(STOCKTON, Calif.) — The family of a Black man who was shot seven times in Stockton, California, last week is pushing for justice in what is now being investigated as a potential hate crime.
Bobby Gayle, 45, a cement mason and father of five was seriously injured in the unprovoked attack last Friday, according to his family. His brother, Marlon Gayle, said Bobby had just finished a construction job at a restaurant when the shooting occurred.
“This big truck came by and almost hit them. So my brother says, ‘Hey, slow down,'” Marlon Gayle told ABC News. “According to my brother and the guy who was with him, his friend, the guy gets out of the truck, the white guy, and he has a gun, and he starts saying the n-word over and over again and started shooting my brother.”
Bobby Gayle was shot seven times, including in the face. His family said that he is in stable condition and that no major arteries were hit.
Right after the shooting, he left his brother a voicemail saying that he had been shot and asking him to pray.
“It was a miracle. God answers prayer and we’re just so thankful,” Marlon Gayle said. “He’s just so happy to be alive, and blessed to be with his family and his children.”
The Stockton Police Department described the shooter as a white male in his 30s, wearing a dark-colored jacket and jeans. Police have described his vehicle as a late-model Chevrolet Silverado extended cab truck with after-model, chrome-colored wheels. There’s a $10,000 reward for information leading to his arrest.
While detectives are in the early stages of the investigation, they said the shooting is being probed as a potential hate crime. The Stockton Police Department said it has had an average of eight hate crime cases a year over the last five years.
“His heart is not right, the hatred that’s inside of him,” Marlon Gayle said. “Yes, it was a hate crime and that person needs Jesus, that person needs prayer, that person needs to be brought to justice.”
“Our family, we never expected something like this to happen. We love people. We’re people that serve in the community, and we love people from all backgrounds,” he added. “We believe in forgiveness, but that person, he definitely needs to be taken off the streets. He’s dangerous.”
Gayle said that the police department has been very helpful.
“I really believe that they’re doing everything that they can to try to find this guy,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released sweeping new guidance for the food industry to voluntarily reduce sodium in processed, packaged and prepared foods in an attempt to reduce Americans’ consumption.
“The FDA is issuing a final guidance, ‘Voluntary Sodium Reduction Goals: Target Mean and Upper Bound Concentrations for Sodium in Commercially Processed, Packaged, and Prepared Foods,’ which provides voluntary short-term sodium reduction targets for food manufacturers, chain restaurants and foodservice operators for 163 categories of processed, packaged and prepared foods,” the agency announced.
Acting FDA Commissioner Dr. Janet Woodcock lauded the new sodium reduction guidance in a press conference Wednesday morning. She said it is a “critical step” in improving Americans’ nutrition, reducing the burden of diet-related chronic diseases and advancing health equity, predicting the effort would “become one of the most significant public health nutrition interventions in a generation.”
The guidance is intended to provide measurable voluntary short-term goals over the next two and a half years to reduce excess sodium intake, while recognizing and supporting the important roles sodium plays in food technology and food safety.
ABC News chief medical correspondent Dr. Jennifer Ashton said the news from Woodcock and Susan T. Mayne, director of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, is “really targeting the food industry.”
The current salt intake recommendation of 3,000 milligrams per day is now set to a goal of 2,300 milligrams a day over the next two and a half years.
“Right now, it is clear that diet is a major contributing factor to not only our obesity, but high blood pressure, which, of course, then increases the risk for heart attack [and] strokes,” Ashton said.
Woodcock voiced hope that this voluntary guidance that targets the food industry itself — rather than leaving the onus on individuals — will help level the playing field for Americans who may not be well-equipped to police their nutrition alone, especially with sparse healthy food options in food deserts and due to some healthier food options being cost-prohibitive for lower-income families.
“The problem is so cumulative — it’s the tomato sauce, the cheese, the bread, the salad dressing, and pretty soon your whole meal has hidden salt in it. And it’s really hard right now for people to manage that on their own,” Woodcock said. “Most of the salt in the diet, the sodium in the diet, it comes from processed or packaged or prepared foods — not from the saltshaker.”
