WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – US President Joe Biden on Tuesday signed documents endorsing Finland and Sweden’s accession to NATO, the most significant expansion of the military alliance since the 1990s as it responds to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Biden signed the US “instrument of ratification” welcoming the two countries, the final step for their endorsement by the United States.
“It was and is a watershed moment I believe in the alliance and for the greater security and stability not only of Europe and the United States but of the world,” he said of their entry into the post World War Two alliance.
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The US Senate backed the expansion by an overwhelming 95-1 last week, a rare display of bipartisan unity in a bitterly divided Washington. Both Democratic and Republican Senators strongly approved membership for the two Nordic countries, describing them as important allies whose modern militaries already worked closely with NATO. read more
The vote was a sharp contrast with some rhetoric in Washington during the administration of former Republican President Donald Trump, who pursued an “America First” foreign policy and criticized NATO allies who failed to reach defense spending targets.
US President Joe Biden delivers remarks and signs documents endorsing Finland’s and Sweden’s accession to NATO, in the East Room of the White House, in Washington, US, August 9, 2022. REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
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Sweden and Finland applied for NATO membership in response to Russia’s Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine. Moscow has repeatedly warned both countries against joining the alliance.
Putin is getting “exactly what he did not want,” with the two countries entering the alliance, Biden said.
NATO’s 30 allies signed the accession protocol for Sweden and Finland last month, allowing them to join the nuclear-armed alliance once all member states ratify the decision. read more
The accession must be ratified by the parliaments of all 30 North Atlantic Treaty Organization members before Finland and Sweden can be protected by Article Five, the defense clause stating that an attack on one ally is an attack on all.
Ratification could take up to a year, although the accession has already been approved by a few countries including Canada, Germany and Italy.
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Reporting by Patricia Zengerle and Jeff Mason Editing by Mark Heinrich and Grant McCool
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WASHINGTON, Aug 9 (Reuters) – Former US President Donald Trump on Tuesday tried to turn the news that the FBI had searched his Florida estate to his benefit, citing the investigation in text messages and emails soliciting political donations from his supporters.
The unprecedented search marked a significant escalation of the federal investigation continues into whether Trump illegally removed records from the White House as he was leaving office in January 2021. Trump to publicly flirt with running again for president in 2024 but has not said clearly whether he will do so
Trump tried to paint the search of his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach as a politically motivated move by President Joe Biden’s administration even as the former president plays a key role in Republican primaries ahead of the November midterm elections that will determine control of the US Congress.
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“They are trying to stop the Republican Party and me once more,” Trump said in a fundraising email on Tuesday. “The lawlessness, political persecution, and Witch Hunt, must be exposed and stopped.”
Trump launched his Save America political action committee days after losing the 2020 election to Biden. It has more than $100 million in the bank, a formidable war chest. read more
His Republican allies in Congress vowed to launch an investigation of the search itself if they recapture control of the House or Senate in November. House Republicans including Representative Jim Banks were set to meet with Trump at his Bedminster, New Jersey, golf club on Tuesday. read more
The Justice Department and FBI have declined to comment on or even confirm the search, which Trump disclosed in a statement on Monday.
‘WITHERING SCRUTINY’
The FBI could not have conducted the search without the approval of a judge who confirmed there was probable cause. The request almost certainly also would be approved by FBI Director Christopher Wray, a Trump appointee, and his boss, Attorney General Merrick Garland, who was appointed by Biden.
A White House official said Biden was not given advance notice of the search.
“This search warrant in my estimation probably underwent more withering scrutiny than any search warrant in the history of the Department of Justice,” said David Laufman, a former Justice Department official who oversaw prosecutions of national security offenses.
A view of former US President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home after Trump said that FBI agents raided it, in Palm Beach, Florida, US August 9, 2022. REUTERS/Marco Bello
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The FBI earlier this year visited Trump’s property to investigate boxes in a locked storage room, according to a person familiar with the visit. FBI agents and a Trump lawyer, Evan Corcoran, spent a day reviewing materials, the source said.
Corcoran did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The search is only an investigative step and does not mean that Trump will face automatically criminal charges, or that he would be found guilty of any wrongdoing.
It is a criminal offense to conceal or destroy government records. Any person convicted of violating a US law called the Government Records Act would be barred from holding federal office and would face a prison term of up to three years.
Legal experts said it is unclear if the disqualification provision is constitutional. The US Constitution sets forth the qualifications for being a president, senator or US representative. Previous Supreme Court rulings have held that Congress cannot limit the list of eligible officeholders.
That means if Trump were to be convicted, he would likely challenge any attempt to disqualify him from serving in office again, perhaps to a US Supreme Court whose 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices he appointed.
“It is not certain that the bar set forth in the Government Records Act is constitutional,” said Mitchell Epner, a lawyer at the firm Rottenberg Lipman Rich and former federal prosecutor. “It is absolutely there and it would be in all likelihood something that would end up being litigated.”
The documents probe is one of several investigations that have focused on Trump since he left office, weeks after his supporters stormed the US Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, in an unsuccessful bid to overturn his election loss. Trump continues to falsely claim that the election was stolen through widespread voting fraud. read more
Trump remains the Republican Party’s most influential voice, though recent polling shows Florida Governor Ron DeSantis rising in stature as a potential 2024 candidate.
