(NEW YORK) — President Joe Biden and Democrats are using the outcry over the new Texas abortion law to distract from other issues including Afghanistan, Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-La., said Sunday.

“(The Supreme Court’s decision) had nothing to do with the constitutionality of Roe v. Wade, it was only on if the plaintiffs had standing, people are using it to gin up their base to distract from disastrous policies in Afghanistan, maybe for fundraising appeals,” Cassidy told ABC “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos. “I wish we’d focus on issues as opposed to — as opposed to theater.”

The severe new abortion law in Texas bans nearly all abortions in the state. The law makes most abortions illegal after six weeks of pregnancy and encourages anyone to sue a person they believe is providing an abortion or assisting someone in getting an abortion after six weeks.

In a 5-4 decision released late Wednesday night, the Supreme Court rejected a request by Texas abortion providers to block the new law.

Cassidy, who called himself “pro-life,” said the Supreme Court will “swat it away” once the law reaches them “in an appropriate manner.”

“If it is as terrible as people say it is, it will be destroyed by the Supreme Court,” Cassidy added. “But to act like this is an assault upon Roe v. Wade is, again, something the president is doing I think to distract from his other issues.”

Pressed further by Stephanopoulos on whether he thinks the Supreme Court decision signals they plan to overturn Roe v. Wade, Cassidy deflected, instead bringing up Hurricane Ida, Afghanistan and the bipartisan infrastructure deal.

“We can always talk theoreticals,” Cassidy responded. “But I’m kind of a guy who’s in the middle of a state in which 700,000 people don’t have electricity, in which we’ve got a disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, and the administration is pushing a $3.5 trillion bill which will be to inflation what the withdrawal was to Afghanistan.”

Debate continues over the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill that many Democrats demand pass in conjunction with the bipartisan infrastructure deal that Cassidy helped negotiate. On Thursday, Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., wrote an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal calling for a “strategic pause” on the budget resolution Democrats took the first step in passing last month.

Stephanopoulos asked Cassidy whether Manchin’s op-ed effectively kills the bill.

“You saw Senator Joe Manchin’s statement this week. As far as you’re concerned, does that kill the bill? And if it does, does it worry you that the bipartisan infrastructure bill, the smaller one that you support, will also die?” Stephanopoulos asked.

“Implicit in what Joe said is that he would accept a smaller (reconciliation) bill,” Cassidy responded. “I think a smaller bill is disastrous, but on the other hand, the two are delinked.”

“There’s going to be a vote on September the 27th on the bipartisan infrastructure bill,” Cassidy added. “The very fact that Joe is saying he has to negotiate means that the vote on the $3.5 trillion inflation-igniting bill that comes later will come later.”

Cassidy said he is concerned that if Manchin’s opposition stands, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would not pass the smaller bipartisan bill.

“Of course, I’m concerned about that, which is why I want Republicans to vote for it, too,” Cassidy said. “It should not be a party line vote in the House, it wasn’t in the Senate.”

The infrastructure bill includes provisions for disaster mitigation, which Cassidy brought up, encouraging those planning to vote no to tell people with no power due to Hurricane Ida.

“I say go down to Lafourche and Terrebonne Parish, to people who will not have electricity back until September 29th and tell them you’re going to vote against a bill which hardens our grid, which gives coastal restoration dollars, which has flood mitigation, which will build levees and protect Louisiana and other states from natural disasters, go to those parishes and tell them whatever cockamamie reason you have to vote no,” Cassidy said.

Hurricane Ida made landfall on Aug. 26, 16 years to the day after Hurricane Katrina did in 2005. The hurricane has left at least 67 dead in eight states.

On Thursday, Cassidy penned a letter to Biden requesting emergency disaster relief for Louisiana and met with him in his state on Friday.

Asked whether he is satisfied with Biden’s initial response, Cassidy told Stephanopoulos the situation is getting better.

“The federal partners have been there,” Cassidy said. “And so, I compliment the federal partners and thank them for that, but we need gasoline and we need electricity and we need housing. And then we need to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill for the long term.”

On the other crisis his state is battling — COVID-19 — Cassidy, a physician, said the delta variant case count is falling but vaccine rates remain low. He also encouraged people to get vaccinated.

“Our immunization rates are still way too low and our ICUs still have too many patients related to what is essentially a vaccine-preventable disease,” Cassidy said. “Yes, it’s getting better, but we can imagine future waves.”

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(NEW YORK) — A Planned Parenthood clinic in Houston has turned into a “crisis center” in the days after the most restrictive abortion law in the nation went into effect in Texas, with women desperate and begging for care, a distraught staffer told ABC News.

