ST. LOUIS– The Rolling Stones kick off their “No Filter Tour” at the Dome at America’s Center on Sunday and the band has a special message for fans about keeping safe at their upcoming shows.

This weekend’s concert launches the band’s 13-date tour. It will be the band’s first St. Louis show since 2006 when they performed at the Savvis Center, now known as Enterprise Center.

The Instagram video says they are excited to be back on tour and want it to be a safe night. The band members say they’ve all been vaccinated and are encouraging fans to get the vaccine too.

In the video, Mick Jagger says if you aren’t vaccinated, get tested. He also says if you have symptoms don’t come to the show.

The band’s “No Filter Tour 2020” was going to include a June 2020 show at the Dome at America’s Center, but because of the pandemic, they had to take an unscheduled break and relaunch the tour. After the unscheduled break, the tour relaunches this weekend at the Dome at America’s Center.

The Rolling Stones have been touring since 1964, and this is the Stones’ first tour without late drummer Charlie Watts. The band announced this summer that the longtime drummer was ill and would be sitting out the tour. He died last month, not long after the announcement. Watts is being replaced on this tour by Steve Jordan, known for his role in the John Mayer trio.

The St. Louis City ordinance requires wearing a mask indoors. However, proof of vaccination or a negative COVID test is not required to enter the Dome at America’s Center. The concert begins Sunday at 7:30 p.m.

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Outside Eddie Braly’s window, empty fields roll northward from the edge of Adams County into Weld County, marking the spot where Denver’s northern suburbs seem to finally fade into farmland that’s dotted with grain elevators and oil pumpjacks.

Braly, a 10-year resident of Thornton’s North Creek Farms subdivision, said he and his wife “bought the view on purpose,” but he’s under no illusion it’s going to stay this way.

Nor will Colorado’s soon-to-be-formed 8th Congressional District, a mashup of fast-growing suburban neighborhoods that ooze into prime agricultural land and high-yield oil and gas territory between Greeley and Commerce City.

“At some point, the cities will grow together in a Dallas-Fort Worth type of way,” said Braly, whose neighborhood likely will be swept into the new district.

Colorado’s newest congressional district, which will become active for the 2022 election and contain exactly 721,714 people, is being drawn up due to the state’s rapid growth over the last 10 years. The latest 8th District map was released Thursday. It still must be finalized by the state’s Independent Congressional Redistricting Commission and sent to the Colorado Supreme Court by Tuesday; the court is expected to approve it in December.

The supercharged growth north of Denver will undoubtedly stoke simmering political and cultural tensions, often highlighted in the state’s urban-rural divide, and hand Colorado’s newest member of Congress the formidable task of stitching together the 8th District’s divergent interests.

The new district will also have the heaviest concentration of Latinos — nearly four of every 10 residents — among Colorado’s congressional districts, according to 2020 Census data compiled by the redistricting commission. And that segment of the population is only projected to grow.

Long-time Weld County resident Terry Wiedeman, who farms corn and sugar beets on 650 acres outside Gilcrest, worries whether anything can stop the impending wave of development. He’s already seen farmland around him steadily overtaken by homes and shopping centers over the last 50 years.

“Eventually there won’t be any farms in this area,” Wiedeman said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Add to all of that the fact that the new district pulls together two counties — Weld and Adams — that lean away from the other on the blue-red political spectrum. Two-term Adams County Commissioner Steve O’Dorisio said finding common ground will be a challenge.

“Whoever represents this 8th Congressional District has their work cut out for them,” he said.

Rapid growth

The last time Colorado added a congressional district — the 7th — was 20 years ago. It currently splits much of Adams County’s big cities with the 6th District. Once established, the 8th District will cover just about all of Adams County’s significant population centers.

Weld County is currently in the 4th Congressional District, a conservative district represented by Republican Rep. Ken Buck.

“There’s excitement to have an Adams County-anchored congressional district,” said state Sen. Faith Winter, a Democrat who represents Thornton, Northglenn, Federal Heights and a portion of Westminster. “Even if the (new congressperson) doesn’t come from Adams, they have to pay attention to the votes.”

And those votes are becoming more plentiful with every passing year.

