Mayorkas says federal authorities are addressing New Jersey drone sightings
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(NEW YORK) — Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the federal government is taking action to address the aerial drones that have prompted concern among New Jersey residents.
“There’s no question that people are seeing drones,” he told “This Week” anchor George Stephanopoulos in an exclusive interview on Sunday. “I want to assure the American public that we in the federal government have deployed additional resources, personnel, technology to assist the New Jersey State Police in addressing the drone sightings.”
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Kristin Gambardella speaks to ABC News. (ABC News)
(PHOENIX) — Kristin and Dave Gambardella never expected the journey of growing their family to include an abortion procedure, but in summer 2023, the married couple nevertheless found themselves in a Planned Parenthood parking lot in Albuquerque, New Mexico, a seven-hour drive from their home in Tucson, Arizona.
A week beforehand, a routine blood test at 17 weeks into Kristin’s pregnancy had come back with devastating results. A follow-up ultrasound confirmed her doctors’ fears. The fetus had a severe genetic abnormality.
“They told us it was really a guaranteed short life, full of pain and surgeries and constant medical care,” Gambardella said. “Dave is a stoic person,” she said of her husband, “and I remember he just broke down and lost it. And that’s when I really felt that feeling in my gut that was like, wow, this is pretty catastrophic.”
In deciding to end the pregnancy, the Gambardellas realized they weren’t only tasked with an agonizing decision for their family — they also had an Arizona law to contend with, which would prevent them from seeing any of their own doctors for the procedure.
“The doctor, I remember, she looked at me and her eyes just looked really sad. And she said, ‘No, you can’t come here. We can’t do that procedure for you. You’d have to leave the state’,” Gambardella said.
Arizona’s abortion ban
In Arizona — one of 21 states that has enacted abortion restrictions since the end of Roe v Wade — abortion is banned after 15 weeks, except for medical emergencies endangering the life of the mother. Gambardella didn’t qualify for that exception.
“As someone who has always believed in a woman’s right to make decisions about her own bodies, it was such a turning point in my understanding on just how much abortion care is interconnected with fertility care and the act of wanting to have a baby,” Gambardella said.
The experience inspired her to join the campaign to pass Proposition 139, a ballot measure that would enshrine in Arizona’s state constitution the right to an abortion until fetal viability.
Arizona is one of 10 states in the country that have such measures on the ballot this November, including Florida, Colorado, Maryland, Missouri, Montana and Nebraska.
This large push nationwide comes as abortion access remains one of the most important issues to voters this election — and the top issue for women under 30, according to an October survey by KFF, the nonpartisan health policy organization.
Where the candidates stand
Democrats hope that the issue could drive enthusiasm for Vice President Kamala Harris, who has centered her campaign on restoring reproductive rights and attacking former President Donald Trump for nominating the conservative Supreme Court justices that voted to overrule Roe v. Wade.
Trump, who has repeatedly shifted his position on abortion from supporting a federal ban to declaring that he would not pass one, while remaining open to other reproductive health care restrictions, maintains that he will “protect women,” but is sparse on details.
It’s not clear, however, if abortion-access ballot measures will alter the outcome of the presidential race in a swing state like Arizona. Voters could split the ticket — voting to enshrine abortion access, but prioritizing other issues in their presidential choice.
Trump is leading Harris in Arizona by two points, according to 538’s latest polling average, even as polling so far has shown the abortion access amendment in Arizona to be widely popular, with about 60% of likely voters saying they’ll support it.
That level of support is in line with the success of abortion rights ballot measures in other states over the last two years since Roe v. Wade was overruled. Reproductive rights ballot measures have passed every time they’ve been on the ballot, whether the state leans Republican, Democrat or is closely divided like Arizona.
Susan Ashley, a retiree and a volunteer for the Arizona for Abortion Access campaign, says her “fury” over Roe vs. Wade being overturned drove her to make the initiative her “full-time job right now.”
“I’ve been an active voter, but I’ve never been involved in an event where there were so many passionate volunteers. And so this struck a nerve,” Ashley said.
Efforts on the ground
Athena Salman, a former Arizona state representative and director of Arizona campaigns for Reproductive Freedom for All, was at Ashley’s side for door-knocking in mid-October, in the 90-degree heat.
The two women spoke to nearly a dozen registered Independents in a neighborhood of Chandler, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix. Each voter they spoke to said they were supporting the ballot measure.
“I think it really shows that Arizonans are just fed up with their reproductive freedom being up in the air and they’re ready to take action and get the government interference out of our personal decisions,” Salman said.
Though Arizona currently bans abortion at 15 weeks, the state saw all abortions halted for four months in the summer of 2022 when a ban from 1864 was revived. It nearly took effect again in the spring of 2024, but the Arizona state legislature repealed it after massive outcry from residents and a push from the Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs and Attorney General Kris Mayes.
To Cindy Dahlgren, spokesperson for the campaign against the abortion access ballot measure, the legislature’s decision to repeal the near-total abortion ban and keep a 15-week ban should put people at ease.
“Proponents play on those fears and that confusion by saying there’s a ban when there’s not a ban,” she said, arguing that the current law only curtails the procedure but doesn’t fully ban it. “I would also point out that it was the legislature that repealed that law. And there doesn’t seem to be an appetite to put that law back in.”
Her campaign, called “It Goes Too Far,” argues that enshrining abortion access until fetal viability would remove too many restrictions around abortion, leaving it too unregulated.
“The choice really in November is not between abortion or no abortion. It’s between limited abortion and safety precautions and a doctor and parents involved or unlimited and unregulated abortion,” Dahlgren said.
