Politics

By Sarah N. Lynch

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday denied Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes’ request to postpone his upcoming Jan. 6 Capitol riot trial, and ruled he cannot fire his lawyers and replace them just three weeks before the case is set to begin.

Rhodes and eight other co-defendants are accused of plotting to stop the peaceful transfer of presidential power in a failed bid to block Congress from certifying President Joe Biden’s election victory on Jan. 6, 2021.

Rhodes is due to go to trial in Washington, D.C. with four other defendants on Sept. 27 for seditious conspiracy, a rarely prosecuted criminal charge. A second set of four defendants head to trial on Nov. 29.

“The idea that at the 11th hour, Mr. Rhodes wants to bring in new counsel three weeks before this trial is set to begin, months and months after trial preparation,” said U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta, at times sounding exasperated. “Here’s the thing: I’m not going to do it.”

Rhodes, one of the most high-profile defendants of the more than 860 people charged over the Capitol riot, informed the court in a Tuesday filing that he had “a complete, or near-complete breakdown” in communication with his two original attorneys, James Bright and Phillip Linder.

His new lawyer, Edward Tarpley, told Mehta he needs at least 90 additional days to get up to speed on the case, address motions Rhodes wanted filed and collect additional potentially exculpatory evidence.

The list of to-do items Tarpley cited should be done included deposing witnesses whose names have not been mentioned in any pre-trial motions or hearings, such as Cassidy Hutchinson, the former aide to former President Donald Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows.

Tarpley also said the government dealt a blow to Rhodes’ defense plans when it charged Oath Keeper attorney and Rhodes’ former girlfriend Kellye SoRelle earlier this month in connection with the Capitol attack.

During a sometimes contentious virtual hearing on Wednesday, Rhodes’ original attorneys expressed exasperation with their client, saying some of his claims about their performance were untrue.

“I’ve given 7 months of my life to Mr. Rhodes…I’ve missed sporting events for my children. I’ve missed time with my family for a man I don’t know,” Bright told the court.

Mehta ruled the trial will continue as scheduled.

“If Mr. Rhodes wants you in this case? That’s fine,” Mehta told Tarpley. “Mr. Linder and Mr. Bright are going to be at that table, representing Mr. Rhodes in this trial starting September 27. Period. Full stop. End of story.”

(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Josie Kao)

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By Sharon Bernstein and Scott DiSavino

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (Reuters) -A man in a heat-stricken suburb of Los Angeles and a woman with two young kids in Pomona were among the Californians desperately seeking cool shelter as extreme temperatures baked the state on Wednesday for an eighth straight day.

Temperatures were expected to top 108 degrees Fahrenheit (42 degrees Celsius) in Sacramento, the state capital, and other inland valleys, and broke 100 degrees around the Los Angeles area.

The agency that operates most of California’s electrical grid urged consumers to conserve energy during the late afternoon and evening hours to avoid rolling blackouts, as the heat wave blanketed the drought-stricken region and crews fought multiple wildfires linked to the dry conditions.

Many people without air conditioning or homes found some relief in cooling centers operated out of city hall conference rooms and community centers.

But untold numbers of homeless people lay on the streets in downtown Los Angeles, seeking whatever patches of shade they could find, said Andy Bales, president and CEO of the Union Rescue Mission, which helps people experiencing homelessness.

Bales said he and his staff were walking the streets twice a day to hand out water bottles. Some people barely moved, he said, opening their eyes only to look at the volunteers and grasp a cool bottle.

About 1,000 people were sheltering at the Union Rescue Mission’s three facilities in the area, he said.

The organization also found cool places to stay for others, including two mothers with children and a man who called from suburban Simi Valley, where the temperature hit 100 degrees Fahrenheit on Wednesday.

In Sacramento, hard-hit by the prolonged heat wave that started in Southern California and moved north over the Labor Day weekend, a high school football player collapsed. A local chain of fitness centers canceled classes, saying its air-conditioning system could not keep up.

Temperatures are forecast to remain extreme in coming days before residents get some relief during the weekend, according to the National Weather Service.

Evacuation orders remained in place in Riverside County east of Los Angeles and in Siskiyou County in the northernmost part of the state, abutting Oregon, as crews responded to deadly wildfires.

