(NEW YORK) — Between the damaging storm threat from the Midwest to the East and dangerous heat in the West and South, more than 110 million Americans are on alert for dangerous weather over the holiday weekend.
On Saturday, excessively hot temperatures extending from the West Coast to the South could affect 66 million Americans.
Temperatures in the West will reach the 100s in many locations and even the 110s in places like Redding, California, and Fresno, California, along with Phoenix, Arizona. A whopping 116 degrees is expected in Palm Springs.
In the South, heat index temperatures (how temperatures feel) will range from 105 to 115 degrees on Saturday in at least 8 southern states from Texas to Georgia. The entire state of Mississippi is under an excessive heat warning.
On Saturday, the highest risk area is centered over St. Louis, Louisville and Indianapolis stretching across portions of I-70, I-55, I-65 and I-64.
More than 50 million Americans are in the storm zone this holiday weekend. From Missouri to the East Coast, Americans will need to stay alert for storms with damaging winds along with chances for large hail and a few tornadoes.
On Sunday, the threat for damaging wind and large hail will extend from Tennessee to New Jersey.
Temperatures are expected to remain hot through the July 4th holiday.
Fifteen states remain under air quality alerts on Saturday. Overall, the smoke in America is weakening but those with asthma and other respiratory issues should continue to use caution, health officials warn.
Health officials say its important to remember to reduce outdoor exertion and listen to your body – sitting in the shade with plenty of adequate hydration is of the utmost importance if you’re outside. Better yet, stay indoors with air conditioning.
(NEW YORK) — As Canada and the U.S. continue to feel the lasting effects of the ongoing wildfires raging in the Great White North, environmental experts are pushing for long-term changes that they say can mitigate the damage from future blazes.
And with climate change making these once unprecedented wildfire events commonplace, those experts said governments on both sides of the border need to act fast.
“It has been an issue because we don’t have a strong federal government and it’s left us in this mess right now, Robert Gray, a wildland fire ecologist based in British Columbia, told ABC News.
Gray, who has studied wildfires in both the U.S. and Canada, said that higher temperatures, and dryer conditions have left the land in the eastern Canadian wilderness more susceptible to larger wildfires.
Even one lightning strike on a tree or brush could be detrimental as there is much more wood to keep the fire burning for a long time.
“These fires are reburning past fires that have been not that old,” he said. “The trees fall down and then it’s basically available to burn again.”
As for the current situation, some experts said the terrain and severity of the fire make it difficult to put out quickly.
“Because of the size of the fires, the weather is going to be the only thing now that’s going put them out. That means major rain, and in some areas, possibly snowfall,” Gray said.
John Gradek, a faculty lecturer and the coordinator of McGill University’s aviation management program, told ABC News that Canada doesn’t have a unified government entity that manages the country’s forests and handles disasters that take place in multiple provinces.
Those responsibilities lie with each province’s government, and because of that, he said there is not a coordinated effort between Quebec and Ontario with the current situation.
But even without that national oversight, Gradek said that emergency response teams can start to implement mitigation techniques that have been proven to curb forest fires.
For example, in locations such as British Columbia, California and Colorado, which have had more experience with major wildfires, forestry teams will do controlled fires to clear the underbrush at the beginning of the season, Gradek said.
“In the wildlands of the Quebec forests there is no prescribed program to clean up the forest floor,” he said.
Gradek said that government groups can also plan before the warmer months by deploying fire retardant substances from the air to lessen the chance of a spread once wildfire season starts.
Negar Elhami-Khorasani, an associate professor of civil, structural and environmental engineering at the University at Buffalo School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, told ABC News that at the very least local and federal governments should come up with policies and strategies that provide fair warning about the dangers of the wildfires.
Similar to hurricane plans near coastal cities, Elhami-Khorasani said it wouldn’t take too much time or resources to warn residents who live and work near wildfire-prone areas in Canada about dangers during wildfire season.
“Prior to the event, completing a risk evaluation and creating tools to predict what can happen can guide mitigation actions,” she added.
