(NEW YORK) — Maryland Gov. Hogan announced earlier this month, the launch of the $1 million VaxU scholarship program. The effort is to incentivize those eligible, kids between 12-17 to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the governor said. Anyone between those ages who was vaccinated in the state is automatically entered to win.
Winners will receive a $50,000 scholarship for any public, in-state institution of higher education. As of July 12, the state began randomly selecting two winners and will continue with weekly drawings through Labor Day, when they will then pick four winners.
“The virus, and its variants are a dangerous threat to you,” Hogan said. “Getting vaccinated is the only way to protect yourself and to continue on our recovery.”
“The winners will receive a Maryland 529 prepaid college trust contract, which locks in today’s tuition rates for the future, or a Maryland 529 College invest plan,” said Gov. Hogan. “And the winner, if they decide down the line…. [that they] would like to attend a private institution or school that’s outside of the state of Maryland, they can actually transfer the scholarship to the school of their choice.”
The funding behind these scholarships comes from the American Rescue Plan which distributed more than $360 billion in emergency funding to state and local governments.
“Promotions like these are just one more way that we are reinforcing the importance of getting every single Marylander that we can vaccinate against COVID-19, especially our young people,” said Gov. Hogan. “But those who are unvaccinated do remain at risk, especially with the new highly transmissible variants, including the delta variant which is currently circulating.”
“According to our state health department, 95% of all new COVID cases reported last month were people who have not been vaccinated [and] 93% of all new covid deaths in the month of June were Marylanders who were unvaccinated,” said Gov. Hogan.
The incentive comes as the delta variant spreads rampantly throughout the U.S. and vaccination rates across the nation continue to fall.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky told lawmakers Tuesday that the delta variant now makes up 83% of COVID cases, up from 50% at the beginning of this month.
Since vaccinations have become widely avaiable states have used lotteries, college scholarships and other rewards as ways to intice people to get vaccinated.
In May, Joseph Costello was announced the winner of a full-ride scholarship in Ohio’s Vax-a-Million lottery. Costello’s name was randomly drawn from nearly 105,000 entries among vaccinated 12 to 17-year-olds.
That same month, the mayor of Lancaster, California, offered a raffle scholarship that included a grand prize of $10,000 for teens who get the COVID-19 vaccine.
(NEW YORK) — Some of the best colleges and universities in the U.S. are facing backlash over the extent of their commitment to classroom diversity.
Several high-profile Black academics have been denied tenure at esteemed higher-learning institutions, sparking a new debate about racism and privilege in academia. This comes as data has shown that as student demographics changed to have more people of color, while the racial makeup of professors and instructors remains the same at these institutions: predominately white.
After decades of teaching at schools including Yale and Princeton, activist and scholar Dr. Cornel West’s name made headlines this year in a very public conflict with Harvard Divinity School. West resigned from his position at the school in June.
In his resignation letter, he attributed his decision to “spiritual rot” after he was denied tenure.
“I’ve been a Black man in America for over 60-something years. … I know what’s going on. It has nothing to do with academics,” West said in his letter.
West has said he believes race was a factor in his not getting tenure. He had previously held tenure during his last stint at Harvard and has also held a tenured position at Princeton University. He said his teaching has been significantly limited by Havard’s failure to grant him that protection.
Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors, spoke with ABC News about tenure standards and policies for higher education.
“[Tenure] provides job security, but it’s really about academic freedom,” Mulvey said. “[With tenure], you’re not worried about your job security for teaching the wrong thing or saying the wrong thing, or because somebody doesn’t like what you’re researching.”
Harvard administrators offered West a five-year contract with consideration of a future tenure bid following public outcry from student protestors, but West declined.
“Harvard offered me more money. It offered me a big chair … and I said it’s not about that. You can’t even undergo a tenure process. You can’t negotiate respect in that regard,” West said in an interview with ABC News’ Deborah Roberts.
The Harvard Divinity School issued a statement thanking West for his “enormous contribution to … issues of racial justice” adding: “We had hoped to retain him on our faculty for many years to come.”
During the three-month dispute over West’s tenure debate with Harvard, New York Times journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones publicly announced her withdrawal from tenure negotiations with her alma mater, the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
UNC recruited her to be the Knight Chair in race and investigative journalism, a position which is endowed at schools by the Knight Foundation to lead journalism in the digital age.
However, the board of trustees at the school initially refused to vote on her tenure. It would have made her the first person to hold the position without tenure in the Knight Chair’s history at the school.
