Jason Bowles, the attorney for Rust armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, told Michael Strahan on ABC’s Good Morning America Wednesday that there may be more to the fatal on-set shooting than meets the eye.
Without presenting evidence, Bowles blamed “sabotage” for the death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins, in the incident that also injured director Joel Souza.
Just days after an attorney for assistant director Dave Hallsblamed October 21’s deadly mishap on Reed, who was responsible for the Western film’s firearms, Bowles floated the new idea. “We’re afraid…that somebody intended to sabotage this set with a live round intentionally placed in a box of dummies,” he told Strahan.
Dummy rounds look on screen like real bullets, but cannot be fired.
Before the shooting occurred, Bowles claims that Reed left the box of dummy rounds unattended while she went to lunch.
“[F]irst of all you wouldn’t bring a live round on the set but second of all, why do you place that in the box labeled dummies that the armorer is going to be pulling from?” Bowles asked rhetorically, adding, “There is no purpose for a live round on this set, zero.”
In fact, investigators have said publicly that 500 rounds of ammunition were found on the Rust set, a mix of dummy rounds, blank rounds — that is, rounds with primer and powder but no projectile — and live ammunition.
“They wanted to do something to cause a safety incident on set. That’s what we believe happened,” Bowles said.
The attorney insisted that before the shooting, his client Gutierrez-Reed showed the revolver star Alec Baldwin fired to Halls, who later reportedly handed it to Baldwin after declaring it was “cold” — that is, it didn’t contain any live rounds.
“She showed Mr. Halls each of the rounds, there were six dummy rounds that she had loaded…she believed [they were] dummy rounds…”
Bowles also insisted that while Rust was only Gutierrez-Reed’s second film, the 24-year-old was “very experienced,” declaring, “And the reason is her father, longtime person in the industry, very well respected, he taught her literally from the age of 10…”
Gutierrez-Reed’s attorney also denied reports crew members were using downtime to use the on-set guns for target practice, saying, “[Hanna] doesn’t believe that happened.”
This report is a part of “Rethinking Gun Violence,” an ABC News series examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
(NEW YORK) — Just before 11 p.m. on an April night, a 19-year-old man arrived at his former job site, an Indianapolis FedEx facility, and chatted with security about his status at the company.
The young man then exited his car with two legally purchased rifles and opened fire indiscriminately, at employees inside and outside the building, authorities said.
After killing eight employees — ranging in age from 19 to 74 — and injuring at least seven others, the gunman died by suicide, an attack “which he believed would demonstrate his masculinity and capability of fulfilling a final desire to experience killing people,” the FBI in Indianapolis said this summer, months after the attack.
According to the nonprofit research center The Violence Project, men are responsible for 98% of mass shootings, and according to an analysis by Everytown for Gun Safety, a grassroots organization aiming to combat gun violence, men were behind 94% of 240 mass shootings (four or more killed regardless of location) from 2009 to 2020 in which the shooter’s gender could be confirmed.
In 40 active-shooter incidents in the U.S. last year, 35 shooters were male, three were female and four were unspecified, according to FBI data.
The gender gap goes beyond active shooter incidents. Of 16,245 murders in the U.S. in 2019, in those for which a suspect’s gender was identified, 10,335 (63%) were committed by men, according to FBI data.
Gun violence victims also are predominantly male, accounting for 85% of fatalities and 87% of injuries through May, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But women are also deeply affected by gun violence, often as grieving family members or because they’re left as sole caregivers of children in the wake of the violence.
Or as victims themselves.
So why are American men so much more prone to gun violence? Experts cite a variety of reasons, from brain chemistry and evolution to how men and boys are socialized, said Jillian Peterson, co-founder of The Violence Project and a professor of criminology and criminal justice at Hamline University.
“The ideology of masculinity is not all that different in Spain or Britain than it is here. But they don’t have mass shootings like this. Why? I think that has to do with a specific version of American masculinity.”
