(NEW YORK) — A storm system that spawned possibly multiple tornadoes across America’s heartland on Wednesday night — rare for December — has left a trail of destruction and hundreds of thousands without power.
At least five people were killed in the storms, according to The Associated Press, including three in Kansas killed in car crashes caused by blinding dirt kicked up by the strong winds.
At least 23 tornadoes were reported across four states — Iowa, Nebraska, Minnesota and Wisconsin — between Wednesday and Thursday, with at least six so far confirmed by the National Weather Service.
As of 6 p.m. ET on Thursday, more than 332,000 customers were without power across the Midwest, with Michigan and Wisconsin accounting for the highest volume of outages, according to data collected by PowerOutage.US.
A twister touched down in Plainview, Minnesota, just outside Rochester, on Wednesday evening, after tornado threats were issued for Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin, according to the National Weather Service. It was the first time Minnesota recorded a tornado in December, and the first-ever tornado watch and tornado warning to be issued for the state in December.
Wisconsin saw its first December tornado since 1970, with two so far confirmed, including an EF-2 in Neillsville.
The nearby Rochester Fire Department said in a statement on Facebook that its officers had a “busy night” responding to 35 calls for help during the “record storm and wind gusts.” Incidents included multiple small fires, gas leaks, downed power lines and other hazards caused by falling trees. The most significant event was a burning transformer on a power pole that spread to a nearby detached garage, setting the structure ablaze. There were no injuries and the nearby home was not impacted by the fire, Rochester police said.
A tornado was confirmed in Hartland, Minnesota, about 65 miles southwest of Rochester. About 35 to 40 houses in the surrounding Freeborn County were damaged, mostly minor, with Hartland being the worst-hit city. Commercial buildings in the area suffered “substantial damage” and several power lines were knocked down, according to the Freeborn County Emergency Management. There were no storm-related injuries.
Meanwhile, extensive storm damage was reported in Stanley, Wisconsin, where a tornado was confirmed. The Stanley Police Department said in a statement on Facebook that the storm resulted in property damage throughout the city but no injuries.
“Daybreak will reveal the true extent of damages within the city,” Stanley police said, “but we are certain this storm will bring out the true definition of community as we begin to recover and move forward.”
The storm system, along with a cold front, will stall over the Mid-South and Ohio Valley regions over the next few days, bringing heavy rain to some states in the Midwest and South that were hit hard by deadly tornadoes last weekend, according to the latest forecast from the National Weather Service.
Multiple tornadoes are unusual for December in the United States. While twisters can happen any time of year, the greatest threat is typically in spring and summer with the peak season on the earlier side for more southern states, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul, Max Golembo, Will Gretsky and Ahmad Hemingway contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration has blacklisted and sanctioned dozens of Chinese government research institutes and private-sector tech firms, accusing them of weaponizing technology for use at home and abroad, the U.S. departments of Commerce and Treasury announced Thursday.
In particular, the U.S. warned that these entities were working as part of a broader Chinese government strategy to develop and deploy biotechnology, including “brain-control weaponry,” for possible offensive use and as part of its crackdown on Uighurs and other Muslim ethnic minorities — a campaign that the U.S. has determined constitutes genocide.
The penalties seek to bar U.S. technology from being exported to these projects or block their access to the U.S. financial system.
“The scientific pursuit of biotechnology and medical innovation can save lives. Unfortunately, the PRC is choosing to use these technologies to pursue control over its people and its repression of members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo said, using an acronym for China’s formal name, the People’s Republic of China.
“We cannot allow U.S. commodities, technologies, and software that support medical science and biotechnical innovation to be diverted toward uses contrary to U.S. national security,” she added in a statement.
In total, 12 Chinese research institutes and 22 Chinese tech firms have been blacklisted by her agency and barred from any exports or transfers of U.S. technology, except in limited cases with a license. Chief among them is China’s Academy of Military Medical Sciences and its 11 research institutes.
Taken together, they “use biotechnology processes to support Chinese military end uses and end users, to include purported brain-control weaponry,” the Commerce Department said in its public notice Thursday.
It’s unclear what kind of weaponry might already exist, but Chinese military leaders have talked for years about biotechnology as creating new “offensive capability,” including “brain control” weapons and “specific ethnic genetic attacks.”
“China’s research focus on these technologies is not unique. What is unique is their declared intent to weaponize their inventions,” said retired Lt. Col. Stephen Ganyard, the former top U.S. diplomat for military affairs.
