(WASHINGTON) — As the country commemorated Juneteenth, thousands of people lined up outside the National Archives in Washington on Monday to see rarely exhibited original versions of the Emancipation Proclamation and General Order No. 3.
The former is President Abraham Lincoln’s order freeing America’s slaves in 1863, amid the Civil War; the latter is from 1865 when a Union general informed Texas that slaves were now free — on the day that later became Juneteenth.
Both documents, while foundational to the United States and the end of slavery, are very fragile and normally kept in a secure climate-controlled vault with limited light exposure to ensure their preservation.
However, the National Archives intends to place the Emancipation Proclamation on permanent display, with select pages rotated to limit exposure.
“I am proud that the National Archives will enshrine this seminal document for public display adjacent to our nation’s founding documents,” the nation’s archivist, Colleen Shogan, said in a statement on Saturday announcing the planned permanent display alongside the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Visitors to the National Archives on Monday told ABC News that viewing the documents was impactful and an important way for everyone to recognize history, including the next generation. Juneteenth was designated by President Joe Biden as a federal holiday in 2021.
Ashley Witfield brought her mother and three sons to the archives.
“It’s really important to me that my children know the history of the country and that they understand that our ancestors really were an integral part to building it,” Witfield said. “One thing that my son did say is, ‘You’re going to see the paper of justice,’ and I thought that that really sums it up well. So it was really special to be able to share that with them.”
Washington resident Shawna brought her young son, John, for the first time and said she hoped Juneteenth does not become synonymous merely with a day off of work — but rather “to actually understand the purpose of it and why is it important to us.”
Another pair of visitors, Priscilla and Warren, said that Monday’s celebration was a long time coming and that the holiday needed more promotion.
“When you hear Fourth of July, you think of fireworks sales, holiday, people cooking out. Here’s June the 19th, and you have to advertise it,” Warren said.
“It should be celebrated by all, not just people of color, not just by Black people,” Priscilla said, “because otherwise, we’re going to continue to be a nation that’s fractured.”
For Virginia resident Ashley, seeing the documents up close with her husband and daughter was a transporting experience.
“It makes it less of a story and more of a real,” she said. “These are real lives and real people that were directly impacted by that signature.”
(NEW YORK) — Public health experts fear that Meta’s decision to roll back some of its COVID-19 misinformation measures will lead to more disinformation about the virus, treatments for it and vaccines.
The company announced the changes on Friday after it asked its independent oversight advisory board whether it should continue its COVID-19 misinformation policy for Facebook and Instagram or take a “less restrictive approach.”
In countries that still have a COVID-19 public health emergency declaration, the policies still stand and content that violates Meta’s coronavirus misinformation policies will be removed. The policies will not be upheld in the U.S. due to the emergency expiring last month.
Meta said the World Health Organization downgrading the global public health emergency was a major reason behind the change.
“Our COVID-19 misinformation rules will no longer be in effect globally as the global public health emergency declaration that triggered those rules has been lifted,'” the company wrote in a statement. ‘We are consulting with health experts to understand which claims and categories of misinformation could continue to pose this risk.”
Infectious disease specialists told ABC News they are worried this misinformation and disinformation could reach vulnerable groups such as teenagers.
“One of the biggest challenges we faced with the pandemic, in some ways, was not the virus itself but it was the misinformation that was generated around the science of the virus and interventions that surrounded our control of the virus, whether that’s vaccines, or masking, or therapeutics,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
He continued, “That misinformation, it’s been a threat to science for many years, and that’s been amplified by social media.”
This is not the first time that social media platforms have rolled back misinformation policies. Twitter announced it would no longer label or remove posts that have COVID-19 misinformation in November 2022, a month after Elon Musk bought the company.
Other platforms, such as YouTube, are continuing to keep their polices about COVID-19 misinformation and removing content that contradicts health authorities. Health experts say that despite COVID-19 cases and deaths remaining low, misinformation is still prevalent.
“The ramifications are huge because the pandemic is not over yet. The end of the emergency doesn’t mean that it’s still not a threat,” Dr. Peter Chin-Hong, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of California, San Francisco, told ABC News.
