# Trump is raising expectations heading into the Iowa caucuses. Now he has to meet them
By **STEVE PEOPLES** and **THOMAS BEAUMONT**
January 8, 2024. 8:41 AM EST

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**NORTH LIBERTY, Iowa (AP)** - When Donald Trump launched his 2024 presidential campaign after a disappointing midterm election for Republicans, his trajectory was something of a mystery. But seven days before Iowa's kick-off caucuses, his standing among the GOP faithful is hardly in doubt.

Voters, campaign operatives and even some of the candidates on the ground here overwhelmingly agree that the Republican former president is the prohibitive favorite heading into the Jan. 15 caucuses - whether they like it or not.

"Everybody sees the writing on the wall," said Angela Roemerman, a 56-year-old Republican from Solon, Iowa, as she waited for former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley to arrive for a weekend rally at Field Day Brewing Co. in North Liberty.

"It's a little depressing," Roemerman said as her order of tortilla chips arrived, lamenting "all the drama" surrounding Trump. "We don't need another four years. But Trump's going to win."

Just beneath all the perceived certainty about Trump's victory, however, lies serious risks for the front-runner. Trump continues to fuel sky-high expectations, despite questions about the strength of his voter-turnout operation, a closing message clouded by lies about the 2020 election and stormy weather forecasts that could dissuade supporters from showing up.

Few believe such issues will lead to a straight-up loss next week in Iowa, but in the complicated world of presidential politics, a win is not always a win.

## Meeting expectations
Should Trump fail to meet expectations with a resounding victory in Iowa, he would enter next-up New Hampshire and South Carolina much more vulnerable. Haley and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis continue to pour millions of dollars into Iowa advertising as they cross the state, backed by well-funded allies with robust get-out-the-vote operations, in a relentless effort to narrow Trump's margin of victory.

At the same time, Trump's team privately acknowledges that it has cut back on its door-knocking, get-out-the-vote operation heading into the final week. They insist they can ensure his loyalists show up on caucus day more effectively by relying on rallies, phone calls and a peer-to-peer text message program. That's even as allies of DeSantis and Haley push ahead with traditional get-out-the-vote plans at voters' doorways.

New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu, who has endorsed Haley and spent the weekend campaigning with her across Iowa, conceded that "it will be tough" to beat Trump here.

"There's obviously a strong implication Trump's gonna likely win the Iowa caucus," Sununu told The Associated Press, even as he insisted momentum was building for Haley that will show up more clearly in New Hampshire's Jan. 23 first-in-the-nation primary. "In New Hampshire, she clearly has a chance to do something no one thought was possible, which was to beat Trump in an early state."

Aware of the risks, the former president's team is scrambling to lower expectations for Iowa.

Trump's advisers in recent days have been quick to remind reporters - at least privately - that no Republican presidential candidate has won a contested Iowa caucus by more than 12 points since Bob Dole in 1988.

The Trump campaign sees Dole's margin as the floor for Trump's victory, a senior adviser told The Associated Press, requesting anonymity to share internal discussions. The adviser described the mood on the campaign as confident but not comfortable, acknowledging questions about the strength of rival organizations and, as always, the weather, which could affect turnout if there is snow or extreme cold.

## Frigid forecast
Heavy snowfall, blowing and drifting snow and dangerous travel conditions are expected Monday and Tuesday of this week to be followed by frigid temperatures that could drift below 0 degrees by caucus day.

The weather has already forced the Trump campaign to cancel multiple appearances by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Sanders and her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, who had been scheduled to court Iowa voters on Trump's behalf Monday.

Ever defiant, Trump projected confidence as he raced across the state for a series of "commit to caucus" rallies over the weekend before returning to his Florida estate. He's scheduled to return to Iowa on Wednesday for a Fox News town hall.

At every stop over the weekend, he talked about his dominant standing in the polls. He's also frequently repeated lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him by voter fraud, a claim refuted by the courts and his own administration but one that fueled a violent attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Still, weather is the more immediate concern heading into the final full week of campaigning in Iowa.

Trump told an audience of more than 2,000 in Clinton on Saturday night that his aides told him he shouldn't worry about cold weather, although his opponents probably should.

"The other side will never vote, because they don't have any enthusiasm," Trump said. Stoking the crowd, he added, "We won't lose one vote, because our people, they're going to walk on glass."

That's not to say there's no risk.

"The biggest risk is you say, you know, 'We're winning by so much, darling, let's stay home and watch television,'" Trump said the night before in Mason City. "And if enough people do that, it's not going to be pretty."

## Trump's risks
Indeed, Trump has a loyal base of support but he's also targeting a significant number of first-time caucus participants who don't necessarily know where to go next Monday or how the complicated caucus process works. The events feature a series of speeches and votes that can span multiple hours, and in many cases, they're not held at regular polling locations.

A Des Moines Register poll conducted in December found that 63% of likely first-time Republican caucus participants say Trump is their first choice.

One of the first-time participants may be William Caspers, a 37-year-old farmer from Rockwell, Iowa. He said he had never attended a political event of any kind before Trump's Mason City event on Friday. While he's supporting Trump "100%" in 2024, he said he was only "pretty sure" he would caucus for him.

"Where is it going to be? Where do I go? I'm kind of confused about that," Caspers said. He noted that he was in the bathroom when a caucus explainer video played at the big screen at the front of the event hall. Several hundred other voters were still in line outside during the video.

"So, the caucus is this Monday?" Caspers asked an AP reporter, who clarified that it was Monday Jan. 15.

Not far away, Jackie Garlock, of nearby Clear Lake, was wearing a white hat indicating her status as one of Trump's "caucus captains." The campaign has promoted its efforts to recruit and train hundreds of such captains, who will represent the campaign within a given precinct on Monday night.

Garlock said she only briefly attended one virtual training on Zoom, which she described as largely a pep rally. She also said that she's not particularly good or experienced at political organizing.

But she's not worried.

"I have a lot of confidence," she said of Trump's chances next week as she scanned the crowded North Iowa Events Center. "I just look at the number of people who are here and I think, how can they all be wrong?"

## Haley and DeSantis
Meanwhile, Haley and DeSantis are spending big money to attack each other on Iowa television, although Haley has had a decided spending advantage in the caucus' final days.

Overall, Haley and her allies are on pace to spend more than $15 million in Iowa television advertising this month alone; DeSantis' team is spending less than $5 million, according to an AP analysis of data from the media tracking firm AdImpact.

Virtually none of the attack ads from Haley or DeSantis is directed at Trump. That's even as Haley's primary super PAC is running multiple ads describing DeSantis as "a dumpster fire," and one of DeSantis' evolving group of super PACs recently launched an ad campaign calling Haley "Tricky Nikki."

Trump and his allies are spending nearly $10 million this month in Iowa. And he's shifted some of his attacks away from DeSantis and toward Haley. But he's also investing in ads targeting Democratic President Joe Biden, his likely general election opponent.

Of all the candidates on the ground in Iowa this week, only DeSantis is predicting an outright victory over Trump. He moved his entire campaign leadership to the state in recent months and visited each of Iowa's 99 counties.

"You're going to see an earthquake on Jan. 15," DeSantis told dozens of supporters at a downtown bar in Dubuque.


# DeSantis and Haley are battling to emerge in Iowa as the preferred Republican alternative to Trump
By **THOMAS BEAUMONT**
January 6, 2024. 11:32 AM EST

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**DUBUQUE, Iowa (AP)** - Second place in the Iowa caucuses is seldom so important.

The rivalry between GOP presidential candidates Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley has become a leading storyline before the first Republicans vote on Jan. 15. The two are in an increasingly testy contest to emerge in Iowa as the preferred alternative to former President Donald Trump for the party's 2024 nomination.

Florida Gov. DeSantis has said he expects to win Iowa despite trailing far behind Trump in polls. He portrays Haley, a former South Carolina governor who was Trump's U.N. ambassador, as a puppet of wealthy donors and someone who has flip-flopped on key issues.

Haley, who hopes to edge the better-organized DeSantis in Iowa, has accused him of misrepresenting her record, especially on taxes, and of falsely portraying himself as tough on China.

The stakes are enormous for both.

DeSantis would upend the race if he were to beat Trump in the caucuses. Haley's allies believe they could hobble DeSantis if she finishes ahead of him. The thinking is that a second-place finish would give her a boost before New Hampshire's Jan. 23 primary and a chance to take on Trump directly in South Carolina a month later.

"I don't know if we'll get to second. I certainly hope so. That's our mission," said Mark Harris, lead strategist for Stand for America, a pro-Haley super political action committee. "We do that, we turn the page and head into a state where I think we're in a great position to win."

Trump has been operating at a different level, attracting tens of thousands to rallies in larger cities since the fall and packing events into the final stretch of the campaign in every corner of the state. His campaign has spent months organizing caucusgoers and recruiting "captains" responsible for turning out voters on Jan. 15.

He has ramped up his attacks of Haley in speeches and campaign ads, which Haley has said is a sign he is taking her more seriously. Before a Trump speech Friday, her campaign issued a statement about the former president going after her on immigration.

"Nikki Haley is rising," her campaign said. "Donald Trump is scared. This is a two-person race."

But Haley must also fend off DeSantis. His camp has hit her for several recent comments about the cause of the Civil War and the role of Iowa in the GOP nomination process. In an interview with NBC News and the Des Moines Register, DeSantis referred to Haley as a "phony."

DeSantis has repeatedly mentioned comments Haley made in New Hampshire this past week when she suggested that New Hampshire voters would "correct" Iowa's results. Haley tried to play down the remark by explaining it as a nod to the good-natured rivalry between the two early-voting states.

