Love Is Blind star Kyle Abrams has a new love after splitting from co-star Deepti Vemapti.
After appearing on season two of the Netflix show, Kyle and Deepti confirmed their off-screen romance during After The Altar, which dropped on September 16. However, just a few days after the show’s release, Kyle gave fans an honest update on their current relationship status.
“I understand many of you are curious as to where Deepti and I stand today,” he wrote on Instagram Monday. “Since After the Alter [sic] was filmed, we had decided to go our separate ways in early summer. Thank you to everyone who has followed our journey through arduous vulnerability and has supported us along the way.”
Abrams then went on to reveal that he has moved on and “embarked on a new relationship,” one that he intends to “keep private for a bit.”
“As for what the future holds, I have not a clue,” he continued. “Going forward I plan to live each day in the present without any regret.”
During Love Is Blind season two, Kyle hit it off with Shaina Hurley before the two split over religious differences. Meanwhile, Deepti and Abhishek ‘Shake’ Chatterjee were an item before she broke things off prior to their on-screen wedding.
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Fiona strengthened to a Category 3 storm Tuesday after leaving the entire island of Puerto Rico without power.
The storm system is currently carrying sustained winds of 115 mph as it moves northwest near Turks and Caicos. It could become a Category 4 storm as it closes in on Bermuda later in the week.
Fiona made a second landfall Monday in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma on the eastern side of the island with sustained winds of 90 mph and even higher gusts.
On Monday, the hurricane moved over the Dominican Republic with damaging winds and rain, causing more flash flooding and hurricane warnings in the region.
At least one person was killed in Puerto Rico as the then-Category 1 storm slammed the island, officials announced Monday.
The Arecibo resident was attempting to fill his generator with gasoline while it was on, causing an ignition, officials said.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi warned residents that more rain is expected on the island through Tuesday evening.
“We are going through a difficult moment but our people are strong and very generous,” he said during a press conference.
At least two more people died in a shelter due to natural causes, but those have not been labeled as storm-related deaths, Pierluisi said.
Restoring power in Puerto Rico
LUMA Energy said that only 100,000 out of 1.5 million clients have power on the island.
The governor said Monday the goal is for “a large number of LUMA customers” to have power “in a matter of days.” However, LUMA said in a statement Sunday that “full power restoration could take several days.”
Hospitals on the island are currently operating on generators, according to the governor.
Only 34% of households on the island have potable water after rivers grew and heavy rainfall impacted the system — meaning more than 834,000 people are without drinking water, the governor said Monday.
More than 1,000 people have been rescued by authorities, including a woman rescued Sunday who was stuck in a tree for seven hours after trying to look at the damage, officials said.
Heavy rainfall causes flooding across the island
Fiona strengthened to a hurricane from a tropical storm Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Fiona made landfall in southwestern Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 p.m. ET, dumping torrential rain on much of the island.
Some regions measured up to 25 inches of rain by 8 a.m. Monday, and flash flood warnings remain in effect for much of the island, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A flash flood emergency was issued overnight due to many rivers rising very quickly out of their banks. The Rio Grande de Arecido river rose 13 feet in one hour.
A bridge near Utuado, a town in the central mountainous region of the island, has collapsed, cutting off the communities of Salto Arriba and Guaonico, local newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported.
The portion of the bridge that collapsed is on Highway 123, a branch of Highway 10, which serves as a link between both roads and is one of the accesses to the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado campus, according to El Vocero.
The bridge, installed by the National Guard following Hurricane Maria, cost about $3 million to construct, the newspaper reported.
The rain saturated areas in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, along with the mountainous areas, where potential mudslides and winds could cause the most damage.
Prior to landfall, Pierluisi said Puerto Rico was prepared as it could be, with enough resources and manpower in place to respond — adding that the island learned its lessons from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
“We’re much in a much better position than we were five years ago,” he said.
Where Fiona heads next
After passing through the Caribbean, the storm system will head northward, passing just east of Turks and Caicos before tracking near Bermuda, forecasts show. The storm system will continue to gradually strengthen in the coming days as it moves north and then northeast this week.
Forecasts place Fiona near Turks and Caicos Monday night into Tuesday morning as a strong Category 2 hurricane with winds near 100 mph.
Tremendous rainfall is forecast, with much of the Dominican Republic expected to receive up to 10 inches and some regions in Turks and Caicos expected to see 8 inches of rain.
On Tuesday morning, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will continue to see gradually improving conditions, however, lingering showers and thunderstorms will still be likely, potentially impacting initial cleanup and recovery efforts.
By mid-week, Fiona is forecast to become the first major hurricane of 2022 Atlantic season, with winds of up to 125 mph.
Winds could be as high as 125 mph as the storm passes near Bermuda, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge. Some models show the storm hitting Bermuda directly on Friday.
While it won’t make landfall in the U.S., the hurricane will affect the entire East Coast with huge waves, rip currents and coastal flooding from Florida to Maine as it moves northward.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, which allows federal agencies to coordinate all relief efforts.
Biden’s decision has the “purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” the White House said in a statement.
