Every year thousands of visitors to Las Vegas can’t help falling in love — at least long enough to get married by an Elvis impersonator.

But the company that controls the rights to the King’s likeness has sparked outrage in Sin City by cracking down wedding chapels offering Elvis-themed nuptials.

Authentic Brands Group, which bought a controlling stake in Elvis Presley’s estate in 2013, last month sent cease-and-desist letters to companies offering the kitschy weddings.

The move triggered angry responses from Elvis impersonators, chapel owners, and even the mayor of Las Vegas, who called for a little more open conversation — and less legal action — from the group.

“Elvis Presley long called Las Vegas his home and his name has become synonymous with Las Vegas weddings,” Jason Whaley, president of the Las Vegas Wedding Chamber of Commerce, told AFP.

“The Vegas Wedding Chamber shares a concern that many of our chapels and impersonators livelihoods are being targeted, especially as many are still trying to recover financially from the hurdles we all endured with Covid shutdowns.”

ABG on Thursday apologized for its initial approach, saying it was committed to protecting Presley’s legacy.

“We are sorry that recent communication with a small number of Las Vegas based chapels caused confusion and concern. That was never our intention,” the company said in a statement to AFP.

“We are working with the chapels to ensure that the usage of Elvis’ name, image and likeness are in keeping with his legacy.”

It added: “From tribute artists and impersonators to chapels and fan clubs, each and every one of these groups help to keep Elvis relevant for new generations of fans.”

But a day earlier, the Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that ABG was now offering chapels financial “partnerships,” including annual licensing deals to continue business as usual.

“That is their solution, to pay $20,000 a year to do what we’ve been doing for the past nine years,” said Kayla Collins, co-owner of the Las Vegas Elvis Wedding Chapel.

“This was not on the table a few days ago. Frankly, I think this thing going to the public has changed their minds.”

‘Elvis Pink Caddy’

The move comes weeks before the release of Baz Luhrmann’s new big-screen biopic “Elvis” — a large-scale Warner Bros production expected to boost interest in the singer.

Elvis-themed weddings have been a lucrative business in Las Vegas since the 1970s.

Packages today run as high as $1,600 for the Elvis Pink Caddy Luxury Model Wedding Package, which offers couples the chance to be driven up the aisle of the Viva Las Vegas Wedding Chapel by Elvis in a 1964 pink Cadillac convertible.

Weddings are a $2.5 billion industry in Las Vegas, according to the Wedding Chamber of Commerce.

But while Elvis musical tribute acts are freely allowed under Nevada law, businesses using Presley’s likeness simply to attract publicity and customers are not protected.

Harry Shahoian, one of dozens of Elvis impersonators in the city, who officiates at the Graceland Wedding Chapel in Las Vegas, told the Review-Journal that people just “love to be married by Elvis.”

“I did the whole day Sunday, 22 ceremonies. I’ve done more than 30 in one day, 100 in a week, all of those Elvis-themed.”
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A gunman suspected of fatally shooting a retired county judge at a Wisconsin home had a list that included Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, Whitmer’s office and a law enforcement source said Saturday.

Douglas K. Uhde, 56, who has not been charged, is suspected of killing retired Juneau County Judge John Roemer at Roemer’s house in New Lisbon on Friday, the Wisconsin Department of Justice said in a news release Saturday.

Uhde was found in the basement of the home with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, following attempts by police to negotiate with him. Uhde is hospitalized in critical condition, DOJ officials said.

Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul on Friday said the shooting appeared to be a “targeted act” and that the gunman had selected people who were “part of the judicial system.”

But investigators believe the gunman also may have planned to target other government officials and found a list in his vehicle that contained the names of several other prominent elected leaders, a law enforcement official said. The other targets on the list, which mentioned Roemer, included Evers, McConnell and Whitmer, the official said.

Roemer was found tied to a chair in his home and had been fatally shot, the official said. The official could not discuss details of the investigation publicly and spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity.

