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Two judges on "The Masked Singer" walked off after Rudy Giuliani unmasked himself at the end of a show taping, a source close to the show told CNN Wednesday.

Robin Thicke and Ken Jeong walked off stage following the revelation of Giuliani as a contestant on the popular Fox reality show in which contenders perform in full costume until they are eliminated.

The former attorney to ex-President Donald Trump and former New York mayor was taping an episode that is expected to air next month, the source said, without providing additional detail.

CNN has reached out to representatives for Thicke and Jeong.

The incident was first reported by Deadline.

Photos: Rudy Giuliani through the years

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was in the Oval Office with his daughter Ivanka and Vice President Mike Pence's national security adviser on the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, when he made yet another push to pressure Pence.

Trump again told Pence that he had a duty to reject Electoral College votes that would formalize Democrat Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election, something the vice president had no authority to do in his ceremonial role in Congress that day.

"You don't have the courage to make a hard decision," Trump told Pence, according to congressional testimony. Even after Trump called him a "wimp," Pence rebuffed the demand, issuing a lengthy statement afterward laying out his conclusion that he had no power to influence the outcome.

When the call ended, Ivanka Trump turned to retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg and said, "Mike Pence is a good man."

"Yes, he is," Kellogg replied.

Now the House committee investigating the riot wants to know what else Ivanka Trump heard and saw that day as they try to stitch together the narrative of the riots and the former president's role in instigating them. There was a frantic effort by many of Trump's top supporters to persuade him to intervene, and some directly sought to use his daughter as their conduit.

Keep scrolling for a photo gallery from Jan. 6, 2021

A committee aide said they are hopeful that she will soon commit to a time to meet.

Throughout her time in the White House, Ivanka Trump was known as a rare voice who could get through to her father and talk him out of bad decisions, though her success was mixed. The former first daughter has kept an extraordinary low profile since her father left office and has distanced herself from him and politics since moving to Florida.

But her proximity to him on Jan. 6 could provide the committee with direct access to what Trump was doing during those crucial three hours when his supporters violently stormed Capitol.

"Ivanka Trump has details about what occurred in the lead-up to and on Jan. 6 and about the former president's state of mind as events unfolded," Rep. Stephanie Murphy, D-Fla, a member of the panel, told The Associated Press.

It is highly unusual for congressional investigators to target a family member of a president, but as a senior adviser to her father, she also had a perch close to power.

Kellogg disclosed the exchange with the committee, but so far Ivanka Trump, who famously guards her image and public profile, has not talked to the panel.

The answers could have significant repercussions not only for Donald Trump, who is eyeing a political comeback in 2024, but for those in the Republican Party who have downplayed his role in the insurrection.

A spokeswoman for Ivanka Trump did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But in a statement issued in late January, a representative for her noted that Ivanka Trump did not speak at the rally near the White House where the then-president urged his supporters to "fight like hell" as Congress convened to certify the 2020 election results, and said she still believed that "any security breach or disrespect to our law enforcement is unacceptable."

Members of the committee hope to get beyond such vague assertions.

Hours after Trump's call to Pence, Ivanka Trump joined brother Donald Trump Jr., Rudy Giuliani and Kimberly Guilfoyle under a large tent at the rally to listen to Trump's speech.

She reportedly told aides she "decided to attend only because she had hoped to calm the president and help keep the event on an even keel."

After Trump's speech, as rioters began to smash through Capitol police barriers and break windows, the former president tweeted: "Mike Pence didn't have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution ..."

That tweet, according to court testimony, only added to the anger fueling the mob.

Back in the White House, as staffers watched in shock at what was unfolding down Pennsylvania Avenue on television screens positioned throughout the West Wing, Trump's attention was so rapt that he hit rewind and watched certain moments again, according to Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary.

"Look at all of the people fighting for me," Trump said, according to Grisham, who also served as chief of staff to first lady Melania Trump. At one point, the president was confused why staffers weren't as excited as he was watching the unrest unfold.

