MEMPHIS, Tenn. (AP) — Memphis police officers who beat Tyre Nichols to death wanted to punish him after he ran from a 2023 traffic stop and thought they could get away with it, a prosecutor said Wednesday during closing arguments in the federal trial of three of the officers.

“They wanted it to be a beatdown. That's what it was,” prosecutor Kathryn Gilbert told jurors in the federal trial of Tadarrius Bean, Demetrius Haley and Justin Smith, who are accused of violating Nichols' civil rights and of trying to cover up the beating.

Prosecutors have argued the beating reflected a common police practice known in officer slang as the “street tax” or “run tax.”

Gilbert noted that Emmitt Martin, one of two officers to take a plea deal, testified that Nichols was not a threat when police beat him. She showed the jury a photo of a smiling Nichols wearing a vest, a tie, a white shirt with sleeves rolled up to the elbows, and hands in his pockets.

She said the officers laughed and bragged about hitting Nichols, then lied to their supervisor and medical personnel to protect themselves.

“They chose their own comfort and convenience over Mr. Nichols’ life,” she said.

Haley's lawyer, Stephen Leffler, said his client only kicked Nichols once on the arm to help get him handcuffed. He also blamed Martin for falsely suggesting Nichols tried to grab Martin’s weapon at the traffic stop.

“He was affected by that to his detriment, and the detriment of Tyre Nichols,” Leffler said.

Bean's attorney, John Keith Perry, told jurors that Nichols ignored commands such as “give me your hands" and said his client, the youngest of the officers, followed department policies. Perry said Bean did not know whether Nichols had a weapon but still ran after him and tackled him.

“The force was not excessive,” Perry said. “It just wasn’t.”

Bean only hit Nichols in his hands to try to cuff him, Perry said, despite statements made by an FBI agent who testified Bean told him he punched Nichols in the head. Perry noted that the agent’s interview with Bean was not recorded and he questioned the truthfulness of his statements.

Martin Zummach, Smith’s lawyer, said Smith was blinded by pepper spray and did not see Martin and Haley kick Nichols. He only learned about the kicks after an internal affairs interview days after Nichols died. Smith called his supervisor to report that he had learned about the kicks, according to Zummach. Smith also had previously reported that an officer, who no longer works for Memphis police, had hit a handcuffed teenager, Zummach added.

“He does not cover up excessive force,” Zummach said.

Zummach also noted that Smith told EMTs Nichols’ oxygen appeared low, and he blamed Nichols for not allowing the officers to handcuff him.

None of the officers on trial testified in their defense. They each called experts to try to combat prosecutors’ arguments that the officers used excessive force against Nichols, didn’t intervene, and failed to tell their supervisors and medical personnel about the extent of the beating.

Both Martin and the other former officer who pleaded guilty and testified for prosecutors, Desmond Mills, lied to investigators about what happened, said Perry, who warned the jury of playing a “game of changing words and semantics.”

Police video shows five officers, who are all Black, punched, kicked and hit Nichols, who was also Black, about a block from his home as he called out for his mother.

Outside the courthouse, supporters of Nichols' family stood in a circle for a prayer from Tennessee state Rep. Justin Pearson while holding hands. They ended the prayer with a chant of “Justice for Tyre.” Pearson sat next to Nichols' mother, RowVaughn Wells, in court during the closing arguments, putting his hand on her back and rubbing gently to comfort her.

Nichols died Jan. 10, 2023, three days after the beating. An autopsy report shows Nichols — the father of a boy who is now 7 — died from blows to the head. The report describes brain injuries, and cuts and bruises on his head and elsewhere on his body.

The officers used pepper spray and a Taser on Nichols during the traffic stop, but the 29-year-old ran away, police video shows.

All five officers were fired. They were with the Scorpion Unit, which looked for drugs, illegal guns and violent offenders. It was disbanded after Nichols’ death.

Haley, Bean and Smith pleaded not guilty to federal charges of excessive force, failure to intervene, and obstructing justice through witness tampering. They face up to life in prison if convicted. The jury was expected to begin deliberating Thursday.

The five officers have pleaded not guilty to separate state charges of second-degree murder. A trial date in that case has not been set. Mills and Martin are expected to change their pleas.

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Associated Press journalist Jonathan Mattise in Nashville contributed to this report.

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — A Montana man was convicted Wednesday of threatening to assault former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy after becoming upset that the government had not shot down a Chinese spy balloon that floated over his home city.

Richard Rogers, 45, of Billings, delivered the threat to a McCarthy staffer during a series of more than 100 calls to the Republican speaker's office in just 75 minutes on Feb. 3, 2023, prosecutors said. That was one day after the Pentagon acknowledged it was tracking the spy balloon, which was later shot down off the Atlantic Coast.

The 12-person federal jury also found Rogers guilty on two counts of making harassing telephone calls: the ones to McCarthy's office plus 150 calls he made to an FBI tip line in 2021 and 2022.

Rogers routinely made vulgar and obscene comments in those calls.

Sentencing was set for January 31. He faces up to six years in prison and a 0,000 fine for threatening to harm a member of Congress, and a maximum penalty of two years and a 0,000 fine on the harassment counts.

U.S. District Judge Susan Watters allowed Rogers to remain free of custody pending sentencing.

Threats against public officials in the U.S. have risen sharply in recent years, including against members of Congress and their spouses, election workers and local elected officials. Rogers' case was among more than 8,000 threats to lawmakers investigated by the U.S. Capitol Police in 2023, and officials expect another surge with the 2024 election.

During a three day trial, Rogers testified that his outraged calls to the FBI and McCarthy's office were a form of “civil disobedience."

He and his attorneys argued that using obscenities with FBI operators and Congressional staff was protected as free speech under the First Amendment, which establishes the right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”

But prosecutors said Rogers crossed the line with a threat on McCarthy’s life and by hurling abusive and sexual verbal tirades against the lawmaker's staffers and FBI operators.

In the dozens of calls that were played for jurors, Rogers was heard asking for investigations of various alleged conspiracies involving the FBI and the administration of President Joe Biden. He was polite at times, but would quickly become angry and shout obscenities until the calls were disconnected.

“You can’t talk to people that way. It’s common sense,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Thomas Godfrey said. “He’s calling not out of political protest; he’s calling because he gets enjoyment out of it.”

The prosecutor told the jury there was no exception in federal law that says government employees can be subjected to harassment.

“'Petitioning the government' — baloney,” Godfrey said. “Kevin McCarthy was the Speaker of the House. It’s not his job to shoot down spy balloons.”

Rogers, a former telephone customer service representative, testified that he took to care to “edit” his comments on the phone to avoid any threats because he didn’t want to go to prison.

He added that he never tried hide his actions and frequently offered his name and phone number when calling the FBI.

“They were disrespectful to me, so I was disrespectful to them,” Rogers said.

Defense attorney Ed Werner said Rogers “just wanted to be heard.”

Following the guilty verdict, Rogers repeated his contention that he never threatened anyone. He also said he was dissatisfied with his defense attorneys for not adequately presenting his case.

Rogers wore shirts depicting Captain America and other superheroes throughout the trial, including one Wednesday with the letters “MAGA” on the front, a reference to Donald Trump's “Make America Great Again” slogan. A supporter of the former president, he said he was in Washington during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Godfrey said the case was not about politics but rather illegal harassment.

Earlier this year, a 30-year-old Billings man was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in federal prison after leaving voicemail messages threatening to kill Montana Democratic U.S. Sen. Jon Tester and his family. Another Montana man, from Kalispell, was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison last year, also for making threats against Tester.

WASHINGTON (AP) — The CIA wants to make it easier — and safer — for people in Iran, China and North Korea to share information with America's premier spy agency.

The agency on Wednesday posted online instructions in Korean, Mandarin and Farsi detailing steps that potential informants can take to contact U.S. intelligence officials without putting themselves in danger.

