(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Biden and first lady to meet with families of Surfside condo collapse victims
The death toll has risen to 18 after the bodies of two children were found on Wednesda…
President Joe Biden is on the ground in Surfside, Florida, Thursday following the devastating partial collapse of a beachside condominium building last week that has killed at least 18 people.
The president departed the White House early Thursday morning and was planning to spend nearly eight hours on the ground in Florida. He’s already met with local officials and thanked first responders engaged in the ongoing search efforts ahead of consoling families affected by the disaster and delivering remarks at 3:50 p.m. ET. First lady Jill Biden is accompanying him for the visit.
At an earlier command briefing with local officials, seated next to Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Biden immediately made a big offer to cover the cost of the response effort.
“I think there’s more we can do, including, I think we have the power, and I’ll know shortly, to be able to pick up 100% of the cost to the county and the state,” Biden said, eliciting a surprised reaction from Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who put her hand on Biden’s arm.
“I think the governor will you tell you, anything he asked for, he got,” Biden said, ahead of DeSantis nodding in agreement.
Biden took a moment to turn to politics, noting the bipartisan display of cooperation
“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate when it’s really important,” Biden said.
Meeting later with a group of first responders, Biden was effusive with praise.
“I just want you to know that we understand,” he told the responder. “What you’re doing now, is just hard as hell. Even psychologically. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He also invoked three personal stories to demonstrate the importance of first responders in his own life, referring to his experience having an aneurysm, describing his two sons being pulled out of the car crash that killed his first wife and daughter with the jaws of life and explaining that his home burned down after being struck by lightning.
“You saved my life. Literally, my fire department saved my life,” he said.
Search and rescue efforts were paused Thursday morning due to concerns about the stability of the remaining structure and the potential danger it poses to the crews. Structural engineers are on-site monitoring the situation as officials evaluate possible options and determine the next steps, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
“We’re doing everything that we can to ensure that the safety of our first responders is paramount and to continue our search and rescue operations as soon as it is safe to do so,” she said at an earlier press conference.
Officials were unable to provide a timeline for when the urgent operation will resume.
Separately, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the visit has been closely coordinated with officials on the ground to ensure that it does not divert any resources away from search and rescue operations.
“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search and rescue teams, and everyone who has been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones, to offer them comfort as search and rescue efforts continue. And they want to make sure that state and local officials have the resources and support they need under the emergency declaration,” Psaki said earlier this week.
En route to Florida, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that local leaders urged the Bidens to visit Thursday, saying the time was right despite ongoing search and rescue efforts.
“The message that we’ve been given is very clear from the mayor’s office, from the governor’s office, from local officials, which is, they wanted us to come today, think now is the time to come, to offer up, offer up comfort and show unity from not just from him, but the country. And so this is why he and the first lady decided to come today, and he thought this was the right time to do it,” Jean-Pierre said.
(WASHINGTON) — A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, rejecting claims that they discriminate against minority voters and imposing new limits on the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The 6-to-3 decision, breaking along ideological lines, overturned a lower court ruling to uphold Arizona’s policy of invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and a law criminalizing the collection of mail ballots by third-party community groups or campaigns.
Democrats had argued that data show both restrictions disproportionately hurt Latino and Native American voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any policy that “results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote of any citizen on account of race or color.”
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s six conservatives, said Section 2 requires equal openness to voting, not equal outcomes.
“It appears that the core of [Section 2] is the requirement that voting be ‘equally open.’ The statute’s reference to equal ‘opportunity’ may stretch that concept to some degree to include consideration of a person’s ability to use the means that are equally open. But equal openness remains the touchstone,” Alito wrote.
“Mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of [Section 2],” he added.
Civil rights advocates, Democrats and the court’s three liberal justices warned that the decision’s more stringent approach to racial disparity in voting will weaken the protections intended by Congress.
“This Court has no right to remake Section 2. Maybe some think that vote suppression is a relic of history — and so the need for a potent Section 2 has come and gone. But Congress gets to make that call,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. “Because it has not done so, this Court’s duty is to apply the law as it is written.”
“The law that confronted one of this country’s most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court,” she wrote.
The decision is the court’s most significant on voting rights in nearly a decade since the justices in 2013 effectively gutted Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which had required states with a history of discrimination to “pre-clear” any new voting rules with the Justice Department.
The ruling could have a sweeping impact on the fate of state election laws as dozens of GOP-led states push for voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud. Republicans in 48 states are pushing more than 389 restrictive bills that would make it more difficult to cast a ballot, according to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice.
