(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Engineers and Surfside, Florida, officials are concerned that recent construction at a neighboring residential building may have contributed to instability at the Champlain Tower South building that collapsed last week — and could potentially have been “the straw that broke the camel’s back,” according to one expert.
“Construction of a neighboring building can certainly impact the conditions, particularly the foundation for an existing building,” Ben Schafer, a structural engineer at Johns Hopkins University, told ABC News. “A critical flaw or damage must have already existed in the Champlain towers, but neighboring new construction could be the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ in terms of a precipitating event.”
Construction at Eighty-Seven Park, a ritzy condominium that abuts Champlain Tower South to the south, began in 2015, when a firm called Terra Developers began erecting the 18-story building, according to news reports at the time.
The project caused such a ruckus for Champlain Tower residents that, in January 2019, a member of the board reached out to Surfside officials, according to records released by the city.
“We are concerned that construction next to Surfside is too close,” Mara Chouela, a member of the Champlain Tower South board of directors, wrote to city officials. “The Terra project … are digging too close to our property and we have concerns regarding the structure of our building.”
Chouela received a terse response from Ross Prieto, the city’s then-building inspector: “There is nothing for me to check.”
“The best course of action is to have someone monitor the fence, pool and adjacent areas for damage,” Prieto wrote, “or hire a consultant to monitor those areas as they are closest to the construction.”
Champlain Tower South residents and condo board members continued to complain about the construction next door, mostly regarding Styrofoam and dirt from the construction site washing up into the Champlain pool deck and plaza.
On Tuesday, Surfside Commissioner Eliana Salzhauer slammed Prieto’s response to Chouela, telling ABC News that it reflects “laziness” from a person “too comfortable” in his job.
“The residents should have a place to go for their complaints … they should have been treated seriously,” Salzhauer said. “What happened here is a wake-up call for every small town and for every government.”
Prieto has not responded to multiple requests for comment.
A spokesperson for 8701 Collins Development LLC, a joint venture that was established by Terra and other developers involved in the Eighty-Seven Park project, told ABC News in a statement Wednesday that they are “confident that the construction of 87 Park did not cause or contribute to the collapse that took place in Surfside on June 24, 2021.”
Joel Figueroa-Vallines, an Orlando-based forensic structural engineer, told ABC News that because Eighty-Seven Park is “lower in elevation” than Champlain Tower South, there is a possibility that the construction of the building could be a concern — but that more evidence is needed.
“It’s most important and necessary to not discard anything so early on that could potentially be a consideration,” Figueroa, president of the engineering firm SEP Engineers, said.
Dr. Mehrdad Sasani, a professor at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Northeastern University, told ABC News that the method in which Champlain South’s support structure was built would usually allow it to withstand disturbances to the soil near the surface, which means the impact of the excavation for the neighboring construction would have likely been what Sasani called “minute.”
“But indirectly, as a result of a failure in the pool area and the deck slab, the parking garage roof could have been affected,” Sasani said.
He said more information on both buildings, including a geotechnical distance analysis, would be needed to determine the potential role of the construction on the Champlain Tower. ABC News has requested relevant documents to the City of Miami Beach.
Dr. Mehrooz Zamanzadeh, a corrosion engineering expert, told ABC News that cracks and spalling on the Champlain building should also be examined to determine whether vibrations from the construction had any effect on the building’s structural integrity.
Regardless, said Zamanzadeh, the building’s accelerated deterioration and corrosion was likely a critical factor in the collapse. He said that corrosion inspections should be mandatory, and also called for building recertifications to be the performed more frequently than the current 40-year cycle.
Miami Dade County Commissioner Jose Diaz told ABC News that he would not speculate what role neighboring construction had on the collapse, but said, “We’re going to investigate.”
(NEW YORK) — When Carly Birmingham, a 7th grader from Massachusetts who identifies as nonbinary, was depressed and experiencing suicidal thoughts last fall, their mother drove to a local hospital emergency department at 2 a.m. hoping for immediate help.
But Carly says they ended up spending 14 days waiting for a psychiatric inpatient bed (seven in the emergency department (ED) and seven in a patient room) at Boston Children’s Hospital in what doctors and other experts describe as a troublesome and increasing practice that leads in many cases to substandard care for vulnerable patients — boarding.
“After a few days, I almost regretted [going to the hospital]. We were there, we were getting no sleep, and I wasn’t even getting any help. I was just sitting there waiting for a bed. And we didn’t know how long it was gonna take,” Carly, of Arlington, Massachusetts, told ABC News. Boston Children’s declined comment about Birmingham’s care citing privacy laws.
While there is no standard definition for boarding, the American College of Emergency Physicians describes it as the practice of holding patients in the ED after they have been evaluated because no inpatient beds are available or are awaiting transfer to another facility, which can result in lengthy wait times, possibly increased suffering among patients and strains overburdened EDs.
