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Suicides increased in 2021, reaching highest level since 2018: CDC report

April 13, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Suicides increased during the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, new federal data shows.

There were 48,183 people who died by suicide in 2021, according to a report published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It comes after two consecutive years of declines and is an increase of 4.7% from the 45,979 deaths recorded in 2020. It’s also the highest number recorded since 2018, when 48,344 Americans died by suicide.

What’s more, the total rate hit 14.1 per 100,000, slightly less than the 14.2 per 100,000 in 2018.

It’s also a 4% increase from the rate in 2020 of 13.5 per 100,000 — the largest seen in two decades.

Both males and females saw an increase of 4% in suicide rates from 2020 to 2021.

The rate for males went up from 22.0 per 100,000 to 22.8 per 100,000 while the rate for females rose from 5.5 per 100,000 to 5.7 per 100,0000.

Males were found to be more greatly affected, with rates increasing for those aged 15 to 24, 25 to 44, 65 to 74, and 75 and older.

By comparison, the only significant increase for females was in the age group 75 and older, the report found.

However, both Black females and white females saw suicide rates significantly increase.

Black females saw rates rise by 14% from 2.9 per 100,000 to 3.3 per 100,000 while white females saw a 3% increase from 6.9 per 100,000 to 7.1 per 100,000.

Although the increase was not significant from 2020 to 2021 for American Indian or Alaskan Native women, they had the highest rate during the second year of the pandemic at 13.9 per 100,000.

In addition, in 2021, suicide was the 11th leading cause of death in the U.S. While this is higher than in 2020, when it was the 12th leading cause, it’s lower than in 2019, during which it was the 10th leading cause of death.

Specifically, it was the second leading cause of death for Americans between ages 10 to 34.

The report did not discuss why suicides increased in 2021, but research has shown the COVID-19 pandemic had a negative impact on mental health.

According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, four in 10 U.S. adults reported symptoms of an anxiety or depressive disorder during the pandemic, an increase from one in 10 adults who reported similar symptoms from January 2019 to June 2019.

The impact on young adults was particularly severe. According to a 2021 study from Boston College, rates of depression and anxiety rose 61% and 65%, respectively, among those aged 18 to 29 during the first year of the pandemic. Both disorders are known to increase the risk of suicide.

Researchers are also studying if there is a link between long COVID-19 patients and higher rates of depression and suicidal thoughts.

If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, call the Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988 for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

US special operations team working out of embassy in Ukraine: Sources

April 13, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — A small U.S. military special operations team has been based at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv since early in the war in Ukraine that began in February 2022, according to a former and a current U.S official.

Both officials stressed to ABC News on Wednesday that the U.S. military team does not go out on the front lines with Ukrainian troops and only operates out of the U.S. Embassy.

Among several duties this team provides is security for VIPs and intelligence assistance to Ukrainian Special Operations Forces, according to the current U.S. official. The official stressed that they are not on the front lines and they are not accompanying Ukrainian troops in Ukraine.

The former U.S. official told ABC News that in addition to providing assistance with the oversight of U.S. equipment and supplies being sent to Ukraine, the team has assisted Ukrainian military planners with operations that have resulted in hundreds, if not thousands, of Russian military casualties.

The presence of U.S. military personnel working at the U.S. Embassy in Kyiv was first disclosed by the Pentagon last November.

But the information that there are presumably special operations forces was included in one of the 38 apparently highly classified documents that appear to have been leaked on the internet and that have been reviewed by ABC News. ABC News has not independently verified the authenticity of these documents.

That document mentioned 14 U.S. special operations forces in Ukraine in late February in a round-up description of other NATO countries that had special operations forces inside Ukraine.

Dated to Feb. 28, the apparently leaked document seems to list a total of 97 special operations forces from five NATO countries operating in Ukraine with the highest number coming from the United Kingdom and numbers comparable to the U.S. team from other countries.

The purported leaked document also noted the presence of additional U.S. military personnel working at the embassy with the Defense Attaché’s office and the Defense Cooperation Office.

Last November, the Pentagon’s top spokesman noted the presence of U.S. military personnel at the embassy to help with the accountability of the billions of U.S. military assistance being provided to Ukraine and emphasized they were not in Ukraine in a combat role.

“We’ve had U.S. forces serving at the embassy as part of the Defense Attache Office, which is where these guys are assigned,” Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said at a Nov. 1 press briefing.

