Tag: government organizations – us

The Federal Reserve is testing how climate change could hurt big banks | CNN Business

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A version of this story first appeared in CNN Business’ Before the Bell newsletter. Not a subscriber? You can sign up right here. You can listen to an audio version of the newsletter by clicking the same link.

New York
CNN
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The largest six banks in the United States have been given until July to show the Federal Reserve what effects disastrous climate change scenarios could have on their bottom lines.

Noting the risks could be “material,” the Fed said the banks will have to show how their finances fare under a number of climate stress tests, including heat waves, wildfires, floods and droughts, according to details of a new Fed pilot program released on Tuesday.

“The pilot exercise includes physical risk scenarios with different levels of severity affecting residential and commercial real estate portfolios in the Northeastern United States and directs each bank to consider the impact of additional physical risk shocks for their real estate portfolios in another region of the country,” wrote the Fed.

The Federal Reserve first announced the pilot program in September, noting that Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Wells Fargo would participate.

Climate activists said that the project was long overdue (Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has been questioned about it multiple times over the last year), and that other central banks are far ahead of the Fed on climate risk assessments. The Bank of England ran a similar exercise in 2021.

They also said the proposal lacked any real teeth. In its announcement the Federal Reserve stressed that the exercise “is exploratory in nature and does not have capital consequences.” It also said that it would not publish individual banks’ results.

San Francisco Federal Reserve President Mary Daly told CNN in October Thursday that this was a learning and exploratory exercise for the Federal Reserve. It would be “incredibly premature to jump to the conclusion that any new policies or programs would come out of it,” she said.

The other side: Critics of the pilot program have argued that the Federal Reserve was overstepping its boundaries and that they might soon begin to enforce financial penalties.

“The Fed’s new ‘pilot’ program is the first step toward pressuring banks into limiting loans to and investments in traditional energy companies and other disfavored carbon-emitting sectors,” wrote former Republican Senator Pat Toomey, then a ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee. “The real purpose of this program is to ultimately produce new regulatory requirements.”

Powell said last week that the central bank would not become a “climate policymaker.”

“Today, some analysts ask whether incorporating into bank supervision the perceived risks associated with climate change is appropriate, wise, and consistent with our existing mandates,” Powell said last Tuesday. “In my view, the Fed does have narrow, but important, responsibilities regarding climate-related financial risks. These responsibilities are tightly linked to our responsibilities for bank supervision. The public reasonably expects supervisors to require that banks understand, and appropriately manage, their material risks, including the financial risks of climate change.”

The discovery, movement and use of oil has played an outsized role in shaping geopolitics over the past century and a half. But over the next 50 years, global interaction and wealth are more likely to be influenced by microchips, Intel CEO Pat Gelsinger told CNN Tuesday.

“Where the technology supply chains are, and where semiconductors are built, is more important for the next five decades,” Gelsinger said in an interview with CNN’s Julia Chatterley at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

Intel (INTC) is betting those predictions prove true. The company announced in 2021 it would invest $20 billion to build two new US chipmaking facilities, as well as up to $90 billion in new European factories, aimed at reasserting its position as the leader of the semiconductor industry, reports my colleague Clare Duffy.

Gelsinger said the company’s investment in new manufacturing facilities in the United States, Europe and elsewhere is important not only for the company’s future, but for the “globalization of the most critical resource to the future of the world.”

“We need this geographically balanced, resilient supply chain,” he said.

The announcements also came amid concerns about the concentration of manufacturing for chips, in Asia, particularly China and Taiwan, during the Covid-19 pandemic and as geopolitical tensions grew. Issues in the chip supply chain in recent years have caused shortages and shipping delays of everything from desktop computers and iPhones to cars.

“If we’ve learned one thing from the Covid crisis and this multi-year journey that we’ve been on it’s we need resilience in our supply chains,” Gelsinger said, adding that Intel’s manufacturing investments are aimed at “leveling that playing field so that good investment decisions can be made.”

The years following the peak of the Covid pandemic have not been good for wealth equality.

The world’s wealthiest residents have been getting far richer, far faster than everyone else over the past two years, reports my colleague Tami Luhby.

The fortune of the 1% soared by $26 trillion during that period, while the bottom 99% only saw their net worth rise by $16 trillion, according to Oxfam’s annual inequality report released Sunday.

And the wealth accumulation of the super-rich accelerated during the pandemic. Looking over the past decade, they netted just half of all the new wealth created, compared to two-thirds during the last few years.

Meanwhile, many of the less fortunate are struggling. Some 1.7 billion workers live in countries where inflation is outpacing wages. And poverty reduction likely stalled last year after the number of global poor skyrocketed in 2020.

“While ordinary people are making daily sacrifices on essentials like food, the super-rich have outdone even their wildest dreams,” said Gabriela Bucher, executive director of Oxfam International.

“Just two years in, this decade is shaping up to be the best yet for billionaires — a roaring ’20s boom for the world’s richest,” she said.

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January 18, 2023
Jay Inslee Fast Facts | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Here is a look at the life of Jay Inslee, governor of Washington and former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate.

Birth date: February 9, 1951

Birth place: Seattle, Washington

Birth name: Jay Robert Inslee

Father: Frank Inslee, biology teacher, coach and athletic director

Mother: Adele (Brown) Inslee, store clerk

Marriage: Trudi (Tindall) Inslee (August 27, 1972-present)

Children: Jack, Connor and Joe

Education: Stanford University, 1969-1970; University of Washington, B.A., 1973, economics; Willamette University College of Law, J.D., 1976, graduated magna cum laude

Religion: Protestant

Inslee is dedicated to addressing climate change and other environmental issues.

While in the US House of Representatives, he served on the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and on the House Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

He was the first governor to enter the 2020 presidential race.

At Seattle’s Ingraham High School, Inslee was the starting quarterback.

Worked his way through college doing odd jobs.

Has praised the “Green New Deal,” saying it is “raising people’s ambitions” and “making what might seem impossible within the realm of the possible,” but has not outright said he would support the entire package. Nor has he endorsed Medicare-for-all.

Established Washington’s Marijuana Justice Initiative. It allows for gubernatorial pardons for those previously convicted of a single misdemeanor marijuana crime “between January 1, 1998, and December 5, 2012, when I-502 legalized marijuana possession.”

After law school, works as an attorney with Peters, Schmalz, Leadon & Fowler (later Peters, Fowler and Inslee), and serves as a city prosecutor for over a decade.

November 1988 – Wins an open seat in the Washington House of Representatives for the 14th District against Lynn Carmichael (R) with 51.64% of the vote. Is reelected in 1990 with 61.82% of the vote.

1989-1993 – Washington House of Representatives.

November 1992 – Wins US House of Representatives seat for Washington’s 4th District against Richard “Doc” Hastings (R) with 50.84% of the vote.

January 3, 1993-January 3, 1995 – US House of Representatives.

November 1994 – Loses his reelection bid to the US House of Representatives to Hastings with 46.6% of the vote.

1995-1996 – Attorney at Gordon, Thomas, Honeywell, Malanca, Peterson & Daheim L.L.P.

September 1996 – Unsuccessful gubernatorial bid, only coming in third with 10% of the vote in the primary.

1997-1998 – Region 10 Director for the US Department of Health and Human Services under US President Bill Clinton, serving Alaska, Idaho, Oregon and Washington.

November 1998 – Wins US House of Representatives seat for Washington’s 1st District, after four years out of office, against incumbent Rick White (R) with 49.77% of the vote.

January 3, 1999-March 20, 2012 – US House of Representatives. Reelected six times.

2007 – His book, “Apollo’s Fire: Igniting America’s Clean Energy Economy,” written with Bracken Hendricks, is published.

March 10, 2012 – Announces he will resign from the US House of Representatives in order to focus on his run for governor of the state.

November 2012 – Wins the election for governor of Washington, defeating Rob McKenna (R) with 51.54% of the vote. Is reelected in 2016 with 54.39% of the vote.

January 16, 2013-present – Governor of Washington.

February 11, 2014 – Announces that he is suspending executions while he is in office, meaning he will issue reprieves when any capital cases come to his desk for action.

2015-2016, 2017-2018 – Education and Workforce Committee Chair, National Governors Association (NGA).

2016-2017, 2018-2019 – Education and Workforce Committee Vice Chair, NGA.

2016 – Endorses Hillary Clinton for president of the United States.

2017-present – Co-chair of the US Climate Alliance, a group he co-founded with California Governor Jerry Brown and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. The Alliance pledges to uphold the Paris Climate Accord following the United States’ withdrawal from the agreement.

2017-2018 – Chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.

July 5, 2017 – Inslee signs Washington’s paid family and medical leave act into law. It is considered one of the most generous such laws in the nation.

November 6, 2018 – Loses a bid to enact a statewide carbon emissions tax, for the second time in two years.

March 1, 2019 – Releases a video announcing his presidential candidacy.

March 14, 2019 – Signs a bump stock buy-back program into law a week before a nationwide ban takes effect. The devices, which replace the standard stock and grip of a semi-automatic firearm, make it easier to fire rounds from such a weapon by harnessing the gun’s recoil to “bump” the trigger faster.

August 21, 2019 – Suspends his 2020 presidential campaign.

August 22, 2019 – Announces that he is running for a third term as governor.

November 3, 2020 – Wins reelection to a third term as governor.

June 30, 2022 – Inslee issues a directive that bars state police from cooperating with out-of-state investigatory requests related to abortion in his efforts to make the state a “sanctuary” for those seeking abortion services. The decision comes after the US Supreme Court ruled to strike down Roe v Wade, the 1973 legal precedent which guaranteed people’s federal constitutional right to abortion. The historic ruling essentially leaves abortion laws in states’ hands.

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January 17, 2023
CDC needs a reset requiring support from the federal level, new think tank report finds | CNN

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CNN
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The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is in “a moment of peril” and a “strong, effective, and more accountable” agency is an urgent matter of national security, according to a new report from the Center for Strategic & International Studies’ (CSIS) Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security.

“This report argues that a significant reset of the CDC is necessary – and possible – if carried out through building actionable recommendations across branches of government and across party lines,” Katherine Bliss, a senior fellow at CSIS, a Washington think tank, said during an event on Tuesday marking the report’s release. The event included CSIS experts, elected officials and public health experts, including past leaders of the CDC.

