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Washington state braces for dangerous flooding as thousands could face evacuation orders
Residents began packing up and fleeing rising rivers in western Washington state Wednesday as a new wave of heavy rain swept into a region still reeling from a storm that triggered rescues and road closures a day earlier.
In the Pacific Northwest, an atmospheric river was swelling rivers toward record levels, with major flooding expected in some areas including the Skagit River, a major agricultural valley north of Seattle. In the town of Mount Vernon, officials ordered residents within the river’s floodplain to evacuate.
Earlier in the day, dozens of vehicles were backed up at a sandbag-filling station in the town as residents prepared for what Mayor Peter Donovan described as “what increasingly appears to be a worst-case scenario here.”
Washington Gov. Bob Ferguson declared a statewide emergency Wednesday, saying, “Lives will be at stake in the coming days.” He estimated that as many as 100,000 Washington residents may soon face evacuation orders.
“We expect rivers to hit historic levels as early as 4 a.m. tomorrow, lasting into Friday morning,” Ferguson wrote on social media.
Ferguson later posted that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association’s National Weather Prediction Service had predicted 18 major floods and 15 moderate floods in the state.
The National Weather Service warned of the possibility of “catastrophic flooding,” specifically along the Skagit and Snohomish rivers.
“Landslides are likely in areas of steep terrain within the considerable and catastrophic regions,” the weather service said.
Gent Welsh, adjutant general of the Washington National Guard, said hundreds of Guard members will be sent to help communities.
In the Mount Rainier foothills southeast of Seattle, Pierce County sheriff’s deputies rescued people at an RV park in Orting, including helping one man in a Santa hat wade through waist-deep water. Part of the town was ordered to evacuate over concerns about the Puyallup River’s extremely high levels and upstream levees.
A landslide blocked part of Interstate 90 east of Seattle, with photos from Eastside Fire & Rescue showing vehicles trapped by tree trunks, branches, mud and standing water, including a car rammed into the metal barrier on the side of the road.
Officials also closed a mountainous section of U.S. 2 due to rocks, trees and mud. The state transportation department said there were no detours available and no estimated time for reopening.
The Skagit River is expected to crest at roughly 47 feet in the mountain town of Concrete early Thursday, and roughly 41 feet in Mount Vernon early Friday.
Those are both “record-setting forecasts by several feet,” Skagit County officials said.
Flooding from the river long plagued Mount Vernon, the largest city in the county with some 35,000 residents. In decades past, residents would form sandbagging brigades when floods threatened, but businesses were often inundated. Flooding in 2003 displaced hundreds of people.
The city completed a floodwall in 2018 that helps protect the downtown. It passed a major test in 2021, when the river crested near record levels.
But the city is on high alert. The historic river levels expected Friday could top the wall, and some are worried that older levees could fail.
“The concern about that kind of pressure on the levy and dike system is real,” said Ellen Gamson, executive director of the Mount Vernon Downtown Association. “It could potentially be catastrophic.”
Gamson said many business owners were renting tables to place their inventory higher off the floor. Sheena Wilson, who owns a floral shop downtown, said she stacked sandbags by the doors and cleared items off the floor.
“If the water comes in above table height I’ve got bigger problems than my merchandise,” she said.
Jake Lambly, 45, added sandbags, tested water pumps and moved valuables to the top floor of the home he shares with his 19-year-old son. Lambly said he was concerned about damage in his neighborhood, where people “are just on the cusp of whether or not we can be homeowners.”
“This is my only asset,” he said from his front porch. “I got nothing else.”
Harrison Rademacher, a meteorologist with the weather service in Seattle, described the atmospheric river soaking the region as “a jet stream of moisture” stretching across the Pacific Ocean “with the nozzle pushing right along the coast of Oregon and Washington.”
Authorities in Washington have knocked on doors to warn residents of imminent flooding in certain neighborhoods, and evacuated a mobile home park along the Snohomish River. The city of Snohomish issued an emergency proclamation, while workers in Auburn, south of Seattle, installed temporary flood control barriers along the White River.
In Sumas, a small city along the U.S.-Canada border, a flood siren rang out at city hall and residents were told to leave. The border crossing was also closed to southbound commercial vehicles to leave more room for evacuations, according to the Abbotsford Police Department.
Climate change has been linked to some intense rainfall. Scientists say that without specific study they cannot directly link a single weather event to climate change, but in general it’s responsible for more intense and more frequent extreme storms, droughts, floods and wildfires.
Another storm system is expected to bring more rain starting Sunday, Rademacher said. “The pattern looks pretty unsettled going up to the holidays.”
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Video: At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
new video loaded: At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
transcript
transcript
At Least Two Killed in Shooting at Brown University
Students remained locked in their dorms and classrooms as the police searched for the shooter, who was described as a man wearing black. At least two people are dead, and eight are in critical condition.
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At 4:00 in the afternoon, we received a call. 4:05 was when the initial call came in to Brown University of a report of an active shooter. I can confirm that there are two individuals who have died this afternoon, and there are another eight in critical status. We do not have a shooter in custody at this time. There is a shelter in place in effect for the greater Brown University area. If you live on or near Brown’s campus, we are encouraging you to stay home and stay inside. This is a sad state of our country right now where you have to plan for these things. And hopefully the community takes some comfort to know that their Providence leadership has planned for this occurrence, including very recently.
By McKinnon de Kuyper
December 13, 2025
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Multiple people shot near Brown University, police say
In this image from video, law enforcement officials gather outside the Brown University campus in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, Dec. 13, 2025.
Kimberlee Kruesi/AP
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Kimberlee Kruesi/AP
Multiple people have been shot near Brown University in Providence, R.I., on Saturday, police said.
