(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Kevin McCarthy on Wednesday unveiled a long-awaited GOP proposal to lift the debt limit and enact federal spending cuts.
Speaking on the House floor, McCarthy outlined what’s included in the so-called Limit, Save, Grow Act, designed to raise the debt limit into next year and also provide more than $4.5 trillion in savings.
“The American people have elected a divided government, and our government is a divine compromise,” McCarthy said. “That is why the House, the Senate and the White House should be negotiating a responsible debt limit increase right now.”
The legislation would claw back unspent COVID-19 money, block federal student loan cancellation, rescind billions of dollars for the Internal Revenue Service provided by the Inflation Reduction Act, end green tax credits and put in place stricter work requirements for federal aid programs. It would also limit government spending to pre-inflationary, fiscal year 2022 levels and limit spending increases to 1% per year, according to McCarthy.
President Joe Biden, who gave the proposal a chilly reception, last met with McCarthy to discuss the debt limit in February. Their standoff has intensified in recent weeks as lawmakers stare down a fast-approaching summer deadline to lift the debt ceiling or risk an economically catastrophic default.
In recent days, the House speaker has tried to amp up pressure on Biden and Democrats to negotiate. Biden and other party leaders have so far declined to do so as they push for a “clean” debt limit increase not tied to federal spending cuts.
“President Biden is skipping town to deliver a speech in Maryland, rather than sitting down to address the debt ceiling,” McCarthy said on Wednesday. “He’s giving America’s debt the Southern border treatment: ignore it and hope that it goes away.”
Biden shot back at the Republican leader during his Maryland event, taking aim at McCarthy’s debt ceiling comments delivered Monday at the New York Stock Exchange.
“They say they’re going to default unless I agree to all these wacko notions they have. Default would be worse than totally irresponsible,” Biden said.
Biden warned a default “would destroy this economy. And who do you think will hurt the most? You, hardworking people, the middle-class, neighborhoods I got raised in — not the super wealthy or the powerful, but working folks.”
The legislative text of the House GOP bill, which clocks in at 320 pages, was released shortly after McCarthy’s remarks.
McCarthy said the chamber will vote as early as next week on the plan. While it’s not yet clear he’ll have the 218 votes necessary to pass it, he expressed optimism about its prospects.
“We’re going to get there,” he told reporters. “I never give up. We’ll get them.”
-ABC News’ Gabe Ferris, Justin Gomez contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — More than a year after Russian President Vladimir Putin launched a full-scale invasion of neighboring Ukraine, the countries are fighting for control of areas in eastern and southern Ukraine.
Ukrainian troops have liberated nearly 30,000 square miles of their territory from Russian forces since the invasion began on Feb. 24, 2022, but Putin appeared to be preparing for a long and bloody war.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 19, 5:22 PM EDT
Russia reportedly fires nearly 80 missiles at Kherson in 24 hours
Russia has fired nearly 80 missiles at Kherson in 24 hours amid ongoing shelling, a local official said.
“For the previous day, we have recorded 79 shellings throughout our territory,” First Deputy Chairman of the Kherson Regional Council Yuriy Sobolevskyi said on Telegram earlier Wednesday. “About 300 rounds of ammunition were used by the enemy.”
At least two people have sought medical attention due to shelling injuries, according to Sobolevskyi, who noted that the “shelling continues.”
-ABC News’ Will Gretsky
Apr 19, 2:31 PM EDT
US announces new $325 million military package
The U.S. Department of Defense announced a new $325 million military aid package for Ukraine, including more rockets and artillery rounds, in addition to other equipment.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Gen. Mark Milley are in Europe to attend another meeting of the 50-plus countries providing military assistance to Ukraine that begins later this week in Ramstein, Germany.
“The United States will continue to work with its Allies and partners to provide Ukraine with capabilities to meet its immediate battlefield needs and longer-term security assistance requirements,” the Pentagon said in a statement.