These inventions could include “the stuff of science fiction, such as brain-controlled weaponry” that would allow “a Chinese commando to discharge a weapon with just a thought, not a trigger finger,” according to Craig Singleton, a former U.S. diplomat who is now an adjunct fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington think tank.
That could give China military and intelligence advances over the U.S., per Singleton, although it’s unclear if the Pentagon is developing similar weapons programs.
“Some of these technologies may not be easily contained and could have disastrous second- and third-order consequences on civilian populations. China’s seeking to weaponize advanced technologies is putting the whole world at risk of unforeseen and uncontainable consequences,” added Ganyard, an ABC News contributor.
For now, it seems China has focused their alleged use against domestic targets, including the Uighurs in the country’s westernmost province, known formally as Xinjiang.
“Private firms in China’s defense and surveillance technology sectors are actively cooperating with the government’s efforts to repress members of ethnic and religious minority groups,” said Brian Nelson, the senior Treasury Department official for terrorism and financial intelligence.
The Treasury Department designated eight more private firms, cutting them off from the U.S. financial system and threatening sanctions on those that do business with them, for reportedly working with Xinjiang authorities.
That includes developing facial recognition software, cloud computing, drones, and GPS technology, among other artificial intelligence tools.
“One such AI software could recognize persons as being part of the Uyghur ethnic minority and send automated alarms to government authorities,” according to the Treasury, while another firm helped “develop a transcription and translation tool for the Uyghur language to enable authorities to scan electronic devices.”
It’s estimated between one and nearly two million Uighurs and other minorities, like Kazakhs, have been detained in mass “re-education” camps where they are used as forced labor and are taught Chinese Communist Party propaganda.
In addition, independent researchers, Uighur activists, and the U.S. government have accused China of a mass sterilization campaign to sink Uighur birth rates, which have declined precipitously in recent years.
While the majority of the blacklisted firms were designated because of their ties to China’s so-called “civilian-military fusion strategy,” where civilian fields like medicine and biotechnology are allegedly weaponized to support the military, a handful were also designated for exporting sensitive technology to Iran.
That strategy has alarmed U.S. officials in recent years, starting with the Trump administration, which launched a robust all-of-government effort to stymie it. That included deploying this Commerce Department blacklist repeatedly to ban U.S. exports to Chinese firms that the People’s Liberation Army could then access.
The Biden administration has carried that policy on and expanded it — announcing last week during Biden’s Summit for Democracy a small group of countries committed to blocking similar technology exports to China, including the United Kingdom, France, and Australia.
(ATLANTA) — The CDC’s advisory committee recommended Thursday that people who have a choice should get an mRNA vaccine, either Pfizer or Moderna, over the single-shot Johnson & Johnson vaccine after a review of new CDC data on rare blood clots linked to J&J.
The rare blood clots are not a new safety concern, and the J&J vaccine has already become far less common in the U.S. after it was given an FDA warning label about the clotting condition. But more data that confirmed a slightly higher rate of clotting cases and deaths than was previously reported caused the CDC and FDA to take another look at the data this week.
The CDC has now confirmed a total of at least 54 cases and nine deaths from the severe clotting event, which is called thrombosis with thrombocytopenia or TSS, out of the 17 million people who have gotten the J&J vaccine in the US.
Though it’s very rare, the data led CDC experts to favor mRNA vaccines by comparison, particularly because there are so many mRNA vaccines available in the US and people are less likely to be limited.
There could also be more cases and deaths, because TSS is under-diagnosed and could be underreported, the CDC said.
The clotting is more common among women in their 30s and 40s but has also been seen in adult men and women of all ages.
The experts were very clear, however, that the J&J vaccine should not be taken off the shelves and is still far more beneficial than not getting any vaccine at all.
In certain parts of the U.S., particularly among prison populations, people dealing with homelessness, or rural parts of the country, the J&J vaccine is most common. And outside of the U.S., J&J has played a huge role in vaccinating populations in low-income countries — a growing priority as it becomes clear that variants will continue to emerge until vaccination is widespread around the globe.
“In the setting where there are no alternative COVID-19 vaccines, the benefits of the J&J vaccine outweigh the risk. This is important in global situations where there may not be other COVID vaccines available,” CDC’s Dr. Sara Oliver said in a presentation to the committee on the cost-benefit analysis of J&J vaccines.
