(WASHINGTON) — In an address to the nation on the crisis in Afghanistan, President Joe Biden conceded that the Taliban takeover of the country unfolded faster than anticipated, but insisted that he remains “squarely behind” his decision to withdraw American troops.
“I will not repeat the mistakes we’ve made in the past — the mistake of staying and fighting indefinitely in a conflict that is not in the national interests of the United States, of doubling down on a civil war in a foreign country, of attempting to remake a country through the endless military deployments of U.S. forces,” Biden said.
While Biden said he ultimately bore responsibility for the situation in Afghanistan, declaring “I am president of the United States of America, and the buck stops with me,” he also faulted Afghan forces for the Taliban’s rapid advance.
“We gave them every chance to determine their own future. (What) we could not provide them was the will to fight for that future,” he said.
“There are some very brave and capable Afghan special forces units and soldiers,” the president continued. “But if Afghanistan is unable to mount any real resistance to the Taliban now, there is no chance that one more year, five more years or 20 more years of U.S. military boots on the ground would have made any difference.”
Biden also blamed his predecessor for the current situation in Afghanistan, claiming an agreement former President Donald Trump cut with the Taliban while he was in office left him with only two options: End the U.S. military mission or reignite the conflict.
Biden has repeatedly pointed out that he is the fourth president to preside over an American troop presence in Afghanistan and adamantly insisted he won’t pass it on to a fifth commander-in-chief.
“So I’m left again to ask of those who argued that we should stay, how many more generations of America’s daughters and sons would you have me send to fight Afghanistan’s civil war when Afghan troops will not? How many more lives — American lives — is it worth?” Biden said.
Biden also argued that ending the military mission in Afghanistan would free up counterterrorism resources to address broader threats to the homeland posed by jihadist groups throughout Africa and the Middle East.
But concerns within the intelligence community that Afghanistan will revert to an incubator for extremism remains. Gen. Mark Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators during a briefing that the Pentagon would reassess the threat posed by Al -Qaida now that the Taliban have retaken the country.
As conditions in Afghanistan deteriorate, Republicans are pouncing on the White House, calling the drawdown an embarrassment for the nation.
“What we have seen is an unmitigated disaster — a stain on the reputation of the United States of America,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said on Monday.
Few Democrats have rushed to publicly defend the Biden administration. In a statement released before the president’s remarks, Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., the chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, called the images being broadcast out of Afghanistan “devastating” and vowed “to ask tough but necessary questions about why we weren’t better prepared for a worst-case scenario involving such a swift and total collapse of the Afghan government and security forces.”
Biden denied that national security officials were caught off guard, insisting “we were clear-eyed about the risks. We planned for every contingency.”
He also offered little in the ways of an explanation as to why the planned withdrawal had unraveled into a chaotic evacuation effort.
Biden did not take any questions from the reporters gathered in the East Room following his speech, his first public remarks on Afghanistan in nearly a week.
The president was previously scheduled to remain at Camp David until Wednesday, but returned to the White House to deliver the address. He departed again for Camp David shortly after he concluded his remarks.
The White House said Biden had been receiving regular updates from his advisors throughout the weekend and released a photo of Biden being briefed in a video conference Sunday.
(WASHINGTON) — The Taliban’s return to power has ended America’s two-decade effort to build a democratic society in its mold in Afghanistan. But that effort, despite its billions of dollars and tens of thousands of lives, was doomed virtually from the start by a galling failure to understand the country and a willful disregard for local realities on the ground, according to a scathing new report.
The U.S. Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction, or SIGAR, blasted successive U.S. administrations for lacking the “necessary mindset, expertise, and resources to develop and manage the strategy to rebuild Afghanistan,” in its latest report released Tuesday.
The report, prepared before Kabul’s fall, found that while the U.S. achieved some important successes for the Afghan people, those gains would be lost if the Taliban took control.
“The U.S. government struggled to develop a coherent strategy, understand how long the reconstruction mission would take, ensure its projects were sustainable, staff the mission with trained professionals, account for the challenges posed by insecurity, tailor efforts to the Afghan context, and understand the impact of programs,” the report said.
More than 140 pages long, the report details how 20 years and $145 billion of effort were often wasted because projects weren’t tailored to the complex realities on the ground. Essentially, the U.S. government kept trying to force Afghanistan into a box that it didn’t — and couldn’t — fit into, the report found.
“We were devoid of a fundamental understanding of Afghanistan,” Douglas Lute, who oversaw the war for Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama from 2007 to 2013, told SIGAR. “We didn’t know what we were doing.”
“It’s really much worse than you think,” he added. “There (was) a fundamental gap of understanding on the front end, overstated objectives, an overreliance on the military, and a lack of understanding of the resources necessary.”
This is the 11th annual lessons-learned report released by SIGAR, which has 13 years of oversight work now. John Sopko, the special inspector general, has highlighted failures throughout the U.S. war in Afghanistan, from waste and fraud to a lack of transparency.
