Roughly 36,000 Heartwarming Hugs Bears, a stuffed animal manufactured by Build-A-Bear, are being recalled due to a zipper detaching from the bear’s pouch.
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On Thursday, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that the stuffed animals pose a serious risk of injury or death, as the detached zipper can present a choking hazard.
The recall number is 034464. The recall number can be found on the product label located on the back of one of the bear’s legs.
The bear includes a stuffed heart that fits inside a pocket. The heart-shaped insert is filled with 2.5 pounds of ceramic beads and can be used as a heating pad or chilled for cooling comfort.
“The product is graded 3 years+ and carries a cautionary statement advising adult supervision due to the heated/cooled element,” the release stated.
The bear was sold between January 2026 and March 2026 for about $48.
Customers are advised to immediately stop using the Heartwarming Hugs Bear. Consumers who purchased the bear should return it to the nearest Build-A-Bear store or request a shipping label at www.buildabear.com/recalls. Once returned, Build-A-Bear will issue a refund to the original form of payment or provide a gift card.
There have been no reported injuries, although one consumer in the United Kingdom reported the zipper detaching.
For information on the recall visit Build-A-Bear online at www.buildabear.com/recalls according to the release.
Thermos is recalling 8.2 million containers after consumers suffered laceration injuries — and in some cases reported permanent vision loss — when stoppers forcefully ejected from the products and struck them in the face.
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The recall covers approximately 5.8 million Stainless King Food Jars and 2.3 million Sportsman Food & Beverage Bottles. According to a recall notice posted by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission on April 30, consumers should stop using the affected products immediately.
The affected models include Thermos Sportsman Food & Beverage Bottles: all units, model SK3010; Food Jars and Food & Beverage Bottles: all units, models SK3000 (16-ounce), SK3020 (24-ounce), and SK3010 (40-ounce); and Thermos Stainless King Food Jars manufactured before July 2023: models SK3000 and SK3020.
The model number can be found at the bottom of the item.
The hazard stems from a design flaw in the stopper — the component that retains heat and prevents leakage. If perishable food or beverages are stored for an extended period, pressure can build up and cause the stopper to forcefully eject when the container is opened. Unlike safer designs, the stopper on the recalled models lacks a pressure-relief valve.
Thermos said it has received 27 reports of consumers being struck by an ejected stopper, including injuries requiring medical attention. Three consumers reported suffering permanent vision loss after being struck in the eye.
The recalled products were sold between March 2008 and July 2024 at Walmart, Target, and Amazon, as well as on Thermos.com. They were available in a variety of colors and bear the Thermos trademark on the side.
Owners of SK3000 and SK3020 Food Jars should dispose of the stopper and submit a photo of the disposal to Thermos. Owners of SK3010 bottles should return the product using a prepaid shipping label provided by the company. For details on returns and replacements, visit the Thermos recall page at Thermos.com.
AUSTIN, Texas — The Onion’s plan to take over the Infowars platforms that Alex Jones built into a bullhorn of conspiracy theories and turn them into parody sites was in limbo again Thursday, after a Texas court paused a proposed deal involving the satirical news outlet.
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Austin-based Infowars is facing liquidation because of the more than $1 billion in defamation lawsuit judgments Jones owes relatives of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting for calling the Connecticut massacre a hoax. The proposed licensing deal would give The Onion temporary authority to use Infowars’ trademarks, copyrights and intellectual property while a state receiver in Texas works toward liquidation.
A state judge in Austin had scheduled a hearing Thursday on whether to approve The Onion deal with the receiver. But the proceeding fizzled into a status conference because the Texas Third Court of Appeals late Wednesday approved an emergency motion by Jones’ lawyers that temporarily blocked the transfer of any Infowars assets. The judge set another hearing for May 28.
Lawyers for the Sandy Hook families had asked the Texas Supreme Court to overturn the appeals court ruling, but the high court did not issue a decision before Thursday’s hearing.