Gray emphasized that increased wildfires are a multinational problem throughout North America, and both the U.S. and Canada need to prioritize wildfire mitigation in all areas of the country as he predicted that this summer’s events will become more common.
“There is a political will to do this, and there is an outcry in the U.S. that is raising the word on the impact,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Five-year-old Penelope Sapia was diagnosed with a rare disease at birth. Ever since then, her mother, Gillian Sapia, has had to become well-versed in the complex world of Medicaid enrollment — the only way the family affords the constant brain scans, kidney tests and seizure medications that Penelope needs to treat her classic galactosemia, a genetic metabolic disorder.
That’s why Gillian Sapia, a former nurse turned full-time caretaker for her daughter, was stunned when she received a text from Penelope’s occupational therapist in May. Penelope no longer had Medicaid, the therapist texted, and she wouldn’t be able to get treatment again until she did.
“I was crying all day,” said Sapia, who wasn’t sure if she’d made a mistake renewing her daughter’s Medicaid or if there had been a mistake in the system. “It was just so overwhelming and so defeating because I really do — my whole life is taking care of her. I’m her caretaker. And I felt like a bad mom.”
Sapia knew that their home state of Florida, along with a handful of other states, had begun combing through Medicaid rolls to make sure everyone was still eligible — as required with the end this year of the federal government’s public health emergency for COVID-19.
Nonetheless, Sapia had expected to remain enrolled because, she said, she applied for renewal and hadn’t heard otherwise from the state Medicaid office.
Instead, Sapia said that text from her daughter’s occupational therapist kicked off a three-week period of daily calls, often with hourslong hold times, to reach agents with the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF). When she couldn’t get answers there, she turned to health advocates and lawyers who took up her case.
In that time, the Sapias said, they spent about $1,000 a week to keep up with Penelope’s health care needs as they struggled to find out why she lost her Medicaid coverage — and how to get it back.
Three weeks later, after working with lawyers and a health advocacy group called the Florida Health Justice Project, Sapia said she got a call carrying good news: Penelope was back on Medicaid.
But the Sapias say they still don’t have a clear answer for why they were suddenly removed in the first place.
DCF declined to comment to ABC News on Penelope’s case, citing privacy concerns, and a spokesperson did not respond to a detailed list of questions for this story. But the spokesperson maintained that “everyone that is removed from Medicaid receives a final notice informing them of the reason for termination.”
Sapia said that wasn’t her experience.
“They didn’t even tell me that I was dropped. And I went through all of my letters to see where I was dropped, and there was absolutely not a single letter in my profile online,” she said. “No answers whatsoever.”
In May, the same month the Sapias were removed from Medicaid, Florida removed around 250,000 other enrollees — and nationwide, more than 1.5 million Americans have lost coverage in the last four months, according to an analysis of available data from at least 25 states by the nonpartisan health policy center KFF.
Why Medicaid is undergoing a huge review
The massive shift in health care coverage — potentially the biggest since the country implemented the Affordable Care Act 10 years ago, experts have said — started in the spring, when the country officially moved out of the pandemic’s emergency phase, first declared by the federal government in 2020.
States had been given additional federal funding for the last three years to provide continuous Medicaid coverage, ensuring no one lost health care amid the throes of COVID-19.
The end of the emergency, in May, also meant the end of the federal money and states could once again begin reviewing their Medicaid rolls, asking people to renew their coverage and prove they’re still eligible for government-funded health care. Florida began redetermining Medicaid eligibility on May 1 and will be updating the coverage rolls each month through March 2024.
In Arkansas, where at least 110,000 people have lost coverage so far, according to KFF, Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has pledged to carry out the process in half the time the federal government called for states to use. Huckabee has called the Medicaid rollbacks “necessary” to help get the program “back to normal.”
“We’re simply removing ineligible participants from the program to reserve resources for those who need them and follow the law,” she wrote in an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal in May.
Nearly all states will have begun their redetermination processes by July, and about half the country already has.
In all, 15 million people could get removed from the Medicaid rolls during the redetermination process, the U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) estimates.
