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(JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.) — Missouri has become the latest state to advance bills that target transgender youth.

The Republican-led House voted to push forward in a committee this week with HB 2649 or the “Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” which bars physicians and health care professionals employed by state and local governments from providing “gender transition procedures” to anyone under the age of 18. It also prohibits state or locally-run facilities from performing the procedure on minors.

The legislature also voted for an amendment to HB 1973, which would require transgender students in high school to play on the sports teams of the same biological sex listed on their birth certificate.

Any physician or health care professional who performs gender transitioning procedures or refers anyone to any health care professional that can could be “subject of civil and administrative actions,” according to the proposed bill.

The SAFE Act also states that any health carrier or health benefit plan on or after Jan. 1, 2023, will not include reimbursement for gender transition procedures for an individual under 18 years of age, nor will it be required to provide coverage for gender transition procedures.

Republican Rep. Suzie Pollock, who sponsored the SAFE Act, said when presenting it at a hearing on Thursday that the SAFE Act “helps kids struggling to embrace their biological sex by protecting them from harmful drugs and surgery.”

“The SAFE Act is providing a standard of informed consent for children by not violating the Hippocratic Oath of ‘Do no harm,’” she said. “Giving children puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery violates the first duty of medicine, which is ‘Do no harm.’”

PROMO, a Missouri statewide organization advocating for LGBTQ equality, tweeted against the SAFE Act.

“Testifying in front of HB 2649 this morning. Rep. Pollock’s extreme attack on banning access to life-saving affirming health care for trans kids. We’re here to protect trans youth in our state,” PROMO said. “Don’t be fooled, there’s nothing ‘SAFE’ about this act. Call Rep. Pollock now and express how offensive her misunderstanding of science and medicine really is.”

Republican Rep. Ron Copeland said he offered the amendment to HB 1973 to protect his daughter.

“I know this is a controversial issue in this body, and when it comes right down to it, I come up here and I’m going to fight for my daughter and all the daughters in the state,” Copeland said at the hearing. “I want everybody to know that I’m here as a father, and if I can’t fight for my daughter’s rights, I can’t expect anyone else to do that.”

Copeland said he is okay with biological women playing male sports due to the biological differences.

Republican Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman was in agreement with Copeland’s amendment.

“Conflating who can and cannot participate in [sports] is really going to hurt the outcome for our daughters, so as someone who has really benefited from participation in women’s sports, I would ask everyone to stand up for our daughters and for the girls of the state and support this amendment,” she said.

Missouri Democrat Rep. Ian Mackey went viral on Apr. 14 for his speech condemning a different bill that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. Mackey spoke up about the same issue again at Monday’s hearing.

“I just want to remind my colleagues — colleagues that I have had conversations with over the last few days about this legislation — that your vote on the record will last forever,” Mackey said. “Do the right thing.”

Democratic Rep. Peter Merideth also spoke out against the amendment.

“I’ve got three daughters. I want to protect my three daughters. This stuff is not how we do it … This is not about protecting our daughters. It’s about ignorance and fear,” Merideth said at the hearing on the bill. “It’s about bullying the most vulnerable group of kids in our state to score political points.”

Both bills will move forward and await to be heard on the floor in front of the full chambers.

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(NEW YORK) — Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest annual report.

The organization recorded 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism — the highest number of incidents on record since the ADL began tracking these attacks in 1979.

This averages to more than seven incidents per day and represents a 34% increase year over year.

“In 2021, the world still wasn’t fully reopened yet,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a Tuesday press conference on the findings. “People were still socially distancing. Businesses are still shuttered. Campuses are still closed and yet, 2021, far and away, the highest total we have ever seen.”

Oren Segal, the vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, said that these audits typically represent an undercount of the reality due to lack of reporting and other barriers to data collection.

The majority of the incidents were categorized as harassment, which increased more than 40% from last year.

