Michigan AG condemns reversal of conviction related to Whitmer kidnap plot
Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer speaks on March 11, 2026 in Washington, DC. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
(LANSING, Mich.) — Michigan’s attorney general condemned a decision by the Michigan Court of Appeals reversing the conviction of a man who allegedly provided support for a plot to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.
The court overturned the conviction of Joseph Morrison on Tuesday, saying in part that kidnapping was not considered a violent felony in this case.
“This ruling is completely and irredeemably nonsensical, outrageous and irresponsible,” Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said in a statement. “For the panel to declare that kidnapping is not a violent felony strains all legal credibility and insults the intelligence of every person in this State.”
Nessel said her office would appeal the ruling, calling it a “preposterous decision.”
Morrison was one of several members of a militia who were convicted in October 2022 for providing material support of a terrorist act, as well as charges related to firearms and membership in a gang. The charge of support for a terrorist act carried a maximum of 20 years in prison.
Whitmer’s chief of staff, JoAnne Huls, also reportedly criticized the ruling, said the decision “doesn’t change the underlying facts: Joseph Morrison and other men supported an effort to kidnap and murder Governor Whitmer.”
“They committed crimes, and they must be held accountable,” Huls told ABC News in a statement. “Releasing them poses a danger to the public and letting them walk is a threat to our democracy. We do not agree with today’s decision, which invites a culture of fear and violence in Michigan and the country.”
“When radical extremists like Joseph Morrison can commit crimes and then walk free, it sends an alarming message and condones political violence. Today’s decision may dissuade people from making their voices heard, running for office, and more,” Huls said.
Huls acknowledged the work of prosecutors and law enforcement in the case and said Whitmer “will keep working tirelessly to make a difference for Michiganders.”
The attorney general’s office, in its statement, said the decision to overturn the conviction amounted to an effort by the court to twist “itself into a knot using legal and linguistic gymnastics in order to liberate dangerous criminals using convoluted definitions of the crimes upon which they were convicted.”
Morrison was part of a militia group known as the Wolverine Watchmen, which took part in armed protests at the Michigan state capitol, largely over Whitmer’s strict COVID-19 shutdown rules. He was among several Watchmen members who were photographed at the Capitol, holding rifles, outside Whitmer’s office, during one of those protests in April 2020.
A member of the group eventually turned into a confidential informant in March 2020 after talks turned to harming law enforcement and eventually public officials.
Fourteen members of the self-styled militia were arrested in October 2020, and news of the plot to kidnap Whitmer emerged.
Illustration of Legionella pneumophila bacteria (Roger Harriss/Science Photo Library/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Health officials in New York City said they are investigating a cluster of Legionnaires’ disease.
As of July 6, 23 cases of Legionnaires’ disease have been confirmed in two of Manhattan’s Upper East Side neighborhoods, according to the New York City Department of Health. So far, no deaths have been associated with the cluster.
In a notice to the two neighborhoods — Carnegie Hill and Yorkville — the department said it believes the likely source of the bacteria is a cooling tower in the area, which sprays a mist that contains the bacteria.
The health department said there is no issue with any building’s plumbing system and that residents in the affected areas can continue to drink tap water, bathe, shower, cook and use their air conditioners.
“All cooling towers in [the] area are being sampled and tested in the NYC Public Health Lab,” Mark Levine, the city’s comptroller, wrote in a post on X on Sunday evening. “It unfortunately takes several weeks for cultures to grow.”
Legionnaires’ disease is a severe form of pneumonia caused by inhaling the Legionella bacteria in small droplets of water mixed in the air or contaminated water accidentally going into the lungs.
The bacteria are found naturally in freshwater but amounts generally don’t lead to disease. The bacteria typically grow best in warm water and in warm to hot temperatures, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The disease does not generally spread from person to person, but infections can occur if the bacteria get into a building’s water supply, including in shower heads, sink faucets, hot water tanks, heaters, cooling towers and other plumbing systems.
