Four killed, 14 hurt in Chicago mass shooting: ‘Absolute chaos’
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(CHICAGO) — Four people were killed and 14 others wounded in a “deplorable and cowardly” mass shooting in Chicago on Wednesday night, according to the police superintendent.
Around 11 p.m., people were exiting a venue in the River North neighborhood and standing on the sidewalk when a vehicle pulled up and someone in the car opened fire on the crowd, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling said at a news conference.
“They didn’t care who was struck, and in a matter of seconds, they were able to shoot 18 people,” Snelling said.
The venue was targeted, but it’s not clear who specifically was the target, police said.
The vehicle fled the scene immediately and no one has been taken into custody, police said. Two different calibers of shell casings were recovered, police said.
The victims killed were identified as Leon Andrew Henry, 25; Devonte Terrell Williamson, 23; Taylor Walker, 26; and Aviance King, 27, according to the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.
Fourteen others were wounded, including several who were hospitalized in critical condition, according to police. The injured victims are all in their 20s and 30s, and 11 of the 14 people hurt are women, police said.
“When I arrived last night it was absolute chaos,” Pastor Donovan Price, who works to help victims of violence, told reporters. “From people screaming, to blood on the streets, to people laying on the streets, a massive police presence. Just horrific. More than I’ve ever seen.”
The hospitals were “almost as chaotic” as the crime scene as people searched for their loved ones, Price said. “It can happen anywhere,” he warned. “It’s devastating.”
A second mass shooting also erupted on Chicago’s far South Side on Wednesday night, leaving four people hospitalized, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson said.
“We are frustrated, but we are also grieving,” Johnson said, adding, “We will not rest until there is full accountability.”
Despite the shootings, murders were down 32% year-to-date in the city as of June 29 and shooting incidents were down 39%, according to Chicago’s crime data.
(NEW JERSEY) — New Jersey Transit train engineers have officially commenced their strike, shutting down commuter trains and leaving hundreds of thousands of commuters scrambling to find other modes of transportation.
Members of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen union had been threatening to go on strike unless NJ Transit officials and the union were able to agree on new contract terms and conditions for the workers who drive the trains.
A deal was close but not reached, according to New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, resulting in all New Jersey Transit commuter trains and the MTA Metro-North West of Hudson service to stop running when the strike began at 12:01 a.m. on Friday.
Tom Haas, the general chairman for BLET, told ABC News on Friday that “it felt like” they were close to reaching a deal, but the two were “still several dollars apart and New Jersey Transit was unable to bridge that gap.”
“We are ready, willing and able to talk at any time,” Haas said. “Ultimately, it was New Jersey Transit that decided to walk away, which is unfortunate because we don’t want to be in this situation.”
BLET National Vice President James Louis said during a press conference on Friday that negotiations between the union and NJ Transit officials will not resume until Sunday.
“We hope this is not a long strike,” Louis said.
On Thursday, both sides met again for eleventh-hour negotiations to avert the strike, in addition to a meeting in Washington, D.C., on Monday with the National Mediation Board, but no resolution was reached.
During a press conference late Thursday evening, Murphy and NJ Transit CEO Kris Kolluri encouraged commuters to work from home on Friday.
“If you can work from home, certainly tomorrow, and you’re out there watching that would be a really good day to do so,” Murphy said.
Kolluri said Thursday evening there was an imminently achievable deal and negotiations weren’t a “lost cause.” They are expected to resume negotiations on Sunday morning, according to Kolluri.
After a New Jersey Transit board meeting on Wednesday, Kolluri told reporters he was “confident and optimistic” about their efforts to avert a strike.
“I am going to stay at the negotiating table as long as it takes,” Kolluri said. “If it takes two to tango, I think if we can all focus on the task at hand, which is to get a fair and affordable agreement, I think we can avert a strike.”
BLET National President Mark Wallace said during a press conference on May 9 that it’s been five years since train engineers working for NJ Transit have received a pay increase.
“Reasonable people would vote for an agreement that is fair,” Wallace said.
Haas said during the same news conference that engineers working for NJ Transit earn an average salary of $113,000 a year. If New Jersey Transit CEO Kris Kolluri agrees to an average salary of $170,000 a year for engineer operators, then “we got a deal,” Haas said.