But Trump has weathered many political scandals and observers said this FBI search could bolster his standing with Republican voters.
“The Biden administration is only adding rocket fuel to Trump’s campaign prospects and energizing his supporters who want him to run again,” said Ron Bonjean, a Republican strategist in Washington. “There should be more transparency around the decision to have this FBI raid because it looks overly political and allows Trump to say he’s being unfairly attacked.”
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Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington and Karen Freifeld in New York, additional reporting by Brian Ellsworth, Jim Oliphant, Luc Cohen, David Morgan and Steve Holland; Editing by Scott Malone, Will Dunham and Alistair Bell
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Aug 8 (Reuters) – Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel is alleging that her Republican political opponent in the November elections orchestrated a conspiracy with a state lawmaker and a lawyer to break into voting equipment in a hunt for evidence to prove former president Donald Trump’s false voter -fraud claims.
The charge that Nessel’s Republican challenger, Matt DePerno, was involved in a potential felony is outlined in a petition filed by Nessel, a Democrat, seeking the appointment of a special prosecutor to continue the investigation. The petition notes that DePerno has emerged as “one of the prime instigators of the conspiracy,” creating a conflict of interest for her office de ella to take the case further.
Reuters exclusively reported on Sunday that DePerno led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment in Richfield Township. The news organization linked the Trump-backed Republican candidate to the incident by matching the serial number on the compromised machine to a photograph in a report submitted by DePerno in a failed lawsuit alleging voter fraud.
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The Richfield tabulator is among five such machines that the attorney general said were accessed without authorization, including a separate incident in Roscommon County and other breaches in Missaukee County’s Lake Township and Barry County’s Irving Township. The incidents occurred between early March and late June of 2021, the attorney general said.
DePerno did not respond to requests for comment, but said on Twitter that Nessel’s investigation was politically motivated. His tweet from him included a fundraising plea for donations to help him “fight back.”
“My opponent called for me to be arrested for the ‘crime’ of investigating voter fraud in 2020,” DePerno said in a tweet. His campaign called Nessel’s actions “unethical” in a statement.
Nessel declined a request for an interview and her communications director, Amber McCann, did not answer questions about when DePerno became a suspect in his investigation and why the office did not request a special prosecutor earlier. McCann said in a statement that the office “reviews facts and follows evidence” during investigations.
It remains unclear when the conflict of interest emerged. DePerno announced his candidacy against Nessel in July 2021 and received the Republican Party’s endorsement in April. Nessel announced her investigation into voting breaches in February.
The investigation into a Republican attorney general candidate in a voting-system breach comes amid a national effort by backers of Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections.
Nessel’s petition says DePerno plotted to illegally access voting equipment with Republican State Rep. Daire Rendon and Stefanie Lambert, a lawyer who helped high-profile Trump allies file an ultimately unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to overturn Michigan’s election results. The trio “orchestrated a coordinated plan to gain access to voting tabulators” in three township offices and a county office, the petition said. In one case, Rendon allegedly told the Roscommon County clerk, falsely, that the state House of Representatives was conducting an investigation into election fraud.
The machines were taken to “hotels and/or AIRBNB’s” in Oakland County, in metropolitan Detroit. There, technical experts “broke into the tabulators and performed ‘tests’ on the equipment,” the petition says. In at least one instance, the petition notes, DePerno “was present at a hotel room during such ‘testing.’”
Rendon and Lambert did not respond to requests for comment.
The attorney general’s petition listed a series of crimes for potential prosecution, including malicious destruction of property, fraudulent access to a computer, and conspiracy. A conspiracy charge could be punished with up to five years in prison under Michigan state law.
The attorney general’s petition said her office had sought approval for criminal charges from the state Criminal Trials and Appeals Division. The office asked that a special prosecutor take over the handling of that request and any subsequent prosecutions. The Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, an autonomous entity within the attorney general’s office, will decide if a special prosecutor is warranted.
Nessel’s petition also names Dar Leaf, the sheriff in rural Barry County, as a participant in the scheme, alleging that he asked the Irving Township clerk to cooperate with “investigators” involved in the conspiracy. In a story last month, Reuters detailed the alleged involvement of Leaf, a far-right backer of Trump’s stolen-election falsehoods and a prominent figure in the extremist “constitutional sheriffs” movement. He said in an interview that no one in his department was involved in taking the tabulator and that he did not authorize anyone to do so.
Leaf did not respond to a request for comment on Nessel’s allegations.
The technical team that examined the voting equipment removed from government offices included James Penrose, a former analyst for the National Security Agency who has assisted prominent Trump allies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, the attorney general’s petition said. It also included Doug Logan, head of Cyber Ninjas, the now-defunct company hired to do a widely criticized partisan audit of the 2020 voting results in Maricopa County, Arizona. Others involved in examining the machines were Jeff Lenberg, a computer security consultant, and Ben Cotton, founder of the digital forensics firm CyFIR LLC.
Penrose, Lenbert and Cotton all worked with DePerno on his lawsuit alleging election fraud in Michigan’s Antrim County. None responded to requests for comments. Logan also did not respond to a request for comment.
Nessel’s petition names all four members of the technical team as targets for possible charges, along with DePerno, Rendon, Lambert and Leaf, the Barry County sheriff. Another person named as a target is Ann Howard, a Michigan lawyer who allegedly coordinated the printing of fake ballots to be run through the tabulators during their examination of her.