Kellogg testified that staff wanted the president to take immediate action to address the violence consuming the Capitol, but Trump refused.

"Is someone getting to potus? He has to tell protestors to dissipate. Someone is going to get killed," Alyssa Farrah Griffin, a former White House communications official, texted Ben Williamson, an aide to White House chief of staff Mark Meadows.

"I've been trying for the last 30 minutes. Literally stormed in outer oval to get him to put out the first one. It's completely insane," Williamson wrote back.

Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., then called Ivanka Trump, pleading that the president "ask people to leave."

"We're working on it," she replied.

At that point, staffers acknowledged that despite efforts by Meadows, press secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Kellogg, the only person who could get through to him would be his daughter.

Ivanka Trump, according to testimony, went on to make at least two "tenacious" attempts to reason with her father as staffers were bombarded with messages from Trump allies begging him to quell the violence.

"Can he make a statement. I saw the tweet. Ask people to leave the (Capitol)," Fox News host Sean Hannity texted Meadows.

But inside the West Wing, Kellogg strongly recommended that they not ask the president to appear in the press room, where a group of reporters would be waiting for him.

"Apparently, certain White House staff believed that a live unscripted press appearance by the President in the midst of the Capitol Hill violence could have made the situation worse," lawmakers wrote in their letter to Ivanka Trump.

The president ultimately agreed to a video statement. Multiple takes were filmed but not used. In each one of the initial takes, according to the committee, he failed to ask rioters to leave.

The final video was released on Twitter at 4:17 p.m. — nearly two hours after Trump's initial tweet criticizing Pence.

"This was a fraudulent election, but we can't play into the hands of these people," Trump said in the video. "We have to have peace. So go home. We love you; you're very special."

Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., the vice chair of the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection, has said it's hard to "imagine a more significant and more serious dereliction of duty" than Trump's failure to quell the riots.

Trump's last words that day came at 6:01 p.m. when he tweeted that the 2020 election was "unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long."

He ended with, "Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever."

The committee has been aggressively interviewing witnesses — nearly 500 so far — and has subpoenaed Meadows and Trump's personal lawyer. They are asking Ivanka Trump to cooperate voluntarily.

***

Images of chaos: AP photographers capture US Capitol riot

SALT LAKE CITY (AP) — The largest natural lake west of the Mississippi is shrinking past its lowest levels in recorded history, raising fears about toxic dust, ecological collapse and economic consequences. But the Great Salt Lake may have some new allies: conservative Republican lawmakers.

The new burst of energy from the GOP-dominated state government comes after lake levels recently hit a low point during a regional megadrought worsened by climate change. Water has been diverted away from the lake for years, though, to supply homes and crops in Utah. The nation's fastest-growing state is also one of the driest, with some of the highest domestic water use.

This year could see big investment in the lake that's long been an afterthought, with Gov. Spencer Cox proposing spending $46 million and the powerful House speaker throwing his weight behind the issue. But some worry that the ideas advancing so far at the state Legislature don't go far enough to halt the slow-motion ecological disaster.

One proposal would tackle water use in homes and businesses, by measuring outdoor water that's considered some of the country's cheapest. Another would pay farmers for sharing their water downstream, and a third would direct money from mineral-extraction royalties to benefit the lake.

"I long took for granted the lake. It's always been there, and I've assumed it always would be there," said House speaker Brad Wilson at a summit he convened on the issue. But learning about the lake's precarious position this summer left him terrified. "The Great Salt Lake is in trouble. ... We have to do something."

The shrinking of the lake poses serious risks to millions of migrating birds and a lake-based economy that's worth an estimated $1.3 billion in mineral extraction, brine shrimp and recreation. Health risks exist too: The massive dry lakebed could send arsenic-laced dust into the air that millions breathe.

