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For Trump, the stakes are highest yet in Georgia’s GOP primary

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The power of former President Donald Trump’s endorsement and lasting influence over Republican midterm voters faces its biggest test yet on Tuesday in Georgia, where Trump and his former vice president are on opposite sides in a significant statewide race and where Trump’s “big lie” is effectively on the ballot.

So, for Trump, it’s not just politics — it’s personal.

Incumbent Gov. Brian Kemp and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, both Republicans, are defending their offices from challengers — but also from their most vocal critic, Trump, since both men resisted his pressure in 2020 to overturn President Joe Biden’s victory, in a state where three audits confirmed Trump lost by more than 11,000 votes.

Appearing to lay the groundwork for 2024, Trump has endorsed a slate of his loyalists who espouse his “big lie,” including former GOP Sen. David Perdue, relentlessly attacking Kemp in the process as a “sellout” and “coward.” But Trump appears headed for a showdown of his own, as some of his favored candidates, including Perdue, are behind in the polls.

“We have to win,” Trump said in a tele-town hall for Perdue in Georgia Monday night. “We want to win, and we have a governor that’s done the worst job of any governor in probably decades on election integrity.”

Cementing his break from Trump, former Vice President Mike Pence appeared in Kennesaw, Georgia, at the same time on Monday to rally behind Kemp and tout what he called “the Republican Party is the party of the future,” in what could be as an indirect swipe at Trump for continuing to falsely claiming 2020 election fraud.

“I know the polls look good — real good,” Pence said to applause. “But don’t let up, don’t slow down. Keep chopping.”

Trump spokesperson Taylor Budowich, turning the heat on Pence, said in a statement to ABC News that the former vice president is “desperate to chase his lost relevance” and “parachuting in to races, hoping someone is paying attention.”

With Kemp polling better than 50%, according to data compiled by FiveThirtyEight, Pence’s endorsee is expected to not only win renomination but surpass the need for a runoff with Trump’s pick. Polling also suggests Perdue would be a weaker candidate in the general election this fall, where Republicans will face Stacey Abrams, running unopposed for the Democratic gubernatorial nomination — a point Pence hammered.

“I’m here because Brian Kemp is the only candidate in tomorrow’s primary who has already defeated Stacey Abrams, whether she knows it or not,” Pence said Monday, praising Kemp without once mentioning Trump.

Perdue lost a Senate runoff last year to Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff. Georgia’s other senator, Rev. Sen. Raphael Warnock, will likely defend his seat in the emerging battleground against Herschel Walker, the Georgia college football legend Trump endorsed who is holding steady as the frontrunner in the GOP Senate primary, despite allegations of violent behavior, which Walker has denied.

Secretary of state race

In a closer, but arguably more consequential race, Trump has directed his ire at Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who famously refused in a January 2021 phone call to “find” the former president more votes, and endorsed challenger Rep. Jody Hice, R-Ga., who voted against certifying the 2020 election results.

The winner of the secretary of state race will play a key role in the next presidential election if Georgia again comes down to the wire.

Hice is one of at least 23 election deniers were running for secretary of state in 18 states, according to the States United Action, a nonpartisan advocacy group tracking the uptick in election deniers running for office. Former New Jersey Gov. Christine Todd Whitman, a Republican critic of Trump and co-chair of the group, warned that if Trump were to get his loyalists in place for 2024, it would presumably be much easier to ensure a loss wouldn’t happen again.

“People tend to focus just on the federal races and federal elections but forget that they’re run by the states. And that’s why these elections are so important,” Whitman told ABC News, describing the thinking behind their strategy: “We change the laws, so we can change the referee, so we can change the outcomes.”

So far, more than 850,000 votes have already been cast in Georgia – surpassing the early vote in the 2018 and 2020 elections, despite new election rules inspired by unproven claims of fraud surrounding the 2020 election which Democrats argue have restricted the vote.

