2022 marks Madonna‘s 40th year as a recording artist, and she’s kicking off the celebration with a new take on one of her classic hits.
Madonna’s dropped a new remix of her 1998 song “Frozen,” based on the viral version by producer Sickick that took over TikTok last year, soundtracking more than 100,000 videos. It’s called “Frozen (Fireboy DML Remix),” and is credited to Madonna, Sickick and Fireboy DML, a Nigerian singer who’s currently on the charts with an Ed Sheeran collaboration called “Peru.” A video for the remix is coming “soon,” according to Madonna.
In other Madonna news, The Hollywood Reporter has more information on the casting process for the Queen of Pop’s upcoming biopic, which she co-wrote and is directing. The publication says Ozark‘s Julia Garner, Black Widow‘s Florence Pugh, Euphoria star Alexa Demie, indie-film star Odessa Young and Mayor of Kingstown actress Emma Laird are in the running to play Madonna, and even pop star Bebe Rexha has been part of the search.
The audition process is described as “grueling,” involving 11-hour-a-day choreography sessions with Madonna’s choreographer and then with Madonna herself. The callbacks consist of readings and singing auditions, again with Madonna — so, no pressure, right? One insider tells The Hollywood Reporter, “You have to be able to do everything.” Just like Madonna.
In October, Madonna told Jimmy Fallon that she’s so involved in the project because “A bunch of people have tried to write movies about me, but they’re always men.”
Robert Pattinson had a lot of preparation ahead of him when he signed on to play the iconic Caped Crusader in The Batman — including about 80 years’ worth of reading material.
At Tuesday’s New York City premiere of the film, the actor detailed the daunting process to ABC Audio.
“A year just working on the script and then probably three months just physically training, and then fight choreography and then reading probably a trillion Batman graphic novels,” Pattinson admitted on the red carpet.
“[I] didn’t really think about the fact that you got a character that’s been around for 80 years, there’s quite a lot of comics you’ve got to read, so I had a whole suitcase full of them.”
Pattinson wasn’t the only cast member who came prepared. Paul Dano, whose villain Riddler takes heavy cues from the Zodiac Killer, told ABC Audio he practiced extensively with the creepy mask he wears for much of the film.
He also noted that in trying to put his stamp on the Riddler he focused on, “going as deep as I can into that character and bringing the history with me but going in a new direction.”
Darker in tone even than Christopher Nolan‘s Oscar winning The Dark Knight, director Matt Reeves‘ The Batman dives into the psychology of its titular character and his iconic nemesis.
In addition to Dano’s Riddler, admitted Bat-fan Colin Farrell is unrecognizable as a sleazy Penguin, and Pattinson’s hero tangles, and teams up, with Zoë Kravitz‘ Selena Kyle/Catwoman.
On how Gotham has changed in Reeves’ reboot, Pattinson said, “It’s very much about the corruptions of the institutions. The bad guys are not fantastical at all, and Batman is not fantastical at all in this movie. He’s not even known as Batman in this movie yet…he’s just a guy in a suit of armor.”
Shonda Rhimes transformed television with her hit shows such as Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, and now the five-time Emmy nominee wants to transform something else — the “dream gap.”
Rhimes teamed with Barbie to close the “dream gap,” a “heartbreaking” phenomenon where are girls as young as five are led to believe they aren’t as smart or as capable as their male counterparts. In order to break this “widespread… problem,” she says parents need to stop limiting their expectations for their daughters.
“Overcoming the dream gap has to do with your parents and how you’re raised,” Rhimes explained. “My parents never allowed me to think that there was a dream gap for me. Their dreams for me were as big as their dreams were for my brothers or for anybody else.”
“I was lucky enough to be raised in a household where I was expected to be president of the United States… My father literally used to say to me, ‘If you can believe it, you can achieve it,'” she continued.
Rhimes understands not everyone was raised by supportive parents, which is why she hopes her new partnership will inspire more female role models to step up and encourage girls to embrace their full potential.
