Flooding, debris flow possible as rain slams Los Angeles; evacuation orders issued
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — Dangerous, heavy rain is pounding the Los Angeles area, bringing a threat of flooding and debris flow to spots impacted by the recent devastating wildfires.
The rain will fluctuate from heavy to moderate to light throughout the morning, and rates may approach 1 inch per hour on steeper terrain.
One to 2 inches of rain is expected in the LA area, with more rain possible at higher elevations.
The rain will reach San Diego on Thursday morning and will end across Southern California in the afternoon.
Over 20 million people from the Los Angeles area to the San Diego area are under a flood watch.
The greatest risk for flooding and debris flow is in burn scar areas left by wildfires.
The burn scars and mountains around San Diego — where 1 to 3 inches of rain is expected — are the greatest risk for debris flows and rockslides.
In LA County, evacuation orders and warnings were issued for some burn scar areas impacted by January’s devastating Eaton and Palisades fires, according to the sheriff’s department and the mayor’s office.
“Wireless Emergency Alerts have been sent to targeted areas in and around where the Evacuation Warnings and Orders will be in effect,” the mayor’s office said.
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump’s executive order seeking to end birthright citizenship will face its next legal hurdle this week when three separate federal judges hold hearings to consider whether to block the order.
Ahead of the hearings, lawyers with the Department of Justice argued in legal filings that birthright citizenship creates a “perverse incentive for illegal immigration” while claiming that Trump’s executive order attempts to resolve “prior misimpressions” of the Fourteenth Amendment.
“Text, history, and precedent support what common sense compels: the Constitution does not harbor a windfall clause granting American citizenship to, inter alia, the children of those who have circumvented (or outright defied) federal immigration laws,” Acting Assistant Attorney General Brett Shumate wrote in a recent filing.
U.S. District Judge John Coughenour blocked the order last month — describing it as “blatantly unconstitutional ” — with a temporary restraining order that is set to expire this week.
Coughenour scheduled a Thursday morning hearing to consider whether to issue a preliminary injunction ordering the Trump administration to stop enforcing the order.
Judges in two additional federal cases challenging the order also scheduled hearings this week, including a Wednesday hearing in a Maryland case filed by five undocumented pregnant women and a Friday hearing in a lawsuit filed by 18 state attorneys general.
The hearings will likely provide the first opportunity for Department of Justice lawyers to outline their defense of Trump’s Day-1 executive order that sought to eliminate birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants or immigrants whose presence in the United States is lawful but temporary.
According to a recent court filing, Trump’s executive order clarified the phrase “subject to the jurisdiction” within the citizenship clause of the 14th Amendment, interpreting the phrase to mean that immigrants in the country unlawfully or temporarily would not be entitled to birthright citizenship.
“Prior misimpressions of the Citizenship Clause have created a perverse incentive for illegal immigration that has negatively impacted this country’s sovereignty, national security, and economic stability,” the lawsuit said. “But the generation that enacted the Fourteenth Amendment did not fate the United States to such a reality.”
Lawyers for the Department of Justice attempted to defend the lawfulness of the order by comparing undocumented immigrants to the foreign diplomats, who are not entitled to birthright citizenship.
“Just as that does not hold for diplomats or occupying enemies, it similarly does not hold for foreigners admitted temporarily or individuals here illegally,” the filing said.
While the Supreme Court established birthright citizenship in the 1898 case United States v. Wong Kim Ark, DOJ lawyers claim that the case is only relevant for the children of parents with “permanent domicile and residence” in the United States, suggesting the executive order does not run afoul of the longstanding legal precedent.
“And if the United States has not consented to someone’s enduring presence, it follows that it has not consented to making citizens of that person’s children,” the lawsuit said.
Trump’s executive order got a frosty reception last month when Judge Coughenour, in the course of issuing his temporary restraining order, reprimanded the Department of Justice attorney who suggested that Trump’s executive order was constitutional.
“I have been on the bench for over four decades,” said Judge Coughenour. “I can’t remember another case where the question presented is as clear as it is here.”
Trump, vowing to appeal the temporary restraining order, criticized Judge Coughenour — who was nominated to the bench by President Ronald Reagan in 1981– as partisan.
“Obviously, we’ll appeal it. They put it before a certain judge — in Seattle, I guess, right? And there’s no surprises with that judge,” Trump said from the Oval Office.
(LONDON) — Dozens of officials in the U.S. Agency for International Development’s humanitarian aid bureau received termination notices over the weekend, despite prior assurances from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that the agency’s “core lifesaving medicine, medical services, food, shelter and substance assistance” would be preserved.
Beginning late Friday night, several now-former employees at the Bureau of Humanitarian Assistance received termination letters from personnel officers at USAID, according to copies of those letters obtained by ABC News.
BHA is the government’s lead federal agency for international emergency disaster relief, working closely with the military to provide humanitarian aid in the wake of earthquakes, typhoons, hurricanes and other global natural disasters.
Serena Simeoli, a Humanitarian Aid Adviser to the Military at BHA, told ABC News that she received a termination letter on Friday night, but that it was not addressed to her and did not include her name or contract number — so she remains “confused” about what to do.
