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Jan. 6 committee expects more information soon from Secret Service amid deleted Jan. 6 messages

July 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — Ahead of Thursday’s hearing by the House’s Jan. 6 committee, investigators anticipate receiving more information from the Secret Service “to get the full picture” of what occurred before and during the Capitol insurrection last year, including as it related to text messages agents sent in that period of time, Rep. Zoe Lofgren said Sunday.

“We expect to get them by this Tuesday,” Lofgren, a California Democrat and member of the House committee, told ABC “This Week” co-anchor Martha Raddatz. Lofgren was referring to “pertinent texts” the agency said they had in the wake of a complaint last week from an internal watchdog that the Secret Service had deleted texts from Jan. 5 and Jan. 6, 2021, after the watchdog sought those records.

“We need all of the texts from the fifth and sixth of January. I was shocked to hear that they didn’t back up their data before they reset their iPhones. That’s crazy, and I don’t know why that would be,” Lofgren told Raddatz, “but we need to get this information to get the full picture.”

In a previous statement, the Secret Service — which was subpoenaed by the committee on Friday — said any “insinuation” that they intentionally deleted texts was false and that the committee had their “full and unwavering cooperation.”

On “This Week,” Raddatz asked Lofgren about what evidence the public could expect at Thursday’s hearing, which the committee has said will detail the Trump White House’s reaction to the unfolding riot.

“I’m going to let the hearings speak for itself, but we hope to go through minute by minute what happened, what didn’t happen on that day and people can make their own judgment,” Lofgren said.

She said the hearing would not touch on the allegation of witness tampering that Wyoming Republican Rep. Liz Cheney, the committee’s vice-chair, raised during the last hearing — saying that Trump had attempted to contact an unnamed witness who hasn’t appeared publicly. (Trump’s spokesman called Cheney a liar.)

Raddatz noted that while some in the public have been influenced by the committee’s evidence during the hearings, “a recent Monmouth poll [from late June] found less than a quarter of Americans are paying attention and 90% of those say the hearings have not changed their minds.”

“I think some people have heard us. More than 55 million people have watched some part of the committee proceedings,” Lofgren said.

Meanwhile, she said, “This investigation is very much ongoing. The fact that series of hearings is going to be concluded this Thursday doesn’t mean that our investigation is over. It’s very active, new witnesses are coming forward, additional information is coming forward.”

The committee is also weighing seeking interviews with Trump and Trump’s vice president, Mike Pence, as was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

“Everything is on the table,” Lofgren said — including a possible criminal referral, which committee members have repeatedly said they are considering but which amounts to a symbolic gesture rather than a legal directive. The decision is ultimately up to prosecutors.

As for the Department of Justice’s cases related to Jan. 6, Lofgren said she believed the wrongdoing went beyond the false electors scheme the committee had detailed — evidence the committee said the DOJ has now requested.

“I do think that there’s a much broader plot here. I think that’s pretty obvious,” Lofgren said. “I would not want to tell the attorney general how to conduct his investigations. But I will say this, they have subpoena power and they have a lot easier way to enforce their subpoenas than the Congress does.”

Uvalde report outlines ‘shortcomings and failures’ before and during attack

July 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(UVALDE, Texas) — Lawmakers in Texas on Sunday unveiled the first detailed investigative report into the May 24 mass shooting at Robb Elementary School, laying out the lapses in preparation, training and judgment in connection with one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history.

Their report, which painted the most complete portrait to date of the massacre, described a series of “shortcomings and failures of the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District and of various agencies and officers of law enforcement.”

Members of a special committee of the Texas state legislature met Sunday with family members of the victims to present their findings and field questions from a community still seeking answers nearly two months after a gunman killed 19 students and two teachers.

Family members of the victims say the anguish of losing their loved ones has been compounded by a failure on the part of state and local leaders to articulate what took police officers nearly 77 minutes to confront and kill the 18-year-old gunman.