As for the advice she has for those who have been tricked by the dream gap, she says, “There’s absolutely no evidence or reason why you should be settling for less than your greatest or your best or anything that you want to have happen… Nobody asked men to settle, so I don’t think anybody should be asking a woman to settle.”
Barbie is honoring the Shondaland CEO with her own one-of-a-kind Barbie doll, as part of their Role Models line that highlights 11 other women, which you can see here.
The official trailer for Hulu’s The Girl from Plainville, starring Elle Fanning, dropped on Wednesday. The miniseries, inspired by the true story of Michelle Carter‘s unprecedented “texting suicide” case, is based on Jesse Barron‘s Esquire article of the same name and explores the relationship between Carter and Conrad Roy III — played respectively by Fanning and Colton Ryan — and the events that led to his death and, later, Carter’s conviction of involuntary manslaughter. The series also stars Chloë Sevigny, Cara Buono, Kai Lennox and Norbert Leo Butz. The Girl from Plainville premieres on Hulu with three episodes March 29…
Apple TV+ announced on Wednesday that it has renewed the Tiffany Haddish-led murder-mystery comedy, The Afterparty, for a second season ahead of Friday’s season-one finale. The series follows Haddish’s Detective Danner as she searches for a killer during a house party following a high school reunion. The first season stars Haddish, Sam Richardson, Zoë Chao, Ben Schwartz, Ike Barinholtz, Ilana Glazer, Jamie Demetriou and Dave Franco…
CBS has picked up two additional seasons of the long-running soap The Bold and the Beautiful through the 2023-2024 broadcast season. The announcement comes three weeks before the daytime drama celebrates its 35th anniversary on March 23. “For 35 years, The Bold and the Beautiful has been a cornerstone of our #1 daytime lineup,” said Margot Wain, senior vice president, daytime programs, CBS Entertainment. “Congratulations to our talented cast and crew, as well as Bradley Bell, who have made this show a creative and ratings success, and thank you to B&B’s dedicated fans, whose passion for these characters and stories is unrivaled.” The Bold and the Beautiful debuted in 1987 and has won 100 Daytime Emmys…
The Shubert Organization announced on Wednesday that Broadway’s 110-year-old Cort Theater will become the James Earl Jones Theatre “in recognition of Mr. Jones’s lifetime of immense contributions to Broadway and the entire artistic community.” In a statement, 91-year-old Jones said, “For me standing in this very building sixty-four years ago at the start of my Broadway career, it would have been inconceivable that my name would be on the building today. Let my journey from then to now be an inspiration for all aspiring actors.” Jones has been seen on Broadway in The Great White Hope, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Fences, Driving Miss Daisy, Gore Vidal’s The Best Man, You Can’t Take It with You and The Gin Game, among others. He has won three Tony awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2017…
Jennifer Hudson, will make her daytime TV debut this fall with the launch of The Jennifer Hudson Show on Fox Television stations.
“I have experienced so much in my life; I’ve seen the highest of the highs, the lowest of the lows, and just about everything in between, but as my mother always told me, ‘Once you think you’ve seen it all, just keep on living,’” Hudson said in a statement obtained by Variety on Wednesday.
“People from around the world have been a part of my journey from the beginning — twenty years ago — and I’m so ready to join their journey as we sit down and talk about the things that inspire and move us all,” the statement continued. “I have always loved people, and I cannot wait to connect on a deeper level and let audiences see the different sides of who I am, the human being, in return. And I couldn’t be more thrilled to do it alongside this incredible team. We’re about to have a lot of fun and shake things up a little bit!”
Hudson first rose to fame as a contestant on American Idol in 2004. In addition to releasing several albums, she went on to star as Effie White in the film adaptation of the Broadway musical Dreamgirls, for which she won an Oscar, appeared in dozens of TV and film projects and starred on Broadway in The Color Purple.
Most recently, Hudson portrayed Aretha Franklin in the biopic, Respect, which earned her another Oscar nomination and the award for outstanding actress in a motion picture at the Sunday’s NAACP Image Awards, along with the entertainer of the year award.