Simeoli said her small team of some 60 employees had assisted during “sudden-onset disasters, complex emergencies,” including the earthquakes in Haiti and Syria, typhoons in the Philippines, hurricanes in the Caribbean, and the conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine.
Without BHA, “it is going to be very challenging” for the U.S. to play a meaningful role in global emergency relief, “and I think I’m a little scared to think how it might go without us,” Simeoli said.
“The work that we do it matters, and we won’t know how much it matters until we’re presented with another catastrophic disaster,” she warned.
“I’ve devoted so much of my life to this organization … I would work around the clock because I believed in what we were doing,” Simeoli said. “It’s pretty painful to see and to be a part of what’s been happening.”
Another former BHA official said some colleagues reported receiving multiple termination notices, including some during the overnight hours this weekend.
That official, a former Marine, said that during his tenure with USAID he had responded to some of the world’s most challenging natural disasters .
“It makes me seriously question why I dedicated my entire adult life to carrying water in the most dangerous places in the world for our government and its people,” said the person, who asked not to be identified out of fear of retaliation.
Rubio wrote in a late January memo that he would grant an emergency waiver to allow USAID’s humanitarian missions to continue — but noted that the “resumption is temporary in nature.”
A State Department representative did not immediately respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
(PHILADELPHIA) — The black box from the medical transport jet that crashed in Philadelphia Friday evening is on its way to Washington, D.C., where the National Transportation Safety Board will try to extricate any information, Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker said during a press conference Monday.
The jet, which was carrying a child and her mother along with four other people, was in the air for less than a minute after taking off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport before coming down in a fiery “high-impact” crash.
The six people on board, as well as one person on the ground, were killed.
The Learjet 55, operated by Jet Rescue Air Ambulance, took off at 6:06 p.m. Friday, climbed to about 1,500 feet and then rapidly descended, according to NTSB investigator Bill Hicks.
“The entire flight lasted less than a minute,” Hicks said.
The child, who had just received care from Shriner’s Hospital in Philadelphia, was returning home to Mexico with her mother.
There were also four crew members on board. All were Mexican citizens, according to a statement from the Mexican government. NTSB investigators announced on Sunday that the aircraft’s engines and cockpit voice recorder had been recovered from the crash.
The CVR was located at the site of initial impact, at a depth of 8 feet, according to investigators.
The airplane’s enhanced ground proximity warning system, which could also contain flight data was recovered Sunday as well, officials said. Both components have been sent to the NTSB Vehicle Recorders Laboratory in Washington, D.C., for evaluation.
Jet Rescue Air Ambulance identified those aboard the crashed jet as 11-year-old pediatric patient Valentina Guzman Murillo and her 31-year-old mother, Lizeth Murillo Ozuna; Dr. Raul Meza Arredondo, paramedic Lopez Padilla, flight Capt. Alan Alejandro Montoya Perales and co-pilot Josue De Jesus Juarez Juarez.
Jet Rescue Air Ambulance said Montoya Perales, 46, had worked for the company since 2016, and that 43-year-old Juarez Juarez had been with the company since December 2023. Arredondo, 41, has been flying with the air ambulance company since 2020 and 41-year-old Padilla has been with the company since November 2023.
The mayor of Ensenada, Mexico, a city in the state of Baja California, confirmed two of the victims as Valentina Guzman Murillo and her mother.
Ensenada government officials said the plane was bound for Tijuana, Mexico. The plane was scheduled to make a stopover in Springfield, Missouri, before continuing to Tijuana, officials said.
In addition to those aboard the aircraft, at least one person in a vehicle died in the crash. The identity of the person has not been disclosed.
Parker said Monday that the number of people injured on the ground had risen from 22 to 24. She said four people remained hospitalized as of Monday, two are in stable condition and two are in critical condition.
There was no indication of a problem radioed from the flight deck of the jet back to air traffic control before the crash, NTSB Chair Jennifer Homendy told reporters. “In fact, in the recording that we have, there is an attempt by air traffic controllers to get a response from the flight crew that they didn’t receive,” she said.
The NTSB has classified the crash as an accident.
The “high-impact” crash left debris scattered across four to five city blocks, Homendy said.
At least five homes caught fire in the aftermath of the crash, Philadelphia officials said.
The Federal Aviation Administration is assisting in the investigation. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Monday a preliminary report on what caused the crash will be available within 30 days.
The crash of the medical jet came just two days after an Army Black Hawk helicopter collided with a regional American Airlines jet near Reagan National Airport just outside Washington, D.C., killing 67 people.
Homendy said her agency is able to carry out both investigations simultaneously.
“We are a highly skilled agency,” she said, adding that it’s not unusual for the board to investigate two incidents.
In a message posted on X, Duffy called the back-to-back disasters a “heart-wrenching week.”
Regarding the Philadelphia crash, Duffy said, “We’re not going to have answers right away. It’s going to take time. But as I get those answers, I’m going to share it with all of you.”
Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro said Monday the incident shows “a thin line between tragedy and triumph, between danger and safety.”
“That line you can literally witness on Cottman Avenue,” Shapiro said during a press conference on Monday. “[A] millisecond difference could have claimed more lives in our community. Thank God, it didn’t.”
ABC News’ Stephanie Ramos contributed to this report.
