Public defenders call for moratorium on executions in Tennessee after 'temporary reprieve' for death row inmate
CNN
Federal public defenders in Tennessee are calling for a statewide moratorium on executions and an independent commission to study the state's executions after a death row inmate was granted a temporary reprieve minutes before his execution last week, according to a letter addressed to Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee.
Oscar Smith was scheduled to be executed last week for the 1989 murders of his wife, Judith Smith, and her two minor children, Chad and Jason Burnett, in Nashville.
Lee declined to intervene in Smith's case earlier, setting the 72-year-old inmate up to be the first person executed in the state since the Covid-19 pandemic began.
A former University of Virginia student pleaded guilty Wednesday to fatally shooting three football players and wounding two other students on the Charlottesville campus in 2022.
Donald Trump is considering a right-wing media personality and people who have served on his US Secret Service detail to run the agency that has been plagued by its failure to preempt two alleged assassination attempts on Trump this summer, sources familiar with the president-elect’s thinking tell CNN.
The United States has vetoed a UN Security Council resolution that called for an immediate, unconditional and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, on the grounds it would not have secured the release of hostages.
A Democratic election official in Pennsylvania offered an impassioned apology Wednesday for claiming “precedent by a court doesn’t matter anymore in this country” to justify counting about 600 faulty ballots in defiance of state Supreme Court rulings.
On one side of the Capitol, Republican Rep. Nancy Mace vowed to “stand in the way” of Democratic Rep.-elect Sarah McBride, the first out transgender woman elected to Congress, using women’s bathrooms in the US Capitol.
President-elect Donald Trump has chosen Matthew Whitaker, who served as acting attorney general during Trump’s first term, as his pick to be US ambassador to NATO.
Police in Peru have arrested a man caught trying to leave the country with 320 tarantulas, 110 centipedes and nine bullet ants strapped to his body.
Ensuring the US doesn’t default on its obligations. Extending trillions of dollars in tax cuts before they expire. Quarterbacking President-elect Donald Trump’s plans for the economy.
President-elect Donald Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, a nongovernmental entity helmed by billionaire Elon Musk and biotech entrepreneur and former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, is expected to make a push for an end to remote work across federal agencies as a way to help reduce the federal workforce through attrition.
“I want to say to my babies that your mama loves you so much…” Susan Smith, then 23 years old, tearfully said to the scrum of news cameras.
The Biden administration has approved sending anti-personnel mines to Ukraine for the first time in another major policy shift, according to two US officials. The decision comes just days after the US gave Ukraine permission to fire long-range US missiles at targets in Russia, a shift that only occurred after months of lobbying from Kyiv.