Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — The Army’s recruiting challenges this year continue as senior U.S. Army officials acknowledged to Congress on Tuesday that the total size of the active-duty arm of the branch will be 10,000 soldiers fewer than had been anticipated.
Army officials blame a tight labor market where private companies are incentivizing pay and the decreasing number of young people who can meet their tough eligibility standards.
The total size of the Army, or the “end strength,” as it is known, is met by keeping soldiers through retention or by bringing in new soldiers through recruiting. This year’s retention rates for the fiscal year 2022, ending in September, are higher than had been planned, but the same cannot be said for Army recruiting.
“The Army active-duty enlisted recruiting goal for the FY22 is 60,000 based on the 476,000 end-strength goal announced in March. As of mid-July, the Army has recruited nearly 30,000 enlisted Soldiers, 50% of our mission,” Lt. Col. Randee Farrell, the spokeswoman for Army Secretary Christine Wormuth, said in a statement to ABC News.
Back in March, already facing recruiting challenges, the Army had reduced its annual recruiting target by 15,000 recruits.
On Tuesday during a House Armed Services subcommittee hearing, Gen. Joseph Martin, the Army’s vice chief of staff, acknowledged that the Army’s recruiting challenges will mean it will fall about 10,000 soldiers short of meeting its projected end-strength goal.
“We believe that will land at 466,400 for this year for an end strength if we make our recruiting objectives,” Martin said. “If we’re over or under that will impact next year’s and strength, as well. We’re taking that all into account.”
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., cited new Army information provided to another House committee that the Army would have an even more “dramatic” drop in the fiscal year 2023.
“You’re now shifting from an end strength of 473 [thousand] to somewhere between 445,000 and 452,000, so a reduction of between 21,000 and 28,000,” Speier said. “That’s alarming.”
Martin confirmed Speier’s numbers and said he was planning for it to be higher, though it would all depend on recruiting.
“I’d like to say that it’s 445 to 452 [thousand] but we’re going to mission ourselves for 455 if we can achieve it,” Martin said. “The question is, it’s whether or not we can achieve it.”
The big drop in recruiting is blamed on the tight post-COVID labor market and rising incentives from private companies to hire employees. The shrinking number of young Americans eligible to meet their recruiting standards has also shrunk from 29% to 23%.
“Right now what we’re experiencing and the why of what we think’s going on right now is we’ve got unprecedented challenges with both a post-COVID-19 environment and labor market, but also competition with private companies that have changed their incentives over time,” Martin said.
“You’ve seen that with the various incentives that companies have provided, and then what we call a decrease as a result of that, a decreasing propensity and requisite qualifications to serve,” he added.
What impact the Army’s end-strength drop will have on readiness remains to be seen.
Other military branches are also facing recruiting challenges.
“The Department is in fierce competition for skilled, relevant and innovative talent. The labor market, exacerbated by the effects of the pandemic and the military-civilian divide, creates a challenging recruiting environment,” Gilbert Cisneros, under secretary of defense for personnel and readiness of the United States, told senators during an Armed Services subcommittee hearing in April
(WASHINGTON) — Several House Democrats were arrested on Tuesday while protesting outside the Supreme Court over its decision to overturn constitutional protections for abortion access.
The group of Democratic lawmakers and others marched over to the high court from the Capitol while chanting “we won’t go back” and “our body our choice” — the latest demonstration after five conservative justices ruled last month to reverse the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision that first legalized abortions nationwide.
Seventeen lawmakers in total were arrested, according to Capitol Police, including Reps. Katherine Clark of Massachusetts, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and Illinois’ Jan Schakowsky.
Police at the Supreme Court told the protesters that they were participating in “illegal demonstration activity” before advising anyone who didn’t want to get arrested to leave, which sparked singing and chanting from the group.
Officers then began arresting the demonstrators, though no handcuffs were seen. Police also collected IDs and took pictures of those arrested — including of some of the lawmakers — and brought water to the staging area for protesters to drink.
Tuesday’s event was part of Democrats’ efforts to continue highlighting the Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision, which allowed the implementation of stringent abortion restrictions or outright bans in at least a dozen states across the country.
In statements, the lawmakers vowed they would keep fighting to protect abortion access.
“The extremist Republican Party is determined to take us back in time and take away our rights. I refuse to stand on the sidelines as their rampage continues,” Clark said in a statement. “I am furious and heartbroken, and I will proudly fight for our right to abortion and all of our Constitutional rights. They can arrest me, but we won’t allow them to arrest freedom.”
