Kim Kardashian is opening up about her relationship with Pete Davidson, telling Good Morning America co-anchor Robin Roberts she is “very happy.”
The SKIMS founder and reality star, 41, spoke to Roberts about her romance with the 28-year-old Saturday Night Live star and comedian in a new ABC News primetime special airing Wednesday, April 6, at 8 p.m. Eastern time on ABC.
“I mean, I am a relationship kind of girl, for sure,” Kim Kardashian said when Roberts asked how serious the relationship is. “And I wouldn’t be with someone if I didn’t plan on spending a lot of my time with them,” Kardashian added. “Obviously I wanna take my time, but I’m very happy and very content and it’s such a good feeling just to be at peace.”
Kardashian’s mother, Kris Jenner, and her sisters, Kourtney Kardashian and Khloé Kardashian, are also featured in the ABC News special. The family’s new reality show, The Kardashians, premieres April 14 on Hulu.
Jenner weighed in on her daughter’s new boyfriend, describing him as “great” and “a really nice guy.”
Khloé also chimed in, adding, “He just makes her laugh and she laughs all the time.”
Kim Kardashian filed for divorce from rapper Kanye West in February 2021. The former couple, who were married in May 2014, share four children together: North, 8; Saint, 6; Chicago, 4; and Psalm, 2.
The Kardashians:An ABC News Special airs Wednesday night and will be available Thursday on Hulu.
Ed Sheeran outside court; Joshua Bratt/PA Images via Getty Images
Ed Sheeran and his collaborators have won their copyright case over Ed’s smash hit, “Shape of You.”
AsMusic Week reports, the judge ruled that Ed, Johnny McDaid and Steve Mac did not plagiarize the song “Oh Why,” by Sami Chokri, who records under the name Sami Switch, while writing their number-one hit. Following an 11-day trial, Judge Antony Zacaroli ruled that Sheeran had “neither deliberately nor subconsciously copied” Chokri’s song.
Zacaroli added that any similarities between the two were “only a starting point for a possible infringement” of copyright. Ed told the court that he’d never heard “Oh Well” until the trial.
According to Music Week, Ed’s lawyers said in a statement, “The judgement is an emphatic vindication of the creative genius of Ed, Johnny and Steve.”
Ed, Johnny and Steve issued their own lengthy statement, in which they spoke of the “cost” of the lawsuits, noting, “There is a cost on creativity. When we are tangled up in lawsuits, we are not making music or playing shows. There is a cost on our mental health. The stress this causes on all sides is immense…It is so painful to hear someone publicly, and aggressively, challenge your integrity.”
They conclude, “Our message to songwriters everywhere is: Please support each other. Be kind to one another. Let’s continue to cultivate a spirit of community and creativity.”
Ed additionally posted a video statement online, pointing out in part that with only “12 notes available…and very few chords used in pop music, coincidence is bound to happen.”
He continued, “I hope with this ruling, it means in the future baseless claims like this can be avoided…Hopefully, we can all get back to writing songs rather than having to prove that we can write them.”
Netflix revealed on Tuesday that the second season of Bridgerton was watched for 251.7 million hours over the last seven days, setting a record as the streaming service’s most-viewed English-language TV series.
The second season launched on March 25 and amassed 193 million hours viewed across its opening weekend, but added to that with its first full week of ratings data. The move also saw Bridgerton‘s first season return to Netflix’s top ten, in second place with another 53 million hours watched.
However, the Korean smash Squid Game still holds the overall record for the streaming service, with 571.8 million hours viewed during the week of September 27.
(NEW YORK) — Tennis superstar Serena Williams is describing in her own words the life-threatening complications she faced while giving birth to her daughter, and how she advocated to save her own life.
Williams, 40, gave birth to her daughter, Olympia, with husband Alexis Ohanian, in September 2017, in an emergency cesarean section.
In the new book Arrival Stories: Women Share Their Experiences of Becoming Mothers, a collection of essays helmed by Amy Schumer and Christy Turlington Burns, Williams writes, “Giving birth to my baby, it turned out, was a test for how loud and how often I would have to call out before I was finally heard.”
