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(NEW YORK) — Drew Spiegel was preparing to march in the 2022 Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park when gunfire rang out.

“In that short time span, seven people died, 48 more [were] injured,” the 19-year-old told ABC News. “I texted my parents that I might not be coming home from the Fourth of July parade. And my life forever changed.”

For more than a year after the shooting, Spiegel didn’t talk about it. That changed when he got to college and encountered the advocacy group Everytown for Gun Safety.

“They asked me straight up like, ‘Are you a survivor of gun violence?’ ” he said. “And I was like, no, but technically I was at a mass shooting. And they were like, so then yes.”

The U.S. sees 43,000 fatal shootings every year, and 120 people are fatally shot every day, according to Angela Ferrell-Zabala, the executive director of Moms Demand Action, an Everytown subsidiary group.

“This is bigger than a mass shooting problem, it’s a gun violence epidemic,” Spiegel said, citing the July assassination attempt and apparent September attempt on former President Donald Trump, who won a second term in the White House on Tuesday, as evidence of the problem’s scale.

“If Donald Trump, the former president of the United States, is not safe from gun violence, then nobody is,” he said.

Now, Spiegel is sharing his story with people who may have different opinions than him.

“The change we’re fighting for, is not mutually exclusive with the Second Amendment. They can coexist,” he told ABC News. “We can have a country where people are allowed to have guns and also a country where you don’t have to worry about going to school.”

But he isn’t just thinking in terms of the next four years — he’s looking at how the laws made in the coming decades could save lives.

He’s found an ally in Rep. Maxwell Frost, who won election in Florida’s 10th Congressional District in 2022 and won reelection on Tuesday. The 27-year-old Democrat is also a survivor of gun violence and was previously the national organizing director for gun control advocacy group March For Our Lives.

That movement didn’t result in gun control legislation getting passed, but Frost accepts that change takes time.

“The way you measure the success of a movement is, you see the seeds are planted in people,” Frost told ABC News. “I’m the first person from that movement to be in Congress. That’s a win, right? And then we got the Office of Gun Violence Prevention[in 2023]. That’s a win.”

However, Frost warned ABC News in August that he foresees this progress being rolled back.

“If Donald Trump wins this election, one of the things he’s going to do on Day One is get rid of the office completely. Get rid of it,” he said. “This office is helping to save lives across the entire country. So getting rid of the office literally means more people will die due to gun violence.”

With Trump returning to the White House in January, it’s unclear how much progress gun control will make. In 2018, the Trump administration banned bump stocks, which allow guns to essentially operate as automatic weapons. However, the Supreme Court struck down that ban in June.

“When I’m back in the Oval Office, no one will lay a finger on your firearms,” he told National Rifle Association (NRA) members in February.

Despite this, Spiegel is hoping people will keep fighting for gun violence prevention laws, to prevent stories similar to his own from happening all over again.

“I think our rights and freedoms will be under a higher attack than ever before. But I don’t think it’s completely over,” he told ABC News. “I think there’s still a country and, more importantly, our friends and family in the country that are worth fighting for. And we just put our heads down and get back to work. You just keep fighting.”

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(NEW YORK) — A federal judge in New York on Thursday raised the possibility of holding Rudy Giuliani in contempt if he fails to turn over property by next week to the two Georgia poll workers he defamed after the 2020 election.

A 90-minute hearing devolved into what the judge called “griping” after a lawyer for former election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss accused Giuliani of “game playing” and an attorney for Giuliani accused the two women of being “vindictive.”

A federal jury last year ordered Giuliani to pay Freeman and Moss nearly $150 million for defaming them with false accusations that the mother and daughter committed election fraud while the two were counting ballots in Georgia’s Fulton County on Election Day in 2020.

Earlier this week, Freeman and Moss’ attorney claimed that Giuliani had “secreted away” his property after the receivership controlled by the two election workers accessed Giuliani’s apartment, only to find it virtually empty.

