A professor at Texas A&M University was fired and others were removed from their positions after a video surfaced in which a student confronted the instructor over her teaching of issues related to gender identity in a class on children's literature.

The firing of Melissa McCoul, a senior lecturer in the English department with over a decade of teaching experience, came after political pressure from Republican lawmakers, including Gov. Greg Abbott, who had called for her termination.

The incident prompted Glenn Hegar, the chancellor of the Texas A&M University System, to order an audit of courses at all 12 schools in the system.

"It is unacceptable for A&M System faculty to push a personal political agenda," Hegar said in a statement on Monday. "We have been tasked with training the next generation of teachers and childcare professionals. That responsibility should prioritize protecting children not engaging in indoctrination."

In an email, McCoul referred all questions to her attorney, Amanda Reichek. Reichek said in a statement that McCoul has appealed her termination and "is exploring further legal action."

"Dr. McCoul was fired in derogation of her constitutional rights and the academic freedom that was once the hallmark of higher education in Texas," Reichek said.

Texas A&M University President Mark A. Welsh III said in a statement Tuesday he directed the campus provost to fire McCoul after learning the instructor had continued teaching content in a children's literature course "that did not align with any reasonable expectation of standard curriculum for the course."

Welsh said the issue had been raised earlier this summer and he had "made it clear to our academic leadership that course content must match catalog descriptions for each and every one of our course sections." Welsh said he learned on Monday that this was not taking place.

"This isn't about academic freedom; it's about academic responsibility," Welsh said.

In her statement, Reichek pushed back on Welsh's claims that McCoul's teaching did not match the course description.

"Professor McCoul's course content was entirely consistent with the catalog and course description, and she was never instructed to change her course content in any way, shape, or form," Reichek said. "In fact, Dr. McCoul taught this course and others like it for many years, successfully and without challenge."

Welsh also ordered the removal of the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the head of the English Department from their administrative positions.

The actions by Texas A&M were criticized by faculty and writers' groups.

"We are witnessing the death of academic freedom in Texas, the remaking of universities as tools of authoritarianism that suppress free thought," Jonathan Friedman, Sy Syms Managing Director of U.S. Free Expression Programs at PEN America, said in a statement.

The Texas chapter of the American Association of University Professors said what happened at Texas A&M University should concern every Texan.

"Not only has the integrity of academic freedom come under fire, but the due process rights of a faculty member have been trampled at the urging of state politicians + the governor himself," the group said in a statement.

The controversy began on Monday after Republican state Rep. Brian Harrison posted a video, audio recordings and other materials on a thread on the social media site X. Harrison called for the professor and Welsh to be fired for "DEI and LGBTQ indoctrination."

In one video, a female student and the professor can be heard arguing over gender identity being taught in a children's literature class. The student and professor are not shown and it's unclear when the video was taken.

"This also very much goes against not only myself but a lot of people's religious beliefs. And so I am not going to participate in this because it's not legal and I don't want to promote something that is against our president's laws as well as against my religious beliefs," the student could be heard saying in the video.

"If you are uncomfortable in this class you do have the right to leave. What we are doing is not illegal," the professor said.

In her back-and-forth with the professor, the student mentioned an executive order that President Donald Trump signed earlier this year in which he said "it is the policy of the United States to recognize two sexes, male and female."

A Texas law took effect on Sept. 1 that forbids Texas K-12 schools from teaching about sexual orientation or gender identity. The law does not apply to universities and other institutions of higher education.

Texas A&M is located in College Station, about 95 miles (153 kilometers) northwest of Houston.

President Donald Trump said Friday he'll send the National Guard to address crime concerns in Memphis with support from the mayor and Tennessee's governor, making it his latest expansion of military forces into American cities that has tested the limits of presidential power and drawn sharp criticism from local leaders.

Speaking on Fox News, Trump said "the mayor is happy" and "the governor is happy" about the pending deployment. The city is "deeply troubled," he said, adding, "we're going to fix that just like we did Washington," where he's sent the National Guard and surged federal law enforcement.

Memphis is a majority-Black city and has a Democratic mayor, who did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Republican Gov. Bill Lee confirmed Friday that he was working with the Trump administration to deploy National Guard troops to Memphis as part of a new crime-fighting mission.

The governor said he planned to speak with the president on Friday to work out details of the mission and was working with Trump's team to determine the most effective roles for the Tennessee National Guard, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Tennessee Highway Patrol, Memphis Police Department and other law enforcement agencies.

Trump on Friday said he decided to send troops into Memphis after Union Pacific's CEO Jim Vena, who used to regularly visit the city when he served on the board of FedEx, urged him earlier this week to address crime in the city.

Since sending the National Guard to Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., Trump has openly mused about sending troops to some of the nation's most Democratic cities including Chicago and Baltimore even as data shows most violent crime in those places and around the country has declined in recent years.

Trump has also suggested he could send troops to New Orleans, another Democratic-run city in a Republican-leaning state.

Crime is down, but troops may be coming

The president's announcement came just days after Memphis police reported decreases across all major crime categories in the first eight months of 2025 compared to the same period in previous years. Overall crime hit a 25-year low, while murder hit a six-year low, police said.

Asked Friday if city and state officials had requested a National Guard deployment -- or had formally signed off on it -- the White House didn't answer. It also didn't offer a possible timeline or say whether federal law enforcement would be surged in connection with a guard deployment to Memphis, as happened when troops were deployed to Washington.

Trump said Friday that he "would have preferred going to Chicago," where local politicians have fiercely resisted his plans, but suggested the city was too "hostile" with "professional agitators."

Officials in Tennessee appear divided

Republican state Sen. Brent Taylor, who backs the Memphis troop deployment, said Friday the National Guard could provide "administrative and logistical support" to law enforcement and allow local officers to focus on policework. Republican U.S. Sen. Marsha Blackburn also voiced her approval.

The Democratic mayor of Shelby County, which includes the city of Memphis, criticized Trump's proposal. "Mr. President, no one here is 'happy,'" said Mayor Lee Harris. "Not happy at all with occupation, armored vehicles, semi-automatic weapons, and military personnel in fatigues."

Republican Gov. Bill Lee said Wednesday that an ongoing FBI operation alongside state and local law enforcement had already made "hundreds of arrests targeting the most violent offenders." He also said there are record levels of Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers in Shelby County, including a newly announced additional 50 troopers.

"We are actively discussing the next phase of our strategy to accelerate the positive momentum that's already underway, and nothing is off the table," Lee said in the statement.

On Thursday, Memphis Mayor Paul Young said he learned earlier this week that the governor and Trump were considering the deployment in Memphis.

"I am committed to working to ensure any efforts strengthen our community and build on our progress," Young's statement said. What the city needs most, he said, is money for intervention and crime prevention, as well as more officers on patrol and support for bolstering the police department's investigations.

Some Republicans, including Taylor, the state senator, have asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to audit the Memphis Police Department's crime reporting.

Trump's broader National Guard strategy

Trump first deployed troops to Los Angeles in early June over Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom's objections by putting the California National Guard under federal jurisdiction, known as Title 10, to protect federal property from protests over immigration raids. The guard later helped protect officers during immigration arrests.

Alongside 4,000 guard members, 700 active duty Marines were also sent, and California sued over the intervention.

In Washington, D.C., where the president directly commands the National Guard, Trump has used troops for everything from armed patrols to trash cleanup without any legal issues.

