(CN) — Republican attorney generals from 21 states filed a lawsuit Thursday against President Joe Biden, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration for issuing a rule requiring states to establish targets for reducing on-road carbon dioxide emissions.
Filed in the Western District Court of Kentucky, the states claim that the executive agencies lack the authority to regulate greenhouse gas emissions or to compel states to administer a federal regulatory program.
The plaintiff states include Kentucky, South Dakota, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Utah, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming.
They say that the agencies claimed authority under the “2012 Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act,” which was created to establish performance standards for managing bridges and paved roads on interstates, but interpreted the term “performance” to include “environmental performance” in order to further executive goals.
The regulations, announced by the Federal Highway Administration last month, are part of the Biden administration’s efforts to reduce national emissions, as transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States.
While federal officials claim the rule simply adds to existing National Highway System performance measures and standards, the Republican states argue it is “arbitrary and capricious.”
Since the Obama administration, Democratic officials and environmental groups have been advocating for states to track emissions and set reduction targets as a way to monitor how state transportation agencies affect Americans’ means of travel and its environmental impact.
But others, such as Kentucky Attorney General Daniel Cameron, argue the reality of achieving “net-zero” greenhouse emissions means “drastic changes” as most Americans still drive internal combustion engine cars and much of the country still relies heavily on coal for electricity.
Although there is no penalty for failing to achieve reductions, Cameron argues in the states’ complaint that the rule requirements will affect “the American economy” by forcing states to “make choices about projects, contracts and regulations in order to meet the declining targets.”
In the suit, Cameron adds that “any mandated decline in on-road CO2 emissions will disproportionately affect states with more rural areas,” because rural residents tend to drive more miles per day than those living in urban areas.
“States with fewer metropolitan areas have fewer options available to them to reduce CO2. Many of the ideas for how states can decrease GHG emissions — congestion pricing, road pricing, ramp metering, increased coordination with transit and non motorized improvements, paying fees to scrap low mileage heavy duty vehicles — are options more conducive to metropolitan areas, not rural ones,” Cameron wrote.
“Low population densities limit the efficacy of public transit and congestion pricing as options that would reduce vehicle miles traveled and, consequently, CO2 emissions,” he added.
The filing comes just two days after Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a similar suit against the U.S. Transportation Department, calling for the rule to be vacated. Texas was the country’s largest producer of carbon dioxide in 2021, producing 13.5% of the nation’s total emissions, according to Choose Energy’s August analysis of data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Florida’s Republican Governor Ron DeSantis said in a press release, “Florida will not sit idly by while the Biden Administration tries to force the Green New Deal into existence through the U.S. Department of Transportation. Florida will always fight for freedom and against the federal government’s unlawful efforts to control the American people.”
WASHINGTON (CN) — The Senate made history Tuesday as it voted to approve the nomination of Sara Hill, former attorney general for the Cherokee Nation, for a vacancy on Oklahoma’s northern federal district court.
The upper chamber voted 52-14 to confirm Hill, who became the fourth Indigenous woman to be appointed to the federal bench by the Biden administration — and the first ever in Oklahoma. She is only the eighth Indigenous person in U.S. history to receive a lifetime judicial appointment.
Hill’s nomination had the support of the Sooner State’s all-Republican Senate delegation, who backed her appointment despite calls to reconsider from Oklahoma Governor Kevin Stitt.
“Oklahoma and the White House don’t agree on a lot of things,” the lawmaker said, “but we can find common ground and we are able to work on things together.
Carl Tobias, chair of the University of Richmond School of Law, said Tuesday that Senator Lankford and fellow Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin “deserve much credit” for supporting Hill’s nomination and for their bipartisan compromise. Tobias projected that a second Northern District of Oklahoma nominee, John Russell, will be confirmed in the new year.
Meanwhile, advocacy groups sounded off Tuesday evening to applaud Hill’s confirmation.Civil rights coalition the Leadership Conference for Civil and Human Rights said in a statement that the jurist’s appointment was a “critically important step toward ensuring that our federal courts truly reflect and represent the rich diversity of our nation.
”In a separate statement, The Native American Rights Fund pointed to what they said was Hill’s breadth of experience, “including a depth of understanding of tribal sovereignty that is far too often lacking on the judicial bench.”
While she had the support of her Republican senators, Hill’s appointment became the subject of scrutiny for some GOP lawmakers. During her confirmation hearing, Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee grilled the nominee about, among other things, her time as the Cherokee Nation’s natural resources secretary from 2015 to 2019.
Lawmakers including South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham needled her for participating in a tribal delegation to North Dakota’s Standing Rock Reservation in 2016, during protests opposing the rerouted Dakota Access oil pipeline.
Although Graham appeared to suggest that her involvement with the protest would bias her against the fossil fuel industry, Hill assured lawmakers that her record also included work with energy companies.
“Working directly with those pipeline companies to make sure that they’re in compliance with the law is something that I’ve done,” she said.
Hill also brushed off Republican questioning about a migrant youth holding facility operated by a Cherokee Nation contracting company, arguing that the firm operates independently of the tribal government and that the facility in question was not located within her jurisdiction.
Meanwhile, the Senate Tuesday afternoon also voted to confirm Christopher Fonzone as assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. It’s Fonzone’s second job as a top federal lawyer — he previously served as general counsel for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Fonzone, whose nomination was approved on a 50-17 vote,also faced tough questions from lawmakersduring a confirmation hearing in early November. Republicans dialed in on his private practice work at law firm Sidley Austin — particularly legal work he did for Chinese telecommunications company Huawei and Beijing’s commerce ministry.
The nominee told lawmakers that he had done only “a small amount of work” for those clients at the request of the law firm’s other partners, and that it had not affected his ability to impartially represent the ODNI.
Tobias observed that Fonzone, who also worked as a deputy assistant and counsel to former President Barack Obama, “knows his way around D.C. … so [he] brings much relevant experience.”
The Senate continued its work Tuesday as lawmakers languish in Washington, their holiday recess delayed while Democrats and Republicans struggle to work through their differences on a proposed White House aid package for Ukraine and Israel.
The GOP has demanded that the legislation include language strengthening U.S. border security — it is unclear whether negotiations have made enough progress to allow lawmakers to hold a vote this week, possibly forcing the Senate to take things up again in the new year.
WASHINGTON (CN) — Ahead of a crucial House vote on a resolution to formally authorize impeachment proceedings against President Joe Biden, Democrats blasted their Republican colleagues Tuesday for what they framed as an attempt to conceal the probe from public scrutiny.
The lower chamber is expected to vote on the proposed measure this week, which would further expand House Republicans’ ongoing investigation into the Biden family and their finances.
Lawmakers have yet to uncover any solid evidence that President Biden was involved in any financial malfeasance, but that hasn’t stopped GOP leaders from making sweeping allegations against the president, including claims that Biden leveraged his political clout to advance the business dealings of his son Hunter.
Democrats, on the other hand, have disparaged their colleagues’ investigation as a political stunt — retribution on behalf of former President Donald Trump, who was impeached twice during his one term for conduct related to a Ukrainian influence scheme and his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection.
Meanwhile, Republicans’ proposed impeachment resolution took a step closer to the House floor Tuesday morning as the lower chamber’s Rules Committee met to approve the measure. Despite the strong contentions of some GOP lawmakers, the panel’s Republican leadership sought to approach the impeachment probe with a lighter touch.
“We are here to determine a process, not an outcome,” said Oklahoma Representative Tom Cole, the Rules Committee chairman. “We are here to assert our Article I responsibility, not to act as judge and jury.”