“I think it showed that there was not a respect for what Black faculty go through on campus,” she told ABC News in a recent interview. “If they were able to do this to me — I work at the New York Times. I have a huge megaphone, I have a huge platform — what do they think they could get away with when it came to lesser-known scholars?”
Though the school’s board of trustees did eventually vote in her favor for tenure, she declined the offer, instead announcing her decision to accept the first Knight Chair position at Howard University, a historically Black college.
UNC said it is “disappointed” that Hannah-Jones won’t be joining the faculty” and that the school is working “toward a more inclusive and equitable campus,” in a statement released on July 6.
ABC News’ data team analyzed U.S. Department of Education reports on more than 4,000 schools and found that there has been a dramatic change in the demographic makeup of students, while instructors’ demographics remained stagnant.
Overall, they found the student population on the nation’s college campuses have become majority non-white, while faculty has remained about 70% white.
“Nikole Hannah-Jones’ situation is particularly egregious because what you can see is a Black woman not getting what was given automatically to everyone that came before her,” Mulvey said.
Research shows non-white professors are less likely to receive tenure. Data from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System shows professors of color make up 30% of the overall faculty, but only 10% of tenured professors are people of color. Of that 10%, 3.7% are Black and 4.8% are Hispanic/Latino.
Overall about 41% of all faculty are tenured, but among Black and Hispanic faculty, the percentage of those who are tenured is lower.
Hannah-Jones will join faculty members at the Cathy Hughes School of Communications at Howard University, alongside author and Howard alumnus Ta-Nehisi Coates.
West says there are “barriers” that non-white professors face on the path to tenure.
He noted the “invisible” responsibilities that professors of color take on that typically fall outside of their job description on paper. In large part, he said, this stems from their relationship with students of color. These professors fulfill the role of a mentor and encourage professional development.
“When you have students coming in who are hungry and thirsty for a quest for truth and they themselves feel disrespected, many Black professors feel that we want to spend some time with them. Some of us spend a lot of time with them to empower them. Why? Because we had Black professors who empowered us. So that takes extra time. It takes extra effort. It takes extra energy,” West said.
According to Mulvey, the glass ceiling for nonwhite professors in higher education is nothing new.
“Higher education is not immune to systemic and institutional racism,” Mulvey said. “Faculty of color will talk to you about the Black tax, which is well-known in that faculty of color are always asked to serve on diversity, inclusion and equity task forces. And as a result, when a faculty of color comes up for tenure, they may have found they didn’t have the same amount of time for research as their white colleagues.”
The racial disparities within higher education reach beyond the realm of faculty, influencing students’ experiences in the classroom.
ABC News’ data analysis has found that non-white students at universities with more diverse faculty have higher graduation rates.
It’s a correlation not lost on Georgetown University senior Yaritza Aguilar. She is the first in her family to go to college and says professors of color have been crucial throughout her education.
“When I have a Latino professor, I feel more confident. Latin professors have been in my shoes, being the first to kind of lift your family out of a difficult situation and there’s a lot of trauma that comes with that,” said Aguilar.
ABC News’ data team found racial disparity is present across schools, which can cause students to feel isolated and discouraged to continue their education, affecting graduation and retention rates.
“For a student to come on a campus and not see anyone else that looks like them, the message is you’re an outsider. If they see faculty that looks like them, the message they get is that, I can succeed here, I can succeed in this field,” Aguilar said.
Early last year, Aguilar was involved with a group of student volunteers who pushed an initiative to help the school hire two more Latino professors in the history and American studies department. She is also starting a petition to help create a Latino studies minor.
“After the murder of George Floyd, I think Georgetown has been more responsive and critical of the way they’ve dealt with diversity. They created a racial justice initiative and hired another professor of color. But we want that rhetoric to be turned into action,” Aguilar said.
Though progress has been made among universities and colleges, many academics say there is still more to be done for faculty and students.
“Racism is still operating in these institutions,” West said. “The racism is still at work at each and every one of these institutions. Yet there’s decent people of all colors willing to fight against it. That’s the good news. That’s the good news.”
(TOKYO) — It was one of the most lopsided losses in Olympic basketball history: Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony and Team USA thrashed the Nigerian men’s basketball team by 83 points in London in 2012, with a final score of 156-73.
“I remember that game,” said 21-year-old Precious Achiuwa, who was born in Nigeria and immigrated to the United States in eighth grade. “It wasn’t good.”