As of Wednesday morning, just 5% of the Fairview Fire in Riverside was contained after scorching 7,000 acres (2,830 hectares), according to the Riverside County Fire Department. The fire has claimed the lives of two people and injured another.

Fire crews have contained 65% of the Mill Fire in Siskiyou, where nearly 4,000 acres (1,620 hectares) have burned.

On Tuesday, power prices soared to a two-year high and demand hit an all-time record as homes and businesses cranked up air conditioners.

The California Independent System Operator (ISO), grid operator for most of the state, canceled its warning for possible rotating outages late Tuesday with no outages needed.

While urging consumers and businesses to keep conserving, the grid operator has been primarily concerned with the late afternoon and evening hours, when the sun sets and solar power is no longer available.

The last time the ISO ordered utilities to shed power was for two days in August 2020 when outages affecting about 800,000 homes and businesses lasted anywhere from 15 minutes to about 2-1/2 hours.

(Reporting by Scott DiSavino and Tyler Clifford in New York and Sharon Bernstein in SacramentoEditing by Nick Zieminski, Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler)

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By Brendan O’Brien

(Reuters) – Texas state police are adopting a more aggressive strategy for responding to school shootings after scathing criticism of law enforcement for its handling of a massacre in Uvalde that killed 19 children and two teachers, the New York Times reported.

The Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has also referred five of its officers to the state inspector general for investigation into their actions during the May 24 shooting at Robb Elementary School, the Times reported on Tuesday. Two have already been suspended, the newspaper reported, citing an agency spokesperson.

Texas police were not immediately available for comment.

The new policy and investigation are the latest indications that state police officials, including DPS Director Steven McCraw, have acknowledged that more than just local law enforcement were responsible for the failed police response during the deadliest U.S. school shooting in nearly a decade.

The officers under investigation were identified during a review by the agency, which includes the Texas Ranger division, of how its officers responded to the shooting in Uvalde, a small town in Texas Hill Country, about 80 miles (129 km) west of San Antonio.

Also in July, McCraw sent an email outlining changes in the protocol for DPS officers responding to a mass shooting, the New York Times reported.

“Officers responding to an active shooter at a school will be authorized to overcome any delay to neutralizing an attacker,” McCraw wrote. “When a subject fires a weapon at a school he remains an active shooter until he is neutralized and is not to be treated as a ‘barricaded subject.’”

In the wake of the shooting, criticism of law enforcement’s response has centered on Pete Arredondo, the school district’s embattled police chief. According to the Texas DPS, Arredondo acted as “incident commander” in charge of the overall response. Last week, the Uvalde school board fired Arrendondo.

DPS officials said 19 officers waited for an hour in a hallway outside adjoining classrooms where the gunman was holed up with his victims before a U.S. Border Patrol-led tactical team finally made entry and killed the suspect.

McCraw said the new policy diverged from the approach recommended by the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University, a protocol that the Texas state police and departments around the country have generally followed.

“We will provide proper training and guidelines for recognizing and overcoming poor command decisions at an active shooter scene,” McCraw wrote, according to the Times.

A report by state lawmakers, released in July, said a total of 376 law enforcement officers, including more than 90 state police offices, rushed to the school in a chaotic scene marked by a lack of clear leadership and sufficient urgency.

(Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Editing by Richard Chang)

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By Nate Raymond

(Reuters) – A group representing the top judges in all 50 states is urging the U.S. Supreme Court not to shield actions taken by state legislatures affecting federal elections – such as reconfiguring electoral districts and imposing voting restrictions – from the scrutiny of state courts.

The bipartisan Conference of Chief Justices filed the brief on Tuesday in a closely watched case involving a map drawn by the Republican-led North Carolina legislature of the state’s 14 U.S. House of Representatives districts. The state’s top court struck down the map on Feb. 4, concluding that the districts were crafted in a manner intentionally biased against Democrats, diluting their “fundamental right to equal voting power.”

The Conference of Chief Justices argued that the U.S. Constitution does not prevent state courts from reviewing such congressional maps for violations of state constitutions, as the Republican state legislators defending the map argue.

