(WASHINGTON) — The Justice Department announced Thursday it has sued the State of Texas over its restrictive voting law that went into effect in September.
The complaint argues SB1 violates Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act “by improperly restricting what assistance in the polling booth voters who have a disability or are unable to read or write can receive.”
SB1 affects voters who have a disability by preventing those who assist them from providing help like answering questions on their behalf, confirming voters with visual impairments have properly marked their ballots and responding to any requests they might have about certain ballot translations.
The complaint also accuses the law of violating Section 101 of the Civil Rights Act “by requiring rejection of mail ballots and mail ballot request forms because of certain paperwork errors or omissions that are not material to establishing a voter’s eligibility to cast a ballot.”
The complaint filed in civil court asks a judge to prohibit Texas from enforcing the identified provisions in the law.
The DOJ similarly sued Georgia in June, alleging provisions in its new voting law violated Section 2 of the Civil Rights Act.
John Travolta and Tarantino on the ‘Pulp Fiction’ set
What if the mystery glow from the briefcase in Pulp Fiction was a cache of never-before-seen scenes from the Oscar-winning film?
Quentin Tarantinohas announced that a collection of unreleased material from his 1994 crime classic will be up for grabs, in the form of Secret NFTs — encrypted Non-Fungible Tokens — in partnership with Secret Network.
According to a new website, “Each NFT contains one or more previously unknown secrets of a specific iconic scene,” and promises the purchaser “will get a hold of those secrets and a glimpse into the mind and the creative process of Quentin Tarantino.”
Seven never-before-seen clips will be up for grabs, along with annotations and other notes from the writer-director himself.
The site adds, “The owner will enjoy the freedom of choosing one of these options: To keep the secrets to himself for eternity…to share the secrets with a few trusted loved ones,” or, “To share the secrets publicly with the world.”
The filmmaker himself spoke this week at the crypto art gathering NFT.NYC, where he explained his fellow director — and Inglorious Basterds star — Eli Roth first told him about NFTs, and the more he learned about them, the more intrigued Tarantino became about the technology, reports Artnet.
Tarantino’s certainly not the first filmmaker to embrace the collectable format. MGM recently released James Bond-related NFTs tied to the release of No Time to Die, and Warner Bros. announced fans will be able to collect NFTs from the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections.
Emmy winner Anthony Hemingway has signed on to direct the upcoming The Preacher’s Wife remake.
According to Deadline, the new film will be a present-day “reimagining” of the 1996 original film and will feature original cast member Courtney B. Vance. As you may recall, the original film, directed by Penny Marshall, starred Denzel Washington as Dudley, an angel who comes to Earth to help a preacher, played by Vance, and his wife, Julia, portrayed by the late Whitney Houston, save their church and family. The film became a popular holiday staple and its soundtrack remains one of the best-selling gospel albums of all time. Additional casting on the new The Preacher’s Wife has yet to be announced.
In other news, Regina King is teaming up with producer David E. Kelley to adapt Tom Wolfe’s novel A Man in Full for Netflix, Deadline has learned. King will direct and exec-produce the limited series as part of her first-look deal with the streamer. Published in 1998, the book follows Atlanta real estate mogul Charlie Croker who, after facing sudden bankruptcy, must “defend his empire from those attempting to capitalize on his fall from grace.” Casting details on A Man in Full have not been revealed.
Finally, ICYMI, fans will get to see Kid Cudi open up about his years of battling depression, anxiety and drug abuse in the highly-anticipated Amazon documentary A Man Named Scott. The new doc, which features commentary from Kanye West, Timothée Chalamet, Shia LaBeouf, Willow Smith, and more, which chronicle his rise to fame as well as his troubled upbringing. A Man Named Scott hits Amazon Friday, November 5.
(NEW YORK) — Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance has convened a new special grand jury to hear evidence in the investigation of former President Donald Trump and his eponymous company, sources familiar with the matter told ABC News.
