(SEOUL, South Korea) — North Korea fired a possible submarine-launched ballistic missile off the East Coast Tuesday morning, according to the neighboring countries South Korea and Japan, marking the eighth missile test-fire this year alone.
“Our military detected a missile launch eastward from a site in the vicinity of Sinpo, South Hamgyong Province around 10:17 a.m.,” South Korea’s Joint Chief of Staff, General Won In-choul, told reporters.
The unidentified ballistic missile allegedly launched from a submarine and flew 370 miles at an altitude of 37 miles, according to South Korea’s military.
“It is likely a new mini-SLBM that North Korea showcased last week at an arms exhibition,” Shin Beom-chul, director of the Center for Diplomacy and Security at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy, told ABC News.
Another analyst told ABC News that Kim Jong Un is developing submarine-launched ballistic missiles in order to prepare a more survivable nuclear deterrent able to blackmail his neighbors and the United States.
“North Korea cannot politically afford appearing to fall behind in a regional arms race with its southern neighbor,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor of international studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul, told ABC News.
Easley said that although the North Korean missile launch timing is largely driven by a technical schedule for when tests are ready and useful, there’s also a political factor.
“Pyongyang is celebrating the ruling party’s founding and looking to boost national morale after harsh pandemic lockdowns. And the Kim regime likely wants to one-up South Korean missile tests, at least in Pyongyang’s propaganda,” Easley said.
The same day, the intelligence chiefs of South Korea, the United States and Japan held a closed-door trilateral meeting in Seoul to discuss the pending issues in the Korean peninsula, such as the security situation, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence.
Meanwhile in Washington, South Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Noh Kyu-duk discussed North Korea’s missile launch over the phone with the U.S. Special Representative for North Korea Policy Sung Kim. Noh happened to be in Washington for the meeting to discuss ways to bring the North back to the negotiating table the day before.
North Korea’s missile launch comes only two weeks after Pyongyang made a conditional peace offer to Seoul on reconnecting the military hotline. For Seoul, it was a symbolic gesture that their relations could see an improvement.
As Pyongyang raised international concern by firing yet another missile just 19 days after the latest missile test, South Korea’s presidential office held a presidential National Security Council right after the missile launch.
“The council members expressed deep regret that North Korea’s launch occurred while active consultations are underway with related countries like the United States to advance the Korean Peninsula peace process,” South Korea’s Unification Ministry said in an official statement.
North Korea’s last test-fire of an SLBM was in October 2019.
(NEW YORK) — New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday was set to announce a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for all municipal workers — a move that is likely to escalate tensions with unions and employees that have been resistant, a source told ABC News.
Nearly 150,000 of the city’s workers — teachers and school staff — had already been required to be vaccinated, but the new announcement took the push for vaccination one step further.
About 71% of employees have already have at least one shot of the vaccine. It’s up to 94% in the 11 city-run hospitals, and 96% in schools, where vaccinations are already mandatory.
But other sectors of the city’s workforce, including the police and fire departments, lag behind.
About 69% of NYPD employees and 60% of FDNY workers are vaccinated and both the fire and police commissioners have endorsed the mandate. The Police Benevolent Association has previously said “vaccine is a medical decision that members must make in consultation with their own health care providers.”
The mandate is expected to include all employees from sanitation workers to office workers and will require some 161,000 workers to have their first dose by the end of the month.
The mayor, who is pondering a run for governor when his term ends at the end of the year, is set to appear on MSNBC to make the announcement.
Municipal employees who do not get vaccinated will be placed on unpaid leave, and their future employment will be resolved in negotiations with individual labor unions.
Correction officers will face a later deadline of Dec. 1.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Republicans are expected to defeat — for the second time this year — a Democratic measure aimed at enacting sweeping federal election law changes, a move that is certain to increase pressure on the majority to change the chamber’s filibuster rule.
