(NEW YORK) — A former teacher in northeast Ohio is opening up about why he walked away from years of teaching to go work at Walmart.
Seth Goshorn decided to share his personal story through TikTok, posting a short clip of him holding up and displaying Walmart’s signature blue uniform in the same way athletes hold up their team jersey on draft day.
The 28-year-old’s post, just 6 seconds long with a caption that read “Leaving teaching after 6 years to go be a manager at Walmart and make more not using my degree,” quickly went viral. It has now been viewed more than 810,000 times in the last week.
Goshorn told ABC News’ Good Morning America he left education after careful consideration and doing his research, tapping his family members who also work at the retailer for their input. In the end, he said he made the switch, even though he “absolutely” loved teaching, for more growth and a higher salary, especially since he hopes to start a family with his fiancée in the near future.
“My biggest thing was the opportunity,” he said. “You don’t have to go and get another degree or more initials or letters in front of your name to move up.”
“The compensation,” he added. “It was a lot better than I think people are used to and what people would expect.”
As a stocking 2 coach at a Walmart store in Massillon, Ohio, Goshorn said he makes about $55,000 a year before bonuses, a figure Walmart corroborated to GMA.
It was an upward move for him after working for five-and-a-half years in education, first as a reading tutor in a lower-paying school district and then as a second-grade teacher in a district he described as a “middle [to] upper” paying district. He said when he was teaching with Plain Local Schools in Ohio’s Stark County last year, he was earning $43,000 a year. The district confirmed to GMA that their elementary teacher salaries range from $43,896 to $83,766.
Goshorn said he hoped to shine a light on how he felt hard-working teachers and his former colleagues are underappreciated, in the wake of a national teacher shortage and amid high burnout among educators since the COVID pandemic.
“There’s a misconception that we only work six or nine months out [of] a year,” he said, explaining that often, teachers spend many extra hours outside the classroom to draw up lesson plans, grade assignments and so forth.
“Think about how good our teachers can be if they could focus on just teaching and not have to work a second job on the weekends, or I know some that would work at Starbucks after their shifts,” he said, adding that he also coached two sports and worked summer school sessions while holding down his teaching position. “They chose to be a teacher because they’re passionate about it. They didn’t choose to have to work a second job that comes along with it. And that’s the thing that I would have loved to see go away.”
But although he’s giving up full-time teaching, for now, he said he plans on keeping and renewing his teaching license and doesn’t discourage others to pursue the same path he was once on.
“If that’s what you’re passionate about, absolutely,” Goshorn told GMA. “Just make sure going into it, figure out what the [return] is on your investment and make sure that it makes sense for you.”
“I absolutely don’t want this to be that I’m just trying to discourage anybody from becoming a teacher. That’s not the case. I just want my teacher friends to be paid as they should be,” he added.
(NEW YORK) — Mark Hall, a nurse practitioner who was diagnosed with monkeypox, says he isn’t exactly sure who he contracted the disease from.
However, he found out he was exposed by someone a week before he started showing symptoms. That person, he says, knew they had monkeypox and didn’t tell him.
Hall, a gay man living in New York City, said shame and stigma surrounding the virus have made some people afraid to come forward.
“Whenever anybody gets sick — even if it’s COVID — half the time, people don’t want to tell because sometimes it feels like a moral failure,” Hall told ABC News in an interview. “We’ve stigmatized these things in so many ways that if you get sick, that you somehow have failed morally. I think people are scared to admit that.”
“It’s a system problem rather than an individual problem,” Hall added.
Of the more than 18,000 confirmed monkeypox cases reported globally, in countries that don’t usually have monkeypox researchers have found the vast majority are among gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men.
In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says that most known cases in the current outbreak are among people who identify as gay or bisexual, but that anyone can get it.
“Stigma and discrimination can be as dangerous as any virus,” said WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus at a press conference Saturday. “In addition to our recommendations to countries, I am also calling on civil society organizations, including those with experience in working with people living with HIV, to work with us on fighting stigma and discrimination.”
The parallels between the failings of the HIV/AIDS crisis — including slow-moving action from the government and poor outreach that failed to contain the epidemic — were highlighted by monkeypox’s growing impact on gay and bisexual people, activists say.
Prior to the outbreak, most cases occurred in countries where the virus is usually found or endemic — typically central and western Africa.
Monkeypox, a cousin of the smallpox virus, is generally a mild illness with the most common symptoms being rash, swollen lymph nodes, fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches. The rash may be painful and have lesions that look like pimples or blisters that can occur on the face and other parts of the body.
Hall said his lesions caused “probably some of the worst pain that I’ve ever experienced in my life.”
People are typically infected by close person-to-person contact though it is possible to be infected by animals through a bite or a scratch or through preparation and consumption of contaminated bush meat.
However, in the current outbreak, most of the spread has come from coming into prolonged skin-to-skin contact with infected people’s lesions or bodily fluids. The illness can also be contracted from the clothes or other fabrics, such as bedsheets, used by an infected patient.
Anyone can contract the virus and despite misinformation circulating online, it is not a sexually transmitted disease or infection though it can be contracted through sexual contact.
