By MICHAEL R. SISAK and LARRY NEUMEISTER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — Jeffrey Epstein’s former girlfriend and longtime associate Ghislaine Maxwell asked a federal judge on Wednesday to set aside her sex trafficking conviction and free her from a 20-year prison sentence, saying “substantial new evidence” has emerged proving that constitutional violations spoiled her trial.

Maxwell maintained in a habeas petition she has promised to file since August that information that would have resulted in her exoneration at her 2021 trial was withheld and false testimony was presented to the jury.

She said the cumulative effect of the constitutional violations resulted in a “complete miscarriage of justice.”

“Since the conclusion of her trial, substantial new evidence has emerged from related civil actions, Government disclosures, investigative reports, and documents demonstrating constitutional violations that undermined the fairness of her proceeding,” the filing in Manhattan federal court said. “In the light of the full evidentiary record, no reasonable juror would have convicted her.”

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The filing came just two days before records in her case were scheduled to be released publicly as a result of President Donald Trump’s signing of the Epstein Files Transparency Act. The law, signed after months of public and political pressure, requires the Justice Department to provide the public with Epstein-related records by Dec. 19.

Forced to act by the new transparency law, the Justice Department has said it plans to release 18 categories of investigative materials gathered in the massive sex trafficking probe, including search warrants, financial records, notes from interviews with victims, and data from electronic devices.

Epstein, a millionaire financier, was arrested in July 2019 on sex trafficking charges. A month later, he was found dead in his cell at a New York federal jail and the death was ruled a suicide. Maxwell, a British socialite, was arrested a year later and was convicted of sex trafficking in December 2021. She was interviewed by the Justice Department’s second-in-command in July and was soon afterward moved from a federal prison in Florida to a prison camp in Texas.

After the Justice Department asked a New York federal judge to permit grand jury and discovery materials gathered prior to her trial to be released publicly, attorney David Markus wrote on her behalf that while Maxwell now “does not take a position” on unsealing documents from her case, doing so “would create undue prejudice so severe that it would foreclose the possibility of a fair retrial” if her habeas petition succeeds.

The records, Markus said, “contain untested and unproven allegations.”

Last week, Judge Paul A. Engelmayer in Manhattan granted the Justice Department’s request to publicly release the materials.

On Wednesday, U.S. Attorney Jay Clayton said during a news conference on another topic that he would follow the law and the judge’s orders pertaining to the records.

Engelmayer, who along with other judges had previously rejected Justice Department unsealing requests before the transparency law was passed, said the materials “do not identify any person other than Epstein and Maxwell as having had sexual contact with a minor.”

If you’ve been on the fence about buying tickets to see the touring revival of “The Wiz” that opened Tuesday night at the Orpheum Theatre in downtown Minneapolis, go ahead and do so right now. It’s a wildly entertaining, old school Broadway show that’s firing on all cylinders.

Written by musical prodigy Charlie Smalls in the early ’70s, “The Wiz” reimagines L. Frank Baum’s classic “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz” as a Black fairy tale with an enchanting collection of songs that lean into jazz, blues and R&B. Two of the numbers, “Ease on Down the Road” and “Home,” crossed over into the mainstream. (A young Whitney Houston covered the latter when she made her television debut in 1983 on “The Merv Griffin Show.”)

Smalls, who studied at the Julliard School, died at the age of 43, but “The Wiz” has lived on, starting with the 1978 big-budget film adaptation (which, to be sure, has its detractors) and numerous revivals around the world, including an NBC live version in 2015.

The current iteration enjoyed a limited run on Broadway in 2024 before hitting the road for the current tour. It’s probably not a coincidence that “The Wiz” re-emerged at a time when Oz is front and center of pop culture thanks to the pair of “Wicked” films that are breaking records (even if the second one isn’t that great).

Thank Amber Ruffin for making this “Wiz” a must-see. The 46-year-old actor, writer and comedian has been on the “Late Night with Seth Meyers” staff for more than a decade and became the first Black woman to host a late-night talk show when she led “The Amber Ruffin Show” on Peacock for three seasons.

Ruffin previously made magic with Matthew López on their new musical take on the film “Some Like it Hot” that hit the Orpheum in October. On “The Wiz” she’s credited for “additional material for the production.” Her work here isn’t a rewrite as much as it is a refresh that replaces some of the extremely ’70s aspects of the original, fleshes out some of the characters and creates something that feels much more timeless.

