Suspect in connection with a mass shooting at July 4th parade has ...

Editor’s Note: Find the latest coverage of the Highland Park, Illinois, parade shooting here.

Highland Park, Illinois CNN —

Robert E. Crimo III, the suspect in a mass shooting at a parade that left six dead and sent more than two dozen people to hospitals, has been taken into custody near Lake Forest, Illinois, authorities said during a brief news conference Monday night.

Authorities said Crimo was spotted by a North Chicago officer who attempted a traffic stop. Crimo led officers on a brief chase before being stopped. He was taken into custody without incident and will be transferred to the police department in Highland Park, where the deadly shooting occurred earlier Monday.

Earlier, as law enforcement searched for Crimo, police had labeled him “a person of interest” and the FBI said, “He being sought for his alleged involvement in the shooting of multiple individuals at an Independence Day parade in Highland Park, Illinois.”

The capture ended an intense manhunt across the Chicagoland area after the shooting upended Independence Day festivities in cities throughout the region.

The shooting in Highland Park, about 25 miles north of Chicago, began shortly after 10 a.m. CT as parade-goers enjoyed a sunny Fourth of July parade along Central Avenue.

Robert "Bobby" E. Crimo III Highland Park Police Department

Firearm evidence was found on the rooftop of a business near the shooting, police commander Chris O’Neill said earlier. The gunman used a ladder attached to the building on a wall in an alley to access the roof, said Christopher Covelli, spokesperson for the Lake County Major Crime Task Force.

The gun was a “high-powered rifle” and the attack appeared to be “random” and “intentional,” Covelli said.

The FBI provided a photo of the 2010 silver Honda Fit with Illinois license plate DM80653 that Crimo is thought to be driving. Highland Park Police Department

Authorities are working to trace the firearm to find out who purchased it and its origins, according to Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spokesperson Kim Nerheim.

Covelli told reporters that SWAT members and other officers have been evacuating people from buildings within a certain radius of the shooting.

Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said the five people who died at the scene were adults. One person died at a hospital, she said, but she didn’t have more information about that victim.

The scene following a shooting in Highland Park on July 4th. Network Video Productions

Highland Park Fire Chief Joe Schrage said his department transported 23 people to hospitals and other victims were taken in police cars or bystanders’ personal vehicles.

A Lake County police officer walks down Central Ave in Highland Park on Monday. Brian Cassella/Chicago Tribune/AP

A total of 26 patients were received at Highland Park Hospital, according to Dr. Brigham Temple, the medical director of the NorthShore University Health System. The patients ranged in age from 8 years old to 85 years old – four or five were children, according to Temple.

He said 19 of the 25 gunshot victims were treated and have been discharged. There were gunshot wounds to extremities as well as more central parts of bodies, he added.

The shooting caused hundreds of parade attendees to flee and triggered a large police response of local, state and federal officers, including the FBI. Heavily armed officers patrolled the streets of Highland Park on Monday afternoon, and others were positioned on rooftops with sniper rifles.

Zoe Pawelczak, who attended the Independence Day parade with her father, said parade-goers initially thought the array of pops were fireworks given the occasion.

“And I was like, something’s wrong. I grabbed my dad and started running. All of a sudden everyone behind us started running,” she said. “I looked back probably 20 feet away from me. I saw a girl shot and killed.”

They hid behind a dumpster for about an hour until police moved them into a sporting goods store and then eventually escorted them back to their car, she said. She saw one person who had been shot in the ear and had blood all over his face and another girl who was shot in the leg, she said.

“It looked like a battle zone, and it’s disgusting. It’s really disgusting,” she said.

The incident marks at least the 308th mass shooting in the US this year, according to data compiled by the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit tracking such incidents. The organization defines a mass shooting as involving four or more people shot, not including the shooter.

There have been 11 mass shootings in the first four days of July, including three on July 4 alone, in Richmond, Virginia; Chicago and Highland Park, according to the Gun Violence Archive.

The carnage punctuates an already bloody American spring and summer, including an 18-year-old’s racist attack at a New York supermarket that killed 10 and another 18-year-old’s shooting at a Texas school that left 19 students and two teachers dead.

In the wake of those massacres, President Joe Biden just nine days ago signed into law the first major federal gun safety legislation in decades, marking a significant bipartisan breakthrough on one of the most contentious policy issues in Washington.

Witnesses say gunshots caused stampede

A large police presence responded to a shooting at a July 4th parade in Highland Park, Illinois. WBBM

Witnesses at the scene who spoke to CNN described a peaceful parade pierced by the sudden ring of gunfire and ensuing chaos.

Miles Zaremski said he heard what he believed to be about 20 to 30 gunshots, in two consecutive spurts of gunfire, at about 10:20 a.m. CT, shortly after the start of the parade. He told CNN he saw a number of people bloodied and on the ground and described the scene as chaotic.

Video taken by a witness, Hugo Aguilera, shows an ambulance turning around on the parade route and a police car with sirens on, as people gathered on the grassy sidewalk. Aerial video from CNN affiliate WLS shows abandoned lawn chairs up and down the parade route amid a heavy police presence.

Warren Fried, who attended the parade with his wife and 7-year-old twins, said he watched the police and ambulance pass by him at the parade and afterward heard an array of gunshots. People began yelling “shooter” and “run” and he and his family fled toward their car for safety.

“People were hiding, kids were on the streets looking for their parents, just in a state of shock,” he said.

US Rep. Brad Schneider, a Democrat who represents the area, told CNN he was just arriving in Highland Park when the shots were fired and he was told to detour.

“Everyone scattered and ran. As I was going around, I came across a group of young kids who were trying to call their parents to say they were OK,” he said. “So I stopped and offered them to use my phone. There were a lot of cars moving, so I helped to direct traffic for a bit.”

Jeff Leon, 57, told CNN the shots sounded like “firecrackers in a garbage can,” and it wasn’t until he saw police officers reacting, that he knew anything had happened.

“The police started reacting, and I saw some people falling,” Leon said. “We just took off. And, you know, we, we were hiding behind cars, folding into the next car and making our way.”

Jose Alamar, an employee at a nearby gas station, said about 20 people ran into the gas station and took shelter after the shooting started.

The suburb of Highland Park has a population of about 30,000 people and has a per capita income of about $90,000, nearly triple the US average, according to US Census data.

The July 4th parade was expected to feature floats, marching bands, novelty groups, community entries and other special entertainment, the city said on its website. It was scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. CT at the intersection of Laurel and St. Johns Avenues, and was set to head north on St. Johns Avenue and then west on Central Avenue and continue to Sunset Park, the city said.

Nearby suburbs, including Deerfield and Evanston, canceled their July 4th parades in the wake of the shooting. Events in other nearby communities were canceled.

The Chicago White Sox will hold a moment of silence before their home game but have called off their postgame fireworks.

Eric Levenson Adrienne Broaddus Shawn Nottingham Brynn Gingras Steve Almasy Joe Sutton

With 100 days to the midterms, Democrats try to defy the odds as ...

CNN —

As the countdown to November’s midterm congressional elections enters its final 100 days, Democrats face broad and persistent headwinds driven by widespread gloom over the economy and President Joe Biden’s consistently low approval ratings.

Though recent polling has provided the party glimmers of hope, those fundamental weaknesses have been compounded by what many accept as a political fact of life: that the president’s party is doomed to a poor showing in his first midterm after taking office in all but the most exceptionally advantageous circumstances.

The first nationwide election since Biden defeated former President Donald Trump in 2020 will not provide Democrats that unique boost. Instead, the vote will take place amid economic uncertainty, an ongoing pandemic that has killed more than a million Americans the rupture created by the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn federally protected abortion rights.

For Democratic voters, the additional specter of a Trump revival – he is widely expected to run for president a third time in 2024 – and the further ascent of the anti-democratic movement around him has deepened the sense of foreboding.

“My sense is that voters are looking for a level of independence that they aren’t seeing on either side of the aisle,” said Greg Landsman, the Democratic Cincinnati councilman who is challenging Republican Rep. Steve Chabot in November.

Landsman’s calculation is that any backlash over his relationship with Biden will be outweighed by the Trump’s unpopularity.

“(Trump) is way more involved in these races than just about anyone else,” Landsman said. “Trump endorsed Chabot. Chabot obviously tried to overturn an election for the guy. I think that is way more inescapable than me and the President.”

Republican strategists, meanwhile, view the contest for the House majority as close to a done-deal as possible. A dismal economy mixed with complete Democratic control in Washington, they believe, makes this a straightforward “change” election.

“The Republicans are going to win the House. Period. End of discussion,” said Corry Bliss, a Republican strategist. “If there’s an election in November, Republicans will win control of the House.”

None of the non-economic developments over the past few months – the overturning of Roe v. Wade, a wave of high-profile mass shootings or the progression of the investigation by the House select committee into the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot have shifted the GOP assessment that voters’ top priorities remain inflation and a higher cost of living.

And while Republicans admit that while the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe has energized Democratic donors, it’s done little to blunt the sense that a GOP wave in the House is approaching.

In fact, outside GOP groups are pressing their apparent advantage into more Democratic districts. The Congressional Leadership Fund, the leading super PAC associated with House Republican leadership, has begun to spend money in multiple Democratic-held districts that were not initially on the group’s list of possible targets, including in Indiana (against Rep. Frank Mrvan), Connecticut (against Rep. Jahana Hayes), and California (an open seat in the San Joaquin Valley after Rep. Josh Harder switched races following redistricting).

CLF president Dan Conston told CNN that the group will also start spending in Rhode Island’s 2nd District, whose longtime Democratic Rep. Jim Langevin is retiring.

“Biden’s deep unpopularity and Democrats’ mishandling of the economy has created opportunities in some districts once thought unwinnable,” Conston said. “We haven’t found a single district in America where the President has a favorable image.”

Democrats search for a unified message

Four years ago, as anger at Trump raged, Democrats enjoyed a fired-up base and a clearly crafted national message that centered on health care and Republican attempts to gut the Affordable Care Act. From California to Texas to Michigan, candidates hammered Republicans over their efforts to repeal a law that helps provide and protect health insurance for millions. Republicans – unable or unwilling to divorce themselves from Trump – didn’t have a straight answer. In the end, Democrats picked up 41 House seats and the majority.

This year, however, the message is far less consistent, with Democratic House candidates attempting to personalize their campaigns – betting that their personal brands or emphasis on specific hot-button issues can help them duck below and evade what appears to be a coming wave. There are overarching themes across their campaigns – including Republican extremism, support for Trump’s 2020 election lies and a host of other policy positions – but four years after singing from a shared hymn sheet, Democrats in 2022 are often seen crafting their own tunes.

“When the national environment is good for you, you can do that,” a Democratic strategist working on House races said of the strategy that worked for Democrats in 2018. “When it is a bit of a challenge, you got to personalize these races.”

The strategist added: “With Republicans, who they are nominating really matters,” specifically noting a race like Ohio’s 9th Congressional District, where longtime but vulnerable Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur is facing Trump-backed Republican J.R. Majewski, a veteran who was outside the US Capitol during the January 6 insurrection.

Democrats argue that if Republicans had nominated a more traditional candidate in this race, Kaptur – who has served in Congress since 1983 – would be almost a lost cause. But because Republican primary voters backed Majewski, who might struggle with independents and moderate GOP voters, Democrats have a chance to hold a seat they would have had no business otherwise keeping.

If enough races unfold in that way, multiple Democrats said, the majority could be saved.

“There is a clear contrast in this race,” said North Carolina state Sen. Donald Davis, who is running against Sandy Smith, a Republican who tweeted on January 6 that she had just “marched from the Monument to the Capitol.” To Davis and other Democrats running against Republicans with ties to the insurrection, it would be foolish not to talk about their opponents’ links to the deadly day.

In some ways, however, Democrats in 2022 find themselves confronted with a similar problem to Republicans in 2018: How do you deal with an unpopular president? The depth of the challenge is even clearer looking further back to 2010, when then-President Barack Obama’s popularity was dipping and the economy reeling in the aftermath of the financial collapse and Great Recession. Republicans picked up 63 seats that fall.

Even the most upbeat Democrats acknowledge Biden’s popularity is an issue they must address, but few in the party have yet to significantly distance themselves from the President.

One reason: It’s nearly impossible for a single House candidate to do.

“The person in the White House has a notable impact on down ballot races in the midterms – good and bad,” said Meredith Kelly, the top spokesperson for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee in 2018 and now a partner at Declaration Media. “And there is also very little that a single House Democrat can do about that in their races. So, ultimately embracing the good things that have gotten done is the best move.”

Kelly said she is more upbeat now about the prospect of keeping the House than she was a few months ago, arguing that there is an opportunity to charge Republicans with attempting to take away a long held right – the right to an abortion.

“Republicans are on the wrong side of history but also on the wrong side of the country, particularly persuadable voters in these midterms,” she said.

Still, many Democrats acknowledge that Biden looms over the midterms – causing some to seek distance.

Rep. Dean Phillips of Minnesota told a radio interviewer on Thursday that he doesn’t want Biden to run for reelection in 2024.

“I think the country would be well served by a new generation of compelling, well-prepared, dynamic Democrats to step up,” said Phillips, who represents a relatively safe seat in Minneapolis.

According to recent CNN polling, not only is Biden’s overall approval rating hovering below 40%, but a remarkable 75% of Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters want the party to nominate someone else for the presidency in 2024.

Some Democrats, however, are happy to stand with Biden, especially when he visits to talk about a bill or promise he plans to deliver on – a number that could grow if Democrats in Congress pass a climate funding and tax bill that was recently revived in the Senate. Landsman has been one of the candidates who’s stood by the President.

“An event about jobs and bringing jobs to the region, it’s a no-brainer,” said Landsman, who attended an event in May with Biden to rally support for semiconductor legislation. “It is a huge win for Ohio. … It is also a big contrast to Chabot, who voted against it.”

As for whether he would attend a strictly political event with Biden, Landsman was less committal, saying it’s “just not something we talk about,” instead choosing to focus on “extreme Republicans” and Chabot’s work to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Former Virginia Rep. Tom Perriello, a Democrat elected to a traditionally Republican district in 2008, then swept out by the tea party wave of 2010, agreed that the increasing nationalization of politics – spurred on by a decline in local media – has made it not only difficult, but politically unwise for candidates to divorce themselves from party leadership.

But Perriello sees 2022 as unusually distinct from past midterms, in large part because Republicans, even without one of their own in the White House, have, in Trump, their own widely unpopular party leader.

“If Trump had stayed quiet, if the moderates in the (Republican) party had regained control, this would’ve been a natural year for Republicans to run the tables,” Perriello said. “But instead, it’s the moderates that are largely in charge of the Democratic Party and being run out of the Republican Party.”

Democrats are also attempting to upend conventional wisdom by arguing that, rather than a rebuke in 2022, what it – and the country – needs to claw out of the current malaise is a more robust Democratic majority to help jumpstart the stalled parts Biden’s popular-on-paper agenda. Larger margins in the Senate, where Democrats need every member onboard to move most legislation, and House would give leadership more leeway to advance big ticket items.

“Obviously you need to run through the tape and minimize variables, but you can’t look at how things are shaping up from issues, to candidates, to fundraising and say Republicans aren’t well-positioned,” Republican strategist Matt Gorman said.

The ‘Roe’ factor

The landscape is, indeed, more friendly to Republicans. But over the past few months, the number of “variables” have increased, and despite GOP insistence that their fundamental advantage remains in place, Democrats are keen to test whether the stakes have truly changed.

That speculation is based on the energetic backlash to the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe and Republicans’ refusal to consider more ambitious gun control legislation in the aftermath of recent mass shootings – issues strategists and candidates believe could stir previously frustrated base voters, especially college-educated Whites, one of the few demographics among which Democrats were already building support.

A CNN poll last week found overwhelming opposition to the high court’s abortion ruling, cutting across party lines. More than 9 in 10 liberal Democrats disapproved of the ruling, but so did 71% of independents and 55% of moderate or liberal Republicans. Whether Democrats can translate that anger into success at the polls, though, remains an open question – especially with 77% of respondents who disapproved of the ruling saying politicians who support legal abortion are not doing enough to ensure access to it.

New York Democrat Pat Ryan, the Ulster County executive running in a special election next month to replace Antonio Delgado, who left Congress to become New York’s lieutenant governor, has made the abortion fight a central theme of his campaign against Republican Marc Molinaro, the Dutchess County executive.

“The intensity is hard to articulate in a poll, but on the ground, certainly women, but across the board, across gender, race, religion, I’ve felt it. We’ve seen it in our campaign. Our fundraising numbers reflect from grassroots support, our numbers of volunteers. I wouldn’t normally use this as an indicator, but we can’t keep yard signs,” Ryan said. (He will be on two ballots on August 23: the special election in New York’s 19th Congressional District and in a primary race for the new 18th.)

Ryan’s race, in a swing district, is widely viewed as a bellwether for November. He is embracing and encouraging the attention – and hopeful that, especially if he is successful, other Democrats will try to emulate his forceful rhetoric.

“When you pull your punches and sort of triangulate and moderate, that’s what gets us to where we are right now,” Ryan said, “where rights are being ripped away because we haven’t made clear what the stakes are.”

Gregory Krieg Dan Merica Michael Warren
Gregory Krieg
Dan Merica
Michael Warren

Six mass shootings and 90 dead. What has Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ...

Facing the largest audience of the 2022 campaign, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sought to show he shared the horror and sorrow of the families in Uvalde, whose lives were forever scarred by the May 24 mass shooting that killed 19 elementary school children and their two teachers.

"I can feel their pain,” Abbott said during the Sept. 30 debate at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, which was aired or streamed to every corner of the state.

But in nearly the same breath, the two-term Republican told those families that he would not grant their pleas to make 21 the minimum age to purchase combat-style rifles like the one used by the 18-year-old gunman in Uvalde.

Moore County power: Investigators are zeroing in on 2 possible ...

CNN —

Investigators – who have found nearly two dozen shell casings from a high-powered rifle – are zeroing in on two threads of possible motives centered around extremist behavior for the weekend assault on two North Carolina electric substations, according to law-enforcement sources briefed on the investigation.

The news comes as the primary utility company in Moore County restored electricity to the final customers of the 45,000 homes and businesses that initially lost power.

Officials on Wednesday also announced a total of $75,000 in reward money for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or people responsible for Saturday’s attacks.

One thread involves the writings by extremists on online forums encouraging attacks on critical infrastructure. The second thread looks at a series of recent disruptions of LGBTQ+ events across the nation by domestic extremists.

The FBI and the NC State Bureau are assisting in the investigation.

investigators have no evidence connecting the North Carolina attacks to a drag event at the theater in the same county, but the timing of two events are being considered in context with the growing tensions and armed confrontations around similar LBGTQ+ events across the country, the sources told CNN.

In the past two years, anti-government groups began using online forums to urge followers to attack critical infrastructure, including the power grid. They have posted documents and even instructions outlining vulnerabilities and suggesting the use of high-powered rifles.

One 14-page guide obtained by CNN cited as an example the 2013 sniper attack on a high voltage substation at the edge of Silicon Valley that destroyed 17 transformers and cost Pacific Gas and Electric $15 million in repairs.