One study in The New England Journal of Medicine reported that 95% of recent cases were likely transmitted through sexual close contact.
“Let’s start with the designation and differentiation between a sexually transmitted infection, and disease you can get when being intimate. These are two different concepts,” Dr. Perry Halkitis, dean of Rutgers School of Public Health in New Jersey, told ABC News. “Syphilis, gonorrhea, chlamydia are sexually transmitted infections, but you can make out with someone as a precursor to sex and give them COVID. That doesn’t make COVID a sexually transmitted infection.”
He continued, “It’s the same thing with monkeypox. Monkeypox is a disease that does not require sexual intercourse to be transmitted and if we continue to call it a sexually transmitted infection, it mischaracterizes the manner in which it is transmitted.”
At least two pediatric cases have been identified in the United States as well as one case in a pregnant woman, according to the CDC.
“The stigma associated with this disease and gay men happened because this disease ended up, first and foremost, attacking and perpetuating in the gay population,” Halkitis said. “I call [monkeypox] an infection or a disease of connectedness and intimacy that you could get from your grandma or you can get from your child or you can get from someone you’re not engaging in sex with.”
Activists say misinformation about monkeypox can worsen public health efforts.
The rollout of the monkeypox vaccine, as well as outreach to populations at a higher risk of contracting the virus, faced a rocky start.
“We’re all experiencing this, and it seems like either nobody’s listening or everybody’s downplaying,” Zac Mordechai Levovitz, clinical director of LGBTQ Jewish youth group JQY, told ABC News.
Activists say that shame and lack of outreach have silenced those who contracted the illness and have left many at-risk populations mis- or underinformed.
“[There’s] a lot of slut-shaming messaging that we’re seeing,” Jason Rosenberg, an activist at ACT UP NY, told ABC News. “We need to meet each other where we are. And that is through harm reduction, that is through sharing healthy ways to reduce risk.”
Stigma against the illness has prompted concern from activists, who say monkeypox has become a tool for anti-LGBTQ haters against the community.
LGBTQ activists say they have noted a rise in homophobic or transphobic messages about monkeypox online, something doctors say may make those diagnosed with monkeypox — LGBTQ or not — reluctant to come forward about their illness.
“I’m certain there are patients out there with monkeypox who are not coming forward or who have a concern they have monkeypox or were exposed to monkeypox who, because of the stigmatization, are not reaching out to their health care providers or getting the help that they need at a time when it is really critical,” Dr. Scott Roberts, an assistant professor and the associate medical director of infection prevention at Yale School of Medicine, told ABC News.
He continued, “We’re at this critical phase of this outbreak where we should be doing everything we can to stop this before it becomes endemic. The obvious risk is that people go about their daily lives while infected and spread this to other people.”
Roberts said he has seen patients who have told him that monkeypox is restricted to the men who have sex with men community so there is no reason for them to be concerned.
“We do need to warn people who have exposures that they might be at risk if this continues to grow,” he said. “As this does get bigger, which we’re all anticipating, it’s only a matter of time until this hits other groups.”
“And when that happens, you know, our hope is that we haven’t really done damage from stigmatization where either people haven’t come forward or those people who are exposed do not seek vaccination or any medical care because they don’t think they can be infected with it,” Roberts added.
Hall said he shared his story online in hopes of shattering the stigma.
“I want to normalize this for people and say like, ‘Hey, I’m here. Here’s my face. I have monkeypox. This is what the experience has been like for me. And it’s okay to talk about it,”‘ Hall said.
(NEW YORK) — In September 2016, Kai Li stepped off a plane from the United States to his native China to visit relatives and attend a memorial for his late mother. He never returned.
The Chinese government had imprisoned the 59-year-old Li, an act the United Nations has condemned, and which his family says is based on bogus charges of espionage. A U.S. citizen who lived in Long Island, New York, since 1989, Li is only allowed to call his wife and son once a month for conversations that last just minutes.
His six-year absence has been “devastating,” said Harrison Li, his son. Not only did it throw his family into debt, but it also forced them to shutter two gas stations Li owned and operated as a way to make his family prosper in his adopted country, he said.
“Our government has failed us by allowing this to continue for so long,” he said. “They need to find the will and motivation to get him released.”
Li joins the chorus of dozens of families who say the Biden administration is failing to adequately confront a crisis that experts say is only getting worse. According to the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation, a Washington organization that advocates for hostages and journalist safety, at least 67 U.S. citizens are currently being held overseas; 90 percent of those are wrongly detained by foreign governments hostile to the U.S.
Cynthia Loertscher, director of research, hostage advocacy and legislative affairs for the Foley foundation, says there is a greater interest among countries like Venezuela, Russia and China to use U.S. citizens as “geopolitical pawns” whose imprisonments can be leveraged to demand change in U.S. policy or to force concessions like a prisoner exchange.
“They become human collateral to try to get the United States to budge on its policies on a very large scale which is why these cases are so difficult to solve,” Loertscher said.
The problem, she said, “is absolutely” worsening as an increasing number of countries are testing the waters for potential gain.
Last week, President Joe Biden issued an executive order that allows federal agencies to impose financial sanctions and other consequences on parties involved in hostage-taking or wrongful detentions. It also creates a new State Department indicator to alert Americans where there’s a risk of being wrongfully detained by a foreign government.