Howard declined to comment.
Nessel’s allegations mark a dramatic turn in an investigation that the attorney general launched in February at the request of Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat, who had received information on at least two of the breaches. Benson, a Democrat, said in a statement to Reuters: “There must be consequences for those who broke the law to undermine our elections in order to advance their own political agendas.”
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Reporting by Peter Eisler and Nathan Layne; edited by Brian Thevenot
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Aug 7 (Reuters) – Police in New Mexico on Sunday asked for the public’s help in locating a “vehicle of interest” in their probe of four fatal shootings of Muslim men whose slayings in Albuquerque over the past nine months are believed by investigators to be related.
Mayor Tim Keller said state authorities were working to provide an “extra police presence at mosques during times of prayer” as the investigation proceeds in New Mexico’s largest city, home to as many as 5,000 Muslims out of some 565,000 total residents.
The latest victim, police said, was gunned down on Friday night, in a killing that local Islamic leaders said occurred shortly after he had attended funeral services for two others slain during the past couple of weeks.
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All three of those men, as well as the very first victim who was shot dead in November, were Muslim men of Pakistani or Afghan descent who resided in Albuquerque.
Police have given few details of the latest murder but described the first three killings as ambush shootings. Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham has characterized them as “targeted killings of Muslim residents.”
US President Joe Biden posted a message on Twitter on Sunday expressing solidarity with the Muslim community, adding, “These hateful attack have no place in America.”
Albuquerque police officials told a news conference hours later that they were following a number of leads and issued a bulletin with photos of a four-door, dark gray Volkswagen sedan with tinted windows that they described as a “vehicle of interest” in the investigation.
It was left unclear how the car was tied to the case, and police said they had yet to determine whether they were seeking one or more suspects in the investigation.
Mayor of Albuquerque Tim Keller speaks to the public during an event to mark Indigenous Peoples’ Day in Albuquerque, New Mexico, US, October 11, 2021. REUTERS/Mostafa Bassim
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The three latest victims belonged to the same mosque, according to Tahir Gauba, a spokesperson for the Islamic Center of New Mexico. Officials were withholding the identity of the man killed on Friday pending notification of next of kin.
But Gauba said he was killed shortly after attending the funeral for the two previous victims.
Muhammed Afzaal Hussain, 27, a planning director for the city of Espanola who immigrated from Pakistan, was shot dead on Aug. 1 outside his apartment complex, less than a week after Aftab Hussein, 41, from Albuquerque’s large Afghan community, was found slain on July 26 near the city’s international district, police said. Hussain also worked on the campaign team for US Representative Melanie Stansbury of New Mexico.
Police said they were treating those two slayings, along with Friday’s killing, as linked to the Nov. 7 murder of 62-year-old Mohammad Ahmadi, also a Muslim from Afghanistan, who was shot to death in a parking lot outside a halal supermarket and coffee.
“There are several things in common with all four of the homicides,” city police spokesman Gilbert Gallegos told reporters on Sunday.
Asked whether investigators consider the killings to be hate crimes, Gallegos said, “Hate is determined by motive, and we don’t know that motive at this point.”
Gauba estimated there are 3,000 to 5,000 Muslims living in and around Albuquerque, accounting for about 85% of the entire state’s Islamic population.
New Mexico State Police, the FBI and the US Marshals Service are among the agencies assisting in the investigation.
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Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Additional reporting by Doina Chiacu in Washington; Editing by Lisa Shumaker and Edwina Gibbs
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Aug 7 (Reuters) – The Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general led a team that gained unauthorized access to voting equipment while hunting for evidence to support former President Donald Trump’s false election-fraud claims, according to a Reuters analysis of court filings and public records .
The analysis shows that people working with Matthew DePerno – the Trump-endorsed nominee for the state’s top law-enforcement post – examined a vote tabulator from Richfield Township, a conservative stronghold of 3,600 people in northern Michigan’s Roscommon County.
The Richfield security breach is one of four similar incidents being investigated by Michigan’s current attorney general, Democrat Dana Nessel. Under state law, it is a felony to seek or provide unauthorized access to voting equipment.
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DePerno did not respond to a request for comment.
The involvement of a Republican attorney general nominee in a voting-system breach comes amid a national effort by backers of Trump’s fraud falsehoods to win state offices that could prove critical in deciding any future contested elections.
In Arizona last week, three Trump-backed candidates who claim the 2020 election was stolen won Republican primary elections for governor, attorney general and secretary of state, the top official overseeing elections. In Pennsylvania, Republican gubernatorial nominee Doug Mastriano has vowed to decertify any election he considers fraudulent through his appointed secretary of state. Michigan, Arizona and Pennsylvania are all presidential election battlegrounds.
Trump lavished praise on DePerno before a large audience this weekend at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Dallas. “He’s going to make sure that you are going to have law and order and fair elections,” Trump said, pumping his fist as DePerno stood up in the audience and waved. “That’s an important race.”
Reuters established the connection between Michigan’s DePerno and the Richfield voting-system breach by matching the serial number of the township’s tabulator to a photograph in a publicly released report written by a member of DePerno’s team. The photograph showed a printed record of a vote-tabulator’s activity, which also included a string of ten digits. Reuters confirmed that those numbers matched the serial number of a Richfield vote tabulator through public records obtained from the township. State officials had previously identified Richfield as the site of a voting-equipment security breach.
