by tyler | Aug 2, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Senate went into lockdown Wednesday afternoon as US Capitol Police investigated reports of an active shooter in the Russell office building, putting Capitol Hill on edge more than two years after the January 6, 2021, attack.
But after some staff fled from the building following a concerning phone call and police instructed others on the Senate side of the Capitol to shelter in their offices with their doors locked, law enforcement authorities found no evidence of an active shooter, according to multiple sources.
US Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger told reporters it “may have been a bogus call,” and that there was no confirmation of an active shooter after more than 200 police officers went door-to-door to make sure everything was fine.
“So far, nothing. … Nobody has heard shots” and “no victims,” he added. All three Senate office buildings have been cleared of any threats.
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police Department says there is “no evidence of anyone injured” and at the moment, they are “unable to substantiate” the call.
The tense afternoon comes as security in Washington begins to ramp up ahead of former President Donald Trump’s expected appearance on Thursday in a federal courthouse situated several blocks from the US Capitol. Trump was indicted Tuesday on criminal charges by a federal grand jury in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election leading up to the January 6 attack on the US Capitol.
On Wednesday, Senate staff received an alert from USCP came just before 3 p.m. EST.
“Due to a security threat inside the building, immediately: move inside your office or the nearest office; take emergency equipment and visitors; close, lock and stay away from external doors and windows,” and “If you are in a public space, find a place to hide or seek cover,” among other directions.
A social media post kicking off the scramble from USCP at 2:45 p.m. EST said, “Our officers are searching in and around the Senate Office Buildings in response to a concerning 911 call.”
“If you are inside the Senate Buildings, everyone inside should be sheltering in place as the report was for a possible active shooter. It should be noted that we do not have any confirmed reports of gunshots,” the post continued.
Lawmakers are out of Washington on their August recess.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
A dozen states have had to pause terminating certain residents from Medicaid and to restore coverage – at least temporarily – for tens of thousands of people, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
A Covid-19 pandemic-era ban on states ending residents’ Medicaid coverage expired on April 1. Since then, more than 3 million enrollees have been disenrolled, according to state and federal data compiled by KFF.
What’s greatly concerning CMS is that the majority of those terminations have been for so-called procedural reasons, meaning that enrollees did not complete the renewal process – possibly because they didn’t receive the forms or didn’t understand the instructions, among other reasons.
Nearly three-quarters of disenrollments fell into this category, according to KFF, though the rate varied widely by state. Many of these folks may actually be eligible for Medicaid.
“Despite all the preparations and what we know has been a tremendous amount of work at the state level and in the community, we are very concerned about the level of terminations, meaning disenrollment, that we are seeing across the country,” Daniel Tsai, director of the Center for Medicaid and CHIP Services, told reporters on Wednesday.
In particular, CMS is very worried that when states terminate people for procedural reasons, they have not definitively ascertained that those enrollees are no longer eligible for Medicaid, he said.
The agency is closely monitoring states’ progress and compliance with federal requirements, as laid out in Congress’ fiscal 2023 federal spending package, which set the expiration date of the pandemic ban.
The 12 states are working with CMS to pause terminations to address issues related to full compliance with renewal requirements for some or all of their enrollees, the agency said.
In addition, CMS is also in preliminary discussions with multiple other states to make sure they are not in violation of the federal rules.
The agency is not naming any of the states since they are working collaboratively with CMS to address the issues. But if they ever fail to comply in the future, the agency “won’t hesitate to make that information public,” said CMS administrator Chiquita Brooks-LaSure.
One of the most common reasons that states have had to pause disenrollments is that they did not use electronic data sources to check certain enrollees’ income, which can lead to them being automatically renewed. Tsai termed the problem “systems glitches.”
The length of the pauses varies by state and depends on the speed at which it can remedy its problem, said Tsai, noting that some states are taking an extra 90 days to correct their systems.
The most effective stick that CMS has to get states to comply is the risk of losing their federal Medicaid matching funds if they don’t follow all the federal requirements, Tsai said.
“What those states understand is if they do not do that, their entire enhanced federal match for the quarter that’s been outlined by statute is at risk, and that’s a significant amount of funding,” he said.
States had been receiving a 6.2 percentage point increase in their federal match during the disenrollment ban. That enhancement is phasing out over the course of 2023.
Separately, another 10 states are taking advantage of a new CMS option to delay procedural terminations for at least a month to conduct additional outreach.
Enrollment in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program, known as CHIP, has soared to nearly 94 million people during the roughly three years that states could not winnow their rolls.
Estimates of how many people will lose their coverage during the redetermination process vary. KFF pegs it at 17 million, while a Department of Health and Human Services analysis from last summer projected a reduction of 15 million enrollees.