Loertscher said the new tools show the administration is taking the issue seriously, but it is too soon to tell of its lasting effect considering the order did not name specific countries or cases like Li’s.
For Neda Sharghi, whose brother Emad has been wrongfully detained in Iran since 2018, she says nothing short of meeting with Biden directly will be satisfactory. Emad Sharghi, an American-Iranian dual citizen based in Washington, is one of at least four Americans wrongfully detained in Iran currently. Months after his capture more than four years ago, he was released, but not allowed to leave the country.
Two months before Biden took office, Emad Sharghi was rearrested and sentenced to 10 years in prison for charges that remain unclear to his family.
Neda Sharghi said her family has written to Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken but have not received a response from either. She said the issue “transcends politics” and should be one that both political parties could work on together.
Holding people captive fraudulently “cuts against every principle we as Americans hold onto,” Sharghi said.
“It’s baffling to me why it’s so difficult to get them released and why it isn’t a more focused priority for our administration,” she said.
A senior State Department official would not discuss specific cases with ABC News, but said that the new executive order is an example of the administration being “willing to make tough but important decisions” on the issue.
“Anyone who has worked on these issues for any period of time knows that strategies need to be case specific. They have to be informed by the intelligence and information about a particular case. They need to take into account country-specific facts, regional facts and anything we can bring to bear to get what we all ultimately want, which is an American home with his or her loved ones,” the official said.
Biden recently met with the families of Austin Tice, detained in Syria since 2012, and Trevor Reed, who was recently released from Russia in a prisoner exchange. Families say the media attention thrust on both cases, along with that of basketball star Brittney Griner, detained in Russia on drug charges, are bringing public awareness to an issue that for so many years has been lost in the news cycle.
For Alexandra Forseth, the “biggest obstacles” for families like her own “is not the government holding our own people — it’s our own government.”
Her father, Alirio Zambrano, and uncle, Jose Luis Zambrano, are members of the so-called “Citgo 6,” a group of Houston-based Citgo oil executives imprisoned in Venezuela since 2017 on corruption charges. Last year, the men were released under house arrest but in November were suddenly sent back to prison where conditions are so poor their families say they must purchase their clothes and food and ferry them in through intermediaries.
The arrests came around the same time the U.S. extradited a Colombian financier with close ties to Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. In February, a Venezuelan court upheld the executives’ prison sentences.
In March, the Biden administration announced the release of one member of the Citgo 6, Gustavo Cardenas, along with another American held in the country, Jorge Fernandez.
“We did get a couple of Americans out and that was a great thing,” White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters this month regarding the release of the men. “But it was bittersweet because there’s a lot of Americans still there, and we’ve got to get them home.”
Forseth said her family has been working closely with Roger Carstens, the special presidential envoy for hostage affairs (SPEHA), a special State Department position created during the Obama years. While Carstens has “unanimous support” by the families, she said he and others working on their behalf are ultimately hindered by bureaucracy.
The characterization is supported by Loertscher who said these efforts ultimately need the full support of the administration to be fully effective.
“There are some people absolutely working their tails off for us. They are going way above what to do, but there are some people who are full-on obstacles to making creative solutions because don’t want to bring up these men as priorities to the president,” Forseth said.
“The short answer is, I’m mad at the people who won’t allow the negotiating process to be dynamic and swift,” she said.
Families banded by Bring Our Family Home, an organization tasked to raise the profile of the missing, unveiled a block-long mural in Washington last week that features the portraits of 18 loved ones being detained by foreign governments, including Griner and the Citgo 6.
“We would love it if President Biden came to look at it and hopefully inspire him to reach out and want to meet with us,” said Sharghi.
The project is also a catalyst for hope, something Li said, for him, is in short commodity over the years.
“There’s always hope and hope always gets dashed,” he said. “My father is still suffering behind bars.”
(NEW YORK) — Laura High has a brain tumor, but she says that’s not her defining characteristic.
High is a stand-up comedian whose routine consists of jokes about being a millennial and living in New York City. High also jokes about being a donor-conceived child and her search for her biological father.
“I’m what happens when a woman needs to become a mother and a man needs $200,” High joked at a recent appearance in New York City.
Behind all the giggles, High said she is fighting for concrete action to help protect donor-conceived people and provide them access to their medical records.
“It’s shocking to learn and to find out how many donor-conceived people [there are] especially in my age group, who have never been told, and who only found out by accident via a DNA test,” said High, 34, referring to donor-conceived people who discover their biological parent only through a DNA test.
High said her parents told her when she was 14 that she was conceived using donor sperm.
She took her own DNA test many years later, after she got engaged, because she said she feared that the man she loved might be her half-brother.
“I live in the same city that my donor was donating, so chances are the majority of my siblings are probably in New York City,” High said. “I have no idea if my neighbor is a sibling. I have no clue.”
High said she discovered she and her fiancé were not related — but through the DNA test, she found three of her biological siblings.
All of the siblings had similar genetic health issues. In High’s case, she was diagnosed with a brain tumor in 2016.