While the Court’s conservative majority declined to lay out a sweeping new test for when state voting rules discriminate on race, it did make clear they will cast a skeptical eye on future challenges to similar measures.
Justice Alito offered a series of “guideposts” for judges to consider: the size of a voting rule’s burden; the degree to which it departs from past practice; the size of racial disparities; and the overall level of opportunity afforded voters within a state’s entire system for casting a ballot.
“No one suggests that discrimination in voting has been extirpated or that the threat has been eliminated,” Alito wrote, “but Section 2 does not deprive the states of their authority to establish non-discriminatory voting rules.”
Justice Kagan called Alito’s list of guidelines “a list of mostly made-up factors at odds with Section 2 itself.”
The law, she says, is written with a focus squarely on the effects of a voting restriction. “It asks not about why state officials enacted a rule, but about whether that rule results in racial discrimination. The discrimination that is of concern is inequality in voting opportunity.”
Democrats and civil rights advocates say the guidelines laid out by Alito will make it more difficult to win legal challenges against restrictions like tighter rules for absentee ballots, reductions of drop boxes, stricter ID requirements, bans on ballot collection, purges of voter rolls, and even criminalizing of water distribution to people in long voting lines.
“This is a ruling that definitely will make it easier for states to impose restrictions, harder for plaintiffs and voting rights groups to challenge these kinds of restrictions, and could really impact the outcome in close elections going forward,” said Kate Shaw, Cardozo law professor and ABC News legal analyst.
President Biden said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” in the Supreme Court’s decision and that it inflicts “severe damage” to the Voting Rights Act. “After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them,” Biden wrote.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called it a “resounding victory for election integrity.”
“Democrats were attempting to make Arizona ballots less secure for political gain, and the Court saw right through their partisan lies,” she said in a statement.
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that Americans by a 2-1 margin call it more important to make it easier to vote lawfully than to make it harder to vote fraudulently.
Sixty-two percent in the national survey, completed Wednesday night, say it’s more important to pass new laws making it easier for people to vote lawfully; 30% instead say it’s more important to pass new laws making it harder to vote fraudulently.
There are sharp partisan and ideological differences. Eighty-nine percent of Democrats prioritize making it easier to vote lawfully, as do 62% of independents, dropping to 32% of Republicans. Still, that means a third of Republicans hold this view, which is at odds with the national party’s focus on the issue.
Earlier this month, Congress failed to advance a sweeping overhaul of federal election laws backed by Democrats and the White House that would have established new baseline standards for mail-in voting, early voting, ID requirements and voter registration. Republicans were staunchly opposed.
“The Court’s decision, harmful as it is, does not limit Congress’ ability to repair the damage done today: it puts the burden back on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act to its intended strength,” President Biden said.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced Republican Rep. Liz Cheney will serve on the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We are very honored and proud she has agreed to serve on the committee,” Pelosi said Thursday.
At her press conference on Capitol Hill, Pelosi also announced House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., will serve as the chair of the committee, which was widely expected.
The other Democrats tapped by Pelosi to serve on the committee are Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin and Elaine Luria.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a press conference following Pelosi, downplayed reports that he’s threatened GOP members with taking away committee assignments if they were to accept a select committee position and questioned Cheney’s place in the Republican Party when given the chance.
“I was shocked that she would accept something from Speaker Pelosi. It would seem to me, since I didn’t hear from her, maybe she’s closer to her than us,” McCarthy said.
Cheney, who has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump in the wake of the attack and stripped of her No. 3 GOP leadership role earlier this year, said in a statement she was “honored” to be named though she did not appear with Democrats on Thursday.
“Those who are responsible for the attack need to be held accountable and this select committee will fulfill that responsibility in a professional, expeditious, and non-partisan manner,” she said. “Our oath to the Constitution, our commitment to the rule of law, and the preservation of the peaceful transfer of power must always be above partisan politics.”
Later, appearing informally with the other members chosen by Pelosi, Cheney was asked if she would lose her committee assignments. She said she has not been told that at this time.
“We have an obligation to have a sober investigation of what happened leading up to the attack on the Capitol on that day,” she said.
The House approved a resolution Wednesday to green-light the creation of a select committee after a vote for a bipartisan, independent commission — similar to one formed after the Sept. 11 attacks — failed to pass the Senate earlier the month.
