(NEW YORK) — Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are back.
The apps, owned by Facebook, stopped working Monday for millions of users across the U.S., according to outage site Down Detector.
Both the mobile and web browser editions of the apps were not working as of 11:42 a.m. ET, the site reported.
They were down for more than six hours.
“To the huge community of people and businesses around the world who depend on us: we’re sorry. We’ve been working hard to restore access to our apps and services and are happy to report they are coming back online now. Thank you for bearing with us,” Facebook said Monday evening, once the apps began working again.
On Monday afternoon, a Facebook company spokesperson told ABC News, “We’re aware that some people are having trouble accessing our apps and products. We’re working to get things back to normal as quickly as possible, and we apologize for any inconvenience.”
The company added that it was experiencing “networking issues” and gave no timeline for a fix.
“Sincere apologies to everyone impacted by outages of Facebook-powered services right now,” Facebook said at the time. “We are experiencing networking issues and teams are working as fast as possible to debug and restore as fast as possible”
The Instagram and Facebook outages come shortly after a whistleblower came forward and claimed to CBS News that the company could do more to protect against hate speech and misinformation but prioritizes profits over its users.
Following the Sunday “60 Minutes” interview with the whistleblower, identified as Frances Haugen, a data scientist, the company put out a statement defending itself.
“We’ve invested heavily in people and technology to keep our platform safe, and have made fighting misinformation and providing authoritative information a priority,” the company said in a statement. “If any research had identified an exact solution to these complex challenges, the tech industry, governments, and society would have solved them a long time ago.”
After the whistleblower’s identity was made public, Sens. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., announced the Senate will hold a hearing in the Senate Consumer Protection Subcommittee Tuesday to hear from Haugen about Facebook and Instagram’s impacts on young users.
Facebook’s stock took a severe hit Monday following the whistleblower’s revelations and the outage, recording its worst day of the year. At closing, the stock was trading at $326.23 a share, down 16.78 points or 4.89%.
The situation promoted other social media sites to make some fun jokes.
Twitter’s official account tweeted, “Hello literally everyone,” Monday afternoon.
The tweet prompted several funny replies from other major accounts, including McDonald’s, Burger King, and Starbucks, which tweeted, “Perfect time for a coffee break.”
Twitter users later on Monday reported some issues with the app due to an increase in users, but Twitter’s support page said the matter was fixed.
“Sometimes more people than usual use Twitter. We prepare for these moments, but today things didn’t go exactly as planned. Some of you may have had an issue seeing replies and DMs as a result. This has been fixed. Sorry about that!” Twitter Support tweeted.
On Monday afternoon, the Facebook status page came back online with a message for users. “Major disruptions: Platform Status,” it read. “We are aware that there is an ongoing issue impacting our service. Our engineers are working on it. Sorry for the inconvenience.”
Facebook’s safety head was questioned by lawmakers last Thursday over what the company knew about the potential for Instagram to be harmful to young users’ mental health.
The Senate Subcommittee on Consumer Protection, Product Safety and Data Security convened the hearing in the wake of a Wall Street Journal investigation citing Facebook’s own internal research, allegedly leaked by a whistleblower, which found Instagram adversely impacted mental health issues in teens, especially girls.
“We’re here today because Facebook has shown us once again that it is incapable of holding itself accountable,” Blumenthal said in his opening remarks last week.
Facebook defended itself against the bipartisan scrutiny at the hearing.
“We understand that recent reporting has raised a lot of questions about our internal research, including research we do to better understand young people’s experiences on Instagram,” Antigone Davis, Facebook’s global head of safety, stated in written testimony. “We strongly disagree with how this reporting characterized our work, so we want to be clear about what that research shows, and what it does not show.”
The new, upcoming committee hearing, titled “Protecting Kids Online: Testimony from a Facebook Whistleblower,” is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday.
ABC News’ Victor Ordonez contributed to this report
(NEW YORK) — The pot of cash up for grabs continues to grow. According to lottery officials, the Powerball jackpot for Monday night’s drawing soared to $685 million.
The cash value of the grand prize is $485.5 million, Powerball officials said.
The jackpot was last hit on June 5, and since then there have been 40 consecutive drawings without a Grand Prize winner, a new record for the Powerball jackpot, according to officials.
The lottery is available in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
In August, it went from two drawings a week, on Wednesdays and Saturdays, to three drawings a week, Mondays, Wednesdays and Saturdays.