“This bill is a compromise, but a good one. It’s a bill that every Senate Democrat is united behind enthusiastically,” said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, who worked to get moderate Democrat Joe Manchin behind the proposal known as the Freedom to Vote Act. The legislation is a product of Democrats’ concerns about the wave of stricter new voting laws in red states following the false claims by former President Donald Trump that the 2020 election was stolen.
Manchin, D-W.Va., refused to endorse a more comprehensive reform effort by his caucus in June, saying it lacked bipartisan input and encroached too far on state’s rights to run elections. But after months of trying to corral GOP support, Manchin has found none.
The vote on Wednesday is to start debate on the measure, a move that would require 10 Republicans to vote with all Democrats. But no Republican is expected to support the revised bill.
“There are areas where we could perhaps work together, but the legislation that’s been crafted (by Democrats) is not what I’ll support,” said Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, a consensus-minded Republican whom Manchin approached. “Federalizing election law is something which I think is not a good idea.”
Sen. Angus King, D-Maine, a lead sponsor of the legislation and member of that working group, pleaded with colleagues to support the bill, saying U.S. democracy is “fragile” and at stake in the wake of Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election despite no widespread fraud found in multiple, nonpartisan investigations.
“The problem with this goes well beyond the wave of voter suppression legislation sweeping the country; the deeper problem is the massive and unprecedented erosion of trust in the electoral system itself, the beating heart of our democracy,” said King. “Of all the depredations of Donald Trump, this is by far the worst. In relentlessly pursuing his narrow self-interest, he has grievously wounded democracy itself. And by the way, I mean ‘narrow self-interest’ quite literally; he doesn’t give the slightest damn about any of us — any of you — and will cast any or all of us aside whenever it suits his needs of the moment.”
But Republicans for months have said they see the efforts to counter red state laws as nothing more than “a partisan power grab.”
“The only thing this proposal would have done for the people…would be to help make sure that the outcome of virtually every future election meant that Democrats win and Republicans lose. Thus, Republicans would be relegated to a permanent minority status. That was the goal,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, charged in a Tuesday floor speech. “If this bill weren’t so dangerous, it would have been laughable.”
King told reporters on a conference call that the only option after the vote fails Wednesday is to alter the Senate’s filibuster rule that requires 60 votes to pass most legislation but also imposes no requirement on the 41 senators who are in opposition other than his or her stated opposition to legislation that is up for a vote.
“I’ve been very, very reluctant on (changing the filibuster), but on the other hand, it strikes me that this is a very special case, because it goes to the very fundamentals of how our democracy works,” King told reporters, adding that the debate among Democrats “can’t go on forever, because as you know redistricting has already started in states…It’s got to happen, I would say, in this calendar year.”
King said Democrats are looking at a number of possible changes, from requiring those supporting a filibuster to appear on the floor and hold the chamber with speeches — the so-called “talking filibuster” — to modifying the rules to end filibusters on motions to start debate — which is what will happen Wednesday — to ending the filibuster altogether.
Changing the filibuster would require all Democrats to be united, but that is not the case currently. Manchin and his fellow moderate, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have steadfastly refused to change the chamber’s rules citing a fear of permanently damaging the institution.
Outside groups pushed back Tuesday and called on Biden to do more.
“The president must get in the game. Say into a microphone, ‘You’ve got to get rid of the filibuster,” said Meagan Hatcher-Mays of the progressive group Indivisible.
“The filibuster is paralyzing the Senate. It’s preventing it from doing the very basics, such as debating bills,” said Adam Jentleson, a one-time deputy chief of staff to former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., and founder of the Battle Born Collective, a progressive interest group.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki demurred Tuesday when asked about support for the filibuster.
“It’s a discussion that we would have with leaders and members in Congress,” said Psaki, who added that the White House was focused on the Wednesday vote. “Republicans still have an opportunity to do the right thing to protect people’s fundamental right to vote.”
