MISSION, Kan. (AP) — Tens of millions of Americans endured bone-chilling temperatures, blizzard conditions, power outages and canceled holiday gatherings Friday from a winter storm that forecasters said was nearly unprecedented in its scope, exposing about 60% of the U.S. population to some sort of winter weather advisory or warning.

More than 200 million people were under an advisory or warning on Friday, the National Weather Service said. The weather service’s map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said.

Power outages have left about 1.4 million homes and businesses in the dark, according to the website PowerOutage, which tracks utility reports. The Tennessee Valley Authority, the nation’s largest public utility, ended its rolling blackouts Friday afternoon but continued to urge homes and businesses to conserve power. In Georgia, hundreds of people in Atlanta and northern parts of the state were without power and facing the possibility of sub-zero wind chills without heat.

And nearly 5,000 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, causing more mayhem as travelers try to make it home for the holidays.

“We’ve just got to stay positive,” said Wendell Davis, who plays basketball with a team in France and was waiting at O’Hare in Chicago on Friday after a series of flight cancellations.

The huge storm stretched from border to border. In Canada, WestJet canceled all flights Friday at Toronto Pearson International Airport, beginning at 9 a.m. as meteorologists in the country warned of a potential once-in-a-decade weather event.

And in Mexico, migrants waited near the U.S. border in unusually cold temperatures as they awaited a U.S. Supreme Court decision on whether and when to lift pandemic-era restrictions that prevent many from seeking asylum.

Forecasters said a bomb cyclone — when atmospheric pressure drops very quickly in a strong storm — had developed near the Great Lakes, stirring up blizzard conditions, including heavy winds and snow.

Multiple highways were closed and crashes claimed at least six lives, officials said. At least two people died in a massive pileup involving some 50 vehicles on the Ohio Turnpike. A Kansas City, Missouri, driver was killed Thursday after skidding into a creek, and three others died Wednesday in separate crashes on icy northern Kansas roads.

Michigan also faced a deluge of crashes, including one involving nine semitrailers.

Brent Whitehead said it took him 7.5 hours __ instead of the usual six __ to drive from his home near Minneapolis to his parents’ home outside Chicago on Thursday in sometimes icy conditions.

“Thank goodness I had my car equipped with snow tires,” he said.

Activists also were rushing to get homeless people out of the cold. Nearly 170 adults and children were keeping warm early Friday in Detroit at a shelter and a warming center that are designed to hold 100 people.

“This is a lot of extra people” but it wasn’t an option to turn anyone away, said Faith Fowler, the executive director of Cass Community Social Services, which runs both facilities.

In Chicago, Andy Robledo planned to spend the day organizing efforts to check on people without housing through his nonprofit, Feeding People Through Plants. Robledo and volunteers build tents modeled on ice-fishing tents, including a plywood subfloor.

“It’s not a house, it’s not an apartment, it’s not a hotel room. But it’s a huge step up from what they had before,” Robledo said.

In Portland, Oregon, nearly 800 people slept at five emergency shelters on Thursday night, as homeless outreach teams fanned out to distributed cold-weather survival gear. Shelters called for volunteers amid high demand and staffing issues. Employees were laid low by flu or respiratory symptoms or kept from work by icy roads, officials said.

DoorDash and Uber Eats suspended delivery service in some states, and bus service was disrupted in places like Seattle.

The power ceased at Jaime Sheehan’s Maryland bakery for about 90 minutes Friday, shutting off the convection oven and stilling the mixer she needed to make butter cream.

“Thankfully, all of the orders that were going out today already finished yesterday,” she said a few moments before the power returned.

At about the same time, Corey Newcomb and his family were entering their sixth hour without power at their home in the small town of Phenix, Virginia.

“We are coping and that’s about it,” Newcomb said in a Facebook message.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said she was deploying the National Guard to haul timber to the Oglala Sioux and Rosebud Sioux tribes and help with snow removal.

“We have families that are way out there that we haven’t heard from in two weeks,” Wayne Boyd, chief of staff to the Rosebud Sioux president, said.

Fearing that some are running out of food, the tribe was hoping to get a helicopter on Saturday to check on the stranded.

The Oglala Sioux Tribe, meanwhile, was using snowmobiles to reach members who live at the end of miles-long dirt roads.

“It’s been one heck of a fight so far,” said tribal President Frank Star Comes Out.

On the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, Harlie Young was huddled with five children and her 58-year-old father around a wood stove as 12-foot (3.6-meter) snow drifts blocked the house.

“We’re just trying to look on the bright side that they’re still coming and they didn’t forget us,” she said Friday, as the temperature plunged to frigid lows.

The weather service is forecasting the coldest Christmas in more than two decades in Philadelphia, where school officials shifted classes online Friday.

