(WASHINGTON) — A new report from the federal watchdog overseeing the trillions in approved coronavirus relief funds says several relief programs potentially disbursed nearly $100 billion in fraudulent relief money.
The Pandemic Response Accountability Committee, established as part of the $2.2 trillion coronavirus relief bill passed in March 2020, is responsible for overseeing a combined $5 trillion in pandemic relief funds authorized by Congress.
Working with inspectors general from several key federal agencies, the committee, in its report published Wednesday afternoon, identified fraud within programs championed by both parties, including those designed to aid small businesses and unemployed individuals.
“This is an unprecedented amount of money,” the report said. “And most of the funds were disbursed quickly. These factors put the money at a higher risk of fraud.”
The federal unemployment insurance program provides up to a $600 weekly in addition to the state unemployment payout. But the report found the program will disburse nearly $87 billion in fraudulent unemployment insurance payments before its expiration this month.
Democrats championed the program, holding it up as a necessary safety net for people whose jobs were wiped out by the pandemic, but Republicans have long challenged it.
Though the program technically expires in September, it has already been rolled back in many Republican-controlled states. Republican leaders said the program incentivizes people to stay home by in some cases paying them more than low-wage jobs.
Businesses were also eligible for several types of loans under the massive coronavirus relief bills passed by Congress.
Potentially ineligible applicants for Economic Injury Disaster Loans, which were given to small businesses that were established before the pandemic and could be used to pay normal business expenses, received $918 million in loan funds, the report says, “reducing the total amount of funds available for legitimate businesses.”
Both unemployment insurance benefits and loans issued to small businesses were plagued by self-certification, which allowed applicants to self-assess eligibility, sometimes without traditional review standards, the report says.
The report also detailed problems with the paycheck protection program, a small business COVID-19 relief measure that Republicans strongly advocated for. That program allowed small businesses to receive federal loans that would be forgiven if at least 60% of the borrowed funds were used to keep employees on the payroll, but the watchdog group found issues with representation and fraud.
Failure to require the checking of applicants against a list of those ineligible to receive federal loans led to 57,500 PPP loans worth $3.6 billion being issued to potentially ineligible recipients, according to the report.
And, despite language in the federal legislation instructing lenders to ensure small business loans were given to women, minorities and veterans, there is “no evidence that small businesses in underserved and vulnerable communities” received the loans.
The small business association, responsible for collecting demographic data on who was getting these new federal loans, did not collect demographic data on the loan applications and did not issue guidance requiring lenders to prioritize applicants from businesses in vulnerable communities, disadvantaging potential borrowers who may not have had existing relationships with larger lenders.
Since June, there’s been an effort to correct that issue through the creation of a new online tool and a revised application process.
Stimulus checks, several rounds of which went out to Americans in certain income brackets, were also not immune to fraud. The watchdog found that nearly 2.2 million checks worth nearly $3.5 billion were issued to deceased individuals. Of that, $72 million was voluntarily returned.
(FORT WORTH, Texas) — As the clock ticked toward midnight, staff at an abortion clinic in Texas rushed to provide service for their patients while they still legally could.
“Honestly, there was no rhythm. There was no rhyme. It was a pure push to get everyone that walked in that door yesterday completed before 11:59 p.m.,” Marva Sadler, Whole Woman’s Health director of clinical services, told ABC News.
Sadler was at the Whole Woman’s Health location in Fort Worth until midnight Tuesday assisting the push to serve patients before the most restrictive abortion law in decades went into effect.
While she said she felt proud to be able to provide care for the patients Tuesday night, when she returned to the office early Wednesday, that feeling “was immediately replaced by the thought that we were going to come in this morning and have to turn so many women away,” Sadler said.
Texas’ Senate Bill 8 went into effect at midnight after the Supreme Court did not respond to providers’ request for an emergency injunction in the midst of a legal challenge to the law. It still remains to be seen how the Supreme Court will react.
The law bans physicians from providing abortions “if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat,” including embryonic cardiac activity, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. The law prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, instead authorizing private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
Whole Woman’s Health and other independent abortion providers, as well as Planned Parenthood clinics, are still providing abortion care in Texas in strict adherence to the new law. However, because the ban is so soon after a person may be able to detect a pregnancy — let alone book an appointment — “the tragedy is that we can only provide abortion for about 10% of the people that we could provide abortion for yesterday,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, founder and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health, said on a press call Wednesday.
Patients seeking abortions had heard about the upcoming law, Sadler said, and so in Fort Worth, “the schedule was full, because patients knew it was their last resort.”
