(NEW YORK) — National attention turns next to the South as Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia and Texas voters head to the polls on Tuesday, rounding out a consequential string of May contests.
Months-long, sometimes contentious battles to be governor, attorney general, secretary of state and for U.S. Senate and House seats will come to a head. The results should give more insight into the strength of former President Donald Trump’s endorsement with the Republican base as well as conservative voters’ appetite for election lies.
The most-watched races will be in Georgia, an emerging battleground state, with primaries for governor and the Senate that will preview closely fought races come November’s midterms.
At the top of the ticket — where he hopes to stay — sits incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp, an establishment Republican who shot to national prominence after the 2020 election when he refused to promulgate Trump’s debunked theory of a stolen election. Happy to take up that drumbeat, though, is Kemp’s challenger David Perdue, a former senator who lost to Jon Ossoff but who has embraced a MAGA-edge in his campaigning to return to office.
Perdue has spent most of his time on the trail pushing for sweeping electoral change, parroting Trump’s debunked talking points about voter fraud and a somehow-stole election. Despite Trump’s endorsement, though, Perdue’s message hasn’t seemed to stick with primary voters, at least not according to recent polling that shows Kemp with a major lead.
Trump-backed “big lie” believers continue down-ballot with Republican secretary of state candidate Rep. Jody Hice, who has said he would look to decertify the last presidential election — an extraordinarily undemocratic move that further highlights the possible ramifications of such candidates taking control of election administration.
Polling puts Hice in a neck-and-neck battle with incumbent Ben Raffensperger, who like Kemp was a popular establishment Republican-turned-enemy of the former president for refusing to act on the 2020 election conspiracy.
Not only are these races a test of Trump’s endorsement, they will also indicate how enthusiastically Georgia GOP voters will embrace the election mistrust that has become central to Trump’s pitch.
Another high-profile race is the GOP Senate primary, with the Trump-approved Herschel Walker leading the pack. Walker — a businessman and college football legend in Georgia — has been press shy, in part perhaps due to his headline-making past, including allegations of violent behavior and his diagnosis with dissociative identity disorder, or D.I.D., a complex mental health condition characterized by some severe and potentially debilitating symptoms.
Walker has denied some of the past allegations of domestic violence, physical threats and stalking; others he claimed not to remember. His campaign referred ABC News to his 2008 memoir, which detailed his D.I.D. diagnosis, and a 2008 interview he did with ABC News in which he discussed its effects on his marriage.
Democrats have two candidates who are likely to sail to victory Tuesday, with Stacey Abrams again up for governor — eyeing a possible rematch with Kemp in November — and Sen. Raphael Warnock up for re-election.
Across state lines in Alabama will see similar primary matchups for governor and an open Senate seat.
The three-way contest for the Senate slot evolved significantly over the campaign cycle: Rep. Mo Brooks earned Trump’s endorsement early in the race, only to have Trump withdraw it two months ago following disagreements over 2020 election claims.
Trump’s rescinded backing could prove consequential as Brooks now trails in the polls behind Katie Britt — a former chief of staff for retiring GOP Sen. Richard Shelby. Businessman Mike Durant was polling ahead of both candidates at certain points during the race but is now behind Britt and Brooks after Brooks saw a final-hour surge in recent voter surveys.
Brooks may still be campaigning off of Trump’s name, however. Campaign mailers obtained by the Alabama Political Reporter feature quotes from Trump during the time he supported Brooks.
Earlier this month, Brooks said he wouldn’t cooperate with the House’s Jan. 6 committee and was subpoenaed shortly thereafter. (He had spoken at the rally earlier on Jan. 6, 2021, before deadly rioting broke out at the U.S. Capitol; he has continued to try to delegitimize the 2020 election results.)
“I wouldn’t help Nancy Pelosi and Liz Cheney cross the street — I’m definitely not going to help them and their partisan Witch Hunt Committee,” Brooks previously told ABC News. “At this moment in time, right before an Alabama U.S. Senate election, if they want to talk, they’re gonna have to send me a subpoena, which I will fight.”
Brooks’ soon-to-be vacant House seat is a contest between former Trump Assistant Army Secretary Casey Wardynski, endorsed by the House Freedom Caucus, and Madison County Commissioner Dale Strong. Strong has been outraising Wardynski.
Another matchup in Alabama will be between incumbent Republican Gov. Kay Ivey and several primary challengers. That race — previously expected to be won handily by Ivey — has grown more combative after a term where Ivey bent away from some GOP messaging surrounding COVID-19 and gas taxes.
Lindy Blanchard, a former Trump-appointed ambassador running in the primary, called Ivey a “tax-hiking Fauci-loving” liberal in a recent ad. Ivey is also being challenged by the son of former Gov. Fob James — businessman Tim James — as well as former Morgan County Commissioner Stacy Lee George, pastor Dean Odle and others.
In Arkansas, races are shaping up to be somewhat less competitive. Former Trump White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders is the clear front-runner in a race where she’s eclipsing her competitors in fundraising and also received Trump’s endorsement. She’s up against Doc Washburn, the former host of a radio show in Little Rock.
Trump-backed Sen. John Boozman is on track to be reelected against several primary challenges, including from Army veteran and former NFL player Jake Bequette.
And in Texas, voters will decide more of the their 2022 nominees on Tuesday, determining the results of the runoff elections from the March 1 primaries.
The GOP race for attorney general is between incumbent Ken Paxton and Land Commissioner George W. Bush, a member of the state’s most prominent political family.
Paxton’s vulnerability from scandals — including indictment for securities fraud, FBI investigations into malfeasance and marital infidelity, among others, even as he has denied all allegations — will be tested against the grandson of former President George H.W. Bush and nephew of former President George W. Bush in a party that is more and more anathema to the Bushes’ brand of conservatism.
Tuesday’s sole competitive Democratic race will be in Texas. Progressive Jessica Cisneros, endorsed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., will face nine-term Congressman Henry Cuellar in the run-off election in the 28th district.
