(WASHINGTON) — A small lesion removed from first lady Jill Biden’s left eyelid last week has been found to be noncancerous, White House physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor said Thursday.
In a memo, O’Connor shared an update following Biden’s Mohs surgery to remove other cancerous tissue. He said the lesion on Biden’s left eyelid, which was removed through simple excision, was a seborrheic keratosis, a “very common, totally harmless, non-cancerous skin growth.”
No additional treatment will be required, he said.
The first lady underwent the outpatient procedure at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center on Jan. 11 to remove a small lesion above her right eye and on the left side of her chest that were found to be small basal cell carcinomas, in addition to the lesion that was found on her left eyelid, the White House has said.
Last week, O’Connor said that the lesion on the first lady’s left eyelid was being sent for examination.
“Dr. Biden is recovering nicely from her procedures. She is experiencing some anticipated mild bruising and swelling, but feels very well,” O’Connor said in his memo Thursday to the first lady’s press secretary.
President Joe Biden accompanied the first lady to her procedure at Walter Reed last week. He told reporters the next day that she was doing “really well.”
“She’s recovering and she’s gonna be sore for a while because of the work they did on her eyes. … But you know, that’s where one of these [lesions] were. But she is — 0, 0 to 1% chance of ever returning of any cancer, and so thank god,” he said at the time.
The first lady, 71, has urged Americans to get cancer screenings that may have been delayed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Together, we’re going to make sure everyone has access to the screenings they need so that they can catch cancer before it’s deadly,” she said at an October cancer “moonshot” event focused on curbing the disease.
“We’re going to find the best way to help people get vaccines, screenings like mammograms and pap smears, and all of the care that they need — no matter their race, ZIP code or background. And we’re going to come together to accelerate research so we can better treat these diseases and save more lives,” she said.
The moonshot initiative is the Biden White House’s goal to reduce the cancer death rate nationwide by half within 25 years and “end cancer as we know it today.”
(WASHINGTON) — While 2023 will be a less crowded year for elections, because it falls between the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race, it will still feature three governor’s races, in Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi.
Republicans hope to flip one seat and hold another and Democrats hope to hold the third. The results could also begin to show how voters are feeling in the wake of last year’s midterms and before they head back to the polls to vote for president.
Last year was a successful one for Democratic gubernatorial candidates, with the party flipping Arizona, Maryland and Massachusetts.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, chair of the Democratic Governors Association (DGA), said that Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly, the current vice-chair of the DGA, will be important in applying the lessons learned from the wins in traditionally red states and states with a history of Republican leaders.
Of the gubernatorial races in 2023, Kentucky and Louisiana are held by Democrats.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear was elected in 2019, ousting Republican Gov. Matt Bevin, and is seeking reelection. Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards is term-limited.
Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, is seeking reelection as well.
Kentucky
The Republican primary in Kentucky, scheduled for May, is shaping up to be a serious competition to face off against Beshear in November.
State Attorney General Daniel Cameron, state Agriculture Commissioner Ryan Quarles and businesswoman Kelly Craft, a U.S. ambassador to the U.N. under President Donald Trump, are among those running in the Republican primary.
Cameron, who scored an early endorsement from Trump, is the first Black attorney general in the state’s history. He garnered national attention in 2020 for how his team handled a grand jury who then did not indict the Louisville officers who shot Breonna Taylor for any direct wrongdoing in her death.
The Kentucky governor’s race will be a test to see if Democrats can continue wielding power in a state where Trump beat President Joe Biden by more than 25 points.
But Democrats do have an edge in the race due to having a popular incumbent running for reelection. In Louisiana, though, they’ll have to field a potential successor to Edwards.
“Clearly, our top priority is to get Andy Beshear reelected in Kentucky,” Murphy said. “John Bel Edwards has been a phenomenal governor in Louisiana … but John Bell is term-limited. So, we’ve got to find somebody to step into his shoes and that’s a process that is unfolding.”
