(PHILADELPHIA) — The legal team representing the family of two young Black girls who were seemingly waved off by a Sesame Place character is calling for the costumed performer to be fired.
“We want a genuine and authentic apology,” attorney B’Ivory LaMarr said in a press conference Wednesday. “The second thing that we’re requesting is for the immediate termination of that performer. The third thing that we’re going to request is — we’re going to demand that they take care of any type of health care or mental care expenses that these children have realized.”
In a video posted on Twitter, two young Black girls at Sesame Place Philadelphia waved excitedly and held out their arms as a performer dressed in a Rosita costume approached.
Rosita high-fives parkgoers as she walks down the line, before appearing to shake her head at and wave off the two girls as she walks away from them.
“#BabyPaige & her cute lil friends went to @SesamePlace this weekend to celebrate Paige’s 4th birthday & this is how #SesamePlace treated these beautiful Black children,” the tweet, posted by the apparent aunt of the girl celebrating her birthday, read.
Outrage ensued online, as more footage of similar incidents with park characters and Black children were posted online in response to the viral video. Calls to boycott Sesame Place are growing on social media.
“While we hate to speculate and consider ‘race’ as the motivating factor, which would explain the performer’s actions, such actions both before and after the young girls reached out only leads us to one conclusion,” said LaMarr, who is representing the family, in a statement to ABC News.
He continued, “Although Sesame Place purports to stand for inclusivity and equality, this was not demonstrated this past Saturday. We are currently investigating this incident and will exercise every legal remedy possible to further protect this family.”
In the park’s initial statement, the performer portraying Rosita is said to have intended the “no” hand gesture in response to requests to hold children for a photo and did not intentionally ignore the girls.
The park said it has apologized to the family directly and has invited them for a meet-and-greet with the characters. It has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment on the family’s employee termination demands.
Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit that runs Sesame Street, said it will “conduct bias training and a thorough review of the ways in which they engage families and guests” at Sesame Place after a video of a potential racial bias incident went viral online.
“As a global nonprofit educational organization with a mission to help children grow smarter, stronger and kinder, Sesame Workshop has always stood for respect, inclusion and belonging and is committed to providing the highest quality engaging experiences for all children and families,” the organization said in a statement.
In an interview with ABC News, the mother of the birthday girl Jodi Brown said she’s happy the video went viral.
“These are innocent children. And the job of the character is to bring joy to the kids,” she said. “I also think that a lot of parents, as you can see in the other videos that are now released, have went through a similar thing and just didn’t speak up about it right away. So now they have the courage to say ‘hey, this also happened to my child.'”
Sesame Place Philadelphia released a second statement on the incident, saying, “We know that it’s not OK. We are taking actions to do better. We are committed to making this right.”
The park said it will conduct training for employees to deliver an “inclusive, equitable and entertaining” experience for parkgoers.
Sesame Place is a licensed park partner of Sesame Workshop.
ABC News’ Sabina Ghebremedhin and Kendall Ross contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Gov. Larry Hogan is a popular Republican who won two statewide elections in Democratic-leaning Maryland — but his full-throated endorsement didn’t mean enough to the Republican base in Tuesday’s primary.
Hogan’s preferred candidate, his former Commerce Secretary Kelly Schulz, is projected to lose the GOP nod to succeed Hogan.
Instead, primary voters chose state Del. Dan Cox, a vocal critic of Hogan’s policies — in particular restrictions to combat COVID-19 — who was backed by former President Donald Trump, another Hogan foe. The governor, in turn, assailed Cox as a right-wing “conspiracy theorist.”
Hogan, a moderate who twice won over a majority of voters in a blue state, hoped to see a similar politician win the nomination to continue the GOP’s control of the governorship.
But Trump, as he has done to mixed success in other state primaries, weighed in to support the more conservative choice and relished the chance to punish a Republican critic.
It was Cox — who criticized the 2020 elections results; opposes abortion and restrictions on guns; and who has campaigned heavily against government’s role in public life, including COVID lockdowns and changes in education — who won out.
“RINO Larry Hogan’s Endorsement doesn’t seem to be working out so well for his heavily favored candidate,” Trump said in a statement after Tuesday’s race. “Next, I’d love to see Larry run for President!”
In remarks on Tuesday night, Cox said, “President Trump didn’t have to come alongside an outsider, a newcomer so to speak. Somebody that believed in his vision of America first. A person that believed in it for each one of us. But he did.”
Soon, Hogan’s office was telling reporters that he would not vote for Cox in November.
And, according to The Baltimore Sun, Schulz adviser Doug Mayer spoke sharply about who the base had chosen: “The Maryland Republican Party got together and committed ritualized mass suicide. The only thing missing was Jim Jones and a glass of Kool-Aid. I hope it was a good party.”
This year’s primary season has seen the next phase of the GOP’s political identity slowly form, race by race, across the country.
In Maryland as in some other states, like Arizona and Georgia, a relative sliver of high-profile Republicans have decided to challenge the Trump-backed candidates, many of whom baselessly question the 2020 election as he does or who run further to the right of the general electorate.
In Georgia, for example, the Trump choice lost handily. In Illinois and in Maryland, it was the reverse.
While that narrows the lane for local anti-Trump Republicans, some Democrats hope the victory of more right-wing nominees will give them a boost in the November midterms.
In Maryland as elsewhere, Democratic groups spent big on advertising in the Republican primary trying to raise the profile of Cox as the more conservative choice in a state with blue-leaning voters.
Observers says they may be right: The day after the primary, the Cook Political Report changed its rating for the Maryland governor from “lean Democrat” to “Solid Democrat.”
In a press conference earlier this month, Hogan blasted the Democratic Governors Association decision to advertise about Cox, saying Democrats were “spending over $1 million … [because they] desperately want [Cox] to be the Republican nominee.”
Cox reportedly attended that press conference, occasionally shouting back at the governor and at Schulz, then later posted a series of videos on social media that called the event “laughable” and “hilarious.”
So where does Tuesday’s result leave more moderate Republicans like Hogan? He has been pointed and emphatic about his hopes for the party repudiating Trump — as epitomized during a speech at the Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California this past May.
“The last four years were the worst four years for the GOP Party since the 1930s, even worse than after Watergate when Ronald Reagan had to rebuild the party from the ashes,” Hogan said in remarks about the future of the Republican party. “We lost the White House, the Senate, the House. We lost governors’ seats, and state legislative bodies. Trump said we would be winning so much we’d would get tired of winning. Well, I’m tired of our party losing.”
Republican voters, though, aren’t tired of Trump. While a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, showed half of the party preferred someone else as a potential 2024 candidate, Trump was still the overwhelming favorite among a hypothetical field of candidates.
And a significant number of Republican candidates have found primary success sowing the same sorts of doubts that Trump embraces and that Hogan warned against. According to data collected by FiveThirtyEight, at least 120 election-denying candidates who ran for all sorts of down-ballot offices advanced from their primaries and will be on the general election ticket in November.
Cox likewise attacked the 2020 election. He called former Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” for certifying the 2020 election results in now-deleted tweets. (He later apologized.) He also organized buses to drive Maryland residents to Trump’s rally on Jan. 6, 2021, though he said he didn’t go to the Capitol and denounced the rioting that broke out there.
