Politics

(WASHINGTON) — Debra Ward — a military wife and mother — assumed her husband’s more than 25 years of service would provide a safety net whenever their child became sick.

The couple’s only son, 22-year-old Joel, was diagnosed diabetes over a a decade ago and has already suffered from three life-threatening hypoglycemic shocks while in college.

So when renewing her son’s insurance card, it came as a surprise that he would only be eligible for the plan’s benefits until he was 23, not 26 like most other dependents in the U.S. After that, she would need to start paying more than $450 in monthly premiums to remain insured under TRICARE, the civilian care component of the Military Health System.

“I didn’t believe it at first, with my husband being in active duty and all,” Ward said. “Looking at the premiums they were asking for, I thought surely something had been messed up.”

While dependents under civilian insurance plans are eligible to remain under their parents’ coverage at no additional cost or requirements until the age of 26 as dictated by the Affordable Care Act, the same protocols do not apply to children of military families using TRICARE.

Instead, dependents like Ward’s son receive coverage until they turn 21 (or 23 if enrolled full-time at a university), at which point they can either find employment that offers independent coverage or pay hefty premiums through a program called TRICARE Young Adult to hold on to benefits until the age of 26.

“We’re not expecting any special treatment, but it does seem like we ought to be at least getting the same treatment everybody else in the country has been receiving for the last 11 years,” Ward said.

Across the country, families like Ward’s say they are frustrated at a lack of congressional response to what many see as the unjust treatment of military members’ dependents.

Despite bipartisan concern about the young cut-off age and high premiums for young adults, Congress has yet to hold a vote on changing TRICARE’s young adult provisions.

A bill introduced last year by Rep. Elaine Luria, D-Va., and Rep. Michael Waltz, R-Fla., to extend dependents’ coverage until age 26 without premiums failed to make the final version of the fiscal 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

A similar bill introduced this year by Sen. Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., and Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., also aims to eliminate premiums for dependents, but it awaits a vote in both the Senate and House.

“Our bipartisan bill allows every military child under the age of 26 to continue receiving steady coverage under their parents’ plan, enabling these young adults to finish school or start their careers without worrying about what happens if they get sick,” Tester said in a release.

There are currently about 9.6 million beneficiaries under TRICARE, according to the Military Health System. Of those, 37,000 are unmarried, adult children of military sponsors enrolled in TYA.

Eileen Huck, senior deputy director of government relations for the National Military Family Association, said that TRICARE Young Adult is simply too expensive for many dependents, often requiring them to enroll in a university even if they are not prepared for higher education.

“We run into various families and individuals who ran into unexpected costs because their children decided to delay enrolling in college,” Huck said. “And whether it’s a special needs student, or just someone for whom college isn’t the right choice, those life-changing decisions shouldn’t’ be driven by whether or not they’re worried about losing their health care coverage.”

TYA’s Select and Prime programs were created in 2011 following passage of the Affordable Care Act because military service members are exempt from the national health care reform law, requiring separate legislation to extend benefits. The difference between TYA’S two options is largely the same as PPO versus HMO programs: Those covered under TYA Prime are restricted to receiving coverage from Veterans Affairs clinicians.

The 2011 legislation, however, required that no government funding would be used to cover the cost of TYA , necessitating premiums based on commercial insurance rates and coverage.

The price for the two options of TYA has only been rising since the law went into effect. In 2021, monthly premiums for were set at $257 per month for TYA Select and $459 per month for TYA Prime, a 12.7% and 22% increase from 2020, respectively. For comparison, a study from the Kaiser Family Foundation found that ACA rates have only increased by a median of 1.1% in the last year.

Huck said these steep price tags stem from the nature of TYA that requires all the costs to be borne by the beneficiaries, in addition to a decreasing number of TYA participants.

“Oftentimes we have healthier young adults leaving the program for cheaper but less comprehensive marketplace plans, which means the people with conditions that need more treatments covered through TRICARE end up remaining but paying more as the pool of people participating gets smaller,” she said. “It turns into a vicious cycle.”

Many military affairs advocates like Jennifer Akin, director of research at Blue Star Families, remain optimistic that bills to address these issues will either be passed independently or included in next year’s defense budget.

