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Tag: Courts

  • Colorado jury awards $21 million to woman paralyzed in fall from Crested Butte ski lift

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    A Colorado jury on Friday awarded $21 million to a woman who was paralyzed when she fell from a ski lift at Crested Butte Mountain Resort three years ago.

    The jury verdict comes just over a year after the Colorado Supreme Court considered the woman’s case and ruled that liability waivers do not protect ski resorts when resorts violate state laws or regulations. That ruling allowed the lawsuit to go forward and likely ended a push by ski resorts to use such waivers to shield themselves from almost all lawsuits.

    The case and its $21 million verdict may open up new avenues for skiers to sue ski operators, particularly over incidents involving chairlifts, said Brian Aleinikoff, an attorney for Annie Miller, the woman who fell in 2022.

    “For the longest time, ski areas have been so insulated from lawsuits,” he said. “…At the end of the day the ‘inherent dangers’ and risks of skiing aren’t going to change. If you are skiing and you hit a rock or a bare patch or some ice or you go over a cliff, that is on you. But I think how some of the ski lifts operate — that is really where this will have the biggest impact moving forward.”

    Jurors on Friday awarded the family $5.3 million in non-economic damages, $10.5 million in economic damages and $5.3 million in damages for physical impairment and disfigurement, according to an order from 17th Judicial District Court Judge Jeffrey Smith.

    The jury assigned 25% of the fault for the incident to Miller and 75% of the fault to Vail Resorts, which owns Crested Butte Mountain Resort. Vail Resorts expects to pay a total of $12.4 million in damages both because of the jury’s assignment of fault and a statutory cap on non-economic damages.

    “We disagree with the decision and believe that it was inconsistent with Colorado law,” Katie Lyons, communications manager for Vail Resorts, said in an email. “Still, we recognize the personal toll this accident has taken on Ms. Miller and her family, and we wish her continued strength in her recovery. We remain committed to the highest safety standards in our operations.”

    Miller, now 20, was 16 when she fell 30 feet from a four-seat, high-speed chairlift at Crested Butte on March 16, 2022. Miller boarded the Paradise Express lift with her father, but couldn’t get properly seated, and grabbed the chairlift to keep from falling.

    Her father and others began to yell for the lift to be stopped as she was dragged forward, but the lift continued with Miller hanging from the chair and her father trying to pull her back to safety.

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    Shelly Bradbury

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  • Trump administration agrees to restore health websites and data

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    NEW YORK — Federal officials have agreed to restore health- and science-related webpages and data under to a lawsuit settlement with doctors groups and other organizations who sued.

    The settlement was announced this week by the lead plaintiffs in the case, the Washington State Medical Association.

    Soon after President Donald Trump’s inauguration, federal health officials deleted or removed information on a range of topics including pregnancy risks, opioid-use disorder and the AIDS epidemic. The move was made in reaction to a Trump executive order that told agencies to stop using the term “gender” in federal policies and documents.

    The administration saw it as a move to end the promotion of “gender ideology.” Doctors, scientists and public health advocates saw it as an “egregious example of government overreach,” says Dr. John Bramhall, the organization’s president, said in a statement.

    “This was trusted health information that vanished in a blink of an eye — resources that, among other things, physicians rely on to manage patients’ health conditions and overall care,” Bramhall said.

    The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has agreed to restore more than 100 websites and resources to the state they were in, said Graham Short, a spokesperson for the Washington State doctors’ group.

    “We expect the sites will be restored in the coming weeks,” Short said in an email.

    The case was filed in federal court in Seattle. The plaintiffs include, among others, the Vermont Medical Society, the Washington State Nurses Association and the International Association of Providers of AIDS Care.

    The defendants included U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and federal health agencies and officials who work under him.

    Federal officials responded to questions about the settlement with this statement: “HHS remains committed to its mission of removing radical gender and DEI ideology from federal programs, subject to applicable law, to ensure taxpayer dollars deliver meaningful results for the American people.”

    The case is similar to one filed in Washington, D.C., by Doctors for America and others against the government. That lawsuit also sought to force the government to restore health information to the public, and the two cases overlapped somewhat in the websites they targeted, Short said.

    In July, a judge in the Doctors for America case ordered restoration of websites. As of last week, 167 of the websites at issue had been restored and 33 were still under review, according to a court filing.

    ___

    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Los Angeles school district settles with parents who sued over distance learning

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    Parents have agreed to settle a lawsuit that alleged the distance learning program used by the Los Angeles Unified School District during the COVID-19 pandemic failed to meet state educational standards and disproportionately harmed Black and Latino students, a lawyer for the families said.

    Attorneys for parents who filed the class-action lawsuit in 2020 said the agreement would require the nation’s second-largest school district to offer at least 45 hours of significant tutoring services a year to more than 100,000 of its most vulnerable students over the next three years in addition to teacher training and mandatory assessments. The goal is to help the district’s most disadvantaged students, the lawyers said.

    The deal must be approved by the court to take effect.

    “For nearly five years, we have fought tirelessly on behalf of LAUSD students and their families to enforce students’ constitutional right to basic educational equality,” Edward Hillenbrand, one of the plaintiffs’ pro bono attorneys, said in a statement on Wednesday.

    A message seeking comment was sent to Los Angeles Unified.

    The agreement ends a five-year court battle over Los Angeles Unified’s distance learning programs during school shutdowns. The case was dismissed in 2021 once schools were reopened but the parents, who have been supported by educational non-profits Parent Revolution and Innovate Public Schools, appealed. A state appeals court reinstated the case two years later.

    The parents argued that the district failed to engage their children online at the same rate as other large California school districts and that state-mandated instructional minutes often lacked actual instruction. They said teachers would sometimes dismiss kids after checking they turned in their work and without going over new material, and complained it was not always possible to connect to the district’s platform.

    In turn, they said their students began lagging behind grade-level standards and grew disinterested in school. The challenges disproportionately affected Black and Latino children, they said, who had lower weekly participation rates online than other students soon after the shutdowns began.

    California schools had a range of pandemic learning models including some that offered hybrid schedules where students toggled between distance and smaller class settings and others that were solely online. Many districts were not allowed to fully reopen schools due to infection rates under the state’s rules.

    Today, Los Angeles Unified has 400,000 students through 12th grade, and more than three-quarters are economically disadvantaged, according to district data.

