(LOS ANGELES) — A fire burning out of control in a Northern California national forest and threatening a town of nearly 8,000 people has quickly become the largest wildfire in the state this year, officials said.
The McKinney Fire in the Klamath National Forest in Siskiyou County, near the Oregon border, had burned 57,519 acres and was 10% contained as of Wednesday night, according to Cal Fire.
Rain in the area on Tuesday presented firefighters with opportunities to properly combat the fire, officials said. However, the fire is expected to grow in the next few days due to drier and hotter weather. The forecast was for temperatures to reach 96 on Wednesday.
Red flag warnings were in effect as well.
The blaze grew by nearly 3,000 acres overnight on Monday as gusty winds helped fan its spread through a drought-dry tinderbox of high grass, brush and timber, according to Cal Fire.
Two people were found dead in their car in a driveway in the town of Klamath River, Siskiyou County Sheriff Jeremiah LaRue told ABC News. Firefighters said they suspected that the two were caught in the fast-moving fire as they tried to flee, according to the sheriff. More rescue teams were expected to search the area on Monday.
The fire started around 2:15 p.m. Friday and has caused the closure of Highway 96 in the area and the evacuation of several communities, including the partial evacuation of Yreka, California, officials said.
There was concern that lightning storms over the fire area could have sparked additional fires, officials said. But that same storm system also carried a significant amount of moisture, slowing the fire’s spread significantly over the past 24 hours, the sheriff said on Monday.
“We’re feeling pretty good” about protecting Yreka, whose western fringes were threatened by the fire, he told ABC News.
The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office told ABC News Sunday afternoon that more than 100 structures have been destroyed, including the homes of several deputies who are continuing to work despite personally being under evacuation orders.
Many of the lost structures are along the Klamath River, which runs parallel to Highway 96, according to a spokesperson for the sheriff’s office. The Klamath River Community Hall in Klamath River was also among the structures destroyed, officials said.
The Jackson County Sheriff’s Office said search crews rescued about 60 hikers from a section of the Pacific Crest Trail, a popular backpacking trail that runs from Canada to Mexico.
Sgt. Shawn Richards of Jackson County Search and Rescue told reporters the hikers were not in immediate danger. He said that because of the rapidly spreading fire, unpredictable winds and smoke reducing visibility to roughly 20 feet, the decision was made to rescue the hikers before conditions worsened.
More than 1,300 firefighters are battling the blaze on the ground and from the air with 10 helicopters and 16 air tankers, Cal Fire said Monday.
“Really erratic winds from the start of the incident all the way up until now,” Kelsey Lofdah, a firefighter for the U.S. Forest Service, told San Francisco ABC station KGO of challenging firefighting conditions. “Pretty extreme fire behavior throughout the entire shift.”
The Yreka Police Department issued evacuation orders for a neighborhood in the western part of the town “due to its proximity to the fire” about 12 miles away.
“Please leave IMMEDIATELY,” the police department wrote in the evacuation order.
The police department also issued evacuation warnings to residents in all areas of the community west of Interstate 5.
The cause of the fire is under investigation and emergency management officials are assessing the damage.
Californian Gov. Gavin Newsom proclaimed a state of emergency on Saturday for Siskiyou County due to the effects of the McKinney Fire. A state of emergency frees up more state resources to be used in battling the blaze, including dispatching more firefighters and equipment to the scene.
The McKinney Fire surpassed the Oak Fire in Mariposa County near Yosemite as the largest wildfire in the state this year, according to Cal Fire. The Oak Fire, which started on July 22, was 72% contained on Monday after burning 19,244 acres and destroying 182 structures, including more than 100 homes, officials said.
(ARLINGTON, Texas) — A 16-year-old boy is speaking out after he was held at gunpoint and detained by police in what authorities said appears to have been a misunderstanding.
The incident occurred Monday afternoon at an apartment complex in Arlington, Texas, located between Dallas and Fort Worth.
Arlington police say they responded to a report of an armed man standing outside the door of one of the apartments.
A 911 caller told the dispatcher that he looked through his door’s peephole and saw a “male at his door wearing a hoodie and holding a firearm that was partially covered by a towel,” the Arlington Police Department said in a statement.
“The 911 caller advised that he’d been receiving threats from a person over social media, and the 911 caller believed the person at his door with a firearm was the same person who was making the threat,” the department said.