(NEW YORK) — The United States marked a new stage in the government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic when President Joe Biden announced in his State of the Union address Tuesday that “COVID-19 no longer need control our lives.”
The World Health Organization declared a global pandemic in March 2020 due to rapid spread of COVID-19 all across the globe.
However, as many experts believe the virus that causes COVID-19 will never be eradicated, the world must at some point transition away from “pandemic” and toward an “endemic” phase.
Pandemics are a widespread, rapid spread of disease, with exponentially rising cases over a large area. Endemic viruses, meanwhile, are constantly present and have a fairly predictable spread. That predictability allows health care systems and doctors to prepare and adapt, reducing loss of life.
For a pandemic to reach an endemic phase, it would need to be “a situation where you have a background level” of disease, said Dr. Daniel McQuillen, president of the Infectious Diseases Society of America and a senior physician in the division of infectious diseases at Beth Israel Lahey Health in Massachusetts.
This means that, while some people would still get infected, it wouldn’t be an unbearable number with devastating consequences that overwhelms the public, hospital systems and providers.
The seasonal flu, or influenza, is an example of an endemic virus. H1N1 influenza has had pandemic spread of variants in the past, such as the Spanish flu in 1918 and swine flu in 2009. Variants of these are now part of respiratory viruses that we encounter regularly.
“There’s not a hard and fast rule for when a pandemic becomes an endemic,” said Dr. Paul Goepfert, a professor of medicine in the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s division of infectious diseases.
Without knowing if there may be another variant on the horizon and without a predictable pattern of disease, it’s still too soon to tell if the nation has reached an endemic phase.
That’s why many Americans are concerned it’s too soon to lift mask mandates. There is still a lot of transmission, and young children and immunocompromised people are still vulnerable.
However, McQuillen said the new guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are a reasonable shift, as they focus on local transmission and capacity.
“We’re going from trying to prevent disease completely to going more to how do we deal with preventing severe illness and hospitalizations and how do we prevent our health care system from getting so swamped that we can’t take care of even normal problems,” he said.
This must be determined at a local level.
“I think [the new CDC guidance] reflects this need to be flexible in how to respond to the pandemic,” said Dr. Natasha Chida, assistant professor in the division of infectious diseases at Johns Hopkins University.
Pandemics are “not a static experience,” she said. Some places in the country still have very low hospital capacity, so they would struggle to handle additional cases and thus would benefit from masking. But when numbers are low, we should “be able to have a normal type of experience,” she said.
Despite the new guidelines, many experts are hesitant to say the nation has entered an endemic phase just yet, as only time will tell if a new variant will arise and cause similar upheaval.
“Endemic is where you are seeing consistently low numbers, the health care system is able to manage it [and] people are able to get the care they need,” Chida said.
While the U.S. is getting close, numbers have dropped before and then new variants emerged, so it’s “too soon to say” if we are in this phase yet, she said.
To prepare for and prevent another wave, McQuillen, Goepfert and Chida each emphasized the importance of building better infrastructure for public health initiatives. This includes equitable vaccine distribution across the globe and increasing supply of treatments and testing — items currently outlined in the White House’s new pandemic policy agenda.
Goepfert also noted the importance of supporting primary care providers, both in allowing them to administer vaccines in their clinics and ease of access to treatment.
“What the pandemic laid bare was that public health has been massively under-resourced for decades, and people suffered because of that,” Chida said.
Now, with more than 75% of Americans vaccinated, experts are hopeful that the country can move toward better control of the disease and toward a new endemic phase — where we can control the disease, and it doesn’t control us.
(NEW YORK) — Russian forces are continuing their attempted push through Ukraine from multiple directions, while Ukrainians, led by President Volodymr Zelenskyy, are putting up “stiff resistance,” according to U.S. officials.
The attack began Feb. 24, when Russian President Vladimir Putin announced a “special military operation.”
