(LAS VEGAS) — Flash flood warnings are in effect Friday in Las Vegas after strong winds, lightning and heavy downpours struck overnight, flooding roads across Sin City.
Some people were seen getting rescued from their cars.
This flooding comes during the heart of monsoon season. Sometimes desert areas in the Southwest can see all of their annual rain in just a few days.
But Las Vegas has been even drier than usual, leaving the parched soil to act like concrete during a night of heavy rainfall.
(WASHINGTON) — Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito for the first time publicly addressed critics of his landmark opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, using a speech in Italy to make light of Britain’s Prince Harry and other foreign figures who have lamented the rollback of U.S. protections for abortion.
“What really wounded me, what really wounded me, was when the Duke of Sussex addressed the United Nations and seemed to compare the decision — whose name may not be spoken — with the Russian attack on Ukraine,” Alito said in a sarcastic tone. The decision, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, was released last month.
Prince Harry had referenced “the rolling back of constitutional rights here in the U.S.” as well as war in Ukraine as examples of why 2022 is “a painful year in a painful decade,” during a speech July 18 in New York.
Alito also made light of commentary from outgoing British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, French President Emmanuel Macron and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
“I had the honor this term of writing I think the only Supreme Court decision in the history of that institution that has been lambasted by a whole string of foreign leaders who felt perfectly fine commenting on American law,” he said. “One of these was former Prime Minister Boris Johnson, but he paid the price.”
Alito appeared to reference Johnson’s recent resignation after a series of scandals in office.
The justice’s comments came during a speech July 21 in Rome at a conference on religious liberty hosted by the University of Notre Dame Law School. The appearance was not previously announced by the Court; video of the speech was posted online Thursday.
“It is hard to convince people that religious liberty is worth defending if they don’t think that religion is a good thing that deserves protection,” Alito told the audience. “The challenge for those who want to protect religious liberty in the United States, Europe, and other similar places is to convince people who are not religious that religious liberty is worth special protection. That will not be easy to do.”
The Court’s conservative majority delivered significant victories for religious liberty in the most recent term, affirming the right of a public school football coach to pray among students at the 50-yard line; allow a civic group to raise a Christian flag on Boston City Hall flag pole; and permit Maine families to utilize taxpayer-funded tuition credits for religious schools.
Those decisions, along with major rulings on gun rights, climate policy and immigration, thrust the justices to the center of a divisive and highly-partisan public debate.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the most senior liberal and third woman justice, and Justice Amy Coney Barrett, the most junior conservative and 5th woman justice, held a rare public conversation Thursday night in what appeared to be at least partly a bid toward lowering the temperature of debate.
“We like each other. We really do,” Barrett said of her relationship with Sotomayor and her other colleagues. “As is often joked, this is like a marriage. We have life tenure and we get along.”
“Fundamentally, they are good people,” Sotomayor said of her colleagues.
The pair, appearing together for the first time, spoke as part of the Reagan Institute’s Summit on Education in a session moderated by Yale Law professor Akhil Reed Amar. The theme of the event was “An Educated Citizenry.”
“To the extent we can maintain a tone,” Barrett said, “I think that in itself has an educative function on civics.”
Neither addressed any of the decisions of the past term, even obliquely; but they did lament public misunderstanding of the court and demonization of its members.
“For me, democracy means an informed group of people,” Sotomayor said, “because without being informed, you really can’t know how to shape, how to live with others.”
Organizers of the event said the conversation was pre-taped several weeks ago but aired Thursday for the first time.
(LONDON) — When Roe v. Wade was overturned in June, Dr. Rebecca Gomperts, a Dutch physician who has made a reputation for providing abortion services overseas in countries that restrict reproductive rights, saw a huge increase in emails from the U.S.
“When the draft of the decision leaked, we already saw a huge increase in the amount of requests for the service indicating that people were really scared and panicking,” she told ABC News. “But I think what is more important is what I feel is that the enormous fear that we hear in the voices of the women or the parents.”