Sanders traveled to Texas to stump for Cisneros on Friday in a last-ditch effort to defeat Cuellar, the sole pro-life Democrat in Congress.
(NEW YORK) — The number of births increased in the United States for the first time in seven years, according to a new federal report.
Provisional data published Tuesday from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found there were 3,659,289 babies born in 2021, a 1% increase from 2020.
It also marks the first rise in births since 2014. Prior to this report, the number of births had been decreasing by an average of 2% per year.
The report did not explain why the number of births increased, but Pew Research Center polls have suggested Americans delayed having babies during the first year of the pandemic due to public health and economic uncertainty, so the rising number could be the result of a rebound.
“When it comes to changes in fertility behavior, we’re limited,” Dr. Brady Hamilton, from the NCHS Division of Vital Statistics and lead author of the report, told ABC News. “That’s where you need a survey about what’s behind the decision-making process.”
The report also showed the fertility rate — the number of live births per 1,000 women between the ages 15 and 44 — was 56.6. This is up from 56 in 2020 and the first increase since 2014, according to the CDC.
However, the total fertility rate — the number of births a hypothetical group of 1,000 people would have over their lifetimes — was 1,663.5 births per 1,000 women.
This is still below what experts refer to as replacement level, the level a population needs to replace itself, which is 2,100 births per 1,000 women.
The team found birth rates among women aged 25 and older increased while decreasing for those aged 24 and younger.
“That sort of suggests [that] when we saw the decline in births from 2019 to 2020, probably a lot of births were postponed,” Hamilton said. “People were waiting to see what happened [with the pandemic] and rates rose in older women as they may have proceeded to have that child.”
Among teenagers aged 15 to 19, the rate of birth declined 6% from 15.4 per 1,000 to 14.4 per 1,000 — a record low for this age group.
Teenage births have been continuously falling since 2007 by an average of about 7% through last year.
“When you look at it across time, that’s a 77% decline since 1991 and 65% decline since 2017. That’s astonishing,” Hamilton said. “That’s certainly good news. And it will be interesting to see when we go into next year if it continues on.”
Meanwhile, for tweens and teens aged 10 to 14, the rate of birth was 0.2 per 1,000, which is unchanged since 2015, the report found.
Additionally, researchers also looked at births by race and found that white and Hispanic women each saw the number of births increase by about 2% from 2020 to 2021.
Meanwhile, Black and Asian women saw the number of births decline by 2.4% and 2.5%, respectively, over the same period, while American Indian/Alaskan Native women saw their numbers fall by 3.2%.
The report also examined the type of delivery and how early the babies were born.
Data showed that 32.1% of babies were born via cesarean delivery in 2021, up from 31.8% in 2020 and the second increase in a row after the rates had declined from 2009 to 2019.
The percentage of C-sections increased among all racial and ethnic groups, with the highest seen among Black women, from 36.3% to 36.8%.
While C-sections can lower the risk of death in women with high-risk pregnancies, they are associated with complications such as infection or blood clots, according to the Cleveland Clinic.
The preterm birth rate also rose by 4% in 2021 from 10.09% to 10.48%, which is the highest reported rate since 2007. Increases were seen in babies born early preterm, which is before 34 weeks gestation, and later preterm, which is 34 to 37 weeks gestation.
Premature babies are at a greater risk for problems with feeding, breathing, vision and hearing, as well as behavioral issues.
“Whenever you see an increase in preterm births, that’s concerning,” Joyce Martin, from the Division of Vital Statistics and co-author of the report, told ABC News. “And we saw an increase in early-term babies, and they’re at greater risk than later-term babies of not surviving the first year of life.”
Martin said it’s not clear what’s behind the rise in preterm birth rates but said mothers younger than 18 and older than 35 are more likely to have premature babies.
“And we did see an increase in older moms’ birth rates. It’s not clear if it influences this change yet,” she said.
(NEW YORK) — When a disgruntled employee opened fire in the parking lot of a FedEx distribution facility in Indianapolis, Indiana, in April 2021, the shooter did so because he wanted to commit “suicidal murder,” an FBI report released Monday concludes.
That incident, according to the FBI, was one of deadliest mass killings that year.
As a whole, active-shooter incidents in the United States increased by more than 50% from 2020 to 2021, according to the report.
Over the past five years, active shooter incidents have steadily increased, the FBI said, with the most recent in Buffalo, New York, on May 14 when a gunman killed 10 Black people at a local supermarket.
That shooting is being investigated as a hate crime.
The new report, titled “Active Shooter Incidents in the United States in 2021,” says there were 61 mass shooting incidents in the U.S. in 2021, representing a nearly 100% increase in active shooter incidents from 2017, which saw 31.
The FBI defines an active shooter as one or more individuals actively engaged in killing or attempting to kill people in a populated area. Implicit in this definition is the shooter’s use of a firearm.
The shootings occurred in 30 states, which saw 103 die and 140 wounded, according to the FBI, which says 12 of the shootings met the “mass killing” definition.
The FBI defines a mass killing as three or more killings in a single incident.
John Cohen, the former acting undersecretary for intelligence and analysis at the Department of Homeland Security, told ABC News that the United States is seeing a trend with active shooters.
“The U.S. is in the midst of a multiyear trend where we are experiencing an increase in mass shooters who are seeking to advance their ideological beliefs or based on a perceived personal grievance,” Cohen, now an ABC News contributor, said. “A growing subset of our population believes that violence is an acceptable way to express one’s ideological beliefs or seek redress for a perceived personal grievance.”
Nearly all of the shooters were male, and half the accused shooters were arrested by law enforcement. The FBI says 55% of the shootings took place in the afternoon and evening hours.
More than half of the shootings took place in areas of commerce.
“The locations range from grocery stores to manufacturing sites,” the FBI said.
The youngest shooter was 12 and the oldest was 67.
