(WASHINGTON) — Madison Cawthorn, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, was caught trying to go through security with a loaded gun at Charlotte Douglas International Airport Tuesday morning, according to multiple sources.
This was the second time the controversial congressman has been stopped trying to bring a weapon through airport security.
TSA officers spotted the gun at the checkpoint and called airport police.
Individuals can face fines up to $13,000 for a second offense, according to TSA.
It was not immediately clear if Cawthorn faces any charges. The congressman’s office did not immediately respond to an ABC News request for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — While Democrats raise alarms and Republicans celebrate Twitter’s announcement Monday that Elon Musk was buying the platform for $44 billion, experts weigh what political impact the world’s richest man will have on the social media giant and whether his private ownership once the sale completes later this year could include clearing the way for Donald Trump’s return.
Some Democrats are already painting a dire picture of the platform’s future, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., calling the sale “dangerous for our democracy,” while Republicans have declared it a victory for “free speech” — with Musk having described himself as a “free speech absolutist.”
The Tesla and SpaceX entrepreneur has long been critical of how Twitter manages its content, pushing for looser moderation, and Republicans have blasted the platform for booting former President Donald Trump in the wake of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, arguing it’s become too heavy-handed against conservatives voices.
“This is a great day to be conservative on Twitter,” Sen. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., tweeted Monday. “Elon Musk buying Twitter terrifies the left because they don’t want their power to censor conservatives threatened,” she added.
Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., also touted the news, tweeting, “Elon Musk now literally owns the libs,” and Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, tweeted, “Free speech is making a comeback.”
Since Musk announced his proposal to buy Twitter via a tweet just 11 days ago, Republicans have largely rallied behind him. He told a TED conference one day after submitting his bid that his takeover plan is about free speech.
“If in doubt, let the speech exist,” he said. “If it’s a gray area, I would say, let the tweet exist. But obviously, in the case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you would not necessarily want to promote that tweet.”
Musk has argued that Twitter’s content moderators intervene too much on the platform, calling it the internet’s “de facto town square.”
“Free speech is the bedrock of a functioning democracy, and Twitter is the digital town square where matters vital to the future of humanity are debated,” Musk said in a release announcing the deal Monday. “I also want to make Twitter better than ever by enhancing the product with new features, making the algorithms open source to increase trust, defeating the spam bots, and authenticating all humans.”
“Twitter has tremendous potential — I look forward to working with the company and the community of users to unlock it,” he added.
But experts warn against what the social media giant’s landscape would look like without current misinformation policies in place and if all users who have been kicked off were allowed back on — while voices to fact check them might leave the site in defiance.
Angelo Carusone, president of watchdog media nonprofit Media Matters, said to expect to see Trump’s account to be restored along with a host of other accounts that had previously violated Twitter’s rules.
“Elon Musk will unwind a whole range of very basic protections against harassment, abuse, and disinformation that Twitter has spent years putting into practice — effectively opening the floodgates of hate and lies and using Twitter’s position as a market leader to pressure other social media companies to backslide,” Carusone said in a statement Monday.
“The race to the bottom begins,” he added.
The American Civil Liberties Union raised concerns similar to Warren — with one person, Musk, in this case, also the world’s richest man, obtaining “so much control over the boundaries of our political speech online.”
Musk hasn’t said whether he will allow banned users back on, and Tump has claimed that even if he’s reinstated, he intends to stay off the platform in favor of his own platform.
“I am not going on Twitter, I am going to stay on TRUTH,” Trump told Fox News Monday. “I hope Elon buys Twitter because he’ll make improvements to it and he is a good man, but I am going to be staying on TRUTH.”
Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose personal Twitter account was permanently suspended in January for “repeated violations” of Twitter’s COVID misinformation policy, reactedto the sale from her government account, saying Twitter violated her freedom of speech “along with an unknown number of Americans.”
“I want everyone else to have theirs back too, if they choose it,” she said.
(CHICAGO) — Life expectancy in Chicago fell by nearly two years during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with national trends, a new report finds.
The data, released Monday by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and the city’s Department of Public Health, showed Chicagoans had a life expectancy of 75.4 years in 2020, down from 77.3 years in 2019.
The figure is one of the steepest declines in life expectancy recorded in a single year for Chicago. What’s more, the sharpest drops were seen among communities of color, particularly Black and Hispanic residents.
“COVID has taken a terrible toll on the health and well-being of our city’s residents, particularly those who are Black and Latinx,” Lightfoot said in a statement. “Without formally acknowledging this detrimental impact, and its roots in structural racism, we will never be able to move forward as a city.”
