100 million on alert for dangerous cold, as some see coldest winds of season
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — At least 100 million Americans are on alert for dangerous cold weather in the coming days across the East as brutal, eye-watering cold winds — the coldest of the season for some — are expected across the Northeast this weekend.
Wind chills in the -20s are possible in Michigan and northern Ohio through Saturday morning, with -10s for southern Ohio and West Virginia.
Richmond, Virginia, could reach below-zero wind chills this weekend.
Extreme cold warnings are in place across much of the Northeast, including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont.
New York City could reach as low as -20 this weekend, and upstate New York around Saranac Lake could reach -40. Frostbite can occur in 10 minutes on exposed skin.
Much of this extreme cold is due to strong winds gusting 30 to 50 mph this weekend, especially Saturday.
Monday morning will still be very cold across the Northeast, but the wind will be calmer, so wind chills won’t be as extreme.
Slowly through the week, a warming trend is expected across the East, with high temperatures going above freezing for New York City and Boston on Wednesday, possibly even on Tuesday.
The end of next week is looking above average across the middle of the country, while the Northeast feels seasonal mid-February winter temperatures.
The system ushering in the brutal cold also brings some snow.
Friday morning, snow was falling over Michigan, Indiana, Ohio, West Virginia, western Pennsylvania and western New York.
By Friday afternoon, snow will become more scattered and fall from the Appalachians of western North Carolina through upstate New York.
A few light snow showers or flurries will pass over New York City on Friday night, and much of Saturday is looking dry. A dusting up to 1 inch of snow is possible over the city on Friday night.
On Saturday, Boston and much of New England will continue to see passing snow showers.
Boston could see 2 to 4 inches of snow through Saturday evening.
The western New York I-90 corridor could see 2 to 5 inches of snow through Saturday evening, including Syracuse, Rochester and Buffalo.
Former President Barack Obama during a campaign event for Representative Mikie Sherrill, Democratic gubernatorial candidate for New Jersey, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2025. (Adam Gray/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — Former President Barack Obama, in a video shared exclusively with ABC News, called on Virginians to vote in favor of a redistricting measure that could give Democrats a boost in the 2026 midterms if it passes.
“By voting yes, you can push back against the Republicans trying to give themselves an unfair advantage in the midterms,” Obama said in the video shared with ABC News. “By voting yes, you can take a temporary step to level the playing field. And we’re counting on you.”
Over a million Virginians have voted early already, according to the Virginia Public Access Project, in an April 21 statewide referendum that will decide if the Democratic-controlled legislature should be allowed to redraw the state’s congressional map.
That would allow the legislature to implement a map it already advanced that would reconfigure four congressional seats to favor Democrats, which could be decisive in the midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives given Republicans’ current slim majority.
Democrats — including Obama, who previously starred in an advertisement for the “yes” side — have argued that it’s a necessary counterweight to mid-decade redistricting in 2025 that redrew nine seats to favor Republicans.
Republicans and other opponents of the redistricting gambit, which is also still facing a court challenge even as the election was allowed to proceed, have slammed the move as unfair to a large swath of Virginia voters. President Donald Trump received 46% of the vote in Virginia in the 2024 election.
“Virginia is a very purple state, and there’s a wide variety of voices in Virginia,” U.S. Rep. Jen Kiggans, a Republican whose district is redrawn by the proposed new map, told ABC News. “And for one political party to come in and assume that it’s their way or the highway, and to force that down Virginians’ throats — this will come back to bite them.”
The “Yes” side has fundraised and spent millions more on advertisements than the “No” side, according to campaign finance filings and an analysis by AdImpact. It’s also been bolstered by celeb power from figures such as Kerry Washington, John Legend and Pusha T.
Yet polling has still shown a close race, despite the seeming momentum behind the “Yes” efforts. A Washington Post-Schar School poll conducted in late March, after early voting had begun in the state, found that 52% of likely voters in the referendum supported the move, while 47% were opposed — a result just outside the poll’s margin of error.
Why does it appear so close? J. Miles Coleman, a political expert and analyst at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, told ABC News that could be in part because for Democrats, the stakes may not seem as high as they are for Republicans.
“For Democrats, it would be nice to have these four extra seats out of Virginia if this map gets passed,” he said. “But I just think probably something driving enthusiasm on the Republican side is that, from their point of view, this vote probably seems more existential … they lost their statewide seats last year in a drubbing. They could very well stand to lose a lot of their federal representation.”
But Obama, in the video shared with ABC News, framed the stakes as having national importance.
“By voting yes, you have the chance to do something important — not just for the Commonwealth, but for our entire country,” Obama said in the video.
(The video also serves as a way for Obama to reaffirm his support for the ballot measure, after allies of his harshly criticized mailers that used old quotes from Obama about redistricting to portray him as against the initiative.)
Some Democrats are not onboard.
