At least 11 dead after record-breaking snowstorm swept across the South
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(NEW YORK) — The Gulf Coast is digging out from a once-in-a-lifetime snowstorm that struck from Texas to Florida, closing airports, crippling roadways and leaving freezing temperatures in its wake.
At least 11 deaths have been attributed to the storm and accompanying cold blast.
In Dale County, Alabama, one person was killed in a house fire after leaving their stove on to keep them warm and a second person was killed in a car accident, according to the local coroner.
One person died from hypothermia in Georgia and two people died in the cold in Austin, Texas, officials said.
Southwest of San Antonio, five people died when a tractor-trailer collided with other vehicles on an icy road, the Texas Department of Safety said.
In Moncks Corner, South Carolina, a 71-year-old man died while shoveling snow, according to the Berkeley County Coroner’s Office.
This storm brought more snow to some cities than any other storm in at least the last 130 years.
Florida saw its most snow on record, with 9.8 inches of snow recorded in Milton, northeast of Pensacola.
Pensacola also saw an all-time record for the city with 8.9 inches.
Texas experienced its first-ever blizzard warning. Beaumont, Texas, recorded 5.2 inches of snow — an all-time record.
Mobile, Alabama, saw an all-time record high of 7.5 inches.
In Louisiana, Baton Rouge saw 7.6 inches.
New Orleans recorded 8 inches, marking the most snow in the city since 1895.
And the danger isn’t over. An extreme cold warning is in effect Thursday morning from Mississippi to the Florida Panhandle, with temperatures dropping as low as 12 degrees in parts of the Gulf Coast.
For Louisiana, this is the coldest it’s been in over 100 years, state climatologist Jay Grymes said.
While snow has melted in many areas, the freeze remains a serious threat. Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development Secretary Joe Donahue is urging “everyone to avoid unnecessary travel.”
Many of the areas hit hard by the storm will thaw soon; temperatures are expected to climb to the 50s and 60s by Sunday.
(TALLAHASSEE, Fla.) — Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Tuesday he has ordered state prosecutors to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the “nowactive criminal investigation” into influencer Andrew Tate and his brother Tristan Tate, after they arrived in the state from Romania.
The announcement was first posted to X, saying, “Last week, I directed my office to work with our law enforcement partners to conduct a preliminary inquiry into Andrew and Tristan Tate.”
It continued, “Based on a thorough review of the evidence, I’ve directed the Office of Statewide Prosecution to execute search warrants and issue subpoenas in the now-active criminal investigation into the Tate brothers.”
The brothers landed at the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Feb. 27 after Romania lifted a travel restriction on them, despite its ongoing criminal investigations into the Tates for human trafficking and forming an organized criminal group with the goal of sexually exploiting women in two cases. Andrew Tate was also charged with rape.
The Tate brothers deny all charges against them.
The two had been confined to Romania since late 2022 and were charged in both 2023 and 2024. Romanian officials announced that court restrictions prohibiting the brothers from leaving Romania while awaiting trial had been lifted, but that the charges against them remained in force. The Tates also face another criminal case in the United Kingdom, where an arrest warrant has been issued on separate allegations of human trafficking and rape. The UK government has faced calls to demand the Tates’ extradition from the U.S.
The Tates’ release followed reports of lobbying by President Donald Trump’s administration. Trump denied any knowledge of it when questioned by reporters about their arrival in the United States. But Romania’s foreign minister has confirmed that Trump’s special envoy, Richard Grenell, raised the brothers’ case during a meeting in February, although he denied being pressured. Key Trump officials and allies, including Elon Musk and Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. have previously condemned the case against the Tates.
The charges against the Tates remain in force and they will be expected to return to Romania for court appearances, according to a statement from Romania’s Directorate for Investigating Organized Crime and Terrorism (DIICOT.) The agency warned that failure to observe the remaining judicial restrictions could result in harsher restrictions being instated.
Despite other Trump allies’ support for the Tates, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis expressed surprise and anger at their arrival in Florida, telling reporters on the day that the Tates were “not welcome” given the conduct they are accused of.
Uthmeier, the attorney general, said he had directed state law enforcement to investigate whether any of their alleged crimes relating to human trafficking and violence against women triggered Florida jurisdiction, and pledging to “hold them accountable” if so.
One of the alleged victims at the center of one of the Romanian cases against Tate is a Florida woman. The American citizen has accused the Tates of luring her to Romania under the pretence of romantic relationship and then pressuring her into working as a pornographic webcam model, according to court documents.