Data from the 2020 Census showed Weld County was the No. 2 county in Colorado for growth over the last decade — trailing only Broomfield — with a more than 30% gain in residents. Projections from the state demographer’s office show both Weld and Adams counties, which make up the bulk of the 8th District, continuing their population surge.

“We are forecasting the fastest growth in Weld and Adams over the next decade,” state demographer Elizabeth Garner said.

In raw numbers, Adams County’s population will leap from nearly 520,000 to about 613,000 in 2030, while Weld County will add nearly 100,000 people to the 331,500 it has today. Most of that growth, demographers say, will happen in the new congressional district.

Starting out, the 8th Congressional District should be one of the most competitive in Colorado. Though registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 12,000 voters out of nearly 430,000 total, Donald Trump beat Hillary Clinton by 1.7% in the 2016 presidential contest, according to an analysis from the redistricting commission.

However, placing populated areas of Adams and Weld counties together for the first time could make for some strange bedfellows. Even within Weld County itself, the clash of old and new is revealing itself in the 8th District’s future footprint.

Matt Boddy just moved out of a townhouse in Broomfield to a newly built single-family home in the Silverstone subdivision in Frederick, a neighborhood that sits a mile east of Interstate 25 on Colorado 52. Builders haven’t even broken ground on hundreds more planned homes in Silverstone, along with retail space.

It’s a scene that’s mushrooming along the I-25 corridor in nearby Dacono and Firestone, too.

“I just wanted to get into a house while prices are still reasonable,” Boddy said, standing on his front porch last week while construction crews framed up homes on his street. “I’m definitely not a city guy — I like it less crowded and more quiet.”

A district divided?

Just 40 miles northeast of Boddy’s house, at the likely very northern end of the new 8th District, people live a far more rural life, where center-pivot irrigation equipment soaks farm fields and cattle sun themselves on grazing land and at feedlots.

Jeff Schwartz, a retired doctor who has lived in his 120-year-old Weld County home just outside Greeley since 1993, said development along I-25 has not only brought more traffic and noise but also changed the political complexion of the long-red county.

“Look at the map and it’s all blue up and down I-25,” he said. “It’s changing the whole state and the whole attitude.”

Schwartz referenced a movement that arose earlier this year calling for a potential ballot measure to break Weld County off from Colorado and merge it with its conservative and rural northern neighbor, Wyoming. Short of that, he said, Adams and Weld counties should keep a respectful distance when it comes to politics.

“I don’t know if anyone in the northern suburbs of Denver knows at all what’s going on up in Greeley,” he said. “They need to leave me alone and I’ll leave them alone.”

Wiedeman, the Gilcrest farmer who also owns a real estate company and runs farm equipment auctions, said a Weld County secession “may not be a bad idea.”

“Our interests in Weld County are not represented by (the state) government,” he said.

He said there is too often a disconnect between the people who grow and process food and produce energy in rural parts of the state, and those who consume it in urban areas. Weld County is Colorado’s top oil and gas producing county and Thornton and other Adams County communities have a history of fighting drilling near homes.

“They gotta realize in the cities that you gotta allow production so that we can make the products you use every day,” Wiedeman said.

Whoever the new congressperson for the 8th District is, he said, he or she should be able to bridge the divide “if they have common sense.”

Weld and Adams counties have a long history of economic cooperation but “differing political philosophies do exist,” said Rich Werner, CEO of Upstate Colorado Economic Development in Greeley. He feels the redistricting commission created a map “that will perpetuate the urban-rural divide not alleviate it.”

“With all the attention and support being given to assist our rural communities, it seems counterintuitive to create a hub-and-spoke map that ensures a metro Denver urban voice in six out of eight districts,” he said. “The concern of using the urban density to fill in multiple congressional districts will perpetuate the likelihood that candidates come from the denser areas of those particular districts.”

Latinos on the rise

So far, only State Rep. Yadira Caraveo has declared her candidacy for the 8th District seat. No Republicans have jumped into the race but are likely to do so once the final boundaries of the district are established.

If Caraveo is elected, the Thornton Democrat and pediatrician would be the first Latina to represent Colorado in Congress.

“It’s a district that is driven by suburban moms and Latinos,” said statehouse colleague Winter, who backs Caraveo’s bid.

