A Texas appeals court has halted the execution of a man who has spent more than 30 years on death row and had been set to die by lethal injection this week. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Tuesday issued a stay of execution for 67-year-old David Leonard Wood. He was convicted in the killings of six girls and young women found buried in the desert near El Paso. The court put Wood’s execution on pause “until further order.” It did not elaborate on the decision in a brief three-page order.
The Associated Press has obtained a document showing that the Trump administration is halting a $1 billion program that helps preserve affordable housing. The cuts could jeopardize projects across the country intended to keep 25,000 units energy efficient, livable and affordable for low-income Americans. The details of how the program will be wound down remain unclear. The lack of communication from HUD about the program’s future has sent organizations in search of contingency plans. A spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban development declined repeated requests for comment.
When protests over the Israel-Hamas war took root on Columbia University’s campus last spring, Mahmoud Khalil became a familiar, outspoken figure in a student movement that soon spread to other U.S. colleges. Now that visibility has helped make him the face of President Donald Trump’s drive to punish what he calls antisemitic and “anti-American” campus protests. In the first publicly known arrest of the crackdown, federal immigration agents took Khalil from his apartment Saturday and held him for potential deportation. To civil rights advocates and Khalil’s lawyers, his detention is an assault on free speech and an attempt to suppress pro-Palestinian views. Khalil is a legal U.S. resident married to an American citizen.
An advocacy group says it's time for states to stop requiring abortion providers to file reports for every abortion. The Guttmacher Institute says that in the current political environment it's become more likely the information could be used against both providers and patients. One Indiana group has used reports in that state to flag what it says are violations by providers. Guttmacher says states should still be able to collect information on abortions, just not through mandatory individual reports. Guttmacher and another abortion-rights data group are already surveying data providers and making abortion statistics public faster than the government does.
NASA's newest space telescope has blasted off to map the entire sky like never before. Launched Tuesday night from California by SpaceX, the Spherex observatory will survey the sky every six months from an orbit over Earth's poles. Its infrared instruments are expected to provide a sweeping, wide-angle view of hundreds of millions of galaxies and their shared cosmic glow. Scientists hope to learn how galaxies formed and evolved, and how the universe expanded so fast in its first moments. NASA also packed four suitcase-size satellites onto the rocket to study the sun from their own polar orbit.
Prosecutors in the Justice Department section that handles public corruption cases have been told the unit will be being significantly reduced in size, and that its cases will be transferred to U.S. attorney’s offices around the country, according to two people familiar with the matter. The discussions about shrinking the the public integrity section comes weeks after the unit’s leadership resigned when a top Justice Department official ordered the dropping of corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. A Justice Department spokesperson said Tuesday that the leadership is “taking a broad look” at the agency’s resources but have no final decisions have been made about the future of the public integrity section.
Voters in a Minnesota House district at the center of a post-election drama have chosen Democrat David Gottfried in a race that leaves control of the House tied. Gottfried defeated Republican Paul Wikstrom. Tuesday’s special election in the heavily Democratic St. Paul suburbs of Roseville and Shoreview was scheduled after a court ruled that a previous Democratic winner failed to meet residency requirements. That led to the collapse of a power-sharing agreement and prompted a three-week Democratic boycott of the chamber. The Democratic victory will end a short-lived Republican majority and force the two parties to work together.
A house cat named Aggie has found her way back to her owner two months after the LA wildfires. Katherine Kiefer had feared the worst for her beloved pet after the Palisades blaze left her home in ashes. But a TikTok video with more than 1 million “likes” shows the emotional moment 82-year-old Kiefer and Aggie reunited at a veterinary hospital. TikTok users have since asked for daily updates on the cat, which has undergone several blood transfusions. Aggie is expected to be released to her family on Thursday.
Junior Bridgeman, a basketball standout who went on to an even more successful career in business, has died at the age of 71. Bridgeman led Louisville to a Final Four and played 12 seasons in the NBA, mostly with the Milwaukee Bucks. He then launched a business career with stakes in publishing, restaurants and the Bucks. He died Tuesday in Louisville, Kentucky. Bridgeman was a fixture in Louisville after his playing days. Mayor Craig Greenberg said the city had “lost a kind, generous and groundbreaking legend.”
A prosecutor has told jurors that two defendants were hired guns for the government of Iran in a plot to assassinate an Iran-born journalist at her Brooklyn residence three years ago. Assistant U.S. Attorney Jacob Gutwillig made the claim in his opening statement Tuesday. He said the defendants were part of an Eastern European criminal organization and arranged the plot to kill of Masih Alinejad. Gutwillig said the hitman was arrested before he could kill Alinejad. He is expected to testify in a cooperation deal. Alinejad will testify as well. Defense lawyers say their clients are not guilty.
