LEAGUE CITY, Texas (CBSDFW.COM/CNN) – The hunt is on in Texas for a man who allegedly stabbed a restaurant manager several times after he was told to wear a mask inside a Jack in the Box restaurant.
According to the police in League City, James Schulz, 53, entered the restaurant on the evening of March 17 without a face mask. He was requested to wear one to be served or use the drive thru.
The customer “belligerently refused,” League City Police Chief Gary Ratliff said, and accused the restaurant staff of not wanting to serve him because he was homeless.
Police say Schulz then walked toward the door, and as the manager turned his back, he allegedly ran behind the manager, tackled him and stabbed him multiple times in the arm and upper torso with what appeared to be a pocketknife.
Several co-workers ran to the manager’s aid and Schulz fled the restaurant on a bicycle. The manager was taken to an area hospital with three stab wounds, was treated and released.
Police are still looking for Schulz, who has been described as a transient “bearded, white male” living in the area.
Ratliff said people should respect the mask policies of local businesses.
“All I would ask is that people respect the opinions and the policies of these businesses,” Ratliff said. “You can refuse to do business at those locations, or whatever it is you choose to do, but there’s no reason to resort to aggressive behavior like this.”
(CNN)As investigators piece together the movements and the motive of the suspect in this week’s deadly shootings at three Atlanta-area spas, there’s a fierce debate underway over whether he should face hate crime charges for the attacks that left eight people dead, including six Asian women.
CNN’s Holly Yan, Amir Vera, Gisela Crespo, Amanda Watts, Stephen Collinson, Audrey Ash, Casey Tolan, Nicquel Ellis, Nicole Chavez, Artemis Moshtaghian, Raja Razek, Jamiel Lynch and Kevin Liptak contributed to this report.
Sean Hannity considers whether Vice President Harris is truly running the country, given Biden’s repeated gaffes.
Russian President Vladimir Putin “is openly mocking the president of the United States for his own amusement,” Fox News host Sean Hannity told viewers Thursday, “and frankly, I find it, as an American citizen, humiliating.”
Putin challenged President Biden to an on-air conversation to discuss Biden’s latest warning that Putin would “pay a price,” following a report containing evidence of attempted Russian-interference in the 2020 election.
“I’ve just thought of this now,” Putin told a reporter in Moscow Thursday. “I want to invite President Biden to continue our discussion, but on the condition that we do it actually live. But with no delays, directly in an open, direct discussion.”
Hannity then asked: “Why would Vladimir Putin immediately call for a debate with Joe Biden with no time to prepare? What have I been saying? … When you compare Joe Biden to 2012 and even 2016, Joe Biden looks extremely weak, frail, often confused, and, yes, he is struggling cognitively. It is obvious. This is not brain surgery.”
“Here’s the problem we all have,” the host said later in his monologue. “This world has many evil actors, many hostile regimes like Putin’s Russia, like the mullahs in Iran, like President Xi and China, like North Korea and Kim Jong Un. Guess what? They’re not pollyannaish about Joe Biden. They study Joe Biden and watch our moves every day.
“All of America’s enemies, all of the world’s hostile actors, they are seeing what we are willing to talk about openly. About Joe Biden struggling, kind of a shell of his former self from years gone by, who’s working clearly very hard to get to the weekend.
“Now, we’re going to ask this important question: Is any of this good for the country? Is any of this good for the free world? The answer to that is obvious as well: Not at all.”
“This is why,” the host concluded, “a candidate can never be allowed to hide in their basement an entire campaign and never be asked tough questions.”
The “Hannity” host also mused that Biden’s occasional references to Vice President Kamala Harris as “President Harris” constitute moments of honesty.
“After all, Kamala Harris has taken all the solo calls with world leaders and is holding weekly meetings with the secretary of state,” he said. “Maybe this possibly could be the Harris administration after all.”