DePerno had submitted the report as evidence in a failed lawsuit challenging the 2020 election results in a different Michigan county, Antrim. The report claimed that Dominion and ES&S election equipment was vulnerable to hacking and vote-rigging.
Reuters asked an election-security expert to review the materials. Kevin Skoglund, president and chief technologist for the nonpartisan Citizens for Better Elections, an election-security advocacy organization, said the matching numbers indicate that DePerno’s team had access to the Richfield Township tabulator or its data drives.
DePerno led the “Michigan Antrim County Election Lawsuit & Investigation Team,” which included himself, Detroit attorney Stefanie Lambert, private investigator Michael Lynch, and James Penrose, a former analyst for the National Security Agency, according to promotional material for a July 2021 fundraising event in California sponsored by a conservative group that advertised appearances by DePerno’s team members Penrose, who had assisted other prominent Trump allies in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results, authored the report that Reuters tied to a tabulator involved in the Richfield Township security breach.
Lambert, Lynch and Penrose did not respond to requests for comment.
The previously unreported link to GOP attorney general candidate DePerno and his associates comes as Democratic incumbent Nessel advances her probe, which she launched in February 2022. Nessel is seeking re-election, which would create a conflict of interest if her political opponent became a suspect in her office’s investigation.
The attorney general’s office declined to comment on the specifics of its investigation but said Nessel would “take appropriate steps to remove herself and her department should a conflict arise.”
Those steps include requesting a special prosecutor to look into the election breaches, according to a letter from the attorney general advising the secretary of state of the request. The request was sent to the Prosecuting Attorneys Coordinating Council, an autonomous entity within the attorney general’s office that would decide whether a special prosecutor is warranted.
Nessel’s office started investigating the voting-system security breaches after a request from Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson. In a February statement, Benson said that “at least one unnamed third party” had gained access to tabulation machines and data drives from Richfield Township and Roscommon County.
Jake Rollow, a spokesperson for the secretary of state, said the office does not believe DePerno’s team had legal approval to access ES&S voting equipment. Rollow declined to comment further on the attorney general’s investigation but emphasized its importance. “To ensure Michigan’s elections are secure in the future, there must be consequences now for the people who illegally accessed the state’s voting machines,” he said.
ES&S did not respond to requests for comment.
SEIZING ON A GLITCH
Voting and vote-counting equipment is subject to strict chain-of-custody requirements to ensure accuracy and guard against fraud. Access to tabulators is tightly restricted, and any machine compromised by an unauthorized person is typically taken out of commission.
The four cases being investigated by Nessel are among at least 17 incidents identified by Reuters nationwide in which Trump supporters gained or attempted to gain unauthorized access to voting equipment. Michigan accounts for 11 of them, reflecting how conspiracy theorists sought to capitalize on an error in the initial reporting of 2020 results in Antrim County to allege widespread fraud in the state, without evidence.
A state review of the Antrim County incident found that a failure to properly update software caused a computer glitch that resulted in county officials initially reporting Joe Biden as the winner of the reliably Republican county. The officials quickly acknowledged and corrected the mistake, and Trump’s victory was affirmed by a hand tally of every vote cast.
DePerno seized on the confusion, filing a lawsuit making the unfounded claim that tabulators made by Colorado-based Dominion Voting Systems had been rigged to flip votes from Trump to Biden in Antrim County.
“No evidence of machine fraud or manipulation in the 2020 election has ever been presented in Michigan or any other state, and courts in Michigan and elsewhere have dismissed such claims as baseless,” Dominion spokesman Tony Fratto said.
In early December 2020, 13th Circuit Court Judge Kevin Elsenheimer granted DePerno’s legal team permission to take forensic images of Antrim County voting equipment to search for evidence of election fraud. The court order was limited to Antrim, where only Dominion equipment was used. The order did not extend to other jurisdictions or machines made by other voting-system providers.
Yet DePerno’s team submitted two reports in April 2021 to the court that revealed they had also examined equipment made by Election Systems & Software (ES&S).
The report written by Penrose, dated April 9, contained a photograph of a “summary tape” with information about a tabulator’s activity on election night, such as when results were submitted to the county. Among other things, the tape showed a sequence of figures: 0317350497.
That is the serial number for one of two ES&S DS200 tabulators Richfield Township used during the 2020 vote, according to copies of documents obtained by Reuters through a public-records request.
Skoglund, the election-security specialist consulted by Reuters, said the matching numbers indicate that the report’s author had access to either Richfield’s tabulator or a data drive containing the results and other information on the machine.
“There’s no doubt in my mind that the Penrose photograph is output from that same DS200 — that he had physical hands-on access,” Skoglund told Reuters.
A second person familiar with the workings of ES&S voting equipment examined the records obtained by Reuters and concurred that the tabulator tape shown in the Penrose report matches the machine with the same serial number.
MORE MACHINES
The Penrose report was part of a series of submissions from DePerno’s team that failed to convince Judge Elsenheimer. At an April 12, 2021 hearing, the judge shut down DePerno’s attempt to subpoena several Michigan counties for access to election data and equipment.
