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Interstate highway shootings surged during pandemic, ABC News analysis shows

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — As the nation continues to grapple with mass shootings in New York and California this past weekend, a new analysis by ABC News and ABC’s owned stations shows a startling rise in gun violence along interstate highways across the country over the last few years.

The analysis, which examined nearly 3,000 shootings that occurred on or near U.S. interstates from January 2018 through March 2022, found that interstate highway shootings across the country spiked alongside the overall surge in gun violence over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, with New Orleans, Chicago and Memphis seeing some of the biggest spikes.

Interstate highway shootings rose from 540 incidents in 2019 to 846 incidents in 2021 — in increase of 57% — according to the data, which was collected by the Gun Violence Archive, an independent research group.

In just the first three months of this year, at least 149 shooting incidents occurred along or near interstate highways, the data shows.

In all, the incidents resulted in 680 people killed and more than 1,600 people injured over the last four years and three months, according to the data.

The full report by ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas, “Highway Gunplay: An ABC News Investigation,” will stream on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

The data collected by the Gun Violence Archive helps shed light on some of the nation’s most dangerous stretches of highway out of the more than 47,000 miles of interstates across the country.

According to the data, I-10 in the New Orleans area has been the single most violent stretch of interstate in terms of gun incidents between 2019 and 2021. It’s followed by I-94 in the Chicago area, I-240 in the Memphis area, I-35 in the Austin area and I-70 in the St. Louis area.

Courtney Bradford, a young man who was about to be married, was shot and killed late last year while riding as a passenger in a car on I-240 in Memphis. He and his fiancé had just bought a new home to share with their 5-year-old daughter.

“I’ve called him by mistake. It’s very hard,” Bradford’s fiancé, Latoya Henley, told ABC News’ Thomas about dealing with Bradford’s death seven months ago.

The shooting that took Bradford’s life was one of 121 interstate shootings Memphis Police responded to in 2021, according to data provided by the police department.

“What’s even more unsettling is the fact that they’re so reckless,” Bradford’s mother Tonja Rounds told ABC News. “You could be aiming at one particular individual — but you’re shooting on the expressway and people are driving by, so you could shoot anybody.”

“It’s very insane,” Henley said. “I get antsy when I’m on the expressway.”

Seven months after the shooting, Henley and Rounds say police don’t appear to be any closer to determining who took Bradford’s life. The shooting occurred at night, and surveillance cameras were unable to provide any details about the car that the shots came from.

“We just keep trusting and believing that someone is going to come forward,” Rounds said.

Memphis, New Orleans, Chicago and Detroit are among the cities that have been hit hardest by the surge in highway shootings over the last few years, with the number of shootings increasing even more as the COVID-19 pandemic spread across the U.S.

Eight of the 10 stretches of interstates with the highest number of gun incidents between 2019 and 2021 are in those four cities, according to the Gun Violence Archive data. Shooting incidents on or near interstates in those cities alone killed at least 63 people and injured at least 284 others during that time, accounting for nearly 12% of all deaths and 23% of all injuries reported from interstate gun violence nationwide during those years.

I-10, which runs across the southern U.S. from Florida to California, had the highest number of interstate highway shootings during the pandemic period, including at least 79 incidents in Louisiana — many of them occurring around New Orleans.

“You’ve got what police chiefs are calling the pandemic impact on crime,” Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, told ABC News. “It cannot be underestimated.”

“Traffic stops have decreased, so now a small altercation — someone cuts someone off on the road — that can quickly escalate,” Wexler said. “And that altercation becomes a shooting, becomes a homicide.”

During the pandemic years, between 2020 and 2021, the Gun Violence Archive data showed at least 121 interstate shootings in the Chicago area, averaging out to one incident every six days. The group found 73 incidents in the New Orleans area, 58 incidents in the Detroit area, 57 incidents in the Memphis are and 38 incidents in the St. Louis area.

The spike in highway shootings during the pandemic mirrors a surge in overall gun violence.

According to data released this month by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, gun homicides increased 35% across the country during the pandemic, to the highest level in 25 years.

Firearm murders increased most markedly among youths and young adults, with the number of victims age 10-24 rising by 40%. People of color experienced the highest increase, as the number of Black male shooting victims age 10-24 years — already 21 times higher than the number of white male victims of the same age — increased even further in 2020.