“They made those appointments and were willing to come in and wait with us and to be patient with us, in almost a desperation to be seen,” Sadler said.
Clinic staff hustled to see those patients, completing 67 in-office procedures and upward of 50 follow-up appointments for medication abortions. On a typical day, the office sees more like 15 procedures and 20 medication abortion patients, according to Sadler.
The last procedure was at 11:56 p.m.
The clock wasn’t the only added pressure for clinic staff. Anti-abortion protesters were working until midnight, too, standing outside the clinic shining flashlights on the parking lot as patients entered and exited, Sadler said.
The protesters took extra efforts to slow down work Tuesday, Sadler and Hagstrom Miller claimed, calling both the police and fire department on the clinic.
Usually, the office has clinic escorts to shield patients from protesters as well as a security guard, but with the last-minute rush did not have those resources. Staff stood in place of the security guard into the night, Sadler said.
This is the third time Whole Woman’s Health, which operates four abortion clinics in Texas and was behind a landmark 2016 Supreme Court case that protected the right to abortion, has had to shutter operations due to laws in the last decade. The first was after the law that led to the Supreme Court case was enacted, and the second was last year when the state ordered abortion services to temporarily stop due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“It’s a place I think we find ourselves in here in Texas often,” Sadler said. “And you would think that we would get used to it, but, I don’t know that you can ever get used to people being so mean.”
She said she and the staff felt pressed to action because “they don’t sleep on the other side.”
“I’m tired, there is no doubt about that. I’m not sure how I’m getting my body to move, but I do know this: I do know that even though this is horrible and I don’t have the best answers to give my patients, I am still — my staff, my team, the wonderful abortion care workers in this state are still the best people to help these women navigate the hardest decisions of their lives,” Sadler said.
“And we can’t give up because Texas kind of beats us up, because a woman is still going to get pregnant and not want to be pregnant today,” she said. “So it hurts. It’s hard, it’s heavy, it seems impossible many times, but if not us, then who?”
Her voice choked with emotion, Sadler asked to share this message with patients: “We won’t give up, we have their back, and we’re going to continue to do everything we can to support them in their time of need.”
(NEW YORK) — A woman who was allegedly sexually abused as a child by Jeffrey Epstein is asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court ruling that, if allowed to stand, would end her years-long challenge to federal prosecutors’ once-secret deal with the deceased sex offender, which in 2008 allowed Epstein to avoid federal charges involving more than 30 underage victims.
“The nation’s highest court should review this ‘national disgrace’ and bring some measure of justice by overturning the decision,” wrote attorneys for Courtney Wild in a petition to the Supreme Court this week. “The importance of this case to crime victims — and to the public — cannot be overstated.”
Wild’s lawyers contend that the case presents a “now-or-never opportunity” for the Supreme Court to decide whether the government’s “covert practices” that concealed the Epstein deal from his victims violated the federal Crime Victims’ Rights Act.
“Courtney’s rights were intentionally violated by our government, and we are now asking our United States Supreme Court to take this important case and finally bring the justice Courtney has been seeking, which will forever forbid the government from working in secret against victims, no matter how wealthy and powerful the criminal might be,” said Brad Edwards, one of Wild’s attorneys.
Wild, 33, sued the U.S. Justice Department in 2008, demanding information from federal prosecutors about their investigation of Epstein, a multimillionaire financier who allegedly sexually abused dozens of underage girls, including Wild, at his waterfront mansion on Florida’s Palm Beach Island.
Wild’s legal action forced the government to admit that the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Miami had already reached a confidential deal with Epstein several months earlier, without informing the alleged victims. Over 12 years of litigation, Wild’s case ultimately exposed details of the secret negotiations between prosecutors and Epstein’s high-priced legal team that led to the controversial agreement.
“Without our case, probably no one would have seen the non-prosecution agreement, the secret agreement,” Edwards said. “Without that action, nobody would have known just how bad [Epstein] and his other co-conspirators were. No one would have ever understood the whole story.”
But the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in April, in a 7-4 decision, that Wild’s case never should have been allowed to proceed. The majority of judges concluded that the Crime Victims’ Rights Act (CVRA), enacted by Congress in 2004, did not permit her to sue the Justice Department over Epstein’s so-called “sweetheart deal” in the absence of an existing criminal prosecution.
Federal prosecutors drafted a 53-page indictment of Epstein in 2007 but never filed it, opting to forgo federal prosecution in exchange for Epstein’s guilty pleas to two prostitution-related charges in Palm Beach County Court. Instead of facing a potential sentence between 14 and 17 years, Epstein served 13 months in the private wing of a county jail, much of that time on work release that allowed him to spend up to 16 hours a day at his West Palm Beach office, before he was released in 2009.
