(NEW YORK) — Severe weather continues to strike the South with damaging winds, tornadoes and huge hail. At least two people have been killed in the storms.
Chunks of hail the size of golf balls were reported Monday night in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi.
On Tuesday, severe thunderstorms moved into Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. In Pembroke, Georgia, a woman was killed Tuesday evening when her mobile home was destroyed by a possible tornado.
Two confirmed tornadoes already touched down early Tuesday in Texas, including one in Johnson County, near the town of Joshua, where one person died.
There were 21 reported tornadoes from late Monday through Tuesday from Mississippi to South Carolina. One of the radar confirmed tornadoes caused some structure and tree damage near the town of Newton, Mississippi, and Highway I-2.
In addition, officials in Allendale, South Carolina, told Savannah, Georgia, ABC affiliate WJCL-TV that three people were left with non-life-threatening injuries after a possible tornado.
Thousands are without power in Washington state as a major storm moved through the area, producing wind gusts near 81 mph.
As this storm system moves east, wind and snow alerts are issued from the Rockies into the Plains with high fire danger from Texas to South Dakota. Red flag warnings have been issued for the Plains where winds could gust up to 70 mph.
California’s first major heat wave of the season is expected soon; a heat advisory was issued for Los Angeles and San Diego with high wind alerts posted for the mountain areas.
The heat wave will begin Wednesday with highs in the lower to middle 90s.
(NEW YORK) — The world’s biodiversity is constantly being threatened by warming temperatures and extreme changes in climate and weather patterns.
And while that “doom and gloom” is the typical discourse surrounding how climate change is affecting biodiversity, another interesting aspect of the warming temperatures is how different species have been adapting over the decades, as the warming progresses, experts say.
Species typically adapt in one of three ways, Morgan Tingley, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of California Los Angeles, told ABC News. They shift their distribution, change spaces or move from one place to another when the region gets too hot (either to a cooler region to higher altitudes). There are also shifts in phenology, or the seasonal timing of biological events, such as when deer are born or when birds return from migration. And finally, the species themselves change, either through evolution or natural selection, Tingley said.
How the species are changing is the least well-studied, but more and more research is emerging to pinpoint climate change’s role in adaption, Tingley said.
The loss of biodiversity is complex — and the most direct impact humans have on it is through habitat loss, rather than climate change, according to the experts. But as more research emerges, the role of climate change is being considered as well.
“Climate change is like this global killer,” Maria Paniw, an ecologist at the Doñana Biological Station, a public research institute in Seville, Spain, told ABC News. “In effect, it often makes all the other risks that animals face much worse.”
Here are some unusual ways climate change is affecting nature:
Invasive fire ants are thriving in warmer soil
Not all living species are suffering as a result of rising temperatures.
While climate change is one of the primary agents of the global decline in insect abundance, one species of fire ant, Wasmannia auropuctata, was found to thrive in warmer conditions, according to a study published Tuesday in Biology Letters.
Researchers heated up tropical forest soil in Panama to directly test how temperature increase affects ant communities and found that little fire ants were more abundant in warmed plots. After studying the insects over a two-year period, scientists determined that the increase in soil temperature can have a profound effect on ants, potentially favoring species with invasive traits and moderate heat tolerances.
Wasmannia auropuctata is native to the Panama region where it was studied, but it has been found to be an invasive species in other regions around the world, Jelena Bujan, an ecologist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and author of the study, told ABC News.
“It seems like this increase was not detrimental for the community,” Bujan said.
Tuberculosis risks in meerkats increasing
Higher temperature extremes may increase the risk of outbreaks of tuberculosis in Kalahari meerkats by increasing physiological stress, as well as the movement of males between group, according to a study published in Nature in February.
As the Kalahari Desert in South Africa continues to warm, the meerkats become more physically stressed and therefore they have less time to forage during the day, for most of the year, Paniw said. The heat, combined with drought conditions from decreasing rainfall amounts, results in the decreasing availability of food as well.
That widespread physical stress can lead to endemic diseases such as tuberculosis to end up in outbreaks, exacerbated by the fact that meerkats are a social species that interact in groups.
“Because of the physical stress involved and less food availability, unhealthy conditions can turn endemic disease more frequently into severe outbreaks decreasing group sizes and putting groups at risk of extinction,” Paniw said.