Williams writes in her essay, an adaptation of which was published by ELLE.com, that after her C-section, she underwent three surgeries due to complications that included an embolism, or clot, in one of her arteries, and a hematoma, a collection of blood, in her abdomen.
She describes in the essay what she remembers happening the day after she gave birth, when the complications began.
“In 2010, I learned I had blood clots in my lungs—clots that, had they not been caught in time, could have killed me. Ever since then, I’ve lived in fear of them returning. It wasn’t a one-off; I’m at high risk for blood clots. I asked a nurse, ‘When do I start my heparin drip? Shouldn’t I be on that now?,'” she wrote, referring to a drug that is delivered by IV and helps to prevent blood clots. “The response was, ‘Well, we don’t really know if that’s what you need to be on right now.’ No one was really listening to what I was saying.”
“The logic for not starting the blood thinners was that it could cause my C-section wound to bleed, which is true. Still, I felt it was important and kept pressing,” she wrote. “All the while, I was in excruciating pain. I couldn’t move at all—not my legs, not my back, nothing.”
Williams said at times she felt like she was dying, but she insisted to a nurse that she get on a heparin drip and have a CAT scan done on her lungs.
“Finally, the nurse called my doctor, and she listened to me and insisted we check. I fought hard, and I ended up getting the CAT scan. I’m so grateful to her,” said Williams. “Lo and behold, I had a blood clot in my lungs, and they needed to insert a filter into my veins to break up the clot before it reached my heart.”
The discoveries from the CAT scan led Williams to undergo her third and fourth surgeries. One week later, she was discharged from the hospital and able to go home with Olympia.
Williams writes that she believes it was because she was “heard and appropriately treated” that her life was saved.
“In the U.S., Black women are nearly three times more likely to die during or after childbirth than their white counterparts. Many of these deaths are considered by experts to be preventable,” she writes. “Being heard and appropriately treated was the difference between life or death for me; I know those statistics would be different if the medical establishment listened to every Black woman’s experience.”
The United States has the highest rate of maternal mortality among developed nations, data shows, with a growing and disproportionate impact on women of color.
Black women are more likely than white, Asian or Latina women to die from pregnancy-related complications regardless of their education level or their income, data shows.
One reason for the disparity is that more Black women of childbearing age have chronic diseases, such as high blood pressure and diabetes, which increases the risk of pregnancy-related complications like preeclampsia and possibly the need for emergency C-sections, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
But there are socioeconomic circumstances and structural inequities that put Black women at greater risk for those chronic conditions. And Black women often have inadequate access to care throughout pregnancy, which can further complicate their conditions, according to a 2013 study published in the American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
In December, when the Biden administration issued a “nationwide call to action” on the maternal health crisis in the U.S., Vice President Kamala Harris called the “systemic inequities” that affect pregnant people of color a “matter of life and death.”
“Regardless of income level, regardless of education level, Black women, Native women, women who live in rural areas, are more likely to die or be left scared or scarred from an experience that should be safe and should be a joyful one,” said Harris. “And we know a primary reason why this is true — systemic inequities, those differences in how people are treated based on who they are, and they create significant disparities in our health care system.”