Outside of an early polling site in Virginia on Thursday, Geoff Warrington, who works in tech and identified himself as a Democrat, told ABC News he had chosen to vote no because he believes it is “relatively unfair to essentially have redistricting temporarily to reallocate seats to sway an election.”
But for some Democratic “yes” voters, the referendum is a way for Democrats to be able to strike back while being locked out of power in the White House and Congress.
“I mean, the Republicans have been playing dirty, so I think the Democrats are good to play dirty,” Adan Hernandez, an engineer, told ABC News at a separate early voting site in Virginia on Thursday.
(WASHINGTON) — An 11th hour plea from the prime minister of Pakistan appears to have swayed both President Donald Trump and the Iranian regime to agree to a two-week ceasefire deal in exchange for temporarily opening the Strait of Hormuz, at least temporarily staving off Trump’s promise to bomb Iran back to the “stone ages.”
With just hours to go until Trump’s 8 p.m. ET Tuesday deadline, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif — one of the key mediators attempting to the end the conflict — issued a public call to Trump, urging him to allow more time for negotiations.
“Diplomatic efforts for peaceful settlement of the ongoing war in the Middle East are progressing steadily, strongly and powerfully with the potential to lead to substantive results in near future,” Sharif said. “To allow diplomacy to run its course, I earnestly request President Trump to extend the deadline for two weeks.”
Sharif also implored Iran to open the Strait of Hormuz as a “goodwill gesture.”
Just after 6:30 p.m. ET, Trump posted on his social media platform that he would suspend military attacks.
“Based on conversations with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Field Marshal Asim Munir, of Pakistan, and wherein they requested that I hold off the destructive force being sent tonight to Iran, and subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz, I agree to suspend the bombing and attack of Iran for a period of two week,” he wrote.
“We received a 10 point proposal from Iran, and believe it is a workable basis on which to negotiate,” Trump continued, referring to an Iranian counterproposal transmitted to negotiators after rejecting plans for a longer ceasefire on Monday. “Almost all of the various points of past contention have been agreed to between the United States and Iran, but a two-week period will allow the Agreement to be finalized and consummated.”
Within the hour, Iran’s Supreme National Security Council claimed that the U.S. agreed to its plan which includes numerous concessions.
In a lengthy statement on Iranian state media, the council said the U.S. “committed in principle to non-aggression, continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, acceptance of enrichment, lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions.”
Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, said Iran would agree to a ceasefire if attacks against it are halted. He also said passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be allowed during the two-week period if coordinated with Iran’s armed forces.
The White House did not respond to specific questions Tuesday evening on whether the U.S. agreed to Iran’s 10-point plan — which includes lifting all primary and secondary sanctions and withdrawing combat troops from the region — or what it made of Iran saying the Strait of Hormuz would open with coordination from Iran’s military.
In response, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement:
“President Trump’s words speak for themselves: this is a workable basis to negotiate, and those negotiations will continue. The truth is that President Trump and our powerful military got Iran to agree to reopening the Strait of Hormuz, and negotiations will continue.”
Despite Trump calling Iran’s counterproposal a “workable basis” for negotiations, it contains many terms the U.S. and the president himself have long rejected and was previously described by administration officials as “maximalist.”
After the two-week ceasefire was announced, mediators began making arrangements to hold the first round of talks following the implementation of the ceasefire on Friday in Islamabad, but the White House said late Tuesday that it had not yet committed to any plans.
Before Sharif’s proposal was made public, two U.S. officials cautioned that although talks showed signs of progress, the Trump administration and Iranian regime still appeared to be far apart on core issues, expressing doubt that a broad deal could be reached on such a tight timeline.
One U.S. official also said the dynamic proposed by Sharif mirrored confidence-building measures under discussion behind closed doors, but up until the president and Iranian authorities accepted the terms, it was unclear whether both sides could be brought on board.
Fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz is a top priority for U.S. officials, who indicated that any agreement with Iran would have to lead to near-immediate progress on that front.
Asked about the state of negotiations with Iran on Tuesday morning, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped “to have more news” later in the day and called Iran’s control over the Strait of Hormuz “a big problem for the world.”
“The whole world’s been impacted unfortunately because Iran is violating every law known by striking commercial vessels in the Straits of Hormuz,” he said. “I mean this is a regime that doesn’t believe in laws, rules or anything like that — it’s a State Sponsor of Terrorism, so it’s not surprising that they’re now conducting terrorist activity against commercial vessels.”
Iran sees the strait as equally important and has signaled publicly and in private negotiations that it is highly reluctant to agree to any terms that would see it losing leverage over the waterway.
Iran’s counterproposal issued Monday stipulated that the country would fully open the Strait of Hormuz but set the rules for passage through the waterway and extract a toll of $2 million per vessel, a situation the Trump administration has repeatedly said would be untenable.
