(NEW YORK) — After touring storm damage from Hurricane Ida in Louisiana on Friday, President Joe Biden will travel to the Northeast next, the White House said.
Overall, there have been at least 64 deaths across eight U.S. states related to Ida, including at least 49 in the Northeast.
New Jersey has seen the greatest loss of life tied to Ida, with at least 25 people dead and at least six people still missing as of Friday. Three tornadoes also were confirmed in New Jersey as the storm swept through Wednesday, mostly in the southern part of the state.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy confirmed on Twitter he will be joining Biden on the tour.
On Tuesday, @POTUS and I will survey devastating damage from Tropical Storm Ida in Manville. We’re grateful for the President’s leadership and support as we recover from this storm. Together, we will help New Jerseyans rebuild.https://t.co/srIK5Fepyc
In New York City, at least 13 people died due to the storm. All but two were found in basement apartments.
On Friday, Biden traveled to Louisiana to survey damage caused by Hurricane Ida.
“This storm has been incredible, not only here but all the way up the East Coast,” Biden told local officials in hard-hit LaPlace, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans.
“We came because we want to hear directly from you all, what specific problems you’ve been dealing with,” he said.
Biden told local officials he thought it was important to rebuild damaged infrastructure in a more resilient manner, such as placing power lines underground or making roofs stronger, and he spoke of the need to restore cellphone service so that residents can get in touch with loved ones and also learn about resources available to them.
Nearly a week after the storm, over 727,000 customers in Louisiana still remain without power statewide, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
The president also surveyed storm damage in the Cambridge neighborhood and took part in an aerial briefing by helicopter to Galliano, south of New Orleans, on Friday, according to the White House.
Before Hurricane Ida made landfall as a powerful Category 4 storm Sunday, Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi, authorizing FEMA to provide emergency assistance.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who made history as the first openly gay Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate, and husband Chasten Buttigieg are officially fathers — twice over.
After announcing last month that the two were expanding their family, the former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, mayor, officially introduced the couple’s new babies, sharing a black-and-white photo on social media of him and his husband each cradling a newborn in a hospital bed.
“Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents,” Pete Buttigieg said on Twitter. “We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”
Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family. pic.twitter.com/kS89gb11Ax
Pete Buttigieg, 39, said in a Twitter post last month that he and his husband were wanting to grow their family “for some time,” and they would “share more soon” on becoming parents.
The couple married in 2018. In an interview with The Washington Post in July, Chasten Buttigieg, 32, detailed their experience getting on adoption waiting lists for babies that have been abandoned or surrendered on short notice. He told the newspaper they had been trying to adopt for a year and had several close calls.
“It’s a really weird cycle of anger and frustration and hope,” he said in the interview. “You think it’s finally happening and you get so excited, and then it’s gone.”
While answering questions about his views on paid family leave on the campaign trail back in April 2019, Pete Buttigieg also spoke about wanting to have children.
“We’re hoping to have a little one soon, so I have a personal stake in this one, too,” he said at a rally. “We should have paid parental leave and find a way to have paid leave for anyone who needs caring.”
Pete Buttigieg has not yet revealed his plans for paternity leave.
ABC News’ Morgan Gstalter contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly one week on, Louisiana is struggling to recover from Hurricane Ida’s devastating blow.
Ida, which is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland in history, killed at least 10 in Louisiana, dumped more than 13 inches of rain in some southern regions and left whole neighborhoods underwater.
Over 721,000 customers in the state remain without power statewide, according to data from PowerOutage.us, as the state swelters under a heat advisory.
All power is expected to be restored in Orleans Parish by Sept. 8., energy company Entergy said in a statement. Over 1 million were left powerless in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
Several communities continue to grapple with water outages and boil-water advisories.
Due to the continued power outages, New Orleans is offering daily transportation assistance to residents who want to temporarily relocate to state-run public shelters, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a news release Friday.
“RTA will pick up residents from 12 City facilities utilized during our recovery response. We have been coordinating direct outreach to our senior housing facilities and apartment complexes to ensure that we are meeting our folks where they are,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday that 3,400 people are being sheltered by the state.
