(WASHINGTON) — The Democratic National Committee on Saturday is launching a new ad campaign targeted at rural voters to boost turnout in two southern battlegrounds in the final days of the presidential election.
The effort, backed by a six-figure media buy, comes as Democrats are especially concerned that early vote turnout is low among Black voters in rural areas. The effort will span 15 counties that are part of the “Black Belt” in Georgia and North Carolina.
The ads, which will run on multi-media billboards and on radio stations in the area, will feature DNC Chairman Jaime Harrison, a Black South Carolinian who has spoken extensively of his upbringing in rural Orangeburg. The effort will promote policies that Democrats say will help rural voters, including expanding rural infrastructure, making health care more affordable and ensuring rural hospitals can remain open.
“In the final days of this election, Democrats are not taking our foot off the gas as we communicate our plan for rural America. From affordable and accessible health care, to lower costs, and economic opportunities, the Democratic Party will fight for the policies that make a tangible difference for rural Americans,” Harrison said in a statement provided first to ABC News.
“Growing up in a rural town, I know how important it is to show up and truly meet rural voters where they are. The DNC’s latest rural ‘I Will Vote’ initiative does exactly that, ensuring that the final message rural voters in the critical battlegrounds of Georgia and North Carolina receive in this election is Democrats’ commitment to fight for them.”
The ad buy comes as Democrats grow concerned that Black rural voters are not participating in early voting at the rate that the party needs.
Democrats hope to be competitive in Georgia and North Carolina, where Black rural voters are key. Vice President Kamala Harris is expected to clean up in urban areas, but she’ll have to keep former President Donald Trump’s rural margins down enough to stop him from offsetting her advantage in cities like Atlanta and Raleigh.
In Georgia, 41% of early voters are Republican, and 42% are Democrats, according to 538 analysis of voter data from L2, a non-partisan political data company. In 2020, early voting was 41% Republican – 46% Democrat.
It’s the same story in North Carolina, where 34% of early vote ballots have been cast by Republicans, and 33% by Democrats. In 2020, early voting was 32% Republican – 35% Democrat.
Of voters who voted early in 2020, only 66% of Black voters have cast an early ballot this time around so far. That number drops to 63% of Black voters in rural areas.
The drop is likely explainable in part by this year’s election not taking place in the middle of a pandemic, whereas in 2020, many voters leaned on early and absentee voting to avoid long lines and possible COVID-19 exposures.
Still, both states remain highly competitive. Polling averages from 538 show Trump up 1.6 points in Georgia and 1.3 points in North Carolina.
Early voting has also had some promising signs for Democrats, including high female turnout, particularly as polls show a widening gender gap, with women leaning toward Harris and men toward Trump.
And while operatives said Democrats were not hitting their marks with Black rural voters early on, that trend has begun to be mitigated, with veteran North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson conceding that while “they had started early vote a little low,” the turnout has “picked up pretty substantially.”
“My suspicion is by Saturday’s close, they’ll be at parity with where they were four years ago,” added Michael Bitzer, a political science professor at Catawba College in North Carolina who is tracking the early vote numbers.
(WASHINGTON) — Vice President Kamala Harris said former President Donald Trump will roll back health care protections if he wins the presidential election.
Speaking to reporters on Thursday in Madison, Wisconsin, Harris said Trump unsuccessfully tried to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), the landmark law signed by then-President Barack Obama in 2010, while he was president.
“Insurance companies could go back to a time where they would deny you coverage for health insurance based on pre-existing conditions, such being a survivor of breast cancer, asthma, diabetes,” Harris said. “The American people, regardless of who they are voting for, know the importance of Obamacare in terms of expanding coverage to health care, based on the fundamental principle I hold deeply: access to health care should be a right and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.”
“Health care for all Americans is on the line in this election,” Harris continued.
In a post on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump falsely claimed not wanting to end the ACA, even though he repeatedly tried to do so while president.
Here is what we know about Trump’s health care agenda if he is elected to a second term:
‘Concepts’ of a heath care plan
During the ABC News presidential debate in September, Trump said he was interested in replacing the ACA — also known as “Obamacare” — but implied that he didn’t have any specific plans in place.
