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sabra's JournalWhite House task force kept airport Covid screeners in place despite known risk of infection, source
Source: CNBC
In a nearly 17-year career with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Officer Omar E. Palmer had encountered plenty of precarious situations, from suitcases filled with weapons and drugs to disorderly passengers in John F. Kennedy Airport’s international terminal.
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Palmer was among hundreds of federal personnel whose responsibilities were adjusted to include evaluating the health of passengers arriving from overseas. “U.S. Customs and Border Protection Officer Omar Palmer performed many assigned tasks with professionalism and integrity, his passing was tragic and we kindly ask that you respect his family’s privacy during this difficult time,” an agency spokesman at JFK said.
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In interviews with dozens of federal employees and task force officials over four months, CNBC learned that the program proved not only ineffective but dangerous from its earliest days. One former official on the White House coronavirus task force estimated that that three- to four-dozen personnel were infected by the end of May. To compare, nine travelers out of thousands screened in the program were detected to have been infected by the end of September.
Yet the White House chose not to dismantle it, in a bid to avoid worrying the public.
Read more: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/12/21/white-house-covid-task-force-kept-airport-health-screeners-in-place-despite-risk.html
Barr Says He Sees No Reason to Appoint Special Counsel to Investigate Hunter Biden
Source: Bloomberg
AP NewsAlert: Barr Says He Sees No Reason to Appoint Special Counsel to Investigate Hunter Biden; Says He Won't Appoint One
Washington (AP) -- Barr says he sees no reason to appoint special counsel to investigate Hunter Biden; says he won't appoint one.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-21/ap-newsalert-barr-says-he-sees-no-reason-to-appoint-special-counsel-to-investigate-hunter-biden-says-he-won-t-appoint-one?utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_source=twitter&utm_content=business&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business
House Panel Subpoenas HHS, CDC Heads in Coronavirus Probe
Source: WSJ
WASHINGTON—A House oversight subcommittee subpoenaed two top Trump administration health officials on Monday for documents that could shed light on alleged political interference at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention throughout the coronavirus pandemic.
The subpoenas, issued by the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, were served to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar and CDC Director Robert Redfield. They require both officials to hand over documents the committee had previously requested, which House officials had said the Trump administration was attempting to conceal.
“The subpoenas were necessary because the Select Subcommittee’s investigation has revealed that efforts to interfere with scientific work at CDC were far more extensive and dangerous than previously known,” Rep. James Clyburn (D., S.C.), the committee’s chairman, wrote in a letter accompanying the subpoenas.
Representatives for HHS and the CDC didn’t return requests for comment.
Read more: https://www.wsj.com/articles/house-panel-subpoenas-hhs-cdc-heads-in-coronavirus-probe-11608562819
Trump Signs Order Mandating 'Beautiful' New Federal Architecture
Source: Bloomberg
President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Monday making classical architecture the preferred style for federal buildings in Washington, a White House official said Monday.
The presidential action stops short of mandating that all new federal buildings are built in a classical style, saying merely that they must be “beautiful.”
Under the order, a “Council for Improving Federal Civic Architecture” will be formed to recommenced updates to the General Services Administration’s architectural guidelines.
The administration has been writing the executive order for months, and an early draft that would have banned modernist design prompted condemnation from the American Institute of Architects and the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-21/trump-signs-order-mandating-beautiful-new-federal-architecture
Jared Kushner helped create a Trump campaign shell company that secretly paid the president
Source: Business Insider
EXCLUSIVE: Jared Kushner helped create a Trump campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent $617 million in reelection cash, a source tells Insider
President Donald Trump's most powerful advisor, Jared Kushner, approved the creation of a campaign shell company that secretly paid the president's family members and spent almost half of the campaign's $1.26 billion war chest, a person familiar with the operation told Insider.
The operation acted almost like a campaign within a campaign. It paid some of Trump's top advisors and family members while shielding financial and operational details from public scrutiny.
When Kushner and others created the company in April 2018, they picked Trump's daughter-in-law Lara Trump, to become its president, Vice President Mike Pence's nephew John Pence as its vice president, and Trump campaign CFO Sean Dollman as its treasurer and secretary, the person who spoke on the condition of anonymity said.
Insider independently verified details of this person's account with other sources close to the Trump campaign.
Read more: https://www.businessinsider.com/jared-kushner-trump-campaign-shell-company-family-ammc-lara-2020-12
(Axios) Scoop: Trump pardons expected today
Source: Axios
President Trump plans to issue a wave of pardons today, moving to expedite acts of clemency before Christmas, according to a source with direct knowledge and advocates who have been briefed on the plans.
What to watch: Trump has been considering pardons for friends and allies, as Axios reported, interrupting conversations with associates to spontaneously suggest he add them to his pardon list. He already pardoned his former national security advisor Michael Flynn.