RELATED STORY | Trump renews National Guard threat to Chicago, citing weekend killings

Chicago is on edge

Trump's comments underscored his shift away from threats to send troops into Chicago. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker and Mayor Brandon Johnson, both Democrats, vowed legal action to block any such move.

Pritzker, a potential 2028 presidential contender, has said a federal intervention is not justified or wanted in Chicago. U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi this week accused state leaders of being uncooperative.

"We want Chicago to ask us for the help and they're not going to do that," she told reporters after an unrelated event near Chicago where federal agents seized vaping products.

Even without National Guard troops, residents in Chicago are expecting more federal immigration enforcement. The Department of Homeland Security launched a new operation this week, with federal officials confirming 13 people with prior criminal arrests had been detained. However, it's still unclear what role that operation would play more broadly.

The United States Naval Academy in Maryland was on lockdown Thursday as law enforcement responded to reports of threats made to the military school, officials said.

The academy in Annapolis was working with local law enforcement to respond to the reports of threats, Lt. Naweed Lemar, the spokesperson for the base that hosts the academy, said in a statement.

The base is on lockdown out of an abundance of caution, he said. "This is a developing situation and we will provide updates as they become available.

Police were near Bancroft Hall, which houses midshipmen in its more than 1,600 dorm rooms. It is considered the biggest single college dormitory in the world, according to the school's website.

Senate Republicans took the first steps to change the chambers rules on Thursday, moving to make it easier to confirm groups of President Donald Trumps nominees after last-minute negotiations with Democrats fell apart.

Senate Majority Leader John Thunes move is the latest salvo after a dozen years of gradual changes by both parties to weaken the filibuster and make the nominations process more partisan. He has said the Democrats obstruction is unsustainable as they have drawn out the confirmation process and infuriated Trump as many positions in his administration have remained unfilled.

The Senate on Thursday evening moved forward on the proposed rule change with a 45-53 party line vote. The new rules would allow the Senate to move some of Trumps nominees in groups of 48 at a time.

Republicans had delayed the votes for almost five hours on Thursday afternoon as a bipartisan group of senators tried to work out a deal that could be beneficial to both parties. But they cut those talks short amid an impasse as Democrats asked for more time to negotiate.

How much time is enough? Thune, R-S.D., angrily asked Democrats as he moved to resume votes. He said that the deal was based on a Democratic proposal when President Joe Biden was in office and that the two parties had already been negotiating for weeks.

Weve got to fix this, Thune said. Its time to vote.

RELATED STORY | Senate GOP eyes rule change to fast-track Trump nominee confirmations

Having abandoned the bipartisan talks, Republicans advanced their original plan to hold several procedural votes that allow them to change the Senate rules for confirming presidential nominees. As part of the vote series, they will ask to appeal the chair, or change the rules, which takes a simple majority vote.

Republicans will have to go through additional procedural steps next week for the process to be complete. And if all goes according to their plan, the first tranche of Trump's nominees undersecretaries and staff positions for various agencies across the government as well as several ambassadors could be confirmed as soon as next Thursday.

The rules change effort comes as both parties have obstructed the others nominees for years, and as both Republicans and Democrats have advocated speeding the process when they are in the majority. The Republican rules change stops short of speeding up votes on high-level Cabinet officials and lifetime judicial appointments.

Republicans have been pushing the rules change since early August, when the Senate left for a monthlong recess after a breakdown in bipartisan negotiations over the confirmation process and Trump told Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to GO TO HELL! on social media.

Democrats have blocked more nominees than ever before as they have struggled to find ways to oppose Trump and the GOP-dominated Congress, and as their voters have pushed them to fight Republicans at every turn. Its the first time in recent history that the minority party hasnt allowed at least some quick confirmations.

Schumer has said Democrats are delaying the nominations because Trumps nominees are historically bad.

If you dont debate nominees, if you dont vote on individual nominees, if theres not some degree of sunlight, what will stop Donald Trump from nominating even worse individuals than weve seen to date, knowing this chamber will rubber stamp anything he wishes? Schumer said Monday.

Still, Democrats continued talks with Republicans into Thursday afternoon as Republicans delayed their votes. The two sides discussed a compromise that would have limited the groups of nominees to 15 and shortened the length of debate.

But in the end, they were not able to agree. Democratic Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii said they were achingly close to a deal.

But I am afraid my colleagues on the other side of the aisle have run out of patience, he added.

The Senate is stuck, said Oklahoma Sen. James Lankford, a Republican who led the negotiations. The challenge is this body has just broken down trust.

Schumer has told Republicans that they will come to regret their action echoing a similar warning from GOP Leader Mitch McConnell to then-Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., in 2013, when Democrats changed Senate rules for executive branch and lower court judicial nominees to remove the 60-vote threshold for confirmations. At the time, Republicans were blocking President Barack Obamas picks.

Republicans took the Senate majority a year later, and McConnell eventually did the same for Supreme Court nominees in 2017 as Democrats tried to block Trumps nomination of Justice Neil Gorsuch.

I say to my Republican colleagues, think carefully before taking this step, Schumer said.

The Trump administration has asked an appeals court to remove Lisa Cook from the Federal Reserves board of governors by Monday, before the central banks next vote on interest rates.

Trump sought to fire Cook Aug. 25, but a federal judge ruled late Tuesday that the removal was illegal and reinstated her to the Feds board. Trump has accused Cook of mortgage fraud because she appeared to claim two properties as primary residences in July 2021, before she joined the board. Such claims can lead to a lower mortgage rate and smaller down payment than if one of them was declared as a rental property or second home. Cook has denied the charges.

On Tuesday, U.S. District Court Judge Jia Cobb ruled that the administration had not satisfied a requirement that Fed governors can only be fired for cause, which she said was limited to misconduct while in office. Cook did not join the Feds board until 2022.

RELATED STORY | Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook sues Trump administration over attempt to fire her

In their emergency appeal, Trumps lawyers argued that even if the conduct occurred before her time as governor, her alleged actions indisputably calls into question Cooks trustworthiness and whether she can be a responsible steward of the interest rates and economy.

They asked an appeals court to issue an emergency decision reversing the lower court by Monday. The Fed begins its next meeting Tuesday, and will announce a decision on interest rates on Wednesday. The central bank is almost certain to reduce its benchmark rate at that meeting by a quarter-point, to about 4.1%.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendezs wife told a judge that her husband was not the man I thought he was before she was sentenced Thursday to 4 years in prison for selling the powerful New Jersey politicians influence in exchange for bribes of cash, gold bars and a luxury car.

U.S. District Judge Sidney H. Stein sentenced Nadine Menendez, 58, after she was convicted in April of colluding from 2018 to 2023 with her husband, the former Democratic chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, in a variety of corrupt schemes, some involving assisting the Egyptian government.

Sobbing as she addressed the judge shortly before she was sentenced, Nadine Menendez described her husband as a manipulative liar.

I put my life in his hands and he strung my like a puppet, she said. The blindfold is off. I now know hes not my savior. Hes not the man I thought he was.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | Ex-New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez begins serving 11-year bribery sentence

Stein told the defendant that she wasn't the person she was portrayed as during last year's trial of her husband and two New Jersey businessmen, when the judge said she was painted as as manipulative, hungry for money and the true force behind the conspiracies.

But he said she also wasn't the innocent observer of what was happening around you, as she was portrayed by her lawyer at her trial.

You knew what you were doing. Your role was purposeful, he said.

