(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn, said she had an “unproductive” call with Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., on Monday over her anti-Muslim remarks and claimed the Colorado Republican refused to publicly apologize for suggesting she was a terrorist.
Instead, Omar claimed in a new statement that Boebert “doubled down on her hurtful and dangerous comments,” which led Omar to “end the unproductive call.”
In a video posted to Twitter last week, Boebert referred to Omar as a member of the “Jihad Squad” and claimed that a Capitol Police officer thought she was a terrorist in an encounter in an elevator on Capitol Hill.
She was condemned by Democrats and some Republicans for the remarks and apologized on Twitter Friday “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended,” adding that she had reached out to Omar’s office to speak with her directly.
Apparently, that call did not go well.
Omar hung up on Boebert after the Colorado Republican refused to make a public apology to her, according to a statement from Omar and Boebert’s account of the call.
“I believe in engaging with those we disagree with respectfully, but not when that disagreement is rooted in outright bigotry and hate,” Omar said, adding that Boebert “doubled down” on her comments.
In an Instagram video recapping their conversation, Boebert said she refused to make a public apology directly to Omar and instead demanded the Minnesota Democrat apologize for her “Anti-American” rhetoric.
“Rejecting an apology and hanging up on someone is part of cancel culture 101, and a pillar of the Democrat Party. Make no mistake, I will continue to put America first, never sympathizing with terrorists,” Boebert said in her video. “Unfortunately, Ilhan can’t say the same thing, and our country is worse off for it.”
Omar and Democratic leaders, issuing a rare joint statement last week, have called on House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and other Republicans to hold Republicans accountable for the anti-Muslim rhetoric, but the California Republican has said nothing publicly about the exchange.
In her statement on Monday, Omar demanded McCarthy “actually hold his party accountable” for “repeated instances of anti-Muslim hate and harassment.” Her office also said she is routinely subjected to harassment and death threats.
Omar added in a tweet on Friday that “normalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims.”
ABC News’ Oren Oppenheim contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Former Secretary of Defense Mark Esper, who served under former President Donald Trump until his firing in the wake of the 2020 election, has sued the Department of Defense over redactions they made to his upcoming book.
Esper’s memoir, set to be released in May of 2022, is expected to chronicle his time in the Trump administration, in which he served first as Secretary of the Army and then as Secretary of Defense until Trump tweeted about his firing on Nov. 9, 2020, following weeks of contention.
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court in Washington on Sunday, said that Esper engaged in “extensive coordination” with the Department’s Office of Pre-publication and Security Review.
Esper alleges the review “dragged on” for six months and when he finally heard back on Oct. 7 after reaching out in May, there was no explanation given for some redactions.
“No written explanation was offered to justify the deletions,” Esper wrote in an e-mail to current Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin. “My follow-on conversations with the DOPSR official handling my case confirmed my assessment. He similarly has been unable to assert that the redacted items contain classified information or compromise national security.”
Esper said he was asked not to quote his conversations with Trump or other foreign officials, although much of the material “was already in the public domain,” according to Esper.
His attorneys argue in the lawsuit that the Defense Department “has unlawfully imposed a prior restraint upon Mr. Esper by delaying, obstructing and infringing on his constitutional right to publish his unclassified manuscript entitled ‘A Sacred Oath.'”
The former defense secretary also said he had already met with Austin’s chief of staff and the Defense Department’s Director of Administration and Management, Mike Donley.
“I should not be required to change my views, opinions, or descriptions of events simply because they may be too candid at times for normal diplomatic protocol. After all, the DOPSR process is about protecting classified information and not harming national security — two important standards to which I am fully committed. Moreover, my Constitutional rights should not be abridged because my story or choice of words may prompt uncomfortable discussions in foreign policy circles,” he said in the suit.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby responded in a statement on Monday.
“We are aware of Mr. Esper’s concerns regarding the pre-publication of his memoir. As with all such reviews, the Department takes seriously its obligation to balance national security with an author’s narrative desire. Given that this matter is now under litigation, we will refrain from commenting further,” Kirby said.
In a memo reported first by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl in his new book Betrayal, the Presidential Personnel Office under the direction of John McEntee, a favorite aide of Trump, made a case for firing Esper three weeks before Esper was terminated.