“For 2021, the FBI observed an emerging trend involving roving active shooters; specifically, shooters who shoot in multiple locations, either in one day or in various locations over several days,” the FBI concluded.
(WASHINGTON) — Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend, she announced Monday.
“I’m experiencing mild symptoms and will be working remotely from home per CDC guidance,” she tweeted. “I am thankful to the @StateDept MED team for taking excellent care of me and all our colleagues around the world during this pandemic.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Sherman were together for a meeting with Saudi Arabia’s deputy minister of defense in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.
Blinken, who recently recovered after testing positive for the virus earlier this month, is currently abroad with President Joe Biden in Asia.
It was initially unclear how frequently Sherman is testing, or if she is considered a close contact by Centers for Disease Control and Prevention standards to anyone currently in the delegation overseas.
Pavlo Gonchar/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — With seven people in the U.S. now confirmed or presumed to have monkeypox, officials from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the risk remains low and there’s no evidence the virus has evolved to be more transmissible.
“This is not COVID,” Jennifer McQuiston, deputy director of the Division of High-Consequence Pathogens and Pathology at the CDC, said during a media briefing Monday.
There is one confirmed positive case in Massachusetts. There is one presumptive positive case in New York, one in Washington state, two in Utah and two in Florida.
The CDC said Monday that the government is in the process of releasing some vaccines from its national stockpile. There is no need to vaccinate the general public against monkeypox, officials said. Rather, those vaccines will be used among a small number people who have been exposed.
Still, CDC officials cautioned that more cases are likely, and the agency is now raising awareness among men who identify as gay or bisexual.
“I think that we need to pay close attention to the communities in which this might be circulating, so that we can communicate effectively with them and help bring this outbreak under control,” McQuiston said.
Monkeypox is not a sexually transmitted infection, and anyone can become infected regardless of sexual orientation.
The virus, a less-transmissible cousin of smallpox, is passed through close contact with another person, including hugging, touching or prolonged face-to-face contact.
An early cluster of monkeypox cases in London was among a nuclear family who lived in the same household.
But health officials say many early clusters in Europe and Canada happened among groups of men who have sex with men, with some ongoing transmission reported in this community.
“Anyone — anyone can develop and spread monkeypox infection,” Dr. John Brooks, medical epidemiologist, Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention at the CDC, said. “But, many of those affected in the current global outbreak identify as gay and bisexual men. We want to help people make the best-informed decisions to protect their health.”
Specifically, the CDC is now warning people to watch out for a distinctive rash in the genital region, which could be confused with an STI.
(NEW YORK) — Trevor Reed, the former U.S. Marine recently released after nearly three years in Russian captivity, has called on the U.S. government to negotiate a prisoner swap like the one that freed him to bring Americans Paul Whelan, a former Marine, and WNBA player Brittney Griner, who are both being detained in Russia.
Reed and his parents, Joey and Paula Reed, told ABC News if it meant freeing Whelan and Griner, the United States should trade the Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who is serving a 25-year prison sentence, and who Russia has floated as a possible candidate for a swap.
“I think that the United States should make any type of agreement to get Paul out. And if that includes an exchange, I think they should absolutely do that,” the 30-year-old Reed said in a lengthy interview with ABC News on Saturday, one of the first he has given since being freed.
Bout, dubbed the “Merchant of Death” by the media and a notorious weapons trafficker, was pursued for over a decade by Western governments and is widely believed to have ties to Russian intelligence. He was finally captured during a sting operation led by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration in Thailand and extradited to the U.S.
He was convicted in 2012 on federal narco-terrorism charges for agreeing during the sting to sell millions of dollars in weapons to Colombian terrorists who were purportedly targeting Americans. In reality, the supposed Colombian arms buyers were part of the DEA undercover sting.
From the moment of his arrest, Russia has sought to return Bout, attempted to block his extradition in 2008 and Russian state media and officials for years have pressed for his release. Since Whelan was seized in 2018, Bout has repeatedly been suggested by Russian state media as a possible trade for him and Reed and last week for Griner.
“Viktor Bout has already been in prison for 15 years,” said Reed, adding that any value he had for Russian intelligence was long since blown. “He’s no longer a threat. He’s paid for that crime. Maybe not as long as, you know, the U.S. government would have liked him to, but he has paid for that.”
Reed said the United States should try to get the two Americans, who are both facing long sentences in Russia, freed in exchange for a man who will likely be released from prison in a few years.
“Fifteen years is not a joke in prison. And, you know, the fact of the matter is that Paul has another 13 years left in prison. And Brittney, who knows how long she’s gonna be sentenced for? She may have ten years in prison. So you’re getting two Americans who are going to have a huge amount of time left on their sentences for a guy who is getting out soon — who has already been in prison for 15 years,” he said.
“And I think that they need to do that,” he said. “If that’s for Viktor Bout, I don’t care. I don’t care if it’s 100 Victor Bouts. They have to get our guys out.”
Whelan was arrested in December 2018 while visiting Moscow for a friend’s wedding and charged with espionage by Russian intelligence officials. He is being held on espionage charges that the U.S. government says were also fabricated to take him as a bargaining chip. Whelan is in a prison camp in Mordovia, sentenced to 16 years.
Griner, a two-time Olympic gold medalist who plays for the Phoenix Mercury, was visiting Russia to play basketball in the off-season and was arrested in February at a Moscow area airport for allegedly having vape cartridges in her luggage that contained hashish oil — an illegal substance in Russia.
The U.S. government considers Griner to be “wrongfully detained” in Russia, the State Department said.
“With this determination, the Special Presidential Envoy for Hostage Affairs Roger Carstens will lead the interagency team for securing Brittney Griner’s release,” a U.S. State Department spokesperson told ABC News this month.
Reed was released from a Russian prison on April 27 when the Biden administration orchestrated a prisoner exchange with the Russian government for Konstantin Yaroshenko, a pilot from Russia who was sentenced in 2011 to 20 years in prison for conspiring to smuggle cocaine into the United States.