These failures in reconstruction, in particular, had critical impacts on a local level, according to the report, undermining U.S. efforts to erode support for the Taliban and build faith in the Afghan government.
“In the majority of districts, we never even heard the real problems of the people,” Jabar Naimee, who served as governor of three Afghan provinces, told SIGAR. “We made assumptions, conducted military operations, brought in government staff, and assumed it would lead to security and stability.”
But it did not. The report argued that since the U.S. government did not pay attention to the local context when projects were implemented, they often stoked local conflicts because one interest group was prioritized over another, which allowed insurgents to create alliances.
Staffing failures exacerbated those problems, according to the inspector general’s report. U.S. reconstruction projects were created and funded — and then officials were ordered to find individuals to carry them out — leading to unqualified workers and construction efforts that were often abandoned before completion.
“DOD police advisors watched American TV shows to learn about policing, civil affairs teams were mass-produced via PowerPoint presentations, and every agency experienced annual lobotomies as staff constantly rotated out, leaving successors to start from scratch and make similar mistakes all over again,” the report said.
Those failures at the program-level and below were mirrored by “policymakers’ ignorance of the Afghan context at the highest strategic levels,” according to the report, with the influence of politics always behind the scenes.
“U.S. officials also prioritized their own political preferences for what they wanted reconstruction to look like, rather than what they could realistically achieve,” the report said.
Afghan officials are to blame as well, the report said, especially for corruption. But the vast amount of American money flowing to reconstruction projects would often fuel that problem.
“The ultimate point of failure for our efforts wasn’t an insurgency,” Ryan Crocker, who served as ambassador to Afghanistan, told SIGAR. “It was the weight of endemic corruption.”
Because the U.S. government refused to create a successful peace process, “the Taliban soon rebuilt itself as a powerful insurgency,” according to the report.
That may now doom the Afghan people to a return to darker days.
“There is no doubt, however, that the lives of millions of Afghans have been improved by U.S. government interventions,” the report said, including gains in life expectancy, the mortality of children under five, GDP per capita, and literacy rates. But the report argued that these gains were neither proportional to the massive U.S. investment nor sustainable with the U.S. military now leaving.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden “absolutely” bears responsibility for the Taliban’s rapid takeover of Afghanistan as does former President Donald Trump and his administration, Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said Sunday.
“What we’re watching right now in Afghanistan is what happens when America withdraws from the world,” Cheney told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “So everybody who has been saying, ‘America needs to withdraw, America needs to retreat,’ we are getting a devastating, catastrophic real-time lesson in what that means.”
Taliban militants were ordered to enter Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, as plans to form a new reconciliation council were announced and Afghan President Ashraf Ghani fled the country on Sunday.
On Thursday, the State Department announced it was reducing its staff levels at the U.S. Embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon began sending in troops to help facilitate those departures. The president on Saturday authorized an additional 1,000 U.S. troops for deployment to Afghanistan, raising the number of troops to 5,000 to assist with “orderly and safe drawdown.”
Cheney, who serves on the House Armed Services Committee, said Sunday on “This Week,” that the Taliban’s rapid takeover did not have to happen, as “everyone was warned.”
“I think if you look at where we were, if you look at what it would have taken in terms of maintaining the status quo, 2,500 to 3,500 forces on the ground, conducting counterterrorism, counterintelligence operations, this disaster, the catastrophe that we’re watching unfold right now across Afghanistan did not have to happen,” Cheney said. “And it’s not just that people predicted that this would happen, everyone was warned that this would happen.”
The ramifications of the current situation extend further than just Afghanistan and the war on terror, but globally, Cheney told Karl.
“Our allies are questioning this morning whether they can count on us for anything,” Cheney said.
Karl pressed Cheney on the argument made by Republicans and Democrats, including former Rep. Justin Amash, that no matter when the U.S. were to withdraw, the results would be the same.
“This is not ending the war, what this is doing actually is perpetuating it,” Cheney responded. “What we’re seeing now is a policy that will ensure — ensure, that we will in fact have to have our children and our grandchildren continuing to fight this war at much higher costs.”
“So everybody — the Rand Paul, Donald Trump, Mike Pompeo, Joe Biden view of the world here is fundamentally dangerous and irresponsible and wrong,” Cheney added.
Karl also asked Cheney about the fact the majority of Americans supported the U.S. withdrawal.
“As you know, poll after poll, for the last several years, have shown that most Americans wanted us out of Afghanistan,” Karl said. “So can you really maintain for the long term a military operation that most of the American people do not support?”
“As leaders we have an obligation no matter what the issue is to tell the American people the truth, and we have an obligation to explain what’s necessary,” Cheney responded. “If American security requires that our enemies can’t establish safe havens to attack us again, then our leaders across both parties have the responsibility to explain to the American people why we need to keep the deployment of forces on the ground.”
