Jamie Foxx is recovering after suffering an undisclosed “medical complication” Tuesday, according to a social media post by the movie star’s daughter, Corinne Foxx.
“We wanted to share that, my father, Jamie Foxx, experienced a medical complication yesterday,” the 29-year-old actress shared in an Instagram post on Wednesday night.
While the post did not elaborate on the exact medical concern, Corinne added that the Day Shift star is “already on his way to recovery.”
“We know how beloved he is and appreciate your prayers. The family asks for privacy at this time,” the post concluded.
It is unclear what kind of symptoms the Oscar winner was suffering during the incident, or whether he was hospitalized.
Lynyrd Skynyrd has decided to go on following the March death of guitarist and original member Gary Rossington, and frontman Johnny Van Zant, who has been with the band over 30 years, knows it’s exactly what Rossington would have wanted.
“Me and him have had very long conversations,” Van Zant tells ABC Audio. “He said, ‘You know what, I want the music to carry on. I want it to carry on.’”
Johnny says Rossington had pointed out to him that since Charlie Daniels’ death in 2020 they were hearing less about him, and the same with the Allman Brothers after Gregg Allman’s 2017 death. Johnny said Gary told him, “I want Skynyrd to be around forever.”
“We got together with the estates, talked it out. We all came to a conclusion that this music is bigger than any of us,” Van Zant shares. “We’re gonna go out and we’re gonna play for a little while longer.” He adds, “We definitely want to finish out this year and we would like, you know, maybe carry on next year and who knows.”
Understandably, Van Zant says he’s “just devastated” by the loss of Rossington. “We became brothers over the years,” he offers. “I always tell people we fought, we cried, we made up and then we got drunk.”
Lynyrd Skynyrd is set to kick off The Sharp Dressed Simple Man tour with ZZ Top on July 21 in West Palm Beach, Florida. A complete list of dates can be found at lynyrdskynyrd.com.
Jamie Foxx is recovering after suffering an undisclosed “medical complication” Tuesday, according to a social media post by the movie star’s daughter, Corinne Foxx.
“We wanted to share that, my father, Jamie Foxx, experienced a medical complication yesterday,” the 29-year-old actress shared in an Instagram post on Wednesday night.
While the post did not elaborate on the exact medical concern, Corinne added that the Day Shift star is “already on his way to recovery.”
“We know how beloved he is and appreciate your prayers. The family asks for privacy at this time,” the post concluded.
It is unclear what kind of symptoms Foxx was suffering during the incident or whether he was hospitalized.
(WASHINGTON) — The Biden administration is pausing a key effort to reform and increase asylum processing at the border, the Department of Homeland Security confirmed on Wednesday.
First introduced last year, the new asylum processing policy had allowed asylum officers with U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services to grant or deny claims. Those powers were previously limited to immigration judges at the Department of Justice.
A Homeland Security spokesperson said the asylum officer adjudication process would start up again “in the near future” and migrants who already had interviews scheduled would be allowed to continue. The pause is intended “to ensure operational readiness,” the spokesperson said, before the end of an emergency pandemic expulsion policy next month that has limited asylum requests under Title 42 of the U.S. Code.
The Los Angeles Times was first to report the pause.
Authorities at the border have been preparing for the aftermath of the emergency Title 42 policy since the Biden administration first tried to end it in 2021 before hitting legal roadblocks lodged by GOP-led states. Without the ability to conduct rapid expulsions, authorities may be left to handle an even greater number of asylum claims, which can take months or years to resolve.
The now-paused process for more quickly adjudicating asylum cases was intended to ease a massive case backlog. The number of asylum seekers waiting for hearings in the U.S. has exceeded 1.5 million, according to researchers at Syracuse University.
ABC News was among the first to report last week that the Biden administration would attempt to accelerate the asylum process by holding screening interviews at Border Patrol stations. Immigrant advocates fear that moving up the initial screening interview closer to a migrant’s initial encounter with authorities would limit their ability to adequately prepare a case.
The effectiveness of that move would ultimately depend on the ability of asylum officers to adjudicate cases, said Muzaffar Chishti, a senior fellow at the nonpartisan Migration Policy Institute.
“If after all this efficiency we send them to the immigration courts, it just won’t work because that’ll be the bottleneck,” Chishti told ABC News.
