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    Body of Tennessee Factory Worker Killed in Hurricane Helene Is Found

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    She is believed to be the last employee who was missing after the plastics plant flooded. Authorities are still investigating the circumstances around the deaths. The remains of a sixth factory worker in eastern Tennessee who was swept away in the flooding brought on by Hurricane Helene have been found, ending a search for what is believed to be the last missing employee more than a month after the storm tore through the Southeast.Officials on Friday disclosed the identity of the body as Rosa Andrade, 29, one of a half-dozen victims of the flood who worked at Impact Plastics, a factory in the close-knit town of Erwin, about 120 miles east of Knoxville.“These people were just reporting to work that morning,” Andrew Harris, a captain with Unicoi County Search and Rescue, said in an interview on Saturday. “We’re trying to provide closure for the families, and obviously grieving with them.”The deluge at the factory on Sept. 27 was part of a trail of devastation caused by Helene, the Category 4 hurricane that hit the coast of Florida on Sept. 26 and decimated neighboring states with landslides and flooding in the days that followed. Helene killed more than 200 people across the Southeast.In North Carolina alone, there were more than 100 storm-related deaths, with damages and recovery efforts projected to cost the state an estimated $53 billion.Although Ms. Andrade is thought to be the last missing person from the factory, Mr. Harris said that search and recovery efforts continue for victims from North Carolina, some of whom are believed to have been swept into Erwin and nearby counties. State officials from Tennessee and North Carolina have suggested that at least a dozen people overall remain unaccounted for in the two states.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      This National Guard Crowd Likes What It Hears From Trump

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      They knew they probably should not have been laughing.Hundreds of National Guard members sat chuckling in their camouflage uniforms as former President Donald J. Trump tore into Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who served for 24 years in the National Guard. When Mr. Trump mocked him as “Tampon Tim” (a reference to a law he signed requiring schools to provide menstrual products to all students who need them) nervous laughter rippled through the crowd, then quickly dissipated.“This group is a little more low-key than the ones I’m used to speaking before,” Mr. Trump observed.It was Monday afternoon, and he was speaking at the National Guard Association’s annual conference in Detroit. There were people from all 50 states and various U.S. territories there. Those in uniform said they were prohibited from discussing politics with a reporter, but the crowd also included former service members who had gone to work for private contractors. These more casually dressed members of the defense sector were free to say what the others could not.“I think it’s phenomenal that he’s out and about, speaking with the military,” said Walt Nichols, a 58-year-old from San Antonio who said he served for 26 years in the Texas National Guard and did three tours in Iraq (he is now a sales engineer for TacMed Solutions, which manufactures high-tech manikins). “We need him back,” Mr. Nichols said of Mr. Trump.“We just found out this week that he was going to be here — we had no idea,” said Cliff Byrd, 45, a former Marine from Portsmouth, N.H., who now works for Vidarr Inc., which specializes in night vision technology. “As you can see, a lot of people came out for it.”The crowd at the National Guard Association conference included members in uniform, but also former service members who have gone to work for private defense contractors.Nick Hagen for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Walz in the National Guard: A Steady Rise Ending With a Hard Decision

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      In a military career that spanned three decades, Tim Walz achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. Some peers took issue with the timing of his retirement.In the 1980s, the U.S. military was in the middle of a transformation. The Vietnam War was over, and a force once staffed with drafted troops who had fought and died in the jungles of Southeast Asia was transitioning to ranks filled solely with volunteers.In Nebraska, Tim Walz was one of those volunteers.Mr. Walz, now Minnesota governor and the presumptive Democratic candidate for vice president, raised his hand to join the Army National Guard just two days past his 17th birthday on April 8, 1981. In a career in the military that spanned three decades, he battled floods, managed an artillery unit and achieved one of the highest enlisted ranks in the Army. He also navigated a full-time job teaching social studies alongside his part-time military occupation as an enlisted combat arms soldier, a role that trained him for war.Mr. Walz never went to war. Most of his service covered a period when America was bruised from foreign entanglements and wary of sending troops into combat overseas for long stretches. And it ended when Mr. Walz was 41, as the military ramped up for war after Sept. 11.Since being picked as Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate this week, he has found himself facing allegations previously aired by Minnesota Republicans and newly amplified by JD Vance, former President Donald J. Trump’s running mate.Those criticisms center on Mr. Walz’s decision to retire from the Army in 2005, the year before his artillery battalion deployed to Iraq. He was thinking seriously about a run for Congress and spoke with other soldiers about being torn between his loyalty to his fellow troops and his desire to move on with his life. At the time, there were vague expectations that the unit might deploy, but actual orders came several months later.The unit deployed to Iraq for more than one year beginning in 2006. During that time, soldiers in the unit provided security for transportation convoys and other tasks common in a combat zone. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Sweeping New Immigration Law Takes Effect in Texas