States have until the end of May 2024 to complete their eligibility reviews, though a number plan to finish the process much faster.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
The Senate Judiciary Committee voted 11-10 to advance legislation that would create a code of ethics for Supreme Court justices.
The bill advanced on party lines, with 11 Democrats voting for the bill and 10 Republicans voting against. It is not expected to get the 60 votes required to advance on the Senate floor – and even if it did, it would also likely fail in the GOP-controlled House.
Democrats have been pushing for a check on justices who violate ethics norms since a Pro Publica report revealed that Justice Clarence Thomas had accepted vacations and travel from a Republican mega donor. Justice Samuel Alito has also faced criticism for alleged ethics violations.
However, Senate Republicans have called this bill a partisan attack on the court’s conservative justices, and argued that Congress is overstepping by trying to make rules for a co-equal branch of government.
Senate Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, a Democrat from Illinois, said that the American people have a low opinion of the court after the allegations of ethical misconduct by Thomas and Alito.
“All the disclosures about lavish vacation gifts, travel, it goes on and on,” Durbin told reporters. “Failing to disclose this to the public has left a bitter taste in the mouth of most Americans about the Supreme Court.”
Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut argued that Republican opposition to this bill could hurt them in the polls.
“This issue shouldn’t be partisan,” he said. “To be against ethics is not smart, it’s not right. It’s basically a betrayal of our democracy. And the Supreme Court has to be answerable to someone.”
Blumenthal pushed back on the Republican arguments that Congress cannot legislate rules for the Supreme Court.
“We prescribe ethical codes for the other branches of government for the other judges, hundreds of them that abide by ethical rules made for them and required of them by the United States Congress,” he noted.
However, Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee argued that the Supreme Court should be able to make its own rules.
“It’s up to Chief Justice Roberts,” she said. “And as we said in the press conference we did yesterday, we’ve got three branches of government, and the court can tend to this. This is not our place.”
She added that the bill would never become law, calling it a “messaging bill” and noting that the House would block it even if it got through the Senate.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
The US Army Secretary emphasized Thursday that the service is “not going to lower our standards” despite ongoing challenges with recruiting.
“I think we saw from some of the years in the early 2000s, we lowered some of our standards we gave … what we call moral waivers, we allowed in more people with some misconduct. And that came back to bite us, frankly, in the backside,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said at the Aspen Security Forum. “So Gen. McConville and I have made a pact not to lower standards, we’re going to instead invest in Americans to meet our standards.”
The Army – along with the other military services – is facing substantial challenges to recruit the number of new service members they need. In 2022, the Army missed its recruiting goals by 15,000 new soldiers.
Lawmakers have pressed military leaders on the question of lowering standards to meet their recruiting goals, which service leaders have consistently said they will not do. The question has come up several times in regard to the Army’s new fitness test, which some lawmakers have criticized as easier than the previous test.
Wormuth said Thursday, however, that they would not lower standards because “as we saw in the in the last 20 years of the global war on terrorism, even if you’re a cyber warrior, even if you’re a cook, you may find yourself in combat.”
“The front line is very, very mutable,” she said, “and so I think all of our soldiers, no matter what they do, have to meet some basic fundamental requirements for fitness.”
And while the service is expecting to bring in thousands more recruits this year than they did last year, service leaders have said that they don’t expect to meet their goal of 65,000 new recruits this year.
Wormuth acknowledged Thursday that the goal of 65,000 was “always a stretch goal,” but said that while the Army won’t meet it, they will bring in “more young Americans into the Army than we did last year.”
“So, I think by several thousand, we’re going to do better than we did last year,” she said Thursday. “And that’s positive, but we’ve got more work to do.”
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
Criminals, volunteer fighters and arms traffickers in Ukraine stole some Western-provided weapons and equipment intended for Ukrainian troops last year before it was recovered, according to a Defense Department inspector general report obtained by CNN.
The plots to steal the weaponry and equipment were disrupted by Ukraine’s intelligence services and it was ultimately recovered, according to the report, titled “DoD’s Accountability of Equipment Provided to Ukraine.” CNN obtained the report via a Freedom of Information Act request. Military.com first reported the news.
But the inspector general report noted that after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, the Defense Department’s ability to track and monitor all of the US equipment pouring into Ukraine, as required by law under the Arms Export Control Act, faced “challenges” because of the limited US presence in the country.
According to the report, which examined the period of February-September 2022, the Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv “was unable to conduct required [end-use monitoring] of military equipment that the United States provided to Ukraine in FY 2022.”
“The inability of DoD personnel to visit areas where equipment provided to Ukraine was being used or stored significantly hampered ODC-Kyiv’s ability to execute” the monitoring, the report added.
