(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department revealed in an early Monday morning court filing that federal investigators interviewed former President Donald Trump’s attorney Justin Clark two weeks ago in connection with Steve Bannon’s criminal contempt case.
Prosecutors say that Clark confirmed in the interview that at no point did Trump ever invoke executive privilege over Bannon’s testimony — and directly contradicted other claims made by Bannon’s defense team in their case.
They further suggest Bannon’s recent efforts in conjunction with Trump to offer to finally testify before the committee are no more than a stunt to try and make him more a sympathetic figure to the jury he’s set to face next week.
“All of the above-described circumstances suggest the Defendant’s sudden wish to testify is not a genuine effort to meet his obligations but a last-ditch attempt to avoid accountability,” prosecutors say.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — “Keep making your point. It’s critically important,” President Joe Biden said as for his message to the thousands of abortion-rights activists who gathered outside the White House on Saturday.
President Joe Biden said Sunday he was looking into declaring a public health emergency in support of abortion access across the country after Roe v. Wade was overturned last month.
“That’s something I’m asking the medical people in the administration to look at, whether I have the authority to do that and what impact that would have,” Biden told reporters in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, while quickly taking questions during a bike ride near his home.
A public health emergency regarding abortion has been supported by members of Biden’s own party as well as abortion rights advocates.
The Women’s March, which helped organize a “Summer of Rage” in response to the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe — which was widely praised by conservatives — has argued such a move would allow the administration to “utilize additional flexibilities, deploy resources where necessary, and act with the urgency that this moment requires.”
Broadly speaking, a public health emergency is made in the cases of disease outbreak or other health crises and unlocks certain government powers and funding sources.
Biden told reporters on Sunday he recognized he had limited executive powers to go further in supporting abortion access, saying, “I don’t have the authority” to reinstate Roe. He reiterated that he wanted Congress to pass a federal law codifying Roe after the Supreme Court reversed the landmark 1973 ruling and said there was no constitutional guarantee to an abortion.
As for his message to the thousands of people who gathered outside the White House on Saturday, pressuring him to do more to protect abortion rights, he said, “Keep protesting. Keep making your point. It’s critically important.”
“We can do a lot of things to accommodate the rights of women. In the meantime, fundamentally, the only way to change this is to have a national law that reinstates Roe v Wade,” he said.
The prospects of that are dim in the narrowly divided Senate, where Democrats do not have enough votes to either overcome a Republican filibuster on the issue or approve an exception to the filibuster rule, which is opposed by moderates Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema.
Biden on Friday signed an executive order aimed at supporting access to abortion despite efforts in dozens of states to outlaw or severely restrict it.
Speaking from the White House alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Biden urged women, specifically, to practice their “political power” by voting in November, saying it was the “fastest way” to reverse the high court’s ruling by giving congressional Democrats the majorities they need to the codify Roe.
In the weeks since a five-justice majority on the court rejected Roe — which has long been a goal of Republicans and conservatives who oppose abortion — Biden has faced criticism from other Democrats and from progressives who say he should be acting more aggressively.
“I want President Biden to do absolutely everything in his power to protect access to abortion in America—let’s really push the envelope to protect women in this country, and let’s do it now,” Washington Sen. Patty Murray, who chairs the Senate Committee on Health Education and Labor, told ABC News in a written statement last month, adding that she understood that there were limits to his authority.
Biden’s executive order largely finalized what had already been announced by his administration, including instructions to the Justice Department to make sure women can travel out-of-state for abortion care.
The order addressed the elevated risks for patients, providers and clinics by focusing on protecting mobile clinics that have been deployed to state borders to offer care for out-of-state patients.
Biden’s action, the White House said, also directed Attorney General Merrick Garland and the White House counsel to convene volunteer lawyers and organizations to “encourage robust legal representation of patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking or offering reproductive health care services throughout the country.”
Biden has said he’ll provide leave for federal workers traveling for medical care, which could set an example for private companies to do the same.
ABC News’ Anne Flaherty contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Steve Bannon, a former top adviser in Donald Trump’s White House, recently told the House panel investigating the Capitol riot that he would be willing to testify since Trump now says he won’t cite executive privilege.
In a letter on Saturday to the committee, obtained by ABC News, Bannon said he would prefer testifying in a live, public hearing after the former president had sent him a separate letter on Saturday — also obtained by ABC — waiving objections.