Reshaping the CDC will need to be a joint effort with the agency’s leaders and the federal government, the report says. It outlines a number of recommendations for the CDC to regain the public’s trust and to become more flexible and accountable, Bliss said.

According to the report, the CDC needs to strengthen its global work in order to detect and prepare for new epidemic threats, improve its data collection process, and it needs to be able to move money in its budget to respond to crises.

“The big picture here is, we all see the need for a reset of the agency. Some of the reset has to be structural, some of it needs to be activity that only Congress can really manage and that has to do with how the budget is structured, the size and scope of the budget and the flexibilities or lack thereof,” said Julie Gerberding, who was the CDC director from 2002 to 2009, and is co-chair of the CSIS Commission on Strengthening America’s Health Security. “And some of it has to do with, I think, modernization – really looking at how the CDC can take advantage of data science and the opportunities to build better data systems, more interoperable data systems and really complete the trajectory that they’ve already started with the data modernization act.”

In August, CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy laid out plans to overhaul the agency and create a “public health action-oriented culture at CDC that emphasizes accountability, collaboration, communication, and timeliness” after a sweeping review of the agency’s structures and systems.

She said she would ask Congress to grant the agency new powers, including mandating that jurisdictions share their data and for new flexibilities in the agency’s funding, which would allow the CDC to better respond to public health emergencies.

Walensky and other CDC senior leaders met with the CSIS commission’s working group to help explain what they learned from their own internal review, Gerberding said.

CNN has reached out to the CDC for comment about the report.

The working group also took issue with the CDC’s Atlanta headquarters, saying it limits access to policymakers.

Gerberding said a bigger presence in Washington, D.C., is important.

“If you want to play, you gotta be in the game and the game is not played in Atlanta, unless, you know, you’re a fan of the baseball team there,” she said.

But ultimately, the working group said, the CDC has faced a lot of pressure and challenges over the last three years during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“I do really want to emphasize that while there is substantial opportunity here for evolution, modernization and performance improvement at the CDC, it has also done a lot of things well and we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that in the midst of a pandemic there were many other public health activities going on. CDC teams were deployed all over the United States and internationally to assist with local response efforts. The CDC Foundation stepped up and engaged some 3,000 or more people to help the workforce shortages and so forth,” Gerberding said. “So there were a lot of very positive things that happened and we need to make sure that we don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here when we’re looking at the really critical things that need to be fixed, but also to appreciate and respect what our public health system has been able to accomplish for the past three years.”

“There’s a lot of incredible talent, passion and capability at the CDC and, you know, I’ve seen them do miracles,” she added.

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January 17, 2023
McConnell calls criticism on election security ‘modern-day McCarthyism’ | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell defended himself from withering criticism by Democrats and political commentators that his blockade of election security legislation is un-American, calling it “modern-day McCarthyism.”

In a spirited speech on the Senate floor Monday, the Kentucky Republican turned his sights on opinion columnist Dana Milbank and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough, who respectively called McConnell on Friday a “Russian asset” and “Moscow Mitch.”

McConnell said that he has been tough on Russia for more than three decades, from supporting President Ronald Reagan’s strategy on missile defense to greenlighting the bipartisan Senate investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 elections. He said Democrats and Republicans had spontaneously applauded at a closed-door meeting he helped set up a few weeks ago when officials discussed all the “progress” that had been made since then. And he noted that he supported the hundreds of millions of dollars Congress has sent to the states to boost their election infrastructure.

“American pundits calling an American official treasonous because of a policy disagreement,” McConnell said. “If anything is an asset to the Russians, it is disgusting behavior like that.”

For months, the left has criticized McConnell for countering in 2016 a proposal by the Obama administration to warn state election officials about Russian interference in the election; he reportedly agreed to send a vaguer letter regarding “malefactors” who sought to “disrupt” the election.

But McConnell’s critics revived their attacks last week, after special counsel Robert Mueller confirmed his report on Russian interference in the presidential election for the first time before Congress. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York asked McConnell for a unanimous request to pass a bill that would spend hundreds of millions of dollars to improve election security and require the use of backup paper ballots. The Democratic-controlled House passed the bill with a single Republican vote; McConnell blocked it.

“This kind of objection is a routine occurrence in the Senate,” said McConnell on Monday. “It doesn’t make Republicans traitors or un-American.”

Senate Republicans have blocked Democratic attempts to bring up several bipartisan election security bills for votes, including legislation to require a paper trail for ballots and to require disclosure for online political advertisements. McConnell has blamed Democrats for politicizing the issue and asserted that elections should be primarily controlled by state and local authorities.

“My opposition to nationalizing election authorities that properly belong with the states is not news to anybody who’s followed my career or knows anything about Congress,” said McConnell on Monday.

Scarborough did not let up his attacks after McConnell’s speech. In response, the MSNBC host tweeted out an altered image of McConnell in front of a Russian flag wearing a fur hat. Scarborough said, “Why do you keep doing Putin’s bidding, #MoscowMitch?”

McConnell made clear that he would not bear the charges any longer.

“I don’t normally take the time to respond to critics in the media when they have no clue what they’re talking about,” said McConnell. “But this modern-day McCarthyism is toxic and damaging because of the way it warps our entire public discourse. Facts matter. Details matter. History matters. And if our nation is losing the ability to debate public policy without screaming about treason – that really matters.”

This story has been updated.

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January 17, 2023
Federal student loan office has lots to do but no new money to do it | CNN Politics

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Washington
CNN
—

Big headaches for student loan borrowers could be on the horizon.

Their monthly payments could restart as early as this summer after a three-year pause. And the federal office that oversees the student loan system is operating under the same budget as last year – which could complicate any efforts to make sure the repayment process goes smoothly, as well as the office’s plans to overhaul the system.

When Congress passed the government’s annual budget in December, the Federal Student Aid office got about $800 million less than what the Biden administration had asked for. After granting steady increases in previous years, lawmakers left funding for the office’s operations flat at about $2 billion.

Republican lawmakers touted how Congress provided no new funding to help implement President Joe Biden’s controversial student loan forgiveness plan – which is currently tied up in the courts. If the Supreme Court allows the forgiveness program to move forward, it would also be a huge lift for the Federal Student Aid office.

“I think it’s particularly unfortunate for borrowers that the political fight over loan forgiveness has resulted in flat funding this year,” said Jonathan Fansmith, assistant vice president of government relations at the American Council on Education, an advocacy group for colleges and universities.

“Wherever the cracks start to show, borrowers are going to be impacted,” Fansmith added.

The Federal Student Aid office, which has about 1,400 employees and provides about $112 billion in grant, work-study and loan funds annually, has a lot on its plate.

The office oversees the $1.6 trillion federal student loan portfolio but has also taken on additional work to revamp the federal student aid application form, known as the FAFSA, and to overhaul some federal student loan programs. Last week, it announced a plan to start making significant changes to its income-driven repayment program this year.

“I think certainly a number of their priorities will either not get done on the timeline that they had originally hoped for, or not get done at all,” said Michele Shepard, senior director of college affordability at The Institute for College Access and Success, an advocacy group.

But the Department of Education says it can still meet the timelines it has set.

“The several hundred-million-dollar shortfall will of course have an impact on these important bipartisan priorities, but we will continue to do everything we can with the available resources to better serve students and protect taxpayer dollars,” the department said in a statement sent to CNN.

Still, that means the Federal Student Aid office would be doing more work with less money. Here are some of the tasks it is expected to tackle this year:

Federal student loan borrowers have not had to make any payments since March 2020, thanks to a pandemic-related pause that has been extended by both the Trump and Biden administrations several times.

Most recently, Biden extended the pause after his student loan forgiveness program was halted by federal courts. The administration had told borrowers debt relief would be granted before payments restarted.

The payment pause will now last until 60 days after litigation over Biden’s student loan forgiveness program is resolved. If the program has not been implemented and the litigation has not been resolved by June 30, payments will resume 60 days after that.

Bringing roughly 44 million borrowers back into repayment at one time is an unprecedented task. Many people may be confused about how much they owe, when to pay and how. Missing payments can result in monetary fees.

The government contracts with several outside organizations, such as MOHELA and Nelnet, to handle servicing the federal student loans. But it’s up to the Federal Student Aid office to communicate with the servicers about when payments restart and how.

“To be kind, the quality of student loan servicing has not been stellar,” Fansmith said.

“If you multiply all of these issues, even if small, by 44 million borrowers, it’s a massive national problem,” he added.

In late February, the Supreme Court will hear arguments in two cases concerning Biden’s student loan forgiveness program, which could deliver up to $20,000 of debt relief for millions of low- and middle-income borrowers.

A decision on whether the program is legal and can move forward is expected by June. Until then, it is on hold and no debt will be discharged under the program.

Biden’s student loan forgiveness program has faced several legal challenges since the president announced it in August. The Department of Education had received about 26 million applications for debt relief by the time a federal district court judge struck down the program on November 10.

The legal back-and-forth has created confusion for borrowers around the status of the program. Adding to the uncertainty, about 9 million people received an email from the Department of Education in the fall that mistakenly said their application for student loan forgiveness had been approved.

The Biden administration has plans to overhaul some of its student loan repayment programs and the Federal Student Aid office is charged with rolling those out.

In July, the Department of Education plans to implement permanent changes to the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program to make it easier for government and nonprofit workers to qualify for debt relief after making 10 years of payments. The program has long been plagued with loan servicing problems.

Big changes to the department’s income-driven repayment plans are also in the works, aimed at reducing monthly debt burdens as well as the total amount borrowers pay over the lifetime of their loans.

The new regulations are expected to cap payments at 5% of a borrower’s discretionary income, down from 10% that is offered under most current income-driven plans. As a result, single borrowers making less than $30,600 per year would not need to make any payments under the proposal, up from the current $24,000 threshold.

The changes would also forgive remaining balances after 10 years of repayment, instead of 20 or 25 years, as well as cover the borrower’s unpaid monthly interest.

The Department of Education said last week that it expects to start implementing some of these provisions later this year.