DePerno gave an interview later the same day to two right-wing websites, Gateway Pundit and 100 Percent Fed Up. DePerno said that Penrose had examined an ES&S machine. I added that the team had also looked at Dominion equipment “outside of Antrim County.” The attorney said he didn’t consider Elsenheimer’s ruling a dead-end.
“Maybe there will be some county somewhere that decides to come forward and cooperate. That would be nice,” DePerno told the websites.
In reality, DePerno’s associates had already taken possession of voting machines from local officials in Richfield Township in Roscommon County and Lake Township in Missaukee County, according to police records and text messages acquired through public records requests.
Lynch, the private investigator who worked with DePerno on his Antrim county case, exchanged texts with Lake Township clerk Korinda Winkelmann on March 20, 2021. Lynch asked for help accessing a Dominion device she had provided to him, according to the messages, obtained by Reuters through a public-records requests. Winkelman shared with Lynch an operational manual and a password for the device, while also speculating on how election systems might be rigged.
Lynch had no authorization to examine the machine, and the incident remains under state investigation. Winkelmann did not respond to requests for comment.
Elsenheimer dismissed the Antrim suit in May 2021, a decision that was affirmed this year by the Michigan Court of Appeals. DePerno’s fraud claims have been widely debunked. A Republican-led Michigan Senate committee issued a scathing report in June 2021 that called DePerno’s various allegations “demonstrably false.”
In September 2021, Trump endorsed DePerno as the Republican nominee for Michigan attorney general, praising his pursuit of “fair and accurate elections” and his ongoing effort to “reveal the truth about the Nov. 3 presidential election scam.”
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Reporting by Nathan Layne; additional reporting by Peter Eisler; edited by Brian Thevenot
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WASHINGTON, Aug 6 (Reuters) – The US Senate on Saturday began debating a Democratic bill to address key elements of President Joe Biden’s agenda – tackling climate change, lowering the costs of medication for the elderly and energy, while forcing corporations and the wealthy to pay more taxes.
The debate began after the Senate voted 51-50 to move ahead with the legislation. Vice President Kamala Harris broke a tie vote, with all 50 Republicans in opposition.
The Senate was set to debate the bill for up to 20 hours before diving into an arduous, time-consuming amendment process called a “vote-a-rama.”
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Democrats and Republicans were poised to reject each other’s amendments, as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer maneuvered to keep a his 50-member caucus united behind a bill that was negotiated over several months. If even one Democrat were to peel off, the entire effort would be doomed in the evenly split 50-50 Senate. read more
Earlier in the day, the Senate parliamentarian determined that the lion’s share of the healthcare provisions in the $430 billion bill could be passed with only a simple majority, bypassing a filibuster rule requiring 60 votes in the 100-seat chamber to advance most legislation and enabling Democrats to pass it over Republican objections.
Democrats hope that the legislation will give a boost to their candidates in the Nov. 8 midterm elections in which Biden’s party is in an uphill battle to retain its narrow control of the Senate and House of Representatives. The Democrats cast the legislation as a vehicle to combat inflation, a prime concern of US voters this year.
“The bill, when passed, will meet all of our goals: fighting climate change, lowering healthcare costs, closing tax loopholes abused by the wealthy and reducing the deficit,” Schumer said in a Senate speech.
There are three main parts to the bill’s tax provisions: a 15% minimum tax on corporations and the closing of loopholes that the wealthy can use to avoid paying taxes; tougher IRS enforcement; and a new excise tax on stock buybacks.
The legislation has $430 billion in new spending along with raising more than $740 billion in new revenues. read more
Democrats have said the legislation by 2030 would result in a 40% reduction in US carbon emissions, blamed for climate change.
‘PRICE-FIXING’
The measure would also allow the Medicare government health insurance program for the elderly to begin negotiating in 2026 with the pharmaceutical industry over prices on a limited number of prescription drug prices as a way of reducing costs. It also would place a $2,000-per-year cap on out-of-pocket medication costs under a Medicare drug program.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell attacked the provision involving negotiating drug prices, comparing it to past “price-fixing” attempts by countries such as Cuba, Venezuela and the former Soviet Union.
“Their policy would bring about a world where many fewer new drugs and treatments get invented in the first place as companies cut back on R&D,” McConnell said in a floor speech, referring to research and development.
While senators debated the policies embedded in the bill, its political ramifications were also on display.
In a speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) on Saturday, former President Donald Trump predicted fallout for Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin, two key Democratic senators: “If this deal passes, they are both going to lose their next elections.”
But Manchin and Sinema are not up for re-election until 2024 and many of the provisions of the bill are popular with voters.
The legislation is a scaled-down version of a far broader, more expensive measure that many Democrats on the party’s left had hoped to approve last year. That measure stalled when Manchin, a centrist, balked, complaining that it would exacerbate inflationary pressures.
The bill calls for billions of dollars to encourage the production of more electric vehicles and foster clean energy, though automakers say sourcing rules will sharply limit how many electric vehicles qualify for tax credits.
It would also set $4 billion in new federal drought relief funds, a provision that could help the re-election campaigns of Democratic Senators Catherine Cortez Masto in Nevada and Mark Kelly in Arizona.
One provision cut from the bill would have forced drug companies to refund money to both government and private health plans if drug prices rise more quickly than inflation.