Boarding is a longstanding crisis in EDs across the country that some doctors interviewed by ABC News say has only worsened during the pandemic, especially in pediatric units. The coronavirus crisis has led to a surge in pediatric patients, like Carly, some of whom end up waiting days, if not weeks, for a spot in limited psychiatric wards.
The shortage of available psychiatric beds is also happening in the middle of a global pandemic, during which COVID-19 patients have died in hallways waiting for beds in overwhelmed hospitals.
While ED visits for other medical causes for children declined in the early stages of the pandemic, the number of children’s mental health-related ED visits rose 24% among 5 to 11-year-olds and surged 31% among 12 to 17-year-olds in April 2020 through October, compared to that period in 2019, according to a November Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report.
The pandemic also saw a rise in ED visits for suspected suicide attempts among young people. Among teen girls such visits were up 51% from February to March earlier this year compared to 2019, according to a June CDC report.
There is no nationwide data on mental health boarding numbers or wait times, however doctors in New York, Massachusetts and Colorado have painted similar pictures of inundated EDs.
Feeling ‘punished’ waiting for an inpatient bed
Dr. Amanda Stewart, an attending physician in the emergency department of Boston Children’s Hospital, where Carly was treated, said the hospital saw a surge in psychiatric cases in early spring 2021 and “we’re definitely not out of the woods.”
“Unfortunately, there’s a higher number of boarding behavioral health patients. We routinely have children that stay over 100, sometimes up to 200 hours in the ER,” Stewart told ABC News.
In Massachusetts, the number of all patients boarding in emergency rooms increased by 200 to 400% in June 2020 compared to the same month the previous year, the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health told ABC News. The department did not comment on the status of ED boarding in the state.
Carly said the wait in the noisy, bustling ED was agonizing. They said they spent seven days in the ED, then seven days in a patient room at Boston Children’s, before Carly finally got an inpatient psychiatric bed, where they were treated for two weeks.
“What Carly said to me is, ‘I feel like I’m being punished for having feelings,'” their mother Gail McCabe said.
“Carly slept on a stretcher. I slept on a stretcher for the seven nights that we were there. Carly actually started to have some visual hallucinations because of sleep deprivation one time,” McCabe said of their time in the ED. “You are pretty much sitting there staring at the wall for the whole entire time.”
Stewart said there are several causes for the surge in pediatric psychiatric patients at the hospital: the loss of mental health resources offered in-person at schools and at clinics with the shift to online learning and teletherapy, changes to social activities, school stress, and worries over COVID-19. Those stressors coupled with a limited number of beds dedicated to pediatric psychiatric care created a “bottleneck” in the ED.
McCabe said that when Carly arrived at the ED, there were about 25 other kids waiting for inpatient beds.
But Boston Children’s only has 16 inpatient psychiatric beds, and 12 acute residential treatment beds, according to Dr. Patricia Ibeziako, the associate chief for clinical services in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Boston Children’s Hospital. Now, the hospital is planning to add 12 more inpatient psychiatric beds, Ibeziako added.
Pandemic led to psychiatric bed closures
Long boarding times for pediatric psychiatric patients are also being seen in New York City as well, according to Dr. Adjoa Smalls-Mantey, an ABC News medical unit contributor and New York-based psychiatrist who works in several emergency room settings with adults and children.
“In March, April and May [of 2020], there was a decrease in the volume of people presenting with psychiatric complaints and I’ll attribute that to people being just scared to leave their homes with lockdown orders. But then by the time we got to the winter, it felt like people were waiting in the emergency room, for a day, maybe even two days to get a bed,” she said.
“For children, the wait is still long, I saw children one week and then I came back the next week for a shift and they were still there,” she added.
Smalls-Mantey said that during the pandemic some psychiatric beds had been converted into general medicine or ICU beds to focus on COVID-19. At one hospital where she works, both psychiatric units closed so patients were transferred to psychiatric units at other hospitals.
New York state’s Office of Mental Health told ABC News that 871 psychiatric hospital beds were repurposed due to COVID and so far 444 of those have reopened. The OMH said that despite the bed closures psychiatric inpatient admissions in NY are only at approximately 85% capacity, so the shortage of beds hasn’t prevented anyone from receiving needed care.
She said to curb the long wait times, hospital systems need to “reopen the beds that were closed.”
“The onus is on the healthcare systems to devote resources to helping people that are reaching out for help, because we have said, ‘Ask for help.’ So now that people are asking, the healthcare system needs to show up and do that,” Smalls-Mantey said.