It was unclear who will be included in this batch.
Sen. Rand Paul called on Trump to pardon Edward Snowden in an article for The Federalist on Thursday. A source with direct knowledge of the planning said they did not expect Trump to follow through with a Snowden pardon.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/trump-pardons-christmas-bff29efa-b52b-4336-9fa4-650c13558a96.html?stream=politics&utm_source=alert&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=alerts_politics
Nuclear weapons agency breached amid massive cyber onslaught
Source: Politico
The Energy Department and National Nuclear Security Administration, which maintains the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile, have evidence that hackers accessed their networks as part of an extensive espionage operation that has affected at least half a dozen federal agencies, officials directly familiar with the matter said.
On Thursday, DOE and NNSA officials began coordinating notifications about the breach to their congressional oversight bodies after being briefed by Rocky Campione, the chief information officer at DOE.
They found suspicious activity in networks belonging to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), Sandia and Los Alamos national laboratories in New Mexico and Washington, the Office of Secure Transportation and the Richland Field Office of the DOE. The hackers have been able to do more damage at FERC than the other agencies, the officials said, but did not elaborate.
Federal investigators have been combing through networks in recent days to determine what hackers had been able to access and/or steal, and officials at DOE still don’t know whether the attackers were able to access anything, the people said, noting that the investigation is ongoing and they may not know the full extent of the damage “for weeks.”
Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/12/17/nuclear-agency-hacked-officials-inform-congress-447855
Pfizer Says No Vaccine Shipments Have Been Delayed
Source: Bloomberg
Pfizer Inc. said it has shipped all 2.9 million doses of the Covid-19 vaccine that the U.S. government ordered this week and that it has millions more doses sitting in warehouses awaiting instructions for where to ship.
Officials from Operation Warp Speed have said that the second shots of the two-dose vaccines are being withheld until they are due in three weeks.
Some governors have complained this week that their allocations of Pfizer’s vaccine are less than what they had expected. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said Pfizer is experiencing production issues, an assertion that Pfizer rejected. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar made similar claims in a briefing Wednesday.
Pfizer’s statement Thursday is the latest volley in a back-and-forth between Pfizer and U.S. officials over vaccine supply as the first shots roll out.
Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-17/pfizer-says-no-vaccine-shipments-have-been-delayed?utm_campaign=socialflow-organic&utm_medium=social&cmpid=socialflow-twitter-business&utm_content=business&utm_source=twitter
House Democrats roll out resolution calling for Biden to forgive $50,000 of borrowers' student debt
Source: VOX
The pressure is building for President-elect Joe Biden to cancel federal student debt. The latest: a resolution led by prominent House Democrats urging Biden to act.
On Thursday, Reps. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Alma Adams (D-NC), and Maxine Waters (D-CA) are introducing a resolution, shared exclusively with Vox, that pushes the incoming Biden administration to take action on student debt. The resolution doesn’t force the next administration to do anything, but calls on Biden to forgive up to $50,000 of federal debt for student borrowers. It’s the companion to a Senate resolution put forth by Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) in the fall.
“The student debt crisis is a racial and economic justice issue and we must finally begin to address it as such,” Pressley said in a statement accompanying the resolution. “Broad-based student debt cancellation is precisely the kind of bold, high-impact policy that the broad and diverse coalition that elected Joe Biden and Kamala Harris expect them to deliver.”
The United States has a mounting student debt problem: 45 million Americans owe a total of about $1.6 trillion in student loans, and one in 10 loans are in delinquency or default. The Federal Reserve estimates the typical monthly payment to be between $200 and $299.
Read more: https://www.vox.com/2020/12/17/22179577/biden-student-debt-house-resolution
Dominion Voting demands Sidney Powell retract "baseless" election claims
Source: Axios
Dominion Voting Systems sent a letter to former Trump campaign lawyer Sidney Powell on Wednesday night demanding that she retract her “wild, knowingly baseless and false accusations” about the company’s voting machines.
Why it matters: The letter is the first step in possible legal action against Powell, who has made several public appearances claiming, without evidence, that Dominion's machines were involved in an international communist conspiracy to commit voter fraud and rig the election against President Trump.
Specifically, Powell has claimed that the company worked with Hugo Chávez, the late Venezuelan dictator, and employed machines with a "vote flipping" algorithm.
The Trump campaign announced in November that Powell was no longer working with President Trump or the campaign after a wild press conference in which she said President-elect Biden won the 2020 election thanks to "communist money" from the Venezuelan regime.
Read more: https://www.axios.com/dominion-voting-sidney-powell-retraction-d2942b1e-e370-4491-8e50-ada3182d61c3.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=organic&utm_content=1100
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