Chris Redd has joined the parade of Saturday Night Live cast members have who left the late-night sketch comedy show ahead of its 48th season, according to Deadline. He joins Aidy Bryant, Pete Davidson, Kate McKinnon and Kyle Mooney, who left at the end of last season, and Alex Moffat, Melissa Villaseñor and featured player Aristotle Athari, who departed over the summer. Redd, who joined SNL for its 43rd season, is currently developing the feature film Cyber Monday for Universal and has a stand-up special on HBO Max. SNL returns October 1 with three consecutive shows and four new featured players: Marcello Hernandez, Molly Kearney, Michael Longfellow and Devon Walker…
Variety reports Sara Paulson, who won an Emmy award for her portrayal of Marcia Clark in 2016’s The People v. O. J. Simpson: American Crime Story, is attached to star in and executive-produce a scripted TV adaptation of The Way Down God, Greed, and the Cult of Gwen Shamblin, which HBO Max is developing from its own five-part docuseries. The streamer in September 2021 dropped the first three episodes of Marina Zenovich’s investigative docuseries The Way Down, which chronicled Gwen Shamblin Lara’s rise from being a diet guru with her Weigh Down Workshop, launched in 1986, to the founding of her Tennessee church, Remnant Fellowship, in 1999. However, due to Lara’s death in a plane crash in May of 2021, the final two episodes were re-edited and released this past April. According to HBO Max, The Way Down was its “most-watched docuseries debut”…
The Kominsky Method‘s Alan Arkin, Misery star Kathy Bates and singer-turned-actress Teyana Taylor have joined Casey Affleck and Marisa Tomei in the indie heist thriller The Smack, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Smack follows “a con man — played by Affleck — who has hit rock bottom when he meets an upstart hustler — portrayed by Taylor.” Following a tip from a wise con, played by Arkin, the two head to LA to pull off the biggest scam of their lives, only to learn a list of schemers, including Arkin’s ambitious ex, played by Tomei are also after the money. He’s left to figure out if he and the woman are actually falling in love or is being set up for the ultimate grift…
(NEW YORK) — Hurricane Fiona has strengthened to a Category 2 storm after leaving the entire island of Puerto Rico without power.
The storm system is currently carrying sustained winds of 110 mph as it moves northwest at 10 mph. The hurricane is gaining strength as it heads toward Turks and Caicos and could even escalate to a Category 3 by the time it hits in less than 24 hours.
Fiona made another landfall overnight in the Dominican Republic near Boca de Yuma on the eastern side of the island with sustained winds of 90 mph and even higher gusts.
On Monday morning, the hurricane was moving over the Dominican Republic with damaging winds and rain, causing more flash flooding and hurricane warnings in the region.
At least one person was killed in Puerto Rico as the then-Category 1 storm slammed the island, officials announced Monday.
The Arecibo resident was attempting to fill his generator with gasoline while it was on, causing an ignition, officials said.
Puerto Rico Gov. Pedro Pierluisi warned residents that more rain is expected on the island through Tuesday evening.
“We are going through a difficult moment but our people are strong and very generous,” he said during a press conference.
At least two more people died in a shelter due to natural causes, but those have not been labeled as storm-related deaths, Pierluisi said.
Restoring power in Puerto Rico
LUMA Energy said that only 100,000 out of 1.5 million clients have power on the island.
The governor said Monday the goal is for “a large number of LUMA customers” to have power “in a matter of days.” However, LUMA said in a statement Sunday that “full power restoration could take several days.”
Hospitals on the island are currently operating on generators, according to the governor.
Only 34% of households on the island have potable water after rivers grew and heavy rainfall impacted the system — meaning more than 834,000 people are without drinking water, the governor said Monday.
More than 1,000 people have been rescued by authorities, including a woman rescued Sunday who was stuck in a tree for seven hours after trying to look at the damage, officials said.
Heavy rainfall causes flooding across the island
Fiona strengthened to a hurricane from a tropical storm Sunday morning. The National Hurricane Center said Fiona made landfall in southwestern Puerto Rico on Sunday at 3:20 p.m. ET, dumping torrential rain on much of the island.
Some regions measured up to 25 inches of rain by 8 a.m. Monday, and flash flood warnings remain in effect for much of the island, according to the National Hurricane Center.
A flash flood emergency was issued overnight due to many rivers rising very quickly out of their banks. The Rio Grande de Arecido river rose 13 feet in one hour.
A bridge near Utuado, a town in the central mountainous region of the island, has collapsed, cutting off the communities of Salto Arriba and Guaonico, local newspaper El Vocero de Puerto Rico reported.
The portion of the bridge that collapsed is on Highway 123, a branch of Highway 10, which serves as a link between both roads and is one of the accesses to the University of Puerto Rico at Utuado campus, according to El Vocero.
The bridge, installed by the National Guard following Hurricane Maria, cost about $3 million to construct, the newspaper reported.
The rain saturated areas in the southeastern part of Puerto Rico, along with the mountainous areas, where potential mudslides and winds could cause the most damage.
Prior to landfall, Pierluisi said Puerto Rico was prepared as it could be, with enough resources and manpower in place to respond — adding that the island learned its lessons from the devastating effects of Hurricane Maria in September 2017.
“We’re much in a much better position than we were five years ago,” he said.