Russian forces moving from neighboring Belarus toward Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, don’t appear to have advanced closer to the city since coming within about 20 miles, although smaller advanced groups have been fighting gun battles with Ukrainian forces inside the capital since at least Friday.
Russia has been met by sanctions from the United States, Canada and countries throughout Europe, targeting the Russian economy as well as Putin himself.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Mar 03, 6:50 am
Russian foreign minister declines to comment on civilian deaths in Ukraine
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov wouldn’t comment on civilian deaths from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine when pressed during an interview Thursday with ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America.
“I cannot comment,” Lavrov said, adding that there are “a great deal” of “conjectures.”
Mar 03, 6:36 am
Russia says talks with Ukraine will resume Thursday
A second round of talks between Russian and Ukrainian negotiators will be held at the previously planned venue in neighboring Belarus on Thursday at around 3 p.m. local time (7 a.m. ET), according to Vladimir Medinsky, head of the Russian delegation and aide to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“The talks will take place — we are now in contact with the Ukrainian side — at the same venue where they were planned, on the territory of the Brest region of Belarus,” Medinsky told reporters Thursday, adding that Russian negotiators are “waiting calmly.”
“I think the talks will begin at 3 p.m.,” he said.
Mar 03, 6:08 am
Ukraine claims to have raised flag over town outside Kyiv
Ukraine claimed Thursday to have raised its flag over the town of Bucha, close to the Ukrainian capital where some of the most intense fighting has been taking place in recent days and where Russia’s push south on Kyiv appears to have stalled.
A video posted on the official Facebook page of the Ukrainian Armed Forces’ ground troops purportedly shows soldiers hoisting the national flag outside Bucha’s town hall. The town is just a few miles north of the edge of Kyiv and about 15 miles from the center of the capital. Fighting is reported to be ongoing nearby and, in the video, an explosion can be heard in the distance as they raise the blue and yellow flag.
Mar 03, 5:34 am
Ukraine requests no-fly zone over Chernobyl
Ukraine is asking the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) to call on NATO to close access to the airspace over the country’s Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the surrounding exclusion zone.
The deserted exclusion zone around the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, where the world’s worst nuclear accident took place in 1986, was seized by Russian forces last week.
A joint appeal to the IAEA was signed Wednesday by Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Galushchenko, Oleh Korikov, head of the State Nuclear Regulatory Inspectorate of Ukraine, and Petro Kotin, head of Ukraine’s state nuclear energy company Energoatom.
“The fact of the seizure of the world-famous Chernobyl nuclear power plant has all the hallmarks of an act of nuclear terrorism committed against Chernobyl nuclear facilities and its personnel by Russian military units,” they said in the appeal.
Mar 03, 5:06 am
Russia claims to have hit another TV tower in Kyiv
Russia claimed Thursday that its forces have “disabled” another television tower in Ukraine’s capital.
Russian troops fired precision-guided weapons at a TV and radio center in the Lysa Hora region of Kyiv, according to Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
“A strike delivered by a long-range precision-guided weapon disabled a reserve TV and radio center in the Lysa Hora area in Kyiv which the Ukrainian Security Service has been using for psychological operations against Russia,” Konashenkov said at a press briefing Thursday. “There are no casualties and there is no damage done to residential buildings.”
There were reports of more explosions in Kyiv on Thursday morning, but Ukrainian officials have yet to confirm that a second TV tower was hit.
A Russian missile struck Kyiv’s main TV tower in the heart of the capital on Tuesday.
Ukrainian Defence Minister Oleksii Reznikov has said that Russia is aiming to cut off a large part of Ukraine from the internet and communications.
Mar 03, 4:37 am
Russia claims to have seized eastern Ukrainian city
Russia claimed Thursday that its forces have seized the eastern Ukrainian city of Balakliya.
Russian troops worked together with Russia-backed separatist forces on the “successful offensive,” according to Russian Ministry of Defense spokesman Igor Konashenkov.
“The city of Balakliya has been freed from nationalist battalions,” Konashenkov said at a press briefing Thursday.
