Icy mix to hit 22 states from Midwest to Northeast: Latest forecast
ABC News
(NEW YORK) — A storm is set to dump sleet, freezing rain and snow on the Midwest on Wednesday before striking the Northeast on Wednesday night into Thursday morning.
At least 22 states from Oklahoma to Vermont are under ice and snow alerts. An ice storm warning has been issued for the Appalachian Mountains from West Virginia to Pennsylvania, where significant ice accumulation is possible.
The storm begins Wednesday morning in the Plains, from Oklahoma to Missouri, and will move into the rest of the Midwest, including Chicago, in the afternoon and evening.
By Wednesday night, the icy mix will span from Detroit to Washington, D.C., to Philadelphia. The storm will reach New York City by early Thursday morning, making travel extremely treacherous.
The Interstate 95 corridor is under a winter weather advisory for 1 to 2 inches of snow, as well as a glazing of ice.
By mid-morning, the snow will change to rain, and the rain will end by noon.
For New England and the inland Northeast, icy roads will last into the afternoon.
Another storm with ice and snow is possible for the Midwest and the Northeast this weekend.
(NEW ORLEANS) — President Joe Biden and first lady Jill Biden will head to New Orleans on Monday to meet with the families and community members impacted by the devastating truck attack that killed 14 and injured dozens, the White House said.
The suspect, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, drove a pickup truck onto a sidewalk and around a parked police car serving as a barricade to plow into pedestrians over a three-block stretch on Bourbon Street early on New Year’s Day, police said.
Jabbar then exited the damaged vehicle armed with an assault rifle and opened fire on police officers, law enforcement said. Officers returned fire, killing Jabbar. At least two officers were injured, authorities said.
FBI Deputy Assistant Director Christopher Raia called the attack a premeditated “act of terrorism” but said there was no additional threat to the public.
The FBI and Department of Homeland Security has issued a joint intelligence bulletin warning the nation’s 18,000 law-enforcement agencies about potential copycats, ABC News learned. The bulletin was sent out of an abundance of caution to sensitize law enforcement around the country to be on the lookout for any activity pointing to the use of vehicles as a method to inflict mass casualties, sources told ABC News.
“We advise federal, state, local, tribal, and territorial government and law enforcement officials and private sector security partners to remain vigilant of potential copycat or retaliatory attacks inspired by this attack and other recent, lethal vehicle-ramming incidents across the globe,” the bulletin said.
The bulletin notes that ISIS has been promoting the use of vehicles as a terrorism weapon since around 2014.
Sources told ABC News that ISIS has ramped up calls for its supporters to launch low-tech, mass casualty ramming attacks in recent months, especially since the most recent Israel-Hamas conflict began in October 2023.
Jabbar, a 42-year-old Army veteran and U.S.-born citizen from Texas, drove from Houston to New Orleans on Tuesday evening and posted several videos online “proclaiming his support for ISIS,” and mentioning he joined ISIS before this summer, Raia said.
The bulletin stated that Jabbar was inspired by ISIS but that there remains no evidence of any co-conspirators. A senior law-enforcement official told ABC News that there is so far no sign of ISIS claiming responsibility for the New Orleans attack.
“Law enforcement should be aware that in many cases attackers have conducted vehicle-ramming attacks with secondary weapons and may continue the attack with edged weapons, firearms, or IEDs after the vehicle has stopped,” the bulletin said. The tactic could be “attractive” for foreign terrorist organizations and other actors due to its low complexity threshold, the warning said.
An intelligence bulletin from the New York Police Department obtained by ABC News indicated that ISIS supporters did celebrate the attack online. Violent extremists, the bulletin said, “continue to view densely populated walkways, parades, mass gatherings and other outdoor events along streets, especially during holidays, as vulnerable targets of opportunity.”
“This enduring threat underscores the criticality of pre-staged blocker cars and the deployment of other effectively configured countermeasures including heavy block, barriers and bollards,” it added.
Surveillance footage showed Jabbar placing two improvised explosive devices in coolers in the Bourbon Street area, Raia said. He had a remote detonator in the truck to set off the two devices, Biden said. Both devices were rendered safe, officials said.
Bomb-making materials have been recovered at Jabbar’s Houston home, sources confirmed to ABC News. The items found were also referred to as “precursor chemicals” by agents in the field, sources said.
Law enforcement cleared and reopened Bourbon Street on Thursday as the investigation continued. New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell said authorities had the “confidence” to reopen the area to the public ahead of the Sugar Bowl Thursday afternoon, which was initially scheduled for Wednesday but postponed in the wake of the attack.
“I want to reassure the public that the city of New Orleans is not only ready for game day today, but we’re ready to continue to host large-scale events in our city,” she said. “Our hearts and prayers continue to go out to the victims’ families,” Cantrell added.
There is no apparent direct connection between the New Orleans attack and Wednesday’s Tesla Cybertruck explosion outside the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, which is also being investigated as a possible act of terror, Raia from the FBI said Thursday.
(GEORGIA) — Donald Trump’s Georgia election interference case should be dismissed because a sitting president is immune from criminal prosecution, the president-elect’s lawyer told a Georgia appeals court on Wednesday.
“A sitting president is completely immune from indictment or any criminal process, state or federal,” Trump’s attorney Steve Sadow wrote in a five-page notice filed on Wednesday.
Sadow asked the Georgia Court of Appeals to direct the trial judge overseeing the case to dismiss the indictment on the grounds that local prosecutors are prohibited from interfering with a president’s official duties.
“This is particularly true where, as here, there is compelling evidence of local bias and political prejudice against the President by the local prosecutor, who not only answers to a tiny segment of the American electorate but is acting in clear opposition to the will of the citizens of Georgia as reflected by the recent election results,” Sadow argued.
Trump and 18 others pleaded not guilty last year to all charges in a sweeping racketeering indictment for alleged efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in the state of Georgia. Four defendants subsequently took plea deals in exchange for agreeing to testify against other defendants.
The case has been on pause after Trump and his co-defendants launched an effort to have Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis disqualified from the case over her relationship with a fellow prosecutor. Fulton County Judge Scott McAfee declined to disqualify Willis, but the case has been paused as Trump and his co-defendants appeal the decision.
An oral argument before the Georgia Court of Appeals was initially scheduled for Dec. 5, but was unexpectedly canceled last month without explanation.
Sadow asked the same appeals court to direct McAfee to dismiss the indictment against Trump on the grounds that the prosecution is unconstitutional.
In a similar filing, Trump on Tuesday asked that his criminal hush money case in New York be immediately dismissed because the prosecution disrupts the president-elect’s transition and “threatens the functioning of the federal government.”
A federal judge last week threw out Trump’s federal election interference case after special counsel Jack Smith moved to the dismiss the case due to the Justice Department’s standing policy prohibiting the prosecution of a sitting president.
A federal appeals court also dropped Trump from the government’s ongoing appeal of Smith’s classified documents case based on the same policy.
(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.