Rep. Ro Khanna: US should be moving toward Medicare for all to cure inequities
ABC News
After an onslaught of criticism toward the insurance industry following the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., expressed sympathy for the victim, but acknowledged the debate it sparked over inequities in the health care system.
“There is no justification for violence,” Khanna told ABC “This Week” anchor Martha Raddatz. “But the outpouring afterwards has not surprised me.”
Thompson’s killing led to an ongoing massive manhunt for the suspected killer and sparked rampant discussion online about the cost of health care and the insurance industry in the United States.
Khanna said he agrees with the assessment of independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who wrote: “We waste hundreds of billions a year on health care administrative expenses that make insurance CEOs and wealthy stockholders incredibly rich while 85 million Americans go uninsured or underinsured. Health care is a human right. We need Medicare for All.”
Khanna said that the U.S. should be moving toward Medicare for all.
“After years, Sanders is winning this debate,” Khanna said.
Khanna has said he supports Trump’s efforts to create a “Department of Government Efficiency” to cut wasteful federal spending. The president-elect appointed Elon Musk and Vivek Ramawamy to lead the effort and the pair was on Capitol Hill this week to discuss their plans.
Khanna told Raddatz that “they should look at the extraordinary waste,” examining Medicare and private health costs, as well as defense spending.
“I think when it comes to defense, getting better defense for value and cutting costs, there can be huge bipartisan cooperation,” said Khanna.
The congressman emphasized that cuts to Social Security, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and Medicare should not be on the table.
Despite bipartisan calls to address federal spending, the United States’ debt stands at more than $36 trillion.
Khanna said he has communicated with Musk regarding his cost-cutting efforts and praised the SpaceX founder’s work with the Obama administration for the private sector to engage in space exploration.
Khanna was also asked about his thoughts on the looming possibility of a ban of TikTok in the U.S. unless it finds a new owner following a Federal Appeals Court ruling on Friday that rejected TikTok’s bid to overturn the law.
In previous interviews on “This Week,” Khanna spoke about his opposition to a bill that would require TikTok to divest from its Chinese parent company or face a ban.
“I don’t think it’s going to pass First Amendment scrutiny because I think there are less restrictive alternatives,” he told “This Week” co-anchor Jonathan Karl in April.
On Sunday, Khanna said he still believes that TikTok won’t face a ban, noting how many politicians themselves are on the platform.
“Let’s see where it goes with the Supreme Court,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — There were many mistakes made on the day of the July assassination attempt of former President Donald Trump by the Secret Service, but an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security revealed systemic issues within the organization and found that without reforms to the agency, “another Butler can and will happen again.”
In the aftermath of the Butler, Pennsylvania, assassination attempt, DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas assigned a panel of four former law enforcement and national security officials to examine what went wrong, and how they recommend the Secret Service moves forward after the attempt on former president’s life.
“The Secret Service does not perform at the elite levels needed to discharge its critical mission,” the letter addressed to Secretary Mayorkas said, which was included in the report. “The Secret Service has become bureaucratic, complacent, and static even though risks have multiplied and technology has evolved.”
On the independent panel are former DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano, former Deputy Attorney General Mark Filip, former Maryland State Police Superintendent David Mitchell and former Deputy National Security Adviser Fran Townsend.
The scathing 35-page report from the independent panel said the findings illustrated “deeper concerns” within the U.S. Secret Service.
“The Panel has observed that many of the Secret Service personnel involved in the events of July 13 appear to have done little in the way of self-reflection in terms of identifying areas of missteps, omissions, or opportunities for improvement,” the report said. “July 13 represents a historic security failure by the Secret Service which almost led to the death of a former president and current nominee and did lead to the death of a rally attendee.”
The panel said that even a “superficial” level of reflection would have been meaningful.
Plaguing the Secret Service are “corrosive cultural attitudes” regarding resourcing events – a “do more with less” attitude, according to the report.
The report also found there was a troubling “lack of critical thinking” by Secret Service personnel “before, during and after” the assassination attempt.
“A prominent instance of this is the fact that personnel had been read into significant intelligence regarding a long range threat by a foreign state actor against former President Trump, but failed to ensure that the AGR building was secured despite its proximity to the rally stage and the obvious high angle line of sight issues it presented,” the report found.
Other instances “revealed a surprising lack of rigor in considering the specific risks posed to particular individual protectees.”