Uhde has an extensive criminal and prison record dating back at least two decades, including a case in which he was sentenced by Roemer to six years in prison on weapons charges. He was released from his last prison stint in April 2020.

Zach Pohl, Whitmer’s deputy chief of staff, said her office was notified that her name appeared “on the Wisconsin gunman’s list.”

“Governor Whitmer has demonstrated repeatedly that she is tough, and she will not be bullied or intimidated from doing her job and working across the aisle to get things done for the people of Michigan,” Pohl said.

Whitmer became the object of protests and criticism after she blamed former President Donald Trump for stoking anger over COVID-19 restrictions and refusing to condemn right-wing extremists.

A trial held earlier this year in which four men accused in an alleged kidnapping plot of the Michigan Democrat resulted in the acquittal of two of the men. The jury could not reach a unanimous verdict for the other two.

Roemer, 68, was a “very loving, very encouraging man with a wonderful sense of humor who will be dearly missed” by the community, said Chip Wilke, pastor at St. Paul’s Evangelical Lutheran Church in Mauston, where Roemer was president of the congregation and evangelism chairman. “He was in my office several mornings a week.”

Roemer retired from the bench in 2017. He was first elected in 2004 and was reelected in 2010 and 2016. He previously had served as an assistant district attorney for Juneau County and an assistant state public defender. He also worked in private practice and served as a lieutenant colonel for the U.S. Army Reserves.

Investigators said there is no immediate danger to the public.

“The information that’s been gathered indicated that it was a targeted act and that the targeting was based on some sort of court case or court cases,” Kaul said.

The Juneau County Sheriff’s Office received a call that two shots were fired at a home in New Lisbon at 6:30 a.m. Friday, according to the Division of Criminal Investigation. The caller had fled the home and made the call from another nearby house. 
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Abbott Nutrition has restarted production at the Michigan baby formula factory that has been closed for months due to contamination, the company said Saturday, taking a step toward easing a nationwide supply shortage expected to persist into the summer.

The February shutdown of the largest formula factory in the country led to the supply problems that have forced some parents to seek formula from food banks, friends and doctor’s offices.

Abbott said it initially will prioritize production of its EleCare specialty formulas for infants with severe food allergies and digestive problems who have few other options for nutrition. The company said it will take about three weeks before new formula from the plant begins showing up on store shelves.

“We will ramp production as quickly as we can while meeting all requirements,” Abbott said in a statement.

The plant’s reopening is one of several federal actions that are expected to improve supplies in the weeks ahead. President Joe Biden’s administration has eased import rules for foreign manufacturers, airlifted formula from Europe and invoked federal emergency rules to prioritize U.S. production.

Abbott closed the Sturgis, Michigan, factory in February after the Food and Drug Administration began investigating four bacterial infections among infants who consumed powdered formula from the plant. Two of the babies died. The company continues to state that its products have not been directly linked to the infections, which involved different bacterial strains.

FDA inspectors eventually uncovered a host of violations at the plant, including bacterial contamination, a leaky roof and lax safety protocols. The FDA has faced intense scrutiny for taking months to close the plant and then negotiate its reopening. Agency leaders recently told Congress they had to enter a legally binding agreement with Abbott to assure all the problems were fixed.

Abbott’s February recall of several leading brands, including Similac, squeezed supplies that had already been strained by supply chain disruptions and stockpiling during COVID-19 shutdowns.

The shortage has been most dire for children with allergies, digestive problems and metabolic disorders who rely on specialty formulas. The Abbott factory is the only source of many of those products, providing nutrition to about 5,000 U.S. babies, according to federal officials.

Abbott is one of just four companies that produce about 90% of U.S. formula. The company’s recalls and shutdown triggered a cascade of effects: Retailers have limited customer purchasing to conserve supplies and parents have been told to switch brands to whatever formula is in stock.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf recently told lawmakers it could be about two months before formula supplies return to normal levels. The agency has waived many of its regulatory requirements to accept more formula from the United Kingdom, Australia and other nations.