A ‘pediatric mental health state of emergency’
In Colorado, physicians are also reeling from the “unprecedented” spike in pediatric psychiatric patients that led Children’s Hospital Colorado to declare a “pediatric mental health state of emergency” in May.
“We too, have seen an influx, particularly from January through May of this year, in unprecedented volumes. We’re seeing increases of upwards 70 to 90% from our 2019 volumes,” Jason Williams, the operations director for the Pediatric Mental Health Institute at Children’s Hospital Colorado told ABC News.
According to Williams, the wait for juveniles to be placed in an inpatient bed pre-pandemic was about eight hours. For the past two months, the wait has been upwards of 20 hours, he said.
Children’s Hospital Colorado has 18 general psych inpatient beds and 4 neuropsychiatric specialty care inpatient beds and they’ve been at 98% capacity for the last 18 months, Williams added.
He said he believes the state has a “broken system” equipped with fewer pediatric psychiatric beds, an issue shared across much of the nation.
Williams said the patients coming in are typically 12-years-old and up, mostly females, and most presenting suicidal ideation or suicidal attempts.
“We are seeing more severity in that patient population than we would have seen pre-pandemic, with kids making more lethal attempts on their lives,” he said.
Children’s Hospital Colorado CEO Jena Hausmann said the state’s mental health services are “not enough” in a May news release, calling for reform.
“It has been devastating to see suicide become the leading cause of death for Colorado’s children,” Hausmann said. “For over a decade, Children’s Colorado has intentionally and thoughtfully been expanding our pediatric mental health prevention services, outpatient services and inpatient services, but it is not enough. Now we are seeing our pediatric emergency departments and our inpatient units overrun with kids attempting suicide and suffering from other forms of major mental health illness.”
Colorado’s Department of Health did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment on boarding.
Surge in mental health needs and boarding
Mental health care in the U.S. has dramatically changed over time.
In the 1960s, deinstitutionalization was a government policy that moved mental health patents out of state-run institutions into community-based mental health centers. In part, the effort tried to target the negative effective of coercive hospitalization, except for high risk cases, but it also reduced the availability of long-term inpatient care beds across the country, according to a 2019 report in the Western Journal of Emergency Medicine.
In June 2016 there were 37,679 staffed psychiatric beds in state hospitals nationwide, which came out to about 12 beds per 100,000 of the population, according to the Treatment Advocacy Center (TAC), a national nonprofit focused on improving mental health care. That was a 17% drop from the 2010 bed numbers, the group reported.
Massachusetts has 608 public psychiatric beds, Colorado has 543, and New York State has 3,217, all as of 2016, per the TAC. The group says a minimum of 50 beds per 100,000 people is considered necessary to provide minimally adequate treatment for individuals with severe mental illness.
A 2020 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics found that among youth requiring inpatient psychiatric care, 23% to 58% experienced boarding and average durations ranged from 5 to 41 hours in EDs and 2 to 3 days in inpatient units. The study found that risk factors that led to longer boarding times included if patients came in during non-summer months (meaning during the school year), if they were younger and if they exhibited suicidal or homicidal ideations.
The study stated pediatric mental health boarding is experienced by at least 40,000 to 66,000 youth admitted to hospitals each year.
During the pandemic, use of telehealth services among Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) beneficiaries increased 2,700% from March to October last year compared to 2019, showing there was a demand for mental health services.
Yet at the same time, some vulnerable younger Americans went without mental health services. A May report by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service found a 34% decline in the number of primary and preventative mental health services utilized by children under age 19, which amounts to 14 million fewer mental services for kids, compared to the same time period in 2019.
This can eventually lead to kids coming into ED’s in more serious states of mental crisis.
Studies say once in the ED, waiting for so long for care can have serious consequences.
A 2011 study by the Society for Academic Emergency Medicine found that mortality increased with increased boarding time and patients who boarded in 12 hours or more had a 4.5% greater chance of in-hospital mortality.
ACEP said that those who are boarded are “less likely to be receiving optimal treatment for their mental health conditions while in the ED” and are more likely to require chemical and physical restraints. The group also cites the risk of medication errors, such as when patients are not given medications they take at home during their boarding time.
Changes in the works
In Colorado, Williams said an issue is a lack of residential treatment centers, which is the next level of care for kids who leave inpatient units. As a result, children are often sent out of state for care.
But changes appear to be afoot. On Monday, Gov. Jared Polis signed four new laws that will boost mental and behavioral health services in the state, which includes $2.5 million for elementary school programs and $5 million for youth residential help and therapeutic foster care using funds from the American Rescue Act.
President Joe Biden’s American Rescue Plan Act provided funding to address mental health and substance abuses challenges.
In Boston, leaders at Boston Children’s have worked with local lawmakers and started community service efforts to improve mental health resources at schools and training at primary care centers to equip doctors to manage acute problems early on.