“This has been an epic failure across the board, one we’re going to pay for for years to come,” Cheney added.
(WASHINGTON) — A group of House moderates is threatening to blow up Democrats’ plans of passing a $3.5 trillion budget resolution when the chamber is set to return the week of Aug. 23 unless the chamber also votes on the $1.1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.
House Democrats intended to vote on the $3.5 trillion budget blueprint in late August after the Senate approved the measure this week. The budget blueprint allows both the House and the Senate to craft a reconciliation bill, filled with progressive priorities, that can be passed with a simple majority and without Republican support.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said the House will not vote on the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill until the larger $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill has also cleared the Senate, a condition which is wholeheartedly approved by progressives in her party.
“We have been clear for three months that we are not going to vote for the bipartisan package unless there is a reconciliation package that has passed that includes sufficient funding for our five priorities,” Rep. Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., who heads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, told reporters earlier this month.
In the letter sent to Pelosi on Friday, moderate lawmakers insisted on a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill and have said their districts can’t afford “months of unnecessary delays.”
Democrats have just a three-seat majority in the House. Any handful of members can be potential roadblocks if they are determined enough to challenge Pelosi and the White House.
“The country is clamoring for infrastructure investment and commonsense, bipartisan solutions,” the letter states. “With the livelihoods of hardworking American families at stake, we simply can’t afford months of unnecessary delays and risk squandering this once-in-a-century, bipartisan infrastructure package. It’s time to get shovels in the ground and people to work.”
The letter was spearheaded by Rep. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., a co-chairman of the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus, and endorsed by eight other moderate Democrats: Reps. Henry Cuellar of Texas, Jim Costa of California, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, Filemon Vela of Texas, Vicente Gonzalez of Texas, Jared Golden of Maine, Ed Case of Hawaii and Carolyn Bourdeaux of Georgia.
A senior Democratic aide downplayed the threat Friday and said the moderates represent a small fraction of the larger caucus that approves of Pelosi’s original plan.
“This is 9. There are dozens upon dozens who will vote against the [bipartisan infrastructure bill] unless it’s after the Senate passes reconciliation,” the aide told ABC News.
The aide added that there are “not sufficient votes” to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill this month and noted Pelosi’s comments to her caucus during a private call earlier this week, when she said her plan reflected a “consensus” of House Democrats.
“The president has said he’s all for the bipartisan approach … bravo! That’s progress, but it ain’t the whole vision,” she said. “The votes in the House and Senate depend on us having both bills.”
(WASHINGTON) — The war of words between President Joe Biden, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and other GOP governors escalated Thursday, raising new questions about how much politics and politicians should be involved in potentially life or death public health decisions.
At the White House, Biden addressed the ongoing debate — and in some cases, outright cultural war — around children being required to wear masks in school, arguing it shouldn’t be a “political dispute” even though that’s clearly what much of it has become.
“This isn’t about politics. This is about keeping our children safe,” he said. “To the mayors, school superintendents, educators, local leaders, who are standing up to the governors politicizing mask protection for our kids, thank you.”
Under pressure to act more forcefully as the delta variant rages across the South, Biden said earlier this week the White House is “checking” into how much power the federal government has to intervene as DeSantis threatened to withhold state funding from schools and officials adopting mask mandates in Florida — the state with the highest number of pediatric COVID-19 cases as kids head back to school.
It comes after weeks of growing tensions as some Republican governors — particularly in Florida and Texas — continue to fight against mask and vaccine mandates as COVID-19 cases skyrocket in their states. It also follows the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issuing new guidance recommending indoor masking across-the-board for all staff, students and visitors to K-12 schools, regardless of vaccination status.
Arthur Caplan, a bioethicist expert and founder of the Division of Medical Ethics at the New York University School of Medicine, told ABC News that while the federal government has the authority to intervene — and should — it’s the responsibility of elected officials at the state and local level to rely on experts and not make public health decisions colored by appeals to their political base.
“Politicians have to, in a plague, yield to the best science and medical opinion, consensus opinion, that they can get,” Caplan said. “People who often did not take any science classes past high school should not be telling us how best to manage an infectious disease outbreak.”
Even the most scientific minds, however, can be influenced by politics. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention expert Dr. Rochelle Walensky, in an interview published Thursday, hinted at regretting her decision in May to ditch masks if you’re vaccinated.
“There was an enormous pressure for vaccinated people to be able to do things that they wanted to get back to doing,” she told the Wall Street Journal.
Under pressure to follow the science, but also no doubt aware of polls showing what Americans want, Biden has often repeated he’s leaning on health experts like the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci in making his decisions, putting the onus on local leaders to take precautions, and not, as some critics have urged, using his presidential powers and influence to take more actions at the federal level.
