(WASHINGTON) — In an effort to cut emissions, the Federal Aviation Administration announced it’s changing the way some planes land at U.S. airports.
Currently, most planes that land at airports descend in a stair-step method, where aircraft repeatedly level off and power up the engines during the descent. Under the agency’s new 42 Optimized Profile Descents, or OPDs, planes will instead descend from cruising altitude to the runway in a smoother, continuous path with engines set at near idle.
“If you just think about what takes more energy, walking down the stairs or sliding down a slide, that’s basically what the plane is doing,” FAA spokesperson Matthew Lehner said in an interview with ABC News.
The move is part of the agency’s work to achieve a net-zero greenhouse gas emissions aviation sector by 2050 — part of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg’s U.S. Aviation Climate Action Plan announced at the United Nations Climate Change Conference last November.
“There’s less fuel burn as you’re sliding down toward the approach to the airport,” Lehner said. “It also means with less fuel burning you get less emissions in the air.”
In 2013, researchers with the FAA and the Georgia Institute of Technology found OPDs cut about 41 million pounds of carbon dioxide emissions and 2 million gallons of jet fuel at Los Angeles International Airport in one year, which is equivalent to cutting 1,300 flights from Atlanta to Dallas, the FAA said.
The FAA implemented OPDs at various airports across the country in 2021, including Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport, Miami International Airport and Florida’s Orlando International Airport. This year, it plans to implement the descents at New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Missouri’s Kansas City International Airport and Omaha, Nebraska’s Eppley Airfield. It is also adding additional routes at Orlando International Airport.
In addition to cutting emissions, the agency said passengers might notice a smoother, quieter approach with the engine not revving throughout its descent. The continuous landing technique is also quieter for areas surrounding airports.
(NEW YORK) — The sneaky sting of inflation is catching many Americans by surprise as soaring prices erode their savings and prompt major sticker shock at the supermarket, gas pump and seemingly everywhere they look.
Rapidly rising prices have become a major new wellspring of anxiety for American families. Some 3 in 10 Americans said everyday bills (15%) or inflation specifically (14%) was the single biggest concern facing their family right now, according to a Monmouth University poll released last month. This is nearly double the 16% of Americans naming rising prices or household bills as their biggest concern last July, and more than triple the 8% who named household bills as their top concern in August 2020.
Government data indicates consumer prices last month jumped at their fastest pace since 1982 — the tail-end of an agonizing period in the U.S. economy when out-of-control inflation forced policymakers to orchestrate a steep correction that resulted in a recession and double-digit unemployment rates.
Many who remember this painful historical era are now retiring, and research reveals that peoples’ expectations about inflation are mostly shaped by their experience of it. This results in a “substantial disagreement between young and old individuals in periods of highly volatile inflation,” economists at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Chicago, wrote in a 2014 paper. It also suggests a majority of consumers are now unsure of how to navigate inflation or may be less aware of its broader dangers.
Here is how experts say inflation is eroding Americans’ cash and how they can brace themselves for what might come next as policymakers seek to anchor in the surging prices.
Savings dissolving as those with no cushion get crushed by so-called ‘cruelest tax’
Inflation, defined by the Federal Reserve as increases in the overall prices of goods and services over time, means that Americans are going to have to pay more money than they are used to for their essentials and other expenses.
While the ascending price tags can be a more obvious sting, rising inflation can also impact the value of savings accounts for those who have been able to practice financial prudence in building up a rainy day or retirement fund.
Many Americans were able to save over the course of the pandemic thanks to fiscal support and the fact that COVID-19 shuttered businesses and urged people to stay at home rather than spend on the services they used to go out for, according to Wells Fargo Senior Economist Sarah House.
“But that financial cushion is getting whittled away more quickly. Given these elevated rates of inflation, that savings isn’t stretching as far,” House told ABC News.
