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Robert Morris, Texas megachurch pastor, pleads guilty to sexually abusing a child

admin - Latest News - October 2, 2025
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PAWHUSKA, Okla.— Robert Morris, the Texas megachurch pastor who built Gateway Church into one of the largest congregations in the country, pleaded guilty Thursday in Osage County District Court to charges that he sexually abused a girl in the 1980s



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Oct. 9, 2025, 5:00 AM EDTBy Dareh GregorianPresident Donald Trump’s efforts to deploy National Guard troops in states that don’t want them will be tested in two different courts Thursday.Lawyers for Chicago and Illinois will go before a federal judge to try to block troops from being deployed in the country’s third most populous city, while attorneys for Portland and Oregon will urge a federal appeals court to leave in place a restraining order against troop deployments there.The hearings — in Chicago and San Francisco — are set to begin at noon ET in courthouses about 2,000 miles apart.“We’re looking for the courts to do the right thing,” Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a Democrat, told reporters Wednesday.Trump defended his actions in both states. “Everything we’re doing is very lawful. What they’re doing is not lawful,” he said at the White House later Wednesday.Illinois sued Monday seeking to block the administration from deploying federalized National Guard troops on the streets of Chicago, contending it’s illegal, unconstitutional and unnecessary.Trump ordered the deployment over the weekend. U.S. Northern Command said that 500 National Guard members have been mobilized — 300 from Illinois and 200 from Texas — and that some of the troops from Texas were on duty “in the greater Chicago area” as of Wednesday night.“These forces will protect U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and other U.S. Government personnel who are performing federal functions, including the enforcement of federal law, and to protect federal property,” Northern Command said in a statement.The lawsuit argues that there’s no emergency in Chicago and that the administration has been trying to provoke unrest by increasing the presence of federal law agents who are using “unprecedented, brute force tactics for civil immigration enforcement.”Those tactics include shooting “chemical munitions at groups that included media and legal observers” at an ICE facility outside Chicago and staging a dramatically produced raid at an apartment building in which agents rappelled down from Black Hawk helicopters.“The community’s horror at these tactics and their significant consequences have resulted in entirely foreseeable protests,” the suit said.“The deployment of federalized National Guard, including from another state, infringes on Illinois’s sovereignty and right to self-governance” and “will cause only more unrest,” it added.The White House has maintained that Trump is trying to keep American cities and federal personnel safe. Trump said this week that if the courts wind up derailing his efforts to use the National Guard, he could invoke the Insurrection Act, which would empower him to use the U.S. military domestically.Trump floats invoking Insurrection Act amid showdown with Democratic-led cities12:07″The Trump administration is committed to restoring law and order in American cities that are plagued by violence due to Democrat mismanagement. And President Trump will not stand by while violent rioters attack federal law enforcement officers,” White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said in a statement Wednesday.The administration is expected to make similar arguments to a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit of Appeals in San Francisco, which it’s asking to pause a federal judge’s order in Oregon over the weekend blocking the state’s National Guard from being federalized and deployed.The “extraordinary” order by U.S. District Judge Karen Immergut “improperly impinges on the Commander in Chief’s supervision of military operations, countermands a military directive to officers in the field, and endangers federal personnel and property,” Justice Department attorneys contended in their court filing.They also noted that the 9th Circuit blocked a similar restraining order this year involving National Guard troops in Los Angeles and held then that the president’s judgment about whether troops are needed should get “a great level of deference.”White House expects it will win lawsuit challenging deployment of National Guard to Portland12:06Immergut, a Trump appointee, said in her order that the Portland case is different from the California one, in part because it appears Trump was acting in bad faith with his exaggerated claims of violence in the city, including that it was “war ravaged” with “ICE Facilities under siege from attack by Antifa” and “crazy people” who “try to burn down buildings, including federal buildings” every night.While there had been some violent protests in June, demonstrations “were not significantly violent or disruptive in the days — or even weeks — leading up to the President’s directive on September 27,” Immergut wrote, describing the protests as mostly “small and uneventful.””On September 26, the eve of the President’s directive, law enforcement ‘observed approximately 8-15 people at any given time out front of ICE. 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Sept. 23, 2025, 2:00 PM EDTBy Max GaoCanadian comic Mae Martin knows their new Netflix limited series — which blends light-hearted comedic elements with the anxiety-inducing horror and thriller genres — may feel like a dramatic departure for anyone who is familiar with their stand-up routines and their semi-autobiographical show, “Feel Good.”