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Inside the National Guard’s Daring Rescue of Hundreds from a California Wildfire
More than 200 campers were trapped near a boat dock on Shaver Lake in California’s Fresno County over the Labor Day weekend, encircled by flames and a blinding wall of wildfire smoke.
Chief Warrant Officer 5 Joseph Rosamond, piloting a California Army National Guard CH-47 Chinook, had already made the decision to try to put his helicopter down close by the desperate campers on Sept. 5.
So had CWO 5 Kipp Goding, pilot of a California Guard UH-60 Black Hawk, who had linked up with Rosamond’s aircraft and was trailing him to the scene, weaving through peaks rising to 7,000 feet and then dropping down to a valley leading to the dock.
“We were quickly running out of time,” Rosamond said.
Order Gives Employees Social Security Withholding Tax Deferral, Not Forgiveness
President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order on August 8 that allows employers to defer withholding Social Security taxes.
However, it’s a payroll “deferral,” not payroll “forgiveness” — meaning it’s a temporary change, and service members and Defense Department civilians have to pay that money in 2021.
Internal Revenue Service officials said the Presidential Memorandum defers the employee portion of Social Security taxes. The Social Security tax is set for employees by law at 6.2 percent.
For service members, that would be 6.2 percent of basic pay. An E-5 with eight years of service has a monthly basic pay rate of $3,306.30. The monthly Social Security tax equals $204.99. Through the end of the year, this adds up to $819.96.
Beginning Jan. 1, 2021, the deferred Social Security taxes will be collected through April 30, 2021. So, that E-5 with eight years of service who received a total of $819.96 from the tax deferral now has to pay it back early in 2021.
Arlington National Cemetery Reopens to Public, But Most-Visited Sites Still Off-Limits
Arlington National Cemetery will reopen to the general public Wednesday after a six-month shutdown due to the COVID-19 pandemic. But its most visited sites, such as the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, will remain off-limits, the cemetery said in a release Tuesday.
Beginning Wednesday, the hallowed cemetery in Virginia, across the Potomac from Washington, D.C., will be open to the public from 8 a.m. to noon for visits to gravesites only. Face coverings and social distancing will still be required at all times, the cemetery said.
However, “several places of interest will remain closed to assure health protection conditions,” it added. “These sites include the John F. Kennedy gravesite, the Memorial Amphitheater and the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.”
Exhibits in the Welcome Center will also remain closed.
Pentagon: Use of surveillance planes in protests was legal
The use of National Guard reconnaissance planes in four U.S. cities to monitor the widespread protests earlier this year didn’t violate rules against the military collecting intelligence on Americans, a Pentagon report has concluded.
The investigation by the Air Force inspector general found that the planes were used to gather information about crowd size, crowd flows and fires but they did not monitor individuals. The probe was ordered by Defense Secretary Mark Esper in response to questions within the department and Congress about whether the military illegally conducted surveillance of American citizens during the unrest after the death of George Floyd.
The flights in late May and early June came as President Donald Trump was calling for tougher measures to quell the widespread unrest. Floyd was a black man who died after a white Minneapolis policeman pressed his knee into his neck for several minutes.
National Guard troops were used to assist local law enforcement in a number of cities around the country.