Atop New Hampshire’s Mount Washington, the tallest peak in the Northeast, the wind topped 150 mph (241 kph).

In Boston, rain combined with a high tide, sent waves over the seawall at Long Wharf and flooded some downtown streets. It was so bad in Vermont that Amtrak canceled service for the day, and nonessential state offices were closing early.

“I’m hearing from crews who are seeing grown trees ripped out by the roots,” Mari McClure, president of Green Mountain Power, the state’s largest utility, said at a news conference.

Calling it a “kitchen sink storm,” New York Gov. Kathy Hochul declared a state of emergency. In parts of New York City, tidal flooding inundated roads, homes and businesses Friday morning, with police trudging through knee-deep water to pull stranded motorists to safety in Queens.

In Iowa, sports broadcaster Mark Woodley became a Twitter sensation after he was called on to do live broadcasts outdoors in the wind and snow because sporting events were called off. By midday Friday, a compilation of his broadcasts had been viewed nearly 5 million times on Twitter.

“I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news,” he told an anchor. “The good news is that I can still feel my face right now. The bad news is, I kind of wish I couldn’t.”

___

Bleed reported from Little Rock, Arkansas. Associated Press journalists Dee-Ann Durbin in Detroit; Gillian Flaccus in Portland, Oregon; Zeke Miller in Washington; and Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Mississippi, contributed to this report.

BLOOMINGTON, Minn. (AP) — A shooting at the Mall of America sent frightened customers at the nation’s largest shopping center racing into a lockdown just before the holiday weekend, mall officials and police in suburban Minneapolis said Friday.

The Bloomington Police Department responded to the shooting shortly before 8 p.m., the mall said in a statement. The lockdown lasted for about an hour before the mall tweeted that shoppers were being sent outside. Emergency vehicles had converged in the snowy parking lot and police could be seen putting up yellow crime scene tape near the Nordstrom store.

Police did not immediately provide details on whether anyone was injured or arrested. A press briefing was scheduled for 10:30 p.m.

Videos posted on social media show shoppers hiding in stores, and an announcement in the mall warned people to seek shelter. Some videos show shoppers running for cover after a loud bang is heard.

The reported shooting comes as shopping centers and malls across the U.S. see an influx of customers just days before Christmas.

Jenny Hefty of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and her 16-year-old daughter had just gotten off the escalator up to the mall’s second floor, in front of the Nordstrom store, when people started running toward them and screaming. Her daughter thought she heard gunshots, although Hefty did not.

“At first we thought they were just messing around,” she told The Associated Press on Friday night. “It was like ‘why are all these kids running by us?’”

Retailers began shutting their doors and her husband told them to run as armed guards rushed toward Nordstrom, where Hefty had been trying perfume about 20 minutes earlier.

The trio raced to their hotel in the mall complex and frantically tried to reach the couple’s 18-year-old daughter, 21-year-old son and their friends on their cellphones. They had been shut inside stores or whisked into safer spots as the mall locked down.

The family, which often travels the four hours to the mall, was in town for the Minnesota Vikings football game against the New York Giants on Saturday.

“Of course we wanted to come early and do some Christmas shopping,” Hefty said.

The Giants were staying at a hotel adjacent to the mall. Pat Hanlon, the team’s executive vice president of communications, said he believes some players were in the mall at the time of the shooting.

“Everyone is back in the hotel and accounted for now,” Hanlon said Friday night.

Since it opened in 1992, the mall has been a tourist destination and community gathering spot. It bans guns on the premises but shoppers have generally not been required to pass through metal detectors. The mall said in October it was testing a “weapons detection system” at one of its entrances.

The mall was placed on lockdown in August after a reported shooting at the suburban Minneapolis shopping complex sent some shoppers running for cover and two people were wounded last New Year’s Eve during an apparent altercation.

Representatives from the city of Bloomington did not immediately return requests for comment.

__

Dazio reported from Los Angeles. Associated Press Sports Writer Tom Canavan contributed.

(NEXSTAR) – If you cut it close by sending out Christmas gifts at the last minute this year, your presents may not arrive in time thanks to a bitterly cold storm system that has blasted key package distribution hubs.

UPS and FedEx each issued alerts in the last 24 hours letting customers know that the storm has forced the companies to prioritize crew safety over speed.

“Potential delays are possible for package deliveries across the U.S. with a delivery commitment of Friday, December 23 and Saturday, December 24. FedEx is committed to provide service to the best of our ability,” the company stated on its website Friday morning.

FedEx said distribution hubs in Memphis and Indianapolis were hit particularly hard by the storms, meaning packages passing through those locations are most at risk of delay. The same is true at UPS hubs in the area.

