(NEW YORK) — Louisiana’s House of Representatives is debating a bill Thursday which would ban abortions and subject women to criminal prosecution for murder.
The proposed bill seeks to rewrite the state’s homicide statute to include abortion. The bill also voids any federal statutes, regulations, treaties, orders and court rulings that would allow abortion.
Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards, a pro-life Democrat, issued a statement calling the bill “radical” and said it goes far beyond being pro-life.
“House Bill 813 is not a pro-life bill. In addition to the fact that this legislation is patently unconstitutional, this bill would criminalize the use of certain types of contraception, as well as parts of the in vitro fertilization process, and it could even serve as a barrier to life-saving medical treatment for a woman who is suffering a miscarriage,” Edwards said in a statement.
Edwards called the idea of a woman being jailed for an abortion “simply absurd.”
“I do not normally comment on these types of bills before they’ve made it through the legislative process, but I felt I had to join my voice to the chorus of pro-life organizations against HB 813,” Edwards said.
Anti-abortion group Louisiana Right to Life also criticized the bill, saying it is not consistent with the group’s policy and “does not exempt women from criminalization and is unnecessary to protect the life of babies from abortion.”
“Our longstanding policy is that abortion-vulnerable women should not be treated as criminals. Instead, we should hold accountable the individuals performing the abortion or selling or providing the chemical abortion drugs,” Louisiana Right to Life said in a statement.
The bill’s sponsor, state Rep. Danny McCormick, did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Louisiana Right to Life on Thursday said it supports an amendment by Rep. Alan Seabaugh which completely replaces the bill, and seeks to “hold accountable” those who provide abortion services rather than mothers, the group said in a statement.
“Through Rep. Seabaugh’s amendment, Louisiana will reaffirm its policy to protect unborn children from abortion without criminalizing abortion-vulnerable women. Unless HB 813 is fundamentally changed through Rep. Seabaugh’s amendment, Louisiana Right to Life is asking legislators to oppose HB 813,” said Benjamin Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life, in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — Thousands of nurses from around the country marched to the White House and past the U.S. Capitol Thursday demanding reforms to the health care industry they claim has been putting their lives in danger and prioritizing profits over the care of patients.
They called for three major changes: fair wages, safe-staffing ratios, and protection against workplace violence — issues nurses say have only been made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic.
As the nation marked 1 million deaths from Covid, the nurses gathering in front of the White House warned of what they said was the dangerous nurse-to-patient staffing ratio putting both patients and nurses in danger.
While the ratio of nurses to patients depends on the type of care, a nurse most commonly cares for three patients at one time. Some nurses at Thursday’s protest reported caring for eight to 10 patients simultaneously. Cindy Reuss said she left her job after 17 year due to unsafe staffing ratios.
Her job job was her heart, she said, in an interview with ABC affiliate WJLA.
“None of us want to leave bedside nursing,” Reuss said. “But we cannot do it. With eight to ten patients, it’s not safe. We just want the opportunity to be good nurses.”
Other nurses at the protest highlighted what they said was the lack of protection nurses have against workplace violence.
Thomas Fernandes, who’s been a critical care travel nurse for five years, claimed a patient shattered a meth pipe on his head with no repercussions.
“Put your hands on a cop, you go to jail. Put your hands on a nurse and you can come back next week,” Fernandes said, pointing to what he said was a lack of penalties for patients who harm those dedicated to caring for them.
Adriane Carrier said she has been injured three times and spent two and half years out of work. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, nursing and residential care facilities have the second-highest workplace injury incident rates in the country.
“We need to have a safe workplaces and consequences for injuring and harming health care workers and nurses,” she said.
During their march past the U.S. Capitol, the nurses also demanded fair, reasonable and competitive wages, noting what they said is the increase in hospital profits while they’ve seen little to no increase in pay.