“We know that increased turnout has nothing to do with suppression,” Abrams said at a press conference on Tuesday morning. “We know voters want their right to vote to be made real and be held sacrosanct. And so they are showing up.”

Raffensperger, providing reporters with an update on voting in Georgia on Tuesday, declined to answer a question about his race from the state capital, saying “Since we’re in this building, I really have my secretary of state hat on right now.”

After Perdue tells Abrams to ‘go back where she came from,’ she says Republicans just ‘deflect’

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(ATLANTA) — Stacy Abrams, a Black Democrat running for Georgia governor, declined on Tuesday to directly comment on Republican David Perdue saying she should “go back to where she came from.”

“No, not at all,” Abrams, said at a news conference in Atlanta, when asked by ABC News whether she wanted to respond to what was widely labeled as racist remarks from Perdue on Monday night while giving a campaign speech in which he also charged she was “demeaning her own race.”

“I will say this,” Abrams told ABC News at Tuesday’s press conference. “I have listened to Republicans for the last six months attack me. But they’ve done nothing to attack the challenges facing Georgia. They’ve done nothing to articulate their plans for the future of Georgia. Their response to a comment on their record is to deflect and to pretend that they’ve done good for the people of Georgia.”

Perdue, running to get the GOP nomination for Georgia governor, seized on Abram’s comments last week that Georgia was “worst state in the country to live,” citing residents’ disparities in mental health and maternal mortality, among other issues.

“She ain’t from here. Let her go back to where she came from,” Perdue, a former senator challenging Gov. Brian Kemp for their party’s nomination, said at a campaign event in the Atlanta suburbs on Monday night. “She doesn’t like it here.”

Abrams grew up in Mississippi but has deep ties to Georgia, a state she moved to during high school and where she previously served as the House minority leader. She said last week that “when you’re No. 48 for mental health, when you’re No. 1 for maternal mortality, when you have an incarceration rate that’s on the rise and wages that are on the decline, then you are not the No. 1 place to live.”

Perdue’s dismissal that she “go back” somewhere else echoes comments by his party’s standard-bearer, former President Donald Trump, who notoriously told four progressive, non-white lawmakers in 2019 to “go back” to the “broken and crime infested places from which they came.” The lawmakers Trump targeted are all U.S. citizens and his tweet sparked a firestorm of criticism. (Perdue’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News on Tuesday about the fallout of his attack on Abrams.)

While Abrams did not address Perdue directly at Tuesday morning’s press conference, she conceded that what she said last week about Georgia’s problems was “inelegant.” Still, she reiterated her larger point about what she called the many health and social challenges Georgians, especially voters, face.

“I had an inelegant delivery of the statement that I was making, and that is that Brian Kemp is a failed governor and doesn’t care about the people of Georgia,” she said. “Look at his record. Look at the results under his four years of leadership.” Kemp, for his part, has continued to assail Abrams as an out-of-step leftist while touting how he addressed COVID-19 and more.

Perdue on Monday also criticized comments Abrams made during her 2018 campaign for governor when she said she wanted to diversify the state’s economy beyond agriculture and hospitality.

But Perdue responded to her comments by claiming Abrams had “told Black farmers, ‘You don’t need to be on the farm,’ and she told Black workers in hospitality and all this, ‘You don’t need to be.'”

“She is demeaning her own race when it comes to that. I am really over this,” Perdue said. “She should never be considered material for governor of any state, much less our state where she hates to live.”

According to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, Abrams actually said in 2018: “I want to create a lot of different jobs. Because people shouldn’t have to go into agriculture or hospitality in Georgia to make a living in Georgia. Why not create renewable energy jobs? Because, I’m going to tell y’all a secret: Climate change is real.” (Even then, she was dinged by the GOP as “brash and condescending,” with her aides at the time calling the criticism “absurdly misleading.”)

Perdue, who has been endorsed by Trump, is hoping to overtake what polls show is a significant deficit behind Kemp in order to win the Republican nomination and face Abrams in November.