-ABC News’ Luis Martinez
Apr 18, 6:20 PM EDT
Germany says it delivered Patriot missile system to Ukraine
The German government announced Tuesday that it delivered a Patriot missile defense system and missiles to Ukraine this week.
The country also sent 16 Zetros trucks, bringing its total to 76, and two border patrol vehicles, bringing its total to 124, the government said.
-ABC News’ Will Gretsky
Apr 18, 6:10 AM EDT
Russia detains man who spoke with WSJ reporter
Russia’s security services have arrested an anti-Kremlin political commentator who the jailed Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich met with shortly before his own arrest.
Yaroslav Shirshikov has said he spent two days showing Gershkovich around the city of Yekaterinburg during a reporting trip there a couple of weeks before Russia seized Gershovich.
Shirshikov said he had been due to meet with Gershkovich again the week the reporter was arrested in the city.
This morning, local media published video showing masked security officers detaining Shirshikov in his apartment and searching it.
A local news outlet cited a security services representative saying Shirshikov may have been arrested for posting comments cheering the assassinations of two ultra-nationalist pro-war figures, Daria Dugina and the blogger Vladen Tatarsky.
The site UralLive quoted a law enforcement source that Shirshikov was detained on a charge of “justifying terrorism,” which carries a maximum sentence of seven years in prison. It linked the charge to a social media post in which Shirshikov wrote he wasn’t sad over the death of Tatarsky, who was killed in a bomb attack in St. Petersburg this month.
Shirshikov spoke to several international media outlets including ABC following Gershkovich’s arrest. He said that Gershkovich had acted entirely as a professional journalist in Yekaterinburg, conducting interviews openly and doing usual reporting.
Shirshikov is a critic of the Russian government and has spoken publicly about his opposition to the war in Ukraine.
Apr 18, 4:52 AM EDT
Putin visits military in occupied Kherson Region
Russian President Vladimir Putin made a trip to Kherson and Luhansk, visiting a military headquarters in occupied territory in Ukraine.
Putin arrived via helicopter at the headquarters of an army group in occupied Kherson, according to video released on Tuesday by the Kremlin.
In brief remarks after he arrived, Putin said he didn’t want to distract troops from their mission, saying his tour of the installation would be in a “businesslike manner, briefly, but concretely,” according to Interfax, a Russian state-affiliated news wire.
“It is important for me to hear your opinion on how the situation is developing, to listen to you, to exchange information,” he said, according to Interfax.
Apr 17, 6:19 AM EDT
Putin critic sentenced to 25 years
A Moscow court has sentenced one of Russia’s best-known opposition leaders, whose family live in the U.S., to 25 years in prison in what is widely seen a show trial.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is the most high-profile opponent of Russian President Vladimir Putin to be jailed since Alexey Navalny.
Kara-Murza’s extraordinarily harsh sentence is one of the lengthiest any opposition figure has received under Putin and illustrates how repressive Russia has become during the war in Ukraine, reverting to something much closer to the USSR where no opposition is tolerated.
Kara-Murza was convicted of treason, as well as “discrediting Russia’s armed forces,” a new law that effectively criminalizes criticizing the war in Ukraine. He was also convicted of belonging to a banned organization. The charges are widely seen as politically motivated.
Kara-Murza is one of Russia’s best-known pro-democracy figures and a veteran critic of Putin.
Kara-Murza, who holds both British and Russian citizenship, spent many years living in the United States and his wife and children still live in Virginia. He was close to the late U.S. Sen. John McCain, who championed human rights in the former Soviet Union.
Dozens of journalists and Western diplomats attended the court hearing on Monday, including the U.S. ambassador who read out a statement condemning the sentence.
“We support Mr. Kara-Murza and every Russian citizen to have a voice in the direction of their country. Mr. Kara-Murza and countless other Russians believe in and hope for a Russia where fundamental freedoms will be upheld. And we will continue to share those hopes and work for that outcome,” Amb. Lynne Tracy said.
Kara-Murza previously has survived being poisoned not once but twice. In 2015 and then again in 2017, he suffered organ failure after being exposed to an unknown toxin. Independent researchers later linked the poisoning to the same team of FSB poisoners who targeted Navalny.