The resolution required a majority vote in the House for the committee to be formed and it passed mostly along party lines — other than Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., breaking from Republicans.
Pelosi introduced the measure earlier in the week, which states the committee will include 13 members. Eight of those members will be selected by Pelosi, while the five others will be selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in consultation with Pelosi.
“As we enter the Fourth of July weekend to observe the birth of our nation, we do so with increased responsibility to honor the vision of our Founders and to defend our American Democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement announcing her committee choices.
As for whether McCarthy will cooperate and to which members he would select to the committee, he told reporters Thursday, “When I have news on that, I’ll give it to you.”
(NEW YORK) — Former President Donald Trump’s long-serving chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, has surrendered to authorities in New York to face criminal charges, court officials told ABC News Thursday morning.
Weisselberg arrived at the Manhattan District Attorney’s office with his lawyer hours after a grand jury indicted him and the Trump Organization on charges that are expected to be unsealed Thursday afternoon.
A special grand jury in Manhattan voted Wednesday to indict Trump’s firm and its chief financial officer.
The charges are believed to involve fringe benefits given to employees, including Weisselberg, sources said. Investigators have been examining whether the company and Weisselberg properly accounted for those forms of compensation.
“Allen Weisselberg is a loving and devoted husband, father and grandfather who has worked at the Trump Organization for 48 years,” a spokesperson for the Trump Organization said in a statement Thursday after Weisselberg surrendered to authorities. “He is now being used by the Manhattan District Attorney as a pawn in a scorched earth attempt to harm the former President. The District Attorney is bringing a criminal prosecution involving employee benefits that neither the IRS nor any other District Attorney would ever think of bringing. This is not justice; this is politics.”
Attorneys for the former president’s company were told to expect charges last week by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s staff, sources said.
Trump has called the charges “completely outrageous” and dismissed the investigation as being a politically-motivated “witch hunt.”
(WASHINGTON) — With pressure to change policing in America following the death of George Floyd while in police custody, Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J., sounded the alarm Wednesday, warning that “time is running out.”
“This Congress is moving very quickly,” he said. “There’s a crowded agenda on the Senate floor and if we don’t do something soon, we will lose a historic moment where we really should rise (to) the moment and make the reforms necessary.”
While the lead negotiators released a statement last week announcing they’ve “reached an agreement framework,” several sources have told ABC News that behind closed doors there are still major points of contention.
What’s putting the deal at risk?
The latest hurdle is an emerging divide within police unions, which are closely involved in the negotiations.
The discussions have dragged on for months, already blowing past two self-imposed deadlines. As talks progressed, lawmakers turned to outside groups for insight — holding a meeting with two police unions, the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police in late May.
At the time, Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina told Booker that if he could get the unions “on board with a proposal, he would not stand in the way,” a source familiar with the discussion told ABC News.
Booker floated a potential compromise to the unions, gaining their initial support, according to two sources familiar.
But when other unions caught wind of the floated proposal, they fired back.
The National Association of Police Organization encouraged the other negotiators to reject it. In a June newsletter, NAPO said, “Sen. Booker froze out NAPO and other police groups, despite the fact that NAPO represents just about all law enforcement officers in the senator’s state of New Jersey.”
According to sources familiar, Booker’s proposed measure tried to strike a balance of providing more resources to police departments but also giving the federal government more power to bring cases against officers who committed acts of misconduct in four areas: excessive force, sexual misconduct, theft and obstruction of justice. It did not touch qualified immunity, a sticking point for Republicans and a red line for many progressive Democrats.
Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., said that she fears the infighting could put the entire deal at risk.
“Absolutely I worry that it could prevent us from coming to a deal. And you know what? I think that it would be a really sad statement about the profession,” Bass said on Tuesday.
Booker said Wednesday that his meeting with the Fraternal Order of Police executive Jim Pasco made him more hopeful for police reform legislation to gain bipartisan support in the Senate.
“I told a great guy named Jim Pasco I viewed him as like an ogre before I got there, because these guys are tough, tough union and have not shown — in my opinion — the level of desire for reform. But Jim and I — along with other law enforcement agencies — had three weeks in negotiation, working up a lot of respect for him, as I’ve always had respect for his membership, we came to some accord,” Booker said. “And if we can — a Democrat from New Jersey and the administrative head of FOP — come to a lot of agreements, I’m sure hoping that Tim and I can work the final details out and get a bill done.”