When she spoke, Nadine Menendez partly blamed her husband, saying she was duped by his power and stature and that she felt compelled to do whatever he wanted, such as calling or meeting with certain people.

I would never have imagined someone of his ranking putting me in this position, she said, though she acknowledged that in retrospect, she was a grown woman and should have known better.

Prior to the hearing, Bob Menendez submitted a letter to the judge saying he regretted that he didnt fully preview what his lawyer said about his wife during his trial and in closing arguments.

To suggest that Nadine was money hungry or in financial need, and therefore would solicit others for help, is simply wrong, he wrote.

In addition to prison time, Stein sentenced Nadine Menendez to three years of supervised release. He said he granted her leniency in part because of the trial she endured, her difficult childhood in Lebanon, her abusive romantic partners, her health conditions and her age.

Stein said a prison term was important for general deterrence purposes: People have to understand there are consequences."

IN RELATED NEWS | DOJ: Menendez connected Qatari royal with NJ businessman for profit

Nadine Menendez wont have to surrender to prison until next summer. Stein set a reporting date of July 10, accommodating a defense request that she be allowed to remain free to complete necessary medical procedures before she heads behind bars. Federal prosecutors did not object to the request.

Prosecutors had sought a prison sentence of at least seven years.

Her lawyer, Sarah Krissoff, asked that she serve only a year behind bars, citing her difficult recovery from breast cancer, which was diagnosed just prior to last year's trial, when she was to be tried along with her husband. She ended up being tried separately.

Bob Menendez, 71, is serving an 11-year sentence after his conviction on charges of taking bribes, extortion, and acting as an agent of the Egyptian government.

Prosecutors say Nadine Menendez played a large and crucial role in her husbands crimes, serving as an intermediary between the senator and three New Jersey businessmen who literally lined his coat pockets with tens of thousands of dollars in cash in return for favors he could deliver with his political clout.

During a 2022 FBI raid on the couple's New Jersey home, investigators found $480,000 in cash, gold bars worth an estimated $150,000 and a luxury convertible in the garage.

Prosecutors said that, among his other corrupt acts, the senator met with Egyptian intelligence officials and speeded that country's access to U.S. military aid as part of a complex effort to help his bribe-paying associates, one of whom had business dealings with the Egyptian government.

The NCAA banned three men's college basketball players for sports betting on Wednesday, saying they had bet on their own games at Fresno State and San Jose State and were able to share thousands of dollars in payouts.

The NCAA Committee on Infractions released findings from an enforcement investigation that concluded Mykell Robinson, Steven Vasquez and Jalen Weaver bet on one another's games and/or provided information that enabled others to do so during the 2024-25 regular season; two of them manipulated their performances to ensure certain bets were won. The eligibility was permanently revoked.

The NCAA said a sports integrity monitoring service in January notified Fresno State and NCAA enforcement staff that a Nevada sportsbook operator had flagged suspicious prop bets on Robinson. The investigation began a week later. The Associated Press could not immediately locate the former players for comment.

RELATED STORY | NCAA head warns of the dark side of college sports gambling

According to the NCAA, Robinson and Vasquez had been roommates at Fresno State during the 2023-24 season. In January 2025, Robinson and Vasquez, now at San Jose State, discussed over text message that Robinson planned to underperform in several statistical categories during a regular-season game. Robinson also placed multiple bets on Weaver, his teammate at Fresno State in 2024-25, the NCAA found.

The game that drew attention to Robinson was Fresno State's Jan. 7 matchup with Colorado State. The NCAA said he had three bets based on his his performance one was $200 to win $1,450; the second was $800 to win $5,800; and the third was $1,200 to win $8,700.

Investigators found that before that game, Robinson told his mother to transfer money by Apple Pay to Vasquez so Vasquez could coordinate a $200 bet on Robinson's under-line for Robinson. After the game, the NCAA said, Vasquez helped Robinson transfer $1,425 of the winnings to Robinson's mother. On Jan. 10, Vasquez provided $200 to Robinson.

Also last season, Robinson placed 13 daily fantasy sports over-line and under-line prop bets totaling $454 on parlays that included his own performance. He collected $618 on one occasion, the NCAA said.

Robinson placed bets on Weaver before a game in late December 2024 after he and Weaver exchanged information about their respective betting lines, the NCAA said. Weaver also placed a $50 prop bet on a parlay for himself, Robinson and a third athlete, and he won $260.

Vasquez and Robinson failed to cooperate with the enforcement staff's investigation, the NCAA said. Weaver cooperated and agreed to the violation in his case.

All three were released from their respective teams and are no longer enrolled at their previous schools. Neither school was punished.

Fresno State said it cooperated willingly with the NCAA.

"The university proactively shared reported information concerning sports wagering activity with the NCAA and worked collaboratively with the NCAA staff throughout the investigation," the school said in a statement. "While the eligibility consequences for the former student-athletes are significant, the case ultimately resulted in a Level III/Secondary violation and no sanctions for the institution. The university continues to have confidence in the Fresno State Athletics' culture and is grateful to conclude this matter."

San Jose State said in a statement that it is aware of the decision and noted that Vasquez had already been removed from the roster several months ago. He graduated in May 2025.

The latest case comes eight years after a 2017 federal investigation into off-the-books payments to players and their families that, at the time, was against NCAA rules and one of the biggest scandals in the sport's history.

Since then, the growth of legalized gambling across the United States has raised concerns for college sports leaders and there have been allegations against schools involving betting, including some against three other basketball programs earlier this year.

The NCAA in June said that "several sports betting-related violations by staff members at NCAA schools" have been resolved in recent years and noted its enforcement staff was working on issuing notices of allegations in several ongoing gambling cases.

"The enforcement staff's sports betting-related caseload has significantly increased in recent years, and our staff including our new sports betting integrity unit has been effective in detecting and pursuing violations," Jon Duncan, NCAA vice president of enforcement, said then.

The nation's largest college sports organization, overseeing some 500,000 athletes, also said it was considering a proposal that would allow athletes and staff members to bet on professional sports and shift enforcement efforts to college sports betting and "behaviors that directly impact game integrity." The Division I Council introduced the proposal that will be considered this fall and be implemented if Divisions II and III officials also approve.

Current NCAA rules do not allow athletes or institutional staff to engage in sports betting for any sports that have NCAA championships; bets by an athlete on their own team or own sport risks a lifetime ban from college athletics. Those rules would not change under the pending proposal.

They were careful with the explicit imagery as usual. But did it make any difference?

Traditional news organizations were cautious in their midafternoon coverage of Charlie Kirk's assassination Wednesday not to depict the moment he was shot, instead showing video of him tossing a hat to his audience moments before, and panicked onlookers scattering wildly in the moments after.

In practical terms, though, it mattered little. Gory video of the shooting was available almost instantly online, from several angles, in slow-motion and real-time speed. Millions of people watched.

Video was easy to find on X, on Facebook, on TikTok, on Instagram, on YouTube even on Truth Social, where President Donald Trump posted official word of the conservative activist's death. It illustrated how the "gatekeeping" role of news organizations has changed in the era of social media.

Scripps News reached out to leaders at X to ask about their efforts to stop the spread of graphic videos and images, if any, and have not heard back.

Kirk was shot at a public event before hundreds of people at a Utah college campus, many of them holding up phones to record a celebrity in their midst and savvy about how to disseminate video evidence of a news event.