Balakliya is about 55 miles southeast of Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, where heavy shelling continued Thursday.
Mar 02, 11:25 pm
US condemns Kremlin’s ‘full assault’ on ‘truth’ in media
The U.S. State Department is condemning Moscow’s attack on the media, saying the Kremlin “is engaged in a full assault on media freedom and the truth, and Moscow’s efforts to mislead and suppress the truth of the brutal invasion are intensifying.”
“The people of Russia did not choose this war. Putin did,” Ned Price, State Department spokesman, said in a statement. “They have a right to know about the death, suffering and destruction being inflicted by their government on the people of Ukraine. The people of Russia also have a right to know about the human costs of this senseless war to their own soldiers.”
The statement comes 24 hours after the Russian government blocked the country’s only two major independent news broadcasters, Dozhd TV and Radio Ekho Moskvy, accusing them of spreading “false information” about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Ekho Moskvy has been respected for its even-handed treatment of breaking news since its founding 32 years ago, and, until yesterday, its broadcasts reached some 1.8 million daily listeners throughout Russia and beyond,” the State Department said in a statement Wednesday night. “Dozhd, which has been operating for more than a decade, is similarly known for high-quality reporting.”
Russian state channels, such as RT and Sputnik, are banned from using the word “war” or “invasion” in relation to Russia’s assault on Ukraine. Russian President Vladimir Putin instead has referred to it as a “special military operation.”
The State Department said the Russian Parliament will consider a bill Friday to make “unofficial” reporting on the invasion punishable by up to 15 years in prison.
(NEW YORK) — As the Russian invasion of Ukraine intensifies, children are experiencing devastating consequences of being caught up in the war zone.
At least seven children have been killed, according to United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and several more have been injured during air strikes and blasts.
Dozens of children are hiding in bomb shelters, basements, metro stations and other underground areas while others have fled their homes for neighboring countries.
Psychologists and other experts say there are also mental health concerns these children face and that it’s important they have as much structure as possible to keep a sense of stability in their lives.
And adults can better provide for their children by taking care of their own mental health needs.
“Children are extremely vulnerable to insecurity, not only the physical trauma but the psychological trauma, and it can reverberate and have repercussions for a long time,” Dr. Paul Wise, a professor of pediatrics at Stanford University, told ABC News.
Mental health risks for children in war zones
There are physical risks for children that come with living in war zones, such as breathing in smoke and ash from fires and blasts that can affect the nose and lungs. But there are also mental health risks.
Studies have shown that children and families living in or fleeing war regions have an increased risk of suffering from mental health problems.
“We’ve seen past war situations like what is happening in Ukraine, an increase in depression, anxiety,” Dr. Monica Barreto, a clinical psychologist at Orlando Health Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children, told ABC News.
And while not all children will be traumatized, they may react differently to the traumatic situations they’re witnessing.
“Some children may be more agitated, they may be harder to calm down, just more unsettled,” said Dr. Jack Shonkoff, director for the Center of the Developing Child at Harvard University. “Some children in these circumstances tend to be more withdrawn, they’re not crying as much, they’re not demanding much attention.”
He continued, “Sometimes people might look at that and say, ‘This child is managing pretty well.’ Sometimes that’s a sign of the things to worry about the most because these children are withdrawing, they’re internalizing a lot of what’s going on.”
Taking care of adults’ needs helps children
Shonkoff, who is also a professor of child health and development, said one way to ensure a good outcome for children in a war zone is by making sure the adults are being taken care of too.
“The most important factor that determines how children are going to basically survive and go forward after a war experience is the nature of the adults who are caring for them,” he said. “If the parents and the caregivers are significantly traumatized, they can’t provide that sense of support. The adults’ needs become critically important to protect the children.”
He likens it to a safety presentation on a flight, when flight attendants tell passengers to secure their own oxygen masks before helping others.
“That’s not a way of saying you’re more important than your child. It’s a way of saying if you pass out, your child won’t be OK,” Shonkoff said.