With the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, though, the protection against COVID was considered better and the side effects less severe, the CDC analysis found.
“Due to both higher vaccine effectiveness of the mRNA vaccines and the severity of safety issues seen with J&J vaccines, in the setting of widely available mRNA vaccines in the U.S., the benefit-risk balance of the mRNA vaccines is more favorable than for the Janssen vaccine,” she said.
There was also discussion about the recovery from TSS, which often leads to brain bleeding and can be a harder recovery than myocarditis, the heart inflammation condition linked to the mRNA vaccines that is also a rare safety concern.
“It’s important to note that there are differences in the severity of these vaccine associated events. In myocarditis after mRNA COVID-19 vaccines … at a three-month follow up, over half reported no symptoms and over 90% were fully recovered by cardiologist or health care provider, and there have been no confirmed deaths,” Oliver said.
“For TTS after the Janssen COVID vaccines, there’s around a 15% mortality rate and 17% required discharge to a post-acute care rehabilitation facility,” she said.
The experts on the committee were largely in agreement with the recommendation, supporting a push toward Pfizer or Moderna over J&J when available but continuing to offer J&J as opposed to no vaccination.
“I recognize the drawbacks of the Janssen vaccine. However, I look at this as an issue of the trolley problem in ethics, where you’re driving the trolley and you have to decide whether you’re going to go down one track and have one person die or go down a different track and have 10 people die,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, a doctor in Ithaca, New York.
“If we take away the Jansen vaccine, and people … cannot get the mRNA vaccine, we have all these complications from getting COVID disease. And so even though there are significant risks to the vaccine, if it’s the only one that is an option, I want it to be available,” he said.
Dr. Beth Bell, a professor of public health at the University of Washington, said she thought the “preferential recommendation” would make it very clear that experts were concerned about the side effects but wanted to maintain individual choice.
“I would not recommend the Janssen to my family members. On the other hand, I think we do have to recognize that different people make different choices and if they are appropriately informed, I don’t think we should remove that option,” she said.
Some were more determined to avoid it, however.
“I just have a real problem with a recommendation for anyone to give a vaccine that 1 per 100,000 women ages 30-49 years old will have a condition with a case fatality rate of 15%,” said Dr. Pablo Sanchez, a pediatrician at The Ohio State University Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
“And so I really have a problem. I’m not recommending it to any of my patients’ parents and I tell them to stay away from it,” Sanchez told the committee.
For its part, J&J said it remained very confident in the positive impact of its vaccine, particularly in low-income countries.
“Let me just state at the outset that based on the data we are confident in the positive benefit-risk profile of our vaccine. It is saving lives here in the U.S. today and on every continent around the globe,” Dr. Penny Heaton, global head of vaccines for J&J, said at the meeting.
“Our vaccine is different, it’s long lasting, it offers high levels of protection and it provides breadth of protection. Our vaccine has flexible dosing, it’s easy to store and transport. In many low- and middle-income countries, our vaccine is the most important and sometimes the only option, even in the U.S.,” Heaton said.
(WASHINGTON) — One hundred three Marines have been discharged for refusing to take the COVID vaccine, the Marine Corps said Thursday, as the military services have begun to discharge a pool of possibly as many as 30,000 active duty service members who still refuse to be vaccinated — even after multiple opportunities to do so past vaccination deadlines.
In late August, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered mandatory COVID vaccines for all U.S. military personnel.
Shortly after Austin made the COVID vaccine mandatory, the military services quickly set up its own deadline dates and warned service members that they could face discharge unless they were vaccinated, which is in line with the Pentagon’s stance that choosing to remain unvaccinated is a violation of a lawful order from Austin.
While the percentage of vaccinated active duty personnel in each service is at 95% or higher, the number of unvaccinated personnel is close to 30,000.
Earlier this week, the Air Force became the first to make public that it had followed through on the warning, announcing that 27 airmen had received administrative discharges.
According to the latest numbers provided by the Air Force and the Navy, 7,365 airmen and 5,472 sailors are unvaccinated, either refusing the vaccine outright or awaiting the processing of requests for administrative, medical, or religious exemptions.
The Marine Corps said Thursday that 95% of its active-duty force of 182,500 Marines had received at least one COVID vaccine shot, the lowest percentage among the military services. The Marine Corps has approved 1,007 medical and administrative exemptions and is still processing 2,863 of the 3,144 requests made for a religious exemption.