Each year, as part of its normal work, the Federal Student Aid office processes millions of FAFSA applications from students. Generally, the form is released in October for the following academic year.

Every college student needs to fill out the FAFSA in order to qualify for federal student loans, grants and work-study aid. But it has long been criticized as too long and complicated.

Congress passed a law in 2021 that simplifies the FAFSA form, and the Federal Student Aid office has been working on implementing the changes – which financial aid experts hope will be done before October this year.

The office was supposed to have had the changes already done, but the effective date was pushed back by a year.

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January 16, 2023
Locally caught freshwater fish contain PFAS toxins, study finds | CNN

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Editor’s Note: Sign up for CNN’s Life, But Greener newsletter. Our limited newsletter series guides you on how to minimize your personal role in the climate crisis — and reduce your eco-anxiety.

CNN
—

Fish caught in the fresh waters of the nation’s streams and rivers and the Great Lakes contain dangerously high levels of PFOS, short for perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, a known synthetic toxin phased out by the federal government, according to a study of data from the US Environmental Protection Agency.

The chemical PFOS is part of a family of manufactured additives known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, widely used since the 1950s to make consumer products nonstick and resistant to stains, water and grease damage.

Called “forever chemicals” because they fail to break down easily in the environment, PFAS has leached into the nation’s drinking water via public water systems and private wells. The chemicals then accumulate in the bodies of fish, shellfish, livestock, dairy and game animals that people eat, experts say.

“The levels of PFOS found in freshwater fish often exceeded an astounding 8,000 parts per trillion,” said study coauthor David Andrews, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit environmental health organization that analyzed the data.

In comparison, the EPA has allowed only 70 parts per trillion of PFOS in the nation’s drinking water. Due to growing health concerns, in 2022 the EPA recommended the allowable level of PFOS in drinking water be lowered from 70 to 0.02 parts per trillion.

“You’d have to drink an incredible amount of water — we estimate a month of contaminated water — to get the same exposure as you would from a single serving of freshwater fish,” Andrews said.

“Consuming even a single (locally caught freshwater) fish per year can measurably and significantly change the levels of PFOS in your blood,” Andrews said.

Chemicals in the PFAS family are linked to high cholesterol, cancer and various chronic diseases, as well as a limited antibody response to vaccines in both adults and children, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

“This is an important paper,” said toxicologist Linda Birnbaum, former director of the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences and the National Toxicology Program.

“To find this level of contamination in fish across the country, even in areas not close to industry where you might expect heavy contamination, is very concerning. These chemicals are everywhere,” she said.

Read more: Doctors should test levels of PFAS in people at high risk, report says

It’s nearly impossible to avoid PFAS, experts say. Manufacturers add the chemicals to thousands of products, including nonstick cookware, mobile phones, carpeting, clothing, makeup, furniture and food packaging.

A 2020 investigation found PFAS in the wrapping of many fast foods and “environmentally friendly” molded fiber bowls and containers.

A 2021 study found PFAS in 52% of tested cosmetics, with the highest levels in waterproof mascara (82%), foundations (63%) and long-lasting lipstick (62%). Polytetrafluoroethylene, the coating on nonstick pans, was the most common additive.

Read more: Makeup may contain potentially toxic chemicals called PFAS, study finds

In fact, PFAS chemicals have been found in the blood serum of 98% of Americans, according to a 2019 report using data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey.

“These chemicals are ubiquitous in the American environment. More than 2,800 communities in the US, including all 50 states and two territories, have documented PFAS contamination,” Dr. Ned Calonge, an associate professor of epidemiology at the Colorado School of Public Health and chair of the Academies committee that wrote the report, told CNN previously.

Read more: Dangerous chemicals found in food wrappers at major fast-food restaurants and grocery chains, report says

Scientists at the Environmental Working Group used data from the EPA’s own monitoring programs — the National Rivers and Streams Assessment, which has been periodically testing stream conditions since 2008, and the Great Lakes Human Health Fish Fillet Tissue Study, which tests lake water every five years.

“The analysis focused on EPA wild-caught fish in rivers, streams and throughout the Great Lakes from 2013 to 2015 as that was the latest data available,” Andrews said.

The contamination was widespread, impacting “nearly every fish across the country,” he said. “I believe there was one sample without detected levels of PFOS.”

The EWG created an interactive map of the results with details for each state. Fish caught near urban areas contained nearly three times more PFOS and overall PFAS than those caught in nonurban locations, the study found. The highest levels were found in fish from the Great Lakes.

The analysis showed PFOS accounted for an average 74% of the contamination in the fish. The remaining 25% was a mixture of other PFAS known to be equally damaging to human health, Andrews said.

CNN reached out to the EPA for comment but did not hear back before this story published.

Based on the study’s findings, people who fish for sport might “strongly” consider releasing their catch instead of taking the fish home for a meal, Andrews said.

Yet many people in lower socioeconomic groups, indigenous peoples and immigrants in the US rely eating freshly caught fish.

“They need it for food or because it’s their culture,” Birnbaum said. “There are Native American tribes and Burmese immigrants and others who fish because this is who they are. This is key to their culture. And you can’t just tell them not to fish.”

Read more: Water- and stain-resistant products contain toxic plastics, study says. Here’s what to do

The predominant chemical in the fish, PFOS, and its sister perfluorooctanoic acid, or PFOA, are known as “long-chain” PFAS, made from an 8-carbon chain.

Read more: Plastics and pesticides: Health impacts of synthetic chemicals in US products doubled in last 5 years, study finds

Manufacturers agreed in the early 2000s to voluntarily stop using long-chain PFAS in US consumer products, although they can still be found in some imported items. Due to growing health concerns, the use of PFOS and PFOA in food packaging was phased out in 2016 by the US Food and Drug Administration.

However, industry reworked the chemicals by making them into 4- and 6-carbon chains — today over 9,000 different PFAS exist, according to the CDC. Experts say these newer versions appear to have many of the same dangerous health effects as the 8-chain PFAS, leaving consumers and the environment still at risk.

Many of these longer-chain PFAS can be stored for years in different organs in the human body, according to the National Academies report. Scientists are examining the impact of newer versions.

“Some of these chemicals have half-lives in the range of five years,” National Academies report committee member Jane Hoppin, an environmental epidemiologist and director of the Center for Human Health and the Environment at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, told CNN previously.

Read more: FDA must do more to regulate thousands of chemicals added to your food, petitioners say

“Let’s say you have 10 nanograms of PFAS in your body right now. Even with no additional exposure, five years from now you would still have 5 nanograms,” she said. “Five years later, you would have 2.5 and then five years after that, you’d have one 1.25 nanograms. It would be about 25 years before all the PFAS leave your body.”

That’s why it’s “no surprise” to find such high levels of PFOA in freshwater fish, said the director of environmental pediatrics at NYU Langone Health, Dr. Leonardo Trasande, who was not involved in the new study.

“These truly are ‘forever chemicals,’” Trasande said. “This reinforces the reality that we need to get all PFAS out of consumer products and people’s lives.”

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January 16, 2023
Schumer says he will push to confirm Biden’s pick for FAA administrator following system outage | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday he would push to confirm President Joe Biden’s pick to lead the Federal Aviation Administration, following a computer system failure that triggered the delay of more than 10,000 flights last week.

Phillip Washington, Biden’s pick to lead the FAA, has yet to receive a confirmation hearing in the Democratic-controlled Senate.

“There is no doubt about it: it’s time to clear the runway for President Biden’s choice for FAA Administrator, Phil Washington. With recent events, including airline troubles and last week’s tech problem, this agency needs a leader confirmed by the Senate immediately,” Schumer said in a statement Sunday. “I intend to break this logjam, work to hold a hearing for Mr. Washington, where he can detail his experience and answer questions and then work towards a speedy Senate confirmation.”

Washington has faced questions about his limited aviation experience and, in September, was named in a search warrant issued as part of a political corruption investigation in Los Angeles. But Schumer’s Sunday announcement appears to show he’s prepared to push past those issues.

If confirmed, Washington would be the first Black permanent administrator of the agency. He is currently the CEO of Denver International Airport – the third-busiest airport in the world. Washington previously held leadership roles a municipal transit organizations, including in Denver and Los Angeles, focused on bus and rail lines.

Because his nomination wasn’t acted upon during the last Congress, Biden faced a choice this year of whether to resubmit his name for consideration or identify a new nominee.

Biden renominated Washington earlier this month, signaling the administration’s continued support for him.

The FAA has been without a permanent administrator since March, when former President Donald Trump’s appointee, Stephen Dickson, stepped down midway through his five-year term.

The agency is facing increased scrutiny after it was forced to ground thousands of flights starting Wednesday when air traffic control officials opted to shutdown the central database for all NOTAMs (Notice to Air Missions) nationwide after they found a corrupt file in the system. That plan and the outage led to massive flight delays and the first nationwide stop of air traffic in more than 20 years.

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January 15, 2023
Republicans shy away from calling on Santos to resign as Democrats renew push for more information | CNN Politics

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More House Republicans on Sunday stopped short of calling on embattled New York Rep. George Santos to resign, while two Democrats made a fresh push for more information from GOP leaders.

Republicans back home in the GOP freshman’s Long Island district, however, doubled down Sunday on calls for him to step down.

Santos is facing growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. He also faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances. Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer called Santos “a bad guy” in an interview Sunday with CNN’s Jake Tapper on “State of the Union.”

“He’s not the first politician, unfortunately, to make it to Congress to lie,” the Kentucky Republican said. “But, look, George Santos was duly elected by the people. He’s going to be under strict ethics investigation, not necessarily for lying, but for his campaign finance potential violations. So I think that Santos is being examined thoroughly.”

“It’s his decision whether or not he should resign. It’s not my decision. But, certainly, I don’t approve of how he made his way to Congress,” Comer said.

GOP Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska said Sunday he would resign if he were in Santos’ position but said that was a decision for the New York Republican’s constituents.

“If it was me, I would resign. I wouldn’t be able to face my voters after having gone through that,” Bacon told “This Week” on ABC. “But this is between him and his constituents, largely. They elected him in, and he’s going to have to deal with them on that. I don’t think his reelection chances will be that promising, depending on how he handles this.”