"We're getting down to crunch time in the Iowa caucuses," DeSantis told more than 300 people jammed into a bar Saturday in downtown Dubuque. "And no, your votes don't need to be corrected by any other state. I don't care what Nikki Haley says."

Haley answered a recent question in New Hampshire about the cause of the Civil War without mentioning slavery. She walked back her answer a day later and said "of course" slavery was a cause of the war.

The Civil War comment came up again at a CNN town hall Thursday. DeSantis' campaign posted on X, formerly Twitter, an excerpt of Haley's response, in which she said she had "Black friends growing up."

While the original remark prompted rebuke from Democrats and GOP rivals, especially former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who mentioned that South Carolina was the first state to secede from the Union over slave rights, the dust-up never came up in questions at four Iowa events the following weekend.

What Haley did mention at an event Friday, as she has regularly in recent weeks, is an ad aired by a DeSantis-aligned super PAC in which she is accused of flip-flopping on a pledge not to raise the fuel tax while governor of South Carolina.

"Every one of those commercials is a lie," she said. She said she resisted gas tax-increase proposals until she offered a compromise to proponents that came with an even larger income tax reduction. The proposal died without action.

DeSantis has shaken up his campaign staff and recalibrated his message several times over the past year and has bet heavily on a strong Iowa finish. He visited all 99 counties, aided by an aligned super PAC, Never Back Down, that spent the summer and fall sending organizers door to door to recruit supporters.

Haley's team began organizing much later and only last month received the endorsement of the political arm of the billionaire Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity. That group is now canvassing voters and organizing for Haley.

Still, the pro-Haley super PAC Stand for America has emerged the biggest spender down the stretch, purchasing more than $27.5 million in ads since the start of last year, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact. Two DeSantis-allied groups, Never Back Down and Fight Right, have combined to spend about $26 million over the same period.

Former Iowa Gov. Terry Branstad, a Republican who has not endorsed in the race, described Haley's comment about Iowa an unfortunate mistake, but not one that would likely derail her campaign. His successor, Gov. Kim Reynolds, has endorsed DeSantis.

"Second is a possibility. If she gets second here, there would be tremendous momentum going into New Hampshire," Branstad said Friday at an event where Haley was speaking. "It's going to be difficult because DeSantis has spent a lot of time here and has the governor's support."

Candidates running in Iowa work to show respect for the state's traditions and its leadoff status, though some question Iowa's ultimate influence. The last Republican to win a contested caucus and become the GOP nominee was George W. Bush in 2000.

"You can't be antagonistic or dismissive of people whose votes you want," said Ellen Carmichael, a Republican campaign messaging strategist who has worked on presidential campaigns. "To me, that was just such an unforced error. They take it seriously, with such reverence for the system. You don't want to diminish that."


# Iowa's Christian conservatives follow their faith when voting, and some say it leads them to Trump
By **MICHELLE L. PRICE**
January 7, 2024. 9:08 PM EST

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**DES MOINES, Iowa (AP)** - Pastor Charles Hundley opened his worship service on a cold Sunday in northeast Des Moines with a prayer that made it clear one endorsement above all will matter in Iowa's caucuses eight days away.

"We thank you for the upcoming election, Lord - or caucus, as we call it in Iowa," said Hundley, speaking from the sanctuary of his evangelical Christian church in his slight Texas drawl as his parishioners bowed their heads.

"It doesn't matter what our opinion is," he went on. "It's really what's your opinion that matters. But you've given us the privilege of being able to exercise a beautiful gift. The gift of vote. We thank you for that."

While Hundley stops short of suggesting to his parishioners which candidate divine guidance should lead them to support, he is among more than 300 pastors and other faith leaders who've been described as supporters by former President Donald Trump's campaign. It's a message that some members of Hundley's First Church of God have taken to heart, saying their faith informs their intention to caucus for Trump.

The former president and his rivals for the Republican nomination in 2024 have for months been heavily courting social conservatives and white evangelical Christians, long seen as the most influential group in Iowa's Republican caucuses.

Ron Betts, a 72-year-old Republican who said he plans to caucus for "Trump all the way," said he felt the former president "exemplified what Jesus would do."

Hundley said he doesn't speak about politics from the pulpit or privately urge members of his congregation to support his favored candidate, but he encourages them to participate and use their faith to make their choices.

"I look at it from a Christian perspective," he said. "I expect them to look at it from a Christian perspective. What does God say of us?"

Before weather forced a postponement, the First Church of God on Monday was supposed to host a Trump campaign event featuring Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Trump's former press secretary, and her father, former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Baptist minister and former presidential candidate, as part of what's billed as a Team Trump Iowa Faith Tour.

Trump, who has a commanding polling lead in Iowa, has been emphasizing his endorsements from faith leaders and success in seating three Supreme Court justices who voted to overturn the Roe v. Wade decision that protected abortion rights nationwide. The former president, however, has faced some pushback from conservatives for failing to endorse national abortion restrictions.

Trump frequently features a prayer at the start of his campaign events, something his rivals have also included at their stops. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has portrayed himself as more conservative than Trump, features religious rhetoric as he campaigns and has the backing of more than 100 faith leaders, including the influential Iowa evangelical figure Bob Vander Plaats.

Trump has long seemed like an unlikely fit for the conservative faithful who shape the first contest of the Republican primary. He entered politics as a brash, thrice-married former reality television star who spent decades as a New York City tabloid fixture, boasted of his sexual prowess and once supported abortion rights. His frequent lies and distortions in his campaigns and presidency focused on everything from his political rivals to the pandemic to the 2020 election results. And last year a jury found him liable for sexual abuse.

In his first race for the White House in 2016, his image seemed to dog him as he struggled in Iowa, losing the state to Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. But as the former president again seeks the White House, he is finding strong support among the faithful.

While about one-third of U.S. adults, 37%, have a favorable opinion of Trump, he's seen more favorably among those who identify themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians. About half of evangelicals in an AP-NORC poll conducted in October said they have a favorable view of Trump. That's even higher among white born-again Christians, at 56%.

Trump has focused his third campaign around a message of retribution and harsh justice, a framework that doesn't seem to be hurting him with evangelicals. Some members of Hundley's church pointed to those themes as a reason Trump best aligns with their faith, suggesting his tough stance on the border and calls for harsher punishment for crimes reflect a sense of justice they see as rooted in Christianity.

The 72-year-old Betts likened Trump's legal troubles - from the 91 criminal charges he currently faces to the effort in some states to keep him off the 2024 presidential ballot because of his push to overturn his 2020 election loss - to a crucifixion.

"I think they are doing the same thing they did to Jesus on the cross," Betts said. "I can see a lot of correlation there."

Cliff Carey, a 73-year-old member of Hundley's congregation, said Trump supported things he supports as a Christian and pointed to his actions around abortion in particular, calling him "the greatest pro-life president we've ever seen."

"I think he's an imperfect individual just like the rest of us, but I think God used that man to govern in godly principles," he said.

His sister-in-law, Cindy Carey, agreed.

"I wouldn't vote for him as my pastor," she said. "I want him to lead our nation back to that city on a hill, shining city on a hill."

Carey feels Trump's "Make America Great Again" slogan is about returning the country to the Christian principles she believes it was founded on.

"I definitely take my belief and my understanding of the Bible into the voting booth with me." she said. "I believe 100% that that's my responsibility."


# Feeling caucus confusion? Your guide to how Iowa works
By **ROBERT YOON**
January 5, 2024. 3:50 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - The race for the White House is about to officially begin, and despite some prolonged jockeying over the election calendar, the long primary season will once again begin in Iowa with a caucus process that has served as the lead-off voting event since the 1970s.

While Iowa has played an outsize role in presidential politics for generations, the details of how the caucuses actually work can surprise and mystify even hard-core political junkies. The Republican process this year is largely unchanged, but there are significant changes to the traditional voting schedule on the Democratic side. Much of what you think you know about the Iowa caucuses may no longer be applicable in 2024.

Since the contested Iowa caucuses of 2016 and 2020 may seem like a long time ago, here's an update of what they are, how they work and why they matter.

## WHAT IS A CAUCUS?
A political caucus is a gathering of people with a shared interest or goal. The Iowa caucuses are a series of local meetings held throughout the state where participants conduct party business and usually indicate their preference for a presidential nominee to represent the party on the November ballot. It's also the first step in a months-long process to select people to serve as delegates to the national party conventions this summer.

## HOW ARE CAUCUSES DIFFERENT FROM PRIMARIES?
One of the main differences between caucuses and primaries is the amount of time allotted for voting to occur and the methods by which people can vote. In a primary, people can show up at the polls and cast ballots throughout Election Day, from the early morning until polls close in the evening. They have the option of casting an absentee ballot if they can't make it to the polls on Election Day, and in some states, people may vote before Election Day. The Iowa caucuses, on the other hand, are held in the evening and voters must attend in person in order to participate, except in a few isolated instances. Caucuses are run by political parties, whereas primaries are usually (but not always) run by the state.

## ARE BOTH THE REPUBLICANS AND DEMOCRATS HOLDING CAUCUSES IN IOWA THIS YEAR?
Sort of. While both the state Republican and Democratic parties will hold caucuses on Jan. 15, only the Republican event will have an immediate, binding impact on the presidential race. In a departure from previous years, the Democratic caucuses will be held only to conduct administrative party business and to start the process of choosing delegates to the national conventions. Iowa Democrats will express their preferences for their party's presidential nominee through a mail-in voting process, the results of which will not be known until March.

