(WASHINGTON) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has spent much of this week defending the department’s newly established Disinformation Governance Board in response to Republican lawmakers’ concerns about partisan influence in federal law enforcement.

The board, according to DHS, was actually created to address privacy concerns that arise with disinformation campaigns when information is shared between departments as well as to ensure it’s done appropriately. But the Orwellian name and an admittedly clumsy rollout immediately raised eyebrows as well as ignited a pre-existing debate about free speech and partisanship — especially given the person tasked with leading the board’s activities.

“Given the complete lack of information about this new initiative and the potential serious consequences of a government entity identifying and responding to ‘disinformation,’ we have serious concerns about the activities of this new Board, particularly under Ms. Jankowicz’s leadership,” Mike Turner and John Katko, Republican leaders of the House Committee on Homeland Security, wrote in a letter to Mayorkas last week.

In a fact sheet released Monday, the department admits that “there has been confusion about the working group, its role, and its activities” and vows to work on building greater public trust.

That confusion over the board’s work stemmed from a comment Mayorkas made to Congress last week that it would be used to “more effectively combat” the threat of false information. DHS has now said the body will not be involved in managing department operations and Mayorkas said the group would “bring together the experts throughout our department to ensure that our ongoing work in combating disinformation is done in a way that does not infringe on free speech, a fundamental constitutional right embedded in the First Amendment, nor on the right of privacy or other civil rights and civil liberties.”

The White House on Friday pledged the board will operate in a “nonpartisan and apolitical manner.”

But Sen. Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, was not sold.

“I think you’ve got no idea what disinformation is, and I don’t think the government is capable of it,” he said during a Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

The secretary pushed back on the assertion from Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., that the board will be the “truth police.”

“The Department of Homeland Security is not going to be the truth police,” Mayorkas said. “That is the farthest thing from the truth. We protect the security of the homeland.”

The GOP criticisms also center on Nina Jankowicz, the former Wilson Center fellow tapped to lead the board. Jankowicz, who is routinely outspoken on Twitter, has publicly criticized Republicans and sowed doubt about the accuracy of press reports critical of President Joe Biden’s son Hunter.

Jankowicz was quoted by the Associated Press in 2020 refuting a story about the discovery of new emails that reportedly linked Hunter Biden and a Ukrainian energy executive with the president.

“We should view it as a Trump campaign product,” Jankowicz told the AP that October.

She later suggested on Twitter that the emails were “part of an influence campaign.”

“Voters deserve that context, not a fairy tale about a laptop repair shop,” Jankowicz wrote.

The New York Times and Washington Post confirmed the authenticity of the emails related to Hunter Biden with the help of security experts in March. ABC News has not independently confirmed the veracity of the emails, which were first reported by the New York Post in an article that was flagged as disinformation on Twitter. The social media company demanded the tabloid delete the posts but eventually backed down when it refused.

The debate over the new board takes place against the backdrop of a long-standing divide over regulating speech, especially online. Fueled by libertarian beliefs in an unregulated public sphere, leaders on the right have championed figures like Elon Musk, whose recent acquisition of Twitter was met with skepticism and concern from those who believe social media companies have a duty to remove vitriolic harassment, disinformation and misinformation on their platforms.

“Your priority is setting up a board and hiring someone who has gone to TikTok to talk about stopping speech she doesn’t like, who has mocked voters of the last president, that has been your priority, and to say your priorities are misplaced is a dramatic understatement, and the time I think has come, Mr. Secretary, for you to resign,” Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., told Mayorkas.

Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., said Jankowicz has made “political statements” in the past that would disqualify her from holding the position on the board.

“I think it’s a terrible idea,” Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, said.

Mayorkas, for his part, pushed back, saying he didn’t know about the TikTok posts and, as secretary, he is ultimately responsible for what occurs at DHS. He also declined to say who hired Jankowicz but stressed she must do her job in a nonpartisan way.

John Cohen, the former acting intelligence chief at DHS who helped stand up the disinformation board and left the department last month, said the board simply addresses a communication issue within the department.

“It didn’t coordinate operational activities, it wasn’t governing intelligence operations, it had no input on how organizations collect intelligence or information,” Cohen, now an ABC News contributor, said. “It was simply intended to be a working group that would gather on an ad hoc basis to address matters of policy.”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — U.S. officials on Thursday pushed back on a New York Times report that said the U.S. provided Ukraine intelligence that helped it target and kill Russian generals and other senior officers.

National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson took exception to the story’s headline: “U.S. Intelligence Is Helping Ukraine Kill Russian Generals, Officials Say.”

“The headline of this story is misleading and the way it is framed is irresponsible. The United States provides battlefield intelligence to help the Ukrainians defend their country. We do not provide intelligence with the intent to kill Russian generals,” Watson said, drawing a semantic distinction, appearing to want to distance the U.S. from any direct involvement in an attack on Russian commanders.

A second U.S. official with knowledge of U.S. intelligence-sharing with Ukraine confirmed that the U.S. provides intelligence on movements of Russian units and command posts, but not on individual Russian military leaders.

“The U.S. is not providing intelligence on Russian generals,” the official told ABC News Wednesday evening.

A third official told ABC News the same: “That is not how we operate.”

Pentagon press secretary John Kirby offered clarifying remarks during a press briefing Thursday.

“The United States provides battlefield intelligence to help Ukrainians defend their country,” Kirby said. “We do not provide intelligence on the location of senior military leaders on the battlefield or participate in the targeting decisions of the Ukrainian military.”

The New York Times story originally cited American officials claiming U.S. intelligence “has helped Ukrainians target and kill many of the Russian generals who have died in action in the Ukraine war.”

Officials say it is correct, as reported by the Times, that the Ukrainians are able to combine what they learn from the U.S. with their own intelligence to then target Russian leaders. But they emphasized that the U.S. does not play a direct role in targeting individuals on the battlefield.

Other nations are also sharing intelligence with Ukraine, which has its own “robust” capabilities, according to Kirby.

“Ukraine combines information that we and other partners provide with the intelligence that they themselves are gathering on the battlefield, and then they make their own decisions, and they take their own actions,” Kirby said.

The Kremlin also responded to the article, saying its troops are aware of intelligence-assistance for Ukraine coming from the West.

“Our servicemen are well aware that the United States, the United Kingdom and NATO in general are providing intelligence and information about other parameters to the Ukrainian Armed Forces on a permanent basis. This is well known and, of course, together with the arms supply to Ukraine by the same countries and the alliance, all of those actions are not helping rapidly finalize the operation, although they cannot hinder the achievement of objectives set for the special military operation,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at a press briefing Thursday.

Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense has claimed 12 Russian generals have been killed since the invasion, though U.S. officials have not confirmed this when asked.

One reason senior officers might be particularly vulnerable is due to the structure of Russia’s military.

“They do not delegate authority,” said Mick Mulroy, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East and ABC News contributor. “So, they are out giving orders directly to their forces.”

Unlike the U.S. military, Russia does not empower its non-commissioned and junior officers with the authority to make decisions on their own, according to Mulroy.

“It’s the only way to effectively fight in modern combined arms maneuver warfare,” he said. “The lack of delegation is another reason the Russian military is performing so poorly.”

Top American military leaders have publicly stated the U.S. is sharing intelligence to help Ukrainians in their fight against Russia’s invading forces.

“We have opened up the pipes,” Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told senators Tuesday. “There is a significant amount of intelligence flowing to the Ukraine from the United States.”

The officials ABC News spoke to could not say whether the U.S. has any hard rules in place against giving Ukraine intelligence on high-level leaders, including top Russian general Valery Gerasimov, who spent multiple days in the contested Donbas region last week. But according to Mulroy, there is nothing wrong in principle with helping Ukraine kill Russian generals.

“Targeting generals is fully lawful, targeting non-combatant civilians is not,” Mulroy said. “If Russian generals don’t want to be targeted, they should withdraw their forces and return to Russia.”

ABC News’ Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.

(WASHINGTON) — Attorney Kathryn Kolbert has spent a majority of her career thinking about the after-effects on reproductive rights if the Supreme Court was to overturn Roe v. Wade. She believes prohibiting abortions will force some women to turn to unsafe practices to terminate pregnancies that will put their lives in danger.

“Women are crafty,” said Kolbert. “I’m not advocating that they break the law, but the reality is, as in the days before Roe, the underground market will operate.”

Kolbert is best known as one of the lawyers who argued and helped win the landmark 1992 abortion case Planned Parenthood vs. Casey. Now, a leaked draft opinion for the Supreme Court appears to indicate that the court is poised to fully overturn Roe v. Wade and Planned Parenthood v. Casey.

Kolbert told ABC News’ podcast Start Here that if the ruling is overturned, so-called “trigger laws” will immediately go into effect to ban or prohibit abortions across half the country.

“The reality is that women in those 25 or 26 states will not be able to obtain the reproductive health care that they need,” said Kolbert. “The bottom line: Women will have to travel hundreds of miles, sometimes thousands of miles, to obtain reproductive health care. That’s what they did in the 1970s.”

If women cannot afford to travel to obtain proper reproductive care, Kolbert said that some women will take dangerous measures, either through unsafe surgical abortions or medical abortions, that could result in serious consequences.

“They’ll figure it out and there’s all kinds of ways they can do that. Internet access from doctors around the world, getting drugs from their friends… traveling across the border, and picking up the drugs, all kinds of ways,” said Kolbert.

Kolbert said that, although medical abortions, which is the use of different medications to terminate a pregnancy, are safe under medical supervision, there are still always risks that women can bleed more than expected. For those who obtain the drugs illegally, they’ll often be deterred from seeking follow up medical care when they need it.

“[A woman in Texas] was prosecuted for self-managing her abortion. They dropped those charges eventually, but [she] was dragged into court,” said Kolbert. “[Authorities] found out because she went to a hospital, because she was bleeding and wanted appropriate health care.”

Kolbert said another risk is women receiving “bad drugs.”

“For the most part, [medication is] safe when you get the right drug, but there’s unscrupulous people out in the world and that’s a risk,” said Kolbert. “But the reality is, even with the risks of medication… [For some women] being forced by the government to carry your pregnancy to term is unthinkable and they will do, as they did in the days before Roe, just about anything to terminate a pregnancy.”

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 13% of annual maternal deaths can be attributed to unsafe abortions. The same study states that in developed regions, it is estimated that 30 women die for every 100,000 unsafe abortions.

For now, abortions are legal while the final Supreme Court decision remains pending. Kolbert said that there are three things people can do to help: donate money to abortion rights causes, get political and build “a badass social justice movement” because “change has never happened until there has been a cry for change.”

“The young people in our country really need to demand that their rights, their liberties that they’ve enjoyed their entire lifetimes, be respected,” said Kolbert. “It is not appropriate to tell women that they can’t make decisions about their lives. It is not appropriate to tell women that their bodies do not belong to themselves. We need to stand up and say, ‘No way.’”

Copyright © 2022, ABC Audio. All rights reserved.