    Plaintiff Maritza Gonzalez said in the statement that the support is too late for her son, who is now in college, but she is thankful her daughter, who is starting high school, will have access to tutoring.

    “After all the time, effort and years invested in this lawsuit, this victory feels like a step in the right direction,” Gonzalez said.

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  • Colorado sheriff’s deputy who alerted ICE to Utah student resigns; AG drops lawsuit

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    A Mesa County sheriff’s deputy resigned Tuesday, almost three months after he was accused of violating state law by sharing information with federal officials that led to a Utah college student’s immigration arrest, according to court records.

    Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser on Thursday dropped the lawsuit he filed against Investigator Alexander Zwinck over the incident because of the deputy’s resignation, according to court records. Weiser agreed to dismiss the case because the law no longer applies to Zwinck after his resignation, according to a motion filed last week.

    A larger investigation into whether other state law enforcement officers in the region collaborated with federal officials in a Signal group chat for the purposes of federal immigration enforcement will continue, said Lawrence Pacheco, spokesman for the attorney general’s office.

    “Because the laws he is accused of violating apply only to state and local employees, the attorney general’s office is dismissing the lawsuit against Mr. Zwinck but retaining the right to re-file the case if Mr. Zwinck becomes a state or local employee in the future,” Pacheco said.

    Weiser alleged in the lawsuit that Zwinck knowingly assisted in federal immigration enforcement by sharing information about 19-year-old Caroline Dias Goncalves in the Signal group chat during a June 5 traffic stop on Interstate 70 near Loma.

    Colorado law prohibits local law enforcement officers from carrying out civil immigration enforcement and largely blocks local police agencies from working with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

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    Shelly Bradbury

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  • Final preparations for trial of man accused of attempting to assassinate Trump

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    FORT PIERCE, Fla. — A man charged with trying to assassinate President Donald Trump last year in South Florida is set to represent himself during a pretrial conference on Tuesday, as final preparations are made for trial.

    Barring any delays, jury selection is scheduled to begin Sept. 8 in Fort Pierce federal court for the case against Ryan Routh. U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon signed off on Routh’s request to represent himself in July but said court-appointed attorneys need to remain as standby counsel.

    The trial will begin nearly a year after prosecutors say a U.S. Secret Service agent thwarted Routh’s attempt to shoot Trump as he played golf. Routh, 59, has pleaded not guilty to charges of attempting to assassinate a major presidential candidate, assaulting a federal officer and several firearm violations.

    Prosecutors have said Routh methodically plotted to kill Trump for weeks before aiming a rifle through the shrubbery as Trump played golf on Sept. 15, 2024, at his West Palm Beach country club. A Secret Service agent spotted Routh before Trump came into view. Officials said Routh aimed his rifle at the agent, who opened fire, causing Routh to drop his weapon and flee without firing a shot.

    Law enforcement obtained help from a witness who prosecutors said informed officers that he saw a person fleeing. The witness was then flown in a police helicopter to a nearby interstate where Routh was arrested, and the witnesses confirmed it was the person he had seen, prosecutors have said.

    The judge on Tuesday unsealed prosecutor’s 33-page list of exhibits that could be introduced as evidence at the trial. It says prosecutors have photos of Routh holding the same model of semi-automatic rifle found at Trump’s club.

    The document also lists numerous electronic messages sent from a cellphone investigators found in Routh’s car. One message dated about two months before his arrest is described as Routh requesting a “missile launcher.” It says that in August 2024, the month before his arrest, Routh sent messages seeking “help ensuring that (Trump) does not get elected” and offering to pay an unnamed person to use flight tracking apps to check the whereabouts of Trump’s airplane.

    The exhibit list cites evidence from Routh’s phone of an electronic “chat about sniper concealment” during President John F. Kennedy’s assassination. And it lists internet searches for how long gunpower residue stays on clothing and articles on U.S. Secret Service responses to assassination plots.

    Routh was a North Carolina construction worker who in recent years had moved to Hawaii. A self-styled mercenary leader, Routh spoke out to anyone who would listen about his dangerous, sometimes violent plans to insert himself into conflicts around the world, witnesses have told The Associated Press.

    In the early days of the war in Ukraine, Routh tried to recruit soldiers from Afghanistan, Moldova and Taiwan to fight the Russians. In his native Greensboro, North Carolina, he had a 2002 arrest for eluding a traffic stop and barricading himself from officers with a fully automatic machine gun and a “weapon of mass destruction,” which turned out to be an explosive with a 10-inch-long fuse.

    In 2010, police searched a warehouse Routh owned and found more than 100 stolen items, from power tools and building supplies to kayaks and spa tubs. In both felony cases, judges gave Routh either probation or a suspended sentence.

    In addition to the federal charges, Routh also has pleaded not guilty to state charges of terrorism and attempted murder.

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    AP journalist Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia, contributed.

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  • The federal circuit’s tariff ruling highlights the audacity of Trump’s power grab

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    In ruling against the sweeping tariffs that President Donald Trump purported to impose under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit did not settle the question of whether that law authorizes import taxes. Nor did it uphold the injunction that the Court of International Trade (CIT) issued against the tariffs on May 28. But the Federal Circuit agreed with the CIT that the tariffs are unlawful, and its reasoning highlights the audacity of Trump’s claim that IEEPA empowers him to completely rewrite tariff schedules approved by Congress.

    The decision addresses two challenges to Trump’s tariffs, one brought by several businesses and one filed by a dozen states. Both sets of plaintiffs argued that Trump had illegally seized powers that belong to Congress.

    The Constitution gives Congress, not the president, the power to “lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises.” And although Congress has delegated that authority to the president in “numerous statutes,” the Federal Circuit notes in an unsigned opinion joined by seven members of an 11-judge panel, it has always “used clear and precise terms” to do so, “reciting the term ‘duties’ or one of its synonyms.” Furthermore, Congress always has imposed “well-defined procedural and substantive limitations” on the president’s tariff powers.

    IEEPA, by contrast, “neither mentions tariffs (or any of its synonyms) nor has procedural safeguards that contain clear limits on the President’s power to impose tariffs.” Yet under Trump’s reading of the statute, it empowers him to impose any tariffs he wants against any country he chooses for as long as he deems appropriate, provided he perceives an “unusual and extraordinary threat” that constitutes a “national emergency” and avers that the import taxes will “deal with” that threat.

