Category: US

An Indianapolis woman whose 17-year-old daughter suffered a severe allergy and asthma attack at work and was pronounced brain dead days later was faced with a harrowing predicament: block the hospital from removing her daughter from life support and find another facility willing to take her before then.

“God can work a miracle, but I know it’s down to the wire,” Angela Kosarue said Thursday morning, hours before a temporary restraining order was set to expire that prevented doctors at Riley Hospital for Children in downtown Indianapolis from withdrawing her daughter, Treasure Perry, from life support.

A court last Friday initially gave her daughter more time on a ventilator, writing that “the injury suffered by the Plaintiff will be irreparable, in that if life-sustaining measures are terminated, the Plaintiff will likely be deceased.”

But a judge on Wednesday declined to extend a deadline, and Treasure’s family said the hospital took her off the ventilator on Thursday afternoon.

“She was an amazing niece, sister, aunt, daughter and granddaughter,” Skylee Kosarue, an aunt of Treasure, said. “We never gave up on her de ella — the doctors failed her de ella and us.”

Angela Kosarue said she had been scrambling to persuade another hospital to take her daughter, but there was a sticking point, according to her lawyers: Hospitals say they won’t receive the teen because she hasn’t had a tracheotomy, a procedure in which a hole is made in the windpipe to help with breathing. However, Riley Hospital won’t perform a tracheotomy because Treasure is considered clinically dead.

Under Indiana law, a person is considered dead when they’ve sustained an “irreversible cessation” of circulatory and respiratory functions or of all brain functions.

According to Kosarue, her daughter was working at her job at a restaurant on July 23 when she suffered an allergic reaction to shellfish that triggered her asthma. No one at the restaurant could help her, Kosarue said, and she was rushed to the hospital. Doctors declared her brain de ella dead on Aug. 2, about a week and a half after she was hospitalized.

Kosarue, however, wouldn’t give up hope that her daughter’s condition could improve and still considered her alive. She said that Treasure made movements in recent days, including squeezing her hand “like a quick couple of seconds,” and that her pupils were reactive to light.

With drawing her daughter from life support “goes against my beliefs,” Kosarue said. “I believe when your heart stops beating and your body shuts down is when you’re dead.”

A spokeswoman said Thursday that Riley Hospital had no information to share in the case and didn’t provide further comment.

Medical ethics experts say it can be challenging and difficult for some people to accept brain death — when someone can only be kept alive on life support — as permanent.

“Although death by neurologic criteria has been accepted as death medically for over 40 years, legal variance exists throughout the states, especially regarding religious accommodations and in pregnancy,” according to a 2020 paper, “Controversies in Brain Death Declaration: Legal and Ethical Implications in the ICU,” written by two Oregon Health & Science University doctors.

Such cases have drawn intense debate over the years.

In 2013, a 13-year-old named Jahi McMath was declared dead after she suffered irreversible brain damage while having her tonsils removed during a procedure in California. Her mother de ella, however, citing her religious beliefs de ella, said her daughter de ella was still alive and went to court to keep her on life support. In 2018, McMath’s family accepted that she was dead after she had excessive bleeding and liver failure following surgery to treat an intestinal issue.

In writing about the case in 2013, Dr. Arthur Caplan, the founding head of the division of medical ethics at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, said that “brain death is not a coma.”

“People wake up from comas — they still have brain activity. Brain death is not a vegetative state,” Caplan wrote. “People in a vegetative state still have some, minimal brain activity. Those who are brain dead have lost all brain activity except the random firing of a few cells. They will not come back.”

But Kosarue insisted that her daughter wouldn’t want her to give up on her.

Treasure, a middle child with seven siblings, was working to save money for a car before entering her senior year of high school this fall. Kosarue said her daughter de ella “is so loving and full of life” — the first to text back in groups chats and tell her that she loves her at night.

Her asthma would keep her from fully participating in basketball at school, but that didn’t stop her from harboring dreams of playing hoops in college.

Kosarue said her daughter had always been strong-willed.

“I don’t want to give up. I still don’t,” Kosarue said earlier Thursday. “I’ve exhausted all my options from her, but I’m going to keep fighting for her to the every end.”

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a news conference Wednesday in Omaha, Neb.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

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Charlie Neibergall/AP

FBI Director Christopher Wray speaks during a news conference Wednesday in Omaha, Neb.

