(WASHINGTON) — When Rep. Pete Aguilar, D-Calif., was sworn in for the 118th Congress in January, he became the highest-ranking Latino in Congress, serving as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, the No. 3 position in his party in the chamber.
Aguilar, a fourth-generation Mexican-American, recently sat down with ABC News contributor Maria Elena Salinas to discuss his personal story, his new role in the House and the pressure of representing a demographic that often feels overlooked.
“It’s a sense of opportunity. My story is not very different than so many other, you know, Latinos who grew up in communities where they had to work hard to get by,” Aguilar told Salinas in the interview, which aired Sunday on ABC’s “This Week.”
At just 26 years old, Aguilar began his political career in Redlands, California, 11 miles east from where he grew up.
“I joined the Redlands City Council, actually, by getting appointed to fill a vacancy for someone who had left town, and then became elected at the age of 27 and became mayor by 30,” Aguilar said.
He won election to the U.S. House in 2014, representing what is now California’s 33rd Congressional District. Now, as chairman of the House Democratic Caucus, his job is to unite members of his party around legislation and party issues, while also finding common ground across the aisle.
“What issues do you feel that you and Republicans can have common ground on?” Salinas asked.
“I think there has been common ground on the ability for ‘Dreamers’ to become citizens,” Aguilar responded, referring to the hundreds of thousands of young people who were illegally brought to the U.S. as children. “We have Republicans on board with that.”
Policies surrounding immigration have been at the forefront of Aguilar’s political career, with the protection of “Dreamers” being at the top of his list. Aguilar supported the DREAM Act, which would allow the young immigrants to establish permanent residency and eventually grant them U.S. citizenship.
His most recent efforts involved a letter pushing for legislation to allow “Dreamers” to hold federal employment.
“The Senate introduced a bill to help guide ‘Dreamers’ toward legalization of their status. This has been happening for decades now and it never comes to fruition,” Salinas said. “What needs to happen to make it a reality?”
“I think we need more friends and allies in the United States Senate,” Aguilar responded. “I can respect that, you know, that certain times the House has been at fault and the Senate’s been at fault. But in the last 10 years, Democrats have continually put these bills on the floor, and Republicans have stood in the way on the House side to see any real reform happen.”
Aguilar said he is also concerned with the influx of migrants at the southern border.
“How do you think President [Joe] Biden is doing on the border?” Salinas asked.
“I think the grade would be incomplete, right?” Aguilar answered. “There’s plenty to do. We know that it’s a humanitarian issue down at the southern border. What President Biden sought to do was to clean up the mess from the prior administration, too.”
“But it’s not less messy right now,” Salinas pressed.
“Well, but I would tell you that the tone of how we address this is very, is very different,” Aguilar said.
He also noted that the Democratic Party has to win back the Latino vote, after recent elections show the party losing ground with those voters. According to national exit polls of the last three election cycles, the share of Latino voters backing Democrats has dropped nine points, from 69% in 2018 to 60% in 2022.
“I think that how we talk to voters, how we meet them where they are and we talk about the issues with them really is important,” Aguilar said. “And there’s no cookie cutter way to talk about Latino issues. We need to realize that we need to have a plan to talk to those voters and those individuals. And I think that we need to do a better job of that.”
The congressman said he is already strategizing how to win back a House majority, emphasizing that lawmakers need to get out and talk to constituents about their legislative wins, such as the bipartisan infrastructure law and the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to combat gun violence.
“So can we interpret that as your biggest challenge is going to be winning back the House in 2024?” Salinas asked.
“We have to do it to save democracy, to help our communities,” Aguilar replied.
(WASHINGTON) — Another high-altitude object was shot down on Sunday afternoon, this one over Lake Huron, three U.S. officials confirmed to ABC News, marking the latest in a string of such incidents.
The object was shot down by a U.S. military aircraft, according to one of the officials.
A senior administration official said President Joe Biden directed that the object be shot down “out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of military leaders.”
This official said the object shot down was detected on radar over Montana on Saturday and was seen again on radar over Wisconsin and Michigan on Sunday.
The object was octagonal in structure, unmanned and traveling at about 20,000 feet, the official said. There is no indication of surveillance capabilities but the administration cannot rule that out.