The state demographer’s office projects the Latino population in Adams County to surge nearly 30% over the next 10 years, to 284,000. In Weld County, the leap will be even more dramatic: a nearly 50% jump over the next decade.

By 2030, both counties together will account for just over a quarter of Colorado’s projected 1.7 million or so Latinos, with 436,000.

Aislin Dominguez, an 18-year-old high school student who lives in the Aristocrat Ranchettes subdivision just northeast of Fort Lupton, said she would love to see a Latino congressperson in the 8th District.

“It would be great to have someone represent us,” she said.

Dominguez’s mostly Latino neighborhood is a grid of dirt roads with no sidewalks. Many residents own horses and other livestock. Peacocks wander the streets. Last week, a man holding a stick guided sheep and goats as they ate weeds on the side of the road.

State health officials said Friday morning that they don’t have enough guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency to know when to estimate whether “minor” polluters in Colorado exceed air quality limits on particulates, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide.

The Colorado Attorney General’s office released Friday an independent report on an investigation into a complaint filed by three whistleblowers in March. The report also found that claims of fraud and suppression were unsubstantiated, according to Shaun McGrath, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment’s environmental programs.

The three, who worked for the state’s Air Pollution Control Division of CDPHE, said in that 14-page complaint in March that division director Gary Kaufman ordered managers to tell employees not to review or model estimated emissions at certain facilities for those gases and particulates less than 2.5 micrometers. All three contribute to unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone.

The employees alleged that the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment was “suppressing information” and “approving air quality permits” that violated national air quality standards. Through the Maryland-based organization Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, the whistleblowers said the state fosters a culture of approving permits for industrial polluters “at all costs” and to the detriment of public health.

Gov. Jared Polis and CDPHE Director Jill Hunsaker Ryan asked Attorney General Phil Weiser in April to investigate the whistleblowers’ allegations, and in July, state officials chose national legal firm Troutman Pepper Hamilton Sanders LLP to lead the probe.

Ryan said Friday that the report highlighted that lack of federal guidance from the Environmental Protection Agency. EPA representatives did not immediately respond to request for comment.

“The report does illustrate the need for more scientifically sound criteria and better processes for when to model minor sources,” Ryan told The Post.

Kaufman is still the director of the Air Pollution Control Division, Ryan said.

That surprised Chandra Rosenthal, who is the Rocky Mountain Field Office director for PEER: “They’re really sticking by (Kaufman), huh?”

Rosenthal said state officials have known for years that employees had concerns about how smaller facilities are monitored, and acted after the whistleblower complaint went public.

Her nonprofit is considering whether to ask law enforcement officials to examine whether Kaufman broke any laws.

This is a breaking news story and will be updated.

A 6-year-old Colorado Springs girl plunged more than 100 feet to her death at Glenwood Caverns Adventure Park over Labor Day weekend because operators of the vertical drop thrill ride she was on did not properly check her seatbelts, according to a state investigation into the fatality.

Investigators found the girl, Wongel Estifanos, was actually sitting on the two seatbelts instead of wearing them across her lap, and the ride’s two newly hired operators never noticed even though they checked that everyone’s belt was fastened.

An alarm system warned of a problem, but the two workers weren’t trained well enough to know what to do about it, so one of them reset the system and sent the ride on its way, investigators with the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s division of oil and public safety found.

Inspectors ordered the park to remain closed shortly after the Sept. 5 incident while outside trainers were brought in to retrain staff on how to safely operate the various rides there. It reopened nearly a week later but the Haunted Mine Drop ride remains closed.

Operators are responsible for “fastening and checking two separate seatbelts for each passenger prior to dispatching the ride,” the report says, noting an alarm system warned of a seatbelt problem. “Operators took several incorrect actions and reset the ride seatbelt monitors which allowed them to dispatch the ride.”

Estifanos died of multiple blunt force trauma from the fall, according to the Garfield County coroner. No other injuries were reported, officials have said, and the girl was found at the bottom of the ride’s mine shaft.

The nine-page report does not say who occupied the other five seats on the Haunted Mine Drop, but the girl was on vacation with her family at the time, officials have said. The state expects to issue violations and fines related to the incident but has not determined the extent.