According to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. has seen more than 37,000 deaths from COVID-19 this year, which is more than seen in a typical flu season.
“We haven’t even reached the midpoint of the year and there’s still the potential for a winter surge,” Chin-Hong said. “So I’m worried that this fuel of misinformation, and the megaphone of misinformation, is going to threaten how we deal with not just COVID but all respiratory viruses this particular season.”
Both Brownstein and Chin-Hong recommended that people be careful about what they read online and look for trusted sources such as public health agencies.
“It’s at some level challenging because [for] someone not trained in science, it may be harder to separate fact from fiction,” Brownstein said. “But I would say, generally speaking, don’t use social media as the core information source, especially when it comes to making personal health care decisions.”
(WASHINGTON) — Despite what prosecutors claim in an unprecedented indictment against him, including an alleged recording of him saying otherwise, Donald Trump insisted on Monday that he hadn’t shown a classified document to someone else after leaving the White House.
The former president was interviewed by Fox News’ Bret Baier, who pressed Trump on one of the most notable parts of the indictment that outlines the 37 federal charges against him.
Prosecutors wrote in the indictment that on July 21, 2021, Trump allegedly showed what he called “secret information” to other people at his club in Bedminster, New Jersey, and acknowledged it was still classified and “highly confidential.”
According to the indictment, Trump allegedly said the information was “done by the military and given to me” and appeared to indicate it was related to plans for attacking a foreign country.
The alleged exchange was recorded, prosecutors wrote.
On Fox News on Monday, however, Trump pushed back when Baier cited that part of the indictment.
“It wasn’t a document, OK? I had lots of paper — I had copies of newspaper articles, I had copies of magazines,” he said.
“There was no document. That was a massive amount of papers and everything else talking about Iran and other things. And it may have been held up or may not, but that was not a document,” Trump said. “I didn’t have a document per se. There was nothing to declassify. These were newspaper stories, magazine stories and articles.”
ABC News previously reported that the recording was made during part of a book interview Trump gave and was subsequently obtained by federal prosecutors.
ABC News also reported earlier this month that Trump’s attorneys had not located the material Trump was referencing in the recording from 2021.
Trump has been indicted by federal prosecutors in Florida related to his alleged mishandling of government secrets after leaving the White House. He pleaded not guilty to the charges.
In a speech to supporters after being arraigned, he maintained that he “did everything right” and “I had every right to have these documents,” an argument which has been disputed by outside legal experts.
Elsewhere in his interview on Fox News, Trump claimed to have no more classified records and falsely cited the Presidential Records Act as giving him permission to take the government records with him when he left office.
He said he took the documents because he was rushing during his move from the White House and wanted to go through his personal items.
“So, like every other president, I take things out. And in my case, I took it out pretty much in a hurry, but people packed it up and we left and I had clothing in there. I had all sorts of personal items,” he said.
“Because I had boxes — I want to go through the boxes and get all my personal things out,” he said.
He told Baier that he was running for president again “because I want to make America great again. We had great — we were respected all over the world. Very simple.”
He also said he wouldn’t want his children to be in his administration if he is reelected. Daughter Ivanka served as a senior adviser during his first term alongside her husband, Jared Kushner.
“It’s too painful for the family,” he said.
Should he win another term, he said that he wants to be “less combative.”
“I would like to be less combative, but I find the press is extremely dishonest,” he said. “And if I’m not combative, I don’t get my word across. If I’m not combative, I don’t know. I don’t think you could win.”
During the interview, Trump criticized the Biden administration — including on the economy and foreign policy — and labeled the case against him as “weaponization” of the Department of Justice by the White House.
Special counsel Jack Smith, an independent prosecutor named last year by Attorney General Merrick Garland to oversee the DOJ investigations of Trump, has defended the indictment.
“This indictment was voted by a grand jury of citizens in the Southern District of Florida,” he said earlier this month, “and I invite everyone to read it in full to understand the scope and the gravity of the crimes charged.”
(HARRISBURG, Penn.) — In his nearly 40 years as a member of the Pennsylvania State Police, Lt. Col. George Bivens said he’s never witnessed a gunfight more intense than the one that erupted over the weekend with a suspect alleged to have ambushed and killed one trooper and critically wounded another.