The Tates have denied the woman’s accusations.
It is unclear if the new Florida investigation involves the women’s allegations. Uthmeier declined to give details on Tuesday but pledged to use “every tool” to hold the Tates accountable.
“These guys have themselves publicly admitted to participating in what very much appears to be soliciting, trafficking, preying upon women around the world,” he told a local reporter. “People can spin it however they want, but in Florida this type of behaviour is viewed as atrocious. We’re not going to accept it.”
“If these guys did criminal activity here in Florida we will go after them with full force of law and hold them accountable,” he said.
A lawyer representing the Tates, Joseph D. McBride, condemned the investigation, accusing Uthmeier of making “inflammatory, biased” comments and claiming the case was politically motivated.
“Today, Attorney General James Uthmeier threw ethics law out of the window when he publicly took a side in an ongoing Florida lawsuit where Andrew and Tristan Tate are suing a Florida woman,” McBride, wrote on X, challenging the attorney general to present evidence.
McBride blamed the new investigation on DeSantis, calling him “an angry, vertically challenged imp who hates Tate and Trump for being actual men. Attorney General Uthmeier is his pathetic lap dog.”
The Tates brought a defamation lawsuit against the Florida woman in the state in 2023, accusing her and her family of conspiring to damage their reputations by participating in the Romanian case. Last month, the woman brought her own countersuit against the Tates, accusing them of using the defamation lawsuit to try to silence victims. Both cases are currently pending.
A lawyer for the Florida woman in the Romania case praised the attorney general’s move to criminally investigate the Tates.
“Florida AG Uthmeier is right to criminally investigate the Tate brothers who have publicly boasted about exploiting women yet have continuously sought to undermine the Romanian investigation into these crimes,” Dani Pinter, senior vice president at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation said in a statement. “Over 40 victims have been identified across Romania, the United Kingdom, and the United States. They deserve justice. Florida’s investigation is a positive step towards justice realized.”
One of the women who is an alleged victim at the center of one of the Romanian cases is an American woman who lives in Florida.
It’s unclear from Uthmeier’s statement what the investigation is examining right now or how it might proceed.
ABC News’ Meredith Deliso and T. Michelle Murphy contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Three weeks into Donald Trump’s breakneck effort to remake the federal government, the rapid pace of lawsuits pushing back against his orders — and a number of legal setbacks for the Trump administration — have challenged the Department of Justice, seemingly overwhelming the government lawyers tasked with defending the president in court.
In a court filing Monday night, Justice Department lawyers acknowledged making two significant errors last week during a court hearing about the dismantling of the foreign aid agency USAID. While DOJ attorneys last week claimed that 500 employees at USAID had been put on leave and that only future contracts had been put on pause, more than 2,100 employees had actually been placed on leave while both future and existing contracts were frozen, according to the filing.
“Defendants sincerely regret these inadvertent misstatements based on information provided to counsel immediately prior to the hearing and have made every effort to provide reliable information in the declaration supporting their opposition to a preliminary injunction,” DOJ lawyers wrote to the judge overseeing the case.
During the USAID hearing last week, Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, expressed frustration that the government had not provided him sufficient information.
“I need to know what the government’s official position is right now. What is happening?” Nichols said. “Is the government paying people or not?”
The Trump administration has faced a torrent of lawsuits over the last two weeks, with judges over the last two days blocking them from enforcing a federal buyout program, cutting funding for health research, and removing public health data from government websites.
After a New York judge blocked Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency from accessing Treasury Department records on Saturday, both DOGE head Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance began to publicly float the idea of defying the court orders.
Justice Department representatives did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
During a hearing in the Treasury Department case, the DOJ claimed that Marko Elez — a SpaceX employee-turned-DOGE cost-cutter who briefly resigned last week after the Wall Street Journal reported on racist social media posts — was a “special government employee” within the Department of the Treasury.
In a filing Monday, the DOJ corrected themselves to note that Elez was actually a full-fledged Treasury Department employee — a “Special Advisor for Information Technology and Modernization” according to the filing — who is subject to additional ethics requirements.
During a hearing last week on whether the DOJ should be blocked from disseminating a list of federal agents and employees who worked on cases involving the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, a DOJ attorney was unable to say with confidence whether the government might eventually release the list, frustrating the judge overseeing the case.
“You represent the government,” U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said sternly. “The White House wants this information. Does the government have present intent to publicly release names of FBI agents that worked on Jan. 6 cases?”