“Because the [federal] government never filed charges against Epstein, there was no pre-existing proceeding in which Ms. Wild could have moved for relief under the CVRA, and the Act does not sanction her stand-alone suit,” U.S. Circuit Judge Kevin Newsom wrote in the court’s majority opinion.
Newsom acknowledged that the court’s decision left Wild and other alleged Epstein victims “largely empty handed” and without any remedy for the U.S. government’s alleged mistreatment of Epstein’s victims. Wild had argued for years that the Epstein deal, which also conferred limited immunity to any alleged co-conspirators, should be declared illegal and torn up.
“We have the profoundest sympathy for Ms. Wild and others like her, who suffered unspeakable horror at Epstein’s hands, only to be left in the dark — and, so it seems, affirmatively misled — by government attorneys,” Newsom wrote in April. “Shameful all the way around. The whole thing makes me sick.”
In arguing for the Supreme Court to step in, Wild’s lawyers contend that the appeals court decision effectively frees the government “to dispense with victims’ rights and orchestrate clandestine deals without affording victims any rights under the CVRA.”
“Unless the decision from the 11th Circuit is overturned, the Justice Department will have a blueprint for keeping all sorts of negotiations secret — to the detriment of victims and the public understanding how cases are being resolved,” said Paul Cassell, another of Wild’s attorneys.
Wild, now a mother of two, was present in a Manhattan courtroom in July of 2019, when Epstein made his first appearance after being charged by federal authorities in New York with conspiracy and child sex trafficking. Epstein died a month later by apparent suicide while being held in New York City’s Metropolitan Correctional Center. But Wild and her lawyers contend that her case against the federal government should not end with Epstein’s death.
“All we have ever wanted is to make sure that there are basic rights for victims like myself,” Wild told ABC News in a statement. “My final hope in this fight is with the United States Supreme Court, who I hope and pray will take my case and right the wrong that was done.”
(WASHINGTON) — For the thousands of Afghan evacuees bound for the U.S., their rescue flights to America were just one more step in a long journey, but for the airline crews who brought them here — the flights are the most memorable of their careers.
“You felt a part of them because you were the first face they saw when they left those gates,” United Airlines flight attendant Hope Williams said after a flight from Doha, Qatar, to Ramstein Air Base in Germany. “I think when someone tells you that you’re going to safety, that’s what makes the difference.”
Williams worked one of the first U.S. relief flights for United.
“I feel like I lived up to the name my parents gave me. My name is Hope, and even for seven hours — it was short, but I gave them hope,” Williams told ABC News in an interview at Washington Dulles International Airport. “It was a relief to see the children once they made it onto the plane, even at a young age. I think they understood that they were safe.”
United, American and Delta are among six U.S. commercial carriers that bring evacuees to the U.S. under Civil Air Reserve Fleet (CRAF), a Department of Defense program that allows the federal government to use commercial planes during a national defense crisis. The program has only been activated twice before.
Onboard Williams’ flight were dozens of young children, a mother who had a caesarian section three days earlier, her newborn child and an amputee who had been thrown over the airport wall in Kabul. Many had no idea of the plane’s destination.
“Immediately everyone said, where are we going? We’re going to Germany. Where are we going after that? The United States of America. There are a lot of smiles, especially from the children. They did speak English and were able to articulate that to the parents.”
For many evacuees, it was their first time flying.
“I had an elderly lady friend in the back. And unfortunately, the seat that she was sitting in was just to two seats. She was able to sit there by herself, but towards the end, like during the flight, she laid down on the floor, it was just so uncomfortable. But that’s not safe. We’re not allowed to do that. So just talking to her, rubbing her back, I think that made the difference. Felt like grandma to me,” Williams said.
When the first flights arrived at Dulles, federal officials weren’t fully prepared for the arrivals. Evacuees were kept on planes as long as 12 hours after landing. United brought food, diapers, toy and new crews on board to help.
Monique Williams is normally a manager at Dulles but is also a trained flight attendant. When the first flight waited at the gate for six hours with the original crew, she swapped in and stayed on board until customs agents finally gave clearance to deplane.
“I spoke to a woman who was on board with her husband and her twin kids, a boy and a girl. And she was talking to me about her, how her husband works for the U.S. government. And she was discussing how they had to basically within 10 minutes time, pick up whatever they could carry to get in a car, to get out of one location, to try to change cars, to get into another location, to change cars again for the third time, to finally get to the [Kabul] airport. And she mentioned how it was days that they didn’t have adequate food or water, they didn’t shower,” she said.
