WH: Trump, GOP 'owe East Palestine an apology', blizzard warning near LA: 5 Things podcast

On today's episode of the 5 Things podcast: White House blames Trump administration and Republicans over Ohio spill

The White House is blaming the Trump administration and Republicans over the Ohio train derailment and toxic chemical release. Plus, blizzard warnings have been issued near Los Angeles, USA TODAY Senior Data Reporter Doug Caruso looks at whether Amber Alerts really work, Idaho Republicans introduce a bill that would criminalize giving mRNA vaccines and USA TODAY Health Reporter Ken Alltucker breaks down a report that says nursing homes are not safe amid the world's climate crisis.

Podcasts: True crime, in-depth interviews and more USA TODAY podcasts right here.

Hit play on the player above to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript below. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

Taylor Wilson:

Good morning. I'm Taylor Wilson and this is 5 Things you need to know Thursday, the 23rd of February 2023. Today, the blame game over the Ohio train derailment. Plus blizzard conditions near Los Angeles, and we look at the effectiveness of Amber Alerts.

♦

The White House is blaming the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress in the wake of the Ohio train derailment and toxic chemical release. The Biden administration is blaming them for undoing Obama-era rail safety measures designed to avoid such disasters. The rebuttal from a White House spokesman came as former president Donald Trump visited East Palestine, Ohio yesterday. And Republicans have increasingly attacked the Biden administration, especially Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for his response to the disaster. Among the safety rollbacks cited by the White House, the Trump administration withdrew a 2015 proposal to require advanced braking systems on trains carrying highly flammable material. They also ended regular safety audits of railroads and scrapped a proposal to require at least two crew members on freight trains.

♦

Some 35 million Americans are under winter weather advisories this week, and that includes millions in California. In the mountains above Los Angeles, blizzard warnings have been issued with wind gusts of up to 75 miles an hour expected and several feet of snow over the next few days. Even beach-side communities in Southern California like Santa Monica and Venice will see temperatures in the low forties with rain. Meanwhile, more typical for this time of year are blizzard warnings in effect today for parts of Minnesota and the Dakotas, and winter storm warnings are in effect for parts of New York and New England through this afternoon. For updates throughout the day, stay with USATODAY.com.

♦

You've probably gotten a notification on your phone or seen messages on the highway announcing that a child in the area is missing. These so-called Amber Alerts are supposed to help bring missing kids home, but how often are they actually given and do they succeed? I spoke with USA TODAY Senior Data Reporter Doug Caruso to find out. Doug, welcome to 5 Things.

Doug Caruso:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

I want to start with some basics here for those who may not know. What is an Amber Alert, and what are the requirements to get one when a child goes missing?

Doug Caruso:

An Amber Alert is an alert that gets sent out almost always for abducted, endangered children under the age of 17, when local law enforcement requests one. They started in 1996 in Texas after a girl named Amber Hagerman was abducted and killed, and local radio and television stations banded together so that in the future they would be able to quickly broadcast news about abductions and rescue children.

Taylor Wilson:

And so if and when a child goes missing, what are some of these requirements to actually have an Amber Alert issued for that child?

Doug Caruso:

Most Amber Alert coordinators and states and regions across the United States will want to see four things. It's a child under the age of 17, that this child has been abducted, and that the child is in danger from that abduction, and that they have adequate descriptions of the vehicle or the abductor or the child to help the public actually find the person or help authorities find the person.

Taylor Wilson:

You did some deep analysis on the frequency of Amber Alerts. So Doug, I'm wondering what do the numbers say about Amber Alert frequency in America and how effective are they really at finding missing children?

Doug Caruso:

What we found is that they're extremely rare. For example, in 2021, local police agencies reported to the FBI that they took 337,000 missing child reports. So we're talking about roughly a third of a million missing child reports, right? There were 254 Amber Alerts issued. These are extremely rare. The criteria reduced the number of alerts issued to a fairly small amount. Your state is likely to only have a handful in a year, for example. Are they effective? Last year over about six months, we called the police department in every Amber Alert case across the country. That was 96 cases, and we asked them whether the Amber Alert was the reason that the child was found. And in about a quarter of cases they said yes. So 75% of the time, for some other reason, the child was found. 25% of the time, of an already rare event, they said that the Amber Alert was what led to the child's recovery.

Taylor Wilson:

Did you find in the data, Doug, that kids are still being found even without the Amber Alerts?

Doug Caruso:

They are being found even without the Amber Alerts. Most children are recovered successfully. We talked to a researcher who has studied this pretty carefully and done statistical analysis on the reasons kids are returned safely who have been issued Amber Alerts. And he essentially said that he doesn't think the Amber Alert matters very much, that it matters a lot more whether the child was abducted by a stranger or somebody the child knows, and that whether or not the Amber Alert provided a tip is almost beside the point. He's saying that it's not true that Amber Alerts are rescuing children. He called them Crime Prevention Theater.

Taylor Wilson:

Considering their effectiveness, is there any movement to improve this system?