An analysis of data provided by the Houston Police Department by ABC13 showed that homicides along the city’s highways and streets doubled during the pandemic, driving a surge in the overall number of homicides in the city during the two pandemic years. Among those killed in Houston road rage incidents was 17-year-old David Castro, who was fatally shot last summer on I-10 while leaving an Astros baseball game, and Tyler Mitchell, who died earlier this month after being shot along the same interstate just before his 22nd birthday.

In California, the Gun Violence Archive identified more than 200 interstate highway shootings between January 2018 and March of 2022, with many of them occurring on I-5, I-80 and I-580. And additional shootings occurred on Southern California freeways that aren’t part of the interstate system; last year, the California Highway Patrol reported at least 80 incidents of cars being shot at while traveling on SoCal freeways in just the one-month span between late April and late May, with the majority of them occurring along the 91 Freeway that runs from east of the 15 Freeway west toward the 605 Freeway.

Law enforcement officials say the nature of highway shootings typically makes them more difficult to track and solve that other types of shootings.

“The evidence and the crime scene is moving, sometimes 70, 80, 90 miles an hour,” said Illinois State Police Director Brendan Kelly.

As a result, said Kelly, the Illinois State Police are adding patrols and increasing searches to identify people with illegal weapons in their cars. They’ve also added new cameras along interstates to try to better track suspects.

“We will use license plate readers, we will use our air operations, we will use our patrol officers that are out there, we will use canines, we will use all the tools at our disposal to be able to pursue the people that are responsible for this violence,” Kelly said.

In the Detroit area, where the Detroit Police Department says they’ve seen an average of five freeway shootings a month over the past three years, the city has teamed up with more than three dozen other law enforcement agencies to launch “Operation Brison,” a multi-city effort to crack down on freeway shootings after two-year-old Brison Christian was killed last year when someone opened fire on his family’s vehicle on I-17 in what the police say was a case of mistaken identity.

Two alleged gang members have been charged with murder in the case.

But in Memphis, Latoya Henley is still waiting for resolution to her fiancé’s murder.

“We don’t know what happened at all,” Henley told ABC News. “We don’t know who’s involved.”

“I don’t want anyone to ever feel what I feel,” she said. “I pray a lot, ’cause the one thing I don’t want to be is angry. Because that’s what I was at first — I was angry. I was confused. And I was in disbelief. And you know, some days, I’m still in disbelief.”

ABC News’ Jack Date, Luke Barr and Alexandra Myers contributed to this report, along with Ross Weidner of WLS in Chicago, Courtney Carpenter of KTRK in Houston and Lindsey Feingold of KGO in San Francisco.

Watch “Highway Gunplay: An ABC News Investigation” on ABC News Live Prime with Linsey Davis, Wednesday at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m.

Biden invoking Defense Production Act to address baby formula shortage

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden is invoking the Defense Production Act to address the widespread shortage of baby formula, the White House announced Wednesday evening.

The move will get ingredients to manufacturers to help speed up production, the administration said.

“The President is requiring suppliers to direct needed resources to infant formula manufacturers before any other customer who may have ordered that good,” the White House said in a statement. “Directing firms to prioritize and allocate the production of key infant formula inputs will help increase production and speed up in supply chains.”

The president has also directed the use of Department of Defense commercial aircraft to pick up infant formula overseas to get on U.S. shelves faster while U.S. manufacturers ramp up production, the White House said.

The ongoing baby formula crisis has triggered a public outcry from parents and lawmakers, as well as an investigation by the House Oversight Committee.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Buffalo shooter’s livestream sparks criticism of tech platforms over content moderation

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(BUFFALO, N.Y.) — The 18-year-old suspect who allegedly gunned down 10 people in a mass shooting at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, on Saturday had, authorities say, an assault-style rifle, body armor, a tactical helmet — and a small camera.

The horror that followed became the latest mass shooting simultaneously broadcast online. Twitch, the Amazon-owned platform on which the video appeared, said it took down the broadcast after less than two minutes.

But that duration gave enough time for individuals to download and repost copies of the video, one of which was viewed more than 3 million times, after a link to the video on Facebook garnered more than 500 comments and 46,000 shares before its removal, the Washington Post reported.

Plus, a 180-page document believed to have been published by the alleged shooter that included a litany of bigoted views said the writer had seen hateful messages on 4chan and other sites known for the appearance of white supremacist content, raising the possibility that he had been radicalized online. An additional 589-page document believed to be tied to the alleged shooter included postings by the alleged shooter on Discord, a social media platform.