Massachusetts has also launched the Roadmap for Behavioral Health Reform, which will create a new centralized service for people to call or text to get connected to mental health and addiction treatment and expand access to treatment at primary care offices. It will also create more inpatient psychiatric beds for pediatric and adult patients.
“There’s a lot of stigma associated with mental illness. And the more we can address this and bring other people to the table, such as private health insurance to actively engage in these efforts, that will really help in developing best practices for improving care for this patient population,” Ibeziako, with Boston Children’s Hospital, said.
For Carly and their mother, they want mental health to be paid attention to just as much as other health concerns.
“When you’re waiting, and you see other kids with medical problems like, ‘oh, I broke a leg,’ everybody’s on it, everyone’s taking care of it. And you have a psychiatric issue, it’s ‘oh, you’re going to have to wait for X amount of days.’ It makes these kids and their families feel like their mental health isn’t important,” McCabe said. “As a nation, kids should be our most important focus.”
If you are struggling with thoughts of suicide or worried about a friend or loved one, help is available. Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 [TALK] for free, confidential emotional support 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. You can also reach the Trevor Project at 1-866-488-7386 or the Crisis Text Line by texting “START” to 741741.
(SURFSIDE, Fla.) — Biden and first lady to meet with families of Surfside condo collapse victims
The death toll has risen to 18 after the bodies of two children were found on Wednesda…
President Joe Biden is on the ground in Surfside, Florida, Thursday following the devastating partial collapse of a beachside condominium building last week that has killed at least 18 people.
The president departed the White House early Thursday morning and was planning to spend nearly eight hours on the ground in Florida. He’s already met with local officials and thanked first responders engaged in the ongoing search efforts ahead of consoling families affected by the disaster and delivering remarks at 3:50 p.m. ET. First lady Jill Biden is accompanying him for the visit.
At an earlier command briefing with local officials, seated next to Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, Biden immediately made a big offer to cover the cost of the response effort.
“I think there’s more we can do, including, I think we have the power, and I’ll know shortly, to be able to pick up 100% of the cost to the county and the state,” Biden said, eliciting a surprised reaction from Miami-Dade mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who put her hand on Biden’s arm.
“I think the governor will you tell you, anything he asked for, he got,” Biden said, ahead of DeSantis nodding in agreement.
Biden took a moment to turn to politics, noting the bipartisan display of cooperation
“We’re letting the nation know we can cooperate when it’s really important,” Biden said.
Meeting later with a group of first responders, Biden was effusive with praise.
“I just want you to know that we understand,” he told the responder. “What you’re doing now, is just hard as hell. Even psychologically. And I just wanted to say thank you. Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you.”
He also invoked three personal stories to demonstrate the importance of first responders in his own life, referring to his experience having an aneurysm, describing his two sons being pulled out of the car crash that killed his first wife and daughter with the jaws of life and explaining that his home burned down after being struck by lightning.
“You saved my life. Literally, my fire department saved my life,” he said.
Search and rescue efforts were paused Thursday morning due to concerns about the stability of the remaining structure and the potential danger it poses to the crews. Structural engineers are on-site monitoring the situation as officials evaluate possible options and determine the next steps, according to Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava.
“We’re doing everything that we can to ensure that the safety of our first responders is paramount and to continue our search and rescue operations as soon as it is safe to do so,” she said at an earlier press conference.
Officials were unable to provide a timeline for when the urgent operation will resume.
Separately, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the visit has been closely coordinated with officials on the ground to ensure that it does not divert any resources away from search and rescue operations.
“They want to thank the heroic first responders, search and rescue teams, and everyone who has been working tirelessly around the clock, and meet with the families who have been forced to endure this terrible tragedy waiting in anguish and heartbreak for word of their loved ones, to offer them comfort as search and rescue efforts continue. And they want to make sure that state and local officials have the resources and support they need under the emergency declaration,” Psaki said earlier this week.
En route to Florida, principal deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters that local leaders urged the Bidens to visit Thursday, saying the time was right despite ongoing search and rescue efforts.
“The message that we’ve been given is very clear from the mayor’s office, from the governor’s office, from local officials, which is, they wanted us to come today, think now is the time to come, to offer up, offer up comfort and show unity from not just from him, but the country. And so this is why he and the first lady decided to come today, and he thought this was the right time to do it,” Jean-Pierre said.
(WASHINGTON) — A divided US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld two Republican-backed Arizona voting restrictions, rejecting claims that they discriminate against minority voters and imposing new limits on the landmark Voting Rights Act.
The 6-to-3 decision, breaking along ideological lines, overturned a lower court ruling to uphold Arizona’s policy of invalidating ballots cast in the wrong precinct and a law criminalizing the collection of mail ballots by third-party community groups or campaigns.