Senior law enforcement and elected officials have repeatedly shared misleading or contradictory information about the police response, testing the community’s faith in leadership. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said he had been “misled” by authorities after conveying inaccurate information to the public days after the shooting — a blunder that he said left him “livid.”

In those first hours, officials painted a picture of heroism and fast action by police — but in the days and weeks since, that portrait has been turned on its head.

“There are people who deserve answers the most, and those are the families whose lives have been destroyed,” Abbott said. “They need answers that are accurate, and it is inexcusable that they may have suffered from any inaccurate information whatsoever.”

Last month, at a hearing before a state Senate panel, Texas Department of Public Safety Director Steven McCraw called the police response an “abject failure” and claimed that enough officers and equipment arrived on the scene within three minutes to “neutralize” the shooter.

Surveillance video of the shooting obtained and published last week by ABC affiliate KVUE and the Austin-American Statesman showed dozens of officers congregating outside the adjoined classrooms where the gunman had fired indiscriminately on students and teachers.

Lawmakers had planned to release the surveillance video on Sunday after meeting with the families, but were preempted earlier this week when media outlets broadcast the footage — enraging some family members of the victims, who said they felt blindsided by how things were handled.

During his testimony last month, McCraw reserved his harshest criticism for Uvalde ISD Police Chief Pete Arredondo, who he accused of “[deciding] to place the lives of officers before the lives of children.” Arredondo, who has not responded to multiple interview requests from ABC News, told the Texas Tribune last month that he did not know he was the on-scene commander during the shooting.

ABC News’ Alexandra Dukakis contributed to this report.

Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez take out a marriage license in Nevada

July 17, 2022 by WDNY Radio

If they haven’t already tied the knot, it appears as though Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are getting ready to do so at any moment.

The couple, who got engaged in April, took out a marriage license in Clark County, Nevada on Saturday. While various outlets are reporting that the two have actually gotten married, that hasn’t been confirmed. ABC News has reached out to the couple’s representatives.

Affleck and Lopez were previously engaged in 2002, but postponed their 2003 wedding before finally breaking up in 2004. Affleck went on to marry Jennifer Garner in 2005; they divorced in 2018. Lopez married singer Marc Anthony in 2004, but they divorced in 2014. Affleck shares three kids with Garner, while J-Lo shares 14-year-old twins with Anthony.

Last year, after Jennifer and fiancé Alex Rodriguez broke up, she and Affleck rekindled their romance, and he proposed in April.

Earlier this year, Lopez told People of their romance, “It’s a beautiful outcome that this has happened in this way at this time in our lives where we can really appreciate and celebrate each other and respect each other.”

Woman killed in alligator attack at Florida golf course: Sheriff

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(ENGLEWOOD, Fla.) — An elderly woman was killed after she fell into a pond along a Florida golf course and was attacked by two alligators, authorities said.

The incident occurred shortly before 8 p.m. Friday at the Boca Royale Golf and Country Club in Englewood, about 30 miles south of Sarasota.

The woman fell into a pond along the course near her home “and struggled to stay afloat,” the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement.

“While in the water two alligators were observed near the victim and ultimately grabbed her while in the water,” the sheriff’s office said.

The woman, who has not been identified by authorities, was pronounced dead at the scene.

An alligator trapper from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission responded and removed the alligators as part of the investigation, the sheriff’s office said.

The Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission said an 8′ 10” alligator and a 7′ 7″ alligator seen near the pond were removed. The agency said it is unknown at this time if the alligators were involved in the incident, but that it doesn’t plan to remove any additional alligators from the area at this time.

“The FWC and Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office will be working jointly on this investigation until cause of death is determined by the Sarasota County Medical Examiner’s Office,” the agency said in a statement.

No further information was released by the sheriff’s office amid the investigation.

The Boca Royale Golf and Country Club told ABC News it doesn’t have a comment at this time.

The country club is located in a 1,000-acre private gated community that features lakes and nature preserves, according to its website.