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      There was no immediate response along the border after the U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for Texas police to arrest and deport migrants. Officials have not said when enforcement would begin.The most aggressive state-level immigration law in the nation went into effect in Texas on Tuesday after the U.S. Supreme Court temporarily sided with Gov. Greg Abbott in his increasingly bitter confrontation with the Biden administration over border policy.The law makes it a crime for migrants to enter Texas from Mexico without authorization, and creates a process for state courts to order migrants charged with violating the law to return to Mexico, no matter their national origin.The high court ruled that the law could temporarily go into effect while a federal appeals court further considers whether to override a lower-court ruling that found the Texas measure unconstitutional on a variety of grounds.“Huge win,” Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general, said in a statement. Mr. Abbott, the governor, sounded a slightly more cautious note about the Supreme Court’s decision, describing it as “a positive development.”The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit said that it would hold oral arguments Wednesday morning on whether the lower-court injunction blocking the law should be allowed to stay in effect while the full appeal is underway.The sudden clearance for the law to go into effect appeared to catch Texas officials off guard. As of Tuesday evening, no date had been set for enforcement to begin. Two state officials said that the timing was still being discussed and that arrests could begin within days.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After Another Subway Shooting, NYC Wrestles With Question of Safety

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      Even with the National Guard patrolling the system, some New Yorkers say they don’t feel secure, particularly after the subway shooting in Brooklyn on Thursday. Others remain unfazed.The subway crime that Jimmy Sumampow had been hearing about in recent years — as well as his own experience — had already led him to make plans to leave New York City. Then, on Friday, he saw a video online of the shooting on an A train this week.“I’m scared,” said Mr. Sumampow, 46, after seeing the video. Mr. Sumampow lives in Elmhurst, Queens, but plans to board an Amtrak train on Monday for Florida, where he has a new job and an apartment lined up. “I feel I should move out for a while and see if New York takes action and gets better,” he said.For Elise Anderson, however, the shooting did not raise her level of concern.“I wouldn’t say I’m any more scared,” Ms. Anderson, a 27-year-old Brooklyn resident, said as she waited at the Port Authority Bus Terminal subway station on Friday for a downtown A train. “I think we’re in one of the safest cities in the world.”In interviews across the city this week, New Yorkers wrestled with a question that cut to the core of the city’s identity: Is the subway system safe? Subway crime data in recent years shows a muddled picture, and just as they have in surveys of riders and polls of residents, New Yorkers’ opinions diverge.But barely more than a week after Gov. Kathy Hochul sent the National Guard and State Police into the subway to increase security and help ease New Yorkers’ fears, the shooting seemed to underscore the limits of law enforcement’s ability to improve safety underground.The episode took place at the Hoyt-Schermerhorn station, where the Police Department maintains an outpost, Transit District 30, that is regularly staffed by officers. Moments before the shooting, two additional officers entered the station to inspect the platforms and train cars, Kaz Daughtry, the Police Department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said at a news conference on Friday.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      New York State Trooper Among Those Killed in Texas Helicopter Crash

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      John M. Grassia III was one of three people killed when a National Guard helicopter crashed along the U.S.-Mexico border in Texas.Two members of the New York State National Guard were identified as victims in a military helicopter crash that killed three people in Texas on Friday near the U.S.-Mexico border.John M. Grassia III, a New York State trooper, and Casey Frankoski, a National Guard helicopter pilot, were killed near La Grulla, Texas, when the chopper crashed into a field. Chris Luna, a U.S. Border Patrol agent, also died in the crash, according to the Department of Homeland Security.All three had been deployed along the southern U.S. border since October.The death of Mr. Grassia, 30, was announced by the New York State troopers union in a social media post, which said he had joined the force as a state trooper in 2022. Ms. Frankoski was named in a Facebook post by the mayor of her hometown, Rensselaer, N.Y., where her father is a retired police chief.The operation last week was said to be a “routine mission” along the U.S.-Mexico border, where Mr. Grassia, Ms. Frankoski, and two others were working with Joint Task Force North, a U.S. Defense Department initiative that tracks the boundary along with local and federal law enforcement.The group had been “providing monitoring and detecting capabilities along that sector of the border,” said Maj. Ryan Wierzbicki, a spokesman for the task force.Emergency services personnel responding to the helicopter crash near La Grulla, Texas, on Friday.A.C./UGC, via ReutersThe helicopter was following people who were illegally crossing into the United States when it crashed, according to Judge Eloy Vera, a top local official in Starr County, the site of the accident.Army investigators arrived at the site this weekend and were expected to comb the wreckage for the black box of the aircraft, a UH-72 Lakota, used regularly in such missions by the Army as a light utility aircraft.A third National Guardsman was seriously injured in the crash, the National Guard said. More

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      National Guard Can’t Carry Long Guns While Checking Bags in Subway

