(NEW YORK) — As recession forecasts have grown dire in recent months, they’ve faced one complication: Strong economic data.
The U.S. showed robust job growth last month, defying expectations of a slowdown and keeping the unemployment rate at a near-historic low of 3.6%. Meanwhile, retail spending, a key indicator of economic health that reflects consumer appetite, rose 1% in June, outpacing gloomier predictions — even if some of that increase can be attributed to rising prices due to inflation.
The positive signs have fueled caution about the rush to pessimism.
“While sentiment has shifted, little of the data I see tells me the U.S. is on the cusp of a recession,” Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser said during the company’s earnings call on Friday.
The trend raises the question of whether the U.S. could avoid a recession altogether.
In a sense, the answer is an unequivocal no, economists told ABC News. Ultimately, a recession is inevitable, since it makes up a natural part of an economic cycle marked by alternating periods of growth and contraction.
But the continued strength of the economy meaningfully challenges expectations that a recession will come to pass anytime soon, as robust hiring and healthy household and business balance sheets provide a buffer for a potential slowdown, they added. One economist, Jeremy Swartz of Credit Suisse, said it’s more likely that the economy will avoid a recession right now than undergo one.
Inflation
A stark imbalance between supply and demand poses a daunting challenge over the mid- and long-term, some less-optimistic economists said. In light of that imbalance, economic strength becomes a liability, since a supply bottleneck can’t keep up with hiring and spending, resulting in crippling inflation.
Safely navigating that predicament over the coming years — without triggering a recession — will require an unlikely but possible series of events, Aneta Markowska, chief economist at New York City-based financial services company Jefferies, told ABC News..
“There’s a consensus view right now that a recession is imminent — that, I think, is premature,” Markowska said. “We have an economy that’s already overheated, like a plane that has overshot the runway, which makes it incredibly difficult to land it softly. There’s certainly a scenario for how we could achieve that. But I think that scenario involves a lot of things going very, very well.”
Supply and demand
At the crux of current economic risk stands a glaring asymmetry between traditional supply and demand, according to Markowska and Lindsey Piegza, the chief economist at Stifel, a St. Louis-based investment bank.
A surge in demand followed a pandemic-induced flood of economic stimulus that combined with a widespread shift toward goods instead of services, as hundreds of millions across the globe facing lockdowns replaced restaurant expenditures with couches and exercise bikes. Meanwhile, that stimulus brought about a speedy economic recovery from the March 2020 downturn, triggering a hiring blitz.
But the surge in demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply, as COVID-related bottlenecks slowed delivery times and infection fears kept workers on the sidelines. In turn, prices and wages skyrocketed, ultimately prompting sky-high inflation that has not only endured for many months but gotten worse, Markowska and Piegza said.
The consumer price index, or CPI, stood at 9.1% last month, a significant increase from 8.6% in May, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That is the largest 12-month increase since December 1981.
To avert a recession, the U.S. will need to slow demand while increasing supply, in turn bringing the two into balance, Markowska and Piegza said. But both sides of that task pose thorny problems, they added.
Interest rates
To weaken demand, the Federal Reserve has embarked on a series of hikes to its benchmark interest rate, which raises borrowing costs for consumers and businesses alike. That should slow the economy and slash demand.
Since U.S. households have stockpiled savings and the economy has accumulated millions more job openings than job seekers, in theory, the rate hikes could weaken the high demand without harming economic output, Markowska, the chief economist at Jefferies, said.
“The idea is that we can destroy that excess demand without actually destroying activity,” she said.
In reality, the task is much more difficult, Markowska said. The persistently strong economic conditions will prompt the Fed to take more aggressive action, which increases the risk of an abrupt economic slowdown that brings about a recession, she explained. For instance, in order to slow down a hot economy enough that healthy companies will abandon hiring and ease labor demand, Fed actions will likely trigger significant layoffs at other companies in a more precarious financial position, which could bring about a decline in demand that goes too far and pushes the economy toward a recession, she added.
Policymakers
Swartz, the economist at Credit Suisse, contested the view that strong economic performance raises the risk of recession. Instead, positive indicators like robust hiring show that the economy is healthier than many people think, he said.
“It’s not fully a situation where good news is bad news and bad news is good news,” he said. “All things being equal, we still like to see stronger growth.”
While demand weakens, supply will need to grow, economists said. That will require a set of outcomes that extends well beyond the control of U.S. economic policymakers, Piegza, the chief economist at Stifel, said. In order to relieve COVID-induced supply bottlenecks, countries like China will need to relax ongoing lockdowns. Moreover, a fix for global oil and agricultural shortages depends on an end to the Russia-Ukraine war, Piegza said.
“It’s out of the Fed’s control and the federal government’s,” she said. “You would need the dominos to line up with a certain level of precision.”
“That scenario has a very low probability but it’s not a zero probability,” she added.
While possible, the rosy outcome is far less likely than a downturn, Piegza said.
“Essentially, there’s a good chance, or a heightened probability, of a recession by the end of the year,” she said.
Markowska offered a slightly more optimistic forecast for the chances of a recession.
“In the next six months, I’d put it at 10%; in the next 12 months, I’d put it at 30% or 40%; in the next 24 months, I’d put it at 70%,” she said.
But she isn’t ruling out the possibility that the U.S. will avoid a recession altogether.
“We basically have to get really lucky,” she said.
Swartz, the economist at Credit Suisse who thinks the U.S. is more likely to avoid a recession than experience one, said the overall negative mood about the economy risks hurting consumer and business sentiment while helping induce a recession.
One place where that gloomy outlook can be found is on Wall Street, which saw a historic plunge in the stock market over the first half of the year. The S&P 500 — a popular index to which many 401(k) accounts are pegged — plummeted 20.6%, marking its worst first-half performance of any year since 1970.
