RFK Jr. backs 15-week federal ban on abortion, then reverses himself

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Sunday said he would support a federal ban on abortion after the first three months of pregnancy, but his campaign later said he "misunderstood" the question.

Speaking to NBC from the Iowa State Fair, Kennedy said, “I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the women during the first three months of life,” but also said: “Once a child is viable, outside the womb, I think then the state has an interest in protecting the child.”

He said he would sign a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks or 21 weeks of pregnancy if he were elected president.

But his campaign subsequently said Kennedy did not mean to support any federal limits on abortion.

"Today, Mr. Kennedy misunderstood a question posed to him by a NBC reporter in a crowded, noisy exhibit hall at the Iowa State Fair," his campaign said. "Mr. Kennedy’s position on abortion is that it is always the woman’s right to choose. He does not support legislation banning abortion."

A longtime advocate of what he calls “medical freedom,” Kennedy has been in the public eye in recent years largely for discussions about public health issues, in particular his stated doubts about mandates for vaccinations and some conspiracy theories about Covid-19, including widely condemned suggestions that the virus could have been engineered to spare Ashkenazi Jews and Chinese people.

In June in a town hall in New Hampshire, he called himself “pro-choice” and spoke in favor of legal abortion.

“I’m not going be in a position, put myself in a position, where I am going to tell a woman to bring a child to term,” he said at the time.

Limits on abortion have been widely discussed in the Republican presidential field. Former Vice President Mike Pence, for instance, has called for his fellow GOP presidential candidates to support a 15-week national ban.

Kennedy’s remarks come only days after voters in Ohio rejected a ballot measure that would have made it harder for the state’s voters to codify abortion rights in the state constitution in November.

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Police challenged over Kansas newspaper raid in which computers, phones seized

MARION, Kan. — A small central Kansas police department is facing a firestorm of criticism after it raided the offices of a local newspaper and the home of its publisher and owner — a move deemed by several press freedom watchdogs as a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution’s protection of a free press.

The Marion County Record said in its own published reports that police raided the newspaper’s office on Friday, seizing the newspaper’s computers, phones and file server and the personal cellphones of staff, based on a search warrant. One Record reporter said one of her fingers was injured when Marion Police Chief Gideon Cody wrested her cellphone out of her hand, according to the report.

Police simultaneously raided the home of Eric Meyer, the newspaper’s publisher and co-owner, seizing computers, his cellphone and the home’s internet router, Meyer said. Meyer’s 98-year-old mother — Record co-owner Joan Meyer who lived in the home with her son — collapsed and died Saturday, Meyer said, blaming her death on the stress of the raid of her home.

Meyer said in his newspaper’s report that he believes the raid was prompted by a story published last week about a local restaurant owner, Kari Newell. Newell had police remove Meyer and a newspaper reporter from her restaurant early this month, who were there to cover a public reception for U.S. Rep. Jake LaTurner, a Republican representing the area. The police chief and other officials also attended and were acknowledged at the reception, and the Marion Police Department highlighted the event on its Facebook page.

The next week at a city council meeting, Newell publicly accused the newspaper of using illegal means to get information on a drunken driving conviction against her. The newspaper countered that it received that information unsolicited, which it sought to verify through public online records. It eventually decided not to run a story on Newell’s DUI, but it did run a story on the city council meeting, in which Newell confirmed the 2008 DUI conviction herself.

A two-page search warrant, signed by a local judge, lists Newell as the victim of alleged crimes by the newspaper. When the newspaper asked for a copy of the probable cause affidavit required by law to issue a search warrant, the district court issued a signed statement saying no such affidavit was on file, the Record reported.

Newell declined to comment Sunday, saying she was too busy to speak. She said she would call back later Sunday to answer questions.

Cody, the police chief, defended the raid on Sunday, saying in an email to The Associated Press that while federal law usually requires a subpoena — not just a search warrant — to raid a newsroom, there is an exception “when there is reason to believe the journalist is taking part in the underlying wrongdoing.”

Cody did not give details about what that alleged wrongdoing entailed.

Cody, who was hired in late April as Marion’s police chief after serving 24 years in the Kansas City, Missouri, Police Department, did not respond to questions about whether police filed a probable cause affidavit for the search warrant. He also did not answer questions about how police believe Newell was victimized.

Meyer said the newspaper plans to sue the police department and possibly others, calling the raid an unconstitutional violation of the First Amendment’s free press guarantee.