“I just have to commend our crews because they didn’t want to leave,” she added. “They wanted to stay on the flight with all the people because they had heard these stories. They had built relationships. They had built bonds in the short period of time that they didn’t want to leave them. It was like their family.”
United CEO Scott Kirby flew to Washington to hear the stories.
“They’ll never be another moment like this in my career. And we at United Airlines, all of us, we’re honored to play a small role in helping get the people back here to the United States,” Kirby said. “Dulles Airport for many of these people is going to be like the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. This will be the place that they always remember where they came to freedom.”
ABC News’ Amanda Maile and Nate Luna contributed to this report
(WINSTON-SALEM, N.C.) — A high schooler has died after being shot Wednesday at Mount Tabor High School in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, authorities said.
The victim was identified by authorities as William Chavis Raynard Miller Jr.
The suspect has not been apprehended, authorities said at a news conference over four hours after the shooting was reported around noon. The suspect is believed to be a student, authorities said.
“We have a mother and family who will not be able to hug their child tonight,” Winston-Salem Police Chief Catrina Thompson said.
No one else was shot, authorities said, but some students suffered trauma-related health problems, including one student who had a seizure.
The school was locked down immediately after the shooting, police said. Once the campus was secured, students were sent to a local grocery store to be reunited with their parents, the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office said.
There is no known threat to the school at this time, police said.
Agents from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives responded to the scene.
Mount Tabor’s school year started just last week.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper noted in a tweet that this was the second school shooting in the state this week. A 15-year-old was injured in a shooting at New Hanover High School in Wilmington on Monday.
“Our prayers are with the victims, their families and all the students of Mt. Tabor High School in Winston-Salem,” Cooper tweeted. “We must work to ensure the safety of students and educators, quickly apprehend the shooter and keep guns off school grounds.”
(NEW YORK) — Once a touchy subject in the private sector, a new survey indicates that most firms are now planning on having COVID-19 vaccine mandates for their workforce.
The number of companies requiring workers to get the shot is expected to surge over the next several months, according to data released by Wednesday by Willis Towers Watson, a multinational advisory and insurance firm.
Over half of the employers surveyed (52%) said that by the fourth quarter of 2021, they could have one or more vaccine mandate requirements in the workplace. This ranges from requiring vaccinations for employees to access common areas (such as cafeterias) to requiring the jab for a subset of specific employees to requiring it for all employees. This is a major hike from the current 21% of firms that have some type of vaccine mandate in place for employees.
The survey was conducted between Aug. 18 and 25 — in the wake of the insidious spread of the more contagious delta variant — and respondents included nearly 1,000 U.S. employers that together employ nearly 10 million workers.
“The delta variant has made employers take new actions to keep their workers — and workplaces — safe and healthy. We expect even more employers to institute vaccine mandates in the wake of FDA approval of the Pfizer vaccine,” Dr. Jeff Levin-Scherz, the population health leader at Willis Towers Watson, said in a statement.
“This is not an easy situation for employers to navigate,” Levin-Scherz added. “For instance, new policies such as tracking workers’ vaccinations can improve safety but also bring additional administrative requirements. At the same time, employers will continue efforts to encourage vaccination and communicate regularly with employees.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and lawmakers on both sides of the aisle are imploring Americans to get the COVID-19 vaccine to protect themselves and those around them from the virus that has left more than 600,000 dead in the U.S.
“COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective,” the CDC states on its website. “Millions of people in the United States have received COVID-19 vaccines under the most intense safety monitoring in U.S. history.”
Still, vaccine requirements have emerged as a hot button issue for a vocal faction of Americans resisting the shot, despite the U.S. recording the highest number of coronavirus cases.
Breaking down the survey data further, some 29% of employers said they are planning or considering making vaccinations a requirement to gain access to the workplace, and some 21% are planning or considering vaccination as a condition of employment for all employees.
The number of firms that track or will track their employees’ vaccination status is also rising, the data found. Some 59% of employers currently track their employees’ vaccination status, and an additional 19% are planning or considering to do so later this year — bringing the total to some 78% of employers.
Around 31% of employers are either offering or considering offering financial incentives to staff for getting vaccinated.
The Equal Opportunity Employment Commission said employers can legally require COVID-19 vaccines to re-enter a physical workplace as long as they follow requirements to find alternative arrangements for employees unable to get vaccinated for medical reasons or because they have religious objections. Still, mandates have spurred showdowns and lawsuits from workers across the country.