Even though there hasn’t been a jackpot winner in months, several Powerball players have earned smaller cash prizes.
“In Saturday’s drawing alone, more than 2.8 million tickets won prizes ranging from $4 to $1 million,” Powerball officials said in a news release.
The largest Powerball jackpot prize money was $1.586 billion in 2016, which was shared by winners in California, Florida and Tennessee, officials said.
Monday’s drawing is scheduled for 10:59 p.m. ET. The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, according to Powerball officials.
(WASHINGTON) — Stephanie Grisham, one of former President Donald Trump’s most senior and longest-serving advisers, says she is “terrified” that her former boss may run for office again.
“I am terrified of him running in 2024,” Grisham, who served as both Trump’s press secretary and first lady Melania Trump’s chief of staff, told “Nightline” co-anchor Juju Chang in a wide-ranging exclusive interview on the eve of the publication of Grisham’s new book.
“I don’t think he is fit for the job,” Grisham said. “I think that he is erratic. I think that he can be delusional. I think that he is a narcissist and cares about himself first and foremost. And I do not want him to be our president again.”
Asked by Chang what scares her the most, Grisham painted a grim picture of what could happen if Trump ends up running again in 2024.
“I think he would foment more violence,” she said. “He won’t have consequences. He won’t need to be reelected again.”
“I think he will line his pockets,” she added. “I think his family will line their pockets. I believe that he wanted to help the country in the beginning; I believe he wants to help himself now.”
In her new book, titled “I’ll Take Your Questions Now,” out this Tuesday, Grisham describes a White House in perpetual chaos, where she says “casual dishonesty” flowed through the air “as if it were in the air conditioning system.” The book is filled with accusations about the former president, and includes a host of alleged wrongdoings that range from downplaying the seriousness of the coronavirus to making sexual comments about a young female White House staffer.
But amid all the turmoil laid out in the book, Grisham remained by the former president’s side for nearly his entire four-year term in the White House, before resigning after the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol.
“How did you go from one of the loyalist loyals to one of their fiercest critics, seemingly overnight?” Chang asked Grisham, who responded, “Definitely not overnight. It’s kind of a journey.”
Grisham, who is perhaps best known for never holding a televised press briefing during her time as White House press secretary, has faced a barrage of criticism for speaking out now, nearly a year after leaving the White House.
The former president and his family have forcefully responded to the latest tell-all book by a former close ally, with Melania Trump’s office saying in a statement, “The author is desperately trying to rehabilitate her tarnished reputation by manipulating and distorting the truth about Mrs. Trump. Ms. Grisham is a deceitful and troubled individual who doesn’t deserve anyone’s trust.
“Stephanie didn’t have what it takes and that was obvious from the beginning,” former President Trump said in a statement. “Now, like everyone else, she gets paid by a radical left-leaning publisher to say bad and untrue things.”
Grisham has also received harsh pushback from some former colleagues, including former Trump White House Director of Communications Alyssa Farah, who responded to the book live during her guest-host appearance on “The View” Monday.
“First and foremost, I don’t believe in profiting off of public service. I had a chance to write my White House tell-all and declined. The American people, the taxpayers paid my salary. I’m not going to go write a book and cash in,” said Farah, who resigned from the White House in December following the election.
“Reading some of the reviews, some of the critics are saying, you know, if you’re admitting to lying then, what makes us think that you’re not lying now?” Chang asked Grisham about her role as press secretary.
“Well, I don’t think I’m admitting to lying at all,” Grisham responded. “I tried to give the press the most honest answers I could, and there were oftentimes I was given information that I knew to be true that perhaps wasn’t true.”
But Chang pushed back, pointing out that Grisham had already admitted that a 2019 tweet she posted targeting former Chief of Staff John Kelly had been untrue.
“To be fair, you did say that the John Kelly tweet was not sincere,” Chang said to Grisham, who acknowledged, “That was not sincere,” and added, “And I regret and apologize for so much.”
“But you said that, ‘I never lied?'” Chang followed up. “Oh no,” Grisham said. “I would s– I– I just would say I– I tried my best.”
Beyond not holding a press briefing, Grisham writes in the book that she was once tasked by the former president with figuring out how to completely ban members of the media from the White House grounds. “I researched different places we could put them other than the press briefing room. Each time the president asked me about my progress on the matter, I let him know I was still working on options,” she writes.