Rep. Chris Stewart, a Utah Republican, also declined to say if Santos should resign from his Long Island seat.

“He clearly lied to his constituents, and … it’s going to be very, very difficult for him to gain the trust of his colleagues,” Stewart said on CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday. “The reality is you can’t expel a member of Congress. At the end of the day, it really is up to the voters in Nassau County. I can tell you this – if I were in that situation, I don’t know how I could continue to serve and I suppose he needs to ask that same question.”

Several House Republicans have called for Santos to resign, including five of his fellow New York Republican colleagues in the House. Leaders of the Nassau County GOP have also called for the congressman to step down.

House Speaker Kevin McCarthy told reporters Thursday that Santos has “a long way to go to earn trust” and that concerns could be investigated by the House Ethics Committee, but he emphasized that the congresman is a part of the House GOP Conference. Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik, of New York, who chairs the House GOP Conference, told CNN on Thursday that the process “will play itself out.”

“He’s a duly elected member of Congress. There have been members of Congress on the Democrat side who have faced investigations before,” she said.

Meanwhile, two Democrats are calling on McCarthy and Stefanik to cooperate with any House Ethics Committee investigation into Santos.

In a letter sent to the two Republican leaders and to Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund – the super PAC affiliated with House GOP leadership – New York Reps. Dan Goldman and Ritchie Torres cite new reporting “indicating that each of you had at least some knowledge of lies used by Congressman George Santos to deceive his voters long before they became public.”

“We urge you to inform the American people about your knowledge of Mr. Santos’s web of deceit prior to the election so that the public understands whether and to what extent you were complicit in Mr. Santos’s fraud on his voters,” Goldman and Torres said in the letter.

CNN has reported that Conston expressed concerns about Santos’ background prior to the election and contacted lawmakers and donors about those concerns. Goldman and Torres cite reporting by The New York Times in their letter, which also indicated that associates of Stefanik were made aware of issues regarding Santos’ background ahead of the election.

In an interview with CBS News’ “Face the Nation” on Sunday, Goldman called Santos a “complete and total fraud” and pushed back on attempts by some Republicans to equate the allegations against him to ethics complaints against some Democrats.

“This is a scheme to defraud the voters of the 3rd District in New York, and this needs to be investigated intensively,” he said.

Goldman and Ritchie said last week that they were filing a formal complaint with the House Ethics Committee requesting an investigation related to Santos’s financial disclosure reports. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint last week with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of concealing the source of more than $700,000 that he put into his successful 2022 bid.

CNN’s KFILE also reported that Santos had said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in an email that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at that company.

Murray also previously defended the Santos campaign’s actions, saying in a statement, “The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”

Nassau County Republicans were ready Sunday in case Santos showed up at a morning fundraiser on Long Island.

“Had he shown up, we were ready to greet him,” Nassau County GOP Chair Joseph Cairo said. “We would have said, ‘You’re really not welcome. You deceived us, you lied to us.’”

Over 900 people turned out for the annual “kickoff brunch” featuring a who’s-who of Nassau County Republicans, with most wanting to distance themselves from the freshman lawmaker.

“People say he should serve out his term,” Cairo said. “He didn’t get elected. The fictional character he created got elected.”

Cairo said the topic of Santos came up at times during public speeches made by various Republicans at the fundraiser but not in a supportive way.

“Virtually everyone is done with George Santos,” said Cairo. “We’ve told him he’s not welcome at our events. We don’t invite him to our meetings.”

Former New York Rep. Peter King, who represented a different Long Island seat in Congress for nearly three decades, said no one had anything positive to say about Santos.

“I made it a point to sort of mingle in the crowd beforehand. Everyone says we’ve got to get rid of this guy,” said King, a onetime chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee. “He’s dangerous to the party and dangerous to the country.”

King said local Republicans would now move to ostracize Santos as much as possible.

“That’s not to punish him but to send the signal to everyone, including Washington, that he has to go,” the former congressman said. “They can’t be slow-walking it in Washington, waiting for something to happen in Washington.”

Republican Rep. Anthony D’Esposito, a freshman lawmaker from a neighboring Long Island district, said Santos won’t have support from the party if he opts to stay put and run for reelection next year.

“We’ve all called for George Santos’ resignation. If that’s not something that’s going to happen, then I think it’s clear … that we are ready to do what we need to do when it comes to the polls in two years,” he said.

“One of the things that I think is really bothering people the most is the fact that he claimed he was of the Jewish faith and that his grandparents survived the Holocaust,” D’Esposito said. “In the district that I run in, we have a very large population of Orthodox and a large Jewish population. It’s not something that we could stand for.”

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January 15, 2023
Biden urges Congress to pass bipartisan tech legislation in WSJ op-ed | CNN Business

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President Joe Biden called on members of Congress Wednesday to set aside partisan differences and pass groundbreaking legislation to rein in Big Tech, focusing on digital privacy, antitrust and the industry’s liability shield, Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed, Biden said that despite making some progress on increasing tech industry oversight, the US government has run up against the limits of its statutory authority.

“We need bipartisan action from Congress to hold Big Tech accountable,” Biden wrote. “We’ve heard a lot of talk about creating committees. It’s time to walk the walk and get something done.”

Biden urged lawmakers to “limit targeted advertising and ban it altogether for children,” a proposal linked to a key bipartisan privacy bill unveiled in the last Congress. He reiterated his longstanding calls to amend Section 230 in ways that would expose tech platforms to more lawsuits over content moderation, and advocated for rules forcing them to be more transparent about how their algorithms work.

And he said Congress should implement “fairer rules of the road” to prevent new businesses from being “smothered by the dominant incumbents before they have a chance to get off the ground.”

Tech policy analysts have said that with Congress entering a new phase of divided partisan control, the prospect of bipartisan tech legislation may have dimmed, particularly on antitrust issues.

Calls to revise Section 230 are bipartisan, but Republicans and Democrats have not been able to agree on why the law needs changing, much less on how. Democrats have said tech companies should face more liability for failing to remove enough problematic content; Republicans argue tech platforms should face more liability for removing too much.

Some policy experts have said that efforts to craft bipartisan privacy legislation have the strongest odds of passage in the new Congress, but it remains a long way from becoming law.

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January 14, 2023
Concerns over Santos’ backstory were known prior to the election | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Concerns over Rep. George Santos’ backstory became louder over the summer and into the fall campaign season, and issues surrounding the recently elected Republican congressman from New York had not been a secret, a GOP source told CNN on Friday.

When it became clearer that Santos had a chance at winning his New York district, people talked more about how his backstory didn’t add up, the source said.

There was trepidation among consultants, donors and other Republicans – including those in Washington – that what Santos was saying about himself wasn’t accurate and that his biography didn’t line up, the source said. There had also been an expectation that some kind of major story would drop in the press before the election, the source said. But that story never came.

Among those who expressed concerns, according to a source, was Dan Conston, president of the Congressional Leadership Fund PAC and a close associate of now-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. Conston contacted lawmakers and donors, sharing his concerns about Santos, the source said.

A representative for the Congressional Leadership Fund declined to comment.

Among potential donors, one person who went to a Santos fundraising event in March 2022 told CNN that he immediately could tell Santos was not being truthful. Santos, he said, boasted about his time at Goldman Sachs, promised to pressure China and planned to require the US to default on its debt to not pay China – something that anyone who worked in finance would know to be a catastrophic mistake.

A separate donor who now feels conned said he gave substantial amounts of money to Santos, who he felt came across as “maybe” an embellisher. “He seemed like a novice but I believed his heart was in the right place,” the source said.

The revelations come as the freshman congressman faces growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history. CNN’s KFILE also reported that Santos had said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Joseph Murray, an attorney for Santos, told CNN in an email that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at that company.

Santos has admitted to “embellishing” his resume, but maintains he is “not a criminal.”

The New York Times first reported details of what Republicans knew about Santos before the election.

According to the Times, some of the GOP associates assisting Santos’ campaign were alarmed by the findings of a background study on Santos conducted by a Washington research firm, prompting them to advise him to end his bid. Santos had permitted his campaign to run the study in late 2021 as he prepped his run for New York’s 3rd Congressional District, the Times reported Friday.

According to the Times, it remains unclear who else – if anyone – learned about the background study’s findings at the time, or whether party leaders were made aware of the information.

Earlier this week, Nassau County GOP leaders insisted they had no indication that Santos had misled them before The New York Times broke the story after the election.

CNN has reached out to Santos’ lawyer for comment on the Times reporting. Murray told the Times that “it would be inappropriate to respond due to ongoing investigations.”

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January 14, 2023
Matt Gaetz says George Santos should go through House ethics process but should not be shunned | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said Saturday that fellow Republican Rep. George Santos, the embattled New York congressman who has admitted to lying about parts of his biography and faces federal and local investigations into his campaign finances, “will have to go through the congressional ethics process” but shouldn’t be shunned by his colleagues as it plays out.

“George Santos will have to go through the congressional ethics process. I don’t want to prejudge that process, but I think he deserves the chance to at least make his case. There are requirements members of Congress have to meet when it comes to the money that they donate to their own campaigns,” Gaetz said in an interview with CNN’s Michael Smerconish.

“But until then, I don’t think that George Santos should be subject to shunning because the Americans he serves deserve representation, and they have real challenges, and we ought to work together to solve their challenges and meet their needs,” he said.

Gaetz interviewed Santos on Thursday when the Florida Republican sat in for Steve Bannon on the latter’s podcast “War Room.” In the interview, Santos declined to divulge the source of hundreds of thousands of dollars he gave his campaign for his Long Island seat. A campaign watchdog group filed a complaint earlier this week with the Federal Election Commission accusing Santos of concealing the source of more than $700,000 that he put into his successful 2022 bid.

Santos’ personal lawyer, Joe Murray, has defended the campaign’s activity, saying in a previous statement, “The suggestion that the Santos campaign engaged in any unlawful spending of campaign funds is irresponsible, at best.”

Santos is facing backlash from Democrats and within his own party with a growing number of House Republicans calling for him to resign or saying he can’t serve effectively. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has stood by Santos, while also saying that he has “a long way to go to earn trust.”

Santos has pushed back on calls for his resignation, insisting he has “done nothing unethical” while brushing off concerns about the ethics complaint.

