TYLER — Tyler Police are searching for a Plano man for his suspected involvement in a fatal shooting Monday. Officers were dispatched to an apartment complex on Bellwood Lake Road at around 3:05 p.m. in reference to a homicide. When authorities arrived, they reportedly found a woman, later identified as Cheyenne Russell, 26 from Nacogdoches, with multiple gunshot wounds. According to our news partner, KETK, Police have identified the suspect as 29-year-old Jorian Jackson. A warrant for murder with a $1 million bond has been issued for Jackson, and the police department said this was not a random act and Jackson should be considered armed and dangerous.
Authorities say the block Ford F-150 with Texas handicap plate 9PFMW he was believed to be driving was found, but he was not in the vehicle. Anyone who knows his location is asked to contact the Tyler Police Department at 903-531-1000 or for emergency call 911.
(WASHINGTON) -- House Speaker Mike Johnson said Tuesday that cuts to Social Security and Medicare won't be part of the legislative package being worked out to fund President-elect Donald Trump's agenda.
"No, the president has made clear that Social Security and Medicare have to be preserved," Johnson replied when asked if he was open to cutting the programs as part of the spending plans being worked out between House and Senate Republican leaders. "We have to look at all spending while maintaining… The Republican Party will not cut benefits."
Johnson said he was to meet with Senate Majority Leader John Thune on Tuesday to discuss ideas for a funding package that Republicans plan to pursue through "reconciliation" -- a fast-track process limited to spending and revenue legislation that needs only a majority rather than the 60-vote threshold in the Senate needed to pass legislation. Republicans hold a narrow majority in the House and a 3-seat majority in the Senate.
Congressional Republicans have yet to decide on a reconciliation plan. Johnson is pushing Trump's desire for "one big, beautiful bill" to fund his agenda but Senate leaders and some conservatives in the House prefer that it be divided into two pieces of legislation.
The negotiated package is expected to include several of Trump's top priorities, which include extending the tax cuts passed during his first term and addressing his immigration reforms, including more funding for Border Patrol and ICE. Trump has also pushed Congress to increase or eliminate the debt limit, though details of any plan remain unclear.
Trump reiterated his preference for one bill when he spoke to reporters on Tuesday, but said he could live with two.
"Well, I like one big, beautiful bill, and I always have, I always will, he said. But if two is more certain, it does go a little bit quicker because you can do the immigration stuff early."
Before Trump spoke, Johnson said he remains convinced that the one-bill strategy is the "best way to go."
"I'm meeting today with Leader Thune about the two ideas," Johnson told reporters outside a closed GOP conference meeting Tuesday morning. "We still remain convinced over here that the one-bill strategy is the best way to go, but there's some senators who have different ideas."
"They're all dear friends and colleagues, and we're going to work on this together. We will get the two chambers united on the same strategy. And I think the president still prefers 'one big, beautiful bill,' as he likes to say, and there's a lot of merit to that -- we could talk about the ins and outs of that maybe at our leadership press conference here."
Senate Republican Whip John Barrasso said one of the key objectives in the meeting with Trump will be attempting to forge a clearer path on reconciliation.
"He's going to be with Senate leadership as well as the entire Senate conference to talk about that exact thing tomorrow and how we get on the same page with the House," Barrasso said.
Barrasso said a two-part plan that would deliver wins for Trump early in his presidency and allow for more time to address tax policy that doesn't expire until the end of the year, but the "goal is the same."
"It was a suggestion by John Thune -- this was before Christmas -- he said 'Let's get an early win on the border.' It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this," Barrasso said. "This issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn't really come into play until l the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now."
Johnson also said he intends to handle the debt limit -- another Trump priority -- in the reconciliation process, which Republicans could try pass in both chambers without Democratic support.
"That way, as the Republican Party, the party in charge of both chambers, we again get to determine the details of that. If it runs through the regular order, regular process… then you have to have both parties negotiating. And we feel like we are in better stead to do it ourselves," he said.
Johnson said members will have "lengthy" sessions to go over the plan for reconciliation since there are "broad opinions" on how to handle it.
"Republicans in this majority in the House and Senate – our intention, our mission is to reduce spending in a meaningful way so we can get, restore fiscal sanity… so raising the debt limit is a necessary step so we don't give the appearance that we're going to default in some way on the nation's debt," he added.
Johnson said this does not mean Republicans will "tolerate" spending more to the new debt limit because the "commitment" is to reduce spending, but the final formula has not been determined.
The speaker also told reporters that he'll likely speak with Trump on Tuesday, ahead of the president-elect's visit to Capitol Hill on Wednesday.
"I'm sure I'll speak with him today, probably this afternoon, and when he's in town, I'm sure we'll get together," Johnson said. "He and I both have a very busy schedule. He's trying to jam a lot into that visit on the Hill, so we're sympathetic to that." Johnson said.
Johnson said there will be more discussions on Trump's agenda when he meets with House Republicans at Mar-a-Lago this weekend.
"He's bringing in big groups of House Republicans to Mar-a-Lago over the weekend three days in a row to meet with and talk with all of our team members about what's ahead of us and the challenges and how we can accomplish all this together. So we're very excited about that. The president-elect is excited about it, and we all are as well," Johnson said.
Senate Republicans are preparing to meet with President-Elect Trump in the Capitol tomorrow, and one of their key objectives will be attempting to forge a clearer path about how to proceed with advancing Trump's agenda through a fast-track budget tool called reconciliation, Republican Whip John Barrasso, R-Wyo. said.
"He's going to be with Senate leadership as well as the entire Senate conference to talk about that exact thing tomorrow and how we get on the same page with the House," Barrasso said.
Barrasso said today that the "goal is the same" regardless of whether Congress ultimately proceeds with a one-part bill, as Speaker Johnson and Trump have suggested, or with a two-part strategy championed by Majority Leader Thune.
But he made the case for a two-part plan that would deliver wins for Trump early in his presidency and allow for more time to address tax policy that doesn't expire until the end of the year.
"It was a suggestion by John Thune -- this was before Christmas -- he said 'Let's get an early win on the border.' It was an issue in the election and it is a big issue for the American people and it is a big issue for national security, and we just thought we could get that done in a quicker fashion with a focus on that, on taking the handcuffs off of American energy as well as military strength, and then have the longer time to work on the financial component of this," Barrasso said. "This issues and the urgency of the tax issue doesn't really come into play until l the end of the year to the level that these other issues have the higher urgency right now."
Senate Republicans have slightly more breathing room on these measures than their House colleagues as they have a 3-seat GOP majority. In the House, Johnson might only be able to afford to lose a single Republican, so his preference for one large bill appears to be focused on getting his members together.
"If you put a number of high priority issues together, then people are more apt to vote for the larger package, because even though there may be something in it that doesn't meet their preference, they're not going to be willing to vote against the larger measures that are such, such high priority for the American people and for President Trump," Johnson told Newsmax on Monday.
