(FLINT, Mich.) — Five years after a water crisis rocked Flint, Michigan, a significant number of residents are suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder or depression and some may be suffering from both conditions, a new study finds.
Researchers from the Medical University of South Carolina in Charleston surveyed a sample of 1,970 residents aged 18 and older living in Flint, which is 430 miles northwest of Detroit, between 2019 and 2019.
They found that nearly one in four — 24.4% — met the criteria within the past year for PTSD and more than one in five — 22.1% — met criteria for depression. An additional 14% met the criteria for both disorders.
That means among a city of more than 80,000 people, 22,600 Flint residents may have had depression, 25,000 may have had PTSD and 14,300 may have had both.
What’s more, the prevalence of depression and PTSD are about three-fold and five-fold higher than the prevalence among the general U.S. population, respectively.
The Flint water crisis, which lasted from April 2014 to June 2016, occurred after emergency managers appointed by then-Gov. Rick Snyder decided to change to the city’s water supply from Lake Huron and the Detroit River to the Flint River to save costs.
Residents immediately raised concerns about their water quality. The Flint River is highly corrosive to lead plumbing and officials did not apply corrosion inhibitors to the water, resulting in lead being leached from the old pipes.
As a result, tens of thousands of people were exposed to dangerously high levels of lead. There were also outbreaks of Legionnaires’ disease — a severe form of pneumonia caused by inhaling Legionella bacteria in small droplets of water or accidentally swallowing water containing the bacteria — that sickened 87 and killed at least 12.
The study found residents who believed the contaminated water harmed their or their family’s health, or had low confidence in public officials, were at higher risk of PTSD and depression. Those with an annual household income of less than $25,000 were also at higher risk.
What’s more only about one-third, or 34.8%, were offered mental health services. Of those offered services, 79.3% used them.
The team did say its study had some limitations, including not accounting for pre-existing mental health conditions and the potential diagnoses not being made through interviews with a psychologist or psychiatrist.
The authors, however, believe people who suffer environmental disasters may require long-term mental health services. Additionally, despite restoring the water supply to Lake Huron and efforts to remove lead from city pipes, the team says mental health services have not matched the need in the community.
“Environmental disasters, such as the Flint, Michigan, water crisis, are potentially traumatic events that may precipitate long-term psychiatric disorders,” they wrote. “The water crisis was associated with acute elevations in mental health problems in the Flint community, but long-term psychiatric sequelae have not yet been evaluated using standardized diagnostic measures.”
The study comes as another city — Jackson, Mississippi — suffers its own water crisis.
Floods in late August caused the city’s main water treatment to fail, leaving all 150,000 without access to clean water for drinking, cooking or cleaning.
ABC News’ Dr. Anna Yegiants contributed to this report.
Four men and three women were taken to hospitals, officials said. Their ages were not immediately clear.
A building adjacent to the site of the explosion was being evacuated, fire officials said.
Video from the scene showed debris strewn across the sidewalk, street and several cars. Windows were blown out of the building, which had extensive damage to its top floor.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Six men and two women were taken to hospitals, officials said. Their ages were not immediately clear.
A building adjacent to the site of the explosion was being evacuated, fire officials said.
Video from the scene showed debris strewn across the sidewalk, street and several cars. Windows were blown out of the building, which had extensive damage to its top floor.
Crews for local gas utility Peoples Gas did not smell any gas at the site, a spokesperson for the company said.
“The cause of the incident is unknown, but there is no reason at this point to believe the cause is related to gas or any of our equipment,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the Chicago Police Bomb Squad were also responding to investigate, the Chicago Fire Department said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(LONDON) — Britain’s royal family released a previously unseen photo of Queen Elizabeth II on Monday, following her private burial at the King George VI Memorial Chapel at Windsor Castle.
The photo, shared on the royal family’s social media accounts, shows the queen walking through the countryside, holding a walking stick and wearing one of her trademark head scarves.
The photo was captioned with the words, “May flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest,” from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet.”