Democrats had argued that data show both restrictions disproportionately hurt Latino and Native American voters in violation of Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, which prohibits any policy that “results in the denial or abridgment of the right to vote of any citizen on account of race or color.”
Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the court’s six conservatives, said Section 2 requires equal openness to voting, not equal outcomes.
“It appears that the core of [Section 2] is the requirement that voting be ‘equally open.’ The statute’s reference to equal ‘opportunity’ may stretch that concept to some degree to include consideration of a person’s ability to use the means that are equally open. But equal openness remains the touchstone,” Alito wrote.
“Mere inconvenience cannot be enough to demonstrate a violation of [Section 2],” he added.
Civil rights advocates, Democrats and the court’s three liberal justices warned that the decision’s more stringent approach to racial disparity in voting will weaken the protections intended by Congress.
“This Court has no right to remake Section 2. Maybe some think that vote suppression is a relic of history — and so the need for a potent Section 2 has come and gone. But Congress gets to make that call,” Justice Elena Kagan wrote in dissent. “Because it has not done so, this Court’s duty is to apply the law as it is written.”
“The law that confronted one of this country’s most enduring wrongs; pledged to give every American, of every race, an equal chance to participate in our democracy; and now stands as the crucial tool to achieve that goal. That law, of all laws, deserves the sweep and power Congress gave it. That law, of all laws, should not be diminished by this Court,” she wrote.
The decision is the court’s most significant on voting rights in nearly a decade since the justices in 2013 effectively gutted Section 5 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, which had required states with a history of discrimination to “pre-clear” any new voting rules with the Justice Department.
The ruling could have a sweeping impact on the fate of state election laws as dozens of GOP-led states push for voting restrictions in the wake of former President Donald Trump’s claims of 2020 election fraud. Republicans in 48 states are pushing more than 389 restrictive bills that would make it more difficult to cast a ballot, according to the liberal Brennan Center for Justice.
While the Court’s conservative majority declined to lay out a sweeping new test for when state voting rules discriminate on race, it did make clear they will cast a skeptical eye on future challenges to similar measures.
Justice Alito offered a series of “guideposts” for judges to consider: the size of a voting rule’s burden; the degree to which it departs from past practice; the size of racial disparities; and the overall level of opportunity afforded voters within a state’s entire system for casting a ballot.
“No one suggests that discrimination in voting has been extirpated or that the threat has been eliminated,” Alito wrote, “but Section 2 does not deprive the states of their authority to establish non-discriminatory voting rules.”
Justice Kagan called Alito’s list of guidelines “a list of mostly made-up factors at odds with Section 2 itself.”
The law, she says, is written with a focus squarely on the effects of a voting restriction. “It asks not about why state officials enacted a rule, but about whether that rule results in racial discrimination. The discrimination that is of concern is inequality in voting opportunity.”
Democrats and civil rights advocates say the guidelines laid out by Alito will make it more difficult to win legal challenges against restrictions like tighter rules for absentee ballots, reductions of drop boxes, stricter ID requirements, bans on ballot collection, purges of voter rolls, and even criminalizing of water distribution to people in long voting lines.
“This is a ruling that definitely will make it easier for states to impose restrictions, harder for plaintiffs and voting rights groups to challenge these kinds of restrictions, and could really impact the outcome in close elections going forward,” said Kate Shaw, Cardozo law professor and ABC News legal analyst.
President Biden said in a statement that he was “deeply disappointed” in the Supreme Court’s decision and that it inflicts “severe damage” to the Voting Rights Act. “After all we have been through to deliver the promise of this Nation to all Americans, we should be fully enforcing voting rights laws, not weakening them,” Biden wrote.
Republican National Committee chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called it a “resounding victory for election integrity.”
“Democrats were attempting to make Arizona ballots less secure for political gain, and the Court saw right through their partisan lies,” she said in a statement.
A new ABC News/Washington Post poll finds that Americans by a 2-1 margin call it more important to make it easier to vote lawfully than to make it harder to vote fraudulently.
Sixty-two percent in the national survey, completed Wednesday night, say it’s more important to pass new laws making it easier for people to vote lawfully; 30% instead say it’s more important to pass new laws making it harder to vote fraudulently.
There are sharp partisan and ideological differences. Eighty-nine percent of Democrats prioritize making it easier to vote lawfully, as do 62% of independents, dropping to 32% of Republicans. Still, that means a third of Republicans hold this view, which is at odds with the national party’s focus on the issue.
Earlier this month, Congress failed to advance a sweeping overhaul of federal election laws backed by Democrats and the White House that would have established new baseline standards for mail-in voting, early voting, ID requirements and voter registration. Republicans were staunchly opposed.