Press freedom and civil rights organizations agreed that police, the local prosecutor’s office and the judge who signed off on the search warrant overstepped their authority.

“It seems like one of the most aggressive police raids of a news organization or entity in quite some time,” said Sharon Brett, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas. The breadth of the raid and the aggressiveness in which it was carried out seems to be “quite an alarming abuse of authority from the local police department,” Brett said.

Seth Stern, director of advocacy for Freedom of the Press Foundation, said in a statement that the raid appeared to have violated federal law, the First Amendment, “and basic human decency.”

“This looks like the latest example of American law enforcement officers treating the press in a manner previously associated with authoritarian regimes,” Stern said. “The anti-press rhetoric that’s become so pervasive in this country has become more than just talk and is creating a dangerous environment for journalists trying to do their jobs.”

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As Maui rescue continues, families and faith leaders cling to hope but tackle reality of loss

For scores of families in Hawaii still hoping to reunite with loved ones, it was not yet time to give up — even as the staggering death toll continued to grow, and even as authorities predicted that more remains would be found within the ashes left behind by a wildfire that gutted the once-bustling town of Lahaina.

But many others are already confronting a painful reality. Their loved ones did not make it out alive.

Kika Perez Grant wasn’t sure what would become of the remains of her uncle, Franklin Trejos, who was found in a charred car, his body shielding a friend’s dog.

“We knew he was happiest out there, and so we’re allowing his best friends, who he’s been with for over 30 years out there, do whatever they think he would be happy with,” said Grant, who lives with her mother and family in Maryland.

Specific plans have yet to be decided, she said, partly because it was unclear who had possession of his remains.

Thus far, the remains of more than 90 people have been pulled from flattened homes, blackened cars or on streets just a few strides from their front doors — unable to outrun the smoke and flames that were just too fast and too ferocious.

On Saturday, Gov. Josh Green told residents to brace for more grim news. Crews and cadaver-sniffing dogs will certainly find more of the missing within the destruction, he said. He predicted the tragedy could rank as Hawaii’s deadliest natural disaster ever.

It was an ominous signal of the anguish to come in the months ahead. Mourners will file into houses of worship, then somberly gather at gravesites to say final goodbyes. The scenes will be repeated over and over — though how many times no one yet knows.

Maui officials declined to respond to phone calls, text messages and emails requesting information about how and where the county are sheltering the recovered remains. Nor did they answer questions about whether the county has the facilities and resources to handle the rising number of fatalities.

With just one hospital and three mortuaries, it remains unclear where all those corpses will be temporarily stored and how soon they will be released to family.

Pope Francis acknowledged the tragedy during his Sunday address to people gathered at the Vatican’s St. Peter’s Square, saying that he “desires to assure my prayers for the victims of the fires that devastated the island of Maui.” Locally, amid the gloom, faith leaders were focused on providing community and spiritual hope for congregants who lost homes and livelihoods. Some vowed to hold services on Sunday.

“We’re hoping our church can be a beacon of hope when the time comes,” the Rev. Barry Campbell said from Kihei, where his family has stayed since escaping Lahaina.

He plans to hold services as soon as it’s possible at Lahaina Baptist Church, which remained standing, even if buildings around it were razed down to their slabs.

“That’s the thing our people really need,” Campbell said. “To be together.”

Amid Lahaina’s devastation, the Maria Lanakila Catholic Church suffered smoke damage, but the convent and school were destroyed, said the Most Rev. Clarence “Larry” Silva, the Bishop of Honolulu.

“Funerals are not yet on the horizon,” he told The Associated Press. “Even in the best of times, Hawaii has the custom on having funerals anywhere from a month to six months after the death.”

For now, many faith leaders are mounting relief efforts, including turning houses of worship into temporary shelters. They are also delivering supplies to those in need, and doing their best to help families connect with friends and relatives across an area with intermittent power and without reliable cellphone services.

The Church of Latter-day Saints in Maui said five of its members died in the fires, including four from the same family. In the fire’s aftermath, the church has transformed two meeting houses into shelters.

The Rev. Jay Haynes, the pastor at Kahului Baptist Church, said recovery will take many years.

“Our people just need to keep going,” he said.

The Chabad of Maui — which was under evacuation orders — was spared and is now sheltering evacuees, said Rabbi Mendy Krasnjansky. As the fire raged, some of the faithful stood ready to move the temple’s holy scrolls to safer grounds.