Though she is licensed in Austria, in 2018 Gomperts founded Aid Access, a team of doctors and advocates that work with counterparts in the U.S. to provide abortion medication and information, and has continued to work despite a Food and Drug Administration request to cease their activity. Medication abortions done at home involve patients taking a regimen of two drugs — mifepristone and misoprostol — which are approved by the FDA to end pregnancy up to 10 weeks.
Before Roe v. Wade was overturned, Aid Access would receive around 400 emails per day from the U.S. On June 24 — the day the landmark ruling was struck down in the Supreme Court — they received 4,000 emails, a record for the organization, and now comfortably see 1,000 emails per day, two-and-a-half times more interest than before the draft leak, Gomperts said.
“I’ve been working in this field like creating different possibilities with different laws for more than 20 years,” Gomperts told ABC News. “But this service specifically, it’s under my Austrian doctors license and in Austria it’s allowed to provide abortion services or to write prescriptions for medication abortion up till 14 weeks of pregnancy. The conditions under which I do it are also allowed. Which is telemedicine.”
The legal position of such services in states that have banned abortion is unclear. In December of last year, the FDA permanently lifted restrictions allowing mifepristone to be delivered by mail.
According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, part of the confusion lies in states passing multiple laws that have overlapped, but states could go further in criminalizing people who obtain abortion pills in online pharmacies. The confusion, Gomperts said, has already led to cases where the authorities have misapplied the law.
Already providing for women in states with restrictive laws, Aid Access has also been used by those who cannot afford in-clinic care. One study from the University of Texas found that requests increased ten-fold after the legislature banned abortion after six weeks. But while data is still being collected on telemedical services post-Roe, all the indications are that requests for the service will be significantly higher.
Telehealth services such as Aid Access, operating in part outside of the jurisdiction of states where abortion is banned, could now be one of the few ways to end pregnancies in post-Roe America.
One trend that Gomperts has noticed is the uncertainty surrounding the laws themselves, with women fearful that they, rather than providers and those who aid them, could be liable for prosecution.
Aid Access has explored a way to potentially circumvent the strict laws in parts of the U.S. by administering abortion medication for future use — essentially as a preventative measure for women who can access the pills when they need it from their own medicine cabinets.
“Time and time again, medication abortion has been scientifically proven to be a safe and effective method to terminate a pregnancy,” Nimra Chowdhry, senior state legislative counsel at the Center for Reproductive Rights Abortion, told ABC News. “Abortion restrictions flagrantly disregard people’s health and put people and providers at risk of punishment just for accessing and providing essential health care. We have started to see more and more states target the use of medication abortion because they recognize that medication abortion is safe, effective, and in-demand. People should not have to live in a state of fear when obtaining or providing abortion care including medication abortion.”
One U.S. study into the safety and effectiveness of self-managed medication abortions provided by Aid Access found that 96% of people self-reported they were able to end their pregnancies using the pills alone after consulting with online telemedicine. These are numbers, according to one of the study’s authors, Abigail Aiken, that are on par with what can be expected in a clinical setting.
In her work, Gomperts has found that obstacles to abortion services, and not abortions themselves, have proved most traumatic. One of the fundamental misconceptions about abortion, she said, is that it is treated as an “exception,” rather than one “part of our reproductive lives.”
“The discourse around trauma is something that is created by society,” she said. “It’s not based on our experience of the stories of women. They experience the trauma because their access to the abortion has been taken away and restricted.”
(NEW YORK) — At least 15 people have been killed amid devastating flooding in Kentucky, Gov. Andy Beshear said Friday, and he said he expects the death toll to “more than double.”
The fatalities will likely include children, the governor said on CNN.
Among those killed was an 81-year-old woman, according to the governor.
On Thursday, Beshear called it “one of the worst, most devastating” floods in the state’s history, and said he anticipates this will be one of the deadliest floods in Kentucky in “a very long time.”
A flash flood emergency was issued in Kentucky late Wednesday as 2 to 5 inches of rain pounded the Bluegrass State.