Similar behavior has been seen in corals, which, when infected with a bacterial infection, can spread it “more widely” in warmer conditions, she added.
Rising ‘divorce’ rates among albatrosses
Albatrosses, a monogamous species famous for mating for life, are seeing higher “divorce” rates as temperatures warm, a study published in the Royal Society Journal in November found.
The rate of Black-browed albatross pairs that split up and and found new mates rose to 8% during years of unusually warm water temperatures, researchers who studied more than 15,000 albatross pairs in the Falkland Islands over 15 years found.
The previous rate of divorce, 1% to 3%, typically involved female albatrosses finding a new mate as a result of an unsuccessful breeding season, scientists said. But during the years of atypical warmth, breakups rose even among couples that successfully reproduced.
The research is the “first evidence of a significant influence of the prevailing environmental conditions on the prevalence of divorce in a long-lived socially monogamous population,” the authors concluded.
The findings will also provide “critical insight” into the role of the environment on divorce in other socially monogamous avian and mammalian populations, the researchers said.
Polar bears are inbreeding due to melting sea ice
Polar bear populations were found to have up to a 10% loss in genetic diversity over a 20-year period as a result of inbreeding due to habitat fragmentation, a recent study published in Royal Society Journals in September found.
Scientists studied in Svalbard, the Norwegian archipelago on the Barents Sea, and found that the frequency in which the inbreeding occurred correlated with a “rapid disappearance of Arctic sea ice.”
Simo Maduna, a researcher at the Norwegian Institute of Bioeconomy Research and author of the study, described the results as “alarming” and “surprising” to ABC News.
The lack of genetic diversity could also eventually lead to the species’ inability to produce fertile offspring or withstand disease, Maduna said.
“With genetic diversity, when the population becomes so small, you’ll find that there will be a higher chance of closely related individuals mating and producing offspring,” he said. “But with that comes a risk in the sense that some of the traits … that are recessive, will now basically be unmasked in the population.”
When gray seals give birth is changing
Researchers who monitored gray seals in the U.K.’s Skomer Marine Conservation Zone for three decades found that climate change has caused older seal mothers to give birth to pups earlier. The observation favors the hypothesis that climate affects phenology, or the timing of biological events, by altering the age profile of the population, a study published November in the Royal Society Journals found.
In 1992, when the researchers first began surveying grey seal populations, the midpoint of the pupping season was the first week of October. By 2004, the pupping season had advanced three weeks earlier, to mid-September, according to the study.
Warmer years were also associated with an older average age of mothers, the scientists found. Gray seals typically start breeding around 5 years old and can continue for several decades after. But the older the seals got, the earlier they gave birth.
The changes were not isolated to the U.K., as there have been observable changes in the timing of seal life throughout the Atlantic and the world, according to the study.
Amazonian birds are shrinking
Birds in undisturbed areas of the Amazon rainforest, the largest in the world, are experiencing physical changes to dryer, hotter climates, according to research published in Science Advances in November.
Scientists who studied four decades of data on Amazonian bird species found that 36 species have lost substantial weight, some as much as 2% of their body weight every decade since 1980. In addition, all of the species showed a decrease in average body weight.
“Faced with a changing environment, biological responses of species are limited to extinction, distribution shifts, and adaptation,” the authors said. “For birds in lowland Amazonia, population trends for a subset of the community are not encouraging.”
Birds are considered by scientists to be a sentinel species, which indicate the overall health of an ecosystem. The precipitation in the region declined as average temperature rose — all during the study period.
Tingley, who studies birds, said a general hypothesis surrounding this phenomenon is that animals must shrink as temperatures rise to become more “thermo-efficient” and regulate body heat.
“Because as things get warmer, it’s basically more sort of thermo-efficient to have a smaller body size because you can dissipate heat more effectively,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with troops crossing the border from Belarus and Russia. Moscow’s forces have since been met with “stiff resistance” from Ukrainians, according to U.S. officials.
Russian forces retreated last week from the Kyiv suburbs, leaving behind a trail of destruction. After graphic images emerged of civilians lying dead in the streets of Bucha, U.S. and European officials accused Russian troops of committing war crimes.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 06, 5:49 am
EU proposes new sanctions, readies Russian coal ban
European Union leaders said on Wednesday they were preparing a new round of economic sanctions against Russia, as outrage grew over civilian deaths in Bucha.
