(NEW YORK) — From oat lattes to plant-based protein drinks, a new recall has had a sweeping impact on more than 50 nutrition drink products distributed across the country.
Lyons Magnus LLC has voluntarily recalled 53 of its nutritional and beverage products due to the potential for microbial contamination, including from the organism Cronobacter sakazakii, according to a recent company announcement.
Impacted brands included popular items like the plant-based Oatly Barista Edition oat milk, Premier Protein drinks, prepackaged Stumptown coffee cartons and more.
The company announced the recall — which was also posted on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration website — on July 28.
It confirmed that “the list of recalled products does not include products intended for infants (i.e. under the age of one).”
According to the recall announcement, the preliminary root cause analysis showed that the products were not up to “commercial sterility specifications.”
“Anyone who has a recalled product in his or her possession should dispose of it immediately or return it to the place of purchase for a refund,” the company wrote. “Consumers in all time zones with questions may contact the Lyons Recall Support Center 24/7 at 1-800-627-0557, or visit its website at www.lyonsmagnus.com.”
According to the company, the recall was “conducted in cooperation with” the FDA.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states that Cronobacter infection is rare but can cause “several kinds of infections, and symptoms vary with the patient’s age and what part of the body is infected.”
“Cronobacter infections are often reported among infants who have been fed powdered infant formula,” the CDC website states. “In some cases, Cronobacter has been found in powdered infant formula that was likely contaminated in the factory. In other cases, Cronobacter likely contaminated the powdered infant formula after it was opened at home or elsewhere.”
Cronobacter infections are diagnosed by a laboratory culture, according to the CDC.
At the time of publication, no illnesses or complaints related to the recalled products had been reported.
The delegation headed by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrives in Songshan Airport in Taipei, Taiwan, Aug. 2, 2022. – ABC News
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan this week is a significant moment in her long career of advocating for democracy and human rights in Asia while pressuring China and its government in Beijing.
Second in line to the presidency after Vice President Kamala Harris, Pelosi is the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan in 25 years, since then-Speaker Newt Gingrich’s 1997 visit to the island.
The Biden administration, which appeared to have unsuccessfully attempted to dissuade Pelosi from visiting Taiwan on her trip to Asia, — although it wouldn’t confirm or deny whether it tried to so — has warned that Beijing could retaliate economically or militarily to her visit.
“If the speaker does decide to visit and China tries to create some kind of crisis or otherwise escalate tensions, that would be entirely on Beijing,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday. “We are looking for them, in the event she decides to visit, to act responsibly and not to engage in any escalation going forward.”
The visit has infuriated China, which considers Taiwan a breakaway province, and has claimed sovereignty over the island. A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson vowed that China would “take resolute and vigorous countermeasures” in response to Pelosi’s visit.
“Everything is stormy,” Derek Grossman, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation, told ABC News. “And from China’s perspective, they see this as yet another example of how the U.S. will not stop pushing Taiwan to think and act for itself, which is exactly what they don’t want.”
While the Biden administration has maintained the longstanding ‘One China’ policy and does not recognize Taiwanese independence — the standoff over Pelosi’s visit is also due to her reputation as a China critic and hawk, experts told ABC News.
“The Chinese just see her as rabidly anti-China, and believe that no good can come out of her,” Bonnie Glaser, the director of the Asia Program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told ABC News.
As she landed, Pelosi and others in the congressional delegation traveling with her put out a statement saying, “Our Congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant Democracy.”
The statement continued, “Our visit is one of several Congressional delegations to Taiwan – and it in no way contradicts longstanding United States policy,guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances. The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo.”
Tiananmen Square and protecting Chinese students
Pelosi seized on human rights in China quickly after winning her first full term in Congress — a liberal who often found common cause with conservatives on human rights issues and China after the Tiananmen Square demonstrations and violent crackdowns against protests in 1989.
Representing one of the largest Asian-American communities in the country, she was the chief sponsor of legislation that would allow thousands of Chinese students to remain in the United States after their visas expired and avoid potential persecution if they returned to China.
Despite her relatively junior status in the House, she helped propel the legislation through Congress, prompting a showdown President George H. W. Bush, who vetoed the legislation.
“First the Chinese authorities gave us a massacre, and then they gave us a masquerade,” Pelosi said at a news conference outside the U.S. Capitol in 1990.
Pelosi wrangled Democratic and Republican votes to override Bush’s veto — embarrassing Bush, who once served as a top U.S. representative to China.
