(GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.) — A second man charged in a bizarre plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer pleaded guilty Wednesday and has agreed to testify for the prosecution at the federal trial of four other defendants.
Kaleb Franks, 27, of Waterford, Michigan, admitted in U.S. District in Grand Rapids that he and other members of the Wolverine Watchmen, a Michigan-based self-styled “militia” group, hatched the plot to abduct Whitmer at her summer home in 2020 because they were upset by the state’s COVID-19 restrictions.
The plot, which allegedly included plans to use semiautomatic assault-type weapons and to bomb a bridge near Whitmer’s vacation home, was foiled by undercover law enforcement officers who infiltrated the group.
“Did any law enforcement officers suggest kidnapping the governor?” U.S. Magistrate Judge Phillip Green asked Franks during Wednesday’s hearing.
Franks replied, “No sir.”
Franks admitted in court that the kidnapping plan originated solely with him and the others charged in the conspiracy.
Lawyers for the other men facing trial in March filed a motion to dismiss the charges, arguing they were entrapped. The judge rejected that motion.
Franks’ guilty plea comes after another man charged in the case, Ty Garbin, 25, pleaded guilty last year to firearms charges and conspiracy charges of providing material support for terrorists. Garbin was sentenced in August to 75 months in prison.
Garbin is also expected to testify for the prosecution in the upcoming federal trial for Adam Fox, 40, Barry Croft Jr., 45, Daniel Harris, 24, and Brandon Caserta, 33. Eight other men face charges in state court stemming from the kidnap plot.
Franks admitted being deeply involved in the kidnap plot, participating in meetings and training sessions, and surveillance conducted on Whitmer’s vacation home in his signed plea agreement.
After the plot was thwarted, Whitmer alleged in an interview with ABC’s Good Morning America that the plan included more than kidnaping her.
“This was a very serious thought-out plot to kill police officers, to bomb our capitol, killing Democrats and Republicans alike, and to kidnap and ultimately put me on trial and kill me as well,” Whitmer said on GMA. “These are the types of things you hear from groups like ISIS. This is not a militia; it is a domestic terror organization.”
(HOUSTON) — A 9-year-old girl is in critical condition after she was hurt in an apparent road rage shooting in Houston, police said.
The suspect, believed to be in a white GMC Denali pickup truck, apparently cut off the girl’s family several times on the Southwest Freeway Tuesday night, Houston police said.
At about 9:10 p.m., the pickup truck pulled behind the family’s vehicle and someone in the pickup truck fired shots, hitting the 9-year-old, police said.
No arrests have been made. Police ask anyone to call the police department at 713-308-8800 or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 909,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Feb 09, 11:01 am
Massachusetts lifts statewide school mask mandate
Massachusetts is lifting its statewide school mask mandate effective Feb. 28, Gov. Charlie Baker announced Wednesday.
“Everyone now has the tools and the knowledge to stay safe,” Baker said, citing availability of vaccines, distribution of tests and the relative lack of serious illness among kids. “It’s time to give our kids a sense of normalcy.”
Baker said the state fully supports an individual’s decision to continue to wear a mask and he asked school districts to do the same, echoing New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, who told school districts to crack down on any bullying that results from continued mask wearing.
Baker said Massachusetts ranks 2nd in the nation for the highest number of vaccinated kids.
-ABC News’ Aaron Katersky
Feb 09, 8:29 am
England to lift all COVID-19 restrictions a month early
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday his plans to lift all remaining pandemic-related restrictions in England in less than two weeks.
Addressing lawmakers in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, Johnson said he hopes to scrap England’s COVID-19 restrictions as soon as Parliament returns from its upcoming recess on Feb. 21.
“I can tell the House today that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with COVID,” Johnson told lawmakers. “Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive, a full month early.”
Johnson first announced his plans to end all of the so-called Plan B measures last month, starting with mask mandates. He told lawmakers at the time that the legal requirement for people with COVID-19 to self-isolate would be allowed to expire when the regulations lapsed on March 24, but that the date could be brought forward.
Although Johnson is the U.K. prime minister, his government is only responsible for COVID-19 restrictions in England because public health legislation is devolved to national governments within the U.K., meaning that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own pandemic-related policies.
Feb 09, 7:55 am
US reported more cases, deaths than any country last week, WHO says
The United States reported the highest number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the disease last week out of any country in the world, according to a weekly epidemiological update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the U.S. during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, a 50% decrease compared to the previous week. Over 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15% decrease, the WHO said.
France had the second-highest number of new cases with more than 1.7 million, a 26% decrease, while India had the second-highest number of new deaths with nearly 8,000, a 69% increase, according to the WHO.
Meanwhile, the global number of new cases during that same period decreased by 17% compared to the previous week, while fatalities increased by 7%, the WHO said.
(NEW YORK) — Adding more plants to your diet can add years to your life, according to a new study.
Researchers in Norway used computer models to compare a typical Western diet — heavy on animal-based proteins dairy and sugar — with a more ideal plant-based diet that’s heavy on fruits, vegetables, beans and grains and light on animal-based proteins.