Formally authorizing impeachment proceedings, Cole reasoned, would give House committees “the strongest legal standing” to collect information and enforce subpoenas related to lawmakers’ probe of the Biden family.
The proposed resolution, the Oklahoma Republican added, was based on a framework set by Democrats in 2019 as they moved to impeach Trump the first time. While Republicans opposed such legislation at the time, Cole explained, it set a precedent for future impeachment proceedings.
“Having created this procedure in 2019, it’s appropriate that we follow it in 2023,” he said.
Democrats took the opportunity to again slam their Republican colleagues for attempting to move ahead with impeachment proceedings despite a lack of strong evidence implicating President Biden in any wrongdoing.
“This impeachment sham … has no credibility, no legitimacy and no integrity,” said Massachusetts Representative Jim McGovern, the Rules Committee’s Democratic ranking member. “Every single Republican allegation has been debunked, discredited or disproven.”
McGovern accused his GOP colleagues of pursuing impeachment in a bid to get former President Trump reelected and to shield him from scrutiny over a litany of criminal charges.
“They want to hang around Joe Biden’s neck to tarnish him as he heads into the next election,” he said. “They think it will muddy the waters and confuse people who know in their gut that Trump is a criminal. “
Lawmakers sparred over the language of the proposed impeachment resolution, which Democrats argued gives Republicans license to conduct their probe behind closed doors and out of the public eye.
GOP lawmakers voted down an amendment offered by Colorado Democrat Joe Neguse, who suggested that the resolution should explicitly commit to transparency during the impeachment process.
Such language, Neguse told his colleagues, had been present in Democrats 2019 impeachment resolution but is nowhere to be found in the current measure, which he called a “glaring omission.”
“I don’t think this was an accident,” the Colorado lawmaker said. “It wasn’t an error by omission. It was intentional.”
Firing back at Neguse, Kentucky Republican Thomas Massie shifted the blame onto Democrats, arguing that Democrats had conducted closed-door interviews with witnesses in their 2019 impeachment inquiry and that the GOP was simply following their lead.
“There was no semblance of openness,” Massie said.
Neguse parried his colleague by pointing out that those private meetings had taken place before Democrats passed their formalized impeachment resolution, which mandated transparency in the process. On the flipside, he said, the Republican version opens the door for lawmakers to shroud the Biden probe in secrecy.
“That’s all I’m trying to figure out,” Neguse told Massie. “Why is the language permissive? Why has ‘open and transparent’ been deleted?”
The Kentucky Republican did not directly answer the question, again falling back on his argument about how Democrats handled their impeachment investigation before the 2019 resolution was passed.
Cole later interjected, explaining to Neguse and his fellow Democrats that language about transparency had been removed to give committee chairs more discretion in what material is made public during the formal impeachment inquiry.
“We trust the chairmen to do the right thing,” he said. “We want these committees to operate independently.”
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Rules Committee had yet to vote on whether to advance the proposed impeachment resolution to the full House.
Whether Republicans can get the measure through the lower chamber, though, remains an open question. Under the GOP’s already razor-thin majority — which shrank this month after lawmakers voted to expel New York Representative George Santos — the party can only afford to lose around three votes.
Some congressional Republicans, such as Colorado Representative Ken Buck, have expressed reticence about formalizing the probe, casting aspersions on whether President Biden indeed committed impeachable offenses.
(AP) — Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” dominated the Golden Globe Awards nominations with nine nods for the blockbuster film, including best picture — musical or comedy, as well as acting nominations for Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling and three of its original songs.
It was closely followed by its release date and meme companion Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” which scored eight nominations, including best picture — drama and for actors Cillian Murphy, Robert Downey Jr. and Emily Blunt.
In a statement, Gerwig said she “can’t wait to bring the Barbie party to the Globes.”
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The revamped group, now a for-profit endeavor with a larger and more diverse voting body, announced nominations Monday for its January awards show, after scandal and several troubled years, including one without a broadcast. Cedric the Entertainer and Wilmer Valderrama presided over the announcements from the Beverly Hilton Hotel, where the show will also take place on Jan. 7.
Films nominated for best motion picture drama included “Oppenheimer,” Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon,” Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro,” Celine Song’s “Past Lives,” Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” and Jonathan Glazer’s “The Zone of Interest.”
In the best motion picture musical or comedy category, “Barbie” was joined by “Air,” “American Fiction” “The Holdovers,” “May December” and “Poor Things.”
Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Poor Things” and Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” both received seven nominations each. “Poor Things” saw nominations for Lanthimos, its actors Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Willem Dafoe, and Tony McNamara for screenplay. “Killers of the Flower Moon” got nods for Scorsese, for direction and co-writing the screenplay with Eric Roth, and stars Leonardo DiCaprio, Lily Gladstone and Robert De Niro.
Stone, who was also nominated for the Showtime series “The Curse,” said in a statement that she was “feeling extremely bewildered and thankful for it all.” She also said her “Poor Things” character Bella Baxter is her favorite.
DiCaprio praised Gladstone in his statement: “She is the soul of our film and helped to bring this sinister and painful part of our nation’s history to life,” he wrote. The film is about the murders of wealthy Osage individuals in Oklahoma in the early 20th century.
“Barbie” tied for the second-most nominations in Globes history with “Cabaret,” from 1972. Robert Altman’s “Nashville” remains the record-holder with 11 nominations. It went into the morning as a favorite and got a big boost from its three original song nominations, including “I’m Just Ken,” and one of the year’s new categories, recognizing cinematic and box office achievement. One person who was not nominated was America Ferrera, who delivered the movie’s most memorable monologue.
“Succession” was the top-nominated television program, with nine nods including for series stars Brian Cox, Jeremy Strong, Sarah Snook and Kieran Culkin, followed by Hulu’s “The Bear.”
As always there were some big surprises, like Jennifer Lawrence getting nominated for her bawdy R-rated comedy “No Hard Feelings” for best performance by a female actor in a musical or comedy. She was nominated alongside Robbie, Stone and Fantasia Barrino (“The Color Purple”), Natalie Portman (“May December”) and Alma Pöysti (“Fallen Leaves”).
Barrino heard the news from her husband who she immediately called back to make sure she wasn’t dreaming.
“My voice is shot because I’ve been screaming, crying and just telling God, ‘Thank you.’ I almost allowed fear to hinder me from this role, to keep me from this role,” she told the AP through tears. She’s been on the road for work and said she’s excited to go home and experience it with her children.
“The Color Purple” was expected to do better. The adaption of the stage musical got only two nominations total, both for actors, for Barrino and Danielle Brooks for her supporting performance. Left out was Colman Domingo, who was nominated for best drama actor for “Rustin.”
Cord Jefferson’s comedy “American Fiction” also came up with only two nods, best musical or comedy and for lead actor Jeffrey Wright, who plays a frustrated writer.
“I don’t think it’s totally healthy to think about these things too much, but they’re there, so one does,” Wright told the AP Monday. “I’m really pleased that the film is being recognized more so than my own personal recognition.”
Sofia Coppola’s widely acclaimed “Priscilla” got only one nomination, for actor Cailee Spaeny’s portrayal of Priscilla Presley. Her category mates in best female performance in a drama include Gladstone, Annette Bening for “Nyad,” Sandra Hüller for “Anatomy of a Fall,” Greta Lee for “Past Lives” and Carey Mulligan for “Maestro.”
The Globes won’t have to worry about anyone criticizing its “all male” directors this year, however. Gerwig was nominated as was Celine Song, for her romantic debut “Past Lives,” alongside Nolan, Scorsese, Cooper and Lanthimos.
