NewzIntel.com

Category: United States of America

  • MIL-OSI USA: Senator Murray Presses VA IG Nominee on Political Appointments, Involvement with DOGE

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Washington State Patty Murray

    ***WATCH: Murray’s Q&A at nomination hearing *****

    Washington, D.C. — Today, at a Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee hearing to consider pending nominations, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), a senior member and former Chair of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee, questioned Cheryl Mason, President Trump’s nominee to be Inspector General (IG) of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), on how—as a political appointee for President Trump and an advisor to VA Secretary Doug Collins—she can be trusted to serve as an independent and nonpartisan watchdog for VA, as is the job of the VA Inspector General. Under Secretary Collins’ leadership, VA is stonewalling members of Congress on critical oversight requests and has rolled out controversial policies to dramatically limit Congressional engagement with veterans and VA employees.

    Senator Murray began by probing Ms. Mason on her time serving as a senior advisory to Secretary Collins at VA, including even after she was nominated to be Inspector General: “Ms. Mason, you did say on your questionnaire that you continued to be a senior adviser to Secretary Collins after you were nominated to become the Inspector General monitoring his agency. While you were senior advisor to Secretary Collins, what discussions were you involved in related to abruptly canceling contracts, or ending DEI efforts, or eliminating outreach to LGBTQ [veterans]?”

    “At the time I answered the questionnaire, I was senior advisor to the Secretary. That role ended very quickly after I submitted that questionnaire,” Ms. Mason replied. “So as for your question as to those roles, the only roles I had with contracts were ensuring that the organizations that were in my portfolio knew that they needed to justify the contracts and ensured that they responded timely. I did not review contracts; I was not involved in those. As far as in the DEI situation, that was an Executive Order, and shortly after the senior advisors came in, they were followed by more senior advisors, and that was not something that was on my plate. That belonged to General Counsel and the senior advisor who was charged with EOs.”

    “What substantive work were you doing if you weren’t involved in any of that?” Senator Murray pressed.

    “My role as senior advisor was to look into actions that were going on in the administration—,” Ms. Mason said.

    “But a lot of the actions that were going on in the administration that we know about were about ending DEI, about firing employees, about canceling contracts. So that was most of the activity that was going on there,” Murray replied.

    “That was not in my portfolio. There were separate senior advisors assigned to that. My portfolio was looking at the way those organizations operated and how they served veterans, particularly VBA, because it’s such a large organization. There were challenges with the digital GI Bill, challenge with disability compensation backlog and inventory, with both the Board and VBA, challenges with loan guarantees. There were a variety of challenges within VBA that I was looking at,” said Ms. Mason.

    Senator Murray followed up: “Let me ask you differently: What was your engagement with DOGE and the White House outside of the Presidential Personnel Office?”

    “I had no engagement with DOGE,” Ms. Mason said.

    “None, zero? No contact?,” Murray asked.

    “No. The only contact I had was a swearing-in—I attended a swearing-in for a person who has since, I guess, has left the department in DOGE. That person, I attended the VA swearing-in. That was it,” Ms. Mason replied.

    Senator Murray continued her questioning by asking whether Ms. Mason would Congressional oversight of the OIG. “As you know, Congress has a responsibility to conduct oversight over the Office of Inspector General to make sure that they are properly conducting their role, so it’s really crucial, as you well know, that the OIG is transparent. If you are confirmed, will you provide us with a list of every ongoing OIG investigation within 30 days?”

    “Yes, Senator, I will do so,” replied Ms. Mason.

    “The budget for VA proposed the elimination of ‘unnecessary’ outreach activities. From a Congressional perspective, it is really critical to make sure that any canceled outreach doesn’t impact veterans’ ability to receive care that is necessary to provide. If confirmed, will you hold the Department responsible for conducting all outreach that is in statute or policy, even if the political leadership—meaning your former boss, Secretary Collins—doesn’t want to reach out to those groups?” Senator Murray pressed.

    Ms. Mason responded, “Senator Murray, I will look into all those situations and I will see where there are statutory require[ments] and they will be held accountable under my watch as OIG if confirmed.”

    Senator Murray continued, “Congress was very clear in 1978 when it passed the law governing Inspectors General. The law states, and I want to quote it, ‘each Inspector General shall be appointed without regard to political affiliation and solely on the basis of integrity.’ Do you believe that an Inspector General should be entirely independent from the administration in which they serve?”

    “I do,” Ms. Mason replied.

    “Well, you were a political appointee for President Trump in his first term, and as we said on your questionnaire, you said you continued to be an advisor to Secretary Collins after you were nominated for this. Do you believe that this demonstrates the kind of nonpartisanship it takes to successfully execute this job?” asked Senator Murray.

    “Yes, I do believe I have that,” said Ms. Mason, referencing her prior experience in VA serving under different administrations.

    Senator Murray was the first woman to join the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee and the first woman to chair the Committee—as the daughter of a World War II veteran, supporting veterans and their families has always been an important priority for her. Senator Murray has been a leading voice in the Senate speaking out forcefully against President Trump and Elon Musk’s mass firing of VA employees and VA researchers across the country and Elon Musk and DOGE’s infiltration of the VA, including accessing veterans’ sensitive personal information.

    Last month at a hearing on veterans’ mental health, Senator Murray pressed administration officials on the importance of transparency and communication with Congress and how the Trump administration’s mass firings might undermine care for veterans who have dealt with sexual trauma. In February, Murray grilled Trump’s then-nominee for VA Deputy Secretary, Dr. Paul Lawrence, on the mass firings of VA employees and VA researchers. After pressing Doug Collins on EHR and protecting women’s access to VA health care, including lifesaving abortion care, at his nomination hearing, Senator Murray voted against Doug Collins’s nomination to be VA Secretary in early February, sounding the alarm over Elon Musk and DOGE’s activities at the VA and making clear that the Trump administration’s lawlessness is putting our national security and our veterans at risk.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Rep. Kelly Statement on Trump Administration’s Recissions Package: ‘Needlessly Cruel and Evil’

    Source: United States House of Representatives – Congresswoman Robin Kelly IL

    WASHINGTON – The White House released its recissions package, requesting Congress to cancel $9.4 billion already appropriated by Congress. The package advances President Donald Trump’s agenda to codify DOGE’s spending cuts, slash foreign aid, cut funding from major public broadcasting entities and rolls back a Biden-era guidance requiring hospitals to provide emergency abortion care.

    U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (IL-02) released the following statement condemning the recissions package:

    “President Trump’s recissions package is needlessly cruel and evil. He is stealing money – money that has already been designated by Congress – from Sesame Street to Main Street, hurting everyday Americans to give tax breaks to the well-off and well-connected. For years, I’ve heard my Republican colleagues spout about Congress’s constitutional power of the purse, but now, they’d consider cancelling $9.4 billion that we have already appropriated to programs like PBS, NPR, and USAID.

    “The President also continues to threaten the lives of women by rescinding guidance that reaffirmed hospitals’ obligation under law to provide lifesaving abortion care to patients experiencing a medical emergency. While the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act is still the law of the land, this is, again, a cruel and evil decision by the Trump administration. Rescinding this guidance will delay necessary emergency abortion care, endangering the lives of patients.”

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: RED CAT SHAREHOLDER ALERT: CLAIMSFILER REMINDS INVESTORS WITH LOSSES IN EXCESS OF $100,000 of Lead Plaintiff Deadline in Class Action Lawsuit Against Red Cat Holdings, Inc. – RCAT

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    NEW ORLEANS, June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — ClaimsFiler, a FREE shareholder information service, reminds investors that they have until July 22, 2025 to file lead plaintiff applications in a securities class action lawsuit against Red Cat Holdings, Inc. (NasdaqCM: RCAT), if they purchased the Company’s securities between March 18, 2022 and January 15, 2025, inclusive (the “Class Period”). This action is pending in the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey.

    Get Help

    Red Cat investors should visit us at https://claimsfiler.com/cases/nasdaq-rcat/ or call toll-free (844) 367-9658. Lawyers at Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC are available to discuss your legal options.

    About the Lawsuit

    Red Cat and certain of its executives are charged with failing to disclose material information during the Class Period, violating federal securities laws.

    On January 16, 2025, Kerrisdale Capital reported that the Company had overstated the value of its SRR Contract, which was only worth approximately $20 million to $25 million based on U.S. Army budget documents, and that the Company had been misleading investors about the production capacity of its Salt Lake City Facility for years, while also raising concerns about the timing of executive departures and insider transactions that took place shortly after Red Cat announced it had won the SRR Contract.

    On this news, the price of Red Cat’s shares fell $2.35 per share, or 21.54%, over the following two trading sessions, to close at $8.56 per share on January 17, 2025.

    The case is Olsen v. Red Cat Holdings, Inc., No. 25-cv-05427.

    About ClaimsFiler

    ClaimsFiler has a single mission: to serve as the information source to help retail investors recover their share of billions of dollars from securities class action settlements. At ClaimsFiler.com, investors can: (1) register for free to gain access to information and settlement websites for various securities class action cases so they can timely submit their own claims; (2) upload their portfolio transactional data to be notified about relevant securities cases in which they may have a financial interest; and (3) submit inquiries to the Kahn Swick & Foti, LLC law firm for free case evaluations.

    To learn more about ClaimsFiler, visit www.claimsfiler.com.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Duckworth, Warren, Blunt Rochester Condemn RFK for Making it Harder for Pregnant Women and Children to Receive COVID-19 Vaccines, Putting Their Health at Risk

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Illinois Tammy Duckworth

    June 04, 2025

    [WASHINGTON, D.C.] – U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), joined by U.S. Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), today condemned U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. for announcing changes to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) recommended vaccine schedule that would dramatically limit access to COVID-19 vaccines for millions of pregnant women and children, needlessly endangering their health. In their letter, the Senators slam the decision as anti-science and politically motivated, criticizing Secretary Kennedy for failing to provide scientific justification for the policy change and for confirming their longstanding concerns that he would enact unscientific, anti-vax policies as HHS Secretary—despite all his clamoring before Senate committees that he would not restrict vaccine access.

    “Your politically driven, anti-science decision—made suddenly and behind closed doors, without input from the public or scientific and medical communities—flies in the face of your commitment to ‘not…take away anybody’s vaccines’ and will lead to an untold number of preventable illness and death of Americans,” wrote the Senators.

    “Enabled by President Trump and fueled by decades of anti-vaccine skepticism, you appear to be establishing a roadmap by which the United States’ government can implement unscientific, anti-vaccination policies,” the lawmakers continued. “By sowing distrust, creating chaos and justifying your actions with misinformation, you are laying the groundwork to undermine access to other safe, effective vaccines, including for those that prevent diseases like whooping cough, measles and more.”

    The full text of the letter is available on Senator Duckworth’s website and below:

    Dear Secretary Kennedy:

    We write to express our extreme concern regarding the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS’) recent policy changes to dramatically curtail access to the COVID-19 vaccine for those Americans who would choose to receive it. We are particularly alarmed by your May 27, 2025 announcement on X—along with Drs. Marty Makary and Jay Bhattacharya, Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), respectively—that the COVID-19 vaccine will no longer be included under the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) recommended routine immunization schedule for healthy pregnant women.

    We are also concerned that the CDC changed its recommendation for administering the COVID-19 vaccine for healthy children and adolescents from routine to using “shared clinical decision-making” between clinicians and families. As of the writing of this letter, the CDC has updated the immunization schedule for adults, removing the previous recommendation for pregnant women. The unjustified announcement “blindsided” senior officials at the CDC and were designed to “further erode public trust in the [agency].” By side-stepping the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices’ (ACIP’s) open and transparent deliberation of the evidence, you have thrown into question coverage of vaccines under Medicare, Medicaid and private insurance for millions of Americans. Your politically driven, anti-science decision—made suddenly and behind closed doors, without input from the public or scientific and medical communities—flies in the face of your commitment to “not…take away anybody’s vaccines” and will lead to an untold number of preventable illness and death of Americans. We therefore strongly urge you to reverse this position until there is a thorough, transparent consideration of the body of evidence regarding the COVID-19 vaccine’s public health benefit.

    Political Motivations Threaten COVID-19 Vaccine Access for Millions of Americans

    The ACIP’s vaccine recommendations, as adopted by the CDC, form the basis of no-cost access to the vaccines for millions of Americans. For example, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, as amended, requires that most commercial health insurance plans and Medicaid Alternative Benefit Plans cover ACIP-recommended vaccines for a given individual with no cost sharing. In addition, for the Vaccines for Children Program, authorized by the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, ACIP determines which vaccines are provided at no cost to children who are uninsured, underinsured, Medicaid-eligible, Medicaid-enrolled or American Indian or Alaska Native. States must also cover ACIP-recommended vaccines and their administration for children enrolled in separate State Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) programs without enrollee cost-sharing.

    More recently, the Inflation Reduction Act expanded no-cost coverage of ACIP-recommended vaccines and vaccine administration without cost-sharing to adults under Medicare Part D, Medicaid and CHIP. The uncertainty and confusion caused by your politically driven actions may lead to many insurers deciding to drop coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine for millions of people. Without insurance coverage, individuals who wish to receive the COVID-19 vaccine will be forced to pay up to $200 or more out-of-pocket—an insurmountable cost for many families, especially amid cost-of-living crisis exacerbated by the current administration’s policies.

    Politically Driven, Anti-Vaccination Decision-Making Circumvents Scientific Input

    You appeared to make this policy change without consulting the FDA’s Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) and prior to the next scheduled public meeting of the ACIP, the members of which are leading vaccine experts tasked with developing vaccine recommendations. You did so even though the ACIP had independently been considering updating COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to take into account the risk levels of different populations and was expected to vote on those recommendations when it was next scheduled to meet on June 25-27, 2025.

    Your announcement is a striking departure from the transparent and evidence-informed manner by which vaccine approvals and recommendations are formulated by HHS. For decades, scientists have weighed in on vaccine recommendations through a strenuous process. Following a decision from FDA experts about whether to approve a new vaccine based on clinical trial evidence and other data, ACIP “weighs extensive evidence about safety, effectiveness and other data to determine the best recommendation for who should receive the vaccine, when and how often.” The CDC director may choose to adopt, reject or modify these recommendations, though rejection or modification of such recommendations is rare. In the past quarter century, the CDC director has acted only twice to expand access beyond the ACIP’s recommendation, both times in response to extraordinary circumstances—in 2002 for the smallpox vaccine in connection with a vaccination campaign to address potential bioterrorism attacks, and in 2021 for the COVID-19 vaccine for front-line workers during the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, in an unprecedented and deeply troubling abuse of your authority, you did not wait to hear ACIP’s expertise, and you exploited a key vacancy at CDC to set these recommendations yourself. According to the Washington Post, this is “the first time an HHS secretary has unilaterally altered an existing recommendation from the advisory committee and the CDC.”

    Your decision represents a significant public health threat that will endanger millions of Americans. Pregnant women are at higher risk of serious illness and hospitalization if infected with COVID-19, and the virus raises the risk of having a cesarean birth, preeclampsia or eclampsia and blood clots. COVID-19 infection during pregnancy has also been shown to result in higher risk of lower birthweight babies, preterm birth and stillbirth. Babies born to women who were not vaccinated against COVID-19 are at higher risk of needing intensive care. That is why the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists (ACOG), and the Society for Maternal-Fetal Medicine (SMFM) strongly recommend women who are pregnant, breastfeeding or planning to get pregnant get the COVID-19 vaccine. According to ACOG and SMFM, the COVID-19 vaccine has been demonstrated repeatedly to be safe and protective for such individuals. Because this vaccine is so protective and safe for this population, ACOG further recommends eliminating barriers to receiving the COVID-19 vaccine. This is likely why the CDC stated in its “Interim Clinical Considerations for Use of COVID-19 Vaccines in the United States,” updated on May 12, 2025:

    “COVID-19 vaccination is recommended for everyone ages 6 months and older in the United States…Vaccination is especially important for people at highest risk of severe COVID-19, including people ages 65 years and older; people with underlying medical conditions, including immune compromise; people living in long-term care facilities; and pregnant women to protect themselves and their infants.” (emphasis added)

    After birth, infants under 6 months of age are at the same high level of risk of hospitalization due to COVID-19 as adults ages 65 to 74, and the only means of protecting these infants from COVID-19 is through maternal vaccination. An analysis of HHS data by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that 11,199 children were admitted to the hospital with COVID-19 during the 2024-2025 respiratory virus season, 7,746 of whom were younger than 5 years old. And 41 percent of children ages 6 months to 17 years old hospitalized with COVID-19 from October 2022 to April 2024 did not have a known underlying condition, meaning that “healthy” children are also at risk of severe disease.