As of Friday morning, central and eastern Kentucky remain under a flood watch, according to Beshear. An additional 2 to 4 inches of rain is expected in eastern Kentucky through Monday.
For some areas, the water will not crest until Saturday, the governor said.
“While rain totals are not expected to be as high, flooding still remains a concern due to saturated grounds,” the governor tweeted.
The state is combating washed out roads, destroyed homes and flooded schools, according to Beshear.
“Hundreds” have been rescued by boat and many people remain stranded, Beshear said Friday.
Hundreds of residents are expected to lose their homes and it’ll likely take families years to recover and rebuild, he said.
Three of Kentucky’s state parks are being opened to people who have lost their homes, according to the governor.
President Joe Biden on Friday approved a disaster declaration for Kentucky.
ABC News’ Alexandra Faul, Kenton Gewecke and Morgan Winsor contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — A Minnesota woman is sharing her health battle on TikTok, she says, in order to raise awareness and encourage women to advocate for themselves and their health.
Raquel Rodriguez, 25, said doctors first found a cyst on her ovary in 2016 while doing testing to determine why she was experiencing kidney infections so severe she had to be hospitalized.
“They just kind of said, ‘Oh, you have a cyst. We’re not worried about it,'” Rodriguez told Good Morning America, referring to her doctors at the time. “They didn’t tell me the size and they didn’t really tell me much about it at all, so I just kind of moved on and was like, OK, they’re not worried about it.”
Ovarian cysts, fluid-filled sacs that forms on or in the ovaries, can happen monthly in the ovulation process. Most of the cysts are what gynecologists call “functional cysts” that resolve on their own and are typically benign, according to the U.S. Office on Women’s Health.
Rodriguez said over the course of the next several years, she continued to experience intermittent kidney and bladder issues, as well as pain during intercourse.
Though the pain during intercourse was often severe, Rodriguez said she struggled to seek help.
“Me being a teen, I was kind of embarrassed, like, I don’t know if this is normal,” Rodriguez said, adding that after a negative experience with a male emergency room doctor, whom she said she felt undermined her pain, she never sought help for the pain again.
Even though Rodriguez said she continued to experience symptoms such as continued pain and frequent urination, it was only this past year that she said she began to notice more physical changes, including extreme bloating.
“I kind of took it into my own hands to do as much research as possible,” she said. “I really started to dig and look at Reddit threads and talk to other women that had the same thing, and then I really started to advocate for myself.”
Rodriguez said she wanted to be “as educated as possible” about what was going on with her body because the previous times she sought medical care for her symptoms, she “wasn’t taken seriously.”
Through her research, Rodriguez said she assumed it was her cyst that was growing and went to a midwife, noting, “I thought they would listen to me better than anyone else had.”
The midwife she saw ordered an emergency ultrasound with a doctor that same day, according to Rodriguez. On the ultrasound, a cyst was found that extended from Rodriguez’s pubic bone to her sternum.
“She said, ‘I’ve never, ever in my life seen something this big before,'” Rodriguez said of the reaction of the doctor who performed the ultrasound. “I remember after walking out of the appointment, I called my mom immediately and told her, and I called my sister and told her, and everyone was really excited because we’d dealt with this for so long. I was really, really relieved.”
In June, on her 25th birthday, Rodriguez underwent a two-hour surgery to remove the cyst, which weighed 10 pounds and carried more than four liters of fluid.
“The first thing I noticed after surgery was not having to pee right away. I could drink a glass of water and not have to go pee immediately,” she said. “That night after the surgery, I looked down at my stomach and it looked like it was sunken in, which was super weird.”
Rodriguez’s surgeon, Dr. Adrienne Mallen, a gynecologic oncology specialist, said the cyst was large enough that it looked like Rodriguez was carrying a full-term pregnancy.
“The abdominal cavity, I tell people it’s like thinking of the inside of a beach ball. It’s easy to hide growths,” Mallen said. “The body is pretty adaptive, so it can be very easy to not notice something in that area, and sometimes it’s not noticed until it comes out of what we refer to as the pelvis, especially in women’s bodies.”