“I think the combination of the new [screening interview] proposal at the border with the asylum officer rule is probably the best way forward,” he said, noting the training necessary for asylum officers may take time.
The government funding deal produced by Congressional negotiators last December resulted in USCIS getting roughly one-third of the $765 million in funding Biden initially requested, according to the publication Government Executive. The White House has said additional funding for the agency is necessary in order to reduce the growing backlog of asylum cases.
(NEW YORK) — A federal U.S. appeals court late Wednesday partially blocked an unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas last week that reverses the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the widely-used abortion drug mifepristone.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit granted the U.S. Department of Justice’s emergency request to put on hold U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision to suspend the FDA’s initial authorization of mifepristone back in 2000, citing the the statute of limitations. However, the three-judge panel determined that other parts of Kacsmaryk’s ruling, which suspends changes the FDA later made to mifepristone’s approved use and halts distribution of the drug by mail, could still go into effect at the end of the day Friday.
The Justice Department could ask the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene and completely block Kacsmaryk’s order.
The challenge to mifepristone’s FDA approval stems from a lawsuit filed in Amarillo, Texas, in November 2022 by Alliance Defending Freedom, an Arizona-based conservative Christian legal advocacy group working to outlaw abortion. The case was assigned to Kacsmaryk, who was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump and is currently the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.
On April 7, Kacsmaryk ruled to suspend the FDA’s authorization of mifepristone, saying the drug was unsafe and its approval process was rushed. The Justice Department subsequently appealed the decision to a higher court.
The lawsuit against mifepristone came just months after the Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade case that legalized abortion nationwide nearly 50 years ago.
Mifepristone has been on the market for 23 years. In 2016, the FDA lifted some of mifepristone’s original safety restrictions by increasing the maximum gestational age at which the drug can be used from 49 to 70 days, reducing the number of in-person office visits that patients are required to make from three to one, allowing non-doctors to prescribe and administer the drug and eliminating the requirement for prescribers to report non-fatal adverse events.
In 2021, the FDA announced it had permanently lifted its restriction that mifepristone must be dispensed in-person. Last month, the agency went a step further by allowing retail pharmacies to provide the drug too, either by mail or in person, so long as they meet certain requirements.
Medication abortion now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the U.S., using a combination of two drugs, mifepristone and misoprostol, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a New York-based research group focusing on sexual and reproductive health.
The FDA has not approved misoprostol to be used for abortions on its own.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Wednesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Houston 7, Pittsburgh 0
Seattle 5, Chi Cubs 2
LA Angels 3, Washington 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Minnesota 3, Chi White Sox 1
NY Yankees 4, Cleveland 3
Tampa Bay 9, Boston 7
Oakland 8, Baltimore 4
Toronto 4, Detroit 3
Kansas City 10, Texas 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE
LA Dodgers 10, San Francisco 5
NY Mets 5, San Diego 2
St. Louis 7, Colorado 4
Arizona 7, Milwaukee 3
Miami 3, Philadelphia 2
Atlanta 5, Cincinnati 4
NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION
Chicago 109, Toronto 105
Oklahoma City 123, New Orleans 118
NATIONAL HOCKEY LEAGUE
Calgary 3, San Jose 1
NY Islanders 4, Montreal 2
Dallas 5, St. Louis 2
Silversun Pickups have premiered the video for “Stick and Stones.”
The clip, directed by Jade Curley, focuses on Black and Indigenous surfers.
“The collision of two personal things (our song from us, visuals from Jade) makes something new that couldn’t have been created from an individual,” says SSPU frontman Brian Aubert. “For me, I get to step out of our world and live in the song where I feel like a spectator. Also, I think I want to start surfing now.”
You can watch the “Stick and Stones” video streaming now on YouTube.
Physical Thrills, the sixth Silversun Pickups album, was released last August. It also includes the singles “Scared Together” and “Empty Nest.”
Black Sabbath‘s first official live album is getting the reissue treatment.
A super deluxe version of 1983’s Live Evil, featuring remastered and newly mixed audio, will be released on June 2. You can listen to the reissue’s version of the song “The Mob Rules” now via digital outlets.