The former New York City mayor was given a Nov. 14 deadline to turn over the shares in his Upper East Side co-op apartment, valuable sports memorabilia, a Mercedes-Benz convertible, and luxury watches — including one that belonged to Giuliani’s grandfather.

When defense lawyer Ken Caruso complained that forcing Giuliani to relinquish his grandfather’s watch was “vindictive,” an exasperated Judge Lewis Liman said, “Oh come on!”

“The law is the law and I don’t apply it differently to your client,” Liman said. “Don’t come to me and say something is vindictive.”

The judge was equally unmoved by the defense argument that Giuliani’s car, a blue Mercedes-Benz convertible once owned by the actress Lauren Bacall, was exempt from the judgment because it’s worth less than $4,000.

“Monday the title and keys will be delivered as well as the physical location of the car,” Judge Liman said.

Giuliani also balked at relinquishing about $2 million dollars he is owed for legal worked performed for Donald Trump.

“They wanted that money to make a political statement,” Caruso said.

Liman did not budge and reminded Giuliani of the consequences.

“He is under an unqualified order to deliver all the receivership property to the receiver,” Liman said. “If he doesn’t comply then I’m sure I’ll get a motion for contempt. If he hasn’t delivered, and there is a way in which he could have delivered, he’ll be subject to contempt sanctions.”

Outside court, Giuliani accused Freeman and Moss of bringing a “political vendetta” that was “financed by the Bidens.”

When ABC News asked whether he regretted defaming Freeman and Moss, Giuliani answered “No” before his lawyer stepped in to say the case was on appeal.

 

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(DELPHI, Ind.) — The small town of Delphi, Indiana, is reeling with grief and shock after the horrific double murder of two teenage girls in broad daylight, forever changing the lives of those who knew and loved the victims.

Now, seven years later, one man is standing trial in the murders.

The story of the Delphi murders begins and ends on the Monon High Bridge Trail. It was here that police believe Abigail “Abby” Williams, 13, and Liberty “Libby” German, 14, spent the last moments of their lives.

On Feb. 13, 2017, the two best friends went missing and were found dead the following day. Tens of thousands of tips were received, dozens of people were interviewed, and a crucial piece of evidence emerged: a video recorded by one of the girls that pointed directly to a suspect.

“For a long time, the question was, ‘Who is Bridge Guy?'” ABC News’ Janel Klein said. “A lot of people in town thought they recognized him.”

The case went cold but five years after the murders, in 2022, police arrested Richard Allen, who worked at a local CVS store in Delphi. He was charged with two counts of murder and two counts of murder while kidnapping in the deaths of Abby and Libby.

Today, the question is whether Allen is the man on the bridge as he stands trial.

Allen has pleaded not guilty to the murders, but the prosecution claims they have more than 60 confessions from him admitting to killing the girls. He allegedly confessed to wardens, inmates, family members, and almost anyone who would listen within the prison and jailhouse setting.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like that before,” Tracy Walder, a former FBI special agent, said. “They typically confess one time, right? They don’t do so over and over and over.”

A key moment in the trial was when audio recordings of Allen calling his wife and mother from jail were played. The audio reveals Allen admitted to committing the crime, and asking his wife Kathy, “Do you still love me?”

Despite the alleged confessions, Allen’s defense has called a list of experts as they try to poke holes in the state’s case.

Allen’s defense has sought to focus the jury’s attention on Allen’s mental health, and addressed the issue of him declining after being held in solitary confinement for months.

“We heard from his psychologist who testified as to what a decline he had and some of the behaviors that he displayed in prison were alarming. He was naked a lot,” Klein said. “He was rolling around on the floor. He was eating paper. He was drinking from his toilet. All of these things, they say, were proof that he was really suffering mentally and entering psychosis, including at the time when he was admitting to these crimes and making numerous confessions to his wife and mother.”

Another key point for the defense is that investigators found no DNA evidence at the scene linking Allen or anyone else to the crime.

In an unusual memorandum filed with the court which the judge ruled cannot be allowed into court, Allen’s team is alleging that the double crime was committed by a mysterious group they refer to as a white supremacist cult of Odinism.