Reasons outlined for his firing in the memo included that Esper “barred the Confederate flag” on military bases, “opposed the President’s direction to utilize American forces to put down riots,” “focused the Department on Russia,” and was “actively pushing for ‘diversity and inclusion.'”
(WASHINGTON) — With the COVID-19 omicron variant sending shockwaves around the world, President Joe Biden is set to address the nation surrounding the new variant following a morning briefing from his White House COVID-19 Response Team.
The president announced Friday that starting this week, the U.S. will restrict travelers from South Africa, Botswana, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Lesotho, Eswatini, Mozambique and Malawi. Experts predict it’s only a matter of time before the variant first detected in southern Africa is circulating in the U.S.
The omicron variant was first detected last week in Botswana and cases have since been confirmed in several countries including South Africa, Germany, Belgium, Japan and Canada. The World Health Organization (WHO) classified the variant as one of concern on Friday.
In an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America on Monday, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, argued omicron gives Americans more reason to get their COVID-19 booster shots — or for getting the jab if they haven’t been vaccinated already.
“We just need to make sure that we know we have tools against the virus in general,” Fauci said.
Fauci told Biden in a meeting on Sunday that it would likely take two weeks for a better picture of omicron’s transmissibility and severity, according to a White House readout of the meeting. Fauci said on ABC’s “This Week” that it will also take time to determine if the current COVID-19 vaccine is effective against the new variant.
“The pharmaceutical companies are preparing to make a specific booster for this, but we may not need that,” Fauci said on Good Morning America.
Biden will address the public twice Monday. Following a meeting with CEOs from different business sectors, Biden will also deliver remarks about the supply chain and inflation concerns.
The president continues to face low polling numbers and mounting political pressure heading into the holiday season with several crises converging, from the ongoing pandemic to supply chain woes and rising consumer prices.
ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Amy Klobuchar said she’s confident President Joe Biden’s Build Back Better plan will be passed by Christmas, but Republicans, including Sen. Bill Cassidy, are still firmly opposed.
Klobuchar, D-Minn., told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos on Sunday that the Build Back Better Act would help create jobs, which she said is crucial right now because of labor shortages in certain fields.
“We’ve got workforce issues, and that’s why this Build Back Better Act is so important,” Klobuchar said. “We need people, we need kids to go into jobs that we have shortages. We don’t have a shortage of sports marketing degrees. We have a shortage of health care workers. We have a shortage of plumbers, electricians, construction workers. This bill puts us on the right path.”
The House passed the $1.7 trillion Build Back Better Act on Nov. 19 along party lines, 220-213, with one Democrat voting “no.” The legislation includes $555 billion for climate initiatives, $109 billion for universal pre-K, $150 billion for affordable housing and $167 billion for Medicare expansion.
Cassidy, R-La., told Stephanopoulos the Build Back Better plan is “a bad, bad, bad bill.”
“There’s corporate welfare. It’s going to raise the price of gasoline at least about 20 cents a gallon. And it begins to have federal dictates as to how your child’s preschool is handled, the curriculum even,” he said.
President Joe Biden applauded the House for passing the Build Back Better Act and said in a statement it would help improve the economy if enacted.
“The United States House of Representatives passed the Build Back Better Act to take another giant step forward in carrying out my economic plan to create jobs, reduce costs, make our country more competitive, and give working people and the middle class a fighting chance,” he said.
The bill now heads to the Senate, but Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., and Sen. Joe Manchin D-W.Va. — key players in ensuring that the bill passes in the Senate — have not agreed to support the latest version of the bill yet.
“Sen. Manchin is still at the negotiating table, talking to us every day, talking to us about voting rights, getting that bill done, restoring the Senate,” Klobuchar said. “He’s talking to us about this bill.”
Cassidy argued that the social spending bill will fuel inflation, which is currently at a 30-year high, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Stephanopoulos pointed out that the Biden administration has brought forward 17 Nobel Prize-winning economists who said the bill won’t increase inflation, but Cassidy argued that, according to the Washington Post’s Fact Checker, those economists “said that was the bill they had then, not the bill they have now.”