Mallen said that because there is no common way to check women’s ovaries, ovarian cysts can often go undetected.
“The best test we have to determine if there’s growth is a pelvic examination with your doctor,” Mallen said, adding that ultrasounds are then used to help determine if a cyst is benign. “We don’t have a standard test that you can get to check your ovaries, it’s only if you’re having a problem.”
Though ovarian cysts affect millions of women each year, only around 5% to 10% of women, like Rodriguez, have cases severe enough to require surgery to remove an ovarian cyst, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“I tell people to just focus on body awareness so they can feel empowered because they know their body well,” Mallen said, adding of her own patient, “Raquel was a great advocate for herself and made sure she found a team that was listening to her.”
Ovarian cysts — which can be caused by hormonal changes, endometriosis, pregnancy and severe pelvic infections — often cause no symptoms at all.
If an ovarian cyst does cause symptoms, they may include bloating, pressure or pain near where the cyst is located. Symptoms of a ruptured ovarian cyst may include dizziness, nausea, vomiting, bleeding and intense pelvic or abdominal pain on the side of the body where the cyst is located, according to the Office on Women’s Health.
Over the past year, as Rodriguez got answers herself, she began to share her health journey on TikTok to help raise awareness about ovarian cysts and women’s health.
“I wished I had been a bigger advocate for myself because I felt had I been a bigger advocate, I would have gotten the help I needed back when this first started,” she said. “And I really wanted people to understand that women do go through a lot, and there are a lot of things that people go through that we don’t talk about.”
Rodriguez said that as she has shared her journey, she has been surprised both by the number of people who do not know about ovarian cysts, and the number of people who have messaged her thanking her for speaking out.
She said that as she continues to recover and improve, she has also been surprised to find herself with a platform to help empower women when it comes to their health.
“Women are dismissed so often and it is not really talked about,” Rodriguez said. “I realized just how strong I was getting through this surgery, advocating for myself, and then being able to share my journey with other people. It has really made me feel empowered.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into neighboring Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with Russian forces invading from Belarus, to the north, and Russia, to the east. Ukrainian troops have offered “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The Russian military has since launched a full-scale ground offensive in eastern Ukraine’s disputed Donbas region, capturing the strategic port city of Mariupol and securing a coastal corridor to the Moscow-annexed Crimean Peninsula.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Jul 29, 8:28 AM EDT
US ambassador to Ukraine speaks to ABC News as grain ships prepare to leave
U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink told ABC News on Friday morning that she is “optimistic” ships carrying grain will begin leaving Ukraine this weekend, but that it’s up to Russia to keep its side of the deal.
During an interview in the Ukrainian port city of Odesa, Brink declined to say whether the United States would impose consequences on Russia if it disrupted the United Nations-brokered deal or attacked the ships. But she underlined her country’s support for Ukraine and the deal, saying it was important that Ukrainian grain starts reaching countries that need it.
When asked if there was a “Plan B” if the deal failed, Brink said the focus was on doing everything to ensure “Plan A” works.
Earlier Friday, Brink and ambassadors of other G-7 countries held a press conference in Odesa while overseeing the preparations. She told reporters that she hopes an agreement confirming the safe corridors of the grain ships to sail through this weekend would be reached. Under the deal, Ukraine and Russia have been negotiating the precise routes the vessels will take through the Black Sea.
Since Russian forces invaded neighboring Ukraine on Feb. 24, the cost of grain has skyrocketed worldwide. Russia and Ukraine — often referred to collectively as Europe’s breadbasket — produce a third of the global supply of wheat and barley, but Kyiv has been unable to ship exports due to Moscow’s offensive. Last month, the Ukrainian Grain Association warned that Ukraine’s wheat harvest is expected to plummet by 40%.
In recent weeks, there has been an all-out push from the U.S. and the U.N. to facilitate exports from war-torn Ukraine, desperate to offset what they foretell is a looming global food crisis with the potential to devastate the developing world. A Russian blockade in the Black Sea, along with Ukrainian naval mines, have made exporting siloed grain and other foodstuffs virtually impossible and, as a result, millions of people around the world — particularly in Africa and the Middle East — are now on the brink of famine.