“Obamacare was lousy health care. Always was,” Trump said. “It’s not very good today and, what I said, that if we come up with something, we are working on things, we’re going to do it and we’re going to replace it.”
When asked to clarify if he had a health care plan, the former president said he had “concepts of a plan” to replace the ACA but provided no details.
“If we can come up with a plan that’s going to cost our people, our population, less money and be better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it,” Trump said.
After Harris’ press conference on Thursday, Trump took to Truth Social to deny wanting to end the ACA.
“Lyin’ Kamala is giving a News Conference now, saying that I want to end the Affordable Care Act. I never mentioned doing that, never even thought about such a thing,” he wrote Thursday morning.
Trump made several attempts to repeal the ACA during his presidency but failed to do so.
He attempted to partially repeal the ACA by passing the American Health Care Act (ACHA). The plan would have repealed the individual mandate and the employer mandate, amended Medicaid eligibility and weakened protections for patients with pre-existing conditions.
The ACHA passed the House in May 2017 but failed to pass in the Senate. Perhaps mostly infamously, the Senate attempted to pass a so-called “skinny repeal” in late July 2017 but it was rejected, with Republican Sens. John McCain, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski siding with Senate Democrats to kill the bill.
During a closed-door campaign event for a fellow Republican House candidate earlier this week, House Speaker Mike Johnson said that there will be “no Obamacare.”
“We want to take a blowtorch to the regulatory state,” Johnson said in footage first reported by NBC News. “Health care is one of the sectors, but we need this across the board.”
“No Obamacare?” an attendee of the event asked Johnson.
“No Obamacare,” Johnson replied. “The ACA is so deeply ingrained, we need massive reform to make this work, and we got a lot of ideas on how to do that.”
Trump’s campaign has worked to separate itself from the speaker’s comments with Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary for the Trump campaign, telling ABC News in a statement that repealing the ACA is “not President Trump’s policy position.”
“As President Trump has said, he will make our health care system better by increasing transparency, promoting choice and competition, and expanding access to new affordable health care and insurance options. Kamala Harris broke our health care system, President Trump will fix it,” the statement continued.
The 2024 GOP platform currently calls for expanding access to “new” affordable health care and prescription drug access as well as protecting Medicare and increasing transparency in the health care sector.
Trump enlists Kennedy to oversee health care policy
Trump has also suggested that he intends to tap Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — who dropped out of the presidential race in August and endorsed Trump — to help shape health care policies if he wins a second term.
During the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner — an annual white-tie dinner to raise money for Catholic charities — earlier this month, Trump said Kennedy will “make us a healthier place.”
“We’re gonna let him go wild for a little while, then I’m gonna have to maybe reign him back, because he’s got some pretty wild ideas, but most of them are really good,” Trump said at the dinner. “I think he’s a — he’s a good man, and he believes, he believes the environment, the healthy people. He wants healthy people, he wants healthy food. And he’s going to do it. He’s going to have a big chance to do it, because we do need that.”
Kennedy said Trump has “promised” him “control of the public health agencies,” but Trump’s team said no decisions have been made yet on who will be leading these agencies if he wins the election.
However, Trump implied during a rally in Henderson, Nevada, on Thursday that Kennedy would play a role in shaping women’s health care policies.
“Robert F. Kennedy Jr., we have,” Trump said. “And he’s gonna work on health, and women’s health, and all of the different reasons ’cause we’re not really a wealthy or a healthy country. We’re not.”
There are currently no women’s health care issues listed in the 2024 GOP platform aside from keeping “men out of women’s sports.”
“The only thing President Trump and his campaign team are focused on is winning on November 5th. Everything after that is after that, and President Trump has made clear that Bobby Kennedy will play an important role,” Jason Miller, senior adviser to the Trump campaign told ABC News in a statement.
In response to Trump saying Kennedy will oversee women’s health, Harris reposted a clip of Trump’s comments on X with the caption “No” followed by a heart emoji.
The Harris campaign did not immediately respond to ABC News’ requests for comment.