“They point out that if you are going to avoid inflation, then you’ve got to be able to pay for it,” Cassidy said.
The Washington Post spoke to six of the 17 economists who signed the letter in support of the bill when the package totaled $3.5 trillion. The Post found that while “some indicated that the proposed changes [to the bill] have lessened the potential impact on inflationary pressures,” none of them backed away from their signing of the letter.
Inflation has been a mounting concern among Americans. Democrats are concerned, too, as Biden’s polling numbers drop, with 55% of Americans disapproving of his handling of the economy and 50% blaming Biden directly for inflation, according to a recent ABC News/Washington Post poll.
On Tuesday, Biden announced that he would authorize a release of 50 million barrels from the U.S. strategic oil reserve, hoping to lower surging gas prices.
“I look at it this way — we’ve got an increased demand, shortage of supply. The petroleum reserve was a temporary measure,” Klobuchar said.
Cassidy has blamed the Biden administration for the high gas prices and in a tweet referred to Biden tapping into the strategic oil reserve as a “Band-Aid fix.”
Lawmakers are also facing another challenge. In October, Congress voted to temporarily raise the debt ceiling by $480 billion and put off the risk of the United States defaulting on its debt — which the treasury secretary said would be “catastrophic” — until mid-December.
Now, the time has come for negotiations to ramp up, but Republicans and Democrats are still butting heads.
“You know, if the Republicans want to scrooge out on us, and increase people’s interest rates and make it hard to make car payments — go ahead, make that case,” Klobuchar said. “We’re going to stop them from doing that.”
With only a couple weeks left until the U.S. reaches the debt limit, Stephanopoulos pressed Cassidy on why he’s against raising the debt ceiling.
“You mentioned the tax cuts. Republicans passed a huge tax cut under President Trump — that’s one of the things that extending the debt limit has to pay for,” Stephanopoulos said. “So why are you against extending the debt limit?”
“The debt limit in the past has been the result of bipartisan negotiations, bipartisan both about the spending, bipartisan both about the debt limit,” Cassidy said. “If you haven’t noticed, Republicans have not been invited in at all to discuss this.”
(COLORADO) — Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado) issued an apology on Friday for remarks she made that used anti-Muslim tropes to refer to Rep. Ilhan Omar, a Democratic representative from Minnesota and one of only three Muslim members of Congress.
Later on Friday, Omar sent a tweet calling for House leadership to take “appropriate action.”
Omar added that “normalizing this bigotry not only endangers my life but the lives of all Muslims.”
In an undated video that went viral on Thursday, Boebert said that she was getting into an elevator with one of her staffers when a Capitol police officer rushed over to the elevator with “fret [sic] all over his face,” trying to open the door as it was closing.
She then claimed that, upon seeing Omar to her left, she said: “Well, she doesn’t have a backpack. We should be fine,” implying that Omar could have been carrying explosives in a backpack — an anti-Muslim trope.
Boebert also called Omar a part of a so-called “jihad squad” twice in the video.
“I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction,” Boebert tweeted on Friday.
I apologize to anyone in the Muslim community I offended with my comment about Rep. Omar. I have reached out to her office to speak with her directly. There are plenty of policy differences to focus on without this unnecessary distraction.
Omar said on Thursday that Boebert made up the story, and said that anti-Muslim racism should not be allowed in Congress.
“Fact, this buffoon looks down when she sees me at the Capitol, this whole story is made up,” Omar tweeted on Thursday night. “Anti-Muslim bigotry isn’t funny & shouldn’t be normalized. Congress can’t be a place where hateful and dangerous Muslims tropes get no condemnation.”
Omar received support from some fellow representatives, including Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), who called Boebert’s remarks “shameful, deeply offensive and dangerous.”
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan), another Muslim member of Congress, wrote on Thursday night, “These pathetic racist lies will not only endanger the life of @IlhanMN, but will increase hate crimes towards Muslims. The continued silence & inaction towards this hate-filled colleague and others is enabling violence. It must stop.”
One representative across the aisle, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Illinois), retweeted the video with the comment, “Boebert is TRASH.” Republican congressional leaders have not commented yet on Boebert’s remarks.
Edward Mitchell, deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, told CNN on Friday morning that Boebert’s comments were “beyond the pale.”
