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In the blue tide overtaking the country this week, Alabama voters elected the first openly gay sheriff as well as the state’s first openly transgender legislator.
Democrat Brett Jones, in Madison County, defeated a two-term Republican incumbent to take over the law enforcement role. Jones is a former Navy SEAL who wrote a 2014 book about his experience of being gay in the military called “Pride: The Story of the First Openly Gay Navy SEAL.”
Jones, a police officer at the University of Alabama at Huntsville, campaigned on transparency, jail reform and discontinuing the county’s contract with Flock, the controversial license plate reader system that has sparked widespread concern about overreaching government surveillance.
“My being gay has absolutely nothing to do with how I’m going to do my job,” Jones told reporters in Alabama this week. “My job is to reform that jail and respect people’s constitutional rights.”
Voters also chose Allison Montgomery, a software engineer and civil rights advocate, as the first openly transgender person elected to the Alabama state legislature.
Floridians this week adopted a constitutional amendment that could cut property taxes for many homeowners, but that public officials have warned also threatens to starve municipal budgets around the state.
The proposal, known as Amendment 3, had been the subject of town hall meetings, multimillion-dollar ad campaigns, op-eds and news conferences in the lead-up to Tuesday’s election.
Its supporters, including Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Florida Realtors, described it as much-needed relief for millions of homeowners. Amendment 3, as it is widely known, would extend the state’s homestead exemption from the current $50,000 a year per eligible home to $150,000 beginning in 2027. That number would rise to $250,000 in 2028. New residents have to live in Florida for five years before qualifying for expanded exemptions.
“You vote for it, you’ll pay less. End of story,” DeSantis said in one September news conference.
But the amendment faced broad opposition from mayors and city managers, police and fire chiefs, and advocacy groups who warned the policy would deprive local governments of billions of dollars — and lead to painful cuts in key services.
Despite those pleas, on Tuesday the measure cleared the 60 percent of support required to pass, receiving about 62 percent of votes.
What now?
DeSantis said Wednesday he plans to call a special session before his term ends for lawmakers to work out the details for implementation. In addition, Gov.-elect Byron Donalds has said he hopes to eliminate homestead property taxes in the state entirely.
NAIROBI — Paul Nthenge Mackenzie, a cult leader in Kenya who was found guilty last month of the murder of 191 people, all but one of them children, was sentenced Friday to 200 years in prison.
Judge Diana Kavedza, reading the sentence in a courtroom in Mombasa, Kenya, said Mackenzie would serve the prison time for murder by starvation and murder by direct homicide, 100 years for each.
The televangelist, now 53, was arrested in April 2023 after at least 400 people, mostly members of his Good News International Church, were found buried in shallow graves in the Shakahola Forest in Kenya’s coastal region. Some of the dead have never been identified.
During court proceedings, relatives and friends accused Mackenzie of indoctrinating his congregation with doomsday sermons. He discouraged modern medicine, including vaccinations, and government initiatives such obtaining identification cards and participating in the census.
Education was discouraged, and church members burned their school certificates. Children died because of a lack of medical care. Eventually, Mackenzie persuaded much of his congregation to move into the forest and encouraged them to fast until they died.
Fox Corp. on Friday announced it had completed its $22 billion deal to take over Roku, one of the leading smart TV companies.
“Beginning today, our top priority for the combined company is to continue to relentlessly serve audiences and partners, while reinforcing the openness and choice that is the essence of the Roku platform,” Lachlan Murdoch, executive chair and CEO of Fox Corp., wrote in a news release.
The deal, announced in June, will plunge Fox deeper into the Hollywood streaming wars, years after it sold off its own film and television studio, then called 21st Century Fox, to Disney for $71 billion in 2019.
It will also give Fox an advantage in free, ad-supported streaming at a time when large streamers are embracing advertising to complement their subscription plans. Fox already owned Tubi and now will also own the Roku Channel — two of the leaders in free-to-stream media.
The cash-and-stock deal is effective today with Roku shares already halted on the Nasdaq stock exchange.
The Justice Department on Friday said it had closed an antitrust investigation into the merger deal, finding that it was unlikely to harm competition.