He chose to return to Russia after the war began, believing it was important to continue to campaign for freedom in his country and has been an outspoken critic of the invasion.
His trial was held entirely behind closed doors, but a letter containing his closing statement to the court has been released to reporters.
“I only blame myself for one thing,” Kara-Murza said in the statement. “I failed to convince enough of my compatriots and politicians in democratic countries of the danger that the current Kremlin regime poses for Russia and for the world.”
“Criminals are supposed to repent of what they have done. I, on the other hand, am in prison for my political views. I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will dissipate.
The parents of Wall Street Journalist journalist Evan Gershkovich spoke in an interview with with the paper Friday, the first time since their son was detained in Russia in March.
Mikhail and Ella Gershkovich, who were born in the Soviet Union and married after emigrating to the U.S. separately in 1979, talked about how much he wanted to work for the Journal and cover Russia.
“He said I’m just one of the few left there,” Ella Gershkovich, his mother, said of his time working in Russia during the Ukraine war.
The couple said their family is keeping hope that their son will be returned.
The couple said their family is keeping hope that their son will be released.
“It’s one of the American qualities we absorbed. Be optimistic, believe in happy ending. That’s where we stand right now, but I am not stupid. I understand what’s involved, but that’s what I choose to believe,” Ella Gershkovich said.
-ABC News’ Ellie Kaufman
Apr 14, 2:52 PM EDT
6 dead, including 1 child, after Russia attacks Slovyansk
Russian forces shelled Slovyansk, a city in the Donetsk region of Ukraine, Friday, Andrii Yermak, the head of the office of the President of Ukraine, said on Telegram.
At least seven explosions were heard in the city in the area near a school, and three buildings were struck, Yermak said. Russia hit three five-story buildings in the attack, he added.
Six civilians, including one child, were killed and 17 people have been wounded, as of Friday afternoon, officials said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy shared a video of the attack on his Telegram page and condemned Russian forces.
He said there are still people trapped in the rubble.
“The evil state once again demonstrates its essence, just killing people in broad daylight, [and] ruining, destroying all life,” he said.
-ABC News’ Oleksiy Pshemyskiy and Ellie Kaufman
Apr 12, 7:12 PM EDT
Singer Brad Paisley visits Ukraine for 1st time with Senate delegation, meets with Zelenskyy
Country singer Brad Paisley visited Ukraine for the first time on Wednesday and met with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to see firsthand what’s happening in the war-torn country, according to Ukrainian fundraising platform UNITED24.
Paisley, who serves as a global ambassador for UNITED24 and its campaign to help rebuild Ukraine, performed his song “Same Here” while in St. Michael’s Square in Kyiv.
Paisley, who went with a bipartisan U.S. Senate delegation, also played for American troops in Poland, UNITED24 said.
“It’s an emotional experience seeing all of this firsthand,” Paisley said during a press conference. “For me, looking around this city and being here for the first time, I’m absolutely struck by the resilience of life and the beautiful nature of the way this city is trying to thrive in the middle of conflict.”
Apr 12, 5:59 PM EDT
2 US citizens died while fighting in Ukraine, State Dept. says
Two Americans have died while volunteering to fight in Ukraine, he U.S. Department of State said Wednesday.
Edward Wilton and Grady Kurpasi died in combat during the conflict, bringing the total number of Americans killed to at least eight.
Wilton, 22, died on April 7 fighting in Bakhmut, his half brother Parker Cummings told ABC News. He was from Marianna, Florida.
Wilton served in the U.S. Army, Cummings said, and informed his half brother about his plans to fight in Ukraine through a message sent from a plane en route to Poland on April 10, 2022.
“My brother was very selfless. My brother was very honorable and traditional,” Cummings told ABC News. “He cared more about freedom for all than for his own safety. Edward was a true hero and he will be missed until we see him again.”
