(NEW YORK) — AAA forecasts 79.9 million people will travel by car, plane or another mode of transportation for Thanksgiving — up 1.7 million people compared to last year.
Here’s what you need to know before you head to the airport or hit the highway:
Air travel
Hopper expects this will be the busiest Thanksgiving holiday ever for U.S. airports, with 36.5 million seats booked between Saturday, Nov. 23, and Tuesday, Dec. 3 — a 4.8% increase from the same period last year.
The Sunday after Thanksgiving — Dec. 1 — will be the busiest day to fly, according to Hopper.
The cheapest days to leave for your trip are Thanksgiving Day or three days earlier, on Monday, Nov. 25, Expedia said. The cheapest days to fly home are Black Friday (Friday, Nov. 29) or Travel Tuesday (Tuesday, Dec. 3).
Expedia predicts the busiest and most expensive days to fly will be the day before Thanksgiving and the Sunday after Thanksgiving.
The most popular U.S. destinations this year are Atlanta, Los Angeles, Dallas, Las Vegas and Chicago, Hopper found.
Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, Dallas Fort Worth International Airport and Denver International Airport are poised to be the most crowded airports, Hopper said.
Road travel
A record 71.7 million people are expected to travel by car for Thanksgiving — up by 1.3 million people from last year, according to AAA.
The worst times to drive before Thanksgiving are the afternoons of Monday, Nov. 25, Tuesday, Nov. 26, and Wednesday, Nov. 27, according to analytics company INRIX. It’s best to wait until Thanksgiving Day — Nov. 28 — when the roads will be quieter.
If you’re heading home on Saturday, Nov. 30, or Sunday, Dec. 1, INRIX recommends hitting the road before 1 p.m.
Traffic could be more than double what it is on a typical day in cities including Boston, New York City, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles and Seattle, INRIX warned.
(WASHINGTON) — A Secret Service agent tasked with protecting former President Barack Obama knowingly and repeatedly breached his duties while trying to woo a love interest — and living a double life, according to a new memoir by the agent’s former girlfriend.
In “Undercover Heartbreak: a Memoir of Trust and Trauma,” Koryeah Dwanyen describes a series of potential security lapses, including a time when she said she was invited to join the senior agent at the Obamas’ beachfront property in Hawaii in 2022 while they were away.
He had already sent her “several photos” of the house a week earlier, and suggested a tour, according to the book.
“No one will know. If anything, I’m the one who could get in trouble,” says the agent in the memoir, where he is given the pseudonym “Dale.”
He then tried to get her to fool around in the first lady’s bathroom, according to Dwanyen.
“We should have sex in Michelle [Obama]’s bathroom, like a mile-high club,” Dwanyen claims he said.
The senior agent’s alleged violations of fundamental regulations prompted an internal investigation by the Secret Service.
The self-published memoir was released on Oct. 28, adding another reputational shiner to the agency after a major security lapse in the summer led to calls for operational reform.
The Secret Service had faced intense scrutiny since a gunman attempted to assassinate Donald Trump while the former president campaigned at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July. That incident, which prompted the ouster of the agency’s director, was called a “historic security failure by the Secret Service” in an independent review by the Department of Homeland Security.
“The U.S. Secret Service’s top priority is ensuring the safety and security of our protectees, and any actions that compromise this commitment are addressed with the utmost seriousness,” Anthony Guglielmi, the agency’s chief of communications, told ABC News.
Guglielmi confirmed that an incident matching the book’s Hawaii anecdote had occurred – and that upon finding out, a probe was launched and the agent involved was ultimately fired.
“On Nov. 6, 2022, a Secret Service agent involved in protective functions brought an individual who did not have authorized access into a protectee’s residence without permission,” Guglielmi said. “As soon as the Secret Service became aware of the incident, the agent involved was immediately suspended and after a full investigation, terminated.”
“Although the protectees were not present at the time of the incident, these actions were an unacceptable violation of our protocols, our protectees’ trust and everything we stand for,” he continued.
The former agent and prominent character in the book did not respond to requests for comment from ABC News.
According to her memoir, Dwanyen first met the Secret Service agent while he was assigned to the security detail of the Obama family and while she was vacationing in Martha’s Vineyard in 2022.
He said that he was divorced and had been for nearly a decade, Dwanyen said.
As their relationship developed, the author said, so did her concerns about the man that she had fallen for. She would later come to find out that the agent was still married, according to the book.
“There were major red flags — breaches of trust and of his job,” the author said in a phone interview with ABC News. “One of my friends has joked, ‘You were a walking national security risk.’”
Finally, Dwanyen said, she sent an email to his boss outlining her fears related to the agent’s safety — as well as his family’s and her own.
She wrote that, by then, she had met the agent’s boss “several times” in Hawaii, and she explained that she had his “direct contact information” from emails that the agent had shared with her.
The agent’s boss immediately set up an exhaustive interview with agents in the Inspection Division of the Secret Service’s Office of Professional Responsibility, Dwanyen told ABC. The meeting would last “nearly four hours,” she wrote in her book.
