An order by President Donald J. Trump diverted a draft memo by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that would have required all passengers and employees to wear masks on all forms of public and commercial transportation across the nation, according to two federal health officials.
More than 40,000 Americans per day become infected with COVID-19 and the CDC mask mandate would have been a tough federal guideline to help curb or stop the spread of transmission, decreasing the overall viral load in cities and states in a uniform manner. The order was drafted under the CDC's "quarantine powers," which had the support of the secretary of health and human services, Alex M. Azar II. However, the head of the Coronavirus Task Force, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, denied to hear it.
A task force official who wished to speak anonymously said, “The approach the task force has taken with any mask mandate is, the response in New York City is different than Montana, or Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Local and state authorities need to determine the best approach for their responsive effort depending on how the coronavirus is impacting their area.”
“I think masks are the most powerful weapon we have to confront COVID and we all need to embrace masks and set the example for each other,” said CDC Director Dr. Robert R. Redfield.
Representative Peter A. DeFazio, a Democrat from Oregon and chairman of the House committee on transportation and infrastructure, said, “It’s especially outrageous because the science is so clear: masks save lives. The millions of Americans who work in and use our transportation systems every day — from bus drivers, train conductors and flight attendants, to the frontline workers who rely on public transit — deserve to know their president is relying on experts’ best advice and doing everything possible to keep them safe.”
The Washington Post is reporting that the private school attended by Judge Amy Coney Barrett's children has a current COVID-19 outbreak - and it occurred following the infamous "Rose Garden massacre" event at the White House.
“We understand that this sort of situation can create uncertainty,” the school principal, John A. Lee, wrote in the email to parents. “However we have been assured at this point that the risk of exposure for other individuals at Trinity School who were not identified as close contacts is no greater than the risk of getting the virus in the general community.”
A White House official who spoke to The Washington Post on the condition of anonymity said Barrett’s children "have tested negative, never showed symptoms and were kept out of school after revelations that some who attended the White House ceremonies had tested positive. The official did not specify how long the children stayed home, but said the school approved their return to the classroom."
“The health and safety of our students, their families, and our faculty and staff, is of utmost concern, as is protecting the privacy and health information of our school community,” Balsbaugh said.
The New York Times continued its explosive reporting on President Donald Trump's tax records on Friday by divulging that he engineered an eight-figure windfall shortly before contributing $10 million to his "self-funded" 2016 presidential campaign—which sparked fresh calls for probing the president's tax and business practices.
"Voters had a right to know where Trump was getting the money for his campaign."
—Trevor Potter, CLC
"The more we learn about what Trump is hiding in his tax returns, the worse it looks," Tax March tweeted Friday with a link to the report. The group is leading a coalition of progressive organizations behind the #WePaidMore campaign to raise awareness about the country's "utterly rigged" tax system, as demonstrated by Trump's actions.
The latest piece for the Times' investigation into Trump tax documents obtained by the newspaper—which kicked off last month with a bombshell exposé detailing how he paid little-to-no federal income taxes in the years leading up to his presidency—generated concerns the president illegally funded his campaign with a business loan.
Times journalists Susanne Craig, Mike McIntire, and Russ Buettner report that as Trump struggled to raise money for his White House run in 2016, he secured "more than $21 million in what experts describe as highly unusual one-off payments from the Las Vegas hotel he owns with his friend the casino mogul Phil Ruffin."
As the trio of journalists detail:
The tax records, by their nature, do not specify whether the more than $21 million in payments from the Trump-Ruffin hotel helped prop up Mr. Trump's campaign, his businesses, or both. But they do show how the cash flowed, in a chain of transactions, to several Trump-controlled companies and then directly to Mr. Trump himself.
The bulk of the money went through a company called Trump Las Vegas Sales and Marketing that had little previous income, no clear business purpose and no employees. The Trump-Ruffin joint venture wrote it all off as a business expense.
The report raises concerns about potential legal problems related to both claiming the tax deduction and whether the payments are technically campaign contributions.
Just weeks before the 2016 election, "the Trump-Ruffin partnership borrowed $30 million from City National Bank in Los Angeles," according to the Times. "Mr. Trump signed the loan documents in New York City, but tax records show that Mr. Ruffin personally guaranteed nearly the entire amount, should the company ever be unable to pay."
