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(NEW YORK) — A wrongful conviction hearing for a Missouri man who has served 33 years in prison for a murder he claims he did not commit is underway. Now his wife is sharing her hopes for the outcome.

Christopher Dunn, 52, was given a life sentence without the possibility of parole for first-degree murder conviction in the death of Rico Rogers, a 15-year-old who was shot to death in May 1990.

There is no physical evidence linking Dunn, who was 18 years old at the time, to the crime, according to Dunn’s lawyers. His conviction was based on the testimony of two eyewitnesses, then 12 and 14 years old, who said they saw Dunn nearby just before the shots were fired.

DeMorris Stepp and Michael Davis Jr, the two witnesses, both recanted their testimonies in 2005 and 2015, respectively, which they said were coerced by prosecutors and police. The state attorney general’s office said that detectives and prosecutors testified that they never threatened, coerced or manipulated any statements from witnesses.

Kira Dunn, the wife of Christopher Dunn, who he met when she was assigned to write an article about Dunn and later married him in a prison ceremony, spoke with ABC News Live Prime’s Linsey Davis about how she and Dunn’s family have been fighting for his release for years.

“We’re allowing ourselves some joy here and there,” Kira Dunn said. “But we know from experience, as you’ve noted, that that rug can be snatched out so quickly, so we’re afraid to be too hopeful or too happy yet.”

During the hearing, which began on Tuesday, May 21, defense attorneys for Dunn argued that the testimony from the two witnesses, Stepp and Davis, were “inconsistent, uncertain and unsure.”

Prosecutors from the Missouri Attorney General’s office maintained that Dunn was guilty, arguing that the witnesses who have since recanted their testimonies were still able to identify Dunn via photo and live lineup.

“Both witnesses and their separate photo array identifications select a picture of Christopher Dunn and say, ‘This is Christopher Dunn,'” prosecutors said. “‘This is who did it,’ 24 hours later, after Dunn had been arrested.”

The motion to vacate Dunn’s murder conviction was filed in February by St. Louis Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore.

This is the second time a judge has heard Dunn’s case for exoneration. In a 2020 evidentiary hearing in Texas County, Judge William Hickle ruled that “new evidence has emerged, in addition to the recantations, which make it likely that reasonably, properly instructed jurors would find [Dunn] not guilty.”

Dunn wasn’t exonerated, due to a 2016 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that only allowed death row inmates to make a “freestanding” claim of innocence.

Then in 2021, a new law was adopted in Missouri that allows prosecutors to request hearings to vacate convictions if they have information that they feel shows the convicted person is actually innocent or was wrongfully convicted. This expands the rights of inmates who don’t have death sentences to file for exonerations.

“Missouri is actually the only state in the United States where that would be the case, where innocence claims are based on your sentence whether you’re released or not,” Kira Dunn told Linsey Davis. “But it does feel different this time. It feels as though we just have so many great minds working with us now and advocates that our hope is much greater that the door won’t be slammed in our face this time.”

In his current hearing, Dunn’s defense attorneys brought up Judge Hickle’s findings that Dunn had met the standard for actual innocence and called on Judge Jason Sengheiser, who presided over the hearing, to “establish actual innocence and allow you to do what Judge Hickle could not do. Vacate the wrongful conviction of Christopher Dunn.”

For Dunn, who has maintained his innocence from the start, time for exoneration feels short.

“Are you concerned that you might die before being able to be vindicated?” Davis asked Dunn in 2022.

“To be honest with you, yeah,” Dunn answered. “After that, the truth of what happened to me may never be known.”

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(NEW YORK) — One day after lawyers for American Airlines argued a 9-year-old child acted negligently when she was recorded by a hidden camera in an airplane lavatory, the airline is backpedaling that defense.

FBI agents knocked on the 9-year-old’s family home almost a year after the alleged incident in January 2023 to inform her parents that videos of the child were found on a phone belonging to a former flight attendant who is currently in custody.

The airline on Wednesday said in a statement about the filing, “Our outside legal counsel retained with our insurance company made an error in this filing. The included defense is not representative of our airline and we have directed it be amended this morning. We do not believe this child is at fault and we take the allegations involving a former team member very seriously. Our core mission is to care for people — and the foundation of that is the safety and security of our customers and team.”

