Politics

(WASHINGTON) — The Pentagon will temporarily house Afghan workers who aided the U.S. military campaign and are trying to leave the country at Fort Lee, an Army installation in central Virginia, while they complete the application process for a special visa, according to the State Department.

Spokesperson Ned Price said Monday that the State Department requested that the Defense Department house 2,500 Afghans who are the furthest along in the vetting process for the special visa program, have passed “thorough” security vetting and whose work for the U.S. has been certified by the embassy in Kabul.

They’ll be provided services, such as housing, at Fort Lee as their visa applications are processed, according to Price, but he didn’t specify when the applicants and their family members may arrive beyond before the end of July.

John Kirby, Defense Department press secretary, said Monday afternoon that there are still other domestic and overseas locations also being considered.

Separately, the House will vote on Thursday to expand and expedite the special visa program for these Afghans, adding more openings to the program just weeks before the first evacuation flights are scheduled to begin.

The bipartisan Allies Act, introduced by Rep. Jason Crow, D-Colo., would raise the cap on the Special Immigrant Visa program by 8,000, while also removing requirements the authors said could lengthen the application process by several months.

Specifically, it would create a presumption that applicants face threats to their lives in sensitive roles as interpreters, translators or security contractors for the U.S. military, waiving the requirements that they obtain and submit sworn and certified statements.

Crow, a former Army Ranger who served in Afghanistan, said he owed his life in part to the Afghans who worked alongside U.S. troops as interpreters. His district director in Colorado, Maytham Alshadood, is a successfully resettled Iraqi who worked as an interpreter and translator with the U.S. military before immigrating.

“He’s a perfect success story to the contributions these folks can make, and they’ve already proven themselves to be patriotic Americans and people that have served the country,” he told ABC News. “We owe them a great debt.”

The bill would also expand eligibility for the program to roughly 1,000 Afghans working with nonmilitary organizations that have partnered with the United States, such as the National Democratic Institute and the U.S. Institute for Peace.

“The Taliban is not going to make a distinction between someone who was working for USAID, or a grantee of the U.S. government promoting independent journalism or women’s rights and someone who was a driver or translator,” Rep. Tom Malinowski, D-N.J., another cosponsor of the legislation, told ABC News. “So we shouldn’t make those distinctions, either.”

Earlier this summer, the House passed a similar measure that waived the requirement for applicants to receive a medical examination on the front end of the process, and would allow them to receive an exam as soon as possible once resettled in the United States.

In the Senate, both measures have the support of Republicans and Democrats, who are weighing whether to add the provisions to an emergency spending package funding the Capitol Police, which could clear the chamber before the August recess.

“There are a lot of people in Afghanistan that have been loyal to us,” Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., the ranking member of the Senate Appropriations Committee negotiating with Democrats over the package, said last week. “We cannot leave them behind.”

The White House announced Operation Allies Refuge last week, and said the first flights to evacuate visa applicants would begin in the last week of July.

There are now 20,000 applicants for the program, with roughly 10,000 still required to finish various stages of their applications, according to the State Department.

Approximately 2,500 applicants have been approved through the security vetting process and segments of that group could be transported to military bases in the U.S., under humanitarian parole, to finish their applications, the State Department spokesman said.

Afghans who have not yet completed their applications could be sent to third-party countries around Afghanistan or to U.S. military facilities in the Middle East, Crow said.

ABC News’ Trish Turner and Matt Seyler contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — With financial markets down sharply Monday over whether the new delta variant would endanger the recovery, President Joe Biden on Monday pushed back on inflation fears also giving investors jitters, insisting that his policies will create a strong economy and that higher prices are only a short-term growing pain.

“There’s nobody suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way, no serious economist. That’s totally different — I mean, look, the stock market is higher than it has been in all of history, even when it was down this month. Even down this month,” Biden said in White House remarks touting the recovery six months into office.

Biden also took a moment to hit former President Donald Trump for his focus on the stock market, noting there are other ways to judge economic health.

“Now, I don’t look at a stock market as a means by which to judge the economy like my predecessor did. But he’d be very, he’d be talking to you every day for the last five months about how the stock market is so high. Higher than any time in history. Still higher than any time in history. So, that’s not how I judge whether or not we’re having economic growth,” Biden said.