Schulz’s loss is deflating for Hogan for another reason: He opted-out of a run for Senate but has yet to take a presidential bid off the table, citing his belief that he has a winning brand of Republican politics.
In an interview with CBS News earlier this month, Hogan said “more and more people are encouraging” him to consider campaigning.
“There’s a diminishing number of folks that are wanting the former President Trump to run,” he told CBS. “There’s a growing number of people that are looking for our kind of successful, bigger-tent politics.”
ABC News’ Alisa Wiersema contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — As the House committee probing the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol continues to reveal how it says then-President Donald Trump and his allies worked to overturn the 2020 election, a bipartisan group of senators has quietly reached agreement on a sweeping effort to overhaul the very law at the heart of the former president’s effort — the Electoral Count Act of 1887 — and was set to unveil a bill Wednesday.
The ambiguous 19th century law attempts to prescribe both the process by which the Electoral College selects the president and vice president and how Congress then counts those votes.
The senators hope to address the apparent loopholes and vagueness in the bill, problems laid bare last year on Jan. 6 when Trump’s congressional supporters tried to overturn the results in five states that voted for Joe Biden and the committee says Trump attempted to pressure his own vice president to hijack what is normally a ceremonial role in overseeing the certifying of each state’s slate of electoral votes, a move that fueled the Capitol insurrection.
The bipartisan group of 16 senators, nine Republicans and seven Democrats, led by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, and including Trump ally Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said in a joint statement, “From the beginning, our bipartisan group has shared a vision of drafting legislation to fix the flaws of the archaic and ambiguous Electoral Count Act of 1887. Through numerous meetings and debates among our colleagues as well as conversations with a wide variety of election experts and legal scholars, we have developed legislation that establishes clear guidelines for our system of certifying and counting electoral votes for President and Vice President. We urge our colleagues in both parties to support these simple, commonsense reforms.”
The new legislation, the Electoral Count Reform Act of 2022 (ECRA), would enshrine the vice president’s “ministerial” role rendering that person powerless to alter the electoral count; dramatically raise the number of congressional objectors required to challenge a state’s results to 20%, or one-fifth of members, in both chambers — a jump from the current requirement of one in each house; clarify that states may not select electors after Election Day; and dictate what happens if an alternate slate of electors is presented to Congress, according to a one-sheet released from the group.
The bill text, according to an aide familiar with the matter, is nearly done and is expected to be released soon.
On Jan. 6, 2021, Vice President Mike Pence ignored the pressure campaign Trump and his allies mounted and certified the electoral totals from each state, but the Senate group in its release states that the bill “affirmatively states that the constitutional role of the Vice President, as the presiding officer of the joint meeting of Congress, is solely ministerial and that he or she does not have any power to solely determine, accept, reject, or otherwise adjudicate disputes over electors.”
Additionally, the new legislation seeks to stop any state from sending a false slate of electors, as was part of a plan by Trump’s allies in the wake of Joe Biden’s win in 2020.
“We define who is the official at the state level for submitting the slate and that is the governor, unless the state law or state Constitution indicates otherwise,” Collins told reporters Tuesday, adding that the state “would not be able to change who submits the change (to Congress) after the election.”
“Congress could not accept a slate submitted by a different official. This reform would address the potential for multiple state officials to send Congress competing slates,” the release states.
The Maine GOP moderate said the bill states that under the Constitution or under federal laws “an aggrieved candidate could bring a lawsuit and challenge any kind of due process challenge, for example, and there would be a process for expedited consideration in the courts.”
In addition to those changes to the 1887 law, the Senate group reached back to an 1845 law, the Presidential Election Day Act, to strike what it calls “an archaic” provision “that could be used by state legislatures to override the popular vote in their states by declaring a ‘failed election’ –- a term that is not defined in the law,” the group’s release states. Current law states that if electors are not chosen by Election Day in November, states may appoint electors in a manner they choose.
“Instead, this legislation specifies that a state could move its presidential election day, which otherwise would remain the Tuesday immediately following the first Monday in November every four years, only if necessitated by ‘extraordinary and catastrophic’ events,” according to the release.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, told ABC News that his portion of the ECRA dealt with the problem that cropped up just days after the 2020 election in which a Trump appointee at the General Services Administration — a little-recognized federal agency that normally unlocks millions of dollars for office space, equipment, and government staff for a presidential transition — refused to send a letter recognizing Joe Biden as the president-elect.
That provision “would allow an eligible candidate, during the limited time period in which the outcome of a presidential election is reasonably in dispute, to receive transition resources, removing the need for the Administrator of the U.S. General Services Administration to ascertain the apparent winner during this time,” the release states.
The group goes on to define a sole election winner as someone who “receives the majority of pledged electoral votes and there are no further legal or administrative actions pertaining to the results; receives the majority of electoral votes at the meeting of electors in December following the election; or is formally elected at the joint meeting of Congress on January 6.”
In addition to the ECRA, a slimmer bipartisan group also introduced the “Enhanced Election Security and Protection Act” to deal with the unprecedented rise in threats against poll workers and other election officials.
This measure would “double the penalty under federal law for individuals who threaten or intimidate election officials, poll watchers, voters, or candidates. Under current law, threats of violence or intimidation against these individuals are punishable by no more than one year in prison. This penalty would be raised to no more than two years in prison,” the release states. Additionally, the measure seeks to improve the handling of election-related mail, and — though there was no widespread evidence of fraud, like voting system tampering, despite Trump’s false claims to the contrary — “increase the existing maximum penalties for individuals who willfully steal, destroy, conceal, mutilate, or alter election records from $1,000 to $10,000 and from up to one year in prison to up to two years in prison. In addition, it would make it illegal to tamper with voting systems,” according to the release.
Both parties have, in recent years, sought — largely through symbolic challenges — to use the arcane 1887 election law to partisan advantage in what is usually a simple, barely-noticed ceremony of formalities at the heart of a peaceful transfer of power in the U.S, and the legislation introduced Wednesday is also designed to close the door on some of that. Democrats did it in 2001 and 2017 during the joint session of Congress after bitter electoral outcomes that saw their party out of power in the White House.
After the 2020 election, however, Trump and his congressional allies’ outsized effort — without evidence to back their claims of election fraud — moved Congress to finally act. After a violent, pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, the culmination of a months-long effort to reverse the election results, as GOP lawmakers challenged the results of Arizona’s vote for Joe Biden, many senators abandoned the effort – though six conservatives, led by Missouri’s Josh Hawley, ultimately stuck with it.
Collins’ effort began in earnest in January and has included an influential roster in the Senate, from the more consensus-minded, like GOP Sens. Mitt Romney of Utah, Ohio’s Rob Portman, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, as well as Republicans more supportive of Trump, like Graham, North Carolina’s Thom Tillis and Indiana’s Todd Young. Democrats, primarily led by Joe Manchin of West Virginia, include Virginia’s Mark Warner, Biden ally Chris Coons of Delaware, Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, and Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire.
The participation of Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn, a progressive fresh off a major bipartisan win reforming the nation’s gun laws, was a surprise to many at first, with a number of participants — from Republican to Democrat — eventually expressing admiration for his ability to forge consensus.