Star Trek: Picard will welcome aboard six Star Trek: The Next Generation cast members for the Paramount+ show’s third and final season, the streaming service announced on Tuesday. LeVar Burton and Michael Dorn, along with Jonathan Frakes, Gates McFadden, Marina Sirtis and Brent Spiner will join Patrick Stewart in the final chapter of Star Trek: Picard. Frakes, Sirtis and Spiner have appeared in previous in Star Trek: Picard episodes over the first two seasons. Season two is currently streaming on Paramount+, with new episodes dropping weekly on Thursdays…
ABC on Tuesday released the season finale dates for its scripted primetime series, which begin next Tuesday, April 12 with the final episode of the network’s freshman comedy Abbott Elementary, followed by the series finale of black-ish airs the following Tuesday, April 19. The cop drama The Rookie wraps up its fourth season Sunday, May 15, while The Good Doctor closes out its fifth season the following night. ABC’s Wednesday night comedy block — The Goldbergs, The Wonder Years, The Conners and Home Economics — as well as the drama A Million Little Things, close out their current seasons on Wednesday, May 18. Thursday, May 19 marks the Station 19 and Big Sky season finales. Finally, on Thursday, May 26, it’s the two-hour Grey’s Anatomy season 16 finale…
The Sherlock Holmes film universe is expanding into TV with two shows tied to the film in early development at HBO Max, sources tell Variety. The potential show would be set in the same time frame as 2009’s Sherlock Holmes and 2011’s Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, starring Robert Downey Jr. as Holmes and Jude Law as Dr. John Watson, which were based on inspired by the books of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Downey Jr. and Susan Downey would executive-produce the shows along with Amanda Burrell of Team Downey. The two shows would each reportedly focus on a new character that would be introduced in Sherlock Holmes 3. Sherlock Holmes grossed over $524 million worldwide, while A Game of Shadows went on to gross over $543 million worldwide. A planned third film doesn’t have a release date and is not currently in production…
Nancy Meyers has inked a deal to write, direct and produce a new ensemble comedy feature for Netflix, the title and plot of which have yet to be revealed, sources tell Deadline. Meyers’ directing and writing credits include The Parent Trap, Something’s Gotta Give, The Holiday, It’s Complicated, and What Women Want. Her writing/producing Father of the Bride and its sequel. She last wrote, directed and produced the 2015 Anne Hathaway–Robert De Niro dramedy The Intern…
(NEW YORK) — Russian President Vladimir Putin’s “special military operation” into Ukraine began on Feb. 24, with troops crossing the border from Belarus and Russia. Moscow’s forces have since been met with “stiff resistance” from Ukrainians, according to U.S. officials.
Russian forces retreated last week from the Kyiv suburbs, leaving behind a trail of destruction. After graphic images emerged of civilians lying dead in the streets of Bucha, U.S. and European officials accused Russian troops of committing war crimes.
Here’s how the news is developing. All times Eastern:
Apr 06, 6:17 am
Russian military claims attacks on fuel depots
Russian missiles destroyed fuel storage facilities in five cities across Ukraine on Wednesday morning, Russia’s Ministry of Defense said.
“On the morning of April 6, high-precision air- and ground-based missiles destroyed 5 fuel storage bases near Radekhov, Kazatin, Prosyanaya, Nikolaev and Novomoskovsk,” the ministry claimed in its morning briefing. “These facilities have been used to supply fuel to Ukrainian military formations in Kharkov, Nikolaev and Donbass areas.”
Apr 06, 5:49 am
EU proposes new sanctions, readies Russian coal ban
European Union leaders said on Wednesday they were preparing a new round of economic sanctions against Russia, as outrage grew over civilian deaths in Bucha.
“We have all seen the haunting images of Bucha. This is what is happening when Putin’s soldiers occupy Ukrainian territory,” European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said on Wednesday. “They call this liberation. I call this war crimes. The Russian authorities will have to answer for them.”
The sanctions to be proposed may include a ban on importing Russian coal, bans on transactions with four Russian banks, and a ban on Russian ships at EU ports, among other measures.
The fifth round of sanctions “will not be our last,” von der Leyen said. U.S. officials are also expected to announce new sanctions on Wednesday, sources told ABC News.
Apr 06, 4:47 am
Mariupol airstrikes continue, deepening humanitarian crisis
Russian forces are continuing their airstrikes in Mariupol, the besieged Ukrainian port city, the U.K. Ministry of Defense said on Wednesday.
“The humanitarian situation in the city is worsening,” the ministry said. “Most of the 160,000 remaining residents have no light, communication, medicine, heat or water.”
Russian troops have prevented humanitarian access to the southern city, a move the ministry said was a part of a strategy to pressure Ukraine to surrender.
Apr 06, 12:11 am
US concedes Russia won’t be expelled from Security Council
Speaking with MSNBC Tuesday night, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations said the U.S. could not remove Russia from the United Nation’s most powerful body, the Security Council.