ABC News’ Lalee Ibssa, Soorin Kim, Will McDuffie, Lauren Peller and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
A screengrab from a video which purports to show Haitian migrants voting in Georgia. The intelligence community assessed on Friday that the video was part of a Russian influence operation to sow discord in the Election. Obtained by ABC News.
(WASHINGTON) — The origins of the video that falsely showed individuals from Haiti voting in Georgia is the work of Russian influence actors, the intelligence community assessed on Friday.
“The IC assesses that Russian influence actors manufactured a recent video that falsely depicted individuals claiming to be from Haiti and voting illegally in multiple counties in Georgia,” according to a joint statement from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA).
“This judgment is based on information available to the IC and prior activities of other Russian influence actors, including videos and other disinformation activities. The Georgia Secretary of State has already refuted the video’s claims as false.”
CISA is the cyber arm of the Department of Homeland Security.
The intelligence community also found that Russian actors falsely shared a video of an individual associated with a democratic campaign falsely taking a bribe from an entertainer.
“In the lead up to Election Day and in the weeks and months after, the IC expects Russia to create and release additional media content that seeks to undermine trust in the integrity of the election and divide Americans,” the joint statement said.
This is the second time in two weeks the intelligence community has alerted Americans of a Russian influence operation.
Last Friday, intelligence officials assessed that a video purporting to show ripped ballots in Pennsylvania was also part of a Russian influence operation.
Russia, along with Iran and China are seeking to sow discord and undermine confidence in the 2024 presidential election, according to the CISA director.
“We have to understand what these adversaries want,” CISA Director Jen Easterly told ABC News’ Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas on Thursday. “They all want just two things. They want to undermine American confidence in our elections and trust in democracy, and they want to stoke partisan discord. They want to pit Americans against each other, and they are looking for any opportunities to create rage, and we know that enragement equals engagement.”
Easterly said the government will be “leaning forward” in debunking foreign influence operations.
Since the summer, the intelligence community has warned that foreign adversaries will try and influence the election.
Just hours prior to the notification was made by the intelligence community on Friday, a senior CISA official was briefing reporters: election security is national security, and said CISA is monitoring both the physical and cyber threats ahead of the 2024 election.
The official did not single out any one individual, but did say that anyone who knowingly puts out disinformation is “putting election officials at harm.”
When someone puts out misinformation they are “doing the work of our foreign adversaries, and it’s an important reminder to know that these are the tactics that they’re out there leveraging,” and added that there are real-world sometimes violent consequences to the disinformation.
(WASHINGTON) — As Election Day nears, tens of millions of voters have already cast their ballots throughout the country.
Whether through mail-in ballots or early in-person polling stations, more than 68 million Americans, roughly 43% of the 2020 turnout, had voted against standing in line on Election Day as of Friday afternoon, according to data from the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Academic experts, reporters and pundits have been going through basic and limited data gleaned from the early voting numbers, trying to get clues about next week’s outcome.
That picture, however, is not exactly black and white, according to Charles Stewart, director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s election data science lab.
“It’s like talking about the weather,” he said. “The candidates, the press, etcetera — really are trying to draw conclusions just on the face value of the data, but there really isn’t a lot there to say who is winning.”
That said, Stewart said the early voting data does provide some insights when it comes to this year’s voting patterns and overall turnout — indicators that could help explain how the election turns out.
A flip in the ways people early vote
Voting trends have shown that more people have been choosing to cast their ballots before Election Day, and this has increased in numbers over the last 30 years, but 2020 turned out to be a major outlier, according to Stewart.
In the last presidential election, 69% of the 158 million total votes were cast before Election Day either through the mail, which included mail ballots dropped off in person, or at early voting poll sites, according to data from MIT.
Some 43% of the 2020 early votes came from mail ballots, according to the data.
Stewart said the COVID-19 pandemic forced many voters, who were already heavily engaged and wanted to be safe, to opt into using mail ballots or smaller voting lines if available.
“There was a speculation of what would happen with the shift once the pandemic was over,” he said.
However, in this year’s early voting there’s been a drop in voters choosing mail-in voting, Stewart said.
“The main trend I’m seeing is that the interest of voting by mail has shifted to voting in-person,” Stewart said.