On Friday the Louisiana Department of Health announced a 10th fatality in the state: a 59-year-old man poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator believed to be running in his home.
The coroner determined three of the deaths to be storm-related, though the residents’ definitive causes of death have not been confirmed.
On Aug. 27, two days before Ida made landfall, the LDH learned of the four deaths at the warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish.
The probe will look into who decided to move the patients to “this apparently unsafe and potentially inappropriate facility,” who later “turned away career staff members of the LDH when they attempted to look into this situation” and “why did the police chief and the sheriff state an investigation was not needed.”
President Joe Biden surveyed the damage of the storm on the ground in several neighborhoods, including LaPlace, Friday. La Place, straddled between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain suffered severe water damage and flooding.
“I promise we’re going to have your back,” Biden said in a briefing.
He pledged to help with financial assistance and said the government has already distributed $100 million directly to individuals in the state through $500 checks to get them on their feet.
Now, people in communities where streets turned into rivers and roofs were ripped off in Ida’s 150 mph winds are trying to piece their lives back together.
Officials in Jefferson Parish called Grand Isle, a popular vacation site, “uninhabitable”. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development posted a warning on its website Thursday urging people to stay away citing multiple washouts along roadways, no electricity, running water or essential supplies.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s individual assistance director Chris Smith said there’s been a record number of individual assistance applications coming in from Louisiana, particularly the New Orleans area. To date, 290,000 applications for individual assistance have come in, he said in a conference call with reporters Friday,
“This is a record number of applicants that we have received from the Louisiana Ida declaration. We received more applications in the first two days of this disaster than we received in any other disaster in recent history,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — As Americans get ready to celebrate the end of summer, health officials are once again urging the public, particularly those who are still unvaccinated, to act responsibly during the Labor Day weekend, given the country’s ongoing struggle with the virus.
“First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 briefing Tuesday.
Holidays, which often entail traveling and large gatherings, have proven to be a catalyst of rapid COVID-19 spread across the country.
Last year, in the weeks prior to Labor Day, the country was experiencing a steady decline in COVID-19 cases, with the national daily case average falling to approximately 38,000.
However, the late summer holiday weekend set the stage for the country’s most significant viral surge of the pandemic. Between mid-September and Thanksgiving, the nation’s daily case average rose by more than 400%, followed by a record-setting influx of hospitalizations and deaths.
The country’s current average is now more than 100,000 daily cases higher than it was a year ago, with the U.S. reporting more than 153,000 new cases each day, following weeks of increasing metrics. Since the Fourth of July, COVID-19-related infections, hospitalizations and deaths surged to levels not seen since last winter.
“As we head into Labor Day, we should all be concerned about history repeating itself. High or intense transmission around most of the country combined with population mobility with limited masking and social distancing has been a consistent predictor of major surges,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
Experts are warning that although vaccination rates may help partially blunt the impact of a potential Labor Day holiday surge this year, and protect those who are inoculated against severe disease, the country could still be at-risk for the unwanted impacts of unmitigated spread.
“While we now have widespread vaccine uptake, we still have large segments of the population that remain fertile ground for the virus to spread, including our children,” Brownstein said.
With more than 47% of Americans still not fully vaccinated, there is concern that an increase in infections could push already struggling health systems in states with low vaccination rates to the brink, Brownstein added.
Seven states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas — have intensive care units about 90% or more filled, and nationally, nearly 8 in 10 staffed adult ICU beds are occupied by COVID or non-COVID patients.
A recent report published by the CDC found unvaccinated people were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than vaccinated people — and 29 times more likely to be hospitalized for their infections, and ICU bed capacity remains tight in several states with low vaccination rates.
“We need more individuals to step up, as people across the country prepare for Labor Day weekend,” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said during Tuesday’s briefing. “It’s critical that being vaccinated is part of their pre-holiday checklist.”
Walensky added that while fully vaccinated people can feel comfortable traveling, with the added protection of masks, it is important that they take into consideration the risks of COVID-19 infection, given the high transmissibility of the delta variant, prior to deciding whether to or not to travel.
