The House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack has formally announced its first fall hearing for Sept. 28.
Committee members have declined to elaborate on the topic for the hearing, slated for 1 p.m. that day.
The hearing comes as members of the panel have said they’ve continued to gain new details about the riot at the Capitol throughout the August recess.
The panel did not announce any in-person witnesses for the hearing, and Chairman Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) said members had not yet decided whether there would be any.
Unlike other hearings that have been primarily led by one or two lawmakers of the nine-member panel, Thompson said that in next Wednesday’s hearing, “each member will have an appropriate role in the process.”
Thompson also said the September hearing — though perhaps not its final one — would likely be the last before the November midterms.
“I’d say at this point it is, but it’s not in stone. If more information is forthcoming to the hearing, it’s always a possibility,” he told reporters Wednesday.
In recent months the committee has interviewed a number of former Trump administration Cabinet officials, including former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Members of the panel have also said the committee is making progress in its review of communications of the Secret Service on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6.
Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) released the text of his proposed changes to the country’s process for approving energy projects, seeking to make his case to skeptical lawmakers on both sides of the aisle.
Manchin’s text includes several provisions previously outlined in a fact sheet, including those that would benefit a controversial natural gas pipeline that runs through his home state known as the Mountain Valley Pipeline.
The legislation would also limit the timelines for environmental reviews that are part of the approval process to two years for major projects and one year for those that are less significant.
It further requires the president to keep a list of 25 energy projects of strategic national importance for 10 years.
The new legislation specifies that for the first seven of those years, five of the 25 projects must be related to either fossil fuels or biofuels, six must be for clean energy and four must be related to critical minerals.
Manchin’s push is facing some resistance from Democrats and Republicans.
Democrats have expressed concerns that speeding up the approval process could undercut environmental inspections of potentially polluting projects. They are also worried the proposal could make it easier to advance fossil fuel infrastructure.
Several Republicans have said that Manchin’s proposal may not be strong enough to win their vote and have also expressed anger over how Manchin’s deal came together.
Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) reached a deal with Manchin to pursue the permitting reforms in exchange for Manchin’s support for a massive tax, climate and health care bill that Congress approved in August.
Manchin announced he had reached a deal shortly after the passage of a semiconductor bill. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) had threatened to torpedo the semiconductor effort if Democrats went forward with their separate legislation, and many in the GOP say they feel burned by the timing.
Most Republicans are backing an alternative bill from Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.) that also aims to speed up the timeline for environmental reviews.
Capito’s bill goes further, with provisions that prevent the federal government from restricting fracking and allowing states to take over authority from the federal government for energy production on public lands.
Both the Capito and Manchin proposals also both seek to limit state authority to block energy projects that run through their waters, giving them just a year to do so and limiting the reasons states can use to justify their decisions.
Yet Capito’s legislation would also codify a Trump-era rule that limited which waters are subject to federal protections, something Manchin’s bill does not do.
For the Mountain Valley Pipeline, Manchin’s bill specifies that within 30 days, federal agencies need to issue authorizations for its construction and operation. It also says that these actions aren’t subject to judicial review. Capito’s proposal is similar, but would give agencies 21 days.
House lawmakers on Wednesday voted to approve legislation crafted by two members of the Jan. 6 committee that seeks to protect elections from interference by lawmakers.
The Presidential Election Reform Act (PERA) reaffirms that the vice president’s role in certifying the election is purely ceremonial, and drastically increases the number of lawmakers in each chamber needed to object to the certification of electors from one member to one-third of the body.
It also targets other actions taken by former President Trump in the lead up to Jan. 6, making explicit the role governors play in the electoral process. The bill takes aim at the faux election certificates crafted by Trump’s team and the pressure campaign in various states to replace their electors with those who would vote for then-President Trump.
The bill passed in a 229-203 vote, with nine Republicans joining all Democrats present in supporting the measure: Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.), Adam Kinzinger (Ill.), Fred Upton (Mich.), Jaime Herrera Beutler (Wash.), Peter Meijer (Mich.), Tom Rice (S.C.), John Katko (N.Y.), Anthony Gonzalez (Ohio) and Chris Jacobs (N.Y.).
During debate on the House floor Wednesday afternoon, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) — a sponsor of the bill and a member of the Jan. 6 select committee — said the legislation “will make it harder to convince people that they have the right to overthrow the election.”