He noted that shift is apparent in Georgia, which has seen record early voting numbers, with over 3.8 million ballots cast as of Friday. Roughly 92% of those were cast at in-person polling places and the rest via mail, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
Stewart said some states, including swing states Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Arizona, only offer early voting through in-person absentee options. Under this option, a voter must request an absentee ballot, fill it out, and then deposit it in either a ballot box or at a designated location, and they are counted as a mail ballot voter.
Some voters may not have the time or energy to go through those extra steps to cast their ballots early, and are likely going to vote in-person Stewart said.
“If you have to vote early in person you have to figure out where that precinct is but you have to find out which is closer to your house or errands. With voting by mail, you have to take the effort to apply, to fill it out and return it and hope that the mail is delivered on time,” he said. “With Election Day voting you likely have a polling site that is much closer to you.”
Early-voting method preference hasn’t the only thing that’s seen a flip, according to Stewart.
Partisan numbers do not give any indication of outcome
Stewart said historical trends show that the majority of early voters made their decisions a long time ago and are likely politically active.
This year’s data shows that to be the case, he said, bit noted a major change in partisan turnout in several battleground states, according to the University of Florida’s Election Lab.
Registered Republicans have seen a higher early voting turnout in battlegrounds Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina in this election compared to 2024 as of Friday, according to the data.
Typically, Democrats have had an advantage in early voting. However, Trump has pushed his supporters to cast their vote earlier and that appears to have an impact, Stewart said.
While Republican officials have been touting these higher numbers as a sign of growing support, Stewart warned there is more nuance to the data.
He noted it shows, so far, that a large number of the registered Republicans who cast their votes eary came from people who voted on Election Day in 2020 and were not new voters.
Stewart said this would mean there would be fewer Republican voters casting their ballots on Election Day and thus their votes may not be reported until much later on election night or even for days afterward.
In 2020, many swing states saw their Democratic tallies rise throughout the election night and into the week, creating a “red mirage” effect on the outcome.
That mirage and “blue wave” could be muted this time around, Stewart said.
“Whatever the blue shift is, there will probably be less of a steep slope to it,” he said.
What do gender, race say about the early vote
Democrats have been touting the gender gap as a factor in their favor in the early voting numbers, as over 54% of women have cast their vote as of Friday, according to the University of Florida data.
Stewart said that assumption is not noteworthy.
Women have always been the majority of the electorate in presidential elections, going as far back as 1980, according to the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Stewart said this is also true of early voters.
“It’s not always obvious to the public that there’s always been a gender gap,” he said.In 2020, many swing states saw their Democratic tallies rise throughout the election night and into the week, creating a “red mirage” effect on the outcome.
That mirage and “blue wave” could be muted this time around, Stewart said.
“Whatever the blue shift is, there will probably be less of a steep slope to it,” he said.
What do gender, race say about the early vote
Democrats have been touting the gender gap as a factor in their favor in the early voting numbers, as over 54% of women have cast their vote as of Friday, according to the University of Florida data.
Stewart said that assumption is not noteworthy.
Women have always been the majority of the electorate in presidential elections, going as far back as 1980, according to the Center for Women and Politics at Rutgers University.
Stewart said this is also true of early voters.
“It’s not always obvious to the public that there’s always been a gender gap,” he said.
When it comes to race, white voters are more likely to cast their votes by mail than Black voters, according to the MIT data.
Stewart said this stems from traditions going back to the civil rights movement.
“African Americans fought and sometimes died for being able to march into the voting booth. That’s been instilled in the community,” he said.
This practice is one factor in large numbers of Black voters heading to in-person early voting poll sites in states such as Georgia and South Carolina, where that option is available.
Churches, civil rights groups and other organizations with ties to the Black community have been pushing voters to head to the early voting polls, using campaigns such as “souls to the polls” so that they can avoid any complications on Election Day.
Groups in Georgia in particular have stressed voting early to circumvent some of the restrictive voting laws that have been put in place since the 2020 election.
As of Friday evening, more than 1 million Black voters have cast their ballots, according to the Georgia Secretary of State’s office.
“The mobilization efforts have clearly proven effective,” Stewart said.