While pushing his infrastructure policies to lawmakers, he also made the case that inflation is merely temporary, a result of lingering supply chain challenges and an uneven restart after an unprecedented economic upheaval.

“Reality is you can’t flip the global economic light back on and not expect this to happen,” Biden said.

Biden noted that 60% of price increases, according to some economists, are due to global supply chain challenges, such as the shortage of semiconductors that has spurred a spike in car prices, and the increase in lumber prices. Calling price increases temporary, Biden worked to assure Americans he won’t let inflation get out of control.

“I want to be clear. My administration understands if we were to experience unchecked inflation over the long-term, that would pose a real challenge to our economy. So while we’re confident that isn’t what we’re seeing today, we’re going to remain vigilant about any response as needed,” he said.

“Reality is, you can’t flip the global economic light back on and not expect this to happen.”

During remarks about economic recovery, Pres. Biden says increase in prices is expected to be temporary but that his administration will remain “vigilant.” https://t.co/JIlsEYpYvZ pic.twitter.com/kGl3EkF4P4

— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 19, 2021

Biden also noted that he has assured Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell that he is committed to the independence of the Fed, and encourages Powell to take whatever steps necessary to keep the economy strong.

Biden then turned to the elephant in the room — the $4 trillion+ in additional government spending he’s pursuing.

“If we increase the availability of quality, affordable child care, elder care, paid leave, more people will enter the workforce. These steps will enhance our productivity, raising wages without raising prices. That won’t increase inflation. That will take the pressure off of inflation,” Biden said, referring to the $3.5 trillion “human infrastructure” plan Democrats on Capitol Hill are seeking to pass without any bipartisan support through special Senate budget rules.

MORE: Biden, bipartisan senators say they have $1.2 trillion framework infrastructure deal
“If your primary concern right now is inflation, you should be even enthusiastic about this plan,” Biden added.

“What we can’t do, is go back to the same old trickle-down theories, that gave us nearly two trillion dollars in deficit finance corporate tax giveaways, that did nothing to make our economy more productive or resilient,” Biden warned. “We can’t go back to the old failed thinking.“

With a key procedural vote this week in the Senate on the bipartisan infrastructure framework, Biden reminded lawmakers they already had a deal.

“Whatever different views some might have on current price increases, we should be united in one thing: Passage of the bipartisan infrastructure framework which we shook hands on. We shook hands on,” Biden said.

Despite attempting to sell his spending packages, Biden did not address the fact that so many questions about the packages remained unanswered ahead of Wednesday deadlines set by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer: a key procedural vote on a bipartisan $1.2 trillion traditional infrastructure spending bill, and a self-imposed deadline for members of his own party to reach agreement on a $3.5 trillion spending package, which covers the majority of Biden’s American Families Plan agenda, including childcare, free community college, and provisions to lower health care costs.

Top Republican negotiator Sen. Rob Portman expressed frustration Sunday with the state of the talks.

“We shouldn’t have an arbitrary deadline of Wednesday. We should bring the legislation forward when it’s ready… it’s got to be done in a thoughtful, bipartisan way. We don’t want to rush this process or make mistakes,” Portman said in an appearance on CNN’s “State of the Union.”

One remaining hurdle is how to pay for all the spending, after Democrats agreed to drop IRS tax enforcement provisions that were estimated to net $100 billion over ten years in the face of Republican pushback. President Biden has called for both spending bills to be fully paid for, mostly through tax increases on the wealthy and corporations.

“How do we vote on something which is not yet written as we try and get it right?” Senator Bill Cassidy, R.-La., asked in a “Fox News Sunday” interview. “We can get it done, but if they refused to cooperate on the pay-fors, it’s not going to pass. They know that.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Days after Facebook publicly rejected President Joe Biden’s message to the platform that it’s “killing people” by allowing the spread of vaccine misinformation, even as COVID-19 infections rise and vaccinations fall around the U.S., he tried to clean up his comment about the social media giant Monday, saying he hopes Facebook doesn’t take it “personally.”

Following remarks on the economy at the White House, a reporter asked about his comment Friday to companies and platforms like Facebook, the president interjected to answer before the reporter could finish.

