(HOUSTON) — A Houston-area police officer was shot in the face by a suspect armed with two automatic pistols with extended magazines, authorities said.
Crystal Sepulveda was injured early Saturday and hospitalized in stable condition, authorities said.
“She’s a strong officer, she will make it through this,” Missouri City Assistant Police Chief Lance Bothell said at a news conference.
Sepulveda, who has been with the Missouri City Police Department for three years, suffered one gunshot to the face and another to the foot, he said.
The shooting took place early Saturday when Missouri City officers spotted a car that was suspected of being linked to an aggravated robbery on Friday, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner told reporters. Officers pursued the car, Finner said, and the suspect stopped in front of a house. The suspect then headed to the side or back of the house where he shot Sepulveda, Finner said.
The suspect fled on foot, and when he was found in a backyard, he opened fire on officers, Finner said. The suspect was shot and pronounced dead at a hospital, he said.
“We never celebrate the loss of life, but what could you do when a suspect is so violent?” Finner told reporters. “I ask for prayers for everybody involved, but certainly our men and women on the front line.”
Oliver Contreras/For The Washington Post via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — In the 30 days since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the abortion landscape in the United States has dramatically changed.
The 5-4 decision was related to a Mississippi law that banned abortions after 15 weeks. Chief Justice John Roberts voted with the majority to uphold the Mississippi law but joined the liberal justices in voting to not overturn Roe.
Because of the ruling, states can essentially establish their own laws. This means depending on where Americans live, people either have unfettered access, limited access or no access at all to abortion.
Many states had so-called trigger laws that immediately banned abortion once Roe was struck down. Others had laws written prior to the court’s decision that they were able to enact after abortion rights were overturned.
A handful of other states have gone the other way and signed executive orders and directives strengthening access to abortion and protecting those who seek or perform the procedure.
Patient care has changed, too. Abortion providers in states where access is still available are seeing more out-of-state patients than ever before, while OBGYNs told ABC News more women are requesting sterilization over concerns their current methods of birth control will fail and they won’t be able to get an abortion.
More states with abortion bans
Since Roe v. Wade was overturned, at least 13 states have ended nearly all abortion services.
Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota and Texas have completely banned abortion with few restrictions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Georgia, Ohio, South Carolina and Tennessee have enforced six-week bans, and Florida has enforced 15-week bans.
This has led to the U.S. being made up of a patchwork of abortion laws.
At least three other states — Kentucky, Louisiana and Utah — have also passed abortion bans, but they have been blocked in court and are awaiting hearings.
Meanwhile, Michigan and West Virginia had pre-Roe bans on the books that were never repealed and went unenforced for years. Judges have issued preliminary injunctions in court against both bans, while Michigan’s governor has vowed to protect rights.
Mary Ziegler, a law professor at the University of California, Davis, who specializes in the legal history of reproduction, told ABC News that “this is just the beginning” and she believes more states will pass laws banning abortion in the coming months and years.
She said lawmakers wrote several of these abortion laws under the assumption they would not be legally allowed to actually go into effect. Now that Roe is overturned, some states want to make them even more stringent.
For example, in Indiana, the Republican-led Senate has proposed eliminating its current 22-week ban and replacing it with a total ban on abortion with limited exceptions. Additionally, in Missouri, where a total ban already exists, lawmakers want to go a step further and make it illegal to “aid or abet” out-of-state abortions.
“So, since Roe has been overturned, there’s been literally like a cottage industry of abortion opponents producing new model laws and proposals for how to actually enforce an abortion ban, or eliminate exceptions to abortion bans, or enhance punishments for abortion,” Ziegler said.
Some states strengthen abortion protection
While some states have been restricting the right to an abortion since Roe’s reversal, others have been strengthening it.
The governors of Colorado, Maine and North Carolina signed executive orders certifying the right to obtain or perform an abortion.
“A woman’s right to choose is just that — a woman’s, not a politician’s,” Maine Gov. Janet Mills said in a statement at the time of signing.