“The general mood is obviously extremely poor,” he said. “There’s a question of whether that can become self-fulfilling.”
“That’s something we’re concerned about and contributes to heightened recession risk,” he added. “But there’s nothing automatic about it.”
(NEW YORK) — Even near some of the busiest cities in the United States, nearly 54 million people have a tough time accessing fresh and healthy food, according to the United States Department of Agriculture.
One company based in a Denver suburb said they have a solution.
Farmbox Foods in Sedalia, Colorado, turns upcycled shipping containers into vertical hydroponic farms. The company claims the containers can create as much as two football fields worth of traditional agriculture. They grow more than 400-lbs of mushrooms a week.
Rusty Walker, the CEO of Farmbox Foods, called his container boxes “modern farming spaceships.”
“This is a 40 foot high cubed, insulated container that has been repurposed and then engineered to [with] three grow walls,” Walker told ABC News’ Ginger Zee. “[We can grow] right around two and a half acres to three acres of farmland in this container.”
The United States Department of Agriculture defines “food deserts” as areas where people have limited access to a variety of healthy and affordable food. There are approximately 6,500 food deserts in the United States based on 2002 and 2006 census data on locations of supermarkets, supercents and large grocery stores.
Often areas with a higher percentage of poverty and minority population are more likely to be food deserts, the USDA found in a 2012 study.
Walker said his moveable, temperature-controlled, farmland can be shipped and used anywhere.
“So we can be sitting or standing in this container here today and have a truck show up tomorrow and we can put it on a flatbed truck and ship it to Chicago in 48 hours later. Plug it in and it’s growing,” said Walker.
In the United States, more than 40% of the country’s freshwater is used to irrigate crops. Agriculture alone makes up at least 11% of the greenhouse gas emission in the United States, according to the United States Environmental Protection Agency.
Walker said that his system of farming only uses the freshwater equivalent of about two loads of laundry a day.
“I think the biggest thing that we have going for us is we use 3 to 5 gallons of water a day. That’s it,” said Walker. “We find that our plants are growing 3 to 4 times faster than they would in an ordinary environment. So we like to say we’re farming without harming.”
Michael Boardman is a natural grocer in Lakewood, Colorado. His grocery store uses a Farmbox Foods container and he said it gives them control over their produce supply chain.
“We’ll be harvesting, taking it directly into our store [and it’s ready] for our customers,” said Boardman, who added that the produce is fresher than traditional grocery supply chains. “[The produce is] much more nutrient dense because it hasn’t been sitting on a shelf in a warehouse. It hasn’t been shipped across the country.”
Local grocers are not the only ones who have bought into Farmbox Foods. One of the company’s biggest clients is Centura Health, a local hospital system in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Patrick Gaughan, the senior vice president and chief values integration officer at Centura Health, said they’re growing fresh produce for their patients, associates and community members who come to the hospital.
“As we grow and develop in the foods [we grow], then we’re also giving this food to the communities through local food banks, farmer’s markets, so that people can get access and the food will be available for them,” said Gaughan.
Vertical farming, like Farmbox Foods, is often criticized due to the limited amount of foods that can be produced. But Farmbox Foods told ABC News that they are expanding quickly and have been testing carrots, potatoes and radishes.
Gaughan said the ready access to fresh food will only make a stronger and healthier community — all year round.
“We can tie food insecurity and poor nutrition to things like diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, high blood pressure, obesity, even mental health,” he said. “We can introduce people to a whole different way of getting their food, tasting their food, using their food in a culturally respective way, but also in a way that’s affordable and available year round.”
(NEW YORK) — Are you looking for ways to take control of your budget or save for the future?
According to a viral hashtag with more than 376 million views on TikTok, you can accomplish both and all you need is some old-fashioned cash and a set of envelopes.
TikTokers swear by the concept of cash stuffing. It’s a technology-free way to budget and plan out your finances that’s similar to the “developing” method.
How to cash stuff
You can start by dividing up your set of envelopes into categories and labeling them. For example, date night, bills, utilities, etc.
From there, you then divide up your hard-earned cash into the respective category or envelope it will be allotted to.
“I swiped my card way too much,” TikTok cash stuffer Stephanie Garcia told ABC News’ Good Morning America.
Since she began stuffing, Garcia said she managed to keep her debt low and also saved over $10,000 for the future.
(NEW YORK) — Amid growing concerns over highly contagious omicron subvariants that are spreading around the country, Americans are set to have one more COVID-19 vaccine from which to choose.
Earlier this week, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) signed off on use of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine for those 18 years and older, making it the fourth COVID-19 vaccine now available to the American public.
“We now have four safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines available to protect Americans against serious illness, hospitalizations, and death,” President Joe Biden said in a statement on Tuesday. “…more people need to roll up their sleeves, particularly as we confront BA.5,” he added, referring to the highly contagious subvariant.
With a resurgence of COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations — including news Biden tested positive for the virus — there has been a renewed push to get people vaccinated against COVID-19, particularly those who have yet to receive their first shot, leaving many people vulnerable to severe disease and even death.
“If you have been waiting for a COVID-19 vaccine built on a different technology than those previously available, now is the time to join the millions of Americans who have been vaccinated,” CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said in a statement on Tuesday, following the agency’s recommendation of Novavax’s vaccine. “With COVID-19 cases on the rise again across parts of the country, vaccination is critical to help protect against the complications of severe COVID-19 disease.”
Nationally, there are still more than 26.3 million American adults who remain completely unvaccinated.
With the currently available vaccines, the unvaccinated ages 5 years and older are 2.8 times more likely to test positive, and six times more likely to die, compared to the fully vaccinated, according to federal data.