“I think it’s a parity issue,” Akin said. “It’s very difficult to make the case that military children shouldn’t have access to the same health care rights that civilian children do by virtue of their parents’ service.”

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(NEW YORK) — Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “The Apprentice,” has agreed to end her defamation lawsuit against former President Donald Trump.

The The joint stipulation said the case is “dismissed and discontinued.”

Zervos’ attorneys and attorneys for Trump filed a stipulation of discontinuance that offered no explanation for the decision.

“Today the parties have ended Zervos v. Trump,” Zervos’ attorney, Beth Wilkinson, said in a statement. “After five years, Ms. Zervos no longer wishes to litigate against the defendant and has secured the right to speak freely about her experience. Ms. Zervos stands by the allegations in her complaint and has accepted no compensation.”

Zervos had claimed Trump groped her in 2007 at a hotel in Beverly Hills, California, and then defamed her when he denied it during the campaign.

In a statement Friday that called the allegations “made up … for publicity or money,” Trump said: “It is so sad when things like this can happen, but so incredibly important to fight for the truth and justice. Only victory can restore one’s reputation!”

Trump’s attorney, Alina Habba, said Friday the decision to end the case belonged to Zervos.

“She had no choice but to do so as the facts unearthed in this matter made it abundantly clear that our client did nothing wrong,” Habba said in a statement to ABC News. “It is a privilege to defend President Trump, who has been relentlessly attacked and viciously hounded by bad faith actors.”

Habba also said Trump did not pay Zervos.

The former president had recently been ordered to sit for a deposition before Christmas.

In a statement last month abut the deposition, Zervos’ attorney, Moira Penza, said: “We just don’t believe our client can be further prejudiced in delaying this litigation any longer. We do not believe there are any outstanding issues that would prohibit the parties from engaging in depositions.”

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(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department has charged former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress over his defiance of a subpoena from the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol.

The indictment sets off what will likely be a contentious legal battle with significant ramifications for the Jan. 6 committee as it seeks to compel other witnesses to testify about the events leading up to the attempted insurrection, including any communications they may have had with former President Donald Trump.

The case also presents an extraordinary test for the Justice Department under Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has made restoring DOJ’s independence from politicization one of the top priorities of his tenure.

In a recent appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee, Garland told lawmakers the department would follow “the facts and the law” in its consideration of the contempt referral voted on by the full House of Representatives last month.

Given Bannon was indicted on two counts, if he is convicted on both a judge could decide to stack the counts and he could potentially face a max sentence of two years in jail. His fine on each count could be between $100 and $1000.

While Bannon, if convicted, faces the prospect of a max sentence that could amount to up to 12 months in prison and fines of as much as $100,000 — such prosecutions are rare, and if history is any guide the legal fight could potentially drag on for years and face additional hurdles on appeal.

Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the chairman and co-chair of the House Jan. 6 select committee, issued a response to news of Bannon’s indictment Friday afternoon.

“Steve Bannon’s indictment should send a clear message to anyone who thinks they can ignore the Select Committee or try to stonewall our investigation: no one is above the law,” they sad in a joint statement. “We will not hesitate to use the tools at our disposal to get the information we need.”

The last time a criminal contempt case was brought by the Justice Department was in 1983 during the Reagan Administration against an EPA official who was eventually found not guilty by a jury at trial.

Committee members have sought Bannon’s testimony citing his comments leading up to the Jan. 6 attack, including his promotions of the so-called ‘Stop the Steal’ effort and the day before when he predicted on his podcast that “all hell is going to break loose” in Washington.

In its original letter to Bannon seeking his deposition, the committee also raised reports that Bannon and other allies held meetings at the Willard Hotel in Washington leading up Jan. 6, where they strategized about ways to stop or delay Congress’ certification of Biden’s election win.

An attorney for Bannon has repeatedly said his refusal to comply with the committee’s subpoena stems from an assertion of executive privilege made by Trump, though legal experts have cast doubt on the merits of that claim both due to Trump’s status a former president and the fact that Bannon was not a White House advisor at the time of the alleged communications.

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(WASHINGTON) — The long-running special investigation into how the government probed candidate Donald Trump’s ties to Russia brought a new indictment last week and in the process cast fresh doubt on earlier claims that a little-known Belarussian-born businessman named Sergei Millian had been an unwitting source for the “dossier” prepared by former British spy Christopher Steele.