The Democrats’ new bill still encompasses sweeping election law changes, including voter ID requirements, expanded early voting, making Election Day a national holiday, banning partisan gerrymandering, and implementing election security and campaign finance measures.
Among the provisions dropped or changed since June is the automatic mailing of ballots. Under the new measure, any voter may request a mail-in ballot but they are not sent out automatically. The legislation will continue to allow voter roll purges but requires changes to be “done on the basis of reliable and objective evidence” and prohibits the use of returned mail sent by third parties to remove voters.
The bill would also no longer implement public financing of presidential and congressional elections. Still, there are a number of election security provisions, including mandatory, nationwide use of machines that deliver paper ballots.
(NEW YORK) — “Luma out” and “If I can’t breathe, Luma shouldn’t charge us,” read some of the banners held by hundreds of Puerto Rico’s residents as they marched on a main highway Friday in protest against Luma Energy, the island’s power company.
Puerto Rico has had a long history of instability with its electric system, even prior to the devastation Hurricane Maria wreaked in 2017, which left millions on the island without power for nearly a year.
Still, blackout and brownouts are a part of daily life for Puerto Rico’s citizens, with a recent power outage now affecting thousands.
‘Perfect storm’
The combination of Luma’s late response to failures in the transmission and distribution that have left thousands without power in the last months, and the weak infrastructure of the power plants has made Puerto Rico’s electric service the worst among the U.S.’ states and territories, experts say.
“Most of these power plants should have been decommissioned many years ago. But when you decommission something, you need to have something new,” Puerto Rico’s Electric Power Authority former executive director Ricardo Ramos told ABC News.
ABC News requested a comment from Luma Energy and has yet to receive a response.
PREPA’s gas power plants are over 40 years old. The average lifespan of these power plants is about 20 years, according to one report by National Renewable Energy Laboratory.
Ramos, who says he has worked in the energy industry all his life, told ABC News that the situation with Puerto Rico’s power is the result of a “perfect storm” of failures that perpetuate the island’s electricity woes.
PREPA’s operational hurdles
Problems with electricity have been reported since PREPA was established in 1941, Ramos said.
In the1960’s Puerto Rico began building power plants, but amid the island nation’s industrial revolution plus a then-predicted business boom, those power plants were built larger than the country could manage.
“At that time, bunker type C oil was extremely cheap. So it was chosen to use that fuel in order to have a competitive, let’s say, electricity tariff,” Ramos told ABC News.
More businesses actually began leaving the island, and Puerto Rico ended up with a majority of its larger power plants located in the southern area of the island, while the most electric consumption has been in the north, Ramos said.
That has resulted in a complex geographical situation for the island’s transmission and distribution, now managed by Luma, he said.
Prior to Luma’s takeover on June 1, 2021, the government entity, PREPA, was in charge. Today, the government only owns the system that generates electricity while Luma oversees transmission and management.
Financial Problems
The mix of an expensive system, mismanagement and lack of maintenance drove PREPA into a more dire situation, according to energy financial expert, Tom Sanzillo.
“You can look at it as unfunded maintenance over a long period of time,” Sanzillo told ABC News.
Sanzillo is the director of financial analysis of the Institute of Energy and Economics and Financial Analysis, and is a former New York State comptroller.
“You can look at it as the misuse of the revenues that have come in from the ratepayers over a number of years,” Sanzillo told ABC News.
Both Sanzillo and Ramos say that effective energy projects take time, can be complicated, and must include collaboration between key players from stakeholders to politicians.
“A power system is very hard to work on, decisions have to be made years prior,” Sanzillo added.
In addition, financing energy projects involves a large amount of investment, he said, and that PREPA’s investment came from the bond market and loans.
As the electric utility issued bonds to finance energy projects that typically take over six years to build, the island’s politics got in the way.
“If you’re changing the management every four years, and you already have, let’s say, immediate bonds for a project, and the project doesn’t exist, it can quickly become a mess,” Ramos told ABC News.