Louisiana
Currently, four Republicans are running in the Louisiana governor race: state Rep. Richard Nelson, state Sen. Sharon Hewitt, state Treasurer John Schroder and state Attorney General Jeff Landry. But despite the state’s primary being 10 months away, in October, the Louisiana Republican Party gave an early endorsement to Landry in November, which sparked some outcry from other politicians in the state.
“There is nothing more conservative, nothing more [Republican], than competition,” Lt. Gov. Billy Nungesser tweeted. “This endorsement process looks more like communist China than the Louisiana we know and love. Some think this is a coronation. Real republicans will make sure we have an election, not a monarchy.”
Edwards, the Democrat who is term-limited, was first elected in 2015. He notably departs from others in his party on key issues like abortion access.
Mississippi
Lastly, in Mississippi, a state where Democrats haven’t won the governor’s office since 1998 and will likely be facing their toughest race, Murphy insisted they aren’t taking it off the map.
“We think with the right candidate and contrasting what we as Democrats stand for up against the actual middling record of the current incumbent, that’s a state that we’re going to take very seriously,” he said of Reeves, who is touting accomplishments in local schools as part of his bid.
Brandon Presley, a distant cousin of Elvis Presley (their grandfathers were brothers), announced last week that he is running for governor of Mississippi.
Presley, who has served on the Public Service Commission since 2007, describes himself as a “Populist, FDR-Billy McCoy Democrat” and is known for reaching across the aisle. He endorsed the reelection campaign of former President George W. Bush in 2004.
(WASHINGTON) — Embattled Rep. George Santos, who’s facing calls to resign over a string of lies and exaggerations about his background, has denied reports that he performed as a drag queen years ago in Brazil.
“The most recent obsession from the media claiming that I am a drag Queen or ‘performed’ as a drag Queen is categorically false,” Santos, who has publicly supported Republicans’ “Don’t Say Gay” bill in Florida, wrote on Twitter Thursday. “The media continues to make outrageous claims about my life while I am working to deliver results.”
The freshman representative, who was sworn in to Congress this month, has admitted to “embellishing” some details regarding his background, but has refused to step down despite calls from some members of his own party.
A popular Brazilian drag queen named Eula Rochard, who initially posted the claims on social media, told ABC News in an interview that he knew Santos over ten years ago when he says Santos used the drag queen name Kitara Ravache.
Rochard told ABC News that he knew Santos, who at times in the past has reportedly gone by his middle names, Anthony Devolder, as “Anthony.” He said the two met in 2005 when the now-embattled congressman was a teenager.
Rochard, who lives in Brazil, shared an image with ABC News that he said is a photo of him with Santos dressed in drag as Kitara Ravache, from a Brazilian newspaper, Grito Gay.
“He was a huge liar already. Oh yes, he was such a liar,” Rochard recalled.
Rochard said that he did not recall Santos ever having political ambitions when he knew him.
According to Rochard, Santos registered to be a part of a 2008 “Miss Gay Rio de Janeiro” drag queen competition, but “he did not win Miss Drag Queen contest.”
Santos, who has been widely criticized for fabricating much of his resume, ran in New York as an openly gay Republican.
Since joining Congress, Santos has aligned himself with the far-right wing of the Republican Party, which has targeted the drag queen community and pushed policies that LGBTQ activists have condemned.
He voiced support as recently as last April for Florida Republicans’ Parental Rights in Education bill, HB 1557, which was dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill by LGBTQ activists.
The bill, which Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed into law last March, bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, and stipulates that any instruction on those topics cannot occur “in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” according to the legislation.
“The Left is hellbent on creating a false narrative because they want to groom our kids … As a gay man, I UNAPOLOGETICALLY support this law!” Santos wrote on his Facebook page.
(WASHINGTON) — The United States on Thursday reached its borrowing limit, the Treasury Department said, teeing up a congressional showdown later this year with potentially devastating economic consequences.
The federal government can pay most but not all of its bills with the tax and other revenue it takes in, and it must borrow the rest of the money. But Congress enforces a limit on how much debt the government can incur and when that limit — currently about $31.4 trillion — is reached, lawmakers must increase it before the government can borrow more funds.