“One of the reasons why a lot of law enforcement groups I’ve been negotiating with have leaned in is because they just know we are losing ground because of the erosion of trust amongst communities and law enforcement,” he added.
With slim margins on both sides of the aisle in Congress, Booker said there’s a “50-50 chance whether we get something done or not. If we don’t act, this is another shameful moment for Congress, and I know I’m at the center of that. And that’s why I’ve been bending and contorting myself in every way to try to make a bill that can attract people on both sides of the aisle.”
Tensions run high
As details of the negotiations trickled out, the backlash was swift.
The National Sheriffs’ Association said the group felt “blindsided” by Booker’s proposal and brought up their concerns in a previously scheduled face-to-face meeting with Booker and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., in June, according to an official with the group. Sources said Graham came to the defense of the police unions — raising objections about the floated compromise.
Publicly, Graham slammed the proposal.
“There ain’t no way in hell that’s going anywhere,” Graham said. “The conversations we had about police reform were completely different than the document that was produced.”
Graham’s public comments caught Democrats off guard, according to two sources who believed Booker followed through on a request from Scott and did “the impossible” by getting the support of two large police unions. Republicans accused Booker of acting alone.
The NAACP, which has also been closely involved in negotiations, is growing increasingly frustrated and sounding the alarm about the role police unions are playing in the talks.
“Many in law enforcement agree that meaningful change is necessary, but unfortunately, a few are committed to standing in the way with a goal of obstructing the process. Police unions and partisan politicians should not control and dilute the terms of the police reform bill, nor delay any of its progress,” NAACP President Derrick Johnson said in a statement. “This bill must be for the people.”
This week, eight civil rights organizations including the NAACP, The Urban League and the National Action Network, took a direct jab at police unions accusing them of obstructing the negotiations.
The National Sheriffs’ Association pushed back on any accusations that they are trying to sink the bill.
“That’s not true at all. We’re supportive of the process and we’ve been completely transparent with the things that we agree and disagree with — with the senators,” an official with the group told ABC News.
“To say that law enforcement is trying to delete the bill or they don’t want this, it’s just not a fair assessment,” the official said, emphasizing that their role is to advocate on behalf of sheriffs.
The Fraternal Order of Police, who backed Booker’s initial proposal came out with a statement on Wednesday underscoring that talks are on the brink.
“Given the politics of the moment, we seem to be poised to undo more than a year’s worth of work toward common sense criminal justice reform,” said Patrick Yoes, the group’s president, in a statement. “Demagoguery and scare tactics have jeopardized the future of these efforts and may well have derailed the negotiations.”
All sides ask: What now?
Lawmakers have been under increased pressure in recent weeks, having missed the first deadline to pass the bill into law by the first anniversary of Floyd’s death. One source told ABC News that members of the NBA have held multiple bipartisan meetings with lawmakers to push the bill, with several more meetings planned with lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. In May, James Cadogan, the executive director of the National Basketball Social Justice Coalition, said in a statement that the league is “calling on our elected representatives of both parties to work together to pass the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act in the U.S. Senate now and present it to President Biden for him to sign into law this year.”
Two sources close to the talks also told ABC News that there is growing concern about how the upcoming midterm elections will affect the negotiations with some fearing Republicans may be less willing to strike a deal, as their party pushes a law-and-order message.
One source close to ongoing talks told ABC News, “a compromise isn’t me walking over to you, it’s us meeting halfway and that’s not what’s happening at this point.”
“The goal posts keep moving,” the source continued.
Scott’s office declined to comment.
“The process — finalizing the bill is difficult,” one source familiar with Scott’s thinking said. “Despite the challenges, we are going to continue to move forward with the negotiation process, ironing out specifics within the broader, agreed-upon framework.”
“(Sen. Scott) is committed to making sure any final bill honors the family of Walter Scott, George Floyd and any family that has been affected, while at the same time providing the resources officers need to keep our communities safe,” the source added.
Still, no one appears ready to walk away from the negotiations and White House press secretary Jen Psaki said recently that “the president remains eager to sign the police reform bill into law.”
(NEW YORK) — An updated count of in-person votes in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary still shows Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintaining a close lead, but it also shows a razor-thin margin between former consul to Mayor Bill de Blasio Maya Wiley and former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia in the penultimate round of voting.
The New York City Board of Elections released an updated unofficial count of ranked choice votes on Wednesday afternoon, after candidates and officials sharply criticized the BOE for counting over 130,000 test votes in an initial release of vote tallies for the city’s ranked-choice Democratic mayoral primary.