The suspected shooter is now facing murder charges to which he entered a not guilty plea.

The episode drew renewed criticism of tech platforms and urgent calls for scrutiny over the moderation of videos and messages posted online, which can quickly spread to a wide audience and possibly fuel copycat attacks. The uproar arrives at a moment of public reckoning over content moderation, as Tesla CEO Elon Musk has used his $44 billion bid for Twitter to voice his skepticism of platforms taking a broad role in removing posts.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told ABC News’ “This Week” on Sunday that social media companies must balance free speech with concerns over public safety. During the same show, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul criticized how hateful ideas spread on social media “like a virus” and called for accountability from the CEOs of social media companies.

Experts in online extremism told ABC News they hope the mass shooting on Saturday serves as a wake-up call to bolster the push for more rigorous moderation of online posts. But livestreams pose a particularly difficult task for those who police content on tech platforms, experts told ABC News, noting the challenge of monitoring and removing the posts in real time.

Further, online message boards that foment bigotry, such as 4chan, traffic in odious ideas that often stop short of violating the law, leaving the door open to such platforms with a more lax approach to monitoring content, Jared Holt, a resident fellow at Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, told ABC News.

The mass shooting in Buffalo, which saw 10 people killed — all of whom were Black — and three others injured, comes three years after a self-identified white supremacist livestreamed a mass shooting at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, which resulted in 51 people dead. Live video on Facebook of that massacre remained online for 17 minutes, far longer than the less than two minutes it took Twitch to take down the video from Buffalo on Saturday.

“It’s an improvement, but needless to say, obviously it’s not a perfect answer,” Holt told ABC News. “Moderating live content has proven to be a massive challenge to tech platforms.”

In general, tech platforms police content through both automated systems and manual decisions made by individuals, Alice Marwick, a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who specializes in the study of social media, told ABC News. Livestreams pose such difficulty because they can evade the automated systems, forcing platforms to rely on human moderators who sometimes cannot handle the overwhelming volume of incoming content, she said.

“The size and scale of the number of livestreams that there are on a daily basis make it impossible to moderate them completely,” she said.

More than 8 million users broadcast live on Twitch each month, and the site features an average of more than 2.5 million hours of video every day, Twitch Global Head of Trust and Safety Angela Hession told ABC News in a statement.

“We’ve invested heavily in our sitewide safety operations and in the people and technologies who drive them, and will continue to do so,” she said.

Platforms could further limit livestream incidents like what happened in Buffalo by implementing a time-delay for live footage, like television stations do, Marwick and Holt said. The companies could also ensure that users must be verified before gaining the ability to livestream, as YouTube does.

But livestreaming will not be removed from the platforms altogether, Holt said, citing companies like Twitch that depend on livestreaming for their business. “The cat is out of the proverbial bag,” he said.

Even a brief livestream can end up reaching a large audience. As noted, in the case of the video of the shooting in Buffalo, a copy of the livestreamed video received millions of views after a link on Facebook helped drive traffic to it, the Washington Post reported.

A spokesperson for Meta, the parent company of Facebook, told ABC News that the company on Saturday quickly designated the event as a “violating terrorist attack,” which prompted an internal process to identify and remove the account of the identified suspect, as well as copies of his alleged document and any copy of or link to video of his alleged attack.

The move ensures that any copies of or links to the video, writing or other content that praises, supports or represents the suspect will be removed, the spokesperson added.

In a statement, Twitch told ABC News: “We are devastated to hear about the shooting that took place in Buffalo, New York. Our hearts go out to the community impacted by this tragedy. Twitch has a zero-tolerance policy against violence of any kind and works swiftly to respond to all incidents.”

“The user has been indefinitely suspended from our service, and we are taking all appropriate action, including monitoring for any accounts rebroadcasting this content,” the statement added.

Content monitors also face a challenge from message boards and other sites that feature white supremacist ideology and can radicalize users. Since such content is offensive and dangerous but oftentimes legal, the onus falls on platforms to take an aggressive approach to remove it, Holt told ABC News. Not all platforms bring the same level of rigor to the task, he added.

The anonymous imageboard website 4chan is known for the appearance of hateful content. The alleged shooter in Buffalo named 4chan as a site he had visited. The website has not responded to ABC News’ request for comment.

Hateful content can migrate from alternative platforms to more mainstream ones, allowing such messages to reach a wider audience before they are addressed, Holt said.