On X, there was a video showing a direct view of Kirk being shot, his body recoiling and blood gushing from a wound. One video was a loop showing the moment of impact in slow-motion, stopping before blood is seen. Another, taken from Kirk's left, included audio that suggested Kirk was talking about gun violence at the moment he was shot.

For more than 150 years, news organizations like newspapers and television networks have long been accustomed to "gatekeeping" when it comes to explicit content making editorial decisions around violent events to decide what images and words appear on their platforms for their readers or viewers. But in the fragmented era of social media, smartphones and instant video uploads, editorial decisions by legacy media are less impactful than ever.

RELATED STORY | Trump to honor Charlie Kirk with posthumous Medal of Freedom after fatal shooting

Images spread across the country

Across the country in Ithaca, New York, college professor Sarah Kreps' teenage sons texted her about Kirk's assassination shortly after school was dismissed and they could access their phones.

No, she told them. He was shot, but there were no reports that he had died. Her son answered: Have you seen the video? There's no way he could have survived that.

The videos were posted and reposted at lightning speed. One person on X urged "stop the violence" but then included a clip of the shooting. Several people took to social media to plead for people not to spread the images. "For the love of God and Charlie's family," read one message, "just stop."

YouTube said it was removing "some graphic content" related to the event if it doesn't provide sufficient context, and restricting videos so they could not be seen by users under age 18 or those who are not signed in, the company said.

"Our hearts are with Charlie Kirk's family following his tragic death," YouTube said. "We are closely monitoring our platform and prominently elevating news content on the homepage, in search and in recommendations to help people stay informed."

Meta's rules don't prohibit posting videos like Kirk's shooting, but warning labels are applied and they are not shown to users who say they are under 18. The parent company of Instagram, Facebook and Threads referred a reporter to the company's policies on violent and graphic content, which they indicated would apply in this case, but had no further comment. An X representative did not immediately return a request for comment.

It's an issue social media companies have dealt with before, in equally gruesome circumstances. Facebook was forced to contend with people wanting to livestream violence with a mass shooting in New Zealand in 2019, said Cornell University's Kreps, author of the forthcoming book, "Harnessing Disruption: Building the Tech Future Without Breaking Society."

RELATED STORY | Who is Charlie Kirk? What we know about the conservative political influencer

Getting to the other side

Some images seeped out into more traditional media. TMZ posted a video of Kirk in which a shot and a voice saying, "Oh, my God," can be heard, but Kirk's upper body was blurred out. A similar video with a blurred image of Kirk was posted on the New York Post's website.

In such an atmosphere, the care shown by most traditional news outlets may seem quaint or old-fashioned. But news industry leaders are acutely aware of protecting people from graphic images when they are not expecting it; happening upon them is a little harder online, where many people have to search for and click on an image if they want to see it if it hasn't already been sent to you or your group chat.

There can also be an important message sent by news outlets being cautious in what they show, Kreps said. "The traditional media can amplify and validate behavior," she said. "It can be a signal for how things should be stigmatized, rather than validated or normalized."

But on the day of the shooting in a politically polarized country, the easy availability of shocking images ran the risk of making society's wound even more painful.

"I don't see how many signs of how we get as a people, as a nation to the other side of this," said CNN's David Chalian. "I think we are broken, and potentially beyond repair."

In a close vote, Senate Republicans defeated an effort Wednesday by Democrats to insert language into Congress' annual defense authorization bill that would have forced the public release of case files on the sex trafficking investigation into the late Jeffrey Epstein.

The Senate voted 51-49 to dismiss the changes to the bill, with Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Rand Paul of Kentucky joining with all Democrats in opposition.

For months, Democrats have clamored for the release of what's become known as the Epstein files, looking for practically every opportunity to force Republicans to either join their push for disclosure or publicly oppose a cause that many in the Republican base support.

RELATED STORY | House panel releases lewd Epstein letter that Trump denies signing

President Donald Trump signaled, as he was running for presiden,t that he was open to releasing a full accounting of the case, but is now trying to dismiss the push as a "Democrat hoax."

So far, Democrats have been successful in forcing Republican leadership to grapple with the issue, yet it was unclear whether they would actually be able to crack Trump's hold on congressional Republicans to force legislation through Congress.

"I ask my Republican colleagues, after all those years you spent calling for accountability, for transparency, for getting to the bottom of these awful crimes, why won't you vote yes?" Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said in a floor speech Wednesday.

The New York Democrat maneuvered earlier Wednesday to force a procedural vote on language that would force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files, inserting it into an annual defense policy bill that Congress has to pass. Senate Republican leadership was then forced to hold a vote to dispense with Schumer's amendment, arguing that he was inserting political gamesmanship into defense legislation that often enjoys bipartisan support.

RELATED STORY | House Oversight Committee releases tens of thousands of pages of Epstein records

"This is not the right way to do it," said Sen. Mike Rounds, a South Dakota Republican.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune said earlier this week that the Justice Department "has already released tons of files" on Epstein.

"I trust them in terms of having the confidence that they'll get as much information out there as possible in a way that protects the rights of the victims," added Thune, R-S.D.

Still, many in the Republican base as well as some victims of Epstein's abuse have been unsatisfied with what the Justice Department has so far released.

The calls for disclosure of Epstein's case have, at moments, consumed Congress, looming over politics even more than when Epstein killed himself in a Manhattan jail while awaiting trial in 2019 on charges that said he sexually abused and trafficked dozens of underage girls. The case was brought more than a decade after he secretly cut a deal with federal prosecutors in Florida to dispose of nearly identical allegations. Epstein was accused of paying underage girls hundreds of dollars in cash for massages and then molesting them.

Asked by reporters on Wednesday why Democrats had not pushed for disclosure when they controlled the White House, Schumer responded, "It's become so apparent that they're lying about it in every different way and the demands of the American people are so great."

"The need is greater than ever now," he added.

Meanwhile, a separate effort to force a vote on a similar bill in the House inched ahead.

Democrats picked up one more House seat when Rep. James Walkinshaw, D-Va., was sworn into office after winning a special election this week. It gives them one more supporter for a procedure called a discharge petition to maneuver around Republican leadership's control of the House floor and hold a vote on legislation to force the Justice Department to release the Epstein files.

Four Republicans have also signed onto the discharge petition, meaning that it is just one name short of having the support needed to potentially force a vote. That could come as soon as the end of this month when a heavily blue congressional district in Arizona holds a special election to fill a vacant seat.

The fatal shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk at an event in Utah had particular resonance for public figures who have experienced political violence themselves.

Kirk, who served as chief executive and cofounder of the youth organization Turning Point USA, made frequent appearances on college campuses and in other settings, engaging in political dialogue with students in public settings.

RELATED STORY | Scripps News Investigates: A surge of political violence in America

Several leaders who have survived public attacks or had family members victimized joined in bipartisan condemnation of the attack on Kirk.

Nancy Pelosi

The former House speaker's husband was seriously injured at their California home in 2022 by a man wielding a hammer, who authorities said was a believer in conspiracy theories.

Pelosi, a Democrat, posted that the horrific shooting today at Utah Valley University is reprehensible. Political violence has absolutely no place in our nation.

Donald Trump

The president sustained a minor ear injury when he was shot at a campaign event last year. He was also the target of a failed assassination attempt while playing golf in Florida. He had a close relationship with Kirk and announced his passing Wednesday on his Truth Social site.

Trump described Kirk on Truth Social as a great guy from top to bottom. GOD BLESS HIM!

