Cognito verified email users being asked to verify every time they log in

Currently using Cognito in a react app. Using the Authenticator component from "@aws-amplify/ui-react", Users are being asked to verify their email even after receiving the verification code in their email and using the code successfully. All users in the user pool are showing the email is verified. When I manually create a new user and select the email verified box, it still asks to verify or skip during every login attempt.

As a last resort I tried going into the MFA and verifications tab inside cognito and changing 'Which attributes do you want to verify?' section to No verification. Still doing this all users in the cognito pool are being asked to verify on every login. I do not have and user groups setup, all users are in a pool.

edit - also just tried to call the adminUpdateUserAttributes API and pass email_verified = true as an attribute with a newly created user using aws cli. I can see in cognito dashboard the user email switching to verified in real time. However, the user is still being asking to verify the email even though it clearly shows the user email as verified.