# Reluctant pastor's son to most-viewed preacher: Shooting puts new spotlight on Joel Osteen
By **BEN FINLEY**
February 12, 2024. 8:05 PM EST

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Joel Osteen is one of the most familiar faces in American religion.

The pastor who leads the Houston megachurch where a 5-year-old boy was critically wounded in a Sunday shooting that also hit a man in the hip - before the shooter was killed by off-duty police working security - is known for his megawatt smile, wavy hair and widely popular brand of Christianity.

The 60-year-old regularly preaches to about 45,000 people a week in a former basketball arena and he's known to millions more through his television sermons.

Osteen inherited his calling from his father and increased the size of the congregation almost five-fold. His book, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living Your Full Potential" sold nearly 3 million copies. In the mid-2000s, Osteen was viewed by more people than any preacher in the United States, reaching 95 percent of all households, according to Nielsen Media Research.

His services over the years have drawn an almost equal mix of whites, Blacks and Hispanics - a diversity not seen in most churches across the nation.

Nicknamed the "smiling preacher," Osteen told The Associated Press in 2004 that his message of hope and encouragement "resonates with people."

But his laid-back preaching style has also drawn criticism for focusing on feel-good messaging over fiery sermons.

Osteen follows a thread of evangelical Christianity called the Prosperity Gospel, which believes that following God brings rewards to followers who devote themselves to him, said Mark Ward Sr., a professor of communication at the University of Houston-Victoria who writes about evangelical mass media.

"Essentially, God wants to bless you. And if you have enough faith, he will," Ward told The Associated Press on Monday. "You can prosper. And you can live your best life now. And that is a very appealing message to both white and Black evangelical audiences."

Authorities said the critically injured boy is the son of shooter Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, who authorities said had a history of mental illness, including being placed under emergency detention in 2016.

The weekend shooting at Joel Osteen's megachurch in Houston is not the first time gunfire has caused panic and tragedy at a Texas house of worship.

Osteen told his 10 million followers on X, the social media platform, that his church community was "devastated."

"In the face of such darkness, we must hold onto our faith and remember evil will not prevail," Osteen stated. "God will guide us through the darkest of times. Together, we will rise above this tragedy and stand firm in our commitment to love and support one another."

Decades before Sunday's shooting, Osteen said he never dreamed he would be a preacher and never imagined leading a flock so large.

Osteen had never preached - and never had the desire, he has said - until the Sunday before his father died in 1999. John Osteen had founded the charismatic Christian Lakewood Church in an abandoned feed store in 1959.

Osteen told The Associated Press in 2004 that as his father's church grew he preferred to be behind the scenes. He had left his studies at Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Okla., in 1982 and joined his father's staff as a television producer.

When the elder Osteen was hospitalized, the preacher's son reluctantly stepped to the pulpit. His dad listened to the sermon by telephone from his hospital bed.

"The nurses said they'd never seen him so happy, so proud," Osteen recalled in 2004. John Osteen died five days later, and his son "just knew it down on the inside" that God wanted him to preach.

Critics have taken Osteen to task for downplaying the sinful nature of humanity and the need for repentance. But Osteen's mother, Dodie Osteen, told the AP in 2005: "We don't preach the gospel sad, we preach it glad."

"To me, it's cotton-candy theology," Ole Anthony, president of Trinity, a Dallas-based religious watchdog group told the AP in 2004. "There's no meat. They just make everybody feel good."

Osteen is "quite sincere," said William Martin, a professor of religion and public policy at Rice University who lives near the Houston church.

He said Osteen often opens his sermons with a joke and doesn't shout at his congregants.

"He's upbeat. Doesn't claim to be theologically or philosophically deep," Martin said.

Osteen's father expanded Lakewood's already huge congregation at the perfect time: The American media landscape was rapidly changing with the rise of the internet and the deregulation of broadcast media, said Ward, the University of Houston-Victoria professor.

Television preachers receiving a large number of donations from their congregations could buy airtime on large cable networks such as the Trinity Broadcasting Network instead of making a hodgepodge of deals with "mom-and-pop" TV stations.

"In order to be able to raise that kind of money, you have to have a message that is broadly appealing," Ward said. "And so we have televangelists like Joel Osteen or T.D. Jakes, who have a broadly popular message."

Osteen is not overtly political and megachurches like his provide a different experience than many others, Ward said.

"You get a feeling of transcendence that's not through vestments and creeds and organ playing but essentially multimedia," Ward said. "The lights go down. You've got large screens with videos. You've got a praise band that's playing at rock-concert decibels."

Ward added: "People who are watching are getting a sense of the transcendent through the televised spectacle."

Osteen's leads his flock in the former home of the Houston Rockets, where they won two NBA titles in the 1990s and the Houston Comets of the WNBA when they won four.

It was also the site of Osteen's first date with his future bride, Victoria, when they went out to watch a Houston Rockets basketball game.

Turning the former arena into a church took 15 months and about $75 million to complete. When it opened in 2005, it featured two waterfalls, three gargantuan television screens and a lighting system that rivals those found at rock concerts.

Two choir lofts with 12 rows of rich purple pews sat between the waterfalls, accented by live foliage.

Absent, however, was a cross, an image of God or Jesus Christ or any other traditional religious symbols. Osteen told the AP in 2005 that his father never displayed such symbols and he simply continued the tradition. Osteen speaks in front of a large golden-colored globe that rotates slowly.

Along with classrooms, the addition includes a chapel, a baptismal area, meeting space for young adults and an entire floor dedicated to the church's television broadcast efforts.

Osteen told the AP in 2004 that he was providing something that people wanted.

"It's sort of like to me it's a good restaurant - if you've got good food, people will come," he said. "So we know we've got to make our services good. They've got to uplift people. They've got to walk away saying, 'You know what, I feel better today.'"


# What to know about a shooting at Joel Osteen's megachurch
By **JUAN A. LOZANO**
February 12, 2024. 6:57 PM EST

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HOUSTON (AP) - A shooter's motive for opening fire in celebrity pastor Joel Osteen's megachurch remained unclear Monday as authorities searched the suspect's home in suburban Houston and identified the weapon used in the attack as an AR-style rifle.

The house in Conroe, Texas, is more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of Lakewood Church, where Sunday's shooting in between busy services sent worshippers scrambling to find safety.

The shooter was identified as 36-year-old Genesse Ivonne Moreno, according to police. Police say Moreno was shot and killed by two off-duty officers working security at the church, one of the largest megachurches in the U.S.

Two other people were shot and wounded, including the shooter's young son, who entered the church with Moreno.

Here's what to know about the shooting:

## HOW DID THE SHOOTING UNFOLD?
The sound of gunshots inside the massive church, which was formerly the home of the NBA's Houston Rockets, startled worshippers just before 2 p.m. Sunday, around the time many people were getting ready to watch the Super Bowl later.

Houston police Chief Troy Finner said Moreno entered the church wearing a trenchcoat and backpack and armed with a long rifle. Moreno began shooting and was confronted by two off-duty officers, a Houston police officer and an agent with the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, who returned fire.

"They held their ground in the face of rifle fire at point blank range," said Kevin Lilly, chairman of the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission.

Before being shot and killed, the suspect told officers that they had a bomb and were carrying "a yellow in color rope and substances consistent with the manufacture of explosive devices, which appeared to be a detonation cord," according to the search warrant affidavit. Authorities said Monday that no explosives or hazardous material were found at the scene.

## WHO ARE THE VICTIMS?
Moreno's son, whom authorities described as a 7-year-old, was shot in the head and remained in critical condition Monday. The boy was initially described Sunday as a 5-year-old.

It remained unclear how the boy, who was taken to a Houston children's hospital, was struck by gunfire. Finner said he did not want to speculate but added: "That suspect put that baby in danger."

Authorities described the other victim as a man in his 50s who was wounded in his hip.

## WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THE SHOOTER?
Authorities said Moreno had a history of mental illness, including being placed under emergency detention in 2016, but provided no other details.

Houston Police Commander Chris Hassig said Moreno sometimes used both male and female aliases, but he said investigators determined through interviews and past police reports that Moreno identified as female. Authorities said investigators were looking into a dispute involving Moreno and the family of Moreno's ex-husband.

Police said Moreno legally purchased in December the AR-15 style rifle that was used in the shooting. Moreno was also carrying a .22-caliber rifle.

Investigators also found antisemitic writings by the shooter, and Hassig noted Moreno's rifle had a "Palestine" sticker on the buttstock. He described Moreno as a "lone wolf" who was not acting as any part of a larger group.

