(NEW YORK) — The Trump Organization’s longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, is expected to plead guilty to tax charges as soon as this week, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
Weisselberg, 75, is currently scheduled to go on trial in the fall, but a hearing in the case is now scheduled for this Thursday, in what could be a sign that he could change his plea then.
An attorney for Weisselberg declined to comment when contacted by ABC News.
Weisselberg, along with former President Donald Trump’s namesake family real estate firm, was charged last year with tax fraud after they were accused of compensating employees “off the books” in order to pay less in taxes.
According to the charging documents, Weisselberg avoided taxes on more than $1.7 million over the past 15 years, resulting from the payment of his rent on an apartment in a Trump-owned building and related expenses that prosecutors said included cars and private school tuition for his grandchildren.
The Trump Organization is proceeding to trial, the sources said, with the case currently scheduled to begin toward the end of October.
News of the development was first reported by The New York Times.
It was not immediately clear whether the terms of Weisselberg’s plea would require him to cooperate with the ongoing investigation.
However, sources said Weisselberg is expected to serve some prison time.
Last week, Weisselberg lost his motion to have the indictment against him thrown out.
He is no longer the Trump Organization’s CFO, but remains employed by the firm.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats’ campaign arm is going on the offense for Arizona Sen. Mark Kelly less than two months before the first ballots go out in the state for the midterms — in which Kelly’s race and a handful of others could decide the balance of power in the upper chamber.
The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee (DSCC) on Tuesday launched its first ad campaign of the general election cycle against Republican Blake Masters, a 36-year-old venture capitalist who is running to unseat Kelly in his first bid for political office.
Arizona voters will wake up in the West to television, digital and radio spots trying to depict Masters as “not like normal Arizonans,” as part of a previously announced $33 million independent expenditure reservation from the DSCC, which has a particular interest in protecting incumbents like Kelly.
Not a single ad of the three launching Tuesday mentions former President Donald Trump, who saw a slate of his endorsees win in Arizona two weeks ago — Masters included.
The campaign, instead, argues Masters has “dangerous beliefs and plans that are deeply out of step with the state’s values and would be harmful to Arizona’s families,” the DSCC told ABC News.
“Walk Away,” a TV ad airing both English and Spanish, highlights a remark Masters made at a GOP Senate debate in June — and later walked back — in which he said, “Maybe we should privatize Social Security, right? Private retirement accounts. Get the government out of it.” (Arizona has one of the highest percentages of residents ages 65 years and older.)
Since winning his primary, Masters has played down that remark. In a 45-minute interview with the Arizona Republic last week, he said he doesn’t want to privatize Social Security. “I, think, in context I was talking about something different,” he said.
In another new video ad targeting Masters, titled “His Own Words,” Democrats cite Masters’ past statements on abortion, arguing he would likely support a nationwide ban if given the chance.
The ad points to Masters saying in a podcast interview last year that abortion is “a religious sacrifice to these people. I think it’s demonic.”
Betting on Arizona voters reacting as voters did in Kansas and turning against strict abortion bans in the wake of the Supreme Court overturning constitutional abortion protections, Democrats are raising the issue in various battlegrounds. The DSCC has also reserved ad space in Nevada, Georgia, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania ahead of competitive races there to defend their Senate majority, and they launched a campaign last week in Wisconsin against Sen. Ron Johnson, also hitting the incumbent on abortion.
Masters told the Republic, in the same post-primary interview last week, that he thinks Arizona’s 15-week abortion ban, which makes no exceptions for rape or incest, is appropriate for his state but that he would support a federal “personhood law” to ban all third-trimester abortions. (Such procedures represent fewer than 1% of all abortions in the U.S. and are usually done to save the life of the mother or if dire fetal anomalies are detected).
A final spot reserved by the DSCC is a Spanish-language radio ad.
Masters — backed by millions in funding from billionaire Peter Thiel (his former employer and a major ally with whom he’s partnered since taking Thiel’s class at Stanford University) — has also launched his first TV ad of the general election campaign, pitching himself as a “true independent” for Arizona, a strategy which helped Kelly win in 2020.