Both the House committee and federal prosecutors who sought to speak with Bannon have said the executive privilege claims never covered him, since the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection took place long after Bannon left his post as chief White House strategist in 2017.
Bannon previously defied a subpoena from the committee and is awaiting trial on criminal contempt charges.
His attorney wrote on his behalf in the letter this weekend that “circumstances have now changed.”
“President Trump has decided that it would be in the best interests of the American people to waive executive privilege for Stephen K. Bannon, to allow Mr. Bannon to comply with the subpoena issued by your Committee. Mr. Bannon is willing to, and indeed prefers, to testify at your public hearing,” lawyer Bob Costello wrote. “Mr. Bannon is willing to, and indeed prefers, to testify at your public hearing.”
It’s unclear if Bannon now also plans to comply with the committee’s demand for documents, which accompanied his subpoena.
In Trump’s letter to Bannon, Trump reiterated his criticisms of the House committee and wrote that he felt his former aide — now a right-wing commentator — had been treated “unfairly.”
“When you first received the Subpoena to testify and provide documents, I invoked Executive Privilege. However, I watched how unfairly you and others have been treated, having to spend vast amounts of money on legal fees, and all of the trauma you must be going through for the love of your Country, and out of respect for the Office of the President,” Trump wrote. “Therefore, if you reach an agreement on a time and place for your testimony, I will waive Executive Privilege for you, which allows you to go in and testify truthfully and fairly…”
Speaking on CNN on Sunday morning, Jan 6 committee member Rep. Zoe Lofgren suggested the panel had not yet considered Bannon’s reversal but hinted that a public testimony may be unlikely. “This goes on for hour after hour after hour. We want to get all our questions answered, and you can’t do that in a live format,” Lofgren told CNN’s Jake Tapper.
The panel has typically held private depositions with witnesses before they end up testifying live in a hearing room — or clips from their depositions are aired to the audience.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, another member of the committee, was asked by ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday about Bannon’s possible testimony. Kinzinger said that “on a high-level position, anybody that wants to come in, that knows information to talk to the select committee, we welcome them to do so.”
“We welcome them to do so under oath. And we all know the history with our requests to have talked to Steve Bannon. So we’ll see how that comes out,” Kinzinger said.
After defying a Jan. 6 subpoena last year, Bannon was charged with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, though he argued Trump’s privilege claim protected him.
He pleaded not guilty and is set to go to trial next week.
Bannon remained an outside adviser to Trump after helping to lead his first presidential campaign and a short stint in the White House. He was at a meeting at the Willard Hotel where lawmakers were encouraged to challenge the 2020 presidential election results, the Jan. 6 committee claimed in a 2021 letter to Bannon along with his subpoena.
He was quoted as saying, “All hell is going to break loose tomorrow,” the panel wrote in that letter, citing a Jan. 5, 2021, episode of his podcast “War Room.”
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a member of the House select committee investigating last year’s Capitol riot, said Sunday that Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone didn’t contradict previous testimony by other witnesses and will be featured in the investigation’s final report after he sat for a transcribed, videotaped interview with the panel last week.
“You’ll see over the next couple of hearings a little of what he said. Certainly you’ll see a lot of that in the report,” Kinzinger, R-Ill., told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “But at no point was there any contradiction of what anybody said.”
Cipollone was recently subpoenaed and spoke with the committee on Friday. The subpoena came after he was repeatedly mentioned during startling testimony last month by former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson.
Hutchinson told the committee under oath in a public hearing that Cipollone had been wary of then-President Donald Trump’s desire to march with his supporters from the Ellipse to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, where Congress was working to certify the 2020 Electoral College results.
“Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of, ‘Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy, keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,'” Hutchinson said.
The Jan. 6 panel had repeatedly referenced Cipollone as someone who pushed back against Trump’s unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.
Both CNN and The New York Times reported that Cipollone was not asked about some specifics from Hutchinson during his own interview on Friday.
Kinzinger was asked on “This Week” about a report that Trump may wave executive privilege for his former adviser Steven Bannon, who was charged with contempt of Congress for rejecting a subpoena related to the Jan. 6 investigation. (Bannon pleaded not guilty.)
“Does the committee still want to hear from him?” Stephanopoulos asked.