That includes Mr. Biden’s more ambitious immigration overhaul, the U.S. Citizenship Act, which would provide legal status to almost all undocumented immigrants in the country, provide money to secure ports of entry and speed up the processing of asylum claims, expand legal immigration and pump $4 billion into Central American countries that have sent a flood of asylum seekers northward to the U.S. border in recent years.
Douglas Rivlin, the communications director at the immigrant advocacy organization America’s Voice, said that bill remained the “North Star” for activists. But groups like his helped coalesce around a strategy to try advancing narrower bills for Dreamers and farmworkers first to test the waters.
“If anything is going to get 60 votes and build a coalition around it, it’s these two bills for deeply rooted, long-term immigrants and deeply rooted agriculture in lots of places, red states,” he said. “It allows us to see where Republicans are.”
House Democratic leaders have pledged to hold a vote on Mr. Biden’s Citizenship Act this year, as well. For now, though, their own members are divided over it, with moderates and progressives at odds over border security provisions.
And in the Senate, Bob Menendez, Democrat of New Jersey and a lead sponsor of the plan, said this week that he would be trying to determine “if we can amalgamate enough people to have a more significant, broader effort.”
Progressives and pro-immigration activists are not holding their breath. They are already pushing Democratic leaders to find a way to force through broad immigration changes without the minority party, including by blowing up the filibuster.
Another option they are discussing is to package a sweeping legalization measure with a large jobs and infrastructure package that enjoys bipartisan support, by including legislation granting a path to citizenship for millions of undocumented essential workers.
Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) said Thursday that he is still feeling some lingering effects nearly a year after first experiencing symptoms of covid-19. Kaine, a member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, tested positive for coronavirus antibodies in May.
The French government has imposed a month-long lockdown on Paris and parts of northern France after a faltering vaccine rollout and spread of highly contagious coronavirus variants forced the president, Emmanuel Macron, to shift course.
Since late January, when he defied the calls of scientists and some in his government to lock down the country, Macron has said he would do whatever was needed to keep the euro zone’s second-largest economy as open as possible. However, this week he ran out of options just as France and other European countries briefly suspended use of the Oxford/AstraZenca vaccine.
The prime minister, Jean Castex, said on Thursday that France was in the grip of a third wave, with the virulent variant first detected in Britain now accounting for about 75% of cases. Intensive care wards are under severe strain, notably in Paris where the incidence rate surpasses 400 infections in every 100,000 inhabitants. “The epidemic is getting worse. Our responsibility now is to not let it escape our control,” Castex told a news conference.
France reported 35,000 new cases on Thursday and there were more Covid patients in intensive care in Paris than at the peak of the second wave. “Four weeks, the time required for the measures to generate a sufficient impact. [It is] the time we need to reach a threshold in the vaccination of the most vulnerable,” Castex said.
The lockdowns will start from Friday at midnight in France’s 16 hardest-hit departments that, with the exception of one on the Mediterranean, form a corridor from Calais to the capital. Barbers, clothing stores and furniture shops will have to close, though bookstores and other shops selling essential goods can stay open.
Schools will stay open and people will be allowed to exercise outdoors within a 10km (6.2 miles) radius of their homes. Travel out of the worst-hit areas will not permitted without a compelling reason. “Go outdoors, but not to party with friends,” the prime minister said.
Castex said France would resume inoculations with the AstraZeneca vaccine after the European Medicines Agency confirmed it was safe. Seeking to shore up public confidence in the vaccine, critical if France is to hit its targets, Castex said he would get the shot on Friday. “I am confident public trust in the vaccine will be restored,” he said, though he acknowledged it may take time.
Although Macron stopped short of ordering a nationwide lockdown, the new restrictions may be extended to other regions if needed and may yet slow the country’s economic recovery. The Paris region is home to nearly one-fifth of the population and accounts for 30% of economic activity.