But other experts said it really just comes down to what they say is arguably America’s most dangerous combination: toxic masculinity and gun availability.
‘Only America’
Shannon Watts, founder of Moms Demand Action, said toxic masculinity, the cultural idea that manhood is defined by violence and aggression to maintain power or strength, is at the root of both domestic violence and mass shootings, adding that there’s one reason gun violence is a “uniquely American issue” — it’s easy to get guns.
Men commit about 90% of murders worldwide (including but not limited to the use of firearms), according to a 2019 United Nations report. But America’s gun homicide rate is 25 times higher than other high-income countries, according to Everytown for Gun Safety.
“Every country has racism, xenophobia, hatred. Only America gives those same people” access to guns, Watts said.
Michael Kimmel, a distinguished professor of sociology and gender studies at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, agreed.
The traditional idea of masculinity is, “You don’t get mad, you get even,” Kimmel said. “The capacity for violence has been a hallmark of masculinity since the beginning of writing. Go back to ‘The Iliad.’ The Bible is filled with stories about vengeful violence.”
“That is true for masculinity in other countries, in other cultures,” Kimmel said. “So you have to also ask yourself: Why is it that gun violence at the scale that we see it is a phenomenon” in the U.S.?
“You have to ask the question,” Kimmel continued, ‘Why here and not elsewhere?’ The ideology of masculinity is not all that different in Spain or Britain than it is here. But they don’t have mass shootings like this. Why? I think that has to do with a specific version of American masculinity.”
Kimmel said American men are responsible for such a staggering sum of shootings because of that ideological masculinity, American culture, which he said gives a “constant presentation of enemies,” real or imagined, and — the most significant contributor — easy access to guns.
The power of ‘protection’
Kimmel says protection also plays an important role.
“If you ask American men, what’s the role of a man? He will tell you, ‘To provide for and protect my family,'” Kimmel said. “In this uncertain economic world, being a provider is actually far more difficult than it was in my father’s generation, than it was in his father’s generation. I think some part of American men’s fascination with guns and arming themselves has to do with, ‘If I can’t be a provider, at least I can be a protector.'”
About 45% of American men last year said they owned a gun, according to Gallup, and 19% of American women said they did.
In a 2017 Pew Research Center poll, 67% of gun owners said protection was a major reason for ownership, Iowa State professor Craig Rood noted in a Gender Policy Report through the University of Minnesota. Protection was followed by: hunting, sport shooting, as part of a collection and for one’s job.
Only 26% mentioned protection in a 1999 Pew Research Center poll in which hunting ranked No. 1, Rood noted.
“I could imagine several explanations why Americans are more afraid today than they were in 1999,” Rood told ABC News. “For instance, gun sales spiked after several high-profile mass shootings and again when the COVID-19 pandemic began. But not everyone has responded to that fear by turning to guns.”
“When we are talking about ‘protection,’ we are talking about perception of danger, and perceptions of danger can be real, imagined or some place in between,” Rood said. “Statistically, the United States has been relatively safe for most people, as crime and homicide rates started falling from the mid-1990s until quite recently. Yet the perception of danger has increased. So, there’s an obvious mismatch.”
Rood added, “I would bet most men acquire guns for commendable reasons: They want to protect themselves or their family, they enjoy hunting or they simply like guns. But the very presence of a gun in the home opens the possibility for accidents. Guns also heighten the risk for completed suicide and deadly intimate-partner violence.”
What can be done?
Peterson, of the Violence Project, said the key to fewer shootings is prevention, and offered four prongs.
1. Prevention should start early, by teaching boys how to understand emotions and trauma.
“Think about things like trauma screening and teaching social and emotional learning in schools … teach young boys how to cope with emotions and have empathy,” she said.
When it comes to male mass shooters, Peterson said many tend to have an attitude that “the world owes me more than what I have.”