Without medical records, High said doctors can’t prove it is due to a genetic issue, but it’s suspected given her biological siblings’ own medical records.
When High found her father, she said he refused to give her and her siblings access to his medical records, which High claims could have helped catch her brain tumor sooner.
High said she and her siblings all have hormonal disorders that she said, in her case, put her at risk of developing her brain tumor. She said she was diagnosed when she was just 13.
“I’m very lucky I caught it in time before I needed surgery, and before I started trying to have children, because the tumor, while it is still in my head, essentially makes me infertile,” High said. “It’s taking a year for it to [decrease in size], so thank God I caught it now.”
As she continues to undergo treatment, High is continuing to fight for access to her own medical records and to pave the way for other donor-conceived people.
A bill proposed in High’s home state of New York would require disclosures from donors on diagnosed medical conditions, family medical conditions, doctors seen, names of schools attended and criminal felony convictions.
The bill, called the Donor Conceived Person Protection Act, would require fertility clinics to give donor-conceived people access to their updated medical records.
“It’s not going to just save my life, it’s also going to potentially save my children’s lives,” High said, adding that donor-conceived people “are just asking for the same knowledge you would get if you knew your parents.”
The fight for donor-conceived rights
New York State Sen. Patrick Gallivan, a Democrat, is the sponsor of the bill, S7602A. He said he believes most people are not aware of what he described as the loose regulations that currently exist around the fertility industry.
“People have the same reaction I did,” Gallivan told ABC News. “So far, they’re completely shocked.”
Gallivan explained that state requirements vary, but in New York, there is no requirement for screening for mental health, physical health or criminal records in order to be a donor.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration requires that sperm donors be tested within a week of their donation. Donations are tested for nine sexually transmitted diseases, but certain donors could be tested for more, according to a 2020 FDA pamphlet.
Gallivan’s bill would create action against fertility fraud and a doctor would not use reproductive tissue from a donor if the recipient did not consent. If a doctor used a donation that was not the one a client consented to use, it would become a crime of aggravated assault, according to the bill.
In High’s case, she claims the sperm donation her mother received was not the one her mother and father selected. She said she later found that her biological father was a colleague and friend of her mother’s OB-GYN.
High has advocated for Gallivan’s bill on TikTok, where she has more than 10 million likes on her platform.
Gallivan said his bill would help provide structure to New York fertility procedures. Currently, for example, it is not illegal for a doctor to switch out a promised sperm donation with any other donation or a doctor’s own sample.
The bill also would give a definition of professional misconduct for physicians, physician’s assistants and specialist assistants. Fertility clinics would have to disclose donor information such as medical records, prior felonies and previous doctor visits, according to Gallivan.
The bill would require that information would have to be updated as children become adults and donors find more potential medical issues as they age.
New York State Sen. George Borrello, a Republican, co-sponsored the bill and said there is no reason for donor-conceived children to suffer mental and physical health issues when genetic testing and background checks are widely available.
“If you buy a vehicle, that used car that has some problems, you have recourse,” Borrello said. “In this, you’re talking about a human being, a life.”
Gallivan and Borrello said that no one from the fertility industry has reached out to their offices directly, but emphasized that this area in protecting children is one of the few bipartisan efforts they think everyone can support.
The bill is currently in the New York Senate’s Health Committee, where Gallivan and Borrello say they are pushing their colleagues to see the necessity of this bill.
While there are other bills around the U.S. that deal with donor anonymity, this is the first proposed bill that would directly provide access to medical records for donor-conceived people.
ABC News reached out to six fertility clinics in the New York area for comment on the bill. None have responded.
Richard Vaughn, the founder of International Fertility Law Group, said that the New York bill is a good start, but that laws need to look at the fertility industry as a whole.
“The issue with donor-conceived persons and their right to know is a bit of a love triangle,” Vaughn said.
He said the donor-conceived children, the donors and the parents all have to be represented, but the bill only looks at protection for the children.
“I don’t think anybody disagrees with the part that it’s so important that donor-conceived kids have accurate information about their medical history and their genetic heritage,” Vaughn said. “So the trick is balancing all three of those, and in the middle, you’ve got medical providers.”
Vaughn said in his practice, about half of parents choose to tell their kids if they are donor-conceived.
Vaughn said the issue is balancing the health of the family with the accessibility of donors. He said there is a fear that shifting to making more personal information about donors accessible would cause fewer people to donate.
“All donations should be open,” Vaughn said. “That’s healthy for the donor-conceived children, it’s healthy for the parents to know that this isn’t something you really have to hide.”
Georgetown Law professor Susan Crockin, who specializes in fertility ethics, said she believes New York’s law could be the start of a national trend.
She said she hopes new laws don’t go too far to place an “impossible burden” on providers to fully investigate every donor.
“My biggest hope is that we have laws that are reasonable, and that provide more assurances, that donors don’t shrink back from it, but that we give everybody more background and more context for who they are,” Crockin added.
(NEW YORK) — Police released footage of three suspects wanted in connection with the armed robbery of a Brooklyn, New York bishop during a livestream of his service.
Bishop Lamor Whitehead said he and his wife were robbed of “hundreds of thousands” in jewelry, including his wedding band, during a targeted incident on Sunday at his church, Leaders of Tomorrow International Ministry.