American administrations are traditionally reluctant to make prisoner exchanges, fearing that it sets a precedent that encourages hostile governments to seize more Americans.
Reed rejected that position, saying such governments would continue to target Americans regardless and were already doing so.
“That’s completely inaccurate. That’s not a concern at all, because, you know, countries like, you know, Russia, China, Venezuela, Rwanda, Iran, Syria, places like that need absolutely no incentive to kidnap Americans,” he said.
“Even if they didn’t get anything out of it, just for the simple fact that they could show the United States that we have your citizens here and that we’re not scared of you,” he said.
Reed’s father, Joey Reed, who spent more than a year in Russia trying to free his son and picketed the White House, said he believed the government needed to move with more urgency.
“Don’t get me wrong; we’re super thankful that President Biden made the decision to trade for Trevor. And what we want is we want that to continue,” Joey Reed said. “If there’s no other way to bring an American citizen home, do it. Don’t wait until they’ve been there 20 years. Don’t wait until they’re near death.”
In an interview with ABC News earlier this month, Paul Whelan’s brother, David, said Paul spoke with his parents after Reed’s release and said the news hit him hard.
“He asked, ‘Why was I left behind?'” David Whelan said. “And we still don’t really have a good answer for that.”
Trevor Reed told ABC News that he’s speaking out “in order to make the American people aware that this is not an isolated situation.”
“We have political prisoners all over the world who are suffering and who need our help,” Reed said.
Speaking of Whelan, Reed became emotional.
“He was in some worse prisons than I was. His situation is a lot worse than mine and we need to do everything possible to get him out at any cost,” Reed said.
Reed said that when he found out his release was part of a prisoner exchange, he assumed Whelan would be freed, too. But Whelan was left behind.
“I thought that that was wrong, that they got me out and not Paul,” Reed said. “I knew that as soon as I was able to that I would fight for him to get out and I would do everything I could to get him out of there. The United States got me out, but they left him there. I can’t describe to you how painful that feeling is.”
(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:
May 23, 4:49 pm
Russian troops have 20 times the military equipment of Ukraine: Zelenskyy
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine is outgunned 20-to-1 on the eastern front in a virtual speech to the Ukraine House in Davos, Switzerland, where the World Economic Forum is currently taking place.
“We do not have enough technical supplies because we are fighting against such a big country with a big army,” Zelenskyy said. “They have 20 times more equipment. Just imagine, now in Donbas, we have 1 to 20. You can just imagine what kind of people we have, how strong they are, what strong warriors we have.”
Zelenskyy has continuously pushed Western countries to increase the amount of military aid coming into the country to stave off the attack from Russia. He sent special thanks over the weekend to President Joe Biden for approving $40 billion in additional aid last week.
“I just don’t want hundreds of thousands of people to die, so we need weapons that will allow us to fight at a great distance,” Zelenskyy added in his speech to the Ukraine House.
Zelenskyy said over the weekend that 50 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are dying every day in the fighting.
-ABC News’ Christine Theodorou
May 23, 4:24 pm
Russian UN diplomat resigns over Ukraine war: ‘Never have I been so ashamed of my country’
Boris Bondarev, Russia’s counselor to the United Nations in Geneva, has resigned, becoming the Kremlin’s most senior diplomat to defect since his country’s invasion of Ukraine began in February, according to a report from U.N. Watch, a nongovernment organization based in Geneva.
“Never have I been so ashamed of my country,” Bondarev wrote in a statement shared with diplomats in Geneva and published by U.N. Watch.
He said he started his diplomatic career in Russia’s ministry of foreign affairs in 2002 and began his most recent role at the U.N. in 2019.
“I regret to admit that over all these twenty years the level of lies and unprofessionalism in the work of the Foreign Ministry has been increasing all the time,” Bondarev said in his statement. “However, in most recent years, this has become simply catastrophic.”
He added, “Today, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is not about diplomacy. It is all about warmongering, lies and hatred. It serves interests of few, the very few people thus contributing to further isolation and degradation of my country. Russia no longer has allies, and there is no one to blame but its reckless and ill-conceived policy.”
ABC News has not independently verified the statement’s authenticity with Bondarev. The Associated Press spoke with him by phone and he confirmed his statement.
Kira Yarmysh, a spokesperson for imprisoned Russian opposition leader Alexey Navalny, shared the statement on her verified Twitter account and wrote, “It seems that there was one honest person in the entire Ministry of Foreign Affairs.”
-ABC News’ Josh Margolin
May 23, 2:55 pm
Canadian artist turns bullet holes into beautiful flowers in Bucha
Canadian artist Ivanka Siolkowsky is trying to restore some beauty to the war-ravaged Ukrainian city of Bucha.
A former school teacher, Silokowsky has been painting flowers and butterflies around bullet holes she finds in fences, walls of buildings and homes, frequently soliciting children and other local residents to help her.
“The project began a few weeks ago. I only painted 5 fences, but my hope is that the people of Bucha and other formerly occupied cities in Ukraine will continue this project further,” Siolkowsky recently wrote on her Instagram page.
Bucha, which is northwest of Kyiv, is one of the most heavily bomb cities in Ukraine, where residents have told ABC News of witnessing numerous killings and torture at the hands of Russian forces.
Siolkowsky conceded that her paintings are not masterpieces and said someone commented on one of the Instagram posts, writing, “the paintings aren’t even good.”
“Believe me, I’m aware,” she wrote on Instagram. “But the point of this wasn’t to create masterpieces — it was to bring joy back into a city filled with darkness after the Russian occupation.”
May 23, 12:32 pm
Defense Secretary Austin convenes 2nd Ukraine Contact Group meeting
U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin convened the second monthly meeting of the Ukraine Contact Group Monday morning, during which more than 40 nations participated virtually.