In Delaware, Gov. John Carney signed legislation allowing licensed physician assistants, certified nurse practitioners and certified nurse-midwives with training to “terminate pregnancy before viability.”
Governors in all four of the above states as well as Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Mexico, North Carolina, Rhode Island and Washington signed executive orders protecting people who seek or provide abortions from criminal or civil investigations or charges.
In North Carolina and Delaware, neither patients nor providers will be penalized for inquiring about abortions as well as providing or receiving abortion care.
The governors of Colorado, Maine, New Mexico and Rhode Island said they will not cooperate with investigations in other states of people who received or performed abortions in their own states.
Additionally, Govs. Charlie Baker of Massachusetts and Tim Walz of Minnesota said they will not cooperate with extradition attempts for those who obtained or provided abortions in their respective states.
Baker’s order also protects providers from losing their licenses due to out-of-state charges relating to abortion.
In Washington, Gov. Jay Inslee signed a directive forbidding the Washington State Patrol from cooperating with investigations related to abortion in states with restricted access.
Earlier this month, President Joe Biden signed an executive order directing federal agencies to take steps to safeguard abortion access including protecting patient privacy, promoting the safety of providers and clinics and strengthening the mandate set by Obamacare that birth control continue to be covered by insurance. Biden has said his power to protect abortion is limited but fellow Democrats and abortions rights advocates have been pressuring the White House to codify abortion rights.
Doctors are seeing more out-of-state patients
Abortion providers in states where the procedure is legal say the makeup of their patients has somewhat changed.
Pro-Choice Washington, a non-profit organization focused on advocacy for reproductive freedom in Washington state, expects a 400% increase in patients seeking care from out of state following Roe’s reversal. One New Mexico clinic said 75% of their patients come from Texas, which has a total abortion ban.
Dr. Lisa Harris, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Michigan, said she has seen more out-of-state patients for abortions than ever before in her almost 30-year career.
Before Roe was overturned, Harris said, typically about three-quarters of her patients seeking abortions were in-state and one-quarter were out-of-state.
“The last day I saw patients, it was 80% out of state and 20% in state,” Harris told ABC News. “It was just like a flip-flop.”
“Most of the patients I took care of last week seeking abortion care came from three different states where they had appointments scheduled on the day the decision was released or shortly after and were unable to get abortion care,” she added.
She continued, “And it took a couple of weeks for them to find and set up care somewhere else, which happened to be Michigan.”
Michigan is one of several states that had an abortion law predating Roe that was never repealed. In Michigan’s case, the 1931 law makes providing an abortion a felony, including in cases of rape and incest. The only exception is if the mother’s life is in danger.
A judge issued a temporary injunction in May blocking the ban as a lawsuit Planned Parenthood filed against the state plays out. Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer also filed a lawsuit in April to stop the ban and ask the state’s Supreme Court to recognize abortion as a constitutional right.
Last month, Whitmer filed a motion asking for the court to immediately consider her lawsuit. It’s unclear when a hearing will be held.
The lawsuit has been criticized by groups that oppose abortion rights. Barbara Listing, president of Right to Life of Michigan, referred to the lawsuit as “frivolous” and called on the court to dismiss it.
Harris also said this is the first time she has ever had to tell patients who schedule appointments that she can’t guarantee they will be seen if the injunction is lifted.
“When we meet a patient, we’ve had to say, ‘We will schedule you, but there is a chance that when next week rolls around, abortion will no longer be legal in Michigan and we won’t be able to care for you,’ which causes a great deal of stress, as you can imagine, and people try to make contingency plans,” she said.
Harris is also worried about what qualifies as a life-saving abortion under the save the mother’s life exception if the Michigan ban is upheld.
“In Michigan, our ban permits abortions to preserve the life of the patient, but it’s unclear what the means and does that mean they have to be imminently dying?” she said. “What if the risk was later if they continue in their pregnancy? Does it need to be a 100% chance that they would die? What if it’s 50%?”
She said she thinks it will start to be clear about what qualifies as a life-saving abortion “as doctors begin to be prosecuted.”