## HOW DID WORSHIPPERS INSIDE REACT?
Alan Guity, whose family is from Honduras, has been a member of the church since 1998. He said he heard gunshots while resting inside the church's sanctuary as his mother was working as an usher.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I yelled, 'Mom,'" he said.

Guity, 35, said he ran to his mother and they both lay flat on the floor as the gunfire continued. Guity said he and his mother prayed and stayed on the floor for about five minutes until someone told them it was safe to leave the building. As he was led outside, Guity could see people were crying and looking for loved ones.

## WHO IS JOEL OSTEEN?
Osteen, 60, took the helm of Lakewood Church after John Osteen, his father and the church's founding pastor, passed away in 1999. The church has grown dramatically under Joel Osteen and is regularly attended by 45,000 people weekly, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Osteen is a leader of what is known as the prosperity gospel, a belief that God wants his followers to be wealthy and healthy. He is the author of several best-selling books, including, "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential."

His televised services reach about 100 countries and renovating his church's arena cost nearly $100 million.

After Hurricane Harvey flooded Houston in 2017, Osteen opened his church to those seeking shelter after social media critics slammed the televangelist for not offering to house people in need.


# Shooter entered Texas megachurch with young son and used AR-style rifle in the attack, police say
By **JUAN LOZANO**, **ACACIA CORONADO**, and **JIM VERTUNO**
February 13, 2024. 10:04 AM EST

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**HOUSTON (AP)** - The shooter at a Texas megachurch had a history of mental illness and brought their young son to the attack that was carried out using an AR-style rifle and ended in an exchange of gunfire with two off-duty officers, authorities said Monday.

Houston police identified the shooter as Genesse Ivonne Moreno, 36, who they say wore a trenchcoat and carried a backpack Sunday upon entering Lakewood Church, which is led by the pastor Joel Osteen. Moreno used both male and female aliases, but investigators who looked at past police reports found that Moreno identified as female, Houston Police Commander Chris Hassig said.

The attack happened between services at the Houston megachurch - in a former NBA arena - and sent worshippers scrambling for safety.

During the shooting, Moreno's 7-year-old son was shot in the head and remained in critical condition Monday, authorities said. Moreno, who was killed by the officers, was not a known member of Osteen's congregation, said church spokesman Don Iloff.

Police and FBI investigators said they had not established a motive for the shooting but were looking into a dispute involving Moreno and the family of Moreno's ex-husband. Hassig and others said Moreno had a history of mental illness, including being placed under emergency detention in 2016, but provided no additional details.

## THE SHOOTER AND THE GUN PURCHASE
Investigators found antisemitic writings by the shooter, Hassig said, noting Moreno's former in-laws are Jewish. The rifle also had a "Palestine" sticker on the buttstock. Hassig described Moreno as a "lone wolf" who acted alone.

Police searched Moreno's residence in Conroe, a city more than 50 miles (80 kilometers) north of the church. Court records show that Moreno had prior arrests and was involved in a divorce and child custody battle in 2022, in which Moreno's ex-mother-in-law indicated she had sought advice from pastoral staff at Lakewood.

The court documents do not indicate which staff the woman contacted. Iloff said he had not found anyone familiar with the contact described in the legal filings.

Moreno appeared to have legally purchased the rifle used in the attack in December, and investigators were looking into how Moreno obtained it, officials said. Moreno also carried a .22 caliber rifle into the church, police said.

## DETAILS OF THE SHOOTING
Investigators said Moreno and the boy entered the church building shortly before the 2 p.m. Spanish service after Moreno pointed a gun at an unarmed security guard.

Moreno began firing once inside, and the guards inside the building - off-duty Houston police officer Christopher Moreno and Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Agent Adrian Herrera - returned fire and killed the shooter, investigators said. Christopher Moreno is not related to Genesse Moreno, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said.

All the gunfire took place in a church hallway, and none of the violence spilled into the main sanctuary, Hassig said, describing the confrontation as a "gun battle" that lasted several minutes.

"They held their ground in the face of rifle fire at point blank range," Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission Chairman Kevin Lilly said of the security guards. "They were a wall that existed between worshippers and terror."

Both officers fired their weapons, but investigators do not yet know if Moreno's son was accidentally shot by one of them, Finner said. Police said a 57-year-old man who was shot in the hip was discharged from the hospital.

Finner said the shooter told officers after being shot that there was a bomb, but a search found no explosives.

## THE SHOOTER'S RECORD
Records in Harris County, where Houston is located, showed that Moreno, under the names Jeffery Escalante-Moreno or Jeffery Escalante, was charged in six criminal cases from 2005 to 2011.

The charges ranged from forging a $100 bill, to stealing socks, hats and makeup, to assault for kicking a detention officer. The August 2009 assault conviction sent Moreno to jail for 180 days.

In a rambling 2022 application for a protective order against Moreno's ex-mother-in-law that Moreno wrote without help from an attorney, Moreno complained of being threatened and followed and claimed to have had received text messages from FBI Director Christopher Wray.

In a separate court filing seeking to be named conservator of Moreno's son, the ex-mother-in-law alleged that Moreno was mentally ill and that the child was being neglected and abused.

Telephone messages seeking comment from members of Moreno's family were not returned Monday.

## THE CHURCH
Lakewood is regularly attended by 45,000 people weekly, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research.

Osteen said the violence could have been worse if the shooting had happened during the earlier and larger late Sunday morning service. Iloff said Osteen was inside the church but was on the first floor during the shooting, which happened on the second floor.

The gunfire terrified worshippers.

Alan Guity has been a member of the church since 1998. He said he heard gunshots while resting inside the church's sanctuary as his mother was working as an usher.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom. And I yelled, 'Mom!'" he said. Guity, 35, said he ran to his mother and they both laid flat on the floor as the gunfire continued.

Osteen, 60, took the helm of Lakewood Church after John Osteen - his father and the church's founding pastor - passed away in 1999. The church has grown dramatically under his leadership.

Osteen is a leading promoter of what is known as the prosperity gospel, a belief that God wants his followers to be wealthy and healthy. He is the author of several best-selling books, including "Your Best Life Now: 7 Steps to Living at Your Full Potential."

His televised services reach about 100 countries, and renovating his church's arena cost nearly $100 million.


# Woman killed after she opened fire in Joel Osteen's megachurch, boy with her shot, hospitalized
By **JUAN A. LOZANO**
February 12, 2024. 1:04 AM EST

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**HOUSTON (AP)** - A woman in a trenchcoat opened fire with a long gun Sunday inside celebrity pastor Joel Osteen's megachurch in Texas, sending worshippers rushing to find safety while two off-duty officers confronted and killed the shooter. Two other people were shot and injured, including a 5-year-old boy who was in critical condition.

The violence erupted shortly before the Houston church's 2 p.m. Spanish service was set to begin, just as the rest of the country was preparing for the Super Bowl. The woman entered the enormous Lakewood Church – a building with a 16,000-person capacity that was previously an arena for the NBA's Houston Rockets -- with the boy who was later hurt in the shootout with police. A man in his 50s was also wounded.

Details of the confrontation remain unclear in the hours after the tragedy, and police have not released the woman's identity or a possible motive. It's also unknown what relationship, if any, the woman had to the boy, and who actually shot him and the man.

"I will say this," Houston Police Chief Troy Finner told reporters during a news conference outside the church. "That female, that suspect, put that baby in danger. I'm going to put that blame on her."

The boy was in critical condition at a children's hospital, while the man was stable at a different hospital with a hip wound.

The shooting happened between services at the megachurch that is regularly attended by 45,000 people every week, making it the third-largest megachurch in the U.S., according to the Hartford Institute for Religion Research. Osteen said the violence could have been much worse if it had happened during the earlier, larger 11 a.m. service.

Witnesses told reporters that they heard multiple gunshots. Christina Rodriguez, who was inside the church, told Houston television station KTRK that she "started screaming, 'There's a shooter, there's a shooter,' "and then she and others ran to the backside of a library inside the building, then stood in a stairway before they were told it was safe to leave.

Longtime church member Alan Guity, whose family is from Honduras, said he was resting inside the church's sanctuary before the Spanish service as his mother was working as an usher when he heard gunshots.

"Boom, boom, boom, boom and I yelled, 'Mom,' " he told The Associated Press.

The 35-year-old ran to his mother and they both laid flat on the floor and prayed as the gunfire continued. They remained there for about five minutes until someone told them it was safe to evacuate. Outside, Guity said, he and his mother tried to calm people down by worshiping and singing in Spanish, "Move in me, move in me. Touch my mind and my heart. Move within me Holy Spirit."