“This gathering is virtual, but our efforts together are making a very concrete difference on the battlefield,” Austin told the group as he faced two large monitors showing the virtual participants. “We’re all here today because of the extraordinary valor and resilience of Ukraine soldiers and citizens.”
The group was formed last month to help coordinate international efforts to support Ukraine in its fight against the Russian invaders.
“For three months, Ukraine has been fighting with grit and tactical ingenuity against an entirely unprovoked invasion by its far larger neighbor,” Austin said. “And we’re here to help Ukraine for the long haul.”
Defense leaders from 44 countries and representatives of NATO and the European Union participated in the meeting. Several new nations joined the group since its first meeting, including Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Colombia, Ireland and Kosovo.
Ukrainian officials, including Minister of Defense Oleksii Reznikov, also logged on to the virtual meeting.
“My friends, we’ve got your back — all of us,” Austin told the Ukrainian representatives. “President Zelenskyy and Ukraine’s leaders have made history, and your forces have inspired the free world with their courage and skill.”
May 23, 12:06 pm
Starbucks announces complete withdrawal from Russia
Starbucks announced on Monday its decision to exit the market in Russia.
“We continue to watch the tragic events unfold and, today, we have decided to suspend all business activity in Russia, including shipment of all Starbucks products,” Starbuck CEO Kevin Johnson said in a statement. “Our licensed partner has agreed to immediately pause store operations and will provide support to the nearly 2,000 partners in Russia who depend on Starbucks for their livelihood.”
The announcement comes after the company suspended all business activity in Russia on March 8. Going forward, Starbucks said it will continue to pay its employees in Russia for six months.
Starbucks is one of multiple major U.S. and international companies that have put operations on hold in Russia because of the invasion of Ukraine. Other companies that have suspended operations there include Pfizer, Apple, FedEx, McDonald’s and Amazon.
May 23, 11:26 am
Russian soldier sentenced to life in prison in first war crimes trial in Ukraine
A Ukrainian court in Kyiv sentenced a 21-year-old Russian soldier to life in prison in the first war crimes trial since Russia’s invasion began in February.
Sgt. Vadim Shishimarin pleaded guilty and confessed in court last week to killing a 62-year-old Ukrainian man a few days into the Russian invasion.
During the trial, the widow of the man Shishimarin killed testified that her husband meant everything to her and said she believes the Russian soldier deserves life in prison.
However, the widow said she would support exchanging Shishimarin for any of the Ukrainian soldiers taken prisoner this month by Russia at the Azovstal steel plant in Mariupol, Ukraine.
“I feel very sorry for him,” the widow testified. “But for a crime like that I can’t forgive him.”
May 23, 10:08 am
Zelenskyy calls for preventative sanctions in virtual address at World Economic Forum
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy spoke Monday at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, calling on the West to recognize as a mistake the refusal to impose preventive sanctions on Russia and take decisive steps in that direction.
“We must not react, but act preventively,” Zelenskyy told the forum in a virtual address. “And not only adapt what we have to the new realities, but create new tools. … Do not wait for fatal shots. Do not wait for Russia to use chemical, biological or, heaven forbid, nuclear weapons. Do not give the aggressor the impression that the world allegedly will not offer sufficient resistance. Protect immediately to the maximum freedom and a normal, useful world order.”
Zelenskyy said there are still no such sanctions against the Russian Federation, and listed them:
Complete embargo on Russian oil.
Complete blocking of all Russian banks.
Complete rejection of the Russian IT sector.
And complete cessation of trade with the aggressor.
Zelenskyy also called for freezing and confiscating Russian assets around the world and sending them to a special fund to pay compensation and restore Ukraine.
“There should be a precedent for punishing the aggressor. … Russian assets scattered across different jurisdictions should be found, arrested or frozen, and then confiscated and sent to a special fund, from which all victims should receive compensation,” Zelenskyy said.
He warned it will not be easy, but added that various aggressors will definitely not be motivated to do what Russia has done and continues to do in Ukraine.
Zelenskyy said he believes the world is at a turning point and that the future of not only Ukraine, but the whole world, depends on the resistance to brutal force.
“This year, the words ‘turning point’ are not just a rhetorical figure of the speech,” Zelenskyy said. “Now is really such a moment when it is decided whether brutal force will dominate the world. If it dominates, then our thoughts are not interesting to it, and we can no longer gather in Davos. For what? Brutal force is looking for nothing but subjugation of those whom it wants to subdue, and it does not debate, but kills immediately, as Russia is doing in Ukraine right now — at this time when we are talking to you.”
May 22, 3:21 pm
Lithuania becomes first EU country to suspend all Russian energy imports
Lithuania is suspending all imports of Russian oil, natural gas and power, the country’s energy minister Dainius Kreivys announced in a statement Sunday, making it the only country in the European Union to suspend all imports on Russian energy.
Lithuania is now receiving liquified gas from the U.S. after becoming the first EU country to suspend Russian gas imports in April, Kreivys said. The country is now generating electricity via local power generation and local EU imports via existing connections with Sweden, Poland and Latvia.
It is unclear what alternate source of oil Lithuania will rely on, but Kreivys’ statement indicates that its sole importer of oil, Orlen Lietuva, refused to import Russian oil more than a month ago, Kreivys said.
The move is an expression of solidarity with Ukraine, Kreivys said, adding that it cannot allow its money to finance a Russian war machine.
The EU stated in March that it would end its dependency on fossil fuels imports from Russia and made plans to phase out Russian oil, gas and coal. The European Commission presented details on how it plans to achieve that last week.
May 22, 2:54 pm
50 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers killed every day, Zelenskyy says
While Ukraine has rarely reported on its combat losses since the Russian invasion began in late February, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy announced during a press briefing Sunday that 50 to 100 Ukrainian soldiers are being killed every day.