Fast forward nine years, and Achiuwa, now a forward for the Miami Heat and Nigeria’s national team, helped pull off a surprising upset against Team USA, 90-87, in an Olympic exhibition game two weeks ago — playing highlight-reel defense against American superstar Kevin Durant.
It was the first time an African team has ever defeated Team USA. It was a coming-out party of sorts for the Nigerian team, called D’Tigers, who are hunting for Africa’s first basketball medal in the upcoming Olympics.
“Hopefully it brings a lot of attention to us from younger athletes that are Nigerian, that may be interested in being a part of Nigerian basketball now,” said Gabe Nnamdi Vincent, a Nigerian American guard who, like Achiuwa, plays for the NBA’s Heat and the Nigerian national team.
Stephen Bardo, a former NBA player and college basketball analyst who has run basketball clinics across Africa, told ABC News he wasn’t surprised by Nigeria’s victory.
“Over half that team has NCAA or NBA experience,” he said. Eight players on the team’s 12-man Olympic roster are currently playing in the NBA.
The team also has a top-flight coach in Mike Brown — a former NBA coach of the year who helmed teams with some of the world’s top stars, including LeBron James and Bryant.
“I’ve been a head coach in the NBA Finals. I’ve been an assistant coach in multiple finals with multiple different teams. And I’ve won a couple,” he told ABC News. “Being a coach in the Olympics, I’ve never done that. So why not experience that now?”
While he doesn’t have any personal ties to Nigeria, Brown sees the role as an opportunity to build something bigger than a strong national team — and is working for the Nigerian Basketball Federation without pay.
“I got 10 toes in. I got both arms in. I got my big ole head in, every part of my body is in — to uplift Nigeria as a country through the game of basketball,” he said.
With a team of stars, the USA men’s team is still the favorite for the gold medal in Japan. But after dropping consecutive exhibition games to Nigeria and a powerhouse Australian team, the Americans are entering their first game in their shakiest position since 2004, when a team of NBA stars struggled to play together and wound up with the bronze medal at the Athens Olympics.
Brown said “the rest of the world is catching up” to Team USA.
That shrinking skills gap has been on full display this summer, as Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Milwaukee Bucks superstar born in Greece to Nigerian parents, led his team to victory in the NBA Finals, through the playoffs filled with teams anchored by stars from Cameroon, Slovenia, Serbia, France and the Bahamas.
“We all fought so hard to make sure that we opened the door for the next generation to come and compete in this game,” said Dikembe Mutombo, the Congolese American Hall of Fame basketball player-turned-philanthropist.
He was one of three African-born players in the NBA when he was drafted in 1991. Last year, the NBA season began with 107 international players from 41 countries — including 14 from Africa.
Now, he’s excited to watch the Nigerian team perform in Tokyo, and said they have a good shot at ending up on that medal stand.
“This will be a great celebration for everyone on the continent of Africa. We can say that we did it — not just Nigeria,” he said. “They are representing a big flag, not just the green flag of Nigeria.”
Ekpe Udoh, a veteran on Team Nigeria who played in the NBA for eight years, expressed optimism for the future of the national team.
“The core of our team [is] pretty young,” he told ABC News. “So if we can start now and continue to build a culture, I know we’ll be successful for years to come.”
“I don’t think there’s any one or two countries that would dominate something like the Olympics forever,” Vincent told ABC News. “I think it’s only a matter of time that Africa itself will step up.”
(WASHINGTON) — COVID-19 vaccinations rose 14% over the past week, White House officials said Friday, as the more contagious delta variant is quickly spreading in under-vaccinated areas.
“In the past 7 days 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%),” Cyrus Shahpar, the White House COVID-19 data director, said on Twitter Friday.
“The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US,” he added. “Get vaccinated!”
Friday just in: +600K doses reported administered over yesterday’s total, incl. 363K newly vaccinated. In the past 7 days, 2.15M reported newly vaccinated, vs. 1.88M the 7 days prior (+14%). The delta variant is highly contagious and circulating across the US. Get vaccinated!
The delta variant now makes up over 80% of cases, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said Tuesday, up from 50% at the beginning of July.
It’s unclear at the moment whether the increase in vaccinations is a blip or a trend. An ABC News analysis of CDC data shows that, as of Thursday, the number of COVID-19 vaccinations had plateaued at about 530,000 total shots administered per day. Over the last week, on average, 297,202 people initiated vaccination per day — 9.6% higher than the previous seven days.