The spot featured his wife, Catherine, speaking and Masters playing with his three sons — in a dramatic shift in tone from primary ads attacking his opponents and standing with Trump.
He said in a primary ad in November, by contrast, “I think Trump won in 2020. Maybe you disagree, but you gotta admit this election was really messed up.”
Kelly, a Navy veteran and former NASA astronaut married to former Rep. Gabby Giffords, won his spot in the Senate in a special election two years ago for the late Sen. John McCain’s seat — and did so by just 2.4%.
(WASHINGTON) — A frozen food manufacturer issued a recall Sunday for more than 13,000 pounds of frozen meat pizza over possible contamination, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service said.
Home Run Inn Frozen Foods said the food products “may be contaminated with extraneous materials, specifically metal,” the USDA said.
The company discovered the problem after it received complaints from consumers, according to the USDA.
“There have been no confirmed reports of injuries or adverse reactions due to consumption of these products. Anyone concerned about an injury or illness should contact a health care provider,” the agency said in a statement.
The company said the recall affects its 33.5-ounce cartons containing “Home Run Inn Chicago’s Premium Pizzeria Deluxe Sausage Classic Pizza” with a “best by” date of “12/03/22.” The frozen meat pizzas were produced on June 6, 2022, the USDA said.
The affected products recall bears an establishment number “EST. 18498-A” inside the USDA mark of inspection, according to the agency.
Anyone who purchased these products is urged not to consume them, the USDA said.
(NEW YORK) — Tuesday’s primaries in Alaska and Wyoming will spotlight two big Republican detractors of former President Donald Trump — and now two big targets of his revenge tour this election cycle.
The incumbents, Sen. Lisa Murkowski and Rep. Liz Cheney, may also see two diverging results at the ballot box.
Polls close in Alaska at 1 a.m. ET on Wednesday and in Wyoming at 9 p.m. ET on Tuesday.
Cheney learns her fate
Wyoming is the state that handed Trump his widest margin of victory in the 2020 election.
Cheney, Wyoming’s lone member of the House, has since cemented herself as the one of the most vocal anti-Trump members of Congress.
She earned the ire of Trump, his ardent supporters and many of her fellow Republican lawmakers after she crossed party lines — with nine other House Republicans — to impeach him after the attack on the U.S. Capitol last year.
She was censured one month later by the Wyoming Republican Party and, though she initially survived a leadership vote among the House GOP caucus, she was subsequently booted from her position as the No. 3 House Republican.
Legislatively, Cheney and Trump were not political foes: As noted by FiveThirtyEight, Cheney voted with him on the issues 92.9% of the time.
But she has broken with Trump on what she calls the greatest issue of all: His continued, baseless attacks on elections. As vice chair of the House Jan. 6 committee, she has taken a major role in a year-long investigation into Trump’s conduct before, during and after the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Cheney is the last of six House Republican incumbents to seek reelection after their impeachment vote last year. So far only two — Rep. David Valadao of California and Rep. Dan Newhouse of Washington — have successfully fended off their primary challengers.
The other three — Reps. Jaime Herrera Beutler of Washington, Peter Meijer of Michigan and Tom Rice of South Carolina — all lost to Trump-endorsed challengers. Cheney’s chances of reelection also seem slim, according to polling cited by FiveThirtyEight, though surveys of the race are sparse and Cheney insists she still has a shot.
Cheney’s main opponent is boosted by Trump: Attorney Harriet Hageman is a former Republican National Committee member — and a former Cheney ally and Trump critic.
Once an adviser to Cheney in Cheney’s short-lived 2014 Senate campaign, Hageman won Trump’s approval in September 2021 and has since embraced his false messaging about the last presidential race, claiming that it was “absolutely” rigged.
Hageman, her supporters will say, also has a home-field advantage over Cheney: She is a lifelong Wyomingite while Cheney — whose father held Wyoming’s House seat for a decade in the ’70s and ’80s — was raised in both Wyoming and the Washington, D.C., area. before she went on to work in national politics.