The North Carolina Supreme Court rejected the Republican arguments seeking to exempt U.S. congressional electoral maps from legal review in state courts. A lower state court on Feb. 23 rejected a redrawn map submitted by the legislature and instead adopted a different map drawn by a bipartisan group of experts.

The conservative-majority U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case in its next term, which begins in October, with a decision due by June.

The Republican defense of the North Carolina legislature’s map relies on a legal theory called the “independent state legislature doctrine” that is gaining traction in conservative legal circles and, if endorsed by the U.S. Supreme Court, would vastly increase politicians’ control over how elections are conducted.

Under that doctrine, language in the U.S. Constitution called the Election Clause gives state legislatures, not state courts or other entities, authority over election rules including the drawing of electoral districts.

The Conference of Chief Justices in its brief said that argument flew in the face of history and that the Constitution does not bar states from allowing their courts to review state election under their state constitutions.

“The Elections Clause does not derogate from state courts’ authority to decide what state election law is, including whether it comports with state and U.S. Constitutions,” the conference’s lawyers wrote.

Two groups of plaintiffs, including Democratic voters and an environmental group, sued after North Carolina’s legislature passed its version of the congressional map last November. The plaintiffs argued that the map violated the North Carolina state constitution’s provisions concerning free elections and freedom of assembly, among others.

The dispute is one of numerous U.S. legal battles over the composition of electoral districts, which are redrawn each decade to reflect population changes measured in a national census, last taken in 2020. In most states, such redistricting is done by the party in power, which can lead to map manipulation for partisan gain.

Republicans also have enacted voting restrictions in various states that they say are needed to combat fraud but critics contend are intended to reduce the voting power of Democrats.

(Reporting by Nate Raymond in Boston; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Karen Freifeld

(Reuters) – Steve Bannon, a onetime top strategist for former U.S. President Donald Trump and recipient of a presidential pardon, is expected to surrender to New York authorities on Thursday to face a new indictment, a person familiar with the matter said.

Bannon in 2020 was accused in federal court of defrauding donors to a fund to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, but that indictment was dismissed after he was pardoned in the final hours of Trump’s presidency.

The new indictment is for state criminal charges that may mirror parts of the earlier federal case, though it is unclear because the indictment is still sealed, the person said.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office declined to comment.

Bannon himself issued a statement Tuesday night, after the Washington Post first reported the new indictment.

“This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system,” Bannon said in the statement.

He said Manhattan federal prosecutors did the same thing in August 2020 to try to take him out of that year’s election.

“It didn’t work then; it certainly won’t work now,” Bannon said.

Bannon is expected to appear in state court in Manhattan on Thursday and then be released pending trial, the person said.

A president can pardon people for federal crimes but not state crimes.

Bannon is not the first Trump ally to be charged in state court. In 2019, the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office attempted to pursue former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on felony charges, including mortgage fraud, that were similar to crimes for which Manafort had been convicted in federal court.

But the charges were dismissed after rulings that they amounted to double jeopardy, or trying someone twice for the same conduct. Manafort was pardoned by Trump in 2020.

Bannon had pleaded not guilty in the federal case, but double jeopardy may not apply because he was never tried.

Brian Kolfage and Andrew Badolato, who were charged alongside Bannon in the federal “We Build the Wall” case, pleaded guilty to fraud charges in April.

Bannon runs a popular hard-right podcast, “War Room,” where he regularly promotes pro-Trump information and hosts guests who deny that Trump lost the 2020 election.

In July, Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the select committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, a verdict the panel called a “victory for the rule of law.”

Bannon was a main adviser to Trump’s 2016 Republican presidential campaign, then served as his chief White House strategist during 2017 before a falling out that was later patched up.

Bannon, 68, championed “America First” right-wing populism and fierce opposition to immigration that became hallmarks of Trump’s presidency.

(Reporting by Karen Freifeld; additional reporting by Luc Cohen; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found in the FBI’s search last month of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The Post report, which cited people familiar with the matter, did not identify the foreign government discussed in the document, nor did it indicate whether the foreign government was friendly or hostile to the United States.

An FBI spokesperson declined to comment on the report. Trump representatives did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its Aug. 8 search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records.

According to the Post report, some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations that require special clearances, not just top-secret clearance.

