(NEW YORK) — After touring storm damage from Hurricane Ida in Louisiana on Friday, President Joe Biden will travel to the Northeast next, the White House said.
Overall, there have been at least 64 deaths across eight U.S. states related to Ida, including at least 49 in the Northeast.
New Jersey has seen the greatest loss of life tied to Ida, with at least 25 people dead and at least six people still missing as of Friday. Three tornadoes also were confirmed in New Jersey as the storm swept through Wednesday, mostly in the southern part of the state.
New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy confirmed on Twitter he will be joining Biden on the tour.
On Tuesday, @POTUS and I will survey devastating damage from Tropical Storm Ida in Manville. We’re grateful for the President’s leadership and support as we recover from this storm. Together, we will help New Jerseyans rebuild.https://t.co/srIK5Fepyc
In New York City, at least 13 people died due to the storm. All but two were found in basement apartments.
On Friday, Biden traveled to Louisiana to survey damage caused by Hurricane Ida.
“This storm has been incredible, not only here but all the way up the East Coast,” Biden told local officials in hard-hit LaPlace, Louisiana, just outside New Orleans.
“We came because we want to hear directly from you all, what specific problems you’ve been dealing with,” he said.
Biden told local officials he thought it was important to rebuild damaged infrastructure in a more resilient manner, such as placing power lines underground or making roofs stronger, and he spoke of the need to restore cellphone service so that residents can get in touch with loved ones and also learn about resources available to them.
Nearly a week after the storm, over 727,000 customers in Louisiana still remain without power statewide, according to data from PowerOutage.us.
The president also surveyed storm damage in the Cambridge neighborhood and took part in an aerial briefing by helicopter to Galliano, south of New Orleans, on Friday, according to the White House.
Before Hurricane Ida made landfall as a powerful Category 4 storm Sunday, Biden approved emergency declarations for Louisiana and Mississippi, authorizing FEMA to provide emergency assistance.
ABC News’ Ben Gittleson contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, who made history as the first openly gay Cabinet member to be confirmed by the Senate, and husband Chasten Buttigieg are officially fathers — twice over.
After announcing last month that the two were expanding their family, the former 2020 Democratic presidential candidate and South Bend, Indiana, mayor, officially introduced the couple’s new babies, sharing a black-and-white photo on social media of him and his husband each cradling a newborn in a hospital bed.
“Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents,” Pete Buttigieg said on Twitter. “We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family.”
Chasten and I are beyond thankful for all the kind wishes since first sharing the news that we’re becoming parents. We are delighted to welcome Penelope Rose and Joseph August Buttigieg to our family. pic.twitter.com/kS89gb11Ax
Pete Buttigieg, 39, said in a Twitter post last month that he and his husband were wanting to grow their family “for some time,” and they would “share more soon” on becoming parents.
The couple married in 2018. In an interview with The Washington Post in July, Chasten Buttigieg, 32, detailed their experience getting on adoption waiting lists for babies that have been abandoned or surrendered on short notice. He told the newspaper they had been trying to adopt for a year and had several close calls.
“It’s a really weird cycle of anger and frustration and hope,” he said in the interview. “You think it’s finally happening and you get so excited, and then it’s gone.”
While answering questions about his views on paid family leave on the campaign trail back in April 2019, Pete Buttigieg also spoke about wanting to have children.
“We’re hoping to have a little one soon, so I have a personal stake in this one, too,” he said at a rally. “We should have paid parental leave and find a way to have paid leave for anyone who needs caring.”
Pete Buttigieg has not yet revealed his plans for paternity leave.