Netflix got the most nominations overall, with 13 total for a slate which included “Maestro,” “May December” and “Rustin,” followed by Warner Bros., which made “Barbie” and “The Color Purple” with 12.
Ridley Scott’s “Napoleon” was not nominated at all. Instead, its star Joaquin Phoenix was recognized for “Beau is Afraid” in the lead actor comedy/musical category, with Wright, Matt Damon (“Air”), Nicolas Cage “Dream Scenario,” Timothée Chalamet (“Wonka”) and Paul Giamatti (“The Holdovers”). Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” with Adam Driver, and Wes Anderson’s starry “Asteroid City” also got zero nominations.
The voting body has now grown to 300 members, following backlash to a 2021 report in the Los Angeles Times that found that there were zero Black members in the group that was then composed of only 87 foreign journalists.
Perhaps as a result, there were more international films and actors nominated in prominent categories including the Finnish comedy “Fallen Leaves,” the courtroom thriller “Anatomy of a Fall” and the harrowing Auschwitz drama “The Zone of Interest.”
The 81st Golden Globes will be the first major broadcast of awards season, with a new home on CBS, but no word yet on a host. It’s been tumultuous few years behind the scenes in the aftermath of the L.A. Times report, which also exposed ethical lapses like its members accepting lavish gifts and travel from awards publicists and studios.
The Globes had long been one of the highest-profile awards season broadcasts, second only to the Oscars. Before the pandemic, it was still pulling in around 19 million viewers. The show was touted as a boozy, A-list party, whose hosts often took a more irreverent tone than their academy counterparts.
Some years, the HFPA were pilloried for nominating poorly reviewed films with big name talent with hopes of getting them to the show, the most infamous being “The Tourist,” with Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp. In the past decade, they’ve more often overlapped with the Oscars.
This year, NBC’s Tuesday night broadcast got its smallest audience ever for the ceremony, with 6.3 million viewers.
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By LINDSEY BAHR AP Film Writer
AP Film Writer Jake Coyle and National Writer Jocelyn Noveck contributed from New York.
BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) — LSU quarterback Jayden Daniels is The Associated Press college football player of the year, the school’s second winner in the past five seasons.
Daniels received 35 of the 51 first-place votes and 130 total points from AP Top 25 poll voters. The Heisman Trophy finalist finished comfortably ahead of Washington quarterback Michael Penix, who was second with 15 first-place votes and 97 points.
Oregon QB Bo Nix was third, with Ohio State receiver Marvin Harrison fourth and Oklahoma State running back Ollie Gordon II fifth. Nix received the other first-place vote. USC quarterback Caleb Williams, the 2022 AP Player of the Year and last year’s Heisman winner, did not receive votes this season.
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Daniels, Penix, Nix and Harrison are the finalists for the Heisman, which will be presented in New York on Saturday. The winner of the AP award has differed from the Heisman winner just twice in the past two decades.
The last LSU player to be named AP Player of the Year was Joe Burrow in 2019, when he also won the Heisman.
Daniels, a San Bernardino, California, native who transferred to LSU from Arizona State in 2022, has led the nation in total offense this season with 4,946 yards in 12 games (412.2 yards per game). He has passed for 3,812 yards, which ranks third nationally. His 40 TDs passing ties for first nationally with Nix, who has played in one more game than Daniels.
The 6-foot-4, 210-pound Daniels rushed for 1,134 yards and 10 TDs. His 50 touchdowns rushing and passing combined, along with a 2-point conversion on a passing play, has made him responsible for a nation-high 302 points.
As a youth athlete, his nickname was “Smooth,” he said in an interview with The Associated Press, “because it looks like I’m not running fast or running hard … but I’m moving faster than what most people think.”
As productive as Daniels has been as a passer, his elusiveness and breakaway speed as a scrambler have distinguished him. During a 52-35 victory over Florida, Daniels became the first Football Bowl Subdivision QB to pass for more than 350 yards and rush for more than 200 in a game.
“His ability to run when things are not there is unique,” LSU coach Brian Kelly said. “His speed, his durability, his toughness, puts him up there with the great ones.”
“It’s just all instincts,” Daniels said. “It’s not something that I think about pre-snap.”
His approach comes with risk and puts a premium on toughness.
A big and arguably late hit at Missouri briefly forced Daniels out of that game with a deep bruise in his ribs. He returned to lead LSU to a comeback victory, highlighted by his 35-yard scoring run. The rib injury bothered him for two more games.
“My pain tolerance is high,” Daniels said. “I was able to go out there and deal with it.”
LSU (9-3) was knocked out of contention for an SEC title when it lost to Alabama, a game in which Daniels spent most of the fourth quarter on the sideline with concussion symptoms after a penalized hit by linebacker Dallas Turner. Until that point, Alabama’s defense had struggled to contain Daniels.
“That still burns me,” Daniels said. “Obviously, we lost to a very good team, but I felt like it would have been a whole different story if I was in there.”
Daniels said it’s important to him to credit his team’s role in any individual accolades he receives, from the offensive line to the running backs and his pass-catchers.
“Without them, I wouldn’t be in a position like this where I was receiving any type of award,” Daniels said. “That’s my thing, is to make sure they feel a part of it.”
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin, days removed from announcing he won’t seek reelection, said Wednesday that if the nation’s voters give former President Donald Trump another term in the White House, “he will destroy democracy in America.”
Manchin, whose home state voters overwhelmingly backed Trump in the last two presidential elections, made the comment on a press call with West Virginia-based reporters amid speculation that Manchin himself might be weighing a third-party run for president.
The moderate West Virginia Democrat said Wednesday that he would never want to be a “spoiler” who contributed to getting any other candidate elected. But he said he would do what he had to in order to save the country.
“If they said, ‘You’re the only person to do it,’ I’ll do whatever I can to save this nation,” he said.
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Manchin had harsh words for how the two-party system is currently functioning.
“These parties have taken over to where they weaponized us against each other,” he said. “And that’s wrong.”
But Manchin reserved his harshest comments for Trump, who won every one of West Virginia’s 55 counties in both 2016 and 2020, making it one of the former president’s most loyal states. Manchin said it would be “dangerous” to give Trump another term.
“You can’t have this visceral hatred spewing out of every time you give a speech, denigrating Americans,” he said. “And the only good American is the one that likes you and supports you; the only fair election is the one you win; the only laws pertain to everybody but you.”
Manchin also critiqued Democratic President Joe Biden on Wednesday, saying he has been pushed too far to the left during his term in office.
After Manchin announced his decision last week not to seek another term, Trump took to social media to take credit for nudging him out of the race by endorsing the current West Virginia governor’s bid for Manchin’s Senate seat next year.
“Because I Endorsed Big Jim Justice of West Virginia for the U.S. Senate, and he has taken a commanding lead, Democrat Joe Manchin has decided not to seek re-election. Looking good for Big Jim!” the former president said on his Truth Social internet site.
Manchin’s condemnation of Trump came less than a week after the senator, who was a state lawmaker, secretary of state and governor of once-deep-blue West Virginia before being elected to the Senate in 2010, announced he would not pursue another term because of frustration with the political divide in U.S. politics.
Manchin would have had a difficult path to reelection as the only remaining Democratic statewide officeholder in West Virginia, likely running against either GOP U.S. Rep. Alex Mooney or Gov. Jim Justice, both loyal Trump supporters.
Since his decision not to run for reelection next week, political pundits have speculated that Manchin might be eyeing a potential presidential run as a candidate with No Labels. Manchin has long been friendly with No Labels, which has already begun holding private conversations with potential presidential nominees, Manchin among them.