“We don’t know why things happen, but we believe we have the strength to soldier on,” he said.

That was the case for Zac Wasserman who has been frantic about finding his uncle, David Hawley. Now in his 70s, his uncle uses a wheelchair after a stroke left him mostly immobile more than a year ago.

“We just don’t know where he is, which is definitely scary,” said Wasserman, who lives in Southern California.

Even before the fires, he wasn’t always good about keeping in touch. Maybe it was just another one of those cases.

Phone call after phone call from Wasserman, his siblings and cousins have gone unanswered.

“I still have hope,” he said, “unless somebody tells me otherwise.”

Then after sharing his anguish, his family tried once more.

This time there was an answer. Their uncle was alive.

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As death toll from Maui fire reaches 93, authorities say effort to count the losses is just starting

LAHAINA, Hawaii — As the death toll from a wildfire that razed a historic Maui town reached 93, authorities warned Saturday that the effort to find and identify the dead was still in its early stages. It’s already the deadliest U.S. wildfire for over a century.

Crews with cadaver dogs have covered just 3% of the search area, Maui Police Chief John Pelletier said.

“We’ve got an area that we have to contain that is at least 5 square miles and it is full of our loved ones,” noting that the death toll is likely to grow and “none of us really know the size of it yet.”

He spoke as federal emergency workers picked through the ashen moonscape left by the fire that razed the centuries-old town of Lahaina. Teams marked the ruins of homes with a bright orange X to record an initial search, and HR when they found human remains.

Pelletier said identifying the dead is extremely challenging because “we pick up the remains and they fall apart ... When we find our family and our friends, the remains that we’re finding is through a fire that melted metal.” Two people have been identified so far, he said.

Dogs worked the rubble, and their occasional bark — used to alert their handlers to a possible corpse — echoed over the hot and colorless landscape.

“It will certainly be the worst natural disaster that Hawaii ever faced,” Gov. Josh Green remarked Saturday as he toured the devastation on historic Front Street. “We can only wait and support those who are living. Our focus now is to reunite people when we can and get them housing and get them health care, and then turn to rebuilding.”

At least 2,200 buildings were damaged or destroyed in West Maui, Green said, of which 86% were residential. Across the island, he added, damage was estimated at close to $6 billion. He said it would take “an incredible amount of time” to recover.”

The confirmed death toll was later raised to 93 from the total of 89 announced in a press conference with Green and other officials.

At least two other fires have been burning on Maui, with no fatalities reported thus far: in south Maui’s Kihei area and in the mountainous, inland communities known as Upcountry. A fourth broke out Friday evening in Kaanapali, a coastal community north of Lahaina, but crews were able to extinguish it, authorities said.

Green said the Upcountry fire had affected 544 structures, of which 96% were residential.

Emergency managers in Maui were searching for places to house people displaced from their homes. As many as 4,500 people are in need of shelter, county officials said on Facebook early Saturday, citing figures from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Pacific Disaster Center.

He encouraged those with missing family members to go to the family assistance center.

“We need you to do the DNA test. We need to identify your loved ones,” Pelletier said.

Those who escaped counted their blessings, thankful to be alive as they mourned those who didn’t make it.

Retired fire captain Geoff Bogar and his friend of 35 years, Franklin Trejos, initially stayed behind to help others in Lahaina and save Bogar’s house. But as the flames moved closer and closer Tuesday afternoon, they knew they had to get out. Each escaped to his own car. When Bogar’s wouldn’t start, he broke through a window to get out, then crawled on the ground until a police patrol found him and brought him to a hospital.

Trejos wasn’t as lucky. When Bogar returned the next day, he found the bones of his 68-year-old friend in the back seat of his car, lying on top of the remains of the Bogars’ beloved 3-year-old golden retriever Sam, whom he had tried to protect.

Trejos, a native of Costa Rica, had lived for years with Bogar and his wife, Shannon Weber-Bogar, helping her with her seizures when her husband couldn’t. He filled their lives with love and laughter.

“God took a really good man,” Weber-Bogar said.

The newly released death toll surpassed the toll of the 2018 Camp Fire in northern California, which left 85 dead and destroyed the town of Paradise. A century earlier, the 1918 Cloquet Fire broke out in drought-stricken northern Minnesota and raced through a number of rural communities, destroying thousands of homes and killing hundreds.