The court filing was submitted on behalf of American Airlines on Tuesday in response to a civil lawsuit filed by the 9-year-old’s parents in Texas District Court against the airline and the flight attendant, Estes Carter Thompson III, who allegedly recorded the child.

The filing, which generally denies the allegations and raises several affirmative defenses, including contributory negligence, states, “Defendant would show that any injuries or illnesses alleged to have been sustained by Plaintiff, Mary Doe, were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s own fault and negligence, were proximately caused by Plaintiff’s use of the compromised lavatory, which she knew or should have known contained a visible and illuminated recording device.”

The lawsuit was filed by Mary Doe’s parents, alleging that Thompson secretly filmed their 9-year-old daughter in the airplane’s lavatory on a flight to Los Angeles in January 2023.

Thompson is currently in federal custody after being charged with one count of attempted sexual exploitation of children and one count of possession of images of child sexual abuse depicting a prepubescent minor. He was arrested after a 14-year-old passenger on another flight discovered Thompson’s hidden phone in the plane lavatory. Police said Thompson allegedly possessed recordings of four additional minor female passengers who used bathrooms aboard the same aircraft. One of those recordings was allegedly of Mary Doe. Thompson has pleaded not guilty.

Reacting to the airline’s filing Tuesday, Jane Doe, mother of Mary Doe, said, “Instead of taking responsibility for this awful event, American Airlines is actually blaming our daughter for being filmed.”

“How in good conscience could they even make such a suggestion? It both shocks and angers us. American Airlines has no shame,” the mother added.

Responding to American Airlines backtracking on their court filing, Paul Llewellyn, a lawyer representing the family of the 9-year-old girl, said Wednesday, “American Airlines has clearly faced intense media and public backlash over their blaming of a 9 year old for being filmed. To claim that they filed the “wrong” [answer] is simply not credible. But the bell cannot be unwrung. They should never have taken such a position in the first place.”

Llewellyn said the airline did not reach out to the family after the recording was discovered.

Representatives for American Airlines did not immediately respond to requests for comment on the attorney’s claim that the airline did not reach out to the family.

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(WASHINGTON) — Prosecutors plan to use Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop as evidence in an upcoming trial to help them prove that the president’s son unlawfully obtained a firearm in 2018.

Special counsel David Weiss wrote Wednesday that “the defendant’s laptop is real (it will be introduced as a trial exhibit) and it contains significant evidence of the defendant’s guilt.”

Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty in October to federal gun charges after prosecutors say he obtained a Colt Cobra 38SPL revolver and lied on a federal form about his drug use at the time. Biden owned the firearm for eleven days and never fired it, his attorneys said.

The laptop has become a symbol of the legal and political controversy surrounding the president’s son in recent years. Weiss’ office plans to use the laptop to demonstrate that Biden was on drugs around the time of his gun purchase in October 2018.

The younger Biden chronicled his extensive drug use in his memoir, “Beautiful Things,” and has acknowledged the problematic behavior that came with it.

His gun-possession trial is scheduled to begin on June 3. Hunter Biden has pleaded not guilty to three felony counts.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden had previously attempted to preclude the laptop as evidence, arguing that they have “numerous reasons to believe the data had been altered and compromised before investigators obtained the electronic material.”

But in his response on Wednesday, Weiss claimed that Biden “has not provided any evidence or information that shows that his laptop contains false information, and the government’s evidence shows the opposite.”

“Any argument that suggests his laptop is not authentic would be inappropriate because there is no foundation for such questioning, and it risks creating juror confusion about the evidence actually at issue in this case,” Weiss wrote.

The development came on the same day a federal judge postponed Hunter Biden’s Los Angeles trial on tax charges until Sept. 5 — raising the likelihood that a jury could be deliberating whether to convict the president’s son on several felony counts in the waning weeks of the 2024 election.

Judge Mark Scarsi on Wednesday granted a motion from Hunter Biden’s legal team to move the trial from June 20 to September, giving them the chance to adequately prepare.

Attorneys for Hunter Biden had said a June 3 trial would hamper their ability to adequately represent their client.

“There was an assumption that he could do both, but it’s becoming complicated,” Abbe Lowell, an attorney for Hunter Biden, said at a hearing on Wednesday.

Prosecutors in Weiss’ office had opposed the delay.