Legionnaires’ disease has increased in prevalence over the last decade, reaching a peak of 2.71 cases per 100,000 in 2018, the CDC said. Cases dropped during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic and then rebounded in 2021.
Although most people recover from Legionnaires’ disease with antibiotics, certain patients — including those who are immunocompromised or who suffer from chronic lung diseases — can develop complications that can be fatal.
About one out of every 10 people who develop Legionnaires’ disease will die due to complications, according to the CDC. Among those who develop Legionnaires’ disease during a stay in a healthcare facility, about one out of every four people will die, the federal health agency added.
The NYC health department said anyone who lives or works in the affected areas — or has visited since late June — and is experiencing flu-like symptoms should contact a healthcare provider immediately. The ZIP codes for the areas are 10028, 10128, and 10075.
First responders at the scene of a deadly car crash in Grand Junction, Colorado, on Aug. 9, 2026.(Grand Junction Police Department)
(NEW YORK) — Five 17-year-old boys died when their vehicle went off a cliff in Colorado and crashed, authorities said.
The crash occurred in a residential area of Grand Junction late Saturday, according to the Mesa County Coroner’s Office.
Police and fire personnel responded shortly before 8 a.m. local time Sunday to a report of a possible vehicle that drove off the edge of a cliff in the 2000 block of Lookout Lane, according to the Grand Junction Police Department. They located the crashed vehicle on the hillside, police said.
All five victims were pronounced dead at the scene, authorities said.
“Initial investigation indicates the vehicle was traveling southbound on Lookout Lane when it veered off the roadway and down the steep incline of the hillside,” the Grand Junction Police Department said in a release on Sunday.
Speed is being considered as a factor in the crash, which remains under investigation, police said.
First responders from multiple agencies worked to recover the bodies from the crash site. All five teens died from injuries sustained in the crash, the coroner’s office said in a statement Monday.
The driver, front seat passenger and a third occupant were wearing their seatbelts, while the two other occupants were not and were ejected from the vehicle, according to the coroner’s office.
The teens were residents of Grand Junction, according to the coroner’s office, which did not publicly identify them, citing a policy not to release the names of minors.
“Our hearts are heavy following the tragic losses this weekend,” the police department said.
ICE agents confront protesters as they gather outside the federal immigration center at Delaney Hall where ICE is housing detained immigrants on June 8, 2026, in Newark, New Jersey.. (Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Only 3% of individuals detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the first 14 months of the second Trump administration had a violent felony conviction, according to an ABC News analysis of government data.
The findings, based on data tracking the current Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, come after President Donald Trump had pledged to target the “worst of the worst” criminal offenders among the nation’s migrants.
Based on government data analyzed by ABC News as provided by ICE in response to a FOIA requests to the Deportation Data Project and the University of Washington Center for Human Rights, the findings show that immigration enforcement has affected more than 400,000 individuals with no violent criminal history, including parents and spouses of U.S. citizens.
While the 3% figure is consistent with rates seen under the Biden administration, the data shows the Trump administration is not detaining a higher proportion of violent offenders despite a significant overall increase in total detentions.
‘President Trump’s promise’
Under Trump, there has been record high detention population, currently at around 60,000 in federal immigration custody. The most detainees under the previous administration was 39,748 in November 2023, according to a nonprofit data gathering group.
According to the government data, of the 438,537 people detained between Jan. 20, 2025, and March 11, 2026, 13,018 had a violent felony conviction in the United States. The analysis defined “violent felony” as homicide, sexual assault, robbery, or assault.
The data also showed that in the first eight months of 2025, ICE apprehended the parents of approximately 14,450 U.S.-born children. This eight-month figure nearly surpassed the total for all of 2024 and surpassed the yearly totals for both 2022 and 2023.
Of those apprehended during the administration’s first seven months, more than 9,700 children saw at least one parent placed into immigration detention — more than in previous years. Of those detained, parents of more than 7,000 children were eventually deported. Of the more than 4,700 deported parents, 265 had a violent felony conviction. And of the more than 6,400 detained parents, 322 had a violent felony conviction.
