Earliest snow since 2010 hits parts of Vermont, blankets upstate New York
(BURLINGTON, Vt.) Residents of parts of upstate New York and Vermont awoke to winter-like weather Thursday morning, including the earliest a foot of snow has fallen in the higher elevations of the Green Mountain state in 14 years.
The overnight snowfall brought 12 inches to Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in Vermont, and 15 inches to the summit of Whiteface Mountain in New York’s Adirondack Mountains.
The snowy weather ties 2010 as the earliest date that the snow depth at Mount Mansfield has reached a foot, according to the National Weather Service in Burlington, Vermont.
Winter storm watches and warnings were also issued in the West from Oregon to Colorado, where one to more than two feet of October snow is forecast through Saturday for the Rocky Mountains.
Millions of people from Oklahoma to Maine were feeling their coldest air of the season Thursday morning. Frost and freeze alerts were issued in 20 eastern states or about half of the country.
Frost alerts were also issued for Little Rock, Arkansas, Birmingham, Alabama and Atlanta. Asheville, North Carolina, which is still recovering from devastating floods caused by Hurricane Helene last month, was under a frost alert Thursday.
The weather was also chilly in Tampa Bay, Florida, where temperatures dipped to the 50s Thursday morning.
The cold spell is expected to be short-lived. A warm-up is on the way for much of the eastern half of the United States. Temperatures are forecast to jump to the 70s in the Northeast and the 80s across the South over the weekend.
The high forecast for New York City on Sunday is 73 degrees, while Tampa could reach 83 on Sunday.
The first major winter storm of the season is moving through the Pacific Northwest on Thursday. Ahead of this storm, gusty winds and dry conditions are sparking fire weather alerts across the West Coast.
Red flag warnings signaling elevated fire danger have been issued for the San Francisco Bay Area and much of Northern California. Red flag warnings were also in place Thursday for parts of Colorado and Minnesota, and extreme fire danger is forecast for Nebraska, where warm, dry and gusty winds could spread fires quickly.
(WASHINGTON) — House Republicans on Monday released the results of a sweeping three-year investigation they say is the most detailed public accounting yet of the Biden administration’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan that left behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of allies, some so desperate they clung to U.S. planes as the last military aircraft departed Kabul in 2021.
The report by House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul — which relied on interviews with 18 top officials and 20,000 pages of documents — blames the White House, its National Security Council and the State Department for being slow to listen to military generals who warned the security situation would deteriorate quickly once U.S. troops began to depart.
The investigation did not, however, find evidence that Vice President Kamala Harris played any role in the planning or execution of the evacuation, although she expressed public support for President Joe Biden’s decision at the time.
Former President Donald Trump and other Republicans have suggested Harris is culpable, noting past comments by the vice president that she was the “last person in the room” when Biden decided to leave Afghanistan.
“Caused by Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, the humiliation in Afghanistan set off the collapse of American credibility and respect all around the world,” Trump told National Guard members and their families in Detroit last month on the anniversary of the 2021 suicide bombing at Kabul’s airport during the evacuation, which killed 13 U.S. service members and some 170 Afghans.
The Biden administration pushed back on the findings by Republicans, calling it a partisan effort that sought to cherry-pick facts ahead of an election.
The Republican probe also is being released ahead of the first political debate between Harris and Trump, which ABC News is hosting on Tuesday night in Philadelphia. Trump and GOP loyalists are expected to hammer the Democratic administration for failing to prepare for a Taliban takeover once U.S. troops began to depart.
“The chaos and devastation that took place in August of 2021 has forever damaged U.S. credibility in the eyes of our allies, while emboldening our adversaries like China, Russia and Iran,” said McCaul, R-Texas. “Yet, not a single person was fired and, to this day, no one was ever held accountable by President Biden or Vice President Harris.”
Last week, McCaul issued a subpoena for Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s testimony on the withdrawal, threatening to hold him in contempt if he doesn’t testify on Sept. 19. In a written statement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller noted that Blinken has already testified on Afghanistan and the State Department provided the 20,000 pages of documents the committee was relying on to inform its investigation.
“Though the secretary is currently unavailable to testify on dates proposed by the committee, the State Department has proposed reasonable alternatives to comply with Chairman McCaul’s request for a public hearing,” Miller said. “It is disappointing that instead of continuing to engage with the Department in good faith, the committee instead has issued yet another unnecessary subpoena.”
