Menendez brothers’ resentencing hearing postponed due to impact of wildfires
Erik and Lyle Menendez booking photos taken Oct. 10, 2024. Via CRDC.
(LOS ANGELES) — The resentencing hearing for the Menendez brothers has been postponed nearly two months due to the wildfires impacting Los Angeles County, the county’s lead prosecutor said Friday.
Erik and Lyle Menendez had been scheduled to appear in court in the resentencing case from Jan. 30-31 amid their bid for freedom after being sentenced to life in prison for the murders of their parents.
The hearing will now take place from March 20-21 “due to the impact of recent wildfires on the parties’ extensive preparations for the hearings,” LA County District Attorney Nathan Hochman’s office said in a statement.
Prosecutors and defense counsel met Friday with LA Superior Court Judge Michael Jesic to set a new date for the resentencing hearing, the office said.
The postponement comes as Los Angeles County is battling two devastating wildfires, the Palisades and Eaton fires, that have destroyed thousands of structures. At least 27 people are believed to have died in the fires, which both ignited on Jan. 7.
The fires temporarily impacted the operation of multiple courthouses in Los Angeles County, though all 36 courthouses in the county remain open, according to the LA Superior Court.
Hochman said earlier this month that he has with the Menendez brothers’ relatives but is still reviewing the facts in the case and hasn’t yet decided if he’s in support of the brothers’ bid for freedom.
Erik and Lyle Menendez were convicted in 1996 of the 1989 murders of their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez, who they gunned down in the family’s Beverly Hills home.
The defense claimed the brothers acted in self-defense after enduring years of sexual abuse by their father, but prosecutors alleged they killed for money.
Lyle and Erik Menendez, who were 21 and 18 at the time of the crime, respectively, were sentenced to two consecutive life prison terms without the possibility of parole.
ABC News’ Emily Shapiro contributed to this report.
(BOSTON) — As more than two million federal employees face a midnight Thursday deadline to accept the Trump administration’s buyout offer, a federal judge in Massachusetts will consider an eleventh-hour request to block the buyout from moving forward.
U.S. District Judge George O’Toole Jr. set Thursday afternoon hearing to consider a request by three federal unions to issue a temporary restraining order that would suspend Thursday’s deadline for the buyout and require the Office of Personnel Management to provide a legal basis for the unprecedented offer, which offers to continue to pay federal employees through Sept. 30, 2025, if they resign by Thursday at 11;59 p.m..
Three unions representing a combined 800,000 federal civil servants argue that the “deferred resignation” offer is unlawful, arbitrary, and would result in a “dangerous one-two punch” to the federal government.
“First, the government will lose expertise in the complex fields and programs that Congress has, by statute, directed the Executive to faithfully implement,” the lawsuit said. “And second, when vacant positions become politicized, as this Administration seeks to do, partisanship is elevated over ability and truth, to the detriment of agency missions and the American people.”
The lawsuit comes as at least 40,000 federal workers — roughly 2% of the civilian federal workforce — have accepted the deferred resignation offer to leave the federal government since last week, ABC News has reported.
The three unions — the American Federation of Government Employees, the National Association of Government Employees, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees — argue that the OPM violated the Administrative Procedure Act by failing to provide a legal basis for the buyout offer and leaving open the possibility that the government might not follow through with the buyout once federal employees agree to resign.
The lawsuit added that the buyout’s promise of payments through September violates the law because the current appropriation for federal agencies expires in March. Moreover, the buyout is unfair because it was made alongside a threat of future layoffs, the lawsuit said.
The buyout offer, part of DOGE head Elon Musk’s effort to trim the size of government under President Donald Trump, was sent out under the subject line “Fork in the Road” — the same language Musk used when he slashed jobs at Twitter after taking over that company in 2022.
“To leverage employees into accepting the offer and resigning, the Fork Directive threatens employees with eventual job loss in the event that they refuse to resign,” the unions’ lawsuit says.
Overall, the lawsuit alleges that the OPM rushed the offer with a questionable legal basis, largely mimicking Elon Musk’s management style following his takeover of Twitter.
“OPM’s rapid adoption of Musk’s private-sector program confirms that the agency took very little time to consider the suitability of applying an approach used with questionable success in a single for-profit entity to the entirety of the federal workforce,” says the lawsuit.
(LOS ANGELES) — The president of a mortgage lending company in California has been arrested on suspicion of murder after allegedly driving drunk through an intersection and killing an 88-year-old man, police said.
The traffic collision happened on Friday at approximately 6:15 p.m. when Orange County Sheriff’s deputies in California responded to a report of a traffic collision involving two vehicles at the intersection of Golden Lantern and Stonehill Drive in Dana Point, California – some 60 miles south of downtown Los Angeles, according to a statement from the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.
“Deputies arrived and discovered a Land Rover SUV and a Ford Transit van had been involved in a head-on collision,” police said. “Based on preliminary investigation, the Land Rover was traveling westbound on Stonehill Drive and turned left against a red arrow signal in front of the Ford Transit van traveling eastbound on Stonehill Drive.”
The driver of the transit van was taken to the hospital where he was treated for serious but non-life-threatening injuries.
However, an 88-year-old passenger of the transit van, Melvin Joseph Weibel of Dana Point, “succumbed to his injuries sustained in the collision and was pronounced deceased at the scene,” according to authorities.
The 48-year-old woman who was driving the Land Rover — Serene Francie Rosenberg of Dana Point — was immediately arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and booked into the Orange County Jail for murder and DUI causing injury.
Police confirmed that she had three prior convictions, but did not offer details on the charges that led to those convictions.
