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(CHARLESTON, S.C.) — The sister of Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was recently targeted with a bomb threat, the Charleston, South Carolina, Police Department said on Wednesday.
Over the weekend, an executive assistant at the Charleston County Sheriff’s Department received an email just before midnight on March 8 with “a threat of a potential explosive device in a mailbox” at the home of Amanda Coney Williams, the sheriff’s department said in a statement to ABC News.
The employee only works during the week, so she did not see the email until Monday morning, the sheriff’s department said. After discovering the email, she notified Sheriff Carl Ritchie “within five minutes of arriving to work,” to which Ritchie forwarded the email to the Charleston Police Department.
“Using a 1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipe, end caps, a kitchen timer, some wires, metal clips and homemade black powder, I’ve constructed a pipe bomb which I recently placed in Amy Coney Barrett’s sister’s mailbox at her home,” according to the email obtained by the Charleston Police Department.
The email also said the “device’s detonation will be triggered as soon as the mailbox is next opened,” with the suspect signing off the email with “Free Palestine,” police said.
Officers arrived at the residence at approximately 9:30 a.m. on Monday and inspected the mailbox, police said.
CPD’s Explosive Device Team along with local fire and emergency medical services crews were also on the scene, according to police.
The incident was determined to be a false alarm, police said.
Investigators spoke to David Williams, the husband of Amanda Coney Williams, who said he was not sure who would target their residence, but stated “an unknown person possibly related to the sender of the email had attempted pizza deliveries to some households related to Amy Coney Barrett, sometime over the weekend,” police said on Wednesday.
The investigation is still active, police said.
Justice Barrett was appointed to the U.S. Supreme Court in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term. She is a devout Catholic, mother of seven children and was the youngest Supreme Court nominee since Clarence Thomas in 1991.
School districts prep students and families for possible mass deportations. ABC News
(SOUTH TEXAS, Texas) — President Donald Trump has threatened mass deportations of immigrants, potentially expanding the “expedited removal” program to conduct raids in neighborhoods and workplaces. This program would allow for the quick deportation of individuals who entered the U.S. without proper documentation and have been here for less than two years.
Trump has pledged to tighten immigration laws and roll back Biden-era policies that he believes have encouraged a rise in undocumented immigration.
On Monday, Trump signed executive orders enhancing operations of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, in sensitive areas, expanding expedited deportations for undocumented immigrants, and aiming to end birthright citizenship.
Educators and organizers are grappling with what this means for their communities, and schools are determining the best way to support students and families.
ABC News visited a school in South Texas to meet with students and faculty preparing for the potential impacts of President Trump’s immigration policies.
While in South Texas, a student named Maria, a high school junior, shared with ABC News that she came to America from Mexico on a special visa last fall. Born and raised in Mexico, the 15-year-old lives with her grandmother, who is her legal guardian, in South Texas.
“It’s an honor for me to study here,” Maria said. “And my parents, more than anything, they did it in search of something better for me and my future…to have more opportunities and be able to speak a second language.”
When Maria first arrived, she knew very little English and was placed in a special set of classes to help integrate her into the Texas public school system.
She expressed that she misses her family in Mexico but wants to become a Spanish teacher. She must stay in America to do that, but with Trump’s plan, her goals may be cut short.
“We found out through TikTok, later on Instagram or things like that,” Maria said. “And just like in anything else, there are people who find ways to make the news entertaining…even if it’s something bad. We try to focus on the positive to drown out the negative.”
In 1982, the Supreme Court ruled that all children, regardless of immigration status, can access public education.
While students like Maria are here legally on unique accommodation, there is growing concern about the potential impact an immigration crackdown could have on educational institutions.
The boundary lines for Maria’s school district run along the U.S.-Mexico border. The debate over immigration is finding its way into the classroom, as administrators in Southern Texas believe many of their students come from mixed-status families — some in the household have documentation allowing them to legally reside in the U.S., while others do not.
“When you come to our school district, you will be asked the name, of course, and some type of identification of your child and what can we do to service your child? Our business will never be to ask ‘what is your status in this nation?'” Norma Garcia, director of multi-language at Harlingen Consolidated Independent Schools, said.
District leaders are enhancing mental health support for students and organizing informative sessions for families. These sessions will connect families with experts, such as immigration attorneys and local border patrol agents, to help address their questions and concerns.
However, not all school districts share the same outrage. In Oklahoma, the Department of Education Superintendent Ryan Walters supports the incoming administration’s push for more decisive immigration action.
He claims that the influx of non-English-speaking students has strained the education system. As a solution, he proposes a rule requiring schools to collect information about a student’s or their parent’s immigration status and then share that information with federal authorities.
“Right now, our schools are being required by the federal government to educate all those children of illegal immigrants and never ask them if they’re here legally, never ask them where they’re from,” Walters told ABC. “Never collect any of this information. And so what happens is, is we have situations where one district, we had over 100 students a week that came in in the middle of the school year that we believe are illegal immigrants.”