Doug Caruso:

Parents put a lot of faith in them, and when you talk to people who have been through this process, you often hear that they would like it to change. They didn't feel like theirs went out fast enough. They felt like they should have gotten one when they did not. And there have been calls in Pennsylvania, the family of a little girl who was abducted and killed after her Amber Alert went out, has been seeking a law that would require the alert to be issued immediately, not without a lot of back and forth between police and the state police over issuing it, especially in cases where the child has been abducted by a stranger and the family calls in the abduction.

There are groups that would like... Essentially by saying that you have to be abducted in order to get an Amber Alert, you're ruling out kids who are labeled runaways and they would like to get that runaway designation taken away because that rules out too many kids who might be in legitimate danger, but then don't get an Amber Alert because they're labeled a runaway and not an abduction.

Taylor Wilson:

All right. Doug Caruso is a senior data reporter for USA TODAY. Thanks for your time, Doug. Really appreciate it.

Doug Caruso:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

You can find a link to the full story in today's show notes.

♦

Republican lawmakers in Idaho have introduced a bill that would criminalize giving mRNA vaccines across the state. That's the same technology used in vaccinations for COVID-19. State Senator Tammy Nichols and State Representative Judy Boyle introduced the bill. It doesn't specifically mention COVID, but Nichols in her presentation referred to the two COVID mRNA vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna. They were authorized by the FDA and have been supported by a number of public health agencies. Researchers are also working on mRNA vaccines that would prevent other diseases, including cancer.

♦

Nursing homes are not safe amid the world's climate crisis. That's according to a report from the Senate and things may be getting worse. USA TODAY Health Reporter Ken Alltucker has more. Ken, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Ken Alltucker:

Thanks for having me.

Taylor Wilson:

What did this report find about the risks to nursing home residents during extreme weather events?

Ken Alltucker:

Yeah, this was a report by two Senate committees and they wanted to look at ... with climate change events raising a risk for all facets of society, but in particular vulnerable residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities. So they wanted to take a look at an incident in Texas. There was a freeze that essentially wrecked the power grid there in February 2021, and examined really how that affected people who depended on medication, depended on things like oxygen. So they really needed to have power and kind of a comfortable living environment to survive.

Taylor Wilson:

And so what does this report recommend to better protect long-term care residents, especially as weather events like these, Ken, are going to become more common in the coming years?

Ken Alltucker:

So about five years ago, the same senate committee did a report after hurricanes in Texas, in Florida, and found widespread issues. So five years later, they decided to do a check on how the federal agencies are regulating this and how the nursing homes are complying. Now, the agency that oversees Medicare now requires these nursing homes to do some level of emergency planning. So that's one thing that they did check, and it was kind of hit or miss. A lot of homes did do the planning, but many did not. And this wasn't a comprehensive check by any means, it was sort of a spot check done by another government watchdog agency, Office of Inspector General. Of the homes they looked at in eight states, roughly two thirds had not completed all the planning that they needed to in the event of a fire or a hurricane or a tornado or in Texas, in this case, a deep freeze.

Taylor Wilson:

So you mentioned these recommendations back in 2018. What's different this time around?

Ken Alltucker:

Post pandemic, it's sort of a different environment. We've had COVID and that sort of has uncovered a lot of the issues that nursing homes face. There are so many deaths due to COVID during 2020 and 2021 that the Biden administration has really highlighted improving nursing home safety. They've announced some things, like they want to look at a minimum staffing ratio to make sure there are enough workers in the nursing homes to take care of the residents, and they want to look at safety metrics, and they also want to kind of put homes on notice that have a kind of poor track history of patient care. The Biden administration has also said they do plan to come out with more details on what they want to do in the way of emergency planning. They recognize it's a big issue.

Taylor Wilson:

So what do the nursing homes themselves say they need on this issue?

Ken Alltucker:

Right now, they're facing many challenges. During the pandemic, they had a hard time even getting enough workers in the door, not to mention that the workers that they did employ, many of them died tragically during COVID. So staffing is one of the foremost concerns right now. They want to get enough workers in their doors to take care of the residents who live there. What they're saying about this particular report is they say, hey, what we don't need right now is more regulation. How you could really help us out is to better coordinate in the event of a power outage, make sure the utility in local, state, and federal emergency management planners prioritize restoring power to these homes because people who live there are so vulnerable. One of the recommendations in the report is for homes to have some sort of backup power supply, but the homes right now say, hey, we have limited resources. We really want to focus on what's challenging to us right now, and certainly that's staffing and safety.

Taylor Wilson:

Great info. Ken Alltucker covers health for USA TODAY. Thanks, Ken.

Ken Alltucker:

Thank you.

Taylor Wilson:

Thanks for listening to 5 Things. You can find us every day of the week right here, wherever you're listening right now. I'm back tomorrow with more of 5 Things from USA TODAY.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: WH blames Trump for East Palestine, LA blizzard warning: 5 Things podcast