(WASHINGTON) — A coalition of racial justice and civil rights nonprofit advocacy organizations are formally joining the fight to prevent a ban on TikTok.
The Asian American Federation, Asian Americans Advancing Justice Southern California, Calos Coalition and Hispanic Heritage Foundation are among the 13 groups arguing that TikTok serves as an essential platform for communities of color and other marginalized groups.
“TikTok is a modern-day digital town square that empowers diverse communities, often neglected by traditional media outlets, to share their underrepresented voices with people across America and the world,” lawyers from the firm Cooley LLP wrote in a court filing expected to be filed Thursday on behalf of the coalition.
The Protecting Americans from Foreign Adversary Controlled Applications Act, which President Joe Biden signed into law as part of a larger spending package, could potentially make the app unavailable in the U.S. TikTok and its parent company ByteDance filed a lawsuit against the law, which is now formally supported by the civil rights nonprofits.
Supporters of company’s lawsuit argue the legislation threatens the First Amendment rights of 170 million U.S. users and would effectively ban the app. The groups argue the legislation is unconstitutional and they also expressed “grave concerns about anti-Asian animus undergirding the TikTok Ban.”
“The TikTok Ban imposes an unprecedented prior restraint on free speech, silencing countless voices, while also discriminating on content and viewpoint,” the Cooley lawyers wrote.
Congressional leaders and President Biden have argued that restricting the app is necessary due to security concerns with the Chinese government.
ByteDance refuted those allegations in its lawsuit, arguing there has been no tangible evidence that the app poses any security risk.
(MOSCOW, Idaho.) — The prosecution and defense are working toward a June 2025 trial date for Bryan Kohberger, the man accused of killing four University of Idaho students in an off-campus house.
Judge John Judge said he anticipates the trial to take three months.
The defense still wants a change of venue, which has not yet been determined.
The parents of 21-year-old victim Kaylee Goncalves attended Thursday’s court hearing. The Goncalves had been desperate for a date to be set, telling ABC News in January their family is “in limbo” until trial begins.
“We got to get this case over,” Steve Goncalves said. “Let’s do it. Let’s stop playing these delay tactics, let’s just get it done.”
Roommates Kaylee Goncalves, Madison Mogen and Xana Kernodle, as well as Kernodle’s boyfriend Ethan Chapin, were stabbed to death in the girls’ off-campus home in the early hours of Nov. 13, 2022. Two other roommates survived.
Kohberger, who was a criminology Ph.D. student at nearby Washington State University at the time of the gruesome crime, was arrested weeks later.
A not guilty plea was entered on Kohberger’s behalf for four counts of first-degree murder and one count of burglary. If convicted, he could face the death penalty.
The prosecution and defense have gone back-and-forth proposing potential trial dates at hearings this year.
On Jan. 26, the prosecution told the judge it was ready to go to trial in summer 2024. Prosecutors said summer is best because there will be out-of-state witnesses who need accommodations in Moscow, which they said is difficult while local schools are in session.
The defense argued a summer 2024 trial is not realistic for this complex case. The defense said it still had a lot of digital evidence to go through, more potential witnesses to speak with and more documents to collect from Kohberger’s past and his family.
The prosecution agreed that there was a large amount of information to sift through.
The defense recommended a summer 2025 trial if the case moved forward in Latah County, but days after the Jan. 26 hearing, Kohberger’s defense filed a motion for a change of venue.
The prosecution said the case has national and international interest, so a change of venue would not solve any problem.
At a Feb. 28 hearing, the judge and prosecution proposed a trial date of March 3, 2025, while the defense asked for a June 2025 trial.
The next hearing to discuss a change of venue will be Aug. 29.
ABC News’ Julie Scott and Sasha Pezenik contributed to this report.
(BEND, Ore.) — A wind-driven wildfire threatening homes and causing evacuations in Central Oregon has grown to more than 3,614 acres, officials said Thursday.