Apartment complex resident Rykeem Johnson, 16, says he was returning home from the pool that afternoon and was on the third floor of the building when two officers responded to the call. He matched the description of the suspect, wearing a hoodie and holding a towel, police said.
“They told me to put some weapon down. I didn’t know what they were talking about at first,” Johnson told ABC Dallas affiliate WFAA.
The teen said he froze, as officers pointed their firearms up at him from their position on the ground.
“I was very terrified. I was so terrified, I couldn’t move my body,” he told the station.
When the teen didn’t respond to verbal commands to drop the towel and show his hands, the officers called for backup and the police department’s tactical unit responded to the scene, police said.
“He goes gets his rifle and he’s pointing it directly at me, I get more scared,” Johnson recounted to WFAA. “My body starts to shake, I can’t move. My body feels stiff. In my mind, I was like, what should I do?”
The SWAT team was ultimately able to get the teen to show his hands and come down the stairs, and officers detained him, handcuffing him and placing him in a patrol car, police said.
Officers determined the teen was unarmed and was not the person making social media threats to the 911 caller and he was not arrested, police said.
“The only thing they said to me was ‘sorry for the misunderstanding. We apologize.’ That wasn’t enough for me,” Johnson told WFAA. “They had me at gunpoint, scared for my life.”
The teen was released to his older brother and guardian, Relius Johnson, who had rushed home from work after he received a call from an officer advising residents to shelter in place.
Relius Johnson told ABC News he didn’t realize at first that his brother was the one being detained by police. He said he spoke to his brother after getting the shelter-in-place call, and that he sounded “panicked.” When he got ahold of him again on the phone, his brother “started screaming, ‘Save me, they’re trying to shoot me,'” Relius Johnson said.
Relius Johnson said he told several officers at the scene that they had the wrong person. Eventually he was able to get a detective to connect with the SWAT commander, he said.
“That’s when he got on my phone with my little brother and got him to come down the stairs,” he said.
The incident lasted nearly three hours, police said.
Relius Johnson believes the situation could have been over a lot sooner if they had listened to him and his brother, whom he said officers kept calling by a different name.
“He was trying to tell them, try to talk to them,” Relius Johnson said. “If they would have listened from the very beginning, that would have been a whole different situation, as well as if they would have listened to me, for about 30, 40 minutes, when I’m trying to tell them that’s my little brother.”
“If I wouldn’t have gotten that call, or if I wouldn’t have been there, I think it would have been a totally different outcome,” he said. “I would be burying my brother instead of him being here.”
Arlington Police Department spokesperson Tim Ciesco told ABC News police are investigating whether the 911 caller mistook the teen for the person threatening him online.
“We don’t have any evidence to show that anybody that was trying to harm him was actually there,” Ciesco said.
Throughout the response, police also determined there were “consistency issues” with the original 911 caller and “slowed down its actions so that we could be sure that we were proceeding appropriately given the circumstances,” the department said. Ciesco could not elaborate on the consistency concerns due to the ongoing investigation.
Members of the police department’s command staff have been in direct contact with the family following the incident, Ciesco said.
Relius Johnson said he reached out to the chief and deputy chief to understand “how did this get to where it did.” They arranged a call on Wednesday and a sit-down meeting next week during which he hopes to get some questions about the incident answered, including why his brother was considered a suspect.
(ATLANTA) — Pregnant people in Georgia will now be able to count their fetus as a dependent on their tax return and file for child support, according to state law.
The state’s Department of Revenue announced this week it will recognize “any unborn child with a detectable human heartbeat” as “eligible for the Georgia individual income tax dependent exemption,” which totals $3,000.
The new tax guidance from state officials comes just two weeks after a federal appeals court ruled Georgia’s so-called “heartbeat law,” titled the Living Infants Fairness and Equality (LIFE) Act, could take effect immediately following the Supreme Court’s decision in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, giving power back to states to decide abortion access.
The law was previously declared unconstitutional by a federal judge in July 2020, and barred from taking effect.
Under the legislation — which Gov. Brian Kemp originally signed into law in 2019 — abortions in the state are banned after a fetal heartbeat can be detected, which can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. There are exceptions for medical emergencies, “medically futile” pregnancies and rape and incest, if a police report has been filed.
The law has other implications, including for taxes, because it also redefines “natural person” under Georgia law to mean “any human being including an unborn child” — including an embryo or fetus at any stage of development.