Republicans in the House say they will insist on deep spending cuts in exchange for their cooperation in again raising the debt ceiling. But Democrats, led by the Biden administration, want a so-called clean hike without concessions on spending and they are publicly signaling they won’t negotiate on the matter.
Thursday’s deadline isn’t yet an economic calamity. But it does mean that the Treasury is going to begin stretching its funds by implementing what Secretary Janet Yellen last week called “extraordinary measures” to keep the federal government fully funded and to avoid a default on its debts.
A full default has never happened — the Congressional Research Service cited a “mini-default” in 1979 that was linked to delayed payments to some investors — but if one did occur, it would likely downgrade the nation’s credit rating, damage its ability to borrow and cause markets around the globe to roil.
Treasury’s newly enacted measures, like cutting contributions to employees’ retirement plans, are expected to stave off bigger problems through sometime this summer, according to a letter Yellen sent to congressional leaders on Friday, giving Congress just a few months to act.
“The use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time,” Yellen wrote in her letter. “It is therefore critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit. Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and the global financial stability.”
With the clock ticking on the divided Congress, political brinkmanship on raising the federal debt limit — a move that has come to be seen as politically poisonous in recent years, after fiscal fights under President Barack Obama — is already reaching an all-time high.
Republicans now hold the gavel in the House, and they have said they’ll look to extract major concessions from Democrats in exchange for their necessary cooperation to raise the federal cap. Newly minted Speaker Kevin McCarthy holds the reins on negotiations in the chamber.
To secure the speakership, McCarthy made major promises to the conservative wing of his conference, including seeking to reduce federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels. The Republicans who supported McCarthy will expect him to use the debt limit as leverage for these cuts.
McCarthy said he wants to negotiate directly with President Joe Biden.
“I had a very good conversation with the president when he called me, and I told him I’d like to sit down with him early and work through these challenges,” McCarthy said during a press conference last week. “We don’t want to put any fiscal problems on our economy and we won’t. But fiscal problems would be continuing to do business as usual.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has side-stepped questions on whether the two men will meet.
“Congress is going to need to address the debt without conditions. And it’s just that simple. There should be no hostage-taking here. There should be no attempts to exploit the debt ceiling or to leverage it,” she said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“As you’ve heard us say before, we will not be doing any negotiation over the debt ceiling,” she said last week. “It’s not and should not be a political football. … And that’s how we see this process moving forward.”
On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the White House has been “reaching out to all members from both sides of the aisle” but said again that the administration didn’t want to compromise on the debt ceiling. She said both parties have repeatedly voted to raise the limit in the past, including under President Donald Trump.
“It is essential for Congress to recognize that dealing with the debt ceiling is their constitutional responsibility. This is an easy one. This is something that should be happening without conditions,” she said.
While the debt limit fight will likely be heightened in the House, Senate Republicans have a bargaining chip of their own: They remain the minority party in the chamber but at least 60 votes are needed to enact any legislation raising the ceiling.
Senate Democrats could seek a higher debt limit through reconciliation, which requires only 50 votes, with Vice President Kamala Harris breaking a tie. But that process is time-intensive and could still be blocked by House Republicans.
The last time the limit had to be raised, in late 2021, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted Democrats increase it on their own. McConnell cut a deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer which saw a group of Republicans approve a one-time change to the chamber rules, allowing that debt hike to occur with just 50 votes — all from Democrats.
But that was before Senate Democrats passed Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act a few months later without any Republican support. This time, McConnell might be less inclined to bargain.
Some Senate Democrats wanted to raise the debt limit before House Republicans took control of the lower chamber in January. But they ran out of time to do it during the lame duck session at the end of the last Congress.
Schumer said on CNN last week that he doesn’t regret leaving the debt limit to this term.
“It should be done in a bipartisan way. It always has been,” he said.
He pointed to the 2021 deal he struck with McConnell.
“I think Republicans learned their lesson,” he said. “They suffered, we won the election after that [in 2012], and they will hopefully come and work with us and get this done in a bipartisan way. That’s what we look to do, no brinkmanship.”
While the Biden administration prepares to go toe-to-toe with Republicans, some members of the House GOP conference are crafting a plan to address what might happen if they and Democrats don’t reach a deal to lift the borrowing limit.