The Darlene 3 Fire, which started around 2 p.m. Tuesday in Deschutes County, remained 30% contained Thursday for the second consecutive day. Between Wednesday night and Thursday morning, an additional 1,200 acres had burned, according to the Central Oregon Fire Management Service.
Fanned by gusty winds, the blaze quickly spread through a pine forest near homes on the south side of La Pine, a small town of about 2,500 people in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains, officials said. On Wednesday, fire officials said a new blaze broke out on the east side of La Pine, threatening homes in several neighborhoods and triggering more evacuation ordered from the Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office.
Officials said shelters were opened at a local high school and the La Pine Rodeo Grounds.
The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office said evacuation alerts were sent to 1,100 homes and businesses.
— Central OR Fire Info (@CentralORFire) June 27, 2024
It was not immediately clear if any structures had been damaged or destroyed.
Several campgrounds and hiking trails in the area were also closed, officials said.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
The sheriff’s office posted photos and video on its Facebook page showing a large plume of smoke emerging from a forest behind a group of homes and a firefighting air tanker dropping fire-suppression retardant on the flames.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek invoked the Emergency Conflagration Act after determining the fire posed a threat to life and property and exceeded the resources of the local fire agencies. The act allows the state fire marshal to mobilize firefighters and equipment throughout the state to assist local fire crews in battling the fire.
Oregon State Fire Marshall Mariana Ruiz-Temple said gusty winds and hot weather caused the fire to quickly spread.
“The Emergency Conflagration Act allows us to send the full power of the Oregon fire service to protect life and property,” Ruiz-Temple said in a news release. “As we enter the hot and dry summer months, I am asking Oregonians to do everything they can to prevent wildfires.”
(WASHINGTON) — The first presidential debate of the 2024 election will be the first ever to feature two former presidents, but that isn’t the only thing that makes it unprecedented: It’s also the earliest general election debate ever.
When President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump take the stage at the CNN-hosted contest on Thursday — it will be 131 days ahead of the Nov. 5 Election Day — months ahead of the usual fall timeline.
Since 1960, Debates have been sanctioned — and scheduled — by the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, with the previous earliest one taking place when Ronald Reagan faced off against Independent candidate John Anderson during the 1980 election cycle. That occurred on Sept. 21, 44 days ahead of that year’s general election.
Since 1976, the average length of time between the first general election debate and election date has been about 35 days, according to CPD records. The shortest interval was in 1992, when there were only 23 days between a debate an Election Day — when Democrat Bill Clinton debated Republican George H. W. Bush.
Biden and Trump will have about three extra months on the campaign trail following their first public faceoff — and experts ABC News spoke with said the early timing could have a significant impact on the race.
“The combination of having so many people with doubts about both candidates, coupled with the first debate occurring before either convention, heightens its potential importance,” said Republican political strategist Whit Ayres. “I don’t know that it will be actually important. But it certainly heightens the potential for importance.”
But Mitchell McKinney, a professor at the University of Akron and noted political communication scholar, took a different view, predicting that this early debate may not matter as much.
First, he said, at this stage in the cycle, voters aren’t as tuned in as they would be in early fall, when the debates are usually held.
“Our most recent general election presidential debates, which typically occur in late September into October, have continued to be big draws, as in 75 to 80 million” viewers, said McKinney. This time around, he continued, “It could be half that.”
The New York Times has reported that TV industry observers expect the debate to draw between 30 and 70 million viewers. For comparison, the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump — in September 2016 — topped 84 million viewers, according to Nielsen ratings.
Second, regardless of whether CNN’s debate exceeds ratings expectations Thursday night, the extra months between the first debate and election debate allow the candidates time to recover from a poor performance.
“If there is for a candidate — one or both of these candidates — some sort of gaffe or blunder,” McKinney said, “there is plenty of time for other events to take over … the candidate or candidates can recover,” he added.
But with Biden and Trump barreling toward a November rematch that voters are broadly unenthusiastic about, veteran Democratic strategist James Carville told ABC News that any new information about the two presidents on debate stage could make a difference for some key voters.
