(LOS ANGELES) — The heat emanating from the dozens of wildfires ravaging the West is creating thunderstorms without rain in regions desperate for moisture.
The pyrocumulus clouds, or fire-driven thunderstorm clouds, are created as large pockets of heat and smoke from the Bootleg Fire in southern Oregon rise and meet a relatively cool atmosphere.
The thunderstorms typically don’t contain rain because any moisture that forms usually evaporates on the way down. Vegetation parched by the megadrought is more likely to burn if struck by lightning, and gusty winds from the storms can spread fires more rapidly.
This year’s dry season, exacerbated by the megadrought and climate change, has created a tinderbox, with the relative humidity often as low as 10%.
At least 87 large wildfires are burning in 13 states, with more than 2.5 million acres burned so far this year.
The Bootleg Fire has burned through 388,360 acres and is 32% contained. The fire is threatening about 5,000 homes and has caused thousands of households in Lake County, Oregon, to evacuate.
Evacuations also are occurring near Lake Tahoe due to the Tamarack Fire, which had burned through nearly 40,000 acres by Wednesday morning and was 0% contained.
The Dixie Fire in Butte County, California, has scorched more than 85,000 acres and was 15% contained.
The haze from the smoke-filled skies even traveled east, causing air quality alerts in several East Coast cities, including New York, which marked its poorest air quality in several years.
More than 750,000 acres have burned in 2021 than at the same time last year, and fire season is far from over. The wet season typically begins in October.
(WASHINGTON) — America’s top general on Wednesday spoke publicly for the first time about whether he feared then-President Donald Trump would try to involve the military in the aftermath of the 2020 election, as reported in a newly-released book.
While Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley, at a rare Pentagon news conference, declined to comment on specific claims made in the book, he and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin Wednesday were emphatic that the military is and ought to remain a strictly “apolitical” institution.
“I, the other members of the Joint Chiefs, and all of us in uniform, we take an oath, an oath to a document, an oath to the Constitution of the United States, and not one time do we violate that,” Milley told reporters asking about the book excerpts. “The entire time, from time of commissioning to today, I can say with certainty that every one of us maintained our oath of allegiance to that document, the Constitution, everything that’s contained within it,” he said, referring to the Joint Chiefs.
“I want you to know, and I want everyone to know, I want America to know, that the United States military is an apolitical institution — we were then, we are now — and our oath is to the Constitution, not to any individual at all,” he said. “And the military did not and will not and should not ever get involved in domestic politics. We don’t arbitrate elections. That’s the job of the judiciary and the legislature and the American people. It is not the job of the U.S. military. We stayed out of politics, we’re an apolitical institution.”
Austin went out of his way to defend Milley.
“We fought together, we served a couple of times in the same units,” Austin said. “I’m not guessing at his character — he doesn’t have political bone in his body.”
Before the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol, Milley saw ominous parallels between the political turmoil in the United States and the rise of the Nazi party in Germany, according to “I Alone Can Fix It: Donald J. Trump’s Final Catastrophic Year,” by Washington Post reporters Philip Rucker and Carol Leonnig.
“He had earlier described to aides that he kept having a stomach-churning feeling that some of the worrisome early stages of 20th-century fascism in Germany were replaying in 21st-century America. He saw parallels between Trump’s rhetoric about election fraud and Adolf Hitler’s insistence to his followers at the Nuremberg rallies that he was both a victim and their savior. ‘This is a Reichstag moment,’ Milley told aides. ‘The gospel of the Führer,'” Rucker and Leonnig wrote.
The authors say that Milley believed Trump was stoking unrest after the election, and decried what he called “brownshirts in the streets,” although an official told ABC News the comment was in reference to the radical members of the Oath Keepers and so-called “boogaloo boys,” not Trump supporters in general.
An early sign of unease between Trump and Milley came last July amid Black Lives Matter protests in Washington, D.C., when Milley apologized for taking part in Trump’s controversial walk from the White House to St. John’s Church, though he peeled off before the president’s notorious photo opportunity.
