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(BELLE GLADE, Fla.) — A Florida teen is celebrating and sharing her advice for other students after getting accepted to not just one or even 10 colleges, but 72 of them.

Ja’Leaha Thornton of Belle Glade, Florida, told “Good Morning America” that she began applying to 90 colleges and universities in early September 2021 and has since received acceptance letters from 72 schools and counting.

“I know the process of applying could be kind of overwhelming to many, and instead of stressing myself out, I decided to make it a competition … and see how many I can actually get into,” the 18-year-old told “GMA.” “I wanted to broaden my horizons and explore some different schools outside of my state.”

The teen used the Common Black College Application and the Common App to submit applications to multiple colleges simultaneously.

“At most, I spent $20 because I did the Black Common App and also the Common App, and I was able to use my fee waivers,” she said.

Thornton said she was eyeing several colleges and in the beginning, Howard University in Washington, D.C., was her dream school. But in the end, she chose to attend Xavier University of Louisiana, another historically Black university in New Orleans.

“I was nervous about opening the letter because like, this is one of the top schools, and I already made a mistake with sending the wrong college essay. And when I opened the letter and actually got accepted, I was like, ‘Wow, like this is options for me now. I’m not only considering Howard or UF, I have this school and I have options.’ So it was very exciting,” Thornton recalled.

For other students who are just beginning to embark on their application process, Thornton said they shouldn’t hold themselves back in any way.

“Shoot beyond the sky, because it’s a world out there, and it has so much for us to explore, so don’t limit ourselves,” she said.

“Go beyond what’s in front of you and don’t take advantage of time. Use your resources and your opportunity.”

The high school senior at Glades Central Community High School will be her class’s valedictorian when she graduates on May 24 and plans on majoring in pre-medical psychology and minoring in chemistry. She also hopes to study abroad in Asia and go to medical school after college.

Thornton said she’s interested in pursuing a career in forensic psychiatry. “At first, I was looking into becoming a child psychiatrist … but the more I looked into it, I became more interested in working with the people who have committed crimes and trying to get them back on the right track, studying their stories and seeing how we can apply that to life,” she said.

As her high school career winds down, Thornton said she’s grateful for all the support she’s received both in the last four years and throughout her life so far.

“I just wanted to make sure I give special shoutouts to my family, especially my mom, my great grandmother, my grandmother and my uncle. They have been the solid foundation for me. I believe in the saying ‘It takes a village to build a child,’ and that was my village.”

“Also my school family, my guidance counselor, my teachers and my friends. Pretty much everybody that helped me through the journey,” she added. “I’m just excited for the next steps of my life.”

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(LOS ANGELES) — Unprecedented restrictions have been ordered for millions of residents in Southern California as the megadrought in the region persists and continues to intensify.

About 6 million customers in Los Angeles, San Bernardino and Ventura counties under the Metropolitan Water District will be required to dramatically cut down outdoor water use. However, they are still encouraged to hand water their trees, Metropolitan Executive Officer Deven Upadhyay said during a news conference Wednesday.

The water district is requiring its member agencies in the State Water Project-dependent areas to restrict outdoor watering to just one day a week, or the equivalent.

The goal is to reduce overall water consumption by 35% in the face of the water shortage, Upadhyay said. If the restrictions do not get consumption down by 35%, even stricter rules could follow next year, he added.

The water district will be monitoring the daily water use and how much is being used, as well as how residents and businesses are responding to these emergency restrictions, Upadhyay said.

After Sept. 1, the water company may need to put more limits on how much water people can use, including banning all outdoor water usage, said Metropolitan General Manager Adel Hagekhalil, adding that the company is aware it will “create a challenge for people.”

“Conservation should be a way of life for all of us,” he said, describing the new restrictions as unprecedented. “This is a wake-up call for everyone.”

The Metropolitan Water District uses water from the Colorado River as well as the State Water Project, which gets its water from the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

The Colorado is now at the top of the country’s most endangered rivers list due to the megadrought.

Anyone who does not follow the water district’s new requirements will be fined $2,000 per acre foot and other penalties for water the facility will need to provide, Upadhyay said.