According to the models, a 20-year-old who went all-in on the plant-based diet could add 10 years to their life. Even just making a partial change could add six years of life expectancy.
An 80-year-old who started a plant-based diet could add three years to their life expectancy, according to the study, published Tuesday in PLOS Medicine.
“A sustained dietary change may give substantial health gains for people of all ages both for optimized and feasible changes,” the researchers wrote. “Gains are predicted to be larger the earlier the dietary changes are initiated in life.”
The researchers turned their model into a public online tool, Food4HealthyLife, where users can calculate how dietary changes can change their life expectancy.
A plant-based diet is a way of eating that consists mostly or entirely of foods derived from plants, including vegetables, grains, nuts, seeds, legumes and fruits.
Plant-based diets typically consist of eating few to no animal foods and is different from vegan diets, which eliminates all animal foods and products, and from vegetarian diets, which eliminate all meat, fish and poultry.
Plant-based diets, often done for health and environmental reasons, also often place an emphasis on whole foods.
Even small changes make a difference when it comes to trying a plant-based diet, according to Dr. Jennifer Ashton, ABC News chief medical correspondent.
“I think when people hear plant-based diet or they hear a definition they get very intimidated. This does not have to be an all-in thing,” Ashton said Wednesday on Good Morning America. “You can make small changes with, let’s say, a meatless Monday or just one meal of every day.”
She added, “Read the labels. Explore those food aisles. There are more plant-based options than ever.”
Plant-based diets have been steadily gaining acclaim for the last several years, often landing atop the annual best diet rankings from U.S. News & World Report.
Here are four questions answered about the plant-based diet trend.
1. What are good things to eat on a plant-based diet?
Brian Wendel, maker of the 2011 documentary Forks Over Knives, places an emphasis on eating whole, minimally processed foods within a plant-based diet.
“For me, the best guide is, does the food still look somewhat like it does when you take it out of the ground? When you cook a potato, it still looks like a potato,” he told GMA in 2020. “The more a food is like that the more you can lean on that in your diet and lifestyle, for health benefits.”
Of course fresh vegetables and fruits are a big part of a plant-based diet, as well as nuts, whole grains and legumes. Seafood and meat products can also, on occasion, be part of a plant-based diet.
Wendel emphasizes eating more than just vegetables on a plant-based diet to ensure you are taking in enough calories.
“Make starchy foods — beans, rice, sweet potatoes, quinoa, chickpeas –- the center of the plate because that has the energy to sustain you,” he said. “And then surround it with vegetables.”
2. What about all the packaged foods advertised as ‘plant-based’?
The emphasis on eating whole foods on a plant-based diet raises the question of what to make of all the packaged plant-based products on the market, from kale chips to meat-free burgers.
“So many diets that are restrictive or have a buzz name have nothing in their description about the quality of their food and that’s something that is really important,” said Deirdre Tobias, assistant professor in the department of nutrition at Harvard School of Public Health. “A lot of these plant-based products might still be highly processed and have a lot of sodium and saturated fats.”
“Be careful about plant-based being used as a marketing tool,” she said.
Tobias recommends being a “savvy shopper” and shopping for your plant-based diet in the produce aisle.
“Make your own plant-based foods because vegetables are there for you,” she said. “You don’t have to be purchasing packaged, processed foods.”
3. Are there any downsides to a plant-based diet?
Not really, according to the experts.
“For heart disease, diabetes, cancer, all of the major chronic diseases, there are no downsides to eliminating meat products from your diet for any of those,” said Tobias. “If anything, the evidence shows that by going plant-based you would be benefiting your long-term survival and reducing the risk of those diseases.”
“Fruits and vegetables, fiber, nuts and legume have also all been proven to be good for weight loss and to keep weight off long-term,” she said.
Is there a way to be plant-based but still eat some meat?
Yes, the definition of plant-based is that your diet is based on plants but allows room for other foods from time to time.
“If you’re not ready to give up meat entirely, still even reducing it to once in a while would have a lot of great benefits,” said Tobias. “The science isn’t there to say a steak or a burger once in a while is horrible for you, it’s the daily consumption that’s problematic.”
One option is the flexitarian diet which encourages people to try alternative meat options, like tofu, but leaves room for flexibility if you can’t quite fully give up meat. The diet was promoted by dietitian Dawn Jackson Blatner in a 2009 book that says you can reap the benefits of a plant-heavy diet even if you eat meat occasionally, according to U.S. News and World Report, which ranked the diet No. 2 on its 2022 best diets list.
This plant-heavy diet focuses on adding five food groups — “new meat,” fruits and vegetables, whole grains, dairy and sugar and spices — to your diet, instead of taking foods away.
The “new meat” food group includes tofu, beans, lentils, peas, nuts, seeds and eggs, according to U.S. News and World Report.
4. How do I know if a plant-based diet is right for me?
You’ll know a plant-based diet is working for you if you feel well and you are able to stick to it long-term, according to Dr. Fatima Cody Stanford, an obesity medicine physician scientist at Harvard Medical School.
