Bomb cyclone impacts West Coast, 2 dead in Washington state
ABC News
(BELLEVUE, Wash.) — Two people have been killed by falling trees in Washington state as a powerful storm hits the Pacific Northwest.
In Bellevue, a tree fell into a home, hitting and killing a woman while she was in the shower Tuesday night, Bellevue fire officials said.
In Lynwood, a woman in her 50s was killed when a tree fell on a homeless encampment, officials said.
More than 500,000 customers are without power in Washington state on Wednesday.
The storm exploded into a bomb cyclone off the coast, near Vancouver Island, Canada, where winds gusted near 101 mph.
A bomb cyclone means the pressure in the center of the storm drops 24 millibars within 24 hours.
Wind gusts reached 50 to 84 mph from Northern California to Washington.
As the storm sits and spins over the ocean this week, it will help to push a plume of Pacific moisture called an atmospheric river into Oregon and Northern California.
Alerts are in effect through Friday for flooding, snow, avalanches and high winds.
Some places could see more than 1 foot of rain this week. A flood watch has been issued in Northern California.
(GREEN LAKE, Wis.) — Ryan Borgwardt, the husband and father of three who authorities said faked his own death at a Wisconsin lake and fled the country, is speaking to police but isn’t revealing where he is, the local sheriff said.
In recent weeks, as authorities worked to track Borgwardt down, they made contact with a woman who speaks Russian, Green Lake County Sheriff Mark Podoll said at a news conference Thursday.
“On Nov. 11, we got in contact with Ryan through her. That was a big turning point,” he said.
When authorities reached Borgwardt, they asked him questions only he would know and asked him to film a video of himself, Podoll said.
In the selfie-style video, which was played at the news conference, Borgwardt appears to be in an apartment. He said the date was Nov. 11 and he was safe.
Authorities believe he in Eastern Europe, Podoll said, adding that he doesn’t appear to be in danger.
“We do not know where Ryan exactly is,” the sheriff said. “He has not yet decided to return home.”
“We’ve had nearly daily communications with Ryan,” the sheriff said.
Borgwardt has not spoken to his wife or children, Podoll said.
The mysterious case began on the night of Aug. 11, when Borgwardt last texted his wife. He told her he was turning his kayak around on Green Lake and was heading to shore soon, Podoll said.
The 45-year-old was reported missing the next day.
After Borgwardt’s overturned kayak and life jacket were discovered in the lake, responders believed the missing dad drowned, officials said.
Crews scoured the lake for weeks using divers, drones, sonar and cadaver K-9s, officials said.
The case took a turn in October when investigators discovered Borgwardt’s name had been checked by law enforcement in Canada on Aug. 13, the sheriff said.
Authorities also learned Borgwardt had been communicating with a woman from Uzbekistan, the sheriff said.
Other behavior included clearing his browsers the day he disappeared, inquiries about moving funds to foreign banks, getting a new life insurance policy, obtaining a new passport and replacing his laptop hard drive, the sheriff said.
Podoll said Borgwardt revealed to authorities how he faked his death at the lake and fled the country.
“He stashed an e-bike near the boat launch. He paddled his kayak in a child-sized floating boat out into the lake. He overturned the kayak and dumped his phone in the lake,” the sheriff said. “He paddled the inflatable boat to shore and got on his e-bike and road through the night to Madison, [Wisconsin]. In Madison, he boarded a bus and went to Detroit, and then the Canadian border. He continued on the bus to an airport and got on a plane.”
“We are continuing to verify this information,” the sheriff added.
One of the reasons Borgwardt picked Green Lake is because it’s one of the deepest lakes in the state, Podoll said.
Borgwardt told authorities he didn’t think responders would spend more than two weeks searching for him, the sheriff said.
“He feels bad about the amount of hours we’ve put in,” Podoll noted.
The family wants Borgwardt home, and Podoll said he wants Borgwardt back to “clean up the mess that he has created.”
The sheriff said authorities will keep “pulling at his heartstrings.”
“He needs to come home to his kids,” Podoll said.
The sheriff, appearing emotional, ended the news conference by saying, “Christmas is coming, and what better gift he could give his kids is to be there for Christmas with them?”
Borgwardt could potentially face an obstruction charge, the sheriff said.
The county is seeking around $35,000 to $40,000 for restitution, the sheriff said.
Mohamed Bahi, who resigned Monday from his job in the Adams administration, was arrested Tuesday for obstructing the investigation into the mayor and his campaign.