“At first, I was really skeptical of Chris’ involvement. I thought, ‘No way. He’s a ringer for (Senate Majority Leader Chuck) Schumer.’ But seriously, he was constructive, thoughtful,” said one Republican senator who asked to speak on background of the group’s deliberations.
The group is aiming to present their work in two parts – with the core of the bill going to the Rules Committee which has jurisdiction over election law.
On Tuesday, that panel’s chair, Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, told ABC News that she planned to hold hearings on the bill and allow her members to consider the legislation and potentially make changes. The rest of the bill would go to the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees.
Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell, who strongly rebuked Trump and his fellow Republicans for attempting to stop the orderly transfer of power, said he has kept close tabs on what the group is doing and is “generally supportive.” If he were to support the bill, that could have great sway over his conference and give cover to those who might fear a Trump backlash.
Earlier this year, McConnell, R-Ky., told ABC of the Electoral Count Act, “I think it needs fixing, and I wish them well, and I’d be happy to take a look at whatever they can come up with.” Asked for any red lines in those negotiations, the leader said, “I just encourage the discussion, because I think [the ECA] clearly is flawed. This is directly related to what happened on January 6th, and I think we ought to be able to figure out a bipartisan way to fix it.”
(COLLEGE STATION, Texas) — An evacuation order has been lifted after authorities responded to 24 new wildfires that burned 7,774 acres in north Texas on Tuesday, according to the Texas A&M Forest Services.
Officials say that hot temperatures, winds and drought conditions will continue the threat of fires in the area.
The evacuation was issued in response to the Chalk Mountain Fire, which spread from Somervell County into Hood County on Tuesday.
The Hood County judge issued a mandatory evacuation in the area of Hutchinson, Coleman Ranch Road, Rock Church Highway and Nocal in Tolar around 7:45 p.m. before the evacuation was lifted around two hours later.
The Chalk Mountain Fire burned 6,000 acres, destroyed at least 12 structures and was 10% contained as of Wednesday morning, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.
As of Wednesday morning, the service was not able to confirm how many of the affected structures were homes.
The National Weather Service has issued a red flag warning for northern Texas and southern Oklahoma as gusty winds near 30 miles per hour, combined with extremely dry vegetation — which can fuel fires — and dangerous heat nearing 110 degrees threaten the area on Wednesday.
The Texas A&M Forest Service also responded to a fire about 70 miles west of Fort Worth, where a fire at Possum Kingdom Lake reached 500 acres burned and 10% containment as of Tuesday night.
At least five homes have been burned from the fire, the service said.
The service said they are using bulldozers to dig containment lines around the fires and aircraft to drop water on the growing flames.
As of Wednesday morning, no injuries have been reported at either fire.
According to the Texas A&M Fire Service, 214 counties are under burn bans on Wednesday, meaning that individuals in those counties are prohibiting from any outdoor burning until further notice.
The East County Fire in Kaufman County is currently at 500 acres burned and 40% containment.
A number of large fires have reached 80 to 90% containment, including the West Bend Fire that has burned 6,522 acres and the Nethery Road Fire that has burned 3,262 acres.
In addition to the North Texas fires that continue to burn, the service said that the risk for significant fires is spreading to east Texas.
(ATLANTA) — A new report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has found a significant increase in opioid overdose death rates among Black and American Indian/Alaskan Natives people in the US.
Experts from the CDC said that a lack of education about lethal drugs, as well as limited access to treatment and treatment biases have exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in drug overdoses.
The latest report found 91,799 recorded opioid overdoses in 2020, which was a 30% increase from 2019.
According to the report, Black Americans saw a 44% increase and American Indian/Alaskan Natives had a 39% increase from 2019 to 2020.
Comparatively, white Americans saw an increase of 22% from 2019 to 2020.
The largest increase was seen among Black individuals aged 15 to 24, whose overdose death rates jumped 86% from 2019 to 2020.
For Black males aged 65 years and older, overdoses were nearly seven times that of non-Hispanic white males aged 65 years and older.
For American Indian/Alaskan Native women aged 25 to 44, overdose death rates were nearly twice of white women in the same age group, the CDC said.
Debra E. Houry, acting principal deputy director of the CDC, said in a Tuesday press conference that the disproportionate increase in overdose death rates within these two groups may be contributed to health inequities, such as unequal access to substance abuse treatment and treatment biases.
The report found that drug overdose death rates increased with higher county-level income inequality, particularly among Black people.
The CDC data showed the rate of overdose deaths to be more than twice as high in areas with the highest income inequality than in areas with the lowest income inequality.
According to the report, increased stigmatization, criminalization and lack of access to evidence-based treatments among minorities with substance use disorder have been “well-documented.”
Houry said by addressing systemic factors, such as a lack of awareness of lethal drugs and the limited access to treatment, recovery services and harm reduction actions that are “known to work,” could help end disparities in drug overdose deaths across the country.
“Health disparities can be prevented and all of society benefits,” Houry said at Tuesday’s conference.
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde, Texas, school board will meet in a special session Saturday to consider the recommendation to fire Police Chief Pete Arredondo for cause following widespread criticism of how he handled the response to the May school shooting.
The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District has recommended Arredondo be fired.
Arredondo is currently on leave while an investigation into the conduct of law enforcement at the shooting on May 24 takes place. Nineteen children and two teachers were killed in one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.
The discussion will occur in a closed session, but, legally, a determination to fire him would have to be publicly announced.
Despite the Uvalde school district’s active shooter plan calling for its police chief to assume command in the event of a shooting, Arredondo allegedly failed to take on the role of incident commander or transfer the responsibility to another officer on scene during the May 24 attack, according to a report issued this week by a joint committee of the Texas Legislature.
“The Uvalde CISD’s written active shooter plan directed its police chief to assume command and control the response to an active shooter,” according to the report.
Last month, Arredondo told The Texas Tribune he did not consider himself the commanding officer on the scene.
He also said that no one told him about the 911 calls that came in from students who were still alive in the classrooms during the 77 minutes before law enforcement breached a classroom door and killed the 18-year-old gunman.
“We responded to the information that we had and had to adjust to whatever we faced,” Arredondo said. “Our objective was to save as many lives as we could, and the extraction of the students from the classrooms by all that were involved saved over 500 of our Uvalde students and teachers before we gained access to the shooter and eliminated the threat.”
At an open forum hosted by the Uvalde school board Monday, parents and community members called on officials to fire Arredondo immediately, with some also calling for the firing of other members of Uvalde’s school district police force who were present during the shooting.
(WASHINGTON) — Steve Bannon, who served as former President Donald Trump’s chief strategist before departing the White House in August 2017, is on trial for defying a subpoena from the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
Bannon was subpoenaed by the Jan. 6 panel for records and testimony in September of last year, with the committee telling him it had “reason to believe that you have information relevant to understanding activities that led to and informed the events at the Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
After the House of Representatives voted to hold him in contempt for defying the subpoena, the Justice Department in November charged Bannon with two counts of criminal contempt of Congress, setting up this week’s trial.