Some women are turning to sterilization
Dr. Charisse Loder, a clinical assistant professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Michigan Medicine who specializes in sterilization, told ABC News she has seen an increase in the number of patients coming in requesting sterilization procedures since Roe was overturned.
Before the Supreme Court decision, Loder said she saw one to two patients a week to discuss sterilization. In the weeks since, she has seen anywhere from four to six patients a week.
“Many of them scheduled their appointments after the decision and are actually telling me without prompting that they were prompted to make their appointments based on the news,” she said.
Loder said many of her patients were on other types of birth control, including condoms, pills and IUDs, but wanted to switch to a method with a lower failure rate following the reversal of Roe.
“I’ve had patients say things like, ‘I just can’t take any chances now,’ or, ‘I don’t know what the future holds,'” she said.
She added some patients were also fearful that access to birth control would be lost after reading a concurring opinion written solely by Justice Clarence Thomas in which he called for the reconsideration of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established the right of married couples to use contraception.
On Thursday, the House passed a bill that would protect access to birth control nationwide. The bill passed 228-195 with eight Republicans joining the Democrats.
“So, patients [asking for sterilization] have said, “I don’t know if in the future I’ll need my partner’s permission to use birth control,'” Loder said. “One patient told me, ‘I can’t trust the government to protect me.'”
(NEW YORK) — Family Dollar shoppers should check their medicine cabinets and bathrooms for any recently recalled products.
The variety dollar store chain issued a voluntary recall of hundreds of products from toothpaste and lip balm to deodorant and lotions due to them being stored incorrectly.
The products were “stored and inadvertently shipped” to some stores from around May 1 through June 10, and were “stored outside of labeled temperature requirements,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration stated.
Family Dollar said it has not received any consumer complaints or reports of illness related to this recall.
“Family Dollar has notified its affected stores asking them to check their stock immediately and to quarantine and discontinue the sale of any affected product,” the FDA said in the recall. “Customers that may have bought affected product may return such product to the Family Dollar store where they were purchased without receipt. This recall does not apply to Delaware, Alaska, Hawaii as no Family Dollar stores in Delaware received any products subject to this recall and Family Dollar does not have any stores in Alaska or Hawaii.”
Any questions can be directed to Family Dollar Customer Service at 844-636-7687 between 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. ET.
The FDA urged customers to contact a health care provider if they experience any problems that may be related to using these products.
“Adverse reactions or quality problems experienced with the use of this product may be reported to the FDA’s MedWatch Adverse Event Reporting program either online, by regular mail or by fax,” the agency said.
(NEW YORK) — An eruption of the Sakurajima volcano in Japan has raised emergency alerts of their highest levels and prompted evacuations for residents nearby.
The volcano, located in Japan’s southwestern prefecture of Kagoshima on the western island of Kyushu, erupted at 8:05 p.m. local time on Sunday, according to Japan’s Meteorological Agency.
The emergency alert in the region has been raised to level 5, the highest, and evacuations were ordered for residents living within a 2-mile range of the crater, including parts of Arimura-cho, Furusato-cho and Kagoshima City, where about 600,000 people live.
The volcano is still “very active,” and windows can break due to the vibrations from the continuous explosions and falling debris, including large rocks and ash, according to the agency.
The ash and smaller rocks can also be carried on by winds, NHK, the Japan Broadcast Corporation and a partner of ABC News, reported.
Frequent explosive activity has been occurring at Sakurajima for centuries, according to the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. There has been persistent activity at the Minamidake summit cone and crater since 1955, and the Showa crater has also been intermittently active since 2006.
Activity decreased significantly in May 2021 and throughout the rest of the year, when the number of monthly explosions and ash emissions were both much lower compared with the first half of the year, according to the Smithsonian.
A task force has been set up at the prime minister’s office, which has called up a team of officials from various agencies to assess the extent of the emergency, NHK reported.
Additional information on the severity of the eruption was not immediately available.
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — From books to clothing to electronics, back-to-school shopping is around the corner for many families.