Those are the same words the queen’s eldest son King Charles III used at the end of his first public address following the queen’s death on Sept. 8 at age 96.
“And to my darling Mama, as you begin your last great journey to join my dear late Papa, I want simply to say this: thank you,” Charles said. “Thank you for your love and devotion to our family and to the family of nations you have served so diligently all these years. May ‘flights of Angels sing thee to thy rest.'”
The life of the queen, Britain’s longest-reigning monarch, was celebrated Monday with a state funeral at Westminster Abbey attended by around 2,000 dignitaries, heads of state and members of the royal family.
The queen’s coffin was lowered into the royal vault in a smaller committal service at Windsor Castle’s St. George’s Chapel following her funeral.
Later Monday evening, Charles and other members of the royal family attended a private burial service for the queen.
Elizabeth was buried next to her husband Prince Philip at the King George VI Memorial Chapel at St. George’s Chapel, where her mother, father and sister are also buried.
The royal family’s period of mourning for the queen will last until Sept. 27, when they will resume official engagements and the flags will be raised to full staff at royal residences once more.
The national period of mourning in the U.K. ended on the day of the queen’s funeral, which was declared a public holiday.
(BAIDOA, Somalia) — At an encampment in Baidoa, Somalia, Garan Hassan tugged at a reporter’s sleeve. Her 18-month-old daughter Malaika was too sick to eat, too weak to cry.
Staff at a Save the Children pediatric nutrition center quickly determined that this toddler had severe acute malnutrition, like more than 500,000 other children in Somalia, according to the U.N. This diagnosis means they could die without immediate treatment.
Malaika’s arm was as thick as a man’s thumb, and she weighed little more than an infant. Her body was shutting down and if left untreated she would likely die.
Somalia, like Ethiopia and Kenya, is suffering a record drought which, coupled with soaring food prices and plummeting donor funding to humanitarian groups, has left more than 22 million people starving, according to the U.N.’s World Food Programme.
A 2011 famine in Somalia killed nearly 260,000 people, half of them children.
More than half of the country’s children face acute malnutrition, Save the Children revealed in a report released on Monday.
The hunger has dislocated over a million Somalis, like Garan Hassan and her family, many of them seeking food and support in the once-small town of Baidoa. It is now a massive sprawl of thousands of tattered tents and home to 600,000 internally displaced people.
Many of them, like Hassan, had to travel through territory controlled by the Islamic fundamentalist group al-Shabab to get there.
Hassan told ABC News her husband died from starvation “at the beginning of the famine.” He was just 32. She is now the sole provider for little Malaika and her six siblings, which is why she told Save the Children staff she could not take Malaika to the hospital — she had to ensure that her other children were cared for.
“For me the declaration of famine is irrelevant. Look around you,” Ebrima Saidy, chief impact officer at Save the Children, told ABC News at the nutrition center where over 200 women with acutely malnourished children hoped to get support, “what is this if this is not famine?”
A famine has not been officially declared in Somalia since 2011.
Aid groups say that after the 2011 famine they had built up the infrastructure to help, but now with donor attention on the war in Ukraine and the COVID-19 pandemic, they lacked the funds.
Famine prevention efforts by the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization go to a million Somalis, but the agency tells ABC News its projects here are only 24% funded.
The next day Save the Children staff visited Garan Hassan and Malaika. They found that another of her siblings had severe acute malnutrition and both children, Malaika and her 3-year-old brother Nadifa, had multiple complications. They had suffered fevers, but were now disturbingly cold to the touch.
The staff warned Hassan they could die if they didn’t get treatment. After a terrifying night, Hassan quickly agreed to go to the hospital.
The children were whisked through the camp to a van that took them along streets broken by neglect and war to the Save the Children stabilization center — basically a hospital for the acutely malnourished.
Hospital staff determined the children suffered from malaria, whooping cough and measles — a result of their immune systems cratering from malnutrition.
During the admission process, as the two children were weighed, and measured and prodded with needles, Nadifa whimpered that he was thirsty. A few minutes later he was propped up on a nurse’s knee and given nutritional formula.