The new grand jury was convened as the time limit on the original special grand jury is about to expire.
The new six-month special grand jury allows the case to continue beyond Vance’s tenure if needed. He leaves office in early January, when District Attorney-elect Alvin Bragg takes office. In a historic victory, Bragg was elected as Manhattan’s first Black district attorney on Tuesday.
News of the grand jury was first reported by The Washington Post.
The initial grand jury returned an indictment in June against the Trump Organization and its long-serving chief financial officer Allan Weisselberg. Both have pleaded not guilty.
The first indictments returned in the case involved corporate benefits for which, allegedly, no taxes were paid.
“During the operation of the scheme, the defendants arranged for Weisselberg to receive indirect employee compensation from the Trump Organization in the approximate amount of $1.76 million … in ways that enabled the corporate defendants to avoid reporting it to the tax authorities,” the indictment said.
The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, along with New York Attorney General Letitia James, have also been investigating whether Trump valued his holdings one way when seeking loans and a different way when preparing taxes, manipulation alleged by Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, in 2019 congressional testimony.
Neither the Vance nor James has commented. The Manhattan DA fought a battle for the former president’s tax returns that twice went to the U.S. Supreme Court.
Trump, who has not been charged, has denied wrongdoing and decried the investigation as political.
He told ABC News in July that Weisselberg is a “tremendous man and called the indictment a “disgrace” and “shameful.”
(WASHINGTON) — The Navy has fired the top three leaders who were aboard the attack submarine USS Connecticut when it struck an uncharted sea mountain in the Pacific Ocean in early October.
The commander of the Navy’s Seventh Fleet relieved the commanding officer of the submarine, Cmdr. Cameron Aljilani, the executive officer, Lt. Cmdr. Patrick Cashin, and the top enlisted sailor, Master Chief Sonar Technician Cory Rodgers, “due to loss of confidence,” according to a Navy statement.
Though the vessel struck an uncharted sea mountain, Vice Adm. Karl Thomas, commander of Seventh Fleet, determined that the incident could have been prevented.
“Sound judgement, prudent decision-making and adherence to required procedures in navigation planning, watch team execution and risk management could have prevented the incident,” according to the statement.
The three who were fired will be replaced by a new leadership team while the submarine remains in Guam before it makes its way to Bremerton, Washington, for repairs to the hull and interior.
On Oct. 2, the Seawolf-class fast-attack submarine struck an unknown object while underwater, but the Navy did not publicly disclose the incident until after the vessel was close to arriving at the naval base in Guam, where a damage assessment would be made.
A Navy official said at the time that two sailors had suffered moderate injuries and were treated aboard the vessel. Other sailors suffered bumps, bruises and lacerations. There was no damage to the submarine’s nuclear reactor.
While the Navy would not say where the submarine had been operating, China has claimed it was in the South China Sea, where China has made territorial claims not accepted by the United States and the international community.
Last week, a Navy investigation into the incident determined that the submarine had struck an uncharted sea mountain and that the Seventh Fleet commander would determine whether accountability actions might be appropriate.
Fore! Some top musical acts have been lined up to perform at this year’s Tournament of Champions, the official start of the 2022 LPGA Tour season.
The Tournament, sponsored by Hilton Grand Vacations, Inc. will feature three days’ worth of private concerts from Goo Goo Dolls, Sheryl Crow, Boyz II Men, LeAnn Rimes, the Gin Blossoms and country star Sara Evans.
The concerts begin Tuesday, January 18 with Sheryl and LeAnn, followed by Sara and Boyz II Men on January 20, and Jan 22 with Gin Blossoms and Goo Goo Dolls. You can buy tickets now.
The outdoor concerts take place at Lake Nona Golf & Country Club in Orlando. LPGA Tour winners will compete for $1.2 million in prize money, and there will also be a pro-am with more than 50 celebrities, athletes and entertainers. The tournament will air January 21 on the Golf Channel and January 22 and 23 on the Golf Channel and NBC.