(PALM BEACH, Fla.) -- President-elect Donald Trump declared in a left-field proposal on Tuesday that his administration will rename the Gulf of Mexico the "Gulf of America" in his latest attack on Mexico.
"We're going to change because we do most of the work there and it's ours," Trump said. "It's appropriate, and Mexico has to stop allowing millions of people to pour into our country," Trump said in a long, winding news conference.
Trump criticized Mexico for the increase of drugs into the U.S. and said that he would make Mexico and Canada pay through "substantial tariffs."
"We want to get along with everybody. But you know ... it takes two to tango," he said.
Shortly after, longtime Trump ally Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene announced on X that she had instructed her staff to begin drafting legislation to change the name of the gulf.
"This is important to begin funding the changing of maps for all agencies within the federal government, like the FAA and the military," she said in her post.
The Gulf of Mexico has been identified by several names through its history, with "Golfo de Mexico" first appearing on maps in the mid-16th century when Spain occupied the areas now known as Cuba to the south, Mexico to the west and the the U.S. states that surround it to the North.
The Gulf of Mexico is one of the largest and most important bodies of water in North America. It's the ninth-largest body of water in the world and covers some 600,000 square miles.
Half of the U.S. petroleum refining and natural gas processing capacity is located along the Gulf of Mexico, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and it supplies about 40% of the nation's seafood.
Its more than 17.2 million acres of marsh and nearly 30,000 miles of tidal shoreline draw millions of tourists to the area each year, the NOAA says, and it's home to hundreds of fish species.
Trump's promise to rename the gulf isn't the first.
In 2012, then-Mississippi State Rep. Steve Holland proposed a bill that also would have renamed the gulf into the "Gulf of America," however the Democrat backtracked and said he was joking and using it as a way to criticize his Republican colleagues over their anti-immigrant stances.
"They are trying to really discriminate against immigrants, which offends me severely," Holland told ABC News in 2012. "I just thought if we're gonna get into it, we might as well all get into it, it's purely tongue and cheek."
Stephen Colbert suggested the same name during the 2010 BP oil spill on his Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report."
(WASHINGTON) -- The House voted at 1 p.m. Tuesday on the Laken Riley Act, passing the bill as its first piece of legislation of the 119th Congress on a vote of 264 to 159.
Forty-eight Democrats voted in favor of the bill.
“Laken Riley was brutally murdered by an illegal alien that President Biden and the Democrats let into this country with their open border policy," House Speaker Mike Johnson said in a statement after the vote. "It is hard to believe after countless horrific stories like Laken’s, ANY House Democrats would vote against deporting illegal aliens who commit violent crimes against American citizens.
“But 159 just did, demonstrating some Democrats have ignored the loud and clear message from voters in this election who demanded secure borders, the deportation of violent illegal aliens, and laws that put the safety and security of the American people first," he added.
Reintroduced by Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, a Republican, the legislation pins Riley's death on the Biden administration's open-border policies and grants power to attorneys general to sue the federal government if they can show their states are being harmed over failure to implement national immigration policies. The measure also allows states to sue the Department of Homeland Security for harm caused to citizens allegedly due to illegal immigration.
The bill was named after Riley, a nursing student who was murdered by illegal immigrant Jose Ibarra while jogging on campus at the University of Georgia. Ibarra was sentenced to life in prison for the murder.
"The only thing President Biden did after Laken's tragic death was apologize for calling her murderer an illegal," Johnson said ahead of the vote. "That's outrageous. We all know the real victim here was young Laken. There are real consequences to policy decisions. This one was deadly."
The House previously passed the bill in March by a vote of 251-170, with 37 Democrats voting in favor. The bill was expected to pass again with bipartisan support.
“House Republicans heard the voices of those who wanted change and voted to pass the Laken Riley Act," Johnson said Tuesday. "We will always fight to protect Americans, and today’s success is just the beginning of Republican efforts to undo the catastrophic damage caused by years of the Democrats’ failed leadership.”
The measure now heads to the Senate, where Majority Leader John Thune teed up a procedural vote on the Laken Riley Act, which could occur as soon as this week. It will be one of the first legislative actions taken by the new Senate.
The bill will need 60 votes to advance through the upper chamber. Even with the Republicans' new 53-vote majority, it could prove difficult to court the necessary Democratic support to advance it.
So far, only one Democrat, Pennsylvania Sen. John Fetterman, is reportedly co-sponsoring the bill, which is being led in the chamber by Sens. Katie Britt, R-Ala., and Ted Budd, R-N.C. It is unclear whether there will be requisite Democratic support to clear the Senate.
The Senate, under Democratic leadership last session, never considered the act as a standalone bill. But it previously considered the Laken Riley Act when Senate Republicans forced a vote on it as an amendment to a sweeping government funding package in March. The amendment was considered as a government shutdown loomed, and changes to the bill would have likely forced a government shutdown.
No Democrats voted for it at the time, though it later earned the support of Montana Sen. Jon Tester, who lost reelection to Republican Sen. Tim Sheehy.
(NEW YORK) -- Online holiday shopping soared to a fresh record high in 2024, driven by an array of e-commerce discounts and adoption of AI-fueled shopping assistants, according to data released on Tuesday by Adobe.
E-commerce sales topped $240 billion in November and December, climbing nearly 9% when compared with the gift-buying season a year prior, data showed.
The data indicated that three product categories accounted for more than half of the online holiday spending: electronics, apparel and home goods.
Spending on cosmetics totaled nearly $8 billion, jumping more than 12% compared to a year prior. That marked the largest year-over-year spending increase for any product category, the data showed.
Discounts helped drive strong sales for some high-priced items, Adobe said, pointing to a 20% jump in units sold for expensive goods.
The fresh data indicated a spike in use of shopping assistants powered by generative AI, suggesting the technology has seeped into the retail sector’s busiest time of the year.
Traffic to retail sites from generative AI-powered chatbots skyrocketed 1,300% over November and December when compared to the same period a year prior, the data showed.
The share of consumers arriving via AI shopping assistants remains modest, however, Adobe said. Shoppers arrived at retail sites via links shared by the chatbots.
“The 2024 holiday season showed that e-commerce is being reshaped by a consumer who now prefers to transact on smaller screens and lean on generative AI-powered services to shop more efficiently,” Vivek Pandya, a lead analyst at Adobe Digital Insights, said in a statement.
The e-commerce data comes weeks after initial indicators pointed to a robust holiday shopping season.
Overall holiday spending surged in 2024, blowing past expectations and outpacing customer purchases over the gift-buying season last year, according to data released by Mastercard SpendingPulse last month.
The end-of-year flex of consumer strength marks the latest indication of resilient U.S. buying power, which has kept the economy humming despite a prolonged stretch of high interest rates.
