(SAN DIEGO) — San Diego State University officials made their first public statements addressing a civil lawsuit filed against former punter Matt Araiza and two other football players of allegedly gang-raping a 17-year-old girl.
“To be absolutely clear, we take allegations of sexual assault very seriously and do not support any actions or behaviors that cause harm to others,” Athletic Director John Wicker said Monday at a press conference.
The university officials pushed back against criticism of how the school handed the sexual assault allegations, with Wicker telling reporters, “It is absolutely not true that we swept this under the rug,” at the press conference.
Wicker defended the university’s handling of the accusations, saying because the alleged assault was said to have happened at an off-campus party, “the San Diego Police Department had the jurisdiction over this matter” and the university allowed SDPD’s request to investigate the sexual assault allegations.
“We are committed to hold accountable students who violate the universities policies,” said Head Coach Brady Hoke at the press conference.
Wicker alleged SDPD asked the university not to investigate the allegations because they felt it would “impede or negatively impact their investigation.”
The Buffalo Bills released rookie Araiza on Saturday after he was named in the lawsuit along with two of his San Diego State University teammates. The 22-year-old NFL rookie has denied the accusations.
“This afternoon, we decided that releasing Matt Araiza was the best thing to do. Our culture in Buffalo is more important than winning football games,” Buffalo Bills General Manager Brandon Beane said in a statement posted to the team’s Twitter account on Saturday.
Beane added that the team had spoken to the accuser’s lawyer and that “we tried to be thorough, and thoughtful and not rush to judgment.”
“With the serious nature of allegations and we just can’t, we don’t have the means to put all the facts together. And there’s multiple versions of what happened and you know, he’s a football coach. I’m a GM like we don’t have access to everything. And so that’s more important than playing football. And so we want Matt to focus on that,” he said.
Beane also said the team’s investigation into the allegations is ongoing.
In a statement to ABC News, Araiza’s parents alleged a “war” was waged on their son and alleged he has been “extorted, discriminated against, harassed and the subject of multiple and continuous threats of violence and death.”
“He has been released from his job and our entire family continues to receive horrific threats of violence and death. We have all been canceled. Every member of our family. Salacious rumors grew as fact. There are multiple witness reports to deny the claims that are made against him. The legal system is designed to find the facts and make decisions. They should be allowed to do that,” Araiza’s parents said in a statement.
An attorney for Araiza told ABC News in a statement that he does not understand why the university is receiving backlash as they were just following the SDPD’s directive.
“As far as SDSU, I feel sorry that the school has been raked over the coals since this story broke. It is my understanding that the San Diego Police Department told them to back off and let them (SDPD) do the investigation, and then SDSU complied with that directive,” Kerry Armstrong, an attorney for Araiza, said in the statement.
Armstrong denied the accusations of rape against his client and alleged he has several witnesses who talked to his investigator and will “back up much of Araiza’s story.” Armstrong also said he does not know what happened in the bedroom, but alleged that Araiza was not present.
(NEW YORK) — At the end of the 2021 school year, sixth-grade teacher Anita Carson decided to resign.
Carson, of Polk County, Florida, told ABC News that she didn’t want to leave her students behind. But when new laws began to restrict what teachers could teach about diversity, she said it would make “an already hard job — even if you love it — really unmanageable.”
Across the country, legislation has forced strict limitations on classroom curriculum and discussions concerning race and LGBTQ issues.
Schools and libraries have reported a massive increase in book-banning efforts from legislators and parents on topics like racism, race, sexual orientation, gender and more.
The U.S. has 300,000 teacher and school staff vacancies according to the National Education Association. And the culture wars over censorship and diversity in the classroom have pushed out teachers like Carson from schools.
“We are seeing that teachers are personally targeted. They’re targeted in social media, they’re targeted in everyday life,” said Emily Kirkpatrick, the executive director of the National Council of Teachers of English. “It is leading towards an extinguishing of the passion of why teachers got into the profession in the first place.”