“The Court’s decision, harmful as it is, does not limit Congress’ ability to repair the damage done today: it puts the burden back on Congress to restore the Voting Rights Act to its intended strength,” President Biden said.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has announced Republican Rep. Liz Cheney will serve on the House select committee to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
“We are very honored and proud she has agreed to serve on the committee,” Pelosi said Thursday.
At her press conference on Capitol Hill, Pelosi also announced House Homeland Security Chairman Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., will serve as the chair of the committee, which was widely expected.
The other Democrats tapped by Pelosi to serve on the committee are Reps. Zoe Lofgren, Adam Schiff, Pete Aguilar, Stephanie Murphy, Jamie Raskin and Elaine Luria.
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in a press conference following Pelosi, downplayed reports that he’s threatened GOP members with taking away committee assignments if they were to accept a select committee position and questioned Cheney’s place in the Republican Party when given the chance.
“I was shocked that she would accept something from Speaker Pelosi. It would seem to me, since I didn’t hear from her, maybe she’s closer to her than us,” McCarthy said.
Cheney, who has been an outspoken critic of former President Donald Trump in the wake of the attack and stripped of her No. 3 GOP leadership role earlier this year, said in a statement she was “honored” to be named though she did not appear with Democrats on Thursday.
“Those who are responsible for the attack need to be held accountable and this select committee will fulfill that responsibility in a professional, expeditious, and non-partisan manner,” she said. “Our oath to the Constitution, our commitment to the rule of law, and the preservation of the peaceful transfer of power must always be above partisan politics.”
Later, appearing informally with the other members chosen by Pelosi, Cheney was asked if she would lose her committee assignments. She said she has not been told that at this time.
“We have an obligation to have a sober investigation of what happened leading up to the attack on the Capitol on that day,” she said.
The House approved a resolution Wednesday to green-light the creation of a select committee after a vote for a bipartisan, independent commission — similar to one formed after the Sept. 11 attacks — failed to pass the Senate earlier the month.
The resolution required a majority vote in the House for the committee to be formed and it passed mostly along party lines — other than Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., breaking from Republicans.
Pelosi introduced the measure earlier in the week, which states the committee will include 13 members. Eight of those members will be selected by Pelosi, while the five others will be selected by House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, in consultation with Pelosi.
“As we enter the Fourth of July weekend to observe the birth of our nation, we do so with increased responsibility to honor the vision of our Founders and to defend our American Democracy,” Pelosi said in a statement announcing her committee choices.
As for whether McCarthy will cooperate and to which members he would select to the committee, he told reporters Thursday, “When I have news on that, I’ll give it to you.”
(NEW YORK) — Wally Funk, a pioneering female pilot who dreamed of being an astronaut in the 1960s, will fly to space later this month with Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos on the first crewed flight for his space-faring firm Blue Origin.
The flight will fulfill a lifelong dream for Funk, 82, and make her the oldest person ever to fly to space.
Funk’s dreams of becoming an astronaut date back to the original U.S.-Soviet Space Race era, when she was the youngest graduate of the privately-funded Woman in Space Program that later became known as the “Mercury 13” due to its 13 women participants. Female pilots went through the same physiological and psychological tests as the astronauts selected by NASA for Project Mercury. The women, however, never ended up flying to space.
In an Instagram video shared by Bezos revealing the news Thursday, Funk said she already knows the first thing she will say upon landing back on Earth: “Honey, that was the best thing that ever happened to me!”
“Back in the 60s, I was in the Mercury 13 program. They asked me, ‘Do you want to be an astronaut?’ I said, ‘Yes,'” Funk said in the video. “They told me that I had done better and completed the work faster than any of the guys. So, I got a hold of NASA — four times — I said, ‘I want to become an astronaut,’ but nobody would take me.”
“I didn’t think that I would ever get to go up,” she added. “They said, ‘Wally, you’re a girl, you can’t do that!’ I said, ‘Guess what, doesn’t matter what you are, you can still do it if you want to do it, and I like to do things that nobody has ever done.'”
Despite not becoming a NASA astronaut, Funk still blazed trails for women in flight. She was the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector and later the first woman National Transportation Safety Board investigator. She has amassed some 19,600 flying hours and taught more than 3,000 people how to fly.
The crew for the New Shepard spacecraft’s first flight consists of Jeff Bezos, Mark Bezos (Jeff’s brother), Funk, and one unnamed private citizen who paid $28 million in an auction for Blue Origin’s final seat. Blue Origin has perviously said the name of the auction winner will be released in the coming weeks.
The inaugural crewed flight for Blue Origin is scheduled for July 20. In total, the flight is only about 11 minutes and approximately four minutes will be spent above the so-called Karman line that is defined as the boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and outer space.
