(WASHINGTON) — Former President Donald Trump, who was indicted by the Manhattan district attorney on Thursday, can still be elected president — even if he is convicted — experts tell ABC News. But there are practical reasons that could make it a challenge, experts say.
Trump said recently at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference that he would “absolutely” stay in the race for president even if he were to be criminally indicted.
“I wouldn’t even think about leaving,” Trump told reporters ahead of his speech on Saturday. “Probably it will enhance my numbers.”
Trump has denied wrongdoing and has characterized the probe as part of a “witch hunt” against him.
The U.S. Constitution does not list the absence of a criminal record as a qualification for the presidency. It says only that natural born citizens who are at least 35 years old and have been a resident of the U.S. for 14 years can run for president.
Constitutional experts also told ABC News that previous Supreme Court rulings hold that Congress cannot add qualifications to the office of the president. In addition, a state cannot prohibit indicted or convicted felons from running for federal office.
“Some people are surprised to learn that there’s no constitutional bar on a felon running for president, but there’s no such bar,” said Kate Shaw, ABC News legal analyst and professor at Cardozo School of Law.
“Because of the 22nd Amendment, the individual can’t have been twice elected president previously,” Shaw said. “But there’s nothing in the Constitution disqualifying individuals convicted of crimes from running for or serving as president.”
Shaw said that while incarceration “would presumably make campaigning difficult if not impossible,” the impediment would be a “practical problem, not a legal one.”
James Sampler, a constitutional law professor at Hofstra University, told ABC News that the Constitution sets the minimal requirements, but leaves the rest up to the voters.
“It depends on the wisdom of the people to determine that an individual is not fit for office,” Sampler said. “So the most fundamental obstacle that President Trump has in seeking office in 2024 is the obstacle that anyone has, but he has it in a different and more pronounced way — which is proving to the voters that the individual deserves the office.”
If Trump were to be indicted or convicted and prevented by law from traveling out of state, Sampler said, that would impose a practical limitation on his ability to travel the country and campaign — but it wouldn’t prohibit him from running.
Sampler also pointed out an irony in the electoral system, in which many states bar convicted felons from voting. According to the Sentencing Project advocacy group, 48 states have laws that ban people with felony convictions from voting.
“It is a sad day for a country that ostensibly values democratic participation and equality, that individuals who’ve been convicted of a felony can be prohibited from participating even as voters in our democracy, but a president convicted of a felony is still allowed,” he said.
Jessica Levinson, a professor of election law at Loyola Law School, agreed.
“You could conceivably have a situation where the president of the United States is not disqualified from being president … but can’t vote for himself,” Levinson told ABC News.
“The interesting thing about the qualifications like you have to be born here, you have to live here for a certain amount of time … all of that is kind of getting at the idea that we want you to be loyal to our country,” Levinson said. “But you could conceivably be convicted of crimes against our country, and still be able to serve as president.”
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Jamaal Bowman expanded Thursday on his prior outburst against Rep. Thomas Massie over gun violence, arguing more Americans “should be yelling and screaming” following the mass shooting in Nashville.
Bowman, who was a middle school principal prior to his election to Congress in 2020, argued the “broken” institution of Congress has failed to provide a remedy for the “sick society” that allows gun violence to occur regularly.
“We’re a sick society,” Bowman told reporters outside the Capitol. “We’re the only developed nation where this happens, and we’re sick because this institution (Congress) has been broken for so long.”
“The whole country should be yelling and screaming and marching on these steps to make sure we pass legislation to do something about gun trafficking, assault rifles, and to bring some commonsense gun control,” he added.
The New York Democrat was nearly as passionate as he was a day earlier when he first shouted at reporters to pressure Republicans to take action on gun reform. He said he believes Congress might address gun violence if the media pushed lawmakers “to do more.”
“Push us to do more,” he said. “The media is very important in the conversation.”
Addressing more directly what transpired with Massie, Bowman said Thursday that gun violence is personal to him as a former educator.
“I stood in my cafeteria every day at the door just in case someone came in to shoot up my school,” Bowman said.
Massie on Thursday tweeted a screenshot of a text message purportedly from an elementary school teacher voicing support to the Kentucky congressman for arming educators with guns.
“Sometimes I hear: ‘Teachers and administrators don’t want to carry, and they aren’t qualified.’ The reality is it only takes a few individuals like this person (who just texted me) to keep our kids safe, primarily as a deterrent to the psychopaths who choose unprotected targets,” he tweeted.