“Your body has the answers,” said Stanford. “Pay attention to your body and don’t pay attention to someone else and how they say their body responded.”
The experts also noted there may be some trial and error involved so stay open to finding what works best for you.
(LONDON) — Dozens of people are dead and thousands are homeless after a tropical storm struck Madagascar over the weekend, the second to batter the island nation since the start of the year.
With wind gusts of up to 143 miles per hour, Cyclone Batsirai made landfall on Madagascar’s eastern coast late Saturday before sweeping across the central and southern parts Sunday. The storm left land Monday morning and returned to sea, but heavy rainfall was forecast for southern Madagascar through Tuesday, according to the country’s meteorology department, fueling fears of more flooding.
The cyclone’s powerful winds and torrential rains flooded roads and farmland, ripped roofs from homes and buildings and knocked down trees and utility poles. The hardest-hit areas were on the eastern side of the country, though the full scope of the damage was still being assessed.
According to Madagascar’s National Office for Risk and Disaster Management, more than 112,000 people have been impacted by Batsirai, which was classified by the country’s meteorology department as a dangerous storm. As of Wednesday evening, at least 92 people have died, mostly in the southern Ikongo district, and over 60,000 others remain displaced from their homes and have been temporarily relocated, the country’s risk and disaster management office said.
At least three children under the age of 12 were among the dead, according to United Kingdom-based international charity Save the Children, which cited Madagascar’s risk and disaster management office.
The cyclone flooded almost 7,000 homes, completely destroyed 6,000 and damaged nearly 1,500. Hundreds of schools were also affected, leaving an estimated 9,271 children out of school. Meanwhile, at least 53 hospitals were damaged and six were completely destroyed, the country’s risk and disaster management office said Wednesday.
The storm also damaged various infrastructure, including at least 20 roads and 17 bridges, leaving some of the worst-affected areas inaccessible by road. Some towns suffered disruptions to power and water supplies, according to the risk and disaster management office.
The World Food Program, the food assistance branch of the United Nations, has started distributing hot meals to 4,000 evacuated and displaced people in shelters in coordination with Madagascan authorities. Pasqualina DiSirio, the World Food Program’s director for Madagascar, warned that the number of storm victims could “easily rise.”
“We have right now, still waters increasing in the canals, in the rivers, and people are still in danger,” DiSirio said in a statement Monday. “We know for sure that rice fields, that rice crops will be damaged. This is the main crop for Malagasy people and they will be seriously affected in food security in the next three to six months if we don’t do something immediately and we don’t help them recover.”
Humanity & Inclusion, a France-based independent charity that has worked in Madagascar for over 30 years, has a 163-person team on the ground helping Madagascan authorities evaluate and respond to the disaster. Vincent Dalonneau, Humanity & Inclusion’s director for Madagascar, said the effects of Batsirai “are devastating.”
“The amount of destruction is significant and for many this is only the beginning. The storm may have passed, but now the affected communities must restart from scratch — rebuilding their homes, schools and hospitals,” Dalonneau told ABC News on Monday night. “Right now, we only have initial estimates of the damage caused. What remains a great challenge is that more isolated areas have yet to be assessed. So, we expect to see the extent of destruction rising in the coming days as we get a clearer image of the situation.”
Dalonneau said some isolated villages are more than a two-day walk away, which make damage assessments and aid deliveries even more difficult.
One of the affected residents was a 32-year-old single mother named Josephine. She said she and her young daughter evacuated their home near the eastern city of Mahanoro on Friday night amid heavy rain. When they returned, Josephine said their house was “completely destroyed,” according to Humanity & Inclusion.
Batsirai, which means help in Shona, an official language in Zimbabwe, arrived less than two weeks after Tropical Storm Ana barreled through southeastern Africa, killing scores of people in Madagascar, Mozambique and Malawi.
The Madagascan government declared a state of emergency on Jan. 27 due to Ana.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 909,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:
Feb 09, 8:29 am
England to lift all COVID-19 restrictions a month early
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday his plans to lift all remaining pandemic-related restrictions in England in less than two weeks.
Addressing lawmakers in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, Johnson said he hopes to scrap England’s COVID-19 restrictions as soon as Parliament returns from its upcoming recess on Feb. 21.
“I can tell the House today that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with COVID,” Johnson told lawmakers. “Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive, a full month early.”
Johnson first announced his plans to end all of the so-called Plan B measures last month, starting with mask mandates. He told lawmakers at the time that the legal requirement for people with COVID-19 to self-isolate would be allowed to expire when the regulations lapsed on March 24, but that the date could be brought forward.
Although Johnson is the U.K. prime minister, his government is only responsible for COVID-19 restrictions in England because public health legislation is devolved to national governments within the U.K., meaning that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own pandemic-related policies.
Feb 09, 7:55 am
US reported more cases, deaths than any country last week, WHO says
The United States reported the highest number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the disease last week out of any country in the world, according to a weekly epidemiological update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the U.S. during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, a 50% decrease compared to the previous week. Over 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15% decrease, the WHO said.
