President Joe Biden announced an executive action on Monday to ban new oil and natural gas drilling on over 625 million acres of U.S. offshore and coastal waters.
In a statement released Monday by the White House, Biden said, “I am taking action to protect the East and West coasts, the eastern Gulf of Mexico, and Alaska’s Northern Bering Sea from oil and natural gas drilling and the harm it can cause.”
Fox News reported that by Biden invoking the 1953 Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, President-elect Donald Trump could face difficulty reversing the executive action. The outlet noted that Congress may be required to take action to reverse Biden’s decision under the upcoming Trump administration.
In Monday’s statement, Biden said that offshore drilling “could cause irreversible damage to places we hold dear and is unnecessary to meet our nation’s energy needs.”
“It is not worth the risks,” Biden said. “As the climate crisis continues to threaten communities across the country and we are transitioning to a clean energy economy, now is the time to protect these coasts for our children and grandchildren.”
The president claimed that he has “delivered on the most ambitious climate and conservation agenda in our country’s history” by conserving over 670 million acres of American land and water over the past four years.
READ MORE: Biden admin expected to ban offshore oil drilling ahead of Trump’s 2nd term: Report
“We do not need to choose between protecting the environment and growing our economy, or between keeping our ocean healthy, our coastlines resilient, and the food they produce secure and keeping energy prices low,” Biden wrote. “Those are false choices. Protecting America’s coasts and ocean is the right thing to do, and will help communities and the economy to flourish for generations to come.”
Following Biden’s executive action on Monday, Karoline Leavitt, who has been nominated to serve as Trump’s White House press secretary, released a statement on X, formerly Twitter, saying, “This is a disgraceful decision designed to exact political revenge on the American people who gave President Trump a mandate to increase drilling and lower gas prices. Rest assured, Joe Biden will fail, and we will drill, baby, drill.”
Trump also appeared to reference Biden’s ban against new oil and gas drilling in a Monday post on Truth Social.
“Biden is doing everything possible to make the TRANSITION as difficult as as possible, from Lawfare such as has never been seen before, to costly and ridiculous Executive Orders on the Green New Scam and other money wasting Hoaxes,” Trump said. “Fear not, these ‘Orders’ will all be terminated shortly, and we will become a Nation of Common Sense and Strength. MAGA!!!”
A new report claims that more than 1,000 of the individuals convicted on charges stemming from the storming of Capitol Hill four years ago on January 6, 2021, are expected to be granted clemency by President-elect Donald Trump.
According to Bloomberg, Trump is expected to quickly grant clemency to more than 1,000 January 6 defendants after his inauguration on January 20.
Nicole Reffitt, a participant at vigils held at a local jail in Washington, D.C., in support of the January 6 defendants, told Bloomberg, “There is anxiety in the Jan. 6 community because of the uncertainty of what the process is even going to look like.”
While Reffitt told Bloomberg she was not aware of any direct outreach from the president-elect’s team to the family members of the January 6 defendants, she claimed that an anonymous intermediary source had indicated that the January 6 defendants and their families should feel “confident and secure.”
NBC News previously reported that at least 1,572 individuals have been charged in connection with the storming of Capitol Hill on January 6, 2021. According to the outlet, over 1,251 individuals have either been convicted or have pleaded guilty for their participation in the Capitol Hill protest.
READ MORE: Video: Trump to consider pardoning Jan 6 protesters on day one
NBC News reported that at least 645 of the protesters have been sentenced to varying lengths of prison time, with some individuals sentenced to just a few days in prison and others sentenced to up to 22 years in prison. Approximately 250 of the January 6 defendants were in custody as of December, according to NBC News.
During an interview last month with Kristen Welker, moderator of NBC News’ “Meet the Press,” Trump announced that he would be considering the “individual cases” the Biden-Harris administration’s Department of Justice brought against the individuals involved in the storming of Capitol Hill four years ago.
“I’m going to be acting very quickly,” Trump told Welker. The president-elect also revealed that he would be considering pardons for January 6 defendants on the “first day” of his second term in the White House.
“These people have been there, how long is it? Three or four years,” Trump said. “They’ve been in there for years, and they’re in a filthy, disgusting place that shouldn’t even be allowed to be open.”
Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., debuted his new show and a new look on the right-wing One America News Network Thursday night.
The MAGA representative launched the eponymously named program with a visit from Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky.
But the OAN gig wasn’t Gaetz’s first job choice to start 2025. The president-elect nominated the right-wing firebrand to serve as the U.S. attorney general in the second Trump administration. After much ado, the 42-year-old Floridian withdrew his nomination ahead of a House Ethics Committee report that accused Gaetz of soliciting sex from an underage girl. He denies any wrongdoing.
