(HOUSTON) — A man who’s been nicknamed the “Sticky Note Bandit” robbed another bank in Houston on Tuesday, marking his fourth robbery in two weeks, the FBI said.
“He has committed four robberies in less than two weeks, and we need your help to find him!” the FBI’s Houston office said in a statement posted to social media on Tuesday.
The man, who hasn’t been publicly identified, allegedly robbed a Bank of America branch on San Felipe Street in Houston while dressed as a woman, the bureau said.
He also allegedly struck three other banks this month, the bureau previously said. In each case, he handed tellers sticky notes with “threatening” messages demanding cash, earning him the nickname “Sticky Note Bandit,” the FBI said.
It was unclear if the suspect left Tuesday’s alleged robbery with money, but he left the two other Houston-area banks with undisclosed sums this month, the bureau’s Violent Crime Task Force said in a press release.
The man allegedly entered Hancock Whitney Bank in Houston on July 5 “dressed as a female, approached a teller, and handed them a threatening note written on a sticky note which demanded cash,” the FBI said. He left that branch with an undisclosed sum, the FBI said.
“No one was physically hurt during the robbery,” a statement said.
The suspect, who was described as a 5-foot-8-inch Black man with a “thin to medium build,” allegedly used a similar method at two Wells Fargo branches in Houston on July 11 and 13.
“During the last two robberies he wore a black wig, black sunglasses, a blue medical mask, a green women’s style sweater, black women’s ballet flats, and carried a black purse,” the FBI said prior to Tuesday’s alleged robbery.
During the July 11 robbery, the “teller walked away from the counter and locked themselves in the back room for safety,” the FBI said. “The suspect remained in the bank lobby for a short time, then fled the scene on foot without any money.”
He left the July 13 robbery with an undisclosed sum, the FBI said.
(NEW YORK) — We hear the word collagen a lot when it comes to supplements and skin care, but what is it, exactly?
To answer all of our questions, we turned to Dr. Brandon Richland of Orange County.
What is collagen?
“Collagen is the most abundant protein found in the human body, making up approximately 25-35% of your body’s total protein content. This naturally occurring building block provides structural support to many tissues such as skin, connective tissue, bones, cartilage, muscle, tendons and ligaments,” Richland told ABC News’ Good Morning America.
What are the benefits of collagen?
“Some commonly cited benefits that collagen supplementation may provide may include improved skin elasticity and hydration, reduced wrinkles, expedited wound healing, stronger bones, increased bone density, reduced joint pain and improved nail and hair health,” Richland said.
Are there any risks involved?
“Collagen supplements are generally considered safe,” Richland said, “but risks exist, such as bloating, diarrhea, heartburn, rash, elevated liver tests and allergic response among others.”
Should I be taking a collagen supplement?
“Collagen supplementation may be beneficial to a wide range of patients, such as those who are looking for anti-aging benefits, improved bone strength and reduced joint pain,” Richland said.
What should I look for in a collagen supplement?
“The best forms of collagen supplementation come as hydrolyzed collagen (aka collagen peptides), or as capsules,” Richland said. “You may also want to find a supplement that contains all three major types of collagen, including Type I, and Type III collagen for skin health and Type II collagen for bone/joint support.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s campaign slammed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ culture war platform on Tuesday as a “contrived political stunt,” in its first on the record comments on the Republican presidential candidate.
DeSantis rolled out a proposal to “rip the woke out of the military” by, in part, ridding it of any groups that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, banning race and gender quotas, and prohibiting drag shows on bases in a speech in South Carolina.
“We’re now in a situation where we find ourselves seeing the military go down a very different path,” DeSantis said. “It’s a military that has been ordered by civilian officials to pursue political ideology.”
However, later in the day, DeSantis said during an interview on CNN that many people are unfamiliar with the term “woke” and do not know how to define it.
“Well, but I think there’s an issue about – not everyone really knows what wokeness is,” DeSantis said after being presented a survey of the Army that showed “woke” did not rank near the top of concerns service members had. “I mean, I’ve defined it, but a lot of people who’ve railed against wokeness can’t even define it.”