A group pushing for Manchin to partner with retiring Utah Sen. Mitt Romney to seek a third-party presidential bid independently filed paperwork to form a formal draft committee with the Federal Election Commission on the same day Manchin announced he wouldn’t vie to return to the Senate.
Manchin said he has yet to make any decision about his next steps, but repeated his vow to travel the country to gauge interest in a centrist political movement.
“I’ve done everything I can to try to change the political dysfunction and political divisions that we have in Washington, and I’ve come to the conclusion, it can’t be done here in Washington,” he said.
Manchin’s remarks came a day after a congressional hearing devolved into an angry confrontation between a Republican senator and a witness in which Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma challenged Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, to a fight.
Manchin said he was “ashamed” of the testy exchange as a member of Congress and cited it as the latest example of the rise of extremism in the U.S. political system. He said Trump has contributed to and taken advantage of that.
“The normal procedures in the political arena today, from Donald Trump’s point of view, is attack, attack, attack, insinuate, and then basically invigorate hatred, spew, call you names, wants to get a reaction, wants a fight,” he said. “It’s not who we are. We didn’t become this country like that.”
Manchin said when Trump was elected in 2016, he tried to work with him, but that the president’s approach to politics goes against “every grain I understood of what we’re supposed to do in public service.”
“You can’t say, ‘I’m going to take the most powerful office in the world and use it for vengeful purposes,’” he said.
Manchin has played a key role in the closely divided Senate, helping to pass the bipartisan infrastructure law and crafting the inflation reduction act, which lowered prescription drug prices, provided health care subsidies and invested heavily in clean energy projects, as well as embracing support for carbon sequestration and storage and other projects to support the fossil fuel industry.
He said it had been one of the most productive congresses in U.S. history because Democrats and Republicans were forced to work together.
“There were people upset thinking I had this power. I said, ‘I don’t have any more power than any of the other senators,’” he said. “I can’t figure out why you all won’t use it to do something good for our country and our states we represent.”
Manchin is the last in a line of powerful West Virginia Democrats who advocated for coal interests in Washington, something that has become untenable as the progressive party has embraced clean energy and the transition away from fossil fuels.
He said when he first came to the Senate, he was asked, “What happened to the West Virginia Democrat?”
“I said, ‘They want to know what happened to the Washington Democrat,’’’ Manchin said. ”The West Virginia Democrats still worked hard, they mined the coal, made the steel, built the guns and ships, they gave everything they have, shed more blood, lost more lives for the cause of freedom than most any state, but all of a sudden, we’re not good enough, green enough, clean enough or smart enough. And they got sick and tired of it.”
WASHINGTON (CN) — Just a week after the Senate Judiciary Committee’s top Republican threatened to torpedo regular business over Democrats’ Supreme Court ethics inquiry, members of the upper chamber’s legal affairs panel met in the middle Wednesday to consider a group of district court nominees.
The Judiciary Committee was a battleground last week as Republicans raged against a Democrat-led effort to issue subpoenas for a pair of influential conservatives, who they contend had improper financial relationships with Supreme Court justices. South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham, the panel’s ranking member, has suggested that GOP lawmakers would gum up the panel in retaliation to Democrats’ effort.
Despite that, things were somewhat subdued on the Judiciary Committee Wednesday, as lawmakers questioned a trio of White House district court nominees.
Among those were Sara Hill and John Russell, two appointments for vacancies on the Northern District of Oklahoma. Both nominees had the written support of the Sooner State’s all-Republican Senate delegation.
Oklahoma Senator James Lankford, introducing the nominees, thanked the Biden administration for reaching across the aisle to find consensus candidates.
“Oklahoma and the White House don’t agree on a lot of things,” he said, “but we can find common ground and we are able to work on things together. We have gone through a rigorous process over the course of the last year to have two incredibly well-qualified candidates.”
Lankford said that both of the Oklahoma district court nominees would “faithfully and impartially discharge and perform all the duties incumbent upon them as a judge of the Constitution and laws of the United States.”
Hill, a member of the Cherokee Nation and the tribe’s former attorney general, would also be the first Indigenous woman to serve on the federal bench in Oklahoma, Lankford added.
Chair Durbin, meanwhile, thanked Lankford and fellow Oklahoma Republican Markwayne Mullin for their cooperation and extended his gratitude for other committee Republicans doing similar work.
“We’re seeing some progress in many states,” the Illinois Democrat said, “and it’s encouraging.”
Durbin has long been a proponent of the age-old Senate tradition of blue slipping, which allows lawmakers to support or object to judicial nominees in their states. While the Judiciary Committee chair has held up blue slips as a vestige of bipartisanship in a divided Congress, critics say that the process gives senators an avenue to unfairly obstruct the White House’s judicial agenda.
While it was mostly smooth sailing Wednesday for the trio of nominees, some lawmakers had questions about Hill’s time as the Cherokee Nation’s secretary of natural resources, a position she held from 2015 to 2019.
Graham needled the nominee about her participation in opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline — Hill in 2016 was a member of the Cherokee Nation’s delegation to the Standing Rock Reservation, where the controversial oil line was rerouted.
Asked whether her work related to the Dakota pipeline biased her against fossil fuels, Hill argued that her record includes work with fossil fuel companies.
“When they’re putting in infrastructure, things like pipelines, one of the things they have to deal with is making sure they don’t affect various sites where there might be tribal interest,” she told Graham. “Working directly with those pipeline companies to make sure that they’re in compliance with the law is something that I’ve done.”
Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley pressed Hill about reports that Cherokee Federal, an independent contracting company made up of Cherokee Nation businesses, had negotiated a contract with the federal government to operate an intake facility for migrant youth.
Hill argued that she had not been involved in any of those discussions in her capacity as the Nation’s attorney general, pointing out that Cherokee Federal operates independently of the tribal government and that the facility in question wasn’t located within the Nation’s jurisdiction.
The nominee said that her office had not received any complaints related to Cherokee Federal or any other tribal entity managing migrant facilities. “I do recall there being a bit of a controversy about it,” she said, “bit it was not as if I had a formal request for review or anything like that on my desk.”
Lawmakers also questioned Ramona Manglona, renominated by the White House to serve as a judge for the District Court of the Northern Mariana Islands. Manglona detailed her experience managing the federal courthouse serving the Pacific Island chain, including the court’s response to a severe typhoon the islands weathered in 2015.
“I believe all this experience is going to ensure that, should there be another disaster or calamity, I would be somewhat prepared to keep the courthouse doors open to ensure that people’s constitutional rights are still addressed,” she said.
Lawmakers were curious about Manglona’s island-hopping casework, which she explained sometimes requires her to fly from the Northern Mariana island of Saipan to the nearby U.S. territory of Guam. At one point, she was flying three to five times a day, she said.
Graham was particularly taken aback when Manglona noted that it took her 24 hours to fly to Washington from Saipan. “Is there anything the committee can do,” the lawmaker said, “to make your job easier?”
“Confirm me,” Manglona replied.
The Senate, tasked with approving the Biden administration’s federal court nominees, is slowly working its way through a backlog of appointments on the chamber floor. Lawmakers last week confirmed the White House’s 150th nominee, marking a major milestone that could put the administration on track to surpass the more than 200 federal judges approved under the Trump administration.
COLORADO SPRINGS (CN) — The owners of a green funeral home were arrested in Wagoner, Oklahoma, on Wednesday after law enforcement discovered 188 improperly stored bodies decomposing in a warehouse in Penrose, Colorado.