Chester Spatt, a professor of finance at Carnegie Melon University and former chief economist and director of the SEC’s Office of Economic Analysis, added that rising inflation suggests that Americans’ “spending power, potentially, is going to decrease quite substantially.”
If inflation is rising at a clip of 7%, and your savings account offers interest rates of some 0.5% (or even an enviable higher-yield 1% rate), then “that spending power might decline by about 6%,” Spatt told ABC News.
This means for those with $1,000 saved up, their financial buffer might actually be closer to $940 as inflation at its current pace eats into that money. For those with $10,000 saved up, they might expect to see about $600 seemingly evaporate from that nest egg — without even touching it.
For Americans who are living paycheck to paycheck, the impacts of inflation can be even more devastating. Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell warned lawmakers on Tuesday that high inflation takes a toll “particularly for those less able to meet the higher costs of essentials,” such as food, housing and transportation.
“People sometimes talk about inflation being kind of ‘the cruelest tax’ that really hurts poor people disproportionately, and I can see that certainly to be the case,” Spatt told ABC News.
Ultimately, the historically high inflation we are seeing now is becoming impossible for consumers to ignore, House added.
“When you’re seeing roughly 2% price increases, it’s kind of running in the background, that 2% number is by design,” House said of the past. “But when we are seeing 5, 6, 7% inflation, it’s hard for consumers not to notice, and that begins to affect how they think about their decisions, including what they’re asking for in terms of wages out of a job.”
Asking for higher wages is generally a good thing, but during times of inflation, those who were working during the 1970s and ’80s know it can also be linked to further skyrocketing prices — and at the broader level, throw a wrench into efforts to rid inflation from the economy as a whole.
Policies to combat inflation have historically carried painful consequences
Inflation historically has been extremely difficult to eradicate, and past efforts to do so by the government and policymakers have sometimes been accompanied by painful consequences.
At the same time, the inflation we are seeing now is being fueled by vastly different circumstances than in the past, specifically supply-demand imbalances spurred by a global pandemic and the fiscal and monetary policies that buoyed the economy during the unprecedented health crisis.
As supply chains recover from pandemic shocks and reach of pandemic-era stimulus policies wanes, many remain hopeful that this will help ease inflationary pressures.
Economists also note that policymakers now have the lessons from the past to glean how best to respond to inflation.
During “The Great Inflation” period of the 1970s and early 1980s, the most-recent inflationary period that those on the cusp of retirement are warning their children about, inflation snowballed out of control as prices climbed and workers in turn asked for higher wages — creating the economic phenomenon now referred to as the “wage-price spiral.”
Wages are again increasing at headline-making rates, as major companies — especially in the service industry — report struggles to attract and retain staff.
“We are in a tight labor market,” House told ABC News, meaning workers are “able to flex some of that clout a little bit more, and extract some more wage increases” from their employers.
“We’re seeing this filter into inflation expectations to some extent; we’re also seeing it filter into wages, and so I think that’ll be key in the year ahead as to how much inflation comes down,” House said. “We are expecting it to recede, given the unwinding of some of these pandemic distortions — but I think now that we’re seeing more pressure coming from wages in the labor market, it’s going to be harder to cool off.”
As a result, House said she expects the Fed “to step in a little more aggressively” than they may have initially planned to help anchor inflation.
This will likely manifest in interest rate hikes, which the Fed has already signaled will likely occur three times in 2022, and a more rapid end to pandemic-era monetary policies that flushed financial markets with liquidity.
These actions can help cool off inflation and uncertainty, House said, because “it will send a signal to markets, to consumers, to businesses, that they are on top of that, that they are watching inflation numbers and they do not want to let this get out of hand, or at least further out of hand.”
“That signal will help anchor inflation expectation and that can have an influence on further price setting, whether that’s for goods, services or for labor,” she added.
Looking back at history, the Fed was seen as initially behind the curve and slow to raise interest rates in the ’70s to respond to inflation — before announcing a shockingly sudden federal funds rate increase of almost 20% in 1980. Those who held bonds directly or through retirement accounts subsequently suffered huge losses, and real interest rates also soared. The move ended up having ripple effects that devastated the overall economy, as well as the stock market.