The data showed that life expectancy for Black residents fell below 70 years for the first time in decades, with a drop from 71.8 years to 69.8 years. Additionally, the life expectancy gap between Black and white Chicagoans widened to 10 years, up from 8.8 years in 2017.
Although the COVID-19 pandemic was a significant driver of the Black-white life expectancy gap in 2020, it was only the second leading cause of death. According to officials, the main driver was chronic diseases, including heart disease, cancer and diabetes.
The city also saw sharp increases in deaths caused by homicides and accidents, including drug overdoses and car crashes.
Meanwhile, Hispanic residents saw the steepest drop of any racial/ethnic group from 79.1 years to 75.9 — a decrease of 3.2 years. The data also found that Asian/Pacific Islanders saw a life expectancy decline of two years while white residents saw a decrease of one year.
In addition, death rates increased from 2019 to 2020 for all races and ethnicities, with people of color making up a disproportionate number of deaths. Black residents only represent one-third of Chicago’s population but accounted for half of the city’s deaths.
Overall deaths in Chicago rose by 30%, according to the report. Officials recorded about 6,000 more deaths than predicted and approximately 4,000 of those were due to COVID-19.
CDPH said it is working to narrow the racial life expectancy gap through a program called Healthy Chicago 2025 to address the root causes of these disparities such as structural racism.
Among the top priorities is increasing access to health care. The department’s Health Chicago Survey found that in 2020, 35% of Black residents lost health care coverage compared to 19% of white residents and 27% of Hispanic residents were unable to access health care compared to 8% of white residents.
What’s more, 27% of Hispanic residents and 26% of Black residents said they missed urgent medical appointments while only 9% of white Chicagoans reported similar circumstances.
The action plan also includes investing money to increase access to housing, food and childcare for minorities.
“The life expectancy gap isn’t just about the causes that show up on the death certificate most often, but what drives those causes,” CDPH Commissioner Dr. Allison Arwady said in a statement. “There is no miracle cure, no shortcut to closing the life expectancy gap.”
The statement continued, “Collectively, the City and its partners must do the work to fundamentally transform the conditions in which people live — by ending the pandemic and by addressing its impacts on access to services, housing, education, and economic opportunities, as well as people’s mental health.”
Neither the mayor’s office nor the CDPH immediately replied to ABC News’ request for comment.
(ATLANTA) — A new CDC analysis estimates that at least three out of every five Americans have antibodies that indicate a prior COVID-19 infection. Prior to the omicron-fueled surge in cases from December 2021 to February 2022, only an estimated one-third of people in the U.S. were estimated to have a prior infection.
“This is the first time that population seroprevalence is over 50%,” Dr. Kristie Clarke, co-lead for the CDC’s COVID-19 Epidemiology & Surveillance Taskforce Seroprevalence Team, told reporters on a press call this afternoon.
Clarke said she had expected a post-omicron increase in seroprevalence — antibodies that show previous COVID-19 infection — but not this much of an increase.
About 58% of adults had detectable antibodies as of February — but that rose to nearly 75% among children and teens under 17.
“We had 43% in January and I did expect it to increase. I didn’t expect it to increase quite this much, but we follow the data and we look at the data and this is what the evidence is showing us and so this is why we want to get this message out to the U.S. population as soon as possible,” Clarke said.
The jump in antibody protection, both from infection and from vaccines and boosters, is part of the reason why the CDC went ahead with its recent decision to use new metrics for masking and community warnings, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky said.
“We do believe that there’s a lot of protection in the community both from vaccination as well as from boosting and from prior infection,” she said.
But Walensky and Clarke repeatedly emphasized how important vaccination still is. There’s very little information on how long immunity from a case of COVID lasts, but a lot more data on how long immunity from vaccines and boosters lasts.
“I can’t underscore enough what Dr. Clark said, which is those who have detectable antibody from prior infection, we still continue to encourage them to get vaccinated,” Walensky said.
“We don’t know … when that infection was, we don’t know whether that protection has waned. We don’t know as much about that level of protection than we do about the protection we get from both vaccines and boosters,” Walensky said.
Clarke said this study cannot be interpreted to mean 60% of Americans have protection against reinfection.
“Reinfection happens and infection after vaccination can happen,” Clarke said.
Nor does the percentage mean we’ve reached some kind of herd immunity.
“There’s also no known threshold of the population where once you get above X percentage will completely stop community transmission of COVID. So all of that is really important to know,” Clarke said.
Still, there is continued good news on the BA.2 variant, which has yet to cause a significant jump in severe illness or death, Walensky said, though there are a few counties in the Northeast that the CDC now categorizes as orange.
“There are some areas of the country, particularly in the Northeast, where we’re seeing higher number of cases and we’re starting to see some hospitalizations tick up. You know, we’re watching this carefully,” Walensky said.
But she noted: “We haven’t seen them tick up as much as we might have expected in prior times during this pandemic, thanks to, I believe, a large amount of protection in the community both from disease and infection, as Dr. Clark has articulated, as well as vaccine protection.”
The hospital stays that the CDC is monitoring have also not been as severe as in the past, she said.
“We’re seeing less oxygen, use less ICU stays. And we haven’t, fortunately, seen any increase in deaths associated with them. So we are hopeful that positive trends will continue that we will not see as a result of these increasing cases, any further severity of disease,” Walensky said.
(NEW YORK) — West Virginia had the highest opioid overdose death rate per capita in the country last year, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
OxyContin, a prescription drug that helped fuel the crisis, was heavily marketed in towns across the state and its use spread among residents of all ages, experts said.
“Nobody was prepared. Nobody knew that they were going to get a drug that was supposed to help alleviate pain,” Maegan Malcomb, a woman recovering from addiction in West Virginia, told ABC News.
While first responders and doctors in the state scramble to save people from these decades of danger, they also are fighting a new phase of the crisis as fentanyl overdoses have jumped in the area.
Doctors and medical experts said there is a straight timeline from the rise in opioid prescriptions to fentanyl overdoses in places like West Virginia.
When OxyContin was first introduced into the market, Purdue Pharmaceuticals misled medical professionals contending the company’s pain killer drug was far less addictive than other opioids. In 2007, the company paid $600 million in criminal penalties after admitting to misbranding OxyContin.
Two years ago, Purdue admitted that it marketed dangerous opioids to health care providers despite having reason to believe those providers were diverting drugs and that often led to abuse, according to the Department of Justice.
Lou Ortenzio, a former West Virginia doctor, told ABC News he has been feeling guilt for the years that he prescribed OxyContin.
“I never envisioned prescribing somebody with pain would have this catastrophic tidal wave effect,” he said.
Ortenzio himself became addicted to prescription pain pills, taking as many as 30 pills a day before he got help. Today, he helps run a recovery clinic in West Virginia for other people living with addiction or in recovery.
Malcomb told ABC News that she got addicted to opioids by the time she was 16. The mother of three said by the time she was 18, she didn’t know one person who wasn’t addicted to opioids.
“All I’ve ever known is addiction. And most of the people that I love, the people that I grew up with, that’s all they’ve known, too,” she said.
Even though OxyContin and other related pills are harder to prescribe, there is a population of West Virginians who are still suffering from addiction and have found an alternative to those prescription pain pills – primarily heroin, health experts said.
But by substituting a new drug, those suffering from addiction are putting themselves at a bigger risk, the experts warned.
Fentanyl has been found in as much as 70% of the nation’s heroin supply, according to the CDC. In many cases, those who use heroin have no idea that fentanyl has been added until it’s too late.
First responders in the town of Clarksburg, West Virginia, told ABC News that they respond to calls related to fentanyl-related overdoses daily. In one day they responded to three overdose calls.
“It’s poison, it’s pure poison. You don’t know what it is, ” Michael Veltri, a Clarksburg EMS, told ABC News.
Last year, fentanyl was the leading cause of death for Americans between the ages of 25 and 44, according to the CDC. And some fear it’s only going to get worse.
Dr. Stephen Loyd, also developed an opioid addiction, but is currently in recovery. He runs a recovery center in Nashville, and told ABC News that his facility loses several patients a week due to fentanyl.
“There are not weeks that go by that we don’t,” he told ABC News.
Loyd said there is a direct link between the rise of OxyContin prescriptions in the 1990s and 2000s and the current fentanyl crisis in the country.
“These folks that are coming in with fentanyl, 98% of them got started with pain pills,” he said.
Loyd and other experts said that the country will have to work harder to help those living with addiction , particularly in places like West Virginia that were the hardest hit during the crisis.
Malcomb told ABC News that the only way to deal with a drug problem is to deal with people directly and persevere.
“I have no choice if I don’t want to die,” she responded when asked if she’d continue her recovery. “[I’m] surprised I’m not dead now.”
(SAN JOSE, Calif.) — A 3-month-old baby boy has been found safe Tuesday after he was taken from his Northern California home in what police believe was a premeditated kidnapping.
One suspect is in custody, police said.
Brandon Cuellar’s kidnapping was reported around 1 p.m. Monday by his grandmother, who was watching the baby while the mother was at work, San Jose Police Sgt. Christian Camarillo said at a news conference.
The grandmother said she came home, took Brandon inside the apartment and went back to the car to unload groceries, Camarillo said.
In that “short amount of time,” a man went into the apartment and took the little boy, he said. Police released footage of the man they say was seen on surveillance video leaving with the 3-month-old.
Camarillo said the suspect brought a baby carrier with him to the home.
“We believe this was planned. It’s not some random act,” he said.
Camarillo said Tuesday that police are speaking with a female person of interest, but added that she’s not been “formally charged yet.”
“This is a person that was with the grandmother yesterday when they went shopping. She was present at the apartment complex when this happened,” Camarillo said.
“That person has changed their story a couple of times — a lot of inconsistencies,” Camarillo said.
ABC News’ Bonnie McLean contributed to this report.
Theodore Parisienne/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — After years of failed attempts to reform Rikers Island, a federal judge in Manhattan on Tuesday will consider whether to put New York City’s sprawling and troubled jail complex under control of the court.
Judge Laura Taylor Swain in 2014 appointed a federal monitor but Rikers, part of the New York City Department of Correction, remains plagued by staffing problems, physical deterioration and violence.
Fifteen inmates died in custody last year and three have died so far in 2022.
There were more than five dozen stabbings in March alone.
Damien Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, expressed alarm at the level of violence. He raised the possibility of federal receivership to force change.
“The jails are in a state of crisis, inmates and staff are being seriously injured, and action is desperately needed now,” Williams said in a letter to the court. “Based on our experience over the last six years and the sustained non-compliance with key Consent Judgment provisions and the three subsequent Remedial Orders entered by this Court, our Office is very concerned about whether the Department and City have the ability, expertise, and will to swiftly make the changes necessary to bring true reform to this deeply troubled agency.”
The administration of New York City Mayor Eric Adams, in its own letter to the court, insisted it is making progress and asked for more time.
“The extraordinary measure of ordering a receivership is not merited and DOJ’s reference to it, less than four months into Commissioner Molina’s term, is unfair,” said Kimberly Joyce of the New York City Law Department. “The commissioner has taken more far-reaching action than has previously been demonstrated.”
Swain has ordered Correction Commissioner Louis Molina to attend the afternoon hearing, marking the first time all the stakeholders will convene since the possibility of a federal takeover was raised.
ABC News has previously documented the horror at Rikers. Exclusive material from Diane Sawyer’s project aired as a full episode of Nightline.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris tested positive for COVID-19 via rapid and PCR tests on Tuesday, according to her office.
Harris, who received her second booster shot on April 1, doesn’t have any symptoms.
Harris will isolate and work from home, Harris’ press secretary, Kristen Allen, said in a statement.
“She has not been a close contact to the President or First Lady due to their respective recent travel schedules,” the statement said. “She will follow CDC guidelines and the advice of her physicians. The Vice President will return to the White House when she tests negative.”
Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, tested positive for COVID-19 last month.
Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., also tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday.
He said he felt “mild symptoms overnight.”
“I’m sure if I wasn’t fully vaccinated I would be feeling a lot worse. So remember to get your booster!” he tweeted.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — For years, doctors recommended people in their 50s start taking baby aspirin every day to protect against heart attacks and stroke. But in recent years, with new evidence of the possible harm of daily aspirin, health experts shifted those recommendations.
In major new guidance, an influential physician task force no longer recommends daily aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke among people 60 and older. Meanwhile, the new guidance said people 40 to 59 should only take it if they have a high risk of cardiovascular disease, and in consultation with a doctor. There is little benefit in continuing aspirin beyond the age of 75 years old, experts concluded.
The new guidance comes from the United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), an influential physician group that helps guide medical best practices.
Heart disease and stroke are the leading causes of death in the United States, accounting for more than one in four deaths. While daily aspirin use has been shown to lower the chance of having a first heart attack or stroke, it can also increase the risk for bleeding in the brain, stomach and intestines. Although the absolute risk of a bleeding event is low, the risk increases with age.
“Based on current evidence, the task force recommends against people 60 and older starting to take aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke,” task force vice chair Dr. Michael Barry, professor of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, told ABC News. “Because the chance of internal bleeding increases with age, the potential harms of aspirin use cancel out the benefits in this age group.”
“People who are 40 to 59 years old and don’t have a history of cardiovascular disease but are at higher risk may benefit from starting to take aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke,” task force member Dr. John Wong, interim Chief Scientific Officer and Professor of Medicine at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News. “It’s important that they decide together with their healthcare professional if starting aspirin is right for them because daily aspirin does come with possible serious harms.”
“It is important for the public to understand that for the vast majority of Americans without pre-existing heart disease, aspirin does not provide a net benefit. The harms are approximately equal to any benefits. The USPSTF is just catching up with this widely accepted scientific viewpoint. For nearly 20 years the FDA has advised against routine use of aspirin for prevention in patients without heart disease,” Dr. Steven Nissen, cardiologist at the Cleveland Clinic, told ABC News.
The new recommendations were aimed at people who have not yet started taking a daily aspirin. The panel of experts did not issue guidance for people who are already taking a daily aspirin, and the updated news does not necessarily mean people should stop taking it if prescribed by a doctor.
“We want to emphasize that these recommendations are focused on starting aspirin to prevent a first heart attack or stroke. Anyone who already takes aspirin and has questions about it should speak with their healthcare professional,” Wong said.
The new guidelines do not change for people who have had a heart attack, stroke or other major cardiovascular issue. The recommendation for using aspirin to protect them from a second event remains strong.
Recommendations on daily aspirin to prevent disease have shifted in recent years. In 2016, the preventive services task force recommended people in their 50s at risk for heart disease take baby aspirin to prevent both cardiovascular disease and colon cancer. But updated recommendations based on additional research found benefits may not outweigh the risk, concluding the best colon cancer prevention is routine screening beginning at the age of 45.
Dr. Chineze Akusoba is an Internal Medicine resident at the Mayo Clinic Rochester, Minnesota, and a contributor on the ABC News Medical Unit.
(SANTA FE, N.M.) — The Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department’s investigation into the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins on the set of Rust is “nearing completion,” Adan Mendoza, the Santa Fe County sheriff, said in an interview Tuesday on Good Morning America.
Hutchins died and the film’s director was hospitalized after a gun held by Alec Baldwin as a prop fired a live round on the set of Rust last October.
The department is waiting for an FBI report with analysis of the firearm, the munitions, the prints and DNA as well as a report from the office of the medical investigator and analysis of cellphone data before the investigation can be completed, Mendoza said.
“The FBI has stated that it might be a few weeks before they finalize their report so we are hoping in weeks and not months,” Mendoza said, referring to when the investigation could come to a close.
On Monday, the sheriff’s office released evidence from its investigation, including hours of body cam video, witness interviews and crime scene photos.
An attorney representing the Hutchins family said they were “surprised” by the release of the evidence while the investigation is still active and ongoing but did not comment further.
Mendoza said the department was required to release the evidence in response to a public records request and it was doing so in an effort to be “transparent” in its investigation.
While it has been more than six months since the incident happened, Mendoza said the case is complicated and the department is doing the best that it can.
“As you can see with the enormous amount of information that we’ve released, the investigative report is 200 plus pages, it’s very complicated. It’s very convoluted. There is an enormous amount of information, so in order to do a thorough report, I think we’re doing the best that we can with the time frame that we have,” Mendoza said.
Mendoza said no one has come forward and admitted to bringing ammunition to the set, but there was at least one live round that was fired from the weapon.
The film’s producers were fined last week for failures that led to what the New Mexico Environment Department’s Occupational Health and Safety Bureau called an “avoidable death.”
“These are two separate investigations. But I think in our investigation, you’ll see some of the same things and I’ll say it again, I think there was complacency, disorganization. They were not adhering to proper safety protocols and industry standards, to be honest, so there’s a degree of neglect,” Mendoza said.
He went on, “Whether that reaches a criminal level will be up to the district attorney to determine.”
The sheriff would not comment on whether Baldwin knew there were live rounds on set, but said it is “yet to be determined” whether he is vulnerable to criminal prosecution.
“The key component is also the analysis on the firearm and the FBI report. So once that’s all collected, a thorough report will be forwarded to the district attorney’s office. They’ll make the determination who is responsible, if anyone,” Mendoza said.
An analysis should show what it took to manipulate the firearm to allow it to go off and the projectiles that were on the scene, Mendoza said.
“This is a lot of information that we’re going to work in conjunction with the D.A.’s office to determine if there is criminal neglect or criminal charges,” Mendoza said.
