CBS News
Anti-abortion groups divided over RFK Jr., after Pence objects to Trump’s pick
Two conservative groups opposing abortion rights announced Friday they support President-elect Donald Trump’s pick of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to head the Department of Health and Human Services, after former Vice President Mike Pence criticized the selection over abortion concerns.
If confirmed to the position, Kennedy would have sweeping authority over a number of agencies that could directly affect access to abortion nationwide, including the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
In a post Friday, Pence criticized Kennedy’s selection as teeing up “the most pro-abortion Republican appointed secretary of HHS in modern history.”
“On behalf of tens of millions of pro-life Americans, I respectfully urge Senate Republicans to reject this nomination and give the American people a leader who will respect the sanctity of life,” Pence said in a statement published by the group Advancing American Freedom, calling the choice “deeply concerning to millions of pro-life Americans.”
Some of Trump’s allies have dismissed Pence’s objection, arguing that there is no reason to believe that Kennedy would buck the platform hammered out by Republicans over the summer that largely deferred the issue to the states.
“RFK Jr. is going to serve at the pleasure of the president. And the president has been very clear that his policy is that there’s no federal role in abortion,” Terry Schilling, head of the American Principles Project, told CBS News.
Schilling’s political action committee bills itself as “the only national pro-family organization” on a slate of issues including opposition to abortion and gender-affirming care. He said they spent $18 million in campaigns this year and also plan to work to support Kennedy’s nomination.
He pointed to other areas where Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda might find common ground with conservatives, citing Kennedy’s past stances questioning puberty blockers and other kinds of hormone therapy for transgender minors.
“Trump chose him because of his Make America Healthy Again agenda. And it’s very clear there are a lot of problems in our country, and I think RFK Jr. is the best suited person to get to the bottom of that,” Schilling said.
Another major activist group, Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, also voiced concern over the Kennedy pick.
“There’s no question that we need a pro-life HHS secretary, and of course, we have concerns about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the group’s president, said in a statement.
But regardless of who is HHS secretary, Dannenfelser also said that they believed “baseline policies” set by Trump’s first term would return.
A person close to the president-elect’s transition said did not think the abortion issue would pose an actual hurdle to Kennedy’s confirmation, and said they were unsurprised that Pence was making the argument against Kennedy.
Trump expressed support for Kennedy’s “Make America Healthy Again” platform during the campaign, and offered to let him “go wild on health” in the new administration.
“Do whatever you want. You just go ahead. Work on pesticides, work on making women’s health. He’s so into women’s health, and you know he’s really unbelievable. It’s such a passion,” Trump said of Kennedy on Nov. 4.
In a statement, the group Americans United for Life told CBS News that they were “optimistic about working with RFK Jr. to correct the wrongs of the Biden/Harris administration.”
But they also appeared to acknowledge his views were not fully in alignment.
“Like many newcomers to the conservative pro-life movement, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. needs further education on the reality of abortion and its harmful effects,” John Mize, the group’s CEO, told CBS News in a statement.
Mize pointed to Kennedy’s comments at the Iowa State Fair in August, in which he suggested he would support a federal ban on abortion. Kennedy’s campaign later walked that back — one of several changes Kennedy made to his shifting position on abortion during his longshot presidential bid.
Before dropping out, Kennedy posted in June that he backed “the emerging consensus that abortion should be unrestricted up until a certain point,” while also calling for policies that could “reduce more abortions in America by choice than by force.”
There are ways that Kennedy could go further to cement his support among anti-abortion activists, Mize said.
As one “large signal to the movement,” Mize suggested, Kennedy could support reinstating the FDA’s restrictions requiring in-person prescribing of the medication abortion pill mifepristone. More than 60% of abortions in the U.S. in 2023 involved use of the pills, and many prescriptions are now obtained via telehealth.
Croatian authorities arrested an Austrian national on suspicion of trying to smuggle a corpse, after he was stopped at a border crossing with a dead woman riding in his car’s passenger seat, police said Tuesday.
The 65-year-old man was stopped at the Gunja border crossing with Bosnia in late November after presenting travel documents for himself and another passenger, police told AFP in a statement.
The officers then became suspicious after noticing the female passenger “was not conscious and was not communicating.”
Police called a coroner to the scene, who established that the passenger was dead.
Authorities said the 83-year-old woman had died in Bosnia, and the driver had tried to take her body to back Austria to “avoid formalities related to the transport of deceased,” the statement added.
Police did not elaborate on the relationship between the two, but local media has described the man as the deceased’s legal guardian.
Police said the case had been formally handed over to the country’s prosecutors.