While the veto override effort fell several votes short in the Senate, the Washington Post reported, the administration eventually issued an executive order that accomplished Pelosi’s goals of protecting the Chinese students in the United States.
Later, on an official visit to China in 1991, Pelosi and two congressmen were briefly detained by Chinese police, after unfurling a small banner in protest to commemorate pro-democracy protesters killed near Tiananmen Square.
“We’ve been told now for two days [in private meetings with Chinese officials] that there is no prohibition on freedom of speech in China,” Pelosi said, according to the Baltimore Sun. “This does not conform to what we were told.”
The international incident cemented Pelosi’s position as a chief China critic. She “has been a strong advocate of human rights for a very long time,” Glaser told ABC News.
Pelosi ruffled feathers on a subsequent trip to China: In 2009, she hand-delivered a letter to Hu Jintao, China’s president at the time, calling for the release of political prisoners.
Challenging China’s trade status and taking on her own party
In the 1990s, Pelosi repeatedly clashed with leaders of her own party over the United States’ improving economic relationship with China and its ascension to the World Trade Organization.
She criticized and challenged President Bill Clinton’s efforts to improve trade relations between the two countries, arguing against normalizing trade relations and decoupling the economic relationship from concerns about Beijing’s human rights record and the transfer of technology to countries hostile to the United States.
“I am disappointed that President Clinton has chosen to continue a failed policy,” she said in a statement when normal relations were extended in 1997. “Since he delinked trade from human rights three years ago, the human rights situation in China and Tibet has deteriorated, the U.S. trade deficit with China has soared, and China’s authoritarian government has continued its sale of nuclear, chemical, missile and biological weapons technology to dangerous countries, including Iran.’
Years later, her positions even led to one of her rare breaks with President Obama and his administration.
According to Newsweek, Pelosi in 2009 helped scuttle the confirmation chances of Obama’s initial pick to lead the National Intelligence Council, over comments he had made about the Tiananmen Square massacre.
(She did not deny her position when later asked about the episode by the Huffington Post.)
“It’s a cheap shot for both Americans or Chinese to accuse her of sort of doing this as some sort of provocation when her commitment to the region and activists has been consistent and unwavering,” said Samuel Chu, the founder and President of the Campaign for Hong Kong, whose father, a prominent/veteran pro-democracy activist, met with Pelosi in Hong Kong on one of her early visits to the region.
Olympic boycotts over Tibet and Chinese forced labor
Pelosi called for the U.S. to impose diplomatic boycotts of the summer and winter Olympics hosted by China in Beijing in 2008 and 2022, respectively.
In 2008, she called for President Bush and other world leaders to boycott the opening ceremonies of the Summer Olympics to show support for Tibetans pushing for independence from China, and condemned the International Olympic Committee for awarding the games to China given its human rights record.
“If freedom-loving people don’t speak out against China’s oppression of people in Tibet, we have lost all moral authority to speak out against any oppressed people,” Pelosi said on a visit to India and the Dalai Lama’s government-in-exile.
“I don’t think China should have gotten the Olympic Games to begin with,” Pelosi told ABC’s Good Morning America in 2008. “I had a resolution in the Congress which was very popular, and bipartisan support on it. But they did get them with the promise that they would open up more and have better respect for human rights and freedom of expression. They have not honored that.”
Years later, when China prepared to host the Winter Olympics, Pelosi repeated her calls for a diplomatic boycott – this time over China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim minority.
“We cannot proceed as if nothing is wrong about the Olympics going to China,” she said at a congressional hearing.
China’s Foreign Ministry blasted Pelosi’s statements and said she was “full of lies and disinformation” in calling for a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Games.
Around the same time, she worked across party lines with Republicans to pass legislation to sanction China for selling goods to America made with Uyghur Muslim forced labor — which President Biden later signed into law.
“None of that would have been possible without her leadership,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., told ABC News. “She’s unrelenting.”
(TAIPEI, Taiwan) — U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi arrived in Taiwan on Tuesday despite repeated warnings not to from mainland China, which claims the island democracy as its own territory.
Pelosi and members of a congressional delegation landed at Taipei Songshan Airport in the Taiwanese capital at just after 10:40 p.m. local time as part of her tour of Asia. She visited Singapore on Monday and Malaysia on Tuesday. Her office previously said she would also travel to South Korea and Japan but didn’t mention a stop in Taiwan, until after her plane touched down under the cover of darkness Tuesday night.