“I should not have been there,” Milley said in a prerecorded video commencement address to National Defense University. “My presence in that moment and in that environment created a perception of the military involved in domestic politics.”
In August 2020, Milley told Congress there is no role for the U.S. military in elections.
Then in January 2021, after the Capitol riot, Milley and the seven other members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff signed an internal memo to service members saying “the violent riot in Washington D.C. on January 6, 2021 was a direct assault on the U.S. Capitol building, and our Constitutional process,” warning them that any act to disrupt the constitutional process is against the law.
Milley said Wednesday that he and the other members of the Joint Chiefs always gave the “best military professional advice” to Trump and any other president they’ve served under.
“We always adhered to providing best professional military advice, bar none. It was candid, honest, in every single occasion. We do that all the time every time,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Thirty years ago Engracia Figueroa, 51, was hit by a Bay Area Rapid Transit train that left her with a spinal cord injury and amputated leg. She now calls her wheelchair an “extension of her body” — granting her freedom and independence.
But last week Figueroa says she was “re-disabled” when her $30,000 wheelchair was mangled in the cargo hold of a United flight.
“I was heartbroken,” she said when she first saw what she described as her “completely contorted” chair after her flight to Los Angeles. “I just thought, all of the independence that I fought and strived for and successfully survived for soon to be 30 years by the minute, it’s stripped away, and I was completely disabled and traumatized, as well as hurt and exhausted.”
Airlines are obligated to fix or replace damaged or lost wheelchairs under the Air Carrier Access Act.
“They’re attempting to fix it,” Figueroa told ABC News, but “there’s nothing to fix.”
“The chair is a total loss and to get a new wheelchair, it takes two months,” she said.
(Courtesy Engracia Figuero) Disability rights activist Engracia Figuero says United Airlines damaged her $30,000 custom-made electric wheelchair on a flight from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles, July 14, 2021.
A United spokesperson said the company apologized to Figueroa and is “actively working with the repair company to reach a resolution to this issue as quickly as possible.”
She is currently using a loaner chair that she says only allows her to move in her apartment.
“There is no regard or respect of the extension of the human that’s in the plane,” she said. “When they see a mobility device they should respect it, as if it is a person, because that’s what it is — an extension of their person. And we’re trusting them with the rest of our body.”
Figueroa says this is the fourth time her wheelchair has been damaged in-flight. She blames a lack of training on how to break down and load the devices.
Near the end of 2018, U.S. carriers had to start reporting the number of wheelchairs and scooters that were mishandled.
In a little more than two and a half years, airlines damaged or lost 15,749 wheelchairs and scooters, according to data from the Department of Transportation. In 2019, they mishandled 10,548 mobility devices, amounting to roughly 29 a day.
Earlier this month, model Bri Scalesse called out Delta Air Lines in a now-viral Tik Tok for breaking the frame of her wheelchair. According to Scalesse, the repair company told her the chair could not be fixed and that “it was going to take a really long time to replace.”
“I don’t know how I’m going to live my life,” Scalesse said in the video, which is now viewed more than two million times.
In a statement to ABC News, Delta said they “work closely with the customer to make things right at their direction including personal apologies about their experience with us.”
Videos like Scalesse’s have generated more interest in accessibility issues than Michele Erwin, the founder and president of disability rights group All Wheels Up, has seen in more than a decade.
“I don’t think I know of one person who uses a wheelchair who hasn’t had a travel horror story,” Erwin said.
And advocates say airlines are losing potential customers.
“Eighty percent of the wheelchair community isn’t flying,” she said, “and it’s not just about the one person whose wheelchair is damaged, times it by four, because now that person’s family isn’t traveling.”
According to Erwin, in 2016, one major U.S. carrier told her they spent $2.6 million on wheelchairs repairs and replacements. Eight years prior, they had only spent $1.6 million.
