Hillsborough County, Florida, Sheriff Chad Chronister withdrew his name from consideration to lead the United States Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In a post on X, Chronister issued a statement describing it as an “honor of a lifetime” to have been selected by President-elect Donald Trump to lead the DEA. Chronister added that he had “concluded” that he should withdraw his name from consideration for the role, noting that “there is more work to be done for the citizens” in his county. “To have been nominated by President-Elect Donald Trump to serve as Administrator of the Drug Enforcement Administration is the honor of a lifetime,” Chronister wrote. “Over the past several days, as the gravity of this very important responsibility set in, I’ve concluded that I must respectfully withdraw from consideration.” “There is more work to be done for the citizens of Hillsborough County and a lot of initiatives I am committed to fulfilling,” Chronister continued. “I sincerely appreciate the nomination, outpouring of support by the American people, and look forward to continuing my service as Sheriff of Hillsborough County.” In response to Trump picking Chronister to lead the DEA, several people, such as Mike Cernovich and Liz Wheeler, criticized Chronister over several policies that he enforced during the COVID-19 pandemic. “Trump’s pick for DEA head Chad Chronister withheld taxpayer money from unvaccinated deputies if they got sick,” Wheeler wrote in a post on X. “He gave taxpayer money to vaxxed deputies. Despicable.” “Please, Pres. Trump, withdraw this nomination,” Wheeler continued. “The last thing we need in federal law enforcement is more tyranny.” In a post on X, Cernovich shared an article in which Chronister described himself as being “the most Democratic of Republicans.” Scott Morefield, a writer with Townhall, also noted how Chronister “was an absolute monster during” the COVID-19 pandemic. Morefield wrote that Chronister “arrested a pastor for daring to hold a church service,” among other things.
Dual member of the Probation Business Managers Association and Probation Information Technology Managers Association Oscar Morales has been honored at the 2024 Annual Chief Probation Officers of California Awards Ceremony with the Affiliate Employee of the Year Award.Manhattan’s top federal prosecutor, Damian Williams, has announced his resignation effective December 13, 2024, paving the way for President-elect Donald Trump’s nominee to lead the Southern District of New York (SDNY). The announcement comes a month before Trump’s inauguration. “Today is a bittersweet day for me,” Williams said in a statement. “It is bitter in the sense that I am leaving my dream job, leading an institution I love that is filled with the finest public servants in the world. It is sweet in that I am confident I am leaving at a time when the Office is functioning at an incredibly high level — upholding and exceeding its already high standard of excellence, integrity, and independence.” A Legacy of High-Profile Cases Appointed by President Joe Biden in November 2021, Williams made his mark by prosecuting significant cases across the political and financial spectrum. His tenure included pursuing charges against high-profile Democrats such as former New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez and New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Williams’ office secured convictions against former billionaire financiers, including Archegos Capital Management founder Sung Kook ‘Bill’ Hwang and FTX cryptocurrency exchange founder Sam Bankman-Fried. Additionally, he filed sex-trafficking charges against Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, accusing the music mogul of leading a criminal enterprise involving coerced participation in drug-fueled sex shows. Trump’s Nominee for SDNY Leadership Williams’ resignation coincides with President-elect Trump’s plans to nominate Jay Clayton, a former US Securities and Exchange Commission chairman, to the role. Trump praised Clayton as a “highly respected business leader, counsel, and public servant” and described him as a “strong Fighter for the Truth” in his efforts to “Make America Great Again.” The position will require confirmation by the US Senate. Interim Leadership Transition Edward Y. Kim, Williams’ deputy, will assume the role of acting US Attorney upon his departure. Williams’ departure marks a significant leadership change at one of the nation’s most powerful federal prosecutor’s offices, with a legacy of high-profile cases and stringent enforcement of financial and political accountability.EC: Bluesky Breaches Rules by Not Disclosing Number of Users
Netflix continues to express confidence that its streaming platform is prepared to handle the massive audiences expected for a pair of Christmas Day NFL games along with the start of its live coverage of the World Wrestling Entertainment's "Raw" next month. Concerns were raised after users experienced issues with buffering and low quality feeds during the Jake Paul-Mike Tyson boxing match last month. Netflix has exclusive rights to stream NFL games on Christmas Day between the Kansas City Chiefs at the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Baltimore Ravens at the Houston Texans. Beyonce is scheduled to perform during halftime of the Ravens-Texans game, which could create more server traffic Netflix must take into account. It's a major test after the company reported an average global live audience of 108 million viewers for Paul's victory over Tyson in Arlington, Texas. Downdetector.com , which tracks service outages, announced that there were 90,000 issues reported at one point. "It was a big number, but you don't know, and you can't learn these things until you do them, so you take a big swing," Netflix chief content officer Bela Bajaria told Front Office Sports. "Our teams and our engineers are amazing, moved super quickly, and stabilized it, and many of the members had it back up and running pretty quickly. But we learn from these things. "We've all obviously done a lot of stuff to learn and get ready for the NFL and Beyonce, and so we're totally ready and excited for WWE." WWE president Nick Khan told FOS that Raw's tone and content will not change as it moves to the streaming service, with its first event of 2025 scheduled for Jan. 6. "There's some online chatter about, ‘oh, it's going to be R-rated, or for us old folks, X-rated.' That's definitely not happening," Khan said. "It's family-friendly, multi-generational, advertiser-friendly programming. It's going to stay that way. I would look for more global flair, especially as the relationship continues to develop." --Field Level MediaState, local leaders urge Senate, governor to pass 'revenue sharing trust fund'AP Trending SummaryBrief at 4:39 p.m. EST
NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Married couples across the U.S. have had access to no-fault divorce for more than 50 years, an option many call crucial to supporting domestic abuse victims and key to preventing already crowded family courts from drowning in complicated divorce proceedings. But some advocates for women worried as old comments from now Vice President-elect JD Vance circulated during the presidential campaign opposing no-fault divorce. After President-elect Donald Trump and Vance won the election, warnings began popping up on social media urging women who might be considering divorce to "pull the trigger" while they still could. Some attorneys posted saying they saw a spike in calls from women seeking divorce consultations. Donald and Ivana Trump pose in May 1988 outside the Federal Courthouse in New York after she was sworn in as a United States citizen. Trump — who is twice-divorced — hasn't championed overhauling the country's divorce laws, but in 2021 Vance lamented that divorce is too easily accessible, as have conservative podcasters and others. "We've run this experiment in real time and what we have is a lot of very, very real family dysfunction that's making our kids unhappy," Vance said during a speech at a Christian high school in California, where he criticized people being able to "shift spouses like they change their underwear." Marriage rates held steady but divorce rates of women age 15 and older declined from 2012 to 2022, according to U.S. Census Bureau data released in October. Despite concerns, even those who want to make divorces harder to get say they don't expect big, swift changes. There is not a national coordinated effort underway. States determine their own divorce laws, so national leaders can't directly change policy. "Even in some of the so-called red states, it hasn't gotten anywhere," said Beverly Willett, co-chair of the Coalition for Divorce Reform, whose group unsuccessfully attempted to convince states to repeal their no-fault divorce laws. A couple exchanges wedding bands Oct. 11, 2018, at City Hall in Philadelphia. Mark A. Smith, a political science professor at the University of Washington, said while many Americans became accustomed to no-fault divorce being an option, Vance's previous comments on making it more difficult to separate from a spouse could help jump-start that effort. "Even though he's not directly proposing a policy, it's a topic that hasn't gotten a ton of discussion in the last 15 years," Smith said. "And so to have a national profile politician talk that way is noteworthy." Meanwhile, Republican Party platforms in Texas and Nebraska were amended in 2022 to call for the removal of no-fault divorce. Louisiana's Republican Party considered something similar this year but declined to do so. A handful of proposals were introduced in conservative-led statehouses over the years, but all immediately stalled after they were filed. In January, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Dusty Deevers introduced legislation that would have removed married couples from filing for divorce on the grounds of incompatibility. Deevers backed the bill after writing a piece declaring no-fault divorce was an "abolition of marital obligation." Sen. JD Vance smiles as his wife Usha Vance applauds Nov. 6 at an election-night watch party at the Palm Beach Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla. Similarly, in South Carolina, two Republican lawmakers in 2023 filed a bill that would have required both spouses to file for a no-fault divorce application rather than just one. In South Dakota, a Republican lawmaker attempted to remove irreconcilable difference as grounds for divorce since 2020. None of the sponsors of these bills responded to interview requests from The Associated Press. All are members of their state's conservative Freedom Caucus. Nevertheless, some Democratic lawmakers say they remain worried about the future of no-fault divorce. They point to the U.S. Supreme Court overturning the constitutional right to abortion in 2022 as an example of a long-accepted option that was revoked through a decades-long effort. "When you choose to be silent, you allow for this to creep in," said Democratic South Dakota Rep. Linda Duba. "These are the bills that gain a foothold