However, Fox promised the government that it would continue carrying content from its competitors on Roku’s platform for at least three years, and said it won’t discriminate against rival media companies using the platform.
Amazon on Friday announced a two-part docu-series focused on first lady Melania Trump’s return to Washington in early 2025, saying the program will provide “unprecedented insight” into her life.
The new program, titled “Melania, The Series,” will begin airing Nov. 20 on Prime Video. The production follows Amazon’s decision to acquire and market a documentary earlier this year about the first lady. That film, “Melania,” sparked criticism that Amazon was seeking to curry favor with the Trump administration, and several Democrats opened an investigation.
Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns The Washington Post, has denied that the film was an effort to win influence, distanced himself from its production and said it was a business decision.
The new show will include events recorded after the January 2025 inauguration, according to a news release from Amazon. Brett Ratner, who directed the documentary, also directed the episodes of the new show.
An Amazon spokesperson said Friday that the original licensing deal for the documentary also covered the new series.
Amazon reportedly spent $40 million to acquire the documentary and an additional $35 million to promote it.
Celebrities typically apologize for their wrongdoings with a statement via Notes app — but Martha Stewart went further this week after she dressed up as a homeless person for Halloween, sparking intense backlash.
Over the weekend, the lifestyle entrepreneur posted a photo to Instagram wearing a plaid shirt, ripped jeans, a torn sweater and what looked like dirt on her face, frowning, as she held up a sign that read “I AM HUNGRY HELP ME!!” Social media users did not find this costume amusing, especially from someone so wealthy.
Stewart deleted the picture and sent a statement to Page Six, explaining she didn’t mean to offend anyone and was trying to raise awareness about homelessness. Then she posted another statement, apologizing and adding that her earlier explanation wasn’t enough, adding that her costume was “insensitive” and “not funny”: “I know many people are suffering economically.”
It didn’t end there: TMZ soon posted footage of Stewart at a Florida corporate event, saying that she threw together the costume after she appeared on the “Today” show, and during a cooking segment, co-host Craig Melvin spilled chocolate on her sweater — one that she was supposed to wear later to a Halloween party. Finally, it all culminated on Friday with Stewart completing the ultimate celebrity mea culpa: Going on live morning television to apologize in person.
During a brief and slightly awkward interview, Stewart sat down with Melvin and explained that she did not blame him for the chocolate-spilling incident. Stewart emphasized she did not mean to make light of any social issues, and recognizes the costume was a mistake: “I was stupid. What else can I say? I’m so sorry, and I hope that my followers and my fans and the rest of America forgives me for doing something that was not meant in any way to be a bad thing.”
Melvin and Stewart agreed that she would like to move on, and that the “Today” show will see her again next week to talk about cooking for Thanksgiving.
One of President Donald Trump’s fiercest defenders in Congress criticized Pete Hegseth on Friday, marking the latest Republican lawmaker to distance themselves from the polarizing defense secretary after the GOP’s massive losses in the midterm elections.
In an interview with News Nation, Rep. James Comer (Kentucky), chair of the House Oversight Committee, declined to say whether he wanted Trump to replace Hegseth, saying the decision was up to the president.
But Comer emphasized that lawmakers have “a lot of questions about Hegseth” and want to know how the administration will end the Iran war, now in its ninth month.
“We have no idea what the strategy is moving forward in Iran,” Comer said.
Hegseth faces a likely impeachment vote over the war next week when lawmakers return to Washington. It remains to be seen whether the effort, led by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), will succeed, though it’s unlikely to result in a conviction if it advances to the Senate.
Senior GOP officials — led by Vice President JD Vance — have publicly faulted the Iran war and its resulting spike in energy prices for the Republicans’ electoral wipeout this week, as Democrats regained control of the House and the Senate.
Speaking with reporters this week, Trump reiterated his support for Hegseth, who has vowed to remain at the Pentagon.
In a combative video posted on social media on Thursday, and reposted by his press team, the defense secretary said he was “not going to back down” despite the threats of an impeachment and investigations from the Democratic Congress next year.
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