The Biden campaign seized on the Florida governor’s remarks.
“Ron DeSantis himself just told CNN ‘not everyone really knows what wokeness is’– admitting his hallmark campaign issue is a contrived political stunt,” Biden campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz told ABC News.
“If Ron DeSantis actually cared about the military, he would call on Senator Tuberville to stop the unprecedented damage he’s doing to the armed forces and military families every day by blockading of hundreds of military nominations and promotions,” Munoz said.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., has for months blocked many military nominations because of his opposition to the Pentagon’s policy on supporting members who travel for abortions.
DeSantis, who has struggled to make headway in the Republican presidential primary against former President Donald Trump, made taking on “woke” ideology a cornerstone of his agenda as governor, and has campaigned on taking his fight national while on the campaign trail.
DeSantis repeatedly touts the message “Florida is where woke goes to die” in front of audiences across the country. However, Democrats believe it’s one they can beat.
“It’s proof of the larger problem MAGA Republicans are facing in this race,” Munoz added. “They have a deeply unpopular agenda that Americans have rejected time and time again, so instead, they recycle the same divisive culture wars and attacks on bedrock freedoms meant to tear Americans apart.”
(MOSCOW, Idaho) — Idaho prosecutors responded to a suggestion from the defense that suspect Bryan Kohberger’s DNA could have been planted at the scene of last year’s quadruple murder, saying it does not support one of their requests for additional discovery.
In previous court filings, lawyers for Kohberger asked for more information on the genealogical analyses used to zero in on the suspect, attempting to cast doubt on the strength of investigators’ evidence and whether it pointed irrefutably to just their client. The defense lawyer even questioned the investigators’ objectivity.
The Latah County Prosecutor, leading the case against Kohberger, said in court filings Monday that none of the defense’s arguments hold water as reasons to share the additional information.
“The State is at a loss as to how that theory supports a claim that the lGG information is material to the preparation of his defense,” they wrote.
Investigative Genetic Genealogy (IGG) helped law enforcement eventually link Kohberger to the crime scene, after a more common DNA criminal profiling method, called a short tandem repeat analysis (STR), first found no match with the DNA left at the crime scene.
Prosecutors said the profile used in their IGG was informed by the same DNA as the STR analyses they performed, and they are already handing over information related to the STR analyses in discovery.
“If Defendant wishes to explore the theory that his DNA was planted on the Ka-Bar knife sheath, he is free to do so. But the family tree created by the FBI has no relevance to that theory,” the prosecution wrote.
Kohberger’s attorneys said last month they should get additional discovery on the genealogical “family tree” which helped lead authorities to their client.
The defense said in a June filing that Kohberger’s DNA could have been planted — put on the Ka-Bar sheath by someone other than him — by someone throughout the investigation, for instance, which spanned “hundreds of members of law enforcement and apparently at least one lab the State refuses to name.” The IGG process was “like a lineup where the government was already aware of who they wanted to target,” they said, pointing to three additional males’ DNA they say were found in and around the scene after the killings, and adding that “precisely how the police came to believe” they had identified the suspect’s car as the kind Kohberger drove “is still unknown.”
“The Defense is to guess whether the State focused its investigation on Mr. Kohberger via a bizarrely complex DNA tree experiment or through its faulty identification of the vehicle involved in this case,” they wrote in the June filing.
In their filing Monday, the prosecution said that even if Kohberger’s team wants to go down that road and claim that process was “rigged” — it would be an irrelevant argument because they are not planning to present the genetic genealogy information at trial.
The prosecution said the IGG analysis was used to point them in the right direction — but is a separate process from the ultimate STR DNA profile — and they are not planning on using IGG at trial.
The prosecution also noted they have already handed over information related to the STR analyses.
The two analyses are distinct, they say — the IGG was used “to develop a lead, not to demonstrate substantive evidence of guilt,” while the STR analysis “is substantive evidence the State intends to use at trial to prove its accusations” against Kohberger, the prosecution writes.
They include an affidavit from the Idaho State Police Forensic Services Laboratory manager who notes the STR data and the data used in investigative genetic genealogy “cannot be directly compared.”