“The defense from the beginning has been blaming the murders on Odinism, what they describe as a Nordic cult with ties to white supremacy,” ABC’s Alex Perez said.

“They believe (the cult) were carrying out some sort of ritual when they killed the girls,” Perez said. “And the defense attorneys in their memorandum pointing to certain things at the crime scene that they believe they say were signs the way branches were laid around the bodies of the two girls.”

Allen’s team said in the filing that the girls’ bodies were found in unusual positions with branches over them, and the defense argued that the branches resembled Pagan Runes.

Jefferson Calico, an associate professor at University of the Cumberlands in Kentucky, studied Pagan religions, including Odinism, and explained what this means.

“So runes are widely incorporated into Odinist culture as well,” Calico said. “So if there were runes in the crime scene, then that would be a reason to suspect pagan or Odinist involvement for sure. For instance, the sticks over the body, possibly a rune mark on a tree. It’s not convincing to me as someone who studied these religions, but it provides an interpretation of some of the details of the crime scene.”

But Calico also said that Odinists were not known to engage in human sacrificial rituals and added that, as believers in white supremacy, it would make no sense to kill two Caucasian girls.

The Delphi murder trials are continuing, and 12 jurors will decide Allen’s fate. If convicted, he faces 130 years in prison.

“Even once they arrested Richard Allen, there’s been so much doubt across the board as to whether he’s responsible,” Klein said. “There are many people attending the trial and weighing in on social media that will say there is no way he did this. Whether he’s convicted or not, I think there will always be that speculation in Delphi as to who really is responsible for this crime.”

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(YEMASSEE, S.C.) — At least 43 primates were on the loose Thursday in a South Carolina town where authorities “strongly advised” residents to keep their doors and windows locked after the animals escaped from a research laboratory.

“At this point, none have been captured,” the Yemassee Police Department said in a statement posted on its Facebook page.

Traps were being set around the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center in Yemassee, where the Rhesus Macaque monkeys escaped en masse around 9:45 p.m. ET on Wednesday, according to the Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office.

Yemassee police officers were searching for the furry fugitives, which can grow to up to 21 inches tall and weigh 17 pounds, using thermal imaging cameras, according to the sheriff’s office.

“Residents are strongly advised to keep doors and windows secured to prevent these animals from entering homes,” the sheriff’s office said. “If you spot any of the escaped animals, please contact 911 immediately and refrain from approaching them.”

Police said they are working with staff of Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center to find the escapees.

“We want to assure the community that there is no health risk associated with these animals,” police said.

Representatives of the Alpha Genesis Primate Research Center could not be immediately contacted for comment.

According to its website, Alpha Genesis “provides the highest quality nonhuman primate products and bio-research services world-wide,” including serum, plasma, whole blood and tissue samples.

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(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris said her heart is “full of resolve” after losing the presidential election to former President Donald Trump.

“My heart is full today — full of gratitude for the trust you have placed in me, full of love for our country and full of resolve,” Harris said Wednesday at her alma mater, Howard University, in Washington, D.C.

“The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for. But … the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up,” Harris said.

Harris said she told Trump on the phone Wednesday that she’ll help with a peaceful transfer of power, which got a cheer from the crowd at Howard.

“We must accept the results of this election,” the vice president said.

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” Harris said, alluding to Trump’s refusal to acknowledge his loss of the 2020 election.

Harris stressed, “While I concede this election, I do not concede the fight that fueled this campaign.”

“The fight for freedom, for opportunity, for fairness and the dignity of all people — a fight for the ideals at the heart of our nation — the ideals that reflect America at our best,” she said.

Harris vowed that she’ll “never give up the fight for a future … where the women of America have the freedom to make decisions about their own body.”

“We will never give up the fight to protect our schools and our streets from gun violence,” she continued. “And America, we will never give up the fight for our democracy, for the rule of law, for equal justice, and for the sacred idea that every one of us, no matter who we are or where we start out, has certain fundamental rights and freedoms that must be respected and upheld.”