“Let me say what I said. I’m glad you asked that question,” Biden began. “It was pointed out that Facebook, of all the misinformation, 60% of the misinformation came from 12 individuals. That’s what the article said.”

Biden was referring to research the White House pointed to at a press briefing last week when Surgeon General Vivek Murthy warned in his first advisory of the Biden administration of the threat of misinformation to public health.

Biden continued on Monday by retracing his steps, saying, “I was asked that question about what do I think is happening.”

“Facebook isn’t killing people. These 12 people are out there giving misinformation, anyone listening to it is getting hurt by it. It’s killing people. It’s bad information,” Biden continued. “My hope is that Facebook — instead of taking it personally — that somehow I’m saying Facebook is killing people, that they would do something about the misinformation — the outrageous misinformation — about the vaccine. That’s what I meant.”

When pressed if he felt the social media company was doing enough to combat the misinformation, the president said he was unsure, because he wasn’t sure what action they had taken over the weekend.

He then sidestepped when asked how he would hold the company accountable, he replied, “When you say hold accountable, I’m not trying to hold people accountable. I’m trying to make people look at themselves. Look in the mirror. Think about that misinformation going to your son, daughter, your relative, someone you love. That’s all I’m asking.”

Biden was attempting to clean up an answer he gave when leaving the White House for Camp David on Friday afternoon when he was specifically asked, “On COVID misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?” and said, “They’re killing people. I mean, it really — look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

The controversial comment came one day after the surgeon general put out a new advisory arguing that misinformation, particularly on social media websites like Facebook, has hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.

“Simply put, health misinformation has cost us lives,” Murthy said from the White House last week.

Facebook took issue with the description by the president on Friday, saying in a statement that his claim was not true.

“We will not be distracted by accusations which aren’t supported by the facts,” Facebook spokesperson Dani Lever said in a statement to ABC News. “The fact is that more than 2 billion people have viewed authoritative information about COVID-19 and vaccines on Facebook, which is more than any other place on the internet. More than 3.3 million Americans have also used our vaccine finder tool to find out where and how to get a vaccine. The facts show that Facebook is helping save lives. Period.”

However, while Facebook has said how many people have viewed authoritative information on vaccines, the platform has not said how many users have viewed misinformation.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The United States, several allies and partners and NATO are joining forces to “expose and criticize” China for a “pattern of malicious cyber activities,” announcing on Monday that China is profiting off some of the cyberattacks it’s supported, and officially saying it was behind the Microsoft Exchange server breach in March.

“We will show how the PRC [People’s Republic of China] MSS, Ministry of State Security, uses criminal contract hackers to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations globally, including for their own personal profit,” senior administration officials said on a call with reporters Sunday night. “Their operations include criminal activities such as cyber-enabled extortion, cryptojacking and theft of victims around the world for financial gain.

Officials said they also know of some “government-affiliated cyber operators conducting ransomware operations against private companies that have included ransom demands of millions of dollars.”

Senior officials said they found the MSS-affiliated ransomware attacks to be “surprising” and gave them “new insights” into how the MSS operates and the “aggressive behavior” coming out of China.

Asked how the tactics from the Chinese differ from similar attacks they see coming out of Russia, senior officials said they sometimes see “some connection” between Russian intelligence services and individuals, but “the MSS use of criminal contract hackers to conduct unsanctioned cyber operations globally is distinct.”

Joining the U.S. in this public announcement is the European Union, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, Japan and NATO. It’s the first time NATO has condemned Chinese cyber activities.

The FBI, NSA and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency released a list Monday of tactics, procedures and techniques used by Chinese state-sponsored cyber actors.

Among the trends, officials say these actors are “using a revolving series of virtual private servers (VPSs) and common open-source or commercial penetration tools.” They are also accused of looking for ways to exploit vulnerabilities in major applications, like “Pulse Secure, Apache, F5 Big-IP, and Microsoft products.”

The advisory also states that they are using a “full array of tactics and techniques to exploit computer networks of interest worldwide and to acquire sensitive intellectual property, economic, political, and military information.”

“Countries around the world are making it clear that concerns regarding the PRC malicious cyber activity is bringing them together to call out those activities, promote network defense in cybersecurity, and act to disrupt threat to our economies and national security,” a senior administration official said.