“People who have the list don’t have present intent,” replied the attorney, Jeremy Simon, who then had to ask for a series of short recesses as he was pressed to provide answers on the government’s stance.
At one point Simon needed to excuse himself into the hallway to speak by phone with his superiors.
The legal challenges began immediately after Trump ignited his barrage of Day-1 executive orders. During a hearing on the administration’s short-lived federal funding freeze, a DOJ attorney appeared unable to provide a clear answer about the extent of the White House’s new policy.
“It seems like the federal government currently doesn’t actually know the full scope of the programs that are going to be subject to the pause. Is that correct?” U.S. District Judge Loren L. AliKhan asked the attorney.
“I can only speak for myself, which is just based on the limited time frame here, that I do not have a comprehensive list,” replied DOJ lawyer Daniel Schwei. “It just depends.”
And during the first court hearing about Trump’s executive order on birthright citizenship, the position of defending Trump’s order put Brett Shumate, the acting assistant attorney general for the DOJ’s civil division, in a federal judge’s firing line.
“In your opinion, is this executive order constitutional?” U.S. District Judge John Coughenour asked Shumate during the hearing.
“Yes, we think it is,” Shumate said, drawing the judge’s rebuke.
“I have difficulty understanding how a member of the bar can state unequivocally that this is a constitutional order. It boggles my mind,” Coughenour said. “Where were the lawyers when this decision was being made?”
A constitutional law expert told ABC News that DOJ attorneys have been rebuked by judges of all stripes.
“They are doing this regardless of geography and regardless of who appointed them,” said Loyola Marymount University law professor Justin Levitt. “So you’ve seen pushback from Reagan appointees, you’ve seen pushback from Bush appointees, you’ve seen pushback from Obama appointees and Trump appointees and Biden appointees, and that’s going to continue.”
Levitt said the results have generally not been in the Trump administration’s favor.
“As far as I can tell, they’re winless in the courts,” he said.
(WASHINGTON) — A federal judge will hear arguments Monday on efforts by a group of California public university students to block Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency from accessing highly sensitive federal student loan records maintained by the Department of Education.
An organization representing more than 200,000 students enrolled in California’s public universities has brought suit seeking a temporary restraining order to block DOGE from accessing the student loan records as part of its effort to slash government spending.
The lawsuit, one of several that DOGE is facing, alleges that individuals associated with DOGE are illegally attempting to access the personal and financial information of the more than 42 million borrowers — accounting for more than 12% of the U.S. population — who have federal student loans.
A handful of people working with DOGE were spotted at the Department of Education last week and some now have access to the agency’s records and files, according to sources familiar with the matter.
“The scale of the intrusion into individuals’ privacy is enormous and unprecedented,” the lawsuit said, alleging that Musk’s team could access the bank account numbers, income information, dates of birth, and social security numbers of millions through the Education Department’s Office of Federal Student Aid.
DOGE workers are now listed in the Department of Education’s email directory, meaning they were hired as employees, sources also told ABC News.
The Department of Education is the smallest cabinet-level agency, with 4,400 employees. Some 1,400 employees work in the department’s FSA office, which distributes money — including loans and grants — for students to pursue higher education.
The University of California Student Association lawsuit, filed against Acting Secretary of Education Denise Carter, alleged that DOGE has engaged in a “systematic, continuous, and ongoing violation of federal laws” meant to protect the security of data held by the federal government.
“People who take out federal student loans to afford higher education should not be forced to share their sensitive information with ‘DOGE.’ And federal law says they do not have to,” the lawsuit said. The lawsuit also raised concerns with the lack of transparency surrounding DOGE, which they alleged might share the sensitive information with third parties.
“Because Defendants’ actions and decisions are shrouded in secrecy, individuals do not have even basic information about what personal or financial information Defendants are sharing with outside parties or how their information is being used,” the lawsuit said.
Last week, Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Minority Leader Chuck Schumer wrote a letter to Carter requesting information about whether Musk and his team have been provided access to National Student Loan data, among other sensitive borrower information.
“There are over 40 million federal student loan borrowers in the United States,” the senators, along with 14 others, wrote. “It is not at all clear that DOGE officials meet the strict criteria that would allow them to access this sensitive information protected by federal law–or whether DOGE officials have gained access to other sensitive ED databases as part of their efforts to “reform” the agency,”
The senators also asked Carter to describe what safeguards are in place to ensure that student loan data is not misused. The letter urged Carter to ensure that Musk and his team have not been provided access to any other databases managed by the department.