The New York Police Department released surveillance footage late Tuesday that shows the suspects, dressed in all black and wearing masks, crossing the street and entering the location shortly after 11 a.m. Sunday. Police said Wednesday there were no updates in the case.
Footage of the livestream, which is also part of the police investigation, shows the bishop saying “alright, alright” and lowering himself to the ground as one of the masked men enters the frame.
“When I see them come into the sanctuary with their guns, I told everybody, ‘Get down,'” Whitehead said in a video posted on Instagram. “I didn’t know if they wanted to shoot my church up or if they were coming for a robbery.”
Police said the men displayed firearms and stole a “large sum of jewelry” before fleeing in a white Mercedes.
Whitehead said that he chased after the suspects, whom he said had changed clothes and took their masks off, but ended up driving past them.
The bishop said the ministry was “traumatized” by the incident, and that a gun was pointed in the face of his 8-month-old baby. He has since offered a $50,000 reward for information leading to the “healthy” arrest of the three men.
“I don’t want nothing happening to these young men,” he said in a video posted on Instagram announcing the reward. “I want the law to deal with these people.”
He decried the robbery, saying that he would have helped the men if they needed it.
“I would have been able to show love,” he said.
Following news of the robbery, Whitehead has also defended himself against criticism over his “flashy” lifestyle.
“It’s not about me being flashy,” he said. “It’s about me purchasing what I want to purchase.”
“It’s my prerogative to purchase what I want to purchase,” he added.
(WASHINGTON) — Leading gun manufacturing executives testified Wednesday before a House panel investigating the role of the firearms industry in the nation’s high rates of gun violence, maintaining under sharp questioning from Democrats that American citizens — not firearms — cause mass shootings.
The hearing, helmed by House Oversight Committee Chairwoman Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, featured two CEOs and other gun industry members ahead of the consideration of legislation that would restrict the sale of semiautomatic weapons, which are often used in large-scale killings.
Many gun rights supporters and Republicans oppose such a move as unconstitutional.
Over the span of nearly six hours, House Democrats probed the manufacturers on their marketing tactics to children and adults, with lawmakers asking if they would implement additional safety features on their firearms and seeking, the lawmakers said, to better understand the features of the military-style weapons.
“I hope the American people are paying attention today. It is clear that gun-makers are not going to change unless Congress forces them to finally put people over profits,” Maloney said.
Gun companies have seen revenues of more than $1 billion over the last 10 years, according to a new report from Democrats on the House Oversight Committee on the five major gun manufacturers’ sales and marketing of AR-15-style rifles.
The two CEOs who spoke Wednesday, Marty Daniel of Daniel Defense and Christopher Killoy of Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc., both pushed back when asked if they felt they had responsibility for recent mass shootings, such as those in Uvalde, Texas; Highland Park, Illinois; and Buffalo, New York, among others, given that the weapons their companies make are often used in such massacres.
“I believe that these murders are a local problem that have to be solved locally,” Daniel said. “These acts are committed by murderers. The murderers are responsible.”
“I don’t consider what my company produces to be ‘weapons of war,'” Killoy said.
Some of the Uvalde and Buffalo victims’ relatives sat in the chamber during the hearing. The parents of 10-year-old Alexandria Rubio, one of the students slain in Uvalde, propped up their daughter’s photo in the room.
Republicans on the committee defended the manufacturers, agreeing that “criminals” are responsible mass shootings rather than guns or weapons manufacturers.
Some lawmakers, like South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace, called the hearings “political theater.”
Rep. Jody Hice, a Georgia Republican, and Tennessee Republican James Comer, the committee’s ranking member, said the hearing was a part of a “disturbing trend in this committee of going after both private citizens and the constitutional rights of American citizens.”
“I want to know when are you, Chairwoman Maloney, going to apologize to the American citizens for not dealing with the real issues and showing responsibility and accountability?” Hice asked — trying to redirect the focus to what he said was a more important issue.
“When are we gonna have hearings in this committee, holding people responsible in cities, municipalities, states and right here in our own Congress, for being soft on crime? When are we going to have hearings to do away with the ridiculous, outrageous policies of defunding the police?” he said.
Daniel, of Daniel Defense, said that he was at the hearing voluntarily but was “concerned” that the implied purpose of the hearing was to vilify and blame rifles for recent deadly shootings.
Two months ago, the Uvalde gunman used a Daniel Defense weapon to kill 19 students and two teachers at an elementary school.
“Many Americans, myself included, have witnessed an erosion of personal responsibility in our country and in our culture. Mass shootings are all but unheard of just a few decades ago,” Daniel said. “So what changed? Not the firearms … I believe our nation’s response needs to focus not on the type of gun but on the type of persons who are likely to commit mass shootings.”
During his testimony, Daniel said he wanted to reduce violent crime. He said that the hearing focused on a weapon, the AK-15, that is responsible for less than 4% of homicides.
Killoy began his testimony by discussing his corporation’s safety practices, then defended the right to gun possession despite the push by some in Congress for further restrictions and reforms.