DeSantis has taken a different approach with his political base, sending fundraising emails in recent weeks exploiting the conservative animosity toward the president and Fauci.
Speaking on ABC’s “GMA3” on Thursday, Fauci said it’s “so unfortunate” that an “ideological divide” is stopping some people from getting vaccinated.
“We’re dealing with a public health crisis, and you address a public health crisis by public health principles,” Fauci said. “Ideology, divisiveness has no place in this and yet, in many areas, it seems to dominate.”
Caplan also said it’s political — and the result, in the case of DeSantis, is harming the people of Florida and beyond.
“The core of his party is still anti-mandates, whether it’s vaccine or masks, and has never shown any enthusiasm for tough public health measures, that’s just political and it is true, despite the fact that Trump is vaccinated, Abbott is vaccinated,” Caplan said. “It’s not like conservative GOP leadership hasn’t been vaccinated.”
But thousands of their constituents are not.
An ABC News/Washington Post poll from July illustrates how partisanship has infected pandemic attitudes and behavior.
Ninety-three percent of Democrats say they either have been vaccinated or definitely or probably will do so; that plummets to 49% of Republicans. Independents are between the two at 65%. And while Republicans are far less likely to get a shot, just 24% see themselves as at risk for infection.
“The bottom line is, look at a map, see where the dead and hospitalized people are, then ask yourself, if the governor’s policies in Texas and Florida make any sense,” Caplan said.
Some Republican governors who have issued orders effectively forbidding local officials from requiring masks in schools, continued with a firing exchange of words with the White House this week as kids, many too young to be vaccinated, head back to the classrooms across the country.
Asked on Wednesday about a recent New York Post headline framing Biden as “kneecapping” DeSantis, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the administration is not out to get DeSantis but wants him to participate in their efforts to combat COVID-19 — which, she said, he has not.
“Our war is not on DeSantis. It’s on the virus, which we’re trying to kneecap, and he does not seem to want to participate in that effort to kneecap the virus — hence our concern,” she said at an afternoon press briefing.
DeSantis slammed the White House earlier Wednesday and vowed that he would “fight back vociferously” against any attempt by the administration to find a way to pay the salaries of school officials that defy his state ban on mask mandates as he threatens to withhold state funding from those that adopt them.
“If you’re talking about the federal government coming in and overruling parents and our communities, that would be something that we would fight back vociferously against,” DeSantis told reporters in St. Petersburg outside of an elementary school.
The governor is facing at least two lawsuits from parents, and several school districts in Florida have already voted to mandate masks despite his executive order, citing data in their lawsuits that masks are proven to help slow the spread and noting that most kids are still too young to be eligible for vaccinations.
“It is a common sense, reasonable accommodation for a vulnerable child who is immunocompromised or at risk of a serious disease to require a public entity to implement simple precautions to ensure that the most vulnerable children are safe,” one lawsuit said, adding the order allegedly “harms the children who the disability discrimination laws were enacted to protect.”
The White House has praised the “courage” of school officials who have chosen to defy the order and said it’s looking into whether unused funding from the federal government’s American Rescue Plan could be used to make up the difference in funds DeSantis threatens to withhold. Texas, meanwhile, is dealing a similar hand.
Since Biden last week called out Texas Gov. Greg Abbott by name, along with DeSantis, as leaders who need to “help or get out of the way,” Abbott has also stuck defiantly behind his order banning mask mandates — despite hospitals becoming so overwhelmed that Abbot has called for out-of-state medical personnel to come help mitigate the surge of COVID-19 cases there.
Under Abbott’s order, institutions that defy the governor’s mask mandate ban are subject to a $1,000 fine. At least two school districts there have announced they still will require masks, and the tides appear to be turning in their favor.
“Any school district, public university, or local government official that decides to defy GA-38—which prohibits gov’t entities from mandating masks—will be taken to court,” Abbott said in a tweet.
Amid the growing concerns with sending kids back to school amid a surge in pediatric COVID-19 cases, it’s not clear under what authority the White House will actually step in when it comes to fines to educators. Psaki reiterated on Wednesday they are “looking into ways we can help the leaders at the local level who are putting public health first continue to do their jobs,” and speaking with the Department of Education.
Biden took a shot at those governors restricting schools’ abilities to issue mandates on Tuesday, without naming names, saying, “I find that totally counterintuitive and, quite frankly, disingenuous” but admitted he didn’t currently believe he had the authority under law to directly intervene on any state government’s mask mandate.
“I don’t believe that I do, thus far. We’re checking that,” Biden said.
Caplan told ABC News that the federal government “can and should” look at ways in which Texas and Florida are gaining certain federal benefits and suspend them — “until they drop these absurd prohibitions and return to solid public health advice.”
“I would try to turn up the pain on the governors in terms of economic consequences of their ill-thought-out, morally wrong policies, and the justification is you’re putting the rest of the country at risk,” Caplan said. “Because not only are they endangering their own state residents, they’re putting the rest of us at risk.”