Nadifa drank one cup, then two. A milk mustache formed on his face, and on his mother’s face, for the first time in a long time, a smile.
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Fiona strengthened to a Category 3 storm Tuesday after leaving the entire island of Puerto Rico without power.
The storm system is currently carrying sustained winds of 115 mph as it moves northwest near Turks and Caicos. It could become a Category 4 storm as it closes in on Bermuda later in the week.
Fiona made a second landfall Monday in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma on the eastern side of the island with sustained winds of 90 mph and even higher gusts.
On Monday, the hurricane moved over the Dominican Republic with damaging winds and rain, causing more flash flooding and hurricane warnings in the region.
At least one person was killed in Puerto Rico as the then-Category 1 storm slammed the island, officials announced Monday.
The Arecibo resident was attempting to fill his generator with gasoline while it was on, causing an ignition, officials said.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi warned residents that more rain is expected on the island through Tuesday evening.
“We are going through a difficult moment but our people are strong and very generous,” he said during a press conference.
At least two more people died in a shelter due to natural causes, but those have not been labeled as storm-related deaths, Pierluisi said.
Restoring power in Puerto Rico
LUMA Energy said that only 100,000 out of 1.5 million clients have power on the island.
The governor said Monday the goal is for “a large number of LUMA customers” to have power “in a matter of days.” However, LUMA said in a statement Sunday that “full power restoration could take several days.”
Hospitals on the island are currently operating on generators, according to the governor.
Only 34% of households on the island have potable water after rivers grew and heavy rainfall impacted the system — meaning more than 834,000 people are without drinking water, the governor said Monday.
More than 1,000 people have been rescued by authorities, including a woman rescued Sunday who was stuck in a tree for seven hours after trying to look at the damage, officials said.
Heavy rainfall causes flooding across the island
Fiona strengthened to a hurricane from a tropical storm Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Fiona made landfall in southwestern Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 p.m. ET, dumping torrential rain on much of the island.
Some regions measured up to 25 inches of rain by 8 a.m. Monday, and flash flood warnings remain in effect for much of the island, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A flash flood emergency was issued overnight due to many rivers rising very quickly out of their banks. The Rio Grande de Arecido river rose 13 feet in one hour.
A bridge near Utuado, a town in the central mountainous region of the island, has collapsed, cutting off the communities of Salto Arriba and Guaonico, local newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported.
The portion of the bridge that collapsed is on Highway 123, a branch of Highway 10, which serves as a link between both roads and is one of the accesses to the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado campus, according to El Vocero.
The bridge, installed by the National Guard following Hurricane Maria, cost about $3 million to construct, the newspaper reported.
The rain saturated areas in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, along with the mountainous areas, where potential mudslides and winds could cause the most damage.
Prior to landfall, Pierluisi said Puerto Rico was prepared as it could be, with enough resources and manpower in place to respond — adding that the island learned its lessons from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
“We’re much in a much better position than we were five years ago,” he said.
Where Fiona heads next
After passing through the Caribbean, the storm system will head northward, passing just east of Turks and Caicos before tracking near Bermuda, forecasts show. The storm system will continue to gradually strengthen in the coming days as it moves north and then northeast this week.
Forecasts place Fiona near Turks and Caicos Monday night into Tuesday morning as a strong Category 2 hurricane with winds near 100 mph.
Tremendous rainfall is forecast, with much of the Dominican Republic expected to receive up to 10 inches and some regions in Turks and Caicos expected to see 8 inches of rain.
On Tuesday morning, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will continue to see gradually improving conditions, however, lingering showers and thunderstorms will still be likely, potentially impacting initial cleanup and recovery efforts.
By mid-week, Fiona is forecast to become the first major hurricane of 2022 Atlantic season, with winds of up to 125 mph.
Winds could be as high as 125 mph as the storm passes near Bermuda, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge. Some models show the storm hitting Bermuda directly on Friday.