It is also essential, said Walensky, that those who choose to celebrate the weekend holiday take precautions in order to keep themselves safe, such as gathering outside and with others who are vaccinated.
“Throughout the pandemic, we have seen that the vast majority of transmission takes place among unvaccinated people in closed, indoor settings,” she warned.
Further, Walensky said, while inside, wear masks to mitigate the spread of the disease.
The warnings come at yet another critical turning point in the pandemic, with infection rates still on the rise driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
Every state in the country is now experiencing high community transmission and nearly 103,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with the virus — one of the highest numbers of patients receiving care in seven months. An average of 1,000 Americans are also currently losing their lives each day from the virus.
Also, pediatric COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are reaching their highest point of the pandemic, as many unvaccinated children fall victim to the virus.
“With children returning to in-person school after Labor Day, health officials stress it is critical to act cautiously and responsibly in order to reduce transmission,” Brownstein said.
In the last week alone, nearly 204,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19, marking the second highest week on record, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Since the Fourth of July, the rate of child hospital admissions per capita has grown sevenfold, coinciding with the rapid spread of the highly infectious delta variant. Further, hospitalization rates among unvaccinated adolescents were 10 times the rate of those fully vaccinated, according to a newly released CDC study.
“It will be critical for eligible Americans who are still unvaccinated to get the shot, and protect those who are still vulnerable,” Brownstein said.
(WASHINGTON) — The House will vote in late September to protect abortion rights, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said this week, after the Supreme Court rejected a request to block the new Texas law outlawing most abortions in the state after six weeks.
The court’s late-night ruling left Democrats in Washington and across the country scrambling to respond, sparking vows for action on Capitol Hill and renewed calls from activists for the expansion of the Supreme Court currently controlled by conservatives.
“It’s so stunning,” Pelosi said Thursday at an event in Texas, pledging a House vote when the chamber returns at the end of the month to “make sure that women everywhere have access to reproductive health that they need.”
Democrats have coalesced around the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would “enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into law,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the lead author of the bill, told ABC News.
“If it were to pass, then abortion access would be protected everywhere, in every state,” Chu said, adding that the House is expected to vote on the measure the week of Sept. 20.
But the path forward is unclear in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority with just 50 seats. Forty-eight Democrats back the bill; Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are not co-sponsors.
Even with the support of pro-choice GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the proposal would still lack the votes to clear the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to reach the president’s desk.
While a Senate Democratic aide claimed “all options are on the table” in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Chu was skeptical that the party could use the budget reconciliation process, which Democrats are using to pass President Joe Biden’s policy agenda with just 50 votes in the Senate around GOP opposition, to enact abortion protections.
“Whatever we pass with reconciliation has to have a direct impact on the budget, and I have to think that this would not qualify,” she said.
Even if Democrats did pass a bill to enshrine the protections of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, it wouldn’t be a “silver bullet,” said Kate Shaw, a constitutional law professor at Cardozo School of Law and ABC News legal contributor.
“As a constitutional matter, I do think Congress is on solid footing, but I also think it’s possible that this conservative Supreme Court, particularly if it was hostile to the effort to enshrine in federal law abortion protections, could be inclined to read Congress’s [authority] narrowly, which could result in this law being invalidated,” Shaw said.
With the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, and plans to take up a major abortion case later this fall brought by the state of Mississippi, some Democrats are pressuring party leaders to consider altering the number of justices on the highest court for the first time since 1869 — or change Senate rules to empower Democrats to pass abortion legislation with just 50 votes.
“We need to restore balance to the court after Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell blatantly stole the seats of Justice Scalise and Justice Ginsburg,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement, referring to Senate Republicans’ refusal to fill the seat left vacant by the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election, and decision to confirm a replacement for the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall of 2020, before the election.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a member of the progressive “squad” and co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, has been among those calling to expand the court.
“We need to abolish the filibuster and we need to expand the court,” Pressley told ABC News Friday night. “I’m not at all surprised by the extreme response of this court. The courts have not been on our side, and that’s why Congress must act.”
But Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been wary of changing Senate rules or altering the composition of the Supreme Court, and instead set up a commission to study the issue.