U.S. manufacturers, including Reckitt and Gerber, have also increased production, running plants 24/7 and sourcing more formula from alternate facilities.
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The young man in the jeans and sunglasses proudly shows off his gun in the YouTube video, then instructs his 1 million subscribers how to fit an extra clip in his gun belt, and offers a chilling observation.

“Pretty cool for active shooter stuff, if you need extra mags.”

It’s a typical video, one of thousands teaching military-style training and tactics to civilian gun owners, offering instructions on silencers and grenade launchers, on shooting from vehicles or into buildings. Other websites sell ghost gun kits, gas masks and body armor. 

“You shouldn’t be scared of the NRA. You should be scared of us,” one online ghost gun dealer Tweeted last week.

As Americans reel from repeated mass shootings, law enforcement officials and experts on extremism are taking increasing notice of the sprawling online space devoted to guns and gun rights: gun forums, tactical training videos, websites that sell unregistered gun kits and social media platforms where far-right gun owners swap practical tips with talk of dark plots to take their weapons.

It’s an ecosystem rich with potential recruits for extremist groups exploiting the often-blurry line separating traditional support for a Constitutional right from militant anti-government movements that champion racism and violence.

White supremacists have carried out most of the deadliest attacks on U.S. soil in the last five years, including a 2018 shooting inside a Pittsburgh synagogue and a 2019 rampage in which a gunman targeting Hispanics inside a Texas Walmart killed 23 people.

The gunman who perpetrated last month’s rampage in Buffalo, for example, claimed in a rambling racist diatribe that he was radicalized when pandemic boredom led him to far-right social media groups and tactical training videos he found online.

One of the companies specifically cited by the gunman sells firearm accessories and operates popular social media channels boasting hundreds of training videos. The videos cover topics like shooting from cars, assaulting a building, using gas masks while shooting, and night vision goggles.

“I think we’re going to see an increase in these kinds of attacks,” said Kurt Braddock, a professor and extremism researcher at the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University. “Until we’re able to figure out a way to address this, this kind of disinformation is going to keep spreading, and with it the risk of increased radicalization and violence.”

Elected leaders in some states are considering how to address the internet’s role in radicalizing extremists. New York lawmakers, for example, recently introduced legislation to require social media companies to set policies on “hateful conduct” and to create mechanisms for users to report disturbing posts they may read.

New York Attorney General Letitia James initiated an investigation into some of the platforms used by the Buffalo gunman, who streamed his attack on Twitch, which is owned by Amazon. Twitch pulled the livestream after about two minutes.

Federal authorities have also taken notice, increasing funding for investigations into domestic terrorism, a challenge that FBI Director Christopher Wray last year described as “metastasizing.” But there’s little law enforcement can do but monitor as extremists use the threat of gun control to recruit new members.

Extremists paint any effort to regulate firearms as the prelude to widespread gun seizures, according to Callum Hood, director of research at the Center for Countering Digital Hate, a UK-based organization that researches online extremism and abuse.

“The message quickly becomes ‘the government is coming to take your guns and leave you undefended,’” Hood said. That’s despite the obvious political challenges that even modest attempts at gun control face in the U.S. Despite a long and growing list of mass shootings, gun rights have not been restricted in any significant way in the U.S. in decades.

Rather than be under threat, guns are flourishing. Since the year 2000, the year after Columbine school shooting in Colorado, the number of firearms manufactured in the U.S. has tripled. There are now an estimated 400 million guns in the U.S. — more than one for everyone in the country — giving the nation the world’s highest gun ownership rate.

Gun manufacturers and industry groups like the National Rifle Association bear some responsibility for unfounded conspiracy theories about federal plots to seize American’s guns, according to Braddock.

“What’s the first rule in salesmanship? It’s to create the need for the item. We think about guns as something different – and they are because they’re instruments of violence – but they’re also commodities sold in huge quantities,” Braddock said. “They’re creating the illusion of need.”

