The brother of Ghislaine Maxwell says that he denies any possibility that his sister is guilty of the sex trafficking crimes she was convicted of on Wednesday.
Kevin Maxwell, in an American television exclusive, spoke to ABC News a day after a jury convicted his sister of conspiring with and aiding serial sex offender Jeffrey Epstein in his sexual abuse of underage girls.
Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s longtime associate, was convicted Wednesday on five of six counts related to the abuse and trafficking of underage girls between 1994 and 2004.
Kevin Maxwell told ABC News’ James Hill that his sister had been unfairly portrayed as Epstein’s “demon queen” accomplice, and that while accusers’ testimony might have been moving, she should not be pilloried for her longtime associate’s crimes.
“I think that anybody who sat in and listened to the accusers’ testimony — I’m a dad, I’m a brother, anybody, just any normal guy listening to their testimony — is going to have been moved. And I can also understand anger. But that doesn’t mean that I believe for a single second that my sister is guilty of the crimes of which she was convicted,” Kevin Maxwell said.
Epstein, the one-time millionaire financier, died by suicide in jail in 2019.
Ghislaine and Kevin Maxwell are two of the children of controversial British publishing mogul Robert Maxwell, who drowned in the Atlantic Ocean after falling off his yacht in 1991.
Kevin Maxwell sat through his sister’s trial for a substantial portion of the proceedings, often accompanied by her other siblings, Isabel, Christine and Ian. Less than 24 hours after his sister was convicted, he told ABC News that he was “still shocked” at the verdict in what he described as a “tremendous injustice.”
His sister will appeal the verdict, Maxwell said, and he was certain that it would be overturned and that she would be vindicated.
“The reality is that there are myriad jury cases, miscarriages of justice involving juries, where the verdicts have been overturned on appeal. This will just be yet another one,” Maxwell said.
“Because of the, we think, very strong legal grounds and evidential grounds for the appeal, obviously that has to wait for sentencing, so it’s some way off, but the work is already in hand and we’re very confident,” he said.
Though multiple accusers testified that Ghislaine Maxwell had groomed them for Epstein’s abuse — and had at times participated in it herself — Kevin Maxwell pushed back on her role.
“There’s no, simply no, question that there are many victims of Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes,” Maxwell said. “They’re simply not crimes that were committed by my sister.”
Kevin Maxwell would not say if he had anything to tell Epstein’s accusers and those who say Ghislaine Maxwell played a role in abetting Epstein’s crimes.
“I don’t want to use this opportunity to denigrate in any way the evidence that’s been given by those accusers; that’s their evidence,” he said. “As I say, I remain absolutely persuaded of Epstein’s crimes. I’m equally persuaded that my sister will be exonerated on appeal, and these guilty verdicts will be overturned.”
Retired two-star U.S. General Paul Eaton co-authored a recent op-ed about the fear that a coup could succeed after the 2024 elections.
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Retired two-star U.S. General Paul Eaton co-authored a recent op-ed about the fear that a coup could succeed after the 2024 elections.
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As the anniversary of the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol approaches, three retired U.S. generals have warned that another insurrection could occur after the 2024 presidential election and the military could instigate it.
The generals – Paul Eaton, Antonio Taguba and Steven Anderson – made their case in a recent Washington Post Op-Ed. “In short: We are chilled to our bones at the thought of a coup succeeding next time,” they wrote.
Paul Eaton, a retired U.S. Army major general and a senior adviser to VoteVets, spoke with NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly earlier this week.
Below are the highlights of the conversation.
Edited for brevity and clarity.
How could a coup play out in 2024?
The real question is, does everybody understand who the duly elected president is? If that is not a clear cut understanding, that can infect the rank and file or at any level in the US military.
Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., read the final certification of Electoral College votes cast in November’s presidential election, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol.
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Vice President Mike Pence and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., read the final certification of Electoral College votes cast in November’s presidential election, hours after a pro-Trump mob broke into the U.S. Capitol.
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And we saw it when 124 retired generals and admirals signed a letter contesting the 2020 election. We’re concerned about that. And we’re interested in seeing mitigating measures applied to make sure that our military is better prepared for a contested election, should that happen in 2024.