Fatal alligator bites are rare. From 1948 to 2021, Florida reported 442 unprovoked bite incidents from alligators, 26 of which resulted in fatalities, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. In the last 10 years, the state has averaged eight unprovoked bites a year that require medical treatment, the agency said.

The likelihood of someone being seriously injured during an unprovoked alligator incident in Florida is roughly one in 3.1 million, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.

A man believed to be looking for Frisbees in a lake was killed in a suspected alligator attack in late May in Largo, a city in the Tampa Bay area, police said.

Biden pledges U.S. won’t ‘walk away’ from Middle East

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia) — President Joe Biden wrapped up his first trip to the Middle East on Saturday by pledging that the United States will continue to be an engaged partner in the region.

Speaking at the Gulf Cooperation Council in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Biden said his administration will support relationships with nations that “subscribe to the rules-based international order.”

“As the world grows more competitive, and the challenges we face more complex, it is only becoming clearer to me how closely interwoven our interests are with the successes of the Middle East,” Biden said. “We will not walk away and leave a vacuum to be filled by China, Russia or Iran.”

The U.S., he said, “is not going anywhere.”

Biden on Saturday announced $1B to fight food insecurity in the region, and said the nations present at the summit were collectively contributing billions of dollars on clean energy initiatives.

Biden’s four-day international trip came as the U.S. remains focused on countering China’s rise in the region and uniting global partners against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

It also occurred as Biden seeks to lower sky-high gas prices at home. Biden said Saturday the leaders agreed on the need to ensure “adequate supplies” to meet global demand.

After meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman on Friday, Biden said the Saudis “share that urgency” and that he expects to see further action in the coming weeks. But when asked when Americans can see the impacts of that visit, he acknowledged it wouldn’t be immediate.

“I suspect you won’t see that for another couple of weeks,” he said.

Biden faced some criticism for his meeting with Mohammed bin Salman — the man the U.S. believes is responsible for the 2018 murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi embassy.

Biden and Mohammed bin Salman were photographed fist-bumping each other outside the Al-Salam Royal Palace, three years after Biden vowed as a presidential candidate to make the nation a “pariah” over Khashoggi’s murder.

Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, said Khashoggi would have responded to the fist bump by asking the president “is this the accountability you promised for my murder? The blood of MBS’s next victim is on your hands.”

Biden told reporters he raised Khashoggi at the top of their meeting, and continued to condemn his killing as “outrageous.”

Sitting next to Mohammed bin Salman at Saturday’s summit, Biden also touched on the issue of human rights as he laid out his five-point vision for U.S. policy for the region.

“Foundational freedoms are foundational to who we are as Americans,” he said. “It’s in our DNA. But it’s also because we know that the future will be won by the countries that unleash the full potential of their populations, where women can exercise equal rights and contribute to building stronger economies, resilient societies, and more modern and capable militaries; where citizens can question and criticize their leaders without fear of reprisal.”

ABC News’ Molly Nagle and Benjamin Siegel contributed to this report.

Automakers look to the South to build electric vehicle batteries

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(NEW YORK) — You won’t find many electric vehicles on the back roads in Alabama and Tennessee yet thousands of residents in these states are building them to meet growing demand.

Automakers such as Mercedes-Benz, Ford and Volkswagen are investing billions of dollars in high-tech plants that will supply the battery packs necessary for the transition to EVs.

Last month, Volkswagen of America opened a $22 million Battery Engineering Lab (BEL), a 32,000-square-foot facility located near its Chattanooga, Tennessee, plant. Engineers at the lab test batteries for safety, durability and quality in extreme climate conditions and the company’s compact ID.4 SUV, currently imported from Germany, will roll off assembly lines for U.S. consumers later this year. More than 4,000 workers are employed at the Chattanooga plant and Volkswagen plans to hire 1,000 new production team members by year-end.

Producing battery packs locally “makes us faster,” Wolfgang Maluche, vice president of engineering at Volkswagen of America, told ABC News. “Chattanooga [will] become Volkswagen’s hub for electric mobility in the United States.”