Up to 7M Americans may lose coverage unnecessarily
The concern of health advocates, though, is for people like the Sapias, who seemingly slip through the cracks of bureaucracy.
With such a big undertaking after three years, Medicaid officials estimate that there could be roughly 7 million people who are still eligible but lose their coverage anyway.
“That is of paramount concern to us,” Dan Tsai, who oversees federal Medicaid efforts for CMS, told ABC News in an interview.
The estimate comes from historical data, Tsai said, which shows that before the pandemic, people struggled to keep up with regular reapplications for Medicaid coverage. Procedural errors, missed notices and confusion are known factors in part to blame for eligible recipients losing coverage, he said.
“Because of the Medicaid renewal process, which is often very paper-based, you have individuals in the program — kids, families, parents — losing coverage for a period of time and often not knowing it until they show back up at the doctor’s office,” he said.
Referring to the 15 million expected to lose Medicaid coverage with the end of COVID-19 funding, Tsai said, “We know and have estimated that roughly half of that … will be people that are still eligible and lose coverage. Not because their income has changed but because of red tape, of not getting a piece of paper in the mail or knowing that they were up for renewal and needing to submit and return a form to the state.”
In Florida, for example, 82% of those removed from the Medicaid rolls in May lost coverage because of “procedural reasons,” according to a KFF analysis of the Florida redetermination data from May. That meant people didn’t fill out a form correctly or submit it in time, or perhaps moved homes and missed a letter notifying them of the change in the mail.
By contrast, 18% of the 250,000 people in Florida were removed in May because they were ineligible, KFF found, usually meaning they’d found employer-sponsored health care or they now made too much money to qualify for the low-income program and were transferred over to coverage through the ACA, also known as “Obamacare.”
DCF did not respond to ABC News’ multiple requests for comment regarding KFF’s findings.
While it’s still unclear why Penelope Sapia was temporarily removed from Medicaid coverage, experts who reviewed her case pointed out that Florida’s plan pledges to keep children with medically complex conditions enrolled until the end of the redetermination process.
Because of that, the Sapias expect her to have coverage until they go through the renewal again in March 2024 — but her story raises concern about the state’s process, said Joan Alker, executive director of the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University.
Across the country, Alker said, it will be a challenge to navigate such a far-reaching process without dropping people from coverage unnecessarily.
“This is a really heavy lift. We see mistakes are made. Families don’t get the letter, they don’t understand the letter, they have a hard time getting help,” she said.
While the DCF wouldn’t comment on Penelope Sapia, the department’s deputy chief of staff, Mallory McManus said they are “utilizing an aggressive text and email effort in addition to traditional mail.”
“If all of those efforts are unsuccessful, we are calling recipients to inform them that their redetermination is past due and to encourage them to respond to the Department,” McManus told ABC News.
Tsai, at CMS, said his department has been working for two years to get states to streamline their processes in order to lessen the blow when redeterminations inevitably began again.
“So much of the work and the strategies we put on the table, the all-hands-on-deck moment now, is to help make sure that everybody eligible is aware of what’s happening, has a chance to update their contact information with the state and really is able to return the renewal form to keep their coverage,” he said.
“There’s more to do,” he acknowledged. “And indeed, some states have taken us up on every option and strategy that we’ve put on the table. Some states have taken up fewer of those.”
But the “bottom line” is this, he said. “We’re really encouraging and urging our state partners and others to really adopt, take up, do everything in your power, to do everything to keep people covered.”
ABC News’ Eric Fayeulle and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Kelsey Hoskin charges students $675 for an hour-long, private college admissions strategy Zoom session. And students are paying.
Unlike many traditional private college admissions consultants, Hoskin hasn’t served as an admissions officer before. She’s a recent alumna of Harvard University and a current medical student at the University of Michigan.
Hoskin, who has 127.7k TikTok followers under her account @harvardhoneyyy as of writing, says that during the past admissions cycle, at least two of her students were accepted into each of the eight Ivy Leagues.
As acceptance rates at selective universities seemingly hit record lows each year, anxiety over the college admissions process only continues to increase, inspiring students to turn to fellow students for advice. For the Class of 2027, Yale University reported it’s largest-ever pool of applicants, with only a 4.35% acceptance rate, the lowest in its history.