“This newly insane, unprecedented legal stalling does nothing but delay our deal with the receiver to take control of InfoWars,” Ben Collins, The Onion’s CEO, said in a social media post ahead of the hearing. “We now expect new traps in Alex Jones’ amoral war to deny paying the Sandy Hook families, but we’re freshly surprised by the U.S. legal system’s appetite to put up with it.”
The Onion already has been selling Infowars merchandise on its own website, including T-shirts and tote bags with an Infowars logo that replaces the “o” with its trademark onion image. It wants to turn the Infowars platforms into comedy sites that would include spoofing Jones, conspiracy theories and right-wing talking points, while giving revenue to the Sandy Hook victims’ relatives.
Jones declared victory in videos posted on his social media sites after the appellate court ruling. He called The Onion’s plan illegal, citing pending appeals and his continuing personal bankruptcy case.
“I said days ago there’s no way the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Texas doesn’t overturn this — you know they’re all Democrats — because it’s so outrageous what you’ve done,” Jones said.
After Thursday’s hearing, Mark Bankston, a lawyer for some of the Sandy Hook victims’ relatives, accused Jones of delaying the liquidation of Infowars numerous times with court filings.
“As far as the world is concerned, Infowars is dead. Everybody knows that,” he said. “He’s trying to keep the bloated corpse of a media organization alive. It’s all a joke. Everybody knows where this is going.”
It’s not the first time The Onion has hit a legal setback in plans to take over Infowars.
In November 2024, the Chicago-based satirical outlet was named the winner of a bankruptcy court auction of the assets of Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, aimed at helping pay some of the defamation judgments. But a federal judge overturned the auction results, citing problems with process and The Onion’s bid.
Jones said on his show this week that he has a new studio nearing completion. He already has set up a new phone app and websites, including one that sells the dietary supplements, clothing and other merchandise he hawks on his shows. And his personal X account, where he posts videos of his shows and has 4.5 million followers, is not affected by any of the court cases.
On Thursday night, Jones toasted to his crew and viewers during a livestream on X as a clock ticked down to when he said his final moments in the building would hit.
“We’re not here anymore because they’re turning the power off at midnight,” he said.
A political firestorm erupted this week after a Washington, D.C., internal police email appeared to reprimand rank-and-file officers for body camera footage allegedly showing them “finess[ing]” their way out of making arrests on reasonable grounds.
The news comes as the Trump administration cracks down on crime in the District of Columbia at the federal level. While crime rates have steadily declined from a peak in 2023, the nation’s capital continues to suffer per-capita violent crime at higher rates than the national average, according to FBI data.
The Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to Fox News Digital that its brass had rescinded an email sent by the captain for Sector 2 of the Sixth Police District, which covers areas north of Marion Barry Avenue and east of the John Philip Sousa Bridge.
“We are seeing more and more BWCs [body-worn cameras] where officers are not making arrests where probable cause or RAS [reasonable amount of suspicion] is apparent. This is leading to complaints to IAD (internal affairs division) and OPC, and it is also leaving victims and complainants unprotected by the police,” wrote Capt. Jerome Merrill.
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Merrill’s letter, first obtained by Washington’s CBS affiliate, said the situation is getting many police officials in trouble for failing to recognize or correct classifications of interactions with the public.
“Please do not try and finesse your way out of an arrest it is not worth the consequences I assure you,” the memo said, urging police to make arrests or apply for warrants before detectives need to follow up on them.
The department told Fox News Digital the information in the email was “incorrect” and that MPD is investigating.
Asked about the situation and whether arrests can be made on reasonable suspicion in any context, former Supreme Court Chief of Police Ross Swope told Fox News Digital that the distinction is “not only typical of most departments, it is the law.”
Swope, who served for decades with the MPD and later wrote texts on police ethics and internal operations, said probable cause requires more than reasonable suspicion.
“It requires a higher degree of certainty,” he said. “[Probable cause] is when the facts and circumstances within an officer’s knowledge would lead a reasonable person to believe that a crime has been committed for which a summary arrest may be permitted.”
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He said Merrill may have viewed body cams and believed in his own view that arrests should have been made, but that he was wrong to instruct officers to make arrests based solely on reasonable suspicion.