Meanwhile, in his interview Saturday, Gaetz reiterated his call for giving C-SPAN cameras greater access in the House chamber, saying that “if we had cameras on the floor, my suspicion is we would have far better attendance during debates that impact the lives of our fellow Americans.”

“The public value of being able to see the human interactions in frustration, in warmth, in all of those things far outweighs the risk that people will play to the cameras. I mean, we have that during debate one way or the other,” he told Smerconish. “I think some of the old guard in Congress opposes this because they want to continue to maintain the fiction that when four or five people are on the floor spending millions of dollars, that that is actually the action of the whole legislative body when the reality is far different.”

C-SPAN sent a letter to McCarthy earlier this week asking for permission to operate its own independent cameras in the House chamber.

The House normally forbids independent media coverage of proceedings. But during special events, such as during last week’s election of the House speaker, independent cameras from outlets such as C-SPAN are permitted.

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January 14, 2023
Why there are more Republican women in Congress than ever before | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Lori Chavez-DeRemer sat in the gallery of the House nearly two decades ago with her mom and her twin daughters – tourists peering down at lawmakers on the floor of the chamber.

“I’d really love to be here someday,” the Oregon Republican recalled telling her mother, who encouraged her to think about a run. She’d recently been elected to her city council, but she had her doubts. “I said, ‘Everybody on the floor there probably has a law degree. I’m a stay-at-home mom.’”

But Chavez-DeRemer flipped a Democratic seat in November, helping Republicans win a narrow House majority. She is now among a record 42 Republican women in Congress and one of the first two Latino members of Congress from Oregon.

The trail she has blazed is emblematic of the progress that the Republican Party has made in electing women over the past decade – hard-fought milestones reached only after outside groups began playing a larger role in primaries.

Still, GOP women are far from reaching parity with Democrats. Thirty-three of them will serve in the House alone this term, compared with 91 Democratic women. Though many women (and men who care about electing them) applaud a recent shift in attitude among GOP leadership and a segment of the donor class – for whom identity politics has often been anathema – long-term hurdles remain.

Some leaders, including House GOP Conference Chair Elise Stefanik and Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, want to see the party do more.

That push is not just about statistics. It’s imperative as the party tries to appeal to a broader spectrum of voters, including the many suburban women who abandoned the GOP after Donald Trump was elected in 2016.

“Suburban women and independent women are going to continue to be the X factor in whether we win,” said Annie Dickerson, the founder and chair of Winning for Women, an outside group that helps elect female Republicans.

When Erin Houchin first ran for the Indiana state Senate in 2014, she urged a few party leaders to support female candidates in primaries – especially in deep-red seats where the primary is the only competitive election.

“The answer I got was, ‘Well, we don’t get involved in primaries. You should go see if other women will help you,’” Houchin recalled.

After winning her race, she ran for Congress in 2016 – the only woman in a five-person primary for a safe Republican seat. The party officially stayed out; the National Republican Congressional Committee’s policy is to never take sides in primaries.

Houchin had support from Republican women, including early backing from Value in Electing Women, or VIEW, PAC, which encouraged female members of Congress to write checks for her.

Those checks, however, were no match for what Houchin was up against: an opponent who benefited from a big-spending super PAC that likely could have outspent her even if she had more institutional party support. Trey Hollingsworth won that primary and the general election and went on to represent the 9th District for three terms before retiring last year.

Houchin was once again the only woman in the primary to succeed Hollingsworth out of a field of nine, but this time, she emerged the winner. She easily won the general election for a district that Trump would have carried by 27 points in 2020.

“There were many more groups this time around that did engage,” Houchin said, praising VIEW PAC, Winning for Women and Stefanik’s leadership PAC, known as Elevate PAC or E-PAC. “That made a difference.”

Republicans have long viewed supporting diverse candidates differently from Democrats, who were earlier to embrace building coalitions among specific demographics.

“Some of the Republican men didn’t necessarily think that it ought to be a priority,” GOP strategist Parker Poling, the executive director of the NRCC for the 2020 cycle, said of the party’s prior attitude toward boosting female candidates.

“I had to sell it very differently in the beginning, back in 2017,” Dickerson recalled. “And it was real work persuading donors that it wasn’t identity politics. It was really about identifying excellence.”

Stefanik raised the alarm with House GOP leaders after the 2018 election, when, as the first female recruitment chair of the NRCC, she had enlisted more than 100 women to run. Just one of them won.

Democrats flipped the House that year, buoyed in large part by the success of female candidates, but the number of GOP women in the chamber declined by nearly half. Even if Republican leaders didn’t immediately recognize the problem – then-NRCC Chairman Tom Emmer called Stefanik’s desire to get involved in primaries a “mistake” – they quickly came around in their public support for her mission.

“I am very proud that our efforts have been pretty much embraced across the board,” Stefanik said last month when asked if leadership now understands the importance of supporting women.

That commitment to changing those dynamics showed in 2020 – which some have called the “Year of the Republican Woman” – when a record-breaking number of nonincumbent House GOP female candidates won, helping flip several pivotal Democratic seats.

“There’s an understanding now that Republican women candidates can be very successful in the general election and in many cases are stronger candidates than men,” said Cam Savage, a veteran Republican consultant who worked for Houchin. “It’s been true for a while; it just hasn’t been recognized.”

McDaniel also noted that the tenor of conversations with donors has changed.

“Our investors – when I started, some of them would say to me candidly, ‘You have young kids. How can you be a mom and do this?’” she said. “I don’t have those conversations anymore. It’s more: ‘What other women candidates can we invest in?’ ‘Where can we support women in our party?’”

After impressive gains in 2020, Republican women made more nominal progress in 2022. Just one GOP woman, Virginia’s Jen Kiggans, unseated a Democratic incumbent in a swing seat, while several others flipped open seats in Oregon, Florida and Texas.

There’s excitement, however, about conservative women’s success in red districts and how that could help deepen and extend the longevity of the bench of female Republicans in Congress.

“You can’t just focus on electing women Republicans in swing seats. That’s why we had, you know, such a historic loss in 2018, as most of our women members were in those swing seats,” Stefanik said.

Of the seven nonincumbent Republican women elected last year, five represent districts Trump would have carried in 2020.

“That allows those members to gain seniority over time and also to make investments in other candidates,” added Stefanik.

In other words, electing women in safe seats means they’re more likely to stay there – although not always. Liz Cheney lost her deep-red Wyoming seat in a primary to another woman backed by Stefanik.

And those very primaries in deeply conservative districts have sometimes been harder for women to win, even if – based on their policy positions and voting records – they are the most conservative candidates.

Houchin, for example, said it was important for her to be very clear about where she stood on the issues because “it’s been easier to paint female candidates as more moderate or more liberal. That’s certainly not my profile.”

Helping women get through primaries in safe red seats could become more difficult after a deal reached between two outside groups as part of the Republican negotiations over the House speaker’s election. Congressional Leadership Fund, a super PAC backed by House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, agreed to stay out of open-seat primaries in exchange for the anti-tax Club for Growth’s support for his speakership bid.

Chavez-DeRemer — one of those Republican women to flip an open seat last year — now calls her self-doubts during that visit to the Capitol silly.

“Little did I know that, really, my whole life, I was probably preparing for this,” she said. “I needed to just be me.”

The former mayor of Happy Valley, in suburban Portland, won a five-way primary in Oregon’s 5th District and went on to win the general election over a Democratic woman, who had defeated the incumbent in her primary.

Her story speaks to the message pushed by potential White House aspirant Nikki Haley, who has channeled her energies into elevating female Republican candidates through her Stand for America PAC.

“What we need to do is to tell women, ‘We need you. We need you at the table. We need you making the decisions. We need your experience. We need your ability to talk about families and budgets and crime, and all of those things,” the former South Carolina governor and onetime US ambassador to the United Nations said in a brief interview on the campaign trail in Nevada last year.

“Success begets success,” Poling added of female candidates’ track record. “When people see that this helped us win more seats, then they’re more likely to put the time and effort into recruiting and helping female candidates.”

Party operatives credit strong recruitment – both in 2022 under NRCC recruitment chair Carol Miller of West Virginia and in 2020, under then-Rep. Susan Brooks of Indiana.

“That begins with the acknowledgment that the way you recruit women is different from men,” Savage said. “You don’t have to recruit men. They line up to tell you they’re the best fit.”

But one of the major lessons from 2018 is the recognition that getting women to run isn’t enough: Helping them through the process is also critical.

“I don’t look at women as a monolith – they come with different backgrounds and experience – but sometimes fundraising can be a challenge, or life balance,” said McDaniel, who was elected RNC chair in 2017.

One part of addressing that is female candidates supporting each other. Monica De La Cruz was one of three Republican women running for South Texas swing districts along the southern border last year.

“We had a support group of women who understood exactly what you were going through at that moment, so it was a very special time,” said De La Cruz, the only one of the three to win.

And increasingly, there’s recognition that a female perspective can be a strength in the eyes of voters.

“I had no political background. I’m a small-business owner, single mom of two teenage children. And people could relate to that,” said De La Cruz, who has been tapped to serve on the RNC’s advisory panel to examine how the party can continue broadening its appeal to women and more diverse voters.

“They saw me at the Friday night football games, and the Saturday morning volleyball games,” she said. “They saw me in parent-teacher conferences at the school. My community saw themselves in me.”

The GOP still has a lot of catching up to do. Even with leadership PACs and outside groups committed to boosting women in Republican primaries, the party lacks the firepower of a group like EMILY’s List, which has been helping elect Democratic women who support abortion rights since the mid-1980s.

Some of the outside groups backing GOP women have diverged in primaries, either not engaging in the same races or even backing different women in the same primaries.

To expand institutional support, McDaniel pointed to the example of programs such as League of Our Own, a campaign program she worked with in her home state of Michigan that has focused on training female candidates.

“We talked about things like, ‘How do you raise money? How do you pick a campaign manager?’” McDaniel said. “You’d see these women who were graduates, going on to be state reps or state senators. It’s really, really impactful to see how even just that little bit of campaign school and that little bit of help can go a long way in bringing women into the conversation.”

Chavez-DeRemer said the party must “keep reaching out” and “make sure that all women are running at a local level.”