The instructions include ways to reach the CIA on its public website or on the darknet, a part of the internet that can only be accessed using special tools designed to hide the user's identity. The CIA posted similar instructions in Russian two years ago following Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

“People are trying to reach out to us from around the world and we are offering them instructions for how to do that safely,” the agency said in a statement. “Our efforts on this front have been successful in Russia, and we want to make sure individuals in other authoritarian regimes know that we’re open for business."

The tips, presented in text-only videos and infographics, include using a virtual private network, or VPN, to circumvent internet restrictions and surveillance, and the use of a device that can't easily be traced back to the user. The CIA also urged any potential informants to use private web browsers and to delete their internet history to cover their tracks.

The messages in the three languages were posted on Telegram, YouTube, X, Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. Several of those platforms are blocked in China, Iran and Russia but can still be accessed using a VPN.

Authoritarian leaders around the world have used the internet as a tool of mass surveillance and as a way to deliver propaganda and disinformation while blocking sites and views deemed unfavorable to the government.

China, Russia, North Korea and Iran all block access to American platforms like Facebook, for example, and use web access to control what sources of information users can access.

VPNs and other tools offer ways around this censorship and surveillance, but that ability has made them a target. In its instructions to potential sources, the CIA warned its audience to be selective, as their well-being could depend on choosing the right program.

“Use a VPN provider not headquartered in Russia, Iran, or China, or any other country that is considered unfriendly to the United States," the agency wrote in its instructions for Mandarin users.

The jury heard prosecutors' closing argument against former Fairfax County Police officer Wesley Shifflett, who is charged with involuntary manslaughter. But the judge sent them home for the day after defense lawyers objected to the argument by Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Natheena Tyler.

Shifflett fatally shot Timothy McCree Johnson in February 2023 following a brief foot chase outside Tysons Corner Center, a busy shopping mall, after Johnson was identified stealing sunglasses from a Nordstrom department store.

Jurors have seen bodycam video of the shooting, in which Shifflett yells “get on the ground” before firing two shots at Johnson. After the shots were fired, Shifflett immediately yelled “stop reaching” and told other officers that he saw Johnson reaching in his waistband.

The shooting occurred at night, and the dimly lit video is unclear as to whether Johnson, who turned out to be unarmed, ever reached for his waistband.

Shifflett, who was fired after the shooting, is white, and Johnson was Black.

While jurors saw much of the bodycam video, they had not seen a snippet from a couple minutes after the shooting in which Shifflett recounts to officers that he told Johnson to “show me your hands," something he never actually said to Johnson before or after firing the shots.

Tyler went on to argue that Johnson made up the quote in his explanation to officers because he already knew that “he messed up.”

Defense lawyer Matthew Noel said the error is highly prejudicial to his client, portraying him as a liar and denying him the ability defend against it with evidence of his own. He said that the defense had an expert lined up who could have explained how an officer might make excited utterances like that, but that the expert's testimony was barred because the “show me your hands” clip was not going to be presented at trial.

Another defense lawyer, Caleb Kershner, said after Wednesday's hearing that he expects to seek a mistrial with prejudice, meaning that the case would be tossed out and prosecutors would be barred from seeking a new trial.

But it is unclear how Judge Randy Bellows will address the issue. While it was significant enough for him to stop the trial and send the jury home, he also said the defense erred by waiting to object until the conclusion of the prosecutor's closing. He said they should have objected as soon as the clip played.

Defense lawyers said they hesitated to object immediately in part because they weren't entirely sure in the moment that the clip hadn't been introduced as evidence.

Bellows will rule on how to proceed when the trial resumes Thursday.

Prosecutors have struggled to present their case against Shifflett. Initially, a grand jury declined to indict Shifflett. At that point, Fairfax County Commonwealth's Attorney Steve Descano, who won office on a campaign platform that included holding police officers accountable for misconduct, convened a special grand jury that operated under rules that gave Descano more oversight over the process.

The special grand jury returned indictments on charges including involuntary manslaughter and reckless handling of a firearm.

The trial was delayed for several days when the lead prosecutor suffered a serious medical issue. A different prosecutor stepped in after several days.

ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — Maryland officials approved a [scripts/homepage/home-dev.php].75 million settlement on Wednesday to resolve a federal investigation into discriminatory hiring practices affecting Black and female applicants to the Maryland State Police.

The settlement, approved by the Maryland Board of Public Works, will include changes to the ways applicants are tested.

Gov. Wes Moore, a Democrat who chairs the three-member board, said the federal investigation began in 2022 before he took office last year and that his administration pledged to fully cooperate from the start.

“Over the past 19 months, we have worked in complete partnership with the Department of Justice to bring this matter to a close and also to establish a plan forward that will ensure that this will not happen again,” Moore said.

The state police have faced other discrimination allegations in recent years. Officers previously sued the Maryland State Police alleging widespread discrimination over promotions and in disciplinary actions.

In the current case, the Justice Department alleged that the state police used a written test that discriminated against Black candidates and a physical fitness test that discriminated against female applicants.

The tests disqualified Black and female applicants from the hiring process at significantly disproportionate rates, and the U.S. attorney’s office concluded that these tests violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Title VII is a federal statute that prohibits employment discrimination based on race, sex, color, national origin, and religion.

The agreement must still be approved by a federal judge.

Col. Roland Butler, superintendent of the Maryland State Police, told the Board of Public Works that the discriminatory practices against 48 people were found to be unintentional, but that discrimination of any form “has no place in the Maryland State Police.”

“We are working closely with our DOJ partners to adopt new testing procedures in accordance with this consent decree," Butler said.

Since the governor appointed him to lead the agency last year, Butler said he has been working with his leadership team to modernize the agency's practices “to renew commitment to transparency and accountability and to uplift the culture of policing in the spirit of strength and service.”

“Today, we take yet another meaningful step forward to accomplish this objective,” Butler said.

Sarah Marquardt, an assistant U.S. attorney in Maryland who worked on the investigation, said the Justice Department and the Maryland State Police worked cooperatively throughout the process.

In addition to the monetary payout, the agreement also requires the state police to hire up to 25 applicants who were unfairly disqualified by the previous tests and who successfully complete the new trooper screening and selection process.

“Equal employment opportunities in law enforcement are not just a core civil right but essential to ensuring that those who serve reflect the rich racial and gender diversity of the communities they are sworn to protect,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department's Civil Right's Division. “The underrepresentation of Blacks and women in law enforcement undermines public safety and runs contrary to the principle of equal opportunity."

The largest dam removal project in U.S. history was completed Wednesday, marking a major victory for tribes in the region who fought for decades to free hundreds of miles of the Klamath River near the California-Oregon border.

Through protests, testimony and lawsuits, local tribes showcased the environmental devastation due to the four towering hydroelectric dams, especially to salmon, which are are culturally and spiritually significant to tribes in the region. The dams cut salmon off from their historic habitat and caused them to die in alarming numbers because of bad water-quality conditions.

Without the tribes' work "to point out the damage that these dams were doing, not only to the environment, but to the social and cultural fabric of these tribal nations, there would be no dam removal,” said Mark Bransom, chief executive of the Klamath River Renewal Corporation, the nonprofit entity created to oversee the project.

Power company PacifiCorp built the dams to generate electricity between 1918 and 1962. But the structures halted the natural flow of the waterway that was once known as the third-largest salmon-producing river on the West Coast. They disrupted the lifecycle of the region’s salmon, which spend most of their life in the Pacific Ocean but return to the chilly mountain streams to lay eggs.

At the same time, the dams only produced a fraction of PacifiCorp’s energy at full capacity — enough to power about 70,000 homes. They also didn’t provide irrigation, drinking water or flood control, according to Klamath River Renewal Corporation.

Since breaching the dams, salmon regained access to their habitat, water temperature decreased and its quality improved, said Michael Belchik, senior water policy analyst for the Yurok Tribe.

But tribal advocates and activists see their work as far from finished, with some already refocusing their efforts on revegetation and other restoration work on the Klamath River and the surrounding land.

Here’s a look at just a few of the many tribal members at the center of this struggle for dam removal:

When Karuk tribal member Molli Myers took her first major step into the fight for Klamath dam removal, she was six months pregnant, had a toddler in tow and was in a foreign country for the first time. It was 2004 and she had organized a group of about 25 tribal members to fly to Scotland for the annual general stockholders meeting for Scottish Power, PacifiCorp’s parent company at the time.