“Another eight years from now, that number is going to double again,” Erwin said, “and that’s why I believe they are interested in having the conversation of what can All Wheels Up do to improve accessible air travel.”
She said she’s had meetings with representatives at major U.S. airlines and manufacturers to come up with solutions.
“If they invested that money into the actual research on trying to implement a wheelchair spot on airplanes, we could save them millions of dollars, as well as bad press,” she said.
All Wheels Up is currently funding and conducting crash-test studies in an attempt to get the Federal Aviation Administration’s approval for a wheelchair spot on planes.
“Every person that uses a mobility device has traveling anxiety,” Figueroa said. “You worry you’re going to lose your independence and become re-disabled again. I’m always saying in the back of my mind — not this time, not this time.”
(DENVER) — One woman is dead and two adults are missing in the wake of a devastating flash flood and mudslide in Colorado, authorities said.
The flooding in the Poudre Canyon in Larimer County, about 100 miles north of Denver, was reported at about 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, the Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said.
A mudslide around 6 p.m. sent debris flowing into the canyon, destroying at least five structures and damaging the road, the sheriff’s office said.
Outage update: Crews were able to restore power to around 30 members last night. There are currently 101 members without power. For those members, we are expecting extended outages that could last multiple days. #cowx#flood2021pic.twitter.com/OLYwZfHcLM
— Poudre Valley REA (@PoudreValleyREA) July 21, 2021
Evacuations were ordered around 7:45 p.m. The evacuation mandate was lifted later in the night.
Search operations are ongoing Wednesday by foot and drone. Divers will try to recover the victim as well as a car in the river, the sheriff’s office said.
And the danger isn’t over — the flash flood threat will remain through the week.
“We ask that residents remain alert to the weather conditions in the event additional evacuations may be necessary,” the sheriff’s office said.
(NEW YORK) — Tom Barrack, a longtime friend of Donald Trump’s who chaired the committee that raised more than $100 million for his inauguration, has been charged with acting as an agent of a foreign government and obstruction of justice.
Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said Tuesday that in 2016, Barrack illegally sought to use his influence with the new president on behalf of the United Arab Emirates.
In May 2016, according to the indictment, Barrack “took steps to establish himself as the key communications channel for the United Arab Emirates” to the Trump campaign and, that same month, gave a co-defendant a draft copy of an energy speech then-candidate Trump was preparing to deliver. The co-defendant then sent it to a UAE official and solicited feedback.
“Congrats on the great job today,” court records quoted the Emirati official saying in an email to Barrack after Trump delivered the speech. “Everybody here are happy with the results.”
A spokesman for Barrack, 74, told ABC News that “Mr. Barrack has made himself voluntarily available to investigators from the outset. He is not guilty and will be pleading not guilty.”
At a court appearance in California, where he was arrested Tuesday morning, Barrack was ordered detained after prosecutors described him as “an extremely wealthy and powerful individual with substantial ties to Lebanon, the UAE, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia” who “poses a serious flight risk.”
Between May 2016 and October 2017, Barrack “repeatedly promoted the United Arab Emirates and its foreign policy interests during media appearances” after soliciting direction from his co-defendant and UAE officials, the indictment said.
“The defendant promoted UAE-favored policy positions in the Campaign, in the Administration, and through the media, at times using specific language provided by UAE leadership,” assistant U.S. Attorney Jacquelyn Kasulis wrote in the court filing. “The defendant never registered as an agent of the UAE, as public disclosure of his agreement to act at the direction of senior UAE officials would have diminished, if not eliminated, the access and influence that the UAE sought and valued.”
The allegations involving Barrack came to light as part of a House Oversight Committee investigation, ABC News reported in July 2019.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Wednesday he would hold a key test vote on a bipartisan infrastructure deal — even though the Republicans involved in the talks say they won’t give Democrats the votes they need to meet the Senate’s 60-vote threshold to start debate on the bill.
