Biden to announce over $600M in Florida resiliency projects following hurricanes
Tristan Wheelock/Bloomberg via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden will travel on Sunday to Florida areas ravaged by the back-to-back hurricanes, and announce federal funding for projects to strengthen the electrical grid, according to the White House.
Biden will be touring St. Petersburg, one of the hardest hit Florida cities from Hurricane Milton last week, and reveal $612 million for six Department of Energy projects in the southeast.
Two of the projects are focused in Florida and provide a combined $94M in federal funds, according to the White House.
Gainesville Regional Utilities will use the funding to help mitigate the effects of increasingly extreme weather in north central Florida, “through storm hardening, as well as faster restoration through deployment of self-healing devices and tools that will enable more efficient and precise dispatching of field teams during outages,” the White House said in a statement.
Switched Source, a private utility technology developer, will work with Florida Power and Light to deploy Phase-EQ, which “optimizes power flow in distribution circuits, will unlock over 200 MW of system capacity, and improve reliability on circuits serving communities that are most susceptible to prolonged outages,” according to the White House.
“These investments are part of the president’s commitment to making long-term investments that protect, enhance, and upgrade our nation’s electric grid, especially in the face of extreme weather events,” the White House said in a statement.
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. At least 16 people were killed in the storm and over a million remain without power.
Biden has spoken to numerous state and local officials, including Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who he said was “very cooperative.” When asked if he would meet with DeSantis on Sunday, Biden said yes so long as the governor was available.
(WASHINGTON) — Peach and Blossom are the two lucky turkeys from Minnesota who escaped a fowl fate of ending up on someone’s Thanksgiving table this year when they were pardoned Monday by President Biden at the White House.
“This event marks the official start of the holiday season here in Washington,” Biden said to what he said was a crowd of 2,500 gathered on the South Lawn. “It’s also my last time to speak here as your president during this season and give thanks and gratitude. So let me say to you, it’s been the honor of my life. I’m forever grateful.”
“May we use this moment to take time from our busy lives and focus on what matters most: our families,” Biden said. “My dad used to have an expression, family is the beginning, the middle and the end, our friends and our neighbors. The fact that we are blessed to live in America, the greatest country on Earth — and that’s not hyperbole. We are. No matter what, in America we never give up. We keep going, we keep the faith.”
These birds were plucked for the presidential flock and went through rigorous training to ride the gravy train to the White House for the honor, according to John Zimmerman, chairman of the National Turkey Federation.
Zimmerman’s 9-year-old son Grant and other young trainers made sure their feathers wouldn’t be ruffled by the spotlight.
“Preparing these presidential birds has taken a lot of special care,” Zimmerman said Sunday during a news conference introducing the two turkeys. “We’ve been getting them used to lights, camera and even introducing them to a wide variety of music — everything from polka to classic rock.”
Peach and Blossom, weighing 41 and 40 pounds, respectively, where hatched back in July. They traveled to Washington this week and were treated to a suite at the Willard InterContinental hotel before their big day on Monday, as is tradition.
Biden said the birds were named after the Delaware state flower: the Peach Blossom.
The president joked Peach lived by the motto “keep calm and gobble on.” Blossom’s mantra, he said, was “no foul play, just Minnesota nice.”
Biden at times was interrupted by gobbles, responding by saying one was making a “last-minute plea.”
After the pardons, the two turkeys were headed back to Waseca, Minnesota, to live out the remainder of the feathery lives as “agricultural ambassadors” at Farmamerica, an agricultural interpretive center.
“And today, Peach and Blossom will join the free birds of the United States of America,” Biden said.
The turkey pardon at the White House is an annual tradition that is usually “cranned” full of a cornucopia of corny jokes.
The history of the turkey pardon
The origin of the presidential turkey pardons is a bit fuzzy. Unofficially, reports point all the way back to Abraham Lincoln, who spared a bird from its demise at the urging of his son, Tad. However, that story might be more folklore than fact.
The true start of what has evolved into the current tradition has its roots in politics and dates back to the Harry Truman presidency in 1947.
Truman ruffled feathers by starting “poultry-less Thursdays” to try and conserve various foods in the aftermath of World War II, but Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day all fell on Thursdays.
After the White House was inundated with live birds sent as part of a “Hens for Harry” counter-initiative, the National Turkey Federation and the Poultry and Egg National Board presented Truman with a bird as a peace offering — although the turkey was not saved from a holiday feast.
President John F. Kennedy began the trend of publicly sparing a turkey given to the White House in November 1963, just days before his assassination. In the years following, the event became a bit more sporadic, with even some first ladies such as Pat Nixon and Rosalynn Carter stepping in to accept the guests of honor on their husband’s behalf.
The tradition of the public sparing returned in earnest during the Reagan administration, but the official tradition of the poultry pardoning at the White House started in 1989, when then-President George H.W. Bush offered the first official presidential pardon. In the more than three decades since, at least one lucky bird has gotten some extra gobbles each year.