Hageman ran for Wyoming governor in 2018, pledging to “reform federal land management and access” in a state where nearly half of the land is federally owned. During that primary, she took the position of transferring federal public land to the states and suggested that 1 million acres of Wyoming be part of the pilot plan. The proposal raised eyebrows among leading conservation groups, most of whom endorsed Republican Mark Gordon, who went on to win.
Palin and Murkowski on the ballot
Further north, in Alaska, voters on Tuesday will be making a bit of history: The state has scrapped its party-line primaries in favor of a top-four system, where every candidate competes together, and has implemented a ranked-choice voting system for its general elections.
The special general election held Tuesday along with the primaries will be the first time Alaskan voters rank candidates on the ballot.
The new system works like this: If a candidate gets more than 50% of the votes, they win outright; otherwise, the last-place candidate is eliminated and their voters’ ballots are distributed to the voters’ second-choice picks. This process continues until a candidate gets more than 50%.
According to the new system’s supporters, ranked-choice encourages more moderate candidates who can appeal to the most voters, especially in crowded fields.
One of the critics of the new system is also eyeing to win the special election to serve the few months remaining in late Rep. Don Young’s term in the House. Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who is backed by Trump, seeks a return to elected office after running as the Republican vice-presidential nominee in 2008. Between then and now, Palin was a face of the Obama-era tea party movement — a precursor, in style and substance, to Trump’s platform — and was a conservative pundit and TV personality.
She has called Alaska’s new voting system a “convoluted” process that will result “in voter suppression.”
Facing off against Palin are Nicholas Begich III — Republican heir to a local Democratic dynasty whose family members include a former representative and state senator — and Democrat Mary Peltola, a former Alaska state representative.
The polling aggregate from FiveThirtyEight shows Peltola doing well against both Begich and Palin. (The fourth candidate who advanced in the special primary, Al Gross, withdrew and urged people to back Peltola.)
The three are also the front-runners in the regular House primary election simultaneously being held Tuesday, in which 22 candidates are vying to advance to November’s general election and secure a full two-year term in the House.
On the Senate side, incumbent Republican Lisa Murkowski faces her first major electoral test in years — though, as history has shown, she is no stranger to surprising victories.
Murkowski is the only one of the seven GOP senators who voted to convict in Trump’s impeachment trial last year to be on the ballot this year. Her vote, like Cheney’s, led to a censure from her state’s Republican Party.
Unlike Cheney, Murkowski has built a profile as one of the Senate’s most moderate Republicans and repeatedly crosses political lines — notably, supporting abortion access, voting against Trump-nominated Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Supreme Court and negotiating last year’s infrastructure spending bill.
Kelly Tshibaka, a former commissioner of the Alaska Department of Administration, hopes to unseat her. Backed by Trump, Tshibaka has cast doubts on the integrity of the 2020 election but ultimately recognized Joe Biden as the president. She also called last week’s FBI search of Mar-a-Lago a “gross abuse of power.”
According to FiveThirtyEight’s polling aggregate, Murkowski and Tshibaka trade off the lead in various surveys.
Still, because of the primary’s top-four rules, Murkowski is likely to advance from Tuesday to the general election. And even if she doesn’t, she could still win: She famously lost the Republican primary in 2010 to tea party-challenger Joe Miller but went on to win the general election after more than 100,000 Alaskans voted for her as a write-in candidate — in part, due to ads that taught voters how to correctly spell her name.
ABC News’ Chris Donovan and Tracy Wholf contributed to this story.
(NEW YORK) — Millions of Americans are at risk of experiencing an “extreme heat belt” that would affect parts of the Midwest over the next three decades, according to a new report from the nonprofit research group First Street Foundation.
By 2053, 1,023 counties, an area home to more than 107 million Americans and covers a quarter of U.S. land, are expected to see the heat index, or the feels-like temperature, surpass 125 degrees Fahrenheit at least one day a year, according to the report, which was released Monday.