ABC News’ Morgan Gstalter contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Here are the scores from Friday’s sports events:
MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL
INTERLEAGUE
Final Detroit 15 Cincinnati 5
Final Seattle 6 Arizona 5
Final Houston 6 San Diego 3
AMERICAN LEAGUE
Final Tampa Bay 5 Minnesota 3
Final Toronto 11 Oakland 10
Final Boston 8 Cleveland 5
Final N.Y. Yankees 4 Baltimore 3
Final Kansas City 7 Chicago White Sox 2
Final L.A. Angels 3 Texas 2
NATIONAL LEAGUE
Final Chicago Cubs 6 Pittsburgh 5
Final Miami 10 Philadelphia 3
Final N.Y. Mets 6 Washington 2
Final Colorado 4 Atlanta 3
Final St. Louis 15 Milwaukee 4
Final San Francisco 3 L.A. Dodgers 2
TOP-25 COLLEGE FOOTBALL
Final Virginia Tech 17 (10)North Carolina 10
MAJOR LEAGUE SOCCER
Final Nashville 3 New York City FC 1
Final New England 1 Philadelphia 0
Final Portland 2 Houston 0
Final Los Angeles FC 4 Sporting Kansas City 0
(NEW YORK) — Nearly one week on, Louisiana is struggling to recover from Hurricane Ida’s devastating blow.
Ida, which is tied for the fifth-strongest hurricane to strike the U.S. mainland in history, killed at least 10 in Louisiana, dumped more than 13 inches of rain in some southern regions and left whole neighborhoods underwater.
Over 721,000 customers in the state remain without power statewide, according to data from PowerOutage.us, as the state swelters under a heat advisory.
All power is expected to be restored in Orleans Parish by Sept. 8., energy company Entergy said in a statement. Over 1 million were left powerless in the immediate aftermath of the storm.
Several communities continue to grapple with water outages and boil-water advisories.
Due to the continued power outages, New Orleans is offering daily transportation assistance to residents who want to temporarily relocate to state-run public shelters, Mayor LaToya Cantrell said in a news release Friday.
“RTA will pick up residents from 12 City facilities utilized during our recovery response. We have been coordinating direct outreach to our senior housing facilities and apartment complexes to ensure that we are meeting our folks where they are,” said Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
Gov. John Bel Edwards said Thursday that 3,400 people are being sheltered by the state.
On Friday the Louisiana Department of Health announced a 10th fatality in the state: a 59-year-old man poisoned by carbon monoxide from a generator believed to be running in his home.
The coroner determined three of the deaths to be storm-related, though the residents’ definitive causes of death have not been confirmed.
On Aug. 27, two days before Ida made landfall, the LDH learned of the four deaths at the warehouse in Tangipahoa Parish.
The probe will look into who decided to move the patients to “this apparently unsafe and potentially inappropriate facility,” who later “turned away career staff members of the LDH when they attempted to look into this situation” and “why did the police chief and the sheriff state an investigation was not needed.”
President Joe Biden surveyed the damage of the storm on the ground in several neighborhoods, including LaPlace, Friday. La Place, straddled between the Mississippi River and Lake Pontchartrain suffered severe water damage and flooding.
“I promise we’re going to have your back,” Biden said in a briefing.
He pledged to help with financial assistance and said the government has already distributed $100 million directly to individuals in the state through $500 checks to get them on their feet.
Now, people in communities where streets turned into rivers and roofs were ripped off in Ida’s 150 mph winds are trying to piece their lives back together.
Officials in Jefferson Parish called Grand Isle, a popular vacation site, “uninhabitable”. The Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development posted a warning on its website Thursday urging people to stay away citing multiple washouts along roadways, no electricity, running water or essential supplies.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency’s individual assistance director Chris Smith said there’s been a record number of individual assistance applications coming in from Louisiana, particularly the New Orleans area. To date, 290,000 applications for individual assistance have come in, he said in a conference call with reporters Friday,
“This is a record number of applicants that we have received from the Louisiana Ida declaration. We received more applications in the first two days of this disaster than we received in any other disaster in recent history,” he said.
(NEW YORK) — As Americans get ready to celebrate the end of summer, health officials are once again urging the public, particularly those who are still unvaccinated, to act responsibly during the Labor Day weekend, given the country’s ongoing struggle with the virus.
“First and foremost, if you are unvaccinated, we would recommend not traveling,” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky said during a White House COVID-19 briefing Tuesday.
Holidays, which often entail traveling and large gatherings, have proven to be a catalyst of rapid COVID-19 spread across the country.
Last year, in the weeks prior to Labor Day, the country was experiencing a steady decline in COVID-19 cases, with the national daily case average falling to approximately 38,000.