“This is a time where the health care industry and hospitals have made record profits while [nurses] are leaving the bedside,” Carrier said. “50,000 more nurses will be leaving the bedside. There will be no more nurses to take care of Americans and our country and that is going to be the biggest tragedy of all.”
(WASHINGTON) — The White House is moving to deal with yet another crisis with potentially damaging political consequences: a nationwide shortage of baby formula.
President Joe Biden spoke Thursday with retailers and infant formula manufacturers — including Target, Walmart, Reckitt and Gerber — on efforts to make more supply available to American families, according to senior administration officials.
In the meantime, the White House will be urging states to let parents use their benefits from the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to purchase formula. The administration is also calling on the Federal Trade Commission and state officials to crack down on any instances of price gouging.
The FDA is expected to announce ways the U.S. can import more formula products from abroad in the coming days.
Even as one company said it could take up to two months to get its product back in stores, the FDA wouldn’t provide an estimate on when shelves will be replenished.
“We absolutely recognize the frustration that American families are feeling right now,” one official said on Thursday, “and that’s why the president has acted to direct administration to pull additional levers, take additional action to make more supply available as quickly as possible.”
Or as House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a California Democrat put it during her weekly press conference: “Right now the baby’s crying, the baby’s hungry, we need to address it right now.”
“President Biden has directed the administration to work urgently to ensure that infant formula is safe and available for families,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday
Asked why Biden and the administration hadn’t acted earlier, Psaki insisted that administration efforts had been “underway for months.”
“The steps the President took today are an acknowledgment and a recognition that more needs to be done. That we do not want parents, mothers, families out there to be stressed and worried about feeding their babies,” she said. “We are working. We are seeing increases over the last couple of weeks. More needs to be done. We are going to cut every element of red tape we can cut. We are going to work with manufacturers, we’re going to import more, to expedite this as quickly as possible.”
“If you are a parent who is looking for formula right now, struggling to find what you need, do you have, even have a rough guess of how long these shortages are going to last? pressed ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce.
“Well, we’ve already seen an increase in supply over the past couple of weeks. What we are seeing, which is an enormous problem, is hoarding. People hoarding because they’re fearful,” Psaki answered. “Our message to parents is we hear you, we want to do everything we can and we’re going to cut every element of red tape to help address this and make it better for you to get formula on the shelves.”
.@MaryKBruce: “When will parents be able to get the formula they need?”
Psaki: “FDA took a step to ensure that babies were taking safe formula…We’re going to work with manufacturers, we’re going to import more to expedite this as quickly as possible.” https://t.co/9KEtZZ0mlFpic.twitter.com/qZSdrHH3ry
A shortage of formula has been a long-standing problem because of supply chain problems, but the situation was made even worse when Abbott — one of the largest manufacturers of formula in the nation — announced in February a recall of three popular brands and shut down its Sturgis, Michigan, plant due to contamination concerns.
The company took the action after complaints of Cronobacter sakazakii and Salmonella Newport infections in infants who consumed the formula. Two of the infants died.
Parents report scrambling to find formula as the out-of-stock rate for baby formula hit 43% at the end the first week of May, according to a report from the real-time data tracking agency Datasembly.
Public outcry has garnered the attention of lawmakers on Capitol Hill — providing Republicans with another line of attack against the Biden administration.
Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., read letters he received from worried parents and grandparents aloud the floor of the Senate on Thursday.
“This outrageous, unacceptable situation has been unfolding in slow motion over several months,” McConnell said. “Much of it stems from a recall that resulted in a plant being shut down. But it seems that while President Biden’s administration and the FDA knew all about this problem as it developed, they had been asleep at the switch in terms of getting production back online as fast as possible.”
A group of House Republicans held a press conference Thursday to discuss the issue, hitting Biden for not getting ahead of the problem.
“This is not a Third World country” said Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik. “This should never happen in the United States.”
As outrage from the public intensifies, the FDA this week said it’s doing “everything in our power to ensure there is adequate product available where and when they need it.”