“He’s waiting for the conclusion of [the commission’s] report, looks forward to reviewing it, seeing where they come out,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
Democratic candidates and operatives also expect the Supreme Court’s actions to reverberate into the upcoming election cycles, likely turning abortion into a major issue for the party looking to defend gubernatorial seats in 2021 and the House and Senate majorities in 2022.
ABC News’ Trish Turner contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers and prosecutors continue to piece together the events of the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and now, a new film offers a firsthand perspective from the firefighters and paramedics who responded.
The documentary-style video, produced by DC Fire and EMS and released on YouTube, offers an hour-by-hour account of their attempts to provide life-saving care amid a flurry of violence, turmoil and death.
“The resources we had in place were quickly overwhelmed,” Deputy Fire Chief Daniel McCoy says in the first few minutes of the film.
McCoy and his team surged resources to the park south of the White House where demonstrators and rioters first gathered. That morning, they also deployed personnel to survey the Capitol and surrounding area, anticipating the crowd would head in that direction.
Paramedic Sgt. Alethea Brooks described the chaos while she was trying to provide aide to the injured. Rioters spat at her and called her racial slurs multiple times, she said.
“You always know there are people that you have to help regardless, it doesn’t matter if you’re a murderer,” Brooks says. “It’s our job to not judge and we’re just here to help. But it definitely makes it harder when you know that the people that you’re helping are actually harming our brothers — our brothers in blue — and have no regard for me.”
Another paramedic, Rocco Gabriele, describes how his gear was taken by rioters and his supplies were dumped out while he was treating a patient.
“We did what we could with what we had and we did it fast,” he said.
Gabriele, Brooks and several of their colleagues described the extreme difficulties involved with providing care amid such a hectic scene.
During the fray, one of the people attempting to breach the inner halls of the Capitol was shot by a police officer. First responders had to carry her out before providing care because the paramedic team was worried for their own safety.
The violent nature of the crowd also made it difficult for first responders to access and treat many of the police officers who were injured. There were about a thousand documented assaults against law enforcement over the course of the day, according to recent legal filings from the Department of Justice.
Among the dead was Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who suffered a stroke that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia said caused his death.
After paramedics had been alerted that Sicknick collapsed on an upper level of the Capitol building, they began working on a plan to get him out. Due to the state of emergency, the elevators were out of service so a team of National Guardsmen and Capitol Police carried him out in a wheelchair, one of the first responders recounted.
A congressional committee continues to investigate the events surrounding Jan. 6 and is attempting to obtain any relevant records it can find, such as call logs, as well as the type of first-hand accounts featured in the film.
(NEW YORK) — The deaths of 13 people, all but two of whom lived in basement apartments, during New York City’s catastrophic flooding this week have renewed attention on the oftentimes illegal dwellings, with city officials looking to bolster evacuation efforts for vulnerable residents in extreme weather.
A record 3.15 inches of rain fell in one hour in the city Wednesday, all but stalling the city’s subway system and prompting dozens of water rescues. At least 13 people have been reported dead in New York City after the remnants of Hurricane Ida swept through the region.
The rapid rainfall inundated residences away from the city’s coastline not prone to flooding, damaging scores of homes and turning at least six basement apartments into death traps.
“The danger came from above,” as opposed to storm surge, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said during a press briefing Friday, while calling for more effective early warnings ahead of “wicked” weather that she said will undoubtedly become more frequent due to climate change.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Friday the city will be working on a “more severe kind of warning and more severe set of actions that will be a jolt to people.”
“What we saw in some of these basement apartments on Wednesday was people need to be evacuated who are far away from the coast, because of the sheer intensity and speed, the amount of rain that came in such a brief period of time,” he said, calling this extreme weather “a whole new ballgame.”
“We can say now that extreme weather has become the norm. We need to respond to it differently,” de Blasio told reporters.
The mayor said the city would need to impose travel bans more frequently, instructing people to leave the streets and get out of the subways, and evacuate more New Yorkers ahead of future storms.
To target those who live in basement apartments, changes could include cellphone alerts or door-to-door evacuations, the mayor said. But first, the city would need to create a database of what is conservatively estimated at more than 50,000 basement apartments, impacting at least 100,000 people, de Blasio said.