Gross domestic product grew at a solid 2.8% annualized rate over three months ending in September, the most recent quarter for which data is available.
The labor market has slowed but proven sturdy. The unemployment rate stands at 4.2%, a historically low figure.
Consumer spending accounts for nearly three-quarters of U.S. economic activity.
The increase in holiday spending coincided with an initial bout of relief for borrowers, as the Federal Reserve cut interest rates by a total of one percentage point over the final few months of the year.
However, interest rates still stand at a historically high level of between 4.25% and 4.5%.
Lower interest rates typically stimulate economic activity by making it easier for consumers and businesses to borrow, which in turn fuels investment and spending. But interest rate cuts usually influence the economy after a lag of several months, meaning the recent lowering of rates likely had little impact on holiday spending.
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Justice Jimmy Blacklock, a conservative ally of Gov. Greg Abbott, has been named the new chief justice of the Texas Supreme Court. He replaces Nathan Hecht, the court’s longest serving justice, who stepped down at the end of December due to the mandatory judicial retirement age.
Abbott appointed his general counsel, James P. Sullivan, to take the seat vacated by Blacklock’s promotion.
“The Supreme Court of Texas plays a crucial role to shape the future of our great state, and Jimmy Blacklock and James Sullivan will be unwavering guardians of the Texas Constitution serving on our state’s highest judicial court,” Abbott said in a statement.
As chief justice, Blacklock will take on a larger role in the administration of the court. During his tenure, Hecht helped reform the rules of civil procedure and was a fierce advocate for legal aid and other programs to help low-income Texans access the justice system. But, as he told The Texas Tribune in December, when it comes to rulings, “the chief is just one voice of nine.”
Adding Sullivan to the court will further secure the court’s conservative stronghold. While Hecht came up in an era when state courts were less politically relevant, Blacklock and Sullivan are both young proteges of an increasingly active conservative legal movement.
Blacklock attended Yale Law School and clerked on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, and after a stint in private practice, he joined the Texas Office of the Attorney General under Abbott. He helped lead Texas’ aggressive litigation strategy against the Obama administration, defending the state’s restrictive abortion and voter identification laws, gay marriage restrictions and crusade against the Affordable Care Act.
When Abbott became governor, Blacklock became his general counsel. Abbott appointed him to the bench in December 2017, when he was just 38 years old.
The Texas Supreme Court has transformed over the last few decades from a plaintiff-friendly venue dominated by Democrats to the exclusive domain of increasingly conservative Republicans. Abbott, a former justice himself, has played a huge role in this shift, appointing six of the nine current justices, including Sullivan.
Sullivan graduated from Harvard Law School and clerked for the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. He spent four years as Texas assistant solicitor general during Abbott’s tenure as attorney general, and in 2018, became Abbott’s deputy general counsel. In 2021, he became the governor’s general counsel.
“As General Counsel for the Office of the Governor, James Sullivan has provided superior legal advice and rendered opinions on some of the most consequential legal issues in Texas,” Abbott said in a statement. “He has the integrity, temperament, and experience Texas needs as a Texas Supreme Court Justice.”
It’s now seen as one of the most conservative high courts in the country, issuing consequential rulings on abortion, COVID restrictions, health care for trans minors and local control in just the last few years. While Democrats have tried to pin these often unpopular rulings on the justices during election years, incumbents tend to easily win reelection in these relatively low-awareness down-ballot races.
Blacklock defeated Harris County District Judge DaSean Jones in November by more than 16 points. In a statement Monday, he thanked Hecht for his “extraordinary legacy of service.”
“The Supreme Court of Texas belongs to the People of Texas, not to the judges or the lawyers,” he said. “Our job at the Court is to apply the law fairly and impartially to every case that comes before us. My colleagues and I are committed to defending the rule of law and to preserving our Texas and United States Constitutions.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the original article, click here.
Since the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states like Texas to ban nearly all abortions, the number of pregnancy terminations in the United States actually increased. This paradox, which pleases abortion advocates as much as it frustrates their conservative counterparts, hinges mostly on pills.
An average of 2,800 Texans receive abortion-inducing medications through the mail each month from states that still allow abortion, according to #WeCount, a tracking project from the Society of Family Planning.
Until recently, abortion-ban states like Texas mostly gnashed their teeth and railed against their blue state counterparts for allowing this underground enterprise to flourish. But now, they’re using lawsuits and legislation to more directly attack these abortion pill providers.
In December, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a first-of-its-kind civil lawsuit against a New York doctor for allegedly prescribing abortion pills to a Texas resident, setting up a conflict between Texas’ abortion ban and New York’s shield laws. Legislators are filing bills for the upcoming session that would give the state more tools to try to root out this practice. And they do all of this knowing the incoming Trump administration has their back.
“We’re getting to the point where, if we don’t start swinging, start adopting new tools, these websites and the 20,000 abortion pills coming into the state [each year] are going to become the new status quo,” said John Seago, the president of Texas Right to Life. “I don’t judge legislators for trying something that doesn’t work. But we are demanding that they start swinging.”
In 2023, on the eve of the first anniversary of the Dobbs decision, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed into law a sweeping set of protections for abortion providers. The shield law meant New York wouldn’t cooperate with another state’s efforts to “prosecute, penalize, sue one of our health care providers who prescribed abortion medication,” Hochul said.
“You can continue hell-bent down your path on continuing this radical behavior,” she said, addressing anti-abortion states like Texas. “But we’ll be just as hell-bent on stopping you.”
Almost immediately, providers in New York joined those in Massachusetts, California and other shield law states in providing abortion pills via telehealth appointments and mail-order pharmacies to patients in abortion-ban states. The health care they provided was fully legal in the state they were based in, but clearly illegal in the states their patients are based in, and they undertook this work knowing they were courting legal challenges.
If anything, it’s a surprise how long it took, said Mary Ziegler, an abortion legal historian at UC Davis School of Law.
“Everyone has been expecting this and preparing for this,” Ziegler said. “And it’s no surprise that it’s Texas that brought this first suit.”
In mid-December, Paxton filed a lawsuit in Collin County alleging Dr. Maggie Carpenter, the founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine Access, provided a Texas woman with abortion pills in violation of state law.
Carpenter’s group not only provides direct patient care but also advises other shield providers on technical and legal support. The group was co-founded by Carpenter, Dr. Linda Prine and Julie Kay, a former ACLU attorney who led the lawsuit that overturned Ireland’s abortion ban.
“This is someone who is part of a network, part of a movement,” Ziegler said. “They’re prepared for this test of the shield law.”
But Texas was prepared, too, and legal experts are not certain how exactly this will play out. Nothing in New York’s shield law prevents a Texas court from hearing a case against a New York doctor, said Paul Schiff Berman, a law professor who specializes in conflicts of state law at the George Washington University law school.