Despite the chaos, Finner said the tragedy "could have been a lot worse" if the two officers had not "engaged" the woman when she opened fire. They had been working security at the church on Sunday, and Finner praised them for their quick actions.

The officers work for the Houston Police Department and the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, respectively. Both have been placed on protocol-mandated administrative duty.

After she was shot, the woman told police that she had a bomb, but authorities said no explosives were found when her vehicle and backpack were searched. First responders continued to search the megachurch for hours afterwards.

Osteen said Sunday that his congregation is "devastated." He added that he would pray for the victims and for the woman who did the shooting and their families. It was not clear where he was at the time of the shooting.

"We're going to stay strong and we're going to continue to, to move forward," he said during the news conference with police. "There are forces of evil, but the forces that are for us -- the forces of God -- are stronger than that. So we're going to keep going strong and just, you know, doing what God's called us to do: lift people up and give hope to the world."

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott issued a statement saying "our hearts are with those impacted by today's tragic shooting and the entire Lakewood Church community in Houston. Places of worship are sacred."

The church has grown tremendously over the past 25 years since Joel Osteen took over after his father's death in 1999 and introduced an upbeat style of Christian televangelism that has captured a following of millions. His televised sermons reach about 100 countries. The elder Osteen founded the church in a converted feed store in 1959.


# Feel the need for speed? Late president's 75-mph speedboat is up for auction
February 12, 2024. 3:25 PM EST

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**KENNEBUNKPORT, Maine (AP)** - It seems former President George H.W. Bush felt the need for speed in the waters off Maine, where he kept a nearly 1,000 horsepower speedboat. And for the right price, someone else can experience its excitement.

The vessel is set to go up for auction on Thursday during the 2024 Presidential Salute auction in Houston, said Hutton Higgins, a spokesperson for the George & Barbara Bush Foundation.

Proceeds from selling the 38-foot (11.5-meter) speedboat "Fidelity V" will be used to expand offerings at the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library & Museum and The Bush School of Government & Public Service at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas.

Bush purchased the 2011-model Fountain 38CC after both he and his son, former President George W. Bush, had left office.

The watercraft is emblazoned with a presidential seal and boasts three Mercury outboard engines that can propel the vessel to 75 mph (120 kph). The boat was used in the North Atlantic waters off Kennebunkport, where the Texas family has a summer retreat on the Maine coast.

It's the fifth of George H.W. Bush's speedboats to bear the name Fidelity. The first is on display at the Bush library and museum, and the fourth is still in use in Kennebunkport, Higgins said.


# Flowers, chocolates and flash mobs: Valentine's Day celebrations around the world
By **THE ASSOCIATED PRESS**
February 14, 2024. 5:33 PM EST

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Flowers, chocolates, handwritten cards - and flash mobs.

People around the world expressed their love in myriad ways on Valentine's Day: hanging hundreds of paper hearts in the streets to honor a recently deceased "Valentine's Day Bandit" in Portland, Maine; vowing to cherish and obey democracy by casting votes in Valentine's Day-themed polling stations in Indonesia; and donning heart-shaped sunglasses at a victory rally for the Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs.

Images captured by Associated Press photographers around the globe Wednesday showed love is a many-faceted emotion, employed not just to root for long-lasting romances but to fight for justice and counteract anger and hatred.

In Rome, activists wearing matching red-and-black T-shirts reading "One Billion Rising" created a flash mob at the famed Spanish Steps to call for an end to violence against women and girls. In Kenya's capital of Nairobi, women held candles and flowers during a "Dark Valentine" vigil to protest the deaths of at least 16 women police believe were killed by their partners this year.

In Washington, D.C., where the vitriol of politics usually reigns, giant fake candy hearts reading "keep the faith," "reach out" and "be kind" sprouted from the White House Lawn, and pink-and-red paper valentine's greetings covered the walls of the East Landing. One enormous card from President Joe Biden's first lady read, "Happy Valentine's Day 2024. Xoxo Jill."

For many, love means having a sense of humor, whether it's gathering to celebrate being "married for one day" and mounting life-size kissing skeletons at a "'Til Death Do Us Part" installation in Bucharest, Romania, or carving a dozen hearts and scrawling the message "I love my wife" in the dirt covering the back of a van after a nor'easter in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Tradition also had its place. Couples embraced in the shadow of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, viewed by many as the City of Love; posed for a selfie in front of a hotel in St. Petersburg, Russia, where windows were lit to form a heart; or bought heart-shaped balloons from vendors next to the Bosphorus in Istanbul.

In the ultimate gesture of Valentine's Day, Justin Shady proposed to his girlfriend, Nicolette Miller, with a giant, lit-up billboard during a Love in Times Square event in New York. She said "yes," and amid floating streamers and clouds of confetti, the couple sealed the deal with a kiss.


# Black Catholic nuns: A compelling, long-overlooked history
By **DAVID CRARY**
April 30, 2022. 12:46 PM EST

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Even as a young adult, Shannen Dee Williams – who grew up Black and Catholic in Memphis, Tennessee – knew of only one Black nun, and a fake one at that: Sister Mary Clarence, as played by Whoopi Goldberg in the comic film "Sister Act."

After 14 years of tenacious research, Williams – a history professor at the University of Dayton -- arguably now knows more about America's Black nuns than anyone in the world. Her comprehensive and compelling history of them, "Subversive Habits," will be published May 17.

Williams found that many Black nuns were modest about their achievements and reticent about sharing details of bad experiences, such as encountering racism and discrimination. Some acknowledged wrenching events only after Williams confronted them with details gleaned from other sources.

"For me, it was about recognizing the ways in which trauma silences people in ways they may not even be aware of," she said.

The story is told chronologically, yet always in the context of a theme Williams forcefully outlines in her preface: that the nearly 200-year history of these nuns in the U.S. has been overlooked or suppressed by those who resented or disrespected them.

"For far too long, scholars of the American, Catholic, and Black pasts have unconsciously or consciously declared -- by virtue of misrepresentation, marginalization, and outright erasure -- that the history of Black Catholic nuns does not matter," Williams writes, depicting her book as proof that their history "has always mattered."

The book arrives as numerous American institutions, including religious groups, grapple with their racist pasts and shine a spotlight on their communities' overlooked Black pioneers.

Williams begins her narrative in the pre-Civil War era when some Black women – even in slave-holding states – found their way into Catholic sisterhood. Some entered previously whites-only orders, often in subservient roles, while a few trailblazing women succeeded in forming orders for Black nuns in Baltimore and New Orleans.

Even as the number of American nuns – of all races – shrinks relentlessly, that Baltimore order founded in 1829 remains intact, continuing its mission to educate Black youths. Some current members of the Oblate Sisters of Providence help run Saint Frances Academy, a high school serving low-income Black neighborhoods.

Some of the most detailed passages in "Subversive Habits" recount the Jim Crow era, extending from the 1870s through the 1950s, when Black nuns were not spared from the segregation and discrimination endured by many other African Americans.

In the 1960s, Williams writes, Black nuns were often discouraged or blocked by their white superiors from engaging in the civil rights struggle.

Yet one of them, Sister Mary Antona Ebo, was on the front lines of marchers who gathered in Selma, Alabama, in 1965 in support of Black voting rights and in protest of the violence of Bloody Sunday when white state troopers brutally dispersed peaceful Black demonstrators. An Associated Press photo of Ebo and other nuns in the march on March 10 - three days after Bloody Sunday - ran on the front pages of many newspapers.

During two decades before Selma, Ebo faced repeated struggles to break down racial barriers. At one point she was denied admittance to Catholic nursing schools because of her race, and later endured segregation policies at the white-led order of sisters she joined in St. Louis in 1946, according to Williams.

The idea for "Subversive Habits" took shape in 2007, when Williams – then a graduate student at Rutgers University – was desperately seeking a compelling topic for a paper due in a seminar on African American history.

At the library, she searched through microfilm editions of Black-owned newspapers and came across a 1968 article in the Pittsburgh Courier about a group of Catholic nuns forming the National Black Sisters' Conference.

The accompanying photo, of four smiling Black nuns, "literally stopped me in my tracks," she said. "I was raised Catholic ... How did I not know that Black nuns existed?"

Mesmerized by her discovery, she began devouring "everything I could that had been published about Black Catholic history," while setting out to interview the founding members of the National Black Sisters' Conference.

Among the women Williams interviewed extensively was Patricia Grey, who was a nun in the Sisters of Mercy and a founder of the NBSC before leaving religious life in 1974.

Grey shared with The Associated Press some painful memories from 1960, when – as an aspiring nurse – she was rejected for membership in a Catholic order because she was Black.