“You have a combination of a system and disrepair and political mismanagement at the top of the agency, and you have a recipe for a real problem,” Sanzillo from IEEFA said.
The island filed for bankruptcy in 2016 under Title 3 known as Puerto Rico’s Oversight Management Economic Stability Act.
In 2017, the financial oversight board imposed by Congress filed Title 3 papers for the bankruptcy process of PREPA.
Bankruptcy proceedings are still underway, according to local media reports.
Amid Hurricane Maria’s destruction, the Trump administration designated one of the biggest federal funds with nearly $10 billion for PREPA’s reconstruction. As of today only $7.1 million has been disbursed, according to Puerto Rico’s government.
Sanzillo says using funds for the expansion of a solar system on the island could help change the situation.
“You would have less stress on what is clearly a fragile system,” he added.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot on Tuesday moved to punish Trump adviser Steve Bannon, recommending the full House hold him in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with a subpoena for records and testimony.
The nine-member panel voted unanimously Tuesday evening to send a report recommending contempt charges to the full House. If approved by the full chamber as soon as this week, the matter would then be referred to the Justice Department to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.
“Our goal is simple: we want Mr. Bannon to answer our questions,” Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., said in the meeting. “We want him to turn over whatever records he possesses that are relevant to the select committee’s investigation. The issue in front of us today is our ability to do our job.”
The Justice Department has declined to comment on how it might act on a criminal referral for Bannon or others who may be held in contempt.
After President Joe Biden said recently that the Justice Department should prosecute Bannon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki attempted to distance the White House from that action, telling reporters on Monday that Biden “believes it’s an independent decision that should be made by the Department of Justice.”
The matter could take months, if not years, to litigate, and could result in a fine of up to $100,000 and up to one year in prison.
Robert Costello, Bannon’s attorney, told committee members that his client would not cooperate with the probe given Trump’s executive privilege concerns, or without a court order to do so.
“Though the Select Committee welcomes good-faith engagement with witnesses seeking to cooperate with our investigation, we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral,” Thompson and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement earlier this month.
Thompson said Bannon “stands alone in his complete defiance” of the committee.
“We have reached out to dozens of witnesses. We are taking in thousands of pages of records. We are conducting interviews on a steady basis,” he said.
The committee’s report argues that the committee’s efforts to seek information from Bannon are justified because he “had specific knowledge about the events planned for January 6th before they occurred.”
“Mr. Bannon was a private citizen during the relevant time period and the testimony and documents the Select Committee is demanding do not concern discussion of official government matters with the President and his immediate advisors,” the panel wrote in the report, in response to Trump’s claims of privilege.
Cheney, one of two Republicans on the committee, said that Bannon and Trump’s claims of privilege “suggest that President Trump was personally involved in the planning and execution of January 6th.”
She also warned Republicans that Trump’s continued lies about widespread election fraud are “a prescription for national self-destruction.”
“You know that there is no evidence of widespread election fraud sufficient to overturn the election; you know that the Dominion voting machines were not corrupted by a foreign power. You know those claims are false. Yet President Trump repeats them almost daily,” she said.
“The American people must know what happened. They must know the truth. All of us who are elected officials must do our duty to prevent the dismantling of the rule of law, and to ensure nothing like that dark day in January ever happens again,” Cheney said.
Several other former Trump aides and associates, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Kashyap Patel, who served as a senior Pentagon official, continue to negotiate with the committee over cooperation after receiving subpoenas.
It’s not clear if Dan Scavino, one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, will cooperate with the panel’s investigation.
On Monday, the former president announced he was suing the committee, as well as the National Archives, to block lawmakers from receiving Trump White House records.
The Biden administration had refuted Trump’s of claim executive privilege, saying that the invocation “is not in the best interests of the United States,” White House counsel Dana Remus wrote in a letter to the National Archives.