He also posted, No one understood or had the Heart of the Youth in the United States of America better than Charlie."

Gabrielle Giffords

The former U.S. representative, a Democrat, suffered a serious brain injury from a 2011 shooting while meeting with constituents at a shopping center in her Arizona congressional district. She survived and has taken up the cause of fighting gun violence.

Giffords posted on social media that she was horrified to hear of Kirks shooting.

Democratic societies will always have political disagreements," she wrote, "but we must never allow America to become a country that confronts those disagreements with violence."

Steve Scalise

The House majority leader, a Louisiana Republican, was shot at practice for a charity baseball game involving members of Congress in the Virginia suburbs in 2017. The man who attacked Scalise had grievances against Trump and Republicans and was later fatally shot by police.

Scalise asked people on the social media platform X to please join me in praying for Charlie Kirk after this senseless act.

Josh Shapiro

The Pennsylvania governor, a Democrat and potential national candidate, was evacuated with his family from the governor's mansion earlier this year after a man broke into the building and set a fire that caused significant damage.

We must speak with moral clarity," Shapiro wrote on X. "The attack on Charlie Kirk is horrifying and this growing type of unconscionable violence cannot be allowed in our society.

Gretchen Whitmer

The Michigan governor, a Democrat, was the subject of a failed kidnapping plot by right-wing extremists who hoped to ignite a civil war. Two men were imprisoned for their 2020 attempt to kidnap the governor during her first term.

We should all come together to stand up against any and all forms of political violence," Whitmer wrote on social media.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

The Health and Human Services secretary appeared to invoke his familys losses as he reacted to Kirks killing. Kennedys father, for whom he was named, was assassinated in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy Sr. was an outspoken critic of the Vietnam War and an advocate for civil rights legislation as attorney general during his brothers presidency and after John F. Kennedys assassination in 1963.

Once again, a bullet has silenced the most eloquent truth teller of an era, Kennedy wrote on social media. He called Kirk a relentless and courageous crusader for free speech.

NASAs Mars rover Perseverance has uncovered rocks in a dry river channel that may hold potential signs of ancient microscopic life, scientists reported Wednesday.

They stressed that in-depth analysis is needed of the sample gathered there by Perseverance ideally in labs on Earth before reaching any conclusions.

While acknowledging the latest analysis certainly is not the final answer, NASAs science mission chief Nicky Fox said its the closest weve actually come to discovering ancient life on Mars."

Roaming Mars since 2021, the rover cannot directly detect life, past or present. Instead, it carries a drill to penetrate rocks and tubes to hold the samples gathered from places judged most suitable for hosting life billions of years ago. The samples are awaiting retrieval to Earth an ambitious plan that's on hold as NASA seeks cheaper, quicker options.

Calling it an exciting discovery, a pair of scientists who were not involved in the study SETI Institutes Janice Bishop and the University of Massachusetts Amhersts Mario Parente were quick to point out that non-biological processes could be responsible.

"Thats part of the reason why we cant go so far as to say, A-ha, this is proof positive of life,' lead researcher Joel Hurowitz of Stony Brook University told The Associated Press. All we can say is one of the possible explanations is microbial life, but there could be other ways to make this set of features that we see.

Either way, Hurowitz said its the best, most compelling candidate yet in the rovers search for potential signs of long-ago life. It was the 25th sample gathered; the tally is now up to 30. The findings appeared in the journal Nature.

It would be amazing to be able to demonstrate conclusively that these features were formed by something that was alive on another planet billions of years ago, right?" Hurowitz said. But even if that's not the case, it's "a valuable lesson in all of the ways that nature can conspire to fool us.

Collected last summer, the sample is from reddish, clay-rich mudstones in Neretva Vallis, a river channel that once carried water into Jezero Crater. This outcrop of sedimentary rock, known as the Bright Angel formation, was surveyed by Perseverances science instruments before the drill came out.

Along with organic carbon, a building block of life, Hurowitz and his team found minuscule specks, dubbed poppy seeds and leopard spots, that were enriched with iron phosphate and iron sulfide. On Earth, these chemical compounds are the byproducts when microorganisms chomp down on organic matter.

RELATED STORY | Apollo 13 moon mission leader James Lovell dies at 97

There is no evidence of microbes on Mars today, but if any had been present on ancient Mars, they too might have reduced sulfate minerals to form sulfides in such a lake at Jezero Crater, Bishop and Parente wrote in an accompanying editorial.

There's no evidence of present-day life on Mars, but NASA over the decades has sent spacecraft to Mars in search of past watery environments that might have supported life way back when.

When Perseverance launched in 2020, NASA expected the samples back on Earth by the early 2030s. But that date slipped into the 2040s as costs swelled to $11 billion, stalling the retrieval effort.

Until the samples are transported off of Mars by robotic spacecraft or astronauts, scientists will have to rely on Earthly stand-ins and lab experiments to evaluate the feasibility of ancient Martian life, according to Hurowitz.

NASA's acting Administrator Sean Duffy said budgets and timing will dictate how best to proceed, and even raised the possibility of sending sophisticated equipment to Mars to analyze the samples on the red planet. All options are on the table, he said.

Ten of the titanium sample tubes gathered by Perseverance were placed on the Martian surface a few years ago as a backup to the rest aboard the rover, all part of NASAs still fuzzy return mission.

Protesters blocked roads, lit blazes and were met with volleys of tear gas on Wednesday in Paris and elsewhere in France, heaping pressure on President Emmanuel Macron and making new Prime Minister Sbastien Lecornu 's first day in office a baptism of fire.

The government announced hundreds of arrests, as demonstrations against Macron, budget cuts and other complaints spread to big cities and small towns.

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT | French government collapses in a confidence vote, forcing Macron to seek yet another prime minister

Although falling short of its self-declared intention to Block Everything, the protest movement that started online over the summer caused widespread hot spots of disruption, defying an exceptional deployment of 80,000 police who broke up barricades and swiftly took people into custody.

Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau said that a bus was set on fire in the western city of Rennes. In the southwest, fire damage to electrical cables stopped train services on one line and disrupted traffic on another, transport authorities said.

Spreading protests

The Bloquons Tout, or Block Everything, protests, while mobilizing tens of thousands of people, nevertheless appeared less intense than previous bouts of unrest that have sporadically rocked Macron in both his first and ongoing second term as president. They included months of nationwide so-called yellow vest demonstrations against economic injustice in 2018-2019.

After his reelection in 2022, Macron also faced firestorms of anger over unpopular pension reforms and nationwide unrest and rioting in 2023 after the deadly police shooting of a teenager on Paris outskirts.

Still, demonstrations and sporadic clashes with riot police in Paris and elsewhere Wednesday added to a sense of crisis that has again gripped France following its latest government collapse on Monday, when Prime Minister Franois Bayrou lost a parliamentary confidence vote.

The protests immediately presented a challenge to Bayrou's replacement, Lecornu, installed Wednesday.

Another from the right

Groups of protesters who repeatedly tried to block Paris' beltway during the morning rush hour were dispersed by police using tear gas. Elsewhere in the capital, protesters piled up trash cans and hurled objects at police officers. Firefighters were called out to a fire in a restaurant in the downtown Chtelet neighborhood, where thousands of protesters gathered peacefully.