According to new survey data from the National Retail Federation, American families are expected to spend over $860 this year on school supplies. But with inflation hitting hard, parents are likely looking for a break wherever they can.
“We feel the squeeze like everybody else,” Lindsay Chamberlin, a mother of three in Florida, told Good Morning America. “Everything seems to be going up, but really the back-to-school deals have been really good.”
Seventeen states are now offering tax-free holidays for school supplies, cutting sales tax ahead of the start of school. In Florida, where many schools begin in August, the sales tax holiday kicks off Monday and runs until Aug. 7.
“This week is my Olympics,” Chamberlin said. “The savings really stack up, definitely with the tax advantage in the stores stacking their sales on top of it. We’ll definitely be finishing up our shopping by Friday.”
Which states are offering tax-free holidays for back-to-school supplies in 2022?
Alabama (already passed; ran from July 15-17)
Arkansas (Aug. 6-7)
Connecticut (Aug. 21-27)
Florida (July 25-Aug. 7)
Iowa (Aug. 5-6)
Maryland (Aug. 14-20)
Massachusetts (Aug. 13-14)
Mississippi (July 29-30)
Missouri (Aug. 5-7)
New Mexico (Aug. 5-7)
Ohio (Aug. 5-6)
Oklahoma (Aug. 5-7; only clothing items are exempt from sales tax)
South Carolina (Aug. 5-7)
Tennessee (July 29-31)
Texas (Aug. 5-7)
Virginia (Aug. 5-7)
West Virginia (Aug. 5-8)
In addition, Illinois is offering a reduced sales tax of 1.25% on school supplies from Aug. 5 to 14.
For other ways to save, check cash-back apps such as Ibotta and Rakuten for deals and for computers and electronics, look for refurbished models, buy from certified sellers, check return policies and comparison shop.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Liz Cheney said Sunday that she is working hard to win reelection this year and beat back a Trump-endorsed primary challenger — but if her time investigating the former president for the House Jan. 6 committee leads to her defeat, “there’s no question” it will have been worth it.
“I believe that my work on this committee is the single most important thing I have ever done professionally,” Cheney, R-Wyo., said on CNN’s “State of the Union.” “It is an unbelievable honor to represent the people of Wyoming in Congress. And I know that all of us who are elected officials take an oath that we swear under God to the Constitution.”
“That oath has to mean something,” she continued. “And that oath means that we cannot embrace and enable a president as dangerous as Donald Trump is.”
Cheney has become perhaps the GOP’s loudest anti-Trump voice and, as vice-chair of the House panel, has become a public face for the hearings this summer detailing a year-long investigation into the events surrounding the Capitol insurrection.
Despite her conservative record — which largely aligns with Trump on the issues — Cheney has been repudiated by many in her party for helping lead the House’s Jan. 6 investigation after she voted along with a handful of other Republicans to impeach Trump last year.
The GOP caucus booted her from House leadership not long after her impeachment vote and her state party censored her.
Last fall, Trump — who denies any wrongdoing in Jan. 6 — backed Harriet Hageman’s primary challenge to Cheney, saying in statement: “Harriet has my Complete and Total endorsement in Replacing the Democrats number one provider of sound bites, Liz Cheney.”
Voting is set for Aug. 16.
“I’m fighting hard. No matter what happens on Aug. 16, I’m going to wake up on Aug. 17 and continue to fight hard to ensure Donald Trump is never anywhere close to the Oval Office ever again,” Cheney said on CNN. But she acknowledged the cost.
“If I have to choose between maintaining a seat in the House of Representatives or protecting the constitutional republic and ensuring the American people know the truth about Donald Trump, I’m going to choose the Constitution and the truth every single day,” she said.
That echoes what she said on ABC’s This Week earlier this month: “The single most important thing is protecting the nation from Donald Trump. And I think that that matters to us as Americans more than anything else, and that’s why my work on the committee is so important.”
“I don’t intend to lose the Republican primary,” she said then.