More battery plants are coming and southern states will continue to benefit, according to Arun Kumar, a managing director at consulting firm AlixPartners, which forecasts a 54% EV market share globally by 2035.

“Southern states are definitely aggressive … 46% of vehicle production in the U.S. currently happens in the South. It’s not a surprise to me that more investment is going there,” Kumar told ABC News. “This is just a start. The EV era is real.”

Gil Tal of UC Davis’ Institute of Transportation Studies said southern states are “fighting hard” to be chosen by automakers, offering attractive tax incentives and favorable investment packages. As the Biden administration pushes consumers toward EVs, setting an ambitious target to make half of all new vehicles sold by 2030 electric, Tal, like Kumar, expects automakers to diversify their supply chain.

“Demand is going up for EVs and there will be new regulations that mandate sales of them,” Tal told ABC News. “Battery production is changing and getting better and more efficient. Any company that sells a significant amount of cars in the U.S. will build battery plants here.”

Producing these highly technological batteries within the U.S. solves many of the headaches plaguing automakers in recent years, Kumar argued. Tesla, the No. 1 seller of EVs in the country, produces batteries and electric motors for the Model 3 at its Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, which broke ground in June 2014. The site currently produces more batteries in terms of kWh than all other carmakers combined, making it the highest-volume battery plant in the world, according to Tesla.

Mercedes, which said it would go all electric by the end of the decade, will invest over 40 billion euros into battery electric vehicles between 2022 and 2030. The Bibb County plant joins the company’s global battery production network with factories on three continents.

In September, Ford Motor said it would construct twin battery plants in central Kentucky to power a new lineup of Lincoln and Ford EVs. Another battery campus in Tennessee will focus on next-generation electric F-Series pickups like the F-150 Lightning. The two projects will cost $11.4 billion and create nearly 11,000 new jobs, Ford said. The Dearborn automaker expects 40% to 50% of its global vehicle volume to be fully electric by 2030.

BMW expanded its battery facility at Plant Spartanburg in South Carolina in late 2019, more than doubling its capacity for battery assembly. Higher performing, fourth-generation batteries are assembled on-site for the BMW X5 and BMW X3 plug-in hybrid electric variants and 120 employees were specially trained to work the new line, having completed an extensive program in battery production, robotics and electrical inline quality inspection along with end-of-line testing, BMW said.

States in the traditional “auto belt” are still vying for automakers’ investment dollars. Panasonic, a major supplier to Tesla, announced this week it would build a new U.S. lithium-ion battery cell factory in De Soto, Kansas, investing $4 billion and creating up to 4,000 new jobs. The plant will primarily supply batteries to Tesla but is not limited to the company, Reuters reported.

Stellantis said it would build an EV battery plant in Kokomo, Indiana, with its partner Samsung SDI. The plant, on target for a 2025 launch, would create 1,400 jobs in Kokomo and the surrounding area, Stellantis said, for a total investment of $2.5 billion.

Ultium Cells, a joint venture of LG Energy Solution and General Motors, will open a new 2.8 million-square-foot facility in Lansing, Michigan, its third battery cell manufacturing plant in the country. At least 1,700 manufacturing jobs will be available at the location and workers will supply battery cells to Orion Assembly in Michigan and other GM EV assembly plants.

The southern shift by automakers and intense focus on EVs has some long-time industry workers worried about their future. EVs take 40% less powertrain assembly hours than a gas-powered vehicle, according to Kumar. Workers with core skills in combustion engine technology would need significant retraining to work in a battery plant, he noted. EVs in general are less complicated to manufacture, are not labor intensive and many parts of the process are automated.

“Workers are worried about job security and concerned their sons and daughters won’t have jobs” in the industry, said Erik Gordon, a professor at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “Working in an auto plant is often a family affair — and these are pretty good jobs.”