## WHAT'S AT STAKE?
For Democrats, nothing is at stake, since the 2024 caucuses will have no bearing on the presidential race.

For Republicans, there are usually two prizes in the Iowa caucuses: delegates and bragging rights. Iowa Republican voters will indicate their picks for the party's presidential nominee, and the results of that vote will determine how many of the state's 40 convention delegates each candidate will receive. Candidates win national convention delegates in direct proportion to the percentage of the vote they receive. There is no minimum threshold required to qualify for delegates.

However, Iowa makes up a minuscule share of the total number of Republican delegates nationwide (only 1.6%). So, in theory, a candidate who performs poorly in Iowa has plenty of opportunities in the remaining states and territories to more than make up the difference. But because of Iowa's first-in-the-nation placement in the presidential campaign calendar, the caucus results often give a disproportionate boost to the winners and to those who perform strongly or surpass expectations, while often having a winnowing effect on the field by nudging underperforming candidates out of the race. They can also signal to voters in other states, fairly or unfairly, which candidates are possibly on a better footing in the race for the nomination and have momentum (or the "Big Mo" as candidate George H.W. Bush called it after winning the 1980 caucuses) heading into the next contests.

## HOW WILL THE REPUBLICAN CAUCUSES WORK IN 2024?
There will be two main agenda items at every Republican caucus site: holding a binding vote for the party's presidential nominee and electing delegates to attend county conventions, which is the next step in the multi-tiered process of electing delegates to attend the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee this summer.

The binding presidential vote functions essentially like a party-run primary, only with very limited polling hours and no accommodation for absentee voting, except for a tiny handful of overseas and military voters. There are speeches on behalf of various candidates before the voting and a variety of party business after the vote. Individual caucus chairs are allowed to exercise some discretion in how to conduct the vote, but the voting is done by secret ballot and there is no set list of candidates. Voters must be given the option to vote for any candidate they choose. In the past, some caucus sites have pre-printed the names of major candidates and provided a write-in option, but typically, voters vote by writing the name of a candidate on a blank slip of paper.

There is no walking around the caucus room to form candidate preference groups. That voting method was a feature of Democratic caucuses from 1972 to 2020 but is no longer in use by either party in 2024.

The Republican caucuses will convene statewide at 7 p.m. local time (8 p.m. EST), and begin with the election of a caucus chair and secretary. Only registered Republicans may participate in the caucuses and only in their designated home precincts. However, Iowans may register or change their party affiliation on caucus day. Voters must turn 18 by the November general election in order to participate.

## HOW WILL THE DEMOCRATIC CAUCUSES WORK IN 2024?
Iowa Democrats had to completely redo their caucus and presidential delegate selection process after their 2020 caucuses devolved into chaos and failed to produce a clear, undisputed winner.

This year, Iowa Democrats will still hold caucuses on the same day as Republicans, but unlike in previous years, caucus-goers will not vote or indicate their pick to represent the party on the November presidential ballot. Instead, they will vote for a party nominee through a mail-in voting process that begins Jan. 12 and concludes on March 5.

The Democratic caucuses on Jan. 15 will elect delegates to the county conventions in March, which is the next step in selecting the individuals to serve as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. National convention delegates will be required to vote for a presidential nominee in accordance with the results of the mail-in voting process.


# A timeline of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin's hospitalization and lack of White House notification
By **TARA COPP** and **LOLITA C. BALDOR**
January 9, 2024. 7:39 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - The revelation that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had prostate cancer surgery and was later hospitalized in intensive care due to complications from that operation without President Joe Biden, Cabinet members or even his deputy knowing has put an intense spotlight on what staff knew when and why they did not inform government or military leaders or the public.

On the night of Austin's ambulance ride to Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his personal security detail was with him, and there are now questions about why that did not trigger an immediate call to an operations center to inform his key staff.

Despite persistent questions, details about what happened and Austin's medical status only slowly dribbled out, day by day. Eight days after Austin was hospitalized for an infection stemming from the surgery a week earlier, the Defense Department finally released a detailed statement from his doctors outlining his cancer and subsequent complications.

Although doctors say he is recovering well, there are many unanswered questions about the lack of disclosure and what impact the diagnosis will have on his ability to do his job, which entails an aggressive travel and public schedule.

Here's a look at the timeline:

Early December: During regular medical screenings, Austin's lab results identify prostate cancer which requires treatment. He does not disclose that news to staff or the White House.

Dec. 22: Austin undergoes what doctors have now described as a "minimally invasive surgical procedure called a prostatectomy to treat and cure prostate cancer." Austin is under general anesthesia during this procedure at Walter Reed. He does not inform the White House or senior staff that he is undergoing the procedure, but he does temporarily transfer some of his authorities to Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. Hicks is not told the reason for the transfer, which is not unusual.

Dec. 23: Austin is discharged from Walter Reed.

Dec. 24-31: Austin is working from home. On Dec. 25, in response to militia attacks in Iraq and Syria that injured several U.S. service members, U.S. Central Command strikes multiple facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups in Iraq.

Jan. 1: By the evening, Austin is in severe pain, but conscious, and is taken by ambulance back to Walter Reed. He is admitted to the intensive care unit. His personal security detail is with him, but no call is made to an operations center or to key staff to alert them of the hospitalization. He is evaluated throughout the evening. Neither his staff nor the White House are informed of the development.

Jan. 2: Austin is visited by a junior aide. Following the guidance of his physicians, he again transfers "certain operational responsibilities that require constant secure communications capabilities" to Hicks, who is on vacation in Puerto Rico. She again is not told why.

Also that day, Austin's senior staff, including chief of staff Kelly Magsamen, his senior military assistant, Lt. Gen. Ron Clark, the assistant defense secretary for public affairs, Chris Meagher, and Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder, say they are informed of Austin's hospitalization. Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. CQ Brown is also told. None of those officials notifies the White House, National Security Council or Hicks. Austin remains in the intensive care unit.

Jan. 4: The U.S. conducts strikes against a militia target in Baghdad. Hicks is still assuming the authorities Austin transferred to her, but the Pentagon says Austin had pre-approved the strike before his hospitalization. Hicks is finally told Austin is in the hospital, and she and Magsamen begin working on a statement to notify Congress and others. White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan is notified and he notifies Biden.

Also that day, Ryder briefs the media and never mentions Austin's hospitalization.

Jan. 5: The congressional notifications begin that evening, just minutes before the Pentagon issues its first public statement about Austin's status. The three-sentence statement says only that he was admitted to Walter Reed on Jan. 1 because of complications from a "recent elective medical procedure" and is recovering. It does not state his condition or if he is still in the hospital. The Pentagon Press Association issues an immediate statement underscoring the seriousness of the lapse: "The public has a right to know when U.S. Cabinet members are hospitalized, under anesthesia or when duties are delegated as the result of any medical procedure."

Jan. 6: Austin issues a statement saying: "I could have done a better job ensuring the public was appropriately informed. I commit to doing better." He still does not divulge what medical issues he is addressing. And Defense Department officials still will not say publicly when the White House and others were notified. Austin also speaks to Biden, but does not tell the president he has prostate cancer.

Jan 7: Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle say they will be looking further into the matter. Ryder for the first time reveals publicly that Austin went to Walter Reed for the medical procedure on Dec. 22 and that he was admitted to the ICU on Jan. 1 due to severe pain, but provides no other details about the procedure.

Jan. 8: The White House and Pentagon begin separate reviews of policies on notification when there is a transfer of power and how the public will be informed. Several Republicans call for Austin to resign. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby says Biden still supports Austin, and Ryder says Austin has no plans to resign. Ryder, in his first public briefing to reporters on the matter, provides a more detailed timeline of events and says Austin is still hospitalized but out of the ICU. He does not disclose the ailment. The Pentagon does not know when he will be discharged.

Jan. 9: The Defense Department releases a statement from Austin's doctors revealing he was diagnosed with prostate cancer and that the procedure on Dec. 22 was prostate surgery. The doctors' statement says Austin was taken back to Walter Reed on Jan. 1 after he developed a urinary tract infection related to that surgery and was admitted to the ICU. They say he is expected to fully recover.

Also on Jan. 9, the White House says Biden had not been informed until that day that his defense chief had cancer.


# US and Chinese military officers resume talks as agreed by Biden and Xi
By **TARA COPP**
January 9, 2024. 5:57 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - U.S. and Chinese military officers have resumed talks that were frozen after former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan in the summer of 2022, a development U.S. officials have said is key to keeping the growing competition between the two great powers from turning into direct conflict.

During the deputy-level talks at the Pentagon, the two parties discussed setting future meetings between their military officers, including potentially scheduling a future meeting between Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and newly appointed Chinese Defense Minister Dong Jun.

Austin is currently hospitalized due to complications from prostate cancer treatment. He had not been scheduled to attend Tuesday's meeting. Dong is a former naval commander who was appointed in late December after his predecessor, Li Shangfu, was removed from office.

Li was sanctioned by the U.S. in 2018 for buying Russian weapons. After he was named the defense minister in March 2023, the U.S. did not lift the sanctions. No U.S. defense secretary has visited China since Jim Mattis visited in 2018.

The face-to-face meetings follow a call between Gen. CQ Brown Jr., chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his counterpart Gen. Liu Zhenli, several weeks ago, which marked the first senior military communications between the U.S. and China since August 2022.

China's delegation at the meeting was headed by Maj. Gen. Song Yanchao, deputy director of the Central Military Commission for international military cooperation. He met with Michael Chase, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary of defense for China, Taiwan, and Mongolia.