As for babies, he explained they are highly attuned to what’s going on and if adults are not engaging with them, it can hurt the babies’ development.
“If the parent is so traumatized or depressed, they can’t coo back, can’t smile back. That signals danger to the brain even though the baby doesn’t know what’s going on. That can create excessive stress in the body, raise inflammation and blood pressure levels,” Shonkoff said.
Wise adds that children look to adults not only for protection but also for how frightened they should be and “for understanding what’s happening to them in a time of profound insecurity, and children will feel the best protected with a strong, coherent community life and family life.”
Children need as much as structure as possible
The experts say it’s important to make sure that children are provided structure as much as possible while living in war zones to help with their development and well-being.
Barreto mentioned videos she’s seen online of Ukrainian families in bunkers trying to provide play and teachers trying to teach lessons.
“Children are no longer in school, they’re no longer in a safe environment,” she said. “Maintaining some of that structure can be very helpful and protective during these times.”
Barreto added that the same recommendations apply for children in refugee camps, making sure they are set up with their families and that some time is provided so they can experience “normality” whether that is playtime or having lessons.
(NEW YORK) — A North Carolina woman who had been unable to eat solid foods for over a decade due to a rare condition underwent a life-changing multiorgan transplant that gave her a new stomach, pancreas and intestines.
Sarah Granados, a mom of three from Gastonia, North Carolina, waited 444 days for the transplant, which took place in November at Indiana Health University Hospital, more than 500 miles away from her home.
“It gave my kids their mom back. It gave my husband back his wife,” Granados, 36, said of the transplant. “It gave me the chance to dream about things I haven’t dreamt about in years because I was too scared to.”
Granados has faced life-threatening medical complications since 2012, when she underwent what was considered a routine surgery to remove her gallbladder because of a potentially cancerous spot.
Though the surgery did not have complications, Granados said doctors believe she was uniquely affected by it because she has Hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, an inherited connective tissue disorder that can cause gastrointestinal dysfunction.
After the surgery, Granados said she was unable to eat solid foods and had to be placed on a feeding tube.
Doctors diagnosed her with severe gastroparesis, a disorder that “slows or stops the movement of food from your stomach to your small intestine,” according to the National Institutes of Health.
After spending six years on a feeding tube, Granados underwent a second surgery, a gastrectomy, in 2018 to remove her stomach and part of her small intestines. Complications from that surgery, she said, sent her into intestinal failure and she was diagnosed with intestinal pseudo-obstruction, a rare condition when the intestines appear blocked, according to the NIH.
Granados, whose youngest child was around 4 years old at the time, was then placed on total parenteral nutrition, a lifesaving measure that delivers nutrients intravenously.
“I ran into complications almost immediately,” said Granados. “It was at that time that [doctors] said, ‘You’re either going to need a transplant or your life expectancy is probably only a few years.”
Doctors determined that Granados needed a transplant of her gastrointestinal system, a rare procedure that only occurs in around 100 patients worldwide each year, according to Dr. Richard Mangus, surgical director of the IU Health intestine transplant program and the doctor who performed Granados’ transplant.
Granados went on the transplant list in 2020, during the coronavirus pandemic, and spent much of the time leading up to the transplant in the hospital.
She was hospitalized in North Carolina in November 2021 when she got the call that a donor had been found with a stomach, pancreas and small and large intestines deemed a “perfect match” for Granados.
“At that point I was having conversations with my family about having my lines actually removed and going into hospice because I was ready to be done,” said Granados. “And not because I don’t love my life, and not because I wouldn’t give anything and everything, but because my body was really, really tired and couldn’t stand the thought of living in a hospital anymore.”
“I essentially had to have a perfect donor to make this this match happen,” she said.
Within 24 hours of getting the call, Granados was transported by plane to Indiana Health University Hospital in Indianapolis.
At the same time, Mangus flew to the location of the deceased donor to oversee the removal of the organs.
Once back in Indianapolis, on Nov. 14, 2021, Mangus oversaw a complex, 10-hour transplant procedure that involved several doctors.
