Nearly 800 cases in South Carolina’s record-breaking measles outbreak
The measles virus. (BSIP/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
(SOUTH CAROLINA) — The record-breaking measles outbreak in South Carolina continues to grow with 89 new cases reported since the last update on Friday.
This brings the total number of cases in the outbreak to 789.
At least 557 people are currently in quarantine across the state, including students from various schools.
This is South Carolina’s largest measles outbreak in over 30 years, a spokesperson for the state’s health department told ABC News.
There have been at least 416 confirmed measles cases across the United States so far this year, the latest CDC data shows.
CDC data shows that the majority of cases occur among people under 19. About 2% of all measles cases in the U.S. have been hospitalized.
Dr. Kristin Moffitt, an infectious diseases physician at Boston Children’s Hospital, previously told ABC News she is “very alarmed” by the increase in measles cases in the U.S. over the last year or two.
“I’m very worried about our current year already,” she told ABC News. “Exceeding 2,000 cases in the last year is indeed alarming [and] … I am worried that even our current year is off to a very concerning start.”
Moffitt said that declining vaccination rates across the U.S. are behind the recent increase in measles cases.
“This is entirely due to declining vaccination rates,” she said. “It’s very clear based on where these outbreaks are occurring.”
The CDC currently recommends that people receive two doses of the MMR vaccine, the first at ages 12 to 15 months and the second between 4 and 6 years old. One dose is 93% effective, and two doses are 97% effective against measles, the CDC says.
However, federal data shows vaccination rates have been lagging in recent years. During the 2024-2025 school year, 92.5% of kindergartners received the MMR vaccine, according to data. This is lower than the 92.7% seen in the previous school year and the 95.2% seen in the 2019-2020 school year, before the COVID-19 pandemic.
The national trends mirror those see in counties across the U.S. A recent map from ABC News — a collaboration with researchers from Boston Children’s Hospital, Harvard School of Medicine and Icahn School of Medicine at Mt. Sinai that allows people to type in their ZIP code and see the measles risk in their area — found a wide range of risks in areas across the U.S.
Some counties and ZIP codes fell into the “lowest risk,” with 85% or more of children under 5 years old receiving one or more measles vaccine dose to “very high risk,” with fewer than 60% of children under age 5 receiving one or more measles vaccine doses.
ABC News’ Mary Kekatos and Dr. Richard Zhang contributed to this report.
According to an FBI affidavit, the building sustained “extensive” damage, rendering it “inoperable for an indefinite period of time.”
The suspect, identified by the FBI as Stephen Spencer Pittman, allegedly laughed about the attack, telling his father “he finally got them” and referring to the place of worship as the “synagogue of Satan,” according to the affidavit.
Pittman is charged with arson of property used in interstate commerce or used in an activity affecting interstate commerce, according to the criminal complaint.
The fire occurred around 3 a.m. on Saturday at the historic Beth Israel Congregation temple in Jackson, the same synagogue that was bombed in 1967 by the Ku Klux Klan, officials said. The FBI said the building also houses the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life (ISJL).
“The ISJL operates in interstate and foreign commerce as it provides services to Jewish communities” in 13 different states, including Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, according to the affidavit, and also “provides comprehensive religious school programs to 70 Jewish congregations and offers traveling rabbinical services,” most of which “are delivered in states outside the State of Mississippi.”
Pittman’s father contacted the FBI and “advised his son confessed to setting the building on fire,” according to the affidavit, and allegedly sent text messages to his father about the blaze, saying he was “due for a homerun” and “I did my research,” according to the affidavit.
Pittman allegedly admitted to stopping to purchase gasoline, taking his license plate off of his car, breaking a window at the synagogue, pouring the gasoline inside of the building and using a torch lighter to start the fire, according to the affidavit.
“Pittman was identified as a person of interest and ultimately confessed to lighting a fire inside the building due to the building’s Jewish ties,” according to the affidavit.
Security video from inside the building “showed the fire was started by an individual inside the building in the early morning hours of January 10, 2026,” according to the affidavit.
“A hooded individual can be seen walking in the interior of the building pouring contents from what appeared to be a gas container,” the affidavit also said.
A sign marks the location of the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) headquarters building on April 30, 2025, in Washington, DC. J. David Ake/Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — Three million pages from the Justice Department’s files on the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein are being released to the public today, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche said at a press briefing Friday.
Blanche said the release will include 2,000 videos and 180,000 images related to the Epstein case.
Blanche said in total there were 6 million documents, but due to the presence of child sexual abuse material and victim rights obligations, not all documents are being made public in the current release.
Blanche pushed back on the notion that the DOJ might have protected President Donald Trump from his name appearing in the files.