In 2021, Axios reported that Gaetz told confidants he was considering leaving Congress to work for conservative outlet Newsmax as reports of his alleged indiscretions arose. Newsmax told Reuters at the time that the network had “no plans” to hire the embattled lawmaker.
Some viewers were surprised by Gaetz’s appearance under the bright lights of OAN. One Democratic strategist commented on the former politician’s makeup. Others wondered if he’d had some kind of cosmetic work done since leaving Congress.
Gaetz brings a familiar face to OAN viewers who seem to favor his bombastic brand of MAGA advocacy. The Trump-supporting outlet saw a spike in ratings during the president-elect’s first term in office and breathlessly reported conspiracy theories about fraud in the 2020 election when President Joe Biden defeated the Republican incumbent.
OAN settled a lawsuit with the Smartmatic voting technologies company in April over the network’s reporting on their part in the election. OAN also settled a defamation suit with Dominion Voting Systems in 2023.
Jeff Baena, an independent filmmaker who directed wife Aubrey Plaza in “The Little Hours” and co-wrote David O. Russell’s “I Heart Huckabees,” has died at 47.
Baena died Friday at his residence, according to the Los Angeles County coroner’s office. The office did not provide any information about cause of death.
Born June 29, 1977, Baena attended New York University film school and was a production assistant on Robert Zemeckis films before working with Russell. During that period they collaborated on the writing of “I Heart Huckabees,” a dark comedy released in 2004 that starred Dustin Hoffman, Lily Tomlin and Mark Wahlberg.
Baena then went on his own, writing and directing “Life With Beth,” a 2014 zombie comedy starring Plaza toward the end of her run on “Parks and Recreation.” The two kept their relationship private, with Plaza referring to him as her husband in 2021.
She also starred in “The Little Hours,” a 2017 dark comedy Baena directed and co-wrote about a servant who takes refuge with nuns during the Middle Ages, and appeared in 2022’s “Spin Me Round,” the last film Baena directed. He co-wrote “Spin Me Round” with star Alison Brie.
Baena also wrote and directed 2016’s “Joshy,” starring Thomas Middleditch, and “Horse Girl,” a 2020 Netflix release also starring Brie, co-writer on the project. His credits also include the 2021 Showtime series “Cinema Toast,” starring Brie, Christina Ricci and Chloe Fineman.
Representatives for Plaza, who received an Emmy nomination for her performance in the second season of “The White Lotus,” had no comment on Baena’s death. In addition to his wife, Baena is survived by his mother, Barbara Stern; father Scott Baena; stepfather Roger Stern; stepmother Michele Baena; brother Brad Baena; stepsister Bianca Gabay; and stepbrother Jed Fluxman.
Apple agreed to pay $95 million in cash to settle a lawsuit that alleges the tech giant recorded private conversations from people who used its voice assistant Siri without their consent.
The iPhone maker was sued in 2019 for allegedly violating users’ privacy after The Guardian reported that contractors hired by the company to review Siri’s responses to prompts heard recordings that included medical information, drug deals and couples having sex.
Apple apologized that year for the privacy breaches following consumer complaints and said it would no longer retain recordings of users’ exchanges with Siri. In court filings, however, the company denied having overstepped users’ rights, writing that “Apple denies all of the allegations made in the lawsuit and denies that Apple did anything improper or unlawful.”
The company didn’t respond to a request for comment about the settlement.
The allegations underscore problems tech companies are facing as people become increasingly reliant on voice assistants to answer questions, set alarms and find directions.
Filed on Tuesday in a federal court in California, the preliminary settlement also requires the iPhone maker to confirm that it permanently deleted Siri audio recordings collected before October 2019 and publish a webpage that explains how users can opt in to improve Siri and what information Apple collects.
Tens of millions of Apple users could be eligible for money from the settlement by submitting claims for up to five devices that include Siri in which the voice assistant was unintentionally activated from Sept. 17, 2014, to Dec. 31, 2024, during a private or confidential conversation. The money received depends on how many valid claims are filed, according to the settlement.
Plaintiffs in the case estimated total damages to the class exceeded $1.5 billion, but they agreed to settle the lawsuit because obtaining “the total damages at trial would be a challenge, given Apple’s denial of liability,” the settlement said.
The settlement is still pending approval from U.S. District Judge Jeffrey White.
President-elect Donald Trump went on a social media blast following the recent truck attack in New Orleans that killed 15 people, though he has yet to make a specific comment on the Tesla Cybertruck explosion that occurred outside of his hotel in Las Vegas.
On New Year’s Day a Cybertruck exploded outside of the Trump International Hotel, injuring seven bystanders. Police identified the driver of the vehicle as Matthew Livelsberger, an active duty military operations sergeant from Colorado who died by suicide just before the explosion.
