Wisconsin
Man serving life for Alabama murder also sentenced in Wisconsin killing
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Michigan man already serving a life sentence for a murder conviction in Alabama also has been ordered to spend life in prison for the killing of a man in Wisconsin.
Caleb Anderson, 25, received his second life sentence on Monday in a Green Bay courtroom. He pleaded no contest last month to first-degree intentional homicide in the stabbing death of Patrick Ernst, according to WLUK-TV.
Authorities have said that Anderson assaulted an 18-year-old woman in 2022 while she jogged in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He then drove to Wisconsin where Ernst, 65, was killed in Ernst’s Green Bay apartment. Authorities say Anderson then stole’s Ernst’s car before driving to Alabama, where Dwight Dixon was killed.
Court documents have shown that Anderson found Ernst through a smartphone app that men use to meet other men for sex.
Anderson, of Caspian, Michigan, was accused of taking selfie videos and photos with Ernst’s body, writing a Bible verse on the wall and leaving a handwritten apology.
Anderson was convicted of capital murder in January in Alabama in Dixon’s death, according to WLUK-TV.
Texas
AG sues Biden administration over listing lizard as endangered
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that his office is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for declaring a rare lizard endangered earlier this year.
The dunes sagebrush lizard burrows in the sand dunes in the Mescalero-Monahans ecosystem 30 miles west of Odessa — the same West Texas land that supports the state’s biggest oil and gas fields.
For four decades, biologists warned federal regulators about the existential threat that oil and gas exploration and development poses for the reptile’s habitat, while industry representatives fought against the designation, saying it would scare off companies interested in drilling in the nation’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basin.
In May, federal regulators ruled that the industry’s expansion posed a grave threat to the lizard’s survival when listing it as endangered.
Now, the state’s top lawyer is suing.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Paxton said. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”
Paxton’s statement said the listing of the lizard was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, adding that the Fish and Wildlife Service “failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data” when declaring the lizard endangered and did not take into account conservation efforts already in place to protect the lizard.
The 2.5-inch-long lizard only lives in about 4% of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which spans Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the lizard has been found in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward and Winkler counties.
According to a 2023 analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the lizard is “functionally extinct” across 47% of its range.
The listing requires oil and gas companies to avoid operating in areas the lizard inhabits, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to determine where those areas are because it is still gathering information. Oil and gas companies could incur fines up to $50,000 and prison time, depending on the violation, if they operate in those areas.
Paxton’s office said that because the Fish and Wildlife Service has not specified those areas, it has left operators and landowners uncertain about what they can do with their own land.
Washington
FBI: Son of suspect in Trump assassination attempt arrested on child sexual abuse images charges
WASHINGTON (AP) — The son of the man suspected in the assassination attempt in Florida against former President Donald Trump has been arrested on federal charges of possessing child sexual abuse images.
Oran Alexander Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” and found hundreds of files depicting child sexual abuse, an FBI agent said in court papers.
Investigators who seized multiple electronic devices found videos sent to Oran Routh in July as well as chats from a messaging application commonly used by people who share child sexual abuse material, the FBI agent said.
He faces two charges of possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material and is expected to appear later Tuesday in federal court in North Carolina.
There was no attorney listed for Oran Routh in court papers. Phone messages left for relatives of Oran Routh were not immediately returned.
Oran Routh’s father, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been charged with federal gun offenses in connection to the attempted assassination at Trump’s Florida golf course earlier this month.
Prosecutors have indicated much more serious attempted assassination charges are coming.
Oran Routh’s arrest was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.
A federal judge on Monday agreed with Justice Department prosecutors that Ryan Routh should remain locked up while he awaits trial in his case.
Prosecutors have said Ryan Routh left behind a note detailing his plans to kill the former president and kept in his car a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was to appear. The note describing Routh’s plans was placed in a box that he dropped off months earlier at the home of an unidentified person who did not open it until after Ryan Routh’s arrest, prosecutors said.
Ryan Routh is currently charged with illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions, including two charges of possessing stolen goods in 2002 in North Carolina, and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
But a prosecutor said in court Monday that they would pursue additional charges before a grand jury, accusing him of having tried to “assassinate a major political candidate” — charges that would warrant life in prison in the event of a conviction.
Ryan Routh was arrested Sept. 15 after a Secret Service agent who was scoping the Trump International Golf Club for potential security threats saw a partially obscured man’s face and the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle, aimed directly at the former president.
The agent fired at Routh, who sped away before being stopped by officials in a neighboring county.
Man serving life for Alabama murder also sentenced in Wisconsin killing
GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — A Michigan man already serving a life sentence for a murder conviction in Alabama also has been ordered to spend life in prison for the killing of a man in Wisconsin.
Caleb Anderson, 25, received his second life sentence on Monday in a Green Bay courtroom. He pleaded no contest last month to first-degree intentional homicide in the stabbing death of Patrick Ernst, according to WLUK-TV.