“They are a member of the Security Council. That’s a fact. We can’t change that fact, but we certainly can isolate them in the Security Council,” Linda Thomas-Greenfield said.
That’s separate from the push to remove Russia from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which Thomas-Greenfield said earlier they hope to bring to the U.N. General Assembly for a vote.
“I know we’re going to get” the necessary two-thirds majority, she told CNN.
Thomas-Greenfield also described what it was like in the room Tuesday as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s graphic video finally played for the Security Council. She told MSNBC it was the first time she saw the uncensored video of the war’s victims.
“We were all speechless. We had all seen various videos showing atrocities. But they all covered up the real, you know, the real people that were there – they were all blurred,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “This was the first time I’ve seen that video without the bodies being blurred. And it was horrific. And there was silence in the room. I can tell you that people were horrified.”
Apr 05, 9:26 pm
US sending $100M in new anti-tank missiles
The U.S. will be sending an additional $100 million in Javelin anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, a White House official confirmed to ABC News. The weapons will be coming from existing military stockpiles.
The White House later released a memorandum from President Joe Biden saying he would be using drawdown powers to release “an aggregate value of $100 million in defense articles and services of the Department of Defense, and military education and training, to provide assistance to Ukraine.”
Pentagon officials have said anti-tank weapons provided by the U.S. and other partner countries have been very successful in staving off Russian troops and bogging down vehicle movement.
(NEW YORK) — April is Autism Acceptance Month, a time to embrace the differences of people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), a developmental disability that impacts roughly one in 44 children in the United States, according to a study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
For Eric Garcia, a Washington, D.C.-based journalist and the author of the book We’re Not Broken: Changing the Autism Conversation, it’s also a time to remember that people with autism are “everywhere.”
“Autistic people work in every sector,” he told ABC News’ Good Morning America. “They’re doctors and lawyers and waitresses. They’re car mechanics. They’re journalists. They’re everywhere.”
Fashion designers Tommy and Dee Hilfiger said three of their seven children have been diagnosed with ASD.
The couple said they first noticed signs of autism in their kids early on.
“Our son was counting steps at one-and-a-half years old and at 2, he stopped counting, stopped speaking. He was babbling quite a bit and then just stopped,” Tommy Hilfiger said Tuesday on GMA. “So we had him tested and obviously, it was a bit of a shock. But once you get over the shock, you then plan to do something about it.”
The designer said he and his wife sought out expert advice for each of their children, who have exhibited different symptoms.
He added that one of his top tips for parents is to know the signs of autism in order to be able to recognize them in your child and get help early on.
“Early intervention is really the key,” said Tommy Hilfiger. “If you sense that your child is off in any way … if they’re not responding or if they seem like they’re in their own world, you should get them tested, and the earlier you get them tested, the sooner you can intervene.”
In addition to seeking out expert advice, the Hilfigers say building a support system within the autism community has really helped them as parents.
“I think it’s really crucial that you talk to pediatricians,” said Dee Hilfiger. “And once the child is diagnosed, I think the most helpful thing for us and for other parents is to seek out other parents.”
“When you receive that diagnosis, it can be quite devastating but I think seeking out the support of friends made a big, big difference for us,” she added.
What to know about autism
People with autism have a wide variety of traits affecting communication, behavior and socialization, according to the CDC. The “spectrum” in autism spectrum disorder means that there’s a wide range of symptoms and severity.
A child of any race, socioeconomic status or ethnic group can get ASD. Boys though are four times more likely to be diagnosed with autism than girls, based on a study of children aged 8 years old. Kids that have a sibling with autism, and especially a twin, are more likely to have autism. Those with developmental disabilities or genetic and chromosomal diseases such as Down syndrome are also more likely to have ASD. There is also evidence that kids born to older parents have an increased risk of autism, according to several studies.
Garcia points out that autism “manifests itself in very different ways” in each person with the condition.
For Garcia, he experiences “stimming,” which involves making repetitive movements or sounds, a calming tactic for when one feels overwhelmed. Garcia said for him that can mean playing with his tie and taking his class ring on and off.
