Winter weather hits Northeast as new storm system moves across country
People walk through snow in Manhattan on December 26, 2025 in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Heavy snow fell from southern Connecticut through the Hudson Valley and into parts of upstate New York on Friday as most of Long Island saw anywhere from 2 to 6 inches of snow.
Meanwhile, the New York City area accumulated just short of 3 inches of snow as difficult travel conditions are expected through Saturday morning while crews work to clean up this wintry mess.
The winter storm is beginning to wrap up, but some lingering light snow and wintry mix will stick around through Saturday along the I-95 corridor as an additional inch of snow and a light glaze of ice will be possible across the region.
Meanwhile, low temperatures across the Northeast from Washington, D.C. and Pittsburgh to the North and East will be near or below freezing on Saturday night, allowing for refreezing of any slush or snow that’s still on the ground.
Another system will move through the region late Sunday into Monday but will be mostly rain, though some wintry mix will be possible into higher elevations.
This weekend, a storm system will move from across the country and bring more snow to the inner mountain West on Saturday and eventually rain to the east on Sunday.
On Saturday, the Rocky Mountains will get snow from Idaho and Montana through Wyoming and Colorado. On Sunday, some snow may linger in the Colorado Rockies and into northern New Mexico.
Most of these mountain areas will see up to a foot of snow, but some areas could see up to 18 inches.
On Sunday, rain will pick up across the Midwest from Kansas and Missouri through Ohio and Pennsylvania while scattered thunderstorms are possible from Arkansas up to Ohio, with some possibly strong enough to bring gusty winds and maybe an isolated tornado.
This system is expected to continue to move through the East late Sunday through Monday, bringing rain for most and freezing rain for some in northern New England.
Next week is expected to start off wet for the East on Monday and will bring mostly rain to the East Coast, with some snow and wintry mix possible for the Great Lakes.
Most of the country should see dry and quiet weather leading up to New Year’s Eve, with the West seasonably warm and the East seasonably cooler.
After New Year’s, a new weather pattern will stick around for the start of 2026 as warmer temperatures should stick around for most of the West and reach down into parts of the South.
Meanwhile, the Upper Midwest and Northeast will be on the cooler side with an active pattern of quick-moving systems possible.
Leslie and Colby Taylor, parents of Jay Taylor, speak to ABC News anchor Juju Chang about their late son and the dangers of 764. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — The parents of a Seattle-area teenager who was allegedly pushed to take his own life by a member of the online extremist network “764” have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against Discord, claiming the social media giant “caused” their son’s suicide and “abetted one of the most depraved and dangerous child abuse cults in modern history.”
According to the lawsuit, Discord “supplied 764 with unlimited victims,” including 13-year-old Jay Taylor, who in January 2022 died by suicide outside of a local grocery store in Gig Harbor, Washington.
“It’s almost biblical in its definition of evil, what happened,” Jay Taylor’s father, Colby, told ABC News in an exclusive interview in November.
As ABC News has previously reported, 764 members find vulnerable victims on popular platforms, elicit private information and intimate sexual images from them, and then use that sensitive material to blackmail victims into mutilating themselves, harming others, or taking other violent action.
Members of 764 often host live online chats so others can watch the self-harm and violence in real time. The further they can push their victims, the more stature and respect they will receive within 764, authorities say.
“Discord [provided] 764 access to its platform, failed to take reasonable steps to prevent or disrupt such exploitation, and affirmatively maintained the same product design and defaults that enabled the abuse,” the new 31-page lawsuit alleges.
Colby Taylor previously told ABC News that he and his wife, Leslie, were preparing to file a lawsuit against Discord, hoping that legal action would pressure the platform to do more to stop online predators. The lawsuit was filed Thursday in a Pierce County, Washington, court, seeking an unspecified amount in damages.
As the Taylors described it to ABC News, Jay Taylor was a vulnerable victim. He was “funny” and “sweet,” and he had a knack for drawing and crafts, his mother recalled. But by the start of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic had left Jay feeling isolated and lonely. And though he was assigned female at birth, he was in the midst of a gender transition, exacerbating his feelings of loneliness, his parents said.
In January 2022, Jay posted a message to Discord, saying, “I’m looking for friends, preferably LGBTQ for crochet buddies,” Jay’s father recalled.
Someone responded to Jay’s message, bringing him into a live chat with several others. Within an hour or so, the others in the group chat began telling Jay he should kill himself, Jay’s parents recounted.
A Discord user who called himself “White Tiger” online was leading the charge, directing others to push and manipulate Jay, according to Jay’s parents.
“Eventually, the pressure took hold of Jay,” their lawsuit says.
The FBI later identified “White Tiger” as a young German-Iranian medical student from Hamburg, Germany. He is currently on trial in Hamburg, charged with Jay Taylor’s murder and more than 200 other counts for the alleged abuse of dozens of victims. According to the Taylors’ lawsuit, Discord poses “a foreseeable risk of harm to youth users” and is “not reasonably safe as designed.”