"I was so hurt and disappointed, I couldn't believe it," she said about reading that rejection letter. "I remember crumbling it up and I didn't even want to look at it again or think about it again."

Grey initially was reluctant to assist with "Subversive Habits," but eventually shared her own story and her personal archives after urging Williams to write about "the mostly unsung and under-researched history" of America's Black nuns.

"If you can, try to tell all of our stories," Grey told her.

Williams set out to do just that – scouring overlooked archives, previously sealed church records and out-of-print books, while conducting more than 100 interviews.

"I bore witness to a profoundly unfamiliar history that disrupts and revises much of what has been said and written about the U.S. Catholic Church and the place of Black people within it," Williams writes. "Because it is impossible to narrate Black sisters' journey in the United States -- accurately and honestly -- without confronting the Church's largely unacknowledged and unreconciled histories of colonialism, slavery, and segregation."

Historians have been unable to identify the nation's first Black Catholic nun, but Williams recounts some of the earliest moves to bring Black women into Catholic religious orders – in some cases on the expectation they would function as servants.

One of the oldest Black sisterhoods, the Sisters of the Holy Family, formed in New Orleans in 1842 because white sisterhoods in Louisiana, including the slave-holding Ursuline order, refused to accept African Americans.

The principal founder of that New Orleans order - Henriette Delille - and Oblate Sisters of Providence founder Mary Lange are among three Black nuns from the U.S. designated by Catholic officials as worthy of consideration for sainthood. The other is Sister Thea Bowman, a beloved educator, evangelist and singer who died in Mississippi in 1990 and is buried in Williams's hometown of Memphis.

Researching less prominent nuns, Williams faced many challenges – for example tracking down Catholic sisters who were known to their contemporaries by their religious names but were listed in archives by their secular names.

Among the many pioneers is Sister Cora Marie Billings, who as a 17-year-old in 1956 became the first Black person admitted into the Sisters of Mercy in Philadelphia. Later, she was the first Black nun to teach in a Catholic high school in Philadelphia and was a co-founder of the National Black Sisters' Conference.

In 1990, Billings became the first Black woman in the U.S. to manage a Catholic parish when she was named pastoral coordinator for St. Elizabeth Catholic Church in Richmond, Virginia.

"I've gone through many situations of racism and oppression throughout my life," Billings told The Associated Press. "But somehow or other, I've just dealt with it and then kept on going."

According to recent figures from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, there are about 400 African American religious sisters, out of a total of roughly 40,000 nuns.

That overall figure is only one-fourth of the 160,000 nuns in 1970, according to statistics compiled by Catholic researchers at Georgetown University. Whatever their races, many of the remaining nuns are elderly, and the influx of youthful novices is sparse.

The Baltimore-based Oblate Sisters of Providence used to have more than 300 members, according to its superior general, Sister Rita Michelle Proctor, and now has less than 50 – most of them living at the motherhouse in Baltimore's outskirts.

"Though we're small, we are still about serving God and God's people." Proctor said. "Most of us are elderly, but we still want to do so for as long as God is calling us to."

Even with diminished ranks, the Oblate Sisters continue to operate Saint Frances Academy – founded in Baltimore by Mary Lange in 1828. The coed school is the country's oldest continually operating Black Catholic educational facility, with a mission prioritizing help for "the poor and the neglected."

Williams, in an interview with the AP, said she was considering leaving the Catholic church – due partly to its handling of racial issues – at the time she started researching Black nuns. Hearing their histories, in their own voices, revitalized her faith, she said.

"As these women were telling me their stories, they were also preaching to me in a such a beautiful way," Williams said. "It wasn't done in a way that reflected any anger -- they had already made their peace with it, despite the unholy discrimination they had faced."

What keeps her in the church now, Williams said, is a commitment to these women who chose to share their stories.

"It took a lot for them to get it out," she said. "I remain in awe of these women, of their faithfulness."


# Voices from the violent civil rights era see attacks on voting rights as part of ongoing struggle
By **Gary Fields**
June 8, 2023. 12:05 PM EST

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They are part of a small, vanishing group who lived at the epicenter of the struggle for voting rights six decades ago, an era driven by segregation, violence and the yearning for equality that eventually led to laws bringing the U.S. closer to its promise of democracy for all its citizens.

They reflect on the times and their struggles, and why they are certain it all was worth it. On Thursday, a majority of the Supreme Court seemed to reinforce that view by siding with Black voters in a congressional redistricting case from Alabama.

Ten years ago this month, the court halted what many consider the heart of that landmark law - the ability of the Justice Department to enforce it in states and counties with a history of voter suppression.

The stories from those on the front lines of history recount tragedy, racism, oppression and ultimately hope in seeing a president sign into law a measure designed to ensure equal access to the ballot and fair representation in the halls of political power - from city councils to statehouses to Congress.

Stephen Schwerner lost a brother, murdered in Mississippi trying to register Black people to vote. Nearly 60 years after the Voting Rights Act was signed, he remains immensely proud of his brother, Mickey Schwerner, but with a great sense of loss: "I don't think anybody in our family has ever gotten over it."

Andrew Young walked with Martin Luther King Jr., on the long road to equality and was with him when he died in Memphis in 1968. Seeing the continued attempts to chip away at voting rights, he knows there are more battles to be fought: "I never thought that the United States or anybody else would be perfect, but I thought we would be constantly getting better."

Luci Johnson was a teenager when she witnessed "one of the most historic occasions of the 20th century" - her father, former President Lyndon Johnson, signing the law ensuring access to the ballot for people of color. If she could convey a message to Supreme Court justices as they consider another challenge to the Voting Rights Act, it would be for them to remember "what a privilege they all have with access to the voting booth. I would tell them to do all that they can to make liberty and justice a right for all Americans."

Joel Finkelstein was a young lawyer helping draft the document that became the Voting Rights Act of 1965, overwhelmed to be an accidental witness at the signing and yet unaware of the measure's magnitude. He remains hopeful, even as voting rights have been eroded over the past decade: "Somehow this country digs out of these messes with people who you never would expect would be there. Go look at 1860. We got Abraham Lincoln, a country lawyer, self-educated out of Illinois, and he became our greatest president, one of the wisest men we would ever have hold public office."

Norman Hill moved from the protests over civil rights to the organization and political clout of the labor movement, where he helped build a groundswell for voting rights. Now in his ninth decade, Hill said the fight must continue, "not just today, not just tomorrow but as long as we live and breathe."

Della Simpson Maynor was a teenager who pushed herself to the front of a protest in the small town of Marion, Alabama, and was terrified when police clubbed a pastor who was kneeling to pray. Police later struck her with a club as she tried to get away, and she would hear the gunshot from a state trooper that fatally wounded a young church deacon, Jimmie Lee Jackson. His death prompted a march starting in Selma, which would lead to one of the most violent days of the Civil Rights Movement, Bloody Sunday, when police beat protesters trying to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge: "Without Bloody Sunday, there would have been no voting rights. But without Jimmie Lee Jackson, there would have been no Bloody Sunday."

Their voices echo across the past six decades, in searing debates over race, equal treatment and what it means to be an American citizen.


# The first Black woman in the Mississippi Legislature now has her portrait in the state Capitol
By **EMILY WAGSTER PETTUS**
February 13, 2024. 7:10 PM EST

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**JACKSON, Miss. (AP)** - Former Rep. Alyce Clarke was the first Black woman elected to the Mississippi Legislature, and now she is the first Black person - and first woman - to have a portrait on display in the state Capitol.

She smiled Tuesday as fellow lawmakers, friends and supporters honored her during a ceremony to unveil the oil painting, which has a prominent spot in the room where the House Education Committee meets.

Clarke, an 84-year-old Democrat from Jackson, served 39 years before deciding not to seek reelection in 2023.

"Thank God, I've had more good days than I've had bad days," she said during a ceremony. "And I'd just like to thank everybody who's here. I'd like to help everybody who's helped me to get here because I did nothing by myself."

Other portraits in the Mississippi Capitol are of former governors and former House speakers, who were all white men.

The artist, Ryan Mack, said he based the portrait on a photo of Clarke from the mid-1980s.

"I'm a true believer and witness of the good she has done," Mack said, citing her work on education and nutrition programs.

The first Black man to win a seat in the Mississippi Legislature in the 20th century was Robert Clark, no relation, a Democrat from Ebenezer who was elected to the House in 1967. He retired in December 2003, and a state government building in downtown Jackson was named for him the following year.

Alyce Clarke won a March 1985 special election, and another Black woman, Democrat Alice Harden of Jackson, won a seat in the Mississippi Senate two years later.

