Days of disabled workers earning less than $7.25 an hour may soon be over
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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Department of Labor is proposing a rule that will eliminate the certificates that allow employers to pay some workers with disabilities less than the federal minimum wage, which stands at $7.25 an hour.
The department announced the change on Tuesday, which also marked the International Day of Persons with Disabilities.
“One of the guiding principles of the American workplace is that a hard day’s work deserves a fair day’s pay, and this proposal ensures that principle includes workers with disabilities,” said Wage and Hour Administrator Jessica Looman in a statement on the proposed rule.
She continued, “Since the enactment of the Fair Labor Standards Act in 1938, opportunities and training have dramatically expanded to help people with disabilities obtain and maintain employment at or above the full federal minimum wage. Similarly, employers today have more resources and training available to recruit, hire and retain workers with disabilities in employment at or above the full minimum wage, and this proposed rule aligns with that reality.”
The rule, if passed, would no longer allow employers to apply for certificates under Section 14(c) of Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows for the subminimum wage. It would set a three-year phase-out period for employers who currently have existing certificates.
A 2020 report from the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights found that some workers were being paid less than a dollar an hour for their work.
The disability community faces higher rates of poverty and lower rates of employment in the workforce, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the National Council on Disability. Disabled advocates have long criticized Section 14(c) for perpetuating what they call discrimination and stigma.
(NEW YORK) — The search for an unidentified gunman who fatally shot UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, and the investigation into a possible motive, remain ongoing Friday.
Thompson, 50, was shot Wednesday morning outside a Midtown Manhattan hotel, where the insurance group’s investors conference was being held. The masked gunman appeared to be lying in wait outside the Hilton hotel before shooting Thompson at close range, police said.
Police said they are interviewing Thompson’s colleagues and family about any potential specific threats while they investigate a motive into the shooting.
Evidence collected from the scene of the shocking shooting include shell casings with the words “deny,” “defend” and “depose” written on them, according to police sources.
ABC News contributor Brad Garrett, a former FBI agent, said he believes the shooter is “trying to send a message” through the words.
“It strikes me that it has to do with insurance companies using those terms in some of their processes of turning down claims,” Garrett told ABC News Live’s Stephanie Ramos when asked about the words. “It’s a common complaint by people of having claims denied, and so I think this shooter is trying to send a message that someone — either himself or a loved one or someone close to him — has been harmed by this insurance company.”
“There wouldn’t be, logically, any other reason,” he added.
The words on the shell casings also echo the title of a 2010 book “Delay, Deny, Defend: Why Insurance Companies Don’t Pay Claims and What You Can Do About It.” Police are aware of the similarity, and are investigating whether one possible motive is anger at the insurance industry, sources said.
The book was written by legal scholar and insurance expert Jay Feinman, a professor emeritus at Rutgers Law School in New Jersey.
It explores abuses of auto and homeowners insurance to “avoid paying justified claims,” according to its summary.
“Today the name of the game is delay, deny, defend: to improve their profits, insurance companies delay payment of justified claims, deny payment altogether, and defend their actions by forcing claimants to enter litigation,” the book description states.
This strategy is not restricted to auto and homeowners insurance, the introduction states. “All insurance companies have an incentive to chisel their customers in order to increase profits,” it says.
ABC News has reached out to Feinman for comment.
In a response to a post on X that mentioned his book and the words on the shell casings, Feinman said he has “no comment” to media inquiries.
Police are working to identify the gunman in the shooting and his whereabouts.
After the shooting, the perpetrator fled on foot into an alley, where a phone was recovered, then fled on a bike, according to NYPD Chief of Detectives Joseph Kenny.
Other evidence recovered from the scene includes a water bottle and candy wrapper, police sources said.
Police have also collected video of the suspected gunman all over the city, including in the subway, in cabs and a McDonald’s, since he arrived in New York City on Nov. 24 on a Greyhound bus, sources told ABC News.
In each place, he paid with cash and he made sure to keep his mask on, which indicates to detectives he knew he was coming to the city to commit the crime, sources said.
Police have released several photos of the shooting suspect while asking for the public’s help in identifying him. They include images of him unmasked taken from a surveillance camera at an Upper West Side hostel, where it appears the suspect shared a room with two other men, according to police sources.