“We’ve been very clear there are no combat forces in Ukraine, no US forces conducting combat operations in Ukraine,” Ryder said at the time. “These are personnel that are assigned to conduct security cooperation and assistance as part of the Defense Attache Office.”

Biden admin pauses asylum processing changes for migrants at border

April 13, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is pausing a key effort to reform and increase asylum processing at the border, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Wednesday.

First introduced last year, the new asylum processing policy had allowed asylum officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant or deny claims. Those powers were previously limited to immigration judges at the Department of Justice.

A Homeland Security spokesperson said the asylum officer adjudication process would start up again “in the near future” and migrants who already had interviews scheduled would be allowed to continue. The pause is intended “to ensure operational readiness,” the spokesperson said, before the end of an emergency pandemic expulsion policy next month that has limited asylum requests under Title 42 of the U.S. Code.

The Los Angeles Times was first to report the pause.

Authorities at the border have been preparing for the aftermath of the emergency Title 42 policy since the Biden administration first tried to end it in 2021 before hitting legal roadblocks lodged by GOP-led states. Without the ability to conduct rapid expulsions, authorities may be left to handle an even greater number of asylum claims, which can take months or years to resolve.

The now-paused process for more quickly adjudicating asylum cases was intended to ease a massive case backlog. The number of asylum seekers waiting for hearings in the U.S. has exceeded 1.5 million, according to researchers at Syracuse University.

ABC News was among the first to report last week that the Biden administration would attempt to accelerate the asylum process by holding screening interviews at Border Patrol stations. Immigrant advocates fear that moving up the initial screening interview closer to a migrant’s initial encounter with authorities would limit their ability to adequately prepare a case.

The effectiveness of that move would ultimately depend on the ability of asylum officers to adjudicate cases, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.

“If after all this efficiency we send them to the immigration courts, it just won’t work because that’ll be the bottleneck,” Chishti told ABC News.

“I think the combination of the new [screening interview] proposal at the border with the asylum officer rule is probably the best way forward,” he said, noting the training necessary for asylum officers may take time.

The government funding deal produced by Congressional negotiators last December resulted in USCIS getting roughly one-third of the $765 million in funding Biden initially requested, according to the publication Government Executive. The White House has said additional funding for the agency is necessary in order to reduce the growing backlog of asylum cases.

US appeals court partially blocks federal judge’s ruling on abortion drug mifepristone

April 13, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A federal U.S. appeals court late Wednesday partially blocked an unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas last week that reverses the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the widely-used abortion drug mifepristone.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s emergency request to put on hold U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision to suspend the FDA’s initial authorization of mifepristone back in 2000, citing the the statute of limitations. However, the three-judge panel determined that other parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which suspends changes the FDA later made to mifepristone’s approved use and halts distribution of the drug by mail, could still go into effect at the end of the day Friday.

The Justice Department could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and completely block Kacsmaryk’s order.

The challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval stems from a lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas, in November 2022 by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group working to outlaw abortion. The case was assigned to Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump and is currently the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

On April 7, Kacsmaryk ruled to suspend the FDA’s authorization of mifepristone, saying the drug was unsafe and its approval process was rushed. The Justice Department subsequently appealed the decision to a higher court.

The lawsuit against mifepristone came just months after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide nearly 50 years ago.

Mifepristone has been on the market for 23 years. In 2016, the FDA lifted some of mifepristone’s original safety restrictions by increasing the maximum gestational age at which the drug can be used from 49 to 70 days, reducing the number of in-person office visits that patients are required to make from three to one, allowing non-doctors to prescribe and administer the drug and eliminating the requirement for prescribers to report non-fatal adverse events.

In 2021, the FDA announced it had permanently lifted its restriction that mifepristone must be dispensed in-person. Last month, the agency went a step further by allowing retail pharmacies to provide the drug too, either by mail or in person, so long as they meet certain requirements.

Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., using a combination of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based research group focusing on sexual and reproductive health.

The FDA has not approved misoprostol to be used for abortions on its own.

Unprecedented Texas abortion pill ruling sparks debate about ‘judge shopping’

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — An unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas on mifepristone is raising concerns of “judge shopping” in a legal clash that could reshape abortion access in the U.S.

Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, in his April 7 order, ruled to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill. In his order, Kacsmaryk the drug — which has been on the market for 23 years — is unsafe and its approval process was rushed.