Because they don’t plan to use the IGG analyses at trial, the prosecution argued it wasn’t relevant information to disclose. Anyone involved with those analyses wouldn’t constitute a prosecution witness, thus making that defense argument inapplicable, they said.
“The IGG information is neither exculpatory nor material to guilt or punishment. The family tree built by the FBI merely pointed law enforcement to Defendant, and law enforcement followed that lead to develop the substantive evidence of guilt that was used for his arrest and that will be used at trial,” the prosecution writes.
Responding to a June defense expert declaration in support of further discovery on the DNA analyses, the prosecution says that expert, who is also an attorney, should not “hijack” the court’s role in determining evidence’s relevance and admissibility, adding their declaration was a “poorly disguised legal brief” by a lawyer who is not on the case.
Prosecutors allege that in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, Kohberger, a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University, broke into an off-campus home and stabbed to death four University of Idaho students: Ethan Chapin, 20; Madison Mogen, 21; Xana Kernodle, 20, and Kaylee Goncalves, 21.
After a six-week hunt, police zeroed in on Kohberger as a suspect, saying they tracked his white Hyundai Elantra, cellphone signal data, and recovering what authorities said was his DNA on a knife sheath found next to one of the victims’ bodies.
That DNA evidence taken from the knife sheath at the crime scene “showed a statistical match” with a cheek swab taken directly from Kohberger after his arrest, authorities said in court filings.
Kohberger’s attorneys pushed back on that analysis in several court filings, saying the “statistical probability is not an absolute,” and pointing to what they called a “total lack of DNA evidence” from the victims in Kohberger’s home or car.
Kohberger was arrested on Dec. 30, 2022, at his family’s home in Pennsylvania, after driving cross-country to spend the holidays in Albrightsville.
He was indicted in May and charged with four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. At his arraignment, he declined to offer a plea, so the judge entered a not-guilty plea on his behalf.
A trial in the quadruple homicide has been set for Oct. 2, though that could be delayed.
(NEW YORK) — When Sean Saifa Wall was 13, a doctor recommended to his mother that Wall’s male-typical genitals be removed and that he begin feminizing hormone therapy.
He says his late mother agreed to the surgery and treatment, but Wall adds that his mother picked the wrong gender for him.
“Receiving my medical records and really learning about what happened to me without my thorough informed consent, I think, made me really angry,” Wall, who is now 44, told ABC News.
Wall was born intersex, which encompasses a group of people with genitals, chromosomes, hormones or reproductive organs that are neither clearly male nor female at birth.
Born with partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, or AIS, he had atypical reproductive organs and, like many intersex people, had surgery performed to assign him to one gender over the other without, he says, his consent.
Up to 1.7% of people are born with intersex traits, according to the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights.
Though conservative legislators across the country have introduced or passed bans that limit access to gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth, the bills have explicitly allowed an exception for surgery on intersex minors.
This means surgeries can be performed on babies or young children, but only if they have a medically verifiable condition that doesn’t fit into the typical definitions of “male” or “female.”
Surgeries on intersex children have been condemned by the United Nations, the Human Rights Campaign and intersex activists around the world. However, in the U.S., the federal government has left it up to individual states to create their own laws on gender-affirming care.
Some doctors have defended these surgeries as being an option that should be made available to children and patients. But many intersex patients and advocates say these procedures are medically risky.
“This is not protecting children at all,” said Wall. “We have to acknowledge that what we have done to intersex people, what we have allowed to happen is unjust. And it’s a flagrant violation of bodily autonomy and bodily integrity.”
Wall believes transgender people and intersex youth are being used as cannon fodder in the fight to maintain the gender binary and reinforce heterosexuality as the societal norm.
“Biological sex is not neat at all, right?” he added.
The medical-ethical dilemma
Since the mid-1900s, genital reconstructive surgery has often been seen as a “fix” for intersex conditions to be more cosmetically pleasing and to fit into one gender, experts told ABC News.
This can include removing internal testes and gonad tissue, reducing the clitoris or creating a vaginal canal.
