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Bryan Kohberger hearing could set rules for evidence in Idaho murders trial

Prosecutors and attorneys for Bryan Kohberger, the man charged in the killings of four University of Idaho students in 2022, will argue some of the final ground rules they want for his trial in a two-day hearing set to begin Wednesday morning.
Kohberger, 30, is accused in the stabbing deaths of Ethan Chapin, Xana Kernodle, Madison Mogen and Kaylee Goncalves at a rental home near campus in Moscow, Idaho. Prosecutors say the four were killed in the early morning hours of Nov. 13, 2022, and their bodies were discovered later that day.
Kohberger, then a criminal justice graduate student at Washington State University, was arrested in Pennsylvania weeks after the killings. Investigators said they matched his DNA to genetic material recovered from a knife sheath found at the crime scene.
A judge previously entered not guilty pleas on Kohberger’s behalf when he remained silent after being asked how he pleaded.
Attorneys for the prosecution and defense have submitted more than 170 legal filings ahead of Kohberger’s trial, CBS News correspondent Jonathan Vigliotti reported Wednesday on “CBS Mornings.” Among the filings are motions addressing whether Kohberger should face the death penalty if convicted, whether witnesses should be allowed to testify about issues like “touch DNA,” and whether certain people should or should not be allowed in the courtroom during the trial.
The hearing will give the attorneys a chance to make their case in person, discussing the legal reasoning behind their requests. It will also give 4th District Judge Steven Hippler a chance to ask the attorneys questions as he weighs their arguments.
Many of the motions are focused on what evidence can be presented to jurors during the trial. Each side has argued some evidence should be prohibited.
For their part, Kohberger’s defense team is seeking to limit how much of their client’s online shopping data can enter the court, as prosecutors allege the suspect used his Amazon account to purchase what they believe to be the murder weapon — a Ka-Bar knife with sheath and sharpener — and legal filings show they want to introduce evidence of his “click history” at Amazon.com. Kohberger’s attorneys have argued his online shopping history could be taken out of context or not reflect the influence of algorithms that recommend purchases.
Investigators never found the Ka-Bar knife, although they did discover the sheath next to one of the victims at the crime scene.
Defense attorneys have suggested the paraphernalia was planted, in another attempt by Kohberger’s representation to push back on evidence that’s central to the prosecution’s case. His lawyers have also argued against the admissibility of testimony from one of the slain women’s surviving roommates, who claims to have seen a masked man with “bushy eyebrows” in the house the night of the murders. His lawyers suggested the testimony could unfairly influence the jury.
Prosecutors want to introduce a photo that Kohberger took of himself hours after the time of the killings because they say it shows what he looked like at that time.
The defense and prosecution also will likely present arguments over whether jurors should hear audio of a 911 call made by two women in the house roughly eight hours after the killings, as they realized one of their roommates wasn’t waking up.
Regarding the death penalty, Kohberger’s defense has asked the judge to find that an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis would make Kohberger ineligible for the death penalty.
Other topics that could come up include what kinds of questions will be asked during the jury selection process. Attorneys on both sides have submitted proposed questionnaires that could be used to narrow the jury pool down to a small group of candidates, but so far those documents have been sealed from public view.
Hippler can “rule from the bench” — simply telling the attorneys what his decision is on each request — but he can also decide to issue a written ruling sometime after the hearing is over. Sometimes written rulings can be particularly helpful in complicated legal cases like this one, because they can help attorneys quickly find and refer to the judge’s decisions months or even years down the road.
Jury selection in the case is expected to begin July 30, with the trial starting Aug. 11 in the Ada County Courthouse in downtown Boise.
The trial is expected to take nearly three months to complete, lasting into the start of November.