In that case, the shooter fired more than 100 bullets in about 20 minutes, disappearing a minute before police arrived. The case remains unsolved.

While investigators haven’t found a rifle in the North Carolina shootings, the casings still could offer critical evidence. A law enforcement source told CNN that the caliber of the bullets in the California incident is different from those used in North Carolina.

Investigators are taking into consideration that the timing of Moore County shootings – 7 p.m. on a Saturday night – coincided with the time a drag performance sponsored by the local LBGTQ+ community began, according to the sources. Audience members used their phone flashlights to light the stage for one last song, but after that the performance couldn’t continue due to the power outage, according to Sandhills PRIDE.

Officials have said the gunfire, which left much of the county without electricity for days, were a “malicious” and “intentional” attack. The two substations are about 10 miles apart.

No suspects in the outages have been announced.

Sheriff Ronnie Fields has said whoever fired at the substations “knew exactly what they were doing.” No group “has stepped up to acknowledge or accept they’re the ones who (did) it,” the sheriff said Sunday.

As of Wednesday morning there were 35,000 customers without power, but that number had decreased to 1,200 by the time a 4 p.m. news conference began, according to Duke Energy spokesperson Jeff Brooks. A few hours later the company’s website showed zero outages in the area.

Given the information, county officials said a nightly curfew will end for good at 5 a.m. Thursday.

Shell casings and bullets offer clues

Bullets recovered from the sites, and the brass shell casings found a short distance away, are the few pieces of physical evidence that investigators have.

Because of the heat generated in a high-powered rifle’s chamber during rapid fire, fingerprints are burned away – and nearly impossible to recover from spent casings. Still, the brass may offer valuable clues.

Investigators can enter the casings into the National Integrated Ballistic Information Network, a database from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The database records three-dimensional images of shell casings and can match them to any other shell casings that may have been fired by the same gun at another crime scene or to the gun if the weapon is recovered.

The spot where the casings were found can give investigators a way to pinpoint the firing positions. Knowing where the shooter fired from could lead to discoveries such as shoe prints and tire tracks.

Residents head to shelter for hot food and showers

For now, schools are closed through Thursday, many stores and restaurants are shut, homes are without heating or running refrigerators, drivers are traversing intersections with no traffic lights.

Nakasha Jackson, who came to the shelter to pick up some hot food, said the outage has been difficult with her 1-year-old child. CNN

A Red Cross-run emergency shelter was set up at the Moore County Sports Complex to help provide shelter, food, showers and other services to people impacted. It will remain as a shelter through noon on Thursday, officials said.

Nakasha Jackson, who came to the shelter to pick up some hot food, said the outage has been difficult for her 1-year-old child.

“No lights, no power, can’t really do nothing. The kid is scared of the dark,” she told CNN.

Jackson said sometimes she has to travel up to an hour one way to buy food. “It’s ridiculous. It should never have been done,” Jackson said.

Residents who rely on electricity-powered medical equipment have also seen their lives upended. One woman told CNN she came to the shelter because she had no power for her CPAP machine at night.

After two days of sleeping without it, she said she began to feel ill and came into the shelter for help.

Others have sought shelter fearing for their safety as they struggled to keep their homes warm.

“It’s different. It’s kind of hard to sleep, you know. But at the end of the day, I’d rather be somewhere where it’s warm, where we have food, where we’re taken care of than to be somewhere it’s freezing cold,” said Amber Sampson.

On top of having to stay at the shelter, Sampson hasn’t been able to work since Sunday after her employer also lost power – an issue that could end up costing her hundreds of dollars.

Authorities have expressed anger over the attack, with Carol Haney, mayor of Southern Pines – a town of about 15,900 residents that completely lost power – calling it a cruel and selfish act.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper voiced concern over businesses and residents in nursing homes.

“When we look at all the money that’s being lost by businesses here at Christmastime, when we look at threats to people in nursing homes having lost power, hospitals having to run off generators and not being able to do certain kinds of operations at this point – all of those are deep concerns here, and we can’t let this happen,” the Democrat told CNN on Tuesday.

“This was a malicious, criminal attack on the entire community.”

John Miller Steve Almasy Whitney Wild
John Miller
Steve Almasy
Whitney Wild

High number of firearm recoveries underscores America's ...

CNN —

Earlier this month, two NYPD officers were killed while responding to a domestic disturbance call. According to authorities, the suspect used a Glock 45 that was stolen in Baltimore in 2017, prompting city and state officials to call for stronger measures against gun violence and gun trafficking across state lines. The tragedy highlighted a growing concern about the seeming flood of firearms across America.

Law enforcement agencies in some of the country’s biggest cities seized or recovered near decade-high numbers of firearms in 2021, according to data provided to CNN. Many police departments also reported recovering high numbers of “ghost guns” — untracked and untraceable firearms that are often bought online and assembled at home.

“We have to stop the flow of guns,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams in a press conference on January 24. “We are removing thousands of guns off our streets, and it appears as though for every gun we remove from the street, five are coming in. That is unacceptable.”

In New York, police made 4,497 gun arrests in 2021, up 3% from 2020 but a 26% rise from 2019. Adams said in the press conference that police had recovered more than 6,000 guns in the city last year.

The high volume of guns recovered comes as the country has seen a surge of gun violence since the onset of the pandemic. A CNN analysis showed that more than two-thirds of the country’s most populous cities recorded more homicides in 2021 than the previous year, with at least 10 setting all-time homicide records – with the majority committed with a firearm.

CNN requested data on gun seizures and recoveries from police departments in over a dozen of America’s largest cities. Of the eight cities that responded with data through the end of 2021, all recorded more gun recoveries last year than in 2020, with several reaching highs not seen in at least a decade. Not all cities distinguished between guns recovered from crime scenes and those recovered from voluntary efforts, such as a gun buyback program, but the increases are indicative of growing numbers of firearms in America.

In Philadelphia, for example, police last year recovered 5,920 crime guns — a gun used or suspected of being used in a crime — the highest in at least a decade.

The Chicago Police Department (CPD) recovered more than 12,000 guns in 2021, up from 11,397 in 2020, including guns recovered through buyback programs and other voluntary means. Notably, last year’s total includes at least 706 assault weapons, which the CPD said was 62% higher than the number recovered in 2020.

Experts say that increasing numbers of firearms and the difficulty tracking the true scope of both legally and illegally owned guns make it challenging to address gun violence effectively. Here’s what we know, and don’t know, about guns in the United States — and how better data could provide a key to understanding and reducing violent crime.

Ghost guns are on the rise

Law enforcement officials and gun violence prevention groups have sounded the alarm on the fast-growing threat of unregulated ghost guns. There is no background check required to purchase the parts needed to assemble a firearm at home, which can be done in less than an hour, and often at a low cost.

Data shows that these guns have been involved in shootings and found at crime scenes with increasing frequency. Several cities have reported sharp increases in the number of ghost guns recovered over time – and while they make up a relatively small percentage of the total number of guns recovered by law enforcement, that share is growing. Police in San Francisco seized 1,089 guns in 2021, about 20% of which were ghost guns. Just five years prior in 2016, ghost guns made up less than 1% of total gun seizures. Similar steep increases are apparent in other cities. Baltimore reported 352 ghost guns seized last year, with Washington, DC reporting more than 400 in 2021, up from 25 in 2018.

Raj Vaswani, acting deputy chief of investigations for the San Francisco police, said the ghost guns officers have encountered are often more dangerous than typical firearms recovered by the department. The SFPD also reported that nearly half of the firearms recovered in homicide cases in 2020 were ghost guns.

“The ghost guns that we do see are generally really high capacity,” he told CNN. “I’m talking about 100-round drums, really large capacity magazines.”

The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) currently cannot trace most ghost guns because certain frames and receivers — two key components that make the firearm work — purchased online are not classified as firearms by the bureau.

Following a 2021 directive from the Biden administration, however, the bureau proposed a rule in May that would allow the ATF to classify the building blocks that often make up ghost guns as firearms. This would require many dealers selling component parts to mark them with serial numbers, and the dealers would need to be federally licensed. When buying from these sellers, purchasers would need to pass a background check before buying a ghost gun.

It’s the first significant step federal lawmakers have put forth to combat the increase in ghost gun production – but the rule has yet to take effect. John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety, called the rule “muscular” in its scope but stressed the need for speedy implementation.

“Every day that goes by that it’s not [implemented], more people are killed. It’s a pretty simple equation. Delay equals death,” he said. Everytown for Gun Safety is a nonprofit that advocates for gun control.

High demand for firearms

It’s impossible to get the full picture of how many guns have been purchased legally – let alone illegally – because of decades of successful lobbying for the privacy of gun owners. The FBI tracks pre-sale background checks, but there is no federal database of gun sales or ownership. Under the 2003 Tiahrt Amendment, the agency is required by law to destroy approved gun purchaser records within 24 hours after approval.

While background checks do not directly translate to gun sales, the data can serve as a window into the country’s interest in gun purchases. The number of background checks jumped during the first few months of the pandemic and has been high ever since.

But it’s harder to draw a clear line between increased legal gun sales and guns recovered from crime scenes, said Adam Winkler, a professor at UCLA School of Law who specializes in constitutional law and gun policy.

“We shouldn’t necessarily expect a tight connection between the number of background checks and the number of guns that are found at crime scenes,” Winkler told CNN. “Many criminals do not buy their guns at gun stores.”

Gun advocacy groups and criminology experts have pointed to the uncertainty of the pandemic as a key driver for firearm sales. The National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade group, estimated that 40% of gun buyers in 2020 were first-time buyers.

“It does seem like the pandemic has led to increasing desire for people to have firearms,” Winkler said. “The pandemic caused a major disruption in people’s lives. And when people’s lives are disrupted, they look for those things that can provide them security.”

Thomas Chittum, acting deputy director of the ATF, said the “vast majority” of legally purchased guns will never be used to commit a crime. But more guns in stores and in the home brings its own set of inherent risks.

Chittum says that part of the agency’s job includes outreach to gun stores to emphasize the importance of proper gun safety and storage in a climate of increased demand, especially among first-time buyers.

“The more guns that are there and not really stored properly, the more that might be stolen. And we know that stolen firearms are a source of crime guns – a significant source,” he said.

Winkler also cautioned against correlating firearms in the home with increased safety.

“The gun lobby has for years been trying to persuade you that an important part of your security is having a firearm in your home, but the data doesn’t really support that idea,” he said. “The data shows that having a gun in your home actually makes you more at risk of being a victim of gun violence than it protects you.”

Accelerating ‘time to crime’

The most comprehensive source that tracks crime guns is the ATF’s yearly Trace Data, which attempts to trace a gun to its original retail sale point. Because of restrictions in the Tiahrt Amendment, the ATF cannot publish detailed tracing data, and many gun purchase records are kept in paper format.

The aggregated data the ATF publishes, however, still provides insight into crime guns in the United States. One of the metrics it tracks is the “time to crime” – the time between when a gun is legally purchased to when it’s used to commit a crime. Its 2020 firearms trace report, published this January, found that the average time to crime dropped from eight years in 2019 to seven in 2020.

Alarmingly, the percent of traces where the time to crime was under one year increased sharply over the past few years, from 16% in 2015 to 29% in 2020.

The ATF said in a statement to CNN that “firearms with a short Time-to-Crime have the most immediate investigative potential for law enforcement officials because they are likely to have changed hands less frequently from the time of the original purchase until recovery by law enforcement.”

The states with the highest time to crime on average were those with stricter gun laws, like California, Hawaii and New Jersey.

“The most noteworthy thing is a lot more guns were recovered generally – and a lot more guns recovered that were recently sold,” said Daniel Webster, director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Prevention and Policy. The number of guns the ATF traced rose from about 217,000 in 2015 to just over 393,000 in 2020.

“To me, I think it sort of reflects a very basic thing, which is more guns, more gun crime,” he said.

Lack of data

The data comes with large caveats. The ATF calculates time to crime based on the gun’s original point of purchase, which means transactions can be missed. For example: If someone sells a gun they legally purchased 10 years ago to a pawn shop, the pawn shop could resell the gun to someone who then uses it to commit a crime six months later. That gun’s time to crime would be recorded as 10 years rather than six months, as the pawn store would not be required to report the sale to the ATF.

The ATF noted to CNN that the time to crime metric has declined steadily over the past several years, and that while there was “no single factor” they could point to for the decrease, they mentioned the “the continual expansion” of their tracing system, as well as improved data collection to close gaps in missed transactions, as potential factors.

Law enforcement agencies in many states are not required to submit recovered firearms to the ATF for tracing, though Chittum says the agency has “put a lot of effort into educating state and local agencies about the value of comprehensive tracing.”

Even if recovered firearms are reported, not every gun can be traced. A report from the New York Attorney General’s office, which analyzed traced guns in the state from 2010 to 2015, described the process as “time consuming and prone to failure.” Of the 52,915 records the report analyzed, the ATF was “unable to obtain any state of origin for 12% of traces and a date of retail purchase for approximately 42% of traces.”

Data about gun trafficking – the term for when a gun is moved from a legal to illegal commerce stream – is also severely limited. The four most common forms of trafficking are gun thefts, straw sales, purchases on the unregulated secondary market and ghost guns.

The US government has not conducted a comprehensive study on sources of gun trafficking since 2000. Last April, the Biden administration directed the Justice Department to publish a new report that would be updated annually, but it has not yet been released.

Rising gun violence highlights need for action

As law enforcement officials grapple with a lack of comprehensive data and an increase in hard to trace firearms, gun homicides and assaults have risen steadily since 2020.

In its latest UCR report, the FBI stated that the number of homicides in 2020 increased almost 30% from 2019, the largest single-year increase the agency recorded since it began tracking these crimes in the 1960s. About 77% of reported murders in 2020 were committed with a gun, up from 74% in 2019.

Amid escalating gun violence, a Supreme Court decision this term could significantly upend decades of gun restrictions in major cities. In November, the court appeared ready to expand Second Amendment rights as justices expressed skepticism over an existing New York law that prohibits people from carrying concealed handguns in public. If the law is overturned in New York, gun advocacy groups and researchers argue that the ruling could have a ripple effect across the US.

According to a recent study by Everytown for Gun Safety, one of those effects could be more firearm deaths. The study found a strong correlation between states that have looser gun laws and higher rates of gun deaths.

Without robust data collection on traced crime guns or gun ownership, and any lack of enacted rules about ghost guns, Everytown’s Feinblatt said law enforcement officers are limited in what they can do to effectively reduce gun violence.

“When you can’t publish data about who are the bad apple sellers? That’s fighting with one hand behind your back. When you can’t publicize trace data and when the government isn’t finalizing the rule on ghost guns? That’s fighting with one hand behind your back,” he told CNN.

Vaswani with the San Francisco police stressed the impact that rising gun violence has on the families and communities, pointing to the shooting deaths of a toddler in Oakland last year and a 6-year-old in San Francisco in 2020, both killed by stray gunfire.

“The byproduct of this is our neighborhoods, our kids, innocent people that get caught in gun violence that have nothing to do with it,” he said. “They’re just at the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Uvalde: How lessons from Columbine went unheeded in Texas ...

CNN —

After the 1999 mass shooting at Columbine High School, a state commission investigating the attack in Colorado offered a recommendation that would go on to be widely adopted by police agencies across the United States:

“Law enforcement policy and training should emphasize that the highest priority of law enforcement officers, after arriving at the scene of a crisis, is to stop any ongoing assault.”

Twenty-three years and hundreds of active shooter incidents later, society and policing leaders have set expectations that police end shooting attacks quickly and decisively – by killing or arresting the gunman – and prioritize the lives of victims over those of responding officers.

That did not happen three months ago when a gunman in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 fourth-graders and two teachers and left 17 other people injured. After law enforcement approached the classrooms where the shooter had holed up with wounded students, the gunman fired at police, who retreated, then waited more than 70 minutes to confront and kill him.

The attack on Robb Elementary, the tactical failures of the police response, the inaccurate framing later by police of their own efforts as heroic and the subsequent refusal over months by government officials to answer key questions that could clarify the public’s understanding of that day, together, will have ramifications for years to come, even if only as a reminder of how not to respond to an active shooter and how not to communicate with the public afterward.

Beyond the immediate and deep devastation of dead students and educators, the deficiencies already have begun to undermine the credibility of law enforcement in Texas, testing residents’ faith in their own police and raising questions about the officers’ ability to confront future crimes. The mistrust has rippled, too: A sheriff in Illinois soon after the attack declared publicly that his deputies never would respond to a similar assault as police did in Uvalde, and school officials in Atlanta just this week briefed parents also concerned over the Uvalde police response about their own safety plans.

AP/Getty Images

“This is very, very early in a long-, long-term affair,” said Thor Eells, executive director of the National Tactical Officers Association. “We’re in the first minute of an overtime game. There will be a lot of unintended, unforeseen, unanticipated consequences. That’s a shame.”

During the police response to the Columbine attack – a shocking siege that felt like a first-of-its kind event and marked a seminal moment in American policing – officers surrounded the school, trained to expect a SWAT team with specialized weapons and tactics to enter and resolve the situation. Professional practice in law enforcement back then also held that time itself benefited police responders.

But Columbine upended that widely held belief, with the state commission finding the trained response was “demonstrably inadequate for incidents like that at Columbine High School.” “Time is not on the side of police if one or more active perpetrators are in control of a large public building where there are many potential victims,” its report reads.

Twelve students and one teacher died at Columbine at the hands of two students who killed themselves at the school before officers found them. The police response was hampered not just by the ill-suited tactics but also by problems with communication among responding police agencies. Though an officer traded gunfire with one of the shooters a few minutes into the attack outside the school, the first law enforcement entry into the school came about 50 minutes after the shooting began, the report states.

Columbine High School students run from the campus under police cover on April 20, 1999. Mark Leffingwell/AFP/Getty Images

Amid debate after Columbine over whether police waiting for backup was the right approach, there was broad agreement the surround-and-negotiate approach taken during that massacre wasn’t appropriate to the type of violent school attack that’s only become more common over the past two decades, recalled Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, which aims to improve professionalism in policing.

“Back then, there was still some (debate as to) whether a single officer should go in or wait for additional officers. There was variation in policies … I think that’s the case even at Parkland,” he said, referring to the 2018 school shooting in Florida. “But Uvalde was a line in the sand in the sense that … lessons will be felt for decades to come. It’s not a debate anymore.”

The Columbine commission’s recommendation to prioritize a speedy confrontation was just that – a recommendation. Not even every police agency involved in the Columbine response cooperated with the commission’s work, and the wide adoption of its approach to active shooting events as a professional policing standard didn’t happen immediately.

Still, the expectation of a fast and aggressive police response has only sharpened over the years, as groups like the National Tactical Officers Association in Colorado and the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training center in Texas have developed training programs that prioritize the rapid and violent, if necessary, confrontation of spree shooters.

Indeed, few things in law enforcement can now be so simply explained as the officer’s obligation during an attack, especially at a school:

Move toward gunfire.

End the threat.

“In Uvalde, we’re 20 years past Columbine and (four) years past Parkland … but that’s the challenge of American policing: the expectation that everybody is going to perform and knows best practices. But what happens when that message doesn’t get through and you have the response like you have in Uvalde? A question of who’s in charge, question of command, question of equipment, question of willingness to put yourself, your life on the line to protect someone else,” Wexler said. “All those came about.”