“We need to have an absolute accounting of all of them and then we can apply these door-to-door techniques if we need to,” he said. “We’ve got to have a clear database to work from and certainly begin with knowing the areas, which we do know, where they are prevalent.”
With many of the city’s basement apartments illegal conversions, oftentimes providing affordable housing to low-income New Yorkers and undocumented immigrants, the city would work with community organizations and other trusted messengers to reach residents, the mayor said.
“We have an illegal basement problem and then we have a problem that so many people end up in illegal basements are fearful to communicate for fear they might be evicted or, worse in their mind, deported,” de Blasio said. “It’s just an extraordinarily challenging set of circumstances.”
Five of the six apartments where 11 people died during the storm were illegally converted cellar and basement apartments, according to the city’s buildings department. Four of them were in Queens and one in Brooklyn. The lone legal basement apartment was in Queens, where a 48-year-old woman was found unconscious and unresponsive at a home near Corona.
Those who died in the illegal conversions included a 43-year-old woman and a 22-year-old man at a basement apartment in Jamaica, Queens; a 50-year-old man, a 48-year-old woman and a 2-year-old boy at a cellar-level apartment in Flushing, Queens; and a 66-year-old man at a cellar unit in Cypress Hills, Brooklyn, based on statements from the city’s building department and New York Police Department.
City officials encouraged basement apartment residents to call 311 or 911 to report issues without fear of being vacated, unless they are facing life-threatening danger.
The risks posed to those living in basement apartments were raised in the city’s “stormwater resiliency plan,” released in May. It included an initiative to develop notifications for basement dwellings “to keep residents out of harm’s way” during extreme rain events, but the completion date wasn’t until 2023.
When asked about that timeline Friday, de Blasio said, “Clearly we have to change that.”
“This is a new deal we’re dealing with now, a new reality,” the mayor said. “We have to take the very muscular approaches that we have, the very forceful approaches like mandatory evacuation, like mandatory travel ban, and use those in ways we never had before, because events are just changing the paradigm constantly.”
On Friday, New York Attorney General Letitia James called on the city to provide emergency housing vouchers to all New Yorkers living in unregulated basement apartments, as extreme weather events have become “the rule, not the exception” due to climate change.
“We know that New York’s housing crisis has gone too far when tenants have to risk their lives just to have a roof over their heads,” James said in a statement. “To prevent these problems in the future, we must also ensure that basement units are safe for human occupancy and regularly inspected. Overcoming the twin threats of climate change and a housing crisis will not be simple, but we must ensure measures are in place to protect our neighbors and prevent a future catastrophe.”
Queens Borough President Donovan Richards also pointed to the city’s affordable housing crisis in the wake of the deadly flooding while pushing for more infrastructure investments in neighborhoods that have been “historically left behind.”
“The reason people are in basement apartments is because of the failure of New York City to really truly build out affordable housing,” he told Pix11 Friday morning. “I was a basement baby myself. … We lived in basements because it provided an affordable opportunity. So this was a failure on many levels, and we need to make sure we’re never back here again.”
ABC News’ Mark Crudele contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Arizona man seen sporting a Viking helmet and fur vest during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol pleaded guilty Friday to one felony count related to his participation in the riot.
Jacob Chansley, the self-proclaimed “QAnon Shaman” who entered the Senate chamber and left an ominous note on a desk for then-Vice President Mike Pence, pleaded guilty to unlawfully obstructing an official proceeding — the most serious charge in the government’s indictment against him.
The other five charges against Chansley were dropped as part of a plea agreement he entered into with federal prosecutors.
Chansley is set to be sentenced November 17 and his conviction carries a maximum sentence of up to 20 years in federal prison — although another Capitol rioter who pleaded guilty to the same felony charge last month was only sentenced to eight months.
Chansley’s attorney, Al Watkins, said during a Friday hearing that he is seeking Chansley’s release pending sentencing, which a federal prosecutor said the government would oppose.
Chansley is one of the few rioters who has remained detained over the past eight months despite not being accused of participating in any violence against law enforcement during the riot.
