A Better Childhood, which represented 5 foster care children in the federal suit, told the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals last week that it was seeking to voluntarily dismiss the case.
The firm’s motion was accepted by the court on July 31.
The group of plaintiffs filed a class-action suit in 2022, alleging systemic problems within the foster care system — including chronic understaffing, overburdened caseworkers and failure to find adequate placements — were creating a danger to children.
Judge Sharon Gleason presided over an 11-day trial late last year and ruled against the plaintiffs, finding none had standing to bring the case and that none of the plaintiffs were either harmed or faced risk of harm.
A Better Childhood appealed Gleason’s decision to the 9th Circuit but chose to drop that appeal. It isn’t clear why. A Better Childhood did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday afternoon.
In other states, A Better Childhood has filed successful lawsuits that resulted in court orders requiring specific actions by foster care programs in those states.
The Alaska Department of Law — which represented the state’s defense — said in a statement that A Better Childhood’s decision to drop the case will allow the state to direct the foster care system without a court mandate.
“There is always room for improvement in how we support children and families,” said acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills. “But meaningful reform happens through thoughtful policy and cooperative innovation here in Alaska, not through expensive lawsuits brought by outsiders that drain already scarce public resources. (The) dismissal preserves Alaska’s flexibility to continue pursuing creative, practical solutions to the unique child welfare challenges our state faces.”
During this spring’s session of the Alaska Legislature, state lawmakers voted by a wide margin to mandate tighter regulation of hospitals that treat foster youth and to require stricter oversight of any psychiatric treatment.
A separate lawsuit, alleging that the state is not adequately supporting older foster children, continues to advance in state court.
Brantley Gilbert has been sober for 14 years. While a lot has changed since he made that decision, he’ll never forget the moment that inspired him to turn his life around.
The country rocker appeared on a recent episode of Tracy Lawrence’s Road House podcast, where he explained how his drinking had reached a dangerous point before he made the decision to get sober. Gilbert opened up about the toll the addiction was taking on his health, revealing that his struggles had become more than just a bad habit, they had become a serious medical concern too.
“You got to know leading into this, it was becoming a health thing. It was becoming a medical thing. Pancreatitis, liver, kidneys were shot in my early 20s. And so it got bad. It wasn’t that I didn’t know there was a problem…Two liters a day. Every 24 hours. Just vodka the first part of the day and then bourbon or Jäger to end the day. And honestly, if you didn’t know me well, you wouldn’t have known I tore up. It becomes a cruising altitude.”
Photo Courtesy of Brantley Gilbert
The night his hit song “Country Must Be Country Wide” reached No. 1 should have been a moment of pure celebration. But as Gilbert was out on the road marking the career milestone with his team and a cake on the bus, he says an unexpected feeling of guilt began to creep in.
“I was hearing from everybody, ‘Man, you really need to just take a moment and appreciate this, smell the roses.’ And I’m terrible about that and I don’t do it anymore. But I went to the back of the bus and it was supposed to be my moment to kind of soak it all in. And I cracked the window and looked out. And for whatever reason, I just looked at the table the cake was on and I was like, ‘Man, there are people that have gone broke and homeless and destroyed their lives and their marriages and their relationships for a chance just to get on the radio, not to have the top song in the country. And we’re doing the same s**t we do every night. There’s just a cake here tonight.’”
Gilbert suddenly felt like he was taking all the success and blessings he had received for granted. While he wasn’t a husband or a father yet at the time, he wanted to give himself the opportunity to become a better version of himself.
“I just felt like I owed it to myself and my mom and the people around me that loved and cared about me to, ‘Hey dude, get it out of your life for a minute and see what happens. If you go back down that road, it is what it is but get out of your life and see if anything changes up here in here.’ And I called my manager, told him I needed a hole in my schedule and I didn’t have to tell him. He knew.””
So, on December 18, 2011, Brantley Gilbert checked himself into a facility.
