Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler said the dress had to burn because it ‘represented a lie’.
A woman celebrated her new single status in explosive fashion – by blowing up her wedding dress at her divorce party.
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Kimberly felt her wedding dress ‘represented a lie’ (Carla Santleben-Newport)
The occasion was suitably festive (Carla Santleben-Newport)
Kimberly got plenty of practice in to make sure she nailed that first shot (Carla Santleben-Newport)
Got it in one (Carla Santleben-Newport)
Kimberly Santleben-Stiteler held a celebration with family and friends on Saturday night to mark the end of her 14-year marriage.
And the centrepiece of the event in La Coste, Texas saw her loading up her wedding dress with explosives before shooting it with a rifle.
The ensuing explosion would apparently be felt up to 15 miles away.
Carla Santleben-Newport, Kimberley’s sister, told the Press Association: “My sister’s divorce was finalised on Friday and (she) wanted to burn her wedding dress, so my dad and husband took care of things.
Kimberly felt her wedding dress ‘represented a lie’ (Carla Santleben-Newport)
“They filled her dress with 20lbs of Tannerite and she shot it with a .308 rifle creating a beautiful and loud experience.
“We had Facebook comments and text messages of people hearing the noise in a 15-mile radius. It was a great way to celebrate her divorce.”
Kimberly, 43, told the Centre Daily Times that she was determined to burn it because “the the dress represented a lie”.
The occasion was suitably festive (Carla Santleben-Newport)
Once the explosion idea was hit upon, some preparation was needed – for one thing, Kimberly was no expert with guns.
To ensure everyone was safe when the dress went boom, the party – and therefore the shot that set off the explosion – was about 200 yards away from the dress itself.
And that was no easy shot.
Kimberly got plenty of practice in to make sure she nailed that first shot (Carla Santleben-Newport)
“We have a friend who is a bomb tech and he kept saying, ‘that’s really a lot (of explosives)’, like five different times when we told him our plan,” Carla said.
“My dad and husband set the dress up at 100 yards from the barn on our family farm. Everyone was worried it was too close so they moved it out another 100 yards.
“Kimberly is not a hunter so James, my husband, practised with her that afternoon. She did absolutely amazing hitting the dress on her first shot and blowing her dress to pieces.”
Got it in one (Carla Santleben-Newport)
The moment certainly seemed to go down well with the assembled family and friends – and for Kimberly it was every bit as cathartic as she hoped.
“It was liberating pulling that trigger,” she told the Centre Daily Times. “It was closure for all of us.”
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge ruled Monday that the Trump administration acted illegally when it canceled $7.6 billion in clean energy grants for projects in states that voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in the 2024 election.
The grants supported hundreds of clean energy projects in 16 states, including battery plants, hydrogen technology projects, upgrades to the electric grid and efforts to capture carbon dioxide emissions.
The Energy Department said the projects were terminated after a review determined they did not adequately advance the nation’s energy needs or were not economically viable. Russell Vought, the White House budget director, said on social media that “the Left’s climate agenda is being canceled.”
U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta said the administration's action violated the Constitution’s equal protection requirements.
“Defendants freely admit that they made grant-termination decisions primarily — if not exclusively — based on whether the awardee resided in a state whose citizens voted for President Trump in 2024," Mehta wrote in a 17-page opinion. The administration offered no explanation for how their purposeful targeting of grant recipients based on their electoral support for Trump — or lack of it — "rationally advances their stated government interest,” the judge added.
The ruling was the second legal setback for the administration’s rollback of clean energy program in a matter of hours. A separate federal judge ruled Monday that work on a major offshore wind farm for Rhode Island and Connecticut can resume, handing the industry at least a temporary victory as Trump seeks to shut it down.
A spokesman for the Energy Department said officials disagree with the judge’s decision on clean energy grants.
Officials “stand by our review process, which evaluated these awards individually and determined they did not meet the standards necessary to justify the continued spending of taxpayer dollars,” spokesman Ben Dietderich said. “The American people deserve a government that is accountable and responsible in managing taxpayer funds.”
Projects were canceled in California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Vermont and Washington state. All 16 targeted states supported Harris.
The cuts include up to $1.2 billion for California’s hydrogen hub that is aimed at accelerating hydrogen technology and production, and up to $1 billion for a hydrogen project in the Pacific Northwest. A Texas hydrogen project and a three-state project in West Virginia, Ohio and Pennsylvania were spared, according to clean-energy supporters who obtained a list of the DOE targets.
The city of St. Paul and a coalition of environmental groups filed a lawsuit after they lost grants.
Trump said in an interview last fall with One America News, a conservative outlet, that his administration could cut projects that Democrats want. “I’m allowed to cut things that never should have been approved in the first place and I will probably do that,” Trump said in the Oct. 1 interview.
Vickie Patton, general counsel for the Environmental Defense Fund, one of the groups that filed the suit, said the court ruling “recognized that the Trump Department of Energy vindictively canceled projects for clean affordable energy that just happened to be in states disfavored by the Trump administration, in violation of the bedrock Constitutional guarantee that all people in all states have equal protection under the law.”
The administration’s actions violated the Constitution, foundational American values and “imposed high costs on the American people who rely on clean affordable energy for their pocketbooks and for healthier lives,” Patton said.
Anne Evens, CEO of Elevate Energy, one of the groups that lost funding, said the court ruling would help keep clean energy affordable and create jobs.
“Affordable energy should be a reality for everyone, and the restoration of these grants is an important step toward making that possible,” she said.
Energy Secretary Chris Wright speaks as White House chief of staff Susie Wiles listens during a meeting with President Donald Trump and oil executives in the East Room of the White House, Friday, Jan. 9, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci)
FILE - Director of the Office of Management and Budget Russell Vought speaks to reporters at the White House, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Washington. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, File)