    Establishing an Anti-Vaccination Policy Roadmap

    Enabled by President Trump and fueled by decades of anti-vaccine skepticism, you appear to be establishing a roadmap by which the United States’ government can implement unscientific, anti-vaccination policies. By sowing distrust, creating chaos and justifying your actions with misinformation, you are laying the groundwork to undermine access to other safe, effective vaccines, including for those that prevent diseases, such as pertussis (whooping cough), measles, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), chickenpox, shingles, hepatitis A, as well as cancer caused by hepatitis B and human papilloma virus.

    The May 27, 2025 video announcement is just one action in a series of anti-vaccination, anti-science efforts you have led since becoming HHS Secretary. For example, while the ACIP made recommendations for meningococcal and RSV vaccines months ago, you have failed to adopt the recommendations. Further, even though the United States is experiencing the worst outbreak of measles in 25 years, you have downplayed the harm of one of the world’s most contagious diseases and made false claims that the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine has not been “safety tested.” This undermining of trust in vaccines has led to multiple preventable hospitalizations and deaths. Indeed, President Trump’s nominee to serve as your deputy at HHS expressed unqualified support for your recommendation “encourag[ing] parents to take the measles vaccine,” while saying nothing about vaccinating children against the disease. And the Trump administration clawed back over $11 billion in pandemic-era funding, which has hampered the ability of public health departments across the country to contain the measles outbreak.

    Moreover, on May 20, 2025, Dr. Vinay Prasad, Director of the FDA Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and Commissioner Makary published an opinion piece in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), outlining a new FDA approval framework that creates significant barriers for approval of annual COVID-19 vaccines for millions of Americans. This announcement indicated that the annual COVID-19 vaccine will generally be approved without a randomized, placebo-controlled clinical trial (RCT) only for people ages 65 and older and for those who have medical conditions that leave them at higher risk for severe COVID-19. The framework says nothing about the eligibly of healthy people at higher risk of being infected with COVID-19, such as healthcare professionals. This means that, unlike in most other countries, the annual vaccine will not be available to healthy individuals older than 6 months of age and under the age of 65 without an RCT. This change in the approval process will take away Americans’ freedom to choose to get the annual vaccine and put them and their loved ones at risk.

    Further, placebo-controlled trials for vaccines when a proven intervention exists are widely considered by the medical and research community to be unethical. Ethical guidance advises, “Extreme care must be taken to avoid abuse of [the option to conduct placebo-controlled trials when a proven intervention exists]”; the FDA and HHS have guidance accordingly restricting placebo-controlled trials to certain situations. There is no question that the existing safe and effective COVID-19 vaccines are such “proven interventions,” and withholding their use in new placebo-controlled trials would constitute a grave ethical violation.

    Your new approval process for the annual COVID-19 vaccine will significantly delay access to updated FDA-approved vaccines, jeopardizing the health and lives of the American people. Typically, vaccines, such as the annually updated flu shot, are approved after exhibiting immunogenicity data or other laboratory testing data comparable to previous vaccine versions, which themselves have provided robust safety and efficacy data. A multi-year study and lengthy approval process, which is generally considered by experts to be unnecessary, particularly for annually updated vaccines. The significant hurdles associated with FDA’s new RCT requirement could discourage vaccine manufacturers and researchers from developing new, innovative products that could prevent cancer, HIV and other diseases and ultimately save lives. Dr. Peter Hotez from the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston stated requiring RCTs for future vaccine development “would basically be a recipe for paralysis.”

    Indeed, the day after your announcement, Moderna withdrew an application for its new combined flu and COVID-19 vaccine, despite the new vaccine outperforming existing COVID-19 and flu vaccines. It also comes on the heels of the FDA delaying its approval of Novavax’s protein-based COVID-19 vaccine, missing its own April 1, 2025 deadline. When the FDA finally approved the vaccine, it did so for only a narrow population (adults 65 and older and those between ages 21-64 with an underlying medical condition). In a highly unusual step, FDA is also requiring that Novavax conduct a placebo-controlled RCT for less vulnerable populations.

    Given the suddenness of your May 27, 2025 announcement and its lack of detail or scientific justification, we respectfully request you provide written responses to the following questions no later than June 18, 2025:

    1. Despite “a commitment to gold-standard science,” you failed to provide an appropriate, detailed explanation for your change in the COVID-19 vaccination recommendations.

    1. What specific studies, scientific or clinical data did you consult as the basis for removing the COVID-19 vaccine from the CDC’s recommended vaccine schedule for pregnant women and children? Please provide citations for the research articles or publications you considered.
    2. Did you consult with any scientific or professional organizations, such as those representing obstetricians, pediatricians, family physicians, virologists, immunologists, epidemiologists or other relevant experts, in developing this new policy? Please provide the names of such stakeholders.
    3. Did you decide not to follow any recommendations from the scientific and medical communities? Why not?
    4. Did you submit a memo that explains the rationale and scientific justification for your decision? Please provide a copy of such memo, along with any attachments and communications related to it.

    2. Your directive implementing the new CDC recommendations suggests that the decision was made “[b]ased on a review of the recommendation of the FDA and the NIH.”

    1. Please list all individuals who carried out this review and their qualifications to weigh in on such decisions, such as their formal scientific and/or medical training, previously held professional positions or appointments, etc.
    2. Please provide a copy of the recommendation made by the NIH.
    3. Why were the CDC and ACIP apparently excluded from the process through which you imposed the new CDC recommendations?
    4. Given the former acting CDC director’s nomination to be CDC director, who is currently responsible for finalizing CDC recommendations?

    3. Why did you fail to consult the ACIP before changing the CDC’s COVID-19 vaccine recommendation for children and pregnant women, particularly before the ACIP’s next public meeting?

    4. The ACIP is scheduled to meet in June 2025 to discuss COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.

    1. Do you commit to allowing the ACIP to move forward with its meeting in June 2025? If so, when will the meeting be publicly noticed in the Federal Register?
    2. Do you commit to not altering the anticipated agenda that includes the discussion of the COVID-19 vaccine?
    3. Do you expect the ACIP’s future COVID-19 vaccine recommendations to be influenced by your decision to publish the new vaccine approval framework?
    4. If the ACIP issues a COVID-19 vaccine recommendation that differs from your May 27 announcement, will you commit to listening to the experts and consider adopting that recommendation?

    5. Why did you fail to consult the VRBPAC before granting a narrow approval for the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine?

    6. What role did you play in the decision to publish the new FDA framework outlined in the May 20, 2025 NEJM opinion piece, and in determining its content?

    7. Why did the FDA release this framework in an opinion piece, rather than formally publishing a regulation or guideline written by career vaccine experts?

    8. Does FDA plan to release a regulation, rule or formal guidance that formalizes the framework described in the NEJM article?

    1. If so, when will this policy be released?
    2. Will this policy be developed with the input of vaccine experts, providers, pharmacies, patient advocacy groups and/or other stakeholders?
    3. How will you and Commissioner Makary ensure vaccine experts, providers, pharmacies, patient advocacy groups and/or other stakeholders may provide input or feedback on the framework?

    9. Does the FDA’s new framework apply to initial doses (i.e., primary series) of new formulations of COVID-19 vaccines?

    1. Will this impact parents’ choices to vaccinate their children against COVID-19?
    2. Will you commit to preserving the current COVID-19 vaccine approval standards for the primary vaccine series?

    10. Given the ethical and recruitment challenges clinical trial sponsors may face because of new RCT requirements, how will FDA ensure the public has access to safe and effective vaccines if companies are unable to complete these trials in a timely manner?

    11. Figure 2 of the May 20, 2025 NEJM opinion piece listed pregnancy and recent pregnancy as underlying medical conditions that put an individual at risk of severe COVID-19.

    1. If the CDC is no longer recommending pregnant women get the COVID-19 vaccine, will such individuals still be eligible for the vaccine?
    2. If so, will they be able to get the vaccine at no cost?
    3. If there will be cost-sharing, what will be the cost-sharing policy for the vaccine, and who will make such decisions?

    12. Is the list in Figure 2 of the NEJM piece an exhaustive list for what medical conditions will be considered putting an individual at risk for severe COVID-19 disease?

    13. How do the conditions in the list align with the fact that the only high-risk condition now stated on the CDC immunization schedule for COVID-19 is “moderately or severely immunocompromised”?

    14. Do you believe that parents should have the right to vaccinate their children against COVID-19? If not, why not?

    15. Do you expect the current version of the COVID-19 vaccine to remain available in the primary vaccine series for individuals under 65 without underlying medical conditions?

    16. Will healthcare workers under age 65 who do not have a condition that predisposes them to severe COVID-19 and hospitalization be able to obtain a COVID-19 vaccine?

    17. Do you believe that young, healthy adults should be able to receive a COVID-19 vaccine to reduce the risk of getting Long COVID or of transmitting the virus to individuals with a higher risk of severe infection?

    1. If so, how will the FDA’s new framework preserve this choice?
    2. Why does the FDA’s new vaccine approval framework fail to consider a broad range of potential benefits of booster shots, such as reduced risk of Long COVID-19 and a shorter duration of illness?

    18. Has the FDA communicated with pharmacies about whether they plan to restrict COVID-19 vaccine access in response to the new vaccine approval framework?

    1. If so, will pharmacies require patients to verify they have health conditions putting them at a higher risk of severe COVID-19 to receive the vaccine?
    2. What will be an acceptable means of verification?

    19. What information did you provide health insurers (including Medicaid and Medicare) regarding their requirements for coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine going forward?

    1. Do you expect insurers to drop or alter coverage of the COVID-19 vaccine for children and pregnant women due to the altered CDC recommendation?
    2. If so, was that taken into consideration when formulating the recommendation?

    20. Have you communicated with the vaccine manufacturers to ensure there will be enough supply of the vaccine for the upcoming respiratory illness season? What steps are you taking to ensure supply chains will not be disrupted?

    21. Do you have any plans to change FDA approval frameworks or the CDC immunization schedule for any other vaccines? If so, which ones?

    Your anti-vaccine, anti-science stance has taken priority over the public health and well-being of the American people. We urge you to save lives by reversing course and making evidence-based policy in an open, transparent and clear manner.

    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Attorney General Bonta Files Amicus Brief in Support of Michigan’s Conversion Therapy Ban for Minors

    Source: US State of California

    OAKLAND – California Attorney General Rob Bonta yesterday, as part of a multistate coalition of 20 attorneys general, filed an amicus brief in the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals in support of the state of Michigan in Catholic Charities v. Whitmer, a lawsuit challenging Michigan’s ban on licensed health care providers offering conversion therapy for minors. Conversion therapy is a cruel, harmful, and ineffective practice that aims to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. In their brief, the attorneys general underscore the harms of conversion therapy, arguing that it falls below the standard of care for mental health practitioners, is not a safe or effective treatment for any condition, and puts minors at risk of serious harms including increased risks of suicide and depression.

    “California is proud to support the State of Michigan in protecting our youth from scientifically discredited practices that put their health, safety, and well-being at risk,” said Attorney General Bonta. “No child should ever be subjected to harmful, non-evidence-based practices for simply being who they are.”

    Enacted in February 2024, Michigan’s ban on conversion therapy for minors applies to mental health professionals, including physicians, psychologists, and professional counselors. The overwhelming medical consensus is that conversion therapy is inconsistent with the standard of care because it is ineffective and increases the risk of suicide and lifelong mental illness. In 2012, California became the first state to enact legislation – SB 1172 – banning conversion therapy on anyone under 18 years of age. Additionally, over 25 states have laws prohibiting or restricting the practice of conversion therapy for minors by licensed health care professionals.

    In the amicus brief, the coalition asserts that:

    • The First Amendment does not shield dangerous and ineffective mental health practices from regulation, nor does it allow licensed providers to operate below a certain standard of care.
    • Such bans are consistent with states’ long history of establishing and regulating professional standards of care.
    • Striking down such a ban would likely create profound unintended consequences for states’ authority to regulate professional practices within their borders as they have throughout most of the nation’s history.

    In filing the amicus brief, Attorney General Bonta joins the attorneys generals of Washington, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Wisconsin.

    A copy of the amicus brief can be found here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI China: China’s homegrown 9-valent HPV vaccine expected to boost immunization coverage

    Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

    A nurse shows human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccines developed by Chinese researchers at the provincial Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital in Wuhan, central China’s Hubei province, May 18, 2020. [Photo/Xinhua]

    China’s drug regulator has approved the country’s first domestically developed 9-valent human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine, ending over a decade of foreign dominance in the market.

    The vaccine, Cecolin 9, has been included on a list of approved medical products that was made public by the National Medical Products Administration on Wednesday.

    “The approval of Cecolin 9 not only offers more vaccination options for eligible women in China, but is also expected to improve vaccine accessibility and coverage, reducing the risk of cervical cancer further,” said Zhang Jun, dean of the School of Public Health at Xiamen University and a leading member of the vaccine development team.

    HPV vaccines are commonly used to prevent cervical cancer in women, as well as genital cancers and warts in both men and women.

    Cecolin 9, which targets nine HPV strains, was developed by Xiamen University, the Xiang An Biomedicine Laboratory and Xiamen Innovax Biotech Co., Ltd., marking a breakthrough in China’s ability to produce high-valency HPV vaccines independently.

    China is now the second country — after the United States — capable of supplying 9-valent HPV vaccines.

    Compared to bivalent HPV vaccines, which are effective against two high-risk genotypes (HPV 16 and 18), 9-valent HPV vaccines protect against an additional five high-risk genotypes (HPV 31, 33, 45, 52 and 58) and two low-risk genotypes (HPV 6 and 11), and provide better protection against cervical cancer.

    Over 18 years of research, scientists overcame major technical challenges in producing virus-like particles (VLPs) from multiple HPV types using an E. coli platform, and completed crucial clinical trial validation processes.

    Five related clinical trials have been conducted across China since 2019, and the vaccine has demonstrated a favorable safety profile and a strong immune response, comparable to those of similar international products.

    Statistics show that globally, approximately 700,000 cancer cases each year are associated with HPV, including an estimated 530,000 cases of cervical cancer. Vaccination is up to 94 percent effective in preventing HPV infection.

    In 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) launched a global strategy to accelerate the elimination of cervical cancer, aiming for 90 percent of girls to be fully vaccinated against HPV by the age of 15 by 2030.

    In alignment with the WHO strategy, China’s National Health Commission launched a cervical cancer elimination action plan for the 2022-2030 period, urging the expansion of HPV vaccination coverage nationwide.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Hawley Chairs Missouri District Judge Nominations Hearing  

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo)

    Wednesday, June 04, 2025

    Today, U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) chaired the Judiciary Committee nominations hearing featuring the four Missourians President Trump has tapped to serve as district judges for Missouri–his first tranche of judicial nominees. 
    The nominees are:
    Maria A. Lanahan, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri
    Cristian M. Stevens, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri
    Joshua M. Divine, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern and Western Districts of Missouri
    Zachary M. Bluestone, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri
    These individuals would fill judicial positions that have been vacant throughout the Biden Administration. Since the beginning of the year, Senator Hawley has worked closely with the Trump White House to ensure that appointments to Missouri vacancies are prioritized.

    Meet the 4 outstanding Missourians Trump tapped as his FIRST judicial nominees: Josh Divine, Maria Lanahan, Zachary Bluestone & Cris Stevens
    We’ve waited four long years for these judges. We WILL get them confirmed. And they will be a great credit to Missouri pic.twitter.com/OuC5mqAT1g
    — Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) June 4, 2025

    Senator Hawley also had a memorable exchange on Title IX protections with Whitney D. Hermandorfer, nominated to be United States Circuit Judge for the Sixth Circuit. Senator Hawley highlighted her record of defending legislation to safeguard women’s sports and opportunities from men who identify as women. 
    “I want to thank you for going to battle for our daughters, for going to battle for the women you played sports with, for standing up for this landmark legislation,”Senator Hawley said. 
    “When it comes to the litigation that you carried out on behalf of Tennessee … I think you did a great service, not just to Tennessee but for the nation,” Senator Hawley added. 
    Watch the full committee hearing here. 

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: SPC Jun 5, 2025 0100 UTC Day 1 Convective Outlook

    Source: US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

     For best viewing experience, please enable browser JavaScript support.

    Jun 5, 2025 0100 UTC Day 1 Convective Outlook

    Updated: Thu Jun 5 00:33:04 UTC 2025 (Print Version |   |  )

    Probabilistic to Categorical Outlook Conversion Table

     Forecast Discussion

    SPC AC 050033

    Day 1 Convective Outlook
    NWS Storm Prediction Center Norman OK
    0733 PM CDT Wed Jun 04 2025

    Valid 050100Z – 051200Z

    …THERE IS A SLIGHT RISK OF SEVERE THUNDERSTORMS ACROSS PORTIONS OF
    THE SOUTHERN HIGH PLAINS…

    …SUMMARY…
    Isolated severe thunderstorms are expected this evening across
    portions of the southern High Plains. Large hail and severe wind
    gusts are the primary concerns.