While it won’t make landfall in the U.S., the hurricane will affect the entire East Coast with huge waves, rip currents and coastal flooding from Florida to Maine as it moves northward.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, which allows federal agencies to coordinate all relief efforts.
Biden’s decision has the “purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” the White House said in a statement.
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Fiona has strengthened to a Category 2 storm after leaving the entire island of Puerto Rico without power.
The storm system is currently carrying sustained winds of 110 mph as it moves northwest at 10 mph. The hurricane is gaining strength as it heads toward Turks and Caicos and could even escalate to a Category 3 by the time it hits in less than 24 hours.
Fiona made another landfall overnight in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma on the eastern side of the island with sustained winds of 90 mph and even higher gusts.
On Monday morning, the hurricane was moving over the Dominican Republic with damaging winds and rain, causing more flash flooding and hurricane warnings in the region.
At least one person was killed in Puerto Rico as the then-Category 1 storm slammed the island, officials announced Monday.
The Arecibo resident was attempting to fill his generator with gasoline while it was on, causing an ignition, officials said.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi warned residents that more rain is expected on the island through Tuesday evening.
“We are going through a difficult moment but our people are strong and very generous,” he said during a press conference.
At least two more people died in a shelter due to natural causes, but those have not been labeled as storm-related deaths, Pierluisi said.
Restoring power in Puerto Rico
LUMA Energy said that only 100,000 out of 1.5 million clients have power on the island.
The governor said Monday the goal is for “a large number of LUMA customers” to have power “in a matter of days.” However, LUMA said in a statement Sunday that “full power restoration could take several days.”
Hospitals on the island are currently operating on generators, according to the governor.
Only 34% of households on the island have potable water after rivers grew and heavy rainfall impacted the system — meaning more than 834,000 people are without drinking water, the governor said Monday.
More than 1,000 people have been rescued by authorities, including a woman rescued Sunday who was stuck in a tree for seven hours after trying to look at the damage, officials said.
Heavy rainfall causes flooding across the island
Fiona strengthened to a hurricane from a tropical storm Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Fiona made landfall in southwestern Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 p.m. ET, dumping torrential rain on much of the island.
Some regions measured up to 25 inches of rain by 8 a.m. Monday, and flash flood warnings remain in effect for much of the island, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A flash flood emergency was issued overnight due to many rivers rising very quickly out of their banks. The Rio Grande de Arecido river rose 13 feet in one hour.
A bridge near Utuado, a town in the central mountainous region of the island, has collapsed, cutting off the communities of Salto Arriba and Guaonico, local newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported.
The portion of the bridge that collapsed is on Highway 123, a branch of Highway 10, which serves as a link between both roads and is one of the accesses to the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado campus, according to El Vocero.
The bridge, installed by the National Guard following Hurricane Maria, cost about $3 million to construct, the newspaper reported.
The rain saturated areas in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, along with the mountainous areas, where potential mudslides and winds could cause the most damage.
Prior to landfall, Pierluisi said Puerto Rico was prepared as it could be, with enough resources and manpower in place to respond — adding that the island learned its lessons from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
“We’re much in a much better position than we were five years ago,” he said.
Where Fiona heads next
After passing through the Caribbean, the storm system will head northward, passing just east of Turks and Caicos before tracking near Bermuda, forecasts show. The storm system will continue to gradually strengthen in the coming days as it moves north and then northeast this week.
Forecasts place Fiona near Turks and Caicos Monday night into Tuesday morning as a strong Category 2 hurricane with winds near 100 mph.
Tremendous rainfall is forecast, with much of the Dominican Republic expected to receive up to 10 inches and some regions in Turks and Caicos expected to see 8 inches of rain.
On Tuesday morning, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will continue to see gradually improving conditions, however, lingering showers and thunderstorms will still be likely, potentially impacting initial cleanup and recovery efforts.
By mid-week, Fiona is forecast to become the first major hurricane of 2022 Atlantic season, with winds of up to 125 mph.
Winds could be as high as 125 mph as the storm passes near Bermuda, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge. Some models show the storm hitting Bermuda directly on Friday.