Under that definition, a pregnant person may also request child support, amounting to the “direct medical and pregnancy related expenses of the mother.”
“I think what legislators tried to do is to say on the one hand, we’re going to ban abortions at about six weeks. But on the other side of the equation, we’re going to attempt to counter arguments that the state isn’t doing enough to support women who are going to be forced to carry pregnancies to term that otherwise would have elected to have an abortion,” Anthony Michael Kreis, J.D, Ph.D., assistant professor of law at Georgia State University College of Law, told ABC News.
Georgia is now one of around a dozen states in the U.S. that include fetal personhood language in legislation restricting or banning abortion, according to National Advocates for Pregnant Women (NAPW), a nonprofit organization that supports abortion rights.
The issue recently made headlines when a pregnant woman in Texas, Brandy Bottone, said she planned to protest a ticket she received while driving in a local highway’s high occupancy vehicle (HOV) lane, which requires two people to be in the car. Bottone, who was 34 weeks pregnant at the time, told ABC News she counted herself and her unborn baby as two passengers but was issued a $275 ticket for being a single occupant in an HOV lane.
In Texas, a law set to go into effect this summer, following the Supreme Court’s decision, defines life as beginning at fertilization. The state’s transportation code does not specify an unborn child as a person.
Kreis said similar scenarios and legal challenges are bound to happen in Georgia under the new abortion law.
“They opened up a whole can of worms by changing the definition section of state law,” Kreis said of lawmakers. “And so we’re really just in a in this kind of quagmire that will take some time for us to get through.”
Kreis cited an example: If a person were to have one or more miscarriages, and had claimed their fetus or fetuses as dependents on their taxes, would that trigger an investigation beyond a tax audit? There could be potential privacy concerns if state agencies request medical records.
“It’s going to take prosecutors and law enforcement and litigation and appellate court decisions and attorney general opinions to all sort this out,” said Kreis. “And that that’s the kind of thing that will play out over months and years and not necessarily over days or weeks.”
(WASHINGTON) — Travelers could soon have more rights if their flight is canceled or delayed, as the Department of Transportation looks to “strengthen” protections for consumers seeking refunds.
The agency proposed a rule Wednesday that, if enacted, would define the terms of a “significant” change and cancellation for the first time.
Currently, passengers are entitled to refunds if an airline has “made a significant schedule change and/or significantly delays a flight and the consumer chooses not to travel” — though the DOT has not yet defined what “significant” means.
Under the rule, the department would outline significant changes as:
Changes that affect the departure and/or arrival times by three hours or more for a domestic flight or six hours or more for an international flight
Changes to the departure or arrival airport
Changes that increase the number of connections in the itinerary; and
Changes to the type of aircraft flown if it causes a significant downgrade in the air travel experience or amenities available onboard the flight.
The move comes amid increased complaints against airlines — the majority of which concern refunds and flight service, according to data from the agency.
“I think the DOT has heard that passengers are fed up with some of the sleight of hand that airlines are pulling and some of the actions that are not consumer-friendly,” Henry Harteveldt, travel industry analyst at Atmosphere Research Group, said in an interview with ABC News.
In addition, the rule would “codify the department’s longstanding interpretation that a failure to provide refunds when a carrier cancels or significantly changes a flight to, from or within the United States is an unfair practice,” the DOT said.
“The problem, I think, up until now has been that you as an individual traveler don’t necessarily know what is a significant delay on Delta, versus American, versus Southwest, versus Spirit is — It could be significantly different on each airline,” Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights, told ABC News. “And those airlines don’t even necessarily mention explicitly what they consider to be a significant delay.”
Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, U.S. airlines have issued $21 billion in cash refunds, according to Airlines for America (A4A), the group that lobbies on behalf of all major U.S. airlines. Cash refunds accounted for 8% of passenger revenues in 2021 and 22.3% of passenger revenues in 2020, versus 4.3% in 2019, A4A said.
The public will have 90 days to comment on the proposed rule. Once that period ends, the DOT will review and analyze the comments, and then decide whether to proceed with a final rule as proposed or with modifications, issue a new or modified proposal, or withdraw the proposal altogether.
(ROCKVILLE, M.D.) — An Amtrak train departing from Washington, D.C., collided with a semi-truck in Maryland Wednesday evening, officials said.