The college admissions landscape is also constantly changing, with the Supreme Court setting new limits on affirmative action on Thursday.
The prices charged by student college admissions consultants vary, though many of them are cheaper than private consultants with decades of experience. Influencers like Hoskin, who have access to hundreds of thousands of social media followers, can charge more than students promoting services just within their local communities.
Hoskin frequently posts screenshots of her acceptance letters from elite universities on TikTok. However, she doesn’t believe that any student attending these universities should necessarily be selling consulting services.
“THANK YOU SO SO SO SO MUCH FOR ALL OF YOUR HELP, I SERIOUSLY COULDNT HAVE DONE IT WITHOUT YOUR HELP!!!” reads one text posted by Hoskin.
According to Hoskin, her unique credibility comes from getting into every Ivy she applied to, serving as an alumni interviewer for Harvard and partnering with her high school back during her Harvard days to present a webinar on college admissions.
“I think I have more credibility possibly than an admissions officer,” Hoskin said. “A past admissions officer from Brown [University] can tell you what Brown’s looking for. But I figured out what Harvard, Cornell [University], Dartmouth [College], all these schools I applied to, were looking for.”
Becky Munsterer Sabky is a former admissions director at Dartmouth and the author of “Valedictorians at the Gate,” shares she’s witnessed a lot of people from various ages and backgrounds sell college consulting services, including students.
“When we worked in college admissions, when we read applications, we really approached it as every person should have their individual stamp on this application,” Sabky said. “I think if anyone figures out how to secure a person’s place into a college, that’s amazing, because college is a business, and these are difficult business decisions.”
Andrew Liu, a rising sophomore at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, purchased an essay editing service from a company run by current MIT students and recent alumni. After the consultant read over one of his required short answer essays, Liu felt the feedback was “not that helpful” and didn’t purchase more services.
Liu, who was a part of the USA Astronomy and Astrophysics Team in high school, credits his eventual acceptance largely to his academic performance and extracurriculars, not his essays.
“If I had to go back and do it again, I don’t think I would have needed to purchase any extraneous essay help,” Liu said.
And even though his sister, a Northwestern University alumna, started an essay editing business with her friends during college, Liu hasn’t done the same. He says he doesn’t feel qualified to be giving essay advice. According to Liu, receiving an acceptance letter isn’t enough; instead, he thinks consultants should have experience in writing, like his sister did.
Liu has also witnessed his peers present online webinars to their local communities where they share their college admission processes. He finds the practice “slimy,” “very weird” and that students end up “basically just flexing in front of a bunch of parents.”
What Liu learned from his admissions cycle was that the most important thing was to stay true to himself and his passions, an idea that Sabky agrees with.
“I think it’s okay to ask for help,” Sabky said. “But I don’t think anyone offering services because they feel like they could package you better in an inauthentic way is moral.”
(NEW YORK) — While about a dozen major Republican candidates are fighting for the 2024 nomination, a more under-the-radar quadrennial competition is starting: the race to be the still-unnamed nominee’s running mate.
The 2024 veepstakes — still in its infancy — is mostly fuel for speculation, but squinting can reveal early jockeying for a potential spot on the ticket depending on who heads it.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem and Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds are viewed as well-positioned to be vice presidential picks by sources who know them and outside GOP strategists, and current presidential candidates like former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott are constantly beating back conjecture that they’re actually seeking to set up camp at the Naval Observatory instead of at the White House.
“Everybody says they don’t want it, but then ultimately everybody does want it, right? And I don’t think that that excludes [Noem] or any of the other potential leading candidates,” said a person familiar with Noem’s thinking.
Noem was speculated to be considering a White House run of her own, though that appears less likely now.
However, she’s ramping up advertising and is expected to travel more outside South Dakota. South Dakota this month launched a nationwide ad campaign aimed at workforce recruitment. The effort’s two ads prominently feature Noem and are set to run through the summer. The source familiar with Noem’s thinking also teased more travel by the governor and said her attendance at next month’s Family Leadership Summit in the critical early voting state of Iowa is a “lock.”