Independent Senator Bernie Sanders, a leading progressive, has criticized the bill for failing to go far enough and said he planned to offer amendments that would revive a series of social programs he pushed last year, including broadening the number of prescription drugs Medicare could negotiate prices on and providing government-subsidized dental, vision and hearing aid.
His amendments were expected to fail.
Republicans have signaled that they will offer amendments touching on other issues, including controlling immigrants coming across the US border with Mexico and enhancing policing to curtail rising crime rates in American cities since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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Reporting by Richard Cowan and Makini Brice; additional reporting by Valerie Volcovici, David Shepardson and Kanishka Singh; Editing by Will Dunham, Scott Malone and Lisa Shumaker
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Aug 4 (Reuters) – The United States has declared monkeypox a public health emergency, the health secretary said on Thursday, a move expected to free up additional funding and tools to fight the disease.
The US tally topped 6,600 on Wednesday, almost all of the cases among men who have sex with men.
“We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously,” Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra said at a briefing.
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The declaration will improve the availability of data on monkeypox infections that is needed for the response, US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky said, speaking alongside Bacerra.
The US government has come under pressure for its handling of the outbreak.
The disease began spreading in Europe before moving to the United States, which now has the most cases in the world. Vaccines and treatments have been in short supply and the disease often left for historically underfunded sexual health clinics to manage. read more
The World Health Organization declared monkeypox a “public health emergency of international concern,” its highest alert level. The WHO declaration last month sought to trigger a coordinated international response and unlock funding to collaborate on vaccines and treatments. read more
Governments are deploying vaccines and treatments that were first approved for smallpox but also work for monkeypox.
The US government has distributed 600,000 doses of Bavarian Nordic’s (BAVA.CO) Jynneos vaccine and deployed 14,000 of Siga Technologies’ (SIGA.O) TPOXX treatment, officials said, though they did not disclose how many have been administered.
Walensky said the government aims to vaccinate more than 1.6 million high-risk individuals.
US Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Robert Califf said the agency was considering freeing up more Jynneos vaccine doses by allowing doctors to draw 5 doses of vaccine from each vial instead of the current 1 dose by using a different subcutaneous method of inoculation.
US President Joe Biden this month appointed two federal officials to coordinate his administration’s response to monkeypox, following declarations of emergencies by California, Illinois and New York. read more
First identified in monkeys in 1958, the disease has mild symptoms including fever, aches and pus-filled skin lesions, and people tend to recover from it within two to four weeks, the WHO says. It spreads through close physical contact and is rarely fatal.
Anthony Fauci, Biden’s chief medical adviser, told Reuters on Thursday that it was critical to engage leaders from the gay community as part of efforts to rein in the outbreak, but cautioned against stigmatizing the lifestyle.
“Engagement of the community has always come to be successful,” Fauci said.
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Reporting by Manas Mishra and Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru, Ismail Shakil in Ottawa, Caroline Humer and Leela de Kretser, Editing by Anil D’Silva, Deepa Babington and Howard Goller
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A map showing locations where Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) will conduct military exercises and training activities including live-fire drills is seen on newspaper reports of US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, at a newsstand in Beijing, China August 3 , 2022. REUTERS/Tingshu Wang
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BEIJING, Aug 4 (Reuters) – China’s People’s Liberation Army has begun military exercises including live firing on the waters and in the airspace surrounding the island of Taiwan, Chinese state television reported on Thursday.
The drills, spread out across six locations, are due to end at 12:00 pm (0400 GMT) on Sunday. The exercises followed US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, a trip condemned by Beijing, which claims the self-governed island as its own.
Significantly, in the north, east and south, the exercise areas bisect Taiwan’s claimed 12 nautical miles of territorial waters – something Taiwanese officials say challenges the international order and amount to a blockade of its sea and air space. read more
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The locations encircle the island in an unprecedented formation, Meng Xiangqing, a professor at the National Defense University, told Chinese state television, describing how an actual military operation against Taiwan could play out.
“In fact, this has created very good conditions for us when, in the future, we reshape our strategic landscape conducive to our unification,” Meng said.
Chinese forces in two areas off the northern coast of Taiwan could potentially seal off Keelung, a major port, while strikes could be launched from an area east of Taiwan targeting the military bases in Hualien and Taidong, he said.
The “doors” to Kaoshiung could also be closed by Chinese military off the southwestern coast, Meng said.
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Reporting by Ryan Woo; Editing by Jacqueline Wong & Simon Cameron-Moore
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
Aug 3 (Reuters) – Pro-Trump operatives are flooding local officials with public-records requests to seek evidence for the former president’s false stolen-election claims and to gather intelligence on voting machines and voters, adding to the chaos rocking the US election system .
The Maricopa County Recorder’s Office in Arizona, an election battleground state, has fielded 498 public records requests this year – 130 more than all of last year. Officials in Washoe County, Nevada, have fielded 88 public records requests, two-thirds more than in all of 2021. And the number of requests to North Carolina’s state elections board have already nearly equaled last year’s total of 229.
The surge of requests is overwhelming staffs that oversee elections in some jurisdictions, fueling baseless voter-fraud allegations and raising concerns about the inadvertent release of information that could be used to hack voting systems, according to a dozen election officials interviewed by Reuters.