The wildfires are the state’s deadliest natural disaster in decades, surpassing a 1960 tsunami that killed 61 people. An even deadlier tsunami in 1946, which killed more than 150 on the Big Island, prompted development of a territory-wide emergency alert system with sirens that are tested monthly.

Hawaii emergency management records do not indicate the warning sirens sounded before fire hit the town. Officials sent alerts to mobile phones, televisions and radio stations, but widespread power and cellular outages may have limited their reach.

Fueled by a dry summer and strong winds from a passing hurricane, the wildfires on Maui raced through parched brush covering the island.

“It outpaced anything firefighters could have done in the early hours,” U.S. Fire Administrator Lori Moore-Merrell said, adding that it moved horizontally, structure to structure and “incredibly fast.”

“It was a low-to-the-ground fire. It was grass-fed by all evidence that we could observe today,” she said.

The most serious blaze swept into Lahaina on Tuesday and destroyed nearly every building in the town of 13,000, leaving a grid of gray rubble wedged between the blue ocean and lush green slopes.

Maui water officials warned Lahaina and Kula residents not to drink running water, which may be contaminated even after boiling, and to only take short, lukewarm showers in well-ventilated rooms to avoid possible chemical vapor exposure.

Maui’s firefighting efforts may have been hampered by limited staff and equipment.

Bobby Lee, president of the Hawaii Firefighters Association, said there are a maximum of 65 county firefighters working at any given time, who are responsible for three islands: Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

Green said officials will review policies and procedures to improve safety.

“People have asked why we are reviewing what’s going on and it’s because the world has changed. A storm now can be a hurricane-fire or a fire-hurricane,” he said. “That’s what we experienced, that’s why we’re looking into these policies, to find out how we can best protect our people.”

Lahaina resident Riley Curran said he doubted that county officials could have done more, given the speed of the onrushing flames. He fled his Front Street home after seeing the oncoming fire from the roof of a neighboring building.

“It’s not that people didn’t try to do anything,” Curran said. “The fire went from zero to 100.”

More than a dozen people formed an assembly line on Kaanapali Beach Saturday to unload water, toiletries, batteries and other essentials from a catamaran that sailed from another part of Maui.

David Taylor, marketing director of Kai Kanani Sailing, which owns the boat, said many of the supplies were for hotel employees who lost their homes and were living with their families at their workplaces.

“The aloha still exists,” he said as the group applauded when they finished unloading the boat. “We all feel it really intensely and everybody wants to feel like they can do something.”

Caitlin McKnight, who also volunteered at an emergency shelter at the island’s war memorial, said she tried to be strong for those who lost everything.

“It was evident that those people, those families, people of the Maui ohana, they went through a traumatic event,” McKnight said, using a Hawaiian word for family. “You could just see it in their face.”

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Taiwan’s VP defies Beijing with New York City transit stop

Taiwan’s vice president Lai Ching-te defied pressure from Beijing to make a transit stop in New York City on Saturday en route to a state visit to Paraguay.

Lai, the leading presidential candidate in Taiwan’s upcoming election, is using the Big Apple stop to meet with members of the Taiwanese American community. On Saturday, China began conducting a three-day military exercise in the East China Sea a few hundred miles from Taiwan — a typical show from Beijing to express its displeasure with the island’s foreign political activities.  

But China’s reaction was relatively muted given that China’s ambassador to the U.S., Xie Feng, told a crowd at the Aspen Security Forum last month that aborting Lai’s stopovers was his “top priority.” These travel visits often attract the eyes of watchers in Beijing and Washington, given their contentious nature for China, but American protocol dictates that they remain low key.

Lai announced his arrival in New York on Saturday evening in a post on X, the platform previously known as Twitter.

“Happy to arrive at the #BigApple, icon of liberty, democracy & opportunities,” he wrote, attaching a photo alongside Bi-Khim Hsiao, who leads Taiwan’s unofficial embassy in the U.S., and Ingrid Larson, a managing director at America’s de facto embassy in Taiwan. “Looking forward to seeing friends & attending transit programs in #NewYork.”

His first stopover will only be about 24 hours. Lai will leave New York City on Sunday to attend the inauguration of Paraguay’s new president, Santiago Peña Palacios. Paraguay is one of Taiwan’s 13 remaining diplomatic allies, and attending the event gives Lai — who isleading the polls in the race to succeed outgoing President Tsai Ing-wen in January — a chance to show off his foreign policy chops and connect with supporters.