The group will also formally attribute the Microsoft Exchange server cyberattack in March to China’s Ministry of State Security (MSS) “with high confidence.”

Asked what caused the delay for the U.S. to officially point to China for that attack, a senior administration official said they wanted to work with allies and partners because victims of this attack were not just in the U.S.

Officials said they have raised these incidents with senior Chinese government officials and “are not ruling out further actions to hold the PRC accountable,” adding that their actions “threaten security, confidence and stability in cyberspace.”

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has focused the opening months of his presidency largely on domestic issues, including crime and gun violence.

Last month, he unveiled a multi-tiered strategy on gun crime that includes giving federal resources to police departments and letting communities use pandemic relief funds for prevention programs, including the hiring of counselors and social workers.

“This shouldn’t be a red or blue issue — it’s an American issue,” Biden said at the time.

But how to deal with crime, particularly during ongoing conversations regarding the role of policing and alternative crime prevention matters, tends to splinter along party lines — and within the parties themselves. Not all Democrats are in lockstep with Biden’s plans, and some Republicans agree with them. Some 26% of Democrats disapprove of Biden’s work on crime, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll, while only 6% of Republicans approve of how Biden has handled the issue.

One of Biden’s plans — increased funding, especially in impoverished areas, for gun crime prevention — has support across both parties: 61% of Republicans and 90% of Democrats.

“I feel like there’s always room for improvement,” Bailey Dockery, a Democratic voter from North Carolina, told ABC News after telling a pollster she disapproved, but adding that Biden is likely “doing the best he can.”

Dockery said that there “needs to definitely be control over who’s allowed to have a gun,” but she doesn’t think gun control laws should involve confiscating people’s guns: “When somebody tells you not to do something, you want to do it 10 times harder.”

“Crime reform is not what I think it should be, with the corrections system, criminal justice system … not enough rehabilitation,” Robert Bell, a Democratic voter from Ohio who also said he disapproves, told ABC News.

The administration should focus more on “what are the initiating factors in crime,” he said, including a lack of housing and community resources.

The ABC News/Washington Post poll was released during an uptick in crime in the United States, with 24% more homicides and 22% more gun assaults in the first quarter of 2021 compared with that period in 2020, according to a study by the National Commission on COVID-19 and Criminal Justice. There are also ongoing discussions in both local and federal government about alternatives to policing aimed at the underlying causes of crime.

Federal policy on crime and related issues has also been under the microscope.

“Today, there is an emerging recognition that federal dollars have helped deepen today’s devastating fissures between police and the communities they purport to serve,” the non-partisan Brennan Center for Justice think tank at New York University School of Law wrote in a recent analysis.

But while most Republicans polled said they disapprove of the Biden administration’s work on crime, some said they support his efforts.

“There seems to be less violence going on since he’s been in power,” Paul Brazezicke, a Republican voter from Pennsylvania, told ABC News in a follow-up interview.

Sandra Buchanan, a Republican from Mississippi, said she approves of Biden’s handling of crime because “I think he’s doing a good job on everything he’s doing” and feels that crime isn’t the fault of the president but of individuals.

Other Republicans who spoke with ABC News said they’re skeptical of some alternatives to policing, including hiring more social workers to work alongside police, but they do believe improving economic opportunities in underserved areas would help.

“I just think, if someone’s at the point where they’re committing a crime” or in a similar high-stakes situation, they won’t be talked out of it by a social worker, said David Patton, a voter from Connecticut.

But he does believe increased funding for communities could have an impact. Patton said he was a driver for Frito-Lay who delivered to inner-city communities, and in “one city where they did some nice work … [it] made people more respectful to the area, for lack of a better word.”

Sheila Tabone of Mississippi, once a Republican but now a registered independent, said she felt that using social workers to reduce crime wouldn’t work “because it’s too little, too late in a lot of cases.”

She said she was a psychiatric nurse for six years, and focused on individuals with mental illness in the community at times, adding, “We do not have the resources for these people so they can live.”

When it comes to funding communities, Tabone said “throwing money at a problem without a plan doesn’t work,” but she supports plans to fund and train police departments, and plans “to help people who want to live a decent life to live a decent life.”