The ADL also recorded a major increase in incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, community centers and schools — from 327 in 2020 to 525 in 2021, an increase of 61%.

“The findings come at a time where Jews are feeling particularly vulnerable because of the violent, antisemitic incidents that have targeted our community over the past several years, but also because of how they’ve targeted the Jewish community in the last several months,” Segal said.

He pointed to recent attacks, including the Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage crisis in January.

Three-quarters of American Jews believe there is more antisemitism in the U.S. today than there was five years ago, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.

About 53% say that, as a Jewish person in the U.S., they feel less safe than they did five years ago.

Jewish Americans continue to be the most targeted religious group, FBI hate crime statistics show.

“This should be a warning call to all Americans — antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem. It’s an American problem that demonstrates or indicates the decay of our society,” Greenblatt said at the conference.

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(NEW YORK) — A group of residents in Llano County, Texas, is suing county officials for removing books from public libraries because officials “disagree with the ideas within them.”

The residents say the county is violating their first amendment rights by removing award-winning books from shelves due to their content and terminating “access to over 17,000 digital books” from the local library system.

“Public libraries are not places of government indoctrination,” the lawsuit filed Monday reads.

It continued, “They are not places where the people in power can dictate what their citizens are permitted to read about and learn. When government actors target public library books because they disagree with and intend to suppress the ideas contained within them, it jeopardizes the freedoms of everyone.”

Several of the books listed in the lawsuit that have been removed from libraries include adult works about oppression and racism like Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents, by journalist Isabel Wilkerson, and They Called Themselves the K.K.K.: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group by Susan Campbell Bartoletti.

The lawsuit also listed some of the children’s books that have been removed: Maurice Sendak’s In the Night Kitchen is about a boy’s dream of making a cake, and Robie H. Harris’ It’s Perfectly Normal: Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health is a sex education book about the biology of the human body.

“Though Plaintiffs differ in their ages, professions, and individual religious and political beliefs, they are fiercely united in their love for reading public library books and in their belief that the government cannot dictate which books they can and cannot read,” the lawsuit read.

The complaint states that the library system’s policy claims that “in no case should any book be excluded because of race or nationality or the political or religious views of the writer.”

The local fight over book bans has been ongoing.

In December 2021, the Llano County Library shut down for several days to review the children’s books in the library. The move followed a directive from Matt Krause, the chairman of the Texas House Committee on General Investigating.

He asked districts to provide insight into library material that discussed human sexuality “or contain[ed] material that might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex or convey that a student, by virtue of their race or sex, is inherently racist, sexist, or oppressive, whether consciously or unconsciously.”

Shortly after, in January 2022, the court voted to dissolve the existing library board and appointed a new board of residents advocating for the removal of the aforementioned books, according to the lawsuit.

Several plaintiffs wanted to join the new board but say they were refused due to their “public stances against ongoing censorship efforts in the County.”

One plaintiff, according to the lawsuit, “holds a master’s degree in Library and Information Science, previously managed the rare books collection at the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston, and formerly served on a library board in Wichita Falls.” He says he was refused a position on the new board.

Other plaintiffs say they were fired from the previous library board or would not be considered for a position on the new board.

The lawsuit also claims that one librarian was fired after refusing to remove books from the shelf.

Llano County declined to comment to ABC News about the lawsuit.

In a past statement, County Judge Ron Cunningham told The Washington Post that the county was “cognizant of the concerns of our citizens pertaining to our library system.”

He claimed that “a portion of the public and media have chosen to propagate disinformation that Llano County (and other rural communities) are operating with political or phobic motivations,” and said that such was not the case.

Llano County is just one of many nationwide fired up about the restriction of subjects in public libraries and schools.

Republican-backed efforts across the country, including what critics call the “Don’t Say Gay” law in Florida or the anti-race education legislation, aim to limit speech and/or content on race, gender and sexual orientation.

The American Library Association’s Office for Intellectual Freedom (OIF) has tracked a record-breaking number of book challenges, or attempts to ban or remove books, in 2021.

