Wendy Williamswill not return toThe Wendy Williams Show this season, according to a report from Variety.
Williams, 57, has been on hiatus from the show, which is in its 13th season, as she battles health issues, including an ongoing battle with Graves’ disease, an autoimmune disease that causes an overactive thyroid. Although the TV personality will not return to her purple chair, the outlet adds that the show will continue, though its future remains in flux.
Meanwhile, Sherri Shepherd, who has served as a guest host on The Wendy Williams Show, is in negotiations for her own daytime talk show that could potentially take over Williams’ time slot, sources tell Variety.
A spokesperson for Lionsgate’s Debmar-Mercury, the company behind both William’s series and Shepherd’s potential show, declined to comment on either situation. However, earlier in the season, they released a statement in support of Williams.
“Wendy is a valued and stalwart member of the Debmar-Mercury family and has been so for 12 years. We want her health to be her top priority,” the statement read. “As soon as she’s ready, she will be back in her treasured purple chair. We very much appreciate the respect for Wendy’s privacy, as well as all the good wishes from her fans, station partners and advertisers.”
(NEW YORK) — After being selected by the Detroit Lions as the No. 1 overall draft pick in 2009 and 12 seasons without a playoff win before being traded to the Los Angeles Rams, quarterback Matthew Stafford will make his Super Bowl debut at SoFi Stadium against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
His wife, Kelly Stafford says she knows the scrutiny he’s faced and opened up to ABC News’ Good Morning America in an exclusive interview ahead of the Super Bowl.
“I am so excited for him, I mean he has worked his butt off for a long time,” she said. “He had so much pressure on him. That team had so much pressure on them. And if they didn’t make it to the Super Bowl they were a bust, you know? So now that that pressure is kind of taken off in a way, he can just go play this game and have some fun, while he’s doing it.”
After the NFC championship win, Matt Stafford credited his wife for fueling his performance.
“I couldn’t have done it without her. She’s an unbelievable part of my life,” the quarterback said in a post-game press conference. “She’s been through a lot with me, and we’ve leaned on each other at separate times to help ourselves get whatever we’re having to get through.”
The couple battled through a health scare in 2019 when Kelly Stafford successfully underwent a 12-hour surgery to remove an acoustic neuroma from her cranial nerves.
“I wouldn’t be here today, without him,” she told GMA.
“He was the one that really encouraged me to go get checked and fought with me through that entire battle,” she added.
Following her surgery, Stafford said she had to relearn to walk and was forced to take time away from their young daughters throughout her recovery period.
“They said — ‘you can’t have any kids around you'” she recalled, adding that there couldn’t be anything around that could throw off her balance or risk falling and injury. “We actually had to say goodbye to our kids, for I think about three weeks and Matthew really became the most amazing caregiver and it didn’t surprise me, I guess it just more impressed me.”
Since their family’s move to LA, Kelly Stafford let fans behind the scenes on her podcast, “The Morning After,” where she talks about everything from parenting and mental health to football.
“It’s something that’s my own, and I feel like sometimes especially being the wife or a significant other of a professional athlete or anyone who has this kind of limelight you tend to lose yourself,” she said. “And I just felt as a mom in particular it’s mainly for moms to just come and be like ‘hey, no one has their stuff together.’ Like if we can get through these days and our children are happy and healthy that’s all you can hope for.”
She said she already has a plan for filming the Monday after the Super Bowl.
“Honestly, depending on the outcome of it might be a podcast on no sleep, it might be a podcast where I have you know little alcohol in my system if we do take that victory so I’m hoping for that,” Stafford said. “It’ll be entertaining, I’m sure.”
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 909,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:
Feb 09, 8:29 am
England to lift all COVID-19 restrictions a month early
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced Wednesday his plans to lift all remaining pandemic-related restrictions in England in less than two weeks.
Addressing lawmakers in the United Kingdom’s House of Commons, Johnson said he hopes to scrap England’s COVID-19 restrictions as soon as Parliament returns from its upcoming recess on Feb. 21.
“I can tell the House today that it is my intention to return on the first day after the half-term recess to present our strategy for living with COVID,” Johnson told lawmakers. “Provided the current encouraging trends in the data continue, it is my expectation that we will be able to end the last domestic restrictions, including the legal requirement to self-isolate if you test positive, a full month early.”
Johnson first announced his plans to end all of the so-called Plan B measures last month, starting with mask mandates. He told lawmakers at the time that the legal requirement for people with COVID-19 to self-isolate would be allowed to expire when the regulations lapsed on March 24, but that the date could be brought forward.
Although Johnson is the U.K. prime minister, his government is only responsible for COVID-19 restrictions in England because public health legislation is devolved to national governments within the U.K., meaning that Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are responsible for their own pandemic-related policies.
Feb 09, 7:55 am
US reported more cases, deaths than any country last week, WHO says
The United States reported the highest number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the disease last week out of any country in the world, according to a weekly epidemiological update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the U.S. during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, a 50% decrease compared to the previous week. Over 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15% decrease, the WHO said.
France had the second-highest number of new cases with more than 1.7 million, a 26% decrease, while India had the second-highest number of new deaths with nearly 8,000, a 69% increase, according to the WHO.
Meanwhile, the global number of new cases during that same period decreased by 17% compared to the previous week, while fatalities increased by 7%, the WHO said.
(NEW YORK) — Milwaukee resident Exie Tatum III grew up in heart of the city and still lives there. The African American father owns a home in a predominantly Black neighborhood but has been house-hunting in pricey, majority-white suburbs, searching for an affordable home that he might someday pass along to his young son Charles through inheritance.