“They feel disappointed where they’re at in life, or they feel frustrated that they lost their job or that they can’t get a girlfriend or whatever it is … so they pick a target of who to blame, whether they pick women or their school or a racial group,” Peterson said.
In July, a 21-year-old Ohio man was charged for allegedly trying to carry out a mass shooting of women, prosecutors said. He allegedly compared his “extremely empowering action” to Elliot Rodger, a 22-year-old man who carried out a mass shooting at the University of California, Santa Barbara in 2014 after videotaping his rage over his rejection by women and vowed “retribution.” The Ohio 21-year-old allegedly had a manifesto, according to prosecutors, in which he wrote he “would ‘slaughter’ women ‘out of hatred, jealousy and revenge.'”
2. Peterson said the U.S. also needs better systems for crisis training and how to recognize and report someone’s potential crisis.
According to The Violence Project, 82% of men who commit shootings are suffering from a noticeable crisis, with most showing at least one of the following symptoms and more than one-third exhibiting five or more: increased agitation, abusive behavior, isolation, losing touch with reality, depression, mood swings, paranoia and an inability to complete daily tasks.
Peterson said she considers the lack of a social safety net, which impacts trauma and crisis, to be a uniquely American problem.
3. Potential mass shooters often look online for others who validate their thoughts and feelings, or research past or potential shooters, Peterson said, so internet companies, especially social media platforms, must be pressured to better regulate hateful rhetoric and content.
Watts said parents also have a part in this.
“Every nation is home to young men being radicalized online to believe that somehow a loss of power means that they need to become violent,” Watts said.
Watts said she’s constantly talking to her 20-year-old son about how the internet is home to platforms “where this kind of violent rhetoric can become ingrained.”
“It’s a conversation that all parents need to have, in particular with their sons,” she added.
4. Peterson said another uniquely American problem is the struggle to regulate access to guns, like through red flag laws, which allow the court to remove an individual’s guns for a certain amount of time if a judge finds he or she is a danger.
Watts stressed the need for more background checks, noting that only 21 states and Washington, D.C., require background checks on all gun sales — meaning that in every other state, someone looking to acquire a gun quickly can do so at a gun show or via a private transaction.
Watts is also pushing for substantive legislative change, including advocating for an update to the Violence Against Women Act that would include a provision that would prevent abusive dating partners or alleged stalkers from accessing a gun.
The current law doesn’t define abusive dating partners or alleged stalkers as domestic abusers, and instead focuses on spouses and live-in partners, which Watts called a loophole.
Every 16 hours a woman in America is shot dead by a current or former partner, according to the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Further, an Everytown analysis found that in at least 53% of American mass shootings from 2009 to 2020, the gunman also shot a current or former intimate partner or family member.
The VAWA, initially passed in 1994 and expanded in later years, has since expired.
“It’s really toxic masculinity that’s at the root of domestic violence and mass shootings — misogyny and easy access to guns,” Watts said. “Guns are the weapons of choice for extremists, for misogynists, for insurrectionists and, ultimately, women are paying the price with their lives.”
Pixies have announced Live in Brixton, a new box set capturing the band’s 2004 concerts at London’s Brixton Academy.
The eight-disc collection will be released January 28. The vinyl version, which will be limited to 2,000 pieces, features different colored LPs for each of the four shows.
Pixies played the Brixton run as part of their 2004 reunion tour, which marked the first time the “Where Is My Mind?” rockers took the stage together since breaking up in 1993.
“It was an amazing reception, I guess they had missed us over all those years,” recalls guitarist Joey Santiago. “I particularly remember getting word that the balcony was swaying, and seeing that the crowd didn’t want to leave long after we had finished the show.”
Pixies would continue to play shows together following the reunion tour, but didn’t release any new music until after bassist Kim Deal left the group in 2013. Deal was replaced by Kim Shattuck of the punk band The Muffs, and then by ex-A Perfect Circle bassist Paz Lenchantin, who remains in Pixies to this day.