“Should the American public believe what you’re saying now when you, in many ways, were non-responsive and not communicating transparently or honestly during — by your own admission?” Chang asked.
“Fair question — the fact is, the president never wanted me to do a briefing,” said Grisham who added that “I was glad that that was something he didn’t want from me, because I didn’t want to have to go out there and say something dishonest.”
Farah, however, pushed back on Grisham’s claim that Trump told her not to hold press briefings.
“That would surprise me,” Farah said. “When I worked for him, it was, ‘Go get out on TV, Alyssa. Kayleigh, go give a briefing.’ He wanted people out.”
“She could have done backgrounders in her office,” Farah said of Grisham. “But it seemed like she was largely MIA on the job.”
Grisham also claims in the book that she observed the former president, who has been accused of sexual misconduct by at least 18 women, develop an “unusual interest” and behave “inappropriately” toward a young female staffer during his time as president, including during one trip where he summoned the unnamed aide to his cabin on Air Force One, allegedly telling other staffers, “Let’s bring her up here and look at her ass.”
“What I do know is that he behaved inappropriately. And since the woman worked for me, I tried to protect her and keep his unusual interest in her under wraps,” Grisham writes. “If the president didn’t see her with the press corps, he would ask me where she was. He would ask me if she were coming with us on foreign trips. When she did come along on trips, he often asked me to bring her to his office cabin in the aircraft, which he’d rarely done with anyone else.”
“I wouldn’t leave her in the cabin with him. I always sat there,” Grisham told Chang. “And he would just talk to her about, you know, ‘Did you see my speech? What did you think?’ You know, I think have her compliment him.”
But Chang challenged Grisham, asking, “And yet in many ways were you helping in some ways normalizing his other inappropriate behavior and enabling in some way this behavior?”
“I’ve thought about that a lot,” Grisham replied. “At the White House, it’s not like there’s a human resources office that you can go to say, ‘Hey, the president of the United States is acting inappropriately.'”
Grisham’s claims about the staffer were corroborated by Farah, who said on “The View” that “I was aware of the situation and of the female and I did report it to the chief of staff.”
“It was a challenging situation I don’t know if anything was done,” she said.
“What were you worried that might happen?” Chang asked Grisham.
“I was worried that a young, impressionable girl would be put into a situation that made her uncomfortable,” said Grisham, who also admitted that she now believes “most” of the women who have accused Trump of sexual misconduct, including former porn star Stormy Daniels. “I was worried he would sexually harass her.”
As the first lady’s chief of staff, Grisham had an up-close look at the woman she says Secret Service agents referred to as “Rapunzel.” Regarding the #FreeMelania hashtag that became a rallying cry for those who theorized online that the first lady didn’t want to be in the White House, Grisham said that idea was misguided.
“The #FreeMelania hashtag I think was people hoping that she wanted to leave,” Grisham said. “The truth is, she liked it there. I think there was a rumor for years that she had a whole separate house somewhere, which was not true. We would laugh about the #FreeMelania hashtag all the time.”
Grisham also described what it was like to be the person to inform the first lady that her husband was being accused of an extramarital affair and was being sued by Daniels.
“That was tough. As a woman, I’ve been cheated on before, so that was painful for me,” Grisham recalled. “It was very, very awkward. I’ve never had to do anything like that before.”
Grisham also claimed that staffers had a secret nickname for the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, who both held senior positions in the White House, referring to the pair as “the interns.”
“We called them the interns because as interns usually are, they come into places and think they know everything,” Grisham said.
In the book, which publisher HarperCollins calls “the most frank and intimate portrait of the Trump White House yet,” Grisham also claims Trump had an infatuation with dictators and writes how the former president allegedly sought to cozy up to Russia’s Vladimir Putin during an overseas trip for the Group of 20 summit in Osaka in 2019. Grisham alleges that during a private meeting before the press was brought into the room, Trump told Putin, “Okay, I’m going to act a little tougher with you for a few minutes. But it’s for the cameras, and after they leave we’ll talk. You understand.”
“Putin was coughing. He kept coughing, kept clearing his throat, and I did find it odd that he wouldn’t just take a drink of water … and he knows ways to get in someone’s head,” Grisham told Chang.
As one of Trump’s longest-serving political aides, Grisham’s time working for the former president dates back to his 2016 campaign when she served as a press wrangler before moving deeper into the Trumps’ inner circle. As other top aides resigned or were forced out — with some even speaking out against Trump while he was still in office — Grisham continued to stand by the president.