Where Fiona heads next
After passing through the Caribbean, the storm system will head northward, passing just east of Turks and Caicos before tracking near Bermuda, forecasts show. The storm system will continue to gradually strengthen in the coming days as it moves north and then northeast this week.
Forecasts place Fiona near Turks and Caicos Monday night into Tuesday morning as a strong Category 2 hurricane with winds near 100 mph.
Tremendous rainfall is forecast, with much of the Dominican Republic expected to receive up to 10 inches and some regions in Turks and Caicos expected to see 8 inches of rain.
On Tuesday morning, Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic will continue to see gradually improving conditions, however, lingering showers and thunderstorms will still be likely, potentially impacting initial cleanup and recovery efforts.
By mid-week, Fiona is forecast to become the first major hurricane of 2022 Atlantic season, with winds of up to 125 mph.
Winds could be as high as 125 mph as the storm passes near Bermuda, bringing strong winds, heavy rain and storm surge. Some models show the storm hitting Bermuda directly on Friday.
While it won’t make landfall in the U.S., the hurricane will affect the entire East Coast with huge waves, rip currents and coastal flooding from Florida to Maine as it moves northward.
President Joe Biden approved an emergency declaration for Puerto Rico on Sunday, which allows federal agencies to coordinate all relief efforts.
Biden’s decision has the “purpose of alleviating the hardship and suffering caused by the emergency on the local population, and to provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures, authorized under Title V of the Stafford Act, to save lives and to protect property and public health and safety, and to lessen or avert the threat of a catastrophe in all 78 municipalities in the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,” the White House said in a statement.
Fiona leaves 1 dead in Guadeloupe
While still a tropical storm, the system battered other Caribbean islands. One person died in the French territory of Guadeloupe, according to The Associated Press. More than 20 others were rescued amid heavy wind and rain according to the AP.
Fiona’s center moved through the island of Guadeloupe on Friday night, bringing heavy rain and gusty winds across the Leeward Islands.
The island’s emergency management office in Puerto Rico even had a blackout during its Saturday morning press conference. Pierluisi reiterated during that press briefing Saturday evening that the fear is that heavy rains will produce mudslides.
Resident Magda Diaz told ABC News outside a San Juan Walmart that she expects to be without power. Diaz said she loses power regularly, especially during smaller storms, and was recently in the dark for three days.
A LUMA Energy official told ABC News on Saturday that the company has been fixing the grid and is ready to get the grid back online if the system fails. LUMA Energy is in charge of the transmission and distribution of electricity on the island.
“We were expecting power outages from Fiona … and we’re bringing in 100 more workers from our parent companies that will be landing Sunday,” LUMA official Don Cortez said.
LUMA Energy’s Crisis Management Manager Abner Gomez told reporters the energy distributor is working to prevent a repeat of Hurricane Maria’s aftermath.
“We are going to make sure [a widespread outage] will not happen because we have the crews,” he said. “There will be damage. There will be outages and we will be ready to respond.”
ABC News’ Daniel Amarante, Rachel DeLima, Kenton Gewecke, Max Golembo and Daniel Peck contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden’s contention in a recent interview that the “pandemic is over” is complicating Senate Democrats’ efforts to secure needed Republican support for COVID-19 relief funding that had been requested by Biden’s administration.
“COVID is not over,” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., said Monday when asked about Biden’s remarks, made during a 60 Minutes appearance that aired the previous day. “I don’t know what he meant — some people use ‘pandemic’ or ‘epidemic’ or other phrases. And he said that COVID isn’t over, the pandemic is over. But the way I look at it, COVID isn’t over.”
Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin agreed.
“The variants are still out there. We are all hoping that it’s over [but] nobody is going to predict with certainty that it is. I’m not,” Durbin, D-Ill., told ABC News on Monday.
When pressed on the fact that the president twice resolutely stated that he believed the pandemic had ended, Durbin shrugged: “Maybe he knows something I don’t.”
“The president has asked in the past not just for pandemic funds for COVID-19 but to prepare for what might be next. And I think that’s always obvious and fair to do that,” Durbin said. “Maybe that’s his approach to it, I’d have to ask him.”
Biden on Sunday told CBS’ 60 Minutes that “the pandemic is over,” adding that “we still have a problem with COVID. We’re still doing a lot of work on it. But the pandemic is over.”
His comments soon became fodder for Republicans who already opposed the additional $22 billion COVID funding for testing and vaccine development that the White House sought.
The administration’s efforts to get lawmakers on Capitol Hill to approve more money have been repeatedly blocked by Republicans. Currently, the White House hopes to have the $22 billion included in a must-pass government funding bill.
But at least 10 Republicans would need to support that move.
“It makes it eminently harder for sure,” Republican Minority Whip John Thune said Monday.
The top Republican on the Senate’s health committee, North Carolina’s Richard Burr, wrote in a Monday letter to the president that he “watched with great interest” Biden’s 60 Minutes interview.
In the letter, Burr asked for more information about how Biden’s view that the “pandemic is over” might influence some of the administration’s policies, including its request for more COVID-19 funding.