“There may be awful things on seedier internet platforms like 4chan,” he said. “The internet doesn’t exist as perfectly siloed platforms.”

The alleged shooter also posted messages online in a private group on Discord, a social media platform. It’s unclear who had access to the group. According to ABC News consultant and former Department of Homeland Security official John Cohen, Discord is a popular platform mostly with high school-aged teenagers and has been used to spread conspiracy theories.

“We extend our deepest sympathies to the victims and their families. Hate and violence have no place on Discord. We are doing everything we can to assist law enforcement in the investigation,” a spokesperson for Discord told ABC News in a statement.

Online radicalization takes place over a prolonged period, affording multiple opportunities for platforms to step in, said Marwick, the professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“When people do get radicalized online, it’s not something that happens in an instant,” she said. “Sometimes people like to think about this as a flash of lightning — that’s not how this works”

“It takes place over a period of time,” she adds. “There are possible points of intervention before it gets to this point.”

1st monkeypox case in US this year reported in Massachusetts

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — A Massachusetts resident has tested positive for monkeypox, health officials confirmed Wednesday, making it the first case of the rare virus detected in the United States this year.

According to a release from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health, the patient is an adult male who recently traveled to Canada. The department completed initial testing Tuesday and was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The case poses no risk to the public, and the individual is hospitalized and in good condition,” MDPH stated in a press release. “DPH is working closely with the CDC, relevant local boards of health, and the patient’s health care providers to identify individuals who may have been in contact with the patient while he was infectious.”

It comes after four more cases of monkeypox were identified in the U.K recently, bringing the nationwide total to nine since the beginning of May.

Monkeypox is a rare disease caused by the monkeypox virus. The first case among humans was recorded in the Democratic Republic of the Congo in 1970, and the illness has since spread to several other nations, mostly in central and western Africa.

It can transmit from animals to humans when an infected animal — such as a rodent or a primate — bites or scratches a person. The CDC said humans can also be infected when hunting wild animals or preparing bush meat for consumption.

The disease can also spread from person to person via large respiratory droplets in the air, but they cannot travel more than a few feet, so two people would need to have prolonged close contact.

The most common symptoms are fever, headache, fatigue and muscle aches.

Very few cases of monkeypox have been identified among Americans.

According to the CDC, the disease does not naturally occur in the U.S. Infections are usually identified among people who recently traveled to countries where monkeypox is more commonly found.

In 2003, 47 confirmed and probable cases were reported in six U.S. states, the first human cases reported outside of Africa.

All the infections occurred after coming into contact with pet prairie dogs, which in turn became infected “after being housed near imported small mammals from Ghana,” the CDC stated.

Since then, just two other cases have been detected in the U.S., both associated with travel.

In July 2021, a case was confirmed in a Texas resident who had recently returned from Nigeria and in November 2021, another case was found in a Maryland resident who had also traveled to Nigeria.

ABC News’ William Gretsky contributed to this report.

Ashley Biden, the president’s daughter, tests positive for COVID-19

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s daughter, Ashley Biden, has tested positive for COVID-19, according to a White House official.

The first daughter, 40, was scheduled to travel to Latin America this week with first lady Jill Biden.

The president and first lady are not considered a close contacts, according to the first lady’s spokesperson, Michael LaRosa.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre reaffirmed in Wednesday’s briefing that the president was not considered a close contact of his daughter, who he hasn’t seen in “about a week.” She did not have guidance on when the president was last tested for COVID-19.

“[T]he president tests regularly throughout the week as part of a cadence as determined by his doctor,” Jean-Pierre told reporters. “If his testing were to change because of the close contact, we’d let all of you know, but his cadence has not changed.”

Ashley Biden will no longer be joining the first lady on her trip to Ecuador, Panama and Costa Rica, LaRosa said. Jill Biden was scheduled to depart Wednesday afternoon for Quito, Ecuador.

This is the second foreign trip Ashley Biden has had to drop out of in recent weeks. She was considered a close contact of someone who tested positive for COVID-19 before the first lady’s trip to Poland, Romania and Ukraine earlier this month.

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, who is currently meeting with health officials from G-7 countries in Germany, also tested positive for COVID-19 on Wednesday, the agency said. The president is not considered a close contact, it said.

As the BA.2 subvariant has spread around Washington, several people within the president’s inner circle have tested positive for COVID-19 in recent weeks, including Vice President Kamala Harris, White House communications director Kate Bedingfield, former press secretary Jen Psaki and Jean-Pierre herself.