“Ensuring the availability of safe, sole-source nutrition products like infant formula is of the utmost importance to the FDA,” Commissioner Robert M. Califf said in a statement. “Our teams have been working tirelessly to address and alleviate supply issues and will continue doing everything within our authority to ensure the production of safe infant formula products.”
Abbott has said it could restart operations at its Michigan plant within two weeks, so long as it gets a green light from the FDA. From there, it would take the company six to eight weeks to get the new product to shelves.
“We would begin production of EleCare, Alimentum and metabolic formulas first and then begin production of Similac and other formulas,” the company said.
ABC News’ Benjamin Siegel, Mariam Khan and Benjamin Gittleson contributed to this report.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack subpoenaed House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and four other Republican members of Congress on Thursday for testimony about events surrounding the Capitol riot and efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
McCarthy and the other members — Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Andy Biggs of Arizona, Mo Brooks of Alabama and Scott Perry of Pennsylvania — had rejected the committee’s voluntary requests for cooperation in recent months.
“Before we hold our hearings next month, we wished to provide members the opportunity to discuss these matters with the committee voluntarily,” Committee Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said in a statement regarding the subpoenas. “Regrettably, the individuals receiving subpoenas today have refused and we’re forced to take this step to help ensure the committee uncovers facts concerning January 6th. We urge our colleagues to comply with the law, do their patriotic duty, and cooperate with our investigation as hundreds of other witnesses have done.”
In Thompson’s letter informing McCarthy of the subpoena, which the committee chair released to the media, Thompson said, in part, “The Select Committee has tremendous respect respect for the prerogatives of Congress and the privacy of its members. At the same time, we have a solemn responsibility to investigate fully the fact and circumstances of the violent attack on the United States Capitol and issues relating to the peaceful transfer of power.”
The subpoenas mark a dramatic escalation in the committee’s tactics and follow weeks of internal debate over whether to try to force Republicans to testify behind closed doors about their conversations with former President Donald Trump and involvement in various parts of the effort to overturn the election and contest the certification of the results.
The Republican members are unlikely to comply with the requests, which could prompt a legal — and, at minimum, political — battle with McCarthy and other lawmakers who are expected to be in the majority next year and in position to seek retribution.
The committee is expected to begin a series of public hearings on their investigation next month, ahead of issuing a final report on their inquiry in the fall. The report will be the product of nearly 1,000 interviews, and tens of thousands of pages of records obtained by investigators.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court justices met Thursday for the first time since the bombshell leak of a draft opinion showing the Court’s conservative majority is poised to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The private conference is for the justices only, no staff or aides are allowed in the room.
The meeting came as abortion rights activists showed no signs of slowing down, gathering outside the homes of Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Samuel Alito and Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh.
The protests, while peaceful, have prompted Attorney General Merrick Garland — the nation’s top law enforcement official — to direct additional support to ensure the safety of the nine justices.
“Attorney General Garland continues to be briefed on security matters related to the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Justices,” Justice Department spokesperson Anthony Coley said in a statement on Wednesday. The Attorney General directed the U.S. Marshals Service to help ensure the Justices’ safety by providing additional support to the Marshal of the Supreme Court and Supreme Court Police.”
On Wednesday, additional height was installed to the already “unscalable” eight-foot-high fence erected outside the Supreme Court last week. The barrier was similar to that placed around the U.S. Capitol after the violence on Jan. 6, 2021 and it comes ahead of a large-scale protest planned for Saturday.
The increased security at the Supreme Court and for the justices comes as Republicans continue to blast the demonstrations, despite no reports of violence.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., on Thursday said Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and the White House won’t “condemn the harassment.”
McConnell also hit Garland for not doing more to enforce a statute some say makes it illegal for protesters to picket or parade with the intent of influencing a judge at a building or residence occupied or used by such judge.