Stefanik echoed that sentiment, pointing to a robust state and local pipeline as a lynchpin to deepening the bench of Republican women in Congress in the years ahead.

“It’s a long-term strategy,” she said.

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January 14, 2023
‘Command your troops, damn it!’ How a series of security failures opened a path to insurrection in Brazil | CNN

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CNN
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A sea of people, draped in the yellow and green of the Brazilian flag, surge onto the roof of the country’s modernist congressional building in the capital Brasilia, a video shared on social media shows.

In the foreground, officers from the military police of Brazil’s Federal District, which includes Brasilia, can be seen standing, chatting or filming the crowds in the distance.

Their calm belies the chaos unfolding on January 8. For around four hours, thousands of far-right supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro stormed all three branches of Brazil’s government – Congress, the Supreme Court, and presidential palace – overwhelming security forces and calling for the leftist incumbent Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to be ousted.

The violence has shocked the country, with many wanting answers as to how so many people managed to enter some of the most highly securitized buildings in the country, with practically no resistance. Questions are mounting as to whether members of the security forces tasked with protecting the area and their leaders were just overstretched, incompetent or even actively assisted the protesters.

Top Brazilian officials say that pre-agreed security plans were not carried out on the day.

CNN has analyzed a series of videos and livestreams posted on social media to explore the security failures that allowed an insurrection to take place with such extraordinary ease and found that some officers appeared friendly to the rioters, while many others seem woefully underprepared for the angry mob. CNN has not identified and spoken to the officers in the videos.

Videos show some police officers standing and watching the protestors as they stormed Congress, one even filmed the events. Credit: YouTube, Twitter and Telegram.

Authorities investigating the riots, like the Supreme Court, have pointed fingers at officials in Brasilia, and several Federal District security chiefs have been fired or issued with arrest warrants for alleged collusion since the Sunday riots.

“The Brasilia police neglected [the attack threat], Brasilia’s intelligence neglected it,” Lula claimed one day after the siege. He said that from the footage it was easy to see “police officers talking to the attackers. There was an explicit connivance of the police with the demonstrators.”

Suspicions of “connivance” have been fueled by his predecessor Bolsonaro’s close relationship with the military during his presidency, filling his then-cabinet with military chiefs. In the weeks leading up to the siege, supporters of the ex-leader and former army captain – who never explicitly conceded his election loss in October – camped outside army barracks across Brazil, calling for a military intervention to overturn Lula’s victory.

Bolsonaro has made false claims of election fraud, sowing doubt in the legitimacy of the election. He left for Florida more than a week before the insurrection.

Lula on Thursday also accused some people in the armed forces of complicity. “There were many people complicit in this. There were many from the (military police), many from the armed forces complicit,” he said during a press conference.

The Brazilian president said he doesn’t think of the events of January 8 as a “coup” but as a “smaller thing, a band of crazy people who haven’t realized that the election is over.”

The military police of the Federal District have not responded to CNN’s questions about the alleged security failures of their forces. Nor has the Army Command in Brasilia – which has yet to make a public statement on the riots.

Videos taken on January 8 suggest a reduced security presence compared to Lula’s inauguration a week before, at the same government complex, when more than 8,000 troops from military and civil forces were deployed.

On January 8, there were just 365 military police officers working in the area. After Lula authorized a federal intervention at around 6 p.m. local that evening, another 2,913 were summoned, a caretaker Federal District spokesperson told CNN. The leadership of the office has changed since the January 8 riots.

The army and civil police forces did not respond to CNN’s request for information on how many army troops and police forces were deployed to the area on Sunday.

The military police are investigating the events on January 8 and “will start procedures to investigate” the alleged conduct of “police agents who behaved differently from (how) they were supposed to,” Ricardo Cappelli, the caretaker head of security for the Federal District of Brasilia, who got the role Sunday after his predecessor was fired, said this week.

Sunday’s protests had been openly organized online days before and intelligence services were aware of their plans. Telegram conversations seen by CNN show people messaging as early as January 5 about their intentions to storm Brazil’s Congress.

One post mentions a plan to use the Zello phone app, which works like a walkie talkie, if the internet was disrupted. The same app was used by some US Capitol rioters on January 6, 2021.

Several others shared detailed maps of the parliamentary area, labeling clearly the Congress and Senate buildings as the assembly point.

Brazil’s intelligence agency said it issued daily alerts ahead of January 8 to the government and the federal district government, warning the protests would be large and violent, CNN Brasil reports.

Their intelligence was based on a warning raised by the country’s transport agency that an unusual volume of buses had been chartered to Brasilia. Both the Minister of Justice Flávio Dino and then-Federal District Governor Ibaneis Rocha, a Bolsonaro ally, were notified, said the intelligence agency.

Despite the warnings, on January 7, Rocha told a Federal District news portal, Metropoles, that the protest would go ahead on the Esplanade – a grassy stretch surrounded by governmental buildings that leads directly to Brazil’s seats of power.

In a press conference a day after the riot, Justice Minister Dino said special security plans had been agreed upon with the Federal District – which handles the defense of the governmental complex and was led by Rocha – but did not materialize on January 8. There was a “change in administrative orientation yesterday in which the planning, which did not allow people to enter the Esplanade, was changed at the last minute,” he said.

Rocha was removed from his post for three months on Sunday. He said he respected the decision in an official statement and had also apologized to officials, including Lula, for what happened that day, saying his team “did not believe at all that the demonstrations would take on the proportions that they did.” CNN has reached out to Rocha for comment.

When protesters, as planned, turned out in droves on January 8, they were met with little resistance.

Beginning from their encampment outside the army headquarters, they walked over 7 kilometers (4.3 miles) down Brasilia’s main avenue, the Monumental Axis, to Congress.

Prior to the breach of Congress, a long line of protesters march to the government complex. In one video, a military police officer appears to give a thumbs up while shaking hands with the pro-Bolsonaro crowd walking down the avenue. Some are even patting officers on the back.

Military police attempted to stop the protesters by the Esplanade of Ministries along Eixo Monumental at around 2:25 p.m. local time, live video posted on YouTube by a protester and reviewed by CNN shows. But they were quickly over-run by protesters, who broke through the barricades. Police attempted to pepper spray a few of them as they tried to maintain the barricade but were overwhelmed.

The time the crowds arrived outside Congress at around 2:45 p.m. local time. Videos showed some federal and military police units further attempting to block their way, but they were severely outnumbered.

Chaos ensued.

Another attempt by Brasilia’s military police to use pepper spray on protesters failed. The officers, standing behind a line of metal barricades, were quickly overwhelmed as the crowd surged through, tossing the barricades to the ground.

Police confront protestors with pepper spray as they approach Congress but are quickly overwhelmed. Credit: Twitter

Free to roam in Praça dos Três Poderes (Three Powers Square), thousands of Bolsonaro supporters climbed the ramp leading to the Congress, which houses the Senate and Chamber of Deputies. They entered the buildings just before 3 p.m.

Videos from inside show overturned chairs and documents strewn on the floor as the crowds march through chanting pro-Bolsonaro slogans.

With the barricades gone, several military police officers simply watched the scene. One even filmed the protesters climbing onto the roof of Congress.

Meanwhile, outside the Congress building two federal police vans sat with smoke billowing from their windows, video shows. One has swerved off the road half-submerged in a lake.

The swarm of protesters also moved to the Supreme Court and the Presidential Palace. Officers seemed once again unable to control the situation. Some on horseback were attacked near the Supreme Court, pulled to the ground and pummeled by rioters.

In the end, the crowd managed to break inside these buildings as well and wreak havoc.

Videos showed little coordination between police divisions and left some officers overwhelmed by the crowds. Credit: TikTok and Telegram

Lula has suggested that someone deliberately left the doors to the palace unlocked. It was “opened for these people to enter because there is no broken door. It means someone facilitated their entry here,” he told reporters Thursday.

While he waits for the dust to settle, “I want to see all the tapes recorded inside the Supreme Court, inside the palace. There were a lot of conniving agents. There were a lot of people from the MP (Military Police) conniving,” he added.

The January 8 videos found online seem to convey the chaos of the moment.

In one video, responders seem to struggle to coordinate and communicate as security forces seem overwhelmed as they try to gain control.

A military police officer shouts at soldiers from the presidential guard battalion to fight the invaders as they stand by the presidential Planalto Palace.

“Command your troops, damn it!” he yells at the battalion commander.

But the soldiers appear hesitant, and their leader remains silent as they struggle to make decisions while confronted by the horde.

In pictures: Bolsonaro supporters storm Brazilian Congress

As it approaches 7 p.m. local time, the police and army finally have things under control. A YouTube livestream shows crowds filing off the roof of Congress and leaving the governmental compound.

Two hours later, Bolsonaro condemns the day’s events, saying “peaceful demonstrations, respecting the law, are part of democracy. However, depredations and invasions… escape the rule.”

Brazil’s response to the riots has been swift. The pro-Bolsonaro encampments outside army barracks were cleared, and a new round of protests on January 11 never materialized.

The Supreme Court agreed to prosecutor’s requests on Friday to investigate Bolsonaro for the alleged involvement in the attacks. His lawyer has rebutted the accusations, saying Bolsonaro always “rejected all illegal and criminal acts … and has always been a defender of the constitution and democracy.”

High level officials have aimed their sights on Bolsonaro allies still working in government, including Anderson Torres, who was effectively in charge of security for the Three Powers Square, where the governmental buildings were located.

Brazil’s Supreme Court on Tuesday ordered the arrest of Torres, who was previously Bolsonaro’s justice minister and assumed the role of security secretary of the Federal District in January, and the district’s former military police commander Fabio Vieira.

The order accuses the pair of attempting a coup d’état, terrorist acts, damage to public property, criminal association, and violent abolition of the rule of law. It also argues “the absence of the necessary policing” during the riots happened due to the “omission and connivance of several authorities in the area of security and intelligence.”

Torres, who was fired on Sunday with Vieira, had traveled to Florida on January 7, a day before the riots. It is unclear if he met with Bolsonaro, who was also in Florida, having left Brazil in December, days before the inauguration of Lula.