While administrative in nature, the two-day talks do allow both sides to raise policy concerns. In a readout of the meeting, the Pentagon said that Chase talked about operational safety in the Indo-Pacific and the United States' commitment to "our longstanding 'One China' policy, which is guided by the Taiwan Relations Act," the Pentagon said in a readout of the meeting.

"The Department will continue to engage in active discussions with PRC counterparts about future engagements between defense and military officials at multiple levels," the Pentagon said in the readout.

The agreement to resume the military talks was reached between President Joe Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping during their summit in San Francisco last November.

In a briefing with reporters prior to the meetings, a senior U.S. defense official said while the resumption of the talks is a good sign, "we're clear-eyed" that significant differences remain between the two militaries, including the implications of China's movement toward a reunification with Taiwan, which could commit the U.S. to aid in Taiwan's defense. The official spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity to provide details ahead of the meeting.

Pelosi's 2022 visit to Taiwan angered China because it claims the island as part of its territory and views visits by foreign government officials as recognition of the island's sovereignty. She was the highest-ranking American official to visit Taiwan in 25 years.

For the past two years, the Pentagon has faced increased difficulty contacting the Chinese military as the number of intercepts between U.S. and Chinese aircraft and ships sharply rose. According to the Pentagon's most recent report on China's military power, Beijing "denied, canceled or ignored" military-to-military communications and meetings with the Pentagon for much of the past two years. The report warned that the lack of such talks "raises the risk of an operational incident or miscalculation spiraling into crisis or conflict."


# Ray Epps, a target of Jan. 6 conspiracy theories, gets a year of probation for his Capitol riot role
By **MICHAEL KUNZELMAN**
January 9, 2024. 9:22 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - A man targeted by right-wing conspiracy theories about the U.S. Capitol riot was sentenced on Tuesday to a year of probation for joining the Jan. 6, 2021, attack by a mob of fellow Donald Trump supporters.

Ray Epps, a former Arizona resident who was driven into hiding by death threats, pleaded guilty in September to a misdemeanor charge. He received no jail time, and there were no restrictions placed on his travel during his probation, but he will have to serve 100 hours of community service.

He appeared remotely by video conference and wasn't in the Washington, D.C., courtroom when Chief Judge James Boasberg sentenced him. Prosecutors had recommended a six-month term of imprisonment for Epps.

Epps' sentencing took place in the same building where Trump was attending an appeals court hearing as the Republican former president's lawyers argued he's immune from prosecution on charges he plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election he lost.

Fox News Channel and other right-wing media outlets amplified conspiracy theories that Epps, 62, was an undercover government agent who helped incite the Capitol attack to entrap Trump supporters. Epps filed a defamation lawsuit against Fox News last year, saying the network was to blame for spreading baseless claims about him.

Epps told the judge that he now knows that he never should have believed the lies about a stolen election that Trump and his allies told and that Fox News broadcast.

"I have learned that truth is not always found in the places that I used to trust," said Epps, who asked for mercy before learning his sentence.

The judge noted that many conspiracy theorists still refuse to believe that the Capitol riot was an insurrection carried out by Trump supporters. The judge said he hopes that the threats against Epps and his wife subside so they can move on with their lives.

"You were hounded out of your home," the judge said. "You were hounded out of your town."

Federal prosecutors have backed up Epps' vehement denials that he was a government plant or FBI operative. They say Epps has never been a government employee or agent beyond serving in the U.S. Marines from 1979 to 1983.

The ordeal has forced Epps and his wife to sell their property and businesses and flee their home in Queen Creek, Arizona, according to his lawyer.

"He enjoys no golf, tennis, travel, or other trappings of retirement. They live in a trailer in the woods, away from their family, friends, and community," attorney Edward Ungvarsky wrote in a court filing.

The internet-fueled accusations that upended Epps' life have persisted even after the Justice Department charged him with participating in the Jan. 6 siege.

"Fear of demented extremists has no apparent end in sight so long as those who spread hate and lies about Mr. Epps don't speak loudly and publicly to correct the messaging they delivered," Epps' lawyer wrote.

Epps pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct on restricted grounds, a charge punishable by a maximum of one year behind bars.

A prosecutor, Michael Gordon, said Epps doesn't deserve to be inundated with death threats but should serve jail time for his conduct on Jan. 6.

"He didn't start the riot. He made it worse," Gordon told the judge.

Epps' lawyer sought six months of probation without any jail time. Ungvarsky said his client went to Washington on Jan. 6 to peacefully protest the certification of the Electoral College vote for Joe Biden, a Democrat, over Trump, a Republican.

"You're never going to see Mr. Epps commit a crime again," the defense attorney said.

On the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, Epps was in a crowd at Washington's Black Lives Matter Plaza when he was captured on video advocating for entering the Capitol the following day. At Trump's "Stop the Steal" rally on Jan. 6, Epps was recorded telling other attendees: "As soon as the President is done speaking, we go to the Capitol. The Capitol is this way!"

At the Capitol, Epps was photographed whispering into the ear of another man before rioters breached a police barricade. Epps also helped other rioters push a large, metal-framed sign into a group of police officers and participated in "a rugby scrum-like group effort" to push past a line of officers, Gordon, an assistant U.S. attorney, said in a court filing.

"Even if Epps did not physically touch law enforcement officers or go inside of the building, he undoubtedly engaged in collective aggressive conduct," Gordon wrote.

Epps surrendered to the FBI two days after the riot after learning that agents were trying to identify him. He agreed to be interviewed by FBI agents as well as by the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The government initially declined to prosecute Epps in 2021 after the FBI investigated his conduct on Jan. 6 and found insufficient evidence to charge him with a crime, according to Ungvarsky. Epps isn't accused of entering the Capitol or engaging in any violence or destruction on Jan. 6.

"Mr. Epps was one of many who trespassed outside the Capitol building. Through the exercise of prosecutorial discretion, most of those persons will never be charged," the defense lawyer wrote.

More than 1,200 defendants have been charged with Capitol riot-related federal crimes. Over 900 of them have pleaded guilty or been convicted after trials decided by a judge or jury. Approximately 750 rioters have been sentenced, with nearly two-thirds getting some term of imprisonment.

Epps once served as an Arizona chapter leader for the Oath Keepers, but he parted ways with the anti-government extremist group a few years before the Jan. 6 attack.

Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes and other members were convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power from Trump to Biden after the 2020 election. Rhodes was sentenced last year to 18 years in prison.

Fox News has sought the dismissal of Epps' lawsuit, calling it "a direct attack on the First Amendment."


# Maine House votes down GOP effort to impeach election official who removed Trump from ballot
By **DAVID SHARP**
January 9, 2024. 2:10 PM EST

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AUGUSTA, Maine (AP) - Democrats who control the Maine Legislature on Tuesday rejected a Republican effort to impeach the state's top election official for her decision to remove former President Donald Trump from the state ballot over his role in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

The Maine House voted 80-60 against the resolution targeting Shenna Bellows, the first secretary of state in history to block someone from running for president by invoking the U.S. Constitution's insurrection clause.

Bellows, who watched the entire proceeding from the gallery, vowed to abide by any legal ruling on her decision to keep Trump off Maine's March 5 primary ballot, which is under appeal in Maine Superior Court.

Republicans are furious over Bellows' conclusion that the GOP frontrunner shouldn't be on the ballot. They argued that her decision disenfranchised the more than 300,000 voters in Maine who chose Trump in the last election.

GOP Rep. Michael Soboleski, of Phillips, called the secretary's action "election interference of the highest order" and a fellow Republican, Rep. James Thorne, of Carmel, said it "does nothing but further divide the political banner between the parties, and indeed the people of the state of Maine."

"There has been no conviction in a court of law. She is not a judge. She is not a jury. And I believe that the people feel absolutely disenfranchised," added Rep. Katrina Smith, a Republican from Palermo.

But they had faced long odds in seeking retribution against the Democrat.

The proposal called for a panel to investigate Bellows' actions and report back to the 151-member House. If the proposal had moved forward - and there had been an impeachment vote - then there would have been a trial in the 35-member Senate, where Democrats also have a majority.

Democratic Rep. Kevin O'Connell, of Brewer, said Bellows "faithfully discharged her oath of office." He called her "an honorable person" who should not be removed from office for "simply doing her job."

"You might disagree with her decision, and some folks do. But every government official has an obligation to follow the law and fulfill their oath to the Constitution," he said.

Afterward, Bellows said she stood by her assessment that the impeachment effort was "political theater" and that she acted as required by state law after Trump's candidacy was challenged.

"If people disagree with the decision, the proper venue for resolving that disagreement is with the courts. And indeed Mr. Trump has appealed to Superior Court. If people disagree with the authority delegated to the secretary under Maine election law, the proper venue is for the legislature to amend the law," Bellows said after the vote.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment prohibits those who "engaged in insurrection" from holding office. Some legal scholars say the post-Civil War clause applies to Trump for his role in trying to overturn the 2020 presidential election and encouraging his backers to storm the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

So far, Colorado is the only other state to bar Trump from the ballot. That decision by the Colorado Supreme Court is currently under appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

On Monday, Trump's lawyers asked a judge to pause his appeal of Bellow's decision to allow time for a U.S. Supreme Court decision that could render it moot. But the attorney general's office, which is representing Bellows, objected to the effort to delay the legal process in Maine.

Bellows, 48, is Maine's 50th secretary of state and the first woman to hold the office, beginning in the role in January 2021 after being elected by lawmakers.

The former state senator also served as executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Maine from 2005 to 2013 and worked on successful drives to legalize same-sex marriage, same-day voter registration and ranked choice voting.