On his Truth Social, the president-elect said the crime rate in the country is at a “level that nobody has ever seen before.”
“Our hearts are with all the innocent victims and their loved ones, including the brave officers at the New Orleans Police Department,” he wrote on Wednesday. “The Trump Administration will fully support the City of New Orleans as they investigate and recover from this act of pure evil!”
Later he posted “this is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS and said the “DOJ, FBI, and Democrat state and local prosecutors have not done their job,” calling them incompetent and corrupt.
It wasn’t clear what event he was referring to.
“The USA is breaking down,” he wrote. “A violent erosion of Safety, National Security, and Democracy is taking place across our Nation. Only strength and powerful leadership will stop it.”
The FBI reported national crime decreased an estimated 3 percent in 2023 compared to 2022, according to its 2023 Crime in the Nation Statistics. Both the suspect in the New Orleans attack and the Las Vegas attack are U.S. citizens.
Eric Trump, a son of Trump and executive vice president of the Trump Organization, posted on X about the explosion, praising the fire department and local law enforcement “for their swift response and professionalism.”
First Lady Melania Trump posted Wednesday on X that the “incidents of violence that have impacted our communities are deeply concerning.”
“The brutality must stop,” Melania Trump said. “My heartfelt thoughts and prayers are with the families who are experiencing such profound grief and loss.”
On Thursday, President Joe Biden said he convened with his homeland security team to discuss both the attacks in New Orleans and Las Vegas.
“We’re making every resource available to law enforcement to ensure there are no remaining threats to Americans,” he wrote on X.
A spokesperson for Republican Gov. Joe Lombardo said the governor is grateful for the diligent response efforts from law enforcement partners and referred all inquiries to the Metropolitan Police Department.
John Sadler, spokesperson for the attorney general’s office, said the office has been in touch with Clark County Sheriff Kevin McMahill, Gov. Joe Lombardo and other law enforcement partners.
“Many details of the attack, including a possible motive, have not yet been confirmed, but we are confident in the investigation and in continued efforts to ensure the public’s safety,” Sadler said in a statement to the Review-Journal.
In the wake of the explosion, Nevada officials also expressed gratitude for the first responders at the scene.
Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto said she is grateful to Metro, the FBI and all the first responders for their work to keep Las Vegas safe.
“I have confidence in the ongoing work by local, state, and federal law enforcement as this investigation continues,” she said Wednesday on X.
Sen. Jacky Rosen, Rep. Dina Titus and Rep. Susie Lee said on Wednesday their offices are monitoring the situation closely and is in contact with state and local officials.
Rep. Mark Amodei, R-Nev., called both incidents “senseless acts of violence” that were “aimed at instilling fear and terror.”
“My sincere condolences go out to the victims who have been impacted by these heartbreaking tragedies,” he said in the statement. “I am thankful for our local law enforcement officers who bravely ran into danger, putting their lives on the line, to protect innocent civilians.”
As chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations Subcommittee, Amodei said he will work with federal Homeland Security partners to understand the full extent of the attacks in the coming days.
Other Republican allies to Trump also reacted to the news.
Nevada GOP Chairman Michael McDonald said he was concerned when he learned Trump’s hotel was targeted, but he commended the sheriff’s work to secure the area and conduct a thorough investigation.
“He’s done a really good job to get to the bottom of it,” he said. “We’re in different times. We have to watch our surroundings and be cognizant of who we are around.”
McDonald said he was “caught off guard” when he learned Livelsberger was a registered No Labels voter.
During the election McDonald discussed politics with several people who expressed losing faith in government and not liking either major party.
“A lot of people just don’t trust the government anymore, and it’s scary,” McDonald said.
GOP Senate candidate and veteran Sam Brown called it a “terrible situation” on X and thanked the first responders and the staff at the hotel.
If you’re thinking about suicide, or are worried about a friend or loved one, help is available 24/7 by calling or texting the Lifeline network at 988. Live chat is available at 988lifeline.org. Additionally, the Crisis Text Line is a free, national service available 24/7. Text HOME to 741741.
On Dec. 12, 2006, Pineda woke up from a night shift at the Swift meatpacking facility along Interstate 90. About 8 a.m., a friend called her with a warning: Immigration officers were raiding the plant.
That morning, in a raid called Operation Wagon Train, Worthington was one of six towns across the nation targeted by federal raids of Swift meatpacking plants. It remains the largest one-day mass raid in U.S. history, with nearly 1,300 people arrested ― twice the number of those arrested in the largest raid under President Donald Trump.