If Carpenter doesn’t show up to the hearing, Paxton’s office will likely ask the court for a default judgement. If that is granted, Paxton can ask a New York state court to enforce it, which is where the shield law may come into play.
But much of the shield law’s protections are about protecting doctors from criminal investigations and regulatory consequences, like losing their medical licenses. In a civil suit, like the one Paxton has filed, it’s much harder for one state to undermine another’s ruling, Berman said. The U.S. Constitution specifically requires that a civil judgement issued in one state, like Texas, is enforceable in all states, regardless of their other laws.
This clause applies most clearly to private lawsuits — if a court orders you to pay someone you’ve harmed to make them whole, that judgement is enforceable no matter where you live.
“You don’t want it to be that if I sue you and win in Texas, and you flee to New Mexico, that I have to sue you all over again in New Mexico, and then you flee to California and it starts again,” Berman said.
But when it’s a state, not an individual, bringing the lawsuit, the judgement may not be as easily enforced. There’s an exception for “penal judgements,” when one state is using a civil lawsuit to try to enforce their state laws.
“This is clearly not just one random person suing another random person,” Ziegler said. “New York’s best argument is that this is the state of Texas enforcing its abortion policy through a lawsuit, which is a penal judgement, and they wouldn’t have to deal with that.”
But this is a rarely litigated question the federal courts haven’t meaningfully waded into in decades. Complicating matters further is a provision in New York’s shield law that would allow Carpenter to sue Texas right back, opening the door to more questions about sovereign immunity and state-on-state litigation.
It is, put simply, “a mess,” Ziegler said.
“If New York wins, as in they don’t have to enforce the judgment, that doesn’t mean that the state 100% would know what happens with other types of defendants,” she said. “And if Texas wins, I don’t think that’s going to be the end of abortion pills, or necessarily a guarantee that Texas’s abortion rate will plummet. There are no quick fixes.”
Seago, with Texas Right to Life, agrees. He sees the Carpenter lawsuit as a “very encouraging step,” but said there’s no one legal strategy that will bring the practice of mailing abortion pills into Texas to a stop.
“There’s a long list of areas of law that have not been tested, and areas where we need to start getting precedent,” he said. “We need to start getting some specific fact patterns before judges for them to determine whether some of the laws we already have on the books apply.”
Some of these lawsuits will be brought by Paxton’s office, but Seago said he anticipates private wrongful death lawsuits, as well as lawsuits against people who “aid or abet” in illegal abortions, as prohibited by Texas’ ban on most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.
“There’s no silver bullet,” he said. “These are really difficult cases because these websites are run by individuals and others in other countries, their websites, their domains are out of our jurisdiction, the pharmacies they are using are outside of the country as well.”
Last legislative session was the quietest in decades for abortion. After successfully banning nearly all abortions, Republicans were wary about continuing to push an issue that is widely unpopular with voters.
This session, coming off a Republican rout in November, Seago is hopeful that lawmakers will feel more empowered to continue restricting abortions, and especially abortion pills.
“Texas is uniquely positioned to lead on these cutting-edge pro-life issues,” Seago said. “Some of our friends in red states are still playing defense. They’re fighting off constitutional amendments. They’re still fighting off exceptions to their laws. We’re in a solid place to start fighting back.”
Texas has no mechanism to put a constitutional amendment to increase abortion access on the ballot without the approval of lawmakers, and while Democrats have filed bills to add more exceptions to the abortion laws, they are once again expected to not get any traction.
But whether conservative efforts to further restrict abortion pills will take hold also remains to be seen. Rep. Nate Schatzline, a conservative Republican from Fort Worth, has filed House Bill 1651, which would make it a deceptive trade practice to send abortion pills through the mail without verifying that they were prescribed by an in-state doctor after an in-person exam.
Another bill, HB 991, filed by Republican Rep. Steve Toth of The Woodlands, would allow lawsuits against websites that provide information about obtaining abortion pills. Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, an information repository about telehealth abortion access, said they expect any challenge to their work to run afoul of free speech protections.
“Texas is a state that values free speech, but despite that, they’re taking action to try and limit free speech with respect to abortion,” she said. “It’s a bit hypocritical.”
Wells said they take seriously any legislation that might further restrict access to abortion in states like Texas. But she said even if all the domestic access routes were shut off by lawsuits and legislation, there are international providers prepared to keep providing pills to people who need them.
“It’s ironic that a lot of these legal actions and court decisions and attempts to restrict access are what is shining a spotlight on … the fact that abortion pills are available by mail,” she said. “Every time there’s a decision like that, we just see the traffic to our site just exponentially increase. These anti-choice actions are the best advertisement.”
After the overturn of Roe v. Wade, the Biden administration took steps to shore up abortion access and protect providers and patients in states where the procedure remained legal. The incoming presidential administration is expected to undo most of those protections and more vociferously go after entities that are attempting to help people skirt state abortion laws.
One open question is whether Trump will direct the Food and Drug Administration to revoke the approval of Mifepristone, a common abortion-inducing drug that conservatives tried to get moved off the market. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected those efforts, but nothing about that ruling would stop a new FDA from reviewing that approval.
Additionally, many are watching to see whether the Trump administration will issue new guidance on the Comstock Act, a 19th-century zombie law that hasn’t been enforced in decades. The Comstock Act prohibits mailing anything that could be used to facilitate an illegal abortion, which legal experts say could wreak havoc across the medical supply chain.
While trying to enforce the Comstock Act would spark significant legal challenges, it is a much more direct route to shutting down the infrastructure these shield providers have built, Ziegler said.
“This lawsuit [from Texas] isn’t likely to change much of these shield providers’ behavior, because they’ve been expecting this,” she said. “But there’s much more anxiety about the possibility of Comstock prosecutions, because those would be federal charges.”
Article originally published by The Texas Tribune. To read the original article, click here.
WASHINGTON (AP) — More Americans say immigration should be a top focus for the U.S. government in 2025, as the country heads toward a new Republican administration in which President-elect Donald Trump has promised the mass deportations of migrants and an end to birthright citizenship.
The issue of immigration has risen in salience across the board — among Democrats and Republicans, men and women, and adults both young and old. But Republicans, in particular, have converged around this issue in recent years. About 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or a U.S.-Mexico border wall should be a top focus, up from 45% just two years ago.
This means that Trump will return to the White House with his base, and much of the country, interested in his signature issue. That’s a marked contrast to when he left Washington four years ago with his successor, Democrat Joe Biden, offering a more welcoming posture toward migrants.
But even with the widespread uptick in concern about immigration, that issue is still overshadowed by economic worries. About three-quarters of Americans want the government to focus on addressing broad economic concerns, similar to the past few years. There’s a range of economic issues Americans want addressed — about 3 in 10 referenced general economic issues, a similar share pointed to inflation, and roughly 1 in 10 mentioned either unemployment or taxes.