“One would think a DOJ run by the former chief judge of the D.C. Circuit would need no prodding, no prodding to protect judicial safety and judicial independence. But at least so far the attorney general was quicker to pounce on concerned parents at school board meetings,” McConnell said on the Senate floor. “The governors of Maryland and Virginia have had to write a joint letter to the attorney general begging him to make his U.S. attorneys do their job and uphold the law.”
Maryland GOP Gov. Larry Hogan and Virginia GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin wrote to Garland on Wednesday asking the Justice Department to provide “appropriate resources to safeguard the Justices and enforce the law as it is written.”
White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Tuesday that the administration believes in peaceful protest, and that “violence, threats and intimidation of any kind have no place in political discourse.”
But she also took aim at Republicans, saying those criticizing these protests were “silent for years on protests that have happened outside of the homes of school board members, the Michigan Secretary of State, or including threats made to women seeking reproductive healthcare, or even an insurrection against our Capitol.”
“I know that there’s an outrage right now, I guess, about protests that have been peaceful to date — and we certainly continue to encourage that — outside of judges’ homes,” Psaki added. “And that’s the president’s position. But the silence is pretty deafening about all of the other intimidation that we’ve seen to a number of people.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday addressed the U.S. reaching the milestone of 1 million coronavirus deaths.
“One million empty chairs around the family dinner table,” Biden said in a pre-taped video message. “Each irreplaceable, irreplaceable losses. Each leaving behind a family or community forever changed because of this pandemic. Our heart goes out to all those who are struggling.”
Biden is ordering flags be flown at half-staff at the White House and all federal public buildings and grounds until sunset on May 16 in remembrance of those who lost their lives to the virus.
His remarks kicked off a second virtual summit focused on the global response to the ongoing health crisis and preventing future pandemics. The United States is co-hosting the event alongside Belize, Germany, Indonesia and Senegal.
Biden also noted the U.S. is not alone in its grief.
“Around the world many more millions have died,” he said in the video message. “Millions of children have been orphaned, with thousands still dying every day. Now is the time for us to act. All of us together. We all must do more, must honor those we have lost by doing everything we can to prevent as many deaths as possible.”
Biden on Thursday reiterated his call for Congress to pass more COVID-19 aid.
In March, Biden requested an additional $22.5 billion to combat the virus, warning that the country’s testing, vaccine and treatment supplies were running low.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are trying to forge ahead with a slimmed down $10 billion coronavirus assistance package. Senate Republicans previously blocked it over the administration’s plan to lift Title 42, a pandemic-era rule restricting migration at the U.S. border.
Democrats tried to link the COVID-19 package to supplemental aid for Ukraine to ensure its passage but the two measures were decoupled earlier this week.
Biden said Thursday that the emergency coronavirus funding is “vital to protect Americans.”
The pre-taped message marking 1 million deaths was more muted than Biden’s address on 500,000 virus deaths in February 2021, when he and Vice President Kamala Harris stood in front of the South Portico of the White House and held a moment of silence as well as a candle-lighting ceremony.
Andy Cross/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images, FILE
(NEW YORK) — John Eastman, Donald Trump’s former lawyer, urged Pennsylvania lawmakers to sow doubt in the 2020 election and even suggested throwing out absentee ballots so Trump could take the lead in the state, according to emails obtained by ABC News and sent to the Jan. 6 committee by the Colorado Ethics Institute.
“For example, depending on how many ballots were counted that were received after the statutory deadline (say 10,000 for example’s purpose), those 10,000 votes need to be discarded, and you can take the absentee ballot ratio for each candidate in the counties were late-received ballots were illegally counted and deduct the pro-rated amount from each candidate’s total,” Eastman wrote to Pennsylvania Republican state Rep. Russ Diamond on Dec. 4, 2020.
“Then, having done that math, you’d be left with a significant Trump lead that would bolster the argument for the Legislature adopting a slate of Trump electors — perfectly within your authority to do anyway, but now bolstered by the untainted popular vote,” he continued. “That would help provide some cover.”