The views of Democratic voters not in lockstep with the administration or national Democrats on crime echo those of recent New York City Democratic mayoral primary winner Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a former police officer. He called the priorities of national Democrats on gun crimes “misplaced” in an interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper on Monday, saying more focus should be on the spread of handguns than on just assault rifles.

But Adams also was among the community leaders and law enforcement officials who met with Biden in the White House on Monday to discuss plans for reducing gun crimes. He told reporters afterward, “Why did it take so long before we heard the gunshots that families were listening and hearing every night. … This president said, this is not the America we’re going to live in.”

ABC News’ Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

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(AUSTIN) — A federal judge in Texas ruled Friday that the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, program was unlawful in a significant blow to the Obama-era approach that shielded young people brought to the country illegally from deportation.

U.S. District Court Judge Andrew Hanen sided with a group of nine states led by Texas and concluded that the creation of the DACA program violated federal administrative law. Hanen emphasized in his decision that his ruling does not compel immigration authorities to arrest and deport recipients, but it does make them eligible.

DACA was created by former President Barack Obama in 2012 to provide relief for the growing population of undocumented immigrant minors, sometimes called Dreamers, who had little to no say in their immigration process due to their youth. It’s estimated there are about 650,000 people who hold DACA status, according to U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services.

Lawyers with the Texas Attorney General’s Office argued that the Obama administration overextended its executive authority in creating the program. They were joined in the lawsuit by Alabama, Arkansas, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Carolina and West Virginia.

The Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, which represented a group of DACA recipients in defending the program, argued in a prior hearing on the matter that Texas shouldn’t be successful in its lawsuit because none of the states were harmed by the existence of DACA.

The DACA program has maintained bipartisan political support even as Republican-led states have moved to end it. A solid majority — 75% — of Republicans favor allowing recipients the chance to obtain citizenship along with 92% of Democrats, according to a 2018 Gallup survey.

Thomas A. Saenz, president and general counsel of the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, said DACA is the only way the president can exercise discretion.

“When you’re dealing with the number of people that the immigration system has to deal with, you have to make resource decisions,” Saenz said. “It’s hard to imagine an efficient way of doing it otherwise.”

The Biden administration could act to change the program in a way that would satisfy Hanen’s ruling, but still, the future for many DACA recipients will likely face the Supreme Court once again.

The ruling also ramps up pressure on Biden to achieve a legislative victory for DACA recipients, possibly through the reconciliation process.

In response to the news, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, in a tweet, said it was “more important than ever for Congress to pass permanent protections for Dreamers and provide a pathway to citizenship.”

ABC News’ Ben Siegel and Justin Fishel contributed to this report.

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(WASHINGTON) — The director of President Joe Biden’s Domestic Policy Council, Susan Rice, has divested herself of millions of dollars’ worth of holdings in a company that’s leading a contentious pipeline project supported by the Biden administration.

According to newly released financial disclosure reports and a White House official, Rice has liquidated nearly $2.7 million worth of shares she and her husband owned in Enbridge, a Canadian company building the Line 3 pipeline, which would carry hundreds of thousands of barrels of Canadian oil through Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Last month, the Biden administration gave a public boost to the Trump-era pipeline project, calling for the dismissal of a court challenge brought by environmental groups seeking to protect Minnesota watershed and tribal lands from the pipeline.

The Enbridge stock sale is part of a series of large divestments that Rice, one of the wealthiest members of the Biden White House, has recently made or is planning to make in the coming days. Divesting is a common measure that newly appointed public officials take to ensure that their government duties don’t overlap with their personal interests.

A certificate of divestiture issued by the Office of Government Ethics last week shows Rice’s plans to sell holdings in more than three dozen companies and several investment funds that she and her family own — assets currently worth a total of more than $30 million.

Enbridge’s stock price has been on an upward trend since November, and the value of Rice’s holdings in the company has increased from roughly $2.4 million when she joined the Biden administration earlier this year to nearly $2.7 million as of Friday.

It’s unclear if Rice netted any capital gains from the sale of her Enbridge shares, but those who divest assets under a certificate of divestiture are allowed to defer taxes on capital gains.

A White House official told ABC News that during the transition period leading up to Biden’s inauguration, Rice had agreed to divest from all of the listed assets. In the meantime, while waiting for her certificate of divestiture to be issued, she recused herself from matters involving companies in which she had investments.