Authorities have said that Anderson assaulted an 18-year-old woman in 2022 while she jogged in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. He then drove to Wisconsin where Ernst, 65, was killed in Ernst’s Green Bay apartment. Authorities say Anderson then stole’s Ernst’s car before driving to Alabama, where Dwight Dixon was killed.
Court documents have shown that Anderson found Ernst through a smartphone app that men use to meet other men for sex.
Anderson, of Caspian, Michigan, was accused of taking selfie videos and photos with Ernst’s body, writing a Bible verse on the wall and leaving a handwritten apology.
Anderson was convicted of capital murder in January in Alabama in Dixon’s death, according to WLUK-TV.
Texas
AG sues Biden administration over listing lizard as endangered
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton announced Monday that his office is suing the U.S. Department of the Interior, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and Biden administration officials for declaring a rare lizard endangered earlier this year.
The dunes sagebrush lizard burrows in the sand dunes in the Mescalero-Monahans ecosystem 30 miles west of Odessa — the same West Texas land that supports the state’s biggest oil and gas fields.
For four decades, biologists warned federal regulators about the existential threat that oil and gas exploration and development poses for the reptile’s habitat, while industry representatives fought against the designation, saying it would scare off companies interested in drilling in the nation’s most lucrative oil and natural gas basin.
In May, federal regulators ruled that the industry’s expansion posed a grave threat to the lizard’s survival when listing it as endangered.
Now, the state’s top lawyer is suing.
“The Biden-Harris Administration’s unlawful misuse of environmental law is a backdoor attempt to undermine Texas’s oil and gas industries which help keep the lights on for America,” Paxton said. “I warned that we would sue over this illegal move, and now we will see them in court.”
Paxton’s statement said the listing of the lizard was a violation of the Endangered Species Act, adding that the Fish and Wildlife Service “failed to rely on the best scientific and commercial data” when declaring the lizard endangered and did not take into account conservation efforts already in place to protect the lizard.
The 2.5-inch-long lizard only lives in about 4% of the 86,000-square-mile Permian Basin, which spans Texas and New Mexico, according to the Fish and Wildlife Service. In Texas, the lizard has been found in Andrews, Crane, Gaines, Ward and Winkler counties.
According to a 2023 analysis by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the lizard is “functionally extinct” across 47% of its range.
The listing requires oil and gas companies to avoid operating in areas the lizard inhabits, but the Fish and Wildlife Service has yet to determine where those areas are because it is still gathering information. Oil and gas companies could incur fines up to $50,000 and prison time, depending on the violation, if they operate in those areas.
Paxton’s office said that because the Fish and Wildlife Service has not specified those areas, it has left operators and landowners uncertain about what they can do with their own land.
Washington
FBI: Son of suspect in Trump assassination attempt arrested on child sexual abuse images charges
WASHINGTON (AP) — The son of the man suspected in the assassination attempt in Florida against former President Donald Trump has been arrested on federal charges of possessing child sexual abuse images.
Oran Alexander Routh was arrested this week after authorities searched his Greensboro, North Carolina, home “in connection with an investigation unrelated to child exploitation,” and found hundreds of files depicting child sexual abuse, an FBI agent said in court papers.
Investigators who seized multiple electronic devices found videos sent to Oran Routh in July as well as chats from a messaging application commonly used by people who share child sexual abuse material, the FBI agent said.
He faces two charges of possessing and receiving child sexual abuse material and is expected to appear later Tuesday in federal court in North Carolina.
There was no attorney listed for Oran Routh in court papers. Phone messages left for relatives of Oran Routh were not immediately returned.
Oran Routh’s father, Ryan Wesley Routh, has been charged with federal gun offenses in connection to the attempted assassination at Trump’s Florida golf course earlier this month.
Prosecutors have indicated much more serious attempted assassination charges are coming.
Oran Routh’s arrest was first reported Tuesday by ABC News.
A federal judge on Monday agreed with Justice Department prosecutors that Ryan Routh should remain locked up while he awaits trial in his case.
Prosecutors have said Ryan Routh left behind a note detailing his plans to kill the former president and kept in his car a handwritten list of dates and venues where Trump was to appear. The note describing Routh’s plans was placed in a box that he dropped off months earlier at the home of an unidentified person who did not open it until after Ryan Routh’s arrest, prosecutors said.
Ryan Routh is currently charged with illegally possessing his gun in spite of multiple felony convictions, including two charges of possessing stolen goods in 2002 in North Carolina, and with possessing a firearm with an obliterated serial number.
But a prosecutor said in court Monday that they would pursue additional charges before a grand jury, accusing him of having tried to “assassinate a major political candidate” — charges that would warrant life in prison in the event of a conviction.
Ryan Routh was arrested Sept. 15 after a Secret Service agent who was scoping the Trump International Golf Club for potential security threats saw a partially obscured man’s face and the barrel of a semiautomatic rifle, aimed directly at the former president.
The agent fired at Routh, who sped away before being stopped by officials in a neighboring county.