The Republican proposal, if it becomes law, would require the Biden administration to prioritize paying back certain debts over others. News of the deal was first reported by The Washington Post.
Sources familiar with the ongoing talks said McCarthy, R-Calif., committed to conservatives that the House would pass the deal and send it to the Senate in the first quarter of 2023 as part of his larger agreement to secure votes to become speaker.
A spokesperson for McCarthy did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment.
Lauren Fine, a spokesperson for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, told ABC News that discussions around the plan “are ongoing with the conference, and the Leader remains a strong proponent of this legislation.”
Even if this legislation passes the House, it almost certainly will not be taken up by Schumer in the Senate.
The Treasury has previously pushed back on the feasibility that it could prioritize certain bills over others, citing legal and logistical issues.
ABC News’ Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Sometime Thursday, the United States is expected to reach its borrowing limit, teeing up a congressional showdown later this year with potentially devastating economic consequences.
The federal government can pay most but not all of its bills with the tax and other revenue it takes in, and it must borrow the rest of the money. But Congress enforces a limit on how much debt the government can incur and when that limit — currently about $31.4 trillion — is reached, lawmakers must increase it before the government can borrow more funds.
Republicans in the House say they will insist on deep spending cuts in exchange for their cooperation in again raising the debt ceiling. But Democrats, led by the Biden administration, want a so-called clean hike without concessions on spending and they are publicly signaling they won’t negotiate on the matter.
Thursday’s deadline isn’t yet an economic calamity. But it does mean that the Treasury is going to begin stretching its funds by implementing what Secretary Janet Yellen last week called “extraordinary measures” to keep the federal government fully funded and to avoid a default on its debts.
A full default has never happened — the Congressional Research Service cited a “mini-default” in 1979 that was linked to delayed payments to some investors — but if one did occur, it would likely downgrade the nation’s credit rating, damage its ability to borrow and cause markets around the globe to roil.
Treasury’s newly enacted measures, like cutting contributions to employees’ retirement plans, are expected to stave off bigger problems through sometime this summer, according to a letter Yellen sent to congressional leaders on Friday, giving Congress just a few months to act.
“The use of extraordinary measures enables the government to meet its obligations for only a limited amount of time,” Yellen wrote in her letter. “It is therefore critical that Congress act in a timely manner to increase or suspend the debt limit. Failure to meet the government’s obligations would cause irreparable harm to the U.S. economy, the livelihoods of all Americans, and the global financial stability.”
With the clock ticking on the divided Congress, political brinkmanship on raising the federal debt limit — a move that has come to be seen as politically poisonous in recent years, after fiscal fights under President Barack Obama — is already reaching an all-time high.
Republicans now hold the gavel in the House, and they have said they’ll look to extract major concessions from Democrats in exchange for their necessary cooperation to raise the federal cap. Newly minted Speaker Kevin McCarthy holds the reins on negotiations in the chamber.
To secure the speakership, McCarthy made major promises to the conservative wing of his conference, including seeking to reduce federal spending to fiscal year 2022 levels. The Republicans who supported McCarthy will expect him to use the debt limit as leverage for these cuts.
McCarthy said he wants to negotiate directly with President Joe Biden.
“I had a very good conversation with the president when he called me, and I told him I’d like to sit down with him early and work through these challenges,” McCarthy said during a press conference last week. “We don’t want to put any fiscal problems on our economy and we won’t. But fiscal problems would be continuing to do business as usual.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre has side-stepped questions on whether the two men will meet.
“Congress is going to need to address the debt without conditions. And it’s just that simple. There should be no hostage-taking here. There should be no attempts to exploit the debt ceiling or to leverage it,” she said during a press briefing on Tuesday.
“As you’ve heard us say before, we will not be doing any negotiation over the debt ceiling,” she said last week. “It’s not and should not be a political football. … And that’s how we see this process moving forward.”
On Wednesday, Jean-Pierre told reporters that the White House has been “reaching out to all members from both sides of the aisle” but said again that the administration didn’t want to compromise on the debt ceiling. She said both parties have repeatedly voted to raise the limit in the past, including under President Donald Trump.