“People’s attitudes are very fixed and voters tend to be pretty entrenched. The person that ‘wins’ — I don’t know how you determine that — in this debate is going to be the one that provides voters with some new information, something they thought about before,” said Carville, who ran Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign.
“I guess this seems to be pretty, kind of hard to move a lot of people in this election, but if you move a few, it makes a big difference,” he added.
The decision to move up the timing followed disputes between the campaigns and the Committee on Presidential Debates — partially over scheduling.
Before the Biden and Trump campaigns declared their participation in a non-Commission for Presidential Debates-sanctioned broadcast, the candidates were planning on appearing on stage for the first time together this fall, on Sept. 16.
The Trump campaign urged the commission in May to move up its debate schedule, arguing that early voting would have already begun in some places by the time Trump and Biden debated at that date.
“As it always does, the CPD considered multiple factors in selecting debate dates in order to make them accessible by the American public. These factors include religious and federal holidays, early voting, and the dates on which individual states close their ballots,” the commission wrote in a statement.
(WASHINGTON) — As former President Donald Trump and his team continue to tease his vice presidential pick, his potential VP contenders were gathering in Atlanta Thursday to support the former president around the debate and make a case that they’re the best choice to be his running mate.
Potential vice presidential candidates, including Sens. J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio and North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum are among the dozens of surrogates the campaign is expected to have on the ground in Atlanta, including in the debate spin room aftereard and at a watch party the campaign is holding Thursday night, where loyal supporters and donors will gather.
Trump himself was scheduled to arrive in Atlanta later Thursday afternoon from his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, and is feeling confident and ready, his senior campaign advisers told ABC News.
As Trump was set to take the debate stage later Thursday, his campaign is fundraising off his much-anticipated running mate selection, suggesting that person could be present at the debate.
“Do you want to see my Vice President at the debate? They could be there, but you’ll never know until I make the OFFICIAL VP ANNOUNCEMENT!” a Trump campaign fundraising email sent out to supporters Thursday morning said.
Trump for weeks has been saying that he’s likely to announce his vice presidential candidate around the Republican National Convention scheduled to take place next month, but Trump in recent days has been teasing the idea of his potential running mate joining him in Atlanta, telling his supporters at a retail campaign stop in Philadelphia last week that that his vice president will “most likely” be in attendance at the debate site.
In recent weeks, Trump has also been asking his donors at fundraisers who they want to see as his running mate and sending out fundraising emails to small-dollar donors asking the same question.
Those on the vice presidential shortlist — including Vance, Rubio and Burgum — were staying mostly quiet on the eve of the debate as they prepared to rally behind their Republican leader. Other Trump surrogates have been on a media tour, holding intimate campaign stops in Atlanta on Wednesday and making television appearances Thursday morning.
In a taped interview on “Fox and Friends,” South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott said he had told Trump “never forget the provocative racial past of Joe Biden,” when asked if he helped the former president in prepare for the debate.
“Donald Trump has done more for progress from a racial perspective economically than any president in my lifetime,” Scott continued. “He should focus on that.”
Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, asked by CNN Thursday morning if he expects Trump to discuss looking forward as a country during the debate rather than focusing on the past, said the former president has been looking forward but added that he might still comment about the 2020 election and the hush money trial and verdict.
“If you’ve been on a trail with the president — I’ve been on a trail with him — if you listen to everything that he says, he’s been talking a lot, significantly, a lot about what’s going on in our country, inflation, the border, foreign policy, all the issues that really matter to the American people,” Donalds said.
Donalds and GOP Rep. Wesley Hunt made rounds of surrogate campaign stops in Atlanta on Wednesday to court black voters on behalf of Trump, stopping by a barbershop and local cigar lounge.
Trump called into the barbershop event earlier on Wednesday, touting his administration’s record, bashing CNN ahead of Thursday’s debate, and once again repeating his argument that he is gaining support with the Black community because of his indictments.
“Since that happened, the Black support, I think my representatives will tell you this, the Black support has gone through the roof and, I guess they equated to problems that they’ve had,” Trump said.
