Today in history:

On July 31, 2012, at the Summer Olympics in London, swimmer Michael Phelps won his 19th Olympic medal, becoming the most decorated Olympian of all time. (He would finish his career with 28 total Olympic medals, 23 of them gold.)

Also on this date:

In 1715, a fleet of Spanish ships carrying gold, silver and jewelry sank during a hurricane off the east Florida coast; of some 2,500 crew members, more than 1,000 died.

In 1919, Germany’s Weimar Constitution was adopted by the republic’s National Assembly.

In 1945, Pierre Laval, premier of the pro-Nazi Vichy government in France, surrendered to U.S. authorities in Austria; he was turned over to France, which later tried and executed him.

In 1957, the Distant Early Warning Line, a system of radar stations designed to detect Soviet bombers approaching North America, went into operation.

In 1964, the U.S. lunar probe Ranger 7 took the first close-up images of the moon’s surface.

In 1971, Apollo 15 crew members David Scott and James Irwin became the first astronauts to use a lunar rover on the surface of the moon.

In 1972, vice-presidential candidate Thomas Eagleton withdrew from the Democratic ticket with George McGovern following disclosures that Eagleton had received electroshock therapy to treat clinical depression.

In 1991, President George H.W. Bush and Soviet President Mikhail S. Gorbachev signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) in Moscow.

In 2020, a federal appeals court overturned the death sentence of Dzhokhar Tsarnaev in the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, saying the judge who oversaw the case didn’t adequately screen jurors for potential biases. (The Supreme Court later reimposed the sentence.)

Today’s Birthdays:

• Jazz composer-musician Kenny Burrell is 93.
• Actor Geraldine Chaplin is 80.
• Former movie studio executive Sherry Lansing is 80.
• Singer Gary Lewis is 78.
• International Tennis Hall of Famer Evonne Goolagong Cawley is 73.
• Actor Michael Biehn is 68.
• Rock singer-musician Daniel Ash (Love and Rockets) is 67.
• Entrepreneur Mark Cuban is 66.
• Rock musician Bill Berry (R.E.M.) is 66.
• Jazz guitarist Stanley Jordan is 65.
• Actor Wesley Snipes is 62.
• Musician Fatboy Slim is 61.
• Author J.K. Rowling is 59.
• Actor Dean Cain is 58.
• Actor Jim True-Frost is 58.
• Actor Ben Chaplin is 55.
• Actor Eve Best is 53.
• Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden is 50.
• Country singer-musician Zac Brown is 46.
• Actor-producer-writer B.J. Novak is 45.
• Football Hall of Famer DeMarcus Ware is 42.
• NHL center Evgeni Malkin is 38.
• NASCAR driver Kyle Larson is 32.
• Hip-hop artist Lil Uzi Vert is 29.
• Actor Rico Rodriguez (TV: “Modern Family”) is 26.

Now he will serve the maximum allowable sentence.

Justin Lee Palmer, 44, of Jonesboro, was sentenced July 25 to 30 years in federal prison without the possibility of parole and a lifetime of supervised release on a production of child pornography charge, according to a July 26 news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Palmer pleaded guilty to the charge Aug. 4, 2023, court records show.

“A vile, disgusting, reprobate has finally received his due,” U.S. Attorney Jonathan D. Ross said in the release.

McClatchy News reached out to Palmer’s attorney for comment July 30 but did not immediately hear back.

Authorities first learned of Palmer during a 2020 investigation into the sexual abuse of a 9-year-old girl which was filmed and distributed to users on KIK, a messaging app, officials said.

The FBI identified Palmer, username “skipdinnergetmethin,” as someone who received the video of the abuse, according to court records.

Further investigation into Palmer revealed that he “used the screen name ’skipdinnergetmethin’ to pose as a 15-year-old girl and coach teen and preteen girls how to be anorexic,” officials said.

“Palmer instructed girls to perform a variety of humiliating and harmful acts while they were naked so that they would feel disgusted with themselves and be motivated to lose weight,” according to officials.

FBI Little Rock Special Agent in Charge Alicia D. Corder called Palmer’s actions “revolting and deplorable.”

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Predations ’far beyond the typical scope’

Investigators found saved conversations on Palmer’s phone between him and his victims in which he asked their weight “stats,” called them pigs and directed them to take photos and videos of themselves naked, court records show.

Palmer’s phone contained 38 images and 49 videos of one 13-year-old girl, 71 of which showed sexual acts, according to court records.

“Palmer’s predations went far beyond the typical scope of production cases,” Ross said in a sentencing memo, calling the abuse “calculated and cruel.”