The ride is equipped with two lap belts. The report describes one as using a special metal rod at the end that is affixed to a locking mechanism. The second is more akin to a seatbelt in a motor vehicle. Operations manuals for the ride say operators are expected to fasten both but do not tell them what to do if an error occurs.

Investigators said the manufacturer’s operating manual was not part of the workers’ training, nor is an explanation of the alarm system or what to do when there’s a problem.

The workers were apparently confused over whether the lap belts were actually across Estifanos’s lap when she was actually sitting on them, according to the report. No one from the previous ride had been sitting in one of the middle seats where Estifanos sat, so the seatbelt there had not been detached, investigators found.

Seatbelts are fastened even if there is no passenger in the seat so that the ride will operate, the report says. Operators are supposed to unfasten all the belts after each ride and passengers are unloaded so the next load of riders can be buckled in.

That didn’t happen for Estifanos’s ride, according to the report.

Instead, Estifanos sat atop the seatbelts and pulled the tail flap across her lap, making it appear as if she was buckled in.

“As Operator 1 tightened the seatbelts, the tail was pulled out of Ms. Estifanos’ hands, and Operator 1 did not notice that the seatbelts were not positioned across her lap,” the report says.

Because the belts on Estifanos’s seat had not been unfastened from the previous ride cycle, the alarm system showed an error. The operator went back to double-check all the rods and saw they were properly affixed.

The second operator arrived and, when told of the problem, unlocked the rods, went and removed them all, and then reinserted them “without understanding and resolving the actual issue — that Ms. Estifanos did not have the seatbelts across her lap.”

When the reset alarm system showed no more errors, the ride was activated. The operators didn’t notice Estifanos was missing until the ride platform returned about two minutes later, the report says.

Both workers were hired within weeks of the incident. The operator who activated the ride had been an employee for just two weeks, according to the report.

Caverns workers in the past were required to take a six-page exam showing they understood the ride they were to operate as well as its safety features, according to copies of the exam from a 2011 accident the state investigated. The report does not address whether workers are still required to take those tests.

The exam asked what procedures are to be followed if a worker feels a ride is unsafe and whether they’re authorized to unload passengers as a result. It also asked about the instructions operators must give to riders, as well as safety checks they must conduct of each rider, such as whether seatbelts are fastened correctly.

Dan Caplis, the attorney representing the Estifanos family, and officials at Glenwood Caverns could not be immediately reached Friday morning.

The ride was designed without shoulder harnesses in order to make it more exciting, The Denver Post has reported. The investigation concluded the ride operated properly and there was no equipment malfunction.

The Haunted Mine Drop ride only uses seatbelts and has no safety bar, according to a promotional video by Coaster Studios in May 2019 in which a park employee was interviewed. The safety belt system relies on a metal rod that is locked into place across the riders’ laps, according to the video.

Riders sit facing forward and raise their arms and legs at an operator’s direction and then the six-seat platform is released, plunging down through a mine-shaft-like tunnel. The ride takes about 2.5 seconds and drops 110 feet.

A counterweight and a braking system are used to slow the ride as it approaches the bottom, according to the video.

Ride designer Stan Checketts of Providence, Utah, has not responded to Denver Post efforts to contact him at his company, Soaring Eagle Zipline.

Checketts founded and later sold S&S Sansei, one of the biggest amusement ride design manufacturers in the world. The company has about 150 tower drop rides internationally — the latest in China — and none are without a shoulder harness.

A spokesman at S&S, which did not make or design the Haunted Mine Drop, said modern rides cannot operate if any of their safety features are not properly affixed, but did not say whether alarms could be overridden.

The iconic cone-shaped building on the corner of Yampa and 11th streets in downtown Steamboat Springs was once a wood-waste burner before being moved to become the home for Sore Saddle Cyclery and Moots Bicycles.

The 6,771-square-foot property is now for sale for $2.4 million, and it includes the three-story building where Moots, one of the first purpose-built mountain bike manufacturers in the country, got its start. There are also two additions that were built more recently.

The building is owned by Kent Eriksen and Bruce Alston, who teamed up in the late 1980s to provide a space where Eriksen’s Sore Saddle Cyclery business could expand into a year-round operation.