The U.S. may be viewed as a laggard in EV battery production compared to China, where EVs caught on early with consumers and government leaders deemed batteries to be a critical industry. Gordon argued that automakers are tackling U.S. battery production at the right time and any earlier could have been a foolhardy move.

“People would have been laughing 10 years ago if automakers wanted to build these plants,” Gordon said. “They would be obsolete today. The underlining tech is changing so quickly and for the better.”

What will happen to these plants and the workers if EV sales in the U.S. hit the brakes in the next five, 10 years?

“The interest in EVs won’t die off,” Tal said. “Automakers have a secure EV market. All this investment won’t go away.”

Biden is weighing a public health emergency over abortion, but experts are skeptical

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden has said he is looking into declaring a public health emergency over abortion, nearly a month after the Supreme Court majority voted to overturn Roe v. Wade — landmark legislation that established federal protections for a woman’s right to abortion.

The Center for Reproductive Rights told ABC News that implementing a public health emergency over abortion would be crucial for the secretary of Health and Human Services to include in the plan Biden directed the department to create.

The CFRR said the emergency declaration would narrowly focus on abortion medication, which is approved at the federal level for pregnancies up to 10 weeks, allowing people to not have to travel across state lines to get access to abortions.

Experts told ABC News it is unclear how the Biden administration plans on using a public health emergency or whether they would be able to use it to increase access to abortion or abortion services.

Experts and the CFRR agree that there are a lot of potential legal challenges the Biden administration could face in taking this action.

“It’s clear to me and to a lot of experts, that what we are facing here is a true public health emergency. So I’m not worried about the ability of the administration to declare a public health emergency here and use authority,” Katherine Gillespie, acting director of the Senior Federal Policy Counsel at the CFRR told ABC News in an interview.

Gillespie added: “I think, unfortunately, we are we are in a situation where any option that the administration, or even Congress for that matter, would take will be subject to some legal challenge. But I think that there, the fact that there’s some legal risk, it doesn’t mean that the administration shouldn’t take this important action.”

In a statement to ABC News, the White House said the Biden-Harris administration will never stop fighting to protect access to abortion care.

What can a public health emergency do?

Declaring a public health emergency does two things: It frees up money from a range of funds appropriated specifically for health emergencies and it gives the administration, particularly the secretary of Health and Human Services, a fair amount of authority to shorten and wave rules or regulations that exist under federal law, according to Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association.

But, public health emergencies are temporary, lasting just 90 days. After that period is over, the administration could choose to renew.

The status of how many dollars are currently in those funds is unclear, according to several experts.

“We have been using all those dollars already for COVID and those are the same pots of money that one would use, should a hurricane or tornado hit a community and you had to respond for other health emergencies,” Benjamin said.

“The administration has been actively trying to find money for the next generation COVID vaccines and next generation medications for COVID. So, my understanding is that they pretty much have scoured almost all that money that they had that they can move around,” he said.

Lawrence Gostin, the faculty director of the O’Neil Institute for National and Global Health Law at Georgetown Law, told ABC News that, on the margins, under one emergency statute, Health and Human Services could provide immunity to people who provide abortion services or abortion medications.

However, this would likely face many legal challenges as the authority to decide who is licensed to practice medicine lies with states, not the federal government.

“It would be very, very hard to win that kind of case in court,” he said.

Gostin warned that the declaration would “utterly politicize public health.”

“The CDC and other public health agencies have already been battered and bruised from the COVID 19 pandemic and this would utterly make them political bodies and public trust in the CDC would go even lower,” Gostin added.

Even though he agrees that abortion has become a medical emergency, and the avalanche of state laws limiting or banning abortions will result in hundreds of thousands of women dying every year, Gostin said it is unlikely the declaration would do much.

“Emergency powers would do very little to help ordinary women in red states, it would unleash very low amounts of funding and powers. And the downsides of litigation and of loss of public trust and politicizing public health is, I believe, a step too far,” Gostin said.

“And you can be sure that if President Biden declares an emergency over abortion access, then the next Republican incumbent the Oval Office, will declare an emergency for fetuses and the right to life and the politicization of public health will be endless,” he added.