In a statement to ABC News, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security said, “Since Day One, DHS law enforcement has been delivering on President Trump’s promise to the American people to arrest and deport criminal illegal aliens including murderers, rapists, pedophiles, gang members, and terrorists. This data is being cherry picked by the Deportation Data Project to peddle a false narrative.”
The Deportation Data Project provides minimally processed and unprocessed data supplied to them directly by ICE via FOIA.
“Nearly 70% of ICE arrests are criminal illegal aliens,” the statement went on to say. “We are continuing to go after the worst of the worst — including gang members, pedophiles, and rapists. Many of the individuals that are counted as ‘non-criminals’ are actually terrorists, human rights abusers, gangsters and more; they just don’t have a rap sheet in the U.S.”
“Further, every single one of these individuals committed a crime when they came into this country illegally,” the statement said regarding charges of unlawful entry, which is generally a civil violation, not a criminal offense.
‘Economic consequences’
Andrea Flores, the founder of Securing America’s Promise and a former Department of Homeland Security official, said the policy of mass deportation could lead to a child welfare crisis.
“So many children are losing primary caretakers or going to guardians,” Flores said in a Zoom interview. “We are going to have a class of children who lose their parents under this administration that is bigger than we probably have seen in modern history.”
DHS said in a statement that ICE does not separate families and that “parents are asked if they want to be removed with their children or ICE will place the children with a safe person the parent designates.”
In the first eight months of 2025, ICE also apprehended 4,843 spouses of U.S. citizens. During the first seven months of the term, more than 2,000 of these spouses were deported. Of the more than 2,000 spouses of U.S. citizens deported during the first seven months of the term, 165 had a violent felony conviction.
“We cannot underplay what it means to have even just a spouse go to detention, because what if they are the primary earner in that household?” Flores said. “We’re talking about economic consequences. We’re talking about the emotional costs of not having access to that family member.”
Trump administration officials have said that its crackdown on illegal immigration is primarily targeting dangerous and violent criminals living in the U.S. illegally, but they have also maintained that anyone residing in the country without legal status is subject to removal.
Methodology
ABC News analyzed enforcement trends by merging two primary sources: data provided by ICE via FOIA requests to the Deportation Data Project and ICE data provided to the University of Washington Center for Human Rights. The data provided to the Deportation Data Project includes data from the Department of Homeland Security’s PERSIST database, which shows the full lifecycle of immigration cases from January 2022 through early March 2026.
The data provided to the University of Washington Center for Human Rights includes I-213 records, which are the documents created when immigration officers arrest a noncitizen. These records span from January 2022 through late August 2025.
Publicly available data from ICE and DHS show detention populations and numbers on removals.
Statistics regarding the total number of parents and spouses apprehended were calculated using the University of Washington dataset alone. To determine how many of those individuals were specifically detained or deported, ABC News matched records across both databases using unique identifiers such as the date of arrest, gender, country of citizenship, and birth year.
The analysis focused on a subset of the data where a definitive match could be made between the two sources. The merged dataset allowed ABC News to track the progression of individual cases from the initial arrest through federal custody to identify parents and spouses who were ultimately held in facilities or removed from the country.
ABC News’ estimates for the number of U.S. citizens who had a parent or spouse arrested, detained and deported are likely an undercount. ProPublica, a nonprofit news organization, first reported similar data in March.
ABC News’ analysis of U.S. citizens who had a parent or spouse detained is limited to only individuals for whom arresting agents wrote an I-213 report, which represents the vast majority of individuals arrested by ICE, but is not everyone who has been detained. To perform the analysis, any possible duplicates in the data were not counted.
Flores said these numbers will likely grow.
“We have seen some recent reporting as well that the numbers are going into the tens of thousands in terms of children who have been impacted by a detained parent,” Flores said. “There are 4 million U.S. citizen children in current estimates who have a parent that isn’t documented.”
ABC News’ Ryann Jones and Armando Garcia contributed to this report.