Tyler Vielie walks on April 20, 2021, past crosses with the names of the victims of the Columbine High School shooting in Littleton, Colorado. Michael Ciaglo/Getty Images

‘A massive failure of leadership on every level’

A complete accounting of the police response to Uvalde has not yet been made public by officials, who’ve largely avoided answering questions about internal reviews complicated by the overlapping response by 23 agencies and the fact that key agencies are investigating themselves.

Still, police experts, public officials, grieving parents and others all have said the choice by Uvalde responders to wait so long to confront the shooter was wrong.

What’s known of the Uvalde response so far largely comes from video from inside school hallways, a report released by a Texas legislative committee investigating the shooting, police body-worn camera videos from the city of Uvalde and a report from the ALERRT training center at Texas State University. Together, the materials show a failure of command early in the response that experts have said compounded failures further on in the incident and in the days that followed, as police gave the public wrong information about what happened.

For instance, a CNN review of body-worn camera footage revealed officers with the state agency investigating the shooting – the Texas Department of Public Safety – were at Robb Elementary earlier than publicly acknowledged by its leaders, who instead have focused on its members’ actions later in the attack. Meantime, the city of Uvalde waited nearly two months – until after the release of the legislative report – to release the bodycam videos and has shared little about a third-party probe of its police force. And while the school board fired its police chief – a move his lawyer called “an illegal and unconstitutional public lynching” – school officials haven’t commented on the status of any other officers there that day.

Officers stage May 24 in a hallway at Robb Elementary. Texas House Investigative Committee/Reuters

All the while, parents of slain children and their neighbors have been showing up to city and school government meetings, demanding far more answers and accountability from public officials, who’ve shown little interest in the three months since the carnage in releasing more information.

“It’s a massive failure of leadership on every level,” said Peter Moskos, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and former Baltimore city police officer. “No one there has said they f**ked up. There’s still a need for police, there’s just no accountability. Someone needs to resign and say, ‘We messed up.’ It would give some accountability to it. This idea you make a big mistake, kids die, then you just go on … that’s what’s happening. If it happened again, there’s no reason to think they’d do it any differently.”

Among the unanswered questions about Uvalde are how officials are reviewing the actions of lower-ranking officers and whether they’re considering how officers can go back into the small community and expect respect and compliance from residents who know they waited outside a classroom while kids bled from gunshot wounds.

“We are still being placated with tidbits or being outright stonewalled or being given excuses” about the city police department’s response, said resident Michele Prouty, who passed out complaint forms against Uvalde police at an August 9 Uvalde City Council meeting. “What we have instead – what we are traumatized again and again by – is an inept, unstructured national embarrassment of a circus tent full of smug clowns. These clowns continue to cruise our streets sporting their tarnished badges.”

“I cannot, for the life of me, imagine how you’d continue a career knowing you left children in there,” said Eells, of the National Tactical Officers Association. “Cannot imagine it.”

Texas’ DPS Director Steven McCraw has called the law enforcement response “an abject failure” and said each of his officers will be scrutinized internally and by the county district attorney spearheading a criminal investigation in the case. McCraw will not publicly release any information, per a district attorney’s request, he said, acknowledging the case could take years.

“It is important to do a thorough investigation, especially when law enforcement officers are involved,” McCraw said earlier this month. His agency would not comment for this story.

The head of the union that represents law enforcement officers across the state, including some in Uvalde, has called for an independent probe of Texas DPS. “I don’t know that we can trust them to do an internal investigation,” said Charley Wilkison, executive director of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas.

Texas DPS “was fast to wash its hands, to point fingers and to make sure that the general public, particularly the elected officials, knew that they were spotless, blameless and that this was a local problem. … No one created this environment, (in) which everyone’s to blame except DPS. No one did that except them,” he said.

“If we’re to never, ever let this happen in Texas, we have to know what happened, exactly what happened.”

People cry May 24 outside a civic center where students were taken from Robb Elementary. Marco Bello/Reuters

Candid Illinois sheriff soon faces a spree shooting

It’s common for police, formally and informally, to look at how another agency handled a case that garnered significant news attention. Cases less consequential than Uvalde can result in a reminder from a supervisor during roll call of officers’ responsibilities during an active shooting event, or something more formal, like an agency prioritizing refresher training.

Nationally, there was concern within law enforcement within a few days of the Robb Elementary attack over the quality of the police response and how it was being communicated, based on the shifting narrative from law enforcement officials in Texas. The public shared those same concerns as they saw the police yarn unravel through news reports and official reviews.

In Lake County, Illinois, the sheriff released a statement three days after the Uvalde shooting vowing his force would do all the things law enforcement in the Texas city did not: “immediately respond” and “move immediately into the scene and utilize their training to do what is necessary” and “take whatever actions are necessary to protect life.”

The agency thought it important to reassure county residents that deputies knew their responsibilities in an active shooter situation, said Chris Covelli, a deputy chief and the sheriff’s office public information officer. People in Lake County – where a mass shooting would unfold only weeks later at a July 4 parade, killing seven and injuring dozens more in Highland Park – were looking at what was happening in Uvalde and wondering, Covelli said.

“Had the community not been concerned, it wouldn’t have needed to be addressed. But they were, and the onus is on us to know where we stand and what we’re prepared to do,” he said. “Our sheriff reassured the community that in an active shooter situation, we are going to respond to move and stop that threat – not going to wait, not going to wait to get orders through the grapevine how to proceed.

“Our deputies are trained to make immediate decisions. Whether it’s an active shooter at a school bus, church, whatever the case is, (they’re) trained to enter and stop the threat immediately, don’t need to wait for approval to do that,” he said.

Mourners visit a memorial days after a mass shooting at a Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois. Jim Vondruska/Getty Images

In Atlanta in late August, school and police officials addressed parents who’d raised concerns related to the Uvalde attack by detailing their own plans to respond to active shooters, CNN affiliate WGCL reported. The very next day, the high school was the subject of a threat quickly investigated by city police and the FBI, according to a principal’s statement.

Fear of a cover-up in the Uvalde police responses is real. The city’s mayor has openly wondered about it, and the legislative committee investigating the shooting noted in the report it issued July 17, “The fear of a coverup is palpable here … Most fundamentally, there has been a loss of trust in government.”

“Problems with the flow of information have plagued government, media, and public discussion about what happened at Robb Elementary from the outset – damaging public trust, inflicting a very real toll on the people of Uvalde, and creating an imperative to provide a reliable set of facts,” the report stated.

After the 2014 deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner at the hands of police, then-President Barack Obama formed a task force that issued a report declaring “legitimacy” as essential to any police agency’s ability to do its job. “Building Trust & Legitimacy” ended up as the first pillar of the panel’s report – “really the fundamental, underlying all the pillars,” said Laurie Robinson, one of the report’s authors.

While the circumstances of Brown’s killing – which like Garner’s prompted widespread protests and calls for reform in how officers use legal force against suspects – differ markedly from what happened in Uvalde, the hesitance of officials in that Ferguson, Missouri, case to release key details of what happened mirrors the pattern that has emerged after the Robb Elementary massacre, said Wexler, of the Police Executive Research Forum.

And as the Obama task force concluded, “transparency and accountability” cut directly to the ability of police agencies to retain the public’s trust. Its report suggested police communicate “swiftly, openly, and neutrally,” especially when there are allegations of police misconduct.

It’s counsel officials so many years later in Uvalde did not appear to heed.

“That really compounded things in Uvalde, the fact you couldn’t get answers to basic questions. Whenever (a) department decides (it was) not going to communicate basic information, they undercut their legitimacy immediately,” Wexler said. “And that’s one of (the) lessons police chiefs know: that the days of saying ‘no comment’ ended decades ago.”

Opinion: Buffalo is part of an unfolding American tragedy | CNN

Editor’s Note: Peniel E. Joseph is the Barbara Jordan Chair in ethics and political values and the founding director of the Center for the Study of Race and Democracy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is also a professor of history. He is the author of the forthcoming book “The Third Reconstruction: America’s Struggle for Racial Justice in the Twenty-First Century,” in addition to “Stokely: A Life” and “The Sword and the Shield: The Revolutionary Lives of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr.” The views expressed here are his own. View more opinion articles on CNN.

CNN —

The racist mass shooting at the Tops grocery store in Buffalo, New York, that left 10 Black people dead and three others injured at the hands of a teenager who labeled himself a White supremacist reflects the latest chapter of a deepening moral and political crisis within the United States.

Peniel Joseph Kelvin Ma/Tufts University/Kelvin Ma/Tufts University

Racist ideas that seemed to be relegated to history’s dustbin after watershed civil rights, legal and legislative victories have returned with a vengeance. Headlines characterizing the Buffalo massacre as “racially motivated” do the entire nation a disservice. The benign description does not begin to cover the depth and breadth of the crisis we are facing. White supremacy almost destroyed the nation during antebellum slavery, triggered secession, treason and a catastrophic Civil War where over 600,000 Americans perished.

The alleged Buffalo shooter, 18-year-old Payton S. Gendron, has been charged with first degree murder and pleaded not guilty. He livestreamed his attack on Twitch and posted a document, since removed, expressing his belief in “replacement theory,” a racist belief that Jews, Blacks, immigrants and persons of color are plotting to eliminate native born Whites from the US. It’s a set of ideas and a worldview that has, in the past, and still does, fuel White supremacy.

Authorities have said Gendron’s motivation was hate; Erie County Sheriff John C. Garcia described the attack “a straight up racially motivated hate crime” and the Justice Department is investigating it as such.

Buffalo is heartbreaking precisely because this did not have to happen. An America true to its ideals would not be engaged in a Cold Civil War marked by a Supreme Court hostile to the rights of women and an influential right-wing hostile to people of color and underdogs of all stripes. Voter suppression would be impossible if we cared as much about the rights of citizenship as we did guns. Gun control, in a healthy democracy, should be a bipartisan issue, not one used to partisan political advantage. Right-wing extremism in our politics, media, and religious and democratic institutions provides oxygen for online hate communities that have now turned one time rhetorical fantasies into blood-soaked nightmares that harm us all.

Black people, according to the FBI’s data, are the most likely targets of racist hate crimes in America. 2020, the year of the largest social justice movements in American history, saw the largest increase in hate crimes since 2008, with over 15,000 reported incidents.

While Black people are the most likely targets of such violence, assaults on Jewish, LGBTQ, Latinx, and Asian American and Pacific Islander communities have proliferated over the past several years. The attack in Buffalo serves as a gruesome bookend to an unfortunate seven-year period, beginning with the shooting at Emanuel AME church that left nine Black parishioners dead in Charleston, South Carolina, on June 17, 2015. In between we have witnessed scores of hate crimes against other groups including the June 12, 2016, anti-LGBTQ massacre in Orlando, Florida that left 49 dead and 53 injured; the October 27, 2018, anti-Semitic massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania that left 11 dead and six injured; the August 3, 2019, mass shooting in El Paso, Texas, that killed 23 and expressly targeted the city’s Latinx community; the March 16, 2021, spa shootings in Atlanta that killed eight, including six people of Asian descent.

Buffalo marks the continuation of an unfolding American tragedy. Anti-Black racism, gun violence, hate groups amplified by social media and domestic White terrorism have all combined to produce waves of violence, death, and suffering. The political flames of White nationalism, fanned by former President Donald Trump and his Make America Great Again adherents and cable TV personalities at Fox News such as Tucker Carlson threaten our very democracy.

The New York Times’ recent investigative report on Carlson and Fox News revealed, in over 15,000 words and after watching more than one thousand hours of his program, how Tucker Carlson’s support for “replacement theory” and other White supremacist fantasies raised his popularity, helped spread misinformation, and made him the king of cable news and Donald Trump’s cultural heir.

Donald Trump’s assertion that Barack Obama was not born in America and was thus an illegitimate President offered a proof of concept that helped galvanize the most extremist parts of the Republican Party and its base. The “Birther Movement” lie gained enough traction to allow Trump to successfully win the Republican nomination and the presidency. In Trump White nationalists and White supremacists found a politician they considered an ally in their quest to restore America back to its pre-1965 immigration reform ethnic and racial makeup.

The misinformation, lies and racism being spread across a right-wing media echo chamber is working. One in three Americans believe in the “Great Replacement” – the fear-driven and utterly false theory that Black Lives Matter activists, queer folk, immigrants, Muslims and supposedly racially suspect others are conspiring to displace hardworking (read: White) Americans with an undeserving group of interlopers. Part of this theory dovetails into partisan politics, through persistent, yet unfounded, rumors that Democrats are plotting to steal future elections with ineligible voters.

Appeals to racism, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and queer phobia have reached new partisan heights in our current age of White nationalism. Legislation banning the teaching of Black history, which has passed in multiple states, is designed to perpetuate racist myths about America that threaten to unravel our almost 250-year-old experiment in democracy. So too voter suppression efforts masked as election security to protect the nation from almost non-existent voter fraud.

Florida, as one example, is a state that makes it difficult for Black people to vote or receive fair treatment in the criminal justice system – and punishes those who teach parts of America’s racial history that could make any White person uncomfortable. The state has broken new ground in ratcheting up partisan divides and weaponizing against difference and has gone so far as to try and pass legislation against the Disney Corporation for daring to speak out against the state’s “don’t say gay” law.

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The agonizing scenes of suffering emanating from Buffalo, where bewildered residents wondered what could inspire a teenager to travel three hours to methodically kill Black people based on racial hatred are not isolated from the rest of America. ,For Black Americans, this is the latest chapter in a long history that has forced too many families into mourning for dead loved ones, friends and neighbors.

Events in Buffalo require a response that goes far beyond allyship, the term that became popular in the wake of George Floyd’s murder and the demonstrations and soul-searching that followed. All people of goodwill, whatever their political and religious affiliation, or circumstances, must stand in solidarity with Buffalo’s African American community. Almost two years after George Floyd’s death seemed to signal that the nation would turn a corner on racial divisions, the politics of White backlash, violence and terror have, as witnessed in Buffalo and elsewhere, seemed to have upended these hopes.

And yet, belief in a future where all things are possible is the bedrock of humanity’s faith in itself and in a higher power. The discipline that animates such faith, both religious and secular, is a core feature of the Black freedom struggle. The hopes that remain in the wake of death. The faith that endures after tragedy. The belief that, despite this mean season of suffering, brighter days lie ahead.

California is about to experience a political earthquake. Here's why ...

CNN —

An earthquake is building in Tuesday’s California elections that could rattle the political landscape from coast to coast.

In Los Angeles and San Francisco, two of the nation’s most liberal large cities, voters are poised to send stinging messages of discontent over mounting public disorder, as measured in both upticks in certain kinds of crime and pervasive homelessness.

That dissatisfaction could translate into the recall of San Francisco’s left-leaning district attorney, Chesa Boudin, likely by a resounding margin, and a strong showing in the Los Angeles mayoral primary by Rick Caruso, a billionaire real estate developer and former Republican who has emerged as the leading alternative in the race to Democratic US Rep. Karen Bass, once considered the front-runner.

Linking both these contests – as well as several Los Angeles City Council races and an ongoing effort to recall George Gascon, Los Angeles County’s left-leaning district attorney – is a widespread sense among voters in both cities that local government is failing at its most basic responsibility: to ensure public safety and order. It’s a sentiment similar to the anxiety over urban disarray that inspired the “broken windows” policing theory during the 1980s, and contributed to the election of Republican Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Richard Riordan in New York and Los Angeles, respectively, amid the cascading violence of the crack epidemic in the early 1990s.

Tuesday’s California results will likely send a stark message to the Democrats controlling Congress and the White House. The outcome will again underscore how much danger a party in power can face when voters feel that certainty has been stripped from their lives – a dynamic that extends beyond crime and homelessness to inflation, soaring gasoline prices and continued disruption from the unending Covid pandemic.

“In the broadest perspective, the voters and residents are feeling that the governing regime, the liberal Democratic regime that has dominated LA for the last 30 years, and California and San Francisco, is not meeting the moment,” says Fernando Guerra, a political scientist who directs the Center for the Study of Los Angeles at Loyola Marymount University.

Zev Yaroslavsky, who served on the LA City Council and then the LA County Board of Supervisors for almost 40 years starting in 1975, says the only time he can remember Los Angeles voters as discontented as they are today was in the late 1970s, an era of high inflation and soaring property tax bills that produced California’s Proposition 13 and the tax revolt that helped elect Ronald Reagan president in 1980.

“What people used to take for granted they can no longer take for granted – on your ability to pay your rent, your ability to walk the streets safely, on your ability not to be accosted by a homeless person,” says Yaroslavsky, now director of the Los Angeles Initiative at the Luskin School of Public Affairs at the University of California Los Angeles. “It’s a lack of confidence in government’s ability to respond.”

Los Angeles City Council President Nury Martinez, who took office in 2013, feels those gusts too. “I’ve never seen a more angrier electorate than this particular election,” she told me. “I think all of this is just at a boiling point.”

A flipped agenda

The dominant role of crime and homelessness in the Los Angeles and San Francisco elections represents an inversion of the political agenda since the summer of 2020. Like dozens of other cities, both places saw protesters for police reform fill the streets following George Floyd’s murder. In Los Angeles, that energy helped propel Gascon to a narrow victory over the law enforcement-backed District Attorney Jackie Lacey in November 2020 and also powered voter approval of a ballot initiative to combat racial inequities by shifting county funds toward social services and alternatives to incarceration.

Boudin, the San Francisco district attorney, who was narrowly elected in 2019, and Gascon have pursued largely parallel agendas centered on reducing incarceration through measures such as a virtual prohibition on trying juveniles as adults, the rejection of “enhancements” (for such factors as gang involvement or use of a gun) that extend sentence lengths and a policy of not prosecuting “quality of life” misdemeanors associated with homelessness, such as trespassing and public urination.

That agenda quickly faced fierce resistance from other elements in the criminal justice system committed to traditional approaches, including the unions representing police in both cities. Law enforcement interests are backing the recalls against Gascon and Boudin, and in LA the police union is spending heavily against Bass, a leader in the House of Representatives’ passage last year of sweeping federal police reform legislation. The recall efforts against Boudin and Gascon, as well as Caruso’s mayoral bid in Los Angeles, have also drawn support from big Republican donors, who constitute a distinct minority in both cities.

The role of both law enforcement insiders and conservative donors and activists has frustrated advocates for police reform, who see the backlash across these many fronts as an attempt to restore hardline approaches before new alternatives are given a chance to demonstrate whether they can succeed.

Take a look at our streets: No matter where you live now, you can walk down the street, you can look out your front window, and you will see … that what the city and the county have been doing simply is not working. Nury Martinez, Los Angeles City Council president

“I think to a very large degree that more conservative forces have been very, very adept at framing the issues of homelessness and of crime so that the discussion about … how to respond to those two issues is very, very narrow,” says Los Angeles City Council Member Mike Bonin, an outspoken liberal who is not seeking reelection this year after narrowly avoiding a recall drive centered on his resistance to tougher measures against the endemic homelessness across his Westside district.