Contacted by the Associated Press, one website selling ghost gun kits responded with a statement saying “all questions” about regulating firearms amount to “naked attempts to disarm traditional Americans, weaponize the government against them, and subject them to the ignorant and vicious tools of federal power.”

While some of the creators of tactical training videos posted on platforms like YouTube say their intended audience is law enforcement, others say their subscriber base is mostly those looking to arm themselves against the government.

Despite their alarm, law enforcement officials and experts on extremism caution there’s little to do about the growing online spaces devoted to military-style weaponry unless they find evidence of illegal gun sales or other crimes.  

For their part, tech companies and social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter say they have rules to prohibit violent threats, hate speech and other content that poses direct harm. Some platforms also prohibit the sale of firearms.

Further restrictions on content about guns or even extremism will only backfire anyway, according to Amy Cooter, an expert on militias. While efforts to ban users might be successful in the short term, they’re bound to fail as those users flee to other platforms with less moderation.

“If we want to reduce the size of the movement, de-platforming is really effective,” Cooter said. “But If we want to de-radicalize it, it is not. The most extreme elements will find other ways to stay connected.”
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Former Trump White House official Peter Navarro has been indicted on charges that he refused to cooperate with a congressional investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, but the Justice Department spared two other advisers, including the ex-president’s chief of staff, Mark Meadows, from criminal prosecution.

The department’s decision to not prosecute Meadows and Dan Scavino, another adviser to former President Donald Trump, was revealed in a letter sent Friday by a federal prosecutor to a lawyer for the House of Representatives. The move was reported hours after the indictment of Navarro and a subsequent, fiery court appearance in which he vowed to contest the contempt of Congress charges.

The flurry of activity comes just days before the House committee leading the investigation into the riot at the Capitol holds a prime-time hearing aimed at presenting the American public with evidence it has collected about how the assault unfolded. The split decisions show how the Justice Department has opted to evaluate on a case-by-case basis contempt referrals it has received from Congress rather than automatically pursue charges against each and every Trump aide who has resisted congressional subpoenas.

The committee’s leaders called the decision to not prosecute Meadows and Scavino “puzzling.” In a statement late Friday, Reps. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., said: “We hope the Department provides greater clarity on this matter. … No one is above the law.”

Though the Justice Department has referred multiple Trump aides for potential prosecution for refusal to cooperate, Navarro is only the second to face criminal charges, following the indictment last fall of former White House adviser Steve Bannon.

Navarro, 72, was charged with one contempt count for failing to appear for a deposition before the House committee and a second charge for failing to produce documents the committee requested.

During an initial court appearance, he alleged that the Justice Department had committed “prosecutorial misconduct” and said he was told he could not contact anyone after being approached by an FBI agent at the airport Friday and put in handcuffs. He said he was arrested while trying to board a flight to Nashville, Tennessee, for a television appearance.

“Who are these people? This is not America,” Navarro said. “I was a distinguished public servant for four years!”

Each charge carries a minimum sentence of a month in jail and a maximum of a year behind bars.

The Justice Department and Attorney General Merrick Garland had been facing pressure to move more quickly to decide whether to prosecute other Trump aides who have similarly defied subpoenas from the House panel.

The New York Times first reported on the decision to not charge Meadows and Scavino. A person familiar with the decision who was not authorized to discuss it publicly confirmed it to The Associated Press on Friday. The U.S. Attorney’s office in Washington, which made the decisions regarding each of the Trump aides, declined to comment Friday.

Meadows, a close Trump adviser seen by House investigators as a vital witness to key events, initially cooperated with the committee, turning over more than 2,000 text messages sent and received in the days leading up to and of the attack. But in December, Meadows informed the committee that he would not sit for a deposition.

Scavino was held in contempt in April after declining to cooperate with Congress.