Joshua Cropper, who told ABC News he fought with Wilton in Ukraine’s International Legion between April and early July 2022, said of Wilton: “He was so young, but immensely brave. Fearless. We’d need three guys to do any task, he’s always going to have his hand up. He was as mature as anybody I’ve ever known.”
Kurpasi was reportedly last seen in April 2022 and was widely reported to be missing last June.
As recently as last fall, his family said they believed he was in critical condition in a Russian-controlled hospital in Donetsk, but it’s not clear exactly when he was confirmed dead or if he was ever hospitalized.
A GoFund Me page organized on behalf of Kurpasi’s wife provides few details on his time in Ukraine, but states that he “ended up leading a squad into battle and was killed in action.”
“We can confirm the death of a U.S. citizen in Ukraine. We are in touch with the family and providing all possible consular assistance,” a State Department spokesperson said in a statement when asked about his case. “When a U.S. citizen dies overseas, including in Ukraine, the Department of State supports the legal representative and family of the deceased in numerous ways, including by providing information on the disposition of remains and estates and issuing a consular report of death.”
The spokesperson added: “The U.S. government takes its role in such a situation very seriously, providing all appropriate assistance through the legal representative, next of kin or their designee.”
Regarding Wilton, a State Department official confirmed that a U.S. citizen died near Bakhmut and said they’re in touch with the family and providing all appropriate consular services.
-ABC News’ Shannon Crawford and Chris Looft
Apr 12, 2:50 PM EDT
Efforts to pressure Russia to release WSJ reporter ‘senseless and futile,’ Russia says
Days after the U.S. designated Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich as wrongfully detained in Russia, Russian officials referred to pressure from the U.S. to release him as futile.
“Any attempts to put pressure on the Russian authorities and the court, insisting on a ‘special treatment’ for U.S. citizens who have violated Russian law, are senseless and futile,” the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Wednesday.
After some missed calls, President Joe Biden finally connected with the parents of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre confirmed Tuesday.
“He felt it was really important to connect with Evan’s family,” she told reporters on Air Force One as the president travels to Ireland.
Meanwhile, National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Gershkovich’s detention is “pretty fresh” and officials are still trying to get consular access to Gershkovich, which they have not been able to do.
He would not get into any specific conversations the U.S. is having with Russians about releasing Gershkovich or if a prisoner swap is a possibility.
“I just want to make a couple of things clear that is, the determination of wrongful detention, it doesn’t start the clock necessarily on communicating with the Russians about getting him released,” Kirby said. “We’re very early in this process here and I certainly, I think you can understand why I wouldn’t talk about any discussions we might be having with the Russians about his release or Paul [Whelan]’s release. We certainly wouldn’t do that.”
Kirby said the administration is “certainly having discussions about what we can do to get him released.”
“I don’t want to go into details about these internal deliberations, having things out in the public sphere viscerally might actually make it harder to get Evan and Paul home, and that’s what we’re focused on,” Kirby said.
-ABC News’ Justin Gomez
Apr 10, 4:28 PM EDT
Gershkovich designated as wrongfully detained by Russia
Secretary of State Antony Blinken has determined that Wall Street Journalist reporter Evan Gershkovich is being wrongfully detained by Russia, according to a statement released Monday afternoon.
Two Americans are now considered to be wrongfully detained by Russia — Gershkovich and Paul Whelan.
Gershkovich’s case will now be transferred to the Office of the Special Envoy for Hostage Affairs, the U.S. government’s top hostage negotiator.
Gershkovich, a 31-year-old New Jersey native who has lived and worked in Moscow as an accredited journalist for the last six years, was in a restaurant in Yekaterinburg on March 29 when Russia’s Federal Security Service arrested him on espionage charges that the Wall Street Journal, his colleagues and the U.S. government have said are absurd.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Wednesday gave itself more time to decide whether to wade into a legal challenge to FDA’s approval of the abortion pill, a case that could restrict access to the drug mifepristone nationwide – even in states where abortion is legal.
The court, which was expected to act by the end of the day Wednesday, extended a temporary stay of a lower court ruling until 11:59. p.m. Friday.