In an interview with a local news outlet Tuesday, Noem stopped short of endorsing former President Donald Trump’s comeback bid but did say “I don’t see a path to victory for anybody else with him in the race and the situation as it sits today” — boosting the candidate who is widely considered the primary favorite.
“These ads are really getting a lot of attention. She did ‘Fox & Friends’ on it. She did Kilmeade. She did ‘Hannity.’ All of this is designed to demonstrate to people across the country what she’s doing in the state,” said the source familiar with Noem’s thinking, referencing the ad campaign. “Number one, it brings people to South Dakota. Number two, it’s a really, really, really smart marketing opportunity if you don’t want to file for president to keep your name top of mind.”
“Just think of that, and then we’ll see what her travel schedule looks like over the coming weeks and months,” the person teased.
Should Noem ultimately be tapped, allies say she can boast a strong fundraising base, tap into ties to congressional leaders after eight years in the House before becoming governor and highlight her claims that South Dakota did not experience lengthy shutdowns during the coronavirus pandemic. And with mostly men leading the primary field, Noem would also offer an opportunity to bring gender diversity to the ticket.
“She’s definitely had a national profile and worked to maintain that. And that’s had some benefits to South Dakota, but it’s also meant that she has horizons beyond just being governor of South Dakota,” said one South Dakota GOP official. “I think there’s a broad assumption that that’s something she’d be interested in.”
Just to the east, Reynolds is also making waves. As the governor of Iowa, Reynolds has appeared at events with several presidential contenders eager to gin up support for the state’s caucuses — a ubiquity that sparked a Wall Street Journal profile.
Reynolds also highlighted her foreign policy chops by meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Wednesday and gained plaudits in 2022 for her response to President Joe Biden’s State of the Union address — a role typically reserved for a party up-and-comer.
“I think she would definitely consider it, and I think she would see it as an honor for all of Iowa and for Iowans to be considered. And if she thought she could elevate Iowa values, Iowa common sense to the country, I think she then would welcome that invitation,” said Bob Vander Plaats, an influential evangelical activist in Iowa who speaks with Reynolds.
Like Noem, Reynolds would offer a presidential nominee a rising star and deeply conservative record, including a laser focus on how race and sexuality are taught in public schools — another issue popular with the GOP base.
“I think she does her job so well that it would compel someone to consider [her]. She’s been an incredibly effective governor. She’s passing her agenda, which is popular in the state of Iowa,” said David Kochel, a GOP strategist who worked on both of Reynolds’ gubernatorial campaigns. “If I were the Republican nominee, it’d be a pretty short list of people I would look at, and she is right at the top of it.”
Beyond Noem and Reynolds, operatives who spoke with ABC News also mentioned people like Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn as potential picks.
However, a source familiar with Sanders’ thinking told ABC News she intends to serve as governor for eight years, though “she’s certainly aware that her name has been mentioned,” and a spokesperson for Blackburn insisted she’s running for reelection in 2024.
Sources who spoke to ABC News also repeatedly mentioned Haley and Scott, both of whom are polling in the low single digits and have thus far struggled to expand their bases — sparking whispers that they may be using presidential bids to increase their name recognition and then become vice president or score a spot in a GOP administration. Scott himself years ago even expressed openness to being a vice president.
Both of their campaigns have continually denounced the speculation, calling it offensive and insisting their candidates are in the race for the long haul.
Yet if there is a hidden scheme in their campaigns, strategists cast doubts on whether a presidential campaign could turn into a spot as the party’s No. 2.
“If you think you can become vice president by running for president, that’s not always the best strategy because if you run a poor campaign for president, then why should you be vice president? And if you run a great campaign for president, then in all likelihood you’ve attacked the eventual nominee on the way,” said Alex Conant, a GOP strategist who worked on Sen. Marco Rubio’s, R-Fla., 2016 presidential bid.
Bob Heckman, a GOP strategist and veteran of several presidential campaigns, suggested “the best way to set yourself up is [to] pick the winning horse and be supportive.”