“Ultimately, this bill is about protecting the will of the American voters, which is a principle that is beyond partisanship. The bottom line is this — if you want to object to the vote, you better have your colleagues and the constitution on your side. Don’t try to overturn our democracy,” she added.
Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), the second sponsor of the bill and one of two Republicans on the Jan. 6 panel, argued that the measure would“prevent Congress from illegally choosing the president itself.”
After reading a host of conservative commentary praising the legislation, the Wyoming Republican urged her GOP colleagues to support the measure.
“If your aim is to prevent future efforts to steal elections, I would respectfully suggest that conservatives should support this bill. If instead your aim is to leave open the door for elections to be stolen in the future, you might decide not to support this or any other bill to address the Electoral Count Act,” Cheney said.
House Republican leadership began whipping against the bill Tuesday afternoon, urging members of the conference to vote against the “flawed” measure, and arguing that it “tramples on state sovereignty and opens the door for destructive private rights of action that will only delay results and inject more uncertainty into our elections.”
Republicans during debate also pounced on the bill for the speed at which it was brought to the floor — Lofgren and Cheney, who have been working on the bill since shortly after Jan. 6, introduced the measure on Monday, and it faced a final vote on Wednesday.
Rep. Rodney Davis (R-Ill.), the ranking member of the House Administration Committee, during debate on Wednesday argued that Democrats are trying to put a spotlight on Trump just weeks away from the midterm elections.
“Why rush such a significant piece of legislation when the next presidential certification won’t happen for over two years? It’s pretty simple, Madam Speaker: the midterm elections are just weeks away, and the Democrats are desperately trying to talk about their favorite topic, former President Trump,” he said.
Also during debate, Democrats criticized Republicans for failing to back legislation they say largely reaffirms principles laid out in the constitution.
“To all those who oppose this legislation, I ask you: how could anyone vote against free and fair elections, a cornerstone of our constitution? How could anyone vote against our founders’ vision, placing power in the hands of the people? How could anyone vote against their own constituents, allowing radical politicians to rip away their say in our democracy?” Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said.
The Presidential Election Reform Act, which adjusts the 1887 Electoral College Act, is the first of a number of legislative proposals that could stem from the House Jan. 6 Committee’s review. The panel has been tasked with investigating the events of the Capitol riot and presenting improvements to ensure that a similar event does not occur in the future.
The passage of the bill comes as the Senate has plans to review bipartisan legislation introduced in July that would also reform the Electoral College Act.
That bill, though similar, would require just a one-fifth vote for lawmakers to raise objections to a state’s election results.
During a House Rules Committee meeting on Tuesday, Lofgren signaled an openness to discussing the threshold needed to raise an objection to a state’s electors.
“We selected one-third, and I thought it was a reasonable amount, but to some extent it’s an arbitrary number. Now in talking to [Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.)], they had a formula that they had in mind, they have a smaller number. Maybe they’re right, I don’t know, so I think we need to have some further discussion with the Senate on that point, and I’m sure that will be productive,” she said.
Another departure from the Senate bill is a provision in PERA that seeks to prevent any future attempt to delay an election – making clear only things like natural disasters could be considered a “catastrophic event” used to extend voting.
Cheney said the provision was designed to ensure “false claims of fraud could be made to allow a state to refuse to certify valid votes.”
The bill drafted by Lofgren and Cheney may be the only formal legislation to come out of the committee.
Chair Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) told reporters Wednesday that he’s unsure if any of the committee’s recommendations from its final report will be crafted into legislation by the panel.
“I think in terms of what we have before us now, that will probably be the only complete legislation introduced, but that is not in stone. But the discussion up to this point has been recommendations” for the final report, he said.
New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) on Wednesday announced a civil lawsuit against former President Trump, the Trump Organization and three of his adult children, alleging over a decade of fraud.
The attorney general’s lawsuit alleges that the former president’s company falsely inflated and deflated the value of assets in order to pay lower taxes and get better insurance coverage.
The civil lawsuit is seeking $250 million in financial penalties and asking the State Supreme Court in New York to bar Trump and his children named in the suit from serving as an officer or director of any corporation registered or licensed in the state.