“I will just say, on a high-level position, anybody that wants to come in, that knows information to talk to the select committee, we welcome them to do so,” Kinzinger said. “We welcome them to do so under oath. And we all know the history with our requests to have talked to Steve Bannon. So we’ll see how that comes out.”
Kinzinger said he felt the same about possible testimony from Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the far-right Oath Keepers. But these examples had something in common, Kinzinger said: “They went from initially saying that this committee was nothing but a sideshow, something that nobody was interested in, to all of a sudden — ‘oh, yeah, I want to testify publicly in front of it.'”
Still, Stephanopoulos noted, the committee’s work on the deadly rioting “doesn’t appear to be breaking through to Republicans,” according to recent polls.
“On the margins, yes, it is puncturing through,” Kinzinger said. “And I think what’s most important is, again, what does history say in five or 10 years? Because I can guarantee — well, I can get about as close as I can to guaranteeing that — in about 10 years, there’s not going to have been a single Trump supporter that exists anywhere in the country. It’s like [Richard] Nixon. There were a lot of people that supported Nixon until he was out of office, and then everybody was like, ‘No, nobody supported Nixon.'”
Kinzinger said he wasn’t fazed by the possibility that Republicans would “review” the panel’s investigation if the GOP retakes the House in the November midterm elections.
“I welcome them to see the work that we’ve done,” Kinzinger said.
The committee will continue its work this week, with a hearing on Tuesday focusing on ties between Trump’s orbit and extremist groups like the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers and another on Thursday that Kinzinger said would focus on Trump’s activity during the insurrection itself.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Friday touted falling gas prices, robust new jobs numbers and a low unemployment rate to make the case that his economic program and fight to bring inflation down is “working.”
“The unemployment rate is near a historic low of 3.6%. The private sector jobs are at a record high,” he said at a White House event about abortion. “Gas prices are still way too high, and have fallen 25 days in a row. And this week we saw the second largest single day decrease in gas prices in a decade. We still have a lot of work to do … But I am suggesting we are making significant progress. The program is working.”
The national average for a gallon of gas stood at $4.72 Friday, down three cents from Thursday and about 12 cents since this time last week, according to AAA.
The average cost for gas peaked at $5.01 per gallon on June 14, according to AAA, and the price of crude oil fell below $100 per barrel this week for the first time since May 11.
Relief at the pump comes as global demand for commodities slows, resulting in lower prices for crude oil copper, cotton, and lumber.
“I think the reason why oil prices are going down now is because the prospect that we do see an economic slowdown,” GasBuddy’s head of petroleum analysis Patrick De Haan told ABC News Thursday.
If that trend continues, a potential recession could prove politically problematic for Biden and fellow Democrats ahead of the midterm elections in November. Building a strong economy was a priority in the Democratic party’s 2020 platform.
“But, if all of a sudden, the worries over the recession fade, we can see oil prices go right back up,” De Haan said.
A hurricane making landfall near a refinery, such as one in Louisiana, could also cause prices to rise.
In the coming weeks, what Americans pay at the pump in some states could fall another 25 to 50 cents per gallon on average, De Haan said.
Some stations around the country have already lowered prices to the mid-three-dollar range.
The president’s remarks Friday are the latest in a largely unsuccessful White House effort to counter damaging daily headlines about skyrocketing prices at the pump.
What began with attributing the rise in prices to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine became a proposal to suspend the federal gas tax for three months. But that plan found little support among Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Some Republican senators called the proposal to halt the 18-cent tax a gimmick, while some Democrats said it might not work.
The president also floated offering rebate cards to Americans in June, but the Washington Post reported a chip shortage would make it challenging to produce the cards.
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm then met with top oil executives late last month to discuss how their companies might help ease pain at the pump, but some analysts say it is unlikely the current price drop is related to the administration’s lobbying efforts.
The falling price of crude oil and weakened demand have driven the cost of gas down and the industry is also working through higher-cost inventory, according to investment research firm Third Bridge’s global lead for energy Peter McNally.
“That is bringing prices at the pump down, not the president telling the corner gas station to do it,” McNally said Thursday.
The White House doubled down this week, again calling for Congress to suspend the federal gas tax Thursday and blaming Russia’s invasion of Ukraine Friday.
“Wholesale gas prices are down by $1 per gallon,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters Thursday. “Retail gas prices have only come down by about 20 cents over the same period. More work needs to be done.”