Charlie Neibergall/AP

OMAHA, Neb. — The director of the FBI had strong words Wednesday for supporters of former President Donald Trump who have been using violent rhetoric in the wake of his agency’s search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home.

Christopher Wray, who was appointed as the agency’s director in 2017 by Trump, called threats circulating online against federal agents and the Justice Department “deplorable and dangerous.”

“I’m always concerned about threats to law enforcement,” Wray said. “Violence against law enforcement is not the answer, no matter who you’re upset with.”

Wray made the remarks following a news conference during a long-planned visit to the agency’s field office in Omaha, Nebraska, where he discussed the FBI’s focus on cybersecurity. He declined to answer questions about the hours-long search Monday by FBI agents of Trump’s Palm Beach, Florida resort.

It has been easy to find the threats and a call to arms in those corners of the internet favored by right-wing extremists since Trump himself announced the search of his Florida home. Reactions included the ubiquitous “Lock and load” and calls for federal agents and even US Attorney General Merrick Garland to be assassinated.

On Gab — a popular social media site with white supremacists and antisemites — one poster going by the name of Stephen said he was awaiting “the call” to mount an armed revolution.

“All it takes is one call. And millions will arm up and take back this country. It will be over in less than 2 weeks,” the post said.

Another Gab poster implored others: “Lets get this started! This unelected, illegitimate regime crossed the line with their GESTAPO raid! It is long past time the lib socialist filth were cleansed from American society!”

The search of Trump’s residence Monday is part of an investigation into whether Trump took classified records from the White House to his Florida residence, according to people familiar with the matter. The Justice Department has been investigating the potential mishandling of classified information since the National Archives and Records Administration said it had received from Mar-a-Lago 15 boxes of White House records, including documents containing classified information, earlier this year.

With California enduring a historic drought amplified by global warming, Gov. Gavin Newsom on Thursday released a new plan to adapt to the state’s hotter, drier future by capturing and storing more water, recycling more wastewater and desalinating seawater and salty groundwater.

The governor’s new water-supply strategy, detailed in a 16-page document, lays out a series of actions aimed at preparing the state for an estimated 10% decrease in California’s water supply by 2040 due to higher temperatures and decreased runoff. The plan focuses on accelerating infrastructure projects, boosting conservation and upgrading the state’s water system to match the increasing pace of climate change, securing enough water for an estimated 8.4 million households.

Newsom called it “an aggressive plan to rebuild the way we source, store and deliver water so our kids and grandkids can continue to call California home in this hotter, drier climate.”

Newsom was scheduled to speak about the plan Thursday morning in Antioch, where a desalination plant is being built to treat brackish water.

“The best science tells us that we need to act now to secure California’s water future. Climate change means drought won’t just stick around for two years at a time like it historically has,” Newsom said in a statement. “Drought is a permanent fixture here in the American West and California will adapt to this new reality.”

The plan calls for expanding water storage capacity above and below ground by 4 million acre-feet; expanding average groundwater recharge by 500,000 acre-feet; accelerating wastewater recycling projects to reuse at least 800,000 acre-feet of water by 2030; building projects to capture more runoff during storms, and desalination of ocean water and salty groundwater.

The projected loss of 10% of the state’s water supply within two decades translates to losing 6 million to 9 million acre-feet per year on average — more than the volume of Shasta Lake, the state’s largest reservoir, which holds 4.5 million acre-feet .

The state’s plan refers to how warmer temperatures unleashed by rising levels of greenhouse gases are leading to what many scientists describe as aridification. A warmer climate makes the atmosphere “thirstier,” pulling more moisture from the landscape through evaporation and increasing the amount plants take in, leaving less runoff flowing into streams and rivers.

“Regardless of drought or flood, in this changed climate there will be less water available for people to use,” the state plan says. “To match the pace of climate change, California must move smarter and faster to update our water systems. The modernization of our water systems will help replenish the water California will lose due to hotter, drier weather.”

The extreme dryness and high temperatures during the 2012-16 drought, closely followed by the current drought since 2020, “send a strong climate signal that we must heed,” the plan says. It says these more extreme conditions make clear that California should “double down” on a set of actions to bolster the state’s water supply “with haste.”

State officials said executing the strategy, which builds on the governor’s water resilience portfolio released in 2020, will require coordination with local and federal agencies and tribes.