A nationwide nightly curfew in place since mid-December remains, though it will start an hour later, at 7pm. The government had no regrets about not locking down earlier, Castex said. “It was the right decision in January. We would have had an unbearable three-month lockdown. We did well not to do so.”
Not everyone agrees. In the intensive care unit of a private hospital on the edge of Paris, doctors expressed resignation at having once again to deal with overloaded wards. “We’re back here again,” said ward chief Abdid Widad.
“China, Japan and South Korea have never been on good terms, but people of these roots in the US, please be united because your power will be stronger.”
Over the past year, Asian American women reported 2.3 times as many hate incidents as Asian American men, according to a report released Tuesday by Stop AAPI Hate, a nonprofit organization formed during the pandemic to respond to the increase in attacks against people in the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) community.
Among both men and women, nearly 3,800 hate incidents were reported against AAPI people nationwide over the last year, according to Stop AAPI Hate.
“It is out of sadness and grief that so many Asian American people, especially Asian American women, are calling for change,” said Dr. Melissa May Borja, an assistant professor of American culture at the University of Michigan, who specializes in Asian American history. “So many of us are acknowledging that we’re not surprised by what happened, and so there’s a certain grief associated with knowing that people have been doing these things to our community for a long time, to Asian American women in particular.”
The suspect in Tuesday’s shooting, Robert Long, told investigators that the shootings were not racially motivated and instead blamed a struggle with an “addiction to sex,” according to a statement from the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office. Long was charged with eight counts of murder on Wednesday.
Police have not yet said whether the shooting spree would be classified as a hate crime.
“With this mass shooting in Atlanta, I would like to think it would take the blinders off for folks, but the fact that a lot of the discussion is still sort of evading the fact that six Asian women were murdered and this denial of the fact that their race and their sex was part of this is still deeply problematic,” said Marita Etcubañez, director of strategic initiatives for Asian Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC), a Washington, D.C.,-based nonprofit organization.
“I don’t think the blinders are fully off yet,” she said. “There’s still a lot that we need to grapple with in this situation and just more broadly as a society.”
Even with the bigger societal changes needed, Etcubañez and other advocates said they have been encouraged by the support that has come recently from outside the Asian American community.
Last year, AAJC partnered with Holliback! — a nonprofit that provides training and education to end harassment — to offer virtual training on bystander intervention in response to the increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans.
Since then, AAJC and Holliback! have trained more than 16,000 people in nonviolent ways to stand up for people being harassed.
“I think we were all kind of stunned with the number of people that have been registering for the trainings,” said Etcubañez. “It’s clear to me that people are eager to be able to do something.”
Borja described the increased attention to violence against the Asian community in the United States as a “watershed moment.” She has pivoted her own career in response so as to focus on anti-Asian racism research, which she conducts in partnership with Stop AAPI Hate.
“I do think that we are in a moment where more people who are not Asian American are realizing that this is a problem, a longstanding problem,” she said. “I’ve been encouraged by that and I haven’t seen that level of solidarity and support at other moments in this year of anti-Asian racism associated with the pandemic.”
Borja said she has been struck in particular by the fact that while Asian American women are bearing the brunt of the trauma, it is Asian American women who are now leading the calls for change.
“That’s a critical part of understanding this moment,” she said. “Often times Asian American women are portrayed in popular culture as passive, as quiet, as submissive, and that’s a really problematic rendering of Asian American women.”
“We’re actually pretty feisty and pretty outspoken,” said Borja. “It’s exciting to see Asian American women assert their power in this moment, and I think it’s also maybe surprised some people.”
Here are four things Borja and other experts say people can do now to support Asian Americans, specifically Asian American women.
1. Check in on Asian American friends, colleagues and family.
“One of the most immediate things you can do right now in this moment is reach out to your Asian American friends, especially Asian American women friends, and say that you care and that you’re thinking about them,” said Borja. “We’re not okay. We’re very upset in this moment. It’s a really awful moment.”