About one-third of Americans identify foreign policy as an important issue, with health care issues and politics — both identified broadly — close behind.
Republicans are especially likely to want government action on immigration
Some of his immigration reforms are likely to face legal challenges as Trump seeks to sharply limit the number of immigrants welcome in the U.S. But addressing those issues remains paramount for Americans as he prepares to take office.
About 8 in 10 Republicans want the government to prioritize economic issues, while about 7 in 10 Republicans say immigration or the border wall should be a top priority.
Most Democrats, meanwhile, are focused on the economy, but they don’t have a clear second priority. Instead, about 4 in 10 name health care and health issues, a small uptick from a year earlier. About one-third of Democrats mention political issues, the environment or climate change, or immigration.
But even Democrats are more likely to want the government to make progress on immigration than they were the year before, when only about 2 in 10 Democrats considered it something that should be a primary focus for the federal government.
That doesn’t mean, though, that they align with Trump’s hard-line approach. One Democrat said the government should focus on “border control, not mass deportation,” while another said “better pathways to citizenship” should be the goal. In their responses to the poll, Republicans tended to mention “illegal immigration” and “a stronger border” as an important focus. One Republican supported “closing the border, deporting illegal immigrants, starting with criminals first.”
The focus among Republicans on immigration and the economy dovetails with two of the biggest challenges Biden confronted during his tenure, which saw both high inflation and sharp growth in migration.
Illegal border crossings reached a record level in 2023, adding fuel to Trump’s relentless focus on border security and his promise to deport migrants en masse. The numbers fell during 2024 after Biden announced a crackdown on asylum claims, but Trump argued those moves were too little, too late.
Americans under 30 really want the government to prioritize inflation
The youngest adults are particularly likely to want the government to work on economic issues.
Americans under 30 are significantly more likely than older adults to mention economic issues, inflation and personal financial topics as a vital focus for government in 2025. About 4 in 10 young adults name inflation, compared with roughly one-quarter of older adults. And about one-quarter of young adults say they want the government focused on housing costs, whereas only about 1 in 10 adults ages 60 or older say the same.
Trump made gains among young adults in 2024 compared with his performance four years earlier, but his youngest voters were much more motivated by the economy than by immigration, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 120,000 voters.
The same sentiment prevails as Trump prepares to take office. Compared with 2023, the December poll found, Americans under 30 are more likely to highlight general economic issues and immigration as things they want government to focus on — but they are much less focused on immigration than older adults. Only about one-third of adults under 30 said immigration should be a focus, compared with about 6 in 10 adults 60 or older.
Older Americans are also broadly focused on the economy, but their priorities are a little different — for instance, about 1 in 10 Americans over 60 want the government focused on Social Security in the coming year. Very few Americans under 30 mentioned Social Security as a concern.
NEW YORK (AP) —Facebook and Instagram owner Meta said Tuesday it’s scrapping its third-party fact-checking program and replacing it with a Community Notes program written by users similar to the model used by Elon Musk’s social media platform X.
Starting in the U.S., Meta will end its fact-checking program with independent third parties. The company said it decided to end the program because expert fact checkers had their own biases and too much content ended up being fact checked.
Instead, it will pivot to a Community Notes model that uses crowdsourced fact-checking contributions from users.
“We’ve seen this approach work on X – where they empower their community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context,” Meta’s Chief Global Affairs Officer Joel Kaplan said in a blog post.
The Associated Press had participated in Meta’s fact-checking program previously but ended its participation a year ago.
The social media company also said it plans to allow “more speech” by lifting some restrictions on some topics that are part of mainstream discussion in order to focus on illegal and “high severity violations” like terrorism, child sexual exploitation and drugs.
Meta said that its approach of building complex systems to manage content on its platforms has “gone too far” and has made “too many mistakes” by censoring too much content.
“The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech,” Zuckerberg said in an online video.
Meta’s quasi-independent Oversight Board, which was set up to act as a referee on controversial content decisions, said it welcomed the changes and looked forward to working with the company “to understand the changes in greater detail, ensuring its new approach can be as effective and speech-friendly as possible.”
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — The next round of bitter cold was set to envelop the southern U.S. on Tuesday, after the first significant winter storm of the year blasted a huge swath of the country with ice, snow and wind.
The immense storm system brought disruption even to areas of the country that usually escape winter’s wrath, downing trees in some Southern states, threatening a freeze in Florida and causing people in Dallas to dig deep into their wardrobes for hats and gloves.
On Tuesday morning, the wind chill temperature was 16 (minus 9 degrees C) at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, according to the National Weather Service. A low-pressure system was expected to form as soon as Wednesday near south Texas, bringing the potential of snow to parts of the state that include Dallas, as well as to Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana.
“As we go through the next few days, we’re still going to be seeing those colder-than-normal temperatures,” said Peter Mullinax, a meteorologist with the weather service in College Park, Maryland. “We’re going to see areas of snow and ice start to take shape across northern Texas, southern Oklahoma as we get into Thursday morning.”
Snow and ice are expected to make their way farther south into the lower Mississippi Valley, some of it “pretty disruptive,” he said.
Lingering snow and ice in the central Plains through the Ohio Valley into the Atlantic is likely to stick around for a few days, Mullinax said. That will create opportunities for constant re-freezing, and black ice, which may create treacherous travel conditions in some areas for the next few days.
The polar vortex that dipped south over the weekend kept much of the country east of the Rockies in its frigid grip Monday, making many roads treacherous, forcing school closures, and causing widespread power outages and flight cancellations. Some experts say such cold air outbreaks are happening more frequently, paradoxically, because of a warming world.
Ice and snow blanketed major roads in Kansas, western Nebraska and parts of Indiana, where the National Guard was activated to help stranded motorists. The weather service issued winter storm warnings for Kansas and Missouri, where blizzard conditions brought wind gusts of up to 45 mph (72 kph). The warnings extended to New Jersey into early Tuesday.
A Kentucky truck stop was jammed with big rigs forced off an icy and snow-covered Interstate 75 on Monday just outside Cincinnati. A long haul driver from Los Angeles carrying a load of rugs to Georgia, Michael Taylor said he saw numerous cars and trucks stuck in ditches and was dealing with icy windshield wipers before he pulled off the interstate.
“It was too dangerous. I didn’t want to kill myself or anyone else,” he said.
The polar vortex of ultra-cold air usually spins around the North Pole, but it sometimes plunges south into the U.S., Europe and Asia. Studies show that a fast-warming Arctic is partly to blame for the increasing frequency of the polar vortex extending its grip.
Temperatures plunge across the country
The eastern two-thirds of the U.S. dealt with bone-chilling cold and wind chills Monday, with temperatures in some areas far below normal.