“A lot of times I can just completely be overwhelmed and almost want to have a meltdown, like to the point where it’s difficult for me to communicate or speak,” he said. “And that’s just my way to deal with all the sounds that we’re having all around here.”
Autism can be identified as early as infancy, although most children are diagnosed after the age of 2. There is no medical test to diagnose autism, so doctors watch a child’s behavior and development to make a diagnosis, according to the CDC.
“Someone might have the communication delay, but may not have the motor skill delay,” said Dr. Jen Clark, a New York-based clinical psychologist and specialist in autism. “They may experience sounds and lights in a very different way than you and I would and sometimes they can experience a sensory overload and they may wear headphones and this will help to make the noise not as severe, but also they may avoid certain situations where it’s just too overwhelming.”
The CDC notes that in some cases, people are not diagnosed with autism until they are teens or adults.
Experts say though that early detection of ASD is key, as is early intervention.
“When a child is young, the brain is capable of change,” said Clark, also the director of COAST Club, which offers therapy and social groups for children, teens and young adults with autism.
Early signs of autism in children may include, but are not limited to, little or no smiling and limited eye contact by 6 months; little to no babbling, pointing or response to their name by 12 months; and few or no meaningful two-word phrases by 24 months, according to the CDC.
Clark added that children may exhibit additional signs such as flapping of the hands, spinning, twirling and walking on their toes. She also says lining up toys, instead of playing with them in the way they’re intended to be played with, may also be a sign.
“If you do see these behaviors in your child, these are behaviors that are associated with ASD and important to mention to your pediatrician,” she said.
Treatment comes in many different forms, from mental health therapy to occupational, physical and speech therapies. Sometimes medications can be helpful for things related to ASD, like mood problems or inability to focus.
(NEW YORK) — Republican candidates are shying away from the debate stage as the midterm elections approach.
Over a half dozen GOP candidates in crucial state and federal races have either skipped out on or not committed to primary debates.
Joe Lombardo, a gubernatorial candidate in Nevada, turned down a chance to debate in January. In Nebraska, Jim Pillen, another gubernatorial candidate, turned down offers to debate his opponents in March, telling ABC News debates amount to “political theater.”
In Pennsylvania, Senate candidate Dr. Mehmet Oz did not take part in the first GOP Senate primary debate in January, citing a “prior commitment.”
And the frontrunner in the GOP Senate primary debate in Georgia is Hershal Walker, who said he won’t debate his primary opponents and is instead focused on facing Democratic Sen. Raphael Warnock on the debate stage in the general election.
“We have always strongly encouraged all candidates to participate in our debates,” said Lauri Strauss, executive director of the Atlanta Press Club, which is organizing 15 primary debates in Georgia.
When candidates choose not to participate, there are ripple effects.
In North Carolina, Republican representative and Senate candidate Ted Budd declined to take part in a primary debate in February and said he won’t attend one scheduled for April.
When word spread that Budd was not participating in the debate this month, GOP Senate candidate and former North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory pulled out too, saying he would only debate if Budd did. Once McCrory dropped out, that left only one candidate and The North Carolina Faith and Freedom Coalition, which was organizing the debate, decided to cancel it altogether.
In Ohio, Republican Gov. Mike DeWine also decided not to attend the state’s March GOP gubernatorial primary debate. Jill Zimon, executive director of the Ohio Debate Commission, said once DeWine made it public that he would not participate, former Rep. Jim Renacci’s campaign told the Ohio Debate Commission that Renacci would not attend unless DeWine changed his mind.
Asked why the governor declined the invitation, DeWine’s campaign told ABC News that he “is the most publicly accessible governor in Ohio history” and that Ohioans already know where he stands on the issues.
Richard Davis, the president of the State Debate Coalition and co-founder of the Utah Debate Commission, said Republican candidates are becoming more “empowered” to refuse traditional debates.
The Republican National Committee’s continuous threats to bar their party’s presidential nominees from participating in debates organized by the Presidential Debate Commission, he said, has encouraged other Republican candidates to set debate requirements in exchange for their participation.