(L-R) Robert Wilson, Charlie Wilson and Ronnie Wilson of the Gap Band Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images
Ronnie Wilson, a founding member of legendary funk and soul group The Gap Band has died. He was 73.
Ronnie’s wife, Linda Boulware-Wilson, confirmed his death on her Facebook page, saying in part, “Ronnie Wilson was a genius with creating, producing, and playing the flugelhorn, Trumpet, keyboards, and singing music, from childhood to his early seventies. He will be truly missed!”
According to TMZ, Wilson died on Tuesday after suffering a stroke.
Ronnie, along his brothers Charlie and Robert, formed The Gap Band in their Tulsa, Oklahoma, hometown in the 1970s. Their music, which was infused with funk and soul, help to inspire bands like Parliament-Funkadelic and Earth Wind & Fire.
The group enjoyed some early success in the late ’70s, but some of their most notable hits came during the early ’80s. In 1980 they released The Gap Band III, which produced such soul ballads as”Yearning for Your Love” and”Burn Rubber on Me (Why You Wanna Hurt Me).” Then in 1982, with the release of The Gap Band IV — their sixth LP — they hit the R&B charts again with songs like “Early in the Morning,” “You Dropped a Bomb on Me” and “Outstanding.”
Although The Gap Band retired in 2010 after the passing of member Robert Wilson, their music has been sampled or covered by a wide range of R&B artists over the years, including Tyler, the Creator, Mary J. Blige, Ice Cube, Snoop Dogg and Tina Turner. More recently, producer Mark Ronson sampled the song “I Don’t Believe You Want to Get Up and Dance (Oops!)” for his smash 2014 collaboration with Bruno Mars, “Uptown Funk.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lobbying firms with ties to President Joe Biden and his administration are thriving, with some doubling and quadrupling their lobbying revenues from last year, disclosure filings show — but overall lobbying revenues haven’t increased much over the last year.
Earlier this year, three firms led by former Biden aides and others with close ties to key members of the Biden White House kicked off 2021 with a slew of new big-name clients and an early jump in their lobbying revenues, lobbying disclosure filings at that time showed.
Fast-forward nine months, and these firms have brought in far more in lobbying revenues in just the first three quarters of 2021 than the amount they brought in during the entire previous year.
The jump showcases how lobbyists with connections to Biden, the Biden administration, and Biden’s key advisers have been prospering under the new — and at the same time, familiar — presidency.
The lobbying firm run by the brother of Biden White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti nearly quadrupled its lobbying revenues in the first three quarters of this year from what it brought in during the same period last year. The firm reported more than $2.4 million in revenues from January through September of 2021, compared to just $635,000 through September of last year, filings show.
Ricchetti Inc, the firm that Jeff Ricchetti previously shared with his brother Steve, had reported a relatively quiet lobbying operation over the last few years, until late 2020 when the firm began picking up several new clients and reported a major spike in lobbying revenues.
Now, with major clients like Amazon and TC Energy Corporation, as well as several pharmaceutical and health care companies, Ricchetti Inc is enjoying its most lucrative year since Steve Ricchetti sold his stake in the firm and left in 2012 to joined the then-Obama White House as Biden’s adviser.
Ricchetti Inc earlier this year reported lobbying the office of president on behalf of health care companies, and the National Security Council on behalf of General Motors — but otherwise has mostly focused its efforts on lobbying Congress.
Jeff Ricchetti, who is now the only registered lobbyist for Ricchetti Inc, did not respond to ABC News’ request for comment. Earlier this year, a source close to Steve Ricchetti told ABC News that Jeff Ricchetti “has never and will never lobby his brother on behalf of any of his clients” and that “Steve and Jeff keep their professional activities distinctly separate.”
Entering the White House earlier this year, Biden committed himself and his administration to a set of ethics rules that some experts have described as more stringent than those of the Trump administration, including extending bans on so-called revolving-door and shadow lobbying.