    To justify his tariffs, Trump declared two supposed emergencies, one involving international drug smuggling and the other involving the U.S. trade deficit. The former “emergency,” he said, justified punitive tariffs on goods from Mexico, Canada, and China, with the aim of encouraging greater cooperation in the war on drugs. The latter “emergency,” he claimed, justified hefty, ever-shifting taxes on imports from dozens of countries, which he implausibly described as “reciprocal.”

    Leaving aside the question of whether it makes sense to characterize drug trafficking and trade imbalances, both of which are longstanding phenomena, as “unusual and extraordinary” threats, Trump’s attempted power grab is striking even for him. “Since IEEPA was promulgated almost fifty years ago, past presidents have invoked IEEPA frequently,” the Federal Circuit notes. “But not once before has a President asserted his authority under IEEPA to impose tariffs on imports or adjust the rates thereof. Rather, presidents have typically invoked IEEPA to restrict financial transactions with specific countries or entities that the President has determined pose an acute threat to the country’s interests.”

    Trump claims to have discovered a heretofore unnoticed tariff power in an IEEPA provision that authorizes the president to “regulate…importation.” And that power, he avers, is not subject to any “procedural and substantive limitations” except for the pro forma requirement that he declare a national emergency based on a foreign threat. As the Federal Circuit dryly observes, “it seems unlikely that Congress intended, in enacting IEEPA, to depart from its past practice and grant the President unlimited authority to impose tariffs.”

    Trump’s assertion of that authority “runs afoul of the major questions doctrine,” the Federal Circuit says. According to the Supreme Court, that doctrine applies when the executive branch asserts powers of vast “economic and political significance.” In such cases, “the Government must point to ‘clear congressional authorization’ for that asserted power,” the appeals court notes. “The tariffs at issue in this case implicate the concerns animating the major questions doctrine as they are both ‘unheralded’ and ‘transformative.’” The Supreme Court “has explained that where the Government has ‘never previously claimed powers of this magnitude,’ the major questions doctrine may be implicated.”

    The Federal Circuit was unimpressed by the government’s citation of United States v. Yoshida International, a 1975 case in which the now-defunct Court of Customs and Patent Appeals approved a 10 percent import surcharge that President Richard Nixon had briefly imposed in 1971 under the Trading With the Enemy Act (TWEA). Although Nixon relied on a different statute, the government’s lawyers noted, the court concluded that the phrase “regulate importation” in TWEA encompassed tariffs.

    Even assuming that conclusion was correct, the Federal Circuit says, Yoshida “does not hold that TWEA created unlimited authority in the President to revise the tariff schedule, but only the limited temporary authority to impose tariffs that would not exceed the Congressionally approved tariff rates.” Trump, by contrast, claims IEEPA gives him carte blanche to set tariffs, regardless of what Congress has said.

    “The Government’s expansive interpretation of ‘regulate’ is not supported by the plain text of IEEPA,” the Federal Circuit says. “The Government’s reliance on the ratification of our predecessor court’s opinion in [Yoshida] does not overcome this plain meaning.” The appeals court adds that “the Government’s understanding of the scope of authority granted by IEEPA would render it an unconstitutional delegation.”

    Four judges agreed with the majority that IEEPA “does not grant the President authority to impose the type of tariffs imposed by the Executive Orders.” But they went further in a separate opinion, arguing that the statute does not authorize the president to impose any tariffs at all.

    As Reason‘s Eric Boehm notes, the appeals court nevertheless vacated the CIT’s injunction and remanded the case for further consideration in light of the Supreme Court’s June 27 decision in Trump v. CASA. In that June 27 ruling, the Court questioned universal injunctions that judges had issued in two birthright citizenship cases “to the extent that the injunctions are broader than necessary to provide complete relief to each plaintiff with standing to sue.”

    Although the Supreme Court “held that the universal injunctions at issue ‘likely exceed the equitable authority Congress has granted to federal courts,’” the Federal Circuit notes, “it ‘decline[d] to take up…in the first instance’ arguments as to the permissible scope of injunctive relief. Instead, it instructed ‘[t]he lower courts [to] move expeditiously to ensure that, with respect to each plaintiff, the injunctions comport with this rule and otherwise comply with principles of equity’ as outlined in the opinion. We will follow this same practice.”

    On remand, the Federal Circuit says, “the CIT should consider in the first instance whether its grant of a universal injunction comports with the standards outlined by the Supreme Court in CASA.” The CIT, in other words, is tasked with deciding what sort of order is appropriate to grant the plaintiffs “complete relief.” Alternatively, as Boehm suggests, Congress could intervene by asserting the tariff authority that Trump is trying to usurp.

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    Jacob Sullum

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  • Gilgo Beach murders: A key test in use of advanced DNA techniques in criminal trials

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    RIVERHEAD, N.Y. — When Maureen Brainard-Barnes’ skeletal remains were found hidden in the roadside scrub near Long Island’s Gilgo Beach in the winter of 2010, there was hardly any physical evidence that might help investigators find her killer, save for a single stray hair.

    But at the time, extracting DNA evidence from the degraded strand was beyond the capabilities of crime labs. Investigators kept looking for other clues that might help them identify a suspected serial killer who had scattered women’s bodies along a coastal parkway.

    Then, about seven years ago, investigators turned to Astrea Forensics, a California lab using new techniques to analyze old, highly degraded DNA samples — including rootless hairs like the one discovered with Brainard-Barnes’ body.

    Now, that lab’s work is the focus of a pivotal decision in the closely watched case. A state judge is weighing whether to allow the DNA evidence generated through Astrea Forensics’ whole genome sequencing into the trial of Rex Heuermann, who is accused of killing 25-year-old Brainard-Barnes and six other women.

    If allowed, it would mark the first time such techniques could be admitted in a New York court, and one of just a handful of such instances nationwide, according to prosecutors, defense lawyers and experts.

    Prosecutors say Astrea’s findings, combined with other evidence, overwhelmingly implicate Heuermann, 61, as the killer.

    But lawyers for the Manhattan architect argue the company’s calculations exaggerate the likelihood that the hairs recovered from the burial sites match their client.

    “You can imagine the pressure that’s on this judge because he’s probably more than likely making a ruling that will set the stage for all the cases that come after,” said April Stonehouse, a DNA forensics expert at Arizona State University who is not involved in the case.

    DNA analysis is no longer new, but the tests typically used by criminal labs across the country have limitations.