"The partnership was not required to disclose on its tax returns how the borrowed money would be spent," the reporters note. "But the timing of the loan, combined with the partnership's lack of available cash that year, strongly suggests that the loan funded the millions of dollars in payments to Mr. Trump."
— (@)
Campaign Legal Center (CLC) president and former Republican chairman of the Federal Election Commission Trevor Potter said in a statement Friday that "if Trump took out a bank loan in the LLC's name for the purpose of financing his election, then the Trump campaign violated its legal reporting requirements by failing to disclose the loan, and failing to disclose that Trump's Vegas property was used as collateral."
"If Trump secretly financed his 2016 campaign using an undisclosed bank loan backed by a billionaire developer, then voters have been illegally deprived of important information about the true sources of Trump's financial support," he said. "Additionally, if the LLC took a tax deduction for the payments to Trump, it would mean that Trump secretly relied on taxpayers to help subsidize his 2016 campaign."
"Disclosure to voters in 2016 would have been important, since Trump's claim that he was self-financing his campaign was central to his campaign message, and created a veneer of credibility for him to accuse rivals of being beholden to wealthy special interests," Potter added. "Voters had a right to know where Trump was getting the money for his campaign."
The Times report goes on to detail Ruffin's friendship with the president and years serving as a "wingman for Mr. Trump's political ambitions." Jennifer Renzelman, a spokesperson for Ruffin, told the newspaper that the 85-year-old was not involved in the day-to-day operations of the hotel in question and that "all tax statements go to the people who work on his taxes."
White House spokesperson Judd Deere called the report "yet another politically motivated hit piece inaccurately smearing a standard business deal," and said that "during his years as a successful businessman, Donald Trump was longtime partners with Phil Ruffin and earned whatever payments he received."
Meanwhile, tax and campaign finance experts, reporters, and other political commentators highlighted the legal concerns raised and called for further investigation:
Hurricane Delta churned toward the Louisiana coast Friday packing ferocious winds and potential for dangerous storm surge and flooding -- prompting the evacuation of people still rebuilding from a devastating storm less than two months ago.
The hurricane, located 80 miles (130 kilometers) from the coastal town of Cameron on Friday afternoon, is expected to make landfall by evening as a Category 2 storm, the National Hurricane Center said.
Winds of 110 miles (175 kilometers) per hour are expected to bring a life-threatening storm surge of up to 11 feet (three meters) in some areas, according to the bulletin from the Miami-based center, although the storm will weaken as it moves inland.
In Lake Charles, a city in southwest Louisiana that was hit hard by Hurricane Laura on August 20 and is now in the path of Delta, the streets were deserted Friday as a steady rain fell.
The city is still in disarray from the more powerful Laura, which was a Category 4 on a scale of five and ripped roofs off houses and uprooted trees. Streets are still littered with debris.
"I don't even know if we'll have a house when we come back," said Kimberly Hester, who lives in Lake Charles.
"I just pray to God every night we can at least have a house to come home to."
Cristy Olmsted, 41, said she had decided to ride out Delta because evacuating is too stressful. She put boards up to protect her windows and door and said her main worry was Delta kicking up debris loosened by the last hurricane.
"The last one was the worst one, this one cannot be worse," said Olmsted, who works for an electrical utility and lives with her boyfriend.
Arthur Durham, 56, was finishing covering windows at his home with plywood as protection against flying debris.
"I stayed for the last one. I'm pretty well prepared. I have a generator back-up, tools, equipment... I'm pretty self-sufficient," he told AFP, adding: "I'm used to this."
Battered US Gulf
Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards announced that 2,400 National Guard personnel had been mobilized to aid locals.
Hurricane Delta will hit "in the area of our state that is least prepared to take it," he said late Thursday.
In Lake Charles, Shannon Fuselier drilled plywood over the windows of a friend's home.
Many neighborhood houses are covered with tarps from previous hurricane damage, and the home Fuselier was working on had already suffered roof damage from a fallen tree and smashed windows during Laura.
"The branches and leaves don't do that much damage," said Fuselier, 56. "It's pieces of metal, steel, frames of other people's windows, signs from people's stores, nails."
Fuselier said she was staying because she didn't think the storm was strong enough for her to flee.
Edwards has already warned that Delta could sweep up old debris and hurl it like missiles.
Traffic was jammed Thursday as people left Lake Charles.
Terry Lebine evacuated to the town of Alexandria, some 100 miles (150 kilometers) to the north, during the previous hurricane, and was ready to head out again.