Some of the documents are so restricted that even some of the Biden administration’s senior-most national security officials were not authorized to review them, the Post said.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Trump for removing government records from the White House after he departed in January 2021 and storing them at Mar-a-Lago.

On Monday, a federal judge agreed to Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review records seized in the FBI search, a move that is likely to delay the Justice Department’s criminal investigation.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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PROVO, Utah (AP) — Campaigning at a park filled with 19th-century pushcarts on a state holiday honoring Utah’s early Mormon pioneers, Evan McMullin glad hands voters as he strolls past potato sack races and beverage stands selling cold, sugary drinks under a sweltering sun.

The independent U.S. Senate candidate who won the official backing of Utah’s Democratic Party in this year’s midterm election harks back to Utah’s pioneer days as he explains his quest to unseat two-term Republican Sen. Mike Lee.

“When our ancestors arrived, the only way to make this harsh but very beautiful place work in order for them to survive and thrive was to work together,” said McMullin, who casts his candidacy as an opportunity to ”unite Americans across party lines to protect democracy.”

To defeat Lee, McMullin’s idealized call for cross-party unity will have to do a lot more than just win over Democrats and a few disgruntled conservatives. Republicans have won every U.S. Senate race in Utah since 1976.

It’s been six years since McMullin, a soft-spoken former Republican congressional staffer, emerged as a third-party candidate as a conservative alternative to Donald Trump. McMullin won 21.5% of the vote in Utah in 2016, the most of any third-party candidate in the country. Trump still breezed to victory.

McMullin warned in a New York Times op-ed after Trump’s election that he was an authoritarian who “undermined critical democratic norms including peaceful debate and transitions of power.” This year, McMullin is hitting that message even harder, denouncing his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection, his attempts to overturn the 2020 election and his handling of classified documents.

McMullin has cast both Trump and Lee as threats to democracy, noting text messages obtained by the Jan. 6 House committee that show Lee discussing legally dubious schemes to keep Trump in power, before shifting course, backing away and voting to certify the election results.

“Authoritarians serve themselves and the small cadres that surround them,” McMullin, an ex-CIA officer, said. “They never solve problems.”

As both parties jockey for control of the evenly split Senate, the peculiar Republican-versus-independent contest has transformed Utah from an electoral afterthought into a possible spoiler. Conservative groups like Club for Growth are spending millions to defend Lee.

If McMullin were to win in November, he would become the Senate’s third independent, joining Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Both caucus with the Democrats, though McMullin has said he wouldn’t caucus with either party.

Both Lee and McMullin are vying for voters like Cindy Kemp of Lehi, who credits Trump for the country’s thriving pre-pandemic economy but was often fed up with his public persona.

“With Trump and everything, we were like, ‘What do we do?’” Kemp said after speaking to McMullin in Provo. “But he did good for the country.”

She plans to vote for McMullin.

Eighty miles (129 kilometers) north at a junior livestock auction in Ogden, Lee wears ostrich skin cowboy boots and sits cross-legged on a folding chair. Mingling with voters amid the the sound of squealing hogs after purchasing a sheep at the auction, he acknowledges the race defies traditional two-party dynamics yet hews closely to conventional Republican talking points: government spending, inflation and polling showing widespread disapproval of President Joe Biden.

In response to questions about prominent midterm election issues, Lee repeatedly prefaces his answers by circling back to a reminder that McMullin has been “embraced and endorsed and funded by the Democratic Party.”

Lee, a one-time critic of the former president who even voted for McMullin in protest of Trump in the 2016 election, dismisses McMullin’s alarm bells about extremism and says their race has less to do with Trump than Biden.

“Trump’s not on the ballot. This one is not about him,” Lee said as he walked through a cattle corral talking about the effects of inflation on feed and fuel prices.

“People in Utah feel strongly about the horrible state of affairs that Joe Biden has brought and the horrible conditions that we’re now facing with inflation and all that goes along with it.”

McMullin acknowledges issues like inflation and abortion rights are focal points in Senate races nationwide. Still, his campaign is laser-focused on what he believes are growing threats to democracy from power-hungry extremists willing to abandon it. It’s difficult to fix issues like air quality near the Great Salt Lake or buoy economically depressed coal towns in Carbon County, he said, without a functional, representative democracy.