The court’s ruling, widely celebrated by conservatives, was met with widespread protests by abortion rights supporters.
Democrats in liberal states have pushed efforts to enshrine abortion protections into law. But at the federal level, lawmakers have struggled to pass similar legislation, given GOP opposition and reluctance to change Senate rules.
House Democrats this week passed two bills, one to codify Roe v. Wade and another to protect a person’s right to travel to other states for legal abortions. However, those measures are not expected to have sufficient support to pass the 50-50 Senate.
(WASHINGTON) — Steve Bannon, who served as former President Donald Trump’s chief strategist before departing the White House in August 2017, is on trial for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bannon was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 panel for records and testimony in September of last year, with the committee telling him it had “reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
After the House of Representatives voted to hold him in contempt for defying the subpoena, the Justice Department in November charged Bannon with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, setting up this week’s trial.
Here is how the news is developing. All times are Eastern.
Jul 19, 3:55 PM EDT
Defense tells jury ‘there was no ignoring the subpoena’
Bannon’s defense attorney Matt “Evan” Corcoran said in his opening statement that “no one ignored the subpoena” issued to Bannon, and that “there was direct engagement by Bob Costello,” Bannon’s attorney, with the House committee, specifically committee staffer Kristin Amerling.
He said Costello “immediately” communicated to the committee that there was an objection to the subpoena, “and that Steve Bannon could not appear and that he could not provide documents.”
“So there was no ignoring the subpoena,” Corcoran said. What followed was “a considerable back and forth” between Amerling and Costello — “they did what two lawyers do, they negotiated.”
Corcoran said, “the government wants you to believe … that Mr. Bannon committed a crime by not showing up to a congressional hearing room … but the evidence is going to be crystal clear no one, no one believed Mr. Bannon was going to appear on Oct. 14, 2021,” and the reasons he couldn’t appear had been articulated to the committee.
Corcoran told the jury that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable that Steve Bannon willfully defaulted when he didn’t appear for the deposition on Oct. 14, 2021 — “but you’ll find from the evidence that that date on the subpoena was the subject of ongoing discussions” and it was not “fixed.”
In addition, Corcoran told jurors, you will hear that “almost every single one” of the witnesses subpoenaed led to negotiations between committee staff and lawyers, and often the appearance would be at a later date than what was on the subpoena.
Corcoran also argued that the prosecution may have been infected by politics, telling the jury that with each document or each statement provided at trial, they should ask themselves: “Is this piece of evidence affected by politics?”
Jul 19, 3:31 PM EDT
Prosecutors say Bannon’s failure to comply was deliberate
Continuing her opening statement, federal prosecutor Amanda Vaughn told the jury that the subpoena to Bannon directed him to provide documents by the morning of Oct. 7, 2021, and to appear for a deposition the morning of Oct. 14, 2021 — but instead he had an attorney, Robert Costello, send a letter to the committee informing the committee that he would not comply “in any way,” she said.
“The excuse the defendant gave for not complying” was the claim that “a privilege” meant he didn’t have to turn over certain information, Vaughn said. “[But] it’s not up to the defendant or anyone else to decide if he can ignore the [request] based on a privilege, it’s up to the committee.”
And, said Vaughn, the committee clearly told Bannon that “your privilege does not get you out of this one, you have to provide documents, and you have to come to your deposition.” And importantly, she said, the committee told Bannon that “a refusal to comply” could result in criminal prosecution.
“You will see, the defendant’s failure to comply was deliberate here,” Vaughn told the jury. “The only verdict that is supported by the evidence here: that the defendant showed his contempt for the U.S. Congress, and that he’s guilty.”
Federal prosecutor Amanda Vaughn began opening statements by saying, “In September of last year, Congress needed information from the defendant, Steve Bannon. … Congress needed to know what the defendant knew about the events of Jan. 6, 2021. … Congress had gotten information that the defendant might have some details about the events leading up to that day and what occurred that day.”
So, Vaughn told the jury, Congress gave Bannon a subpoena “that mandated” he provide any information he might have.
“Congress was entitled to the information it sought, it wasn’t optional,” Vaughn said. “But as you will learn in this trial, the defendant refused to hand over the information he might have.”
Vaughn said Bannon ignored “multiple warnings” that he could face criminal prosecution for refusing to comply with the subpoena and for preventing the government from getting “important information.”
“The defendant decided he was above the law and decided he didn’t need to follow the government’s orders,” she said.