“The history of surgery to ‘fix’ intersex children and to normalize their sex organs is a very contentious one,” Dr. Ilene Wong, a urologist at MidLantic Urology in Pennsylvania, told ABC News. “And most devastatingly is when kids are assigned or switch to a gender that [parents] think is conforming to their chromosomes, when, in fact, later on they have a vastly different gender identity.”
A 2022 study comparing the views specialized physicians have regarding intersex child surgery with the experiences of intersex adults found, “physicians justify surgery on the grounds that they are defending the right of the child to have access to treatments and live as normal a life as possible.”
But Wong said these surgeries can also come with complications, including possibly removing the ability of sexual function and reproductive potential. There is also the risk of pain, nerve damage and scarring, according to research studies.
Wong said a surgery she performed on an intersex teenage patient was her first understanding of the risks these surgeries can carry.
During her first year of residency, Wong said she treated a patient who identified as female and externally looked female but never got her period because, as it turned out, she had internal testes instead of ovaries and a uterus.
The teenager had given her consent to the surgery, but Wong said the patient had not been adequately informed about the risks of her surgery.
“We basically made this 17-year-old girl menopausal and so I had to talk to her about needing hormones and you could tell there’s this blank expression on her face,” Wong said. “She had no idea that this was even a possibility.”
She continued, “So it was representative of the failure of the consent process, and how challenging it is for even for adults or proto-adults or adolescents to really understand the full outcomes, the full potential complications of any surgery.”
Not all doctors are against intersex surgeries, however. When California lawmakers introduced a bill in 2019 calling for a ban on genital surgeries on infants that are not medically necessary, the Societies For Pediatric Urology spoke out against the bill.
“The medical community is not advocating for or against the surgical option,” Dr. Lane Palmer, then-president of the group, said in a statement. at the time. “However, making only one option available and withholding others is not in the best interest of the patient, especially in complex conditions.”
The statement continued, “The decision of what is ‘medically necessary’ is different for each patient. Proposals of a blanket ban on surgery would not only threaten the care of children with intersex conditions by denying access to surgery by erroneously deeming it ‘unnecessary,’ but it would even deny surgery to infants and children without intersex conditions who would be placed inadvertently under an overarching umbrella of legislative proposals. This latter group constitutes the vast majority of patients who would be affected by such bills.”
Intersex surgery exceptions
As anti-transgender legislation has swept the country — with lawmakers in many states preventing minors from undergoing gender-affirming care — carve-outs have been allowed for surgeries on intersex children to continue.
Dr. Arlene Baratz, a Pennsylvania-based physician and medical and research coordinator for InterConnect Support Group for intersex people, said she finds the exception “interesting” considering that most transgender children do not undergo surgery until they are in their late teens and don’t undergo genital surgery until they are age 18 or older.
They also are often required to undergo a psychological evaluation and have to live in the gender they identify with before surgery can be performed.
“The opposite is actually true for intersex children, and they [often] undergo surgery when they’re infants. Again, they’re not old enough to speak, some of them aren’t old enough to walk,” Baratz, the mother of two intersex children, told ABC News. “They know nothing about themselves, we know nothing about them, who they are, what they will like, how they are experiencing their gender.”
She continued, “And so, I think that in order not to make mistakes with this kind of surgery, it should be available to people who want it and it should be available to people who can understand the consequences of it and that it should wait until they’re old enough to be able to decide for themselves.”
ABC News reached out to Do No Harm, a medical conservative organization against transgender health care for minors that helps draft legislation for lawmakers. ABC News also reached out to several lawmakers across several states.
Lawmakers declined or didn’t respond to the request for an interview, as did Do No Harm, which instead sent the statement: “The model legislation was drafted based on scientific evidence and expertise from multiple areas, including pediatrics and pediatric endocrinology.”
The group has said in previous interviews it is opposed to gender-affirming care in part because it ignores “informed consent” from transgender youth, despite calling for surgery exceptions for intersex people with no age or informed consent requirements.
