(TOPEKA, Kan.) — Months after Kansas voters decided to uphold protections for abortion rights, the state’s House of Representatives approved a bill based on the disputed idea that providers leave newborns to die after unsuccessful abortions. The bill passed with a 88-34 vote.
If approved, the bill would provide legal protections for infants born alive after a failed abortion, requiring healthcare providers to provide them with care. The bill would create criminal penalties and civil liability for violations of the act.
The bill now heads to the Republican-majority state Senate for approval. Kansas voters decided to protect abortion rights in a high-turnout primary vote, striking down a proposal to remove abortion protections from the state’s constitution.
The vast majority of abortions are performed before the point in pregnancy when a fetus would theoretically survive, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2020, only 0.9% of abortion procedures occurred after 21 weeks gestation, the CDC reports. Failed abortions where infants are born alive are extremely rare.
Providers who fail to provide care to infants born alive will face felony charges. The father of the fetus, the mother of the fetus and family including parents or guardians are allowed to bring civil lawsuits against providers who fail to follow the law.
If the pregnancy results from any criminal conduct, the person guilty is barred from bringing such lawsuits.
The bill defines an infant as “born alive” if it “breathes or has a beating heart, pulsation of the umbilical cord or definite movement of voluntary muscles,” according to the bill.
Under the bill, health care centers will be required to report to the secretary of health and environment how many abortions result in infants being born alive. Facilities who fail to submit the report could face a fine of up to $500.
The measure is similar to a proposed Montana law that voters rejected in November.
The U.S. House of Representatives passed a similar bill in January, but it is unlikely the bill will become law.
(NEW YORK) — It was a pivotal day in world history as the United States, and several allies, invaded Iraq under the suspicion that then-President Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction.
The March 20, 2003, invasion led to an eight-year conflict with over 4,400 American troops killed, and nearly 32,000 wounded during the conflict, according to the Department of Defense. Reports by groups, such as the nonprofit online database the Iraq Body Count, said that nearly 200,000 Iraqi civilians were killed during those years.
No weapons of mass destruction were ever found and Hussein was apprehended, tried and executed.
“Nightline” took a look back at the 20th anniversary of the conflict with some Iraq War veterans who were profiled on the show just before they were deployed.
Even though it’s been two decades since they were among one of the first troops sent overseas, Retired Marine Corporal Michael Elliot and Retired Marine Corporal Josh Hisle told “Nightline” have only recently healed from the mental and emotional traumas of war.
“The war took a big toll on my life,” Elliot, 41, told “Nightline.” “The military and war threw me into the deep end.”
Elliot and Hisle were among the 206 Marines of Fox 2/5 company out of Camp Pendleton, California.
“Nightline” embedded with the Marines before the invasion, filming as they waited for official orders. Hisle, now 41, played guitar for his troops when they were getting ready in Kuwait.
“I still just remember it being this one evening for a minute where it was such a good time that you almost forgot,” he told “Nightline” co-anchor Byron Pitts.
The troop would see combat not too long after it deployed and suffer a major loss. On April 4, 1st Sgt. Ed Smith, who postponed retirement to serve in Iraq, was killed when a piece of shrapnel struck his head while their convoy was trapped next to an ammunition dump fire.
“We’re all standing up exposed, and he made the call to have everybody get back in the vehicles,” Elliot said.
Smith’s daughter, Shelby Robinson, who was 8 when her father was killed, told “Nightline” that Smith was always proud of his military experience. She’s now a police officer and said her father inspired her.
“That makes me feel very close to him. And I definitely think that he’s watching over me out there,” Robinson told “Nightline.”
Marine Col. Terry Johnson was Fox 2/5’s commander when the war began. He told “Nightline” that war had its consequences and many of his brave comrades paid the ultimate price for their service.
Johnson, now 52, who is set to retire this year, said he believed the U.S. involvement in Iraq was worth the price that was paid.
“Clearly Saddam was a bad individual, was a dictator of classic proportions, was extremely brutal to his people,” he told Pitts.
Not all of his colleagues believed the war was completely warranted.
Elliot and Hisle both said they had trouble adjusting to civilian life after they were honorably discharged and left the Marines feeling remorse for some of the actions and directives they were given in Iraq.
“Every mission, everything we did, kicking doors and disrupting people’s lives, bagging people’s heads, bagging the dude’s head and dragging him out of the house, while his kids are standing there screaming, for what? What are we doing?” Hisle said.
Hisle said he feels that America didn’t learn anything from the war because civilians’ lives weren’t affected.
Elliot said he felt heartbroken because the post-military life for newer veterans is getting more difficult and nothing is being done to help.