Jul 19, 2:51 PM EDT
Judge instructs jury of the burden of proof
Prior to opening statements, the judge made clear to the jury that the Justice Department has the burden to prove four distinct elements “beyond a reasonable doubt”:
(1) that Bannon was in fact subpoenaed for testimony and/or documents;
(2) that the testimony and/or documents were “pertinent” to the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation;
(3) that Bannon “failed to comply or refused to comply” with the subpoena;
(4) that the “failure or refusal to comply was willful.”
Jul 19, 2:44 PM EDT
Jury sworn in after judge denies continuance
A 14-member jury has been sworn in for the contempt trial of ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Of the 14 jurors, nine are men and five are women.
The swearing-in of the jury comes after U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied the defense’s request for a one-month delay of the trial, which attorneys for Bannon argued was necessary due to a “seismic shift in the understanding of the parties” of what the government’s evidence will be.
“We have a jury that is just about picked,” Nichols said in denying the request for a one-month continuance.
One of the jurors, a man who works for an appliance company, said Monday during jury selection that he watched the first Jan. 6 committee hearing and believes the committee is “trying to find the truth about what happened” on Jan. 6.
Another juror, a man who works as a maintenance manager for the Washington, D.C., Parks and Recreation department, said he believes what happened on Jan. 6 “doesn’t make sense.”
Another juror, a woman who works as a photographer for NASA, said “a lot” of her “photographer friends were at the Capitol” on Jan. 6, and she has watched some of the Jan. 6 hearings on the news.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden signed an executive order on Tuesday that codifies a 2020 law dealing with Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.
Drawing on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, the new executive order will reinforce the U.S. government’s efforts to support families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas, according to the White House.
The order will authorize the federal government to impose financial sanctions on those who are involved — directly or indirectly — in wrongful detaining Americans abroad, the White House said. Moreover, government agencies will be directed to improve engagement with those Americans’ families, including sharing intelligence information about their loved ones and the government’s efforts to free them. The order will also charge experts across agencies with developing “options and strategies to deter future hostage-takings,” the White House said.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that new sanctions will not be announced on Tuesday.
In addition to the executive order, Biden will introduce a new “risk indicator” — “the ‘D’ indicator” — to the U.S. Department of State’s travel advisories for particular countries to alert Americans of the risk of wrongful detention by a foreign government, according to the White House.
Starting Tuesday, the first countries to receive this additional risk indicator will be China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, another senior administration official told reporters. The “D” indicator joins the existing “K” indicator that covers the risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking by non-state actors, as well as a range of other existing risk indicators.
China’s “D” risk designation may spark ire in Beijing, where Chinese officials have largely tried to avoid the subject of wrongful detentions and where Western sanctions are a constant trigger.
Experts estimate that roughly 200 Americans are arbitrarily jailed in China, and that even more are subject to unlawful “exit bans,” barring them from leaving the country. Some advocates have pushed for the Biden administration to take a more vocal approach to secure their freedom, rather than the standard behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But the State Department has recently tried a similar strategy — updating their official advisory to American and instructing them to reconsider travel plans to China due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
Syria, with which the United States does not currently have formal diplomatic relations, will be notably excluded from the “D” risk designation on Tuesday. U.S. officials believe that while the Syrian government may not be currently holding American journalist Austin Tice in its custody, it could have valuable information on his whereabouts and perhaps those of other missing Americans. Tice, 40, was abducted in Syria nearly 10 years ago.
The White House recently held a telephone call for the relatives of detained Americans to share information with them about these new announcements. Some of them are in Washington, D.C., this week for the unveiling of a public mural depicting their loved ones, according to Jonathan Franks, a spokesperson for many of the families.
The mural in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood will depict the faces of 18 American hostages and wrongful detainees, according to Franks, who represents a group called the Bring Our Families Home Campaign. Among those featured will be American basketball star Brittney Griner, 31, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, 52, both of whom remain detained in Russia, as well as U.S. permanent resident Paul Rusesabagina, 68, who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film “Hotel Rwanda” and was sentenced last September to 25 years in Rwandan prison over terrorism charges.
Franks accused U.S. officials of ignoring these relatives’ requests to meet with Biden, and said the phone call the White House held with the relatives was a “one-way conversation with families.” He said the Biden administration was rolling out these new steps in order to “pre-manage the press attention from many hostage families being in D.C. this week to unveil their mural,” saying the White House was “taking executive action to direct itself to follow existing law.”
A spokesperson for the White House told ABC News that it had invited the families to learn about the new announcements before they were announced publicly.