Millions still unvaccinated
A number of health experts have expressed their hope that some of the individuals, who are still hesitant, may be more inclined to get the Novavax vaccine because it is based on a more traditional protein-based technology, one already used for the flu vaccine and other shots, while Pfizer and Moderna vaccine platforms tapped a new genetic technology — with messenger RNA — to produce their vaccines.
Since December of 2020, more than 205 million Americans have now received a mRNA COVID-19 vaccine, according to federal data, which health experts stress have also proven to be safe and effective and protecting Americans against severe forms of COVID-19.
“I think it’s an important advance. It’s actually giving proteins as vaccines as ‘tried and true’ in the sense that hepatitis and a variety of vaccines use that similar technology,” Novavax President and CEO Stanley Erck told ABC News last week, following the Food and Drug Administration’s authorization of the vaccine.
Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center in Boston said that although initial indicators suggest there may be low demand for the shots, even a sole person getting the Novavax vaccine could protect someone from severe outcomes of COVID-19.
“Every single person vaccinated is a potential life saved. In my mind there is no downside, only upside,” Doron said.
Data presented to CDC advisers this week showed that the vaccine was 90% effective against overall mild, moderate, and severe disease, and 100% effective against severe disease alone. However, the data was collected at the time when the Alpha variant was dominant, thus prior to the emergence of the omicron variant, which has been shown to chip away at vaccine efficacy. But the company announced on Tuesday that it had signed agreements with its partner, SK bioscience, for the creation of the company’s vaccine that would be designed to target the omicron variant.
Some prior concerns were raised by the CDC and FDA advisers, as preliminary data, reported by the company during presentations, indicated that some cases of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation that can occur following vaccination, had been discovered after some trial participants received the Novavax series.
The rare cases of myocarditis have also been found to occur in people, most commonly in young men, who receive the other authorized COVID-19 vaccines, such as the Moderna and Pfizer. However, the occurrences have not been deemed serious enough to stop use of the vaccines in adults.
Ultimately, both groups of advisers unanimously voted to recommend the Novavax vaccine for use.
Some skepticism
Although many lauded the positive data presented by Novavax, some other experts said they are still skeptical that that the introduction of the new vaccine will truly make a difference in the overall fight against COVID-19.
“Despite impressive clinical trial results and a more traditional technology, it’s hard to imagine that Novavax will make much of a dent in vaccination coverage,” said John Brownstein, Ph.D. an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
“While there is some hope that those who have waited this long may change their minds, widespread infection among the unvaccinated and hope for a more well-matched vaccine may continue to prolong those holding out,” he added.
There has not been a significant bump in the number of people receiving a first COVID-19 dose since November 2021. Since then, the average number has steadily fallen to around 50,000 first shots, administered among all age groups, each day.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the Biden administration had secured 3.2 million doses of Novavax’s COVID-19 vaccine, which will be made available for free to U.S. states and jurisdictions.
The two-dose vaccine, which is given three weeks apart, is expected to be made available in the coming weeks, according to the CDC, although the agency noted in a planning document that a “limited number of doses of Novavax COVID-19 vaccine will be distributed and not all providers are expected to carry Novavax COVID-19 vaccine.”
Ordering is tentatively expected to open the week of July 25, though it is still unclear when the first deliveries will arrive, and Novavax said on Tuesday that it expects to ship doses to the U.S. Government-designated distribution center in the coming days.
“This vaccine is likely to fill in the gap left as the Johnson & Johnson vaccine is sunsetted,” Brownstein explained
In May, the FDA announced that it now limiting authorized use of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine after conducting an updated investigation into reports of rare blood clots. Use is limited to people ages 18 and older for whom other authorized or approved COVID-19 vaccines are not “accessible or clinically appropriate,” and to adults who choose to receive the vaccine or else they would not get vaccinated, the FDA wrote at the time.
— The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (@KensingtonRoyal) July 21, 2022
Last year, for George’s eighth birthday, Kate took a photo of her son in Norfolk, England, where their family has a home.
George stole the spotlight last month when he celebrated his great grandmother, Queen Elizabeth II, for her Platinum Jubilee, which marked her 70th year on the throne.
Along with his sister Princess Charlotte, George, who is third in line for the throne, was spotted out and about on a visit to Cardiff Castle, where the two children and their parents met performers and crew taking part in a Platinum Jubilee concert later that evening.
Earlier this month, George was also spotted at Wimbledon with his parents. The family attended the men’s singles final between Serbia’s Novak Djokovic and Australia’s Nick Kyrgios.
(WASHINGTON) — The first case of polio reported in the U.S. in nearly a decade was detected in New York state, health officials said Thursday.
The case is in a resident of Rockland County, the state health department said.
State health officials said sequencing determined that the newly detected case is an instance of vaccine-derived polio. The oral polio vaccine contains a weakened version of the polio virus that can be excreted in stool and transmitted.
That vaccine has not been administered in the U.S. since 2000, suggesting that the virus may have originated somewhere outside the U.S., health officials said.
The Rockland County polio patient is a young adult whose symptoms began a month ago, according to public health officials in Rockland County. The person is no longer contagious but has suffered some paralysis. It is unknown whether that will be permanent.
The infected person contracted polio through exposure to someone who was inoculated with the oral vaccine. The patient did not travel outside of the country, so the exposure was here, said health officials, who are now investigating whether there are any close contacts of the patient who are at risk. There are no other suspected cases at this time.
Health officials urged those who are unvaccinated, and parents of unvaccinated children, to seek polio vaccination now.
“The polio vaccine is safe and effective, protecting against this potentially debilitating disease, and it has been part of the backbone of required, routine childhood immunizations recommended by health officials and public health agencies nationwide,” State Health Commissioner Dr. Mary Bassett said in a statement.
Rockland County will host vaccine clinics on Friday and Monday, the health department said.
The last known case in the U.S. was recorded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2013, which was also an instance of vaccine-derived polio. The last “wild” case of polio was detected in the U.S. in 1979.