“What I witnessed …. was one of the most intense, unbelievable gunfights I have ever witnessed,” Bivens said at a news conference on Sunday.
The suspect, 38-year-old Brandon Stine, was fatally shot by police in the gunbattle on Saturday in which Bivens said “hundreds of rounds” were fired.
State Police Commissioner Christopher L. Paris said Stine was armed with a high-powered .458 magnum rifle, which he said is normally used by large game hunters.
“This was as harrowing as it gets,” Paris said of the gunfight that ended with Stine’s death.
Bivens said the rifle Stine allegedly used “would defeat any body armor” the officers he confronted were wearing.
A motive for the rampage remains under investigation, and authorities declined to comment on whether state police had previous contact with Stine, who is from Thompsontown, Pennsylvania, in Juniata County.
Bivens described the initial attacks on the troopers as an “ambush” and said the suspect called 911 several times to give his location in an apparent effort to lure officers into a trap.
The violence unfolded about 11 a.m. Saturday when Stine drove his 2008 Chevrolet pickup truck into the parking lot of the state police Troop G barracks in Lewistown, Pennsylvania, got out of his vehicle and fired several shots at parked patrol cars before driving off. Surveillance cameras captured Stine firing his weapon in the parking lot and enabled police to obtain his license plate number and identify him as the registered owner and likely assailant, Paris said.
The state police immediately launched a massive search for the suspect, who was spotted at 12:45 p.m. Saturday in Mifflintown, Pennsylvania, about 13 miles northwest of Lewistown, by state police Lt. James Wagner, Paris said. Wagner was critically wounded in a confrontation with the suspect, Paris said.
He said several civilians came to the 45-year-old Wagner’s aid and used his radio to call for help.
Around 2:30 p.m. Saturday, Trooper Jacques F. Rougeau Jr., 29, a member of the state police force since 2020, was fatally shot in his patrol vehicle as he participated in the search for Stine.
Bivens alleged that Rougeau was “ambushed” by Stine as the trooper was driving in Walker Township.
He said Rougeau was fatally shot from a distance through the windshield of the patrol vehicle. He said Stine then drove into a residential area and was eventually spotted again by officers in the parking lot of a store and restaurant.
“There were people in the lot that were patronizing that business,” said Bivens, who was in a police helicopter overhead directing the pursuit.
Bivens said the troopers put themselves between the suspect and the civilians and used their patrol vehicle to force the suspect away from the businesses. He said several troopers were shot at by the suspect.
“It was such a fluid situation that our patrol car members were literally bailing out of cars while they were running,” Bivens said.
In an apparent attempt to escape, Stine drove across the yard and garden of a home and got stuck against a row of trees, Bivens said. He was fatally shot during a final gunbattle with police, Bivens said.
Paris added, “It’s a miracle that no members of the public were killed or injured as a result.”
(NEW YORK) — A submersible with five people aboard has gone missing while on a tour of the wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, according to officials.
The Coast Guard said the 21-foot submersible went underwater Sunday morning, and lost contact about 1 hour and 45 minutes later.
The Coast Guard was notified Sunday afternoon that the vessel belonging to the deep sea exploring company OceanGate was overdue, and crews immediately launched search and rescue operations, Rear Adm. John Mauger, U.S. Coast Guard 1st District commander, said at a news conference Monday.
The vessel was designed to have 96 hours of oxygen available, he said.
The search is taking place in remote waters about 13,000 feet deep, Mauger said.
“It is a challenge to conduct a search in that remote area, but we are deploying all available assets to make sure that we can locate the craft and rescue the people on board,” Mauger said.
OceanGate confirmed Monday that it lost contact with a submersible.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
OceanGate’s website says it offers paying customers the opportunity to explore the wreckage of the Titanic.
One of the passengers was Hamish Harding, who worked for the sales company Action Aviation, a colleague told ABC News.
“This is on the site of a wreckage, the wreckage of the Titanic, and so there’s a lot of debris on the bottom, and locating an object on the bottom will be difficult,” Mauger told Fox News on Monday.