Approximately 61.4% of the U.S. population 12 years of age and older are fully vaccinated as of Wednesday, according to CDC data, and some 72.2% have received at least one dose.
Separate from vaccine mandate plans, around 80% of respondents also said that they require employees to wear masks indoors at any location — and an additional 13% are planning or considering doing so. A majority (75%) are also using workplace exposure tracing to alert employees to a potential exposure, with another 8% planning or considering doing so.
As for a return to normal, about 39% of companies now expect their organizations won’t reach a “new normal” in terms of returning to the workplace and ending pandemic-related policies and programs until the second quarter of 2022. About a quarter (26%) expect a return to normal in the first quarter of 2022.
Simon Shin/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(CHICAGO) — As new COVID-19 cases emerge with the spread of the delta variant, businesses have implemented updated health protocols to ensure staff and customer safety.
While certain cities and states now require proof of vaccination to dine inside or shop in stores, fast food chains are assessing their own best practices.
Joe Erlinger, president of McDonald’s USA, recently discussed in an internal company meeting the enhanced safety policies for their restaurants and franchisees in consultation with public health experts and the Mayo Clinic.
According to the fast food company, Erlinger surmised in the meeting that McDonald’s will continue to operate its business from the same mindset they had during the peak of the pandemic 18 months ago.
“We’re monitoring the impact of the delta variant closely and recently convened together with our franchisees to underscore existing safety protocols, reinforce our people-first approach and provide updates on the rise in cases in the country,” a representative said in a statement shared with “Good Morning America.”
While the company said it has successfully served customers through digital, delivery, drive-thru and dine-in over the last 18 months, McDonald’s said it will consider adapting as needed.
“Should we see further changes in customer behavior, we are well positioned to adapt while maintaining high standards for safety,” the statement said.
McDonald’s initially closed its U.S. dining rooms in March 2020 and reopened to 70% capacity last month with procedures that incorporate local case counts, local regulations and guidance and community feedback.
Local owners and operator work in partnership with the field offices to make dining room decisions.
McDonald’s has implemented a facial covering requirement for all crew and customers in hot spot counties regardless of vaccination status. Additionally, all corporate employees are required to get vaccinated.
Erlinger also told employees that meetings are continuing, but with strict safety protocols and limits on size in place.
(WASHINGTON) — For the first time in 39 years, Social Security payments made to retired Americans this year, and every year after, will exceed tax revenues coming into the federal government in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic’s economic downturn, according to a new government report.
Social Security payments for retired Americans will be exhausted in 2034 — a year earlier than previously predicted, says the 2021 report from the Social Security and Medicare Boards of Trustees, which oversees both programs. After that, tax incomes will only cover 76% of anticipated benefit needs. As for Social Security’s disability insurance program, those funds will run dry in 2057 — eight years earlier than previously predicted.
The recession and increased mortality rate due to the COVID-19 pandemic are the main factors driving the earlier depletion of funds, according to the report — the red flags adding to the pressure for federal lawmakers to act as a wave of retiring baby boomers and the pandemic’s new variants are sure to put more strain on an already stressed system.
The report says last year’s Social Security income exceeded costs by $11 billion. When excluding interest earned on the program’s trust fund assets, the program’s deficit is $65 billion.
While the funding shortfall would seem to point to benefit cuts, the nonpartisan Concord Coalition estimated Wednesday that Social Security could start liquidating the trust funds’ bonds to cover its obligations absent congressional action.
“Sudden and substantial benefit cuts await Medicare and Social Security beneficiaries in less than 15 years — well within the lifetimes of many current recipients — as long as lawmakers continue to ignore the warning signs in these reports. Solutions must be found that are fiscally and generationally responsible,” said Robert Bixby, the coalition’s executive director.
Though there has been no movement on Capitol Hill or within the Biden White House to address the report’s findings, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen affirmed the administration’s commitment to sustaining some of the nation’s most prominent social welfare programs.
“Having strong Social Security and Medicare programs is essential in order to ensure a secure retirement for all Americans, especially for our most vulnerable populations,” Yellen said in a statement Tuesday. “The Biden-Harris Administration is committed to safeguarding these programs and ensuring they continue to deliver economic security and health care to older Americans.”
As for Medicare, the report indicated the depletion of its funds in 2026 remains unchanged.
Senate Finance Committee Chair Ron Wyden, D-Ore., issued a statement Tuesday saying Congress must work “hand in hand with President Biden” to ensure the continuation of both Social Security and Medicare.