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Confused by the legal battles over troop deployments? Here’s what to know

A member of the Texas National Guard stands at an army reserve training facility on October 07, 2025 in Elwood, Illinois.
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President Trump’s federalization and deployment of National Guard troops to both Oregon and Illinois are facing a pair of legal litmus tests — including one at the Supreme Court — that could be decided in the coming days.
At the heart of both challenges is whether or not to defer to the president’s assessment that major cities in both places — Portland and Chicago — are lawless and in need of immediate military intervention to protect federal property and immigration officers, despite local leaders and law enforcement saying otherwise. Both deployments were done against the wishes of Democratic state governors, and were quickly temporarily blocked by district courts.
On Monday, a divided panel on the 9th Circuit court of appeals overturned a temporary restraining order put in place by a federal judge in Portland, siding with the Trump administration, however another temporary restraining order remains in place.
That ruling came days after the 7th Circuit court of appeals upheld a similar block from a federal judge in Illinois on the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago. The Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to intervene.
Movement in both cases is expected in the coming days, in what has been a dizzying pingpong of legal disputes around Trump’s use of the military domestically in several Democratic-led cities around the country. And while any decision will only impact troop deployment in an individual state, they could impact how courts weigh in on such cases going forward — and embolden the administration, legal experts say.
“This could be a pretty seminal week in terms of the bigger legal fight over domestic deployments,” says Scott R. Anderson, a fellow at the non-partisan Brookings Institution and senior editor of Lawfare.
The 9th Circuit and Portland, Ore.
The 9th Circuit’s decision earlier this week only applies to one of the two temporary restraining orders that U.S. District Judge Karin Immergut issued this month to block the National Guard deployments — meaning that troops can still not be on the streets in Portland. But the federal government has asked Immergut to remove her second temporary order. A court hearing has been scheduled for Friday to discuss the dissolution of that order.

Karin J. Immergut, nominated to be U.S. district judge for the District of Oregon, attends a judicial nomination hearing held by the Senate Judiciary Committee October 24, 2018 in Washington, D.C.
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The 9th Circuit is also deciding whether or not to revisit the ruling made earlier this week with a larger group of judges — and that decision could come before Immergut’s deadline.
Trump has said that the 9th Circuit decision has made him feel empowered to send the National Guard to any city where he deems it necessary.
“That was the decision. I can send the National Guard if I see problems,” Trump told reporters Tuesday. In recent days, Trump has renewed an interest in sending troops to San Francisco.
Justin Levitt, a law professor at Loyola Marymount University Loyola Law School and an expert in constitutional law, worries the ruling by the 9th Circuit “authorized blindness to facts.”
“It said [Trump] can decide that there’s a war when there’s nothing but bluebirds,” he says, noting that’s likely why an immediate call for a full review was made. “I fully expect a larger group of 9th Circuit judges to say we don’t have to be blind to what’s actually going on in order to give ample deference to the Trump administration.”
The Supreme Court and Chicago
At the same time, the Trump administration has issued an emergency appeal to the Supreme Court on whether National Guard troops can be deployed in Illinois, after the 7th Circuit court of appeals upheld a district court’s block.
It’s unknown when, or if, the Supreme Court will issue a decision, although experts expect it in the coming days as well.
The decision, although not precedent-setting, will likely clarify the president’s power to deploy federal military resources — and how deferential the courts should be to his administration’s presentation of facts — but only to a point. Emergency decisions are usually short, without much reasoning provided by the justices, experts say.
“It ends up kind of putting the onus on district and appellate courts to read the tea leaves of those interim orders to inform these much larger questions in very different factual environments, you know, possibly months in the future,” says Chris Mirasola, a national security law professor at the University of Houston Law Center.