Asked about cases like Gambardella’s, where pregnancy complications arise in the second trimester, or women who experience rape or incest and do not qualify for an exception, Dahlgren said, “we do not have to enshrine a very extreme abortion amendment to care for those victims.”
But Dr. Misha Pangasa, an OB-GYN with Planned Parenthood, one of only nine clinics in Arizona providing abortion care, said she doesn’t want to leave reproductive rights up to the political makeup of the state legislature anymore.
“The idea that Arizonans health care is at the whims of whichever legislature is holding the majority is never going to be the best way for people to get the best care,” Pangasa said.
There are currently around 40 laws that restrict abortions in the state of Arizona, which Pangasa said have already significantly impacted her ability to provide care to pregnant patients.
“Pregnancy is complicated and decisions at various stages are hard. And I am the one there helping support them. And what I wish that our government would do is just let me,” Pangasa said.
Pangasa said she sees patients like the Gambardellas on a regular basis.
“To be honest, it’s a really heartbreaking moment to be in when I talk to my patients and say, if you were in a different state with me right now, I would tell you that these are your options. But because we’re in Arizona, an abortion is just not an option,” she said.
(WASHINGTON) — House Speaker Mike Johnson said on Friday that he does not think the House Ethics Committee should release the findings of its investigation into Matt Gaetz, now that the Florida Republican is no longer a member of Congress.
“I believe it is very important to maintain the House’s tradition of not issuing ethics reports on people who are no longer members of Congress,” Johnson said. “I think it would open a Pandora’s box.”
Johnson weighing into the issue is extremely rare as House speakers traditionally stay out of the committee’s investigations and business.
Just two days ago, Johnson said the following about the report: “As far as the timing of the release of a report, or something, I don’t know. The speaker of the House is not involved in that, can’t be involved in that.”
It’s unclear what the bipartisan panel will do now with its report. There are growing calls from senators on both sides of the aisle for the report to be released.
The House Ethics Committee, which sources said was preparing to meet this week to deliberate over whether to release a final report, was now not expected to meet on Friday, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
Gaetz stepped down from the House shortly after being tapped by President-elect Donald Trump to be attorney general — a choice that shocked some Republican lawmakers and many Justice Department officials. Gaetz will need to be confirmed by the Senate to serve in the role.
Asked on Friday if he spoke to Trump about the ethics investigation, Johnson sidestepped.
“I’m not talking to anybody about what I have said to Trump,” he said.
Johnson also claimed he was responding to public reports about the panel’s findings and had not been briefed on the investigation.
“The speaker has no involvement or understanding of what’s going on with the Ethics Committee or what they’re investigating or when,” Johnson added.
“What I am saying is someone who is no longer a member of Congress. You’re not in the business of investigating and publishing a report,” he concluded. “I would encourage the House Ethics Committee to follow that tradition. I think it’s important.”
(GRAND RAPIDS, MI) — Former President Donald Trump and his vice presidential pick, Sen. JD Vance, spent the closing hours of the 2024 campaign reviving rhetoric criticized by opponents as divisive.
Trump’s closing rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan, saw the former president deliver meandering attacks on political opponents, baselessly claim that electronic voting machines are not secure and suggest it would be the fault of his supporters if he lost Tuesday’s vote.
Trump took aim at President Joe Biden and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi during his address, suggesting the former “was stuck in a basement” during the campaign and mouthing an expletive when referring to the latter.
While Vice President Kamala Harris and Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz stuck to their message of American unity, Trump said he was “running against an evil Democrat system” populated by what he called “evil people.”
Vance, meanwhile, described Democratic leaders as “trash” in returning to Biden’s recent remarks in which he appeared to call Trump supporters “garbage.”
Biden’s comments were in response to comedian Tony Hinchcliffe’s controversial joke about Puerto Rico at last month’s Madison Square Garden rally. Biden later said he was referring specifically to Hinchcliffe, not Trump supporters generally.
“To the Pennsylvanians who are struggling, no matter what Kamala Harris and Joe Biden and Tim Walz say, you are not garbage for being worried about not being able to afford your groceries,” Vance told rally goers at an event in Newtown, Pennsylvania.
“You are not garbage for thinking that Kamala Harris ought to do a better job,” he continued. “You are not racist for thinking that America deserves to have a secure southern border.”
“So, to Kamala Harris, you shouldn’t be calling your citizens garbage,” Vance continued. “You shouldn’t be criticizing people for daring to criticize you for doing a bad job.”
“And our message to the leadership, to the elites of the Democratic Party is no, the people of Pennsylvania are not garbage for struggling under your leadership,” Vance said. “But tomorrow, the people of Pennsylvania are going to take out the trash in Washington, D.C., and we’re going to do it together.”
Trump also recommitted to working with former presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who he described as “a credible guy” that will be “very much involved” in his administration if he wins.
“He’s got a tremendous view on health and pesticides and all this stuff,” Trump said at a rally in Pittsburgh. “And we’re not really a healthy country,” he added.
Kennedy would be allowed “to pretty much do what he wants,” Trump said.
Kennedy’s activism against vaccines, immunization and other public health measures like water fluoridation has raised concerns among medical experts and been broadly criticized by Democrats. So, too, has his opposition to abortion, an issue on which his policy shifted during his presidential tilt.
“Bobby, you got to do one thing,” Trump said Monday. “Do whatever you want. You just go ahead, work on that pesticides. Work on making women’s health. He’s so into women’s health … he’s really unbelievable. It’s such a passion.”
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Kelsey Walsh, Soo Rin Kim and Hannah Demissie contributed to this report.