While they were diagnosed with PTSD and sought help, they said the road to recovery was challenging in ways they couldn’t have predicted.
“Everything I did in combat is not going to work in civilian life. Now I have to re-learn again. And how do I take care of myself? I’m going to drink, I’m going to numb myself. I’m going to drink until I pass out,” Elliot said.
After the war, at least three Fox 2/5 Marines died by suicide, and one of them is in prison for murder after allegedly suffering from PTSD.
These Marines are a snapshot of an alarming reality for America’s vets.
In 2019, 17 veterans died by suicide every single day and 29.3% of veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan have been diagnosed with lifetime PTSD, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Nearly 13% of homeless adults are veterans, according to the National Coalition for Homeless Veterans.
Both Elliot and Hisle said they are doing better. They both graduated college after their service. Elliot is now working as a physical therapist and Hisle is working in a local government job.
“Even with support and all the encouragement from my friends, it’s only been a couple of years…where I’ve experienced this inner peace,” Elliot said.
“It’s a hard journey and you have to decide if it’s worth it,” he said.
Free support to those facing a suicidal crisis is available by calling the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
(NEW YORK) — A hush money payment made to an adult film actress nearly seven years ago is at the center of a criminal probe that could potentially result in criminal charges filed against a former U.S. president.
Former President Donald Trump is currently under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office as part of a probe into a payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels in the final days of the 2016 presidential race.
No current or former U.S. president has ever been indicted for criminal conduct.
The hush money probe had languished even as other investigations into Trump moved forward — until Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg convened a grand jury to revive the probe at the start of this year, according to sources.
Trump was invited to appear before the grand jury in recent weeks, sources told ABC News, in a sign that the DA could be moving closer to a charging decision. The former president’s attorney said Trump has no plans to testify. Trump himself speculated over the weekend that he would be arrested Tuesday in the probe, but Tuesday passed with no action on the DA’s part.
What is the case about?
The investigation centers around a $130,000 hush money payment to Daniels just days before the 2016 election by Trump’s then-attorney, Michael Cohen, in order to prevent her from going public with her allegations of a 2006 affair with Trump, which he has long denied.
Cohen executed the transaction through a shell corporation, Essential Consultants LLC, which Cohen had set up just days prior, according to court filings.
“Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign,” Cohen testified before Congress in 2019.
When Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment, his company logged the payments as a “monthly retainer” for Cohen’s legal services, according to Trump and court documents from Cohen’s subsequent plea deal. Prosecutors are considering whether Trump should be charged with falsifying business records, sources say.
Trump initially claimed he didn’t know about the payment to Daniels, telling reporters in April 2018 to “ask Michael Cohen” about where the money came from. But a month later he posted to Twitter that the payment to Daniels was part of a nondisclosure agreement to keep her from making false accusations.
“Mr. Cohen, an attorney, received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign, from which he entered into, through reimbursement, a private contract between two parties, known as a non-disclosure agreement, or NDA,” Trump tweeted.
“Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction,” he wrote.
But just weeks before Cohen delivered the payment to Daniels, the now-former attorney worked with the publisher of the National Enquirer, longtime Trump ally David Pecker, to pay another woman who claimed she’d had an affair with Trump, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.
The Enquirer, in concert with the Trump campaign, paid Playboy model Karen McDougal $150,000 for the rights to her story that she’d had a 10-month affair with Trump from 2006 to 2007 — then suppressed the story “in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election,” according to a 2018 plea deal made by the Enquirer’s publisher, AMI.
Trump has denied that he had an affair with McDougal and that he or his campaign directed the Enquirer to “catch and kill” her story.
The first investigation
Following an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York, Cohen pleaded guilty in August 2018 to multiple felonies for his role in orchestrating the payment to Daniels and to AMI.
The charges included two campaign finance violations related to the payments, which federal prosecutors considered campaign contributions because they were made “in order to influence the 2016 presidential election.” By law, individual contributions to a presidential campaign are limited to $2,700.
Cohen was sentenced to three years in prison.
“Today [Cohen] stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election,” Cohen’s attorney, Lanny Davis, said in a statement after Cohen entered his guilty plea on August 20, 2018. “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”
But the federal investigation ended without any charges filed against Trump himself.
Trump’s attorney at the time praised the decision.
“We are pleased that the investigation surrounding these ridiculous campaign finance allegations is now closed,” Jay Sekulow said in a statement in 2019. “We have maintained from the outset that the President never engaged in any campaign finance violation. From the Court’s opinion: ‘the Government’s investigation into those violations has concluded … another case is closed.'”