    Astrea is one of a small but growing number of private labs that say they are capable of taking extremely short DNA fragments found in very old bones and hair and using them to reconstruct a person’s entire genetic sequence, or genome.

    During court testimony, experts called by the Suffolk County District Attorney’s office highlighted how scientists use similar techniques in a wide range of scientific and medical work, such as mapping the genome of the Neanderthal — an effort awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Medicine.

    Astrea Forensics’ co-founder, Dr. Richard Green, described in court how his lab’s whole genome sequencing results were allowed as evidence in last year’s trial and conviction of David Allen Dalrymple in the cold-case murder of 9-year-old Daralyn Johnson in Idaho.

    Heuermann’s lawyers argue that Astrea’s DNA methods haven’t been subjected to enough scrutiny yet, and warned they needed more evaluation because they had the potential to “dramatically reshape” how forensics is used in criminal trials.

    They zeroed in on the statistical analysis Green’s lab conducted on the DNA profiles it generated from the hairs recovered from the victims’ remains, saying it was potentially overstating the likelihood that a mapped genome was a match with any particular person.

    For its calculations, Astrea Forensics uses reference data from an open-source database containing the full DNA sequence of some 2,500 people worldwide, called the 1,000 Genomes Project.

    Dr. Dan Krane, a professor at Wright State University in Ohio, testified for the defense that Astrea Forensics’ methods were “wildly and unfairly prejudicial.”

    Prosecutors countered that Krane’s critique was “misguided” and revealed a “fundamental misunderstanding” of the lab’s methods.

    William Thompson, a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of California, Irvine, who is not involved in the case, agreed with the defense that Astrea Forensics’ statistical analysis was “unvalidated” and lacked wide acceptance in the scientific community.

    “This new technique may eventually be proven to live up to the claims of its promoters, but that hasn’t happened yet,” he said.

    But Nathan Lents, a biology professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan, who is also not involved in the case, disagreed, suggesting the “mathematical quibble” didn’t warrant dismissing the evidence outright.

    “The bottom line is that there are genuine scientific concerns with the way that the statistics are computed, but not with the laboratory techniques,” he said. “The concerns are real, but the likelihood ratios still look very damning for the defense, no matter how they are computed.”

    Prosecutors have amassed other evidence against Heuermann, who is accused of killing women as early as 1993.

    In court filings, they say cellphone call information and tracking data show that Heuermann arranged meetings with some of the victims shortly before their disappearances.

    Last year, prosecutors revealed they had recovered from Heuermann’s computer files what they describe as a “blueprint” for the killings, including a series of checklists with reminders to limit noise, clean the bodies and destroy evidence.

    They also have a second DNA analysis completed by a separate crime lab that used more traditional methods long accepted in New York courts. They say those findings, from Mitotyping Technologies, also convincingly link hairs found on some victims to either Heuermann or members of his family.

    Investigators say that as he disposed of his victims, Heuermann used items from his house — including tape, belts, bags and a surgical drape — that had traces of hair from his wife and daughter.

    In Brainard-Barnes’ case, though, only the advanced DNA tests performed by Astrea identified a match, finding the hair found with her remains belonged to Heuermann’s wife.

    New York State Supreme Court Justice Timothy Mazzei is expected to announce whether he’ll allow Astrea’s DNA work into the trial during a Wednesday hearing in Riverhead.

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    Follow Philip Marcelo at https://x.com/philmarcelo

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  • Raw milk debates are turning sour in Florida

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    In the fall of 2024, I predicted that America might be on the brink of having its “raw milk moment” given now Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s political elevation. Since then, hardly a week has passed without unpasteurized milk making headlines across the country. A recent bacterial outbreak in Florida has now heightened the controversy and further solidified raw milk’s central role in America’s broiling culture wars.

    The Florida Department of Health (DOH) issued a press release in early August detailing a campylobacter and E. coli outbreak in the Sunshine State. Officials alerted that “there have been 21 cases since January 24, 2025, including six children under the age of 10, and seven hospitalizations linked to consumption of raw milk.” The DOH explicitly identified Keely Farms Dairy, a small family farm, as the source of the outbreak.

    Weeks later, a Florida woman, represented by a self-described “national food poisoning law firm,” filed suit against Keely Farms, alleging that its raw milk caused her two-year-old son to contract a bacterial infection and fall ill. The woman further alleges that she fell ill herself and developed sepsis, which eventually led to the loss of her pregnancy.

    The details from the lawsuit are heartbreaking, but the more we learn about the situation surrounding Keely Farms, the more bizarre the story becomes. Despite DOH’s definitive declaration that Keely Farms was the source of the bacterial outbreak, it was later found that the agency had reached this conclusion despite not conducting a single test at the farm, nor alerting the farm that it was under investigation. In a Facebook post, Keely Farms said that the department’s press release “blindsided” them. (The DOH’s press release stated that it would “continue working with Keely Farms Dairy,” insinuating that the relevant parties had been working together throughout.)

    Confusing things further, Keely Farms was recently inspected by the Florida Department of Agriculture. “We passed, as always,” Keely Farms posted.

    Selling raw milk for human consumption is illegal in Florida. As a result, milk that has not been pasteurized—the process of heating the liquid to a specific temperature for five to 30 seconds to kill harmful bacteria—can only be sold for livestock feed. Keely Farms’ raw milk was appropriately labeled as “not for human consumption,” meaning that the 21 Floridians who allegedly drank the farm’s milk (and those who also gave it to their children) chose to do so despite this warning.

    It’s unclear how the current litigation involving Keely Farms will ultimately play out, although it’s likely that more follow-on suits will be filed, using the DOH’s press release as evidentiary fodder. 

    Politico recently noted that raw milk has gone from “the darling of the organic liberals, deserving of sympathetic coverage…to the conservative culture war signal that is a sweetheart of deep-red state legislatures.” This is on display in Florida. Despite the DOH targeting Keely Farms for its raw milk, Florida’s Surgeon General Joseph A. Ladapo—an appointee of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and the head of the DOH—recently expressed support for human consumption of raw milk in a social media post. 

    On the other hand, Florida’s agriculture commissioner, who was endorsed by President Donald Trump, has encouraged Floridians to only drink pasteurized milk, citing the dangers of raw milk. This means that the head of the Florida agency that targeted Keely Farms’ raw milk products is unexpectedly pro-raw milk, while the head of the state agency that inspected and greenlighted Keely Farms’ operations is against raw milk.