Video Ad Feedback Rep. Bass: 'We really have a humanitarian crisis in Los Angeles' 17:04 - Source: CNN

Yet the evidence is overwhelming that the unease dominating Tuesday’s elections extends far beyond conservative circles. Yaroslavsky points out that in the UCLA Luskin School’s annual polling across Los Angeles County, concern about crime has increased substantially not only among Whites, but among Hispanics, Blacks and Asian Americans as well.

Ben LaBolt, a San Francisco-based Democratic strategist and former campaign spokesperson for Barack Obama, likewise notes that prominent local Democrats have played leading roles in the effort to recall Boudin. “The notion that this [recall] is some right-wing misinformation campaign is dangerous for Democrats to say or think, because it’s definitely not,” he says.

In both cities, anxiety about public safety is rising faster than the actual trends in reported crime. The online dashboard maintained by the San Francisco Police Department shows that through May 29 (the latest week for which figures are available) burglaries and break-ins or thefts of motor vehicles are clearly up from the comparable period in 2019, before Boudin took office. But assaults and homicides are virtually unchanged over that period, and robberies are down, as are the total number of serious offenses.

In Los Angeles the trends are more consistently troublesome: The Los Angeles Police Department’s tracking system shows that through late May both property crimes and violent crimes had increased substantially over the comparable period in 2020 (before Gascon’s election). But even in LA, both violent and property crimes remain a small fraction of their elevated levels in the 1990s and well below their rates for most of this century’s first decade.

“We are not seeing numbers that look anything like some of the worst eras that people have been through,” says Michelle Parris, California program director at the Vera Institute of Justice, speaking on behalf of Vera Action, a criminal justice advocacy group. Moreover, she points out, California communities with tough-on-crime policies like Sacramento and rural Kern County are experiencing crime upticks that in some cases exceed the increases in Los Angeles and San Francisco. “We’ve seen that even tough-on-crime prosecutors in California have not delivered safety,” she says. “They are subject to the same exact trends we are seeing around the country.”

A problem with high visibility

Like many other observers in both cities, Parris points to a different cause than crime per se as the primary driver of rising anxiety over public safety. “Homelessness and untreated mental illness … impacts people’s perception of safety,” she says. “And so I think that’s part of why in places like Los Angeles or San Francisco in particular, where [that] is quite visible, that has a great impact of what people are talking about.”

In both cities, pervasive homelessness has rekindled the concern about losing control of city streets that inspired advocates of the “broken windows” theory to argue 40 years ago for greater enforcement against crimes of “disorder” like loitering, panhandling and public intoxication. In San Francisco, concern has centered on the Tenderloin neighborhood, which has been overwhelmed with open drug use among the homeless. In Los Angeles, the mayoral and City Council races have been dominated by concerns about the spread of large homeless encampments across the city. These encampments have proliferated despite the approval of two ballot initiatives in Los Angeles in 2016 authorizing substantial expenditures to build housing and provide services for the homeless – and the City Council’s passage of an ordinance last fall authorizing the removal of encampments around sensitive areas such as schools, libraries and day care centers.

“Take a look at our streets: No matter where you live now, you can walk down the street, you can look out your front window, and you will see … that what the city and the county have been doing simply is not working,” says Martinez, the LA City Council president.

Yaroslavsky, the former city and county official, says the persistence of the homeless encampments has become a viscerally visible symbol of fundamental governmental failure. “I think homelessness is both a real issue but it’s also a metaphor for everything else that’s gone wrong in society and government’s ability to address something that is so visible and so ubiquitous in the county,” he says. “So it’s like a billboard that says failure.”

My last email to the mayor’s office was that, amongst other things, we just had a massacre in Texas, an unstable man who was ignored, but it’s not like people didn’t know he was unstable. We have a park of mentally unstable people currently slashing and shooting each other. What would make us think this wouldn’t turn into something much more tragic? Elizabeth Clay, activist and land use planner

The neighborhood uproar over a large encampment around the public library in the traditionally liberal oceanfront LA community of Venice encapsulates the discontent that has upended politics in both cities. After the city of Los Angeles finally cleared out a massive homeless encampment along the Venice boardwalk that attracted national attention, a new one developed last fall around the community’s public library. It has now engulfed the library on all sides, angering and frightening nearby residents, who have posted viral videos of rampant drug use and violence in the area. Longtime library patrons have publicly lamented that they no longer feel safe using the facility, which was also threatened by a recent fire that started in the camp.

“There’s slashings. There’s shootings,” says Elizabeth Clay, a local activist and land use planner who has been involved in community protests against the encampment. “My last email to the mayor’s office was that, amongst other things, we just had a massacre in Texas, an unstable man who was ignored, but it’s not like people didn’t know he was unstable. We have a park of mentally unstable people currently slashing and shooting each other. What would make us think this wouldn’t turn into something much more tragic?”

To frustrated residents, the effective surrender of the library – the quintessential public service – to a homeless encampment amounts to a perverse elevation of the interests of those who don’t pay taxes over those residents who do. Many, like Clay, express deep disappointment with outgoing Mayor Eric Garcetti, who they view as disengaged from his job and the mounting crisis on the streets as he tries to win approval for his nomination as ambassador to India.

But the principal focus of residents’ ire is Bonin, the liberal council member who was one of two to oppose the ordinance barring camping around sensitive facilities. The city’s anti-camping ordinance requires that the council vote to approve each individual enforcement action, and Clay and others say that Bonin has repeatedly blocked plans for such efforts around the library.

In the interview, Bonin denied blocking cleanup plans (except for once, he said, when he asked the city to hold off while he tried to assemble a broader interagency response that never materialized). But he was adamant in insisting that simply dismantling the tent city in the park would only compound the problem unless it was accompanied by permanent housing and services for the homeless now living there. “If there is a massive enforcement without offering services … what that’s going to do is just move people across the street in front of people’s homes and deeper into residential neighborhoods,” he argues.

Voters feel conflicted

There is still substantial support in Los Angeles for providing services to homeless people. Even Caruso, who has promised to build much more housing and provide more services to the homeless, sounds very different from Giuliani and other early hardline advocates of the broken windows theory, whose policies were often derided as unfairly increasing police enforcement against young minority men. No mainstream voice in either city is suggesting that policymakers can simply arrest their way out of the homeless crisis or even the uptick in crime.

But all sides in the debate agree the public appears out of patience, both in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with a set of policies that has surrendered control of public spaces and made it difficult for residents to get through the day without encountering people who appear to be a danger to themselves or others. The same ebbing of patience is visible in the often-expressed belief that Boudin and Gascon, by placing so much priority on reducing incarceration, have encouraged a sense of invulnerability among repeat criminal offenders. “The voters are conflicted: Karen Bass, Mike Bonin, all these guys, they reflect our values,” says Guerra, the political scientist. “But that’s not where we are right now. The moment is about homelessness, public safety, and they are not even speaking to that.”

Rick Caruso shakes hands with workers during a tour of Industrial Metal Supply in Sun Valley, California, Monday, June 6, 2022. Hans Gutknecht, Los Angeles Daily News/SCNG/Getty Images

Caruso has declared that if elected he will declare emergency powers as mayor that authorize him to clear homeless encampments without approval from the City Council. Bass hasn’t gone that far, but she’s also pledged to end encampments. “There are some things you just don’t do outside, and sleeping is one of them,” Bass has repeatedly said.

Whoever wins the LA mayoral race, “the tide is turning, and now I feel that in each district you have an avalanche of people who are just outright pissed off at the state of affairs in our city,” says Martinez, the City Council president. “I believe that is what is moving the council to take a harder stance on allowing encampments to remain.”

The same trajectory is evident on policing. While activists had hoped to significantly redirect funding away from the LAPD – an institution with a long history of racial bias – in the aftermath of the Floyd murder, Caruso is now promising to add 1,500 officers. Even Bass, while not abandoning her calls for reform and accountability, wants to maintain the department’s current staffing level and move more officers out from desk jobs to augment its presence on the streets.

It’s still an open question how far this public demand for order will extend. Boudin’s recall seems almost inevitable, and it will likely reinforce the message of the recent recalls of three very liberal members of the city’s Board of Education: that local residents want their government to focus less on absolutist ideological statements than on delivering basic services. LaBolt predicts that after Boudin, San Francisco won’t see a lurch to the right on law enforcement but rather a recalibration toward the center: “I think what we’ll see is a return to the assertion that you don’t have to choose between public safety and criminal justice reform.”

Video Ad Feedback Smerconish: A political earthquake in San Francisco 03:37 - Source: CNN

The landscape in LA is complex too. Polls show widespread discontent with Gascon’s performance, and the campaign against him claims it is well on its way toward obtaining the signatures it needs by early July to qualify a recall against him on the November ballot. But it is not unusual in California for such efforts to fail after large number of signatures are disqualified. Meanwhile, the county’s hardline and scandal-tarred sheriff, Alex Villanueva, who has denounced liberal policies on crime and homelessness, will likely face a runoff after Tuesday with a challenger to his left. Tuesday’s City Council primaries could see strong showings for hardline law-and-order candidates – in particular in Bonin’s district, where discontent is peaking – but in several other districts, left-leaning candidates deeply critical of the LAPD and the anti-encampment laws are mounting serious challenges to more centrist incumbents.

Even the mayoral race shows conflicting currents. The fact that Caruso, a former Republican, is demonstrating so much strength is revealing in itself (even if he’s been buoyed by his massive personal spending). But Caruso has endorsed conventionally liberal positions on almost all issues beyond crime and homelessness, and most analysts expect that he and Bass will meet in a November runoff because neither will attract the 50% of the vote needed to win outright on Tuesday.

Rep. Karen Bass greets supporters on Sunday, June 5, 2022, in Los Angeles. Gina Ferazzi/The Los Angeles Times/Getty Images

Caruso’s promises to restore order “can have great appeal … in a time that is unsettled and you have $30 million to spend,” says Manuel Pastor, director of the Dornsife Equity Research Institute at the University of Southern California. “The question is whether or not there’s a cap to that [support] similar to the top that there was to the recall campaign” against California Gov. Gavin Newsom in 2021, which qualified for the ballot but then failed last fall.

Yet even if Bass ultimately squeezes past Caruso, Gascon narrowly avoids a recall or San Francisco doesn’t swing hard to the right on law enforcement if Boudin is recalled, the evidence suggests Democrats would be wrong to minimize the magnitude of the tremors building in California. In both Los Angeles and San Francisco, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the most progressive forces have opened the door to a right-tilting backlash by failing to adequately respond to, or even acknowledge, the depth of public discontent over the mounting disorder – even among many voters who lean left in their values. More than even the specific issues of crime and homelessness, “what’s feeding the beast” of backlash “is just the general sense of disarray and dysfunction that is permeating everything,” says veteran Democratic pollster Paul Maslin, who is advising an independent expenditure campaign supporting Bass.

The parallel to national politics is the potential for a seismic backlash in November among voters unsettled by all the disruptions to daily life – from inflation to Covid-19 to crime – that have persisted through Joe Biden’s presidency. That continued turbulence has undermined the implicit promise of his candidacy: to return the nation to something approaching normalcy after all the turmoil of the Donald Trump presidency. In all likelihood, the results in Los Angeles and San Francisco on Tuesday will underscore how far voters feel from normalcy even in two of the nation’s most staunchly Democratic communities.

2018 news year in review: Stories across United States that moved us

Editors

USA TODAY

In 2018, the eyes of the nation were again fixed on President Donald Trump, whose second year in office was no less remarkable than his first. It was a year that saw the president open up trade wars, meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, spar with the press and defend hush money payments to women he allegedly had affairs with, all while new revelations and indictments poured out of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian election meddling.

Policies and politics divided us. We found ourselves embroiled in a fierce immigration debate. Trump's Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh ascended to the high court despite sexual assault allegations from Christine Blasey Ford.

Nature humbled us. California burned as the Camp Fire became the most destructive in state history. Hurricane winds and floods battered the Carolinas. But other stories made us proud. Team USA brought home 23 Olympic medals from Pyeongchang, South Korea. Teachers fought for better pay.

We exercised our rights, voting in the most tumultuous midterms in years. Democrats gained control of the House, Republicans expanded their Senate majority, and voters made history, ushering into Congress many firsts for women and minorities.

Then, we ended the year with a solemn goodbye. Funeral services for George H.W. Bush were a farewell not only to a former president, but also to a generation.

After another eventful year, USA TODAY revisits one story from each state that moved us – the big news, the best investigations and the moments we can't stop talking about.

More:Our most-read stories of 2018

Passages:Aretha Franklin, Stephen Hawking, George H.W. Bush and other luminaries: A look at legends we’ve lost in 2018

More:Striking images: A photo a day from 2018

Alabama

Jeff Sessions, the Russia investigation and high-profile White House departures

The former Alabama senator's beleaguered tenure as U.S. Attorney General finally ended in November, one day after the midterm elections. While Sessions was one of President Donald Trump’s earliest supporters, he was berated by the commander-in-chief for recusing himself from the investigation into Russian meddling of the 2016 presidential election. Sessions' departure was just one of the many notable firings and resignations from the Trump administration in 2018, including chief of staff John Kelly and secretary of state Rex Tillerson. As for the Russia investigation: Trump has denied wrongdoing, and repeatedly called special counsel Robert Mueller's looming investigation a "witch hunt." Earlier this month, Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen was sentenced to three years in federal prison – the first sentencing for a member of the president's inner circle, and one that could hold legal perils for Trump.

Alaska

Massive quake turns disaster into a learning experience

A magnitude 7.0 earthquake that struck near Anchorage on Nov. 30 sliced opened roads, knocked out power and damaged buildings. Over 3,000 aftershocks have rattled the region, though no deaths or serious injuries were reported. Meanwhile, recovery efforts, made more difficult by the cold, have become the envy of the nation after work crews repaired major road damage within four days after the quake. Delivery of food supplies, fuel and other cargo has not been interrupted, according to officials, who said that crews will redo the majority of their work in the summer to ensure long-term sustainability.

Arizona

'You're telling me that my assault doesn't matter': Contentious Kavanaugh hearings

Christine Blasey Ford testified with quiet, measured emotion that Brett Kavanaugh forced her onto a bed and tried to remove her clothes at a party when both were teens. Kavanaugh yelled, cried and interrupted when it was his turn in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee. A day later, a protester who said she was sexually assaulted approached outgoing Republican Arizona Senator Jeff Flake in an elevator. "You're telling me that my assault doesn't matter," the audibly emotional woman told Flake. The moment seemed to matter, as it was Flake, alongside Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), who called for a week-long FBI investigation. Ultimately, Kavanaugh was confirmed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

Arkansas

Viral photo shows a brother saying goodbye too soon

An Arkansas family's tragic photo captured hearts around the nation in June as it showed the moment a brother said goodbye to his dying little sister. Adalynn Sooter, 4, lost her battle with a rare brain tumor, but her siblings got one last chance to spend time together. Jackson, 6, rubbed his sister's head as she grasped his hand. Then Jackson said goodnight. Addy was Jackson's "playmate, his best friend, his little sister," father Matt Sooter wrote on Facebook. "This isn't how it's supposed to be." Though her condition worsened and the rare tumor took her life hours later, the family found hope: "She wasn't in any pain at the end," her father wrote.

California

Wildfires devastate the Golden State

6,228 wildfires. Over 876,000 acres charred. At least 100 deaths. California was devastated by historic blazes this year which will likely impact the state for decades. In Northern California, the Camp Fire, the deadliest and most destructive in state history, killed nearly three times as many people as the Griffith Park Fire – a record that stood for 85 years. And the worst may be yet to come: According to a new study, wildfires in California may be more commonplace with the brutal combination of hot and dry weather linked to climate change. Meanwhile, homeowners affected by the deadly blazes face dilemmas on whether to rebuild in high-risk areas repeatedly ravaged by fires.

Colorado

'Most inhumane and vicious crime': No parole for dad who killed pregnant wife and 2 kids

Christopher Watts gave an emotional TV interview the day after his pregnant wife and two daughters were reported missing in August, pleading for their safe return. Shortly after, he was arrested and charged in their gruesome deaths. Watts drove the bodies to an oil field and buried his wife in a shallow grave. He shoved Bella and Celeste in two separate oil tanks, pushing their bodies through openings that were only 8 inches in diameter. In November, the suburban Denver dad was sentenced to three consecutive life terms in prison and 84 additional years with no possibility of parole.

Connecticut

Teacher fired for running student 'fight club'

A former substitute teacher at a Connecticut high school was fired and faced charges after police discovered he was running a "fight club" inside of his math class. Ryan Fish, 23, encouraged high school students in Montville to physically battle as students recorded the fights and cheered. Police became involved when a social worker reported a 15-year-old student was traumatized after being robbed and beaten by his classmates. Fish was fired from his position at the school and faced felony and misdemeanor charges associated with child endangerment. Those charges will be dropped if Fish completes the state's accelerated rehabilitation program, a judge ruled in October.

Delaware

Virtual reality lets chemo patients ditch sterile hospitals for tranquil woods

As poison dripped into her veins, Kathleen Krakowski heard birds chirping and watched leaves sway in the wind. Krakowski, a breast cancer patient, sat in chemotherapy at the Helen F. Graham Cancer Center & Research Institute in Newark, but she gazed into a serene forest within a virtual reality headset. "It doesn't look fake at all," she said. Patients could also sit on the beach or admire a mountainside, forgetting – if only for minutes – the sterile hospital room and deadly illnesses, nurses said. More health-focused VR programs are coming to ease challenges for women in labor and those in chronic pain, too, VR companies VRHealth and Oculus announced in September.

Florida

They witnessed a mass shooting at school. Then they marched for their lives

Parkland became the site of a mass school shooting when a former student killed 17 people, including students, a football coach and an athletic director, at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School on Valentine’s Day. Police arrested Nikolas Cruz, who now faces the death penalty among other charges. Cruz was known to police, who had received 18 calls between 2008 and 2017 warning about him – some directly concerned about him opening fire at school. Amid criticism, an armed school resource officer who never went into the school during the shooting retired. But Parkland students emerged from the tragedy fueling a movement and marches against gun violence across the nation that also targeted NRA-backed candidates in midterm elections. The students were recently awarded a global peace award and praised as "true change-makers."

Georgia

Brian Kemp wins, Stacey Abrams sues

When many Americans were asking who to vote for on election day, claims of voter suppression left some Georgians asking whether their votes would be counted fairly. In a close race, Democrat Stacey Abrams vied to become the nation's first black woman governor, while Republican Brian Kemp sought to maintain his party's control of the office. Kemp won, but both sides claimed foul play by the other. Abrams accused Kemp of trying to suppress Democratic votes as secretary of state by removing voters from the rolls. Kemp's office said it was investigating Democrats for what it called a "failed attempt to hack" the registration system. And the fight isn't over: An Abrams-backed group recently filed a federal lawsuit asking a judge to order fixes to what it says are deep-seated problems in the state's election system.

Hawaii

False alarm: Ballistic missile alert rattles Hawaii

Hawaiians were sent scrambling one January morning after an emergency alert notification warned of an incoming ballistic missile threat. Residents and vacationers ran for cover and called loved ones thinking death was imminent. The only problem? The alert was an error. Officials knew within three minutes that the error had happened, but it took 38 minutes to send out the false alarm message. The unsettling notification came after months of aggressive rhetoric from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who had threatened to strike the United States. President Donald Trump later met Kim to discuss denuclearization at a much-hyped summit in Singapore. A historic handshake between the two represented the first time a sitting U.S. president met with a North Korean leader and a major breakthrough in decades of tensions.