Wednesday’s count showed Eric Adams holding 31.8% of the vote in the first round, with Maya Wiley following with 22.2% and Kathryn Garcia third with 19.3%.
But by the eighth round, with all of the other candidates eliminated and their votes allotted to others, Garcia led Wiley by only 347 votes.
“While we remain confident in our path to victory, we are taking nothing for granted and encourage everyone to patiently wait for over 124,000 absentee ballots to be counted,” Garcia said in a statement on Wednesday night.
As of Wednesday evening, the BOE has received over 125,000 absentee ballots, none of which are included in the unofficial count.
“Yesterday’s ranked choice voting reporting error was unacceptable and we apologize to the voters and to the campaigns for the confusion,” the BOE said in a statement released alongside the updated figures.
The Board of Elections removed the initial results from its website late Tuesday, and tweeted a statement around 10:30 p.m. ET that admitted to including test votes in the released figures.
“When the cast vote records were extracted for the first pull of RCV results, it included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional errors,” the BOE said. It committed to removing the test votes and accurately recounting.
Common Cause New York Executive Director Susan Lerner said on Tuesday that “a mistake by a low-level junior staffer” caused the miscount.
After the Board of Elections’ admission, Adams struck a conciliatory tone.
“We appreciate the Board’s transparency and acknowledgement of their error,” Adams said in a statement late Tuesday. “We look forward to the release of an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”
He had initially questioned the results, with Wiley going further in criticizing the board.
“This error by the Board of Elections is not just [the] failure to count votes properly today, it is the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed,” Wiley said in a statement on Tuesday night. “We have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results … because those who implement [election laws] have failed too many times.”
Garcia called the count error “deeply troubling” and said it “requires a much more transparent and complete explanation.”
“I am confident that every candidate will accept the final results and support whomever the voters have elected,” she said in a statement on Tuesday night.
Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters on Wednesday morning that what happened is “indicative of the fact the Board of Elections is broken, structurally broken. I don’t know how many times we are going to have this conversation. We can no longer have a partisan Board of Elections.”
Representatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties sit on the Board.
Lerner called for reforming the Board as well, adding: “The system is designed for the 19th century, and we need to bring it into the 21st century.”
“It’s like a rookie mistake,” Rob Richie, president and CEO of FairVote, a nonpartisan organization advocating for voting reforms, said in an interview with ABC News. “Every voting equipment process has to be tested, and it’s a very elementary part of it, which is you clear the data after you do your tests.”
The Board of Elections has faced scrutiny before for election errors. Last September, it erroneously mailed at least 100,000 absentee ballots with incorrect names and addresses.
Richie said that ranked-choice voting itself, which New Yorkers experienced for the first time in the primary, is not to blame, and next time the BOE could possibly run daily vote tallies and accept additional support from developers of the tabulation software.
“I think a lot of people would have expected it to be lucky to get turnout [like] what we got eight years ago, when Bill de Blasio ran,” Richie said. “Well, it’s much bigger than that, right? It’s like more than 25% more votes.”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky and Averi Harper contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Former President Trump’s namesake company expects to face criminal charges by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as soon as Thursday, sources told ABC News.
The Trump Organization and its longtime chief financial officer, Allen Weisselberg, are expected to face charges of tax fraud, the sources said. The charges would be the first brought by prosecutors following their two-year investigation of the former president and his company.
A Trump Organization spokesperson declined to comment, as did a spokesperson for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office.
The expected charges, which have not been publicly disclosed, are believed to involve fringe benefits given to employees, including Weisselberg, the sources said. Investigators, who fought all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court for access to the former president’s personal and business tax returns, have been examining whether the company and Weisselberg properly accounted for those forms of compensation, said sources.
ABC News has previously reported that prosecutors zeroed in on the perks after Weisselberg’s daughter-in-law Jennifer revealed the existence of a rent-free apartment used by her estranged husband, Weisselberg’s son Barry.
Attorneys for the former president’s company were told to expect charges last week by Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance’s staff, the sources said.
“In my more than 50 years of practice, never before have I seen the District Attorney’s Office target a company over employee compensation or fringe benefits,” Ronald Fishchetti, an attorney for former President Trump, told ABC News in a statement last week, adding the case in his view is “completely outrageous.”
Trump himself is not expected to be part of these criminal charges. He has denied all wrongdoing and has dismissed the investigation as being politically motivated, calling it “a continuation of the greatest Witch Hunt in American history.”