"It's exhausting," she told AFP. "I've got my mother, she's 81 years old and not in the best of health. Right after we went back home after Laura, we have to leave again for Delta. We were home a good two to three weeks."
The storm toppled trees and tore down power lines in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula Wednesday as it swept over the western Gulf of Mexico. But the region escaped major destruction and no deaths were reported.
Delta is the 26th named storm of an unusually active Atlantic hurricane season.
In September, meteorologists were forced to break out the Greek alphabet to name Atlantic storms for only the second time ever, after the 2020 hurricane season blew through their usual list, ending on Tropical Storm Wilfred.
As the ocean surface warms due to climate change hurricanes become more powerful -- and scientists say there will likely be an increase in powerful Category 4 and 5 storms.
A quasi-new militia movement called the boogaloo was born out of internet forums for pro-gun/anti-government enthusiasts over the summer of 2019 when white supremacists adopted the term. Earlier this year in January, the boogaloo movement gained traction off the internet and into the streets - with gun-toting rural enthusiasts coining the term for a civil war second-coming, of sorts, using phrases like "big luau" as a deterrent and Hawaiian-style shirts as an identification marker for incoming traffic.
The recent boogaloo kidnapping plot against Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) was just the tip of the iceberg. And never has a U.S. president taken part in the extremism circling this underground organized group.
Raw Storyreported Thursday that police and private intelligence predicted "coming violence" from right-wing vigilantes at polling places in battleground states. President Donald J. Trump shook it up and, arguably, encouraged the acts of violence with his "stand back and stand by" directives during the first presidential debate a week prior.
“What we are seeing include calls for civil war, race-based conflict, and for increased acquisition of weapons,” said FBI former counterintelligence director Frank Figliuzzi, speaking at an October 2 briefing by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on voter intimidation threats and responses. “Right-wing extremist groups, including QAnon, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Boys and violent militia groups, are all using the language of violent conflict in both their public and in their private communications online.”
Figliuzzi added, “They are also calling for a physical response and presence at the polling places. The specter of people who are violent in nature and have violent agendas, and often come armed with long guns, is becoming a very real possibility.”
— (@)
Trump has voiced his next call to action, saying Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden "must pay the price." For all intents and purposes, it sounds like another call for violence from the "fine people on both sides" and "we need to take away the children" showman president with a mere 25 days to go until the Nov. 3 presidential election.
In order to protect the upcoming election, Kristen Clarke, the Lawyers’ Committee’s president and executive director, said, “One step that election officials can make is to make clear the campaign-free zone that applies in their states. In every state there is a certain perimeter in which electioneering activity is prohibited, and [in] which intimidating activity would also be prohibited.”
President Donald Trump has not announced any negative tests after being infected with coronavirus for over a week, but he has now announced two events where he will appear in public, possibly creating two more super spreader events.
"Will be in Sanford, Florida on Monday for a very BIG RALLY!" Trump tweeted late Friday afternoon.
— (@)
Trump is also hosting another potential super spreader event – a campaign function at the White House on Saturday. Trump has erased the line between his campaign and his presidency, using all the tools of government, paid for by the taxpayers, to help his flailing political career.
Saturday's event is expected to include hundreds of invited guests. Trump is expected to address them from a balcony but it's hard to imagine he will isolate himself.
When it comes to Supreme Court rulings, constitutional law cases – like Roe v. Wade and Citizens United – tend to hog the limelight. But that’s not the only type of case that matters.
The Supreme Court issues a lot of important rulings that affect workers, like the Bostock case earlier this year declaring that LGBT workers are protected from discrimination under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.
The Roberts court has been a mixed bag, however, when it comes to worker rights. It has also issued rulings that are unfavorable to unions and uphold forced arbitration of employment claims.
How might the addition of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the high court alter its approach?
As a law professor specializing in employment law, I was curious about Barrett and decided to read the employment cases she decided while serving on the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. I found 15 such rulings written by Barrett on behalf of a three-judge panel and another 45 where she was part of the panel but did not write the opinion.
Although it is impossible to separate Barrett’s conclusions from those of the other panelists, her opinions provide a window into her approach.
By the numbers
Federal appellate courts favor the status quo. According to official statistics, federal courts will uphold the lower court ruling in 91% of appeals.
And in employment cases, most appeals involve workers whose cases were tossed out by a lower court. In other words, the deck is stacked against workers at the appellate courts, regardless of the judge assigned to a particular case.