“The difference here is that we do have some forces that I think will help bring down inflation on its own,” House said when comparing the present to late-’70s inflation, such as the waning pandemic-era fiscal support that boosted consumer demand and shifting patterns on how consumers are spending their money.
“It’s a fine line for monetary policy to walk, between not choking off a recovery or an expansion and also not letting it overheat to the point where you have further pain down the road,” she said.
There are also only so many tools at the Fed’s disposal, she noted, saying the Fed can’t manufacture semiconductor chips or do much to address the beleaguered global supply side of the equation.
In figuring out how to best anchor inflation without triggering an economic downturn, simply put, House said the Fed is “not in a very enviable position.”
So how can Americans protect their hard-earned cash?
At the individual level, meanwhile, Carnegie Melon’s Spatt warns there is very little consumers can do on their own to tackle inflation as a whole once it takes root in the economy.
“Individuals can, of course, try to make the best decisions that they can to watch out for themselves,” Spatt said. “To the extent that they see opportunities for higher wages, obviously, they should go for those. To the extent that they see prices that haven’t yet moved up, but they think are going to move up, they might want to lock in their purchases.”
To protect their savings, Americans “might want to consider, or might be more open to, buying bonds or buying equities,” Spatt added.
Uncertainty brought on by inflation has traditionally been bad news for the stock market, but at the same time stocks have also been a good source historically for investors looking to grow wealth over the longer term. While there is potential to guard against inflation with sound stock investments (and conversely to further deplete savings with investments that go down in value), going this route comes down to personal risk tolerance and financial goals.
Other savings vehicles that “may be a little bit better than bank accounts” in regards to inflation are inflation-protected government savings bonds, according to Spatt.
“At least in the near term, those [Series] I Bonds are offering extraordinary rates, about 7% because of the current levels of inflation,” he added.
These are capped at relatively modest levels, he noted, but said he still views them as a “terrific kind of low-risk type of inflation hedge of a different kind than investing in equity.”
Investors can also protect themselves from inflation by purchasing Treasury Inflation Protected Securities, or TIPS, which were not around during the ’70s and also have interest rates adjusted for inflation.
The Treasury has a useful breakdown for Americans comparing I Bonds and TIPS on its website.
As inflation tightens its grip on the economy and previous assurances from policymakers that it is “transitory” have gone out the window, Spatt said Americans should now recognize “prices are going to change over time, and they’re going to change adversely.”
People should keep this in mind when doing their shopping and financial planning, and then assess based on individual needs, options and goals how they can best adapt to this ever-evolving economic reality.
At the broader level, however, Scott warned inflation’s unwelcome return to the U.S. economy presents “a tremendous problem.”
“When you think about the policies that may be followed to stamp out the inflation, they may actually bring the economy into recession; that may be necessary like it was in the 1980s,” Spatt said. “It’s not easy to knock it out of the economy; this is one of the lessons of the 1980s.”
(EUGENE, Ore.) — Six people were transported to hospitals after a shooting at a concert hall in Eugene, Oregon, police said.
At 9:29 p.m. Friday, there were reports of multiple shots fired outside WOW Hall, where Lil Bean and Zay Bang were performing.
The Eugene Police Department and multiple law enforcement agencies responded, along with Eugene Springfield Fire.
Of the six victims that were shot, one is in critical condition, Eugene Police Department Chief Chris Skinner said during a press conference early Saturday.
Police don’t yet know if the shooting was random or targeted, but Skinner said it was “one of the highest profile shootings we’ve had in the city of Eugene.”
There are no reported fatalities at this time.
Police are looking for a single suspect, thought to be a male in a hoodie who was last seen running westbound away from the scene, Skinner said. The police chief added that he does not believe there is a broader safety risk to the community, but emphasized the suspect is still likely armed and dangerous.