The order is set to take effect at the end of the day Friday unless the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court intervene.

President Joe Biden, in his first on-camera reaction to the ruling, said Tuesday he thought it was “completely out of bounds what the judge did.”

Legal experts, too, have both scrutinized Kacsmaryk’s ruling and how the case ended up in his court in the first place.

“I think his order shows why the lawsuit was brought in Amarillo,” Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, told ABC News. “It gives the appearance of being a sort of a judicial decision that was written to reach a foreordained result.”

Texas is home to four federal district courts, and several of them have created so-called “single judge divisions” where just one judge is responsible for hearing 100% of the cases filed there.

Kacsmaryk is the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District of Northern Texas. He was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, and has since been at the center of several contentious legal fights over policies on immigration, LGBTQ protections and more — often ruling against the Biden administration.

Before his appointment, Kacsmaryk worked with the conservative First Liberty Institute, where he participated in a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” requiring health insurers to pay for birth control. Kacsmaryk said at the time the requirement aimed to “punish” those who follow “their religious beliefs and moral convictions.”

Kacsmaryk’s sister told the Washington Post, which reported in depth his stance on abortion, she felt he “was made” for this case.

But during his confirmation process, Kacsmaryk said as a district judge he would “not advocate for clients or a particular policy but instead is bound by oath to faithfully apply all Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent.”

Critics have accused the plaintiffs in this case of exploiting the single-judge division and purposely seeking out Kacsmaryk because they thought he’d be friendly to their point of view. The group Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, filed the lawsuit last year.

Some legal observers have pointed to the specific language from Kacsmaryk’s order as evidence of his ideological inclinations. Instead of referring to a fetus or embryo, he used the term “unborn human” or substituted the phrase “chemical abortion” for medication abortion.

“It is very clearly anti-abortion movement language,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a health law professor at Boston University.

The issue of judge shopping, Vladeck said, undermines fairness in the judicial process and raises ethical concerns.

“The legal system is not supposed to work this way,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be able to handpick your judge.”

Huberfeld said this “playbook already existed” but has intensified in recent years.

In response to accusations that plaintiffs specifically sought out Kacsmaryk, Erik Baptist, a senior attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, told ABC News his organization “goes wherever our clients take us.”

“And in this instance, we have eight different plaintiffs: four national Medical Association’s and four individual doctors,” Baptist said. “Two of our clients are based in the Amarillo, Texas, area and we went where they took us this time.”

Asked about the broader issue of judge shopping, and whether it undermines the legal process, Baptist said the group didn’t have a position on the matter.

“ADF doesn’t have a position,” he said. “But those are the rules that the courts have established for themselves, and we honor what those rules are as the court deems appropriate.”

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, told ABC News “all lawyers file a case in the place where they can have the best shot of winning.”

The bigger issue, Blackman argued, is the nature of nationwide injunctions — where a single district court judge can prevent the government from enforcing a statute or regulation coast to coast.

“The problem, to the extent that exists, is where single judges can sort of change policy overnight,” he said.

The nation now waits for word from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Justice Department’s emergency stay motion to block Kacsmaryk’s order. The DOJ has asked the court to enter an administrative stay or grant a stay pending appeal by noon on Thursday.

And at the same time, there is a competing order out of Washington in a separate case regarding the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. That order prevents the FDA from “altering the status quo” as it relates to the availability of the drug.

“I think it’s important to recognize that these legal battles matter,” Huberfeld said, “that they have real implications for people, that people won’t get the care that they need, that it increases the risk of injury and death. And this isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It is a health problem whether or not people want to recognize it as such.”

Families of police brutality victims gather to turn ‘grief into action’

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Families of Black men killed by police or gun violence have come together to brainstorm how to turn their “grief into action” to prevent continued instances of police violence.

The conversation comes as the country awaits a decision from a grand jury on the indictment of officers in the death of Jayland Walker, who was shot by police following a 2022 attempted traffic stop.

The panel, held by civil rights organization National Action Network on Wednesday in Manhattan, included family members of Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tyre Nichols, Amir Locke and Botham Jean.

Garner, Locke, Floyd and Nichols were killed in incidents with police.

Martin was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a man who followed Martin for believing Martin was suspicious. He was acquitted on all charges connected to Martin’s death. Arbery was followed by three men and fatally shot by one of them while out for a jog because the men believed he was responsible for trespassing.