France had the second-highest number of new cases with more than 1.7 million, a 26% decrease, while India had the second-highest number of new deaths with nearly 8,000, a 69% increase, according to the WHO.
Meanwhile, the global number of new cases during that same period decreased by 17% compared to the previous week, while fatalities increased by 7%, the WHO said.
(NEW YORK) — Milwaukee resident Exie Tatum III grew up in heart of the city and still lives there. The African American father owns a home in a predominantly Black neighborhood but has been house-hunting in pricey, majority-white suburbs, searching for an affordable home that he might someday pass along to his young son Charles through inheritance.
“It would really change the game,” Tatum said of owning a suburban Milwaukee home.
But statistics suggest he’s fighting an uphill battle.
Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation persists in America’s largest cities and urban centers — and an exclusive ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data shows a pattern of racial isolation remains consistent following decades of failed initiatives.
The analysis shows that 20 of the nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas have an “extreme dissimilarity index” of 50 or higher — meaning at least half of the population would have had to move to another neighborhood in the area to achieve total integration in 2019.
The Milwaukee metro area is at the top of ABC News’ “extreme” segregation list, but that list also includes America’s largest metro areas — New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Also on the top 20 “extreme” list: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island.
ABC News’ analysis of segregation and home lending patterns across America used data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and the U.S. Census American Community Survey.
Race and ethnicity information in the home lending data is collected voluntarily from the loan applicant or through visual observation by the lender, and by self-identification in the census data.
The data were used by ABC’s Owned Television Stations to compile the Equity Report, which allows readers to track and measure quality of life and equality in America’s 100 largest metro areas in five categories: housing, health, education, policing, and the environment.
Using the home lending and census datasets, ABC News calculated a dissimilarity index for metropolitan areas and census tract neighborhoods across the U.S.
Indexes like the ones used by ABC News are often used by researchers to measure residential segregation between two racial or ethnic groups within a geographic region. It is based on a 0-100 scale, with “0” being total integration and “100” being total segregation.
The ABC News analysis found that segregation persists across the nation, and that there is no indication that the racial composition of neighborhoods is rapidly changing in the nation’s most segregated metropolitan areas.
In 19 of those 20 extremely segregated metro areas, at least 40% of the homeowners who got a mortgage loan in 2019 — white or non-white — would have had to buy a house in a different neighborhood to create a naturally integrated pool of new homeowners.
In eight of those metro areas with extreme segregation, at least half the new homebuyers would have had to settle into a new neighborhood in 2019 to make an integrated pool of new neighbors.
Even in neighborhoods where some racial evolution is taking place, the analysis shows an overall disparity: It’s easier for whites to buy homes in majority non-white neighborhoods than for non-whites to buy in mostly white sections of a metro area.
In 2019, nearly two-thirds of the 347,000 white homebuyers (64.8%) who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in America’s largest metro areas got a loan approval — an indicator of what many urban planners and demographers see as a continued pattern of gentrification in urban areas across the nation.
Meanwhile, about 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods.
In mostly white neighborhoods, the same pattern exists in the largest metro areas. About 69% of the 1.9 million loan requests from white applicants were approved, compared to about 55.8% of 613,000 applications from non-whites.
The ABC analysis shows disparities were similar for applicants in the same income range ($50,000 – $100,000) who sought mortgage loans of $50,000 to $250,000.
In majority-white neighborhoods, white applicants in those categories had a 67% approval rate, compared to 52% for non-white applicants.
In mostly non-white neighborhoods, white applicants with similar incomes and loan amounts had a 63% approval rate, while the approval rate for similar non-white applicants was 55%.
In some cities, the gentrification process is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the small minority-owned businesses, cultural enterprises and institutions — barbershops, hair salons, and churches — that have catered to those residents for decades.
Milwaukee under the microscope
The ABC News analysis shows just how mortgage lending disparities in wealthy suburbs and poorer urban neighborhoods play out in the Milwaukee metro area.
Overall, in 2019, whites filed four times more mortgage loan applications than non-whites, and had 73% of those loans approved, compared to 49% for non-whites.
In Milwaukee’s majority non-white neighborhoods — mainly urban areas where gentrification was taking place — non-white home seekers filed twice as many applications as whites, but had a lower approval rate — 55% compared to 64% for whites.
Meanwhile, in majority white neighborhoods, white home seekers filed seven times as many mortgage applications — and the 73% approval rate among white applicants was higher than the non-white approval rate of 47%.
For Milwaukee metro applicants with similar income and loan requests, the analysis shows the white approval rate in both mostly non-white and mostly-white neighborhoods was 1.5 times higher than the non-white approval rate.
Tatum says he has seen and experienced the suburban housing disparities that the data seem to support — and how they affect people of color.
Demographically, Tatum has seen Milwaukee change dramatically over the years. But when it comes to segregated neighborhoods, he’s seen some things stubbornly stay the same.
“If you look at the north side of Milwaukee, you’re going to see African-Americans,” Tatum explained. “As soon as you cross the bridge to the south side, that’s where the Latino community begins.”