The report is dated October 6, 2022. In late October, the US resumed on-site inspections of Ukrainian weapons depots as a way to better track where the equipment was going. The department has also provided the Ukrainians with tracking systems, including scanners and software, the Pentagon’s former under secretary of defense for policy, Colin Kahl, told lawmakers in February.
But the report underscores how difficult it was in the early days of the war for the US to track the billions of dollars worth of weapons and equipment it was sending to Ukraine.
Republicans have criticized the Biden administration over what they view as a lack of accountability over the billions of dollars of aid going to Ukraine. House Speaker Kevin McCarthy said earlier this year that he supports Ukraine but doesn’t “support a blank check.” The same sentiment has been shared by Republican presidential candidate and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis.
CNN reported in April 2022 that the Biden administration was willing to take the risk of losing track of weapons supplied to Ukraine despite a lack of visibility, as they saw it as critical to Ukraine’s defeat of Russian forces.
“We have fidelity for a short time, but when it enters the fog of war, we have almost zero,” a source briefed on US intelligence told CNN at the time. “It drops into a big black hole, and you have almost no sense of it at all after a short period of time.”
US European Command tried to alleviate the issue last year by requesting and maintaining hand receipts from the Ukrainians, which the Ukrainians made a “good faith effort” to provide, the report says, citing EUCOM personnel. The personnel did not provide the IG with corroborating paperwork by the time the investigation concluded, however, the report notes.
The Office of Defense Cooperation-Kyiv also asked the Ukrainian government for expenditure, loss, and damage reports for US-provided equipment, the report says, and they “made efforts to prevent illicit proliferation of defense material provided by the United States.”
Still, criminal organizations managed to steal some weaponry and equipment provided by the US and its allies, the report says.
In late June 2022, an organized crime group overseen by an unnamed Russian official joined a volunteer battalion using forged documents and stole weapons, including a grenade launcher and machine gun, and more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, the report says. Ukraine’s intelligence service disrupted the plot, according to the report.
That same month, Ukraine’s intelligence services also disrupted a plot by arms traffickers working to sell weapons and ammunition they stole from the frontlines in southern Ukraine, as well as a separate plot by Ukrainian criminals posing as aid workers who stole $17,000 worth of bulletproof vests, the report says.
And in August 2022, Ukraine’s intelligence services discovered a group of volunteer battalion members who stole 60 rifles and almost 1,000 rounds of ammunition and stored them in a warehouse, “presumably for sale on the black market.”
The report does not specify whether the weapons and equipment were American, but the anecdotes are outlined in a highly redacted section that deals with Ukrainian tracking of US-provided weaponry.
The Pentagon inspector general wrote that some larger items like missiles and helicopters were easier to track through intelligence mechanisms. Smaller items, like night-vision devices, however, were harder to monitor.
The report ultimately does not make any recommendations, noting that the Defense Department “has made some efforts to mitigate the inability to conduct in-person” monitoring.
by tyler | Jul 20, 2023 | CNN, politics
Arkansas is appealing a federal judge’s ruling last month striking down the state’s ban on gender-affirming treatment for transgender youth.
Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin, one of the defendants in the case, on Thursday notified a federal district court in the state that he and his co-defendants are appealing the ruling to the 8th US Circuit Court of Appeals, which is largely stacked with judges appointed by Republican presidents.
The June 20 ruling from US District Judge James M. Moody Jr. said that the state’s “Save Adolescents from Experimentation Act” violated the US Constitution and that the 2021 law cannot be enforced by state officials.
“Rather than protecting children or safeguarding medical ethics, the evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients and that, by prohibiting it, the State undermined the interests it claims to be advancing,” Moody wrote in his ruling.
Though the ruling only applies to Arkansas’ ban, it represented a significant victory for LGBTQ advocates, who have been bringing legal challenges over the last few years to similar laws that have been enacted in GOP-led states.
Under the now-blocked law, young people would have not been able to access puberty-blockers, a treatment option for transgender youth that is used to prevent the onset of puberty. The measure also banned so-called cross-hormone therapy, a gender-affirming treatment that allows for trans people to change their physical appearances to be more consistent with their gender identities. The legislation made what it calls an “exception” for some intersex people with unspecified chromosomal makeup and hormone production, and those with difficulties resulting from previous gender-affirming treatments.
Gender-affirming care spans a range of evidence-based treatments and approaches that benefit transgender and nonbinary people. The types of care vary by the age and goals of the recipient, and are considered the standard of care by many mainstream medical associations.
CNN has reached out to the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent the plaintiffs in the case, for comment on the appeal.
The lawsuit had been brought two years ago by four transgender adolescents in Arkansas and their families, as well as two doctors who provide gender-affirming care to trans youth in the state.
Last August, a three-judge panel on the appeals court allowed Moody’s preliminary injunction against the law to stand while the legal challenge to it played out.