“They realized that not only had ‘Dale’ shared photos of the Obamas’ house, but he had also brought me there,” Dwanyen wrote. She “showed them photos on my phone to corroborate what I was saying,” scrolling through “pictures of Alicia Keys’ house, Steven Spielberg’s boats, Melinda Gates, Tyler Perry and Amal Clooney.”
“He was really oversharing,” Dwanyen recalled one of the agents saying.
The agent told her “personal tidbits he should not have,” Dwanyen said on the phone with ABC News. Those “tidbits” he shared spanned across protectees, she said: ranging from information about background on Mike Pence — whom the agent had been assigned to during his vice presidency under Trump — to details about the Obamas.
“I knew their code names. I knew what day Orange Theory was, what day [Michelle Obama] had private tennis lessons and when her personal trainer came,” Dwanyen said. “Things that I should not have been privy to as a civilian.”
(MIAMI, FLORIDA) — As Election Day nears, Donald Trump is continuing his long-standing effort to recast the violent events of Jan. 6, 2021, now calling it a “day of love” even as he tries to distance himself from what happened.
A Republican audience member, during a Univision town hall on Wednesday, pressed Trump on his actions that day as thousands of his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol, temporarily disrupting the congressional certification of President Joe Biden’s victory.
“I want to give you an opportunity to win back my vote,” the participant said, adding he found Trump’s actions and alleged inaction on Jan. 6 a “little disturbing” and wanted to know why some of Trump’s former top administration officials are no longer supporting him — some even calling him a danger to national security and democracy.
Trump quickly went on defense and in the process repeated some false or misleading claims that have been long disproved or debunked.
The former president said he “totally disagreed” with then-Vice President Mike Pence’s adamance to his constitutional duty to uphold the certification process and not unilaterally reject the election results. Pence has said he is not endorsing Trump this cycle.
Trump then claimed thousands of his supporters who traveled to Washington “didn’t come because of me,” despite his posting on social media in mid-December 2020 that there would be a “big protest” on Jan. 6.
“Be there, will be wild!” Trump famously wrote on Twitter, where he’d amassed some 88 million followers.
One man who admitted to illegally entering the Capitol that day, Stephen Ayres, testified in court documents and before the House Jan. 6 committee that he was influenced heavily by Trump’s activity on social media to come to Washington for the rally at the Ellipse.
“They came because of the election,” Trump said on Wednesday. “They thought the election was a rigged election, and that’s why they came. Some of those people went down to the Capitol but I said peacefully and patriotically. Nothing done wrong at all.”
Trump went on to say, “Ashli Babbitt was killed. Nobody was killed. There were no guns down there.”
Babbitt, a 35-year-old Trump supporter and Air Force veteran, was fatally shot by a U.S. Capitol Police officer as one of a group of rioters who tried to break into the House floor through barricaded entrances near the Speaker’s Lobby.
She was one of several people who died during or after the riot of various causes. Four officers who responded to the Capitol attack later died by suicide. Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick, who was pepper sprayed by rioters, suffered strokes and died the next day. A Washington medical examiner determined he died of natural causes but said his experience that day played a role.
The Justice Department has noted that in court it has been proven that “weapons used and carried on Capitol grounds include firearms; OC spray; tasers; edged weapons, including a sword, axes, hatchets, and knives; and makeshift weapons, such as destroyed office furniture, fencing, bike racks, stolen riot shields, baseball bats, hockey sticks, flagpoles, PVC piping, and reinforced knuckle gloves.”
More than 1,500 people have been federally charged with crimes associated with the Capitol attack, the Justice Department said earlier this year. That includes 571 charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement agents and 171 defendants charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon.
At least 943 individuals have pleaded guilty — including 161 who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement and 67 who pleaded guilty to assaulting law enforcement with a dangerous or deadly weapon — and an additional 195 people have been found guilty at trial.
Approximately 140 law enforcement officers were injured during the riot, the DOJ has said.
Jan. 6 began with Trump’s speech at the Ellipse, in which he did tell supporters to march “peacefully and patriotically” to the Capitol, as he now likes to note, but also stoked tensions by saying they have to “fight like hell” or they wouldn’t have a country.
“But that was a day of love,” Trump said at the Univision town hall. “From the standpoint of the millions, it’s like hundreds of thousands. It could have been the largest group I’ve ever spoken to before. They asked me to speak. I went and I spoke, and I used the term ‘peacefully and patriotically.'”
The comments come as Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. JD Vance continue to deny the 2020 election outcome and downplay what transpired on Jan. 6.
Vance on Wednesday when asked if Trump lost the election replied, “No, I think there are serious problems in 2020 so did Donald Trump lose the election? Not by the words that I would use.”
Vance has also said he wouldn’t have certified the election were he in Pence’s shoes in 2021.
The election denialism and Jan. 6 comments have prompted swift push back from Democrats and Vice President Kamala Harris. Harris has cast Trump as a threat to democracy as the 2024 campaign enters its final weeks.
ABC News’ Jack Date, Soorin Kim, Lalee Ibssa and Kelsey Walsh contributed to this report.
