5 things to know for April 9: Trump trials, Southern storms, Middle East, Crumbley parents, Tesla
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It will be a bit of a wait until the next total solar eclipse if you missed out on Monday’s spectacular show — but just how long depends on how far you’re willing to travel. Several upcoming total solar eclipses will traverse paths through popular tourist destinations, including one over Egypt’s pyramids in 2027. Here’s what else you need to know to Get Up to Speed and On with Your Day. Former President Donald Trump’s New York hush money trial is set to begin with jury selection on April 15, despite multiple attempts by his lawyers to push back all of his trials until after the 2024 election. Trump’s attorneys on Monday urged a New York appeals court to postpone the trial start date so it could consider whether to change the venue, arguing that the former president cannot get a fair jury in New York, but the court denied the request. Separately, special counsel Jack Smith urged the Supreme Court on Monday to reject Trump’s claims of sweeping immunity and to deny the former president any opportunity to delay another trial on charges that he attempted to subvert the results of the 2020 election. The Supreme Court will hear arguments on April 25, and a decision is expected by July. More than 30 million people from Texas to western Mississippi are at risk for severe weather today, less than a week after a powerful storm system swept through the region and killed at least three people. “Several tornadoes, a couple of which should be strong, significant large hail, and damaging winds” are expected, the Storm Prediction Center warned. About 9 million people in parts of eastern Texas and western Louisiana had an enhanced, or Level 3 of 5, risk of severe weather early today. That includes Houston and Austin. However, the most significant storm threat could come Wednesday when the threat of severe storms — a Level 4 of 5 — stretches from eastern Louisiana to western Alabama, the prediction center said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the timing for a ground offensive in Rafah, where about 1.5 million Palestinians are sheltering, has been set — but did not reveal the date. He also said that “entry into Rafah” was necessary for a “complete victory over Hamas.” After the announcement, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said Israel had not briefed the US on the Rafah invasion’s timing, and reiterated that the US believes a ground offensive “would have an enormously harmful effect on … civilians, and that it would ultimately hurt Israel’s security.” Meanwhile, a UN committee said it will review whether or not Palestine will be granted full state member status in the United Nations this month. The Palestinian Mission to the UN was granted “non-member observer state” status in November 2012. James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of the teenager who killed four students in the 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Michigan, are set to be sentenced on manslaughter charges today. They each face up to 15 years in prison. The sentencing represents the end of a dramatic saga that has set a precedent of who can be held responsible for a mass shooting, aside from the perpetrator. Both parents were found guilty in separate trials this year for allowing their 15-year-old son to have a gun and ignoring signs of his spiraling mental health. It was the first time the parents of a school shooter have been charged with such serious crimes even though they did not pull the trigger.
Brian Walshe on Thursday came face-to-face for the first time with the man who had been having an affair with his wife before her death, as he took the stand to testify in Walshe’s murder trial.
The Supreme Court on Thursday allowed Texas to use a congressional map that will boost President Donald Trump’s effort to keep Republicans in control of Congress, blocking a lower court decision that found the new boundaries were likely unconstitutional because they were drawn based on race.
The US military carried out a strike Thursday on a suspected drug boat in the Eastern Pacific, killing four people on board, according to a social media post from US Southern Command.
A grand jury voted against indicting New York Attorney General Letitia James after being asked to look at the mortgage fraud case against her a second time, according to multiple people familiar with the development Thursday.
National Guard troops deployed to Washington, DC, can remain there for now, after a federal appeals court on Thursday temporarily froze a judge’s ruling that would have soon required them to leave the city’s streets.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s bad week just got worse. That’s after the long-awaited release Thursday of an inspector general’s report on his sharing of highly sensitive military attack plans on the unclassified app Signal earlier this year.
President Donald Trump has hired a new architect for the White House ballroom amid disputes between the president and his architect originally contracted to complete the project, several sources have told CNN.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth risked compromising sensitive military information that could have endangered US troops through his use of Signal to discuss attack plans, a Pentagon watchdog said in an unclassified report released Thursday. It also details how Hegseth declined to cooperate with the probe.
If nothing else, the controversy over the Trump administration’s second strike on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean has surfaced a long-overdue debate about its already legally dubious first strikes.
Two top House lawmakers emerged divided along party lines after a private briefing with the military official who oversaw September’s attack on an alleged drug vessel that included a so-called double-tap strike that killed surviving crew members, with a top Democrat calling video of the incident that was shared as part of the briefing “one of the most troubling things” he has seen as a lawmaker.
Authorities in Colombia are dealing with increasingly sophisticated criminals, who use advanced tech to produce and conceal the drugs they hope to export around the world. But police and the military are fighting back, using AI to flag suspicious passengers, cargo and mail - alongside more conventional air and sea patrols. CNN’s Isa Soares gets an inside look at Bogotá’s war on drugs.
Young Americans are “a generation under profound strain” with little confidence in institutions and widespread economic concerns, according to a Harvard Institute of Politics survey of adults younger than 30 released Thursday.
As lawmakers demand answers over reports that the US military carried out a follow-up strike that killed survivors during an attacked on an alleged drug boat in the Caribbean, a career Navy SEAL who has spent most of his 30 years of military experience in special operations will be responsible for providing them.