For hours, they protested outside with signs, sang and played drums. They cooked fish on Calton Hill over a fire of scotch barrels and gave it out to locals as they explained why they were there.

“I really felt an urgency because I was having babies,” said Myers, who was born and raised in the middle Klamath in a traditional fishing family. “And so for me I was internalizing the responsibility to take care of their future.”

The initial trigger for her to act came two years before that when she saw some of the tens of thousands of salmon die in the river from a bacterial outbreak caused by low water and warm temperatures.

“Looking back on it now I wonder where would we be if that hadn’t happened," said Myers, 41. "Looking back on it now I can say, ‘Was this our creator’s call to action?’”

She spent the next two decades protesting and flooding state and federal meetings with tribal testimony, including waiting with other tribal members at the doors of a Berkshire Hathaway shareholder meeting at 4 a.m. in 2007 to ask Warren Buffett what he was going to do about the dams. PacifiCorp was at that point part of Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc. conglomerate.

Today, those same children with her in Scotland are 21 and 19, and with the dams gone Myers said she sees the hope they and her other three children have about the future.

“They can do whatever needs to get done because they saw it happen, they lived it, so now there’s no impossible for them," she said.

For Yurok elder Jacqueline Winter, her feelings on the newly free-flowing river are more complicated. The 89-year-old’s son, Troy Fletcher, was the tribe’s point person for dam removal for two decades, testifying in front of the U.S. Congress and presenting to state and federal regulatory committees.

But his true power came through his ability to bring people with radically conflicting viewpoints — from farmers to commercial fishers to tribal members — together. Winter said that came from his belief that everyone living along the river are relatives and deserve to be heard.

“We’re all family. None of us can be left hurting and all of us have to give a little,” she said was his message.

But at 53, the former executive director for the Yurok Tribe died unexpectedly from a heart attack, nearly a decade before that vision of a free-flowing river would finally be realized. Winter said when she saw the dams breached last month, it felt like his spirit was there through those he touched and she could finally let him go.

“His vision became reality and I think he never doubted it,” she said. “He never doubted it. And those who worked closely with him never doubted it.”

Former Klamath Tribes Chairman Jeff Mitchell’s work since the 1970s for dam removal came out of the belief that the salmon are their relatives.

“They were gifted to us by our creator and given to us to preserve and to protect and also to help give us life,” said Mitchell, chair of the tribe’s Culture and Heritage Committee. “As such, the creator also instructed us to make sure that we do everything in our power to protect those fish.”

The Klamath River’s headwaters lie on the tribe’s homelands in Oregon, and members once depended on salmon for 25% of their food. But for more than a century their waters have not held any salmon, he said.

Mitchell and other tribal members’ fight to bring them back has cycled through several forms. There were the years of protesting, even gathering carcasses of fish after the 2002 fish kill and leaving them on the doorsteps of federal office buildings. There were his days of walking the halls of the state Legislature in Salem, Oregon, meeting with lawmakers about the millions in funding needed to make dam removal happen.

Today, he said he feels like they achieved the impossible, but there’s still more work to do.

“I’m happy that the dams are gone and we have passage,” he said. “But now I’m thinking about what are those fish coming home to? And that’s really the focus now, is how do we get the parties to start taking restoration actions and making that the top priority in all of this?”

Xavier Roa was merely exercising his constitutionally protected free speech rights as he led others in protest chants last month outside Young Israel of Lawrence-Cedarhurst, an orthodox synagogue near the New York City borough of Queens, attorney Geoffrey Stewart said following Roa's arraignment in Nassau County District Court in Hempstead.

Stewart said the county’s Mask Transparency Act, which was signed into law in August, bans mask wearing if police have reasonable suspicion to believe the person was involved in criminal activity or intends to “intimidate, threaten, abuse, or harass” anyone.

He questioned whether Roa had been attempting to conceal his identity, as police claim. Stewart noted his client had the Arab scarf draped around his neck and only pulled it over his face shortly before his arrest, meaning he was readily identifiable to officers for much of the demonstration.

Videosshared on social mediashow Roa wearing the keffiyeh around his neck as he’s led away by officers in handcuffs.

“By all accounts, he complied and acted respectfully to officers," Stewart added.

Nassau County District Attorney Anne Donnelly’s office, which is prosecuting the case, declined to comment Wednesday.

Nassau County police, in their complaint filed in court, said Roa acknowledged to officers at the time that he was wearing the scarf in solidarity with Palestinians and not for medical or religious purposes, which are the main exceptions to the new ban.

The 26-year-old North Bellmore resident is due back in court Oct. 17 and faces up to a year in jail and a jumi,000 fine if convicted of the misdemeanor charge.

County lawmakers have said they enacted the ban in response to antisemitic incidents since the Oct. 7 start of the Israel-Hamas war.

Roa is the first protester among the handful so far arrested in connection with the new law, which has raised concerns from civil rights groups.

A federal judge last week dismissed a class action lawsuit claiming the ban was unconstitutional and discriminated against people with disabilities. In the ruling, U.S. District Judge Joan Azrack noted the ban exempts people who wear masks for health reasons.

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Follow Philip Marcelo at twitter.com/philmarcelo.

CARLISLE, Pa. (AP) — The remains of nine more Native American children who died at a notorious government-run boarding school in Pennsylvania over a century ago were disinterred from a small Army cemetery and returned to families, authorities said Wednesday.

The remains were buried on the grounds of the Carlisle Barracks, home of the U.S. Army War College. The children attended the former Carlisle Indian Industrial School, where thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their families and forced to assimilate to white society as a matter of U.S. policy.

The Office of Army Cemeteries said it concluded the remains of nine children found in the graves were “biologically consistent” with information contained in their student and burial records. The remains were transferred to the children's families. Most have already been reburied on Native lands, Army officials said Wednesday.

Workers also disinterred a grave thought to have belonged to a Wichita tribe child named Alfred Charko, but the remains weren't consistent with those of a 15-year-old boy, the Army said. The remains were reburied in the same grave, and the grave was marked unknown. Army officials said they would try to locate Alfred's gravesite.

“The Army team extends our deepest condolences to the Wichita and Affiliated Tribe,” Karen Durham-Aguilera, executive director of the Office of Army Cemeteries, said in a statement. “The Army is committed to seeking all resources that could lead us to more information on where Alfred may be located and to help us identify and return the unknown children in the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery.”

The nine children whose remains were returned were identified Wednesday as Fanny Chargingshield, James Cornman and Samuel Flying Horse, from the Oglala Sioux Tribe; Almeda Heavy Hair, Bishop L. Shield and John Bull, from the Gros Ventre Tribe of the Fort Belknap Indian Community; Kati Rosskidwits, from the Wichita and Affiliated Tribes; Albert Mekko, from the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma; and William Norkok, from the Eastern Shoshone Tribe.

The Army declined to release details on one grave disinterment, saying the tribe asked for privacy.

More than 10,000 children from more than 140 tribes passed through the school between 1879 and 1918, including Olympian Jim Thorpe. Founded by an Army officer, the school cut their braids, dressed them in military-style uniforms, punished them for speaking their native languages and gave them European names.

The children — often taken against the will of their parents — endured harsh conditions that sometimes led to death from tuberculosis and other diseases. The remains of some of those who died were returned to their tribes. The rest are buried in Carlisle.

ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia prison officials are “deliberately indifferent” to unchecked deadly violence, widespread drug use, extortion and sexual abuse at state lockups, the U.S. Justice Department said Tuesday, threatening to sue the state if it doesn’t quickly take steps to curb rampant violations of prisoners’ Eighth Amendment protections against cruel punishment.

Prison officials responded with a statement saying the prison system “operates in a manner exceeding the requirements of the United States Constitution” and decrying the possibility of “years of expensive and unproductive court monitoring” by federal officials.