“As part of our regular communication with families of those who are held hostage or wrongfully detained, we invited them to hear about new policy efforts we are launching to help bring their loved ones home,” the spokesperson said. “We wanted to share information with the families first before we announce them publicly, which the families deserve.”
The spokesperson added that the Biden administration would “continue to be in regular touch with these families through the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs, Hostage Recovery Fusion Cell, and the president’s national security team as we do everything we can to support them during these difficult times.”
Whelan’s brother, David Whelan, told ABC News the executive order was “a good next step and shows a long-term commitment by the Biden administration, both in the amount of time it must have taken to craft the framework … and the focus on continued deterrence.”
He said the White House holding the call with families in advance of the public announcement “was exactly what families had been asking for: communication in advance of new announcements that would impact our families.”
According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, there are actually 64 publicly known cases of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world.
(WASHINGTON) — The Secret Service is preparing to notify the House Jan. 6 committee that it has found no new text messages related to the Capitol riot, a source says — the same day the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) sent a letter requesting the agency investigate the deletion of some its records from Jan. 6, 2021, which drew the scrutiny of an internal watchdog.
The Secret Service’s plans were confirmed to ABC News on Tuesday by a source familiar with the matter.
A Secret Service spokesman last week acknowledged that text messages from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, were deleted after being sought by the Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General.
A letter sent Wednesday by the inspector general to the heads of the House and Senate Homeland Security Committees said the messages were deleted “as part of a device-replacement program” despite the inspector general requesting such communications.
The director of communications for the Secret Service, Anthony Guglielmi, subsequently dismissed any “insinuation” the agents had intentionally deleted the texts.
The Jan. 6 committee subpoenaed the Secret Service on Friday — its first such order to an executive agency.
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, a member of the Jan. 6 committee, said on ABC’s “This Week” on Sunday that the panel expected more information about the Secret Service texts by Tuesday.
“We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones. That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be,” Lofgren, D-Calif., said then. “But we need to get this information to get the full picture.”
In its letter on Tuesday, the NARA wrote that “if it is determined that any text messages have been improperly deleted” — “regardless of their relevance” to Jan. 6 investigations — “then the Secret Service must send NARA a report within 30 calendar days of the date of this letter with a report documenting the deletion.”
“This report must include a complete description of the records affected, a statement of the exact circumstances surrounding the deletion of messages, a statement of the safeguards established to prevent further loss of documentation, and details of all agency actions taken to salvage, retrieve, or reconstruct the records,” NARA wrote.
The Secret Service — which has faced fresh controversy over its conduct amid the insurrection and then-President Donald Trump’s behavior that day — has repeatedly said it is readily cooperating with both the inspector general and the Jan. 6 committee.
“Over the last 18 months, we have voluntarily provided dozens of hours of formal testimony from special agents and over 790,000 unredacted emails, radio transmissions, operational and planning records,” spokesman Guglielmi said Friday. “We plan to continue that cooperation by responding swiftly to the Committee’s subpoena.”
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Bennie Thompson, the chairman of the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol, announced Tuesday he has COVID-19 two days ahead of a prime-time hearing Thursday.
“I tested positive for COVID-19 yesterday, and I am experiencing mild symptoms,” Thompson said in a statement. “Gratefully, I am fully vaccinated and boosted. I am continuing to follow CDC guidelines and will be isolating for the next several days.”
Despite Thompson’s diagnosis, the committee’s next hearing later this week will go on as planned.
“While Chairman Thompson is disappointed with his COVID diagnosis, he has instructed the Select Committee to proceed with Thursday evening’s hearing,” a spokesperson for the committee said in a statement. “Committee members and staff wish the Chairman a speedy recovery.”
Thursday’s hearing will focus on former President Donald Trump’s response to the attack, zeroing in on the 187 minutes between his speech at the Ellipse and his statement later that day telling rioters to go home.
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., told “GMA 3” last week that evidence shows Trump wasn’t emphatic in his call to the rioters to stop the violence.
Luria will be leading the hearing along with Republican Rep. Adam Kinzinger.
“Mr. Kinzinger and I plan to go through that 187 minutes. What happened between the time that [Trump] left the stage, gave these inflammatory remarks and gave people the impression … that he was going to himself march with this crowd to the Capitol,” Luria said.
“[And] what happened between that moment and then around 4:17 in the afternoon, which is about 187 minutes later, when he finally made a statement to the nation, to the people at the Capitol to go home,” she added.