On CNN, she also talked about the state of the committee’s investigation, which she said continued apace even as the panel’s summer hearings have wrapped. More are expected in the fall.
“We have a number of many interviews scheduled that are coming up. We anticipate talking to additional members of the president’s Cabinet. We anticipate talking to additional members of his campaign,” Cheney said, adding, “We’re very focused as well on the Secret Service and on interviewing additional members of the Secret Service and collecting additional information from them.”
Cheney said potential witnesses were prompted by the testimony of former Trump White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson, who said at a hearing last month, in part, that she was told Trump physically lashed out when his security detail prevented him from going to the Capitol to join his supporters.
The Secret Service has since said they will respond on the record to Hutchinson’s account.
They have also said agency text messages from the days around Jan. 6 were deleted — inadvertently — as part of a technology issue, though the House committee is pressing for answers.
“We will get to the bottom of it,” Cheney said Sunday.
Among the Trump-adjacent figures in talks with the panel is conservative activist Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, who repeatedly urged Trump’s then-chief of staff, Mark Meadows, to attempt to overturn the 2020 election results
“The committee is engaged with her counsel. We certainly hope that she will agree to come in voluntarily. But the committee is fully prepared to contemplate a subpoena if she does not,” Cheney said on CNN.
“I hope it doesn’t get to that,” Cheney said. “I hope she will come in voluntarily.”
Helen H. Richardson/MediaNews Group/The Denver Post via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Well before the Supreme Court ruled in June to overturn Roe v. Wade, 9% of abortions in the U.S. were obtained by people who had to travel out of state, according to data released Thursday by the Guttmacher Institute, a policy organization that supports abortion rights.
That number — nearly 1 in 10 abortions in the U.S. — is up from 6% in 2011, an increase that occurred at the same time as more states passed abortion restrictions, according to the Guttmacher Institute.
Now, with the power to decide abortion access returned to the states by the Supreme Court, abortion rights advocates say the number of women forced to travel for abortion care is already growing.
Amanda Carlson, director of The Cobalt Abortion Fund, which provides financial assistance to people traveling for abortion care, said in the days following the Supreme Court’s decision, the fund helped more than 50 people travel to Colorado for abortion care.
In all of 2021, the fund helped 34 people travel, according to Carlson.
“It has skyrocketed our spending,” Carlson told ABC News of the Supreme Court’s decision, adding that the Colorado-based fund spent $20,000 on support for people seeking abortion care in the first 10 days after the ruling. “We’re seeing numbers that we’ve never seen before.”
The right to abortion is protected in Colorado. In April, Democratic Gov. Jared Polis signed a bill that codified the right to abortion and declared that a “fertilized egg, embryo, or fetus does not have independent or derivative rights under the laws of the state.”
Earlier this month, Polis signed an executive order that added more protections for abortion providers and individuals who travel to Colorado for abortion care.
The states surrounding Colorado — including Texas, Oklahoma, Wyoming, Utah and Arizona — have mostly strengthened their restrictions on abortion access, in some cases implementing near-total bans, in the weeks since the Supreme Court’s June 24 decision.
In Oklahoma alone, one abortion clinic, Trust Women Clinic in Oklahoma City, was seeing around 300 patients per month before Roe v. Wade was overturned, according to clinic director Kailey Voellinger.
In the neighboring state of Kansas, voters will cast their ballots on Aug. 2 to determine the fate of a state constitutional amendment which, if passed, would reverse the right to an abortion in the state. The Kansas Supreme Court previously ruled in 2019 that the state constitution protected a person’s right to an abortion.
If the amendment is approved, further restrictions on abortion access are expected, according to FiveThirtyEight.
Carlson said that, over the last month, The Cobalt Abortion Fund had helped women from as far as Florida and as close as Texas get abortion care in Colorado. The fund, she said, is spending between $1,000 and $2,000 on average in travel assistance per person.
“People are struggling economically and they’re facing not only the cost of abortion care but also very expensive plane tickets, very expensive gas,” she said. “They need flights purchased for them. They need transportation to and from the airport. They may need a hotel while they’re here.”