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This new “Wiz” also incorporates more aspects of the Black experience, from a New Orleans-style parade to hip hop to Ballroom culture. It also boasts a terrific sense of humor, with Ruffin adding a series of gags and knowing nods to the audience. I found myself grinning throughout and I laughed out loud during the final scene featuring Evillene (Kyla Jade, who also plays Aunt Em), aka the Wicked Witch of the West.

There’s not a weak point in the production, with the four leads — Dorothy (Dana Cimone), the Scarecrow (Elijah Ahmad Lewis), the Tinman (D. Jerome) and the Lion (Cal Mitchell) — displaying an instant, believable chemistry. They’re each supremely talented at singing, dancing and selling the storyline. Jerome in particular is truly dazzling and displays a stunning amount of personality from a face covered in silver paint.

The costumes from Sharen Davis are a Technicolor delight and director Schele Williams keeps the action moving at a brisk pace, while also allowing numerous moments for choreographer Jaquel Knight’s work to shine.

If you’re looking for an immersive, entertaining, fun and funny show, look no further than “The Wiz.”

‘The Wiz’

When: Through Sunday
Where: Orpheum Theatre, 910 Hennepin Ave. S., Minneapolis
Tickets: $203.10-$70.45 via hennepinarts.org
Capsule: An inventive, colorful take on a familiar tale.

“Policy succeeds or fails in the space between City Hall and neighborhoods. When civic infrastructure is strong, communities know where to get information, can organize around priorities, and maintain trust through complex policy transitions. When it is weak, even good ideas falter.”

Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani addressing the media on Election Day. (Shutterstock/Ron Adar)

When New Yorkers elected Zohran Mamdani as mayor in 2025, they did more than choose a political direction. They issued a mandate for structural change on housing, transit, affordability, and safety. Early voting check-ins reached historic levels, according to the NYC Board of Elections, and more than two million ballots were cast in the mayoral election, the highest turnout in at least 50 years. Voters showed that when they see meaningful choices and bold ideas, they engage.

But a political mandate is not enough. The question now is whether New York has the civic infrastructure needed to translate this historic energy into lasting change. Today, the answer is unclear.

Public mood entering the 2025 election was conflicted. On one hand, turnout surged. On the other, confidence in the systems that shape daily life remained low. Only 34 percent of New Yorkers rated overall quality of life as excellent or good, according to the Citizens Budget Commission’s 2025 Resident Survey. Meanwhile, the Five Borough NYC People’s Pulse found that residents feel deeply rooted in their neighborhoods but remain worried about affordability, mental health and safety, and are skeptical that institutions can respond. 

This mix of local attachment and institutional doubt reveals a deeper problem. New Yorkers care about their communities. They are showing up. But they do not trust that public systems can keep pace with the scale of their expectations.

Civic infrastructure is the set of systems, relationships, and communication channels that allow residents to understand public decisions, participate in shaping them, and hold institutions accountable. It is not abstract. It is the backbone of democratic practice, and it determines whether big visions can be implemented.

New York’s civic infrastructure has two essential layers.

The first is community civic infrastructure. These are the civic intermediaries, tenant associations, youth leadership networks, advocacy coalitions, and trusted messengers that connect policy to everyday life. Yet their funding is inconsistent and often short term. The uneven civic capacity across neighborhoods shows up in voter participation. The NYC Campaign Finance Board’s analysis of demographic turnout data, available here, found that voters aged 18 to 29 participated at less than half the rate of older voters, and turnout in lower income districts lagged far behind wealthier ones. These disparities reflect differences in civic networks, not differences in interest.

The second layer is institutional civic infrastructure. This includes public facing information systems, multilingual communication channels, participatory platforms, engagement staff, and the citywide architecture that helps residents follow government action. The Civic Engagement Commission’s People’s Money participatory budgeting initiative, which engaged more than 100,000 New Yorkers, shows what is possible when an institutional structure supports large scale participation. 

But across agencies, communication remains inconsistent. Public information is scattered. Many residents do not know where to find updates or how to engage between elections. This fragmentation makes government harder to trust and slows policy implementation.

Three trends reveal the city’s civic capacity problem:

First, participation gaps persist. High turnout in one election does not automatically become sustained engagement. Without strong civic infrastructure, participation spikes and then drops. That means residents are present at the moment of a mandate but not during the long process of designing and implementing the policies that mandate requires.

Second, trust in institutions is low. Even when people participate, they stay engaged only if they believe government will listen. The CBC’s survey shows declining confidence in responsiveness and transparency. The People’s Pulse survey reinforces this skepticism. Trust is not a side issue. It is infrastructure. Without it, every step of implementation becomes slower and harder.