Parents joining the fight against intersex surgeries
Some parents of intersex children say they felt pressured by their doctors to do the medically unnecessary surgeries to make their children “normal.”
“They wanted to do surgery to solidify a female gender and I really pushed back,” said Kristina Turner, the mother of an intersex teenager.
Eric and Stephani Lohman, who wrote the book Raising Rosie about their refusal to give their child surgery, were told their child “had what they called ambiguous genitalia and we should do a surgery before like, as early as possible, before his first birthday, because then he would never know,” Stephani said.
“Certainly, there was an implied secrecy and shame,” she added.
The Lohmans wanted their children to feel comfortable talking to them about gender and sex.
“That created an atmosphere that when [their child] was about 6 or 7, he started saying, ‘I really feel like a boy and I want to get this boy’s haircut, and I want to do all these things that are like what our society typically assigns to male gender,'” Eric said.
Some parents of intersex children criticize legislation that restricts gender-affirming care but includes exceptions for intersex people.
“Trans people are being told, ‘You can’t possibly know anything about your body because you’re way too young’…And then for intersex people, it’s the opposite. The choice of your gender is so important that you can’t possibly wait until you’re old enough to understand,” Stephani said.
Turner said their child’s intersex identity is not causing the most stress; rather, it’s the legislation impacting transgender and intersex youth.
“Nothing about that is hard for them or a struggle, they’re fine with being intersex and who they are,” Turner said. “The only struggles they’re really enduring are the political attacks.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a U.S. Army soldier launched international headlines by apparently intentionally crossing the border into North Korea on Tuesday, the Biden administration sent mixed signals on how far it might be willing to go to secure his release.
“We’re looking into this,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told ABC News Senior White House Correspondent Mary Bruce, adding that President Joe Biden had been briefed on the matter and that U.S. officials were still gathering the facts.
“The White House, the Department of Defense, the State Department, and also the U.N. are all working together to ascertain more information and resolve this situation,” Jean-Pierre said.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said the Pentagon had reached out to North Korean military officials on the matter and that he was “absolutely foremost concerned about the welfare of our troop,” identified by U.S. officials as 23-year-old Pvt. Travis King.
Although King is now the first American in nearly five years known to be detained by North Korea — a country notorious for its harsh prison conditions — the State Department indicated it would take a restrained approach as officials said they had seen no clear sign that King wanted to return to the U.S.
Hours after the incident, spokesperson Matthew Miller said the State Department had not directly reached out to any foreign governments about the case because it did not see such outreach as “an appropriate or necessary step.”
While the U.S. does not have a direct diplomatic relations with North Korea, limited consular services are often made available to American citizens in the country through Sweden, which serves as the protecting power for the U.S.
Miller said the State Department may attempt to extend that assistance to King.
“I will just say that, as always, the safety and security of any American overseas remains the top priority for the United States,” he said. “Whatever we can do to resolve this situation we will of course not hesitate to take the appropriate step.
Sweden has also served as an effective intermediary in other cases involving Western nationals imprisoned by Pyongyang.
Before crossing into the Korean demilitarized zone, King spent 47 days at a South Korean detention facility following an altercation with local and was set to return to the U.S. to face disciplinary action, according to one U.S. official.
Prior to King, Bruce Byron Lowrance was the last American known to be held by North Korea. Lowrance illegally crossed over the border from China in October 2018 and was jailed for roughly a month before ultimately being deported with minimal international intervention.
North Korea has released several other American prisoners in recent years, including Otto Warmbier, the University of Virginia student who entered the country as part of a guided group tour in 2015 and was convicted of stealing a propaganda poster during his stay.
Due to unknown causes, Warmbier slipped into a vegetative state shortly after his sentencing. Pyongyang allowed the student to be repatriated to the U.S. in 2017 while he in a coma, but he died less than a week after his return.
The following year, Pyongyang freed three Americans — Kim Hak Song, Tony Kim and Kim Dong Chul — shortly after then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited the country, a move that laid the groundwork for the first summit between former President Trump and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un.
But during President Biden’s time in office, communication with the hermit kingdom has been virtually nonexistent, with the administration maintaining it is ready to engage with Pyongyang without any preconditions but receiving no substantive response.