On average, 236,791 adults initiated vaccination each day in the last seven days — 7.4% higher than the previous seven days, the analysis found. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, that number rose nearly 20%.
The five states that currently have the highest COVID-19 case rates are seeing their vaccination numbers increase, according to the White House. Arkansas, Florida, Louisiana, Missouri and Nevada are seeing a higher rate of people getting their first shots compared to the national average, Jeff Zients, the White House coordinator on COVID-19, told reporters Thursday.
“This is a very positive trend,” he added.
Visits to the website vaccines.gov from users in Alabama — the least-vaccinated state — have gone up three times in the last two weeks, according to epidemiologist and ABC News contributor Dr. John Brownstein. Meanwhile, people in Louisiana and Missouri have doubled visits to the site, he found, suggesting people there are seeking information on where to get a shot.
On Friday, Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey called on people to get vaccinated, as the daily average of new COVID-19 cases has tripled over the last two weeks in the state.
“Let’s get it done, and we know what it takes to get it done — get a shot in your arm,” she said during a press briefing. “I’ve done it, it’s safe, it’s effective, data proves that it works, it doesn’t cost anything, it saves lives.”
Just under 34% of the state’s population is fully vaccinated, according to CDC data.
“Folks are supposed to have common sense,” Ivey said. “But it’s time to start blaming the unvaccinated folks, not the regular folks. It’s the unvaccinated folks that let us down.”
Louisiana’s health department issued new COVID-19 guidance Friday, recommending mask-wearing indoors regardless of vaccination status “in light of Louisiana’s troubling COVID-19 trends in cases and hospitalizations,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said on Twitter.
“Louisiana is undeniably in a fourth surge of COVID,” the governor said during a press briefing Friday afternoon, as the state reported 3,127 new cases. The state’s average daily cases per 100,000 residents has increased 208% over the past 14 days.
“Louisiana now has the highest growth rate in cases per capita in the United States of America. I want to let that sink in,” Bel Edwards said, attributing that to widespread transmission of the delta variant and the “very low percentage of people who have been vaccinated.”
About 48% of residents ages 12 and up have gotten at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the governor.
“That number is far below where we need to be to have the protection that we need in order to slow the spread and move toward ending the pandemic,” he said.
One encouraging sign, and one the governor noted he hopes continues, is that vaccinations have been on the rise over the past two weeks, state officials said, going from an average of 2,000 vaccine initiations per day to about 5,000 per day.
“This surge is on us,” Bel Edwards said. “How bad it gets, how long it stays bad, how many people ultimately die — on us.”
ABC News’ Cheyenne Haslett, Sasha Pezenik and Jason Volack contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — A U.S. Senate committee has approved legislation that would, if enacted, require young women to register for Selective Service alongside men, and in the rare event of a war or other national emergency, be drafted for the first time in the nation’s history.
During the Vietnam War — between 1964 and 1973 — nearly 2 million men were drafted in the U.S., according to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. Just afterward, in 1973, facing a tide of opposition to the controversial draft, President Richard Nixon officially ended military conscription, and the U.S. established an all-volunteer force.
But even though the draft is no more, most young men, including immigrants, are required to register with the Military Selective Service in case conscription becomes necessary once again. Federal law requires registration when a man turns 18 years of age, and immigrants are required to register within 30 days of arriving in the country.
The new legislation, authored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., would remove any reference to “male” in current law, leaving women on an equal playing field.
But not everyone is on board.
Committee member Josh Hawley, R-Mo., announced his opposition to the measure, tweeting Friday, “American women have heroically served in and alongside our fighting forces since our nation’s founding – It’s one thing to allow American women to choose this service, but it’s quite another to force it upon our daughters, sisters, and wives. Missourians feel strongly that compelling women to fight our wars is wrong and so do I.”
Women have been serving at all levels of the military since 2013 when the Pentagon opened up front-line, ground combat positions to them, and supporters of the Reed legislation say it’s high time that women sign up, particularly since the service has changed dramatically since the Vietnam era.
“This isn’t our grandfather’s military,” a Senate aide close to the matter told ABC News in an interview, noting that should a draft be instituted, the greater need nowadays would be for more educated conscripts in the specialty branches, like those with an expertise in cyber, technology and STEM, as well as doctors and lawyers.
“So, while a draft is highly unlikely in many of our lifetimes, none of that raises the same arguments about physicality — all of the things that were used to argue for a male-only draft,” the aide said. “It’s a different world.”