“The next five days were five of the most miserable days of my life, man. I crawled to the shower and back to the bed in that room. I didn’t get released from medical until day six or day seven. And I left 11 days in to go on the Eric Church Blood, Sweat and Beers Tour. And I was still at risk for after my seizures and all that stuff. So I had to bring a guy out. But that was my first tour with my own boss.”
While still in recovery, he crossed paths with Keith Urban and remembers feeling shame in that moment.
“I was like, ‘Oh shit.’ Trying to hide my head and didn’t want him to see me. And he turned around and saw me. He goes, ‘Brantley, can I talk to you for a minute?’ And I was like, ‘God, I’m hiding.’ I didn’t want to talk to anybody, man. Even Keith Urban. I just wanted to be miserable and do my time.”
An unexpected conversation came from this interaction that found them swapping stories of their struggles and had Urban asking Gilbert, “What are you afraid of?” Gilbert’s first instanct was to say that he wasn’t afraid of anything, but the Australian country star encouraged him to dig deeper and speak openly.
“He said, ‘No, really? What are you afraid of?’ And almost immediately doing my job. I’m terrified to do my job. I don’t remember what it’s like to play a show sober,” he admitted. “It’s like alcohol for me wasn’t, man, I’m going to drink, have a good time tonight.”
The drinking had quickly became a coping mechanism for Georgia native. He says he drank or used every chance he got and the partying reached an entirely new level once music became his full-time gig.
“You take an interview at 8:00 in the morning, you got your bottle of orange juice full of vodka. Who’s going to tell you something different…I’m going to do what the hell I want to do. So man, years of that, it was never a drink, have a good time. Man, it was not just a coping mechanism it was self-destructive, but it was medicine, man.”
Lawrence then opened up about his own struggles with alcohol and revealed that in order to get to a place where drinking wasn’t controlling his life, he had to get to the root of the problem.
“When I finally went through the process and I went to a treatment facility for a while, the one thing that, and I don’t know what your process was, but the counselor, he put this big piece of white paper up on the wall and he drew a line right in the middle of it. And we went back to my earliest memories and we started doing the positive and the negative impact of what that was. And we drew that whole map out all the way up to the current point of my life.”
Lawrence continued, “Went back through those things of regression and pain and childhood trauma and all those things. And it was awful, absolutely freaking awful. But being able to get through that whole thing and start to put some things in perspective as I’d gotten to a point in my life that I didn’t even realize what I was running from anymore.”
Tracy Lawrence; Photo Courtesy of YouTube
Brantley Gilbert emphasized that everyone’s journey with addiction is different, but sharing personal experiences can help others feel less alone. He believes stories of overcoming struggles have the power to connect people and offer hope to those facing similar battles.
“I’ll never tell anybody I know where they’re at because we’re always different with our fingerprints. And I feel like our addictions are the same…just communicating with somebody that’s in that place we know how to speak that language. We recognize each other. I can walk in a room in five minutes and tell you if it’s somebody that’s dealt with serious trauma or substance abuse.”
A man was arrested at a golf course owned by Donald Trump, just days ahead of a fundraising dinner.
When authorities searched his home, they found a small arsenal, including hollow point bullets and body armor.
This is a big week to be in Trump’s orbit and have the first name Jeanine, it seems.
Donald Trump speaks in the Oval Office of the White House on July 29, 2026. (Photo Credit: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Who is Jeanine John Taele?
Well, this is a weird one.
On Sunday, August 2, a man named Jeanine John Taele was arrested outside of Trump National Golf Club in Rancho Palos Verdes.
Trump himself was not present. But there was a security meeting at the time ahead of his GOP fundraiser.
Taele was allegedly taking photos while walking the grounds of the golf course. He had apparently been beforehand, which prompted staff at the facility to notify law enforcement of his return.
Plainclothes federal agents reportedly spotted him while he was allegedly monitoring “security-planning activities.”
Officers for the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department found a loaded magazine on Taele’s person.
In his car, they found a loaded pistol and still more ammunition.
The real find came on Monday, August 3, when investigators executed a search at his home.
