Texas land commissioner offers 1,402 acres to Trump for ‘deportation facilities’
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(AUSTIN, Texas) — Texas Land Commissioner Dawn Buckingham is offering the incoming Trump administration 1,402 acres it purchased along the Texas-Mexico border to be used in a mass deportation operation.
In a letter to President-elect Donald Trump, Buckingham said she’s offering the land “to be used to construct deportation facilities.”
The Texas General Land Office purchased the plot of land from a farmer in October to facilitate Texas’ efforts to build a wall.
“My office is fully prepared to enter into an agreement with the Department of Homeland Security, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or the United States Border Patrol to allow a facility to be built for the processing, detention, and coordination of the largest deportation of violent criminals in the nation’s history,” Buckingham wrote in the letter, dated Tuesday.
Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs told ABC News Live on Monday that she would not use state police or the National Guard to help with mass deportation.
“We will not be participating in misguided efforts that harm our communities,” she said.
Trump on Monday confirmed he would declare a national emergency to carry out his campaign promise of mass deportations of migrants living in the U.S. without legal permission, and pledged to get started on the mass deportations as soon as he enters office.
A spokeswoman for the Trump transition team said the president-elect will “marshal every lever of power” to launch his mass deportation plans.
“Local and state officials on the frontlines of the Harris-Biden border invasion have been suffering for four years and are eager for President Trump to return to the Oval Office. On day one, President Trump will marshal every lever of power to secure the border, protect their communities, and launch the largest mass deportation operation of illegal immigrant criminals in history,” Karoline Leavitt said.
In an interview with Fox News, which first reported the news of the Texas General Land Office’s offer, Buckingham reiterated she is “100% on board” with the incoming administration’s promise to deport criminals.
The plot of land is in Starr County, about 35 miles west of McAllen, Texas.
“Now it’s essentially farmland, so it’s flat, it’s easy to build on. We can very easily put a detention center on there — a holding place as we get these criminals out of our country,” she told Fox News.
(NEW YORK) — When convicted Delphi, Indiana, killer Richard Allen returns to court for sentencing on Friday, he’s expected to come face-to-face with the victims’ families.
Last month, a jury found Allen guilty on all charges in the double homicide: felony murder for the killing of 13-year-old Abigail “Abby” Williams while attempting to commit kidnapping; felony murder for the killing of 14-year-old Liberty “Libby” German while attempting to commit kidnapping; murder for knowingly killing Abby; and murder for knowingly killing Libby.
Allen faces a sentence of 90 to 130 years in prison.
A gag order has prevented the families of Abby and Libby from commenting during or after Allen’s trial. But at sentencing, they’ll get their chance to address Allen through victim impact statements.
When Allen was arrested in 2022 — five years after the 2017 murders — Libby’s grandparents and guardians, Becky and Mike Patty, told ABC News they were grappling with the news that the suspect was living among them in their small town.
“How can somebody do that and then just go on living life like nothing happened?” Mike Patty said.
Law enforcement, prosecutors and defense attorneys have also been under the gag order and have not yet commented on the verdict.
Abby and Libby were walking along a Delphi hiking trail when they were attacked on Feb. 13, 2017. Their throats were slit and their bodies were dumped in the nearby woods.
Moments before the murders, Libby posted a photo of Abby on Snapchat showing her on the Monon High Bridge. After crossing the bridge, the girls saw a man behind them — who became known as “bridge guy” — and Libby started a recording on her phone, according to prosecutors.
As police looked for the suspect, they released footage from Libby’s phone to the public: a grainy image of “bridge guy” and an audio clip of him telling the girls to go “down the hill.”
Allen, a husband and father who worked at the local CVS, was arrested in 2022. He admitted to police he was on the trail that day, but he denied being involved in the crime.
The prosecution’s key physical evidence was a .40-caliber unspent round discovered by the girls’ bodies. Police analysis determined that unspent round was cycled through Allen’s Sig Sauer Model P226, prosecutors said.
Another major focus of the trial was Allen’s multiple confessions in jail and his mental health at the time. The defense argued Allen was in a psychotic state when he confessed numerous times to his psychologist, corrections officers and his wife.
Photography by Keith Getter (all rights reserved)/Getty Images
Meteorology may have come a long way since its inception, but it is not possible for anyone — whether it be the government, scientists or billionaires — to control the weather, according to experts.
The desert region of Dubai received a record-breaking amount of rain — two year’s worth in 24 hours — in April. Ever since, every time a flash flooding event occurs, ABC New Chief Meteorologist and Managing Editor of the ABC News Climate Unit Ginger Zee has been receiving messages on social media from people who claim the sharp increase in precipitation is not the result of nature.