They argued in court papers and again at a hearing on Wednesday that a delay would inconvenience their office and several witnesses who they had already subpoenaed to testify at trial in June and July.

Weiss’ office charged Hunter Biden in December in California with nine felony and misdemeanor charges stemming from his failure to pay $1.4 million in taxes for three years during a time when he was in the throes of addiction. Hunter Biden pleaded not guilty to all charges.

The back taxes and penalties were previously paid in full by a third party, identified by ABC News as Hunter Biden’s attorney and confidant, Kevin Morris.

The new trial schedule raises the likelihood that Hunter Biden will be on trial as many voters begin casting their ballots. The parties predict that the trial could last up to six weeks, meaning jurors could be deliberating a verdict in mid-October.

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(MIAMI) — A hearing in former President Donald Trump’s federal classified documents case got heated at times on Wednesday as prosecutors with special counsel Jack’s Smith’s office became frustrated with what they called “nonsense” arguments presented by Trump’s co-defendant Walt Nauta in his effort to have the indictment against Nauta dismissed.

“That was difficult to sit through for lots of reasons,” prosecutor David Harbach said of arguments made by Nauta’s attorney Stanley Woodward. “It’s a garbage argument to begin with.”

Nauta, Trump’s longtime aide, and Carlos De Oliveira, the property manager at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate pleaded not guilty last August to obstruction charges related to alleged attempts to delete Mar-a-Lago surveillance footage, after Trump pleaded not guilty in June to 37 criminal counts related to his handling of classified materials after leaving the White House.

Prosecutors have accused Nauta of lying to the FBI in May of 2022 when he told agents that that he was unaware of boxes being brought to Trump’s residence and said he didn’t know where they had been stored before they were taken there.

Nauta’s attorneys are seeking to have the charges against him dismissed on the basis that he is being “selectively” and “vindictively” prosecuted by investigators. At Wednesday’s hearing, Woodward said Nauta was being “selectively prosecuted,” as there were numerous others who also moved boxes at Mar-a-Lago but are not being prosecuted.

Harbach disputed that contention, saying there is “not a person who did everything Nauta did” — including allegations of perjury and efforts to destroy evidence.

“The only people who are comparable to him are his co-defendants,” Harbach said.

Woodward also claims that during an August 2022 meeting that he had with prosecutors, Woodward was pressured improperly by a member of Smith’s team over a pending judicial appointment.

By Woodward’s account, prosecutor Jay Bratt asked him about his pending appointment on the D.C. Superior Court and implied that Woodward’s affiliation with Trump might negatively affect his confirmation.

The special counsel wholeheartedly disputes these claims, and pointed out in court that Woodward’s account of what happened during the meeting has been inconsistent.

“Mr. Woodward’s story about what happened at that meeting is a fantasy; it did not happen,” Harbach exclaimed.

When U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon repeated certain quotes that Woodward claimed the prosecutors allegedly made during that August 2022 meeting, and pressed the prosecution on why those comments had to be made and whether those comments were professional, Harbach, after consulting his colleagues, did not dispute the comments but claimed they were “fragmented” and “out of context.”

At one point, Judge Cannon asked for Harbach to “just calm down” when he became emotional while answering her questions about whether there had been any effort to preserve evidence related to the meeting in question.

“That is not true!” Harbach said after Cannon suggested the government hadn’t made an any efforts to preserve evidence. “That is not what I said … the government has not done anything to destroy or obstruct evidence.”

Cannon, meanwhile, did not appear highly satisfied with Woodward’s argument, asking him multiple times if he could point to any evidence that suggests the alleged comments made to him in that meeting relate in any way to his client being unfairly prosecuted.

Cannon said she was not clear on the “connection between the allegations on comments made to you and how that affected Mr. Nauta not cooperating.”

The core of Woodward’s claim at the hearing was that his client is being “vindictively prosecuted” because of his refusal to testify before the grand jury and turn against Trump.

“Presumably, if Nauta had decided to cooperate, we’d all be friends here,” Woodward said.

There were also some disputes as to when Nauta was made aware of the possibility that he is a target of the investigation and not just a witness.

Woodward claimed the Nauta was unaware of possible obstruction charges until he received his target letter, while the prosecution claimed that a November 2022 search warrant on Nauta’s device was an indication of possible obstruction charges.