A cold weather advisory will take effect early Tuesday across the Gulf Coast. In Texas’ capital of Austin and surrounding cities, wind chills could drop as low as 15 degrees (minus 9.4 C).
The Northeast was expected to get several cold days.
Transportation has been tricky
Hundreds of car accidents were reported in Virginia, Indiana, Kansas and Kentucky, where a state trooper was treated for non-life-threatening injuries after his patrol car was hit.
Virginia State Police responded to at least 430 crashes Sunday and Monday, including one that was fatal. Police said other weather-related fatal accidents occurred Sunday near Charleston, West Virginia, and Monday in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Kansas saw two deadly crashes over the weekend.
More than 2,300 flights were canceled and at least 9,100 more were delayed nationwide as of Monday night, according to tracking platform FlightAware. Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport reported that about 58% of arrivals and 70% of departures had been canceled. The airport announced early Tuesday that it had reopened all runways after closing them Monday evening so airport crews could focus on snow removal and prevent refreezing on the airfield.
A record 8 inches (more than 20 centimeters) of snow fell Sunday at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport, leading to dozens of flight cancellations that lingered into Monday. About 4 inches (about 10 centimeters) fell Monday across the Cincinnati area, where car and truck crashes shut at least two major routes leading into downtown.
SMITH COUNTY — Police have arrested an East Texas man in connection to a 2023 deadly Fourth of July crash after he reportedly admitted to drinking and driving. According to an affidavit obtained by our news partner KETK, DPS troopers were dispatched to a crash on Farm to Market 346 near Dudley Road in Smith County around 12:30 a.m.
The Tyler Police Department, Whitehouse Police Department, firefighters and medical personnel were already at the scene where a 2017 Buick had crashed into a tree and sustained extensive front-end damage.
Documents identify the driver as Raul Trejo and front seat passenger as 44-year-old John Freeman. Authorities said Trejo was transported to a local hospital for minor injuries while Freeman was unresponsive and later died. The trooper on the case went to the hospital to talk with Trejo and told him Freeman had died. Continue reading Driver admits to drinking before fatal 2023 crash
(WASHINGTON) -- President Joe Biden, President-elect Donald Trump, former presidents and other dignitaries came together Thursday to honor the life of former President Jimmy Carter at a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C.
Grandson Jason Carter and Biden were among those who delivered eulogies for the 39th president, who died on Dec. 29 at the age of 100.
Plains residents wait to say final goodbye
Residents of Plains, Georgia, are lined up to say their final goodbye to Plains native Jimmy Carter.
The former president grew up in the rural community in the 1920s in a home that didn’t have running water or electricity. After the White House, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter returned to Plains, where they were staple fixtures in the small town for decades.
Jimmy Carter died in Plains on Dec. 29.
The family is holding a private service at Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains Thursday afternoon.
Plane takes off for Georgia
The plane carrying former President Jimmy Carter’s casket has taken off from Joint Base Andrews in Maryland, marking the last time the 39th president leaves the Washington, D.C., area.
Carter is returning to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, where his family will hold a private service and burial.
Carter to return to Plains
Former President Jimmy Carter’s casket was carried out of Washington National Cathedral to the strains of "Hail to the Chief" at the conclusion of the service.
Next, the hearse will drive to Joint Base Andrews in Maryland. The casket will be placed on a plane to return to Carter’s hometown of Plains, Georgia, for a private service.
The 39th president, who died on Dec. 29 at age 100, will be buried in Plains next to his beloved wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
'Your spirit will remain with us'
"I don't mean this with any disrespect, but, it's still hard for me to understand how you could get to be president from Plains, Georgia,” said former U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young, prompting a big laugh from the crowd in the cathedral.
Young, 92, was appointed to be U.N. Ambassador by Carter and was the first Black person to hold the position.
Young recalled how Carter grew up in a mostly Black county and had many Black friends. He said Carter asked that his roommate at the Naval Academy be the first Black midshipmen in hopes that he could help him adjust.
Carter "went out of his way to embrace those of us who had grown up in all kinds of conflict," Young said. "But that was the sensitivity, the spirituality that made James Earl Carter a truly great president."
"He never wavered from his commitment to God almighty and his love of all of God’s children," Young said. "Jimmy Carter was a blessing that helped to create a great United Staes of America. And for all of us, and many who are not able to be here, I want to say, thank you. You have been a blessing from God and your spirit will remain with us."
Biden recalls Carter's 'strength of character'
After wiping his eyes during "Amazing Grace," President Joe Biden stepped up to the podium to recall his friendship with former President Jimmy Carter.
"Jimmy Carter's friendship taught me ... strength of character is more than the title or power we hold. It's the strength to understand that everyone should be treated with dignity, respect. That everyone -- and I mean everyone deserves an even shot," Biden said.
"We have an obligation to give hate no safe harbor and to stand up to -- [what] my dad said, the greatest sin of all -- the abuse of power," Biden said, as all of the former presidents looked on. "It's not about being perfect, none of us are perfect. We're all fallible."
"Jimmy Carter, throughout his life, he showed us what it means to be a practitioner of good works and a good and faithful servant of God, and of the people," Biden said.
Some may think Carter is from a "bygone era," but Carter "saw well into the future," Biden said.
To anyone in search of meaning and purpose, Biden said, "study the power of Jimmy Carter's example."
"I miss him, but I take solace in knowing that he and his beloved Rosalynn are reunited again," he said.
Grandson calls Carter 'definition of integrity'
Former President Jimmy Carter’s house was filled with items like so many other southern grandparents': fishing trophies, a phone with a landline and a fridge covered with photos of grandchildren and great-grandchildren, his grandson Jason Carter said.
"And demonstrating their Depression-era roots, they had a little rack next to the sink where they would hang Ziploc bags to dry," Jason Carter said, as the crowd laughed.
"In my 49 years, I never perceived a difference between his public face and his private one. He was the same person," Jason Carter said. "For me, that’s the definition of integrity."
"His political life and his presidency, for me, was not just ahead of its time -- it was prophetic. He had the courage and strength to stick to his principles, even when they were politically unpopular," Jason Carter said. "As governor of Georgia half a century ago, he preached an end to racial discrimination and an end to mass incarceration. As president in the 1970s, as you've heard, he protected more land than any other president in history. Fifty years ago, he was a climate warrior who pushed for a world where we conserved energy, limited emissions and traded our reliance on fossil fuels for expanded renewable sources."
President Carter's beloved wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, died on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
Jason Carter said that, in recent weeks, his grandfather "told us he was ready to see her again."
'Unshakable sense of right and wrong'
Stuart Eizenstat, who was former President Jimmy Carter's chief domestic policy adviser, praised Carter's "unshakable sense of right and wrong."
"His faith brought integrity to the presidency after Watergate and Vietnam," Eizenstat recalled. "'I will never lie to you,' he promised the American people -- a vow he fulfilled."