Here is how the news is developing. All times are Eastern:
Jul 20, 11:17 AM EDT
Jan. 6 staffer says panel ‘rejected the basis’ for Bannon’s privilege claim
Kristin Amerling, a senior staffer on the House Jan. 6 committee, returned to the stand to continue her testimony from Tuesday. She testified that Bannon was clearly informed that any claims of privilege were rejected by the committee, and that his non-compliance “would force” the committee to refer the matter to the Justice Department for prosecution.
She said the subpoena issued to Bannon indicated he was “required to produce” records encompassing 17 specific categories, including records related to the Jan. 6 rally near the White House, his communications with Trump allies and several right-wing groups, his communications with Republican lawmakers, and information related to his “War Room” podcast.
The committee was seeking to understand “the relationships or potential relationships between different individuals and organizations that played a role in Jan. 6,” Amerling said. “We wanted to ask him what he knew.”
Asked by prosecutor Amanda Vaughn if Bannon provided any records to the committee by the deadline of 10 a.m. on Oct. 7, 2021, Amerling replied, “He did not.”
“Did the committee get anything more than radio silence by 10 a.m. on Oct. 7?” Vaughn asked.
“No,” said Amerling.
Amerling said that in a correspondence she received that day at about 5 p.m. — after the deadline had passed — Bannon’s attorney at the time, Robert Costello, claimed that Trump had “announced his intention to assert” executive privilege, which Costello said at the time rendered Bannon “unable to respond” to the subpoena “until these issues are resolved.”
But the next day, Amerling recalled on the stand, she sent Costello a letter from Jan. 6 committee chairman Bennie Thompson, “explaining that the committee rejected the basis that he had offered for refusing to comply.”
“Did the letter also tell the defendant he still had to comply?” Vaughn asked Amerling.
“Yes, it did.” Amerling said.
“Did the letter warn the defendant what might happen if he failed to comply with the subpoena?” Vaughn asked.
“Yes, it did,” said Amerling.
The letter was “establishing a clear record of the committee’s views, making sure the defendant was aware of that,” Amerling testified.
Jul 20, 10:06 AM EDT
Judge won’t let trial become ‘political circus,’ he says
Federal prosecutors in Steve Bannon’s contempt trial raised concerns with the judge that Bannon’s team has been suggesting to the jury that this is a “politically motivated prosecution” before the second day of testimony got underway Wednesday morning.
Before the jury was brought in, prosecutor Amanda Vaughn asked U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols to make sure the jury “doesn’t hear one more word about this case being” politically motivated, after she said the defense’s opening statement Tuesday had “clear implications” that the defense was making that claim.
Nichols had barred such arguments from the trial.
In response, defense attorney Evan Corcoran defended his opening statement, saying it “was clearly on the line.”
Nichols then made it clear that during trial, the defense team may ask witnesses questions about whether they themselves may be biased — “but may not ask questions about whether someone else was biased in an action they took outside this courtroom.”
“I do not intend for this to become a political case, a political circus,” Nichols said.
Speaking to reporters after the first full day in court, Bannon blasted members of the Jan. 6 committee and House Democrats for not showing up as witnesses in his trial.
“Where is Bennie Thompson?” asked Bannon regarding the Jan. 6 committee chairman. “He’s made it a crime, not a civil charge … have the guts and the courage to show up here and say exactly why it’s a crime.”
“I will promise you one thing when the Republicans that are sweeping to victory on Nov. 8 — starting in January, you’re going to get a real committee,” Bannon said. “We’re going to get a real committee with a ranking member who will be a Democrat … and this will be run
appropriately and the American people will get the full story.”
The first witness for the prosecution, Kristin Amerling of the Jan. 6 committee, testified that a subpoena is not voluntary.
Amerling, the Jan. 6 panel’s deputy staff director and chief counsel, read aloud the congressional resolution creating the committee and explained that the committee’s role is to recommend “corrective measures” to prevent future attacks like the one on Jan. 6.
“Is a subpoena voluntary in any way?” asked prosecutor Amanda Vaughn.
“No,” Amerling replied.
Amerling also discussed how important it is to get information in a timely manner because the committee’s authority runs out at the end of the year. “There is an urgency to the focus of the Select Committee’s work … we have a limited amount of time in which to gather information,” she said.
Amerling noted that Bannon was subpoenaed pretty early on in the committee’s investigation.
She said the committee subpoenaed Bannon in particular because public accounts indicated that Bannon tried to persuade the public that the 2020 election was “illegitimate”; that on his podcast the day before Jan. 6 he made statements “including that all hell was going to break loose, that suggested he might have some advance knowledge of the events of Jan. 6”; that he was involved in discussions with White House officials, including Trump himself, relating to “strategies surrounding the events of Jan. 6”; and that he had been involved in discussions in the days leading up to Jan. 6 with “private parties who had gathered in the Willard hotel in Washington, D.C., reportedly to discuss strategies around efforts to interfere with the peaceful transfer of power or overturning the election results.”
“Is that something that would have been relevant to the committee’s investigation?” Vaughn asked.
“Yes, because the Select Committee was tasked with trying to understand what happened on Jan. 6, and why,” Amerling replied.
Amerling will be back on the stand Wednesday morning when the trial resumes.
Jul 19, 3:55 PM EDT
Defense tells jury ‘there was no ignoring the subpoena’
Bannon’s defense attorney Matt “Evan” Corcoran said in his opening statement that “no one ignored the subpoena” issued to Bannon, and that “there was direct engagement by Bob Costello,” Bannon’s attorney, with the House committee, specifically committee staffer Kristin Amerling.
He said Costello “immediately” communicated to the committee that there was an objection to the subpoena, “and that Steve Bannon could not appear and that he could not provide documents.”
“So there was no ignoring the subpoena,” Corcoran said. What followed was “a considerable back and forth” between Amerling and Costello — “they did what two lawyers do, they negotiated.”
Corcoran said, “the government wants you to believe … that Mr. Bannon committed a crime by not showing up to a congressional hearing room … but the evidence is going to be crystal clear no one, no one believed Mr. Bannon was going to appear on Oct. 14, 2021,” and the reasons he couldn’t appear had been articulated to the committee.
Corcoran told the jury that the government has to prove beyond a reasonable that Steve Bannon willfully defaulted when he didn’t appear for the deposition on Oct. 14, 2021 — “but you’ll find from the evidence that that date on the subpoena was the subject of ongoing discussions” and it was not “fixed.”
In addition, Corcoran told jurors, you will hear that “almost every single one” of the witnesses subpoenaed led to negotiations between committee staff and lawyers, and often the appearance would be at a later date than what was on the subpoena.
Corcoran also argued that the prosecution may have been infected by politics, telling the jury that with each document or each statement provided at trial, they should ask themselves: “Is this piece of evidence affected by politics?”
Jul 19, 3:31 PM EDT
Prosecutors say Bannon’s failure to comply was deliberate
Continuing her opening statement, federal prosecutor Amanda Vaughn told the jury that the subpoena to Bannon directed him to provide documents by the morning of Oct. 7, 2021, and to appear for a deposition the morning of Oct. 14, 2021 — but instead he had an attorney, Robert Costello, send a letter to the committee informing the committee that he would not comply “in any way,” she said.