While it won’t make landfall in the U.S., the hurricane will affect the entire East Coast with huge waves, rip currents and coastal flooding from Florida to Maine as it moves northward.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, which allows federal agencies to coordinate all relief efforts.
Biden’s decision has the “purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” the White House said in a statement.
Fiona leaves 1 dead in Guadeloupe
While still a tropical storm, the system battered other Caribbean islands. One person died in the French territory of Guadeloupe, according to The Associated Press. More than 20 others were rescued amid heavy wind and rain according to the AP.
Fiona’s center moved through the island of Guadeloupe on Friday night, bringing heavy rain and gusty winds across the Leeward Islands.
The island’s emergency management office in Puerto Rico even had a blackout during its Saturday morning press conference. Pierluisi reiterated during that press briefing Saturday evening that the fear is that heavy rains will produce mudslides.
Resident Magda Diaz told ABC News outside a San Juan Walmart that she expects to be without power. Diaz said she loses power regularly, especially during smaller storms, and was recently in the dark for three days.
A LUMA Energy official told ABC News on Saturday that the company has been fixing the grid and is ready to get the grid back online if the system fails. LUMA Energy is in charge of the transmission and distribution of electricity on the island.
“We were expecting power outages from Fiona … and we’re bringing in 100 more workers from our parent companies that will be landing Sunday,” LUMA official Don Cortez said.
LUMA Energy’s Crisis Management Manager Abner Gomez told reporters the energy distributor is working to prevent a repeat of Hurricane Maria’s aftermath.
“We are going to make sure [a widespread outage] will not happen because we have the crews,” he said. “There will be damage. There will be outages and we will be ready to respond.”
ABC News’ Daniel Amarante, Rachel DeLima, Kenton Gewecke, Max Golembo and Daniel Peck contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s contention in a recent interview that the “pandemic is over” is complicating Senate Democrats’ efforts to secure needed Republican support for COVID-19 relief funding that had been requested by Biden’s administration.
“COVID is not over,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Monday when asked about Biden’s remarks, made during a 60 Minutes appearance that aired the previous day. “I don’t know what he meant — some people use ‘pandemic’ or ‘epidemic’ or other phrases. And he said that COVID isn’t over, the pandemic is over. But the way I look at it, COVID isn’t over.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin agreed.
“The variants are still out there. We are all hoping that it’s over [but] nobody is going to predict with certainty that it is. I’m not,” Durbin, D-Ill., told ABC News on Monday.
When pressed on the fact that the president twice resolutely stated that he believed the pandemic had ended, Durbin shrugged: “Maybe he knows something I don’t.”
“The president has asked in the past not just for pandemic funds for COVID-19 but to prepare for what might be next. And I think that’s always obvious and fair to do that,” Durbin said. “Maybe that’s his approach to it, I’d have to ask him.”
Biden on Sunday told CBS’ 60 Minutes that “the pandemic is over,” adding that “we still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
His comments soon became fodder for Republicans who already opposed the additional $22 billion COVID funding for testing and vaccine development that the White House sought.
The administration’s efforts to get lawmakers on Capitol Hill to approve more money have been repeatedly blocked by Republicans. Currently, the White House hopes to have the $22 billion included in a must-pass government funding bill.
But at least 10 Republicans would need to support that move.
“It makes it eminently harder for sure,” Republican Minority Whip John Thune said Monday.
The top Republican on the Senate’s health committee, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, wrote in a Monday letter to the president that he “watched with great interest” Biden’s 60 Minutes interview.
In the letter, Burr asked for more information about how Biden’s view that the “pandemic is over” might influence some of the administration’s policies, including its request for more COVID-19 funding.
“Despite Americans having largely returned to normal life, which you acknowledged when you noted that attendees at the Detroit Auto Show were not wearing masks, your Administration continues to request un-offset emergency funding from Congress, enforce vaccine mandates, and maintain federal emergency declarations that cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” Burr wrote in the letter.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., called Biden’s request for additional money “crazy” since he has now said the pandemic is ended.