A lawyer for Meadows did not immediately return messages Friday night. Stan Brand, an attorney representing Scavino, said he had not yet received the letter from the U.S. attorney’s office, but he’d heard the news through a third party. “I’m grateful that the Justice Department exercised their discretion to decline prosecution,” Brand said.

The indictment against Navarro alleges that when summoned to appear before the committee for a deposition earlier this year, he refused to do so and instead told the panel that because Trump had invoked executive privilege, “my hands are tied.”

After committee staff told him they believed there were topics he could discuss without raising any executive privilege concerns, Navarro again refused, directing the committee to negotiate directly with lawyers for Trump, according to the indictment. The committee went ahead with its scheduled deposition on March 2, but Navarro did not attend.

The indictment, dated Thursday, came days after Navarro revealed in a court filing that he also had been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury this week as part of the Justice Department’s sprawling probe into the insurrection. The subpoena to Navarro, a trade adviser to Trump, was the first known instance of prosecutors seeking testimony from someone who worked in the Trump White House as they investigate the attack.

“This was a preemptive strike by the prosecution against that lawsuit,” Navarro told Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui during his court appearance. “It simply flies in the face of good faith and due process.”

Navarro made the case in his lawsuit Tuesday that the House select committee investigating the attack is unlawful and therefore a subpoena it issued to him in February is unenforceable under law. He sued members of the committee, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and the U.S. attorney in Washington, Matthew M. Graves, whose office is now handling the criminal case against him.

In an interview with The Associated Press this week, Navarro said the goal of his lawsuit is much broader than the subpoenas themselves, part of an effort to have “the Supreme Court address a number of issues that have come with the weaponization of Congress’ investigatory powers” since Trump entered office.

Members of the select committee sought testimony from Navarro about his efforts to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, including a call trying to persuade state legislators to join their efforts.

The former economics professor was one of the White House staffers who promoted Trump’s baseless claims of mass voter fraud. Trump, in turn, promoted a lengthy report Navarro released in December 2020, which Navarro falsely claimed contained evidence of the alleged misconduct and election fraud “more than sufficient” to swing victory to his former boss.

Despite the opposition from several Trump allies, the Jan. 6 panel, comprised of seven Democrats and two Republicans, has managed to interview more than 1,000 witnesses about the insurrection in the past 11 months and is now preparing for a series of public hearings to begin next week. Lawmakers on the panel hope the half-dozen hearings will be a high-profile airing of the causes and consequences of the domestic attack on the U.S. government.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday paid tribute to the pro-democracy student protesters crushed by Chinese forces in Tiananmen Square 33 years ago, saying that “these brave individuals will not be forgotten.”

The statement by the top U.S. diplomat came after police in Hong Kong on Friday closed parts of the park where annual candlelit vigils were held to commemorate victims of the 1989 clampdown, when soldiers brutally quashed peaceful demonstrations in Beijing demanding political and economic reform.

“Today, the struggle for democracy and freedom continues to echo in Hong Kong, where the annual vigil to commemorate the massacre in Tiananmen Square was banned by the PRC and Hong Kong authorities in an attempt to suppress the memories of that day,” Blinken said in a statement, using the acronym for the People’s Republic of China.

“We will continue to speak out and promote accountability for PRC atrocities and human rights abuses, including those in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, and Tibet,” Blinken said. 

“To the people of China and to those who continue to stand against injustice and seek freedom, we will not forget June 4.”

Public commemorations of Tiananmen are all but forbidden in mainland China.

Semi-autonomous Hong Kong had been the one place in the country where large-scale remembrance was still tolerated — until Beijing imposed a wide-reaching national security law two years ago, in reaction to citywide pro-democracy protests.

The imposition of the security law has swiftly driven Tiananmen commemoration underground.

Vigils will be held globally Saturday to commemorate the crackdown in which an unknown number of peaceful protesters were killed, with rights group Amnesty International coordinating candlelit ones in 20 cities “to demand justice and show solidarity for Hong Kong.”
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