The Providence Police Department said it is actively investigating the situation and is encouraging the public to shelter in place until further notice.
There is no suspect in custody, the university said on X, adding that it’s coordinating with multiple law enforcement agencies to search for a suspect.
The university issued an alert Saturday afternoon that the shooter was spotted near the Barus and Holley building, which houses the School of Engineering and Physics Department.
“Continue to shelter in place. Remain away from Barus & Holley area. Police do not have a suspect in custody and continue to search for suspect(s). Brown coordinating with multiple law enforcement agencies on site,” the university said.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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What to know about Kilmar Abrego Garcia’s release from immigration custody
BALTIMORE — Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whose mistaken deportation helped galvanize opposition to President Donald Trump’s immigration policies, was released from immigration detention on Thursday, and a judge has temporarily blocked any further efforts to detain him.
Abrego Garcia currently can’t be deported to his home country of El Salvador thanks to a 2019 immigration court order that found he had a “well founded fear” of danger there. However, the Trump administration has said he cannot stay in the U.S. Over the past few months, government officials have said they would deport him to Uganda, Eswatini, Ghana and, most recently, Liberia.
Abrego Garcia is fighting his deportation in federal court in Maryland, where his attorneys claim the administration is manipulating the immigration system to punish him for successfully challenging his earlier deportation.
Here’s what to know about the latest developments in the case:
Abrego Garcia is a Salvadoran citizen with an American wife and child who has lived in Maryland for years. He immigrated to the U.S. illegally as a teenager to join his brother, who had become a U.S. citizen. In 2019, an immigration judge granted him protection from being deported back to his home country.
While he was allowed to live and work in the U.S. under Immigration and Customs Enforcement supervision, he was not given residency status. Earlier this year, he was mistakenly deported to El Salvador, despite the earlier court ruling.
When Abrego Garcia was deported in March, he was held in a notoriously brutal Salvadoran prison despite having no criminal record.
The Trump administration initially fought efforts to bring him back to the U.S. but eventually complied after the U.S. Supreme Court weighed in. He returned to the U.S. in June, only to face an arrest warrant on human smuggling charges in Tennessee. Abrego Garcia was held in a Tennessee jail for more than two months before he was released on Friday, Aug. 22, to await trial in Maryland under home detention.
His freedom lasted a weekend. On the following Monday, he reported to the Baltimore immigration office for a check-in and was immediately taken into immigration custody. Officials announced plans to deport him to a series of African countries, but they were blocked by an order from U.S. District Judge Paula Xinis in Maryland.
On Thursday, after months of legal filings and hearings, Xinis ruled that Abrego Garcia should be released immediately. Her ruling hinged on what was likely a procedural error by the immigration judge who heard his case in 2019.
Normally, in a case like this, an immigration judge will first issue an order of removal. Then the judge will essentially freeze that order by issuing a “withholding of removal” order, according to Memphis immigration attorney Andrew Rankin.
In Abrego Garcia’s case, the judge granted withholding of removal to El Salvador because he found Abrego Garcia’s life could be in danger there. However, the judge never took the first step of issuing the order of removal. The government argued in Xinis’ court that the order of removal could be inferred, but the judge disagreed.
Without a final order of removal, Abrego Garcia can’t be deported, Xinis ruled.
The only way to get an order of removal is to go back to immigration court and ask for one, Rankin said. But reopening the immigration case is a gamble because Abrego Garcia’s attorneys would likely seek protection from deportation in the form of asylum or some other type of relief.
One wrinkle is that immigration courts are officially part of the executive branch, and the judges there are not generally viewed as being as independent as federal judges.
“There might be independence in some areas, but if the administration wants a certain result, by all accounts it seems they’re going to exert the pressure on the individuals to get that result,” Rankin said. “I hope he gets a fair shake, and two lawyers make arguments — somebody wins, somebody loses — instead of giving it to an immigration judge with a 95% denial rate, where everybody in the world knows how it’s gonna go down.”
Alternatively, the government could appeal Xinis’ order to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals and try to get her ruling overturned, Rankin said. If the appeals court agreed with the government that the final order of removal was implied, there could be no need to reopen the immigration case.
In compliance with Xinis’ order, Abrego Garcia was released from immigration detention in Pennsylvania on Thursday evening and allowed to return home for the first time in months. However, he was also told to report to an immigration officer in Baltimore early the next morning.
Fearing that he would be detained again, his attorneys asked Xinis for a temporary restraining order. Xinis filed that order early Friday morning. It prohibits immigration officials from taking Abrego Garcia back into custody, at least for the time being. A hearing on the issue could happen as early as next week.
Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Abrego Garcia has pleaded not guilty in the criminal case where he is charged with human smuggling and conspiracy to commit human smuggling.
Prosecutors claim he accepted money to transport, within the United States, people who were in the country illegally. The charges stem from a 2022 traffic stop in Tennessee for speeding. Body camera footage from a Tennessee Highway Patrol officer shows a calm exchange with Abrego Garcia. There were nine passengers in the car, and the officers discussed among themselves their suspicions of smuggling. However, Abrego Garcia was eventually allowed to continue driving with only a warning.
Abrego Garcia has asked U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw to dismiss the smuggling charges on the grounds of “selective or vindictive prosecution.”
Crenshaw earlier found “some evidence that the prosecution against him may be vindictive” and said many statements by Trump administration officials “raise cause for concern.” Crenshaw specifically cited a statement by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on a Fox News Channel program that seemed to suggest the Justice Department charged Abrego Garcia because he won his wrongful-deportation case.
The two sides have been sparring over whether senior Justice Department officials, including Blanche, can be required to testify in the case.
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