While Maine has just four electoral votes, it's one of two states to split them, so the state could have outsized importance in what's expected to be a close presidential race this year. Trump earned one of Maine's electors when he was elected in 2016 and again in 2020 when he lost reelection.


# A former gang leader charged in the killing of Tupac Shakur is granted $750,000 bail and house arrest
By **KEN RITTER**
January 9, 2024. 7:50 PM EST

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**LAS VEGAS (AP)** - A Nevada judge set bail Tuesday at $750,000 for a former Los Angeles-area gang leader charged with orchestrating the killing of hip-hop legend Tupac Shakur in 1996, saying he can serve house arrest with electronic monitoring ahead of trial on a murder charge.

Court-appointed attorneys for Duane "Keffe D" Davis told The Associated Press after the judge's decision that they believe Davis can post that amount. They had asked for bail of not more than $100,000 and noted for the judge that the demands of preparing a defense based on two decades of evidence may require a postponement of the current June trial date.

Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson told reporters that he expects Clark County District Judge Carli Kierny will hold a "source hearing" to determine whether money posted for bail is legally obtained. The judge did not set a new trial date but called for a status check Feb. 20.

Prosecutors Binu Palal and Marc DiGiacomo argued Tuesday that Davis has never left gang life, that his 15 years of admissions about his role in Shakur's killing show he is guilty of murder, and that a jailhouse phone call in October suggested he poses a threat to witnesses.

"There is one constant," Palal told the judge. "Mr. Davis has consistently admitted to being architect of the murder."

DiGiacomo called Davis "a very, very high danger to the community."

The judge, in her ruling, acknowledged that Davis "made a living talking about his past life as a leader of the South Side Crips," a street gang in his hometown of Compton, California, "and also the killing of Mr. Shakur in graphic detail."

Robert Arroyo and co-counsel Charles Cano argued that police and prosecutors could have arrested Davis 15 years ago but didn't, and that the prosecutors were wrong with their interpretation of the jail telephone call and a list of names provided to Davis' family. The defense lawyers said it is Davis and his family who are at risk.

Arroyo and Cano said their 60-year-old client is in poor health after battling cancer, which is in remission, and said he would not flee to avoid trial.

They also downplayed evidence against Davis as the product of tales told by witnesses with gang backgrounds that make them not credible, and noted the prosecution lacks evidence, including the gun and the car involved in the September 1996 drive-by shooting that killed Shakur.

Arroyo focused Tuesday on what he called "the obvious question" dating to 2008 and 2009 - when Davis talked with police in Los Angeles and Las Vegas. He went on to write a 2019 tell-all memoir and began giving interviews on social media in which he described his role as gang leader and "shot-caller" in Shakur's death.

"If his guilt is so overwhelming, what's been happening for 15 years?" Arroyo asked in court Tuesday. "Why did we wait 15 years to make the arrest?"

Davis was arrested Sept. 29 outside his home in suburban Henderson, which Las Vegas police had searched in mid-July. He pleaded not guilty in November to first-degree murder and has been jailed without bail at the Clark County Detention Center in Las Vegas, where detainees' phone calls are routinely recorded. If convicted at trial, he could spend the rest of his life in prison.

Arroyo argued Tuesday that his client's accounts in "the YouTube world" accentuated violence to attract viewers and make money.

"Conflict sells," Arroyo said. "They get on these interviews, they puff out their chest. They're trying to get clicks."

Prosecutors say Davis' own words are strong evidence that he is responsible for the crime, even if he didn't pull the trigger. DiGiacomo said other people who have described Davis' role in other media interviews, and to police, corroborate his accounts.

Davis is the only person still alive who was in the car from which shots were fired, mortally wounding Shakur and wounding rap mogul Marion "Suge" Knight. Knight is serving 28 years in a California prison for an unrelated fatal shooting in the Los Angeles area in 2015.

Davis' attorneys noted that Knight is an eyewitness to the Shakur shooting but did not testify before the grand jury that indicted their client.

Davis maintains he was given immunity from prosecution in 2008 by an FBI and Los Angeles police task force investigating the killings of Shakur in Las Vegas and rival rapper Christopher Wallace, known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, six months later in Los Angeles.

DiGiacomo and Palal say any immunity agreement was limited. Last week, they submitted to the court an audio recording of a December 2008 task force interview during which they said Davis was told that what he said in the room would not be used against him, but that if he talked to other people he could be in legal jeopardy.

Davis' attorneys responded with a reference to the publication 12 years ago of a book written by former Los Angeles police Detective Greg Kading, who attended those interviews.

"Duane is not worried," the attorneys said, "because his alleged involvement in the death of Shakur has been out in the public since ... 2011."


# Even Andrew Scott was startled by his vulnerability in 'All of Us Strangers'
By **JAKE COYLE**
January 9, 2024. 11:15 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - On a recent winter day in New York when the sun was shining, Andrew Scott rushed into a coffee shop between recording sessions for an upcoming series.

"I'm scheduled tighter than a teenage pop star," he said, beaming.

The interview had been postponed once, and the location was switched at the last minute to save Scott some time in traffic. But he sat down fully engaged and eager to start talking. Immediately, though, a passerby tapped on the storefront glass and asked for a photo. Scott, without a grumble, sprinted out to oblige, even though the gesture seemed more like a command ("You're under arrest," joked Scott) than a polite request.

Scott, the 47-year-old Irish actor, is in demand like never before. That's partly due to accrued good will. A regular presence on stage in the West End, Scott is known to many as the "Hot Priest" of "Fleabag" or the cunning Moriarty of "Sherlock." Soon, he'll play Tom Ripley in the Netflix series "Ripley," adapted from the Patricia Highsmith novel.

But the real reason Scott's time is short right now is Andrew Haigh's new film, "All of Us Strangers." In it, Scott plays a screenwriter working on a script about his childhood. The film is gently poised in a metaphysical realm; when Adam (Scott) returns to his childhood home, he finds his parents (Claire Foy, Jamie Bell) as they were before they died many years earlier.

At the same time, the movie, loosely adapted from Taichi Yamada's 1987 book "Strangers," balances a budding romance with a neighbor ( Paul Mescal ), a relationship that unfolds with profound reverberations of family, intimacy and queer life. In a dreamy, longing ghost story, Scott is its aching, shimmering soul.

"The challenge of it was to try to go to that place but not gild the lily too much," Scott says. "As an actor, I have to be in touch with that playful side of myself and that part of you that's childish. I was actually quite struck by how vulnerable I looked in the film."

Scott's acutely tender performance has made him a contender for the Academy Awards. He was named best actor by the National Society of Film Critics. At the Golden Globes on Sunday (Scott wore a white tux and t-shirt), he was nominated for best actor in a drama.

Scott has long admired actors like Anthony Hopkins, Judi Dench and Meryl Streep - performers with a sense of humor who, he says, "are able to understand what you feel and what you present." Scott, too, is often funny on screen (see Lena Dunham's medieval romp "Catherine Called Birdy" ). And even in quiet moments, he seems to be buzzing inside at some discreet frequency. Something is always going on under the surface.

He's been acting since he was young; drama classes were initially a way to get over shyness. Scott's first film role came at age 17. He has often spoken about seeking to maintain a childlike perspective in acting. In that way, "All of Us Strangers" is particularly fitting. On Adam's trips home, he sort of morphs back into the child he was. In one scene, he wears his old pajamas and crawls into bed with his parents.

"So many of the things that are required of you as an actor are a sense of humor and some ability to be able to put yourself in a situation. Because it's all down to imagination," says Scott. "For me, that's the thing you need to keep. That's the thing - because I started out when I was young - I don't want to move too far away from. Like when kids go, 'OK, you be this and I'll be this.' That ability doesn't leave us. What does leave us is a lack of self-consciousness. Our job is to hold on to that."

Haigh, the British filmmaker of "45 Years" and "Weekend," began thinking of Scott for the role early on. They met and talked through the script for a few hours.

"He's a similar generation to me. He's a tiny bit younger than me, but he's from the same generation," says Haigh. "He understands that experience."

Scott came out publicly in 2013, but his natural inclination is to be private. "I feel like I've given so much of myself in the film, you think you don't want to give it all away," he says. He describes "All of Us Strangers" - which Haigh shot partly in his childhood home - as personal, but not autobiographical in its depiction of the alienation that can linger after coming out.

"Mercifully, I feel very comfortable for the most part. But it stays with you that pain, and it actually makes you more compassionate, I think. Because we shot in Andrew's childhood home, that sort of threw down the gauntlet in relation to how much of his own personality he was giving," says Scott. "I wanted it to be sort of unadorned, unarmored and raw. That's why I think there's such tenderness in the film."

Scott has sometimes recoiled from how sexuality is talked about the media and in Hollywood. He recently said the phrase "openly gay" should be done away with. As of late December, Scott hadn't yet watched "All of Us Strangers" with his parents, though he planned to.

"The best way to express it is to say I'll be very sensitive to how they watch it and how they feel about it, and how it makes me feel them watching it," Scott says.

The tenderness in the film is also owed in part to Scott's chemistry with Mescal. On-screen chemistry is an amorphous quality that the film industry has long tried to turn into a science with camera tests and marketing that flirts with real-life romance.

But for Scott, it's something different. He and Phoebe Waller-Bridge had chemistry, overwhelmingly, in "Fleabag," but that didn't have anything to do with sexual attraction. Pinpointing that quality is something Scott pondered during Simon Stephens and Sam Yates' recent staging of Chekhov's "Uncle Vanya" at the National Theater. Scott played all eight roles, meaning he essentially had to have chemistry with himself.