    …01z Update…

    Upper low that was located over the northern Baja Peninsula early
    this morning has deamplified and quickly sheared northeast as it
    tracks into western NM. Large-scale ascent ahead of this feature
    appears to be aiding several thunderstorm clusters along the Sangre
    de Cristo range, and more isolated activity now across the high
    Plains of northeast NM. ICECHIP sounding from TCC earlier this
    afternoon exhibited strong, deep-layer shear (50kt through 6km),
    with substantial veering in the lowest 1km. While buoyancy is not
    particularly strong on 00z sounding from AMA, wind profiles favor
    supercells and this activity should spread across northeast NM
    toward the southern TX Panhandle later this evening. Some longevity
    is expected as a LLJ is expected to increase across the High Plains
    after sunset. Hail and wind are the primary concerns.

    ..Darrow.. 06/05/2025

    CLICK TO GET WUUS01 PTSDY1 PRODUCT

    .html”>Latest Day 2 Outlook/Today’s Outlooks/Forecast Products/Home

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Security: CORRECTION: Coast Guard responds to vessel fire offshore Adak, Alaska

    Source: United States Coast Guard

    News Release

    		  

    U.S. Coast Guard 17th District Alaska
    Contact: 17th District Public Affairs
    Office: (907) 463-2065
    After Hours: (907) 463-2065
    17th District online newsroom

     

    06/04/2025 08:37 PM EDT

    Corrections: Updated vehicle numbers are 3,048 total vehicles, with 70 being fully electric vehicles and 681 being partial hybrid electric vehicles.  Vessel is Liberian-flagged and U.K.-managed The crew evacuated aboard a life boat, not life raft Zodiac Maritime is the vessel’s manager, not parent company KODIAK, Alaska — The Coast Guard is responding to a vessel fire approximately 300 miles south of Adak, Wednesday.   Watchstanders at the Seventeenth Coast Guard District command center received a distress alert Tuesday at approximately 3:15 p.m. reporting a fire aboard the cargo ship Morning Midas, a 600-foot Liberian-flagged and U.K. managed cargo vessel with 22 crew members and reportedly carrying several thousand vehicles. Watchstanders immediately issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast requesting assistance from vessels in the vicinity of the Morning Midas. Three good Samaritan vessels responded to the incident.  Watchstanders also diverted the crew of U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Munro (WMSL 755) to the area, directed the launch of a C-130J Super Hercules aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, and positioned an MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter aircrew in Adak. All 22 crew members aboard the Morning Midas evacuated the ship aboard a life boat and were subsequently rescued by the crew of motor vessel Cosco Hellas, one of the good Samaritan vessels on scene, with no reported injuries. The status of the fire is currently unknown, but smoke is still emanating from the vessel. “As the search and rescue portion of our response concludes, our crews are working closely with the vessel’s manager, Zodiac Maritime, to determine the disposition of the vessel,” said Rear Admiral Megan Dean, commander of the Coast Guard’s Seventeenth District. “We are grateful for the selfless actions of the three nearby vessels who assisted in the response and the crew of motor vessel Cosco Hellas, who helped save 22 lives.” The Morning Midas is estimated to have approximately 350 metric tons of gas fuel and 1,530 metric tons of very low sulfur fuel oil (VLSFO) onboard. They are also reportedly carrying a total of 3,048 vehicles, with 70 being fully electric vehicles and 681 being partial hybrid electric vehicles. This is based on reports to the Coast Guard and is subject to change pending the development of any new information.  The Coast Guard is working with the Morning Midas’s manager Zodiac Maritime to coordinate recovery efforts of the vessel. Zodiac Maritime can be contacted via email at media@navigateresponse.com or by phone at 44-207-283-9915 or 65-6222-6375.

    MIL Security OSI –

  • MIL-OSI USA: News 06/4/2025 Blackburn Introduces Legislation to Protect Federal Law Enforcement Officers from Doxxing

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn)
    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.) introduced the Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act to make it illegal to dox federal law enforcement officials following the dangerous actions of Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell and his office to publicly release the names of law enforcement officers last week. This puts them at a higher risk of being targeted by criminal gangs, including MS-13 and Tren De Aragua.
    “Blue city mayors are doing everything they can to obstruct the Trump administration’s efforts to deport criminal illegal aliens,” said Senator Blackburn. “Just last week, Nashville Mayor O’Connell and his office doxxed federal law enforcement officers after the Trump administration worked with Tennessee Highway Patrol to arrest criminal illegal aliens. My Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act would make this illegal and hold blue city mayors accountable for obstructing enforcement of our immigration laws by putting law enforcement officers in harm’s way.”
    BACKGROUND
    Last year, an illegal alien from Mexico was charged with criminal homicide and evidence tampering after Nashville restaurant owner, Matt Carney, was tragically killed in a hit-and-run crash. Just a few months earlier, another illegal alien was charged with attempted kidnapping, sexual battery, public intoxication, and evading arrest after he followed a woman into the bathroom and groped her at the Nashville Sundae Club in the Gulch.
    Click here for a list of examples of the criminal illegal aliens who were arrested during a joint operation in Nashville by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and the Tennessee Highway Patrol, including convicted rapists, drug dealers, and individuals affiliated with MS-13. Senator Blackburn praised this operation in a recent column published by The Tennessean.
    Following this operation, Mayor O’Connell and his office doxxed federal law enforcement officers, putting them at risk of being targeted by criminal gangs. 
    Senator Blackburn has called on the U.S. Department of Justice to launch an investigation into the actions of Mayor O’Connell and his office for attempting to undermine President Trump and ICE’s work to get dangerous criminals out of Tennessee communities.
    THE PROTECTING LAW ENFORCEMENT FROM DOXXING ACT
    The Protecting Law Enforcement from Doxxing Act would make it illegal to publish the name of a federal law enforcement officer with the intent to obstruct a criminal investigation or immigration operation.
    Under this legislation, an individual found guilty of doxxing a federal law enforcement officer would face a fine and/or imprisonment of five years. 
    Click here for bill text.
    RELATED

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Facing Extreme Hurricane & Wildfire Seasons, Cantwell Slams Admin’s Erosion of Weather Forecasting: “NOAA Has Been Transparent That They Can’t Keep Up”

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Washington Maria Cantwell
    06.04.25
    Facing Extreme Hurricane & Wildfire Seasons, Cantwell Slams Admin’s Erosion of Weather Forecasting: “NOAA Has Been Transparent That They Can’t Keep Up”
    Meteorologists from WA, OK and FL sound the alarm on laying off 100s of National Weather Service employees, creating unprecedented staffing shortages; Earlier today, Trump’s Commerce Secretary misled a Senate subcommittee that NOAA was “fully staffed” heading into hurricane & wildfire season
    WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, U.S. Senator Maria Cantwell (D-WA), ranking member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation and a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee, joined renowned meteorologists from across the country for a virtual presser to sound the alarm on cuts to the National Weather Service (NWS) as the United States heads into peak hurricane and wildfire season – and call on the Trump Administration to restore the agency to full capacity.
    “We have already seen these impacts from the Administration failing to heed these warnings. For at least a half a century, the National Weather Service has provided forecasts for 24 hours a day, seven days a week — until now. At least eight weather forecasting offices no longer have a meteorologist to cover overnight shifts. They are planning on eliminating the NOAA buoy program. You can’t map a hurricane if you don’t have the buoy information,” Sen. Cantwell said. “NOAA has been transparent that they can’t keep up. They have said that they can’t keep the lights on in a number of forecast offices. The Department of Commerce needs to be clear to the American people that the staffing shortages will impact our ability to compute that science [and] get those wildfire crews and emergency response where they need to go.”
    “We’re already a handful of days into the 2025 hurricane season. But the National Weather Service and NOAA are dealing with their own storm right now in the form of short staffing and budget cuts,” said Brian LaMarre, former Meteorologist in Charge in the Tampa Bay area. “There are eight [NWS offices] that are below a certain number of employees that work at that particular office, and that means that they can’t work 24/7 operations. That’s never before happened in my career.”
    “For the first time in 35 years, I have real concerns due to the staffing situation,” said Alan Gerard, a 35-year meteorologist with the NWS and the National Severe Storms Laboratory in Norman, OK. “And the very fact that some offices aren’t able to operate 24/7 and that the administration has authorized these hires during a hiring freeze, tells you that there’s recognition that there’s serious shortages.”
    “I find it frankly shameful that we even have to have this sort of discussion,” said Jeff Renner, retired meteorologist of 39 years at KING 5 in Seattle. “More people such as you and I now utilize weather apps such as I have on my telephone, yet there is a lack of fundamental appreciation that most of those forecasts, if not all of them, stem from National Weather Service forecasts.”
    Video of today’s virtual press conference is available HERE; a transcript is HERE.
    Over the past several months, the NWS lost over 560 employees due to layoffs and retirements spurred by the Trump Administration. On Monday, they announced they’d hire 126 – amounting to “a flimsy band-aid,” Sen. Cantwell said.
    This dangerous decision to leave critical jobs unfilled comes as the National Interagency Fire Center, a partnership which includes NWS, released its Fire Maps for the next four months predicting above normal significant fire potential across the West, in Hawaii, the coasts of North and South Carolina, and parts of Texas and Florida. The National Weather Service predicts an above-normal hurricane season, which began June 1.  Last year, according to the National Centers for Environmental Information, there were 27 weather disaster events that cost over $1 billion each and resulted in 568 deaths.
    Earlier this week, the acting head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) baffled his staff when he stated that he did not know that the United States had a hurricane season.
    And earlier today, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick testified in a Senate hearing and claimed, falsely, that NOAA is “fully staffed” heading into the summer.
    Lutnick was plainly incorrect:
    National Hurricane Center in Miami has at least five vacancies.
    At least eight NWS weather forecasting offices no longer have enough meteorologists to cover overnight shifts.
    30 of the 122 weather forecast offices don’t currently have a meteorologist-in-charge, their most experienced weather expert. Some of these vacancies are in major metropolitan areas such as New York City, Cleveland, Houston, and hurricane-prone Tampa.
    Since mid-March, at least 10 weather forecast offices have suspended or limited their weather balloon launches needed for daily forecasts.
    NOAA is short more than 90 staffers whose job is maintaining Doppler radar and automated airport weather sensors operational across the nation.
    Last Thursday, Sen. Cantwell sent a letter demanding that the Trump Administration immediately exempt the NWS from its current federal hiring freeze so that citizens and communities will not be left to fend for themselves without adequate warnings as both hurricane season and wildfire season rapidly approach.
    Monday’s action by the administration lifted the hiring freeze on 126 positions across four roles – meteorologists, hydrologists, physical scientists, and electronic technicians. However, many other important roles remain subject to the freeze, including credentialed mariners needed to safety operate NOAA research vessels, weather scientists, and weather satellite technicians. NOAA vessels and satellites are crucial to maintaining forecast and weather infrastructure needed for meteorologists to issue quality and timely forecasts. These firings also impact our economy, with a number of commercial fishing surveys cancelled this year, including for Alaska pollock and salmon. Elimination of surveys will take catch from fishing families, which will result in job loss and increased cost for consumers who want access to high-quality American seafood at their local markets and restaurants.
    Multiple recent reports have documented the impacts of the hiring freeze. The Washington Post reports that “Some…forecasting teams are so critically understaffed that the agency is offering to pay moving expenses for any staff willing to transfer to those offices, according to notices recently sent to employees…” And the New York Times found that “The National Weather Service is preparing for the probability that fewer forecast updates will be fine-tuned by specialists, among other cutbacks, because of ‘severe shortages’ of meteorologists and other employees, according to an internal agency document.” These reports make clear that action must be taken immediately to avoid a catastrophic gap in capacity in the face of a future storm or wildfire.
    In February, Sen. Cantwell sent Lutnick a letter warning of the likelihood of this exact situation.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Global: The secret to Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia – it knows wars are never won in the past

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Matthew Sussex, Associate Professor (Adj), Griffith Asia Institute; and Fellow, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University

    The iconoclastic American general Douglas Macarthur once said that “wars are never won in the past”.

    That sentiment certainly seemed to ring true following Ukraine’s recent audacious attack on Russia’s strategic bomber fleet, using small, cheap drones housed in wooden pods and transported near Russian airfields in trucks.

    The synchronised operation targeted Russian Air Force planes as far away as Irkutsk – more than 5,000 kilometres from Ukraine. Early reports suggest around a third of Russia’s long-range bombers were either destroyed or badly damaged. Russian military bloggers have put the estimated losses lower, but agree the attack was catastrophic for the Russian Air Force, which has struggled to adapt to Ukrainian tactics.

    This particular attack was reportedly 18 months in the making. To keep it secret was an extraordinary feat. Notably, Kyiv did not inform the United States that the attack was in the offing. The Ukrainians judged – perhaps understandably – that sharing intelligence on their plans could have alerted the Kremlin in relatively short order.

    Ukraine’s success once again demonstrates that its armed forces and intelligence services are the modern masters of battlefield innovation and operational security.

    Finding new solutions

    Western military planners have been carefully studying Ukraine’s successes ever since its forces managed to blunt Russia’s initial onslaught deep into its territory in early 2022, and then launched a stunning counteroffensive that drove the Russian invaders back towards their original starting positions.

    There have been other lessons, too, about how the apparently weak can stand up to the strong. These include:

    • attacks on Russian President Vladimir Putin’s vanity project, the Kerch Bridge, linking the Russian mainland to occupied Crimea (the last assault occurred just days ago)

    • the relentless targeting of Russia’s oil and gas infrastructure with drones

    • attacks against targets in Moscow to remind the Russian populace about the war, and

    • its incursion into the Kursk region, which saw Ukrainian forces capture around 1,000 square kilometres of Russian territory.

    On each occasion, Western defence analysts have questioned the wisdom of Kyiv’s moves.

    Why invade Russia using your best troops when Moscow’s forces continue laying waste to cities in Ukraine?

    Why hit Russia’s energy infrastructure if it doesn’t markedly impede the battlefield mobility of Russian forces?

    And why attack symbolic targets like bridges when it could provoke Putin into dangerous “escalation”?

    The answer to this is the key to effective innovation during wartime. Ukraine’s defence and security planners have interpreted their missions – and their best possible outcomes – far more accurately than conventional wisdom would have thought.

    Above all, they have focused on winning the war they are in, rather than those of the past. This means:

    • using technological advancements to force the Russians to change their tactics

    • shaping the information environment to promote their narratives and keep vital Western aid flowing, and

    • deploying surprise attacks not just as ways to boost public morale, but also to impose disproportionate costs on the Russian state.

    The impact of Ukraine’s drone attack

    In doing so, Ukraine has had an eye for strategic effects. As the smaller nation reliant on international support, this has been the only logical choice.

    Putin has been prepared to commit a virtually inexhaustible supply of expendable cannon fodder to continue his country’s war ad infinitum. Russia has typically won its wars this way – by attrition – albeit at a tremendous human and material cost.

    That said, Ukraine’s most recent surprise attack does not change the overall contours of the war. The only person with the ability to end it is Putin himself.

    That’s why Ukraine is putting as much pressure as possible on his regime, as well as domestic and international perceptions of it. It is key to Ukraine’s theory of victory.

    This is also why the latest drone attack is so significant. Russia needs its long-range bomber fleet, not just to fire conventional cruise missiles at Ukrainian civilian and infrastructure targets, but as aerial delivery systems for its strategic nuclear arsenal.

    The destruction of even a small portion of Russia’s deterrence capability has the potential to affect its nuclear strategy. It has increasingly relied on this strategy to threaten the West.

    A second impact of the attack is psychological. The drone attacks are more likely to enrage Putin than bring him to the bargaining table. However, they reinforce to the Russian military that there are few places – even on its own soil – that its air force can act with operational impunity.

    The surprise attacks also provide a shot in the arm domestically, reminding Ukrainians they remain very much in the fight.

    Finally, the drone attacks send a signal to Western leaders. US President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, for instance, have gone to great lengths to tell the world that Ukraine is weak and has “no cards”. This action shows Kyiv does indeed have some powerful cards to play.

    That may, of course, backfire: after all, Trump is acutely sensitive to being made to look a fool. He may look unkindly at resuming military aid to Ukraine after being shown up for saying Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky would be forced to capitulate without US support.

    But Trump’s own hubris has already done that for him. His regular claims that a peace deal is just weeks away have gone beyond wishful thinking and are now monotonous.

    Unsurprisingly, Trump’s reluctance to put anything approaching serious pressure on Putin has merely incentivised the Russian leader to string the process along.

    Indeed, Putin’s insistence on a maximalist victory, requiring Ukrainian demobilisation and disarmament without any security guarantees for Kyiv, is not diplomacy at all. It is merely the reiteration of the same unworkable demands he has made since even before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022.

    However, Ukraine’s ability to smuggle drones undetected onto an opponent’s territory, and then unleash them all together, will pose headaches for Ukraine’s friends, as well as its enemies.