“In 2021, libraries found themselves at the center of attacks orchestrated by conservative parent groups and right-wing media that targeted books about race, gender, and LGBTQIA+ issues for removal from public and school library shelves and, in some cases, included threats of book burning,” the organization stated in its “State of America’s Libraries” study.

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(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wisc.) — Police said Tuesday they’ve arrested a suspect in connection with the death of a 10-year-old girl whose body was found on a Wisconsin walking trail.

Lily Peters, a fourth grader, was reported missing by her father on Sunday night, said police in Chippewa Falls, a city about 100 miles east of Minneapolis.

Lily had been at her aunt’s house on Sunday and never made it home that night, police said.

On Sunday night officers found Lily’s bike in the woods by a walking trail near her aunt’s house, police said.

Around 9:15 a.m. Monday, Lily’s body was found in a wooded area near the walking trail, Chippewa Falls Police Chief Matthew Kelm said at a news conference.

On Tuesday evening, Kelm said the police arrested an unidentified juvenile suspect who was not a stranger to the girl. Kelm said that the suspect was known to the family.

“While nothing will bring back Lily Peters, we are grateful to deliver the news of an arrest to the family,” he said at a news conference.

The chief said the police received over 200 tips, and some were critical to the arrest.

The investigation was ongoing. Kelm had earlier said police are considering this a homicide investigation.

ABC News’ Matt Foster and Darren Reynolds contributed to this report.

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(MINNEAPOLIS, Minn.) — Attorneys for former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin in a court filing Monday asked an appeals court to overturn his conviction in the killing of George Floyd.

Chauvin’s lawyers in the filing asked the court to do one of three things: reverse his conviction, reverse his conviction and grant him a new trial in a different venue, or return the case to a lower court for resentencing.

In April 2021, Chauvin was found guilty in the death of Floyd on counts of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

He was sentenced to 22 1/2 years in prison last June.

In a 72-page court filing, Chauvin’s lawyers said that pretrial publicity, jurors’ concerns for their safety, the potential for riots to break out if Chauvin was acquitted and physical threats to the courthouse prevented Chauvin from getting a fair trial.

“The overwhelming media coverage exposed the jurors — literally every day — to news demonizing Chauvin and glorifying Floyd, which was more than sufficient to presume prejudice,” the court filing said.

The lawyers added, “However, the real problem is the jurors expressed concern for (i) they and their families’ personal safety and (ii) riots breaking out in the event they acquitted Chauvin.”

The court filing argued that a change of venue, which was previously denied by the lower court, was necessary in this case.

“There are few cases involving such violent threats by the community in the event the jury finds the defendant not guilty. Those cases — which all involved defendant police officers — required transfer of venue,” the attorneys said in the filing.

The threat of violence was “extreme,” and because jurors were not sequestered, they saw this every day during trial, Chauvin’s lawyers said in the filing.

“The courthouse was surrounded by barbed wire and soldiers during the trial. Prior to jury deliberations, National Guard troops were deployed throughout Minneapolis, businesses boarded up their buildings and schools were closed ‘bracing for a riot’ in the event Chauvin’s acquittal,” the filing said.

Lawyers for Chauvin also argued that his sentence should be reduced, as the presumptive sentence for someone without a criminal history is 150 months, while he received 270 months. They argued that “abuse of a position of authority” is not an aggravating factor that would allow for his upward sentencing.

Chauvin’s lawyers also claimed that a police officer cannot be convicted for felony murder under Minnesota law and that Chauvin was authorized to “touch” Floyd when Floyd resisted arrest.

“Chauvin is a police officer statutorily authorized to commit ‘assaults’ to effect an arrest,” they stated in the filing.

Later, the attorneys claimed that “in order for a police officer to be convicted of murder, Minnesota statutes require the officer to be using ‘deadly force’ — force one knows will cause either death or ‘great bodily harm.’ Putting your knees on the back of a suspect does not create a ‘substantial risk of causing, death or great bodily harm.'”