Abrams, the only major Democrat running for her party’s nomination, is preparing for a rematch with Kemp, whom she ran against in 2018 — losing by a very narrow margin that she claimed was influenced by tactics that suppressed the vote. The GOP has repeatedly highlighted Abrams’ criticism of the election she lost, saying it is hypocritical given how Democrats have renounced Trump’s election lies.

“In 2018, voters across the state were denied access to the right to vote,” Abrams said Tuesday. “They were denied the ability to register and stay on the rolls. They were denied the ability to cast the ballot and the ability to have that ballot counted In 2018.”

Even in the face of high voter turnout, she said, “We know that … has nothing to do with suppression. Suppression is about whether or not you make it difficult for voters to access the ballot.”

ABC News’ Miles Cohen, MaryAlice Parks, Brittany Shepherd and Briana Stewart contributed to this report.

At least 2 children dead in ‘active shooter’ incident at Texas elementary school

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — At least two children are dead and over a dozen injured after an “active shooter” incident at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, according to hospital officials.

A suspect has been taken into custody, police said. The Uvalde Police Department did not immediately provide further information.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital confirmed to ABC News that two children had died from presumed gunshot injuries in the incident.

Additionally, 13 students were being treated in the hospital’s emergency department in the wake of the incident, the hospital said. Two patients were transferred to San Antonio for treatment, while a third was pending transfer, the hospital said. A 45-year-old was also hospitalized after getting grazed by a bullet, the hospital said.

University Health in San Antonio said it had two patients from the shooting incident — a child and an adult. The hospital did not yet have information on their conditions.

Uvalde Mayor Don McLaughlin did not confirm casualties, but told ABC News in a text message that “this is a very bad situation.” He said the office is trying to contact parents before releasing any information.

Earlier, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had said a shooter was located at Robb Elementary School and asked people to stay away from the area.

“There is an active shooter at Robb Elementary,” the school district said on Twitter. “Law enforcement is on site. Your cooperation is needed at this time by not visiting the campus. As soon as more information is gathered it will be shared.”

A school official initially clarified to ABC News that the shooting took place off campus, and that Robb Elementary School was under lockdown.

The school informed parents shortly after 2 p.m. local time that students had been transported to the Sgt. Willie Deleon Civic Center, the reunification site, and could be picked up.

Uvalde, Texas, is located about 90 minutes west of San Antonio.

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and San Antonio Police Department are sending aid.

ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Multiple fatalities, including several children, after ‘active shooter’ incident at Texas elementary school: Sources

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — Multiple people are dead, including several children, after an “active shooter” incident at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, law enforcement sources told ABC News.

Multiple sources told ABC News the suspect is dead.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital has confirmed to ABC News that two children died from presumed gunshot injuries in the incident.

University Health in San Antonio said it had two patients from the shooting incident — a child and an adult. The hospital said the adult — a 66-year-old woman — is in critical condition. It did not have an update yet on the condition of the child.

Earlier, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had said a shooter was located at Robb Elementary School and asked people to stay away from the area.

A school official initially clarified to ABC News that the shooting took place off campus, and that Robb Elementary School was under lockdown.

The school informed parents shortly after 2 p.m. local time that students had been transported to the Sgt. Willie Deleon Civic Center, the reunification site, and could be picked up.

Uvalde, Texas, is located about 90 minutes west of San Antonio.

The Bexar County Sheriff’s Office and San Antonio Police Department are sending aid.

The Houston Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives also said it is assisting in the investigation of a school shooting.

ABC News’ Mireya Villarreal contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Ohio man charged with plot to assassinate former President George W. Bush

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(COLUMBUS, Ohio) — An Ohio man was charged with aiding and abetting a plot to kill former President George W. Bush, the Justice Department said Tuesday.

Shihab Ahmed Shihab Shihab, 52, an Iraqi citizen who lived in Columbus, was arrested early Tuesday by the FBI.

Shihab allegedly exchanged money with an undercover informant working for the FBI in an attempt to bring foreign individuals into the U.S. in order to carry out the assassination. He even traveled to Dallas in February 2022 to carry out surveillance of places regularly visited by the former president, the DOJ said.