“We have all seen the haunting images of Bucha. This is what is happening when Putin’s soldiers occupy Ukrainian territory,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. “They call this liberation. I call this war crimes. The Russian authorities will have to answer for them.”
The sanctions to be proposed may include a ban on importing Russian coal, bans on transactions with four Russian banks, and a ban on Russian ships at EU ports, among other measures.
The fifth round of sanctions “will not be our last,” von der Leyen said. U.S. officials are also expected to announce new sanctions on Wednesday, sources told ABC News.
Apr 06, 4:47 am
Mariupol airstrikes continue, deepening humanitarian crisis
Russian forces are continuing their airstrikes in Mariupol, the besieged Ukrainian port city, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday.
“The humanitarian situation in the city is worsening,” the ministry said. “Most of the 160,000 remaining residents have no light, communication, medicine, heat or water.”
Russian troops have prevented humanitarian access to the southern city, a move the ministry said was a part of a strategy to pressure Ukraine to surrender.
Apr 06, 12:11 am
US concedes Russia won’t be expelled from Security Council
Speaking with MSNBC Tuesday night, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the U.S. could not remove Russia from the United Nation’s most powerful body, the Security Council.
“They are a member of the Security Council. That’s a fact. We can’t change that fact, but we certainly can isolate them in the Security Council,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
That’s separate from the push to remove Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which Thomas-Greenfield said earlier they hope to bring to the U.N. General Assembly for a vote.
“I know we’re going to get” the necessary two-thirds majority, she told CNN.
Thomas-Greenfield also described what it was like in the room Tuesday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s graphic video finally played for the Security Council. She told MSNBC it was the first time she saw the uncensored video of the war’s victims.
“We were all speechless. We had all seen various videos showing atrocities. But they all covered up the real, you know, the real people that were there – they were all blurred,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “This was the first time I’ve seen that video without the bodies being blurred. And it was horrific. And there was silence in the room. I can tell you that people were horrified.”
Apr 05, 9:26 pm
US sending $100M in new anti-tank missiles
The U.S. will be sending an additional $100 million in Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, a White House official confirmed to ABC News. The weapons will be coming from existing military stockpiles.
The White House later released a memorandum from President Joe Biden saying he would be using drawdown powers to release “an aggregate value of $100 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Ukraine.”
Pentagon officials have said anti-tank weapons provided by the U.S. and other partner countries have been very successful in staving off Russian troops and bogging down vehicle movement.
(WASHINGTON) — The White House is attempting to speed up the nation’s response to long COVID by establishing a new task force to coordinate research efforts across the government.
President Joe Biden appointed Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra as the interagency task force leader in a memorandum issued Tuesday.
The task force will deliver two reports over the next four months, a senior administration official told ABC News.
The first report will lay out existing government services for people struggling with long COVID. The second report will plan for further research needs.
“The interagency will take 120 days to put forward a comprehensive action plan that will lay out all of the work that’s ongoing, the lessons that have been learned and the plan moving forward to make sure we continue to accelerate and move as fast as we can,” the senior administration official said.
Biden’s directive also called on the National Institute of Health to accelerate its ongoing $1.15 billion research project, moving quicker to fulfill its slow-moving pledge to enroll 40,000 Americans in long COVID studies.
Other White House efforts would require about $45 million in funding, all of which depends on congressional approval, which is expected to be an uphill battle for Biden. About $25 million would go toward long COVID research, and about $20 million would be allocated to fund centers that are making headway in long COVID treatment.
But experts who advocate for the government to do more on long COVID say money is not the chief concern. The government has already made a huge investment in long COVID research with the over $1 billion NIH project called the Researching COVID to Enhance Recovery (RECOVER) Initiative.
And Biden’s memorandum on Tuesday didn’t add many new policies to the federal response.
The top priority, experts say, is moving quickly on research that is already underway to get a clear picture of how widespread long COVID is and how urgently the country needs to respond.
“I think the frustration is they’re taking their time,” said former White House Health Policy Advisor Dr. Zeke Emanuel, reacting to Biden’s announcement.
Emanuel, who co-wrote a recent report on the path out of the pandemic, called for NIH to enroll people quicker in its studies and “turbocharge” the process. Recent reporting found the NIH had so far enrolled 1,366 people, or just 3% of its goal.
“This is not rocket science. These are desperate people and it should be easy to enroll hundreds of thousands of them,” Emanuel said.
