H.R.6666 - COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act
Introduced in House (05/01/2020)
116th Congress (2019-2020)
COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act
This bill authorizes the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to award grants for testing, contact tracing, monitoring, and other activities to address COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus disease 2019). Entities such as federally qualified health centers, nonprofit organizations, and certain hospitals and schools are eligible to receive such grants. In awarding the grants, the CDC shall prioritize applicants that (1) operate in hot spots and medically under-served communities, and (2) agree to hire individuals from the communities where grant activities occur.
H.R.666 - Haitian Educational Empowerment Act of 2019116th Congress (2019-2020)
Introduced in House (01/17/2019)
Haitian Educational Empowerment Act of 2019
This bill directs the Department of State to establish a scholarship program for eligible Haitian students who were enrolled as full-time or part-time students in a Haitian or U.S. university or institution of higher education and whose studies were interrupted as a result of the January 12, 2010, earthquake or the October 4, 2016, Hurricane Matthew. A Haitian student who receives such a scholarship shall return to Haiti for at least two years upon completion of an undergraduate or graduate degree.
The State Department may make grants to institutions of higher education that have enrolled a significant number of Haitian students who were enrolled in a Haitian university at the time of such earthquake or hurricane. Such grants shall be used to provide social and educational support services.
In a series of candid email exchanges with top Clinton Foundation officials during the hours after the massive 2010 Haiti earthquake, a senior aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton repeatedly gave special attention to those identified by the abbreviations “FOB” (friends of Bill Clinton) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs).
“Need you to flag when people are friends of WJC,” wrote Caitlin Klevorick, then a senior State Department official who was juggling incoming offers of assistance being funneled to the State Department by the Clinton Foundation. “Most I can probably ID but not all.”
“Is this a FOB!” Klevorick writes later, when a Clinton Foundation aide forwards a woman’s offer of medical supplies. “If not, she should go to cidi.org,” she adds, directing the person deemed not to be a Clinton friend to a general government website.
Klevorick and Amitabh Desai, the director of foreign policy for the Clinton Foundation, exchanged dozens of emails, which were obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit by the Republican National Committee and then shared with ABC News. ABC News independently authenticated the emails.
However noble the motives of the officials working to get supplies into Haiti after the 2010 earthquake, numerous messages show a senior aide to then–Secretary of State Hillary Clinton coordinating with a Clinton Foundation official to identify FOBs. The Clintons have said repeatedly that the State Department never gave favorable treatment to foundation supporters in Haiti or anywhere else.
“Nothing was ever done for anybody because they were contributors to the foundation,” Bill Clinton told CBS News’ Charlie Rose in September. “Nothing.”
The correspondence offers a glimpse into the first stages of a $10 billion Haiti recovery effort. The emails appear to show a State Department process that at times prioritized — and, some argue, benefited — people with close ties to the Clintons.
“I think when you look at both the State Department and the Clinton Foundation in Haiti, that line was pretty faint between the two,” said Jake Johnston, a Haiti analyst for the nonpartisan Center for Economic and Policy Research. “You had a lot of coordination and connection between the two, obviously. And I think that raises significant questions about how they were both operating.”
#obamagate