“Sodium is widely present in the American diet (most commonly, but not exclusively, as a result of eating or drinking foods to which sodium chloride, commonly referred to as “salt,” has been added),” according to the FDA. “More than 70% of total sodium intake is from sodium added during food manufacturing and commercial food preparation.”
During the same press conference, Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra underscored Woodcock’s point that neglecting to address sodium consumption would carry high human and economic costs. He added that the COVID pandemic has shown the importance of taking better care of one’s health.
“The pandemic has graphically illustrated why today’s announcement is so important and why it’s so important that we take care of our health,” Becerra said, adding the consequences of Americans’ sky-high sodium intake could be “catastrophic personally and for the country.”
Mayne said that this issue impacts all age groups with “more than 95% of children age two to 13 who exceed recommended sodium limits for their age groups — even baby food — which carries long-term ramifications for children’s health and development,” she said.
But being that this is voluntary, truly capping sodium intake effectively will require a groundswell of both industry cooperation and consumer demand to help drive the initiative.
When asked whether there would need to be more teeth behind such policy, Woodcock said the government would monitor the impact of this current guidance over time, pointing to the importance of public support.
“If we don’t see success, then we’re going to have to evaluate what else we should do,” Woodcock said, without ruling out the idea of further, more stringent future measures.
“We have a plan to monitor and then to ratchet it further down, and what we learn over the next several years will tell us what magnitude of steps we can take,” Woodcock said. She acknowledged that “this change won’t happen overnight” and will require “an iterative approach that supports gradual reduction in sodium levels, broadly across the food supply, over time.”
(NEW YORK) — Actor William Shatner was overcome with emotion after his “unbelievable” 10-minute trip to space on Blue Origin’s New Shepard.
“Everybody in the world needs to do this,” Shatner told Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos after he touched down in Texas Wednesday.
“To see the blue color rip by — now you’re staring into blackness,” Shatner said, who, at the age of 90, is now the oldest person ever to go to space. “It was so moving. This experience has been something unbelievable.”
“What you have given me is the most profound experience,” the “Star Trek” star said to Bezos.
“I am so filled with emotion. It was extraordinary,” he said. “I hope I never recover from this. I hope that I can maintain what I feel now. I don’t want to lose it. It’s so — so much larger than me and life.”
Shatner also told Bezos, “It would be so important for everybody to have that experience through one means or another. I mean maybe you can put it on 3D and wear the goggles.”
Shatner joined Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations and a former NASA flight controller and engineer; Chris Boshuizen, the co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs and a former space mission architect for NASA; and Glen de Vries, the co-founder of Medidata Solutions, a life science company.
This was Blue Origin’s second crewed mission to space.
(FORT HOOD, Texas) — A Fort Hood soldier assigned to the 1st Cavalry Division was found dead Saturday behind his barracks over the weekend, according to military officials.
Officials have not released the victim’s ID or the cause of death.
“More details will be released once all next of kin have been notified. The incident is under investigation,” Fort Hood officials said in a press release.
Fort Hood officials did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
There have been multiple incidents at the Texas base this year.
Last week, there were concerns for Pfc. Jennifer Sewell, who was believed to be missing after she failed to report for duty on Oct. 7. Fort Hood officials said in an update Sunday that “Sewell’s family confirmed she is safe and with extended family.” She returned to the base Monday.
Fort Hood is the same Army base where Vanessa Guillen was murdered in April 2020, in a case that engrossed the nation.
Guillen, 20, was bludgeoned to death with a hammer in an arms room on April 22, 2020, authorities said. She was missing for months until some of her remains were found buried along the Leon River in June 2020.
Her suspected killer was fellow soldier Spc. Aaron Robinson, who took his own life when confronted by police after her remains were discovered, authorities said at the time.
Her death cast a harsh spotlight on the base and its culture, particularly for its handling of sexual assault and harassment, as she told her family that she had been harassed at the base. A long-awaited U.S. Army investigation released in April determined she had been sexually harassed by a supervisor, but the incidents of harassment were not related to her murder.
In December 2020, the Army announced 14 senior leaders and enlisted personnel at Fort Hood were fired or suspended following an independent panel’s review of the command climate and culture at the base.
Last week, the base unveiled the People First Center, a training center for support and resources for victims of sexual assault or those experiencing suicidal thoughts.