Borja said that statements of solidarity from individuals, schools and churches and businesses also have an impact, saying, “It doesn’t seem like a big thing but it does help Asian Americans know that they’re not alone.”
2. Know how to intervene when you see harassment.
Holliback! instructs people to follow five steps when they feel they can safely intervene in a situation.
“When Holliback! talks about bystander intervention, we’re not asking people to put an ‘S’ on their chest and strap on a cape and make some huge gesture that might make them feel uncomfortable,” said Jorge Arteaga, the organization’s deputy director. “We’re always asking them to consider their own safety first, but we are asking them to please at least do one thing, if they feel comfortable doing it.”
Distract: Create a distraction to deescalate the situation.
Delegate: Find someone else to help you.
Document: Document the situation.
“What we counsel is that you should, if you can, record, but you want to make sure you hand [the recording] to that person who experienced the harm so they can choose how to report it, if they even want to report it,” said Arteaga.
Delay: Check in with the person after the harm has happened.
Direct: Create a boundary and then turn your attention to take care of the person being harassed.
3. Don’t continue jokes, stereotypes against Asian Americans
The AAJC uses the phrase “spectrum of disrespect” to describe the different levels of hate that Asian Americans face, with something like the killings in Georgia on one end and a joke or an ill-intentioned compliment on the other end of the spectrum, according to Etcubañez.
“We talk about the spectrum to encourage people to take on the acts that we might view more as micro aggressions,” she said. “Like the statements that some people might dismiss as not a big deal, but to address those things as they happen.”
Giving a personal example, Etcubañez added, “As an Asian American, if I am complimented on my English, some people might say, ‘Why would you object to that? That’s a good thing,’ but you might actually say to the person who offered you the so-called compliment, ‘Why did you feel the need to compliment me on my English?,’ just sort of break it down for them.”
Etcubañez pointed out that while Asian Americans can turn slights into teachable moments, it is not their sole burden to bear. What people outside of the Asian American community say to each other and around each other also matters greatly.
“If you hear a racist joke, you could say, ‘Why do you think that’s humorous?,'” said Etcubañez. “It’s in those moments where we can move the needle a little bit”
4. Advocate for policies that will help Asian Americans.
“One of the important things allies of the Asian American community can do right now is elevate the policy changes that they’re calling for,” said Borja, citing the need for more support, resources and education around anti-Asian American violence.
“Are we making sure that there are ways to help victims of hate incidents? Do people know to report hate incidents?,” she said as examples of what’s needed, considering that comprehensive and accurate statistics on anti-Asian hate are currently sparse. “Are we pushing for an educational curriculum that involves anti-bullying measures, that is inclusive and includes Asian American perspectives?”
Asian Americans Advancing Justice’s Atlanta leaders have called on government leaders there to offer “robust and responsive crisis intervention resources,” noting in a statement, “In Georgia, as in many states across the country, systemic disinvestment from and criminalization of communities of color means that we do not have the infrastructure or resources in place for effective community safety, a robust social service safety net, and in-language support.”
“During this time of crisis for our AAPI community, we call on our local and state government to provide robust and responsive crisis intervention resources, including in-language support for mental health, legal, employment, and immigration services,” the statement continued. “It is time for Georgia to invest in transformative justice that begins with cross racial dialogue and community-building that address the root causes of violence and hate.”
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The Georgia sheriff whose agency is investigating the suspected gunman who allegedly killed eight people in Atlanta-area massage parlors said comments made by a spokesperson were not meant to disrespect the victims.
Cherokee County Sheriff Frank Reynolds issued the remarks Thursday amid criticism and furor over comments made by Capt. Jay Baker that some have deemed racist. On Wednesday, while talking to reporters about suspect Robert Long, who is accused of shooting up three massage parlors Tuesday night, he said the 21-year-old had a very “bad day.”
The comment was in reference to Long’s alleged confession to authorities that he has sex addiction issues and wanted to eliminate any “temptation.” However, some saw the comment as being sympathetic for a White suspect while excusing his actions.