Live Evil was recorded during Ronnie James Dio‘s first tenure with the band, before he left Sabbath to form his namesake band Dio in late 1982. The set includes performances of Dio-era staples such as “The Mob Rules” and “Heaven and Hell,” as well as the Ozzy Osbourne-era classics “Iron Man,” “War Pigs” and “Paranoid.”
Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — An unprecedented ruling by a single federal judge in Texas on mifepristone is raising concerns of “judge shopping” in a legal clash that could reshape abortion access in the U.S.
Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk of the Northern District of Texas, in his April 7 order, ruled to suspend the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill. In his order, Kacsmaryk the drug — which has been on the market for 23 years — is unsafe and its approval process was rushed.
The order is set to take effect at the end of the day Friday unless the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals or the U.S. Supreme Court intervene.
President Joe Biden, in his first on-camera reaction to the ruling, said Tuesday he thought it was “completely out of bounds what the judge did.”
Legal experts, too, have both scrutinized Kacsmaryk’s ruling and how the case ended up in his court in the first place.
“I think his order shows why the lawsuit was brought in Amarillo,” Stephen Vladeck, a constitutional law professor at the University of Texas, told ABC News. “It gives the appearance of being a sort of a judicial decision that was written to reach a foreordained result.”
Texas is home to four federal district courts, and several of them have created so-called “single judge divisions” where just one judge is responsible for hearing 100% of the cases filed there.
Kacsmaryk is the sole judge seated in the Amarillo division of the U.S. District of Northern Texas. He was appointed to the federal bench in 2019 under former President Donald Trump, and has since been at the center of several contentious legal fights over policies on immigration, LGBTQ protections and more — often ruling against the Biden administration.
Before his appointment, Kacsmaryk worked with the conservative First Liberty Institute, where he participated in a legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act’s “contraception mandate” requiring health insurers to pay for birth control. Kacsmaryk said at the time the requirement aimed to “punish” those who follow “their religious beliefs and moral convictions.”
Kacsmaryk’s sister told the Washington Post, which reported in depth his stance on abortion, she felt he “was made” for this case.
But during his confirmation process, Kacsmaryk said as a district judge he would “not advocate for clients or a particular policy but instead is bound by oath to faithfully apply all Supreme Court and Fifth Circuit precedent.”
Critics have accused the plaintiffs in this case of exploiting the single-judge division and purposely seeking out Kacsmaryk because they thought he’d be friendly to their point of view. The group Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian legal advocacy group, filed the lawsuit last year.
Some legal observers have pointed to the specific language from Kacsmaryk’s order as evidence of his ideological inclinations. Instead of referring to a fetus or embryo, he used the term “unborn human” or substituted the phrase “chemical abortion” for medication abortion.
“It is very clearly anti-abortion movement language,” said Nicole Huberfeld, a health law professor at Boston University.
The issue of judge shopping, Vladeck said, undermines fairness in the judicial process and raises ethical concerns.
“The legal system is not supposed to work this way,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be able to handpick your judge.”
Huberfeld said this “playbook already existed” but has intensified in recent years.
In response to accusations that plaintiffs specifically sought out Kacsmaryk, Erik Baptist, a senior attorney for Alliance Defending Freedom, told ABC News his organization “goes wherever our clients take us.”
“And in this instance, we have eight different plaintiffs: four national Medical Association’s and four individual doctors,” Baptist said. “Two of our clients are based in the Amarillo, Texas, area and we went where they took us this time.”
Asked about the broader issue of judge shopping, and whether it undermines the legal process, Baptist said the group didn’t have a position on the matter.
“ADF doesn’t have a position,” he said. “But those are the rules that the courts have established for themselves, and we honor what those rules are as the court deems appropriate.”
Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, told ABC News “all lawyers file a case in the place where they can have the best shot of winning.”
The bigger issue, Blackman argued, is the nature of nationwide injunctions — where a single district court judge can prevent the government from enforcing a statute or regulation coast to coast.
“The problem, to the extent that exists, is where single judges can sort of change policy overnight,” he said.
The nation now waits for word from the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals on the Justice Department’s emergency stay motion to block Kacsmaryk’s order. The DOJ has asked the court to enter an administrative stay or grant a stay pending appeal by noon on Thursday.
And at the same time, there is a competing order out of Washington in a separate case regarding the FDA’s approval of mifepristone. That order prevents the FDA from “altering the status quo” as it relates to the availability of the drug.