He encouraged the girls to “drink toilet water, cut into their skin, urinate into a bottle and drink it, masturbate with household objects, and cover their skin in shameful phrases about their weight,” according to court records.

“The humiliation, self-hatred, and physical pain these victims — known and unknown — suffered as a result of Palmer’s lies and manipulation was, and likely continues to be, undoubtedly profound,” Ross said.

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©2024 The Charlotte Observer. Visit charlotteobserver.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

When his body arrived at the funeral home, after undergoing a state autopsy, the undertaker told the family that the 43-year-old’s internal organs were missing. The family said they had not given permission for his organs to be retained or destroyed.

Moore said her daughter and other son drove four hours to the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where the autopsy had been performed, and picked up a sealed red bag containing what they were told was their brother’s organs. They buried the bag along with him.

“We should not be here. This is something out of science fiction. Any human would not believe that something so barbaric is happening,” Kelvin’s brother Simone Moore, said Tuesday.

Six families, who had loved ones die in the state prison system, have filed lawsuits against the commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections and others, saying their family members’ bodies were returned to them missing internal organs after undergoing state-ordered autopsies. The families crowded into a Montgomery courtroom Tuesday for a brief status conference in the consolidated litigation.

“We will be seeking more answers about what happened to these organs and where they ended up,” Lauren Faraino, an attorney representing the families said after court. Faraino said there are additional families who are affected.

In one of the lawsuits, another family said a funeral home in 2021 similarly told them that “none of the organs had been returned” with their father’s body after his death while incarcerated.

The lawsuits also state that a group of UAB medical students in 2018 became concerned that a disproportionate number of the specimens they encountered during their medical training originated from people who had died in prison. They questioned if families of incarcerated people had the same ability as other patients’ families to request that organs be returned with the body.

UAB, in an earlier statement about the dispute, said that the Alabama Department of Corrections was “responsible for obtaining proper authorizations from the appropriate legal representative of the deceased.” “UAB does not harvest organs from bodies of inmates for research as has been reported in media reports,” the statement read.

UAB spokesperson Hannah Echols said in an emailed statement Tuesday that sometimes that organs are kept for additional testing if a pathologist believes it is needed to help determine the cause of death.

The University of Alabama System, which includes UAB, is a defendant in the lawsuits. Lawyers for the university system indicated they will file a motion to dismiss the lawsuits. UAB no longer does autopsies for the state prison system.

The Alabama Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment.

NEW YORK (AP) — The director of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 vision for a complete overhaul of the federal government stepped down Tuesday amid blowback from Donald Trump’s campaign, which has tried to disavow the program created by many of the former president’s allies and former aides.

Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts said Paul Dans’ exit comes after the project “completed exactly what it set out to do.” Roberts, who has emerged as a chief spokesman for the effort, plans to lead Project 2025 going forward.

“Our collective efforts to build a personnel apparatus for policymakers of all levels — federal, state, and local — will continue,” Roberts said.

What started as an obscure far-right wish list is now a focal point in the 2024 campaign. Democrats for the past several months have made Project 2025 a key election-year cudgel, pointing to the ultraconservative policy blueprint as a glimpse into how extreme another Trump administration could be.

The nearly 1,000-page handbook lays out sweeping changes in the federal government, including altering personnel rules to ensure government workers are more loyal to the president. Heritage is building a database of potential new hires to staff a second Trump White House.

Yet Trump has repeatedly disavowed the document, saying on social media he hasn’t read it and doesn’t know anything about it. At a rally in Michigan earlier this month, he said Project 2025 was written by people on the “severe right” and some of the things in it are “seriously extreme.”

“President Trump’s campaign has been very clear for over a year that Project 2025 had nothing to do with the campaign, did not speak for the campaign, and should not be associated with the campaign or the President in any way,” Trump campaign advisers Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita said in a statement.

They said, “Reports of Project 2025’s demise would be greatly welcomed and should serve as notice to anyone or any group trying to misrepresent their influence with President Trump and his campaign — it will not end well for you.”

But Ohio Sen. JD Vance, Trump’s running mate, wrote a foreword to a forthcoming book by Roberts in which he lauds the Heritage Foundation’s work. A copy of the foreword was obtained by The Associated Press.

“The Heritage Foundation isn’t some random outpost on Capitol Hill; it is and has been the most influential engine of ideas for Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump,” wrote Vance.

Quoting Roberts elsewhere in the book, Vance writes: ″We are now all realizing that it’s time to circle the wagons and load the muskets. In the fights that lay ahead, these ideas are an essential weapon.”