“We comply with the act, and there is no ‘protect President Trump.’ We didn’t protect or not protect anybody. I mean, I think that there’s a hunger or a thirst for information that I do not think will be satisfied by the review of these documents. And there’s nothing I can do about that,” Blanche told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.
Blanche said there was “no oversight” by the White House about what the material showed.
He added that if there was evidence in the files that others had abused victims, the DOJ would pursue charges against them.
A team of 500 attorneys from the Justice Department worked around the clock to redact and review material, Blanche said.
“If any member of Congress wishes to review any portions of the response of production in any unredacted form, they’re welcome to make arrangements with the department to do so, and we’re happy to do that,” said Blanche.
Friday’s tranche is the latest in a series of releases that began last month in response to the Epstein Files Transparency Act, which passed Congress overwhelmingly and was signed into law by President Donald Trump on Nov. 19. The act gave the Justice Department 30 days to make publicly available all unclassified records pertaining to investigations and prosecutions of Epstein and his convicted co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell.
The bill contains several exceptions that allow for withholding or redacting records, notably to protect the privacy of Epstein’s victims.
The DOJ to date had posted to its online Epstein library roughly 12,000 documents totaling about 125,000 pages — just a small fraction of the millions of records the department has been reviewing.
Those materials included a record of a complaint to the FBI filed in 1996, years before the disgraced financier was first investigated for child sex abuse. The documents also included new details about the government’s investigation into potential accomplices as well as thousands of photographs of Epstein’s New York and U.S. Virgin Islands properties that were searched by the FBI after Epstein’s arrest in 2019.
The initial release of the files also contained numerous old photos of Epstein traveling with former President Bill Clinton, including pictures of Clinton lounging in a jacuzzi and one of him swimming with Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year prison sentence after her 2021 conviction for sex trafficking of minors and other offenses.
The images, which were released without any context or background information, contained little information related to Trump, leading a spokesperson for Clinton to accuse the DOJ of selectively disclosing the pictures to imply wrongdoing on the part of Clinton where he said there is none.
“The White House hasn’t been hiding these files for months only to dump them late on a Friday to protect Bill Clinton,” Angel Urena said. “This is about shielding themselves from what comes next, or from what they’ll try and hide forever. So they can release as many grainy 20-plus-year-old photos as they want, but this isn’t about Bill Clinton. Never has, never will be.”
In an interview with ABC News on the day of the initial release, Blanche said that every document that mentions Trump will eventually be released, “assuming it’s consistent with the law.”
“There’s no effort to hold anything back because there’s the name Donald J. Trump or anybody else’s name,” Blanche said.
Both Trump and Clinton have denied all wrongdoing and have denied having any knowledge of Epstein’s crimes.
Federal prosecutors have indicated in recent court filings that hundreds of government lawyers have spent weeks reviewing “several millions of pages” of materials — including documents, audio and video files — in preparation for disclosure to the public.
The Epstein Files Transparency Act came after the Trump administration faced months of blowback from its announcement last July that they would be releasing no additional Epstein files, after several top officials — including FBI Director Kash Patel and former Deputy Director Dan Bongino — had, prior to joining the administration, accused the government of shielding information regarding the Epstein case.
The files released thus far have yet to show evidence of wrongdoing on the part of famous, powerful men, against the expectations of many of those who pushed for the files’ release.
Epstein owned two private islands in the Virgin Islands and large properties in New York City, New Mexico and Palm Beach, Florida, where he came under investigation for allegedly luring minor girls to his seaside home for massages that turned sexual. He served 13 months of an 18-month sentence for sex crimes charges after reaching a controversial non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. attorney’s office in Miami.
In 2019, prosecutors with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York indicted Epstein on charges that he “sexually exploited and abused dozens of minor girls at his homes in Manhattan, New York, and Palm Beach, Florida, among other locations,” using cash payments to recruit a “vast network of underage victims,” some of whom were as young as 14 years old.
Epstein died by suicide in a New York jail in 2019 while awaiting trial.
U.S. Border Patrol Chief Greg Bovino leads his troop as they confront demonstrators outside of an immigrant processing center on September 27, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois. Scott Olson/Getty Images
(CHICAGO) — U.S. Customs and Border Protection commander-at-large Greg Bovino is expected to be leaving the city of Chicago in the coming days, multiple sources tell ABC News.
The Department of Homeland Security will continue to maintain a presence in the city, according to sources.
Bovino’s departure could mean he is set to go to another city, or return to the El Centro sector in Southern California, according to a source.
DHS Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs Tricia McLaughlin said the agency isn’t leaving Chicago.
“We aren’t leaving Chicago,” she posted citing statistics from “Operation Midway Blitz,” the surge of federal immigration enforcement in the city.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates.