“You may have heard that there was a shooting outside the WOW Hall tonight at the ‘Lil Bean + Zay Bang’* concert,” WOW Hall’s Board Chair Jaci Guerena and Interim Executive Director Deb Maher said in a statement on the venue’s website. “There is not much information currently available however we heard gunshots in the back parking lot. The motives are not yet known. We do know that some people were injured, but we do not know the extent of the injuries, and we do not want to speculate.”
All classes held at the WOW Hall are canceled until further notice, they said.
“We at the WOW Hall want to thank all first responders who came so quickly to ensure everyone’s safety and administer first aid. We believe all staff and volunteers are safe and accounted for. This is unprecedented at the WOW Hall. The police are investigating. If we receive additional information, we will try to make it available,” Guerena and Maher added.
The shooting is under active investigation.
Police are asking that anyone with information regarding the incident (case 22-00850) call 541-682-5111.
(NEW YORK) — The National Tsunami Warning Center issued a tsunami advisory for the entire West Coast and Alaska in the wake of an undersea volcanic eruption near Tonga.
Nearly all coastal areas in California, Oregon, Washington, Southeast Alaska, South Alaska, the Alaskan Peninsula and the Aleutian Islands are under a tsunami advisory. British Columbia is also under advisory.
Japan’s Meteorological Agency issued a tsunami warning for the southern Amami island and Tokara island chain in Kagoshima Prefecture and a tsunami advisory for all coastal areas facing the Pacific Ocean. Tsunami waves as high as 1.2 meters were reported near those islands around 11:30 a.m. eastern time.
A tsunami advisory means that a tsunami could produce strong currents or waves near the coastline. However, a tsunami advisory does not indicate a major tsunami event where water is actively entering coastal communities. In this circumstance, the tsunami is only dangerous to those in the water, or on the immediate beach — like swimmers and boaters.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
Editor’s note: This story’s headline has been updated to report that a tsunami advisory, not a warning, was issued.
(ATLANTA) — Any mask is better than no mask. But loosely woven cloth masks provide the least amount of protection and Americans in some cases might want to opt for higher quality masks like KN95 and N95 respirators, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention wrote Friday in updated online guidance.
“Wearing a highly protective mask or respirator may be most important for certain higher risk situations, or by some people at increased risk for severe disease,” the CDC stated.
The updated guidance comes after weeks of health experts urging Americans to upgrade their masks in the face of omicron, warning that cloth masks are not effective enough at stopping the highly transmissible variant from spreading.
But with much of the public reluctant to wear a mask at all, the CDC recommendation stops short of calling on Americans to choose one mask over the other, maintaining that any mask is better than no mask. The CDC also argues that higher quality masks can be less comfortable, and if a person takes it off, they are left with no protection.
“What I will say is the best mask that you can wear is the one that you will wear and the one you can keep on all day long that you can tolerate in public indoor settings and tolerate where you need to wear it,” Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the CDC director, told reporters this week.
N95 and K95 masks can be costly and harder to find, even as the U.S. government has built up a stockpile of 737 million N95s to ensure first responders don’t fun out. President Joe Biden said this week he is developing a plan to make the higher quality masks more widely available.
“Next week we’ll announce how we’re making high-quality masks available to the American people for free,” Biden said.
In its earlier guidance, the CDC urged Americans not to purchase surgical N95 masks so as to save them for health care workers. However, it noted that “basic disposable” respirators can be an option so long as supplies are available.
While this latest guidance stops short of calling on people to wear a certain type of mask, it includes more information about why a person might opt for a nonsurgical N95 or a KN95. It also suggests wearing a disposable surgical mask with a cloth mask over it to improve the fit.
“Some masks and respirators offer higher levels of protection than others, and some may be harder to tolerate or wear consistently than others,” the CDC stated in the updated guidance. “It is most important to wear a well-fitted mask or respirator correctly that is comfortable for you and that provides good protection.”