The official said that as of early this week Rice had divested all of her Canadian assets, including the Enbridge holdings and more than $14 million worth of shares in Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd., as well as many U.S. assets.

Her remaining U.S. stocks are in the process of being divested, a process that will be finished before July 27, the official said.

Among the other assets she is divesting, according to her disclosure reports, are $1 million worth of shares in Johnson & Johnson, more than $823,000 worth of shares in Apple, and nearly $289,000 worth of shares in Comcast.

She will retain major holdings in Canadian banks, including $5 million to $25 million each in the Royal Bank of Canada and the Toronto-Dominion Bank, according to her disclosure reports.

Rice’s certificate of divestiture was first reported by the Daily Poster.

As ABC News previously reported, several other senior members of the Biden administration similarly divested themselves of their assets to comply with ethics rules earlier this year.

Biden’s White House climate envoy John Kerry was issued a certificate of divestiture in March for liquidating $4 million to $15 million in assets from more than 400 companies, including energy-sector interests. In May, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm divested $1.6 million worth of shares in electric vehicle producer Proterra.

Kedric Payne, general counsel and Senior Director of Ethics at the good-government group Campaign Legal Center, said that considering the large number of diverse stocks that Rice is divesting, it’s difficult to say whether the timing of the Biden administration’s support for the Line 3 pipeline project and Rice’s divestiture raises any questions.

But he said that Rice’s divestment from those assets shows the highest level of effort to avoid a conflict of interest.

“Ethics laws allow an official to resolve conflicts of interest with recusals, waivers, and blind trusts, but divesting assets is typically the most extreme remedy,” Payne said. “When officials are transparent about conflicts and sell their relevant assets to avoid such conflicts, the ethics laws are working as intended.”

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(WASHINGTON) — One day after the surgeon general warned Americans about what he called the “urgent threat of health misinformation,” President Joe Biden didn’t mince words when asked for his message to platforms like Facebook about COVID-19 misinformation.

“They’re killing people,” he said.

As the president was leaving the White House for Camp David on Friday afternoon, he was asked, specifically, “On COVID misinformation, what’s your message to platforms like Facebook?”

Biden answered, “They’re killing people. I mean, it really — look, the only pandemic we have is among the unvaccinated. And they’re killing people.”

It was the only question Biden took before boarding Marine One to leave town for the weekend and follows comments by other Biden administration officials warning of the dangers of misinformation in combatting COVID-19.

On Thursday, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy issued the first public health advisory of the Biden administration to addresses an epidemic of misinformation and disinformation and its harmful impact on public health. The Biden administration is now calling on social media companies to take further action to combat misinformation around the COVID-19 vaccine.

Ahead of Biden’s departure, White House press secretary Jen Psaki was pressed Friday by ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott over whether Facebook was doing enough to combat the issue.

“Clearly not,” Psaki said, “because we’re talking about additional steps that should be taken.”

“We’re dealing with a life-or-death issue here. And so, everybody has a role to play in making sure there’s accurate information,” she added. “It’s clear there are more that can be taken.”

The decision to elevate misinformation comes as some Republicans have used the government’s coronavirus response and vaccine messaging as a political wedge.

It also comes amid the government’s current push to boost stalling vaccination rates while the delta variant takes hold of the country’s unvaccinated, in what Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky called “a pandemic of the unvaccinated” on Friday.

The Biden administration has doubled down on their efforts to get more people vaccinated — particularly after the country missed the president’s goal of getting 70% of adults with at least one dose by July 4.

The surgeon general’s new advisory specifically digs into social media platforms as having greatly contributed to the “unprecedented speed and scale” of misinformation’s spread and Murthy calls on technology and social media companies to “take more responsibility to stop online spread of health misinformation.”

It argues that misinformation, particularly on social media websites like Facebook, has hindered vaccination efforts, sown mistrust, caused people to reject public health measures, use unproven treatments, prolonged the pandemic and put lives at risk.

“Simply put, health misinformation has cost us lives,” Murthy said from the White House Thursday.

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(WASHINGTON) — The group of 10 bipartisan infrastructure bill negotiators was already having trouble coming up with ways to pay for nearly $600 billion in planned new spending, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer setting a Wednesday deadline for a key test vote on their bill turned up the heat and pressure significantly.