The president has never been deemed a close contact. When asked how this was possible, Jean-Pierre reiterated Wednesday that “extra precautions” are taken around meetings with the president. Because she had a meeting with the president today, Jean-Pierre said she was tested, masked and the meeting was socially distanced.

Masks are now optional at the White House campus, though meetings with the president are often socially distanced, officials said. White House officials have also stressed that the president is up-to-date on COVID boosters.

Someone is considered a close contact if the person was within 6 feet of an individual with confirmed or suspected COVID-19 for at least 15 minutes over a 24-hour period, per Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines.

ABC News’ Molly Nagle contributed to this report.

Mars lander losing power because of dust on solar panels

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — NASA’s Mars lander, called Insight, is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust and it will need to mostly shut down by the end of May.
NASA is being forced to end its Mars lander mission early because of dust.Officials announced Tuesday the InSight spacecraft is slowly losing power because its two solar panels are covered in dust.Morever, the dust levels in the atmosphere are only increasing and sunlight is decreasing as Mars enters winter, which is speeding up the loss of power.

Power levels will likely die out in July — effectively ending operations — and, by the end of the year, project leaders expect InSight will be “inoperative.”

“People can obviously relate to, in their own homes, they have to dust because dust settles,” Chuck Scott, InSight’s project manager, told ABC News. “It’s the same sort of thing with these solar panels. We have dust in the Mars atmosphere that gets kicked up because of the local weather … storms where you get the dust kicked up because you have lot of wind.”

“Since Mars’s atmosphere is thinner, it goes up into the upper atmosphere and it can get distributed more widely than it would on Earth and it’ll deposit back down on whatever’s below including our spacecraft and the solar panels,” he added.

InSight is currently generating about one-tenth of the power it was when it landed on Mars in November 2018.

When the spacecraft first landed, the solar panels were producing 5,000 watt-hour for each Martian day, enough to power an electric oven for an hour and 40 minutes, NASA said. Currently, the panels are producing 500 watt-hour per Martian day, only enough to power an electric oven for 10 minutes.

Project leaders had expected the gradual dust buildup on the solar panels, but had hoped passing whirlwinds on Mars might have cleaned some of it off, but none have so far.

“Two rovers we sent back in 2003, they both experienced what we would call ‘natural cleaning’ or ‘dust cleaning events,'” Scott said. “Those winds went over the vehicles and cleared a lot fo the dust off the solar panels of those vehicles. We were were kind of hoping this would occur with a stationary lander.”

Due to the lower power, the team will put InSight’s robotic arm in a resting position known as “retirement pose” later this month. Then, by the end of the summer, the lander’s seismometer will only be turned on at certain times, such as night when winds are not as high.

Because energy is being preserved for the seismometer, NASA said non-seismic instruments “will rarely be turned on” starting next month.

InSight has detected more than 1,300 quakes since its landing, the most recent of which occurred on May 4. The data gathered from the marsquakes have helped scientists understand the composition of Mars’s deep interior, including the planet’s crust, mantle and core.

NASA said the lander had completed its primary goals during its first two years on Mars and was currently on an extended mission.

“There wasn’t really anything known about the interior of Mars,” Scott said. “Why that’s important is NASA had been looking at how our own planets formed in the Solar System. especially the rocky ones like Venus, Earth, Mars and even our own Moon.”

This is not the first time NASA has ended a Mars lander due to dust.

Opportunity, a robotic rover, landed on the planet in 2004 and was in operation until June 2018, when a global dust storm completely covered its solar panels, which ended communications with project leaders.

Mother charged after loaded gun goes off in student’s backpack

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(CHICAGO) — The mother of a Chicago student faces child endangerment charges after the student brought a loaded gun to school in a backpack and the weapon accidentally discharged, police said.

The incident occurred at Walt Disney Magnet School on the city’s North Side shortly before 10 a.m. Tuesday, according to the Chicago Police Department.

“The weapon accidentally discharged in the backpack while inside a classroom, with a bullet striking the ground and ricocheting, resulting in a classmate being grazed in the abdomen,” the department said in a statement.

The classmate was taken to a local hospital in “good condition,” the department said. Information on the ages of the students involved was not given.

Following the incident, Tatanina Kelly, 28, was charged with three misdemeanor counts of child endangerment, police said.

Kelly appeared in court Wednesday, where a judge set bond at $10,000, Chicago ABC station WLS reported.