However, the late summer holiday weekend set the stage for the country’s most significant viral surge of the pandemic. Between mid-September and Thanksgiving, the nation’s daily case average rose by more than 400%, followed by a record-setting influx of hospitalizations and deaths.
The country’s current average is now more than 100,000 daily cases higher than it was a year ago, with the U.S. reporting more than 153,000 new cases each day, following weeks of increasing metrics. Since the Fourth of July, COVID-19-related infections, hospitalizations and deaths surged to levels not seen since last winter.
“As we head into Labor Day, we should all be concerned about history repeating itself. High or intense transmission around most of the country combined with population mobility with limited masking and social distancing has been a consistent predictor of major surges,” said Dr. John Brownstein, an epidemiologist at Boston Children’s Hospital and an ABC News contributor.
Experts are warning that although vaccination rates may help partially blunt the impact of a potential Labor Day holiday surge this year, and protect those who are inoculated against severe disease, the country could still be at-risk for the unwanted impacts of unmitigated spread.
“While we now have widespread vaccine uptake, we still have large segments of the population that remain fertile ground for the virus to spread, including our children,” Brownstein said.
With more than 47% of Americans still not fully vaccinated, there is concern that an increase in infections could push already struggling health systems in states with low vaccination rates to the brink, Brownstein added.
Seven states — Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi and Texas — have intensive care units about 90% or more filled, and nationally, nearly 8 in 10 staffed adult ICU beds are occupied by COVID or non-COVID patients.
A recent report published by the CDC found unvaccinated people were five times more likely to get COVID-19 than vaccinated people — and 29 times more likely to be hospitalized for their infections, and ICU bed capacity remains tight in several states with low vaccination rates.
“We need more individuals to step up, as people across the country prepare for Labor Day weekend,” White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said during Tuesday’s briefing. “It’s critical that being vaccinated is part of their pre-holiday checklist.”
Walensky added that while fully vaccinated people can feel comfortable traveling, with the added protection of masks, it is important that they take into consideration the risks of COVID-19 infection, given the high transmissibility of the delta variant, prior to deciding whether to or not to travel.
It is also essential, said Walensky, that those who choose to celebrate the weekend holiday take precautions in order to keep themselves safe, such as gathering outside and with others who are vaccinated.
“Throughout the pandemic, we have seen that the vast majority of transmission takes place among unvaccinated people in closed, indoor settings,” she warned.
Further, Walensky said, while inside, wear masks to mitigate the spread of the disease.
The warnings come at yet another critical turning point in the pandemic, with infection rates still on the rise driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
Every state in the country is now experiencing high community transmission and nearly 103,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with the virus — one of the highest numbers of patients receiving care in seven months. An average of 1,000 Americans are also currently losing their lives each day from the virus.
Also, pediatric COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations are reaching their highest point of the pandemic, as many unvaccinated children fall victim to the virus.
“With children returning to in-person school after Labor Day, health officials stress it is critical to act cautiously and responsibly in order to reduce transmission,” Brownstein said.
In the last week alone, nearly 204,000 children have tested positive for COVID-19, marking the second highest week on record, according to the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Children’s Hospital Association.
Since the Fourth of July, the rate of child hospital admissions per capita has grown sevenfold, coinciding with the rapid spread of the highly infectious delta variant. Further, hospitalization rates among unvaccinated adolescents were 10 times the rate of those fully vaccinated, according to a newly released CDC study.
“It will be critical for eligible Americans who are still unvaccinated to get the shot, and protect those who are still vulnerable,” Brownstein said.
(WASHINGTON) — The House will vote in late September to protect abortion rights, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said this week, after the Supreme Court rejected a request to block the new Texas law outlawing most abortions in the state after six weeks.
The court’s late-night ruling left Democrats in Washington and across the country scrambling to respond, sparking vows for action on Capitol Hill and renewed calls from activists for the expansion of the Supreme Court currently controlled by conservatives.
“It’s so stunning,” Pelosi said Thursday at an event in Texas, pledging a House vote when the chamber returns at the end of the month to “make sure that women everywhere have access to reproductive health that they need.”