According to the First Street Foundation’s study, those high temperatures, considered extremely dangerous by the National Weather Service, are expected to affect 8 million Americans this year and increase 13 times over 30 years.
The “extreme heat belt” extends from Texas’ northern border and Louisiana north through Iowa, Indiana and Illinois, the report shows.
Other parts of the country are expected to see hotter temperatures, harming people living in areas not used to excessive heat, the report found.
“This reality suggests that a 10% temperature increase in Maine can be as dangerous as a 10% increase in Texas, even as the absolute temperature increase in Texas is much higher,” researchers wrote in the report.
The researchers cited the changing condition in the environment that’s leading to higher temperatures and more humid conditions.
“When everyone thinks of this extreme summer we [are having], this is probably one of the best summers over the next 30 years,” Matthew Eby, founder and CEO of the First Street Foundation, told ABC News. “It’s going to get much worse.”
Extreme temperatures can cause health issues, from fatigue to life-threatening problems such as heat strokes.
Scientists have said that prolonged heat waves result from climate change, particularly in different countries at the same time, as was the case last month in parts of the continental U.S. and Europe.
Jason Smerdon, a climate scientist for the Columbia Climate School’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York, told ABC News last month that extreme heat is a “basic consequence of climate change.”
“While each heat wave itself is different and has individual dynamics behind it, the probability of these events is a direct consequence of the warming planet,” Smerdon said.
The First Street Foundation is a Brooklyn, New York-based nonprofit research and technology group that quantifies climate risks.
ABC News’ Julia Jacobo contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A child in Martin County, Florida, has tested positive for monkeypox, state health data shows.
Across the U.S., at least seven children have now tested positive for monkeypox. The child in Florida is between the ages of 0 and 4 years old, according to the state health data.
The additional pediatric case comes after health officials in Maine announced Friday that they, too, had confirmed a positive monkeypox case in a child.
In Maine, no further information about the case has been released due to concerns over patient privacy, officials said.
“Maine CDC [Center for Disease Control and Prevention] is working to identify any others who may have been exposed and make vaccination available to close contacts,” officials wrote in a press release.
In addition to the cases in children reported in Maine and Florida, two cases have been confirmed in California, as well another two in Indiana, and a case in a non-U.S. resident reported in Washington, D.C.
The majority of cases in the current monkeypox outbreak have been detected in gay, bisexual or other men who have sex with men. However, health officials have repeatedly stressed that anyone can contract the virus.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has previously warned that there has been some preliminary evidence to suggest that children younger than 8 years old are at risk of developing more severe illness if infected, alongside pregnant people and those who are immunocompromised.
However, last week, in an effort to protect the youngest Americans, the Food and Drug Administration issued an emergency use authorization that allows health care for children under 18 who are at high risk of monkeypox to be vaccinated.
MORE: 6th child tests positive for monkeypox in US: What parents should know
Across the globe, nearly 32,000 cases of monkeypox have now been reported, including more than 11,000 cases in the U.S. — the most of any country, according to the CDC. All but one U.S. state — Wyoming — have now confirmed at least one positive monkeypox case.
Monkeypox primarily spreads through prolonged skin-to-skin contact with infected people’s lesions or bodily fluids, according to the CDC. In addition to lesions, which can appear like pimples or blisters, the most common symptoms associated with monkeypox are swollen lymph nodes, fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.
(WASHINGTON) — Wyoming Rep. Liz Cheney has gone from House GOP leadership to party gadfly in the span of just over 18 months as she stands out as the loudest Republican critic of former President Donald Trump — which could cost her her job in Tuesday’s primary
After first winning election in 2016, Cheney quickly rose through the ranks to become the No. 3 House Republican, with rumored aspirations toward the speakership. She was also one of Trump’s most reliable votes in Congress, backing him on nearly every issue, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Yet her continued, impassioned rebukes of Trump and his allies over last year’s insurrection brought an even swifter political downfall — one that saw her booted from her leadership perch and her state party, an increasingly isolated apostate in a party still led by Trump.