Her attorney, Rodger Clarke, argued that Kelly had no criminal record and that this was a “one-time incident, not soon to be repeated,” according to the Chicago Sun-Times.

Walt Disney Magnet School has students in preschool through eighth grade.

In a letter obtained by WLS that was sent to parents on Tuesday, the school’s principal, Paul Riskus, addressed the incident.

“This morning during school hours, a gun was accidentally discharged on school grounds,” he wrote. “The gun discharged in a backpack and hit the floor, causing some damage and releasing debris.”

Riskus said no one was “seriously injured” and that school staff secured the gun and contacted police and and the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Safety and Security. Police confiscated the weapon.

“We are working closely with the CPS Office of Safety and Security to make a safety plan moving forward,” he wrote. “Please know that we are taking this situation extremely seriously, and CPD is investigating this incident.”

Worried family members of students who attend the school rushed to the campus in the wake of Tuesday’s incident.

“All I heard was there was a gun and I came flying,” Jennifer Uribe, whose daughter texted her about the incident, told WLS. “I wasn’t going to text her because if she had to hide, I didn’t want her doing that. So I said, ‘Stop texting me’ and I came here.”

Edwina Watkins, whose 12-year-old grandson attends the school, told WLS she was shocked.

“It is shocking for one, for a little kid to have a gun, something that should be hard for an adult to have at a school,” Watkins said.

Victor Garcia, whose son is in pre-K, told WLS he was “freaking out.”

“Gun shootings going all over the country,” he said. “This is crazy.”

House to vote on domestic terrorism bill after Buffalo supermarket shooting

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — In the wake of the Buffalo, New York, supermarket shooting that left 10 Black people dead, the House on Wednesday is expected to pass a measure to beef up federal efforts to combat domestic terrorism and white supremacy.

The bill from Rep. Brad Schneider, D-Illinois, would create new offices within the Justice Department, Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation to “monitor, analyze, investigate, and prosecute domestic terrorism.”

Suspect fired 50 rounds in Buffalo supermarket hate crime shooting that killed 10: Police
The bill is expected to have broad support among Democrats for passage. Rep. Cori Bush, D-Mo., and other progressives were initially wary of the measure earlier this year but reached an agreement on language in talks with leadership and the American Civil Liberties Union to address concerns about the potential infringement on Americans’ First Amendment rights.

“I was proud to lead my colleagues in a successful effort to strengthen protections in this bill for protesters, narrow the domestic terrorism definition, and enhance the scope of Congressional oversight to ensure that civil rights and civil liberties continue to be protected,” Bush said in a statement to ABC News. “As an activist, I know first-hand the ways in which law enforcement agencies have targeted, surveilled and prosecuted marginalized communities.”

Republicans, however, are expected to oppose the bill, arguing that the measure is duplicative and could be used to target parents raising concerns at local school board meetings.

That could jeopardize its passage through the Senate, where Democrats have pledged to hold a vote but need the support of ten Republicans to advance legislation past the 60-vote threshold.

“By diverting resources that could be used to actually combat domestic terrorism and mandating investigations into the armed services and law enforcement, this bill further weaponizes and emboldens the DOJ to target Americans’ First Amendment rights and go after those who they see as political threats,” House GOP Whip Steve Scalise’s office wrote to Republican lawmakers in a memo encouraging them to vote against the measure.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland have said Republicans are mischaracterizing a memo issued last fall to the FBI and U.S. attorneys’ offices around the country encouraging them to meet with local law enforcement partners to address a rising number of threats against local school board officials.

Even Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., who co-sponsored the original resolution introduced with Schneider, said he was “torn” on the bill and unsure how he would vote.

“Maybe for four months after I put my name on that bill, every meeting I went to, I had people upset I was on that bill,” he told ABC News. “They said, ‘Will I be investigated because I am pro-life?’ I heard overwhelming feedback.”

The Justice Department has already established a domestic terrorism unit, and the Biden administration has requested funding from Congress to support 60 attorneys focused on domestic terrorism cases.

FBI Director Christopher Wray has called domestic terrorism one of the greatest threats to the United States.

The problem of domestic terrorism has been metastasizing across the country for a long time now and it’s not going away anytime soon,” Wray told a Congressional panel in March of 2021. “At the FBI, we’ve been sounding the alarm on it for a number of years now.”

ABC’s Luke Barr and Alex Mallin contributed to this report.

America’s mental health care deserts: Where is it hard to access care?