WASHINGTON — The House is voting Friday on legislation aimed at guaranteeing a woman’s right to an abortion, an effort by House Democrats to circumvent a new Texas law that has placed that access under threat.

The expected House passage is likely to be mostly symbolic, as Republican opposition will doom it in the Senate. But Democrats say they will do all they can to codify the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision after the Supreme Court recently allowed the Texas law banning most abortions in the state to take effect. The court will hear arguments in December in a separate Mississippi bid to overturn the landmark decision.

Codifying the Roe ruling would mean creating a right to abortion in federal law, a monumental change that would make it harder for courts and states to impose restrictions.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has said that congressional action would make a “tremendous difference” in Democrats’ efforts to maintain access to abortion rights. She called the Supreme Court’s decision “shameful” and counter to its own precedent.

Pelosi said just ahead of the vote that it should “send a very positive message to the women of our country — but not just the women, to the women and their families, to everyone who values freedom, honors our Constitution and respects women.”

The vote is bound to fall mostly along party lines. Nearly every House Republican, including the few who favor abortion rights, is expected to vote against the legislation, which would supersede state laws on the subject, give health care providers the right to perform abortions and patients the right to receive them. Republicans argue it would prevent states from setting requirements like parental involvement and could weaken laws that allow doctors to refuse to perform an abortion.

The legislation “isn’t about freedom for women, it’s about death for babies,” said Republican Rep. Vicky Hartzler of Missouri. She said it would eliminate protections for women and girls who may be coerced into having abortions.

“It ends the life of a living human being with a plan and a purpose from God and who deserves to live,” Hartzler said.

The vote comes as Democrats have spoken boldly about fighting the Supreme Court — which has a more conservative tilt after Justice Amy Coney Barrett was confirmed last year — but struggled privately to find an effective strategy. They control Congress by the slimmest of margins, including the evenly split 50-50 Senate, making the prospects of a successful legislative response difficult.

The party has split, in some cases, over how far Washington must go to preserve access to abortions. Liberal lawmakers backed by advocates of reproductive rights who helped power President Joe Biden to office want to expand the number of justices on the Supreme Court to rebalance power, changing the rules if needed to lower the 60-vote threshold typically required in the Senate to advance legislation.

“Democrats can either abolish the filibuster and expand the court, or do nothing as millions of peoples’ bodies, rights, and lives are sacrificed for far-right minority rule,” tweeted Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. “This shouldn’t be a difficult decision.”

But other Democrats — Biden among them — have been wary of such a move.

Biden supports the House bill and called the court’s ruling on Texas an “unprecedented assault on a woman’s constitutional rights.” He has directed multiple agencies to conduct a government-wide effort to ensure women have abortion access and to protect health care providers. But he has not endorsed the idea of adding justices to the Supreme Court, instead forming a commission to study it.

The court’s decisions on abortion could prompt political tensions among Republicans, as well.

Former President Donald Trump was able to secure three new conservative Supreme Court justices because Republican leadership in Congress led by GOP leader Mitch McConnell paved the way. Now, as the court upheld the strict new Texas aw outlawing most abortions in the state, the political fallout will test the limits of that strategy.

Women and advocates of abortion rights are quickly mobilizing to take on not just those Republicans, but also the big businesses that backed them, aiming squarely at those that contributed to many of the Texas Republicans behind the abortion law.

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden said Friday that talks over his $3.5 trillion rebuilding plan have hit a “stalemate” in Congress as he made the case for his expansive effort to recast the nation’s tax and spending programs and make what he sees as sweeping, overdue investments.

Biden spoke at the White House as Democrats in the House and Senate are laboring to finish drafts and overcome differences between the party’s centrist and moderate factions. Despite efforts by the president and congressional leaders to show progress, Biden cast the road ahead as long and potentially cumbersome, even with upcoming deadlines.

“We’re getting down to the hard spot here,” Biden told reporters at the White House. “We’re at this stalemate at the moment.”

Biden said the process is “going to be up and down” but ”hopefully at the end of the day I’ll be able to deliver on what I said I would do.”

The president said his private meetings with some two dozen Democratic lawmakers this week in efforts to hasten progress and close the deal went well — describing the tone as collegial and with “no hollering.”