Trump campaign representatives did not respond to messages inquiring about whether the campaign asked or pushed for Dans to step down from the project. The Heritage Foundation said Dans left voluntarily and it was not under pressure from the Trump campaign. Dans didn’t immediately respond to an emailed request for comment.

Project 2025 has many ties to Trump’s orbit

In many ways, Project 2025 served as a potential far-right White House in waiting, a constellation of outside groups that would be ready for action if Trump wins a second term.

The project included not only the detailed policy proposals that Trump could put into place on day one at the White House. Project 2025 was also building a personnel database of resumes for potential hires, drawing Americans to Washington to staff a new Trump administration.

Many Trump allies and former top aides contributed to the project. Dans formerly worked as a personnel official for the Trump administration. And Trump regularly campaigns on many of the same proposals in the Project 2025 book — from mass deportations to upending the Justice Department — though some of its other proposals, including further taxes on tips, conflict with some of what Trump has pledged on the campaign trail.

It was clear that Project 2025 was becoming a liability for Trump and the Republican Party.

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign and top Democrats have repeatedly tied Trump to Project 2025 as they argue against a second term for the former president.

The Harris campaign said Project 2025 remains linked to Trump’s agenda, written by his allies for him to “inflict” on the country.

“Hiding the 920-page blueprint from the American people doesn’t make it less real — in fact, it should make voters more concerned about what else Trump and his allies are hiding,” said Harris for President Campaign Manager Julie Chavez Rodriguez.

For months Trump’s campaign had warned outside groups, and Heritage in particular, that they did not speak for the former president.

In an interview from the Republican convention first published by Politico, LaCivita said Project 2025 was a problem because “the issues that are going to win us this campaign are not the issues that they want to talk about.”

It was almost certain than Trump’s campaign forced the shakeup, said one former Heritage aide granted anonymity to discuss the situation.

Trump’s team was well aware it couldn’t risk any missteps from Heritage in this final stretch ahead of the election.

By announcing the departure, Roberts appeared to be sending a signal to the Trump campaign that changes were being made at Heritage to tamp down any concerns over Project 2025, said another conservative familiar with the situation and granted anonymity to discuss it.

If Trump wins the White House, he almost certainly will need to rely on Heritage and other outside entities to help quickly staff a new administration, the person said.

Heritage says Project 2025 is not going away

Project 2025’s website will remain live and the group will continue vetting resumes for its nearly 20,000-person database of potential officials eager to execute its vision for government, the Heritage Foundation said Tuesday.

The group said Dans, who had started the project from scratch more than two years ago, will leave the Heritage Foundation in August. Roberts will now run Project 2025 operations.

Roberts has faced criticism in recent weeks after he said on an episode of former Trump aide Steve Bannon’s “War Room” podcast that the country is in the midst of a “second American Revolution” that will be bloodless “if the left allows it to be.”

Earlier this month, in an interview before beginning a prison sentence for defying a congressional subpoena, Bannon mentioned Roberts as the type of leader who could land a top job in a Trump White House.

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Mascaro reported from Washington. Associated Press writer Michelle L. Price contributed to this report.

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This week, a coalition of election officials, businesses, and civic engagement, religious and veterans groups will make a national push to encourage hundreds of thousands of Americans to serve as poll workers in November’s presidential election.

Poll worker demand is high. With concerns over the harassment and threats election officials face, and with the traditional bench of poll workers growing older, hundreds of counties around the country are in desperate need of people who are willing to serve their communities.

On Aug. 1, there will be a social media blitz across Facebook, TikTok, X and other platforms that will encourage Americans to spend a few hours helping democracy. They’re being asked to wake up before sunrise, welcome voters to polling places, hand them a ballot, and make sure the voting process goes smoothly.

Many sites will see long lines and frustrated voters; they may face unexpected problems such as a power outage or a cantankerous voting machine. Nearly all will hand out scores of tiny “I Voted” stickers.

The U.S. Election Assistance Commission, a federal agency that works with election officials to improve the voting process, established the recruitment day in 2020. The commission offers a social media toolkit, full of suggested hashtags and cartoon video snippets, to help local election officials reach potential new workers. There are 100,000 or so polling places across the country, and the agency’s website shows potential workers how to sign up.

“Serving as a poll worker is the single most impactful, nonpartisan way that any individual person can engage in the elections this year,” said Marta Hanson, the national program manager for Power the Polls, one of the leading nonpartisan groups in the recruitment effort.

