(WASHINGTON) — Top Democrats in Congress investigating the events of Jan. 6 continued to allege that the government’s federal watchdog for Homeland Security abandoned efforts to collect texts and phone records from that day.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney and Rep. Bennie Thompson, who chair the House Oversight and Homeland Security committees, on Monday renewed calls for Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph Cuffari to step away from the watchdog’s investigation.
“We recently called for you to step aside from this matter and for a new IG to be appointed in light of revelations that you had failed to keep Congress informed of your inability to obtain key information from the Secret Service,” the chairs said in a letter to Cuffari. “Removing yourself from this investigation is even more urgent today.”
“These documents also indicate that your office may have taken steps to cover up the extent of missing records,” the chairs added.
Last month, Cuffari told Congress that the U.S. Secret Service had deleted text messages from Jan. 5 and 6 and that record reviews by DHS attorneys were causing months-long delays.
But House Democrats on Monday said the inspector general may have abandoned plans to collect the texts from the Secret Service more than a year ago and did not report the issues until recently. They requested interviews with Cuffari’s staff as well as internal documents from the office.
Responding to questions on Homeland Security’s data retention policy and the missing records, DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Marsha Espinosa said the department is working with the Jan. 6 committee and is cooperating with the ongoing investigations.
“DHS is fully cooperating with the ongoing investigations and, as appropriate, looking into every avenue to recover text messages and other materials for the Jan. 6 investigations,” Espinosa said in a statement. “The Department is in continued close communication with, and deeply committed to supporting the Jan. 6 Committee and those investigating the events that occurred that day.”
A spokesperson for the Secret Service acknowledged in a recent statement that some phone data from January 2021 was lost as the result of a pre-planned data transfer, noting that the transfer was underway when the IG office made the request in February 2021.
The committees also said that former DHS Acting Deputy Secretary Ken Cuccinelli was using his personal phone, potentially for official government businesses, and Congress was not notified by the inspector general. A report from the government accountability group Project on Government Oversight found that messages from Cuccinelli and then-DHS Secretary Chad Wolf have also gone missing.
“I complied with all data retention laws and returned all my equipment fully loaded to the Department,” Wolf said in a tweet last week. “DHS has all my texts, emails, phone logs, schedules, etc. Any issues with missing data needs to be addressed to DHS.”
A senior DHS official told ABC News that text messages are not always assumed to be records as defined by federal data retention law and individual employees are required to ensure the proper storage of records while working in an official capacity.
ABC News’ Katherine Faulders contributed to this report.
The musical broke box office records there and at its later home, Theatre Royal Haymarket, later that year.
Heathers: The Musical returned to the Haymarket for another successful West End season in 2021, and it also toured the United Kingdom before returning to The Other Palace in November 2021, where its hit run continues.
Like the film, the musical centers on Ryder’s Veronica Sawyer finally taking on Westervelt High School’s dreaded, identically monikered mean girls known collectively as The Heathers, with the help of the mysterious new kid, J.D., played by Christian Slater in the film.
The Roku version will star theatrical players Ailsa Davidson as Veronica and Simon Gordon as J.D., as well as Vivian Panka as Heather Duke, Teleri Hughes as Heather McNamara and Maddison Firth as Heather Chandler.
Their film counterparts were played, respectively, by Shannen Doherty, Lisanne Falk and Kim Walker.
According to Roku, the musical will be filmed at its original venue.
(WASHINGTON) — After a series of delays and emotional protests, the Senate is expected to vote Tuesday night on a bill that would help veterans exposed to toxic burn pits.
Schumer announced that the Senate will begin voting on the PACT Act at 5 p.m., with votes on three Republican amendments before a vote on final passage of the bill. Republicans agreed to the deal.
“I believe it will pass and pass this evening,” Schumer said during his weekly press conference.
The PACT Act passed the Senate earlier this year, but after a quick fix in the House required the bill to be voted on again, 26 Republican senators changed their votes and blocked swift passage of the act last week, sparking outrage among Democrats and veterans groups.
Comedian and activist Jon Stewart has become the face of this legislation, joining veterans in protest outside the Capitol for the last several days. He’s harshly criticized Republicans and demanded action from lawmakers.
“America’s heroes who fought in our wars outside sweating their asses off with oxygen, battling all kinds of ailments” while Republican senators were sitting “in the air conditioning walled off from any of it,” Stewart said during a press conference in front of the Capitol Building on Thursday. “They don’t have to hear it, they don’t have to see it. They don’t have to understand that these are human beings.”