But as lawmakers raised objections over the sweep and scope of the plan, which is to be funded by higher taxes on corporations and the wealthy, Biden said he tried to get them focused on priorities — what they can and can’t live with.

”It’s about paying your fair share, for lord’s sake,” Biden said. “There clearly is enough, from a panoply of options, to pay for whatever it is.”

In a stark reality check, Biden suggested talks could drag to the end of the year. “It’s just going to take some time,” he said.

DEL RIO, Texas — Only 225 migrants remained in a Texas border camp where almost 15,000 mostly Haitian migrants had gathered just days ago hoping to seek asylum, the top elected official in Val Verde County said Friday.

County Judge Lewis Owens told The Associated Press in a text message that he’s been told all of the migrants will be removed by the end of the day — a dramatic change from Saturday, when the number peaked as migrants driven by confusion over the Biden administration’s policies and misinformation on social media converged at the border crossing between Del Rio, Texas, and Ciudad Acuña, Mexico.

Many face expulsion because they are not covered by protections recently extended by the Biden administration to the more than 100,000 Haitian migrants already in the U.S. — many of whom left their homeland after its devastating 2010 earthquake — citing security concerns and social unrest in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country.

The United States and Mexico appeared eager to end the increasingly politicized humanitarian situation at the border that prompted the resignation of the U.S. special envoy to Haiti and condemnation from civil rights leader Rev. Al Sharpton and UNICEF after images spread widely this week of border agents maneuvering their horses to forcibly block and move migrants.

President Joe Biden on Friday said it was “horrible” to see the way agents used horses block people from crossing the Rio Grande and he promised that “people will pay” as a result.

The incident prompted widespread outrage and is under investigation. The agents have been assigned to administrative duties and the Department of Homeland Security said it has suspended the use of horses in Del Rio.

“It was horrible, what you saw to see them treat people like they did,” Biden told reporters. “Those people will pay, there’s an investigation underway now and there will be consequences. … It’s an embarrassment, but it’s beyond an embarrassment — it’s dangerous, it’s wrong, it sends the wrong message around the world and sends the wrong message at home. It’s simply not who we are.”

Homeland Security has said that nearly 2,000 Haitians had been rapidly expelled on flights since Sunday under pandemic powers that deny people the chance to seek asylum. About 3,900 were being processed for a possible return to Haiti or placement in U.S. immigration court proceedings. Others have been released in the U.S. with notices to appear in court or to report to immigration authorities. Thousands have returned to Mexico.

A U.S. official said Thursday that authorities expected the camp to be empty in about two days. The official had direct knowledge but was not authorized to speak publicly. Homeland Security had planned to ramp up to seven daily flights but flew only three Wednesday and five Thursday because of issues with contractors and mechanical delays, the official said. Seven flights were scheduled to Haiti on Friday, six on Saturday and seven on Sunday.

Across a river, Haitians who camped in Mexico awoke Thursday surrounded by security forces, with a helicopter thundering overhead and state police trucks spaced every 30 feet (9 meters) or so between their tents and the edge of the Rio Grande.

After anxious minutes of indecision, dozens of families hurried into the river to cross where there was only one municipal police vehicle, calculating it was better to take their chances with U.S. authorities.

“Things are going badly,” said Michou Petion, carrying her 2-year-old son toward the river. Her husband carried bags of belongings and several pairs of sneakers dangled around his neck.

“The U.S. is deporting a lot to Haiti, now I don’t know if I can enter or leave,” Petion said.

Sharpton said Thursday that he toured the camp and witnessed “a real catastrophic and human disgrace.” A handful of protesters, some wearing camouflage hats from former President Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign, shouted through Sharpton’s remarks.

Sharpton vowed to “continue to come back … and stand with our people and make sure asylum is treated in one way and one manner.”

Some Haitians are being allowed to remain in the U.S. at least temporarily to seek asylum or to stay under some other claim to residency, with notices to appear later before immigration authorities. DHS officials declined to specify the number but said they are people with particular “vulnerabilities,” meaning they are pregnant, have young children or the U.S. doesn’t have the capacity to hold them in detention, especially during the pandemic.

The government has no plans to stop expelling others on public health grounds despite pressure from Democratic lawmakers, who say migrants are being sent back to a troubled country that some left more than a decade ago.