Legal Challenges

Gostin said Biden would face rapid and multiple legal challenges that could end up before the same conservative supermajority that overturned Roe.

There are three or four different statutes that Biden could use to declare a public health emergency, all of which would be “on very vulnerable legal ground,” Gostin said.

Despite supporting any action that would expand access to abortion, Benjamin said there are a lot of legal issues that the administration would need to address before they make this move.

Medication-prescribing physician practices are regulated at the state level, but the federal government has, in the past, given physicians the authority to practice medicine across state lines under a federal umbrella. But states still have to validate that physicians are authorized providers under that umbrella, Benjamin said.

Benjamin said this could come to the forefront of abortion when it comes to telemedicine appointments across state lines.

“If I’m up here in a state where abortion is legal, I do a telemedicine visit with a patient in a state that were there as abortion restriction. Am I practicing across state lines? Is it legal? Does that still relieve the patient of their legal liability?” Benjamin said.

Benjamin also said there is a risk of attorneys general taking that administration to court, as they have done for mask and vaccine mandates, which could deal federal agencies losses.

He also highlighted that a judge has already said that the CDC does not have the authority to require people to wear masks, which he thinks the agency has very clear authority to do.

“The courts are a real wildcard here,” he said.

Benjamin said the administration could take action to make sure that insurance plans cannot deny patients coverage for abortions. Biden could also make sure that adequate coverage is available and that there is reimbursement for providers.

The administration could also make sure that providers under the federal umbrella, like military providers, allow for a full range of reproductive services.

Case of 10-year-old rape victim challenges anti-abortion rights movement

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — In a House hearing on Capitol Hill this week, an anti-abortion rights advocate said ending a pregnancy isn’t an abortion when it involves a 10-year-old rape victim.

The comment stunned the Democratic lawmaker questioning her.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists defines abortion as a “medical intervention provided to individuals who need to end the medical condition of pregnancy.”

“Wait, it would not be an abortion?” said Rep. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif.

Catherine Glenn Foster, head of the anti-abortion group Americans United for Life, told Swalwell she didn’t think it was.

“If a 10-year-old with her parents made the decision not to have a baby that was a result of a rape, if a 10-year-old became pregnant as a result of rape, and it was threatening her life then that’s not an abortion,” Foster told the House Judiciary Committee on Thursday.

Around the same time as Foster’s testimony, the top lawyer for the National Right to Life Committee, had a decidedly different take.

In a phone interview with Politico, James Bopp said the girl should have been forced to carry the pregnancy to term under model legislation he wrote last June as NRLC’s general counsel. That legislation is being used by states to adopt abortion restrictions.

“She would have had the baby, and as many women who have had babies as a result of rape, we would hope that she would understand the reason and ultimately the benefit of having the child,” Bopp is quoted as saying.

Bopp did not respond to requests for an interview.

After spending decades united in a quest to overturn Roe v. Wade, the conservative movement is facing tough questions about what it means to oppose abortion.

Should there be exemptions for rape and incest? Does the age of the victim matter? What does it mean to protect the “life of the mother”? How imminent should death be before a doctor can legally intervene?

Other questions: Should states enact laws preventing women from traveling out of state for abortions? Should they ban IUDs and the emergency contraceptives like Plan B?

Conservatives praising the Supreme Court ruling say those details should be decided by voters in states. Abortion rights proponents say rights to liberty and privacy should not be up to voters to decide, but are guaranteed in the Constitution.

“In case we’ve forgotten, this is what democracy looks like,” said Rep. Michelle Fischbach, R-Minn,, in defending the Supreme Court’s decision.

But no case has challenged the anti-abortion rights movement more than the rape of a 10-year-old Ohio girl.

Following the arrest of a 27-year-old man in her case, a detective testified in a court hearing this week that the girl became pregnant as a result of the rape and traveled to Indianapolis to undergo an abortion. Ohio has banned abortion after cardiac activity is detected, which is at about six weeks into pregnancy. The state does not provide exceptions in cases of rape or incest.