As a result, the National Archives notified Trump’s attorney last week that it planned to turn over dozens of records to the committee on Nov. 12, “absent any intervening court order.”
(NEW YORK) — Getting a COVID-19 vaccine isn’t just about protecting yourself, it goes a long way toward protecting your family, according to a new blog post by the director of the National Institutes of Health.
Dr. Francis Collins also noted in his Tuesday post that the data shows adults getting vaccinated helps protect those who can’t get vaccines, especially children.
“This is a chance to love your family — and love your neighbor,” Collins wrote.
Collins reiterated that studies have shown vaccinated individuals are significantly less likely to spread coronavirus to family members within a household. He cited a Swedish study published in JAMA Internal Medicine Journal last week that looked at 1.8 million people from more than 800,000 families “who acquired immunity from either previous COVID-19 infection or full vaccination.”
“The data show,” Collins wrote, “that people without any immunity against COVID-19 were at considerably lower risk of infection and hospitalization when other members of their family had immunity, either from a natural infection or vaccination.”
Specifically, the study found that households with one immune family member had a 45% to 61% lower risk of a COVID-19 infection, and that when a household included two immune family members the risk dropped 75% to 86%. With three or more immune family members, the risk of infection dropped almost 97%.
“These results show quite clearly that vaccines offer protection for individuals who lack immunity, with important implications for finally ending this pandemic,” Collins wrote.
Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor, said Collins’ message is important because there needs to be more emphasis on how getting a vaccination is an altruistic act for the entire community.
“We get a lot of focus on individual risk and side effects, and it takes our eye off the ball for the real reason we can and want the population to get inoculated,” he said.
MORE: COVID-19 vaccine shots for kids under 12 may be available in November: 6 things to know
Brownstein said it’s imperative that every eligible person gets vaccine shots as soon as possible since it may take a while for tens of millions of American children to be fully protected.
“Vaccines create a cocoon that ultimately protects those who aren’t eligible,” he added.
Anyone who needs help scheduling a free vaccine appointment can log onto vaccines.gov.
(WASHINGTON) — Amid a fresh wave of criticism from liberal activists and lawmakers, the White House on Tuesday defended President Joe Biden’s decision to nominate Rahm Emanuel for U.S. ambassador to Japan.
The former congressman and chief of staff to President Barack Obama has faced questions over how, as mayor of Chicago, he handled the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014.
Emanuel faces his Senate confirmation hearing Wednesday, which is also the seventh anniversary of McDonald’s killing — prompting renewed outcry this week.
He’s one of dozens of Biden ambassadorial nominees still stuck in the confirmation process. Biden has seen a single-digit handful of his ambassadorial nominees confirmed by the Senate, leaving key vacancies in foreign capitals and at the highest ranks of the State Department that some analysts warn pose a national security threat.
Republican senators, especially Ted Cruz of Texas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, have put holds on dozens of nominees over Biden’s refusal to sanction the German company behind Russia’s pipeline, Nord Stream 2. But the chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Sen. Bob Menendez, D-N.J., secured confirmation for 33 nominees on Tuesday, sending them to the Senate floor for a final vote.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki pushed back against new calls for Biden to withdraw Emanuel’s nomination on Tuesday.
“The president nominated Rahm Emanuel to serve as ambassador to Japan because he’s somebody who has a record of public service, both in Congress, serving as a public official in the White House, and certainly also as the mayor of Chicago, and he felt he was somebody who could best represent the United States in Japan,” she told reporters.
No Democratic senators have spoken out against Emanuel’s nomination. Instead, powerful Democratic senators like Dick Durbin, the Senate Majority Whip and a fellow Illinois Democrat, have backed him. Durbin tweeted back in August that Emanuel “has a lifetime of public service preparing him to speak for America. … I will do all I can to help Rahm become America’s voice in Japan.”