Together, the families talked about their collective efforts to keep the memory of their deceased loved ones alive – in some ways, through the implementation of police reform.

On Tuesday, the evening before the panel, Memphis passed an ordinance called the “Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols” that would ban traffic stops for secondary violations like overdue registration or broken lights.

Nichols died in January following a violent traffic stop captured in body camera footage, which shows officers striking Nichols repeatedly. Five officers have been charged so far in connection with his death.

“He was on his way home from watching the sunsets. He liked to go to a park and watch the sunsets as much as possible,” said Row Vaughn, mother of Nichols, through tears.

She continued, “He was stopped. He was beaten. Less than 800 feet from my home … I didn’t watch the video, but I could hear him calling my name.”

She applauded Memphis for the move, but says there is much more to be done.

“We are going to continue to fight so that this doesn’t happen to another Tyre,” said Vaughn. “There’s just too many of our Black men being killed for nothing. I’m not understanding why Black men can’t even go home.”

Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, said the pain over her son’s 2014 death by police in New York City lingers on. She reminds other families facing similar tragedies that they’re “all fighting for the same thing, going down the same road.”

“I remember when this horrible incident happened to my son – I didn’t know what I would do. I was in a dark place at that time. But I decided to turn my mourning into action,” Carr said.

In 2020, several years after Garner’s death, she helped to pass the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, which criminalizes the harmful use of a chokehold by a police officer.

“You’re going to knock on doors that are not going to open, but sometimes you have to kick the door in,” said Carr.

She also helped build the E.R.I.C. Initiative Foundation, which offers scholarships, free meals, toy giveaways and retreats in an effort to connect and uplift those affected by police brutality.

Wanda Cooper Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, also has been fighting for legislative change since her son’s death.

Arbery was killed in Brunswick, Georgia, when three men followed him while he was jogging in their neighborhood and one of the men fatally shot him.

Arbery’s death and the nationwide outcry that followed led to the repealing of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law and the enactment of hate crime laws that criminalize acts motivated by someone’s identity.

“They repealed the citizens’ arrest laws, so white people cannot get in their trucks and chase down a Black boy,” said Cooper Jones.

She said her son’s death made her redefine who she was “as a woman.”

“Wanda, are you just going to sit down or are you going to implement more changes?” she said she asked herself. “Ahmaud is gone, but it is very important that his legacy lives forever.”

Though the evening applauded the wins so far from victims and their families, others said there’s a long way to go in addressing the policing issues that lead to the deaths of their children.

Amir Locke’s father, Andre Locke, is working on federal legislation that would end the use of no-knock warrants, which allow officers to enter a home without announcing their arrival. Locke was fatally shot by police who were executing a no-knock warrant.

The passage of the George Floyd Policing Act also has been an ongoing battle for police reform advocates. The legislation would improve accountability for police misconduct, restrict certain harmful policing practices, and enhance transparency and data collection.

“I cannot explain the pain,” said one of George Floyd’s brothers. “We’ve been fighting since 2020 – it is 2023. Times are changing.”

Whole Foods closes flagship San Francisco store over employee safety concerns

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(SAN FRANCISCO) — Whole Foods is temporarily closing a large store in downtown San Francisco due to concerns over employee safety, the company said on Wednesday.

The closure arrives roughly a week after the high-profile killing of Cash App Founder Bob Lee in San Francisco, which sparked crime fears among some city residents.

Overall, crime in San Francisco is down nearly 10% this year compared to last year, but homicides are up 20% and robberies are up more than 13%, San Francisco crime data shows.

The Whole Foods store, which spans nearly 65,000 square feet, opened last year at Trinity Place in the city’s Mid Market neighborhood.

A company press release announcing the store’s opening in March 2022 referred to the location as a “flagship store.”

Whole Foods opted to close the location to “ensure worker safety,” the company said, noting that all of the employees would be transferred to nearby locations.

“We have made the difficult decision to close the Trinity store for the time being,” the company said in a statement.

Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, said it would assess a reopening of the store if it feels it can protect employees at the location.

San Francisco Board of Supervisors member Matt Dorsey said he was “incredibly disappointed but sadly unsurprised” with the decision.

“Our neighborhood waited a long time for this supermarket, but we’re also well aware of problems they’ve experienced with drug-related retail theft, adjacent drug markets, and the many safety issues related to them,” he added.