"The Great Salt Lake needs some leaps to be saved. It's not going to do it with baby steps," said Zach Frankel, executive director of the nonprofit Utah Rivers Council. "These are tiny baby steps that should have been taken 20 years ago."

The lake took a pummeling last year, with especially devastating effects on its microbialites, the Great Salt Lake's version of a coral reef. The mushroom-like structures are formed by furry, deep green mats of microbes, which are the base of the lake's food chain and main sustenance for brine shrimp.

The shrimp both support a multimillion-dollar industry supplying food for fish farms and nourish millions of migrating birds whose massive flocks can show up on radar. The lake is also the nation's biggest source of magnesium and could soon provide lithium, a key mineral for renewable energy batteries.

But last year the lake matched a 170-year record low and kept dropping, hitting a new low of 4,190.2 feet (1,277.2 meters) in October. A significant portion of the microbialites were exposed to air, killing the vital microbes. The die-off will likely take years and years to repair even if they are fully submerged again, said Michael Vanden Berg, a state geologist.

And if the water levels continue to drop, the lake could get too salty for the edible microbes to survive, something that's already happened in the bright pink waters of the lake's north arm.

Still, Vanden Berg is cautiously optimistic for the south arm, where a portion of the green microbialites did survive last year's lake drop.

"It's bad but not catastrophic yet," he said. "There is still time to fix and mitigate the situation."

In some ways, the fix is simple: More water needs to flow into the lake.

But that's no small task in the state that grew by 18.4% over the past decade, to nearly 3.28 million people.

Utah has relatively inexpensive water overall. A 2015 state audit found Salt Lake City water prices were lower than almost every other city surveyed, including Phoenix, Las Vegas and Santa Fe.

But a subset of homes have access to especially low-price water — the cheapest in the nation, according to the Utah Rivers Council.

About 200,000 homes and businesses pay a flat fee for an entire season of irrigation water. It's called a secondary water system, made from converted agricultural supply in communities that are now largely suburban. Those account for a disproportionately large segment of the state's water use — and many of them are on the Great Salt Lake watershed, Frankel said.

"It's like an all-you-can-eat buffet," he said. While most people have a water meter on the side of their homes, usage isn't measured for secondary-water users.

But small-scale projects have shown that simply being aware of how much they're using makes people cut back by 20%, said GOP Utah Rep. Tim Hawkes.

There's been pushback to change the system before, and part of the reason is the per-meter cost of about $1,500, but the governor has backed spending about $250 million in federal pandemic relief money to install them.

The Utah Rivers Council would like to see people pay more for that water, but there's been little public discussion of that this year. Hawkes argues that even conserving 20% through awareness would dramatically increase the chances that the lake stays healthy.

This year is shaping up to be a wetter year than 2021, but that doesn't immediately translate to more water for the lake. First comes replenishing drinking water supplies. Then comes the lake.

And homes and businesses aren't the only ones that need moisture. About 65% of the water on the Great Salt Lake watershed goes to agriculture. Farmers have a right to that water, and under historic laws they could lose the water they don't use.

"Right now, there's actually a disincentive for agriculture to conserve, or optimize, the water they're using," said Republican Rep. Joel Ferry.

He's sponsoring legislation that would let farmers get paid for water they let flow to the Great Salt Lake and other bodies. Because each farm is so much larger than the average home, even slight adjustments can have a major impact.

Under his plan, which has advanced at the state Legislature, it would be up to each farm to decide whether to sell water in a given year. The fund would also likely start with some federal pandemic money, and backers would hope to get donations as it continues.

"This is going to be a slow start," said Ferry, who is a farmer himself. "We recognize there's a problem, and farmers want to be part of the solution. ... Ultimately the solutions to this are going to be expensive."

The costs of doing nothing may be even higher. The draining of California's Owens Lake as Los Angeles grew has cost billions. Overseas, the Aral Sea became as source of toxic dust after its water was diverted away by the former Soviet Union. Experts estimate a drying Great Salt Lake could cost Utah more than $2 billion every year.