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(NEW YORK) — One person died and at least 85 people were admitted to hospitals after a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore experienced severe turbulence Tuesday.

Deaths from turbulence are extremely rare. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, 163 passengers and crew on U.S. flights have been seriously injured by turbulence between 2009 and 2022, out of what the FAA says is more than 2.9 million people who fly in the U.S. every day.

Most anyone who has ever flown in an aircraft has experienced turbulence, when the ride becomes bumpy due to turbulent air – a common occurrence in air travel. Yet what exactly causes turbulence, especially the kind as severe as what Singapore Airlines flight SQ 321 experienced? And why was there apparently little to no warning?

ABC News contributor Col. Stephen Ganyard, who is a retired Marine Corps fighter pilot, says the kind of turbulence that the Singapore Airlines flight encountered was most likely what’s known as clear-air turbulence. He also says if you’re planning to fly for Memorial Day weekend, fear of turbulence shouldn’t deter you from your plans.

Ganyard spoke with “Start Here,” about turbulence in general, and what likely happened to Singapore Airlines flight SQ 321.

START HERE: Col. Ganyard, this was an international flight right? What happened here?

GANYARD: So let’s talk about the facts as we know them now. It was a Singapore Airlines flight from London to Singapore. They had just come off the Indian Ocean, the Andaman Sea, and they were flying over Myanmar, over the Irrawaddy River valley, which is the north-south river within Myanmar. So, why is that important? Because it was hot. Tropical area. You have a river providing lots of moisture into the air. So hot, wet, rising air causes thunderstorms. We’ve seen the pictures of the area, both the radar returns and the overhead satellite returns. There was lots of major thunderstorm buildup in the area.

At some point, they hit turbulence. The turbulent incident resulted in a 100-foot drop and, just right after that, a 300-foot climb. So very rapid, negative G – negative G being less than gravity, meaning that’s what you feel on a roller coaster, when you go over the top you feel that negative G. But it wasn’t just zero G, it was one or two negative Gs, which would have forced people, slammed them onto the ceiling. And then as the airplane rapidly climbed up at those 300 feet, would have slammed them back down into the seats that they were supposedly supposed to be buckled into, or onto the cabin floor.

So it’s that very rapid, unload negative G, throwing people up in the air, and then the positive G that came very quickly after that threw them back down to the ground. So there’s two places where they get hurt: hitting the ceiling and coming back down to the ground.

START HERE: To look at the aftermath of this, I mean, there were images of, you had meals scattered all over the floor, debris everywhere. One passenger died of a suspected heart attack. Dozens more were injured. Some people are in critical condition. So how did this happen? One official described this is like a plane hitting an air pocket. I mean, what does that mean? How does turbulence work, I guess is what I’m asking you.

GANYARD: Yeah, don’t ever say air pocket around me. I’ve trained you better.

START HERE: That’s not a thing. Air pocket?

GANYARD: There’s no such thing as an air pocket. Air is air, and air doesn’t create pockets. But what people are talking about is that feeling of a drop. So we’ve had some of the passengers on board said, oh, we dropped thousands of feet. Well, this airplane did in fact descend – after this incident when people got hurt – several thousand feet. But it was a controlled descent.

But when you come back to turbulence, what is turbulence? The two primary kinds of turbulence are clear-air turbulence and convective turbulence, the turbulence that occurs in, say, thunderstorms or in big clouds, big lines of clouds. Clear-air turbulence is the kind of turbulence you get when, say, two jet streams come together. We know that the jet streams – you know, the pilots always talk about it, the meteorologists say the jet stream is pushing this weather across the country. So these are just big rivers of air between about 30,000 and 40,000 feet, that can be moving anywhere from 100 to 200 miles an hour.

When they run into each other, it’s like two streams running together. So you see two rapids coming together. It creates additional turbulence. That can’t be seen by radar on an airplane. So that is where the meteorologists before the flight come into play, where the meteorologists say, ooh, we see these two jet streams coming together, we see this area where there’s potential for clear turbulence, and they’ll brief the pilots before they even take off. So when the pilots get to a point in the journey where they say, we were told that there might be turbulence out here, they may preemptively flip on the fasten seatbelt.