The U.S. uses the inactivated polio vaccine, which cannot cause infection.
Being vaccinated against polio protects people against both vaccine-derived and “wild” polio.
Polio is a very contagious, potentially fatal, virus that can be spread even when an infected person has no symptoms.
Symptoms, which include fatigue, fever, headache, stiffness, muscle pain and vomiting, can take up to 30 days to appear. In rare cases, polio can cause paralysis or death.
“Many of you may be too young to remember polio, but when I was growing up, this disease struck fear in families, including my own,” Rockland County Executive Ed Day said in a statement. “The fact that it is still around decades after the vaccine was created shows you just how relentless it is. Do the right thing for your child and the greater good of your community and have your child vaccinated now.”
(NEW YORK) — NASA will return to the moon with a new mission planned for August, the agency said at a press conference Wednesday.
Fifty-three years after the historic landing of Apollo 11 in 1969, the new mission to orbit the moon is tentatively set to begin on Aug. 29, according to agency officials.
Artemis I will be an uncrewed test-launch with a newly developed spacecraft, Orion, to determine if it’s time to send a human crew to the moon next year.
NASA says Artemis I is the first mission aimed to kick start a larger campaign of increasingly complex missions with the goal of bringing astronauts to the moon and Mars.
The powerful new spacecraft underwent its most recent wet dress rehearsal, or test run, on Wednesday, which was deemed a success, according to NASA officials.
However, the agency is still addressing some repairs to the rocket’s systems, officials said.
NASA officials said that they are making strides on these repairs but are still proceeding carefully to ensure the spacecraft is ready to move forward to a launch.
A navigation and control assembly unit has already been replaced, and personnel are testing batteries and checking the interim cryogenic propulsion stage that will help propel the Orion spacecraft for its orbit around the moon, according to a NASA statement.
There is a rigorous set of operation maintenance requirements that the new ship must pass before it can prepare for take-off, Cliff Lanham, senior vehicle operations manager of NASA’s exploration ground systems program, said at Wednesday’s conference.
The tests run long, but the agency has emphasized a few key requirements for the craft.
This includes tests of the flight termination system, the rocket’s engine section, the rocket’s core stage forward skirt that houses flight computers and avionics systems and the Orion spacecraft, officials said.
According to officials, there are three launch windows in place from Aug. 29 to Sept. 5. The mission will last a varied amount of time depending on which day the rocket launches.
The first launch window, on Aug. 29, begins at 8:33 a.m. and lasts for two hours. Using this window would result in a mission lasting 42 days that ends with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of San Diego on Oct. 10, with the U.S. Navy recovering the capsule.
Next, a window will open on Sept. 2, beginning at 12:38 a.m. and lasting for two hours. Leaving within this window creates a mission lasting 39 days, with a splashdown in the Pacific on Oct. 11. The U.S. Navy will recover the capsule here as well.
Finally, a window will open on Sept. 5 at 5:12 p.m. and last an hour and thirty minutes. This mission would also last 42 days and end with a splashdown in the Pacific on Oct. 17.
There is no launch period from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1 because of an eclipse. During this three-day period, the sun and the Earth are out of alignment, so the Orion capsule’s solar arrays wouldn’t be able to produce enough power, as it would in the shadow of the Earth, officials said.
(NEW YORK) — Across the United States, millions are facing extreme heat as temperatures hold steady in the triple digits. For communities of color, underlying systemic inequities increase the chances of heat-related illnesses and death.
Heat is among the deadliest of all weather-related disasters, beating out floods, lightning and hurricanes, according to the National Weather Service. The World Health Organization estimates that heatwaves caused more than 166,000 deaths globally between 1998 and 2017.
The rates of emergency department visits for heat-related causes increased by 67% for African Americans, 63% for Hispanics, 53% for Asian Americans and 27% for white people from 2005 to 2015, according to a report in the Wilderness and Environmental Medicine journal.
Between 2004 and 2018, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that Indigenous groups had the highest rates of heat-related death, followed by Black populations.
The impact on people of color in the U.S. during the ongoing heat wave may be exacerbated through various iterations of discrimination and inequity.
Poor urban planning and housing discrimination raises risks
People of color were exposed to more extreme urban heat than white people in almost every major U.S. city, a 2021 study published in the research journal Nature found.
That’s because of “urban heat islands,” where poor urban planning removed much of an area’s natural green lands and replaced them with pavement, buildings and other materials that retain and absorb heat, according to the report.
This type of urban planning causes the air to heat up more than it does in leafier areas. Black and Hispanic residents have the highest average summer urban heat island exposure, according to the study in Nature.
“We find that the average person of color lives in a census tract with higher SUHI intensity than non-Hispanic whites in all but 6 of the 175 largest urbanized areas in the continental United States,” the report says.
This discrepancy is caused by redlining and housing discrimination that pushed Black and brown communities into neighborhoods with fewer trees and green spaces and heavier traffic, experts say.
The urban heat island effect is worsening, as more people are continuing to move into and grow cities, Dr. Angel Hsu, a climate scientist at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, told ABC News.
“We found that 97% of major cities in the U.S. where more than a quarter of a million people live were seeing the same disproportionate exposure patterns for communities of color and people who are living below the poverty line,” Hsu said. “That seems to suggest that it’s not just a policy that we can blame from the 1960s.”
Around 83% of people in the U.S. live in urban areas, up from 64% in 1950, according to a study from the University of Michigan. About 89% of the U.S. population will live in an urban area by 2050.
Workforce imbalances leave some exposed
People of color are also disproportionately exposed to extreme heat through their occupations, according to health research organization KFF.
Researchers found that noncitizen and Latino migrant workers respectively make up 50% and 75% of agricultural workers in the U.S. It’s a group that’s about 20 times more likely to die from heat-related illnesses compared to other U.S.-based workers, the organization says.