She said that fight will continue “in the voting booth, in the courts, and in the public square.”

“And we will also wage it in quieter ways, in how we live our lives, by treating one another with kindness and respect, by looking in the face of a stranger and seeing a neighbor,” she said. “By always using our strength to lift people up, to fight for the dignity that all people deserve.”

To her young supporters watching, the vice president said, “It is OK to feel sad and disappointed, but please know it’s gonna be OK.”

“Sometimes the fight takes a while. … The important thing is don’t ever give up,” she said.

“This is not a time to throw up our hands, this is a time to roll up our sleeves. This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together,” she said.

Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff waved to the crowd after her remarks as Harris’ running mate, an emotional Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, looked on.

Harris’ family, Walz’s family, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Harris’ campaign staff were also in attendance.

Harris’ defeat came as Trump won the swing states of Pennsylvania, Georgia and Wisconsin overnight. Trump won another swing state, Michigan, on Wednesday.

Trump’s victory underscores just how deep voters’ frustrations were surrounding inflation and immigration, Republicans’ two top issues this election cycle as polls consistently showed Americans’ unhappiness with how President Joe Biden handled them. Trump’s return to the White House also suggests that Democrats were not motivated enough by the prospect of electing the first female president and that its base’s fury over the Supreme Court’s revocation of constitutional abortion protections has waned since 2022.

Biden plans to address the nation on Thursday.

ABC News’ Fritz Farrow, Gabriella Abdul-Hakim, Will McDuffie and Tal Axelrod contributed to this report.

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(NEW YORK) — The “Trump Trade” was in overdrive Wednesday, making it one for the history books on Wall Street with record finishes for all three major stock indices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average rocketed 3.6%, its biggest one day jump since November 2022. The S&P 500 shot up 2.5% while the Nasdaq climbed nearly 3%.

The biggest winners were companies and sectors that investors are betting will benefit from President-elect Trump’s policies.

Bank stocks, including JP Morgan Chase (JPM), Wells Fargo (WFC), and Bank of America (BAC) rallied on the promise of lower taxes and less regulation. The small-cap Russell 2000 Index (RUT), which includes some regional banks, soared nearly 6%.

It was the biggest surge for the U.S. dollar since 2020, and Carl Icahn, the activist investor and billionaire, said it will lead to less regulation and more mergers and acquisition.

Elon Musk was perhaps the day’s biggest winner. Shares of his Tesla Corporation (TSLA) rocketed nearly 15%. The world’s wealthiest person has been a staunch Trump proponent, donating more than $130 million toward Trump’s election efforts. In his victory speech, the president-elect referred to Musk as a “super genius” and has promised him a role in his administration.

“The biggest positive from a Trump win would be for Tesla and Musk,” wrote Dan Ives, Senior Equity Research Analyst at Wedbush. “We believe a Trump presidency would be an overall negative for the EV industry as likely the EV rebates/tax incentives get pulled. However, for Tesla we see this as a huge positive. Tesla has the scale and scope that is unmatched in the EV industry and this dynamic could give Musk and Tesla a clear competitive advantage in a non-EV subsidy environment, coupled by likely higher China tariffs that would continue to push away cheaper Chinese EV players from flooding the US market,” Ives wrote in a research note.

The cryptocurrency market also cheered Trump’s return to the White House. Bitcoin (BTCUSD) notched a record close, climbing above $75,000. Trump has said he wants the U.S. to be the “crypto capital of the planet” and plans to create a “strategic reserve of bitcoin.”

In September, he even launched his own crypto platform, World Liberty Financial, a new venture with family members to trade cryptocurrencies.

Donald Trump saw his personal wealth balloon during Wednesday’s stock market rally, at least on paper. Shares of his Trump Media and Technology Group (DJT), the parent company of his social media platform Truth Social, soared more than 30% at the market’s open but pulled back considerably to finish just 6% higher. Still, that gave the company a market cap of about $7.2 billion, with Trump’s majority stake worth about $4.1 billion.

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