So when we think about, well, what happened to the seatbelt sign? Apparently – and this is just a couple of reports from people on board the airplane – apparently that seatbelt sign went on only seconds before they hit the turbulence. Now, whether that was because the pilots didn’t see anything on their radar or were just doing it as a precaution, or this was more clear air turbulence, which can’t be detected by an airplane – that’ll be a question for the investigators. But almost a certainty that anybody who was injured in this airplane was due to not having a seatbelt on at the time they hit that turbulence.

START HERE: I guess I’m trying to figure out how scared should we be going into, like, Memorial Day travel weekend? Because again, I mean, it sounds like so much force exerted on an aircraft so potentially quickly.

GANYARD: If you think about this, here’s this airplane that went through this terrible turbulence, terrible injuries. But the airplane’s fine. Airplanes that are carbon fiber, like the 787 or the A350: extraordinarily strong, the kind of material they’re made out of is five times stronger than steel. So take comfort in the fact that this airplane went through this terrible, terrible set of turbulence and came out just fine because the airplane is designed to take it. If you have your seatbelt on, you’re going to be fine. And Singapore Airlines is no fly-by-night airline. It is one of the best airlines in the world. They have great, airplanes, great, well-trained crews. And so if it can happen to Singapore, can happen to any airline in the world.

START HERE: All right. I guess I’ve got more confidence in seat belts, maybe even planes. But I’m going to need you there, sitting next to me, grabbing my hand if we go through turbulence like this. Colonel Stephen Ganyard, thank you so much.

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(NEW YORK) — For the fourth straight day, residents of the Midwest and the Great Plains were bracing for dangerous tornado weather, a day after at least 20 twisters tore through three states, killing multiple people in Iowa, officials said.

As severe weather is forecast to move into the south and east and stretch from New York state to Texas on Wednesday, the town of Greenfield, Iowa, was left ripped to shreds with about half the town destroyed, officials said.

A “devastating” tornado hit Greenfield, southwest of Des Moines, causing fatalities and injuries in the area, Sgt. Alex Dinkla of the Iowa State Patrol said at a news conference Tuesday night.

“It’s just gut-wrenching. It’s horrific. It’s hard to describe until you can actually see it, the devastation,” Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds said at a news conference in Greenfield Wednesday morning.

Reynolds said search-and-rescue crews are continuing to look for victims.

The number of people killed and injured and the amount of damage were still being tallied Wednesday morning.

“This is a search-and-rescue mission and it will continue to be throughout the day,” said Reynolds, adding that officials don’t want to give out any misinformation.

She said, however, that much of the town of Greenfield was flattened.

Asked if dozens of homes were damaged in Greenfield and throughout the state, Reynolds said, “That would be way underestimating.”

The Adair County Memorial Hospital, which serves Greenfield, sustained tornado damage, Dinkla said, but still managed to treat patients and transport some to nearby hospitals for further care.

State Rep. Ray Sorensen, who represents Greenfield, said he was painting at a church when the tornado struck around 3 p.m. Tuesday and rushed into town to find numerous homes damaged or completely demolished and nearly all the historic trees in Greenfield uprooted and stripped of limbs.

“It’s a completely different town now,” Sorensen said.

But he said that when he arrived at the scene of the devastation, people were already clearing the streets of debris to make way for emergency vehicles and helping those injured get medical attention at a makeshift triage center established at a lumber yard.

“Everybody became little makeshift ambulances,” Sorensen said. “We pulled a guy from the rubble and put him on a little makeshift stretcher that we made, threw him in the back of a truck of a guy that isn’t even from Iowa and we just made our way to the lumber yard, which was the makeshift hospital.”

At least 329 severe storms were reported Tuesday through the nation’s midsection from Texas to Michigan, even up in New England. At least 20 tornadoes were confirmed in three states, including Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota. Most of the twisters swept across Iowa.

More severe weather is on the way. The highest threat for tornadoes, damaging winds and large hail will be in Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas and Louisiana, including major cities such as Dallas, Waco, Abilene, Little Rock and Shreveport.

Some damaging winds could also develop in Memphis and Nashville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Buffalo and Rochester, New York.

Severe weather is also expected to stretch into Thursday as the Memorial Day weekend gets underway. Dangerous weather is expected on Thursday through large parts of the Heartland and parts of the South from South Dakota to Texas and east to Tennessee.

On Tuesday, the National Weather Service issued tornado watches for parts of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas and Oklahoma.