How worried is he on a scale of 1 to 10?
I see it as low probability, high impact. I hesitate to put a number on it, but it’s an eventuality that we need to prepare for. In the military, we do a lot of war-gaming to ferret out what might happen. You may have heard of the Transition Integrity Project that occurred about six months before the last election. We played four scenarios. And what we did not play is a U.S. military compromised – not to the degree that the United States is compromised today, as far as 39% of the Republican Party refusing to accept President Biden as president – but a compromise nonetheless. So, we advocate that that particular scenario needs to be addressed in a future war game held well in advance of 2024.
A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 as Congress held a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.
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A pro-Trump mob breaks into the U.S. Capitol on January 06, 2021 as Congress held a joint session to ratify President-elect Joe Biden’s 306-232 Electoral College win over President Donald Trump.
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Can the current Pentagon leadership handle it?
I’m a huge fan of Secretary [of Defense Lloyd] Austin, a huge fan of the team that he has put together and the uniformed military under General Milley. They’re just superb. And I am confident that the best men and women in the U.S. and in our military will be outstanding. I just don’t want the doubt that has compromised or infected the greater population of the United States to infect our military.
What should the military do?
I had a conversation with somebody about my age and we were talking about civics lessons, liberal arts education, and the development of the philosophical underpinnings of the U.S. Constitution. And I believe that bears a re-teach to make sure that each and every 18-year-old American truly understands the Constitution of the United States, how we got there, how we developed it and what our forefathers wanted us to understand years down the road. That’s an important bit of education that I think that we need to re-address.
I believe that we need to wargame the possibility of a problem and what we are going to do. The fact that we were caught completely unprepared – militarily, and from a policing function – on January 6, is incomprehensible to me. Civilian control of the military is sacrosanct in the U.S. and that is a position that we need to reinforce.
A protester screams “Freedom” inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob on January 06, 2021. Retired U.S. General Paul Eaton suggests better civics lessons could help prevent another insurrection.
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A protester screams “Freedom” inside the Senate chamber after the U.S. Capitol was breached by a mob on January 06, 2021. Retired U.S. General Paul Eaton suggests better civics lessons could help prevent another insurrection.
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Are civics lessons ‘weak tea’ to stave off an insurrection?
A component of that – unsaid – is that we all know each other very well. And if there is any doubt in the loyalty and the willingness to follow the Oath of the United States, the support and defend part of the U.S. Constitution, then those folks need to be identified and addressed in some capacity. When you talk to a squad leader, a staff sergeant, a nine man Rifle Squad, he knows his men and women very, very well.
Colorado Gov. Jared Polis has reduced a 110-year sentence to 10 years for a truck driver who killed four people in 2019 after he said his brakes gave out.
Polis announced Rogel Aguilera-Mederos’ commutation on Thursday, a week after a Colorado district attorney asked the court to reconsider his sentence, and explained his reasoning in a clemency letter.
“You were sentenced to 110 years in prison, effectively more than a life sentence, for a tragic but unintentional act. While you are not blameless, your sentence is disproportionate compared with many other inmates in our criminal justice system who committed intentional, premeditated, or violent crimes,” Polis wrote in his letter to Aguilera-Mederos.
The “arbitrary and unjust sentence” was a result of Colorado’s mandatory minimum sentencing laws, the governor wrote.
Aguilera-Mederos, 26, said his truck’s brakes failed in April 2019 while driving on Interstate 70 west of Denver, leading him to crash into cars that were stopped because of another collision. Four people died in the crash: Doyle Harrison, 61; William Bailey, 67; Stanley Politano, 69; and Miguel Lamas Arrellano, 24.
A jury found Aguilera-Mederos guilty on four counts of vehicular homicide and 23 other charges in October. He was sentenced in December to 110 years in prison.
Since then, more than five million people have signed a petition to cut his jail sentence. Judge A. Bruce Jones, who said the state’s sentencing laws forced him to give the minimum of 110 years, and one member of a victim’s family said they disagreed with the length of the punishment following the hearing.