“[Republicans believe they] can set the ground rules and say that organizations that run debates…are biased,” Davis said.
While Republicans have been declining debates in eyebrow raising numbers, Democrats are not immune.
In Pennsylvania, the frontrunner in the Democratic Senate race, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, did not take part in the first primary debate Sunday and instead met with voters in rural Pennsylvania. Fetterman’s campaign, however, said he has committed to three other upcoming debates.
As more candidates skip out on debates or dictate the conditions under which they will appear, both Davis and Strauss believe candidates are shirking an important public service for voters.
“How can someone run for office and want to be elected if they’re not willing to debate their opponents and let the public know what they stand for?” Strauss said.
(BREMERTON, Wash.) — A coach’s personal act of prayer that grew into a public spectacle after Bremerton High School football games is now a major test of the First Amendment in a case this month before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The coach, Joe Kennedy, who was suspended by the school in 2015 over post-game prayers on the field, is asking the justices to affirm the right of public school employees to pray aloud while on the job, even when within view of students they coach or teach.
“This is a right for everybody. It doesn’t matter if you’re this religion or that religion or have no faith whatsoever,” Kennedy told ABC News . “Everybody has the same rights in America.”
The school district says Kennedy’s prayers, some of which were surrounded by players at the 50 yard-line, are hardly private acts of faith and run afoul of constitutional prohibitions against promotion of religion by government officials.
“It was my covenant between me and God that after every game, win or lose, I’m going to do it right there on the field of battle,” Kennedy said of his ritual, which he said typically lasted less than a minute.
Lower courts sided with the school district. A Supreme Court ruling for Kennedy has the potential to expand the ability of public school employees nationwide to practice their faiths more openly around students, legal experts say.
The case will be argued April 25 and decided by the end of June.
The First Amendment protects free speech and free exercise of religion, but it also prohibits the establishment of religion by the government. The Supreme Court has long said that public school-sponsored prayer violates the Establishment Clause, even if the prayer is voluntary.
It has struck down Bible readings and teacher-led prayer in classrooms, religious invocations at graduations and religious displays at other school sponsored activities. In a 2000 case, Santa Fe Independent School District v. Doe, the court said that opening football games with student-led prayer is also unconstitutional.
At the same time, the court has ruled that free speech rights don’t end at the schoolhouse gate and that religion need not be entirely expunged from public schools.
While Kennedy routinely prayed on the field after games for more than seven years, attracting varying levels of participation from students, it wasn’t until 2015 that the school district informed him that separation of church and state meant he could no longer pray with players and keep his job.
“They just said if anybody could see you anywhere here, it was over,” Kennedy said.
The school district explained at the time that the prayers violated “constitutionally-required directives that he refrain from engaging in overt, public religious displays on the football field while on duty.”
Some Bremerton High School parents like Paul Peterson, whose son Aaron played for coach Kennedy in 2010, later complained the prayer sessions were applying inappropriate pressure.
“The coach is a leader. The coach is a mentor. If he goes to the 50-yard line, he has a message he wants to deliver, and so the players would follow,” said Peterson in an interview.
“The harm is to those who are the minority students, the minority faiths, the students who have no faith,” he said. “They are being pressured into doing something that they don’t fundamentally agree with.That’s what the First Amendment protects us from.”
Kennedy insists there was no coercion, though widely publicized scenes show his post-game prayers became much more than solitary acts of faith.
Attorney Jeremy Dys, representing Kennedy on behalf of the First Liberty Institute, said the coach should not be held accountable for the voluntary decisions of others to join him in an expression of faith.
“He’s not on the field coaching anybody, he’s not telling what play to run. No instruction taking place,” Dys said. “School districts don’t own every word out of your mouth or any religious expression that you choose to make in your private time, even on school grounds.”
A federal appeals court called Kennedy’s characterization of his prayers as brief, quiet and solitary as a “deceitful narrative,” noting that they were clearly audible prayers surrounded by groups of students, amounting to unlawful religious speech as “a school official.”