“It is essential for Congress to recognize that dealing with the debt ceiling is their constitutional responsibility. This is an easy one. This is something that should be happening without conditions,” she said.
While the debt limit fight will likely be heightened in the House, Senate Republicans have a bargaining chip of their own: They remain the minority party in the chamber but at least 60 votes are needed to enact any legislation raising the ceiling.
The last time the limit had to be raised, in late 2021, Minority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted Democrats increase it on their own. McConnell cut a deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer which saw a group of Senate Republicans approve a one-time change to the chamber rules, allowing that debt hike to occur with just 50 votes — all from Democrats.
But that was before Senate Democrats passed Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act a few months later without any Republican support. This time, McConnell might be less inclined to bargain.
Some Senate Democrats wanted to raise the debt limit before House Republicans took control of the lower chamber in January. But they ran out of time to do it during the lame duck session at the end of the last Congress.
Schumer said on CNN last week that he doesn’t regret leaving the debt limit to this term.
“It should be done in a bipartisan way. It always has been,” he said.
He pointed to the 2021 deal he struck with McConnell.
“I think Republicans learned their lesson,” he said. “They suffered, we won the election after that [the 2012 midterms], and they will hopefully come and work with us and get this done in a bipartisan way. That’s what we look to do, no brinkmanship.”
While the Biden administration prepares to go toe-to-toe with Republicans, some members of the House GOP conference are crafting a plan to address what might happen if they and Democrats don’t reach a deal to lift the borrowing limit.
The Republican proposal, if it becomes law, would require the Biden administration to prioritize paying back certain debts over others. News of the deal was first reported by The Washington Post.
Sources familiar with the ongoing talks said McCarthy, R-Calif., committed to conservatives that the House would pass the deal and send it to the Senate in the first quarter of 2023 as part of his larger agreement to secure votes to become speaker.
A spokesperson for McCarthy did not respond to calls and messages seeking comment.
Lauren Fine, a spokesperson for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, told ABC News that discussions around the plan “are ongoing with the conference, and the Leader remains a strong proponent of this legislation.”
Even if this legislation passes the House, it almost certainly will not be taken up by Schumer in the Senate.
The Treasury has previously pushed back on the feasibility that it could prioritize certain bills over others, citing legal and logistical issues.
(NEW YORK) — Rep. George Santos this week denied a Navy veteran’s claim that he allegedly ran a fundraiser for the veteran’s ill dog in 2016 — and then never shared the thousands raised.
Santos, R-N.Y., has faced mounting criticism and calls to resign, including from some in his party, over a string of lies and exaggerations about his background. He has admitted to “embellishing” some details, but has said he will not step down, suggesting he’ll defer to his constituents to either reelect him or vote him out in the next election.
Navy veteran Richard Osthoff added to the string of accusations against Santos when he told Patch, in a story published Tuesday night, that Santos strung him along rather than provide the money for his dog’s care that was raised via an online fundraiser.
Osthoff is disabled and was discharged from the Navy in 2002, according to Patch. He said that he was living out of a tent and his service dog, Sapphire, was sick with a tumor in 2016 when he was referred to Friends of Pets United, which he believed was a pet charity that Santos was running at the time, when Santos was going by the name Anthony Devolder.
The IRS’ online records do not currently list a charity under that name.
Santos opened a fundraiser for Sapphire on GoFundMe and raised $3,000 but later became uncooperative and unresponsive and didn’t provide the money to treat Sapphire, Osthoff alleged to Patch.
Osthoff never managed to get Sapphire the proper treatment, he said, and she died in January 2017.
According to Patch, a screenshot of a November 2016 post from Osthoff’s Facebook page shows him writing that “we were scammed by Anthony Devolder … and Friends of Pets United.”
Patch reported that it was given texts and Facebook screenshots corroborating Osthoff’s account but could not find an archived version of the since-deleted GoFundMe page that he described.
The online news outlet Semafor found an April 2016 tweet from another user apparently referencing a fundraiser for Sapphire by an “Anthony Devolder.”