Some House Democrats, however, have urged the White House to reverse course, although they do not vote to confirm nominees.
“This nomination is deeply shameful. … That the Biden administration seeks to reward Emanuel with an ambassadorship is an embarrassment and betrayal of the values we seek to uphold both within our nation and around the world. I urge the Senate to vote NO on his confirmation,” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., said in a statement last month.
This week, Kina Collins, a Democrat running for Congress in Emanuel’s home state of Illinois, has been leading advocacy against him.
“We can’t say Black Lives Matter and plan to build back better by appointing the man who covered up a police murder to a cushy job as an ambassador — a job the man is completely unqualified to hold,” tweeted the community organizer and activist, running again against Democratic lawmaker Danny Davis, who has held the Chicago district’s seat for over two decades.
At issue is the accusation that Emanuel, a longtime Democratic power player, helped cover up the 2014 killing of McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times by Jason Van Dyke, a white policer officer.
Chicago police had said McDonald ignored warnings and approached the officers, but video, released 13 months later by a judge’s order, showed McDonald veering away from Van Dyke before the officer shot him.
The city reached a settlement with McDonald’s family, and in October 2018, Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder and 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm.
Emanuel had said the city could not release the video because of a Justice Department investigation, said he did not see the video until shortly before its release, and has denied any wrongdoing. The video was released in Nov. 2015, seven months after Emanuel won reelection as mayor.
Asked whether Biden and Emanuel have spoken, including about the McDonald case, Psaki told reporters, “I don’t have any record of him speaking with him necessarily through the process. … Obviously, he’s somebody who he was familiar with. He knew his record of long standing prior to the nomination. And the president has made his own comments about that case, which I would point everyone to.”
Emanuel, a former ABC News contributor, was reportedly under consideration for a Cabinet secretary position during the transition last winter, but ultimately, he was not nominated for a role. The White House announced his nomination for ambassador to Japan on Aug. 20 after months of speculation.
To date, only nine Biden ambassador picks have been confirmed by the Senate, with dozens of others held up by Cruz, Hawley, and others over foreign policy disagreements with the White House, especially on Nord Stream 2.
“There have been unprecedented delays, obstruction, holds on qualified individuals from Republicans in the Senate,” Psaki said Monday. “The blame is clear. It is frustrating. It is something that we wish would move forward more quickly.”
After months of battle, however, there was a breakthrough Tuesday, with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee voting to send 33 nominations to the Senate floor for a vote.
“As the United States faces an unprecedented confluence of challenges on the world stage, our security, interests, and ability to advance our values and assert global leadership should not be imperiled by the obstructionism of those infatuated with playing politics with our entire national security infrastructure,” Menendez said Tuesday.
Among those approved by the committee are Cindy McCain, John McCain’s widow, for U.S. envoy to the United Nations agencies in Rome; former Republican Sen. Jeff Flake, an outspoken Trump critic, as ambassador to Turkey; famed pilot Chesley Burnett “Sully” Sullenberger as U.S. envoy to the International Civil Aviation Organization; and former Delaware Democratic Gov. Jack Markell as U.S. envoy to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris.
ABC News’s Sarah Donaldson contributed to this report from the White House.
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot is expected to recommend holding longtime Trump adviser Steve Bannon in contempt of Congress for refusing to cooperate with the panel’s investigation.
Committee members will vote Tuesday evening on whether to send a report recommending contempt charges to the full House. If approved by the full chamber on Thursday, the matter would then be referred to the Justice Department to decide whether to pursue criminal charges.
After President Joe Biden said recently that the Justice Department should prosecute Bannon, White House press secretary Jen Psaki attempted to distance the White House from that action, telling reporters on Monday that Biden “believes it’s an independent decision that should be made by the Department of Justice.”
The matter could take months, if not years, to litigate, and could result in a fine of up to $100,000 and up to one year in prison.