“President Biden has established the highest ethical standards of any Administration in history, and his team has put in place stringent safeguards to protect against any potential conflicts of interest,” White House spokesperson Michael Gwin told ABC News.
Although many firms with connections to the Biden White House have been thriving, lobbying revenues overall are relatively flat compared to last year. Overall spending on lobbying has only increased by 3% so far this year compared to the same period in 2020, the final year of Donald Trump’s presidency.
“Under the last administration we saw firms with links to President Trump prosper, and now we are seeing a similar windfall for firms that hire lobbyists with connections to President Biden,” Dan Auble, a senior researcher at OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan research organization that tracks campaign finance and lobbying data, told ABC News. “It is clearly evidence that connections matter in Washington.”
Despite the rapid growth of several Biden administration-connected firms, Auble says that none of them top the way Ballard Partners took off during the Trump presidency.
“None of these have come from nowhere to become one of the biggest grossing firms like Ballard Partners did under Trump,” Auble said of the firm headed by Trump confidant and fundraiser Brian Ballard, which quickly became one of the leading K Street shops in Washington after it was launched in 2017. The firm reported nearly $19 million in lobbying revenues during the first three quarters of Trump’s last year in office.
Top-grossing firms so far this year include TheGROUP DC, which reported $5.2 million in lobbying revenues from a Rolodex of big name clients that includes Facebook, Lyft, BP, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin and JPMorgan Chase. Putala Strategies reported bringing in $2.8 million in lobbying revenues through work that includes lobbying on behalf of major clients like TransCanada Pipelines, Comcast, T-Mobile, and several other pharmaceutical and energy companies.
Neither Putala Strategies or TheGROUP DC responded to ABC News’ requests for comment.
In a sign of evolving influence, the American Health Care Association is now one of TheGroup DC’s highest-paying clients since signing on in December of last year — after previously being a top client of Ballard Partners. After several years of billing the AHCA $320,000 a year for its services, Ballard Partners’ filings for April through September of this year list “No Activity” for the AHCA.
The firm, however, isn’t standing pat; since Biden’s victory it’s been transitioning into a more bipartisan enterprise, adding some big Democratic names to its team over the last few months, including Courtney Whitney, a top Democratic fundraiser who was a consultant for the pro-Biden super PAC Priorities USA.
The Beatles‘ Let It Be will be among the albums profiled during the second season of the Amazon Original weekly podcast Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums, which premieres at Amazon Music on November 16.
As its name suggest, the episodic podcast delves into records that were chosen for Rolling Stone magazine’s latest list of the 500 greatest albums. Each episode takes a behind-the-scenes look at how one specific album on the list was made, featuring interviews with people associated with the record, and sometimes including the artists themselves.
The Let It Be episode will kick off season two of the podcast. Interviews with surviving Beatles members Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr are featured in the presentation, discussing details about how the band’s final studio album came together, and the whether the common perception that the band members were angry with each other throughout the project is accurate.
Also appearing in the podcast are Giles Martin, son of late Beatles producer George Martin, and filmmaker Peter Jackson, director of Get Back: The Beatles, the upcoming Disney+ docuseries focusing on the Let It Be sessions.
Other upcoming episodes of the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums podcast include shows focusing on Britney Spears‘ Blackout, jazz artist Alice Coltrane‘s Journey in Satchidananda, Dolly Parton‘s Coat of Many Colors, and Weezer‘s self-titled 1989 studio effort, a.k.a. The Blue Album.
Season two of the Rolling Stone’s 500 Greatest Albums podcast will be available exclusively at Amazon Music and Wondery+.
You can check out a trailer for the new season, and episodes from the podcast’s first season, at Amazon.com.
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — A group of New York gun owners on Wednesday will ask the Supreme Court to establish a fundamental right to carry a handgun for self-defense outside the home, an expansive view of the Second Amendment that could reshape gun laws nationwide if a majority of justices agree.