(WASHINGTON) — Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, one of four Latino cabinet members in President Joe Biden’s administration, said on Tuesday he wanted to end raids by Immigration and Customs Enforcement at workplaces.
“The deployment of mass worksite operations, sometimes resulting in the simultaneous arrest of hundreds of workers, was not focused on the most pernicious aspect of our country’s unauthorized employment challenge: exploitative employers,” Mayorkas wrote in a memo obtained by ABC News. “These highly visible operations misallocated enforcement resources while chilling, and even serving as a tool of retaliation for, worker cooperation in workplace standards investigations.”
Such a change from what was seen under the previous administration is something that policy experts, including Sylvia Puente, president and CEO of Latino Policy Forum, have said may result from Biden having surrounded himself with a more representative cabinet.
Mayorkas has been joined by Secretary Xavier Becerra of Health and Human Services, Secretary Miguel Cardona of the Department of Education and Administrator Isabel Casillas Guzman of the Small Business Administration.
“It was about time — the increase in representation that looks like us in the White House, and cabinet levels in Congress, really allows us not to be invisible,” Puente told ABC News. “It really allows us to take our place in our American society.”
Becerra, who made history as the first Latino to lead HHS, discussed with ABC News the importance of representation for all Americans.
“There’s a pride that comes in understanding what you bring to the table, of what your parents taught you and what your forefathers and foremothers did for this country,” Becerra said. “I’m very proud that I bring that to my country. And that’s the heritage that has made the fabric of our country so strong.”
Becerra is the first person in his family to get a four-year college degree, after his parents emigrated from Mexico at a young age. Ultimately, he added, his opportunities have allowed him to help provide opportunities for others.
“It’s about helping people like my dad, who didn’t get past sixth grade, who worked with his hands all his life as a construction worker, a farm worker, so that he could actually have a better [life], at least for his kids,” Becerra said.
“Given that we have this historic number of cabinet officials who are Latino,” Puente said, “it really feels like the administration is living up its profit promise to have equity, to have diversity and to have inclusion.”
Puente said she hopes to see it continue, and not “just in Hispanic Heritage Month,” which spans Sept. 14 to Oct. 15. It’s important for Latinx and Hispanic individuals “to be a part of this ongoing dialogue.”
Barack Obama had a total of six Latino cabinet members.
Educational disparity
Cardona said during a GMA3 interview on Sept. 15 that he hopes to improve access to higher education.
“We want access to higher education for Latino students at the same rate as other students — we want to make sure completion happens,” Cardona said.
While Latinos account for 18.7% of the U.S. population, according to Census data, only 16.4% complete a four-year degree.
“We also want to make sure at the pre-K level that Latino students have access to early childhood education that serves as a foundation,” Cardona added.
The dropout rate among Latino students, according to a 2019 fact sheet from the National Center for Education Statistics, is about 7.7%, which has declined in recent years but still trails Black (5.6%), white (4.1%) and Asian (1.8%) students.
In August, more than 200,000 migrants were encountered crossing the southern border, according to DHS data.
“People really want to come to the U.S. because they feel they can’t make a living in their homeland, or they can’t stay safe in their homeland, or they’re afraid of being murdered in their home,” Puente told ABC News.
After reports of U.S. border patrol agents acting aggressively towards Haitian migrants fleeing their country amid multiple crises, DHS launched an investigation and alerted the department’s Office of Inspector General. Biden condemned the agents’ actions by saying those who confronted the Haitian migrants aggressively “will pay.”
Puente is among those hoping Biden’s words can lead to larger reforms.
“We certainly expect immigration reform,” she added. “We expect the president and vice president to not only continue to elevate the issue, but to really work with Congress. There are so many pieces of immigration that need to be unpacked.”
Late last month, Mayorkas announced the formation of the Law Enforcement Coordination Council, an effort to “institutionalize best practices in law enforcement.”
Mayorkas intends to chair the LECC, the first department-wide body to serve as a governing organization for agencies including U.S. Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
“We are bringing a greater, in my opinion, a greater degree of organization, cohesion to [law enforcement policies],” Mayorkas told ABC News at the time.