(WASHINGTON) — The House approved a resolution Wednesday that would green-light the creation of a select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The resolution required a majority vote in the House for the committee to be formed and it passed along party lines.
The final vote was 222-190.
Republicans have blasted the select committee as too partisan. Even those few Republicans who ultimately decided to impeach the former president earlier this year for his role in inciting the insurrection opted to oppose the select committee in Wednesday’s vote.
GOP Reps. Adam Kinzinger and Liz Cheney, both Trump critics, were the only two Republicans to vote in favor of the select committee with all Democrats.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said she will appoint members and announce a chair for the committee at a later time.
Members of the Capitol Police and Metropolitan Police Department were sitting in the Speaker’s box in the House Gallery to watch the vote at Pelosi’s invitation.
After Cheney voted yes, she was spotted paying them a visit and giving several officers a hug, including the family of fallen Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
Pelosi introduced the resolution earlier in the week, which states the committee will include 13 members. Eight of those members will be selected by Pelosi, while the five others will be selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in consultation with Pelosi.
An aide to the House speaker signaled that she could name a Republican among her eight appointments to the committee.
Pelosi could select either Cheney or Kinzinger to be on the committee as part of her eight appointees, and both have expressed an openness to it.
“January 6th was one of the darkest days in our nation’s history. It is imperative that we establish the truth of that day and ensure such an attack cannot again happen. The Select Committee will investigate and report upon the facts and causes of the attack and report recommendations for preventing any future assault,” Pelosi said in a statement.
The select committee comes after Senate Republicans blocked the creation of a bipartisan, independent commission last month.
“Senate Republicans did Mitch McConnell a ‘personal favor’ rather than their patriotic duty and voted against the bipartisan commission negotiated by Democrats and Republicans. But Democrats are determined to find the truth,” Pelosi said Monday in her statement.
The select committee will be run by House Democrats and it will have subpoena power.
“I’m hopeful that both the speaker and the minority leader appoint people who are honest, sincere in their effort to get at the facts, underlying why Jan. 6 happened, who was responsible for Jan. 6 happening and what can we do to prevent a Jan. 6 insurrection from happening again,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Tuesday. “All of those facts are necessary for the Congress, but much, much more importantly, necessary for the American people to understand and have knowledge of.”
A chair to run the committee has not yet been announced, but Pelosi told reporters last week that further details would be released soon.
McCarthy, for his part, has said a select committee is not necessary and has bashed it as a politically motivated, partisan act by Democrats.
He has also not indicated who he would appoint to the committee.
McCarthy could be called to testify about a phone call he made to former President Donald Trump on the day of the insurrection. He has yet to fully recount that phone call in a public setting, but he has said he would be willing to testify if asked.
“I have no problem talking to anybody about it,” McCarthy said last week. “I don’t know what the conversations that day would matter as that’s going on.”
House Democratic Chair Hakeem Jeffries told reporters Tuesday he expects McCarthy will be asked to testify before the committee.
“It’s my expectation that whoever winds up chairing the select committee will pursue all available angles in terms of individuals that will be called before the committee to testify and I think that Leader McCarthy has indicated that he’s willing to testify and share the contents of that conversation,” Jeffries said.
Under the resolution text, the select committee does not have a deadline for producing a report.
(WASHINGTON) — Americans can now choose which gender is displayed on their passports, no longer needing medical certification if their preference contradicts supporting documents such as birth certificates, the State Department announced Wednesday.
“Today, I am pleased to announce that the Department will be taking further steps toward ensuring the fair treatment of LGBTQI+ U.S. citizens, regardless of their gender or sex, by beginning the process of updating our procedures for the issuance of U.S. Passports and Consular Reports of Birth Abroad (CRBA),” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.
While the most immediate change will be allowing applicants to self-identify as either “M” or “F,” the two current options on forms, the department is working to add a third gender marker for “non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming persons,” applying for passports or CRBAs. That step will take more time.
Today we are taking important steps toward ensuring the fair treatment of LGBTQI+ U.S. citizens. https://t.co/tfNnTUQmsp
— Secretary Antony Blinken (@SecBlinken) June 30, 2021
“The process of adding a gender marker for non-binary, intersex, and gender non-conforming persons to these documents is technologically complex and will take time for extensive systems updates,” Blinken said.
The State Department “cannot provide an exact timeline” for when the new gender marker might be available, according to its website.