ABC News’ Matthew Fuhrman and Flor Tolentino contributed to this report.

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(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — Protesters shut down a Grand Rapids City Commission meeting on Tuesday, demanding justice for Patrick Lyoya, who was shot and killed by a Michigan police officer earlier this month.

During the commission’s public comment period, several people took to the stand to call for police accountability. As protesters began to shout, Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said the commission will be taking a recess, an online recording of the meeting shows.

Bliss adjourned the meeting as the commotion continued, a spokesperson for the city told ABC News. Commissioners and most city staff left the chambers about five to 10 minutes later, according to local outlet MLive.

Grand Rapids Police Chief Eric Winstrom later took questions from protesters, who largely voiced their concerns, according to MLive. The meeting ended at 9 p.m. and Winstrom stayed to speak with residents until nearly 11 p.m., according to the spokesperson. Protesters left peacefully and no arrests were made, the spokesperson added.

Winstrom told FOX17 he was not surprised by what had happened at the meeting.

“I’ve been in this situation before, where, people want to scream and yell,” said Winstrom. “It looked to me like it was a group of people who wanted to vent.”

Winstrom added, “Sometimes people want to sit at the table, the seat at the table, they want their voice to be heard and they want to have a discussion and then other times they just want to vent. It sounded to me after the first couple of speakers people just wanted to scream and yell.”

Lyoya, 26, was shot by an officer following a struggle outside a house after he was pulled over for a faulty license plate, according to body cam footage and police.

Amid the struggle, the officer was able to force Lyoya to the ground, shouting, “Stop resisting,” “Let go” and “Drop the Taser” before he shot Lyoya in the back of the head, according to video footage.

Earlier this week, police named Christopher Schurr as the officer who shot Lyoya.

Protesters are demanding that Schurr be arrested and officers get their own liability insurance. They also want Kent County prosecutor Chris Becker to remove himself from deciding whether to charge Schurr, according to MLive.

Grand Rapids Police did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.

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(CONCORD, N.H.) — The FBI has joined the investigation into the fatal shootings of a retired couple whose bodies were found last week on a hiking trail near their New Hampshire home, leaving residents in their town fearful for their own safety, authorities said.

No suspects have yet been identified and police have released little information on the mysterious double homicide in Concord, New Hampshire, of retired international humanitarian worker Stephen Reid, 67, and Djeswende “Wendy” Reid, 66.

“We’ve been able to provide the information that we have, which is that we have no specific information that there’s any danger to the public in general at this point in time, but be vigilant, and those families are going to have to make those decisions for themselves as to what’s best for their family and what they’re most comfortable with,” Geoffrey Ward, a senior assistant state attorney general, said on Tuesday.

The attorney general’s office confirmed Tuesday that the FBI is assisting in the investigation.

Despite reassurances from the authorities that no imminent danger is lurking in Concord, the state’s capital, state Rep. Kris Schultz, D-Concord, said anxiety has permeated the city of nearly 44,000 people, where only seven murders have occurred in the past five years, according to the Concord Police Department’s annual crime statistics.

Schultz told ABC affiliate station WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire, that the lack of answers has left many of her constituents on edge.

“Do we need to be worried on an everyday basis in our neighborhood? Are we safe?” Schultz said. “This has been a safe community, and I believe it will continue to be, but I’m eager to hear more.”

‘No. 1 priority’

Concord Police Chief Bradley Osgood said solving the slayings is his department’s “No. 1 priority.”

“We are dedicating resources to be more visible in the community to make people feel safer,” Osgood said.

The Reids were reported missing on April 20 when Stephen Reid failed to show up at a planned event, according to the state attorney general’s office. Their bodies were discovered a day later off a hiking trail in a wooded and marshy area within the city’s Broken Ground Trails system, officials said.

Autopsies determined they both died from multiple gunshot wounds.

The Reids were last seen alive on April 18, when they left their home in the Alton Woods apartment complex around 2:30 p.m. and went for a walk in the Broken Ground Trails area.

Homicide investigators and the couple’s children are asking the public to report any information that could possibly be helpful in cracking the case.