“Our Congressional delegation’s visit to Taiwan honors America’s unwavering commitment to supporting Taiwan’s vibrant Democracy,” Pelosi and the delegation said in a joint statement Tuesday. “Our visit is part of our broader trip to the Indo-Pacific — including Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan — focused on mutual security, economic partnership and democratic governance. Our discussions with Taiwan leadership will focus on reaffirming our support for our partner and on promoting our shared interests, including advancing a free and open Indo-Pacific region. America’s solidarity with the 23 million people of Taiwan is more important today than ever, as the world faces a choice between autocracy and democracy.”
“Our visit is one of several Congressional delegations to Taiwan — and it in no way contradicts longstanding United States policy, guided by the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979, U.S.-China Joint Communiques and the Six Assurances,” they added. “The United States continues to oppose unilateral efforts to change the status quo.”
Just minutes after Pelosi’s arrival in Taiwan was confirmed, China’s largest state-run news agency, Xinhua, announced that live-fire military drills would be held in the airspace and waters surrounding and close to Taiwan from Thursday to Sunday.
Beijing considers any official contact with Taiwan a recognition of its democratically elected government, which the mainland’s ruling Communist Party asserts has no right to conduct foreign relations.
Pelosi is the most senior U.S. official to visit Taiwan in a quarter century. Her arrival came on the heels of fiery reactions from Chinese officials amid reports that she was planning such a trip.
Zhao Lijian, spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told a press briefing on Monday that Beijing “will take firm and strong measures” if Pelosi were to visit Taiwan.
“We want to once again make it clear to the US side that the Chinese side is fully prepared for any eventuality and that the People’s Liberation Army of China will never sit idly by, and we will make resolute response and take strong countermeasures to uphold China’s sovereignty and territorial integrity,” Zhao said. “We have on many occasions stated our grave concern and solemn position that we firmly oppose Speaker Pelosi’s attempted visit to Taiwan region, and will take firm and strong measures to safeguard national sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
“The One China principle is what underpins peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait,” he added. “It is the United States that has constantly distorted and hollowed out the One China policy and made irresponsible remarks on the Taiwan question, creating tension across the Strait. The U.S. side lately has begun to stress the need to safeguard the sovereignty and territorial integrity of each country. We hope that the U.S. side should first act as it speaks on the Taiwan question and must not play the double-standard game.”
Under the so-called “One China principle”, Beijing regards Taiwan as their territory, a renegade province to be reunified — by force if necessary — with the mainland. The U.S. has a “One China Policy” recognizing the people of Mainland China and Taiwan being part of “One China,” that Beijing is China’s sole legal government and does not support an independent Taiwan, but considers the matter “unsettled.” Washington is also militarily supportive of the self-governing island and maintains extensive commercial and unofficial ties.
Taiwan split from mainland China in 1949, following a civil war between the Nationalist Party’s forces and those of the Communist Party. As the communists took control of the mainland, the nationalists retreated to the island of Taiwan where they established their new capital.
Both sides agree that they are one country but disagree on which is the national leader. Although they have no formal relations, the island’s economy remains reliant on trade with the mainland.
The U.S. switched diplomatic recognition from Taipei to Beijing in 1979. The Taiwan Relations Act, which went into force that same year, requires Washington to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself.
Hua Chunying, a senior spokesperson for the Chinese foreign ministry, appeared to dial down the rhetoric on Tuesday before Pelosi’s arrival was officially announced, telling reporters that Beijing and Washington “have maintained close communication.”
“China has repeatedly and unmistakably expressed to the U.S. side our strong opposition to Speaker Pelosi’s potential visit to Taiwan,” Hua said. “And we hope that two U.S. officials will be very clear about the importance and sensitivity of this issue and how dangerous this issue could be.”
While the Chinese foreign ministry has not yet summoned U.S. Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns in protest, Hua noted: “I think when appropriate, we will be in touch with the U.S. ambassador.”
Unlike Zhao, she would not comment on any military response to Pelosi’s visit and deferred the question to a spokesperson for the ruling party’s military, the People’s Liberation Army.
White House spokesperson John Kirby told a press briefing on Monday that Beijing is seemingly laying the groundwork to carry out “military provocations” in response to Pelosi’s possible visit to Taiwan.
“China appears to be positioning itself to potentially take further steps in the coming days and perhaps over longer time horizons,” Kirby said.
Kirby told reporters that the “potential steps” China may take in response “could include military provocations, such as firing missiles in the Taiwan Strait or around Taiwan, operations that break historical norms such as a large-scale air entry into Taiwan’s air defense identification zone” or “air or naval activities that crossed the median line; military exercises that could be highly publicized.” He said the last time Beijing fired missiles into the Taiwan Strait was in 1996.