Beyond its human rights record and strict isolationism, North Korea poses significant national security and diplomatic challenges to the U.S., including through its resurgent nuclear program and frequent ballistic missile launches — violations of United Nations Security Council resolutions.
In the past, American leaders have been able to rely on China to steer North Korea, but both Beijing’s willingness and ability to intercede has increasingly coming into question.
During the Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s engagement with his Chinese counterpart earlier this month, North Korea was not even on the agenda, officials said.
(YARMOUTH, Mass.) — A woman was left shaken and terrified by the side of a highway when she found a man hiding in the backseat of her car as she was driving “with a coat over his head,” police said.
A police officer from the Yarmouth Police Department in the Cape Cod community of Massachusetts was patrolling near the Route 6 exit ramp just before 1 a.m. on Monday morning when he “came upon a vehicle he thought was disabled,” according to a statement from the Yarmouth Police Department released on social media.
“As he went to check on the car, he saw a woman standing outside of it attempting to dial 911. She appeared to be scared and upset as she explained to the officer what had just occurred,” police said.
The woman told police that she had just left her friend’s house and didn’t notice anything out of the ordinary at the beginning of her journey. However, a short time later a light suddenly came on in her car while she was driving which caused her alarm.
“As she looked into the back seat, she was surprised to see a man hiding with a coat pulled over his head,” said the Yarmouth Police Department.
The woman told police that she was extremely frightened and began driving erratically which caused the man hiding in the backseat of her car to fall out of the open rear door of the vehicle and onto the road, authorities said.
Following a brief investigation by officers from the Yarmouth Police Department, they found the suspect — 36-year-old Jailton Dos Santos of South Yarmouth — and he was arrested and charged with breaking and entering into a vehicle in the nighttime.
Police did not give any indication of why Dos Santos was in the unnamed woman’s car or what his motivation might have been behind the alleged crime.
While the victim was lucky to escape physically unscathed, following the incident, the Yarmouth Police Department took the opportunity to “remind everyone to make sure they lock their unattended vehicles, especially at night.”
(FORT MYERS, Fla.) — A 7-year-old in Fort Myers, Florida, has died after sustaining critical injuries when he was struck by a golf cart his 3-year-old brother was driving, law enforcement officials said.
The 3-year-old, who was driving the cart on private property on Orange River Boulevard Monday, was approaching a curve near a home on the street when he collided with his brother, the Florida Highway Patrol said in a news release. The 7-year-old brother had been standing in front of the home at the time. The Florida Highway Patrol did not provide any information on why the 3-year-old child was driving a golf cart.
The 7-year-old was transported to the hospital, where he later died, according to the Florida Highway Patrol.
The child driving the golf cart did not sustain injuries, according to officials. He was not wearing a seat belt and was not wearing a helmet, police said.
Law enforcement officials are investigating the incident.
Over 6,500 children are injured by golf carts every year, with more than half of those injured being 12 years old and younger, according to a 2021 study from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP).
Researchers found that injuries happen more frequently in males than females; superficial injuries were common, with more severe injuries such as fractures and dislocation being the second most common; and most injuries happen in the neck and head, the American Academy of Pediatrics said in its report.
“I think it’s important that we raise awareness of the severity and types of injuries that golf carts pose to children including pre-adolescents, so that greater prevention measures can be instituted in the future,” Dr. Theodore J. Ganley, director of CHOP’s Sports Medicine and Performance Center and Chair of the AAP Section on Orthopedics, said in a news release announcing the study.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican candidates for president and lawmakers on Capitol Hill largely fell in line, again, behind former President Donald Trump on Tuesday after he was informed that he is a target in special counsel Jack Smith’s investigation into efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
The target letter indicates that Trump, who is already facing New York state charges over hush money payments to a porn star during his 2016 campaign and a federal indictment in Florida over his handling of classified documents after leaving office, will likely be indicted for a third time — which is unprecedented for any current or former president.