In his letter to Aguilera-Mederos, Polis also wrote, “Though your actions have caused immense pain, I am encouraged by your personal reflection and the commercial vehicle safety changes that were made in the wake of this tragedy to ensure this type of event never happens again.”
Aguilera-Mederos will be eligible for parole on Dec. 30, 2026.
BOULDER, Colo. — A ferocious wind-driven wildfire on Thursday destroyed hundreds of homes and businesses near Denver, forcing tens of thousands to flee and blanketing the area in smoke.
The high winds that fanned fires in the area continued into Thursday night as the Boulder suburbs of Superior and Louisville remained under evacuation orders. Firefighters were forced to withdraw in many areas as one large wildfire raged on and another remained under control.
On Thursday night, hundreds of people watched from a ridge top as orange flames tore through the Rock Creek neighborhood of Superior, and numerous other fires dotted the horizon.
Firefighting conditions were expected to improve overnight with decreasing winds. The National Weather Service said a high wind warning was extended through 8 p.m. but winds were expected to lessen overnight. Snow that’s expected Friday could also help douse the blaze, a National Weather Service meteorologist told USA TODAY.
About 600 homes, a Target shopping complex and a hotel have been destroyed by fire in the area, according to Boulder County Sheriff Joe Pelle.
One fire had burned over 1,600 acres in a suburban area as of Thursday evening, Pelle said at a press conference. At least one first responder was injured and a hospital reported treating several burn victims.
There have been no reports of missing people or fatalities yet. But Pelle said he would not be surprised if there were injuries or fatalities resulting from the fires.
Gov. Jared Polis declared a state of emergency to allow the state to access emergency funds and services.
“This area, for those who don’t know this area of Boulder County, is right in and around suburban sub-developments, stores – It’s like the neighborhood that you live in,” Polis said at the press conference. “1,600 acres near a population center can be, and is in this case, absolutely devastating.”
On Thursday afternoon, a cloud of dark gray smoke could be seen blowing over the town of Superior, located about 20 miles northwest of Denver. The entire town of about 13,000 residents was ordered to evacuate. About 210 homes were lost in the Old Town area of Superior.
The city of Louisville, with some 20,000 residents, was also ordered to evacuate. All 370 homes in the Sagamore subdivision of Louisville also burned, Pelle said.
Late Thursday night, Louisville issued a boil water advisory for the entire city in coordination with Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment.
“Protect yourself by using bottled water or boiling any water to be used for drinking, making ice, brushing teeth, washing dishes, and food preparation until further notice,” the advisory said.
Six people were hospitalized with burns at UCHealth Broomfield Hospital, spokeswoman Kelli Christensen told USA TODAY. She could not elaborate on their conditions or the severity of burns due to HIPAA, a health care privacy law, but said all six were being treated currently.
Centura-Avista Adventist Hospital, just northwest of Broomfield, evacuated its patients and employees as the flames grew closer. The hospital was fully evacuated by 4:15 p.m. and sent patients to two sister hospitals. Before the hospital was evacuated, videos posted to social media showed flames just across the street with homes on fire. One video showed hospital workers in a field outside the hospital with a hose nearby that had been used to wet the grass.
“Patients should not attempt to go to Avista Adventist Hospital; nearby roads have been closed. Patients should go to the nearest hospital to receive services or call 9-1-1 if it is emergency,” said Lindsay Radford, a spokeswoman for the hospital.
The Broomfield Detention Center, about 20 miles northwest of Denver, was evacuated late Thursday night. All inmates were evacuated to another facility and are safe, Broomfield police tweeted.
As of 5 p.m., the fire was hopscotching through several neighborhoods in Superior, setting ablaze some houses and leaving others untouched. Almost all that burned were completely unchecked, firefighters powerless to stop the flames being driven by the howling wind.
Pat Kilbride, who has lived in the Old Town area of Superior for 30 years said his house burned down, killing his dog and cat. He said he believed many other homes were also destroyed.
Kilbride rushed toward his house when he heard the fire was approaching the area, but couldn’t get close because of road closures. By the time he arrived on foot, it was already engulfed.