Barrett’s three-judge panel on the Seventh Circuit was a little bit less likely than average to uphold the lower court ruling – they did so in 80% of the 45 cases. And Barrett did so in around 75% of the 15 opinions she wrote.
But did workers end up better or worse off as a result? Well, they didn’t do very well when one of Barrett’s co-panelists wrote the opinion – the panel ruled in the employee’s favor in only seven of those cases, or 16%.
Workers actually fared somewhat better in opinions written by Barrett. She issued a ruling favorable to the employee in one-third of her 15 cases. And there were two additional cases where she mostly upheld favorable jury verdicts for the worker but reduced some of the damages. That suggests she may be more sympathetic toward workers than her colleagues.
But a closer read of Barrett’s opinions suggest that her stance toward employment cases depends on whether workers are suing on their own or as part of a class action.
Barrett wrote a ruling that effectively ended a class action lawsuit filed by Grubhub delivery drivers.
Ben Gabbe/Getty Images
Class action skepticism
Class actions – where many workers bring a lawsuit together – tend to be important for enforcing minimum wage and overtime laws. They’re just not worth enough money for a lawyer to file one claim at a time.
But these sorts of class actions did not fare well before Judge Barrett. Of the five class action opinions she wrote, the workers lost in all but one.
Barrett’s skepticism is revealed in two class actions involving very similar fact patterns. In the first, which involved Grubhub delivery drivers, she sent the drivers to arbitration because they were not engaged in interstate commerce due to the local nature of their deliveries. This effectively ended their lawsuit, because the arbitration agreement prohibited class actions.
By contrast, in a remarkably similar case involving drivers for a cardboard box company, she ruled that the drivers were engaged in interstate commerce, even though they were mostly just driving to and from a loading dock or across the street. This ruling meant they couldn’t sue for overtime under an exemption meant for long-haul truckers.
Very similar facts, very similar legal rule, opposite rulings – both of which ended the case for the workers at issue. That’s not promising for workers.
It’s unclear whether Barrett’s adverse rulings simply reflect current law, which is quite unfriendly to class actions, or signal her underlying views.
However, a jaundiced approach toward class actions may be one respect in which Barrett mirrors the judicial philosophy of her mentor, the late Justice Antonin Scalia. In 2011, Scalia penned two landmark Supreme Court rulings – Dukes v. Walmart and AT&T v. Conception – which proved incredibly damaging to workers’ ability to use class actions to protect their rights.
With Barrett added to the bench, I would therefore expect the Supreme Court to continue to take a pro-business stance when it comes to class actions.
Barrett has been busy meeting with senators, such as John Cornyn, as she prepares for her confirmation hearings, scheduled to begin on Oct. 12.
Barrett’s approach to claims brought by individual workers was different and somewhat hard to pin down.
As best I could tell, she seemed to approach these lawsuits from a framework of personal responsibility. In general, she seemed to rule against whichever party made bad or irresponsible choices – whether that was the worker or the company.
When a prison guard was fired for falsely claiming that a prisoner hit her with a snack cake box, Barrett had no patience for her gender discrimination claim against the prison. The surveillance footage showed that the prisoner threw the box but it did not hit her. Barrett seemed especially concerned that the prisoner could have been sentenced to extra prison time if there hadn’t been surveillance footage to back up his account.
Likewise, Barrett proved unsympathetic toward an ice rink worker who brought a disability discrimination claim after causing a Zamboni accident. Barrett was also nonplussed by a race harassment claim brought by a traffic patrolman with a bad driving record that included driving away from a gas pump with the nozzle attached and almost crashing into a police car.
Barrett seemed so appalled by the bad driving, the merits of the harassment claim fell by the wayside.
But Barrett’s philosophy also favored workers when the employer dropped the ball or behaved badly. She upheld a jury verdict against Costco for failing to protect a worker who was being harassed by a customer. She upheld another involving a Latina park supervisor who brought a race discrimination case after her employer subjected her to surveillance and falsely accused her of altering her timecard. Barrett likewise sided with a butcher who was repeatedly sexually and racially harassed by his male co-workers and his supervisor.
In perhaps the best illustration of her philosophy, she reversed a lower court ruling against a worker who had been bilked out of his long-term disability benefits. The insurance company lost, Barrett ruled, because it had “blown” the regulatory deadline for responding to the worker’s claim. “A deadline is a bright line rule,” she wrote. “What’s good for the goose is good for the gander.”