The New York State Rifle and Pistol Association and two individual gun owners are challenging a century-old New York statute that requires applicants for concealed carry permits to show “proper cause,” or a specific special need, for possessing a firearm in public places.
Gun rights advocates say the standard is so tough to meet that it violates the Second Amendment. The state argues that gun rights are not unlimited and that reasonable barriers to concealed carry are in the public interest.
The case is the biggest test on gun rights at the high court in more than a decade, and its reach could extend far beyond New York. Roughly a quarter of Americans live in 29 states that require concealed carry permits. Eight of those, including New York, give authorities discretion to deny permits to anyone who can’t show a special need.
“If the law gets struck down in New York, it would have ripple effects across other places that have similar regimes,” said Eric Ruben, a Second Amendment law scholar at Southern Methodist University Law School. “It would mean that you could expect more people to be carrying handguns in places like New York City, Boston and Los Angeles.”
In 2008, the Supreme Court ruled in District of Columbia v. Heller that Americans have an individual right to possess a handgun inside their homes but said nothing about that right in public places.
“The Second Amendment does not end at your doorstep,” said Tom King, president of NYSRPA, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association. “‘Proper cause’ is a restriction. It’s something the ‘anti-gunners’ put in there to keep guns out of the hands of lawful citizens in New York state.”
Gun control advocates warn that if the court rolls back restrictions on the carrying of handguns, American streets could become even more dangerous at a time when gun violence deaths are already surging.
“Even people who are well trained, who are prepared and carry a gun, oftentimes have to make split-second decisions that they then regret,” said Albany, New York’s Mayor Kathy Sheehan, who had to declare a state of emergency in the city last summer because of an outbreak of gun violence.
“The fewer guns, the fewer gun deaths. That’s what the data shows us. The more guardrails that you have in place with respect to gun ownership, the lower the number of gun deaths,” Sheehan said.
New York State Police, the agency defending the state’s permitting law in court, argues in court documents that, historically, no state has “allowed the right to carry a handgun everywhere… based on speculation that a confrontation warranting the use of deadly force might suddenly arise.”
“This case is going to present a lot of opportunity for the defenders of the law to present evidence on the special risks that guns can present in public and also evidence that limits on concealed carry in public can, on the whole, lead to less crime, less deaths and less injuries,” Ruben said.
Nationwide, gun sales and gun violence deaths have been climbing to near-record levels. More than 35,000 U.S. deaths from guns have been reported so far this year, according to the nonpartisan Gun Violence Archive.
“The uptick in violence has just been astronomical. The gun violence — just violence alone,” said Cheryl Apple, a small business owner and mother of five from Albany, who obtained her first handgun this year. “I just felt that I needed to be able to protect myself.”
Late last year, Apple applied for an unrestricted license to carry her 9-mm pistol almost anywhere she goes, a process that took her 10 months to complete and included a background check, a safety seminar and an interview with a judge.
“I explained to the judge that I am a woman-owned business, and that I traveled to and from my job at night, sometimes late, sometimes early in the morning, and that I just felt that it would make me feel safe,” she said.
The judge approved Apple’s request, but other gun-owners say the standard is overly discretionary and unfair.
“We don’t feel we should have to show a special reason that if you’ve been deemed eligible to own a firearm you should have the ability to have concealed carry,” said Shawn Lamouree, vice president of the Liberty Group, which operates a chain of gun stores and shooting ranges in upstate New York.
Lamouree said fear of rising crime should be sufficient cause for any law-abiding citizen to arm themselves if they so choose.
“The bottom line: If a criminal wants a gun, there’s a very good chance the criminal is going to find a way to get a gun,” said Lamouree, who is a former sheriff.
Gun rights groups are optimistic that the Supreme Court’s six-member conservative majority will be sympathetic to arguments in favor of broad concealed carry rights.