“That’s pretty aggressive. That means we have a lot of work to do,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, a key GOP negotiator, announcing that she and her colleagues would be working through the weekend to try to finish up the details of their $1.2 trillion plan.

ABC News has learned that one of the key components that negotiators had been relying on to finance the package — a boost in IRS tax enforcement to go after unpaid taxes — is out, leaving negotiators scrambling to come up with a replacement for a proposal that was expected to generate around $100 billion in estimated revenue to help offset the $579 billion in new spending in the legislation.

“I think we’re all trying to think about other ways to get there,” said Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., emerging from a nearly four-hour marathon negotiating session behind closed doors Thursday night. About halfway through that meeting, senior White House officials joined the bipartisan group, including senior counselor Steve Recchetti and Biden’s Legislative Affairs Director Louisa Terrell — a sign of just how important the measure is to the president’s agenda.

According to an aide to a negotiator who requested anonymity to discuss the state of play, wary Republicans wanted to put so many guardrails on the IRS in exchange for getting the money to increase enforcement that “it was untenable.”

Conservative groups have railed against the proposal to empower an agency that they claim once targeted their ranks based on political leanings starting in 2010, as they sought tax-exempt status. The IRS in a 2017 settlement apologized for failing to provide controls and guidance to its employees, though a 2014 House GOP investigation found no connection to or coordination with the Obama administration.

And getting an official amount for that finance option from the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), which prices out legislation for lawmakers, was also not possible because the government already assumes it will get all of the annual taxes it is owed.

This further exacerbated the problem for negotiators, who admitted that they were only ever going to get an estimate — perhaps in the neighborhood of $70 billion to $100 billion, according to sources close to the matter. That would not be enough for some Republicans, including in leadership, who demanded a hard “score” or price tag to show the spending was fully offset.

Negotiators said they plan to work through weekend, but they are under the gun to publish final legislative text as soon as possible so that they can prevail in the vote on Wednesday.

And some GOP sponsors of the bipartisan plan — including its lead author, Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio — made clear Thursday that they will not vote to proceed if it is not yet complete.

Others have tried to argue that the vote on Wednesday, a procedural move to start debate on a shell of the bill which will require the support of 60 senators, is simply the start of a week-long process before final passage. Anyone wanting to support the bill could simply vote “aye” on Wednesday, start debate and substitute in the final text when it is ready.

“My goal this weekend is to make sure that we can all get there, that we’ve got not only the agreement but we’ve got text that people can look at so that we’re not in a situation where we [say], ‘I don’t know what I’m voting on, I just hope that it’s good,'” said Murkowski, referring to Wednesday as “just the beginning.”

The deadine set by Schumer is undoubtedly a high-stakes gamble as he tries to get infrastructure legislation well on its way before the August recess, including a related $3.5 trillion budget resolution that contains the remainder of President Joe Biden’s infrastructure priorities. Schumer also demanded that his caucus reach a final agreement by Wednesday on that product, so that it can move soon after the bipartisan legislation.

Under special, fast-track budget rules, Democrats plan to pass their $3.5 trillion blueprint legislation without a single Republican vote but only if the caucus remains united behind the sweeping outline that includes everything from Medicare coverage expansion to universal child care, climate change and immigration reform.

Still, even though the budget resolution — which Schumer and House Democrats have demanded must be linked to the bipartisan infrastructure deal — is merely a blueprint to be fleshed out later by multiple committees, some Democratic senators are insisting on more details in advance of any vote in the coming weeks.

Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., told Roll Call that he wants to see the details behind his colleagues’ plan to wring revenue out of the pharmaceutical industry to help pay for about $600 billion of their massive plan.

Democrats have for years sought to have Medicare negotiate drug prices to bring them on par with prices paid by other countries. Menendez told Roll Call: “The only industry that gets directly, I’ll call taxed, mostly is the pharmaceutical industry. You have to show me that you’re reducing the cost of prescription drugs to the consumers.”

Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said he would be looking for adequate funding to modernize the dilapidated northeast corridor rail, while Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., said she would be “fighting to make sure universal child care and enough money to attack the climate crisis head on” are in the bill.