Osthoff told Patch that Santos told him he “didn’t do things my way” and Santos redirected the money “for other dogs.”
Santos denied Osthoff’s allegations to Semafor, texting a reporter there that it was “fake” and he has “no clue who this is,” in reference to Osthoff.
Texts that Osthoff provided to Patch from “Anthony Devolder” show he was told by Devolder in November 2016: “Sapphire is not a candidate for this surgery [and] the funds are moved to the next animal in need.”
“We will make sure we use of resources [sic] to keep her comfortable!” Osthoff was texted by Devolder, according to what Osthoff shared with Patch.
ABC News has reached out to Santos for comment and has not received a response.
In a statement to ABC News, GoFundMe spokesperson Jalen Drummond said the platform received a “report of an issue with this fundraiser in late 2016.”
“Our trust and safety team sought proof of the delivery of funds from the organizer. The organizer failed to respond, which led to the fundraiser being removed and the email associated with that account prohibited from further use on our platform,” Drummond said. “GoFundMe has a zero tolerance policy for misuse of our platform and cooperates with law enforcement investigations of those accused of wrongdoing.”
A source confirms it was Santos running the GoFundMe in 2016.
In an interview on Wednesday with ABC’s WABC-TV in New York and other local news, Osthoff recalled the end of Sapphire’s life.
“I grabbed her by the paws. I put my mouth up to her nose and I inhaled her last breath because I wanted her soul inside of my body,” he said.
Osthoff said “of course” he’s still angry over what happened.
“More, just, I’m at a loss. This is the strangest thing that’s ever happened to me,” he said. “I can’t believe that I was so vulnerable that I allowed myself to be used like that. I’m more ashamed, I think, that I let that happen than I am angry.”
When he reached out to Santos after being referred to the charity, he told WABC, “I took his help. I needed it. I needed that dog to survive. And I didn’t have any inkling of idea that it was a scam at first; had no clue.”
Osthoff said Sapphire was a major support for him: “She knew when my moods were changing. She knew when I was depressed … She pressed herself up against me; she would climb on me; she knew something was happening. So I would put all my concentration on her, and whatever was triggering me went to the back of my mind.”
Osthoff said his only interactions with Santos were through phone calls and texts. He said he did not know who Santos really was until he saw him on television a few weeks ago outside the Capitol being chased by reporters.
“I got a sick feeling in my stomach when I saw his face,” Osthoff told WABC.
New Jersey Veterans Network President Michael Boll, a veteran and retired police sergeant, said he tried to help Osthoff and intervene in the situation.
“It really just hurts us so much to know that people are out there taking advantage of veterans that are in need,” Boll told WABC on Wednesday.
Boll also confirmed Osthoff’s service with the Navy, telling WABC he had served on the USS Nimitz.
Maj. Gen. Paul Eaton, a senior adviser to advocacy group and PAC VoteVets, said in a statement: “There is not much that’s lower in this world than stealing from a disabled veteran with a terminally ill dog … Santos must be referred to the [House] Ethics Committee and must face an eventual expulsion vote, if he will not step down.”
Santos has previously apologized for some of his fabrications but cast them as more routine resume embellishments. He told The New York Post last month, “I am not a criminal.”
ABC News on Wednesday also obtained documents showing Santos’ mother was not in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks, as he claims.
The records were first reported by The Forward, a Jewish news outlet, and The Washington Post. They were obtained by genealogist Alex Calzareth, who requested them under the Freedom of Information Act and subsequently provided them to ABC News and other news outlets.
According to the documents from the Department of Homeland Security’s U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services, Santos’ mom, Fatima Devolder, applied in February 2003 for an immigrant visa from the American consulate in Brazil. The form states that she had not been in the United States since June 1999.
However, Santos wrote in a tweet in 2021 that “9/11 claimed my mother’s life…”
His campaign website currently states that his mother “was in her office in the South Tower on September 11, 2001, when the horrific events of that day unfolded. She survived the tragic events on September 11th, but she passed away a few years later when she lost her battle to cancer.”
An online obituary for his mother, reviewed by ABC News, states that she died on Dec. 23, 2016.