“Poll workers are the face of our democracy and the face of our elections,” she told Stateline.

Launched in the spring of 2020 during the throes of the COVID-19 pandemic, Power the Polls gathered nonprofits and businesses together to help election workers close the gap left after many poll workers, who tend to be older, decided to no longer serve due to health concerns. Nearly half of the poll workers who served in 2020 were older than 60.

The group’s effort recruited 700,000 prospective poll workers nationwide.

“It is our vision that every voter has someone who looks like them and speaks their language when they show up at the polling place, and that election administrators have the people that they need,” Hanson said.

Polling places still need poll workers. This year Power the Polls is tracking more than 1,835 jurisdictions, spanning all 50 states and the District of Columbia, that the group identified through outreach to election administrators, monitoring local news and working with on-the-ground partners.

Of those jurisdictions, Hanson said, 700 towns and counties have “really, really high needs.”

For example, Boston needs 500 new poll workers by its Sept. 3 primary, while Detroit needs 1,000 more people to sign up before November. In small towns in Connecticut and rural California, officials are desperate to find 20 people to help. Los Angeles County is looking for people who speak one of a dozen languages that are prevalent in the area.

In suburban Cobb County just outside of Atlanta, Director of Elections Tate Fall said recruiting poll workers has been difficult, but not at the level she’s heard about in other communities nationally. Her team has found success at farmers markets, Juneteenth festivals and senior services events.

Among her challenges, she said, is that many of the poll workers who have signed up this year are new and need more training and practice before November. She also worries about reliability.

“It’s just we have a lot of people sign up and then they never mark their availability, or they only want to work in their precinct,” Fall said. “We need people that are a bit more flexible. But overall, we’re doing good.”

Over the past four years, local election officials have been bombarded by misinformation, harassment and threats fueled by the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen.

To ease voters’ skepticism about ballot security, officials will often welcome them into the elections office and give them a tour.

In Nevada, Carson City Clerk-Recorder Scott Hoen goes a step further by inviting skeptical residents to see the election process firsthand as a poll worker.

“Lo and behold, once they go through the cycle, they understand and they can touch, feel it, see it, know it, understand it, that we run a really good, tight election here in Carson City,” Hoen said. “I think they have a better comfort with me now doing that, teaching them what’s going on.”

In Marion County, Florida, Supervisor of Elections Wesley Wilcox has been worried about people who believe the 2020 election was stolen working as poll workers and potentially disrupting the voting process. But the required training to become a poll worker has alleviated some of that concern.

“We’ve had them, and they actually become some of our advocates in this process,” he said.

Joseph Kirk, the election supervisor for Bartow County, Georgia, said that, beyond learning about the voting system, being a poll worker is just fun.

Kirk tells voters that it’s an opportunity to take a day off work, get paid, meet new people, see the characters of the community and enjoy a good meal, since some poll workers bring in homemade food to share.

And for the high school government students he recruits in their classes, it’s a way to participate in elections as early as 16.

“It’s a community,” he said. “And being part of it is really special.”

Stateline is part of States Newsroom, a national nonprofit news organization focused on state policy.

©2024 States Newsroom. Visit at stateline.org. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

The poll found Harris has 48% to Trump’s 46% among likely voters.

The result is within the survey’s margin of error, making the results a statistical tie.

Among a slightly larger pool of all voters, not just those seen as likely to vote, the poll finds Harris and Trump tied at 46%.

The campaign is still in flux. Harris’ campaign began on July 21, immediately after President Joe Biden said he would end his reelection campaign.

Since then, in Florida and across the country, Democrats have reported enthusiastic support for their new candidate as Republicans have switched gears from opposing Biden to opposing Harris.

“I think it shows that we are a pretty divided country. Part of the deficit for Biden was with Democratic enthusiasm. At least for now, it appears that Harris has captured much of the Democratic base and returned the race to basically a dead heat,” Kevin Wagner, an FAU political scientist, said via text.

Wagner — who also is co-director of FAU’s PolCom Lab, a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science, which conducted the poll — said the numbers show “how much Biden was dragging the ticket.”

Demographic breakdowns:

— American voters quickly assumed their partisan positions. Among Democratic likely voters surveyed, Harris has support of 82%. Among Republicans, Trump has support of 87%. Independent likely voters are closely divided, with 45% for Harris and 43% for Trump. “The presidential race really shows how much partisan identity drives our choices. This has become another election that will be decided by who turns out their voters better,” Wagner said.