An official told the Washington Post that Baker has been removed as the spokesperson for the massage parlor shootings.
In a statement, Reynolds said his office regrets “any heartache” Baker’s words may have caused.
“Comments made by Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office Captain Jay Baker have become the subject of much debate and anger,” Reynolds said. “In as much as his words were taken or construed as insensitive or inappropriate, they were not intended to disrespect any of the victims, the gravity of this tragedy, or express empathy or sympathy for the suspect.
“There are simply no words to describe the degree of human suffering experienced on Tuesday, March 16, 2021, in our community and in Atlanta,” he added.
Capt. Jay Baker, of the Cherokee County Sheriff’s Office, speaks about the arrest of Robert Aaron Long during a press conference at the Atlanta Police Department headquarters on Wednesday. His comments about suspected gunman Robert Long’s actions have drawn scrutiny. (Alyssa Pointer/Atlanta Journal-Constitution via AP)
Reynolds said he’s known Baker for many years and cited his “personal ties to the Asian community.” Most of the victims were of Asian descent.
Baker has been further criticized after social media posts went viral appearing to show him promote a T-shirt emblazoned with derogatory language about China and the coronavirus pandemic.
BEIJING — The first high-level gathering of U.S. and Chinese officials under President Joe Biden kicked off with an exchange of insults at a pre-meeting press event in Alaska on Thursday.
A planned four-minute photo session for the officials to address reporters ended up lasting one hour and 15 minutes due to a frothy exchange, according to NBC News. Both the Chinese and U.S. side kept calling the reporters back into the room so they could add remarks.
Expectations were already low for the meeting in Anchorage, Alaska, with U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and Yang Jiechi, director of the Central Foreign Affairs Commission of the Chinese Communist Party.
In his opening remarks, Blinken said the U.S. would discuss its “deep concerns with actions by China, including in Xinjiang, Hong Kong, Taiwan, cyber attacks on the United States, economic coercion toward our allies.”
“Each of these actions threaten the rules-based order that maintains global stability. That’s why they’re not merely internal matters, and why we feel an obligation to raise these issues here today,” Blinken said. “I said that the United States’ relationship with China will be competitive where it should be collaborative, word(s) can be adversarial, where (they) must be.”
An installation erected near the U.S. Capitol showcases support for the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act on March 17, 2021.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Communities Uni
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Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Communities Uni
An installation erected near the U.S. Capitol showcases support for the American Dream and Promise Act and the Farm Workforce Modernization Act on March 17, 2021.
Jemal Countess/Getty Images for Communities Uni
The House has overwhelmingly passed a pair of immigration bills that offer a targeted approach to amending the immigration system but have an uncertain future when it comes to passage in the Senate.
The American Dream and Promise Act, which previously passed in the House in 2019, would create a process for undocumented immigrants brought to the U.S. as children — otherwise known as “DREAMers” — to earn permanent resident status and eventual citizenship. It also includes a path to citizenship for people with temporary protected status and beneficiaries of deferred enforced departure. It passed by a vote of 228-197.
“Millions in this country live in fear, holding their breaths every day, that they could be deported to faraway lands that are not their homes,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer said Thursday. “Because America is their home. For Dreamers, it has been their home since their earliest days. And today, this House is going to take action – as we did last Congress – to help them breathe easier.”
The House also approved the Farm Workforce Modernization Act, which would establish a system for agricultural workers to earn temporary status with an eventual option to become a permanent resident. The act would also amend the existing H-2A temporary agricultural worker visa program.
The bills are aimed at tackling pieces of a larger immigration proposal put forth by President Biden at the start of his term. But passing that broad approach through both chambers of Congress is a tall order.
Thursday’s votes follow a week in which immigration was front and center on both sides of the aisle. On Monday, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy led a dozen Republican lawmakers to visit the southern border in El Paso and blamed President Biden for the surge of migrants at the border.