“It’s all gone. The whole Old Town,” he said. “I’m going to head back to my truck and feel sorry for myself.”
Strong winds were helping fuel the blaze with gusts as strong as 115 mph measured earlier in the day just south of Boulder, Bruno Rodriguez, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service told USA TODAY. Constant winds were being measured around 40 mph with higher gusts throughout the region.
Officials suspected some of the fires may have been sparked by downed power lines.
Rodriguez said the winds were unlike anything they’ve seen this season. Coupled with six to seven months of incredibly dry conditions, he said, it was “the worst, most terrible combination that just allowed a fast-moving fire like this.”
The region only saw about 1.6 inches of rain since August, which was “well below normal,” Rodriguez said.
As firefighters continued to battle the raging fire, the area was also placed under a winter storm warning with several inches of snow forecast overnight and into Friday. The wet snow should help douse the blaze, along with winds forecasted to slow into the evening.
“We’re going to thankfully see rapidly changing weather conditions,” Rodriguez said. “We’ve been waiting for this snow for a while, and it couldn’t have come at a better time.”
Gov. Gavin Newsom declared a state of emergency in 20 California counties on Thursday as winter storms continued to lash the state with record snow and rainfall that have knocked out power, shut down major roads and freeways, and caused debris flows, among other hazards.
According to the proclamation, the following counties are under a state of emergency: Alameda, Amador, Calaveras, El Dorado, Humboldt, Lake, Los Angeles, Marin, Monterey, Napa, Nevada, Orange, Placer, Sacramento, San Bernardino, San Luis Obispo, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Sierra and Yuba.
The emergency proclamation will support response and recovery efforts after the storms, including by expanding access to state resources under the state’s Disaster Assistance Act, according to a statement by Newsom’s office.
It directs the California Department of Transportation to request immediate help through the Federal Highway Administration’s Emergency Relief Program for highway repairs or reconstruction and eases access to unemployment benefits for residents who lose their jobs because of the storms.
In Los Angeles, the slow-moving storm caused multiple road and highway closures and triggered evacuations near wildfire burn scars.
Firefighters rescued at least 50 people from the Leo Carrillo State Park campground in Malibu after rainfall sent a torrent of muddy water through the area, and accumulating ice and snow forced officials to close a portion of the Grapevine in both directions of the 5 Freeway for several hours.
Travelers at downtown L.A.’s Union Station were sent scrambling in the morning as several inches of water filled at least one hallway.
In the Sierra Nevada, record-breaking snowfall brought communities to a standstill as storms cut power to tens of thousands of residents and officials urged residents and visitors to stay off mountain roads until conditions improve.
The 2.34 inches of rain in downtown L.A. broke a daily record set in 1936 as the storm led to flash floods, debris flows and closed highways and roads.
DENVER, Dec 30 (Reuters) – Colorado Governor Jared Polis on Thursday commuted the 110-year sentence of a truck driver convicted of vehicular homicide, reducing the prison term to 10 years after prosecutors went back to court this week in a rare move seeking leniency.
In a commutation letter to the Cuban-born trucker, Rogel Lazaro Aguilera-Mederos, 26, the governor said the fiery crash along a mountain highway that killed four motorists in April 2019 was a “tragic but unintentional act.”
“While you are not blameless, your sentence is disproportionate compared with many other inmates in our criminal justice system who committed intentional, premeditated, or violent crimes,” the letter said.
Aguilera-Mederos, whose case garnered national attention with nearly 5 million people signing an online petition calling for clemency, will now be eligible for parole in five years, the governor said.
Defense lawyer James Colgan said his client was pleased with the news. “He is relieved and very grateful,” Colgan said.
District Attorney Alexis King criticized Polis, saying the governor essentially short-circuited a more deliberative judicial process that prosecutors had begun in consultation with victims’ families and survivors.
“We are disappointed in the governor’s decision to act prematurely,” King said in a statement, adding that a final decision on Aguilera-Mederos’s fate should rest with a judge.
King went to court on Monday for a hearing requesting that the 110-year prison term, imposed under mandatory sentencing rules earlier this month, be reduced to the 20-to-30-year range, arguing that leniency was warranted in the absence of any criminal intent.