Jon and Carie Hallford, who own Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, were arrested on suspicion of several felonies, including abuse of a corpse, theft, money laundering and forgery. The court sealed the couple’s probable cause affidavit.
In October, the Fremont County Sheriff’s Office discovered the decomposing bodies when officers investigated a foul odor coming from the funeral home’s facility in Penrose, a town of 3,000 approximately two hours south of Denver.
The business’s website, which is no longer active, had advertised green and natural burials free of embalming chemicals. Colorado law allows for natural burials, but requires bodies to be refrigerated within 24 hours if they are not preserved.
When questioned by law enforcement, Jon Hallford initially attributed the smell to his taxidermy hobby.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation sent a mass casualty team to help identify the remains. The 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office is also asking potential victims who patronized the funeral home between September 2019 and September 2023 to come forward and help identify bodies.
To date, families who entrusted the funeral home to cremate deceased loved ones have filed two civil actions for negligence and fraud.
“For these plaintiffs this was a real-life nightmare,” says a 26-page lawsuit filed in the District Court of El Paso County on Nov. 2. “After weeks of worry, sleepless nights and gut-wrenching anguish those fears were confirmed. They were among the almost 200 families whose beloved family members had been discarded in an empty building to decompose, the ashes were fake and they now had to start grieving all over again.”
The civil complaints claim the Hallfords gave families crushed concrete instead of ashes.
Colorado Governor Jared Polis, a Democrat, issued a statement on the couple’s arrest.
“I am relieved that criminal charges have been brought against the funeral home owner and a criminal investigation is proceeding,” Polis said in a statement. “I know this will not bring peace to the families impacted by this heart-wrenching incident but we hope the individuals responsible are held fully accountable in a court of law.”
The Colorado legislature elevated the offense of abuse of a corpse to a Class 6 felony in 2020 following the discovery of a body-brokering scheme at Sunset Mesa funeral home in Montrose.
If convicted of the highest charge — money laundering — the couple faces up to 12 years in prison and a fine of $750,000.
WASHINGTON (AP) — As new Speaker Mike Johnson grabbed hold of the House gavel, he made a plea for Americans to “give me a chance” before making up their minds about the newcomer’s ability to lead the far-right House Republican majority that elected him to power.
What Johnson has shown in his first big test as the House passed a nearly $14.5 billion military aid package to Israel is that the easy-going social conservative is more than eager to lift up the priorities of his right flank rather than reach toward the political center in the name of compromise.
By seeking to force the Israel-Hamas war package to be paid for with government spending cuts, something rarely required in emergencies of war or natural disasters, Johnson turned what’s normally an overwhelming bipartisan issue, support for Israel, into one that bitterly split Democrats from Republicans. President Joe Biden threatened a veto.
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It’s a stark example of what may come — or not. The looming government shutdown deadline, Biden’s nearly $106 billion request for aid to Israel, Ukraine, Taiwan and U.S. border security policy and the presidential impeachment inquiry are all demanding attention from the untested new leader.
“That’s his very first opening move?” asked an incredulous Sen. Chris Coons, D-Del., a close Biden ally, echoing the sentiment of many Democrats on Capitol Hill.
“Congress is all about what caucus and which members are driving you and setting your priorities,” he said. “And part of the challenge the House seems to be having is the House Republican caucus has deep divisions between their Main Street and their MAGA Republicans.”
Johnson, of Louisiana, is trying to accomplish the seemingly impossible — uniting a fractured House Republican majority where the past GOP leaders before him have very publicly and dramatically fallen short.
The new speaker, who is closely aligned with Donald Trump, the Republican frontrunner in the 2024 election, has positioned himself as someone who can unite the GOP’s flanks. A low-key, lower-rung leader, he surprisingly rose to the top spot after more tested or fiery contenders — Steve Scalise, Jim Jordan and Tom Emmer — were brushed aside to replace the ousted former speaker, Rep. Kevin McCarthy, R-Calif..
In Johnson, House Republicans ultimately found the leader it now seems they always wanted since taking control in January — a Trump defender who challenged the 2020 election results, voted against certifying the election for Biden and reflects the deeply conservative and growing Christian nationalist wing of the GOP.
“A lot of these people don’t know me,” Johnson told Fox News host Sean Hannity in the first of multiple interviews on the cable show. “Give me a chance. Let me have a chance to lead here, and you will see what I’m really about.”
While Johnson found quick political success in his first week on the job with House passage of the Israel aid package, he is keenly aware it is a short-lived victory. The package, with its plan to pay for the aid with cuts to the IRS, would actually end up costing the government billions in lost revenue from tax dodgers, according to budget scorekeepers. and is headed toward a dismal defeat. The Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer has already rejected it.
The speaker took the risk, ceding to the far-right’s demands to reduce the size of government, and calculating that doing so will position House Republicans with the strongest hand as they fight Biden and the Senate.
Jordan, a firebrand former rival allied with Johnson, said the new speaker is doing a “good job.”
But the chairman of the Democratic caucus, Rep. Pete Aguilar, said Johnson took a flat out “wrong” move.
Democrats argue that Johnson could have launched his speakership on a consensus note and won a full vote of support on the Israel aid package, with hundreds of Democrats and Republicans coming together to support the top U.S. ally in the Middle East. But instead he chose a divisive, starkly partisan path.
“We’re learning a lot about the new speaker,” Aguilar of California said at a press conference at the Capitol.
“These are the things that Speaker Johnson has to advocate to appease the most extreme members,” he said. “They are his base. They are who gave him the gavel.”
After so much turmoil in the House this year, there is little time left for Republicans in the majority to accomplish the big goals they promised voters they would set out to do.
The year-end calendar is pressing down on Johnson in disadvantageous ways, starting with this month’s deadline to fund the government by Nov. 17 or risk another federal shutdown. A lapse in government funding is what McCarthy successfully avoided in a compromise with Democrats, but it resulted in Republicans kicking him out of the speaker’s office.
Johnson also has signaled the Biden impeachment inquiry may soon come to actual impeachment proceedings. “I do believe that very soon, we are coming to a point of decision,” he told reporters.
Johnson has promised he would turn next to Ukraine as Congress tries to broker a compromise package that would provide money to help Kyiv fight Russia as part of a broader deal to beef up security at the U.S. Mexico border as well.
During the Hannity interview Johnson signaled a break from the GOP’s rising non-interventionist wing, and vowed the Congress would not “abandon” Ukraine.
“We can’t allow Vladimir Putin to prevail in Ukraine,” he said about the Russian president.
But Johnson said the U.S. has stewardship over “the precious treasure of the American people.” And he said House Republicans want to know the administration’s strategy: “What is the endgame in Ukraine?”
It’s a high-stakes trial for the new speaker, who met with Biden his first day on the job in what he first said was a very good meeting, before questioning the president’s “age and acumen” later on Fox.
The White House and its allies have allowed little of a honeymoon for the new speaker. In the administration’s stark veto message it said the Israel package’s “new and damaging precedent would have devastating implications for our safety and alliances in the years ahead.”
Still, the White House has begun reaching out to allies over the border security demands Johnson is making in return for the aid to Ukraine.
A former House Republican, Sen. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma, said Washington is underestimating Johnson.
“You’ll see consistency, consistency out of Mike,” said Mullin. “Mike will not be a guy that’s going to get rattled, he’s not going to get excited.”
WACO, Texas (CN) — A Texas federal jury on Tuesday sided with a former Baylor University student who says the school was indifferent after she reported being beaten up by her football player ex-boyfriend, awarding her $270,000 in damages for her negligent response claim.