    This confusion highlights how raw milk has become a political flashpoint. The state health agency blamed Keely Farms while skipping basic investigative steps, the agriculture department cleared the farm, and their leaders publicly contradicted their own agencies.

    When policy decisions are filtered through the lens of culture wars, the result is not clarity or safety but a muddle of mixed signals. Floridians are left unsure whether raw milk is a health risk, a personal freedom, or just another pawn in America’s endless red vs. blue standoff.

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    C. Jarrett Dieterle

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  • Man sentenced to 27 years for making racist threats against pregnant Black woman

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    SANTA ANA, Calif. — A California man was sentenced Friday to 27 years to life in prison for making racist threats against a pregnant Black woman after prosecutors appealed an earlier, lighter sentence, officials said.

    Tyson Mayfield, 49, pleaded guilty in a court-offered deal in 2019 to get a five-year sentence that the Orange County District Attorney’s office opposed and later appealed.

    An appeals panel rejected the decision, and Mayfield was retried and convicted of making criminal threats with an enhancement for a hate crime.

    “Over the last six years we have fought and fought and fought for justice in this case,” District Attorney Todd Spitzer said in a statement. “Justice was finally served today against a man who spent decades hating others, and now he will spend decades behind bars where he belongs.”

    A message was left at the public defender’s office seeking comment.

    Mayfield was accused of threatening and yelling racial slurs at a woman who was eight months pregnant at a bus stop in Fullerton in 2018, prompting her to use pepper spray to protect herself and run for help.

    Authorities said Mayfield, who is white and has a swastika tattoo, had prior convictions for attacking bystanders, including punching a man outside a supermarket while yelling a racist slur.

    Orange County Superior Court Judge Roger B. Robbins made the offer to Mayfield in 2019, noting no weapon was used or injury caused during the crime. Prosecutors and community advocates said Mayfield shouldn’t have been eligible for the deal because of his prior convictions.

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  • Volkswagen faces historic $30 million compensation for Amazon labor abuses in Brazil

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    SAO PAULO — SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s labor court on Friday ordered Volkswagen to pay 165 million reais (about $30 million) for collective moral damages after workers were subjected to slave-like conditions at a company-owned farm in the Amazon during the 1970s and 1980s. Prosecutors said it is the largest such reparation in the country’s history.

    The Labor Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation in 2019 after obtaining extensive documentation from a local priest who had tracked the case for decades. Following further inquiries and witness testimony, prosecutors formally charged Volkswagen in 2024.

    The court accepted the charges that hundreds of workers were subjected to degrading conditions between 1974 and 1986 at a farm in Para state, owned by Volkswagen through a subsidiary. The farm was used for cattle ranching and logging.

    According to court filings, about 300 workers were hired under irregular contracts to clear the forest and prepare pastures. They were monitored by armed guards, lived in precarious housing, received insufficient food and were forced to stay on the farm under a system of debt bondage. No medical care was provided, even to those who contracted malaria.

    “These practices constituted one of the largest cases of slave labor exploitation in Brazil’s recent history,” the Labor Prosecutor’s Office said in a statement.

    In his ruling, Judge Otavio Bruno da Silva Ferreira said evidence confirmed the farm belonged to Volkswagen and that conditions met the legal definition of slave labor.

    “Slavery is a ‘present past,’ because its marks remain in Brazilian society, especially in labor relations,” Ferreira wrote. He added that the legacy of Brazil’s colonial slave system continues to shape social structures and that recovering this memory is essential to understanding current realities and guiding antidiscrimination judgments.

    Volkswagen’s Brazilian headquarters said in a statement it will appeal the decision. The company said that in its 72 years of operation in Brazil, it has “consistently defended the principles of human dignity and strictly complied with all applicable labor laws and regulations.”

    “Volkswagen reaffirms its unwavering commitment to social responsibility, which is intrinsically linked to its conduct as a legal entity and employer,” the company said.

    Brazil enslaved more people from Africa than any other country, according to estimates from the Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade database. It was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to abolish slavery, in 1888.

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    Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america

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  • Western states seek to end long-running water dispute over dwindling Rio Grande

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    ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — A simmering feud over management of one of North America’s longest rivers reached a boiling point when the U.S. Supreme Court sent western states and the federal government back to the negotiating table last year.

    Now the battle over waters of the Rio Grande could be nearing resolution as New Mexico, Texas and Colorado announced fresh settlement proposals Friday designed to rein in groundwater pumping along the river in New Mexico and ensure enough river water reliably makes it to Texas.

    New Mexico officials say the agreements allow water conservation decisions to be made locally while avoiding a doomsday scenario of billion-dollar payouts on water shortfalls.

    Farmers in southern New Mexico increasingly have turned to groundwater as hotter and drier conditions reduced river flows and storage. That pumping is what prompted Texas to sue, claiming the practice was cutting into water deliveries.

    It will be up to the special master overseeing the case to make a recommendation to the Supreme Court.

    If endorsed by the court, the combined settlements promise to restore order to an elaborate system of storing and sharing water between two vast, adjacent irrigation districts in southern New Mexico and western Texas.

    Still, tough decisions await New Mexico under its new obligations.

    In 1939, when New Mexico was a young, sparsely populated state, it ratified a compact with Texas and Colorado for sharing the waters of the Rio Grande. The agreement defined credits and debits and set parameters for when water could be stored upstream.

    From the San Luis Valley in Colorado to below Elephant Butte Reservoir in New Mexico, the compact called for gages to monitor the river, ensuring downstream obligations were met.

    Meeting the nearly century-old metrics has become harder as snowpacks shrink in the mountains that feed the Rio Grande. Thirsty soil soaks up more snowmelt and runoff before it reaches tributaries, warmer temperatures fuel evaporation, and summer rainy seasons that once boosted flows and recharged reservoirs are more erratic.

    The equation is further complicated by growing populations. The Rio Grande provides drinking water for about 6 million people and helps to irrigate millions of acres of cropland in the U.S. and in Mexico.

    While the Colorado River gets all the headlines, experts say the situation along the Rio Grande is just as dire.

    The proposed settlements would provide a detailed accounting system for sharing water with Texas.

    New Mexico could rely on credits and debits from year to year to navigate through drought and wet periods, though it could be responsible for additional water-sharing obligations if deliveries are deferred too long.

    The international group Sustainable Waters is wrapping up an extensive study on how the river’s water is being used.