— There is a gender gap. Among women, Harris is at 50% and Trump at 43%. Among men, Harris has 45% and Trump is at 49%.

— Democrats have touted Harris’ appeal to younger voters. The Florida Democratic Party put out an email blast Tuesday morning that proclaimed, “The youth vote will decide the election.”

That doesn’t show up in the FAU poll. Among likely voters younger than 50, Harris is at 41% to 49% for Trump. Among likely voters 50 and older, Harris is at 52% and Trump is at 44%.

Wagner said the breakdowns by age are large groups that may not best assess the views of the youngest voters. And, he said, younger voters often are one of the last groups to focus on an election.

A week ago, an FAU national poll found 49% for Trump, the Republican nominee, to 44% for Harris, among likely voters. It’s not a direct comparison, since the poll released on July 23 was conducted immediately after the conclusion of the Republican National Convention with questioning halted immediately after Biden dropped out. So the matchup was hypothetical, without people actually seeing the rollout of her campaign.

When likely voters were given the additional choice in the new poll of independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr., he gets 8% in a three-way matchup.

With Kennedy in a hypothetical matchup, Harris is at 44% and Trump at 43%.

Another test

The poll included a generic question asking people which party they’d vote for in fall elections for U.S. House of Representatives.

Likely voters favored the Democrat over the Republican 47% to 42%, a five-point advantage for Democrats, and among all voters a Democrat was ahead 46% to 42%, a four-point advantage.

A week earlier, Republicans had a one-point advantage among likely voters, and Democrats had a one-point advantage among all voters.

Wagner said the small Democratic lead in the latest survey is a “good measure that Harris’ candidacy has brought the base back and will likely help down ballot. This is one of the reasons so many elected Dems wanted Biden to step aside.”

Favorability

Harris was viewed favorably by 53% of voters and unfavorably by 44%, which is a net favorability rating of 9 percentage points.

Among Democrats, 87% viewed her favorably, compared to 17% of Republicans and 48% of independents.

Trump was viewed favorably by 49% of voters and unfavorably by 50%, a net negative of 1 point.

Among Democrats, 19% viewed him favorably, compared to 86% of Republicans and 43% of independents.

Biden departure

Many voters had positive emotional reactions to Biden’s decision to end his reelection and Harris taking his place, the survey found.

Asked about Biden being out and Harris being in, 20% of voters expressed excitement, 18% joy/happiness, 18% fear, 9% pride, 7% sadness and 7% anger.

Comparisons:

• Democrats — 33% expressed excitement, 24% joy/happiness, 16% pride, 7% fear, 7% sadness and 3% anger.
• Republicans — 32% expressed fear, 12% anger, 11% joy/happiness, 10% sadness, 7% excitement; and 3% pride.
• Independents — 19% expressed excitement, 17% joy/happiness, 16% fear, 8% anger, 7% pride and 5% sadness.

Republicans (26%) and independents (28%) were much more likely than Democrats (11%) to say they didn’t know how they felt.

Fine print

The poll of 997 U.S. registered voters was conducted July 26 to July 27 by Mainstreet Research for Florida Atlantic University’s PolCom Lab, which is a collaboration of the School of Communication and Multimedia Studies and Department of Political Science.

The survey used an online panel and automated phone calls to reach other voters. It has a margin of error equivalent to plus or minus 3 percentage points for the full survey of Democrats, Republicans and independents.

However, the margin of error for smaller groups, such as Republicans or Democrats or men and women, would be higher because the sample sizes are smaller.

Anthony Man can be reached at aman@sunsentinel.com and can be found @browardpolitics on Bluesky, Threads, Facebook and Mastodon.

Today in history:

On July 30, 1976, Caitlyn Jenner, who was then known as Bruce Jenner, set a world record of 8,618 points and won the gold medal in the Olympic decathlon at the Montreal Summer Games.

Also on this date:

In 1619, the first representative assembly in Colonial America convened in Jamestown in the Virginia Colony.

In 1916, German saboteurs blew up a munitions plant on Black Tom, an island near Jersey City, New Jersey, killing about a dozen people.

In 1930, Uruguay won the first FIFA World Cup, defeating Argentina 4-2.

In 1945, the Portland class heavy cruiser USS Indianapolis, having just delivered components of the atomic bomb to Tinian in the Mariana Islands during World War II, was torpedoed by a Japanese submarine; only 316 out of nearly 1,200 service members survived.

In 1956, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a measure making “In God We Trust” the national motto, replacing “E Pluribus Unum.”

In 1965, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Social Security Amendments of 1965, which led to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.