There could also be measures taken “in the diplomatic and economic space,” Kirby said, “like Beijing’s public assertions last month that the Taiwan Strait is not an international waterway.”
When asked what planning was “being done in advance to ensure there won’t be any dangerous fallout if she does indeed go to Taiwan,” Kirby told reporters he could “assure” that Pelosi would be able to “travel safely and securely.”
“The speaker makes her own decisions,” he added. “And what we did was provide her context, analysis, facts, information, so that she could make the best decision possible for every stop, for every overseas travel.”
Kirby cast the escalating tensions as fueled by China, which the U.S. was “not threatening.” He said a potential visit from Pelosi would have precedent and would not “change the status quo” regarding China and Taiwan.
In 1997, then-House Speaker Newt Gingrich visited Taiwan after meeting with then-Chinese President Jiang Zemin in Beijing.
But Hua told reporters Tuesday that there would be no “excuse” for a visit by Pelosi.
“The wrong actions of individual U.S. politicians in the past should not set a precedent, much less an excuse for the US to make mistakes on the Taiwan issue,” she said.
(BIRMINGHAM, England) — Prince William and Kate attended the 2022 Commonwealth Games on Tuesday, bringing along Princess Charlotte on the royal outing.
The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were photographed alongside their daughter enjoying the festivities while sitting in the stands of Sandwell Aquatics Centre. The trio watched the swimming heats at the facility in Birmingham, England.
The Commonwealth Games are an international, multi-sport event featuring athletes from various nations in the Commonwealth — former territories of the British Empire which recognize Queen Elizabeth II as their head of state — and held every four years, much like the Olympics.
For the family outing, William, 40, wore a pair of off-white pants, a light blue button-up shirt and a dark blue jacket; Kate, 40, wore an all-white pantsuit. Seven-year-old Charlotte opted for a black-and-white horizontal striped dress with a white collar and pigtails.
This year’s 22nd Commonwealth Games kicked off July 28 and run through Aug. 8.
This is the third time England has hosted the event. Previous years include the 1934 London games and the 2002 Manchester festivities.
The U.K. has hosted the Commonwealth Games seven times total.
(NEW YORK) — At least 37 people have been killed in Kentucky’s devastating flooding, which Gov. Andy Beshear has called the most “devastating and deadly” of his lifetime.
Among those killed are four siblings — ages 8, 6, 4 and 2 — who were swept away in the water, according to family members.
The number of deaths “will grow,” the governor said.
Over 1,300 people have been rescued from flooded areas, the governor said Tuesday.
Kentucky was bracing overnight for new storms moving through the already flood-ravaged areas. But Beshear said Tuesday morning that the ground stayed “pretty much dry” overnight.
A few passing showers are possible on Tuesday but the state should stay dry through Sunday, when residents may get hit with more rain.
Beshear said he’ll visit more areas impacted by flooding on Tuesday.
President Joe Biden has approved a disaster declaration.
(NEW YORK) — Puzzled scientists are trying to figure out what a giant shark native to the Arctic was doing in considerably warmer waters thousands of miles south of its frigid home.
Researchers from Florida International University and the Belize Fisheries Department recently discovered a Greenland shark, which typically lives in the freezing waters of the Arctic, in the tropical waters of the Caribbean Sea while working with local Belizean fishermen to tag tiger sharks, according to a press release from the university.
The shark was swimming near the Belize Barrier Reef, the second-longest barrier reef in the world, the scientists said. The discovery marks the first time a shark of its kind has been found in western Caribbean waters.
Devanshi Kasana, a marine biologist at FIU and a Ph.D. candidate in the university’s Predator Ecology and Conservation lab, at first thought that what she was looking at was a sixgill shark, which is known to live in the deep waters off coral reefs.
“I knew it was something unusual and so did the fishers, who hadn’t ever seen anything quite like it in all their combined years of fishing,” Kasana said in a statement.
Kasana then conferred with her adviser and other shark experts, texting a photo of the creature. The final determination was that it was “definitely” in the sleeper shark family due to its large size, and was most likely a Greenland shark or a hybrid between a Greenland shark and a Pacific sleeper shark, according to FIU.
It is unclear whether the researchers were able to tag the shark.
“This finding is so exciting because it suggests that these ancient predators are potentially roaming the world’s oceans from pole to Equator, but staying very deep in tropical waters,” Kasana, who is still in Belize, said in an emailed statement to ABC News. “It feels great to be a part of this and be a part of what could be the first step in protecting sleeper sharks in this region.”