The plan includes targets and timelines, such as expanding desalination of brackish groundwater to 84,000 acre-feet by 2040, and increasing the state’s capacity to capture storm water by 500,000 acre-feet by 2040. For comparison, the total annual water use of Los Angeles is nearly 500,000 acre-feet.

Among other things, the state plan calls for creating a groundwater recharge coordinating committee to help implement projects that will capture water and replenish aquifers.

To offset the increased evaporation and reduction in supplies brought on by the changing climate, the plan says, “California must capture, recycle, de-salt, and conserve more water.” It says the new set of priorities will “put to use water that would otherwise be unusable, stretch supplies with efficiency, and expand our capacity to bank water from big storms for dry times.”

The plan says this approach is designed for a “climate prone to weather whiplash.”

The desperate search for missing teen Kiely Rodni who disappeared after a party at a California campground has entered its fifth day.

Kiely, 16, was last seen around 12.30am on 6 August near the Prosser Family Campground in Truckee, where she attended an allegedly alcohol-fueled gathering of more than 200 teens and young adults.

An investigation was launched by the Placer County Sheriff’s Office the next morning after Kiely failed to show up for a hike with friends.

The case is being treated as an abduction because Kiely’s car is unaccounted for. More than 260 personnel have been canvassing the area on the ground and in the air.

Investigators say they don’t have any new leads, but still suspect someone in the community knows more.

“We believe that someone knows,” Nevada County Sheriff’s Office captain Sam Brown told a Wednesday press conference. “Someone saw her but they’re not coming forward.”

Meanwhile Kiely’s boyfriend revealed some of his final words to her: “Be safe. Don’t like, do anything stupid.”

On Monday night, while several Senate GOP nominees jumped to blast the FBI and federal justice officials, Republican candidates in the swing states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina held off. The next morning, as pressure mounted from vocal right-wing activists, celebrity doctor Mehmet Oz, who is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania, took to Twitter with a message that did not mention Trump by name but merely lamented the country’s divisions and asserted that Americans had “every right” to demand answers about the search and seizure of documents.

Rep. Ted Budd, who is seeking a Senate seat in North Carolina, likewise eventually tweeted from his official Congress account after his office was bombarded with calls asking about his response. His statement from him said Americans deserved a “full explanation” of what happened.

Those calls for transparency from Oz and Budd differ markedly from the more fiery rebukes from other Republicans who painted America as a lawless banana republic — and reflect that some GOP candidates in battleground states are erring on the side of caution in discussing a Trump investigation that could influence critical independent and suburban voters.

“The reintroducing of his radioactive person and politics is coming at a very inopportune time for Republicans,” said Michael Brodkorb, a former deputy chair of the Minnesota GOP. “Republicans want this election cycle to be about Joe Biden, inflation, jobs and the economy, and right now, it’s becoming more about Donald Trump. And just like a rock in the shoe that won’t go away, he’s back again, and it’s going to complicate an election cycle that was trending to be a very uncomplicated one for Republicans.”

The caution in some corners in the GOP also reflects just how tight the contest is for control of the Senate. After initially declining to weigh in on the Mar-a-Lago search at a press conference — which prompted criticism from pro-Trump activists — Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also decided to take a cautious tack of calling for transparency, issuing a statement arguing that “the country deserves a thorough and immediate explanation of what led to the events of Monday.”

Scott Jennings, a Kentucky-based GOP strategist who has served as an adviser to McConnell, said that approach enables Republicans to nod to the party base without turning off more moderate voters.

“If you’re a candidate who doesn’t want to engage in conspiracy theories, but you also don’t want to ignore it, it’s a pretty good place to land by saying, ‘We need some transparency here,’” Jennings said . “Donald Trump — like him or not — this is not a run-of-the-mill situation. Because half the American people are going to believe something politically motivated is afoot.”

Jonathan Felts, a senior adviser to Budd, said the campaign decided to wait on issuing a statement because they assumed there would be some type of explanation from the Department of Justice.

“We didn’t have a political calculus,” Felts said of the campaign’s decision not to immediately jump on the issue Monday.

But as Budd’s congressional office began getting slammed with phone calls from constituents angry about a perceived overreach by the Biden administration, his official House social media accounts — though not ones associated with his Senate campaign — posted a statement just before noon Tuesday. Calling the search “unprecedented,” Budd, who has touted his support of him from law enforcement, stopped short of suggesting the FBI activity was illegitimate.