(WASHINGTON) — The State Department will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon will send troops in to help facilitate those departures, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals.
There wasn’t any specific event that led President Joe Biden and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to execute the plan, Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said Thursday afternoon, but rather the overall worsening trend in Afghanistan.
“There wasn’t one precipitating event in the last couple of days that led the president and the secretary to make this decision. It’s a confluence of events, and as I’ve been saying for now for several weeks, we have been watching very closely with concern the security situation on the ground — and far better to be prudent about it and be responsible and watching the trends to make the best decisions you can for safety and security of our people than to wait until it’s too late,” Kirby said.
The events in Afghanistan over the last 24 hours with the Taliban pressuring major Afghan cities was a significant factor in the decision to go forward with the reduction in staffing and the new military mission, a U.S. official told ABC News.
Biden held a meeting with his team Wednesday night and tasked them to come up with recommendations, according to a senior administration official. Then, at a meeting Thursday morning with Austin and national security adviser Jake Sullivan, the recommendations were presented to Biden and he gave the order to move forward.
The official also said the president separately spoke with Secretary of State Antony Blinken Thursday morning to discuss a diplomatic strategy and that Biden continues to be engaged on this issue and is staying in close contact with his team on the situation.
State Department Spokesman Ned Price said that while the embassy in Kabul will remain open, they will be reducing their civilian footprint due to the “evolving security situation.” He added that they expect to draw down to a core diplomatic presence in Afghanistan.
“What this is not — this is not abandonment. This is not an evacuation. This is not the wholesale withdrawal,” Price said Thursday. “What this is, is a reduction in the size of our civilian footprint. This is a drawdown of civilian Americans who will, in many cases, be able to perform their important functions elsewhere, whether that’s in the United States or elsewhere in the region.”
The United Kingdom is also sending military personnel — about 600 paratroopers — to Kabul on a short-term basis to provide support to British nationals leaving the country, according to a joint press release from the Ministry of Defence and Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office. The number of staffers working at the British Embassy in Kabul has also been reduced to a core team focused on providing consular and visa services for those needing to rapidly leave the country.
In a briefing at the Pentagon, the Defense Department’s top spokesman announced that it’s sending 3,000 troops from three infantry battalions — two Marine and one Army — to Kabul’s Hamid Karzai International Airport to help out with the removal of American personnel from the U.S. embassy.
The State Dept. will begin reducing its staff levels at the U.S. embassy in Kabul and the Pentagon will send troops in to help facilitate those departures, as Taliban forces advance on more provincial capitals. @IanPannell & @LMartinezABC report. https://t.co/PILkULaxcqpic.twitter.com/FR2OTOLFNt
They’ll be there “temporarily” and will begin shipping out in the next 24 to 48 hours. These numbers are on top of the 650 already in Kabul protecting the airport and the embassy.
An additional 1,000 personnel will be sent to assist with the processing of Afghans who worked as interpreters, guides and other contractors and applied for Special Immigrant Visas.
“I want to stress that these forces are being deployed to support the orderly and safe reduction of civilian personnel at the request of the State Department and to help facilitate an accelerated process of working through SIV applicants,” Kirby said. “This is a temporary mission with a narrow focus. As with all deployments of our troops into harm’s way, our commanders have the inherent right of self defense, and any attack on them can and will be met with a forceful and appropriate response.”
Furthermore, a brigade of 3,000 to 3,500 soldiers from the 82nd Airborne will be sent to Kuwait to pre-position in case they are needed further.
Kirby called it a “very temporary mission for a very temporary purpose,” and said the DOD expects to keep no more than 1,000 troops in Kabul to protect the airport and embassy after the Aug. 31 deadline — a number that has notably crept up from the 650 troops originally set to remain.
Price said they will continue to relocate qualified Afghans who assisted the American mission, such as interpreters and others who worked for the U.S. government, and flights will ramp up in the coming days.
Vice President Kamala Harris told reporters that after a meeting with business leaders Thursday afternoon she would leave to “continue the briefings that we’ve been receiving.”
The U.S. embassy in Kabul has also urged Americans to evacuate Afghanistan immediately, amid fears that the capital could fall into Taliban hands in a matter of weeks.
A military analysis said the city could be isolated in 30 to 60 days and be captured in 90 days, a U.S. official told ABC News, but that timeline seemed even more accelerated Thursday as the Taliban claimed Herat, Afghanistan’s third-largest city.
This is a developing news story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The Census Bureau on Thursday released the first district-level 2020 census results, setting off redistricting battles that could help determine whether Republicans or Democrats win control of the House of Representatives in the 2022 midterm elections.
The data will not only trigger a rush to redraw congressional and state legislative districts across the country, amid voting rights fights, but also are expected to show how the United States has grown more diverse.