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and two years into a global pandemic that has highlighted the need for increased access to mental health care, 570 counties across the United States still have no psychologists, psychiatrists or counselors.

They’re known as mental health care deserts.

Most are considered rural, meaning your ability to access care may differ greatly depending on where you live.

“While this country has given resources for healthcare over the decades, it has never been enough,” said Dr. Saul Levin, chief executive officer and medical director for the American Psychiatric Association.

Rural areas, in particular, Levin said, “have not gotten the resources to keep up.”

Seventy-five percent of rural counties across the country have no mental health providers or fewer than 50 per 100,000 people, according to an ABC News analysis of Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services data.

A majority of counties with no or few providers per capita are located in the Midwest and Southeast regions of the U.S.

ABC News data journalists developed this interactive map showing the ratio of patients to providers in counties across the nation.

Problem worst in Texas, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota

The ABC News analysis shows Texas has the highest number of counties with no providers.

Texas Health and Human Services Public Information Officer Kelli Weldon explained in an email that the state has 39 local mental and behavioral health authorities providing care to residents.

Of the state’s 254 counties, 172 are considered rural, according to Weldon.

She wrote that the Texas Health and Human Services Commission “places a high priority on identifying mental health and substance use service availability at the right time and right place.”

The state is currently working on increasing access to mental health care for residents in rural areas with an initiative called All Texas Access, which includes efforts to decrease costs to local government for crisis care services and address incarceration of and the number of emergency room visits by people with mental illness.

The ABC News analysis also found that Nebraska (49.5%), North Dakota (49.1%) and South Dakota (47%) have the highest percentage of counties with no providers.

Laurie Gill, Cabinet secretary for the Department of Social Services in South Dakota, said the state faces infrastructure issues that can complicate access to mental healthcare.

“We are, I think, classified as a frontier state, and we have this challenge across many, many different avenues,” Gill told ABC News. “When we come to talking about mental health services, we want all South Dakotans, regardless of where they live, to have access to at least short-term comprehensive behavioral and mental health crisis stabilization. Our goal is to try to keep people as close to home as possible in the least restrictive settings that we can.”

The mental health care system in South Dakota, Gill said, operates mainly through contracting with 11 nonprofit community mental health centers located across the state, which provide services including therapy and crisis intervention. Each center serves multiple counties, meaning residents may not always have a center nearby.

In communities where accessing care is more difficult, Levin says, people may find their illnesses progress before they are able to receive it and, “the comorbidity is a lot more severe.”

Gill acknowledged that sometimes a lack of options at the local level has sometimes led to people in the state needing more intensive, inpatient psychiatric care, but said her department has been doing a gap analysis to identify needs in the mental healthcare system and fill them.

Native Americans at higher risk

Native Americans are also more likely to live in a mental health desert. South Dakota is home to nine tribes, and Native Americans make up about 9% of the state’s population, according to U.S. Census data for 2021.

Gill said the state recognizes this population struggles with a disproportionately high rate of suicide and is working on increasing access to mental healthcare on reservations.

Dr. Karen Severns, Behavioral Health Director for the Indian Health Service Great Plains Area, explained that more resources are needed to meet mental health care needs on reservations.

“Just in the last 2 years, the need for mental health and substance abuse services, they actually surged due to the COVID-19 pandemic,” Severns said.

She explained that the trauma of the pandemic compounds on the historical trauma this population struggles with, adding to the need for care. As is the case across much of the nation, however, Severns said COVID enabled expanded access to telehealth services on reservations.

“We just need more resources and now that behavioral health has become the forefront not only within our community, but also nationally,” Severns said. “The biggest [challenge] is the stigma. There’s rural challenges as well, but people don’t want to go into a clinic, so we have seen high success when there was an audio [option] allowed for them to just touch base with their therapist.”

Special focus on young people

Concern has also been heightened recently for the mental health of young people in America, with the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy telling the Senate Finance Committee in February that the obligation to act is, “not just medical, it’s moral.”

Some organizations are working to address mental health impacts on youth, particularly amid the last two years of increased stress due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Save the Children, a nonprofit organization focused on improving outcomes for children through education, health care, and other avenues.

“One of the components to ensure that children are able to survive and thrive is to provide for their mental health,” said Greta Wetzel, Senior Advisor of Psychosocial Support for Save the Children. “[It’s by] providing those psychosocial support, social-emotional learning opportunities, that they are able to develop into that strong and holistic child and have it be able to thrive.”

