New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell indicted
Why it matters: She's the city's first mayor to be indicted while in office.
The big picture: Cantrell's former bodyguard, Jeffrey Vappie, was also indicted, according to the reports.
The U.S. Attorney's Office has a press conference at 2:45pm to release more information.
Cantrell's attorney told Axios around 1:30pm that he had not received a copy of the indictment yet. He did not make any further comments.
The mayor's office has not responded to the allegations yet.
Zoom in: Vappie was indicted last year and was accused of falsifying timesheets, lying to the FBI and taking other actions to conceal his romantic relationship with Cantrell.
He and Cantrell hired separate criminal defense attorneys last year amid the federal investigations.
What they're saying: Cantrell and Vappie have both previously denied allegations they are romantically involved.
The U.S. Attorney's Office last year included a photo of a handwritten note investigators say Vappie and Cantrell shared, which includes a heart and the use of the term "baby" as a term of endearment.
Previously, Cantrell said that as the city's first female mayor and as a Black woman, she faces more intense scrutiny and has been held to different standards than her predecessors.
Between the lines: Vappie's wife filed for divorce in January 2023 and accused him of having an affair with Cantrell in the documents, Fox 8 reported at the time.
Cantrell's husband, Jason, died in August 2023 from a heart attack. They were a month shy of 24 years of marriage.
State of play: Cantrell has been dogged by scandals since she was elected in 2018.
The Democrat says many of the controversies are Republican-led attacks.
Along with the alleged affair, other political tussles include a state ethics investigation into her international travel, the City Council evicting her from a city-owned apartment, and a stalking lawsuit she filed against a woman who took pictures of her and Vappie. (A judge dismissed the stalking case.)
She also was the target of a failed recall effort last year.
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New York Post
an hour ago
- New York Post
Schwarzenegger taunts Newsom with message targeting Dem redistricting push
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Newsom on Thursday teamed up in Los Angeles with congressional Democrats and legislative leaders in the heavily blue state to unveil their redistricting playbook. 4 Arnold Schwarzenegger wears a 'F*** The Politicians. Terminate Gerrymandering' shirt while working out. Arnold Schwarzenegger/X Newsom and the Democrats are aiming to counter the ongoing effort by President Donald Trump and Republicans to create up to five GOP-friendly congressional districts in red state Texas at the expense of Democrat-controlled seats. 'Today is liberation day in the state of California,' Newsom said. 'Donald Trump, you have poked the bear, and we will punch back.' Newsom vowed to 'meet fire with fire' with his push for a rare — but not unheard of — mid-decade redistricting. 4 California Gov. Gavin Newsom embraces former Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at a news conference in Los Angeles, Calif. on March 22, 2024. Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag The Republican push in Texas, which comes at Trump's urging, is part of a broader effort by the GOP across the country to pad its razor-thin House majority to keep control of the chamber in the 2026 midterms, when the party in power traditionally faces political headwinds and loses seats. Trump and his political team are aiming to prevent what happened during his first term in the White House, when Democrats stormed back to grab the House majority in the 2018 midterms. While the Republican push in Texas to upend the current congressional maps doesn't face constitutional constraints, Newsom's path in California is much more complicated. The governor is pushing to hold a special election this year to get voter approval to undo the constitutional amendments that created the nonpartisan redistricting commission. A two-thirds majority vote in the Democrat-dominated California legislature as early as next week would be needed to hold the referendum. 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'Most people don't really think about an independent commission much, one way or another. And that's both an opportunity and a challenge for Newsom,' Jack Pitney, an American politics professor at California's Claremont McKenna College, told Fox News. 'It's going to take a lot of effort and money to energize Democrats and motivate them to show up at the polls,' Pitney said, adding Newsom's effort 'is all about motivating people who don't like Trump.' Fox News' Lee Ross contributed to this report
2 hours ago
Takeaways from the Trump-Putin meeting: No agreement, no questions but lots of pomp
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Here are key takeaways from the summit: Putin got a red carpet welcome and even rode in Trump's presidential limousine from the tarmac to the summit venue. There, the pair were joined by two of their top aides: Secretary of State and national security adviser Marco Rubio and special envoy Steve Witkoff for Trump and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and national security adviser Yuri Ushakov for Putin. Putin, who spoke first after the meeting concluded, lauded the historical relationship between the United States, Russia and the former Soviet Union, recalling joint missions conducted by the two countries during World War II. He said the U.S. and Russia share values, a standard talking point for Russian officials when trying to woo Trump and his aides. Putin also noted that Trump has frequently said the Ukraine war wouldn't have happened had he won the 2020 election. "I think that would have been the case," the Russian leader said, a comment sure to please Trump. However, there is no indication and no way to prove that Moscow would have acted differently toward Ukraine had Democrat Joe Biden not been elected. Trump had gone into the meeting hoping to get Putin to agree to a ceasefire with Ukraine — or at least a commitment from Russia to enter into negotiations to reach one. Instead, Trump conceded that 'we haven't quite got there' and said he would be conferring with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy and NATO leaders about next steps. Trump said he and Putin had made some significant progress toward the goal of ending the conflict but gave no details on what that entailed and had to acknowledge that they had been unable to bridge substantial gaps. 'I believe we had a very productive meeting,' Trump said. 'We haven't quite got there, but we've made some headway. So, there's no deal until there's a deal.' In a subsequent conversation with Sean Hannity of Fox News Channel, Trump again offered no details on his discussions with Putin. Amid drawn-out diplomatic moves to end the war, time is appears to be on Putin's side. That gives a leg up to Russian forces, who have used their larger numbers to slowly grind down defenses in eastern Ukraine 3 1/2 years into the conflict. Putin got a pleasant reception from the leader of the free world on U.S. soil and walked away hours later without either providing details on what they discussed, whether a ceasefire was any closer to reality or what the next steps would be. Putin praised Trump for the 'friendly' tone of the talks — Trump said nothing publicly about the killing of Ukrainian civilians in Moscow's attacks — and for 'understanding that Russia has its own national interests.' Putin said Moscow and Washington should 'turn the page,' with relations having sunk to the lowest point since the Cold War. Putin appearing in the U.S. for the first time in 10 years was celebrated as a sign that Moscow was no longer a pariah on the global stage. In a social media post, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told followers that the Western press would be on the verge of 'losing their minds.' 'For three years, they talked about Russia's isolation, and today they saw the red carpet being rolled out to greet the Russian president in the United States,' she said. Both men said the talks were 'productive' but the lack of any announcement of solid achievements was revealing. The news conference ended up being less than 15 minutes of rather standard diplomatic comments — and gave no indication that any concrete results were achieved — and offered little departure from their previous comments on the war in Ukraine. Trump has made it a feature of his second term to parry questions from reporters in front of world leaders, but in the clearest sign of his disappointment, the president abruptly cut short his plans to take questions. Trump had gone into the summit saying here was a 25% chance that the summit would fail and that it was meant to be a 'feel-out meeting,' but he had also floated the idea of bringing Zelenskyy to Alaska for a subsequent, three-way meeting if things went well. It's unclear what comes next.
CNN
2 hours ago
- CNN
Over 200 rallies are expected across the country to protest Trump-led redistricting plans
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