Prosecutors argued he posed a danger to the public given his actions on Jan. 6, noting that he was among the first 30 members of the pro-Trump mob to enter the building and that he carried an American flag tied to a pole with a sharp object at the tip, which the government characterized as a “dangerous weapon.”
Upon entering the Senate chamber, Chansley could be seen in videos calling on other rioters to join him up on the dais where Pence was previously presiding over the counting of the electoral college vote.
Before being escorted out, Chansley left a note on the desk that said, “It’s Only A Matter of Time. Justice Is Coming!”
At least 600 individuals are currently facing federal charges in connection with the Jan. 6 insurrection, according to an analysis of public court records by ABC News.
As of Friday, approximately 60 accused rioters had either pleaded guilty or have plea hearings scheduled in the coming weeks.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — A website seeking anonymous tips on people violating Texas’ new law restricting abortions has been inundated with spam after viral calls from social media users.
The law, which went into effect on Wednesday, bans physicians from providing abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected (including embryonic cardiac activity). This can happen as early as six weeks into a pregnancy. While the law prohibits the state from enforcing the ban, it instead authorizes private citizens to bring civil suits against anyone who “aids or abets” an abortion.
A “whistleblower” website set up by the anti-abortion group Texas Right to Life calls on community members to anonymously report anyone they think might be violating the law — which can even include a driver taking someone to a clinic.
As the online submission form spread across the internet, scores of social media users from TikTok to Twitter reacted by calling on people to flood the tip line with anything but violators.
One TikTok user said in a video that she had submitted 742 fake reports of Texas Gov. Greg Abbott — a proponent of the law — getting an abortion.
“It would be a shame if TikTok crashed the Prolifewhistleblower.com website,” the caption stated. “Real shame.” The video garnered more than 80,000 likes and more than 480,000 views.
Another TikTok user even says he coded an iOS shortcut to let iPhone users submit false reports repeatedly. His video garnered more than 175,000 views.
The calls soon emerged on Twitter, Reddit and beyond — with users sharing images of themselves reporting fictional characters such as “Shrek” to uploading nonsensical memes online.
Diana, a New York-based social media user who asked to be identified by just her first name due to concerns speaking out could make her a target, told ABC News that she submitted an anonymous tip reporting a “Simpsons” character as an abortion physician.
Diana said she felt the law was a “huge blow to women’s rights” and a “huge step backwards.”
“It’s just a little step that I could do with my smartphone, it’s not like I did anything amazing, but there are people out there doing real work and I support them and I wish I was brave enough to do that,” she said.
“The purpose is to clog their inbox because it’s ridiculous,” she added. “You’re making your citizens turn against each other too, so it’s kind of two-fold if you ask me, you’re asking people to tattle on people that are — some of them may be trying to get life-saving services.”
“I think the main goal is to stop them from finding people that are trying to get life-saving services or personal health services,” she added, but said she would also be “happy” if her message even just angered someone on the receiving end.
This is not the first time social media users across the nation have banned together for a digital protest. Last year, TikTok users claimed responsibility for the dismal turnout at a Trump campaign rally — saying they mobilized to reserve tickets at the event they had no intention of attending.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — In the wake of a severe new abortion law in Texas, some state lawmakers have said they will attempt to mimic the near-total abortion ban.
Texas’ law makes most abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy and encourages anyone to sue a person they believe is providing an abortion or assisting someone in getting an abortion after six weeks.
Although the law is being challenged — and although similar laws have been ruled unconstitutional following Supreme Court precedent — the Supreme Court rejected abortion providers’ call for an emergency injunction to block the law while courts hear the case. It went into effect this week.
This prompted several lawmakers to suggest they would look into similar laws in their own states, while existing similar bills got renewed attention.
Here’s a roundup of the states where these battles are playing out beyond Texas:
Arkansas:
Arkansas Republican state Sen. Jason Rapert, who represents the state’s 35th District and is running for lieutenant governor in 2022, tweeted on Thursday morning, “As the original sponsor of the first #HeartbeatBill to pass in America in 2013, today I have ordered a bill be filed in Arkansas to update our law to mirror the Texas SB8 bill.”