Idaho

Inspiring photo shows an Idaho boy's simple, patriotic gesture

An Idaho boy who protected the American flag with his body stirred the patriotism of a nation in September. Fifth-grader Jack LeBreck lay on the ground under the flag as two other boys struggled to fold it on a windy day. The moment of respect was captured by a passerby who shared the image to Facebook, where it soon made national headlines. The image was so iconic that some questioned its authenticity. "Was it staged?" some asked photographer and Facebook user Amanda Reallan. Most certainly was not: "These boys had no idea I was taking the photo," she said. "They took it upon themselves to protect the flag."

Illinois

He was stopping a gunman at a bar. He was shot by police anyway

Jemel Roberson was doing his job when a suburban Chicago police officer fatally shot him. The 26-year-old armed guard, who was black, had detained a suspected gunman at the bar where he worked and was waiting for police help when an officer, who is white, opened fire on him. Police say the officer ordered Roberson to drop his gun. Witnesses say they shouted that Roberson was a security guard. Roberson's death prompted cries for justice from civil rights advocates and a federal lawsuit filed by his mother against the still unnamed police officer and Midlothian, where the officer is from. And his death was just one at the hands of police 2018.

Indiana

Aftershocks from Larry Nassar upend USA Gymnastics

The fallout from the sexual abuse committed by Larry Nassar further engulfed Indianapolis-based USA Gymnastics in 2018, threatening to swallow up top executives and the sport governing body itself. Criminal cases ended in February against Nassar, the former USA Gymnastics doctor convicted of sexually assaulting young gymnasts. USA Gymnastics' CEO resigned in September, forced out under heavy criticism. The organization filed for bankruptcy protection in December, sagging under the weight of lawsuits from survivors of Nassar's abuse. The next week, a chief for the U.S. Olympic Committee was fired after a report found both the committee and USA Gymnastics failed "to adopt appropriate child-protective policies" to prevent abuse.

Iowa

Mollie Tibbetts went missing. Her story gripped a nation

Mollie Tibbetts was last seen running along Boundary and Middle Streets in her hometown Brooklyn on July 18, surveillance footage shows. The 20-year-old University of Iowa student was reported missing the next day, sparking a monthlong search that gripped Americans from Iowa to the White House. "I just want Mollie's family to know: You're on the hearts of every American," Vice President Mike Pence said Aug. 15. Authorities found her body in a cornfield southeast of Brooklyn six days later, and charged Cristhian Rivera, a 24-year-old Mexican national, with first-degree murder. Rivera, who led police to the body, said he "blocked" his memory after pursuing Tibbetts during her run. He pleaded not guilty to the charge.

Kansas

Army officer’s adopted Korean daughter forced to leave US

A South Korean-born teenager who was adopted by her aunt and uncle in Kansas will soon be forced out of the country. Now-retired Army Lt. Col. Patrick Schreiber and his wife Soo Jin delayed a formal adoption of daughter Hyebin, in large part because Schreiber, a 27-year Army veteran, was deployed in Afghanistan where he served as an intelligence officer. Following poor legal advice, the parents formally adopted their daughter a year too late, when she was 17 – one year after the cutoff for a foreign-born child to derive citizenship from an American, according to immigration law. In September, a federal judge said the girl must leave the country immediately after she graduates Kansas University. The family said if their daughter is deported, they will move to South Korea.

Kentucky

'It is such a shock': Two die in shooting in Kroger grocery store

Minutes after trying to break into a predominately black church, a shooter gunned down two black shoppers at a Kroger grocery store in Jeffersontown in October. The suspect, Gregory Bush, was charged with federal hate crimes, and reportedly told another man who shot at him in the store's parking lot, "Don’t shoot me. I won’t shoot you. Whites don’t shoot whites." The community mourned the deaths of Vickie Lee Jones, 67, and Maurice E. Stallard, 69, who was shopping with his grandson at the time of the shooting.

Louisiana

Mothers keep dying in childbirth. The simple solution is ignored

More than 50,000 American women are severely injured during childbirth each year. About 700 die. Why? Medical workers skip safety practices known to head off disaster. And the deadliest state for pregnant women and new mothers is Louisiana, according to a USA TODAY investigation, "Deadly Deliveries." There were 58.1 deaths for every 100,000 births in the Pelican State from 2012 to 2016. Half of these deaths could be prevented, best estimates say, and half the injuries reduced or prevented with better care. Through our investigation, USA TODAY contacted 75 hospitals in 13 states to ask if they followed certain nationally recognized safety practices. Half wouldn’t answer.

Maine

Smoked lobsters? Restaurant tries marijuana to ease crustacean pain

At Charlotte's Legendary Lobster Pound, your lobster might get smoked before it gets steamed. The restaurant in Southwest Harbor experimented with using marijuana to ease lobsters' pain before the steaming process. Owner Charlotte Gill said she tried it with a lobster named Roscoe, placing him in a covered box with two inches of water as marijuana smoke was pumped inside. Gill said Roscoe was more calm following his smokeout. PETA is not convinced, though. "There is a well-established, foolproof way to prevent crustaceans from suffering, though, and that's by not eating them."

Maryland

It was 'like a war zone,' but they still put out 'a damn paper'

The shooting was "like a war zone." Five newspaper employees were killed when a gunman with a grudge opened fire on the Capital Gazette in the Annapolis. The victims: assistant editor and columnist Rob Hiaasen, special publications editor Wendi Winters, writer John McNamara, editorial page editor Gerald Fischman and sales assistant Rebecca Smith. Jarrod Ramos, now charged with five murder counts, had sued the paper over a 2011 article about his guilty plea for harassment, and he had unleashed vitriol on social media against the paper and its staff for years. But the tragedy didn't stop Capital Gazette journalists from doing their jobs after their colleagues had been killed and "putting out a damn paper" the next day. In December, they, along with murdered Saudi Arabian writer Jamal Khashoggi and other journalists, were named as TIME magazine's 2018 Person of the Year.

Massachusetts

Hidden dangers lurk underneath from aging gas pipes

The natural gas industry and government regulators have known the dangers of leaking gas pipelines for decades. Repairing those pipes is not only difficult and expensive, but also sometimes perilous. In September, utility crews upgrading cast iron pipes inadvertently caused fires and explosions in three northern Massachusetts towns, killing one person, injuring 21 others and leaving hundreds homeless. Investigators say Columbia Gas issued faulty work orders that contributed to the blasts. The Merrimack Valley, the area north of Boston shaken by explosions, is served by some of the nation's oldest and most leak-prone pipes, according to a USA TODAY analysis.The explosions could become the most expensive natural gas disaster ever for a utility that was already spending $80 million this year to upgrade an aging infrastructure.

Michigan

Aretha Franklin: America says goodbye to a queen

Aretha Franklin, the "Queen of Soul" whose music shaped the American songbook for over 50 years, died of pancreatic cancer in August. Franklin was a transcendent cultural figure of the 20th century. She sang for presidents and royalty, and befriended high-profile leaders such as the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jesse Jackson. Amid the global glitter and acclaim, she remained loyal to her adopted home, living in the Detroit area for decades. Her marathon, 8-hour funeral featured speakers like Former President Bill Clinton and legendary record producer Clive Davis and included musical tributes from Stevie Wonder, Ariana Grande and Jennifer Hudson. Rev. Al Sharpton called Franklin’s career the soundtrack to the Civil Rights Movement, saying "We don’t all agree on everything, but we agree on Aretha."

Minnesota

Washington welcomes a younger, more diverse Congress

In a historic midterm season, Minnesota elected Ilhan Omar to the House of Representatives in November, where she will serve as one of the first ever Muslim women in Congress. Omar, a Somali-American former refugee, was elected alongside Rashida Tlaib in Michigan, Congress's only other Muslim woman. And they weren't alone as the 2018 elections were marked by groundbreaking firsts around the country. Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids will serve as the first Native American women in Congress. New York elected Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who will be the youngest woman in Congress. In Colorado, Jared Polis was the first openly gay man to win a governor’s race in American history. Here are all the firsts from the 2018 midterms.

Mississippi

Searching for answers: The FBI reopens the Emmett Till case after six decades

Sixty-three years have passed since Emmett Till’s gruesome murder, but the FBI announced in July it was reopening investigations into the black teen’s historic death "after receiving new information." Till was visiting relatives in Money in 1955 when a white woman, Carolyn Bryant Donham, accused him of sexual harassment. Till’s body, beaten and shot, was found three days later, igniting a national debate about race and violence. Today, his family is still searching for the truth. "We want the process to work, and we want justice to prevail for Emmett," Deborah Watts, Till's cousin, told USA TODAY. "This cannot just be forgotten."

Missouri

Duck boat tragedy: 17 people die, including nine from same family

In July, an amphibious duck boat capsized during a severe storm on Table Rock Lake in Branson, leaving 17 dead, including nine members of the same family. "My heart is very heavy," said Tia Coleman, who lost her husband and three kids and was one of the surviving members of the Coleman family aboard the boat. Duck boats have a long history of serious accidents, leaving more than 40 people dead since 1999. As part of an investigation into the incident, the duck boat’s captain was indicted on criminal charges last month. In September, Tia Coleman filed a lawsuit against the boat operators and manufacturer.

Montana

Border Patrol agent questions women for speaking Spanish

Two U.S. citizens at a northern Montana gas station were questioned by a U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer for speaking Spanish earlier this year. Ana Suda captured video of the now viral encounter, where she and her friend were asked for identification because of the language they were speaking inside a convenience store gas station about 35 miles south of the U.S.-Canada border. Suda accused the agent of racial profiling. Responding to questions about the incident and whether or not to speak Spanish publicly, acting CBP commissioner Ronald Vitiello later said "It’s not something people should be concerned about if they’re here legally."

Nebraska

'Please forgive me': First-ever fentanyl execution in Nebraska

The first person ever executed in the U.S. using fentanyl had three last words for his witnesses: "I love you." Carey Dean Moore died Aug. 14 from a fatal mixture including the drug, the first such execution in the United States and Nebraska's first lethal injection of any kind. Moore, 60, had faced death after killing two cab drivers in the summer of 1979. Death penalty opponents feared that the mixture with fentanyl – an opioid more potent than heroin – could have inflicted extreme pain had the substances not worked as planned. In a last statement, Moore apologized to his brother, a witness to the first murder: "Please forgive me, Don, somehow."

Nevada

Dennis Hof – dead, bombastic, legal brothel owner – elected to Nevada’s state assembly

Nevada voters elected a legal pimp who had died several weeks prior in a November state assembly race. Dennis Hof was known as a flamboyant and notorious brothel owner, reality TV star and later Republican politician. A rally for Hof’s campaign took place just hours before his Oct. 16 death at the age of 72 – that rally attracted high-profile conservative speakers including Former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Fox News personality Tucker Carlson. Following his death, Hof remained on the ballot and cruised to an easy victory in his Assembly District race. His win kicked off a lengthy and competitive process to appoint a living Republican to the seat.

New Hampshire

Mystery lotto winner can stay anonymous

A mystery New Hampshire lottery winner who won a $560 million Powerball prize can remain anonymous, a judge ruled in March. The woman won the Powerball drawing Jan. 6, and the state Attorney General's Office had argued that her identity must be revealed because she signed her name on the back of the ticket. The woman, who filed a suit under the pseudonym Jane Doe, said she made a "huge mistake" when she signed her real name before contacting a lawyer. The woman could remain anonymous had she established a trust, then had a trustee sign the ticket, her lawyers argued. In October, the ticket for an even bigger prize – a whopping $1.537 billion Mega Millions jackpot – was sold in South Carolina, but the prize was still unclaimed in November.

New Jersey

Jersey Shore is back in a year of reboots

Snooki, The Situation and the rest of Jersey Shore's cast returned for a two-season reboot filled with plenty of "duck face" and nostalgia for the reality show that premiered in 2009. The cast partied in Miami Beach, Florida and Las Vegas before heading to – where else – Atlantic City. This time around, the cast dealt with more than just the cabs being here, as the show touched on issues like sobriety and parenthood. And Jersey Shore wasn’t the only reboot this year. The Ocean’s franchise, A Star is Born and a spooky new take on Sabrina the Teenage Witch all made their way back to our screens in 2018.

New Mexico

Search for missing child leads to grisly New Mexico compound

"We are starving and need food and water." The message from inside a "third-world"-like compound in New Mexico led authorities to a gruesome discovery in August. Eleven children were rescued amid a search for three-year-old Georgia boy Abdul-Ghani Wahhaj, whose father allegedly abducted him. Police found the children with a group of heavily armed Muslims living on property they didn't own in a compound built from wooden pallets, clear plastic tarps and dirt-filled tires. The toddler's body was later found buried on the site. One of the rescued children told authorities the group's leader believed the dead child would be reincarnated to launch an attack on banks, schools and other "corrupt" institutions. Now, five adults from the compound face firearms-related charges and accusations that a group member had been training children and others in military tactics.

New York

Trump Foundation to fold under pressure from state

Did President Donald Trump turn his Trump Foundation into a political tool? Allegations "sufficiently support a claim that Mr. Trump intentionally used Foundation assets for his private interests knowing that it may not be in the Foundation's best interest," New York Supreme Court Judge Saliann Scarpulla said in a ruling last month that cleared the way for a civil lawsuit against the Trump Foundation. An investigation led New York Attorney General Barbara Underwood to allege Trump used the foundation as "little more than a checkbook" to promote his businesses and presidential campaign. The lawsuit spurred an investigation of the organization's tax practices by the state Tax Department, and the Trump Foundation agreed to dissolve in December. Add to that the alleged tax evasion and "outright fraud" by the Trump family as reported by the New York Times in October. The Times' investigation sparked a separate state inquiry into Trump.

North Carolina

Flooding from Hurricane Florence ravages North Carolina

Hurricane Florence brought catastrophic flooding to North Carolina and surrounding states in September, causing billions of dollars in property damage and shattering all-time rainfall and flood records in the Carolinas. More than 50 people died in the storm, despite warnings from local authorities to evacuate. One North Carolina mayor warned residents to notify their next of kin if they planned to weather the storm. In the storm's wake, flooding cut off access to towns both large and small. After the rain stopped, residents began to grapple with the devastation, including heavy losses to agriculture and animals. More than a million chickens died, fish carcasses needed to be hosed off of roads and overflowing pig waste created a disgusting, hazardous mess.

North Dakota

Miss America pageant embroiled in controversy

Miss North Dakota Cara Mund won the title of Miss America 2018 – the first from her state to take the crown – but less than three weeks before the 2019 pageant this September, Mund publicly accused Miss America CEO Regina Hopper and chairwoman Gretchen Carlson of bullying and silencing her. Carlson, a former Miss America winner and Fox News host, said the organization lost $75,000 in potential scholarship funds as a result of the accusations. The Miss America Organization had been taking public steps in the name of female-empowerment, but infighting and controversy surrounding the pageant has been making headlines ever since Carlson announced the ceremony would no longer feature a swimsuit competition for the first time in its 98-year history. After the overhaul, the pageant lost one million television viewers, and many were unhappy with the changes.

Ohio

'They did this quickly, coldly, calmly and very carefully': One family allegedly massacred another in Ohio custody dispute

In November, Ohio authorities charged six family members in connection with one of the state’s most heinous crimes: A massacre that left eight members of another family dead in four different locations. Authorities allege that a child custody dispute motivated members of the Wagner family to murder Rhoden family members in April 2016, leaving some experts stunned that a custody dispute could lead to such a crime. "They did this quickly, coldly, calmly and very carefully, but not carefully enough," Pike County Sheriff Charles S. Reader said of the charges. Four Wagner family members have pled not guilty to murder charges, while two other family members face related charges.

Oklahoma

Sooners QB wins the Heisman, then apologizes for old homophobic tweets

Kyler Murray became the second Oklahoma quarterback in a row to win the Heisman Trophy. But then, homophobic tweets from when he was 15 years old resurfaced. Murray, 21 now, apologized, and joined several other famous athletes thrust into a negative light in 2018 for previous social media activity. Milwaukee Brewers' Josh Hader had racist, homophobic and misogynistic tweets resurface. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen saw racist tweets resurface from his teenage years ahead of the NFL draft. Villanova Final Four Most Outstanding Player Donte DiVincenzo had a profane tweet surface right after he helped the Wildcats win a national title. In the world of entertainment, comedian Kevin Hart refused to apologize in December for past offensive tweets, and the resulting crisis led him to recuse himself from hosting the Oscars.

Oregon

Protesters who tried to occupy ICE were arrested as immigration backlash continued

Days before the Trump administration's "zero tolerance" immigration policy sparked nationwide marches in June, protesters in Oregon were arrested after setting up a makeshift camp on the grounds of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in Portland. A few dozen protesters confronted police with profanities and chants such as "No justice, no peace, no racist police." Federal police arrested several demonstrators on June 28, but protests and arrests at the location continued into July. The backlash was tied to calls by some progressives on the left to abolish ICE – a message that helped propel some Democrats, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to victory in the midterms. The movement also helped boost some Republicans, who argued against lax law enforcement.

Pennsylvania

'The Nazis are here again': 11 worshipers gunned down at Tree of Life synagogue

Barry Werber hid in a storeroom. Judah Samet was four minutes late. Both survived what would become the deadliest attack in U.S. history targeting American Jews when a gunman hurling anti-Semitic epithets fatally shot 11 people on the Sabbath at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh. Even before the attack, violence and harassment of Jewish people and institutions was rising sharply. There were at least 1,986 incidents motivated by anti-Jewish bias – including physical assaults, vandalism and attacks on Jewish institutions – in 2017 in the United States, a 57 percent spike in incidents over the year before, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

Rhode Island

Mexican restaurant takes heat for anti-Trump '86 45' t-shirts

A Mexican restaurant in Westerly got some backlash for selling T-shirts it says advocated impeaching President Donald Trump. The shirts, which read "86 45," were worn by restaurant staffers on Election Day. That was just one showing of how the man not on the ballot (Trump) was actually a big factor in this year's midterms. Trump didn't shy from making the Nov. 6 election a referendum on him, holding huge rallies in a string of red and swing states and telling crowds that a vote for the local Senate or House candidate was "a vote for me." Midterms are often a judgment about the sitting president, but never in modern times did one campaign so hard to make sure it was.

South Carolina

Deadly prison riot serves as rallying cry for reform

A bloody, seven-hour riot at Lee Correctional Institution, a 1,785-bed maximum security prison in rural South Carolina, put the state's criminal justice system back in the national spotlight. The April melee left seven inmates dead and over a dozen others injured in what is considered the nation's deadliest prison riot in a quarter-century. While state officials attributed the deaths to gangs, some blamed the outbreak of violence on living conditions. A 2010 criminal justice reform package allowed the state to close three maximum-security prisons and slash millions of dollars in annual prison spending from its budget – making the state's prison system among the country’s cheapest for taxpayers but also one of the deadliest for inmates. In August, a nationwide prison strike, created in response to the brutal brawl, aimed to raise awareness on the lack of mental health and rehabilitation programs in the state.