When asked if President Joe Biden supports the change, a White House aide pointed to a September 2020 Military Officers Association of America candidate forum in which then-candidate Biden said, “The United States does not need a larger military, and we don’t need a draft at this time…I would, however, ensure that women are also eligible to register for the Selective Service System so that men and women are treated equally in the event of future conflicts.”
In a Supreme Court case earlier this year, the ACLU challenged the constitutionality of an all-male draft legislation, but the acting solicitor general pointed to likely action from Congress in arguing that the high court hold off making a judgement, which it eventually acceded to.
The Reed legislation is part of a massive defense policy measure known as the National Defense Authorization Act, a highly popular piece of legislation giving raises to U.S. troops, funding many new military systems, weapons upgrades and more. It is considered must-pass legislation, and it is expected that the new selective service requirement for women will remain in place, according to the aide.
The Senate nearly passed the legislation back in 2017, but instead a national commission was created to study the issue, along with a wider mandate to look at national public service in general.
That National Commission on Military, National, & Public Service last year came out in favor of the Reed position, and the senator took his current legislation directly from the commission findings.
“In reviewing the question of whether Selective Service registration should include women, the Commission seriously considered a wide range of deeply felt moral, legal, and practical arguments and explored the available empirical evidence,” the panel’s report read.
“The Commission concluded that the time is right to extend Selective Service System registration to include men and women, between the ages of 18 and 26. This is a necessary and fair step, making it possible to draw on the talent of a unified Nation in a time of national emergency,” the report concluded.
Taken together, the Senate aide said, the sentiment was, “If we’re going to have a draft – a selective service system – then women have to be involved.”
“The recognition is that we’re probably not going to have a military draft, but if we do, then we recognize that you can’t fight with one hand tied behind your back,” the aide added.
Plus, the aide noted, back in 2016 when the initial idea was being seriously considered, all four service chiefs testified in favor of adding women.
Congress for years has shot down the idea of mandatory registration for women, but times are changing. The NDAA — with the requirement in it — passed the Senate Armed Services Committee 23-2 this week.
If the legislation survives, the measure would go into effect one year after enactment of the new law.
Robert A. Reeder/The The Washington Post via Getty Images
(CAMBRIDGE, Md.) — While extreme heat waves, wildfires and devastating flooding bring attention to the impacts of climate change, some parts of the country are fighting more pernicious effects that threaten both protected ecosystems and important landmarks of American history.
Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge is a wetland in the outer banks of Maryland established in 1933 as a protected area for bald eagles, osprey and several species of migratory birds. The government officials working to protect it say they can see the impacts of climate change in the refuge every day. As the ocean continues to warm and sea levels rise, the water is turning marshes into lakes and allowing invasive species to take over the ecosystem.
But the pressure to protect Blackwater is about more than just the plants and animals that live there. It also has deep roots in American history. Harriet Tubman is connected to multiple sites in the area, including the town where she was born, the general store where she was hit in the head after refusing to stop an enslaved boy from escaping and multiple locations she used when leading slaves to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
“These are the very forests. If Harriet Tubman were here today, none of this landscape would have looked different to her at all,” said Deanna Mitchell, the superintendent of the Harriet Tubman Underground Railroad Historical Park.
Those forests are now also feeling the impact of climate change. The trees can’t survive the saltwater intruding on the marsh, and more and more forests are dying, turning into what U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Biologist Matt Whitbeck calls “ghost forests.”
“For many people, many visitors, if they come to the refuge, they go around our wildlife drive and they look to the south and they see this big body of open water. And it’s beautiful. You know, we have pelicans out there, we get tundra swans out there in the winter, the sunsets, and it’s just lovely,” he said.
“But once you understand the factors that cause this big expanse of open water, it’s a little alarming. So when the refuge was established in 1933, that was all the vast expanse of tidal marsh. So we had black rails, we had nesting black ducks. We had all of this habitat that has since been lost to open water.”
Whitbeck said 5,000 acres of tidal marsh at Blackwater have been converted into open water since the refuge was created, and encroaching saltwater has killed acres of forests and made irreversible changes for native species. The Fish and Wildlife Service expects sea levels around Blackwater will be 3.4 feet higher in 2100 than they are now, meaning most of the marshlands visible now will all be underwater.
The Fish and Wildlife Service has worked to restore marsh areas and is researching ways to manage the ecosystem, but Whitbeck said they won’t be able to stop all of the changes they’re seeing in the marsh as sea levels continue to rise and the saltwater makes it harder for native species to survive.
Just in the last year, a team of archeologists from the Maryland Department of Transportation announced they discovered the site of a cabin belonging to Harriet Tubman’s father, Ben Ross, where Tubman lived as a child and worked with him as an adult.
The agency recently purchased the 2,600-acre property where they found the site, because they were concerned it could be completely flooded before they were able to find and preserve what remained of the property.
“Sea level rise was already beginning to take away that particular site and that history. So if we had waited, if we hadn’t been able to begin this, even a couple of years, we might never have found it. So we found it just in time in a surprise area, in an area that was definitely being impacted by sea level rise,” said Marcia Pradines, the head of restoration efforts for wildlife refuges around the Chesapeake Bay.
Pradines and other federal officials are charged with making difficult decisions about how to prioritize the fight against climate change in protected wildlife refuges, including sometimes accepting that not every impact of climate change can be stopped or that they have to adapt their approach to determine what parts of the ecosystem will be able to survive. The federal government has adopted new guidance called Resist, Accept, Direct, acknowledging that they can no longer protect the country’s natural resources from every impact of climate change.
“I am very confident that at the end of my lifetime, Dorchester County will continue to be one of the largest expanses of tidal marsh in the Chesapeake Bay,” Whitbeck said.
“The trick is what kind of marsh will it be, and what plants and animals will live in that marsh? And that’s what we’re still sorting out.”
While federal and state officials work to balance the current impacts of climate change with the parts of Blackwater they can protect, they say they are focused on preserving the history for generations to come.
“The reality is we are dealing with climate change, and we are seeing the impacts of sea level rise to some degree,” Mitchell said.
“So I would say probably by the end of the century, things will start to change in here, you know, pretty much. But while we can do it and while we have the ability, we need to try and do as much as we can to protect what we can for as long as we can.”
(NEW YORK) — Josh Smith, a quadriplegic, has been unable to walk or perform most activities after an accident seven years ago.
So when Smith proposed to his girlfriend, Grace on bended knee, it was a big surprise for his friends and family.
Smith was able to do so using an exoskeleton suit.
“I had this huge idea, and I didn’t know if it was even possible because I don’t think I’ve ever seen anybody do it before,” Smith said. “So, I reached out to my therapists and told them I wanted to try to get down on one knee to propose, and I was hoping that we could use the exoskeleton to help with that.”
After he was given the green light, Smith got to work. But just like the last few years of his life, he knew it wouldn’t be easy.
A life-changing injury
In August of 2014, Smith was visiting some friends in Virginia Beach when he dove into a wave head first, slamming into a sandbar. He was instantly paralyzed from the chest down.
“I was floating there face down and couldn’t move anything, but my eyes were open,” Smith said. “It took me a little bit to realize that I couldn’t move at all and then once I came to, I thought I was going to drown there.”
“It was really scary,” he added. “Luckily, my friends dragged me out onto the beach and waited for the paramedics to get there.”
At 23 years old, Smith said he realized he would be in a wheelchair for the rest of his life.
The weeks following the accident were tough for Smith. He spent up to four months at the Shepherd Center, a spinal cord and brain injury rehabilitation center in Atlanta, where he worked with therapists to help him adjust to his wheelchair. Shortly after, he returned to his hometown of Richmond, Virginia, where he continued life, but forced to look through a new lens.
“Life as Josh knew it had changed in one horrific instant,” his mother , Caroline Smith said. “With his level of injury, living independently is very hard to achieve, but we worked together as a team to help him reach that goal.”
In under a year, Smith was making stride. He could drive an accessible van, work full-time, participate in adaptive sports and even invent products and tools for those, like himself, with limited motor functions. A little over two years after his injury, Smith lived in an accessible home he custom built for his needs, his mother said.
“It was kind of just my own drive that really pushed me forward to get independent and learn new things,” Smith said. “Help from my parents definitely makes things easier too.”
Although Smith said his life improving, there was one aspect of his life that he knew might not ever be the same again — dating.
“My self-confidence kind of went down the drain a little bit,” he said. “I didn’t really think anybody would want to date me, let alone marry me.”
Meeting “the one”
In February 2020, that notion changed when Smith connected with a woman named Grace Thompson on a dating app and realized they had a lot in common. Both Richmond natives, they discovered they attended the same church.