(RUZVAT, Tajikistan) — In many places along Tajikistan’s border with Afghanistan, the countries are separated by just a few yards of water — the narrow Panj River.
There are no walls or fences, and, standing on the Tajikistan side, northern Afghanistan is so close that as ABC reporters looked across last week, Taliban fighters waved back at them.
The Taliban have taken control of the Afghan side of the border, something they were unable to achieve even when they ruled there 20 years ago. Now their white flags can be seen flying in the villages perched along the river as it winds between two towering walls of mountains.
The border, which runs through the Pamir Mountains, is a new fault line in a new reality. It’s a place that poses questions to Afghanistan’s neighbors, including regional powers like Russia and China, about what a Taliban-controlled Afghanistan will mean.
There are fears that instability could spread from Afghanistan to surrounding countries. Terrorist groups including ISIS and Al-Qaeda have footholds in northern Afghanistan, and Tajikistan is already a major drugs route. And as a catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Afghanistan threatens, so does a potential refugee exodus.
So where does that leave Tajikistan?
The nearly 850-mile-long border is now closed. As the Taliban advanced this summer, groups of Afghans, mostly government soldiers, began to flee across the border. Tajikistan’s government reacted by sending 20,000 troops to the area.
The sealed border has cut off the flow of refugees. The Taliban are also stopping people, according to Afghans who’ve tried to cross.
ABC News reporters visited a stretch of border in the Darvoz region last week. To enter, foreigners must have special permission and pass through three checkpoints. But beyond that, the only visible security force was an occasional three-man patrol of young conscripts.
Locals said things have been calm since the Taliban took over, with the sound of shooting on the other side stopping. Life has been relatively unchanged, they said, except Tajik security service agents now lived in some villages. The three nearby bridges spanning the river all have been closed.
Tajikistan is the only one of Afghanistan’s neighbors to adopt an openly hostile attitude toward the Taliban since their takeover. Nearly half of Afghanistan’s population are ethnically Tajiks, and in the 1990s, Tajikistan’s government supported the anti-Taliban resistance. This time, Tajikistan has again become a sanctuary for resistance leaders.
Ahmad Massoud, the son of the legendary mujahideen commander Ahmad Shah Massoud and leader of the National Resistance Front of Afghanistan, is in Tajikistan, his spokesman said this week, seeking to drum up international support.
But unlike the last time, the resistance has almost no holdouts in Afghanistan, and Tajikistan’s government has shown little appetite for assisting beyond offering shelter.
Before Kabul fell, Tajikistan said it could take in 100,000 Afghan refugees, but now it’s closed to new entries. Several thousand Afghans did manage to arrive, including 160 U.S.-trained Afghan Air Force Pilots, who are now trapped waiting evacuation.
Those who did reach Tajikistan are now struggling, unable to find work or feed themselves in one of the world’s poorest countries. Tamim Talash, a former official at Afghanistan’s election commission, is now stranded there with his wife and 4-month old daughter.
“We have a lot of problems,” Talash said. “I am jobless now.”
Talash, who said the Taliban twice tried to kill him, has applied for asylum in the U.S. but heard nothing so far.
“I don’t know how to find out any person or any organization to help us,” he added.
The upheaval in Afghanistan has also boosted Russia’s role in the region, where it already retains a strong grip on former Soviet colonies. Worried about potential terrorists in those countries, Russia has been moving to bolster them.
Tajikistan’s capital, Dushanbe, already is home to Russia’s 201st Military Base, the largest it has anywhere in the world outside Russia.
Since the summer, Russia has sent to Tajikistan military equipment and money to construct new border posts and re-equip military forces. The countries have staged large joint military exercises. In October, Russia took journalists to watch the culminating display of scheduled exercises organized by the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a military alliance of former Soviet countries.