Nearly the entire state of Iowa was under a “Particularly Dangerous Situation,” according to the National Weather Service, which issued several tornado warnings before the town of Greenfield was slammed by a funnel cloud.

Gov. Reynolds authorized a proclamation of disaster emergency for 15 counties across the state. On Wednesday, she said the state will ask President Joe Biden to approve federal disaster relief.

The counties include Adair, Adams, Cass, Clay, Hardin, Harrison, Jasper, Kossuth, Marshall, Montgomery, Page, Palo Alto, Pottawattamie, Tama and Warren.

Gov. Reynolds authorized a proclamation of disaster emergency for 15 counties across the state. On Wednesday, she said the state will ask President Joe Biden to approve federal disaster relief.

Several videos obtained by ABC affiliate station WOI-DT in Des Moines captured a large funnel cloud on the ground in Greenfield.

On Tuesday, WOI reporter Dana Searles, surveying the damage in Des Moines, said, “This small community has a big chunk destroyed, but about half of it is still intact. From what I’ve seen, I’d estimate that maybe 75% of it is near to the ground right now.”

In Yuma, in northeast Colorado, hail ranging from golf ball to softball size pummeled the area, causing damage to cars and buildings. At one point, the hail was so deep it caused multiple vehicles to get stuck, JJ Unger, a volunteer Yuma firefighter, told ABC News Tuesday.

“It was like a blizzard hitting for a half hour because of the hail,” Unger said. “That’s the longest I’ve seen it hail like that.”

Unger said he and his fire crew were out spotting for possible tornadoes Monday evening when lightning struck.

“It was very intense,” said Unger, adding that he and his crew had to pull over and seek shelter as visibility went to almost zero.

Unger said that when the hail finally let up, a foot of hail was covering his fire engine and roads in the area.

He said the windshields of his pickup truck and his wife’s vehicle were shattered.

“Almost every home in town has broken windows and I’ve heard that over a thousand cars were damaged,” Unger said.

In Nebraska, hail measuring two inches in diameter fell in Dundy County in the southwest corner of the state, according to local emergency management officials. Winds of over 90 mph were also reported.

More than half a foot of rain was recorded in Omaha, Nebraska, on Tuesday, producing major flash flooding in the area.

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(WASHINGTON) — The U.S. Capitol Police said they temporarily locked down the Republican National Committee’s Washington, D.C., headquarters on Wednesday morning after a suspicious package containing two vials of blood was found.

Officers arrived on the scene around 7:45 a.m. after the package was found, according to police.

“The package was cleared by our Hazardous Incident Response Division,” Capitol Police said in a statement later in the morning.

Police lifted the lockdown shortly after the package was removed. An investigation into the incident and the package’s source is ongoing, according to police.

The RNC has not immediately commented on the situation.

ABC News’ John Parkinson and Beatrice Peterson contributed to this report.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(HOUSTON) — Many states are adopting a drastic approach to address what they judge to be under-performing schools. They’re assuming control of how the schools are run, including appointing new administrators.

Texas did that this school year with the Houston Independent School District’s (HISD), when the Texas Education Agency, which oversees public education in the Lone Star State, disbanded the elected school board and appointed a new superintendent, Mike Miles. He’s been tasked with improving standardized test scores, particularly in math and reading, and especially in the wake of the pandemic, when remote learning saw those scores decline. The state also instituted new systems for evaluating the performance of educators and campus leaders.

Now that HISD is near the end of its first full year under state control, many teachers and community members say despite good intentions, it’s not working.

“It’s never been like this. It’s never felt so much like you’re being strangled,” HISD teacher Maria Benzon said. “I want everybody to love learning for the sake of learning. And it has become sadly a space of we are learning so we can pass the standardized tests.”

In recent years, 25 states, including Texas, have taken over school districts due to poor academic performance or fiscal mismanagement. Miles made one of the most significant changes by choosing 28 Texas schools and placing them under what he calls the New Education System, or NES model.

Among the changes Miles made was deciding that those schools no longer needed librarians. Cheryl Hensley is a librarian whose position was eliminated as part of those changes.

“My mission in life, I’m a librarian,” Hensley told ABC News. “I’m making sure that these kids love it too. I want to make sure that they go find something they want to read and find something that they love to read.”