The incident occurred around 5:20 p.m. in Rockville, Maryland, when the vehicle “obstructed the track” and “came into contact with the train,” Amtrak said in a statement.
None of the 142 passengers and crew aboard Amtrak Capitol Limited train 29 were injured, Amtrak said. The train was en route to Chicago.
Amtrak said it’s working with local law enforcement to investigate the incident.
The railroad service has had other high-profile, sometimes fatal, incidents, in the last year.
In June, an Amtrak train crashed into a dump truck in Mendon, Missouri, killing four people and injuring 150.
Also, in June, another train, this time in Brentwood, California, slammed into a car, killing three people and seriously injuring two others, including a child.
An Amtrak train derailed in northern Montana, killing three people and injuring dozens of people in September 2021. Multiple passengers filed federal lawsuits against Amtrak and the operator of the railroad tracks for negligence.
ABC News’ Amanda Maile, Bill Hutchinson, Mark Osborne, Melissa Gaffney, Teddy Grant, Emily Shapiro and Ivan Pereira contributed to this report.
Lev Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images, FILE
(WASHINGTON) — Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand on Wednesday called on the Biden administration to invoke the Defense Production Act to help increase supply and access to monkeypox vaccines, which lag far behind demand as the virus continues to spread nationwide.
“Right now there are enough vaccines in the United States to cover one-third of the community generally currently most at risk,” Gillibrand said during a press conference. The senator’s own state of New York is the hardest hit in the country and has declared a disaster emergency.
Gillibrand’s calls for DPA action come after The Washington Post recently reported that the U.S. won’t be receiving any more doses of the monkeypox vaccine Jynneos until October.
When pressed on specifics of what the DPA could do to increase supply quickly, Gillibrand pointed to prioritizing government orders of monkeypox vaccines ahead of other orders.
“We know exactly which manufacturers already manufacture those vaccines, and so we can enter a contract with them immediately,” she said.
If the White House does invoke the DPA, Gillibrand hopes it will be weeks instead of months for the U.S. to ramp up supply.
“Once you start manufacturing a dose, you have doses coming off the line immediately. So I would think it’s weeks, not months,” she said.
It remains to be seen if the White House will act. Gillibrand said she hasn’t heard back on a letter she sent to the White House earlier Wednesday.
“I haven’t verbally spoken to anybody, but I did send a letter asking for them to use it right away,” she said.
New York Gov. Kathy Hochul has also pressed the White House for more vaccines for New York, saying during a press conference Wednesday morning that she has asked for New York to leapfrog other states for orders because they have the highest number of cases and are running short.
The Department of Health and Human Services has yet to declare a public health emergency that would free up federal resources to address the outbreak.
President Joe Biden named FEMA’s Robert Fenton as White House national monkeypox response coordinator on Tuesday to address the ongoing outbreak.
(WASHINGTON) — While ABC News and others haven’t made projections in her still too-close-to-call contest, former TV reporter Kari Lake, Donald Trump’s pick in Arizona’s GOP gubernatorial primary, went ahead and claimed victory in Phoenix on Wednesday as other state candidates backed by the former president also celebrated wins down the ballot.
Lake — echoing Trump — described herself as triumphing over unsubstantiated wrongdoing that was sometimes based only on what she said she was told by others.
“We outvoted the fraud,” she insisted. “The MAGA movement voted like their lives depended on it.”
Asked whether she should be declaring victory before the race has been officially called — in an election she’s already suggested needs to be investigated — a smiling Lake said her team was projecting a wide lead to come, so she was confident in calling the race for herself.
“And, frankly, I’m gonna be having dinner with my husband tonight, and I don’t want anybody to call me and ask me for a comment,” said Lake, a longtime local news anchor in Phoenix who left her job in 2021 to run for office. “So we’re doing this a little bit early because I actually want to take one night off. I haven’t had a night off for a long time.”
But while eager to claim and celebrate her victory, despite votes still coming in, Lake also continued to allege irregularities in the primary process — citing the shortage of paper ballots in Pinal County, which officials there said was due to an “unprecedented demand for in-person ballots” in certain precincts.
“I am not satisfied with how the election was run. We had major issues,” Lake said, not providing evidence to the press but maintaining that’s what the people of Arizona were telling her. “We have a lot of evidence of irregularities and problems, and we’re going to address those.”