Santos’ team did not respond to a further request for comment about the discrepancies over his mother and 9/11.
In a press release, DeSantis, a Republican, said he is proposing legislation that will prevent employment decisions based on COVID-19 vaccination status and prevent schools or businesses from requiring face coverings.
The legislation would specifically prohibit COVID-19 vaccine passports in Florida; prohibit vaccine and mask requirements in Florida schools; prohibit masking requirements by businesses; and prohibit employees from being hired or fired based on whether or not they have received a COVID-19 vaccine.
These would extend a number of measures DeSantis signed in 2021, which he has previously called “unscientific” and “unnecessary,” which were set to expire in July.
“When the world lost its mind, Florida was a refuge of sanity, serving strongly as freedom’s linchpin,” DeSantis said in a statement. “These measures will ensure Florida remains this way and will provide landmark protections for free speech for medical practitioners.”
During a speech in Panama City, DeSantis criticized state-level and national-level efforts to reinstate mask and vaccine mandates, claiming these measures clash with personal freedom.
“It required us over the past few years to stand against major institutions in our society: the bureaucracy, the medical establishment, legacy media and even the president of the United States who, together, were working to impose a bio-medical security state on society,” he said.
Throughout the course of the pandemic, DeSantis has been outspoken about his opposition to lockdowns and closures.
The move was backed by Florida’s Surgeon General Dr. Joseph Ladapo. Since Ladapo assumed the position in September 2021, he has been accused by many experts of spreading misinformation on COVID-19 and promoting vaccine hesitancy.
In March 2022, Ladapo recommended healthy children in Florida not receive the COVID-19 vaccine, directly contradicting guidelines from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
“As a health sciences researcher and physician, I have personally witnessed accomplished scientists receive threats due to their unorthodox positions,” Ladapo said in a statement. “However, many of these positions have proven to be correct, as we’ve all seen over the past few years. All medical professionals should be encouraged to engage in scientific discourse without fearing for their livelihoods or their careers.”
DeSantis, whose name has been floated as a possible GOP candidate in 2024, called for an investigation last month into whether Floridians were misled by pharmaceutical companies about the safety and side effects of COVID-19 vaccines.
The Florida Supreme Court agreed to DeSantis’s request for a grand jury, which will meet for one year before making a decision.
Liberal and conservative voters have been divided on COVID-19 vaccines and mandates since the shots were first rolled out.
(NEW YORK) — A forthcoming book by a former prosecutor could harm the ongoing criminal investigation into former President Donald Trump and his family real estate company, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said Wednesday.
That investigation led to the recent conviction of the Trump Organization and appeared to accelerate again on Tuesday when Bragg met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney, about the hush payment Cohen says he helped arrange to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who alleged a long-denied affair with Trump.
The book’s author, former prosecutor Mark Pomerantz, was assigned to the Trump case by then-District Attorney Cy Vance. Pomerantz and another senior prosecutor, Carey Dunne, quit last February over their disagreements with Bragg about how the case should proceed.
Pomerantz’s publisher, Simon & Schuster, announced last week that the book, entitled “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” will be released next month.
Bragg’s office sent a letter to both Simon & Schuster and Pomerantz, expressing concern that the book could interfere with the ongoing investigation.
“Based on the pre-publication descriptions of his book and the benefit of current knowledge of the matter, but without access to the manuscript, this Office believes there is a meaningful risk that the publication will materially prejudice ongoing criminal investigations and related adjudicative proceedings,” read the letter, a copy of which was obtained by ABC News.
The letter was signed by Bragg’s general counsel, Leslie Dubeck, and requested 60 days to review the manuscript, which would delay the Feb. 7 publication date.
“The District Attorney’s interest here is to protect the integrity of this Office’s pending criminal investigations and proceedings regarding the former President,” the letter said. “The Office urges Mr. Pomerantz not to take any further steps that would damage an ongoing criminal investigation.”
In a statement provided to ABC News, Pomerantz said, “I am confident that all of my actions with respect to the Trump investigation, including the writing of my forthcoming book, are consistent with my legal and ethical obligations.”