“We firmly believe it’s wrong to deprive citizens of their constitutional right because of the criminal acts of wicked people. The firearm, any firearm, can be used for good or evil,” Killoy said. “The differences in the intent of the individual possessing it, which we respectfully submit can be the focus of any investigation into the root causes of criminal violence involving firearms.”
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., asked Killoy if he would track crimes committed with his company’s firearms as part of a new human rights assessment.
“Congressman, respectfully, that’s not our job. We’re not law enforcement. We don’t have the resources or capability to track injuries or fatalities.” Killoy said.
Ryan Busse, a senior adviser at the Giffords Law Center and a former gun-industry professional, testified that he had seen the industry evolve over time, becoming more emboldened in their marketing and sales of weapons.
“Sadly for me, there is no place in the industry for anyone who believes in moderation or responsible regulation,” he said.
When questioned on how exactly an AR-15 differs from other guns, Busse said AR-15s were “designed to be an offensive weapon of war for troops in battle, to charge into places like buildings and battlefields to take as many lives as possible as fast as they possibly can.”
Maloney spoke with ABC News on Tuesday about the context of the hearing. She said it should be a “wakeup call” for Congress to act on gun reform “to hold these gun manufacturers accountable for the deadly weapons that they’re manufacturing that are killing innocent Americans.”
“Most industries have a responsibility for their products. We have liability on our cars. Every time there’s a car wreck, we study it. We should do the same thing with guns. We should have liability on guns. They’re far more dangerous than cars,” Maloney told “GMA3.”
Maloney told ABC News that a representative for a third gun manufacturer, President Mark P. Smith of Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc., was invited to the hearing, but did not attend. Smith’s company made the weapons used by the shooters in Highland Park and in Parkland, Florida, among others.
“I would say, ‘We have invited three manufacturers — CEOs — [and] two have accepted,'” Maloney said.
“One is dodging us and not responding to our requests for documents,” she contended. “And we intend to hold them accountable eventually in some form.”
Maloney opened the hearing Wednesday by announcing her intent to issue a subpoena for documents from Smith & Wesson “so that we can finally get answers about why this company is selling assault weapons to mass murderers, answers we were hoping to get at today’s hearing.”
The company did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
The oversight committee previously sent letters to Smith & Wesson, Daniel Defense and Sturm, Ruger & Company, Inc., among others, on May 26, following the mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde.
The letters sought further information on the companies’ sale and marketing of AR-15-style semiautomatic rifles and similar firearms, “including revenue and profit information, internal data on deaths or injuries caused by firearms they manufacture, and marketing and promotional materials.”
On July 7, following the Fourth of July shooting in Highland Park, Maloney sent additional letters to the CEOs of the three top gun manufacturers, requesting their appearance at Wednesday’s hearing.
Maloney’s request for the hearing with gun executives came ahead of the committee’s June 8 hearing with Uvalde and Buffalo survivors and victims’ relatives.
President Joe Biden a month ago signed into law a bipartisan gun safety package, which did not include the weapons ban he sought. House Democrats are pushing for more reforms.
Maloney told ABC News that she believed the additional legislation “will make America safer for our citizens.”
At the hearing, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, D-N.Y., pressed the gun manufacturers on several advertisements tied to their weapons with what appear to be acknowledgment of white supremacist groups. She asked both Daniel Defense and Sturm, Ruger & Company if they would condemn the practice of marketing to far-right extremist groups.
Both CEOs said they were unaware of her specific instances, but “we do not tolerate racism or white supremacy,” Killoy said.
Busse, the former industry professional, said he would push back on the idea that gun laws don’t work — citing Uvalde and Buffalo, both cases in which the shooters waited until they were 18 years old to lawfully purchase their guns.
In the wake of those killings, Democrats renewed calls to raise the minimum age to buy assault-style weapons.
“The fact is that the laws impact the way people purchase and use guns and we need to as a responsible society and you as a governing body need to take that into account,” Busse said.
In closing remarks, Comer, the ranking Republican, thanked the manufacturers for continuing to do business in the U.S. and he called for better security at our schools, mental health support and police funding.
Maloney, in her remarks, apologized to the families of gun violence victims.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott announced he will provide a $1.25 million grant to the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District for counseling students and faculty impacted by the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.
“As the community of Uvalde continues to heal, Texas continues working to help improve security and aid in the recovery among students and educators,” Abbott said in a news release.
The money will be used for community outreach, crisis intervention and trauma-informed counseling through the Governor’s Public Safety Office, the statement said.
“This new source of funding will provide critical support to students, staff, and faculty in Uvalde as they continue to process the trauma from that day and grieve for the innocent lives lost,” Abbott said.
The funding comes over two months after 19 students and two teachers were shot and killed by a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, at Robb Elementary. Immediately following the incident, Abbott blamed the massacre on mental health issues in response to critics who criticized the state’s gun policies.
Texas is currently ranked as the worst state in the country for access to mental care, according to Mental Health America’s 2022 report.
A month before the school shooting, Abbott said that $500 million from various government agencies in the state would fund Operation Lone Star, a Texas-Mexico border security initiative by the Texas Department of Public Safety and the Texas Military Department.
Approximately $210.7 million was from Texas Health & Human Services, which oversees public mental health programs.
