At least 23 people injured in Oklahoma lake party mass shooting: Police
(EDMOND, Okla.) — At least 23 people were injured in a shooting that erupted Sunday night during what police alleged was a “unsanctioned” lakeside party in Edmond, Oklahoma, that had been advertised on social media and drew a large crowd of young adults.
The shooting occurred at around 9 p.m. at Arcadia Lake in Edmond, about 14 miles north of Oklahoma City, Emily Ward, a spokesperson for the Edmond Police Department, said during a conference Sunday night.
On Monday, Edmond police officials said the number of victims injured in the shooting grew from 13 to 23 as more showed up at emergency rooms on their own.
The victims’ injuries ranged in severity, including gunshot wounds, police said.
According to Integris Health, victims treated for injuries at its Edmond and Oklahoma City hospitals ranged in age from 16 to 30.
No arrests have been announced, but police said in a statement Monday that “investigators are actively working the case and are not releasing suspect information at this time.”
“The incident occurred during an unsanctioned party that began after dark and was advertised across multiple social media platforms, drawing a large crowd of young adults from across the metro area. The event was not a permitted or reserved gathering,” according to the statement.
Edmond police officers responded to Arcadia Lake and the nearby Scissortail Campground after receiving multiple 911 calls from people reporting shots fired.
“There is no reason to believe there is an ongoing threat to the public,” according a police statement on Monday.
Seeking the public’s help in identifying a suspect, police asked that anyone with information about the shooting contact the Edmond Police Department immediately.
Nicolas Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, are seen in handcuffs after landing at a Manhattan helipad, escorted by heavily armed Federal agents as they make their way into an armored car en route to a Federal courthouse in Manhattan on January 5, 2026 in New York City. (Photo by XNY/Star Max/GC Images)
(NEW YORK) — After three months in jail, ousted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro appeared thinner and grayer, but still in command, as he appeared in federal court in Manhattan for a status conference on Thursday.
Maduro — was shackled at the ankles and wearing a beige smock over an orange shirt — nodded to the gallery and said “good morning,” in English.
Judge Alvin Hellerstein said he would not dismiss the narcoterrorism and other charges Maduro faces, but appeared to wrestle with how to assure Maduro had access to sufficient counsel.
The defense argued the case must be tossed because the Treasury Department had not given the government of Venezuela a special license to fund Maduro’s defense with funds subject to U.S. sanctions.
“I’m not going to dismiss the case,” Hellerstein said. However, the judge questioned the national security need for sanctions now that Maduro is no longer in charge and he and his wife, Cilia Flores, are in American custody.
“I see no abiding interest in national security in the right to defend yourself,” Hellerstein said. “The right to defend is paramount.”
A federal prosecutor said Maduro should not be allowed to use Venezuelan funds after he was accused of plundering the country’s wealth.
“A defendant has no right to spend a third party’s money,” prosecutor Kyle Wirshba said.
Defense attorney Barry Pollack said the quality of Maduro’s defense would suffer with court-appointed counsel, whose taxpayer-funded resources are often limited.
Pollack said the allegations “against these defendants occurred in Venezuela.”
Hellerstein agreed that defending Maduro would come at “great expense” and deplete the resources of most public defenders.
“Truthfully, we have no case like this,” Hellerstein said.
President Donald Trump said at a Cabinet meeting Thursday that he was hopeful that additional charges will be brought against Maduro and said Maduro should be charged for facilitating the transport of people and drugs into the U.S.
“I hope that charge will be brought at some point,” Trump said.
“He emptied his prisons into our country and was a major purveyor of drugs coming into our country. … I would imagine there are other trials coming,” Trump said.
Maduro and his wife pleaded not guilty to federal charges including narco-terrorism during their first appearance in court in January, and their attorneys have since pushed to have the case dismissed over concerns that the Trump administration is blocking the Venezuelan government from paying their legal fees.
For more than a decade, Maduro enjoyed an opulent life as Venezuela’s president, living in the neoclassical palace in Caracas and accruing a net worth reportedly in the millions. He allegedly owned multiple mansions, two private jets, millions in jewelry and cash, a horse farm, and a fleet of luxury vehicles.
But he’s pushing to have his case dismissed by arguing he doesn’t have enough money to pay for his own legal defense — and his lawyers argue his due process rights will be violated if Venezuela is unable to pay for his lawyers because of U.S. sanctions on the country.
“I understand that the government of Venezuela is prepared to fund my legal defense and it is my expectation that it will,” Maduro said in a sworn declaration. “I have relied on this expectation and cannot afford to pay for my own legal defense.”
As the Trump administration gradually warms relations with Venezuela, Thursday’s hearing marks the second time that the ousted Venezuelan leader has appeared in a U.S. courtroom since special operations forces captured him in Caracas in January.
The Department of Justice initially brought an indictment against Maduro and 14 other Venezuelan officials in March of 2020, arguing they committed narco-terrorism by conspiring with drug cartels to allow the flow of cocaine into the United States.
Nearly six years later, prosecutors filed a new indictment charging Maduro, Flores, Maduro’s son, and three others with narco-terrorism conspiracy, cocaine importation conspiracy and weapons offenses.
Maduro “sits atop a corrupt, illegitimate government that, for decades, has leveraged government power to protect and promote illegal activity, including drug trafficking,” the indictment said.
Prosecutors alleged that Maduro allowed “cocaine-fueled corruption to flourish for his own benefit,” including by providing diplomatic cover to drug traffickers and money launderers. Maduro has pleaded not guilty and denies being involved in drug trafficking.
“[Maduro] is at the forefront of that corruption and has partnered with his co-conspirators to use his illegally obtained authority and the institutions he corroded to transport thousands of tons of cocaine to the United States,” the indictment said.
-ABC News’ Emily Chang, Michelle Stoddart and Fritz Farrow
U.S. President Donald Trump attends UFC 327 at Kaseya Center on April 11, 2026 in Miami, Florida. (Photo by Julia Demaree Nikhinson – Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — A federal judge on Monday threw out President Donald Trump’s $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal after Trump sued the paper last July for its reporting on convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s 50th birthday book.
In his order issued Monday, U.S. District Judge Darrin Gayles concluded that Trump failed to prove that the Wall Street Journal knowingly published false information in the paper’s July article on an alleged letter from Trump that was included in Epstein’s 50th birthday book in 2003.
“Because President Trump has not plausibly alleged that Defendants published the Article with actual malice, both Counts must be dismissed,” the order said.
The case was dismissed without prejudice, meaning that Trump could attempt to refile the case by April 27.
In court filings, Trump’s lawyers had argued that the article and surrounding coverage were a “deliberate smear campaign designed to damage President Trump’s reputation” and subject the president to “public hatred and ridicule.”
In a 17-page ruling, Judge Darrin Gayles concluded that President Trump came “nowhere close” to the legal standard to prove that the Wall Street Journal acted with malice when it published its reporting about the birthday letter.
Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell told the Justice Department’s Todd Blanche last year that Epstein had asked her to coordinate contributions to a book celebrating his 50th birthday, but said she could not recall if President Trump, then a private citizen, was among those who responded.
Trump filed the suit by arguing that the Journal “acted with serious doubts about the truth of their reporting” because the president had claimed the letter was fake. However, Judge Gayles concluded that the reporters “attempted to investigate” the letter and did not act recklessly just because Trump denied its authenticity.
“To establish actual malice, ‘a plaintiff must show the defendant deliberately avoided investigating the veracity of the statement in order to evade learning the truth,'” the ruling said. “The Complaint comes nowhere close to this standard. Quite the opposite.”
The White House has continued to deny the authenticity of the letter after it was released by the House Oversight Committee in September.
Judge Gayles reached his conclusion without having to make a factual determination about the authenticity of the letter.
“Because the Court finds that the Complaint fails to adequately allege actual malice, it declines to address these issues at this juncture. Moreover, whether President Trump was the author of the Letter or Epstein’s friend are questions of fact that cannot be determined at this stage of the litigation,” he wrote.
Trump filed the defamation lawsuit in July against the Wall Street Journal, its parent company Dow Jones, its owner Rupert Murdoch, and the reporters who filed the story.
The Environmental Protection Agency flag flies outside the EPA headquarters in Washington on Thursday, August 7, 2025. Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
(WASHINGTON) — More than two dozen Senate Democrats are launching an independent investigation into the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a rule change on how the agency calculates the health benefits from curbing air pollution.
The EPA wrote in its regulatory impact analysis last month that it would no longer apply a dollar value to the health benefits that result from its regulations for fine particulate matter (PM2.5) and ozone because the agency says there’s too much uncertainty in the estimates. In the past, the EPA calculated a dollar value based on the health benefits of reducing air pollution, which included the number of premature deaths and illnesses avoided, such as asthma attacks.
The senators described the new policy as “irrational” and said it will lead to the EPA rejecting actions that would impose “relatively minor costs” on polluting industries that could result in “massive benefits” to public health, according to a letter sent to the EPA on Thursday and obtained by ABC News.
“The only beneficiaries will be polluting industries, many of which are among President Trump’s largest donors,” the senators wrote.
Led by Senate Committee on Environment & Public Works Ranking Member Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., the senators are requesting documents and information about how EPA made this determination by Feb. 26.
The decision to not quantify the health benefits of environmental regulations is “completely unsupported” and “a very stark departure” from the way the EPA has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations over the last several decades, said Richard L. Revesz, dean emeritus at the New York University School of Law who specializes in environmental and regulatory law and policy.
The regulatory impact analysis does not cite any science or economics and did not allow for public comments, Revesz told ABC News. The approach was also not submitted to the EPA’s Science Advisory Board, “which is standard,” nor was it submitted for peer review, he added.
“Each of those things are necessary elements for changing scientific policies like this, and EPA violated every single one of them,” Revesz said.
Senate democrats are seeking the basis on which the EPA made the decision; what the EPA willl take into account when undertaking Clean Air Act rulemaking; whether the EPA has discussed ceasing to quantify health effects of other pollutants; and whether the EPA consulted with any third parties, including the Secretary of Health and Human Services, the U.S. Surgeon General, public health experts and interested civil society groups.
It was industry executives who pushed for benefit-cost analysis during Ronald Reagan’s administration in the 1980s, said Janet McCabe, visiting professor at Indiana University’s McKinney School of Law and former deputy administrator of the EPA between 2021 and 2024. In 1993, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 12866, which instructs each agency to perform rigorous cost benefit analysis for any rule or regulation to be implemented.
“There’s a whole field of environmental economics where models and analytical methods and data collection have evolved on both the cost and the benefit side to help decision-makers and the public understand,” McCabe told ABC News.
While the EPA points to uncertainties in the estimates, assigning a number to monetize health benefits is “very defensible” because of the vast number of studies that allow economists to estimate ranges of health impacts in terms of monetary value, McCabe said.
In the past, when the EPA felt like it could not rigorously assign a number to either cost or health benefit, “it would say so,” McCabe said.
The EPA has received the letter and will respond through the proper channels, an EPA spokesperson told ABC News.
PM2.5 and ozone — soot and smog — are two of the most dangerous and widespread pollutants in the U.S., according to health and environmental policy experts. They are produced by a number of sources, including emissions from vehicles, power plants, the agriculture industry and oil refineries.
The agency is still considering the impacts that fine particulate matter and ozone emissions have on human health, like it “always has,” but that it will not be monetizing the impacts “at this time,” an EPA spokesperson told ABC News last month.
“EPA is fully committed to its core mission of protecting human health and the environment by relying on gold standard science, not the approval of so-called environmental groups that are funded by far-left activists,” the EPA spokesperson said.
The new EPA rule could prove dangerous to human health in the future because it will make it easier for the Trump administration to weaken air pollution controls, the experts who spoke with ABC News said. The EPA will only have the cost to industry to consider when making policy decisions without factoring in the benefits to health, the experts said.
“There will be nothing on the health side to balance them,” McCabe said. “That will make rules much easier to justify from a cost benefit perspective, because all you will see is the costs.”
In its regulatory impact analysis published in January 2024, the EPA calculated the benefit avoided morbidities and premature death in the year 2032 as worth between $22 billion and $46 billion. In February 2024, when the EPA tightened the amount of PM2.5 that could be emitted by industrial facilities, it estimated that the rule would prevent up to 4,500 premature deaths by 2032.
This data will no longer be considered under the new rule.
“It’s not even estimating how many deaths that is, even though the models for doing both things have been very well established for a long, long time,” Revesz said.