It also asks the court to bar Trump and the Trump Organization from any real estate acquisition in New York or from applying for loans from any financial institution in the state for five years.
Here are five things to know amid the lawsuit announcement.
The lawsuit comes after a three-year civil investigation
James has been leading a three-year investigation into the former president’s family business and finances in the state.
James at a press conference Wednesday said her office had interviewed more than 65 witnesses and reviewed millions of documents throughout the probe.
The attorney general said Trump “falsely inflated his net worth by billions of dollars to unjustly enrich himself and to cheat the system, thereby cheating all of us,” and that he did so with the help of his children and with two named former Trump Organization executives, Allen Weisselberg and Jeffrey McConney.
The lawsuit alleges that the group engaged in a conspiracy to violate state laws, including falsifying business records, issuing false financial statements and committing insurance fraud, James argued.
Alleged federal crimes, including bank fraud, are being referred to the federal prosecutors and the IRS.
For Trump, New York is close to home
The former president began his career in New York and started building his business empire there in 1976.
The Trump Organization is a real estate development company that owns and operates a number of resorts, hotels, golf clubs and other businesses in New York.
The famed Trump Tower looms on New York City’s Fifth Avenue, but toward the end of his four-year White House stint, Trump announced he was switching his primary residence from New York to Florida.
The then-president had retreated often to his private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida during his time in office, and has since made the resort his primary home — a move rumored to have been made for tax purposes.
But even after turning his back on Manhattan, Trump has maintained a large footprint in New York.
Trump’s two adult sons now run the Trump Organization, which he turned over in 2017 as he assumed the presidency.
Trump’s children are involved
The lawsuit names Donald Trump Jr.,Ivanka Trump and Eric Trump alongside their father and alleges they engaged in conspiracy to commit the fraud crimes.
Eric Trump was questioned back in 2020 and reportedly pleaded the Fifth to over 500 questions related to his work within the Trump Organization.
Trump’s children have played prominent roles in their father’s business orbit. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump both currently serve as executive vice presidents at the Trump Organization.
When Ivanka Trump served as a White House adviser to her father during his presidential term, her business connections to the Trump Organization raised concerns about conflicts of interest.
Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump decried the lawsuit on social media after the announcement, accusing James of a “witch hunt” and arguing that the lawsuit is politically motivated to boost James’ reelection bid ahead of this year’s midterms.
“This is all about politics. Weaponizing her office to go after her political opponents!” Donald Trump Jr. said on Twitter after the announcement.
He and Eric Trump both shared video clips of James vowing to go after Trump as attorney general.
Former Attorney General William Barr on Wednesday critiqued James for trying “to drag the children into this.”
The fight between James and Trump has been intense
Like his sons, Trump has long dismissed the probe and argued that the investigation was politically motivated against him.
“Attorney General Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, a total crime fighting disaster in New York, is spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well represented banks and insurance companies, who were fully paid, made a lot of money, and never had a complaint about me, instead of fighting murder and violent crime, which is killing New York State,” Trump said on Truth Social shortly after the lawsuit was announced.
“She is a failed A.G. whose lack of talent in the fight against crime is causing record numbers of people and companies to flee New York. Bye, bye!”
James has been vocal about her inquiry into the former president, a fact that has fueled the Trumps’ arguments that her inquiry is politically motivated.
But the attorney general has consistently hit back at the criticisms, and pressed on with the probe despite attempts from Trump and his team to block its progress.
“My office will follow the facts of any case, wherever they lead. Make no mistake: No one is above the law, not even the President,” James wrote on Twitter back in 2019.
She echoed the same sentiment after the lawsuit was announced Wednesday. “There aren’t two sets of laws for people in this nation: former presidents must be held to the same standards as everyday Americans,” James wrote on Twitter.
It’s not the only legal battle Trump is facing
As the longstanding New York investigation turns into a lawsuit, Trump continues to face a slate of other legal challenges, including probes and lawsuits over his presidential campaign, his time in office and his business practices.
The lawsuit comes in the wake of last month’s FBI search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence.
Agents executing a search warrant at the Palm Beach, Fl., resort found over 100 classified documents and dozens of empty folders marked classified, taken from the White House and stored at Trump’s home after the end of his time in office.