Grisham told Chang that one of her biggest regrets was not doing more from inside the White House during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic when, as she alleges, Trump was thinking more about getting reelected than how to get the virus under control.
“It was about having him look presidential for reelection. I wish I would have told him he needs to wear a mask. I wish I could’ve been louder with that,” she said.
“Do you think that misinformation or dishonesty cost lives?” Chang asked about the White House’s response to the pandemic.
“Yes,” Grisham replied. “I will always think that, and I don’t know that I — you can ever forgive yourself fully for being a part of that.”
(TUSCON, Ariz.) — One Drug Enforcement Administration agent was killed and two other officers were injured in a shooting on an Amtrak train that was stopped in Tucson, Arizona, authorities said.
Officers boarded the train Monday morning to perform a routine check for illegal guns, money and drugs and encountered two people on the second level of the double-decker Amtrak car, Tucson police said.
One individual was detained, but a second person revealed a handgun and opened fire, police said.
One DEA agent was killed and another DEA agent is in critical condition, police said.
A Tucson police officer who was on the platform heard the gunfire and ran onto the train, at which point he was shot, police said. That officer is in stable condition, police said.
After exchanging rounds with police, the suspected gunman barricaded himself in a lower-level bathroom, authorities said. It was later determined that the suspected gunman died, though it is not clear how he died, police said.
There were no reports of injuries to the 137 passengers or 11 crew members, Amtrak said.
The train was en route from Los Angeles to New Orleans and arrived in Tucson at 7:40 a.m. local time, Amtrak said.
ABC News’ Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.
(MILWAUKEE) — The grandmother of an 11-year-old Milwaukee girl killed in a weekend drive-by shooting that also left her 5-year-old sister injured said on Monday that the children were coming home from a birthday party with their mother when a gunman opened fire on their car.
The death of Ta’Niyla Parker has sparked widespread outrage in Milwaukee and community activists have taken to the streets holding signs reading, “Stop killing our children.”
“She was very smart, outgoing. She was a loving big sister to her little sister,” Ta’Niyla’s grandmother, Janice Little, told ABC News on Monday.
Little said she was Ta’Niyla’s legal guardian and that the child has lived with her since she was born.
“I hope they get caught and get arrested,” Little said of her granddaughter’s killer.
The shooting unfolded about 9 p.m. on Saturday in the Sherman Park neighborhood in northwest Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Police Department. A vehicle pulled up alongside the family’s car and gunfire erupted, police said.
Sherman Park resident Kristofer Koneazny told ABC affiliate station WISN in Milwaukee that he called 911 after hearing around 15 gunshots in rapid succession.
No arrests have been made in the homicide and police are still working to identify the person or persons responsible for the shooting, authorities said.
Police said a relative was driving the car and took the wounded children to the District 7 police precinct several blocks away, where officers performed first aid and called Milwaukee Fire Department paramedics.
The sisters were taken to Children’s Hospital in Milwaukee, where the older child died early Sunday morning, police said.
Little said her daughter, Talea Hairston, was driving the girls to her home when the shooting occurred.
She said Hairston had taken her daughters to a friend’s birthday party at a Chuck E. Cheese in Milwaukee.
“She called about 9 o’clock. I’m thinking she’s calling to say, ‘Come open up the door because I’m fixing to drop the kids off,'” Little said. “But she just called and started hollering and screaming and said, ‘The babies were shot.'”
She said her younger grandchild suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
“She’s doing better. She’s walking now and they said that she would probably be able to come home today,” Little said.
She said Ta’Niyla was a sixth-grader and loved drawing cartoons on her cellphone.
“She loved her anime,” Little said, referring to a Japanese style of cartoons. “She was doing all of that on her phone. She loved to do that.”
Community activists in the Sherman Park neighborhood took to the streets Sunday afternoon to draw attention to the tragedy.
“I’m a father myself and seeing what happened … the senseless act of violence where a little kid has to die, I think enough is enough,” Walter Garron of the Brown Berets community social justice group, told WISN.
Garron was one of several community activists holding signs reading “Stop killing our children.”
“We’re trying to bring awareness make sure people know there are other people here watching,” Garron said, “and we are caring about their families and the community and we want this stopped.”
(NEW YORK) — Northwell Health, the largest hospital system in New York state, announced Monday that all of its employees have been vaccinated against the coronavirus.
The move comes just one week after the state issued a vaccine mandate for all health workers.