Allegations of violence, chaos and “grossly inadequate” staffing are laid out in the Justice Department's grim 93-page report, the result of a statewide civil rights investigation into Georgia prisons announced in September 2021. The system holds an estimated 50,000 people.

“In America, time in prison should not be a sentence to death, torture or rape,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who oversees the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said Tuesday as she discussed the findings at an Atlanta news conference.

In its response, the Georgia Department of Corrections said it was “extremely disappointed” in the accusations. The Justice Department’s findings “reflect a fundamental misunderstanding of the current challenges of operating any prison system,” the agency said.

The report said large, sophisticated gangs run prison black markets trafficking in drugs, weapons and electronic devices such as drones and smart phones. Officials fight the flow of contraband through the arrest of smugglers and mass searches. “However, the constant flow of contraband underscores that these efforts have been insufficient,” the report said.

Inmate gangs have allegedly “co-opted” some administrative functions, including bed assignments, said Ryan Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia. “The leadership of the Georgia Department of Corrections has lost control of its facilities."

The number of homicides among prisoners has grown over the years — from seven in 2018 to 35 in 2023, the report said. The report said there were five homicides at four different prisons in just one month in 2023.

And the homicide numbers are often hard to nail down in Georgia Department of Corrections statistics, according to the report.

“GDC reported in its June 2024 mortality data that, for the first five months of 2024, there were 6 homicides, even though at least 18 deaths were categorized as homicides in GDC incident reports, and GDC assured us these suspected homicides were under investigation," the report said.

Multiple allegations of sexual abuse are recounted in the report, including abuse of LGBTQ inmates. A transgender woman reported being sexually assaulted at knifepoint. Another inmate said he was “extorted for money” and sexually abused after six people entered his cell.

“In March 2021, a man from Georgia State Prison who had to be hospitalized due to physical injuries and food deprivation reported his cellmate had been sexually assaulting and raping him over time,” the report said.

Again, the true number of such assaults may be higher. Victims are often reluctant to report sexual abuse, the report noted. And the report alleged that investigations of such abuse are sometimes questionable, as in the case of an Autry State Prison inmate who reported being raped at knifepoint. “A chemical examination of a rectum swab indicated the presence of seminal fluid, and the man was found to have bruising to his anal area. Despite this, the final OPS investigative report incorrectly determined that no seminal fluid was detected, and the allegations were not substantiated.”

Clarke said Tuesday that efforts to stop the violence, suffering and chaos in the Georgia prison system also figure into the pursuit of racial justice.

“We know that across the country, Black people are disproportionately represented in the prison population," she said. "And Georgia is no exception — 59% of people in Georgia’s prisons are Black, compared to 31% of the state’s population.”

Included in the report are 13 pages of recommended short-and long-term measures the state should take. The report concludes with a warning that legal action was likely. The document said the Attorney General may file a lawsuit to correct the problems in 49 days, and could also intervene in any related, existing private suits in 15 days.

“We can’t turn a blind eye to the wretched conditions and wanton violence unfolding in these institutions,” Clarke said. “The people incarcerated in these jails and prisons are our neighbors, siblings, children, parents, family members and friends.”“

However, Clarke did not discuss possible legal action during the news conference in Atlanta. She said the Justice Department looked forward to working with Georgia officials to address the myriad problems.

“Certainly, severe staffing shortages are one critical part of the problem here,” Clarke said. “We set forth in our report minimal remedial measures that include adding supervision and staffing, fixing the classification and housing system, and correcting deficiencies when it comes to reporting and investigations.”

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McGill reported from New Orleans; Durkin, from Washington.

PARIS (AP) — A giant empty cage greeted Chanel’s guests at its return to the Grand Palais on Tuesday. Though perhaps not intentionally symbolic, the décor seemed to capture the current state of the house itself: a majestic structure empty of creative direction. With Virginie Viard’s recent departure, Chanel finds itself at a crossroads, as the fashion world eagerly awaits the appointment of a new creative leader.

Meanwhile, in a powerful step toward embracing diversity, Chanel announced Lupita Nyong’o as its newest ambassador. The appointment of the Oscar-winning actor, who is Kenyan Mexican, comes at a pivotal moment for the French fashion house that had faced criticism in the past for its lack of inclusivity. This move follows the widely-lauded appointment of British-Indian Leena Nair as Chanel’s global chief executive in 2022, making her the only woman of color at the helm of a major luxury brand.

Here are some highlights of spring-summer ready-to-wear shows:

The spring collection delivered many familiar elements from Chanel’s vast repertoire — chiffon capes, slit skirts, embroidered transparent shirt dresses, trench coats adorned with multicolored feather prints, aviator jackets with Peter Pan collars, total pink or blue tweed looks, and the iconic little black dress that Chanel herself introduced to the world. Tweed, jersey, faille, transparent embroidery, sequins, fringe, pastel knits, and sparkling platform shoes all made an appearance, forming a showcase of the house’s signatures.

Yet despite the breadth and richness of the offering, something was amiss. There was little cohesion, and at times, the collection lacked the unmistakable soul that once characterized Chanel’s shows. A series of foulard-printed gowns seemed out of place — as if borrowed clumsily from another narrative altogether.

With a snip of scissors, Gabrielle “Coco” Chanel freed women from their corsets. Today, Chanel itself needs liberation. The applause at the end of the show, which featured designs that often felt uninspired, was distinctly muted, with critics visibly shifting in their seats.

Star appearances by Elvis Presley’s granddaughter Riley Keough, who capped the show with a funky vocal performance of a Prince hit from inside the gilded cage, as well the starry presence of Nyong’o, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Vanessa Paradis, Margaret Qualley and Naomi Campbell, seemed like an effort to divert attention from the elephant — or the empty cage — in the room.

Chanel is unquestionably a fashion juggernaut, and it will weather this moment of transition. However, there is no overstating the importance of the decision the house now faces. Chanel must find a designer who can reshape and redefine its vision for the future. The industry is rife with speculation. Potential successors include Daniel Roseberry, known for his dramatic work at Schiaparelli, Marc Jacobs, a seasoned classicist with Paris experience, and Nadège Vanhée, the skilled designer from Hermès.

Viard, ousted this summer, succeeded Karl Lagerfeld upon his death in 2019 and was his closest collaborator for decades. She had overseen record sales for Chanel, reaching a reported .7 billion last year. Ready-to-wear sales reportedly increased 23% during her tenure. Viard was only the third creative director in Chanel’s over 100-year history, following Lagerfeld and legendary founder Chanel herself.

Nyong’o shared her excitement and the deep sense of responsibility accompanying the new role. “It’s a great honor,” she said. “Chanel is a legacy brand with a long history. And to be the newest face of it feels monumental. I feel very, very proud and excited to take this new journey with a brand that I think is dynamic and always feminine and regal.”

Nyong’o’s appointment comes as a breath of fresh air in an industry criticized for lack of diversity and reluctance to change. The number of Black designers leading heritage houses remains alarmingly low — currently only Balmain’s Olivier Rousteing and Louis Vuitton men’s designer Pharrell Williams hold such positions in Parisian legacy brands.

For Nyong’o, joining Chanel is about more than wearing beautiful clothes — it’s about contributing to a narrative shift in fashion. “The message that I bring naturally and deliberately to the role is that things have changed. And we don’t want them to go back to what they once were,” she said.

Nyong’o drew inspiration from watching a recent documentary about Bethann Hardison, the iconic model and activist who was at the forefront of pushing for diversity in fashion during the 1960s and 1970s. Hardison, who rose to prominence after her appearance at the historic 1973 Battle of Versailles — a groundbreaking fashion show that brought American designers into the spotlight — became one of the first high-profile Black models and an outspoken advocate for change.

“In that documentary, I was really alarmed to see how much work had been done to diversify the fashion industry, but then how much it reverted to monoculture in the following years,” Nyong’o said.

Hardison’s tireless efforts led to significant gains for Black models in the past, but the subsequent regression underscored how fragile those victories could be. Her fight for inclusivity in fashion serves as both a cautionary tale and a source of inspiration for Nyong’o, who now finds herself continuing Hardison’s legacy.