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Republican and Democratic election officials said they consider some of the requests an abuse of freedom-of-information laws meant to ensure government transparency. Record requests facing many of the country’s 8,800 election offices have become “voluminous and daunting” since the 2020 election, said Kim Wyman, head of election security at the federal Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). Last year, when she left her job as Washington secretary of state, the state’s top election official, her office de ella had a two-year backlog of records requests.
“You still have a group of people in each state that believe that the election was stolen,” said Wyman, a Republican.
In April, the official in Arizona’s Maricopa County in charge of responding to public records requests, Ilene Haber, assigned four of her nine staffers to pull 20,000 documents out of holding boxes, sort them for scanning, and then carefully return them to their proper place . It took four days.
The staffers were filling just one of several records requests from Haystack Investigations, who had asked for chain-of-custody records for all 2.1 million ballots cast in the election. The firm says on its website that it conducts a variety of investigations for companies, law firms and individuals. The company worked on Arizona’s “forensic audit,” the examination of Trump’s defeat in the county by pro-Trump partisans that ended last year without uncovering voter fraud.
The labor-intensive Haystack requests illustrate the growing challenge facing stretched election offices across the country. In Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, extensive requests like the one submitted by Haystack make up about one-quarter of the total the office has received this year, said Haber, the director of communications and constituent services in the Maricopa County Recorder’s Office.
“The requests are getting bigger, more detailed, more burdensome, and going back even further” in time, she said.
Heather Honey, who heads Pennsylvania-based Haystack, said the requests were unrelated to the firm’s work on the Arizona audit and were for her own investigation. “All are meaningful and contribute to specific professional research activities,” said Honey, who has sought similar election-related records in Pennsylvania.
The local officials told Reuters that the surge in requests from election deniers is drowning their staffs in extra work at a time when they are struggling to recruit and retain voting administrators vital to democracy. Election workers have already endured an onslaught of death threats and harassment from Trump activists. Reuters has documented more than 900 such hostile messages since the 2020 vote.
“The concern is burnout,” said Jamie Rodriguez, the interim registrar of voters in Washoe County, Nevada. “With burnout does come the potential for mistakes.”
Rodriguez took over this week from the former registrar, who resigned after being targeted with death threats and other harassment.
Ryan Macias, an election security consultant for CISA, likened the swarm of records request to a denial-of-service cyber-attack, in which hackers attempt to overwhelm a network with internet traffic, and said it was creating potential security risks given the stresses already weighing on election workers.
“We have the attrition rate; we have people who are under threat from the community, people who are getting death threats, people who are overworked,” Macias said at a gathering of state election directors in Wisconsin on July 19.
SECURITY RISKS
All 50 US states have freedom-of-information laws that are used routinely by journalists, advocates, academics and everyday citizens to access records on government. Such statutes aim to ensure the public has the information needed to hold their leaders accountable. Local officials told Reuters they believe in the importance of such laws and said they are trying to find creative ways to lessen the burden of the election-related requests on their staffers.
Rather than ask for a bigger budget, Haber of Maricopa County said she has trained her whole team to help respond. Washoe County temporarily halts the production of documents at a certain point prior to the election, to ensure staff can focus on administering the vote, Rodriguez said. Donald Palmer, a commissioner on the federal Election Assistance Commission, told a gathering of secretaries of state on July 8 in Baton Rouge that they should help local officials more efficiently respond to the deluge of requests by, for instance, creating a “reading room” site to simultaneously respond to duplicative requests from different people.
Rodriguez said most of her nine current staffers joined in 2021 or 2022 after a rash of staff departures. She is trying to limit their overtime to keep them fresh for November.
But the records requests aren’t letting up. One request sought various information on the county’s election workers during the 2022 primary, including their phone number, mailing address and party affiliation. Another one was filed in late June by Robert Beadles, a businessman who moved from California to Reno in 2019 and is now leading a movement to push election-fraud theories and target politicians who do not support his agenda. Beadles requested 38 different data sets.
Beadles tells visitors to his website, operationsunlight.com, to send requests to their county clerks for a list of voters in the November 2020 election, broken down by voting method, and the total number of ballots cast for each candidate. He asks them to email the records to Shiva Ayyadurai, a leading purveyor of election fraud conspiracies.
Neither Beadles nor Ayyadurai responded to emails seeking comment.
As strapped government staffs struggle to keep up with the extensive inquiries, some election officials express concern about slipping up and releasing information that could compromise election security.
Samuel Derheimer, director of government affairs at voting-equipment manufacturer Hart InterCivic, said his company has seen an explosion of requests from election officials for help determining when releasing certain records threatens election integrity. Public records requests sometimes target operational manuals containing security protocols that should not be released to the public, he said.
Karen Brinson Bell, executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said one of the challenges is analyzing whether seemingly separate individuals or groups might be working together to piece together sensitive information about voting equipment and processes.
“That’s when your antenna starts going up,” she said. “We are having to spend a lot of extra time thinking in those terms.”
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Reporting by Nathan Layne; editing by Jason Szep and Brian Thevenot
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
KABUL/WASHINGTON, Aug 2 (Reuters) – The United States killed al Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in a “precision” strike in the center of Kabul, the Afghanistan capital, President Joe Biden said, the biggest blow to the militant group since its founder Osama bin Laden was killed in 2011.