The former security secretary has strenuously denied any involvement in the riots. “I deeply regret these absurd hypotheses of any kind of collusion on my part,” he tweeted on Sunday, and wrote days later that he would return to Brazil and fight the charges.

He was arrested on his return to Brazil on Saturday, CNN Brasil reports.

On Thursday, the Federal Police announced that during a search of Torres’ home, it found a draft decree proposing to overturn October’s presidential election. Torres has denied being the author.

CNN has reached out to his lawyer for comment.

Investigators are looking for funders and leaders of the riots, an unenviable task due to the protesters lack of formalized leadership, Michele Prado, an expert on the Brazilian far right, told CNN.

“Despite this fluidity of (protest) leaders and horizontality,” there are thousands of people online who continue to share extremist positions, she added.

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January 14, 2023
Missouri lawmakers adopt stricter dress code for women in state House | CNN Politics

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CNN
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Lawmakers in the Missouri House of Representatives this week adopted a stricter dress code for women as part of a new rules package, and now requires them to cover their shoulders by wearing a jacket like a blazer, cardigan or knit blazer.

The addition, which was proposed by Republican state Rep. Ann Kelley, sparked outrage from some Democrats who said the change was sexist because the dress code for men was not altered.

Men in the Missouri House of Representatives are required to wear a jacket, shirt and a tie. The previous dress code for women required “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots.”

Kelley, speaking on the House floor, said she felt compelled to offer the change that “cleans up some of the language … by mirroring the language in the gentleman’s dress code.”

“Men are required to wear a jacket, a shirt and a tie, correct? And if they walked in here without a tie, they would get gaveled down in a heartbeat. If they walked in without a jacket, they would get gaveled down in a heartbeat. So, we are so interested in being equal,” Kelley said on Wednesday during the floor debate.

Women hold less than a third of the seats in the Missouri House, which is made up of 116 men and 43 women, according to the state House site.

The dress code amendment was passed in a voice vote and the rules package was later adopted by the GOP-controlled legislature in a 105-51 vote, but not without pushback and debate from House Democrats.

“Do you know what it feels like to have a bunch of men in this room looking at your top trying to determine if it’s appropriate or not?” Democratic state Rep. Ashley Aune proclaimed from the House floor.

Republicans altered their amendment to include cardigans after Democratic state Rep. Raychel Proudie criticized the impact requiring blazers could have on pregnant women.

Democratic state Rep. Peter Merideth refused to vote on the amendment, telling his colleagues on the floor, “I don’t think I’m qualified to say what’s appropriate or not appropriate for women and I think that is a really dangerous road for us all to go down.”

“Y’all had a conniption fit the last two years when we talked about maybe, maybe wearing masks in a pandemic to keep each other safer. How dare the government tell you what you have to wear over your face? Well, I know some governments require women to wear things over their face, but here, oh, it’s OK because we’re just talking about how many layers they have to have over their shoulders,” Merideth added.

In the US Congress, up until 2017, reporters and lawmakers were required to wear dresses and blouses with sleeves if they wanted to enter the House chamber. A group of bipartisan female lawmakers protested over their “right to bare arms,” prompting then-Speaker Paul Ryan’s office to concede that the dress code “could stand to be a bit modernized.” The US Senate later amended its rules as well, The New York Times reported.

Aune told CNN Friday afternoon the change signals that Republicans in the state aren’t focused on “important issues.”

“In 2019 House Republicans passed the abortion ban that went into effect this summer after the Dobbs decision came down, fully restricting a women’s right to choose in this state, and on day one in our legislature they’re doubling down on controlling women,” she said on “CNN Newsroom.”

“It’s wild to me. I think it’s sending a message that the Republican Party, the Missouri GOP, doesn’t have the best interest in mind and (is) not focused on the important issues.”

This story has been updated with additional details.

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January 14, 2023
George Santos said accused ‘Ponzi scheme’ he worked at was ‘100% legitimate’ when accused of fraud in 2020 | CNN Politics

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Republican Rep. George Santos, said a company later accused of running a “Ponzi scheme” was “100% legitimate” when it was accused by a potential customer of fraud in 2020, more than a year before it was sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. Once the company, where he worked, came under federal scrutiny, Santos claimed publicly that he was unaware of accusations of fraud at the firm, a CNN KFile review of Santos’ social media and statements found.

Santos, the embattled freshman Republican, faces growing pressure to resign after he lied and misrepresented his educational, work and family history, including falsely claiming he was Jewish and the descendant of Holocaust survivors. Santos admitted to “embellishing” his resume, but has maintained he is “not a criminal.”

Santos worked at Harbor City Capital Corp. in 2020 and 2021, a company the SEC said was a “classic Ponzi scheme” in an April 2021 complaint against the firm. A Ponzi scheme is a type of fraud where existing investors are paid with funds from new investors, often promising artificially high rates of return with little risk. Santos was not named in the SEC complaint.

Joseph Murray, an attorney for Rep. Santos, told CNN in an email on Thursday that Santos was unaware of wrongdoing at the company.

“As to any questions about Harbor City Capital, in light of the ongoing investigation, and for the benefit of the victims, it would be inappropriate to respond other than to say that Congressman Santos was completely unaware of any illegal activity going on at Harbor City Capital,” Murray told CNN.

Santos told The Daily Beast in 2022 that he was “as distraught and disturbed as everyone else” to learn of allegations against Harbor City. But in a since-removed tweet on his since-deleted personal Twitter account, a potential customer questioned claims the company had a 100% bank guarantee on their investment in the form of a stand by line of credit (SBLC).

“The market instability is leading to sever (sic) capital erosion. @HarborCityCap offers you a strategy that mitigates loss and risk while creating cash flow, meanwhile your principle is 100% secured by an SBLC held by various major institutions. #fixedincome #alternativeinvestment #win,” Santos tweeted in April 2020 under the name George Devolder, using his mother’s family name.

In June, a potential customer responded to that tweet from Santos saying he looked into a SBLC from Harbor City and found it to be fraudulent.

“George, this SBLC I received from Harbor City was looked into, and Deutsche Bank claims is a complete fraud and not signed by the bank officer on the document. How do you explain this?,” the user said.

“I’m sorry I’m not following you. Could you please send me an email at George.devolder@harborcity.com and we can go over this together. Our SBLC is 100% legitimate and issued by their institution. I look forward to hearing from you,” responded Santos.

In fact, according to the SEC complaint, “at no point” was Harbor City Capital “ever issued a SBLC,” despite claims from the company.

Dylan Riddle, a spokesman for Deutsche Bank, told CNN on Monday that they had no affiliation with Harbor City Capital.

“Harbor City Capital was not a client of Deutsche Bank,” he said.

Attorney Katherine C. Donlon, the court-appointed receiver for Harbor City Capital told CNN in an email on Friday Santos was affiliated with Harbor City Capital from mid January 2020 through April 2021.

On Wednesday, the Nassau County GOP and several New York Republican congressmen called on Santos to resign. Santos still has the tacit support of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, who said it was up to the voters to decide.

In other media reviewed by CNN’s KFile from 2020, Santos called himself “the head guy” at the Harbor City office in New York and the executive at the company. In one 2020 interview, Santos said he managed a $1.5 billion fund for the company with returns of 12% and 26% on investors’ money.

“Currently at Harbor City Capital, I manage a 1.5 billion fund, right?,” said Santos. “And I know how to manage it well. I give record returns to anybody who watches this, they’ll understand. I’m giving, a 12% fixed yield income return a year, which nobody in the market’s giving four and we’re giving 12. We’re also giving up to 20 to 26% in IRR return on our investors’ capital. So if there’s something I know how to do, it’s manage dollars and grow them.”

The SEC filed a complaint in April 2021 against Harbor City Capital and founder Jonathan P. Maroney, alleging that Maroney raised $17.1 million by deceiving more than 100 hundred investors through a series of unregistered fraudulent security offerings and used the money to enrich himself and his family. The SEC claimed that of the investor money collected and deposited into Harbor City Capital bank accounts “at most” only $449,000 were used for business expenses.

Neither Santos nor other Harbor City Capital employees were named in the complaint.

In October, Maroney was granted a stay in federal court for the SEC’s civil lawsuit, after Maroney noted that he “is currently the target in a related criminal investigation.” He is representing himself in the case.

CNN reached out to Maroney for comment but did not receive a response.

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January 14, 2023
The debt ceiling drama, explained in 2 minutes | CNN Business

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• Watch: Bannon lawyer pleads with judge to be removed from fraud case
• Club Q shooting suspect Anderson Aldrich appears in court, charged with 12 new counts

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January 14, 2023
Biden admin preparing to ask Congress to approve sale of F-16 jets to Turkey | CNN Politics

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The Biden administration is preparing to ask Congress to approve the sale of 40 F-16 fighter jets to Turkey, after weighing a Turkish request for the planes for more than a year, congressional sources familiar with the deliberations told CNN.

If approved, the sale would be among the largest arms sales in years. The administration is also discussing a separate sale of 40 F-35 warplanes to Greece. There are longstanding tensions between Turkey and Greece.

Turkey was removed from the F-35 program in 2019 in response to Ankara’s decision to purchase the Russian-made S-400 missile system.

The sale to Turkey could put pressure on Ankara to approve the accession of Sweden and Finland to NATO, a process that Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been blocking since last year.

Finland and Sweden were officially invited to join the alliance at the NATO summit in June last year, but as a NATO member Turkey could block them from joining.

A Finnish official told CNN that Finland has “not been part of any discussions” when it comes to the American F-16s.

“Finland has implemented everything that was agreed in Madrid in June. Now we hope all NATO members help us get our accession process over the finishing line. What comes to American F-16s, we obviously have not been part of any discussions. It is an internal US matter,” the Finnish official said.

It is not clear when the administration plans to make a formal request to Congress, as required by law for foreign military sales. But on Thursday night, the administration sent informal notifications about the prospective sale to the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations committees, kicking off the committee review process, the sources said.

The Wall Street Journal first reported the news.

Most administrations typically give Congress informal notification of proposed sales weeks before taking formal action. The informal notification process is a common practice in which the relevant committees get a heads up on planned sales, allowing committee leadership to raise concerns, give their input, or place holds.