“The pandemic played a huge role in how serious we became because we went on the perfect amount of dates to where we both felt safe and comfortable not being in public anymore,” Thompson, 26, said. “We were pretty lucky in the timing of it all. It was a lot of game nights with another couple that we got close with during quarantine. We liked to cook dinners together and play games, and it was kind of nice to because, you know, we were still getting to know each other. We had a lot of great conversations and went out to parks a lot. He’s the only guy I’ve ever dated who I really work out with — which most people would be surprised at because he’s in a wheelchair — but he’s more active than most people I know.”
After being in a relationship for over a year, Smith said he knew Thompson was meant to be in his life forever. He planned a proposal which would include the use of the exoskeleton suit — made up of motorized leg braces — allowing him to get down on one knee and pop the question.
“I went to the hospital and met with a therapist twice to sort of work through the kinks and discuss how we were going to do it,” he said.
After sending Thompson off with her best friend to get a manicure, Smith made the final arrangements, waiting on the deck of his home in position while friends and family waited inside.
“It was just the easiest place for the therapist to set up the exoskeleton and things were just in a much more controlled environment,” he said. “It was a little bit less stressful.”
The proposal
Thompson said she was completely shocked to see Smith down on one knee after she took off her blindfold.
“I just kind of froze, staring at him and I felt like I couldn’t move,” she said. “Then my family and his family started pouring out and I was like, ‘Oh! It was very overwhelming but in a good way.”
“It was really cool that he was able to get on one knee, she added. “But to see him stand up — I’ve never seen him stand before, so that was really great and it was really strange to, like, have him hug me standing up! I wish we could do that more!”
Thompson said that meeting one another was meant to be, fueling her ambition to go to nursing school to help those who, like Smith, really needed it.
“There really is someone out there for everybody,” Thompson said. “And I think on my end of things, and from what I’ve learned, is to just try to be more patient and learn how and when to help him and know when he wants to do things on his own.”
The couple said they plan marry in October of next year and look forward to traveling more in the coming months.
“Everyone deserves love,” Smith said. “Sometimes you don’t know how it will come but it will always come when you’re least expecting it.”
(NEW YORK) — A former sales representative for a Kentucky company that marketed a performance-enhancing drug used with racehorses pleaded guilty Friday to a criminal charge stemming from what federal prosecutors in New York called a “widespread, corrupt” doping scheme.
Michael Kegley conspired with trainers, veterinarians and others to make misbranded drugs, secretly administer them to racehorses and cheat bettors in the $100 billion global racehorse industry, prosecutors said.
According to the indictment, Kegley marketed SGF-1000, the same adulterated and misbranded performance-enhancing drug that Maximum Security was given when he briefly placed first in the 2019 Kentucky Derby before being disqualified for interference.
The feds intercepted calls during which Kegley acknowledged he did not know the precise contents of SGF-1000, the indictment said. Kegley also was overheard explaining that trainers could be charged with felonies in the U.S. for doping horses.
“We can even put on the box, you know, ‘dietary supplement for equine,'” the indictment quoted Kegley as saying. “That way it’s not, no one even has to question, if it’s FDA approved or not.”
Kegley pleaded guilty to drug adulteration and misbranding of drugs. He faces a maximum sentence of three years in prison and agreed to forfeit more than $3 million.
SGF-1000 was not approved, was mislabeled and distributed without a valid prescription, said Sarah Mortazavi, an assistant U.S. attorney.
“I knew that there was no medical description for those products,” Kegley said at a plea hearing on Friday, adding that he “knew that the product was not manufactured in an FDA facility or approved by the FDA.”
“Did you know that the trainers intended to use these products on thoroughbred racehorses?” asked Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.
(COLUMBIA COUNTY, N.Y.) — Dozens of children tested positive for COVID-19 at an upstate New York summer camp, health officials confirmed to ABC News on Thursday.
The site of the outbreak was Camp Pontiac, a 550-person sleep-away camp located in Columbia County, about 2 1/2 hours north of New York City. Thirty-one children ages of 7 to 11 contracted the virus, according to Jack Mabb, the county health director.
The sickened children, younger than 12, weren’t eligible to be vaccinated. About half of campers are 12 or older, according to Mabb, and all but four of them had been vaccinated.
The 275-person staff at the camp had a similarly high vaccination rate, with only three unvaccinated staffers. The sick campers were sent home to isolate, as were 130 other campers who were considered close contacts of those who tested positive.
