Midday Roundup: Terrorists kill 17 foreigners in attack on Tunisian museum

Tunisian terror. Militants in Tunisia stormed a museum in the North African nation’s capital today, killing 19 people. Seventeen of the victims were foreign tourists. The Polish government said three of its citizens were caught in the gunfire. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Government security forces killed two gunmen after the attack. One officer also died. Another two or three gunman are thought to be on the loose, said officials, who evacuated the nearby parliament building as a precaution. The National Bardo Museum is the largest in Tunisia and houses one of the world’s largest collections of Roman mosaics. Tunisians overthrew their authoritarian president in 2011 as part of the Arab Spring uprising, and the country has been more stable than its neighbors since then. But sympathy for ISIS runs high in the country, with an estimated 3,000 Tunisians traveling to Syria to fight with the militant Islamic group.

ISIS sympathizer. A former Air Force mechanic has been charged with trying to join ISIS. Tairod Pugh, 47, converted to Islam in 1998, eight years after leaving the military with four years of service. The FBI investigated him in 2001 after a co-worker at American Airlines said he was sympathetic to Osama bin Laden. He worked as a contractor in Iraq in 2009 and 2010 and most recently lived in Kuwait and Egypt. The FBI discovered 180 jihadi videos on his computer, including at least one showing a brutal ISIS execution. Officials arrested Pugh as he tried to board an airplane to Turkey, allegedly on his way to Syria. Pugh will be arraigned today in federal court on charges of trying to aid a terror group.

Porous border. Witnesses before the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Tuesday described a scene out of the Wild West on the southern border. Border Patrol Agent Chris Cabrera told lawmakers the Mexican government gives drug- and human-trafficking cartels free rein. That prevents the border patrol’s interdiction boats from stopping illegal crossings on the Rio Grande. “If you go down that river at night with infrared, you’ll see literally every quarter mile … somebody in the trees along the Mexican side,” he said. “They know that’s OK; the boat can’t possibly make it at its top speed. They have it all figured out.” In a rare bipartisan atmosphere, lawmakers from both parties agreed the nation’s border security is broken. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp, D-N.D., said it’s up to the government to fix it. Committee chairman Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., is planning a series of hearings to find ways to secure the southwest border.

More or less covered? A new report by the Congressional Budget Office shows a dramatic decrease in the number of uninsured Americans under Obamacare—35 percent. But there are skeptics. “I wouldn’t say there has been any net gain in terms of access to care or improved healthcare,” said Sean Parnell of the Heartland Institute. “Whatever modest gains there have been is dwarfed by the costs both political and economic.” But that’s not how Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell described the impact of the Affordable Care Act at a budget hearing last month. “In terms of providing all Americans with quality, affordable healthcare, it builds upon our historic progress in reducing the number of uninsured and improving coverage for families who already have insurance,” she said. But Parnell believes the CBO’s claim is misleading. About half the people who bought insurance on the exchanges already had it, and millions of others have been shuffled into the Medicaid system, he said, estimating as many as 35 million Americans remain uninsured.

Bad accounting. The federal government wasted $125 billion last year in improper benefits payments, according to the Government Accountability Office, which reports that more than 20 federal agencies made bad payments last year. The biggest offenders? Medicare, Medicaid, and the Earned Income Tax Credit. On Capitol Hill Monday, Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., said improper payments were $19 billion greater than the previous year, and to address this massive problem, the government needs to “stop making the kind of expensive, avoidable mistakes that lead to wasteful spending and make our agencies susceptible to fraud and abuse.”

WORLD Radio’s Jim Henry and Carl Peetz contributed to this report.