Military personnel serving in the United States had already been required to receive 12 vaccines, including those for measles, polio, anthrax, chickenpox and flu, in order to serve. Service members assigned overseas were required to receive up to five others, like those for yellow fever or encephalitis, depending on which global region they are assigned to.
While the Army announced Thursday that nearly 98% of its 478,000 active-duty soldiers had been vaccinated, that means close to 10,000 soldiers are not.
The Army said 3,864 soldiers have refused the vaccine outright while an additional 6,263 are awaiting the processing of their requests for an exemption.
The majority of service members who remain unvaccinated have sought religious exemptions, but none of the services has yet to approve an exemption on religious grounds.
The defense authorization bill passed by Congress this week guarantees that service members who are kicked out of the military for refusing the vaccine will receive either an honorable discharge or a “general discharge under honorable conditions.”
Unlike the other services, the Army has decided that it will not discharge soldiers who refuse to be vaccinated. Instead, they will be “flagged,” cannot be promoted and will have to leave the Army when their enlistment contracts expire.
Flagged soldiers who have refused to get the vaccine will have to submit to regular COVID testing, Lt. Col. Terence Kelley, an Army spokesman told ABC News.
A soldier reporting daily to the same job location will be tested weekly, while those who are teleworking and have to visit their job location will be tested within 72 hours of the meeting or job activity, Kelley said.
(WASHINGTON) — Not far from the San Pedro Bay Port Complex in Orange County, which sees 40% of the nation’s imports, Rep. Young Kim, R-Calif., has been witnessing supply chain issues in her district due in part due to bottlenecks in the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.
Now she and Rep. Mikie Sherrill, D-N.J., are sending a bipartisan letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., calling for a bipartisan select committee to address the issue. The proposed committee would have an equal number of members from both sides of the aisle to address supply chain issues and the impacts on the economy, families and small businesses.
“Congress must come together in a bipartisan way to address this economic and national security crisis that threatens to undermine U.S. competitiveness abroad,” Kim said. “That is why I am proud to work with Rep. Sherrill and a bipartisan group of colleagues to call on House leadership to ensure Congress takes immediate steps to bring relief to our nation’s economy.”
The committee would investigate the root causes of the supply chain issues and how the crisis has affected various industries. The panel would aim to draft and submit a report to Congress with its recommendations.
“Addressing the current shortfalls throughout our supply chain is imperative to continuing our economic recovery from the pandemic and addressing the very real impacts of inflation facing families across the country,” Sherrill said.
Kim also wrote a letter to California’s Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom in January urging officials to include dockworkers and others as essential workers.
She commended President Joe Biden for opening ports in southern California for 24-hour operation in October but said the administration needs to do more.
“While I was encouraged by the announcement that the San Pedro Bay Port Complex will be open 24/7, the administration’s actions so far are not the be-all and end-all that will solve the long-term issues of our supply chain and help ease persistent — not ‘transitory’ — inflation in our economy. A piecemeal approach won’t help solve the supply chain crisis, and that is why I led a bipartisan letter to the administration calling for a whole-of-government response,” Kim said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Department of Education on Thursday urged districts to combat pandemic-fueled teacher shortages by offering them more money from the pot of federal COVID-relief aid, in a letter sent to schools nationwide.
Schools are facing dire staffing losses as droves of teachers leave their posts, exhausted by the stresses of the pandemic. Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said federal money could be used to hire more substitute teachers and give permanent teachers much-needed time-off, or to offer teachers better salaries through hiring or retention bonuses.
“Let us be clear: [The American Rescue Plan] provides vital resources to hire additional educators and school staff and to improve compensation to recruit and retain educators and school staff,” Cardona wrote in the letter to educators, obtained exclusively by ABC News.
“School districts should act with urgency to keep schools open for in-person learning and ensure they do not waste this opportunity to make critical investments,” he said.
The American Rescue Plan, signed into law last March by President Joe Biden, provided over $122 billion to schools.
Cardona listed various ways schools could use this pot of money to improve the situation for teachers, custodians, bus drivers, school nurses and other educators, and cited schools that have already done so.
“The most common reason educators have cited for leaving school employment in the last year is stress, followed by insufficient pay,” Cardona wrote.
“Many school leaders are increasing wages by offering hiring and retention bonuses, working towards permanent salary increases, or providing premium pay that help educators receive the compensation they deserve and keep them in the profession, and we encourage others to continue to work towards increasing compensation,” he wrote.