Court records revealed investigators suspected Trump of multiple violations of the Espionage Act for his mishandling of the materials, and Trump’s legal team is now engaged in a battle to block the DOJ from reviewing the seized materials.
The Department of Justice and a House select committee also continue to investigate the Jan. 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Members of the House committee have pushed for the DOJ, which has the power to prosecute that the committee lacks, to home their probe in on Trump and criminally investigate the former president.
The Jan. 6’s committee’s Vice Chairwoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), who has been the target of much ire from her former party leader for her work on the panel, said the investigation had gathered evidence of “a supreme dereliction of duty.”
In Georgia, a special grand jury is investigating efforts of Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election results in the state.
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Vladimir Putin’s decision to mobilize 300,000 military reservists marks a major gamble in the Russian president’s war in Ukraine, which could be reaching a make-or-break stage as he faces rare and intense criticism at home and abroad.
Putin’s announcement comes as the Ukrainian armed forces have succeeded in ousting the Russian military from key areas in the east of the country, while the U.S. and allies have maintained unity in their military and economic support for Kyiv.
The military failures have sparked rare pushback from Russian lawmakers, allies in Chechnya and talking heads on state television, where the Kremlin’s narrative on the war is typically strictly enforced.
Putin’s televised address early Wednesday morning therefore appeared as an effort to silence those critics, railing against Ukraine, the U.S. and NATO as forcing his decision to invade, while also issuing blunt threats to use nuclear weapons.
“When the territorial integrity of our country is threatened, we, of course, will use all the means at our disposal to protect Russia and our people,” Putin said in his translated remarks.
“This is not a bluff. And those who try to blackmail us with nuclear weapons should know that the weathervane can turn and point towards them.”
President Biden on Wednesday reacted to Putin’s remarks during a speech at the United Nations General Assembly, saying that the Russian leader’s war “is about extinguishing Ukraine’s right to exist as a state, plain and simple, and Ukraine’s right to exist as a people.”
“Whoever you are, wherever you live, whatever you believe, that should not — that should make your blood run cold,” he added.
The White House is taking Putin’s threats to use nuclear weapons seriously, if also skeptically.
“It’s irresponsible rhetoric for a nuclear power to talk that way, but it’s not atypical for how he’s [been] talking the last seven months,” National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “We have to take it seriously. We’re monitoring as best we can their strategic posture, so that if we have to, we can alter ours. We’ve seen no indication that that’s required right now.”
There are early signs that Russian citizens increasingly view the price of Putin’s war in Ukraine as too high.
Civilian flights leaving Russia reportedly jumped in price and sold out quickly following Putin’s address, as Russian citizens already feeling the squeeze of sanctions and visa restrictions faced the grim prospect of potentially being forced to join the fight.
Hundreds of Russians were arrested on Wednesday at anti-war protests across the country.
“I think what Russian’s are fearing is that they see this as a sign of weakness,” said Evelyn Farkas, the executive director of the McCain Institute at Arizona State University who previously served as deputy assistant secretary of Defense for Russia, Eastern Europe and conventional arms control in the Obama administration.
“They understand the president needs more men in arms … He’s calling up these additional, basically, non-volunteers, because they’re in a bind. And so the Russian people are thinking to themselves, ‘Well, what’s next? If this doesn’t work, he’s going to call for mass mobilization, and that means me, or my son or my husband.’ So I think they’re booking flights to try to avoid a future mobilization that might include them.”
Regional watchers say the mobilization, and signs that Putin is likely to formally annex occupied Ukrainian territory, is a signal that the Russian leader is doubling down to project a victory in Ukraine, but is risking key political capital that could trigger wider backlash in his own country.
“It is a clear indication from Putin that he knows the war is not going the way he wants it to be,” Rob Lee, a senior fellow with the Philadelphia-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, said Wednesday in a Twitter space event discussing the latest developments in the war.
“He’s making a very significant risky decision here, probably riskier than almost anything he’s done in his career, other than maybe starting this war.”
The mass number of 300,000, and the steps being taken toward annexation, shows that Putin is “principally now staking the regime on this war,” Michael Kofman, director of Russia Studies at the Virginia-based think-tank CNA, said during the Twitter space event.
The U.S. and its allies have preemptively rejected Putin’s expected annexation plans — expected to take place in Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine including Donetsk and Luhansk in the east, in Zaporizhzhia — where Russia is occupying Europe’s largest nuclear power plant — and the region of Kherson in the south.