She called the reality that kids no longer have a librarian “extremely heartbreaking.”

Miles also had officials and administrators monitor teachers’ lessons to ensure they are following the district’s course materials. What those monitors observe plays a key role in ensuring educators’ job security.

Some HISD teachers and principals have told ABC News that they have already started to receive termination notices before the end of the school year.

Benzon said that when she pulled two students to the back of the class to help them individually, she was told she shouldn’t be giving any students one-on-one instruction.

HISD addressed that incident in a statement to ABC News “As part of NES training, teachers are asked to ensure all kids are sitting in the front rows to maximize their engagement with their instructors and the content,” the statement said. “Students who need more instruction time on a given lesson get extra classroom time with their teacher in a smaller group and have access to teacher apprentices and learning coaches as necessary to support their learning.”

The HISD had the highest teacher turnover rate, with 600 leaving the this year, according to ABC station KTRK. That’s twice as many as the roughly 300 HISD teachers who left during the same timeframe last year.

HISD acknowledges that two-thirds of teachers who left this year were from NES schools, but according to KTRK, the model raises expectations and is not for everyone. Also, HISD said 55 of their school elected to opt in to NES, while others have adopted selected NES policies.

Among the latter is A-rated Barbara Bush Elementary, which has introduced a timed curriculum option used at NES schools. Teachers set a timer that allows students about four minutes to complete each session before moving on to the next one.

Henley Jackson, a fifth-grader with ADHD, finds the timed curriculum overwhelming.

“Once there’s a little bit of time left, I start panicking because I feel like I’m not going to finish in time,” Jackson said, adding that her grades are dropping.

Henley’s mother said she and other parents have voiced their concerns to the district, but they feel as if those concerns “are falling on deaf ears.”

Kristen Hall, the HISD chief academic officer, told ABC News that the primary focus of NES is enhancing classroom instruction, and also noted that HISD has raised salaries for NES teachers. Hall said their goal is simple: to improve student achievement in failing or near-failing schools.

Hall also said that while morale may be low for some teachers and parents, she doesn’t think that’s the case when she walks into classrooms, adding, “We’re out in the classrooms all of the time.”

“My message, if someone is experiencing something, is what we’re trying to say and what we continue to say as the thing we are here to do is stay committed to ensuring your student is receiving the best instruction and the best education that we can provide them,” Hall said.

Yet it’s not certain that such school takeovers accomplish what they set out to do, Josh Bleiberg, a researcher and assistant professor of education at the University of Pittsburgh, told ABC News. In 2021, Bleiberg and Beth Schueler, from the University of Virginia, conducted a national study of schools that were taken over by states.

“Overall, we find no evidence that state takeover improves academic achievement,” the study determined, in part.

“What we find is that test scores in math and English language arts were about the same before the takeover and after the takeover,” Bleiberg told ABC News.

While not all parents oppose the changes that came with NES, frustrated parents and teachers have been very vocal about their concerns.

“There are barriers to just up and leave and not to mention people’s socioeconomic levels in life and where they live alone, family obligations, and just life in general,” Marcus Edwards, a concerned parent, told ABC News.

Protests against the state takeover began this year, which led the Houston Federation of Teachers, the largest teachers’ union in Houston, to recently ratify a resolution calling for Superintendent Miles’s removal following a 98 percent vote of no confidence.

Officials state that their goal is to eventually return HISD to local control. However, the state plans to add as many as 40 more new schools to NES by next school year and expand it to just over half of HISD schools by 2025.

Jackie Anderson, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers, wants to restore a democratically elected board.

“There’s a very diverse culture here,” Anderson said. “You cannot use a blanket, a cookie-cutter model for every child in this district.”

Yet state takeovers of school districts are happening more frequently, indicating that many other schools may be on the verge of significant changes, according to Bleiberg. He also suggests state officials would do well to listen to concerns.

“The pushback from community members, from teachers, from parents, those are valued stakeholders in any successful school turnaround effort,” Bleiberg said. “And if there isn’t that trust, it’s less likely will be a positive effect.”

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(NEW YORK) — Elvis Presley’s home of Graceland will not be hitting the auction block on Thursday after all.

In a hearing Wednesday that only lasted about eight minutes, Chancellor JoeDae Jenkins adjourned the sale of Graceland, saying, “The notary has sworn that the notary did not notarize the signature of Lisa Marie Presley on the deed of trust, which brings into question the authenticity of the signature.”