When Social Security funds are dried up, “workers in the future will take a 25% cut in benefits, even though they’ll still be contributing to Social Security with every single paycheck,” Wyden said in the statement. “And while the projected depletion of the Medicare Trust Fund remains unchanged from last year’s report, this provides cold comfort to the millions of Americans who rely on the Medicare program for their health care.”
The report says both Social Security and Medicare will soon face “long-term financing shortfalls.” The COVID-19 pandemic and accompanying recession significantly impacted both programs’ funds, with employment, earnings, interest rates and GDP dropping substantially last year.
On average, 65 million Americans receive Social Security benefits each month, and a rapidly growing retired population, compounded by a decreasing birth rate, will only increase program costs.
By 2034, adults 65 and older are projected to outnumber the population under age 18 for the first time in the nation’s history, according to data from the Census Bureau.
ABC News’ Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — A law that took effect in Texas Wednesday outlaws abortions after six weeks of pregnancy.
The law effectively bars abortions in the America’s second most populous state, making it the most restrictive abortion law in the nation.
Here are six questions answered about Texas’ new law.
1. What does the law allow and not allow on abortions?
The law, Senate Bill 8, bans abortion once the rhythmic contracting of fetal cardiac tissue can be detected. That’s usually around six weeks, before some women may even know they’re pregnant. Most of the abortions performed nationwide are after six weeks of pregnancy.
There is an exception in the Texas law for abortions in cases of medical emergencies. The law does not make exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape.
When a person is six weeks pregnant, it typically means the embryo started developing about four weeks prior, based on the formula used to figure out when a person will give birth. People don’t often realize they are pregnant until after the six-week mark.
A fetal heartbeat is typically first detected five to six weeks after gestation.
2. Who will enforce the law?
The Texas law is unusual in that it prohibits the state from enforcing the ban but allows private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion — i.e. driving a person to an appointment or offering financial assistance — but not the patient herself.
People who successfully sue an abortion provider under this law could be awarded at least $10,000.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott signed the so-called “heartbeat ban” on May 19 and it went into effect on Sept. 1.
The heartbeat bill is now LAW in the Lone Star State.
This bill ensures the life of every unborn child with a heartbeat will be saved from the ravages of abortion.
3. Is the law here to stay or can it be blocked in court?
The law — which went into effect after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which covers Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, canceled a hearing on the law planned for Monday — is currently facing several legal challenges in lower courts.
Women’s health groups filed an emergency request with the U.S. Supreme Court to block the law while legal challenges continue. The court has not yet responded to the request.
The court has only been asked at this stage to decide whether or not to issue a temporary injunction on the law while lower-level court proceedings continue. Whatever the decision, legal experts cautioned that it will not have direct bearing on the precedent in Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that established a constitutional right to abortion, or abortion rights more broadly across the country.
The justices are likely to weigh in on the matter but do not operate on a fixed timeline.
Legal experts say the law’s enforcement mechanism — allowing private citizens to sue — has complicated the legal dispute before the Supreme Court because it is not clear who might bring a lawsuit and how widespread private legal action might be.
4. What will women who live in Texas do now for abortions?
Texas is home to nearly 14 million women who now face expensive and time-consuming options to obtain care, abortion rights advocates argue.
Abortion providers told the Supreme Court the law is expected to limit abortion access to 85% of patients across Texas.
“Patients will have to travel out of state – in the middle of a pandemic – to receive constitutionally guaranteed health care,” said Nancy Northup, president and CEO of the Center for Reproductive Rights, which is leading the challenges to Texas’ law. “And many will not have the means to do so. It’s cruel, unconscionable and unlawful.”
Several clinics in Texas reported full waiting rooms up until the midnight deadline.
“Our clinic staff saw patients until 11:56 last night, just 3 minutes before the 6 week abortion ban went into effect in Texas,” Whole Women’s Health, a top abortion provider in Texas, posted on Twitter.
Abortion clinics in Texas will still remain open though, but only those in compliance with the law, according to abortion rights providers.
“We’re offering ultrasounds to women … if there is no fetal cardiac activity, we’re able to prepare them for abortions,” Amy Hagstrom Miller, CEO of Whole Women’s Health, which operates four clinics in Texas, told reporters Wednesday.
All 24 of Planned Parenthood of Greater Texas’ health centers also remain open, providing consultation and other services, including abortions, in compliance with the law, according to Vanessa Rodriguez, a call center manager for the organization.