"There's a real question about what happens next. Are we going to break through some critical thresholds here in the next little bit if we continue to go lower?" Hawkes said. "If we act now and we are thoughtful about it ... there's a good chance we can keep the lake healthy and happy — and us along with it."

***

History of droughts in the U.S.

10th century–14th century: Megadrought

14th century–19th century: Mississippi River Valley drought

1841: Sonoma drought

1850s–1860s: Civil War drought

1864: Central Valley drought

1874: Year of the Locusts

1890–96: 1890s drought

1928–34: Seven-year California drought

1931–41: Dust Bowl

1950–57: Great Dry Up

1961–69: New England drought

1976–77: Two-year California drought

1987–92: Six-year California drought

1988: Pacific La Niña drought

1998–2002: Florida drought

2011–2019 California drought

2012: National drought

2016: New York drought

2016: Southeast drought

2020: California wildfires linked to drought—and climate change

History of droughts in the U.S.

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (AP) — A large bull moose spent more than an hour stomping on the sled dog team of a rookie Iditarod musher in the wilds of Alaska last week — and the attack didn't end even after Bridgett Watkins emptied her gun into the animal.

She said on Facebook Friday that the moose, after seriously injuring four of her dogs, wouldn't leave and that the ordeal stopped only after she called friends for help and one showed up with a high powered rifle and killed the moose with one shot.

"This has been the most horrific past 24 hours of my life," she posted after the Thursday moose attack on the Salcha River trail system near Fairbanks.

But just days later, her four dogs are on the mend and she's back training with the others.

"This isn't what I was planning for, but these dogs and myself have trained for so long and so hard for this race ... when I walk back out to my dog yard and I have 12 perfectly healthy dogs out of the 16 and they look at me and all they want to do is run, how can I tell them no?" she told The Associated Press on Tuesday. "That would be selfish of me."

"These are freaking amazing athletes that just survived probably the most traumatic experience of any dog team ever in history, and they're survivors and they're still pushing through," she added.

Watkins said that the attack, first reported by the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, happened while she was on a 52-mile (83.7-kilometer) training run for the nearly 1,000-mile (1,609-kilometer) Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race. It starts March 5 in Anchorage.

"As he charged me I emptied my gun into him and he never stopped," she wrote on Facebook. "I ran for my life and prayed I was fast enough to not be killed in that moment. He trampled the team and then turned for us."

Watkins said she and a friend who was trailing her on a snowmobile took refuge next to the snowmobile.

The moose stopped its charge toward them about 2 feet (0.6 meters) from the snowmobile and she managed to cut free six dogs that were tied to the machine.

But the moose went back to her sled and began stomping the dogs that were still tethered to it — standing over the dogs and trampling them repeatedly for over an hour.

"I have never felt so helpless in my life," Watkins wrote. "He would not leave us alone and he even stood over top of the team refusing to retreat."

She called friends and the moose was shot and killed after one arrived with a rifle.

Alaska State Troopers had been preparing a helicopter to respond but stopped doing so after they were told the moose was dead, agency spokesperson Tim DeSpain said in an email.

Her four injured dogs were taken to a veterinarian in the nearby community of North Pole and are recovering, Watkins posted.

Watkins, a native of Arkansas who moved to Alaska when she was 5, is no stranger to mushing or its dangers. Her father and step-mother are well-known mushers Allen Moore and Aliy Zirkle.

In the 2016 Iditarod, Zirkle and four-time winner Jeff King were attacked by a man on a snowmobile near the community of Nulato. One dog on King's team was killed and two others were injured.

Another famous tale of a musher's run-in with an angry moose happened in the 1985 Iditarod — when the late Susan Butcher came across one while she was leading the race.

She used her ax and a parka to fight off the moose, but it killed two of her dogs and injured 13 others. Another musher came along and killed the moose.

She had to withdraw from the race, but later won four Iditarod races. Butcher died in 2006 from leukemia at age 51.