But gas stations are slowly lowering their prices as they try to recapture some of their margins from when prices rose, De Haan said. Stations are behind the curve when their costs rise for up to five days, as raising prices is difficult if other stations do not adjust theirs, he said.
The White House and the Federal Reserve deserve some credit for recognizing inflation as a serious challenge, University of Houston petroleum engineering professor Ramanan Krishnamoorti said Thursday.
The FED raising interest rates last month “certainly slowed down some of the price exuberance we’ve seen with inflation,” he said.
The government’s release of 100 million oil barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve year-to-date has also helped. Releasing oil has added supply to the market, likely preventing prices from going higher, McNally said.
(WASHINGTON) — A Louisiana Supreme Court ruling allowed the state’s ban on almost all abortions to go into effect on Friday, after a series of court challenges by local abortion providers was moved to another jurisdiction.
After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled to overturn Roe v. Wade on June 24, Louisiana’s trigger laws restrictions arguably went into automatic effect.
However, a lawsuit led by the Center for Reproductive Rights and the Boies Schiller law firm on behalf of Hope Medical Group for Women — a Louisiana abortion provider — that had challenged the state’s three abortion trigger laws, led to a temporarily ruling to block such bans on June 27.
Louisiana District Court Judge Ethel Simms Julien will not extend a temporary restraining order to block the Louisiana state ban on abortion, according to the public information officer for the New Orleans Parish Civil District Court.
Since Orleans Parish Civil District Judge Robin Giarrusso’s decision on June 27, two abortion clinics have continued to see patients in the state: Women’s Health Care Center Delta Clinic of Baton Rouge and Hope Medical Group for Women.
As of this ruling, those clinics will no longer be able to continue their services. Nor is it clear which guidelines providers are to follow, since no ruling was issued on the specifics of the lawsuit.
Instead, the lawsuit is now under a different court’s jurisdiction, and the state’s bans are not blocked during the time it will take to obtain a ruling, according to Friday’s hearing.
During the hearing, Attorney General Jeff Landry argued that the New Orleans Parish Civil District Court is not the appropriate venue to litigate the case. The court will now transfer the case to the 19 Judicial District Court in Baton Rouge.
It is unclear at this point when that hearing will take place.
According to Julien’s ruling in Friday’s hearing, the case is now out of the jurisdiction of the New Orleans Parish Civil District Court, and the judge has no authority to extend the temporary restraining order blocking the state bans. Abortion is effectively banned in Louisiana until the case is heard in Baton Rouge.
According to The Associated Press, about 60 protesters gathered outside the courthouse Friday waving signs that read, “Abortion is health care” and “Do you want women to die?”
Following the ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court, Louisiana was only one of three states to have automatic, immediate trigger laws restricting abortions, including a ban on abortion after 6 weeks.
The first of the state’s trigger laws was enacted in 2006, stating that abortion under all circumstances except due to certain medical circumstances would become criminal offenses. However, there was no clear guideline as to how the ban would be enforced or when it would become effective.
In June 2022, in anticipation of a Supreme Court ruling on Roe v. Wade’s constitutionality, a second ban was signed. This ban added a statement directly relating to the overturning of Roe by the Supreme Court.
A third trigger ban was enacted days after the second, which states that it will ban abortion after 15 weeks gestation, compared to the first and second’s bans for abortion at any point. The three bans also all differ on their penalty provisions.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Trump White House counsel Pat Cipollone appeared on Capitol Hill Friday morning for a closed-door interview with House Jan. 6 committee investigators after negotiations over what he could be questioned about.
His testimony will be videotaped and it’s expected that clips of Cipollone’s deposition will be presented during the committee’s upcoming public hearings, according to sources familiar with the planning.
Cipollone and the committee, according to sources, have agreed he can be asked about what he knows about the actions taken by former top Department of Justice official Jeffrey Clark to use the powers of the Justice Department to attempt to overturn the 2020 presidential election, what Cipollone did during the day of Jan. 6, and interactions he was present for or had with former Trump lawyer John Eastman as well as interactions he was present for or had with members of Congress following the 2020 election.
The questioning on those topics is expected to exclude conversations he had directly with former President Donald Trump.