The fight over education
Several bills across the nation have broadly targeted race, gender and sexual orientation in classroom education.
Supporters of these bills say that students should not feel shame, guilt or discomfort based on school lessons. Many teachers have reported heavy vetting when it comes to books and curriculum; several math textbooks in Florida were rejected for allegedly having racial “indoctrination.”
“We can and should teach this history without labeling a young child as an oppressor or requiring he or she feel guilt or shame based on their race or sex,” said Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt when he signed an anti-race education bill in May 2021. “I refuse to tolerate otherwise during a time when we are already so polarized.”
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shared similar sentiments when signing the now-blocked Stop WOKE Act, which limited education on race and was deemed unconstitutional by a judge.
“No one should be instructed to feel as if they are not equal or shamed because of their race,” DeSantis said in June. “In Florida, we will not let the far-left woke agenda take over our schools and workplaces. There is no place for indoctrination or discrimination in Florida.”
Some teachers say these efforts will block them from discussing the nation’s past and present accurately.
They also say these efforts are eroding the quality of public education and making it harder for students and teachers from marginalized groups to succeed.
“We have a nationwide challenge with getting students to read and to want to read,” Kirkpatrick said. “Teachers work so hard to find books that will appeal to students and that students can identify with and relate to. And so what legislators are doing is making that extraordinarily difficult, if not impossible.”
Stories from teachers who left
Michael James, a former special education teacher in Escambia County, Florida, resigned after he alleged that pictures of historic Black figures like Martin Luther King Jr. and Harriett Tubman were taken down from his classroom walls because they were inappropriate.
The district has refuted the claims, saying officials were “astounded by Mr. James’ allegations, as his demeanor in the classroom that day was very friendly and accommodating.”
The district claims officials told James he would have to change his board to accommodate state standards and that he obliged, though James said he did not agree to this.
James told ABC News that he taught in a diverse school district where 34.6% of students are Black and felt it was important that his students see themselves represented in the classroom.
“Bottom line — this is all about small precious children that need to be protected, loved and rigorously educated and not treated less than others in a higher income area or poorly because of race or income,” James said in a statement.
Similarly, 2022 Kentucky Teacher of the Year Willie Carver resigned from his position at Montgomery County High School after he says he faced harassment from parents and residents over his sexuality, as well as restrictions on what educators could teach about race.
“The last year began with me hearing administrators telling us not to teach racial things and us having to push back pretty hard,” Carver told ABC News. “I have very few students of color. It is all the more important for us to make sure they feel seen or that they feel represented. It’s also all the more important that my students who are white have experiences with perspectives outside of their own, especially when they’re faced with such racism at home, often, or in their communities.”
Carver, a gay man, also said his school district did little to defend him from attacks on his identity from a local woman who claimed he was “grooming” children in a student-run LGBTQ group.
Carver is now working as an academic adviser at the University of Kentucky.
Montgomery superintendent Matt Thompson told ABC News in an email, “Mr. Carver is a wonderful English and French teacher. We wish him well in his new endeavor.”
Carson, the former Florida teacher, now works as a community organizer for the local political advocacy group Equality Florida. The activist group fights against the very bills that pushed Carson to leave her work as an educator. She said if parents can come to understand what’s being taught in the classroom, kids would benefit.
“This idea that teachers are trying to hide things from parents when we’ve been spending decades, begging for parents’ involvement and having curriculum nights and parent conferences and constantly having events that parents can come to … it’s incredibly false and toxic,” Carson said.
She said these bills pit parents against teachers and severely limit conversations about how to best serve the students.
“I left teaching but I could not leave advocating for my kids and advocating for students,” Carson said.
In the new satirical comedy Honk for Jesus. Save Your Soul., Sterling K. Brown plays Lee-Curtis Childs, a pastor at a Southern Baptist megachurch trying to rebuild his congregation after a huge scandal.