Kofman likened such an action to “crossing the Rubicon.”
“Annexation is a point of no return,” he continued. “After that, there will be nothing possibly left to negotiate with Ukraine… And mobilization, to an extent, is too, because this is de facto enacting wartime measures, without declaring it, but it has the same effect.”
U.S. officials and allied governments are using Putin’s military mobilization as a chance to pile on the criticisms that his campaign in Ukraine is a failure.
“It’s definitely a sign that he’s struggling,” Kirby said in his “GMA” interview.
British Defense Secretary Ben Wallace said Putin’s video speech is “an admission that his invasion is failing,” while German Chancellor Olaf Sholz called Putin’s mobilization “an act of desperation.”
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that Putin’s decision to mobilize more troops is a result of poor morale among his forces, telling the TV station of Germany’s Bild newspaper on Wednesday that “he needs an army of millions … He sees that a large part of those who come to us just run away.”
And Putin is increasingly growing isolated among even countries that have withheld full-throated criticism of his war.
Ahead of a meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping in Uzebkistan on Sept. 15, Putin said that Russia understands “your questions and your concerns” related to Ukraine.
The next day, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in remarks alongside Putin that the two men had spoken “many times on the phone,” and that “now is not an age of wars.”
National security adviser Jake Sullivan responded to Modi’s remarks saying, “We would like to see every country in the world making that case.”
And Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who has positioned himself as a mediator between Putin and Zelensky, said in an interview with PBS on Sunday that Russia must retreat from the territory it occupies.
“The lands which were invaded will be returned to Ukraine,” Erdoğan said.
Farkas of the McCain Institute said the increasing public criticism from these countries are “signaling to Putin that this war is costly. And they are signaling that they’re not convinced Putin’s gonna win.”
She added that the solidarity of the international community against the use of nuclear weapons is further pressure to keep Putin from taking such a devastating action.
“Everything would change, and Vladimir Putin has to know that,” Farkas said.
“He has to know that he would face conventional attacks and that he would face an attempt to maneuver him out of the Kremlin, out of office, by the international community. Because the international community would say, ‘Anyone who would actually use nuclear weapons for the first time, in anger, since World War II, cannot remain in power.’”
President Biden boldly claimed in an interview over the weekend that the pandemic is over, but public health experts — and U.S. statistics — put those remarks in serious doubt.
Coronavirus cases and deaths in the U.S. have been on a steady decline in recent weeks following a slight rise due to the BA.5 omicron subvariant.
However, tens of thousands of new cases are still being recorded daily, hundreds of Americans are still dying of the virus every day and enthusiasm for immunization has all but stagnated.
In his “60 Minutes” interview, Biden acknowledged the U.S. still has “a problem with COVID,” but pointed to the fact that people were not wearing masks at the event he was attending as evidence that the pandemic phase of COVID-19 is over.
He sought to walk back the remarks on Tuesday, saying the pandemic is “not where it was.”
But he has maintained the core of his argument: COVID-19 has reached a new, less severe phase.
Many have been waiting for the pandemic to become endemic.
For a virus to be considered endemic, it would still exist within communities, but it would not severely impact medical providers and health systems.
Available information paints a picture of a country that, while making strides in combating the outbreak, is far from being in the clear.
Cases
While cases are declining, they are still far from being the lowest they have ever been throughout the pandemic.
Case rates for COVID-19 currently stand at a seven-day moving average of about 55,000 cases per day, a marked decline from the hundreds of thousands of infections that were seen at the start of this year when the omicron wave peaked.
This rate is still more than twice what the U.S. saw in April before BA.5 rose in dominance.
Since the start of the pandemic, case rates reached their lowest in June 2021 when they dipped below 12,000 per day for a few weeks.
Half of all U.S. counties are currently considered to have low COVID-19 community levels, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Another 36 percent of counties have medium COVID-19 community levels, and 13 percent have high community levels.
This leaves half the communities in the country in a place where mask wearing is still recommended by the CDC in some situations, particularly for those at high risk for severe illness.
Deaths and hospitalizations
Coronavirus-related deaths and hospitalizations have continued to drop since the middle of the summer, indicating a concurrent fall in people experiencing severe illness from COVID-19.