Cardona cited reports of schools offering signing bonuses of up to $6,000 in California, and other financial incentives offered to new teachers in Oklahoma, North Carolina and New Jersey.
“Now, more than ever, supporting educator well-being is critical for retaining our current educators and staff,” Cardona wrote.
Still, some schools have noted that short-term pay increases aren’t enough to solve their staff shortages.
Some principals have found that there are simply not enough trained professionals in the pipeline for them to recruit, and it takes time for teachers or counselors to get certified. Others have found that the temporary pay increases from federal relief are unsustainable.
And other schools have reported that nearby districts have been able to poach teachers with higher salaries funded by federal aid, leaving schools in lower-income areas with less teachers.
On the other hand, the National Education Association, a powerful teachers’ union, has thrown its weight behind the policy of using federal aid to retain teachers, saying it’s been effective with educational support professionals, or ESPs, when paired with other solutions.
“ESP leaders have found that increasing pay and benefits is the top strategy,” the NEA said in a post on its website.
“But what also helps is providing flexibility for retirees to return to work while still receiving pension payments, revisiting licensure challenges, providing incentives, creating cross-state collaborations to make it easier to work in other states and localities, and looking at the well-being of current staff and ways to improve it to keep them on board,” the union wrote.
The NEA noted that the average salary of ESPs in 22 states is $30,000 or below, “which is not a livable wage or an attractive career proposition.”
Without addressing the educator shortages, schools are facing interruptions in all facets of the school day, from longer bus routes due to less bus drivers, larger class sizes or substitute teachers who aren’t qualified for the subjects they’re assigned to, and even school closures.
Schools in 11 states — Idaho, California, Colorado, Illinois, Missouri, Michigan, New Mexico, New York, Tennessee, Vermont, and West Virginia — have had to close temporarily because of staffing shortages, according to an October report in Ed Week.
For his part, Cardona acknowledged that the short-term solutions were just the beginning, but called on schools to take advantage of what was available.
“[The Department of Education] strongly encourages you to use funding under ARP to respond to the urgent needs resulting from the pandemic while beginning to plan for the investments needed to ensure that every student has access to the qualified educators and staff they need,” Cardona wrote.
(LONDON) — Queen Elizabeth has canceled her annual pre-Christmas celebration for family for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic.
The 95-year-old monarch traditionally holds a lunch at Buckingham Palace before Christmas for extended members of the royal family, but has decided to cancel it again this year, a royal source told ABC News.
“The decision is a precautionary one as it is felt to put too many people’s Christmas arrangements at risk if it went ahead,” the royal source said. “While there is regret that it is cancelled, there is a belief it is the right thing to do for all concerned.”
Buckingham Palace has not yet confirmed where or with whom Queen Elizabeth will celebrate Christmas, her first without her husband of 73 years, Prince Philip, who died in April at the age of 99.
Last year, also amid the coronavirus pandemic, the royal family broke a decades-long tradition of spending Christmas at Sandringham, Queen Elizabeth’s estate in Norfolk.
The queen and Philip instead spent the Christmas holiday at Windsor Castle, their home outside London, where they had spent much of their time since March 2020, when the U.K. began its first stay-at-home orders.
In past years, Philip and Elizabeth oversaw the family’s multi-day Christmas celebration at Sandringham with their four children — Princes Charles, Andrew and Edward and Princess Anne — and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The family traditionally holds their gift exchange on Christmas Eve, following the German tradition, where they often swap funny or homemade gifts.
On Christmas Day, they walk to St. Mary Magdalene Church for the Christmas service.
After the service, the royals enjoy a Christmas lunch at Sandringham and then gather to watch Queen Elizabeth II deliver her annual Christmas message.
In the evening, the royal family will get together again for a Christmas buffet dinner with 15 to 20 different delicacies prepared by the queen’s chef.
On the day after Christmas, known as Boxing Day in the U.K., the royals traditionally partake in a pheasant shoot on the grounds of Sandringham.
Some members of the royal family gathered Dec. 8 at Westminster Abbey for a Christmas carols service hosted by Duchess Kate.
Kate and Prince William were joined by William’s cousins Zara Tindall and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie.
William’s aunt, Sophie Wessex, also attended, as did members of Kate’s family, the Middletons.
(WASHINGTON) — When Sarah Hutchinson, mom of a 5-year-old son, saw her $300 child tax credit payment deposited into her bank account Wednesday, she said she felt a sense of both relief and fear.