Lake also said that in the lead-up to the general election in November, she would continue talking about the widely disproven claim that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
“Because I won doesn’t mean I’m going to now pivot and try to become a Democrat. Absolutely not,” she said — though, notably, she has acknowledged on the campaign trail that she did support Democratic causes in the past before converting to Trump’s GOP. “We will continue to talk about the election because we want to make sure we shore up those election laws.”
In what might be a messy preview of the general election against Democratic nominee Katie Hobbs if Lake is, in fact, ultimately found to have won the Republican nomination — when asked what her reaction would be if the Associated Press called the race for her opponent Karrin Taylor Robson and Taylor Robson declared victory, Lake made clear she intended to try and grab the win based on her belief about the outcome.
“Well, let’s remember they called the election for Joe Biden, so we know that AP is part of the problem. We’re going with the votes, and we’re going with what the people who really understand what’s happening this election now,” she said.
Taylor Robson, endorsed by Trump’s former Vice President Mike Pence, told ABC News at a rally on the eve of the primary that Lake already priming her supporters with the false idea that any loss was due to fraud was “wrong” and “should disqualify her from being the governor of this great state.”
At a watch party Tuesday night, Lake took to the stage at a Doubletree in Scottsdale three times as votes trickled in — at one point wielding a sledgehammer she said was intended for electronic voting machines and the Democratic nominee for governor — to tell hundreds of supporters that she won.
“There is no path to victory for my opponent, and we won this race. Period,” she said at her first appearance, when vote totals had Taylor Robson in the lead. “I don’t want any of you not to believe that.”
“And I want to thank President Donald J. Trump,” she added to the energized crowd decked out in Lake gear and “not my president” shirts. “He’s the one that got this whole thing going.”
Taylor Robson, for her part, had projected confidence in brief remarks on Tuesday from the Astoria Biltmore luxury resort, as the first batches of results put her ahead in the race. Widely seen as the establishment candidate — and echoing general GOP concerns about election integrity — Taylor Robson also outspent Lake.
It was a subdued atmosphere for much of the night but turned energetic when Taylor Robson approached the stage and spoke — with loud boos at the mention of Lake’s accusations of voter fraud
“Don’t let her get you down. Remember, talk is cheap,” Taylor Robson said. “She has no veto process over the votes being carried out in the process being carried out now, nor over the will of Arizona voters.”
Arizona sees MAGA primary sweep
Down the ballot, Trump’s other endorsees rose to victory in Arizona in Tuesday’s primaries, signaling the state Republican Party might be moving on from its maverick tradition to its “ultra-MAGA” era.
Not long ago, the late John McCain and the retired Jeff Flake were the state’s two Republican senators. But with those seats flipping blue under Trump and Joe Biden’s subsequent presidential win — the first by a Democrat in Arizona in almost three decades — Trump’s candidates winning in congressional and statewide races serves as a measure of how the party has shifted ahead of a true bellwether for the country in the November midterms.
Brian Seitchik, a GOP strategist in Arizona, said the primary proved to be a “complete and total victory for Trump” with his base.
“The president’s always had a love affair with Arizona, and that was simply reaffirmed again last night,” Seitchik told ABC News Wednesday. “This is still very much Trump country.”
In the Senate race, Blake Masters, a 35-year-old venture capitalist who pushed false claims about the 2020 election during his primary campaign and got Trump’s endorsement in the crowded race in June, will face Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, a former astronaut and Navy captain, in November. At a rally with Trump in July, Masters attacked Kelly for his Democratic record and said he would try to impeach Biden, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
For Arizona’s secretary of state, Trump backed Mark Finchem, a far-right state lawmaker who has previously identified as an Oath Keeper, a militia group with other members who have faced charges for alleged involvement in the U.S. Capitol attack on Jan. 6. Finchem was in Washington on Jan. 6, though he has repeatedly said he did not enter the Capitol, and was among 30 GOP lawmakers in Arizona who signed a resolution calling on Congress to accept an “alternate” slate of electoral votes.
Finchem beat out Gov. Doug Ducey’s pick, advertising executive Beau Lane, who has acknowledged Biden’s victory and defended Arizona’s early voting system, a popular method in the state that the state Republican Party, post-2020, contends is unconstitutional.
If elected secretary of state in November, Finchem would have broad powers over the management of the state’s elections. He has said he would not have certified Biden’s win and wants to ban early voting and restrict mail-in ballot options.