With so many out-of-state people seeking abortion care in Colorado, wait times for appointments are now as long as one month at some clinics, according to Carlson.
Adrienne Mansanares, CEO of Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains, told ABC News that her organization purposely placed one of its centers along a Colorado highway knowing that people would travel to the state, given its abortion protections.
“People who were in my position before me 20 years ago were preparing for their worst nightmare, which is this,” said Mansaneres, referring to Roe v. Wade being overturned. “We built a beautiful health center that’s right along the highway [by] Denver International Airport with this idea in mind. If people ever had to fly, patients can come in and out so we can see them in our health center.”
Planned Parenthood’s two other clinics in Colorado are also purposefully located, according to Mansaneres, with one in the northern part of the state accessible to patients from Wyoming, and one in the south more accessible to patients from Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.
“When people don’t want to be forced to have a child, they will go through the means necessary that they have access to,” said Mansares. “So if they have money to hop on a plane, if they have connections and family in another state, they have the information that they need, they’re going to go find it, so we have seen the migration of people coming from these states.”
In New Mexico, a state where abortion access is also protected, demand for abortion care has spiked since the Supreme Court’s decision, according to Joan Lamunyon Sanford, executive director of the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, a faith-based advocacy group and abortion fund.
“We’re seeing people contact us from all over the country, not just states that are bordering New Mexico, and we’re seeing people in all stages of pregnancy contact us,” Lamunyon Sanford told ABC News. “People are confused about whether it’s safe for them to travel from other states to New Mexico, and at the same time they’re determined to get the care that they need.”
“We’re doing the best we can to meet all of those needs,” she said, adding that the fund is working to hire more people to meet the demand.
Abortion clinics in New Mexico that were overwhelmed prior to Roe’s reversal — due to an influx of patients from Texas, which for the past year had a near total ban on abortions after six weeks — are now experiencing wait times of several weeks, according to Lamunyon Sanford.
“We know that just from Senate Bill 8 in Texas, that our numbers increased between three and four times,” she said. “And our numbers have increased beyond that in the last four weeks.”
In response to abortion restrictions in Texas post-Roe, Whole Woman’s Health, an Austin-based network of abortion clinics, has announced it is closing its four Texas clinics and reopening in New Mexico, where they hope to open a location near the border with Texas as early as August.
“We are hoping that by setting up in New Mexico, we can help the people in Texas who have been displaced,” said Amy Hagstrom Miller, president and CEO of Whole Woman’s Health and Whole Woman’s Health Alliance, which also operates abortion clinics in Minnesota, Virginia, Indiana and Maryland. “We know thousands of people have already been forced out of Texas for abortion since last September, and they were able to go to Louisiana and Arkansas and Oklahoma … and now those states have also banned abortion.”
Hagstrom Miller said that 30% of patients at Whole Woman’s Health’s clinic in Minnesota are from Texas, with abortion now banned both there and in neighboring states.
“That’s a far travel and so we are hoping that opening in New Mexico will help sort of mitigate some of the harms that are going to come across Texas,” she said. “But keeping our sites open in Texas is not sustainable.”
Whole Woman’s Health’s four Texas-based clinics stopped providing abortions the day Roe was overturned, even as patients sat inside the facilities awaiting care, according to Hagstrom Miller. Most of the Texas clinics remain open but are in what Hagstrom Miller called a “wind down phase” of packing up and answering phone calls from people still in need of care.
“The volume of telephone calls coming in is large,” said Hagstrom Miller. “Oftentimes people don’t know about all these restrictions or abortion bans until they find themselves facing an unplanned pregnancy, and they call us and our staff are put into a position of telling them all about what has happened over the last couple of weeks.”
“So we’re still answering the phone trying to support people as much as possible,” she continued, adding that clinic workers are helping callers access care in other states and providing funding for travel when possible. “It’s heartbreaking for us and it’s traumatic for people who are trained to provide a service, and trained to provide that service compassionately, to all of a sudden out of the blue have to look someone in the eye and say, ‘I can no longer provide the abortion that you need.'”