On the investigation, Miller accused Republicans of politicizing the war and “presenting inaccurate narratives.”
“The State Department remains immensely proud of its workforce who put themselves forward in the waning days of our presence in Afghanistan to evacuate both Americans and the brave Afghans who stood by our sides for more than two decades,” he said.
While many of the details included in the Republican investigation have already become public through media reports and internal government reviews, among the more interesting details come from inside-the-room accounts of U.S. Embassy personnel.
At one point, according to Republicans, staff grew so panicked at the rushed evacuation that they began filling Tupperware containers with passports and visa foils to burn as Taliban forces arrived outside their building. Classified documents were eventually left behind in the scramble, according to the report, although the report doesn’t say how many or what type.
Meanwhile, the NSC was slow to establish criteria for who was eligible for evacuation, a standard the report says changed hourly. At one point, electronic visa letters known as “hall passes” were given to eligible Afghans, but the documents were so easily replicated that bootleg copies began circulating and the U.S. quickly scrapped the plan, according to the report.
The report also paints a picture of a State Department and NSC slow to understand the danger U.S. personnel were in as the Afghanistan government collapsed and the Taliban took control.
Ambassador Ross Wilson, who was brought out of retirement in the Trump administration to serve in Afghanistan and was the top American diplomat in Kabul at the time of the withdrawal, was allegedly reluctant to trigger a military-led evacuation, according to the report. Wilson has spoken publicly before that his staff worked feverishly in those final days to try to process as many travel documents as possible to help qualified people evacuate.
Biden has defended the State Department’s handling of the evacuation in the wake of the operation.
“In the 17 days that we operated in Kabul after the Taliban seized power, we engaged in an around-the-clock effort to provide every American the opportunity to leave. Our State Department was working 24/7 contacting and talking, and in some cases, walking Americans into the airport,” Biden said in 2021 in the wake of the withdrawal.
Biden and other Democrats have also defended the decision to pull out U.S. troops and shutter the embassy after 20 years in the country, saying their options were limited after Trump struck a deal with the Taliban to depart by May 1, 2021.
Trump’s agreement with the Taliban included the departure of U.S. troops and the release of 5,000 Taliban fighters from Afghan prisons so long as the Taliban promised not to collaborate with al-Qaeda or engage in “high-profile” attacks.
Wanting to bring an end to the war and concerned that Taliban fighters might target American service members if the U.S. reneged on the deal, the Biden administration stayed the course but amended the U.S. withdrawal deadline to Aug. 31, 2021.
“He could either ramp up the war against a Taliban that was at its strongest position in 20 years and put even more American troops at risk or finally end our longest war after two decades and $2 trillion spent,” said Sharon Yang, the White House spokesperson for oversight and investigations. “The President refused to send another generation of Americans to fight a war that should have ended long ago.”
Military generals in charge at the time have previously testified that their recommendation to Biden earlier that year was to maintain some 2,500 troops beyond that date regardless of what Trump had agreed to.
“At the end of 20 years, we the military helped build an army, a state, but we could not forge a nation. The enemy occupied Kabul, the overthrow of the government occurred and the military we supported for two decades faded away,” Gen. Mark Milley, who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the time of the withdrawal, testified last March.
“That is a strategic failure,” he said.
ABC News’ Emily Chang, Matthew Seyler and Shannon Kingston contributed to this report.
(AUSTIN, Texas) — In an 11th-hour turn of events, Robert Roberson, the first person set to be executed in the U.S. based on the largely discredited “shaken baby syndrome” hypothesis, was granted a temporary hold on his death sentence.
Late Thursday evening, the Texas Supreme Court issued a temporary stay in the case, delaying the looming execution and capping, for now, a back-and-forth series of legal maneuvers, including an earlier decision by the U.S. Supreme Court not to intervene in the case.
When he learned of the last-minute delay of his execution, Roberson, who was convicted of murder in the death of his 2-year-old daughter, was “shocked,” and then “praised God, thanked his supporters and proclaimed his innocence,” said Amanda Hernandez, director of communications for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, during a news conference Thursday evening.
