West
Menendez brothers resentencing hearing postponed due to raging Los Angeles fires
The resentencing hearing for the Menendez brothers, who notoriously shot their parents to death in 1989, is being pushed back by nearly two months due to California’s devastating wildfires.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman announced Friday that the resentencing hearing for Erik and Lyle Menendez will now take place on March 20-21. The hearing was originally scheduled for January 30-31.
“The continuance is due to the impact of recent wildfires on the parties’ extensive preparations for the hearings,” Hochman wrote in a brief statement.
The LA fires have ravaged large swaths of Los Angeles, torching tens of thousands of acres and killing at least 27 people.
MENENDEZ BROTHERS RESENTENCING: WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?
The postponement is the latest development in the brothers’ ongoing fight for freedom.
Joseph Menendez, who goes by his middle name Lyle, and younger brother, Erik Menendez, have been in California prisons since 1996, serving sentences of life without the possibility of parole for their parents’ 1989 slayings.
The brothers claim they shot their father, former RCA Records executive Jose Menendez, in self-defense, arguing they thought he was going to kill them after they warned him they planned to expose him as a child sex abuser.
They also killed their mother, Mary “Kitty” Menendez, who was sitting next to Jose eating ice cream in their Beverly Hills living room when they opened fire.
The brothers went on a $700,000 spending spree as investigators initially suspected a mob hit, but they were eventually arrested.
MENENDEZ BROTHERS PROSECUTOR ANNOUNCES RESENTENCING DECISION
Their first trial ended in a mistrial, when jurors couldn’t agree on their fate. After a second trial in the mid-1990s, in which some of their evidence about the alleged sexual abuse was excluded, jurors agreed with prosecutors that their motive was greed.
Hochman replaced progressive former District Attorney George Gascón, who had pushed for a resentencing that could have freed the brothers under a new California law.
But he lost in a landslide to Hochman, an independent, who said he would fully review the facts of each brother’s case before taking a stance.
About two dozen of their relatives support freedom for the brothers. There has also been public support for their release after a series of documentaries explored their claims of child abuse at the hands of their father, a former RCA Records executive.
Milton Andersen, the men’s uncle, opposes any leniency for his nephews.
The brothers’ attorney says new evidence bolsters their case: Roy Rosello, a member of the 1980s boy band Menudo, came forward with his own allegations of abuse against Jose Menendez in 2023. And a letter, purportedly written by Erik Menendez to his cousin, Andy Cano, eight months before the murders, could support some of the latter’s trial testimony about Jose Menendez. Cano died in 2003, and the letter’s authenticity has been called into question in court filings.
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Utah
Winter storm moves Houston-Utah game to Wed.
HOUSTON — No. 7 Houston’s game against Utah scheduled for Tuesday night has been pushed back to Wednesday because of severe weather forecast for the Houston area.
The Cougars, who have won 10 games in a row, will face Utah at 5 p.m. CST Wednesday.
The postponement also impacted the Houston women’s game. They were scheduled to play Wednesday night but their game against Texas Tech has been moved up to 1 p.m. to accommodate the doubleheader.
The National Weather Service is forecasting 3-5 inches of snow for much of the Houston metropolitan area and both William P. Hobby Airport and George Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston announced Sunday night that flight operations would be suspended Tuesday in anticipation of hazardous conditions.
Washington
Triumphalism reigns in Washington — for now
Then, there are the rank-and-file supporters of the winning party. Wearing transparent plastic raincoats, they have to brave the weather conditions and slosh around icy sidewalks, often being misdirected by police transferred from other cities and states to assist the security operation — it’s a far cry from the well-heeled taking high tea in the lobby of the Willard Hotel, listening to harp music a stone’s throw from the White House.
But with this inauguration, more than any other, there’s sense of a profound break with the past. The crowd who’ve descended on Washington, donning their red MAGA hats, Trump-adorned shirts and American-flag regalia, seem more like an army of sans-culottes — the working-class who played a significant role in the French Revolution.
They feel they’ve conquered, and they mean to take the nation’s capital back.
Whether that’s how it will play out isn’t clear, though. As Trump bragged at a campaign-style pre-inaugural rally on Sunday night, his electoral coalition has expanded. Railing against his adversaries, from Democrats to journalists and immigrants to never-Trump Republicans, he promised his cheering supporters: “Once and for all, we’re going to end the reign of a failed and corrupt political establishment in Washington, a failed administration.”
Other speakers at the raucous rally were even more belligerent, denouncing opponents who stood in Trump’s way. “They did everything they could to stop this movement, and they failed,″ Eric Trump, the president son, said.
“Accountability is coming,” said senior Trump advisor Stephen Miller. “The whole federal bureaucracy is about to learn that they don’t work for themselves; they work for you, they work for President Trump, and they work for the American people. We are about to get our country back and our democracy back.”
But a bigger coalition risks tensions and flare-ups. The MAGA crowd may like the spectacle of tech and Wall Street titans coming to them cap-in-hand, but who will co-opt who? Republicans have a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but the five-seat majority they have in the House of Representatives will make life difficult — and Trump strategists have already walked away from attempting what Trump dubbed “one big, beautiful bill” to enact a huge raft of reforms.
“At the moment Trump doesn’t have to choose between competing parts of his coalition,” Sean Spicer, a former Trump aide who served as press secretary for part of the president’s first term, told POLITICO. “There’s nothing making him have to pick … at the moment.”
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