Northwell Health representatives said in a statement that all of the company’s 76,000 employees, from 23 hospitals and more than 830 outpatient facilities, have received their shots.
“Northwell believes that having a fully vaccinated workforce is an important measure in our duty to protect the health and safety of our staff, our patients and the communities we serve,” the company said in a statement.
A spokesman for the hospital system told ABC News that 1,400 employees were laid off because they did not comply with the mandate.
“Northwell regrets losing any employee under such circumstances, but as health care professionals and members of the largest health care provider in the state, we understand our unique responsibility to protect the health of our patients and each other,” the hospital said. “We owe it to our staff, our patients and the communities we serve to be 100% vaccinated against COVID-19.”
As the deadline for the mandate approached, Gov. Kathy Hochul said that thousands of unvaccinated health care workers got their doses. No hospital in the state was forced to close its doors following the termination of employees who didn’t comply with the mandate.
New York hospitals were the epicenter of the pandemic during the spring of 2020, with bed space scarce in several locations in New York City. Hospital admissions peaked 18,825 on April 12, 2020, according to the New York State Health Department.
Hospitalization rates in the state have seen a jump since the summer, when they hit a low of 349 on July 13, state health data showed. As of Oct. 2, 2,151 people are hospitalized throughout the state, most of whom are unvaccinated patients, according to state health officials.
As of Oct. 4, 71.9% of all New York residents have received at least one dose of the vaccine, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
(NEW YORK) –Former President Donald Trump will have to sit for a deposition sometime before Christmas as part of a defamation lawsuit filed by Summer Zervos, a former contestant on “Apprentice,” a judge’s law clerk said Monday.
Zervos has alleged that Trump sexually assaulted her at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2007 and defamed her during his campaign when he said she lied about it.
Earlier, in a 2016 statement, Trump had said that he had “never met her at a hotel or greeted her inappropriately a decade ago.”
The two parties are still haggling over disclosure of certain documents but Zervos’ side is eager to depose the former president.
“We just don’t believe our client can be further prejudiced in delaying this litigation any longer,” said Zervos’ attorney Moira Penza. “We do not believe there are any outstanding issues that would prohibit the parties from engaging in depositions.”
An attorney for Trump, Alina Habba, called it “completely ridiculous” to think depositions could occur immediately when Zervos has not turned over all relevant information.
“Ms. Zervos is claiming emotional damages and financial damages,” Habba said. “How can we, as defense counsel, provide any kind of quality deposition when we don’t have all the medical records?”
A law clerk for the judge overseeing the case said he saw no reason depositions could not occur before the end of the year.
“Now he’s a private citizen,” said clerk Michael Rand during a virtual status conference on Monday. “I’m sure like any other litigant, we can have mutually agreeable dates for depositions. I really don’t see a reason that before the end of the year, you’re not done with depositions.”
Rand set a close-of-fact date by Dec. 23, meaning depositions will have to be taken by then. He said he expected a trial date to be set sometime in the early part of 2022.
(WASHINGTON) — Sen. Krysten Sinema, an Arizona Democrat, is clapping back after she was videotaped and chased into a school bathroom over the weekend by a group of pro-Biden agenda activists, confronting her over her objections holding up Democratic efforts on Capitol Hill.
President Joe Biden has also weighed in on the encounter, when asked on Monday, calling it not appropriate but also “part of the process” for someone without Secret Service protection.
Sinema, in a new statement on Monday, called the display caught on video and posted online “no legitimate protest” and “wholly inappropriate.”
She claimed activists entered Arizona State University, where she was teaching, using “deceptive” and “unlawful” means.
“After deceptively entering a locked, secure building, these individuals filmed and publicly posted videos of my students without their permission — including footage taken of both my students and I using a restroom,” the statement said.
While she wrote she supports the First Amendment, she shunned the protest — by a group she doesn’t name but claims to have met with several times since she was elected to the Senate.
“Yesterday’s behavior was not legitimate protest. It is unacceptable for activist organizations to instruct their members to jeopardize themselves by engaging in unlawful activities such as gaining entry to closed university buildings, disrupting learning environments, and filming students in a restroom,” she wrote.
Video posted to Twitter on Sunday by the organization Living United for Change in Arizona or LUCHA, showed people chanting at and chasing the first-term senator into a bathroom, pressing her to support Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and progressive immigration policy.
ABC News has reached out to LUCHA for comment.