    That’s because it makes domestic intelligence and policing part of any effective defence posture. It is a contingency democracies will have to plan for, just as much as authoritarian regimes, who are also learning from Ukraine’s lessons.

    In other words, while the attack has shown up Russia’s domestic security services for failing to uncover the plan, Western security elites, as well as authoritarian ones, will now be wondering whether their own security apparatuses would be up to the job.

    The drone strikes will also likely lead to questions about how useful it is to invest in high-end and extraordinarily expensive weapons systems when they can be vulnerable. The Security Service of Ukraine estimates the damage cost Russia US$7 billion (A$10.9 billion). Ukraine’s drones, by comparison, cost a couple of thousand dollars each.

    At the very least, coming up with a suitable response to those challenges will require significant thought and effort. But as Ukraine has repeatedly shown us, you can’t win wars in the past.

    Matthew Sussex has received funding from the Australian Research Council, the Atlantic Council, the Fulbright Foundation, the Carnegie Foundation, the Lowy Institute and various Australian government departments and agencies.

    – ref. The secret to Ukraine’s battlefield successes against Russia – it knows wars are never won in the past – https://theconversation.com/the-secret-to-ukraines-battlefield-successes-against-russia-it-knows-wars-are-never-won-in-the-past-258172

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI Global: Unprecedented heat in the North Atlantic Ocean kickstarted Europe’s hellish 2023 summer. Now we know what caused it

    Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Matthew England, Scientia Professor and Deputy Director of the ARC Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science, UNSW Sydney

    Westend61/Getty Images

    In June 2023, a record-breaking marine heatwave swept across the North Atlantic Ocean, smashing previous temperature records.

    Soon after, deadly heatwaves broke out across large areas of Europe, and torrential rains and flash flooding devastated parts of Spain and Eastern Europe. That year Switzerland lost more than 4% of its total glacier volume, and severe bushfires broke out around the Mediterranean.

    It wasn’t just Europe that was impacted. The coral reefs of the Caribbean were bleaching under severe heat stress. And hurricanes, fuelled by ocean heat, intensified into disasters. For example, Hurricane Idalia hit Florida in August 2023 – causing 12 deaths and an estimated US$3.6 billion in damages.

    Today, in a paper published in Nature, we uncover what drove this unprecedented marine heatwave.

    A strange discovery

    In a strange twist to the global warming story, there is a region of the North Atlantic Ocean to the southeast of Greenland that has been cooling over the last 50 to 100 years.

    This so-called “cold blob” or “warming hole” has been linked to the weakening of what’s known as the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation – a system of ocean currents that conveys warm water from the equator towards the poles.

    During July 2023 we met as a team to analyse this cold blob – how deep it reaches and how robust it is as a measure of the strength of the Atlantic overturning circulation – when it became clear there was a strong reversal of the historical cooling trend. The cold blob had warmed to 2°C above average.

    But was that a sign the overturning circulation had been reinvigorated? Or was something else going on?

    A layered story

    It soon became clear the anomalous warm temperatures southeast of Greenland were part of an unprecedented marine heatwave that had developed across much of the North Atlantic Ocean. By July, basin-averaged warming in the North Atlantic reached 1.4°C above normal, almost double the previous record set in 2010.

    To uncover what was behind these record breaking temperatures, we combined estimates of the atmospheric conditions that prevailed during the heatwave, such as winds and cloud cover, with ocean observations and model simulations.

    We were especially interested in understanding what was happening in the mixed upper layer of water of the ocean, which is strongly affected by the atmosphere.

    Distinct from the deeper layer of cold water, the ocean’s surface mixed layer warms as it’s exposed to more sunlight during spring and summer. But the rate at which this warming happens depends on its thickness. If it’s thick, it will warm more gradually; if it’s thin, rapid warming can ensue.

    During summer the thickness of this surface mixed layer is largely set by winds. Winds churn up the surface ocean and the stronger they are the deeper the mixing penetrates, so strong winds create a think upper layer and weak winds generate a shallower layer.

    Sea surface temperature anomaly (°C) for the month of June 2023, relative to the 1991–2020 reference period.
    Copernicus Climate Change Service/ECMWF

    Thinning at the surface

    Our new research indicates that the primary driver of the marine heatwave was record-breaking weak winds across much of the basin. The winds were at their weakest measured levels during June and July, possibly linked to a developing El Niño in the east Pacific Ocean.

    This led to by far the shallowest upper layer on record. Data from the Argo Program – a global array of nearly 4,000 robotic floats that measure the temperature and salinity in the upper 2,000 metres of the ocean – showed in some areas this layer was only ten metres deep, compared to the usual 20 to 40 metres deep.

    This caused the sun to heat the thin surface layer far more rapidly than usual.

    In addition to these short term changes in 2023, previous research has shown long-term warming associated with anthropogenic climate change is reducing the ability of winds to mix the upper ocean, causing it to gradually thin.

    We also identified a possible secondary driver of more localised warming during the 2023 marine heatwave: above-average solar radiation hitting the ocean. This could be linked in part with the introduction of new international rules in 2020 to reduce sulfate emissions from ships.

    The aim of these rules was to reduce air pollution from ship’s exhaust systems. But sulfate aerosols also reflect solar radiation and can lead to cloud formation. The resultant clearer skies can then lead to more ocean warming.

    Early warning signs

    The extreme 2023 heatwave provides a preview of the future. Marine heatwaves are expected to worsen as Earth continues to warm due to greenhouse gas emissions, with devastating impacts on marine ecosystems such as coral reefs and fisheries. This also means more intense hurricanes – and more intense land-based heatwaves.

    Right now, although the “cold blob” to the southeast of Greenland has returned, parts of the North Atlantic remain significantly warmer than the average. There is a particularly warm patch of water off the coast of the United Kingdom, with temperatures up to 4°C above normal. And this is likely priming Europe for extreme land-based heatwaves this summer.

    Global ocean temperatures on June 2 2025. A patch of abnormally warm water is visible off the southern coast of the United Kingdom.
    National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration

    To better understand, forecast and plan for the impacts of marine heatwaves, long-term ocean and atmospheric data and models, including those provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States, are crucial. In fact, without these data and models, our new study would not have been possible.

    Despite this, NOAA faces an uncertain future. A proposed budget for the 2026 fiscal year released by the White House last month could mean devastating funding cuts of more than US$1.5 billion – mostly targeting climate-based research and data collection.

    This would be a disaster for monitoring our oceans and climate system, right at a time when change is severe, unprecedented, and proving very costly.

    Matthew England receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Alex Sen Gupta receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Andrew Kiss receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    Zhi Li receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

    – ref. Unprecedented heat in the North Atlantic Ocean kickstarted Europe’s hellish 2023 summer. Now we know what caused it – https://theconversation.com/unprecedented-heat-in-the-north-atlantic-ocean-kickstarted-europes-hellish-2023-summer-now-we-know-what-caused-it-258061

    MIL OSI – Global Reports –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Grassley Oversight Unveils Disturbing Extent of FBI’s Anti-Catholic Bias

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Iowa Chuck Grassley
    WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today released Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) records revealing the Biden FBI’s anti-Catholic Richmond Memo was widely distributed to over 1,000 FBI employees across the country before it was publicly disclosed by a whistleblower in 2023.  
    Per the Grassley-obtained records, the Biden FBI’s targeting of Catholics based on biased sources was more widespread than previously known. In fact, Grassley found the FBI produced at least 13 additional documents and five attachments that used anti-Catholic terminology and relied on information from the radical far-left Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). One FBI agent admitted over email, “[O]ur overreliance on the SPLC for hate designation [of traditional Catholics] is … problematic.”  
    A second FBI memo, released by Grassley, was drafted by the FBI Richmond field office for Bureau-wide distribution. The draft memo repeated the unfounded link between traditional Catholicism and violent extremism, but was never published due to backlash following the Richmond Memo’s public disclosure. The existence of this second memo contradicts former-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s testimony that the Richmond field office only produced “a single product.” 
    Grassley is urging FBI Director Kash Patel to continue producing records related to the Richmond Memo’s origins, as well as former-FBI Director Christopher Wray’s misleading and obstructive response to Grassley’s oversight of the memo. 
    “I’m determined to get to the bottom of the Richmond memo, and of the FBI’s contempt for oversight in the last administration,” Grassley wrote. “I look forward to continuing to work with you to restore the FBI to excellence and prove once again that justice can and must be fairly and evenly administered, blind to whether we are Democrats or Republicans, believers or nonbelievers.” 
    Find Grassley’s letter and the released FBI documents HERE. 
    Related: 
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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Grassley Recognizes C-SPAN’s Decades of Senate Coverage, Discusses Need for Public Access Across All Platforms

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Iowa Chuck Grassley

    WASHINGTON – In a speech on the Senate floor, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) celebrated the 39th anniversary of C-SPAN 2’s first Senate broadcast on June 2, 1986. Earlier today, Grassley and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) introduced a bipartisan resolution to celebrate C-SPAN’s historic coverage and urge all television providers, including streaming services, to carry the network.

    [embedded content]

    VIDEO

    Today is the 39th year celebration of the United States Senate being covered by C-SPAN 2. 

    I’ve come to the floor countless times since my first term in the United States Senate. beginning in 1981. It’s a privilege to represent Iowans and my home state here in the greatest deliberative body in the world.

    For more than four decades, and counting, I’ve joined my colleagues here in this chamber to debate public policy, shed light on wrongdoing and celebrate historic milestones.

    I’ve cast votes on behalf of Iowans, giving my assent or dissent to nominations and legislation on matters both foreign [and] domestic, on issues from A to Z.

    For a period of time – spanning more than 27 years – I held the longest voting streak in Senate history. My 8,927 consecutive roll call votes ended in November of 2020, when I was quarantined for exposure to COVID-19.

    My good friend from Maine, Senator Susan Collins, now holds the baton, as she continues her unbroken voting streak since she was sworn into office in 1997.

    During the 116th Congress and now the 119th Congress, I’m honored to serve as Senate President pro tem. From this leadership position, I open the Senate daily, lead the Pledge of Allegiance and often take the opportunity to deliver brief remarks during what we call Morning Business.

    Since 1986, every minute of the people’s business conducted here in the Senate chamber has been made available live to the public, from memorable moments – including televising 16 Supreme Court nomination debates and three presidential impeachment trials – to subjects that are often very mundane.

    Thanks to C-SPAN 2, this public service allows our constituents to see the swearing-in of newly elected members, watch all-night sessions during vote-a-ramas and tune in to history being made.

    Speaking of the historic moments, it was 39 years ago today, [on] June 2, when C-SPAN 2 started its gavel-to-gavel coverage of the United States Senate. 

    That was seven years after C-SPAN started broadcasting live coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives in 1979. At that time, I was a member of the House and appreciated C-SPAN’s mission to foster civic engagement and let the sunshine in on the people’s business.

    So, today, I wish C-SPAN 2 a happy birthday and thank those who are dedicated to its mission to bring the people’s business to the people of our country. C-SPAN does not receive one penny of taxpayer dollars. It is funded primarily from satellite and cable providers.

    Senator Klobuchar of Minnesota and I have introduced a bipartisan resolution to recognize C-SPAN 2 and the public service it provides the American people through its live, nonpartisan coverage. Our resolution calls for television providers, including streaming services, to make C-SPAN public affairs programming available to all Americans in real time on all platforms. 

    For [the] tens of millions of Americans who have cut the cord and get their content from streaming services, they should not be cut off from the civic content made available by C-SPAN.

    C-SPAN gives our constituents a front row seat to the legislative branch, providing unfiltered access to debates and deliberations that impact their lives and their livelihoods.

    C-SPAN 2 has recorded more than 43,830 hours of Senate sessions that span the spectrum of political views, policy debates and personal testimony, including more than 169,000 speeches.

    It has documented more than 23,439 roll call votes, providing a live testimonial of Senate decision-making. Its coverage helps hold elected officials accountable to our constituents who are able to see every roll call vote, as it actually happens.

    And it just so happens, on C-SPAN 2’s inaugural day on June 2, 1986, I took my turn as presiding officer during the Senate session.

    I also delivered remarks to introduce a bill on human rights and free speech issues that involved protestors outside of the then-Soviet embassy here in Washington, D.C. Thanks to C-SPAN, Americans can watch history unfold before their very eyes.

    As an advocate for civic engagement and transparency, I applaud C-SPAN’s commitment to chronicling democracy in action here in the Congress.

    In fact, for more than 20 years, I’ve pushed to allow cameras into the federal courthouses, including the Supreme Court, to foster a better understanding of the federal judiciary and its role in our system of checks and balances and in resolving legal disputes.

    Keeping C-SPAN’s cameras rolling here in Congress keeps lawmakers accountable to our constituents by providing a valuable conduit for civic engagement and civic education. As James Madison wrote in 1822, after he had been President six years before, some 35 years after he helped write the Constitution:

    “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a Farce or Tragedy; or perhaps both. Knowle[d]ge will for ever govern ignorance: and a people who mean to be their own Governours, must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives.”

    C-SPAN helps arm Americans with knowledge in real time in a refreshing, nonpartisan lens. In this era of civic discord and polarization, C-SPAN serves the public interest, not a partisan agenda. 

    I encourage my colleagues to support our bipartisan resolution that Sen. Klobuchar and I have introduced.

    And I’ll finish with another James Madison [quote], as he noted: an engaged and educated citizenry is necessary to advance the public good and secure the longevity of our republic.

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    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: ICYMI: Grassley Discusses AI Whistleblower Protection Act During “A Starting Point” Interview

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Iowa Chuck Grassley
    WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) joined “A Starting Point” to share details about his AI Whistleblower Protection Act.
    The legislation provides explicit whistleblower protections to those developing and deploying Artificial Intelligence (AI). Currently, some AI companies’ restrictive severance and nondisclosure agreements (NDAs) create a chilling effect on current and former employees looking to make whistleblower disclosures to the federal government, including Congress.
    Video and excerpts of Grassley’s remarks follow.

    VIDEO
    On the Importance of Whistleblowers:
    “A whistleblower can be anybody, most often in government that I deal with, but sometimes in the private sector. People that know something isn’t right, [that a] law might be violated. People might be stealing taxpayers’ money [or] taxes aren’t being paid, whatever the case might be. They think it’s not right. They may not even think of themselves as a whistleblower. I think of them as just patriotic Americans that want the government to do what the government’s supposed to do: obey the laws [and] spend the taxpayers’ money the way Congress intended.”
    On the Need for AI-Specific Whistleblower Protections:
    “I’ve had [AI] whistleblowers come to me and say that things aren’t right. They want to expose it … That’s why we need laws that would protect whistleblowers within the AI community, as we would any place in government or in the private sector …
    “My bill will explicitly protect communications of current and former AI employees making legally protected disclosure to Congress or a federal agency or to a supervisor. It seems as time goes on, AI is growing. My timely legislation will bring transparency and accountability to the artificial intelligence sector before it’s too late.”
    On Shady Non-Disclosure Agreements:
    “[These] non-disclosure statements that would say ‘you can’t talk about this,’ and it just prohibits and inhibits people that know something’s wrong coming to Congress to talk about it. It’s a violation of free speech, [and] it’s a way of covering up things that are wrong, that either people in government don’t want public, or private business wants to keep the information within the business.”
    On the Free Market System:
    “I believe in the free enterprise system. And of course, that causes me to support pro-business, pro-growth policies. I don’t see my whistleblower protection interest in any way violating that, because the government is legitimately a referee within the free enterprise system. So, all of this legislation isn’t about upending any non-disclosure agreements or ending companies’ rights to confidentiality. This is pretty simply stated as being something to ensure people who see wrongdoing can speak up without retribution before more harm is done to the public.
    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Grassley, Republican Colleagues Introduce Legislation to Bolster Violent Crime Laws

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Iowa Chuck Grassley

    WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) today led 10 Republican colleagues in introducing legislation to strengthen violent crime statutes and help prevent future crime. The Combating Violent and Dangerous Crime Act would resolve conflicting court decisions by clarifying penalties for violent offenses like carjacking, robbery and kidnapping.

    “Under the Biden-Harris administration, our nation saw a massive spike in violent crime. As the Trump administration works to clean up the previous administration’s mess, Congress has a duty to resolve any legal ambiguities that may weaken our ability to hold criminals fully accountable,” Grassley said. “Our bill includes several modest, but meaningful, reforms to tamp down on future crime and ensure justice is served.”

    The Combating Violent and Dangerous Crime Act addresses ambiguity and conflicting applications of existing law by clarifying congressional intent. Among other provisions, the bill would:

    • Resolve conflicting circuit court decisions that have resulted in a higher burden to charge violent offenses;
    • Clarify that an attempt or conspiracy to commit an offence involving physical force meets the legal definition of a violent crime;
    • Increase the statutory maximum penalty for carjacking and remove a duplicative intent requirement needed to charge a carjacking offense;
    • Clarify that attempted bank robbery and conspiracy to commit bank robbery are punishable under the current bank robbery statute;
    • Outlaw the marketing of candy-flavored drugs to minors; and
    • Establish a new category of violent kidnapping offences, allowing for greater penalties for violent kidnapping.