(NEW YORK) — Americans are going to the polls Tuesday to cast their ballots in the historic election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump.
Surveys ahead of Election Day found the two candidates in a virtual dead heat nationally and in several key swing states.
Broad economic discontent, sharp divisions about the nation’s future and polarized views of the major-party candidates mark voter attitudes nationally in ABC News’ preliminary exit poll results.
The state of democracy prevailed narrowly as the most important issue to voters out of five tested in the exit poll.
The country and democracy
Voters broadly express more negative than positive views about the country’s direction: Just 26% are enthusiastic or satisfied with the way things are going, versus 72% dissatisfied or angry.
More voters see American democracy as threatened than say it’s secure, 73% to 25%. Still, about six in 10 in these preliminary exit poll results say the country’s best days are ahead of it, versus about a third who say the country’s best days are in the past.
Extremism and candidate favorability
Fifty-five percent call Trump’s views “too extreme,” and he’s underwater in personal favorability, 44%-55%. Fewer call Harris’ views too extreme (46%), though she’s also underwater in personal favorability, albeit slightly, 48%-50%.
Favorability isn’t determinative: Just 40% saw Trump favorably in 2016, when he won the Electoral College (albeit not the popular vote). One reason is that almost as few, 43%, had a favorable view of his opponent that year, Hillary Clinton. (In 2020, Trump’s favorability rating was 46%; Joe Biden’s was 52%.)
Underscoring the emotion associated with the contest, preliminarily 36% of voters say they’d be “scared” if Trump were elected, while 29% would be scared by a Harris win.
The economy and Biden
The economy remains a key irritant. Voters say it’s in bad shape by 67%-32%. And 45% say their own financial situation is worse now than four years ago, versus 30% the same, with just 24% doing better. The “worse off” number exceeds its 2008 level, then 42%, and far outpaces its shares in 2020 (20%) and 2016 (28%).
Biden takes the heat, with just a 41% job approval rating (58% disapprove). It’s been a challenge for Harris to persuade voters she’s taking a new direction from Biden’s. (Biden’s approval rating is the lowest for an incumbent president in exit polls since George W. Bush’s 27% as he left office in 2008. Trump managed 50% job approval in 2020, yet Biden beat him anyway).
(LOS ANGELES) — Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascón has recommended resentencing for Lyle and Erik Menendez, who are each serving two life prison terms without parole.
“We are going to recommend to the court [on Friday] that the life without the possibility of parole be removed and they would be sentenced for murder,” which would be a sentence of 50 years to life, Gascón said at a news conference Thursday. But because of their age — they both were under 26 at the time of the crimes — they would be eligible for parole immediately, he said.
“I believe that they have paid their debt to society,” he said.
“The final decision will be made by the judge,” he stressed.
Gascón told ABC News this month that any recommendation for resentencing would take into account the decades that the brothers already served and their behavior in prison. The brothers’ attorney, Mark Geragos, called them model prisoners who worked tirelessly to reform themselves with no expectation they’d be released.
The decades-old case began on Aug. 20, 1989, when Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, in the family’s Beverly Hills home. Lyle Menendez, then 21, and Erik Menendez, then 18, used shotguns they bought days earlier.
Prosecutors alleged the brothers killed their wealthy parents for financial gain.
The defense argued the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father.
Their first trials — which captured the nation’s attention with cameras in the courtroom — ended in mistrials.
In 1996, at the end of a second trial — in which the judge barred much of the sex abuse evidence — the brothers were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
The sensational case gained new attention this fall with the release of the Netflix drama “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” and the Netflix documentary “The Menendez Brothers.”
Gascón said this month that his office was evaluating new evidence: allegations from a member of the boy band Menudo who said he was molested by Jose Menendez, and a letter Erik Menendez wrote to a cousin eight months before the murders detailing his alleged abuse.
Erik Menendez’s cousin testified about the alleged abuse at trial, but Erik Menendez’s letter — which would have corroborated the cousin’s testimony — wasn’t unearthed until several years ago, according to Geragos.
“Their actions, while tragic, were the desperate response of two boys trying to survive the unspeakable cruelty of their father,” Kitty Menendez’s sister, Joan Andersen VanderMolen, said. “As their aunt, I had no idea of the extent of the abuse they suffered.”
“It’s time to give them the opportunity to live the rest of their lives free from the shadow of their past,” she said.
Behind bars, the siblings “sought to better themselves and serve as a support and inspiration for survivors all over the world,” added Jose Menendez’s niece, Anamaria Baralt. “Their continued incarceration serves no rehabilitative purpose.”
The brothers “deserve a chance to heal, and our family deserves a chance to heal with them,” Baralt said.
Despite the massive show of support, one relative — the brothers’ uncle, Milton Andersen — is adamant about keeping them behind bars. He said in a statement he firmly believes his nephews were not sexually assaulted and were motivated by greed.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