“From the outset, Discord designed a platform structurally rife with obvious, risk-amplifying features–and when those risks materialized through 764, Discord housed it, grew it, and meanwhile marketed itself to more child users, guaranteeing their exploitation,” the lawsuit says.
The lawsuit further alleges that Discord is “refusing to invest in commonsense safety measures” and “deliberately understaffs and under-resources its safety and response team, employing a tiny fraction of what is needed to effectively control abusive conduct.”
764 was started on Discord by a teenager in Stephenville, Texas, who named it after the first three digits of his local ZIP code. Born in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, when teenagers were stuck inside and flocked to online spaces, 764 was an even more vicious offshoot of other online groups exploiting children through blackmail and self-harm, authorities said.
Since then, 764 has spread around the world, growing into more of an ideology than a singular group, experts say. And other groups, inspired by 764, have formed with different names but identical tactics and goals. As of November, the FBI was investigating more than 350 people across the United States with suspected ties to 764 or similar networks.
The number has only increased since then, experts say. On Tuesday, the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, James Comer, R-Kentucky, sent a letter to FBI Director Kash Patel, demanding that FBI officials brief committee staff on the agency’s efforts to “track and apprehend” members of 764.
Citing reporting from ABC News, Comer wrote that the “disturbing tactics attributed to this network” warrant “rigorous oversight and an evaluation of whether existing federal countermeasures are effective and adequately resourced to combat these elusive online perpetrators.”
In September, Patel told lawmakers during a public Senate hearing that fighting 764 is now “a priority” for the FBI. He called 764-related crimes a new form of “modern-day terrorism in America.”
On Friday, a spokesperson for Discord said the company is reviewing the new lawsuit filed by Colby and Leslie Taylor.
After ABC News interviewed the Taylors several months ago, a Discord representative told ABC News in a statement that the platform is “committed to user safety” and that the “horrific actions of groups like this have no place on Discord or anywhere in society.”
According to a Discord spokesperson, the platform invests “heavily” in specialized teams and newly-developed artificial intelligence tools that can “disrupt these networks, remove violative content, and take action against bad actors on our platform.”
Discord also said it shares intelligence with other platforms, which can help identify bad actors even before Discord has spotted them, and Discord said it cooperates with law enforcement, proactively providing tips and other information to them.
Its tips have led to many arrests, including the arrest of Bradley Cadenhead, the Texas teen who started 764 and is now serving an 80-year sentence in state prison after pleading guilty to child pornography-related charges. And Discord recently announced new tools aimed at giving parents more control and more insight into their children’s accounts.
A memorial dedicated to the 19 children and two adults murdered on May 24,2022 during a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School is seen on January 05, 2026 in Uvalde, Texas. (Brandon Bell/Getty Images)
(UVALDE, Texas) — A jury has acquitted former Uvalde, Texas, school police officer Adrian Gonzales for his response to the Robb Elementary shooting in May 2022.
After more than seven hours of deliberations, the jury returned a not guilty verdict Wednesday evening on all 29 counts of child endangerment.
As the verdict was read, Gonzalez bowed his head as he heard it. Several of those sitting in the gallery started crying. He hugged his lawyers, shook hands and appeared to be tearing up.
Gonzales was among the first officers to respond to the mass shooting, in which 19 students and two teachers were killed. It took 77 minutes before law enforcement mounted a counterassault to end the rampage.
Prosecutors alleged Gonzales did not follow his training and endangered the 19 students who died and an additional 10 surviving students.
Lawyers for Gonzales, who pleaded not guilty, argued he was unfairly blamed for a broader law-enforcement failure that day.
Ex-officer: Focused on ‘picking up the pieces’ When he walked out of the courtroom on Wednesday night after the jury acquitted him, Gonzales was a man of few words.
“I want to start by thanking God for this — my family, my wife and these guys — he put them in my path,” he told reporters, referring to his lawyers. “Thank you for the jury, for considering all the evidence.”
When ABC News’ John Quiñones asked him, “What does moving on look like to you?” he answered succinctly.
“Picking up the pieces and moving forward,” Gonzales said.
Asked about the frustration of some of the families of victims about the verdict, defense attorney Nico LaHood said he’s “sorry that they feel that way” and vowed to pray for them.
“We pray for them. We’re sorry that they feel that way. We understand that their separation from their loved one is going to be felt as long as they walk on this earth, and we don’t, we don’t ignore that. We acknowledge that we’re just going to continue to pray for them. So I’m very sorry that they feel that way,” he said.
According to LaHood — who said he spoke with some of the jurors after the verdict — the jury was saddened by the trial but couldn’t see through some gaps in the prosecution’s case.