“Despite Americans having largely returned to normal life, which you acknowledged when you noted that attendees at the Detroit Auto Show were not wearing masks, your Administration continues to request un-offset emergency funding from Congress, enforce vaccine mandates, and maintain federal emergency declarations that cost taxpayers billions of dollars,” Burr wrote in the letter.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., called Biden’s request for additional money “crazy” since he has now said the pandemic is ended.
“The president saying the pandemic is over is … just kind of mind-boggling,” said Cassidy, who previously worked as a doctor. “He wants tens of billions for COVID and he says the pandemic is over?”
When asked if Biden’s comments meant there was no need for further funding, Cassidy was brief: “Sounds like it to me,” he said.
But some Democrats defended the president. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., said Monday that Biden’s comments were consistent with the changing needs of addressing COVID-19.
“What he’s saying reflects reality. People are not acting like we are in the same kind of crisis we were two years ago,” Murphy said. “It would not be consistent with reality if President Biden was out there suggesting what we’re living through today is the same thing as what we’re living through two years ago.”
(WASHINGTON) — There’s a tension between voter access and voting security, but that balance has been tipping decidedly one way in the recent political environment in which false claims that Donald Trump didn’t lose the 2020 election have muddied the waters, according to many experts who are raising alarms about proposed election-related laws.
Since the last presidential election, conservative state legislators across the country have enacted or introduced a flurry of bills that would increase restrictions to the election system — with a focus, in 2022, on changing how races are run and regulated — according to several nonpartisan organizations who describe themselves as advocating for democracy.
Experts from the States United Democracy Center, the Brennan Center for Justice and other groups who spoke with ABC News tied this growing amount of legislation to the false election fraud allegations that Trump and his supporters’ have been spreading since Joe Biden’s victory in 2020.
Since Trump was defeated by Biden, Trump has continued to claim — without evidence — that his election was marred by ineligible voters, fake votes cast by mail and other problems.
The pro-democracy groups told ABC News that hundreds of GOP-authored bills on voting and elections have already been considered during the 2022 legislative sessions in various states, consistent with a similar trend seen in 2021.
The measures from the past two years would purge some people from voter rolls, restrict mail-in ballot access and early voting — which was heavily emphasized by many states during the COVID-19 pandemic — as well as tighten ID requirements to vote, allow politicians to oversee local election boards and more, according to pro-democracy watchdogs.
The bills introduced at the state level would generally make it harder for eligible Americans to register to vote, cast their ballots and stay on voter rolls in comparison to existing laws, according to the Brennan Center. Joanna Lydgate, the co-founder and CEO of the States United Democracy Center, also specified that restrictive bills introduced over the past two years touch every aspect of current voting systems.
“Through these bills, legislators are kind of trying to take control over practically every step of the electoral process,” she said.
Only a fraction of proposed legislation typically gets signed into law, according to experts. But the “political bluster” of bills churning through statehouses will have an impact on expert-run elections systems that have successfully operated for decades, Lydgate told ABC News.
“In a lot of cases these are really poorly designed bills … it can lead to a lot of really unworkable situations. It can lead to confusion and chaos,” Lydgate said.
Fair Fight Deputy Executive Director Esosa Osa said that in her group’s view, there was a “new dynamic of shifting power over election administration from state and local election officials to more partisan actors, and there’s hyper criminalization of voting.” Fair Fight was founded by Georgia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams in 2014.
“If you consider the ability to vote, the ability to register to vote, to cast a ballot, and to have that ballot counted fairly — we are seeing all three aspects of that attack,” Osa told ABC News.
But John Fortier, a voting and elections expert for the conservative-aligned American Enterprise Institute, noted that some of the election bills come with nuance such as attempts to return elections back to in-person models after the COVID-19 pandemic rather than to create entirely new sets of restrictions.
“Do I think that some of the major bills that are being considered and passed through are really aimed at cutting down turnout? I don’t think they are aimed that way,” he told ABC News.
State legislatures are “not as interested in moving to kind of a Washington state, Oregon, 100% voting-by-mail model,” Fortier said.
In his view, increasing election security doesn’t always involve tightening access to elections themselves.
“I think it is true that Republicans have a lens of looking at elections where they prioritize more integrity issues,” he said. “You can imagine cases where that gets in the way of access, but I don’t think they’re always as contradictory as one thinks.”
For example, Georgia enacted a sweeping 2021 election bill that was criticized by some advocates for increasing regulations on mail voting. But the law also imposed requirements to try and keep poll lines shorter and increase the availability of poll workers.
By the numbers
Fair Fight said that in 2022 they have counted almost triple the amount of election-related legislation they’d tallied during 2011, the last year they marked a highpoint for restrictions on who can vote and how.
In the years 2018, 2019 and 2020 — before the crescendo of unsupported claims by Trump and his allies about problems with elections — the Brennan Center had tallied more pro-voter reforms than anti-voter restrictions.
In 2018, the Brennan Center counted at least 12 states that advanced a combined total of at least 20 bills expanding voting access in comparison to five states that advanced a combined total of at least six bills restricting voting access.
In 2019, 46 states introduced or carried over 688 bills expanding access compared to 29 states introducing or carrying over at least 87 bills restricting voting access.