“We have lives that are potentially at risk,” he said.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York. Over 2,200 passengers and crew were on board, and more than 1,500 people died when the ship sank.
The ship wreckage was found in 1985, almost 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
ABC News’ Miles Cohen, Josh Hoyos, Alex Faul and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As he prepared to leave Beijing Monday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that he had accomplished one of his most critical goals for the high-stakes trip: strengthening communication between the U.S. and China.
But whether his visit will have a lasting impact on the relationship will depend on what happens in the weeks ahead.
“I stressed that direct engagement and sustained communication and senior levels is the best way to responsibly manage our differences and ensure the competition does not veer into conflict,” Blinken said of his discussions during a news conference, capping off the first visit to China by a Cabinet official since 2019.
“And I heard the same from my Chinese counterparts,” Blinken continued. “We both agree on the need to stabilize our relationship.”
Despite this point of agreement, Blinken acknowledged that, despite raising the issue multiple times during his visit, he was not able to make significant progress on revitalizing perhaps the most important channel between countries: military-to-military communication.
“I think it’s absolutely vital that we have these kinds of communications,” Blinken said. “That imperative, I think, was only underscored by recent incidents that we saw in the air and on the seas. And at this moment, China has not agreed to move forward with that.”
The close calls Blinken alluded to include a Chinese warship coming within 150 yards of U.S. destroyer earlier this month and a Chinese fighter jet intercepting an American surveillance plane in international airspace in May.
Both incidents were decried by the Pentagon as unnecessarily dangerous, but China says the U.S. is at fault for conducting military operations in the region.
As Beijing has carried out what the State Department has described as increasingly provocative actions in the region, it has also sharply limited direct contact with the U.S. military — even shutting down a request from Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin to meet with his Chinese counterpart in May.
“It’s an escalation management risk,” said Rear Adm. (Ret.) Mark Montgomery, a senior director at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies.
“We need to have all the tools at our disposal for deescalating an accidental incident, and we are missing one of the biggest tools right now without military-to-military communications,” he continued.
The secretary’s most important engagement during his trip — a sit-down with President Xi Jinping — came together during the final hours of his visit.
Negotiations over the meeting with Xi continued well after Blinken touched down in China and was firmed up only once the Chinese government determined that the secretary’s other talks had gone well enough to merit face time with the leader, according to sources.
“It’s certainly better that it happened. It would have been quite a dampener to the relations had Xi declined to visit with Blinken,” said Montgomery.
“I’m not sure that it achieves anything of its own, but it’s a signal of Chinese cooperation that that we certainly hadn’t seen in the last six months,” he added.
Blinken predicted that additional dialogue would take place in the aftermath of his visit to Beijing.
“I would expect additional visits by US officials to China over the coming weeks, and we welcome further visits by Chinese officials to the United States,” Blinken said.
American officials likely to visit China in the coming weeks might include Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Special Presidential Envoy for Climate John Kerry. On the Chinese side, Blinken extended an invitation to Foreign Minister Qin Gang to visit Washington at a time both countries deem suitable.
Most telling of all will be if President Biden and Xi come together in the months ahead. The two last met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Bali, Indonesia, last November, and officials from both countries have speculated that they could sit down again in November in San Francisco when the U.S. hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation CEO Summit.
“I think this Xi/Blinken meeting does make a meeting with the president more likely. I’m not sure it necessarily means that there’ll be a meeting between the two leaders that has a successful outcome,” said Montgomery.
“That’s still predicating on China acting differently and us not valuing engagement for engagement’s sake,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — A submersible has gone missing while on a tour of the wreckage of the Titanic off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, according to a Coast Guard official.
The Coast Guard was notified Sunday afternoon that a vessel belonging to the deep-sea exploring company OceanGate was overdue, and crews immediately launched search and rescue operations, Rear Adm. John Mauger, U.S. Coast Guard 1st District Commander, told Fox News.
The capsule is advertised to have 96 hours of oxygen for survival, which “gives us some time to continue searching and continue to use all our means to try and locate the crew members,” Mauger said.
He noted that this is in a remote part of the Atlantic Ocean.