The Colorado Ethics Institute obtained the Eastman emails via a Freedom of Information Act request for Eastman’s communications while he was employed by the University of Colorado-Boulder from August 2020 until May 2021.
The Denver Post first reported on the emails, which were later obtained by ABC News.
Eastman is under investigation by the Jan. 6 committee and a judge recently ruled he must turn over some documents to the committee he had been withholding. He drafted a plan for Trump to cling to power by falsely claiming then-Vice President Mike Pence could reject legitimate electors during the 2020 presidential election.
ABC News reported exclusively that Eastman was recently part of a small group of Trump allies who secured a private meeting in March to try and convince the Republican leader of the Wisconsin state Assembly to decertify Biden’s win.
Eastman was subpoenaed in November 2021 by the congressional committee looking into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol. He had been rejecting the panel’s request for documents, claiming attorney-client privilege, until a federal judge ordered most of them turned over.
ABC News’ Will Steakin and Laura Romero contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — In the wake of a bombshell leak last week of a Supreme Court draft opinion indicating the court’s conservative majority could soon overturn Roe v. Wade, Senate Democrats on Wednesday forced a vote to advance a bill that would enshrine abortion rights into federal law.
The Women’s Health Protection Act would codify the Roe v. Wade ruling while also banning requirements some states have put into place related to abortion care, such as waiting periods and mandatory doctor visits before the procedure. But without the 60 votes needed to overcome a GOP-led filibuster, the legislation failed in the Senate 49-51, sending Democrats scrambling for alternatives.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia broke from his party and joined every single Republican senator to vote against advancing the bill.
Still, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer argued the vote was worth taking, to put Republicans on the record, calling it “one of the most consequential we will take in decades.”
“All of us will have to answer for this vote for the rest of our time in public office,” Schumer said in floor remarks Wednesday morning. “Before the day is over, every member of this body will make a choice stand with women to protect their freedoms or stand with MAGA Republicans to take our country into a dark and repressive future.”
“This is a cruel repressive dangerous vision for our country, but it is precisely the future that MAGA Republicans are working towards,” he added, portraying a nation without abortion access.
Vice President Harris presided as the afternoon vote began, not to break a tie on the bill, but because she has long fought to protect reproductive rights, the White House said.
Schumer filed cloture on Monday on a motion to start debate on the Women’s Health Protection Act, setting the bill up for a procedural roll call vote on Wednesday. The bill cleared the House last year but already failed once to pass through the upper chamber in February, when Schumer failed to get the entire Democratic caucus on board, in a 46-48 vote. Democrats currently control 50 seats in the Senate with Harris, as president of the Senate, serving as their tie-breaking vote — but 60 votes are needed to end debate on a piece of legislation, under the filibuster rule.
Not only did Democrats lack the 60 votes needed to get past a GOP-led filibuster, but they lacked the full support of their caucus, since Manchin, who voted with Republicans to block the measure earlier this year, said earlier Wednesday he would, again, vote “no.”
“I would vote for a Roe v. Wade codification if it was today. I was hopeful for that, but I found out yesterday in caucus that wasn’t going to be,” he told reporters.
Republicans and Manchin have called the Women’s Health Protection Act too broad, prompting Democrats to draft a modified version. Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska — the sole Senate Republicans who support abortion rights — told reporters this week the bill still goes too far for them and that they would be voting “no.” For instance, the bill doesn’t protect the right of Catholic hospitals to refuse to perform abortions, which Collins took issue with.
“After today’s vote fails, I plan to continue working with my colleagues on legislation to maintain — not expand or restrict — the current legal framework for abortion rights in this country,” Collins said in a statement Wednesday.
She and Murkowski have their own proposal to codify Roe called the Reproductive Choice Act, which they say would prohibit states from imposing an “undue burden” on the ability of a woman to choose to terminate a pregnancy pre-viability but allow states to keep other restrictions in place. However, at least 17 abortion-rights groups this week said would not protect the right to abortion.
NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said their legislation, as written, would actually weaken protections found under current law.