-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell
Jul 29, 7:11 AM EDT
Ukraine says 1st grain ships should leave this weekend
Ukraine announced Friday that it hopes the first ships carrying grain will finally be leaving two ports this weekend under a United Nations-brokered deal to end Russia’s blockade.
The departure of the first ships will be a major test of whether the deal with Moscow will hold and Ukrainian food can begin to ease the global hunger crisis worsened by the blockade amid Russia’s war.
Ukrainian Minister of Infrastructure Oleksander Kubrakov, who is overseeing the operation, told reporters in Odesa on Friday morning that the port as well as the nearby Chernomorsk port are prepared to begin, with 17 ships already loaded with grain.
A final agreement mediated by the U.N. and Turkey needs to be signed off on the routes the vessels will take out of the heavily mined ports. Kubrakov said Ukraine had provided a number of options and that, from its side, the country is ready. Ukraine is waiting for the U.N. to confirm the routes are accepted by both sides.
Kubrakov said the first ships should leave by the end of the weekend.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was also in Odesa on Friday morning to see the preparations and meet with Kubrakov as well as other officials, including U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Bridget Brink.
-ABC News’ Patrick Reevell
Jul 27, 2:51 PM EDT
Blinken and Lavrov to discuss US proposal to free Griner and Whelan
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said he plans to speak with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in the coming days, marking the first time the two leaders will speak since the war began.
Blinken said a critical topic of discussion would be securing the freedom of detained Americans Paul Whelan and Brittney Griner, revealing that the U.S. has already put forward a plan to accomplish that.
“We put a substantial proposal on the table weeks ago to facilitate their release. Our governments have communicated repeatedly and directly on that proposal, and I’ll use the conversation to follow up personally and I hope move us toward a resolution,” Blinken said.
“I can’t and won’t get into any of the details of what we’ve proposed to the Russians over the course of some many weeks now,” Blinken said.
Blinken said President Joe Biden played an active role in crafting the proposal for Griner and Whelan.
Blinken also stressed, “My call with Foreign Minister Lavrov will not be a negotiation about Ukraine,” adding, “Any negotiation regarding Ukraine is for its government and people to determine.”
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford
Jul 27, 9:32 AM EDT
Ukraine uses US rocket system to strike key bridge in Russia-held Kherson
Ukrainian forces struck a strategic bridge in the Russian-occupied city of Kherson early Wednesday, according to local officials.
High-precision missile strikes by the Ukrainian military damaged the Antonivskiy bridge, forcing the occupied authorities to close the structure to civilian traffic. The mile-long bridge across the Dnieper River is an essential artery used by Moscow to supply its troops occupying southern Ukraine.
“Strikes were delivered on the bridge, on its road. The bridge is currently closed to the civilian population,” Kirill Stremousov, the deputy head of the Moscow-appointed administration for the Kherson region, told local media on Wednesday.
The bridge’s pillars and spans were still intact as of Wednesday morning, according to Stremousov.
“It is simply that the number of holes on the road has increased. The strike on the bridge has affected only the civilian population,” he added.
According to Stremousov, Ukrainian forces hit the bridge with High Mobility Artillery Rocket Systems (HIMARS) supplied by the United States. He said ferry crossings across the Dnieper River will be organized during the bridge’s restoration, and that traffic will resume in the near future.
“We have prepared a pontoon bridge. We have a ferry link,” he told local media.
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukrainian military officials said the number of Russian soldiers killed in the war has surpassed 40,000, just more than five months after Russia launched its invasion of neighboring Ukraine in late February.
-ABC News’ Edward Szekeres, Yulia Drozd, Max Uzol and Yuriy Zaliznyak
(NEW HAVEN, Conn.) — As students prepare to return to school in the fall, one Ivy League law school has a new scholarship aimed at broadening access to legal education by eliminating tuition for students with financial needs.