“This is on the site of a wreckage, the wreckage of the Titanic, and so there’s a lot of debris on the bottom and locating an object on the bottom will be difficult,” Mauger said.
“We have lives that are potentially at risk,” he said.
OceanGate confirmed Monday that it lost contact with a submersible.
“We are exploring and mobilizing all options to bring the crew back safely. Our entire focus is on the crewmembers in the submersible and their families,” OceanGate said in a statement. “We are working toward the safe return of the crewmembers.”
OceanGate’s website says it offers paying customers the opportunity to explore the wreckage of the Titanic. The website says it has five-person submersibles.
On April 14, 1912, the Titanic hit an iceberg on its maiden voyage from England to New York. Over 2,200 passengers and crew were on board, and more than 1,500 people died when the ship sank.
The ship wreckage was found in 1985, almost 12,500 feet below the surface of the Atlantic Ocean.
ABC News’ Josh Hoyos, Alex Faul and Nadine El-Bawab contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Climate change is taking a major human, economic and environmental toll in Europe, which has now been dubbed the fastest warming continent of the world, according to a new report.
Europe has been warming twice as much as the global average since the 1980s, the report, released Monday by Copernicus, the European Union’s climate change service, and the World Meteorological Organization, states.
Summer 2022 in Europe was characterized by rolling heatwaves, record-breaking temperatures and more than 100 heat-related deaths in a single event.
In 2022, Europe was approximately 2.3 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial revolution average — global temperatures between 1850 and 1900, which are used as a baseline for the Paris climate accord.
Several countries, including Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. had their warmest year on record in 2022, according to the report.
Europe’s 2022 annual average temperature was between the second and fourth highest on record, with an anomaly of about 0.79 degrees Celsius above the average between 1991 and 2020.
Summers with extreme heat will likely be “frequent and more intense across the region” in the future, Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said in a statement.
“The record-breaking heat stress that Europeans experienced in 2022 was one of the main drivers of weather-related excess deaths in Europe,” Buontempo said. “Unfortunately, this cannot be considered a one-off occurrence or an oddity of the climate.”
The pattern of extreme heat has already continued into 2023. An early season heat wave that plagued countries along the Mediterranean Sea such as Spain, Portugal, Morocco and Algeria in April was found to have been prompted by anthropologic, or human-caused, climate change, according to a study published last month.
In addition to extreme heat, the year was also marked by drought, wildfires and sea surface temperature reaching new highs, which were then accompanied by marine heatwaves, the report states.
Meteorological, hydrological and climate-related hazards in Europe in 2022 resulted in 16,365 reported fatalities (many of them due to heat stress, the No. 1 weather-related killer in the world.
Glaciers in Europe lost a volume of about 880 cubic kilometers of ice from 1997 to 2022. The Alps were the worst affected, with an average reduction in ice thickness of 34 meters, the report said.
MORE: Extreme heat taking its toll on US, European economies
In 2022, glaciers in the European Alps experienced “unprecedented” mass loss in one single year, caused by very low winter snow amounts, a very warm summer and Saharan dust deposition, the researchers said.
The report also noted a “hopeful future” for renewable energy, which generated more electricity on the continent than polluting fossil gas for the first time in 2022.
Wind and solar power generated 22.3% of European Union (EU) electricity in 2022, overtaking fossil gas at 20%, the researchers said.
Increasing use of renewables and low-carbon energy sources is crucial to reduce dependence on fossil fuels,” World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Petteri Taalas said in a statement. “Climate services play a key role in ensuring the resilience of energy systems to climate-related shocks, in planning operations, and in informing measures to increase energy efficiency.
(NEW YORK) — A tropical depression in the Atlantic could strengthen to a hurricane by the end of the week and pass the Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands.
Here’s what to expect:
The system is expected to strengthen to Tropical Storm Bret later on Monday and is forecast to become the first hurricane of the season by Thursday morning.
By Thursday night into early Friday morning, Bret is forecast to move just north of St. Lucia.
The National Hurricane Center predicts Bret will pass just south of Puerto Rico on Saturday as a Category 1 hurricane.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is predicting a near-normal hurricane season this year.
Kristi Daugherty remembers the announcement like it was yesterday.