The court telling the jury that “it is not necessary for the State to prove that [Chauvin] intended to inflict substantial bodily harm” is a “material misstatement of the law,” Chauvin’s attorneys argued.

In the filing, the lawyers claimed this statement invited the jury to apply strict liability, a standard of liability that means the defendant could be responsible for the consequences of an action even in the absence of criminal intent.

Lawyers also claimed there was “prosecutorial misconduct,” including discovery violations and failures to disclose, starting with the state “largely ignoring the Court’s initial discovery deadline.”

“The State’s pervasive, intentional discovery violations, alone, were sufficiently prejudicial as to require a new trial,” the filing stated.

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(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — Nearly three weeks after Patrick Lyoya was killed, the Grand Rapids police chief on Monday identified the officer who fatally shot Lyoya as Christopher Schurr.

Lyoya, a native of Congo, was shot in the head on April 4 after Schurr pulled him over for an unregistered license plate. Video footage of the incident shows Schurr struggling with Lyoya, eventually forcing him to the ground and shouting, “stop resisting,” “let go” and “drop the Taser,” before shooting Lyoya.

While Grand Rapids attorney Ven Johnson and civil rights attorney Ben Crump, who are representing the Lyoya family, have been calling for the name of the officer to be released since the day Lyoya was killed, now that it’s happened, Johnson said knowing the name does little to console the family.

“Our clients literally buried their son Friday. … This doesn’t do a whole lot, and it’s something that should have been done at the time when they released the videos,” Johnson told ABC News, adding that Lyoya’s parents “feel like they’re getting red tape after red tape after red tape.”

Chief Eric Winstrom had refrained from releasing the name of the officer as the investigation was ongoing, arguing the city has a long-standing policy not to release the names of employees under investigation.

“How dare you hold the name of a man who killed this man?” civil rights activist Al Sharpton said at Lyoya’s funeral in Grand Rapids on Friday. “Every time a young Black man or woman is arrested in this town, you put their name all over the news. Every time we’re suspected of something, you put our name out there.”

Winstrom released a statement Monday saying he decided to identify Schurr “in the interest of transparency, to reduce ongoing speculation and to avoid any further confusion.”

While the name has been released, Johnson said it’s “too little, too late.”

“They hid the name of this officer who killed my client for three weeks, and yet as part of their press release, they say this is in the spirit of transparency,” Johnson told ABC News. “Well, if I said to you, I’m gonna be transparent with you, but I’m gonna hide material facts … for three weeks, they will look at me and say, just, that’s not fair.”

After Schurr’s name was released, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer released a statement saying the investigation should be wrapping up “quickly” and said her “heart is with the Grand Rapids community.”

While no charges have been filed against Schurr, Johnson said his team is prepared but hopes the state will do better in the future for preventing these events.

“In Michigan, we have a lot of hard work we need to do,” Johnson said.

Schurr is currently on administrative leave and has been stripped of all his police power as the investigation continues. ABC News was not able to reach an attorney for Schurr.

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(NEW YORK) — West Virginia had the highest opioid overdose death rate per capita in the country last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

OxyContin, a prescription drug that helped fuel the crisis, was heavily marketed in towns across the state and its use spread among residents of all ages, experts said.

“Nobody was prepared. Nobody knew that they were going to get a drug that was supposed to help alleviate pain,” Maegan Malcomb, a woman recovering from addiction in West Virginia, told ABC News.

While first responders and doctors in the state scramble to save people from these decades of danger, they also are fighting a new phase of the crisis as fentanyl overdoses have jumped in the area.

Doctors and medical experts said there is a straight timeline from the rise in opioid prescriptions to fentanyl overdoses in places like West Virginia.