The film is not afraid to dive into deep topics – sexual impropriety, hypocrisy and pride, to name a few – and Brown tells ABC Audio he knows that will possibly upset some people. And that’s OK.
“I’m somebody who’s grown up in the church, has a deep affinity for it, but I feel like there’s some critical thought that could be examined,” Brown says. “Nothing is perfect, everything can be looked at further.”
One of the biggest topics the film handles is marriage. Specifically, Brown says, it asks “what constitutes the breaking of a covenant” and “when is the right time to be out” of a marriage.
Regina Hall, who plays Brown’s wife, Trinity, in the film, agrees, saying that marriage is “defined in this movie specifically, as, ‘are you a Christian?’ And, if so, ‘how much you are willing to endure?'”
“Trinity is a Christian,” Hall says. “She just has to endure Lee-Curtis. That’s a bit of a measure on her Christianity.”
Brown says he was – at first – a bit hesitant to take on a role some might find controversial.
“Not enough to not let me do it,” he says. “But, yeah. I hear my mom’s voice all the time … my mama will ask with every role that I do, ‘Now how does this honor God?’ And I’ll be like, ‘Well, Mama, God made us. And he made each and every one of us and God didn’t make no mistakes.’”
Jeff Beck and ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons in 2009; Kevin Mazur/WireImage
ZZ Top has more than two dozen upcoming U.S. shows scheduled this fall as part of the famed Texas trio’s 2022 Raw Whiskey Tour.
Among the concerts are six late-September dates that will feature British rock-guitar legend Jeff Beck as an opening act; the first three also will include a set by Heart frontwoman Ann Wilson.
ZZ Top singer/guitarist Billy Gibbons notes that he’s performed with both Beck and Wilson before and says it’s possible that they may all end up onstage together during the upcoming shows, which are scheduled to take place in three different Texas cities — on September 23 in Del Valle, September 24 in Dallas and September 25 in the Houston suburb of The Woodlands.
“[I]t’s going to be a very interesting gathering, having an expanded lineup on the stage,” Gibbons tells ABC Audio. “Let’s go for it.”
Gibbons also reveals that he recently had a conversation with Beck, one of his guitar heroes, who mentioned a couple of ZZ Top songs he was hoping to jam on with the group.
“He said, ‘Listen … I’ve been polishing my chops. I got ‘La Grange’ down,'” Gibbons reports. “He said, ‘Can we do “Rough Boy”?’ I said, ‘Well, we’ve done it in the past … There’s no reason why we can’t stretch it out.'”
ZZ Top’s upcoming U.S. tour dates are mapped out from a September 17 concert in Catoosa, Oklahoma, through a November 13 show in Pompano Beach, Florida. The band’s 2022 itinerary winds down with a five-date Las Vegas residency at The Venetian Resort, scheduled from December 3 to December 10.
D.F. Stauffer Biscuit Co., Inc./U.S. Food and Drug Administration
(NEW YORK) — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced a voluntary recall of fudge-coated animal cookies that were sold at Target stores across the U.S.
Stauffer’s voluntarily recalled its 44-ounce Market Pantry White Fudge Animal Cookies “because they may contain metal,” according to the FDA.
The affected products distributed to Target come in a bear-shaped clear plastic jug and have a best-by date of Feb. 21, 2023, with lot number Y052722 and UPC code 085239817698.
“The recall was initiated when metal (wire) was found inside a portion of the cookies,” the FDA wrote in the recall notice. “Foodborne foreign objects that are hard, sharp, and large are more likely to cause serious injury or dental injury. Foodborne foreign objects that are flexible, not sharp, and smaller in length are more likely to cause minor injuries such as transient choking or small lacerations in the gastrointestinal system.”
Consumers in possession of the product are “urged to stop consuming” it and return it to the place of purchase for a full refund.