“You’ve gotta remember, Lauren Boebert is not some comedian at a club. She is a sitting member of Congress speaking to her constituents… I will say the more disturbing thing is that the audience applauded, and laughed, and that Republican leaders did not condemn this yet,” Mitchell said.
(Nantucket, MA) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden spent the first part of their holiday hosting a virtual meeting with service members from around the world to wish them a happy Thanksgiving and thank them for their service.
From Coast Guard Station Brant Point in Nantucket, Massachusetts, the Bidens addressed members representing all six military branches — the Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard and Space Force.
After that, the president met outside with roughly two dozen members of the Coast Guard, shaking their hands and presenting them with challenge coins, which are historically collectible pieces.
The president said the “blessings of Thanksgiving are especially meaningful” this year after so many families and friends couldn’t gather last year because of surging COVID-19 cases.
“We also keep in our hearts those who we’ve lost,” the president said. “And those who have an empty seat at their kitchen table or their dining room table this year because of this virus, or another cruel twist of fate or accident, we pray for them.”
Thanksgiving in Nantucket is a decades-long tradition for the Biden family. The first lady also confirmed that they would be taking part once again in the annual Christmas tree lighting ceremony Friday afternoon.
“We’re all going to be there,” she said. “We’re all going together.”
(CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va.) — Four years after “Unite the Right” was held in Charlottesville, Virginia, a federal jury has ordered the white nationalist leaders and organizations who backed the deadly rally to pay more than $25 million in damages to nine plaintiffs.
The rally began as a protest against removing a prominent statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, and it turned deadly when James Alex Fields Jr., a self-proclaimed admirer of Adolf Hitler, drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer and injuring several others. Fields later was sentenced to life in prison.
The 11-person jury that announced judgment in the case of Sines v. Kessler did so on its third day of deliberations. Plaintiffs in the civil case initially had asked the jury to consider judgments ranging from $7 million to $10 million for physical injuries and $3 million to $5 million for pain and suffering.
Despite the $25 million judgment, the jury also announced it was deadlocked on the first two federal claims of the existence of a conspiracy possibly motivated by animus toward Black or Jewish individuals.
The two deadlocked federal claims in the civil lawsuit, which was filed in 2017, were based on a rarely used post-Civil War law, the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871. The law allows private citizens to sue other citizens for civil rights violations and for conspiring to interfere with the civil rights of others. Some rally organizers and attendees have maintained that they merely were exercising their right to free speech.
Integrity First for America, a civil rights nonprofit that’s supported the plaintiffs in their years-long legal battle, told ABC News that the battle isn’t over.
“Our team is committed to holding these defendants liable,” Executive Director Amy Spitalnick said in a statement Tuesday. “Our plaintiffs also secured default judgments against seven other defendants that we’ll be pursuing.”
Those potential defendants include: the East Coast Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the Fraternal Order of the Alt-Knights, Nationalist Front and Moonbase Holdings, LLC, Andrew Anglin and Augustus Sol Invictus.
Following the jury’s decision, Roberta A. Kaplan and Karen L. Dunn, lawyers for one of the plaintiffs, said in a joint statement that the verdict “sends a loud and clear message that facts matter, the law matters, and that the laws of this country will not tolerate the use of violence to deprive racial and religious minorities of the basic right we all share to live as free and equal citizens.”
Added Spitalnick: “At a time when extremism is on the rise and democracy is under threat, this case provides a model for accountability.”
(WASHINGTON) — Kate Hendricks Thomas deployed to Iraq in 2005 as a member of the Marine Corps. She said she knew that choice carried risks, but she says she didn’t realize it would come back to haunt her nearly two decades later.
“I knew that deploying could cost me my life,” Thomas, now 41, told ABC News. “I didn’t think it would be like this.”
Unknown to her at the time, she said, some of the air she was breathing while deployed was toxic, laced with thousands of chemicals.
The military used burn pits in Iraq and Afghanistan as a way to get rid of trash. Regular household waste items were burned, such as food and clothing. But so were more toxic substances — paint, metals, plastics, styrofoam, rubber and human waste. She said these burn pits smelled like exhaust and asphalt on a hot summer day. She said they smoldered, with billowing black smoke.