Cassidy Hutchinson, a top aide to former chief of staff Mark Meadows, previously testified that Trump was not empathetic to the violent language targeting his vice president during the riot — including calls to “hang Mike Pence.”
Two more aides in Trump’s White House are expected to testify before the panel, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
Former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, a member of the National Security Council during the Trump administration, are slated to speak Thursday. Both officials resigned from their posts on Jan. 6, 2021.
Thompson, a Mississippi Democrat, has opened each of the seven public hearings the committee has held since early June.
In his statement Tuesday, Thompson encouraged Americans to get vaccinated.
“The pandemic has impacted our lives, changed the way we work, and affected our daily activities,” he said. “Vaccinations are crucial to humanity. The message to unvaccinated Americans is to protect yourself from infectious diseases by getting vaccinated. We must continue to do our part.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will sign an executive order on Tuesday that codifies a 2020 law dealing with Americans held hostage or wrongfully detained abroad.
Drawing on the 2020 Robert Levinson Hostage Recovery and Hostage-Taking Accountability Act, the new executive order will reinforce the U.S. government’s efforts to support families of Americans wrongfully detained or held hostage overseas, according to the White House.
The order will authorize the federal government to impose financial sanctions on those who are involved — directly or indirectly — in wrongful detaining Americans abroad, the White House said. Moreover, government agencies will be directed to improve engagement with those Americans’ families, including sharing intelligence information about their loved ones and the government’s efforts to free them. The order will also charge experts across agencies with developing “options and strategies to deter future hostage-takings,” the White House said.
A senior Biden administration official told reporters that new sanctions will not be announced on Tuesday.
In addition to the executive order, Biden will introduce a new “risk indicator” — “the ‘D’ indicator” — to the U.S. Department of State’s travel advisories for particular countries to alert Americans of the risk of wrongful detention by a foreign government, according to the White House.
Starting Tuesday, the first countries to receive this additional risk indicator will be China, Iran, Myanmar, North Korea, Russia and Venezuela, another senior administration official told reporters. The “D” indicator joins the existing “K” indicator that covers the risk of kidnapping and hostage-taking by non-state actors, as well as a range of other existing risk indicators.
China’s “D” risk designation may spark ire in Beijing, where Chinese officials have largely tried to avoid the subject of wrongful detentions and where Western sanctions are a constant trigger.
Experts estimate that roughly 200 Americans are arbitrarily jailed in China, and that even more are subject to unlawful “exit bans,” barring them from leaving the country. Some advocates have pushed for the Biden administration to take a more vocal approach to secure their freedom, rather than the standard behind-the-scenes diplomacy. But the State Department has recently tried a similar strategy — updating their official advisory to American and instructing them to reconsider travel plans to China due to “arbitrary enforcement of local laws.”
Syria, with which the United States does not currently have formal diplomatic relations, will be notably excluded from the “D” risk designation on Tuesday. U.S. officials believe that while the Syrian government may not be currently holding American journalist Austin Tice in its custody, it could have valuable information on his whereabouts and perhaps those of other missing Americans. Tice, 40, was abducted in Syria nearly 10 years ago.
The White House recently held a telephone call for the relatives of detained Americans to share information with them about these new announcements. Some of them are in Washington, D.C., this week for the unveiling of a mural depicting their loved ones, according to a spokesperson for many of the families, Jonathan Franks.
Franks, who represents a group called the Bring Our Families Home Campaign, accused U.S. officials of holding a “one-way conversation with families” and ignoring their requests to meet with Biden.
The public mural in Washington’s Georgetown neighborhood will depict the faces of 18 American hostages and wrongful detainees, according to Franks. Among those featured will be American basketball star Brittney Griner, 31, and former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan, 52, both of whom remain detained in Russia, as well as U.S. permanent resident Paul Rusesabagina, 68, who inspired the acclaimed 2004 film Hotel Rwanda and was sentenced last September to 25 years in Rwandan prison over terrorism charges.
Franks accused the White House of rolling out these new steps in order to “pre-manage the press attention from many hostage families being in D.C. this week to unveil their mural,” saying “the White House is taking executive action to direct itself to follow existing law.”
The White House declined to comment in response to Franks.
According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, there are actually 64 publicly known cases of Americans being held hostage or wrongfully detained around the world.
(WASHINGTON) — With Tuesday’s primary, a contentious race to succeed Maryland’s term-limited Gov. Larry Hogan is about to enter its next phase as Republicans seek to hold the seat of a popular incumbent while Democrats work to retake the governorship — in part by trying to influence the contest to get the GOP nod.