“She could have cruised to another term if she had just kept her head in the sand like everybody else did,” Mark Christensen, a former Campbell County commissioner and Cheney ally, told ABC News. “But she’s not really the person who does that. She’s not really that person who shies away from a fight.”
Cheney began her House career boasting a legendary last name in Republican politics and sterling conservative credentials.
After an earlier false start as a candidate — seeking a Wyoming Senate seat in the 2014 cycle — she won Wyoming’s only House seat in 2016, the same year Trump won the White House.
While she did note during her campaign that she and Trump differed on foreign policy, she focused much of her bid on domestic issues, lambasting former President Barack Obama and even hinting that she was open to joining the hardline House Freedom Caucus, which today is filled with some of her most vocal detractors.
“Wyoming needs a strong voice in Congress to lead the effort to undo the devastating policies of the last seven and a half years and restore our freedom. I will be that voice,” Cheney said after winning her primary that year. “I will be that leader.”
Two years later, after winning only her second House term, she was elected by Republican members to be their conference chair, making her the third-highest ranking GOP lawmaker in the chamber.
While campaigning for the leadership spot, she pushed for the implementation of an aggressive messaging platform for the party.
“We need to be able to drive our message across all platforms,” she said at the time. “We need to own the daily news cycles. We need to lead and win the messaging wars. Too often we have found ourselves playing catch up without access to useful information, and we have not been on offense. Constantly playing defense in the battle of communications is a recipe for failure. We need to work as a team to use all our messaging tools to drive our agenda.”
Her rapid rise fueled whispers she had her eye on the speakership one day. That chatter only grew when she decided to stay in the House in 2020 rather than run for an open Senate seat, which many considered to be hers for the taking.
During her first two terms in Congress, Cheney built a staunchly conservative record, voting with Trump nearly 93% of the time, according to FiveThirtyEight’s analysis. And while disagreements with the then-president flared over foreign policy, Cheney did not stand out as a major roadblock to his messaging or domestic agenda.
On top of that, her allies in Wyoming recall having someone in the House who would keep a strong eye on local issues.
“With Liz, we actually would have in-depth policy discussions and then we would discuss together what our approach was going to be for, say, approaching Interior on a policy or something with Department of Energy or something else. And then not only that, she would actually do the follow up herself and then we hear back from her again, too. And I never got that from any other elected official,” said Christensen, the former county commissioner.
Yet last year’s Capitol attack marked an inflection point for Cheney, who made underscoring Trump’s role with the mob a focal point of her work — transforming her political fortunes nearly overnight.
She quickly and repeatedly denounced Trump and, when she was still the conference chair, became the highest-ranking Republican to vote for his impeachment. She later agreed to serve as the vice chair of the select House committee investigating the riot and the former president’s unfounded election fraud claims, lending it a sheen of bipartisanship.
While Cheney has traveled to Wyoming for smaller campaign events, the highly publicized work of the Jan. 6 panel swamped her travels — landing her in hot water both in Washington, where House Republicans were angered at her focus on Trump (who insists he did nothing wrong), and in Wyoming, a state he won with 70% of the vote in 2020.
“After she jumped in on the Jan. 6 thing, and she jumped in on the impeachment … she was nowhere to be found. She wasn’t meeting with the people. She doesn’t care about us,” local voter Myrna Burgess told ABC News.
Cheney’s political peril was put into stark relief when Trump endorsed Harriet Hageman in September and made ousting Cheney a top priority as part of his ongoing campaign of retribution against GOP lawmakers who turned against him.
“Unlike RINO [Republican in name only] Liz Cheney, Harriet is all in for America First. Harriet has my Complete and Total Endorsement in replacing the Democrats number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney. Make America Great Again!” Trump said in a statement at the time.
Cheney allies insist she’s still the right person for the job, casting her reelection bid as a broader fight for the direction of the GOP.
“This is bigger than one person’s presidency. This is our Constitution. This is our history. This is what we’re going to be remembered for. And that’s exactly what Liz is remembering,” Republican state Rep. Landon Brown told ABC News. “And there’s a lot of people in my district alone, but as well as other people out there, that they feel the exact same way.”