“If this were a case about a coach who in fact wanted to pray privately, in a solitary manner, we wouldn’t be here,” said Rachel Laser, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, a nonprofit advocacy group backing the school district. “You don’t leave that behind when you go teach or coach at a public school, but what you do leave behind is your ability to engage students who are very impressionable, who are required to attend public school.”
Kennedy’s case has been cheered on by top Republicans, including former President Donald Trump, dozens of state and federal lawmakers, and star NFL quarterbacks, like Kirk Cousins and Nick Foles, who have told the justices in a friend-of-the-court filing that the power of prayer promotes good sportsmanship.
“These kids mean everything to me, because I was a troubled youth, and I wanted to reach out to help these kids in Bremerton, give back to my community which I terrorized as a kid,” said Kennedy, who is a Marine Corps veteran and former project manager at the Bremerton naval shipyard.
On the other side of the debate, leaders of minority faiths, atheists and parents like Peterson, say a coach’s good intentions shouldn’t be an excuse for flouting the Constitution.
“When the teacher or coach is standing up and leading the children, I think you cross the line into indoctrination,” Peterson said.
The case could have an impact on public school playing fields nationwide and determine whether Kennedy can coach again, and take a knee in prayer for his Bremerton Knights.
He currently lives in Florida but has told the Court he would move back to Bremerton if the justices rule in his favor.
“Nobody should have to be fired or worry about their job if they show any signs of faith,” Kennedy said. “At the end of the game, I’m hoping to have victory but we’ll see how the courts rule.”
(ALEXANDRIA, Va.) — A British man accused of being one of the infamous quartet of ISIS terrorists nicknamed the “Beatles” by prisoners who they beat and executed was faced down in federal court this week by two of their victims’ mothers, and one man who survived their brutality.
El Shafee Elsheikh is accused of a direct role in holding hostage four Americans, several Britons, and other captives between 2013 and 2014 at several makeshift prisons in Syria.
At his trial this week in U.S. federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, prosecutors called as witnesses the mothers of two Americans who did not survive as hostages of ISIS, journalist James Foley and humanitarian aid worker Kayla Mueller.
Foley, of Wolfeboro, New Hampshire, was kidnapped in Syria in 2012 along with British journalist John Cantlie, and was held for nearly two years before he was shown beheaded in a gruesome video by the ISIS Beatle dubbed “Jihadi John,” whose real name was Mohammed Emwazi.
“Incredible shock, I didn’t believe it — I didn’t want to believe it,” Foley’s mother Diane testified about learning that her son was killed.
Foley’s brother Michael testified about the horror of seeing the ISIS video that showed the remains of his brother, a 38-year old a freelance journalist for Global Post and Agence France-Presse, after the killing that stunned the world on Aug. 19, 2014.
Her head tilted up to look at the ceiling rather than at the defendant, Diane Foley spoke in a clear, strong voice about her son, who had previously survived previous captivity by other militants in Libya.
She said when President Barack Obama “announced Jim had been beheaded, it sunk in.”
The Foley family subsequently established the James W. Foley Legacy Foundation to assist hostages, their families and war journalists.
On Tuesday, it was Marsha Mueller’s turn.
She told of how her 27-year-old daughter Kayla, of Prescott, Arizona, had traveled to the Middle East and to Turkey and Syria, seeking ways to help refugees of the Syrian civil war.
Then on Aug. 4, 2013, after visiting a Doctors Without Borders hospital in Aleppo, Syria, to help her friend Omar Alkhani install satellite internet, Kayla and her colleagues were kidnapped by armed men.
Dressed in a black sweater, Marsha Mueller’s voice became stronger with each passing minute as she told of Kayla’s love for owls, music and books, and how Kayla had sought to provide aid to women and children refugees in need.
She described exchanging 27 emails with ISIS, in which they demanded the release of convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqi or 5 million Euros in exchange for Kayla’s release. An ABC News investigation in 2015 found that the FBI and Obama White House had blocked the Foleys, Muellers and other families from paying ISIS’ ransom demands — though ransoms paid for European hostages had led to their release.