Abe Hamadeh, a former prosecutor in Maricopa County and an Army intelligence officer, won the state attorney general nomination by pitching himself as an “Arizona first conservative,” earning Trump’s coveted endorsement in June after supporting the GOP-backed audit of the vote in Maricopa, which the current Republican attorney general said this week had allegations of dead voters his office could not substantiate.
Like most of Trump’s picks, Hamadeh has called election integrity and border security his top campaign issues.
“MAGA had its best night since Nov. 8, 2016,” Arizona Republican strategist Barrett Marson, who supported Taylor Robson, told ABC News.
“There’s no doubt the Trump endorsement was worth a significant boost to those campaigns,” Marson said. “If Donald Trump anointed you in Arizona, there was a really good chance you’re moving onto November.”
Trump even waded into the state legislature, somewhat rare for a former president, targeting House Speaker Rusty Bowers, who testified at a House Jan. 6 hearing on the pressure he faced to interfere with the 2020 election. Bowers lost his state Senate race to Trump-endorsed David Farnsworth, a former member of the Arizona State Senate who has alleged that the 2020 election was stolen and “headed by the Devil himself.”
While the candidates are celebrating their wins, some Arizona Republicans say they are concerned Trump’s influence will make it harder for the GOP nominees to beat Democrats in November.
“As far as Kari Lake goes, I loved Trump’s policies, but I’m afraid that there’s a lot of people that are going to vote against her just because Trump is supporting her,” Arizonan Anastasia Keller, who was undecided until she entered the voting booth Tuesday, told ABC News. “I want somebody that can beat the Democrats, as divided as people are over Trump.”
As Marson, the pro-Taylor Robson strategist, put it: “It’ll be up to them [the Trump candidates] to moderate, or to at least start to appeal to the broader audience. I just don’t get telling your voters that there’s fraud in the election that you want and then expect them to continue to come out and vote for you.”
“Because Lake, Finchem, Master and Hamadeh are attacking so far to the right with election denialism, they’re opening up the races to be more competitive,” Marson said, arguing Taylor Robson and other candidates would have had more appeal to moderates and independents who lean Republican in a general election.
Pinal County presents issues
In a significant move on a primary day, Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel joined Republican Party of Arizona Chairwoman Kelli Ward in calling for Pinal County Elections Director David Frisk to resign after the county ran out of paper ballots hours before polls closed. The issue arose weeks after thousands of mail-in ballots were sent out with incorrect local races printed on them in the state’s third largest county, which Republican candidates blasted on social media ahead of the election.
“This is a comprehensive failure that disenfranchises Arizonans and exemplifies why Republican-led efforts for transparency at the ballot box are so important. Pinal County Elections Director David Frisk should resign immediately,” McDaniel and Ward’s joint statement read. (ABC News has reached out to Frisk’s office for comment.)
Pinal county election officials said the ballot shortage was due to an “unprecedented demand for in-person ballots” in certain precincts. Additional ballots were distributed to roughly 20 affected polling places, officials said, and as long as voters were in line at 7 p.m. local time Tuesday, they were allowed to cast a ballot.
Still, Seitchik, the consultant in Republican races, said, “It shakes confidence in the system.”
“I don’t think it’s going to have any impact on the statewide races. It doesn’t seem like any of these races are so close that you can point to that, but it does matter — and it fuels the frustration and the suspicion as we head into the general election,” he said.
Meanwhile Hobbs, the Democratic nominee for governor, is currently serving as Arizona’s secretary of state, which raises questions of whether she would recuse herself from any potential litigation brought by Republicans in Pinal County.
“In the event of an investigation or litigation into Pinal County’s election, we will assess our office’s involvement on a case-by-case basis,” said Sophia Solis, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office.
Georgia presented a similar situation in 2018.
Brian Kemp also ran for governor while he was secretary of state at the time and said ahead of his contest with Democrat Stacey Abrams that he would not recuse himself as Georgia’s chief elections officer if the race went to a recount.
Ultimately, Kemp declared victory and resigned from his post in November after a lawsuit was filed in the race.
“We’ve won, and now I’ve got to move on, but the process is true and has been for many, many years in Georgia,” Kemp said at the time. “That’s another reason we’re going to have a new SOS that certifies elections to make that clear to Georgians that I understand that, so that they have confidence in the process.”