“Some of the big concerns are that the exposure to extreme heat is just one thing that may lead to so many other issues, with regards to access to foods, with regards to people being able to go out to work and provide for their families and afford a lot of things,” said Nambi Ndugga, a policy analyst with KFF’s Racial Equity and Health Policy Program.
Low-income households, especially those in predominantly Black, Hispanic or Indigenous communities, may have a hard time accessing cooling centers or using air conditioners due to the high cost of energy bills, experts say.
“We need to be making sure that people have access to air conditioning in their homes and we know that communities of color have disproportionately lower access to air conditioning and the ability to run it,” Rachel Licker, the principal climate scientist at the science advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News. “Obviously, that’s becoming more and more of an issue as energy bills are increasing right now.”
Health disparities can lead to increased risks
Health disparities often plague Black, Hispanic and indigenous communities, thanks to inequities in healthcare access, quality insurance, access to healthy foods and other factors, a report in Everyday Health found.
These groups experience cardiovascular and respiratory diseases — such as heart disease, hypertension and asthma — at higher rates, which could increase one’s risk of being hospitalized or dying from extreme heat as well, health experts say.
Extreme heat can worsen or aggravate existing health conditions, the CDC found.
“We know that those communities have disproportionately lower access to quality health care to deal with health-related issues as a result of extreme heat,” said Licker.
(WASHINGTON) — The House Jan. 6 committee’s second prime-time hearing focused on what it said was then-President Donald Trump’s “187 minutes” of inaction — from the time he left the rally at the Ellipse, to then watching the attack on the U.S. Capitol on TV at the White House until he finally called on his violent supporters to go home.
Here is how the hearing unfolded:
Jul 21, 10:55 PM EDT
Cheney asks: Can Trump ever be trusted to hold power again?
Rep. Liz Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, criticized Trump for “preying” on the patriotism of his supporters by lying to them about the 2020 election. His conduct on Jan. 6, she said, was “indefensible.”
“In our hearing tonight, you saw an American president faced with a stark and unmistakable choice between right and wrong. There was no ambiguity, no nuance. Donald Trump made a purposeful choice to violate his oath of office, to ignore the ongoing violence against law enforcement, to threaten our constitutional order. There is no way to excuse that behavior,” she said.
“And every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” she asked.
Jul 21, 10:46 PM EDT
Cheney thanks witnesses for their testimony
In her closing statements, committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., acknowledged the testimony from dozens of Republican witnesses throughout its investigation.
“The case against Donald Trump in these hearings is not made by witnesses who were his political enemies,” she said. “It was, instead, a series of confessions by Donald Trump’s own appointees.”
That included those who served Trump loyally for years and his own family members, she said.
She thanked the witnesses — including ex-staffers Sarah Matthews, Matthew Pottinger and Cassidy Hutchinson — for their bravery in speaking out publicly before millions of Americans.
“[Hutchinson] knew all along that she would be attacked by President Trump and by the 50-, 60- and 70-year-old men who hide themselves behind executive privilege,” Cheney said.
Jul 21, 10:38 PM EDT
Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 a ‘supreme violation’ of his oath: Kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger said one area where all Americans must agree is on Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6.
“Whatever your politics, whatever you think about the outcome of the election, we as Americans must all agree on this: Donald Trump’s conduct on Jan. 6 was a supreme violation of his oath of office and a complete dereliction of his duty to our nation,” the Illinois Republican said.
“It is a stain on our history,” Kinzinger continued. “It is a dishonor to all those who have sacrificed and died in service our democracy.”
Jul 21, 10:35 PM EDT
Trump in Jan. 7 statement outtakes: ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’
The House select committee shared never-before-seen raw footage of outtakes from former President Donald Trump’s recorded message on Jan. 7, in which he “still could not say that the election was over,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said.
“This election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump starts to say, then adding, “I don’t want to say the election is over.”
“I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election is over, OK?” he continues.
Trump had refused to record the address for hours, Luria said, but ultimately relented “because of concerns that he might be removed from power by threats of the 25th Amendment.”
The 25th Amendment lays out the procedures for replacing the president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.
Jul 21, 10:11 PM EDT
Panel airs new footage of urgent call between congressional leaders, defense secretary
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., introduced what she called “never-before-seen” photos and videos of what lawmakers were doing during the attack.
Congressional leaders called then-acting Secretary of Defense Chris Miller at 4:45 p.m. that day to regain control of the Capitol.
“We’re not going to let these people keep us from finishing our business,” GOP Sen. Mitch McConnell can be heard saying in a huddle of lawmakers. “So, we need you to get the building cleared, give us the okay so that we can go back in session and finish the peoples’ business as soon as possible.”
Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., then asked Miller if he agreed with one assessment that it was going to take “several days” to secure the area. Miller disagreed, stating it would take four to five hours.
At one point, Schumer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Majority Steny Hoyer grouped together taking a phone call about securing the Capitol.
Jul 21, 10:03 PM EDT
Trump went off-script in never-before-seen footage of Rose Garden message
When President Trump recorded his message in the Rose Garden more than three hours after rioters stormed the Capitol, he went “off the cuff,” according to committee testimony.
“His staff had prepared a script for him to read, but he refused to use it,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said.
The prepared script said, “NO ONE should be using violence or threats of violence to express themselves. Especially at the U.S. Capitol.”
The committee shared raw footage from the recording, in which Trump told his supporters, “We love you. You’re very special,” while urging them to go home.
The committee juxtaposed the filming of this message with footage of the heavy violence still occurring on the Capitol at that moment.
Jul 21, 9:53 PM EDT
Kushner testifies that a ‘scared’ Kevin McCarthy asked for help during riot
Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and White House adviser, told the committee in taped deposition that House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy wanted help to stop the violence as rioters breached the U.S. Capitol building.