It was March 11, 2021—one year since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic—and in those twelve months, emerging data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showed that historic rates of mental illness, overdose deaths and deaths by suicide were soaring. Amid the horrific trends, the government decided to take action.
The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline was getting a makeover.
As part of the refresh, the 10-digit phone number was simplified to a succinct 9-8-8. The lifeline also added texting services, in addition to comprehensive mental health services beyond suicide prevention.
The program was supported with $200 million in funding through the Biden administration’s American Rescue Plan.
As the chief executive officer at Emergence Health Network in El Paso — which provides behavioral health, crisis response and other services to nearly 30,000 Texans a year — Daugherty said she was excited about the developments.
But then, political pressure hit a boiling point and the launch timeline got moved up by half a year, Daugherty told ABC News. For months, EHN hustled to staff up in the face of tight budgets and tighter deadlines, she says, they didn’t see a dime of federal support trickle down from Austin. The Texas Department of Health and Human Services did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Daugherty’s claim.
She’s not alone in her frustration.
In some critical ways, 988 has bolstered an American mental healthcare system that the Department of Health and Human Services itself has called “long underfunded and under-resourced.”
Since its launch in July 2022, the new hotline fielded over 2 million calls from people in crisis — 45% more than the 10-digit hotline over the same period in the previous year, according to data from Vibrant Emotional Health, the organization appointed by the federal government to oversee the line.
Vibrant says the hotline has also answered over 1 million chats and texts. Average wait times have dropped from nearly 3 minutes to less than a minute. Additionally, 988 has rolled out variations of the line specifically devoted to the care of at-risk groups like veterans, Spanish-speakers and LGBTQI+ youth.
Outcome data on emergency responses, referrals to outpatient mental healthcare or inpatient stabilization services is not immediately available, according to Vibrant. But Tia Dole, the chief 988 officer at the organization, said the service has helped many people who may not have elsewhere to turn for help.
In 2021, one American died by suicide every 11 minutes, over 12 million considered suicide, and suicide was the second-leading cause of death in most youth or young adults, according to the CDC. Over 100,000 more Americans died from drug overdoses, per National Institute of Health data.
But almost one year after the crisis line’s rollout—and after nearly one billion dollars of federal investment—the majority of states are still struggling to ensure that their citizens’ calls get answered locally.
Unanswered calls roll over to national backup centers, but federal officials acknowledge these centers are generally less equipped to provide the local services callers may need. In April 2023 alone—the most recent month for which public data is available, according to Vibrant—states collectively missed over 11,000 calls. And in April 2023, despite stipulations to federal funding requiring answer rates above 90% by June 2022, only 15 states met that goal. Texas’ call answer rate, at 75%, ranked it amongst the worst performers.
“This thing we’re doing has never been done,” Dole told ABC News. “Is it perfect? No.”
Widespread staffing shortages
Many of these shortcomings may relate to a particularly thorny challenge: staffing.
Crisis call centers depend on behavior health workers to man the phones — a workforce that includes psychologists and psychiatrists, nurses and social workers, counselors and coaches. The number of job openings for those types of workers is expanding “much faster than the average for all occupations,” according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The market for mental health counselors, for example, is expected to outpace overall job growth by 4.5-times during the next decade.
In 2020, the country required over 1 million more behavioral health workers to meet Americans’ mental healthcare needs, according to federal data collected by the Government Accountability Office. That data also doesn’t account for the pandemic, which took a toll on the workforce, Dole told ABC News.
“I think the workforce, with regards to crisis services, has not recovered since [the pandemic],” Dole told ABC News.
The workforce shortages have meant crisis call centers across the country have struggled to staff up. According to data reviewed by ABC News from state health departments, in Rhode Island, 52% of positions were empty as of May 2023. In Wisconsin, 30% of positions were empty. According to a 988 jobs board maintained by the Substance and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), nearly every state in the country has vacancies.
For Vince Brancaccio, the labor scarcities are a daily struggle.
Brancaccio, who is the chief executive officer at Health Network of Southeast Ohio—one of the state’s 988 centers—is spending a significant part of his days now simply trying to find interested candidates. That’s instead of doing the work of crisis stabilization and mental healthcare itself, Brancaccio told ABC News.