Cheney has focused her campaign messaging around that theme, shedding the Republican red meat that characterizes other House campaigns and adopting a more forward-looking lens.
“Here’s my pledge to you: I will work every day to ensure that our exceptional nation long endures. My children and your children must grow up in an America where we have honorable and peaceful transitions of power. Not violent confrontations, intimidation and thuggery. Where we are governed by laws and not by men. Where we are led by people who love this country more than themselves,” Cheney said in her closing ad.
Yet in a sign of her increasingly rough chances in a state where voters can change their registration the day of the primary, her campaign has been advertising how non-Republicans can back her.
Jim King, a political science professor at the University of Wyoming, put it bluntly: “There aren’t enough Democrats.”
As FiveThirtyEight has noted, public polling in the race has been sparse but favors Hageman. Speculation has already begun over where Cheney’s future ambitions lie beyond the House, including among her supporters, some of whom maintain that the possibility of defeat is really just a hidden victory.
“This race is the first battle in a much larger and longer war that Liz is going to win, because the future of the country depends on it,” said one ally. “And, regardless of what the results in this election turn out to be, she is going to lead a broad coalition going forward of Americans across the political spectrum who will stand up for freedom and restore the foundational principles that Donald Trump continues to dangerously undermine.”
Cheney has been rumored as a potential 2024 presidential candidate who could run as an anti-Trump Republican. And while she insists she’s focused on her reelection, she hasn’t ruled out a future White House run.
“I don’t know if she’d want to stay in politics. She could probably go to Virginia and may get back in, but I don’t know if she would get the Republicans support if she came back. I don’t know what she’d do,” said Natrona County Commissioner Paul Bertoglio. “I feel almost gut-punched because I really like her. And I am sorry that she’s most likely going to lose. And that’s self-inflicted.”
(NEW YORK) — As children are heading back to school this month, Kraft Heinz announced a recall on Friday of more than 5,000 cases of Capri Sun due to a possible contamination.
This voluntary recall comes after the company announced the potential contamination affecting approximately 5,760 Capri Sun cases (each case contains about 10 pouches) of its wild cherry flavor. The company said a diluted cleaning solution was inadvertently introduced into a production line at one of its factories.
The “Best When Used By” date on the products is June 25, 2023, according to the company. No other Capri Sun flavors were listed in the recall.
“The issue was discovered after we received several consumer complaints about the taste of the affected product,” Kraft Heinz said in a statement on Friday. “The Company is actively working with retail partners and distributors to remove potentially impacted product from circulation.”
Those who believe they might have the product are advised not to consume it and return the product where it was purchased.
Click here to view the company’s full description of the affected product.
“Consumers can contact Kraft Heinz from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Eastern Standard Time, Monday through Friday, at 1-800-280-8252 to see if a product is part of the recall and to receive reimbursement,” Kraft Heinz said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden plans to sign the Democrats’ massive climate, health and tax bill into law on Tuesday at the White House, marking a major accomplishment for his domestic agenda less than three months before midterm elections.
Biden will deliver remarks and sign the bill, known as the Inflation Reduction Act, at an event in the White House’s State Dining Room, the White House announced Monday.
It will likely be a smaller ceremony, with most members of Congress involved in the bill’s passage out of town, with Congress out of session.
Taking advantage of some political momentum, Biden is interrupting his vacation in South Carolina for the signing, just days after the House approved the measure, following Senate passage by just one vote amid some political drama.
A larger celebration is being planned for Sept. 6.
The White House also said that, “in the coming weeks,” Biden will host a Cabinet meeting focused on implementing the new law and will also travel across the U.S. to promote it.
The Biden administration has planned a cross-country rollout campaign for the legislation, which aims to make prescription drugs and health insurance cheaper; invest in clean energy and curb climate change; raise taxes on the wealthy; and cut the deficit.
Starting this week through the end of August, Cabinet members plan to travel to 23 states, on more than 35 trips, to tout the “Inflation Reduction Act,” according to the White House.