By buying a suburban home that he could pass on to his son, Tatum would love to help break that decades-old pattern of segregation.
National studies suggest that homeownership is a key factor in building generational wealth within families. A 2017 Federal Reserve study shows the average homeowner had a household wealth of $231,400 in 2016, compared to the average renter having a household wealth of $5,200.
But U.S. Census data show that homeownership rates among non-white households — particularly Black households — falls far short of the white homeowner rate of 76%.
For Tatum and other non-white city residents wanting to relocate to Milwaukee’s suburbs, there’s reason for optimism: The latest census data show that, for the first time, two suburban communities — West Milwaukee and Brown Deer — reported majority-minority population counts.
Those communities are outliers, however. Other suburban neighborhoods in the Milwaukee metro area remain at least 73% white.
For Black residents, the data is even more dismal: Less than 9% in the Milwaukee metro area live in the suburbs.
A “baked” lending system
Tatum and other non-white home seekers across the U.S. blame a financial lending system — developed and regulated by the federal government — that for decades has systematically kept people of color from getting home loans, particularly in suburban neighborhoods.
“I still feel like my bankers always have to go to the underwriters and fight for me. They literally tell me, ‘I’m going to fight for you,'” Tatum said. “Why do you have to fight for me when I’m meeting all the criteria that you told me I needed?”
In San Francisco, 30-year resident Boris Quinonez has had his own experience with lenders.
Around 2010, Quinonez tried purchasing a single-family home in the city’s Mission District, but was denied a loan at least three times by a lender.
Property records show the house eventually sold — to Quinonez’s best friend.
Quinonez said he and his friend had the same job, the same down payment, a similar credit score, and lived in the same neighborhood.
The only difference?
“He was white and I wasn’t,” Quinonez said. “Everything else was the same.”
Rochelle Sparko, the director of North Carolina Policy at the Centers for Responsible Lending, points to historical real estate practices and longstanding racial wealth gaps as barriers that communities of color are still combating.
“It is baked into the system that it is difficult for … Black people who want to take on home mortgages to have difficulty doing that,” Sparko said. “It is possible that some of that is about overt discrimination, but a lot of it is sort of all of these impacts coming together.”
Sparko said that obstacles to getting a home loan for people of color include student loan debt and loss of family wealth during the last foreclosure crisis.
“There are any number of reasons why we see this difference in homeownership rates, and I think what we are beginning to recognize and talk about more is the need for targeted interventions to address that,” Sparko said.
But targeted interventions of the past, like the GI Bill, proved to be little more than an illusion for many Black Americans.
The GI Bill was supposed to guarantee low-interest mortgages and other loans to veterans returning home from World War II. While it generally helped white American veterans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it failed to deliver for many veterans of color — primarily because white-run financial institutions had the power and incentive to refuse mortgages and loans to Blacks and other veterans of color.
In Milwaukee and other cities across the U.S., restrictive housing covenants — some dating back 100 years — helped lay the foundation for America’s segregation problem.
Those covenants, written by local housing authorities and developers, and sanctioned by the federal government, prohibited anyone but whites from owning or leasing property in specific sections of a community.
“People who were living in these covenant neighborhoods knew that this meant, ‘OK, this is an all-white community,'” said Reggie Jackson, an educator, consultant, and member of the City of Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission.
“They kept neighborhoods all white for decades,” Jackson said.
The covenants led to “redlining” practices in many cities, where federally-insured mortgages, loans and private residential insurance were withheld from non-white homeowners who were pigeonholed into non-covenant neighborhoods considered “investment risks.”
The term comes from lenders and other institutions literally drawing red lines around high-risk neighborhoods considered undesirable for business purposes. Redlining thwarted growth and redevelopment in many urban neighborhoods, leading to inner-city ghettos.
Those decades-long practices ended, in theory, with the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental or financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, gender, disability or family status.
But the legacy — and patterns — of segregation left by covenants and redlining still linger.
A demographic analysis by ABC News partner FiveThirtyEight of 138 metropolitan areas where redline maps were drawn found that nearly all the former redlined zones are still disproportionately Black, Hispanic or Asian, compared with their surrounding areas.
In comparison, the FiveThirtyEight analysis found that two-thirds of “greenlined” zones — neighborhoods deemed by insurers and lenders to be the best for mortgage lending — are still overwhelmingly white.
Going “all in” on fair housing
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairperson of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which is charged with overseeing the Fair Housing Act, believes the housing act has fallen short in its intent to “address both discrimination in housing and increase integration.”
In a March, 2020 letter to the general counsel of The Department of Housing and Urban Development, Brown points the blame at HUD, which he says has “failed for decades to fully implement (fair housing).”
“Sadly, half a century later, our nation has failed to achieve that goal of ‘truly integrated and balanced living patterns,'” Brown wrote, quoting the act’s original sponsor, former senator and Vice President Walter F. Mondale.
“We have never, as a nation, gone ‘all in’ on fair housing,” Brown told ABC News in December. “We’ve never, as a nation, tried to close that gap … that gap between black and white ownership.”
HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge believes the regulatory agency is on a path toward fulfilling the original promise of the Fair Housing Act. One of the first steps taken by Fudge in her initial year of leadership was to overturn a decision by the previous administration that suspended a rule requiring local communities to identify fair housing issues and commit to solving them.
HUD will be reviewing the assessments coming from local governments that receive federal funding under the Fair Housing Act.
“More than 50 years since the Fair Housing Act’s passage, inequities in our communities remain that block families from moving into neighborhoods with greater opportunities,” Fudge said in a June 2021 press release. “Today, HUD is taking a critical step to affirm that a child’s future should never be limited by the ZIP code where they are born.”
Linda McCoy, president of the National Association of Mortgage Professionals (NAMB), believes the way to bridge racial gaps in loan approval ratings is through education and government action.
“You know, I wish I could … wave a magic wand and make it (housing discrimination and segregation) go away,” said McCoy, who’s group represents nearly a million mortgage brokers across the U.S.
McCoy noted that NAMB is working with “10 or 12” members of Congress to create legislation that would help mortgage brokers — particularly those lending in majority non-white communities — compete with big banks and lending institutions.
“I’m not sure what the solution is going to be, but I know that we’re doing all that we can do to help,” she said.
Gentrification: The urban neighborhood “makeover”
In the heart of Milwaukee sits a mostly-Black subdivision filled with tidy bungalows, ranch houses and bi-level homes sitting on manicured grass lots.
Halyard Park emits a suburban vibe, even though it’s surrounded by decaying, urban neighborhoods and sits in the shadow of Fiserv Forum, home to the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks.
Established in 1976 with vacant land from the I-43 freeway expansion in the 1960s, Halyard Park was set up as a neighborhood for middle-class Black residents.
It is named for Ardie Clark Halyard and her husband, Wilbur, two Black community activists who saw Black homeownership being stymied by redlining and institutional racism.
The Halyards started Columbia Savings & Loan, the city’s first Black-owned bank, and one of only a few that offered home loans to Blacks moving into the subdivision and other urban neighborhoods.
“You had a group of folks that came up with this brilliant idea,” said Jackson. “If we can’t get these middle-class and upper middle-class black people out to our suburbs, why don’t we build a suburb in the city?
“And that’s what they did,” Jackson said. “It’s a hidden gem.”
Halyard Park has remained a gem over the past 40 years — but it’s no longer hidden.
The neighborhood’s proximity to the arena and other downtown development makes it attractive to developers and wealthy white homebuyers, which has driven up property values and property taxes.
Halyard Park is a real-time example of the urban gentrification taking place in cities across the U.S. — a profit-driven race and class “makeover” of a neighborhood that historically has been deprived of investment opportunities.
Since 2018, the ABC News analysis shows lenders have approved 62% of the home loans in census tracts that comprise the Halyard Park neighborhood. But the lenders have approved 76% of the loans for white applicants, compared to only 53% of non-white applicants.
Yet it’s not the changing demographics that concern longtime Black Halyard Park residents like Clara Smith. It’s the changing economics.
“I have seen my taxes go from $1,500 to over $4,000,” said Smith, a retiree who’s lived 38 years in Halyard Park. “It’s going to be a disaster for everybody. I do not want to be taxed out of my home.”
Chris Neilsen, one of Halyard Park’s newest white residents, says he was drawn to the neighborhood by its diverse environment. But he realizes there’s a difference between integration and gentrification that pushes people out.
“Looking to the future, I think it is a concern, and something that we need to be aware of, if we’re going to keep a diverse atmosphere,” said Neilsen, who bought a house in Halyard Park nearly four years ago with his wife Avery.
Jackson, the Milwaukee equal rights commissioner, agrees.
“Gentrification’s like a slow moving freight train,” he said. “You see it coming, but you’re not going to do anything to stop it from moving.”
Meanwhile, just a few blocks from Halyard Park, Exie Tatum still dreams of owning a suburban home someday.
For now, he’s considering a different strategy: buying a foreclosed property in a rundown neighborhood at a cost of only $1,000 for the house and an adjoining parcel of land. Maybe, says Tatum, he can improve the property then resell it for a handsome return.
But Tatum knows all too well the risks of trying to “flip” a house in an area that isn’t being gentrified. His current home, which he owns in a predominantly Black neighborhood, is a transitional home that he had hoped to “put a little income into, take a little equity, turn it over, and move out a little further (into the suburbs).”
The problem, says Tatum, is that after the house was originally appraised for about $110,000, it dropped to only $25,000 by the time he was ready to sell — all because of the neighborhood where it’s located.
“I’m jumping through multiple hoops just to stay somewhere where I really don’t want to stay,” he said.
ABC News Senior Investigative Correspondent David Scott, San Francisco ABC7’s Stephanie Sierra and Lindsey Feingold, and Raleigh ABC11’s Akilah Davis, Samantha Kummerer and Maggie Green contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 909,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:
Feb 09, 7:55 am
US reported more cases, deaths than any country last week, WHO says
The United States reported the highest number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the disease last week out of any country in the world, according to a weekly epidemiological update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the U.S. during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, a 50% decrease compared to the previous week. Over 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15% decrease, the WHO said.