While it is not yet clear what specific charges Trump could be accused of, and he has adamantly denied wrongdoing and pleaded not guilty in Florida and New York, Republicans on Tuesday defended him as being victimized by federal law enforcement.
Attorney General Merrick Garland previously defended Smith, the independent prosecutor overseeing the Department of Justice investigations of Trump, as a “veteran” committed to “integrity.”
No specific evidence of politicization has emerged. Even so, it has become a key talking point among critics of the cases against Trump.
Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis, considered Trump’s strongest primary rival, told ABC News’ Rachel Scott at a news conference on Tuesday that the former president “should have come out more forcefully” as the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection unfolded but directed sharper criticism at law enforcement.
“Criminal charges is not just because you may have done something wrong. It’s — did you behave criminally? And I think what we’ve seen in this country is an attempt to criminalize politics and to try to criminalize differences. So, I don’t know what was all about that,” DeSantis said.
Former Vice President Mike Pence offered his first reaction Tuesday night on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports,” continuing to condemn the events of Jan. 6 while being careful not to alienate Trump’s base.
After calling former Trump’s words on Jan. 6 “reckless” and repeating his standard lines that “Trump was wrong” and “history will hold him to account for his actions,” Pence said his conduct shouldn’t result in criminal charges.
“With regard to the prospect of an indictment, I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’m not convinced that the president acting on the bad advice of, of a group of crank lawyers that came in into White House in the days before January 6, is actually criminal,” he said.
Tech entrepreneur and GOP primary Vivek Ramaswamy, in a statement of his own, also claimed partisanship is at work and called “the pending Jan 6 indictment of Trump is arguably the most dangerous of all to our Constitutional Republic.”
Some GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill sounded similar notes.
“If you notice recently, President Trump went up in the polls and was actually surpassing President Biden for reelection,” House Speaker Kevin McCarthy of California told reporters, without specifying to which polls he was referring. “So what do they do now? Weaponize government to go after their No. 1 opponent.”
“This shameful witch hunt against President Trump by Joe Biden’s corrupt Department of Justice is just the latest chilling chapter in the Far Left’s unAmerican weaponization of the justice system against their leading political opponent,” New York Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House GOP Conference, said in a statement.
“There is no greater tyranny than that which is perpetrated under the shield of the law and in the name of justice,” said Rep. Byron Donalds, R-Fla.
Trump also got backup from the main super PAC supporting his comeback bid.
“This is election interference. … Fortunately, President Trump will not back down. He will be back in the White House and he will restore greatness to our beloved nation,” Make America Great Again Inc. spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.
What polls show is that, according to FiveThirtyEight, Trump’s support in the GOP presidential primary actually rose after his two impeachments, with the former president currently boasting a nearly 30-point lead over DeSantis.
Trump has also boasted strong second-quarter fundraising numbers, suggesting his campaign isn’t losing financial support from his party’s base. (His campaign sent out a fundraising email Tuesday after news of the target letter broke.)
More broadly, however, many voters have said Trump’s legal troubles are a problem for him.
For example, in the wake of his federal indictment in Florida, 48% percent of Americans said Trump should have been charged with crimes, while 35% said he should not have been and 17% said they didn’t know, an ABC News/Ipsos survey found. And 46% said then that Trump should suspend his bid for the White House, while 38% said he should not and 16% didn’t know.
Tuesday’s supportive reactions on the right reflect a trend as many figures in the Republican Party defended the former president after his two indictments so far, with only some voicing concerns about the seriousness of the allegations against him.
“Two things can be true at the same time. One, the DOJ and FBI have lost all credibility with the American people. … The second thing can also be true if this indictment [in Florida] is true, if what it says is actually the case, President Trump was incredibly reckless with our national security,” former South Carolina GOP Gov. Nikki Haley said in June.
Haley on Tuesday chose to ignore the target letter, instead seeking to focus on her own campaign.
“The rest of this primary election is going to be in reference to Trump, is going to be about lawsuits, is going to be about legal fees, it’s going to be about judges and it’s going to continue to be a further and further distraction,” Haley said on Fox News. “And that is why I am running. It’s because we need a new generational leader. We can’t keep dealing with this drama. We can’t keep dealing with the negativity.”