The report said, for example, Trump, though not formally the Republican nominee at the time, had essentially clinched it months before and thus the Secret Service’s approach was formulaic “rather than an individualized assessment of risk.”
The failure to take ownership of planning the Butler rally and the lack of cohesion with state and local law enforcement during the planning of events, a lack of experienced agents to perform “certain critical security tasks,” a lack of auditing mechanisms to learn from mistakes in the field, a lack of training facilities, and a lack of agents feeling comfortable to speak up.
In particular, the operational tempo for younger agents who came up during the COVID-19 pandemic was slower than most election years, and thus those agents did not get as much experience in the field as agents would normally get.
The panel is calling for new leadership at the Secret Service – saying the agency needs a change with people from outside the agency.
“Many of the issues that the Panel has identified throughout this report, particularly regarding the Panel’s “deeper concerns,” are ultimately attributable, directly or indirectly, to the Service’s culture,” the report said. “A refreshment of leadership, with new perspectives, will contribute to the Service’s resolution of those issues.”
Among the other recommendations the panel made are a restructuring of the agency’s protective office, new training initiatives, new communication technologies that are more reliable and an evaluation “of the Secret Service’s method for how it resources protectees to ensure that it is risk-based, and not overly formulaic or reliant on a protectee’s title for making resource determinations.”
“The Panel also recognizes the bravery and selflessness exhibited by Secret Service agents and officers who put themselves in harm’s way to protect their protectees, including in Butler after Crooks fired at former President Trump and others. However, bravery and selflessness alone, no matter how honorable, are insufficient to discharge the Secret Service’s no-fail protective mission.”
Specific to July 13, the panel’s findings are in line with the Secret Service’s mission assurance review that came out last month.
Some of the findings are an absence of law enforcement to secure the AGR building where Thomas Matthew Crooks eventually fired from, the failure to mitigate the line of site from that building, having two communications rooms, the failure of anyone to encounter Crooks despite spotting him 90 minutes before Trump took the stage, the failure to inform the former president’s detail and the drone detection system not working.
The panel recommends the Service has integrated communications, a mandatory situation report when a protectee arrives, better counter-drone technologies and an advanced line of site mitigations.
A footnote in the report says the second assassination attempt against Trump didn’t impact the panel’s work but might’ve reinforced the report.
The panel recommends the Service implement the Butler reforms no later than March 31, 2025, and the broader reforms by the end of 2025.
Rep. Nancy Mace; Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Rep. Nancy Mace said Tuesday that the bill she introduced to ban transgender women from using biological women’s restrooms at the U.S. Capitol was “absolutely” in response to Rep.-elect Sarah McBride’s entering Congress.
“Yes, and absolutely. And then some,” Mace told reporters at the Capitol.
“I’m not going to stand for a man, you know, someone with a penis, in the women’s locker room,” she said.
McBride, a Democrat from Delaware, didn’t respond to questions on the topic as she entered the House Democratic caucus meeting Tuesday morning.
Monday night, she responded to Mace in a post on X, saying, “This is a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing.”
Outside the Republican conference meeting, GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia called McBride a “biological man” and said she had confronted House Speaker Mike Johnson at during the House Republican Conference meeting Tuesday morning about what “men in leadership” would do to address their concerns.
“You know, Sarah McBride, as he calls himself, formerly Tim McBride, is a biological man, and he should not be using any of our restrooms in the Capitols, in the in our office buildings. But Nancy Mace’s resolution doesn’t go far enough,” Greene said.
“A resolution is just a statement by Congress saying that Congress disagrees with something we need, something more binding. And that’s what I just brought up at the microphones there — in our conference, I directly asked Speaker Johnson what the men in our leadership are going to do about this, because this this has to be stopped,” Greene added.
Mace invoked her own experiences as a victim of rape as part of the reason she introduced the measure.
“That’s not okay. And I’m a victim of abuse myself. I’m a rape survivor,” Mace said. “I have PTSD from the abuse I’ve suffered at the hands of a man, and I know how vulnerable women and girls are in private spaces, so I’m absolutely 100% going to stand in the way of any man who wants to be in a women’s restroom, in our locker rooms, in our changing rooms. I will be there fighting you every step of the way,” she said.
Mace told ABC’s John Parkinson that she wanted to expand her efforts and push a measure that would ban transgender women from using biological women’s bathrooms on all federal property.
