How did two Hollywood actors find themselves as owners of the third oldest professional football club in the world?
That’s what FX’s new docuseries Welcome to Wrexham strives to answer. It details the story of how Deadpool himself Ryan Reynolds teamed up with It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia creator and star Rob McElhenney to purchase the fifth-tier Red Dragons, based in the working-class town of Wrexham in North Wales. It sounds like the start of a joke – but it’s all too real and, according to Reynolds, it was all McElhenney’s idea.
“We didn’t know each other before this endeavor. It was Rob who contacted me and kind of laid it all out,” Reynolds tells ABC News. “I love building businesses, that’s a big part of my life. And Rob certainly is no stranger to that – he’s created two, now three, huge, huge television series.”
Their plan is to build Wrexham A.F.C. up from underdogs into champions, and to tell the human stories of the Welsh community along the way. Their “entire intention,” McElhenney says, “is to show people that even if they don’t think that they’re a fan of football, or even a fan of sports, that we can get them invested in the story.”
Reynolds is confident that they will succeed. “I think that this town and this community has this kind of wellspring of stories coming out of it that, really, are tangential to football, but at the same time, it’s really about those people and the personalities in that community who live and die with this club,” he says.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Tuesday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
San Francisco 3, Detroit 1
NY Yankees 4, NY Mets 2
Colorado 7, Texas 6
Arizona 7, Kansas City 3
Cleveland 3, San Diego 1
Miami 5, Oakland 3
Seattle 4 Washington 2
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Tampa Bay 11, LA Angels 1
Baltimore 5, Chi White Sox 3
Houston 4, Minnesota 2
Toronto 9, Boston 3
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Chi Cubs 2, St. Louis 0
Atlanta 6, Pittsburgh 1
Philadelphia 7, Cincinnati 6
St. Louis 13, Chi Cubs 3
LA Dodgers 10, Milwaukee 1
WOMEN’S NATIONAL BASKETBALL ASSOCIATION PLAYOFFS
Chicago 90, New York 72
(UVALDE, Texas) — The Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District is facing a $27 billion class-action suit in connection with the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School that left 19 students and two teachers dead.
Attorney Charles Bonner told ABC News that he and several other attorneys served the Uvalde school district with a notice of claim Monday night following a school board meeting.
Uvalde:365 is a continuing ABC News series reported from Uvalde and focused on the Texas community and how it forges on in the shadow of tragedy.
The notice cites an investigative report from the Texas House of Representatives which says, “Uvalde CISD and its police department failed to implement their active shooter plan and failed to exercise command and control of law enforcement responding to the tragedy.”
“We want this amount of money to compensate these people for this wrong that was parachuted upon them,” Bonner said.
Bonner also said he hopes the large sum can fund mental health resources and hold police forces accountable. The lawsuit will be formally filed in September, naming a long list of defendants.
The Uvalde school district did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
(WASHINGTON) — Dr. Anthony Fauci on Tuesday responded to Republican vows to investigate him after he steps down from his government roles in December, saying he would consider testifying but not submit to “character assassination.”
Top Republicans in Congress pounced on the news of his planned departure, saying if they retake the majority in the upcoming midterm election, they will grill the nation’s leading infectious disease expert about his role during the COVID pandemic.
“Dr. Fauci lost the trust of the American people when his guidance unnecessarily kept schools closed and businesses shut while obscuring questions about his knowledge on the origins of COVID. He owes the American people answers. A @HouseGOP majority will hold him accountable,” House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy tweeted.
Sen. Rand Paul, who has had many public squabbles with Fauci, pledged to hold a “full-throated investigation into the origins of the pandemic.”
“He will be asked to testify under oath regarding any discussions he participated in concerning the lab leak,” he tweeted.
Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas also weighed in, saying on Twitter: “In January, a GOP Congress should hold Fauci fully accountable for his dishonesty, corruption, abuse of power, and multiple lies under oath.”
“Retirement can’t shield Dr. Fauci from congressional oversight,” House Oversight and Reform Committee ranking member James Comer said in a statement Monday.
Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a household name during the height of the coronavirus pandemic and later served as chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, announced on Monday that he would be stepping down to pursue the next phase of his career after serving nearly 50 years in the federal government.
“While I am moving on from my current positions, I am not retiring,” Fauci said in a statement. “After more than 50 years of government service, I plan to pursue the next phase of my career while I still have so much energy and passion for my field.”
Fauci, who turns 82 in December, has said for months that he plans to step away from his public role as a national leader on the pandemic once COVID-19 reaches a “steady state.”
Louisiana GOP Sen. John Kennedy had strong words for Fauci, saying Republican lawmakers could eventually subpoena him.
“Well, unless Dr. Fauci decides to seek asylum in some foreign country whose Powerball jackpot is 287 chickens and a goat, and therefore, which won’t enforce a subpoena from the United States Congress, then, Dr. Fauci, retirement or not, is going to be spending a lot of time in front of a congressional committee and committees if Republicans take back control,” Kennedy said during an interview with FOX News Monday.
He added: “We’re going to have a lot of questions and we’re going to subpoena him and expect him to answer. And I would not advise Dr. Fauci to put down a nonrefundable deposit on a cruise.”
Republicans – some of whom could become future committee chairs if Republicans retake the majority this fall — have also vowed to hold hearings to determine the origins of COVID and have said they believe Fauci may have concealed information and has told “multiple lies under oath” regarding the novel coronavirus’ origination. The pandemic’s origins remain controversial.
“It’s good to know that with his retirement, Dr. Fauci will have ample time to appear before Congress and share under oath what he knew about the Wuhan lab, as well as the ever-changing guidance under his watch that resulted in wrongful mandates being imposed on Americans,” House Minority Whip Steve Scalise said in a statement.
Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, the top Republican on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, said in a statement that the committee will pursue answers and accountability regarding Fauci’s tenure with the NIH.
“As he prepares to leave his leadership positions at the White House and at the National Institutes of Health, I hope Dr. Anthony Fauci will work to provide more transparency to the American people. We need answers to many questions around the government’s failed COVID-19 pandemic response, how this pandemic started, and his role in supporting taxpayer-funded risky research without proper oversight in China…We need a full accounting of actions taken and decisions made to ensure these mistakes never happen again,” Rodgers said in a statement.
“To that end, House Republicans on Energy and Commerce will continue to pursue answers and accountability. Our oversight of Dr. Fauci’s tenure with NIH, the White House and leading NIAID will continue past his departure and until the American people have the answers they need,” she said.
Other Republicans have questioned the timing of Fauci’s departure, with some accusing him of “conveniently resigning” before a potential red wave of Republicans in the coming midterm election.
“Dr. Fauci clearly knows the Red Tsunami is coming this November which is why he is retiring before Republicans gain control of the House. Dr. Fauci, the highest paid US government official who has been in his appointed bureaucratic position since before I was born, is an example of an unelected Washington bureaucrat who was given far too much power throughout his career and caused irreparable harm to the American people,” House Republican Conference Chair Elise Stefanik said in a statement.
Rep. Andy Biggs, the former chair of the House Freedom Caucus, called Fauci a “coward” and said Fauci is “conveniently resigning from his position in December before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years.”
Fauci responded to Republican critics on Tuesday saying he would “certainly” consider testifying before Congress after he steps down at the end of the year and dismissed their plans to conduct oversight as a “character assassination.”
“I certainly would consider that… I believe oversight is a very important part of government structure, and I welcome it and it can be productive. But what has happened up to now, is more of a character assassination than it is oversight,” Fauci said during an interview with CNN on Tuesday.
“So, sure, I would be happy to cooperate, so long as we make it something that is a dignified oversight, which it should be, and not just bringing up ridiculous things and attacking my character. That’s not oversight,” he added.
Fauci said the animosity towards him from some Republicans played no role “at all” in his decision to depart his role in government.