“The president saying the pandemic is over is … just kind of mind-boggling,” said Cassidy, who previously worked as a doctor. “He wants tens of billions for COVID and he says the pandemic is over?”
When asked if Biden’s comments meant there was no need for further funding, Cassidy was brief: “Sounds like it to me,” he said.
But some Democrats defended the president. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Monday that Biden’s comments were consistent with the changing needs of addressing COVID-19.
“What he’s saying reflects reality. People are not acting like we are in the same kind of crisis we were two years ago,” Murphy said. “It would not be consistent with reality if President Biden was out there suggesting what we’re living through today is the same thing as what we’re living through two years ago.”
(WASHINGTON) — There’s a tension between voter access and voting security, but that balance has been tipping decidedly one way in the recent political environment in which false claims that Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 election have muddied the waters, according to many experts who are raising alarms about proposed election-related laws.
Since the last presidential election, conservative state legislators across the country have enacted or introduced a flurry of bills that would increase restrictions to the election system — with a focus, in 2022, on changing how races are run and regulated — according to several nonpartisan organizations who describe themselves as advocating for democracy.
Experts from the States United Democracy Center, the Brennan Center for Justice and other groups who spoke with ABC News tied this growing amount of legislation to the false election fraud allegations that Trump and his supporters’ have been spreading since Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
Since Trump was defeated by Biden, Trump has continued to claim — without evidence — that his election was marred by ineligible voters, fake votes cast by mail and other problems.
The pro-democracy groups told ABC News that hundreds of GOP-authored bills on voting and elections have already been considered during the 2022 legislative sessions in various states, consistent with a similar trend seen in 2021.
The measures from the past two years would purge some people from voter rolls, restrict mail-in ballot access and early voting — which was heavily emphasized by many states during the COVID-19 pandemic — as well as tighten ID requirements to vote, allow politicians to oversee local election boards and more, according to pro-democracy watchdogs.
The bills introduced at the state level would generally make it harder for eligible Americans to register to vote, cast their ballots and stay on voter rolls in comparison to existing laws, according to the Brennan Center. Joanna Lydgate, the co-founder and CEO of the States United Democracy Center, also specified that restrictive bills introduced over the past two years touch every aspect of current voting systems.
“Through these bills, legislators are kind of trying to take control over practically every step of the electoral process,” she said.
Only a fraction of proposed legislation typically gets signed into law, according to experts. But the “political bluster” of bills churning through statehouses will have an impact on expert-run elections systems that have successfully operated for decades, Lydgate told ABC News.
“In a lot of cases these are really poorly designed bills … it can lead to a lot of really unworkable situations. It can lead to confusion and chaos,” Lydgate said.
Fair Fight Deputy Executive Director Esosa Osa said that in her group’s view, there was a “new dynamic of shifting power over election administration from state and local election officials to more partisan actors, and there’s hyper criminalization of voting.” Fair Fight was founded by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in 2014.
“If you consider the ability to vote, the ability to register to vote, to cast a ballot, and to have that ballot counted fairly — we are seeing all three aspects of that attack,” Osa told ABC News.
But John Fortier, a voting and elections expert for the conservative-aligned American Enterprise Institute, noted that some of the election bills come with nuance such as attempts to return elections back to in-person models after the COVID-19 pandemic rather than to create entirely new sets of restrictions.
“Do I think that some of the major bills that are being considered and passed through are really aimed at cutting down turnout? I don’t think they are aimed that way,” he told ABC News.
State legislatures are “not as interested in moving to kind of a Washington state, Oregon, 100% voting-by-mail model,” Fortier said.
In his view, increasing election security doesn’t always involve tightening access to elections themselves.
“I think it is true that Republicans have a lens of looking at elections where they prioritize more integrity issues,” he said. “You can imagine cases where that gets in the way of access, but I don’t think they’re always as contradictory as one thinks.”
For example, Georgia enacted a sweeping 2021 election bill that was criticized by some advocates for increasing regulations on mail voting. But the law also imposed requirements to try and keep poll lines shorter and increase the availability of poll workers.