“It would really change the game,” Tatum said of owning a suburban Milwaukee home.
But statistics suggest he’s fighting an uphill battle.
Despite 50 years of federal oversight under the landmark Fair Housing Act of 1968, housing segregation persists in America’s largest cities and urban centers — and an exclusive ABC News analysis of mortgage-lending data shows a pattern of racial isolation remains consistent following decades of failed initiatives.
The analysis shows that 20 of the nation’s top 100 metropolitan areas have an “extreme dissimilarity index” of 50 or higher — meaning at least half of the population would have had to move to another neighborhood in the area to achieve total integration in 2019.
The Milwaukee metro area is at the top of ABC News’ “extreme” segregation list, but that list also includes America’s largest metro areas — New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Chicago.
Also on the top 20 “extreme” list: Cleveland, Ohio; Buffalo, New York, Detroit, Michigan; St. Louis, Missouri; Memphis, Tennessee; Birmingham, Alabama; Jackson, Mississippi; Springfield, Massachusetts; New Orleans, Louisiana; Miami, Florida; Bridgeport, Connecticut; Baltimore, Maryland; Cincinnati, Ohio; Baton Rouge, Louisiana; and Providence, Rhode Island.
ABC News’ analysis of segregation and home lending patterns across America used data from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council’s Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) and the U.S. Census American Community Survey.
Race and ethnicity information in the home lending data is collected voluntarily from the loan applicant or through visual observation by the lender, and by self-identification in the census data.
The data were used by ABC’s Owned Television Stations to compile the Equity Report, which allows readers to track and measure quality of life and equality in America’s 100 largest metro areas in five categories: housing, health, education, policing, and the environment.
Using the home lending and census datasets, ABC News calculated a dissimilarity index for metropolitan areas and census tract neighborhoods across the U.S.
Indexes like the ones used by ABC News are often used by researchers to measure residential segregation between two racial or ethnic groups within a geographic region. It is based on a 0-100 scale, with “0” being total integration and “100” being total segregation.
The ABC News analysis found that segregation persists across the nation, and that there is no indication that the racial composition of neighborhoods is rapidly changing in the nation’s most segregated metropolitan areas.
In 19 of those 20 extremely segregated metro areas, at least 40% of the homeowners who got a mortgage loan in 2019 — white or non-white — would have had to buy a house in a different neighborhood to create a naturally integrated pool of new homeowners.
In eight of those metro areas with extreme segregation, at least half the new homebuyers would have had to settle into a new neighborhood in 2019 to make an integrated pool of new neighbors.
Even in neighborhoods where some racial evolution is taking place, the analysis shows an overall disparity: It’s easier for whites to buy homes in majority non-white neighborhoods than for non-whites to buy in mostly white sections of a metro area.
In 2019, nearly two-thirds of the 347,000 white homebuyers (64.8%) who applied for mortgages in mostly non-white neighborhoods in America’s largest metro areas got a loan approval — an indicator of what many urban planners and demographers see as a continued pattern of gentrification in urban areas across the nation.
Meanwhile, about 56% of the 715,000 non-white applicants got a loan in 2019 in those same majority non-white neighborhoods.
In mostly white neighborhoods, the same pattern exists in the largest metro areas. About 69% of the 1.9 million loan requests from white applicants were approved, compared to about 55.8% of 613,000 applications from non-whites.
The ABC analysis shows disparities were similar for applicants in the same income range ($50,000 – $100,000) who sought mortgage loans of $50,000 to $250,000.
In majority-white neighborhoods, white applicants in those categories had a 67% approval rate, compared to 52% for non-white applicants.
In mostly non-white neighborhoods, white applicants with similar incomes and loan amounts had a 63% approval rate, while the approval rate for similar non-white applicants was 55%.
In some cities, the gentrification process is forcing more non-white residents out of urban neighborhoods, along with the small minority-owned businesses, cultural enterprises and institutions — barbershops, hair salons, and churches — that have catered to those residents for decades.
Milwaukee under the microscope
The ABC News analysis shows just how mortgage lending disparities in wealthy suburbs and poorer urban neighborhoods play out in the Milwaukee metro area.
Overall, in 2019, whites filed four times more mortgage loan applications than non-whites, and had 73% of those loans approved, compared to 49% for non-whites.
In Milwaukee’s majority non-white neighborhoods — mainly urban areas where gentrification was taking place — non-white home seekers filed twice as many applications as whites, but had a lower approval rate — 55% compared to 64% for whites.
Meanwhile, in majority white neighborhoods, white home seekers filed seven times as many mortgage applications — and the 73% approval rate among white applicants was higher than the non-white approval rate of 47%.
For Milwaukee metro applicants with similar income and loan requests, the analysis shows the white approval rate in both mostly non-white and mostly-white neighborhoods was 1.5 times higher than the non-white approval rate.
Tatum says he has seen and experienced the suburban housing disparities that the data seem to support — and how they affect people of color.
Demographically, Tatum has seen Milwaukee change dramatically over the years. But when it comes to segregated neighborhoods, he’s seen some things stubbornly stay the same.
“If you look at the north side of Milwaukee, you’re going to see African-Americans,” Tatum explained. “As soon as you cross the bridge to the south side, that’s where the Latino community begins.”
By buying a suburban home that he could pass on to his son, Tatum would love to help break that decades-old pattern of segregation.
National studies suggest that homeownership is a key factor in building generational wealth within families. A 2017 Federal Reserve study shows the average homeowner had a household wealth of $231,400 in 2016, compared to the average renter having a household wealth of $5,200.
