Presented by ExxonMobil To view past editions of The Hill's 12:30 Report, click here: http://bit.ly/1M1mIfw To receive The Hill's 12:30 Report in your inbox, please sign up here: http://bit.ly/1Tt4hqN --> A midday take on what's happening in politics and how to have a sense of humor about it.* *Ha. Haha. Hahah. Sniff. Haha. Sniff. Ha--breaks down crying hysterically. The Hill’s 12:30 Report: Increased security on Capitol Hill amid QAnon’s March 4 date | House leaves early | Sights and sounds | House passes election reform bill | Summer could be ‘normal,’ but experts warn that US risks delaying that | Urge remaining vigilant in the homestretch | Biden’s COVID-19 bet | Dolly Parton gets vaccine | Leslie Jones on Steve Kornacki’s election coverage HAPPENING TODAY 00 Days Since The Last Big Threat Of Violence To The US Capitol ... ^ we had been doing SO well: Via The Hill’s Cristina Marcos and Rebecca Beitsch , “Alarming revelations of threats to the Capitol and members of Congress prompted House Democratic leaders to wrap up their legislative work for the week on Wednesday night, underscoring the security concerns that remain nearly two months after the Jan. 6 insurrection.” https://bit.ly/3e64nqT Why today : March 4 was the date of presidential inaugurations until 1933. QAnon conspiracy theorists believe that former President Trump Donald Trump Trump State Department appointee arrested in connection with Capitol riot Intelligence community investigating links between lawmakers, Capitol rioters Michelle Obama slams 'partisan actions' to 'curtail access to ballot box' MORE will return to office today. YESTERDAY’S HEARING ON JAN. 6 — FIVE TAKEAWAYS: Timeline delays come into focus National Guard was hamstrung ahead of the attack Summer protests loomed large Pressure is on for DOD testimony The FBI’s top brass was unaware of warnings Context and details for each : ...
Democratic 12 billion foreign aid
Students Pursuing Risky Degrees Draw More Than $25 Billion In Yearly Federal Loans
Noël Flynn is spending more than 80 percent of her income to pay back tens of thousands of dollars in debt for her Art Therapy degree. In 2016 alone, the Department of Education loaned $25.9 billion to students who, like Flynn, chose degrees under the umbrella of the liberal arts and humanities , an analysis by The Daily Caller News Foundation found. A significant portion of those students are unlikely to have the means to pay back their debt after graduating. “I find myself struggling financially, and the biggest reason why is student loans,” said Flynn, 23, who says she was told the loans “wouldn’t be overwhelming” once she graduated. Most federal student loan programs do not require a credit check , nor do they require a cosigner. Rather, the loans are backed by nothing more than the borrower’s future earnings with a college degree, but the kind of degree isn’t a consideration in the loan process. “What you make depends on what you take,” Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce, wrote in a 2016 report . “A major in social work pays $30,000 a year compared to $120,000 a year for a major in petroleum engineering.” Business, vocational, and STEM majors all have significantly better chances of paying off their loans, TheDCNF’s analysis of federal data shows. In addition to lower pay, many liberal arts and humanities majors enter a job market with less opportunity, leading to high rates of unemployment and underemployment, according to the New York Fed . Are students being set up to fail? The $25.9 billion in arts and humanities represents a massive annual investment in students who are likely to struggle to pay back their loans. Flynn said she was drawn to Art Therapy because it married her passion for art with clinical psychology. The program offered what she believed could feasibly become a viable career. But it wasn’t until her junior year when she started interning ...