Indiana’s Republican attorney general said he planned to investigate the doctor who helped the girl get an abortion. An attorney representing Dr. Caitlin Bernard said she followed reporting procedures, and Indiana University Health said an investigation found that she was in compliance with privacy laws.

Several Republican politicians, including Rep. Jim Jordan, a House Judiciary Committee member, had questioned whether the case had been fabricated for political reasons. Jordan did not reference the case in his questioning at the hearing on Thursday, instead speaking about violent attacks against anti-abortion pregnancy centers.

Jennifer Holland, a history professor at the University of Oklahoma, said she thinks conservatives are struggling to talk about the rape case of such a young victim because they never had to before.

“For 50 years, the focus has been as much as possible on the fetus,” she said. “They chose never to reckon with hard cases. Now that they have the power of the state, that’s very different.”

Daniel Williams, a history professor at the University of West Georgia who studies politics and religion, said support among conservatives for exceptions to rape and incest have changed over time. In this case, leaders in the anti-abortion rights movement probably weren’t prepared for such a case to confront them so soon after the reversal of Roe vs. Wade, he said.

“I doubt, though, that this will be a substantial setback for the movement,” said Williams. “At most, it may make some conservative states that are considering an abortion ban to think about including a rape (or) incest exception clause, but even that is uncertain. But we’re in uncharted territory here, so predictions about future developments are difficult to make.”

Sarah Warbelow, the legal director of the Human Rights Campaign, said it’s disinformation to suggest an abortion wouldn’t be an abortion for a 10-year-old rape victim.

“Abortion is a medical procedure. It’s a medical procedure that individuals undergo for a wide range of circumstances, including because they have been sexually assaulted, raped in the case of the 10-year-old,” she said.

Dr. Rachel Boren, a member of the ABC News Medical Unit, contributed to this report.

Indiana AG told to ‘cease and desist’ over doctor

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(INDIANAPOLIS) — The attorney for an Indiana physician who performed an abortion for a 10-year-old girl from Ohio has sent a cease and desist letter to the Indiana attorney general over “false” and “defamatory” statements made about the doctor.

The cease and desist letter, which was sent Friday and obtained by ABC News, is the latest development stemming from the unsettling case, which has become a flash point in the national debate on abortion post-Roe v. Wade.

The incident first came to light in a July 1 report by the Indianapolis Star. Dr. Caitlin Bernard, an OB-GYN at Indiana University Health Medical Center in Indianapolis, recounted to the publication that she had a 10-year-old patient from Ohio who, at over 6 weeks pregnant, traveled to Indianapolis for an abortion after her state’s so-called heartbeat law banning most abortions went into effect after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

The report gained national attention, with President Joe Biden referencing the IndyStar report during remarks made while signing an executive order on abortion access last week.

Meanwhile, some Republican leaders, including the Ohio attorney general, doubted the veracity of the report. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said it was “too good to confirm.”

On Tuesday, Columbus police arrested a 27-year-old suspect who allegedly confessed to raping the 10-year-old victim, who police said had traveled to Indianapolis to obtain a medical abortion on June 30. The suspect was ordered held on $2 million bond on Wednesday.

After the suspect was arraigned on the felony rape charge, Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, a Republican, said his office was investigating Bernard “to prove if the abortion and/or the abuse were reported,” as is required under Indiana law.

“The failure to do so constitutes a crime in Indiana, and her behavior could also affect her licensure,” he said in a statement. “Additionally, if a HIPAA violation did occur, that may affect next steps as well. I will not relent in the pursuit of the truth.”

A termination of pregnancy report filed with the Indiana Department of Health obtained by ABC News shows that Bernard did report the abortion within three days of the procedure, as required by state law. Indiana University Health also released a statement Friday that an investigation has found Bernard to be in compliance with privacy laws.