"Chemistry isn't just about sexual chemistry. It's something to do with listening, and I think it's something to do with playfulness," Scott says. "Your ability to listen to someone and take note of what someone is doing is chemistry. You have to wait and see what the other actor is doing."

A few moments later, Scott will have to rush out just as quickly as he arrived. But before that, he leaned back, naturally lit by the winter sun, and pondered whether "All of Us Strangers," in the nakedness of his performance, had taken him somewhere he hadn't before been as an actor.

"Yeah, I think so," said Scott. "Or else to return to something that perhaps I've been before."


# Lindsay Lohan, Reneé Rapp and the stars of the new 'Mean Girls' turn out for premiere
By **JOHN CARUCCI**
January 9, 2024. 10:32 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - She doesn't even go here, but Lindsay Lohan still joined the cast of the new "Mean Girls" at the musical film's premiere Monday night in New York.

Lohan, the star of the original 2004 film, reunited with Tina Fey - who wrote both the classic film, the Broadway show it inspired and this new adaptation - and posed with the new Cady Heron, Angourie Rice, on the pink carpet.

"It was an amazing movie to work on when I did it, and I can't wait to see this new iterative version of it. I think it's gonna be wonderful," Lohan told The Associated Press.

Lohan said it "felt great" to hear of the movie's impact on teens over the years and was excited that the new film, which releases Friday, will deal with new topics.

"I loved Lindsay's performance in the 2004 film so much, it's one of my favorites," Rice said. "So in everything I did, I just hoped that my performance would be adding to the legacy that she started."

Just like the 2004 version, the musical movie follows Cady's move to the suburbs, where she experiences the treacherous hierarchies of high school. There, she finds herself accepted by an elite yet shallow group of girls known as the Plastics, led by Regina George - here played by Reneé Rapp. It's billed as "a new twist from Tina Fey," incorporating songs and new technology, but Fey said the "core story" still resonates two decades later.

"In a way, things haven't changed that much, right? People have new ways to mess with each other, right? They can do it over the internet, but it's still just human beings pulling someone else down to make themselves momentarily feel better, right?" she told the AP.

Lohan concurred, saying the movie is a good "wake-up call."

"I think the characters in this movie definitely were relatable, too, and I think that's so important," she said, "and it's good to have a new refresher of it 20 years later for people to see and know that it's still goes on and cliques still happen."

In addition to Lohan, Fey, Rice and Rapp, the starry premiere featured actors from the new movie like Jon Hamm,Auli'i Cravalho and Busy Philipps, as well as directors Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr. and producer Lorne Michaels.Megan Thee Stallion, who recently released the song "Not My Fault" with Rapp, and Fey's "30 Rock" co-star Jane Krakowski also turned out.

As for Lohan, she told the AP she starts filming a Netflix movie next week and is in "Irish Rose," out on the streaming service in March. She said she's also filming "something else coming up this summer."

When asked what it's like having a baby and seeing what kids go through as teenagers, as portrayed in "Mean Girls," Lohan replied, "Oh my god, he's not a teenager yet."

"Don't rush me. I want to savor every moment," she continued. "But it's a blessing. It's the biggest blessing in the world."


# Marin Alsop to become Philadelphia Orchestra's principal guest conductor next season
By **THE ASSOCIATED PRESS**
January 9, 2024. 11:01 AM EST

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**PHILADELPHIA (AP)** - Marin Alsop will become principal guest conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra next season, succeeding Nathalie Stutzmann.

Alsop, 67, was music director of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra from 2007-08 through 2020-21, the first woman to lead a top-level American orchestra. She agreed to a three-year term with the Philadelphia Orchestra starting with a 2024 tour of China, the organization said Tuesday. She will conduct it for two or three weeks per season.

Alsop debuted with the orchestra in 1990 and has led it 32 times. Yannick Nézet-Séguin, the Philadelphia Orchestra's music director since 2012-13, reached out to her along with the orchestra's management. She said the orchestra had long put aside its reputation for a heavy string sound, developed when Eugene Ormandy was music director from 1936-80.

"It's a much different organism that when I first conducted them," she said. "They're super-flexible. They're super-engaged. They're super-enthusiastic,

She is in her fifth season as chief conductor of the ORF Vienna Radio Symphony Orchestra and her first season as chief conductor of the Polish National Radio Symphony and as principal guest conductor of London's Philharmonia Orchestra. She began in 2020 as the chief conductor of the Ravinia Festival, the summer home of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

Alsop is to make her Metropolitan Opera debut in April leading the company debut of John Adams' "El Niño."

In 2005, she received a MacArthur Foundation "genius grant."


# Tennessee Titans fire coach Mike Vrabel after back-to-back losing seasons
By **TERESA M. WALKER**
January 9, 2024. 6:04 PM EST

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**NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP)** - Tennessee Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk wants a fresh approach to compete in the NFL, so she fired coach Mike Vrabel on Tuesday morning after six seasons and losing 18 of the past 24 games.

Strunk said in a statement it was a decision "as difficult as any I've made."

But she said she believes teams best positioned to win must be aligned and collaborate across the board. The Titans started that shift a year ago, hiring Ran Carthon as the franchise's first Black general manager and expanding its analytics staff. More changes were needed to "fully achieve our vision."

Strunk said she assessed the team throughout the season in an interview released by the team. The Titans went 7-10 in 2022 and just finished a 6-11 season Sunday.

"I thought it was time to make that change," Strunk said.

The announcement came a day after the Titans cleaned out their lockers with Vrabel not speaking to reporters. It was the first time in the franchise's 27 seasons in Tennessee the head coach did not talk to reporters since the team moved to the state from Texas.

Several Titans, from rookie quarterback Will Levis to two-time Pro Bowl defensive lineman Jeffery Simmons, all said they wanted to keep Vrabel as their coach.

The Titans hired Carthon from San Francisco where he spent six seasons. The Niners have made the playoffs three straight seasons and four of five, including reaching Super Bowl 54, and currently are the NFC's No. 1 seed.

Carthon said at a news conference Tuesday he has a couple of candidates already for his first head coaching search. The search process starts immediately.

"We have to get it right, and I'm confident that we will," Carthon said.

Carthon dispelled speculation of friction between himself and Vrabel, saying the coach was part of every meeting on players. Carthon also said Vrabel never talked with him about wanting more control over personnel.

"We're not going to bring players in here that the coaches don't want to coach," Carthon said.

The Titans now are the sixth NFL team at the moment looking for a new coach, joining Atlanta and Washington who fired coaches Monday. The Raiders, the Chargers and Panthers didn't wait for the season to end before firing coaches.

NFL teams can't start in-person interviews until after the divisional round after owners voted in October to push those back a week to slow down the hiring process and try to increase diversity in hiring.

They also cannot interview head coaching candidates employed by other NFL teams until Tuesday or Wednesday for any coach whose team is done or team has a playoff bye. Teams can start virtual interviews.

Any internal candidates or someone not currently employed by the NFL can interview in person.

Strunk said the Titans thought of trying to trade Vrabel as a coach expected to be a top candidate. She noted a coach has to be willing to be traded, and trying to deal Vrabel might've delayed the Titans' search by three weeks.

"To get the right head coach, I was just not willing to go to the back of the line and take a chance of missing out on someone we really wanted," Strunk said.

Hired in January 2018, Vrabel went 56-48 overall, including a 2-3 record in the playoffs that included reaching the AFC championship game in the 2019 season as part of three straight playoff berths.

The Titans contended for a playoff spot in the season finale of his first five seasons until they were eliminated from postseason contention for this season in December. Vrabel wound up coaching a team that used the most players in the NFL in each of the past three seasons because of injuries.

Carthon said nine starters missed the season finale and that figuring out how to stay healthier will be a part of the process as the Titans hire a new coach.

Vrabel signed a contract extension after a 2021 season where he won the AP NFL Coach of the Year award. He said last week that "of course he wants to be here" in 2024, but used an expletive to make clear that losing stinks.

Strunk fired general manager Jon Robinson on Dec. 6, 2022, in the midst of the team's seven-game slide to blow a third straight division title. She hired Carthon in January 2023, though he had few resources to fix the roster.

The Titans go into this offseason with the seventh overall draft pick, the second-most salary cap space in the NFL and believe they have their quarterback after Levis went 3-6 as a rookie. The 33rd pick overall out of Kentucky took over at the end of October after veteran Ryan Tannehill sprained his right ankle.

Strunk said she will never shy away from having "unapologetically high expectations" for the team her late father founded in 1960. She called this offseason as important as any in the franchise's history. This will be the third head coach Strunk has hired since taking over in March 2015.

"I'm prepared to make the hard decisions to hopefully get us there sooner," Strunk said.

Tennessee breaks ground on a new enclosed stadium expected to cost $2.1 billion sometime this spring, which is set to open for the 2027 season. That only adds to the pressure of making the right decisions from top to bottom moving forward.


# Rays shortstop Wander Franco faces lesser charge as judge analyzes evidence in ongoing probe
By **MARTÍN ADAMES ALCÁNTARA**
January 9, 2024. 11:54 AM EST

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**SANTO DOMINGO, Dominican Republic (AP)** - Wander Franco is facing a lesser charge after a judge in the Dominican Republic analyzed evidence that alleges the Tampa Bay Rays shortstop had a relationship with a 14-year-old girl and paid her mother thousands of dollars for her consent.

Originally accused of commercial and sexual exploitation and money laundering - charges that carry up to 30 years, 10 years and 20 years of prison respectively - Franco now stands accused instead of sexual and psychological abuse, according to a judge's resolution that The Associated Press obtained on Tuesday.