ABC News’ Will McDuffie contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Senate approved a resolution Wednesday evening to support Finland and Sweden in joining NATO — a crucial step in the quest of the two countries to join the 30-member alliance.
The Senate voted 95-1, with Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley voting no and Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., voting “present.”
The vote comes several weeks after the Senate Foreign Relations Committee approved admitting Finland and Sweden into NATO. Lawmakers were working to approve the matter before their August break.
Finland and Sweden announced their decision to formally join NATO within days of each other in May, ending long-held positions of neutrality in the wake of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. They simultaneously submitted their applications on May 18.
All 30 NATO members must ratify the accession of the two countries. Seven countries remain.
During Wednesday’s vote, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., took a veiled swipe at Paul and Hawley in a floor speech, saying, “Their accession will make NATO stronger and America more secure. If any senator is looking for a defensible excuse to vote no, I wish them good luck.”
Hawley aligned himself with former President Donald Trump, saying the U.S. could devote more funds and firepower to NATO “or do what we need to do to deter Asia and China. We cannot do both.”
Paul has always worked to keep the U.S. out of foreign conflicts. He offered an amendment that most rejected seeking to ensure that Congress’ role in authorizing military force would not be usurped by the NATO pact’s common defense commitment, known as Article 5.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., applauded the Senate’s vote, saying on Twitter that it is “all the more urgent given [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s barbaric, immoral and unjustified war in Ukraine.”
President Joe Biden thanked a number of senators, including Schumer and McConnell, for moving the ratification process along quickly.
“This historic vote sends an important signal of the sustained, bipartisan U.S. commitment to NATO, and to ensuring our Alliance is prepared to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow,” the president said in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — A bill designed to help keep young children safe by strengthening safety requirements for products with button batteries has passed both the U.S. House and Senate, and is now headed to the desk of President Joe Biden.
The legislation, known as Reese’s Law, is named for Reese Hamsmith, an 18-month-old Lubbock, Texas, girl who died after swallowing a button battery, the small, round batteries found in many home devices and toys.
After her death, Reese’s mom Trista Hamsmith made it her mission to ensure no other parent had to suffer the pain and loss her family did.
“Reese’s life was taken way too soon, but her legacy will live on through this law so that no other family will have to suffer like ours,” Hamsmith said in a statement after the bill was passed by the Senate. “We are thankful for the passage of this legislation to help protect all children and families from the hidden dangers of button batteries.”
Reese was 16 months old in October 2020 when she developed cold-like symptoms, including a stuffy nose, Hamsmith told “Good Morning America” last year.
Hamsmith said and her husband took their daughter to see a pediatrician, who she said suspected Reese had croup, an infection of the upper airways, and prescribed steroids.
Shortly after, the family discovered a button battery was missing from a remote control in their home. After looking online and discovering that symptoms of button battery ingestion — including coughing, wheezing and chest discomfort — matched those of Reese, Hamsmith said she and her husband rushed Reese to the emergency room.
An X-ray confirmed that a battery was lodged near the top of Reese’s esophagus.
After spending six weeks hospitalized and undergoing various surgeries and attempts to try to save her life, Reese died on Dec. 17, 2020, according to Hamsmith.
Hamsmith calls button batteries a “hidden danger” because they are used in many items, including remotes, hearing aids, thermometers, tealight candles, battery-powered jewelry, greeting cards, key fobs, kids’ toys and even toothbrushes.
After Reese died, Hamsmith created a nonprofit organization, Reese’s Purpose, to educate parents about button battery safety and to try to create change around how button batteries are protected in packaging and in the items in which they are found.
“It literally takes one second [for button battery ingestion to happen],” she told “GMA” last year. “You can set your kid down, turn around and pick up a piece of laundry, and it’s happened.”
Under Reese’s Law, the Consumer Product Safety Commission would be required to create safety standards, such as requiring companies to use product warning labels, childproof packaging and adhere to performance standards to ensure that children under the age of 6 cannot access button batteries, according to the office of Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal, a Democrat and a lead sponsor of the legislation.
“Kids like Reese Hamsmith have tragically died or been severely injured after swallowing this small but deadly hazard found in common household items,” Blumenthal and Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn, a Republican and lead sponsor of the bill, said in a joint statement. “We are relieved this common-sense legislation has passed Congress and is on its way to President Biden’s desk to become law so families can have greater peace of mind about the safety of products in their home.”