After U.S. special mission unit Delta Force raided a makeshift prison on Independence Day 2014, but missed rescuing the hostages by only two days because critics said the intelligence was not acted upon swiftly enough by the White House, ISIS sent an angry email about Kayla and threatened they would “put a bullet in her head.”
Her mother said they knew nothing about the U.S. raid, and reacted to the message with fear.
“They were going to kill her,” she recalled in court.
Marsha Mueller’s voice cracked when she read aloud one of three letters Kayla wrote from ISIS prisons, sending “hugs and kisses” to her niece, and signing it, “All my everything, Kayla.” The letters were addressed to her parents, her mentor the Rev. Kathleen Day, and her friends Halla and Orouba Barakat, mother-daughter journalists in Turkey who themselves were later murdered in Istanbul in 2017 and were the subject of an ABC News-Reveal investigation.
When Kayla was reported killed on Feb. 6, 2015, ISIS emailed Carl and Marsha Mueller three photos of their lifeless daughter.
“Her face looks like it is smeared with blood, her eyes are partly open, her mouth is slightly open,” Kayla’s mother told the jury.
The Muellers later learned that Kayla had stood up for and cared for other hostages, for which she had been repeatedly raped by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the ISIS top leader and self-proclaimed “caliph” of all Muslims. Al-Baghdadi was subsequently killed by Delta Force in 2019 in a raid named “Operation Kayla Mueller” in Mueller’s honor.
After providing testimony on Tuesday, Marsha Mueller and Diane Foley held each other in comfort, beyond the eyes and ears of the jurors.
Another witness who faced Elsheikh in court was Spanish journalist Marc Marginedas, who was kidnapped in Syria and held with Mueller, Foley, Cantlie and others including American journalist Steven Sotloff, with whom Marginedas became close during their captivity.
Marginedas recounted in horrifying detail how the four “Beatles” — so named by Cantlie to keep track of their British-accented captors because their real names were unknown — inflicted savagery upon them.
As Sotloff’s parents Arthur and Shirley looked on in the courtroom, Marginedas recalled how the terrorists appeared to take particular joy in beating Sotloff, who was Jewish. Sotloff told Marginedas he believed that the beatings, some of which occurred in front of his fellow captives, had left him with broken ribs.
But the Jewish journalist never revealed his faith to his captors, and simply wore extra clothing to soften the blows.
“He was a very courageous man who didn’t complain much,” said Marginedas, who testified in the Virginia courtroom only a week after reporting from the front lines in Ukraine.
A decade after he was kidnapped, Cantlie’s whereabouts remain unknown, as do the whereabouts of New Zealand nurse Louisa Akavi, who was kidnapped by ISIS in 2013.
Other victims’ relatives who appeared in the courtroom were Paula and Ed Kassig, the parents of former U.S. Army Ranger Peter Kassig, an American aid worker who was killed by ISIS in 2014.
Elsheikh, dressed in a collared shirt and khakis, with black-framed glasses and a beard, sat motionless as each family member took the stand, slouching on his left elbow even as prosecutors played video of interviews he had voluntarily given.
In one clip filmed in 2019 in a Syrian prison where Elsheikh and fellow ISIS Beatle Alexanda Kotey were held following their capture, former ABC News contributor Sean Langan asked if Jihadi John, who the CIA later killed in a drone strike, had asked Elsheikh to get the Muellers’ contact information from their daughter to negotiate ransom.
“That was the first time I saw Kayla, I took an email from her,” he replied.
Elsheikh, who has admitted in media interviews to being an accomplice of ISIS, faces a life sentence if convicted. Prosecutors took the death penalty off the table in a deal with the British government, which opposes capital punishment.
On Tuesday, after the jury was dismissed for lunch and U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III had left the courtroom, Kayla Mueller’s friend Omar Alkhani delivered an insult in Arabic to Elsheikh while Elsheikh was being led out by a U.S. Marshal.
One day Elsheikh would meet his former ISIS bosses “in hell,” Alkhani shouted.