He appeared in federal court in Ohio earlier on Tuesday, according to the Justice Department.

Shihab, according to a criminal complaint unsealed on Tuesday, said that he wanted to use an FBI confidential source’s service to “illegally” bring ISIS individuals to the US with the intention to murder Bush.

“Shihab told [Confidential Source 1] that the four Iraqi nationals Shihab wanted to smuggle into the United States are planning to kill former president George W. Bush,” the complaint said. “Shihab advised CS1 that former president Bush had a house and farm in Texas. Shihab twice inquired if CS1 knew what type and amount of security there was protecting former president Bush, as Shihab believed CS1 had connections in the Dallas area. Shihab asked if CS1 thought that four to six individuals were enough to kill former president Bush. CS1 stated that he/she did not know but believed former president Bush would have security.”

He repeatedly made claims to a separate confidential source that he’d be able to get a fake passport and be able to smuggle that source’s brother through the U.S.-Mexico border. He said an upfront payment between $10,000 and $40,000 was to be made in order to smuggle people in.

The U.S. Secret Service said it was prepared to handle any threat to the president.

“The U.S. Secret Service takes all threats to our protectees seriously,” it said in a statement to ABC News. “In order to maintain operational security, the Secret Service does not discuss the means and methods used to conduct our protective operations or matters of protective intelligence.”

“President Bush has all the confidence in the world in the United States Secret Service and our law enforcement and intelligence communities,” said Freddy Ford, a spokesman for Bush.

ABC News’ Mark Osborne contributed to this report.

Texas elementary school reports ‘active shooter’ on campus

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — Authorities are on scene at an “active shooter” incident at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, the school district said.

The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District said the shooter was located at Robb Elementary and asked people to stay away from the area.

A school official clarified to ABC News that the shooting took place off campus, but Robb Elementary School is under lockdown.

Parents were being asked to pick up students at Sgt. Willie Deleon Civic Center, according to the Uvalde Police Department.

Uvalde, Texas, is located about 90 minutes west of San Antonio.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

Suspect in custody after ‘active shooter’ reported at Texas elementary school

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — A suspect has been taken into custody after an “active shooter” incident at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, according to police.

The Uvalde Police Department did not immediately provide further information. It’s unclear whether anyone was injured in the shooting.

Earlier, the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District had said a shooter was located at Robb Elementary School and asked people to stay away from the area.

A school official clarified to ABC News that the shooting took place off campus, but Robb Elementary School was under lockdown.

Students will be transported to be picked up by parents at Sgt. Willie Deleon Civic Center, according to the Uvalde Police Department.

Uvalde, Texas, is located about 90 minutes west of San Antonio.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

New York City subway shooting suspect in custody

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — The alleged suspect in the unprovoked fatal shooting of 48-year-old Daniel Enriquez on a Q train in New York City is in police custody, according to law enforcement sources.

Sources identified the suspect as Andrew Abdullah, a 25-year-old man from Brooklyn with about 20 prior arrests, including an outstanding gun charge from last year. He also has prior arrests for assault, robbery, menacing and grand larceny, sources said.

Abdullah has three cases that are still pending, including an April arrest for fourth-degree criminal possession of stolen property for allegedly being found with a stolen motorcycle, as well as a June 2021 arrest for violating a protective order and March 2021 arrest for assault.

Detectives have also recovered the gun used in the shooting.

It is believed the suspect handed the gun to a homeless man as he fled the Canal Street station. The homeless man then apparently sold the gun for $10 to a third person, who reported it to police, the sources said.

The New York Police Department released surveillance photos Monday of the suspect believed to have shot Enriquez taken shortly after he exited the subway.

The motive for the shooting is still unknown.

In January 2020, Abdullah was arrested as part of a gun-related case and in May 2017 he was charged with second-degree attempted murder as part of an 83-count federal indictment of the Harlem-based street gangs Fast Money and Nine Block. Abdullah was sentenced to three years in federal prison, but served just four months before being released in 2019.