Some Republican leaders have supported investigations into the 2021 riot, with Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell, Ky., saying in 2021 that “it was a horrendous event, and I think what they are seeking to find out is something the public needs to know,” referencing the then-select House committee probing the insurrection.
McConnell, in a floor speech in February 2021, soon after the Capitol attack, said, “President Trump is still liable for everything he did while he was in office as an ordinary citizen. He didn’t get away with anything yet.”
The Kentuckian, who has not yet commented on the new target letter, rebuked Trump after voting to acquit him in his second impeachment trial. “Impeachment was never meant to be the final forum for American justice,” the lawmaker said then.
On Tuesday, though, few Republicans directly took on Trump, leaving longshot presidential candidates as the loudest voices criticizing the primary frontrunner.
Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who is polling at the back of the GOP primary field and who has consistently criticized Trump, came out with full-throated condemnation of Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and incitement of the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
“I have said from the beginning that Donald Trump’s actions on January 6 should disqualify him from ever being President again. As a former federal prosecutor, I understand the severity of Grand Jury investigations and what it means to be targeted by such an investigation,” Hutchinson said in a statement.
Former Rep. Will Hurd, R-Texas, another Trump critic and long shot candidate for the GOP nomination, echoed that.
“Jan. 6 was a dark day for democracy. Trump’s inaction then, and now being a target in the investigation, proves he’s not fit for office,” Hurd wrote in a tweet. “Our country deserves leaders who will put the Constitution and the American people above all else.”
ABC News’ Libby Cathey and Lauren Peller contributed to this report.
(BLANCO, Texas) — A tiny cattle and ranching town nestled in Central Texas is experiencing water supply woes so severe that it recently only had about a day’s worth of water left.
The City of Blanco warned residents Friday night that a “very serious water emergency” had commenced. A small pipe break in the Texas Water Company’s system stopped water deliveries to the city altogether, Blanco Mayor Mike Arnold wrote in an announcement posted to Facebook.
The Texas Water Company, which draws its water from the Canyon Lake Reservoir, had already been struggling to keep up with the city’s water demands in the last several weeks, Arnold said, describing the pipe malfunction as “a common occurrence.”
Without water coming in to replenish usage, the supply in the city’s holding tank began to “rapidly decline,” according to Arnold.
Officials estimated that the water in the tank would “run completely dry” by midday on Saturday, the mayor said.
The dire situation triggered a Stage 6 drought contingency water restriction, which shut down all industrial and recreational users in town while the Texas Water Company worked to isolate and repair the leak. All outdoor usage was also prohibited, except for providing drinking water to livestock.
The city is currently relying on water deliveries from the Texas Water Company until its own water plant is back online in early 2024, Arnold said.
“It would be wise for us all to expect we will be in situations like this from time to time,” Arnold wrote.
The emergency subsided by Saturday morning, when the Texas Water Company resumed water deliveries to the city. While city tanks began to fill and water levels remained steady through the weekend, the Stage 6 emergency remained at Stage 6 until Monday morning, when industrial operations were gradually allowed to resume.
The city remains in a Stage 5 water restriction, in which water is limited to indoor use only.
Residential, commercial, wholesale and industrial customers were instructed to avoid engaging in landscape irrigation until further notice. Bulk water haulers are prohibited from pulling water from hydrants until further notice, the city said on Monday.
“Folks, this drought has hit everyone hard,” the city wrote. “The river and lake levels are very low. Our recent rains barely made an impact.”
The city is targeting a 50% reduction in total water usage and daily water demand before it continues to lift restrictions.
100% of residents in Blanco County, located about 50 miles north of San Antonio, have been affected by the drought, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s National Integrated Drought Information System.
At least eight public water systems in Texas are limiting water usage to avoid shortages, according to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Record-breaking heat has been blanketing the state for more than a month.
The City of Blanco’s supply management plan includes reduced or discontinued flushing of water mains, reduced or discontinues irrigation of public areas; use of an alternate supply source and use of reclaimed water for non-potable purposes.