“They are making it rain” is the overall theme of the conspiracy theories Zee keeps hearing about.
The commenters are often referring to cloud seeding, a weather modification technique currently used in the United Arab Emirates and several places in the U.S., mostly in the Western U.S., a region notorious for its pervasive droughts. The geoengineering technology involves injecting microscopic particles — sometimes silver iodide — into the atmosphere to encourage rain and snowfall.
The particles then act like magnets for water droplets and bind together until they are heavy enough to fall as rain or snow, amplifying the amount of precipitation. But the water droplets can’t be made out of nothing — it has to be already raining or snowing for cloud seeding to take effect.
For the last several decades, there have been investments in small-scale cloud seeding operations in pockets in the West, both ground-based and in the air, Brad Udall, senior water and climate research scientist at Colorado State University, told ABC News.
Despite feats in geoengineering, humans have no capability whatsoever to control the weather, Andrew Dessler, director of the Texas Center for Climate Studies, told ABC News.
“Until recently, we weren’t even sure it worked,” Udall said. “But there’s some new science that suggests, yes, you can slightly increase the precipitation out of storms due to these, usually ground-based, but sometimes air-based efforts.”
A 10-year cloud seeding experiment in the Snowy Range and Sierra Madre Range in Wyoming resulted in 5% to 15% increases in snow pack from winter storms, according to a 2015 report from the Wyoming Water Development Office. In the region around Reno, Nevada, cloud seeding is estimated to add enough water to supply about 400,000 households annually, according to the DRI.
While humans can enhance existing weather, it is not possible to control it, Dessler said.
“We humans are not powerless,” Udall said. “But, unfortunately, in the weather realm, our ability to affect things is pretty minor.”
Cloud seeding can’t make it rain. It can’t even make a cloud, according to Zee. And it certainly is not being used to create storms with enough precipitation to cause flash flooding.
If humans could control the weather, then the megadrought in the West would probably never had persisted at the level that it did for decades, Udall said.
In late September and early October, Google searches for cloud seeding ramped up again as Hurricanes Helene and Milton caused severe destruction far beyond the storm’s direct impact, including flash flooding in the mountain region near Asheville, North Carolina, previously considered a climate haven.
While there is some evidence that cloud seeding can enhance precipitation, it’s impossible for humans to create or steer a hurricane, Dessler said.
“It’s amazing we’re even having this discussion because, of course, humans can’t control the weather in ways to create a hurricane,” Udall said.
However, there has been a larger-scale climate modification that has been ongoing for the past two centuries, Zee said.
“We’re doing that right now with green with enormous greenhouse gas emissions on a scale that humanity has never, ever done before,” Udall said.
Since the Industrial Revolution began in the late 1800s, the greenhouse gases emitted from the extraction and burning of fossil fuels have been causing global temperatures to rise at unprecedented rates, according to climate scientists.
The amplification of Earth’s natural warming has actually increased hourly rainfall rates — a key factor in flash flooding — across much of the U.S. by 10% to 40%, according to Climate Central.
“We have all contributed to making it rain more and heavier as we warm the planet,” Zee said.
Dessler likened global warming to “steroids” for extreme weather events.
“Steroids don’t hit a home run, but if you give steroids to a baseball player, he’s gonna hit more home runs,” Dessler said. “And that’s essentially, you know, the way to think about humans and the weather.”
The experts urged people to not believe rumors on the possibility that the weather can be controlled, chalking up the conspiracy theories as machinations of intrigue but nothing more.
“It’s yet one more example, right, of unbridled social media doing irreparable social harm,” Udall said.
ABC News’ Daniel Manzo contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Dozens of people across the U.S. have contracted E. coli traced to ingredients in McDonald’s Quarter Pounders, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said Tuesday.
As a result, McDonald’s announced it has proactively removed two ingredients from stores across two impacted regions, but the company’s leadership team has assured that a majority of other menu items are not impacted, according to the CDC investigation.
What to know about McDonald’s E. coli outbreak
McDonald’s says either fresh, slivered onions or beef patties used for the Quarter Pounder may be behind the outbreak.
If onions are found to be the source of the E. coli outbreak, it would be the first time onions have ever been a carrier for this particular strain of the bacteria, company spokespeople said on Wednesday.
The spokespeople also reiterated that onions used in the Quarter Pounders, as identified by CDC tracing data, came from suppliers that also test for E. coli.
McDonald’s uses multiple suppliers for the slivered onions in the area where the outbreak cluster occurred, but all of the product has been retrieved from stock and it will not be supplying more onions until the investigation is completed.