She wasn’t the only veteran exposed to these toxic fumes. Roughly 3.5 million veterans who deployed post 9/11 could have been exposed, concerned members of Congress say.
“When I checked in at Fallujah, I originally was housed in this area where everybody was cleaning their air conditioners all of the time,” Thomas said. “And it was really as soon as I got there that I realized we were cleaning this chunky particulate matter out of the filters,” she later continued.
Thomas left the Marine Corps in 2008. She went back to school, earned her Ph.D., married, and had a son. But in 2018, at the age of 38, she received shocking news: she had stage 4 breast cancer.
“They said it looked like I had been dipped in something,” Thomas remembered. “I had metastases throughout my skeletal system from my skull to my toes.”
According to a 2021 VA-funded research proposal, “there is a notably high incidence of breast cancer among younger military women (20% to 40% higher). The incident rate of breast cancer for active duty women is seven times higher than the average incident rate of fifteen other cancer types across all service members.”
Kate says she’s met “a ton” of other female veterans who have had breast cancer.
“I actually ran into the only other woman in my unit in Iraq,” Thomas said. “And she and I started chatting, and the conversation turned to health. And it turns out, she has the exact same type of aggressive breast cancer that I do. And that’s anecdotal data, it’s anecdotal evidence, but to me, that felt like a big deal.”
But many of the medical conditions allegedly caused by these toxins weren’t recognized by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Thomas immediately submitted a claim with the VA for coverage. She says she went back and forth with them for three years.
“They denied my claim, they denied appeals,” she said. “They said, ‘You know, we’re not — we’re not approving claims for burn pits right now.'”
Since then, Thomas and her family have paid thousands of dollars every year for private health insurance to pay for her medical treatments not covered by veterans’ benefits.
Expanding coverage
There are multiple ways to expand veterans’ benefits. The president can sign an executive order, Congress can pass legislation, which could then get signed into law, or the VA can choose to recognize more claims.
Last week, the Biden administration said it was establishing a new policy to help more veterans exposed to burn pits during their service overseas receive more benefits.
The Veterans Administration will now “create presumptions of exposure … when the evidence of an environmental exposure and the associated health risks are strong in the aggregate but hard to prove on an individual basis,” according to the White House. But veterans’ claims take time to be approved, and once when they are recognized it can still take months before payouts begin, according to a press conference earlier this month with Secretary of Veterans Affairs Denis McDonough. The Military Times reported that it could be until May 2022 until checks are actually put in the mail.
Congress, which controls the purse strings, could also pass legislation.
“Congress sent us to war, and they need to understand that paying the full cost of war includes the health care [of veterans],” Tom Porter, the executive vice president at the IAVA, said to ABC News.
There are two bills being considered to expand benefits for veterans, one in the House and one in the Senate.
The chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Committee, Rep. Mark Takano, D-Calif., told ABC News that he believes “2021 will be the year that we get a comprehensive toxic exposure bill done.”
With little over a month left until 2022, there’s still a lot of work to be done.
Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., a co-sponsor of the House bill and a veteran herself, believes that if passed, the measure could be expansive enough to give affected veterans what they need.
“This bill is very comprehensive,” Luria told ABC News. “And it brings together about 15 different pieces of [previous] legislation that address all different aspects of toxic exposures.” She later added that she believes this is “probably the largest veterans benefit bill of our generation.”
While there has been bipartisan support for both of these bills in the House and the Senate, Sen. Jon Tester, D-Montana, told ABC News there’s been some hesitancy over the cost.
“We have seen some push back by some of the Republicans that say we can’t afford to do this,” Tester said. “If we’re not willing to take care of our veterans when they get back home, then we shouldn’t send them off to war to begin with,” he later continued.
Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., says he has been working with the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee to make sure a full list of ailments is included in the bill.
“It is outrageous that the federal government has turned a blind eye to the men and women who honorably served their nation,” Rubio told ABC News. “If our bill becomes law, the worst thing that can happen is someone who served our country receives treatment for a rare, debilitating illness.”
While Congress negotiates, the VA is urging vets to file claims, even if they’ve been denied in the past.