While Schumer’s effort appeared doomed to fail — handing him and President Joe Biden at least a temporary political loss on a top priority — the White House said Wednesday the president was “extremely supportive” of Schumer’s strategy aimed at jump starting negotiations on the measure that would spend $1.2 trillion on “traditional infrastructure.”
“This vote is not a deadline to have every final detail worked out. It is not an attempt to jam anyone,” Schumer said on the Senate floor Wednesday morning.
“According to the negotiators, spurred on by this vote this afternoon –- they are close to finalizing their product,” he argued. “Even Republicans have agreed that the deadline has moved them forward more quickly. We all want the same thing here – to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill. But in order to finish the bill, we first need to start.”
Key Republican negotiators in the bipartisan group of senators who have been trying to work out the deal say they believe they can finalize it by Monday.
“We are making tremendous progress, and I hope that the majority leader will reconsider and just delay the vote until Monday. That’s not a big ask of him,” GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine told reporters Monday morning.
The group huddled over Mexican food and wine behind closed doors for over two hours late Tuesday night, but left without squaring all of their differences on how to pay for package.
Schumer, the Republicans say, is well-aware of their position that waiting until next week to hold a vote would heighten the chances of success.
Negotiators said Tuesday that there are about six remaining issues with the bipartisan bill, the thorniest of which is how to structure spending on public transit systems.
At the same time, the senior lawmaker expects the legislation to be finalized by Monday, and that includes the nonpartisan analyses by various agencies breaking down all of the financing options, how much revenue would be produced, and a final price tag.
Republicans, in particular, will be looking to show that the $579 billion in new spending is fully paid for.
If the vote seems certain to fail, Schumer could switch his vote to the losing side at the last minute, enabling him as majority leader, under Senate rules, to call up the vote again for reconsideration.
The Wednesday vote is to start debate on a shell bill because there is no final bill from the negotiators. It would serve as a placeholder should negotiators strike a final deal.
The measure is separate from a much larger bill Biden and Democrats are pushing that would spend $3.5 trillion on so-called “human infrastructure” such as child care.
Democrats plan to push that through the Senate with no Republican votes, using a budget tool called “reconciliation.”
A federal judge rejected a request from students to block Indiana University’s vaccine mandate this week, clearing the way for the school to require students to get the COVID-19 shot to attend class.
The ruling may set a precedent for future cases about COVID-19 vaccine mandates at universities, according to Eric Feldman, a professor of medical ethics and health policy at the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School, though he cautioned against generalizing too much from the case at hand.
“We’ve got a Trump-appointed judge in a relatively conservative district, dealing with an issue that I think will be a variety of courts,” Feldman said. “My guess is we’re going to see other opinions that track this opinion.”
“The law is on the judge’s side,” he added.
The lawsuit alleged that the university violated students’ rights as well as Indiana’s recently passed vaccine passport law, which prohibits state and local governments from creating or requiring vaccine passports. In the lawsuit, the students claimed they were being coerced into vaccination and that if they did not comply, they would face “the threat of virtual expulsion from school.”
In June, school administrators announced that students would have to verify their vaccination status with the school unless they applied for a medical or religious exemption. Those without exemptions could have their class schedules canceled, their student IDs deactivated and wouldn’t be allowed to participate in on-campus activities, according to the lawsuit.
“This certainly impacts the public interest,” said U.S. District Judge Damon Leichty, who was nominated to the United States District Court for the Northern District of Indiana by President Donald Trump in 2018. However, “the students ‘are not asking to be allowed to make a self-contained choice to risk only their own health’ in making this decision — their decision necessarily bears on the health of other students, faculty, and staff,” the South Bend judge added.
“The balance of harms doesn’t weigh in the students’ favor here.”
Contrary to the students’ claim that they were being forced into unwanted medical treatment, the judge said students could choose from alternatives, including getting a vaccine, applying for a religious or medical exemption, applying for a medical deferral, taking a semester off, going to another school or taking online courses.