The FDA hasn’t reported any injuries tied to the possible contamination.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Arizona 3, Chicago White Sox 2
Minnesota 8, San Francisco 3
Kansas City 15, San Diego 7
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Tampa Bay 12, Boston 4
LA Angels 8, Toronto 3
Houston 3, Baltimore 1
Detroit 9, Texas 8
Seattle 4, Cleveland 0
Oakland 4, NY Yankees 1
NATIONAL LEAGUE
LA Dodgers 8, Miami 1
Washington 3, Cincinnati 2
Pittsburgh 5, Philadelphia 0
Colorado 1, NY Mets 0
Milwaukee 9, Chicago Cubs 7
St. Louis 6, Atlanta 3
NATIONAL FOOTBALL LEAGUE PRESEASON
NY Jets 31, NY Giants 27
Pittsburgh 19, Detroit 9
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Seattle 76, Las Vegas 73
Connecticut 68, Chicago 63
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Atlanta 3, DC United 2
Orlando City 2, New York City FC 1
LA Galaxy 2, New England 1
(WASHINGTON) — Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina is facing backlash after claiming political violence will break out if former President Donald Trump is indicted for mishandling presidential records.
President Joe Biden on Tuesday, while not mentioning Graham by name, appeared to call him out at a political rally in Pennsylvania, saying, “the idea you turn on a television and see senior senators and congressmen saying if such and such happens, there’ll be blood in the street. Where the hell are we?”
Graham’s comments came at a time when Trump supporters’ threats against law enforcement have escalated following the Mar-a-Lago search and at least one man citing it attacked an FBI field office in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was later killed by police.
Law enforcement officials told ABC News they were investigating social media posts apparently linked to the suspect that called for violence in the days after the FBI search.
During an appearance on Fox News on Sunday, the former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee said there “will be riots in the street” if Trump faces legal ramifications for taking at least 184 classified documents to his Mar-a-Lago estate after leaving office.
After months of the Justice Department and National Archives negotiating with Trump’s legal teams to get him to return the documents, the FBI executed a search warrant on Aug. 8 at Mar-a-Lago. But since then, Graham and many other Republicans have argued that Trump is facing a double standard from how the DOJ treated Hillary Clinton.
Specifically, Clinton, Trump’s 2016 Democratic rival for president, was not charged after probes into her use of a private email server containing classified information while she was secretary of state.
The two cases are not the same, however. In both cases, the FBI launched criminal investigations, obtaining search warrants to obtain or access relevant documents. But in Clinton’s case, the FBI said in findings released in July 2016, the classified information had been improperly transmitted via carelessness, not in an attempt to circumvent the law.
The caliber of “classified information” found on Hillary Clinton’s private servers was not the same as what was found at Mar-a-Lago, particularly as it relates to highly-sensitive Special Access Programs. According to the Department of Justice’s report on the Clinton case, investigators found seven email chains on Clinton’s servers that were “relevant to” and “associated with a Special Access Program, while it appears Trump was keeping SAP materials themselves at Mar-a-Lago.
Trump’s case is ongoing, but an unsealed search warrant and property receipt from the FBI raid confirmed that the former president took properly marked classified documents from the White House.
Experts have said it’s highly unlikely that the Justice Department would have pursued such a search warrant without significant evidence. “The department does not take such a decision lightly,” Garland said during the press conference following the FBI search.
“If they try to prosecute President Trump for mishandling classified information after Hilary Clinton set up a server in her basement, there literally will be riots in the street. I worry about our country,” Graham said to Fox News host and former South Carolina GOP Rep. Trey Gowdy. Later in the program, Graham repeated the threat of violence again.
Graham again doubled down on his earlier remarks in Charleston on Monday, again likening Trump’s FBI search to the probe into Clinton, saying: “America cannot live with this kind of double standard. I thought what she did was bad, but she got a pass at the end of the day.”
Using less inflammatory language, he said that that there would be many “upset people” if Trump was prosecuted. “I reject violence. I’m not calling for violence. Violence is not the answer, but I’m just telling you,” he said.