The indictment from special counsel John Durham alleged that Igor Danchenko, the key “collector” hired by Steele to gather information for the dossier, had lied to the FBI when he suggested that he had spoken with Millian, who at the time served as president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, and had obtained information from Millian that then made its way into the dossier.

Danchenko, a Russian national living in the U.S., was arrested last week on charges that he “willfully and knowingly” made a number of false statements during interviews with the FBI, including the alleged lies about Millian, in describing how he obtained information that he later provided to Steele for inclusion in the dossier.

“Danchenko stated falsely [to the FBI] that, in or about late July 2016, he received an anonymous phone call from an individual who Danchenko believed to be … then president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce” and obtained information about Trump from that man, the indictment says, referring to Millian but not naming him. “Danchenko never received such a phone call or such information from any person he believed to be [Millian] … rather, Danchenko fabricated these facts regarding [Millian].” The indictment alleges that Danchenko “never spoke to” Millian at all.

An indictment in the investigation into how officials probed Donald Trump’s ties to Russia has raised new questions about sourcing of the Steele dossier.

It is illegal to lie to a federal agent. Danchenko’s attorney said in court his client intends to plead not guilty, releasing a statement accusing the special counsel of presenting “a false narrative designed to humiliate and slander a renowned expert in business intelligence for political gain.”

The arrest of Danchenko appeared to be an escalation of the wide-ranging probe by Durham, who was appointed by Trump Attorney General William Barr in October 2020 to investigate the origins of the FBI’s Russia investigation.

The new allegations made public last week have reignited questions about the now-infamous Steele dossier and about earlier claims that Millian had been one of many sources for the content.

In March 2017, shortly after the dossier surfaced publicly, people familiar with the dossier told the FBI, and later told media outlets including ABC News, that Millian had been an unwitting source of some of the most salacious but unverified information laid out in the document, including claims that the Russian government had a video of Trump watching prostitutes urinating on a bed at a Moscow hotel, which if true could be used to blackmail the then-candidate and future American president. Trump denied that claim and called the Steele dossier “junk” and “fake.”

Millian strenuously denied being a source of any material in the dossier, including any information about a supposed tape. He went on social media to call the assertions false, and appeared on a Russian television news outlet to call the claims “a blatant lie.”

Millian said on the Russian broadcast that the people who had named him as a source were lying in an attempt “to show our president [Trump] in a bad light, using my name.” And when asked directly if he had any salacious material about Trump that is described in the dossier, Millian said he did not. “I don’t have any information and I doubt it exists,” he said.

Early in the campaign, Millian sought contact with members of Trump’s campaign, citing past work with the candidate’s real estate business marketing Trump-branded properties in Russia, according to texts and messages that later appeared in the Mueller report. He was never accused of any improper conduct.

Millian could not be reached for comment on the new allegations from the Durham investigation that support his 2017 denials.

The development comes as a series of follow-on investigations have cast doubts on several aspects of the Steele dossier.

In 2019, the inspector general for the Department of Justice released a detailed report on the FBI’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. In it, the agency watchdog describes an interview with a man later identified as Danchenko, which suggested Steele’s dossier had overstated Danchenko’s reports to him.

Danchenko told the inspector general he “felt that the tenor of Steele’s reports was far more ‘conclusive’ than was justified,” and that much of the information he had provided came from “word of mouth and hearsay,” according to the inspector general report.

Last week’s indictment alleges that Steele — whom the indictment refers to as “U.K. Person -1” — told the FBI that he understood from Danchenko that Millian was one of Danchenko’s sources.

According to the indictment, Steele told the FBI that Danchenko had “met in-person with” Millian “on two or three separate occasions” and that Danchenko had cited Millian as one of the sources of information for portions of dossier — specifically including the allegation regarding the purported salacious tape. The indictment asserts that Steele “believed Danchenko had direct contact” with Millian, and that Danchenko never corrected Steele “about that erroneous belief.”