Third, civic intermediaries lack stable support. National research is clear. Brookings Metro describes civic intermediaries as part of the invisible civic infrastructure needed for inclusive growth, and warns that cities systematically underinvest in them. The Aspen Institute similarly argues that building civic intermediaries requires long term investment rather than short funding cycles. Together, these trends show a civic ecosystem that is not built to the scale of the city’s ambition.

Policy succeeds or fails in the space between City Hall and neighborhoods. When civic infrastructure is strong, communities know where to get information, can organize around priorities, and maintain trust through complex policy transitions. When it is weak, even good ideas falter.

Consider two recent examples. The Civic Engagement Commission’s participatory budgeting process worked because a system existed to support it. By contrast, the city’s effort to build universal composting struggled due to inconsistent communication and limited neighborhood level engagement. A Columbia University analysis found that the citywide organics capture rate in Fiscal Year 2024 was only 3.7 percent, with food scraps at just 1.2 percent. The Independent Budget Office also found wide disparities in participation across districts, reflecting uneven civic networks and outreach capacity.

These differences show that bold ideas succeed where civic infrastructure is strong and stall where it is thin. To honor the 2025 election’s mandate, the administration must treat civic infrastructure as essential public infrastructure.

First, stabilize and scale civic intermediaries. Provide multi-year support for the organizations that translate policy into community action and sustain engagement between election cycles.

Second, modernize public communication and engagement systems. Create a cross-agency civic dashboard with clear progress updates and engagement opportunities. Standardize multilingual communication. Strengthen the role of the Civic Engagement Commission in coordinating engagement across city government.

Third, set citywide standards for civic engagement. All agencies should follow consistent practices for outreach, plain language materials, multilingual access, timely updates, and transparent opportunities for community input.

Voters delivered a historic mandate because they wanted a city willing to think in bold strokes. That mandate produced a vision. Now, New York must build the infrastructure to carry it.

The city has civic assets in its neighborhoods, community organizations, and engaged residents. What it lacks is a civic foundation built to the scale of this political moment. If New York wants the promise of 2025 to become lasting change, civic infrastructure must be treated as essential to the work ahead.

Na’ilah Amaru is an advocacy and policy strategist and doctoral researcher at the CUNY Graduate Center exploring the intersections of public policy, political power, and civic engagement.

The post Opinion: What Mamdani’s Election Reveals About New York’s Civic Capacity appeared first on City Limits.

DULUTH — Two years after a company confirmed the presence of helium beneath the surface of Northeastern Minnesota, other companies are poking around the area for confirmation of a lightweight gas from the other end of the periodic table of elements: hydrogen.

At its remote site between Babbitt and Isabella, Pulsar Helium has drilled three additional wells since October, bringing its total to five as it seeks to better estimate the size of the helium reservoir and characterize its resource, which already ranks among the highest concentrations in the world.

Most notably, the company recently announced that some of the helium released by its original well includes helium-3, a rare isotope that can be used for nuclear fusion, scanning for nuclear weapons at ports of entry and supercomputing, among other uses.

“A cylinder the size of my forearm here would be 30 million bucks,” said Cliff Cain, CEO of Edelgas Group, which advises companies — including Pulsar — on rare gases.

Why is helium so valuable?

It’s incredibly rare on Earth, sourced primarily as a byproduct of decaying tritium from nuclear warheads. Its prevalence on the moon, however, has even prompted some to consider sourcing it from there.

Remote northern Minnesota would be a bit easier to reach, and Pulsar officials are still determining how much of the gas is standard helium versus helium-3.

The region’s subterranean cracks and fissures are believed to have trapped helium, a byproduct of the breakdown of radioactive elements, in pockets beneath the surface, and those characteristics are also attracting companies looking for hydrogen, sometimes found in the same places as helium.

Last month, Pulsar finalized a deal to buy a hydrogen exploration company and its private gas exploration rights across more than 59,000 acres in St. Louis and Itasca counties as it looks for more helium.

Thomas Abraham-James, president and CEO of Pulsar, said he’s aware of several other companies eyeing gas exploration in the region, and if they are after helium, he doesn’t see it as competition.

“It’s further validation of what we’ve done and the potential of this area,” Abraham-James said.

What’s fueling the hunt for hydrogen?

A drill rig is in place and about to start drilling Pulsar Helium’s third well near Babbitt, Minn. on Oct. 16, 2025. The company confirmed the presence of helium gas trapped beneath the surface in northeastern Minnesota two years ago. Companies hoping to find hydrogen in the area also want to conduct exploratory drilling. (Jimmy Lovrien / Duluth News Tribune)

While demand for helium stems from its uses in medical, aerospace and defense products, the search for so-called “natural hydrogen” or “geologic hydrogen” in the region is being driven by the desire to have a fuel that releases only water vapor when it’s burned.