“Significant weather events across several regions of the U.S. are impacting the UPS Air and Ground network, including UPS hubs in Louisville, Kentucky and Rockford, Illinois. As a result, some delivery and pickup services in these areas will be affected,” UPS posted on its website Thursday night.

Both courier networks urge customers to track their packages online for updated delivery information. Storm disruptions were not limited to package delivery.

More than 200 million people were under some form of winter weather advisory or warning on Friday, the National Weather Service said. The weather service’s map “depicts one of the greatest extents of winter weather warnings and advisories ever,” forecasters said in a statement Friday.

More than 3,400 flights within, into or out of the U.S. were canceled Friday, according to the tracking site FlightAware, causing more mayhem as travelers try to make it home for the holidays. More than 458,000 homes and businesses were without power Friday morning.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

University of California (UC) academic workers ended a nearly six-week strike that unions described as the biggest work stoppage ever at a U.S. institution of higher education, union leaders said late on Friday.

Thousands of academic workers went on strike at UC campuses throughout the state on Nov. 14, forming picket lines and staging noisy protests to demand better wages for teaching assistants and others.

The walkout disrupted final exams, study sessions and the grading of papers throughout California’s flagship university system.

Some 48,000 academic workers represented by the United Auto Workers will return to work in January after the winter break, union leaders said, after ratification votes by large majorities of two fractious UAW bargaining units.

The striking scholars included teaching assistants, researchers, tutors and other graduate student instructors at all 10 UC campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

UC officials did not immediately respond to a request for comment outside business hours.

When the strike began, the union said its members were working themselves into extreme debt with a base salary for part-time employees starting at $24,000 per year.

University administrators and union leaders reached an agreement last week after a series of negotiations. The thousands of striking academic workers began voting this week on whether to ratify the deal with the University of California.

The agreement was hailed by union and university supporters as a landmark labor deal that would set a new national standard, boosting wages and working conditions for graduate students employed at public universities.

The agreement would provide wage increases of up to 66% over the 2-1/2 year life of the contract, according to leaders of the two UAW union locals representing the 36,000 graduate students covered by the deal.

By the fall term of 2024, the minimum nine-month salary for teaching assistants would rise to $36,500 at UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and UCLA, and to $34,000 at other campuses, according to the university.

Some detractors said the pact falls short in meeting the living costs grad students face in pricey cities where many UC campuses are located, and critics faulted the deal for giving up on union demands to tie wage gains to housing costs.

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Politics is many things, often cutthroat, sometimes extremely rewarding, and never boring. But what politics usually does NOT do is offer the right people the right comeuppance. However, that might just be about to change. The political titanic (also called Kevin McCarthy) has begun to sink.

Right now, readers, McCarthy is stranded alone in the boat amid raging tidewater, no rescue in sight. It is extraordinary that things have become WORSE for McCarthy this week, but they have. And McCarthy is showing the effects of the storm.

Marooned out on his own private island of insanity, I think it is finally — FINALLY -occurring to Kev that he might lose the speakership. How do we know this? Because of his actions. (Always, always watch their actions.)

He’s not yet jumped ship. No, McCarthy is exhibiting, however, shape-shifting and crazed behavior. He is transforming right before our eyes into some sort of maniacal sea monster who is actually threatening — THREATENING other republicans with killing the bills of any republican who supports the omnibus appropriations bill.

It’s just pitiful. And it didn’t work. Do you know, friends, readers, and fellow McCarthy haters, what republicans did in response to the madman’s threat? They laughed at him.

Well, that’s one way to become a speaker — to threaten to kill the bills of the people who will be voting yes or no. Never let it be said that Kevin McCarthy isn’t a fool. And the talk is getting louder. There are many different reports of what possible outcomes will be. I know not which are true and which are not. But they all have one thing in common.

They do not end with McCarthy becoming Speaker. The rejection of McCarthy isn’t just a tiny breeze — it’s growing, the outpouring getting heavier and heavier and angrier and angrier. This wasn’t expected to happen. The tsunami was supposed to lessen, NOT amp up.

Look. The bottom line is he doesn’t have the votes. He did not have them yesterday. He is unlikely to have them tomorrow. And it is making him crazy. Things could still change. But if I were McCarthy, I’d leap off the sinking ship and swim toward safety. I suppose McCarthy can’t do that.

What does he do if he does not come speaker? Who will clap for him? Who will obey him? Who will cheer for him? If Kevin were to ask that question, the storm would, at last, be blissfully silent because the answer is absolutely no one. And as it stands now, McCarthy’s political future is poised to be known as the titanic of DC.

The post Kevin McCarthy is riding the Titanic appeared first on Palmer Report.