Sources close to Cipollone told ABC News it is possible he may claim some form of executive privilege, which sources familiar with the negotiations say is not expected to be challenged by committee investigators.
Committee investigators may also ask Cipollone about other topics, sources said.
Cipollone, appearing under subpoena, has been one of the panel’s most sought-after witnesses following last week’s testimony from Cassidy Hutchinson, a former top aide to Mark Meadows, Trump’s fourth and final White House chief of staff.
Hutchinson told the panel that Cipollone was fearful of the consequences of Trump’s push to march with his supporters on Jan. 6 from the Ellipse to the Capitol, where Congress was working to certify the 2020 Electoral College results.
“Mr. Cipollone said something to the effect of, ‘Please make sure we don’t go up to the Capitol, Cassidy, keep in touch with me. We’re going to get charged with every crime imaginable if we make that movement happen,'” Hutchinson testified.
During the attack on the Capitol, Hutchinson also said Cipollone was pushing for Trump to make some kind of statement to help end the violence.
“Mark, something needs to be done or people are going to die and the blood is going to be on your f—— hands,” Cipollone told Meadows, according to Hutchinson’s testimony.
On Wednesday, Trump complained about Cipillone agreeing to an interview on his social media platform Truth Social.
“Why would a future President of the United States want to have candid and important conversations with his White House Counsel if he thought there was even a small chance that this person, essentially acting as a ‘lawyer’ for the Country, may some day be brought before a partisan and openly hostile Committee in Congress, or even a fair and reasonable Committee, to reveal the inner secrets of foreign policy or other important matters,” Trump wrote. “So bad for the USA!”
(WASHINGTON) — Two weeks after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, President Joe Biden signed an executive order aimed at protecting access to abortion nationwide despite efforts by some states to outlaw or severely restrict it.
Speaking from the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Friday, alongside Vice President Kamala Harris and Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, Biden decried the court’s decision as “extreme” and “totally wrong.”
“This isn’t some imagined horror,” Biden said. “It is already happening. Just last week, it was reported that a 10-year-old girl was a rape victim — 10 years old — and she was forced to have to travel out of state to Indiana to seek to terminate the pregnancy and maybe save her life.”
“Imagine being that little girl,” he continued. “I’m serious, just imagine being that little girl.”
The executive action comes as Biden faces pressure from his fellow Democrats to take more forceful action, especially since the decision handed down by the high court on June 24 was leaked in early May.
His executive order largely finalizes what has already been announced by the administration — including instructions to the Justice Department to make sure women can travel out-of-state for abortion care.
The order addresses the elevated risks for patients, providers and clinics, which includes efforts to protect mobile clinics that have been deployed to state borders to offer care for out-of-state patients.
Biden’s action, the White House said, directs Attorney General Merrick Garland and the White House counsel to convene volunteer lawyers and organizations to “encourage robust legal representation of patients, providers, and third parties lawfully seeking or offering reproductive health care services throughout the country.”
Biden has also said he’ll provide leave for federal workers traveling for medical care, which could set an example for private companies to do the same.
Amazon, Starbucks and other corporations have already announced expanded health benefits to pay for their employees’ travel fees if they are seeking an abortion and the procedure is unavailable near where they live.
Biden is also ordering the Department of Health and Human Services to take “additional action to protect and expand” access to medication abortion, emergency contraception and IUDs.
The agency is instructed to increase outreach and public education efforts regarding access to reproductive health care services — abortion included — to get reliable information to the public.
Patient privacy is another part of Biden’s order, which takes additional measures to address the transfer and sale of sensitive health-related data, combat digital surveillance related to reproductive health care services and protects people from fraudulent and deceptive practices.
Last week, Democratic governors urged Biden to use federal facilities and land for abortion services.
“What am I talking about? Veterans hospitals, military bases and other places where the federal government controls the jurisdiction in some of the states that are hostile to women’s rights, and make sure that those services can be available to other women,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul suggested.
The White House didn’t seem too enthusiastic about the idea, stating it could have “dangerous ramifications.” The suggestion will not be included in Biden’s executive order.
Also not included in Biden’s action are several proposals by advocates, including Michigan Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s recommendation this week that the administration make clear Americans can legally transport the abortion pill across the U.S.-Canadian border.
Biden says it’s ultimately up to Congress to codify Roe into law, calling it “the fastest way to restore” rights. But any effort by Democrats to do so would likely fail in the Senate, where they would need 10 Republican votes.