“I don’t think that in the Republican Party, there has been a tendency to try to find someone who ran against you or supported those people who ran against you and make that person a vice presidential nominee,” he said.
If that’s true, that could potentially indicate Noem’s positive comments about Trump are part of a larger play — and put any possible vice presidential ambitions of Scott and Haley, who has been sharply critical of Trump, in peril. Reynolds, meanwhile, has said she’ll remain neutral at least through the Iowa caucuses.
The last Republican presidential nominee to select a primary opponent as his running mate was Ronald Reagan, who brought on George H.W. Bush as his running mate in the 1980 general election after he defeated him in the Republican primaries earlier that year.
Still, all would-be vice presidential candidates could have a tightrope to walk, lest they appear too eager for the role.
“Being seen as campaigning for it,” Conant warned, “is probably the quickest way to get yourself off the list.”
(NEW YORK) — The Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP) and Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) agreed Friday to an extension of the 2020 TV/Theatrical contracts in a move that averts a possible strike .
The current SAG-AFTRA contract was set to expire Friday at midnight but has now been extended to July 12, at 11:59 pm PT.
SAG-AFTRA released an open letter Friday to its members stating that negotiations have been ongoing for three weeks for a comprehensive and inclusive contract.
“No one should mistake this extension for weakness. We see you. We hear you. We are you,” the letter states.
SAG-AFTRA voted last month to authorize a strike if a deal had not been reached between the studios, production companies and streamers by June 30. Nearly 98% of the 65,000 members cast their vote in favor of the strike.
Rolling Stone reported earlier this week that Hollywood superstars such as Meryl Streep, Jennifer Lawrence and Ben Stiller were among 300 members that urged the union to stand strong to ensure better compensation and addressed concerns about artificial intelligence in a letter.
“We want you to know that we would rather go on strike than compromise on these fundamental points, and we believe that, if we settle for a less than transformative deal, the future of our union and our craft will be undermined, and SAG-AFTRA will enter the next negotiation with drastically reduced leverage,” the letter states.
The Writers Guild of America went on strike in May after a failure to reach an agreement with studios.
(LONDON) — Canada’s wildfire season is now the worst ever recorded as the country has exceeded the largest area ever burned in a year, totaling more than 19.5 million acres so far.
There are at least 500 active fires burning around the country, 257 of which are classified as “out of control”, according to Canada Interagency Forest Fire Centre (CIFFC).
The scale of the environmental catastrophe is unparalleled in the country’s recorded history. In Quebec alone, 3.6 million acres have burnt in the wildfires so far. The average annual area that has burned in the past 10 years is 24,359 acres, meaning that the areas burned just in the last two months are approximately 147 times larger than an average year.
One fire, in the western province of British Columbia, is the largest the province has ever seen. The Donnie Creek fire now covers an area larger than the size of Rhode Island.
Rains have so far failed to provide relief for the ferocious fires as Canadian officials say heavy rains in Quebec have missed areas where wildfires are most active.
According to the report Canadian government, climate change is already affecting the frequency, duration and intensity of extreme weather and climate-related events in Canada.
The report adds that June has already brought above-normal temperatures across the northern Prairies in Canada as well as northern Ontario and northern Quebec. Throughout the summer, higher temperatures are expected to persist and experts say the extreme warmth at high latitudes is a clear connection to climate change.
The sheer number and size of the fires is only part of the reason why they have created such a problem for the country, with one key reason being the geographic spread. In a normal year, provinces might be able to help each other by sending resources to badly affected regions, but this year there are fires in nearly every single province which has caused a huge problem when it comes to figuring out the resourcing of fire fighting equipment.
The Canadian army has been mobilized in several provinces as international crews have arrived to help — most notably South African teams in Alberta and French teams in Quebec. The White House announced earlier this month that over 600 U.S. firefighters and support personnel have been deployed to help fight the fires.
South Korean teams are also expected to arrive in Quebec next week but the geographic scope of the fires still means resources that would usually be able to target one place have to now be spread unevenly.