“It’s democracy. And it’s what democracy allows us to do,” McMullin explains.

Although he says voters he speaks to largely agree having a functional government in Washington is important, McMullin is aware opinions clash within the coalition he hopes to unite behind him.

He insists voters are less polarized than people assume, yet despite that belief, offers carefully calibrated answers on polarizing topics such as abortion. He talks about “standing up to the extremes that want to criminalize women” and rejects abortion bans that don’t have exceptions for rape, but says he “doesn’t have all the answers” rather than articulating when he thinks abortion should be legal and when it shouldn’t.

Much like Lee repeatedly references McMullin’s Democratic Party support, McMullin repeatedly prefaces explanations about where he stands on issues by referencing “our coalition” — a group he says is the same one that supports Sen. Mitt Romney and includes Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents.

The “coalition,” he said, also supports investing in more modern infrastructure, but he doesn’t clarify his position on the billions in infrastructure spending approved since Democrats took control of Washington.

Back at the Weber County Fair, Lee says recently approved spending will exacerbate inflation and expand the role of government in everyday life.

“It’s pretty relevant if the party that has endorsed you and is funding you and is backing you is behind a $750 billion spending boondoggle at a time we’re in a recession and at a time we’re experiencing rampant inflation,” Lee said of McMullin.

Although Lee’s frequent “no” votes on bipartisan legislation garner criticism, they endear him to legions of Utah Republicans who call him “a fighter” and like that he isn’t afraid to disrupt Washington.

“He fights for us and takes what we say and takes it to heart. Not like other politicians, who lie to us and do different things, like Mitt Romney,” Heidi Hadley of Plain City said after meeting Lee at the fair.

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WASHINGTON (Reuters) -A document describing a foreign government’s military defenses, including its nuclear capabilities, was found in the FBI’s search last month of former President Donald Trump’s Florida home, the Washington Post reported on Tuesday.

The Post report, which cited people familiar with the matter, did not identify the foreign government discussed in the document, nor did it indicate whether the foreign government was friendly or hostile to the United States.

Trump representatives and the Justice Department did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Reuters.

The FBI recovered more than 11,000 government documents and photographs during its Aug. 8 search at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate, according to court records.

According to the Post report, some of the seized documents detail top-secret U.S. operations that require special clearances, not just top-secret clearance.

Some of the documents are so restricted that even some of the Biden administration’s senior-most national security officials were not authorized to review them, the Post said.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating Trump for removing government records from the White House after he departed in January 2021 and storing them at Mar-a-Lago.

On Monday, a federal judge agreed to Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review records seized in the FBI search, a move that is likely to delay the Justice Department’s criminal investigation.

(Reporting by Eric Beech; Editing by Sandra Maler)

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(Reuters) -Steve Bannon, a prominent associate of former U.S. President Donald Trump, is expected to face a new criminal indictment and surrender to state prosecutors on Thursday, the Washington Post reported, citing people familiar with the matter.

Bannon’s prosecution will likely mirror aspects of a federal case in which Bannon was pardoned, the paper reported on Tuesday. https://wapo.st/3qi9xFg

In 2021, Trump granted clemency to Bannon as part of a wave of pardons and commutations issued in his final hours in office.

Bannon was charged with swindling the president’s supporters in connection with an effort to raise private funds to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border.

He pleaded not guilty.

The details of the new indictment could not be confirmed, the Washington Post said. A spokesperson for Bannon dismissed it as a political ploy.

“This is nothing more than a partisan political weaponization of the criminal justice system,” the spokesperson said in an email to Reuters.

The state case will be handled in the New York Supreme Court by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, the Washington Post said.

A spokeswoman for the Manhattan District Attorney declined to comment on the report.

“The SDNY (Southern District of New York) did the exact same thing in August 2020 to try to take me out of the election. It didn’t work then, it certainly won’t work now,” Bannon said in a statement issued by his spokesperson.

In July, Bannon was convicted of contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena from the committee investigating last year’s attack on the U.S. Capitol, a verdict the committee called a “victory for the rule of law.”

Bannon was a main adviser to the Republican Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, then served as his chief White House strategist during 2017 before a falling out between them that was later patched up. Bannon also has played an instrumental role in right-wing media.