The company she works for, OCMBC, expressed its “deepest sympathies following the tragic traffic accident that occurred in Dana Point on January 31, 2025.”
“Our thoughts are with everyone affected by this heartbreaking event and we intend to monitor the situation closely, responding with care and responsibility in accordance with our company’s core values,” OCMBC said.
The company also announced that Rosenberg had been placed on administrative leave, and John Hamel, former Chief Capital Markets Officer, had “assumed the permanent role of President,” the company said.
“This leadership transition ensures continued stability and operational excellence,” said OCMBC.
“This has been a difficult time for everyone affected by this tragic event, and our hearts go out to those impacted,” said Rabi Aziz, CEO of OCMBC.
Meanwhile, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s Major Accident Investigation Team is investigating the collision and is asking for anyone with additional details or who may have witnessed the collision to contact the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s Traffic Bureau.
(WASHINGTON) — America’s national parks and other federal lands are in danger of falling into disrepair following the firings of thousands of federal employees by the current administration, experts said.
Federal agencies that were already strapped for resources, such as the National Parks Service and U.S. Forestry Service, will now be struggling to find workers to perform critical functions for visitors and maintenance, said Kristen Brengel, senior vice president of government affairs at the National Parks Conservation Association.
More than 1,000 NPS employees were terminated by the Trump administration, Brengel said, while more than 2,000 U.S. Forest Service employees have been fired, according to Fire & Safety Journal Americas.
Some of the eliminated positions include search-and-rescue staff and campsite supervisors, Brengel told ABC News.
With park visitation expected to increase in the next year, fewer employees could translate to longer lines to get into parks, changes in park hours and more trash pileups at some locations.
The National Parks Service did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
‘Most beloved federal employees’
When tourists arrive at national parks, the expectation is that a ranger will be there to greet and educate them, Brengel said.
Surveys from the Pew Research Center find that National Parks employees have a 76% approval rating — the highest among federal employees. NPS workers are dedicated to their jobs and care deeply about the parks they service, Brengel said.
“National park rangers are among the most beloved federal employees,” Brengel said. “These are folks that everyone loves to see when they go to our national parks.”
The NPS has been “stretched thin” since 2010, with a 20% reduction in park service staff in the last 15 years, Brengel said.
“This means that people have to do collateral duties,” Brengel said. For example, a person sitting at the front desk of a visitor center may also be responsible for maintaining restrooms.
The lack of staffing is not new; it was also a problem in the 1980s and 1990s, according to Andrea Lankford, a former law enforcement and search and rescue park ranger for Cape Hatteras, Zion National Park, Yosemite National Park and the Grand Canyon.
Visitation to the parks continues to increase
More than 325 million people visited national parks in 2023, and visitation in 2025 will likely exceed that number, Brengel said. The NPS also contributed a record $55.6 billion to the U.S. economy in 2023 and supported 415,000 jobs that year, according to the NPS.
“We fully expect visitors to flood into national parks this spring and summer, and for parks to just generally be understaffed and not be able to handle that influx,” she said.
Last week, the Trump administration reversed a hiring freeze for seasonal National Parks Service employees, allowing the system to fill crucial roles to help maintain and operate popular parks ahead of the summer season, according to a memo obtained by ABC News.
NPS will now be permitted to hire a total of 7,700 workers, according to the memo. But the one-month delay in hiring seasonal workers, on top of the firing of probationary park rangers, could impact tourists this summer at some of the country’s most popular national parks, said Bill Wade, executive director of the Association of National Park Rangers.
“It’s pretty safe to say that in many parks, at least for the start of the season, visitors are going to probably see some sort of impact and a decline in their experience,” he said.
Tourists could experience long lines to get into the parks, changes in hours at visitor centers, trash pileups and restrooms that are not cleaned as frequently, Wade said.
In addition, there could be delays for road, trail and building maintenance, Brengel said, noting that people who fill potholes and repair leaky roofs were among those terminated.
Impact of firings on Forest Service
Understaffing has also been a concern for the U.S. Forest Service, said Owen Wickenheiser, a former wilderness and climbing ranger at the Okanagan Wenatchee National Forest in Washington state.
“We were already short-staffed as a land management agency, with the number of trails expected to maintain,” Wickenheiser, who was recently fired, told ABC News. “We have one of the busiest districts in all of Washington state.”
Wickenheiser said the lack of rangers means “people will just trash the place.”
“No one is going to be actively searching out all the trash that we pick up — that’s going to make it into the lake,” Wickenheiser said. “Trees that fall down every year across the trail will likely go uncut and people will be hiking over trees all the time.”
Jaelle Downs, who was fired recently from the Forest Service as a wilderness ranger at the Alpine Lakes Wilderness, said she doesn’t know “what the summer is going to look like.”
“Even with volunteers, I don’t see how things aren’t going to be very covered in trash, very covered in human waste, it’s concerning,” she told ABC News.
Downs said she worries how the mass firings will affect future rangers.
“The excited, on-the-ground workers who were preparing to carry on the work of the agency have just been demoralized and pushed out. I just wonder where the next generation is going to come from,” she said.
Hiring freeze exemptions exist for critical health and safety positions, and more than 1,000 U.S. Forest Service firefighter positions were recently approved with more currently under review, according to a USDA spokesperson.
“Protecting the people and communities we serve, as well as the infrastructure, businesses, and resources they depend on to grow and thrive, remains a top priority for the USDA and the Forest Service,” the spokesperson said. “We have a solemn responsibility to be good stewards of the American people’s hard-earned taxpayer dollars and to ensure that every dollar spent goes to serve the people, not the bureaucracy.”