Fox News Digital also reached out to the D.C. Police Union for comment but did not receive a response.
But Union President Gregg Pemberton told the CBS affiliate after the fact that he essentially, independently, agreed with Swope.
“The Union has reviewed Captain Merrill’s email and determined that the reason that our members are not making arrests based on reasonable articulable suspicion is because that’s illegal,” Pemberton told the outlet.
“We would expect a captain of a police patrol district to know that, but unfortunately, this command staff official has proven himself uninformed and incapable of managing police operations in the District of Columbia,” he added.
EXCLUSIVE: The Department of Homeland Security lambasted Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and the state’s refusal to cooperate with ICE after an illegal immigrant convicted of child sexual abuse was released from jail despite calls for state officials to turn him over to federal authorities.
Both Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson have repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement posture, with the mayor comparing President Donald Trump’s America to Jefferson Davis’ Confederacy.
Johnson has accused Trump of “declar[ing] war on Chicago” and using DHS as a “private, militarized, occupying force,” while pledging to fight them in the streets, the legislature and the judiciary. The state operates under the Illinois TRUST Act, a law championed by Springfield Democrats and signed by former Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner that prohibits the use of state and local resources for most civil immigration enforcement purposes.
“Governor Pritzker continues to refuse to do his job to protect his citizens from illegal alien crime and instead chooses to smear our law enforcement,” Assistant Secretary Lauren Bis told Fox News Digital.
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“Where is the investigation into his own policies that allowed this pedophile to be released from jail and be loose in Illinois communities?” she added of the Hyatt Hotels heir and potential 2028 Democratic presidential candidate.
Bis called on Pritzker to “end this insanity and stop releasing pedophiles into our communities.”
DHS told Fox News Digital exclusively that ICE officers went to Chicago and arrested Guatemalan national Erik Giovanni-Quiroa, who had been released from jail after his ICE detainer was ignored following a conviction for aggravated sexual abuse of a five-year-old child.
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Giovanni-Quiroa, who also had a 2011 firearm-battery conviction, was given a three-year sentence on the pedophilia charge but ICE instead encountered him on the streets.
Last week, ICE conducted a targeted vehicle stop and arrested Giovanni-Quiroa after his detainer was denied, forcing agents to locate him themselves.
Officials said Giovanni-Quiroa refused to stop and briefly fled before being placed in federal custody.
Bis said “sanctuary” politicians in Illinois and elsewhere continue to wrongly protect criminal illegal immigrants and allow them to reoffend and perpetrate additional crimes against Americans.
ICE previously called on Illinois law enforcement to begin honoring ICE detainers, as Director Todd Lyons wrote to Attorney General Kwame Raoul noting that DHS says more than 4,000 illegal immigrants are in state custody.
Giovanni-Quiroa illegally entered the U.S. under the second Bush administration and has been essentially a beneficiary of the aforementioned TRUST Act.
In the heat of “Operation: Midway Blitz” in June, Raoul published a memo reiterating key provisions of the law as a “refresher for Illinois law enforcement agencies.”
“It is important to note, however, that although the Illinois TRUST Act prevents the use of state and local resources for civil immigration enforcement purposes, it does not prevent law enforcement officers from taking action to maintain peace and ensure public safety within their jurisdiction,” Raoul wrote.
“Although some provisions of federal immigration statutes are criminal, deportation and removability are matters of civil law, not criminal law [and] whether an individual is lawfully present in the United States is a question of federal civil immigration law.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Raoul for comment on the current case, as well as Pritzker and Johnson.
When Rauner signed the TRUST Act in 2017, he said it would “continue Illinois’ history of welcoming immigrants and help law enforcement focus on stopping violent crime and protecting Illinois residents.”
In that statement, Rauner also cited a federal court decision from the Chicago-based Northern District of Illinois in which an Obama-appointed judge whom President Joe Biden later promoted to an appeals court found flaws in ICE’s detainer process.
Judge John Z. Lee said in his 2019 order in Jimenez-Moreno v. Napolitano that immigration detainer orders exceeded DHS’ statutory authority but he also acknowledged a Philadelphia federal court ruling that ICE detainer requests do not violate the Tenth Amendment as alleged.