    Brian Richter, the group’s president, said that over the last couple of decades, New Mexico has lost more than 70% of its reservoir storage along the river while groundwater has been extracted faster than it can be replenished. Add to that New Mexico has fallen behind in its water deliveries to Texas.

    Richter called it a triple whammy.

    “We’re definitely in a precarious situation and it’s going to become more challenging going forward,” he said. “So I think it’s going to require sort of a major reenvisioning of what we want New Mexico’s water future to look like.”

    The parties in the case say the proposed agreements will facilitate investments and innovation in water conservation.

    “The whole settlement package really provides for the long-term vitality, economic vitality, for the communities in both New Mexico and Texas,” said Hannah Riseley-White, director of the Interstate Stream Commission.

    New Mexico would have two years to adopt a plan to manage and share water along its southernmost stretch of the Rio Grande. The state can still pump some groundwater while monitoring aquifer levels.

    “The burden is on New Mexico,” said Stuart Somach, lead attorney for Texas in the Rio Grande dispute.

    In Albuquerque, it looks grim.

    It’s common to have stretches of the Rio Grande go dry farther south, but not in New Mexico’s largest city. Prior to 2022, it had been four decades since Albuquerque had seen the muddy waters reduced to isolated puddles and lengthy sandbars.

    Aside from a changing climate, water managers say the inability to store water in upstream reservoirs due to compact obligations exacerbates the problem.

    Many of the intricacies of managing the Rio Grande are as invisible to residents as the water itself.

    Sisters Zoe and Phoebe Hughes set out to take photos during a recent evening, anticipating at least a sliver of water like usual. Instead they found deep sand and patchwork of cracked, curled beds of clay.

    “It’s so dystopian. It’s sad,” Phoebe Hughes said, adding that the river isn’t so grand now.

    Looking for a silver lining, the two collected pieces of riverbed clay, hoping they could fashion it into something. Other curious visitors played in the sand and walked dogs.

    Downstream, Elephant Butte stands at less than 4% of capacity. The reservoir is an irrigation lifeline for farmers, fuels a hydropower station and serves as a popular recreation spot.

    The settlements call for reducing groundwater depletions to a rate of 18,200 acre-feet per year. While that’s about one-sixth of the drinking water supplied to New York City each day, for the arid West, it’s a monumental amount.

    New Mexico officials expect to achieve most of those reductions from buying water rights from willing sellers, meaning more than 14 square miles (36 square kilometers) of farmland would be retired.

    Many details — and the price tag — have yet to be worked out, the general counsel for the New Mexico state engineer’s office told state lawmakers this month. The Legislature in 2023 set aside $65 million toward the settlements and related infrastructure projects, and the state is tapping additional federal dollars. But it will still need more funds, experts say.

    Riseley-White said it will take a combination of efforts, including long-term fallowing programs, water conservation and more efficient irrigation infrastructure.

    “There isn’t one answer. It’s going to be necessarily an all-of-the-above approach,” she said, acknowledging that there will be less water in the future.

    Attorney Sam Barncastle, who worked for years on behalf of irrigators, worries small farming operations and backyard gardeners could ultimately be pushed out.

    “Farmland does not come back once it’s gone,” she said.

    The overall idea is to avoid abruptly curtailing water for users, but farmers in southern New Mexico have concerns about how much water will be available and who will be able to use it.

    New Mexico is the nation’s No. 2 pecan producer, and the sprawling orchards would die without consistent water. The state also is home to world-renowned chilies — a signature crop tightly woven into New Mexico’s cultural identity.

    Ben Etcheverry, a board member of the New Mexico Chile Association, said farmers have transitioned to drip irrigation to save water and energy but are continually told they have to do more with even less water and pay higher rates.

    “It just becomes a game of whack-a-mole while we try to do better,” he said. “Every time we do better, it seems they turn it into a punishment.”

    ___

    Lee reported from Santa Fe.

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  • Fed governor Cook to seek court order blocking her firing by Trump

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    A case that could provide the Trump administration with new and expansive power over the traditionally independent Federal Reserve will get its first court hearing Friday.

    Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook has requested an emergency injunction to block President Donald Trump’s attempt to fire her over allegations that she committed mortgage fraud when she purchased a home and condo in 2021. She was appointed to the Fed’s board by former president Joe Biden in 2022.

    If her firing is allowed to stand, it would likely erode the Fed’s longstanding independence from day-to-day politics. No president has ever fired a Fed governor in the agency’s 112-year history. Economists broadly support Fed independence because it makes it easier for the central bank to take unpopular steps such as raising interest rates to combat inflation.

    Cook has asked the court to issue an emergency order that would block Trump’s firing of her and enable her to remain on the seven-member board of governors while her lawsuit seeking to overturn the firing makes its way through the courts. Many observers expect her case will end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.

    The law governing the Fed says the president can’t fire a governor just because they disagree over interest rate policy. Trump has repeatedly demanded that the Fed, led by Chair Jerome Powell, reduce its key interest rate, which is currently 4.3%. Yet the Fed has kept it unchanged for the last five meetings.

    But the president may be able to fire a Fed governor “for cause,” which has traditionally been interpreted to mean inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance. Cook’s lawyers argue that it also refers only to conduct while in office. They also say that she was entitled to a hearing and an opportunity to rebut the charges.

    “The unsubstantiated and unproven allegation that Governor Cook ‘potentially’ erred in filling out a mortgage form prior to her Senate confirmation — does not amount to ‘cause,’” the lawsuit says.

    Trump has moved to fire a number of leaders from a host of independent federal regulatory agencies, including at the National Transportation Safety Board, Surface Transportation Board, Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and Nuclear Regulatory Commission, as well as the Fed.

    The Supreme Court declined to temporarily block the president from firing directors of some independent agencies earlier this year while those cases move through the courts. Legal experts say the high court this year has shown more deference to the president’s removal powers than it has in the past.

    Still, in a case in May, the Supreme Court appeared to single out the Fed as deserving of greater independence than other agencies, describing it as “a uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.” As a result, it’s harder to gauge how the Supreme Court could rule if this case lands in its lap.

    As a governor, Cook votes on all the Fed’s interest rate decisions and helps oversee bank regulation. The Fed has substantial power over the economy by raising or cutting its key interest rate, which can then influence a broad range of other borrowing costs, including mortgages, car loans, and business loans.