At the watch party Thursday night, where Trump is advertised to potentially make post-debate remarks, Burgum, Vance, Rubio, Donalds, Hunt as well as Rep. Elise Stefanik, former Trump Housing and Urban Development Secretary Ben Carson and Sen. Lindsey Graham are scheduled to attend as featured guests.
(NEW YORK) — Author Sadie Dingfelder discusses her experiences with face blindness in her new book, “Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination.”
From a young age, Dingfelder has been aware of her struggle with remembering people and faces. However, it took her decades to realize that her experience was not the norm.
She didn’t realize this until one day when she mistook her husband for a random man in the grocery store who had a similar build as her spouse.
A recent study found that only 3.08% of Americans meet the criteria for face blindness, or prosopagnosia. This condition affects close to 10 million Americans.
In her latest book, Dingfelder delves into her condition and unveils the incredible neural diversity of humans. ABC News sat down with Dingfelder to discuss her book in more detail.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Since childhood, science journalist Sadie Dingfelder has known that she isn’t good at remembering people or faces, but for decades she failed to notice that most people function otherwise. In fact, a recent study found that only 3.08% of Americans meet the criteria for face blindness. That number is close to 10 million Americans.
In her newest book, “Do I Know You?: A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination”, Sadie Dingfelder explores her condition and reveals the remarkable neural diversity of humans. Sadie, thank you so much for joining us.
DINGFELDER: Thank you for having me.
ABC NEWS LIVE: All right. So how did you realize that you have face blindness?
DINGFELDER: Well, let me tell you. I was in a grocery store and I was following my husband around. He was. And all of a sudden, he went rogue. And he started filling up our grocery cart with all this junk food. And I, I, you know, had to stop him, obviously. So I plucked a jar of generic peanut butter out of the cart, and I said, ‘since when do you buy generic?’
And Steve looked completely horrified, and it took me a second, but he looked horrified because he was not Steve. He was not my husband. He was a random Steve-shaped stranger. And, you know, and on the way home, I just was thinking, ‘this is not the kind of mistake that neurotypical people make.’
ABC NEWS LIVE: You said that he looked horrified. So you were able to see certain emotions in the face? But not, just give us a sense if you can kind of describe what kind of images you might see.
DINGFELDER: Well, it’s really interesting because face recognition is controlled by a totally different part of your brain than emotion, recognizing emotion or gaze direction or even telling genders. So, I’m normal at all those things. My problem is I just can’t remember faces.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And so when did you connect the dots that this was somehow related to the brain function?
DINGFELDER: Well, so ironically, I am a science writer, and I specialize in neuroscience and psychology.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Convenient.
DINGFELDER: Right! So I knew, like, how to do the research, and I got myself into a study. So I pitched it as a story and I thought, oh, this is a fascinating disorder that I probably don’t have. But I had it, turns out.
ABC NEWS LIVE: And so not only do you have face blindness, but you also have something called stereo blindness. Explain what that is.
DINGFELDER: Yeah. This is. My world is very flat. I can’t catch a ball or a frisbee, and I stumble a lot. It’s because my brain — I only look out of one eye at a time. And in most people’s brains, combine the images from their two eyes into a single, you know, three-dimensional image. And my brain doesn’t doesn’t do it.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So you’ve really kind of taken this deep dive into your own brain. But in the same time, what have you learned just about neuroscience and how other people’s brains work?
DINGFELDER: Yeah, that’s been the huge revelation for me, is that, you know, your father, your best friend, your spouse. They could all be living in a world that like, if you could beam into their minds, you you would find the world to be completely unrecognizable. I had no idea that other people could visualize. I thought that people were speaking in metaphors.
You know, when you’re in yoga class and they’re like, shine your sternum forward, like, I didn’t realize people could actually visualize like, rays of light coming out of their sternum.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So if I were to say, visualize a meadow, a very calm scene, you’re not able to do that?
DINGFELDER: That. No, I can just think I can think about a calm scene.
ABC NEWS LIVE: But you wouldn’t be able to picture it?
DINGFELDER: Right.