Smoke bellows out from the JBS pork processing plant (formerly Swift) in Worthington Minnesota, on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
Pineda, like dozens of other workers, was an undocumented immigrant in Worthington, a packing town on the southwestern edge of Minnesota, a landscape rich in hogs and slaughterhouses.
Born in El Salvador, Pineda crossed the Mexican border into Texas in 2005 to reunite with her husband in Worthington. Today, 18 years later, Pineda is a pastoral assistant at St. Mary’s, the Catholic church in town, where on a recent Thursday — the 18th anniversary of the raid — the pews overflowed with parishioners honoring the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe.
A young immigrant man makes his way out of Our Lady of Guadalupe Free Clinic in Worthington Minnesota, on Wednesday, Dec. 18, 2024. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
For many in the parish, and broader community, what took place in 2006 stirs painful memories.
“There will be a shadow,” said Pineda, now 40. “Always.”
As Americans look to the incoming administration’s promises to deport millions of people without legal status, past chapters of mass arrests create a chilling prelude for what may come. Unauthorized immigrants work on kitchen lines, in day cares, in hospitals and on farms, holding jobs most Americans choose not to do.
Some say packing towns feel like they have a target on their back, with many immigrants concentrated at a single factory.
Worthington, population 14,000, anchors the southwest Minnesota farmland that helps feed America. The packing towns of Sioux Falls, S.D., and Sioux City, Iowa, are not far down the road.
Eugenio Lopez, 21, was a small child during the 2006 immigration raids at the JBS pork processing plant (formerly Swift) in Worthington Minnesota. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
Today, Worthington is an immigrant-fueled economic engine, boasting a Rockwellian downtown that’s the envy of many rural Minnesota towns. According to the latest census data, 50% of Worthington’s population is nonwhite. Nearly 40 languages are spoken at home by students, according to school district data. Many in town have ties to San Marcos, Guatemala.
St. Paul immigration attorney Gloria Contreras Edin thinks the incoming administration will look to the past for lessons. Edin, who represented clients swept up in Wagon Train even though they had legal work permits, said she remembers a “gym filled with children.”
“I’m guessing they’re going to use some of the same strategies,” Edin said. “They’re smarter now.”
Andrea Duarte-Alonso, who as a fourth-grader, remembers the 2006 immigration raids that stormed into Worthington, from her home in Worthington, Minnesota. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
Locals on the immigration front lines are bracing themselves. Colleen Bents, who volunteers at a free health clinic in Worthington, spoke frankly about the incoming administration’s rhetoric on massive deportations.
”I think we have to believe what [the incoming administration] is saying,” Bents said. “We have to prepare for it.”
On a cold morning this month, with an aroma of bacon from the JBS factory hanging over the air, pedestrians hustled between the Asian and Central American grocery stores. At a Mexican restaurant, soccer played on TV. Customers hurried into a coffee shop that doubles as a church on Sundays.
For many in Worthington, stories of the raids are handed down and carried by today’s generation of young people, a binding, traumatic web.
“Padre Jim” or Father Jim Callahan holds a mass for some his immigrant friends in Worthington, Minnesota. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
Eugenio Lopez was 3 years old that day when his parents sat him down. They’d emigrated from Guatemala to work at area plants, including Swift.
“My parents told me: ‘We’re not legal in the U.S. We don’t have status,’” Lopez said. He learned young that “anything could change, at any moment.”
The raids began months earlier. In February 2006, ICE agents interviewing a man in an Iowa jailhouse unearthed a fake ID ring that helped people circumvent E-Verify to gain work at meatpacking plants.
That December, on Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day, approximately 100 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in blue jackets descended upon the pork plant, then owned by Swift (later purchased by Brazil-based JBS).
“Padre Jim” or Father Jim Callahan holds a mass for some his immigrant friends in Worthington, Minnesota, on Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (Elizabeth Flores/The Minnesota Star Tribune/TNS)
Workers were told to put down their tools and gather in the cafeteria. Some without documents would be deported without a chance to say goodbye to loved ones. Others were detained even though they had documents. They would not be released until days later.
Frightened workers were doing everything they could to not be taken. One of Pineda’s friends hid in a meat locker, after asking someone to lock her in from the outside. Frantic mothers kept their children home.
Pineda, who worked the night shift, did not go into work that day. She went into hiding for the next week, in fear of another raid. Star Tribune accounts at the time reported that some workers — yelling for their children — were allowed to return home. Others were not so fortunate.
“I remember bawling my eyes out,” said Andrea Duarte-Alonso.
Today, Duarte-Alonso, 28, teaches at the Worthington school district. In 2006, she was in fourth grade. She remembers her mother called her at a holiday party with other children, telling her to come home. Agents picked up her uncle, leaving his pregnant wife behind.