    Bill Pulte, Trump’s appointee to the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, first leveled the accusation against Cook that she has committed mortgage fraud.

    It’s a charge he has also made against two of Trump’s biggest political enemies, California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff and New York Attorney General Letitia James, who has prosecuted Trump. Pulte has ignored a similar case involving Ken Paxton, the Texas attorney general who is friendly with Trump and is running for Senate in his state’s Republican primary.

    Cook’s lawsuit responds by arguing that the claims are just a pretext “in order to effectuate her prompt removal and vacate a seat for President Trump to fill and forward his agenda to undermine the independence of the Federal Reserve.”

    If Trump can replace Cook, he may be able to gain a 4-3 majority on the Fed’s governing board. Trump appointed two board members during his first term and has nominated a key White House economic adviser, Stephen Miran, to replace Adriana Kugler, another Fed governor who stepped down unexpectedly Aug. 1. Trump has said he will only appoint people to the Fed who will support lower rates.

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  • San Mateo County claims State of California owes it and its 20 cities $38 million after ‘raid’

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    San Mateo County in a lawsuit filed this week claims the State of California “shorted” it and its 20 cities $38 million in funds distributed annually under a decades-old deal involving vehicle-license fees that is now enshrined in law.

    California’s unprecedented “raid” on the funding stream deprived San Mateo County and cities from East Palo Alto to Daly City of “critical” funds for serving residents, while giving a “windfall” to the state, the lawsuit filed Monday in San Francisco County Superior Court claimed.

    The lawsuit accuses California of breaking a legal requirement to provide the funding, and seeks a court order mandating payment of the $38 million, plus unspecified damages.

    Named as defendants are the State of California along with state Finance Department Director Joe Stephenshaw and State Controller Malia Cohen. A spokesperson for the Finance Department said the department had not seen the lawsuit yet and couldn’t comment on it.

    “Once we receive it and review it we will obviously have a filing with the court in response,” said department spokesman H.D. Palmer.

    State Controller’s office spokesman Bismarck Obando said none of the lawsuit’s allegations “pertain to the State Controller in her official capacity.”

    Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office did not immediately respond to questions about the lawsuit.

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    Ethan Baron

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  • Judge rejects Cuomo’s attempt to make texts in harassment lawsuit public

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    ALBANY, N.Y. — A judge rejected former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s attempt to prolong a taxpayer-funded court battle with a woman who accused him of sexual assault, saying it wasn’t in the public’s interest to keep litigating for the purpose of repairing the Democrat’s reputation as he runs for mayor.

    “Cuomo has not advanced any viable argument for why the taxpayers of this state should continue to foot the bill for his continued use of civil litigation discovery devices to further his efforts to resurrect his public image,” state Supreme Court Justice Denise Hartman wrote in a decision posted online Monday.

    The decision comes more than a month after New York agreed to pay $450,000 to settle a lawsuit from Brittany Commisso, an ex-aide who alleged Cuomo sexually harassed and groped her while he was in office. Cuomo, who has denied the allegations, resigned as governor in 2021 after a report from the state attorney general determined that he had sexually harassed at least 11 women.

    Cuomo, a co-defendant with the state, opposed Commisso’s request to discontinue the lawsuit. Relatedly, he sought to make public text messages produced under discovery he claims refute Commisso’s allegations. Cuomo attorney Rita Glavin had told a judge that ending the case is a matter of “enormous public interest” as Cuomo runs for mayor.

    Hartman allowed Commisso to drop the civil suit and denied Cuomo’s motion on the texts.

    Cuomo is running for mayor as a independent after losing the Democratic primary to Zohran Mamdani by more than 12 percentage points.

    With the race heating up this summer, Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa has needled Cuomo over the sexual harassment allegations. And incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, who also is running as an independent, recently placed whistles on reporters’ chairs at a news conference. Adams explained they were for female reporters interviewing Cuomo, in case they needed to call for help.

    A spokesman for Cuomo said Tuesday that the public deserves to see what is in the texts.

    “Governor Cuomo will continue to fight for the release of all the evidence because it shows he didn’t sexually harass anyone and further discredits the AG’s political report. Release the evidence and let the public decide,” Rich Azzopardi said in a written statement.

    Commisso filed her lawsuit in late 2023, just before the expiration of the Adult Survivors Act, a law that created a yearlong suspension of the usual time limit to sue over an alleged sexual assault. She later filed a criminal complaint accusing Cuomo of groping her but a local district attorney declined to prosecute, citing lack of sufficient evidence.

    The Associated Press typically doesn’t identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they decide to tell their stories publicly, as Commisso has done.

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  • Embattled Fed Gov. Lisa Cook says she’ll sue Trump to keep her job

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    WASHINGTON — Federal Reserve Gov. Lisa Cook will sue President Donald Trump’s administration to try to prevent him from firing her, her lawyer said Tuesday.

    “President Trump has no authority to remove Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook,” said Abbe Lowell, a longtime Washington lawyer who has represented figures from both major political parties. “His attempt to fire her, based solely on a referral letter, lacks any factual or legal basis. We will be filing a lawsuit challenging this illegal action.”

    The case is likely to end up at the Supreme Court and could more clearly define the limits of the president’s legal authority over the traditionally independent institution. The Fed exercises expansive power over the U.S. economy by adjusting a short-term interest rate that can influence broader borrowing costs for things like mortgages, auto loans, and business loans. Trump, a Republican, has repeatedly demanded that Chair Jerome Powell and the Fed’s rate-setting committee cut its rate to boost the economy and reduce interest payments on the government’s $37 trillion debt pile.

    If Trump succeeds in removing Cook from the Fed’s board of governors, it could erode the Fed’s political independence, which is considered critical to its ability to fight inflation because it enables the Fed to take unpopular steps like raising interest rates. A less-independent Fed could leave Americans paying higher interest rates, because investors would demand a higher yield to own bonds to offset potentially greater inflation in the future, pushing up borrowing costs throughout the economy.

    Trump appointed two members of the board, Christopher Waller and Michelle Bowman, in his first term and has named Steven Miran, a top White House economist, to replace Gov. Adriana Kugler, who stepped down unexpectedly Aug. 1. If Miran’s nomination is approved by the Senate and Trump is able to replace Cook, he would have a 4-3 majority on the Fed’s board, which votes on all interest rate decisions, along with five of the Fed’s 12 regional bank presidents.