Populations of people of color have grown, while the white population of the United States has shrunk, according to the Washington Post’s preview of the data. Six states and the District of Columbia may now have majority-minority populations.
“Republicans enter this redistricting cycle with the power to redraw 187 congressional districts to Democrats’ 75, which means redistricting could hand control of the House of Representatives back to Republicans in 2022 all by itself,” FiveThirtyEight’s Nathaniel Rakich writes.
Many state legislatures and commissions have already begun to discuss the maps of new congressional and legislative districts, but were waiting for the census data — delayed by the pandemic — before drawing maps.
According to FiveThirtyEight’s redistricting tracker, developed in conjunction with ABC News, at least nine states have upcoming preliminary or final deadlines in fall 2021 for either drafts of or final congressional district maps.
Six states are set to add congressional seats, seven states will each lose one seat and the remaining 37 states will keep the same number of congressional districts, the Census Bureau’s acting director announced in April.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Quinn Scanlan and Rick Klein to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As the delta variant spreads nationwide, the Department of Health and Human Services will require vaccination from more than 25,000 of its employees that directly work with patients, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra announced Thursday.
Going a step beyond the general guidelines for the federal workforce — which is to get vaccinated or be required to wear a mask and do frequent testing — the Department of Health and Human Services is mandating the vaccine for its employees who deal directly with patients. The Department of Veterans Affairs has called for the same policy for its 115,000 health care workers.
Both agencies employ doctors or nurses that could be directly exposed to the virus at work, or directly expose vulnerable patients to it.
The roughly 25,000 HHS employees will have until the end of September to be vaccinated, an HHS official said.
“To increase vaccination coverage and protect more people from COVID-19, including the more transmissible Delta variant, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) will require more than 25,000 members of its health care workforce to be vaccinated against COVID-19,” the department said in a statement.
The 25,000 HHS employees who will be required to get vaccinated are concentrated within the Indian Health Service and National Institute of Health, as well as the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps.
“Staff at the Indian Health Service (IHS) and National Institutes of Health (NIH) who serve in federally-operated health care and clinical research facilities and interact with, or have the potential to come into contact with, patients will be required to receive the COVID-19 vaccine,” HHS said in a statement.
The department will allow exemptions for religious or medical reasons.
(WASHINGTON) — Among the dozens of election reform laws changing rules regarding how voters cast ballots, several have also diminished secretaries of states’ authority over elections or shifted aspects of election administration to highly partisan bodies, such as state legislators themselves or unevenly bipartisan election boards.
“Inserting partisan actors into election administration … is really a worrying trend when you understand it in the context of what happened in 2020,” said Jessica Marsden, counsel for Protect Democracy, a nonprofit founded by former executive branch officials in the White House Counsel’s Office and Department of Justice.
Partnering with States United Democracy Center and Law Forward, Protect Democracy distributed a memo raising the alarm over the “particularly dangerous trend” of state legislatures attempting to “politicize, criminalize, and interfere in election administration.”
Analyzing the Voting Rights Lab’s state-level bill tracker and bill descriptions, ABC News identified at least nine states, including battlegrounds Arizona and Georgia, that have enacted 11 laws so far this year that change election laws by bolstering partisan entities’ power over the process or shifting election-related responsibilities from secretaries of state.
Each law was enacted by a Republican governor or by Republican-controlled legislatures voting to override Democratic governors’ vetoes.
These new laws include one that requires local election boards in Arkansas to refer election law violation complaints to the State Board of Election Commissioners — made up of five Republicans and just one Democrat — instead of their respective county clerks and local prosecutors; another that generally bars the executive and judicial branches in Kansas from modifying election law; and one giving Ohio state legislative leaders the power to intervene in cases challenging state statutes and cases challenging redistricting maps.
‘Backlash’ to officials’ 2020 actions
Some of these changes appear to be in direct retaliation to actions officials took last year around the election.
Arizona Democratic secretary of state, Katie Hobbs, can no longer represent the state in lawsuits defending its election code. That power now lies exclusively with the Republican attorney general — but only through Jan. 2, 2023, when Hobbs’ term ends.
In Kentucky, where the Republican secretary of state and Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear were heralded for their bipartisan collaboration to give electors absentee and early voting options they’d never had before, state law now explicitly opposes such coordination during a state of emergency. Beshear vetoed this bill, which curtails his office’s emergency powers, but the Republican-majority legislature voted to override him.
And in Montana, then-Gov. Steve Bullock, a Democrat, used his emergency powers to authorize counties to conduct all-mail elections for the June primary and November election. Every county opted to do this in June, and about 80% of the state’s counties, including the eight most populous, did in November. But in April, Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte signed into law a bill barring the governor from changing election procedures unless the legislature signs off on it.
“This is unprecedented in ways that I couldn’t have even dreamed up myself,” Audrey Kline, the national policy director for the National Vote At Home Institute, told ABC News. “It does feel like there’s a backlash, and there’s really a misunderstanding about how elections really work.”