Yale Law School’s Hurst Horizon Scholarship will erase tuition and pay for college fees and health care costs for law students with the greatest financial need. It’s a first-of-its-kind scholarship that is creating new conversations about what law schools can do to diversify the legal profession.
Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken, the first woman to serve in the role, tells ABC News the scholarship was needed. “We have so many people from low-income backgrounds, who are not going to law school to pursue change because of the debt that waits on the other end for them,” she said.
The scholarship will be given to any Juris Doctor student whose family income is below the federal poverty guidelines and whose assets are below $150,000. The law school tells ABC News that more than 45 students this fall will qualify to be awarded more than $70,000 per year to cover tuition, fees and health insurance.
The program’s aim is to get lawyers to reflect the country’s demographics more closely and to change the demographics of the legal landscape by setting the tone for other top law schools to eliminate tuition fees, the school says. According to a 2021 report from the American Bar Association, lawyers of color only make up 14.6% of the legal profession.
Other Ivy League law schools have made similar efforts in recent years.
In May, Stanford Law School announced it was eliminating tuition for low-income students.
A spokesperson for the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School told ABC News the school increased financial aid by more than 60% over the past five years, raised $2.5 million to support its First Generation Professional Scholarships and pledged to increase financial support over the next five years by more than $8 million.
Meanwhile, a spokesperson for Harvard Law School told ABC the school “provides 100% need-based financial aid, and spending on financial aid grants has doubled over the past decade.”
Gerken says Yale Law’s scholarship offers much needed benefits for the legal profession.
“If you really just think about this generation and what it’s facing, this generation has inherited problems that are impossible to solve,” Gerken said. “And the job of law schools is to teach them how to solve it. You cannot do that unless everyone is sitting at the table.”
According to U.S. News and World Report, the average percentage of minority students was 28.5% in fall 2020 among 189 law schools surveyed.
“We also still have a system where law students of color graduate with a disproportionately higher loan debt burden,” James G. Leipold, executive director of the National Association for Law Placement, told ABC News.
Leipold said two decades ago, the “bulk of institutional discretionary financial aid moved from a need-based environment to a merit-based environment, I think to the great harm of all of higher ed.”
He said the change was driven by competition for SAT and LSAT scores. Universities began giving scholarships to people with high scores so that they could position their universities or law schools well in rankings, Leipold said.
Gerken said the idea for the Hurst Horizon Scholarship began in 2016 during a conversation between students. Rakim H. D. Brooks, a first-generation law student who grew up in New York City’s public housing, led the conversation that night for students who were restarting the First Generation Professionals program at Yale, a group for students who are the first in their families to attend the school.
It was during that conversation that Gerken noticed many of the students saw law school debt as a family or community debt. “I realized that it’s time for legal education to change if it really wants to achieve equity access and accessibility,” she said.
Brooks, who now serves as president of the nonprofit Alliance for Justice, said the new scholarship, named after founding donors Soledad and Robert Hurst, will allow future law students to pursue their passions.
He says its “quintessentially American to provide the hardest working working class and poor kids the best opportunities, and that’s what this scholarship is going to do.”
Gerken said she believes this scholarship is just the beginning of Yale’s mission to diversify the legal profession and “create a generation of lawyers and leaders who reflect our society.”
(NEW YORK) — Who will win the Mega Millions jackpot in Friday night’s drawing? That’s the billion-dollar question.
For only the third time in the 20-year history of the American lottery game, the big prize has reached the billion-dollar mark. The jackpot has grown to an estimated $1.1 billion — a cash value of $648.2 million — after no ticket matched all six numbers drawn Tuesday night, according to a press release from Mega Millions.
If won, it will be the second-largest jackpot in Mega Millions history, behind only the record $1.537 billion won in South Carolina on Oct. 23, 2018 — the world’s largest lottery prize ever won on a single ticket.
Friday night’s Mega Millions drawing will mark the 30th in this jackpot run, which began on April 19.
In the 29 drawings since the Mega Millions jackpot was last won in Tennessee on April 15, there have been over 28.1 million winning tickets at all prize levels, including 42 worth $1 million or more in 17 states across the country. Four Mega Millions jackpots have been won so far this year — in California, New York, Minnesota and Tennessee.