The jury of three men and five women deliberated for more than nine hours after listening to five days of testimony.
Dolores Lozano of Houston sued Baylor in 2016 on claims of negligence and violations of Title IX. In 2018 she added former athletic director Ian McCaw and former football head coach Art Briles as defendants, accusing them of gross negligence.
Lozano claims she was beaten three times by running back Devin Chafin in March and April 2014, during her senior year, and says the school’s deliberate indifference to her reports led to additional beatings. She also claims Chafin kicked her on the floor of a closet and strangled her into unconsciousness after she aborted a pregnancy.
Jurors also found in Lozano’s favor on her Title IX claim, but awarded no damages, and concluded Baylor was deliberately indifferent to her reports.
Lozano thanked her supporters immediately after the verdict was announced, tweeting “justice prevailed.”
Her story, along with several other female students’ stories of rape and abuse, surfaced in 2016, prompting Baylor regents to order an independent investigation by the law firm Pepper Hamilton. The firm concluded that administrators discouraged students from reporting abuse, and in one case even retaliated against a student.
Lozano’s attorney, Zeke Fortenberry of Dallas, accused coaches of knowing “not only of rapes, but of gang rapes” involving players who “were not reprimanded” at all, during his opening statement.
U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman tossed a gross negligence claims against Baylor, Briles and McCaw on the fifth day of trial, holding that, after hearing Briles and McCaw testify, “no reasonable jury” could conclude the defendants had been grossly negligent.
Briles told jurors he felt Baylor regents were being disloyal by firing him after the investigation. He testified that he was never given any Title IX training by Baylor and didn’t learn of Lozano’s claims until 2016, two years after the incidents she described having occurred.
McCaw testified that he quit after being sanctioned and placed on probation because he opposed the scapegoating of Briles. Regents used him to “take the fall” in the scandal and to mask years of issues with campus-wide assaults beyond the football team, he said..
“Baylor had a wide-ranging problem with interpersonal violence and sex assault,” McCaw told jurors. “The Board of Regents wanted to blame it all on one program and on one man: Art Briles.”
Lozano says her acrobatics and tumbling team coach LaPrise Harris-Williams asked her about her bruises after one of the alleged assaults and reported it to associate athletic director Nancy Post, who replied that “being involved with incidents like Lozano’s were not [Harris-Williams’] responsibility.”
McCaw refuted her claim: Post informed him of the assault in April 2014 and reported Lozano had sought counseling, medical attention and would file a report with Waco police, he testified. Baylor argued this shows the procedures in place were correctly followed by administrators and there was not deliberate indifference or negligence.
Chafin is not a party to the lawsuit and did not testify. Judge Pitman earlier denied Baylor’s motion to bring Chafin in as a third-party defendant. Chafin has steadfastly denied he ever assaulted Lozano and testified during a deposition that he acted in self-defense by grabbing her arms to stop being hit by Lozano.
Lozano testified on the second day of trial that she told then-running backs coach Jeff Lebby about the assaults and Chafin’s alleged drug abuse, claiming she saw him use marijuana, Oxycontin and mushrooms.
Baylor attorney Julie Springer, with Weisbart Springer in Austin, confronted Lozano on cross-examination on why she testified in a deposition in 2021 that she had only talked to Lebby about Chafin’s grades, yet was now claiming she told him about the assaults and drugs.
“That was what I could recall at that time,” Lozano replied.
“You only had one conversation with him and it was about academics,” Springer said.
Lebby is Briles’ son-in-law and the current offensive coordinator at the University of Oklahoma. He was forced to issue a public apology last month when Briles appeared on a sideline next to Lebby in University of Oklahoma clothing.
Springer told jurors that Baylor does apologize and accepts responsibility for the “bad things” that happened at the school, but as far as its liability, “this is not one of those cases.” She argued that Lozano was repeatedly urged to go to the police and to take advantage of school resources.
“Nobody from Baylor discouraged you from going to the police, right?” Springer asked.
“Yes,” Lozano replied.
Lozano has held public office since she was elected last year to be a justice of the peace in Harris County. Her term runs until 2027.
LOS ANGELES (AP) — There isn’t much Cher hasn’t done in her career. She’s achieved EGOT status, she’s the only artist to have a No. 1 song in each of the past six decades — heck, she’s got her own gelato business, Cherlato. But a Christmas album? That’s new territory.
So, why now?
“I just didn’t want to do one,” she told The Associated Press. “I didn’t know how I was going to make it a ‘Cher Christmas album.’”
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The secret, of course, was to lean into the incredible eclecticism of her career, all while avoiding the sleepy, saccharine pitfalls of a “Silent Night” -heavy holiday release.
Her first new album in five years, the appropriately titled “Christmas,” releases Friday. In some ways, it required Cher to find her voice again. She hadn’t sang since a March 12, 2020, performance in Oklahoma City was canceled when a Utah Jazz basketball player tested positive for the coronavirus.
So, she called up her vocal teacher, “Adrienne Angel, who’s 96, who came out and hung with me and we worked every day.”
“And then I went to the mic and I was able to sing,” she says. “I have very young vocal cords.”
On “Christmas,” Cher enlists an all-star list of collaborators. There’s Cyndi Lauper on “Put A Little Holiday In Your Heart,” Stevie Wonder on “What Christmas Means to Me,” Darlene Love on “Christmas (Baby, Please Come Home),” Michael Bublé on “Home,” and even the rapper Tyga on “Drop Top Sleigh Ride” — you read that last one correctly.
But working with others in this way is something she says she’s never done before. When you’re Cher, do you really need a featured voice?
“Well, with Darlene, I wasn’t going to sing her song without her,” she says of the song they first sang together 60 years ago on “A Christmas Gift for You From Phil Spector.”
“With Stevie, I did the song, I loved the song, but there were just things I couldn’t do, that were just Stevie,” she says. “So, I called him and just said, ‘Stevie, I’ve done it. I’m pretty proud of it. But there are things I can’t do, and I need you.’”
“I was still trying to sell him when he’d already said yes,” she says. “At some point he asked me, ‘Is this my song?’ And I went, ‘You think I could call you to ask you to sing on someone else’s song?’”
Alexander Edwards, Cher’s romantic partner and a credited producer on the project, is best friends with Tyga, who helped make the most unexpected and delightful collaboration happen.
“Christmas” is dedicated to Cher’s late mother, Georgia Holt, who died just before the holidays last year. But don’t mistake this album as therapy — the act of reclaiming Christmas in the face of loss, or a way to memorialize Holt.
“I think about my mom all the time,” she says. She doesn’t need an album to remind her of her mom; her mom is everywhere.
“I don’t have a bit of regret that my mom is gone because my mom was such a vibrant woman and she didn’t like what was going on in her life,” she adds.
Cher says her mom sends her messages all the time — like recently when she rediscovered a huge plate she made her mom, flipped it over, and read what it said: “Dear mom, I love you, Merry Christmas.”
“And it was like, ‘Mom, you’re just not going to leave me alone, are you?’” she says.
In addition to the album, Cher is preparing to release a 25th anniversary edition of her Grammy-winning album “Believe” on Nov. 3. Its title track is credited as the first use of autotune — though, as she recalls, it was termed a “pitch machine” at the time.
She was arguing with her longtime producer Mark Taylor about the track, and he brought up the new technology.
“It started and it was like, ‘Oh my God, this is the best thing ever.’ And I thought, ‘You don’t even know it’s me. This is the best thing ever.’ And then we high fived,” she recounts.