The last time Zelenskyy revealed military death toll figures was in April, when he said that around 3,000 Ukrainian soldiers had been killed in action and around 10,000 wounded. Zelenskyy did not provide a total figure for combatants killed in action on Sunday.
Since the start of the invasion, most Ukrainian men ages 18 to 60 have been banned from leaving the country. On Friday, a petition calling for the government to cancel the ban was registered with the president’s office.
The petition surpassed the 25,000-signature threshold that requires the president to address it on Sunday. Zelenskyy acknowledged the petition during Sunday’s briefing.
“How would I explain that to relatives of our defenders who are fighting at the most difficult positions in the East, where 50 to 100 troops lose their lives every day?” he said.
Ukraine’s parliament voted to extend martial law through Aug. 23. Zelenskyy’s office has a few weeks to consider the petition.
May 22, 12:41 pm
Zelenskyy welcomes president of Poland amid Ukraine’s bid to join EU
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy extended a warm welcome to Polish President Andrzej Duda on Sunday amid his bid to have his country join the European Union.
During a parliamentary session, Zelenskyy expressed his gratitude to all Poles for their support, making it clear that he’s pushing full steam ahead to ensure Ukraine is granted candidate status.
“I am sure that all the necessary decisions will be made first for the status of a candidate for Ukraine, and then for full membership,” he said. “In particular, thanks to Poland’s many years of protection of Ukrainian interests on the European continent.”
Shortly after Zelenskyy and Duda addressed lawmakers, the parliament session was briefly interrupted when air sirens sounded in Kyiv, and members of parliament were moved to a shelter. The Ukrainian regional military administration later confirmed a Russian missile was intercepted over the Kyiv region.
France’s Minister for European Affairs Clément Beaune in his interview with France TF1 radio said on Sunday that it could take 15 to 20 years for Ukraine to become an EU member state, adding that Kyiv could enter the European political community proposed by French President Emmanuel Macron in the meantime.
May 22, 12:07 pm
Recent attacks have killed more than 200 Ukrainians, Russian military claims
The Russian Defense Ministry provided updates to what it described as the “special military operation in Ukraine” on Sunday, saying that hundreds of Ukrainians were killed in recent attacks.
High-precision air missiles and other attacks launched in Donetsk, Lugansk and Krasnyi on Sunday hit command posts, areas where Ukrainian manpower and military equipment are concentrated and ammunition depots, according to the Russian Defense Ministry.
The attacks killed more than 210 Ukrainian nationals and destroyed as many as 38 armored motor vehicles, the ministry claimed.
Russian air defense also shot down 11 Ukrainian aircraft and intercepted “multiple launch rockets” in the Kharkov region, according to the defense ministry.
The ministry claimed that, in total, 174 Ukrainian aircraft and 125 helicopters, 977 unmanned aerial vehicles, 317 anti-aircraft missile systems, 3,198 tanks and other armored combat vehicles, 408 multiple launch rocket systems, 1,622 field artillery and mortars and 3,077 units of special military vehicles were destroyed during the operation.
(NEW YORK) — Daniel Enriquez, 48, was shot and killed in an unprovoked attack on a Q train Sunday in New York City as it headed into Manhattan. The tragedy comes just a few weeks after a gunman opened fire on an N train subway car during rush hour, shooting and injuring 10 people.
The recent spate of crimes on the city’s public transportation has left the city scrambling for answers as ridership continues to climb back toward pre-pandemic levels and more people return to riding with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.
Transit crime is up 58% from this time last year, though April showed a dip in crimes on public transportation, according to New York Police Department data.
When compared with 2020, crime is up only about 1%. However, the amount of transit crime in New York City has remained steady since 2006, with the exception of 2021’s crime dip.
Citywide, crime has gone up since the first two years of the pandemic when the city began to shut down; it’s up 40% from 2021, and 37% from 2020, according to NYPD data.
However, compared to the 80s and 90s, crime is down 72% from 1993, according to city data.
“[Enriquez’s death] just renewed our calls to deal with the proliferation of guns on our street, even after the bullet takes the life of an innocent person, the emotional trauma continues to rip apart the anatomy of our city,” Mayor Eric Adams said in a press conference on Monday.
Adams vowed to address public safety needs following the death of subway rider Michelle Go in January. She was killed after being pushed in front of an oncoming train.
At a press conference following Go’s death, Adams said the attack highlights the importance of those in crisis receiving mental health services to ensure that the city’s streets “above ground and below ground” are safe.
He announced in January that he would deploy more police officers into the subway systems alongside mental health workers, and enforce MTA rules, such as fare enforcement, more strictly.
“[We’ll] just really double down on our concerns that our system must be safe, must be safe from actual crime, which we are going to do and it must be safe from those who feel as though there’s a total level of disorder in our subway system,” Adams said at a Jan. 18 press conference.
At least 1,000 officers were added to the subway’s police force in an attempt to combat crime shortly after the announcement, according to local newspaper AMNY.
Adams has since also placed emphasis on mental health and community building as tools for crime prevention. He also said he hopes to target the prevalence of gun violence and ghost guns as a key issue in the city’s fight against violence.
“By the time someone carries a gun, discharges a gun, we already failed as a city,” Adams said at a May 20 conference, advocating for more community-based services. “Everyone must be on board because we have to prevent as well as apprehend those crimes that are taking place in the city.”
MTA CEO Janno Lieber called Sunday’s fatal shooting “an incredible setback” for the effort to get the city back to normal after the pandemic curtailed ridership.
Still, MTA’s ridership has been seemingly left unaffected by reports of crime, as ridership levels continue to set pandemic-era records, marking the highest totals since March 2020.
“This week, New York reached a milestone in transit ridership, one of the most encouraging indicators that our comeback from COVID is right on track,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said in a recent statement on the records. “Public transportation systems are the lifeblood of New York, and we will continue doing everything in our power to bring riders back, helping drive our economic recovery.”