If Whole Woman’s Health is able to open a clinic on the New Mexico-Texas border, it will be an approximately seven-hour drive from the organization’s clinic in Austin and upwards of nine hours from its clinic in McAllen, according to Hagstrom Miller.
In New Mexico though, abortion providers say they at least see a place to land. The state’s leader, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, has vowed that “abortion will continue to be legal, safe, and accessible” as long as she is in charge.
In addition to Whole Woman’s Health, Jackson Women’s Health Organization, Mississippi’s only abortion clinic, is also relocating to New Mexico.
The clinic, which was at the center of the Supreme Court case that led to Roe’s reversal, plans to reopen in Las Cruces, New Mexico, after Mississippi’s so-called trigger law went into effect earlier this month, banning nearly all abortions.
“This is today in this country,” Diane Derzis, owner of the clinic, told ABC News this month. “Mississippi is the past, and the future is moving on to where women have an option.”
ABC News’ Alexandra Svokos and Kyla Guilfoil contributed to this report.
(LAKE MEAD, Nev.) — Dramatic before-and-after photos of Lake Mead are providing visual evidence to the alarming rate in which the water levels at the largest reservoir in the country are receding.
Satellite images released by NASA show side-by-side comparisons of Lake Mead, one taken on July 6, 2000, and the other more than two decades later on July 6 of this year.
The images show waterways that have thinned drastically over the past 22 years as the surface of Lake Mead continues to hit its lowest levels since it was created in the 1930s amid a decadeslong megadrought in the West, which is intensifying and expanding. The light-colored fringes along the shorelines in the present-day photos is the phenomenon known as the “bathtub ring” due to the mineralized areas of the lakeshore that were formally under water.
In June 2021, Lake Mead’s surface elevation dipped to 1,071.48 feet, the lowest in recorded history at the time. In August of that year, the first-ever water shortage was declared for Lake Make, prompting mandated water releases to Arizona, Nevada and Mexico in 2022 in an effort to keep generating power and providing water for essential uses.
Now, water levels in the reservoir are so low they could soon hit “dead pool” status, in which the water is too low to flow downstream to the dam.
The minimum surface elevation needed to generate power at the Hoover Dam is 1,050 feet, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation. Anything below that is considered an “inactive pool,” and a “dead pool” exists at 895 feet in elevation.
The water levels at Lake Mead measured at 1043.82 on June 23 and remained at 1040.75 on Sunday, according to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation — a mere 146 feet away from becoming a dead pool. As of July 18, Lake Mead was only at 27% capacity, according to NASA.
The highest surface elevation ever in Lake Mead was in June 1983, when levels were recorded at 1,225.85 feet, according to data from the Bureau of Reclamation. The reservoir also approached maximum capacity in the summer of 1999, according to NASA.
Lake Mead has lost more than 25 feet this year alone, data shows. The water has receded so much that it has revealed multiple human bodies, some that may have been dumped there, as well as a World War II-era boat.
Water levels are expected to continue to dry up until November, when the wet season begins.
Much of the megadrought and the concern over a potential water shortage is attributed to climate change, as global temperatures increase, causing less snow to fall in the winters and therefore less water flowing into the Colorado River once spring arrives year after year. About 10% of the water in Lake Mead comes from local precipitation and groundwater, and the rest comes from snowmelt in the Rocky Mountains that flows down the Colorado River and to Lake Powell, the second-largest reservoir in the U.S., Glen Canyon and the Grand Canyon.
More than 74% of the Western U.S. is experiencing drought conditions, according to the U.S. Drought Monitor.
Lake Mead, which is part of the Colorado River watershed, provides water to 40 million residents in the Southwest. Levels at the reservoir are projected to hit a level that could require additional cuts in July 2023, as well as another 25-foot drop in the next 14 months, according to the Bureau of Reclamation.