The store cut its operating hours last year due to theft and hostility among its customers, the San Francisco Standard reported.

Whole Foods operates eight other locations in the San Francisco area.

In California, violent crime increased by 6% last year but remained well below a peak experienced in the early 1990s, according to a report from the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California released in October.

The Whole Foods announcement stoked criticism from some prominent Republican figures over the threat of crime in major U.S. cities, which are typically run by Democratic mayors.

Violent crime in U.S. urban areas increased by 4.4% over the year ending in June 2022, a study from the Major Cities Chiefs Association found. However, instances of homicide and rape fell over that period, the study showed.

After the murder of Lee on April 4, San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said in a statement that the city does not tolerate violent crime.

“There is no place for this kind of violent crime against anyone in our city,” Scott said.

“I want to assure everyone that our investigators are working tirelessly to make an arrest and bring justice to Mr. Lee and his loved ones, just as we try to do on every homicide that occurs in our city.”

ABC News’ Bill Hutchinson contributed reporting.

Manhattan DA receives new suspicious white powder envelope: Police sources

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The New York City Police Department is responding to a new threatening letter sent to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, according to police sources.

The sources told ABC News the letter contained a white powder and was discovered just after 3 p.m. in the basement mailroom at 80 Centre Street.

There are no reports of injuries or sickness.

The NYPD, the Department of Environmental Protection and the Office of Emergency Management are all responding, authorities said.

This is at least the second time Bragg has received a letter containing a suspicious white powder since former President Donald Trump started writing on social media about his impending indictment.

Bragg has been receiving additional security protection.

His lawsuit against House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan said the office has received more than a thousand threatening or harassing calls and emails. Bragg himself has received “multiple” death threats since Trump’s indictment, police sources told ABC News.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Fox News sanctioned by judge in Dominion defamation case over discovery delays

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A judge overseeing Dominion Voting System’s $1.6 billion defamation suit against Fox News on Wednesday imposed a sanction against the network after it made “misrepresentations” to the court and potentially withheld evidence.

Dominion’s lawsuit accuses Fox News of knowingly pushing false conspiracy theories that the voting machine company had somehow rigged the 2020 presidential election in Joe Biden’s favor, so the network could retain viewers.

The judge said during a pretrial hearing on Wednesday that Fox News would have to pay for any last-minute additional depositions that Dominion would need to do before the case is set to head to trial on Monday. Dominion did not immediately make clear if any such depositions were needed.

“If there is a deposition that needs to be done, it will be done,” Judge Eric Davis said. “Fox will do everything it needs to make the person available, and it will be at the cost of Fox.”

But potentially more significantly, the judge said he would “most likely” appoint a special master to “do an investigation” into whether representations by Fox made to the court as part of the case were “untrue or negligent” — including a certification it had made in December that it had essentially completed its discovery process in accordance with the case.

The special master was already involved in the case to oversee the discovery process, but the new investigation will determine “what sanctions could be implemented” against Fox, the judge said — a significant development on the eve of trial.

“This is very serious,” Judge Davis said of the issue.

The unexpected move came in response to concerns raised by Dominion that Fox News was still turning over evidence in the case, and that in some instances Dominion was still learning of evidence from the public domain. This included, for example, an internal recording they said they only recently obtained appearing to show former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani privately expressing doubts over the claims regarding Dominion’s voting software.

The recordings, Dominion’s attorney said, were made by a Fox News producer, Abby Grossberg, on her phone during the pre-taping of an interview Giuliani gave on the network on November 8, 2020.

“What about this software, this Dominion software?” Fox News host Maria Bartiromo could be heard asking Giuliani on the recording, which was played out in court.

“That’s a little harder, it’s being analyzed right now,” Giuliani said.

Dominion’s attorney, Davida Brooks, said the interview “marched forward” even after Giuliani failed to give credence to the question. She said the recordings were “obviously relevant” and expressed concern over what else might exist that Fox has not turned over as evidence.

“What I don’t know is, are there more recordings?” Brooks asked the judge.

An attorney for Fox pushed back, claiming they had handed over all relevant documents and that they were not aware the recordings existed until recently.

“They are recordings of a Fox employee,” Davis responded. “How could Fox not know?”

Grossberg is engaged in separate litigation with the network, claiming in a lawsuit that that she was “coerced” by Fox’s attorneys as part of her deposition in the case.