    Grassley is joined by Sens. John Boozman (R-Ark.), Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Bill Cassidy (R-La.), James Lankford (R-Okla.), Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho).

    Read the full bill text HERE. Read the section-by-section HERE.

    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: On Senate Floor, Grassley Pushes Back Against Baseless Democrat Obstruction of DOJ Nominees

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Iowa Chuck Grassley
    WASHINGTON – Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) is calling out Senate Democrats for obstructing Department of Justice (DOJ) nominees and undermining the Senate’s advice and consent role. 
    Grassley today went to the Senate floor to request unanimous passage of Patrick Davis’ nomination to be Assistant Attorney General for the DOJ’s Office of Legislative Affairs (OLA). Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), who has announced a blanket hold on all DOJ political nominees, objected to Grassley’s request. 
    Citing his reasons for objecting, Schumer claimed to have received insufficient response from DOJ regarding the Qatari jetliner gifted to the United States. Davis, as head of the DOJ OLA, would be responsible for facilitating this and all other DOJ responses to Congress. By obstructing Davis’ swift confirmation, Schumer is hamstringing his own efforts to communicate with DOJ.  
    “Obstructing [Davis’] nomination serves absolutely no one,” Grassley said on the Senate floor. “Many senators – myself included – have outstanding requests to the Justice Department that we expect answers to. I understand that some senators may complain that they haven’t received a response to their own outstanding requests. I’ve made such complaints myself over the years, under both Republican and Democrat administrations. But I don’t believe that obstructing this particular qualified nominee, who can help get the responses we need, will address their concern.”
    Schumer additionally stated that, by seeking unanimous consent on Davis’ nomination, “Republicans want the Senate to quietly rubber stamp a political nominee for the DOJ… no hearing, no debate, no scrutiny.” The Judiciary Committee held a hearing on Davis’ nomination on March 26 and both debated and advanced his nomination on April 10.
    The Senate confirmed the last two heads of the DOJ OLA – Carlos Uriarte and Stephen Boyd – by voice vote. Grassley has repeatedly stressed holds should be used selectively and urged Democrats to work with Republicans to confirm nominees in a bipartisan manner. 
    Video and a transcript of Grassley’s remarks follow. 
    [embedded content]
    VIDEO
    I come to the floor today concerned that the Senate’s advice and consent role is being undermined. It’s being undermined by obstruction from Senate Democrats that threaten to keep the Justice Department from functioning as the American people expect and the American people deserve. 
    The Office of Legislative Affairs serves as the crucial bridge between the Justice Department and this Congress. This relationship is essential, not only for the legislative process but also for maintaining constitutional oversight and accountability. 
    The Office of Legislative Affairs ensures that we, as lawmakers, have the timely information needed to craft legislation, conduct oversight and fulfill our constitutional duties. When we seek answers—whether it’s on criminal justice, or immigration, or national security—it’s the Office of Legislative Affairs that takes our questions and returns the responses. This function can’t run on autopilot.
    Yet today, the Office of Legislative Affairs is hobbled. It lacks a Senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General to lead that office. Why? Because Senate Democrats have decided to impede the confirmation of all Justice Department nominees without exception. That is not the constitutional role of advice and consent; that is obstruction.
    Every senator has the right to raise concerns about nominees—that’s our constitutional role, that’s our duty. And holds of specific nominees for specific reasons at times is very appropriate. It’s an appropriate tool for any senator to use. I have even used that tool, and I’ve also done it on nominees.  
    But the process demands fairness and common sense. We should weigh each nominee individually, not slam the brakes on an entire agency, especially one [responsible] for keeping Americans safe.
    So I’m here at the floor because of the nomination of Patrick Davis, [who has been] pending on the Senate calendar for now two months. This is regrettable, because he’s an exceptionally qualified nominee. And this senator should know, because he worked for this senator. 
    Mr. Davis brings a strong record of public service and a deep understanding of the legislative process, gained from his time working for me on the Senate Judiciary Committee. I’m confident he will lead the Office of Legislative Affairs with diligence, with fairness and with integrity. He should be confirmed today, and I’m here to ask my colleagues to do just that.
    Obstructing his nomination serves absolutely no one. Many senators—myself included—have outstanding requests to the Justice Department that we expect answers to. I understand that some senators may complain that they haven’t received a response to their own outstanding requests. I’ve made such complaints myself over the years, under both Republican and Democrat administrations. But I don’t believe that obstructing this particular qualified nominee, who can help get the responses we need, will address their concern.
    I also understand that some senators are unhappy with the current administration and are using [holds on] Justice Department nominees to make their displeasure known. 
    To these colleagues, I’ll simply say that the obstruction of qualified nominees to lead the Office of Legislative Affairs makes it harder for the Department of Justice to engage with Congress, and harder for Congress to do its job. This ultimately ends up hurting the American people.
    I’m asking this body to uphold a fair confirmation process so that the Justice Department can effectively engage with Congress. 
    Blocking the confirmation of Patrick Davis does not serve the Senate, it does not serve the interests of justice and it does not serve the American People.
    -30-

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Reed Hammers Lutnick for Creating Waste, Inefficiency & Needless Bureaucratic Gridlock at Commerce

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed

    WATCH: Sen. Reed warns Lutnick’s micromanagement and short-staffing of NOAA could leave states vulnerable to future disasters

    WASHINGTON, DC – In his partisan zeal to root out so-called waste, redundancy, and abuse, U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick is generating unprecedented bureaucratic waste and delays that are hampering the U.S. Department of Commerce’s mission, particularly at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).  Whistleblowers within the agency have come forward in the press to sound the alarm that Secretary Lutnick is causing bureaucratic gridlock and hindering the agency’s ability to assist local communities with preparations for extreme weather events.

    “Staff shortages and new layers of bureaucracy are suffocating NOAA and threatening its ability to accurately predict extreme weather events, ensure U.S. ports stay open and safeguard the nation’s commercial and recreational fisheries, say current and former agency officials,” according to E&E News by Politico.

    Things have gotten so bad at Commerce that even President Trump’s staunch ally U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) has sounded the alarm.  Noting that NOAA has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year, Senator Cruz reported at a Congressional hearing last month that Secretary Lutnick typically reviews about two dozen contracts a week — at that pace, only 1,248 contracts would be reviewed in a year, and many of them require immediate attention and action.

    E&E News by Politico reported: “These contracts include everything from post-hurricane flood assessment to janitorial services,” Cruz said. He added that a data center at Texas A&M University was shut down for days, “depriving Texas emergency and water managers of critical drought forecasts that help them manage reservoirs and track storm surge data and hurricane forecasts in real time.”

    The report notes: “The coil around NOAA squeezes in two ways, they say. The first is personnel. More than 1,000 NOAA employees have left the agency since the start of the Trump administration, and the empty desks have led to staffing issues in key weather service offices — just as hurricane season approaches… The second issue is the slow pace of approval for outside contracts and grants… But fewer than 20 percent of outstanding grants have been approved, and more than 1,000 are in the queue with more added every day, according to a current NOAA official who was granted anonymity to speak without fear of reprisal.”

    Today, at a Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies hearing, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) grilled Secretary Lutnick about the growing backlog of contracts that are still awaiting his sign off and how his inefficient and insufficient micromanagement tactics have slowed down the vital work of NOAA just as hurricane season is getting underway.

    “We’ve all been talking about bottlenecks, in fact, in the Department and elsewhere throughout the government. In fact, last month, Senator Cruz warned about the growing backlog of contracts awaiting approval at the Department of Commerce.  He warned that NOAA alone has 5,700 contracts set to expire this year. And it’s been reported in the press that you are insisting on personally reviewing every commerce contract over $100,000,” Reed asked.

    Secretary Lutnick admitted: “That is true.”

    Reed responded: “Well, that seems to be something that is not particularly efficient. And that results in the 5,700 contracts just in NOAA. So again, if you can’t find reliable support to do those reviews, I think you’re wasting your time, frankly.”

    To achieve costs savings and efficiently achieve its diverse missions, NOAA operations rely on a significant number of contractors.  While every Administration carefully reviews each contract to ensure it is an effective use of taxpayer dollars, what sets the Trump Administration apart is its own inefficiency and bureaucratic bottleneck that slows the reviews down to the point where the work in the contract either can’t be done or is approved at the last second and could raise costs in the long run.

    This is not a red state or blue state issue.  In addition to Senators Cruz and Reed, several other Senators – including Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Thom Tillis (R-NC), Dan Sullivan (R-AK) — have raised concerns in recent months about missing or delayed funding, according to Politico.

    During the hearing, Reed pressed Lutnick about when the backlog of contract reviews would be completed and Lutnick, surprisingly, claimed there are no more NOAA contracts he needs to review:

    SEN. REED: Well, let’s go ahead and get those 5,700 contracts done. This weekend?

    SEC. LUTNICK: There are not, under any circumstances, any contracts in there. There are none.

    SEN. REED: How about this weekend?

    SEC. LUTNICK: None. 

    SEN. REED: Can you get it done this weekend? Work overtime with the gang and get it done?

    SEC. LUTNICK: There are no contracts waiting for me, and if there were, I’ll be there all night tonight, making sure they get turned out with my team, teaching my team how to do it.

    Noting that the Trump Administration has proposed drastic cuts to NOAA, slashing the agency’s annual budget from the current level of $6.1 billion down to $4.5 billion next year, and eliminating NOAA’s Office of Oceanic and Atmospheric Research, Reed quoted longtime NOAA researcher Craig McLean, who served as NOAA’s top scientist during the first Trump Administration, and warned that the drastic cuts Secretary Lutnick is backing would “take us back to the 1950s in terms of our scientific footing and the American people” if enacted.

    Lutnick’s claim that the National Weather Service budget would remain unimpacted is undermined by steep cuts to other areas of NOAA, such as technology, research, and satellites that would grossly undercut the agency’s climate, weather, and ocean capabilities.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: New CBO Report Shows Trump’s Bill Would Slash Healthcare Coverage from 16 Million Americans & Raise Costs For Millions More

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Rhode Island Jack Reed

    WASHINGTON, DC – Today, after the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released a new analysis showing 16 million people will lose coverage from the Republican reconciliation plan, including their failure to extend premium tax credits that Americans use to buy affordable health insurance, U.S. Senator Jack Reed (D-RI) issued the following statement:

    “The Republican-plan would rip health care away from working people in order to fund a bigger tax windfall for the ultra-wealthy.

    “Republicans continue to try to mislead the American people about their true intentions, but this CBO report makes it very clear that under the Republican plan, 16 million Americans will lose their health care and health costs will go up for millions more. 

    “The America people aren’t fooled by misleading Republican sales pitches and gravity-defying claims that you can somehow slash hundreds of billions of dollars from Medicaid and not reduce care or services for a single person.  They can see Republicans are trying to effectively dismantle the Affordable Care Act.  The CBO report is clear: Republicans are trying to rip people’s health care away through a variety of tactics, including increased bureaucratic red tape and higher out-of-pocket costs.

    “Republicans should halt this foolish, big ugly bill and start working with Democrats on a bipartisan, fiscally responsible package that includes targeted tax cuts for the middle-class, not just the wealthy few, and strengthens Medicaid instead of slashing hundreds of billions of health dollars.”

    The CBO was established in 1974 under the Congressional Budget and Impoundment Control Act to give Congress independent, objective budgetary and economic analyses.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI: SPEC Resumes Global Collaboration with Companies on U.S. BIS Entity List

    Source: GlobeNewswire (MIL-OSI)

    GAINESVILLE, Va., June 04, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Standard Performance Evaluation Corp. (SPEC), the trusted leader in computing benchmarks, announced today that SPEC International Standards Group (ISG) successfully advocated that the United States clarify export policies to allow companies on the Bureau of Industry and Security (BIS) Entity List to participate in creating standards. SPEC ISG invites the return of member companies excluded from collaborating due to policy reasons, bringing together the strength of industry, academia, and research from all over the world to cooperate on future computing energy efficiency standards.

    A few years ago, in order to ensure the safe application of 5G technology, the US government stipulated that US agencies should not cooperate with companies on the BIS Entity List. This ban was never intended to restrict the development of global standards. However, due to the overly strict definition of the term “standard” in the original exemption clause of BIS, the SPEC SERT suite was classified as a restricted technology, which prevented SPEC (an international standards organization with 12 Chinese member companies) from continuing to develop standards with its members on the Entity List.

    Harmonized standards are best suited to consistent design and regulatory requirements, resulting in significant cost reduction for manufacturers to meet additional benchmark requirements worldwide.

    SPEC President David Reiner said: “Restricting companies on the Entity List from participating in the development of energy efficiency benchmarks risks dividing the global standards process, negating the primary goal of standardization. Through years of hard work, in collaboration with other international organizations, we are pleased to have successfully promoted changes to U.S. policies to remove the unintended restrictions on the development of international standardized benchmarks.”

    SPEC successfully advocated changes to U.S. rules

    In 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s BIS changed its rules to allow U.S. companies to work in standards organizations to ensure U.S. proposals take full account of international standards that underlie product development and interoperability. While this was an important milestone, the change did not allow SPEC to invite Entity List businesses that were among its former members to re-join, nor to invite other entities on the Entity List to join. In response, SPEC took a series of actions to advocate for the revision of relevant U.S. laws and to promote international technology exchanges and innovation. As part of these efforts, SPEC created the International Standards Group (ISG), specifically designed to comply with the updated BIS requirements and provide a clear separation between SPEC’s international standards work and other SPEC projects.

    As a result of SPEC’s successful efforts, BIS improved regulations in late 2022. Under the final regulations, organizations on the BIS Entity List are no longer restricted from licensing, obtaining updates, or participating in the development of the SPEC SERT Suite within the SPEC ISG. These standards development activities related to the implementation, promulgation, or maintenance of the ISO/IEC 21836:2020 standard qualify for the BIS updated standards-related activities exemption. As a result, BIS listed entities are now able to obtain SPEC SERT Suite licenses, updates, and membership status in the SPEC ISG Server Efficiency Committee.

    The return of excluded members is critical because it will enable SPEC to continue to promote effective global standardized benchmarks and apply them to government energy efficiency regulations. The successful adoption of SPEC SERT suites by government regulations such as China National Institute of Standardization, EU Lot9 Ecodesign, Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry, and the U.S. EPA Energy Star is critical to SPEC’s efforts to promote sustainable technology development around the world. For example, computer servers that are ENERGY STAR certified are, on average, about 38% more energy efficient than standard servers. This means that if all computer servers sold in the United States were ENERGY STAR certified, end users would save more than $4 billion per year.

    The next-generation energy efficiency rating tool is currently under development by the SPEC ISG Server Committee, which includes representatives from Ampere, AMD, Dell, HPE, IBM, Intel, IEIT, Microsoft, Nvidia, and the University of Würzburg. The SERT 3 Suite utilizes the SPECpower Committee’s innovative modular architecture, allowing streamlined integration of the latest versions of the Chauffeur benchmark harness and the PTDaemon Interface, which are also utilized by other SPEC benchmarks. This modular design reduces the time required for developing future workloads, adding new architectures, and supporting new power analyzers and temperature sensors.

    Klaus-Dieter Lange, Chair of SPEC ISG, said: “We are pleased that SPEC was able to successfully work with the U.S. Department of Commerce to find a solution to this critical issue. We welcome the world’s innovative companies to join in the development of the next-generation SPEC SERT Suite, which will enable governments and businesses to more effectively achieve sustainable development and carbon emission reduction goals.”

    About SPEC
    SPEC is a non-profit organization that establishes, maintains and endorses standardized benchmarks and tools to evaluate performance for the newest generation of computing systems. Its membership comprises more than 120 leading computer hardware and software vendors, educational institutions, research organizations and government agencies worldwide.

    Media contact:
    Brigit Valencia
    360.597.4516
    brigit@compel-pr.com

    Images available upon request.

    SPEC® and SERT® are trademarks of the Standard Performance Evaluation Corporation. All other product and company names herein may be trademarks of their registered owners.

    The MIL Network –

  • MIL-OSI China: US vetoes UN Security Council demand for Gaza ceasefire

    Source: People’s Republic of China – State Council News

    The United States on Wednesday vetoed a Security Council draft resolution that would have demanded an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and the immediate lifting of all restrictions on humanitarian aid.

    The draft resolution, tabled by the 10 elected members of the Security Council, won the support of 14 out of the 15 members of the council. The United States, which holds veto power, voted against it.

    The draft resolution would have demanded the immediate and unconditional release of all hostages held by Hamas and other groups, and the immediate and unconditional lifting of all restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid into Gaza and its safe and unhindered distribution at scale.