Continuing a 22-year downward trend, water levels in Lake Mead stand at their lowest since April 1937, when the reservoir was still being filled for the first time. As of July 18, 2022, Lake Mead was filled to just 27 percent of capacity. https://t.co/qwgabmDJOGpic.twitter.com/iNMbuT5zbh
Global warming has exacerbated the megadrought so much that the current 22-year drought could have been reduced to just seven years without the interference of human-caused climate change, Matthew Lachniet, a professor of Geology at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, told ABC News Chief Meteorologist Ginger Zee.
“The scientists have been warning about this for a very long time,” Lachniet said. “We feel it’s time for the policy to catch up.”
(NEW YORK) — Former Vice President Al Gore said Sunday that now is the time to act on climate change as the U.S. experiences record heat and wildfires rage across Europe.
“They’re saying that if we don’t stop using our atmosphere as an open sewer, and if we don’t stop these heat trapping emissions, things are gonna get a lot worse,” Gore told ABC This Week co-anchor Jonathan Karl. “More people will be killed and the survival of our civilization is at stake.”
Gore said global warming pollution is trapping the heat equivalent of 600,000 Hiroshima-class atomic bombs.
“That’s why the heat records are being broken all the time now,” he said. “That’s why the storms are stronger, why the ice is melting and the sea levels rising and why the droughts and fires are hitting us so hard and so many other consequences.”
President Joe Biden recently announced several executive actions to address climate change but didn’t include what activists sought most: a declaration of a national climate emergency.
When asked if Biden should declare an emergency, Gore said he’ll “leave it to others to parse the pros and cons” of such action. But there is more Biden can do, he said.
“The EPA can take action to further limit emissions from power plants and from tailpipes, and the Supreme Court decision did not take all their power away,” Gore said. “We could stop allowing oil and gas drilling on public lands, and he could appoint a new head of the World Bank instead of the climate denier that leads it now, appointed by his predecessor.”
But Karl noted a recent focus of the Biden administration has been lowering gas prices, which has meant asking countries to ramp up oil production.
“Isn’t this counterproductive in terms of the climate agenda?” Karl asked.
Gore said people need to avoid “confusing the short term with the long term.”
“This should be a moment for a global epiphany, and the voters and the publics in countries around the world need to put a lot more pressure on their political leaders,” he said. “Don’t forget the fact that all 50 of the Republican senators have been against doing anything on climate, even though the vast majority of the American people want it.”
Gore also praised the work of the Jan. 6 committee after a witness this week invoked his conduct in conceding the 2000 election.
“I think these hearings have been the most persuasive and effective since the Watergate hearings so long ago,” Gore said, “and I think we’re seeing a huge impact on public opinion in our country, too. They’ve done an incredible job.”
Matthew Pottinger, a national security official in the Trump White House, said in live testimony that Gore may have disagreed with the Supreme Court’s decision that ended his presidential bid but he “gave a speech of concession … where he said this is for the sake of the unity of the U.S. as a people and for the strength of our democracy.”
“His speech actually is a good model for any candidate for any office, up to and including president, and for any party to read, particularly right now,” Pottinger said.
Gore said Sunday that he simply did what the Constitution required.
“What was it personally difficult?” Gore said. “Well, you know, when the fate of the country and the traditions and honor of our democracy are at stake, it’s not really a difficult choice.”
(SAN PEDRO, Calif.) — Two people are dead and five others are injured after a shooting at Peck Park Sunday in San Pedro, California, Los Angeles police said.
The shooting possibly started as a dispute between two groups and there were likely multiple shooters, according to the LAPD.
No suspects are in custody at this time.
The incident was reported at or near the car show taking place at the park, according to ABC Los Angeles station KABC. Witnesses told the station there were hundreds of people gathered in the park at the time.
Police said some weapons were recovered at the scene, and authorities are looking into whether or not this was a gang-related incident.
The conditions of those injured was not immediately known.
Earlier Sunday, the Los Angeles Fire Department said three male and three female victims were taken to area hospitals by LAFD Paramedics. Their ages were unknown.
San Pedro is a neighborhood in Los Angeles.
ABC News’ Marilyn Heck contributed to this report.