If the Supreme Court agrees to take up a Texas judge’s ruling that threatened to pull the drug from the market, it would be the second time in less than a year that the high court will deal with limits to abortion access, potentially paving the way for another blockbuster ruling this summer that could dramatically change how drugs are approved in the U.S.
“It is not a stretch to say that a judge can wake up in the morning and decide that they want to take a certain medication off the market,” including vaccines or anti-depressants, if the lower court rulings stand, said Josh Sharfstein, former principal deputy commissioner at the FDA.
The case has deeply divided the country, with Republican governors and lawmakers lining up behind the conservative plaintiffs in the case.
“Fundamentally, chemical abortion drugs pose serious health and safety risks to women and girls,” states a brief filed with the Supreme Court, signed by nearly 150 Republican lawmakers including Senate Minority Whip John Thune of South Dakota, Senate Republican Conference Chairman John Barrasso of Wyoming, and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise of Louisiana.
On the other side are Democratic governors, lawmakers and the nation’s largest medical associations, as well as hundreds of pharmaceutical executives and companies. They note mifepristone has been widely available for 23 years — used by an estimated 5 million women and accounting for more than half of all abortions in the US.
“There is a greater risk of complications or mortality for procedures like wisdom-tooth removals, tonsillectomies, colonoscopies, and plastic surgeries, than by any abortion method (medication or procedural),” the American Medical Association and American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, wrote in a court brief.
Mifepristone is the sole drug approved by the FDA to end early pregnancies, typically given along with second drug misoprostol that helps empty the uterus.
Since the drug’s 2000 approval, the FDA later expanded access, greenlighting a generic version of the drug and allowing it to be given up to 10 weeks of pregnancy instead of seven and provided via telehealth and the mail.
The drug’s rise in popularity and widespread accessibility has made it a target of the anti-abortion rights movement. Last fall, the conservative legal group Alliance Defending Freedom sued the FDA, insisting that federal regulators ignored critical safety concerns during the drug’s 23 years on the market.
Earlier this month, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ordered the FDA to roll back its rules on the drug — only allowing the drug to be given to patients up to seven weeks of pregnancy instead of 10 after three in-person doctor visits and prohibiting it from being mailed.
The Biden administration appealed, and Justice Samuel Alito’s original administrative stay of the ruling last Friday – keeping FDA’s current rules on the drug in place — was intended to give the high court a chance to consider how to address the case.
If the Supreme Court decides to weigh in, it is expected the justices also would decide by Friday whether to keep the 5th Circuit ruling on hold — preserving the status quo — while the legal challenge plays out.
Depending upon what the Supreme Court decides, access to the abortion pill could potentially be severely restricted or even eliminated, including in states where abortion is legal – at least until the case has a chance to wind its way through the legal process.
Complicating the issue is an opposing ruling by a federal judge in Washington who ordered the FDA to keep the drug on the market under its current rules. Danco Labs, which makes the brand-name version of the drug Mifeprex, said the dueling rulings if left unaddressed would create “regulatory chaos.”
The company also warns that if left in place, the 5th Circuit ruling would result in all doses of mifepristone being “misbranded” because the labeling would no longer comply with the approval standard.
Adjusting the drug’s labeling “could take months,” they say, resulting in a stop of production.
The 5th Circuit ruling also would invalidate the 2019 FDA approval of the generic version of the drug — an estimated two-thirds of the market.
John Fogerty was honored earlier this week at the BMI/NAB Dinner in Las Vegas with the BMI Board of Directors Award, which celebrated the impact of his five-decade career.
Mike O’Neill, President & CEO of BMI, shared that Fogerty is “what it means to be a living legend,” calling him a “groundbreaking singer, songwriter and guitarist responsible for some of the best known, most beloved and distinctive rock songs of the 20th century.”
In accepting the award, Fogerty showed off a notebook from 1967, with the first lines written in it being “Proud Mary,” which just eight months later was turned into a song that became a future classic.