With President Donald Trump “hired” by the American people for a second term, Amazon — which now owns production rights to NBC’s “The Apprentice” — is looking for a new host to potentially reboot the once No. 1-rated television program, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Trump leveraged decades of media coverage as a New York mogul amid the ups and downs of the 1980s and 1990s into a smash-hit program that premiered in 2004, following several wannabe business executives through a several-week “job interview” to work for the Trump Organization.
Fifteen seasons and a presidency-compelled hiatus later, Amazon is reportedly considering Trump Organization Executive Vice President Donald Trump Jr. for the role, as the eldest son has served as a frequent stand-in “boardroom adviser” for Trump executives Carolyn Kepcher and George Ross.
Trump addressed rumors of a reboot on Thursday, telling Fox News’ Peter Doocy that his son is a “good guy” and would “probably be good” in the role.
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“He’s got a little charisma going. You need a little charisma for that sucker. So, we’ll see what happens,” Trump said.
Several people familiar with the discussions told The Wall Street Journal that Amazon executives have internally discussed casting Trump Jr. as a host for an “Apprentice” reboot if they do indeed launch the project.
The Journal reported Amazon has not yet approached Trump Sr., Trump Jr. or any Trump family members, but that, instead of NBC, it would air the show on Amazon Prime.
A source close to Trump Jr. told Fox News Digital on Thursday that the Journal report was indeed the first time the 48-year-old father of five had heard his name was in the pot.
Fox News Digital also reached out to the Trump Organization for comment, as well as Amazon and Amazon’s production company.
An Amazon spokesperson told the Journal that the Jeff Bezos-led company previously acquired MGM, which itself bought a majority stake in reality-show impresario Mark Burnett’s company several years earlier.
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Burnett has launched several reality shows, including “The Apprentice” and CBS-aired contests “The Amazing Race” and “Survivor,” with the latter now in its 50th season. The credits for “The Apprentice” list Trump Sr. as executive producer.
A reboot would be Amazon’s second foray into Trumpworld in recent months, as it recently debuted a $40 million biopic of first lady Melania Trump that drew praise from supporters and mockery from critics like ABC’s Jimmy Kimmel.
“Melania” was directed by Brett Ratner of “Rush Hour” fame, as Trump reportedly pressed Paramount Pictures to revive the Jackie Chan-Chris Tucker series and put Ratner back at the helm, according to CNBC, which further reported the original New Line Cinema films are now subject to a distribution pact between Paramount and New Line parent Warner Bros.
Trump Sr. regularly touted his “Apprentice” success throughout his political tenure, once telling the National Prayer Breakfast that attendees should “pray” for former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger after the “Terminator” took over the show and oversaw what the president called a ratings collapse.
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Schwarzenegger, the most recent Republican to serve as governor in Sacramento, occasionally spars with Trump, as he is seen as less bombastic and more politically moderate than the president.
“Hey Donald, I have a great idea,” Schwarzenegger shot back at Trump in an X video at the time.
“Why don’t we switch jobs — you take over TV — since you’re such an expert in ratings, and I take over your job so that people can finally sleep comfortable again — hmm?” the Austria native, who voted for then-Ohio Gov. John Kasich in 2016, quipped.
Fox News Digital reached out to NBCUniversal for additional comment on the potential resurrection of their onetime series. Neither Amazon nor the Trump Organization responded by publication time.
Fox News Digital’s Janelle Ash contributed to this report.
FIRST ON FOX: Minnesota Republican lawmaker Kristin Robbins, chair of the House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee, announced on Friday she is ending her gubernatorial campaign to replace embattled Gov. Tim Walz.
“It was not a tough decision to get into the race 10 months ago,” Robbins exclusively told Fox News Digital. “We could not allow Tim Walz to have a third term in Minnesota. He’s destroyed our state, and we had to stop him, and so, I think I made a great case for that, and because of all my work on the fraud committee he got out nine months ahead of schedule, which is great.”