Cross-cutting values
Barrett’s approach to individual claims is consistent with certain conservative values, but it’s also distinct from a pro-business model of conservatism that seeks to expand employer power and discretion for the sake of efficiency and cost savings.
It’s also somewhat different from the Supreme Court’s approach to discrimination casesinrecentyears, which have been cloaked in technical language, with unpredictable results.
The closest analog to Barrett’s stance may actually be recent liberal social movements such as the #MeToo movement, which was morally centered on accountability and redress. On the other hand, the ultimate goal of many liberal movements is equity, which does not seem to much of a priority for Barrett.
Still, I would expect Barrett to be somewhat of a wild card when it comes to the rights of individual workers. Just like the rest of 2020, Barrett could prove to be more unpredictable than we assume.
Gov. John Carney (D-DE) signed off on a pardon last year for one of the conspirators who attempted the kidnapping of Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) Thursday. Barry Gordon Croft, Jr., 44, of Bear, Delaware was pardoned for crimes between 1994-1997 that included possession of a firearm during the commission of a felony and assault and burglary. Additional charges were conspiracy, receiving stolen property and disorderly conduct.
The 44-year-old Bear, Dela. native was arrested and charged in a federal court in Michigan following the foiled attempt to kidnap Whitmer.
Delaware Department of Justice spokesman Mat Marshall said, "Needless to say, nobody — neither the DOJ nor the bipartisan Board of Pardons — would have endorsed a pardon had they known what the future held."
Carney issued a written statement through a spokesman calling Croft's new charges "disturbing." He said anyone involved in the kidnapping plot should be "prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law."
"The charges brought in Michigan are disturbing and everyone charged in this plot should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law," Carney spokesman Jonathan Starkey said. "This is also another warning sign about the growing threat of violence and radicalization in our politics."
Croft awaits a court hearing on Tuesday that will decide if he's being extradited to Michigan.
The extreme militia group Wolverine Watchmen attempted a terrorism plot involving Whitmer after pre-meditated planning and training for an attack on the Capitol as well. Six others were charged in U.S. District Court with federal conspiracy to commit kidnapping.
In addition to Croft, federal charges were filed against Adam Fox, Ty Garbin, Kaleb Franks, Daniel Harris, and Brandon Caserta.
New York Yankees all-time wins leader Whitey Ford, a six-time World Series champion and Hall of Fame pitcher, has died, the Major League Baseball team announced Friday. He was 91.
Ford died Thursday night surrounded by his family watching the Yankees in a playoff victory over Tampa Bay, the team said.
"All of Major League Baseball mourns the loss of Whitey Ford, a New York City native who became a legend for his hometown team," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said.
"Whitey earned his status as the ace of some of the most memorable teams in our sport's rich history."
The left-hander nicknamed "Chairman of the Board" went 236-106 with a 2.75 earned-run average over 16 seasons with the Yankees, taking the 1961 Cy Young Award as the American League's top pitcher.
Ford, inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1964, has a .690 winning percentage, the highest of any modern-era pitcher with at least 150 triumphs.
"Whitey's name and accomplishments are forever stitched into the fabric of baseball's rich history," Yankees managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner said.
"He was a treasure and one of the greatest of Yankees to ever wear the pinstripes... In so many ways he encapsulated the spirit of the Yankees teams he played for and represented for nearly two decades."
Steinbrenner described Ford as "New York tough" with "a genuine personality and charisma that showed throughout his life," calling his death "a tremendous loss to the Yankees and the baseball community."
Born on October 21, 1928 in New York, Edward Charles Ford attended a 1946 Yankees tryout camp as a first baseman but his strong throwing arm prompted a move to the mound and a $7,000 contract for the 1947 campaign.
"I was a Yankee fan since I was five or six," Ford said upon his Hall of Fame induction. "To think when I was 21 years old I’d be playing with (Joe) DiMaggio and (Yogi) Berra against guys like Stan Musial and Roy Campanella, it's just something I can't fathom. It has just been great."
Lefty Gomez, another famed Yankees southpaw hurler, nicknamed the blond-haired Ford "Whitey" while managing him on a minor-league squad before his 1950 MLB debut. Ford went 9-1 with a 2.81 ERA in 20 games as a rookie.