Afterwards, Democratic Rep. Veronica Escobar said the GOP delegation used her district as a “prop” and that the numbers of unaccompanied migrant children had increased during the Trump administration and wasn’t properly addressed.
In an interview on NPR’s Morning Edition Wednesday, she pushed back on the GOP messaging that the surge is driven by Biden taking office.
“The drive to get here, the impulse to get here, the necessity to get here, it doesn’t change depending on who’s in the White House,” she said.
GOP response
Next week, Texas GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz will lead a Senate delegation to tour the Texas-Mexico border and meet with local officials. Both have taken aim at the Biden administration, telling reporters in recent days that immigrants who attempt to enter the United States illegally don’t face consequences and that’s fueling a surge at the border.
House Republicans are also laying out their rebuttal to Democrats’ immigration plans. Rep. María Elvira Salazar, R-Fla., rolled out her own immigration proposal during a press conference at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday.
Her proposal includes increased funding for border security and would give immediate legal status for DREAMers with pathways to permanent legalization.
Additionally, the draft plan creates the “Dignity Program,” which establishes a path for undocumented immigrants who pass a criminal background check, remain employed and pay income taxes to receive renewable five-year visas to maintain legal status. After completing the Dignity Program, participants have the option to participate in the “Redemption Program” to earn eventual permanent resident status.
“No political party holds a monopoly on compassion in our county,” she said. “We Republicans, we’re compassionate too. We want to give dignity to those who have lived here among us for years, and to those who want to come into this country — but they have to follow the law.”
Addressing the surge at the border
Testifying before a House panel on Wednesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the United States is on track to see the highest number of migrants on the country’s southern border than at any time in the last 20 years.
He said the U.S. needs to “finally fix the immigration system” and to address the root causes of migration from countries like Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
“The president is committed to restarting that critical element of an overarching approach to our border and the issues of migration that have challenged our nation for so many years,” he said.
As NPR’s Franco Ordoñez reports, the U.S. government had over 4,000 unaccompanied migrant children in custody as of Sunday. By law, children are meant to spend no more than 72 hours in the detention facilities before moving to more hospitable facilities run by the Department of Health and Human Services. On average, they are now spending 117 hours in Border Patrol custody.
To respond to the increasing numbers of migrants at the border, the Biden administration has mobilized the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA, to assist with processing the uptick in migrants over the next 90 days. The federal government aims to move unaccompanied children from U.S. Customs and Border Protection to HHS more quickly and then place them with a family member or sponsor while their asylum claims are adjudicated.
Senate faces tougher immigration fight
Senate Democratic Whip Dick Durbin, a key figure in the Senate’s efforts to move comprehensive immigration legislation forward, has sounded pessimistic about the chances of passing any major overhaul of the system in the near future.
Durbin has said the fact that the House is moving forward with only piecemeal provisions of Biden’s proposal is a reminder that neither chamber has the bipartisan support needed to take up the larger effort now.
“Even with a majority, this comprehensive [bill] is still a very difficult thing to achieve,” Durbin told Capitol Hill reporters.
The two provisions approved by the House were previously part of legislation that won Republican support, as well as a 2013 bipartisan bill put together by a so-called Gang of Eight, which included Durbin. However, the legislation has failed to get final passage in Congress.
Some, including West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, has pointed to the 2013 bill as a potential path to compromise. However, other previous members of the Gang of Eight, which includes Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and Marco Rubio of Florida, now argue the window has passed for such a proposal.
New Jersey Democratic Sen. Bob Menendez has said he’s not ready to “wave the red flag” before the Senate can get going on bipartisan talks in earnest.
Rather, Menendez has said he sees a potential to get the larger legislation or smaller version of it done one way or another, and Democrats are working to negotiate with Republicans.
“It’s a constant effort to build a coalition,” said Menendez, the lead senator on Biden’s larger proposal.