Democrats have coalesced around the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would “enshrine the protections of Roe v. Wade into law,” Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., the lead author of the bill, told ABC News.
“If it were to pass, then abortion access would be protected everywhere, in every state,” Chu said, adding that the House is expected to vote on the measure the week of Sept. 20.
But the path forward is unclear in the Senate, where Democrats hold a majority with just 50 seats. Forty-eight Democrats back the bill; Sens. Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Joe Manchin of West Virginia are not co-sponsors.
Even with the support of pro-choice GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, the proposal would still lack the votes to clear the chamber’s 60-vote threshold to reach the president’s desk.
While a Senate Democratic aide claimed “all options are on the table” in response to the Supreme Court’s decision, Chu was skeptical that the party could use the budget reconciliation process, which Democrats are using to pass President Joe Biden’s policy agenda with just 50 votes in the Senate around GOP opposition, to enact abortion protections.
“Whatever we pass with reconciliation has to have a direct impact on the budget, and I have to think that this would not qualify,” she said.
Even if Democrats did pass a bill to enshrine the protections of the landmark 1973 Supreme Court decision, it wouldn’t be a “silver bullet,” said Kate Shaw, a constitutional law professor at Cardozo School of Law and ABC News legal contributor.
“As a constitutional matter, I do think Congress is on solid footing, but I also think it’s possible that this conservative Supreme Court, particularly if it was hostile to the effort to enshrine in federal law abortion protections, could be inclined to read Congress’s [authority] narrowly, which could result in this law being invalidated,” Shaw said.
With the court’s 6-3 conservative majority, and plans to take up a major abortion case later this fall brought by the state of Mississippi, some Democrats are pressuring party leaders to consider altering the number of justices on the highest court for the first time since 1869 — or change Senate rules to empower Democrats to pass abortion legislation with just 50 votes.
“We need to restore balance to the court after Donald Trump and Senator Mitch McConnell blatantly stole the seats of Justice Scalise and Justice Ginsburg,” Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said in a statement, referring to Senate Republicans’ refusal to fill the seat left vacant by the death of the late Justice Antonin Scalia until after the 2016 presidential election, and decision to confirm a replacement for the late liberal Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in the fall of 2020, before the election.
Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., a member of the progressive “squad” and co-sponsor of the Women’s Health Protection Act, has been among those calling to expand the court.
“We need to abolish the filibuster and we need to expand the court,” Pressley told ABC News Friday night. “I’m not at all surprised by the extreme response of this court. The courts have not been on our side, and that’s why Congress must act.”
But Biden, a former chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, has been wary of changing Senate rules or altering the composition of the Supreme Court, and instead set up a commission to study the issue.
“He’s waiting for the conclusion of [the commission’s] report, looks forward to reviewing it, seeing where they come out,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Thursday.
Democratic candidates and operatives also expect the Supreme Court’s actions to reverberate into the upcoming election cycles, likely turning abortion into a major issue for the party looking to defend gubernatorial seats in 2021 and the House and Senate majorities in 2022.
ABC News’ Trish Turner contributed to this report.
Badflower has released a new song called “Johnny Wants to Fight” off the band’s upcoming album, This Is How the World Ends.
If you’re wondering why “Johnny Wants to Fight,” that’d be because frontman Josh Katz‘s narrator is sleeping with Johnny’s girlfriend.
“Johnny wants to fight, let him fight/ Let him paint my f***ing face all over town,” Katz sings. “Johnny Wants to Fight” is available now via digital outlets and steaming services. You also can check out a lyric video for the tune at Badflower’s official YouTube channel.
“Johnny Wants to Fight” is the fourth track to be released from This Is How the World Ends, following “Family,” “Don’t Hate Me” and “F**boi.” The album, the sophomore follow-up to 2019’s OK, I’m Sick, arrives in full on September 24.
Foo Fighters are among the nominees for Group of the Year at this year’s MTV Video Music Awards.
The prize is among the just-announced VMA “social categories,” which will be chosen through MTV’s social media channels. Bracket-style voting is set to begin this Saturday, September 4, via MTV’s Instagram Story.