“The excuse the defendant gave for not complying” was the claim that “a privilege” meant he didn’t have to turn over certain information, Vaughn said. “[But] it’s not up to the defendant or anyone else to decide if he can ignore the [request] based on a privilege, it’s up to the committee.”
And, said Vaughn, the committee clearly told Bannon that “your privilege does not get you out of this one, you have to provide documents, and you have to come to your deposition.” And importantly, she said, the committee told Bannon that “a refusal to comply” could result in criminal prosecution.
“You will see, the defendant’s failure to comply was deliberate here,” Vaughn told the jury. “The only verdict that is supported by the evidence here: that the defendant showed his contempt for the U.S. Congress, and that he’s guilty.”
Federal prosecutor Amanda Vaughn began opening statements by saying, “In September of last year, Congress needed information from the defendant, Steve Bannon. … Congress needed to know what the defendant knew about the events of Jan. 6, 2021. … Congress had gotten information that the defendant might have some details about the events leading up to that day and what occurred that day.”
So, Vaughn told the jury, Congress gave Bannon a subpoena “that mandated” he provide any information he might have.
“Congress was entitled to the information it sought, it wasn’t optional,” Vaughn said. “But as you will learn in this trial, the defendant refused to hand over the information he might have.”
Vaughn said Bannon ignored “multiple warnings” that he could face criminal prosecution for refusing to comply with the subpoena and for preventing the government from getting “important information.”
“The defendant decided he was above the law and decided he didn’t need to follow the government’s orders,” she said.
Jul 19, 2:51 PM EDT
Judge instructs jury of the burden of proof
Prior to opening statements, the judge made clear to the jury that the Justice Department has the burden to prove four distinct elements “beyond a reasonable doubt”:
(1) that Bannon was in fact subpoenaed for testimony and/or documents;
(2) that the testimony and/or documents were “pertinent” to the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation;
(3) that Bannon “failed to comply or refused to comply” with the subpoena;
(4) that the “failure or refusal to comply was willful.”
Jul 19, 2:44 PM EDT
Jury sworn in after judge denies continuance
A 14-member jury has been sworn in for the contempt trial of ex-Trump strategist Steve Bannon.
Of the 14 jurors, nine are men and five are women.
The swearing-in of the jury comes after U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols denied the defense’s request for a one-month delay of the trial, which attorneys for Bannon argued was necessary due to a “seismic shift in the understanding of the parties” of what the government’s evidence will be.
“We have a jury that is just about picked,” Nichols said in denying the request for a one-month continuance.
One of the jurors, a man who works for an appliance company, said Monday during jury selection that he watched the first Jan. 6 committee hearing and believes the committee is “trying to find the truth about what happened” on Jan. 6.
Another juror, a man who works as a maintenance manager for the Washington, D.C., Parks and Recreation department, said he believes what happened on Jan. 6 “doesn’t make sense.”
Another juror, a woman who works as a photographer for NASA, said “a lot” of her “photographer friends were at the Capitol” on Jan. 6, and she has watched some of the Jan. 6 hearings on the news.
(WASHINGTON) — Ukraine’s first lady Olena Zelenska, highlighting the civilian victims of war in her country, implored Congress to provide additional weapons and air defense systems to Ukraine as Russia’s invasion heads into its sixth month.
“You help us and your help is very strong,” Zelenska said in a rare address by a first lady to U.S. lawmakers on Wednesday, via a translator. “While Russia kills, America saves, and you should know about it. But unfortunately, the war is not over.”
The Ukrainian first lady arrived at the Capitol Visitors Center Congressional Auditorium with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi shortly after 11 a.m. on Wednesday. Pelosi introduced Zelenska, stating the Congress is “honored” to welcome her from the war zone.
Zelenska’s remarks came as Vladimir Putin’s forces ramp up attacks and missile strikes on Ukraine’s eastern and southern regions.
“Usually the wives of the president are exclusively engaged in peaceful affairs — education, human rights, equality, accessibility — and maybe you expected from me to speak on those topics,” she said. “But how can I talk about them when an unprovoked, invasive terrorist war is being waged against my country?”
“Russia is destroying our people,” she said.
The first lady spoke about the conflict’s toll on women and children. She has been separated from her husband, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, for much of the time since the war broke out in February.
She told lawmakers she wanted to address them not just as politicians but as mothers, fathers, sons and daughters as she displayed images of some of the children killed in the conflict — including a 4-year-old named Liza who was killed in a Russian missile strike in the city of Vinnytsia last week.
While the slideshow of war casualties played behind her, Zelenska told lawmakers: “Those are Russia’s ‘hunger games’ — hunting for peaceful people in peaceful cities of Ukraine.”
A photograph of Liza’s stroller on the ground after the attack was shown to lawmakers on the screen behind Zelenska.
“I’m asking for air defense systems in order for rockets not to kill children in their strollers, in order for rockets not to destroy children’s rooms and kill entire families,” she said.
Lawmakers in May passed a $40 billion aid package to Ukraine for military and economic assistance.
Zelenska made many stops in Washington this week, holding meetings with high-profile officials including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and U.S. Agency for International Development Administrator Samantha Power.
On Tuesday, she met with U.S. first lady Jill Biden at the White House for a bilateral meeting.
President Zelesnkyy said on Tuesday he expects from his wife’s visit “significant results for Ukraine in cooperation with America. It is important right now.”
“I really believe that it will be heard by those on whom decision-making in the US depends,” Zelenskyy said of his wife’s address to Congress.
Zelenskyy addressed U.S. lawmakers himself virtually in March, receiving a standing ovation after invoking Pearl Harbor in his plea for additional military aid.
(NEW YORK) — More than half of the guns seized on the streets of a dozen American cities after being used in crimes were made by five manufacturers, according to data released Wednesday by the mayors of those cities.
The group is gathered in New York for a summit on preventing gun violence.
The top manufacturer of recovered guns is Glock in nine of the 12 cities. On average, more than one and a half times more Glocks were recovered than the second-leading manufacturer in each of those nine cities.
Five gun manufacturers accounted for over half of the guns recovered: Glock (16.6%), Taurus (12.4%), Smith & Wesson (11.8%), Ruger (6.5%) and Polymer80 (3.8%). These five manufacturers accounted for nearly 10,000 guns recovered in crimes in 2021.
“We’re dealing with the same problem: a $9 billion industry turning their profits into our pain,” New York Mayor Eric Adams told ABC News in an appearance on Good Morning America with the mayors of Buffalo, New York; Little Rock, Arkansas; and St. Louis.
“Over 110 people are killed by guns every day in our country,” Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said. “Something has to be done.”
The mayors have convened to discuss strategies to combat gun violence and “to get that gun before it hits our streets,” Adams said.
Putting a focus on the manufacturers is deliberate, St. Louis Mayor Tishaura Jones said.
“If this were any other industry that was as deadly then the government would have already acted to make sure that we got rid of whatever was killing our citizens,” Jones said. “We haven’t seen that action from the federal government so we have to look at the root causes and try to cure gun violence in our cities.”
Absent additional federal action, Little Rock Mayor Frank Scott said it is left to local leaders to solve the problem.
“Any of us at any point in time will receive a phone call about a homicide and 99.9% of the time it relates to a gun,” Scott said. “We have to address the guns.”