The front-runners in the Republican gubernatorial primary are state Del. Dan Cox, an attorney endorsed by former President Donald Trump, and former state Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, who was endorsed by Hogan.
The contest is something of a proxy battle between Trump and Hogan (a possible 2024 presidential contender and a major voice in the GOP’s anti-Trump minority) and their contrasting visions for their party’s success in Maryland.
Schulz could become the state’s first female governor. She has focused her campaign on issues such as the economy, education and creating a safer community, and she has leaned on her endorsement from Hogan — who is widely popular in the state — and her work in his Cabinet.
After the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Schulz said that she would not change Maryland law, which allows for abortion, but reaffirmed that she was personally opposed.
Her current stance on abortion is much different than the one she held in 2011, when she sponsored the “Maryland Personhood Amendment,” which would have allowed voters to decide to amend the state’s constitution to give rights to people “from the beginning of their biological development.” That amendment failed in the state’s Democratic legislature.
Cox says he is “running to restore freedom” and has focused in part on education, saying he supports parental rights in schools, opposes critical race theory (though that academic framework is not widely taught outside of universities) and has supported legislation against teaching gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms.
Cox opposes abortion without exception and he tried to sue Hogan over the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.
His record has been spotlighted by Democratic advertising during the primary — a tactic that Hogan criticized, arguing it was an attempt to boost Cox in the eyes of conservatives even though he may be weaker in the general election.
Cox called then-Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” in a since-removed tweet after Pence certified the 2020 election results. In another deleted tweet, Cox also said he was arranging two buses to drive constituents to Trump’s Jan. 6, 2021, appearance near the White House shortly before a pro-Trump mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. (Cox said he wasn’t at the Capitol.)
In the Democratic gubernatorial primary, three leading candidates have emerged: former Democratic National Committee Chair Tom Perez, state Comptroller Peter Franchot and Wes Moore, an author and former nonprofit CEO who held a virtual fundraiser with Oprah Winfrey.
Another race drawing notice is the Republican primary for Maryland’s 6th Congressional District. Currently held by Democrat David Trone, several GOP contenders are fighting for the chance to go against him in November.
State Rep. Neil Parrot, who lost to Trone in 2020, is hoping for a rematch in November. However, the race could be shaken up by 25-year-old Matthew Foldi, a newcomer who has received a string of notable endorsements including from Hogan as well as House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the No. 3 House Republican, Elise Stefanik, Donald Trump Jr. and others.
(WASHINGTON) — Two more aides in Donald Trump’s White House are expected to testify before the House Jan. 6 committee during its public hearings, sources say — this time an ex-spokeswoman for the former president as well as one of his previous security advisers.
Former deputy White House press secretary Sarah Matthews and Matthew Pottinger, a member of the National Security Council during the Trump administration, are slated to speak at the committee’s hearing on Thursday, sources familiar with the matter confirmed to ABC News.
Their planned appearances were previously reported by CNN.
Both Matthews and Pottinger resigned from their positions in the White House on Jan. 6, 2021, in the wake of the Capitol rioting by a pro-Trump mob.
Neither a committee spokesperson nor representatives for Matthews or Pottinger responded to ABC News.
Numerous other Trump advisers and aides have already spoken with the committee either in recorded closed-door depositions or the public sessions. Those include his daughter and son-in-law, Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner; his White House counsel Pat Cipollone; his former Attorney General Bill Barr and more.
Committee members have said Thursday’s hearing — the eighth of the latest sessions held by the panel since June, following a year-long investigation — will focus on the Trump White House’s reaction to the insurrection as it unfolded.
“You will hear that Trump never picked up the phone that day to order his administration to help,” Vice Chair Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said last week. “This is not ambiguous. He did not call the military. The secretary of defense received no order. He did not call his attorney general. He did not talk to the Department of Homeland Security. [Vice President] Mike Pence did all of those things.”
Rep. Elaine Luria, a member of the committee who will be co-leading Thursday’s hearing, told “GMA 3” last week that the plan was to “go through that 187 minutes” — the gap, as the committee describes it, between when Trump incensed his supporters at a speech near the White House on Jan. 6 and later sent public statements trying to tamp down the rioting.
Luria, a Virginia Democrat and Navy veteran who will be leading the hearing with Rep. Adam Kinzinger R-Ill., told “GMA 3” that Americans can expect the most detailed timeline of the riot.