Several other Black women have since been elected to Mississippi's 122-member House and 52-member Senate, but women remain a small minority in both chambers.

Clarke pushed early in her legislative career to establish Born Free, a drug and alcohol treatment center for pregnant women. In the 1990s, she led an effort to establish Mississippi's first drug courts, which provide supervision, drug testing and treatment services to help keep people out of prison.

She was instrumental in establishing a state lottery. Clarke filed lottery bills for 19 years before legislators voted in 2018 to create a lottery to help pay for highways. The House and Senate named the legislation the Alyce G. Clarke Mississippi Lottery Law. When lottery tickets went on sale in 2019, Clarke bought the ceremonial first ticket at a Jackson convenience store.

Democratic Rep. Robert Johnson of Natchez said Tuesday that Clarke was persistent in seeking support for her alma mater, Alcorn State University. He recalled meeting with a legislative leader about university funding, and he knew Clarke would ask if he had advocated for the historically Black school.

"I opened the door and came out, and who is standing outside the door? Ms. Clarke," Johnson said. "I'm going to tell you: The city of Jackson, the drug courts, the lottery and Alcorn State University - nobody had a better champion than Alyce Clarke."


# Ed Dwight was to be the first Black astronaut. At 90, he's finally getting his due
By **JAKE COYLE**
February 9, 2024. 10:09 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Ed Dwight grew up in segregated 1930s Kansas on a farm on the edge of town. An airfield was within walking distance, and, as a boy, he'd often go to marvel at the planes and gawk at the pilots. Most were flying back from hunting trips and their cabins were messy with blood and empty beers cans on the floor.

"They'd say to me, 'Hey kid, would you clean my airplane? I'll give you a dime,'" Dwight, 90, recalls. But when he was 8 or 9, Dwight asked for more than a dime. He wanted to fly.

"My first flight was the most exhilarating thing in the world," says Dwight, smiling. "There were no streets or stop signs up there. You were free as a bird."

It would be years before Dwight entertained the idea of himself becoming a pilot. "It was the white man's domain," he says. But while in college, he saw in a newspaper, above the fold, an image of a downed Black pilot in Korea.

"I said, 'Oh my God, they're letting Black people fly,'" Dwight says. "I went straight to the recruitment office and said, 'I want to fly.'"

With that decision, Dwight set in motion a series of events that would very nearly lead to him being among the first astronauts. As Dwight progressed through the Air Force, he was handpicked by President John F. Kennedy's White House to join Chuck Yeager's test pilot program at Edwards Air Force Base in California's Mojave Desert.

That fabled astronaut breeding ground, site of "The Right Stuff," might have turned Dwight into one of the most famous Americans and the first Black man in space. But at Edwards, Dwight was discriminated against even with Kennedy championing him. After Kennedy was assassinated, Dwight's path to NASA disappeared and he was never selected for the space program. Dwight departed for civilian life and largely receded from history.

But in recent years, Dwight is finally being celebrated. The new National Geographic documentary "The Space Race," which premieres Monday on National Geographic Channels and streams Tuesday on Disney+ and Hulu, chronicles the stories of Black astronauts - and their first pioneer, Dwight.

"When I left, everyone said, 'Well, that's over. We got rid of that dude. He's off the map,'" Dwight said in an interview by Zoom from his home in Denver. "Now it comes back full force as one of these I-didn't-know stories. It's almost amusing to me that all this furor could come up. But I'm kind of glad it did because something happened here."

It wasn't until 1983 that the first African American, Guion Bluford, reached space. But two decades earlier, Dwight found himself at a fulcrum of 20th Century America, where the space race and the struggle for social justice converged.

In "The Space Race," astronaut Bernard Harris, who became the first Black man to walk in space in 1995, contemplates what a difference it might have made if Dwight had become an astronaut in the tumultuous '60s.

"Space really allows us to realize the hope that's within all of us as human beings," Harris says. "So to see a Black man in space during that period in time, it would have changed things."

"Ed is so important for everyone who's followed after, to recognize and embrace the shoulders they stand on," says Lisa Cortés, who directed the film with Diego Hurtado de Mendoza . "There's the history we know and the history that's not had the opportunity to be highlighted."

Dwight had experience at a young age with that. His father, known as Eddie Dwight, played in the Negro Leagues for the Kansas City Monarchs. He remembers sitting on Satchel Paige's lap as a child - just one more connection to history running through Dwight's life.

In 1957, when the Soviet Union launched Sputnik into orbit, it jolted its Cold War rival into action; NASA was formed the following year. But Dwight still wasn't thinking about becoming an astronaut.

"Not in the slightest," he says. "I thought these dudes going into space was the craziest thing I had ever heard in my life."

But as the U.S. began pursuing a space program, political leaders were conscious of the image its astronauts could project of American democracy. The first astronauts, the Mercury Seven, were all male and white. In September 1961, Edward R. Murrow, then Director of the U.S. Information Agency, wrote to NASA administrator James Webb.

"Why don't we put the first non-white man in space?" wrote Murrow. "If your boys were to enroll and train a qualified Negro and then fly him in whatever vehicle is available, we could retell our whole space effort to whole non-white world, which is most of it."

When the Aerospace Research Pilot School was established that November, the White House urged the Air Force to select a Black officer. Only Dwight met the criteria, which included 1,500 hours of flying jet airplanes, a bachelor's degree in science or engineering (Dwight graduated with an aeronautical engineering degree from Arizona State University in 1957) and three consecutive "outstanding" ratings from military superiors.

That November, Dwight received a letter out of the blue inviting him to train to be an astronaut. Kennedy called his parents to congratulate them.

"And I thought, 'Hell no.' Why in the world would I ruin a wonderful, career to go and hang out with these guys didn't know what the hell they were doing at the beginning?" says Dwight. "NASA was only two-years-old and they were talking about putting a Black guy in space?"

But he joined up. While at Edwards, Dwight was celebrated on the covers of Black magazines like Jet and Sepia. Hundred of letters hailing him as a hero poured in. But in training, he was treated with hostility by officers who resented his inclusion in the program and the White House's involvement.

"They were all instructed to give me the cold shoulder," Dwight says. "Yeager had a meeting with the students and the staff in the auditorium and announced it - that Washington was trying to shove this N-word down our throats."

Dwight describes one incident when he was the only pilot sent out to fly when film producers, along with Jimmy Stewart, came to the base to film the officers. He recounts private sessions with Yaeger "telling me how good the white guys were and how I shouldn't be there."

"All that kind of stuff didn't really bother me," Dwight says. "The mission was the main thing. What people didn't know was that I was being handled out of the West Wing of the White House the whole time I was there. Either every day or every other day: 'How's it going? What's happening? What do you need?'"

Yeager, who died in 2020, maintained Dwight simply wasn't as good as the other pilots. In his autobiography, Yeager wrote: "From the moment we picked our first class, I was caught in a buzz saw of controversy involving a black student. The White House, Congress, and civil rights groups came at me with meat cleavers, and the only way I could save my head was to prove I wasn't a damned bigot."

The tensions were also described in Tom Wolfe's "The Right Stuff."

"Every week, it seemed like, a detachment of Civil Rights Division lawyers would turn up from Washington, from the Justice Department, which was headed by the president's brother, Bobby," wrote Wolfe. "The lawyers squinted in the desert sunlight and asked a great many questions about the progress and treatment of Ed Dwight and took notes."

Dwight was among the 26 potential astronauts recommended to NASA by the Air Force. But in 1963, he wasn't among the 14 selected. Dwight astronaut future took a more drastic turn when Kennedy was assassinated on Nov. 22, 1963.

"Everybody was wondering, 'What's going to happen with Dwight?'" says Dwight. "Everything changed."

Kennedy was killed on a Friday. By Monday, Dwight says, he had papers in his mailbox shipping him out to Germany. He quickly met with Bobby Kennedy in Washington, who had the Pentagon cancel those orders. A day after that, he had papers sending him to Canada.

Ultimately, Dwight was stationed at Wright-Patterson in Ohio in January of 1964. He graduated the program and totaled some 9,000 hours of air time, but never became an astronaut. He left the Air Force in 1966.

Asked if he was bitter about his experience, Dwight exclaims, "God no!"

"Here you get a little 5-foot-four guy who flies airplanes and the next thing you know this guy is in the White House meeting all these senators and congressmen, standing in front of all these captains of industry and have them pat me on the back and shake my hand," Dwight says. "Are you kidding me? What would I be bitter about? That opened the world to me."

Dwight initially landed at IBM, then he started a construction company. In 1977, he earned his Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture from the University of Denver. Much of his work is of great figures from Black history such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Barack Obama. Several of his sculptures have been flown into space, most recently one aboard the vessel Orion. NASA named an asteroid after him.