Mega Millions jackpots start at $20 million and grow based on game sales and interest rates. Despite a surge in ticket sales, the odds of winning the big prize remain the same — 1 in 303 million.
Mega Millions tickets are $2 and can be purchased in 45 U.S. states, Washington, D.C., and the U.S. Virgin Islands. Drawings are conducted at 11 p.m. ET every Tuesday and Friday at the studios of Atlanta ABC affiliate WSB-TV, supervised by the Georgia Lottery.
Winners can either take the money as an immediate cash lump sum or in 30 annual payments over 29 years.
(UVALDE, Texas) — Mandy Gutierrez, the principal of Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, was reinstated Thursday to her position, her attorney, Ricardo Cedillo, confirmed to ABC News.
“Ms. Gutierrez’s administrative leave with pay has been lifted and she has been fully reinstated to her position, where she will continue to discharge her duties and continue to serve all the families of the UCISD,” a statement read.
Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District superintendent Hal Harrell thanked Gutierrez in a letter obtained by ABC News for submitting responses to the House Investigative report into the May 24 mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead.
“As a result of our review, you will be allowed to return to work,” Harrell said in the letter.
The reinstatement comes a day after Gutierrez responded to criticisms lodged against her and her leadership team by the special investigative committee of the Texas House.
Gutierrez was suspended earlier in the week by Harrell. There was no reason given as to why Gutierrez was placed on administrative leave but the decision came two weeks after a report by the Texas legislative committee into the shooting. The report found that Gutierrez, in her first year at Robb Elementary School, was aware of security problems such as a door not locking properly for one of the classrooms the gunman entered, but did not fix them.
Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo was placed on administrative leave without pay in June as the district considers the recommendation of firing him.
Katie Conway and Josh Margolin contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(JOLIET, Ill.) — Employees at a Joliet, Illinois, Amazon warehouse have filed a complaint with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the company, alleging corporate abuse, racial discrimination, and retaliation.
According to the complaint filed Tuesday, a group of Black employees at the MDW2 Fulfillment Center said that Confederate imagery on coworkers’ clothing, racist death threats written in bathroom stalls, and a lack of security and accountability have contributed to a racially hostile work environment since late 2021. Institutional abuse and women’s rights attorney Tamara Holder said her clients are now not only seeking change in the workplace to appropriately address and resolve these issues, but monetary damages for emotional duress caused by stressful working conditions.
“We don’t know what that amount comes to at this point. But I can tell you that after working in a climate where it’s racially hostile, people are experiencing extreme emotional distress,” she told ABC News. “Our message to Amazon is that their behavior after our cases come to light is only increasing our damages because people are becoming more afraid rather than less.”
As the case receives more attention, Holder said that employees are hesitant to speak out any more about these claims for fear of further retaliation from the MDW2 Fulfillment Center management, causing concern for the future of this case and her clients’ livelihoods.
“They are allegedly telling their employees that if they speak out, they will be fired because they signed an agreement to remain silent,” Holder told ABC News.
Holder says former MDW2 employee Tori Davis was the first to make contact with her about the warehouse’s work environment. Davis, who was fired earlier this month after raising the alarm about her concerns, told ABC affiliate WLS that the death threats were dismissed by Amazon.
“They were trying to sweep it under the rug,” Davis said. “The way that this situation was handled, it was strange.”
A spokesperson for Amazon, Richard Rocha, issued a statement to ABC News.
“Amazon works hard to protect our employees from any form of discrimination and to provide an environment where employees feel safe. Hate or racism have no place in our society and are certainly not tolerated by Amazon,” the statement read.
The MDW2 Fulfillment Center did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Holder said she plans to do everything in her power to see the complaint through and ensure that her clients’ voices are heard.
“I think that they had an opportunity here to make it better. And instead they’re taking a very, very different aggressive stance to make it worse,” she said. “They are not too big for me and they are not too big for the people that I represent…We are not going away.”