“They were very mindful and deliberate,” LaHood said. “Obviously, they were saddened, because they know what the other families are mourning still, but they said there were a lot of gaps in the evidence, and some of it didn’t make sense.”
Jason Goss, another attorney for Gonzales, told reporters that he believes the verdict clears his client’s name.
“The evidence showed that not only did he not fail, but he put himself in great danger,” Goss said. “So, you can imagine how somebody who has had the entire country look at him as somebody who was not willing to do his duty. He is a proud man who does do his duty. And he went in there. When it was time for him to go, he went in there.”
Families of the victims react
For Jacinto Cazares — whose 9-year-old daughter Jackie died in the shooting — the verdict was yet another instance of the legal system failing to deliver justice after one of the worst mass shootings in US history.
“We had a little hope, but it wasn’t enough,” he said outside the court. “Again, we are failed. I don’t even know what to say.”
Cazares said he was hopeful that the jury might have reached a different conclusion but “prepared for the worst.”
“I need to keep composed for my daughter. It has been an emotional roller coaster since day one. I am pissed,” he said.
Jesse Rizo, Jackie’s uncle, told reporters he was concerned about the message the verdict might send to police officers who respond to future mass shootings.
“I respect the jury’s decision, but what message does it send?” he said. “If you’re an officer, you can simply stand by, stand down, stand idle, and not do anything and wait for everybody to be executed, killed, slaughtered, massacred.”
When asked about the defense case by ABC’s John Quiñones, Jackie’s aunt Julissa Rizo pushed back on the defense narrative that Gonzales acted heroically that day.
“The defense said he did as much as he could,” Quiñones said.
“That’s not true,” she responded. “There were two monsters on May 24. One was the shooter, and the other one was the one that never went in, that could have avoided this.”
How the trial unfolded Each of the 29 counts Gonzales faced carried a maximum penalty of two years in prison, and h. could have spent the rest of his life in prison if he was convicted.
Prosecutors claimed Gonzales had a unique opportunity to stop the carnage when he arrived and learned gunman Salvador Ramos’ location from a teaching aide. The aide testified that she repeatedly urged Gonzales to intervene, but said the officer did “nothing” in those crucial moments. Prosecutors also argued Gonzales failed to act once he got inside the school.
Before jurors were sent to deliberate, District Attorney Christina Mitchell gave an impassioned plea, saying, “I know this case is difficult, and it has been difficult. But we cannot continue to let children die in vain.”
The defense argued that Gonzales did everything he could in that moment — including gathering critical information, evacuating children and entering the school — and said Gonzales acted on the information he had. The defense also highlighted that other officers arrived in the same timeframe as Gonzales and that at least one officer had an opportunity to shoot the gunman before he entered the school.
This case marks the second time in U.S. history that prosecutors have sought to hold a member of law enforcement criminally accountable for their response to a mass shooting.
In 2023, a Florida jury acquitted Scot Peterson, a former Broward County sheriff’s deputy, who was charged with child neglect and culpable negligence for his alleged inaction during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Peterson’s lawyers argued his role as an armed school resource officer did not amount to a caregiving post needed to prove child neglect in Florida, and that the response to the shooting was muddled by poor communication.
Former Uvalde Schools Police Chief Pete Arredondo — who was the on-site commander on the day of the Robb Elementary shooting — is also charged with endangerment or abandonment of a child and has pleaded not guilty. Arredondo’s case has been delayed indefinitely by an ongoing federal lawsuit filed after the U.S. Border Patrol refused repeated efforts by Uvalde prosecutors to interview Border Patrol agents who responded to the shooting, including two who were in the tactical unit responsible for killing the gunman at the school.
“What happened to Uvalde on May 24 can happen anywhere, at any time,” she said. “If it’s going to happen, and if we have laws mandating what the responsibility of a law enforcement peace officer is for a school district, then we better be ready to back it up.”
Purchased Powerball tickets ((Photo by Lori Van Buren/Albany Times Union via Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A $1.25 billion Powerball jackpot prize is up for grabs Wednesday night, with a cash value of $572.1 million, after no winners were selected Monday.
This is the game’s sixth largest prize ever, according to Powerball. The largest prize ever was $2.04 billion won on Nov. 7, 2022.
The Powerball jackpot last rolled Monday night, when no ticket matched the five white balls — 23, 35, 59, 63, 68 — and red Powerball 2.
The Powerball jackpot was last hit on Sept. 6 by two tickets in Missouri and Texas that split a $1.787 billion prize. There have been 43 consecutive drawings with no jackpot wins.
If a player wins on Wednesday night, they will have the choice between annual payments worth an estimated $1.25 billion or an immediate $572.1 million lump sum payment.
According to Powerball, the odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million.
The drawing will be held just before 11 p.m. ET in the Florida Lottery draw studio in Tallahassee.