France had the second-highest number of new cases with more than 1.7 million, a 26% decrease, while India had the second-highest number of new deaths with nearly 8,000, a 69% increase, according to the WHO.
Meanwhile, the global number of new cases during that same period decreased by 17% compared to the previous week, while fatalities increased by 7%, the WHO said.
(NEW YORK) — Four months after the Taliban seized power, Obaidullah Alikhil found himself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet as his son laid in bed with no strength to even open his eyes as he battles malnutrition.
Weighing around 12 pounds, 2-year-old Mohammed Alikhil was first admitted to the hospital in the summer of 2021, as the U.S. prepared to retreat its troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s power continued to grow. He was hospitalized for 21 days due to severe diarrhea, Alikhil told ABC News in December.
At the end of his stay, he was brought back home. But his condition, according to Alikhil, only got worse, leading to another hospital visit.
Several hospital visits and medications did not help with Mohammed’s recovery. With no solution, the bills continued to pile up, and the family’s financial situation became even more challenging.
Mohammed is one out of millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation as their families run out of money. More than 23 million Afghans face acute hunger, including nine million who are nearly famished, according to the UNICEF World Food Program.
By mid-2022, the U.N. Development Program estimates that 97% of Afghanistan’s population will “plunge” into poverty. Up to one million children under 5 could die by the end of the year due to the country’s food crisis and the lack of water and sanitation services, according to UNICEF.
The cold weather brought by the winter season makes the situation even more complicated. To keep Mohammed warm, Alikhil boils water and sets the kettle near his bed.
The struggle to keep their homes warm could increase the risk of illnesses, according to UNICEF. If a child is malnourished, the risks of getting sick are higher, and the recovery could take longer.
“We are approaching a critical juncture for Afghanistan’s children, as winter brings with it a multitude of threats to their health,” Abdul Kadir Musse, a former UNICEF Afghanistan representative, said in a Jan. 15 press release.
“There is no time to lose. Without urgent, concerted action — including ensuring we have the resources to deploy additional cash transfers and winter supplies — many of the country’s children will not live to see spring,” he said.
The financial situation among Afghans becomes even more challenging, following the freezing of more than $9 billion in assets after the Taliban took power last August.
The measure to freeze foreign reserves was taken as a way to prevent the resources from falling into the Taliban’s hands. The U.N. has about $135 million in aid in Afghanistan but it can’t access the money since the Taliban-run central bank lacks the infrastructure to convert it to afghani, the country’s currency.
As a way to meet the needs of families, UNICEF launched a $2 billion appeal in December as a way to respond to the needs of over 24 million Afghans. The appeal will “help avert the collapse of health, nutrition, WASH, education and other vital social services for children and families.”
The U.S. is also taking part in providing aid to Afghanistan as it deals with a growing humanitarian crisis. In January, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced a contribution of over $308 million in humanitarian assistance for Afghans, bringing the total amount of aid in the country to nearly $782 million since October 2020.
“The United States continues to urge the Taliban to allow unhindered humanitarian access, safe conditions for humanitarians, independent provision of assistance to all vulnerable people and freedom of movement for aid workers of all genders,” a press release stated at the time. “We will continue to work to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people and call on other donors to continue to contribute to this international response.”
The U.S., however, is under growing pressure to unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets. The Taliban met with western diplomats from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy and Norway in January during a series of closed-door meetings in Oslo to discuss the humanitarian crisis affecting millions of Afghans.
It marked the first official talks since the group seized power six months ago.
For people like Alikhil, they struggle to find opportunities in a country under conflict and the Taliban’s leadership.
“All I want from them is to create a job opportunity [for us] so our lives get better. I am an educated person. I need a job so I can serve the country,” he said. “There is no job, no money.”
Without money and resources, some families are forced to make horrific decisions to make some money — even if it means selling their children.
“As of now, this child belongs to me; I have the right to sell him,” Khoday Ram, who is struggling to feed himself and his family, told ABC News. “If things would have been better, I would have let him study. But we’ve been left like this.”
“It’s normal to sell our daughters, but the situation is so bad, I have to sell my son because we’re hungry,” he said. “What happens to my son once I sell him is not up to me. He could end up being killed, or he could be allowed to go to school.”
Others are left with the choice to sell their organs in exchange for some money to buy a meal.
“I couldn’t go out and beg for money, I was not able to beg. Then I decided to go to the hospital and sell my kidney, so I could at least feed my children for some time,” Ghulam Hazrat told ABC News.
With over 2.5 million registered Afghan refugees, they consist of one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Approximately 2.2 million have relocated to Iran and Pakistan, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Due to the growing conflicts and the rise of the Taliban to power, the UNHCR predicts the number will continue to rise.
While Alikhil struggles to find a job so he can provide for his family, what keeps him hopeful is Mohammed and his recovery after getting the strength to open his eyes once again.