South Dakota

How a South Dakota man was tied to an alleged Russian spy

Vermillion native Paul Erickson made national headlines when accused Russian spy Maria Butina, his business partner and roommate, was arrested and charged in Washington in July for allegedly seeking to exploit political groups to try to advance Russian interests. Once a political provocateur, Erickson had virtually disappeared from South Dakota's political scene in recent years, but in March 2015, Butina reached out to an American matching his description, prosecutors said. Erickson, 56, reportedly helped shepherd the alleged Russian operative to the National Rifle Association and conservative political group meetings. And Butina’s goal to build a backchannel communication line between Russia and the United States appeared to show some success. Erickson allegedly provided contacts while a Russian official directed her. In December, Butina pleaded guilty to conspiring to act as an agent for the Kremlin without registering in the United States.

Tennessee

50 years since King's death: Gone, but never forgotten

In April, thousands of admirers of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. gathered at his memorial to mark 50 years since the assassination of the civil rights leader whose message of non-violence continues to resonate across racial and religious divides in our nation. King was shot on April 4, 1968, as he stood on a balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis. The night before his death, witnesses like Clara Ester heard King all but give his own eulogy, saying he had seen the Promised Land but he "may not get there with you." Yet some civil rights leaders have questioned if the U.S. is moving backward on race relations, saying if King was alive today "he’d be confounded by how little has changed."

Texas

US troops at the Mexico border, migrant caravans: The year in immigration

A large caravan of thousands of Central American migrants brought immigration front and center. The Trump administration vigorously pursued options to restrict or block outright migrants' ability to enter the country, including denying asylum. President Donald Trump also ordered thousands of active-duty troops to the U.S.-Mexico border. Over the summer, Trump enacted (and then back-tracked on) an ill-fated "zero tolerance" policy that led to more than 2,500 family separations along the border. At the time, the eyes of the world focused on the small city of McAllen – a town with Border Patrol's busiest station for apprehending and detaining immigrants suspected of entering the country illegally. In 2018, the USA TODAY Network also won a Pulitzer Prize for its project The Wall, a landmark multi-platform project that examined Trump's campaign promise to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

Utah

US Olympians train in Utah before medaling in Pyeongchang

Before Team USA brought home 23 medals from the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, its skiers and snowboarders trained hard in Utah. Park City plays home to U.S. Ski and Snowboard's Center for Excellence facility, where star athletes like Lindsey Vonn readied for the 23rd Games. While Vonn, widely considered the best female Alpine skier ever, returned with just one bronze medal, snowboard halfpipe prodigy Chloe Kim and Shaun White, perhaps the best to ever ride a board, both brought home gold – a cementing of snowboarding's status from outcast to darling of the Winter Olympics.

Vermont

Vermont legalizes marijuana. There are now 10 states with legal pot

In 2018, Vermont became the ninth state to legalize recreational marijuana and the first to do so through its state legislature. (Later in the year, Michigan became the 10th.) Marijuana has become big business in other states that have legalized it, generating an estimated $1.6 billion in tax revenue. But Vermont has taken a different approach. The state will continue to ban marijuana sales to the general public, and the law leaves open a murky question about marijuana "gifting." In Massachusetts, which legalized marijuana in 2016, the state opened its first commercial pot shops in November.

Virginia

Amazon chooses Virginia and New York for two new headquarters

Alexa, what’s National Landing? Pretty soon, the answer will be the site of one half of Amazon’s HQ2. The tech giant chose the Northern Virginia region straddling Arlington County and the City of Alexandria, and Long Island City, New York, as the locations for its two new headquarters. The November announcement came after 14 months of intense jockeying by more than 230 cities vying for the honor of playing host to the Amazon’s second headquarters. Amazon is expected to bring 25,000 high-paying jobs and invest $2.5 billion in each location. The decision left many cities wondering what could have been and current residents worried their new neighbors might bring public transport nightmares and skyrocketing housing prices. Under CEO Jeff Bezos, who is now the richest person in the world with a net worth of an estimated $166 billion, Amazon also became the second publicly traded company in the U.S. with a stock market value above $1 trillion this year.

Washington

The year people decided plastic straws suck

The days of the plastic straw are numbered. In July, Seattle became one of the largest cities to ban plastic straws. Coffee giant Starbucks, headquartered in Washington state, said they would phase plastic straws out by 2020, too. And some chains like Red Lobster chose only to give out plastic straws upon request. The changes are part of a growing national trend to rid ourselves of what some perceive as an environmental waste. The nonprofit group Sailors for the Sea said plastic straws are among the top 10 marine debris collected during the International Coastal Cleanup. But we really seem to love them: Americans use an estimated 500 million single-use straws daily, according to Eco-Cycle. Fortunately, we have plenty of eco-friendly alternatives.

West Virginia

'There is no incentive to stay, except this is home': West Virginia teachers strike

Educators in West Virginia went on strike for nine days in February and March, capturing the national spotlight and forcing school closures across the state with more than 30,000 teachers and support staff demanding pay raises. Gov. Jim Jordan signed a contract agreeing to a five percent raise for state educators, but West Virginia teacher salaries are still some of the lowest in the nation, according the American Federation of Teachers. Meanwhile, teachers discontent across the country bubbled up this year as educators struggled to keep up with early days and to pay for classroom supplies out of their own pockets. From Arizona to Kentucky, similar protests broke out, demanding better pay and benefits.

Wisconsin

Wisconsin left shell-shocked by Trump's trade wars

Few states fell into the crossfires of President Donald Trump's trade wars more than Wisconsin. "It's been catastrophic," Rob Parmentier, CEO of a Wisconsin-based boat manufacturer, said in October. Retaliatory tariffs from China, Europe, Canada and Mexico came in response to Trump's tariffs on foreign steel and aluminum. Those trade barriers affected everything from manufacturing to farming, including the state's iconic dairy industry: Wholesale cheese and butter prices slumped in the summer as farmers faced an oversupply of milk and tensions with Wisconsin's top two trading partners, Canada and Mexico. House Speaker Paul Ryan urged fellow Wisconsinites to "be patient" with the tariffs. Meanwhile, hundreds of dairy farms closed across the state – about 430 by September.

Wyoming

Matthew Shepard's ashes find a home

Twenty years after Matthew Shepard's death, his ashes found a home at the Washington National Cathedral. Shepard has become an international symbol of the violence LGBTQ people in America face after his death in 1998, when two men savagely beat him then tied him to a fence near Laramie. In their confessions, the assailants said they targeted Shepard because he was gay. Since Shepard's death, same-sex marriage was legalized as well as the ability of transgender Americans to serve in the military. But LGBTQ advocates say more work needs to be done. "Violence against us continues to this day," said Rt. Rev. V. Gene Robinson, the openly gay former bishop who presided over a service remembering Shepard in October.

District of Columbia

Caps claim the Cup for the District

The Washington Capitals ended D.C.'s more than 20 year drought without a major pro sports title when the team took down the Vegas Golden Knights in the Stanley Cup Finals in June. It was pandemonium in the streets of the nation's capital after the team's 4-3 victory in Game 5, followed by a boozy championship parade and rally on the National Mall days later. The win also marked the first Stanley Cup title in the franchise's 44-year history, and Caps great Alex Ovechkin won the Conn Smythe Trophy as playoff MVP, leading his team with 15 postseason goals.

This is a compilation of stories from across USA TODAY and the USA TODAY Network.

Credits: Alia Dastagir, Josh Hafner, Ashley May, Ryan Miller, Brett Molina, Marina Pitofsky, Cara Richardson, Joel Shannon, Charles Ventura and N'dea Yancey-Bragg

Contributing: The Associated Press

Fluoride wince, tsunami maps: News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Tuscaloosa: A long-running festival that aims to entertain people while educating them about the heritage and culture of Native Americans returns this week to west Alabama. The annual Moundville Native American Festival will be held from Wednesday to Saturday at the University of Alabama Moundville Archaeological Park. This will mark the first in-person festival since 2019, as the event was held online only the past two years because of the COVID-19 pandemic. Thousands of visitors are expected at the festival, which began 34 years ago. “The festival is one the largest events that brings people to the park every year,” said Clay Nelson, director of the UA Moundville Archaeological Park. Holding the festival online was the best option for the past couple of years, but Nelson said there’s no substitute for seeing up close the park’s attractions, which include 29 massive flat-topped earthen mounds. “We can describe the earthen mounds as much as we want, but seeing them in person really helps illustrate what great engineering feats the indigenous peoples of Alabama were doing in the 13th century,” he said. The festival will feature artists, craftsmen and educators from around the nation, who’ll share their knowledge of Native American culture. People will be able to buy Native crafts and food, as well as traditional festival fare.

Alaska

Juneau: A fall storm packing strong winds damaged roofs and windows in parts of western and northwest Alaska and resulted in flooding of roads in the far northern city of Utqiagvik, according to damage reports, with a new storm expected to hit the Arctic coast this week. Water levels dropped by midday Saturday across the region, said Jonathan Chriest, a National Weather Service meteorologist. The system forecasters are tracking is expected to bring elevated surf and strong winds to the Arctic coast Tuesday through Thursday, though water levels and winds weren’t expected to be as high as with the last storm, he said Sunday. There commonly are strong storms in northern and western Alaska between September and December, he said. But the storm that just hit parts of western and northwest Alaska and the remnants of Typhoon Merbok, which caused widespread damage in parts of western Alaska last month, were “exceptionally strong” for the areas that each impacted, he said.

Arizona

Phoenix: Abortions can take place again in the state, at least for now, after an appeals court on Friday blocked enforcement of a pre-statehood law that almost entirely criminalized the procedure. The three-judge panel of the Arizona Court of Appeals agreed with Planned Parenthood that a judge should not have lifted the decades-old order that prevented the older law from being imposed. The brief order written by Presiding Judge Peter J. Eckerstrom said Planned Parenthood and its Arizona affiliate had shown they are likely to prevail on an appeal of a decision by the judge in Tucson to allow enforcement of the old law. Planned Parenthood had argued that the lower court judge should have considered a host of laws restricting abortions passed since the original injunction was put in place following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1973 decision in Roe v. Wade that said women have a constitutional right to an abortion. Those laws include a new one blocking abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy that took effect last month. The previous limit was 24 weeks, the viability standard established by now-overruled U.S. Supreme Court cases. “Arizona courts have a responsibility to attempt to harmonize all of this state’s relevant statutes,” Eckerstrom wrote, mirroring arguments made by attorneys for Planned Parenthood.

Arkansas

Little Rock: Two deputies who were caught on video violently arresting a suspect outside a convenience store in August have been fired, Crawford County Sheriff Jimmy Damante said Thursday. Damante told Fort Smith television station KHBS that Levi White and Zachary King had been fired but did not elaborate on the decision. A bystander recorded White, King and Mulberry Police Officer Thell Riddle arresting 27-year-old Randal Worcester outside a convenience store in the small town of Mulberry, about 140 miles northwest of Little Rock, near the border with Oklahoma. Mulberry Police Chief Shannon Gregory said Riddle remains on administrative leave. The bystander’s video of the Aug. 21 arrest shows one of the deputies repeatedly punching and kneeing Worcester in the head before grabbing his hair and slamming him against the pavement. As that was happening, another officer was holding Worcester down, while a third kneed him over and over. Damante has said Worcester was being questioned for threatening a clerk at a convenience store in the nearby small town of Alma. Damante said Worcester tackled one of the deputies and punched him in the head before the arrest. The deputy suffered a concussion, Damante said.

California

Sacramento: The California Geological Survey has released updated tsunami hazard maps for seven counties to help users determine whether they are in areas at risk for inundation and for planning. The revised interactive maps released Friday cover San Diego, Santa Cruz, Ventura, Marin, Sonoma, Solano and Napa counties. The new maps reflect new data and improved computer modeling since an earlier series of maps was published in 2009, as well as threats from tsunamis originating far away and locally, the Geological Survey said in a press release. In one example of the updates, new modeling for Santa Cruz County shows that a subduction zone earthquake off the Aleutian Islands could unleash a tsunami 18-25 feet above the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, more than double the height suggested in 2009, the agency said. The Geological Survey said California’s shores have been struck by more than 150 tsunamis since 1800, and while most were minor, some have been significantly destructive and deadly. On March 28, 1964, a tsunami triggered by a powerful earthquake in Alaska smashed into Crescent City, California, hours later. Much of the business district was leveled, and a dozen people were killed.

Colorado

Denver: A police officer who arrested a woman who was seriously injured when the parked patrol car in which she was placed was struck by a freight train said he did not realize he had stopped the vehicle on the railroad tracks, according to police body camera video. In video obtained by KUSA-TV on Thursday, Platteville Sgt. Pablo Vazquez told another officer he thought he had cleared the tracks when he stopped Yareni Rios-Gonzalez on Sept. 16 in a suspected road rage case involving a gun. He said he pulled up right behind her truck and was focused on her because he was concerned about weapons. Vazquez also said he did not know another officer had put Rios-Gonzalez in Vasquez’s patrol vehicle until after it was hit by the train. He said the “saving grace” was that the other officer put Rios-Gonzalez on the side of the vehicle not usually used for arrested people. Rios-Gonzalez’s injuries included nine broken ribs, a broken arm and a fractured sternum. Her lawyer has said he plans to file a lawsuit against police. Previously released video from Vazquez’s body camera shows he asks the other officer several times over the sound of the train’s rumbling whether Rios-Gonzalez was in the patrol vehicle, and she responds, one hand to her face, “Oh my God, yes, she was!”

Connecticut

Waterbury: Jurors concluded their first full day of deliberations without reaching a verdict Friday in a trial to determine how much conspiracy theorist Alex Jones should pay for spreading the lie that the 2012 Sandy Hook School shooting was a hoax. Jurors are scheduled to return Tuesday. After deliberating just briefly Thursday afternoon, the panel got back to business Friday with a request for a dry-erase easel, markers, an eraser and a copy of the jury instructions. Last year, Jones was found liable for damages. The jury’s task is to decide how much Jones and his company Free Speech Systems should pay to relatives of eight Sandy Hook victims and to an FBI agent who responded to the massacre. The plaintiffs testified they have been tormented and threatened by people who believed that one of the deadliest school shootings in U.S. history was a con staged to build support for gun restrictions. Jones repeatedly publicized that false notion on his “Infowars” show. Twenty children and six adults were killed when a gunman stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012. Jones testified in the trial, saying he was “done saying I’m sorry.” His lawyers have argued that he’s not responsible for the deeds of anyone who tormented the victims’ families, and that they are overstating how much harm it caused them.

Delaware

Dover: New state laws allowing universal voting by mail and Election Day registration are unconstitutional, Delaware’s Supreme Court ruled Friday. In a three-page order, the justices said the vote-by-mail statute impermissibly expands the categories of absentee voters identified in Delaware’s constitution. The same-day registration law conflicts with the registration periods spelled out in the state constitution, they said. The order, which will be followed later by a formal opinion, came after justices heard arguments in the case Thursday. Vice Chancellor Nathan Cook last month upheld the same-day registration law but said the vote-by-mail law, the result of legislation Democrats rammed through the General Assembly in less than three weeks, violates constitutional restrictions on absentee voting. Both bills were passed in June, each receiving exactly one Republican vote, and were signed by Democratic Gov. John Carney in July. Democratic Attorney General Kathleen Jennings appealed Cook’s ruling striking down the vote-by-mail law. GOP attorneys representing voters, a state House candidate and a Department of Elections employee appealed Cook’s decision upholding same-day registration. The Supreme Court upheld Cook’s ruling on the vote-by-mail law but said his decision allowing same-day registration should be reversed.

District of Columbia

Washington: The National Air and Space Museum will reopen half of its flagship building to the public on the National Mall on Friday, WUSA-TV reports. When the museum partially reopens, visitors can check out eight new and renovated exhibitions, along with the planetarium on the museum’s west end. Highlights include “Destination Moon,” which will display the Apollo 11 space suit; “Kenneth C. Griffin Exploring the Planets Gallery,” which will feature an immersive experience called Walking on Other Worlds; and the “Thomas W. Haas We All Fly” exhibition, which will include the Challenger III and the Lear Jet 23. The museum has been undergoing a seven-year renovation that began in 2018 and includes redesigning all 23 exhibitions and presentation spaces, replacing outdated mechanical systems and other repairs and improvements. “You should be excited to engage with these pieces of history, these real artifacts, these real things,” said Beth Wilson, an educator with the museum. “Come and see them.” Free timed-entry passes are required to visit the National Air and Space Museum.

Florida

St. Petersburg: Florida officials began planning to transport migrants to other states in July and told potential contractors their task would be to relocate them on a voluntary basis, according to state documents. The documents released Friday night provide new details about the program that culminated in the Sept. 14 flight of 48 mostly Venezuelan migrants from San Antonio, Texas, to Martha’s Vineyard, an island off Massachusetts. The flight has spawned an investigation by a Texas sheriff and two lawsuits amid criticism that the program was a political stunt by Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to appeal to his conservative base. DeSantis is running for reelection this year and is frequently mentioned as a potential 2024 presidential candidate. According to the documents, the program as outlined in July was intended to “assist in the voluntary relocation of Unauthorized Aliens who are found in Florida and have agreed to be relocated” elsewhere in the country. It made no mention of finding migrants in Texas. Ultimately, state officials chose Vertol Systems Co., based in Destin, Florida, and has so far paid the firm $1.56 million for the Martha’s Vineyard flight and possibly for a second flight to Delaware, the home state of President Joe Biden, that didn’t happen. No other flights have been announced.

Georgia

Atlanta: The Georgia prosecutor investigating whether then-President Donald Trump and others illegally tried to interfere in the 2020 election filed paperwork Friday seeking to compel testimony from a new batch of Trump allies, including former U.S. House Speaker Newt Gingrich and former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis filed petitions in court seeking to have Gingrich and Flynn, as well as former White House lawyer Eric Herschmann and others, testify next month before a special grand jury that’s been seated to aid her investigation. They join a string of other high-profile Trump allies and advisers who have been called to testify in the probe. Rudy Giuliani, the former New York mayor and Trump attorney who’s been told he could face criminal charges in the probe, testified in August. Attorneys John Eastman and Kenneth Chesebro have also appeared before the panel. U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham’s attempt to fight his subpoena is pending in a federal appeals court. And paperwork has been filed seeking testimony from others, including former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows. Willis has said she plans to take a monthlong break from public activity in the case leading up to the November midterm election.

Hawaii

Honolulu: Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on the planet, is in a “state of heightened unrest” but is not erupting, and there are no signs of an imminent eruption, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said Friday. Earlier in the week week, Hawaii Volcanoes National Park closed the Mauna Loa summit backcountry until further notice, calling it a “precautionary measure” amid “elevated seismic activity.” The observatory said the heightened unrest began in mid-September, “as recorded by an increase in earthquakes below Mauna Loa summit.” The volcano, which stands about 13,680 feet above sea level on the island of Hawaii, last erupted in 1984, the observatory said. Since 1843, it has erupted 33 times, with the time between eruptions ranging from months to decades, according to the observatory. The park’s online portal says this is the volcano’s “longest quiet period since written records have been kept.” “Mauna Loa will erupt again,” Ken Hon, scientist-in-charge at the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory, told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser. “As long as there is heightened unrest, it is more likely to erupt. But it could be weeks or months – or it could eventually die off.” The latter happened the last time there was elevated seismic activity and summit expansion on Mauna Loa, in early 2021.