There, Taele allegedly had an illegally modified AR platform rifle, a .45 caliber pistol, body armor, high-capacity magazines, and, yes, even more ammo.
It is not currently clear what Taele may have intended for this arsenal.
Jeanine John Taele, 38, of Downey, who was arrested at Trump National Golf Course Los Angeles in Rancho Palos Verdes, is charged in a federal criminal complaint with possession of an unregistered short-barreled rifle, a felony carrying a mandatory minimum sentence of 10 years in… pic.twitter.com/oY3ISp8n6x
— F.A. United States Attorney Bill Essayli (@USAttyEssayli) August 5, 2026
He was already being sought by a nearby police department
Taele was arrested on charges of carrying a concealed firearm and possessing prohibited ammunition.
It seems likely that additional charges will follow.
Among other things, Taele was already a person of interest in a robbery.
The El Segundo Police Department — an affluent community about 15 miles north — was already on the lookout for him.
There are times when it pays to be someone who everyone wants some time with. Multiple police departments as well as federal authorities wanting you at the same time is not ideal.
Without knowing anything about Taele but this, one can easily imagine a wide range of possibilities.
The first is that a man already wanted in connection to a robbery had decided to go out in a blaze of glory. One can conjure up all sorts of motives, such as a desire for fame or perhaps a personal vendetta against the man whose persistent economic sabotage may have created the motive for the robbery in the first place.
On the other end, perhaps a man — whose arsenal may or may not have had anything to do with an alleged robbery 15 miles away — enjoyed a walk and snapped photos on a golf course, not even knowing that it is owned by one of the planet’s most infamous figures.
We don’t know what happened. It’s possible that we never will.
It’s probably best that authorities decided that it’s better safe than sorry. Really, no one should have an arsenal like the one that investigators reported finding at his home.
Cole Swindell might be busy on the road, but he wouldn’t miss the chance to celebrate his baby girl’s first birthday. The country star says his wife Courtney is planning a special party for their daughter Rainey, who will turn one on August 7.
With Swindell scheduled to perform tour dates from Wednesday, August 5, through Saturday, August 8, he shared plans to celebrate Rainey’s milestone moment on Sunday.
“I’ll be coming in hot Sunday morning,” he told K99.1 FM. We’ll be doing her birthday party and just celebrating a year.”
Courtney Swindell, Rainey, Cole Swindell; Photo Courtesy of Cole Swindell
The “She Had Me At Heads Carolina” singer went on to say that before having a child, he was always told how quickly they grow up and now he is experiencing that first-hand.
“It’s just, you hear how fast it goes, that’s all you hear. And you blink and you’re coming up on a year, her first birthday party. So it’s true. Time flies,” he admitted.
Although Swindell is still navigating his first year of fatherhood, the experience has already inspired some of his most personal music yet. Earlier this year, he released “Girl Dad,” an emotional tune about moving on in life and not being able to share the big moments with his late father.
The 43-year-old tells the radio station that although he still misses his dad every day, seeing glimpses of him in Rainey has brought him a sense of comfort he never expected.
“Until the day we shot ‘Girl Dad,’ she had been around some of my family, but not a lot. And I’d been getting the glimpses of her and like, ‘Am I crazy? Am I just wanting to see this?’ And then somebody in my family, they’re like, ‘Man, I see Keith in her eyes.’ And I’m like, ‘Thank you.’ One, because I’m happy about it. Two, because I’m glad I’m not completely crazy that she does resemble him,” he explained.
This realization has helped remind Swindell that even though his dad is no longer physically present, he is always with him.
“To have a little reminder of that every time I look at her, I mean, the Lord works in mysterious ways and sometimes you don’t understand it. But then for me to be able to look back, I think 10 years later, and I can understand that the things I’ve been through have shaped me into getting ready to be a father and the man I needed to be. And that has not come easy by any means. It’s been a learning process.”
As he continues to balance life on the road with fatherhood, Cole Swindell is cherishing every moment as a family of three while continuing to honor the memory of the man who helped shape him.
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