Drivers in the U.S. have also been found with corpses in their vehicles for a variety of different reasons. Last year, a man in Texas was arrested after a man’s body was found inside his car nearly 40 miles away from where police there believe he was hit by the car.
In 2014, a Detroit-area man said he refused to stop and contact authorities after one of his passengers died during a drive to Michigan from Arizona because he feared being incarcerated if police investigated. Four years before that, police said a Southern California woman drove around for months with a homeless woman’s mummified body in her passenger seat.
CBS News
Rex Heuermann, alleged Long Island serial killer, due in court as prosecutors promise major development
RIVERHEAD, N.Y. – Accused Gilgo Beach serial killer Rex Heuermann is due back in court on Long Island Tuesday morning, and prosecutors are promising a major development in the case.
The hearing is set to begin after 9:30 a.m. A press conference is expected at the Suffolk County DA’s office shortly after. We will bring that news conference to you live on CBS News New York.
The judge has previously indicated he wanted to set a trial date at today’s hearing.
Heuermann’s last court appearance was back in October.
Heuermann accused of killing 6 women, so far
Heuermann, 61, has pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the deaths of six women between 1993 and 2011. The remains of 11 people were discovered around Gilgo Beach during that period, and investigators believe Heuermann may be linked to other killings. The Suffolk County DA has said there could be future indictments.
Four of the victims had their bodies disposed of near Gilgo Beach. Two others were murdered as far back as 2003 and 1993. Each of them had been involved in sex work.
Prosecutors allege Heuermann is linked to the murders through DNA, burner phone data, a description of his truck, internet searches and what they call a blueprint for how to get away with murder.
Attorneys wrangle over DNA, volume of evidence
A key point of contention in the new DNA evidence is called SNP, which prosecutors say links the hairs of victims to Heuermann. The defense has called an outside lab’s methods of genetic testing unproven and “magic.”
Another hurdle for prosecutors is the sheer volume of evidence. The DA says they’re struggling to keep up with the costs of processing the 120 terabytes of data and 400 electronic devices seized.
Heuermann’s attorney says his client is looking forward to his day in court and will be pursuing a change of venue, claiming the jury pool in Suffolk has been “poisoned.”
Heuermann remains in isolation in jail.
CBS News
Osiel Cárdenas Guillén — notorious drug lord nicknamed “Friend Killer” — returned to Mexico after U.S. prison sentence
Notorious drug lord Osiel Cárdenas Guillén has been returned to Mexico after serving a U.S. sentence and was quickly re-arrested and sent to a maximum security prison to face Mexican charges.
There had been nervousness about the impending return of Cárdenas Guillén, who once led the feared Gulf cartel in northeastern Mexico before he was arrested and extradited to the United States in 2007.
The U.S. Homeland Security Department confirmed in its social media accounts Monday that Cárdenas Guillén had been returned after serving 14 years in U.S. custody, most of his 25-year U.S. prison sentence. He is a Mexican citizen, so presumably he was deported.
“The successful removal of Osiel Cardenas, a notorious international fugitive, underscores our unwavering commitment to public safety and justice,” said Enforcement and Removal Operations Chicago Field Office Director Samuel Olson in a statement.
A Mexican federal official who was not authorized to be quoted by name said Cárdenas Guillén had immediately been taken into custody in Mexico on drug, organized crime and money-laundering charges.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement/Handout via REUTERS
The official said Cárdenas Guillén was being held at the country’s top maximum-security Altiplano prison just west of Mexico City.
Homeland Security Investigations posted photos of a paunchy, balding, bespectacled Cárdenas Guillén being escorted by two officers in helmets and flak vests, and the being walked over a border bridge.
The image contrasts with the drug lord’s fearsome reputation for violence in Mexico.
Nicknamed “El Mata Amigos” (“Friend Killer”), he recruited former Mexican special forces soldiers to form his personal guard. The former head of the Gulf cartel was known for his brutality. He created the most bloodthirsty gang of hitmen Mexico has ever known, the Zetas, which routinely slaughtered migrants and innocent people.
The 57-year-old native of the border city of Matamoros, Mexico, moved tons of cocaine and made millions of dollars through the Gulf cartel, based in the border cities of Reynosa and Matamoros.
After his arrest in the northeast border state of Tamaulipas, he was extradited in 2007 to the United States, where he was sentenced in 2010 to 25 years in prison and ordered to pay $50 million.
At that time, the Justice Department alleged that Cardenas Guillen threatened to kill a Texas sheriff’s deputy who was working as an undercover ICE agent because he refused to deliver almost 1,000 kilograms of marijuana.