To the Black astronauts who followed in his footsteps, Dwight braved their path.

"When you talk to the other astronauts, it's never about them. They all want to make sure you understand that for them to do their job, they needed the people who came before and paved the way for them," says Hurtado de Mendoza. "For them, it was really important to include Ed in the story. They all had a story of when they first met Ed Dwight or the first time they heard about Ed Dwight."

Dwight, with a little bemusement at how fate has worked out, acknowledges he's proud to be considered a pioneer for Black astronauts.

"It's good for them in that they didn't have to go through this crap that I went through. It was a goddamn distraction. It's like wanting to have eyes in the back of your head for all the stuff that was coming at you. I had to absorb that graciously," Dwight says. "If I talked about it - 'Oh, crybaby! You couldn't do this and you couldn't do that.' That's what would have happened if I stepped up to the mic and complained."

But complaining wasn't Dwight's nature then, and it isn't now, either. He's not even mad at Yeager.

"This guy was being honest to what he was trained to do. The structure of his life, his culture, his personality, all were implanted in Chuck when he was a kid. He didn't know anything about social liberalism. It was foreign to this man," Dwight says. He adds: "That doesn't make what they were doing right."

Instead, Dwight is filled with gratitude. His one recommendation is that every congressman and senator be flown on a sub-orbital flight so they can see the Earth from above. Everyone, he thinks, would realize the absurdity of racism from that height.

"I'd advise everybody to go through what I went through, and then they'd have a different view of this country and how sacred it is," Dwight says. "We're on this little ball flying around the galaxy."


# National Republican party sides with former Rep. Pete Hoekstra in battle over Michigan GOP chair
By **JOEY CAPPELLETTI**
February 15, 2024. 9:50 AM EST

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**LANSING, Mich. (AP)** - Former Congressman Pete Hoekstra has been officially recognized by the national Republican party as the Michigan GOP chairman in a vote that also affirmed that Kristina Karamo was properly removed from the position earlier this year.

The decision was made Wednesday following a unanimous vote by the executive committee of the Republican National Committee, or RNC, to recognize Hoekstra as chair and confirm his status as a voting member of the national party.

Some members of the Michigan GOP had coalesced last month to vote Karamo out of the position, a result that she has refused to accept. Since then, dueling factions have claimed to control the state party.

Donald Trump had endorsed Hoekstra for the position over Karamo, a once loyal supporter of the former president, whom he previously endorsed in 2022 for Michigan's secretary of state position. Karamo was elected last February to lead the Michigan Republican Party through the 2024 presidential election after losing her secretary of state race by over 14 percentage points.

The RNC's decision comes less than two weeks before the state holds its presidential primary and in a year where Michigan Republicans are desperate to win back some power after historic losses in 2022.

"We must put our nose to the grindstone over the next several months and focus on party unit to secure a red-wave victory in November," said Hoekstra in a statement following the RNC decision.

Hoekstra added that Karamo should "end her misinformation campaign" and "join the fight to re-elect Donald Trump rather than dividing this Party."

Hoekstra served as a U.S. representative from 1993 until 2011 and acted as the United States ambassador to the Netherlands under Trump.

"Pete will make the Republican Party of Michigan great again and has my complete and total endorsement to be its chairman," Trump wrote on social media on Jan. 26.

While the RNC's ruling gives Hoekstra some legitimacy to the position, a final ruling is expected to come in the courts. Karamo has repeatedly said that the RNC had no legal authority in the fight over the chair position and that she would not concede without a court ruling.

Karamo did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment on the RNC's decision.

Some of Karamo's critics have sued her and asked a judge to resolve the dispute. A hearing on Karamo's motion to dismiss the case is set for February 20.

In January, close to half of the Michigan GOP's voting members came together to vote Karamo out as chair, citing fundraising woes and months of infighting. Eight of the state party's 13 congressional district chairs had called on Karamo to resign and her co-chair, Malinda Pego, aided the effort to remove her.

Republicans in Michigan are hoping to win an open U.S. Senate seat this year in addition to multiple competitive House races. Control of the Michigan House, which is currently deadlocked at 54-54 after two seats were vacated by Democrats, will also be up for grabs this year.


# Cyberattacks on hospitals are likely to increase, putting lives at risk, experts warn
By **AMANDA SEITZ**
February 14, 2024. 11:44 AM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - Cybersecurity experts are warning that hospitals around the country are at risk for attacks like the one that is crippling operations at a premier Midwestern children's hospital, and that the U.S. government is doing too little prevent such breaches.

Hospitals in recent years have shifted their use of online technology to support everything from telehealth to medical devices to patient records. Today, they are a favorite target for internet thieves who hold systems' data and networks hostage for hefty ransoms, said John Riggi, the American Hospital Association's cybersecurity adviser.

"Unfortunately, the unintended consequence of the use of all this network and internet connected technology is it expanded our digital attack surface," Riggi said. "So, many more opportunities for bad guys to penetrate our networks."

The assailants often operate from American adversaries such as Russia, North Korea and Iran, where they enjoy big payouts from their victims and face little prospect of ever being punished.

In November, a ransomware attack on a health care chain that operates 30 hospitals and 200 health facilities in the United States forced doctors to divert patients from emergency rooms and postpone elective surgeries. Meanwhile, a rural Illinois hospital announced it was permanently closing last year because it couldn't recover financially from a cyberattack. And hackers went as far as posting photos and patient information of breast cancer patients who were receiving treatment at a Pennsylvania health network after the system was hacked last year.

Now, one of the top children's hospitals in the country, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, has been forced to put its phone, email and medical record systems offline as it battles a cyberattack. The FBI has said it is investigating.

Brett Callow, an analyst for the cybersecurity firm Emsisoft, counted 46 cyberattacks on hospitals last year, compared with 25 in 2022. The paydays for criminals have gotten bigger too, with the average payout jumping from $5,000 in 2018 to $1.5 million last year.

"Unless governments do something more meaningful, more significant than they have done to date, it's inevitable that it'll get worse," Callow said.

Callow believes the government should ban cyberattack victims such as hospitals, local governments and schools from paying ransoms. "There's so much money being paid into the ransomware system now there's no way the problem is going to simply go away on itself," he said.

The dramatic increase in these online raids has prompted the nation's top health agency to develop new rules for hospitals to protect themselves from cyber threats.

The Department of Health and Human Services said it will rewrite the rules for the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act -– the federal law commonly called HIPPA that requires insurers and health systems to protect patient information – to include new provisions that address cybersecurity later this year.

The department is also considering new cybersecurity requirements attached to hospitals' Medicaid and Medicare funding.

"The more prepared we are the better," said Deputy Secretary Andrea Palm.

But, she added, some hospitals will struggle to protect themselves. She is worried about rural hospitals, for example, that may have difficulty cobbling together money to properly update their cybersecurity. HHS wants more money from Congress to tackle the issue, but Palm said the agency doesn't have a precise dollar amount its seeking.

"It's important to note that this has to come with resources," Palm said. "We can't set the industry up not to be able to meet requirements."

Becoming the victim of a cyberattack is costly, too. The attacks can put hospitals' networks offline for weeks or months, forcing hospitals to turn away patients.

In Chicago, Lurie hospital's network has been offline for two weeks. The hospital, which served more than 260,000 patients last year, has established a separate call center for patients' needs and resumed some care.

On Thursday, Lurie's surgeons operated on Jason Castillo's 7-month-old daughter mostly by hand, without some of the high-tech devices usually used.

His daughter's planned heart surgery was postponed on Jan. 31, when the hospital found itself under cyber siege. The surgeon talked to Castillo before his daughter was wheeled in for a six-hour surgery, promising that he felt confident he could do the procedure despite the ongoing cyberattack.

"She's doing fantastic," Castillo said of his daughter, who is now recovering at home. "It feels like a huge cloud has been lifted from our household."

Even once Lurie has restored their network, it'll likely take months of behind-the-scenes work for the hospital to fully rebound, Callow said.

"These incidents can affect everything from patient care to payroll," Callow said. "Fully recovering can take months, it's not simply a matter of flicking a switch and everything comes back on."


# Biden allies, rivals both want transcript of his special counsel interview released. It could happen
By **COLLEEN LONG**, **ZEKE MILLER**, and **ERIC TUCKER**
February 14, 2024. 7:38 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - President Joe Biden avoided criminal charges around his handling of classified documents in part because of his answers during a lengthy interview with the special counsel investigating him. But the sit-down also opened Biden up to fresh scrutiny over his age and memory, and now the public release of a transcript of that discussion is being sought by both Biden allies and critics seeking political advantage.