(NEW YORK) — Southern states have declared states of emergency as snow targets the East Coast this weekend.
The storm first hits the Midwest Friday night into Saturday. Roads will be dangerous in southern Minnesota and Iowa, where up to 10 inches of snow and gusty winds could cause whiteout conditions. The Midwest could see 6 to 12 inches of snow in some areas.
Saturday night into Sunday, the snow turns to Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas.
A wintry mix of snow, sleet and freezing rain could make roads extremely dangerous.
Three to 6 inches of snow is possible in parts of the South, with 6 to 18 inches possible in the mountains of Tennessee, North Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia. This storm has the potential to give Atlanta its first measurable snow in four years.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper and Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam have issued states of emergency as the storm approaches.
“This storm will bring significant impacts from snow, sleet and freezing rain in different parts of the state, with likely power outages and travel disruptions,” Cooper warned.
Northam said, “I urge Virginians to take this storm seriously and make preparations now.”
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice has also declared a statewide “state of preparedness.”
The storm will reach the mid-Atlantic later in the day on Sunday and may bring snow and a wintry mix to Washington, D.C., by Sunday evening. The Virginia, Delaware and New Jersey coastline will see rain and possibly strong winds.
For Monday morning, forecast models are showing heavy snow for the interior Northeast and light snow followed by rain for the major cities along the coast, like Boston, New York City and Philadelphia. But it is possible the storm shifts east, dropping heavy snow on the Interstate 95 corridor.
One to 3 inches of snow is possible for D.C., Philadelphia, New York City and Boston before it’s quickly washed away by Monday’s rain. Six to 18 inches of snow is forecast for the interior Northeast and New England.
For those in the Northeast, make sure to bundle up as you await the snow: temperatures in the Northeast are plunging to their lowest levels in three years this weekend.
Saturday morning the wind chill — what temperature it feels like — will be 2 degrees in New York, minus 12 in Boston and minus 28 in Burlington, Vermont.
ABC News’ Hilda Estevez contributed to this report.
Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration will launch a new website on Wednesday that Americans can use to request free at-home rapid COVID tests mailed to their doorsteps, senior White House officials said on Friday.
People will be able to order four tests per household at COVIDTests.gov. They won’t be delivered immediately, though. They will be shipped out 7-12 days after they’re ordered, senior officials said.
That means the first free tests won’t reach Americans until late January or early February, which will be too late to blunt the peak of omicron cases in many parts of the country. Still, the plan will allow Americans to have free tests on-hand in the coming weeks and months.
All that people need to enter on the site to receive a test is a name and an address. The White House will also launch a call line for people who don’t have computer access.
Another 500 million tests will eventually also be available, bringing the total to 1 billion free at-home tests distributed to Americans, but the White House hasn’t announced a timeline for the second batch of tests.
And more immediately, starting Saturday, people will be able to get up to eight tests per month reimbursed through insurance if they go out and purchase them on their own, either online or at stores.
“In the first couple of days, we’re encouraging people to just make sure you keep your receipts as the systems are getting up online,” a senior administration official said on Friday.
The White House is also incentivizing insurers to work with retailers and offer the tests for free up-front for people who show their insurance cards, similar to how prescriptions might be covered at the pharmacy. Those partnerships between insurers and retailers are still in the works.
This is on top of 50 million free at-home tests that have been doled out to community health centers around the country and 20,000 free testing sites.
Taken together, it all signifies a clear effort on behalf of the administration to increase the testing supply after omicron caught the government off guard.
The myriad testing options now in full swing will also likely take the pressure off the website launching on Wednesday, particularly as cases begin to fall in some northeastern areas.
Less demand will give the White House time to finish contracting all 500 million tests.
Currently, the White House only has tens of millions of tests on hand, a senior administration official confirmed Friday.
They’ve secured another 400 million or so that are still being manufactured and delivered.