Couple shared ‘mutual love of adventure’

The couple’s family, including their children, Lindsay and Brian Reid, released a statement, describing Stephen and Wendy Reid as soulmates who traveled the world and shared a “mutual love of adventure and fitness.”

The Reids moved to Concord about three years ago when Stephen Reid, who grew up in Concord, retired from a more than a 30-year career as an international development specialist working on humanitarian projects around the world through USAID, their family said.

The couple met while Wendy Reid, who was from West Africa, was studying in Washington D.C. on an athletic scholarship, the family said.

After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, Stephen Reid served in the Peace Corps in West Africa for four years, according to relatives.

“Steve’s 30-plus year career as an international development specialist in service to the world’s most vulnerable through USAID humanitarian projects could not have been made possible without the love, care and support of Wendy, who also helped recently resettled refugees acclimate and thrive in the United States,” family members said in their statement.

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(MINNEAPOLIS) — Following an almost two-year investigation, the Minnesota Department of Human Rights found that the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department engaged in a pattern or practice of race discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

The human rights agency said Wednesday it will work with the city to develop a consent decree — “a court-enforceable agreement that identifies specific changes to be made and timelines for those changes to occur.”

The investigation found racial disparities in how “MPD officers use force, stop, search, arrest, and cite people of color; in MPD officers’ use of covert social media to surveil Black individuals and Black organizations, unrelated to criminal activity; MPD officers’ consistent use of racist, misogynistic, and disrespectful language.”

These conclusions were made after investigators sat through hundreds of hours of camera footage, official interviews with officers, experts and witnesses, and read through thousands of pages in documents and materials.

The Department of Human Rights said it will meet with community members, MPD officers, city officials and others to get feedback in preparation for the consent decree to address racial discrimination in policing in the city.

The investigation is aimed at determining whether MPD engages in a pattern or practice of racial discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the state’s civil rights law.

The human rights department filing came shortly after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was convicted of the killing April 20, 2021.

“Community leaders have been asking for structural change for decades,” Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in June 2020 during the department’s announcement. “They have fought for this and it is essential that we acknowledge the work and the commitment of those who have paved the path to make today’s announcement possible.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department also opened a pattern or practice investigation into the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021. That investigation is still ongoing.

Following the announcement, the Department of Human Rights obtained a temporary court order from Hennepin County District Court that forced the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department to implement immediate policy changes.

MPD was required to ban chokeholds, officers were required to report or intervene in unauthorized use of force by other officers, get police chief approval on crowd control weapon use and more.

Since the start of the human rights investigation, groups like the Minnesota Justice Center, the Policing Project at NYU Law and the Minneapolis Foundation have offered recommendations for MPD in independent reviews on the department.

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(CHIPPEWA FALLS, Wis.) — 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) — The Minnesota Department of Human Rights will release findings Wednesday from its investigation into the Minneapolis Police Department two years after filing a charge of discrimination against the city.

The investigation is aimed at determining whether MPD engages in a pattern or practice of racial discrimination in violation of the Minnesota Human Rights Act, the state’s civil rights law.

The filing came shortly after the murder of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, by then-Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Chauvin was convicted of the killing April 20, 2021.

“Community leaders have been asking for structural change for decades,” Commissioner Rebecca Lucero said in June 2020 during the department’s announcement. “They have fought for this and it is essential that we acknowledge the work and the commitment of those who have paved the path to make today’s announcement possible.”

U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and the Justice Department also opened a pattern or practice investigation into the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department in 2021. That investigation is still ongoing.

Following the announcement, the Department of Human Rights obtained a temporary court order from Hennepin County District Court that forced the city of Minneapolis and the Minneapolis Police Department to implement immediate policy changes.

MPD was required to ban chokeholds, officers were required to report or intervene in unauthorized use of force by other officers, get police chief approval on crowd control weapon use and more.

Since the start of the human rights investigation, groups like the Minnesota Justice Center, the Policing Project at NYU Law and the Minneapolis Foundation have offered recommendations for MPD in independent reviews on the department.

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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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