Oklahoma is suing the former Biden administration and federal agencies for millions of dollars to recover those alleged costs. So far, no other states have joined this newly filed lawsuit.
“We’ve got to do what’s best for the American people, the American taxpayer, and shut down the border, send illegal immigrants back home,” Walters said. “And the best way for us to do that right now is to work with the Trump administration, get them the information they need.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump is expected to sign an executive order Wednesday banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s sports, senior administration officials told ABC News, fulfilling a promise that was at the center of his 2024 campaign.
The order will establish sweeping mandates on sex and sports policy and will direct federal agencies, including the Department of Justice, to interpret federal Title IX rules as prohibiting the participation of transgender girls and women in female sports categories, according to a White House document on the upcoming executive order obtained by ABC News.
The order, titled “Keeping Men Out of Women’s Sports,” sources said, will mandate immediate enforcement, including against schools and athletic associations that “deny women single-sex sports and single-sex locker rooms,” according to the document, and will direct State attorneys general to identify best practices for enforcing the mandate.
The White House expects sports bodies like the NCAA to change their rules in accordance with the order once it is signed, according to a senior administration official.
“We’re a national governing body and we follow federal law,” NCAA President Charlie Baker told Republican senators at a hearing in December. “Clarity on this issue at the federal level would be very helpful.”
Trump is expected to sign an executive order on Wednesday afternoon at a signing ceremony featuring athletes, coaches and advocates who have campaigned against transgender participation in women’s sports, sources said. More than 60 attendees, including former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, will join the ceremony.
“We want to take actions to affirmatively protect women’s sports,” deputy assistant to the president and senior policy strategist May Mailman told ABC News, who said that the executive order is designed to further overturn Biden-era policies that required schools and athletic organizations to treat gender identity and sex as equivalent. She noted that a court ruling determined such requirements were not necessary, and that the president’s executive order would explicitly ban them.
Trump’s executive order will lead to increased discrimination and harassment, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson said in a statement on Tuesday.
“This order could expose young people to harassment and discrimination, emboldening people to question the gender of kids who don’t fit a narrow view of how they’re supposed to dress or look,” Robinson said. “Participating in sports is about learning the values of teamwork, dedication, and perseverance. And for so many students, sports are about finding somewhere to belong. We should want that for all kids – not partisan policies that make life harder for them.”
Mailman said the executive order’s goal was “not to make sure that everybody conforms to their sex stereotype as they’re playing sports” but to “protect women’s sports,” adding that options like co-ed categories would still be available.
If universities don’t comply, the White House warned they could not only lose federal funding but also face legal action.
“If schools don’t comply, it’s not just that they’re at risk of DOJ-based actions,” Mailman said. “Title Nine has a private right of action component behind it, so if schools are violating the law, they’re at risk of lawsuits from their female students, that is going to actually be more than just taking away federal funding. These are multi-million dollar lawsuits.”
The executive order also directs the Secretary of State to push for changes within the International Olympic Committee to maintain single-sex competition and the Department of Homeland Security to review visa policies to prevent transgender women from identifying as female, which would allow them to compete in women’s sports, according to the document detailing the order.
The order is the most aggressive move yet by Trump to fulfill one of his central campaign promises regarding transgender athletes in women’s sports.
Trump signed an executive order last week seeking to restrict gender-affirming care for people under the age of 19.
The order would move to restrict medical institutions that receive federal funding from providing such care — including puberty blockers, hormone therapies, and surgeries — calling on the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services to “take all appropriate actions to end the chemical and surgical mutilation of children.”
(NEW YORK) — Private prison company CoreCivic reported in a lobbying disclosure that it donated $500,000 to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee in December, underscoring the close relationship between President Donald Trump and the private prison industry.
As ABC News has previously reported, CoreCivic and private prison company GEO Group, both which have both long supported Trump, saw their stock prices immediately spike after Trump’s victory in the November election.
The industry is expected to grow under Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.
On his first day back in the White House, Trump reversed former President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order that eliminated DOJ contracts with private prisons.
Both CoreCivic and the GEO Group donated to Trump’s first inaugural committee in 2016, with a subsidiarity of each company donating $250,000, according to past inaugural disclosures.
Several top executives at CoreCivic and GEO Group have also been longtime Republican and Trump donors, Federal Election Commission records show.
Representatives for CoreCivic did not respond to a request for comment from ABC News.
Among other Trump-Vance inaugural committee contributions disclosed in new filings, the Florida-based HVAC company Carrier Global Corporation donated $1 million in what records suggest is the company’s first major political contribution.
Chemical company Syngenta Corporation, now owned by China National Chemical Corporation — known as ChemChina — gave $250,000 to the committee in what was its first inaugural donation in recent years.
The Coca-Cola Company gave $250,000, after giving to both the Biden inaugural committee and Trump’s first inaugural committee, and identify verification company Socure gave $100,000.
Overall contributions to the Trump-Vance inaugural committee set an inauguration record by surpassing the committee’s $150 million goal, boosted by $1 million donations from several major tech firms including Meta and Amazon.