Franco has not been formally accused, but if found guilty on the new charge, he could face between two to five years in prison.

Dominican law allows authorities to detain a suspect while prosecutors gather evidence to support their accusations, with a judge later determining whether there is sufficient evidence for charges to be formally filed and the case to move forward.

In his decision, Judge Romaldy Marcelino observed that prosecutors gave the case against Franco a different and more serious treatment because "the accused is a professional MLB player," he said, referring to Major League Baseball. He didn't elaborate.

The judge also determined that the money Franco is accused of giving the teen's mother cannot be considered payment for the girl's alleged services since the mother requested money after finding out about their relationship, which lasted four months, according to evidence collected by prosecutors.

The girl's 35-year-old mother also is charged in the case and remains under house arrest. The original charges of money laundering still stand against her. The AP is not naming the woman in order to preserve her daughter's privacy.

Franco was conditionally released Monday from a jail in the northern province of Puerto Plata after being detained for a week. He was ordered to pay 2 million Dominican pesos ($34,000) as a type of deposit and is required to meet with authorities once a month in the Dominican Republic as the investigation continues.

Franco was having an All-Star season before being sidelined in August, when Dominican authorities began investigating claims he had been in a relationship with a minor. Major League Baseball launched its own investigation, placing Franco on the restricted list on Aug. 14 before moving him to administrative leave on Aug. 22. Both investigations are ongoing.

Franco signed a $182 million, 11-year contract in 2021. His salary last year and this year is $2 million per season.


# Column: Tiger Woods and Nike was a partnership for a lifetime until it wasn't
By **DOUG FERGUSON**
January 9, 2024. 11:00 AM EST

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**KAPALUA, Hawaii (AP)** - The red shirt on Sunday came to identify Tiger Woods.

So did the swoosh.

Woods and Nike were partners from the time he stepped to a podium at the Greater Milwaukee Open in August 1996, a 20-year-old fresh off his unprecedented third straight U.S. Amateur title. With a swoosh on his striped shirt, he gazed at the room and said, "I guess, hello world, huh?"

It all sounded so innocent until Nike launched its "Hello, World" campaign a few days later. That wasn't put together overnight, but so what? It worked.

Just about everything did when it came to Woods and Nike.

"Amazing run. Great partnership," said Mark Steinberg, his agent at Excel Sports.

There was some downtime during a commercial shoot in Florida in 1999 when Woods began bouncing a golf ball off his wedge and a producer decided to catch it on camera. The result was a 30-second spot of Woods bouncing the ball while switching hands, going through the legs, behind the back and then popping it up in the air and making solid contact with a baseball swing. Pure magic.

One of the most famous shots in Masters history was his pitch up the slope on the 16th green, back down the slope toward the hole and then the ball comes to a stop - with the swoosh in full view - before dropping for birdie. That wasn't scripted, of course. It just seemed that way.

Woods had switched to the Nike golf ball in May 2000 and then won the next four majors, the only player in history to hold them all at the same time.

He switched to Nike irons a week before the Ryder Cup in 2002. Asked about the timing of the change, Woods said: "Off the record? Because the majors are over." Asked for a comment on the record, he thought for a minute, laughed and said, "Because the majors are over."

And now the partnership is over after 27 years.

Woods has had three regular caddies and two agents during that time. He has had six corporate sponsors on his bag and four swing coaches. He has used three golf balls and and four brands of irons.

What never changed was his relationship with Nike.

"I would have thought without a doubt he would have been a lifer," Curtis Strange said.

Strange has his own history with Nike Golf. He and Peter Jacobsen wore the swoosh when it was best known for sneakers, particularly the Air Jordan created for Michael Jordan, who remains the one athlete forever linked with Nike.

Strange had a swoosh with "Nike Golf" in block letters when he won back-to-back in the U.S. Open, the first to do that since Ben Hogan. He even wore a red shirt on Sunday for the second title at Oak Hill in 1989. Not many remember that. Even fewer probably cared.

"They were still so young," Strange said. "Even when they pushed us a little bit in ads and posters, it was a small piece of the market."

And then it became much bigger when Nike co-founder Phil Knight signed Woods.

"What Michael Jordan did for basketball, Tiger Woods absolutely can do for golf," Knight told Golf World magazine about the original deal (5 years, $40 million) that seemed so enormous at the time and now looks to be what his father, Earl Woods, once called it - chump change.

"The world has not seen anything like what he's going to do for the sport," Knight said. "It's almost art. I wasn't alive to see Claude Monet paint, but I am alive to see Tiger play, and that's pretty great."

He was right about what Woods did for his sport. He created a popularity boom not seen since Arnold Palmer, and Woods was the catalyst behind network TV deals that made everyone richer than they imagined, at least in the non-Saudi division.

But it never really translated into success for Nike Golf. It outsourced the golf ball. It once made a square-shaped driver (Woods never used it). And then it abandoned the equipment in 2016 and stuck with apparel.

Brooks Koepka remains a Nike athletic and equipment holdout - he still uses a Nike 3-iron.

Knight told Bloomberg in a 2017 interview about Nike's decision to get out of the golf equipment business that it was a "fairly simple equation."

"We lost money for 20 years on equipment and balls and realized next year wasn't going to be any different," he said.

Woods wasn't giving Nike much visibility lately, either, mainly a product of knee surgeries, five back surgeries and most recently the February 2021 car crash outside Los Angeles that shattered bones in his right leg and led to ankle fusion surgery in April.

And then he switched to FootJoy shoes when he did return following the car crash, saying he needed "something that allowed me to be more stable." Nike responded by saying it would work with Woods to "meet his needs." Woods was still wearing FootJoy a month ago.

Woods, who turned 48 a few weeks ago, wants to play a tournament a month if his body allows. He gets more eyeballs than any golfer in history. But it's still only six tournaments.

Woods spoke of "another chapter" in his social media post announcing the end with Nike. Steinberg, the agent, hinted at "an exciting announcement" at Riviera in February. But it will be a different look. It's hard to imagine Woods can create the moments he had with Nike over the years, mainly because Woods is more about medical science than painting like Claude Monet.

Nike still has Scottie Scheffler and Rory McIlroy, and Nelly Korda from the LPGA Tour, in its stable. Cutting ties with Woods will lead to speculation its day in golf are numbered, though there has been no indication of that.

As for Woods? He will show up in Los Angeles for the first time without a swoosh to be found. At least the Sunday shirt will be red.


# Miami Marlins in agreement to hire Rachel Balkovec as director of player development, AP source says
By **ALANIS THAMES**
January 9, 2024. 2:24 PM EST

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**MIAMI (AP)** - The Miami Marlins are in agreement with Yankees minor league manager Rachel Balkovec to become their director of player development, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The person confirmed an MLB.com report of Balkovec's hiring to The Associated Press on Tuesday on condition of anonymity because the team had not announced the deal.

Balkovec finished her second season as manager at Class A Tampa in September. She debuted with the team in April 2022 with a win as the first woman to manage a Major League Baseball affiliate.

Before that, Balkovec was the first woman to serve as a full-time minor league strength and conditioning coach, then the first to be a full-time hitting coach in the minors with the Yankees.

A former softball catcher at Creighton and New Mexico, Balkovec got her first job in professional baseball with the St. Louis Cardinals as a minor league strength and conditioning coach in 2012.

In 2016, Balkovec joined the Houston Astros, hired as the Latin American strength and conditioning coordinator and later was the strength and conditioning coach at Double-A Corpus Christi.

She joined the Yankees organization as a minor league hitting coach in 2019.

The Marlins have made a series of front office moves since the 2023 season ended.

A month after parting ways with general manager Kim Ng, who led the organization for three seasons, the Marlins hired former Rays GM Peter Bendix as their new president of baseball operations. Ng was the first woman to become GM of a major league team.

Bendix got to work immediately, bringing in former San Francisco Giants manager Gabe Kapler as an assistant GM.


# Trump suggests unauthorized migrants will vote. The idea stirs his base, but ignores reality
By **ALI SWENSON**
January 9, 2024. 3:35 PM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Donald Trump is seizing on his party's frustration with the recent surge of illegal crossings at the southern U.S. border to churn up fears around another top GOP concern - voter fraud.

In the final stretch before Iowa's caucuses next Monday, the former Republican president has repeatedly suggested that Democrats are encouraging migrants to flow into the country illegally in order to register them to vote in the 2024 election.

The unsupported claim, which Trump and other Republicans have carted out in past election years, is resonating with voters who agree that security is lacking at both the border and the polls. Experts say it also can be damaging, giving undue traction to false stereotypes and extremist ideologies such as the racist " great replacement theory."

The GOP frontrunner flicked at the idea of Democrats registering unauthorized migrants to vote at least twice over the weekend in Iowa.

"I think they really are doing it because they want to sign these people up to vote. I really do," Trump said in Mason City on Friday. "They can't speak a word of English for the most part, but they're signing them up."

The comments came after he posted recently on his Truth Social platform that "crazed" Democrats are allowing unvetted migrants into the country "so they can vote, vote vote."

His message is welcome to some of Trump's Iowa supporters who are still angry about the outcome of the 2020 election. Trump continues to promote the lie that widespread fraud cost him reelection, despite multiple audits, reviews and recounts in the battleground states where he disputed the results, dozens of failed legal challenges and his own attorney general saying there was no evidence to back up the claims.

Michell Harvilla, awaiting Trump's appearance in Clinton, Iowa, on Saturday, said she "absolutely" believes Democrats favor allowing people into the country illegally to influence the 2024 election.