“It took a step back, so for me that was testament to the fact that it takes consciousness. It’s a conscious effort that has to be made on a daily basis and in present time. You don’t fix it once and then hope it stays that way,” Nyong’o added. She sees Chanel’s decision to name her as an ambassador as part of a broader, deliberate declaration: “I feel like these movements that Chanel is making are part of declaring a desire to represent a more realistic world. And I’m proud to be one of those faces that is sending that message.”

The importance of visibility in reshaping perceptions cannot be understated.

“When I was growing up, I didn’t see myself in ads for brands like this. It resulted in me going through quite the identity crisis and feeling undervalued by the world,” Nyong’o said candidly. She recounted those early days — staring at glossy magazine pages, searching for a face that mirrored her own, only to find none.

Now, she imagines a little girl somewhere, watching her in a Chanel campaign, seeing someone who looks like her — someone who is elegant, celebrated, and valued.

“I would hope that there is a message for little girls,” she continued. “My work as an actor and as an author, as a podcast maker, and now as a brand ambassador, is to change that by just occupying the space.” It is a powerful reminder of the transformative impact of representation; when someone finally occupies a space that was once empty, it changes the way people see themselves and the world around them.

The luxury sector has frequently been accused of tokenism and superficial diversity efforts — making short-term gestures without genuine long-term change. Nyong’o is determined to make her role count, embodying the idea that representation must come with influence and purpose.

French fashion once again showcased its formidable strength at Nicolas Ghesquière’s spring collection for Louis Vuitton, blending savoir-faire with cultural resonance. “French fashion is a formidable soft power, radiating a tradition of savoir-faire, an art de vivre – a cultural singularity,” the house said, and the designer delivered a spectacle that seemed like yet another a grand culmination of the house's journey across time, space, and style.

A sheeny striped coat with a curved silhouette opened the show, its adornments and accessories teeming with a kind of futuristic couture—a theme Ghesquière has mastered over his tenure. The coat set the stage for a collection that often intentionally deceived and dazzled the eye, echoing Ghesquière’s penchant for “colliding references” and reimagining the old as new. Giant petal-like fabrics encircled the necks of models, conjuring both South American flair and a nod to punk—the very hybrid aesthetic that makes Ghesquière’s work so unmistakable.

The show leaned into religious undertones, featuring a priest-like robe with fluid proportions, accessorized with an almost comically oversized black chain adorned with a sort of crucifix.

Yet, despite the individual flair of many pieces, the sheer divergence of styles sometimes felt overwhelming. One particular black-and-white floral split dress seemed to confuse the eye, its busy patterns making it difficult for spectators to discern where the dress ended and the underdress began. This tendency to merge multiple aesthetic elements occasionally crossed into visual overload.

If anyone can redefine fashion by dipping into the nursery wardrobe, it’s Miuccia Prada. This season, Miu Miu, Prada’s irreverent and intellectual baby sister, examined early youth — and with it, the liberating simplicity and honesty it brings to thinking and dressing.

The brand is notorious for blurring the lines between sophistication and play, and it’s no surprise that a baby’s cotton chemisette took center stage and transformed, under Prada’s artful manipulation, into something altogether more complex.

Opening with a crisp white cotton dress, this deceptively intricate collection borrowed directly from childhood is the fruit of a collaboration with Petit Bateau. Chemisette dresses, sweaters, and twisted shirts became subversive statements — folded, wrapped, and twisted in all the wrong ways to create something utterly fresh. The result? A glamour that Prada herself called “dishonest” — a term almost mischievously fitting for Miu Miu’s rebellious ethos. It’s the spirit of a girl who refuses to conform, wearing her tights over her dress, her sweaters in unconventional ways, just because she can.

The sense of playful contrast—an innocent wardrobe rendered provocative—captured one of Miu Miu’s long-standing narratives: youth is a state of being under construction, where rules are fluid, and experimentation is freedom. It’s a continuation of Prada’s love for subversion and polarity, whether it’s mixing raw imperfection with poise or twisting utilitarian comfort into a silhouette that exudes audacity.

Prada called in a remarkable cast, including Alexa Chung, Willem Dafoe, Cara Delevingne, and Hilary Swank — household names from every corner of the artistic universe, as comfortable in front of the camera as they were here, treading the Miu Miu boards.

Where Miuccia Prada excels is her ability to inject humor — a knowing wink — into serious fashion. And just as Prada herself once said, sometimes we must choose whether to be a child or a lady near death. This collection chose the former.

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This article was corrected to show that Erykah Badu did not attend the Chanel fashion show.

With a star-studded cast of celebrities and influencers, the Voto Latino Foundation launched a million initiative Tuesday to encourage Latinos to vote in the upcoming election.

The “Vota Con Ganas” (’Vote with Enthusiasm”) campaign will feature personal stories and messages from the Latino community, voter registration drives and workshops, social media outreach campaigns along with public service announcement-type videos from celebrities and influencers, highlighting the importance of voting and the impact the Latino vote can have in this election.

Notable celebrities participating in the campaign so far include Wilmer Valderrama, Rosario Dawson, America Ferrera, Danny Lux, Jessica Alba, Gina Torres and Xochitl Gomez.

Valderrama, who directed and produced the campaign videos, said in a statement that Latinos have been a vital part of the country and that it is time for them to have a seat at the table.

“The Ganas campaign aims to reinvite our Latino community to vote for their future,” he said. “Every decade the Latino community continues to grow in so many aspects of our country. We contribute in so many different ways and It’s critical that we own and celebrate our contributions to what’s possible for us here.”

As part of the campaign, the foundation also partnered with more than 170 college campus organizations to host voter registration events and digital activations during Hispanic Heritage Month, which ends Oct. 15. The campaign's efforts will also be amplified by over 300 organizations partnering with the foundation, including the NFL, Universal Music and Sony.

As the nation’s largest minority group — 19.5% of the total population, according to the 2020 census — Latinos form a key voting bloc in what’s shaping up to be a tight presidential election.

Latinos have grown at the second-fastest rate, behind Asian Americans, of any major racial and ethnic group in the U.S. since the last presidential election, according to a Pew Research Center analysis, and are projected to account for 14.7%, or 36.2 million, of all eligible voters in this presidential election, a new high.

They are a growing share of the electorate in several presidential and congressional battleground states, including Arizona, California and Nevada, and are being heavily courted by Republicans and Democrats.

Voto Latino Foundation president Maria Teresa Kumar said including everyday Latinos in the videos is a way to give them power and make their voices heard. In a statement, Kumar described the campaign as “a movement to harness the power of the Latino community.”

Kumar said ensuring every Latino voter is registered is vital, as Latinos have the power to shape the future of the country only if they cast their ballot this election.

Dawson, who is a board member of the foundation, said Latinos must mobilize their community, especially youths, as there will be many first-time voters.

“We have the power to decide. We could literally change the tide,” Dawson said in a statement. “'Vota con Ganas’ means to register, vote, volunteer, and own this election, because it is yours to take.”

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — For decades a small, landless tribe in Northern California has been on a mission to get land, open a casino and tap into the gaming market enjoyed by so many other tribes that earn millions of dollars annually.

The Koi Nation's chances of owning a Las Vegas-style casino seemed impossible until a federal court ruling in 2019 cleared the way for the tiny tribe to find a financial partner to buy land and place it into a trust to make it eligible for a casino.

Now the tribe of 96 members has teamed up with the Chickasaw Nation of Oklahoma, which owns the biggest casino in the world, and is waiting for U.S. Department of Interior Secretary Deb Haaland to decide whether the 68-acre (27-hectare) parcel the tribe bought for .3 million in Sonoma County in 2021 is put into trust.

Placing the land into trust would allow the Koi to move closer to building a 0 million casino and resort on prime real estate in the heart of Northern California’s wine country.

The decision comes as the U.S. government tries to atone for its history of dispossessing Indigenous people of their land, in part through a federal legal process that goes beyond reinstating ancestral lands and allows a tribe to put land under trust if it can prove “a significant historical connection to the land.”