Most of the time, his days spent hiring are riddled with frustration by way of empty Zoom rooms. More often than not, candidates “don’t show for interviews,” Brancaccio said. Or if they’re hired, he said, “they don’t show for the job the first day.” About half of the 988 chairs at his center are empty, he said.
Inflexible work requirements
Another challenge call centers are facing around staffing relates to managing remote versus in-person work.
In a post-pandemic world, remote work has become standard, according to a 2021 McKinsey report, especially for computer-based office work, like answering calls. However, many 988 centers — like Brancaccio’s — are not offering remote work: according to the SAMHSA 988 jobs page, over 70% of centers are in-person only.
Additionally, fewer than 5% of 988 centers currently use Vibrant’s new software platform — the development of which was funded in part by federal money — to answer calls, Dole told ABC News. Many are still using legacy software whose origins stretch back to the 2004 launch of the pre-988 lifeline—software that too often is ill-equipped to handle the complexities of remote work almost two decades later, Dole said.
These dynamics mean that states with already-scarce behavioral health workers are experiencing a brain drain, Joshua Thomas, the chief executive officer at the Delaware chapter of the National Alliance on Mental Illness, told ABC News. According to a December 2022 study by the Delaware Department of Health and Social Services, there is a widespread shortage of mental health resources in the state.
Thomas said that lack of flexibility around remote work—combined with “an income potential that is significantly lower than it is elsewhere”—present the risk that states like his will struggle to compete with others who are better resourced or more flexible.
In comparison, states like Massachusetts—which devoted $10 million from state coffers to 988, increasing wages and providing hybrid work options—has more than doubled its staff since the hotline’s rollout, according to Vibrant. Massachusetts’ call answer rate in April was 88% — just under SAMHSA’s 90% answer rate threshold — compared with Delaware’s 73%, according to date collected by Vibrant.
Gift-wrapping an empty box
Daugherty worries that the accelerated timing of the rollout was short-sighted: the rush to announce 988—followed by the scramble to get it operational and the struggles that have ensued—may have undercut trust in the line over the longer-term.
At the time of the hotline’s launch, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra said that “988 is more than a number, it is a message: we’re there for you.” Eleven months later, amid centers’ struggles to staff up, Daugherty compares those promises to gift-wrapping an empty box.
Monica Johnson, SAMHSA’s 988 director, acknowledged the hotline’s growing pains so far. But Johnson also pointed towards the progress of the hotline to date—over 3 million contacts answered, shrinking wait times, almost $1 billion invested—as signs that things are moving in the right direction.
“I think about, okay, what month are we in into this first year—[and] did we demonstrate that we have the capacity to answer the calls?” Johnson told ABC News. “The answer to that, so far, has proven to be yes.”
Still, for people like Molly Jacobson, those growing pains are a matter of life and death.
Jacobson, a Florida native, said she called the line in October 2022 on behalf of a loved one in crisis. A relative had attempted suicide before, and she worried, might do so again. However, when she dialed 988, she says she was immediately put on hold.
When she finally spoke with someone, after a series of triage questions, the operator sounded resigned, she said. “‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what I can offer,'” Jacobson recalls him telling her.
Jacobson said she didn’t know where else to turn.
She said, “For something that’s funded by hundreds of millions of dollars…where’s all that going?”
Jacobson’s experience highlights some of the challenges the state has had so far: in April, Florida received over 10,000 calls, of which it answered only 73%–putting it amongst the worst performing states. Florida’s Department of Children and Families, which oversees the management of the 988 hotlines in the state, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on Jacobson’s case.
Jacobson says her loved one ended up fine despite the negative experience with the line. But she worries about what might happen next time—or, to someone else in a similar situation.
“When any of us are in our darkest hour,” Jacobson said, “what we need is to be heard.”
Despite some of the staffing challenges, if you or a loved one is struggling with a mental health crisis or considering suicide call or text 988.
ABC News is looking into challenges and successes with implementation of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. If you have had issues or successes with the line, please contact us here.
Michal Ruprecht, a member of the ABC News Medical Unit, contributed reporting.
