It’s Wednesday, April 24, 2019. Let’s start here.
1. Biden? His time.
The question for weeks, if not months, was not if former Vice President Joe Biden would be running for president but when.
ABC News has confirmed that Biden, with a video announcement on Thursday, will become the 20th Democrat to declare. Several national polls indicate he’s among the front-runners.
Stephanie Cutter, a deputy campaign manager for former President Barack Obama, says that’s because of “Scranton Joe’s” broad support within his party.
“He comes to this race fairly well-defined, very favorably seen, particularly by the Democratic base, and with an agenda and a narrative about who he is and what he stands for,” she says today on “Start Here.”
FiveThirtyEight Editor-in-Chief Nate Silver says Biden’s popularity among the working class is underrated, but warns about a honeymoon phase this early in the campaign.
“This electability halo,” he added, “gradually fades.”
2. ISIS 2.0?
Sri Lanka remains on edge, fearing additional terror attacks in the wake of coordinated suicide bombings that killed at least 359 people.
The Sri Lankan government has issued warnings that terrorists still are on the run and that the potential for more attacks is “very real” after ISIS claimed responsibility for the Easter Sunday massacre, ABC News Senior Foreign Correspondent James Longman tells us from Colombo.
A van exploded near a church in Sri Lanka as bomb squad officials tried to defuse it, the day after over 300 people were killed in a series of Easter suicide bombings across the country.@ABC News’ @JamesAALongman was nearby when the explosion occurred. https://t.co/XdkffD7pnt pic.twitter.com/XqerQIkPM0
“Perhaps we can call this ISIS 2.0,” he says on today’s podcast. “They’ve seen their territory wiped away in places like Iraq and Syria … but now ISIS is trying to reassert control, trying to get to parts of the world where they weren’t previously, and carry out attacks like this.”
3. ‘Perversion files’
More than 7,800 people involved in the Boy Scouts of America sexually abused 12,000 children between 1944 and 2016, according to lawyers representing the victims.
Attorney Jeff Anderson disclosed the figures at a news conference on Tuesday, accusing the Boy Scouts of hiding “perversion files” that contained information on alleged abusers.
“The real peril and the real problem and the real reason for alarm is that even if they remove them from the Boy Scouts, or from a position of leadership, they don’t tell the community,” Anderson says on “Start Here.”
In a statement to ABC News after the disclosure, the Boy Scouts of America expressed sympathy for the victims and apologized to “anyone who was harmed during their time in Scouting.”
“Start Here,” ABC News’ flagship podcast, offers a straightforward look at the day’s top stories in 20 minutes. Listen for free every weekday on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn or the ABC News app. Follow @StartHereABC on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram for exclusive content and show updates.
Elsewhere:
‘Jack had a constructive meeting’: Twitter’s CEO sits down with the president, who, hours after tweeting that the social media platform is “very discriminatory,” called it a “great meeting” with “lots of subjects discussed regarding their platform.”
‘I don’t know if she got caught with the moving parts and they pulled her in, or if she just slipped and fell’: A woman falls into a meat grinder.
From our friends at FiveThirtyEight:
How the citizenship question could break the census: Critics of the proposal to add a citizenship question to the census are concerned that if a large number of immigrants don’t respond or respond incorrectly, the results will be inaccurate, and as a result, certain areas of the country will lose funding or political representation. Both parties could be affected, since an undercount of immigrants would likely hurt red states like Texas and blue states like California.
Doff your cap:
Lyra McKee died in the line of duty.
The 29-year-old journalist was shot by a “single gunman” during riots in Northern Ireland last week. Three arrests have been made, and the New Irish Republican Army apologized for its role in the buildup, saying in a statement: “In the course of attacking the enemy, Lyra McKee was tragically killed while standing beside enemy forces. The IRA offer our full and sincere apologies to the partner, family and friends of Lyra McKee for her death.”
According to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists, a nonprofit that promotes press freedom, nine journalists have been killed so far in 2019, after 78 were killed worldwide in 2018.
Since 1992, according to CPJ, 1,867 have been killed.
Heroes all.