In 2008, ex-Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic (RA’-doh-van KA’-ra-jich) was extradited to The Hague to face genocide charges after nearly 13 years on the run. (He was sentenced by a U.N. court in 2019 to life imprisonment after being convicted of genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes.)

In 2012, three electric grids in India collapsed in a cascade, cutting power to 620 million people in the world’s biggest blackout.

In 2013, U.S. Army Pfc. Chelsea Manning was acquitted of aiding the enemy — the most serious charge she faced — but was convicted of espionage, theft and other charges at Fort Meade, Maryland, more than three years after she’d spilled secrets to WikiLeaks. (The former intelligence analyst was later sentenced to up to 35 years in prison, but the sentence was commuted by President Barack Obama in his final days in office.)

In 2016, 16 people died when a hot air balloon caught fire and exploded after hitting high-tension power lines before crashing into a pasture near Lockhart, Texas, about 70 miles northeast of San Antonio.

Today’s Birthdays:

• Former Major League Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig is 90.
• Blues musician Buddy Guy is 88.
• Singer Paul Anka is 83.
• Actor and former California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is 77.
• Actor Jean Reno is 76.
• Actor Ken Olin is 70.
• Actor Delta Burke is 68.
• Law professor Anita Hill is 68.
• Singer-songwriter Kate Bush is 66.
• Film director Richard Linklater is 64.
• Actor Laurence Fishburne is 63.
• TV personality Alton Brown is 62.
• Actor Lisa Kudrow is 61.
• Basketball Hall of Famer Chris Mullin is 61.
• Actor Vivica A. Fox is 60.
• Actor Terry Crews is 56.
• Actor Simon Baker is 55.
• Film director Christopher Nolan is 54.
• Actor Tom Green is 53.
• Actor Christine Taylor is 53.
• Actor Hilary Swank is 50.
• Olympic gold medal beach volleyball player Misty May-Treanor is 47.
• Actor Jaime Pressly is 47.
• Alt-country singer-musician Seth Avett (AY’-veht) is 44.
• Former soccer player Hope Solo is 43.
• Actor Yvonne Strahovski is 42.
• Actor Martin Starr is 42.
• Actor Gina Rodriguez is 40.
• Actor Nico Tortorella is 35.
• Actor Joey King is 25.

Before his policing career began with six jobs in four years — the first three of which were part time — 30-year-old Sean Grayson was convicted twice within a year of driving under the influence, which cost him his hitch in the military.

The convictions plus his previous employment record should have raised serious questions when the Sangamon County Sheriff’s Department hired him in May 2023, law enforcement experts say.

Grayson, who has since been fired, is charged with first-degree murder, aggravated battery with a firearm and official misconduct in the death of Massey, a 36-year-old Black woman who had called 911 about a suspected prowler at her home in Springfield, 200 miles (320 kilometers) southwest of Chicago. Grayson, who is white, has pleaded not guilty.

“Six jobs in four years should have raised a red flag. And you would ask why he wasn’t hired full time in any of those (part-time) jobs,” said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. “Combined with a track record of DUIs, it would be enough to do further examination as to whether or not he would be a good fit.”

Grayson, who enlisted in the Army in 2014, was charged with DUI in Macoupin County, just south of Sangamon County, after traffic stops on Aug. 10, 2015, and again on July 26, 2016.

The first DUI led to his discharge from the military in February 2016 for “serious misconduct,” according to a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss personnel information, adding that Grayson had an unregistered gun in his vehicle.

Macoupin County State’s Attorney Jordan Garrison confirmed that police found a gun in the center console, but Grayson did not face a weapons charge because he was a resident of Fort Riley, Kansas. Kansas has an open-carry firearms law.

Grayson received a general discharge under honorable conditions — rather than an honorable discharge — because he was charged by a civilian law enforcement agency and his military service otherwise was good.

His attorney, Daniel Fultz, declined to comment Monday.

A misdemeanor DUI charge doesn’t by law preclude someone from serving in law enforcement, said Sean Smoot, chairman of the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, but a hiring agency can certainly consider it.

“Some police departments would not have hired someone with one DUI,” Smoot said. “I am shocked an agency would hire someone with two DUIs, but multiple agencies apparently did.”

Massey’s father, James Wilburn, has demanded the resignation of Sangamon County Sheriff Jack Campbell. “He does not intend to step down,” Campbell spokesman Jeff Wilhite said.

A statement from Campbell’s office indicated that the county merit commission and state law enforcement board recommended Grayson’s certification as an officer despite the DUIs, and he passed a drug test, criminal background check, psychological evaluation and 16-week academy course.