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 20, 11:42 AM EDT
Zelenska shares photos of killed civilians in her address to Congress
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska spoke to members of Congress on Capitol Hill Wednesday, saying, “Usually the wives of president are exclusively engaged in peaceful affairs: education, human rights, equality, accessibility. And maybe you expected for me to speak on those topics. But how can I talk about them when an unprovoked invasive terrorist war is being waged against my country?”
Zelenska said this marks the first time the wife of a president of a foreign county addressed members of Congress on the Hill.
Zelenska showed members of Congress several images and stories of carnage impacting civilians, including a photo of 4-year-old Liza who was killed by a Russian missile attack last week.
Liza’s mother was seriously hurt, and “for several days, nobody dared to tell her that Liza has died,” Zelenska said.
She highlighted an Odesa family who lost three generations of women to one missile, and a 96-year-old who survived Nazi concentration camps only to be killed in Kharkiv.
The first lady asked Congress to supply more air defense systems.
“Will my son be able to return to school in the fall? I don’t know, like millions of mothers in Ukraine. Will my daughter will be able to go to university at the beginning of the academic year and experience normal student life? I cannot answer,” she said. “We will have answers if we had air defense systems.”
“America, unfortunately, knows from its own experience what terrorist attacks are and has always sought to defeat terrorists. Help us to stop this terror against Ukrainians,” she said.
Zelenska received a standing ovation after her remarks.
Jul 20, 9:05 AM EDT
US announces four new HIMARS and more ammo for Ukraine
The U.S. will send four more HIMARS advanced rocket systems to Ukraine as part of the new presidential drawdown package coming later this week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced Wednesday.
Once these four long-range rocket artillery systems arrive, Ukraine will have a total of 16 HIMARS at its disposal.
Austin said these advanced rocket systems “have made such a difference on the battlefield.”
The new package will also include more ammunition for the HIMARS and for the 155 mm artillery weapons the U.S. and other countries have sent to Ukraine, Austin said at the fourth Ukraine defense contact group meeting, with leaders from roughly 50 nations in virtual attendance.
Austin praised the United Kingdom, Germany and Poland in particular for helping Ukraine boost its ability to hit faraway targets.
Jul 19, 2:28 PM EDT
Ukrainian first lady visits White House
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden greeted Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska at the White House Tuesday afternoon.
Zelenska was presented with a bouquet of flowers in Ukrainian colors: yellow sunflowers, blue hydrangeas and white orchids.
Oksana Markarova, the Ukrainian ambassador to the U.S., arrived with Zelenska.
Jill Biden and second gentleman Doug Emhoff then held a bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian delegation. Jill Biden said they’ll discuss mental health issues for mothers and children who have “suffered such tragedy and the atrocities” during the war.
Zelenska will address Congress on Wednesday.
-ABC News’ John Parkinson
Jul 19, 8:25 AM EDT
US weapons help stabilize frontline, Ukrainian official says
Ukrainian forces have “stabilized” the situation along the frontline in the eastern and south-eastern regions of the country, in large part thanks to U.S.-supplied HIMARS rocket launchers, the Ukrainian military said on Monday.
“We managed to stabilize the situation. It is complex, intense, but completely controlled,” Valery Zaluzhny, the commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Armed Forces, said.
An important factor contributing to Ukraine’s retention of its defensive lines and positions is the timely arrival of U.S. supplied M142 HIMARS — High Mobility Artillery Rocket System — rocket launchers, Zaluzhny added. These highly precise and modern weapons have been delivering “targeted strikes” on Russian “control points, ammunition and fuel storage depots,” the top commander added.
Ukrainian troops struck a Russian military facility in the area of an asphalt plant in the eastern town of Nova Kakhovka on Monday, Ukrainian military officials said. Ukrainian forces also hit an administrative building and a hangar filled with Russian fuel tankers in the southern town of Beryslav, killing more than 100 Russian soldiers, the Ukrainian military said on Monday.
Russian forces shelled the town of Nikopol in the Dnipropetrovsk region about 40 times on Monday night, local authorities said. Explosions were also reported in the Odesa region, injuring several civilians. Russian troops also fired cluster shells at the city of Mykolaiv late on Monday.
Russia’s stated immediate objective is to seize all of the Donetsk region, the UK Ministry of Defence said on Tuesday. Even if Russian troops make further territorial gains, the tempo of their advance is likely to be very slow, the ministry added.
Russian units, severely under-manned, face a dilemma between deploying more forces to the Donbas or defending against Ukrainian counter-attacks in the Kherson area, the observers said.
Jul 18, 4:20 PM EDT
Ukraine’s first lady to meet with Jill Biden
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska will meet with first lady Jill Biden in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Biden’s office said, one day before Zelenska addresses Congress.
Jul 18, 1:45 PM EDT
Ukraine’s first lady to address Congress on Wednesday
Ukrainian first lady Olena Zelenska will make remarks Wednesday before members of Congress on Capitol Hill, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced.
All members of the House and Senate are invited to the event, which is set for 11 a.m ET.
Jul 18, 8:56 AM EDT
Russia orders troops to eliminate Ukraine’s long-range missiles
Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu has visited the East group of Russian forces involved in the fighting in Ukraine and ordered his troops to eliminate the Ukrainian army’s long-range missiles and artillery ammunition it uses to shell targets in the Donbas region, the Russian Defense Ministry said on Monday.
Shoigu instructed the group’s commander to give priority to the use of precision-guided weapons to destroy Ukraine’s long-range missile and artillery assets, the ministry added. Russia has accused Ukraine of using its long-range weapons to shell residential neighborhoods in Donbas communities and set fire to wheat fields and grain storage facilities.
Ukrainian officials said Russian missiles struck targets across much of eastern Ukraine on Sunday and early Monday.
Six people were killed in the town of Toretsk in the Donetsk region after Russian shelling, the state emergency service said. Missiles also struck civilian infrastructure, including a school in the Dnipropetrovsk and Odesa regions.
Russia also carried out 55 strikes on the Sumy region on Sunday. Around 60 projectiles landed in Nikopol, a dozen residential buildings were damaged and one elderly woman was wounded, local officials said.
The southern city of Mykolaiv was subjected to a massive missile strike in the early hours of Sunday as 10 missiles, presumably launched by an S-300 system, hit various parts of town.
Russian officials said on Monday that no clear timeframes have been set for the war in Ukraine, and priority should be given to its efficiency.
“We have no doubts that the special military operation will be completed after all of its objectives are attained. There are no clear timeframes, what counts most is this operation’s efficiency,” Russian presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said as quoted by Russian media.
Officials from the self-proclaimed Donetsk People’s Republic claimed on Monday that DPR territory will be liberated from the Ukrainian military this year.
“The liberation of Donbas will be completed this year,” Eduard Basurin, deputy head of the police department of the DPR, said according to Russian media.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Yulia Drozd, and Max Uzol
Jul 17, 6:20 PM EDT
Number of Ukrainian public officials accused of treason, collaborating with Russia: Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said the former head of the Security Service of Ukraine, or SBU, in Crimea, who was dismissed in the beginning of the Russian invasion, has been notified he is being charged with treason.