When OxyContin was first introduced into the market, Purdue Pharmaceuticals misled medical professionals contending the company’s pain killer drug was far less addictive than other opioids. In 2007, the company paid $600 million in criminal penalties after admitting to misbranding OxyContin.

Two years ago, Purdue admitted that it marketed dangerous opioids to health care providers despite having reason to believe those providers were diverting drugs and that often led to abuse, according to the Department of Justice.

Lou Ortenzio, a former West Virginia doctor, told ABC News he has been feeling guilt for the years that he prescribed OxyContin.

“I never envisioned prescribing somebody with pain would have this catastrophic tidal wave effect,” he said.

Ortenzio himself became addicted to prescription pain pills, taking as many as 30 pills a day before he got help. Today, he helps run a recovery clinic in West Virginia for other people living with addiction or in recovery.

Malcomb told ABC News that she got addicted to opioids by the time she was 16. The mother of three said by the time she was 18, she didn’t know one person who wasn’t addicted to opioids.

“All I’ve ever known is addiction. And most of the people that I love, the people that I grew up with, that’s all they’ve known, too,” she said.

Even though OxyContin and other related pills are harder to prescribe, there is a population of West Virginians who are still suffering from addiction and have found an alternative to those prescription pain pills – primarily heroin, health experts said.

But by substituting a new drug, those suffering from addiction are putting themselves at a bigger risk, the experts warned.

Fentanyl has been found in as much as 70% of the nation’s heroin supply, according to the CDC. In many cases, those who use heroin have no idea that fentanyl has been added until it’s too late.

First responders in the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia, told ABC News that they respond to calls related to fentanyl-related overdoses daily. In one day they responded to three overdose calls.

“It’s poison, it’s pure poison. You don’t know what it is, ” Michael Veltri, a Clarksburg EMS, told ABC News.

Last year, fentanyl was the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the CDC. And some fear it’s only going to get worse.

Dr. Stephen Loyd, also developed an opioid addiction, but is currently in recovery. He runs a recovery center in Nashville, and told ABC News that his facility loses several patients a week due to fentanyl.

“There are not weeks that go by that we don’t,” he told ABC News.

Loyd said there is a direct link between the rise of OxyContin prescriptions in the 1990s and 2000s and the current fentanyl crisis in the country.

“These folks that are coming in with fentanyl, 98% of them got started with pain pills,” he said.

Loyd and other experts said that the country will have to work harder to help those living with addiction , particularly in places like West Virginia that were the hardest hit during the crisis.

Malcomb told ABC News that the only way to deal with a drug problem is to deal with people directly and persevere.

“I have no choice if I don’t want to die,” she responded when asked if she’d continue her recovery. “[I’m] surprised I’m not dead now.”

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(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — A 3-month-old baby boy has been found safe Tuesday after he was taken from his Northern California home in what police believe was a premeditated kidnapping.

One suspect is in custody, police said.

Brandon Cuellar’s kidnapping was reported around 1 p.m. Monday by his grandmother, who was watching the baby while the mother was at work, San Jose Police Sgt. Christian Camarillo said at a news conference.

The grandmother said she came home, took Brandon inside the apartment and went back to the car to unload groceries, Camarillo said.

In that “short amount of time,” a man went into the apartment and took the little boy, he said. Police released footage of the man they say was seen on surveillance video leaving with the 3-month-old.

Camarillo said the suspect brought a baby carrier with him to the home.

“We believe this was planned. It’s not some random act,” he said.

Camarillo said Tuesday that police are speaking with a female person of interest, but added that she’s not been “formally charged yet.”

“This is a person that was with the grandmother yesterday when they went shopping. She was present at the apartment complex when this happened,” Camarillo said.

“That person has changed their story a couple of times — a lot of inconsistencies,” Camarillo said.

ABC News’ Bonnie McLean contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — After years of failed attempts to reform Rikers Island, a federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday will consider whether to put New York City’s sprawling and troubled jail complex under control of the court.