“Usually there are a couple of surgeons taking her organs out, while a couple of surgeons are preparing the organs on a separate table, and then when her organs are out, we go ahead and bring the the new organs and put them into her abdomen,” Mangus explained. “We have to connect the blood vessels … and then we have to connect back to the intestinal tract .. and then distally we have to connect into her large intestine as well.”
Granados said she has thought every day since her transplant about the donor, whom she calls her “angel donor.”
“I can’t change that they had an untimely death, but I truly believe that there are angels that are made to save other people,” she said. “And in my case, the doctors were saying there was a one-in-a-million chance, so I’m very fortunate that I got my one-in-a-million.”
Granados continued, “There’s not an hour that goes by that I’m not very keenly aware that I’m now carrying somebody else. It’s a privilege but it’s also something I take very, very seriously.”
Both Granados and Mangus stressed the importance of organ donation, for which there is a critical need in the United States. More than 106,000 people are currently on the transplant waiting list, and 17 people die each day waiting for an organ transplant, according to U.S. government data.
“They ultimately had to be willing to share five organs with me,” Granados said of her own donor, whose identity she does not know but whose family she said she prays she can one day meet.
“I’m making the choice to honor the beauty of organ donation by talking about it,” she said. “Now every person I walk by, I’m like, ‘You have the potential to save a life or I have the potential to save yours.'”
Granados has had to stay in Indianapolis since November as doctors oversee her recovery. She had a brief visit with her husband and kids, now ages 18, 16 and 14, when the hospital allowed them to visit on Christmas Day.
“We had our first official family meal,” said Granados, who was able to sit and eat with her family for the first time in her kids’ memory. “My oldest daughter couldn’t even hardly eat her food because she was crying because she couldn’t believe that we were having a family dinner.”
In late February, Granados was also allowed to drive to North Carolina to again see her kids, whom she surprised at a local park.
“Getting to surprise them and the look on their faces when they realized it was me might be the best moment of my life,” she said, adding that the visit home gave her “the boost and the strength to go back and continue fighting.”
Granados said she is now on a regimen of 33 prescription medications daily as she fights for her body to continue to accept the transplanted organs.
She said that though her fight is far from over and though there are many hard days in the process, she is for the first time in years allowing herself to dream of a future, which includes swimming with her kids, eating meals with them and fulfilling her dream of opening an animal sanctuary.
“I owe it to my angel donor and to my family to live as best as I possibly can, and I think that means sharing hope and sharing joy wherever I possibly can, so that’s what my goal is,” said Granados. “Like I tell my kids, ‘As long as we have air in our lungs, there’s hope.'”
(WASHINGTON) — The House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol attack said Wednesday it has evidence that former President Donald Trump and some of his associates may have illegally tried to obstruct Congress’ count of electoral votes and “engaged in a criminal conspiracy to defraud the United States” in their efforts to overturn the 2020 election results.
The committee argued in a federal court filing Wednesday that Trump may have committed two crimes as it challenged a bid by former Trump lawyer John Eastman to block investigators from obtaining thousands of pages of emails.
The panel argued that the records should not be protected by attorney-client privilege under the crime fraud exception, given that Eastman’s legal advice may have helped Trump commit multiple crimes.
“The facts we’ve gathered strongly suggest that Dr. Eastman’s emails may show that he helped Donald Trump advance a corrupt scheme to obstruct the counting of electoral college ballots and a conspiracy to impede the transfer of power,” Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Mississippi, and Liz Cheney, R-Wyoming, the leaders of the panel, said in a statement.
Eastman’s lawyer, Charles Burnham, said in a statement to ABC News that Eastman “has a responsibility to protect client confidences, even at great personal risk and expense.”
“The Select Committee has responded to Dr. Eastman’s efforts to discharge this responsibility by accusing him of criminal conduct,” Burnham said. “Because this is a civil matter, Dr. Eastman will not have the benefit of the Constitutional protections normally afforded to those accused by their government of criminal conduct. Nonetheless, we look forward to responding in due course.”