But senior administration officials said they were confident they would be able to get tests sent out to any American who ordered a test next week within their shipping timeline of 7-12 days.
“We’re confident that with our contracting speed, which is very fast, with the ones we have on hand, and the timeline we’re laying out today, that we can meet all of our timelines and get these to Americans that want them,” a senior administration official said.
The tests will be sent via the U.S. Postal Service as first class mail.
The tests will not necessarily be of use to Americans who were exposed and want to take a test within the first 5 days of exposure, or come down with symptoms and want to test immediately, since they’ll take more than 7-12 days to arrive.
But senior administration officials ran through the host of other testing options Americans can use in those scenarios and defended this program as one “designed to ensure that Americans have at-home rapid tests on hand in the weeks and months ahead, as they have a need.”
The officials also said they were “ready” to meet demand on Wednesday and prevent any website crashes, as seen during former President Barack Obama’s launch of Healthcare.gov, which was overseen at the time by the current White House COVID Coordinator Jeff Zients.
“Of course, every website launch poses some risks, we are quite cognizant of that. But we have the best tech teams” across the administration, an official said. “So we’re ready for this and we’re ready for Americans to start ordering their tests on January 19.”
(WASHINGTON) — After a week of high-stakes diplomacy, the U.S. on Friday accused Russia of “fabricating a pretext” to invade its neighbor Ukraine.
It’s another sign that the “drumbeats of war” are getting louder, in the words of one U.S. ambassador, after three key meetings this week to defuse tensions raised by Russia massing approximately 100,000 troops on its borders with Ukraine.
But whether Russian President Vladimir Putin will act on a long-held desire to consume Ukraine, or whether his posturing is a bluff to strengthen Moscow’s hand and therefore its influence, is still an open question, according to senior U.S. officials.
A “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday sparked new fears that the very kind of sabotage plot that U.S. officials have described could already be underway.
“Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, including through sabotage activities and information operations, by accusing Ukraine of preparing an imminent attack against Russian forces in eastern Ukraine,” a U.S. official said Friday.
U.S. intelligence has “information that indicates Russia has already prepositioned a group of operatives to conduct a false-flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” the official added, saying the group was trained in urban warfare and the use of explosives.
The alleged plot would begin several weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which he attacked in 2014 by annexing Crimea and fomenting a war in its eastern provinces known as Donbas. That conflict has killed as many as 14,000 people in the last eight years, with artillery and sniper fire still exchanged weekly between Ukrainian government forces and Russian-led separatists.
Not long after, White House press secretary Jen Psaki spelled out the U.S. accusations in public.
“We are concerned that the Russian government is preparing for an invasion in Ukraine that may result in widespread human rights violations and war crimes, should diplomacy fail to meet their objectives,” Psaki told reporters at her daily briefing. “As part of its plans, Russia is laying the groundwork to have the option of fabricating a pretext for invasion, and we’ve seen this before.
She repeated the U.S. official’s assertion that Russian action could occur sometime between the middle of this month and mid-February.
“We have information that indicates Russia has already pre-positioned a group of operatives to conduct a false flag operation in eastern Ukraine,” Psaki continued. “The operatives are trained in urban warfare and in using explosives to carry out acts of sabotage against Russia’s own proxy forces. Our information also indicates that Russian influence actors are already starting to fabricate Ukrainian provocations in state and social media to justify a Russian intervention and sew divisions in Ukraine.”
The Kremlin dismissed the accusations, saying no proof has been presented.
“All these statements still have just the character of hearsay and haven’t been confirmed by anything,” spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the state news agency TASS.
The buildup since last fall of nearly 100,000 Russian forces, with potential plans for as many as 175,000, according to U.S. officials, has heightened fears of a full-scale invasion or new attack. In addition to the troops, Russia has stationed artillery systems and electronic warfare systems, according to U.S. ambassador to the OSCE, Michael Carpenter.