Witnesses say the suspect, alleged to be Abdullah, was pacing back and forth in the last car of a Manhattan-bound train around 11:45 a.m. when he pulled out a gun and fired it at Enriquez unprovoked, according to NYPD Chief of Department Kenneth Corey.

The shooting comes a little over a month after a Brooklyn subway rider opened fire on a train car, wounding 10 people. The suspect in that shooting, Frank James, was arrested one day later in lower Manhattan.

Transit crime is up 62.5% in the city year-to-date from 2021, according to NYPD statistics.

Fort Bragg to be renamed Fort Liberty among Army bases losing Confederate names: Exclusive

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(FAYETTEVILLE, N.C.) — A blue-ribbon Army commission has recommended new names for nine Army bases named after Confederate leaders, including Fort Bragg, which will be recommended to be renamed Fort Liberty, according to a U.S. official, ABC News learned exclusively Tuesday.

Later Tuesday, the Army Naming Commission is expected to formally disclose its recommended names for the bases named after Confederate generals.

Last year, Congress passed legislation that required the renaming of U.S. military installations named after Confederate leaders by 2023.

Congress and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin must approve the nine naming recommendations.

Fort Bragg in North Carolina is currently named after Gen. Braxton Bragg, a senior Confederate Army general. It would be renamed as Fort Liberty, the only one of the bases named after a concept, with eight others being renamed mostly after individuals with ties to Army history.

The other bases to be renamed are Fort Hood in Texas, Fort Rucker in Alabama, Fort Polk in Louisiana, Fort Benning and Fort Gordon in Georgia and Fort A.P. Hill, Fort Lee and Fort Pickett in Virginia.

The panel has recommended that Fort Hood, Texas, be renamed after Richard E. Cavazos, the first Latino to reach the rank of a four-star general in the Army.

Fort Gordon, Georgia, will be renamed after Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Army general who led all allied forces in Europe during World War II and later became president.

Fort Lee, Virginia, will be named after two individuals: Arthur Gregg, a former three-star general involved in logistics — the only living individual for whom a base will be named — and Charity Adams, the first African-American woman to be an officer in the Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps.

Fort Pickett, Virginia, will be named after Van Barfoot, who received the Medal of Honor for his heroism during World War II and is of Native American descent.

Fort A.P. Hill, Virginia, will be renamed after Dr. Mary Walker, a physician and women’s rights activist who received the Medal of Honor for her service during the Civil War.

Fort Benning, Georgia, will be renamed after Lt. Gen. Hal Moore, a pioneer in the Air Cavalry whose Vietnam-era story was memorialized in the book and movie, “We Were Soldiers.”

Fort Rucker, Alabama, will be named after Michael Novosel, a Medal of Honor recipient who flew combat aircraft in World War II and the wars in Korea and Vietnam.

Fort Polk, Louisiana, will be renamed after William Henry Johnson, a soldier whose heroism in World War Two was not honored with the Medal of Honor until 2015.

‘Bear market’ and ‘recession’ are back in the conversation. What they mean and why they matter.

May 24, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Lately, the stock market has taken a thrashing.

The Nasdaq and S&P 500 have each fallen for seven consecutive weeks. The Dow Jones Industrial Average has fared even worse, dropping for eight weeks straight, the longest such losing streak for the index since the early years of the Great Depression, in 1932.

The losses on Wall Street owe in no small part to the wider economy’s most pressing problem: sky-high inflation, Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at broker OANDA, told ABC News. For months, strong consumer spending and snarled supply chains have sent prices soaring for everyday expenses like food and gas, as well as for materials like computer chips that many US companies rely upon.

In response, the Federal Reserve has raised its benchmark interest rate to a range of 0.75% to 1%, and the central bank has signaled a series of additional hikes.