(Reporting by Abinaya Vijayaraghavan and Jahnavi Nidumolu in Bengaluru; Editing by Jacqueline Wong)

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ATLANTA (AP) — Most contractors told them they would tear it down. A two-story five-bedroom Victorian built around 1900, it was abandoned and collapsing, with vines reaching its rafters. Elegant features were scavenged long ago. The house’s place in American history was at risk of disappearing.

An Atlanta couple bought the property nevertheless, hoping to fix it up and live there with their two children. Eventually they found partners who also recognized the importance of the house built by early civil rights activist Luther Judson Price.

Kysha and Johnathan Hehn’s renovation plans shifted to fast-forward when a neighbor connected them with “This Old House.” The PBS show chronicled their renovation in eight episodes to stream Sept. 29, weaving Black history in with its usual home improvement tips.

“An old house that has fallen into disrepair is our bread and butter,” the show’s host, Kevin O’Connor, said before a scene involving an antique door. “But Kysha and Jonathan continue to surprise me with their determination that anyone who walks through the house is aware of the legacy.”

Born enslaved by his plantation owner-father, Price was an early Clark College graduate who served as the federally appointed postmaster of South Atlanta, executive secretary of a Masonic order and superintendent of the South Atlanta Methodist Episcopal Church, while his wife, Minnie Wright Price, a graduate of Atlanta University, “shared each of these positions with her husband,” according to their obituaries in the Atlanta Daily World.

The Prices also led voter registration drives for African Americans and organized support for the Republican Party of their time, according to the Atlanta Public Schools, which has a middle school named in his honor.

In the house, the Hehns now plan to create a community space downstairs where people will be welcomed for meetings, to share food and stories and learn about a family that tried to point the South toward justice after the Civil War.

The Prices married in 1889 and built the home several years later along a two-block stretch of Gammon Avenue, flanked by the Gammon Theological Seminary and Price’s general store and post office. It was the hub of what was then called Brownsville, an upwardly mobile community that prospered even as Southern whites crushed federal efforts to help Black people rise from slavery’s political, social and economic legacy.

Then came a nightmare in September 1906, when a white mob that had killed at least 25 Black people in downtown Atlanta and ransacked the area, chasing rumors that Price had supplied his neighbors with weapons.

“Can you imagine seeing this mob of people coming toward you? Just imagine what your emotions would have been, with people coming to your house and neighborhood because of the color of your skin?” said Kysha Hehn, shuddering at the trauma they must have felt.

Price was narrowly rescued, staying at the county jail for his own safety until the violence ended. “A lot of white people in Atlanta who had contact with him went out of their way to protect him,” said his grandson, Farrow Allen.

The massacre prompted an exodus of Black people from Atlanta, and those who stayed were legally disenfranchised. While Luther and Minnie Price lived in the home until his death in 1936, their five children left Georgia, missing a chance at generational wealth through real estate. The home changed hands as the neighborhood declined, its assessed value falling below $7,000 before the Hehns bought it, tax records show.

“The most graceful way to move forward is to be gentle and honest with the past, with pieces of our history that we cannot change, while moving forward with the intention of creating a more peaceful and compassionate world for everyone,” Kysha Hehn said.

One small example: The Hehns urged the show’s producers to avoid saying “master bedroom,” given its connotations of slavery. O’Connor said they made the switch to “primary bedrooms” a while ago.

And while they’ll acknowledge the trauma, she said visitors should know “there were birthdays here. There were celebrations here. We lived in joy, even when that was not what was expected for us to do.”

“Everyone has been so kind and nice,” she added, describing how one couple came over and said “Hey, we have Luther Price’s mantlepiece, do you want it?” They had been keeping it in their basement nearby.

Another cherished discovery was the Ashanti symbol of “Sankofa” they saw in wrought-iron bars protecting a downstairs window.

“It’s a bird that’s facing forward, but its neck is craning backward and there’s an egg on its back and the bird is picking up the egg, symbolizing how she’s carrying the wisdom of the past and bringing it forward to the youth,” Kysha Hehn said. “To have this symbol of Sankofa all around where people gathered is just a dream for me.”

___

Warren is a member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team.

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