Thirteen months after she wrote the accusatory email, Hegseth praised her eldest son on Fox News on Mother’s Day, saying he had excelled in high school and college. Above all, she said, he had displayed a love of country in his military service. “I’m grateful for that, Pete, and proud every day to be your mom,” she said, holding hands with him on a couch on the set.

The disclosure of the email comes as Pete Hegseth and his allies, including Vice President-elect JD Vance, are mounting a concerted effort to help him win approval by the Senate. Trump will not be able to formally submit his nomination until after taking office Jan. 20.

Several key Republican senators have said that the sexual assault allegation in Monterey is not an obstacle to Hegseth’s nomination because it was never proven. But Sen. Joni Ernst, R-Iowa, who has said she was sexually harassed while in the military, told Politico: “Any time there are allegations, you want to make sure they are properly vetted, so we’ll have that discussion.”

Hegseth married Meredith Schwarz, his high school sweetheart, in 2004, one year after they both graduated from college. Schwarz sued for divorce less than five years after their wedding. The 2009 court judgment cited Hegseth’s infidelity as the reason for the breakdown of the marriage.

The following year, Hegseth married Samantha. Within five years, they had three boys.

Hegseth has repeatedly said he is a Christian who adheres to conservative family values. In a short-lived bid for the Republican nomination for a Minnesota seat in the U.S. Senate in 2012, he credited his parents for instilling those values in him, saying, “I didn’t learn conservatism out of a book.”

She has since described — in an article in Vanity Fair, and in interviews with The New York Times — several instances in which Kennedy, then in his mid-40s, made physical passes at her: During a meeting with a Pace colleague in the family kitchen, he moved his hand up and down her leg, she has said. Once, he came into her room, shirtless, and asked her to rub lotion on his back. And once, he stepped into the kitchen pantry behind her and moved his hands up and down the sides of her torso, she said.

Kennedy declined to comment on the claims. When her allegations first surfaced this summer, he sent an apologetic text message to Cooney, saying he had no memory of the episodes.

Cooney said she was repulsed by the behavior, and left the household by the end of one year, though she continued her work at Pace and stayed in touch with the family. She says she was troubled by the entitlement and carelessness of his behavior.

“I remember thinking, in the beginning of my tenure there — Wow, it’s as if he’s up on the bow of a large, fast boat, and the rest of us are on board,” she said. “He gets to be in the front, look ahead, think big, holler commands, jump off, do what he wants, without concern for details or implications, while everybody else is there to deal with the wake.”

As part of his 12-step recovery programs, Kennedy kept a journal. In it, he chronicled sexual encounters with more than three dozen women in a one-year period in around 2001, assigning them rankings, 1 to 10, that corresponded with different sexual acts, the New York Post reported. The journal reportedly includes entries suggesting his behavior filled him with self-loathing.

“After daddy died I struggled to be a grown-up,” Kennedy wrote, adding, “I felt he was watching me from heaven. Every time I was afflicted with sexual thoughts, I felt a failure. I hated myself. I began to lie — to make up a character who was the hero and leader that I wished I was.”

“The trickiest thing is to manage the nerves, especially last season, performing for the Western Conference Finals. Every single seat was packed, and the energy was through the roof,” Riley said.

The dancers also performed amid flashing lights, which made things more challenging. “You have to know where you’re at as you’re spinning on your head. It’s a lot to manage,” he said.

To help prepare the dancers, Riley said his group typically rehearses on the court before the show, flashing lights included.

“Part of my job is not just to choreograph, but to coach the new members in particular, to be ready for those timing cues,” he said. “Because if you miss a cue and you fall out of a move and we’re transitioning, it can have a bad snowball effect.”

Riley also owns House of Dance, an official dance studio partner of the Timberwolves and Lynx. The 1st Avenue Breakers rehearse in the space, and it’s the site for auditions, as well. “It’s been a good relationship because we’re so connected to the hip-hop dance community in general,” he said. “Our studio serves as a pipeline of talent for the Timberwolves.”

In a way, basketball is a kind of dance, with set moves and improvisational movement performed by the players. A soundtrack of recorded music and sound effects underlays the rhythm of the basketball hitting the floor, the shoes squeaking against the wood, and the ref’s whistle. Formal dance groups, mostly grounded in different forms of hip-hop vocabulary, supplement that basketball game with their own ebullient moves.