The Koi Nation, a Southeastern Pomo tribe whose ancestors lived in Northern California for thousands of years, faces mounting opposition from other tribes and even California Gov. Gavin Newsom over its plans for the Shiloh Resort and Casino, which would include a 2,500-slot machine casino and 400-room hotel with spa and pool.

If approved, the casino would be built near Windsor, about 65 miles (105 kilometers) north of San Francisco, near two other Native American casinos a few miles away: Graton Resort and Casino in Rohnert Park and River Rock Casino in Geyserville.

The money generated would allow tribal members a better life in one of the country's most expensive regions, including educational opportunities for young tribe members, said Dino Beltran, Vice Chairman of the Koi Nation’s Tribal Council.

“It has taken us years to be on the same playing field as every other tribe in the United States and now the same tribes that have established themselves are against us. It’s a very sad thing,” Beltran said.

Among the most vocal critics of the Koi Nation’s project is Greg Sarris, chairman of Graton Rancheria, a federation of Coast Miwok and Southern Pomo people with more than 1,500 members. The tribe's casino is the biggest in the Bay Area and is undergoing a jumi billion expansion.

Sarris, who last year was appointed by Newsom to the University of California Board of Regents, said the Koi Nation are Southeastern Pomo people whose ancestral home is in Lake County, about 50 miles (80 kilometers) northeast of the project site.

The tribe, Sarris said, is not linguistically, culturally or historically connected to Sonoma County and he accused the tribe of cherry-picking land that already draws tourists.

“They are claiming that part of their deep historical connection is they had a family member in the early 20th century who lived in Sonoma County,” Sarris scoffed.

The Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, enacted by Congress in 1988, sets rules for how and where Native American tribes can operate casinos, and generally limits them to ancestral lands that have been returned to the tribe.

But the law also makes a “restored lands” exception for federally recognized tribes that do not have a reservation — or rancheria, as they are called in California — to build a casino outside their ancestral land if the tribe can show historical and modern connections to the area where the gambling facility will be located. The land also has to be near where a significant number of tribal members reside.

“Generally speaking, tribes cannot game on any land that is taken into trust after 1988 but there are important exceptions to that general prohibition that are meant to be fair to tribes that did not have land in 1988,” said Kathryn Rand, an expert on tribal gaming law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s International Center for Gaming Regulation.

Before white colonizers arrived in California, Koi Nation’s ancestors lived on an island in Lake County and traded with other tribes in Northern California, according to the tribe’s website.

In 1916, the U.S. government approved land in Lake County for Koi Nation's rancheria about 28 miles (45 kilometers) north of the proposed casino site. The land was eventually declared uninhabitable by the Bureau of Indian Affairs because of its rocky terrain and many Koi families moved south to neighboring Sonoma County, mainly to Sebastopol and Santa Rosa, where the tribe is now headquartered.

Four decades later, the federal government took that land and sold it for an airport, leaving the tribe landless. After a lengthy court battle, a federal judge in 2019 ruled the Koi Nation had the right to pursue buying land for a casino.

Michael Anderson, a Koi Nation attorney, said a historic trail used by the tribe from the Clear Lake basin to Bodega Bay, on Sonoma County’s Pacific Coast, runs through a portion of the property, which supports the legal requirement of having a "significant historical connection to the land.”

Anderson said their legal case is strong. But, “the politics is a whole different thing,” he added.

Sarris, whose casino gives millions to small, non-gaming tribes and has become a major donor to California politicians, said the Koi Nation has previously tried to get land under trust to open a casino in Solano and Alameda Counties — both in the San Francisco Bay Area — and accused the tribe of “reservation shopping.”

Anderson said the term was offensive and Sarris is simply trying to protect his lucrative casino from competition.

“This is about market protection, that’s the heart of it,” Anderson said.

Newsom and local politicians also oppose the project along with the Dry Creek Band of Pomo Indians, which operates River Rock Casino.

Newsom’s office sent a letter last month to Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary of Indian Affairs Bryan Newland urging him not to move forward with the Shiloh casino project and another proposed casino in the Bay Area, saying the governor is concerned the department is not considering other sites for the casinos and approving them would “stretch the limits of the ‘restored lands’ exception."

The department is weighing three other land trust applications under the “restored lands” exception, including one by the Scotts Valley Tribe that wants to build a casino in Solano County. In Oregon, the Coquille Indian Tribe wants to open a casino in Medford, about 170 miles (273 kilometers) south of its tribal headquarters and closer to the California border.

Casino-owning tribes are pushing back on both. The Guidiville Rancheria tribe in Northern California has applied but has not yet identified land for their project, according to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Haaland will consider several factors in making her decision, including opposition to the casinos, said Steve Light, an expert on tribal gaming policy at the UNLV International Center for Gaming Regulation.

But the secretary also will take into account whether the casino will help with "tribal self-determination, tribal self-governance, and tribal economic development, job creation and resources for the tribe,” he said.

Of the 574 federally recognized tribes, 110 are in California. According to the American Gaming Association, there are 87 tribal casinos in the state, making California the largest tribal gaming market in the country.

“With 40 million people in California, this is presumably still an untapped market, but one that is increasingly competitive,” Light said.

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This story has been updated to correct the name of the law that regulates tribal casinos. It is the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act.

Ta-Nehisi Coates always writes with a purpose, so naming his latest collection “The Message” is nothing if not on-brand. But what’s the actual message? Consisting of three pieces of non-fiction, the book is part memoir, part travelogue, and part writing primer. It covers his recent trips to Dakar, Senegal; Columbia, South Carolina; and various cities and towns in the Middle East.

He writes in the introduction that the essays fulfill a promise to a Howard University writing class he taught in 2022: “I bring my belated assignment… I’ve addressed these notes directly to you, though I confess that I am thinking of young writers everywhere whose task is nothing less than doing their part to save the world.”

Coates features snippets of his biography in each essay, but always returns to lessons for writers, as in this reflection during his first ever visit to Africa: “There are dimensions in your words — rhythm, content, shape, feeling... The accretion of imperfect, discomfiting life must be seen and felt so that the space in your mind, gray, automatic, and square, fills with angle, color, and curve.” These pilgrimages, for him, help ground his powerful writing about race. As he reflects on his visit to Gorée Island, the place from which tens of millions of Africans departed into a lifetime of slavery, he confesses to “welling up, grieving for something, in the grips of some feeling I am still, even as I write this, struggling to name.”

The second essay examines racism closer to home, as Coates journeys to a South Carolina town where the school board was considering banning his 2015 book “Between the World and Me” because, in part, students in an Advanced Placement English class felt “ashamed to be Caucasian” when they read it. Supporters of the teacher manage to show up in enough force to defeat the ban, but Coates sees in it the power of story. A middle-aged white teacher in Chapin, South Carolina, read his book — a letter to his teenage-son about the realities of being Black in the United States — and decided to use it as an example of how to write a persuasive essay. “We have lived under a class of people who ruled American culture with a flaming cross for so long that we regularly cease to notice the import of being ruled at all,” writes Coates.

The final, and longest, essay encompasses a 10-day trip Coates takes to the Middle East. Like his journey to Senegal, it’s his first time in the region, and the experience really opens his eyes. “Of all the worlds I have ever explored, I don’t think any shone so bright, so intense, so immediately as Palestine.” That’s because everywhere he looks he sees familiar signs of subjugation. The parallels between being Black in America and Palestinian in the Middle East are myriad. “The state had one message to the Palestinians within its borders...‘You’d really be better off somewhere else,’” writes Coates. But while it’s a message Coates clearly conveys in his essay, he realizes it’s not his story to tell. “If Palestinians are to be truly seen it will be through stories woven by their own hands — not by their plunderers, not even by their comrades.”

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AP book reviews: https://apnews.com/hub/book-reviews

NEW DELHI (AP) — Dozens of Tibetans living in India protested outside China's embassy on Tuesday against the human rights situation in their homeland, which China annexed in 1951.

Police blocked the protesters from entering the embassy and detained some after chasing them and wrestling them to the ground.

The protest came as China marks its 75th year of Communist Party rule.