“Mr. Kinzinger and I plan to go through that 187 minutes. What happened between the time that [former President Trump] left the stage, gave these inflammatory remarks and gave people the impression … that he was going to himself march with this crowd to the Capitol,” Luria said.
This week’s hearing is expected to be “the last one at this point,” the committee chair, Mississippi Democrat Bennie Thompson, said last week. He said Monday that more hearings will be held once the committee is prepared to present its report later in the year.
Trump has denied wrongdoing and has repeatedly assailed the committee as one-sided and politically motivated.
ABC News’ Mariam Khan and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Among the priorities for congressional Democrats after the demise of Roe v. Wade are bills to protect someone’s digital health data from being subpoenaed for civil and criminal court cases as a dozen states — and counting — impose widespread restrictions and even bans on abortion.
Under consideration, according to a “Dear Colleague” letter sent on June 27 by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is a proposal that would shield “women’s most intimate and personal data stored in reproductive health apps,” which may contain information that “could be used against women by a sinister prosecutor in a state that criminalizes abortion.”
Privacy experts told ABC News that the concern — as seen, for example, in viral social media warnings to delete your period-tracking apps – isn’t unfounded in a post-Roe digital age, where states have discretion to regulate or restrict abortion and to consider prosecuting violators.
“A user can log a lot of information in health apps, not just the day you start your period,” said Korica Simon, an associate at the Center on Privacy and Technology at Georgetown Law. “It tracks when you last had sex, what your mood was, what symptoms you felt and your alcohol consumption levels. This is all information that law enforcement could be interested in when building a case against someone charged with a crime related to abortion.”
“It’s important to note, though, that as of yet we haven’t seen a case where law enforcement has been using these apps to go after people,” Simon said. “What authorities are mostly relying on is Google searches, internet history, online communication, text messages, online transactions and location data. All of this information can be found in people’s phones. Research shows that Big Tech usually handed over this information without a fight.”
Both leading advocates for overturning Roe and, conversely, local prosecutors who support abortion access — such as South Dakota’s Republican Gov. Kristi Noem and DeKalb County District Attorney Sherry Boston in Georgia, where a reinstated law bans abortions after the detection of embryonic cardiac activity — have said they do not want to prosecute women who seek abortions.
Still, some women have been prosecuted in recent years — including what a Washington Post report described as a “a handful [of cases] in which American prosecutors have used text messages and online research as evidence.”
Among these is the case of Mississippi resident Latice Fisher.
According to news reports and court documents reviewed by ABC, Fisher was initially indicted for second-degree murder after her husband called 911 in April 2017 to say she had given birth at their home. Prosecutors said in court papers that Fisher told an EMT she didn’t know she was pregnant — but soon reversed herself, telling a nurse at the hospital she had known she was pregnant for weeks.
However, according to prosecutors, Fisher also told the nurse she didn’t realize she was about to give birth.
Prosecutors told the court she had searched online for “abortion pills” and the medical examiner ruled that the baby was alive when it was born, rather than a stillbirth, and died of asphyxiation, likely “positional asphyxia and mechanical asphyxia” related to the manner of birth.
However, there was reportedly no evidence Fisher took any medication, and the “float test” the medical examiner used to determine it wasn’t a stillbirth can also produce false positives. Prosecutors decided to dismiss Fisher’s charge — saying the first grand jury “did not have access to complete information about the medical evidence in this case.”
They re-presented her case to a second grand jury, which did not indict her.
Beyond criminal charges, there are potential civil liabilities when a pregnancy ends.
Texas passed a novel law in 2021 that empowers residents to sue anyone they suspect of being connected to an illegal abortion to seek monetary — rather than criminal — penalties. Plaintiffs are entitled to at least $10,000 in a successful suit. Notably, the Texas law prohibits the plaintiff from bringing suit against the person undergoing the abortion.
In May, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt signed a law that criminalizes abortion after fertilization — one of the strictest bans in the country. Like Texas’ law, the statute relies on civilian enforcement and rewards at least $10,000 in damages to residents who successfully sue people involved in illegal abortions.
Such complaints would also enable plaintiffs to try and subpoena digital health care information about the defendants.
Big Tech, hardly a passive observer in data collection, constructed privacy barriers in response to Supreme Court’s decision reversing Roe. Jen Fitzpatrick, the senior vice president for Google Core Systems & Experiences, recently announced that Google would delete entries involving visits to medical clinics, including abortion clinics and domestic violence shelters, from their location history systems “soon after” a Google user visits.