Signs point to high turnout
Stewart said the one definite conclusion that can be drawn from the early voting data is that this year’s overall turnout will be “on par” with 2020’s, which was the highest voter turnout by percentage in over 100 years.
“It could be the high 160 (million),” he estimated.
Stewart said that the early-voting trends have shown that voters under 25 have not yet voted and they will typically line up on Election Day.
“Those populations are really heavily represented on Election Day,” he said.
Stewart reiterated that with the pandemic over, a good number of the 2020 early voters will likely shift back to Election Day voting, especially if it presents itself as the easier option for their locations and schedules.
As for the future, Steward predicted that the rise in Republican voters voting early will continue in future cycles along with the overall trend of the electorate opting for early voting.
“The data is showing this organic increase in early voting even after the pandemic,” he said. “Voters want more options, and they will seriously consider voting if they have more choices.”
(LOUISVILLE, Ky.) — A jury on Friday found former Louisville police officer Brett Hankison guilty of violating Breonna Taylor’s civil rights during a fatal botched police raid, in a retrial of the federal case against him.
The guilty verdict came hours after the jury acquitted Hankison of a second count of violating the civil rights of three of Taylor’s neighbors, who lived in an adjacent apartment that was also struck by gunfire during the raid. After the partial verdict was delivered, jurors, who remained deadlocked on the count specifically related to Taylor, were instructed by the judge to continue deliberating.
The jury returned a guilty verdict on that count shortly before 9:30 p.m., according to Louisville ABC affiliate WHAS.
Family and friends of Taylor hugged each other and cheered after leaving court late Friday night.
Speaking to reporters after the verdict, Tamika Palmer, Taylor’s mother, thanked prosecutors and jurors. “They stayed the course,” Palmer said of prosecutors, who retried the case after Hankison’s first federal trial ended in a mistrial last year when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision after deliberating for several days.
As deliberations this time around stretched late into the evening Friday, Palmer said she began to feel defeated. “The later it got, the harder it got, and I’m just glad to be on the other side,” she said.
“Now, I just want people to continue to say Breonna Taylor’s name,” her mother said.
Taylor was fatally shot during the March 2020 raid. The three officers fired dozens of rounds after her boyfriend fired one round at them, striking one of the officers.
Hankison fired 10 rounds through Taylor’s sliding glass door and window, which were covered with blinds and curtains, prosecutors said. Several of the rounds traveled into Taylor’s neighbor’s apartment, where three people were at the time. None of the 10 rounds hit anyone.
Prosecutors argued Hankison’s use of force was unjustified, put people in danger and violated the civil rights of Taylor and her three neighbors. The indictment alleged Hankison deprived Taylor of the right to be free from unreasonable seizures and deprived her neighbors of the right to be free from the deprivation of liberty without due process of law.
Several witnesses, including Louisville’s current police chief, testified during the trial that the former officer violated Louisville police policy requiring officers to identify a target before firing, according to The Associated Press.
The defense argued during the trial that Hankison had joined a poorly planned raid and that he fired his weapon after believing someone was advancing toward the other officers, the AP reported.
The charges carry a maximum sentence of life in prison if convicted.
The plainclothes officers were serving a warrant searching for Taylor’s ex-boyfriend, who they alleged was dealing drugs, when they broke down the door to her apartment. He was not at the residence, but her current boyfriend, Kenneth Walker, thought someone was breaking into the home and fired one shot with a handgun, striking one of the officers in the leg. The three officers returned fire, shooting 32 bullets into the apartment.
The original indictment alleged Hankison had also violated Walker’s civil rights, though Walker was removed from the charge at the beginning of the retrial.
The retrial marked the third trial for Hankison, following the initial mistrial as well as a state trial in 2022, in which he was acquitted of multiple wanton endangerment charges.
Like in his previous trials, Hankison took the stand during the retrial, getting emotional at times over two days of testimony, according to WHAS, the ABC affiliate in Louisville covering the case in the courtroom.
Hankison told the jurors he was “trying to stay alive, [and] trying to keep my partners alive,” according to WHAS.
Hankison insisted “the only person my bullet could have struck was the shooter,” saying there was “zero risk” of hitting anyone outside the threat, according to WHAS.