And in 2020, during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and with many people in isolation, the Brennan Center counted 57 restrictive bills before state legislatures, while 29 states had introduced at least 188 bills to expand access.
Another report, published through a partnership between the nonpartisan voter organizations States United Democracy Center, Law Forward and Protect Democracy, echoed what Fair Fight and the other groups assessed as increasing restrictions on elections.
This new report tallied at least 244 bills introduced in 33 states that would interfere with election administration as of July 31. Twenty-four of those bills have become law, or adopted, across 17 states. That’s up from 229 bills identified in May and 216 bills spanning 41 states during the entirety of the 2021 legislative year.
Arizona and Wisconsin were the two states identified in the report with more than 30 anti-democratic bills introduced or under consideration, according to the report. Every other state
An additional analysis, published in May 2022 from the Brennan Center, reported similar findings for 2022 but tallied additional bills in 2021 — 440 in 49 states — that carried provisions to restrict voting access during the legislative sessions.
“The sheer volume and certainly the growth of the trend is cause for concern,” Lydgate, with the States United Democracy Center, said. “This is a national trend.”
These bills, Osa said, “highlight the broader political ecosystem that we are in following the 2020 election and the big lie” about Trump’s loss.
Opposing views
Simple conclusions about the entire country are hard to draw, however. Despite the influx of restrictive voting legislation moving through Statehouses across the country, there are some efforts to expand voting access as well.
Many state legislatures this year also took steps to broaden voting rights and election access, according to the Brennan Center. The group counted at least 596 of what they termed “expansive” bills in 44 states and Washington, D.C. Most of those proposals would allow for easier voter registration, a process to seek voting rights restoration for those convicted of crimes and easier mail-in voting in states like Arizona, Connecticut, New York and Oregon.
Elsewhere, however, some states have tightened their regulations — though supporters of such moves say it’s about security and smooth election administration.
In 2021, states like Georgia, Florida and Iowa passed sweeping omnibus bills that included election measures like shortening the period for requesting an absentee ballot or adding ID requirements for absentee ballots.
After Georgia saw record-breaking turnout during the March 2021 primary elections — the first test of Democratic predictions that the heightened requirements would actually turn people away from the polls — members of the GOP denounced the attacks as so much smoke.
“[Stacey] Abrams and President Biden lied to the people of Georgia and the country for political gain,” Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said. “From day one, I said that Georgia’s election law balanced security and access, and the facts have proved me right.”
Osa from Fair Fight, and the Brennan Center, however, said that as primary turnout grew in Georgia, so did the turnout gap between white and Black voters.
What worries experts now
The experts who spoke with ABC News called attention to certain kinds of standalone state bills being proposed this year: those that would shift election oversight to partisan legislatures instead of nonpartisan election officials; those that would require political reviews of elections that might delay their certifications; and those that would create “unworkable burdens” or even threat of criminal penalties for election officials.
The democracy experts who spoke with ABC News also expressed concern over the rise of 2020 election deniers — including those, as state legislators, who spearheaded new voting rules — who are now high-profile GOP candidates in the 2022 midterms.
In Arizona, for example, state Rep. Mark Finchem introduced a bill to decertify Arizona’s 2020 election, which Biden won. Finchem also introduced legislation to require hand tabulation of ballots and audits of election systems. He’s now the Republican nominee for secretary of state, Arizona’s highest elections post.
In Pennsylvania, state Sen. Doug Mastriano, now the Republican gubernatorial nominee, previously introduced legislation that would replace the current groups that oversee election administration and establish a commission that would strip away the election powers of the department of state and the secretary of the commonwealth.
A number of the bills moving through Arizona and Rhode Island would require or authorize additional audit processes for future elections. In Arizona, there are also bills that would allow citizens conduct their own reviews of voted ballots.
“This legislation uniformly lacks basic security, accuracy, and reliability measures for these suspect reviews, bestowing inordinate discretion on individuals, imposing no transparency requirements, or failing to mandate clear guidelines for how results are reviewed,” according to a review from the Brennan Center’s February 2022 roundup of voting laws.
Voting-related prosecutions are also cause for worry in some cases, the experts said, as some states aim to crack down on their vanishingly small numbers of verified cases of voter fraud, especially in contrast to the number of overall votes. Florida lawmakers created a new law enforcement entity within the Florida Department of State that is tasked with investigating voter fraud. And in Georgia, a bill signed into law this spring grants the Georgia Bureau of Investigation authority to investigate and prosecute election crimes.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, a Republican, said in April that “this new law will allow us to engage highly-qualified personnel from the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to assist in ensuring our elections are secure and fair.” Last month, Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis announced the arrests of 20 people on suspicion of illegally voting — touting accountability for wrongdoing.
But subsequent news reports and comments from the accused in Florida, however, suggested they thought they had been given permission to vote — casting the issue as a confusing bureaucratic mix-up, not deliberate criminal conduct.
There are also legislative efforts to increase the requirements of election administration, like an Arizona bill that election officials should document “voting irregularities” — or possibly face a criminal penalty. The legislation never defines the term “voting irregularities,” however.