Currently, most hydrogen comes from fossil fuels, and while water can be split into hydrogen and oxygen through electrolysis, that requires a significant amount of electricity. That’s why the prospect of naturally occurring hydrogen in Northeastern Minnesota has piqued the interest of several companies. The attention comes after the U.S. Geological Survey identified areas along the Midcontinent Rift, including Minnesota, as areas where the geology might allow for hydrogen to form as the water interacts with iron and is then trapped in underground reservoirs.

Quebec Innovative Materials Corp. last month announced it would explore the possibility of hydrogen in two St. Louis County townships on the Iron Range, and Koloma, which is backed by Bill Gates’ Breakthrough Energy Ventures and Amazon’s Climate Pledge Fund, said it has been conducting surveys as it gears up to possibly conduct exploratory drilling in the region.

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Kristen Delano, Koloma’s head of government affairs, told the News Tribune last month that the USGS data is often a starting point for companies hunting for hydrogen, but that Koloma is analyzing other existing geologic surveys, collecting its own data and using artificial intelligence to narrow where it wants to conduct exploratory drilling.

“We also have expert geologists and data that shows us in the Iron Range, you have the right type of iron-rich rock, and that the right type of geology and depths and opportunities for this to exist and be caught in these pockets or traps,” Delano said.

The confirmation of helium in Minnesota in early 2024 and the potential for hydrogen in the area prompted state officials to craft regulations for the industry. The Minnesota Department of Natural Resources said its rulemaking for permitting and the leasing of state lands for gas production must be completed by May 2026.

What makes Northeastern Minnesota a good option?

The Midcontinent Rift formed 1.1 billion years ago when North America tried to pull itself apart, sending magma up and leaving behind deposits of copper, nickel and other metals in areas like Minnesota’s Duluth Complex and Tamarack Intrusion. Iron-rich olivine is often found throughout the Duluth Complex, which itself intersects with the 2-billion-year-old Biwabik Iron Range, which, of course, contains iron. And a type of iron, called iron(II), or Fe(II), can form hydrogen when it reacts with water.

“These terrains are sutured together, and having them right next to each other, you have high potential for a lot of iron(II) that saw a lot of water driven through it from these geologic processes,” said Latisha Brengman, associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at the University of Minnesota Duluth.

Hydrogen can also form by radiolysis, when radiation released by old granite breaks water down into hydrogen over a long period of time.

While the reactions that create hydrogen “probably happen all the time,” Brengman said, there’s only one known reservoir in the world, in Mali. It has been tapped to power a nearby village.

Researchers suspect additional natural hydrogen sources have yet to be discovered, but Brengman said capturing natural hydrogen — reservoir or not — could include a technique combining natural and engineered processes.

That technique would involve using iron near the surface or tailings — waste rock leftover from the taconite pellet plants — to host these reactions and capture the hydrogen. Industries seeking to replace coal, oil and natural gas could then burn that hydrogen as a carbon-free energy source with water vapor as the only byproduct.

Delano said regionally sourced hydrogen could be a “game changer” across many industries, including the iron mining and steelmaking processes. “Natural hydrogen’s best use is being put to use for other energy needs and cleaning up those really hard to abate sectors,” Delano said.

But hydrogen is a small, light gas that can easily leak. Out in the atmosphere, it can react to other greenhouse gases.

“While hydrogen itself is not a greenhouse gas, leakage of hydrogen fuels causes indirect warming due to hydrogen’s influence on methane, tropospheric ozone, and stratospheric water vapor,” according to research published in Frontiers in Energy Research last year.

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Delano said Koloma expects to be “very, very active” in 2026 with seismic studies using earth-shaking “vibe trucks” to send energy waves into the ground and get a sense of what’s below.

“If that data leads to what we think it will, then we’re ready to keep our feet on the ground … and be part of the Minnesota infrastructure as we explore for hydrogen,” Delano said.

And as Brengman readies findings on whether magnetite, a common iron ore on the Iron Range, produces hydrogen — spoiler: “Yes, it’s a very common reaction,” she said — she’s gearing up for her next project. She’ll be partnering with the U.S. Department of Energy’s National Laboratory of the Rockies to build a system that can help predict where hydrogen was or is produced.

“The Midwest has a lot of great potential, because it’s a very old terrain, and so there’s lots of old-water rock interaction to map out,” Brengman said.