Rapert was a co-sponsor of Arkansas Senate Bill 6 (SB6) that was passed earlier this year and signed into law by Gov. Asa Hutchinson. S.B. 6 would create the “Arkansas Unborn Child Protection Act” and would ban most abortions in the state except to save the mother during a medical emergency.
That bill was blocked by a federal judge in July.
Florida:
Florida’s state legislature is not in session right now, but a Republican state lawmaker currently running for Congress in Democrat Stephanie Murphy’s district (FL-07), Anthony Sabatini, confirmed to ABC News on Thursday that he’s planning to introduce a bill that is the “exact same” as Texas’.
He said the bill is in the drafting stages.
Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis hedged a bit more when asked by a reporter about the Texas law at a COVID-19 treatment press conference on Thursday.
“What they did in Texas was interesting, and I haven’t really been able to look enough about it,” DeSantis said. “They’ve basically done this through private right-of-action, so it’s a little bit different than how a lot of these debates have gone. So we’ll have to look; I’m going to look more significantly at it.”
South Dakota:
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem tweeted Thursday that she’s asked someone in her office to look into Texas’ new anti-abortion law and how it compares to South Dakota’s.
“Following the Supreme Court’s decision to leave the pro-life TX law in place, I have directed the Unborn Child Advocate in my office to immediately review the new TX law and current South Dakota laws to make sure we have the strongest pro life laws on the books in SD,” she tweeted from her official Twitter account.
According to the Guttmacher Institute, a research group that supports reproductive rights, in South Dakota abortion is banned at 20 or more weeks post-fertilization (22 weeks after the last menstrual period) except in cases of “life endangerment or severely compromised health.” The state also has a law on the books, as several others do, that would ban abortion if Roe v. Wade were overturned.
Idaho:
Idaho’s Republican Gov. Brad Little signed a legislature-backed bill in April that, like Oklahoma and Texas, would ban abortions if a fetal heartbeat is detected. But the law would only go into effect 30 days after another federal appeals court allows “a restriction or ban on abortion for a preborn child because a detectable heartbeat is present on the grounds that such restriction or ban does not violate the United States constitution,” according to the bill’s text.
Indiana:
Republican legislators in Indiana expressed interest in mirroring the Texas law, but will not be broadening the upcoming special session of the legislature this fall to include discussing abortion legislation.
“We’re closely watching what’s happening in Texas in regards to their new pro-life law, including any legal challenges. Indiana is one of the most pro-life states in the country, and we’ll continue to examine ways to further protect life at all stages,” Indiana House Speaker Todd Huston said, according to a statement cited by the Associated Press.
If Indiana indeed begins debating similar legislation when the legislature meets in 2022, it will align with what reproduction rights advocates have said could be an upcoming flashpoint.
“Many state legislatures have adjourned and will resume meeting in 2022. This is when we anticipate we will see the majority of copycat legislation introduced,” Elisabeth Smith, Director of State Policy and Advocacy at the Center for Reproductive Rights, told ABC News by email Wednesday afternoon.
Oklahoma:
Oklahoma’s Republican Gov. Kevin Sitt signed various bills into law in April that would significantly limit abortions in the state, including by deeming performing most abortions to be “unprofessional conduct” that could get a physician’s license suspended, and a “heartbeat ban” similar to Texas’ new law that prohibits abortions if the fetus’ heartbeat can be detected, which can happen even only six weeks into pregnancy.
But on Thursday, in the wake of the Texas law, a group of reproduction rights groups and abortion providers, among others, sued to block the laws before they would take effect on Nov. 1. Before the Texas law, every other “heartbeat” ban was blocked by courts as unconstitutional following Supreme Court precedent.
“If allowed to take effect, these laws would end abortion access in Oklahoma, forcing patients to travel great distances and cross state lines to get essential health care,” Center for Reproductive Rights president Nancy Northrop said in a press release from the organization. “It’s unbelievable that in the midst of a global pandemic, Oklahoma’s lawmakers would have people drive hundreds of miles to access abortion services.”