“This is a highly coordinated and connected effort,” said Lydgate of the push to restrict voting access. “And that’s part of why we think it’s so important for voters to pay attention.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden said Sunday that the U.S. would militarily defend Taiwan if China were to attack — reiterating, again, his support for the island as Beijing responded with disapproval.
In a 60 Minutes interview, Biden was asked if “U.S. forces” would respond to aid Taiwan against China. He said, “If in fact there was an unprecedented attack.”
He was asked again, “So unlike Ukraine, to be clear, sir, U.S. forces — U.S. men and women — would defend Taiwan in the event of a Chinese invasion?”
“Yes,” Biden said.
His answer mirrors his response when another CBS News reporter asked him a similar question during a press conference in Tokyo in May and is at least the fourth time he’s said something along these lines, appearing to go beyond the historic U.S. policy of “strategic ambiguity” about Taiwan’s relationship to China, which views the island as a breakaway province despite Taiwan’s separate government.
The U.S is legally required to provide Taiwan with resources to defend itself but doesn’t require a U.S. military response if China were to invade.
Since a 1979 agreement, the U.S. has acknowledged the People’s Republic of China as the sole legal government of China — with Taiwan having emerged as a separate faction after the Chinese civil war — while refraining from commenting on the third-rail question of Taiwanese independence.
At a Monday press conference in Beijing, government spokesperson Mao Ning said that China has lodged complaints with the U.S. in response to Biden’s comments about Taiwan.
She said China “deplores” and “firmly opposes” the president’s latest statements and that China reserves the right to take all necessary measures but said the country is “willing to do our best to strive for peaceful reunification.”
In May, Biden said the “burden” of the U.S. “commitment” to defend the self-governing island of Taiwan was “even stronger” after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine earlier this year.
Taiwanese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Joanne Ou said in response that their government “expresses sincere welcome and gratitude to President Biden and the U.S. government for reiterating its rock solid commitment to Taiwan.”
A White House official insisted to ABC News at the time that Biden’s comment didn’t represent a shift because the president “reiterated our commitment … to provide Taiwan with the military means to defend itself.”
On Sunday night, after Biden’s 60 Minutes interview, a White House official again said that his comments did not, in their view, reflect a change in policy.
In July, after Biden and China’s leader Xi Jinping spoke, a White House official said their discussion on Taiwan was “direct” and “honest,” with Biden reaffirming the U.S. commitment to its historic position. But the official wouldn’t respond to a Chinese readout claiming that Xi said, “Playing with fire will set yourself on fire.”
“President Xi used similar language in the conversation that the two leaders had back in November, but you know, I’m not going to get into parsing the various metaphors that the PRC regularly tends to use on these issues,” the administration official said.
(WASHINGTON) — The number of arrests or detentions of migrants at the border this fiscal year remains at a record high, according to data released Monday — as Republicans level sharp criticism at the Biden administration, even as the White House says it is working to humanely manage immigration and stresses its limited influence over those seeking to enter the country.
U.S. Border Patrol’s apprehensions of migrants have exceeded two million so far this fiscal year, including people who turn themselves into authorities between land ports of entry, according to agency data.
With more than a month still left in the fiscal year, the number of apprehensions marks a significant increase from 2021. That fiscal year, authorities apprehended migrants 1.66 million times and encountered migrants nearly two million times — in what was then a new record. So far in fiscal year 2022, there have been more than 2.4 million migrant encounters.
A growing number of the migrants have been exercising their legal right to avoid deportation via humanitarian claims since the COVID-19 pandemic completely shut down standard immigration processing in March 2020.
The amount of time it takes to resolve the humanitarian claims that migrants can make to remain in the U.S. means many end up staying for months or years while their cases are adjudicated.
Authorities overall saw a 2.2% increase month-over-month in unique encounters with migrants in August, according to the new U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data. That growth came despite fewer migrants from Central America and Mexico, and it was driven by people arriving from Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela, Biden administration officials said Monday.
The administration has had ongoing negotiations with multiple countries that have their own challenges with receiving migrants, the officials said. (Advocates highlight how many of the migrants face economic hardships and sociopolitical turbulence in their home countries.)
The Department of Homeland Security noted on Monday that “more individuals encountered at the border will be removed or expelled this year than any previous year.”
According to the government’s data, of the 203,598 stops along the southwest border last month, more than two-thirds involved single adults and 48% of the single-adult encounters resulted in rapid expulsion from the country pursuant to a Trump-era public health order under Title 42 of U.S. federal law, which cuts down opportunities for migrants to make legal claims to avoid deportation.
Slightly more than 1.04 million Border Patrol apprehensions resulted in a Title 42 expulsion in fiscal year 2021.
Amid the scrutiny of high immigration numbers, Biden administration officials have said that, in their view, the pent-up demand for humanitarian relief during the peak of the COVID-19 health crisis was compounded by former President Donald Trump’s hardline immigration restrictions, including measures that forced asylum-seekers back into Mexico while their claims were processed in the U.S.
As the government has sought to roll back those restrictions, including the “remain in Mexico” policy, officials have also enhanced enforcement efforts, which is a driving force behind the historically high level of apprehensions.
In May, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas described a six-point plan to address border migration when the department was preparing for the end of the Title 42 order before its rescission was blocked in court.