The confrontation comes as the moderate Democratic senator, along with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., continue intra-party negotiations on the topline number for a larger social spending package to accompany the already Senate-passed $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
“In the 19 years I have been teaching at ASU, I have been committed to creating a safe and intellectually challenging environment for my students. Yesterday, that environment was breached. My students were unfairly and unlawfully victimized. This is wholly inappropriate,” Sinema continued.
Her statement ended by putting the onus also on elected officials to foster a healthy environment for politics.
“It is the duty of elected leaders to avoid fostering an environment in which honestly-held policy disagreements serve as the basis for vitriol — raising the temperature in political rhetoric and creating a permission structure for unacceptable behavior,” she wrote.
Biden was asked about the recent protests facing both Sinema and Manchin in his remarks on Monday about the debt ceiling.
“Joe Manchin had people on kayaks show up to his boat to yell at him. Senator Sinema last night was chased into a restroom. Do you think that those tactics are crossing a line?” a reporter asked.
“I don’t think they’re appropriate tactics, but it happens to everybody,” Biden replied. “The only people it doesn’t happen to are people who have Secret Service standing around them. So it’s part of the process.”
Asked if Sinema has given the White House a topline number for the social package — somewhere between $1.5 trillion and $3.5 trillion — Biden said “I’m not going to negotiate in public.”
As the video went viral on Twitter over the weekend, accumulating more than five million views by Monday, pundits of all parties united in agreement that the behavior crossed a privacy line.
(WASHINGTON) — As the cry “Oyez! Oyez! Oyez!” rang out just after 10 a.m. Monday in Washington, the justices of the U.S. Supreme Court emerged from behind a 44-foot velvet curtain wall, walking into their vaulted marble chamber for the first time in 18 months.
They entered a world — a courtroom, a docket, an American society — dramatically changed and charged with anticipation since they last convened in-person as major decisions loom on abortion, guns, the death penalty and religious freedom.
A chamber normally packed with hundreds of spectators is now limited to an audience of just five dozen clerks and members of the press — all covid-tested, N95-masked, and seated 6-feet apart. The lectern for attorneys, once 3 feet from the bench, now positioned 10-feet away.
Proceedings that for years were shielded from much of the public in real-time are now livestreamed on the Supreme Court website.
The justices took their seats in a new array for the first time since the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Chief Justice John Roberts, in the middle of the iconic mahogany bench, is now flanked by senior conservative Justice Clarence Thomas and senior liberal Justice Stephen Breyer.
Thomas, 73, who was famously silent for years during oral arguments before the pandemic, asked the first question of the new, in-person term and remained loquacious throughout. A sprightly Breyer, 83, repeatedly whispered to the chief with a smile from his new center-stage spot.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, who retired from the court in 2018, was seated in a front box as special guest — a show of solidarity for the institution at a time when the court faces its lowest public approval rating in decades and a brewing crisis of credibility.
On the wings of the bench, the newest justices: Amy Coney Barrett on the right, appearing in-person for arguments for the first time; on the far left, an empty seat for Brett Kavanaugh, who dialed in by phone from home due to a COVID-19 diagnosis last week. (There were no audible signs of his illness; the court has said he is asymptomatic.)
Justice Sonia Sotomayor was the only justice to don a face mask. Justice Samuel Alito was seen slumped back in his chair sipping from a stainless-steel thermos; he was the only justice to remain silent for the entire first case.
For nearly two-and-a-half hours, the justices heard arguments in two opening disputes: the first, a suit brought by Mississippi against Tennessee over the pumping of groundwater from a massive aquifer that stretches across eight states. The second case addressed a criminal procedural matter involving the Armed Career Criminal Act.
Free-for-all questioning among the justices, which had been sidelined during virtual sessions, was back in full force but remained civil and polite. Chief Justice Roberts has implemented a new procedure at the conclusion of each round, calling on each justice by name to see if they have any additional questions.
The court was gaveled in and out by newly-sworn Court Marshal Gail Curley, a recently retired Army colonel and judge advocate general officer who joined the court this summer as its 11th marshal in history. She is responsible for court security and operations.
Meanwhile, outside the court building protests raged over abortion. That issue will get its first public hearing of the term next Tuesday Oct. 12, in a procedural case out of Kentucky. The marquee abortion case of the year out of Mississippi — which asks the justices to squarely consider nearly 50 years of precedent since Roe v. Wade — is set for December.
