Migrants sue Florida governor over Martha’s Vineyard flights
Venezuelan migrants flown from San Antonio to the upscale Massachusetts island of Martha’s Vineyard have sued Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and his transportation secretary for engaging in a “fraudulent and discriminatory scheme” to relocate them. The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in federal court in Boston. It alleges that migrants were falsely told they were going to Boston or Washington and were induced with $10 McDonald’s gift certificates. DeSantis’ office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. On Monday, the sheriff of Bexar County, Texas, which includes San Antonio, opened an investigation into the flights but didn’t say what laws may have been broken.
Lack of data blunts US response to outbreaks
After a woman tested positive for COVID-19 in January in Fairbanks, Alaska, public health workers sought answers to questions vital to understanding how the virus was spreading in the state’s rugged interior. But most of the information about the Fairbanks woman — and tens of millions more infected Americans — remains effectively lost to state and federal public health researchers. Decades of underinvestment in public health information systems has crippled efforts to understand the pandemic, stranding crucial data in incompatible data systems so outmoded that information often must be repeatedly typed in by hand. Those same antiquated data systems are now hampering the response to the monkeypox outbreak.
Justice Department charges 48 in pandemic aid fraud in Minnesota
The Justice Department said Tuesday that it had charged 48 people with running a brazen fraud against anti-hunger programs during the coronavirus pandemic, stealing $240 million by billing the government for meals they did not serve to children who did not exist. The case, in Minnesota, is the largest fraud uncovered in any pandemic-relief program, prosecutors said, standing out even in a period when heavy federal spending and lax oversight allowed a spree of scams with few recent parallels. The defendants were indicted on charges that included wire fraud, bribery involving federal programs and money laundering.
Special master expresses skepticism of Trump’s declassification claims
A federal judge expressed skepticism Tuesday about the efforts by former President Donald Trump’s legal team to avoid offering any proof of his claims that he had declassified sensitive government documents that were seized from his Florida estate last month. The statements by the judge, Raymond J. Dearie, who is acting as a special master reviewing the seized materials, were an early indication that he may not be entirely sympathetic to the former president’s attempts to bog down the judge’s evaluation with time-consuming questions over the classification status of some of the documents.
GOP AGs push Visa, Mastercard, AmEx not to track gun sales
A group of Republican attorneys general are pushing the major payment networks _ Visa, Mastercard and American Express _ to drop their plans to start tracking sales at gun stores, arguing the plans could infringe on consumer privacy and push legal gun sales out of the mainstream financial network. The letter comes more than a week after the payment networks said they would adopt the International Organization for Standardization’s new merchant code for sales at gun stores. The Second Amendment lobby and its advocates have argued that the merchant code would do a poor job of tracking potential red flags and could unfairly flag legal gun purchases.
Alaskans pocket over $3,000 in annual oil-wealth payments
Nearly every single Alaskan got a financial windfall amounting to more than $3,000 Tuesday. That’s the day the state began distributing payments from Alaska’s investment fund that has been seeded with money from the state’s oil riches. The payments, officially called the Permanent Fund Dividend or the PFD locally, amounted to $2,622. That’s the highest amount ever. Alaska lawmakers added $662 as a one-time benefit to help residents with high energy costs. Residents use the money in various ways, from buying big-screen TVs, vehicles or other goods, using it for vacations or putting it in savings or college funds. In rural Alaska, the money can help offset the enormous food and fuel costs.
4 Ukrainian regions schedule votes this week to join Russia
The separatist leaders of four Russian-controlled areas of Ukraine say they are planning to hold referendums this week for the territories to become part of Russia as Moscow loses ground in the war it launched. The votes will be held in the Luhansk, Kherson and partly Russian-controlled Zaporizhzhia and Donetsk regions. The announcement of the balloting starting Friday came after a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin said Tuesday that they were needed. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev also said that folding Luhansk and Donetsk in eastern Ukraine into Russia itself would make their redrawn frontiers “irreversible” and enable Moscow to use “any means” to defend them.
Fiona swipes Turks and Caicos, Puerto Rico faces big cleanup
Hurricane Fiona is blasting the Turks and Caicos Islands as a Category 3 storm after devastating Puerto Rico, where most people remain without electricity or running water. The U.S. National Hurricane Center says the storm’s eye passed close to Grand Turk, the British territory’s capital island. The government imposed a curfew and urged people to flee flood-prone areas. The storm could raise seas by 5 to 8 feet above normal. Fiona had maximum sustained winds of 115 mph and was moving north-northwest at 9 mph early Tuesday. The Hurricane Center says the storm is likely to strengthen into a Category 4 hurricane as it approaches Bermuda on Friday.
By wire sources