“Really, none at all. Not even a slight amount. I have nothing to hide. And I can defend everything I’ve done. So that doesn’t phase me or bother me. My decisions of stepping down go back well over year,” Fauci said.
He further reiterated that he had hoped to leave his post at the end of the Trump administration but stayed after Biden personally asked him to remain on board to support his administration’s COVID-19 response.
“I thought that was going to last about a year… that we would be having COVID-19 behind us after a year. But obviously painfully so, that’s not the case,” Fauci said. “I think we’re in a relatively good place with regard to COVID, if we utilize and implement the interventions that we have, and I just felt it was the right time.”
ABC News’ Arielle Mitropoulos and Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Rep. Charlie Crist on Tuesday defeated Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, ABC News projects, setting up a high-profile matchup against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis in the fall.
With about 92% of the expected vote counted, Crist won with roughly 60% of the vote, while Fried trailed in second with about 35%.
Crist will next face off against DeSantis, a top Democratic boogeyman who has emerged as a major GOP culture warrior, forcing through several policies through in Florida on issues like discussing sexual orientation and gender topics in public schools.
Crist previously served as governor himself — but as a Republican before becoming an independent once leaving office and ultimately running for the House as a Democrat. Running against Fried, Florida’s only statewide elected Democrat, he insisted he could appeal to a broader swath of the electorate with his more moderate “happy warrior” persona.
DeSantis, who narrowly won his 2018 race, heads into the general with a war chest of over $130 million — and a rising national profile.
Democrats hope to unseat him in an attempt to not only win back the governor’s mansion but also cut off a potential 2024 presidential bid by the first-term governor.
In the primary, Crist and Fried battled over their ideological purity and ability to defeat DeSantis.
Crist also criticized Fried for her ties to the Republican Party. As a lobbyist for a medical marijuana company, she campaigned for former State Sen. Manny Diaz of Miami, the current education commissioner and staunch ally of DeSantis. Fried also was college friends with Trump-ally Rep. Matt Gaetz.
Fried lambasted Crist’s party switching, casting him as soft on key Democratic issues like abortion access and argued that she could produce a groundswell of Democratic voters this November.
(KIEV) — In some ways, 14-year-old Dasha Pivtoratska is like other children her age. She wants to become a choreographer, she shares videos via TikTok and she lights up when she talks about her pets.
But having encountered the Russian invasion of her hometown in Ukraine, a village near Kiev named Katyuzhanka, Dasha has suffered loss and experienced trauma that sets her apart from other children her age.
The war in Ukraine has affected children in profound and incalculable ways. Three million children inside the country and more than 2 million children living as refugees are in need of humanitarian assistance, according to UNICEF.
The agency has also reported that nearly 1,000 children have been killed or injured during the course of the war, which will reach its six-month mark on Wednesday.
Dasha was traveling in the car with her father, driving home, when Russian soldiers opened fire on their vehicle.
“The first shots hit the gas tank, then the windshield,” Dasha told ABC News reporter Britt Clennett. “My dad started to pull back, we went back to the road, and [from] there they started shooting from everywhere.”
Dasha described watching the tanks approach, like a “column,” and how her dad tried to escape the Russian forces by driving in reverse down the street.
The car caught on fire, and Dasha described being told to leave the car. She ran to another car and that’s when she was shot, she said.
She was hit by bullets in her arm and her thigh, and tried to crawl away, apparently making noise that alerted Russian soldiers to her presence.
“About ten minutes later they walked over to me,” she said. “They kicked me in the leg and apparently [thought] that I was already dead. And then they left.”
“I understood almost nothing. It was a shock,” she said. “There was no feeling of pain. Everything was numb.”
She was eventually rescued by her grandfather, and at some point realized that her father had been killed.
“I loved him very, very much,” she said, adding that she had recently been growing closer to him. “I spent a lot of time with him,” she said. “We talked on different topics. He was the only one with whom I could talk. Only he could support me that much.”
Dasha would eventually have surgery on her bullet wounds, and is currently undergoing rehabilitation for her hip. Sometimes the leg hurts, she said, and it impacts her movement.