The evening also featured a performance by the Rock & Roll Hall of Famer, who was joined by sons Tyler and Shane for “Have You Ever Seen the Rain,” “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary.”
Next up, Fogerty is set to hit the road on his Celebration Tour, which kicks off April 27 in Uncasville, Connecticut. A complete list of dates can be found at JohnFogerty.com.
(WASHINGTON) — Top Trump adviser and lawyer Boris Epshteyn is scheduled to meet Thursday with special counsel Jack Smith’s prosecutors as part of the probe into former President Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The interview, requested by the special counsel’s office, comes as multiple other top Trump advisers have appeared before a grand jury investigating Trump’s actions leading up to the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
It’s not immediately clear why investigators are not seeking Epshteyn’s testimony before the grand jury probing the matter, or whether that’s a step they will ultimately take.
Epshteyn could not be reached for comment by ABC News.
A spokesperson for the special counsel declined to comment.
The career blowback against Jonathan Majors continues, following his arrest for an alleged domestic dispute in New York City on March 25.
A day after his longtime management company, Entertainment 360, dropped him, Deadline reports the Creed III star and Texas native will no longer be part of an ad campaign for the Texas Rangers. Further, the trade says he will be replaced in a film called The Man in My Basement, which would have had Majors producing and starring alongside Willem Dafoe.
Majors is reportedly “no longer under consideration” for an Otis Redding biopic called Otis and Zelma, Deadline also says.
Following his arrest, Majors was pulled from a new campaign promoting the U.S. Army.
Majors was set to reprise his Kang the Conqueror character from Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania in Marvel Cinematic Universe projects on both the big and small screen; the first of these to wrap was the second season of Loki.
So far, Marvel Studios has been mum, but a scan of the press release for Quantumania‘s release on digital and Blu-ray makes no mention of the star, who many critics said was a bright spot of the film.
Majors is expected to appear before a judge in New York City May 8 in relation to his arrest on multiple charges of assault and harassment, which left his alleged victim with “minor injuries to her head and neck,” according to the NYPD.
After he was charged, his attorney Priya Chaudhry released a statement calling her client “completely innocent …” and predicted that “all charges will be dropped imminently.”
Marvel Studios is owned by Disney, the parent company of ABC News.
(SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico) — Some Puerto Ricans are worried about the safety of their drinking water.
Over the last few decades, some residents and advocates on the island have become skeptical about the water that comes out of their faucet, deciding to drink only bottled water.
“I buy bottled water,” Bruneli, a resident of Barceloneta, told ABC News. “I’ve found that the water isn’t reliable.”
The issue stems from a combination of factors, including a failing infrastructure at treatment centers and pollution from the booming manufacturing industry, Erik Olson, a senior strategic director at the National Resources Defense Council, told ABC News.
Puerto Rico also does not get the same amount of resources allocated to other jurisdictions in the U.S. and budget cuts have been made to all government agencies on the island, including environmental quality and protection agencies, Ruth Santiago, an attorney and environmental health advocate with Earth Justice, told ABC News.
The issues, which also include decades of violations at water utilities, leave residents feeling like not enough is being done to ensure the quality of their water.
Barceloneta, a town on the northern coast of Puerto Rico known for housing many manufacturing plants, is also the site of a 33-acre plot full of toxic waste that has been there for decades, Julio Lopez Varona, the co-chief of campaigns at the Center for Popular Democracy, told ABC News.
The landfill, where many hazardous wastes were disposed of from the 1970s to the 1990s, has been established as a superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and has been monitored for 30 years, Carmen Guerrero Perez, director of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Caribbean Environmental Protection Division, told ABC News.
“At this moment, based on the five-year reviews that have been conducted, there hasn’t been any migration from contamination at that specific area,” Perez said.
The EPA is tasked with enforcing the Clean Water Act and overseeing local enforcement of the Safe Drinking Water Act. The most common violations include failure to test the water and failure to report problems, Olson said. Health-based violations, such as contamination with bacteria and failure to treat the water in accordance to EPA guidelines and chemical contamination issues, have also occurred, Olson said.