“Only God knows the future, what will happen, whether we will get help or not,” he said. “In our community here, until now, we didn’t get any kind of help yet, neither money or flour. So far no one has helped us.”
“All I want is to earn something so I can take care of my family’s expenses, that’s it,” Alikhil said.
(WASHINGTON) — It’s a move that would have been unthinkable last year: Weeks after a holiday surge crushed hospitals and more people died in a single month than a typical annual flu season, four Democratic governors this week declared an end date to statewide mask mandates in schools.
The new changes won’t take effect for several weeks. Gov. Ned Lamont’s Connecticut mandate will expire Feb. 28, followed by New Jersey on March 7, and Oregon and Delaware on March 31 — presumably after the omicron wave has ended and case counts are low. Their decisions also leave local school districts the option of keeping their mandates in place.
Still, the message from the Democratic governors to President Joe Biden was unmistakable: With the midterms nine months away, Democrats are now joining the chorus of Republicans who say the nation must learn to “live with the virus” and are pressing Biden to chart a path forward.
“Democratic voters have run out of empathy for unvaccinated people dying of COVID,” said Brian Stryker, a partner at Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm. “They are ready to live their lives.”
If 2021 was the year of the vaccine, 2022 is already shaping up to be the year voters demand the U.S. moves on.
For health experts, living with COVID means paying attention to local case counts and “dialing” up or down restrictions as needed. It also means taking steps to protect people who are immunocompromised and are at higher risk for breakthrough cases, as well as children under the age of 5 who still don’t qualify for a vaccine.
For many Americans, though, including a growing number of Democratic voters, living with COVID means loosening restrictions regardless of case counts or vaccination status.
According to a new Axios/Ipsos poll, two-thirds of Americans say they do not believe it’s possible for the U.S. to eradicate the coronavirus within the next year, although they are divided about how to handle that.
That reality puts unique pressure on Biden ahead of his State of the Union address on March 1 — a speech typically used by sitting presidents to declare victory and look toward the future.
“The public is saying ‘enough.’ The politicians are saying ‘enough,'” said Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist.
“If Biden doesn’t say ‘enough’ at the SOTU, he’ll be digging a hole he can’t climb out. The (Democratic) governors know this because they’re closer to the people,” he wrote in an email to ABC News.
A Democratic official familiar with the thinking of the governors said they have been talking for a while now about offering COVID-wary Americans a “light at the end of the tunnel” after the omicron wave — and pressing the White House to do the same in Biden’s upcoming national address.
“The governors are acutely aware that there’s a need to provide people some optimism and give people some sense of ‘here’s the path forward,'” said the official, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity in order to speak more openly.
“They want him to talk about his wins, and there are good ones to talk about” like job growth and infrastructure investments that aren’t COVID related, the person said.
Biden’s initial plan to liberate Americans from the pandemic by last Fourth of July centered on vaccinations and ensuring widespread and equitable access. Eventually, he turned to workplace mandates. Yet one year later, tens of millions of eligible Americans remain unvaccinated and his mandates for large businesses have been scuttled by the Supreme Court.
COVID hospitalizations and deaths also have eclipsed any comparisons to the flu. For example, more than 60,000 people died from complications of COVID in January alone — one of the highest monthly COVID-19 death tolls on record. By comparison, a typical flu season might result in 20,000 to 50,000 deaths in an entire year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. in the last week averaged about 614 new cases a day per 100,000 residents — 61 times what the CDC considers to be low transmission. The CDC still recommends masks indoors, including in schools, for people ages 2 and up.
“I’m sure they’re facing a lot of pressure, both internally and externally, to try to make sure the pandemic is over,” Andy Slavitt, a former Biden adviser on COVID, said on ABC’s “Start Here” podcast of the Democratic governors. “It’s just not quite clear that it is.”
While the Democratic governors insist public health remains the priority, it’s hard to ignore this week’s rollbacks as a political calculation as Democrats look toward the midterm elections. Connecticut’s Lamont is up for reelection this fall. Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown’s term limit expires this fall, leaving her seat up for grabs.
In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Philip Murphy is coming off a narrow victory last fall, a race that surprised many pundits by how close it was. Also worth noting was Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia last fall, flipping enough Democratic voters to win the governor’s race there by promising to keep schools open and empower parents to make education decisions.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and lead pollster for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, said overall polling in the country still suggests strong support among Americans for masks in schools, with moms and women in particular erring on the side of caution. So Biden will have to take into account that majority of voters when addressing the nation, even if they aren’t as vocal, she said.
“Voters are also very worried about the learning loss and social learning loss associated with closing schools,” she said. “Democrats are on the right side of this issue and should make the argument forcefully that we are going to protect our children, work with parents and teachers to get the best schooling for our children, and follow the science to get this under control.”
Stryker said he still thinks the goal — at least from a political standpoint — is to move away from talking about the pandemic as much as Democrats are.
“If Democrats can stop talking about COVID every day, treat it like the long-term problem it is and start talking about more immediate concerns of voters” like the high cost of living, “the better they will do in the midterms,” he said.