Regardless, she continues to dream of working as a choreographer, studying choreography in school after ninth grade and then teaching it.
The pain from the bullet wounds is minor compared to the anguish of losing a family member.
“It’s hard of course,” she said during the interview. “But you can’t do anything.”
(NEW YORK) — For generations, Black Americans have grappled with a troubling reality when it comes to swimming.
Black Americans drown at a rate 50 percent higher than their white counterparts, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
It’s a grim statistic rooted in systemic racism that’s led to a persistent lack of access to pools and swim classes for Black children, according to experts.
Anthony Patterson, the president of the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit Nile Swim Club, said the lingering problem is a civil rights issue.
“I think that it’s a lack of access,” Anthony Patterson, the president of the Pennsylvania-based nonprofit Nile Swim Club, told ABC’s “Nightline.”
Nile Swim Club has been providing free swim lessons to kids for the past four years, part of its “No Child Will Drown In Our Town” campaign, and he said that it is imperative that more Black kids learn these life-saving skills.
“It’s up to us,” he said. “It appears that counting on other folks to teach our children how to swim is not happening in our community.”
Achieving this goal means that the country will have to confront and undo the systemic racism that led to it, according to Patterson.
Nearly 64% of Black children in the country have little or no swimming ability, compared to 40% of white children, according to USA Swimming, the national governing body for the American sport of swimming.
The swimming deficit in the Black community can be traced back to slavery. During which, enslaved Africans were forbidden from swimming. Over time, Black Americans were historically denied access to pools and beaches.
During the Jim Crow era, pools were segregated and there were far fewer affordable swim classes for Black families, according to historians.
The Nile Swim Club, located in Yeadon, was created in 1958 in response to that segregated environment after two Black families found out they were deliberately being denied access to a whites-only swim club, according to Patterson.
“Our founders decided instead of fighting and protesting and forcing them to have us join their club, they decided, ‘You know what? We’ll go back to our community [and] raise the money we need,’ and pretty much purchased these four and a half acres of land and put the Nile Swim Club here,” he said.
Patterson said this segregation is still going on in swim clubs across the country.
In 2012, the Justice Department found the historically white Valley Club in Pennsylvania discriminated against Black children during a camp pool trip in 2009. The club is now defunct.
Imani Kingcade sent her two sons, James and Cairo, to the Nile’s free swim program and told “Nightline” it made a huge difference.
“Cairo just had a big fear of water, period,” she told “Nightline.” “He didn’t want the water coming down on him.”
The boys graduated from the program this summer.
The Nile Swim Club isn’t the only organization helping Black kids improve their swim skills.
Jim Ellis, 74, created the Philadelphia Department of Recreation Swim Team in 1971, and became the first all-Black swim team in the country. He still coaches young swimmers and told “Nightline” that he’s heard too many misconceptions about Black swimmers over the years.
“African-Americans can’t swim. Their bones are too heavy. They’re not built right. Well, I’m African American, I’ve been swimming all my life. So this is a stereotype,” he told “Nightline.”
Ellis said many Black swimmers have proven their worth in the competitive field.
Cullen Jones is one of them.
Jones has won four Olympic medals, two gold and two silver, as well as several gold medals at other international swim competitions. He made history when he won the gold medal in the 100-meter freestyle relay in the 2008 Olympics and became the first Black American swimmer to do so.
Jones told “Nightline” that there is still a way to go before Black American competitive swimmers are given more chances.
“Access is a very easy way for a lot of people to be like, oh, this is the reason why Black people don’t swim. That [swimming] is something that has been pushed out of our culture. There are [Black] swimmers in other countries. Black people swim. It’s a U.S. problem that we believe that this is something we don’t do,” he said,” he said.
Jones, a New Jersey native, said he learned how to swim after nearly drowning while visiting a water park with his family when he was young.
That incident prompted his mother to insist he learn to swim. Now retired from competitive swimming, Jones is determined to make swim lessons more accessible to all. He works as a water safety advocate with USA Swimming’s “Make a Splash” campaign.