The governor’s press secretary, Renae Eze, rejected the claim, telling ABC News in May that Abbott didn’t cut any funding from mental health services.
Abbott’s office touts a $5 million investment in establishing a long-term family resiliency center in Uvalde County, which provides access to mental health services to those impacted by the shooting, as part of its commitment to supporting the community.
ABC News’ Mary Kekatos contributed to this report.
(PHILADELPHIA) — A proposed class action lawsuit has been filed by a Baltimore family against Sesame Place, alleging racial discrimination from the theme park.
The family said it decided to come forward after videos of a Sesame Place character seemingly waving off two young Black girls at the same park went viral this summer.
Quinton Burns said he took his daughter to the amusement park on Father’s Day and during a parade of characters, he claims she, too, was ignored.
“[We] watched in utter disgust as the viral videos of these beloved Sesame Street characters were discriminating against these innocent Black children and the videos began to flood the internet,” Burns’ attorney Malcolm Ruff said at the press conference Wednesday. “She was ignored amongst a sea of other young white children, who were able to interact, give hugs, high-fives, and love from these characters that are supposed to be a source of safety, a source of equity, a source of kindness.”
“We will review the lawsuit filed on behalf of Mr. Burns,” Sesame Place told ABC News in a statement Wednesday. “We look forward to addressing that claim through the established legal process. We are committed to deliver an inclusive, equitable and entertaining experience for all our guests.”
The suit claims that Sesame Place violated Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which protects people against racial discrimination in the creation and enforcement of contracts. When the family bought tickets, they entered a contract with the amusement park and by allegedly being discriminated by costume character actors, this contract was “breached, solely because of the race of the children,” Ruff said.
Video of the encounter is set to be released in the coming days by the family’s attorneys, according to Ruff.
In the incident involving girls from another family that prompted the Burns family to come forward, a “Sesame Street” character named Rosita is seen giving high-fives to parkgoers as she walks down the line, before appearing to shake her head at and wave off the two girls as she walks away from them.
“#BabyPaige & her cute lil friends went to @SesamePlace this weekend to celebrate Paige’s 4th birthday & this is how #SesamePlace treated these beautiful Black children,” the tweet, posted by the apparent aunt, Jodi Brown, of the girl celebrating her birthday, read.
In the park’s initial statement, it said the performer portraying Rosita intended the “no” hand gesture in response to requests to hold children for a photo and did not intentionally ignore the girls.
The park said it has apologized to the family directly and has invited them for a meet-and-greet with the characters, as well as an in-person apology.
“We sincerely and wholeheartedly apologize to the Brown family for what they experienced,” park officials said in a previous statement to ABC News. “To be very clear, what the two young girls experienced, what the family experienced, is unacceptable. It happened in our park, with our team, and we own that. It is our responsibility to make this better for the children and the family and to be better for all families.”
The park said it will implement mandatory bias training so “our employees so that we can better recognize, understand, and deliver an inclusive, equitable and entertaining experience for all our guests. We have already engaged with nationally recognized experts in this area,” the statement read.
The legal team representing the family of the two girls in the video has called for the costumed performer to be fired.
Footage of other incidents with Sesame Place characters and Black children were posted by others alleging they were treated similarly.
Sesame Place is a licensed park partner of Sesame Workshop and is owned by Sea World.
ABC News’ Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
(LEE COUNTY, Fla.) — Transgender students in Lee County School District in Florida who want to be identified by teachers and principals with pronouns that correspond with their gender identity will now have to fill out a Gender Support Plan.
“If a student does complete a gender support plan, which will by law require their parents’ involvement, it is a confidential document and available only to the school counselor and student,” said Rob Spicker, the assistant director of media relations and public information at Lee County Schools.
Without a completed gender support plan, with a parent’s signature, school staff will use the student’s name and gender as it is identified in the school’s system. Students who are 18 or older will not be required to have a parent’s signature.
Local parent Crystal Czyscon told ABC affiliate WZVN that she believed the document was discriminatory and “frightening,” fearing that students may be singled out.
The plan, a copy of which was acquired by WZVN, is to be filled out between a student and their counselor. It asks questions like whether the parents know about the student’s trans or nonbinary status, whether the student has support at home, how public is the student’s gender status, which school employees will be designated support systems and what will be the plan if a child is outed.
In defense of the district, Spicker said the plan is tended to protect LGBTQ students and denied that the plan is some form of registry of trans students. It is not required for trans students to fill out the form, he said. However, if they do not fill it out, they may only be identified by school faculty with their gender assigned at birth.
The move comes amid the implementation of the Parental Rights in Education law , dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law by critics. The measure was signed into law by Gov. Ron DeSantis in March.
It bans classroom instruction on sexual orientation or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade and states that any instruction on those topics cannot occur “in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students in accordance with state standards,” according to the legislation, HB 1557.
Under this law, parents can also decline any mental, emotional and physical health services available to their children at school, and schools will be required to notify parents of their child’s use of school health services unless there is reason to believe “that disclosure would subject the student to abuse, abandonment or neglect.”
The law also requires parents to be involved if a transgender student seeks to have the school use a preferred name or pronoun, Spicker noted.