Once the administration formally notifies the full Congress of the intended sale, lawmakers then have 30 days to block the deal, which they can do by passing a joint resolution of disapproval.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Menendez said on Friday that he would not approve any proposed sale of F-16 aircraft to Turkey, continuing his longstanding opposition to providing the weaponry to Ankara.

“As I have repeatedly made clear, I strongly oppose the Biden administration’s proposed sale of new F-16 aircraft to Turkey,” the New Jersey Democrat said. “President Erdogan continues to undermine international law, disregard human rights and democratic norms, and engage in alarming and destabilizing behavior in Turkey and against neighboring NATO allies.”

Menendez has been highly critical of Turkey’s targeting of the Kurds and threatened incursions into northern Syria. He has slammed Ankara’s closeness with Moscow and warned the Turks against purchasing any more S-400 missile systems from Russia. Additionally, Menendez has accused Turkey of repeatedly violating Greek airspace with provocative overflights in the Aegean Sea, calling it “unacceptable behavior from a NATO country” in remarks in Athens last year.

“Until Erdogan ceases his threats, improves his human rights record at home – including by releasing journalists and political opposition – and begins to act like a trusted ally should, I will not approve this sale,” Menendez said.

At the same time, the New Jersey Democrat said he welcomed “the news of the sale of new F-35 fighter aircraft to Greece.”

“This defense capability is not only critical for a trusted NATO ally and enduring partner’s efforts to advance security and stability in the Eastern Mediterranean, but also strengthens our two nations’ abilities to defend shared principles including our collective defense, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law,” he said Friday.

A National Security Council spokesperson referred CNN to the State Department for comment.

“As a matter of policy, the Department is not going to comment on proposed defense sales or transfers until they’ve been formally notified to Congress,” State Department principal deputy spokesperson Vedant Patel said at a briefing Friday.

“But what I would say is that Turkey and Greece both are vital, vital, NATO Allies,” he added, noting that the US has “a history of supporting their security apparatuses.”

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January 13, 2023
What is NOTAM, the FAA computer system that halted all US flights? | CNN Business

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CNN
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A critical Federal Aviation Administration computer system that experienced an outage Wednesday and briefly halted all US flights provides airlines with a digital bulletin board of crucial safety updates.

The system is known as the Notice to Air Missions or NOTAM. It send alerts to pilots to let them know of conditions that could affect the safety of their flights. It is separate from the air traffic control system that keeps planes a safe distance from each other, but it’s another critical tool for air safety.

NOTAM messages could include information about lights being out on a certain runway, or a tower near an airport not having the required safety lights working, or an air show taking place in the air space nearby.

“It’s like telling a trucker that a road is closed up ahead. It’s critical information,” said Mike Boyd, aviation consultant at Boyd Group International.

Boyd and others said Wednesday’s problems are a sign that computer systems need to be upgraded.

“Today’s FAA catastrophic system failure is a clear sign that America’s transportation network desperately needs significant upgrades,” said Geoff Freeman, CEO of the US Travel Association, a trade group for the travel and tourism industries. “Americans deserve an end-to-end travel experience that is seamless and secure. And our nation’s economy depends on a best-in-class air travel system.”

Although many flights take place without needing to see one of those notices, it’s important that NOTAM messages reach the pilots, who are trained to check for them.

The FAA also operates the nation’s air traffic control system, with air traffic controllers using radar to track all planes in their air space and radio communications with their cockpits to guide them safely. The computer systems that are the backbone of ATC system have also been known to go down. But when that happens, it typically only affects one region of country, not the entire nation’s air space.

NOTAM is a national system, so its failure Wednesday meant that flights across the country were ordered not to take off for a couple of hours before they were cleared to fly again shortly before 9 am ET.

If no new problems crop up, flights should return to normal soon, though it may take time to get all the delayed flights in the air. Just before noon ET Wednesday, tracking service FlightAware shows about 7,000 delayed flights to, from and within the United States, with nearly 1,100 canceled flights altogether.

Aviation analytics firm Circium said 23,000 domestic and international flights to or from the United States were scheduled for Wednesday.

“By 6 pm this evening we won’t even know it happened, I think,” said Boyd.

But if the problem stretches too long, flight crews who are standing by to fly delayed flights will run out of time in their service day. In that case, a delayed flight could turn into a canceled one if another fresh crew can’t be found.

NOTAMS has been around for decades. But until December 2021, it was known by the name “Notice to Airmen,” although the acronym remains the same.

It was changed to remove the gendered term and because the notices were also then being sent to drone operators and not just pilots on board aircraft.

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January 13, 2023
Bank earnings fail to impress investors as recession worries rise | CNN Business

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CNN
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JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and asset management giant BlackRock posted results that topped Wall Street’s forecasts Friday, but investors were nonetheless a little disappointed at first.

Trading was choppy, with most bank stocks falling at the open before rebounding. Shares of JPMorgan Chase

(JPM) were up about 2.5% in late afternoon trading while BofA

(BAC) was up 2%. Wells Fargo

(WFC), which reported earnings that missed Wall Street’s targets, reversed earlier losses and was up 3%. Citi

(C) was up 2% while BlackRock

(BLK) was flat.

“The earnings were solid, but the market is concerned with recession fears,” said John Curran, managing director and head of North American bank coverage at MUFG.

Investors might have been concerned by the downbeat tone of the big banks. Executives are clearly still worried about inflation and the threat of a recession this year following several big interest rate hikes by the Federal Reserve.

JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon said in the bank’s earnings statement that although the economy is still strong and that consumers and businesses are spending and healthy, “we still do not know the ultimate effect of the headwinds coming from geopolitical tensions including the war in Ukraine, the vulnerable state of energy and food supplies, persistent inflation that is eroding purchasing power and has pushed interest rates higher.”

The bank added in the earnings release that it now expects a “mild recession” as a base economic case. CFO Jeremy Barnum added during a conference call with reporters that in addition to the slowdown that has already started in its home lending unit, it is starting to see “headwinds” in auto lending.

Meanwhile, BofA CEO Brian Moynihan noted that this is “an increasingly slowing economic environment” and Wells Fargo CEO Charlie Scharf said “we are carefully watching the impact of higher rates on our customers.” Wells Fargo recently announced plans to pull back on its massive mortgage business.

Banks are clearly worried about a looming recession, and Wall Street has taken notice.

Moody’s Investors Service analyst Peter Nerby noted in a report that “credit provisions are rising” at JPMorgan Chase and that Citi “built capital and reserves in anticipation of a slowdown in core markets.”

The Fed’s rate hikes aren’t helping either.

“Higher than expected interest rates pose a significant risk to the outlook for credit quality, loan growth and net interest margins,” said David Wagner, a portfolio manager at Aptus Capital Advisors, in an email.

Concerns about the economy were one reason why stocks plunged in 2022, suffering their worst year since 2008. As a result of the Wall Street slump, there was a major slowdown in merger activity and initial public offerings.

That hurt the investment banking businesses for the top banks. JPMorgan Chase and Citi each said that advisory fees plummeted nearly 60% in the quarter.

Goldman Sachs

(GS) and Morgan Stanley

(MS) will give more color about the health of Wall Street next Tuesday when they both report their fourth quarter results.

Goldman Sachs, which has aggressively built up a consumer banking unit over the past few years, has struggled to make money in that division. Goldman Sachs disclosed in a regulatory filing Friday that it has lost more than $3 billion in its consumer business since 2020.

There were some signs of optimism though. BlackRock, which owns the massive iShares family of exchange-traded funds, reported a rebound in assets under management from the third quarter to the fourth quarter as stocks soared in October and November.

“The current environment offers incredible opportunities for long-term investors,” said BlackRock CEO Larry Fink in the earnings release.

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January 13, 2023
Justice Department announces new rule to regulate pistol-stabilizing braces | CNN Politics

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Attorney General Merrick Garland and Steve Dettelbach, the director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF), announced new regulations Friday that would subject pistol-stabilizing braces to additional regulations, including higher taxes, longer waiting periods and registration.

Gun control proponents argue that stabilizing braces – which can be attached to pistols – effectively transform a pistol into a short-barreled rifle, which are heavily regulated under the National Firearms Act (NFA).

The rule will go into effect as soon as it is published in the Federal Register.

“Almost a century ago, Congress determined that short-barreled rifles must be subject to stricter legal requirements,” Garland said Friday during a call with reporters to outline the new rule. “Policy makers understood then what we know is still true today. Short-barreled rifles present a deadly combination: They are easier to conceal than rifles, but they are more powerful and lethal than pistols.”

“The final rule submitted today makes clear that firearm manufacturers, dealers and individuals cannot evade the important public safety protections passed by Congress simply by adding accessories to pistols that transform them into short-barreled rifles,” he said.

According to the Justice Department, manufacturers, dealers and individual gun owners have 120 days to register tax-free any existing short-barreled rifles covered by the rule. They can also remove the stabilizing brace or surrender covered short-barreled rifles to the ATF, the department said.

“This rule enhances public safety … and helps ensure compliance with the firearms laws that Congress passed almost a century ago,” Dettelbach said on the same call. The rule makes clear, Dettelbach said, that “when pistols are accessorized with certain stabilizing braces, those pistols are converted into rifles” and should be treated as short-barreled rifles under the law.

Restrictions on stabilizing braces have been hotly debated after they were proposed by the ATF in 2020, when the bureau suggested a new rule that would regulate pistol braces under the NFA. The 2020 proposal sparked a major backlash from the groups such as the National Rifle Association.

Republican lawmakers also spoke out against the proposal and sent a letter to then-Attorney General William Barr saying that the proposed regulation was “alarming and jeopardizes law abiding gun owners across the country.” The ATF withdrew the proposed regulation after the letter was released.

The proposal was given new life in 2021 after shooters in Boulder, Colorado, and in Dayton, Ohio, used pistols with stabilizing braces. At the time, Garland unveiled several proposals aimed at curbing gun violence, including reupping the restriction on pistol braces.

“These requirements are important public safety measures because they regulate the transfer of these dangerous weapons and help ensure they do not end up in wrong hands,” the Justice Department said at the time. “The proposed rule would clarify when these attached accessories convert pistols into weapons covered by these heightened regulations.”

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January 13, 2023