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Many state capitol buildings feel unapproachable, tucked away downtown or barricaded behind lanes of noisy traffic. Not so in Salt Lake City. The Utah Capitol sits at the mouth of a verdant canyon, flanked by parks and neighborhoods, perched below the Wasatch Mountains and presiding over the city with authority. It’s a grand building , just over a century old, with a copper-clad dome and a neoclassical design that mirrors the U.S. Capitol. Inside, the state Legislature convenes every January for 45 days. In deeply conservative Utah, the Republican supermajority passes one law after another that outrages progressives, educators, young people and more. Outside the walls, these marginalized groups protest these same bills. Ten years ago, my wife and I moved a block away from this stately old building, serendipitously finding our new home an easy launchpad to attend rallies. The stack of homemade signs accumulating in our basement testifies to our proximity. In January 2017, we joined 6,000 Utahans in the Capitol rotunda — 1,000 more than the official capacity of the space — for the existential roar of the Women’s March. The following

By Jordan Kinsey Updated on: April 12, 2024 / 7:56 AM EDT / CBS News Sneak peek: The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury Sneak peek: The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury 03:46 The morning of March 31, 2023, for Megan Kingsbury began with a funny text exchange with her younger sister, 26-year-old Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury , who lived in Winona, Minnesota. But that would be the last communication, Megan Kingsbury says, she would ever have with her sister. Later that evening, Megan Kingsbury says her mother, Krista Naber, reached out to see if she had spoken to her sister recently because Naber had not heard from Maddi Kingbsury in hours. Megan Kingsbury says she wasn’t worried at first, but then Maddi Kingsbury did not respond to her new messages or phone calls either.  “…regardless of how busy she was or what she had going on, she always got back to us,” Megan Kingsbury told “48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant. Her interview is featured in “The Disappearance of Maddi Kingsbury,” an all-new “48 Hours” airing Saturday, April 13, at 10/9c on CBS and Paramount+. Madeline “Maddi” Kingsbury Maddi

Like a lot of parents, I’ve carried a picture of my son everywhere I go for many years. Unlike a lot of them, I have a child who never ages: My son George was shot and killed on July 17, 1996. My photos of my son remind me of the days before I had to tell my grandson Gabriel, on what happened to be his 6th birthday, that his father had died. The scream I heard on the other end of the phone is one I wouldn’t wish on my enemies. Though I turned my pain into purpose as the president of the anti-gun-violence group Brady California , I trudge through every day with unanswered questions, one of which echoes the loudest: Who killed my son? That’s because my son’s killer has never been brought to justice. Not knowing who killed George is unfathomably difficult but not unusual. California’s statewide case clearance rate for homicides has been near or under 65% for the last decade. That means more than a third of the state’s killings go unsolved, leaving families and communities to bury people they

April 12, 2024 / 7:02 AM EDT / AP Detroit — The U.S. government’s auto safety agency has opened an investigation into a Ford recall for gasoline leaks from cracked fuel injectors that can cause engine fires, saying in documents that the remedy doesn’t fix the leaks. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in the documents posted Friday on its website that the probe will “evaluate the adequacy and safety consequences of the remedy” that Ford specifies in the recall. The agency moved with unusual speed, posting documents detailing the “recall query” just two days after the recall was made public. The recall covers nearly 43,000 Ford Bronco Sport SUVs from the 2022 and 2023 model years, and Escape SUVs from 2022. All have 1.5-liter engines. The NHTSA said that fuel injectors can crack, causing gasoline or vapors to leak at a high rate onto hot surfaces in the engine compartment. The Associated Press reported Wednesday that Ford’s remedy for the leaks is installation of a drain tube to send the gas away from hot surfaces and a software update to detect a pressure

Updated on: April 12, 2024 / 6:22 AM EDT / CBS/AP Inside Mexican/American gunrunning networks Inside Mexican/American gunrunning networks 03:12 The head of traffic police was shot to death Thursday in Mexico’s troubled Pacific coast resort of Acapulco . The city government said gunmen killed Eduardo Chávez, the head of municipal traffic police. The assailants opened fire on Chávez on a street relatively far away from the resort’s beaches. The crime is under investigation. Drug cartels in Mexico often force bus and taxi drivers to work for them, and thus could have been angered by traffic stops of such vehicles. Videos posted on social media in March showed drug gang enforcers brutally beating bus drivers in Acapulco for failing to act as lookouts for the cartel. One video showed a presumed gang enforcer dealing more than a dozen hard, open-hand slaps to a driver and calling him an “animal,” and demanding he check in several times a day with the gang. It was the latest incident of deadly violence in Acapulco, which is still struggling to recover after being hit by Category 5 Hurricane Otis

California’s highest-ranking court officials are warning of a growing “constitutional crisis” playing out across the state’s judicial system, as hundreds of thousands of hearings are held without a precise record of what occurred. The problem is a shortage of public court reporters, the stenographers who transcribe proceedings, and state law that bars electronic recording devices from being used in certain types of hearings — even when a reporter isn’t available. Courts have tried to triage the problem by reserving available court reporters for the most important cases, such as felony trials. But other critically important proceedings — such as for domestic violence restraining orders and child custody disputes — routinely are going unrecorded. On a daily basis, litigants are told they can either hire their own reporters — for hundreds or even thousands of dollars per hearing — or simply go without a record. The result, officials and advocates agree, is that poorer Californians have less access to justice. Without a verbatim record of a proceeding, litigants can struggle to defend their rights — including against abusers — and find it impossible to appeal rulings

Of all the sounds now vanished from the heart of old downtown Los Angeles — the songs of the Tongva , the whistles of steam locomotives, the clanging of streetcars — there’s one you’d never have expected: the Rebel Yell. The battle cry of the Confederacy resounded a long way from its home, but throughout the Civil War, you could hear it in secessionist hangouts like the old Bella Union Hotel. The yell usually went along with hollering and arguing, and maybe the bibulous singing of “We’ll Hang Abe Lincoln To A Tree.” That was the Confederates’ poor rejoinder to the Yankees’ insult song about the Confederate president, “We’ll Hang Jeff Davis From a Sour Apple Tree.” (Poor, because the meter doesn’t scan, and who hangs anyone to a tree, anyway?) Like the song, the Confederacy was a failure. But here — here, in now politically azure-blue L.A. — sympathy for the South was muscular and, as far as the U.S. government was concerned, a potential menace. Think of Jets and Sharks decked out in buckskins or Yankee blue, ambling down our grubby streets, swapping

After the Supreme Court overturned the Roe vs. Wade decision in 2022, jeopardizing abortion access for millions nationwide, California emerged as a “hot spot” and saw a surge in procedures — an influx probably due in part to out-of-staters facing new restrictions and looking for care. Tuesday’s decision by the Arizona Supreme Court that aims to impose a near-total abortion ban in the neighboring state has put Southern California providers on alert and reignited leading state Democrats’ efforts to provide a “safe haven” for reproductive rights. “We stand with the people of Arizona, and all those who live in states that have enacted dangerous abortion bans and restrictions. No matter what comes, we remain steadfast in our resolve to protect and expand access to safe and legal abortion care for all,” said Darrah DiGiorgio Johnson, president and chief executive of Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest. The regional Planned Parenthood operates clinics in Imperial, Riverside and San Diego counties, where 10% of patients are from outside California. Arizonans were already traveling to California for abortion, because before this week’s ruling the state banned abortions at