Kushner said McCarthy told him it was “getting really ugly.”
“He was scared, yes,” Kushner said of McCarthy’s state of mind during their call.
The committee also discussed a tense phone call between Trump and McCarthy where Trump alleged it was Antifa at the Capitol — an allegation that’s been debunked by FBI Director Chris Wray and other intelligence officials. McCarthy told Trump it was “your people” and told him to call them off.
Jul 21, 9:40 PM EDT
Donald Trump Jr. texted that his father needed to ‘condemn’ riot
Text messages displayed by the committee show Donald Trump Jr. thought more needed to be done by his father besides his two tweets calling on rioters to “stay peaceful” even though violence had already begun.
Trump Jr. texted chief of staff Mark Meadows the message: “He’s got to condemn this sh**. Asap. The capitol police tweet isn’t enough.”
When Meadows responded that he was pushing hard for Trump to do so, Trump Jr. told him: “go to the mattresses.” “They will try to f*** his entire legacy on this if it gets worse,” Trump Jr. added.
Fox News personality Sean Hannity also texted Meadows to get Trump to instruct the mob to peacefully leave.
Sarah Matthews, the former deputy press secretary, testified White House staff had to ask several times for the president to include the word “peaceful” in his tweet on Jan. 6. She said it wasn’t until Ivanka Trump said “stay peaceful” that he decided to include it.
Jul 21, 9:22 PM EDT
Witnesses react to Trump ‘courage’ tweet on Pence: ‘Fuel being poured on the fire’
The House select committee highlighted strong reaction to a tweet by former President Trump about his vice president amid the riot.
“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” the tweet, posted at 2:24 p.m. on Jan. 6, stated.
“He put a target on his own vice president’s back,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said after sharing the message.
Witness Matthew Pottinger, a deputy national security adviser, said it was in that moment that he decided to resign.
“It looked like fuel being poured on the fire,” he told the committee. “I did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.”
Witness and ex-staffer Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary, said she thought the tweet “was the last thing that was needed in that moment” from Trump.
“He should have been telling these people to go home, and to leave, and to condemn the violence that we were seeing,” she said. “For him to tweet out the message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire, and making it much worse.”
Jul 21, 9:32 PM EDT
Committee shows Hawley’s raised fist, then video of him fleeing
In a moment that’s resonated from Thursday’s hearing, the committee shared a photo of Missouri GOP Sen. Josh Hawley walking across the Capitol before protesters who had started to gather at the security gates.
“As you can see in this photo, he raised his fist, in solidarity, with the protesters,” Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., said.
Luria said a Capitol police told the committee that the gesture “riled up the crowd.”
“It bothered her greatly because he was doing it in a safe space, protected by the officers and the barriers,” Luria said.
The committee then showed footage of Hawley, who had voted against certifying the results of the election, later fleeing “after those protesters he helped to rile up stormed the Capitol,” Luria said.
Jul 22, 9:14 PM EDT
Secret Service agents began to ‘fear for their own lives’: Witness
The Jan. 6 committee played new audio of Secret Service radio traffic as the attack occurred.
The traffic indicated that officers were very concerned about safely evacuating Vice President Mike Pence after the Capitol was breached.
“If we lose any more time, we may lose the ability to leave. So, if we’re going to leave, we need to do it now,” one agent is heard saying.
An unidentified White House security official said in chilling testimony that members of Pence’s detail “were starting to fear for their own lives.”
“There were calls to say goodbye to family members,” the official said in a recorded interview. “Whatever the reason was on the ground, the DCPD (D.C. police department) felt that it was going to be very ugly.”
Jul 21, 8:57 PM EDT
White House logs show Trump did not make calls to issue orders
White House logs showed that former President Donald Trump “did not call to issue orders,” according to Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va.
Senior law enforcement officials, military leaders, members of former Vice President Mike Pence’s staff and D.C. government officials that the committee interviewed also said they did not hear from Trump that day, Luria said.
Call logs shown during the hearing indicated that Trump did not make any calls between 11:04 a.m and 6:54 p.m. that day.
Kayleigh McEnany, former White House press secretary, testified for the committee that Trump did want a list of senators to call.
“He was calling senators, to encourage them to delay, or object, the certification,” Luria said.
Jul 21, 8:54 PM EDT
Pat Cipollone describes effort to have Trump make a ‘strong’ statement
Former White House counsel Pat Cipollone told the committee he and other officials attempted to push Trump to make a strong statement condemning the violence almost immediately.
“I think it was pretty clear there needed to be an immediate and forceful response, statement, public statement, that people needed to leave the Capitol now,” Cipollone said in a taped deposition.
Ivanka Trump, White House lawyer, Eric Herschmann and then-chief of staff Mark Meadows all felt the same, Cipollone testified.
Cipollone said it would’ve been “possible” for Trump to go to the White House briefing room to make a statement at any time. Sarah Matthews, the deputy press secretary at the time, testified live that it would have taken “probably less than 60 seconds” for Trump to go to the briefing room from his position in the dining room off the Oval Office.
Jul 21, 8:45 PM EDT
Witness confirms ‘heated’ exchange in Trump’s SUV on Jan. 6
Rep. Elaine Luria said that there is “evidence from multiple sources regarding an angry exchange in the presidential SUV” confirming Cassidy Hutchinson’s previous bombshell testimony.
Hutchinson told the committee on June 28 that a member of Trump’s security detail told her the president tried to grab the steering wheel as he demanded to join his supporters after his speech at the Ellipse. His team ultimately refused the request.
Sgt. Mark Robinson, a retired member of the Metropolitan Police Department responsible for the motorcade that day, told the committee he heard a similar description of what took place inside the vehicle.