Just weeks before Danchenko was indicted, Steele was interviewed by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos for the Hulu documentary, “Out of the Shadows: The Man Behind the Steele Dossier.” In the ABC News interview, Steele said he believed his collector may have “taken fright” at having his cover blown and tried to “downplay and underestimate” his own reporting when he spoke to investigators as part of the inspector general’s probe.

Pressed by Stephanopoulos about why, if it exists, the purported salacious tape has yet to be released, Steele replied that “it hasn’t needed to be released.”

“Why not?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Because,” Steele said, “I think the Russians felt they’d got pretty good value out of Donald Trump when he was president of the U.S.”

Steele added: “I stand by the work we did, the sources that we had, and the professionalism which we applied to it.”

Reached by ABC News in the hours after Danchenko’s arrest, Steele declined to comment.

Last week’s indictment by Durham says Danchenko’s alleged lies were not a trivial matter. The indictment called them “material” because the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign “relied in large part” on the Steele dossier to obtain FISA warrants against former Trump adviser Carter Page, and said that “the FBI ultimately devoted substantial resources attempting to investigate and corroborate the allegations contained” in the dossier.

In his interview for the Hulu documentary, Steele said he had not cooperated with Durham’s probe and did not expect to be charged in connection with his work on the dossier, but said he will be “interested to see what [Durham] publishes and what he says about us and others.”

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(WASHINGTON) — Former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows wants a court to resolve former President Donald Trump’s claims of executive privilege before he cooperates with the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

This comes after the White House notified Meadows’ attorney in a letter obtained by ABC News that President Joe Biden has no plans to assert executive privilege over testimony or documents.

“President Biden recognizes the importance of candid advice in the discharge of the President’s constitutional responsibilities and believes that, in appropriate cases, executive privilege should be asserted to protect former senior White House staff from having to testify about conversations concerning the President’s exercise of the duties of his office,” said the letter from deputy White House counsel Jonathan Su to lawyer George Terwilliger. “But in recognition of these unique and extraordinary circumstances, where Congress is investigating an effort to obstruct the lawful transfer of power under our Constitution, President Biden has already determined that an assertion of executive privilege is not in the public interest, and is therefore not justified, with respect to particular subjects within the purview of the Select Committee.”

Su also writes that Biden has determined he will not assert immunity to “preclude your client from testifying before the Select Committee.”

Terwilliger said in a statement to ABC News that “it now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

“Contrary to decades of consistent bipartisan opinions from the Justice Department that senior aides cannot be compelled by Congress to give testimony, this is the first President to make no effort whatsoever to protect presidential communications from being the subject of compelled testimony,” Terwilliger said. “Mr. Meadows remains under the instructions of former President Trump to respect longstanding principles of executive privilege. It now appears the courts will have to resolve this conflict.”

Meadows was first subpoenaed on Sept. 23 and has since been in talks with the committee through his lawyer on the extent to which he will cooperate with its probe. But sources familiar with the committee’s dealings say there has been growing frustration over the lack of progress regarding Meadows’ potential cooperation.

In a letter Thursday night, the committee threatened to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress if he doesn’t appear for a deposition before the committee on Friday.

“Simply put, there is no valid legal basis for Mr. Meadows’s continued resistance to the Select Committee’s subpoena. As such, the Select Committee expects Mr. Meadows to produce all responsive documents and appear for deposition testimony tomorrow, November 12, 2021, at 10:00 a.m. If there are specific questions during that deposition that you believe raise legitimate privilege issues, Mr. Meadows should state them at that time on the record for the Select Committee’s consideration and possible judicial review,” the letter reads.

“The Select Committee will view Mr. Meadows’s failure to appear at the deposition, and to produce responsive documents or a privilege log indicating the specific basis for withholding any documents you believe are protected by privilege, as willful non-compliance,” it continues. “Such willful non- compliance with the subpoena would force the Select Committee to consider invoking the contempt of Congress procedures in 2 U.S.C. §§ 192, 194—which could result in a referral from the House of Representatives to the Department of Justice for criminal charges—as well as the possibility of having a civil action to enforce the subpoena brought against Mr. Meadows in his personal capacity.”

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(WASHINGTON) — A group of House Democrats have announced that on Friday they will formally introduce a measure to censure Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., for tweeting an edited Japanese cartoon showing him stabbing President Joe Biden and killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.