In New York, the Manhattan district attorney’s office subsequently took up the matter as part of a larger investigation into Trump’s finances starting in 2021. But under then-District Attorney Cy Vance, prosecutors believed the hush money “did not amount to much in legal terms,” according to Mark Pomerantz, one of the probe’s lead investigators who later resigned from the DA’s office due to his dissatisfaction with the pace of the probes and wrote about his experience in his book, “People vs. Donald Trump: An Inside Account.”
The investigation today
At the start of this year, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg returned to the hush money probe with a focus on whether the Trump Organization falsified business records in the way it recorded the reimbursement payment to Cohen, sources familiar with the investigation have told ABC News.
Trump’s namesake company reimbursed Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels through invoices that were billed as a “retainer agreement” — an arrangement that prosecutors say was a “sham” because no such retainer agreement existed. The payments, prosecutors say, were for Daniels.
Appearing on ABC News’ Good Morning America last week, Trump’s current attorney denied that any payments were recorded improperly.
“There was absolutely no false record,” Trump attorney Joe Tacopina told George Stephanopoulos. “To my knowledge there was no false records.”
Tacopina also said the payment could not have been a campaign finance violation because it was made with Trump’s personal funds.
“It’s not a contribution to his campaign,” Tacopina said. “He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out false but embarrassing to himself and his family’s young son. That’s not a campaign finance violation not by any stretch. So personal funds and personal use of funds spending to fulfill a commitment and obligation or an expense of a person that would be existing, irrespective of the campaign, is not a violation.”
The Manhattan grand jury conducting the probe has heard testimony from some of Trump’s closest allies and former aides, including former White House adviser Kellyanne Conway and Trump’s 2016 campaign spokesperson, Hope Hicks, as well as Pecker, the former National Enquirer publisher, who was among the first witnesses brought in.
Cohen, too, testified last week before the Manhattan grand jury over multiple days. And Daniels herself met with prosecutors over Zoom last week at the request of the DA’s office, her attorney said. Both Daniels and Cohen said they would make themselves available as witnesses if needed.
Asked last week on Good Morning America if he expects an indictment for Trump, Tacopina was resolute.
“I expect justice to prevail,” he told George Stephanopoulos. “If that’s the case, George, there shouldn’t be an indictment.”
ABC News’ Soo Rin Kim and John Santucci contributed to this report.
KISS may be ready to say goodbye to the road in December, but it’s not like they’ll be completely gone. In fact, we’re about to learn a whole lot more about their early years, courtesy of a new KISS biopic that’s in the works.
The news of the biopic was confirmed by the band’s manager, Doc McGhee, during an interview with The Rock Experience With Mike Brunn, in which he discussed things coming up for KISS once they retire from the road.
“We have a movie getting ready to be filmed … it’s a biopic about the first four years of KISS,” McGhee said. “We’re just starting it now. We’ve already sold it, it’s already done, we have a director. That’s moving along and that’ll come in ’24.”
As for those two final shows, taking place December 1 and 2 at New York’s Madison Square Garden, it sounds like fans who couldn’t snag tickets may eventually get a chance to see what went down. When asked if the shows would be filmed or recorded for a DVD or pay-per-view special, McGhee noted, “I’m sure we’ll come up with something. We want to do something very special. We’re working on it right now.”
(DENVER) — A student who was under a “certain agreement to be patted down each day” at school allegedly shot and wounded two school administrators at East High School in Denver, authorities said.
The suspect, a juvenile armed with a handgun, fled the school after the Wednesday morning shooting, but Denver police said they know who he is and a search for him is ongoing. The gun has not been recovered, police said.
Both faculty members are in serious condition, according to the hospital. One underwent surgery and the second was able to speak to authorities, officials said.
The suspected shooter was required to be searched at the beginning of each school day, officials said. He allegedly shot the school administrators as they patted him down Wednesday morning in the school’s office area, which officials said is away from other students and staff.
The suspect’s daily searches were part of a “safety plan” that was a result of “previous behavior,” officials said, though they did not elaborate on the previous behavior.
Police described the suspect as an African American teenager wearing an Astronaut hoodie. Police warned the public to not approach him, calling him armed and dangerous.
East High School was placed on lockdown in the wake of the shooting. Denver Public Schools later said it received clearance to start releasing students.
Last month, East High School students went to a city council meeting to call for action on school safety and gun violence after a 16-year-old student was fatally shot near the school, according to ABC Denver affiliate KMGH.
The superintendent said Wednesday that the school will be closed the rest of this week, and that the building will now have two armed officers present through the end of the school year.
Denver Mayor Michael Hancock in a statement said removing school resource officers was a “mistake” and said they should be quickly returned.