But U.S. Census data show that homeownership rates among non-white households — particularly Black households — falls far short of the white homeowner rate of 76%.
For Tatum and other non-white city residents wanting to relocate to Milwaukee’s suburbs, there’s reason for optimism: The latest census data show that, for the first time, two suburban communities — West Milwaukee and Brown Deer — reported majority-minority population counts.
Those communities are outliers, however. Other suburban neighborhoods in the Milwaukee metro area remain at least 73% white.
For Black residents, the data is even more dismal: Less than 9% in the Milwaukee metro area live in the suburbs.
A “baked” lending system
Tatum and other non-white home seekers across the U.S. blame a financial lending system — developed and regulated by the federal government — that for decades has systematically kept people of color from getting home loans, particularly in suburban neighborhoods.
“I still feel like my bankers always have to go to the underwriters and fight for me. They literally tell me, ‘I’m going to fight for you,'” Tatum said. “Why do you have to fight for me when I’m meeting all the criteria that you told me I needed?”
In San Francisco, 30-year resident Boris Quinonez has had his own experience with lenders.
Around 2010, Quinonez tried purchasing a single-family home in the city’s Mission District, but was denied a loan at least three times by a lender.
Property records show the house eventually sold — to Quinonez’s best friend.
Quinonez said he and his friend had the same job, the same down payment, a similar credit score, and lived in the same neighborhood.
The only difference?
“He was white and I wasn’t,” Quinonez said. “Everything else was the same.”
Rochelle Sparko, the director of North Carolina Policy at the Centers for Responsible Lending, points to historical real estate practices and longstanding racial wealth gaps as barriers that communities of color are still combating.
“It is baked into the system that it is difficult for … Black people who want to take on home mortgages to have difficulty doing that,” Sparko said. “It is possible that some of that is about overt discrimination, but a lot of it is sort of all of these impacts coming together.”
Sparko said that obstacles to getting a home loan for people of color include student loan debt and loss of family wealth during the last foreclosure crisis.
“There are any number of reasons why we see this difference in homeownership rates, and I think what we are beginning to recognize and talk about more is the need for targeted interventions to address that,” Sparko said.
But targeted interventions of the past, like the GI Bill, proved to be little more than an illusion for many Black Americans.
The GI Bill was supposed to guarantee low-interest mortgages and other loans to veterans returning home from World War II. While it generally helped white American veterans prosper and accumulate wealth in the postwar years, it failed to deliver for many veterans of color — primarily because white-run financial institutions had the power and incentive to refuse mortgages and loans to Blacks and other veterans of color.
In Milwaukee and other cities across the U.S., restrictive housing covenants — some dating back 100 years — helped lay the foundation for America’s segregation problem.
Those covenants, written by local housing authorities and developers, and sanctioned by the federal government, prohibited anyone but whites from owning or leasing property in specific sections of a community.
“People who were living in these covenant neighborhoods knew that this meant, ‘OK, this is an all-white community,'” said Reggie Jackson, an educator, consultant, and member of the City of Milwaukee’s Equal Rights Commission.
“They kept neighborhoods all white for decades,” Jackson said.
The covenants led to “redlining” practices in many cities, where federally-insured mortgages, loans and private residential insurance were withheld from non-white homeowners who were pigeonholed into non-covenant neighborhoods considered “investment risks.”
The term comes from lenders and other institutions literally drawing red lines around high-risk neighborhoods considered undesirable for business purposes. Redlining thwarted growth and redevelopment in many urban neighborhoods, leading to inner-city ghettos.
Those decades-long practices ended, in theory, with the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, which prohibited discrimination concerning the sale, rental or financing of housing based on race, religion, national origin, gender, disability or family status.
But the legacy — and patterns — of segregation left by covenants and redlining still linger.
A demographic analysis by ABC News partner FiveThirtyEight of 138 metropolitan areas where redline maps were drawn found that nearly all the former redlined zones are still disproportionately Black, Hispanic or Asian, compared with their surrounding areas.
In comparison, the FiveThirtyEight analysis found that two-thirds of “greenlined” zones — neighborhoods deemed by insurers and lenders to be the best for mortgage lending — are still overwhelmingly white.
Going “all in” on fair housing
U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), chairperson of the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs, which is charged with overseeing the Fair Housing Act, believes the housing act has fallen short in its intent to “address both discrimination in housing and increase integration.”
In a March, 2020 letter to the general counsel of The Department of Housing and Urban Development, Brown points the blame at HUD, which he says has “failed for decades to fully implement (fair housing).”
“Sadly, half a century later, our nation has failed to achieve that goal of ‘truly integrated and balanced living patterns,'” Brown wrote, quoting the act’s original sponsor, former senator and Vice President Walter F. Mondale.
“We have never, as a nation, gone ‘all in’ on fair housing,” Brown told ABC News in December. “We’ve never, as a nation, tried to close that gap … that gap between black and white ownership.”
HUD Secretary Marcia L. Fudge believes the regulatory agency is on a path toward fulfilling the original promise of the Fair Housing Act. One of the first steps taken by Fudge in her initial year of leadership was to overturn a decision by the previous administration that suspended a rule requiring local communities to identify fair housing issues and commit to solving them.
HUD will be reviewing the assessments coming from local governments that receive federal funding under the Fair Housing Act.
“More than 50 years since the Fair Housing Act’s passage, inequities in our communities remain that block families from moving into neighborhoods with greater opportunities,” Fudge said in a June 2021 press release. “Today, HUD is taking a critical step to affirm that a child’s future should never be limited by the ZIP code where they are born.”