5. Will other states follow Texas’ lead?
Eight other U.S. states have enacted similar six-week bans and all have been blocked by courts, according to the Center for Reproductive Rights, which claimed in May that Texas’ law intends to “harass, frighten, or bankrupt people who seek care and those who provide it.”
However, if the Texas law stands in federal court, it would be likely that other states trying to restrict abortion access will move to pass similar laws.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule when its next term begins in October on the state of Mississippi’s appeal of lower court decisions striking down a state ban on all abortions after 15 weeks, with exception of medical emergencies or severe fetal abnormality.
The case is seen as a major challenge to Roe v. Wade.
6. What happens when women don’t have access to abortions?
Women who carry unwanted pregnancies to full-term often face long-term physical and mental health complications, data show.
In Texas, the maternal mortality rate is 18.5 deaths per 100,000 live births, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Patients who are denied abortions also face a “large and persistent increase” in financial distress in the years after, according to a working paper published last year by the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Looking at credit report data, researchers found that being denied an abortion increases the amount of debt 30 days or more past due by 78% and increases negative public records, such as bankruptcies and evictions, by 81%. The economic fallout appeared to be the worst for women who were forced to have a child when they were not prepared to, the data show.
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Alexandra Svokos contributed to this report.
(WASHNGTON) — When the young boy, just 13 or 14 years-old, was safely inside the gates of Kabul’s international airport, U.S. State Department officials there asked two questions: Where were his parents? And why was there blood all over his clothes?
“He said that somebody was killed right in front of him, and his whole family dispersed,” said a State Department official, recounting their harrowing 12 days on the ground in Afghanistan.
They were one of dozens of U.S. diplomats who, along with thousands of U.S. troops, helped evacuate more than 123,000 of their fellow Americans, Afghans, and other foreigners fleeing the Taliban.
But that effort also left behind as many as 200 U.S. citizens who were trying to escape and the “majority” of Afghans who worked with U.S. diplomatic and military personnel, according to a senior State Department official, and now fear their lives are at risk from Taliban reprisals.
“Everybody who lived it is haunted by the choices we had to make and by the people we were not able to help depart in this first phase of the operation,” said the senior official, speaking on condition of anonymity at the State Department’s request.
The all-hands-on-deck effort marshaled hundreds of State Department personnel in Washington and at embassies around the world, even rivaling the global repatriation operation at the start of the coronavirus pandemic in spring 2020, according to officials.
Afghanistan Coordination Task Force, an emergency operation headquartered at the State Department, has brought together hundreds of U.S. officials across agencies, including from the departments of Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services, which manages refugee resettlement, and helped coordinate approximately 55,000 calls and 33,000 emails to U.S. citizens in Afghanistan to try to bring them to safety, according to the department. As that operation shifts to help Americans and Afghans left behind, the senior State Department official conceded the evacuation efforts weren’t “pretty, it was very challenging. … It involved some really painful tradeoffs and choices for everybody involved.”
The youngest of those Americans still there may be “Ali,” whose real name ABC News is not using to protect him and his family. The three-year-old boy was born in the Sacramento area, and both his father “Ramin” and mother “Sahar” are U.S. lawful permanent residents, or Green card holders. Ramin moved the family, including Ali’s three older siblings, to Kabul a couple of years ago, drawn to a career as a social worker in his home country.
But with the collapse of the Afghan government – the speed of which surprised even U.S. officials – they scrambled to get out, the family told ABC News affiliate KGO. They said they received instructions from the U.S. embassy in Kabul on how to approach the airport, but were beaten back and blocked by Taliban fighters – too fearful to attempt again.
The senior State Department official said while there was enough cooperation with the Taliban to get tens of thousands of evacuees through, it regularly broke down when the militant group’s checkpoints were overwhelmed by the crowds or when messages from leadership didn’t travel fast enough to fighters on the ground.
“We had zero ability to control that inflow beyond the physical gates of the airport complex,” they told reporters Wednesday.
The State Department’s operation also struggled to provide detailed instructions on how to access the airport to Americans and Afghan partners that wouldn’t end up spreading through the massive crowds. Instead, any unique credential was quickly shared and became useless for U.S. and allied service members manning the fortified walls of Kabul airport.
“It was no longer a viable credential to differentiate among populations, and we simply did not have the people or the time to be able to try to sift through that crowd of people demanding access,” the senior official said.
That meant especially for Afghans who worked for the U.S. — sometimes known as SIVs, for the special immigrant visas they’ve applied for — were left in the crowds.
“We weren’t able to differentiate in the ways we all wanted to pull in those SIV populations,” the senior official added, declining to provide any figures for how many were evacuated, but saying “anecdotal evidence” suggested the “majority” were not.
