Blizzard conditions and chances for severe storms expected in the Heartland
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(NEW YORK) — Blizzard warnings are in place for parts of Kansas and Nebraska, with winter storm watches — which could turn to blizzard warnings — stretching northeast into Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin and into the upper peninsula of Michigan.
Snow accumulations from 2 to 6 inches are generally expected, with higher amounts locally being possible. Wind gusts of up to 60 mph are also possible and could reduce visibility to a quarter mile or less for large parts of the day making travel difficult or even impossible in some areas.
The blizzard is expected to hit Wednesday morning and head east through the afternoon, stretching from Kansas City to Green Bay before it loses some strength.
Ahead of the snow, there is a likelihood a line of storms form along a cold front and some of these storm could turn severe due to damaging wind gusts and large hail, though tornadoes are unlikely.
A slight risk for severe weather also extends from Chicago to Evansville later this afternoon and into the evening with storms moving past Chicago around 6 p.m. CT.
The storm system is expected to give a dusting of snow to Chicago on Thursday morning and may make the commute a little difficult with reduced visibility.
On Thursday afternoon, showers will move into Washington, D.C. by 4pm and then move on to New York Coty later in the evening, ending around 7 a.m. Friday morning, but continuing for Boston and parts of the New England region until early afternoon.
(WASHINGTON) — Six months after a federal judge dismissed special counsel Jack Smith’s classified documents case against Donald Trump and his two co-defendants, defense attorneys are set to return to Florida to try to prevent the limited release of Smith’s final report detailing his investigation.
U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, who tossed out the case based on the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment, is considering whether to prevent Attorney General Merrick Garland from allowing select members of Congress to view the volume of Smith’s report covering his probe — with Friday’s hearing set to serve as an epilogue to the criminal case that legal experts say once posed the most significant legal threat to the former president.
Earlier this week, Garland released the first volume of Smith’s report related to Trump’s alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election, while withholding the second volume related to Smith’s classified documents probe because Trump’s former co-defendants are still appealing the case.
Garland has proposed allowing the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees to see the volume, but Trump’s former co-defendants have argued that even a limited release of that volume should be blocked.
“The Final Report relies on materials to which Smith, as disqualified special counsel, is no longer entitled access — making his attempt to share such materials with the public highly improper,” lawyers for longtime Trump aide Walt Nauta and Mar-a-Lago staffer Carlos De Oliveria argued in a court filing, echoing the same argument about the constitutionality of Smith’s appointment that got the criminal case thrown out.
The defense lawyers have argued that releasing the report to members of Congress could result in a leak of its findings, which would keep Nauta and De Oliveria from receiving a fair trial if the appeals court reverses the case’s dismissal.
“Once the Report is disclosed to Congress, this Court will effectively lose its ability to control the flow of information related to privileged and confidential matters in a criminal proceeding,” lawyers for Nauta and De Oliveira wrote. “That makes delaying the issuance of the Final Report until this matter is resolved essential, as there will be no way to put the proverbial cat back into the bag after the Final Report is shared with Congress, and no way to control congressional speech regarding the pending criminal case.”
Trump pleaded not guilty in June 2023 to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials, after prosecutors said he repeatedly refused to return hundreds of documents containing classified information. The former president, along with Nauta and De Oliveira, also pleaded not guilty in a superseding indictment to allegedly attempting to delete surveillance footage at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate.
Lawyers for the Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Markenzy Lapointe have downplayed the risks of releasing Smith’s report on the case, arguing that the sensitive work products of other special counsels have been reviewed by members of Congress using secure protocols. The four members of Congress who would access Smith’s report would be bound by confidentiality, and would be limited to an on-camera review of the report in which they would be prohibited from taking notes.
“[T]his argument rests entirely on conjecture and disregards the options available to the Court to protect the Defendants from prejudice were this speculative chain of events to come to pass,” prosecutors argued. While Judge Cannon cast the legitimacy of Smith’s appointment into doubt, prosecutors argued that the question of releasing the report no longer relates to Smith — who resigned last week after handing the report in — and is fully in the hands of Garland.
“The Attorney General thus has authority to decide whether to release an investigative report prepared by his subordinates,” their filing said.
(WASHINGTON) — A Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory committee meeting that was set to discuss what flu strains to include in next season’s flu vaccine has been canceled, multiple sources told ABC News, leaving some to wonder if the meeting cancelation will delay next year’s flu vaccine delivery schedule.
The meeting was canceled in an email sent from the FDA to members who were planning to attend the annual meeting in about two weeks.
The high-profile, public meetings of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee are where independent experts review scientific data and vote on a variety of vaccine related issues. Members of the March 13 meeting were set to vote on which flu strains would offer the most protection in next season’s flu shot.
“Influenza vaccines aren’t perfect and to get the best influence vaccine each year requires predicting the strain as best we can,” said Dr. Andrew Pavia, professor of pediatrics and medicine at the University of Utah and a spokesperson for the Infectious Diseases Society of America. “There’s a lot of complex data that needs to be reviewed and having a number of experts do it gives us the best chance of making the best prediction.”