Republicans said they did not object to the new funding for veterans in the bill, but wanted the opportunity to modify a “budget gimmick” they say could be exploited by Democrats. Sen. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., has led Republicans in their opposition, insisting on an amendment to change language in the bill he says could free up $400 billion in existing funds already being used for veterans by shuffling the money inside the budget to use for unrelated purposes.
“What matters to a veteran whose ill because of a toxic exposure is that the money is there to cover what he needs, that’s what he should be concerned about and that will be there,” Toomey said Tuesday. “What I am trying to limit is the extent that they could use a budget gimmick to reclassify a reclassify spending and go on an unrelated spending binge.”
Republicans will finally get their shot at closing this perceived budget loophole during a Tuesday night vote, when they consider Toomey’s amendment to modify accounting provisions in the bill. It will almost certainly fail.
“We have an exceptionally sympathetic overwhelmingly popular group of Americans, and rightfully so, they are veterans,” Toomey said. “There is overwhelming consensus to provide the resources to at least cover their healthcare cost and provide them with disability benefits because of their service to our country. In fact the cause is so popular that the 280 billion of new spending.
Schumer on the floor called today’s development “good news.”
“Our veterans across America can breathe a sigh of relief,” Schumer said on the floor. “The treatment that they deserve and have been denied by the VA because of all kinds of legal barriers and presumptions will now be gone.”
Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry
(LONDON) — A passenger flying from Bali, Indonesia, to Darwin, Australia, was fined 2,664 Australian dollars (about $1,846 U.S.) last week after they were caught with two egg and beef sausage McMuffins and a ham croissant upon arrival in Australia.
The meat products were sniffed out by a newly trained biosecurity detector dog named Zinta.
“This will be the most expensive [McDonald’s] meal this passenger ever has, this fine is twice the cost of an airfare to Bali, but I have no sympathy for people who choose to disobey Australia’s strict biosecurity measures, and recent detections show you will be caught,” Murray Watt, the Australian minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, said in a press release.
Australia has strict policies on the importation of food products in its effort to keep foot and mouth disease out of the country. The passenger received the hefty fine after failing to disclose that they had the meat products.
The meal also included some travel-safe hot cakes, according to a picture of the confiscated breakfast.
“Biosecurity is no joke—it helps protect jobs, our farms, food and supports the economy,” Watt said in the press release. “Passengers who choose to travel need to make sure they are fulfilling the conditions to enter Australia, by following all biosecurity measures.”
The seized meat will be tested for foot and mouth disease before it is destroyed.
Zinta is funded by an AU$14 million biosecurity package from the Australian government. The funding went to more biosecurity monitoring at mail centers and airports, including dogs at certain airports.
Eminem‘s greatest hits compilation Curtain Call 2 drops on Friday, and as many artists do ahead of a project’s release, he’s taken to social media to increase fans’ anticipation with some details.
Those details come in the form of a newly unveiled track list, which boasts some star-studded collaborations. Disc 1 includes the Beyoncé-assisted “Walk on Water,” “Godzilla” featuring the late Juice WRLD and “Love the Way You Lie,” Em’s 2010 song with Rihanna. Among the 16 tracks on Disc 2 are “Crack a Bottle” featuring Dr. Dre and 50 Cent, “No Love” with Lil Wayne and another Rihanna collaboration, “The Monster.”
As its name implies, Curtain Call 2 is a sequel to Em’s first compilation, Curtain Call: The Hits, which dropped in 2005. The new record includes music from Relapse, Recovery, The Marshall Mathers LP 2, Revival, Kamikaze and more. Em is also selling accompanying merch for fans interested in purchasing T-shirts, an orange vinyl complete with his autograph, CD box sets or cassette tapes.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House on Tuesday continued to highlight what it said was President Joe Biden’s “success” in killing Ayman al-Zawahiri, the al-Qaeda leader involved in the planning the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, saying it “has undoubtedly made the United States safer.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan also said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” that the strike vindicated Biden’s controversial and chaotic withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Afghanistan last August.
“It has proven the president right when he said one year ago that we did not need to keep thousands of American troops in Afghanistan fighting and dying in a 20-year war to be able to hold terrorists at risk and to defeat threats to the United States,” Sullivan said.
The White House also released a new photograph it said showed Biden in the Situation Room on July 1 getting briefed briefed on the proposed operation by CIA director William Burns and being shown a model of the safe house where al-Zawahiri was hiding.
A White House official later confirmed to ABC News that the closed wooden box on the table in the photograph contained the scale model of the house.
When Biden announced al-Zawahiri’s death on Monday in an address from the White House, he stated “justice has been delivered” and he made a point of saying he had been careful before approving the strike that no civilians would be killed.