Biden has said on multiple occasions he will be a leader for all Americans, and organizations and his cabinet members have said they’ll do what they can to help him keep that promise.
“As secretary, I’m going to make sure that when the president says ‘everyone,’ it includes everyone,” Becerra told ABC News. “We’re not going to leave anyone out. I don’t care what corner of the country you’re from, if you exist in the shadows, we’re going to service you. We believe in the people who lift up this country.”
(VAN HORN, Texas) — Actor William Shatner and his three crewmates on Blue Origin’s New Shepard have returned to earth after an 11-minute trip to space.
Shatner, 90, is the oldest person ever to go to space.
The “Star Trek” star joined Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations and a former NASA flight controller and engineer; Chris Boshuizen, the co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs and a former space mission architect for NASA; and Glen de Vries, the co-founder of Medidata Solutions, a life science company.
This was Blue Origin’s second crewed mission to space.
Latest headlines:
-‘I am so filled with emotion,’ Shatner says
-Capsule touches down safely
-Capsule separates from booster
-Shatner soars to space in historic launch
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern.
Oct 13, 11:32 am
Bezos pins Shatner and crew
“Welcome to a very small club,” Bezos told the four new astronauts as he fastened pins on their suits.
“Oops, this one is bent,” Bezos said as he tried to pin one on Shatner. “So am I,” Shatner joked back.
ABC News’ Ayushi Agarwal
Oct 13, 11:25 am
‘I am so filled with emotion,’ Shatner says
Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin’s founder, joined friends and family as they greeted the astronauts who exited the capsule one by one.
Bezos sprayed bottles of champagne to celebrate the safe and historic launch.
“Everybody in the world needs to do this,” Shatner, who was overcome with emotion, told Bezos.
“It was so moving. This experience has been something unbelievable,” he said. “The blue down there, the black up there.”
“You have done something,” Shatner said to Bezos. “What you have given me is the most profound experience. I am so filled with emotion.”
“I hope that I can maintain what I feel now,” he said. “I don’t want to lose it.”
“I am overwhelmed,” he said. As for the camaraderie with the crew, the actor said, “It’s like being in battle together.”
Oct 13, 11:02 am
Capsule touches down safely
The newest astronauts touched down safely at about 11 a.m. ET.
This was the second crewed flight for Blue Origin.
Oct 13, 10:59 am
Booster returns to earth ahead of capsule
The booster touched back down on Earth after launching Shatner and crew to space.
(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department on Wednesday will ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reinstate the death sentence for Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, even as the agency has suspended all federal executions and President Biden has vowed to eliminate capital punishment.
A federal appeals court last year upheld Tsarnaev’s conviction for the 2013 attack that killed three and injured more than 200, but it tossed out the jury-recommended execution on the grounds that procedural errors during the sentencing phase compromised his right to a fair and impartial hearing.
The Biden administration calls the case “one of the most important terrorism prosecutions in our nation’s history” and plans to argue before the justices that any discrepancies during the process would not have led the jury to select a different sentence and that an execution must go forward.
“It’s one thing to say that you’re opposed to capital punishment, it’s another for the United States Attorney’s Office to tell the good people in Boston that you’re no longer going to see the death penalty against the Boston Marathon bomber. And, so they didn’t,” said Jeffrey Wall, the former Trump administration acting solicitor general who first led the appeal to reinstate Tsarnaev’s sentence, on why the new administration is continuing to seek death.
The White House would not directly answer when asked by ABC News whether President Joe Biden supports his Justice Department’s case and a federal execution of Tsarnaev.
A Biden administration official pointed to a June statement by White House press secretary Jen Psaki that noted Biden’s “deep concerns” about capital punishment and belief that “the Department should return to its prior practice, and not carry out executions.”
Attorneys for Tsarnaev said their client deserves a new sentencing hearing after an appeals court concluded that the trial judge improperly denied admission of key mitigating evidence and inadequately screened prospective jurors for bias.
The defense said the alleged involvement of Tsarnaev’s older brother, Tamerlan, in a 2011 triple homicide in Waltham, Massachusetts, is critical evidence to suggest he — not Dzhokhar — was the mastermind of the marathon attack and had previously exerted influence over younger accomplices.