Bowman said he received calls from Texas, Kentucky and Florida after the video of him sounding off outside the House floor made waves on social media.
Asked whether he’s spoken with Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland, who was tapping Bowman on his back during the incident with Massie in an attempt to de-escalate the situation, Bowman said he didn’t realize Hoyer was trying to get his attention.
“The thing I love about Dem leadership [is that] they allow me to be me,” he said.
As members of Congress exited the House floor on Wednesday, Bowman began screaming about the need for legislative solutions. While most lawmakers shuffled past, Massie stopped and engaged.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“I’m talking about gun violence,” Bowman responded.
“You know there’s never been a school shooting in a school that allows teachers to carry,” Massie tried to argue.
“Carry guns! You think– More guns lead to more death!” Bowman retorted.
Massie repeatedly asked Bowman to calm down, to which the Democrat replied, “Calm down? Children are dying! Nine-year-old children!” and “I was screaming before you came and interrupted me.”
Gun reforms are expected to face an uphill battle in the Senate. The current makeup of the upper chamber means 10 Republicans would likely need to join all Democrats to overcome the 60-vote threshold to break a filibuster of the legislation.
Calls to abolish the filibuster to shepherd contentious bills through a polarized Congress have gained the support of many Democrats — including Bowman.
“Are we going to abolish the filibuster to pass gun reform?” Bowman asked. “We should.”
On Thursday afternoon, House Speaker Kevin McCarthy dodged reporters’ questions about what information Republicans need to gather on the Nashville shooting before deciding whether to consider new gun safety legislation.
(NEW YORK) — A Manhattan grand jury has indicted former President Donald Trump, according to multiple sources with knowledge of the matter, making him the first current or former president to be indicted.
It’s not immediately clear what the indictment was connected to, or what charges Trump will face. The indictment is under seal.
Trump has been under investigation by the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which has been probing the $130,000 hush money payment made to Stormy Daniels, the adult film actress who has alleged she had an affair with Trump, which he has long denied.
Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer who wrote the check to Daniels in the closing days of the 2016 campaign, went to prison in part over the payment, which federal prosecutors believed amounted to an illicit campaign donation, according to court records.
Prosecutors believe Trump falsified business records because, according to documents associated with Cohen’s federal case, Trump allegedly logged the monthly reimbursement payments he made to Cohen as routine legal expenses.
“This is all about accountability,” Cohen told reporters when he arrived to testify before a Manhattan grand jury earlier this month. Of Trump, he said, “He needs to be held accountable for his dirty deeds.”
Trump has long insisted he did “absolutely nothing wrong” and has called the investigation part of a witch hunt by a Democratic prosecutor. An attorney for Trump has said the payment was not meant to protect the campaign, but to protect Trump’s family.
“He made this with personal funds to prevent something coming out, false, but embarrassing to himself, his family, his young son,” defense attorney Joe Tacopina told George Stephanopoulos two weeks ago on ABC’s Good Morning America.
Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg last year won a tax fraud conviction against Trump’s namesake company, and its former finance chief, Allen Weisselberg, pleaded guilty to tax evasion — but until now Trump himself had never faced an indictment.
GAYLE has released the music video for her new song, “everybody hates me.” In the home video-style clip for the pop-punk track, the singer hits back at her haters as she and her friends hang out under a bridge, in the back of a truck and in a grocery store.
And speaking of GAYLE, Kelly Clarksoncovered her song “abcdefu” on The Kelly Clarkson Show Thursday, changing around some of the lyrics to reference her divorce from Brandon Blackstock. “F you and your dad and the fact that you got half/ and my broken heart/ turn that s*** into art,” she sang.
Lance Bass is lending his voice to the new animated kids flick Baby Shark’s Big Movie!, People reports. The film will follow Baby Shark and his family as they move to a big city. Bass will be playing himself as a TV announcer. Cardi B and her family — husband Offset, and kids Kulture and Wave — will also be lending their voices to the film. Cardi, Offset and Kulture will reprise their characters from Baby Shark’s Big Show!, while 18-month-old Wave will make his debut as Wavey Shark.
The nominations for Australia’s 2023 APRA Awards have been announced. Songs by Ed Sheeran, Harry Styles, Lil Nas X, Adele and GAYLE are nominated in the most performed international work category. Australian artists The Kid LAROI, Dean Lewis, 5 Seconds of Summer and Flume also scored nods.
The Wanted‘s Tom Parker died of brain cancer one year ago Thursday, and his wife, Kelsey, paid tribute on Instagram. “One year without you. forever my soul mate,” she wrote.