(NEW YORK) — The State Department released a declassified version of its long-anticipated report Friday examining the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, unveiling the harshest critique of any of the administration’s efforts to examine its own handling of the crisis to date.
“The decisions of both President Trump and President Biden to end the U.S. military mission posed significant challenges for the [State] Department as it sought to maintain a robust diplomatic and assistance presence in Kabul and provide continued support to the Afghan government and people,” the report states.
The White House released portions of its broad review in April, drawing in part from the State Department’s probe, which was completed in March of 2022.
But that initial summary painted the Biden administration in far more glowing terms, asserting that the president “undertook a deliberate, intensive, rigorous, and inclusive decision-making process” but was constrained by his predecessor.
Biden did not specifically address the report’s findings when he was asked Friday.
“No, no. All the evidence is coming back together. Remember what I said about Afghanistan? I said Al-Qaeda would not be there. I said it wouldn’t be there. I said we’d get help from the Taliban. What’s happening now? What’s going on? Read your press. I was right,” Biden said.
The State Department’s review finds that some of the choices made by Biden “compounded the difficulties” diplomats faced in Afghanistan, such as the speed at which the military withdrew and handing over Bagram Air Base to the Afghan government in July of 2021, leaving Hamid Karzai International Airport as the sole evacuation route.
That airport later became the setting for some of the darkest, most frantic moments of the exit, including a terror attack that claimed the lives of 13 American servicemembers and scores of Afghans desperate to flee as Kabul fell to the Taliban.
While the White House previously said that Biden directed government agencies to prepare for “all contingencies,” the State Department inquiry found disorganization in the highest level of government, saying it was “unclear who in the department had the lead” on evacuation efforts.
The review also claims that senior officials failed to make critical decisions about which at-risk Afghan nationals would be airlifted before Afghanistan fell into turmoil.
Even as the Taliban amassed power and drew closer to Kabul, the report says that American officials failed to act with appropriate urgency and instead “seemed to rely on received assurances” from Afghanistan’s then-president that the country’s forces “would concentrate on the defense of Kabul and believed that they could hold the Taliban at bay for some time.”
Though estimates for how long Afghanistan’s military could retain control varied, the State Department review claims U.S. officials did not sufficiently plan for a worst-case scenario and failed to take decisive action once it became clear that scenario was a reality.
“We’ve already internalized many of these painful lessons and applied them in subsequent crises, most notably in how we managed the Russian invasion in Ukraine and in some of the aspects of our response to the crisis in Sudan a couple of months ago,” a senior official said.
Like the previous release from the White House, this report makes no mention of a message sent by dozens of diplomats from the U.S. embassy in Kabul in July 2021 that warned the country could collapse and urged the Secretary of State to speed up evacuation efforts.
Republicans on Capitol Hill have been urging the State Department to widely share its findings since the report was transmitted to select members of Congress in April, but it’s unclear whether the version released on Friday will satisfy conservatives. Only a quarter of the 80-page report was made public.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the U.S. Supreme Court of granting businesses the right “to refuse to serve members of a protected class” for the first time in its history.
The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday in favor of a evangelical Christian website designer who argued that a Colorado anti-discrimination law violated her First Amendment right to refuse to create websites for same-sex weddings.
Sotomayor noted a nationwide rise in anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination and called it “heartbreaking.”
“Sadly, it is also familiar,” she wrote in her dissent. “When the civil rights and women’s rights movements sought equality in public life, some public establishments refused. Some even claimed, based on sincere religious beliefs, constitutional rights to discriminate. The brave Justices who once sat on this Court decisively rejected those claims.”
Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined the dissent.
The Supreme Court on Friday ruled in favor of the evangelical Christian businesswoman in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, a case involving whether creative businesses can refuse to serve LGBTQ+ customers because of First Amendment free speech rights.
The Court holds that the company has a right to post a notice that says, “‘no [wedding websites] will be sold if they will be used for gay marriages.”
The dissenting justices say the Constitution contains “no right to refuse service to a disfavored group” and argued that the decision could open the door for discrimination.
