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The justice department will ask a court today to void the special master review examining documents seized from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago residence and make the materials available to the criminal investigation surrounding the former president.
The hearing is particularly consequential for Trump: should he lose, it could mark the end of the special master process on which he has relied to delay, and gain more insight into, the investigation surrounding his potential mishandling of national security information.
In a 40-page brief filed in advance of an expedited afternoon hearing in the 11th circuit court of appeals, the department argued that Trump should never have been able to get an independent arbiter because the federal judge who granted the request misapplied a four-part legal test in making her judgment.
The department also argued that the 11th circuit should terminate the injunction preventing federal investigators from examining the documents in the special master review, since Trump appeared to drop his claims that some of the materials are subject to privilege protections.
What did justice department say in its briefing? “Absent any likelihood of any success in the merits of the claim, there is no justification for an injunction,” the department wrote, as it sought the appeals court to reverse the entirety of the Trump-appointed US district court judge Aileen Cannon’s special master order.
Colorado Springs shooting: suspect faces murder and hate crime charges
The suspect in a weekend gun attack on an LBGTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs will face five murder charges, and five additional hate crime counts of causing injury with “bias motivation”, preliminary records released on Monday afternoon show.
The details came as police updated the number of injured in the Saturday night rampage at Club Q to 18, and said the alleged shooter, 22-year-old Anderson Lee Aldrich, remained in custody at a local hospital.
Officials said it was likely he would be discharged from hospital in the next couple of days and would then make a first court appearance on video.
Earlier, the mayor of Colorado Springs, John Suthers, said the attack had “the trappings of a hate crime”, and spoke of the “tragic darkness” that had descended on the community. “The actions of this single individual, whatever his motivations, don’t reflect the city of Colorado Springs,” Suthers told ABC’s Good Morning America.
What do we know about the victims? Among the victims were two bartenders, a trans woman, a mother to an 11-year-old and a young graduate.
The Colorado Springs shooter had allegedly threatened his mother with a bomb. Why could he still get a gun? There’s no public record that prosecutors sought any felony kidnapping and menacing charges against Aldrich, or that police or relatives tried to trigger Colorado’s red flag law that would have allowed authorities to seize the weapons. Questions are being asked about why.
Indonesia earthquake: rescuers search for survivors as death toll rises to 252
Indonesian rescue workers were racing to reach people still trapped in rubble one day after an earthquake struck the main island of Java, as the death toll rose to 252.
Monday afternoon’s quake, centred in the Cianjur region of West Java province, struck at a depth of 6.2 miles (10km), triggering landslides and damaging buildings, including thousands of homes.
The number of people killed is unclear. In an Instagram post on Tuesday the local government said 252 people were confirmed dead, with 31 missing, 377 injured and 7,060 displaced.
Ridwan Kamil, the governor of West Java, said most of the dead were children, many of them students taking extra lessons. “So many incidents occurred at several Islamic schools,” he said. Authorities were operating “under the assumption that the number of injured and [dead] will rise with time”.
How is the rescue operation going? At least 25 people were still buried under the rubble in Cianjur as darkness fell last night. Efforts to reach victims have been complicated by power failures, damaged roads and more than 80 aftershocks.
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In other news …
A manhunt has now been under way for more than a week in a remote college town where a still-unidentified suspect stabbed four University of Idaho students to death in the early hours of 13 November. The lack of clues about the killings is fueling fear and rumors.
Ukrainians are likely to live with blackouts at least until the end of March, the head of a major energy provider has said. Half of Ukraine’s energy infrastructure had been damaged by Russian attacks, President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said, leaving millions of people without electricity and water as winter sets in.
Jay Leno has been discharged from hospital and is “looking forward to spending Thanksgiving with his family” after being treated for serious burns sustained in a recent petrol fire accident. The former host of the Tonight Show was said to be thankful for the care he had received.
A career 911 dispatcher and longtime friend of the New York City mayor Eric Adams who rented a room to Adams in her apartment in Brooklyn’s Crown Heights for four years now has one of the highest-paid jobs in city government, records show.
Qatar World Cup – get daily updates with First Thing
The US played their first match of the Qatar World Cup on Monday against Wales and they started out brilliantly, going 1-0 up. But they faded as the game went on and the game ended 1-1. It was a solid result but on Friday they face England, who looked very strong as they crushed Iran 6-2. The top two from USA’s four-team group qualify for the knockout stages.
If Iran looked distracted during their loss to England, they had good reason. The players refused to sing their national anthem before the game in an apparent support of anti-regime protests in their home country. Barney Ronay was at the game and paid tribute to a stand that could have consequences for the players when they return home.
Meanwhile, Fifa’s dismal crackdown on anything vaguely LGBTQ+-themed at this World Cup continues (homosexuality is illegal in Qatar). Teams such as England were threatened with discipline if they wore armbands with OneLove written on them, while US soccer journalist Grant Wahl was briefly detained at the USA-Wales match for wearing a shirt with a rainbow logo.
Elsewhere at the World Cup:
Two of the favorites enter the fray on Tuesday. Argentina play Saudi Arabia, while the reigning champions, France, face Australia. Both teams should win their openers easily.
Timothy Weah, who scored USA’s goal on Monday, comes from soccer royalty. His father, George, was Fifa’s World Player of the Year in 1995, and is now president of Liberia (Timothy was born in New York and spent his early years in Florida).
Wondering why the World Cup is taking place in November and December this year? It’s been moved from its usual slot to avoid the baking temperatures that Qatar experiences in June and July.
Don’t miss this: Why sexual health projects should switch the focus to pleasure
After decades of emphasis on STIs, HIV, Aids and unwanted pregnancy, a wave of initiatives around the world are using a more sex-positive narrative. The International Planned Parenthood Federation (IPPF)’s digital campaign Treasure Your Pleasure has been leading the way. Mahmoud Garga, who ran the campaign, says: “We talk about sexually transmitted infections, mortality, morbidity. We talk about HIV and unwanted pregnancies. It’s always fear-based. People are always left with guilt and shame and feeling [sex] is something bad they shouldn’t be doing. It’s a taboo. We wanted to shift the narrative and do a sex-positive campaign.”
Climate check: US receives stinging criticism at Cop27 despite China’s growing emissions
The US, fresh from reversing its 30 years of opposition to a “loss and damage” fund for poorer countries suffering the worst impacts of the climate crisis, has signaled that its longstanding image as global climate villain should now be pinned on a new culprit: China. Following years of tumult in which the US refused to provide anything resembling compensation for climate damages, followed by Donald Trump’s removal of the US from the Paris climate agreement, there was a profound shift at the Cop27 UN talks in Egypt, with Joe Biden’s administration agreeing to the new loss and damage fund.
Last Thing: American democracy, Biden’s bad jokes – and two turkeys
High on the Democrats’ midterm success, the president, who celebrated his 80th birthday on Sunday, presided over the annual pardoning of the Thanksgiving turkeys. “It’s a wonderful Thanksgiving tradition here at the White House,” the US’s first octogenarian president said as he welcomed the turkeys Chocolate and Chip on the South Lawn. Noting that Chocolate had won a public poll with Chip as his backup, Biden remarked: “First of all, the votes are in. They’ve been counted and verified. There’s no ballot stuffing. There’s no fowl play. The only red wave this season is going to be if a German shepherd, Commander, knocks over the cranberry sauce on our table.”
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