“Anyone can drown. I can drown, Michael Phelps can drown. What we like to do is say that we are becoming safer around the water,” he said.
“We’re seeing progress,” Jones added, “And for any person that is interested, fearful, I won’t tell you my mom’s age, but she’s learning to swim. So it’s never too late to get out there and learn to swim.”
(SPRINGDALE, Utah) — A hiker who went missing after flash floods hit Utah’s Zion National Park last week has been found dead, park officials said Tuesday.
Jetal Agnihotri, of Tucson, Arizona, was found in the Virgin River on Monday and was later pronounced dead by a medical examiner, park officials said.
“Our deepest sympathy goes out to the friends and family of Jetal Agnihotri,” Zion National Park superintendent Jeff Bradybaugh said in a statement.
The National Park Service initially received multiple reports of park visitors being swept off their feet by a flash flood in the Narrows in the Zion Canyon at around 2:15 p.m. on Friday.
One hiker was sent to the hospital, while rangers found several hikers isolated near Riverside Walk due to high flood water, the National Park Service said.
Agnihotri was reported missing Friday evening after she was overdue from a trip in the Narrows. She was found in the Virgin River near the Court of the Patriarchs, which is about 6 river miles south of the Narrows, park officials said.
The National Park Service was assisting the Washington County Sheriff’s Office and Zion’s rescue team as they searched parts of the Virgin River, located south of the park, for Agnihotri this week.
The Washington County Sheriff’s Office’s water team investigated the fast-flowing and deep areas of the river, while dog handlers looked into areas with vegetation and log jams, park officials said.
More than 170 responders ultimately participated in the four-day search and rescue operation, park officials said.
Amid the search, Agnihotri’s family was anxiously awaiting news.
“We don’t know what she’s going through, where she is,” her brother, Pujan Agnihotri, told Salt Lake City ABC affiliate KTVX as the search entered day three.
Pujan Agnihotri had praised the National Park Service for its efforts in the search for his sister, whom he described as “strong-minded” and “independent.”
“We have confidence in […] whatever decision she would have taken,” Pujan Agnihotri said. “Unfortunately, this flash [flood came] out of nowhere, there [were] no caution signs, there was no closure during the flash flood.”
ABC News’ Nadine El-Bawab and Nicholas Kerr contributed to this report.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — The Internal Revenue Service said it is conducting a comprehensive review of its security systems amid recent threats against IRS employees.
Some of the rhetoric comes after many Republican lawmakers and media figures claimed, without evidence, that the $78 billion being sent to the IRS over 10 years as part of the Inflation Reduction Act is so more agents can be hired to audit the middle class.
“This includes conducting risk assessments based on data-driven decisions given the current environment and monitoring perimeter security, designations of restricted areas, exterior lighting, security around entrances to our facilities and other various protections,” IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig wrote to employees and obtained by ABC News.
“We also monitor threat intelligence and have increased engagement with TIGTA, Department of Homeland Security and local law enforcement officials so we’re ready to implement additional countermeasures and notifications to employees if circumstances warrant,” Rettig wrote.
The commissioner said it is personal.
“I’ll continue to make every effort to dispel any lingering misperceptions about our work. And I will continue to advocate for your safety in every venue where I have an audience,” he said. “You go above and beyond every single day, and I am honored to work with each of you.”
There has been much debate about an increase in IRS agents.
The Internal Revenue Service does not plan to use the nearly $80 billion it’s set to receive in funding from the Inflation Reduction Act to hire 87,000 new agents in order to target middle class Americans, a Treasury Department official told ABC News last week and documents verify, rejecting a claim widely circulated by Republican lawmakers and right-wing media personalities.
In a letter to Rettig, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said the agency is planning on hiring auditors who can enforce the tax laws against high-income Americans and corporations, not the middle class, along with employees to provide customer service to taxpayers. The majority of hires will fill the positions of about 50,000 IRS employees on the verge of retirement, which will net about 20,000 – 30,000 workers, not 87,000.