“In 2011, on the tenth anniversary of the September 11 attacks, Tamerlan robbed and murdered a close friend and two others as an act of jihad,” Tsarnaev’s attorneys write in their brief to the high court. “For Dzhokhar — a teenager well-liked by teachers and peers, with no history of violence — the bombings were the culmination of Tamerlan’s months-long effort to draw him into extremist violence.”
Tamerlan Tsarnaev died shortly after the attack when he was run over by his brother as the two fled from police following a gunfight.
“If you accept the Eighth Amendment principle that somebody pretty much has a right to bring in almost anything that’s mitigating … if you don’t allow the defendant to bring in this evidence, you’ve basically deprived him of the only defense against the death penalty he was offering,” said Irving Gornstein, director of the Supreme Court Institute at Georgetown University Law Center. “I think that will give [the justices] some pause. Now, enough pause? Probably not. But some pause.”
The defense also said the trial judge failed to expose evidence of bias among potential jurors by not asking specifics about pretrial media exposure, including what they had read, heard or seen about Tsarnaev or the Boston Marathon bombing.
Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argues that neither error — even if undisputed — would have swayed a jury against death.
“The record definitively demonstrates that respondent was eager to commit his crimes, was untroubled at having ended two lives and devastated many others, and remained proud of his actions even after he had run Tamerlan over and was hiding out alone,” the government writes in its brief. “The jury that watched a video of respondent place and detonate a shrapnel bomb just behind a group of children would not have changed its sentencing recommendation based on Tamerlan’s supposed involvement in unrelated crimes two years earlier.”
The administration’s pursuit of death for Tsarnaev contrasts with President Biden’s 2020 campaign promise that he would “work to pass legislation to eliminate the death penalty at the federal level, and incentivize states to follow the federal government’s example.”
No legislation has been put forward, but in July, Attorney General Merrick Garland ordered a temporary halt to further executions of federal inmates, noting a number of defendants who were later exonerated as well as statistics showing possible discriminatory impact on minorities.
The Supreme Court could reinstate Tsarnaev’s death sentence, or it could hand Tsarnaev a chance at a new sentencing hearing, clarifying rules for jury selection and mitigating evidence in death-penalty cases.
(WASHINGTON) — Voting rights activists from Mi Familia Vota said after years of being ignored, they are seeing significant investments from politicians trying to reach out to the Latino community. As the largest non-white ethnic group in the United States continues to grow, Latinos have become a focal point for Republicans and Democrats alike.
But Héctor Sánchez Barba, the executive director and CEO of the Latino-focused civic engagement organization Mi Familia Vota, said that Latino voters must be prepared to identify which efforts are performative and what political promises will be kept.
“Nobody has a free ride with the Latino vote,” Sánchez Barba told ABC News. “The important part is this is not a transactional element, just for the Latino vote. It [must be] a serious holistic engagement on Latino priorities.”
The percentage of Latinos who were eligible to vote and did so rose to a historic high of 53.7% in 2020, increasing from 47.3% in 2016, according to CUNY’s Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies.
This research also shows that the number of Latino votes in the 2020 election also increased by 29.8%: from the 12.7 million votes cast in 2016 to approximately 16.5 million in 2020.
Now, the fight for their votes is on ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
President Joe Biden won the majority of Latino voters across the country, but former President Donald Trump scored more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016.
Latino turnout in Texas rose from 1,938,000 in 2016 to 2,972,000 in 2020, the CUNY research shows. That’s a 31.1% increase.
Republicans are now targeting Democratic Latino strongholds throughout the state — like the Rio Grande Valley — which seemingly faltered in 2020. Biden won in most counties, but by less than Hillary Clinton had won them in 2016. Zapata, Starr and Val Verde counties, which previously voted for Democrats, flipped to Trump in 2020.
Democratic representatives from across the state — Colin Allred, Vicente Gonzalez, Filemon Vela, Henry Cuellar, and Lizzie Fletcher — are being threatened by GOP challengers, according to the National Republican Congressional Committee.
McAllen, a Latino-majority border city in the valley, voted for its first GOP mayor in 24 years.
And in order to flip more seats and hold onto newly acquired seats, Republicans are creating Hispanic community centers across the country. The next one is slated to open in San Antonio, GOP Communications Director Danielle Alvarez told ABC News.