“The object has been downed by pilots from the US Air Force and National Guard. Great work by all who carried out this mission both in the air and back at headquarters. We’re all interested in exactly what this object was and [its] purpose,” Rep. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., tweeted.
“As long as these things keep traversing the US and Canada, I’ll continue to ask for Congress to get a full briefing based on our exploitation of the wreckage,” Slotkin wrote.
The downing is the fourth time in recent days that a high-altitude object was shot by the military over U.S. or Canadian territory.
The first incident involved a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon that was tracked across the continental U.S. and then shot down off the coast of South Carolina by a U.S. F-22 fighter jet on Feb. 4. That balloon caused bipartisan concern in Washington after it floated across Alaska, Canada and then through the U.S., passing over sensitive military installations, including at least one housing intercontinental ballistic missiles.
The military waited to shoot it over the Atlantic Ocean out of concerns that downing it could risk people on the ground being injured by debris, officials have said. The delay nonetheless sparked criticism from Republicans and some Democrats that President Joe Biden and the Pentagon waited too long to handle the balloon.
Since then, two more objects were shot down before Sunday — one over Alaska and one over Canada — both by U.S. F-22 jets.
The military has not confirmed what kind of objects they were, but Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday they too were balloons, though smaller than the first one.
Schumer linked them to the Chinese, who initially claimed the first balloon was a civilian craft.
The episodes have only fueled bipartisan calls for more information from the Pentagon over the origin of the subsequent objects and their capabilities, with diplomatic tensions between Washington and Beijing already ratcheting up over the initial balloon.
One U.S. official attributed the rise in the sightings to boosted surveillance capabilities by the military and not a rush of new foreign objects flying over American airspace.
“Northern Command has adjusted the parameters of their radar capabilities in a way that they can see more than they could before,” the official said.
This official explained that the suspected Chinese spy balloon triggered a new state of vigilance for the U.S. military.
“That’s not to say they were blissfully ignorant before,” the official said, “but there are lots of things floating around and now we are more finely attuned to it.”
(SAN FRANCISCO) — An explosion and fire in a San Francisco residential neighborhood that killed a disabled woman and injured her caregiver and a firefighter was allegedly caused by a clandestine drug lab, according to police.
The blast on Thursday that leveled one home and damaged two others in the city’s Outer Sunset neighborhood led to the arrest of 53-year-old Dorron Price, owner of the home that blew up and whose wife was killed in the incident, the San Francisco Police Department announced Saturday.
Price was arrested on charges of involuntary manslaughter, child endangerment, manufacturing drugs and reckless arson with great bodily injury, police said. He was being held without bail Sunday in the San Francisco County Jail, according to online jail records.
Price was booked at the jail Friday night after authorities found evidence of the home lab used to manufacture Phencyclidine, a drug also known as PCP or “angel dust,” according to police.
At the time of the blast, Price’s wife and her 65-year-old caregiver were inside the house, according to police. The caregiver, who suffered major injuries, was in the basement doing laundry when the explosion erupted, according to a statement she gave police that was obtained by ABC San Francisco station KGO-TV.
The caregiver, whose name was not released, managed to dig her way out of the rubble. She told police Price and his wife have two children, who were at school at the time of the explosion.
It was not clear where Price was at the time of the blast.
The explosion produced a three-alarm fire that damaged two neighboring homes and displaced five families, according to the San Francisco Fire Department. One firefighter was injured fighting the fire, authorities said.
Once the fire was extinguished, a K-9 search team found the body of Price’s deceased wife, according to the fire department.
More than 100 firefighters fought the blaze, the department said.
“We are aware of the numerous calls and reports of an explosion and houses shaking in the area,” said San Francisco Fire Capt. Jonathan Baxter.
The cause of the explosion and fire left some residents in the neighborhood shocked and angry.
“It’s a quiet neighborhood. People are nice. And in the middle of the street, you have this guy who is doing something illegally,” neighbor Karen Lei, whose home was damaged in the explosion, told KGO-TV.
Lei applauded the arrest of Price, saying, “That’s the right thing to do, because he’s very destructive — causing property damages and disrupting people’s lives.”
(TORONTO) — A high-altitude object tracked over northern Canada has been shot down over the Yukon, officials said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he ordered the takedown of “an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.”
“Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object,” he tweeted.
Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage, Trudeau said.
The object was shot down approximately 100 miles from the Canada-U.S. border in central Yukon, Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told reporters during a press briefing Saturday night. It appears to have been a “small, cylindrical object” that was flying at about 40,000 feet, she said.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command detected the high-altitude object over Alaska late Friday evening, according to Pentagon spokesperson Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder. Two U.S. F-22 aircraft monitored the object over Alaska, then Canadian aircraft joined as it crossed into Canadian airspace, he said.
Following a call from Trudeau to President Joe Biden on Saturday, Biden authorized that U.S. aircraft take down the new high-altitude object and a U.S. F-22 shot it down with a sidewinder missile, Ryder said.
The leaders authorized that the “unidentified, unmanned object” be taken down “out of an abundance of caution and at the recommendation of their militaries,” according to a White House readout of the call. They also stressed the importance of recovering the object to determine its purpose or origin, the readout stated.
“As Canadian authorities conduct recovery operations to help our countries learn more about the object, the Federal Bureau of Investigation will be working closely with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police,” Ryder said in a statement.
The development comes a day after the White House said an unknown “high-altitude object” was shot down over the waters off Alaska.
That object was about the size of a small car and flying at around 40,000 feet, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday. U.S. Northern Command said Saturday it had no further details on the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin.”
“These objects did not closely resemble and were much smaller than the PRC balloon and we will not definitively characterize them until we can recover the debris, which we are working on,” a spokesperson for the NSC told ABC News on Sunday.
Trudeau said he supported the “decision to take action.”
“Our military and intelligence services will always work together, including through @NORADCommand, to keep people safe,” he tweeted Friday.
NORAD confirmed on Saturday that there was a temporary space restriction over Montana.
The airspace was closed due to an object “to ensure the safety of air traffic in the area during NORAD operations. The restriction has been lifted,” the statement read.
“NORAD detected a radar anomaly and sent fighter aircraft to investigate. Those aircraft did not identify any object to correlate to the radar hits. NORAD will continue to monitor the situation,” the statement continued.
Montana Sen. Steve Daines said he was in contact with the Pentagon regarding the object in the airspace and receiving frequent updates.
“Montanans still have questions about the Chinese spy balloon that flew over our state last week. I’ll continue to demand answers on these invasions of US airspace,” he tweeted.
NORAD and the FAA temporarily closed a section of airspace over Lake Michigan on Sunday afternoon “to ensure the safety of air traffic in the area during NORAD operations,” according to both organizations. The air restriction has since been lifted.
NORAD did not immediately reply to questions on the nature of those operations, such as whether fighters were sent up to investigate a radar anomaly, as happened over Montana on Saturday.
“The FAA briefly closed some airspace over Lake Michigan to support Department of Defense activities,” the FAA said in a statement Sunday. “The airspace has been reopened.”
The U.S. also shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, after tracking it across the continental U.S. for several days.
U.S. officials said Friday that the undercarriage of the Chinese balloon — where the surveillance equipment and other technology was housed — had been located.
In the wake of the incident, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it added six Chinese entities to their Entity List for “supporting the PRC’s military modernization efforts, specifically those related to aerospace programs, including airships and balloons and related materials and components, that are used by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for intelligence and reconnaissance,” according to a press release.
By adding these companies to the list, the U.S. can block them from “obtaining U.S. items and technologies without U.S. government authorization.”
The move is aimed at sending a “clear message to companies, governments, and other stakeholders globally that the entities on the list present a threat to national security,” the release said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
After winning big at the Grammys last weekend, Harry Styles on Saturday night swept the U.K equivalent: the BRIT Awards.
He took home the awards for Best Pop/R&B Act, Song of the Year for “As It Was,” Album of the Year for Harry’s House, and the prestigious Artist of the Year trophy. Accepting the latter award, he shouted out his family and his One Direction band mates, and addressed the lack of female nominees in the category.
“I want to thank my mum for signing me up for X Factor without telling me, so I literally wouldn’t be here without you,” Harry said. “I want to thank Niall, Louis,Liam and Zayn because I wouldn’t be here without you either. Thank you so much.”
He then addressed the fact that even though that the BRIT Artist of the Year category had eliminated “male” and “female” designations to be more inclusive, no female artists were nominated.
“I’m very grateful and I’m very aware of my privilege up here tonight,” he noted, according to Rolling Stone. He then shouted out five female Britsh artists — including Charli XCX and Florence Welch of Florence & the Machine — who were shut out of the Artist of the Year category.
Harry also performed at the ceremony, as did Sam Smith. But Sam’s headlines came from their unique red carpet outfit: a black latex suit custom-made by the London fashion label Harri that looked like it had been inflated at the knees and shoulders.
The designer toldWWD,“Sam was having a lot of hate comments recently after ‘Unholy’ about their body image. This is my take on celebrating his natural form and the beauty of being one’s self. I wanted to create an image which people have never seen Sam in.”
(WASHINGTON) — The downing of a third high-altitude object — this one over Canada, on Saturday — only increases the urgency for Congress to get to the bottom of what appears to be a previously unknown surveillance program by the Chinese, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday.
In an exclusive interview, Schumer told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos that “the bottom line is, until a few months ago, we didn’t know of these balloons.”
The suspected Chinese reconnaissance program also existed during the Trump administration but was only recently discovered by the U.S. intelligence and military communities, according to Schumer.
“It’s wild we didn’t know, isn’t it?” Stephanopoulos said.
“It is wild that we didn’t know, absolutely,” Schumer said, adding, “Now they are learning a lot more.”
And now, Schumer said, it’s essential for lawmakers to learn more, too. He pointed to efforts by Montana Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.
“That’s something I support, Congress should look at that. That’s the question we have to answer,” Schumer said. “I think our military, our intelligence is doing a great job, present and future. I feel a lot of confidence in what they are doing. But why as far back as the Trump administration did no one know about this?”
Schumer said he was briefed by the White House’s national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, on the most recent object shot down over Canada on Saturday. According to Schumer, intelligence officials believe that object as well as the unknown object shot down over Alaska on Friday and the craft downed over South Carolina waters earlier this month were all balloons.
The vessels over Alaska and Canada were “much smaller” than the earlier balloon and posed a different threat because they were flying at a similar altitude to commercial planes, Schumer said.
“The military and the intelligence are focused like a laser on, first, gathering and accumulating the information, then coming up with a comprehensive analysis of what went on before, what’s going on now and what could go on in the future,” Schumer said.
All members of Congress were briefed Thursday on the suspected Chinese spy craft that was shot down off the South Carolina coast on Feb. 4 after it crossed over much of the continental U.S. The briefing prompted outrage from some Republicans who criticized the administration for failing to act sooner.
But Schumer defended the administration’s decision.
“We got an enormous intelligence information from surveilling the balloon as it went over the United States,” Schumer insisted.
“Didn’t the Chinese get enormous intelligence as well?” Stephanopoulos followed up.
“They could have been getting it anyway. But we have to know what they’re doing, OK?” Schumer said.
By shooting the vessel down over water, Schumer said the U.S. will be able to literally piece together more information about its capabilities: “We’re going to probably be able to piece together this whole surveillance balloon and know exactly what’s going on.”
He called it “humiliating” for China and a “huge coup for the United States.”
“I think the Chinese were caught lying, and I think it’s a real step back for them,” he said.
There is growing bipartisan agreement in Congress that something must be done to counter China’s aggression, both from the sky and in commerce and competition. Schumer, a self-described “China hawk,” pointed to ongoing legislative efforts to regulate the U.S. relationship with China in other ways as well — by encouraging domestic rather than overseas manufacturing and by considering a possible ban on TikTok, the popular China-backed social media app.
Still, Schumer said, “We can’t just have a cold war with them [China]. We have to have a relationship.”
House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer, R-Ky., echoed Schumer in his own appearance on “This Week,” but faulted the Biden White House for not setting “a very good example of standing up to China” on economic, academic and patent issues.
“This is a problem for the United States. And we need an administration to stand firm,” he said.
Debt ceiling needs to be addressed ‘without brinksmanship’
While lawmakers look to chart a path forward on U.S. policy toward China, the potential of a debt limit crisis is sending both parties to their respective camps.
The management of how to increase the $31.4 trillion federal debt ceiling, which the Treasury Department has indicated will need to be done as soon as June to make sure none of the federal government’s bills go unpaid, could culminate in a high-stakes stare down between House Republicans and the administration.
Republicans in the chamber, led by newly elected Speaker Kevin McCarthy, are insistent that any increase to the debt limit be conditioned upon cuts to the federal budget. But President Joe Biden wants Congress to raise the debt ceiling without conditions and has said that any discussions of the budget should happen separately.
Senators on both sides of the aisle have largely insisted that a solution be crafted between McCarthy and the White House. Schumer threw his full weight behind the administration’s position Sunday.
“We have a position, we have a clear position: Do it clean do it, without brinksmanship. Do it without this risk of hostage-taking where things could blow up,” Schumer sad. “Because as you know, if we don’t raise the debt ceiling, average American families will be clobbered.”
The Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell, has accused Schumer and Senate Democrats of hypocrisy in their position, noting in floor remarks last week that at one point during the Trump administration, Schumer cast the debt limit as an “ample opportunity for bipartisanship, not for one party jamming its choices down the throats of the other.”
But when pressed by Stephanopoulos on “This Week,” Schumer insisted that McConnell drew a false equivalency.
“The bottom line is that we never did what McCarthy is doing — brinkmanship, holding hostage, saying ‘I won’t do the debt ceiling, I won’t raise the debt ceiling and raise the debts that of course we’ve incurred unless I get certain things that I want,'” Schumer said.
Schumer called on McCarthy, as he has been doing for weeks, to release a plan on his proposed budget cuts. Comer said on “This Week” that the GOP conference is working on its budget request and that it would not — as Schumer suggested — include cuts to Social Security or Medicare.
Biden made a similar call for Republicans to outline what they want during his State of the Union address on Tuesday, which Schumer cast a broad success.
He pointed to Biden’s speech, which highlighted many of the legislative accomplishments Democrats secured in the president’s first two years, as evidence that the Biden is in “great shape” heading into a potential 2024 presidential reelection bid, despite polling showing most Democrats want another nominee.
“What do you say to them?” Stephanopoulos asked.
As more of Biden’s legislative agenda is implemented, support for him will grow, Schumer argued.
“I think the stature of Biden and what this Congress, this Democratic Congress, Senate and the House, have done is going to even rise further in the American people’s eyes,” he said.
(TORONTO) — A high-altitude object tracked over northern Canada has been shot down over the Yukon, officials said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said he ordered the takedown of “an unidentified object that violated Canadian airspace.”
“Canadian and U.S. aircraft were scrambled, and a U.S. F-22 successfully fired at the object,” he tweeted.
Canadian Forces will now recover and analyze the wreckage, Trudeau said.
The North American Aerospace Defense Command said Saturday that its radars and aircraft had tracked a high-altitude object over northern Canada.
The development comes a day after the White House said an unknown “high-altitude object” was shot down over the waters off Alaska.
That object was about the size of a small car and flying at around 40,000 feet, White House National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby said Friday. U.S. Northern Command said Saturday it had no further details on the object’s “capabilities, purpose or origin.”
Trudeau said he supported the “decision to take action.”
“Our military and intelligence services will always work together, including through @NORADCommand, to keep people safe,” he tweeted Friday.
The U.S. also shot down a suspected Chinese surveillance balloon off the coast of South Carolina on Feb. 4, after tracking it across the continental U.S. for several days.
U.S. officials said Friday that the undercarriage of the Chinese balloon — where the surveillance equipment and other technology was housed — had been located.
In the wake of the incident, the U.S. Commerce Department said Friday it added six Chinese entities to their Entity List for “supporting the PRC’s military modernization efforts, specifically those related to aerospace programs, including airships and balloons and related materials and components, that are used by the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) for intelligence and reconnaissance,” according to a press release.
By adding these companies to the list, the U.S. can block them from “obtaining U.S. items and technologies without U.S. government authorization.”
The move is aimed at sending a “clear message to companies, governments, and other stakeholders globally that the entities on the list present a threat to national security,” the release said.
ABC News’ Luis Martinez and Molly Nagle contributed to this report.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(FLINT, Mich.) — Residents of Flint, Michigan, are facing yet another issue with the city’s embattled water system.
Flint announced a citywide boil water advisory after a water main broke Friday morning, causing the pressure of the entire city’s system to drop below safe levels.
Crews have been able to locate the damaged 24-inch transmission line and begin repairs, officials said. A public notice said that officials anticipate the repairs, flushing, and necessary testing will continue at least through Monday, meaning the city’s over 80,000 residents will be left boiling filtered water or using bottled water through the weekend.
A Facebook post from the City of Flint described the boil water advisory as a “precaution.”
“We are estimating right now, if everything goes well, by Monday we will be all clear with this,” Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley said at a press conference. “The repair is underway right now.”
The call for bottled water use comes a month after a program that previously provided free bottled water to residents ended, though the city still offers water filters.
Flint officials have not identified the cause of Friday’s main break. The notice mentioned that the reservoir and pump station at fault was scheduled for renovation later this year.
“As the City of Flint continues to upgrade our water infrastructure, we need to keep in mind that the integrity of our infrastructure is uneven,” Department of Public Works Director Mike Brown said. “Some of it is state of the art, and some of it is very old.”
The failure of the water main caused a drop in water pressure citywide Friday morning, prompting the boil water advisory. Officials notified the public about the main break on Flint’s city website shortly after 10:00 a.m. local time on Friday; Less than an hour later, officials said they located the break and enacted the boil water advisory.
The federal Safe Water Drinking Act’s public notification rule includes requirements to notify the public about the loss of water pressure in drinking water systems. Michigan’s Drinking Water and Environmental Health Division notes that a low-pressure event can allow contaminants to enter a water supply; however, the declaration of a boil water advisory during a low-pressure event can be made on a case-by-case basis.
To lift the advisory, crews will need to repair the transmission line, flush the system, and complete bacterial testing, according to the advisory.
To maintain water service, Flint increased the amount of water it receives from the Great Lakes Water Authority and Genesee County Drain Commission.
Meanwhile, city officials recommend that residents use bottled water or filtered and boiled water for consumption and cleaning purposes. State guidance recommends that residents boil cold filtered water for one minute to kill bacteria and microorganisms.
Once the boil water advisory is lifted, state guidance recommends flushing plumbing, cleaning faucet aerators, and changing water filters.
Flint suffered a years-long water crisis in 2014 after budget cuts prompted a change in the city’s water source. According to the Natural Resource Defense Council, officials failed to apply corrosion inhibitors to the water, allowing lead to leach into the supply and expose residents to the carcinogenic substance.
Research from the University of Michigan later indicated that children in Flint were exposed to triple the lead compared to children a decade earlier.
(LONG BEACH, Calif.) — A California pipeline, that delivers the majority of fuel to the Las Vegas Valley and surrounding areas, is expected to resume operations Saturday afternoon, the pipeline operator announced.
The Kinder Morgan gas pipeline, which supplies about 90% of needed gas, diesel, jet fuel and other refined petroleum products to the Las Vegas Valley and surrounding areas, experienced a disruption that resulted in a temporary shutdown of the line.
“We have isolated the source of the release within our Watson Station in Long Beach, California. Restart activities are underway for Watson Station’s associated SFPP West and CalNev pipelines. We expect these pipelines to resume operations this afternoon and begin delivering fuel to their respective market areas later today. We continue to be in close contact with our customers and the appropriate regulatory agencies as we work to resolve this issue,” Kinder Morgan, the pipeline operator, said in a statement to ABC News.
Nevada Gov. Joe Lombardo declared a state of emergency Friday due to the disruption.
On Thursday, Kinder Morgan, the pipeline operator, began investigating a leak inside its Watson Station in Long Beach, California, the company said in a statement.
“Watson Station and its associated SFPP West and CALNEV pipelines have been isolated and shut down while we work to resolve this issue. There are no injuries or fire reported as a result of this incident,” Kinder Morgan said in its statement. Kinder Morgan’s 566-mile CALNEV pipeline system transports gasoline, diesel and jet fuel from Los Angeles to terminals in Barstow, California, and Las Vegas.
“The appropriate regulatory agencies have been notified, and an investigation into the cause and quantity of the release will be conducted. We are working closely with our customers on potential impacts,” Kinder Morgan said.
The disruption may cause a shortage of fuel supplies in Nevada, according to the declaration of emergency.
The emergency declaration will allow Nevada to receive federal waivers, resources to repair the pipeline and allow the state to increase the transportation of fuel by other means, according to Lombardo.
“To avoid any unnecessary shortages, I strongly urge all Las Vegas residents to avoid panic buying while awaiting repair timeline updates,” Lombardo said in a statement posted on Twitter.
The declaration expires in 15 days unless it is renewed.
(WASHINGTON) — In the six months since the launch of the national, government-backed 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, contact and answer rates have risen dramatically, while the average speed to answer has dropped, according to Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration data.
“As we expected, there’s been a significant increase in the use of the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline service since this transition to a three-digit number,” April Naturale, interim executive director of the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, told ABC News. “And actually, we’re really grateful that more people are contacting the line with this change. That was the whole goal.”
In December, 87% of calls, 96% of chats and 99% of texts were answered across the nation, according to SAMHSA — a 91% overall answer rate. In December 2021, under the previous, 10-digit lifeline, 81% of calls, 24% of chats and 52% of texts were answered, for a total answer rate of 64%.
The increase in answer rates nationwide comes amid a sharp increase in contacts since the launch of 988, the federal agency said.
SAMHSA data shows that 371,655 people contacted the lifeline in December, compared to 260,095 in December 2021.
In that same one-year period, the average speed to answer across all contacts dropped from 172 seconds (roughly three minutes) to 44 seconds.
“Both [contacts and answer rates] have increased at the same time because we were able to increase our capacity to answer more calls more quickly,” Naturale said.
988 launched on July 16, 2022, and marked a transition from the previous National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s number. That service originated in 2005 and, advocates say, struggled to get adequate funding and staffing since its inception.
Ahead of the transition to the new, shorter number, advocates and stakeholders told ABC News about widespread concern that the anticipated influx of calls would be too much for the service to bear.
“There was a very short window from when [the law creating 988] passed in 2020 to the go-live date in 2022. And I had a few sleepless nights myself about what this would look like, but I’m really encouraged and excited by the data that we’re seeing,” said Hannah Wesolowski, chief advocacy officer for the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI).
“There was a lot of work being done to build up that capacity, and clearly it made all the difference,” Wesolowski said.
The Fiscal Year 2023 Omnibus Appropriations Bill, passed in January, included $506.1 million to support and expand services provided by the lifeline. Combined with the $432 million previously allocated to shore up capacity ahead of the 988 launch, the Biden administration has invested almost $1 billion in the service.
“We know that many people across the country are struggling with mental health or substance use related crises,” said Dr. Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, the head of SAMHSA and the Department of Health and Human Services assistant secretary for mental health and substance use. “The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline is a life-saving service and I am encouraged to see that more and more people are reaching out and getting connected to the support and care they need and getting connected more quickly than ever before.”
How money has helped response rates
Naturale, the 988 interim executive director, told ABC News that the federal funding leading up to the launch of the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline assisted in efforts to expand chat and text services so that more centers could answer those contacts more quickly.
“One of the things we wanted to really focus on with the addition of the 988 funding was being able to expand our chat and text offering. [That] really helps us to reach more people who wouldn’t normally pick up the phone,” Naturale explained. “We think we’re reaching a much more expanded audience, and the new funding allows us to continue working on this expanded list of centers so our answer rates and our capacity are both strong.”
The emphasis on chat and text comes amid concerns for the mental health of American youth.
Last month, SAMHSA released its 2021 National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which showed that 20.1% of adolescents aged 12 to 17 experienced a major depressive episode during 2021.
“As more youth started to use text and then chat [to 988], we felt the need to pay attention to those modalities,” Naturale said. “Even though calls remain high, we still get a significant number of contacts or calls, there has been a significant increase in overall utilization across the country of chat and text as communication modality. So, we needed to meet that challenge.”
New services offered
988 is also offering new services six months out from its initial launch. After an initial $7.2 million investment from SAMHSA, the lifeline subcontracted with The Trevor Project, a nonprofit organization focused on suicide prevention for LGBTQ youth, as the primary service provider for an LGBTQ-specific pilot line that started in September 2022.
It enables users of 988 to dial 3 after calling in to be connected with a counselor trained explicitly to support LGBTQ youth and young adults.
“We are incredibly proud to partner with the federal government to provide access to our best-in-class crisis services to more LGBTQ youth than ever before,” Preston Mitchum, director of advocacy and government affairs for The Trevor Project, told ABC News.
Mitchum said that the fiscal year 2023 appropriations for the lifeline — $29.7 million is designated to help enhance training and provide more access to support disproportionately impacted youth — will help build upon this program and increase access.
“The clear demand for this service not only demonstrates that LGBTQ youth face unique mental health challenges and increased suicide risk compared to their peers but also that they desire specialized care,” Mitchum said. “Part of the reason why LGBTQ youth face these disparities is because of experiences of rejection, isolation and stigma. We hear from young people every day who simply want to be respected and affirmed for who they are.”
“In moments of crisis, it’s vital that LGBTQ youth can access counselors who can understand their identities and the issues they face and provide empathy,” he added.
Since the pilot program began, about 5% of calls routed in the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline network, along with 9% of chats and texts — accounting for about 111,000 total contacts — a spokesperson for Vibrant Emotional Health, the administrator of the service, told ABC News.
For the week ending Jan. 29, the LGBTQ line saw average answer rates of 80% for calls, 98% for chats and 99% for texts, according to a spokesperson for Vibrant.
Expanding access
As the Suicide and Crisis Lifeline continues to expand and increase access, Wesolowski, with NAMI, said a “critical” next step is ensuring states are developing their own plans to sustainably fund 988 long-term.
While the national answer rates across all forms of contact are up, state-by-state answer rates still vary. State answer rates in December ranged from 51% in Alabama to 98% in Rhode Island and Mississippi, according to SAMHSA.
Callers are routed based on their area code, as opposed to their physical location — still, depending on where a call is routed, the response may be different. Many of the calls not answered at the state level are sent to one of the national backup call centers to be answered, though some are still abandoned at the state level.
The Biden administration’s funding has helped strengthen the national backup network, according to SAMHSA, so fewer calls are going unanswered, but advocates said the ideal is to have callers connected to centers in their area that can provide useful follow up mental health resources.
The law that designated 988 as the three-digit number for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline back in 2020 empowered states to implement fees on cell phone bills to fund the service, similarly to how 911 call centers are funded.
So far, five states have passed laws establishing such fees, and 29 states in total have passed some form of appropriations to support the 988 infrastructure, according to Wesolowski.
“Advocates are certainly pushing and having those blunt conversations that we can’t be relying on federal funding streams,” Wesolowski said. “I think one thing that we’ve really pushed with the these phone fees is that they can be flexible. They can be set in a range that is determined annually based on what the needs might be in the state for funding that year.”
Despite the need for “more work to be done,” Wesolowski said she feels encouraged by the progress the lifeline has made over the last six months.
“Everyone is working toward improving this day after day and there’s still consensus across the board that this is a priority at the federal level, at the state level, with advocates, with providers, with law enforcement,” Wesolowski said. “[It] gives me a lot of hope that we’re going to be facing a future where everyone knows 988.”
For her part, Naturale shares the hope that people will turn to 988 in times of need.
“It’s our goal to decrease suicide in this country and increase the idea that anyone — they don’t have to be in suicidal crisis — anyone experiencing mental health distress can pick up the phone,” Naturale said. “Being able to call 988 and get treatment without judgment, get interventions without judgment: That’s really our goal.”
If you are experiencing suicidal, substance use or other mental health crises please call or text the new three digit code at 988. You will reach a trained crisis counselor for free, 24 hours a day, seven days a week. You can also go to 988lifeline.org.