Carter is known for his deep faith, and Eizenstat noted how Carter's "faith respected other religions -- he was the first president to light a Hanukkah menorah and he created the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum."
"This president from the deepest part of the Deep South championed civil rights, appointing more people of color and women to senior executive positions and judgeships than all previous 38 presidents," he said.
"President Carter parked politics at the Oval Office door, to do what he believed was the right thing -- tackling controversial challenges regardless of the political consequences. Much of his agenda passed with bipartisan support, a quaint notion in today’s hyper-polarized politics," Eizenstat said.
Walter Mondale's son delivers his father's eulogy
Former President Jimmy Carter’s vice president, Walter Mondale, left behind a eulogy for Carter before he died in 2021.
Mondale’s son, Ted Mondale, delivered that eulogy at Thursday’s service.
The two became close friends and established a person relationship that continued throughout their life, Walter Mondale said.
"While we had only four years in the White House, he achieved so much in that time," Walter Mondale wrote. "It stood as a marker for Americans dedicated to justice and decency."
"Carter was far-sighted -- he put aside his short-term political interests to tackle challenges that demanded sacrifice to protect our kids and grandkids from future harm," he wrote. “Very few people in the 1970s had heard the term climate change. Yet Carter put his presidency on the line to pass laws to conserve energy, deregulate new oil and gas prices, and invest in clean, renewable alternatives to fossil fuels. … In many ways, he laid the foundation for future presidents to come to grips with climate change."
"All of us know President Carter elevated human rights to the top of his agenda, but sometimes we forget how seriously he pushed to advance the rights of women. He proposed and signed the law extending the period for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment, which now, finally, has been ratified by three quarters of the states," he wrote.
"Toward the end of our time in the White House, the President and I were talking about how we might describe what we tried to do," Walter Mondale wrote. "We came up with this sentence, which to me remains an important summary of what we were trying to do: ‘We told the truth, we obeyed the law and we kept the peace.'"
President Ford's son delivers his father's eulogy
Former President Gerald Ford, who lost the 1976 election to former President Jimmy Carter, later forged a friendship with Carter, and the two agreed to leave eulogies for each other.
Ford died in 2006 at the age of 93.
Ford’s son Steven Ford, read his father’s eulogy at Carter’s service.
But first, Steven Ford shared his own message, saying he is praying for the Carter children. It was 18 years ago, nearly to the day, Steven Ford said, that his family sat in that same row at the cathedral and the Carters supported his family.
"It was your dad and his great faith that supported my mom and gave her hope," he said to the Carter children.
President Ford said in the eulogy he left for Carter, "Jimmy and I forged a friendship that transcends politics. We immediately decided to exercise one of the privileges of a former president, forgetting that either one of us had ever said any harsh words about the other one in the heat of battle. Then we got on to much more enjoyable subjects: discussing our families, our faith and sharing our experiences in discovering that there is indeed life after the White House."
"The American people and the people of the world will be forever blessed by his decades of good works," President Ford wrote.
To President Carter, President Ford said, "Looking forward to our reunion -- we have much to catch up on."
Carter’s grandson remembers his Sunday school lessons
At the service, former President Jimmy Carter’s grandson Josh Carter recalled his grandfather’s weekly packed Sunday school classes in Plains, Georgia.
He said his grandfather would always poll the congregation and learn people came from all over the country, with diverse backgrounds and beliefs.
"If he stopped a conflict, he talked about it. If he eliminated disease from a village or a country, he would talk about it," Josh Carter said. "When my brother Jeremy died, he announced that news at Sunday school. In fact, I remember that my brother died on a Sunday because it was the only time my grandfather was ever late to teach."
"He stated the most serious and universal problem on our planet is the growing chasm between the richest and poorest people on Earth," he said. "For the next two decades, as the problem compounded, he returned to this theme with stories from the Bible and stories from today."
"Many of the people that my grandparents helped lived on less than $1 a day," he said. "My grandfather spent the entire time I've known him helping those in need. He built houses for people that needed homes. He eliminated diseases. ... He waged peace. … He loved people."
Harris, Biden arrive
Vice President Kamala Harris and second gentleman Doug Emhoff are seated in front of President-elect Donald Trump.
The two did not appear to interact.
President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden are also at the cathedral.
Clintons, Bushes arrive
Former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are sitting next to former President George W. Bush and former first lady Laura Bush.
Laura Bush sat next to former President Barack Obama, who continued a lengthy conversation with President-elect Donald Trump.
Obama arrives, speaks with Trump
Former President Barack Obama arrived at the service and exchanged a long handshake and a laugh with former Vice President Al Gore.
Obama then sat directly next to Trump and the two exchanged words, both smiling.
Trump arrives, greets Pence
President-elect Donald Trump and Melania Trump have arrived at the service.
Trump shook hands and exchanged brief words with his former Vice President Mike Pence.
Hearse arrives at Washington National Cathedral
Former President Jimmy Carter’s hearse has arrived at Washington National Cathedral for the 10 a.m. service.
Mike Pence, Al Gore arrive at service
Former Vice Presidents Al Gore and Mike Pence have arrived at Washington National Cathedral for the 10 a.m. service.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Vice President-elect JD Vance were also seen at the service.
Carter's casket leaves US Capitol for final time
Former President Jimmy Carter's casket has left the U.S. Capitol for the final time. Carter had been lying in state at the Capitol since Tuesday.
His motorcade will now head to Washington National Cathedral for a 10 a.m. service.
An emotional, weeklong goodbye
The emotional, weeklong public goodbye to former President Jimmy Carter began on Saturday when a motorcade carried his remains from his hometown of Plains, Georgia, to Atlanta.
Family, friends and employees of the Carter Presidential Center congregated at the center in Atlanta for a Saturday afternoon ceremony. Carter's son Chip Carter addressed the mourners and thanked his late parents for their service and sacrifice.
The public was then invited to pay their respects at the Carter Presidential Center from Saturday through Tuesday.
On Tuesday, Carter's body was transported Washington, D.C., and a service was held at the Capitol. Carter lied in state at the Capitol on Wednesday.
On Thursday afternoon, following the Washington National Cathedral funeral, Carter will return to his hometown of Plains for a private service and private interment.
Motorcade makes emotional stop at Navy Memorial Former President Jimmy Carter’s motorcade made an emotional stop at the U.S. Navy Memorial in Washington, D.C., to honor Carter’s service as a lieutenant in the Navy.
Carter’s childhood dream was to be in the Navy and he went on to graduate from the United States Naval Academy in 1946. Carter resigned from the Navy in 1953 after his father’s death so he could return to the family farm.
Carter’s casket was transferred from the hearse to a horse-drawn military caisson for a funeral procession that reproduces the walk Carter took with his family on the day of his inauguration. On that January day in 1977, Carter walked the mile-and-a-half inaugural parade route to the White House, rather than ride in a limousine, bringing a common touch to his presidency.