“What we are doing is surging personnel — both at U.S. Customs and Border Protection, specifically the Border Patrol, as well as enforcement and removal operations within Immigration and Customs Enforcement — to bring expedited removal, that’s immigration enforcement proceedings, to the fullest extent that we can,” Mayorkas told lawmakers.
At the time, the secretary testified to plans that included increasing processing speeds to avoid overcrowding at border stations and a resource surge to bolster migrant transportation for those held in U.S. custody as well as medical services.
Officials said Monday that the administration continues to implement and update these plans.
Meanwhile, Republicans have denounced the White House’s approach to the high level of immigration. Some GOP leaders in border states and elsewhere have also used the migrants as part of public stunts to underline their criticism — buying bus and plane tickets to send the migrants to Democratic states where local officials were caught off guard.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams said this week his city needs help in receiving the migrants that have arrived so far, a request that does not appear to resonate with officials in Texas, including Republican Gov. Greg Abbott, who are managing a level of migrant arrivals many times greater compared to the number they sent north.
“We’ve reached out and stated that, let’s coordinate and work together so we can deal with this crisis together,” Adams told ABC News’ Jonathan Karl on This Week on Sunday. “They refused to do so.”
“They took the call and stated that they would coordinate — I’m talking about Gov. Abbott — they would coordinate, and they did not coordinate at all because I don’t think it was politically expedient for them to coordinate,” Adams added. “It was more to do this, basically, political showmanship that you’re seeing now.”
Abbott’s office, which has said in August that the White House’s immigration policy was “overwhelming Texas communities,” did not respond to questions from ABC News about the level of coordination between officials.
(NEW YORK) — There are early signs that new monkeypox cases are slowing down in the U.S.
Experts are optimistic that the virus can be completely eliminated from the U.S. While challenges remain, recent improvement in vaccination efforts could lead to complete elimination but it may take years, experts say.
“Elimination is going to become more challenging because you can imagine that even if we drive cases down, there’s still going to be potentially sustained transmission,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an ABC News contributor and chief innovation officer at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Public health efforts toward behavior modification and vaccination are showing reassuring results with only 78 new cases reported on Sept. 14. Since May, nearly 60,000 cases of monkeypox have been found in over 100 countries globally.
Historically, monkeypox has been found in 10 countries in central and western African, according to the World Health Organization (WHO). But in the spring of 2022, the virus began spreading in North America, Europe and other continents that historically haven’t witnessed major, prolonged outbreaks.
“I think the goal is containment by continuing treating and educating,” said Dr. Richard Silvera, an associate program director of the Infectious Diseases Fellowship and assistant professor of medicine at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.
Monkeypox is rarely deadly but often has painful symptoms, including blisters and a rash. The virus primarily spreads through close contact, including hugging or touching someone with a rash.
To contain and hopefully eliminate the virus, experts believe it is important to monitor animals for monkeypox because animals can also carry the virus and pass it to humans.
“The way to eliminate it is to ensure that there’s no domestic animal species that becomes a reservoir,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
In previous testing efforts, several animal species have been found to be susceptible to the monkeypox virus. There is no confirmed reservoir for the virus and experts believe further studies and surveillance will be key in elimination and even global eradication.
“There’s a lot to be encouraged by” but it’s “going to depend upon if we’re able to contain this in the human population,” said Dr. Anne Rimoin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
In an effort to contain the global outbreak, the WHO released a public health advisory in July for gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men. Anyone can get monkeypox but because the current outbreak affected this group first, it has continued to spread among men who have sex with men — now the most at-risk population. The WHO is encouraging people to share only non-stigmatizing information from trustworthy sources in order to combat misinformation and help slow the spread.
Survey and vaccination data suggest that gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men are largely aware of the monkeypox outbreak and taking steps to slow the spread of the virus. Rimoin said this is due to the group being “very willing to talk about things that are complicated.”
As of mid-September, the U.S. has vaccinated nearly 500,000 people against monkeypox.
“We must continue to aggressively respond using our entire toolkit, including vaccination, testing, and education about risk to inform behavior change,” said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky.
Although many experts are cautiously optimistic about the outbreak in the U.S., others say it’s possible monkeypox is here to stay.
“We’re probably going to see monkeypox cases for years to come,” Brownstein said.
(WASHINGTON) — A hotter-than-expected inflation report last week dispelled hopes of relief for strained households and rekindled questions about U.S. policy for fighting sky-high prices.
The Federal Reserve has instituted a series of aggressive interest rate hikes in recent months as it tries to slash price increases by slowing the economy and choking off demand. But the approach risks tipping the U.S. into an economic downturn and putting millions out of work.
Moreover, the rate hikes have failed to significantly reduce prices, prompting suggestions of policy alternatives that some economists told ABC News would better address the root causes of inflation, provide relief for struggling consumers and forgo the danger posed by a possible recession.
On the other hand, some economists told ABC News that the Fed’s rate hikes are the best tool for fighting inflation but the central bank hasn’t increased them far enough. For its part, the central bank is set to impose another major rate hike on Thursday.
Economists who support policy alternatives propose measures like price controls, a windfall profits tax on some corporations that charge high prices and a dramatic expansion of U.S. production to address supply shortages.