Little is known about the Greenland shark. The half-blind shark subsists by scavenging on polar bear carcasses and can live up to 250 and perhaps even 500 years, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, making them the longest-living vertebrate known to science.
Greenland sharks are also massive in size and can reach up to 23 feet long and weigh up to 1.5 tons, according to National Geographic.
“Because little is known about them, that means nothing can be definitively ruled out about the species,” the scientists said. “Greenland sharks could be trolling the depths of the ocean all across the world.”
Greenland sharks, or Somniosus microcephalus, are listed as a vulnerable species on the International Union for Conservation of Nature Red List of Threatened Species. The biggest threats they face are climate change and severe weather, which are causing their habitats to alter and shift, and fishing and harvesting.
Hakarl, fermented Greenland shark or other sleeper sharks, is a national dish of Iceland. Greenland shark meat is poisonous until it is dried and fermented over four or five months, and emits a strong odor and tastes of ammonia.
Kasana emphasized that the discovery of the Greenland shark was a joint effort among members of the Belizean shark fishing community, the Belize Fisheries Department and FIU researchers.
The Belizean government recently declared three atolls, including Glover’s Reef where the Greenland shark was found, and the deeper waters around it as protected areas for sharks. This declaration will help keep animals, including undiscovered ones that may be roaming the waters around Glover’s Reef, safe, Kasana said.
“Great discoveries and conservation can happen when fishermen, scientists and the government work together,” said Beverly Wade, director of the Blue Bond and Finance Permanence Unit in the Office of the Prime Minister of Belize. “We can really enhance what we can do individually, while also doing some great conservation work and making fantastic discoveries, like this one.”
(NEW YORK) — After a near-historic decline over the first half of the year, the S&P 500 — a popular index to which many 401(k) accounts are pegged — bounced back in July with its strongest month since November 2020. The other major indices, the tech-heavy Nasdaq and the Dow Industrial Average, reversed their performance, too.
The sudden shift arrived despite little change in the economy. In keeping with recent months, the government released mixed economic data and the Federal Reserve escalated a series of borrowing cost increases meant to slow economic activity, slash demand and dial back inflation.
The explanation behind the bounce back, investment strategists told ABC News, is the reason why investors should not expect it to endure: expectations.
It hardly sounds like the makings of a stock boom, which relies on investor optimism about the outlook for corporate profits.
Over the first half of the year, as the market plummeted and pessimism reigned, investors lowered their expectations, the strategists said. Last month, when the Federal Reserve signaled it would someday ratchet down rate increases and many corporations reported better-than-anticipated earnings, investors saw a reason for a turnabout in sentiment, they added.
The strong returns in July raise expectations, however, the market is setting up for underperformance amid persistent economic challenges, such as inflation, the Russia-Ukraine war, and the pandemic-induced supply chain disruptions, the strategists said.
“It’s not about good or bad,” Ryan Detrick, the chief market strategist at Carson Group, told ABC News. “It’s about better or worse.”
“Expectations were so low — the wick was there,” he said. “We needed anything to light that fire.”
Sameer Samana, senior global market strategist at Wells Fargo Investment Institute, said it will prove difficult to keep that fire lit.
“Unfortunately, along with rising stock prices, you have rising expectations as well,” he said.
For months, market sentiment has strained under the weight of an economy beset by a stark imbalance between supply and demand. A surge in demand followed a pandemic-induced flood of economic stimulus that combined with a widespread shift toward goods instead of services. Meanwhile, that stimulus brought about a speedy economic recovery from the March 2020 downturn, triggering a hiring blitz.
But the surge in demand for goods and labor far outpaced supply. COVID-related bottlenecks in China and elsewhere slowed delivery times and infection fears kept workers on the sidelines. In turn, prices and wages skyrocketed, ultimately prompting sky-high inflation that had not only endured for many months but had also gotten worse, even as economic growth slowed and recession fears grew.
Taken together, the near-historic inflation and sluggish economic activity drove away stock market investors over the first half of the year, said Samana, the senior global market strategist at the Wells Fargo Investment Institute.
“People, to a certain extent, had been throwing in the towel on equities. They were worried about the Fed, worried about China, worried about commodity prices, worried about a recession,” he said. “There was no shortage of worries.”
“What often happens when you get that level of concern is that everybody is on one side of the boat,” he added. “Then what happens is you get a piece of data that isn’t as bad as feared, and people shift to the other side. It causes a herd mentality.”
Market strategists largely attributed the July turnaround to the Federal Reserve signaling it would raise its benchmark interest rate 0.75%, which it ultimately did on Wednesday — a significant hike but less than the 1% increase that some observers had originally feared. Plus, investors seized on comments made by Fed Chair Jerome Powell on Wednesday that the pace of rate hikes would eventually slow.