Linda McCoy, president of the National Association of Mortgage Professionals (NAMB), believes the way to bridge racial gaps in loan approval ratings is through education and government action.
“You know, I wish I could … wave a magic wand and make it (housing discrimination and segregation) go away,” said McCoy, who’s group represents nearly a million mortgage brokers across the U.S.
McCoy noted that NAMB is working with “10 or 12” members of Congress to create legislation that would help mortgage brokers — particularly those lending in majority non-white communities — compete with big banks and lending institutions.
“I’m not sure what the solution is going to be, but I know that we’re doing all that we can do to help,” she said.
Gentrification: The urban neighborhood “makeover”
In the heart of Milwaukee sits a mostly-Black subdivision filled with tidy bungalows, ranch houses and bi-level homes sitting on manicured grass lots.
Halyard Park emits a suburban vibe, even though it’s surrounded by decaying, urban neighborhoods and sits in the shadow of Fiserv Forum, home to the NBA champion Milwaukee Bucks.
Established in 1976 with vacant land from the I-43 freeway expansion in the 1960s, Halyard Park was set up as a neighborhood for middle-class Black residents.
It is named for Ardie Clark Halyard and her husband, Wilbur, two Black community activists who saw Black homeownership being stymied by redlining and institutional racism.
The Halyards started Columbia Savings & Loan, the city’s first Black-owned bank, and one of only a few that offered home loans to Blacks moving into the subdivision and other urban neighborhoods.
“You had a group of folks that came up with this brilliant idea,” said Jackson. “If we can’t get these middle-class and upper middle-class black people out to our suburbs, why don’t we build a suburb in the city?
“And that’s what they did,” Jackson said. “It’s a hidden gem.”
Halyard Park has remained a gem over the past 40 years — but it’s no longer hidden.
The neighborhood’s proximity to the arena and other downtown development makes it attractive to developers and wealthy white homebuyers, which has driven up property values and property taxes.
Halyard Park is a real-time example of the urban gentrification taking place in cities across the U.S. — a profit-driven race and class “makeover” of a neighborhood that historically has been deprived of investment opportunities.
Since 2018, the ABC News analysis shows lenders have approved 62% of the home loans in census tracts that comprise the Halyard Park neighborhood. But the lenders have approved 76% of the loans for white applicants, compared to only 53% of non-white applicants.
Yet it’s not the changing demographics that concern longtime Black Halyard Park residents like Clara Smith. It’s the changing economics.
“I have seen my taxes go from $1,500 to over $4,000,” said Smith, a retiree who’s lived 38 years in Halyard Park. “It’s going to be a disaster for everybody. I do not want to be taxed out of my home.”
Chris Neilsen, one of Halyard Park’s newest white residents, says he was drawn to the neighborhood by its diverse environment. But he realizes there’s a difference between integration and gentrification that pushes people out.
“Looking to the future, I think it is a concern, and something that we need to be aware of, if we’re going to keep a diverse atmosphere,” said Neilsen, who bought a house in Halyard Park nearly four years ago with his wife Avery.
Jackson, the Milwaukee equal rights commissioner, agrees.
“Gentrification’s like a slow moving freight train,” he said. “You see it coming, but you’re not going to do anything to stop it from moving.”
Meanwhile, just a few blocks from Halyard Park, Exie Tatum still dreams of owning a suburban home someday.
For now, he’s considering a different strategy: buying a foreclosed property in a rundown neighborhood at a cost of only $1,000 for the house and an adjoining parcel of land. Maybe, says Tatum, he can improve the property then resell it for a handsome return.
But Tatum knows all too well the risks of trying to “flip” a house in an area that isn’t being gentrified. His current home, which he owns in a predominantly Black neighborhood, is a transitional home that he had hoped to “put a little income into, take a little equity, turn it over, and move out a little further (into the suburbs).”
The problem, says Tatum, is that after the house was originally appraised for about $110,000, it dropped to only $25,000 by the time he was ready to sell — all because of the neighborhood where it’s located.
“I’m jumping through multiple hoops just to stay somewhere where I really don’t want to stay,” he said.
ABC News Senior Investigative Correspondent David Scott, San Francisco ABC7’s Stephanie Sierra and Lindsey Feingold, and Raleigh ABC11’s Akilah Davis, Samantha Kummerer and Maggie Green contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — As the COVID-19 pandemic has swept the globe, more than 5.7 million people have died from the disease worldwide, including over 909,000 Americans, according to real-time data compiled by Johns Hopkins University’s Center for Systems Science and Engineering.
About 64.2% of the population in the United States is fully vaccinated against COVID-19, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Here’s how the news is developing Wednesday. All times Eastern:
Feb 09, 7:55 am
US reported more cases, deaths than any country last week, WHO says
The United States reported the highest number of newly confirmed COVID-19 cases and deaths from the disease last week out of any country in the world, according to a weekly epidemiological update released Tuesday by the World Health Organization.
More than 1.8 million new cases were reported in the U.S. during the week of Jan. 31 to Feb. 6, a 50% decrease compared to the previous week. Over 14,000 new fatalities were also reported, a 15% decrease, the WHO said.
France had the second-highest number of new cases with more than 1.7 million, a 26% decrease, while India had the second-highest number of new deaths with nearly 8,000, a 69% increase, according to the WHO.
Meanwhile, the global number of new cases during that same period decreased by 17% compared to the previous week, while fatalities increased by 7%, the WHO said.
(NEW YORK) — Four months after the Taliban seized power, Obaidullah Alikhil found himself unemployed and struggling to make ends meet as his son laid in bed with no strength to even open his eyes as he battles malnutrition.