He criticized the four-month timeline, though commended the White House for announcing Becerra as “the point person” and “realizing they have to do more.”
The White House, for its part, said on Tuesday that results would come out “every day” of the four-month period.
“We’re not going to wait 120 days to share our results. We’re coming out with our results every single day, as soon as we have them,” a senior administration official said.
“We feel the urgency of this moment. We want to make sure that we’re sharing lessons and learnings as we have them and that is our commitment,” the official added.
Gerard Bottino/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Nationwide distribution of one of the last remaining monoclonal antibody treatments is being paused “effective immediately” since it has shown to be ineffective against the COVID-19 BA.2 subvariant now dominating every region of the country, an internal letter sent Tuesday afternoon from the federal government to states and obtained by ABC News said.
States and stakeholders should not expect any further shipments of sotrovimab, from GSK and Vir Biotechnology, from which the Food and Drug Administration has pulled authorization nationwide.
Sotrovimab was one of two monoclonal therapies in the U.S. arsenal that worked against previous variants. Now, the omicron subvariant has shown to chip away at its efficacy.
The government and FDA had already been incrementally limiting sotrovimab distribution in pockets of the country where BA.2 had been creeping up as the prevailing COVID strain. Tuesday, the FDA announced it would pull back authorization completely.
The agency said it will continue to monitor BA.2’s spread across the country, and that doctors and patients should use one of the other treatments that have held up against BA.2 — the one other monoclonal that still works, bebtelovimab from Eli Lilly; Paxlovid, or the antiviral pills from Pfizer; or molnupiravir from Merck.
Monoclonals have become a mainstay in our COVID medicine cabinet. Their ability to curb hospitalization rates, particularly among unvaccinated high-risk patients, has made them a key component in Biden’s COVID plan.
But new evolving strains of the virus have forced health care officials to recalibrate existing treatments — and this is not the first time the U.S. has seen COVID treatments get shut down when a new variant of concern stymies its efficacy.
GSK tells ABC it is prepping further data on whether a higher dose would hold up better against the omicron subvariant, which it’s sharing with relevant health and regulatory bodies.
The internal letter urges health care providers to make sure they are up to date with which variants impact what treatments, since it’s constantly shifting — and for providers to be aware of the variant makeup in their region in order to “guide treatment decisions” in an optimal way for their patients.
Meanwhile, the national COVID-19 medicine cabinet is once again getting whittled down by new variants and by limited supplies.
Weekly allocations of many COVID therapies had already been scaled down while further COVID relief funding stalled in Congress, and the government cut back on the amount of treatments shipped to states.
Though Senate negotiators had struck a deal for $10 billion in additional funding, its passage is far from guaranteed. It is unclear if this slimmed-down version of what the White House wanted will cover the country’s needs should another infection surge emerge. Without sufficient funding, the White House previously said the U.S. supply of the antiviral pills like Paxlovid could run out by September.
(NEW YORK) — As the nation approaches the grim milestone of 1 million lives confirmed lost to COVID-19, a new report reveals the “devastating and disproportionate” impact of the virus on low-income communities in the U.S., offering an initial analysis of the deadly consequences of poverty, economic insecurity and systemic racism.
“Poverty was not tangential to the pandemic, but deeply embedded in its geography,” researchers wrote. “Poverty and widespread inequality increases vulnerability to crises. While vaccines will prevent the worst impacts of COVID-19, they will not inoculate against poverty.”
The report, produced by the The Poor People’s Campaign in collaboration with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, found that death rates in the lowest income group were double the death rates of those in the highest income group.
In addition, counties with disproportionately more Black residents had a significantly higher COVID-19 death rate than counties that did not.
The pandemic exacerbated preexisting social and economic disparities that existed prior to the emergence of COVID-19, the report found.
“Crises do not unfold independently of the conditions from which they arise,” researchers said. “The pandemic exacerbated preexisting social and economic disparities that have long festered in the US, including a deeply divided society, widespread poverty, a weak social safety net, inadequate living conditions, and a lack of trust in science that predated COVID-19.”
Prior to the onset of the pandemic, there were 140 million low-income people living in the U.S., accounting for approximately 40% of the population — including more than half of children in the country.
“Widespread and unequal distribution of wealth, income and resources prior to the pandemic created the conditions for many of the negative outcomes associated with the virus,” researchers wrote.