“Number one, I want to see this in the House Rules package. I want to make sure that no men are in women’s private spaces. And it’s not going to end here. This shouldn’t be going on any federal property. If you’re a school or an institution that gets government funding, this kind of thing should be banned. I think it’s sick. It’s twisted,” Mace said.
Mace said that her position was a feminist one.
“I have fought like hell for women’s rights. I mean, 25 years ago, this year, I became the first woman to break the glass ceiling and graduate from a military college that was formerly all male, and to see the way that I’ve been attacked today and last night for fighting to protect women and girls — it’s ridiculous. So, if that — being a feminist makes me an extremist, I’m totally here for it,” she said.
“And if McBride wants to go to the gym, she can go to Planet Fitness, where they allow biological men to be around in a room in a private space with underage girls like no thank you. It’s not going to happen, not on my watch,” Mace said.
During his weekly news conference Tuesday morning, Johnson declined to speak about McBride’s gender when asked by a reporter whether she is a man or woman. Johnson also would not say if he’d support Mace’s proposal to ban transgender women from women bathrooms in the Capitol.
Asked whether McBride is a man or a woman, he responded, “Look, I’m not going to get into this. We welcome all new members with open arms who are duly elected representatives of the people. I believe it’s a it’s a command we treat all persons with dignity and respect. We will. And I’m not going to engage in silly debates about this. There’s a concern about uses of restroom facilities and locker rooms and all that. This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before. We’re going to do that in deliberate fashion with every consensus on it, and we will accommodate the needs of every single person.”
Then asked whether he would respond to Mace’s measure, he answered, “I’m not going to address plans on any of that. I just told you what I’m going to say about the issue. I’m not going to engage in this. We don’t look down upon anyone. We treat everybody. That’s a principle that would have pursued my whole life issue, a first impression for Congress, as we will any other thing. We’ll provide appropriate accommodation for every member of Congress.”
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris indicated in a “60 Minutes” interview out Monday that she could get her economic policies through a Republican-controlled Congress, despite the potential for opposition from Republican lawmakers to her proposed tax breaks that drive up the federal deficit.
In a clip of the interview released Monday, “60 Minutes” correspondent Bill Whitaker pressed Harris on how she would pay for the policies, which include tax breaks for small business owners, parents and first-time homebuyers.
“How are you going to get this through Congress?” Whitaker asked.
“You know, when you talk quietly with a lot of folks in Congress, they know exactly what I’m talking about because their constituents know exactly what I’m talking about; their constituents are those firefighters and teachers and nurses,” the vice president responded.
The “60 Minutes” interview, which will air in full Monday night, is the second time in recent weeks Harris has been asked to describe how she would fund her policies.
MSNBC’s Stephanie Ruhle asked her in an interview last month, “If you can’t raise corporate taxes, or if GOP takes control of the Senate, where do you get the money to do that?”
“Well, but we’re going to have to raise corporate taxes. And we’re going to have to raise — we’re going to have to make sure that the biggest corporations and billionaires pay their fair share,” answered Harris.
The vice president speaks often about her economic plans — a key voter issue in the election — while on the campaign trail, too. Her plans are geared toward helping working-class Americans as she tries to gain ground on an issue, which surveys suggest former President Donald Trump is winning.
In an economics-focused speech last month in Pittsburgh, Harris touted a “pragmatic” vision for the economy, saying she would be “grounded in my fundamental values of fairness, dignity and opportunity.”
Harris, though, is likely to face continuing questions about her plans to fund her ideas.
In another pre-released exceprt of the “60 Minutes” interview, Whitaker challenged Harris on whether Israeli Prime Minister Benyamin Netanahu is “listening” to the Biden administration’s urges to defuse tensions in the Middle East.
“Well, Bill, the work that we have done has resulted in a number of movements in that region by Israel that were very much prompted by or a result of many things, including our advocacy for what needs to happen in the region,” Harris said.
Asked if the United States has “a real close ally in Prime Minister Netanyahu,” Harris responded, “I think, with all due respect, the better question is: do we have an important alliance between the American people and the Israeli people? And the answer to that question is yes.”
Harris’ “60 Minutes” interview is part of a flurry of interviews she has set for this week, including with “The View,” “The Howard Stern Show” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,” a senior campaign official said.
Her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz, also has a media blitz planned this week with stops at “Jimmy Kimmel Live” as well as being part of the “60 Minutes” interview.
Both Harris and Walz will spend time campaigning out West this week with stops in Nevada and Arizona, according to the senior campaign official.