Biden suggested a filibuster carveout to enshrine abortion rights in federal law, but two Democratic senators — Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — are opposed to changing the longstanding Senate rule.
The president called on women to turn out in record numbers this November to elect more pro-choice Democrats.
“You, the women of America, you determine the outcome of this issue,” Biden said.
(WASHINGTON) — The Bipartisan Safer Communities Act signed into law last month most likely would not have prevented the recent Fourth of July massacre and won’t eliminate future mass shootings — but the legislation can still save lives, mental health and gun violence experts told ABC News.
Congress’ new gun safety package — the first if its kind in almost 30 years — was signed into law by President Joe Biden just nine days before the July 4 shooting in Highland Park, Illinois, that that left seven dead and dozens injured.
“God willing, it’s going to save a lot of lives,” Biden said while signing the bill.
The new law commits at least $8 billion to programs that support mental health. It also includes enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, plus incentives for states to pass “red flag” laws to remove firearms from people deemed to be a danger to themselves or others.
Despite those measures, experts say that most red flag laws would not have helped prevent the Highland Park shooting — even though the gunman previously had two encounters with the police, including one after he allegedly threatened to kill members of his family, which led officers to confiscate 16 knives. That’s because the suspect didn’t yet own any guns at the time of those incidents.
According to Daniel Webster, co-director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions, which focuses on research and gun violence prevention advocacy, red flag laws are meant to respond to risk “in the most immediate sense.”
“The whole system seems to be reactive,” Webster told ABC News. “When an assessment was done of when there was clear and present danger, there were no firearms. So there were no firearms to remove.”
“I can’t a month later say, ‘Come take away his guns because a month ago he was suicidal and homicidal,'” said Dr. Jeff Temple, a psychologist and founding director of the Center for Violence Prevention at the University of Texas Medical Branch, which focusses on gun policy research and community education. “And that’s the problem with these red flag laws: It puts it on the family and takes it away from the legislative process and takes the power away from the police.”
Webster said the new legislation lacks provisions to prevent the “initial acquisition of firearms” by people who may present danger to themselves or others.
“We have to prove that you’re too dangerous to have a gun, and the way that we do that is a fairly rigid system that sets a pretty low bar for being able to get a gun,” Webster said.
However, several experts said that the new law will save lives in other ways.
The legislation includes $750 million to help states implement and conduct crisis intervention programs like mental health courts, drug courts, and veteran courts, and provides funding for mental health programs and school security, including $150 million for the suicide crisis hotline and $250 million for community mental health.
“The best thing about it is, even though I wish it was more, the money for mental health services is going to save lives,” said clinical psychologist Dr. Joel Dvoskin. “It’s going to help a lot.”
The new measures are “going to reduce suicides and they’re going to reduce homicides,” Temple said.
Experts also praised the legislation’s expansion of an existing law that prevents people convicted of domestic abuse from owning a gun, so now it includes not only spouses but also individuals in “serious dating relationships.”
“The most important thing about this is the closing of the ‘boyfriend loophole,'” said Temple. “Now it applies to dating relationships, which is huge, because about half of domestic violence incidents and homicides are within dating partners.”
Nevertheless, SUNY Oswego criminal justice professor Jaclyn Schildkraut said she’s concerned that most of the provisions in the law won’t address the underlying factors that are known to cause mass shootings.
“I don’t want to be non-optimistic that the legislation that was passed will not help people in our country — it absolutely will,” said Schildkraut, national expert on mass shootings research. “Will it stop mass shootings? No.”
John Cohen, a former ranking Department of Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor, said that in order for the legislation to actually prevent mass casualty shootings, “every local jurisdiction across the nation [needs to operate] under a consistent threat assessment and threat management process.”
“I would say that this law, when combined with a national, consistent level of threat assessment and threat management, could be highly effective,” Cohen said. “The law by itself doesn’t necessarily give you any insight or whether [Highland Park] could have been prevented or not.”
Threat assessments, which are an evidence-based approach to identifying individuals who may pose a threat and providing intervention before a violent incident occurs, are not a new concept, Cohen said.
“Local jurisdictions like Los Angeles, New York City and Montgomery County, Maryland, have threat management units,” Cohen said. “These are units that integrate mental health and law enforcement expertise in order to engage in these types of activities. At the local level, they can be highly effective in preventing these types of mass shootings.”