However, Menendez said the party could also consider taking up immigration overhaul efforts by way of reconciliation, the legislative vehicle Democrats used to work around Republican opposition to approve a $1.9 trillion pandemic relief bill that was signed into law last week.
In the end, a pathway for legal residency for 11 million people remains the goal, he said.
“We’re in a constant effort to try to achieve that and we’ll see. All of the options are on the table,” Menendez said. “If we think that getting there through different segments can make it happen, great. We’re looking at reconciliation as a vehicle, as a possibility for some, if not all of it. We’re looking at appropriation bills, some of the things that we call for in our reform bill are about appropriation-related issues. So we’re looking at all the options.”
And Rettig pushed back against complaints about a backlog of unprocessed tax returns at the agency, pointing to the coronavirus pandemic and recent tax legislation approved by Congress.
“The importance of getting through this is not lost on anyone,” he told the Ways and Means subcommittee on oversight.
His comments came one day after the IRS announced it was postponing the main tax-filing deadline until May 17 from the usual April 15, and amid an unusually difficult filing season for the agency.
The deadline postponement was demanded by lawmakers in both parties, and Rettig made clear he did not like the idea. That’s partly because it would make it harder for the IRS to launch the new child tax credit program — which involves creating a special Web portal for beneficiaries — that is supposed to open for business on July 1, he said.
“The same people who do our income tax processing” and stimulus check processing “are the people who need to develop that portal, so I don’t have the resources to devote to that portal until filing season ends,” he said. “We now have one month less to do the development.”
“We intend to do our best to get there — I’m hopeful that I don’t have to come to the committee to say that we’re unable to meet the statutory requirement” to launch by July 1.
The agency may not be able to distribute the payments on a monthly basis “right out of the box,” he added, noting the legislation calls for “periodic” disbursements.
As part of Democrats’ coronavirus legislation, they greatly expanded the child tax credit, especially for low-income people, and ordered the Treasury Department to devise a way for people to claim a fraction of the break throughout the year.
Regarding unemployment benefits, Rettig said the agency is still working out the kinks but that it expects to announce that people who’ve already filed their tax returns this year won’t have to amend them in order to take a new tax break on the first $10,200 in benefits they receive.
“We believe that we will be able to handle this on our own — we believe that we will be able to automatically issue refunds associated with the $10,200,” he said.
Some lawmakers complained about the agency not extending the deadline for estimated taxes, noting they’re paid by gig workers, for example. Rettig was not interested.
“There’s a large contingent of wealthy individuals in this country who do not make their estimated payments,” he said. “We’re not going to give them a break on interest and penalties.”
The deadline extension is “an accommodation for the most vulnerable individuals — we only extended the 1040 for individuals,” he said.
A San Antonio man who was arrested Wednesday outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris had 113 rounds of rifle ammunition, along with his AR-15, in his car, according to a Metropolitan Police Department report.
Paul Murray, 31, was stopped by Secret Service officers outside the Naval Observatory, where the vice president’s home is located. Though he was unarmed, police searched his car parked in a Washington DC garage, finding the rifle and the ammunition. He was arrested on suspicion of carrying a dangerous weapon, carrying a rifle or shotgun outside of a business, possession of unregistered ammunition and possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device.
In the District of Columbia, it is illegal to travel there without registering your firearm and ammunition.
Murray, who most recently lived in Bryan, had been on law enforcement’s radar before he drove to Washington DC, according to an intelligence bulletin put out by the College Station Police Department on March 10.
In a news release following Murray’s arrest, the Brazos County Sheriff’s Office said they were in contact with Murray due to family members’ concerns over his behavior.
“There were no criminal violations found, but our agency continued to monitor the situation because of concerning behavior and statements, as well as, information that Murray may have been in possession of weapons,” according to the news release.
As deputies and health care providers worked to obtain a mental health evaluation for Murray, investigators received information that Murray had gone to Washington.