“It’s funny because it doesn’t feel like a departure for me,” Martin, who identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns, told NBC News. “It feels thematically in the same universe as everything I do. It’s introspective, and there’s themes about processing adolescence and identity.”“Wayward,” which premieres Thursday, stars Martin as Alex Dempsey, a police officer who has just moved to the seemingly picturesque small town of Tall Pines with his pregnant wife, Laura (Sarah Gadon). During one of his first days in the city, where his wife grew up, Alex crosses paths with two students from the local academy for “troubled teens” who are desperately trying to plot their escape. As he begins investigating a series of unusual incidents, Alex suspects that Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette) — the school’s enigmatic leader who shares a troubling personal connection with Laura — might be at the center of all the town’s problems.“Alex is sort of the eyes of the audience and trying to piece it all together. It’s so seductive to be in a town that is so accepting and progressive on the surface and is offering him everything he’s always dreamed of,” Martin explained. But over the course of eight episodes, Alex, who is a transgender man, “is grappling with his moral compass and also his intense yearning to have that nuclear family and mainstream acceptance that he’s always wanted.”After Martin rose to fame internationally during the Covid-19 pandemic for co-creating the romantic dramedy series “Feel Good,” in which they played a fictionalized version of themselves, some viewers may have expected the writer to create a new project that would feel similarly autobiographical. But Martin said they have been wanting to make a show for decades set against the backdrop of the “troubled teen industry,” a term used for the broad range of controversial youth residential programs aimed at struggling teenagers.“My best friend Nicole got sent to a troubled teen institute in the States, and she was gone for about two years,” said Martin, who grew up in Toronto. “That sparked my interest in some of the shadier practices and the really strange origins of that industry, which all trace back to self-help cults in the 1970s and this really theatrical behavioral modification.”At first, Martin thought the series would be more of a classic, coming-of-age story in the vein of “Stand By Me” or “Holes.” But after hearing about their best friend’s harrowing experiences at one of those unregulated schools — where she recalled being starved, sleep deprived and forced to dig and stand in her own grave overnight — Martin could tell that a tale about troubled teens being held against their will would be much more in line with classic horror and thriller films such as “Fargo,” “Get Out” and “Rosemary’s Baby.”Over time, Martin said, they became more interested in looking “directly at how many young people are pathologized at such a young age, just for having a pretty normal reaction to a sick society.” “When you take kids who are in crisis and your reaction is punitive, you take away their opportunity to go through all the normal milestones of development, and you ascribe labels to them that really affect how they see their own potential,” they said. Mae Martin and Toni Collette in “Wayward.”Michael Gibson / NetflixMartin said they have found themselves increasingly thinking about “the state of the world that we’re passing down to young people, and about intergenerational conflict.”“As we get older, we suppress so much of our sensitivity and our critical thinking and even our empathy just in order to survive in the world,” Martin said. “So we can’t help but kind of gaslight young people out of their very correct observation that the world is insane, and that there’s a lot of hypocrisy out there.”From the outset, Martin said, they knew they wanted to play Alex. While his gender identity is only explored in passing, “a lot of his inner yearning is connected to that and how he sees himself and wants to be seen in the world,” especially as a husband and an expectant father, Martin explained.“The show’s set in 2003, and I think there wasn’t a lot of fluency around nonbinary identity then and not a lot of they/thems,” Martin noted, adding that playing a man “just made sense” to them. “Who knows where I’ll end up on that spectrum? But it felt pretty natural to me as an actor — more natural than it would’ve been to play a woman.”As the creator and co-showrunner of “Wayward,” Martin is one of the few LGBTQ writers in Hollywood who are shepherding their own mainstream projects. While they said they try not to think too much about their public profile when creating their projects, Martin said it is “scary” to be a queer creative at a time when President Donald Trump and conservatives have been actively targeting and rolling back legal protections for the queer community, especially trans and nonbinary people.Toni Collette and Joshua Close in “Wayward.”Netflix“What makes things difficult is when things are charged politically, like they are now, it makes it seem like even having a trans character or a gay character is a political statement and immediately puts your project in a niche category,” said Martin. “It’s crazy that your career can be affected by political swings like that.”Martin said they see their visibility as a prominent nonbinary comedian in the current climate as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they want to tell stories that will reach the widest audience possible and, hopefully, in turn, create more empathy for the LGBTQ community. 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He has written for NBC News, The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Sports Illustrated, The Daily Beast, Harper’s Bazaar, Elle, Men’s Health, Teen Vogue and W Magazine. 
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