More than 3,500 people swallow button batteries each year in the U.S., according to the National Capital Poison Center.
Dr. Kris Jatana, a professor in the department of otolaryngology at Wexner Medical Center at The Ohio State University and Nationwide Children’s Hospital, said his research shows the actual number of button battery ingestions each year is actually much larger because the incidents are vastly underreported.
In the first year of the coronavirus pandemic, there was a 93% increase in emergency department visits for battery-related complaints in school-age children, according to research by Jatana, who helped create the GIRC App, a global database by the Global Injury Research Collaborative for medical professionals to track the severity of injuries, including from button batteries.
“I do think there is a lack of awareness among parents that these are severe hazards,” he told “GMA” last year. “We can’t fix the injuries that these batteries cause, so that’s what’s led us to [ask], ‘How can we prevent these injuries in the first place?'”
Here are three tips from Jatana and Hamsmith to both prevent and treat button battery ingestion injuries.
1. Keep an inventory of button batteries in your home: Because the symptoms of button battery ingestion can mimic the symptoms of other illnesses in kids, as was the case with Reese, both Hamsmith and Jatana say the most important thing for parents and caregivers is to always be aware of and know about the presence of all the button batteries in their home.
Hamsmith’s advice to caregivers is to keep products that contain button batteries not just out of reach but also out of sight of children, especially those ages 6 and under, who are most at risk for swallowing a foreign object.
Jatana said to not only know where the button batteries are in your home, but to also to regularly check all electronic devices to make sure the battery compartment is secured.
2. Know the symptoms: Symptoms of swallowing a button battery may include fever, not wanting to eat or drink, irritability, wheezing, difficulty breathing, coughing, throat pain, choking, gagging, problems swallowing and vomiting, according to a button battery resource website created by Jatana and Nationwide Children’s Hospital.
Children may also put a button battery in their nose or ear, which can present dangers. Symptoms to look for include irritability, pain or swelling around the ears or nose, fever and fluid drainage or bleeding from the ears or nose, according to Jatana.
Children who ingest button batteries may also present no symptoms at all, which is why parents and caregivers should know the whereabouts of button batteries in their home at all times, Jatana added.
3. Act quickly: Serious esophageal injury can occur within two hours of a child ingesting a button battery, before symptoms even start, according to Jatana.
“The clock is ticking from the moment the battery is lodged in the esophagus,” he said.
If a child ingests a button battery, immediately call for help, either through 911 or the National Battery Ingestion Hotline at 800-498-8666, which is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Parents and caregivers may also use honey to treat the child while waiting for medical help. Experts from the National Capital Poison Center recommend giving 10 milliliters of honey every 10 minutes to children 12 months and older.
Jatana stressed not to delay going to the emergency room and said seeking professional medical help should be the top priority.
(REYKJAVIK, Iceland) — An Icelandic volcano has come back to life after a series of nearby earthquakes rumbled it awake, the Icelandic Met Office reported Wednesday.
On Wednesday morning a 4.6 earthquake was recorded on the eastern side of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, prompting further concerns of volcanic action. An hour later, it began erupting.
According to IMO, a volcanic fissure eruption about 100 to 200 meters long left new magma over a field of lava established by eruptions in the area last year.
The IMO has urged people not to go near the volcano, which is about 20 miles south of the country’s capital, Reykjavik, and its nearby Keflavík Airport. According to its statement, the volcanic gas in the area can be hazardous.
However, the IMO said that it does not believe the eruption will cancel any flights or move into the city.
The IMO has recorded over 3,000 earthquakes in the last week. The most intense was a 5.4 earthquake recorded on July 31 northeast of Grindavík.
Last year, a six-month eruption from Fagradalsfjall broke an 80- year dormancy of volcanic eruptions in the area.
Tourists flocked to the site from March to September 2021 to see the lava bubble and belch. Now, almost a year later, the same volcano is active.
IMO said it saw the signs that brought last year’s eruption revive.
“There are indications that the deformation and seismicity is declining and this was precursory to the eruption which started on 19th March 2021,” the IMO said in a statement on Tuesday. “Considering all of the above, the likelihood of an eruption at Fagradalsfjall within the coming days is considered to be substantial.”
A day later, the office has confirmed the reawakening of the visual phenomenon.