Death rates have varied throughout the pandemic, in each of the various surges. Researchers found that the two deadliest waves were the winter surge of 2020-2021, accounting for nearly 40% of all deaths to date, and the recent omicron surge, accounting for nearly 20% of deaths so far, according to data from Johns Hopkins University.
With the exception of the first COVID-19 surge, U.S. counties with the “lowest median income had death rates at least two times higher than that of the counties with the highest income.”
Preexisting disparities in health care access, wealth distribution and housing insecurity created “disastrous effects” for some Americans, as the virus exacerbated gaps in access that “caused increased harm to populations based on their class, race, gender, geography, and ability.”
Findings also suggested that pandemic job losses were concentrated among low-income workers, and that Americans living in poverty were the most likely to miss work due to COVID-19. Furthermore, Black and Hispanic women were most likely to lose full-time jobs.
Researchers stressed that adequate living wages, shared economic prosperity and inclusive welfare programs can address some of the concerns discussed in the report. In addition, ensuring universal and affordable health care, housing, water, access to utilities, quality public education and guaranteeing a robust democracy “will establish a more equitable foundation upon which we can build back better from the pandemic.”
(WASHINGTON) — Domestic airfare is up 40% from the start of the year and is expected to climb another 10% next month, according to online booking platform Hopper.
Last month, average airfare in the U.S. went up 5.2%, the third largest one-month jump since 1999, according to Scott Keyes, founder of Scott’s Cheap Flights.
Hopper said the cost of a domestic round trip is averaging $330 — 7% above 2019 prices. For international trips, the average round trip cost is $810, up 25% from the start of the year.
Pent-up demand and rising prices of jet fuel are driving the change.
“A tremendous amount of demand [is] from travelers who have not been able to travel the last two spring and summer seasons,” Haley Berg, economist at Hopper, said in an interview with ABC News. “And the second factor is jet fuel. Jet fuel prices are also up 40% since the beginning of the year and up 75% since this time last year. Demand and higher jet fuel prices together are really driving overall domestic airfare up.”
But it’s not all bad news. Keyes said average airfare doesn’t tell the whole story.
“A lot of folks see that headlines about airfares going up, and they’re worried that they’re not going to get any cheap flights anymore. And I actually think that’s the that’s the wrong way to look at things,” Keyes said in an interview with ABC News.
In the past two weeks, Keyes has found deals like $215 round trip to Hawaii, $395 round trip to Milan and $579 round trip to Australia.
“While it’s creeping back up, it’s important to remember we are still living in the golden age of cheap flights. Tickets are significantly cheaper than they used to be even a decade or two ago,” Keyes said.
To get those cheap fares, Keyes said it’s important to book one to three months in advance for domestic trips and two to eight months ahead for international trips.
(WASHINGTON, D.C.) — The return of tourists to Capitol Hill — and their discarded food and trash — should have been a “telltail” sign.
Following several “aggressive” incidents, Capitol Police warned the public Tuesday not to approach any foxes reportedly raising alarms around the Capitol complex.
“We have received several reports of aggressive fox encounters on or near the grounds of the U.S. Capitol,” Capitol Police tweeted at 12:50 p.m. on Tuesday. “For your safety, please do not approach any foxes. Animal Control Officers are working to trap and relocate any foxes they find.”
A Capitol Police spokesman told ABC News that a fox “bit or nipped” at least six people, including one lawmaker.
The office of the House Sergeant at Arms had also warned lawmakers in a memo about the fox reportedly biting people and said: “There are possibly several fox dens on Capitol Grounds.”
Pictures of the cute — but potentially dangerous — creature first popped up on social media on Monday. The fox was spotted scavenging on the streets nearby Tuesday afternoon, despite the area being crowded with tourists now that the Capitol complex reopened to the public last month after being mostly closed for two years because of the pandemic.
After workers spent hours trying to find the animal in question, Capitol Police tweeted a photo at 3:36 p.m. of the culprit in a cage with the line “Captured.”
— U.S. Capitol Police (@CapitolPolice) April 5, 2022
Some on the internet were quick to call for the fox — who was captured with the help of the Humane Rescue Alliance — to be freed. One social media account cosplaying as the “Capitol Fox” also appeared on Twitter Tuesday, even releasing a statement on what the fox called its “illegal arrest.”