President Joe Biden promised these changes during his 2020 campaign. “Transgender and non-binary people without identification documents that accurately reflect their gender identity are often exposed to harassment and violence and denied employment, housing, critical public benefits, and even the right to vote,” his website said.
Rodrigo Heng-Lehtinen, deputy executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, praised the move.
“Having accurate passports and consistent ID is critical to daily life,” Heng-Lehtinen said in a statement. “It’s necessary for travel, banking, starting a new job and school. Inaccurate IDs open transgender people up to harassment and discrimination. Reforming US passports is a common-sense way to improve the lives of transgender people.”
The new State Department policy takes cues from other countries, according to Blinken.
“In line with the Administration’s commitment to re-engage with allies and partners, the Department is taking these steps after considerable consultation with like-minded governments who have undertaken similar changes,” Blinken said.
The secretary, who last week had the “Progress” flag raised outside his department’s building in Washington, D.C., said he would let engagement with the LGBTQI+ community “inform our approach and positions moving forward.”
“With this action, I express our enduring commitment to the LGBTQI+ community today and moving forward,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — In the midst of a historic heatwave creating prime conditions for a historic wildfire season, President Joe Biden announced Wednesday he plans to raise the federal firefighter pay to at least $15 an hour and offer new retention incentives amid turnover, as the White House seeks to boost its wildfire preparedness.
“Because of climate change, wildland firefighting is no longer a seasonal endeavor,” said a fact sheet from the White House.
Biden discussed the plans on Wednesday while meeting virtually with governors from Western states, Cabinet officials and partners from the private sector to discuss wildfire preparedness.
He began by invoking the devastating images from last year.
“We’re remembering the horrific scenes from last year. Orange skies that looked like End of Days, smoke and ash that made the air dangerous to breathe, more than 10 million acres burned, billions of dollars in economic damage, families that lost their homes and everything they own. And too many, too many lost lives,” Biden said.
And with that stark remembrance, Biden noted that this year is already threatening to be worse and argued that climate change shouldn’t be a partisan issue.
“And this year, we — they could be even tougher based on the weather patterns. You know, California and some other places, the drought conditions are twice … what they were last year.”
He noted that there are more than 9,000 firefighters already deployed across the Western U.S., and it’s only June.
The president also addressed head-on those who are dealing with historic highs this week, calling for people to take care of one another.
“I want to note that the extreme heat we’re seeing in the west is not only a risk amplifier for wildfires, it’s a threat in and of itself. People are hurting. It’s more dangerous for kids to play outside. Roads are buckling under the heat. Again, I need not tell all of you: We need people to check on their neighbors especially seniors who may need a helping hand,” he said.
The meeting and policy move came after Biden expressed his dismay at the federal wage while visiting the Federal Emergency Management Agency last week.
“I just realized — I didn’t realize this, I have to admit – that federal firefighters get paid $13 an hour. That’s going to end in my administration. That’s a ridiculously low salary to pay federal firefighters,” he said at the time.
The sentiment was echoed by an administration official previewing Biden’s plan on a call Tuesday night.
The official said that, for this year, federal firefighters’ pay raise will come in the form of “provisional bonuses” and that permanent firefighters working on the front lines will receive up to a 10% retention incentive. Temporary workers can also qualify to receive some incentive pay.
The administration also plans to extend seasonal hiring of firefighters, hire more firefighters and add surge capacity by training more federal employees and military service members to be prepared to support wildfire fighting efforts.
“The goal here this year, because we have had a very short runway in getting prepared, has been to find ways to address what we learned, which is that there is this challenge with respect to both recruitment and retention of firefighters that we need across the nation,” the official said.
The Biden White House is also announcing a series of actions to help fight fires and improve how the government responds in the short and long term.
“We’re going to work on additional measures with Congress to move beyond these short-term solutions to address, longer-term needs with respect to compensation and benefits, and work life balance reforms for federal wildlife, land, firefighters,” the official added.
As of last Wednesday, there were at least 50 large wildfires burning more than half a million acres across 11 states — mostly in the West.
Since 2015, the U.S. has had roughly 100 more large wildfires every year than the year before, according to the White House, and the 2021 wildfire season is already outpacing the last.
The White House is also making new preparations for major impacts to power grids, increasing aviation capacity to respond to fires and developing new technologies, including satellites, to improve early detection of fires along with apps, maps and resources so Americans can access information from their phones.