UnitedHealthcare’s parent company, UnitedHealth Group, the largest health insurer in the world, said they are “working closely” with the NYPD in the wake of the shooting.
“So many patients, consumers, health care professionals, associations, government officials and other caring people have taken time out of their day to reach out. We are thankful, even as we grieve,” UnitedHealth Group said in a statement on Thursday. “Our priorities are, first and foremost, supporting Brian’s family; ensuring the safety of our employees; and working with law enforcement to bring the perpetrator to justice.”
“We, at UnitedHealth Group, will continue to be there for those who depend upon us for their health care,” the statement continued. “We ask that everyone respect the family’s privacy as they mourn the loss of their husband, father, brother and friend.”
(NEW YORK) — President-elect Donald Trump slammed the judge in his criminal hush money case Tuesday, a day after the judge refused to dismiss Trump’s conviction on the grounds of presidential immunity.
New York Judge Juan Merchan on Monday rejected Trump’s request to vacate the verdict in the case based on the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision.
Trump had sought to dismiss his criminal indictment and vacate the jury verdict on the grounds that prosecutors, during the trial earlier this year, introduced evidence relating to Trump’s official acts as president that was inadmissible based on the Supreme Court’s subsequent ruling that Trump is entitled to presumptive immunity from criminal prosecution for official acts undertaken while in office.
“Acting Justice Juan Merchan has completely disrespected the United States Supreme Court, and its Historic Decision on Immunity,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform Tuesday, calling Merchan’s ruling, without evidence, “completely illegal.”
Merchan, in his ruling, determined that the evidence in the case related “entirely to unofficial conduct” and “poses no danger of intrusion on the authority and function of the Executive Branch.”
The judge “wrote an opinion that is knowingly unlawful, goes against our Constitution, and, if allowed to stand, would be the end of the Presidency as we know it,” Trump wrote in his post.
Trump was found guilty in May on 34 felony counts of falsifying business records related to a hush money payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in order to boost his electoral prospects in the 2016 presidential election.
(NEW YORK) — Homicides across the United States are poised to plummet for the third straight year as 2024 winds down, driving the nation’s annual murder toll down to levels not seen since before the pandemic, according to preliminary data from cities both large and small.
Based on available crime statistics from U.S. law enforcement agencies, the year is expected to end with a nearly 16% drop in homicides nationwide and a 3.3% decline in overall violent crime, Jeff Asher, a national crime analyst, told ABC News.
The dramatic drop in homicides surpasses a 13% decline in 2023, then the largest decrease on record until now. In 2022, the number of murders across the country fell 6%, according to the FBI.
The three consecutive years of declining homicides come in the wake of a 30% jump in murders between 2019 and 2020, the largest single-year increase in more than a century.
“Considering where we were just three or four years ago, we’re basically looking at 5,000 fewer murder victims than in 2020, 2021 and 2022 having occurred in 2024,” said Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and a former crime analyst for the CIA and the New Orleans Police Department.
In contrast, a dozen major U.S. cities broke annual homicide records in 2021.
Philadelphia — which recorded an all-time high of 562 homicides in 2021, 516 in 2022 and 410 last year — has seen a 40% drop in homicides in 2024.
Other major cities seeing precipitous reductions in homicides this year are New Orleans, down 38%; Washington, D.C., down 29%; Memphis, Tennessee, down 23%; Baltimore, down 24%; Kansas City, Missouri, down 20%; and Los Angeles, down 15%.
New York City, the nation’s largest city, had recorded 357 homicides through Dec. 15, a 7.3% drop from 2023, according to New York Police Department crime statistics. The city — which tallied 442 murders in 2020, a 45% jump from 2019 — has seen homicides fall 15% over the past two years.
Chicago has recorded a 7% decline in homicides as of Dec. 15, down from 603 murders at this time last year, according to the Chicago Police Department’s crime data. Over the past three years, homicides in Chicago have fallen 29% after skyrocketing 55% between 2019 and 2020 to 769 murders.
Homicides this year in 63 cities with populations of more than 250,000 declined by at least 15% and murders were down at least 19% in 246 cities with populations under 250,000, Asher’s research found.
“It’s a tremendous achievement in terms of how far murder has fallen in just really two straight years,” Asher said.