“As a fox, I cannot speak. And too often — I have nobody to speak for me. They mock me in songs, they wear me as clothes, and they hunt me down like a criminal in my home. For what, I ask you?” the statement said.
Notably, foxes are susceptible to rabies and can transmit the disease to humans, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — a fact one lawmaker knows now all too well.
While Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, told reporters she had a close encounter with the fox Monday evening and showed a video she took of the usually nocturnal animal, for Rep. Ami Bera, D-Calif., the encounter was far closer: Bera was bitten.
The congressman’s office confirmed that he was “nipped on the leg” in a statement to ABC News and admitted to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center where he received several shots.
Bera, who is a physician, tweeted a warning a light-hearted warning about his close call.
What does the fox say? Last night, I found out…
Joking aside, animal bites are extremely serious. In the case of an encounter, please speak with a physician immediately: https://t.co/J4tmdlZzQI.
(NEW YORK) — The flashlights of the Ukrainian army followed Zi Faámelu, a transgender woman from Ukraine, as she walked through a swamp and hid from the military while crossing the Romanian border.
Tall, sharp bushes scratched the singer’s face, and the rough waters from the river pulled her body in the opposite direction. She knew it was the only chance she had to escape.
She was carrying only her passport, wrapped in a trash bag to protect it from the water. Her passport identified her as male, making it illegal for her to flee Ukraine after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy ordered all men to join the army.
Once she made it to the other side, Faámelu could only think of the fact she made it alive.
“I knew this was my last chance of survival and I had to do something like this real quick,” she told ABC News.
“I was almost drowning and I drank so much water. And I was very exhausted and I swam. I thought I [wouldn’t] make it. But somehow I reached the other side.”
At the first checkpoint, Faámelu said the guards took a photo of her passport and sent it across the border to prevent her from leaving the country. The treatment she received at the border, she said, was similar to the reality she faced for being a trans woman in Ukraine.
“My story is not like popular opinion right now because I know the inside of it all. And it’s not pretty,” she said. “It’s ugly. So I know the world stands with Ukraine, but they don’t know what’s going on inside the country.”
Throughout her life, Faámelu said she faced discrimination and transphobia. The invasion made things worse, she said, and she found herself stuck inside her apartment due to fear of persecution.
“At first, I wanted to leave Kyiv because there were bombings, but there was a group of dangerous people moving around this city. Homophobic, transphobic people that were preying on LGBTQ folks,” she said.
Faámelu is not the only one who says she fears for her safety. Olha Raiter traveled with her ex-partner, Uliana, and their 7-month-old son to Berlin from Ukraine by car. The trip took about 68 hours, and their car became a temporary home as they saw their country being shelled.
“I tried to stay positive because you could just die in one second if you just imagine what’s going on,” Raiter said.
“We have to be positive. We have to believe,” she added.
Raiter always wanted to have kids, but she said it was difficult to make it a reality because of how it would be viewed by society.
“I couldn’t get married,” she said. “We are all discriminated against in Ukraine because we cannot get the same rights. We have Damien together, but officially, she’s nobody to him, even if she’s a mother the same as me … and she was there from the very beginning and she was there when I was delivering him. But she still, according to Ukrainian law, … she’s nobody.”
Raiter says, “We were moving in the right direction. We put pressure on our government, and it changes. I didn’t have a feeling that this was a country that didn’t want me.” Despite the hardships and the rough reality members of the LGBTQ community say they face in Ukraine, Raiter did not leave the country because she felt unwanted, but feared raising a child among war. She hopes to return to her home country one day to raise Damien.
“I want [Damien] to … grow up in Ukraine, and I think it’s important because it’s important for me. I know it’s possible,” Raiter said.
Svetlana Shaytanova works for Quarteera, a nonprofit organization creating a safe space for members of the Russian-speaking LGBTQ community in Germany. She focuses her work on spreading awareness and sharing the harsh realities faced by queer people, like Faámelu.
The reality for trans people in Ukraine and across Europe, Shaytanova said, is that it’s harder than it might appear.
“They don’t want us to exist,” Shaytanova said.
“It’s not the government that persecutes people; they put laws in place that allow the general population to be openly aggressive against queer people.”
Faámelu is currently staying with a German family – and she says she feels lucky.
“It’s a perfect place for me right now. It’s just luck, … because I could’ve died [at the border],” she said.