“The inflation over the last couple of years caught a lot of people off guard,” Lauren Melodia, the deputy director for fiscal and economic policies at the research group Center for New York City Affairs at The New School, told ABC News. “There’s a way in which society wants one solution for something.”
Here’s what you need to know about alternative policy solutions for fighting inflation:
Price controls
One of the most widely discussed and controversial solutions for inflation is price controls.
The thinking behind it is simple: When prices are pummeling consumers, the government imposes a measure that prohibits companies from selling particular goods above a certain price. Milk could face one price cap, for instance; soap could face another.
Isabella Weber, an economics professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a proponent of price controls, said the limits could be targeted toward specific items that have experienced particularly sharp price increases, especially essential goods like gas and food.
“Price controls help you avoid a price explosion,” Weber told ABC News.
There is a precedent for price controls in the U.S. To stem inflation brought about by supply shortages during World War II, President Franklin Roosevelt empowered the newly created Office of Price Administration to cap prices on a slew of products. The move is widely credited with helping to limit inflation during the war, but it also gave rise to a black market for some items.
Decades later, in 1971, President Richard Nixon imposed price controls in an effort to slash inflation and ensure his re-election the following year. The controls remained in place until 1974 but were seen by many as ineffective at reining in price hikes.
The different outcomes in the 1940s and 1970s show that price controls help fight inflation but not in every case, Weber said, adding that price controls only limit inflation temporarily as other fixes address the causes behind the price pressures.
“It’s not that price controls always work or never work,” she said. “Price controls can work in certain contexts if tailored the right way.”
Some economists, however, reject the notion of targeted price controls.
“Every price is connected to every other price in the economy,” Catherine Pakaluk, a professor of economics at the Busch School of Business at Catholic University, told ABC News. “If you put certain products at bargain rates in relation to the rest of the economy, they get scooped up even faster and it generates supply shortages.”
For example, a price control on milk would prompt shoppers to load up on it and avoid comparatively high items that lack controls, such as meat, Pakaluk said.
The fear of empty shelves carries heightened concern because supply shortages remain a central cause of U.S. inflation and price controls could exacerbate that root problem even further, Pakaluk added.
“The economy is already suffering a really bad situation with shortages,” she said.
Windfall profits tax
Rather than limit prices, some solutions seek to rein in corporate profits.
A windfall profits tax rests on the premise that inflation has resulted in part from alleged price gouging committed by corporations that have reported record profits amid the inflation crisis, such as oil giants.
In theory, a tax on excessive profits should disincentivize profiteering and bring prices down.
Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., backed a bill in May that would empower a federal agency and state attorneys general to enforce a ban on excessive price hikes.
On the whole, economists sharply disagree over the extent to which excessive profits have contributed to inflation. Similarly, economists who spoke to ABC News differed on whether a windfall profits tax would bring down prices.
Benjamin Powell, a senior fellow at the Independent Institute, dismissed the solution, saying it poses the same risk as price controls: exacerbating supply shortages.
“It will just discourage some businesses from supplying goods that are already in short supply,” he said.
Melodia, of the Center for New York City Affairs, disagreed. Because businesses seek to optimize profit, the economy needs a safeguard to prevent them from doing so when prices are highly elevated, she said.
“There is so much evidence over the past couple years that corporations have had increased profits across the board – not just in the oil industry,” she said. “We don’t want companies jacking up prices because they can.”
Some economists, however, told ABC News that a windfall profits tax may push prices higher rather than bring them down.
Richard Wolff, an author and professor of economics emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said the measure would need additional protections because otherwise it could drive companies to hike prices even more to overcome the losses imposed by the tax.
“What it becomes is an incentive to raise prices,” he said.
Ramp up production
Another policy for fighting inflation centers on an expansion of U.S. production in order to address a supply shortage.
At bottom, inflation owes to an imbalance between supply and demand. The surge in demand for goods and labor has far outpaced supply, as COVID-related bottlenecks have slowed delivery times and interrupted services while infection fears have kept workers on the sidelines.
One way to address that imbalance is to dramatically increase supply, thereby bringing it in balance with outsized demand.
Economists who spoke to ABC News largely agreed on the prudence of increased U.S. production but said it would not address immediate inflation, since the necessary output overhaul would take several years.
“It’s the most important thing we could be doing if we want sustained growth without price pressure,” J.W. Mason, a professor of economics at John Jay College, told ABC News. “We should be investing in capacity.”
The policy approach will likely take several years, he added.
“It’s not an immediate or short-term solution,” he said. “Obviously, it’s not going to limit price increases over the next months or year.”
Powell, of the Independent Institute, shared the support for increased U.S. production but opposed public investment. Instead, he said the U.S. should remove current policies that impede private sector growth.
He said he supports “lowering taxes and regulatory barriers that prevent entrepreneurs from bringing new investment.”
Regardless of where they stood on particular policies, several economists told ABC News that the U.S. needs a robust public dialogue about whether to pursue further rate hikes or explore alternatives.
“It’s a big fat mess,” said Wolff. “There should’ve been a debate before launching into interest rates. There should’ve been a discussion between political leaders and the public.”