ABC NEWS LIVE: Your story is really vulnerable. You really allow your inner thoughts, emotions, experiences. You kind of put it all out there for everyone else. What have you learned along this whole journey?
DINGFELDER: Oh, gosh. I have learned that there is just a wild amount of sort of hidden neurodiversity in the world. And so even people who seem completely, you know, like normal and like they’re fitting in, they might have, you know, they might have ADHD or autism or some of the rare things that I seem to have, and you wouldn’t have any idea.
And they often don’t have any idea either, because they have nothing to compare their experience to. And even cooler is how science, scientists are beginning to study this. You know, they they are peeking into our brains in lots of clever ways and discovering that this is not just a problem with describing things. We really do have very different inner lives from one another.
ABC NEWS LIVE: So fascinating. I think a lot of people are going to be really intrigued by this, Sadie. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us. You can now purchase “Do I Know You? A Faceblind Reporter’s Journey into the Science of Sight, Memory, and Imagination,” wherever books are sold.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court, nearing the end of its term, is poised to soon deliver rulings in high-profile cases on everything from presidential power to abortion access.
The justices is releasing opinions on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday this week. It will mark the first time in at least a decade the justices have done three opinion days in a row.
The timing means key decisions, some with enormous consequences for the 2024 campaign, could be handed down just as President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump meet on stage in Atlanta for their first debate.
Blockbuster cases still to be resolved include whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution on charges stemming from his efforts to overturn his 2020 election loss and whether alleged Jan. 6 rioters were improperly charged with obstruction.
Here is a deeper dive into the some of the remaining cases pending before the nation’s high court.
Presidential immunity
In what is likely the most consequential case before the court this term, the justices will decide whether a former president is shielded from criminal liability for “official acts” taken while in the White House.
In Trump v. United States, Trump is seeking to quash the federal election subversion case brought by special counsel Jack Smith by claiming immunity.
Lower courts flatly rejected Trump’s argument, but the justices appeared open to the idea of some level of immunity for former presidents when they heard arguments in April. Their questioning largely focused on what types of official acts would be protected and which would not.
How the justices make that determination will set a new standard for presidential power, and will affect whether Trump stands trial for his unprecedented actions in the aftermath of the 2020 election.
Jan. 6 obstruction charges
A felony obstruction charge used by federal prosecutors against alleged Jan. 6 rioters is being put to the test in Fischer v. United States.
A former Pennsylvania police officer charged for his alleged participation in the U.S. Capitol attack is challenging the government’s use of a 2002 law enacted to prevent the destruction of evidence in financial crimes. The law includes a sweeping provision for any conduct that “otherwise obstructs, influences or impedes an official proceeding.”
The Supreme Court appeared divided on whether the government’s broad interpretation of the law should stand or be narrowed, with conservatives on the bench questioning the lack of prosecutions under the law for matters unrelated to financial or documentary crimes.
The court’s decision could upend hundreds of Jan. 6 cases, including Trump’s. Felony obstruction is one of the four charges the former president is facing in his federal election subversion case.
Idaho abortion ban and emergency care
The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a ruling that will allow emergency abortion access in Idaho, for now, despite the state’s near-total ban on the procedure.
In Moyle v. United States, the question before the court was whether a federal law requiring emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to all patients overrides Idaho law prohibiting nearly all abortions except in reported cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is at risk.
The Biden administration argued the law is conflict with the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act, or EMTALA, which requires hospitals receiving Medicare funds to provide “necessary stabilizing treatment.”
The court dismissed the case without considering the core issues, instead sending it back to the lower courts for further proceedings.
The case marked the first time the court heard arguments about state-level abortion restrictions passed after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Since the court’s conservative majority struck down Roe, 21 states have successfully enacted restrictions or bans on abortion and 14 of those states have total bans with few exceptions.