“We just opened in Doral, which is in South Florida,” said Alvarez. “[We were] talking about having “pastelitos” and “cafecito” and having photos of the South Florida community up, and instead of campaign pull-out tables, doing domino tables. Just making it personal.”
They’ve said they have also implemented this strategy with other ethnic groups, like Asian Pacific Americans and Black voters.
She added, “It provides us the ability to not just share our message and our agenda, but for them to have a conversation back and share their values and what they’re hoping to accomplish.”
From there, the RNC can train them to do the on-the-ground organizing for the Republican efforts.
“Most people kind of hear Democrats’ wishful thinking that Texas is going to be purple,” Alvarez said. “We would make the argument that Texas is red and it’s become even more red, since the previous election.”
Alvarez said that the RNC has a strong data operation that can analyze voters and what is important to them. The party’s 2012’s “Growth And Opportunity Report” continues to be an important source of information for the GOP strategy, Alvarez said. The report highlighted the party’s need to campaign among Latino, Black, Asian, and LGBTQ Americans and “demonstrate we care about them, too,” the report states.
Republicans said they hope to combine what they’ve learned to ensure that the new Hispanic-targeted centers hit home with voters.
“We’re lucky that we don’t often have to paint people with broad brushes — we can get down to what moves in individual voter,” said Alvarez.
Overall, Latinos voted less for Democrats in 2020 than they did in 2016, but the demographic still chose Biden over Trump with 58% of the vote.
Despite this, the Democratic National Committee is attempting to quell any Republican progress, reaching back into its playbook that has long won them the “Latino vote.”
Democrats’ I Will Vote initiative has invested $25,000,000 in voter education, voter protection and targeted voter registration and aims to make voting more accessible. With this, they hope to drive new voters — hopefully Democrats — to the polls.
“You’ll see Democrats going out into communities across the country and specifically showing how these bills are going to be impacting their lives: creating jobs, lowering costs for families and cutting taxes for them as well,” said Lucas Acosta, the senior spokesperson and coalitions director at Democratic National Committee.
In 2020, Latinos overall were concerned with their safety, their health amid COVID-19, and the economy, according to Pew Research.
Eight in 10 registered Latino voters rated the economy as their biggest priority at the time — as the pandemic surged on and the unemployment reached a peak of 14.8% in April 2020, the Congressional Research Service reports. It was the highest rate observed since data collection began in 1948.
Latinos comprise 18.7% of the U.S. population, but represent 28.1% of the population in poverty, according to the U.S. Census.
Acosta said Democrats will focus their door-to-door, on-the-ground community-based outreach on Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which promised to “deliver immediate relief for hard-hit Latino families and small businesses, build a bridge towards economic recovery, and reduce poverty in Latino communities by almost 40 percent,” the plan’s fact sheet read.
“Our responsibility is to make sure that voters know who was in the room fighting for that,” Acosta said.
For Latino-targeted voting groups like Mi Familia Vota, they said the focus remains on protecting voters by campaigning against misinformation targeting this sought-after demographic and legislative efforts that make it harder for Latinos to vote.
Republicans across the country have enacted a wave of new voting laws. In September, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed a sweeping voting bill into law that restricts counties’ ability to expand options for voting and makes the election process harder for Texans. The law would limit how and when voters can cast ballots by banning overnight early voting hours as well as drive-thru voting.
Voting groups also said ads targeting the Latino community spread false claims about politicians and their platforms. Specifically, they say these misinformation campaigns instilled fear and betrayed the trust of voters. A recent Nielson report showed that Latino consumers are more likely to receive and share fake news on social media when compared to the rest of the population.
“Those policies that they’re promoting are gonna make it way harder for us to go to the polls and have the basic right to vote,” Sánchez Barba said. “And this is not something new. This is something historical, so we’re keeping the Republicans accountable at a very high level.”
Sánchez Barba also called out anti-immigrant language from the right. He said the party has a lot of work to repair a reputation of hate against people of color and Latino folks.
“A lot of these politicians and these parties only show up very last minute when they need the Latino vote,” Sánchez Barba said. “The Latino community doesn’t forget.”