“People think the Fed will have to change its mindset sooner rather than later,” Mike O’Rourke, chief market strategist at JonesTrading, told ABC News.
Over the first six months of the year, the S&P 500 plummeted 20.6%, marking its worst first-half performance of any year since 1970. But the index added back 9.1% last month alone.
The blistering pace from July isn’t sustainable, the strategists said. Further, investors should expect volatile highs and lows for the remainder of the year, they added.
O’Rourke said investors should expect a volatile market for the next six to 12 months. Other strategists echoed that view, including Detrick, who warned that investors shouldn’t treat July as a turning point. That said, he urged them to stay the course.
“This year has been historically volatile and disappointing for investors,” Detrick said. “To panic and sell when everything is darkest, that’s the worst time to do it. Hopefully this bounce back in July reminds investors of that.”
“But the truth is, we’re not out of the woods,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — A 49-year-old Texas man was sentenced by a judge to more than seven years in prison Monday for his role in the Capitol attack, the harshest sentence yet for a Jan. 6 defendant — but legal and national security experts say another decision made by the judge could carry potentially broader implications.
In handing down an 87-month sentence to Guy Wesley Reffitt, U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich declined to characterize the defendant as a domestic terrorist, as prosecutors had requested.
Prosecutors had sought a 15-year prison term for Reffitt, predicated on the use of an increasingly rare legal tool called the “terrorism enhancement,” which empowers judges to issue sentences above the federal guidelines for certain crimes. Federal sentencing guidelines in Reffitt’s case called for a prison sentence between nine and 11 years.
On Monday, Friedrich brushed aside the government’s motion for a terrorism enhancement, citing other Jan.6-related defendants whose conduct appeared to be more serious than Reffitt’s — and for whom the Justice Department chose not to pursue the terrorism enhancement.
Experts said Fridrich’s decision demonstrates the challenge prosecutors face in meeting the exceptionally high standard to formally label someone a terrorist under the law.
“In the court of common sense, individuals who went into the Capitol to engage in destructive behavior and disrupt a lawful government proceeding may have, by definition, committed an act terrorism,” said John Cohen, a former Homeland Security official who is now an ABC News contributor. “But the challenge for prosecutors is to prove that a defendant has met the specific legal elements of a terrorism offense.”
The terrorism enhancement, codified in section 3A 1.4 of the federal sentencing guidelines, traces its roots back to the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, after which Congress enacted tougher penalties to deter acts of “intimidation or coercion” aimed at the government or civilian population.
In the intervening years, terrorism sentences have most frequently been applied to defendants with ties to ISIS or al-Qaeda, or to violent domestic extremists like Cesar Sayoc, who pleaded guilty in 2018 to mailing pipe bombs to members of Congress.
But critics complain that the law is too broad and too inconsistently applied.
In 2017, for example, prosecutors secured a terrorism enhancement for Jessica Reznicek, a climate activist who pleaded guilty to damaging pipeline infrastructure across the Midwest. A federal appeals court upheld her sentence in June.
Meanwhile, neither Dylann Roof, who pleaded guilty to massacring nine people at a Charleston bible study, nor James Fields, who was convicted of killing a Charlottesville demonstrator with his car, were sentenced with the terrorism enhancement.
Reffitt, for his part, brought a weapon to the Capitol on Jan. 6 and threatened to “physically attack, remove, and replace” lawmakers, making him a “quintessential” case for the enhancement, prosecutors wrote in a July sentencing memorandum. In March, a jury found him guilty on five felony counts, including obstruction of justice, as well as entering and remaining in a restricted building or grounds with a firearm.
The case marked the first time the Justice Department sought to have a terrorism enhancement applied to a Jan. 6 defendant.
“We do believe that what he was doing that day was domestic terrorism and we do believe that he’s a domestic terrorist,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeffrey Nestler told Judge Friedrich Monday, before the judge declined to apply the terrorism enhancement.
In rejecting the enhancement, Friedrich sided with Reffitt’s defense counsel, who accused prosecutors of utilizing the tool as retribution for Reffitt taking the case to trial.
“This is the only case where the government has asked for the terrorism enhancement, and this is the only case where the defendant has gone to trial,” said Clinton Broden, a lawyer for Reffitt. “I don’t think it takes a rocket scientist to figure that out.”
Friedrich’s decision to reject the enhancement in Reffitt’s case serves as further evidence of its “undisciplined, arbitrary use” in federal cases, according to Bill Quigley, a lawyer for Reznicek.