“The decision threatens to balkanize the market and to allow the exclusion of other groups from many services,” the dissent reads. “A website designer could equally refuse to create a wedding website for an interracial couple, for example.”
Sotomayor acknowledged the growing anti-LGBTQ+ political backlash nationwide, which has lead to threats and violence against the queer community.
“Around the country, there has been a backlash to the movement for liberty and equality for gender and sexual minorities,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent. “New forms of inclusion have been met with reactionary exclusion.”
Sotomayor wrote, “The law in question targets conduct, not speech, for regulation, and the act of discrimination has never constituted protected expression under the First Amendment.”
President Joe Biden also criticized the decision in a statement, arguing that “no person should face discrimination simply because of who they are or who they love” in America.
“The Supreme Court’s disappointing decision in 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis undermines that basic truth, and painfully it comes during Pride month when millions of Americans across the country join together to celebrate the contributions, resilience, and strength of the LGBTQI+ community,” Biden wrote.
(NEW YORK) — An attorney for Hunter Biden on Friday transmitted a sharp and sweeping letter to a powerful Republican lawmaker condemning his handling of an IRS whistleblower who has accused Justice Department officials of undermining the DOJ’s investigation into President Joe Biden’s son.
Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, accused Rep. Jason Smith, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, of leveraging comments made by an IRS supervisory agent as “an obvious ploy to feed the misinformation campaign to harm our client, Hunter Biden, as a vehicle to attack his father.”
Smith last week released transcripts of the committee’s interviews with two IRS whistleblowers who in April accused the Justice Department of granting Hunter Biden “preferential treatment” during the DOJ’s yearslong probe of his tax affairs.
The move came just days after the younger Biden agreed to plead guilty to a pair of tax-related misdemeanors and enter into a pretrial diversion agreement that would enable him to avoid prosecution on one felony gun charge, potentially ending the DOJ’s investigation.
Lowell, in his letter to Smith, accused the IRS agent, Gary Shapley, of being “disgruntled” and of seeking whistleblower status “in an attempt to evade their own misconduct” — implying that Shapley was the source of leaks to the press about the Justice Department’s investigation into Hunter Biden.
“Mr. Shapley may be reaping the ‘reward’ from the cover you have given him, considering the penalties for agents illegally leaking this type of information,” Lowell wrote.
Attorney General Merrick Garland has said that Trump-appointed U.S. Attorney David Weiss has “ultimate authority” over the probe, and both Garland and the White House have denied any interference in Weiss’ investigation.
Lowell also cast doubt on the authenticity of a July 2017 WhatsApp message in which the younger Biden purportedly threatened a Chinese business associate by invoking his father’s political connections.
In the message, Hunter Biden purportedly wrote that he was “sitting here with my father and we would like to understand why the commitment made has not been fulfilled” — a statement Lowell denied in his letter.
“The facts … are that President Biden and our client were not together that day … and that no transaction actually occurred,” Lowell wrote. “More important, your own actions call into question the authenticity of that communication and your subsequent use of it.”
Lowell reserved equally harsh language for Smith, accusing the Republican chairman of “violat[ing] the spirit, if not the letter, of the tax laws and federal rules government investigations.”
“Chairman Smith, it is easy when a committee does not operate with fairness and thoroughness and an adherence to rules and procedures to forward a false political narrative,” Lowell wrote. “You have done that, and it appears that you … will continue to do that.”
“We can only hope that the specious methods you are using, some of which are laid out in this letter, will inform the public of the right way things should be done,” Lowell wrote.
Responding to the letter, Shapley’s attorneys said in a statement, “This attempt to intimidate our client and the oversight authorities scrutinizing the politicization of that case is no surprise. IRS SSA Gary Shapley has scrupulously followed the rules and blew the whistle to Congress about the unequal application of tax laws.”
Smith likewise defended Shapley in a statement, saying he “bravely came forward with allegations about misconduct and preferential treatment for Hunter Biden — and now face attacks even from an army of lawyers he hired.”
“Worse, this letter misleads the public about the lawful actions taken by the Ways and Means Committee, which took the appropriate legal steps to share this information with rest of Congress,” Smith said.