“You feel helpless,” said Duarte-Alonso.
The raids hit a country, like today, divided on how to solve a broken immigration system. In Washington, D.C., Michael Chertoff, who led the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, told reporters, “This problem has been with us for decades.” In St. Paul, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, fresh off re-election, said the raids represented the “type of proactive enforcement needed to combat illegal immigration and related crimes.”
The meatpacker, Swift, condemned the raids, saying the broad actions possibly violated workers’ civil rights.
In Worthington, the raids triggered deep uncertainty. Jerry Fiola, 75, the director of adult community education in 2006, said there was an “eerie quiet” in his classrooms, which once were filled with immigrants learning English after work.
Some of the families separated because of the raids never got back together, the divides in distance and legal status causing divorces.
Still, others stayed in town. Over time, Pineda returned to work, then started a pupusa food truck. In 2016, she gained citizenship.
It’s unknown exactly what the Trump administration might do. Trump on the campaign trail promised the “largest deportation,” though top Republicans, including House Leader Mike Johnson, have reiterated enforcement will first focus on individuals with criminal records. Trump’s selection for Department of Homeland Security secretary, Kristi Noem, the Republican governor of South Dakota, maintains close ties to the farm industry that relies on immigrants to process meat.
Worthington has changed in the 18 years since the raid, say many in the community. Children of the workers at that time have grown up, gotten married, integrated into the town’s fabric. They’re more aware of their rights, more likely to know how to contact a lawyer. There are more legal resources now.
There’s also a new sheriff, Ryan Kruger, who locals say has built bridges to the immigrant community. A free health care clinic aids many uninsured immigrants. Last fall, Lopez ran for an open seat on the City Council. He did not win, but he amassed nearly 20% of the vote with little name recognition.
“Worthington is a lot more welcoming, a lot more open,” said Lopez, who attends the local community college. “Especially with our law enforcement. They’ve been building that trust.”
The next administration may well test those bonds. While Trump won 67% of the voters in surrounding Nobles County, in town, voters were more closely split. Still, around Worthington, many feel the incoming administration has a mandate to put a stopper on the record-breaking influx of migrants under President Joe Biden.
At a shop selling the traje, or traditional Guatemalan dresses, Salia Lopez sits behind a sewing machine with her dark hair pulled back. She said some immigrants appreciated that Trump promised a tougher stance on the cartels responsible for violence and instability south of the U.S. border.
“If [Trump’s] going to deport us, we have to accept that that’s what God wants,” Lopez said, through an interpreter.
This year, on Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day, the Rev. Jim Callahan, a retired Catholic priest, waited for a staffer to pick up roses from Hy-Vee so Mass could begin in the basement of a health care clinic in a nondescript office building.
Callahan came to Worthington in 2010 and started the clinic at the urging of local officials, noting immigrants were seeking health care in the hospital emergency room.
“One of the things we found out was that many of the people were shell-shocked still from [the 2006 raid],” Callahan said. “Even today, there’s a lot of after-effects, you know, PTSD.”
Yellow flowers from Hy-Vee arrived about noon. Callahan began the Mass, reading from Luke the passage about the angel Gabriel visiting the Virgin Mary.
“Do not be afraid,” Callahan said, repeating from the Gospel.
Around the table, a dozen people lowered their heads in prayer, the mood heavy with the unknown.
After years of preparations, Aurora Innovation’s big launch of autonomous trucks in Texas is facing an unlikely stumbling block: safety triangles.
When a traditional big rig pulls to the side of the highway, drivers are legally required to place a series of orange triangles or flares at the rear of the vehicle, to alert oncoming traffic. Aurora’s semis are designed to operate without a human in the cabin, meaning there would be nobody to put out warning signs when the trucks pull over.
The Strip District-based company joined with Waymo, a subsidiary of Google parent Alphabet, to petition federal regulators for an exemption in early 2023. Last week, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration rejected the request, raising questions about how Aurora will pull off a commercial launch that is scheduled for April.
An Aurora spokesperson said the decision will not impact the timing of that launch and that the company believes it can still comply with regulations, without outlining how.
The government said Aurora and Waymo, which has since narrowed its focus to robotaxis, failed to provide adequate data to show that their solution — a series of cab-mounted warning beacons — would provide the same level of safety as the traditional approach. The companies can resubmit an updated application, but that could take months to process.
Aurora was originally planning a commercial launch by the end of 2024, but pushed the debut because its software wasn’t ready. The company said in October that it will begin with a single truck, monitored remotely on a route from Dallas to Houston.
Regulators said their highest priority is safety. The administration embraces “technology advancements that further our policy goals, including reducing crashes, injuries, and fatalities on our nation’s roads,” communications director Cicely Waters said by email.