(VAN HORN, Texas) — Actor William Shatner and his three crewmates on Blue Origin’s New Shepard are just hours away from their suborbital space flight.
The eleven-minute mission for Jeff Bezos’ spaceflight company was initially set for Tuesday but was delayed one day due to forecasted winds in West Texas.
Shatner is joining Audrey Powers, Blue Origin’s vice president of mission and flight operations and a former NASA flight controller and engineer; Chris Boshuizen, the co-founder of satellite company Planet Labs and a former space mission architect for NASA; and Glen de Vries, the co-founder of Medidata Solutions, a life science company.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Oct 13, 9:58 am
Bezos chauffeurs astronauts to launch tower
The countdown clock was paused for approximately 30 minutes as Blue Origin teams assessed launch conditions on the ground, but the astronauts are en route to the launch pad.
PHOTO: In this still image taken from a Blue Origin video, the New Shepard rocket sits on the launch pad prior to lift off on Oct. 13, 2021, from the West Texas region, 25 miles, north of Van Horn.
Jose Romero/Blue Origin/AFP via Getty ImagesJose Romero/Blue Origin/AFP via Getty Images
In this still image taken from a Blue Origin video, the New Shepard rocket sits on the lau…
Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos, who went to space himself in July, chauffeured the four astronauts to the launch tower as workers cheered.
Oct 13, 9:16 am
NASA wishes Shatner ‘all the best’ on his flight to space
NASA sent a good luck tweet to William Shatner Wednesday morning ahead of the actor’s trip to the edge of space.
Oct 13, 9:10 am
Astronauts will experience 3 to 4 minutes of weightlessness
During the 11-minute flight, the astronauts will experience about three to four minutes of weightlessness.
They’ll also travel above the Karman Line, the internationally recognized boundary separating Earth’s atmosphere from space.
Oct 13, 7:31 am
Shatner set to become the oldest person to go to space
Star Trek star William Shatner, 90, is poised to become the oldest person ever to go to space.
He’ll beat the record set by 82-year-old Wally Funk during July’s inaugural New Shepard launch.
(WASHINGTON) — With global supply chain bottlenecks threatening the Christmas shopping season, President Joe Biden will highlight his administration’s work with ports on Wednesday and try to stave off the potentially politically explosive headaches Americans may face as delays threaten holiday gift-giving.
The president plans to meet with the leaders of the two busiest ports in the United States — Los Angeles and Long Beach, both in California — and the International Longshore and Warehouse Union, “to discuss the challenges that ports across the country and actions each partner can take to address these delays,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday.
The port of Los Angeles, a senior Biden administration official said, will announce on Wednesday that it will move to 24/7 operations in order to help alleviate bottlenecks.
Several shippers and retailers will announce that they are taking steps to move toward 24/7 operations, too, according to senior administration officials.
According to the White House, Walmart will increase its use of nighttime hours; UPS will increasingly use 24/7 operations and enhance data sharing with ports; FedEx will increase its nighttime hours and make changes to trucking and rail use; Samsung will operate 24/7 over the next 90 days to move almost 60% more containers out of the Los Angeles and Long Beach ports; The Home Depot will move up to 10% more containers out of these ports in their off-hours each week; and Target will move 10% more containers during these off-peak hours.
Several of these companies and other stakeholders will participate in a virtual roundtable hosted by the White House Wednesday, according to the White House.
That dynamic carries great political risk for Biden, who has pegged his presidency to both pulling the country out of the coronavirus pandemic — the onset of which precipitated this supply crunch — and rebuilding the U.S. economy.
But Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen tried to temper fears Tuesday during an interview with CBS News.
“There may be isolated shortages of goods and services in the coming months,” Yellen said. “But there is an ample supply of goods. I think there’s no reason for consumers to panic about the absence of goods that they’re going to want to acquire at Christmas.”
The White House launched a task force in June to address disruptions to supply chains and in August added a port envoy to that group.
“We certainly know addressing those bottlenecks at ports could help address what we see in many industries across the country, and frankly are leading people who are preparing for holidays, for Christmas, whatever they may celebrate, birthdays, to order goods and get them to people’s homes,” Psaki said Tuesday.