“There are indications the new justices on the court share a broader view of Second Amendment rights than what currently exists as a consensus view within the lower courts,” said Ruben.
King, who helped bring the case on behalf of New York gun owners, said he’s optimistic but not certain about the outcome.
“This could change everything,” he said.
In the meantime, gun safety groups and local leaders like the mayor of Albany are watching the case with a wary eye.
“We will enforce the law as the Supreme Court finds it,” Sheehan said. “But I think that New York State should have the right to put into place common-sense guardrails that it believes help to keep our state and the residents of our state safe.”
The court’s decision is expected by the end of June 2022.
ABC News’ “Rethinking Gun Violence,” is examining the level of gun violence in the U.S. — and what can be done about it.
Jonathan Majors and Zazie Beetz take a calculated step into the Old West with their new film The Harder They Fall.
Directed by Jeymes Samuel, the film follows Majors as real-life cowboy Nat Love, who, in a fictionalized story, reassembles his former gang to seek revenge against the man who murdered his parents. Majors tells ABC Audio that to authentically take on the role of Love he had to “surrender” to the character.
“I was reminded and then…[it] was concretized that…the quiet surrender to the world, to the character is what’s going to save you,” he says. “If I allowed myself to think about riding the horse like that, I’d probably go, ‘Yeah… I could do it.’ But that’d be a lot of ego…But if I go, ‘Let me surrender to Nat’…I know Nat can do it.”
That surrender, Majors says, was not only something he enjoyed, it was something that invigorated him.
“I was addicted to it,” he admits, before sharing how he channeled Love on set. “‘OK, so what are we gonna do now, Nat?’ You know, ‘Let’s bang, bang, bang. Grrr, grr, grr…Let’s do it.'”
Majors co-star Zazie Beetz agrees, explaining that she too “enjoyed” preparing for her role as Stagecoach Mary, Love’s romantic partner and fellow gunslinger.
“It was a little bit more…technical training and getting really comfortable with how to handle these antique weapons…and making it look like it’s second nature,” she says of using a shotgun.
Aside from guns, Beetz says that training to look “natural” on horses was also another unexpected challenge.
“We had to build relationships with our horses,” she says. “They had to learn to respect you and you respect them.”
(WASHINGTON) — It’s likely to become President Joe Biden’s most hotly contested COVID policy yet: a sweeping new nationwide safety standard for the American workplace that demands large businesses require their employees to either get the vaccine or test regularly.
The temporary emergency rule would apply to every U.S. private business that employs 100 workers or more — from grocery clerks to meatpacking plant employees — impacting some 80 million Americans.
It would be the first time Washington has set a federal standard that regards a respiratory virus as an occupational hazard outside of the health care sector, essentially putting COVID in the same category as other workplace safety concerns as asbestos and dangerous machinery.
Details were expected to be released as early as Wednesday or Thursday on the rule, drafted by the Labor Department’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration, or OSHA.
“It’s the biggest thing OSHA has ever done in terms of the number of workers it will cover,” said Jordan Barab, a longtime top official at the agency during the Obama administration.
Union and industry groups say they have yet to see a draft of the new rule. Among the most pressing questions is when employers would have to comply, with Republicans warning that mandates ahead of the holidays might exacerbate the nation’s worker shortage.
It’s also unclear how long the temporary standard would be in place and if it would apply to short-term “gig” workers, like freelancers and Uber drivers, or smaller franchises that are part of nationwide chains, like small restaurants or gyms.
How employers will be expected to enforce the standard is another question mark.
“We don’t know what they’re looking it. It’s a black box,” said one industry official involved in recent discussions with the administration.
Since taking office, the Biden administration had avoided imposing nationwide vaccine mandates, focusing instead on incentives for businesses and individuals. But with the arrival of the delta variant, a surge in pediatric cases and pockets of the country remaining hesitant to get a shot, Biden’s COVID strategy shifted in recent weeks.