Aguilera-Mederos was found guilty by a jury in October on four homicide charges and multiple counts of assault and reckless driving. District Court Judge Bruce Jones said when handing down the original sentence on Dec. 13 that he would not have imposed such a lengthy term but for mandatory minimum penalties required under state law.
At trial, prosecutors presented evidence that Aguilera-Mederos, who was hauling a load of lumber, was improperly trained in driving on mountain roads.
He knew the brakes on his tractor-trailer were failing but descended the mountains anyway, prosecutors said, bypassing a runaway truck ramp and crashing into stopped traffic along Interstate 70 west of Denver when he lost control of the vehicle.
Prosecutors never alleged that Aguilera-Mederos, who had no criminal record, was impaired or had any criminal intent.
At sentencing, Aguilera-Mederos wept as he asked for forgiveness and leniency. “I never thought about hurting anyone in my entire life,” he said.
At Monday’s hearing, Jones said it was virtually without precedent for prosecutors, rather than defense attorneys, to seek a reduced sentence in such a case. Jones ordered both sides to file briefs and set another hearing for Jan. 13, a proceeding apparently rendered moot by the governor’s action.
Earlier this week, Colgan called King’s motion to seek a reduced sentence “disingenuous.”
“Two weeks ago, they (prosecutors) were perfectly fine with my client getting 110 years until there was a public outcry,” he told Reuters after the hearing. “It’s all political.”
The clemency granted by Polis was one of dozens of year-end commutations and pardons announced on Thursday by the governor, a first-term Democrat.
Authorities say a California man arrested in Iowa had an assault rifle, ammunition and a “hit list” that named President Joe Biden, former presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, and others.
The man was pulled over while driving eastbound on Interstate 80 on Dec. 21, the Des Moines Register reported Thursday. Authorities say in criminal complaint that police stopped the man because he was driving aggressively.
Police said the man made concerning comments about Biden during the traffic stop, so he was taken to the Cass County Sheriff’s Office for questioning. He told investigators that he left his home in Sacramento on Dec. 18 to drive straight to the White House to kill people in power, and that if freed, he’d carry out his plan, according to the criminal complaint.
The man is charged with one count of making threats to a former president. Authorities say additional charges could be added by a grand jury in a later indictment.
The defendant’s attorneys filed a notice Thursday that he intends to rely on an insanity defense.
The U.S. Drought Monitor released new data on California’s drought conditions Thursday – and what a difference a week makes.
The map, which includes data as recent as Tuesday, shows remarkable improvement from last week’s conditions. The portion of the state in “exceptional drought,” the most severe category, dropped from 23% to 0.84%.
Last week, the majority of California (about 79%) was in “extreme drought,” shown in bright red on the map above. This week, that area has narrowed quite a bit, to a band that runs down the state’s center. Now, only 33% of the state is experiencing “extreme drought” conditions.
As storms continued to dump rain on much of Southern California and snow covered mountain peaks Thursday, we could see an even better map this time next week.
The Sierra Nevada range has seen more snow than in over a decade, and that’s good news for California’s snowpack. One spot near Lake Tahoe has recorded a whopping 17 feet of snow so far, a record for the month of December.
California received even more good news on Thursday when results of the first snowpack survey of the winter were released, revealing that the state’s snow water content was 160% of normal for the time this year. Once it melts in the late spring and summer, the snowpack provided about one-third of the state’s water supply.
“Obviously we are off to a great start,” said Sean de Guzman, the manager of the Snow Surveys and Water Supply Forecasting section of California’s Department of Water Resources.
But, he urged caution, noting that promising starts in December don’t always lead to more wet weather through the winter. He also noted that the vast majority of California’s reservoirs remain below average.
“We still have a long way to go for our wet season,” de Guzman said. “And we need more and more of these storms to keep coming through.”
While the tone of the call was constructive, according to the Kremlin aide, Mr. Putin repeated his claims that Russia felt threatened by an encroaching NATO. He said that Russia would “conduct itself as the United States would behave if offensive weapons were near the United States.”