The Trump administration enacted the policy in March 2020 to justify restrictive immigration policies in an effort to prevent the spread of the coronavirus. The Biden administration has used it to justify the deportation of Haitian migrants.

A federal judge late last week ruled that the rule was improper and gave the government two weeks to halt it, but the Biden administration appealed.

Officials said the U.S. State Department is in talks with Brazil and Chile to allow some Haitians who previously resided there to return, but it’s complicated because some of them no longer have legal status there.

Meanwhile, the U.S. special envoy to Haiti, Daniel Foote, submitted a letter of resignation protesting the “inhumane” large-scale expulsions of Haitian migrants.

Foote, who was appointed in July, wrote to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, saying he was stepping down immediately “with deep disappointment and apologies to those seeking crucial changes.”

“I will not be associated with the United States inhumane, counterproductive decision to deport thousands of Haitian refugees and illegal immigrants to Haiti, a country where American officials are confined to secure compounds because of the danger posed by armed gangs to daily life,” he wrote. “Our policy approach to Haiti remains deeply flawed, and my policy recommendations have been ignored and dismissed, when not edited to project a narrative different from my own.”

The career diplomat was known to be deeply frustrated with what he considered a lack of urgency in Washington and a glacial pace on efforts to improve conditions in Haiti.

ST. LOUIS – A St. Louis County man was sentenced for his role in setting fire to a downtown St. Louis 7-11 during the unrest in June of 2020.

Justin Cannamore pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 36 months in federal prison for being a felon in possession of a firearm. He also pleaded guilty to demonstrating a technique capable of causing injury to persons during the civil disorder.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Missouri said Cannamore set the 7-11 on fire “after rioters smashed windows and broke into an ATM machine.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office said he “assisted an unidentified individual by spraying a bottle of lighter fuel” on the building. He then entered the 7-11 and started a “fire in the aisle that self-extinguished when a firework exploded in the same location.”

The U.S. Attorney’s office says days after the fire, the St. Louis County Police Department stopped Cannamore for a traffic violation on June 5, 2020. During the stop, police located and seized a stolen .22 caliber revolver. Cannamore is a previously convicted felon and was prohibited from possessing the weapon.

The FBI, ATF and the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department investigated this case.

You can find the latest on the investigation involving Gabby Petito and Brian Laundrie here. Download the WFLA app for breaking news push alerts and sign up for breaking news email alerts.

NORTH PORT, Fla. (WFLA) – An arrest warrant has officially been issued for Brian Laundrie, the fiancé of Gabby Petito. However, the warrant is not connected to what happened to Petito – but what happened after her death.

The FBI in Denver says the arrest warrant was issued by the U.S. District court of Wyoming. Court documents obtained by WFLA show Laundrie was indicted for the “use of unauthorized access devices” following Petito’s death.

According to the documents, Laundrie used a Capital One bank debit card and a pin for two Capital One bank accounts “knowingly and with intent to defraud” between Aug. 30 and Sept. 1 in Wyoming and elsewhere. Using the accounts, he bought items worth more than a thousand dollars, authorities say.

The warrant issued Thursday comes after almost a full week of police searching for Laundrie where his family says he was last seen: the Carlton Reserve in Sarasota County. According to police, Laundrie’s family says he drove his Ford Mustang there more than a week ago and has not been seen since.

Several law enforcement agencies headed back to the nature preserve on Friday morning to pick up the search again. According to WFLA photojournalist Paul Lamison, a temporary flight restriction – also known as a TFR – was raised up to 1,200 feet over the search as of Friday morning. It was previously about 400 feet.

Meanwhile, on Thursday, the parents of Brian Laundrie were seen leaving their home. Their attorney, Steve Bertolino, tells 8 On Your Side the Laundrie’s met with him before returning to their house.

Police say the Laundrie family retained a lawyer soon after Gabby Petito was reported missing by her family on Sept. 11. Petito mysteriously disappeared during a cross-country road trip she was on with Laundrie, who police say returned home to North Port alone on Sept. 1.

Her white van that the couple had been traveling in was recovered by police from the Laundrie home, and police later identified Laundrie as a person of interest in the Petito case.

This is a developing story, please check back for updates.