“We all have to step up as a community and be a part of the solution,” he said.
Hancock also called on Congress to pass “common sense” gun legislation.
“Parents are angry and frustrated, and they have a right to be,” he said. “Easy access to guns must be addressed in our country — Denver cannot do this alone.”
This shooting comes two years to the day after a mass shooting at a King Soopers grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, that claimed 10 lives.
Losing a loved one can be hard on a family, but apparently that wasn’t the case for the cast of The Goldbergs. As reported, Jeff Garlin‘s Murray was killed off between seasons 9 and 10 to cover for the actor having parted ways with ABC after accusations of bullying and other behavior.
The show’s matriarch, Wendi McLendon-Covey,just admitted to Sirius XM’s Radio Andy host Andy Cohen the situation was “a long time coming.”
“That it finally happened, it was like, ‘OK, OK. Finally, someone is listening to us,'” she continued.
However, McLendon-Covey did admit the loss of Murray was compounded by the real-life death of her Goldbergs TV dad, George Segal, who died in 2021.
“To have to go through another loss on a sitcom, you know, you can’t keep asking your audience to mourn people,” she said, adding, “That’s not why they tune in.”
That said, after shedding some light on the obviously touchy topic, the actress asked Cohen if they could change the subject, and he complied.
She explained it was exhausting recapping the events, because of the “PTSD of it all.”
The star of the upcoming comedy Paint also added, “I feel like the less people know about [the situation], the better. No one … benefits from knowing anything.”
In 2022, Garlin announced he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder.
It was recently announced that the current 10th season of The Goldbergs would be the show’s last.
A posthumous single from Juice WRLD will be out soon. The late rapper’s friend and collaborator DJ Scheme announced the news in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.
“New Juice tmrw..ok good night,” he tweeted. Lil Bibby, the founder of Juice’s record label, Grade A Productions, later shared a post confirming the news on his Instagram Story.
Juice passed away January 22, 2020, due to toxic levels of oxycodone and codeine in his system. His team has since released two posthumous albums — Legends Never Die and Fighting Demons — and is working on the release of Juice’s third and final album.
“We want this album to feel like a Celebration/Party! Let’s celebrate the life of Juice,” Bibby wrote. “No more mourning, I want everyone that Juice loved while he was here to help celebrate, especially his fans who he loved! You guys have been the best fans an artist can have (Minus the death threats to Bibby).”
Wet Leg, The Smile and Jack White are among the nominees for the 2023 Libera Awards, which honor the best in independent music.
The “Chaise Longue” duo will compete in six categories, including Record of the Year and Best Alternative Rock Record for their self-titled debut. The Smile is also up for Record of the Year with their debut, A Light for Attracting Attention, while White is nominated for Best Rock Record for Fear of the Dawn.
Other nominees include The Linda Lindas for Breakthrough Artist/Release and Best Punk Record; and Spoon‘s Lucifer on the Sofa for Best Rock Record.
The 2023 Libera Awards will take place June 15. For the full list of nominees, visit LiberaAwards.com.
The Jonas Brothers helped boost Broadway’s box office totals thanks to their five-night residency.
Deadline reports the singers’ sold-out set of shows, titled The Jonas Brothers on Broadway, earned them $1.6 million between March 14 and March 18.
The official number was $1,556,128; ticket prices averaged $192.35.
In all, this buoyed Broadway’s overall haul, which saw a 20 percent boost in its box office total over the past week.
Another show that helped inflate its numbers was The Phantom of the Opera, which is fast approaching its expected April 16 closing date. The musical earned $3 million over the past week, which is apparently its best total yet: it marks the first time the show pulled over $3 million in a week.
Overall, Broadway made $34,124,422 over the past week and saw a 13 percent jump in its audience, entertaining 259,832 people.
So far this year, the Great White Way has made $1,275,614,164 and has seated nearly 10 million people across its theaters.
Get a peek into Dolly Parton‘s wardrobe and signature fashion style with her upcoming new book, Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones.
Arriving on October 17, the special publication will chronicle Dolly’s longtime love for fashion, and share how her quintessential and universally beloved Dolly style came to be. Fans will also get stories about the global icon’s life and career, as well as a behind-the-scenes look at her private costume collection, which includes memorable wigs and high heels.
“I am happy, proud, and excited to present my book Behind the Seams to the public,” Dolly shares in a statement. “It is my hope that you will enjoy a look at my life in costume and hair and get to know some of the great people who have helped shape my life and my look. Enjoy!”
Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones serves as the second installment in a trilogy of books that started with 2020’s Songteller: My Life in Lyrics.
Dolly’s Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones is available for preorder now.