“That leaves the students with multiple choices, not just forced vaccination,” Leichty said.
Feldman pointed to Jacobson v. Commonwealth of Massachusetts, a 1905 Supreme Court decision that found public entities have the right to impose vaccine mandates to protect the public’s health. “One would expect based upon Jacobson and many, many cases that have followed, that courts are more likely to support the mandate than to find against it,” Feldman said.
Feldman described the ruling as “awfully detailed and thoughtful” but pushed back on Leichty’s assertion that the constitutionality of vaccine mandates at universities is a novel question. While COVID-19 vaccines are new, universities have long mandated other vaccines for students who attend, Feldman explained. “What arguably makes the COVID-19 vaccine mandate unique is that the vaccines were approved under emergency use authorization, but full approval is inevitable, so that distinction will soon be moot,” he said.
Chuck Carney, a university spokesperson, told ABC News that “when the case was filed, we felt confident in the outcome that we would prevail.” He added, “we appreciate the quick and thorough ruling, which allows us to focus on a full and safe return. We look forward to welcoming everyone to our campuses for the fall semester.”
Indiana lags slightly behind the national average in vaccinations. As of Monday, 46% of residents had received at least one dose, and 44% were fully vaccinated, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. By comparison, 57% of Americans have gotten at least one shot, and 49% are fully vaccinated.
(WASHINGTON) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she rejects two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s five recommendations for the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Banks and Jordan both voted to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 and Pelosi said their appointments could impact “the integrity of the investigation.”
“Monday evening, the Minority Leader recommended 5 Members to serve on the Select Committee,” Pelosi said in a statement. “I have spoken with him this morning about the objections raised about Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan and the impact their appointments may have on the integrity of the investigation. I also informed him that I was prepared to appoint Representatives Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong and Troy Nehls, and requested that he recommend two other Members.”
. @SpeakerPelosi tells me she spoke with McCarthy about her decision to reject two of his picks to serve on the Jan. 6th commission.
I asked her why she made the decision. She told me “January 6th.” And left it at that. pic.twitter.com/hYUTu4UjGG
“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” she said.
“The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” Pelosi said.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday she rejects two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s five recommendations for the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol — Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio.
Banks and Jordan both voted to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 and Pelosi said their appointments could impact “the integrity of the investigation.”
“Monday evening, the Minority Leader recommended 5 Members to serve on the Select Committee,” Pelosi said in a statement. “I have spoken with him this morning about the objections raised about Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan and the impact their appointments may have on the integrity of the investigation. I also informed him that I was prepared to appoint Representatives Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong and Troy Nehls, and requested that he recommend two other Members.”
. @SpeakerPelosi tells me she spoke with McCarthy about her decision to reject two of his picks to serve on the Jan. 6th commission.
I asked her why she made the decision. She told me “January 6th.” And left it at that. pic.twitter.com/hYUTu4UjGG
“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” she said.
“The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” Pelosi said.
McCarthy reacted to the news in a statement of his own, calling Pelosi’s decision to reject his selections “unprecedented.”
“Denying the voices of members who have served in the military and law enforcement, as well as leaders of standing committees, has made it undeniable that this panel has lost all legitimacy and credibility,” McCarthy said. He went on to accuse the Speaker of being “more interested in politics than seeking the truth.”
“Unless Speaker Pelosi reverses course and seats all five Republican nominees,” McCarthy concluded, “Republicans will not be party to their sham process and will instead pursue our own investigation of the facts.”
The House Select Committee was expected to hold its first hearing on Tuesday.
House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, R-Louisiana, on Tuesday signaled some of the lines of inquiry Republicans would try to advance — calling for an examination of “the whole array of political violence that led up to Jan. 6 and still has gone on after that” along with the security posture on Capitol Hill before the insurrection.