Hutchinson said she was thankful for the payment, which, as a single mom, she uses to pay for her son’s child care, but she also knew it could be the last one she receives under the child tax credit expansion, which went into effect in July after Congress passed President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan in March.
The program is set to expire on Dec. 31, meaning the payments that Hutchinson and millions of other parents across the country received on Wednesday will be their last unless Congress votes to renew the program.
“I’m not looking forward to January,” said Hutchinson, 45, a librarian in Fredericksburg, Virginia, who is also facing more than $120,000 in student loans and thousands of dollars in medical bills accrued by her husband, who died in August. “I’m not sure how I’m going to work it out financially, but I’ll cross that bridge when I get there.”
Since July, around 35 million families each month have received the enhanced tax credit of up to $300 for each child under age 6 and up to $250 for each child ages 6 to 17, according to the Internal Revenue Service.
The families have primarily spent the money on kids’ school and child care expenses and essentials like food, rent, mortgage and utilities, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
Losing that extra financial aid would put nearly 10 million children at risk of falling back into poverty, according to a recent analysis from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, a research and policy institute focused on reducing poverty.
That is the worry that keeps Torie Miesko, a single mom of two sons, up at night.
“I’m afraid,” said Miesko, 28, of Swissvale, Pennsylvania. “I’m trying to keep my sons out of poverty.”
Miesko works full time as an office administrator for a medical clinic while raising her two sons, ages 3 and 18 months. She said the $600 per month she has received since July helps her pay some of her rent and leftover bills and helps to cover her car insurance, which is necessary so that she can get to work.
“It has changed my life,” she said of the monthly child tax credit payments. “I have a little bit of a better job but still everything costs so much money and [the $600 monthly payment] is almost a whole other paycheck.”
Miesko shared her story with several U.S. senators this week in a Zoom call organized by MomsRising, an advocacy organization founded by moms.
The fate of extending the child tax credit expansion in 2022 lies with the Senate, which has yet to vote on the Build Back Better Act, legislation that passed the House of Representatives in November and includes a one-year extension of the monthly payments.
Miesko said she told senators she hopes the Senate stops “messing around” with the financial well-being of parents and passes the legislation.
“I really hope that they take it seriously and know that this really does impact everyday Americans greatly,” she said. “It’s sad how much regular Americans have to struggle and now they want to give [the monthly payments] for a couple of months and then take it back.”
Democratic leaders in Congress had hoped to pass the Build Back Better Act by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s self-imposed Christmas deadline, a timeline the White House said it supported. But that goal is slipping away, in large part due to the objections of Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va.
The House-passed $1.75 trillion bill extends the monthly child tax credit for one year, through 2022, but Manchin has always said he objects to programs in the 10-year legislation that last for a shorter period of time, under the concern that those programs, like the enhanced child tax credit, could be made permanent and thereby more costly.
“Manchin has been clear that he wants the bill to stay at $1.75 trillion,” a source familiar with the matter told ABC News. “[Manchin] isn’t explicitly telling Biden to remove any specific policy, but he has made clear that expensive provisions are not going to fit to keep the bill at $1.75 trillion.”
A White House spokesperson said Wednesday they want the bill passed “as soon as possible.”
“It’s our longstanding rule not to discuss the specifics of private discussions with lawmakers, but the president and Sen. Manchin have had productive and friendly conversations,” deputy press secretary Andrew Bates told ABC News. “The president wants to pass Build Back Better as soon as possible so that it can cut the biggest costs families face, get more Americans into the workforce, reduce the deficit and fight inflation for the long haul.”
If lawmakers do not extend the program ahead of the Dec. 31 deadline, the advance child tax credit payment that parents have been receiving for the past six months would stop. At tax filing time, parents would still receive the remaining half of the credit they are eligible for that wasn’t paid out in advance, according to Erica York, an economist with Tax Foundation’s Center for Federal Tax Policy.
“If lawmakers don’t ever extend the expansion, the child tax credit for 2022 would revert to its current law levels, a maximum credit of $2,000 per child under age 17 that phases in with earned income for lower-income households and that is largely received at tax-filing time, rather than through advance payments from the IRS,” said York. “This could mean many parents would go from receiving a very large child tax credit, to a slimmed down version, or even zero.”
Family policy experts say the potential lost income would devastate many families at a time when inflation concerns are mounting and the coronavirus pandemic is still ongoing.