National Guard troops arrive at an immigration processing and detention facility on October 09, 2025 in Broadview, Illinois.
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He says that while the emergency decisions from the Supreme Court don’t apply broadly, in recent months, some judges have started to treat them as if they do.
“I think what we’re going to get in at least the medium term is even more confusion than we’ve had so far,” he says.
But just how the Supreme Court might weigh in isn’t clear.
“I think it’s a harder case for the Supreme Court than some people might think, who go in with the assumption the Supreme Court is just naturally inclined toward the administration’s positions on things — and it is in many contexts,” says Anderson of the Brookings Institution.
He says that while it’s standard for courts to be deferential to the president, it’s also standard to believe the facts presented by the local courts.
“That is a tricky, tricky sort of situation here,” Anderson says.
What could this mean for possible deployments going forward?
These two expected decisions will only directly affect Portland or Chicago. But the implications of both – especially something from the Supreme Court – could have ripple effects in future litigation.
Elizabeth Goitein, senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, says that what’s particularly worrying is that the Department of Justice has been expressly celebrating high arrest counts by law enforcement in places like Chicago, while still saying the military is necessary to help.
“If the bar is so low that the President can use the military at a time when his administration is touting how effective civilian law enforcement is, it becomes hard to imagine a scenario where he couldn’t deploy the military,” she says.
Experts say that these legal challenges are just the beginning of what will surely be a long and winding road through the U.S. court system.
“This is really just the first battle. There are a lot of legal questions that come after this,” Anderson says.
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Video: Driver Crashes Car Into Security Gate Near White House

new video loaded: Driver Crashes Car Into Security Gate Near White House
By Axel Boada
October 22, 2025
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New York City ICE raid nets 9 arrests of illegal aliens from West Africa, 4 protesters also arrested

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A federal raid in New York City’s Chinatown neighborhood on Tuesday resulted in the arrests of nine migrants from West Africa who were in the United States illegally, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) told Fox News.
Four protesters were also taken into custody for allegedly blocking ICE officers and throwing objects at them.
Officials said the migrants are from Senegal, Mali and Guinea and were busted for allegedly selling counterfeit items in the area.
ICE said the protesters who were detained have criminal backgrounds.
PROTESTS ERUPT AS ICE AGENTS RAID NYC CHINATOWN STREET VENDORS ALLEGEDLY SELLING COUNTERFEIT GOODS
Federal agents conduct an immigration sweep on Canal Street in Chinatown as protesters gather on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Jake Offenhartz)
Department of Homeland Security Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin told Fox News that ICE and federal partners conducted a “targeted, intelligence-driven enforcement operation” on Canal Street focused on criminal activity related to the sale of alleged counterfeit goods.
“During this law enforcement operation, rioters who were shouting obscenities, became violent and obstructed law enforcement duties, including blocking vehicles and assaulting law enforcement,” McLaughlin wrote in a statement. “Already, one rioter has been arrested for assault on a federal officer.”
During a news conference Tuesday night, Murad Awawdeh, vice president of advocacy at the New York Immigration Coalition, said between 15 and 40 vendors were arrested, and at least two locals were taken into custody for protesting and blocking their arrest efforts.
City officials quickly moved to distance themselves from the raid.
US MARSHAL, ILLEGAL MIGRANT SHOT DURING LOS ANGELES IMMIGRATION OPERATION

Federal agents conduct an immigration sweep on Canal Street in Chinatown, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Jake Offenhartz)
Mayor Eric Adams’ press secretary, Kayla Mamelak Altus, told Fox News that New York City “never cooperates with federal law enforcement on civil deportation matters, in accordance with local laws,” and had “no involvement in this matter.”
“Mayor Adams has been clear that undocumented New Yorkers trying to pursue the American Dream should not be the target of law enforcement, and resources should instead be focused on violent criminals,” she said.

Protestors confront federal agents as they walk down Lafayette Street after an immigration sweep on Canal Street through Chinatown, Tuesday, Oct. 21, 2025, in New York City. (Jake Offenhartz/AP)
Socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani weighed in on X, calling the Manhattan raid “aggressive and reckless.”
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“Federal agents from ICE and HSI—some in military fatigues and masks—descended on Chinatown today in an aggressive and reckless raid on immigrant street vendors,” Mamdani wrote in a post. “Once again, the Trump administration chooses authoritarian theatrics that create fear, not safety. It must stop.”
Fox News’ Greg Wehner and CB Cotton contributed to this report.
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