The Biden administration, like the Trump administration before it, has provided hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to the Ukrainian military to fund what it characterizes as purely defensive arms, including anti-tank missiles to repel a threatened Russian invasion. Russia has called those offensive weapons that threaten its own forces.
Mr. Ushakov said that “for now, it’s not clear” if the two sides were moving toward a compromise but said Russia had not specific deadline for talks.
An American official, briefing reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the call “set the sort of tone and tenor for the diplomatic engagements” to come in January. But he declined to “get into the territory of starting to negotiate in public,” saying that “whatever the Russian side has decided is its best tactic and strategy in terms of its public pronouncements, we really believed, based on past precedents, that it is most constructive to have these conversations privately.”
Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin had radically different objectives going into the call. By massing troops on the border and then publishing two draft treaties that had echoes of Cold War-era demands, Mr. Putin created an international crisis and made plain his desire to wind back the clock 30 years, to just before the collapse of the Soviet Union. He demanded that Ukraine halt its embrace of the West, that the United States and its allies halt all military activity in Eastern Europe and Central Asia and that NATO freeze its expansion to the east and roll back military deployments near Russia’s borders.
In Washington and European capitals, most of the proposed treaty language was immediately rejected as an effort to redraw the post-Cold War boundaries of Europe, and, with the threat of invasion, force Ukraine back into Moscow’s orbit.
Yet despite Russia’s damaged economy and diminished capabilities, Mr. Putin is dealing from a strong hand: He demonstrated in 2014, with the annexation of Crimea, his willingness to pick off Russian-speaking territory. And he is confident that the United States and its NATO allies will not commit forces to the task of pushing back.
The Colorado governor has intervened to reduce the 110-year sentence handed down to a trucker for his role in a fatal 2019 collision after widespread outcry and calls for leniency.
Jared Polis announced Thursday he would commute the sentence for Rogel Aguilera-Mederos, reducing his sentence from 110 years to 10 years. Under the new sentence, the 26-year-old would be eligible for parole in five years.
“I am writing to inform you that I am granting your application for a commutation,” Polis wrote. “I believe you deserve clemency for several reasons. You were sentenced to 110 years in prison, effectively more than a life sentence, for a tragic but unintentional act.”
Polis said that the sentence was “simply not commensurate” with Aguilera-Mederos’ “actions, nor with penalties handed down to others for similar crimes”.
In October, a jury convicted Aguilera-Mederos of vehicular homicide and other charges related to a deadly collision that occurred while he was hauling lumber in the Rocky Mountain foothills. He has said that the brakes on his semi-trailer failed as he was descending a steep section of the highway, leading to four deaths and a multi-vehicle pileup.
Rogel Aguilera-Mederos. Photograph: AP
The lengthy sentence, which the judge said he was obligated to give Aguilera-Mederos due to minimum sentencing laws in the state, was widely condemned and fueled criticism of the US justice system. More than 5 million people signed a petition calling for Polis to grant clemency to Aguilera-Mederos or commute his sentence, an effort truckers, civil rights groups and celebrities such as Kim Kardashian voiced support for.
“It is a stark miscarriage of justice,” said Domingo Garcia, the president of the League of United Latin American Citizens (Lulac), of the sentence. Lulac sent a letter to Polis on behalf of Aguilera-Mederos, a Cuban immigrant, requesting a pardon or a reduction of his sentence, and Garcia traveled to Colorado to meet with the governor.
Kardashian, a criminal justice reform advocate, was among those who praised the governor’s decision.
“This case was a clear example of why mandatory minimums don’t work and need to be abolished. I’m grateful to Governor Polis for his empathy and leadership on this case,” Kardashian said on Twitter.
The decision was among several end-of-the-year commutations and pardons issued by Polis. The governor’s announcement comes after a judge scheduled a hearing next month to reconsider the sentence at the request of the district attorney, who had planned to ask that it be reduced to 20 to 30 years.
The ACLU of Colorado has expressed hope that the case might prompt reform of mandatory minimum sentencing laws in the state.