Losing the monthly child tax credit payments would also impact the families that need it most, including families of color and households led by mothers, according to Amber Wallin, deputy director of New Mexico Voices for Children, a research and advocacy organization focused on improving the lives of children in New Mexico, which has one of the country’s highest child poverty rates.
“Data shows these types of programs disproportionately benefit families that are headed by mothers, and that’s really important right now because the data also shows that mothers have really disproportionately been harmed by the economic impacts of the pandemic,” said Wallin. “Mothers more than fathers have lost wages, have decreased work hours and have exited the labor force since the pandemic began, especially mothers of young children.”
Calling programs like the child tax credit “crucial,” Wallin added, “It’s about more than just providing relief to families. It’s about providing targeted relief that gets exactly to the families that need it, and that’s what the child tax credit does.”
ABC News’ Trish Turner and Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.3 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 802,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 61% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Dec 16, 8:04 am
Omicron will be dominant variant in US ‘very soon,’ Fauci says
Dr. Anthony Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, warned Thursday that omicron will become the dominant variant of the novel coronavirus in the United States “very soon.”
“It has an extraordinary ability to transmit efficiently and spread,” Fauci, the chief medical advisor to U.S. President Joe Biden, told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos in an interview on Good Morning America.
“It has what we call a doubling time of about three days and if you do the math on that, if you have just a couple of percentage of the isolates being omicron, very soon it’s going to be the dominant variant,” he explained. “We’ve seen that in South Africa, we’re seeing it in the U.K. and I’m absolutely certain that’s what we’re going to be seeing here relatively soon.”
Fauci, who is also the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, urged Americans to “absolutely” get vaccinated against COVID-19, if they haven’t already, and to also receive a booster shot when they become eligible.
“At this point, we don’t believe you need an omicron-specific boost,” he added. “We just need to get the boost with what you got originally for the primary vaccination.”
Dec 16, 6:14 am
France to ban non-essential travel with UK over omicron surge
France announced Thursday that it will ban non-essential travel to and from the United Kingdom due to the country’s surge in cases of the omicron variant.
Starting Saturday, France will require people to have “a compelling reason” to travel between the two countries. Travel for tourism or work will not be allowed. French citizens, however, can return to France, according to a statement from the French prime minister’s office.
All travelers from the U.K. will be required to show proof of a negative COVID-19 test taken less than 24 hours before departure. Upon arrival in France, they must self-isolate for a week, but that period can be ended after 48 hours if they test negative for COVID-19 again.
The new rules apply to people regardless of their vaccination status.
“Faced with the extremely rapid spread of the Omicron variant in the United Kingdom, the Government has chosen to reinstate the need for an essential reason for travel from and to the United Kingdom, and to strengthen the requirement for tests on departure and arrival,” the French prime minister’s office said in the statement Thursday. “The Government is also calling on travelers who had planned to visit the United Kingdom to postpone their trip.”
Dec 16, 4:24 am
Indonesia confirms 1st case of omicron variant
Indonesia announced Thursday its first confirmed case of the omicron variant.
The case was detected in a janitor who works at the COVID-19 Emergency Hospital of Kemayoran Athletes Village in Jakarta, according to a statement from Indonesian Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin.
The hospital’s cleaning staff are routinely tested and the results for three people were positive for COVID-19 on Dec. 10. Those samples were then sent to a genome sequencing lab, which identified the omicron variant in one of the samples on Wednesday, according to the statement.
Indonesia’s Ministry of Health has also identified probable cases of omicron among five travelers who were in quarantine — two Indonesian citizens who had just returned from the United Kingdom and the United States, and three foreigners from China. Their test samples are being sequenced and the results will be known in a few days, according to the statement.
The health minister urged Indonesians “not to panic and to remain calm,” and to get vaccinated against COVID-19 if they haven’t already.
“The arrival of new variants from abroad, which we identified in quarantine, shows that our defense system against the arrival of new variants is quite good, we need to strengthen it,” Sadikin said. “So it’s normal to stay 10 days in quarantine. The goal is not to make it difficult for people who came, but to protect the people of Indonesia.”
Dec 15, 4:46 pm
Forecast: US could see up to 845,000 deaths by early January
Forecast models used by the CDC suggest weekly death totals and hospital admissions will rise over the next four weeks.