Lauren Daigle has released a new song called “Waiting,” the latest taste of her upcoming self-titled album. The soulful track follows her previous release, “Thank God I Do.” The first collection of songs from her new album drops May 12.
Lance Bass is lending his voice to the new animated kids flick Baby Shark’s Big Movie!, People reports. The film will follow Baby Shark and his family as they move to a big city. Bass will be playing himself as a TV announcer.
Michael Bublé and Ed Sheeran had a nice meetup recently. On social media Thursday, Michael posted a pic of the two smiling with their arms around each other. He captioned it with a quote from Ed’s song “Photograph”: “We keep this love in a photograph. We make these memories for ourselves.”
The outcome of a civil suit concerning a 2016 skiing accident involving Oscar winner Gwyneth Paltrow is now in the hands of a Utah jury.
As reported, Terry Sanderson, a retired optometrist, filed a lawsuit in January 2019 accusing Paltrow of crashing into him on the slopes at Deer Valley Ski Resort in Utah, claiming he was left “seriously injured” as a result.
Sanderson’s original complaint claims that Paltrow “skied out of control and hit” Sanderson in the back, causing various severe injuries.
In an amended complaint filed in February 2019, Sanderson changed the value of damages he is seeking in the lawsuit from $3.1 million to $300,000.
Paltrow filed a countersuit in which she claimed it was Sanderson who crashed into her, delivering a “full ‘body blow'” when he “plowed into her back.” The award-winning actress called Sanderson’s lawsuit an “attempt to exploit her celebrity and wealth.”
Paltrow said her injuries were “relatively minor” and that she is only seeking “symbolic damages” of $1 plus costs for lawyers fees from Sanderson for defending herself against “this meritless claim.”
The trial saw both Paltrow and Sanderson, and their respective family members and medical experts, testifying about what they witnessed both before and after the accident.
Lionel Richie wrote Kenny Rogers‘ classic song “Lady,” and he just revealed on TheDrew Barrymore Show that he finished the tune in a very unlikely place — the bathroom.
“I’m working with Kenny Rogers — this is back in the day — and so Kenny calls and says, ‘I want you to write a song for me,'” Richie shared on the show. “And, of course, I wrote ‘Lady.'”
Richie explains that at Kenny’s request he also prepared a second song, “Goin’ Back to Alabama,” but midway through writing it, Rogers decided he wanted to record “Lady” first.
“Now, what he didn’t know was I only had written the first verse of ‘Lady,’” Richie revealed. “So, I said, ‘Excuse me for a minute. Let me, uh, go to the bathroom.’ I’m sitting in the stall writing the second verse to ‘Lady.'”
Barrymore couldn’t believe Richie was able to finish the classic tune in such a short period of time, but he noted, “You will do some amazing things when you’re scared to death.” He added, “The idea of telling Mr. Rogers, ‘I don’t have the second verse,’ was not going to happen in my lifetime.”
“Lady,” released in 1980, became a number one hit for Rogers, spending six weeks on top of the chart. As for “Goin’ Back to Alabama,” Rogers did eventually record it for his 1981 album, Share Your Love.
(WASHINGTON) — An unusual cross-section of lawmakers has emerged against a TikTok ban, with usual ideological foes employing similar language to denounce what they say would be censorship.
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., is the latest to voice opposition to a total prohibition of the popular social media app — joining the ranks of progressive “Squad” members such as Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Jamaal Bowman and others.
Paul effectively shut down an attempt Wednesday from his Republican colleague Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., to get unanimous consent to ban the Chinese-owned app.
“If you don’t like TikTok or Facebook or YouTube, don’t use them,” Paul said in a 12-minute floor speech. “But don’t think that any interpretation of the Constitution gives you the right to ban them.”
Paul argued a ban would amount to violations of the First Amendment, adding, “The Constitution actually prohibits bills of attainder. You’re not allowed to have a specific bill against a person or a company.”
“So this fails on two egregious points,” he said, cautioning people should “beware of those who peddle fear.”
Hawley argued Paul was advocating for a “right to espionage.”
“I have never before heard on this floor a defense of the right to spy. I didn’t realize that the First Amendment contained a right to espionage,” the Missouri Republican shot back.
TikTok has faced growing bipartisan scrutiny from government officials, with the animosity coming to a head last week in a testy hearing between CEO Shou Zi Chew and House members.
Lawmakers and Biden administration officials have questioned who has access to data stored on the app, with some describing the platform as a threat to national security due to its parent company’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
“Every accusation of data gathering that’s been attributed to TikTok could also be attributed to domestic Big Tech companies,” Paul said.
Ocasio-Cortez, Bowman and a handful of other progressives have also argued that a ban on TikTok raises free speech issues and wouldn’t solve the broader problem of data gathering on various Big Tech platforms. Bowman similarly invoked First Amendment concerns when voicing his opposition to a ban.
“The First Amendment gives us the right to speak freely and to communicate freely and TikTok as a platform has created a community and a space for free speech for 150 million Americans and counting,” he said last week.
Ocasio-Cortez offered her defense of the company in her first-ever TikTok video last week. She told viewers a ban “doesn’t really address the core of the issue, which is the fact that major social media companies are allowed to collect troves of deeply personal data about you that you don’t know about without really any significant regulation whatsoever.”
The New York Democrat also noted the United States has never banned a social media app and that Congress hasn’t received a classified briefing — as is normally the case — regarding national security concerns.
There are several attempts to ban the app working their way through Congress, including the DATA Act from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul, R-Texas, and the RESTRICT Act from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va.
House Speaker Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif., said he expects the House will move forward with legislation to address TikTok but didn’t detail when such action would take place.
(NEW YORK) — The recent mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee, that left six people dead — including three children — was carried out, at least in part, with semi-automatic rifles.
According to Nashville police, the shooter walked into the private Christian elementary school Monday armed with a handgun, but also an AR-15-style rifle and a semi-automatic pistol-caliber carbine.
While handguns have the potential to seriously harm people, sometimes fatally, semi-automatic rifles can cause even more damage.
“Disturbingly, in mass shootings, the AR-15 or the AR-15-style rifle seems to be the weapon of choice,” Dr. Cornelia Griggs, a pediatric and critical care surgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, told ABC News. “That’s not to say that there aren’t other rifles that can cause quite a lot of damage in the human body, but this type of injury is devastating and unique to many military-grade weapons.”
Trauma specialists explained what the injuries look like, how they’re treated and why they can be even more devastating for a child than an adult.
Wounds from handguns vs. semi-automatic rifles
Traditionally, bullets fired by a handgun will cause clear entrance and exit wounds — both of fairly the same size — and will often travel in a straight line into and out of the body.
“A conventional handgun will typically create a relatively small, round wound that sort of conforms to the size of the bullet,” Dr. Michael Shapiro, chief of trauma and critical care surgery at Northwestern Medicine in Illinois, told ABC News. “If it passes through the patient, the exit wound is typically a little bit larger with the skin edges everted a little bit.”
He continued, “As a rule, if you can line up the holes, you’re likely to see a sort of picture of what organs are in between those two wounds and it gives you a pretty good sense of what you need to be concerned about.”
However, the same can’t be said for a wound from a semi-automatic rifle.
Bullets from these firearms do not create the same size entrance and exit wounds, and often one can be much bigger than the other.
“The degree of tissue destruction will be considerably greater, so rather than a bullet simply passing through an organ, it may inflict a more destructive wound to the organ itself,” Shapiro said. “So, you may, instead of seeing a small wound through the stomach, for example, you may see much larger wounds and that’s typically consistent with both with the skin wounds as well.”
“You may see a relatively small entrance wound and a very large, destructive, blown out skin wound on exit,” he added.
Sometimes bullets from AR-15s and AR-15-style weapons can yaw, or tumble, before they hit a person, meaning there is not a linear path through the body.
“Instead of just being sort of point on straight through, there’s more erratic passage of the bullet through the victim so the extent of tissue damage is greater,” Shapiro explained.
What’s more, assault weapons can cause a process called cavitation to occur, meaning it creates a large cavity in the body, destroying tissues and organs.
High-velocity bullets
The size of the bullet doesn’t have much do with the damage a firearm can cause compared to the velocity at which a bullet exits.
This is mostly measured in the form of muzzle energy, or the kinetic energy of a bullet as it is expelled from a firearm’s muzzle.
For example, a 9-millimeter handgun — which the shooter carried into the school — has a muzzle energy of between 300 and 400 foot-pounds of force.
By comparison, an AR-15-style weapon has a muzzle energy of nearly 1,300 foot-pounds of force, meaning a high level of energy resulting in a greater impact.
“The difference with high velocity bullets and military-grade weapons…is the damage they inflict on the human body and our internal organs are much more gruesome and tend to have what is known as a blast effect, because that bullet is carrying so much energy with it as it enters the human body,” Griggs said. “Instead of, for example, if the bullet traveled through the lung, instead of a hole in the lung, we’re looking at an exploded lung.”
Griggs explained that the same holds true if a bullet hits a human bone. A bullet from a handgun that hits a bone might fracture the bone, but a bullet from a semi-automatic rifle might shatter the bone due to the high velocity.
Impact on a child
The doctors told ABC News that while assault-style weapons can injure any human, children will be much more impacted because of their smaller bodies.
Because bullets from these weapons are traveling at a high velocity, they can destroy a significant portion of tissue and are more likely to hit major organs.
“Children, their organs are a lot more compact, and they have a lot less fat surrounding their vital organs,” Griggs said. “And so, you can imagine that a bullet that is causing a blast effect inside their body, inside their abdomen or their torso or their chest, it’s not just going to explode, or tear apart, their lung, but also their heart. Not just going to completely shatter their liver, but also their spleen, causing catastrophic fatal bleeding.”
Griggs said this has been seen in the multiple mass shootings that have occurred in schools across the U.S. including Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, in 2012 and Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last year.
“When we see a child who has been shot with an AR-15-style rifle, there is often very little hope — depending on where the bullet has hit them in their body — that we can save their life even if they make it to the hospital,” she said. “And devastatingly, the children who were shot in Nashville were dead on arrival to the hospital. There’s nothing that trauma surgery team could do and that is very classic of what we have come to see as the norm.”
Treating a wound from a semi-automatic rifle
The initial triage process of treating victims of handgun wounds and semi-automatic rifle wounds is the same, including making sure breathing, blood pressure and circulation are stable and assessing if there are spinal injuries or other internal injuries.
However, those injured by high velocity weapons, such as AR-15-style rifles, are more likely to have serious injuries.
“We’ve learned that, while shooters often don’t shoot well, the semi-automatic weapons increase the likelihood that someone will be shot multiple times,” Shapiro said. “So, it can be a little bit more confounding to understand the connection of all of the different holes.”
He continued. “We’ll see people who come in not with one hole or two holes but with six, eight, 10 holes and trying to sort of piece that out to figure out what organ systems might be injured based on the trajectory, just trying to determine what that trajectory is can be significantly more complicated.”
Multiple wounds often mean identifying which injuries are the most severe and need to be treated first, but unfortunately not all patients can be saved.
“In general, I would expect the prognosis for someone who’s been shot with a military-grade weapon to be much worse, the likelihood of getting them out of the trauma bay to the operating room to survive the hospital stay, I would be much less optimistic,” Griggs said.
Ashan Singh, John Kapetaneas, Stephanie Fasano, Jaclyn Skurie, and Ivan Pereira, ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Student-athletes across the country are cashing in on their talents through ads, social media posts and other media, thanks to a 2021 Supreme Court decision.
Now some athletes have found a place in the spotlight through business agreements related to their “name, image and likeness,” known as NIL deals.
Hanna and Haley Cavinder, twin sisters who play for the University of Miami’s basketball team, reportedly pull in more than $1.6 million a year combined due to their sponsorships, according to On3, which tracks NIL deals among student-athletes.
“Impact x Nightline” takes a look at the debate over this trend among student-athletes in an episode now streaming on Hulu.
“We’re Champs athletes, and then we have WWE,” Haley Cavinder told “Impact x Nightline’s” Ashan Singh.
“And then, we have LifeWallet, Cigarette Racing,” Hanna Cavinder added.
“Then we also have a company called Baseline, which is college streetwear. We have equity in that,” Haley Cavinder said.
But as more young athletes continue to collect on their names and likenesses, some sports experts and coaches question if the trend is moving too fast.
“I think high school athletes, or even college athletes who want to monetize their NIL, need to understand that just highlighting your sport and those, like, action shots of you on field isn’t going to be enough,” Kristi Dosh, a sports attorney and founder of Business of College Sports, told “Impact.”
A key component that has set apart NILs from other sports earnings is the idea that the athletes still remain unpaid by their schools, but they are able to earn money on their popularity outside of games. This includes advertisements, sponsorships and promoted social media posts.
ESPN’s Ryan Smith told “Impact” that NIL sponsorship offers can come in all shapes and sizes — from local car dealerships to major corporations. In some cases, the athletes can make the brand deals themselves, according to Smith.
“When the Supreme Court handed down that decision, it changed everything,” he told “Impact.” “What it is…the student athletes, being able to go out and say, ‘Hey. I’m willing to lend my name to this particular product, and you can sell it, and you pay me for that.'”
The Cavinder twins already had a large following on TikTok prior to the Supreme Court decision and they said they decided to jump on the NIL bandwagon.
“We heard about NIL eventually being a thing. Maybe we could take advantage of the opportunity,” Hanna Cavinder said.
The twins scored a major partnership with Boost Mobile and soon other companies wanted to tap into their social media star power.
Another component of NILs is “NIL collectives,” which are usually founded by wealthy donors who are alumni and super fans who pool money together to give benefits to college athletes coming to the university they champion.
Billionaire lawyer, businessman and University of Miami alum John Ruiz has signed deals with the Cavinder twins through his companies, LifeWallet and Cigarette Racing. He dismissed critics who argued that businesses like his are buying athletes and brushed off concerns that the deals put too much pressure on them.
“That’s what life is about, right? You’re not going to have Mommy and Daddy there around you when you have to deal with real life. So you have to, you know, become a big boy or big girl real quick,” Ruiz told “Impact.”
Weeks after their interview with “Impact,” the first punishment of the NIL era was handed down to the University of Miami centered around an alleged dinner between Ruiz and the Cavinder twins when the twins were transfer prospects.
Such a meeting with someone the NCAA deems a booster prior to a student athlete’s acceptance to a school violates the association’s rules.
In February, the NCAA issued sanctions on the school’s women’s basketball program for its recruitment of the twins, claiming Ruiz provided an impermissible meal. No sanctions were imposed on the Cavinders or Ruiz.
At the time, a photograph, tweeted by Ruiz, showed the twins and their parents at Ruiz’s home prior to their commitment to the university.
The University of Miami’s women’s basketball Coach Katie Meier was suspended for three games during the NCAA investigation, which said Meier inadvertently facilitated the meeting.
Meier released a statement saying, “collegiate athletics is in transformation, and any inadvertent mistake I made was prior to a full understanding of implemented guardrails and the clarification issued by the NCAA in May.”
Ruiz told ABC News in a statement that the twins didn’t have an impermissible meal at his home and that any meal took place after the twins transferred to the school.
“The facts contained in the NCAA’s findings were incorrect in several ways,” he said in a statement. “Coach Meier did nothing more than express her excitement about the fact the twins were coming to Miami. No one ever attempted to entice the Cavinders into attending UM.”
A representative for the Cavinders told ABC News “the twins were found to have done nothing wrong” and they did not want to comment on other’s infractions.
Dosh, a former ESPN analyst, said there is even more debate about the use of NIL deals at the high school level.
“Now we have more than half of the states that have changed their rules at their state high school athletic association to allow NIL,” she said.
Bronx teen Johnuel “Boogie” Fland, who plays basketball for Archbishop Stepinac, a private school in White Plains, Westchester County, became one of the first New York City high school athletes to receive a NIL deal.
Fland said he couldn’t tell “Impact” how much he’s raked in with his sponsorships, but said he estimated it was “six figures.”
“It changed my family. It changed the way we looked at things, you know?” he told “Impact.” “Being from the Bronx, we aren’t that wealthy, it definitely changed my life.”
The landscape for NIL has potentially changed financial outcomes for some student-athletes and families, some of whom may have may come from lower income communities, according to a 2020 study by the Hope Center at Temple University.
Researchers found that nearly 14% of Division 1 athletes had experienced homelessness in the previous year… and nearly a quarter were food insecure in the prior 30 days.
Al Crosby, who has been coaching high school football in Philadelphia for 20 years, told “Impact” he has had players come from low-income households and acknowledged that they are looking for ways to help their families.
However, he said he was concerned that NIL deals may cause issues for athletes from inner city neighborhoods. Crosby noted that a lot of inner-city student-athletes are already targets of violence and harassment.
“All of a sudden this guy gets this deal, this NIL deal, that says, ‘You got a NIL deal for $500,000.’ Well, now, all of a sudden, he’s not only a target, but he’s got a price tag with him, too,” Crosby told “Impact.”
Crosby maintains that proper management and education is needed for high school athletes to thrive in the NIL era.
On Wednesday, the House Subcommittee on Energy and Commerce held a hearing about NILs, the first in more than two years. Up for discussion was a potential federal NIL law that would provide clarity and transparency for athletes.
“In short, we must strike a delicate balance between the rights of college athletes to profit from their own NIL while keeping the amateur status for all college athletes,” Rep. Gus Bilirakis (R-Fla.), the subcommittee’s chairman said.
ABC News’ Kevin Rochford and Kyle Rollins contributed to this report.
