The Government Accountability Office (GAO) will investigate whether three members of President Trump's Florida Mar-a-Lago resort had undue influence on his administration's policy for the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA).
Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii) requested a GAO probe in August after a report from ProPublica alleged this "informal council that is exerting sweeping influence on the VA." Multiple current and former VA officials corroborated the report to CNN that month.
The three Mar-a-Lago members implicated are a Palm Beach doctor named Bruce Moskowitz, Marvel Entertainement chair Ike Perlmutter, and an attorney named Marc Sherman. "None of them has ever served in the U.S. military or government," ProPublica reported, "Yet from a thousand miles away, they have leaned on VA officials and steered policies affecting millions of Americans." The three men said they'd simply volunteered requested advice without wielding any real authority.
The GAO told Warren and Schatz in a Nov. 19 letter the investigation is "within the scope of its authority" and will begin in the spring. In the meantime, read more about the VA's longstanding and numerous problems here at The Week. Bonnie Kristian
During his May trip to Baghdad, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo shared a message with Iraqi leaders that he wanted passed on to Iran: If any attacks by the country or its proxies killed any U.S. troops, there would be military action, U.S. officials told The Washington Post.
Pompeo has issued a few private warnings, the officials said. Tensions are mounting between the U.S. and Iran, with the U.S. accusing Iran of attacking oil tankers in the Middle East and Iran, which denies attacking the tankers, saying it will soon violate the 2015 nuclear deal by having too much low-enriched uranium in its stockpile. On Monday, the Pentagon announced it will send 1,000 additional troops to the Middle East, and while at U.S. Central Command headquarters in Tampa on Tuesday, Pompeo said President Trump "does not want war," and the U.S. is in the region to "deter aggression."
U.S. officials told the Post there are concerns that because there hasn't been a confirmed Defense Secretary in several months, the hawks advising Trump — including Pompeo and National Security Adviser John Bolton — are pushing for the military to do more than its mission in the region, which is to eliminate the remnants of the Islamic State. Bolton, the officials added, is careful about what information gets to Trump, and has reduced the number of meetings where top officials discuss the Iran policy. Catherine Garcia
President Trump made some pretty big promises Tuesday night during a rally in Orlando.
The event marked the official launch of his re-election campaign, and during his nearly 90-minute speech, Trump vowed that if he gets a second term, "we will come up with the cures to many, many problems, to many, many diseases, including cancer. We will eradicate AIDS in America, and we're very close."
Trump made several false claims, including that he passed the largest tax cut in history — it was the eighth largest, and smaller than two of former President Barack Obama's tax cuts, The Washington Post has noted — and that the unemployment rate has never been lower (it was 3.6 percent in May, but as low as 2.5 percent in 1953).
Trump railed against socialism, said Democrats are "more unhinged" than they ever have been, and in a moment straight out of 2016, he criticized Hillary Clinton, which triggered the crowd to start chanting, "Lock her up! Lock her up!" In one sign that Trump might be ready to leave the past behind him, he asked the audience to help him decide between sticking with "Make America Great Again" as his slogan or switching to "Keep America Great." By the amount of cheers, The Guardian reports, it was apparent the crowd preferred KAG to MAGA. Catherine Garcia
Scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks were stunned when they discovered that permafrost in the Canadian Arctic is thawing 70 years earlier than predicted.
"What we saw was amazing," Prof. Vladimir E. Romanovsky told Reuters. "It's an indication that the climate is now warmer than at any time in the last 5,000 or more years." The scientists made their last expedition in 2016, visiting a remote location only accessible by propeller plane, and couldn't believe what they saw — there were depressions and ponds and lots of vegetation, a completely different scene from what they saw during their first trip a decade earlier.
Unusually hot summers triggered the thaw, and it is likely other areas of the Canadian Arctic are also affected; the scientists are preparing to expand their study. When permafrost thaws at a fast rate, large amounts of heat-trapping gasses are released into the atmosphere, and that concerns scientists, as this will make global temperatures rise even faster. "Thawing permafrost is one of the tipping points for climate breakdown and it's happening before our eyes," Greenpeace International Executive Director Jennifer Morgan told Reuters. "The premature thawing is another clear signal that we must decarbonize our economies, and immediately." Catherine Garcia
San Francisco's Board of Supervisors voted unanimously on Tuesday for an ordinance it hopes will tackle the "growing health epidemic of youth vaping."
The supervisors voted to amend the health code to ban the sale and distribution of e-cigarettes in the city, and the final vote is expected next week. "This is about thinking about the next generation of users and thinking about protecting the overall health and sending a message to the rest of the state and the country: Follow our lead," Supervisor Ahsha Safai said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in 2018, 4.9 million middle and high school students were vaping, up from 3.6 million in 2017. The e-cigarette company Juul is based in San Francisco, and says vaping is a safer alternative to smoking tobacco. "The prohibition of vapor products for all adults in San Francisco will not effectively address underage use and will leave cigarettes on shelves as the only choice for adult smokers, even though they kill 40,000 Californians every year," Juul spokesman Ted Kwong told NBC News. Catherine Garcia
Federal authorities seized 33,000 pounds of cocaine Tuesday from a ship at Packer Marine Terminal in Philadelphia, the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania said.
This was one of the biggest drug busts in U.S. history, with the cocaine having a street value of more than $1 billion. The U.S. attorney's office said several crew members were arrested and will face federal charges. There have been several major cocaine busts on the East Coast this year, with authorities finding 3,200 pounds at the Port of New York and New Jersey in February and drug dogs sniffing out 1,185 pounds just a month later in Philadelphia.
The drugs were found on a vessel called the MSC Gayane, The Associated Press reports, which made stops in the Bahamas, Panama, Peru, and Colombia. The ship's owner, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., said in a statement it "takes this matter very seriously and is grateful to the authorities for identifying any suspected abuse of its services." Catherine Garcia