Judge Laura Taylor Swain in 2014 appointed a federal monitor but Rikers, part of the New York City Department of Correction, remains plagued by staffing problems, physical deterioration and violence.

Fifteen inmates died in custody last year and three have died so far in 2022.

There were more than five dozen stabbings in March alone.

Damien Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, expressed alarm at the level of violence. He raised the possibility of federal receivership to force change.

“The jails are in a state of crisis, inmates and staff are being seriously injured, and action is desperately needed now,” Williams said in a letter to the court. “Based on our experience over the last six years and the sustained non-compliance with key Consent Judgment provisions and the three subsequent Remedial Orders entered by this Court, our Office is very concerned about whether the Department and City have the ability, expertise, and will to swiftly make the changes necessary to bring true reform to this deeply troubled agency.”

The administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in its own letter to the court, insisted it is making progress and asked for more time.

“The extraordinary measure of ordering a receivership is not merited and DOJ’s reference to it, less than four months into Commissioner Molina’s term, is unfair,” said Kimberly Joyce of the New York City Law Department. “The commissioner has taken more far-reaching action than has previously been demonstrated.”

Swain has ordered Correction Commissioner Louis Molina to attend the afternoon hearing, marking the first time all the stakeholders will convene since the possibility of a federal takeover was raised.

ABC News has previously documented the horror at Rikers. Exclusive material from Diane Sawyer’s project aired as a full episode of Nightline.

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(SANTA FE, N.M.) — The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department’s investigation into the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust is “nearing completion,” Adan Mendoza, the Santa Fe County sheriff, said in an interview Tuesday on Good Morning America.

Hutchins died and the film’s director was hospitalized after a gun held by Alec Baldwin as a prop fired a live round on the set of Rust last October.

The department is waiting for an FBI report with analysis of the firearm, the munitions, the prints and DNA as well as a report from the office of the medical investigator and analysis of cellphone data before the investigation can be completed, Mendoza said.

“The FBI has stated that it might be a few weeks before they finalize their report so we are hoping in weeks and not months,” Mendoza said, referring to when the investigation could come to a close.

On Monday, the sheriff’s office released evidence from its investigation, including hours of body cam video, witness interviews and crime scene photos.

An attorney representing the Hutchins family said they were “surprised” by the release of the evidence while the investigation is still active and ongoing but did not comment further.

Mendoza said the department was required to release the evidence in response to a public records request and it was doing so in an effort to be “transparent” in its investigation.

While it has been more than six months since the incident happened, Mendoza said the case is complicated and the department is doing the best that it can.

“As you can see with the enormous amount of information that we’ve released, the investigative report is 200 plus pages, it’s very complicated. It’s very convoluted. There is an enormous amount of information, so in order to do a thorough report, I think we’re doing the best that we can with the time frame that we have,” Mendoza said.

Mendoza said no one has come forward and admitted to bringing ammunition to the set, but there was at least one live round that was fired from the weapon.

The film’s producers were fined last week for failures that led to what the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau called an “avoidable death.”

“These are two separate investigations. But I think in our investigation, you’ll see some of the same things and I’ll say it again, I think there was complacency, disorganization. They were not adhering to proper safety protocols and industry standards, to be honest, so there’s a degree of neglect,” Mendoza said.

He went on, “Whether that reaches a criminal level will be up to the district attorney to determine.”

The sheriff would not comment on whether Baldwin knew there were live rounds on set, but said it is “yet to be determined” whether he is vulnerable to criminal prosecution.

“The key component is also the analysis on the firearm and the FBI report. So once that’s all collected, a thorough report will be forwarded to the district attorney’s office. They’ll make the determination who is responsible, if anyone,” Mendoza said.

An analysis should show what it took to manipulate the firearm to allow it to go off and the projectiles that were on the scene, Mendoza said.

“This is a lot of information that we’re going to work in conjunction with the D.A.’s office to determine if there is criminal neglect or criminal charges,” Mendoza said.

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