The five-hour interview over two days, led by special counsel Robert Hur, helped establish that Biden didn't intend to retain most of the sensitive records from his vice presidency that were found at his home and personal office. But Hur's report also repeatedly impugned Biden's memory in a deeply personal way, suggesting, for example, the president couldn't remember when his own son had died.

The transcript, if released, could provide a fuller picture of the conversation.

The White House has the ultimate say over whether to make public the transcript or audio recording of the interview or to claim executive privilege and keep the interview private. There's precedent for documents related to White House investigations to ultimately become public - but also to be withheld.

A transcript of President Bill Clinton's 1998 grand jury appearance related to allegations of a sexual relationship with intern Monica Lewinsky was included as part of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's massive report, which was delivered to the House and subsequently released to the public by Congress following a vote.

The Starr team debated extensively how much to disclose in the report, mindful of the graphic and sensitive nature of the findings, said Robert Bittman, who served as a Starr deputy during the investigation. Recognizing that it was ultimately up to the House to decide what to public public, the team gave "all the information (to Congress) that we had so they can make their own decisions."

President George W. Bush, on the other hand, invoked executive privilege to block Congress from seeing the FBI report of an interview with Vice President Dick Cheney and other records related to the administration's leak of CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity in 2003. The move angered Congress.

Bittman said he did not think it was "necessarily a good thing" for investigative reports to be made public. But now that the Hur report has been disclosed, he said, it would be helpful to release the transcript of Biden's interview "so that people can judge for themselves about whether Hur's opinions about what President Biden said and what he remembered and what he didn't remember is justified."

"If you see that the White House objects to it, it probably suggests that the transcripts are not good for the White House," Bittman said, "and if they support release of it, then I suspect that that suggests the transcripts are good for the White House or President Biden."

The White House is weighing whether or not to release it.

Biden's interview text and the audio recording are classified, because they include a discussion of highly sensitive documents. Any potential release could happen either by a decision of the White House or through the Justice Department working to comply with congressional oversight requests. Both would follow nearly identical procedures.

Once a decision to pursue release of the interview was made, the sensitive parts of the document would be sent to the intelligence community to assess what could be declassified and what would need to be redacted. A further review would be warranted to determine if anything discussed about the security of the president's home might impact protective measures.

Finally, the White House would need to weigh in, with the advice of the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel, on whether to recommend that Biden invoke executive privilege over what others had cleared for publication.

Though Biden didn't invoke executive privilege over the full report, the transcript could well be a different story. Among the documents found in Biden's home were records of deliberations over a potential U.S. troop surge during the Afghanistan war and other conversations within the White House - an area that presidents are particularly loath to have publicly discussed.

The interview with Biden was conducted over two days last October, right after Hamas' brutal attack on Israel.

Hur and his deputy, Marc Krickbaum, a former Trump-appointed U.S. attorney from Iowa, asked all of the questions. Biden was joined by White House Counsel Ed Siskel, the counsel's office investigations leader Richard Sauber and the president's personal lawyer Bob Bauer. Several other individuals from both sides were in the room as well, according to a person familiar with the interviews who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity to discuss them.

Separately, House Republicans have reached out to Hur and his representatives on the possibility of Hur testifying before Congress, and he has expressed a willingness to do so, according to two people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the request and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Republicans and Democrats alike are interested in more complete details about what went into the report. Biden and his allies say a full transcript would show the president is mentally sharp and will prove that Hur cherry-picked moments solely to make him seem feeble. Biden's attorneys raised their concerns to Attorney General Merrick Garland, who nonetheless decided to keep the report as is and made it public.

Bauer, speaking on CBS's "Face the Nation" over the weekend, offered an anecdote that didn't make it into the report but that would be in a transcript. He said Hur acknowledged that sometimes he asked imprecise questions - ones that Biden picked apart.

"Now, everybody in the room recognized that was the case, that showed the president was listening carefully and understood precisely what was wrong with those questions," Bauer said. "I didn't come away from the special counsel's failure to ask precise questions and think to myself, 'he has mental acuity problems,' I just thought he was asking bad questions."

Republicans, meanwhile, have also requested that the audio of the interviews be made public and want to know more on why Hur chose not to prosecute Biden, particularly when they noted in their report that some evidence showed he held onto and shared with a ghostwriter highly classified information.

Hur said in his report that he did find evidence that Biden had willfully mishandled classified records but not enough evidence for a criminal prosecution like the one against former President Donald Trump.

Trump, in addition to being charged with intentionally hoarding top-secret documents after he left office, is also accused of obstructing FBI efforts to get them back and of asking staff to conceal evidence from investigators.

Biden and his team, by contrast, alerted law enforcement officials after locating classified records, willingly handed over documents to the government and cooperated with investigators by allowing the FBI to search his properties for any additional files.

Those voluntary searches stand apart from the FBI's search of Trump's Mar-a-Lago property in 2022, which was done after the FBI got a warrant for the home when it determined that additional classified records were being hidden there. Trump has denied any wrongdoing.


# Palestinians living in US will be shielded from deportation, the White House says
By **COLLEEN LONG**
February 14, 2024. 5:41 PM EST

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**WASHINGTON (AP)** - The White House on Wednesday announced that Palestinians living in the U.S. will be shielded from deportation as the Israel-Hamas war continues, citing "significantly deteriorated" conditions on the ground in Gaza.

Palestinians will be covered under what's known as "deferred enforced departure," an authority used at a president's discretion. The directive signed by President Joe Biden effectively allows Palestinian immigrants who would otherwise have to leave the United States to stay without the threat of deportation. That protection will last 18 months, national security adviser Jake Sullivan said, and will give Palestinians who qualify a "temporary safe haven."

"While I remain focused on improving the humanitarian situation, many civilians remain in danger," Biden wrote in the memorandum that accompanied the announcement.

Biden's decision comes after more than 100 Democratic lawmakers called on the White House to use either deferred enforced departure or a similar authority, called temporary protected status, to ensure that Palestinians currently in the United States would not be forced to return to dangerous conditions in Gaza.

"More than 28,000 Palestinians - including thousands of women and children - have been killed in the last four months in Gaza," Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., who led the effort from congressional Democrats, said Wednesday. "Today's decision by the Administration protects Palestinians in the United States from being forced to return to these clearly dangerous and deadly conditions."

Palestinians who have been convicted of felonies or "otherwise deemed to pose a public safety threat" do not qualify, Sullivan said. Those who decide to voluntarily return home would also lose any protections from deportation.

The president is facing increasing backlash from Arab Americans and progressives for his full-throated support of Israel since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas, although Biden has insisted he is trying to minimize civilian casualties.

More than 27,000 people, mostly women and minors, have been killed in Gaza since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Hamas killed more than 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 more, mostly civilians, in its attack.

It's not immediately clear how many Palestinians would be affected by the deferred departure designation, but the number would be small. According to the November letter from lawmakers, there were roughly 7,241 nonimmigrant visas issued to Palestinians in 2022, the most recent year for which data was available, though that isn't an exact correlation to the number of people who would be eligible.

The designation is not a specific immigration status, but those covered under the policy aren't subject to deportation. Eligibility requirements are based on terms set by Biden. Others right now included under the same policy are people from Liberia and Hong Kong.


# Sean Wang made a home movie. Now, he and his grandmothers are going to the Oscars
By **JAKE COYLE**
February 15, 2024. 7:27 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - Sean Wang's two grandmothers live together. They read the newspaper together. They dance together. They sleep in the same bed and complain about each other's farts. The older of the two, Yi Yan Fuei, is 96. The younger, Chang Li Hua, is 86. They're in-laws but they act more like sisters.

When Wang, their 29-year-old grandson, was getting into filmmaking, one of the first he made was a short where Yi and Chang feed him blueberries. When Sean refuses, they kill him and bury him in the backyard.

Wang kept shooting them in their Bay Area home, especially after he moved back in with his nearby mom during the pandemic. They got accustomed to his camera being around. But they never thought it would lead to the Academy Awards.

"Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó," Wang's deeply charming portrait of his grandmothers, is nominated for best documentary short at the Academy Awards. In it, Wang films Yi and Chang going about their daily lives with bits of playfulness mixed in. They arm wrestle. They play dress-up. They watch "Superbad." But mostly, "Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó," which translates as maternal grandmother and paternal grandmother in Mandarin, captures the joy of two spirited ladies in older age as they occasionally chide their grandson's attempts to turn them into movie stars.