(WASHINGTON) — With the last batches of ballots still being tallied in Pennsylvania’s Republican Senate primary, Donald Trump weighed in last week to insist his chosen candidate go ahead and “declare victory” even though the counting wasn’t complete.
The former president has a long history of insisting elections are fraudulent when he’s expecting he won’t get the outcome he wants. But historically, election officials around the country from both parties have complied with the law to count up and certify the vote regardless of their politics.
That could change come November: Trump is backing a slate of candidates in battleground states (including Pennsylvania) who have said they support his mistrust in elections, despite any evidence of widespread fraud. If voted into office, these officials would have the power to run elections — or even try to reject or reverse the results — as Trump has repeatedly urged them to do.
“We have to be a lot sharper next time when it comes to counting the vote,” Trump said in a video message earlier this year. “There’s a famous statement: Sometimes the vote counter is more important than the candidate. And we can’t let that ever, ever happen again,” Trump said, referring to a quote from Soviet Union dictator Joseph Stalin.
The next big test of Trump’s influence is Tuesday in Georgia, where he’s backed election-denier candidates down the ballot to challenge incumbents who wouldn’t do as he demanded in 2020 and overturn President Joe Biden’s victory. Democrats, and many Republicans, predict based on the candidates’ past statements that if they are chosen to represent the GOP and go on to win in the general election, they would interfere with future contests, especially under Trump’s pressure in 2024.
“Just a few years ago, this would have been considered a fringe and extreme view,” Minnesota Secretary of State Steve Simon, a Democrat, said of the rising tide of candidates questioning elections. “Now it’s been mainstreamed and very much normalized, and that’s a big, big problem.”
“It’s a potential emergency,” Simon added, “particularly going into a presidential election.”
The secretary of state is usually tasked with overseeing and certifying their local elections. They establish Election Day procedures and play a large role in validating the results, so any refusal to do so — while likely to face legal hurdles — could be a vital step in trying to overturn the ballots.
This year, the office is up for grabs in 28 states, including Minnesota, where Simon is facing a Republican who continues to cast doubt on the 2020 results. Simon said that voters in Minnesota and across the country should be able to trust their elected officials — unless there’s evidence of wrongdoing — to certify the vote of the people, no matter if the outcome is on their side.
“That’s what secretaries of state of both parties, to be fair, have done by and large over the last few years,” Simon told ABC News. “But this new crop of candidates is really alarming because they seem not to have those same values. They seem to be driven by an outcome.”
Some of these candidates have suggested they’ll cease absentee and mail-in balloting and continue audits of the 2020 election, among other actions at the position’s disposal that risk eroding voters’ confidence. Trump and his allies have not provided any proof of widespread fraud in the 2020 election, and more than 40 legal challenges across the country failed.
Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican critic of Trump and co-chair of States United Democracy Center, a nonpartisan advocacy group tracking the uptick in election deniers running for office, warned that if Trump were to get his loyalists in place for 2024, it would presumably be much easier to ensure a loss wouldn’t happen again.
“People tend to focus just on the federal races and federal elections but forget that they’re run by the states. And that’s why these elections are so important,” Whitman told ABC News, describing the thinking behind their strategy: “We change the laws, so we can change the referee, so we can change the outcomes.”
Of the 111 candidates Trump endorsed in the 2022 midterms, more than 70% say they believe the 2020 election was fraudulent, according to FiveThirtyEight research. And as of this month, at least 23 election deniers were running for secretary of state in 18 states, according to the States United Action.
Trump has officially endorsed three secretaries of state candidates in GOP primary races. Each of those contenders argues it’s more important to continue pursuing the possible truth of his debunked claims about 2020, despite the damage to democratic norms and erosion of voter confidence that experts say is well underway.
Here’s a brief look at election-denying candidates in six key states where Trump disputed the results in 2020.
Pennsylvania
State Sen. Doug Mastriano, whom Whitman called a “prime election denier,” earned Trump’s endorsement and handily won the GOP gubernatorial primary. The Pennsylvania governor’s office has powerful influence on future elections.
Mastriano chartered buses to the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, where Trump spoke; was seen at the U.S. Capitol that day (but said he didn’t go inside); and he had been involved in a White House meeting with Pennsylvania GOP lawmakers in December 2020, as Trump worked to overturn the results in the state and in other presidential battlegrounds.
While Mastriano is not running for secretary of state, Pennsylvania is one of a handful of states, like Florida and Texas, where the governor appoints the office who serves as the chief elections officer. Democrats fear that Mastriano — who has been critical of mail-in ballots and called for an investigation of how Pennsylvania conducted the 2020 election, insisting he wanted to “restore faith in the integrity of our system” — could appoint a secretary of state beholden to Trump. Mastriano has avoided specifying how he would carry out that duty as governor.
Even Republicans are concerned with Mastriano’s win, as indicated by GOP candidates dropping out in the final stretch of the primary race to consolidate votes around the Republican candidate who ultimately fell second to Mastriano.
Georgia
The former president backed a slate of candidates ahead of Tuesday’s primary, all promoting forms of election denialism in their platforms.
If Herschel Walker and Rep. Jody Hice were to win a Senate seat and the secretary of state’s office, respectively, they could theoretically try to overturn future election results — by refusing to certify the vote and send it to Washington — as Trump had pushed Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, to do in 2020.
In an infamous January 2021 phone call, Trump asked Raffensperger to “find” nearly 12,000 votes to overtake Biden.
Hice, who is challenging Raffensperger, objected to Georgia’s electoral votes being counted for Biden and has said he’d decertify Biden’s 2020 win — a move that election experts say is not possible.
While Georgia has already undergone three separate audits which all confirmed Biden’s victory, Hice has said he would appoint a special counsel to investigate.
Arizona
In Arizona, Trump endorsed Mark Finchem, a far-right lawmaker in the state’s House of Representatives who attended the rally at the Ellipse on Jan. 6.