A U.S. official confirmed to ABC News that the CIA carried out the operation.
A separate senior administration official said Monday there was no indication of anyone else harmed by the two Hellfire missiles fired from a drone, missiles with rotating blades that use kinetic energy to kill, different from large explosions, to limit collateral damage.
But with no U.S. forces on the ground, it was unclear how the administration could be certain of that.
Al-Zawahiri was killed at approximately 9:48 p.m. on July 30 on the balcony of his safe house in downtown Kabul after months of planning among various parts of the counterterrorism community, a senior administration official told reporters Monday.
Biden was first briefed on al-Zawahiri’s whereabouts back in April, the official told reporters, and received updates on the development of the target throughout May and June.
Biden convened several other meetings with his key advisers and Cabinet members in the weeks that followed to carefully scrutinize the intelligence and evaluate the best course of action, the official said.
A final meeting was held on July 25, during which Biden authorized the strike.
The White House photo of Biden was reminiscent of a similar photo of President Barack Obama and then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Situation Room watching the 2011 U.S. raid that killed Osama bin Laden.
While this most recent strike was largely applauded by members of Congress, Republicans focused on what they called Biden’s “disastrous withdrawal” from Afghanistan that they say reopened the door for al-Qaeda in the country.
“It is noteworthy where [al-Zawahiri] was in Kabul,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., said in a floor speech on Tuesday. “So, al-Qaeda is back as a result of the Taliban being back in power and describing the current situation in Afghanistan as a success is utterly absurd.”
McConnell said the “precipitous decision” to remove U.S. troops from Afghanistan has “produced the return of the conditions that were there before 9/11.”
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., is demanding an immediate intelligence briefing for Congress on the “possible reemergence” of the terrorist organization. Rep. Mike McCaul, who sits on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, went so far as to say Biden lied to the American people when he said last year al-Qaeda was “gone” from Afghanistan.
Sullivan pushed back on the criticism on “Good Morning America,” stating the drone strike is proof the U.S. can continue to go after its enemies “over the horizon” without endangering American service members.
“There is not a single American in harm’s way in that country in uniform and there was nobody on the ground in uniform when this strike occurred and yet we were able to take Ayman al-Zawahiri off the battlefield,” Sullivan told GMA co-anchor George Stephanopoulos. “I would call that a successful, effective policy that protects our troops, protects our people and ensures that Afghanistan will not be a safe haven for terrorists.”
But questions remain about how the U.S. will respond to the Taliban’s actions in sheltering al-Zawahiri. Senior members of the Taliban were aware of his presence in Kabul this year, the senior administration official told reporters Monday.
The official also said Haqqani Taliban members took actions after the airstrike to conceal al-Zawahiri’s presence at the location and acted quickly to remove al-Zawahiri’s wife, his daughter and her children to another location consistent with a broader effort to cover up that they had been living in the safe house.
Sullivan said the U.S. is in direct communication with the Taliban but did not reveal any specifics on how exactly the Taliban will be held accountable.
White House National Security Council spokesman John Kirby also declined to provide additional details on what specific steps the U.S. will take to hold the Taliban accountable during Tuesday’s press briefing, but said the “strike itself shows how serious we are about accountability.”
“It shows how serious we are about defending our interests,” Kirby added.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday the Taliban “grossly” violated the Doha Agreement by sheltering al-Zawahiri. In the 2020 agreement, the Taliban said they wouldn’t harbor al-Qaeda members.
“They also betrayed the Afghan people and their own stated desire for recognition from and normalization with the international community,” Blinken said. “In the face of the Taliban’s unwillingness or inability to abide by their commitments, we will continue to support the Afghan people with robust humanitarian assistance and to advocate for the protection of their human rights, especially of women and girls.”
Despite the Taliban’s sheltering of al-Zawahiri, Kirby told ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Cecilia Vega that Afghanistan will “never” become a safe haven for terrorists.
“If you were to ask the members of al-Qaeda, ask them how safe they feel in Afghanistan right now,” Kirby said. “I think we proved … this weekend that it isn’t a safe haven and it isn’t going to be going forward.”
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson, Trish Turner, Allison Pecorin and Sarah Kolinovsky contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Lt. Gen. Michael E. Langley was confirmed by the Senate on Monday as a four-star general, making history as the first Black Marine to attain that rank.
The Senate’s confirmation came after President Joe Biden nominated Langley in June to lead the U.S. Africa Command, responsible for military operations in Africa.
Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Langley said at his July 21 confirmation hearing that his father, retired U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Willie C. Langley, served in the military for 25 years, while his stepmother, Ola Langley, served the U.S. Post Office.
Langley has served for 37 years, including as the deputy commanding general of the II Marine Expeditionary Force, deputy commanding general of the Fleet Marine Force, and as the commanding general of the Marine Forces Europe and Africa. In November 2021, he assumed the duties of commanding general, Fleet Marine Force, Atlantic, and commander, Marine Forces Command and Marine Forces Northern Command.
“It is a great honor to be the president’s nominee to lead USAFRICOM. I am grateful to the trust and confidence extended by him, the secretary of defense, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the commandant of the Marine Corps,” Langley said in the July Senate Armed Services Committee hearing.
Following its founding on Nov. 10, 1775, the U.S. Marine Corps barred Black Americans from enlisting until President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 8802 on June 25, 1941. While the order prohibited discriminatory recruitment practices in national defense departments, agencies and industries, civil rights concerns remained, according to the National Archives.
In 1948, President Harry S. Truman issued another executive order that banned segregation in the armed forces. Executive Order 9981 was initially met with resistance from military personnel, according to the National Archives, but all units were eventually desegregated by the end of the Korean War.
Despite significant progress since the Marine Corps’ establishment, Black men and women are still underrepresentedin the Marines Corps senior leadership, according to a 2020 Council on Foreign Relations report. In 2016, the Department of Defense reported there were six Black general-ranking officers serving in the Marine Corps out of a total 87 across all racial demographics.
“Now, the global security environment we are witnessing today is the most challenging I have seen throughout my 37 years,” Langley said during the July hearing, referencing “global tensions” and other threats.
Nevertheless, he said, he is “enthusiastic to engage across the whole government to faithfully execute the policies and orders of the president and the secretary of defense.”
ABC News’ Luis Martinez contributed to this report.
Jimmie Allen has teamed up with Verizon and The Coda Collection for an interactive concert. Viewers can stream Allen’s June concert from five different camera angles via the Verizon Multi-View Experience App.
Mitchell Tenpenny‘s current single, “Truth About You,” and his 2018 album, Telling All My Secrets, have been certified Gold.
Walker Hayes will make the live TV debut performance of his new single, “Y’all Life,” on the Today show on Friday.
Demi Lovato quietly updated their gender pronouns in their Instagram bio to include “she/her” and spoke about the decision on the Spout podcast.
Demi, who came out as nonbinary in 2021 and has been going by “they/them” pronouns, explained that they are OK with being referred to with female pronouns because their gender identity is fluid.
“I’ve actually adopted the pronouns of she/her again,” said the Grammy nominee. “I’m such a fluid person.”
The singer continued, “I felt like — especially last year — my energy was balanced in my masculine and feminine energy so that, when I was faced with the choice of walking into a bathroom and it said ‘women’ and ‘men,’ I didn’t feel like there was a bathroom for me because I didn’t feel necessarily like a woman. I didn’t feel like a man.”
“I just felt like a human,” said Demi. “And that’s what they/them is about for me. It’s just about, like, feeling human at your core.”
The “Anyone” singer added, “Recently, I’ve been feeling more feminine, and so I’ve adopted she/ her again.”
Demi also had a message to those who are afraid of misgendering them or are upset that they have updated their pronouns again. “Nobody’s perfect,” they said. “Everyone messes up pronouns at some point, and especially when people are learning. It’s just all about respect.”
Demi says they are comfortable being referred to as “they/them” or “she/her.”
Tom Cruise is already famous for performing death-defying stunts on camera, but in recent years, he’s been rivaling Bill Murray for his ability to randomly show up and give fans a story they’ll tell the rest of their lives.
Such was the case recently on the side of a mountain called High Craig in Umbria, England. Sarah and Jason Haygarth tell The Sun they’d reached the 2,440-foot summit with their dog, Edward, when a helicopter approached and landed.
Out popped the Mission: Impossible star.
“Sorry for disturbing your peaceful walk with all the noise — I like your dog,” the star, carrying a blue parasail, reportedly told the gobsmacked pair.
Sarah says she asked the Top Gun hero about the cliff, “Are you really going to jump off there?”
According to The Sun, Cruise nodded and shouted before taking the leap, “See you later, folks.”
It’s thought that Cruise was preparing for a sequence for the next Mission: Impossible film.
The encounter wasn’t the first time Cruise shocked some English fans.
As reported in 2021, Cruise landed his helicopter at a family’s yard in Warwickshire after weather closed the local airport.
And according to his pal James Corden, he texted the late night host later that year to see if he could park in his yard so the pair could catch up.
Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One is set for release July 14, 2023.