"When you first asked us to be movie stars, we were like, 'This must be a joke,'" Chang says in an interview by Zoom alongside Yi, with Wang joining from Los Angeles. "But now that we made this movie and it's going to the Oscars, we do kind of feel like movie stars. Now that this whole experience has happened, we do feel a little prettier."

When Oscar nominations were announced last month, it wasn't Bradley Cooper's or Emma Stone's reactions that went viral. It was the celebration, caught on video, of Yi and Chang, with Wang, his mom and producer Sam Davis standing over them.

In the film, which is streaming on Disney+, Yi and Chang reflect on mortality and the essential things in life. "As long as I have the newspaper, I can live," says Yi in the film, with magnifying glass in hand. Now, they're in the news, themselves.

"Every day I open the newspaper and if I got to see you, that'd be amazing," Yi tells Wang, who, after translating, shrugged: "I don't think we've made it into the Taiwanese newspapers yet."

A prominent news story a few years ago partly inspired Wang to make the movie. During the pandemic, when Asian and Asian-American hate crimes were escalating, he saw his grandmothers as a perfect antidote to the hateful stereotyping that followed COVID-19. At the same time, the short, which premiered last year at SXSW, was meant to essentially just be a simple home movie.

"That's kind of why we made this movie," Wang says. "It's just so we could have this recollection, this time capsule that captures the essence of these two women. Long after they've passed away, we can have some sort of memento to remember what their lives were like."

Yi and Chang both grew up in poverty in wartime Taiwan. Their vivacious attitude ("Doesn't matter if we know how to dance," Chang says in the film. "We'll shake our hips.") is a conscious reaction to hardship they've experienced. In the film, Chang notes that days spent sad pass the same as those spent happy. "So I'm going to choose joy."

"There was so much pain in our childhoods," Chang says now, tearing up. "Our late lives are so much more fortunate than what we experienced when we were young. And then to be surrounded by our family, there's so much more joy around us than when we were young."

That includes Wang who, when not brightening the days of his grandmothers, has emerged as one of the breakthrough filmmakers of the year. At the same time that "Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó" was landing its Oscar nomination, Wang's feature film directorial debut, "Dìdi," was a sensation at the Sundance Film Festival.

At Sundance, "Dìdi," a semi-autobiographical coming-of-age comedy about a teenage Taiwanese American skater kid growing up in Los Angeles, won the U.S Dramatic Audience Award and the special jury award for best ensemble cast – a cast that includes Chang as the mother-in-law. Focus acquired the film, the title of which can mean both "little brother" or a term of endearment for a family's youngest son in Mandarin.

"Surreal and bonkers," Wang says of the twin successes. "To have these spotlights on global platforms for these stories that come from such a deep personal place is bonkers."

A through line for Wang in his rapidly unfolding filmography is family. An earlier short of his, "3,000 Miles," tenderly stitches together voicemails left by his mother while Wang was living in New York. It concludes sweetly in their reunion. To Wang, his role as a filmmaker is to consider his strongest emotions – and more often than not, those feelings are connected to family.

"Making films about my family helps me bridge the gap in my life as a human - seeing my mom not just as my mom or my grandmother not just as my grandmother but as people," Wang says. "I'm still learning to bridge that gap."

Now, Wang's family life will converge, of all places, at the Academy Awards.

"We're going to the Oscars and I'm going with my grandmas," Wang says, smiling. "It's just, like, a sentence I never thought I would say."

For their part, Yi and Chang describe their feelings about attending the Oscars with their grandson in excited unison. "Wonderful! Wonderful!" they shout in English. Asked who they're looking forward to meeting, Chang considers for a moment.

"Will Ang Lee be there?" she says.

But amid their disbelief, Chang and Yi think there's an important lesson to be found in the success of "Nǎi Nai and Wài Pó" that doesn't have to do with them, but in the grandson behind the camera. Even if the film concludes with Chang cursing Wang as a "freakin' brat."

"I want people to realize, especially parents: Don't force your children to walk the path that you want them to walk," Yi says. "Encourage them and support them in their interests, and be open to the paths that they're naturally gravitating towards. Try to water those seeds."

Yi and Chang have become famous enough that casting directors have reached out to Wang about other movies. Wang recently relayed an audition offer to Chang for a film shooting in New York. She said she'd have to read the script first.

Says Wang: "They're offer only."


# Franklin from 'Peanuts' gets to shine in the spotlight of a new animated Apple TV+ special
By **MARK KENNEDY**
February 14, 2024. 9:47 AM EST

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**NEW YORK (AP)** - The mild-mannered Franklin - the first Black character in the "Peanuts" comic strip - gets to shine in his own animated Apple TV+ special this month in a story about friendship.

Franklin is a newcomer who bonds with Charlie Brown and is welcomed to the Peanuts universe in "Snoopy Presents: Welcome Home, Franklin," which premieres on Friday.

Co-writer Robb Armstrong, the cartoonist behind the "Jump Start" strip., says he's building on the blueprints that "Peanuts" creator Charles Schulz left. "Whenever you start with good ingredients, you have to work hard to make a bad cake out of it," he says.

Race is never explicitly mentioned but Armstrong and co-writer Scott Montgomery make a subtle nod when Franklin surveys the kids in his new town and remarks, "One thing was for sure: There was a lack of variety in this place."

"I never wanted to come off preachy or anything, but it needed to be handled in the same way that I handled it in 'Jump Start,'" says Armstrong. "I don't come out and call people anything. I let the characters participate in a problem solving process."

The portrait of Franklin that emerges is of a boy who likes baseball and outer space, is good with his hands and listens to Stevie Wonder, Little Richard, James Brown and John Coltrane.

When he arrives in town, he's tired of a life constantly moving, since his father's military job takes them from location to location. "I have lived in lot of different places but none that I can call home," he says.

But his introduction to the "Peanuts" gang initially goes poorly. He mistakes Lucy's psychiatric booth for a lemonade stand and he freaks Linus out by picking a pumpkin from his patch. "If I didn't know better, I'd swear I was in 'The Twilight Zone,'" Franklin says.

"Every time he's moved, he's had to learn how to make friends quick and that meant that he didn't feel he could ever be his authentic self," said director and story editor Raymond S. Persi. "So when he comes to this town, his normal tricks don't work because these are kind of weird kids."

Franklin made his first appearance in the newspaper strip on July 31, 1968, prompted by a request from a school teacher for Schulz to integrate his comic strip world in the wake of the assassination of The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Schulz introduced him by having Franklin return Charlie Brown's wayward beach ball one day by the sea. It was a historical meeting and a statement: Many public beaches, like other public facilities such as schools, swimming pools, theaters and restaurants, were segregated at the time.

The new Apple TV+ special recreates that first meeting, with Franklin returning Charlie Brown's errant beach ball and then the two building a sandcastle together.

"To have this very simple idea of two children who don't know about racism, having fun playing at the beach, building something together, I think was just so smart," said Persi.

Franklin and Charlie Brown soon enter a soap box derby competition and their friendship is tested before a deep bond is forged. "They're not perfect. I'm not perfect. But we can get through the rough spots together, as friends," Franklin says.

"What I really like about the special is you're getting a chance to see this friendship kind of grow in real time, in the way that real friendships do," says Persi, who has directed animated projects with "The Simpsons," Mickey Mouse and the Minions.

As usual for a "Peanuts" show, music plays a key role. Original music by Jeff Morrow leans into sophisticated jazz and, in nods to Franklin, Berry's "Johnny B. Goode," "Nothing from Nothing" by Billy Preston and some Coltrane playing on a jukebox.

Armstrong has also used the special to correct some misperceptions about the 1973 classic "A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving." In that special, Franklin sits by himself on one side of the Thanksgiving table, leading some to suggest he's not been fully embraced. In the new special, Franklin is specifically asked to come sit with his new pals on their side during a pizza party celebration.

Armstrong says he started with that scene and then had to figure out how the gang got there. The writers came up with a soap box derby. "We needed something that was very highly action-oriented and packed with great risk. It had to be a competition," Armstrong says.

The special has plenty of lessons for kids and adults - winning isn't everything, friendships can be messy but rewarding and be your authentic self.

"What I'd like people to get out of it is that you don't have to be something different for other people. Being yourself is what's going to bring the right people into your lives," says Persi.

Armstrong, who grew up revering Schulz, has a deep connection to Franklin. He became a cartoonist and a friend to Schulz. It was Schulz himself who asked the younger cartoonist if he would lend his last name to the character. So to have him years later spotlight Franklin in a TV special seems almost divine intervention.

"Sometimes a miracle happens," says Armstrong. "If someone's got a better answer, I'd love to hear it. I'm just convinced that sometimes God gets involved. And this is that."