Despite growing evidence against the former president, Trump and allies like Graham have repeatedly accused the Justice Department of being biased against him.
The Justice Department on Friday made public the redacted affidavit that supported the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate. The affidavit outlines months of interactions between the National Archives and Records Administration and Trump’s team to secure the return of records that were improperly taken from the White House.
“Most Republicans, including me, believes when it comes to Trump, there is no law. It’s all about getting him. There’s a double standard when it comes to Trump,” Graham said.
Trump posted a video clip of Graham’s comments on his Truth Social media platform but without comment.
Asked for a response to Graham’s comments Monday, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we have seen MAGA Republicans attack our democracy. We have seen MAGA Republicans take away our rights, make threats of violence, including this weekend …”
Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., tweeted on Monday about Graham’s remarks in contrast to the legislative victories that Democrats have seen throughout the summer.
“We are fighting for relief from prescription drug costs for Seniors, relief from inflation for working-class families, relief from mass shootings for parents, relief from the climate crisis for farmers. Republicans like @LindseyGrahamSC are promising riots,” he tweeted.
The Washington Post editorialized, “There is no excuse for this irresponsible rhetoric, which not only invites violence but also defies democratic norms.”
A new joint intelligence bulletin obtained by ABC News confirms that the FBI has seen an uptick in threats and acts of violence, including armed encounters, to its agents and law enforcement since their search of Trump’s Florida home.
Since the search, the FBI and DHS have identified multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial, law enforcement, and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search, including the federal judge who approved the Palm Beach search warrant, according to the bulletin.
Graham has been a staunch defender of the former president, despite briefly breaking with Trump right after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.
He’s currently resisting a grand jury probe into potential election interference in Georgia, fighting a subpoena to testify in connection with the investigation into Trump’s alleged effort to intimidate Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and other state officials into overturning his 2020 loss to President Joe Biden, asking Raffensperger to “find” enough votes to ensure his victory.
Graham had recently hired former president Trump’s first White House counsel, Donald McGahn, to be part of his legal team.
The probe is led by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who subpoenaed Graham in July. In fighting the order, Graham has argued, among other things, that he was acting “within [his] official legislative responsibilities” as a senator and chairman of the Judiciary Committee when he allegedly made calls to Georgia officials in the wake of the 2020 election.
On Monday, new court filings from the Fulton County District Attorney’s office blasted the temporary subpoena block granted to Graham by a federal appeals court. The motion mentions that the strength of Trump and Graham’s relationship weakens the senator’s push against testifying.
“Senator Graham’s repetition of his previous arguments does not entitle him to partial quashal, and the District Attorney respectfully requests that his motion be denied,” Donald Wakeford, Fulton’s chief senior assistant district attorney, wrote in a motion filed on Monday.
The Fulton County DA’s response comes after Graham told Gowdy on Sunday that he’s got a “good legal case” against testifying before a grand jury.
“If we let county prosecutors start calling senators and members of Congress as witnesses when they’re doing their job, then you’ve got out of kilter our constitutional balance here,” Graham said about the probe on Sunday to Gowdy.
“I’ve got a good legal case, I’m going to pursue it …. You love the law, I love the law. I’ve never been more worried about the law and politics as I am right now. How can you tell a conservative Republican that the system works when it comes to Trump?”
ABC News’ Aaron Katersky, Olivia Rubin and Will Steakin contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Officials have released a remarkable new image of the Phantom Galaxy — about 32 million light-years away from Earth — taken by the James Webb Space Telescope.
Published first by the European Space Agency, which has been collaborating with NASA on the Webb telescope, the image shows the galaxy — located in the Pisces constellation — in great detail.
Also known as Messier 74, the Phantom Galaxy, with its two well-defined spiral arms, falls under a class known as a “grand design spiral.”