As cases have dropped, coronavirus-related deaths have also fallen to a seven-day moving average of under 400. Apart from a slight rise in deaths due to the spread of BA.5 over the summer, deaths have remained relatively low in recent months — though they have been lower at past points in the pandemic.
Virologists and public health officials have previously said the end of the pandemic will not be marked by a certain metric. However, 300 to 500 deaths per day is still a cause for concern and caution among stakeholders.
Thousands of hospital admissions due to COVID-19 are still being recorded by the CDC, with the current seven-day average standing at more than 4,000 per day.
According to the most recent data from the Department of Health and Human Services, more than 30,000 inpatient hospital beds are being used for COVID-19 patients, representing between 4 and 5 percent of all inpatient beds being used.
Vaccines
Almost two years after COVID-19 vaccines were first deployed in the U.S., only about two-thirds of the population has been immunized against the coronavirus.
Among those who have been vaccinated, the majority are also still relying on the protection conferred from the first two doses. Throughout the pandemic, immunity from both prior infections and vaccinations has been observed to wane over time, with health officials recommending a booster shot after an initial course of vaccination.
As the U.S. heads into the fall and winter, airborne pathogens like the flu and COVID-19 generally are expected to see higher rates of transmission.
While vaccinations and therapeutics mean infections are less likely to become severe cases, an infected individual still poses a risk to others, especially those who are immunocompromised.
“If you get vaccinated yourself, it doesn’t only protect you, it protects all the vulnerable populations around you,” said Daniel McQuillen, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America.
McQuillen estimated that about a quarter of the population is not as protected from COVID-19 as they could be. And he reiterated that infected individuals could infect several others, prolonging the virus’s spread.
“You impact both how communities exist and also how the medical community exists, because those people are going to take up outpatient space and time from other people as well,” McQuiston said.
Variants
Throughout the pandemic, the SARS-CoV-2 virus has been an unpredictable pathogen.
Numerous new strains have cropped up around the world, fueling new surges in the U.S.
The BA.5 omicron subvariant accounts for 85 percent of coronavirus cases in the country. The BA.4.6 subvariant has recently started to grow in prevalence, currently accounting for 10 percent of cases.
The World Health Organization only lists one variant of concern, the omicron variant. But health experts have routinely cautioned against presuming to know how the virus will change.
C. Brandon Ogbunu, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professor at MIT’s Department of Chemistry, told The Hill that it would be wrong to behave as though the SARS-CoV-2 virus has run out of new variants, noting that a similar mistake was made during the delta wave of cases.
“Even if we never see a new strain again over the next century, it still wouldn’t be wise to say there is no other variant in existence,” Ogbunu said. “I think we have not seen one in some time, which is encouraging, and certainly it is encouraging for our biomedical and public health interventions … but it is unwise to come to some kind of global conclusion about what is possible or not.”
Experts
Biden’s claim on Sunday elicited surprised responses from multiple public health experts and stakeholders, with many expressing concerns that his remarks inadvertently sent the wrong message.
Ogbunu said he felt that Biden’s declaration was made for “political purposes.”
“Knowing how words are perceived, I thought it was irresponsible and inaccurate,” he said. “I think by the definitions I use for a pandemic, I would say we are at a different point in the pandemic than we were. I think we are at a point where we have useful tools to reduce transmission and treat patients, but I would not say that the pandemic is over.”
“I get what he was trying to get at, but he didn’t say it in a way that was very helpful,” McQuillen said of Biden’s interview. “If you’re going to be very exact in the definitions and all that kind of stuff, it’s not right. The pandemic isn’t over. It’s just in a bit of a different phase.”
“The fact that the administration is still trying to get support for getting vaccinations and other therapeutics and tests out into the community from Congress is a reflection of how they really think,” McQuillen added, referencing the Biden administration’s push for Congress to approve billions of dollars more in COVID-19 relief funding.
However, other public health experts refrained from outright saying Biden was incorrect.
Robert Wachter, a physician and chair of the Department of Medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, said he didn’t know if the pandemic was over, calling that claim a “judgement call.”
“But clearly the threat is far lower than it was, people have the means to stay fairly safe (though many are choosing not to), & at some point we need to shift from an emergency footing to a sustainable long-term strategy,” Wachter said.