Property crime plummets
In addition to violent crime falling, property crime is also poised to finish the year down 8.6% nationwide, mostly due to a 21.4% decrease in motor vehicle theft, Asher said.
“Auto thefts went up 12% last year. They’re coming down more than 20% this year,” said Asher, who added that the 2023 spike in car thefts appears to be tied to social media instruction videos on how to steal certain models of Kias and Hyundais.
Crunching the numbers
Since 2016, Asher has crunched the numbers for an end-of-the-year report on crime trends. This year, his report is based on preliminary crime statistics from 309 U.S. law enforcement agencies, the most data he has ever received.
Asher’s analysis aligns closely with data released in May by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention showing murders down 14%. The Gun Violence Archive, a website that tracks all shootings across the nation, shows homicides are down around 11%.
“We kind of put all those together and we see a very large decline in murder, a very large decline in gun violence happening in the U.S. in 2024 on top of what was a very large decline in murder and a very large decline in gun violence in 2023,” Asher said.
“We kind of put all those together and we see a very large decline in murder, a very large decline in gun violence happening in the U.S. in 2024 on top of what was a very large decline in murder and a very large decline in gun violence in 2023,” Asher said.
The numbers also come just days after a 15-year-old girl allegedly carried out a shooting rampage at her Christian school in Madison, Wisconsin, killing a teacher and a classmate, and injuring six other students before dying from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
The Wisconsin shooting came three months after a 14-year-old boy allegedly killed two students and two teachers, and injured nine others at his high school in Winder, Georgia, with an AR-style weapon police alleged his father gave him as a Chrismas present.
‘We have turned the tide against violent crime’
During a Dec. 10 briefing of the Justice Department’s Violence Crime Reduction Steering Committee meeting, Attorney General Merrick Garland said preliminary crime data showed significant declines in violent crime in 85 cities in 2024, including a 17.5% drop in homicides nationwide.
“Over the past two years, we have turned the tide against the violent crime that spiked during the pandemic,” Garland said.
He said the numbers build on the historic drop in homicides nationwide last year, which he said was the lowest level of violent crime in 50 years.
Merrick attributed the tumbling violent crime rate partly to the DOJ’s Violent Crime Reduction Roadmap, a one-stop-shop created to assist local jurisdictions in developing, implementing and evaluating the strategies to prevent, intervene and respond to acts of community gun violence.
President Joe Biden’s administration has also sought to curb gun violence in recent years through executive actions and signing into law in 2022 the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which enhanced background checks for gun buyers under the age of 21, allocated $750 million to help states implement “red flag laws” to remove firearms from people deemed dangerous to themselves and others.
Biden also established the in 2023 the first-ever White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention to focus on ways to assist states and cities reduce the nation’s epidemic of gun violence.
Some cities such as Philadelphia have credited the work of violence interrupter programs, community-based initiatives that use peacebuilding methods to head off incidents of violence before they occur.
In Philadelphia, city leaders also pointed to a $184 million investment in gun violence initiatives in 2022, including one that attempts to identify people who are at risk of being involved in violence to provide them with mental health services or job placement. While the city also boosted the Philadelphia Police Department’s budget that year by $30 million, it instituted a violence prevention plan that emphasizes a combination of law enforcement strategies, environmental improvements and youth programs to reduce its homicide numbers.
“We need to continue pressing forward with our comprehensive approach, which is prevention, intervention and enforcement,” Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said at a Nov. 1 news conference on the city’s falling homicide numbers.
In October, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul signed six bills to strengthen New York’s gun laws, including one requiring gun sellers to post tobacco-style safety warnings and another that cracks down on illegal devices called “switches” that convert semiautomatic handguns into automatic weapons.
Asher said that in 2020 and 2021 when violent crime rose to alarming levels, programs such as community violence interruptors didn’t exist and the budgets of many police departments were getting slashed in the defund-the-police movement stemming from nationwide protests over the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Asher said states and local governments, as well as philanthropies, are pumping money into programs to bring down violent crime.
“Some of that is undoubtedly contributing to what we’re seeing now,” Asher said. “I’m not naïve enough to suggest that that’s the entire explanation. There are undoubtedly a multitude of factors that help to explain this complex problem.”
ABC News’ Calvin Milliner contributed to this report.