The hearing on Wednesday in Tennessee was set to determine whether a dubious entity could proceed with an advertised plan to auction off the late singer’s estate in Memphis.

Actress Riley Keough, Presley’s granddaughter, was trying to stop a company called Naussany Investments and Private Lending LLC from conducting an auction outside the Shelby County Courthouse on Thursday at noon.

Keough is alleging the company presented fraudulent documents last September “purporting to show that Lisa Marie Presley had borrowed $3.8 million from Naussany Investments and gave a deed of trust encumbering Graceland as security,” according to the court documents obtained by Memphis ABC affiliate WATN.

Keough is being represented by attorneys based in Memphis and Jacksonville, Florida. Both lawyers declined to comment to ABC News. It is not yet clear whether Naussany Investments has an attorney.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

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(NEW YORK) — Millions of people in states from the Great Plains to the Midwest were under the threat of tornadoes Tuesday, including Iowa, where several twisters touched down near Des Moines, causing major damage.

A “devastating” tornado hit the town of Greenfield, Iowa, located southwest of Des Moines, causing fatalities and injuries in the area, Sgt. Alex Dinkla of the Iowa State Patrol said at a news conference Tuesday night.

The Adair County Memorial Hospital team, which serves Greenfield, sustained tornado damage, Dinkla said, but still managed to treat patients and transport some to nearby hospitals for further care.

Search efforts were underway Tuesday night, with officials working to provide a clear and accurate count of those affected, the officer said.

“We believe we have everyone accounted for, but we are conducting extensive searches to be thorough,” he said.

The National Weather Service had issued tornado watches for parts of Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, Missouri, Arkansas, Wisconsin, Illinois, Minnesota, Kansas and Oklahoma through Tuesday night.

Nearly the entire state of Iowa was under a “Particularly Dangerous Situation,” according to the National Weather Service, which issued several tornado warnings.

On Tuesday, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds authorized a proclamation of disaster emergency for 15 counties across the state.

The counties include Adair, Adams, Cass, Clay, Hardin, Harrison, Jasper, Kossuth, Marshall, Montgomery, Page, Palo Alto, Pottawattamie, Tama and Warren.

Several videos obtained by ABC affiliate station WOI-TV in Des Moines, captured a large funnel cloud on the ground in Greenfield.

On Tuesday, WOI reporter Dana Searles, surveying the damage in Des Moines, said, “This small community has a big chunk destroyed, but about half of it is still intact. From what I’ve seen, I’d estimate that maybe 75% of it is near to the ground right now.”

Damaging winds of 70 to 90 mph were forecast for Des Moines, Chicago and Milwaukee from Tuesday afternoon and into the evening.

Severe weather is in full swing across the Great Plains and the Midwest, with more than 100 severe storms reported Monday from Colorado to Michigan.

At least three tornadoes were reported Monday in Minnesota, Nebraska, and Colorado, but there was no significant damage.

In Yuma, in northeast Colorado, hail ranging from golf ball to softball size pummeled the area, causing damage to cars and buildings. At one point, the hail was so deep it caused multiple vehicles to get stuck, JJ Unger, a volunteer Yuma firefighter, told ABC News Tuesday.

“It was like a blizzard hitting for a half hour because of the hail,” Unger said. “That’s the longest I’ve seen it hail like that.”

Unger said he and his fire crew were out spotting for possible tornadoes Monday evening when lightning struck, and hail began to pour.

“It was very intense,” said Unger, adding that he and his crew had to pull over and seek shelter as visibility went to almost zero.

Unger said that when the hail finally let up, a foot of hail was covering his fire engine and roads in the area.

He said the windshields of his pickup truck and his wife’s vehicle were shattered.

“Almost every home in town has broken windows and I’ve heard that over a thousand cars were damaged,” Unger said.

In Nebraska, hail measuring two inches in diameter fell in Dundy County in the southwest corner of the state, according to local emergency management officials. Winds of over 90 mph were also reported in Dundy County.

As severe weather is expected through Thursday across the Great Plains and Midwest, potential record heat is moving into Texas and the Northeast.

Temperatures could flirt with 90 degrees in Philadelphia, New York City and Washington, D.C., by the middle of this week.

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