Weighing around 12 pounds, 2-year-old Mohammed Alikhil was first admitted to the hospital in the summer of 2021, as the U.S. prepared to retreat its troops from Afghanistan and the Taliban’s power continued to grow. He was hospitalized for 21 days due to severe diarrhea, Alikhil told ABC News in December.
At the end of his stay, he was brought back home. But his condition, according to Alikhil, only got worse, leading to another hospital visit.
Several hospital visits and medications did not help with Mohammed’s recovery. With no solution, the bills continued to pile up, and the family’s financial situation became even more challenging.
Mohammed is one out of millions of Afghans on the brink of starvation as their families run out of money. More than 23 million Afghans face acute hunger, including nine million who are nearly famished, according to the UNICEF World Food Program.
By mid-2022, the U.N. Development Program estimates that 97% of Afghanistan’s population will “plunge” into poverty. Up to one million children under 5 could die by the end of the year due to the country’s food crisis and the lack of water and sanitation services, according to UNICEF.
The cold weather brought by the winter season makes the situation even more complicated. To keep Mohammed warm, Alikhil boils water and sets the kettle near his bed.
The struggle to keep their homes warm could increase the risk of illnesses, according to UNICEF. If a child is malnourished, the risks of getting sick are higher, and the recovery could take longer.
“We are approaching a critical juncture for Afghanistan’s children, as winter brings with it a multitude of threats to their health,” Abdul Kadir Musse, a former UNICEF Afghanistan representative, said in a Jan. 15 press release.
“There is no time to lose. Without urgent, concerted action — including ensuring we have the resources to deploy additional cash transfers and winter supplies — many of the country’s children will not live to see spring,” he said.
The financial situation among Afghans becomes even more challenging, following the freezing of more than $9 billion in assets after the Taliban took power last August.
The measure to freeze foreign reserves was taken as a way to prevent the resources from falling into the Taliban’s hands. The U.N. has about $135 million in aid in Afghanistan but it can’t access the money since the Taliban-run central bank lacks the infrastructure to convert it to afghani, the country’s currency.
As a way to meet the needs of families, UNICEF launched a $2 billion appeal in December as a way to respond to the needs of over 24 million Afghans. The appeal will “help avert the collapse of health, nutrition, WASH, education and other vital social services for children and families.”
The U.S. is also taking part in providing aid to Afghanistan as it deals with a growing humanitarian crisis. In January, the U.S. Agency for International Development announced a contribution of over $308 million in humanitarian assistance for Afghans, bringing the total amount of aid in the country to nearly $782 million since October 2020.
“The United States continues to urge the Taliban to allow unhindered humanitarian access, safe conditions for humanitarians, independent provision of assistance to all vulnerable people and freedom of movement for aid workers of all genders,” a press release stated at the time. “We will continue to work to alleviate the suffering of the Afghan people and call on other donors to continue to contribute to this international response.”
The U.S., however, is under growing pressure to unfreeze Afghanistan’s assets. The Taliban met with western diplomats from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy and Norway in January during a series of closed-door meetings in Oslo to discuss the humanitarian crisis affecting millions of Afghans.
It marked the first official talks since the group seized power six months ago.
For people like Alikhil, they struggle to find opportunities in a country under conflict and the Taliban’s leadership.
“All I want from them is to create a job opportunity [for us] so our lives get better. I am an educated person. I need a job so I can serve the country,” he said. “There is no job, no money.”
Without money and resources, some families are forced to make horrific decisions to make some money — even if it means selling their children.
“As of now, this child belongs to me; I have the right to sell him,” Khoday Ram, who is struggling to feed himself and his family, told ABC News. “If things would have been better, I would have let him study. But we’ve been left like this.”
“It’s normal to sell our daughters, but the situation is so bad, I have to sell my son because we’re hungry,” he said. “What happens to my son once I sell him is not up to me. He could end up being killed, or he could be allowed to go to school.”
Others are left with the choice to sell their organs in exchange for some money to buy a meal.
“I couldn’t go out and beg for money, I was not able to beg. Then I decided to go to the hospital and sell my kidney, so I could at least feed my children for some time,” Ghulam Hazrat told ABC News.
With over 2.5 million registered Afghan refugees, they consist of one of the largest refugee populations in the world. Approximately 2.2 million have relocated to Iran and Pakistan, according to the United Nations Refugee Agency. Due to the growing conflicts and the rise of the Taliban to power, the UNHCR predicts the number will continue to rise.
While Alikhil struggles to find a job so he can provide for his family, what keeps him hopeful is Mohammed and his recovery after getting the strength to open his eyes once again.
“Only God knows the future, what will happen, whether we will get help or not,” he said. “In our community here, until now, we didn’t get any kind of help yet, neither money or flour. So far no one has helped us.”
“All I want is to earn something so I can take care of my family’s expenses, that’s it,” Alikhil said.
(WASHINGTON) — It’s a move that would have been unthinkable last year: Weeks after a holiday surge crushed hospitals and more people died in a single month than a typical annual flu season, four Democratic governors this week declared an end date to statewide mask mandates in schools.
The new changes won’t take effect for several weeks. Gov. Ned Lamont’s Connecticut mandate will expire Feb. 28, followed by New Jersey on March 7, and Oregon and Delaware on March 31 — presumably after the omicron wave has ended and case counts are low. Their decisions also leave local school districts the option of keeping their mandates in place.
Still, the message from the Democratic governors to President Joe Biden was unmistakable: With the midterms nine months away, Democrats are now joining the chorus of Republicans who say the nation must learn to “live with the virus” and are pressing Biden to chart a path forward.