“The drumbeat of war is sounding loud, and the rhetoric has gotten rather shrill,” Carpenter said Thursday after the third and last round of talks with Russia. “We have to prepare for the eventuality that there could be an escalation.”
That rhetoric – accusing Ukraine of abusing human rights and increasing belligerence – has dominated on Russia-language social media, according to the U.S. official. In December, it increased roughly 200 percent to nearly 3,500 posts per day, they said, in order “to justify a Russian intervention and sow divisions in Ukraine.”
That appeared to include a “massive” cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites on Friday. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry said theirs and other sites were temporarily down, with a message posted on the site by the attackers, address to “Ukrainians!”
“All your information will become public, be afraid and expect the worst. This is for your past, present and future,” it said in part.
Andrei Yermark, a top adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said later Friday that approximately 90 percent of sites have been restored and that critical infrastructure was not affected.
No one has claimed responsibility for the attack, and Yermak said the country’s security service was investigating now.
“Of course, we have some thoughts,” he added, saying this kind of attack was “one of the potential parts of the destabilization” that officials have warned about.
With partners like the U.S. and the U.K., “We will be ready to answer to this attack and continue to work with our partners to protect,” he said.
Psaki said President Joe Biden was briefed about the cyberattack against Ukrainian government sites, but held back from naming who might be behind it.
“We don’t have attribution at this time, and I can’t point to any more specifics … I would just note that we will take necessary and proper steps, of course, to defend our allies, support our partners, and support the Ukrainian people, but we’re still assessing that at this point in time,” she said.
ABC News’ Justin Gomez and Patrick Reevell contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — With the midterm elections officially taking center stage in national politics, GOP candidates up and down the ballot are taking advantage of nationwide divides over education issues — homing in on controversies over how much power school boards should have to bolster their campaigns.
Parental involvement, curriculum choices, COVID policies and vaccine mandates dominated conversations relating to Virginia’s 2021 gubernatorial race, after Democratic nominee Terry McAuliffe said he didn’t think parents should have a say in what their children are taught at school, which, in part, ultimately delivered a win for Republican Gov.-elect Glenn Youngkin.
The controversy over whether and how to teach about race also helped bring school boards into the national conversation, further seeping the bodies into partisan politics. School boards are now so contentious that some state legislatures are looking to make their normally nonpartisan elections, partisan.
In 2021, Tennessee passed a bill to attach party affiliation to school board candidates, and Arizona, Missouri, Utah and Indiana are among the states flirting with the idea.
School board elections, as with other down-ballot races, often don’t pull hordes of attention from voters. But already in 2022, 20 school board recall efforts have been launched across the country, according to data tracked by the nonpartisan organization Ballotpedia. In 2021, 91 recall efforts were pursued, on average more than twice as many as had been seen in the past.
Like other battlegrounds, school boards have taken center stage in Arizona. GOP candidates for governor there and those hoping to unseat Sen. Mark Kelly in Washington have even started dropping in on school board meetings to shore up support.
School boards were propelled into the spotlight in the state after a document from a Scottsdale school board member listing personal information about parents who had criticized the district was shared by his son, according to the Arizona Republic. Politicians weighed in on the controversy that ensued and, ultimately, efforts to remove the member were successful.
Kari Lake, a former TV anchor, who is running for Arizona governor with backing from former President Donald Trump, and Jim Lamon, a businessman running to unseat Kelly in the Senate, held a joint rally outside the Scottsdale high school in late November ahead of a school board meeting to discuss the parental “dossier.”
Lamon offered to pay legal expenses for parents who chose to pursue lawsuits against the district related to coronavirus policies or other issues.
“These people in that school board meeting about to kick off here, they work for you,” Lamon said outside the Scottsdale meeting, according to the Arizona Republic.
“They work for the parents and the kids, not for themselves. And we don’t work for them. … We’re a peaceful group, we’re great parents here, and we’ll stand tall. And I got your back,” he added.