While Perez said the EPA has “a number of different enforcement strategies,” enforcements are akin to “a slap on the wrist,” Santiago said.
Both the local and federal government need to “step up” on enforcements, Olson said.
“Puerto Rico cannot continue to be the place where the U.S. extracts wealth and harms people because that’s just wrong,” Varona said.
Poorer communities are the demographic most likely to live near the sites that need the most cleanup and monitoring, advocates said. In Barceloneta, there is an “active community” near the waste site, Varona said.
“That’s sort of one of the elements of environmental injustice, right? The overburdening of communities that are poor,” Santiago said.
On April 4, the EPA said more than $62 million in funding is being dedicated to essential drinking water infrastructure upgrades in Puerto Rico.
Luiz C. Ribeiro for NY Daily News via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — The Manhattan district attorney’s office will investigate the partial collapse of a parking garage that killed one and injured five others, a spokeswoman for the office confirmed Wednesday.
More than 50 cars were parked on the roof of the four-story Lower Manhattan building when it collapsed Tuesday afternoon, sending cars plummeting and killing one worker whose body remains trapped in the debris, officials said Wednesday.
The New York City Fire Department is slowly and methodically taking down the building. Gas tanks and electric vehicles in the debris are complicating the deconstruction process.
“This is an incredibly complex operation,” emergency management commissioner Zach Iscol said during a press briefing Wednesday. “The building is not structurally sound.”
The city is working to “safely demolish” the building while also removing the vehicles, he said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams confirmed Wednesday that the deceased garage worker, who has not been publicly identified, also remains in the collapsed building. The man was a 59-year-old manager of the garage, sources said.
Four workers were treated at local hospitals following the collapse, while a fifth refused medical treatment, officials said. The New York Fire Department said it appears most if not all of the patients have since been released.
Department of Buildings acting Commissioner Kazimir Vilenchik said the building “pancaked,” and that the ceiling collapsed “all the way to the cellar floor.”
Firefighters went inside the building to search for victims but it was continuing to collapse so they evacuated. A robotic dog and a drone were brought in to continue to search the building. Officials believe that everyone is accounted for and there is no reason to believe this is anything but a structural collapse.
The exact cause of the collapse remains under investigation.
“There’s a thorough investigation that is going to happen with this building. And we’re going to learn from it,” Adams said.
A focus of the investigation is the weight of the vehicles parked on the roof and the age of the building, which was built in 1925.
The parking garage, which is owned by 57 Ann Street Realty Association, currently has four active violations, according to records from the New York City Department of Buildings.
The violations that remain open were recorded between 2003 and 2013.
One of the four violations still open is from Nov. 25, 2003, and has a severity status listed as “hazardous.” In the violation details, the department recorded the discovery of cracks in the concrete on the first floor, calling the concrete “defective.”
The company did not immediately respond to a voicemail seeking comment.
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Mark Crudele and Victoria Arancio contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Nearly 60 million Americans may not know they’re drinking from toxic metal in present day, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc.
The U.S. currently holds approximately 9.2 lead service lines underground, according to a recent survey released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
As the U.S. faces crisis after crisis in the country’s water infrastructure system, lead service lines continue to be a silent and deadly consequence – a decision determined by U.S. engineers more than 150 years ago.
History
The engineering concept was originally initiated in the Ancient Roman era – lead pipes were designed to channel clean water into its city and sweep out sewage.
In the 1800s, the ancient Roman conception was later adopted by the U.S., which would also install lead pipes nationwide to provide indoor plumbing to citizens.
“It created a public health benefit because we had clean water coming into our homes to take baths and wipe out waterborne disease – and that same water could sweep away our sewage,” Marc Edwards, professor of engineering at Virginia Tech, told ABC News.
For America, the nation’s goal was to deliver water in quantity — which lead pipes helped achieve due to their inexpensive, durable, non-leaking and long-lasting benefits.