Zawahiri, an Egyptian surgeon who had a $25 million bounty on his head, helped coordinate the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people.
US officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity, said Zawahiri was killed when he came out on the balcony of his safe house in Kabul on Sunday morning and was hit by “hellfire” missiles from a US drone.
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“Now justice has been delivered, and this terrorist leader is no more,” Biden said in remarks from the White House on Monday. “No matter how long it takes, no matter where you hide, if you are a threat to our people, the United States will find you and take you out.”
He said he had authorized the precision strike in downtown Kabul and that no civilians were killed.
Three spokespeople in the Taliban administration in Kabul declined comment on Zawahiri’s death.
Taliban spokesperson Zabihullah Mujahid had previously confirmed that a strike took place in Kabul on Sunday and strongly condemned it, calling it a violation of “international principles.”
A spokesperson for the interior ministry said a house was hit by a rocket in Sherpoor, an upscale residential neighborhood of the city which also houses several embassies.
“There were no casualties as the house was empty,” Abdul Nafi Takor, the spokesperson, said.
Taliban authorities threw a security dragnet around the house in Sherpoor on Tuesday and journalists were not allowed nearby.
A senior Taliban official told Reuters that Zawahiri was previously in Helmand province and had moved to Kabul after the Taliban took over the country in August last year.
US intelligence determined with “high confidence” through multiple intelligence streams that the man killed was Zawahiri, one senior administration official told reporters.
“Zawahiri continued to pose an active threat to US persons, interests and national security,” the official said on a conference call. “His death of him deals a significant blow to al Qaeda and will degrade the group’s ability to operate.”
Zawahiri succeeded bin Laden as al Qaeda leader after years as its main organizer and strategist, but his lack of charisma and competition from rival militants Islamic State hobbled his ability to inspire devastating attacks on the West. read more
There were rumors of Zawahiri’s death several times in recent years, and he was long reported to have been in poor health.
SANCTUARY
Osama bin Laden sits with his adviser Ayman al-Zawahiri, an Egyptian linked to the al Qaeda network, during an interview with Pakistani journalist Hamid Mir (not pictured) in an image supplied by Dawn newspaper November 10, 2001. Hamid Mir/Editor/ Ausaf Newspaper for Daily Dawn/Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
The drone attack is the first known US strike inside Afghanistan since US troops and diplomats left the country in August 2021. The move may bolster the credibility of Washington’s assurances that the United States can still address threats from Afghanistan without a military presence in the country.
His death also raises questions about whether Zawahiri received sanctuary from the Taliban following their takeover of Kabul in August 2021. The official said senior Taliban officials were aware of his presence in the city and said the United States expected the Taliban to abide by an agreement not to allow al Qaeda fighters to re-establish themselves in the country.
“The Taliban will have to answer for al-Zawahiri’s presence in Kabul, after assuring the world they would not give safe haven to al-Qaeda terrorists,” Adam Schiff, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said in a statement.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Taliban had “grossly violated” the Doha Agreement between the two sides by hosting and sheltering Zawahiri.
Former President Barack Obama joined lawmakers in praising the operation.
“Tonight’s news is also proof that it’s possible to root out terrorism without being at war in Afghanistan,” Obama said in a Twitter message. “And I hope it provides a small measure of peace to the 9/11 families and everyone else who has suffered at the hands of al Qaeda.”
ReutersGraphics
Republican US Senator Marco Rubio said: “The world is safer without him in it and this strike demonstrates our ongoing commitment to hunt down all terrorists responsible for 9/11 and those who continue to pose a threat to US interests.” said
Until the US announcement, Zawahiri had been rumored variously to be in Pakistan’s tribal area or inside Afghanistan.
A video released in April in which he praised an Indian Muslim woman for defying a ban on wearing an Islamic head scarf dispelled rumors that he had died.
The senior US official said finding Zawahiri was the result of persistent counter-terrorism work. The United States found out this year that Zawahiri’s wife, daughter and her children had relocated to a safe house in Kabul, then identified that Zawahiri was there as well, the official said.
“Once Zawahiri arrived at the location, we are not aware of him ever leaving the safe house,” the official said. He was identified multiple times on the balcony, where he was ultimately struck. He continued to produce videos from the house and some may be released after his death, the official said.
In the last few weeks, Biden agreed to officials to scrutinize the intelligence. He was updated throughout May and June and was briefed on July 1 on a proposed operation by intelligence leaders. On July 25 I received an updated report and authorized the strike once an opportunity was available, the administration official said.
With other senior al Qaeda members, Zawahiri is believed to have plotted the October 12, 2000, attack on the USS Cole naval vessel in Yemen which killed 17 US sailors and injured more than 30 others, the Rewards for Justice website said.
He was indicted in the United States for his role in the August 7, 1998, bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania that killed 224 people and wounded more than 5,000 others.
Both bin Laden and Zawahiri eluded capture when US-led forces toppled Afghanistan’s Taliban government in late 2001 following the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
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Reporting by Idrees Ali and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by Alexandra Alper, Eric Beech, Jonathan Landay, Arshad Mohammed, Patricia Zengerle, Matt Spetalnick in Washington, Jibran Ahmad in Peshawar and Reuters staff in Kabul; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Stephen Coates
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