Concern over so-called ‘takeover’ provision of Georgia election bill
Georgia’s sweeping election law rewrite, enacted at the end of March, spurred protests, boycott calls and corporate outrage over changes to the voting process.
Gov. Brian Kemp and other Republicans have defended the law as “making it easy to vote and hard to cheat,” but Democrats, including Kemp’s 2018 opponent, Stacey Abrams, described it as “Jim Crow 2.0.”
Both Marsden and Kline pointed to its provisions shifting control over elections as among the most concerning enacted so far.
The law removed Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who withstood direct pressure from then-President Donald Trump to “find” enough votes to overturn the election, as chairman and a voting member of the State Election Board, which investigates potential fraud and irregularities.
But the provision the two experts highlighted is one allowing state legislators to request a “performance review” of local election boards. If the State Election Board, which currently has three Republicans and one Democrat, determines a review yields enough evidence of wrongdoing or negligence under the law, the state will appoint a superintendent who takes on the local, multi-person board’s responsibilities, including hiring and firing power, and certifying elections.
Enough Republican lawmakers have already called for a performance review in Democratic-leaning Fulton County, the most populous in Georgia and the target of several 2020 election conspiracies. It’s a long way from any potential “takeover,” which is how Democrats describe the process, but up to four counties could have a superintendent at once.
How a “takeover” could impact a future election’s outcome is unclear, but the concept itself injects “confusion and uncertainty” into the election process, Marsden argued.
Extreme bills die, but unease for future elections doesn’t
Some of the most extreme pieces of legislation introduced never passed, Marsden noted. In Arizona, a bill that would have given the state legislature power to undo the certification of presidential electors by a simple majority vote up until the inauguration died in committee.
The bill failing isn’t a “safeguard,” she warned, because this is exactly what some Republicans wanted to happen last year to appoint electors supporting Trump in key battleground states he lost, but baselessly claimed he would’ve won if not for nonexistent mass voter fraud.
Trump, who may seek a comeback in 2024, still says it should have happened. He again attacked Kemp in a statement Wednesday for not calling one to appoint new electors, which Kemp said at the time would have been illegal.
But the former president’s vendetta against officials who did not bend to his demands around the election is not as damaging to the election process as the widespread lack of trust Republicans now have in U.S. elections.
Achieving full nonpartisan elections, conceded Kline, is not really possible. But what must exist are “bipartisan counterbalances” — like having a Republican-Democratic duo determine voter intent together when a ballot marking is unclear — and operating under the same set of basic facts.
A checkmark, for example, clearly indicates a voter’s intent, she said, even though voters are supposed to fill in the entire oval on a ballot.
What happens when Americans no longer believe in the same set of facts around elections?
“I think we’re all wrestling with these questions,” Kline said. “Leaving it up to a bipartisan team is probably as close as we can get to a perfect sort of check-and-balance system. But when we can’t agree on basic facts, it becomes more difficult.”
Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As the federal investigation into Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz continues into the summer, sources tell ABC News that Gaetz’s one-time wingman has been steadily providing information and handing over potential evidence that could implicate the Florida congressman and others in the sprawling probe.
Former Seminole County tax collector Joel Greenberg, as part of his ongoing cooperation with prosecutors, has provided investigators with years of Venmo and Cash App transactions and thousands of photos and videos, as well as access to personal social media accounts, sources said.
Private messages exclusively reviewed by ABC News potentially shed new light on the process by which Greenberg allegedly met women online who were paid for sex, and introduced them to the Florida congressman and other associates.
Greenberg pleaded guilty in May to multiple federal crimes, including sex trafficking of a minor and introducing her to other “adult men” who also had sex with her when she was underage. Greenberg agreed to provide “substantial assistance” to prosecutors as part of their ongoing investigation.
Gaetz, who currently sits at the center of the ongoing federal sex trafficking investigation into allegations that he had sex with a minor who he also met through Greenberg, has vehemently denied any wrongdoing and has not been charged with any crime.
ABC News has reviewed Google Voice text messages from September 2018 that appear to show Greenberg texting with a woman he met online. In the texts, Greenberg appears to discuss payment options and asks the woman, who was of legal age, if she would take drugs; he then sets up a get-together with himself, Gaetz, the woman, and one of her friends.
“I have a friend flying in and we are trying to make plans for tonight. What are your plans for later,” Greenberg wrote to the woman, whose identity ABC News is withholding for privacy purposes. “And how much of an allowance will you be requiring :)” Greenberg added.
The woman responded by telling Greenberg she has “a friend who introduced me to the website that I could bring” and said she “usually” requires “$400 per meet.”
Greenberg then sent the woman a photo of Gaetz taking a selfie with students at Pea Ridge Elementary from a 2017 visit, and wrote, “My friend,” indicating that Gaetz would be the friend joining him.