Idaho

Boise: The state Supreme Court heard arguments in lawsuits over three of Idaho’s abortion laws Thursday, sharply questioning attorneys about the value placed on a pregnant person’s health, the state’s interest in ensuring that pregnancies are carried to term and Idaho’s long history of anti-abortion laws. The high court earlier this year allowed the laws to go into effect, and as a result Idaho is one of several states where abortion is almost entirely outlawed. A final ruling on the laws – including one that criminalizes all abortions but allows physicians to defend themselves by showing the abortion was needed to save the pregnant persopn’s life, one that criminalizes most abortions after about six weeks’ gestation, and one that allows even extended potential relatives of a fetus or embryo to sue an abortion provider – could be handed down sometime in the coming months. “For 50 years, generations of Idaho women have had control over their bodies and lives with respect to the most intimate personal and private decision imaginable whether to carry a pregnancy to term or whether to terminate it,” Alan Schoenfeld, the attorney representing a regional Planned Parenthood affiliate, told the court. “The Idaho Legislature seeks to upend women’s lives and strip them of this fundamental right – one that’s necessary to the exercise of numerous other rights that all Idahoans cherish.”

Illinois

Chicago: A man accused of walking into a Chicago police station and pointing a gun at officers, leading police to shoot and wound him, appeared in court Friday on assault charges, where a judge ordered his bond set at $200,000. The police department said in a news release that 43-year-old Terrick Bland, of nearby Maywood, is charged with five counts of aggravated assault of a peace officer and one felony count of aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. According to police, Bland walked into the lobby of the Ogden District station in the Lawndale neighborhood on the city’s West Side and began shouting anti-police statements Wednesday. When officers ordered him to drop a gun that he had wrapped in a plastic bag, he pointed it at officers, and at least three of them opened fire. Bland was shot once in the shoulder and was treated at a hospital for non-life-threatening injuries. According to the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office, Bland was represented at Friday’s hearing by an attorney with the county public defender’s office. An official from the office said she could not immediately determine who represented Bland. It was the second time in a little more than a week in which Chicago officers shot an armed suspect inside of a police station.

Indiana

Indianapolis: Health officials are warning northern Indiana residents to take precautions to avoid being bitten by mosquitoes after detecting a rare and potentially deadly mosquito-borne virus in the region. State public health and animal health officials issued the warning Thursday after determining that the eastern equine encephalitis virus was active in multiple northern Indiana counties, with four horses testing positive for the virus. State veterinarian Dr. Bret Marsh said the virus “is a serious threat to both horses and people in northern Indiana” until the first hard freeze of the fall season occurs. As of Tuesday, the Indiana State Board of Animal Health said two horses in LaGrange County and one horse in Kosciusko County had tested positive for the virus. No human cases of the virus disease or mosquitoes infected with the virus have been reported in Indiana this year. But officials said that because northern Indiana contains suitable habitat for mosquitoes that can transmit the virus, “humans and horses in all northern Indiana counties are potentially at risk.” Residents were urged to avoid being outdoors when mosquitoes are present and take other steps, including eliminating breeding grounds for the insects. While rare, the virus can cause serious illness with long-term complications and has a fatality rate of around 33% or higher.

Iowa

Cedar Falls: Paddlers on the Cedar River now will be floating on designated waters. The river, from Janesville to around La Porte City – about 46 miles – has been formally recognized as a designated water trail as part of the Cedar Valley Nature Trail. A 14-mile stretch of Black Hawk Creek from Hudson to the Cedar River was also designated as an official water trail. The Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier reports members of the Iowa Department of Natural Resources, Black Hawk County Conservation, Iowa Northland Regional Council of Governments and Partnership for a Healthy Iowa paddled from Washington Park in Cedar Falls to the Waterloo Boat House in celebration of the new identification. Kayla Lyon, director of the Iowa DNR, said there are more than 1,000 miles of designated water trails in the state. The state’s first designated water trail was the Cedar Valley Paddler’s Trail in Black Hawk County, which begins at the Fisher Lake Boat Ramp. The 10-mile trail was recognized in 2005. Peter Komendowski, executive director of the Partnership for a Healthy Iowa, said the waterway was first paddled by 26 eighth graders and adults, and it took them more than six hours. It travels through a chain of lakes, down the Cedar River and through George Wyth State Park before looping back to the start.

Kansas

Wichita: A Wichita police officer was arrested early Saturday on suspicion of drunken driving, becoming the city’s third officer to be apprehended within about two weeks. Police said in a release that the officer, who was off-duty, is also facing a charge of possession of a gun while intoxicated. The officer, who has been with the department for two years, has been placed on administrative leave while a criminal and internal investigation is conducted, the Wichita Eagle reports. The incident follows two other arrests of Wichita officers within five days at the end of last month. A detective and 15-year veteran of the force was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence Sept. 23 after she collided with a city bus in downtown. A police recruit was arrested on suspicion of criminal threat Sept. 28 when police responded to a domestic violence call.

Kentucky

Louisville: Three Jewish women from Louisville filed a lawsuit Thursday to block Kentucky’s laws banning most abortions from remaining in effect, arguing they are a violation of their religious rights under the state constitution. Under current Kentucky laws, the protected human life of “an unborn child” begins when an egg is fertilized by a sperm, with abortion strictly prohibited once fetal cardiac activity is detected at roughly six weeks. Exceptions are only allowed to prevent a pregnant woman’s death or a “substantial and irreversible impairment of a major bodily function.” The plaintiffs in the case say Jewish law, known as Halakha, for millennia has not defined human life as beginning at conception but rather at birth, while the abortion ban passed into law in Kentucky “has imposed sectarian theology on Jews.” Their complaint, filed in Jefferson County Circuit Court, says Kentucky law particularly contradicts their constitutional religious rights when it comes to their past and intended future use of in vitro fertilization, in which a human egg is fertilized with sperm in a laboratory and then implanted in the uterus. “As a mom, as a woman, this directly affects me; it affects my health care,” lead plaintiff Lisa Sobel said. “And then it’s a personal affront to my personal religious views, on top of it.”

Louisiana

Baton Rouge: The Democratic challenger to U.S. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise released a campaign ad on social media that includes video of her giving birth. Katie Darling said she was seven months pregnant when she decided to join the congressional race in reaction to the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June that ended constitutional protections for abortion. The 75-second video documents Darling traveling from her family farm in St. Tammany parish in September to a hospital, where she grips the side of a bed while in labor. “I wanted to share that this is real for me,” Darling, 36, said in an interview with the Associated Press. “I am literally the one hooked up to the machines and the IVs in the hospital bed, going through childbirth, and nobody else should be deciding how I handle that.” In a voiceover, Darling highlights her concerns about climate change, Louisiana underperforming in education and the state’s near-total abortion ban – the only exceptions are if there is substantial risk of death or impairment to the patient if they continue with the pregnancy and in the case of “medically futile” pregnancies. There are no exceptions for rape or incest. “Louisiana deserves better than the path it’s on,” Darling says in the video. “I want that better path,” she adds, “for you” – as the ad pans to her husband in the delivery room. “For her,” as a the video shows her 6-year-old daughter. “And for him,” she says directly into the camera from her hospital bed as she cradles her newborn.

Maine

Portland: Wildlife agencies are finding elevated levels of a class of toxic chemicals in game animals such as deer, prompting health advisories in some places where hunting and fishing are ways of life and key pieces of the economy. Authorities have detected the high levels of PFAS, or per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, in deer in several states, including Maine, where legions of hunters seek to bag a buck every fall. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency launched an effort last year to limit pollution from the chemicals, linked to health problems including cancer and low birth weight. In Maine, where the chemicals were detected in well water at hundreds of times the federal health advisory level, legislators passed a law in 2021 requiring manufacturers to report their use of the chemicals and to phase them out by 2030. The state issued a “do not eat” advisory last year for deer harvested in the Fairfield area, about 80 miles north of Portland, after several of the animals tested positive for elevated levels. The state is now expanding the testing to more animals across a wider area, said Nate Webb, wildlife division director at the Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife. “Lab capacity has been challenging,” he said, “but I suspect there will be more facilities coming online to help ease that burden.”

Maryland

Baltimore: The office of the state’s attorney general is supporting an appeal by a slain woman’s family after a Baltimore judge overturned a man’s murder conviction in a case chronicled by a groundbreaking podcast. Hae Min Lee’s brother, Young Lee, has asked the Maryland Court of Special Appeals to halt court proceedings for Adnan Syed, whose conviction in Lee’s 1999 killing was reversed by Baltimore Circuit Judge Melissa Phinn in September. Young Lee is asking the appellate court to suspend an Oct. 18 deadline for prosecutors to decide whether to drop the charges against Syed or retry him. Lee argues that his family didn’t get adequate notice of the Sept. 19 hearing at which Phinn overturned Syed’s conviction. Attorney General Brian Frosch’s office, which represented the state in opposing Syed’s appeals, said in a court filing Friday that Young Lee has a right to appeal given his status as the victim’s representative, the Baltimore Sun reports. The filing argues that Lee’s appeal should be addressed before any circuit court rulings render it moot. Syed, who has always maintained his innocence, has served more than 20 years of a life sentence. He was convicted of strangling Lee, whose body was found buried in a Baltimore park. Syed and Lee were students at a Baltimore County high school.

Massachusetts

Boston: Health officials said Friday that they’re concerned about elevated levels of the coronavirus in the city’s wastewater. The concentration of the virus in local wastewater had increased by 3.1% over the prior week and by nearly 100% over the past two weeks, according to new data from last week from the Boston Public Health Commission. New COVID-19 cases in Boston had decreased slightly over the prior week, though the data did not include positive results from at-home tests, the commission said. Boston hospitals had 170 new hospital admissions related to COVID-19 last week. Dr. Bisola Ojikutu, the public health commissioner, said the elevated concentration in the wastewater is “very concerning” because increases in COVID-19-related hospitalizations, combined with flu season, will cause “major strain” on Boston’s health care system. Ojikutu said it’s important to try to get ahead of the issue and recommended that people get booster shots and flu shots, wear a mask indoors, get tested for COVID-19 and isolate if they test positive to help reduce transmission. Nearly 79% of Boston residents are fully inoculated against the disease. The commission began noticing elevated coronavirus levels in the wastewater in late September.

Michigan

Detroit: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer has signed another extension of a law that makes people convicted of crimes, typically with low incomes, responsible for a portion of local court expenses. The law, which raises millions of dollars for local governments, doesn’t apply to others who use Michigan’s court system. It has been criticized, even by judges, as unfair at minimum and unconstitutional at worst. The state Supreme Court last spring heard a challenge by a man who was ordered to pay $1,200 in Alpena County. But instead of settling the matter, the court said it would hear more arguments during its 2022-23 term. The Legislature in September voted to keep the law going for an additional 18 months. Only 17 lawmakers opposed it. Whitmer, a Democrat, said she signed the extension last week. Rep. Sarah Lightner, R-Springport, acknowledged it puts another “Band-Aid on this issue” while a long-term court funding solution can be explored. A group called the Fines and Fees Justice Center tracks how states impose fines and fees in courts. Co-director Lisa Foster said Michigan stands out because judges who preside over a criminal case are also given power to order financial penalties that benefit local government. People convicted of crimes can be ordered to pay a portion of staff salaries and building maintenance.

Minnesota

St. Paul: State Attorney General Keith Ellison sued Fleet Farm on Wednesday, alleging the retailer negligently sold firearms to two straw buyers, including one gun that was used in a shootout in a St. Paul bar that left one person dead and 14 bystanders injured. The lawsuit, filed in Hennepin County District Court, alleges that Fleet Farm ignored multiple red flags that should have tipped off chain officials, including sales of multiple guns in single purchases. It alleges that Fleet Farm stores sold the two at least 37 firearms over a 16-month period. Most of the guns have not been recovered, Ellison said. Ellison, a Democrat, is facing a stiff reelection challenge from Republican candidate Jim Schultz, who has made violent crime his top issue. “We comply with all applicable gun laws and devote substantial resources to training and compliance,” countered Fleet Farm spokesman Jon Austin. He said that after the St. Paul shooting Ellison highlighted, “we were told by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms that our team members had ‘done nothing wrong’ and had complied with all applicable gun laws.” The Midwestern company has 17 stores in Minnesota that sell firearms. Straw buyers purchase firearms from licensed retailers and resell them to people who can’t legally buy them or on the black market.

Mississippi

Jackson: The city is heading off the threat of a garbage pileup by agreeing to pay its overdue bill for collections the past six months. Even as Jackson struggles with a troubled water system, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and the City Council have been feuding over the garbage contract for the city of 150,000 residents. Richard’s Disposal has picked up Jackson garbage since April without compensation. The company said it would stop collections after Saturday unless it receives payment. City Council President Ashby Foote told the Associated Press on Friday that the city will pay $4.8 million, and garbage collection will continue. Lumumba awarded an emergency contract early this year to Richard’s after the council voted multiple times against hiring the New Orleans-based company. Jackson has had water problems for years, and most of the city lost running water for several days in late August and early September because torrential rainfall exacerbated problems with the main water treatment plant. Crews are still making emergency repairs to the water plant, and questions remain about the quality of water in the city where 80% of residents are Black, and a quarter live in poverty.

Missouri

St. Louis: A mother whose son died less than an hour after he was transported from a jail to a state prison has won a $1.2 million settlement in a case that helped lead to suspensions, firings and reforms. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch reports Angela Malcich claimed in the suit that nurses and guards at the St. Louis County Justice Center repeatedly ignored the serious medical distress of her son, Daniel Stout. He was arrested June 3, 2019, on a parole revocation and spent the next eight days in the county jail. The night before his death, Stout complained of stomach pains but was told he would have to wait until the morning to see a nurse, the suit claims. That morning, though, jail staff told a worsening Stout that he would need to wait for care again until he could be transported more than an hour to the state prison in Bonne Terre. Upon arriving, he was vomiting blood and died before emergency crews could get there. An autopsy blamed complications of an ulcer that perforated his intestine. Four other inmates also died in the county jail in 2019, with an internal report finding that all of them had acted “strangely” beforehand and that most were denied medical care.

Montana

Helena: A draft report from Gov. Greg Gianforte’s housing task force details a slew of ideas to boost housing supply in an effort to tackle Montana’s affordability crunch, previewing legislation that could be advanced during next year’s legislative session, the Montana Free Press reports. Several of the task force’s recommendations involve scaling back local zoning restrictions such as minimum lot sizes, building height limits and parking requirements to make it easier to develop more dense housing developments in urban areas with existing access to services like water lines, streets and fire departments. The report released last week calls for legislation that places “sideboards” on the development restrictions towns and cities have the power to enact and also suggests providing financial incentives to local governments that implement “key regulatory reforms.” The group also suggests putting some state money toward supporting affordable housing efforts. It generally avoids suggestions that seek to address housing challenges with new government regulations, such as restricting AirBnB-style short-term rentals. The task force, which is set to formally present its recommendations to the governor in the coming weeks, is looking for public comment to consider as it finalizes its initial report by a Saturday deadline.

Nebraska

Omaha: The city will have a new tallest building once Mutual of Omaha completes its planned $600 million headquarters tower downtown in 2026. Mutual CEO James Blackledge told the Omaha World-Herald it recently became clear that the insurance company’s new skyscraper would eclipse the 45-story First National Bank tower. The new Mutual building is projected to be 677 feet tall. That would make it 43 feet taller than the First National building that opened in 2002. Mutual didn’t set out to build the city’s tallest building, but Blackledge said he’s proud of the impact the project will have on Omaha’s downtown and its image. “I think people see skylines, and it does create an impression of all the things we want Omaha to be perceived as – a vibrant, growing, thriving place where people can live and work and prosper,” he said. The new building will be designed to hold roughly 2,400 of the company’s 4,000 headquarters workers at any one time, reflecting the rise of working from home. It will also be a little less than half the size of Mutual current 1.7 million-square-foot headquarters complex in midtown Omaha. In conjunction with the Mutual project, Omaha leaders have pledged to build a $306 million, 3-mile-long streetcar line to connect midtown with downtown by sometime in 2026.

Nevada

Las Vegas: Victims of a quick series of stabbings on the Las Vegas Strip described the shock and horror of the unexpected attack Thursday on a group of showgirls and others outside a casino that left two people dead and six injured. Police arrested Yoni Barrios, 32, after a short chase blocks from where they say he attacked four showgirls and ended up stabbing eight people. An arrest report released Friday said Barrios told police some of the victims had laughed at him, and he “let the anger out.” Prosecutors said he’ll be charged with two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. “I couldn’t believe that this was happening to me,” said Victoria Caytano, one of the showgirl impersonators who was released from the hospital Friday after she was treated for a stab wound. “I got up, and I started running,” Caytano told KLAS-TV. “I started yelling, ‘He has a knife!’ ” The coroner’s office identified those killed as Las Vegas residents Brent Allan Hallett, 47, and Maris Mareen DiGiovanni, 30. Hallett was stabbed in the back, and DiGiovanni died from a chest wound, authorities said. DiGiovanni was part of the Best Showgirls in Vegas modeling and talent agency, according to Cheryl Lowthorp, who runs the business. She said two others with the agency were among the wounded, and a third escaped without injury.

New Hampshire

Concord: A former juvenile parole officer has been sentenced to 11 years in federal prison for possession of child pornography and trying to send an explicit image to a child. Jason Ellis pleaded guilty in June. Prosecutors agreed in a plea agreement to drop a third charge of distributing child pornography. Ellis was fired from his job as a juvenile parole officer earlier in the year after he was arrested. An affidavit said Ellis sent online messages in 2020 and 2021 to undercover investigators posing as a 13-year-old girl and her father. Detectives uncovered more than 100 images of child sex abuse material on his phone, WMUR-TV reports.

New Jersey

Trenton: The state would sell off all of its pension fund investments in oil, gas and other fossil fuel companies under a bill approved by a New Jersey Senate committee Thursday. The bill targets any pension money invested in 200 of the largest publicly traded fossil fuel companies based on each of their carbon content in oil, gas and coal reserves. It was passed 3-2 along party lines with Democrats in support and Republicans against. “The clock is ticking, and there is not that much time left,” said state Sen. Bob Smith, D-Middlesex, the bill’s sponsor. “We’ve got to get our industry to change and our economy to change.” The pension fund was valued at $92.9 billion as of May 31, but it is not known exactly how much is invested in fossil fuel company stocks. A state Treasury Department spokeswoman did not return a request for that information Thursday. Divest NJ, a group advocating for the measure, estimates it’s between $3 million and $4 million, based on documents it has obtained. The measure had languished in Trenton for almost five years and still has a long road ahead of it. It was moved to the Senate Budget Committee on Thursday and would still need to be approved by the full Senate, the Assembly and Gov. Phil Murphy. It would take effect 12 months after being signed into law.

