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(NEW YORK) — Heavy rainfall is in the forecast for the Northeast, while severe thunderstorms could bring tornadoes, large hail and damaging winds to the South.

The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch from New Jersey to Massachusetts for Wednesday afternoon into Thursday, warning that heavy rain could cause flash flooding. Major cities under the flood watch include New York City, Hartford, Providence and Boston. Localized rainfall amounts of 3 inches is possible within this short period of time, which would trigger urban flash flooding.

The rain is expected to begin early Wednesday afternoon and continue into the evening for most of the Northeast. Then the rain is forecast to linger over New England into Thursday afternoon.

Friday is expected to bring a respite from the rainfall before more heavy downpours come over the weekend with yet another storm.

The rain is forecast to begin Saturday evening for the Interstate 95 travel corridor and continue into Sunday morning.

Snow is expected to fall over the mountains of upstate New York and northern New England from Saturday night into Sunday, with more than a foot possible locally. There could be additional flooding on Saturday night due to a very saturated ground.

There is also a threat for flash flooding across the South, from the Carolinas to Georgia. The National Weather Service has issued a flood watch for North Carolina’s Outer Banks barrier islands.

Meanwhile, severe thunderstorms are forecast to begin in parts of Texas on Thursday morning before moving into the Dallas metropolitan area. More severe weather is expected that night in areas of Texas and Oklahoma, including the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex. The biggest threat there will be large hail, but the possibility of an isolated tornado or damaging winds can’t be ruled out.

The severe weather is expected to move further east on Friday into eastern Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle. The biggest threat there will include tornadoes, damaging winds, hail and flash flooding.

On Tuesday, thunderstorms swept across the South and even the Midwest, with two landspout tornadoes reported in Texas and Ohio. The storms also brought heavy rain to Atlanta on Wednesday morning, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a flash flood warning there.

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(NEW YORK) — A former librarian has filed a lawsuit against Llano County, Texas, and local library officials after she says she was fired for refusing to purge certain books from the library’s collection.

“A public library is a foundation of any good society,” Suzette Baker, who had been appointed head librarian of Kingland Library in 2021, said in an interview with ABC News. “It’s like the cornerstone for our society and if that cornerstone were to fall, we would collapse. We would have no basis to form our own independent thoughts.”

She is accusing county officials of violating her First and 14th Amendment rights as well as those of the library’s patrons.

Baker alleges in her lawsuit that she was fired for “insubordination,” “creating a disturbance,” “violation of policies,” “failure to follow instructions,” and “allowing personal opinions to interfere with job duties and procedures” after refusing to remove the books.

Baker said she feels particularly passionate against what she is calling “censorship” because of the oath she said she made while serving in the military to uphold the U.S. Constitution: “That still resonates with me.”

ABC News has reached out to Llano County and library officials for comment on this most recent lawsuit regarding Baker’s termination.

In 2021, community groups began pushing for the removal of books that they declared inappropriate or unnecessary for the library’s collection. In some cases, they likened the books to “pornography” or “grooming,” the lawsuit states.

These books were predominantly written by or about people of color and LGBTQ individuals. They touched on topics such as race, gender, health, and sexual orientation.

“They’re using incredibly stigmatizing and derogatory language and stereotypes, while attempting to censor these books,” said Baker’s attorney Iris Halpern. “The language that they’re using, how they’re collapsing criminality with the content of these books or their authors, I think only further highlights the animus against LGTBQ [sic] people and people of color.”

Titles like How to be an Anti-Racist, They Called Themselves the KKK: The Birth of an American Terrorist Group, and Being Jazz: My Life As A Transgender Teen were impacted by county efforts to remove the books from shelves.

In some cases, books that “depict bodily functions in a humorous manner in cartoon format,” such as My Butt is so Noisy, were criticized by these groups as “obscene” and promoting “‘grooming’ behavior,” according to court documents.

It’s Perfectly Normal, a book about human biology depicted through cartoons, was also removed because critics claimed it encouraged “child grooming,” according to federal judge Robert Pitman.

Some of these book restrictions were inspired by a 2021 list sent by Texas State Representative Matt Krause to the Texas Education Agency and several school district superintendents with more than 800 books that “might make students feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress because of their race or sex,” he said in a letter first reported by the Texas Tribune.