Robbins continued, “Once Senator Klobuchar became sort of the anointed candidate to replace him, I just think the establishment kind of circled the wagons and, you know, it became a challenging endeavor, and I’m a realist, and I am a numbers person, and when I look at the math, I don’t see a path for me to win.”
Weeks after Walz dropped his re-election bid in January amid a massive fraud scandal that unfolded during his watch, Sen. Amy Klobuchar jumped into the race, bringing her deep political backing and name recognition with her as the presumptive nominee for the Democrats.
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Robbins told Fox News Digital she determined it was better to “bow out” and find a “new way to contribute” due to love of her state and the realization that there are “many ways to serve.”
In terms of what’s next, Robbins says she hasn’t had the time to give that much thought but said she is focused on closing out the current legislative session and said “there’s a lot of big things going on in the front committee.”
“I know where the bodies are buried,” Robbins said about the fraud situation, pointing out that there is much more work to be done to get answers on how the billions of dollars in fraud was allowed to go unchecked for so long.
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With Robbins exiting the race, the Republicans vying to win the gubernatorial primary include Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, healthcare executive Kendall Qualls, MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell and several other lesser known candidates.
Robbins told Fox News Digital she will “not be endorsing anyone.”
“That will be up to the voters to decide, and I wish all the other candidates well,” Robbins said.
Ultimately, Robbins says her “overwhelming thought” is “gratitude” when she looks back on her campaign.
“I am so grateful for the last ten months of going all over the state meeting Minnesotans from every walk of life and to have had the privilege to run for governor and meet all these amazing people and hear their stories, be inspired by what they want for Minnesota,” Robbins said. “I am just so grateful and so privileged.”
Robbins says that going forward, the “answers” are not going to come from the capitol in St. Paul, but rather “from the communities and from the people” and she “looks forward to plugging into that.”
Katie Wilson, Seattle’s new self-proclaimed socialist mayor, sparked a social media firestorm after she gave her take on reports that millionaires are fleeing Washington state due to taxes and various far-left policies.
While speaking at a forum at Seattle University earlier this month, the new Democratic mayor said, “I think the claims that millionaires are going to leave our state are like super overblown.”
“And the ones that leave, like, bye,” she continued, waving her hand and laughing. Though the line drew laughs and applause from those in the auditorium, it did not go over as well online, as conservatives quickly blasted the new Seattle mayor.
“Seattle’s Socialist Mayor responds to exodus of wealth from Washington State by saying “BYE” … then laughing. We’re doomed,” wrote Brandi Kruse.
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Kruse’s post has been seen over 4 million times on social media as of Friday morning.
Popular conservative account “End Wokeness” also posted on X, writing, “Mayor Wilson seems to welcome the idea of a wealth exodus from Seattle. This is the FA part. FO coming soon.”
“Enjoy, Seattle,” Fox News contributor Guy Benson posted on X.
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“What do socialists think happens when the most productive, highest revenue driving members of their tax base leave their jurisdictions?” Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts posted on X.
“Socialists are driven by hate for the rich, not concern for the poor,” Manhattan Institute scholar Daniel Di Martino posted on X.
“This is the reaction of a spoiled child whose parents paid her bills up until the point that she became mayor… She has no grasp of reality or economics,” comedian Tim Young posted on X. “Seattle is extra cooked.”
Discovery Institute Senior Journalism Fellow Jonathan Choe posted on X, “Seattle, you voted for this.”
“This clip will live in infamy,” the Washington State Republican Party posted on X. “@MayorofSeattle Katie Wilson is not only unfit to be mayor, she lacks grace and gratitude. Perhaps, she’s the one who should leave #Seattle.”
Fox News Digital reached out to Wilson’s office for comment.
Wilson shocked many political observers when she was elected Seattle’s mayor last year, and many chalked up her victory to her ability to tap into a similar voting bloc that socialist Zohran Mamdani used on his way to becoming New York City’s next mayor.
Earlier this month, Fox News Digital reported on city advocates who say they are struggling to find solutions as homelessness and open-air drug use spread across Seattle’s streets, amid growing concerns about the direction of Wilson’s new administration.
“You can just see the foil is like blowing down the sidewalks like autumn leaves,” Andrea Suarez, founder and executive director of We Heart Seattle, told Fox News Digital in an interview.
“Very common to see property damage of our parks and shared spaces. You can see Narcan is used to reverse an overdose, so you’ll see cartridges. But at least we’re remodeling the bathroom to be gender-neutral. I’m not [kidding] you, that’s where our priorities are.”
Fox News Digital’s Nikolas Lanum and Rachel Del Guidice contributed to this report.
Five more states are joining a federal antitrust lawsuit aimed at stopping the blockbuster merger of Nexstar and Tegna, a corporate tie-up that would create the largest operator of local television stations in the country.
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California Attorney General Rob Bonta, whose office is leading the court challenge, said Thursday that Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania and Vermont had joined as plaintiffs, making the suit a bipartisan effort.
“This is not controversial stuff — this merger is illegal and will give Nexstar and Tegna the ability to control and raise prices, fire journalists, and dominate the media landscape,” Bonta said in a statement.
“We welcome our sister states into the fray and look forward to fighting alongside them,” Bonta added.
In a statement, Nexstar called the state attorneys general “misguided” and accused them of “strangling local journalism” with their legal efforts.
“The AGs, none of whom has a track record of advocating for local media, would do well to understand the industry they purport to protect,” Nexstar said in part, adding that local broadcast station owners need to grow so they can better compete with Big Tech platforms.
“The alternative to this deal is not more independently owned outlets — it’s the demise of your local broadcast station,” the company said.
Tegna did not immediately respond to a request for comment Thursday.
The new plaintiffs join a lineup that includes state attorneys general for Colorado, Connecticut, Illinois, New York, North Carolina, Oregon and Virginia. The 13 state attorneys general filed an amended complaint Thursday.
The attorneys general of Indiana, Kansas and Pennsylvania are Republicans, while the others behind the suit are Democrats.
U.S. District Judge Troy L. Nunley in California two weeks ago issued a preliminary injunction pausing the merger as the case goes forward. Bonta’s office at the time touted the ruling as a “critical win in our case.”
The Federal Communications Commission and the Justice Department both approved the merger last month. President Donald Trump also publicly backed the deal.
In green-lighting it, the FCC waived a rule barring any single company from owning television stations that reach more than 39% of U.S. households. The combined entity would own 264 TV stations and reach as many as 80% of U.S. households, according to estimates cited in court documents.
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, a Trump appointee, said waiving the rule was “consistent” with the agency’s legal authority.
The FCC’s waiver is the subject of a separate legal challenge filed by an eclectic coalition of petitioners that includes the conservative cable news channel Newsmax and a group of progressive advocacy groups.
Newsmax CEO Chris Ruddy has said he believes it was unlawful for the FCC to waive the 39% rule for Nexstar because it was set by an act of Congress and most recently amended in a 2004 law.
“Basically,” Ruddy told NBC News last month, “the FCC has decided to try to invalidate the law by an administrative decision. I think it’s wrong. I think it’s a threat to democracy.”
A new law takes effect in Oregon on Friday that forces communications and social media companies to promptly comply with search warrants linked to stalking and domestic violence cases.
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The law, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, is named for Kristil Krug, a Colorado woman who was killed in 2023 after an elaborate stalking plot carried out by her husband. He was convicted of her murder last year and sentenced to life in prison.
Krug’s cousin Rebecca Ivanoff lives in Oregon and advocated for the law’s passage there and in Colorado, where she said she’s hopeful it can become law in 2027.
A former prosecutor who specialized in domestic violence cases, Ivanoff has described the legislation as “homicide prevention” and believes her cousin might still be alive had communications companies responded faster to search warrants in Krug’s case.
“Kristil is gone, but there are so many other survivors for whom this would make a difference,” she said in an interview earlier this week.
The new law requires communications companies to respond to warrants in five days and social media companies to respond within 72 hours. In addition to stalking and domestic violence crimes, the companies must also act in cases that involve violations of protective orders in stalking cases.
