A jury of 12 people has been seated in former President Donald Trump’s hush money trial in New York. Alternates are now being selected. The rapid progress Thursday afternoon propels the case closer to opening statements and weeks of testimony in a case charging the Republican with falsifying business records to suppress stories about his sex life in the final days of the 2016 election. The jury includes a sales professional, a software engineer, an English teacher and multiple lawyers. The case centers on $130,000 Trump’s lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen paid to porn actor Stormy Daniels. Trump faces 34 felony counts. He denies any wrongdoing.

The Biden administration is moving to let conservationists lease government land for restoration. It's part of an effort to make conservation an “equal” to other uses of public lands such as drilling and livestock grazing. Republican lawmakers contend the changes are a backdoor to excluding agricultural and energy development from vast areas primarily in the West. Administration officials have said conservation leases would not lock out other uses of U.S. Bureau of Land Management property. The agency oversees about 10% of all land in the U.S. and for more than a century has issued leases for drilling and permits for livestock grazing.