But don’t mistake an openness to technology and musical innovation as an openness to artificial intelligence.
Of the technology, Cher is quick to say: “Not AI. Someone did me doing a Madonna song and it was kind of shocking. They didn’t have it down perfectly. But also, I’ve spent my entire life trying to be myself, and now these a——- are going to go take it? And they’ll do my acting and they’ll do my singing?”
“I’m telling you, if you work forever to become somebody — and I’m not talking about somebody in the famous, money part — but an artist, and then someone just takes it from you, it seems like it should be illegal,” she adds.
For those keeping count: It is also the 35th anniversary of Cher winning the best actress Oscar for her role in “Moonstruck.” When asked if she will act again, she’s quick to point out the necessity of a resolution to the ongoing Hollywood actors strike.
She was asked to do a special, she says.
“They said, ‘Well, we can do it in England.’ I said, ‘We can do it on the moon, but I’m not doing it,'” she says, not until an agreement is reached.
(AP) — Kevin Porter Jr.’s time with the Houston Rockets is over, after the team agreed Tuesday to trade him and a pair of second-round draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder, a person with knowledge of the agreement told The Associated Press.
Porter Jr. — whose future in the NBA is uncertain because of serious legal issues — will be waived immediately by the Thunder once the trade gets league approval, according to the person who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity because neither team had announced the deal.
ESPN first reported the trade terms, which were later confirmed by The Houston Chronicle and other outlets. The Rockets also will receive Victor Oladipo and Jeremiah Robinson-Earl as part of the trade, the person said.
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Porter is owed nearly $15.9 million for this season and an additional $1 million that was guaranteed for next season. The Rockets already had told Porter that he was essentially barred from the team after it learned of his arrest on domestic violence charges last month.
Porter was arrested after an alleged attack on his girlfriend, former WNBA player Kysre Gondrezick, in a New York City hotel room Sept. 11. One assault charge against Porter was dropped this week for insufficient evidence, the New York Post reported; he still faces a strangulation charge and another assault charge in relation to that alleged incident and has pleaded not guilty to both.
“The allegations against him are deeply troubling,” Rockets general manager Rafael Stone said earlier this month. “Going back a few weeks, as soon as I heard the allegations, I informed his representatives that he could not be part of the Houston Rockets.”
There is no known timetable on Oladipo’s return from a patella tendon tear suffered in last season’s playoffs with Miami.
WACO, Texas (CN) – Baylor University’s attorneys cast doubt Tuesday on whether an alumnus actually told coaches about the beatings she says she received from running back Devin Chafin and about what she says was his abuse of prescription opioids, mushrooms and marijuana.
Dolores Lozano sued Baylor, former football coach Art Briles and former athletic director Ian McCaw in federal court. She claims negligence and sex discrimination under Title IX, that she was beaten three times by Chafin in 2014 during her senior year and that the school’s deliberate indifference to her reports caused additional beatings. Lozano’s story along with several other female student stories of rape and abuse surfaced in 2016, resulting in the Baylor board of regents ordering an independent investigation by the law firm of Pepper Hamilton that concluded administrators discouraged students from reporting abuse and retaliated against one student.
The fallout resulted in the demotion of Ken Starr as president — he later resigned as chancellor and as a law school professor. Briles was suspended with intent for termination in spite of winning two Big 12 Conference championships. McCaw was suspended and he later became athletic director at Liberty University after resigning.
Testifying Tuesday, Lozano told jurors that she had informed then-running backs coach Jeff Lebby of Chafin’s assaults and drug use, saying she saw him use marijuana, Oxycontin and mushrooms. She said the prescription opioid abuse was so bad it once required her to throw him into a bathtub to wake up.
Lebby is Briles’ son-in-law and is currently the offensive coordinator at the University of Oklahoma. He was forced to issue a public apology last month when Briles appeared on a sideline next to Lebby in OU clothing. Briles has remained a pariah in college football since his firing — coaching in high school and in Italy since leaving Baylor.
Baylor attorney Julie Springer, with Weisbart Springer in Austin, confronted Lozano on cross-examination on why she testified in a deposition in 2021 that she had only talked to Lebby about Chafin’s grades, yet was now claiming she told him about the assaults and drugs.
“That was what I could recall at that time,” Lozano replied.
“You only had one conversation with him and it was about academics,” Springer said.
Springer also pointed out that Lozano knew she could have contacted Baylor campus police and Judicial Affairs but did not, citing records of earlier disputes Lozano had as a student with a former roommate and an unidentified basketball player.
The attorney also asked Lozano why she did not go to Waco police after the first assault, if she didn’t want to get Chafin in trouble.
“Nobody from Baylor discouraged you from going to the police, right?” Springer asked.
“Yes,” Lozano replied.
With approximately 10 of Lozano’s friends and family members in the courtroom Tuesday, Lozano silently wept while telling jurors she has struggled with anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder after the assaults and that she regularly speaks with a counselor.
Lozano testified she learned of her unplanned pregnancy with Chafin in February 2014 after they had broken up and that he was initially supportive of her decision to have an abortion. She said Chafin later argued with her before he first assaulted her at his apartment on March 6, pushing her over a toilet and then kicking her in the stomach as she laid inside a closet. Lozano said Chafin then began to strangle her and she briefly lost consciousness before she awoke to him crying and asking for forgiveness.
Her attorney, Zeke Fortenberry of Dallas, showed jurors several images Lozano took on her mobile phone of her bruises on her arms, neck and back in the days after the assault.
Lozano criticized Baylor’s response when she went to the Health Services clinic for help after she says Chavin assaulted her a second time in April 2014. She told jurors she was seated in a car at a Waco bar when he approached and slammed her arm against the car window.
Lozano said she told clinic staff about both assaults by Chafin and that she was referred to counselors who seemed to focus more on the abortion than the abuse.
“It was very uncomfortable,” Lozano said. “It was more focus on the abortion than on being beaten … I just left there feeling like I was going to go to hell.”
Lozano said she was staying away from Chafin but that he was expressing suicidal thoughts so she agreed to meet with him a third time in April, where he pushed her down in his apartment kitchen before getting up and leaving.
“I seriously hate you,” Lozano’s Facebook message to Chafin afterwards stated. “I hate you for making me feel like I am not good enough.”
She testified Chafin replied with “I have done nothing but apologize.”
Defense attorney Springer cast doubt on whether Lozano’s self-admitted heavy drinking after she turned 21 years old was really due to Chafin, entering into evidence a statement Lozano wrote when she was sentenced to community service for an open container violation.
Lozano was issued the ticket after being stopped by Waco police driving the wrong way down a one-way street. Lozano reportedly told officers her mother was a cop and her passenger, Chafin, was issued a citation for minor in possession of alcohol.
“I thought I was capable of driving home but I was not,” Lozano wrote at the time. “In all honesty, I started drinking a lot after 21 to deal with school and family stress.”
Springer told jurors during opening arguments Monday that Baylor does apologize and accepts responsibility for the “bad things” that happened at the school, but that “this is not one of those cases.” Baylor claims Lozano was repeatedly urged to go to the police and to take advantage of school resources.
Chafin has already testified during a deposition in this case and will not testify in person. The case is being presided over by U.S. District Judge Robert Pitman, who earlier denied a motion by Baylor to bring Chafin into the case as a third-party defendant. Chafin has steadfastly denied ever throwing Lozano to the ground, kicking or choking her.
Lozano ran for public office last year in Harris County and was elected as Justice of the Peace for Precinct 2, Place 2. A Democrat, Lozano’s first term runs to 2027.
