Tropical Storm Beta made landfall late Monday night, roughly five miles north of Port O'Connor, Texas, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said.
The storm hit with maximum winds of 45 mph, and forecasters expect coastal counties will see four to six inches of rain. Over the next few days, Beta will likely move northeast along the Texas coast before weakening into a depression as it arrives in the Houston-Galveston area. Beta is then expected to head into Louisiana.
Beta is the ninth named storm to make landfall in the continental United States this year, tying a record set in 1916, The Associated Press reports. It has been such a busy Atlantic hurricane season that forecasters ran out of traditional storm names last week and had to start using the Greek alphabet, making Beta the first storm named after a Greek letter to ever make landfall in the continental U.S. Catherine Garcia
Several fathers in the Gaithersburg, Maryland, area are spending their weekends putting their carpentry skills to the test as they build desks for local students.
Al and Jessica Berrellez founded Desks by Dads earlier in the summer, after Jessica learned that several of the kids at her daughters' schools did not have desks at home, and would have to share the dining room table with their siblings or work from their beds during virtual learning. Wanting to ensure educational equity for all students, Jessica asked Al to come up with a prototype for a desk that was inexpensive and easy to make.
After some research, Al made a blueprint for a desk that could be built in one hour at a cost of about $40. Al and Jessica started sharing the plans with others, and soon, Desks by Dads was launched, with several local parents volunteering to spend part of their weekends working on desks. Al told Good Morning America each desk has its own personality, and "every time someone drops off a donated desk to our house, we get to share ideas and build connections. It's also an opportunity to highlight the strengths of Black and brown dads, and show what we can contribute."
So far, more than two dozen desks have been delivered to students, free of charge. Jessica said she hopes this inspires others to help students who may need some extra help amid the pandemic. "I think that's how change happens," she told GMA. "It requires everyday people doing small things and having that grow into something bigger." Catherine Garcia
In his forthcoming book, Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation, Andrew Weissmann describes what it was like serving as a prosecutor on former Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election, going into detail about his frustrations and fears.
In the book, Weissmann — who now teaches at New York University School of Law and serves as an MSNBC legal analyst — writes that the special counsel's efforts were stymied by the constant threat of Trump's wrath, The Washington Post reports. They were reluctant to get too aggressive, he said, due to "the president's power to fire us and pardon wrongdoers who might otherwise cooperate."
Weissmann writes that this is why Mueller's top deputy, Aaron Zebley, stopped investigators from taking a broader look at Trump's finances, the Post reports. The pressure, he said, "affected our investigative decisions, leading us at certain times to act less forcefully and more defensively than we might have. It led us to delay or ultimately forgo entire lines of inquiry, particularly regarding the president's financial ties to Russia."
With Trump, Russia's main intelligence agency has "gotten what it had worked so hard for — a servile, but popular, American leader," Weissmann writes. "There is no other way to put it. Our country is now faced with the problem of a lawless White House, which addresses itself to every new dilemma or check on its power with a belief that following the rules is optional and that breaking them comes at minimal, if not zero, cost."
Weissmann told the Post he decided to write Where Law Ends after Attorney General William Barr released his own four-page summary of Mueller's report, which downplayed the findings; Mueller would later pen a letter saying Barr "did not fully capture the context, nature, and substance" of his work.
"I wrote it very much so there would be a public record from somebody, at least one viewpoint, from the inside as opposed to the story being told in maybe a less accurate way by people from the outside," Weissmann said. In the book, he accuses Barr of enabling a "lawless" president, and says the attorney general "had betrayed both friend and country." Read more about Weissmann's book, including why he thinks there was enough evidence showing Trump obstructed justice and how special counsel rules should be changed, at The Washington Post. Catherine Garcia
The Bobcat fire in Los Angeles County is continuing to threaten the historic Mount Wilson Observatory, as well as communications towers used by local television and radio stations and law enforcement.
Last week, flames were within 500 feet of the 116-year-old observatory, but firefighters were able to keep them at bay. Since the weekend, fire crews have been battling flareups at the top of the mountain, caused by winds out of the east. "Just when I thought the danger was over, it wasn't," Thomas Meneghi, the observatory's executive director, told the Los Angeles Times on Monday. Meneghi also said there is a 530,000-gallon water tank on the observatory grounds, and over the last several days, firefighters have used half of it to battle the blaze.
Since Sept. 6, the Bobcat fire has scorched more than 105,000 acres, making it one of the largest fires in L.A. County history. It is only 15 percent contained, and crews are having a hard time getting a handle on it due to the rocky terrain in the Angeles National Forest. The Bobcat fire has moved down into the Antelope Valley, where it has destroyed several homes and buildings and is quickly burning through low-lying desert shrubbery. Catherine Garcia