“None were seriously ill when they left, but we can’t know if they become more ill at home,” Mabb told ABC News.
Community spread is currently low in Columbia County, according to Mabb. While staffers from the camp are permitted to go into Columbia County and have done so, there’s no evidence so far that the outbreak is affecting the wider community.
“This morning, we have only one positive and she was not associated with the camp,” Mabb said.
Camp Pontiac sent a letter to families following the outbreak, noting that the camp had “decided to test all unvaccinated campers even though the CDC and the Department of Health do not require that we do so.”
“We consider the health and welfare of our camp community our number one priority,” the letter said. “Every camper of course is welcome back after the quarantine period ends and we will happily return or rebate pro rata tuition.”
New York’s vaccination rate is slightly higher than the national average. As of Thursday, 62% of residents had received at least one dose, and 56% were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, 56% of Americans have gotten at least one shot, and 49% are fully vaccinated.
ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Esther Castillejo contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Senate Democrats are demanding answers after the FBI revealed just recently that it received more than 4,500 tips about Brett Kavanaugh when he was a Supreme Court nominee in 2018 and that only ones the agency deemed most “relevant” were referred to then-President Donald Trump’s White House.
The Democrats want to know how the information from the supplemental background check was handled and whether any of it was investigated, details they say were never passed on to the senators considering Kavanaugh’s nomination.
They asked the FBI to hand over by Aug. 31 “all records and communications” related to the first-of-its kind tip line the FBI set up that produced both “telephone calls and electronic submissions” and to explain how the tips were evaluated and categorized as “relevant.”
“If the FBI was not authorized to or did not follow up on any of the tips that it received from the tip line, it is difficult to understand the point of having a tip line at all,” they said in a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray.
It’s been nearly three years since Kavanaugh’s contentious confirmation onto the nation’s highest court following allegations by California professor Christine Blasey Ford that he sexually assaulted her at a party in Maryland when they were both in high school in the early 1980s. Local police did not investigate in 2018 and weren’t asked to look into her allegations around the time she says the incident happened.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse released a letter from the FBI Thursday, dated June 30, that was written in response to a two-year-old request from Sens. Whitehouse and Chris Coons asking about how an expanded FBI review of Kavanaugh — done in response to Ford’s allegation — was pursued and how involved the Trump White House was in the probe.
In the letter, Jill C. Tyson, an FBI assistant director said the most “relevant” of the 4,500 tips received in the probe were passed to the Office of White House Counsel under Trump, but no further, as a 2010 Memorandum of Understanding between the Justice Department and White House requires. The fate and subsequent actions based off those tips remain a mystery.
The letter stated that the agency was conducting a background check rather than a criminal investigation. “The authorities, policies and procedures used to investigate criminal matters did not apply,” Tyson said.
In light of Ford’s accusations, other allegations of sexual misconduct against Kavanaugh ensued, all of which he denied. Don McGahn was White House counsel at the time.
The allegations led to bitter divide among lawmakers over Trump’s nomination of the judge and saw Ford and Kavanaugh endure a heated daylong hearing in September 2018 where they were grilled by members of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Kavanaugh was eventually sworn into the Supreme Court in October that year.
The FBI response has only sparked outrage among Democrats. Whitehouse along with six other Democrats on the Senate Judiciary Committee — Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, Cory Booker of New Jersey, Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, Patrick Leahy of Vermont, Mazie Hirono of Hawaii, and Coons — replied to the FBI’s letter Wednesday asking for additional details on the agreement with the White House over the inquiry and the handling of the incoming tips.
“The admissions in your letter corroborate and explain numerous credible accounts by individuals and firms that they had contacted the FBI with information ‘highly relevant to . . . allegations’ of sexual misconduct by Justice Kavanaugh, only to be ignored,” the senators wrote in response.
ABC News has reached out to the FBI for comment.
In the probe into Kavanaugh’s past, 10 witnesses were interviewed by the FBI, according to the letter, but Ford and Kavanaugh were not. It’s unclear whether those 10 were discovered through the tip line.
Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, the lawyers who represented Ford, said in a statement that the FBI’s investigations into her allegations about Kavanaugh’s alleged misconduct “was a sham and a major institutional failure.”
The lawyers said the FBI “handed the information over to the White House, allowing those who supported Kavanaugh to falsely claim that the FBI found no wrongdoing,” adding, “our nation deserved better.”
ABC News’ Trish Turner and Devin Dwyer contributed to this report.