“Democratic voters have run out of empathy for unvaccinated people dying of COVID,” said Brian Stryker, a partner at Impact Research, a Democratic polling firm. “They are ready to live their lives.”
If 2021 was the year of the vaccine, 2022 is already shaping up to be the year voters demand the U.S. moves on.
For health experts, living with COVID means paying attention to local case counts and “dialing” up or down restrictions as needed. It also means taking steps to protect people who are immunocompromised and are at higher risk for breakthrough cases, as well as children under the age of 5 who still don’t qualify for a vaccine.
For many Americans, though, including a growing number of Democratic voters, living with COVID means loosening restrictions regardless of case counts or vaccination status.
According to a new Axios/Ipsos poll, two-thirds of Americans say they do not believe it’s possible for the U.S. to eradicate the coronavirus within the next year, although they are divided about how to handle that.
That reality puts unique pressure on Biden ahead of his State of the Union address on March 1 — a speech typically used by sitting presidents to declare victory and look toward the future.
“The public is saying ‘enough.’ The politicians are saying ‘enough,'” said Frank Luntz, a longtime Republican pollster and strategist.
“If Biden doesn’t say ‘enough’ at the SOTU, he’ll be digging a hole he can’t climb out. The (Democratic) governors know this because they’re closer to the people,” he wrote in an email to ABC News.
A Democratic official familiar with the thinking of the governors said they have been talking for a while now about offering COVID-wary Americans a “light at the end of the tunnel” after the omicron wave — and pressing the White House to do the same in Biden’s upcoming national address.
“The governors are acutely aware that there’s a need to provide people some optimism and give people some sense of ‘here’s the path forward,'” said the official, who agreed to be interviewed on the condition of anonymity in order to speak more openly.
“They want him to talk about his wins, and there are good ones to talk about” like job growth and infrastructure investments that aren’t COVID related, the person said.
Biden’s initial plan to liberate Americans from the pandemic by last Fourth of July centered on vaccinations and ensuring widespread and equitable access. Eventually, he turned to workplace mandates. Yet one year later, tens of millions of eligible Americans remain unvaccinated and his mandates for large businesses have been scuttled by the Supreme Court.
COVID hospitalizations and deaths also have eclipsed any comparisons to the flu. For example, more than 60,000 people died from complications of COVID in January alone — one of the highest monthly COVID-19 death tolls on record. By comparison, a typical flu season might result in 20,000 to 50,000 deaths in an entire year.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. in the last week averaged about 614 new cases a day per 100,000 residents — 61 times what the CDC considers to be low transmission. The CDC still recommends masks indoors, including in schools, for people ages 2 and up.
“I’m sure they’re facing a lot of pressure, both internally and externally, to try to make sure the pandemic is over,” Andy Slavitt, a former Biden adviser on COVID, said on ABC’s “Start Here” podcast of the Democratic governors. “It’s just not quite clear that it is.”
While the Democratic governors insist public health remains the priority, it’s hard to ignore this week’s rollbacks as a political calculation as Democrats look toward the midterm elections. Connecticut’s Lamont is up for reelection this fall. Oregon Democratic Gov. Kate Brown’s term limit expires this fall, leaving her seat up for grabs.
In New Jersey, Democratic Gov. Philip Murphy is coming off a narrow victory last fall, a race that surprised many pundits by how close it was. Also worth noting was Republican Glenn Youngkin’s victory in Virginia last fall, flipping enough Democratic voters to win the governor’s race there by promising to keep schools open and empower parents to make education decisions.
Celinda Lake, a Democratic strategist and lead pollster for Biden in the 2020 presidential election, said overall polling in the country still suggests strong support among Americans for masks in schools, with moms and women in particular erring on the side of caution. So Biden will have to take into account that majority of voters when addressing the nation, even if they aren’t as vocal, she said.
“Voters are also very worried about the learning loss and social learning loss associated with closing schools,” she said. “Democrats are on the right side of this issue and should make the argument forcefully that we are going to protect our children, work with parents and teachers to get the best schooling for our children, and follow the science to get this under control.”
Stryker said he still thinks the goal — at least from a political standpoint — is to move away from talking about the pandemic as much as Democrats are.
“If Democrats can stop talking about COVID every day, treat it like the long-term problem it is and start talking about more immediate concerns of voters” like the high cost of living, “the better they will do in the midterms,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — Republican lawmakers are divided on what could become a defining issue for the GOP after the Republican National Committee passed a censure resolution last week including language critics said suggested the Jan. 6 attack was “legitimate political discourse” — with the top Republican in Congress rebuking the RNC Tuesday.
The resolution, censuring GOP Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois — members of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack — said the incumbent lawmakers were “participating in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” — a phrase that has since come under fire and Cheney juxtaposed on social media with images of violence at the Capitol.
Asked about the RNC move at a weekly leadership press conference on Capitol Hill, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not address the “legitimate political discourse” language used directly, but offered his characterization of Jan. 6 and suggested the RNC was out of line to single out sitting members.
“Well, let me give him my view of what happened January the 6th. We all were here. We saw what happened. It was a violent insurrection for the purpose of trying to prevent a peaceful transfer of power after a legitimately certified election from one administration to the next. That’s what it was,” McConnell said.
“With regard to this suggestion that the RNC should be in the business of picking and choosing Republicans who ought to be supported, traditionally, the view of the national party committee is that we support all members of our party, regardless of their positions, and some issues,” he added.