“Though the Select Committee welcomes good-faith engagement with witnesses seeking to cooperate with our investigation, we will not allow any witness to defy a lawful subpoena or attempt to run out the clock, and we will swiftly consider advancing a criminal contempt of Congress referral,” Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said in a statement earlier this month.
The statement came after Robert Costello, Bannon’s attorney, told committee members that his client would not cooperate with the probe given Trump’s executive privilege concerns, or without a court order to do so.
The committee’s report argues that the committee’s efforts to seek information from Bannon are justified because he “had specific knowledge about the events planned for January 6th before they occurred.”
“Mr. Bannon was a private citizen during the relevant time period and the testimony and documents the Select Committee is demanding do not concern discussion of official government matters with the President and his immediate advisors,” the panel wrote in the report, in response to Trump’s claims of privilege.
Several other former Trump aides and associates, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and Kashyap Patel, who served as a senior Pentagon official, continue to negotiate with the committee over cooperation after receiving subpoenas.
It’s not clear if Dan Scavino, one of Trump’s longest-serving aides, will cooperate with the panel’s investigation.
Earlier Tuesday, the former president announced he was suing the committee, as well as the National Archives, to block lawmakers from receiving Trump White House records.
The Biden administration had refuted Trump’s of claim executive privilege, saying that the invocation “is not in the best interests of the United States,” White House counsel Dana Remus wrote in a letter to the National Archives.
As a result, the National Archives notified Trump’s attorney last week that it planned to turn over dozens of records to the committee on Nov. 12, “absent any intervening court order.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration on Tuesday backed down on a controversial proposal to direct the IRS to collect additional data on every bank account that sees more than $600 in annual transactions, after widespread criticism from Republican lawmakers and banking industry representatives, who said the tax enforcement strategy represented a breach of privacy by the federal government.
Instead, the administration and Senate Democrats are proposing to raise the threshold to accounts with more than $10,000 in annual transactions, and any income received through a paycheck from which federal taxes are automatically deducted will not be subject to the reporting. Recipients of federal benefits like unemployment and Social Security would also be exempt.
The IRS would collect the total sum of deposits and withdrawals from bank accounts with more than $10,000 in non-payroll income. Information on individual transactions would not be collected.
The changes were announced Tuesday by the Treasury Department.
“In response to considerations about scope, it [Congress] has crafted a new approach to include an exemption for wage and salary earners and federal program beneficiaries. Under this revised approach, such earners can be completely carved out of the reporting structure. This is a well-reasoned modification: for American workers and retirees, the IRS already has information on wage and salary income and the federal benefits they receive,” a Treasury Department fact sheet on the changes said.
The changes would exempt millions of Americans from the reporting requirement, and help the IRS target wealthier Americans, especially those who earn money from investments, real estate, and other transactions that are more difficult for the IRS to track.
“Under the current system, American workers pay virtually all their tax bills while many top earners avoid paying billions in the taxes they owe by exploiting the system. At the core of the problem is a discrepancy in the ways types of income are reported to the IRS: opaque income sources frequently avoid scrutiny while wages and federal benefits are typically subject to nearly full compliance. This two-tiered tax system is unfair and deprives the country of resources to fund core priorities,” Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said in a statement.
“Today’s new proposal reflects the Administration’s strong belief that we should zero in on those at the top of the income scale who don’t pay the taxes they owe, while protecting American workers by setting the bank account threshold at $10,000 and providing an exemption for wage earners like teachers and firefighters,” Yellen said.
The fact sheet says, “Imagine a taxpayer who reports $10,000 of income; but has $10 million of flows in and out of their bank account. Having this summary information will help flag for the IRS when high-income people under-report their income (and under-pay their tax obligations). This will help the IRS target its enforcement activities on those who are actually evading their tax obligations—decreasing costly and burdensome audits for the vast majority of taxpayers who pay what they owe.”