Gosar on Monday tweeted the message, “any anime fans out there?” with what appeared to be an edited clip of the Japanese cartoon series “Attack on Titan,” in which the main characters fight off giants trying to exterminate humanity.

The edited clip of the show’s opening credits depict Gosar and other GOP lawmakers flying through the air and stabbing giants with the faces of Biden and Ocasio-Cortez, in between images of Border Patrol officers with migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Gosar was immediately condemned by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Ocasio-Cortez and other Democrats, some of whom called for his expulsion from Congress and charged him with glorifying violence against the prominent Democrats.

Pelosi tweeted on Tuesday, “Threats of violence against Members of Congress and the President of the United States must not be tolerated. @GOPLeader should join in condemning this horrific video and call on the Ethics Committee and law enforcement to investigate.”

“For a Member of Congress to post a manipulated video on his social media accounts depicting himself killing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and attacking President Biden is a clear cut case for censure,” Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., and other Democrats co-sponsoring her resolution wrote in a statement on Wednesday.

“For that Member to post such a video on his official Instagram account and use his official congressional resources in the House of Representatives to further violence against elected officials goes beyond the pale.”

Ocasio-Cortez also denounced House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for not publicly criticizing Gosar’s actions. Aides to the California Republican did not respond to a message from ABC News seeking comment on the video.

Gosar eventually took down the tweet and video Tuesday night, after Twitter placed a public interest notice on the post. He said the video produced by his office was meant to “symbolize the battle for the soul of America” and was “in no way intended to be a targeted attack against” the Democrats.

“The cartoon depicts the symbolic nature of a battle between lawful and unlawful policies and in no way intended to be a targeted attack against Representative Cortez or Mr. Biden,” Gosar said in a statement.

“It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life. Congressman Gosar cannot fly. The hero of the cartoon goes after the monster, the policy monster of open borders. I will always fight to defend the rule of law, securing our borders, and the America First agenda,” the statement said.

If the censure resolution is taken up by the full House and approved by a majority of lawmakers present and voting, Gosar could be forced to stand in the center of the House chamber as the resolution condemning his actions are read aloud.

It’s not yet clear if the House will take action against Gosar, who has courted controversy for spreading conspiracy theories about the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and appearing at a white nationalist event last winter — though he distanced himself from the main organizer and his comments.

Twenty-three members of Congress have been censured for misconduct, according to a 2016 Congressional Research Service Report.

Former Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., was the last member of Congress to be censured — in December 2010 — accused of nearly a dozen ethics violations.

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(WASHINGTON) — An appeals court has put a temporary pause on the handover of records from the Trump White House to the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection.

A three-judge panel in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals on Thursday granted a request from former President Donald Trump’s legal team for a temporary injunction to block the exchange of records from the National Archives to the committee, which was set to take place Friday, and scheduled a Nov. 30 hearing to hear arguments from all parties in the case.

Trump sued the committee and the National Archives last month, asserting executive privilege over a broad swath of documents the national archivist had identified as relevant to the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and the subsequent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

A district court judge this week twice denied Trump’s request to block or delay the release of the documents, ruling that President Joe Biden’s decision to not assert privilege over the materials outweighed Trump’s efforts to do so as a private citizen.

“[Trump’s] position that he may override the express will of the executive branch appears to be premised on the notion that his executive power ‘exists in perpetuity,'” district judge Tanya Chutkan said in her ruling. “But Presidents are not kings, and Plaintiff is not President.”

It’s unclear how the temporary delay might affect the work of the Jan. 6 committee. The committee’s chairman, Rep. Bennie Thompson, has previously said he hopes the committee’s investigation could conclude by early next year.

According to the national archivist, the first tranche of documents that were set to be handed over on Friday included daily presidential diaries, call logs, White House appointments that occurred around Jan. 6, and three handwritten notes from the files of former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, among other documents.

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(NEW YORK) — Pamela Millwood isn’t against getting vaccinated. But at the federal prison where she works in Jesup, Georgia, many of her coworkers are skeptical or downright opposed to getting a shot.

The result, she predicts, will be an exodus of some 30% to 40% of staff this holiday season, when prison employees will fall under a sweeping mandate that requires the nation’s 2 million civilian workers to become fully immunized against COVID-19.