He won the clinching game of the 1950 World Series over Philadelphia, allowing only two unearned runs over 8 2/3 innings, what Ford later called "my first big thrill in baseball."
Ford missed the next two seasons while serving in the US Army during the Korean War, but was never sent overseas. He returned in 1953 to help the Yankees capture a fifth consecutive World Series crown.
Ford pitched in 11 World Series during his 16 seasons. His 10 World Series victories remain the most of any pitcher in history.
Overall, Ford went 10-8 with a 2.71 ERA in a record 22 career World Series starts. He also set World Series records with 94 strikeouts and 146 innings pitched.
Between 1960-62, Ford threw a record 33 2/3 consecutive scoreless World Series innings, breaking Babe Ruth's record of 29 2/3.
According to reports, President Trump is planning to hold his first in-person rally since being diagnosed with coronavirus. The rally is set to take place on the White House South Lawn this coming Saturday.
"Some in the White House and on the Trump campaign expressed concern about what the president might say in his remarks at the Saturday event, and feared the entire event would serve to underscore existing criticism that Mr. Trump has been cavalier about a virus that has killed over 210,000 Americans," the New York Times reports.
An invite obtained by ABC News says that the event will feature remarks from Trump "to peaceful protesters for law and order."
Trump will reportedly speak to the crowd from the White House balcony.
A growing number of GOP operatives and donors are concerned that President Trump is letting his reelection chances slip away and are suggesting that the party shift its focus towards protecting seats in Congress, NBC News reports.
"Vulnerable GOP candidates are currently tethered to an unpopular president, fighting for survival against a potential blue wave after Trump’s widely panned performance in the first debate, his coronavirus diagnosis and his erratic behavior on economic stimulus talks," NBC's Sahil Kapur writes.
Kapur cites recent polling showing Joe Biden to be leading Trump by at least 10 points, adding that across the country, "Trump is hemorrhaging support among seniors and faces widespread defections among white college graduates, particularly women."
Speaking to NBC, Republican strategist Ken Spain agrees that the situation is dire.
“The president has had possibly the worst two-week stretch that a candidate could have going into the final month of an election," he said.
“In 2016, the president was a buoy. In 2020 he’s more of an anchor. There’s no question there are going to be losses down the ballot,” Spain continued. “Six months ago, Republicans were hoping that we would be talking about Senate races in Colorado, Arizona and Maine. Instead there’s concern about the potential outcomes in states like South Carolina, Georgia and Kansas.”
Longtime Republican Senate Leader Bob Dole (R-KS) returned to the public sphere on Friday to question the integrity of the Commission on Presidential Debates.
Dole, 97, was the GOP nominee for president in 1996 and chaired the Republican National Committee during the Nixon administration.
"The Commission on Presidential Debates is supposedly bipartisan [with] an equal number of Rs and Ds. I know all of the Republicans and most are friends of mine," Dole posted on his Twitter account.
"I am concerned that none of them support [Trump]. A biased Debate Commission is unfair," he declared.
The commission has announced that the second debate will be held virtually due to Trump contracting coronavirus as part of the White House super-spreader event that occurred during the nomination of Judge Amy Coney Barrett for the U.S. Supreme Court.
Two members of the notorious Islamic State kidnapping cell dubbed the "Beatles" pleaded not guilty in a US court on Friday to charges of conspiring to murder four American hostages.
El Shafee Elsheikh, 32, and Alexanda Kotey, 36, were flown to the US from Iraq on Wednesday to face trial for involvement in the murders of American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff and relief workers Peter Kassig and Kayla Mueller.
Appearing from prison by videolink, they both pleaded not guilty during a hearing in US District Court in Alexandria, Virginia and waived their right to a speedy trial.
Judge TS Ellis described the case as "complex and unusual" and set the next hearing for January 15.
"Time is required in order to achieve the ends of justice in this case," Ellis said.
Besides the deaths of the four Americans, Elsheikh and Kotey are also suspected of involvement in the killings of two Britons, Alan Henning and David Haines, and several other hostages including two Japanese nationals.
The two former British nationals had been in the custody of US forces in Iraq since October 2019 after being captured in January 2018 by Syrian Kurdish forces.
Kotey and Elsheikh's four-member IS cell was dubbed the "Beatles" by their captives due to their British accents.
They allegedly tortured and killed their victims, including by beheading, and the IS released videos of the murders for propaganda purposes.
