HOOVER, Ala. (AP) — Authorities in Alabama said Monday that a woman confessed to fabricating a story that she was kidnapped after stopping to check on a toddler she saw walking on the side of the interstate.

Hoover Police Department Chief Nicholas Derzis said Carlee Russell’s attorney, Emory Anthony, provided a statement on Monday saying there was no kidnapping.

“There was no kidnapping on Thursday July 13. My client did not see a baby on the side on the road,” the statement read, according to Derzis, who read it at a news conference. She did not leave the city, and

Former Attorney General Eric Holder said the Justice Department’s investigation into former President Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election started too slowly, but that the department is now “back on track.”

“The Justice Department was a little late in leaning up its investigation, its inquiry with regards to those people at the top of this whole conspiracy,” he said in an MSNBC interview on Saturday. “They’ve done and continue to do a great job with the foot soldiers who were there on Jan. 6th.”

Holder said the agency’s early focus on lining up cases against individuals who participated in

Attorneys representing at least 15 former Northwestern University student athletes announced plans Wednesday to sue the university over allegations that its athletics department fostered a “toxic culture” that facilitated harassment and sexual abuse.

Civil rights attorney Ben Crump said the legal team is also speaking to at least 50 other former student athletes as they prepare the lawsuit.

“What they shared with us was clearly a pattern and practice of a culture that was predicated on physical intimidation, harassment, discrimination, abuse – both mentally and sexually – and it was normalized,” Crump said at a news conference in Chicago Wednesday.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced Tuesday that she has filed charges against 16 people who signed paperwork falsely claiming that President Donald Trump had won the 2020 election as part of a scheme to overturn the results.

US presidents are technically voted in by slates of electors from each state who cast their votes for the candidate selected by their states’ popular vote. In December 2020, as Trump tried to overturn the results of the election, his allies prepared alternative slates of electors in several states.

These appear to be the first charges filed against fake electors.

The announcement

Attorneys who represent Norman residents in a lawsuit against the Oklahoma Turnpike Authority have urged the Oklahoma Supreme Court to deny the agency’s plans after the route for two proposed routes in Norman remain uncertain.

Included in a $5 billion turnpike expansion plan, OTA intends to build a toll road along Indian Hills Road to connect to the South Extension turnpike in the Lake Thunderbird Watershed.

The plans drew outrage from residents who filed a lawsuit last year, which alleges OTA does not have legislative authority to build them, and OTA has tried to improperly fund them. Turnpike projects are