    MIL OSI China News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Hickenlooper Statement on New Budget Estimate for Republicans’ Plan to Gut Medicaid, Increase National Debt

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Colorado John Hickenlooper

    Republicans’ House-passed bill would strip health insurance from 16 million Americans, raise national debt by $2.4 trillion according to CBO 

    WASHINGTON – Today, U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper released the following statement on the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) latest estimate for how the cuts to Medicaid and other crucial services included in the House-passed Republican budget will kick millions of Americans off their health insurance and increase the national debt.

    “Kicking even more kids and their families off their health insurance to pay for big tax cuts for the ultra-wealthy? That’s exactly what another CBO report shows the Republicans’ extreme plan does.

    “Even the President’s friends are saying this is a horrible bill.”

    This latest CBO estimate reflects the last-minute Republican changes to their budget that in total would result in 16 million Americans losing health insurance and increase our national debt by $2.4 trillion.   

    Nearly 80 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) nationally. Medicaid covers the care for over 60% of all nursing home residents.

    The Republican budget proposal calls for extreme Medicaid cuts of more than $700 billion, which would take away people’s health benefits; make it harder for them to see their health care providers; and prevent seniors from getting nursing home care.

    The Senate now must consider the House-passed budget. Hickenlooper has already voted against the Republican budget resolution on the Senate floor twice and offered amendments to prevent cuts to Medicaid. He will vote against the proposal again when it comes to the Senate.

    CBO is a nonpartisan entity that offers impartial analysis on the costs and impacts of proposed legislation to Congress.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI Video: President Donald J. Trump Signs Travel Restrictions Executive Order

    Source: United States of America – The White House (video statements)

    “We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen… That is why today I am signing a new executive order placing travel restrictions on countries including Yemen, Somalia, Haiti, Libya, and numerous others.” –President Trump

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_1F7PxVT40

    MIL OSI Video –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Restricting The Entry of Foreign Nationals to Protect the United States from Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats

    US Senate News:

    Source: US Whitehouse
    class=”has-text-align-center”>BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA A PROCLAMATION
    During my first Administration, I restricted the entry of foreign nationals into the United States, which successfully prevented national security threats from reaching our borders and which the Supreme Court upheld.  In Executive Order 14161 of January 20, 2025 (Protecting the United States From Foreign Terrorists and Other National Security and Public Safety Threats), I stated that it is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from aliens who intend to commit terrorist attacks, threaten our national security, espouse hateful ideology, or otherwise exploit the immigration laws for malevolent purposes. 
    I also stated that the United States must be vigilant during the visa-issuance process to ensure that those aliens approved for admission into the United States do not intend to harm Americans or our national interests.  More importantly, the United States must identify such aliens before their admission or entry into the United States.  The United States must ensure that admitted aliens and aliens otherwise already present in the United States do not bear hostile attitudes toward its citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles, and do not advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists or other threats to our national security.
    I directed the Secretary of State, in coordination with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, to identify countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the admission of nationals from those countries pursuant to section 212(f) of the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA), 8 U.S.C. 1182(f).  After completing that process, the Secretary of State determined that a number of countries remain deficient with regards to screening and vetting.  Many of these countries have also taken advantage of the United States in their exploitation of our visa system and their historic failure to accept back their removable nationals. 
    As President, I must act to protect the national security and national interest of the United States and its people.  I remain committed to engaging with those countries willing to cooperate to improve information-sharing and identity-management procedures, and to address both terrorism-related and public-safety risks.  Nationals of some countries also pose significant risks of overstaying their visas in the United States, which increases burdens on immigration and law enforcement components of the United States, and often exacerbates other risks related to national security and public safety.
    Some of the countries with inadequacies face significant challenges to reform efforts.  Others have made important improvements to their protocols and procedures, and I commend them for these efforts.  But until countries with identified inadequacies address them, members of my Cabinet have recommended certain conditional restrictions and limitations.  I have considered and largely accepted those recommendations and impose the limitations set forth below on the entry into the United States by the classes of foreign nationals identified in sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation.
    NOW, THEREFORE, I, DONALD J. TRUMP, President of the United States of America, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including sections 212(f) and 215(a) of the INA, 8 U.S.C. 1182(f) and 1185(a), and section 301 of title 3, United States Code, hereby find that, absent the measures set forth in this proclamation, the immigrant and nonimmigrant entry into the United States of persons described in sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, and that their entry should be subject to certain restrictions, limitations, and exceptions.  I therefore hereby proclaim the following:
    Section 1.  Policy and Purpose.  (a)  It is the policy of the United States to protect its citizens from terrorist attacks and other national security or public-safety threats.  Screening and vetting protocols and procedures associated with visa adjudications and other immigration processes play a critical role in implementing that policy.  These protocols enhance our ability to detect foreign nationals who may commit, aid, or support acts of terrorism, or otherwise pose a safety threat, and they aid our efforts to prevent such individuals from entering the United States.
    (b)  Information-sharing and identity-management protocols and practices of foreign governments are important for the effectiveness of the screening and vetting protocols and procedures of the United States.  Governments manage the identity and travel documents of their nationals and residents. They also control the circumstances under which they provide information about their nationals to other governments, including information about known or suspected terrorists and criminal-history information.  It is, therefore, the policy of the United States to take all necessary and appropriate steps to encourage foreign governments to improve their information-sharing and identity-management protocols and practices and to regularly share their identity and threat information with the immigration screening and vetting systems of the United States.
    (c)  Section 2(b) of Executive Order 14161 directed the Secretary of State, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, within 60 days of the date of that order, to jointly submit to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, a report identifying countries throughout the world for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full or partial suspension on the entry or admission of nationals from those countries pursuant to section 212(f) of the INA (8 U.S.C. 1182(f)).
    (d)  On April 9, 2025, the Secretary of State, with the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, presented the report described in subsection (c) of this section, recommending that entry restrictions and limitations be placed on foreign nationals of several countries.  The report identified countries for which vetting and screening information is so deficient as to warrant a full suspension of admissions and countries that warrant a partial suspension of admission.
    (e)  In evaluating the recommendations from the Secretary of State and in determining what restrictions to impose for each country, I consulted with the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, appropriate Assistants to the President, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency.  I considered foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism goals.  And I further considered various factors, including each country’s screening and vetting capabilities, information sharing policies, and country-specific risk factors — including whether each country has a significant terrorist presence within its territory, its visa-overstay rate, and its cooperation with accepting back its removable nationals. 
    I also considered the different risks posed by aliens admitted on immigrant visas and those admitted on nonimmigrant visas.  Persons admitted on immigrant visas become lawful permanent residents of the United States.  Such persons may present national security or public-safety concerns that may be distinct from those admitted as nonimmigrants.  The United States affords lawful permanent residents more enduring rights than it does to nonimmigrants.  Lawful permanent residents are more difficult to remove than nonimmigrants, even after national security concerns arise, which increases the costs and aggravates the dangers of errors associated with admitting such individuals.  And although immigrants are generally subject to more extensive vetting than nonimmigrants, such vetting is far less reliable when the country from which someone seeks to emigrate maintains inadequate identity-management or information-sharing policies or otherwise poses risks to the national security of the United States.
    I reviewed these factors and assessed these goals, with a particular focus on crafting country-specific restrictions.  This approach was designed to encourage cooperation with the subject countries in recognition of each country’s unique circumstances.  The restrictions and limitations imposed by this proclamation are, in my judgment, necessary to prevent the entry or admission of foreign nationals about whom the United States Government lacks sufficient information to assess the risks they pose to the United States.  The restrictions and limitations imposed by this proclamation are necessary to garner cooperation from foreign governments, enforce our immigration laws, and advance other important foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism objectives.
    (f)  After reviewing the report described in subsection (d) of this section, and after accounting for the foreign policy, national security, and counterterrorism objectives of the United States, I have determined to fully restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 12 countries:  Afghanistan, Burma, Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.  These restrictions distinguish between, but apply to both, the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants.
    (g)  I have determined to partially restrict and limit the entry of nationals of the following 7 countries:  Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan, and Venezuela.  These restrictions distinguish between, but apply to both, the entry of immigrants and nonimmigrants. 
    (h)  Sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation describe some of the identity-management or information-sharing inadequacies that led me to impose restrictions.  These inadequacies are sufficient to justify my finding that unrestricted entry of nationals from the named countries would be detrimental to the interests of the United States.  Publicly disclosing additional details on which I relied in making these determinations, however, would cause serious damage to the national security of the United States, and many such details are classified.
    Sec. 2.  Full Suspension of Entry for Nationals of Countries of Identified Concern.  The entry into the United States of nationals of the following countries is hereby suspended and limited, as follows, subject to the categorical exceptions and case-by-case waivers described in section 5 of this proclamation:
    (a)  Afghanistan
    (i)   The Taliban, a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) group, controls Afghanistan.  Afghanistan lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.  According to the Fiscal Year 2023 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Entry/Exit Overstay Report (“Overstay Report”), Afghanistan had a business/tourist (B-1/B-2) visa overstay rate of 9.70 percent and a student (F), vocational (M), and exchange visitor (J) visa overstay rate of 29.30 percent.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Afghanistan as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (b)  Burma
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, Burma had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 27.07 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 42.17 percent.  Additionally, Burma has historically not cooperated with the United States to accept back their removable nationals.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Burma as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (c)  Chad
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, Chad had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 49.54 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 55.64 percent.  According to the Fiscal Year 2022 Overstay Report, Chad had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 37.12 percent.  The high visa overstay rate for 2022 and 2023 is unacceptable and indicates a blatant disregard for United States immigration laws.  
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Chad as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (d)  Republic of the Congo
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, the Republic of the Congo had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 29.63 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 35.14 percent.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of the Republic of the Congo as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (e)  Equatorial Guinea
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, Equatorial Guinea had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 21.98 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 70.18 percent.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Equatorial Guinea as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (f)  Eritrea
    (i)   The United States questions the competence of the central authority for issuance of passports or civil documents in Eritrea.  Criminal records are not available to the United States for Eritrean nationals.  Eritrea has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals.  According to the Overstay Report, Eritrea had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 20.09 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 55.43 percent.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Eritrea as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (g)  Haiti
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, Haiti had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 31.38 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 25.05 percent.  Additionally, hundreds of thousands of illegal Haitian aliens flooded into the United States during the Biden Administration.  This influx harms American communities by creating acute risks of increased overstay rates, establishment of criminal networks, and other national security threats.  As is widely known, Haiti lacks a central authority with sufficient availability and dissemination of law enforcement information necessary to ensure its nationals do not undermine the national security of the United States. 
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Haiti as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (h)  Iran
    (i)   Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism.  Iran regularly fails to cooperate with the United States Government in identifying security risks, is the source of significant terrorism around the world, and has historically failed to accept back its removable nationals. 
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Iran as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby suspended.
    (i)  Libya
    (i)   There is no competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents in Libya.  The historical terrorist presence within Libya’s territory amplifies the risks posed by the entry into the United States of its nationals.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Libya as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (j)  Somalia
    (i)   Somalia lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.  Somalia stands apart from other countries in the degree to which its government lacks command and control of its territory, which greatly limits the effectiveness of its national capabilities in a variety of respects.  A persistent terrorist threat also emanates from Somalia’s territory.  The United States Government has identified Somalia as a terrorist safe haven.  Terrorists use regions of Somalia as safe havens from which they plan, facilitate, and conduct their operations.  Somalia also remains a destination for individuals attempting to join terrorist groups that threaten the national security of the United States.  The Government of Somalia struggles to provide governance needed to limit terrorists’ freedom of movement.  Additionally, Somalia has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Somalia as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (k)  Sudan
    (i)   Sudan lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.  According to the Overstay Report, Sudan had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 26.30 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 28.40 percent. 
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Sudan as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    (l)  Yemen
    (i)   Yemen lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.  The government does not have physical control over its own territory.  Since January 20, 2025, Yemen has been the site of active United States military operations.
    (ii)  The entry into the United States of nationals of Yemen as immigrants and nonimmigrants is hereby fully suspended.
    Sec. 3.  Partial Suspension of Entry for Nationals of Countries of Identified Concern.
    (a)  Burundi
    (i)    According to the Overstay Report, Burundi had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 15.35 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 17.52 percent. 
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Burundi as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas, is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Burundi to the extent permitted by law.
    (b)  Cuba
    (i)    Cuba is a state sponsor of terrorism.  The Government of Cuba does not cooperate or share sufficient law enforcement information with the United States.  Cuba has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals.  According to the Overstay Report, Cuba had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 7.69 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 18.75 percent.
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Cuba as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B‑2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas, is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Cuba to the extent permitted by law.
    (c)  Laos
    (i)    According to the Overstay Report, Laos had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 34.77 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 6.49 percent.  Laos has historically failed to accept back its removable nationals. 
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Laos as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B‑2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas, is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Laos to the extent permitted by law.
    (d)  Sierra Leone
    (i)    According to the Overstay Report, Sierra Leone had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 15.43 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 35.83 percent.  Sierra Leone has historically failed to accept back its removable nationals. 
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Sierra Leone as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Sierra Leone to the extent permitted by law.
    (e)  Togo
    (i)    According to the Overstay Report, Togo had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 19.03 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 35.05 percent. 
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Togo as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B‑2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Togo to the extent permitted by law.
    (f)  Turkmenistan
    (i)   According to the Overstay Report, Turkmenistan had a B-1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 15.35 percent and an F, M, and J visa overstay rate of 21.74 percent. 
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Turkmenistan as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B-1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Turkmenistan to the extent permitted by law.
    (g)  Venezuela
    (i)    Venezuela lacks a competent or cooperative central authority for issuing passports or civil documents and it does not have appropriate screening and vetting measures.  Venezuela has historically refused to accept back its removable nationals.  According to the Overstay Report, Venezuela had a B‑1/B-2 visa overstay rate of 9.83 percent.
    (ii)   The entry into the United States of nationals of Venezuela as immigrants, and as nonimmigrants on B‑1, B-2, B-1/B-2, F, M, and J visas is hereby suspended.
    (iii)  Consular officers shall reduce the validity for any other nonimmigrant visa issued to nationals of Venezuela to the extent permitted by law.
    Sec. 4.  Scope and Implementation of Suspensions and Limitations.  (a)  Scope.  Subject to the exceptions set forth in subsection (b) of this section and any exceptions made pursuant to subsections (c) and (d) of this section, the suspensions of and limitations on entry pursuant to sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation shall apply only to foreign nationals of the designated countries who:
    (i)   are outside the United States on the applicable effective date of this proclamation; and
    (ii)  do not have a valid visa on the applicable effective date of this proclamation.
    (b)  Exceptions.  The suspension of and limitation on entry pursuant to sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation shall not apply to:
    (i)     any lawful permanent resident of the United States;
    (ii)    any dual national of a country designated under sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation when the individual is traveling on a passport issued by a country not so designated;
    (iii)   any foreign national traveling with a valid nonimmigrant visa in the following classifications:  A-1, A-2, C-2, C-3, G-1, G-2, G-3, G-4, NATO-1, NATO‑2, NATO-3, NATO-4, NATO-5, or NATO-6;
    (iv)    any athlete or member of an athletic team, including coaches, persons performing a necessary support role, and immediate relatives, traveling for the World Cup, Olympics, or other major sporting event as determined by the Secretary of State;
    (v)     immediate family immigrant visas (IR-1/CR-1, IR-2/CR-2, IR-5) with clear and convincing evidence of identity and family relationship (e.g., DNA);
    (vi)    adoptions (IR-3, IR-4, IH-3, IH-4);
    (vii)   Afghan Special Immigrant Visas;
    (viii)  Special Immigrant Visas for United States Government employees; and
    (ix)    immigrant visas for ethnic and religious minorities facing persecution in Iran.
    (c)  Exceptions to the suspension of and limitation on entry pursuant to sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation may be made for certain individuals for whom the Attorney General finds, in her discretion, that the travel by the individual would advance a critical United States national interest involving the Department of Justice, including when individuals must be present to participate in criminal proceedings as witnesses.  These exceptions shall be made only by the Attorney General, or her designee, in coordination with the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security.
    (d)  Exceptions to the suspension of and limitation on entry pursuant to sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation may be made case-by-case for individuals for whom the Secretary of State finds, in his discretion, that the travel by the individual would serve a United States national interest.  These exceptions shall be made by only the Secretary of State or his designee, in coordination with the Secretary of Homeland Security or her designee.
    Sec. 5.  Adjustments to and Removal of Suspensions and Limitations.  (a)  The Secretary of State shall, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director for National Intelligence, devise a process to assess whether any suspensions and limitations imposed by sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation should be continued, terminated, modified, or supplemented.  Within 90 days of the date of this proclamation, and every 180 days thereafter, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall submit a report to the President, through the Assistant to the President for Homeland Security, describing his assessment and recommending whether any suspensions and limitations imposed by sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation should be continued, terminated, modified, or supplemented.
    (b)  The Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall immediately engage each of the countries identified in sections 2 and 3 of this proclamation on measures that must be taken to comply with United States screening, vetting, immigration, and security requirements.
    (c)  Additionally, and in light of recent events, the Secretary of State, in consultation with the Attorney General, the Secretary of Homeland Security, and the Director of National Intelligence, shall provide me an update to the review of the practices and procedures of Egypt to confirm the adequacy of its current screening and vetting capabilities.
    Sec. 6.  Enforcement.  (a)  The Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall consult with appropriate domestic and international partners, including countries and organizations, to ensure efficient, effective, and appropriate implementation of this proclamation.
    (b)  In implementing this proclamation, the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security shall comply with all applicable laws and regulations.
    (c)  No immigrant or nonimmigrant visa issued before the applicable effective date of this proclamation shall be revoked pursuant to this proclamation.
    (d)  This proclamation shall not apply to an individual who has been granted asylum by the United States, to a refugee who has already been admitted to the United States, or to an individual granted withholding of removal or protection under the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment of Punishment (CAT).  Nothing in this proclamation shall be construed to limit the ability of an individual to seek asylum, refugee status, withholding of removal, or protection under the CAT, consistent with the laws of the United States.
    Sec. 7.  Severability.  It is the policy of the United States to enforce this proclamation to the maximum extent possible to advance the national security, foreign policy, and counterterrorism interests of the United States.  Accordingly:
    (a)  if any provision of this proclamation, or the application of any provision of this proclamation to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid, the remainder of this proclamation and the application of its other provisions to any other persons or circumstances shall not be affected thereby; and
    (b)  if any provision of this proclamation, or the application of any provision of this proclamation to any person or circumstance, is held to be invalid because of the lack of certain procedural requirements, the relevant executive branch officials shall implement those procedural requirements to conform with existing law and with any applicable court orders.
    Sec. 8.  Effective Date.  This proclamation is effective at 12:01 am eastern daylight time on June 9, 2025.
    Sec. 9.  General Provisions.  (a)  Nothing in this proclamation shall be construed to impair or otherwise affect:
    (i)   the authority granted by law to an executive department or agency, or the head thereof; or
    (ii)  the functions of the Director of the Office of Management and Budget relating to budgetary, administrative, or legislative proposals.
    (b)  This proclamation shall be implemented consistent with applicable law and subject to the availability of appropriations.
    (c)  This proclamation is not intended to, and does not, create any right or benefit, substantive or procedural, enforceable by law or in equity by any party against the United States, its departments, agencies, or entities, its officers, employees, or agents, or any other person.
    IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this fourth day of June, in the year of our Lord two thousand twenty‑five, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and forty-ninth.
                                 DONALD J. TRUMP