“If these senators truly cared about safeguarding reproductive freedom in the face of an unprecedented assault from the Supreme Court, they could vote for the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA), a bill that actually secures the right to abortion against medically unnecessary bans and restrictions,” she said in a statement. “Instead, they’re engaging in political theater and making misleading claims about what WHPA is and does.”
Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., told ABC News’ Trish Turner on Tuesday he’s been negotiating with Collins since last week to try to change the Reproductive Choice Act to find a way in federal law to protect access to abortion and contraception.
“We would like to codify the set of holdings beginning with Griswold up through the Whole Women’s Health case,” Kaine said of the bipartisan effort, referring to the Supreme Court case Griswold v. Connecticut upholding a constitutional marital right of privacy. But that measure, again, would need 60 votes to clear a GOP filibuster.
Anticipating the Senate vote, abortion-rights activists spilled over from outside the Supreme Court to the steps of the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday night, calling on lawmakers to protect abortion access nationwide.
“There’ll be no more hiding. There’ll be no more distracting. No more obfuscating where every member in this chamber stands,” Schumer said Tuesday on the Senate floor. “Senate Republicans will face a choice. Either vote to protect the rights of women to exercise freedom over their own bodies, or stand with the Supreme Court as 50 years of women’s rights are reduced to rubble before our very eyes.”
ABC News’ Allison Pecorin contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — More than 500 American Indian, Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian children died over the course of 150 years in Indigenous boarding schools run by the American government and churches to force assimilation, according to a new report.
The federal report follows an investigation launched in June 2021 by Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland into the government’s role in the schools as part of an effort to dispossess Indigenous people of their land to expand the United States. The probe began after nearly 1,000 unmarked graves of Indigenous children were unearthed at Indigenous boarding schools in Canada.
Native Nations scholars estimate that almost 40,000 children have died at Indigenous boarding schools. And according to the federal report, the Interior Department “expects that continued investigation will reveal the approximate number of Indian children who died at Federal Indian boarding schools to be in the thousands or tens of thousands.”
“I come from ancestors who endured the horrors of the Indian boarding school assimilation policies carried out by the same department that I now lead,” a tearful Haaland said during a press conference on Wednesday.
Haaland, the first Native American to hold a Cabinet position, oversees the government agency that historically played a major role in the forced relocation and oppression of Indigenous people.
She is a member of the Laguna Pueblo Tribe and previously told ABC’s “Nightline” that her great grandfather was taken to the United States Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, which was open from 1879 to 1918.
“When my maternal grandparents were only 8 years old, they were stolen from their parents, culture and communities, and forced to live in boarding schools until the age of 13,” Haaland said on Wednesday. “Many children like them never made it back to their homes. Each of those children has a missing family member, a person who was not able to live out their purpose on this earth. Because they lost their lives as part of this terrible system.”
The United States operated or supported 408 Indigenous boarding schools in 37 states in which hundreds of thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families, according to the report.
Interior Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Bryan Newland, who led the initiative, said Wednesday the report shows the federal government targeted Indian children to further its policies.
“Federal Indian boarding schools have had a lasting impact on Native people in communities across America,” Newland said in an emotional address. “That impact continues to influence the lives of countless families. From the breakup of families of tribal nations to the loss of languages and cultural practices and relatives, this has left lasting scars for all Indigenous people.”
The deaths of the children occurred at approximately 19 federal Indian boarding schools, but the Interior Department expects the number of recorded deaths to rise as the investigation continues. The report also identified 53 burial sites for Indigenous students and emphasizes that more sites could be unearthed.
Some of the abuse children experienced included the “rampant physical, sexual, and emotional abuse; disease; malnourishment; overcrowding; and lack of health care,” the report found.
“I am here because my ancestors persevered,” Haaland said. “I stand on the shoulders of my grandmother and my mother and the work we will do with the federal Indian boarding school initiative will have a transformational impact on the generations who follow.”