"I fully believe the last one was rigged," said the 58-year-old middle school library and media director, who caucused for Ted Cruz in 2016 but voted for Trump twice.

Billionaire Elon Musk also has pushed the narrative on his social media platform X in recent days, claiming that Democrats are "importing voters."

The Trump campaign didn't immediately respond to an emailed request for comment. In response to an email directed to Musk, the platform sent only an automated response.

These claims ignore the facts around noncitizen voting in federal elections, which is illegal and remains exceedingly rare even as it is thoroughly scrutinized, according to Sean Morales-Doyle, director of voting rights at the Brennan Center for Justice.

Anyone registering to vote in the U.S. must attest under penalty of perjury that they are a U.S. citizen, Morales-Doyle said. Lying is punishable by fines, imprisonment and deportation, he said - such steep penalties that very few people are willing to accept the risk.

On top of that, federal law requires states to regularly maintain their voter rolls and remove anyone ineligible, a process that identifies immigrants living in the country illegally. Even with this and other vetting processes in place, only a small number of noncitizen voters have been uncovered - evidence that Trump's theory has no teeth, Morales-Doyle said.

In 2017, the Brennan Center examined 42 local jurisdictions around the country in the 2016 election, including some of the most populous counties in Arizona, California, Florida and Texas. Of 23.5 million votes cast, election officials found only about 30 cases of potential noncitizen voting that they referred for prosecution or further investigation.

More recent investigations also haven't shown proof of widespread noncitizen voting. A Georgia audit of its voter rolls conducted in 2022 found fewer than 2,000 instances of noncitizens attempting to register to vote for 25 years, none of which succeeded. Millions of new Georgia voters registered during that period.

Occasional instances in which noncitizens have been found to cast ballots illegally or attempted to register captured widespread attention, helping feed the narrative that they are voting in large numbers. Ahead of the 2022 midterms, Colorado's secretary of state mistakenly sent postcards to about 30,000 noncitizens that encouraged them to register to vote, a problem apparently connected to the state's driver's license database. The office said no noncitizens would be allowed to register if they tried.

The Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights of Los Angeles, an organization that encourages voter participation among Latinos, said it hasn't found evidence of noncitizens voting in its decades of advocacy work.

"The Latino and immigrant communities know the law," the group said in an emailed statement.

Suggesting that non-English speakers are somehow less qualified to vote than other populations also is misleading, said Morales-Doyle. The Voting Rights Act bans voting discrimination against language minorities and builds in requirements for language assistance at the polls, he said.

Federal law doesn't stop states or municipalities from granting noncitizens the right to vote in local races. Some have, among them several cities in Maryland and Vermont, while several states ban the practice. New York City passed a law in 2022 that would allow legally documented noncitizens and "Dreamers" to vote for mayor and other elected officials, but a judge blocked the move.

On the flip side, some states and federal lawmakers have sought to require voters to provide documentary proof of citizenship when they register. But these efforts have been challenged by advocates and blocked by federal courts for the burden they impose on voters.

The Brennan Center and other advocacy groups say proof-of-citizenship requirements disenfranchise people when many eligible voters don't have birth certificates or other applicable documents at hand. They say providing citizenship proof is an unnecessary step when research shows noncitizens are not voting in significant numbers.

Trump's claims that noncitizens are casting ballots aren't new. After the 2016 election, he falsely claimed in a private meeting with congressional leaders that he would have won the popular vote if it weren't for the votes of 3 million to 5 million immigrants living in the country illegally.

Yet the idea may be especially effective with his base now, as videos of migrants traveling to the border inundate social media amid a massive surge in migration through the U.S. border with Mexico that the nation's leaders are still struggling to address.

An estimated 10.5 million people were living illegally in the United States in 2021, according to Pew Research Center's latest figures, published in November. That snapshot was taken before the recent surge of migrants from around the world, a break from the recent past when migrants primarily came from Mexico and Central America.

Millions are in the U.S. seeking asylum or entering on parole, a legal authority granted for humanitarian reasons or when deemed a "significant public benefit." Asylum-seekers and those on parole may be eligible to work but cannot vote. That right is exclusively held for citizens, unless specifically allowed for local elections.

U.S. authorities made 5.9 million arrests for illegal crossings from Mexico from March 2021, when a COVID-inspired lull ended, through November 2023. That included a record-high 2.2 million arrests in the 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2022. Many people are released to seek asylum in immigration courts, which are backlogged with 3 million cases that take years to decide.

The White House and Congress are negotiating how best to reduce the number of migrants traveling to the southern border. Meanwhile, public confusion around border policy leaves room for false claims to spread, said Jared Holt, a senior analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, a London-based think tank that tracks online hate, disinformation and extremism.

He said false noncitizen voting claims over the years have helped build support for a more sinister conspiracy theory about a grand plot to diminish the influence of white Americans by replacing them with minorities.

"It's sort of a tongue-in-cheek way of pushing the great replacement theory, but in a way that has been understood to be less morally repugnant or perceivably more defensible," Holt said. "I don't think you have to scratch very far below the surface to understand what is really being said."


# More delays for NASA's astronaut moonshots, with crew landing off until 2026
By **MARCIA DUNN**
January 9, 2024. 3:54 PM EST

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**CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP)** - Astronauts will have to wait until next year before flying to the moon and at least two years before landing on it, under the latest round of delays announced by NASA on Tuesday.

The space agency had planned to send four astronauts around the moon late this year, but pushed the flight to September 2025. The first human moon landing in more than 50 years also got bumped, from 2025 to September 2026. NASA cited safety concerns with its own spacecraft, as well as development issues with the moonsuits and landers coming from private industry.

"Safety is our top priority," said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. The delays will "give Artemis teams more time to work through the challenges."

The news came barely an hour after a Pittsburgh company abandoned its own attempt to land its spacecraft on the moon because of a mission-ending fuel leak.

Launched Monday as part of NASA's commercial lunar program, Astrobotic Technology's Peregrine lander was supposed to serve as a scout for the astronauts. A Houston company will give it a shot with its own lander next month.

NASA is relying heavily on private companies for its Artemis moon-landing program for astronauts, named after the mythological twin sister of Apollo.

SpaceX's Starship mega rocket will be needed to get the first Artemis moonwalkers from lunar orbit down to the surface and back up. But the nearly 400-foot (121-meter) rocket has launched from Texas only twice, exploding both times over the Gulf of Mexico. A third test flight is planned for February.

The longer it takes to get Starship into orbit around Earth, first with satellites and then crews, the longer NASA will have to wait to attempt its first moon landing with astronauts since 1972. During NASA's Apollo era, 12 astronauts walked on the moon. The competition back then was the Soviet Union; now it's China. Nelson told reporters he's not worried that China will beat America to the moon with a crew, even with the latest delay. Even so, "we don't fly until it's ready," he stressed.

The Government Accountability Office warned in November that NASA was likely looking at 2027 for its first astronaut moon landing, citing Elon Musk's Starship as one of the many technical challenges. Another potential hurdle: the development of moonwalking suits by Houston's Axiom Space.

"We need them all to be ready and all to be successful in order for that very complicated mission to come together," said Amit Kshatriya, NASA's deputy associate administrator. He added that even with the delay, a 2026 moon landing represents "a very aggressive schedule."

NASA has only one Artemis moonshot under its belt so far. In a test flight of its new moon rocket in 2022, the space agency sent an empty Orion capsule into lunar orbit and returned it to Earth. To engineers' surprise, some charred material came off the capsule's heat shield during reentry. Later, testing of another capsule uncovered a design flaw in the life-support electronics, and separate battery issues popped up.

It's the same kind of capsule that will carry astronauts to and from the moon, linking up with Starship in lunar orbit for the trip down to the surface and back up.

Starship will need to fill up its fuel tank in orbit around Earth, before heading to the moon; SpaceX estimates an estimated 10 fuel transfers will be needed. The company plans an orbiting fuel depot to handle the job, another key aspect of the program yet to be demonstrated.

NASA's moon-landing effort has been delayed repeatedly over the past decade, adding to billions of dollars to the cost. Government audits project the total program costs at $93 billion through 2025.


# Supreme Court rejects appeal by ex-officer Tou Thao, who held back crowd as George Floyd lay dying
January 9, 2024. 2:01 PM EST

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**MINNEAPOLIS (AP)** - The U.S. Supreme Court has declined to review the federal civil rights conviction of a former Minneapolis police officer who held back a concerned crowd while fellow officers pinned down a dying George Floyd.

The high court, without comment, on Monday rejected the appeal of Tou Thao, who had argued that prosecutors failed to prove his actions on the day that Floyd died were willful, and alleged that prosecutorial misconduct deprived him of his right to a fair trial.

Thao had testified that he merely served as a "human traffic cone" when he held back concerned bystanders as former Officer Derek Chauvin, who is white, knelt on Floyd's neck for 9 1/2 minutes while the Black man pleaded for his life on May 25, 2020. A bystander video captured Floyd's fading cries of "I can't breathe." Floyd's murder touched off protests worldwide and forced a national reckoning on police brutality and racism.

Thao was one of three former officers who were convicted in a 2022 federal trial of violating Floyd's civil rights. Chauvin pleaded guilty in that case earlier, after being convicted of second-degree murder in a separate trial in state court. Thao and the two other former officers were convicted in state court of aiding and abetting Floyd's murder. Thao is serving his 3 1/2-year federal and 4 3/4-year state sentences concurrently.

The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Chauvin's appeal of his state murder conviction in November. He's recovering from being stabbed 22 times by a fellow inmate at the federal prison in Tucson, Arizona, later that week. He's appealing his federal conviction separately.