Representatives for Trump did not respond to requests for comment.
The new filing marks the first time the committee has formally accused Trump of specific criminal activities, by working to disrupt the joint session of Congress on Jan. 6 and by waging a campaign to overturn the results in key states and promote unfounded claims of widespread voter fraud.
“As the courts were overwhelmingly ruling against President Trump’s claims of election misconduct, he and his associates began to plan extra-judicial efforts to overturn the results of the election and prevent the president-elect from assuming office,” the committee wrote in its filing.
“At the heart of these efforts was an aggressive public misinformation campaign to persuade millions of Americans that the election had in fact been stolen. The president and his associates persisted in making ‘stolen election’ claims even after the president’s own appointees at the Department of Justice and the Department of Homeland Security, along with his own campaign staff, had informed the president that his claims were wrong,” it stated.
While lawmakers on the panel cannot formally charge Trump with a crime, they have suggested their investigation would result in a criminal referral to the Justice Department, which would then decide whether to prosecute the former president.
In making their case that Trump and key allies tried to stop the counting of electoral votes and pressure former Vice President Mike Pence “to manipulate the results in his favor,” the committee cited several interviews with senior White House officials and aides to Pence, including his attorney and chief of staff.
“The evidence supports an inference that President Trump, plaintiff and several others entered into an agreement to defraud the United States by interfering with the election certification process, disseminating false information about election fraud, and pressuring state officials to alter state election results and federal officials to assist in that effort,” the committee wrote in the filing.
Eastman was subpoenaed by the committee in January for his role in crafting two legal memos that argued Pence had the authority to overturn the election results on Jan. 6.
He continued making the case for Pence to overturn the results even as pro-Trump rioters clashed with Capitol Police and sent the vice president into hiding on Capitol Hill.
“We are now under siege,” Pence’s counsel Greg Jacob wrote to Eastman, placing blame on him in a Jan. 6 email released by the committee Wednesday.
“The ‘siege’ is because YOU and your boss did not do what was necessary to allow this to be aired in a public way so that the American people can see for themselves what happened,” Eastman replied to Jacob in the middle of the riot.
Later that evening, Eastman again wrote to Jacob, “I implore you to consider one more relatively minor violation [of the Electoral Count Act] and adjourn for 10 days to allow the legislatures to finish their investigations, as well as to allow a full forensic audit of the massive amount of illegal activity that has occurred here,” according to another email released by the committee.
In the court filing, the committee wrote that this email correspondence suggests Eastman “knew what he was proposing would violate the law, but he nonetheless urged the vice president to take those actions.”
Earlier this week, the State Bar of California announced an investigation into whether Eastman violated state ethics laws for attorneys in his work with Trump challenging the 2020 election results.
Exhibits released as part of Wednesday’s court filings also included excerpts of depositions from several key witnesses the committee interviewed over the last few months, including Trump adviser Jason Miller, former Pence Chief of Staff Marc Short, and former Pence national security advisor Keith Kellogg. The interviews show what kinds of conversations took place among key figures within the Trump circle leading up to and on Jan. 6.
According to one exhibit, Miller, a senior advisor to Trump described that, “soon after the election, a campaign data expert told the President ‘in pretty blunt terms’ that he was going to lose.”
But Trump disagreed with the campaign data expert, Miller said, according to the exhibit.
In another exhibit released on Wednesday, then-Acting Deputy Attorney General Richard Donoghue told the Jan. 6 committee that Trump repeatedly pressed the Justice Department to “publicly say that the election is corrupt or suspect or not reliable” even though Donoghue himself had “personally informed” Trump “in very clear terms” that the Justice Department concluded that there’s no evidence to support major allegations of voter fraud.
Another exhibit shows a text message from Ben Williamson, an aide to Trump’s former Chief of Staff Mark Meadow on Jan. 6 warning Meadows: “Would recommend POTUS put out a tweet about respecting the police over at the Capitol — getting a little hairy over there.”