He said that night was the first time he fired his gun in nearly 20 years of policing, according to the AP.
Hankison was fired from the Louisville Metro Police Department for violating department procedure when he “wantonly and blindly” fired into the apartment.
The two other officers involved in the raid were not charged. Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron called Taylor’s death a “tragedy” but said the two officers were justified in their use of force after having been fired upon by Walker.
Eddie Murphy has reportedly signed on to play a funk music icon on screen.
Variety reports that the actor/comedian is set to star as Parliament-Funkadelic leader George Clinton in a biopic directed by Bill Condon, the same director who directed Murphy in Dreamgirls, a role that earned him an Oscar nomination.
The film, which Murphy will also produce, will be based on Clinton’s 2014 memoir Brothas Be, Yo Like George, Ain’t That Funkin’ Kinda Hard On You?
Clinton, who launched his funk career in the ’70s as one of the founding members of the collective known as Parliament-Funkadelic, was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 1997. He and the band were also honored in 2019 with the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.
(NEW YORK) — The back-to-back retirements of two college quarterbacks seemingly at the start of their careers has put a spotlight again on concussions and youth sports, particularly football.
On Oct. 23, North Carolina State quarterback Grayson McCall announced on Instagramthat he would retire from the sport after being carted off the field in an Oct. 5 game that saw him lose his helmet in a hit.
“As you all know I have battled injuries my whole career, but this is one that I cannot come back from. I have done everything I can to continue, but this is where the good Lord has called me to serve in a different space,” McCall, 23, wrote alongside photos of him playing football as a young kid. “Brain specialists, my family, and I have come to the conclusion that it is in my best interest to hang the cleats up.”
Just five days later, on Oct. 28, University of Michigan quarterback Jack Tuttle announced that he too is retiring from football, also citing medical reasons.
Tuttle, a seventh-year senior, underwent surgery on his throwing arm in the offseason, according to ESPN, and then this season suffered the fifth concussion of his career.
“Unfortunately, the recent experience of enduring my fifth concussion has brought forth the painful truth: that I need to start prioritizing my health,” Tuttle, 25, wrote, in part, in an Instagram post announcing his retirement. “Throughout my college career, I’ve battled numerous injuries, culminating in this difficult choice to step away from playing the game that I love.
Both Tuttle and McCall noted that they planned to stay involved with football through coaching, with McCall writing, “I look forward to taking my passion and love for the game into the coaching space to serve and lead the next group of kids with a dream.”
Whether it’s safe for young kids to dream of playing football is a conversation starting again in the wake of the quarterbacks’ retirements, as well as the recent deaths of two youth football players.
Among youth sports, boys’ football has the highest rate of concussion, with10.4 concussions per 10,000 athlete exposures, according to a 2019 study published in the journal Pediatrics. Girls’ soccer and boys’ ice hockey followed behind with the second and third highest rates, respectively.
For kids who start playing tackle football at a young age, the concussions can start just as young. A 2018 study found that 5% of youth football players ages 5 to 14 suffer a football-related concussion each season.
And the science shows that each concussion — caused by a jolt to the head or a hit to the body — matters.
While not usually life-threatening, the effects of even a mild traumatic brain injury (TBI) or concussion, can be “serious,” according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, causing changes to the brain that can impact a kid’s sleep, learning, behavior and thoughts.
Over time, repeated concussions can cause long-term problems with concentration, memory, balance and headaches, according to the CDC.
Chris Nowinski, Ph.D., co-founder and CEO of the Concussion Legacy Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on concussion and CTE research, told ABC News that while he doesn’t know the specifics of Tuttle’s and McCall’s, it’s notable that they retired from football now, during their college careers.
“It’s important remember, you only get one brain, and when you’re playing football, you’re risking your long-term brain health,” Nowinski said. “And so you want to make sure that when you get warning signs that your brain is losing its resilience to trauma, you shut it down before it gets too bad.”
He added of Tuttle and McCall, “They’re better off finding that new passion versus running their brain to the ground and dealing with those consequences for the rest of their lives.”