“I think it’s important to recognize that these legal battles matter,” Huberfeld said, “that they have real implications for people, that people won’t get the care that they need, that it increases the risk of injury and death. And this isn’t going to stop anytime soon. It is a health problem whether or not people want to recognize it as such.”
(NEW YORK) — Families of Black men killed by police or gun violence have come together to brainstorm how to turn their “grief into action” to prevent continued instances of police violence.
The conversation comes as the country awaits a decision from a grand jury on the indictment of officers in the death of Jayland Walker, who was shot by police following a 2022 attempted traffic stop.
The panel, held by civil rights organization National Action Network on Wednesday in Manhattan, included family members of Eric Garner, Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Trayvon Martin, Tyre Nichols, Amir Locke and Botham Jean.
Garner, Locke, Floyd and Nichols were killed in incidents with police.
Martin was fatally shot by George Zimmerman, a man who followed Martin for believing Martin was suspicious. He was acquitted on all charges connected to Martin’s death. Arbery was followed by three men and fatally shot by one of them while out for a jog because the men believed he was responsible for trespassing.
Together, the families talked about their collective efforts to keep the memory of their deceased loved ones alive – in some ways, through the implementation of police reform.
On Tuesday, the evening before the panel, Memphis passed an ordinance called the “Driving Equality Act in Honor of Tyre Nichols” that would ban traffic stops for secondary violations like overdue registration or broken lights.
Nichols died in January following a violent traffic stop captured in body camera footage, which shows officers striking Nichols repeatedly. Five officers have been charged so far in connection with his death.
“He was on his way home from watching the sunsets. He liked to go to a park and watch the sunsets as much as possible,” said Row Vaughn, mother of Nichols, through tears.
She continued, “He was stopped. He was beaten. Less than 800 feet from my home … I didn’t watch the video, but I could hear him calling my name.”
She applauded Memphis for the move, but says there is much more to be done.
“We are going to continue to fight so that this doesn’t happen to another Tyre,” said Vaughn. “There’s just too many of our Black men being killed for nothing. I’m not understanding why Black men can’t even go home.”
Gwen Carr, mother of Eric Garner, said the pain over her son’s 2014 death by police in New York City lingers on. She reminds other families facing similar tragedies that they’re “all fighting for the same thing, going down the same road.”
“I remember when this horrible incident happened to my son – I didn’t know what I would do. I was in a dark place at that time. But I decided to turn my mourning into action,” Carr said.
In 2020, several years after Garner’s death, she helped to pass the Eric Garner Anti-Chokehold Act, which criminalizes the harmful use of a chokehold by a police officer.
“You’re going to knock on doors that are not going to open, but sometimes you have to kick the door in,” said Carr.
She also helped build the E.R.I.C. Initiative Foundation, which offers scholarships, free meals, toy giveaways and retreats in an effort to connect and uplift those affected by police brutality.
Wanda Cooper Jones, the mother of Ahmaud Arbery, also has been fighting for legislative change since her son’s death.
Arbery was killed in Brunswick, Georgia, when three men followed him while he was jogging in their neighborhood and one of the men fatally shot him.
Arbery’s death and the nationwide outcry that followed led to the repealing of Georgia’s citizen’s arrest law and the enactment of hate crime laws that criminalize acts motivated by someone’s identity.
“They repealed the citizens’ arrest laws, so white people cannot get in their trucks and chase down a Black boy,” said Cooper Jones.
She said her son’s death made her redefine who she was “as a woman.”
“Wanda, are you just going to sit down or are you going to implement more changes?” she said she asked herself. “Ahmaud is gone, but it is very important that his legacy lives forever.”
Though the evening applauded the wins so far from victims and their families, others said there’s a long way to go in addressing the policing issues that lead to the deaths of their children.
Amir Locke’s father, Andre Locke, is working on federal legislation that would end the use of no-knock warrants, which allow officers to enter a home without announcing their arrival. Locke was fatally shot by police who were executing a no-knock warrant.
The passage of the George Floyd Policing Act also has been an ongoing battle for police reform advocates. The legislation would improve accountability for police misconduct, restrict certain harmful policing practices, and enhance transparency and data collection.
“I cannot explain the pain,” said one of George Floyd’s brothers. “We’ve been fighting since 2020 – it is 2023. Times are changing.”