“People don’t know where to go,” Doris Dixon, who oversees patient access at the clinic, said in an emotional interview Friday with Rachel Scott for “Good Morning America.”

As of Wednesday, physicians in Texas are banned from providing abortions once they detect a fetal heartbeat, which can be as early as six weeks into a pregnancy — before many women even know they’re pregnant.

The same day the law went into effect, one woman came in for a regular checkup at the Planned Parenthood clinic, Dixon said. During her checkup, she found out she was five-and-a-half weeks pregnant — still eligible for a legal abortion. But that same day, she also tested positive for COVID-19. By the time her mandated self-isolation will end, she’ll be too far along in her pregnancy to get an abortion under the new Texas law, Dixon said.

“To hear her beg for someone to help her was hard, she was begging,” Dixon said. “For me, I was trying very hard not to cry but the tears were coming down, they were there.”

Out-of-state clinics anticipate a surge in patients due to the law, which has increased the average miles a Texan must drive one-way to seek an abortion from 12 miles to 248, according to the Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive rights organization.

Dixon said some women she’s spoken to don’t have the financial means or the access to child care to travel out of state for an abortion.

“I’m angry. I’m actually angry because this is an attack on people’s constitutional rights to seek these services. And it’s between them and their doctors,” Dixon said with tears in her eyes.

As of Friday, Dixon estimated 70% of the women who called in seeking abortion care this week were turned away.

“They’ve relied on Planned Parenthood for years and we don’t have the answers,” Dixon said, again fighting back tears. “We usually have the answers — we don’t have the answers.”

Dixon has been working at Planned Parenthood in Houston for 13 years. This is the “worst” she has “ever seen it.”

“I feel like I take it personally,” Dixon said, choking back tears. “I have failed in my goal to help people.”

She said she fears this law will lead to high-risk attempts to self-abort pregnancies. The clinic has already seen at least one woman this week who tried to terminate her pregnancy herself after the Texas law went into effect, she said.

Before Wednesday, no law banned abortions earlier than 20 weeks of pregnancy nationwide. Many states had tried to enact early gestational bans, but they had all been blocked by courts.

The Supreme Court refused to block Texas’ law, which allows anyone to sue a person they believe is providing an abortion or assisting someone in getting an abortion after six weeks. The law does not make exceptions for pregnancies resulting from incest or rape.

On Friday, Planned Parenthood affiliates in Texas won a court battle to protect their employees from some lawsuits. A judge granted them a temporary restraining order against Texas Right to Life, stopping the largest anti-abortion rights group in the state from suing Planned Parenthood abortion providers and health care workers under the law.

“This restraining order offers protection to the brave health care providers and staff at Planned Parenthood health centers throughout Texas, who have continued to offer care as best they can within the law while facing surveillance, harassment, and threats from vigilantes eager to stop them,” Helene Krasnoff, vice president for public policy litigation and law, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for Texas Right to Life told ABC News the group is “undeterred” by the legal defeat and would not be “intimidated” by Planned Parenthood.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Navy has declared five sailors dead after they went missing following the crash of their helicopter off the coast of southern California on Tuesday.

“U.S. 3rd Fleet has shifted from search and rescue efforts to recovery operations, Sept. 4,” according to a statement.

The helicopter, based on the USS Abraham Lincoln, was conducting routine flight operations aboard the carrier when it crashed into the sea approximately 60 nautical miles off the coast of San Diego at 4:30 p.m. PDT on Tuesday.

A sailor aboard the helicopter was rescued shortly after the crash and three others who had been on the carrier’s deck were found injured. But five soldiers remained unaccounted for.

Over the next 72 hours, Navy and Coast Guard ships and helicopters carried out extensive flight and sea operations in search of the five missing sailors.

“We are deeply saddened by the loss of five Sailors and those injured following the MH-60S helicopter tragedy off the coast of Southern California,” Adm. Mike Gilday, the chief of Naval Operations, said in a statement. “We stand alongside their families, loved ones, and shipmates who grieve.”

The Navy said the crash is under investigation and that the names of the five sailors will be made public 24 hours after the last notification was made to families.

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(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.

Among the dead, were four nursing home residents who were transferred to a warehouse for the hurricane and later died. Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry has opened an investigation into the deaths.

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.

After hammering Louisiana, Ida went on to pummel the Northeast, triggering record rainfall and devastating flooding. Overall, there have been at least 63 deaths across eight U.S. states related to Ida.

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(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.

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