The administration also plans to roll out information online and on social media about the legislation’s impact, and to collaborate with members of Congress to host hundreds of events, the White House said.
The blitz will highlight will highlight other major legislative wins as well as part of a “Building a Better America Tour.”
In a memo the White House made public from Senior Adviser Anita Dunn and Deputy Chief of Staff Jen O’Malley Dillon to Chief of Staff Ron Klain, the administration plans to not only tout passage of the IRA, but also the CHIPS Act aimed at boosting the U.S. semi-conductor industry over China’s and easing a pandemic-cause shortage, the bipartisan gun control bill and the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
Ahead of Tuesday’s signing, the White House on Monday put out what it said would be the IRA’s impact.
According to the White House, about 1.4 million Americans who are on Medicare who usually spending more than $2000 per year on prescription drugs will see their costs capped at that amount. Overall, it says, there are about 50 million Americans on Medicare Part D who are eligible for that cost cap.
The White House said. there are about 3.3 million Americans on Medicare who use insulin, who will benefit from the new $35 monthly price cap.
The White House also estimates about 5-7 million Americans could see their prescription drug costs decrease once Medicare begins negotiating costs.
Lower Obamacare premiums will be extended for the 13 million Americans insured under that program, the White House said.
And the White House also claims greenhouse gas emissions will be reduced by a billion metric tons in 2030 thanks to the IRA.
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A 99-year-old Pennsylvania woman got to meet her 100th great-grandchild in person earlier this month.
It was a once-in-a-lifetime event for Marguerite “Peg” Koller — also known as “grandmom” to Christine Stokes Balster and her husband Patrick Balster — who was “absolutely ecstatic” to greet baby Koller William Balster after his birth on Aug. 4.
“We went to grandmom’s, introduced her to Koller, who was named after that family name,” Stokes Balster, of Lafayette Hill, told “Good Morning America.” “…She was absolutely ecstatic. Limited words for sure. She was just so happy and felt so blessed and lucky to be holding him.”
“You could feel the emotion and the gratitude and [she] just felt blessed again that she got to hold yet another great-grandbaby, and this one named after my grandfather,” the mom of two added.
In total, the 99-year-old matriarch has 11 children, 56 grandchildren and 100 great-grandkids. Koller was lucky number 100 and arrived a week after his due date, weighing in at 9 pounds, 6 ounces.
“It was a race to 100,” Stokes Balster explained. “My cousin Colleen and I were just a day apart [for] our due dates, and she had the 99th great-grandchild, who is absolutely healthy and beautiful. So you know, just grateful, blessed to have another few babies joining this great family.”
Koller is the second child for Stokes Balster and her husband, who are also parents to Griffin David Balster, 22 months. Griffin David was named after his uncle, Stokes Balster’s late brother David Stokes, who died of brain cancer in 1990.
The Balsters said they wanted another name that was just as meaningful for their second son.
“We wanted to do like a name that was equally significant,” Patrick Balster told “GMA.” “I’ve always loved the name Cole. And Chris one day was like, ‘Hey, how about Koller? This could be baby number 100 for great-grandmom.’ We thought about Koller and we went for Koller William … William Koller was her grandfather’s name [Peg Koller’s late husband, who died in 2008]. And then ‘William’ is also on my side of the family, I’m fourth-generation William, middle name. So we’re like, it just made sense. It felt good.”
The couple kept their baby’s name a secret until after he was born.
“I think each one of my mom’s siblings — she’s one of 11 — just felt that it was such an honor to my late grandfather and the family name,” Stokes Balster said. “[It was] so much love, so much support immediately once we revealed what his name was, and even more special that he was the 100th great-grandchild. So the timing was just right.”
Peg Koller will turn 100 this November and the Balsters are looking forward to spending more time with their family matriarch. They say among the “secrets” to her longevity is working out twice a day and the love and support of their family.
“Faith and family really get her going,” Stokes Balster said. “She is present no matter what is going on and however old she is. I mean she never misses a graduation, a baptism, a wedding, a book moment at grade school. Whatever it is, she’s always there.”