“Everyone who together with him was part of a criminal group that worked in the interests of the Russian Federation will also be held accountable,” Zelenskyy said during his evening address Sunday. “It is about the transfer of secret information to the enemy and other facts of cooperation with the Russian special services.”
A number of Ukrainian public officials have been notified they will be charged for treason and for collaborating with Russia.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
Jul 17, 2:20 PM EDT
‘Evil cannot win’: Priest breaks down at funeral for 4-year-old Ukrainian girl
A funeral service was held Sunday for a 4-year-old girl with Down syndrome who was among two dozen Ukrainian civilian’s killed last week in a Russian missile attack in the west-central Ukrainian town of Vinnytsia.
During the open-casket funeral for Liza Dmytrieva, a Ukrainian Orthodox priest broke down in tears as he told the little girl’s father and other relatives, “evil cannot win,” according to The Associated Press.
Liza was pushing a stroller in a park as she and her mother were headed to a speech therapist appointment when the attack unfolded Thursday afternoon in Vinnytsia, a city close to the front lines in west-central Ukraine, officials said.
The girl and 23 others Ukrainian civilians were killed, including two boys ages 7 and 8. At least 200 other civilians, including Liza’s mother, were injured, officials said.
“Look, my flower! Look how many people came to you,” Liza’s grandmother, Larysa Dmytryshyna, said, as she caressed the child lying in an open casket filled with teddy bears and flowers.
Orthodox priest Vitalii Holoskevych gave the eulogy at Liza’s funeral struggling through tears.
“I didn’t know Liza, but no person can go through this with calm because every burial is grief for each of us,” Holoskevych said. “We are losing our brothers and sisters.”
Jul 15, 10:01 AM EDT
Grandma of 4-year-old girl killed in missile strike: ‘I hate them all’
The grandmother of a 4-year-old girl killed in Thursday’s Russian missile attack in Vinnytsia told ABC News, “They took the most precious [person] I had in my life.”
Four-year-old Liza was among 23 people, including three children, killed in the strike.
Liza’s grandmother, Larysa Dmytryshyna, called her a “wonderfully sunny child.”
“She was the most wonderful girl in the world and it is so painful that her mother cannot even bury her,” she said.
Asked how she feels about Russia, Dmytryshyna, replied, “I hate them all.”
“We did not ask them to come here. They have caused so much sorrow,” she said of the Russians. “I would give my own life to extinguish the entire country.”
-ABC News’ Tom Soufi Burridge, Ibtissem Guenfoud and Natalya Kushnir
Jul 15, 9:04 AM EDT
Demand for artificial limbs surges in Ukraine
One of Ukraine’s leading medical experts on developing prosthetic limbs for amputees says there has been a dramatic surge in demand for artificial arms and legs since Russia invaded Ukraine.
Dr. Oleksandr Stetsenko told ABC News that financial support or donations of prosthetic parts are needed from abroad to meet the increased demand.
External support, he said, is vital so that people have the chance to continue with their lives.
“With good prosthetics people can come back to life again,” Stetsenko told ABC News.
There is currently no official figure for how many people in Ukraine have undergone surgery to remove limbs because of injuries sustained from the war but Dr. Stetsenko estimates that around 500 people have had limbs amputated since the end of February with the majority of those cases being soldiers and around a fifth being civilians.
While the number of patients in Ukraine needing artificial limbs has increased, the domestic supply of components to make prosthetic arms and legs has reduced.
That is because a third of the companies which were previously producing components in Ukraine are now located in territory which has recently been occupied by Russian forces or in areas near to the frontline, according to the Ukrainian Ministry of Health.
A director at the health ministry, Oleksandra Mashkevych, confirmed that Ukraine is no longer able “to cover all of the demand relating to artificial limbs.”
Mashkevych told ABC News that children who need artificial limbs are sent abroad to Europe or to the United States and that around 20 children in Ukraine are thought to have had limbs amputated since the start of the war in February.
-ABC News’ Tom Soufi Burridge, Ibtissem Guenfoud, Natalya Kushnir and Kuba Kaminski
Jul 15, 6:49 AM EDT
Unprecedented rescue operation underway in Vinnytsia
At least 18 people are still missing after a deadly missile strike on downtown Vinnytsia in central Ukraine on Thursday, the Ukrainian National Police said.
Three Russian Kalibr missiles launched from a submarine struck an office building and damaged nearby residential buildings in Vinnytsia, located about 155 miles southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, on Thursday morning.
At least 23 people — including 3 children — died in the attack, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said, and more than a 100 were wounded, some critically. The bodies of 2 children and 11 adults were yet to be identified on Friday morning, local authorities said.
The strike in the heart of Vinnytsia is “part of a systematic Russian campaign of attacks on residential areas of cities in Ukraine”, the Institute for the Study of War said.
The search continued on Friday morning for at least 18 people who were still missing after the attack. The ongoing rescue operation has been unprecedented in its scale, local officials said, with more than 1,000 rescuers and 200 pieces of equipment being involved in clearing the rubble and searching for those still missing.
Several dozen people were reportedly detained in Vinnytsia on Thursday for questioning under the suspicion of acting as local spotters or aimers on the ground for the Russian strikes.
The eastern city of Mykolaiv also reported 10 powerful explosions on Friday morning. The city’s two biggest universities were hit in the attack, wounding at least four people, local authorities said. Russia also struck a hotel and a shopping mall in Mykolaiv on Thursday.
Russian shelling also targeted Kharkiv, another eastern city, on Thursday night. Local officials claimed 2 schools were damaged in the attack.
The European Union and the United Nations strongly condemned Russia for what the EU called a “long series of brutal attacks against civilians.”
Russia’s missile strikes hit more than 17,000 facilities of civilian infrastructure as opposed to around 300 military facilities since the start of the war, Ukrainian officials said on Thursday.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Yulia Drozd, Fidel Pavlenko and Yuriy Zaliznyak
Jul 14, 4:02 PM EDT
Russian missile strike kills at least 23 in Vinnytsia
Russian missiles hit the heart of the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday morning, killing at least 23 people and wounding dozens, according to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service.
Three children were among the dead, the agency said.
The missiles struck an office building and damaged nearby residential buildings in Vinnytsia, located about 155 miles southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The strike also ignited a massive fire that engulfed 50 cars in an adjacent parking lot, according to the National Police of Ukraine. Burned-out vehicles are peppered with holes from the missiles.
The State Emergency Service said about 115 victims in Vinnytsia needed medical attention, with 64 people hospitalized — including 34 in severe condition and five in critical.
Forty-two people are listed as missing, the agency said.
Many Ukrainians moved to Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv, to get away from the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Until now, Vinnytsia had been seen as a city of relative safety.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “an open act of terrorism” on civilians.
“Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, directing missiles at civilian objects. Where there is no military (targets). What is it if not an open act of terrorism?” Zelenskyy said in a statement via Telegram on Thursday.
War crimes investigators are at the scene studying missile fragments.
Russian missile strikes targeted several other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday and early Thursday, including Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv.
At least 12 people died in the Zaporizhia strike, which hit two industrial workshops on Wednesday, according to local authorities.