In April 2022, several Llano County residents sued county officials and the library over the book removals.

Seventeen of the removed books were returned to shelves under a court order from Pitman in March 2023 that asserted that the books were protected by the First Amendment.

The county appealed the judge’s ruling to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit where the case is still pending. At the time of the appeal’s filing, the Llano County Commissioners Court, an elected governing body of the county, called a special meeting. The presiding officer of the Comissioner’s Court, Judge Ron Cunningham, issued a press release defending the Commissioners Court’s actions and decrying the expense the litigation had cost the county.

At the special meeting, officials also considered ceasing operations of the library system.

“Our librarians weed books all the time, and almost every public library must continually weed books that aren’t being checked out to make room for new books given our limited shelf space,” according to the April 2023 press release.

It continued, “The plaintiffs have falsely accused our librarian of weeding these books because of their content, even though our librarian has stated repeatedly under oath that she hasn’t even read the books and weeded them for reasons unrelated to their content or viewpoints.”

Baker also claimed in the lawsuit that some of the books removed from shelves did not meet the standards necessary to be “weeded out” in order to make room for new content.

Baker said these books are vital for people to see themselves in different stories and learn more about the people and world around them.

“One of the lessons I grew up with was you don’t judge anybody unless you walk a mile in their shoes,” said Baker. “How do you walk a mile in their shoes, especially when it’s in a small county? … You can pick up a book at a public library, and you can walk in somebody else’s shoes, and you can learn something outside of your little bubble of community. And that’s what those books are so important for.”

Book bans have been seen across the country in record-breaking numbers: Roughly 1,269 demands were made to censor library books and resources in 2022, according to the American Library Association. The organization says it is the highest number of attempted book bans since it began collecting data over 20 years ago.

The vast majority of book banning attempts were made against literature written by or about members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people of color, according to the ALA.

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(NEW YORK) — A former cheese producer in New York has pleaded guilty in connection to manufacturing raw milk products that were linked to an outbreak of listeria which resulted in two deaths and eight hospitalizations, authorities say.

Johannes Vulto and his company, Vulto Creamery LLC, each pleaded guilty to one misdemeanor count of causing the introduction of adulterated food into interstate commerce on Tuesday after it was discovered that a 2016-2017 outbreak of listeriosis, the disease caused by the pathogen Listeria monocytogenes, was linked back to cheese made in his factory, according to a press release published by the Department of Justice on Tuesday.

“Vulto oversaw operations at Vulto Creamery manufacturing facility in Walton, New York, including those relating to sanitation and environmental monitoring,” the Department of Justice said. “In pleading guilty, Vulto and Vulto Creamery admitted that between December 2014 and March 2017, they caused the shipment in interstate commerce of adulterated cheese.”

Environmental swabs taken at the Vulto Creamery facility between July 2014 and February 2017 repeatedly tested positive for Listeria species, according to the plea agreement.

“The Listeria family includes both harmless species and L. monocytogenes, which can cause listeriosis in humans. In March 2017, after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) linked Vulto Creamery’s cheese to an outbreak of listeriosis, Vulto shut down the Vulto Creamery facility and issued a partial recall that was expanded to a full recall within weeks,” the DOJ said.

The listeriosis outbreak caused by the sanitation issues resulted in eight hospitalizations and two deaths, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It is crucial that American consumers be able to trust that the foods they buy are safe to eat,” said Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Brian Boynton, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Division. “The department will continue to work with its law enforcement partners to hold responsible food manufacturers that sell dangerously contaminated products.”

Listeriosis is a severe, invasive illness that can be life-threatening in some cases, particularly for pregnant women and their newborns, the elderly and persons with weakened immune systems.

“This investigation and prosecution holds accountable the defendant and his business who through unsafe practices caused illness and death to consumers in an entirely preventable tragedy,” said U.S. Attorney Carla B. Freedman for the Northern District of New York. “The law enforcement and regulatory partners involved in this case will continue to work together to bring to justice those who endanger the public through unsafe and unsanitary products and facilities.”

Vulto and Vulto Creamery pleaded guilty in Syracuse, New York, and a sentencing date is expected to be set by the court at a later date.