By evening, the government said police had made over 450 arrests nationwide, including over 200 in Paris, with over 300 people in custody and over a dozen officers lightly injured. It counted over 800 protest actions across the country over 500 rallies and over 250 street fires and warned that tensions were flaring in Rennes, Nantes and Paris after officers came under attack. The ministry put turnout at 175,000, while the CGT union, one of Frances largest labor confederations, claimed closer to a quarter-million.

Road blockades, traffic slowdowns and other protests were widely spread from the southern port city of Marseille to Lille and Caen in the north, and Nantes and Rennes in the west to Grenoble and Lyon in the southeast. Authorities reported demonstrations in small towns, too.

Afternoon gatherings of thousands of people in central Paris were peaceful and good-humored, with placards taking aim at Macron and his new prime minister.

Lecornu, youre not welcome, read a placard brandished by a group of graphic design students. Another read: "Macron explosion."

One prime minister has just been ousted and straight away we get another from the right, said student Baptiste Sagot, 21. They're trying to make working people, young students, retirees all people in difficulty bear all the effort instead of taxing wealth.

A weary nation

Frances prolonged cycle of political instability, with Macrons minority governments lurching from crisis to crisis, has fueled widespread discontent.

Paris protester Aglawen Vega, a nurse and public hospital union delegate, said anger that fueled the yellow-vest protests never went away and that she wanted to defend Frances public services from privatization.

Were governed by robbers, she said. People are suffering, are finding it harder and harder to last out the month, to feed themselves. Were becoming an impoverished nation.

Some criticized the disruptions.

It's a bit excessive, said Bertrand Rivard, an accounting worker on his way to a meeting in Paris. "We live in a democracy and the people should not block the country because the government doesn't take the right decisions.

Block Everything" gathered momentum over the summer on social media and encrypted chats, including on Telegram. Pavel Durov, Telegram's Russian-born founder now under investigation in France for alleged criminal activity on the messaging app., said he is proud the platform was used to organize anti-Macron rallies.

The movement's call for a day of blockades, strikes, boycotts, demonstrations and other acts of protest came as Bayrou was preparing plans to massively slash public spending by $51 billion to rein in France's growing deficit and trillions in debts. He also proposed the elimination of two public holidays from the countrys annual calendar which proved wildly unpopular.

Lecornu, who previously served as defense minister, now inherits the task of addressing France's budget difficulties, facing the same political instability and widespread hostility to Macron that contributed to Bayrou's undoing.

Macron's governments have been on particularly shaky ground since he dissolved the National Assembly last year, triggering an unscheduled legislative election that stacked the lower house of parliament with his opponents.

Spontaneous movement

Block Everything" grew virally online with no clear identified leadership and a broad array of complaints many targeting budget cuts, broader inequality and Macron himself.

Retailleau, a conservative who allied with Macron's centrist camp to serve as interior minister in Bayrou's government and is now in a caretaker role until Lecornu puts his Cabinet together, alleged Wednesday that left-wing radicals hijacked the protest movement, even though it has an apparent broad range of supporters. Appeals for non-violence accompanied its online protest calls.

Retailleau alleged that elected politicians who have backed the movement are attempting to create a climate of insurrection in France and he said some protesters appeared hell-bent on fighting with police.

We have, in fact, small groups that are seasoned, mobile, often wearing masks and hoods, dressed in black, which in reality are the recognized signs, the DNA, of ... extreme-left and ultra-left movements, Retailleau said.

The spontaneity of Block Everything is reminiscent of the yellow vests. That movement started with workers camping out at traffic circles to protest a hike in fuel taxes, sporting high-visibility vests. It quickly spread to people across political, regional, social and generational divides angry at economic injustice and Macrons leadership.

Three high-ranking FBI officials were fired last month in a "campaign of retribution" carried out by a director who knew better but caved to political pressure from the Trump administration so he could keep his own position, according to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday that seeks reinstatement of the agents.

The complaint asserts that Director Kash Patel indicated directly to one of the ousted agents, Brian Driscoll, that he knew the firings were "likely illegal" but was powerless to stop them because the White House and the Justice Department were determined to remove all agents who helped investigate President Donald Trump. It quotes Patel as having told Driscoll in a conversation last month, "the FBI tried to put the president in jail and he hasn't forgotten it."

RELATED STORY | Trump administration moves to fire FBI agents tied to probes of president

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans, three of five agents known to have been fired last month in a purge that current and former officials say has unnerved the workforce. It represents a legal challenge from the top rungs of the FBI's leadership ladder to a flood of departures under Trump's Republican administration that has wiped out decades of experience. Fired agents have leveled unflattering allegations of a law enforcement agency whose personnel moves are shaped by the White House and guided more by politics than by public safety.

"Patel not only acted unlawfully but deliberately chose to prioritize politicizing the FBI over protecting the American people," the suit says. It adds that "his decision to do so degraded the country's national security by firing three of the FBI's most experienced operational leaders, each of them experts in preventing terrorism and reducing violent crime."

Spokespeople for the FBI had declined to comment after the agents were ousted.

Concerns of reputational damage

The suit was filed in federal court in Washington, where judges and grand juries have pushed back against Trump administration initiatives and charging decisions. It names as defendants Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, as well as the FBI, the Justice Department and the Executive Office of the President.

Besides reinstatement, the suit seeks, among other remedies, the awarding of back pay, an order declaring the firings illegal and even a forum for them to clear their names. It notes that Patel, in a Fox News Channel interview two weeks after the terminations, said "every single person" found to have weaponized the FBI had been removed from leadership positions, even though the suit says there's no indication any of the three had done so.

"This false and defamatory public smear impugned the professional reputation of each of the Plaintiffs, suggesting they were something other than faithful and apolitical law enforcement officials, and has caused not only the loss of the Plaintiffs' present government employment but further harmed their future employment prospects," the suit states.

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Unnerving requests from leadership

The three fired officials, according to the lawsuit, had participated in and supervised some of the FBI's most complex work, including international terrorism investigations.

"They were pinnacles of what the rank-and-file aspired to, and now the FBI has been deprived not only of that example but has been deprived of very important operational competence," said Chris Mattei, one of the agents' lawyers. "Their firing from the FBI, taken together, has put every American at greater risk than when Brian Driscoll, Steve Jensen and Spencer Evans were in positions of leadership."

Another of their attorneys, Abbe Lowell, said the lawsuit shows FBI leadership is "carrying out political orders to punish law enforcement agents for doing their jobs."

Perhaps the most prominent of the plaintiffs is Driscoll, a former commander of the FBI's specialized hostage rescue team who served as acting director between when then-Director Christopher Wray resigned in January and Patel was confirmed in February.

In that job, he had a well-publicized standoff in the first days of the Trump administration with a senior Justice Department official, Emil Bove, over Bove's demand for a list of agents who worked on the investigation into the Jan. 6, 2021, riot by a mob of Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol. Driscoll resisted the order in a dispute that led Bove to accuse him of "insubordination."

Driscoll survived the dispute and took another high-profile position overseeing the FBI's Critical Incident Response Group, or CIRG, which deploys to crises. But new problems arose last month, the complaint says, when an FBI pilot whose duties including flying the bureau's private jet was falsely identified on social media as having been a case agent on the investigation into Trump's hoarding of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Florida.

The complaint says Driscoll was told that the pilot, Chris Meyer, could no longer fly Patel on the FBI plane. Driscoll acceded to the request but refused to strip Meyer entirely of his pilot duties and balked when told of Trump administration desires to fire him.