“There have been many questions raised about why there hasn’t been a higher National Guard presence,” Scalise said.
As to how Republicans would respond to Democrats calling for GOP members to testify under oath about Jan. 6, Scalise said he would “let members of the committee discuss that and debate that.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(WASHINGTON) — After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday rejected two of House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s recommendations for the select committee investigating the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, McCarthy said he would pull all his Republican nominees unless she reverses course.
Pelosi rejected two of McCarthy’s recommendations — Reps. Jim Banks of Indiana and Jim Jordan of Ohio, a staunch defender of former President Donald Trump.
Banks and Jordan both voted to overturn the election results on Jan. 6 and Pelosi said their appointments could impact “the integrity of the investigation.”
“I have spoken with him this morning about the objections raised about Representatives Jim Banks and Jim Jordan and the impact their appointments may have on the integrity of the investigation,” she said in a statement. “I also informed him that I was prepared to appoint Representatives Rodney Davis, Kelly Armstrong and Troy Nehls, and requested that he recommend two other Members.
“With respect for the integrity of the investigation, with an insistence on the truth and with concern about statements made and actions taken by these Members, I must reject the recommendations of Representatives Banks and Jordan to the Select Committee,” she said.
“The unprecedented nature of January 6th demands this unprecedented decision,” Pelosi added.
. @SpeakerPelosi tells me she spoke with McCarthy about her decision to reject two of his picks to serve on the Jan. 6th commission.
I asked her why she made the decision. She told me “January 6th.” And left it at that. pic.twitter.com/hYUTu4UjGG
McCarthy shot back at a news conference on Wednesday, saying Pelosi had created “a sham process.”
“House Democrats must answer this question,” he said. “Why are you allowing a lame-duck speaker to destroy this institution? This is the people’s house, not Pelosi’s House.”
He said unless Pelosi changes her mind and seats all five nominees, “we will not participate.” But, he said, Republicans will run their own investigation to answer why the Capitol was “ill-prepared” for the riot — something he and Republicans have blamed Pelosi for.
“Speaker Nancy Pelosi has taken the unprecedented step of denying the minority party’s picks for the Select Committee on January 6,” he said in an earlier statement. “This represents an egregious abuse of power and will irreparably damage this institution. Denying the voices of members who have served in the military and law enforcement, as well as leaders of standing committees, has made it undeniable that this panel has lost all legitimacy and credibility and shows the Speaker is more interested in playing politics than seeking the truth,” it read in part.
The House Select Committee was expected to hold its first hearing on Tuesday.
House GOP Whip Steve Scalise, R-La., on Tuesday signaled some of the lines of inquiry Republicans would try to advance — calling for an examination of “the whole array of political violence that led up to Jan. 6 and still has gone on after that” along with the security posture on Capitol Hill before the insurrection.
“There have been many questions raised about why there hasn’t been a higher National Guard presence,” Scalise said, hitting on a point McCarthy drove home on Wednesday.
As to how Republicans would respond to Democrats calling for GOP members to testify under oath about Jan. 6, Scalise said he would “let members of the committee discuss that and debate that.”
Asked at his press conference if he was still prepared to testify about his phone call with Trump during the riot, McCarthy said his phone call is “out there.”
“The question is, you make a phone call after people are in the Capitol to advise the president of what’s going on, doesn’t get to the answer of why were we ill-prepared,” he said. “That’s really playing politics, and it really shows if that’s the issue that they want to go to, before they want to drive, we don’t get all the answers.”
President Joe Biden did not answer shouted questions on the Jan. 6 commission developments while departing the White House Wednesday, but the White House issued a statement emphasizing that Biden stands behind Pelosi’s decision to reject two of the Republican lawmakers.
“The President has made clear that the shameful events of January 6th deserve a full, independent, and transparent investigation to ensure something like that never happens again, and he has full confidence in the Speaker’s ability to lead that work,” White House spokesperson Michael Gwin said in a statement.