“We’ve been patient, but our patience is wearing thin. And your refusal has cost all of us,” Biden said of unvaccinated Americans on Sept. 9 when announcing his plan to draft the rule.
Federal contractors now have until Nov. 22 to become fully vaccinated, while contractors that work with the government have until Dec. 8.
Testing for these workers is not an option.
Biden also has required that health facilities like hospitals and nursing homes that accept federal dollars mandate vaccines for their workers, a total estimated at 17 million workers.
The latest OSHA rule would significantly expand that pool of Americans, putting two-thirds of the nation’s workforce under a kind of mandate.
Once divided on how to address the pandemic, Republican governors have united against the plan, insisting it represents dangerous federal overreach and would cripple business owners already dealing with worker shortages.
“Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian,” tweeted the South Carolina GOP Gov. Henry McMaster when Biden on Sept. 9 promised to draft the rule.
Supporters counter that many large businesses have already embraced vaccine mandates to both entice employees who want a safe workplace and end a pandemic that has hobbled the economy. They argue too that whenever employees are
“This is not a vaccine mandate. It’s a safe workplace mandate — getting vaccinated or tested,” said Barab, the former deputy assistant secretary of labor for OSHA.
“You want to do it as soon as you can to protect as many people as you can,” he added.
A Labor Department spokesperson and the White House declined to discuss the specifics of the rule ahead of its release, other than to confirm that the White House’s Office of Management and Budget completed its regulatory review on Monday.
“The Federal Register will publish the emergency temporary standard in the coming days,” a Labor Department spokesperson said.
As an emergency standard, the rule would take effect immediately. But the administration was widely expected to give businesses at least some time to comply, although it’s not clear how long. Several industry groups were pushing for a 60-day implementation period that would push any enforcement into 2022.
The rule was expected to call on employers to give workers time off to get the shot and recover from any side effects.
It’s unlikely that workers would be required to get booster shots — at least as of now. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention considers a person “fully immunized” as one shot of the Johnson and Johnson vaccine or two shots of Moderna or Pfizer. CDC officials warn, however, that definition could change as new research develops.
Last week, Bloomberg reported that the rule also would allow employers to force workers who refuse to get the COVID shot to pay for any weekly tests and masks.
ABC News producer Cheyenne Haslett contributed to this report.
(NOTE LANGUAGE) Ryan Reynolds was in New York City Monday evening to accept his WSJ. Magazine Innovator Award, and at the event held at the Museum of Modern Art, he gave a shout-out to his fellow honorees, including Kim Kardashian, Lil Nas X and Lewis Hamilton, as well as his wife, Blake Lively.
“To be in this room with these honorees, let alone whatever category this is, is just completely and utterly insane,” Reynolds said at the podium.
The Deadpool series star and producer also thanked those behind his Group Effort Initiative, a nonprofit that he and Blake created that gives people of color opportunities to work in the entertainment community.
Ryan thanked “Renaissance woman” Lively for how she, “pushes me in ways that I never imagined I’d be pushed,” quipping in retrospect that the compliment sounded “like a police report.”
Ryan also thanked his team at his production company Maximum Effort, which produces everything from movies like his recent hit Free Guy, to clever marketing campaigns for his companies Aviation American Gin and Mint Mobile, among others. “I’m lucky enough to work with people who honor the idea that you can’t make anything great without enthusiasm. I know how lucky I am to have that,” Reynolds expressed.
On that note, their recent effort just used Reynolds’ gin brand to celebrate the seasonal return of “America’s favorite rib-shaped sandwich,” McDonald’s McRib.
In another now-viral ad, Reynolds combined Aviation with barbecue sauce, tomato juice, lemon juice, and a pickle and onion garnish for the Gin Riblet.
Calling it “a Bloody Mary’s hotter cousin,” Ryan toasted the 40th anniversary of the sandwich. “Bring back Grimace, Godd*** it,” he added of McDonald’s former purple mascot.