However, not all major companies behave similarly.
The Markup and Reveal from the Center for Investigative Reporting found that Facebook was collecting personal data from people who visited “crisis pregnancy centers,” which abortion access advocates describe as thinly veiled anti-abortion rights clinics that work to dissuade visitors from receiving abortion services. The data on visits to the clinics could potentially be used to support anti-abortion rights campaigns — or, after Roe, used against abortion seekers in states where the procedure is now illegal.
Meta — Facebook’s parent company — declined to comment on the record about its data filtration system. But its privacy policy prohibits businesses from using their tools for certain types of sensitive information, including sensitive health information, which includes sexual and reproductive health and medical procedures, treatments and testing.
According to their website, if Meta’s filtering mechanism detects information that could be sensitive, health-related data, the filtering mechanism is “designed to prevent that data from being ingested into our ads ranking and optimization systems.”
Reproductive health care apps have had their share of legal troubles related to data privacy. In 2021, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) settled with popular fertility app Flo after allegations that the company had shared user data with third-party data brokers, including Google and Meta. Flo denied any wrongdoing and said at the time it does not share users’ health information without their consent.
Democratic lawmakers detail plans for data post-Roe
Skeptical of the changes made to shield intimate user data from law enforcement, three members of Congress up for reelection in November have asked technology companies about what health and location data can be accessed by data brokers — and how to prevent intimate information from being shared to prosecute people who seek to end their pregnancies.
Rep. Sara Jacobs, D-Calif., who is running to represent the state’s 51st Congressional District, warned that app users may not have their data searched solely by law enforcement. Even if Google clears location history data, Jacobs said she suspects that seemingly-menial “search data” could be used in lawsuits “to suggest whether someone has had or is seeking to have an abortion.”
“This risk is most elevated in the thirteen states with ‘trigger laws’ … as well as other states that are likely to ban and criminalize abortions very soon,” Jacobs said in a statement to ABC News.
Referring to Texas’ example, enabling private lawsuits as punishment for abortions, Jacobs said: “If some states enact bounty laws that provide financial rewards for bringing suits against people that have abortions, like the one already enacted in Texas, this will further elevate the risk–and put those accessing reproductive health care in significant danger.”
In Jacobs’ home state, voters will have the opportunity to amend their constitution to add the right to abortion access. Gov. Gavin Newsom recently signed an executive order to protect people who seek abortions from other states. Jacobs plans to continue introducing similar measures, featuring reproductive health care as a centerpiece issue in her election campaign.
Most recently, she introduced to the House the My Body, My Data Act, which would limit how much sexual health data a company could disclose or collect without the express consent of the user in question. The bill has since been relayed to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. An identical bill was introduced to the Senate by Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii, but shows unlikely prospects of passage due to GOP opposition.
Similar measures have been cosponsored in the Senate by Democrats Patty Murray of Washington and Ron Wyden of Oregon. Supporting Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., the two helped introduce the Health and Location Data Protection Act, which would ban brokers from selling health- and location-related information collected from app data. If passed into law, the FTC would receive $1 billion to “ensure robust enforcement of the bill’s provisions.”
Warren and Wyden, along with Jacobs in the House and Democratic Sen. Cory Booker, of New Jersey, also signed a letter to the FTC on June 24 asking the commission to investigate how Apple and Google have collected and used mobile phone users’ digital information. The letter accused data brokers of “already selling, licensing and sharing the location information of people that visit abortion providers to anyone with a credit card.”
“Selling people’s most sensitive data to turn a profit isn’t just wrong—it’s dangerous, and risks Americans’ safety as they seek the care they need,” Murray, the Senate’s third-ranking Democrat, said in a statement.
Murray last week also chaired a Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing “to make crystal clear how [the Roe reversal] will harm patients, providers, and communities across the country—and what is at stake in November.” At the hearing, she pushed back against a call for a nationwide abortion ban, which is supported by some conservatives, and the possible surveillance of people traveling to other states for abortion services: “Health care providers aren’t sure when or even if they will be able to treat ectopic patients without being sent to prison.”
Separately, Murray called for a vote urging passage on the Freedom to Travel for Health Care Act, which would protect a person’s ability to travel across state lines to receive an abortion, as well as protect the medical providers who offer the procedure. That bill was blocked by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., who urged colleagues to consider the life of what he described as unborn babies.
“This move shows that [the Senate GOP] stand with extreme politicians trying to hold women captive in their own states rather than defending the right to travel within our country,” Murray said.