Other nominees include Twenty One Pilots, BTS, Jonas Brothers, Maroon 5, Silk Sonic, BLACKPINK and CNCO.
Foo Fighters are already up for three other VMAs this year: Best Rock, Best Choreography and Best Cinematography, all for the “Shame Shame” video. They’ll also be honored with the Global Icon Award.
Foo Fighters are also performing during the VMA ceremony, which premieres September 12.
Kool & the Gang’s Robert “Kool” Bell in 2012; Rob Ball/WireImage
Kool & the Gang reached a milestone with the release of their 25th studio album, Perfect Union, two weeks ago. However, it was difficult to celebrate following the recent passing of two of the founding members.
Saxophonist Dennis “Dee Tee” Thomas died on August 7, one year after Ronald Bell, brother of band leader Robert “Kool” Bell, died in 2020.
“Our last show with Dennis Thomas was in Los Angeles on 4th of July weekend,” Kool tells People about their performance at the Hollywood Bowl. “We didn’t know that he would pass two or three weeks later. It was the greatest show. We blended very well with the live orchestra and it was great. We didn’t know that he would be leaving us after that.”
Perfect Union is the Grammy Award-winning band’s first album in eight years, and was conceived by Ronald Bell.
“[He] put together most of this album before he passed,” Kool continues. “The album represents the perfect union the band makes together and the theme of what not only our country, but the world is trying to achieve right now. “
After more than 50 years, Kool & the Gang is ready to document their impressive longevity with a project inspired by their 1974 party classic.
“We’re working on a documentary, a movie as well,” Kool reveals. “My working title is Hollywood Swinging: The Kool and the Gang Story.”
Despite so much recent tragedy, including the passing of his wife, Sakinah, in 2018, Bell is grateful for what has been a very special life.
“A lot of different things over the years were testing periods for me, learning periods of my life,” the 70-year-old bassist comments. “This experience has been a blessing, to be able to travel around the world and see so many different things.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers and prosecutors continue to piece together the events of the violent insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and now, a new film offers a firsthand perspective from the firefighters and paramedics who responded.
The documentary-style video, produced by DC Fire and EMS and released on YouTube, offers an hour-by-hour account of their attempts to provide life-saving care amid a flurry of violence, turmoil and death.
“The resources we had in place were quickly overwhelmed,” Deputy Fire Chief Daniel McCoy says in the first few minutes of the film.
McCoy and his team surged resources to the park south of the White House where demonstrators and rioters first gathered. That morning, they also deployed personnel to survey the Capitol and surrounding area, anticipating the crowd would head in that direction.
Paramedic Sgt. Alethea Brooks described the chaos while she was trying to provide aide to the injured. Rioters spat at her and called her racial slurs multiple times, she said.
“You always know there are people that you have to help regardless, it doesn’t matter if you’re a murderer,” Brooks says. “It’s our job to not judge and we’re just here to help. But it definitely makes it harder when you know that the people that you’re helping are actually harming our brothers — our brothers in blue — and have no regard for me.”
Another paramedic, Rocco Gabriele, describes how his gear was taken by rioters and his supplies were dumped out while he was treating a patient.
“We did what we could with what we had and we did it fast,” he said.
Gabriele, Brooks and several of their colleagues described the extreme difficulties involved with providing care amid such a hectic scene.
During the fray, one of the people attempting to breach the inner halls of the Capitol was shot by a police officer. First responders had to carry her out before providing care because the paramedic team was worried for their own safety.
The violent nature of the crowd also made it difficult for first responders to access and treat many of the police officers who were injured. There were about a thousand documented assaults against law enforcement over the course of the day, according to recent legal filings from the Department of Justice.
Among the dead was Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick, who suffered a stroke that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner for the District of Columbia said caused his death.
After paramedics had been alerted that Sicknick collapsed on an upper level of the Capitol building, they began working on a plan to get him out. Due to the state of emergency, the elevators were out of service so a team of National Guardsmen and Capitol Police carried him out in a wheelchair, one of the first responders recounted.
A congressional committee continues to investigate the events surrounding Jan. 6 and is attempting to obtain any relevant records it can find, such as call logs, as well as the type of first-hand accounts featured in the film.