Representatives for Simon & Schuster told ABC News in a statement, “We stand behind Mark Pomerantz and his book, People vs. Donald Trump, and look forward to sharing this important and timely work with readers when it is published on February 7.”
Demetrius Freeman/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Wednesday again avoided questions about an investigation into documents marked classified found at his home and office, six days after a special counsel was named to investigate the matter.
Biden had no public events planned for Wednesday, after spending the holiday weekend at his Delaware home, out of the public eye, and not responding to reporters’ shouted questions during unrelated events Tuesday and late last week.
The president has not yet offered a public reaction since Attorney General Merrick Garland on Thursday appointed Robert Hur to investigate the potential mishandling of classified documents.
As it works to contain the political fallout, the White House has referred numerous questions to the Justice Department, saying it did not want to interfere with an ongoing investigation.
But the Justice Department has not said publicly if it has asked or advised the White House to refrain from commenting during its investigation, which it launched in November shortly after documents were first found.
And at a news conference Wednesday, Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco declined to comment when asked by ABC News at a news conference whether the department had told the White House it cannot discuss details surrounding the documents.
The White House has said it is cooperating with Hur – as it said it had with the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation – and the White House counsel’s office has disclosed some information in a series of written statements. Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, also released a statement over the weekend explaining how the search process had worked.
But the White House has also left some key questions unanswered, including about the nature of the documents found and why it did not inform the public sooner.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre and a spokesperson for the White House counsel’s office, Ian Sams, have repeatedly referred reporters’ questions to the Justice Department, which itself has not shared much information.
“When it comes to the Department of Justice, when it comes to legal matters, when it comes to legal issues, we have been very clear that we are not going to comment, we are not going to politically interfere,” Jean-Pierre told reporters at a briefing Tuesday. “And that continues with this, also — this legal issue.”
The president himself has addressed the topic just twice since a news report on Jan. 9 made public the fact that documents marked classified had been found at an office he used after he left the vice presidency.
Biden answered one question about the matter the next day. Then, after the White House disclosed more documents had been found, on Thursday he responded to a reporter who asked about that new batch.
On Tuesday, face-to-face with reporters at an Oval Office meeting with the prime minister of the Netherlands, Biden appeared to smile as a reporter shouted whether he would commit to speaking with the special counsel. But he did not otherwise respond.
Meanwhile, the National Archives has told the Republican chair of the House Oversight Committee that before the Archives can turn over records to the panel that the Justice Department needs to consult with the newly appointed special counsel “to assess whether information can be released without interfering” in the investigation into classified documents discovered at the Penn Biden Center and at Biden’s Wilmington home.
Acting Archivist Debra Wall said in a letter to Rep. James Comer that a search had begun for the information the committee requested relating to the Biden documents and advised the Archives would need to consult with DOJ on the release of any such records.
ABC News’ Alexander Mallin, Katherine Faulders, Will Steakin and Luaren Peller contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Reported threats to members of Congress in 2022 declined by more than 2,000 since the record-breaking 9,625 that were reported in 2021, according to statistics released on Tuesday by the U.S. Capitol Police.
In total, there were 7,501 threat cases investigated by Capitol Police last year, the agency said.
“The threats against Members of Congress are still too high,” Chief Tom Manger said in a statement. “This has resulted in a necessary expansion of, not only our investigative capabilities, but our protection responsibilities as well.”
“While that work is ongoing, everyone continuing to decrease violent political rhetoric across the country is the best way to keep everyone safe,” Manger said.
The record-high threats two years ago came in the wake of the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol, which temporarily sent members of Congress into lockdown. Despite the decrease in 2022, there were notable incidents of violence related to lawmakers.
Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was assaulted at their California home in October. The suspect was allegedly looking for Nancy Pelosi, according to police.
Threats to members of Congress have been on the rise since 2017, when there were 3,939, according to Capitol Police data.
As part of its response, the agency has hired attorneys who are detailed to the Department of Justice to work as prosecutors specializing in the threat cases. These prosecutors, known as special assistant U.S. attorneys, do not work on cases related to Jan. 6.