“The description I received was the president was upset and was adamant about going to the Capitol, and there was a heated discussion about that,” Robinson said in a videotaped interview.
Jul 21, 8:27 PM EDT
Trump ‘chose not to act’ during attack: Kinzinger
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., attempted to explain Trump’s behavior on Jan. 6, when it took him several hours to respond to the riot.
“The mob was accomplishing President Trump’s purpose, so of course he didn’t intervene,” Kinzinger said, noting the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s victory was delayed for hours due to the violence.
“Here’s what will be clear by the end of this hearing,” Kinzinger said. “President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home. He chose not to act.”
Jul 21, 8:29 PM EDT
Cheney swears in witnesses
Committee vice chair Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., has sworn in the hearing’s witnesses — ex-staffers Matthew Pottinger, who was a member of the National Security Council, and Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary.
Both witnesses, seen as Trump White House insiders and supporters, resigned from their positions on Jan. 6 in the wake of the riot.
Jul 21, 8:11 PM EDT
Vice Chair Liz Cheney gavels in hearing, committee to reconvene in September
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., gaveled in the committee around 8 p.m. as Chairman Bennie Thompson participates virtually after testing positive for COVID-19.
Cheney, the committee’s vice chair, will preside over the hearing. Thompson said she will be responsible for maintaining order and swearing in witnesses.
Thompson also gave a preview of what’s in store tonight as the committee analyzes Trump’s response to the attack as it unfolded on Jan. 6, 2021.
“For 187 minutes, this man of destructive energy could not be moved,” Thompson said of Trump. “He could not be moved to rise from his dining room table, and walk the few steps down to the press room.”
Thompson said the committee’s work won’t stop here, stating it will reconvene in September.
Jul 21, 7:59 PM EDT
Bennie Thompson will chair the committee remotely after contracting COVID-19
Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., will chair the committee remotely after testing positive for COVID-19. He announced his diagnosis on Monday.
“Gratefully, I am fully vaccinated and boosted,” he said at the time. “I am continuing to follow CDC guidelines and will be isolating for the next several days.”
Jul 21, 7:56 PM EDT
Hearing expected to show outtakes from Trump’s Jan. 7 message
During Thursday’s hearing, the House select committee is expected to show outtakes from former President Donald Trump’s recorded message delivered on Jan. 7, in which he condemned the attack on the Capitol and pledged a “seamless transition of power.”
But sources familiar with their contents tell ABC News that Trump had to be pressured to condemn the attack, taking about an hour to record this message: “The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country.”
Sources say Trump argued with aides as the statement was being written and wanted to call the attackers patriots. — ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl
Jul 21, 7:45 PM EDT
Rep. Aguilar: ‘Our responsibility is to find the truth’
Just ahead of Thursday’s hearing, committee member Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., said Americans can expect to learn “exactly what was happening” on Jan. 6 from when former President Donald Trump left his rally to his address in the Rose Garden three hours later.
“Where was the president at? Who was talking to him? What was he saying?” Aguilar told anchor Linsey Davis on ABC News Live Prime. “Those are the types of details that we want to get to, because while the Capitol was being overrun and law enforcement officers were providing the last line of defense to save democracy, I think it’s important that the American public knows what was going on at the White House.”
Aguilar said the hearing will also address Trump’s statements on social media the day after the attack.
“The statements and addresses that he made on Jan. 6 and Jan. 7 are both important to his state of mind at the time and what he was willing to say and more importantly, what he wasn’t willing to say,” he said.
Aguilar said the committee continues to receive investigative material that may come out.
“To the extent that we need to share that with the American public, we plan to do that,” he said. “Our responsibility is to find the truth here. And that’s what we plan to do.”
Jul 21, 7:25 PM EDT
Bannon on trial for defying House select committee subpoena
As the House select committee’s last scheduled session gets underway, Steve Bannon, a former top political adviser in Donald Trump’s White House, is currently on trial for defying a subpoena in connection with its investigation.
Bannon was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 panel for records and testimony and ultimately charged with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress.
His defense attorney, David Schoen, said in court Thursday that Bannon wanted to testify but decided not to based on the advice of his attorney at the time, who reportedly told Bannon that “executive privilege had been invoked and he was not permitted by law to comply with the subpoena.”
The House committee and federal prosecutors have said the executive privilege claims never covered Bannon, since the insurrection occurred long after he left his post as chief White House strategist in 2017.
Ahead of the contempt trial, Bannon had said he would be willing to testify in a live, public hearing.
Closing arguments and jury instructions in the trial are planned for Friday morning.
Jul 21, 7:07 PM EDT
Criminal probe opened into Secret Service’s deleted Jan. 6 messages
A revelation about deleted text messages by the Secret Service is looming large over Thursday’s hearing.
The House committee subpoenaed the agency earlier this month for text messages sent on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021. But the agency said most of those records were lost in a planned data migration.
So far, the Secret Service has provided a single text exchange to the Department of Homeland Security inspector general investigating the agency’s record-keeping, according to an agency letter to the House Jan. 6 committee obtained by ABC News on Wednesday.
The committee is suggesting the Secret Service broke federal records keeping laws. Hours before the hearing, news broke that the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general has turned the inquiry into a criminal investigation.
Jul 21, 6:45 PM EDT
Kinzinger: Trump was ‘derelict in his duty’ to try to stop mob
The House select committee plans to focus Thursday night’s hearing on what it says was Trump’s dereliction of duty to act to stop the insurrection.
“It’s obvious the president was derelict in his duty, but for all the details you have to watch,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., who is co-leading the hearing, told ABC Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott.
Jul 21, 6:37 PM EDT
Kinzinger previews testimony about Trump watching Capitol attack on television
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., on Thursday morning teased snippets of depositions previewing testimony from Kayleigh McEnany, former press secretary; Ret. Lt. Gen. Keith Kellog, then-national security adviser to Vice President Mike Pence; Molly Michael, Trump’s former executive assistant; and Pat Cipollone, the White House counsel at the time.