“NJ TRANSIT locomotive engineers already have average total earnings of $135,000 annually, with the highest earners exceeding $200,000,” according to a statement on the New Jersey Transit website regarding negotiations with the BLET.
During a separate press conference on May 9, Kolluri responded to the union’s arguments, saying Haas previously agreed to a wage increase to $49.82 an hour but then later demanded even higher wages because he thought there was a “better pot at the end of the rainbow.”
“I cannot keep giving money left and right to solve a problem. It all comes down to, who is going to pay for this? Money does not grow on trees,” Kolluri said.
ABC News requests sent to NJ Transit and the BLET for comment regarding Wallace, Haas and Kolluri’s statements concerning pay increase claims did not receive a response.
NJ Transit states that if they were to accept BLET’s terms, it would cost both them and New Jersey taxpayers $1.363 billion between July 2025 and June 2030. Additionally, if BLET chooses to strike, the taxpayer cost of providing a limited alternative service via buses would be $4 million per day, NJ Transit claims.
NJ Transit officials have said the strike would “disrupt the lives of more than 350,000 commuters” and developed a contingency plan that includes adding “very limited capacity to existing New York commuter bus routes in close proximity to rail stations and contracting with private carriers to operate bus service” for commuters that typically rely on the trains.
But even with the expanded bus service, NJ Transit said that it “estimates that it can only carry approximately 20% of current rail customers” because the bus system doesn’t have the capacity to replace commuter rail service.
Xuan Sharon Di, associate professor of civil engineering and engineering mechanics at Columbia University, told ABC News before the strike began that it could be a “disaster” for the traffic in Manhattan due to the increased bus and car traffic into the city from commuters unable to take the train. There also will be the added penalty of commuters into Manhattan having to pay recently enacted congestion pricing.
“New Jersey Transit is the backbone for people who live in New Jersey to move around. This is actually shocking to me,” Di told ABC News of the prospect of a strike.
Steven Chien, civil and environmental engineering professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, said many of his colleagues use NJ Transit to commute and that a strike will “paralyze vital transportation arteries in our regions.”
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(WASHINGTON) — A day after a highly anticipated Oval Office meeting in which the president of El Salvador said he would not return a wrongly deported Maryland man being held in his country, the federal judge who ordered his return will hear from Trump administration attorneys at a court hearing Tuesday afternoon.
Kilmar Abrego Garcia is entering his second month in an El Salvador mega-prison after he was deported there on March 15 despite being issued a 2019 court order barring his deportation to that country.
Trump administration officials say Abrego Garcia, who escaped political violence in El Salvador 2011, is a member of the criminal gang MS-13, but to date they have provided little evidence of that assertion in court.
He is being held in El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, along with hundreds of other alleged migrant gang members, under an arrangement in which the Trump administration is paying El Salvador $6 million to house migrants deported from the United States as part of President Donald Trump’s immigration crackdown.
Attorney General Pam Bondi, in an Oval Office meeting Monday with President Trump and the visiting El Salvador president, said that Abrego Garcia’s return is “up to El Salvador.”
“If El Salvador … wanted to return him, we would facilitate it,” she said.
Asked by reporters about Abrego Garcia, President Bukele responded, “I don’t have the power to return him to the United States.”
In a motion filed Tuesday in advance of the hearing, lawyers for Abrego Garcia argued that the Trump administration has not taken any steps to comply with the orders to facilitate his release.
“There is no evidence that anyone has requested the release of Abrego Garcia,” they wrote in the filing.
The attorneys also took issue with the government’s interpretation of the word “facilitate,” which the administration has argued in court filings is limited to removing any domestic obstacles that would impede the return of Abrego Garcia to the United States.
Interpreting the term in that manner, Abrego Garcia’s attorneys argued, would render “null” the Supreme Court’s order that the government facilitate his release.
“To give any meaning to the Supreme Court’s order, the Government should at least be required to request the release of Abrego Garcia. To date, the Government has not done so,” they wrote in their motion.
In its daily update on the status of the case, ordered last week by U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis, Justice Department attorneys said Monday afternoon that the Department of Homeland Security does not “have the authority to forcibly extract an alien from the domestic custody of a foreign sovereign nation.”