The Tibetan Youth Congress, which organized the protest, blames China for repressing Tibetan culture.

“We demand the Chinese Communist government to stop the cultural genocide in Tibet. We urge the international community to support the just cause of Tibet,” said protester Sonam Tenzin.

The Tibetan government-in-exile in India accuses China of denying fundamental human rights to people in Tibet and of exterminating Tibetan identity.

At least 85,000 Tibetan refugees live in India. The Dalai Lama — their spiritual leader — has made Dharamshala in northern India his headquarters since fleeing Tibet after a failed uprising against Chinese rule in 1959. Representatives of a Tibetan government-in-exile also reside there.

The Dalai Lama denies China’s claim that he is a separatist and says he only advocates substantial autonomy and protection of Tibet’s native Buddhist culture.

Already the longest-lived of the 45 men to serve as U.S. president, Jimmy Carter is about to reach the century mark.

The 39th president, who remains under home hospice care, will turn 100 on Tuesday, Oct. 1, celebrating in the same south Georgia town where he was born in 1924.

Here are some notable markers for Carter, the nation and the world over his long life.

Carter has seen the U.S. population nearly triple. The U.S. has about 330 million residents; there were about 114 million in 1924 and 220 million when Carter was inaugurated in 1977. The global population has more than quadrupled, from 1.9 billion to more than 8.1 billion. It already had more than doubled to 4.36 billion by the time he became president.

That boom has not reached Plains, where Carter has lived more than 80 of his 100 years. His wife Rosalynn, who died in 2023 at age 96, also was born in Plains.

Their town comprised fewer than 500 people in the 1920s and has about 700 today; much of the local economy revolves around its most famous residents.

When James Earl Carter Jr. was born, life expectancy for American males was 58. It's now 75.

NBC first debuted a red-and-blue electoral map in the 1976 election between then-President Gerald Ford, a Republican, and Carter, the Democratic challenger. But NBC's John Chancellor made Carter's states red and Ford's blue. Some other early versions of color electoral maps used yellow and blue because red was associated with Soviet and Chinese communism.

It wasn't until the 1990s that networks settled on blue for Democratic-won states and red for GOP-won states. "Red state” and “blue state” did not become a permanent part of the American political lexicon until after the disputed 2000 election between Al Gore and George W. Bush.

Carter was 14 when Franklin D. Roosevelt made the first presidential television appearance. Warren Harding became the first radio president two years before Carter's birth.

There was no Amazon Prime in 1924, but you could order a build-it-yourself house from a catalog. Sears Roebuck Gladstone’s three-bedroom model went for [scripts/homepage/home-dev.php],025, which was slightly less than the average worker’s annual income.

Walmart didn’t exist, but local general stores served the same purpose. Ballpark prices: loaf of bread, 9 cents; gallon of milk, 54 cents; gallon of gas, 11 cents.

Inflation helped drive Carter from office, as it has dogged President Joe Biden. The average gallon in 1980, Carter’s last full year in office, was about .25 when adjusted for inflation. That's just 3 cents more than AAA's current national average.

The 19th Amendment that extended voting rights to women — almost exclusively white women at the time — was ratified in 1920, four years before Carter's birth. The Voting Rights Act that widened the franchise to Black Americans passed in 1965 as Carter was preparing his first bid for Georgia governor.

Now, Carter is poised to cast a mail ballot for Vice President Kamala Harris. She would become the first woman, first Black woman and first person of South Asian descent to reach the Oval Office. Grandson Jason Carter said the former president is holding on in part because he is excited about the chance to see Harris make history.

For all the shifts in U.S. politics, some things stay the same. Or at least come back around.

Carter was born in an era of isolationism, protectionism and white Christian nationalism — all elements of the right in the ongoing Donald Trump era. In 2024, Trump is promising the largest deportation effort in U.S. history, while tightening legal immigration. He has said immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.”

Five months before Carter was born, President Calvin Coolidge signed the Immigration Act of 1924. The law created the U.S. Border Patrol and sharply curtailed immigration, limiting admission mostly to migrants from western Europe. Asians were banned entirely. Congress described its purpose plainly: “preserve the ideal of U.S. homogeneity.” The Ku Klux Klan followed in 1925 and 1926 with marches on Washington promoting white supremacy.

Trump also has called for sweeping tariffs on foreign imports, part of his “America First” agenda. In 1922, Congress enacted tariffs intended to help U.S. manufacturers. After stock market losses in 1929, lawmakers added the 1930 Smoot-Hawley tariffs, ostensibly to help American farmers. The Great Depression followed anyway. In the 1930s, as Carter became politically aware, the political right that countered FDR was driven in part by a movement that opposed international engagement. Those conservatives' slogan: “America First.”

Carter is the Atlanta Braves' most famous fan. Jason Carter says the former president still enjoys watching his favorite baseball team.

In the 1990s, when the Braves were annual features in the October playoffs, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were often spotted in the owner's box with media mogul Ted Turner and Jane Fonda, then Turner's wife. The Braves moved to Atlanta from Milwaukee between Carter's failed run for governor in 1966 and his victory four years later. Then-Gov. Carter was sitting in the first row of Atlanta Fulton-County Stadium on April 9, 1974, when Henry Aaron hit his 715th home run to break Babe Ruth's career record.

When Carter was born, the Braves were still in Boston, their original city. Ruth had just completed his fifth season for the New York Yankees. He had hit 284 home runs to that point (still 430 short of his career total) and the original Yankee Stadium — “The House that Ruth Built" — had been open less than 18 months.

Prohibition had been in effect for four years when Carter was born and wouldn’t be lifted until he was 9. The Carters were never prodigious drinkers. They served only wine at state dinners and other White House functions, though it's a common misconception that they did so because of their Baptist mores. It was more because Carter has always been frugal: He didn't want taxpayers or the residence account (his and Rosalynn's personal money) to cover more expensive hard liquor.

Carter’s younger brother Billy, who owned a Plains gas station and died in 1988, had different tastes. He marketed his own brand, Billy Beer, once Carter became president. News sources reported that Billy Carter snagged a ,000 annual licensing fee from one brewer. That's about 5,000 today. The president’s annual salary at the time was 0,000 — it's now 0,000.

The Times Square debt clock didn’t debut until Carter was in his early 60s and out of the White House. But for anyone counting the trillion debt, Carter doesn’t merit much mention. The man who would wash Ziploc bags to reuse them added less than 0 billion to the national debt, which stood below jumi trillion when he left office.

Carter has lived through 40% of U.S. history since the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and more than a third of all U.S. administrations since George Washington took office in 1789 — nine before Carter was president, his own and seven since.

When Carter took office, just two presidents, John Adams and Herbert Hoover, had lived to be 90. Since then, Ford, Ronald Reagan, Carter and George H.W. Bush all reached at least 93.

——-

This story was first published on Sep. 28, 2024. It was updated on Oct. 1, 2024 to correct that only one other former president, John Adams, lived to be at least 90. Herbert Hoover died at 90 in 1964.

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Follow Barrow at https://twitter.com/BillBarrowAP

BILLINGS, Mont. (AP) — Native Americans living on a remote Montana reservation filed a lawsuit against state and county officials Monday saying they don’t have enough places to vote in person — the latest chapter in a decades-long struggle by tribes in the United States over equal voting opportunities.

The six members of the Fort Peck Reservation want satellite voting offices in their communities for late registration and to vote before Election Day without making long drives to a county courthouse.

The legal challenge, filed in state court, comes five weeks before the presidential election in a state with a a pivotal U.S. Senate race where the Republican candidate has made derogatory comments about Native Americans.

Native Americans were granted U.S. citizenship a century ago. Advocates say the right still doesn't always bring equal access to the ballot.

Many tribal members in rural western states live in far-flung communities with limited resources and transportation. That can make it hard to reach election offices, which in some cases are located off-reservation.

The plaintiffs in the Montana lawsuit reside in two small communities near the Canada border on the Fort Peck Reservation, home to the Assiniboine and Sioux tribes. Plaintiffs' attorney Cher Old Elk grew up in one of those communities, Frazer, Montana, where more than a third of people live below the poverty line and the per capita income is about ,000, according to census data.