Russian troops took part alongside those from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Belarus and others at a firing range about 15 miles from Afghanistan. The display, involving around 2,000 troops, simulated a response to an imagined attempt by an Islamist group that had crossed into Tajikistan and declared it an Islamic state.
But Moscow also is building a working relationship with the Taliban. Last month, it hosted the Taliban in Moscow for talks with regional countries, chaired by Russia’s foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov.
Russia has asked for, and received, public guarantees from the Taliban that it will not destabilize Central Asian countries like Tajikistan or allow Afghanistan to be used as a launchpad for international terrorism again.
“Just as we want positive relations with others, we also seek positive relations,” Amir Khan Muttaqi, the Taliban’s acting foreign minister, told reporters through a translator during the Moscow talks. “We remain committed to our commitments that the soil of Afghanistan will not be used to threaten the security of other nations.”
(CHICAGO) — Protests erupted at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago this week after a text exchange between the fast food giant’s chief executive and Mayor Lori Lightfoot seemed to blame the parents of two children who were recently shot to death in the city.
Lightfoot had visited McDonald’s headquarters and met with CEO Chris Kempczinski in April, the day after the fatal shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams, who died in a hail of bullets fired into her family’s car that was in a McDonald’s drive-thru lane. The child’s death came as the city was still mourning and outraged over the fatal shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a police officer.
In a text exchange recently made public, Kempczinski wrote to Lightfoot: “With both, the parents failed those kids, which I know is something you can’t say. Even harder to fix,” according to ABC Chicago station WLS-TV.
The comment sparked immediate backlash and accusations of racism and victim blaming.
Images shared to social media by the labor advocacy group Fight for 15 Chicago, which helped organize a protest on Wednesday, showed crowds of protestors descending on McDonald’s headquarters. Many of those marching were children.
“As the leader of the largest fast food corporation, Mr. Kempczinski has a responsibility to do much better for Black and Brown communities than add on to racist stereotypes,” Fight for 15 Chicago said in a Tweet.
Kempczinski acknowledged the text exchange in a note sent to McDonald’s U.S. corporate employees, which was viewed by ABC News.
“In the text exchange, I thanked Mayor Lightfoot for the visit and reflected on our conversation about the recent tragedies, commenting that ‘the parents failed those kids,'” the CEO wrote. “When I wrote this, I was thinking through my lens as a parent and reacted viscerally.”
“But I have not walked in the shoes of Adam’s or Jaslyn’s family and so many others who are facing a very different reality,” Kempczinski added. “Not taking the time to think about this from their viewpoint was wrong, and lacked the empathy and compassion I feel for these families. This is a lesson that I will carry with me.”
Kempczinksi lamented the “senseless surge in gun violence that is affecting so many children,” adding that, “it is also clear to me that everyone has a role to play.”
“Quite simply, it is on all of us to do better for the children of our communities,” the CEO stated, saying he was committed to working with civic leaders and elected officials to “understand what that means for McDonald’s.”
Lightfoot did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment Thursday, but a spokesperson for the mayor told told WLS-TV: “Victim shaming has no place in this conversation.”
Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — As House Democrats scramble to move forward with President Joe Biden’s landmark infrastructure and social spending legislation, Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Thursday told her deputies behind closed doors that she wants votes on the bills this week — but publicly she declined to commit to any specific timetable.
“I’ll let you know as soon as I wish to,” Pelosi told reporters during her weekly news conference when asked about scheduling what’s become an elusive target for her party.
Congressional Democrats are under new pressure to pass the legislation following Tuesday’s disappointing election results and Biden telling reporters on Wednesday his message to them was: “Get it on my desk.”
“We have to have the votes,” Pelosi said Thursday, indicating her leadership team is still working the numbers behind the scenes.
Pelosi said she was “very unhappy” about missing her previous Oct. 31 deadline for passing the already Senate-passed bipartisan infrastructure bill, stalled as progressives held their votes to continue negotiations on a larger social spending package.