Homeless encampment ban
In the most significant case on homelessness in decades, the justices are weighing whether a local ordinance to bar anyone without a permanent residency from sleeping outside amounts to “cruel and unusual” punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
Officials in Grants Pass, Oregon argue the ordinance is necessary to protect public spaces and encourage a growing tide of unhoused residents to seek shelter. A lower court ruled that punishing homeless people with fines and the possibility of jail time for public camping when they have nowhere else to go is unconstitutional.
A majority of Supreme Court justices seemed to favor the city’s arguments when it heard the case in April.
Social media regulation and free speech
The Supreme Court will determine whether state laws restricting how social media companies moderate content violate the First Amendment.
The measures from Florida and Texas seek to place limits on how the private companies can manage user accounts and feeds on their platforms. Both were passed amid conservative concerns that Facebook and X, formerly known as Twitter, were censoring viewpoints on their site based on politics.
In another case, Murthy v. Missouri, the justices on Wednesday rejected a challenge to the Biden administration’s communication with social media companies about misinformation on their sites about COVID-19 and the 2020 election.
Republican-led states and five individual users had argued the government’s conduct amounted to illegally coercion, while the administration argued their contact with the companies was aimed at protecting national security and public health.
The justices struck down the challenge, stating the plaintiffs did not have legal standing to sue the government because they could not show the government outreach directly resulted in censorship of their views.
(NEW YORK) — Walgreens plans to close a large share of its U.S. stores over the next three years, Chief Executive Tim Wentworth said on a conference call with industry analysts on Thursday.
Wentworth described a quarter of the company’s 8,500 stores as “underperforming,” saying the health care giant would close a “significant portion” of those locations. The exact number of closures is still being finalized, Wentworth said.
Walgreens will make changes at the remainder of the struggling stores in an effort to revitalize them, Wentworth said. “We will continue to consider closure if they don’t improve,” he added.
The announcement arrives nearly seven months after the company embarked on a wide-ranging review of the business in response to flagging consumer spending and adverse changes in the pharmacy industry.
“Everything has been on the table,” Wentworth said. “We are at a point where the current pharmacy model is unsustainable.”
The company reported $28.5 billion in revenue over the three months ending in May, which amounted to a slight increase compared to the same period a year ago, an earnings release on Thursday showed. The results nevertheless underperformed expectations, the company said.
The recent struggles for the company’s U.S. business have stemmed in part from price-conscious customers fatigued by a yearslong bout of elevated prices that have strained household budgets.
“Our customers have become increasingly selective and price-sensitive in their purchases,” Wentworth said.
Walgreens has slashed prices on many of its products this year, keeping pace with discounts at other major retail chains like Target and McDonald’s. Last month, Walgreens announced discounts for 1,300 of its products, enticing customers with lower prices for many items, including miniature pretzels to coolers to gummy vitamins.
Lower prices have triggered some additional customer spending but have hurt the company’s profit margins, Walgreens Boots Alliance CFO Manmohan Mahajan said on Thursday’s conference call.
The company is also facing challenges within the pharmacy industry due to costly regulations and insufficient reimbursements, Wentworth said. He pointed to the relationship between the company and third-party pharmacy benefit managers, or PBMs, which act as intermediaries between insurance companies and pharmacies.
“We continue to have active discussions with PBM and supplier partners,” Wentworth said.
Walgreens will seek to minimize layoffs and retain workers as it cuts stores, Wentworth said. “We intended to redeploy the vast majority of the workforce at the stores we close,” he added.
The company, based in Deerfield, Illinois, employs about 240,000 people nationwide. In 2021, the company raised the minimum wage for staff to $15 per hour.
On Thursday, Walgreens lowered financial expectations for the forthcoming quarter. Still, Wentworth said he remains optimistic about the company’s future.
“I’m at Walgreens today because I believe in the future of retail pharmacy and particularly our future,” he said. “Human-to-human interaction is an imperative in healthcare and the core foundation of our business.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a decision that will allow emergency abortion access in Idaho, for now, despite the state’s strict ban on the procedure.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday threw out an opioid settlement for Purdue Pharma that would have shielded the Sackler family from criminal liability.
The 5-4 opinion was delivered by Justice Neil Gorsuch.