because you choose to be silent." Before California became the first state to adopt a no-fault divorce option in 1969, married couples had to prove their spouse violated one of the approved "faults" outlined in their state's divorce law or risk a judge denying their divorce, said Joanna Grossman, a law professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. Qualified reasons varied from state to state, but largely included infidelity, incarceration or abandonment. Donald and Marla Trump wave to photographers Dec. 20, 1993, as they enter their wedding reception in New York's Plaza Hotel. The system was a particular burden on domestic violence victims, who are often women who could be stuck in dangerous marriages while they try to prove their partner's abuse in court through expensive and lengthy legal proceedings. "If there was any evidence that the couple both wanted to get divorced that was supposed to be denied because divorce was not something you got because you wanted it, it was something you got because you've been wronged in a way that the state thought was significant," Grossman said. To date, every state in the U.S. adopted a no-fault divorce option. However, 33 states still have a list of approved "faults" to file as grounds for divorce — ranging from adultery to felony conviction. In 17 states, married people only have the option of choosing no-fault divorce to end their marriages. Photo Credit: shisu_ka / Shutterstock Marriage—and divorce—in the U.S. today are starkly different than in earlier eras of the country’s history. A series of economic, legal, and social shifts reshaped marriage in the second half of the 20th century. outside of the home in the post-World War II era, which provided avenues to financial security and independence outside of marriage. Greater emphasis on and career development have led young people to wait longer to enter marriage. States began to adopt throughout the 1960s and 1970s that made it easier to end a marriage. Meanwhile, have made it more common for couples to cohabitate, combine finances, and raise children prior to getting married—or without getting married at all. These trends have contributed to a decline in the overall number of marriages and to delays in when people get married for the first time. In the U.S., there are currently only , compared to 10.9 five decades ago. For those who do choose to get married, the age of first marriage is happening later. As late as the early 1970s, the median age for a first marriage in the U.S. was just 22. By 2018, that figure had increased to 28.8. These shifts have also affected how likely married couples are to stay together. As women entered the workforce in the mid-20th century and feminism and the sexual revolution took hold, rates of divorce rose quickly throughout the 1960s and 1970s. From 1960 to 1980, the divorce rate per 1,000 people in the U.S. more than doubled from 2.2 to 5.2. But the rate began to fall steadily after 1980, and as of 2018, the rate of divorce had dropped to 2.9 per 1,000 people. The between rates of divorce and age at first marriage has been borne out over time, but it also explains geographic differences in rates of divorce. Today, most of the states with the lowest rates of divorce are also those with a higher median age for marriage. States like New Jersey, New York, California, and Massachusetts all stand out for having fewer than 10% of adults divorced and an age at first marriage above 30. One exception to this is Utah, which has the lowest overall median age for first marriage at 25.5 but also the third-lowest share of divorced adults at 9%, likely due in part to the state’s strong religious ties to the . In contrast, Maine and Nevada lead all states in the share of the population currently divorced at 13.9% and 13.8%, respectively. And at the local level, many of the cities with the highest levels of divorce are found in Florida, Appalachia, and the Southwest. The data used in this analysis is from the U.S. Census Bureau’s . To determine the most divorced locations, researchers at calculated the percentage of adults currently divorced. In the event of a tie, the location with the higher percentage of adults currently separated was ranked higher. To improve relevance, only cities with at least 100,000 residents were included. Additionally, cities were grouped into cohorts based on population size: small (100,000–149,999), midsize (150,000–349,999), and large (350,000 or more). Here are the most divorced cities in the U.S. Photo Credit: Jacob Boomsma / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock Photo Credit: photo.ua / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Jonny Trego / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Tupungato / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Kevin J King / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Sean Pavone / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Galina Savina / Shutterstock Photo Credit: f11photo / Shutterstock Photo Credit: CHARLES MORRA / Shutterstock Photo Credit: LHBLLC / Shutterstock Photo Credit: Valiik30 / Shutterstock Photo Credit: turtix / Shutterstock Stay up-to-date on the latest in local and national government and political topics with our newsletter.EXCLUSIVE: David O. Sacks Productions, Mark Goffman and Getaway Entertainment are teaming to produce a feature-length film about Satoshi Nakamoto, the enigmatic founder of Bitcoin , with Sophia Banks set to direct. The movie, inspired by Andrew O’Hagan’s longform article “The Satoshi Affair,” will delve into the mystery