“And that we make sure that billionaires and giant corporations pay a fair share,” she said, a reference to key sources of revenue Democrats plan to use to finance the $3.5 trillion in new spending over the next 10 years.

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., a key moderate negotiating the bipartisan plan who has also signaled that he won’t derail this bigger budget measure, told reporters that he is very concerned about inflation and protecting his coal state from Washington climate mandates.

“I’m concerned about inflation. I want to see more of the details of what’s going on,” Manchin said, noting that he had not had one conversation with the broader budget deal’s lead author, Senate Budget Committee Chairman Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.

“I’m concerned also about maintaining the energy independence the United States of America has. And with that, you cannot be moving towards eliminating the fossil. You should be innovating and using more technology. And we should be leading the rest of the world with the technology that you can use all the above energy sources, and I told (Schumer) that I was concerned about some of the language I’d seen that moves us away from fossil,” Manchin said.

It is that kind of concern from Manchin that also raises eyebrows among progressives in the House where Speaker Nancy Pelosi holds a slim majority and has pledged to hold onto any Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill until the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint — also called a “reconciliation” bill after the procedure used to fast-track it — is approved.

“The bipartisan infrastructure bill is much smaller, and it does not meet the same needs that the overall proposal for what frankly the Biden administration has outlined is necessary,” influential progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said in a virtual town hall Thursday night, calling the group of 10 plan “way too small.”

“We do not need a bipartisan deal in order to pass this bill,” she claimed, pushing back on the argument from the White House and Democratic moderates about the importance of trying to working with Republicans. “It’s great that Republicans are wanting to join some Democrats, that’s wonderful. But this country and people across this country elected Democratic majorities … Republicans are not in charge of dictating what policies we pass and what policies we don’t pass.”

“We will tank the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless we also pass the reconciliation bill,” she threatened.

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(WASHINGTON) — As Texas House Democrats close the first week of their quorum break in Washington, D.C., to stall Republican-backed voting bills, their colleagues across the aisle are escalating efforts to compel them to return to the Lone Star State.

On Thursday, Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan announced he would charter a plane on Saturday to fly the absent Democrats from the nation’s capital back to Austin.

“I am demanding all of our colleagues in D.C. to contact my staff immediately in order to secure their seat on the plane and return to Austin in order to do the state’s business. The State of Texas is waiting,” Phelan said in a statement.

In response, the Texas Democrats said they have no intention of taking up Phelan on the request.

“The Speaker should save his money. We won’t be needing a plane anytime soon, as our work to save democracy from the Trump Republicans is just getting started,” they said in a joint statement, adding, “We’re not going anywhere and suggest instead the speaker end this charade of a session, which is nothing more than a month long campaign commercial for Gov. Abbott’s re-election. The speaker should adjourn the House Sine Die.”

Beyond making the open request, the Texas House Speaker cannot further compel the Democrats to return to Texas. The state’s law enforcement officials similarly do not have jurisdiction across state lines to force the lawmakers back.

A group of Democrats left Texas on Monday to break quorum and wait out the end of their ongoing special legislative session in an effort to block the advancement of dual Republican-backed bills that would revise the state’s voting and election laws. Voting rights advocates say, if enacted, those bills would make it harder for Texans to have ballot access. By breaking quorum, the legislators also stalled the advancement of a slate of other bills the state’s Republican Gov. Greg Abbott deemed as priorities for the legislature, of which his party holds as a majority.

While it remains unclear what comes next for the Democrats in the nation’s capital, Abbott says the end of the current special legislative session will not wipe the slate clean of his priority items.

“Whenever the current special session ends, I will immediately call another special session, and I will continue calling additional special sessions so we can address issues,” Abbott said in an interview with CBS Dallas-Ft. Worth on Thursday.

In an attempt to terminate the possibility of another round of walkouts, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick, who heads the Texas Senate, wrote to Abbott on Thursday asking him to add an item to the next session that would change quorum rules to be based on a simple majority attendance.

“Texans expect their legislature to work and not be held hostage by a few legislators who are exploiting the quorum requirement. The majority of other state legislatures require a simple majority plus one,” Patrick wrote in the letter.

The current rules stipulate that two-thirds of elected members in each chamber must be present to conduct business. Abbott has not yet indicated if he plans to make the addition.

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