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul issued an order forbidding the weapons at bag-check stations on Wednesday, directly after her announcement that soldiers would be deployed to New York City’s subways.Shortly after Gov. Kathy Hochul announced on Wednesday that hundreds of National Guard soldiers would be deployed to patrol the New York City subway system and check riders’ bags, her office made an adjustment: Soldiers searching bags would not carry long guns.The change, which was first reported by The Daily News, was ordered by Ms. Hochul on Wednesday for implementation on Thursday, according to a spokesman for the governor. Ms. Hochul issued a directive that National Guard members would be prohibited from carrying long guns at bag-check stations, he said. Soldiers not working at the stations would presumably be allowed to carry them.Donna Lieberman, the executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, called the ban on long guns at bag-checking stations a “relief,” but said the Guard’s presence underground remained “an unnecessary overreaction based on fear, not facts.”“Deploying military personnel to the subways will not make New Yorkers feel safe,” Ms. Lieberman said. “It will, unfortunately, create a perfect storm for tension, escalation and further criminalization of Black and brown New Yorkers.”Early images of the National Guard’s deployment showed soldiers standing near turnstiles in the subterranean system, wearing camouflage and military gear and holding long guns.Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, said the move to flood the system with reinforcements — 750 members of the New York National Guard, and an additional 250 personnel from the State Police and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority — would help commuters and visitors feel safe.Subway safety, a perpetual concern for New Yorkers, has been a challenging issue for public officials, who can be as sensitive to the perception that mass transit is dangerous as they are to an actual rise in crime.In February, following a 45 percent spike in major crimes in the first month of the year compared with the same period last year, Mayor Eric Adams ordered an additional 1,000 police officers into the subway system. Reported crime rates in the system declined that month, according to city data, and the overall rise in major crimes for the year as of March 3 was 13 percent, Police Department data shows.Ms. Hochul’s announcement this week drew criticism from public officials and from some members of her own party.Jumaane N. Williams, the city’s public advocate, warned that the plan would “criminalize the public on public transit.” Emily Gallagher, an assemblywoman and democratic socialist from Brooklyn, said that Ms. Hochul’s move was a “ham-fisted and authoritarian response” that validated “G.O.P. propaganda about urban lawlessness in an election year.”John Chell, the Police Department’s chief of patrol, cited recent statistics suggesting that transit crime had dropped.“Our transit system is not a ‘war’ zone!” he wrote on X. More

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      Texas Governor Greg Abbott Announces Military Base Camp in Eagle Pass

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      The base for up to 2,300 soldiers will establish a significant state law enforcement infrastructure in an area where Texas is contesting the federal government’s sole authority.Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Friday that the state would begin building a forward operating base in the border city of Eagle Pass for up to 2,300 soldiers, creating the most significant military infrastructure yet to support the state’s efforts to limit the number of people crossing illegally from Mexico.While Texas has been deploying National Guard troops and state police officers up and down the state’s border since 2021, the move to create an 80-acre base camp cements a large law enforcement infrastructure in the region and signals Texas’ commitment to a security role that previously belonged almost exclusively to the federal government.“This will increase the ability for a larger number of Texas military department personnel in Eagle Pass to operate more effectively and more efficiently,” Mr. Abbott said in his announcement, as he was flanked by a row of armed National Guard members. The camp, Mr. Abbott added, “will amass a large army in a very strategic area.”Mr. Abbott did not say on Friday how much money the state was spending to build the base, but added that the financial impact would be “minimal” in view of the state’s existing expenditures to house those deployed on the border.The camp, which will include a 700-seat dining facility, a gym, a laundry and medical services, will save on hotel costs for the existing deployment. And it will presumably make way for additional states that are sending troops to help patrol the border as part of a widening rift between Republican governors and the federal government over border enforcement.Mr. Abbott has been testing the legal limits of what states can do to enforce immigration law. Several of his Republican cohorts, including the governors of Florida and Georgia, have sent their own National Guard troops to help patrol the border in Texas, where record numbers of migrants have been crossing without authorization in recent years.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Texas Will Expand Effort to Control Land Along Mexican Border, Abbott Says

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      Flanked by Republican governors, Gov. Greg Abbott said that Texas would expand the immigration enforcement efforts at the center of a legal confrontation with the federal government.Locked in a legal battle with the Biden administration over immigration enforcement, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said on Sunday that he was expanding his effort to establish state control over areas near the Rio Grande in an effort to deter migrants.Mr. Abbott, flanked by 13 other Republican governors, said that Texas would not limit its high-intensity efforts to the small municipal park along the river in Eagle Pass where the state has taken over and limited access for federal agents. A top Texas official said state law enforcement officers were also looking to move in on riverside ranch land north of the city that migrants have continued to use for crossing.Texas has deployed National Guard troops and state police officers up and down the Texas border since 2021, and began stringing concertina wire along the banks of the river the next year. What changed last month in the park, known as Shelby Park, is that Texas began preventing federal agents from routine access to the riverbank or from using the park to detain and process large numbers of migrants.“As we speak right now, the Texas National Guard, they’re undertaking operations to expand this effort,” Mr. Abbott said during a news conference at the park. “We’re not going to contain ourselves to this park. We are expanding to further areas to make sure we expand our level of deterrence and denial of illegal entry into the United States.”Mr. Abbott described the arrival of migrants as an “invasion” that permitted Texas, under the U.S. Constitution, to take on the job of enforcing immigration laws, an area that the Supreme Court has in the past left to the federal government. Whether he has the power to do so is being contested in court by the Biden administration.A spokesman for U.S. Customs and Border Protection did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The agency has previously said that it, not the state, is responsible for detaining and processing those who have crossed the border illegally.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More