That type of mass resignation hasn’t happened at other employers with mandatory vaccinations, such as Tysons Foods, United Airlines and New York City firefighters and teachers. The U.S. military, too, already has required COVID vaccines.

In each instance, personnel eventually complied, even after some raucous protests, with 90% or more of those workers now vaccinated.

But Millwood said she’s not so sure that will be the case at the Jesup prison, where working conditions are particularly stressful and employees are living in a state with some of the lowest COVID vaccination levels despite high transmission levels.

“We’ve got some very strong-minded staff who are going to stand their ground on it,” said Millwood, who also serves as the local union president in Jesup, some 60 miles south of Savannah. “And we’re going to lose some staff over this.”

After initially dismissing a vaccine mandate as the wrong approach, President Joe Biden this summer switched gears. Vaccination rates had stalled out earlier than anticipated, and COVID cases again began ticking upward. Children too young for the vaccine began crowding pediatric ICUs, and hospitals warned of potentially having to ration care as beds overflowed with mostly unvaccinated patients.

In September, Biden announced a new plan: Anyone working for or doing business with the federal government would have to get vaccinated, without the option of testing for the virus. Health care workers at facilities that accept federal money through programs like Medicaid and Medicare also would be required to get their shots. Additionally, private businesses with 100 or more employees would have to impose mandates of their own, although those workers would be given the option of weekly testing.

As the separate mandates face multiple lawsuits, Biden has argued that office spaces and assembly lines aren’t safe without widespread vaccinations, and that it’s up to employers to protect workers against COVID-19 the same as they would asbestos exposure or any other occupational hazard.

“I waited until July to talk about mandating because I tried everything else possible,” Biden said last month at a CNN Town Hall. “The mandates are working.”

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, unvaccinated people are six times more likely to test positive and 11 times more likely to die. When vaccinated people test positive, they also tend to recover and clear the virus more quickly, making them less contagious and protecting those around them.

Research also has found that “natural immunity” isn’t enough. One study of 7,000 people hospitalized for COVID-19 across nine states found that unvaccinated people who had been previously infected still were five times more likely to be re-infected than those who were vaccinated.

Still, as the holiday season approaches and employers complain of a worker shortage, Biden’s mandates are now at the forefront of a nationwide debate on whether the government is going too far.

Under Biden’s plan, the estimated 2 million civilians who work for the federal government — the vast majority of whom reside outside the Washington, D.C., area — were supposed to have gotten their last shot by now in anticipation of a Nov. 22 deadline. The CDC considers a person “fully immunized” two weeks after their last dose.

How much of the federal workforce will meet that deadline remains to be seen. The White House won’t release estimates yet because it insists workers still have time to report their vaccinations, even though guidance to the federal agencies has said disciplinary action could begin as early as this week.

Of particular concern are workers essential to national security and law enforcement, including the more than 50,000 Transportation Security Administration employees at airports tasked with screening an estimated 4 million air travelers over Thanksgiving.

As of last month, some 40% TSA workers remained unvaccinated. The White House and TSA haven’t updated those figures, but did say Thanksgiving travel shouldn’t be greatly affected because potential terminations won’t be immediate.

If workers refuse a vaccination, they would be subject to an initial counseling session, followed by a warning, after which they’d be subject to termination.

But it’s unclear how long that could take. Federal guidelines posted online suggest counseling efforts are limited to five days, to be followed by a 14-day suspension during which workers would be required to initiate getting a shot.

White House officials said agencies are being given discretion on how to implement the mandate, and they’re insisting Biden’s Nov. 22 deadline isn’t a “cliff.”

“The purpose, I think, most importantly, is to get people vaccinated and protected, not to punish them,” Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on COVID-19, said at a recent press briefing.

At the same time, the administration appears to be slow-walking the mandate while simultaneously arguing that getting vaccinated is urgent.

When asked why the deadline for federal workers can’t be moved to Jan. 4 to align with the private sector, as suggested by union officials, a spokesperson for the Office of Management and Budget said: “The vast majority of the federal workforce wants to know they’re safe in the workplace because their coworkers are vaccinated.”

In Jesup, Millwood said protests and employee attrition are inevitable. Two coworkers already have left, stretching thinner an already strained staff, she said.