"It is never a musher's intention to go out and kill an animal," Watkins told the AP.

She said no musher would ever travel with a rifle or a large caliber gun, instead preferring to scare off animals with a flare gun. And with all the jostling of the sled, the larger guns could easily go off.

"People have a lot of negative comments about what I should or should not have been doing but they're not the people on the back of that sled," she said.

"It's not that I wasn't prepared. I wasn't prepared to kill a moose, that's correct," Watkins said. "It's not my intention to go around in February and hunt and kill an animal. This is like worst-case scenario defending my life."

She did carry a .380 caliber gun because there are few people where she trains, and she keeps it to to deter or scare off animals. She has since upgraded to a larger caliber firearm after it didn't stop the moose.

"That would be asinine to go back out there on the same trail, the same place, and not have a gun where I can't truly put down an animal if I have to," she said.

The experience has rattled her, but it's really no different than what other people face, she said.

"I'm just trying to face those fears every day because they're there. It's not that I'm not scared and I'm not terrified and that I don't nearly have a panic attack when I'm on the sled and I think I see a moose in front of me," she said.

"It's not that those things aren't occurring ... people have these situations in their life all the time. They're just different obstacles that they have to overcome, and this is mine, and this is my story, and I just hope that I can be inspiring."

Meat from the moose that attacked her dogs was donated to charity.

***

An off-grid getaway in Alaska’s remote Aleutian Islands

PLAN YOUR ADVENTURE

—Before you go: Visit Alaska’s COVID-19 information site for the latest pandemic information and travel restrictions.

—Where to stay: There are a few no-frills accommodations in old military housing ($150 night), including the Adak/Aleutian Experience and Adak Lodge and Outfitters, which offer hunting trips. Both also rent trucks for $150-$200 a day -- a must-have for backcountry exploration.

—Food: Dining and grocery options are limited and often closed. Bring a cooler of food as one of your three allowed checked bags to fuel your expedition.

—Wi-Fi: With limited cell service and achingly slow satellite-based Wi-Fi, take this opportunity to truly unplug.

—Permits: You’ll need a land use permit from the Aleut Corporation to hunt or hike on Adak. Pick one up for $30 when you arrive at the airport.

—Getting around: Grab an Adak map at the airport and download offline maps before you go. The Adak historical guide is also a great resource. Avoid the well-signed landfill sites and area to the north, known as Parcel 4, due to unexploded ordnance.

Drive carefully. As our host liked to remind us, “On Adak, not all roads are roads.”

MORE IMAGES OF ADAK

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — A bicyclist fell to her death when a drawbridge connecting Palm Beach to the Florida mainland began rising before she could reach the other side. A bystander tried to pull her to safety but lost his grip, officials said.

The woman was walking her bicycle toward West Palm Beach on Sunday afternoon and was within 10 feet of the barrier arms that halt traffic when the drawbridge started to move, police told news outlets.

"The woman tried to hang on. There was a bystander nearby who tried to help her, but tragically she fell five or six stories below where she died landing on concrete," West Palm Beach police spokesperson Mike Jachles said.

Why the bridge tender began raising the span before it was cleared of pedestrians will be a focus of the investigation, Jachles said. The bridge tender was described as "distraught," the Palm Beach Post reported.

The Florida Department of Transportation maintains the bridge, but the bridge tenders are staffed by a private state contractor.

"Palm Beach is accessible only through three bridges, and this is the main bridge, so it's very used by cyclists," bicycle safety advocate Juan Orellana told West Palm Beach television station WPTV.

The bridge is equipped with bells and whistles to alert drivers and pedestrians that the drawbridge is going up.

"For one thing you will hear the bell before the arms go down, so when you hear the bell you gotta get out of the way before the bridge goes up," he said.

The woman's name has not been released. The bridge was closed for more than six hours after the accident.

Photos: Bicyclist falls to death from Florida drawbridge

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