In a statement issued after the hearing, Fox said, “As counsel explained to the Court, FOX produced the supplemental information from Ms. Grossberg when we first learned it.”

Also Wednesday, the judge questioned Fox attorneys over allegations from Dominion that the network had concealed the official role of Rupert Murdoch as an officer at Fox News. Although Murdoch is the chairman of the network’s parent company, Fox Corporation, Dominion said Fox News’ lack of disclosure regarding Murdoch’s position with Fox News had hindered, among other things, their ability to obtain evidence regarding him.

“We have been litigating based on this false premise that Rupert Murdoch wasn’t an officer of Fox News,” Dominion’s attorney, Justin Nelson, told the judge. Nelson also pointed out that Murdoch himself said during his deposition that he was not an officer of Fox News.

The judge appeared taken aback by the revelation, which first arose on Tuesday, saying Fox attorneys had been “evasive.”

“I need people to tell me the truth,” Davis said on Tuesday. “And by the way, omission is a lie.”

Davis said he was ordering Fox attorneys to preserve all communications related to the issue.

“I’m very uncomfortable right now,” Davis said. “I’m going to let you know — I’m very uncomfortable.”

Fox’s attorney, Dan Webb, said that Murdoch himself “did not know” that he was an executive of the network. An attorney for Fox on Tuesday had said it was an “honorific” title.

“I don’t think there’s any documents withheld related to Rupert Murdoch that are relevant to this case,” Webb said. “Nobody intentionally withheld information with them.”

In a statement on Tuesday night Fox pushed back on the idea that Murdoch’s status at Fox News had been concealed.

“Rupert Murdoch has been listed as executive chairman of FOX News in our SEC filings since 2019 and this filing was referenced by Dominion’s own attorney during his deposition,” Fox said in the statement.

“Now the question becomes, ‘What do I do with attorneys that aren’t straightforward with me?'” Judge Davis said. “That’s the next question.”

Designs of the new Uvalde elementary school revealed

April 12, 2023 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — Eulalio “Lalo” Diaz Jr. reminded the small gathering in Uvalde, Texas, that their community “is known as the tree city,” as the Uvalde Moving Forward Foundation announced their new elementary plans and schematic design.

Diaz, a representative of the Uvalde CISD Community Advisory Committee, said Tuesday that when a new elementary school is built in the community, a prominent feature will be a tree with 21 branches – one branch for each of the people killed at Robb Elementary School on May 24, 2022, in a mass shooting. Two branches will be larger than the rest and they will represent the teachers who were killed: Irma Garcia and Eva Mireles. Another 19 branches will memorialize each of the children who lost their lives in the adjoining fourth-grade classes that day last spring.

Diaz said that trees show “strength and stability.”

Robb Elementary, closed since the shooting, will be torn down. The new school, yet to be named, is scheduled to be open by fall 2024.

“This [tree] will be the anchor to hold up the school,” said Diaz.

Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series focused on the Uvalde community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.

The committee worked alongside the Uvalde school district’s Moving Forward Foundation, a nonprofit tasked with collecting funds for the construction of a new elementary campus in the school district. The committee – composed of educators, parents and other community members – was set up to provide input and bring differing perspectives to the design and needs of a new $60 million elementary school.

Committee co-chair Natalie Arias was born and raised in Uvalde and said she has a unique perspective because she is an educator at Uvalde High School and a mother of four children.

“It was very hard,” Arias told ABC News. “I grew up going to school at Robb Elementary. I loved Robb. It was some of the best times of my life.”

Specifically, it was hard for Arias to come to terms with the new location because she worried there would be a gap of schools in the west side of the city, a neighborhood known to be underserved than others in Uvalde. But after weeks of discussion, the committee realized the final site selection would be beneficial because it borders Dalton Elementary and therefore, students can share facilities.

The proposed school will comprise three buildings: the academic wing with a library, dining hall and gymnasium. The committee drew inspiration not only from native oak trees that can be found throughout multiple neighborhoods in Uvalde, but other elements of Uvalde’s fabric including Texas sunsets, monarch butterflies that migrate through the city and honey production. Each of these elements will impact the color scheme throughout the school to be “whimsically, kid-friendly” according to the committee.

“One day I will have a discussion with my children [when they are older] and explain how their beautiful school came to be,” Arias told ABC News.

The committee will present the schematic design to the school district board for approval on Monday, April 17.

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