Prosecutors allege Dr. Jacquelyn Starer, 68, punched a police officer inside the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Department of Justice

• A practicing Massachusetts doctor was arrested and charged in the January 6 Capitol riot this week.
• Prosecutors allege Jacquelyn Starer punched a police officer in the head while inside the Capitol.
• At least 964 people have been arrested in connection with the attack thus far. 

A Massachusetts doctor accused of punching a police officer in the head during the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot was arrested and charged on Tuesday.

Dr. Jacquelyn Starer, 68, was charged with several counts in relation to the insurrection, including two felony counts of assaulting, resisting, or impeding police officers, and civil disorder. 

Starer’s Tuesday arrest came two days before the January 6 congressional committee released its final, 845-page report detailing the Capitol riot and former President Donald Trump’s role in it.

According to court documents, Starer is a practicing physician in Ashland, Massachusetts.

Prosecutors say Starer entered the Capitol approximately 10 minutes after a mob of Trump supporters first breached the building that day. Open-source photos and video from the siege appear to show Starer approaching a group of Metropolitan Police Department officers inside the Capitol before making physical contact with one.

Starer proceeded to punch an officer on the left side of the head, according to investigators. The officer later told prosecutors that a blonde woman wearing a red jacket and hat was responsible for the assault. The unnamed officer said the blonde woman came at her a second time before the officer struck her in response.

Surveillance photos and videos show Starer wearing red-colored clothing and a Trump hat while at the Capitol on January 6. The officer later identified Starer in photos as her attacker, according to court documents. 

An anonymous tipster contacted the FBI just days after the attack and told investigators that they were aware prior to the insurrection that Starer had planned to attend the march on the Capitol, prosecutors said. The tipster said Starer had bragged to a mutual acquaintance that she was “prepared” for the event with a mesh knife-proof shirt and bottles of pepper spray, according to court documents. 

Investigators then used surveillance phones and videos, as well as phone and hotel records to confirm Starer’s presence in DC near the Capitol on January 6, 2021. 

After she is alleged to have punched a police officer, Starer appears to have been affected by chemical irritants that authorities deployed in an effort to curb the mob, according to court documents. Photos from the riot show Starer receiving first aid assistance to her eyes and face.

The doctor did not have a lawyer listed in federal court records as of Friday. An email address appearing to belong to Starer did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment. 

At least 964 people have been arrested in connection with the attack and more than 460 people have pleaded guilty thus far. 

Cassidy Hutchinson, a top former aide to Trump White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, testifies during the sixth hearing by the House Select Committee on the January 6th insurrection in the Cannon House Office Building on June 28, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Brandon Bell/Getty Images

• Former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson testified she was “scared” about getting a lawyer from Trump world.
• Hutchinson told the January 6 committee she contacted family she didn’t even speak to to get help.
• She said her Trump-connected lawyer had encouraged her to withhold information from the committee.

Cassidy Hutchinson, a former White House aide who provided key testimony to the January 6 committee, said even her aunt and uncle who she hadn’t spoken to in years were considering going to great lengths to help her stay out of the orbit of former President Donald Trump.

Hutchinson described the situation in testimony she gave on September 14, a transcript of which was released by the committee on Thursday. She was discussing her efforts to secure legal representation after she was subpoenaed by the committee, and her desire to avoid going with a Trump-aligned lawyer.

Hutchinson said that she told her mother she thought she was “fucked” after she secured Stefan Passantino as her lawyer, saying that “once you are lopped in” to Trump world, “especially financially,” there is “no turning back.”

“‘They will ruin my life, Mom, if I do anything that they don’t want me to do,'” Hutchinson recounted saying at the time.

She said she was so “scared” and desperate to seek legal representation that did not have connections to Trump she reached out to family she wasn’t close to.

“I was communicating with my aunt and uncle, who I had not spoken with in years because they are QAnon fans, but they were looking to refinancing their house to free up money so I could not have to go back to Trump world,” Hutchinson testified, adding “they understood why I didn’t want to.”

Hutchinson said she also visited her biological father, who she does not have a relationship with and who is a “very big Trump supporter,” to seek help. But she said, “he just didn’t get it.”

In her testimony, Hutchinson said Passantino pressured her to withhold information from the committee, and that others connected to Trump dangled the possibility of a job over her.

Passantino denied the allegations, in a statement previously sent to Insider, and claimed the committee did not contact him “to get the facts.”

“As with all my clients during my 30 years of practice, I represented Ms. Hutchinson honorably, ethically, and fully consistent with her sole interests as she communicated them to me,” Passantino told Insider earlier this week. “I believed Ms. Hutchinson was being truthful and cooperative with the Committee throughout the several interview sessions in which I represented her.”

Hutchinson was eventually represented by Bill Jordan and Jody Hunt of Alston & Bird.