Body-worn camera video of the killing released last week has unnerved the capital city, where a 1908 race riot prompted the creation of the NAACP a year later.

“Black women are under attack,” said Teresa Haley, a consultant and founder of Visions 1908, a social and economic justice and education advocacy group. “As I watched the video, I thought, ‘This is not murder. This is an assassination.’”

In the video, Grayson and another officer search outside Massey’s house for a prowler before knocking on her front door. Several minutes pass before Massey answers, during which time Grayson makes a comment that she’s dead inside and calls impatiently for her.

When she does, Massey, who had suffered mental health issues, says, “Don’t hurt me,” acts confused and repeats, “Please, God.” Grayson responds in a condescending manner when asking if there’s anything else he can do for her. As he tries to get her name for a report, he enters the house.

“His conduct before, during and after suggests that this guy was a loose cannon, and that’s being polite,” said Kalfani Ture, a former police officer, now assistant professor of criminal justice at Widener University in Chester, Pennsylvania, and an instructor in the New York Police Department’s academy.

Inside Massey’s home, video shows Grayson directing that a pan of water be removed from a flame on the stove. Massey appears to set it near the sink. After the two joke about Grayson moving away from her “hot, steaming water,” Massey inexplicably says, “I rebuke you in the name of Jesus.”

That prompts Grayson to pull his gun. Massey apologizes and ducks behind a counter, but when Grayson yells at her to drop the pot, she comes back up and appears to pick it up again. Grayson fires three times, striking her in the face. He then discourages his partner from getting his medical kit. After relenting and retrieving his own, he returns to find emergency medical providers on the scene, drops it on the floor and says he won’t “waste my med stuff.”

“That’s not characteristic of an officer. That is characteristic of someone who has a depraved indifference to human life,” Ture said. “And this incident is not an aberration. Someone like this is pretty consistent in in their display of this type of profile.”

Ture said Massey probably picked up the pot again because she had already put it down when Grayson told her to do so and was confused by his aggressive orders. He moved quickly to lethal force despite having cover from the threat — substantial distance from Massey and a counter separating them — and he had other options, including using a stun gun, chemical spray or easily overpowering the diminutive woman, Ture said.

Pulling his weapon escalated the incident, Wexler said.

“He should have slowed things down, communicate, have a plan B and know where the door is to get out of the house, not put himself in a position where he had no alternative but to use deadly force by standing still, pulling out his gun and barking orders,” Wexler said.

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Baldor reported from Washington, D.C.

WASHINGTON (AP) — Former President Donald Trump has agreed to be interviewed by the FBI as part of an investigation into his attempted assassination in Pennsylvania earlier this month, a special agent said on Monday in disclosing how the gunman prior to the shooting had researched mass attacks and explosive devices.

The expected interview with the 2024 Republican presidential nominee is part of the FBI’s standard protocol to speak with victims during the course of its criminal investigations. The FBI said on Friday that Trump was struck by a bullet or a fragment of one during the July 13 assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“We want to get his perspective on what he observed,” said Kevin Rojek, the special agent in charge of the FBI’s Pittsburgh field office. “It is a standard victim interview like we would do for any other victim of crime, under any other circumstances.”

Through roughly 450 interviews, the FBI has fleshed out a portrait of the gunman, Thomas Matthew Crooks, that reveals him to be a “highly intelligent” but reclusive 20-year-old whose primary social circle was his family and who maintained few friends and acquaintances throughout his life, Rojek said.

His parents have been “extremely cooperative,” with the investigation, Rojek said. They have said they had no advance knowledge of the shooting, a statement the FBI considers credible since Crooks had not been doing anything public in the weeks prior to the attack that would have aroused their suspicions.

The FBI has not uncovered a motive as to why he chose to target Trump, but investigators believe the shooting was the result of extensive planning, including the purchase in recent months of chemical precursors that investigators believe were used to create the explosive devices found in his car and his home and the use of a drone about 200 yards (180 meters) from the rally site in the hours before the event.

In addition, Rojek said, Crooks looked online for information about mass shootings, improvised explosive devices, power plants and the attempted assassination in May of Slovakia’s populist Prime Minister Robert Fico.

FBI Director Christopher Wray told Congress last week that on July 6, the day Crooks registered to attend the Trump rally, he googled: “How far away was Oswald from Kennedy?” That’s a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, the shooter who killed President John F. Kennedy from a sniper’s perch in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963.