Asked if he had confidence in RNC Chairperson Ronna McDaniel, McConnell said, “I do — but the issue is whether or not the RNC should be sort of singling out members of our party who may have different views from the majority. That’s not the job of the RNC.”
In an interview with Spectrum News in December, McConnell signaled his personal interest in the House committee’s work, despite blocking the formation of an independent, bipartisan commission to investigate the attack last year, and said, “I think that what they’re seeking to find out is something the public needs to know.”
ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who has struggled to maintain GOP infighting on his quest to become House speaker, whether he thought there was was “legitimate political discourse” on Jan. 6 after he dodged reporters questions on the topic last week.
“Everybody knows there was — anyone who broke inside,” McCarthy replied Tuesday.
McCarthy’s office called later to clarify that he meant that “anybody who broke inside was not” engaged in legitimate political discourse.
Asked also if he was supportive of the censure of Cheney and Kinzinger, McCarthy said, “I think I’ve already answered that question — there’s a reason why Adam is not running for reelection,” in an apparent reference to an earlier interview with OAN.
The No. 3 House Republican Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y. — who replaced Cheney as a member of leadership after an internal revolt last year — told reporters Tuesday, “The RNC has every right to take any action and the position that I have is you’re ultimately held accountable to voters.”
Asked also if she believes the violence on Jan. 6 was “legitimate political discourse,” Stefanik condemned the violence but proceeded to equate the violence of Jan. 6 to the “violence of 2020” — seemingly a reference to the national protests that took place following George Floyd’s murder.
But while House Republicans and close allies of Trump have defended the resolution, several members of Senate Republican leadership sought to distance themselves from it, with a number refuting the “legitimate political discourse” description.
Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas — a key ally of McConnell — told reporters Monday that the language in the resolution wasn’t appropriate.
“I just I think being accurate is really important, particularly when you are talking about something that sensitive, and I just think it was not an accurate description,” Cornyn said.
Sen. Rick Scott, R-Fla., also on the Hill Monday for an evening leadership meeting with McConnell, reacted as if the RNC’s action is wholly apart from him and the Senate GOP.
“I mean it’s what they want to say. I’m clear what I believe has been,” said Scott, who has condemned rioters on Jan. 6 as “disgraceful and un-American.”
But Florida’s other senator, Sen. Marco Rubio, fell in line with messaging of the RNC and former President Donald Trump, condemning the Jan. 6 committee, instead, on CBS’ Face the Nation Sunday as “a partisan scam.”
Other senators have wiggled around taking a clear stance.
Sen. Rob Portman, R-Ohio, who announced last month he is not running for reelection to the Senate, told reporters Monday, “Everybody has the right to peacefully protest, but they don’t have the right to be violent. Of course, there was protest that day that was not violent, but there was also a terrible violent and criminal part of it.”
Pressed on whether the RNC resolution and specific language was appropriate, he said, “I haven’t read what they said, but I don’t think it’s appropriate to call violent and criminal activity.”
Senate GOP Whip John Thune, R-S.D., up for reelection this year and often a target of former President Donald Trump — was pressed repeatedly on whether he supports the censure resolution, but demurred, saying the focus, instead, should “be forward, not backward.”
Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.V., echoed the sentiment but in a more critical tone, saying, “We’ve got a lot of issues that we should be focusing on besides censuring two members of Congress because they have a different opinion.”
The RNC has come under intense questioning since Friday about the inclusion of the “legitimate political discourse” phrase in its censure resolution to Cheney and Kinzinger.
Asked Friday to elaborate on the description, the RNC official said the party is talking about “legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol.”
“Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger crossed a line,” McDaniel said in a statement. “They chose to join Nancy Pelosi in a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens who engaged in legitimate political discourse that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol. That’s why Republican National Committee members and myself overwhelmingly support this resolution.”
McDaniel’s statement notably attempted to clarify the resolution’s “legitimate political discourse” language, adding the words, “that had nothing to do with violence at the Capitol,” though that additional phrasing did not appear in the resolution that was passed Friday.
Senate and House Democrats have come out swinging against the RNC’s decision.
“Ronna McDaniel should be ashamed of herself,” House Democratic Caucus Chairman Hakeem Jeffries told reporters during a press conference Tuesday. “What makes it worse is that our Republican colleagues here in the Capitol refuse to denounce it because they are a part of the cult, as well.”
Republican Rep. Mike McCaul of Texas, meanwhile, sought to pivot away from the issue on ABC’s This Week when pressed by co-anchor Martha Raddatz on Sunday, condemning the violence of Jan. 6 but unwilling to denounce the resolution.
“My understanding is [the statement] pertains to the legitimate protesters that I saw that day,” McCaul said.
Republican Rep. Don Young of Alaska, who voted against both of Trump’s impeachments, weighed in over the weekend to say that what transpired on Jan. 6 “was criminal, un-American, and cannot be considered legitimate protest.”
A handful of the seven Senate Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for “incitement of insurrection” last year were also among the first to condemn the RNC language.
“What happened on January 6, 2021 was an effort to overturn a lawful election resulting in violence and destruction at the Capitol. We must not legitimize those actions which resulted in loss of life and we must learn from that horrible event so history does not repeat itself,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, tweeted.
Hers followed Sen. Mitt Romney, R-Utah, writing Friday morning that “shame” falls on the party, that his niece, McDaniel, currently presides over.
“Shame falls on a party that would censure persons of conscience, who seek truth in the face of vitriol. Honor attaches to Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for seeking truth even when doing so comes at great personal cost,” Romney tweeted.
And Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., also reacted with apparent shock, tweeting, “The RNC is censuring Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger because they are trying to find out what happened on January 6th – HUH?”
The move to censure Cheney and Kinzinger marks the first time the national RNC has had a formal censure for an incumbent member of Congress backed by its members.
The day before the RNC vote, Kinzinger tweeted he has “no regrets about my decision to uphold my oath of office and defend the Constitution.”
Kinzinger, who is not running for reelection but has said his political career is not over, said in a statement that GOP leadership had allowed “conspiracies and toxic tribalism” to cloud “their ability to see clear-eyed.”
“I’ve been a member of the Republican Party long before Donald Trump entered the field,” Kinzinger said in a statement Thursday night. “Rather than focus their efforts on how to help the American people, my fellow Republicans have chosen to censure two lifelong Members of their party for simply upholding their oaths of office.”
Cheney also spoke to her identity as a “constitutional conservative” in a statement and said, “I do not recognize those in my party who have abandoned the Constitution to embrace Donald Trump.”
(NEW YORK) — A growing number of states are lifting mask mandates in schools, but Education Secretary Miguel Cardona says that prematurely easing restrictions could lead to more issues for in-person learning.
“We have to have our health experts at the table,” Cardona told ABC News Live on Tuesday. “Most importantly, we have to keep our schools open; our students cannot afford another round of disruption.”
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy and Delaware Gov. John Carney announced Monday that students will no longer be required to wear a mask in schools by mid-March.
Since a few months after the pandemic hit the United States, local politicians have come under pressure from parents and communities on both sides of the debate over children wearing masks in schools.
“We have people that are very passionate about what they believe,” Cardona said. “We have to remember to engage the perspectives of different parents, teachers.”
Cardona responded to claims of parents who argue that wearing a face mask negatively impacts their child’s learning, by pointing to a likely outcome of lifting restrictions too soon.
“You know what hinders kids’ learning? Being quarantined because they have COVID, or not having a teacher because their teacher has COVID,” he said.
Some experts say it is too soon to end mask mandates in schools because vaccination rates are not high enough among children and new cases are still being reported. Experts are especially concerned for children under 5 who are not yet eligible for the vaccine. Pfizer requested emergency use authorization for children 6 months old to 5 years old on Feb. 1, and a Food and Drug Administration advisory meeting is scheduled for Feb. 15.
“Many of our educators have children under the age of 5 that they go home to,” said Cardona. “We need to make sure our schools are safe for them to work. We have to honor and respect our educators and leaders who have difficult decisions.”
The education secretary said the easing of coronavirus protocols in the classroom are making some educators feel uncomfortable coming to work. Since the pandemic began, there’s been a teacher shortage, due to fears of contracting the virus, remote learning and an overall shift in how our nation’s educators teach and interact with young people.
“It’s been tough to be an educator the last couple years, not only because of the changes that they’ve had to experience in terms of being in-person one day and being fully remote the next, but they’ve been under a lot of pressure,” said Cardona. “There’s strong feelings in the community, oftentimes teachers are being blamed schools are not open.”
He noted that the country has made progress in keeping schools open throughout the last year, stating that in the beginning of President Joe Biden’s term, less than 50% of classes were held in person. Now, all schools have opened their doors, though some are still operating on a hybrid schedule.
Cardona said it’s important for school districts and politicians to remember what has succeeded in keeping students and educators safe in schools.
“What I’m hearing from educators is that they just want to make sure that their work environment is safe for their students,” he added. “But they also understand this pandemic has taken a toll and that we’re ready to move forward, but we can only do so if we protect our students and our staff, including the students who are not yet in our schools, the little ones that parents are going back home to.”
(WASHINGTON) — U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy told lawmakers on Tuesday that the pandemic has had a “devastating” impact on the mental health of America’s young people.
“I’m deeply concerned as a parent and as a doctor that the obstacles this generation of young people face are unprecedented and uniquely hard to navigate and the impact that’s having on their mental health is devastating,” Murthy told the Senate Finance Committee.
Senators expressed bipartisan support for addressing mental health issues among young people, with chairman Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Ranking Member Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, raising alarm over recent increases in suicide attempts among American youth.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported last year that emergency department visits for suicide attempts among teen girls were up more than 50% at the beginning of the pandemic, compared to the same period in 2019.
“Millions of young Americans are struggling under a mental health epidemic, struggling in school, struggling with addiction or isolation, struggling to make it from one day to the next. Our country is in danger of losing much of a generation if mental health care remains business as usual,” Wyden said. “And that means the Finance Committee has got to come up with solutions.”
A main issue, Murthy said, is access to care. He said that on average it takes 11 years from the onset of symptoms before a child begins receiving treatment.
Murthy’s main recommendations are to ensure access to “high-quality, culturally competent care,” focusing on prevention with school and community-based programs and developing a better understanding of the impact technology and social media have on young people.
“Currently there is a grand national experiment that is taking place upon our kids when it comes to social media and we need to understand more about what is happening, which kids are at risk, what impact these algorithms and the broader platforms are having on our children,” Murthy said.
He explained that, in addition to the positive effects social media platforms have had on young people, they have also, “exacerbated feelings of loneliness, futility and low self esteem for some youth,” and increased potential for negative messaging and bullying.
“Our obligation to act is not just medical, it’s moral,” Murthy said. “It’s not only about saving lives, it’s about listening to our kids who are concerned about the state of the world that they are set to inherit. It’s about our opportunity to rebuild a world that we want to give them, a world that fundamentally refocuses our priorities on people and community and builds a culture of kindness, inclusion and respect.”
If you or a loved one is experiencing suicidal thoughts, The National Suicide Prevention Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support. Call 1-800-273-8255 for help.