The lawsuit recounts a conversation from early August in which Driscoll told Patel that it would be illegal to fire someone based on case assignments. Patel, according to the suit, said he understood the actions were "likely illegal" but that he had to fire who his superiors wanted him to "because his ability to keep his own job depended on the removal of the agents who worked on cases involving the President."

Meyer was later fired but is not among the plaintiffs in Wednesday's suit.

One of the plaintiffs, Jensen, was picked by Patel to run the bureau's Washington field office despite a backlash from Trump loyalists about his earlier leadership role coordinating investigations into the Capitol riot. The suit says that even as Jensen was publicly defended by FBI leadership, he was told by Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino that they were spending "a lot of political capital" to keep him in the position.

In May, according to the complaint, Bongino told him he would have to fire an agent assigned to his office who'd worked on Trump-related cases but also investigations into officials of both major political parties. That agent, Walter Giardina, was also among the five who were fired.

Another plaintiff, Evans, says he was targeted for retribution over his leadership role in the FBI's Human Resources Division during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, which made him responsible for reviewing accommodation requests from employees seeking exemption from vaccine requirements.

That position exposed Evans to a barrage of criticism from a former agent who the lawsuit says regularly aired his grievances against Evans on social media and maintained access to Patel.

Evans was among senior executives told in late January to either retire or be fired, but he was given a reprieve and permitted to remain in his job as leader of the Las Vegas field office. Despite being reassured that he had the support of Patel and Bongino, he was told in May that he would have to leave his position.

On Aug. 6, the lawsuit says, Evans was packing for a new FBI assignment in Huntsville, Alabama, when he was notified that he had been fired. The stated cause was a "lack of reasonableness and overzealousness" in implementing COVID-19 protocols, though the suit says he has no recollection of having ever denied a request for a vaccination exemption.

A lightning-sparked wildfire in California's Sierra National Forest burned through a grove of giant sequoias and set some of the ancient towering trees on fire on Tuesday.

Wildland firefighters with tree-climbing experience were being sent in to put out the fire burning in the canopies of the beloved trees, said Jay Tracy, a spokesperson for the Garnet Fire ablaze in Fresno County.

To protect the majestic trees, some estimated to be 3,000 years old, fire crews laid sprinkler lines to increase ground moisture, wrapped the trunks with fire-resistant foil blankets, raked flammable material away from trees and patrolled the area looking for hotspots, he said.

Sequoias grow naturally only in a 260-mile belt of forest on the western slopes of the Sierra Nevada mountains in California. They have massive trunks and can grow over 300 feet (90 meters) tall.

The sequoia is the world's largest tree by volume and is closely related to the redwood, the world's tallest.

"These trees are near and dear to the forest and to our community and we want to do our best to protect them," Tracy said.

The Garnet Fire, which started on Aug. 24, reached the southeast side of the 100-acre (40-hectare) McKinley Grove sometime Sunday night or Monday morning, he said.

The giant trees rely on low-intensity fire to help open their cones to disperse seeds, and flames clear undergrowth so seedlings can take root and get sunlight. The Garnet Fire, however, is more intense, Tracy said.

The blaze has scorched 85 square miles (220 square km) of grass, chaparral and timber in a remote area known for camping and hiking about 60 miles (97 km) east of Fresno. It was about 14% contained as of Tuesday.

More than 60 containers toppled off a cargo ship Tuesday morning in the Port of Long Beach, tumbling overboard and floating in the water.

The shipping containers fell off a vessel named the Mississippi shortly before 9 a.m., and no injuries have been reported, according to Port of Long Beach spokesperson Art Marroquin.

About 67 containers were in the water, the U.S. Coast Guard said on the social platform X.

Long Beach, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Los Angeles, is one of the busiest seaports in the country, with 40% of all shipping containers in the United States coming through it or the Los Angeles port.

Some of the containers appeared to have fallen on the STAX 2, an anti-pollution vessel attached to the side of the Mississippi that captures emissions. When empty, a container can weigh between two to four metric tons (2.2 to 4.4 tons) depending on the size.

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The Pier G container terminal, one of six at the port, temporarily stopped unloading and loading ships as authorities worked to secure the containers.

The Mississippi sails under the flag of Portugal and arrived in Long Beach after departing Aug. 26 from the Yantian port in Shenzhen, China, according to vessel tracking websites.

A Princeton University doctoral student who was kidnapped in Iraq in 2023 while doing research there has been freed and turned over to U.S. authorities, her family and President Donald Trump said Tuesday.

Elizabeth Tsurkov, who holds Israeli and Russian citizenship, spent more than 900 days in custody after being kidnapped in March 2003 in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital.

In the past few months, officials from several countries, including the Iraqi foreign minister and deputy prime minister, have confirmed she was alive and being held in Iraq by a Shiite Muslim militant group called Kataeb Hezbollah, according to her sister. The group has not claimed the kidnapping nor have Iraqi officials publicly said which group is responsible.

My entire family is incredibly happy. We cannot wait to see Elizabeth and give her all the love we have been waiting to share for 903 days, said a statement from her sister Emma in which she thanked, among others, Adam Boehler, the U.S. special presidential envoy for hostage affairs.

RELATED STORY | Iran's detention of Americans highlights 'hostage diplomacy' after recent U.S. military strikes

Emma Tsurkov said she lost contact with her sister in late March 2023, after Elizabeth went to meet sources in a coffee shop in Baghdads central neighborhood of Karradah. Elizabeth Tsurkov had back surgery eight days before her kidnapping for a slipped disc and was more vulnerable, her sister said. She was supposed to get her stitches removed two days after her kidnapping and faced a long road of physical therapy back in Princeton, New Jersey.

The only direct proof of life of Elizabeth Tsurkov during her captivity was a video broadcast in November 2023 on an Iraqi television station and circulated on pro-Iranian social media purporting to show her.

The New Orleans Archdiocese on Monday agreed to a $230 million proposed settlement for survivors of clergy sexual abuse, attorneys for some of the survivors said Monday. The agreement paves the way for a final resolution to yearslong negotiations amid a series of similar settlements from the Catholic Church.

The archdiocese had announced in May that it would pay at least $179.2 million in response to more than 500 abuse claims, which the bloc of attorneys said they opposed because they considered it to be lowballing the hundreds of survivors.

"We knew this was a bad deal, and we knew we could do better; and we have," the group of 10 attorneys said in a statement. "The 'power of no' forced the Archdiocese to come up with significantly more money."

The archdiocese had filed for bankruptcy in May 2020 rather than handle each abuse claim separately, which survivors point out allows church leadership to avoid facing tough questions in court. The archdiocese called the updated settlement a "significant step forward for the benefit of all claimant survivors" in an emailed statement.

Survivors have until late October to vote on whether or not to approve the settlement. If approved by two-thirds of survivors, payments could begin disbursement by next year.

"At this point, I'm not aware of a single attorney for an abuse survivor that opposes the plan," said Brad Knapp, an attorney for a committee representing abuse survivors. "With all the abuse survivors' attorneys supporting it, I think there's much less chance that it gets voted down."

The archdiocese's bankruptcy is one of the longest-running and most contentious of more than a dozen ongoing Catholic Church bankruptcy cases in the U.S. related to sex abuse, according to Terence McKiernan, president of the nonprofit BishopAccountability.org.

Judge Meredith Grabill, overseeing the bankruptcy proceedings in federal court, has warned that if the settlement is not approved, then she will dismiss the case.