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Gillibrand, Markey Slam Republican Plan To Rescind Over $1 Billion In Federal Funding For The Corporation For Public Broadcasting

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for New York Kirsten Gillibrand

    Today, U.S. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Ed Markey led a group of 29 senators in slamming a Republican attempt to rescind $1.07 billion in already-allocated funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which funds local public broadcasting stations across the country.  The $1.07 billion represents 100% of CPB’s funding through September 2027. This move follows President Trump’s executive order directing cuts to federal funding for PBS and NPR.  

    “Following the White House’s request to rescind $1.07 billion in federal funding for CPB, we write to express our strong opposition to any rescission of funding for public broadcasting and prohibitions of direct and indirect funding to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio,” wrote the senators. “This funding is essential to the functioning of the public media system and the communities they serve, and any cuts in funding would have detrimental effects on local stations, which rely on this funding to provide critical services to millions of Americans across the country. Public broadcasting is an essential service that should be protected, not decimated. For this reason, we request that you prioritize maintaining and continuing funding for CPB.”

    The Corporation for Public Broadcasting supports over 1,500 local public television and radio stations that provide free, high-quality programming to millions of households across America. It provides young children who don’t get the chance to attend preschool with educational content that helps them learn to read; airs highly trusted nightly news programming; and shares critical public safety information during emergencies. Local public television stations also provide extensive coverage of local government and elections and host candidate debates, helping Americans stay connected with their elected leaders. Because public television and radio relies heavily on federal funding to operate, particularly in rural communities, losing this funding would force many of these stations to reduce much of their programming or, in some cases, close their doors.

    In addition to Senators Gillibrand and Markey, the letter was also signed by Senators Michael Bennet (D-CO), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), Lisa Blunt Rochester (D-DE), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Tammy Duckworth (D-IL), Martin Heinrich (D-NM), John Hickenlooper (D-CO), Mazie Hirono (D-HI), Tim Kaine (D-VA), Andy Kim (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), Ben Ray Luján (D-NM), Chris Murphy (D-CT), Alex Padilla (D-CA), Gary Peters (D-MI), Jacky Rosen (D-NV), Bernard Sanders (I-VT), Chuck Schumer (D-NY), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Elissa Slotkin (D-MI), Tina Smith (D-MN), Chris Van Hollen (D-MD), Mark Warner (D-VA), Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), Peter Welch (D-VT), and Ron Wyden (D-OR).  

    The full text of the letter is available here or below:  

    Dear Majority Leader Thune,

    Federal investment in the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) supports over 1,500 local and regional public television and radio stations that provide free, high-quality programming to millions of households across the country. Following the White House’s request to rescind $1.07 billion in federal funding for CPB, we write to express our strong opposition to any rescission of funding for public broadcasting and prohibitions of direct and indirect funding to the Public Broadcasting Service and National Public Radio, as outlined in the Executive Order titled, “Ending Taxpayer Subsidization of Biased Media” released on May 1, 2025. This funding is essential to the functioning of the public media system and the communities they serve, and any cuts in funding would have detrimental effects on local stations, which rely on this funding to provide critical services to millions of Americans across the country.

    Our public broadcasting system is a unique American institution that is deeply embedded in our communities and a critical source of lifesaving public safety services, accurate information, and educational programming. The vast majority of the federal funding CPB receives is allocated to local radio and television stations across the country. These cuts will have an immediate and significant impact for stations in rural communities that heavily rely on CPB funding to provide critical services and could likely result in the elimination of programming or outright closure of stations in areas already faced with limited connectivity.

    According to Northwestern University, 55 million people in the United States have no or only one source of local news, and rural counties are far more likely to lose their local news outlets. This number could increase if the two-year advance appropriation for public media is not upheld, resulting in the drastic reduction or complete elimination of free, high-quality local programming. This is especially concerning given the importance of public broadcasting during public emergencies, such as natural disasters, transportation accidents, national security threats, or public safety matters. CPB funds are essential to ensuring that the broadcast infrastructure remains robust and operational in disaster situations, especially scenarios in which local public broadcasters serve as the only source of information for those who need a lifeline. Any cuts in funding will have drastic consequences for communities in need.

    And there is much more to their public safety services in addition to the critical local information they broadcast. Public television’s interconnection technology, which connects local public television stations to PBS, is also one of the backbone pathways for the delivery of our nation’s Wireless Emergency Alert (WEA) services – enabling cell phone subscribers to receive geotargeted emergency text alerts no matter where they are in the country. A cut to public broadcasting funding would put this lifesaving service and its nationwide footprint at risk.

    Public television has also pioneered cutting edge technology that helps first responders communicate with each other over the broadcast spectrum without the need for mobile service or broadband. This datacasting technology and public television’s public safety partnerships is already helping with early earthquake warning and has been proven effective in a wide range of scenarios where broadband or cellular service are limited, including rural search and rescue, overwater communications, large event crowd control and more. But this is only possible if stations serving rural and remote areas with limited broadband are healthy and continue operating as they are today.

    On the education front, public television’s early childhood education services ensure that every family has access to high-quality, non-commercial educational content regardless of their ability to pay for such services. This is essential for over 50 percent of three and four-year old children who do not attend formal preschool.

    If funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) is eliminated or rescinded, the impact would be devastating. Millions of people across the country whose stations rely on CPB funding for a significant percentage of their budget would be at risk of losing access to public television’s services. These are services that nobody else in the media world is providing, but it’s exactly the work for which public broadcasting was created, and they are delivering to our communities every day.  

    Public broadcasting is an essential service that should be protected, not decimated. For this reason, we request that you prioritize maintaining and continuing funding for CPB.

    We appreciate your consideration of this request and thank you for your prompt attention to this matter.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Crapo, Mullin, Kelly, Cramer Introduce Legislation to Strengthen Broadband Connectivity in Rural America

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Idaho Mike Crapo

    Washington, D.C.–U.S. Senators Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), Markwayne Mullin (R-Oklahoma), Mark Kelly (D-Arizona) and Kevin Cramer (R-North Dakota) introduced the Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act of 2025 to direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require proper contributions to the Universal Service Fund (USF) from edge providers and broadband providers.  Requiring edge providers to cover associated costs for rural fiber networks will reduce the financial burden on consumers and rural providers while strengthening broadband connectivity throughout rural America.

    “Idahoans rely heavily upon broadband technology,” said Crapo.  “Addressing the ‘digital divide’ in broadband deployment between rural and urban or suburban areas will ensure communities, regardless of size, can access the necessary connection for modern life.”

    Currently, more than 100,000 households in Idaho lack access to broadband internet, according to the U.S. Census.  On Idaho’s tribal lands, more than 83 percent of residents cannot connect to high-speed internet.

    “Fair contributions to the USF from edge providers are long overdue,” said Mullin.  “Video streaming services account for 75 percent of all traffic on rural broadband networks.  However, unrecovered costs from streaming companies are often shifted and borne by small rural broadband providers.  Available, affordable internet will close the digital divide and increase telehealth, educational and employment opportunities for those who previously went without.  Rural Oklahomans deserve the same connectivity as those living in urban areas.”

    “In an interconnected world, high-speed internet access is part of our daily lives–from scheduling a doctor’s appointment to keeping in touch with family,” said Kelly.  “This bipartisan bill will have big corporations contribute to the expansion of affordable high-speed internet in areas that desperately need it.” 

    The Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act would:

    • Direct the FCC to reform the USF by expanding the base so that edge providers and broadband providers contribute on an equitable and nondiscriminatory basis to preserve and advance universal service.
    • Limit assessments of edge providers to only those with more than three percent of the estimated quantity of broadband data transmitted in the United States and more than $5 billion in annual revenue. 
    • Direct the FCC to adopt a new mechanism under the current USF high-cost program to provide specific, predictable and sufficient support for expenses incurred by broadband providers that are not otherwise recovered.
    • Limit the FCC’s authority over edge providers and broadband providers only to requiring contributions to the USF.

    Full text of the Lowering Broadband Costs for Consumers Act of 2025 can be found here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Senators Coons, Whitehouse, colleagues demand answers from Justice Dept. on decision to shutter specialized unit for cracking down on global drug crime

    US Senate News:

    Source: United States Senator for Delaware Christopher Coons

    WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-Del.), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), and several of their colleagues sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi questioning the Department of Justice’s plan to end the successful Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Forces (OCDETF) program. 

    “As the Department’s website notes, OCDETF ‘is the centerpiece of the Attorney General’s strategy to combat transnational-organized crime and to reduce the availability of illicit narcotics in the nation.’ OCDETF oversees coordination of thousands of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials to implement a national strategy to dismantle transnational drug cartels, the financial networks that support them, and the flow of drugs from these cartels into the United States,” wrote the senators.

    The OCDETF program is the largest anti-crime task force in the country. In just the past two months, OCDETF resources have been used to secure prison sentences for two individuals operating a clandestine fentanyl lab in South Carolina and to take down three prolific Chinese money launderers who have pled guilty to laundering tens of millions of dollars in drug proceeds. Many OCDETF investigations target the cartels’ financial networks, an often-overlooked component of the U.S. strategy to combat drug-trafficking organizations. In Fiscal Year 2023, OCDETF investigations resulted in forfeitures and seizures totaling more than $423 million. 

    Reporting from Bloomberg revealed that the Trump administration plans to eliminate the OCDETF program, including its support for specialized investigators and prosecutors. Such a decision would kneecap America’s ability to dismantle cartels trafficking illicit fentanyl.

    “We seek to fully understand the Department’s plans to cease OCDETF operations. We also seek to ensure that the federal government continues to have a coordinated strategy for working with state and local stakeholders to investigate and hold accountable transnational criminal organizations operating in, or financing the operations of organizations that operate in, the United States,” added the senators.

    The senators requested answers to the following questions by June 13, 2025:

    1. How many cases has OCDETF led, or supported with funds, intelligence, or other resources, that disrupted fentanyl traffickers’ production, distribution, financing, or money laundering networks?
    2. Does the Department intend to cease or significantly reduce OCDETF operations?  If so, please specify how. 
    3. If the Department intends to cease or significantly reduce OCDETF operations:
      1. Why is the department choosing to cease or significantly reduce OCDETF operations?
      2. How will the department ensure that ongoing OCDETF investigations and prosecutions continue uninterrupted?
      3. According to GAO, “OCDETF cases must have a financial component” to facilitate the targeting of financial networks underpinning drug trafficking organizations. How will the Department ensure that OCDETF-enabled inter-agency coordination on investigations into the financial networks of fentanyl traffickers and transnational criminal organizations continues uninterrupted?
      4. How will the department ensure that federal, state, and local law enforcement relying on OCDETF’s Fusion Center intelligence products are not hampered by a cessation or reduction of OCDETF operations? 
      5. Does the department intend to designate another entity to coordinate investigations and prosecutions of transnational criminal organizations, unrelated to low-level offenders?  If so, which entity?

    In addition to Senators Coons and Whitehouse, the letter is signed by U.S. Senators Ben Ray Luján (D-N.M.), Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.).

    The text of the letter is available here.

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Governor Polis Signs New Law Supporting Home Ownership for Colorado Educators

    Source: US State of Colorado

    DENVER – Today, Governor Polis signed SB25-167 – Invest State Funds to Benefit Communities, sponsored by Senators Judy Amabile and Lisa Frizell, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Meghan Lukens. This law helps expand access to housing for teachers, increasing homeownership and supporting Colorado schools by providing down-payment assistance and expanding housing opportunities that educators can afford. 

    “We are taking big steps to reduce housing costs and breaking down barriers to home ownership for people across the state. This new law is another step in the right direction, and I’m proud to sign it today, helping more educators get housing they can afford , allowing teachers to live in the communities they choose, and supporting Colorado children in the classroom. I thank the sponsors for their work to tackle housing costs,” said Governor Polis. 