The proposal is a long way from being enacted. It’s currently included in a multi-trillion dollar social spending package lawmakers and the White House have been negotiating for months. If that package is passed into law, this requirement wouldn’t begin until December 2022.
Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden D-Ore., who spearheaded the effort to revise the proposal, dispute Republican claims that the goal is to snoop on Americans’ financial transactions.
“The bottom line is, wealthy tax cheats are ripping off the American people to the tune of billions and billions of dollars per year. Tax cheats thrive when the reporting rules that apply to them are loose and murky. Democrats want to fix this broken approach and crack down on the cheating at the top,” Wyden said in a press conference on the announcement Tuesday.
Wyden made clear that even Americans who might make a large purchase over $10,000 wouldn’t be subject to the additional reporting.
“If you don’t have $10,000 above your paycheck, Social Security income, or the like coming in or going out, there’s no additional reporting. We’ve also addressed the scenario where an individual spends a significant amount of savings for a major purchase. There will be no additional reporting in this scenario, as long as the amount of money coming into the account does not exceed wages +$10,000,” Wyden said.
The administration did not specify if the changes will impact the additional tax revenue they might be able to collect through enforcement. The administration has estimated improved tax enforcement could net up to $600 billion in additional tax revenue over the next decade.
The initial proposal, which would have affected nearly every non-dormant bank account in the U.S., raised the ire of Republican lawmakers, who called it a breach of privacy and an example of government overreach. Even with the revisions to the proposal, Republicans in the Senate remained critical.
“So how long is it gonna take for them to say, ‘Well you know we need a little bit more information because we really can’t make much of this.’ Then they’re going to want individual transactions and who knows what,” Sen. John Thune, R-S.D., told reporters.
Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, cited President Biden’s commitment not to raise taxes on any American making less than $400,000, suggesting that threshold ought to be applied to IRS reporting.
“Why don’t they just put a ban in there that bans the IRS from snooping in the accounts of people who make less than $400,000? That’s the question I think that should be asked with the sponsors of this approach,” Crapo said.
Crapo was hard-pressed to give an example of an alternative way to close the tax gap other than to say mention “closing loopholes.”
Banking industry representatives remain skeptical of any additional reporting requirement, saying it will create a burden, especially for smaller community banks.
(NEW YORK) — More than 60,000 law enforcement officers were assaulted in the line of duty in 2020, including more than 40 who were killed, according to the FBI.
The total of 60,105 was an increase of 4,071 from 2019, with FBI drawing on reports from some 9,895 law enforcement agencies.
Among those assaulted, about 31% sustained injuries. In 2020, 46 officers were killed, down from 48 in 2019, FBI data showed.
Most of the assaults on officers happened after they responded to disturbance calls, including family quarrels and bar fights, according to the FBI.
“Police officers across the country are facing an increase in violent crime and violent acts committed against them,” said Laura Cooper, executive director of the Major Cities Chiefs Association. “Facing these dangerous situations is another reason why it has been difficult for police agencies to find recruits who want to put on a uniform and put their lives on the line.”
Vernon Stanforth, president of the National Sheriffs Association, said the staggering numbers weren’t a surprise “after this troubling year for law enforcement.”
Law Enforcement Legal Defense Fund President Jason Johnson said the increased assaults on officers come at a time when they’re “seemingly under attack on all fronts.”
In the first nine months of 2021, 54 officers were feloniously killed while on duty compared with 37 over that same time period in 2020, according to the latest FBI data. Among those deaths, 20 were unprovoked attacks.
A new LELDF report showed that from June 1, 2020, to April 30, 2021, in the wake of George Floyd’s killing and the subsequent protests, the percentage of officers quitting or retiring had increased by double digits compared with 2019.
This year, high-profile police killings have already dominated headlines, including the case of Chicago officer Ella French, who was shot during a traffic stop in August.
French, 29, was the first Chicago police officer since 2018 killed in the line of duty and the city’s first female officer killed in the line of duty since 1988.