By the numbers
Fair Fight said that in 2022 they have counted almost triple the amount of election-related legislation they’d tallied during 2011, the last year they marked a highpoint for restrictions on who can vote and how.
In the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 — before the crescendo of unsupported claims by Trump and his allies about problems with elections — the Brennan Center had tallied more pro-voter reforms than anti-voter restrictions.
In 2018, the Brennan Center counted at least 12 states that advanced a combined total of at least 20 bills expanding voting access in comparison to five states that advanced a combined total of at least six bills restricting voting access.
In 2019, 46 states introduced or carried over 688 bills expanding access compared to 29 states introducing or carrying over at least 87 bills restricting voting access.
And in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and with many people in isolation, the Brennan Center counted 57 restrictive bills before state legislatures, while 29 states had introduced at least 188 bills to expand access.
Another report, published through a partnership between the nonpartisan voter organizations States United Democracy Center, Law Forward and Protect Democracy, echoed what Fair Fight and the other groups assessed as increasing restrictions on elections.
This new report tallied at least 244 bills introduced in 33 states that would interfere with election administration as of July 31. Twenty-four of those bills have become law, or adopted, across 17 states. That’s up from 229 bills identified in May and 216 bills spanning 41 states during the entirety of the 2021 legislative year.
Arizona and Wisconsin were the two states identified in the report with more than 30 anti-democratic bills introduced or under consideration, according to the report. Every other state
An additional analysis, published in May 2022 from the Brennan Center, reported similar findings for 2022 but tallied additional bills in 2021 — 440 in 49 states — that carried provisions to restrict voting access during the legislative sessions.
“The sheer volume and certainly the growth of the trend is cause for concern,” Lydgate, with the States United Democracy Center, said. “This is a national trend.”
These bills, Osa said, “highlight the broader political ecosystem that we are in following the 2020 election and the big lie” about Trump’s loss.
Opposing views
Simple conclusions about the entire country are hard to draw, however. Despite the influx of restrictive voting legislation moving through Statehouses across the country, there are some efforts to expand voting access as well.
Many state legislatures this year also took steps to broaden voting rights and election access, according to the Brennan Center. The group counted at least 596 of what they termed “expansive” bills in 44 states and Washington, D.C. Most of those proposals would allow for easier voter registration, a process to seek voting rights restoration for those convicted of crimes and easier mail-in voting in states like Arizona, Connecticut, New York and Oregon.
Elsewhere, however, some states have tightened their regulations — though supporters of such moves say it’s about security and smooth election administration.
In 2021, states like Georgia, Florida and Iowa passed sweeping omnibus bills that included election measures like shortening the period for requesting an absentee ballot or adding ID requirements for absentee ballots.
After Georgia saw record-breaking turnout during the March 2021 primary elections — the first test of Democratic predictions that the heightened requirements would actually turn people away from the polls — members of the GOP denounced the attacks as so much smoke.
“[Stacey] Abrams and President Biden lied to the people of Georgia and the country for political gain,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “From day one, I said that Georgia’s election law balanced security and access, and the facts have proved me right.”
Osa from Fair Fight, and the Brennan Center, however, said that as primary turnout grew in Georgia, so did the turnout gap between white and Black voters.
What worries experts now
The experts who spoke with ABC News called attention to certain kinds of standalone state bills being proposed this year: those that would shift election oversight to partisan legislatures instead of nonpartisan election officials; those that would require political reviews of elections that might delay their certifications; and those that would create “unworkable burdens” or even threat of criminal penalties for election officials.
The democracy experts who spoke with ABC News also expressed concern over the rise of 2020 election deniers — including those, as state legislators, who spearheaded new voting rules — who are now high-profile GOP candidates in the 2022 midterms.
In Arizona, for example, state Rep. Mark Finchem introduced a bill to decertify Arizona’s 2020 election, which Biden won. Finchem also introduced legislation to require hand tabulation of ballots and audits of election systems. He’s now the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Arizona’s highest elections post.