“The extraordinary nature of this particular case has prompted comments from some lawmakers that they may be interested in doing that,” said Mark Silverstein, the legal director of the ACLU of Colorado. “Sometimes unfortunately it takes an extraordinary case like this that put something that ought to be on the legislative agenda to the top of the legislative agenda.”
Michigan’s health department is urging Michigan schools to double-down on preventative measures to limit the spread of COVID-19 as students and staff return to buildings after the holiday break.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) and Michigan Department of Education (MDE) are sending a letter to superintendents with recommendations, intended to keep school buildings open and allow students and staff to return to school safely after winter break.
About 20% of the 5-11 age group has at least one dose, About 45% of the 12-29 age group has at least one dose, and about 51% of the 16-19 age group has at least one dose. All three of those numbers are below the national average.
MDHHS continues to reinforce that vaccination remains the best public health measure to protect Michiganders from COVID-19. Children ages 5 and up are eligible to be vaccinated. Schools should encourage all who are eligible to receive a COVID-19 vaccine and booster dose, and where possible host vaccine clinics to facilitate access for students, families, teachers and staff.
The most effective way to prevent transmission within school buildings and reduce prolonged disruptions to in-person learning is to layer multiple prevention strategies as recommended by the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Our priority has remained keeping students safe,” said MDHHS director Elizabeth Hertel. “Children ages 5 and older now can get vaccinated. In addition to vaccination, we strongly recommend universal masking for students, teachers and staff. We have the tools to keep Michiganders safe, and we must continue to use them.”
Indoor masking
The CDC and MDHHS strongly recommend universal indoor masking for all teachers, staff, students and visitors (age 2 and older), regardless of vaccination status. As Michigan remains in high community transmission, universal indoor masking is a critical prevention strategy for all school districts to allow students to maintain in-person learning. Mask use has been proven to substantially reduce transmission in school settings.
COVID-19 testing
MDHHS also recommends regular testing in all school settings. Frequent testing can help identify infected people, including those without symptoms who may be contagious, so measures can be taken to prevent further transmission or outbreaks. To support schools that incorporate COVID-19 testing into their safer school prevention plans, MDHHS is offering rapid antigen testing to K-12 schools through the MI Safe Schools Testing Program. To take advantage of this program, schools and school districts should follow this process when submitting rapid antigen test orders.
Schools can participate in the MI Backpack Program, which offers free at-home COVID-19 tests to students, their families, teachers, and school staff. School districts interested in participating in this program can fill out this form.
Avoiding large gatherings
As omicron variant cases are anticipated to increase in Michigan, it is important for all schools to review their planned activities for events and gatherings. MDHHS advises modifications to planned activities during and after school where the ability to maintain social distancing between people who live in different households cannot be maintained. Large gatherings (involving 100 or more people) should be held using remote technology or postponed, if not essential. Large gatherings would include events with large numbers of people from multiple households such as conferences or meetings, sporting events, and concerts.
Wearing masks, washing hands often, maintaining social distance wherever possible, and getting staff and students vaccinated all remain important safety measures. All prevention strategies provide some level of protection, and layered strategies implemented at the same time provide the greatest level of protection.
On Monday, the CDC updated its recommendation to shorten isolation for people who contract COVID-19 from 10 days to five days if they don’t have symptoms, which might include a fever, chills, sore throat, cough, shortness of breath, body aches and loss of taste or smell. But those people must wear a mask for five days after their isolation period ends.
An emergency operations center was activated to address three active fires, according to the Office of Emergency Management. The fire south of the city of Boulder that is threatening Superior and Louisville is called the Marshall Fire.
Nearby towns are on high alert about the rapidly spreading fires. While there were not yet active fires in the city of Broomfield, the police announced pre-evacuation orders.
“Prayers for thousands of families evacuating from the fires in Superior and Boulder County,” Gov. Jared Polis said on Twitter. “Fast winds are spreading flames quickly and all aircraft are grounded.”
The head of Ukraine’s national security council, Oleksiy Danilov, sought to downplay that on Thursday, suggesting the number of troops was not currently increasing: “As for the troops build-up near our borders reported by foreign media – we do not see that. There is a certain increase of [Russian] military and we closely monitor what’s happening at our borders.”
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