Operations to rescue Americans, Afghan partners, and other foreigners also became increasingly dangerous as the operation stretched on. The threat from ISIS-K became horribly real when a suicide bomber detonated explosives outside Abbey Gate last Thursday, killing at least 182 people, including 13 U.S. service members.
But officials were also concerned about the crowds themselves, especially as desperation grew with the clock ticking down to President Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.
“It’s not a criticism of the people who were desperate to leave, it’s just the characteristics of human behavior in those kinds of conditions — I think people don’t understand that those crowds that were outside the access points were on the verge of flipping to a mob at any given moment of any given day,” said the senior official.
Now, it will be up to U.S. consular officers to help the hundreds of other Americans and tens of thousands of Afghan partners escape whatever comes next in Afghanistan.
“It was really disheartening,” a second consular officer, who flew to Washington from the U.S. embassy in Canada to assist in evacuation efforts, said of the long shifts on the phone or emails trying to help U.S. citizens in Afghanistan.
In some cases, those individual calls provided personalized instructions for U.S. citizens and residents or at-risk Afghans to access Kabul airport, including a rally point to meet before approaching the gates amid the high threat of attack.
A third State Department official, based at the U.S. embassy in New Delhi, recounted talking to an Afghan woman who only spoke Dari, the Afghan dialect of Persian, but in her basic Urdu and his broken Hindi, he was able to provide instructions on how to access the airport.
“That kept us going all the time — that everybody felt the desperation of the Afghans and wanted to help them and knew it was a matter of time, that we had limited time to help as many people as possible and everybody went out of their way,” said the first State Department official.
But sticking to that timeline has drawn outrage against Biden, accused by Republican lawmakers and some veterans’ groups of abandoning Americans and especially Afghan allies.
“The unwillingness of the U.S. government to protect these trusted allies is an unconscionable failure that could have been avoided,” Adam Bates, policy counsel at the International Refugee Assistance Project, or IRAP, said Tuesday. “The United States not only has an ongoing moral, but also a legal obligation to protect them and all Afghan allies.”
Biden rejected that in an address Tuesday, saying staying longer would have put more U.S. troops at risk by violating former President Donald Trump’s deal with the Taliban: “That was the choice, the real choice – between leaving or escalating.”
For that first State Department official, however, there was no time to dwell on the life-or-death implications for the Afghan people they encountered just inside Kabul airport’s fortified gates – some of whom they were forced to turn away if they weren’t cleared by the U.S. government to travel.
“There were so many people, the need was so great all the time, that we just tried to do what we were supposed to do and get as many people out,” said the official.
Volunteering to help process people, the official arrived with other consular officers on Aug. 17, just two days after Kabul fell to the Taliban. Working 12-hour shifts, consular officers waited behind a line of U.S. special forces to check the documents of Americans, Afghans, and others who were granted entry to the airport — before they could move through another line of U.S. forces and board evacuation flights.
Warning shots were being fired “constantly” by Afghan and Taliban troops on the perimeter, per the official, with the use of flash bangs and at least one instance of tear gas as well. Most people waited three to five days just to get inside, they added — calling it “horrendous.”
“The people that tried to get through those gates, it was a horrifying experience for them, and as consular officers, we were thrilled to be able to do what we could to evaluate their eligibility as quickly as possible,” the official said.
Among the most heartbreaking scenes were the unaccompanied minors — children who lost parents and ended up inside the airport’s walls. Scores of them have been evacuated from Kabul to Doha, Qatar, where UNICEF has custody of them and is working to reunify them with parents and family, according to State Department officials.
Asked how so many children ended up alone, the official said, “Chaos. You can’t even imagine the chaos that was outside the gate.”
“On any given day, we had over 30 children that were separated … They were all traumatized,” the official added.
At least four children were orphaned after their father was killed by the Taliban and their mother was crushed in the crowds outside the airport, a source on the ground told ABC News last week. Others may have been pushed through “for safety” by their parents, according to the State Department official, “But I can tell you any parent that did that did that out of desperation and a love for their child.”
Officials from the U.S. and allied countries, especially Norway, worked together at the airport to care for them, with service members playing with them, rocking babies, and providing supplies like diapers, food, and bottles. Norway set up a reunification center that “quickly got overwhelmed, there were so many children that were separated,” the official said.
For Ali and his family, they are at least still together. But the road ahead — perhaps literally — is unclear.
The family told KGO that they have connected with other Americans on the ground in Afghanistan, leaving a safe house in Kabul to find their own way.