In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, now the Republican gubernatorial nominee, previously introduced legislation that would replace the current groups that oversee election administration and establish a commission that would strip away the election powers of the department of state and the secretary of the commonwealth.
A number of the bills moving through Arizona and Rhode Island would require or authorize additional audit processes for future elections. In Arizona, there are also bills that would allow citizens conduct their own reviews of voted ballots.
“This legislation uniformly lacks basic security, accuracy, and reliability measures for these suspect reviews, bestowing inordinate discretion on individuals, imposing no transparency requirements, or failing to mandate clear guidelines for how results are reviewed,” according to a review from the Brennan Center’s February 2022 roundup of voting laws.
Voting-related prosecutions are also cause for worry in some cases, the experts said, as some states aim to crack down on their vanishingly small numbers of verified cases of voter fraud, especially in contrast to the number of overall votes. Florida lawmakers created a new law enforcement entity within the Florida Department of State that is tasked with investigating voter fraud. And in Georgia, a bill signed into law this spring grants the Georgia Bureau of Investigation authority to investigate and prosecute election crimes.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said in April that “this new law will allow us to engage highly-qualified personnel from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to assist in ensuring our elections are secure and fair.” Last month, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the arrests of 20 people on suspicion of illegally voting — touting accountability for wrongdoing.
But subsequent news reports and comments from the accused in Florida, however, suggested they thought they had been given permission to vote — casting the issue as a confusing bureaucratic mix-up, not deliberate criminal conduct.
There are also legislative efforts to increase the requirements of election administration, like an Arizona bill that election officials should document “voting irregularities” — or possibly face a criminal penalty. The legislation never defines the term “voting irregularities,” however.
“This is a highly coordinated and connected effort,” said Lydgate of the push to restrict voting access. “And that’s part of why we think it’s so important for voters to pay attention.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan if China were to attack — reiterating, again, his support for the island as Beijing responded with disapproval.
In a 60 Minutes interview, Biden was asked if “U.S. forces” would respond to aid Taiwan against China. He said, “If in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
He was asked again, “So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?”
“Yes,” Biden said.
His answer mirrors his response when another CBS News reporter asked him a similar question during a press conference in Tokyo in May and is at least the fourth time he’s said something along these lines, appearing to go beyond the historic U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” about Taiwan’s relationship to China, which views the island as a breakaway province despite Taiwan’s separate government.
The U.S is legally required to provide Taiwan with resources to defend itself but doesn’t require a U.S. military response if China were to invade.
Since a 1979 agreement, the U.S. has acknowledged the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China — with Taiwan having emerged as a separate faction after the Chinese civil war — while refraining from commenting on the third-rail question of Taiwanese independence.
At a Monday press conference in Beijing, government spokesperson Mao Ning said that China has lodged complaints with the U.S. in response to Biden’s comments about Taiwan.
She said China “deplores” and “firmly opposes” the president’s latest statements and that China reserves the right to take all necessary measures but said the country is “willing to do our best to strive for peaceful reunification.”
In May, Biden said the “burden” of the U.S. “commitment” to defend the self-governing island of Taiwan was “even stronger” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said in response that their government “expresses sincere welcome and gratitude to President Biden and the U.S. government for reiterating its rock solid commitment to Taiwan.”
A White House official insisted to ABC News at the time that Biden’s comment didn’t represent a shift because the president “reiterated our commitment … to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”
On Sunday night, after Biden’s 60 Minutes interview, a White House official again said that his comments did not, in their view, reflect a change in policy.
In July, after Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping spoke, a White House official said their discussion on Taiwan was “direct” and “honest,” with Biden reaffirming the U.S. commitment to its historic position. But the official wouldn’t respond to a Chinese readout claiming that Xi said, “Playing with fire will set yourself on fire.”
“President Xi used similar language in the conversation that the two leaders had back in November, but you know, I’m not going to get into parsing the various metaphors that the PRC regularly tends to use on these issues,” the administration official said.