New Mexico

Santa Fe: Democratic Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham has asked the federal Department of Justice to assign more FBI agents to the state in response to violent crime. Lujan Grisham said Wednesday in a statement that she wants to replicate the success of a recent surge in FBI resources and agents in Buffalo, New York. The Sept. 15 letter to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland describes a recent spate of homicides in Albuquerque and says that “additional federal agents are needed to alleviate the current strain on New Mexico’s law enforcement offices.” Lujan Grisham sent a similar request in June to FBI Director Christopher Wray. Lujan Grisham spokeswoman Nora Meyers Sackett said the governor’s office did not receive a response from the Department of Justice as of Wednesday evening. Concerns about crime are a prominent theme in the race for governor ahead of the Nov. 8 general election as Lujan Grisham seeks a second term in office. Republican nominee and former television meteorologist Ronchetti has painted a dire portrait of public safety conditions, railing against the state’s bail system and vowing a different approach to judicial appointments.

New York

Albany: The state police superintendent resigned Friday, days after Gov. Kathy Hochul said he was being investigated for his handling of internal personnel matters. In a statement, Hochul thanked Kevin Bruen for “his years of public service” and said that First Deputy Superintendent Steven Nigrelli will take over as acting superintendent on an interim basis. Bruen had been in charge of the state police since June 2021. A 20-year veteran of the department, he was appointed superintendent by Hochul’s predecessor, Gov. Andrew Cuomo. Bruen’s resignation is effective Oct. 19, the state police said. Hochul told the Albany Times Union’s editorial board on Tuesday that she had ordered her counsel’s office to investigate allegations against Bruen. Among them, according to the newspaper, is whether he had shielded a senior human resources official from complaints about her own handling of personnel issues.

North Carolina

Raleigh: The state’s two top Democratic officials are urging the Republican-led Legislature to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana in light of President Joe Biden’s pardon Thursday of thousands of Americans convicted of “simple possession” under federal law. Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper and Attorney General Josh Stein, the state’s top lawyer who is considering a run for governor in 2024, shared their support for the president’s decision at a Friday task force meeting on racial equity and criminal justice. Established by Cooper in June 2020 after George Floyd’s murder, the 24-member panel of law enforcement officers, attorneys, civil rights advocates and state officials had recommended in a 2020 report that state lawmakers replace the misdemeanor charge for possessing up to 1.5 ounces of marijuana with a civil offense on par with a traffic infraction. The General Assembly did not act on this recommendation. “Conviction of simple possession can mar people’s records for life and maybe even prevent them from getting a job,” Cooper told the task force Friday. “The General Assembly didn’t pass your recommendations on this last session, but I believe they should. North Carolina should take steps to end this stigma.”

North Dakota

Bismarck: The state’s five American Indian tribes are seeking exclusive rights to host internet gambling and sports betting in North Dakota – a monopoly worth millions – just a year after legislators turned aside a push by one big national player to allow gambling in the state. The tribes are turning to Republican Gov. Doug Burgum to approve the idea under tribal-state agreements known as compacts, the first of which was signed in 1992. The current compacts expire at the end of this year, and only Burgum can approve them, said Deb McDaniel, North Dakota’s top gambling regulator. The tribes argue their casinos have been hurt by the explosion of electronic pull tab machines statewide after they were legalized in 2017, with North Dakotans pouring almost $1.75 billion into the machines in fiscal 2022. Their proposal, obtained by the Associated Press, is still in draft form. A public hearing on a final proposal is set for Oct. 21, McDaniel said. DraftKings, a big player in the U.S. mobile gambling market, supported legislation and a failed resolution last year to allow sports betting in North Dakota to join about two dozen other states. The company said at the time that sports wagering already is taking place in North Dakota through illegal offshore markets.

Ohio

Cincinnati: A law banning virtually all abortions will remain blocked while a state constitutional challenge proceeds, a judge said Friday in a ruling that will allow pregnancy terminations through 20 weeks’ gestation to continue for now. Hamilton County Common Pleas Judge Christian Jenkins issued the preliminary injunction from the bench after a daylong hearing where courthouse guards screened spectators, and one abortion provider testified to wearing a Kevlar vest over fears for her safety. In impassioned remarks announcing his decision, Jenkins knocked the state’s arguments that the Ohio Constitution doesn’t ever mention abortion and thus doesn’t protect the right to one. He said a right doesn’t have to be named to be protected. “This court has no difficulty holding that the Ohio Constitution confers a fundamental right on all of Ohioans to privacy, procreation, bodily integrity and freedom of choice in health care decision-making that encompasses the right to abortion,” he said. He said the state failed to prove that the ban on most abortions after detection of fetal cardiac activity is narrowly tailored enough not to infringe on those rights. Rather, Jenkins said, the law is written “to almost completely eliminate the rights of Ohio women. It is not narrowly tailored, not even close.” The state is expected to appeal.

Oklahoma

Blanchard: Jody Miller, whose “Queen of the House” won the 1966 Grammy Award for best country performance by a woman, died Thursday at age 80. Miller died in her hometown, Blanchard, of complications from Parkinson’s disease, according to Universal Music Group, owner of Capitol Records, which released most of her hits. “Queen of the House” was released in 1965 as an answer to Roger Miller’s hit “King of the Road.” The hit opened up a crossover career for Jody Miller, who wasn’t related to the “King of the Road” composer and singer. Her 1965 teen protest song “Home of the Brave” was her biggest-selling single, despite being banned from some radio stations’ playlists. Another hit was “Long Black Limousine,” a song about a man’s funeral procession. In the 1970s, Miller moved to Epic Records, where she had hits with “Baby I’m Yours,” “There’s a Party Goin’ On,” “Darling, You Can Always Come Back Home,” and the Grammy-nominated crossover hit cover of “He’s So Fine.” She retired in the 1980s to spend more time with her husband and children. After her husband’s death, she recorded a 2018 single, “Where My Picture Hangs on the Wall,” with daughter Robin Brooks Sullivan and Miller’s two grandchildren.

Oregon

Portland: A serial rapist is set to be released from prison in mid-December after serving nearly 36 years behind bars, almost all of his maximum sentence. Richard Gillmore, arrested in 1986 and called the “jogger rapist” because he staked out victims as he ran by their homes, admitted to raping nine girls in the Portland area in the 1970s and ’80s but was only convicted in one case because of the statute of limitations. In 1987, a jury found him guilty of raping 13-year-old Tiffany Edens, his last known victim, in December 1986. The Associated Press generally does not name people who have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly. Edens has spoken out about the assault and recently wrote on social media that she received a voicemail in August from the state’s Victim Information and Notification Service telling her of his impending release. “I have been slowly processing the reality of it all,” she wrote. The Oregonian, citing prison officials, reported that Gillmore was transferred in August from Two Rivers Correctional Institution in Umatilla to the minimum-security Columbia River Correctional Institution in Portland to help him prepare for his reentry into the community. He will be 63 at the time of his release in December. KOIN reports Gillmore will remain under supervision until 2034.

Pennsylvania

Pittsburgh: An Italian heritage group has vowed to appeal a judge’s ruling that officials can remove a 13-foot statue of Christopher Columbus from a city park. Attorneys for the Italian Sons and Daughters of America have argued that the mayor doesn’t have the power to override an ordinance passed by the City Council in 1955 that cleared the installation of the 800-pound statue of the explorer. Common Pleas Judge John McVay Jr. ruled about a week ago that because the statue erected in 1958 is in a city-owned park, it represents government speech – citing a 2009 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on a Utah city rejecting a monument proposed for a city park by a religious group. The Italian Sons and Daughters of America filed the lawsuit in October 2020 after the Pittsburgh Art Commission voted to remove the statue. Then-Mayor Bill Peduto then also recommended its removal. McVay had for two years urged the two sides to work toward a solution, including its relocation to a different location. The statue has been vandalized numerous times and is wrapped in plastic. “Based on the court’s ruling, the mayor can put up or take down any statue he wants on any city-owned property without regard for other branches of the city government,” the Italian Sons and Daughters of America argued. “Obviously, this cannot be correct.”

Rhode Island

Providence: The Rhode Island Festival of Children’s Books and Authors returns to an in-person format this year for the first time since 2019, kicking off Friday with a virtual appearance by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor at Lincoln School. Sotomayor, who has written several children’s books in addition to a 2013 memoir, will speak to and answer questions from Rhode Island children. Free signed copies of her books “Just Ask” and “Just Help” will be given to children who attend the 4:30 p.m. event. The festival will continue Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Lincoln School, where participants can listen to 30-minute talks by authors, purchase books and have them signed; make book crafts; and buy lunch from a variety of vendors. Authors and illustrators at the event will be Mary Jane Begin, Gaia Cornwall, Anika Aldamuy Denise, Christopher Denise, Rita Hubbard, Kekla Magoon, Juana Martinez-Neal, Oge Mora, Hayley Rocco, John Rocco, Bob Shea, Melissa Stewart, Chris Van Allsburg and Rhode Island’s poet laureate, Tina Cane, as well as members of Rhode Island Black Storytellers. Admission to the two-hour kickoff event with Sotomayor is free, but space is limited, and advance registration is recommended online. Admission to Saturday’s festival is $5.

South Carolina

Greenville: Write-in U.S. House candidate Lee Turner rallied in downtown Greenville on Saturday to spread the word about her campaign. Turner had no intention of running for Congress, she said, but after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, details of incumbent U.S. Rep. William Timmons’ personal life went viral online, and Democratic candidate Ken Hill dropped out of the race, Turner said: “I’ve got to do something.” Turner said she’s running a campaign based on finding solutions, common ground and bringing elected officials from across the aisle together. “I became more sure that this district needed someone like me, who was a problem solver, versus somebody like Mr. Timmons, who’s just going to tow the party line,” Turner said. While she has run for office as a Democrat in the past, Turner said she is truly an independent who believes people are more alike than they are different and hopes to create legislation with mutual benefits across political ideologies to help the masses. “Mutual benefit is the strongest glue ever,” she said. “It needs no legislation to even sustain itself, but if you do legislate it, it’s not likely to be overturned by the next party in power because it’s mutually beneficial.”

South Dakota

Sioux Falls: A new free online tutoring program is available for K-12 students in the state, administered by the Board of Regents and funded by the Department of Education. The Dakota Dreams Online Tutoring Program is staffed by college students at Black Hills State University and Northern State University who are preparing to become teachers. The program uses a secure online platform for students and tutors to connect for virtual sessions in English, language arts, math, science and social studies. Secretary of Education Tiffany Sanderson said the program will allow K-12 students to receive individualized support after the school day has ended. “Once a parent has registered their child, students can access a tutor from home, the local library or after-school program, or even their favorite coffee shop,” Sanderson said. “I think parents are going to like this one-on-one support as much as their students.” To access the free service, parents first need to register their students to use the platform. Once registered, sessions can either be scheduled in advance or on-demand, depending on tutor availability. Tutors will be available Monday through Sunday afternoons and evenings. The service will not be available on holidays and during Christmas and spring breaks.

Tennessee

Nashville: Country music icon Loretta Lynn was buried in her family’s cemetery on her Hurricane Mills estate Friday morning. The private ceremony of about 100 guests took place in the unincorporated Humphreys County town she bought in the 1960s after achieving worldwide fame with “Coal Miner’s Daughter.” Lynn died Oct. 4 at the age of 90. She left instructions for her funeral ceremonies, including plans for a large memorial where fans will be invited. “A public memorial is being planned,” family spokesperson Ebie McFarland said. “The family did have a private ceremony Friday with no other details available to share at this time.” McFarland said details about the public ceremony will be released soon. Loretta Lynn’s Ranch is one of the largest campgrounds in the state and draws streams of tourists throughout the year to the rural expanse, where she built an event center and other attractions. Lynn, who owned roughly 3,500 acres in Humphreys County, lived in the estate’s mansion until 1988 before turning it into a tourist center and moving into a smaller house on the property. She also built a museum and replica of the Butcher Hollow, Kentucky, cabin where she grew up for tourists to visit.

Texas

Uvalde: The city’s school district suspended its entire police force Friday amid fresh outrage over the hesitant law enforcement response to the gunman who massacred 21 people at Robb Elementary School. The extraordinary move follows the revelation that the district hired a former state trooper who was among hundreds of officers who rushed to the scene of the May 24 shooting. School leaders also put two members of the district police department on administrative leave, one of whom chose to retire instead, according to a statement released by the Uvalde Consolidated Independent School District. Remaining officers will be reassigned to other jobs in the district. Uvalde school leaders’ suspension of campus police operations one month into a new school year in the South Texas community underscores the sustained pressure that families of some of the 19 children and two teachers killed have kept on the district. Brett Cross, the uncle of 10-year-old victim Uziyah Garcia, had been protesting outside the school administration building for two weeks, demanding accountability over officers allowing a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle to remain in a fourth grade classroom for more than 70 minutes. Families have said students in the district are not safe so long as officers who waited so long to confront and kill the gunman remain on the job.

Utah

Salt Lake City: A jury found two animal rights activists not guilty on charges of burglary and theft after they allegedly took two sick piglets from an industrial pig farm. Activists Wayne Hsiung and Paul Picklesimer, with the California-based group Direct Action Everywhere, had argued during their trial that nothing of value was stolen because the 3-week old piglets were in poor condition and likely to die. The not guilty verdict was delivered Saturday following a weeklong trial. The group took a 360-degree virtual reality video of the March 2017 incident at Smithfield Food’s Circle Four Farms near Milford and promoted it online, as part of a tactic known as “open rescue” that’s meant to shed light on abusive farming practices. Investigators used the video to identify the defendants and three other activists who were charged and took plea deals rather than go to trial. Hsiung and Picklesimer faced up to 51/ 2 years in jail if they had been convicted, The Salt Lake Tribune reports. In 2017 a federal court struck down a Utah law banning secret filming at farm and livestock sites, claiming the restrictions were an unconstitutional violation of free speech.

Vermont

Richmond: Residents of a small community were blindsided last month by news that one official in their water department quietly lowered fluoride levels nearly four years ago, giving rise to worries about their children’s dental health and transparent government – and highlighting the enduring misinformation around water fluoridation. Katie Mather, who lives in Richmond, a town of about 4,100 in northwestern Vermont, said at a water commission meeting last week that her dentist recently found her two kids’ first cavities. She acknowledged they eat a lot of sugar but said her dentist recommended against supplemental fluoride because the town’s water should be doing the trick. Her dentist “was operating and making professional recommendations based on state standards we all assumed were being met, which they were not,” Mather said. Kendall Chamberlin, Richmond’s water and wastewater superintendent, told the Water and Sewer Commission in September that he reduced the fluoride level because of his concerns about changes to its sourcing and the recommended levels. He said he worries about quality control in the fluoride used in U.S. drinking systems because it comes from China – an assertion that echoes unfounded reports about Chinese fluoride that have circulated online in recent years.

Virginia

Charlottesville: A Civil War reenactor pleaded not guilty Friday to charges that he planted a pipe bomb at a battlefield in 2017 and threatened to disrupt additional events. A federal indictment against Gerald Leonard Drake, 63, of Winchester, Virginia, was unsealed Thursday. The indictment accuses Drake of planting a pipe bomb at Cedar Creek Battlefield during an annual reenactment in October 2017. The bomb did not detonate but resulted in cancellation of the reenactment after its discovery. The indictment also charges him with writing letters threatening violence at subsequent Cedar Creek reenactments, as well as an annual Remembrance Day Parade in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. At a press conference Thursday announcing the charges, U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Virginia Christopher Kavanaugh said Drake falsely claimed connections to Antifa in his threatening letters not only to hide his actual identity but also to create additional political angst. In reality, according to the indictment, Drake was a Civil War reenactor who regularly participated in events at Cedar Creek until he was expelled from his unit in 2014. The indictment, though, does not explicitly state that bitterness over his expulsion motived his alleged misconduct.

Washington

Olympia National Park: Park officials have closed recreational fishing indefinitely because waters have reached historic lows. The National Park Service announced it would halt all recreational fishing starting Thursday on the Ozette, Bogachiel, South Fork Calawah, Sol Duc, North Fork Sol Duc, Dickey, Quillayute, Hoh, South Fork Hoh, Queets, Salmon and Quinault rivers. The Cedar, Goodman, Kalaloch and Mosquito Creeks within Olympic National Park are also closed, The Seattle Times reports. The region for months has seen above-average temperatures and low rainfall. Seattle has had 0.48 inches of rain from July to September, while the average for that period is 3.16 inches, making it the driest such stretch on record. Park officials said they hope the closure will help protect fish, especially those trying to make upstream spawning migrations in the low water levels.

West Virginia

Morgantown: A West Virginia University fraternity has been cleared of hazing allegations but will be sanctioned separately on other violations, the school said. Pi Kappa Phi and the school agreed to end the fraternity’s interim suspension related to alleged hazing. The chapter will be on deferred suspension through February and lose some privileges through June, the school said Thursday. “In this case, our inquiry found no evidence of hazing, but exposed recruitment and alcohol behaviors which violate our Student Conduct Code,” said Jill Gibson, director of the Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities. The fraternity agreed to participate in education, training and harm reduction programs, WVU said.

Wisconsin

Madison: A Dane County judge refused Friday to issue a temporary order that would allow local election clerks to accept partial witness addresses on absentee ballots. A group called Rise Inc. filed a lawsuit in September seeking a judicial order requiring the Wisconsin Elections Commission to tell local clerks that they must accept ballots as long as the witness address includes enough information that clerks can reasonably discern where the witness can be contacted. The day after the group filed the lawsuit, its attorneys asked Judge Juan Colas to issue a temporary injunction mandating that the commission issue that guidance to clerks. Colas refused to issue the order during a hearing Friday morning, online court records indicate. The case will continue with a scheduling conference set for Oct. 17. Rise Inc., which encourages students to vote, sued after a Waukesha County judge last month sided with Republicans and said clerks are barred from filling in missing witness information on ballot envelopes. The judge struck down guidance the elections commission put in place six years ago, saying nothing in state law allows clerks to do that. The practice was unchallenged until Donald Trump lost Wisconsin to Joe Biden in 2020. About 1.4 million voters cast absentee ballots in that election.

Wyoming

Mammoth Springs: Yellowstone National Park is postponing the opening of a renovated road at its north entrance as it continues to repair the damage from this summer’s catastrophic flooding, the Wyoming Tribune Eagle reports. The park has pushed back the road’s opening date from Oct. 15 to Nov. 1, according to the newspaper, as park officials said they need more time to ensure that over 5,000 feet of guardrail are properly installed for traffic safety. “We have set incredibly aggressive time frames for these repairs, and our contractors have worked at lightning speed to get this road safely reopened,” Yellowstone National Park Superintendent Cam Sholly said in a news release. “It’s essential that we do not cut corners and we ensure the road meets required safety standards prior to opening.” Unprecedented flooding in June severely damaged roads, swept away homes and forced the park to close as it evacuated about 10,000 visitors. The National Park Service said the most significant damage occurred at the Yellowstone’s north and northeast entrances, where access was cut off. The flooding washed out segments of the roadway between the north entrance and Mammoth Hot Springs. To reconnect the two areas, authorities have paved and expanded an old stagecoach route from the 1880s called Old Gardiner Road.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports