District Court Judge Alvin Hellerstein, who oversaw Nicolas Maduro case, has died at 92
Judge Alvin Hellerstein, October 29, 2019 in New York City. (Owen Hoffmann/Patrick McMullan via Getty Images)
The federal judge in New York handling the prosecution of ousted Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro has died.
Judge Alvin K. Hellerstein died of natural causes Wednesday morning just shy of his 93rd birthday, according to Laura Taylor Swain, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
“Judge Hellerstein was an insightful and dedicated lawyer who, following a distinguished career in the private sector, served with distinction for over 25 years as a distinguished jurist of this court,” Swain said in a statement, in part. “His energetic and dedicated service to this Court continued until his death. He is greatly appreciated and will be sorely missed.”
“We were saddened to learn of Judge Hellerstein’s passing and offer our condolences to his family,” Nicolas Maduro’s attorney said in a statement to ABC News.
Hellerstein was appointed by President Bill Clinton in 1998 and oversaw a diverse array of federal cases in the nation’s preeminent district court, including litigation involving the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, over which Swain said he presided “with sensitivity, fairness and efficiency.”
Born in New York City on Dec. 28, 1933, Hellerstein earned his law degree from Columbia Law School in 1956. He clerked for Judge Edmund Palmieri of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York from 1956 to 1957 and served in the U.S. Army JAG Corps as a first lieutenant from 1957 to 1960, according to Swain’s statement. He subsequently worked as a litigator at a New York law firm from 1960 until his appointment to U.S. district court by President Clinton.
A new judge will be randomly assigned to take over the Maduro case and Hellerstein’s other matters, according to the court.
The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, seen from the Theodore Roosevelt Bride in Washington, D.C. September 15, 2026. (Astrid Riecken For The Washington Post via Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said on Wednesday the Kennedy Center could “close” or be “ripped down” if his administration doesn’t receive recognition on the performing arts center as tensions over his name being removed mount.
“I think that the Trump administration should certainly have recognition. Because frankly, if we don’t do that, it’s going to close. It’ll end up being ripped down,” the president told reporters on the tarmac in North Carolina.
Trump claimed that the Kennedy Center was a “mess” without his intervention and “has lost 10s of millions of dollars, even hundreds of millions of dollars,” comparing it to New York’s Carnegie Hall.
The president’s comments come after a federal judge on Tuesday blocked the performing arts center’s board from adding a tribute to Trump on the building or site. He responded by saying he wouldn’t spend congressionally approved funding for the center’s renovation unless the building also bears his name.
Congress last year appropriated $257 million for the renovation.
About an hour after the judge’s ruling Tuesday, the board, which is controlled by Trump appointees, voted to close the center immediately for renovations, citing safety concerns after a piece of plaster from the ceiling of the grand foyer fell during a heavy rainstorm earlier this month.
On Tuesday, Rep. Joyce Beatty, D-Ohio, said Trump “threw a tantrum because he lost in court” when discussing the Kennedy Center meeting.
“He wasn’t pleased with it. He was very explicit with his words, and I responded equally as explicit. He is in contempt of court for what he’s doing now in trying to just simply go over and close the Kennedy Center and to have people leave the center,” Beatty told reporters on the House steps Tuesday night.
Beatty said “there was a heated debate” during the meeting.
On Wednesday, fencing was seen being installed around the main building’s entrance.
The mountain pine beetle is the size of a grain of rice but can inflict colossal harm to forests. (ABC News)
To walk deep into the mountain forests at the doorstep of the Rocky Mountains, is to encounter the fragrant majesty of century-old ponderosa pine trees famous for lining ski slopes, National Park trails and residential neighborhoods.
Now, those iconic Colorado trees — already under strain from record heat and prolonged drought — are threatened by a rapidly growing outbreak of silent killers: the mountain pine beetle.
The size of a grain of rice, the native forest insect can attack a tree in a matter of weeks, feeding upon its critical tissues and effectively strangling it from within.
“Once a tree has been attacked, it’s likely to die,” said Sarah Hart, a forest ecologist with Colorado State University. “For managing large landscapes, we really don’t have particularly effective strategies to stop it.”
WATCH: Outbreak: Hidden Costs of the Climate Crisis at 7 and 9 p.m. ET Monday on ABC News Live PRIME, streaming on Hulu, Disney+ and ABC News apps.
More than 700,000 acres in Colorado are affected, officials say. Climate change is blamed for supercharging the emerging outbreak, with no end in sight.
Some state officials have called them “zombie forests”: ponderosa that appear to be healthy but are under existential threats from a changing climate that may result in extinction in some areas.
“We’ve had this dearth of precipitation, above-average temperatures — It’s kind of like attacking the bank when there’s no security guard,” said Dan West, an entomologist with the Colorado State Forest Service. “These trees are standing there with not a lot of defenses.”
The cost of responding to the pine beetle outbreak, along with the financial impacts from other climate-change influenced environmental threats, are at the heart of a major Supreme Court case being argued Monday in Washington.
The City of Boulder and Boulder County, Colorado, in 2018 sued major fossil-fuel producers Exxon Mobil and Suncor Energy, seeking financial damages under state public nuisance law.
Their complaint alleges the companies “knowingly caused and contributed” to climate change by promoting fossil fuels “while concealing and/or misrepresenting the dangers,” including “devastation” to forests from an “epidemic” of mountain pine beetles.
Exxon and Suncor, which declined interviews for this story, argue in court papers that the Boulder lawsuit is based on a “dubious theory,” insisting local harms from the global phenomenon of climate change cannot be pinned on individual companies.
They’re asking the U.S. Supreme Court to toss the case out.
“National issues should be decided at the national stage, and that means Congress needs to be the one to decide what are the rules for who pays, who ultimately pays, what are standards for imposing those costs,” said Michael Williams, solicitor general of West Virginia, which has joined 25 other states backing Exxon and Suncor.
“If these suits go forward, higher gas prices are maybe the smallest consequence. I think it’s even bigger than that and you’re going to see some of these industries potentially shutter entirely,” Williams said.
Boulder city and county officials declined interview requests about the case.
Longtime Boulder resident Paul Chinowsky, a civil engineer specializing in climate impacts, said he doesn’t want the oil companies to go bankrupt but agrees they should chip in for alleged harms from their product.
“Let’s be real. We can’t live today without some level of fossil fuels, but we need regulation,” Chinowsky said in an interview in his neighborhood on the outskirts of Boulder.
“We see streets getting resurfaced. We see drainage systems getting updated, and we think of it all as, well, this is just a part of regular maintenance. Climate change is putting an accelerator on that,” he said.
Boulder and Boulder County say in court documents that they’ve spent millions on road repairs, storm drainage improvements and utility upgrades to keep pace with other environmental threats amplified by climate change.
“It’s become a significant element of the city’s budget,” said John Tayer, CEO of the Boulder Chamber of Commerce. “There are direct costs associated with the change in climate. Just everything from rising heat, which leads to greater air conditioning costs. It can slow down outdoor work because of the risk to the workforce from heat exposure. It’s across the board.”
Then there is the mountain pine beetle.
Driving from Boulder along Interstate 70 into the Front Range, rust-colored clusters of dead ponderosa pine streak the mountainsides. From above, the scale of the crisis is even more dramatic.
Bark beetles killed more than 54 million acres of pines across the West in the early 2000s, an area the size of the state of Utah. The new outbreak is expected to be much worse for communities in fire-prone areas.
“We’ve seen a lot of sporadic wildfire activity when you have a lot of dead trees like this,” said Dan Gibbs, a veteran wildland firefighter who heads Colorado’s Department of Natural Resources, “Bark beetle-kill timber burns differently than I would say a green, alive forest.”
Teams of state foresters are scrambling to clear beetle-killed trees from hillsides near residential communities to reduce fuels for fire, one dead tree at a time. The cost to state taxpayers: $10,000 per acre, Gibbs said.
“Fire hazard, impacts to recreation, impacts to watersheds — the [dead trees have] a huge ripple effect on almost daily life of Coloradans and visitors,” he said.
If the nation’s highest court allows Boulder to sue Exxon and Suncor for damages, it won’t halt a pine beetle outbreak that state officials say will last from years to decades. But supporters of the case hope it brings increased accountability — and more funding to protect Colorado’s ponderosa pines and the people who love them.
“Oftentimes the people and the organisms that are facing the most dramatic impacts of climate change are not the ones who are benefiting from what’s causing climate change,” said Hart. “I do think that there should be greater accountability for those negative effects.”
The Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool continues to show signs of an algae bloom on the National Mall on June 22, 2026, in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump said that another round of repairs to the iconic basin will begin immediately after paint started peeling following the completion of a recent $14 million no-bid restoration project. (Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
(WASHINGTON) — President Donald Trump said Tuesday the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool will be drained again for “permanent repair” around the Fourth of July, and said that six people have now been arrested for alleged damage to the site.
The Reflecting Pool has been plagued with algae and peeling paint in the days since the Trump administration completed its renovation, which cost taxpayers more than $16 million.
Trump said in a social media post that “large areas of grass are being replaced” around the pool and that the administration “will drain some of the water, either immediately before or after the Fourth of July, to do the permanent repair.” Trump has blamed the Reflecting Pool’s issues on vandals, though has yet to offer evidence.
“Six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited, for the damage they did to our Country’s now beautiful Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote in the post.
“The 350 foot gash, made by a very sharp knife or razors, is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350 foot length. It was purposefully and criminally done, and somebody had to work very hard, probably in the dark of night, to create such a condition. Likewise, the small area at the bottom of the Pool was cut and powerfully lifted off the surface leaving very jagged, uneven edges,” Trump wrote.
On Monday, during an Oval Office event, Trump directed reporters to the Interior Department and the Parks Department for information on ongoing investigations into alleged damages but provided no evidence himself.
The Interior Department and the U.S. Park Police have not responded to multiple outreaches for evidence of the alleged vandalism.
Trump’s post comes after White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, during a Fox News interview on Monday night, said the number of vandalism-related arrests had risen to six.
Earlier on Monday afternoon, an Interior Department spokesperson said there had been five arrests for vandalism, five federal citations and 14 vandalism-related police reports.
Algae and leaks have long plagued the Reflecting Pool, which was constructed in the 1920s. Former President Barack Obama made his own attempt at renovations during his administration and spent roughly $35 million on the changes.