Lai will get another chance to do that when he transits overnight in San Francisco on Aug. 15 on his way back to Taiwan.

In Saturday remarks before leaving Taiwan, Lai briefly mentioned making a transit stop in New York but talked broadly about engaging with different leaders.

“On this trip, I will have confident exchanges with world leaders and speak with representatives from like-minded countries,” Lai said. “I will show the international community that Taiwan is committed to values of freedom, democracy, and human rights, is an active participant in global affairs and has made many efforts to help maintain peace in the Indo-Pacific region.”

The Taiwanese vice president’s arrival in South America will occur amid reports that China has paid outlets in Paraguay to spread negative reports about the visit, according to a release from Taiwan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs condemning the action.

During a previous U.S. transit stop in January 2022, Lai held video meetings from his Los Angeles hotel with 17 U.S. lawmakers. Beijing responded bylodging a “solemn representation” with the U.S. government that included a demand that the Biden administration “stop the erroneous acts of having official exchanges with Taiwan.” Taiwan’s president Tsai Ing-Wen visited the U.S. earlier this year, meeting with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and several other members of Congress, which China retaliated against by conducting three days of military exercises around the island.

Beijing “should not use as a pretext any transit by Vice President Lai for brazen coercion or other provocative activities [and] should not be a pretext for interference in Taiwan's election either,” a senior administration official told reporters last month.

Lai’s profile as the leading candidate to replace outgoing Tsai in the self-governing island’s January 2024 elections makes him doubly problematic for Beijing. He has reinforced his pro-Taiwan independence credentials by declaring in January that Taiwan “is already an independent and sovereign nation.”

Lai’s pro-independence rhetoric “is his [electoral] market share. He's not going to walk away from that,” said Douglas Paal, former unofficial U.S. envoy to the self-governing island at the American Institute in Taiwan from 2002 to 2006.

And eyeing a possible election victory, Lai said last month that elected leaders of Taiwan should be welcomed to the White House, a prospect which would represent a drastic departure to how the U.S. and the island have maintained relations since 1979 — as well as a deep offense to Beijing.

“It's up to the Chinese how they want to play it,” said Daniel Russel, a former senior Asia hand in the Obama administration. “Every serious [Taiwan presidential] candidate in the past has come to the United States for kind of an informal base touch — there is nothing new, radical or different about this.”

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Georgia prosecutor will present witness testimony to grand jury as another Trump indictment appears imminent

A Georgia prosecutor appears on the verge of bringing criminal charges in her investigation into former President Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in that state.

Two witnesses confirmed Saturday that they will appear before a grand jury in Fulton County, Ga., early next week — the clearest sign yet that Fani Willis, the district attorney there, soon plans to ask the grand jury to approve criminal indictments against Trump or his allies.

If Trump is charged in Georgia, it would be his fourth indictment in the past five months. He is already facing federal criminal charges over 2020 election interference and his hoarding of classified documents, as well as New York criminal charges related to hush money payments.

The Fulton County indictment would cap off a yearslong investigation into the former president’s efforts to change the outcome of the Georgia election, which Joe Biden narrowly won. In the weeks after Election Day, Trump spread falsehoods online about the outcome, made a personal call to a state official asking to overturn the will of the voters and plotted using fake electors to falsify results. Willis launched the probe in early 2021.

“I can confirm that I have been requested to testify before the Fulton County grand jury on Tuesday,” Geoff Duncan, a Republican who was Georgia's lieutenant governor during the 2020 election, wrote Saturday afternoon on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “I look forward to answering their questions around the 2020 election. Republicans should never let honesty be mistaken for weakness.”

An Atlanta-area journalist, George Chidi, also posted on X that he was asked to testify Tuesday.

An indictment would likely follow soon after witness testimonies, perhaps as early as Tuesday afternoon or evening. Legal observers had expected that the charges would come down in mid-August.

At the beginning of the month, Trump was indicted on federal charges for conspiring against the U.S. in his attempts to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

On Truth Social, Trump has been railing against the Georgia investigation — and the other three indictments he has faced — as politically motivated, while also making unsubstantiated personal attacks against Willis.

“How can they charge me in Georgia?” he wrote on Saturday. “The phone call was PERFECT. WITCH HUNT!”