One of the programs the organization provides is a psychosocial support program called “Journey of Hope,” which was designed to help children build resilience.

Cathryn Miller, West Virginia State Director for Save the Children, explained that the program has been very beneficial in her state, where many children and families struggle with things like poverty and substance abuse.

“I think it’s really important to remember that kids aren’t just little adults,” Miller said. “And so, when we as adults are struggling through the pandemic and a lot of these challenges we’re facing, it’s amplified for children.”

Director of ABC News Digital Journalism John Kelly contributed to this report.

Parents of preemie describe their scramble to find baby formula

May 18, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — Parents of babies on specialized baby formulas are continuing to sound the alarm as the nationwide formula shortage in the U.S. persists, three months after major manufacturer Abbott temporarily shuttered production at their Sturgis, Michigan, facility and pandemic supply chain issues compounded the growing problem.

It’s an urgent issue Emily and Mac Jaehnert know all too well. Their daughter, MacKenzie, needs a special type of baby formula, Similac’s NeoSure (made by Abbott), that’s intended for babies like MacKenzie who were born prematurely.

Mac Jaehnert told “Good Morning America” he’s had to scour store after store in his local region of Richland, Washington, to try to track down much-needed formula for MacKenzie.

“Every morning, I go through and I search online for all of the stores in the area that have local inventory available,” Mac Jaehnert said. “If I see one of them, I go to that store first. A lot of times, it’s unreliable. It’s probably 50-50 at best.”

He went on, “I’ve gotten lucky one or two times where I have found NeoSure on the shelf … that is where I just start my six-store run. And I’ll do that three or four times a week. Just go and find a store and then hit as many as you can on the way home to make sure that you haven’t missed an opportunity to find this food for your kid or potentially the food that could keep your neighbor’s kid out of similarly dire straits.”

MacKenzie was born three months early, at 27 weeks, and had to spend over 100 days in the neonatal intensive care unit before she became healthy enough to go home with her parents.

Mom Emily Jaehnert said the impact of the baby formula shortage on families like hers is not something many understand.

“If you’re not in the position that us and other parents are in, it’s really hard to understand just how serious and scary it is,” Emily Jaehnert said.

Mac Jaehnert put it another way. “Imagine all of the taps in your house have run dry, and now every bottle of water is off the shelf. It’s what it feels like,” he said.

People who assume MacKenzie can be breastfed or have substitute formula are not getting the full picture, Emily Jaehnert said.

“As a mom, as a woman, as somebody who, I have pumped and produced milk for MacKenzie, but I can’t anymore,” she told “GMA.” “And even if I could, she can’t have 100% breast milk. There’s a lot of people that do not understand the complexity behind feeding a medically complicated child.”

“Typical infant formulas, the ones that aren’t made for preemies will not provide her with the essentials that she needs,” she continued. “This is something that her doctors have put her on, it is not a choice we’ve necessarily made, it is something that is basically equivalent to a medication for her.”

The Jaehnerts, who live in Richland, Washington, have been on a mission to raise awareness for what MacKenzie and other preemies are facing ever since they brought their daughter home in March.

“There should be mechanisms in place to prevent this from happening,” Mac Jaehnert said. “Because this is mission critical for keeping this kid healthy and growing and out of the hospital right now.”

“It is one of the most frustrating things I’ve ever experienced in my life,” he added. “I mean, we get this kid home, after what she’s been through … and the problem is, we can’t keep something as basic as baby formula on the shelf. It is disappointing to the point of angering.”

The couple say they’ve been able to secure enough NeoSure for MacKenzie for the time being, with the help of social media and MacKenzie’s grandfather, who shipped them some formula from Milwaukee, but tell “GMA” they know other families need critical help.

“We were lucky enough to find fellow parents on Facebook who had a preemie who had recently transitioned onto solid foods, and had a month’s supply worth of NeoSure formula that they were willing to share with us,” Mac Jaehnert said. “That was incredibly generous. So we’re doing everything we can to track things down in the area and provide it to other families in need, because I know of at least 10 families who have less than a week supply of NeoSure in this area.”

For other families in need, the Jaehnerts recommend starting with family and friends, going online and checking local resources like food banks for formula.

“There are Facebook groups that are popping up, ‘Find My Formula’ groups,” Mac Jaehnert said, but he also warned parents to be careful too. “This is very dangerous stuff, not getting it through an approved source. But you know, these are the times we’re in right now and parents are doing it if you can.”

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