surrounding the elusive creator of the world’s most revolutionary digital currency, blending investigative journalism with captivating storytelling. “This film will be akin to watching The Social Network without knowing who the Mark Zuckerberg character might actually be,” Sacks remarked. “I’m delighted that we have the correct team in place to bring O’Hagan’s investigation, and the events since that period, to life.” Producers David Sacks and Daniel Brunt optioned the article and took it to longtime collaborator Mark Goffman, who is adapting the screenplay and producing with Sacks and Brunt. Producing for Getaway Entertainment are Damiano Tucci, Banks and Arwen Elys Dayton. David Seimer is executive producing. The film will explore the dramatic events that led O’Hagan to investigate the mysterious figure known only as Satoshi Nakamoto, and his pursuit to uncover the true identity of the cryptic inventor behind Bitcoin. O’Hagan’s article was originally published in the London Review of Books as a long read and then published by Faber in the anthology The Secret Life . His first-person search for the truth takes readers on a journey through the technological innovation that has transformed the global financial system, along with the numerous eccentric and mercurial personalities he encountered. “We are so excited to be partnering with David, Daniel and Mark on this upcoming project,” said Tucci. “The story of Bitcoin’s creator is one that has captivated the world for years. We can’t wait to dive into one of the greatest modern-day mysteries and provide a deeper look into the world of cryptocurrency.” Goffman added, “What I love is that it isn’t another story about crypto fraudsters or even greed. This is the story of highly flawed, overlooked outsiders who rebelled against Wall Street in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis that took everything from them and millions of other people. And they’ve created a currency that has revolutionized the global financial industry.” Banks is known for her ability to blend gripping, character-driven narratives with thought-provoking themes. “The challenge of bringing such a complex story to life is one I am eager to take on,” said Banks, whose directing credits include the 2022 action thriller Black Site starring Michelle Monaghan, Jason Clarke and Jai Courtney. “This film will not only explore the question of ‘Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?’ but also the cultural and technological ripple effect that the creation of Bitcoin has had, and continues to have, on our world.” Getaway’s upcoming slate of projects includes the Cary Joji Fukunaga-helmed Blood on Snow starring Tom Hardy and Aaron Taylor-Johnson; Oh, Canada from Paul Schrader starring Richard Gere, Uma Thurman, Jacob Elordi and Michael Imperioli; Hand of Dante from Julian Schnabel with an ensemble cast including Gal Gadot, Oscar Isaac, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa and Al Pacino; and The Luckiest Man In America starring Paul Walter Hauser, Walton Goggins, Maisie Williams, David Strathairn and Johnny Knoxville.Cheers and beers for Ruud van Nistelrooy as Leicester reign starts with win
Zoom Earnings, Revenue Top Views, Guidance Slightly Above Estimates
The deputy first minister reiterated a promise to introduce legislation disqualifying lying politicians amid concerns about vexatious complaints and politicisation of the courts. Huw Irranca-Davies restated the pledge as he appeared before the Senedd’s standards committee to give evidence to an inquiry about accountability on December 2. Lee Waters questioned if the commitment, to a bill on disqualifying politicians found guilty of deception through an independent judicial process, will be kept by 2026. Mr Irranca-Davies warned of practical complexity in disqualifying candidates and Senedd members. Mr Irranca-Davies said any new legislation would need to be cognisant of freedom of expression, under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The standards committee is weighing up recommendations including creating a criminal offence of deception, a civil offence, or strengthening the existing self-regulation system. Mick Antoniw, a former minister who gave the initial commitment to legislation to avert defeat in a Senedd vote, argued the standards committee sits as a quasi-judicial body. Turning to parliamentary privilege, which affords MPs immunity from legal challenge, Mr Irranca-Davies said the precious principle allows politicians to speak freely. In the Senedd, privilege is limited to defamation and contempt rather than absolute but moves are afoot to provide parity across the four nations. Calling for the standards process as a whole to be strengthened, he backed the introduction of a system of recall, which would allow voters to boot out Senedd members between elections He described the triggers used in Westminster: a custodial sentence for 12 months or less, a suspension of at least ten days or an expenses offence conviction: as a useful starting point. From 2026, people will vote for parties rather than individuals as the Senedd ditches the first-past-the-post system in favour of a full form of proportional representation. The next candidate on the political party’s list would be elected, with the public having no further say on who would replace a recalled Senedd member. The deputy first minister advocated a simple yes-no public vote on whether a politician should stay in office following a recommendation of recall from the standards committee.CHARLESTON SOUTHERN 83, MIAMI (FL) 79