“How can Jessica Reznicek be a terrorist in the eyes of the law, and this person who stormed the Capitol and threatened members of Congress not be?” Quigley said.
“It is ironic that prosecutors managed to secure this enhancement for a person who damaged infrastructure belonging to a private company, but the courts failed to apply the same label to someone who used violence to further their extremist ideological beliefs in the seat of our democracy,” Cohen said.
Jordan Strauss, a former national security official in the Justice Department, pointed out that the government’s pursuit of a terrorist enhancement against Reffitt could mark a shift in its handling of Jan. 6-related cases — and could foreshadow a more aggressive approach in future cases.
“This case is noteworthy in that it may reflect a policy change for January 6th cases moving forward,” said Strauss, who now serves as the managing director at the Kroll Institute, a corporate consulting firm. “We should expect to see more enhancements sought, particularly if there are guilty verdicts in the more complex sedition cases.”
(NEW YORK) — Doctors and other health care providers are being warned to look out for symptoms of a virus that can cause seizures and severe illness in infants.
Nearly two dozen infants were admitted to a Tennessee hospital this spring due to parechovirus, a virus that is especially dangerous for babies under 3 months old, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
While the majority of the infants, ages 5 months and under, recovered without complications, two may have long-term complications, including hearing loss and severe developmental delay, from the virus, the CDC said.
The agency’s report follows an alert it issued last month to health care providers warning about the presence of parechovirus.
Here are five things for parents to know about the virus and the CDC’s warning.
1. Parechovirus is especially dangerous for babies under 3 months old.
The virus, known as PeV, can cause severe illness in babies under 3 months old, and is most dangerous to newborns.
According to the CDC, the virus can cause sepsis-like illness, seizures and infection around the brain and spinal cord called meningitis — or meningoencephalitis — in infants, and can lead to long-term neurological complications in rare cases.
2. The type of parechovirus currently spreading is the most severe.
Most types of human parechoviruses are common childhood pathogens and less serious in kids older than 6 months, spreading through sneezing, coughing and saliva and feces.
The type that has been detected in newborns and young infants, PeV-A3, is the type “most often associated with severe disease,” according to the CDC. The specific strain of parechovirus was not identified in the report from the cases in Tennessee.
3. Symptoms include seizures.
The CDC has instructed health care providers to watch for symptoms of fever, sepsis-like syndrome, seizures and meningitis without a known cause in young infants.
PeV can be detected through lab tests from stool swabs and respiratory specimens, as well as cerebrospinal, blister or blood specimens, depending on the symptoms. Because this isn’t a virus that is routinely tested for, health care providers are being told to keep this virus in mind in case this extra testing is needed.
4. The rise in cases could be due to more testing.
The CDC acknowledged in its alert that the higher number of cases reported over the past few months could be a result of better testing.
“Because there is presently no systematic surveillance for PeVs in the United States, it is not clear how the number of PeV cases reported in 2022 compares to previous seasons,” the CDC said. “PeV laboratory testing has become more widely available in recent years, and it is possible that increased testing has led to a higher number of PeV diagnoses compared with previous years.”
The study authors also note, “This peak in infections might reflect relaxation of COVID-19 isolation measures consistent with increased prevalence of other respiratory viruses.”
5. There is no treatment for PeV.
The CDC said that while there is no specific treatment for PeV, getting a diagnosis matters.
“Diagnosing PeV in infants might change management strategies and provide important health information for families,” the CDC said.
(NEW YORK) — Kansas Secretary of State Scott Schwab spoke with ABC News Live Monday ahead of the state’s anticipated primary election, which includes a referendum on abortion laws.
Voters on Tuesday will decide on a proposal to amend the state constitution to explicitly disavow the right to access abortion. It will be the first popular vote on abortion rights in nearly 50 years.
Below is a transcript of Schwab’s interview with ABC News’ Kyra Phillips:
ABC NEWS LIVE:Well, clearly, it’s a huge vote tomorrow on abortion in your state. Your office estimates that this issue alone could actually bring in an extra 200,000 voters to the polls. Kansas is a red state, of course. So tell me, why is this issue in particular energizing voters there and is that good for Republicans right now?
SCOTT SCHWAB:Well, I think it’s good for our republic to get voters energized. But this is a big issue because we’ve always seemed to be at the center in Kansas on these big social issues, whether it’s slavery, women’s suffrage, prohibition [or] the Civil Rights Act. What’s interesting about this is the Supreme Court of Kansas said there’s an inherent right to an abortion in the Kansas Constitution, and the word does not even exist in the Constitution. But it kind of edges the legislature out from making policy. So this has created the big debate on how much regulation — and should there be regulation — on abortions in our state.