At least five civilians were killed and 30 others injured in Mykolaiv on Wednesday after Russian missiles destroyed a hotel and a shopping mall, the local mayor said. The southern Ukrainian city was shelled again on Thursday morning, but no casualties were immediately reported.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Fidel Pavlenko, Max Uzol, and Yulia Drozd
Jul 14, 1:49 PM EDT
At least 18 Russian filtration camps along Russia-Ukraine border
Michael Carpenter, the U.S. ambassador to the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, is calling the forcible relocation of Ukrainians to Russian filtration camps is “a war crime.”
In an interview with ABC News Live on Thursday, Carpenter said the Russians are “trying to take away Ukrainians who might have Ukrainian civic impulses, who are patriots, who want to defend their country.” Carpenter said the Russians want to “erase Ukrainian identity” and “the Ukrainian nation state, as the entity that governs people’s lives in these regions.”
Carpenter said there are at least 18 filtration camps along the Russia-Ukraine border, adding that it’s impossible to get an exact total because many are located in Russia’s far east.
-ABC News’ Malka Abramoff
Jul 14, 12:04 PM EDT
Russian missile strike kills at least 17 in Vinnytsia
Russian missiles hit the heart of the central Ukrainian city of Vinnytsia on Thursday morning, killing at least 17 people and wounding more than 30 others, according to the Prosecutor General’s Office of Ukraine.
Two children were among the dead, the prosecutor’s office said.
The missiles struck an office building and damaged nearby residential buildings in Vinnytsia, located about 155 miles southwest of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv. The strike also ignited a massive fire that engulfed 50 cars in an adjacent parking lot, according to the National Police of Ukraine. Burned-out vehicles are peppered with holes from the missiles.
The national police said about 90 victims in Vinnytsia sought medical attention, and 50 of them are in serious condition.
Many Ukrainians moved to Vinnytsia, a city southwest of Kyiv, to get away from the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Until now, Vinnytsia had been seen as a city of relative safety.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called the attack “an open act of terrorism” on civilians.
“Every day Russia is destroying the civilian population, killing Ukrainian children, directing missiles at civilian objects. Where there is no military (targets). What is it if not an open act of terrorism?” Zelenskyy said in a statement via Telegram on Thursday.
War crimes investigators are at the scene studying missile fragments.
Russian missile strikes targeted several other Ukrainian cities on Wednesday and early Thursday, including Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Mykolaiv.
At least 12 people died in the Zaporizhia strike, which hit two industrial workshops on Wednesday, according to local authorities.
At least five civilians were killed and 30 others injured in Mykolaiv on Wednesday after Russian missiles destroyed a hotel and a shopping mall, the local mayor said. The southern Ukrainian city was shelled again on Thursday morning, but no casualties were immediately reported.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Fidel Pavlenko, Max Uzol, and Yulia Drozd
Jul 13, 6:30 PM EDT
State Department aware of reports on another American detained by Russian proxies
The State Department said Wednesday it is aware of unconfirmed reports that another American has been detained by pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine.
The statement follows a [report from the Guardian] () on 35-year-old Suedi Murekezi, who is believed to have gone missing in Ukraine in early June.
According to the Guardian, Murekezi was able to make contact with a family member on July 7 and told them he was being held in the same prison as Alexander Drueke and Andy Tai Ngoc Huynh, two American veterans captured while volunteering for Ukrainian forces. Murekezi has lived in Ukraine since 2020 and was falsely accused of participating in pro-Ukraine protests, according to the report.
“We have been in contact with the Ukrainian and Russian authorities regarding U.S. citizens who may have been captured by Russia’s forces or proxies while fighting in Ukraine,” a State Department spokesperson said Wednesday. “We call on Russia to live up to its international obligations to treat all individuals captured fighting with Ukraine’s armed forces as prisoners of war.”
Another American — Grady Kurpasi — is also missing in Ukraine. A family spokesperson said the veteran was last seen fighting with Ukrainian forces in late April and is feared to have been either killed or captured.
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 13, 8:27 AM EDT
Shelling continues throughout Donbas region
Shelling from both Russian and Ukrainian forces caused damage to the landscape and destroyed structures throughout the Donbas region on Tuesday and Wednesday, local officials said.
Russian strikes reportedly targeted the eastern town of Bakhmut, killing one person and wounding 5 others, the local governor said. Explosions were heard in several nearby towns too, with one missile falling near a kindergarten.
Shelling also continued in Izyum, Mykolayiv and Kharkiv on Tuesday. Russian troops reportedly conducted unsuccessful attacks north of Slovyansk and the town of Siversk on Tuesday, despite repeated rhetoric of an “operational pause” that Russia allegedly maintains, the Institute for the Study of War said in its latest report.
Russian forces continue to bomb critical areas in preparation for future ground offensive, with air and artillery strikes reported along the majority of the frontline, the experts added.
Ukrainian forces on Tuesday responded to the Russian attacks and claimed to have destroyed six Russian military facilities on occupied Ukrainian territories. Ukrainian officials claimed to have destroyed several ammunition depots, as well as a larger military unit.
Russian media reported on Tuesday that Ukrainian troops launched a “massive attack” on an air defense unit in the Luhansk region.
Ukrainian military officials also claimed to have killed at least 30 Russian troops on Tuesday, along with destroying a howitzer and a multiple rocket launcher, among other weaponry.
But the U.K. Defense Ministry in its latest intelligence update said it still expects Russian forces to “focus on taking several small towns during the coming weeks” in the Donbas region.
These towns are on the approaches to the larger cities of Slovyansk and Kramatorsk that likely remain the principal objectives for this phase of the Russian military operation, the ministry said.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Max Uzol, Yulia Drozd and Yuriy Zaliznyak
Jul 12, 10:27 PM EDT
US transfers $1.7 billion in economic assistance to Ukrainian government
The United States transferred $1.7 billion to Ukraine’s government Tuesday, the Treasury Department announced.
It’s the second tranche of money the Treasury transferred to Ukraine’s government as part of $7.5 billion approved for this purpose in the $40 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed and President Joe Biden signed into law in May.
It’ll go, in part, to helping Ukraine’s government provide “essential health care services” and health care workers’ salaries, the Treasury Department said.
The U.S. transferred the first tranche, $1.3 billion, to Ukraine’s government two weeks ago.
-ABC News Benjamin Gittleson
Jul 12, 1:59 AM EDT
Ukraine destroys Russian ammo depot in occupied Kherson region
Ukrainian forces hit and likely destroyed a Russian ammunition depot in the Russian-occupied town of Nova Kakhovka in the Kherson region on Monday night, local officials said.
The strike resulted in a massive blast, videos of which soon circulated online. According to local reports, more than 40 trucks filled with gasoline were destroyed. Russian media didn’t verify the claims, saying instead that pro-Russian forces had destroyed a series of saltpeter warehouses.
“People’s windows are blown out, but they are still happy … because this means that the Ukrainian Armed Forces are close,” Sergey Khlan, from the Kherson Regional Military Administration, said in the aftermath of the attack.
Monday’s strike marked at least the fourth time Ukrainian forces destroyed ammunition depots in Nova Kakhovka, local media reported.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Tatiana Rymarenko, Max Uzol and Yulia Drozd