The Supreme Court last week unanimously ruled that Judge Xinis “properly requires the Government to ‘facilitate’ Abrego Garcia’s release from custody in El Salvador and to ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to El Salvador.”
“The Government should be prepared to share what it can concerning the steps it has taken and the prospect of further steps,” the high court added.
In an interview Monday evening with ABC News’ Linsey Davis, an attorney for Abrego Garcia said he hopes Tuesday’s hearing “lights a fire under the government to comply with the Supreme Court’s order.”
“What we’re asking [of Trump] is exactly what the Supreme Court told him,” attorney Benjamin Osorio said. “I personally have worked with DHS before to facilitate the return of several other clients who were deported and then won their cases at circuit court levels or at the Supreme Court, and ICE facilitated their return.”
“So we’re not asking anybody to do anything illegal,” Osorio said. “We’re asking them to follow the law.”
“It feels a little bit like the Spider-Man meme where everybody’s pointing at everybody else,” Osorio said of Bukele’s claim that he doesn’t have the power to return Garcia. “But at the same time, I mean, we are renting space from the Salvadorans. We are paying them to house these individuals, so we could stop payment and allow them to be returned to us.”
Asked if he is confident that Abrego Garcia will be returned, Osorio said he was concerned but hopeful.
“I’m worried about the rule of law, I’m worried about our Constitution, I’m worrying about due process,” he said. “So at this point, I am optimistic to see what happens in the federal court hearing.”
(NEW YORK) — Consumer sentiment improved more than expected in June, indicating a swell of optimism as President Donald Trump rolled back some tariffs in recent weeks.
The resurgence of shopper attitudes ended six consecutive months of worsening sentiment, University of Michigan survey data on Friday showed. Before the uptick, consumer sentiment had fallen near its lowest level since a bout of inflation three years ago.
Year-ahead inflation expectations, meanwhile, dropped sharply from 6.6% last month to 5.1% in June, the data showed. The anticipated inflation level would still mark a major increase from the current year-over-year inflation of 2.4%.
The improvement of sentiment was reflected across all demographics, including age, income, wealth, political party and geographic region, Surveys of Consumers Director Joanne Hsu said in a statement.
In recent weeks, Trump has dialed back some of his steepest tariffs, easing the costs imposed upon importers. Such companies typically pass along a share of the higher tax burden in the form of price hikes.
A trade agreement between the U.S. and China slashed tit-for-tat tariffs between the world’s two largest economies and triggered a surge in the stock market. Within days, Wall Street firms softened their forecasts of a downturn.
The U.S.-China accord came weeks after the White House paused a large swath of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs targeting dozens of countries. Trump also eased sector-specific tariffs targeting autos and rolled back duties on some goods from Mexico and Canada.
Still, an across-the-board 10% tariff applies to nearly all imports, except for semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and some other items. Those tariffs stand in legal limbo, however, after a pair of federal court rulings late last month.
Tariffs remain in place for steel, aluminum and autos, as well as some goods from Canada and Mexico.
Fresh inflation data this week showed a slight acceleration of price increases, but inflation remains near its lowest level since 2021. So far, the economy has defied fears of price hikes, instead giving way to a cooldown of inflation over the months since Trump took office.
Warning signs point to the possibility of elevated prices over the coming months, however.
Nationwide retailers like Walmart and Best Buy have voiced alarm about the possibility they may raise prices as a result of the levies.
The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, or OECD, said this month it expects U.S. inflation to reach 4% by the end of 2025, which would mark a sharp increase from current levels.
Federal Chair Jerome Powell, in recent months, has warned about the possibility that tariffs may cause what economists call “stagflation,” which is when inflation rises and the economy slows.
Stagflation could put the central bank in a difficult position. If the Fed were to raise interest rates, it could help ease inflation, but it may risk an economic downturn. If the Fed were to cut rates in an effort to spur economic growth, the move could unleash faster price increases.
For now, the Fed appears willing to take a wait-and-see approach. At its last meeting, in May, the Fed opted to hold interest rates steady for the second consecutive time.
The Fed will announce its next rate decision on June 18. Investors peg the chances of a decision to leave rates unchanged at 99.9%, according to the CME FedWatch Tool, a measure of market sentiment.