(LONDON) — Princes William and Harry, who have reportedly been estranged for over a year, made a rare appearance together Thursday to honor their mother, the late Princess Diana.
William and Harry, the only children of Diana and Prince Charles, were both present as a much-anticipated statue of Princess Diana was installed in the Sunken Garden of Kensington Palace on July 1, which would have been Diana’s 60th birthday.
“Today, on what would have been our Mother’s 60th birthday, we remember her love, strength and character — qualities that made her a force for good around the world, changing countless lives for the better,” the brothers shared in a joint statement. “Every day, we wish she were still with us, and our hope is that this statue will be seen forever as a symbol of her life and her legacy.”
The princes also thanked the statue’s sculptor, Ian Rank-Broadley, and the garden designer, Pip Morrison, for their “outstanding work” as well as shouted out “all those around the world who keep our mother’s memory alive.”
Also in attendance at the event were Diana’s siblings: The Earl Spencer, The Lady Sarah McCorquodale and The Lady Jane Fellowes.
Not in attendance were the brothers’ wives as well as their father, Prince Charles, and their grandmother, Queen Elizabeth.
The statue itself, which is 1.25 times life size and bronze, aims to “reflect the warmth, elegance and energy” of the late Princess of Wales and shows her surrounded by three children meant to represent “the universality and generational impact” of her work, according to Kensington Palace.
“The portrait and style of dress was based on the final period of her life as she gained confidence in her role as an ambassador for humanitarian causes and aims to convey her character and compassion,” the palace continued.
The base of the statue features Diana’s name and the date of its unveiling. In front of it is a paving stone engraved with an extract from the poem “The Measure of a Man.”
The statue was commissioned by William, 39, and Harry, 36, in 2017 to mark the 20th anniversary of their mother’s death.
Diana died in August 1997 after a car crash in the Pont D’Alma Bridge in Paris. William and Harry were 15 and 12, respectively, at the time.
“It has been 20 years since our mother’s death and the time is right to recognize her positive impact in the UK and around the world with a permanent statue,” the brothers said in a joint statement in 2017. “Our mother touched so many lives. We hope the statue will help all those who visit Kensington Palace to reflect on her life and legacy.”
Just one year after the 20th anniversary of Diana’s death, in 2018, Prince Harry wed his wife, Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex.
The couple, who now live in California, stepped down from their roles as senior, working members of the royal family last year amid family tensions that they went on to reveal in a tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey in March.
In the interview, Harry described himself and William as being on “different paths.”
“The relationship is space at the moment, and, you know, time heals all things, hopefully,” Harry said. “I love William to bits. He’s my brother. We’ve been through hell together, and we have a shared experience, but we were on different paths.”
William and Harry grew up at Kensington Palace and Diana lived there until her death.
Harry and Meghan, who just welcomed their second child, a daughter named Lilibet Diana, at one point also lived in Kensington Palace near William and Kate, who still have their main residence there with their three children.
In 2019, Harry and Meghan moved from the palace to a new home in Windsor and also left the household they shared with William and Kate, a split that author Robert Lacey said was due to an “explosive argument” between the brothers.
Citing palace insiders, Lacey wrote in his new book, “Battle of Brothers,” that Harry reportedly hung up the phone on William, who then went to address him in-person about the way Meghan was reportedly treating palace staff.
After the argument, William reportedly instructed a royal aide to “start the process of dividing their two households immediately,” according to the book.
William and Harry’s first in-person reunion in over a year happened in April, when the royal family came together for the funeral of the brothers’ grandfather, Prince Philip.
Their wives, Kate and Meghan, have not seen each other in person in over a year.
Many see today’s event as a chance for the brothers to bridge the gap between them.
“I think there’s been a lot of hope that an event like this would bring the brothers back together, and it’s certainly true that their mother’s memory and honoring her memory is pretty much one of the only things that really unites them right now,” Victoria Murphy, ABC News royal contributor, said.
Robert Jobson, another ABC News royal contributor, said he hopes William and Harry will be able to reconnect, adding that the presence of Diana’s sisters and close members of the family might help.
“Just standing there and looking at that statue … in the Sunken Gardens where they used to play as kids with her looking over them, maybe that just might be the catalyst to start the end to this rift,” Jobson added.
While he said the relationship between the brothers is still “extremely complicated,” ABC News royal contributor Omid Scobie said he understands “it is still a case of distance” and “they’re simply not talking at the moment.”
“This is really going to be the first time where they have a proper opportunity to chat to each other,” Scobie said. “And maybe being here in the presence of the memory of their mother will be a reminder of the importance of love and family.”
After finding a size 30A bra she wore while modeling for the lingerie brand’s 2016 fashion show, she tried it on for a TikTok video. She also shared that she is now a size 34B, which she said is “healthy for me.”
