Factory workers in Tennessee were swept away by Helene. Their families say they weren’t allowed to leave work in time to flee
CNN
The last time Elías Ibarra Mendoza heard his wife’s voice, she was pleading for his help.
The last time Elías Ibarra Mendoza heard his wife’s voice, she was pleading for his help. “‘Tell my kids that I love them very much and I won’t be able to answer your calls anymore because the phone will get wet,’” Ibarra Mendoza told CNN affiliate Univision of Bertha Mendoza’s last words to him. He never heard from his wife of 38 years again. The 56-year-old grandmother was one of 11 Tennessee plastics plant workers swept away by Hurricane Helene’s deadly floodwaters after they tried to leave the facility. Only five were rescued. Four people who worked at the Impact Plastics plant in Erwin are still missing, and two have been confirmed dead, including Mendoza, the Associated Press reported. Families of the victims and Impact Plastics workers are outraged, demanding answers about why, they say, employees were made to work during extreme weather conditions, and some were told they couldn’t leave as warnings of heavy rainfall in the flood-prone area poured in. Impact Plastics has forcefully denied those claims, saying late Thursday the allegations are false, and no employee was stopped from leaving. Two state investigations are unfolding into the tragedy as employees, victims’ families and company owners offer differing accounts of the hour before floodwaters overtook the area.
One month until voters head to the polls, the Justice Department is caught in a thorny intersection of election-year politics and continuing the work of the nation’s top law enforcement agency – trying to maintain its reputation for impartiality while also continuing to pursue the prosecution of Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate.
Georgia prosecutors urge Supreme Court to keep Mark Meadows’ election subversion case in state court
State prosecutors in Georgia who are pursuing election subversion charges against former President Donald Trump urged the US Supreme Court on Thursday to allow their case against his former chief of staff Mark Meadows to continue in state court.
Former House GOP conference chair Liz Cheney and former Trump White House aides Alyssa Farah Griffin, Cassidy Hutchinson and Sarah Matthews will make the case against the reelection of former President Donald Trump in a fireside chat in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, on Wednesday, October 9, CNN has exclusively learned.
Former first lady Melania Trump said in a new video posted Thursday that she believed there was “no room for compromise” when it comes to a woman’s “individual freedom,” after The Guardian reported excerpts from her forthcoming book in which she says she supports abortion rights “free from any intervention or pressure from the government.”