It's a 60-mile round trip from Frazer to the election office at the courthouse in Glasgow. Old Elk says that can force prospective voters into difficult choices.

“It's not just the gas money; it's actually having a vehicle that runs,” she said. "Is it food on my table, or is it the gas money to find a vehicle, to find a ride, to go to Glasgow to vote?"

The lawsuit asks a state judge for an order forcing Valley and Roosevelt counties and Republican Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen to create satellite election offices in Frazer and Poplar, Montana. The offices would be open during the same hours and on the same days as the county courthouses.

The plaintiffs requested satellite election offices from the counties earlier this year, the lawsuit says. Roosevelt County officials allegedly refused, while Valley County officials said budget constraints limited them to opening a satellite voting center for just one day.

Valley County Attorney Dylan Jensen said there were only two full-time employees in the Clerk and Recorder's Office that oversees elections, so staffing a satellite office would be problematic.

“To do that for an extended period of time and still keep regular business going, it would be difficult,” he said.

A spokesperson said Jacobsen's office had encouraged tribes and counties to work together to establish satellite offices as needed by Jan. 31, under a 2015 state elections directive.

“These types of conversations, as indicated by the directive, need to have occurred months ago,” said Jacobsen's communications director Richie Melby.

Melby added that Jacobsen's office served all Montana voters and said the dispute had been stirred by “political activists.”

Roosevelt County Clerk and Recorder Tracy Miranda did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Prior efforts to secure Native American voting rights helped drive changes in recent years that expanded electoral access for tribal members in South Dakota and Nevada.

A 2012 federal lawsuit in Montana sought to establish satellite election offices on the Crow, Northern Cheyenne and Fort Belknap reservations. It was rejected by a judge, but the ruling was later set aside by an appeals court. In 2014, tribal members in the case reached a settlement with officials in several counties.

Monday's lawsuit said inequities continue on the Fort Peck Reservation, and that tribal members have never fully achieved equal voting since Montana was first organized as a territory in 1864 and Native Americans were excluded from its elections. Native voters in subsequent years continued to face barriers to registering and were sometimes stricken from voter rolls.

“Equal means equal,” said Bret Healy, an expert witness for the plaintiffs who was also involved in the 2012 Montana case. “It is substantively, mathematically and logically not equal if there's not a satellite office on the Indian Reservation.”

In “John Lewis: A Life,” David Greenberg recounts how the late Democratic congressman reacted after Republicans scored a landslide victory in the 1994 election. A staffer hoped Lewis would buoy her spirits and tell her there was a silver lining.

Lewis instead told her, “There is no silver lining.”

Exchanges like this that reveal moments of despair and vulnerability by the seemingly eternally optimistic Lewis are partly what makes Greenberg's biography of the Civil Rights icon so remarkable. It would have been easy to write a book that veers into hagiography for someone who became the nation's moral authority on civil rights and a younger generation's link to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

Greenberg instead offers a more complete portrait of Lewis' evolution and his political education. Greenberg conducted hundreds of interviews for the biography, including with Lewis himself, and that work shows throughout the book.

Greenberg sketches the familiar highlights of Lewis' life, from a boy who preached to chickens on his family's farm to an activist who sustained a fractured skull when he was beaten by police during the “Bloody Sunday” march that helped lead to the passage of the Voting Rights Act.

He also outlines Lewis' years in the public arena, as a member of Atlanta's city council and later as a veteran congressman revered by both Democrats and Republicans.

But the biography does an excellent job of giving readers the context of Lewis' life, including rifts between him and other giants of the movement. And it provides an inside look at how Lewis honed his political skills over time, particularly advocating for the Voting Rights Act's passage and later its reauthorization.

Greenberg also recounts how Lewis was a early and vocal ally of the gay and lesbian community, advocating for their rights when even other liberal politicians kept their distance.

Throughout the book, Greenberg further humanizes Lewis by taking readers inside his family life including his strong relationship with his wife and details on how he spent his final days before succumbing to cancer in 2020.

The poem “Invictus” by William Ernest Henley plays a starring role in the biography, which describes how Lewis would recite its verses as a child and would later chant them in his office. Just like that poem, Greenberg's riveting biography describes someone who was the captain of his soul.

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OKLAHOMA CITY (AP) — The Justice Department announced Monday it plans to launch a review of the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, an attack by a white mob on a thriving Black district that is considered one of the worst single acts of violence against Black people in U.S. history.

The review was launched under a federal cold-case initiative that has led to prosecutions of some Civil Rights Era cases, although Assistant U.S. Attorney General Kristen Clarke said they have “no expectation” there is anyone living who could be prosecuted as a result of the inquiry. Still, the announcement of a first-ever federal probe into the massacre was embraced by descendants of survivors who have long criticized city and state leaders for not doing more to compensate those affected by the attack.

Clarke said the agency plans to issue a public report detailing its findings by the end of the year.

“We acknowledge descendants of the survivors, and the victims continue to bear the trauma of this act of racial terrorism,” Clarke said during her remarks in Washington.

Damario Solomon-Simmons, an attorney for the last known survivors of the massacre, 110-year-old Viola Fletcher and 109-year-old Lessie Benningfield Randle, described Clarke's announcement as a “joyous occasion.”

“It is about time,” said Solomon-Simmons, flanked by descendants of massacre survivors. “It only took 103 years, but this is a joyous occasion, a momentous day, an amazing opportunity for us to make sure that what happened here in Tulsa is understood for what it was — the largest crime scene in the history of this country.”

As many as 300 Black people were killed; more than 1,200 homes, businesses, schools and churches were destroyed; and thousands were forced into internment camps overseen by the National Guard when a white mob, including some deputized by authorities, looted and burned the Greenwood District, also known as Black Wall Street.

The Oklahoma Supreme Court in June dismissed a lawsuit by survivors, dampening the hope of advocates for racial justice that the city would make financial amends for the attack.

The nine-member court upheld the decision made by a district court judge in Tulsa last year, ruling that the plaintiff’s grievances about the destruction of the Greenwood district, although legitimate, did not fall within the scope of the state’s public nuisance statute.

After the state Supreme Court turned away the lawsuit, Solomon-Simmons asked the U.S. Department of Justice to open an investigation into the massacre under the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.

Although investigations under the Act have led to successful prosecutions of Civil Rights Era cases, the DOJ acknowledged in a report to Congress last year that there are significant legal barriers to cases before 1968.

“Even with our best efforts, investigations into historic cases are exceptionally difficult, and rarely will justice be reached inside of a courtroom,” the agency noted in the report.

Since the Act was approved in 2008, the DOJ has opened for review 137 cases, involving 160 known victims. The agency has fully investigated and resolved 125 of those cases through prosecution, referral or closure.

The report also notes the Act has led to two successful federal prosecutions and three successful state prosecutions. Both federal prosecutions involved separate murders of Black men in Mississippi by members of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s.

The first federally assisted state prosecution under the initiative was against Klansmen who bombed a Birmingham, Alabama, church in 1963, killing four young girls. That prosecution in the early 2000s led to convictions and life sentences for two men involved in the bombing.

The company said Monday the libretto by Tifara Brown is still being worked on, delaying the music composition by Kevin Day.

“Lalovavi” had been announced in February with a premiere date of June 19, 2025, in conjunction with the Juneteenth holiday. “Lalovavi” means “love” in the Tut language created by enslaved Black Americans, and the three-act work is set in the year 2119.

The second of the three works in the company's Black Opera Project, “Good Trouble: The Boy from Troy,” was postponed by a year to the summer of 2027. Inspired by the life of U.S. Rep. John Lewis, it has music by Maria Thompson Corley and a libretto by Diana Solomon-Glover.

A third work is to debut in the summer of 2028.

“We’re committed to providing each of these important new stories the creative space and resources to achieve their creators’ respective visions,” Cincinnati Opera artistic director Evans Mirageas said in a statement. "This adjustment will allow additional time for each opera’s development and refinement.”