The U.S. could reach a total of 845,000 deaths by Jan. 8, according to the forecasts from the COVID-19 Forecast Hub at UMass Amherst.
The COVID-19 Forecast Hub team monitors and combines forecasting models from the nation’s top researchers. They then create an ensemble, usually with a wide cone of uncertainty. Nicholas Reich, a biostatistician who runs the forecasting model, told ABC News Wednesday that he doesn’t think the forecasts included omicron in their predictions because the majority of data isn’t publicly available yet in a format that can be easily incorporated into a model.
-ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos
Dec 15, 4:20 pm
US cases up 45% in the last month
The U.S. is now reporting nearly 118,000 new cases each day — up by 45% in the last month, according to federal data.
Daily COVID-19-related hospital admissions have leapt by 46% in the last month.
Maine and New Hampshire are now averaging more new cases than at any other point in the pandemic, according to federal data.
New Hampshire currently holds the nation’s highest case rate, followed by Rhode Island, Maine, Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
(NEW YORK) — The COVID-19 pandemic has shifted Americans’ perceptions of health care, and not for the better, according to a new survey.
Nearly half of Americans say the pandemic has worsened their perceptions of the U.S. health care system, with many describing it as “broken” or “expensive,” according to the West Health-Gallup survey released this week, the largest survey conducted on U.S. health care since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The high price of health care was a major factor, with a staggering one-third of Americans intentionally delaying or declining medical care over cost concerns.
In the midst of a pandemic, 14% of people with COVID-19 symptoms reported that they didn’t seek medical care because they worried they wouldn’t be able to afford it, a Gallup poll from April 2020 found.
In the new survey, nearly all sectors of society reported deep concerns about the health care system, including the insured and uninsured, wealthy and poor. The pandemic has also raised awareness of the unequal impact on Black, Hispanic and other non-white groups.
The survey found nearly three out of four Americans believe that their household pays too much for the quality of health care they receive, and an estimated 58 million U.S. adults find health care costs to be a major financial burden for their families.
One survey respondent, a white, Republican woman in her 60s, told researchers, “It’s hard when you have three or four kids and you’re trying to juggle the cost, and you’re deciding should I go to the emergency clinic or can we wait another day.”
Avoiding treatment due to rising costs is a problem facing both poorer and richer Americans. Around 34% of people with household incomes of less than $24,000 reported not seeking care in the prior three months due to cost. Twenty percent of people in high-income households (earning more than $120,000 annually) reported the same.
One in five U.S. adults reported they or a member of their household had a health problem worsen after postponing their medical care due to concerns about cost.
“Postponing care is only going to create higher costs in the long run,” said Dr. Blythe Adamson, founder of Infectious Economics LLC and affiliate professor at the University of Washington. “If we’re detecting cancer later on, that patient will have worse outcomes and more expensive care.”
The West Health-Gallup survey found that 60% of Americans reported the pandemic has made them more concerned about unequal access to quality health care services. Among Black Americans and Hispanic Americans, this concern was higher at three-fourths and two-thirds, respectively.
“We get brushed aside, African Americans, a lot of times,” said one survey respondent, a Black, Democrat woman in her 40s. “Things that we say, we feel it gets brushed off, they’re not really taking it seriously, like, oh, she’s just complaining again or it’s not serious, that kind of thing.”
Essential workers, who have lower income on average, continue to face greater COVID-19 risks than those with higher-income, more Zoom-friendly jobs.
“We continue to see low-income workers having high COVID-19 exposure at their job and not having insurance,” Adamson said. “These people are more likely to be hospitalized and thrown into bankruptcy.”
While some Americans have benefited from expanded access to telemedicine, inequities remain.
While other countries have government-backed health care, the US still relies on a mix of public and private health care insurers, which can create confusion and unequal pricing, according to Adamson.
Plus, as Adamson pointed out, “There are still many low income people that don’t have reliable internet, smartphones or computers that they can use in a telemedicine visit.”
Collectively, the survey shows that the pandemic appears to have worsened people’s views on the U.S. health care system.
“What’s changed in people’s minds is value in health care. Are we really getting a good value for every dollar we’re spending on prevention, on treatments, on hospitalization in this system?” Adamson asked.
Many of the challenges of the existing health care system were exposed under the strain of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Our current system is unsustainable, especially for the poor,” Adamson said.
Nicholas Nissen, M.D., is an author, host of the “Brain Health with Dr. Nissen” podcast and a contributor to the ABC News Medical Unit.