If a bankruptcy settlement fails, survivors would be required to seek compensation for their abuse claims through new lawsuits, which could take years to play out in courts. And it raises the prospect that the archdiocese would declare bankruptcy again to delay payments, according to a public letter from the Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors. The committee represents the interests of abuse survivors in the bankruptcy case and urged survivors to accept the initial settlement offer.

The committee warned that bringing individual abuse claims in court would likely lead to difficult confrontations with a "aggressive and hostile" archdiocese, which could force survivors and their friends and family to engage in tough depositions and years of appeals, exacerbating survivors' "emotional and psychological pain."

"A lot of survivors are ready for this to be resolved," said Kristi Schubert, an attorney representing dozens of survivors. "A lot of them would prefer to receive certain money now."

But some survivors, like Kevin Bourgeois, say that monetary compensation only goes so far.

"There is no dollar amount that really is equitable considering that abuse survivors live for the rest of their lives putting their lives back together," said Bourgeois, a New Orleans native who suffered clergy sexual abuse and settled privately prior to 2020. He pointed out that the bankruptcy process allows the church to "wear people down" and keep the public in the dark about the extent to which it enabled abuse.

The settlement as outlined in May requires the archdiocese to bring in outside experts to evaluate its child-protection programs and recommend improvements. The archdiocese would also establish a document archive at a secular university related to its abuse and hold public forums for survivors to share their experiences and concerns with the archbishop.

"I remain very hopeful and committed to bringing this bankruptcy to a conclusion that benefits the survivors of abuse," said New Orleans Archbishop Gregory M. Aymond in a Monday statement. "Please know that I pray for the survivors of abuse every day and look forward to the opportunity to meet with them to hear their stories..."

Aymond has resisted the chorus of survivors calling for his resignation over the church's failure to take action on allegations against priests for decades.

The accusations of archdiocese clergy abuse triggered a sweeping FBI probe and a cascading crisis for the Catholic Church, which drew on help from New Orleans Saints executives to help behind the scenes with damage control, an AP investigation revealed.

A decade-long slide in high schoolers' reading and math performance persisted during the COVID-19 pandemic, with 12th graders' scores dropping to their lowest level in more than 20 years, according to results released Tuesday from an exam known as the nations report card.

Eighth-grade students also lost significant ground in science skills, according to the results from the National Assessment of Education Progress.

The assessments were the first since the pandemic for eighth graders in science and 12th graders in reading and math. They reflect a downward drift across grade levels and subject areas in previous releases from NAEP, which is considered one of the best gauges of the academic progress of U.S. schools.

Scores for our lowest-performing students are at historic lows, said Matthew Soldner, the acting commissioner of the National Center for Education Statistics. These results should galvanize all of us to take concerted and focused action to accelerate student learning.

While the pandemic had an outsize impact on student achievement, experts said falling scores are part of a longer arc in education that cannot be attributed solely to COVID-19, school closures and related issues such as heightened absenteeism. Educators said potential underlying factors include children's increased screen time, shortened attention spans and a decline in reading longer-form writing both in and out of school.

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The dip in reading scores appeared alongside a shift in how English and language arts are taught in schools, with an emphasis on short texts and book excerpts, said Carol Jago, associate director of the California Reading and Literature Project at UCLA. As a high school English teacher 20 years ago, Jago said it was common for her high school students to read 20 books over the course of a year. Now, some English classes are assigning just three books a year.

To be a good reader, you have to have the stamina to stay on the page, even when the going gets tough, Jago said. You have to build those muscles, and were not building those muscles in kids.

Education Secretary Linda McMahon said the scores show why the Trump administration wants to give states more control of education spending.

"Despite spending billions annually on numerous K-12 programs, the achievement gap is widening, and more high school seniors are performing below the basic benchmark in math and reading than ever before," McMahon said.

Fewer students show basic proficiency in math and reading

The test scores show more students are not reaching what would be considered basic achievement across subject areas, said Lesley Muldoon, executive director of the National Assessment Governing Board. While NAEPs definition of proficient is a high bar, Muldoon said, it is not an unreasonable one, and it is based on what researchers believe students should be able to achieve by the end of high school.

These students are taking their next steps in life with fewer skills and less knowledge in core academics than their predecessors a decade ago," she said. This is happening at a time when rapid advancements in technology and society demands more of future workers and citizens, not less.

In reading, the average score in 2024 was the lowest score in the history of the assessment, which began in 1992. Thirty-two percent of high school seniors scored below basic, meaning they were not able to find details in a text to help them understand its meaning.

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In math, the average score in 2024 was the lowest since 2005, when the assessment framework changed significantly. On the test, 45% of high school seniors scored below basic achievement, the highest percentage since 2005. Only 33% of high school seniors were considered academically prepared for college-level math courses, a decline from 37% in 2019.

The high school reading and math assessments, and the eighth-grade science test, are given less frequently than the biannual fourth and eighth-grade reading tests, which were last released earlier this year. The new scores reflect tests taken in schools around the country between January and March 2024.

Achievement gaps are widening

The gap between the highest- and lowest-performing students was its widest ever among eighth-grade science students, reflecting growing inequality in the American school system. The achievement gap also widened in 12th-grade math.

The scores also reflect the re-emergence of a gender gap in science, technology, engineering and math courses. In 2019, boys and girls scored virtually the same on the NAEP science assessment. But in 2024, girls saw a steeper decline in scores. A similar pattern occurred in state math assessments, according to an Associated Press analysis.

Schools had largely closed the gender gap in math and science, but it widened in the years following the pandemic as special programs to engage girls lapsed.

On a NAEP survey of students, a shrinking percentage of eighth-grade students said they regularly took part in inquiry-based learning activities in the classroom. The pandemic disrupted schools' ability to create those hands-on learning experiences for students, which are often critical to understanding scientific concepts and processes, said Christine Cunningham, senior vice president of STEM learning at the Museum of Science in Boston.

Still, she noted declines across subjects began well before schools closed in 2020.

We don't know exactly what the cause of it is, but it would be incomplete to assume that if we hadn't had COVID, the score would not have gone down, Cunningham said. That's not what the data showed even before the pandemic.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released on Monday a sexually suggestive letter to Jeffrey Epstein purportedly signed by President Donald Trump, which he has denied.

HERE IT IS: We got Trumps birthday note to Jeffrey Epstein that the President said doesnt exist. Trump talks about a wonderful secret the two of them shared. What is he hiding? Release the files! pic.twitter.com/k2Mq8Hu3LY

Oversight Dems (@OversightDems) September 8, 2025

Trump has said he did not write the letter or create the drawing of a curvaceous woman that surrounds the letter. He filed a $10 billion lawsuit against The Wall Street Journal for a report on the alleged letter.

The letter was included as part of a 2003 album compiled for alleged sex trafficker Epsteins birthday. The president has denied having anything to do with it. Democrats on the House Oversight Committee received a copy of the birthday album on Monday as part of a batch of documents from Epstein's estate.

RELATED STORY | House Oversight Committee releases tens of thousands of pages of Epstein records

The White House did not immediately respond to a message seeking comment.

Trump has denied writing the letter and creating the drawing, calling a report on it false, malicious, and defamatory.

These are not my words, not the way I talk. Also, I dont draw pictures, Trump said.

The letter released by the committee looks exactly as described by The Wall Street Journal in its report.

The letter bearing Trumps name and signature includes text framed by a hand-drawn outline of what appears to be a curvaceous woman.

A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday and may every day be another wonderful secret, the letter says.