The galaxy has low surface brightness, making it hard to see and requiring clear, dark skies to do so. However, Webb’s sharp lens have captured the clearest image of the galaxy’s features.
“These spiral arms are traced by blue and bursts of pink, which are star-forming regions,” NASA wrote in a social media post. “A speckled cluster of young stars glow blue at the very heart of the galaxy.”
It also provides an unobstructed view of the star cluster at the center of the galaxy, without it being obscured by gas. The Webb telescope can past through gas and dust, which can appear opaque to the human eye.
“The addition of crystal-clear Webb observations at longer wavelengths will allow astronomers to pinpoint star-forming regions in the galaxies, accurately measure the masses and ages of star clusters, and gain insights into the nature of the small grains of dust drifting in interstellar space,” the ESA said.
In the NASA post, there are also differences seen in the way the Webb telescope captured the Phantom Galaxy compared to the Hubble telescope.
The Webb telescope is an infrared telescope, meaning it uses infrared radiation to detect objects in space.
It can observe celestial bodies, such as stars, nebulae and planets, that are too cool or too faint to be observed in visible light — that is, what’s visible to humans.
By comparison, the Hubble telescope sees visible light, ultraviolet radiation and near-infrared radiation.
While Hubble did manage to capture many of the same star-forming regions and young stars, the images are not as clear as the one captured by Webb.
The Webb telescope was launched last December and NASA and ESA began releasing images from the new technology in July.
(MOSCOW) — Former Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev has died “after a serious and long illness,” the Central Clinical Hospital reported on Tuesday.
He was 91 years old. A more specific cause of death was not immediately clear.
Gorbachev will be buried at Moscow’s Novo-Dyevitchiye cemetery, next to his wife, Raisa, Russia’s state-run news agency Tass reported.
Gorbachev was the last leader of the Soviet Union before it dissolved. He ruled as general secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1985 until 1991 and was the country’s only president, a title he took in the waning months of his time in office.
Young and energetic, his rise in the ’80s signaled a new spring for what was then one of the world’s two superpowers. A political insider with a view to the outside, Gorbachev set into motion radical reforms — that led to a series of unintended events.
He tore through the Iron Curtain between the USSR and the West by opening relations with the U.S., agreeing to a series of crucial summits soon after taking power.
“We have become closer, and we have come to know each other better,” Gorbachev said in 1989, his — and U.S. President Ronald Reagan — New Years’ address decorated with hopes of international cooperation and understanding. “Americans seem to be rediscovering the Soviet Union, and we are rediscovering America.”
Gorbachev signed treaties to reduce the size of his country’s nuclear arsenal and, in a well-received reversal in military policy, he withdrew troops from a nine-year war in Afghanistan.
In a meeting with Regan in 1988, Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty eliminating both countries’ stock of intermediate and short-range land-based missiles that could carry nuclear warheads. It was the first treaty that abolished an entire class of weapons systems and established unprecedented protocols for observers from both nations to verify the destruction of its missiles.
Underscoring the invention of nuclear weapons as a “material symbol and expression of absolute military power,” Gorbachev also underscored that mankind’s survival and self-preservation came to the floor.
Domestically, Gorbachev had two trademarks: more transparency and freedom — a policy known as glasnost — and bold economic reform, or perestroika.
It was not, ultimately, a winning combination.
Glasnost brought a feeling of liberation and empowerment to the Soviet people and when his economic policies didn’t work, they weren’t afraid to express their disillusionment.
Gorbachev’s vision was to legitimize communism by putting a democratic face on it. What he didn’t seem to realize was that his people would start demanding the real thing.
Discontent spread like wildfire to the countries of the East bloc. And Gorbachev allowed the peaceful revolutions to happen. In 1989, the Berlin Wall came down.
Gorbachev was revered in the West for ending the Cold War. He was ridiculed and ultimately reviled by many at home for the collapse of the country and the bleak years that followed, in the ’90s.
As the Soviet flag was lowered for the last time at the Kremlin in Moscow, Gorbachev had no choice but to resign.
“We live in a new world,” he said in his farewell address. “The Cold War has ended, the arms race has stopped, as has the insane militarization which mutilated our economy, public psyche and morals. The threat of a world war has been removed. Once again, I want to stress that on my part everything was done during the transition period to preserve reliable control of the nuclear weapons.”
“[Russia] has been freed politically and spiritually, and this is the most important decision that we yet to fully come to grips with,” Gorbachev said as he resigned, “and we haven’t because we haven’t learned to use freedom yet.”
Others benefitted far more from his changes than he did.
His political rival, Boris Yeltsin, rose out of the post-Soviet chaos. When Gorbachev ran against Yeltsin, he received less than 1% of the vote, a humiliating end to his political career.
But the Nobel Peace Prize winner — so honored, the Nobel organization said, “for the leading role he played in the radical changes in East-West relations” — remained a man of influence.
After his closest ally, wife Raisa, died in 1999, Gorbachev devoted himself to campaigning for environmental causes. And he continually called for a nuclear disarmament, warning in 2019 that renewed tension between Russia and the West was putting the world at “colossal” risk.
“As long as weapons of mass destruction exist, primarily nuclear weapons, the danger is colossal, irrespective of any political decisions that may be made,” he told the BBC.
Five years after his resignation, Gorbachev published the book “Memoirs” — which recounted his childhood, political rise and his fall as the Soviet Union’s last leader.
“I am the principle witness and the principal person who bears responsibility for what happened,” Gorbachev said of his decision to write, “and I believed it was important for me to explain my position about why I started reforms, why I came around to the view that reforms were necessary … and how difficult the process was.”
For his 85th birthday, in 2016, Gorbachev released a 700-page collection of memoirs, interviews and other documents about his life.
“The more I think about my life, the more I see that the biggest and most important events took place unexpectedly. Absolutely,” he said at the time.
Tributes poured in Tuesday from world leaders after news of Gorbachev’s death.
“I’m saddened to hear of the death of Gorbachev,” British Prime Minister Boris Johnson tweeted. “I always admired the courage & integrity he showed in bringing the Cold War to a peaceful conclusion. In a time of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine, his tireless commitment to opening up Soviet society remains an example to us all.”
Former U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice called Gorbachev a “man who tried to deliver a better life for his people.”
ABC News’ Christine Theodorou contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Mehmet Oz, the Republican candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania, on Tuesday tried to distance himself from an aide’s comment last week that appeared to mock the stroke suffered by Oz’s opponent, Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman.
“The campaign has been saying lots of things,” Oz told KDKA, a Pittsburgh radio station. “My position — and I can only speak to what I’m saying — is that John Fetterman should be allowed to recover fully and I will support his ability, as someone who’s gone through a difficult time, to get ready.”
Oz was responding to a question about a comment attributed to Rachel Tripp, his communications adviser, who was quoted saying that if Fetterman “had ever eaten a vegetable in his life, then maybe he wouldn’t have had a major stroke and wouldn’t be in the position of having to lie about it constantly.”
Tripp’s comment was first reported by Insider on Aug. 23.
Amid near-instant condemnation, including from pro-Fetterman doctors and Fetterman himself, Oz’s campaigni nitially doubled down, calling the comment “good health advice” from a former cardiothoracic surgeon.
Until Tuesday morning, Oz had yet to personally speak about the campaign’s comment.
A spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests from ABC News to speak to the candidate after a town hall Monday night outside Pittsburgh — even as Oz criticized Fetterman for dodging the press at campaign stops of his own.
The spokesperson, Brittany Yanick, and Tripp did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The backstory
The Pennsylvania Senate race took a heated — and personal — turn when Oz’s adviser was quoted derisively blaming Fetterman for his own stroke.
Tripp, the aide, had given a statement for the campaign, to Insider in response to Fetterman’s attacks on Oz as elitist and out of touch.
The Oz campaign comment drew immediate reaction on social media, including from Fetterman, who tweeted, “I know politics can be nasty, but even then, I could *never* imagine ridiculing someone for their health challenges.”
“I had a stroke. I survived it. I’m truly so grateful to still be here today,” he added.
Fetterman — who told a local outlet in 2018, when he was mayor of a small Pittsburgh suburb, that he had lost nearly 150 pounds by adopting a diet that included more vegetables — acknowledged in the days after the stroke in May that he “should have taken my health more seriously.”
But the tone of Tripp’s statement was deemed inappropriate by a group of pro-Fetterman physicians who earlier spoke out against Oz at an event organized by Fetterman’s campaign.
“No real doctor, or any decent human being, to be honest, would ever mock a stroke victim who is recovering from that stroke in the way that Dr. Oz is mocking John Fetterman,” Dr. Valerie Arkoosh, the Democratic chair of the board of commissioners in Montgomery County, said in a statement provided on Tuesday by a Fetterman spokeswoman.
The Oz campaign went on to tell ABC News in a statement late on Aug. 23: “Nice try. Dr. Oz has been urging people to eat more veggies for years. That’s not ridicule. It’s good health advice. We’re only trying to help.”
The salvo — in a race in a battleground state that could tip control of Congress — represented a departure from Oz’s other lines of attack since Fetterman’s stroke, which had involved largely dancing around it by jeering at Fetterman for his absence from the trail without referencing what sidelined him.
Oz struck an even more sympathetic tone immediately after Fetterman announced his stroke. He tweeted then: “I am thankful that you received care so quickly. My whole family is praying for your speedy recovery.”
“I think he just had it,” Stacy Garrity, the state treasurer and a co-chair of Oz’s campaign, told ABC News on Aug. 23. “I think he just got tired. He’s probably tired of hearing about veggies,” she said, referring to the Fetterman team’s repeated swipes over a video showing Oz shopping for vegetables to make crudités and criticizing Democrats for grocery prices.
The volley of statements threatened to overshadow Fetterman’s separate appearance on Aug. 23 afternoon in Pittsburgh to tout a key labor endorsement — only his second public campaign stop since his stroke. With many eyes still on his health, he spoke for roughly four and half minutes and exhibited patterns similar to those he showed at a rally in Erie earlier this month, speaking often in choppy sentences. (He told a newspaper last month that he was working with a speech therapist as he recovered.)
Amid now-routine jokes about the “crudités” video and Oz’s residential history outside of Pennsylvania, Fetterman also pledged to “stand with the union way of life” before exiting the venue without answering a group of reporters who flanked him as he walked.
Among those ignored questions was whether Fetterman would agree to debate Oz this fall, an issue Oz has hammered as Fetterman has remained largely mum about his plans to share a stage with his opponent.
“We’ve said we’re open to debating Oz,” Joe Calvello, a spokesman, said in response to a question that a reporter posed to Fetterman.
Oz’s campaign says he has agreed to five debates, including one on Sep. 6. Fetterman’s campaign says it refuses to set a schedule on Oz’s terms.
But according to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette report, the campaign did not initially respond to an invitation emailed nearly a month ago to both campaigns by a politics editor at KDKA, a TV station in Pittsburgh planning the Sep. 6 debate.
Oz has accepted the invitation, the station’s news director told the Post-Gazette.
Asked by ABC News to respond to that report, a Fetterman spokesperson sent a statement from Rebecca Katz, a senior adviser to the campaign, who called Oz’s focus on debates “an obvious attempt to change the subject during yet another bad week for Dr. Oz.”
On Tuesday, Fetterman declined in a statement to take part in the debate, prompting a spokeswoman for Oz to call him a “liar” and a “coward.”
Fetterman did not commit to debating Oz this fall but did not rule it out, either.