    Governor Polis also signed: 

    • SB25-122 – Extending Organ & Tissue Donation Fund, sponsored by President James Coleman and Senator Cleave Simpson, and Representatives Jennifer Bacon and Regina English
    • HB25-1013 – Department of Corrections Visitation Rights, sponsored by Representatives Regina English and Jennifer Bacon, and President James Coleman and Senator Tony Exum 

    Governor Polis signed the following bills into law administratively: 

    • SB25-017 – Measures to Support Early Childhood Health, sponsored by Senators Lisa Cutter and Iman Jodeh, and Representatives Junie Joseph and Yara Zokaie. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-036 – State Patrol Bonding Exception, sponsored by Senators Marc Catlin and Marc Snyder, and Representatives Sheila Lieder and Ty Winter. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-070 – Online Marketplaces & Third-Party Sellers, sponsored by Senators Larry Liston and Dylan Roberts, and Representatives Ryan Armagost and William Lindstedt. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-075 – License to Sell Vehicles Criminal Offense, sponsored by Senator Julie Gonzales, and Representatives Cecelia Espenoza and Jennifer Bacon. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-126 – Uniform Antitrust Pre-Merger Notification Act, sponsored by Senator Marc Snyder, and Representative Cecelia Espenoza
    • SB25-162 – Railroad Safety Requirements, sponsored by Senators Lisa Cutter and Marc Snyder, and Representatives Javier Mabrey and Elizabeth Velasco. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-163 – Battery Stewardship Programs, sponsored by Senators Lisa Cutter and Matt Ball, and Representatives Kyle Brown and Rebekah Stewart. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-173 – Revenue Classification Taxpayers Bill of Rights, sponsored by Senator Mike Weissman, and Representatives Lorena Garcia and Yara Zokaie
    • SB25-257 – Modify General Fund Transfers to State Highway Fund, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges and Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Rick Taggart. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-258 – Temporarily Reduce Road Safety Surcharge, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges and Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Emily Sirota. This bill is bipartisan.
      • “This bill is an important part of our work to save Coloradans money. By cutting vehicle registration fees, we are helping Coloradans keep more of their hard-earned money. This is just one piece of our efforts,” said Governor Jared Polis.
    • SB25-261 – Property Tax Deferral Program Administration, sponsored by Senators Judy Amabile and Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Emily Sirota. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-286 – Petroleum Products Fees & Penalties, sponsored by Senators Nick Hinrichsen and Marc Snyder, and Representative Shannon Bird. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-299 – Consumer Protection Residential Energy Systems, sponsored by Senator Katie Wallace, and Representatives Kyle Brown and Matt Soper. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-300 – Revisor’s Bill, sponsored by Senators John Carson and Mike Weissman, and Representatives Stephanie Luck and Sean Camacho. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-305 – Water Quality Permitting Efficiency, sponsored by Senators Barbara Kirkmeyer and Jeff Bridges, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Rick Taggart. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-306 – Performance Audits of Certain State Agencies, sponsored by Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez and Senator Barbara Kirkmeyer, and Representatives William Lindstedt and Rick Taggart. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-316 – Auraria Higher Education Center Appropriations, sponsored by Senators Judy Amabile and Jeff Bridges, and Representatives Rick Taggart and Emily Sirota. This bill is bipartisan.
    • SB25-319 – Modification Higher Education Expenses Income Tax Incentive, sponsored by Senators Jeff Bridges and Judy Amabile, and Representatives Shannon Bird and Rick Taggart. This bill is bipartisan.
    • HB25-1043 – Owner Equity Protection in Homeowners’ Association Foreclosure Sales, sponsored by Representatives Naquetta Ricks and Jennifer Bacon, and Senator Tony Exum. This bill is bipartisan.
    • HB25-1056 – Local Government Permitting Wireless Telecommunications Facilities, sponsored by Representatives Meghan Lukens and Jennifer Bacon, and Senators Dylan Roberts and Nick Hinrichsen. This bill is bipartisan.
      • “This bill will help increase connectivity for Coloradans across the state by breaking down barriers. I appreciate the sponsors for their work on this new law and look forward to seeing increased service across Colorado,” said Governor Jared Polis.
    • HB25-1061 – Community Schoolyards Grant Program, sponsored by Representatives Rick Taggart and Jennifer Bacon, and Senators Judy Amabile and Barbara Kirkmeyer. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1082 – Qualified Individuals Death Certificates, sponsored by Representatives Ron Weinberg and Kyle Brown, and Senators Rod Pelton and Dafna Michaelson Jenet. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1108 – Prohibitions in Rental Agreements Due to Death, sponsored by Representatives Ron Weinberg and Javier Mabrey, and Senators Barbara Kirkmeyer and Jeff Bridges. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1161 – Labeling Gas-Fueled Stoves, sponsored by Representative Alex Valdez, and Senators Cathy Kipp and Katie Wallace. This bill is bipartisan.
    • HB25-1223 – Capital Needs of Rural and Frontier Hospitals, sponsored by Representatives Dusty Johnson and Meghan Lukens, and Senators Rod Pelton and Dylan Roberts. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1224 – Revised Uniform Unclaimed Property Act Modifications, sponsored by Representatives Brianna Titone and Matt Soper, and Senator Marc Snyder. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1234 – Utility Consumer Protection, sponsored by Representatives Naquetta Ricks and Junie Joseph, and Senators Faith Winter and Katie Wallace
    • HB25-1307 – Updating Technical References in Education Law, sponsored by Representatives Stephanie Luck and Michael Carter, and Senators Matt Ball and Janice Rich. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1324 – Clarify Property Tax Objection & Protest Deadlines, sponsored by Representatives Cecelia Espenoza and Stephanie Luck, and Senators Matt Ball and Marc Catlin. This is a bipartisan bill.
    • HB25-1327 – Modify Statewide Ballot Measure Processes, sponsored by Representatives Emily Sirota and Meg Froelich, and Senator Cathy Kipp
    • HB25-1300 – Workers’ Compensation Benefits Proof of Entitlement, sponsored by Representative Jenny Willford and Senator Cathy Kipp
    • HB25-1317 – Correct Error in Self-Pay Estimate Statute, sponsored by Representatives Brandi Bradley and Michael Carter, and Senator Tony Exum.

    ###

    MIL OSI USA News –

  • MIL-OSI USA: Governor Hochul Speaks at Axios AI + NY Summit

    Source: US State of New York

    arlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul participated in Axios AI+ NY Summit fireside chat with Ina Fried.

    VIDEO: The event is available to stream on YouTube here and TV quality video is available here (h.264, mp4).

    AUDIO: The Governor’s remarks are available in audio form here.

    PHOTOS: The Governor’s Flickr page will post photos of the event here.

    A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:

    Ina Fried, Axios: Next up, we are joined by a governor who’s putting AI front and center of her tech policy agenda. Please welcome New York Governor Kathy Hochul. Thanks so much. First off, I think we’re both big sports fans, although I think yours are more concentrated in Buffalo than my teams.

    Governor Hochul: I love all my New York teams. All the ones that play in New York in particular.

    Ina Fried, Axios: We have a very lively crowd.

    Governor Hochul: We can annex the Meadowlands and bring them back home for anybody’s paying attention. I think I’m going to run on that.

    Ina Fried, Axios: We just have to annex the Meadowlands.

    Governor Hochul: Trump can take Canada. I should at least be able to get the Meadowlands right.

    Ina Fried, Axios: You focused a lot on bringing high tech jobs to New York, not just AI but CHIPS. I think there was another announcement today, Global Foundries is going to increase its investment by another $3 billion. Talk about those efforts, but also in the context of what’s coming with AI. I mean, if the predictions are right, we had the Anthropic founder, Dario Amodei, saying, this could be half of jobs over a few years. Is it enough to just have incentives to bring high tech jobs here? If generative AI eliminates this many jobs, is even retraining feasible? Like what do we really need?

    Governor Hochul: No, it’s all in the realm of possibility. I want New York to be the home of innovation. We always have that. All the great inventions, all the technological revolutions that proceed. IBM is home here. Micron will soon find its way here, and that’s 50,000 jobs in upstate New York. I’m from Buffalo, as you may have figured out from the first question. That’s a lot. That’s for an economy that you see based on manufacturing and building. And my dad and grandpa were steelworkers and now my dad left a steel plant and started a tech company back in the sixties.

    So I’m hardwired to be part of an economy that’s devoted to risk. The people are willing to go out there and do something that’s quite unprecedented, but also the returns are very high. So I want New York to be that place that people look to as they already are. I mean, we have over 2,000 AI startups right now, but your question is, will these new jobs of manufacturing semiconductors, for example, and others, will that replace the jobs that can be lost?

    It does not have to be that way. AI can increase productivity dramatically. So why can’t we harness that to be the most productive nation on the planet — that we can have more output and use human capital in the ways that have not been harnessed before? Because people are too busy working on an assembly line in the past. Let’s take that talent and refocus it on innovation.

    We have a workforce, for example, of over 188,000. I have a plan to train 100,000 New York State employees. Train them in the uses of AI, how it can supplement us, how we can be more responsive to the public. I’m not looking to eliminate their jobs. I want them to have a better — have people have a better customer experience when they come into a DMV or other offices.

    So I see great potential here, and I leaned hard into this. We will talk about Empire AI I presume, but this is something that’s so natural. I’m very competitive. I’m proud that New York City is now the number one destination for new tech jobs. I mean, that’s us. I won’t name any other cities or what coast they’re on.

    Ina Fried, Axios: Before I came here, I left a few AI companies in San Francisco to come here.

    Governor Hochul: Anybody not a New Yorker here? I’m just pointing it out. This is the smartest people on the planet. They’re here and they’re saying they’re New Yorkers. So, just an observation.

    Ina Fried, Axios: Obviously as a sports fan, it’s hard to beat home field advantage. So jobs is obviously one big piece of this, but another is making sure that society is ready to adapt and use it safely. I want to broaden out, but one place to start — we had a conversation with Aura, which is a startup that’s working on, how do we make this safe for kids and families? And obviously that’s something you’ve also been focused on.

    How do you see the role of AI in education? You’ve had some bills around phone use, around deep fakes among students. How do we make sure that kids are learning the technology they need to be learning, but also protected from chatbots that might increase addiction and that sort of thing. What else do we need?

    Governor Hochul: No. New York State is nation-leading when it comes to protecting our children — and I can go into the details because we enacted these last year against a lot of opposition.

    But I said to the big tech companies that were saying, “Well, we were able to kill this in some other states. We plan on killing it in New York.” I said, “Why don’t you get out of the courtroom and come into my conference room and we’ll talk about this.” There is a path forward, but I know all of you have kids.

    And I’m sure you want someone to be looking out for them. Well, I’m New York State’s first Mom Governor, and I look out for all the kids. So that’s where I approach this from is what we can do to protect our children, but not unnecessarily constrained what AI is all about and the potential.

    So we did this, but I’ll tell you what’s most concerning is what Washington did — their House Republicans just did a few days ago — and if this gets through the Senate, it says that no state or municipality can regulate any form of artificial intelligence for the next decade.

    So that means my ban on sexual exploitation of young girls on social media and using AI and the fact that there are these AI undressing sites. In the first half of 2024, there were 16 sites that had 200 million views. I mean, this is what’s going on to our kids, our girls sitting in high schools, and we have to stop that.

    And so I have a whole list of reforms — I encourage every other state to undertake it because right now I am not holding my breath that Washington will have the courage to stand up and do what’s right, which really should be a nationwide policy to protect our children. We’ll keep at it. And I’m concerned. We’ll see the Trump administration in court, once again, because — and this is a real growth industry for lawyers, right? I’m getting sued, I’m suing them, and I’m a lawyer too, I’d probably make more money on the other side, but I like what I do.

    Ina Fried, Axios: So what I hear from the tech companies all the time is, “Oh, we’re fine with regulation, we just don’t want a patchwork of regulation. We don’t want different regulations in 50 states.” Are they being genuine when they say that or do they just not want regulation?

    Governor Hochul: Well, then here’s what we’ll do. We’ll let you work with New York State as we did. We’ll be the gold standard. I was just with a room full of crypto leaders yesterday. I said, “You want to do virtual currency in New York because we’ll have the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. We always do things to make sure it’s protecting our citizens, our consumers, our viewers, and we’ll always have the highest standards. So come join us, and then you can create it here with us and other states can replicate it. So I’m happy to do that.

    As a former member of Congress — really happy I’m not there right now — I know that this is really Washington’s responsibility, because it’s hard for companies to have a different policy they have to adhere to in 50 different states. That is not ideal.

    Ina Fried, Axios: So if we don’t want 50 regulations and Congress seemingly is not gonna do anything, could you work with other states?

    Governor Hochul: Oh yeah. Yeah.

    Ina Fried, Axios: Is there efforts already in that regard there?

    Governor Hochul: Yeah, there’s a democratic governor’s organization that is more forward thinking in this space, and we do work together, we share ideas. But our legislation is just one-year-old now, and I’m sure they want to see the — our law is one-year-old, the regulations are following, so there’s a little bit of work to do. But that’s exactly what we do, we share best practices.

    Ina Fried, Axios: So as we’ve alluded to, there’s a bunch of individual policies in place in New York, laws that have passed around things like kids’ privacy, deepfake porn. One thing New York doesn’t have is a real comprehensive statewide privacy law, similar to Washington and some other states. Does New York need a privacy bill?

    Governor Hochul: We’re looking at that as well. What we focused on primarily were kids right off the bat, and even with respect to social media algorithms, we are the first state in the nation to ban social media companies from bombarding our kids with algorithms throughout the day, and really many times taking them to a dark place. I mean, if a young person is contemplating suicide and they put in “suicide” and it comes back with — not resources and support and uplifting messages to make them think differently, it tells them how to commit suicide. So when we have triggering words like that that show up, we have our police alerted to that and others who are alerted to this.

    So this is what we’re focusing on, how to send out the warning signals of what can be done. But privacy is very important to us as well. We’ll get to that, I just need to take care of the kids first.

    Ina Fried, Axios: And on that front, you mentioned social media. That’s obviously been a huge concern for a long time is the impact that’s having on our kids. It seems like the next thing down the road is AI companions, where they’re not talking to a real person, but they’re talking to an AI companion. What should that relationship — should kids not be talking to AI companions at all?

    Governor Hochul: We have in our law, and I don’t know that other states have done this, that there has to be some warning or indication over and over that this is not a real person. This is not a real person. We have that in our laws now. We did that already just to give that young person just a reality check.

    And I can’t stop the whole phenomenon from happening, but the stories that have been coming out, not just the 14-year-old in Florida who committed suicide, but the New York Times did quite a story about all the different relationships. And adults can make their own decisions, kids are very impressionable, and those are the ones that we have to take the extra measure to protect.

    And we should not get any opposition from these companies at all. I mean, tell them it’s bad for your image to be standing up against a mom and protecting kids. I mean, just don’t even go there. It’s just not worth the fight.

    Ina Fried, Axios: So every now and then, folks who have been coming to this conference for a while know, I very occasionally give out a magic wand and allow someone to— if you could wave this magic wand and have the ideal regulation in place, what would it look like? So I’m going to let you borrow — you can’t keep it — borrow my magic wand.

    If you could wave your wand and have some ideal legislation in place around how AI can be embraced safely, what would be part of that package?

    Governor Hochul: Part of that would be that there’s a lot of education of people. People do not understand this gap between virtual reality and reality, and I’m afraid that’s something that a lot of kids are falling into.

    So, I would want to make sure that all your personal information is protected. What we did last year was our Child Protection Act — you cannot sell data collected on kids, anyone under 18; you cannot amass this data based on their preferences, where they’re going — you can no longer send algorithms to them; you can no longer sell that to other people. I think that’s something adults are entitled to as well. Those are some of the privacy protections. You can’t be capturing all this personal data and monetizing it. So that’s an area I think we should be focused more on and get some cooperation from the companies.

    Ina Fried, Axios: I know you leave a bunch of the court battles to your very active Attorney General — I get emails from her on a practically daily basis of what she’s challenging the White House on. What are the things that have happened in the first few months of the Trump administration that have you personally most concerned? What are the fights that you want more people to take up?

    Governor Hochul: You do not have enough time.

    Ina Fried, Axios: We got three minutes.

    Governor Hochul: God. I mean, my latest fight was to save offshore wind. They literally, on April 16, pulled the plug on a 10 year, $5 billion project from a company called Equinor from Norway, which will be powering 500,000 homes in Brooklyn with renewable energy. That is a big win for our climate, our renewable energy efforts, and to meet our climate goals. On April 16, the Secretary of Interior gave them a stop work order. The project was going to be stopped a few weeks ago. They’re losing $50 million a week.

    I went down to the White House; I had long conversations; I had more phone calls; and I’m proud to say we saved not just renewable energy, but 1,500 clean energy jobs in the process. So, that’s the most recent. They’re attacking congestion pricing every single month on the 21st — I get, basically, a hostage letter that if you don’t turn off the cameras, we’re going to kidnap you or whatever it is and I usually take it, and do a social media of it, and throw it away — here we go.

    So we’re fighting on that, but also on other areas about my rights to — we just had a win in court on that, where they’re threatening to withhold federal dollars. Anytime they don’t like something you do, whether it’s the State of Maine — my friend Janet Mills was subjected to this; we were together in the White House when she got harassed — they threatened withholding federal dollars. We just got a temporary restraining order from them threatening to withhold our federal dollars when it came. So that’s — I can’t keep it all straight.

    We litigated birthright citizenship. We’re going to have a lot of complicated challenges with the immigration issue. I have to testify before the House Oversight Committee on that very issue next week — really looking forward to that. You see who’s on that committee? Check it out. And, by the way, it’s someone who said, “I didn’t even read the bill. No, it’s a thousand pages.” Use ChatGPT to figure it out — right?

    They’re claiming they did not know that there was a 10 year ban on any social media. I mean, I’m sorry, any AI.

    Ina Fried, Axios: AI.

    Governor Hochul: “Oh, I didn’t know.” You voted for it. Just ask GPT. Anything I should worry about in here?

    Ina Fried, Axios: All right. I would love to keep the —

    Governor Hochul: Just some humble advice for them.

    I would love to keep the conversation going. Unfortunately, I know you have somewhere to go and we’re almost out of time. I have a quick question that I think only you can answer. So, I love buffalo sauce, but I don’t really like the bones.

    Ina Fried, Axios: Do boneless wings count?

    Governor Hocul: There’s chicken fingers.

    Ina Fried, Axios: That’s what my 12-year-old likes.

    Governor Hocul: Okay, chicken fingers are close enough, no one will mock you out, but the damning thing — if you ever eat chicken wings with ranch dressing, you’ll be barred from the entire region. Just don’t go. Just —

    Ina Fried, Axios: All right.

    Governor Hocul: Take it from me, everybody. That’s your pro-tip today. All right, so you heard it here: the Meadowlands is now part of New York, boneless wings are okay, but don’t you dare put them in ranch.

    Ina Fried, Axios: Thank you so much, Governor Hochul.

    Governor Hocul: Thank you.

    MIL OSI USA News –