“Don’t wait for legislation to be passed,” Ronald Burke, deputy under secretary for policy and oversight at the Department of Veteran Affairs, told ABC News. “Don’t wait for a claim for an item to be listed as a presumptive condition. Yes, file your claim.”
‘Six weeks is an eternity’
In July, after three years of denials, the VA finally recognized Thomas’ claim, acknowledging that her aggressive cancer was caused by exposure to toxic burn pits while she served overseas. But, the earliest appointment she could get was six weeks away.
“Six weeks is an eternity in the stage 4 setting,” Thomas said.
Thomas made the decision to keep her private insurance so she could receive quicker treatments.
While the White House’s expansion of benefits will help veterans to come — and the bills in Congress, if passed, would help too — it’s too little, too late for Thomas. Her doctors gave her five years to live. It’s been three.
Thomas has never regretted serving.
“I love the Marine Corps so much,” Thomas said. “It gave me so much — opportunities to lead, opportunities to travel the world, a sense of purpose. I felt like my work mattered.”
But she recognized there will come a time when there will be treatments she’s not willing to do.
“There will come a point where we say, ‘Okay, we’re going to have to let the cancer take its course,'” Thomas said. “But I’d really like my son to be a little bit older.”
So, she said she’s holding out hope for more time. Her son, Matthew, is just eight years old. She said she’s worried about him losing his mom at such a young age.
“And it’s interesting, because he knows,” Thomas said of her son knowing she has terminal cancer. “The other day we were talking about Jesus and heaven. And he had all these questions. And then he got very still. And his eyes filled up with tears. And he looked at me and he said, ‘Mom, it’s gonna be so sad.'”
ABC News’ Stephanie Ramos, Hannah Demissie, Tia Humphries, Luis Martinez and Nate Luna contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. President Joe Biden is expected to announce Tuesday that the country will tap into strategic oil reserves to help offset a surge in gasoline prices, a senior administration official told ABC News.
The move will be formally announced by the White House on Tuesday morning before Biden addresses it in a speech scheduled for the afternoon, according to the official.
Experts said Americans will see a quick drop in prices almost immediately. But the larger impact won’t hit for about two weeks, when gas stations across the nation lower prices.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House said Tuesday that President Joe Biden will tap into the nation’s strategic oil reserve to help offset a surge in gasoline prices.
Biden, facing rising consumer discontent ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday, will make the formal announcement in remarks Tuesday afternoon, a senior administration official told ABC News.
Other countries, including China and India will release their own reserves in concert with the U.S. move, the White House said in a statement.
“Today, the President is announcing that the Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to lower prices for Americans and address the mismatch between demand exiting the pandemic and supply,” the White House said.
It said Biden has been working with countries across the world to address the lack of supply as the world exits the pandemic.
“And, as a result of President Biden’s leadership and our diplomatic efforts, this release will be taken in parallel with other major energy consuming nations including China, India, Japan, Republic of Korea and the United Kingdom. This culminates weeks of consultations with countries around the world, and we are already seeing the effect of this work on oil prices. Over the last several weeks as reports of this work became public, oil prices are down nearly 10 percent,” the White House said.
“The U.S. Department of Energy will make available releases of 50 million barrels from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in two ways: 32 million barrels will be an exchange over the next several months, releasing oil that will eventually return to the Strategic Petroleum Reserve in the years ahead. The exchange is a tool matched to today’s specific economic environment, where markets expect future oil prices to be lower than they are today, and helps provide relief to Americans immediately and bridge to that period of expected lower oil prices. The exchange also automatically provides for re-stocking of the Strategic Petroleum Reserve over time to meet future needs,” the statement said.
Experts said Americans will see a quick drop in prices almost immediately. But the larger impact won’t hit for about two weeks, when gas stations across the nation lower prices.
A senior administration official, citing a low global supply of oil that is contributing to driving up fuel costs, said the decision has been made to ease costs on everyday American consumers as pressures between demand and the easing of the pandemic create unique conditions.
“We think that this is an immediate challenge that we face as we are exiting the global pandemic and supply has not kept up,” the official told reporters Tuesday morning. “We think that this is exactly suited to that.”
ABC’s Sarah Kolinovsky and Jordyn Phelps contributed to this report.