Republican senators on Wednesday went after Biden judicial nominee Julie Rikelman over her past work at a leading abortion advocacy organization.
Rikelman, who has been nominated to serve on the 1st Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, represented the Mississippi abortion clinic at the center of this year’s Supreme Court case that resulted in the overturning of Roe v. Wade.
The former legal director of the Center for Reproductive Rights told senators at Wednesday’s nomination hearing that she believes she can separate her previous advocacy work from her potential work as a judge.
Rikelman also promised to follow all Supreme Court precedent, including the high court’s decision in the Mississippi abortion case that she argued, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
“I will apply Dobbs faithfully,” she said. “Our legal system and the rule of law itself depends on lower federal courts following Supreme Court precedent, and as you said, Dobbs is now the law of the land and I will follow it, as I will follow all Supreme Court precedent.”
However, Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee called into question several statements that Rikelman made while working as an advocate.
Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) asked Rikelman to explain a statement in a report she contributed to that called the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision “egregiously wrong,” while Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) interrogated her about a 2018 op-ed that called pregnancy resource centers “faux clinics.”
“Is your testimony here that these folks are lying under oath … that these centers are all fake?” Hawley asked, noting that individuals from pregnancy centers had previously testified before Congress.
Rikelman maintained throughout the questioning that those statements were made in her capacity as an advocate and represented the views of her organization.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who called the nominee an “extreme zealot” — had a heated exchange with Rikelman after she refused to answer questions about her personal views on abortion.
Rikelman initially answered Cruz by noting that her work as an advocate followed Supreme Court precedent on abortion.
“I didn’t ask what the law was,” Cruz said. “I asked what your belief was … What do you believe?”
“The code of judicial conduct does specifically say that it would be inappropriate to share any personal views as a nominee because it would suggest that I could prejudge issues,” Rikelman said, after a back-and-forth debate with the senator.
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Former President Trump and his two adult sons are hitting back at New York Attorney General Letitia James’s (D) civil lawsuit that alleges the Trump family committed business fraud, casting the investigation as a “witch hunt.”
“Attorney General Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James, a total crime fighting disaster in New York, is spending all of her time fighting for very powerful and well represented banks and insurance companies, who were fully paid, made a lot of money, and never had a complaint about me, instead of fighting murder and violent crime, which is killing New York State,” the former president wrote on Truth Social.
“She is a failed A.G. whose lack of talent in the fight against crime is causing record numbers of people and companies to flee New York. Bye, bye!” his post continued.
In a second post, Trump called James “racist” and tied the investigation to her ongoing reelection campaign.
James’s announcement on Wednesday marked the culmination of her office’s three-year investigation into the Trump Organization’s business practices.
She alleged the Trump family and their company misleadingly inflated property values to attract investments and deflated them at times for tax and loan benefits.
The civil suit, filed in the state’s Supreme Court in Manhattan, asks the court to order the Trumps to pay $250 million in penalties and permanently bar the former president and three of his children — Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump — from serving as an officer or director in any corporation based in New York.
Trump Jr. and Eric Trump subsequently posted montages of James previously vowing to take on the former president, including during her campaign, casting her suit as being politically motivated.
Donald Trump Jr., left, and Eric Trump attend a ceremony to mark the 75th anniversary of D-Day at the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy, France. (Ian Langsdon/POOL via AP)
“Letitia James is not working for the Attorney Generals office — she is working for the DNC… 49 days before her election (newest poll has her tied with a Republican in New York State),” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter.
The Federal Reserve on Wednesday boosted interest rates by three-fourths of a percentage point, the latest in a series of aggressive steps to tame stubborn inflation.
The Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) — the panel of Fed officials responsible for monetary policy— hiked its baseline interest rate by 0.75 percentage points Wednesday to a span of 3 to 3.25 percent.
It is the fifth Fed rate hike since March and the third consecutive FOMC meeting ending with a 75 basis point hike.
The Fed had long been expected to issue another 75 basis point hike in September as inflation continued to rise through much of the summer and linger near four-decade highs. While monthly price growth has slowed slightly, the annual inflation rate of 8.2 percent in August, according to the consumer price index, was close to levels not seen since the late 1970s.