The goal is to slow down the economy, which in theory should eat away at demand and slash inflation. But the approach all but ensures a downturn for stocks, and runs the risk of hitting the brakes on the economy so hard that it triggers a wider contraction.

“The stock market is down — I’m not surprised, that’s by design,” Mark Zandi, the chief economist at Moody’s, told ABC News.

But the rate hikes at the Fed could send the economy into a downturn, especially if an unexpected headwind puts further strain on the economy, Zandi said.

“The risks of this going off the rails are pretty high,” he said. “So we’re vulnerable.”

As the market and economy teeter, buzzwords like “correction,” “bear market” and even “recession” are coming back into the conversation, conjuring images of layoffs, foreclosures and bankruptcies.

But the definitions and implications of these terms can get lost in the tumult, stoking outsized panic in some cases and insufficient caution in others.

What is a bear market?

The S&P 500 made headlines last Friday when it briefly entered bear market territory, which generally means a 20% drop since the index’s most recent high over at least a two-month period. On Friday afternoon, the index had fallen 1.9% for the day, crossing the threshold for a bear market. But it rallied to end the trading day up 0.01% point, elevating it just barely outside of bear market territory. As of market close on Monday, it had ticked up even further.

For its part, the tech-heavy Nasdaq entered a bear market on March 7, and as of market close on Monday had fallen more than 30% since a record high in November.

The prospect of a bear market, and the pessimistic investment environment that it entails, carry disconcerting near-term implications. In the 26 bear markets since 1929, the S&P 500 — the index that most people’s 401(k)’s track — has lost an average of 35.6% of its value over a typical duration of 289 days or about 9 ½ months, according to a report from Hartford Funds.

In comparison with a bear market, a correction entails a milder stock market decline, amounting to a drop of 10% to 20% from the most recent high. The S&P 500 has been in correction territory since late February.

For some traders who jumped into the market during its pandemic boom — when the S&P 500 rose some 108% from March 2020 to its peak in early January — the current downturn may be their first. But a bear market is an expected part of the stock market cycle, especially in light of the pandemic stimulus that flooded the economy in the form of direct payments, low interest rates and other measures, Moya, the senior market analyst, told ABC News.

“We’ve seen a historic amount of support help stabilize the economy,” Moya said. “Also, what that did was inflate risky assets, which included the stock market.”

The currently depressed stock prices should appeal to patient traders, Moya added.

“If you’re a long-term investor, and you believe in the US. economy and that the froth is being taken out of the market,” he said. “These levels should be attractive.”

What is a recession?

The unrelenting market decline has raised fears of a recession.

Many observers define a recession through the shorthand metric of two consecutive quarters of decline in a nation’s inflation-adjusted gross domestic product, or GDP. A country’s GDP is the total value of goods and services that it produces.

U.S. GDP shrank at an annual rate of 1.4% over the first three months of this year, the worst quarterly performance since the recession brought about by the coronavirus in 2020. If the GDP contracts over the second quarter of the year, that would qualify the downturn as a recession in many people’s eyes.

The National Bureau of Economic Research, or NBER, a research organization seen as an authority on measuring economic performance, uses a more complicated definition that takes into account several indicators that must convey “a significant decline in economic activity spread across the economy, lasting more than a few months,” the group says. This definition determines whether a downturn is formally designated as a recession, since the NBER is the official arbiter on the subject.

A report released last year by the NBER showed that the pandemic-induced recession of 2020 lasted only two months. By comparison, the organization said that the Great Recession spanned from December 2007 to June 2009, lasting 18 months.

“The R-word is something that triggers a lot of fear and panic for your average American because normally it suggests the job market is taking a turn for the worse and that consumer spending will weaken significantly,” Moya, the senior market analyst, said.

Zandi, the chief economist, put the odds of a recession over the next 12 months at 1 in 3. But he downplayed the severity of a potential recession, noting that he doesn’t see any “major imbalances” in the economy.

“It’s likely to be short and mild,” he said. “I don’t think it’s a reason to run for the bunkers but it’s a reason to be cautious.”

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