“Oooh my friend thinks he’s really cute!” the woman responded.
Greenberg then replied that Gaetz was “down here only for the day,” adding “we work hard and play hard,” before asking, “Have you ever tried molly,” referring to the drug MDMA, or Ecstasy.
As Greenberg was discussing payment for the get-together, the woman asked if Gaetz used the same website Greenberg had used to meet her. Greenberg replied, in part, “He knows the deal :),” referring to the Florida congressman. The former tax collector then said he would book a “suite Downtown” for the gathering.
Asked about the allegations reported in this article, Harlan Hill, a spokesperson for Gaetz, told ABC News, “After months of media coverage, not one woman has come forward to accuse Rep. Gaetz of wrongdoing. Not even President Biden can say that. That others might invite people unbeknownst to a U.S. Congressman to functions he may or may not attend is the everyday life of a political figure. Your story references people the congressman doesn’t know, things he hasn’t done and messages he neither sent nor received.”
“Rep. Gaetz addressed the debunked allegations against him — and their origin in an extortion plot — during his Firebrand podcast episode last week,” Hill added. “People should download and watch.”
Gaetz himself has also forcefully pushed back against reports of the investigation. After the self-described “sugar daddy” website Seeking.com released a statement claiming to have “no knowledge of Mr. Gaetz ever having an account on the website,” Gaetz said on Twitter that “we are seeing the collapse of the Fake News media’s lies.”
However, The New York Times reported in April that investigators believe it was Greenberg who initially met women through online sugar daddy websites — which connect people who go on dates in exchange for gifts and allowances — and then “introduced the women to Mr. Gaetz, who also had sex with them.”
Additional Facebook messages reviewed by ABC News paint a similar picture, showing Greenberg appearing to organize a gathering in July 2018 that included Gaetz and women the former tax collector had allegedly been paying for sex, at the home of Jason Pirozzolo, a Florida hand doctor who founded a medical marijuana advocacy group and, according to reports, allegedly accompanied Gaetz on a 2018 trip to the Bahamas that investigators are scrutinizing.
The Facebook messages also appear to show Greenberg offering to introduce a Florida media entrepreneur at the meet-up at Pirozzolo’s home, which Greenberg described as “our safe place.”
“You should come meet the group,” Greenberg wrote to the entrepreneur, according to the messages. He then mentioned the names of two girls repeatedly featured on the former tax collector’s Venmo transactions, which ABC News has reviewed.
“I think it would be a wise investment of time. You might already know Jason Pirrazolo … but I’d like for you to meet Congressman Matt Gaetz,” Greenberg wrote. “Gaetz is a wild man, but great dude.”
Greenberg said in the message that the party would have “6-7 chicks” and “just 3-4 guys.” He then provided directions to Pirrazolo’s house, adding, “It’s our safe place, all things considered.”
A few days after the date of the July gathering, the entrepreneur posted a photo on Instagram that appeared to come from a separate get-together and includes the two young women Greenberg had mentioned in his private messages. ABC News is withholding the names of the two women for privacy purposes.
It’s not immediately certain if the gatherings Greenberg was working to arrange in July and September of 2018, over the private messages reviewed by ABC News, ultimately took place around those specific dates. Greenberg had arranged similar gatherings at hotels in the Central Florida area and at friends’ houses, including Pirozzolo’s, with the congressman in attendance, multiple sources who attended the gatherings in the past told ABC News.
Contacted by ABC News, Greenberg’s attorney, Fritz Scheller, said, “The only comment I can make is Joel Greenberg has executed a plea agreement with the government and will continue to honor his obligations pursuant to that agreement.”
Pirozzolo’s attorney, David Haas, declined to comment when reached by ABC News, citing the ongoing investigation.
Last month, a judge granted a request by Greenberg to delay his sentencing for three months, citing the breadth of his continued cooperation with federal prosecutors.
“Mr. Greenberg has been cooperating with the Government and has participated in a series of proffers,” Scheller wrote in a filing requesting the delay. “Said cooperation, which could impact his ultimate sentence, cannot be completed prior to the time of his sentencing.”
Prosecutors did not oppose the delay and a judge approved it a day later.
While Gaetz has appeared to distance himself from Greenberg since news broke regarding the investigation, he previously described Greenberg to acquaintances as his “wingman” and also publicly floated the former tax collector as a potential congressional candidate.
“Joel Greenberg has gone into the Seminole County Tax Collector’s Office, he’s taken it by storm,” Gaetz said in a radio interview on WFLA in June 2017, in which he pushed Greenberg to run for Florida’s 7th congressional district.
“He’s been a disrupter,” Gaetz said of Greenberg. “And if you look at what people want in the country right now, they want that disrupter. And they want someone who is not going to adhere to the dogma that has strangled progress in Washington, D.C., for a generation.”