States impacted by McDonald’s Quarter Pounder E. coli outbreak
So far, one person has died and a total of 49 people from 10 states have fallen ill with a strain known as E. coli O157:H7, which causes a severe intestinal infection in humans.
The person who died was a resident of Mesa County, Colorado, in the western part of the state, according to the county health department.
Most of the cases have been in Colorado, which has 27 reported cases, and Nebraska, which has nine reported cases, according to the CDC.
The other states are Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Montana, Oregon, Utah, Wisconsin and Wyoming.
Ten people have been hospitalized, including a child with complications from hemolytic uremic syndrome (HUS) — a disease that affects the kidneys.
Number of those sickened in outbreak expected to grow
The number of confirmed cases related to the McDonald’s E. coli outbreak could grow.
The CDC says the investigation is “fast-moving,” with new cases being reported on a rolling basis as the investigation connects people reported being ill and the specific strain of E. coli in this outbreak.
McDonald’s stopped selling the Quarter Pounders in the select states just recently, so there may be more cases that develop. The typical onset of symptoms is 3-4 days, and recently ill people may not be part of the current reporting as it usually takes 3-4 weeks to determine if a sick person is part of an outbreak.
The true number of sick people in this outbreak is likely much higher than the number reported, because many people recover without medical care and are not tested for E. coli.
Investigation into McDonald’s ingredients potentially responsible for illness
Every patient interviewed by the CDC said they ate at McDonald’s before falling ill and most said they ate Quarter Pounder hamburgers, specifically.
It’s not clear which ingredient is responsible for the illnesses, but CDC investigators are focused on two ingredients: fresh, slivered onions and fresh beef patties.
“Heat destroys things like bacteria and viruses but in certain cases, especially when you’re producing massive amounts of food — and you have products that are not going to undergo heat, for example, vegetables — that leads to an opportunity for contamination,” ABC News medical correspondent Dr. Darien Sutton explained.
McDonald’s told the CDC it has removed slivered onions and beef patties used for Quarter Pounder hamburgers from stores in the states where cases have been reported, the federal health agency said. As a result, the CDC said Quarter Pounders won’t be available for sale in some states.
In a statement on Tuesday evening, McDonald’s North America Chief Supply Chain Officer Cesar Piña said that the fast food chain believes the outbreak is linked to slivered onions “used in the Quarter Pounder and sourced by a single supplier that serves three distribution centers.”
“As a result, and in line with our safety protocols, all local restaurants have been instructed to remove this product from their supply and we have paused the distribution of all slivered onions in the impacted area,” the statement read, in part. “We will continue to work with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and are committed to providing timely updates as we restore our full menu.”
“The decision to do this is not one we take lightly, and it was made in close consultation with the CDC,” Joe Erlinger, President of McDonald’s USA, said in a statement. “It’s important to note that the majority of states and the majority of menu items are not affected.”
Slivered onions may be linked to strain of E. coli for 1st time
McDonald’s said it is actively working with the CDC, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other health authorities as they investigate.
During the two-week period in which cases were reported, from Sept. 27 to Oct. 11, the fast food chain sells about 1 million Quarter Pounders, making tracing the outbreak complicated, according to company spokespeople.
Because contamination was not linked to a single restaurant, it likely means the outbreak was not caused by the preparation and handling of the food and was likely higher up the chain, the spokespeople said.
If beef patties are behind the contamination, it would mean restaurants failed to cook the food properly to the standard of 175F. However, the slivered onions topping, which are uncooked, are processed at a facility and then sent to McDonald’s.
The company spokespeople said if the slivered onions are identified as the culprit, it would be the first time onions would be a carrier for the O157:H7 strain of E. coli.
McDonald’s said they believe only Quarter Pounders are affected and that case numbers would be much higher if other products were associated with the outbreak.
Currently, one-fifth of McDonald’s stores are not selling Quarter Pounders. Local restaurants customers know if their location is not serving Quarter Pounders, otherwise the product is available, the spokespeople said.
What to know about E. coli symptoms, recovery
Although most E. coli bacteria are harmless and are part of a healthy intestinal tract, some strains of the bacteria can make people sick, according to the CDC.
E. coli symptoms often begin three to four days after ingesting the bacteria and include severe stomach cramps, diarrhea that may be bloody and vomiting.
Most people recover on their own within five to seven days, but some people may develop HUS and require hospitalization.
The CDC urges those who are experiencing severe E. coli symptoms and recently ate a McDonald’s Quarter Pounder to contact their health care provider immediately.