ABC NEWS LIVE:Which leads me to my next question. You know, if abortion remains legal in Kansas, is that the end of the legal fight or will Republicans pursue further restrictions on abortion going forward?
SCHWAB:Well, if the measure passes, it’s very difficult for the legislature to regulate anything as it relates to abortion. I’m no longer a policymaker in the House, even though I had been at a time. We will always have those debates on abortion and some measures will pass, some won’t.
But really, I can see after this, because this has been such a topic of an issue, this constitutional amendment, that the legislature might want to sit back and just take a breath if it passes. Because we have had a whole lot of good laws on the books that aren’t in effect because that Supreme Court ruling and it’ll just be like what we had six, seven years ago. I think a lot of legislators in our state will just kind of want to take a break, but that’s just my prediction.
ABC NEWS LIVE:Take a break. Define take a break. What does that mean?
SCHWAB:We’ll take a break in…not deal with this issue this year. Let’s deal with some other issues that have taken a back-burner, because these social issues have really taken a lot of the legislature’s bandwidth. So there’s a lot of things like K through 12 funding and highway funding and rainy day fund. So I really think the legislature will probably want to focus on this next upcoming session. But I could be wrong. The legislature is an independent body.
ABC NEWS LIVE:Well, and think about all the political pressure. I mean, you really think abortion would take a back seat?
SCHWAB:Actually, they tried to pass this amendment to go to the vote of the people two years ago. And it didn’t pass. It didn’t, it didn’t have the votes to go there. So, yes, sometimes it does.
ABC NEWS LIVE: All right. Let’s talk voter confidence, shall we? Since we’re talking about that, you’re in a pretty tight primary yourself. Your opponent, former County Commissioner Mike Brown, has echoed Donald Trump’s lies about election fraud. He’s made election security central to his campaign against you. What’s your response to those lies about the 2020 election? Where do you stand?
SCHWAB:Well, you know, it is frustrating because he was a county commissioner at the time and he certified his own loss in that election and trusted enough to do that and that all of a sudden the turn. But, President Trump is not complaining about Kansas and we do post-election audits. We’ve done over 300 post-election audits in Kansas since we took office in 2019. And one, not one county has failed their audit. And we’re unique in that that we do post-election audits in a way that they are finished before the board of canvassers meet to show those board of canvassers an error did not occur. And every county has voter paper ballot verification that gets counted. So it’s pretty, it’s pretty hard to cheat.
ABC NEWS LIVE:But if you just look at the past couple of years. Can you win as a Republican if you reject the former president’s false claims about the election? We see the power that Trump still holds within the GOP. What do you say to those in your party who do continue to peddle the “big lie” because it’s still happening?
SCHWAB: It is interesting. I had a friend [who told] me saying, “It’s interesting the people who believe conspiracy theories about somebody trying to control them are allowing themselves to be controlled by the very people spreading the conspiracy theory.” The complaint in Kansas isn’t valid.
And that’s where we put our focus…
I don’t judge other states because I would have to go there and audit them. And I don’t have time to do that because I’m paid to do [that] here in Kansas and in Kansas we get it right. And it’s just the outside voices coming into our state, making false attacks and assumptions that the law itself prevents from happening.
ABC NEWS LIVE:Before we let you go, Scott, I’ve got to ask about one of the stories making news. Of course, locally, your office is refusing to turn over provisional ballot records ahead of voting tomorrow, despite a court ruling that says you violated the state’s open records law. You know, the governor there in Kansas has urged you and your office to comply with the ruling. You’re running as the candidate with integrity and challenge your opponent over his 2020 election lies. How can you claim that while ignoring this court order?
SCHWAB:Well, we can’t do the court order. It requires a software upgrade that we can’t do right now. And we will be appealing that to the Kansas Supreme Court because a lower court agreed with us. What it is, is it’s partial information in that report, and we’re constantly trying to fight partial and misinformation and that appellate courts change Kansas law, as opposed to the open records being, “Hey, if there’s a record, you’ve got to make it open.” The appellate court says you got to create the record. Well, that’s something completely different that we’ve never had to deal with before.
It’s almost like in an open meetings act forcing a legislative body to have a meeting when they normally don’t wish to have a meeting. So we’re struggling with trying to comply with a court order that physically we cannot comply with while trying to run an election. And we don’t want to do massive software changes while we’re in the middle of an election.