The Texas high court’s ruling came after Travis County District Court Judge Jessica Mangrum initially put a temporary hold on Roberson’s execution to allow him to testify in a legislative hearing next week — something sought by a bipartisan group of state lawmakers who had subpoenaed Roberson to appear in a bid to delay the execution.
The temporary hold came through less than two hours before Roberson was scheduled to be executed. Shortly thereafter, however, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed it, putting the execution back on track.
In response, state lawmakers quickly sought a temporary stay by the state’s Supreme Court, which ultimately granted the request.
Notably, Roberson’s execution warrant was only valid through Oct. 17.
A legislative hearing at which Roberson is set to testify is scheduled for noon on Monday in the Texas State Capitol.
“For 22 years, this man has been held in prison — on death row — and we’re hoping that with this ruling today we’ll be able to bring light and get to truth,” Texas State Rep. John Bucy told reporters after the Texas Supreme Court issued its order halting the execution.
Monday’s hearing, in part, will examine laws in Texas targeting “junk science” or unreliable forensic science evidence.
“We needed Robert to be there as a first-hand account, to be able to testify to how it’s been used in his case,” Bucy said.
Roberson was found guilty of the murder of his 2-year-old daughter, Nikki, based on the testimony from a pediatrician who described swelling and hemorrhages in her brain to support a “shaken baby syndrome” diagnosis, even though there is limited evidence that this is a credible diagnosis.
The hypothesis has come under serious scrutiny in biomechanical studies, as well as a growing body of medical and legal literature. The medical examiner at the time also suspected that Nikki sustained multiple head injuries and considered the death a homicide in the official autopsy.
Roberson is autistic, according to his legal team, which affects how he expresses emotions — a concern that also arose during the trial.
Since his conviction, newly presented evidence found that Nikki had pneumonia at the time of her death and had been prescribed respiratory-suppressing drugs by doctors in the days leading up to her death.
A medical expert who performed post-mortem toxicology reports and reexamined her lung tissue said they found that chronic interstitial viral pneumonia and acute bacterial pneumonia were damaging her lungs, causing sepsis and then septic shock, likely leading to vital organ failure.
Over 30 medical and scientific experts have written to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, asking it to reconsider Roberson’s sentence because it hinged on the “shaken baby syndrome.”
A bipartisan group of 86 Texas House of Representatives members have also spoken in support of Roberson’s clemency request, arguing that a state law enables reviews of wrongful convictions based on changes in scientific evidence. In Roberson’s case, they believe that the new evidence should have led to a new trial.
In his plea to halt the execution to the Supreme Court, Roberson argued that his federal due process rights were violated when Texas’ highest court refused to consider his bid to reopen the case based on “substantial new scientific and medical evidence.”
The plea itself followed two previous efforts: to have his sentence commuted to life in prison and to have his execution delayed. Both requests were denied by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles.
In its statement of opposition to the Supreme Court on Wednesday, the state of Texas claimed that there has been no violation of Roberson’s constitutional rights that would warrant intervention from the higher court.
It said that its own courts have adequately considered and rejected Roberson’s requests to review the evidence, writing: “As noted by the [Criminal Court of Appeal’s] opinion on direct review and Judge [Kevin] Yeary’s recent concurrence, ‘the tiny victim suffered multiple traumas’ that are inconsistent with a short fall from a bed or complications from a virus.”
Before the flurry of back-and-forth decisions in Texas on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Roberson’s request for a stay and his petition that the justices take up the case.
(HUNTINGTON STATION, N.Y.) — Police are investigating after human remains were found inside a suitcase Tuesday on Long Island.
Officers responded to a 911 call Tuesday morning reporting “suspicious activity” in a wooded area near an apartment building in Huntington Station, New York, according to the Suffolk County Police Department.
“Upon arriving, police found a person deceased in a suitcase next to the building,” police said in a press release.
The victim’s identity and cause of death is not yet known.
The Suffolk County Medical Examiner’s Office will conduct an autopsy, police said.
Police are requesting anyone with information concerning the incident to contact them.
A resident at the apartment complex told New York ABC station WABC she had heard the sounds of a woman screaming at about 3 a.m. on Sunday.
Another person living in the area said she saw police respond to the incident.
“The police came and lifted it and saw it was a body,” the individual said. “The smell was rancid. Potent.”