To reverse the agency’s decision, Aurora would need to provide additional data showing the effectiveness of their warning beacon approach. The company may also need to narrow the scope of its application.
Aurora and Waymo originally sought a broad, industry-wide exemption for all companies operating autonomous commercial motor vehicles. The government expressed concern about how different companies would approach the task.
Waymo declined to comment on whether it would refile with Aurora. The Mountain View, California-based company abandoned some trucking efforts in July 2023 to focus more on its fleet of robotaxis, which provided 4 million fully autonomous passenger trips in 2024.
Critics of autonomous vehicles used the application as a forum to file broader grievances about the burgeoning industry.
“We continue to see too many instances where AV technology does not perform the way it is designed which further jeopardizes safety performance,” Todd Spencer, president and chief executive of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, wrote in a letter to the agency.
Zach Cahalan, executive director of the Truck Safety Coalition, wrote that “the lack of data requires that [the Department of Transportation] not unnecessarily risk the lives of the 200+ million roadway users who never agreed to be part of this experiment.”
Aurora declined to comment further on the rejection, instead referring to a public statement from Jeff Farrah, chief executive of the Autonomous Vehicle Industry Association, who wrote last week that “the AV industry is disappointed by the Department of Transportation’s decision.”
“Stakeholders widely agree that technology will make American roads safer. Yet DOT took nearly two years to decline an opportunity to embrace technology at a critical juncture,” Mr. Farrah wrote. “The AV industry will be looking at all available options to ensure that this technology can be deployed to save lives.”
Wayne Osmond, the second eldest sibling in the Osmond Brothers group of singers, has died. He was 73.
The baritone-voiced singer and guitarist, who was the fourth oldest of the nine Osmond children and older brother to famed duo Donny and Marie Osmond, “passed away peacefully” Wednesday surrounded by his wife and five children, his daughter Amy Osmond Cook said Thursday in a statement posted on Facebook. The family also launched a celebration of life page on the platform to memorialize the late musician.
“His legacy of faith, music, love, and laughter have influenced the lives of many people around the world. He would want everyone to know that the gospel of Jesus Christ is true, that families are forever, and that banana splits are the best dessert. We love him and will miss him dearly,” his daughter’s statement said.
No cause of death was immediately available.
Wayne Osmond, born Melvin Wayne Osmond in Ogden, Utah, on Aug. 28, 1951, wed Kathlyn White in 1974. The multi-instrumentalist had surgery for a brain tumor in 1997, suffered a stroke in 2012 that left him unable to play guitar and also was treated for cancer, according to the Hollywood Reporter. But he famously reunited with his siblings in 2019 to sing with his brothers for sister Marie’s 60th birthday.
Representatives for Donny and Marie Osmond did not immediately comment when contacted Thursday by The Times.
Brother Merrill Osmond said on Facebook that Wayne Osmond recently had “a massive stroke” and that he was being treated at a Salt Lake City hospital. Wayne “endured much” and “gave it his all,” he said, and praised his brother’s “genius in his ability to write music” and “capture the hearts of millions of people and bring them closer to God.”
“My brother was a saint before he came into this world, and he will leave as an even greater saint than he came in,” Merrill Osmond wrote Thursday on Facebook. “I’ve never known a man that had more humility. A man with absolute no guile. An individual that was quick to forgive and had the ability to show unconditional love to everyone he ever met.
“His departure from this earth will be a sad moment for some, but for those who are waiting for him on the other side, there will be a massive celebration beyond anything we can imagine,” he added.
Wayne’s younger brother Jay Osmond also said Thursday that he was “deeply saddened” by the death and that “a true legend has left the Earth.”
“It is said that where there is great love there is great grief as we part during our earthly journey. Throughout my life I have always felt most connected to Wayne out of all of my siblings. He was my roommate and my confidant over the decades,” he wrote on Facebook.
Jay Osmond said that when he visited his brother last week, Wayne Osmond was sad that he could no longer fly a plane and that “flying brought him peace.”
“What gives me joy is to know that my brother ‘Wings’ has earned his wings and I can only imagine the heights he is soaring right now. The reunion he must’ve had with Father and Mother I’m sure was spectacular!” he said.
Family patriarch George Osmond, a soldier who launched his children’s entertainment careers in the late 1950s, died in 2007. He was predeceased by his wife, Olive Osmond, in 2004.
Both husband and wife passed on their affinity for music — George’s as a singer and Olive’s as a saxophone player — to their children and formed the Osmond Brothers troupe with sons Alan, Wayne, and Jay Osmond. (The couple’s two eldest sons, Virl and Tom, have degenerative hearing loss that affected their speech.) George taught the quartet how to sing four-part harmonies as children, and they performed for their Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints congregation in Ogden. They also performed at fairs and amusement parks in the late 1950s.
The family made its way to Los Angeles in 1962 to audition for “The Lawrence Welk Show” but didn’t land the gig. As a consolation, George Osmond took the family to Disneyland. The boys were dressed alike and the barbershop quartet performing on Main Street took notice. They were asked to do a number with the group; the performance ended up lasting for more than an hour. According to D23, the Osmonds then were brought to the Disneyland entertainment office, where they signed their first professional contract.
While they were performing at Disneyland, the father of singer Andy Williams spotted them and recommended the group to his son, ultimately leading the Osmond Brothers to book a five-year network TV run on “The Andy Williams Show.”
The group added youngest brother Donny Osmond in 1963, changing its name to the Osmonds, and appeared on “The Jerry Lewis Show” before signing with a record label. They produced 34 gold and platinum records in the 1960s and ’70s, according to the Associated Press, including the 1971 chart-topper “One Bad Apple (Don’t Spoil the Whole Bunch).” Their other Billboard Hot 100 hits include “Down by the Lazy River,” “Yo-Yo,” “Love Me for a Reason” and “Crazy Horses.”
Donny and younger sister Marie also performed separately and as a duo to much success in music and television. Wayne made frequent appearances on the “Donny and Marie” variety show, which ran from 1975 to 1979 and which he also occasionally produced.
Reporting from TWENTYNINE PALMS Marine Corps base, Calif. — The two tiny tortoises emerged from their burrows as soon as they detected Brian Henen’s footsteps, eager for the handfuls of bok choy and snap peas that would soon be tossed their way.
It will be a few years before the tortoises, roughly the size of playing cards, have shells tough enough to avoid becoming prey for the ravens soaring above. So for now, they live with roughly 1,000 others of their species in a sheltered habitat ringed by barbed wire and draped in netting.
The Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site raises vulnerable tortoises on the vast Marine Corps base. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
The elaborate setup on the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center is designed to protect the tortoises not only from ravens, coyotes and other predators, but from rumbling tanks, live explosives and anything else that might put them in harm’s way at the 1,189-square-mile Mojave Desert base.
“The desert tortoise is considered a keystone species, which means that they have a disproportionate effect on the entire ecosystem,” says Henen, a civilian who heads the conservation branch of the base’s Environmental Affairs Division.
The tortoises pockmark the desert floor with burrows that other animals use for shelter, and disperse the seeds of native plants in their waste. “They’re influencing what else can exist on the landscape,” Henen said.
Brian Henen of the base’s Environmental Affairs Division holds a desert tortoise.
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
With its barbed-wire enclosure, some call this place Tortoise Gitmo, after the U.S. Navy’s Guantanamo Bay base and prison camp in Cuba. Others call it the Tortoise Bordello, although the young tortoises are released before they are mature enough to breed.
Officially it’s called the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site, and since it was established in 2005 it has helped scientists learn how to protect a species that’s threatened by human encroachment, disease and climate change.
In the first iteration of the program, biologists gathered eggs from wild females and raised the hatchlings until they were hardy enough to stand a chance against predators and drought, in a process known as head-starting.
Brian Henen holds desert tortoise hatchlings at the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
The facility got an influx of new tenants in 2017, when the military relocated tortoises to make way for a controversial expansion of the base’s training grounds. Biologists decided to head-start about 550 young tortoises that were taken from expansion areas.
Then, starting a couple of years ago, Henen’s team began gathering, incubating and hatching eggs from the relocated adult tortoises to study whether they were breeding with their new neighbors. Rather than release the hatchlings into the wild, where they were unlikely to survive, they decided to head-start them as well.
A desert tortoise hatchling at the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site, where vulnerable tortoises are raised inside the vast Marine Corps base. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Some desert conservationists are critical of the efforts, saying the captive rearing program is essentially a smokescreen that distracts from the pressing need to conserve critical habitat.
“What I’d like to see is this kind of effort being done on public lands as a tool to repatriate areas as opposed to minimizing the impacts of the Marine Corps expansion,” said Ed LaRue, a board member of the nonprofit Desert Tortoise Council.
“Hundreds of square miles of good tortoise habitat is now being used for military maneuvers,” LaRue said, citing base expansions at Twentynine Palms and at Fort Irwin National Training Center near Barstow. “It enables the military to go ahead and degrade the desert and claim it’s successful because the tortoises have been moved out of the way.”
Tortoise hatchlings are raised at the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Bases should instead stop expanding into tortoise habitat, he said.
Henen says the program has enabled biologists to both augment tortoise populations and track the success of those efforts by committing to decades of monitoring.
He also points out that the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center has partnered with a coalition of agencies and nongovernmental organizations to conserve land off base. And inside the boundaries of the massive installation, officials have identified the most valuable tortoise habitat and set aside 43,800 acres of restricted areas that protect the species, as well as other natural and cultural resources, he says.
Marines at Twentynine Palms receive specialized training on how to handle tortoises. A glimpse of a single reptile interloper will bring a training exercise to a halt. Troops must radio in to range control and request permission to move the animal. If permission is granted but the tortoise urinates, which can cause them to become dangerously dehydrated, the soldiers must call it in again and wait for a base ecologist to respond.
Brian Henen checks on a desert tortoise at the Tortoise Research and Captive Rearing Site at the Twentynine Palms Marine base. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Desert tortoises were once so plentiful that people driving through the Mojave would take them home to keep as backyard pets. But in some patches of California desert, their numbers have dropped by up to 96% since the 1970s, according to study plots monitored by Kristin Berry, supervisory research wildlife biologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Western Ecological Research Center.
Recognizing the dire straits, the California Fish and Game Commission in April voted to uplist desert tortoises from threatened to endangered.
The Marines are hardly the only threat to tortoises. Roads and highways have carved up previously wide-open stretches of desert into parcels that are in some cases too small to allow for the breeding and genetic diversity needed to sustain their population health. A warming climate has dried up the precipitation needed to sustain them in some places.
Vulnerable tortoises are raised on the vast Marine Corps base. (Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times/TNS)
Livestock not native to the desert have grazed and trampled the plants tortoises like to eat, spreading unpalatable nonnative grasses in their wake. Power lines have added miles of resting perches for ravens, allowing them to more easily spot young tortoises.
Ravens used to be rare in the desert — they could only subsist for a couple of months in the springtime of good rainfall years, said Ken Nagy, professor emeritus at UCLA, who with Henen founded the program at Twentynine Palms. But now, thanks to everything from leaky faucets at gas stations to the irrigation of alfalfa fields, the birds have year-round sources of drinking water that’s caused their population to explode to 30 to 50 times greater than what it once was, he said.
“You can go beneath raven nests on power poles and see piles of dead baby tortoises that were opened, killed, carried to the nests by adults and fed to the babies,” he said. “That is what started this whole thing.”
In desert tortoise head-starting programs, biologists use radio transmitters to monitor wild females and portable X-ray machines to determine when they’re pregnant. They bring those females inside enclosures to lay their eggs, then release them. The hatchlings are reared in captivity until they reach a certain length — Twentynine Palms uses a threshold of 110 millimeters, or about 4 inches long, which can take between seven and nine years — and then rereleased, typically with radio transmitters to monitor their health and movements.
The concept was pioneered in the 1990s at Fort Irwin, followed by a similar program at Edwards Air Force Base near Mojave.
The captive rearing site is tucked in an isolated corner of the base, down a sandy road flanked by mesquite dunes and wrinkled mountains; past collections of buildings used for training that resemble crudely built neighborhoods. Fences to keep Marines on the road have spiky pins atop each post to prevent ravens from having yet another place to perch.
Inside the facility, a clanging noise echoes through the pens. It’s a particularly exuberant tortoise nicknamed Typhoid Mary, who got the nickname because she harbors a contagious bacteria that causes upper respiratory tract disease.
She has heard the biologists coming and wants a snack. She bangs her shell against the metal divider to get their attention. Henen hands her some kale, which stains her beak green.
Mary is believed to be at least 30 years old. One of the few adults at the facility, she ended up here as a result of the 2017 base expansion during which the military used helicopters to relocate more than 1,000 tortoises to other areas, most of them off base. Scientists are currently monitoring about 125 of those adults and 50 juveniles via radiotelemetry so they can keep tabs on their health and movements.
But Mary was placed on the no-fly list after she was found to harbor mycoplasma bacteria. Upper respiratory tract disease has also contributed to tortoise declines, usually in populations that are close to human communities. Scientists believe it may be spread by people releasing sick pet tortoises into the wild, Henen said.
Despite the disease, Mary has remained in relatively good health because she’s well-fed and hydrated. Still, she’ll probably be living out her days here to avoid infecting others.
The program, and others like it, have won converts over the years.
Biologist Tim Shields, who founded a company that develops tortoise conservation technology, was once opposed to head-starting because he thought it was unnatural and the tortoises would be inferior at survival.
“But some very intelligent people have spent a lot of time figuring out a formula for essentially mass production of tortoises — and I’m all for it,” he said. “Because the underlying ecosystem is so bunged up that I don’t see an alternative.”