New details, meanwhile, were emerging about law enforcement security lapses that preceded the shooting, with Sen. Chuck Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, releasing text messages from members of the Beaver County Emergency Services Unit that showed how local officers had spotted a suspicious-looking man who turned out to be Crooks lurking around in the hour before the shooting.

“Kid learning around building we are in. AGR I believe it is,” one officer wrote to other counter-snipers, including a photograph of Crooks. “I did see him with a range finder looking towards stage. FYI. If you wanna notify SS snipers to look out. I lost sight of him.”

AGR is a reference to a complex of buildings that form AGR International Inc. Crooks scaled the roof of one of the buildings of the compound and fired eight shots at the rally stage with an AR-style rifle. Trump said he was “shot with a bullet that pierced the upper part of my right ear,” and he appeared in the days later with a bandage on the ear. One rallygoer, Corey Comperatore, was killed, and two others were injured. Crooks was shot dead by a Secret Service counter-sniper.

In an interview with ABC News, a Beaver County officer who sounded the alarm said that after sending the text, “I assumed that there would be somebody coming out to speak with this individual or find out what’s going on.”

Another officer told ABC News that the group was supposed to get a face-to-face briefing with the Secret Service counter-snipers but that never happened. An email to the Secret Service was not immediately returned Monday.

Iowa’s Republican leaders have been seeking the law for years and gained momentum after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. The Iowa Supreme Court also issued a ruling that year saying there was no constitutional right to abortion in the state.

“There is no right more sacred than life,” Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds said in June. “I’m glad that the Iowa Supreme Court has upheld the will of the people of Iowa.”

Now, across the country, four states ban abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, and 14 states have near-total bans at all stages of pregnancy.

The law in Iowa and other restrictions across the country will be a focus of the 2024 election, with Republicans celebrating their successes and Democrats criticizing them as an attack on women’s rights. Vice President Kamala Harris, who stands to become the Democratic presidential nominee, has said reproductive rights are at stake this November.

The Harris campaign released a video Monday to draw attention to the issue as Iowa’s law becomes enforceable.

“What we need to do is vote,” she said. “When I am President of the United States, I will sign into law the protections for reproductive freedom.”

Iowa’s abortion providers have been fighting the new law but still preparing for it, shoring up abortion access in neighboring states and drawing on the lessons learned where bans went into effect more swiftly.

They have said they will continue to operate in Iowa in compliance with the new law, but Sarah Traxler, Planned Parenthood North Central States’ chief medical officer, called it a “devastating and dark” moment in state history.

The Iowa law was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature in a special session last year, but a legal challenge was immediately filed by the American Civil Liberties Union of Iowa, Planned Parenthood North Central States and the Emma Goldman Clinic. The law was in effect for just a few days before a district judge temporarily blocked it, a decision Gov. Kim Reynolds appealed to the state’s high court.

The Iowa Supreme Court’s 4-3 ruling in June reiterated that there is no constitutional right to an abortion in the state and ordered the hold be lifted. A district court judge last week said the hold would be lifted Monday morning.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, called it a “historic day for Iowa.”

The law prohibits abortions after cardiac activity can be detected, which is roughly at six weeks. There are limited exceptions in cases of rape, incest, fetal abnormality or when the life of the mother is in danger. Previously, abortion in Iowa was legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy.

The state’s medical board defined standards of practice for adhering to the law earlier this year, though the rules do not outline disciplinary action or how the board would determine noncompliance.

Three abortion clinics in two Iowa cities offer in-person abortion procedures and will continue to do so before cardiac activity is detected, according to representatives from Planned Parenthood and Emma Goldman.

A law based on cardiac activity is “tricky,” said Traxler, of Planned Parenthood. Since six weeks is approximate, “we don’t necessarily have plans to cut people off at a certain gestational age,” she said.

For over a year, the region’s Planned Parenthood also has been making investments within and outside of Iowa to prepare for the restrictions. Like in other regions, it has dedicated staff to work the phones, helping people find appointments, connect with other providers, arrange travel plans or financial assistance.

It also is remodeling its center in Omaha, Nebraska, just over the state line and newly offers medication abortion in Mankato, Minnesota, about an hour’s drive from Iowa.

But providers fear the drastic change in access will exacerbate health inequalities for Iowa’s women of color and residents from low-income households.

Across the country, the status of abortion has changed constantly since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, with trigger laws immediately going into effect, states passing new restrictions or expansions of access and court battles putting those on hold.

In states with restrictions, the main abortion options are getting pills via telehealth or underground networks and traveling, vastly driving up demand in states with more access.