Chronicle briefs for Sept. 13
Romney to Retire, Calling For a ‘New Generation’ to lead
WASHINGTON – Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah, the 2012 Republican nominee for president who made a historic break with his party when he voted to remove President Donald Trump from office, announced Wednesday that he would not seek re-election in 2024, saying he wanted to make way for a “new generation of leaders.”
He strongly suggested that Trump, 77, and President Joe Biden, 80, should follow his lead and bow out to pave the way for younger candidates, arguing that neither was effectively leading his party to confront the “critical challenges” the nation faces.
“At the end of another term, I’d be in my mid-80s. Frankly, it’s time for a new generation of leaders,” Romney, 76, said in a video statement. “They’re the ones that need to make the decisions that will shape the world they will be living in.”
The announcement was in some ways the culmination of a long divergence between Romney, a genteel and wealthy former governor and traditional conservative, and the Republican Party, which has veered sharply to the right and embraced a coarser brand of partisanship in recent years.
Elected to the Senate in 2018, Romney has occupied a lonely space in a Capitol where a majority of Republicans remain loyal to Trump – or at least refuse to break with him. Romney has joined an array of bipartisan “gangs” seeking to take on major policy issues – including infrastructure, gun safety and overhauling the Electoral Count Act – but rarely sought to lead those efforts.
Federal Judge Again Rules DACA Is Illegal
A federal judge in Texas again ruled unlawful on Wednesday a program that has shielded hundreds of thousands of undocumented young adults from deportation and allowed them to legally work in the United States, rejecting a new rule that the Biden administration had introduced to address the court’s concerns.
The judge, Andrew S. Hanen of the Federal District Court in Houston, maintained that President Barack Obama exceeded his authority when he created the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA, by executive action in 2012.
The decision is the latest twist in a five-year-long court saga that has left the program and its beneficiaries, known as Dreamers, hanging in the balance. While the ruling is a blow to the immigrants, the judge did not mandate an immediate end to the program. Current applicants will be able to keep and renew their protection. No new applications will be allowed.
“There are no material differences between the two programs,” the judge wrote in his 40-page opinion, adding that his decision did not compel the government to “take any immigration, deportation or criminal action against any DACA recipient.”
The government is almost certain to appeal the decision to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, experts said, and the case is likely to end up in the Supreme Court.
Husband of Rep. Peltola of Alaska dies in plane crash
Eugene Peltola Jr., husband of Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, died after his plane crashed in western Alaska on Tuesday, Peltola’s office said Wednesday.
“We are devastated to share that Mary’s husband, Eugene Peltola Jr. – ‘Buzzy’ to all of us who knew and loved him – passed away earlier this morning following a plane accident in Alaska,” the congresswoman’s communication director, Sam Erickson, said in a statement. “He was one of those people that was obnoxiously good at everything. He had a delightful sense of humor that lightened the darkest moments.”
According to the Federal Aviation Administration, a single-engine Piper PA-18 crashed shortly after takeoff near the western Alaska village of St. Mary’s about 8:45 p.m. local time. Per the FAA, only the pilot was on board.
National Transportation Safety Board Chair Jennifer Homendy said in a briefing Wednesday that preliminary information indicated the plane had carried a hunter and their equipment to a remote, mountainous location 64 miles from St. Mary’s, Alaska. An NTSB team plans to travel to the area with the help of the Alaska Air National Guard.
According to the Alaska Department of Public Safety, two hunters at the scene provided medical care to Peltola. The ADPS incident report states that Peltola died before a rescue team arrived at the scene.
The congresswoman, who was in Washington on Tuesday, returned to Alaska on Wednesday, her office said.
The Peltolas shared seven children and lived in Bethel, Alaska. Eugene Peltola, 57, was a tribal member of the Orutsararmiut Native Council and recently served as director for the Bureau of Indian Affairs Alaska Region. He retired from that position in 2022. He worked in the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for more than three decades.
DA pushes to keep 19 defendants together in Trump case
ATLANTA – The Fulton County District Attorney’s office is urging a judge to keep all 19 defendants in its election racketeering case together, warning that a failure to do so would create a “logistical quagmire” for courthouse staff, witnesses and jurors.
In a brief filed to Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee late Tuesday, prosecutors raised concerns about the case fracturing into multiple courtroom tracks, given that some defendants have demanded a speedy trial.
“The trial of 19 defendants would be feasible within the Fulton County Courthouse, whereas breaking this case up into multiple lengthy trials would create an enormous strain on the judicial resources of the Fulton County Superior Court,” argued DA Fani Willis and assistant DAs Donald Wakeford and Alex Bernick. “The State is capable of trying large and complex cases.”
The brief came in response to a request from McAfee. During a hearing last week, he declined to split off, or sever, co-defendants Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell from one another after both demanded speedy trials. Both Chesebro and Powell are scheduled to go to trial on Oct. 23, while roughly a dozen other defendants have filed motions to sever themselves from some or all of the other parties.
McAfee asked the DA’s office to weigh in on whether Chesebro and Powell should be separated from the other 17 co-defendants, which include former President Donald Trump, ex-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and onetime New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
Flamingos have been spotted across the U.S. Hurricane Idalia may be why
People up and down the East Coast have been surprised to spot wild flamingos. More than 150 flamingos, which typically live south of the United States, have been spotted in unusual states, including Alabama, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Texas and Virginia.
Experts said the birds were probably flying between Cuba and Mexico when they were diverted by Hurricane Idalia, which made landfall in Florida on Aug. 30.
Scot Duncan, the executive director of Alabama Audubon – an organization that protects birds and their habitats – said flamingos get blown off-course by storms and fly to the United States every few years. But it’s unusual when more than a handful of flamingos settle down there, he said.
“To my knowledge, which goes back like 50 years, never anything as spectacular as this (has occurred),” Duncan told The Washington Post. “This is jaw-dropping how many flamingos have been seen.”
After the hurricane swept through the southeast, flamingos were spotted in parts of Florida they don’t normally frequent. While some flamingos live in the Florida Keys and in the Everglades, they’re rare elsewhere in the state, according to Julie Wraithmell, the executive director of Audubon Florida.