PG&E could conduct a “public safety power shutoff” across most of Northern California this week. Photo: Tracey Taylor
PG&E could preemptively shut off power for a huge swath of Northern California on Wednesday and Thursday.
The utility announced Monday that a potential “strong and dry wind event” could prompt the “public safety power shutoff” in around 30 California counties, including Alameda. The National Weather Service has issued a fire weather alert for much of Northern California this week.
“The dry, windy weather pattern is expected to reach from the northern portions of PG&E’s service territory and down through the Sacramento Valley before spreading into the central areas of the state including most of the Bay Area,” PG&E said in a news alert.
Buried within PG&E’s website is a map showing where the outage could take place, including the Berkeley and Oakland hills, and other parts of North Berkeley and the Cal campus area.
The shutoff, potentially lasting from Wednesday morning until Thursday afternoon, is meant to target fire-prone areas only, but could end up affecting any of PG&E’s 5 million customers because of power line connections, the utility said. (Although Berkeley switched over to East Bay Community Energy last year, PG&E still manages the power lines throughout the city and beyond.)
A potential outage map on the PG&E website shows all of the Berkeley Hills and surrounding areas as contenders for the shut-off. Screenshot: PG&E
The state granted PG&E and other utilities the authority to shut off power last year, after massive wildfires killed dozens of people in California. The utility’s equipment was found responsible for starting several of the fires, including the deadliest in the state’s history, the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise.
This summer PG&E launched a new website to help customers prepare for wildfires and potential public safety power shutoffs. The utility gave a presentation to the Berkeley City Council in July about the potential impacts of such shutoffs on local residents. Officials raised concerns about the effect on people who use electricity to power medical equipment, and on cell towers and reservoirs.
PG&E says up-to-date information on this week’s potential shutoff can be found online. The utility will also attempt to contact customers by phone, email and text if the shutoff is planned. Non-customers can sign up for a new Public Safety Power Shutoff Zip Code alert.
BART is unlikely to be affected by a shutoff. In an August post on its website the transit agency writes: “A PSPS in our region is not anticipated to impact train service because BART has flexibility to pull power from other sections of our traction power supply system to replace power turned off in a PSPS, ensuring continuous train operations.”
Several Berkeley Unified schools are within the areas delineated by PG&E’s potential shutoff map, although the utility’s address finder does not currently indicate a shutoff for any BUSD schools. BUSD said in a statement Monday night it expects all schools to be open Wednesday but will keep the schools’ community updated.
In its alert Monday, PG&E issued the following tips on how customers can prepare for the possible shutoff:
Update their contact information at pge.com/mywildfirealerts or by calling 1-866-743-6589 during normal business hours. PG&E will use this information to alert customers through automated calls, texts, and emails, when possible, prior to, and during, a Public Safety Power Shutoff.
Plan for medical needs like medications that require refrigeration or devices that need power.
Identify backup charging methods for phones and keep hard copies of emergency numbers.
Build or restock your emergency kit with flashlights, fresh batteries, first aid supplies and cash.
Keep in mind family members who are elderly, younger children and pets. Information and tips including a safety plan checklist are available at pge.com/wildfiresafety.
Learn more about wildfire risk and what to do before, during and after an emergency to keep your family safe at PG&E’s Safety Action Center.
This story is being updated as more information becomes available.
Two Americans and a British scientist have been awarded the 2019 Nobel Prize for physiology or medicine for discovering how the body’s cells sense and react to oxygen levels, work that has paved the way for new strategies to fight anemia, cancer and other diseases, the Nobel Committee said.
Doctors William G. Kaelin Jr. of Harvard University, Gregg L. Semenza of Johns Hopkins University and Peter J. Ratcliffe at the Francis Crick Institute in Britain and Oxford University will share equally the 9 million kronor ($918,000) cash award, the Karolinska Institute said. It is the 110th prize in the category that has been awarded since 1901.
The Nobel Committee said their work has “greatly expanded our knowledge of how physiological response makes life possible,” explaining that the scientists identified the biological machinery that regulates how genes respond to varying levels of oxygen. That response is key to things like producing red blood cells, generating new blood vessels and fine-tuning the immune system.
The Nobel Committee said scientists are focused on developing drugs that can treat diseases by either activating or blocking the body’s oxygen-sensing machinery.
From left to right, the winners of the 2019 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, Gregg Semenza of the U.S., Peter Ratcliffe of Britain and William Kaelin of the U.S., appear on a screen during a press conference at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, on October 7, 2019.
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The oxygen response is hijacked by cancer cells, for example, which stimulate formation of blood vessels to help themselves grow. And people with kidney failure often get hormonal treatments for anemia, but the work of the new laureates points the way toward new treatments, Nils-Goran Larsson of the Nobel committee told The Associated Press.
Reached at his home, Kaelin said he was half-asleep Monday morning when the phone rang. It was Stockholm.
“I was aware as a scientist that if you get a phone call at 5 a.m. with too many digits, it’s sometimes very good news, and my heart started racing. It was all a bit surreal,” he said.
Kaelin said he isn’t sure yet how he’ll spend the prize money but “obviously I’ll try to put it to some good cause.” Kaelin is paid by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which also supports AP’s Health and Science Department with some grants.
Ratcliffe said he was summoned out of a morning meeting by his secretary, who had “a look of urgency.”
“He had a Swedish accent, so I figured it probably wasn’t one of my friends pulling my leg,” he said of the Nobel caller.
Trained as a kidney doctor, Ratcliffe said his research began when he and his colleagues simply wanted to figure out how cells sense oxygen. “I thought it was a definable problem and just thought we’d find out how it worked,” he said.
Ratcliffe said it was about two years into the research program that first began in 1990 when they realized the discovery had much wider significance. “We saw that it wasn’t just cells in the kidney that know how to sense oxygen, but all cells in the body,” he said. “They use this to do a huge range of other things, reprogram the cells, cause the growth of blood vessels, differentiation of cells. There are hundreds and thousands of processes the body uses to adapt to and regulate its oxygen levels.”
He said while some promising drugs have been developed, including for kidney patients who don’t get enough oxygen, it will be years before it’s clear whether such discoveries are going to change the lives of tens of thousands. Ratcliffe described his fellow laureates as “colleagues, competitors and friends.”
He said he felt honored by the Nobel accolade but that his main goal had always been pure science. “The satisfaction is really finding things out that will continue to be true for all time,” he said. “This is for me an eternal truth and as a scientist, we work away, we find these things out and we hope they will be useful.”
Ratcliffe said he plans to have a celebratory party at the laboratory and later with his family. “A lot of people came to the office after the phone call and we had some champagne,” he said.
In Baltimore, Semenza said when he and his colleagues were studying a gene in a rare cell type in the kidney they did an experiment that showed the factor they discovered — which was linked to oxygen — suggested it had widespread physiological importance. It turns out that the gene turns on erythropoietin, or EPO, which controls red blood cell production, when cells don’t get enough oxygen.
“We found it very interesting that the body can respond to oxygen,” he told the AP. That discovery has led to treatments for people with chronic kidney disease who become anemic when their kidneys stop making EPO. “Now, drugs can turn on EPO production by increasing these factors.”
Semenza said it was likely one or more of these drugs will be approved for production in the next few years and that one has already been green-lighted in China. Semenza has gone on to author more than 400 research articles and book chapters.
Andrew Murray of the University of Cambridge said the three laureates’ discovery was fundamental to understanding how to combat diseases of the heart and lungs as well as numerous cancers. “Low oxygen levels are a feature of some of the most life-threatening diseases,” he said. “When cells are short of oxygen, as is the case with heart failure and lung disease, the tissues need to respond to that in order to maintain energy levels.”
Murray said the case of cancer was slightly different. Some cancer tumors thrive under low oxygen conditions, so Murray said scientists are trying to develop drugs to manipulate oxygen levels under these circumstances.
“The work they have done is already leading the way to drugs that manipulate oxygen sensing pathways,” he said.
Last year, James Allison of the United States and Tasuku Honjo of Japan won the 2018 Nobel Prize for medicine for their work in immunotherapy, activating the body’s natural defense system to fight tumors.
Monday’s announcement kicked off this year’s Nobel Prizes. Last year, the Nobel Prize in literature was not awarded following sex abuse allegations and other issues within the ranks of the Swedish Academy that selects the winner.
This year’s double-header literature prizes — one each for 2018 and 2019 — will be awarded Thursday. The Nobel physics prize is handed out Tuesday, followed by the chemistry prize Wednesday.
The peace prize will be announced Friday. The economics prize will be awarded October 14.
The laureates will receive their awards at elegant ceremonies in Stockholm and Oslo on December 10 — the anniversary of Nobel’s death in 1896.
A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max lands in Victorville, Calif., in March.
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A Southwest Airlines Boeing 737 Max lands in Victorville, Calif., in March.
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The Southwest Airlines Pilots Association is suing The Boeing Company for $100 million in lost income connected with the grounding of the 737 MAX aircraft. Southwest is the largest owner of 737 MAX airplanes and has canceled more than 30,000 flights since the FAA grounded the aircraft in March after two crashes killed 346 people.
The union represents nearly 10,000 pilots. In a statement, union president Captain Jonathan Weaks said, “We have to be able to trust Boeing to truthfully disclose the information we need to safely operate our aircraft. In the case of the 737 MAX, that absolutely did not happen.”
The union has been negotiating with Boeing for compensation since early September but has not been able to come to an agreement.
By the end of the year, Southwest Airlines passenger service will have been reduced by about 8% because of the MAX grounding, pilot income is based in part on the number of hours pilots fly. This summer the airline removed the planes from its schedule through the beginning of January.
The union filed the suit in federal court in Dallas. The filing accuses Boeing of rushing the redesigned 737 to market, prioritizing the company’s profits over safety and sound design and engineering practices. “Boeing … withheld critical information from regulators and deliberately mislead its customers, pilots and the public and the true scope of the design changes to the 737 Max,” the complaint stated.
In a statement Boeing said it “has the greatest respect for the men and women who fly for Southwest Airlines. … We believe this lawsuit is meritless and will vigorously defend against it. We will continue to work with Southwest Airlines and its pilots on efforts to safely return the MAX to service.” In the second quarter the company reported its largest loss ever, $3.7 billion.
In October of last year, 189 people were killed when Lion Air Flight 610 crashed into the Java Sea, 13 minutes into the flight. Then on March 10of this year, 157 souls were lost on Ethiopian Airlines Flight 302 from Addis Ababa to Nairobi when another 737 Max 8 aircraft crashed six minutes after takeoff. The investigation revealed the Ethiopian passengers and crew endured the same terrifying roller coaster flight path before crashing as the Indonesian plane. Within days, aviation authorities around the world began grounding the Max.
President Donald Trump speaks before signing a trade agreement with Japan in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Monday. A temporary stay of decision earlier in the day means he can hold on to his tax records for the time being.
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President Donald Trump speaks before signing a trade agreement with Japan in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Monday. A temporary stay of decision earlier in the day means he can hold on to his tax records for the time being.
Evan Vucci/AP
President Trump has won at least a temporary reprieve from a judge’s order to release his tax records as part of a criminal investigation into his business dealings. Those records could be released to investigators as litigation continues.
Tax experts say they could reveal a lot – or not much at all – about Trump’s financial history.
“Numbers tell stories,” said Kelly Richmond Pope, who teaches forensic accounting at DePaul University. “So following those numbers can help piece together a story.”
The returns could prompt further investigation by prosecutors in New York, who are digging into Trump’s business dealings around hush money his organization allegedly paid to two women who say they had extramarital affairs with him. And whatever they contain, they’re a matter of ongoing public interest, given that Trump has bucked precedent by not releasing them. Here are a few things that tax experts say they’ll be watching for as litigation over Trump’s tax records continues:
How good is Trump, really, at business?
Trump’s wealth and success as a businessman are a central part of his brand. A New York Times investigation last year revealed that much of his wealth in his early years in business came from his father, Fred Trump. And his tax records could give some additional clues to his more recent business dealings.
But his reported income may be limited by the fact that wealthy people are good at finding ways to avoid taxes, said Jeff Hoopes, associate professor of business at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School.
“The whole point of tax planning is – you try to look like you’re really bad at business on your tax return. [That] is the goal of, kind of, both legal tax planning and illegal tax evasion.” Hoopes said. “…If your goal is pay as little in taxes as possible, what you try to do is show the IRS that you made as little income as possible.”
How does he make his money – and how much?
Trump has a lot of business dealings, and that likely means a lot of documents, Hoopes said.
“You and I file a tax return and it might be a dozen, two dozen, three dozen pages.” He said. “There are over 500 entities in the Donald Trump Organization. So this is gonna be a big, messy thing if it ever comes out – just what is a Donald Trump tax return, is kind of an open question?”
The details of Trump’s income may be obscured by complex legal relationships between Trump’s companies and his business partnerships, said Annette Nellen, a professor of accounting and an expert in tax law at San Jose State University.
“You can’t always get a lot of detail. You’re getting more, what’s their type of income, what are the types of expenses that they had,” Nellen said. “…Did they have losses? What are these losses from?”
It also may be difficult to tell whether a business loss is the result of poor management, or a typical cost of doing business, such as real estate depreciation or maintenance expenses, she said.
But there could be clues about Trump’s overall financial situation, Nellen said. She tells her students to look at presidential candidates’ tax records and notice how both their income and their marginal rate of taxation compare to those of average Americans.
“Compared to the rest of the population are they at the top?” Nellen said. “…I think it’s helping you know where they fit among all taxpayers.”
Has Trump done anything illegal?
Maybe, but the tax records alone probably won’t show that, according to Jeff Hoopes at UNC.
“If your goal with Donald Trump’s tax return is to find something he did wrong with his taxes, it’s not gonna be easy – at all,” Hoopes said.
Hoopes said it’s likely that, as President Trump has claimed, he’s already been audited repeatedly by the Internal Revenue Service – a process that involves producing many more records than a typical tax return would include.
“So absent that ability to ask Donald Trump for more information, it’s not clear we’d learn a whole lot,” Hoopes said.
Trump’s tax records could point to some of the organizations and individuals he’s done business with, “but you’re not going to find the name of every vendor or contractor that he’s written a check for,” said Deidre Liedel, an accounting professor at the University of Toledo.
She said the tax returns could point to potential legal problems, but they contain limited amounts of documentation.
“To think that they’re going to find a trail of information that supports an illegal activity simply by looking at the tax returns, I think, is an erroneous assumption,” Liedel said. “Realistically they are looking for the ability to go deeper into his documentation.”
Prosecutors likely will be looking at information related to any dealings with foreign entities.
“He has made some pretty definitive statements about his relationship, for example, with Russia,” Hoopes said. “If it turns out…he has some kind of financial holdings, or assets in a financial institution in Russia, that might contradict what he’s said about his relationship with Russia.”
How much money does he give away?
Many famously wealthy Americans also are known for their charitable giving, said Kelly Richmond Pope at DePaul – think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, for example. She’s curious about Trump’s history of philanthropy.
“We live in a time when we are very intrigued by wealthy individuals,” she said. “…I think a lot of time when people tout their wealth, one of the things that you may be interested in is, ‘How much are you giving?'”
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‘Washington Post’ Reporter Searches For Proof Of Trump’s Charitable Giving
“Because he talks a lot about being charitable – kind of looking at those, seeing if there were any made to his Trump Foundation,” Maresh said.
What precedent does this set?
Deidre Liedel said she’s also watching to see what kind of precedent the case might set about how much financial information elected officials can be forced to release.
“I think there absolutely is a question here of a political motive,” Liedel said. “And what does it mean for other people who may or may not want to get into politics.”
Jonathan Adler, a constitutional law expert at Case Western Reserve University, said the case ultimately is about presidential power and the rule of law.
“The underlying question is whether the president is like the rest of us – an individual who is subject to the laws of this nation, or whether the president has some sort of quasi-royal prerogative,” Adler said. “…As a legal question, that really strikes at the heart of how we conceive of the office of the President of the United States.”
Richmond Pope said she’d like to know what’s in those returns – and why Trump is fighting so hard to withhold them.
“I’m just curious, why the hesitation? Because I think that the hesitation has created, probably, more news stories than there needs to be. Because if they were just public, no one would probably think anything about it,” she said. “It makes us curious because they’re not, but I don’t know if we’ll ever know truly what the full story is.”
Defending Trump against impeachment is getting harder for GOP
7:12 a.m. If the House does move to impeach Mr. Trump, it would be up to the Republican-controlled Senate to hold his trial.
Just a handful of Republicans have raised concerns over the president’s contacts with foreign leaders, but there does not seem to be a unified defense of the president. Privately, some Republicans say it just isn’t worth it to take him on, even if they disapprove of his actions.
One reason why? The president hits back, and his approval rating within the Republican Party remains strong. The latest Gallup Poll, which was taken as reports of the president’s call to Ukraine unfolded, shows his approvals at 87% among Republicans.
Maine Senator Susan Collins is one of the few Republicans willing to call the president out. She told the Bangor Daily News, “I thought the president made a big mistake by asking China to get involved in investigating a political opponent.”
Nebraska Senator Ben Sasse said in a statement to the Omaha World-Herald that “Americans don’t look to Chinese commies for truth.” And Utah Senator Mitt Romney called the president’s plea “wrong and appalling.”
Still, most Republicans have downplayed Mr. Trump’s actions or kept quiet, as defending him has become more difficult.
“I doubt if the China comment was serious, to tell you the truth,” Republican Senator Roy Blunt said on “Face the Nation” this Sunday.
Blunt says not to take Trump’s request for Biden probes seriously
Asked if he doesn’t take the president at his word, Blunt said, “The president was — no, the president loves to go out on the White House driveway. I haven’t talked to him about this. I don’t know what the president was thinking. But I know he loves to bait the press.” — Nancy Cordes
Joshua Brown answers questions from prosecutors while pointing to a map of the South Side Flats apartment complex during the murder trial of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. Ten days after his testimony, Brown was found shot to death.
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Joshua Brown answers questions from prosecutors while pointing to a map of the South Side Flats apartment complex during the murder trial of former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger. Ten days after his testimony, Brown was found shot to death.
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Updated at 4:23 p.m. ET
The Dallas community is stunned and searching for answers following the shooting death of a 28-year-old man who delivered key testimony in the trial of Amber Guyger, a former police officer. Guyger was convicted of murder and sentenced to 10 years in prison in the slaying of her upstairs neighbor Botham Jean at the apartment complex where all three lived.
Authorities say Joshua Brown was found with multiple gunshot wounds in a parking lot about 4 miles away from the apartment complex where Jean was shot and killed. Brown was pronounced dead at a local hospital on Friday, 10 days after taking the witness stand.
As word of Brown’s death spread around the U.S., Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson urged the public to “refrain from speculation” about whether there is any link to the Guyger case, saying police will “conduct a thorough investigation into the death.”
Brown, 28, was born in Jacksonville, Fla., and graduated from South Florida State College. He managed Airbnb units in Los Angeles and Atlanta and was working to get up and running in Dallas, where he and his family lived.
Brown had three children — a 6-year-old and two toddlers — according to his father.
“He was moving on with his life,” Harold Brown, his father, told NPR, recalling a conversation he had with his son after the court testimony. He said he has been in touch with authorities investigating his son’s death.
“I just hope they figure it out,” Harold Brown said in an interview.
His son’s emotional testimony about what he saw and heard before and after Guyger fired two shots into the apartment of Jean, a 26-year-old accountant from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia, factored into the jury’s decision to convict Guyger.
Joshua Brown lived across the hall from Jean. Brown told the jury that on Sept. 6, 2018, he was heading back to his apartment after watching a football game and heard two people who seemed “surprised” to meet each other and that almost immediately two gunshots rang out.
When asked by prosecutors if he heard Guyger say “put your hands up” — which she testified she had ordered Jean to do — Brown said he had not.
The sound of gunfire sent Brown running for cover. Once inside his apartment, he testified, he watched a sobbing Guyger pace back and forth in front of Jean’s door while on the phone, telling the person on the other end of the call that she had mistaken the apartment for her own.
Describing the death of his neighbor drew an emotional response from Brown, who recalled hearing Jean singing gospel music or Drake songs in his apartment — memories that prompted Brown to wipe away tears with his bright teal T-shirt.
The judge ordered a break in testimony until Brown could regain his composure.
Joshua Brown, a neighbor of victim Botham Jean, is overcome with emotion while giving testimony in court in Dallas during the murder trial of Amber Guyger. Ten days after his testimony, Brown was killed in a shooting that remains under investigation.
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Joshua Brown, a neighbor of victim Botham Jean, is overcome with emotion while giving testimony in court in Dallas during the murder trial of Amber Guyger. Ten days after his testimony, Brown was killed in a shooting that remains under investigation.
Tom Fox/AP
On Sunday, the Dallas Police Department publicly identified Brown as the victim in the parking lot of the apartment complex where he moved after Jean’s death. Authorities said they had not identified any suspects or motives.
“We are committed to solving this case and will work diligently to apprehend the individuals responsible for Brown’s death,” Dallas police said in a statement.
Lawyer S. Lee Merritt, who represented the Jean family and is now an attorney for Brown’s family, said in a statement that the 28-year-old former college athlete “lived in constant fear that he could be the next victim of gun violence.”
Merritt said Brown had been shot last year when a birthday party at a club in Dallas turned violent. A gunman fired at Brown and some of his friends, hitting Brown in the foot. One person was killed.
“Josh Brown expressed concerns about the exposure he would get from this trial and expressed concerns for his safety,” Merritt told the Today show.
“A lot of people believe, including himself, apparently, that he was the target of that shooting, and he was afraid somebody might come and try to finish the job,” Merritt said in an interview with Black America Web.
Merritt, who did not respond to NPR’s requests for an interview, is calling for an outside law enforcement agency like the county’s sheriff’s department or federal investigators to take over the probe of Brown’s death.
“Whether they like it or not, the Dallas Police Department is implicated in this,” he said.
The NAACP Legal Defense Fund is also asking for an independent investigation into Brown’s death, calling the killing “deeply alarming and highly suspicious.”
“The circumstances surrounding the murder of Mr. Brown cries out for answers. Most importantly, it demands an independent investigation of how and why he was killed,” said Sherrilyn Ifill, the Legal Defense Fund’s president and director-counsel.
“We urge state or federal authorities to follow the trail of misconduct left by this case and fully investigate the circumstances surrounding Mr. Brown’s death,” Ifill said.
The police department said in response that it had no comment.
Harold Brown said he has no idea whether his son’s death is related to the shooting his son was involved in at the club last year or is somehow connected to his son’s court testimony, but the last he heard from Dallas police indicated that investigators were fielding an outpouring of tips.
“They said people have been talking who know stuff,” Brown said. “So I really hope they know something that will help.”
PG&E is monitoring 30 of California’s 58 counties for a potential power shut-off due to a “severe wind event” forecast for Wednesday and Thursday.
The National Weather Service has issued a fire weather watch for the North and East bay hills, Santa Cruz Mountains, and the North Bay and East Bay valleys. The alert is for Tuesday night through Thursday. Because of dry conditions, very low humidity and gusting winds, there’s a high potential for fire danger.
PG&E announced Monday morning it is watching weather conditions in order to determine if power needs to be turned off in Alameda, Alpine, Amador, Butte, Calaveras, Colusa, Contra Costa, El Dorado, Glenn, Lake, Mariposa, Mendocino, Napa, Nevada, Placer, Plumas, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Santa Cruz, Shasta, Sierra, Solano, Sonoma, Stanislaus, Tehama, Tuolumne, Yolo and Yuba counties.
Significant winds will be coming out of the northwest, blowing from inland areas toward the ocean. These are the gusty conditions that create critical fire weather. The north to northeast winds, often called Diablo winds, will be blowing 15 to 25 mph with isolated gusts up to 45 mph.
The shut-off warning comes just a day before the anniversary of the North Bay Fires; the destructive series of wildfires sparked on Oct. 8, 2017.
If your power is going to be shut off, PG&E says it will contact you via telephone, text and/or email with a timeline for shut-offs. PG&E recommends unplugging or turning off appliances to avoid damage caused by a power surge. If possible, keep cell phones and other devices charged and make sure your supply of flashlight batteries is fully stocked.
In addition, ATMs and gas stations may be out of service during outages so prepare accordingly.
For the latest on PG&E’s Public Safety Power Shutoffs, visit their site.
The FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, also known as ViCAP, began connecting Little to unsolved murders after a Texas Ranger tied the inmate to a 1994 cold case in the city of Odessa.
Not long after, Little confessed to strangling 93 women across the country between 1970 and 2005.
Gary Ridgway, dubbed the Green River Killer, was convicted of 49 murders and confessed to about 20 more. Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy each murdered upwards of 30 people, but Bundy was suspected of more.
“For many years, Samuel Little believed he would not be caught because he thought no one was accounting for his victims,” Christie Palazzolo, a ViCAP analyst, said. “Even though he is already in prison, the FBI believes it is important to seek justice for each victim — to close every case possible.”
Little, who is in failing health, was extradited to Texas last year where he entered a guilty plea in December for the 1994 death of Denise Christie Brothers. He’s likely to spend the rest of his life in prison in the Lone Star State.
Samuel Little appears at Superior Court in Los Angeles on March 4, 2013Damian Dovarganes / AP file
A number of factors helped Little escape justice for decades, including the former boxer’s nomadic lifestyle. Little moved from city to city targeting vulnerable women, such as sex workers or drug addicts, who sometimes went unidentified and their deaths weren’t investigated, according to the FBI.
Limitations of DNA evidence also played a role in how long it took for authorities to pin down Little’s killing spree.
Authorities were finally able to convict Little after he was arrested in Kentucky in 2012 and extradited to California to face a narcotics charge. The Los Angeles Police Department tied Little’s DNA to three murders between 1987 and 1989.
Though Little maintained his innocence at the time, he was convicted in 2014 to three life sentences.
Texas Ranger James Holland, who flew to California to speak to Little, is credited with getting the serial killer to confess to the other 90 murders. After Little was extradited to Odessa, Holland conducted almost daily interviews to create the most accurate accounting possible of Little’s crimes, according to the FBI.
As the FBI works to confirm Little’s 40 other murders, investigators have requested that anyone with information contact the bureau at 1-800-CALL-FBI.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Commerce Department said on Monday it was putting 28 Chinese public security bureaus and companies – including video surveillance company Hikvision (002415.SZ) – on a U.S. trade blacklist over Beijing’s treatment of Uighur Muslims and other predominantly Muslim ethnic minorities.
Those added to the so-called “Entity List” include the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region People’s Government Public Security Bureau, 19 subordinate government agencies and eight commercial firms, according to a Commerce Department filing. The companies include Zhejiang Dahua Technology (002236.SZ), IFLYTEK Co (002230.SZ), Xiamen Meiya Pico Information Co (300188.SZ) and Yixin Science and Technology Co.
Reuters reported on the planned additions earlier Monday, before the Commerce Department made it official.
The department filing said the “entities have been implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uighurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.”
The list includes municipal and county public security bureaus and the Xinjiang Police College.
U.S. officials said the announcement was not tied to this week’s resumption of trade talks with China. Being added to the “Entity List” bars companies or other entities from buying parts and components from U.S. companies without U.S. government approval.
The Commerce Department previously added Huawei Technologies Co and more than 100 affiliates to the Entity List.
Hikvision, officially known as Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co Ltd, with a market value of about $42 billion, calls itself the world’s largest video surveillance gear maker. Reuters reported in August Hikvision receives nearly 30% of its 50 billion yuan ($7 billion) in revenue from overseas.
Hikvision did not immediately comment on the Commerce Department’s move. The Chinese embassy in Washington also did not immediately comment.
In April, a bipartisan group of U.S. lawmakers urged the move against Chinese companies it called “complicit in human rights abuses” and specifically cited Hikvision and Dahua.
China faces growing condemnation from Western capitals and rights groups for setting up facilities that U.N. experts describe as mass detention centers holding more than 1 million ethnic Uighurs and other Muslims.
U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said last week at the Vatican that “when the state rules absolutely, it demands its citizens worship government, not God. That’s why China has put more than one million Uighur Muslims … in internment camps and is why it throws Christian pastors in jail.”
John Honovich, founder of surveillance video research company IPVM, said Hikvision and Dahua both use Intel Corp (INTC.O), Nvidia Corp (NVDA.O), Ambarella Inc (AMBA.O), Western Digital (WDC.O) and Seagate Technology (STX.O) as suppliers and that the impact on the Chinese companies would be “devastating.” Shares in Ambarella fell 12% in afterhours trading on the news.
In August, the Trump administration released an interim rule banning federal purchases of telecommunications equipment from five Chinese companies, including Huawei and Hikvision.
Huawei has repeatedly denied it is controlled by the Chinese government, military or intelligence services and has filed a lawsuit against the U.S. government’s restrictions.
Reporting by David Shepardson; Additional reporting by Jane Lee in San Francisco; Editing by Nick Zieminski and Tom Brown
Fox News Flash top headlines for Oct. 7 are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com
A hospital in Pennsylvania said on Monday that it will transfer some babies to nearby medical facilities following the deaths of three premature infants who contracted a bacterial infection. Four other infants in Geisinger Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) had recovered from the illness, and an additional one is receiving antibiotics.
“The neonatal intensive care unit at Geisinger Medical Center in Danville recently experienced an increase in cases of pseudomonas infection, a waterborne bacteria, among premature infants,” Edward Hartle, M.D, Geisinger executive vice president and chief medical officer, said in a statement. “While HIPPA regulations limit what we can disclose about individual cases, all were confined to the GMC NICU.”
“In total, eight infants confined specifically to the Geisinger Medical Center NICU were treated for a pseudomonas infection,” the statement said. “Four of these infants have been successfully treated and are doing well; one of these infants continues to receive antibiotic treatment for the infection and is responding positively; and, sadly, the other three infants have passed away, which may have been a result of the infection complicating their already vulnerable state due to extreme prematurity.”
The Danville-based hospital continues “to work closely with the Pennsylvania Department of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to investigate and ensure that proactive measures already taken have eradicated the bacteria as well as prevent any additional cases.”
The statement said that out of an abundance of caution, the hospital is diverting mothers likely to deliver prematurely before 32 weeks gestation and infants born at less than 32 weeks gestation to nearby hospitals with appropriate NICU capabilities.
“We will continue our meticulous and comprehensive infection control practices at GMC to reduce the risk of any infection in any infant, and we remain committed to providing the highest level of family-centered neonatal care for our families and babies,” the statement said.
The hospital posted a similar statement to its Facebook page, and said a hotline has been set up for community members with additional questions.
As House Democrats’ impeachment inquiry heats up and new leaks rock the newspapers on a daily basis, normal people have one simple question in mind: What’s going to happen?
We, of course, don’t know what’s going to happen.
But what we can tell you is that there are roughly nine scenarios of varying degrees of plausibility that are legally and constitutionally possible. Some of these involve Trump being impeached and some involve him leaving office and possibly, but not necessarily, both of those things. Some involve House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, or Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin becoming president. In theory, Trump could even be booted from office and then run again for reelection in 2020.
It’s hard to know what’s going to happen in politics. Three months ago, nobody was predicting that the intricacies of the US-Ukrainian relationship would be at the center of American politics. Without that kind of foresight, you owe it to the world to be humble about your ability to forecast the future.
One thing that jumps out of this analysis is that the question of whether Trump or Mike Pence will be in the Oval Office one year from now takes too limited a view of the stakes. There are a lot of different ways Trump’s presidency could survive, with very different implications for the future of American institutions and American politics. And there are a lot of different ways it could end, too, with equally important differences between them for the future.
1) Trump doesn’t get impeached
Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy could defeat impeachment in the House.Alex Wong/Getty Images
The House has not yet voted to impeach Trump. The big swing among House moderates was in favor of launching an “impeachment inquiry” not of impeaching Trump per se. And while impeachment has become much more popular among the public and now enjoys plurality support, it’s not yet at a majority level, and it’s polling well below the roughly 54 percent of the public who say they disapprove of Trump. What’s more, because of gerrymandering most of the pivotal House Democrats hold seats that are 2 to 5 points more GOP-leaning than the nation as a whole.
Given that Trump is now openly soliciting assistance from foreign states, it seems unlikely that House Democrats will just walk away. But it is possible.
The first-order consequence of this is that Trump will remain in office. But what’s more, Democrats getting cold feet about obstruction of justice after the publication of the Mueller report seems to have emboldened Trump to pursue the view that he was the victim of a vast international spy conspiracy. If they get cold feet again, Trump’s currently weak-sounding protests that the real crooks are House Intelligence Chair Adam Schiff and the intelligence community whistleblower will gain new life. Foreign states might also see Democrats essentially waving the white flag and decide that the smart money is now on doing what Trump wants and opening all kinds of politically convenient investigations into his enemies.
Failing to impeach would also, of course, infuriate the Democratic base and set off all kinds of intra-party fighting. It seems like an unattractive option for a variety of reasons, but until an impeachment vote happens, it’s definitely on the table.
2) Trump could be forced to resign
A delegation of party leaders could tell Trump the jig is up.Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
Richard Nixon is the only president to have been forced from office by scandal rather than death, but he’s notone of the two presidents who’ve been impeached by the US House of Representatives.
Instead, a delegation of Republican members of Congress — including the minority leaders of the House and Senate, plus conservative icon Barry Goldwater — came to the White House and told Nixon his support in Congress had evaporated. The leaders of both the Republican Party as an institution and the conservative movement were looking to safeguard their own long-term interests and not go down with the rapidly sinking Nixon administration. Faced with that reality, Nixon chose to resign.
The implicit deal worked out reasonably well for almost everyone involved. Nixon got a pardon from Gerald Ford for his crimes and, rather rapidly, worked his way back into respectability as a political and intellectual figure who would write books on statecraft. When he passed away, his funeral was well-attended by American and international dignitaries and then-President Bill Clinton delivered a eulogy. Republicans got hammered in the 1974 midterms, but Ford very nearly won reelection in 1976. Republicans cleaned up in the ’78 midterms, and in 1980 Ronald Reagan became president, cementing the conservative movement’s control over the GOP and ushering in a generation-long conservative dominance of American politics.
Both Nixon, the Republican Party, and the conservative movement in other words benefitted from the decision not to fight it out to the bitter end.
Nixon, of course, was a genuine party man who cared about things like the long-term future of conservative politics and his personal standing in polite society. It’s not at all clear that Trump shares any level of concern with things like that. What’s more, the rise of a powerful sector of semi-autonomous GOP propaganda media in the form of Fox News — something former Nixon aide Roger Ailes was inspired to create in part out of the recognition that Watergate could have played out very differently if the media ecology was different — creates some very different dynamics.
Nonetheless, it’s certainly possible that something like this will happen if the still-ongoing investigations reveal shocking new evidence that, for whatever reason, bothers Republican Party elites a lot more than existing revelations do.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has stated that his understanding of the Constitution and of US Senate rules is that he is obligated to hold a trial if the House votes on articles of impeachment.
But it’s not entirely clear what that would mean in practice. For the Clinton impeachment trial of 1998, it meant something resembling a normal courtroom with oral arguments presented by House impeachment managers. The trial also featured sworn depositions by key witnesses, video excerpts presented by the managers. This, however, was a matter of choice for the Senate.
Impeachment hawks wanted live witnesses like you would see in a trial. Democrats had moved to have no witnesses at all. The depositions-and-excerpts gimmick was a political compromise reflecting the internal dynamics of the GOP Senate majority. Leadership and vulnerable members knew that impeachment was unpopular, and Clinton would be acquitted and wanted to get things over with fast. But conservative true-believers thought a vivid trial would turn public opinion around. What ended up happening was an effort to thread that needle.
A trial of Donald Trump would take place in a chamber controlled by his GOP allies. If it doesn’t suit their interests to have extended arguments and presentation of evidence, they don’t need to do that. A quick, party-line vote to acquit could be all we get. Given everything we know about Trump-era politics, this seems like one of the most likely scenarios.
4) A rigorous trial leads to a party-line acquittal
A party-line vote would be a big win for Trump.Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images
One has to assume that if Trump has his Senate caucus solidly behind him, its members will vote to greatly curtail the trial and move forward.
But, in theory, Senate Republicans could decide they want to go through a whole extended trial and then acquit Trump on a party-line vote. If that happens, then legally speaking nothing happens — Trump just stays president. Democrats might fall into infighting, arguing that if the party leadership had taken a different tactical approach (a broad impeachment inquiry rather than a narrowly Ukraine-focused one, for example) the outcome might have been different.
The main upside for Democrats, however, would be to pin the more vulnerable GOP senators very tightly to a president who is unpopular in their states. Right now, it’s fairly easy for swing-state senators to simply lay low and not say much. A full trial would force everyone to address the elephant in the room. And for that reason, it’s at least possible that a handful of Senate Republicans will break with Trump early if damning evidence keeps piling up.
5) Trump is acquitted, despite an anti-Trump majority
To save their own skin, vulnerable senators like Susan Collins (R-ME) could hand Democrats a moral victory.Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call
Another possibility is that the Ukraine scandal ends up playing out somewhat similarly to the Affordable Care Act repeal where a small number of Republican senators joined forces with Democrats to secure a majority.
You could imagine the GOP’s vulnerable Senate incumbents — Martha McSally (R-AZ), Cory Gardner (R-CO), and Susan Collins (R-ME) — plus occasional Trump critics Sens. Mitt Romney (R-UT) and Ben Sasse (R-NE) force a real trial and ultimately produce a majority vote in favor of conviction.
Except the Constitution requires 67 votes — not 51 — to remove a president, so that would count as an acquittal. Democrats would, however, regard the anti-Trump majority as an important moral victory and enjoy the intra-GOP infighting on the other side.
The basic political logic of this scenario makes a lot of sense. Right now, senators in states where Trump isn’t popular are standing behind him on outrageous and unpopular conduct, which is slightly bizarre. On the other hand, to vote to convict and remove Trump would be an extremely dangerous move for senate Republicans in its own right. Traditionally, presidents have taken an understanding view of vulnerable members’ practical political need to distance themselves from him, but Trump tends to demand loyalty and has a taste for vengeance.
6) The GOP splits, and Trump is removed from office
Future President Mike Pence?Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
This is a scenario where, in essence, the revelations around Ukraine (or perhaps new revelations about Trump’s discussions with the leaders of other foreign countries) send the political system back to where it was in the winter of 2015-2016.
Trump was popular with GOP primary voters back then but not overwhelmingly so. A wide range of GOP figures (including people like Lindsey Graham and Rick Perry who are now loyal Trumpers) were vocally critical of him. Most GOP donors and the leaders of Republican-aligned institutions were certain his nomination would lead to political distastes, and conservative media was much less solidly pro-Trump than today’s Fox News and Sinclair Broadcasting.
Under this scenario, Trump still holds on to his true base (the roughly half of GOP primary voters who backed him in 2016) but becomes so unpopular with the public that he suffers mass defections from GOP senators leading to his removal from office.
For obvious reasons, it’s difficult to imagine this happening. The Republican establishment didn’t like Trump and doesn’t like everything he does, but he’s fundamentally delivered for them on all their key priorities. As long as that continues to be the case, it’s hard to see why they would turn on him — even though all things considered they, on some level, would prefer Mike Pence. In the event of an establishment coup, one possibility is that in theory Trump could turn back around and run for president again.
But the Senate also has the constitutional authority to disqualify an impeached president from running for office again — authority they would almost certainly use to ensure that Trump doesn’t primary President Pence.
7) Pence is complicit, and he’s removed too
Future President Nancy Pelosi?Tom Brenner/Getty Images
One reason Watergate ended up working out so badly for Nixon is that, sort of by coincidence, his original vice president had been driven from office by an unrelated scandal. Consequently, at the time of maximum peril for Nixon, the VP was Gerald Ford — a well-regarded Republican who genuinely had nothing to do with the Nixon White House or any of its crimes.
By contrast, Pence — like other modern VPs — is himself a senior member of the Trump administration.
As such he appears to have been at least somewhat involved in the execution of Trump’s corrupt Ukraine policy, and he’s deeply involved himself in the defense of Trump’s misconduct. That means in principle the Senate might decide he’s guilty too and remove both Trump and Pence, thus making House Speaker Nancy Pelosi president.
8) The Presidential Succession Act might be unconstitutional
Future President Mike Pompeo?Vatican Pool – Corbis/Getty Images
Every president who has ever left office before the end of his term has been duly succeeded by the incumbent vice president.
But according to the US Constitution, in the event of a double-vacancy the Constitution states that “the Congress may by law provide for the case of removal, death, resignation or inability both of the president and Vice President, declaring what officer shall then act as president, and such officer shall act accordingly, until the disability be removed, or a president shall be elected.”
Congress’s most recent effort to so provide was the Presidential Succession Act of 1947 (lightly modified in subsequent years to include new cabinet secretaries), which holds that priority goes to the speaker of the House, followed by the president pro tempore of the Senate, followed by the secretary of state, and then on down the list of cabinet officers. Now obviously in the real world, it’s essentially inconceivable that congressional Republicans would remove both Trump and Pence and hand the White House to Pelosi.
But there’s a catch!
Many scholars believe that the speaker (and the president pro temp of the Senate) as a member of Congress is not an “officer” under the meaning of the Constitution. It might be good for the Supreme Court to offer its view on this before it needs to be litigated in the middle of a huge national crisis, but America’s top court does not offer advisory opinions choosing instead to rule only on actual controversies. So we’ll never find out if the court will strike this provision down until it actually happens. But suffice it to say it might, in which case Secretary of State Mike Pompeo becomes president.
9) President Steve Mnuchin
Steve Mnuchin, the last man standing.Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
He was on the infamous call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But he feigned ignorance about it and only later admitted he was on the call after press reports exposed him. He used to be all for congressional oversight of the State Department when he was in the House and now says questions about the administration’s conduct toward the European nation amounts to “bullying.” And instead of standing by the ambassador to Ukraine, he let the president recall her seemingly for personal reasons.
If by some remarkable turn of fortune, Congress decides it needs to purge everyone involved with the scandal then it’s going to need to remove Mike Pompeo.
That means Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin becomes president.
British authorities are asking that Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, return to the U.K. for a police investigation of a crash that killed 19-year-old Harry Dunn. The fatal incident occurred in late August outside England’s Royal Air Force Croughton, site of a U.S. Air Force communications base.
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British authorities are asking that Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a U.S. diplomat, return to the U.K. for a police investigation of a crash that killed 19-year-old Harry Dunn. The fatal incident occurred in late August outside England’s Royal Air Force Croughton, site of a U.S. Air Force communications base.
Peter Summers/Getty Images
The wife of a U.S. diplomat is accused of using diplomatic immunity to flee the U.K. after she allegedly struck and killed a young man with her car in late August.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson criticized the use of diplomatic immunity in the case, and said he would raise the matter with the American ambassador to the U.K. on Monday.
“I do not think that it can be right to use the process of diplomatic immunity for this type of purpose, and I hope that Anne Sacoolas will come back and will engage properly with the processes of laws [that are] carried out in this country,” Johnson said. “If we can’t resolve it, then of course I will be raising it myself personally with the White House.”
Police in Northamptonshire, in central England, say the 42-year-old suspect told them after the Aug. 27 incident that she had no plans of leaving the U.K. in the near future. Harry Dunn, 19, was riding his motorbike to visit his father when he was killed in the collision.
The chief constable of Northamptonshire, Nick Adderley, says he wrote to the U.S. Embassy in London, urging officials to waive the woman’s diplomatic immunity so that she can be compelled to return to face a possible arrest and formal interview with police.
Police believe Sacoolas had just driven out of Royal Air Force base Croughton and was driving on the wrong side of the road when she struck Dunn, Sky News reports. RAF Croughton is home to a U.S. Air Force communications base.
The State Department said in an emailed statement to NPR on Monday that questions about waiving immunity for its diplomats and their family members overseas “are considered carefully given the global impact such decisions carry; immunity is rarely waived.” The statement did not identify the driver out of “privacy and security concerns.”
The family expressed dismay that Sacoolas was able to leave the country. “All we need to do is to ask her to come back,” Charlotte Charles, the victim’s mother, said in an interview with Sky News. “It’s not much to ask. She’s left a family in complete ruin. We’re broken, inside and out. … We’re just utterly shocked and appalled that somebody is allowed to get on a plane and go home and avoid our justice system.”
“We can’t grieve for him at the minute because we don’t know where we’re going,” the victim’s father Tim Dunn, told the BBC.
MP for South Northamptonshire Andrea Leadson said the event appears to have been an accident, and she appealed to Sacoolas directly: “It needs a police investigation, but surely she must see that this family needs closure.”
Washington — As soon he took the stage to address a conference in Washington on Monday, Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan was a greeted by a chorus of fervent chants from a small group of pro-immigrant protesters, who listed some of the migrant children who’ve died in his agency’s custody in recent months.
After chanting each name, they demonstrators yelled “presente,” Spanish for present. Among the names yelled by the activists were those of Jakelin Caal Maquin, Felipe Gómez Alonzo and Carlos Gregorio Hernandez Vasquez — all Guatemalan children who died in Border Patrol custody.
Despite the chants, McAleenan tried to restart his scheduled keynote address at the Migration Policy Institute’s annual conference Monday morning several times to no avail.
“As a career law enforcement professional, I’ve dedicated my career to protecting the right to free speech and all the values we hold dear in America — from all threats,” the secretary told the crowd before being interrupted yet again.
“Bulls**t,” one man in the audience yelled.
Acting Homeland Security Secretary Kevin McAleenan takes the podium at a immigration law and policy conference, Monday, October 7, 2019 in Washington.
Colleen Long / AP
At this point, McAleenan grew visibly frustrated and signaled to the hosts that he would leave. But organizers again asked the protesters to let the secretary finish his remarks and then have the chance to ask him probing questions about his busy and often tumultuous interim tenure at the helm of the sprawling Department of Homeland Security.
McAleenan agreed to try one more time, but he warned it would be his last attempt.
“When immigrants are under attack, what do we do?” one woman said, interrupting McAleenan. “Stand up. Fight back!” the rest of the protesters responded.
The secretary thanked the hosts and walked out of the auditorium.
“The First Amendment guarantees all Americans the right to free speech and assembly,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement following the incident. “Unfortunately that right was robbed from many who were scheduled to speak and attend today’s event at Georgetown.”
Protestors did not allow @DHSMcAleenan to start his scheduled remarks at the annual @MigrationPolicy conference in Washington.
Listing the names of migrant children who have died in U.S. custody, they chanted “¡presente!”
The Migration Policy Institute said it regretted that McAleenan’s remarks were interrupted. The group, a nonpartisan think tank, issued a statement saying a democracy requires dialogue between “all sides on public policy issues,” especially from high-ranking administration officials who play a major role in devising and implementing policy.
“By drowning out the Secretary’s remarks, the protesters deprived immigration attorneys, service providers, journalists, advocates, business leaders, law students, and many others in the public who were in the audience from hearing his point of view and engaging in a meaningful dialogue,” the group wrote.
Unlike the acting heads of the immigration agencies at DHS — who are all unabashed in their frequent praise of President Trump and his immigration agenda — McAleenan has kept a relative low profile since assuming the post in April, distancing himself from inflammatory rhetoric and focusing much of his tenure on leading diplomatic engagements with countries in Latin America where the bulk of U.S.-bound migrants are coming from or transiting through.
In addition to the asylum agreements he has recently reached with countries in Central America, McAleenan has also overseen controversial policies to deter migration at the U.S.-Mexico border, including a program that has required more than 50,000 asylum seekers to wait in Mexico for the duration of their court proceedings and a regulation allowed by the Supreme Court that renders most migrants ineligible for asylum if they traveled through a third country to reach the U.S.
In May, McAleenan’s first full month on the job, border apprehensions reached a 13-year monthly high. In the past three months, however, apprehensions of border-crossing migrants have steadily declined.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court kicked off its new nine-month term with a flurry of activity on Monday, hearing arguments in three cases and rejecting numerous appeals that piled up over the summer.
With conservative Justice Clarence Thomas absent due to an unspecified illness, the court began hearing its first argument in a case focusing on whether states can discard the so-called insanity defense in criminal prosecutions. The case involved a man sentenced to death in Kansas for fatally shooting four family members while suffering from severe depression.
In remarks from the bench before the first argument, Chief Justice John Roberts said Thomas, the court’s longest-serving justice, was “indisposed” due to illness but would still participate in deciding the three cases.
Details of Thomas’ illness were not immediately disclosed. Thomas, one of the nine-justice court’s most conservative members, is 71 and has served on the court since 1991.
In another action of note, the court said it would go ahead and hear a challenge to New York City restrictions on handgun owners transporting their firearms outside the home.
The city had argued over the summer that because the measure – challenged by gun owners and the state’s National Rifle Association affiliate – was recently amended, the case before the justices was moot and there was no reason for the Supreme Court to hear the matter.
The justices in a brief order said they would consider that argument when they hear the case on Dec. 2, leaving open the possibility they will toss the case later.
The court hears its first major case of the term on Tuesday on whether a landmark decades-old federal anti-discrimination law that bars sex discrimination in the workplace protects gay and transgender employees.
Abortion rights also will figure prominently for the justices in the coming months. The court on Friday agreed to take up a major case that could lead to new curbs on access to abortion as it considers the legality of a Republican-backed Louisiana law that imposes restrictions on abortion doctors.
Another major case to be heard on Nov. 12 is over Trump’s move to end a program created by his Democratic predecessor Barack Obama that protects from deportation hundreds of thousands of immigrants – mostly Hispanic young adults – who were brought into the United States illegally as children.
The other two oral arguments scheduled on Monday are on whether the U.S. Constitution requires unanimous jury verdicts and on fees in patent litigation.
The court will issue rulings in all its cases by the end of June.
The court declined to hear several appeals. One involved Amazon.com’s bid to avoid a lawsuit seeking to ensure that warehouse workers for the e-commerce giant get paid for the time it takes them to go through extensive post-shift security screenings.
It also refused to hear Las Vegas sports gambler William “Billy” Walters’ appeal of his 2017 insider trading conviction that landed him a five-year prison sentence in a case that also drew attention because of his ties to billionaire investor Carl Icahn and golfer Phil Mickelson.
The court declined to hear a bid by Sempra Energy’s San Diego Gas & Electric Co to recover $379 million from customers related to damages it was forced to pay out in litigation after the deadly 2007 California wildfires that burned hundreds of homes.
It opted not to hear Acorda Therapeutics Inc’s appeal of a lower court ruling that allowed generic versions of its multiple sclerosis treatment Ampyra and caused the drug’s sales to plummet.
The justices refused to hear a bid by the University of Wisconsin’s patent licensing arm to reinstate its legal victory against Apple Inc in a fight over computer processor technology that the school claimed the company used without permission in certain iPhones and iPads.
They also declined to take up a dispute over the assets of Puerto Rico’s largest public sector pension fund.
Reporting by Larence Hurley and Andrew Chung; Editing by Will Dunham
Mr. Trump’s lawyers have called the investigation by Mr. Vance, a Democrat, politically motivated. Mr. Vance has accused the president and his team of trying to run out the clock on the investigation.
Last week, lawyers with Mr. Trump’s Justice Department jumped into the fray, asking the judge to temporarily block the subpoena while the court takes time to consider the “significant constitutional issues” in the case.
The Justice Department, led by Attorney General William P. Barr, did not say whether it agreed with Mr. Trump’s position that presidents cannot be investigated. But, citing the constitutional questions, the department said it wanted to provide its views. A spokeswoman for the department declined to comment on the ruling Monday.
Federal prosecutors are barred from charging a sitting president with a crime because the Justice Department has decided that presidents have temporary immunity while they are in office.
But in the past, that position has not precluded investigating a president. Presidents, including Mr. Trump, have been subjects of federal criminal investigations while in office. Local prosecutors, such as Mr. Vance, are also not bound by the Justice Department’s position.
As part of a temporary deal reached last month, Mr. Vance’s office agreed not to enforce the subpoena until two days after Judge Marrero issued a ruling, which would give Mr. Trump a chance to appeal if he lost. But that agreement was to expire at 1 p.m. on Monday.
US Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland is expected to testify tomorrow in front of the House Intelligence, Foreign Affairs and Oversight committees.
What we know about Sondland: The ambassador is mentioned in a series of text messages between US diplomats and a Ukrainian aide. The messages, which were released last week, show how a potential Ukrainian investigation into the 2016 election was linked to a desired meeting between Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and President Trump.
In one exchange, Sondland seemed to downplay the concerns raised by his counterpart in Kiev.
“Gordon, one thing Kurt and I talked about yesterday was Sasha Danyliuk’s point that President Zelenskyy is sensitive about Ukraine being taken seriously, not merely as an instrument in Washington domestic, reelection politics,” Ambassador William “Bill” Taylor, the charge d’affaires at the US Embassy in Kiev, wrote on July 21.
Sondland replied, “Absolutely, but we need to get the conversation started and the relationship built, irrespective of the pretext.”
Kathleen O’Donnell, left, with her wife, Casey. Since 2014, the couple has lived in Billings, Mont., where there is no explicit law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations.
Courtesy of Kathleen O’Donnell
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Courtesy of Kathleen O’Donnell
Kathleen O’Donnell, left, with her wife, Casey. Since 2014, the couple has lived in Billings, Mont., where there is no explicit law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations.
Courtesy of Kathleen O’Donnell
It’s a hectic morning at the home of Kathleen O’Donnell and her wife, Casey. Kathleen is getting their four-year-old foster daughter ready for the park. She got placed with them overnight. Casey is wrangling the four dogs. They’ve already got their 11-year-old son off to school.
They live on a tree-lined street in Billings, Montana. It’s a place they’ve called home since 2014.
“All of my family lives in Billings, so with a kid we wanted to be near them,” Kathleen said.
But when the same-sex couple made the move, they knew it came with risks. While five Montana cities have local non-discrimination ordinances on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity, Billings, the state’s largest city, is not one of them.
Nor does the state have an explicit law that protects LGBTQ people from discrimination in housing, employment or public accommodations. Neither do more than half of U.S. states, leaving millions to rely on a patchwork of protections that vary depending on where they happen to live.
It’s why Kathleen and her wife are closely watching three upcoming cases that will be argued in front of the Supreme Court on Tuesday related to Title VII, the federal statute that makes it illegal to discriminate against someone at work on the basis of sex. The court is hearing arguments on whether the definition of sex in Title VII includes sexual orientation and gender identity.
For people like the O’Donnells, whatever the Supreme Court decides will have an outsized impact on their lives. They’ve already felt the limits of the protections in the city they call home.
“The owner does not like that you’re gay”
It started the year the family moved to Billings in 2014. Kathleen was looking for a place to live with her family. She found a house that worked. The landlord handed her an application.
“We met the standard requirements for renting the house. And I had just written [my wife’s] name down and he asked me, ‘OK, well is it a girl or a boy?’ Which is an odd question to ask someone,” Kathleen said. “[Casey and I] had actually previously had that conversation on what do we do if someone asks us, because it is common in Montana, unfortunately, and we were like, ‘No, we’re not going to lie, we’re going to tell the truth.’ And so when I did that, that’s when he was like, ‘Oh, I don’t rent to your kind here.'”
She said without local protections, there wasn’t much she could do, so she found a different place to live.
Two years later, Kathleen landed a new job at a local auto dealership. Most people were nice, but she said the owner’s son called her names.
“He felt it was OK to make names based on my appearance,” she said. “I would be considered a ‘butch’ lesbian, and I have the short hair, so they didn’t refer to me by Kathleen. They would refer to me as ‘Bob’ or ‘Bill’ and use a male verbiage because of my appearance.”
She put up with it.
“With that being your job and the way you provide for your family, unfortunately I just kind of let it be the way it was going to be at that time,” she said.
A few days before her six-month probationary period was up, her supervisor called her into the office and told her the owner asked him to fire her.
“I looked at him and I was like, ‘Why am I being fired?’ I was like, ‘I’ve never been in trouble. I’ve shown up to work,'” she said. “And he said, ‘It’s because the owner does not like that you’re gay.'”
The dealership would not comment on O’Donnell’s allegation. At the time, she said she called the Montana state employment office.
“I told them my story and they’re like, ‘Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do for you,” she said.
The question before the court
LGBTQ advocates say such stories are unfortunately all too common in states where gender identity and sexual orientation are not explicitly protected classes under the law. And while the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission says it will enforce Title VII’s protections when gender identity and sexual orientation is at issue regardless of the law in any particular state, courts are irrevocably split on whether it has the authority to do so.
That’s the question the Supreme Court is being asked to decide when they hear the three cases, two on sexual orientation and one on gender identity.
“What these cases will decide is does the federal statute that prohibits sex discrimination in employment, cover discrimination on the basis of someone’s sexual orientation or their gender identity, because those forms of discrimination are sex-based,” said Adam Romero, the federal policy director at the Williams Institute at the UCLA School of Law.
Whatever the court decides, Romero said, will have a ripple effect well beyond employment.
“Its impact will be most immediately on employment, but the question of discrimination in housing, in education, in public accommodations, in credit and other sort of vital spheres of our lives, there are statutes that prohibit sex discrimination in those settings,” he said. “And so the Supreme Court’s decision in the employment context will inform courts’ decision in these other contexts as well.”
Employers who say Title VII should not include sexual orientation or transgender identity object for a variety reasons. Some claim it’s a dress code issue when it comes to transgender individuals. Others say it’s an issue of freedom of expression or religion.
Others are like Lisa Fullerton, a San Antonio based owner of fast food franchises. Fullerton says she worries about the potential repercussions of extending business opportunities that were designed to empower women to members of the transgender community.
“When a person’s sex is arbitrarily defined or interpreted by judges or government, the opportunities are actually going to vanish for the women that they were designed to benefit,” Fullerton said. “Because historically, sex has been biology-based and its association is the basis for government programs that were written to help women.”
Texas, like Montana, does not have explicit state LGBTQ anti-discrimination protections, although San Antonio does. Fullerton says she employs LGBTQ people, but is concerned about government overreach.
“My question,” Fullerton said, “is how do we allow people to disagree about such things, coexist, and yet no one lose their liberties without becoming discriminatory?”
A “safe space” for Billings
Back in Billings, Mayor Bill Cole is closely watching what the Supreme Court decides. Cole said there are two reasons the city doesn’t have a non-discrimination ordinance. Montana’s state laws, he said, already dictate that an employer can’t dismiss someone without good cause once their probationary period ends.
The other reason, he said, is because, “anything that we do may be made moot by cases now pending before the United States Supreme Court.”
LGBTQ advocates argue that that’s all the more reason they want local protections. If the Supreme Court says yes, LGBTQ people are protected, states would be compelled follow. But if they say no, advocates fear, the implications for millions of LGBTQ citizens would be disastrous.
The Supreme Court that expanded gay rights — most notably, by legalizing same-sex marriage — is a very different court today. Retired Justice Anthony Kennedy, regarded as a champion of gay rights, was the key swing vote in several pivotal cases. But with Kennedy no longer on the court, many advocates fear it will be impossible to assemble a pro-LGBTQ majority with Trump appointees Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh.
Billings’ city council considered passing a non-discrimination ordinance in 2014, but it failed to pass. The city’s former mayor, Tom Hanel, cast the deciding vote, saying Billings “just isn’t ready.”
“When that didn’t pass, people in the community were worried about how do we create safe space for LGBTQ people and the youth,” said Reverend Sarah Beck of Billings’ Grace United Methodist Church.
So the church created the Rainbow Coffee House, a meeting space for LGBTQ teens.
“That’s kind of where the Rainbow Coffee House came out of, was sort of people in the community saying ‘We want our community to be safe for people,” she said.
Last year, that safe space was defaced multiple times with anti-gay fliers, a swastika spray painted on the Rainbow Flag that hangs in the church window and another on a church door. A church sign was also spray painted with the words “no gays.”
Now they have extra cameras, a door bell, new locks and other security measures.
At the time, the community rallied around the church.
“That’s all wonderful, but at the same time, what is the expectation when the message you send to the community is that these people don’t need to be protected?” Beck asked. “These types of things are inevitable.”
Teenagers hanging out at Rainbow Coffee House, located at Grace United Methodist Church in Billings.
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Leila Fadel/Leila Fadel
Teenagers hanging out at Rainbow Coffee House, located at Grace United Methodist Church in Billings.
Impeaching a U.S. president might not be the be-all-end-all for their career. We explain why this is the case. Just the FAQs, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Expanding his scorched-earth defense against possible impeachment, President Donald Trump now accuses House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of “treason” and says she is the one who should be impeached.
Having made similar claims against Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Trump said Pelosi has abetted unfair tactics in the investigation of his dealings with Ukraine.
“This makes Nervous Nancy every bit as guilty as Liddle’ Adam Schiff for High Crimes and Misdemeanors, and even Treason,” Trump tweeted late Sunday. “I guess that means that they, along with all of those that evilly ‘Colluded’ with them, must all be immediately Impeached!”
Members of Congress cannot be impeached. Impeachment is a tool that Congress uses to investigate judges or executive branch officials they believe may have committed crimes.
Nancy Pelosi knew of all of the many Shifty Adam Schiff lies and massive frauds perpetrated upon Congress and the American people, in the form of a fraudulent speech knowingly delivered as a ruthless con, and the illegal meetings with a highly partisan “Whistleblower” & lawyer…
Pelosi, Schiff, and other Democrats have made clear they will continue to investigate Trump’s efforts to have Ukraine and perhaps other countries investigate Joe Biden, a Democratic U.S. presidential candidate.
“It’s about a damning call in which the President pressured a foreign power to investigate a political rival, harming national security,” Schiff tweeted over the weekend. “It’s about our democracy.”
Trump’s attack on Pelosi came during a weekend of angry tweets against Democrats, journalists, whistleblowers, and others involved in the impeachment drama.
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U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch was recalled to Washington for “consultations” on April 29, 2019. The whistleblower complaint cited a Rudy Giuliani interview with a Ukrainian journalist published on May 14, 2019, where he stated that Yovanovitch was “removed … because she was part of the efforts against the President.” Seen here, Yovanovitch, center, sits during her meeting with then-Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Kiev, Ukraine, on March 6, 2019. Mikhail Palinchak, Presidential Press Service Pool Photo via AP
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., joins Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., right, at a news conference as House Democrats move on depositions in the impeachment inquiry of Trump, at the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 2, 2019. J. Scott Applewhite, AP
Trump also called to have Romney impeached, though, again, members of Congress are not subject to the impeachment process.
CLOSE
President Donald Trump is acknowledging Democrats in the House “have the votes” to begin a formal impeachment inquiry, but he says he’s confident it will backfire politically and they won’t have the votes to convict in the GOP-controlled Senate. (Oct. 4) AP, AP
SEOUL (Reuters) – North Korea said on Sunday there was no way the United States would bring alternative plans for their stalled nuclear talks to a meeting proposed by Stockholm in two weeks after weekend negotiations in Sweden broke down.
The working-level talks between U.S. and North Korean envoys were broken off on Saturday. The U.S. State Department said it had accepted Sweden’s invitation to return for more discussions with Pyongyang in two weeks.
North Korea said the ball was now in Washington’s court, and warned Washington that it would wait only until the end of the year for the United States to change course.
“We have no intention to hold such sickening negotiations as … happened this time (in Sweden) before the U.S. takes a substantial step to make complete and irreversible withdrawal of the hostile policy toward the DPRK,” KCNA state news agency cited a spokesperson for North Korea’s foreign ministry as saying, referring to the official name of North Korea.
Ann Linde, Sweden’s minister for foreign affairs, said the talks had been constructive “for as long as they lasted.”
“Then I think there was a somewhat different view on what to accomplish at one meeting,” she told Sweden’s public broadcaster SVT, adding that Sweden was at the countries’ disposal if they decide to meet again.
“If that is in two weeks or two months remains to be seen. I think it is possible to achieve more talks, but that is entirely up to both parties,” she said.
It is unclear whether North Korea will return to the talks, but Pyongyang could be using its strategy of negotiating on the edge to gain concessions as fringe benefits of participating in negotiations, experts say.
“They want to create the impression that the cause of the impasse is the inflexibility of the U.S. side – and they likely want to force the United States to either come back with a more favorable negotiating position or eventually force President Trump to engage at the summit level to keep diplomacy alive,” said Mintaro Oba, a former U.S. State Department official specializing in the Koreas.
Vipin Narang, a nuclear affairs expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, added that North Korea is also buying time to continue to expand and improve its missile and nuclear force, and negotiate the terms by which it is accepted as a nuclear weapons power.
“If that’s the case, their best strategy is to dangle the hope of a fictional future deal but stall on actual negotiations, let alone crafting or implementing any such deal,” Narang said.
Under sanctions banning much of its trade because of its weapons program, North Korea recently test-fired a new ballistic missile designed for submarine launch, a provocative gesture that also underscored the need for Washington to move quickly to negotiate limits on Pyongyang’s growing arsenal.
DEADLINE COMING CLOSE
North Korea reiterated the year-end deadline that leader Kim Jong Un set for the United States to show more flexibility in the talks, which fell apart in February during his summit with U.S. President Donald Trump.
In June, the two leaders then met again in Panmunjom, the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas, and agreed to restart working-level talks.
At the working-level talks, the United States has said it brought “creative ideas” and had good discussions with North Korea, without giving further details.
But North Korea’s foreign ministry said Washington had made no preparations for the talks in Sweden but sought only to serve its own political aims.
The North Korean delegation led by chief nuclear negotiator Kim Myong Gil left the embassy in Stockholm, Yonhap News Agency said. Asked whether they would return to Sweden, Kim suggested asking the U.S. side.
The North Korean delegation flew to Moscow on Sunday, apparently going back home via Beijing, according to Yonhap.
A motorcade believed to carry U.S. counterparts also left a Stockholm hotel, Yonhap said.
“The U.S. is spreading a completely ungrounded story that both sides are open to meet after two weeks. … It is not likely at all that it can produce a proposal commensurate to the expectations of the DPRK and to the concerns of the world in just a fortnight,” the foreign ministry spokesperson said.
Additional reporting by Helena Soderpalm, Johan Ahlander and David Brunstromm in Stockholm; Editing by Jane Merriman, Timothy Heritage, Daniel Wallis and Jonathan Oatis
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