Bahi is charged with witness tampering and destroying evidence.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
(NEW YORK) — Across hours of podcast and television interviews, Army veteran and Fox News host Pete Hegseth has articulated his plan for a “frontal assault” to reform the Department of Defense from the top down, including by purging “woke” generals, limiting women from some combat roles, eliminating diversity goals and utilizing the “real threat of violence” to reassert the United States as a global power.
As President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for the Secretary of Defense, Hegseth, 44, could have the chance to implement that vision, commanding the country’s more than a million active duty soldiers.
An infantry officer in the U.S. Army National Guard, Hegseth deployed to Guantanamo Bay, Iraq and Afghanistan before leaving the service with the rank of major, according to military records. Hegseth has worked for Fox News since 2014, where he co-hosts “FOX & Friends Weekend.” Once a critic of Trump’s foreign policy and military stances during Trump’s 2016 campaign, Hegseth grew to become one of Trump’s fiercest on-air defenders.
“Pete is tough, smart and a true believer in America First. With Pete at the helm, America’s enemies are on notice – Our Military will be Great Again, and America will Never Back Down,” Trump said announcing the nomination.
A New York Times best-selling author, Hegseth has frequently commented on military policy and suggested one of his first orders of business would be firing any generals who supported the Pentagon’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts.
“First of all, you got to fire the Chairman Joint of the Chiefs and obviously going to bring in a new Secretary of Defense, but any general that was involved — general, admiral, whatever — that was involved in, any of the DEI woke s—, has got to go,” Hegseth said during a recent interview on the “Shawn Ryan Show” podcast. “Either you’re in for warfighting, and that’s it. That’s the only litmus test we care about.”
Hegseth had preemptively defended the move, saying it would be a return to normalcy for soldiers rather than a “MAGA takeover.”
While Hegseth has described countries like Russia and China as threats, he has framed the military’s biggest threat as an internal one, arguing that “wokeness” divided the military internally and created an issue that adversaries can exploit.
“I think our biggest threat is internal. I think we’re committing cultural suicide, and we’ve lost complete focus on the basics and building blocks of what made Western civilization in America exceptional, fruitful, prosperous, strong, free,” Hegseth said on the podcast.
Hegseth has proposed a wholesale purge of military officials who have supported DEI policies, urging a “frontal assault right back at what’s been done to this military from the top and to the bottom.”
“The dumbest phrase on planet Earth in the military is our diversity is our strength,” Hegseth said on the podcast, arguing that uniformity between soldiers is a key to the military’s strength.
“Every time I hear a military leader say [diversity is our strength], I throw up in my mouth a little bit more, because if they believe it, it shows you how sideways and how indoctrinated they are,” Hegseth said on “The Right Take With Mark Tapson” podcast.
While 17.5% of active-duty military personnel are women, Hegseth has argued that military leaders should acknowledge that their main constituency is “strong, normal men,” rebuffing efforts to diversify the ranks of the armed services.
“There aren’t enough lesbians in San Francisco to staff the 82nd Airborne like you need, you need the boys in Kentucky and Texas and North Carolina and Wisconsin,” Hegseth said on Tapson’s podcast earlier this year.
Hegseth was on the “Take It Outside with Jay Cutler and Sam Mackey” podcast and said that transgender soldiers are “not deployable” because they are “reliant on chemicals” and suggested that women should not serve in certain combat roles.
“Everything about men and women serving together makes the situation more complicated, and complication in combat means casualties are worse,” Hegseth said on Ryan’s podcast, arguing that men are “more capable” in combat roles because of biological factors.
An ardent defender of the president-elect, Hegseth has argued that the United States military under Trump was more effective by posing both “uncertainty” and the “real threat of violence.”
“At least under Trump, there were missiles falling on terrorists’ heads,” Hegseth said on the “Man of War” podcast with Rafa Conde. “They knew he meant business. Kim Jong Un, even though it didn’t work, knew Trump meant business. Fire and fury was a real thing. Uncertainty is a real thing. The real threat of violence is a real thing, and none of that exists under these globalists who think they can sanction their way.”
He has also criticized international institutions like the United Nations as a “farce” and “giant joke” while advocating a military policy that aims to end long-term conflicts through decisive action.
“We expect this clinically sanitized, you know, no civilian casualties. Everything’s going to be perfect. No one’s going to get hurt, everything. It’s just not how war operates, and that’s unfortunate,” Hegseth said on “The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe” podcast. “But if we try to do it with kid gloves or with surgical gloves, we’re never really going to get rid of, actually exterminate the enemies that we need to defeat to create a peace on the other side.”