If the companies fail to comply with the deadlines, Ivanoff said, they can be held in contempt.
There were previously no legaldeadlines in Oregon for companies to provide those responses, which often took weeks and sometimes months, according to a state assistant attorney general who testified in support of the bill in February.
Yet the emails, texts and social media messages can be critical to investigations and for victim safety, said the official, Sarah Sabri. Those delays hinder law enforcement and leave victims in a dangerous limbo, she said.
“In domestic violence and stalking cases, time is not neutral,” Sabri said. “Risk can escalate very rapidly.”
Researchers have previously documented the link between stalking and deadly intimate partner violence, with one 2018 study showing that it triples the risk of homicide.
Oregon’s new law “corrects a dangerous gap in the current system,” state Rep. Kevin Mannix, one of the chief sponsors of the legislation, said after it passed unanimously in Oregon’s House of Representatives in February. “This bill recognizes a simple truth: In domestic violence and stalking cases, speed saves lives.”
Speaking before a House committee, Mannix added that while search warrants typically help authorities investigate crimes that have already occurred, Kristil’s Law will allow them to identify stalkers and intervene earlier in the process to prevent violent outcomes.
Mannix said he hopes it will set a precedent across the country.
Local prosecutors praised the legislation. In a statement to NBC News, the president of the Oregon District Attorneys Association said it will “reduce the chance of tragedies like Kristil Krug’s from occurring in Oregon.”
Brant Wolf, executive vice president of the state association that represents telecom companies, said that while its members initially had concerns with the legislation, they reached a satisfactory resolution.
“Our members were happy to work with the proponents of Kristil’s Law to make sure the legislation passed,” he said.
A spokesman for Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, declined to comment. Google did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the company previously told NBC News that it recognized “the critical importance of maintaining flexibility” in its responses to search warrants.
In Krug’s case, Ivanoff said that her cousin — whom her family described as “a fighter and a true force” — did everything she could to protect herself:She maintained a detailed “stalker log” that she provided to law enforcement, ran drills with her children on what to do if the stalker showed up, installed security cameras and began carrying a handgun.
“And she still got killed,” Ivanoff said.
While Krug was alive, authorities filed search warrants with communications companies that sought information about the increasingly terrifying messages the stalker was sending her, police records show. But those responses didn’t come until after Krug was fatally struck in the head and stabbed in her home on Dec. 14, 2023.
On the day of her death, investigators reached back out to the companies with an emergency request because of the homicide, according to the records. The companies responded within an hour with information that helped authorities determine that the messages had come not from an ex-boyfriend — as the sender made it seem — but from her husband, Daniel Krug.
“Had Kristil had access to that information,” Ivanoff said, “she would have been positioned to know that, quite literally, the call was coming from inside the house, and she could have made a safety plan that never would have allowed him to have the access to her that he did. Law enforcement would have had the evidence they needed to tie him to the stalking and make an arrest.”
Daniel Krug maintained his innocence and was convicted last year of first-degree murder, stalking and criminal impersonation.
Ivanoff said she embarked on her advocacy after a discussion about her cousin’s case with “Dateline” correspondent Josh Mankiewicz last summer. Though Ivanoff had no background in lobbying, her push for Kristil’s Law became reality with bipartisan support after a single five-week session in Oregon’s Legislature, where it was also approved by the state Senate with unanimous support.
Although California and Colorado have recently enacted laws that require social media companies to respond promptly to all search warrants, those laws would have done nothing for Krug, Ivanoff said, because her cousin’s case involved stalking via email and text message.
Though Ivanoff hoped for a quicker deadline in Kristil’s Law — she said she originallywanted companies to respond within in 48 hours — the compromise they landed on recognizes the urgency tied to stalking and domestic violence cases, she said.
Ivanoff told Oregon lawmakers in February that by voting yes, they would ensure her cousin did not die in vain.
“If she were here, she would want something positive to come out of what was a horrific experience for our family,” Ivanoff told NBC News. “She would not want any other victims to have to experience what she did, and this is a commonsense solution to a system-based failure. I think she’d be proud of this work.”