Once Malcolm puts her past runway bra on, she shows how ill-fitted it is now and discusses how she was rejected from a 2017 show by Victoria’s Secret former Chief Marketing Officer Edward Razek.
“He said my body did not look good enough,” she captioned the clip. Malcolm also mentioned that at that point she wore a size 30B bra.
Later in the now-viral video that’s been viewed more than 2.5 million times, the model and mental health advocate included a photo of herself from the past show saying “the sadness behind my eyes from the 2016 show breaks my heart.”
Malcolm concluded the video calling Victoria’s Secret out for “performative allyship” and how she views the brand’s recent efforts for inclusive change as “too little, too late.”
The post has been liked more than 307,000 times, with many TikTok users sharing their thoughts. “I don’t get why models ‘have’ to be like this or like that,” said thetinglez.
“Models are supposed to show stuff for the human and every human is different,” she continued.
In response to Malcolm’s displeasing experience with Victoria’s Secret, a brand spokesperson told GMA, “There is a new leadership team at Victoria’s Secret who is fully committed to the continued transformation of the brand with a focus on creating an inclusive environment for our associates, customers and partners to celebrate, uplift and champion all women,” in a statement.
This statement also follows the company’s major brand revamp announced in June.
The retailer’s new direction includes a new diverse VS Collective with ambassadors such as actress and entrepreneur Priyanka Chopra Jonas, transgender Brazilian model Valentina Sampaio, LGBTQIA+ activist and professional soccer player Megan Rapinoe, and several others.
Through this new platform, the brand plans to create new associate programs, evolutionary product collections, compelling and inspiring content, and rally support for causes vital to women.
In addition to a more diverse collective of ambassadors, Victoria’s Secret told Good Morning America the company’s storefronts will take a new direction and mannequins will be displayed with diverse body types.
After 23 years, the lingerie retailer recently canceled its annual fashion show and has moved forward in a new direction without its infamous “Angels.”
(PARIS) — After a four-day search, a woman was arrested Wednesday as part of the investigation into a large crash at the Tour de France earlier last week, according to local prosecutors.
The 30-year-old suspect turned herself into police and expressed feelings “of shame, of fear, in the face of the consequences of her act,” public prosecutor Camille Miansoni said Thursday. She is “distressed by the media coverage of what she calls ‘her blunder,'” added Miansoni.
Prosecutors said police would take measures “proportionate to the seriousness of the facts and to the personality of the author.”
The woman is accused of causing a large crash by holding a sign in front of cyclists in the opening stage of the competition on Saturday. She had allegedly left the scene before authorities arrived. Her cardboard sign read “allez opi-omi,” meaning “go grandma-grandpa” in German.
After the crash, three riders withdrew from the race due to their injuries, according to the Tour’s organizers, including German cyclist Jasha Sütterlin of Team DSM.
“Following the crash, he was taken to hospital for examinations which revealed no broken bones, but a severe contusion to his right wrist that will require further examinations back at home,” Team DSM said in a statement about Sütterlin, who admitted he was “so disappointed.”
Tony Martin, a member of top Tour contender Primoz Roglic’s Jumbo Visma squad, hit the woman on the right side of the road, causing a domino effect for riders inside the peloton.
The first fall was followed by another, which injured four-time Tour de France winner Chris Froome.
Riders briefly halted the race on Tuesday to protest against the danger caused by spectators who were too close to the road.
“Following the crashes during the third stage of the Tour de France, the riders have been discussing how they wish to proceed to show their dissatisfaction with safety measures in place and demand their concerns are taken seriously,” the riders’ union, the Cyclistes Professionnels Associés, said in a statement. “Their frustration about foreseeable and preventable action is enormous.”
The local chief of police Nicolas Duvinage on Thursday called for calm in a press conference, saying the suspect was trying to send a message on TV to her grandparents and that it is “wise not to carry out a media lynching.”
Fearing a backlash, Tour de France organizers decided to drop their suit against the fan in question and withdrew their complaint “for the sake of appeasement … in the face of the excitement on social media,” said Tour director Pierre-Yves Thouault. “We don’t want to look like we are flogging a dead horse. But we remind you of the safety rules.”
(JERUSALEM) — Israel may have a new prime minister but the departure of Benjamin Netanyahu does not appear to be changing the country’s tough stance against Iran.
Naftali Bennett has been in office less than three weeks and has already made clear that nothing has changed on the Jewish State’s right to defend itself.
The new prime minister on Wednesday vowed Israel will “always defend itself against any external threat” — a message widely seen as a warning to Iran.
Bennett also insisted Israel “will not have its hands tied” when it comes to security.
Like his predecessor Netanyahu, Bennett has indicated a revived U.S.-Iran nuclear deal will not stop Israel from acting to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.