Cuomo Aides Allegedly Altered Report on Nursing-Home Deaths to Hide the Real Toll
Photo: AFP via Getty Images In June 2020, New York governor Andrew Cuomo was writing his book about “Leadership Lessons From the COVID-19 Pandemic.” That same month, his aides were rewriting a report on the death toll in nursing homes in the state, according to new accounts from the Wall Street Journal and New York Times . The report, which came out in July and diagnosed how the coronavirus spread in nursing homes, was written by the New York State Department of Health and initially included data on deaths of nursing-home residents in hospitals and in nursing homes themselves. But the governor’s aides ultimately pushed to have nursing-home deaths in hospitals removed — in order to limit the damage from a Cuomo directive on March 25, which barred nursing homes from turning away residents who had been discharged from hospitals after being treated for the coronavirus. Though the order was aimed at preventing hospitals from becoming inundated with patients, it ultimately caused COVID deaths to surge in nursing homes. When Cuomo’s advisers altered the report, they determined that the March 25 directive was “not a significant factor in nursing home fatalities,” a clause that health-department officials resisted. And by only counting deaths in nursing homes, the report ultimately obscured the total number of COVID deaths in long-term-care facilities at that point, watering down the more than 9,000 coronavirus deaths by June to 6,432. The new details on the governor’s manipulation of the data reveals a more extensive effort to alter nursing-home deaths than what was already known. In February, the scandal over the deaths erupted after the New York Post reported that Cuomo’s top aide Melissa DeRosa said the administration “froze” when lawmakers requested the total number of nursing-home deaths last August; she claimed they did so to forestall potential investigations from the Trump White House and Department of Justice, which allegedly aimed to ...
Democratic centrists flex power on Biden legislation
Sens. Joe Manchin Joseph (Joe) Manchin Overnight Defense: Capitol Police may ask National Guard to stay | Biden's Pentagon policy nominee faces criticism | Naval Academy midshipmen moved to hotels Progressives won't oppose bill over limits on stimulus checks Senate votes to take up COVID-19 relief bill MORE (D-W.Va.), Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and other centrist Democrats increasingly are in control of the fate of President Biden Joe Biden Trump State Department appointee arrested in connection with Capitol riot FireEye finds evidence Chinese hackers exploited Microsoft email app flaw since January Biden officials to travel to border amid influx of young migrants MORE ’s COVID-19 relief package — and perhaps broader pieces of his agenda. In a Senate where both parties hold 50 seats, a single defection by a Democrat can sink legislation, giving the centrists significant influence. Just this week, several Democratic moderates worked behind the scenes to limit eligibility requirements for individuals and couples who would receive $1,400 direct stimulus checks, lowering the threshold for the checks from $100,000 in individual income to $80,000. ADVERTISEMENT The House-passed COVID-19 relief bill allowed individuals earning up to $100,000 and couples earning up to $200,000 to receive some money from the stimulus checks. Under the changes demanded by the centrists, the Senate now cuts off payments for individuals earning more than $80,000 and couples earning more than $160,000. Now there’s a push being led by Sen. Tom Carper Thomas (Tom) Richard Carper Biden to meet with bipartisan lawmakers on infrastructure Five takeaways from dramatic Capitol security hearing Democrats worry Senate will be graveyard for Biden agenda MORE (D-Del.) to keep weekly federal unemployment benefits at $300 a week, instead of the $400 a week favored by Biden and most Democrats. “We’re thinking about offering” ...
Senate includes nearly $2 billion in cyber, tech funds to COVID-19 bill
The Senate included close to $2 billion for federal cybersecurity and technology modernization programs in its version of President Biden ’s proposed COVID-19 relief package. The funds fall short of the more than $10 billion originally proposed by Biden in his American Rescue Plan, but far more than the House included in the version it approved along party lines earlier this week. The House stripped out Biden’s proposed funds for these areas. The Senate included $1 billion for the General Service Administration’s Technology Modernization Fund, a fraction of Biden’s originally proposed $9 billion for the fund, which is intended to help the federal government launch new cyber and information technology programs. ADVERTISEMENT The Senate also included $650 million to help the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) increase its risk mitigation services. While this was less than the $690 million Biden has proposed for CISA, the Senate did include the $200 million Biden proposed for the U.S. Digital Service. A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer Chuck Schumer Ron Johnson forces reading of 628-page Senate coronavirus relief bill on floor Senate panel splits along party lines on Becerra House Democrats' ambitious agenda set to run into Senate blockade MORE (D-N.Y.), who unveiled the proposed legislation on Thursday, did not respond to The Hill’s request for comment on further details on the cyber and technology funding. Biden included the funds in his proposal following the discovery late last year of what has become known as the SolarWinds hack. U.S. intelligence officials have concluded the cyber espionage incident, one of the largest in U.S. history, was “likely” carried out by Russian hackers, and a White House official said last month that at least nine federal agencies and 100 private sector companies were compromised as a result. The breach was cited in the Biden ...
