disregard” of NIH’s numerous requests to “provide the required materials” to back up the research in their grant progress reports, the “NIH’s conclusion that WIV research likely violated protocols of the NIH regarding biosafety is undisputed,” the memo states.
“As such, there is risk that WIV not only previously violated, but is currently violating, and will continue to violate, protocols of the NIH on biosafety,” the memo states.
The WIV received NIH funding through its partnership with EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit and longtime collaborator with the WIV on coronavirus research.
The WIV hasn’t received any federal funding from NIH since the summer of 2020, according to HHS. Still, their continued noncompliance has shown that they “lack the present responsibility to participate” in federal funding programs altogether, the memo states.
This move now makes the WIV ineligible for future federal awards from any U.S. agency, including new contracts, grants and other transactions.
The WIV has 30 days to respond to the notice. If they don’t respond, proceedings will begin to ban them longer term.
An HHS spokesperson tells ABC News they have yet to receive a response from the WIV.
There is “adequate evidence in the record” to ban them longer term, and “immediate action is necessary to protect the public interest,” the memo said.
HHS sent a letter to the WIV’s director general informing the institution of their suspension and possible long-term federal funding ban. The Monday-dated letter, shared with ABC News and signed by an HHS official, was sent via email, fax and UPS. The suspension was effective immediately, the letter said.
This suspension is a temporary action, but meanwhile, “immediate action is necessary to protect the integrity of federal procurement and non-procurement activities,” the letter to WIV’s director general said.
The WIV’s “affiliation with, or relationship to, any organization doing business” with the U.S. government “will be carefully examined to determine the impact of those ties on the responsibility of that organization” on their work with the government.
How long a long-term ban would last is not definitive: HHS’ letter to WIV’s director general noted longer-term funding bans are “generally” no more than three years. It could, however, be shorter or longer as “circumstances warrant” based on mitigating or aggravating factors and the seriousness of the situation.
An HHS spokesperson said in a statement to ABC News that this move comes after a lengthy review, noting the agency “took action” on cutting the WIV’s funding access “after a monthslong review conducted by the Biden administration. The move was undertaken due to WIV’s failure to provide documentation on WIV’s research requested by NIH related to concerns that WIV violated NIH’s biosafety protocols. In short, HHS finds ‘that WIV is not compliant with federal regulations and is not presently responsible.’”
“This formal process began in September 2022, with new information continuing to be provided to the HHS official in charge until June 2023,” the statement continued. “Throughout this time, WIV did not receive any federal funding from NIH and has not received any federal funding from NIH since July 2020.”
It’s not the first time this lab has come under scrutiny for its lack of cooperation and questionable biosafety standards.
Renowned for its massive collection of, and advanced research on, bat coronaviruses, the WIV has been central to one of the leading COVID-19 origin theories — that an accidental research-related incident at the lab could have first unleashed the virus on the world and sparked the pandemic.
The nine-page memo outlines nearly 10 years of correspondence with EcoHealth regarding their grant and research at the WIV which then informed the suspension, and which span before, during and after the pandemic. It makes no referendum on where the pandemic began in the decision to cut funding — whether a lab leak or a natural animal spillover — however the ongoing mystery over COVID-19’s origins exposed urgent questions over biosafety and transparency that have are core to the issues behind the WIV’s suspension now.
Since the pandemic’s inception, as Beijing and the WIV have stonewalled numerous investigations and COVID-19’s origins remained unresolved, the lab has become a symbol of the still-inscrutable source of the virus that has killed nearly seven million people worldwide, per the World Health Organization.
The Biden administration has focused on the lab in their probe into COVID-19’s origins, and the White House, the U.S. intelligence community, and many in the international public health community have consistently and vociferously criticized Beijing and WIV for stonewalling their investigations.
The WIV has also become highly politicized and used as a polemic cudgel, with GOP members using NIH’s funding to WIV to attack, among others, former National Institute of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci.
In their summary on potential links between the WIV and COVID-19’s origins declassified last month, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence noted that while they didn’t know of a specific biosafety incident that spurred the pandemic, they concluded the WIV did not always use adequate safety precautions for the risky research they were carrying out — which could increase the risk of “accidental exposure” to viruses.
In January, a report from HHS’ inspector general found that “despite identifying potential risks associated with research being performed under the EcoHealth awards, NIH did not effectively monitor or take timely action to address” their compliance with research requirements.
“WIV’s lack of cooperation with the international community following the COVID-19 outbreak—consistent with the response from China—limited EcoHealth’s ability to monitor its subrecipient, and greater transparency is needed about information from WIV,” OIG’s report read.