“Did you see the whip count?” Pelosi asked reporters on Thursday. “Because I’ll tell you something about Mr. Clyburn, he keeps it close to the vest.”
Asked if it were possible that she would put only the bipartisan infrastructure bill — or “BIF” — on the floor if the social spending plan or “Build Back Better” bill isn’t ready, Pelosi told reporters: “No.”
“We’re going to pass both bills, but in order to do so we have to have the votes for both bills, and that’s where we are,” she added.
Notably, Pelosi says she does not call votes in the House if she knows she doesn’t have the votes to win.
In an earlier closed-door meeting, Pelosi told her deputies that if the votes are there, they intend to vote on the social spending bill as soon as Thursday night, with votes on the bipartisan infrastructure plan planned for Friday, sources familiar confirmed to ABC News.
“Hopefully we’ll see if we have the votes for BBB tonight and BIF tomorrow morning,” she said, according to a source familiar with the matter.
But there are still several loose ends with the larger social spending or “Build Back Better” package Democrats plan to pass through reconciliation, a process not requiring Republican support but would need all Democratic votes in the Senate — where its fate is unclear with Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., having objected to a late addition.
Pelosi announced on Wednesday that Democrats were adding four weeks of paid family and medical leave back to the social spending package, to the praise of progressives, but a move which Manchin said he doesn’t support, raising concerns with the cost.
ABC News Congressional Correspondent Rachel Scott asked Pelosi what her message is to Manchin, who says he supports paid family leave but not in this package, and Pelosi took an optimistic tone.
“Well, I don’t make a habit of talking to Senator Manchin on the TV. We’re friends. I respect him. He’s a good person. He’s agreed to so much that is in the bill,” Pelosi responded.
“With all the respect in the world for the point of view he represents, I disagree,” she said of his position. “I think that this is appropriate for this legislation. It fits very comfortably with childcare, health care, home care, family medical need, and it has the full support of our caucus.”
Asked by reporters if House Democrats’ inability to pass the legislation ahead of Tuesday’s governor race in Virginia impacted that loss for Democrats, Pelosi said she would have to wait and see the data.
“But I do think as the American people learn more about what we are doing in this legislation for families, for children, for women in the workforce, to save our planet, the rest, it will be very positive. You can’t deny that it would be very positive,” she said. “There’s no question if we the more results we can produce in a way that is people understand in their lives, the better it is,” she added.
Democratic leaders are actively whipping behind the scenes to see if the votes are there and argue to moderates that the social spending plan, expected to cost about $1.75 trillion, will be fully paid for.
The Joint Committee on Taxation said in its latest analysis released Thursday that the new tax provisions included in the social spending plan would raise nearly $1.5 trillion over 10 years — meaning the plan nearly meets Democrats’ mark.
“It’s very solid,” Pelosi told reporters at her weekly press conference, noting that the JCT is an “objective” body providing analysis.
JCT’s latest score does not include revenue raised by providing the IRS more money for enforcement or savings from prescription drug pricing changes since those provisions were added in just the last two days.
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal, D-Mass., also told reporters the JCT score indicates that the bill will be fully paid for when the tax increase, IRS and drug pricing provisions are all taken into account.
The track, which you can download now via digital outlets, is the first preview of the next Foals album, due out in 2022.
“There’s a journey that the band has gone on experimenting with different palettes of sound,” says frontman Yannis Philippakis.
“This time there was a desire to take it back to more of the initial idea of the band where the rhythm, the grooves and the guitars are interlocking architecturally,” he explains. “We wanted to tap into the physicality of music. And we wanted it to feel good.”
The currently untitled album will be the follow-up to Foals’ 2019 two-part release Everything Not Saved Will Be Lost. It’ll also be the English outfit’s first effort following the departure of original keyboardist Edwin Congreave this past September.