The Gender Support Plan is part of the school’s Equity Guide, which was created in response to the Parents Bill of Rights law. It was intended to outline how LGBTQ students will be protected by the district in a way that follows the guidelines of the new law, Spicker said.
“The School District of Lee County’s Civil Rights and Equity Guide was developed to protect the rights of all students,” he said. “The guide helps our school staff manage that request to protect the student and follow the law.”
(WASHINGTON) — In a surprise move Wednesday, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin announced that not only had he reached a deal with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer on a major health care-focused spending package — he had also signed onto climate and energy provisions.
It was a reversal of sorts for the conservative Democrat who just two weeks ago backed away from climate measures being included in any spending bill, telling a radio host that inflation was “absolutely killing many, many people” and that he would have to wait until July inflation numbers were out before considering such measures. Democrats were sure then that they would be left with a health care-only bill. Some other Senators had openly begun making their peace with it.
It was unclear Wednesday why Manchin had changed course.
“Today, we are pleased to announce an agreement,” Manchin and Schumer said in a joint statement, noting “many months of negotiations.”
The pair said they had “finalized legislative text” that, if approved, would reduce the deficit by some $300 billion while investing $369.75 billion in “Energy Security and Climate Change programs” over the next decade.
“The investments will be fully paid for by closing tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and corporations. In addition, the expanded Affordable Care Act program will be extended for three years, through 2025,” the senators said.
With Manchin’s approval, Democratic leaders in the evenly-divided chamber are now aiming to have the bill approved by the end of next week using a fast-track process known as reconciliation that allows passage of such legislation with a simple majority (and Vice President Kamala Harris’ tie-breaking vote).
The House, according to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, would then return sometime in August to pass the measure.
If approved, it would be a major victory for President Joe Biden, who announced his support for the deal in a statement Wednesday night after speaking to both Manchin and Schumer. Biden had tried but failed to get his party united behind a sweeping $2 trillion “Build Back Better” economic and social safety net bill that included provisions like universal pre-K, Medicaid expansion and paid family leave, but Manchin previously balked at that price tag amid rising inflation, tanking that bill.
Similar, if scaled-down, proposals since have all failed to garner sufficient support among Democrats, with Republicans opposed.
Wednesday’s deal was likewise swiftly condemned by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who tweeted, “Democrats have already crushed American families with historic inflation. Now they want to pile on giant tax hikes that will hammer workers and kill many thousands of American jobs. First they killed your family’s budget. Now they want to kill your job too.”
While Democrats await the Senate’s rule-keeping parliamentarian scrubbing through the new deal to ensure all provisions meet the strict guidelines of reconciliation, details of what exactly are in the bill are not yet known. But according to Schumer and Manchin’s portrayal, the bill “lowers energy costs, increases cleaner production, and reduces carbon emissions by roughly 40 percent by 2030,” measures that Democrats say will cost roughly the $369 billion.
Democrats also plan to extend for three years the pandemic-era subsidies for those lower-income Americans who buy health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. It was important for Democrats to push through those changes, they said, because insurance companies typically announce their premium increases in August.
The agreement, known as the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, brings in far more revenue — $739 billion — than the government would spend under this measure, according to Democrats. Together, the climate and ACA provisions would cost the government roughly $433 billion, and Democrats plan to put at least $300 billion of that toward deficit reduction.
That was at the insistence of Manchin, in a bid to bring down record inflation.
To bring in the needed money, Democrats said they plan to target big corporations and the “ultra-wealthy” by implementing a 15% corporate minimum tax as well as collecting more through IRS tax enforcement, both measures bringing in nearly $440 billion.
Republicans for weeks have warned that those tax hikes would hit small and mid-size businesses disproportionately, but Sens. Manchin and Schumer insisted in their news release that under their plan, there will be “no new taxes on families making $400,000 or less and no new taxes on small businesses” — a key campaign promise by President Biden.
“Senate Democrats can change the name of Build Back Broke as many times as they want, it won’t be any less devastating to American families and small businesses. Raising taxes on job creators, crushing energy producers with new regulations, and stifling innovators looking for new cures will only make this recession worse, not better,” Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said in a statement.
Most Senate Democrats have not yet seen the legislative text, though many appeared to be supportive.
Chris Coons of Delaware said he was “very encouraged.”
“I am pleased to report that this will be, by far, the biggest climate action in human history,”said Hawaii’s Brian Schatz. “Nearly $370 billion in tax incentives, grants, and other investments in clean energy, clean transportation, energy storage, home electrification, climate-smart agriculture, and clean manufacturing makes this a real climate bill.The planet is on fire. Emissions reductions are the main thing. This is enormous progress. Let’s get it done.”
A meeting of the entire Senate Democratic caucus is expected at 9 a.m. Thursday to run through the details of the new plan.
But not every member of the caucus was happy with the deal.
Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent and chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, bristled, telling reporters on Wednesday: “Last I heard, Sen. Manchin is not the majority leader, despite what you may think. Last I heard, he is not the only [a] member of the Democratic caucus. I will look at it and we’ll go from there.”
Democrats need each of their 50 votes to remain united and healthy to seal the deal — not an easy feat considering Manchin himself has been quarantined this week with COVID-19.