The Columbus Division of Police, which was alerted to the girl’s pregnancy on June 22, was already investigating the rape case by the time the abortion was performed.

The cease and desist from Bernard’s attorney, Kathleen DeLaney, cites “false and defamatory statements” Rokita made to Fox News on Wednesday that “cast Dr. Bernard in a false light and allege misconduct in her profession.”

While appearing on Fox News Wednesday night, Rokita claimed that Bernard was an “activist acting as a doctor with a history of failing to report.”

“So, we’re gathering the information, we’re gathering the evidence as we speak and we’re going to fight this to the end, including looking at her licensure, if she failed to report,” he said. “And in Indiana it’s a crime to not report to intentionally not report.”

The cease and desist states that Rokita continued to make statements that “further cast Dr. Bernard in a false light and mislead consumers and patients,” even after the release of the termination of pregnancy report showed she complied with reporting laws.

“We are especially concerned that, given the controversial political context of the statements, such inflammatory accusations have the potential to incite harassment or violence from the public which could prevent Dr. Bernard, an Indiana licensed physician, from providing care to her patients safely,” DeLaney stated.

“Moreover, to the extent that any statement you make exceeds the general scope of your authority as Indiana’s Attorney General, such a statement forms the basis of an actionable defamation claim,” she continued.

The cease and desist comes a day after DeLaney said they were considering legal action “against those who have smeared my client, including Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita.”

In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for Rokita’s office said it will review the cease and desist “if and when it arrives.”

“Regardless, no false or misleading statements have been made,” the spokesperson said.

On Friday, Bernard’s colleague, Dr. Tracey Wilkinson, detailed in a guest essay in the New York Times how Bernard “became a target of a national smear campaign for speaking out about her 10-year-old patient.”

Bernard was supposed to co-write the essay, about the “chilling effect” the Supreme Court’s decision has had on medicine, until Rokita said his office will be investigating her, according to Wilkinson, an assistant professor of pediatrics at Indiana University School of Medicine.

“So I’m writing this essay myself, not only to bring attention to the chilling effect on medicine we’re seeing at this moment — but also because I’m terrified that I or any one of our colleagues could soon face what Dr. Bernard is going through after delivering care to our patients,” Wilkinson wrote.

After news broke of the arrest in the rape case, Bernard commented on Twitter Wednesday that her “heart breaks for all survivors of sexual assault and abuse.”

“I am so sad that our country is failing them when they need us most,” she said. “Doctors must be able to give people the medical care they need, when and where they need it.”

ABC News’ Will McDuffie and Kevin Kraus contributed to this report.

Jan. 6 committee subpoenas Secret Service over deleted texts

July 16, 2022 by WDNY Radio

(WASHINGTON) — The House select committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol announced on Friday that it had issued a subpoena for records from the United States Secret Service over deleted text messages.

Chairman Bennie Thompson sought information about Secret Service text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 that were reportedly erased and reiterated three previous requests from congressional committees for information.

Chairman Thompson wrote, “The Select Committee has been informed that the USSS erased text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021 as part of a ‘device-replacement program.’ In a statement issued July 14, 2022, the USSS stated that it ‘began to reset its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost.’ However, according to that USSS statement, ‘none of the texts it [DHS Office of Inspector General] was seeking had been lost in the migration.’

“Accordingly, the Select Committee seeks the relevant text messages, as well as any after action reports that have been issued in any and all divisions of the USSS pertaining or relating in any way to the events of January 6, 2021.”

This week, Department of Homeland Security Inspector General Joseph V. Cuffari offered a briefing to the House Committee on Homeland Security and the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs about “ongoing access issues” with the Department of Homeland Security, specifically that “many U.S. Secret Service (USSS) text messages, from January 5 and 6, 2021, were erased as part of a device-replacement program.”

Friday, Inspector General Cuffari briefed the Select Committee on this and other matters.

ABC News has reached out to USSS for comment on the subpoena.

Please check back for updates. This is a developing story.

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