Like Mastriano, the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack has issued Finchem a subpoena for “information about efforts to send false slates of electors to Washington and change the outcome of the 2020 election.” (Also like Mastriano, Finchem was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 but said he wasn’t inside.)
Trump praised Finchem for an “incredibly powerful stance” on election integrity, well in advance of the GOP primary on Aug. 2. Finchem is sponsoring a bill that would treat Arizonians’ ballots as public records and make them searchable online, which experts warn could be exploited.
“These folks are supported by Trump, if only for the sole reason that they have said that they would seek ways — or have demonstrated already to seek ways — to undermine the election or actually return the election results,” Semedrian Smith, deputy director at the Democratic Association of Secretaries of State, told ABC News. “It’s absolutely terrifying to imagine that folks who already claim now that they are willing to overturn the election results, it’s hard to imagine that they’re not absolutely going to do that down the road.”
Nevada
Jim Marchant, a former member of the Nevada Assembly running in the Republican primary for secretary of state on June 14, has said he would not have certified Biden’s victory had he been in the office in 2020.
Like Mastriano and Finchem, he was involved with a fraudulent election document attempting to award Nevada’s six electoral votes to Trump instead of Biden, which was submitted to Congress and the National Archives. Marchant doesn’t have Trump’s endorsement but has said Trump allies encouraged him to run.
Marchant’s website states that his “number one priority will be to overhaul the fraudulent election system.” He has said he supports changes to state law to allow the legislature to override the secretary of state’s certification of an election.
Wisconsin
Wisconsin is one of nine states with a board or commission in charge of election oversight instead of just the secretary of state, but conservative leaders there are pushing to dismantle the bipartisan election commission.
State Rep. Amy Loudenbeck, the Republican front-runner for secretary of state, said she supports taking power away from the panel, which she has blasted as “broken,” and handing it over to the office she is seeking.
Nearly a dozen other states, meanwhile, have also attempted to diminish secretaries of states’ authority over elections or shifted aspects of administration to highly partisan bodies in the wake of the 2020 election.
In a sign of the fractured times, Wisconsin’s state GOP on Saturday opted not to endorse any candidates for statewide office ahead of the primary on Aug. 9.
Michigan
Trump, in Michigan, has backed Kristina Karamo, a community college professor who won her party’s nomination at a convention last month. She gained prominence after claiming, without evidence, that she’d witnessed irregularities in processing mail-in ballots while working as an election observer in Detroit in 2020.
Karamo will face Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, a Democrat and former law school dean seeking her second term, whom Trump has attacked as “rogue.”
Benson faced an onslaught of criticism in the wake of the 2020 election and told NBC News last week, for the first time publicly, that Trump said in a White House meeting she should be arrested for treason and executed. A Trump spokesperson said Benson was lying, but Benson said the experience showed her “there was no bottom to how far he [Trump] and his supporters were willing to stoop to overturn or discredit a legitimate election.”
Simon, a neighboring Democratic secretary of state, told ABC News that all voters, including Trump supporters, should be concerned with the election-denier trend.
“No matter what issue you care about the most, you’re not going to get very far unless you have free and fair elections,” Simon said. “You want people running them who are going to be fair.”
(NEW YORK) — In the wake of Pfizer’s new pediatric COVID-19 vaccine data for children under the age of 5, which was released on Monday, the Food and Drug Administration has set new, tentative dates for when its advisers will meet to discuss the COVID-19 vaccine applications for children.
The FDA said it expects its independent Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee to convene in mid-June to discuss both Pfizer and Moderna’s pediatric COVID-19 vaccines.
“As we continue to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, there are a number of anticipated submissions and scientific questions that will benefit from discussion with our advisory committee members,” Dr. Peter Marks, director of the Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said in a statement on Monday.
Although children 5 years and older already have access to a COVID-19 vaccine — and now a booster shot — through Pfizer’s two-dose vaccine, on June 14, the committee will meet to discuss Moderna’s emergency use authorization request for children ages 6 to 17 years of age.
The next day, on June 15, the committee will meet to discuss both Moderna’s emergency authorization request for children ages 6 months to under 6 years of age and Pfizer and BioNTech’s authorization request for children ages 6 months to under 5 years of age.
The new dates confirm the FDA anticipates that its advisers will review both Moderna and Pfizer’s applications for young children at the same time, which would indicate that both vaccines could be authorized by the end of June.
The FDA emphasized the dates are tentative, but officials noted that should any of the submissions be completed in a “timely manner and the data support a clear path forward following our evaluation,” the agency will move forward and convene the committee at an earlier or later date.
On June 8, 21 and 22, the FDA has held dates for its advisers to meet to discuss updates to the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech emergency use authorization requests. As more data and information is submitted by the companies, additional scheduling details will be released, officials wrote.
“The agency is committed to a thorough and transparent process that considers the input of our independent advisers and provides insight into our review of the COVID-19 vaccines. We intend to move quickly with any authorizations that are appropriate once our work is completed,” Marks said.
Ahead of an anticipated fall and winter surge, the FDA also announced new dates for the committee to discuss a possible new generation of COVID-19 vaccines, which could address already circulating variants.
The FDA also plans to convene its advisers on June 28 to discuss whether the COVID-19 strain composition of the vaccines should be modified for the fall.
Federal regulators are expected to decide on a new COVID-19 vaccine design in early July, which would allow vaccine companies to begin production for rollout this fall and winter.
“We’ll have to make some decision by early July to make sure that the manufacturers know what we’re looking to do, so that they know what they have to start producing in large quantities,” Marks told ABC News in an interview, last week.
Additionally, the FDA’s advisers are expected to meet on June 7 to discuss an EUA request for a COVID-19 vaccine manufactured by Novavax to protect against COVID-19 in individuals 18 years of age and older.
Novavax asked for emergency authorization of its protein-based vaccine earlier this year in January.
Novavax was part of the Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed — the multibillion-dollar program that was created at the onset of the pandemic to quickly bring safe and effective vaccines to market.