“We communicated that information with our local and federal partners, in an effort to ensure the safety of all involved,” according to the sheriff’s office news release.
As another pandemic wave staggers Europe, the continent’s top drug regulator said on Thursday that the AstraZeneca vaccine was safe, hoping to allay fears of possible side effects from a shot that is a vital weapon in the anti-coronavirus arsenal, and prompt more than a dozen countries to resume using it.
But the regulator, the European Medicines Agency, said a new warning label would be added to the vaccine so that people in the medical community could be on the lookout for a potential rare complication leading to blood clots and bleeding in the brain.
Despite reports of a small number of cases of dangerous blood clots in people who had received the vaccine, a review of millions of cases found that it does not increase the overall risk of clots, though “there are still some uncertainties,” said Dr. Sabine Straus, who heads the agency’s risk assessment committee.
The E.M.A., an arm of the European Union, signaled that even if that threat proves to be real it is a small one, and the AstraZeneca shot, like many other drugs considered effective and safe, will prevent vastly more illness and death than it might cause — the same message conveyed by the World Health Organization and independent experts. Officials want to bolster confidence in a crucial vaccine, and in a stumbling European inoculation campaign that has fueled mistrust of governments across the continent.
Republicans, led by GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy, are seeking to remove Swalwell from the House Intelligence Committee over his 2012-2015 interactions with Christine Fang, the accused foreign agent. Fang helped fundraise for Swalwell’s campaign in 2014 and once placed an intern in his House office. But when Swalwell was briefed on concerns about Fang in 2015, he says he immediately cut off contact and cooperated with the bureau’s probe.
An FBI official has previously defended Swalwell, telling outlets in December that Swalwell was “completely cooperative” and “under no suspicion of wrongdoing,”
House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy intends to force a vote on Swalwell’s committee post Thursday afternoon, contending that the Democrat’s interactions with Fang disqualify him from holding the sensitive assignment. Swalwell wouldn’t be eligible for a security clearance in the private sector and shouldn’t therefore be granted access to national security secrets through the intelligence panel, McCarthy argued at a Thursday press conference.
Asked to explain his push against Swalwell, McCarthy fell back on classified information he says he received in an FBI briefing last year. “I cannot talk to you about what I was given in a classified briefing,” he said, adding that the public record of Swalwell’s relationship with Fang should be enough to disqualify him.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who unilaterally appoints the Democratic members of the House Intelligence Committee, has stood behind Swalwell, saying she has “no concerns” about his actions.
House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff also defended Swalwell Thursday, issuing a statement of support in a “Dear Colleague” letter aimed at rallying the Democratic caucus to his side. Schiff noted that Republicans — including the panel’s current ranking GOP member Devin Nunes of California and then-Speaker John Boehner — were briefed on the matter in 2015 and raised no concerns about Swalwell’s ability to continue serving on the committee.
“It’s disturbing that Leader McCarthy is attempting to weaponize classified counterintelligence briefings as a political cudgel, and use them to smear a House colleague in the process,” Schiff said. “Members face real counterintelligence risks from sophisticated actors, and bad faith political attacks on Members will only make it more difficult to respond.”
Members of Congress are not required to receive security clearances to access classified intelligence, though calls to strip members of the House Intelligence Committee of their access to classified information have become well-worn political weapons in recent years.
Fang first interacted with Swalwell when he held a city council post in California, one of several back-and-forths she reportedly had with local officials across the country. She maintained those contacts until 2015, when intelligence officials’ alarm grew about her relationship with Swalwell, and they offered him a “defensive briefing.” Those briefings are meant to alert the targets of potential foreign operations in order to protect information from falling into the wrong hands.
Swalwell told POLITICO in December that he feared the initial Fang story, which he said he first learned Axios was pursuing in mid-2019, was planted to damage him after he emerged as a prominent Trump critic during a short-lived presidential bid.
“The timing feels like that should be looked at,” he said at the time.
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