NEW YORK (AP) — A moment from years ago keeps replaying in Martin Scorsese’s mind.
When Akira Kurosawa was given an honorary Academy Award in 1990, the then 80-year-old Japanese filmmaker of “Seven Samurai” and “Ikiru,” in his brief, humble speech, said he hadn’t yet grasped the full essence of cinema.
It struck Scorsese, then in post-production on “Goodfellas,” as a curious thing for such a master filmmaker to say. It wasn’t until Scorsese also turned 80 that he began to comprehend Kurosawa’s words. Even now, Scorsese says he’s just realizing the possibilities of cinema.
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“I’ve lived long enough to be his age and I think I understand now,” Scorsese said in a recent interview. “Because there is no limit. The limit is in yourself. These are just tools, the lights and the camera and that stuff. How much further can you explore who you are?”
Scorsese’s lifelong exploration has seemingly only grown deeper and more self-examining with time. In recent years, his films have swelled in scale and ambition as he’s plumbed the nature of faith ( “Silence” ) and loss ( “The Irishman”).
His latest, “Killers of the Flower Moon,” about the systematic killing of Osage Nation members for their oil-rich land in the 1920s, is in many ways far outside Scorsese’s own experience. But as a story of trust and betrayal — the film is centered on the loving yet treacherous relationship between Mollie Brown (Lily Gladstone), a member of a larger Osage family, and Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio), a WWI veteran who comes to work for his corrupt uncle (Robert De Niro) — it’s a profoundly personal film that maps some of the themes of Scorsese’s gangster films onto American history.
More than the back-room dealings of “Casino,” the bloody rampages of “Gangs of New York” or the financial swindling of “The Wolf of Wall Street,” “Killers of the Flower Moon” is the story of a crime wave. It’s a disturbingly insidious one, where greed and violence infiltrate the most intimate relationships — a genocide in the home. All of which, to Scorsese, harkens back to the tough guys and the weak-willed go-alongs he witnessed in his childhood growing up on Elizabeth Street in New York.
“That’s been my whole life, dealing with who we are,” says Scorsese. “I found that this story lent itself to that exploration further.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon,” a $200-million, 206-minute epic produced by Apple that’s in theaters Friday, is an audacious big swing by Scorsese to continue his kind of ambitious, personal filmmaking on the largest scale at a time when such grand, big-screen statements are a rarity.
Scorsese considers “Killers of the Flower Moon” “an internal spectacle.” The Oklahoma-set film, adapted from David Grann’s 2017 bestseller, might be called his first Western. But while developing Grann’s book, which chronicles the Osage murders and the birth of the FBI, Scorsese came to the realization that centering the film on federal investigator Tom White was a familiar a type of Western.
“I realized: ‘You don’t do that. Your Westerns are the Westerns you saw in the late ’40s and early ’50s, that’s it. Peckinpah finished that. ‘Wild Bunch,’ that’s the end. Now they’re different,” he says. “It represented a certain time in who we were as a nation and a certain time in the world – and the end of the studio system. It was a genre. That folklore is gone.”
Scorsese, after conversations with Leonardo DiCaprio, pivoted to the story of Ernest and Mollie and a perspective closer to Osage Nation. Consultations with the tribe continued and expanded to include accurately capturing language, traditional clothing and customs.
“It’s historical that Indigenous Peoples can tell their story at this level. That’s never happened before as far as I know,” says Geoffrey Standing Bear, Principal Chief of Osage Nation. “It took somebody who could know that we’ve been betrayed for hundreds of years. He wrote a story about betrayal of trust.”
“Killers of the Flower Moon” for Scorsese grew out of a period of reflection and reevaluation during the pandemic. Covid-19, he says, was “a gamechanger.” For a filmmaker whose time is so intensely scheduled, the break was in some ways a relief, and it allowed him a chance to reconsider what he wants to dedicate himself to. For him, preparing a film is a meditative process.
“I don’t use a computer because I tried a couple times and I got very distracted. I get distracted as it is,” Scorsese says. “I’ve got films, I’ve got books, I’ve got people. I’ve only begun this year to read emails. Emails, they scare me. It says ‘CC’ and there are a thousand names. Who are these people?”
Scorsese is laughing when he says this, surely aware that he’s playing up his image as a member of the old guard. (A moment later he adds that voicemail “is interesting to do at times.”) Yet he’s also keen enough with technology to digitally de-age De Niro and make cameos in his daughter Francesca’s TikTok videos.
Scorsese has for years been the preeminent conscience of cinema, passionately arguing for the place of personal filmmaking in an era of moviegoing where films can be devalued as “content,” theater screens are monopolized by Marvel and big-screen vision can be shrunk down on streaming platforms.
“I’m trying to keep alive the sense that cinema is an artform,” Scorsese says. “The next generation may not see it that way because as children and younger people, they’re exposed to films that are wonderful entertainment, beautifully made, but are purely diversionary. I think cinema can enrich your life.”
“As I’m leaving, I’m trying to say: Remember, this can really be something beautiful in your life.”
Cinema, he says, may be the preeminent 20th century artform, but something else will belong to the 21st century. Now, Scorsese says, “the visual image could be done by anything by anybody anytime anywhere.”
“The possibilities are infinite on all levels. And that’s exciting,” Scorsese says. “But at the same time, the more choices, the more difficult it is.”
The pressure of time is weighing more heavily on Scorsese, too. He has, he’s said, maybe two more feature films left in him. Currently in the mix are an adaptation of Grann’s latest book, the 18th century shipwreck tale “The Wager, ” and an adaptation of Marilynne Robinson’s “Home.”
“He’s uncompromising. He just does what he feels he really wants to look into,” says Rodrigo Prieto, Scorsese’s cinematographer on “Flower Moon,” as well as his last three feature films.
“You can feel that it’s a personal exploration of his own psyche,” adds Prieto. “In doing that, he allows growth for everybody, in a way, to really look into these characters who might be doing things we might find very objectionable. I can’t think of many other filmmakers who attempt at such a level of empathy and understanding.”
Yet Scorsese says he often feels like he’s in a race to accomplish what he can with the time he has left. Increasingly, he’s prioritizing what’s worth it. Some things are easier for him to give up.
“Would I like to do more? Yeah. Would I like to go to everybody’s parties and dinner parties and things? Yeah, but you know what? I think I know enough people,” Scorsese says with a laugh. “Would I like to go see the ancient Greek ruins? Yes. Go back to Sicily? Yes. Go back to Naples again? Yes. North Africa? Yes. But I don’t have to.”
Time for Scorsese may be waning but curiosity is as abundant as ever. Recent reading for him includes a new translation of Alessandro Manzoni’s “The Betrothed.” Some old favorites he can’t help but keep revisiting. “Out of the Past” — a movie he first saw as 6-year-old — he watched again a few weeks ago. (“Whenever it’s on, I have to stop and watch it.”) Vittorio De Sica’s “Golden Naples” was another recent rewatch.
“If I’m curious about something, I think I’ll find a way – if I hold out, if I hold up – to try to make something about it on film,” he says. “My curiosity is still there.”
So too is his continued astonishment at cinema and its capacity to transfix. Sometimes, Scorsese can hardly believe it. The other day he watched the Val Lewton-produced 1945 horror film “The Isle of the Dead,” with Boris Karloff.
“Really? How many more times am I going to see that?” Scorsese says, laughing at himself. “It’s their looks and their faces and the way (Karloff) moves. When I first saw it as a child, a young teenager, I was terrified by the film and the silences of it. The sense of contamination. I still get stuck on it.”