Asked by ABC News if the federal government plans to offer reparations for Native American families impacted by the policies, Newland said the report is a “first step of this initiative.”
“There’s a lot more work that has to be done to simply tell them the truth and lay out the scope of the federal Indian boarding school system,” he added.
The second phase of the investigation will identify children who died and bring their remains back to their communities, as well as identify living survivors and descendants of attendees of Indian boarding schools to document their experiences, the report says.
It also commits to backing federal funding for the advancement of Native language revitalization, supporting scientific studies that promote Native health research and holding a federal memorial to recognize the generations of children forced into the boarding schools. It pledged to ensure that policies and practices are in compliance with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act.
“I have a great obligation, but I was taught by my mother and my grandfather and my grandmother that when you are asked to do something for your people that you step up,” Haaland told “Nightline” earlier this earlier.
Haaland said she is launching a yearlong tour, “The Road to Healing,” in which she will travel across the country to meet with families impacted by the painful legacy of Indigenous boarding schools and give them a platform to share their stories and heal from “intergenerational trauma.”
“We have lived with the intergenerational trauma of federal Indian boarding school policies for many years,” Haaland said. “But what is new is the determination in the Biden-Harris administration to make a lasting difference in the impact of this trauma for future generations.”
ABC News’ Abby Cruz and Tenzin Shakya contributed to this report.
(KANKAKEE, Ill.) — President Joe Biden hit the road Wednesday to talk about the role American farmers can play in alleviating global food shortages caused by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
At O’Connor Farms, a family-run farm in Kankakee, Illinois, Biden outlined steps his administration is taking to help farmers ramp up domestic production.
“Right now America is fighting on two fronts,” Biden said. “At home, it’s inflation and rising prices. Abroad, it’s helping Ukrainians defend their democracy and feeding those who are left hungry around the world because Russian atrocities exist.”
Biden continued, “Our farmers are helping both on both fronts, reducing the food cost of price of food at home and expanding production and feeding the world in need.”
To support this cause, the administration will increase the number of counties that can get insurance for double cropping, or planting a second crop on the same land in a single year. It will also double Biden’s pledged funding for the production of fertilizer from $250 million to $500 million.
Jeff O’Connor, the owner of the Illinois farm, said the changes will allow U.S. farmers to “step up at a very critical time.”
“The farming community stands ready to maximize production, which we do so well, in this time of world need,” O’Connor said as he introduced Biden.
Biden’s appearance in Illinois came fresh on the heels of the release of April’s consumer price index — a key measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday morning consumer prices rose 8.3% last month from the year prior, a slight dip from March’s peak of 8.5% but still close to a four-decade high.
The cost of food as well as shelter, airfare and new vehicles were the main contributors to the April statistics, the bureau said.
Food prices overall are up 9.4% in the last 12 months, increasing 0.9% from March to April. Grocery prices are even higher, up 10.8% from a year ago.
Gas prices hit a record high on Wednesday of $4.40 per gallon, according to AAA.
“While it is heartening to see that annual inflation moderated in April, the fact remains that inflation is unacceptably high,” Biden said in a statement reacting to the April data. “As I said yesterday, inflation is a challenge for families across the country and bringing it down is my top economic priority.”
Inflation is poised to be one of the biggest issues in the 2022 midterm elections. In bad news for Biden, a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll found most Americans disapprove of his handling of the economic issue.
In anticipation of the new data on consumer prices, Biden on Tuesday delivered remarks on efforts by his administration to combat inflation. His speech also took aim at what he describes as “ultra-MAGA” Republicans, most notably Florida Sen. Rick Scott and his plan to have all Americans pay some federal income tax.
“The Republican plan is to increase taxes on middle class families,” Biden said, despite the fact that Scott’s plan has been dismissed by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
After his remarks, Biden was asked by a reporter when the public can expect prices to come down.
“I don’t know, but I know what we have to do to make sure that we can bring it down,” Biden responded.