The meeting typically takes into consideration recommendations from WHO. It also receives input and data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Department of Defense and vaccine manufacturers.
The timing of this meeting aligns with the six-month lead time typically required for vaccine manufacturing to ensure vaccines are ready for distribution in the fall — before peak flu season hits in the United States.
“I can’t think of any rational reason to do this other than to throw a hand grenade into vaccine production,” Pavia said. “The impact is going to be felt in terms of our ability to reduce flu hospitalizations and flu deaths.”
Earlier in the week, officials and specialists at the CDC virtually joined the annual WHO meeting to discuss the upcoming flu vaccine strain for next year, despite being previously ordered to halt all communication with the global health organization.
Typically, the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee meets after the WHO meeting to finalize recommendations.
It remains unclear what impact the meeting cancellation may have on next season’s flu vaccine. But experts are concerned about the timing because flu vaccines are made using chicken eggs to grow and harvest the virus before processing it into a vaccine.
“It’s a very very tight timeline because it takes a long time to create the template viruses and then grow them in eggs,” Pavia said. “It is a many months long process and any delay means it will be difficult to have vaccine in time for the next season.”
U.S. vaccine strains are usually picked by April. Manufacturing is completed over the summer and delivered for vaccination starting in September.
Sanofi, one manufacturer of flu vaccines, told ABC News the company has already started the initial steps of manufacturing.
“Just as every year, we have already begun production for the 2025-2026 flu season in the Northern Hemisphere and will be ready to support final strain selections in time for the season,” a spokesperson for Sanofi told ABC News.
However, the FDA must approve the final strains for the shots to be legally marketed and distributed in the U.S.
ABC News has reached out to both the FDA and Health and Human Services for comment.
Dr. Paul Offit, a member of the FDA’s independent committee who was planning on attending the meeting said, “Who canceled this meeting? Why did they cancel it? Will the vaccine makers turn to the World Health Organization to determine which strains to include in this year’s vaccine?”
“It’s very concerning with regard to the ability to produce enough vaccine in time for next year’s flu season,” Pavia added. “Hopefully, there will be workarounds that could be developed. But what they are — we don’t know yet.”
(NEW YORK) — After a scrubbed attempt this week, NASA’s SpaceX Crew-10 mission successfully lifted off Friday evening from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida headed for the International Space Station.
NASA astronauts Sunita “Suni” Williams and Butch Wilmore are now one step closer to returning home from the ISS.
Powered by a Falcon 9 rocket, the spacecraft reached a speed of 17,500 mph as it headed into space after lifting off on Friday at 7:03 p.m. ET.
Docking at the ISS is scheduled for Saturday at 11:30 p.m. ET. They will open the hatch and enter the station at 1:05 a.m. ET on Sunday.
The launch was initially planned for Wednesday evening but postponed due to a problem with a ground support clamp arm on the Falcon 9 rocket. SpaceX subsequently said the hydraulic system issue was fixed and the crew was once again cleared for take-off on Friday.
Dragon is transporting the Crew-10 team made up of NASA astronaut Anne McClain, the mission’s commander; NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, the mission pilot; Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi; and cosmonaut Kirill Peskov, with Roscosmo, Russia’s space agency.
Crew-10 will relieve four astronauts who are part of the current station crew, including Williams and Wilmore. The two astronauts planned to spend about a week on the ISS, but that brief stop turned into a nine-month mission when NASA determined that it was unsafe to bring them home on the Boeing Starliner spacecraft they rode into orbit.
The duo arrived at the ISS in early June, but in September, NASA opted to bring the Starliner back home empty due to concerns about technical issues with the craft. This mission marked Boeing’s first crewed flight of the Starliner. An empty Starliner landed safely back on Earth on Sept. 6.
The two American astronauts became part of the ISS Crew-9 team and have been actively engaged in research and maintenance of the station ever since. The extended time in space also allowed Williams to break the record for the most spacewalking time by a woman, with 62 hours and 6 minutes in the vacuum of space.
NASA has long insisted that Williams and Wilmore were never stuck or stranded.
In September, three months after the pair arrived at the ISS, a Roscosmos Soyuz spacecraft arrived at the station with two cosmonauts and an American astronaut. Several weeks later, American astronaut Nick Hague and cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov arrived at the station onboard the SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom spacecraft. Both vehicles have remained docked to the ISS and available for emergencies ever since.
The SpaceX Crew Dragon Freedom capsule that brought Hague and Gorbunov to the ISS is currently docked at the station will be the one that brings Williams, Wilmore and the two other Crew-9 astronauts back home. Endurance will remain docked at the station along with the Soyuz.
There is a period of overlap when the new team and the current crew of seven work collaboratively to ensure a smooth handover. NASA has said Williams and Wilmore could be home as soon as Wednesday.
NASA said that Crew-10 will conduct more than 200 scientific experiments and technology demonstrations during their mission to help humans eventually go deeper into space.