Navy officers stood silently along the snow-lined street, witnessing the casket's transfer to the caisson.
The Carter family will walk behind the casket as it heads from the U.S. Navy Memorial to the U.S. Capitol.
Motorcade leaves Joint Base Andrews
Former President Jimmy Carter’s motorcade has left Joint Base Andrews in Maryland en route to Washington, D.C., to begin several days of services in the nation’s capital.
Carter lands in DC
A plane carrying the Carter family and the casket of former President Jimmy Carter has landed at Joint Base Andrews in Maryland for several days of ceremonies in Washington, D.C.
The U.S. Navy Memorial will be the first stop for the motorcade to honor Carter’s service as a lieutenant in the Navy.
Carter en route from Georgia to DC
The Carter family is accompanying former President Jimmy Carter’s remains on a flight from Georgia’s Dobbins Air Reserve Base to Washington, D.C. for the late president’s final journey to the nation’s capital.
"Hail to the Chief" was played and troops fired a 21-gun salute after the coffin was taken out of the hearse. Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp was among the officials at the base to witness the coffin’s transfer from the hearse to the plane.
Carter is survived by four children -- John William (Jack), James Earl III (Chip), Donnel Jeffrey (Jeff) and Amy Lynn -- and many grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
The flight will land in the D.C. area around 2 p.m.
The late president’s first stop in snowy D.C. will be the U.S. Navy Memorial to honor his time in the service.
That will be followed by a 4:30 p.m. ET service at the U.S. Capitol, which will be
Carter leaves Carter Presidential Center for final time
Former President Jimmy Carter is leaving the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta for the final time Tuesday morning as Carter Center employees and their families look on.
The former president had been lying in repose at the center since Saturday, allowing the public to come pay their respects.
At a Saturday service at the Carter Presidential Center, Carter's son Chip Carter thanked his parents for their service and sacrifice.
"The two of them together changed the world," he said, overcome with emotion.
Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter founded the Carter Center after his presidency to improve health around the world and enhance freedom and democracy.
Carter to head to DC for services at Capitol, Washington National Cathedral
Former President Jimmy Carter's remains will be escorted from the Carter Presidential Center in Atlanta to Washington, D.C., on Tuesday for the 39th president's final trip to the nation's capital.
His remains will leave the Carter Center at 11:30 a.m. ET.
The first stop in D.C. will be the U.S. Navy Memorial in honor of the former president's service.
At 4:30 p.m. ET, members of Congress, the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs and other officials will congregate at the U.S. Capitol for a lying in state ceremony. Vice President Kamala Harris, Senator Majority Leader John Thune and House Speaker Mike Johnson are expected to deliver eulogies and lay wreaths.
Carter's remains will lie in state at the Capitol from Tuesday evening to Thursday morning, allowing the public to pay respects.
On Thursday morning, former presidents and other dignitaries will attend a state funeral at Washington National Cathedral. President Joe Biden will deliver a eulogy.
On Thursday afternoon, Carter’s body will return to his hometown of Plains, Georgia, for a private service and private interment. Carter will be buried next to his wife of 77 years, Rosalynn, who died on Nov. 19, 2023, at the age of 96.
(NEW YORK) -- Facebook plans to replace its fact-checkers with "community notes," a move that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said would allow the social network to return "to our roots around free expression."
"We're replacing fact checkers with Community Notes, simplifying our policies and focusing on reducing mistakes," Zuckerberg said on Tuesday. "Looking forward to this next chapter."
The changes, which will also be in place for Instagram and Threads, will lift restrictions "on some topics that are part of mainstream discourse" and will focus the company's "enforcement on illegal and high-severity violations," Joel Kaplan, chief global affairs officer, said in a blog post.
Meta executives sought in their statements to tie the update to what they described as a sea change in public discourse accompanying the rise of President-elect Donald Trump's brand of politics.
Fact-checkers who were put in place in the wake of Trump's 2016 election have proven to be "too politically biased" and have destroyed "more trust than they've created," particularly in the United States, Zuckerberg said.
"The recent elections also feel like a cultural tipping point towards once again prioritizing speech," Zuckerberg said.
The decision also follows Zuckerberg recent meeting with Trump at the president-elect's private Mar-a-Lago club in Florida. And Meta is donating to Trump's presidential inaugural committee, marking a first for the company.
The shift in policy mirrors a series of updates that Elon Musk -- a Trump ally -- made after purchasing rival social network Twitter, which he's since rebranded as X.
Kaplan on Tuesday praised the approach Musk has taken, saying X under its new owner has empowered its "community to decide when posts are potentially misleading and need more context."
"We think this could be a better way of achieving our original intention of providing people with information about what they're seeing -- and one that's less prone to bias," Kaplan said.
As the company's fact-checking capabilities have grown, they have expanded "to the point where we are making too many mistakes," which in turn has frustrated many of the social networks' users, Kaplan said.
"Too much harmless content gets censored, too many people find themselves wrongly locked up in 'Facebook jail,' and we are often too slow to respond when they do," he said.
ABC News' Michael Kreisel, Zunaira Zaki and Chris Donovan contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) -- In a major change that could affect millions of Americans' credit scores, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Tuesday finalized a rule to remove medical debt from consumer credit reports.
The rule would erase an estimated $49 billion in unpaid medical bills from the credit reports of roughly 15 million Americans, the CFPB said.
That could help boost those borrowers' credit scores by an average of 20 points, helping them qualify for mortgages and other loans.
"No one should be denied economic opportunity because they got sick or experienced a medical emergency," Vice President Kamala Harris said in a statement touting the new rule.
She announced the proposal for the rule last June alongside CFPB Director Rohit Chopra.
"This will be life-changing for millions of families, making it easier for them to be approved for a car loan, a home loan or a small-business loan," Harris added.
Major credit reporting agencies have already announced voluntary steps to remove medical debt from their reports.
The final rule is set to take effect in March – but that timeline could be delayed by legal challenges.
Debt collection industry groups like the Association of Credit and Collection Professionals have opposed the change, saying it would result in "reduced consequences for not paying your bills, which in turn will reduce access to credit and health care for those that need it most."
TYLER — Tyler Police are searching for a Plano man for his suspected involvement in a fatal shooting Monday. Officers were dispatched to an apartment complex on Bellwood Lake Road at around 3:05 p.m. in reference to a homicide. When authorities arrived, they reportedly found a woman, later identified as Cheyenne Russell, 26 from Nacogdoches, with multiple gunshot wounds. According to our news partner, KETK, Police have identified the suspect as 29-year-old Jorian Jackson. A warrant for murder with a $1 million bond has been issued for Jackson, and the police department said this was not a random act and Jackson should be considered armed and dangerous.