Fed officials had faced some pressure to hike by a full percentage point in the weeks leading up to the Wednesday meeting after consumer prices rose again in August. Financial markets locked in a roughly 20 percent change of a 1 percentage point rate hike in the hours before the FOMC meeting concluded Wednesday, according to the CME FedWatch tool, which tracks where traders expect the Fed to set interest rates.
Even so, the Fed stuck to its plan for a 0.75 percentage point hike, a move bank officials portrayed as an urgent but measured attempt to smother inflation.
“Inflation remains elevated, reflecting supply and demand imbalances related to the pandemic, higher food and energy prices, and broader price pressures,” the FOMC said in a statement.
The Fed has hiked interest rates rapidly from near-zero levels set in 2020 as the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic upended the economy. The bank is racing to bring inflation down before it spirals out of control by slowing the economy enough to reduce the amount of spending on goods and services.
Fed officials and many economists were hopeful that the bank could slow the economy and make a dent on inflation without derailing strong job growth, low unemployment and steady economic growth. But experts say the chances of recession in 2024 are rising.
“The Fed is in a really, really tough position, in part because they have a very limited toolkit,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director at Groundwork Collaborative.
“They have inflation that’s coming from a constellation of sources,” Owens explained.
The Fed’s rate hikes have slowed the housing market, curbed some hiring and weighed on economic growth. The combination of the Fed’s actions, normalizing supply chains and falling gas prices should eventually lead to lower inflation.
But inflation has fallen little since the Fed’s rate hikes began and officials have pledged to keep ramping up rates until they see clear signs of slowing price growth — a process Fed Chair Jerome Powell acknowledged would bring “pain.”
“We’re seeing the expected consequences of this,” Owens said. “It’s working, but it is not truly taming the price increases we’re seeing.”
Powell is scheduled to hold a press conference at 2:30 p.m.
Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered a partial mobilization of Russian forces on Wednesday, marking a big escalation as Moscow faces a series of setbacks in its invasion of Ukraine.
Putin announced the decree in a rare address to the nation during which he said that a preemptive occupation of Ukraine was the only option and accused the West of “crossing every line” in its reaction to the invasion.
The text of Putin’s decree offers little insight into who exactly qualifies under the mobilization criteria.
Here’s what it does and doesn’t lay out:
It’s a partial mobilization
A partial mobilization allows Russia to only mobilize certain groups to serve in Russia’s armed forces, as opposed to mobilizing the entire reserve.
The move comes as Kyiv pushes forward with a counteroffensive that has proved highly successful. Ukraine has reclaimed thousands of square miles of territory that were occupied by Russia after its invasion in February. This success has caused Putin frustration and political pain at home.
Who qualifies for being called up?
The text of the decree says Russia will carry out “the call-up of citizens of the Russian Federation for military service,” and that they will serve as military personnel under contract.
Those who are mobilized will be under contract as if they are military personnel until the end of the partial mobilization period unless they are dismissed from service.
The decree does state that service members can be dismissed for age, health reasons or in connection with an “entry into force of a court verdict on the imposition of a sentence of imprisonment.”
The mobilization takes effect on Wednesday, but it doesn’t explicitly define when the mobilization period will end.
How many people will be called up?
The text of the decree itself doesn’t mention how many will be mobilized.
However, Russian Minister of Defense Sergey Shoigu said that up to 300,000 people will be mobilized as part of the effort.
The Institute for the Study of War has said Russia has over 2 million reserve forces.
For perspective, Russia is currently estimated to have about 150,000 troops fighting in Ukraine, The Washington Post reported.
While the text of the mobilization decree doesn’t explicitly mention who qualified for the mobilization, Putin said in his speech that only military reservists who have already served in the armed forces will be called up.
A missing article
The official mobilization decree comes with ten articles, but only nine of them are being made public.
One of the articles — Article 7 — is classified, Kremlin Spokesman Dmitry Peskov said, according to Russian News Agency TASS.
Peskov said he couldn’t explain why the seventh article was classified but appeared to imply that it had to do with the number of people being mobilized under the order.
What happens before active duty
Top officials from each “constituent entity” of the Russian Federation have to arrange the conscription of citizens in accordance with the decree, the text states.
Putin said that before being sent to units, those called up for active duty will have to undergo additional training based on “the experience of the special military operation.”