Millwood acknowledged that her husband agreed to get vaccinated only when faced with the mandate. She said she’s still not sure about her coworkers.

“There are a lot of people,” Millwood said, “who are absolutely either going to wait to the last minute, or are just [saying], ‘You’re going to have to fire me.’ And that’s just the way it is.”

ABC News’s Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.

 

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(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will sign the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill into law on Monday, joined by a bipartisan group of members of Congress during a ceremony at the White House, according to a White House official.

A bipartisan group of governors and mayors, as well as labor union and business leaders, would also join Biden at the ceremony, according to the official. The members of Congress who will attend will include those who helped write the legislation, the official said.

Facing low poll numbers, rising inflation and challenges getting the rest of his legislative priorities passed, the president has put off signing the infrastructure bill in order to put his major, bipartisan accomplishment on display.

During his remarks Monday, Biden also plans to address how the infrastructure legislation will play a role in bolstering supply chains and dealing with bottlenecks, the White House official said. The president planned to visit a port in Baltimore on Wednesday with a similar message.

The House of Representatives passed the bill late Friday, after the Senate passed it in August. Biden has said he wanted to hold a ceremony with members of Congress, who were on recess and out of Washington this week, as well as Vice President Kamala Harris, who is currently visiting France.

“Vice President Harris and I look forward to having a formal signing ceremony for this bipartisan infrastructure soon,” Biden told reporters Saturday.

“I’m not doing it this weekend,” he added, “because I want people who worked so hard to get this done — Democrats and Republicans — to be here when we sign it.”

The bill, officially known as the the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, provides hundreds of billions of dollars to improve the nation’s highways, bridges and roads; passenger rail; public transit; broadband access; and the power grid, among other investments in physical infrastructure.

The White House has cited outside economists to argue it will create hundreds of thousands of jobs over the next decade.

Despite wide public support for the infrastructure bill — as well as for the “Build Back Better” social bill he is also trying to push through Congress — the president himself has suffered from low approval ratings.

Biden and his administration have launched a public relations campaign to promote the two bills, with the president visiting a port in Baltimore on Wednesday and sitting for an interview with a Cincinnati television station, and Cabinet officials conducting interviews to explain how the infrastructure bill in particular will benefit Americans.

A nationwide poll from Monmouth University conducted Nov. 4 to 8 found that 42% of Americans approved of the way Biden was handling his job, and 64% of respondents said they believed things in the United States have gotten off on the wrong track.

But 65% of respondents said they supported the infrastructure package, and 62% said they supported the larger social spending plan.

In the coming weeks, the president, vice president, and Cabinet will continue to travel the country to communicate how the law will help communities, grow the economy, and position America to compete in the 21st century.

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(WASHINGTON) — In a memo never before made public, the Presidential Personnel Office under the direction of John McEntee, a favorite aide of former President Donald Trump, made a case for firing then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper three weeks before Esper was terminated, according to reporting in a new book by ABC News Chief Washington Correspondent Jonathan Karl.

The contents were first reported by Karl in The Atlantic for an article adapted from his forthcoming book, “Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show.”

The memo from McEntee’s office, dated Oct. 19, 2020, provides what Karl calls a remarkable window inside the thinking of the Trump White House during the final months of his presidency and the power held by the then-29-year-old director of the Presidential Personnel Office.

It includes bullet points outlining what Karl calls Esper’s “sins against Trumpism,” including that he “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.'”

Three weeks later on Nov. 9, 2020, Karl says, Trump fired Esper in precisely the way McEntee recommended and replaced, as recommended, by Christopher Miller. The firing also came two days after Trump lost reelection and as the former president was expected to purge top members of his administration with whom he had long been unhappy.

Esper’s termination was made official with a terse two-sentence letter dated Nov. 9 and signed by McEntee that has also, until now, never been made public.

The Presidential Personnel Office, what Karl describes as a normally under-the-radar group responsible for the hiring and firing of the roughly 4,000 executive branch appointees, transformed into an internal police force in the final year of the Trump administration, with employees scouring for acts of dissidence in their ranks.

“Betrayal: The Final Act of the Trump Show” is scheduled to be released on Nov. 16, 2021.

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