Schildkraut told ABC News that Congress’ new legislation lacks specific provisions for threat assessments that might have helped stop recent mass shootings.
“Threat assessment is designed to catch anybody who’s in crisis who needs assistance,” Schildkraut said. “It’s especially helpful in instances where there are potential mass shooting plots, and where somebody brings that information forward.”
Schildkraut also decried the legislation for failing to impose more sweeping measures like requiring universal background checks or banning the sale of large-capacity magazines or military-style rifles.
“We have policies that we know can work, like universal background checks,” Schildkraut told ABC News. “We have different things that we know can help, but they’re not being done.”
(WASHINGTON) — As the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline prepares for the launch of its new three-digit number, 988, on July 16, experts said Thursday they’re excited about the opportunity to reimagine crisis care in the U.S., but building out the system will take time.
“We know that the 16th is the start of a transition, and not an end,” Dr. Miriam Delphin-Rittmon said during a press call hosted by the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention. Delphin-Rittmon is the assistant secretary for mental health and substance abuse at SAMHSA, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, a branch of the Department of Health and Human Services.
“There’s still a lot of work to be done, we know, to strengthen and transform the crisis-care continuum,” she said.
The Lifeline has been in operation using a 10-digit number since 2005 and has been underfunded and understaffed since its inception, advocates say. Ahead of the launch of the new number, which experts anticipate will create a dramatic increase in call volume, workforce capacity issues continue to be a concern.
As of December 2021, the Lifeline was only able to answer about 85% of calls coming through nationwide, according to an appropriations report from SAMHSA.
Answer rates vary from state to state, but those calls are answered at the local level when possible. When a local call center isn’t able to answer a call, it gets forwarded to one of the national backup call centers.
The Biden administration has allocated $272 million in federal grant money for states, territories and the national backup centers to help fund the implementation of the new number. An additional $150 million was recently added to that effort as a part of the gun violence legislative package passed by Congress in late June.
That federal funding, hailed by advocates as an unprecedented investment, has already made a difference, Delphin-Rittmon said Thursday.
She explained that the Lifeline’s ability to respond has increased amid the wave of federal funding.
In May, Delphin-Rittmon said, the Lifeline was able to answer 27,000 more calls, 27,000 more chats and 3,000 more texts, compared to February.
Despite the increases in capacity, experts say more state-level investment is needed to ensure this system holds up long-term.
HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra echoed this sentiment last Friday while speaking with reporters, saying the new number, “will work, if the states are committed to it.”
“It is up to states to step up to the plate and create the funding [to increase capacity],” said Angela Kimball, senior vice president for advocacy and policy for the mental health policy coalition, Inseparable.
Four states have passed cell phone fees to help fund the call centers and crisis response at the state level, and some others have allocated funds from their yearly budget. But, Kimball said, “a lot of states have allocated insufficient resources to actually build a system that has the capacity to respond like people need.”
“That’s going to take people stepping up and demanding that elected officials invest,” she added. “It’s not going to happen for free.”
In addition to the federal funding, SAMHSA has developed a jobs portal for call center jobs across the country to try to help address the workforce issues in the states.
“Crisis care is a priority as it hasn’t been in the past,” said Colleen Carr, director of the National Action Alliance for Suicide Prevention.
“988 is really a transformational moment in our nation’s response to mental health and suicide prevention,” Carr continued. “And to achieve its full promise, it’s going to require long-term commitment and resources to ensure that anyone in crisis has access to quality and compassionate crisis care, when and where they need it.”
The long-term goals for crisis care response, advocates say, includes not just call centers but mobile crisis response teams and crisis stabilization units for people experiencing issues that cannot be deescalated over the phone. Experts say this continuum, as it’s called, will take even longer to develop than a consistent call response.
These sorts of resources, when available, can provide a professional, compassionate response, Kimball said.
Her own son has struggled with his mental health, she explained, and once needed the help of a mobile crisis team, which was able to deescalate the situation and get him the help he needed.
“This, honestly, is the kind of respectful, humane recovery-oriented response that everyone in crisis needs and deserves,” she said.
988 is the first step in making that continuum a reality, she added, saying, “No one’s worst day should ruin their chance to live their best life.”
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