Lake cut an ad with mothers from the district announcing she would establish the “Arizona Parent Coalition” as governor, which would “serve as an oversight to unruly school boards and the union bosses.”
“When all of us parents rally together, we win. And when we win, we will root out critical race theory,” she said in a campaign video.
Lake is fundraising on the school board controversy as well, with a page on the Republican donation hosting site WinRed dedicated specifically to to it. She’s singled herself out from the GOP field across the state by calling for cameras in all classrooms, which her competitors and sitting GOP Gov. Doug Ducey have spoken out against.
Former GOP Rep. Matt Salmon, who is running for governor, has called on the Arizona School Board Association to distance itself from the national branch. He told ABC News that while he doesn’t think school board issues will necessarily draw single-issue voters, he does think they will engage previously unengaged ones.
“It looks like we’ve awakened the sleeping giant, and it’s not just this, it’s all kinds of government intrusion,” Salmon said. “I think this is part and parcel of a lot of things that people are seeing: that their way of life is not getting better. It’s getting worse.”
(CHICAGO) — Students are walking out of their classes in Boston, Chicago and other cities across the country in protest of in-person learning conditions as COVID-19 rages on.
Public school students in Boston left their classrooms at 10:30 a.m. Friday to demand that local leaders take more initiative in reducing the spread of COVID-19 in schools and implement a two-week period for remote learning.
“We will then stand there for exactly 10 minutes, one minute for every hundred thousand new COVID-19 cases found on the 2nd of January,” according to a post from the student-run Massachusetts COVID Walkout Instagram page.
Following the walk-out, students held a webinar to discuss their fears about the handling of the pandemic in schools. Students at the virtual event recounted their urge to take action and keep their fellow students, teachers and staff safe.
They are demanding a two-week remote learning period, proper Personal Protective Equipment for teachers, adequate technology for remote learning and the cancellation of some standardized testing.
In a statement to ABC News, Boston Public Schools said it “believes deeply in students advocating for what they believe in.”
“We further believe it is critically important that we encourage and support them in expressing their concerns, beliefs and positions to their leaders,” the statement said. “We will continue to listen to our students and families as we navigate this latest surge and the impacts it has on our ability to remain in person and deliver a quality education.”
In spring 2021, Massachusetts officials said remote learning would no longer count toward required learning hours. Any school-wide remote learning days must be made up by students and teachers at the end of the year.
Boston Public Schools has reported 3,483 COVID cases as of Jan. 5, according to the district website.
Students in Chicago also walked out of their classes Friday and chanted demands that schools address COVID-19 safety concerns.
As they walked en masse on the streets and toward the administrative offices of the Chicago Public School district, students yelled, “Si se puede,” or “Yes, we can,” as well as “No more oppression, change is now in session!”
Chicago Public Schools’ Radical Youth Alliance, a student-run advocacy group, also sent a letter of demands to Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, CEO of Chicago Public Schools Pedro Martinez, Chicago Department of Public Health Commissioner Allison Arwady.
The students asked for transparency and accuracy in the school’s COVID-19 data, youth participation in decision-making and accountability for “mistakes.”
“As you consistently prove yourself and your leadership to be incompetent, we as Black and Brown young people are the common denominator of being the most harmed and impacted,” the letter read. “We are tired, exhausted, and frustrated.”
The group also backed the Chicago Teachers Union, which narrowly accepted a new agreement on COVID-19 safety precautions.
Chicago Public Schools had 10,928 cases among its students and staff since the start of the 2021-2022 school year, according to the district website.
In a statement, Chicago Public Schools said it “remains committed to fostering learning environments that allow students to respectfully deliberate issues with evidence and an open mind – and safely participate in civic action.”
According to the CPS website, students are required to wear masks in schools and answer a self-screener symptom questionnaire before school. Testing is optional.
Protests in New York, California and other states have highlighted the growing concerns that school leaders are failing to address COVID-19 and its impact on education and health in schools.