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New Jersey bids final farewell to Lt. Gov. Sheila Oliver, capping a 3-day celebration

NEWARK, N.J. — Sheila Oliver's place in history might have been much different before she read Charles Dickens and John Steinbeck.

She had originally planned to be an archaeologist, thinking it would be fun to travel to places like Greece, Egypt and Rome and dig up the past. But, as she said in a past video interview played at her funeral Saturday, she then read Dickens' "A Tale of Two Cities" and Steinbeck's "The Grapes of Wrath," two classic novels exploring themes of class, hardship and renewal.

And growing up in Newark during the race riots of 1967, Oliver witnessed the Civil Rights movement and, she said, "I began to have a heightened consciousness" about being Black in America.

Oliver's journey away from digging up history to making it then began.

Over four hours on Saturday at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Oliver's hometown, hundreds of mourners bid their final farewell to New Jersey's first Black woman to hold statewide office and, before that, first Black female speaker of the Assembly.

Her funeral capped a three-day tribute to Oliver that began Thursday with her body lying in state at the Capitol building in Trenton and again at the Essex County courthouse on Friday.

Oliver died earlier this month at age 71, one day after being hospitalized for undisclosed reasons. She had been serving as acting governor at the time because Gov. Phil Murphy was on an overseas vacation, but she transferred those duties to Senate President Nick Scutari until Murphy returned. Murphy and the Oliver family have not publicly disclosed her cause of death.

On Saturday, the majestic French Gothic cathedral in Newark — North America's fifth largest — filled with mourners that included her family; the legendary performer Dionne Warwick; members of New Jersey's congressional delegation and the state Legislature; four former governors; and her predecessor, the state's first lieutenant governor, Kim Guadagno. Rev. Al Sharpton delivered the eulogy.

Murphy, who wore a large button with Oliver's image on it, recalled in a speech how days of fires during the riots — known as the Newark Rebellion — "lit a fire in Sheila’s heart" as a teenager. It inspired her to become a "champion" of her community, he said.

"And in the decades since, Sheila rolled up her sleeves — again and again — and dedicated herself to extinguishing the embers of inequality, injustice and indigence," Murphy said.

Oliver's political career began in the 1990s with the school board in East Orange, the town outside Newark she lived in until her death. She then rose to become elected an Essex County freeholder and then a member of the state Assembly.

Oliver also worked for Essex County, whose executive, Joe DiVincenzo, said during a speech he plans to rename the county's family assistance and benefits building after her and commission a bust of Oliver to be displayed at the county courthouse. Oliver already had a school in East Orange named after her, and Murphy said he intends to commission an official portrait of her (and Guadagno) to hang in the Statehouse along with those of the state's past governors.

In 2010, Oliver became speaker, the first Black woman in the country to lead a legislative chamber.

Oliver held enormous influence in that position, determining what legislation made it to a vote and how the state spent taxpayer money. She was one of the state's most powerful officials alongside two white men — Governor Chris Christie and Senate President Steve Sweeney.

Multiple speakers said Oliver felt duty-bound to advocate for the interests of her community, which was mostly people of color, disadvantaged and, as Murphy said, "the forgotten families of our state."

That advocacy included fighting for same-sex marriage and raising the hourly minimum wage as speaker even if those efforts failed, and it continued as lieutenant governor by championing affordable housing, investing in schools and combating gun violence, Murphy said. She was described by speakers as a calm "warrior" who led with compassion and didn't posture for political gain, and who always remembered why she went into public service.

"She never forgot and she never let the folks in the room forget why she was in the room," Sharpton said. "She came not for a season, she came for a reason, and that’s the reason we’re here."

In one of the lighter moments of the funeral, Warwick, a native of East Orange, recalled that she nicknamed Oliver "my hat lady" for how well she wore one, and that Oliver "loved to laugh — and she loved a good piece of gossip, too." Warwick called Oliver a "dear friend" she considered family, and said when she heard Oliver had died, she could hardly breathe.

"We're all going to miss her because we're very selfish. But that's OK," Warwick said.

"God said you're going to grieve, you're going to cry, you're going moan and do all the things that affect you now. But then all of a sudden all of those wonderful, laughing memories are going to flood your hearts, and all that moaning, groaning, crying and grieving will fly out the window. Only the good, warm, loving memories will you continue to have, as I will. God rest, God bless you, Sheila Y. Oliver."

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