When Faámelu crossed the border, she left everything behind – her clothes, belongings and even her art pieces. In the midst of the chaos, she still hopes to keep making music and continue her activism within the trans community.
“[My voice] is the only thing I have now … because I have nothing. They took everything away from me,” she said.
Faámelu says change must be made so others don’t have to be discriminated against and fight for their lives as she did at the border. The issue, she said, is beyond the Russian invasion.
“We’re fighting for our lives as trans people,” Faámelu said. “It’s a war for recognition, for getting noticed, for getting hurt. But we are humans. We deserve our rights.
(WASHINGTON) — Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin got into a fiery exchange with Republican Rep. Matt Gaetz during a House Armed Services Committee budget hearing Tuesday, as Gaetz accused the Pentagon of strategic failures due to misplaced focus on alleged “wokeism.”
Gaetz began by asking Austin why taxpayers should fund lectures supporting socialism at the DOD-funded National Defense University, a reference to a recent virtual event hosted by the school titled “Responding to China: The Case For Global Justice and Democratic Socialism,” presented by French economist Thomas Piketty.
Austin said he was unaware of the lecture.
“So now that you know that they did this, would you agree that embracing socialism is not an effective strategy to combat China?” Gatez asked.
“I certainly don’t agree with embracing socialism,” Austin replied.
Gaetz continued, asking, “So why would we invite people we don’t agree with to evangelize views and values that we don’t share at the National Defense University, when we should be learning strategy about how to combat our enemies and make assessments that are accurate?”
Austin responded that learning strategy and other relevant subjects is the focus of military universities.
Decorum began to crumble as the two men started talking over one another, Gaetz reiterating the controversial content of the lecture, Austin reiterating that the Pentagon does not embrace socialism.
“I control the time!” Gaetz protested.
The Florida congressman proceeded to accuse the Defense Department of making poor predictions about the invasion of Ukraine and the fall of Afghanistan.
“You guys told us that Russia couldn’t lose. You told us that the Taliban couldn’t immediately win. And so I guess I’m wondering what in the $773 billion that you’re requesting today is going to help you make assessments that are accurate in the face of so many blown calls.
Austin paused for nearly six seconds before responding.
“You’ve seen what’s in our budget, you’ve seen how the budget matches the strategy, and so I’ll let that speak for itself,” he said.
The secretary then grew visibly annoyed when Gaetz said the U.S. has fallen behind other countries in terms of hypersonic weapons.
“What do you mean we’re behind in hypersonics? How do you make that assessment?” Austin said.
“Your own people brief us that we are behind and that China is winning. Are you aware of the briefings we get on hypersonics?” Gaetz asked.
Austin responded, “I am certainly aware of briefings that we provide to Congress.”
MORE: China’s reported hypersonic weapon test raises security concerns
Gaetz again attacked the Pentagon’s priorities.
“While everyone else in the world seems to be developing capabilities and being more strategic, we’ve got time to embrace critical race theory at West Point, to embrace socialism at the National Defense University, to do mandatory pronoun training,” he said.
Austin fired back: “This is the most capable, the most combat-credible force in the world. It has been and it will be so going forward. And this budget helps us to do that.”
“Not if we embrace socialism,” Gaetz said.
Austin then implied Gaetz was being unpatriotic.
“The fact that you are embarrassed by your country, by your military, I am sorry for that,” Austin said.
Gaetz retorted as Austin was still speaking: “Oh no, no, I’m embarrassed by your leadership, I am not embarrassed for my country.”
“It’s what you’re saying, it’s what you’re saying,” Austin said.
“I wish we were not losing to China … That is so disgraceful that you would sit here and conflate your failures with the failures of the uniformed service members. You guys said that Russia would overrun Ukraine in 36 days. You said that the Taliban would be kept at bay for months. You totally blew those calls. And maybe we would be better at them if the National Defense University actually worked a little more on strategy and a little less on wokeism,” Gaetz said.
“Has it occurred to you that Russia has not overrun Ukraine because of what we’ve done and our allies have done? Have you ever even thought about that?” Austin said.
Gaetz used his remaining seconds to reply: “But that was baked into your flawed assessment. And so I saw that the Obama administration tried to destroy our military by starving it of resources, and it seems the Biden administration is trying to destroy our military by force feeding it wokeism. I yield back.”