“U.S. consumers rely on the FDA to ensure that their food is safe and wholesome,” said Special Agent in Charge Fernando McMillan of the FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations New York Field Office. “When companies and individuals put themselves above the law by producing food that endangers and harms the public, as occurred in this case, we will see that they are brought to justice.”

The FDA’s Office of Criminal Investigations investigated the case.

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(CLEARWATER, Fla.) — New details have emerged in the February small plane crash at a Clearwater, Florida, mobile home park that left three dead.

According to the preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board released on Tuesday, two people at Clearwater Air Park told the Federal Aviation Administration that the pilot of the Beech 35 plane said he could not find the airport. He “asked them to turn on the runway lights, which were already on from an airplane that had just landed,” the report said.

The pilot, Jemin Patel, 54, of Melbourne Beach, asked air traffic control in another communication to turn the runway lights on, the report said. Although the air traffic controllers changed the lighting to its “highest intensity,” per the report, the pilot was unable to locate the airport.

The pilot then announced he had a “fire,” the officials said, according to the NTSB preliminary report. A few minutes later, he said he was going to Albert Whitted airport since he couldn’t find CLW, the report said.

The Clearwater air traffic control asked the pilot to turn 180 degrees and maintain his altitude, but he reportedly said he was “losing engine,” according to the report. The controller asked the pilot if he could see the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport, which was three miles ahead, but no further communications came through from the aircraft.

Two witnesses of the incident — a pilot, and a passenger in a car — both reported seeing a bright light before the plane crashed. The passenger described it as a “fireball,” according to the report. The nearby pilot then saw the plane crash.

As ABC News previously reported, the small plane crashed into a mobile home in Clearwater, Florida, on Feb. 1. The pilot and two people who were in one of the mobile homes hit by the plane died. Authorities later confirmed the victims from the home were Martha Perry, 86, and Mary Ellen Pender, 54. Perry lived in the home and Pender was visiting, the city previously said. Another person suffered minor injuries.

A total of four homes were engulfed in fire following the crash, but firefighters quickly doused the flames, officials said at the time.

The NTSB is continuing to review videos from commercial businesses that recorded the incident. The NTSB said wreckage from the scene was collected for further examination.

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(NEW YORK) — The public release of the now-infamous 2005 Access Hollywood tape before the 2016 presidential election “served as the catalyst” for Donald Trump’s hush payment to Stormy Daniels and should be admissible at Trump’s upcoming hush money trial, prosecutors argued in a court filing Tuesday.

Trump’s defense team had asked the judge to keep the tape out of the trial, arguing it is “inflammatory” and of limited value.

On the tape, Trump can be heard saying that “when you’re a star, you can do anything” to women, including “Grab them by the p—-.”

“I said it, I was wrong and I apologize,” Trump said after the tape surfaced about a month before the 2016 election.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office argued the tape “bears directly on defendant’s intent and motive” for making the hush payment about three weeks later, then allegedly falsifying business records to hide the hush payment’s true purpose from voters.

Trump in April pleaded not guilty to a 34-count indictment charging him with falsifying business records in connection with the hush money payment his then-attorney Michael Cohen made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels just days before the 2016 election. The former president has denied all wrongdoing.

“Indeed, the evidence will demonstrate that the release of the Access Hollywood Tape caused a panic within the campaign about defendant’s electoral prospects and ultimately served as the catalyst for consummating the Stormy Daniels payoff,” assistant district attorney Matthew Colangelo wrote in Tuesday’s filing.

The district attorney’s filing also opposed a defense request to keep Cohen from testifying at trial.

The defense argued prosecutors would be suborning perjury if they called Cohen to the witness stand, but prosecutors called the argument “intentionally inflammatory and totally meritless” since Cohen would be subject to cross-examination.

“In an argument that reads more like a press release than a legal filing, defendant makes the obviously unsupportable request that the Court preclude one of the People’s witnesses from testifying at trial on the ground that defendant anticipates that he will disbelieve the witness’s expected testimony,” the filing said.

Cohen served time in federal prison for lying to Congress in 2017, but Judge Arthur Engoron, who presided over Trump’s recent civil fraud trial in New York, found that Cohen “told the truth” when he testified that Trump directed him to inflate his net worth.

“And it is misleading for defendant to argue otherwise without even advising this Court that Justice Engoron found Cohen’s testimony credible and truthful,” Colangelo wrote in Tuesday’s filing.

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