“Shame on us for thinking Joe Biden wouldn’t play partisan politics with the FBI,” Felts said in a statement to POLITICO, explaining the campaign’s decision.

Oz’s campaign declined to elaborate on his statement.

In Colorado and Washington, two blue states Senate Republicans are eyeing this year as potential pickups, the GOP nominees haven’t publicly mentioned the FBI activity involving Trump.

Despite the downsides of the issue for some candidates, many Republican strategists also see an upside: It’s a fundraising opportunity for the GOP, especially among small-dollar donors. Jennings guessed that “every fundraising consultant in America, when this happened, called their client and said, ‘Hop on this immediately.’”

And some did, including Oz. In stark contrast to his remarks from him on Twitter, a fundraising email from Oz sent Tuesday afternoon called for fighting back “against THIS NEFARIOUS CORRUPTION.”

Josh Novotney, a Pennsylvania-based GOP consultant, said another benefit is that the search could supercharge Republican voters to go to the polls: “The FBI, I’m not calling them political by any means, but what they do ends up having political ramifications. And I think what happened with Mar-a-Lago, after seeing the reaction of a lot of conservatives, is it will probably motivate conservatives to have even more dislike for the administration.”

Several Republican Senate nominees in battleground states took an approach to the Mar-a-Lago search more directly aimed at those voters.

Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Senate candidates Adam Laxalt of Nevada and Herschel Walker of Georgia each lambasted the “weaponization” or “weaponizing” of federal agencies under Biden. And in Arizona, Republican Senate nominee Blake Masters tried to contrast the FBI action against Trump with alleged inaction by law enforcement against violent crime affecting ordinary citizens.

“When street crimes go unsolved but opposition leaders are hounded by federal police, you’re living in a third world country,” Masters tweeted Monday night. On Tuesday and Wednesday, he doubled down, asking why his opponent, the Democratic Sen. Mark Kelly, had not remarked on the “politicization of the DOJ.”

Johnson not only put out a scorching statement on social media, he participated in a series of interviews in which he hinted at nefarious activity by the FBI, including suggesting on the radio that the agency might have been “recovering evidence that would be embarrassing to the FBI.”

Those Republicans’ comments matched the sentiment of Florida Sen. Rick Scott, chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, who declared that “every Republican must demand accountability.” Scott reiterated his feelings about him on television, even as other members of Senate GOP leadership — members more closely aligned with McConnell — took a more measured approach.

Kelly isn’t the only Democratic Senate candidate in a swing state who has remained tight-lipped about the Mar-a-Lago search — in fact, all in the top battlegrounds have been. Even as liberal activists and commentators have gloated, Lt. Govs. John Fetterman of Pennsylvania and Mandela Barnes of Wisconsin, both of whom are vying for the Senate, steered clear of mentioning the FBI action against Trump. Democratic incumbents in other competitive races were also mum, choosing instead to tweet about policy matters or troll their opponents on unrelated issues.

Though many Democrats are counting down the days until Trump announces a 2024 presidential bid under the belief that it would help them in midterms, some party strategists believe nationalizing Senate races could backfire. Fetterman, who has lambasted bad trade deals and run TV ads on Fox News, is making a play for rural voters and Trump supporters. Barnes has highlighted his middle-class roots in an effort to appeal to a broad electorate.

A focus group of swing voters in Pennsylvania held on Wednesday evening, which was viewed exclusively by POLITICO, highlighted the complicated political dynamics of the moment. All of the voters in the focus group held by the Republican Accountability Project had supported Biden or a third-party candidate in 2020 after casting a ballot for Trump four years earlier. About half expressed suspicion of the FBI’s actions and believed it would rally Trump’s base on him.

“They just want to find a reason to prevent [Trump] to run,” said one woman who was planning to vote for Fetterman.

Another woman supporting Fetterman said “I don’t know enough about it” when asked whether the search was a political stunt.

A man who was a soft Oz supporter, and leaning toward backing Democratic gubernatorial nominee Josh Shapiro, said “there’s subpoenas, there’s other ways to get” Trump’s documents. “A raid — if that’s what it’s about, it’s over the top.”

David Siders contributed to this report.