Takeaways for parents and young athletes
Nowinski said he recommends that if a child is interested in playing football, they play flag or touch football instead of tackle football for as long as possible.
It’s a recommendation echoed by the CDC, which cites data showing youth tackle football players had 15 times more head impacts during a practice or game than flag football athletes.
If a child is playing tackle football, safety recommendations from the CDC include reducing the number of contact practices for teams, teaching position-specific and age-appropriate tackling and blocking skills, and strictly enforcing penalties for head hits.
Noting the importance of kids getting as few concussions as possible, Nowinski said he also encourages parents, coaches and trainers to give young athletes more than enough time to recover from a concussion.
“That means staying out longer than a week after a concussion, and potentially staying out longer than is even recommended,” he said. “And that when there are two concussions in a shorter period of time, that you take longer off.”
For young athletes hesitant to miss a game or practice, Nowinski said the takeaway message is, “The more [concussions] you get, the more you risk having to step away from your sport.”
Dr. Munro Cullum, a concussion expert and neuropsychologist from UT Southwestern’s O’Donnell Brain Institute, told ABC News that he tells parents and athletes, “If in doubt, sit it out.”
“If you have questions about how you’re doing, the line I use for a lot of young adults that I see is, ‘If you’re impaired and not functioning at your best, you can’t be the best for your team,'” Cullum said. “‘You can’t be there for your team in full strength, and therefore, you need to let people know when there’s something wrong.'”
Cullum said that parents and guardians can often be the first line of defense when it comes to identifying a concussion in their child.
“I encourage parents to educate themselves about concussion signs also because some of the changes can be very subtle,” he said. “Their behaviors may change and maybe only a parent would notice that somebody’s more sullen or they’re more anxious than they used to be.”
In some cases, symptoms of concussions may appear right away, while in others it may take hours or days after the injury for symptoms to appear.
Concussion symptoms can range from dizziness, nausea, vision problems and headaches to concentration problems, fogginess, anxiety, sadness, nervousness or changes in sleep, according to the CDC.
When it comes to knowing whether the latest concussion is one too many for an athlete, Cullum said there is no “magic number.”
“We don’t yet know how many concussions are too many or for whom,” Cullum said, adding, “It’s what’s unique about one individual versus another. There can’t really be a blanket prescription that’s right for everybody. One size doesn’t fit all.”
(HOUSTON) — Public hospitals in Texas will now be required to ask patients if they are in the U.S. legally and keep a record of the funds spent on illegal migrants after an executive order went into effect Friday.
Public hospitals are required to collect information regarding the “cost of medical care provided to illegal immigrants,” the number of inpatient discharges and the number of emergency visits, then submit that data to the Texas Health and Human Services Commission on a quarterly basis, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott wrote in an August statement announcing the measure.
While facilities must ask patients of their legal status, patients are not required to respond.
The new policy will also be enforced at hospitals enrolled in Medicaid, the Children’s Health Insurance Program and any other facilities identified by the commission.
The first submission is due on March 1, 2025, according to the governor’s office. The commission will then submit the total cost for medical care provided to illegal migrants to the governor, lieutenant governor and the speaker of the house on an annual basis beginning on Jan. 1, 2026.
Patients are to be told that the collection of this information will not affect patient care, according to the executive order. Federal law mandates patients be told their answers will not affect their medical care.
The executive order also states that the federal government “may and should be obligated to reimburse the state of Texas for the costs that its open border policies have imposed on Texans.”
“Due to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris’ open border policies, Texas has had to foot the bill for medical costs for individuals illegally in the state,” Abbott said in the statement, though migrant encounters at the border began rising while Donald Trump was president in the months after April 2020 through the November election. “Texans should not have to shoulder the burden of financially supporting medical care for illegal immigrants.”
Immigration advocacy groups condemned the action as it went into place Friday.
“Abbott’s latest executive order — which takes effect today and goes against federal law — is a calculated attempt to drive immigrants into the shadows and make our communities fearful of being targeted in the very places we should feel safe. Going after immigrants in hospitals is just the first step towards enacting Trump’s Project 2025 agenda,” said Michelle Ming, political director of United We Dream Action, an advocacy group for immigrants.
ABC News’ Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