Those lead pipes later became an environmental disaster as health experts realized their poisonous dangers, including miscarriages and fetal deaths.
“Around the 1920s, many cities required if you wanted to connect your house to the water main you had to use a lead pipe by law,” Edwards said.
Yet, several cities were still installing lead pipes, including Chicago – which didn’t stop installing lead pipes until 1986 when the Safe Drinking Water Act was amended, the EPA said.
Although the 1986 revised law banned lead, the pipes already installed were not required to be replaced, according to the EPA.
Lead is a tasteless, colorless and odorless chemical element that cannot be detected in the water. Health experts have determined there is ‘no safe level of lead’ in the human body. Children are often the most vulnerable as lead exposure can lead to anemia, brain damage, and among other issues in cognitive progress, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Present day health crisis
Edwards, who testified before Congress of the dangers of lead poisoning in Washington, D.C., in 2004, also helped to discover the Flint, Michigan, water crisis and said that he knew more water crises were impending.
Nearly 1 in 4 Flint residents may have PTSD after water crisis, study finds
Following Flint and Washington, D.C. also came Chicago, Newark, New Jersey, Benton Harbor, Michigan and Detroit.
Illinois is the second largest state to have the most lead pipes with more than 1 million still in service – Chicago alone has nearly 400,000, according to the EPA survey released in early April. Florida emerged as the state with the most lead service lines in the nation, beating out Illinois with 1,159,300 lead pipes.
Gina Ramirez, a third generation East Chicago native, says she and her family have strictly drank and cooked with bottled water for the last 30 years — because their home is connected to lead service lines. Ramirez, who also serves as the Midwest Outreach Manager for the Natural Resources Defense Council, NRDC, says her family’s neighborhood is mostly low-income, people of color.
“I mean a lot of families are just trying to put food on the table. There’s a lot of undocumented residences, undocumented residents in my neighborhood as well, so they don’t want to like, bring the alarm on that situation,” Ramirez said
For Ramirez, the process of having her pipes replaced has created a growing frustration as it’s taken her family two years before being approved for Chicago’s Lead Service Line equity program.
Illinois lawmakers have given Chicago nearly 50 years to replace all lead pipes compared to other cities like Flint, Benton Harbor and Newark, that has replaced nearly all its pipes in under five years.
Michigan to replace lead pipes in Benton Harbor in 18 months amid drinking water crisis
“That’s part of what it’s like living in a community where you have a tax on your health from outside your home and within your home. What kind of anxiety that can be, being raised in a home where you have to drink bottled water where you can’t trust your tap. That has to have long-term implications on your emotional health,” Ramirez says.
In late 2021, President Joe Biden signed a bipartisan infrastructure bill totaling $1.2 trillion, $15 billion of which will be targeted towards replacing lead water pipes and $50 billion will go toward fixing the nation’s water infrastructure system. As the Biden administration prioritizes lead pipe replacements nationwide, many Americans like Gina suggest the damage is already done.
Newark residents still aren’t convinced their water is safe to drink after lead water crisis
“This is a public health crisis,” Ramirez said. “I’m hopeful for these infrastructure dollars to go to lead service line replacements — we need the money to come into these communities who are disproportionately suffering health impacts and replace those lead service lines first.”
Def Leppard guitarist Phil Collen is paying tribute to Jeff Beck in a new interview with Guitar World.
“Jeff Beck has always been one of my idols because he’s unique. No-one sounds like him, no-one plays like him, and you’ve got to respect that more than anything else,” Cpllen says of Beck, who passed away in January. “We wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him. No-one was able to get anywhere close to that.”
Collen goes on to praise the days of the Jeff Beck Group with Rod Stewart singing, noting they “could have been a huge band.”
“They were supposed to play Woodstock, but Jeff had to fly home, so they never got to do it,” Collen says, noting that Beck went on to launch a successful solo career and Stewart went to Faces. Collen adds, “so everyone gained from them not doing Woodstock, even though if they’d done it they could’ve been as big as Led Zeppelin.”