In the montage, the former White House officials recall how Trump was in the private dining room off the Oval Office watching television as the violence unfolded.
“To the best of my recollection, he was always in the dining room” McEnany said in her deposition.
Jul 21, 5:53 PM EDT
Former White House staffers to testify about resigning in protest
Two former White House aides are expected to testify before the committee on Thursday, sources previously confirmed to ABC News.
Those ex-staffers are Sarah Matthews, who served as deputy press secretary, and Matthew Pottinger, who was deputy national security adviser. Both resigned from their positions after the pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
At the committee’s June 16 hearing, a clip from Matthews’ prior testimony was played in which she described what it was like on the White House press team as the insurrection unfolded. She said that Trump’s tweet attacking then-Vice President Mike Pence during the attack “felt like he was pouring gasoline on the fire.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House Jan. 6 select committee used its second prime-time hearing Thursday to make the case that President Donald Trump not only did nothing to stop the assault on the U.S. Capitol but did so because he wanted it to succeed.
Chairman Bennie Thompson, leading off the hearing remotely as he recovers from COVID-19, called for accountability at every level of what the committee has described as Trump’s “attempted coup.”
The panel detailed the 187 minutes that passed between Trump’s speech at the Ellipse and his taped statement telling his supporters still storming the Capitol to leave.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., said Trump didn’t move to immediately discourage rioters because they were carrying out his plot to delay the congressional certification of Joe Biden’s electoral victory.
“President Trump did not fail to act during the 187 minutes between leaving the Ellipse and telling the mob to go home,” Kinzinger said. “He chose not to act.”
Former White House officials — including live witnesses Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger — painted a picture of Trump sitting in a private dining room off the Oval Office watching the events unravel on television while the mob closed in on Vice President Mike Pence and congressional lawmakers.
Here are some key takeaways:
Trump resisted pressure to take action, watching the riot on TV instead
Former White House officials described Trump, after his Jan. 6 speech at the Ellipse, spending three hours in the private dining room off the Oval Office simply watching the attack on the Capitol on television while making calls to supportive senators.
Then-White House counsel Pat Cipollone said he was among several officials — including Ivanka Trump — who pushed for Trump to quickly make a “strong” statement to tamp down the violence shortly after it broke out.
Matthews, a deputy press secretary at the time, told lawmakers Thursday that it would’ve taken “less than 60 seconds” for Trump to leave the dining room and make a statement at the briefing room — but he declined.
Text messages sent by Donald Trump Jr. to chief of staff Mark Meadows showed Trump’s son also thought his father should “condemn” the attack as soon as possible.
He finally taped a statement issued at 4:17 p.m., calling on his supporters to end the attack, but also telling them, “We love you. You’re very special.”
The committee juxtaposed the time of that statement with video of heavy violence continuing at the Capitol.
White House reaction to Trump ‘courage’ tweet on Pence
An incendiary tweet by former President Trump about his vice president amid the riot was a pivotal moment for the live witnesses. The tweet, sent at 2:24 p.m. at the height of the riot, said Pence “didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done.”
Pottinger said it was in that moment that he decided to resign.
“It looked like fuel being poured on the fire,” he told the committee. “I did not want to be associated with the events that were unfolding on the Capitol.”
Matthews said she thought the tweet “was the last thing that was needed in that moment” from Trump.
“He should have been telling these people to go home, and to leave, and to condemn the violence that we were seeing,” she said. “For him to tweet out the message about Mike Pence, it was him pouring gasoline on the fire, and making it much worse.”
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., characterized Trump’s tweet as putting a “target on his own vice president’s back.”
Secret Service agents feared for their lives, witness recalls
The public heard new audio of Secret Service radio traffic from the attack indicating officers were very concerned about safely evacuating Pence as rioters made their way into the building.
“If we lose any more time, we may lose the ability to leave,” one agent said over the radio. “So, if we’re going to leave, we need to do it now.”
An unidentified White House security official, whose voice was distorted to hide the person’s identity, provided a chilling detail that members of Pence’s detail “were starting to fear for their own lives.”
“There were calls to say goodbye to family members,” the official said in a recorded interview.
Trump outtakes: ‘I don’t want to say the election is over’
The committee revealed never-before-seen raw footage of outtakes from a message Trump recorded a day after the Capitol attack — on Jan. 7 — that showed, the committee said, that even after everything that happened, Trump insisted on sticking to the “big lie.”
“This election is now over. Congress has certified the results,” Trump starts to say, reading off a teleprompter. He then stops to say, “I don’t want to say the election is over.”
“I just want to say Congress has certified the results, without saying the election is over, OK?” he continues.
Trump had refused to record the address for hours, Luria said, but ultimately relented “because of concerns that he might be removed from power by threats of the 25th Amendment.”
The 25th Amendment lays out the procedures for replacing the president in the event of death, removal, resignation or incapacitation.
Cheney says Trump can’t be trusted
Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., concluded the hearing with a central question as rumors swirl about a Trump comeback in 2024.
The former president was given a choice between right and wrong on Jan. 6, Cheney argued, and his behavior was “indefensible.”
“Every American must consider this: can a president who is willing to make the choices Donald Trump made during the violence of Jan. 6 ever be trusted with any position of authority in our great nation again?” she asked.
The committee’s work isn’t over
While the committee’s hearing on Thursday was its last scheduled proceeding, Thompson and Cheney emphasized that the panel’s work isn’t over.
“Doors have opened, new subpoenas have been issued and the dam has begun to break,” Cheney said.
The panel said it has received an abundance of information since the hearings began in early June, and will continue to collect evidence through the month of August when Congress is on recess. They said the committee will reconvene in September.