“New staff will be hired to improve taxpayer services and experienced auditors who can take on corporate and high-end tax evaders, without increasing audit rates relative to historical norms for people earning under $400,000 each year,” Treasury Department spokesperson Julia Krieger said in a statement last week.
The billions heading toward the IRS are part of the Inflation Reduction Act signed into law by President Joe Biden earlier this month.
Onur Dogman/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images
(NEW YORK) — Former Twitter head of security, Peiter Zatko, alleged in a whistleblower federal complaint last month that the social media giant had numerous wide-ranging information security system lapses, according to a copy of the complaint made public on Tuesday.
According to the complaint, the company prioritized growth over policing spam and bots on the platform, as some employees stood to receive $10 million bonuses based on increasing daily users.
In response, Twitter blasted Zatko, who worked at the company from November 2020 to January 2022, saying he was spreading a “false narrative about Twitter” and was fired for “ineffective leadership and poor performance.” The company also said Zatko’s public remarks are “riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
In a statement, attorneys representing Katko rebuked the characterization from Twitter.
“Mr. Zatko repeatedly raised concerns about Twitter’s grossly inadequate information security systems to the Company’s Executive Committee and Board of Directors throughout his tenure,” they said.
They also said, “On January 19, 2022, a mere two weeks after Mr. Zatko clashed with Mr. Agrawal and Mr. Kordestani about these issues, Twitter abruptly terminated his employment.”
The complaint, first reported by The Washington Post, becomes public as Tesla CEO Elon Musk — the richest person in the world, according to the Forbes Billionaires list — has sought to terminate his $44 billion bid to acquire Twitter over concerns about spam accounts on the platform.
Twitter sued Musk last month in an attempt to force him to complete his purchase of the company after he declared in early July he was walking away from the deal.
Alex Spiro, an attorney at law firm Quinn Emanuel who represents Musk in that suit, said the firm has subpoenaed Zatko, who goes by the nickname “Mudge.”
“We found his exit and that of other key employees curious in light of what we have been finding,” Spiro said in a statement.
Whistleblower Aid, the lawyers that are representing Zatko, told ABC News in a statement “the disclosure speaks for itself and Mudge stands by everything in it.”
Whistleblower Aid confirmed Zatko’s complaint and the authenticity of the document published by The Washington Post. Zatko sent his complaint in July to the Federal Trade Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Department of Justice.
The complaint makes a host of allegations about Twitter’s failure to secure its platform.
The complaint alleges that Twitter made false and misleading statements to users and the FTC about the company’s efforts to protect the privacy and integrity of the platform for more than a decade.
In turn, Twitter violated a settlement that the company reached with the FTC in 2011 in which the company agreed to create a “comprehensive information security program,” the complaint says.
According to the complaint, the misleading remarks made by Twitter include a tweet from CEO Parag Agrawal in May, in which he said that the company is “strongly incentivized to detect and remove as much spam as we possibly can.”
A Twitter spokesperson told ABC News: “Mr. Zatko was fired from his senior executive role at Twitter in January 2022 for ineffective leadership and poor performance. What we’ve seen so far is a false narrative about Twitter and our privacy and data security practices that is riddled with inconsistencies and inaccuracies and lacks important context.”
“Mr. Zatko’s allegations and opportunistic timing appear designed to capture attention and inflict harm on Twitter, its customers and its shareholders. Security and privacy have long been company-wide priorities at Twitter and will continue to be,” the spokesperson added.
The whistleblower complaint is the latest in a series of major developments for Twitter and Musk as they remain locked in a legal dispute over his decision to terminate his acquisition of the company.
Previously, Musk has claimed that Twitter has not provided him with an accurate estimate of the number of bots on the platform. Twitter has rebuked that claim, saying it has provided Musk with information in accordance with conditions set out in the acquisition deal.
Last month, a Delaware court determined that the trial in a lawsuit brought by Twitter against Musk should take place in October, granting an expedited timeline for the case.