    Legal experts say the Republican president’s claim that he can fire Cook, who was appointed by Democratic President Joe Biden in 2022, is on shaky ground. But it’s an unprecedented move that hasn’t played out in the courts before, and the Supreme Court this year has been much more willing to let the president remove agency officials than in the past.

    “It’s an illegal firing, but the president’s going to argue, ‘The Constitution lets me do it,’” said Lev Menand, a law professor at Columbia University and author of a book about the Fed. “And that argument’s worked in a few other cases so far this year.”

    Menand said the Supreme Court construes the Constitution’s meaning, and “it can make new constitutional law in this case.”

    Bill Pulte, a Trump appointee to the agency that regulates mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, made the accusations last week. Pulte alleged that Cook had claimed two primary residences — in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and in Atlanta — in 2021 to get better mortgage terms. Mortgage rates are often higher on second homes or those bought to rent.

    The most likely next step for Cook is to seek an injunction against Trump’s order that would allow her to continue her work as a governor. But the situation puts the Fed in a difficult position.

    “They have their own legal obligation to follow the law,” Menand said. “And that does not mean do whatever the president says. … The Fed is under an independent duty to reach its own conclusions about the legality of Lisa Cook’s removal.”

    The Fed has declined to comment on Trump’s effort to fire Cook.

    Trump said in a letter posted on his Truth Social platform late Monday that he was removing Cook effective immediately because of allegations she committed mortgage fraud.

    Cook said Monday night that she would not step down. “President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” she said in an emailed statement. “I will not resign.”

    The courts have allowed the Trump administration to remove commissioners at the National Labor Relations Board, the Merit System Protection Board and other independent agencies. Yet Cook’s case is different.

    Those dismissals were based on the idea that the president needs no reason to remove agency heads because they exercise executive power on his behalf, the Supreme Court wrote in an unsigned order in May.

    In that same order, the court suggested that Trump did not have the same freedom at the Fed, which the court called a “uniquely structured, quasi-private entity.”

    The law that governs the central bank, the Federal Reserve Act, includes a provision allowing for the removal of Fed governors “for cause.”

    “For cause” is typically interpreted to mean malfeasance or dereliction of duty by an official while in office, not something done before that person is appointed, Menand said.

    To establish a “for cause” firing also requires a finding of fact, said Scott Alvarez, the Fed’s former general counsel and now adjunct professor at Georgetown Law.

    “We know there’s allegations by Bill Pulte, but Lisa has not been able to respond yet,” Alvarez said. “So we don’t know if they’re true. Allegations are not cause.’’

    Lowell said Monday night that Trump’s “reflex to bully is flawed and his demands lack any proper process, basis or legal authority,” adding, “We will take whatever actions are needed to prevent his attempted illegal action.”

    Cook is the first Black woman to serve as a governor. She was a Marshall Scholar and received degrees from Oxford University and Spelman College, and she has taught at Michigan State University and Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

    ___

    Associated Press Writers Mark Sherman and Paul Wiseman contributed to this report.

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  • Colorado, UCHealth reach deal to avoid clawback of $60 million from public hospitals

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    Colorado won’t have to claw back nearly $60 million it paid to public hospitals, including Denver Health and more than two dozen rural facilities, under a deal announced Tuesday to end the state’s court battles with UCHealth.

    “We thank UCHealth for working with us to resolve this issue in a manner that protects all Colorado hospitals,” Kim Bimestefer, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing, said in a news release.

    UCHealth sued the department, alleging it had incorrectly labeled two of its hospitals as public, rather than private nonprofits. A Denver District Court judge agreed, and ordered the state to reclassify Memorial Hospital in Colorado Springs and Poudre Valley Hospital in Fort Collins. The department filed an appeal in July.

    Their classification matters because of the state’s provider tax.

    Hospitals pay about $1.3 billion each year, gaining about $500 million in federal matching funds. Most come out ahead, though those with relatively few patients covered by Medicaid lose out. In future years, the state will have to reduce its tax rate under provisions of H.R. 1, colloquially known as President Donald Trump’s “big beautiful bill.”

    The state pools the money by hospital type, and distributes it based on how each facility’s Medicaid share compares to the others in their group.

    Moving Memorial and Poudre Valley from the public to the private bucket means that less money remains for all public hospitals to divide up, and that Memorial and Poudre Valley likely will get more back from the provider tax, because they’re being compared against hospitals that generally see fewer Medicaid patients.

    The state said that to retrospectively reclassify the UCHealth hospitals and distribute the funds accordingly, it would have to take back $59.7 million paid last year to 29 publicly owned hospitals.

    Denver Health didn’t comment on the possibility, but a group representing 13 Eastern Plains hospitals said some wouldn’t be able to hand over a significant chunk of cash, because they already used their share of the provider tax to pay employees and cover other expenses.

    Under the agreement, the Department of Health Care Policy and Financing will drop its appeal, and UCHealth won’t demand redistribution of provider taxes it paid in previous years.

    UCHealth president and CEO Elizabeth Concordia said the system supports the provider tax program, and thanked the state for working together on a solution.

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    Meg Wingerter

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  • Judge rules Utah’s congressional map must be redrawn for the 2026 elections

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    SALT LAKE CITY — The Utah Legislature will need to rapidly redraw the state’s congressional boundaries after a judge ruled Monday that the Republican-controlled body circumvented safeguards put in place by voters to ensure districts aren’t drawn to favor any party.

    The current map, adopted in 2021, divides Salt Lake County — Utah’s population center and a Democratic stronghold — among the state’s four congressional districts, all of which have since elected Republicans by wide margins.

    District Court Judge Dianna Gibson made few judgments on the content of the map but declared it unlawful because lawmakers had weakened and ignored an independent commission established by voters to prevent partisan gerrymandering.

    “The nature of the violation lies in the Legislature’s refusal to respect the people’s exercise of their constitutional lawmaking power and to honor the people’s right to reform their government,” Gibson said in the ruling.

    New maps will need to be drawn quickly, before candidates start filing in early January for the 2026 midterm elections. The ruling gives lawmakers a deadline of Sept. 24 and allows voting rights groups involved in the legal challenge to submit alternate proposals to the court.

    But appeals expected from Republican officials could help them run out the clock to possibly delay adopting new maps until 2028.

    The ruling creates uncertainty in a state that was thought to be a clean sweep for the GOP as the party is preparing to defend its slim majority in the U.S. House. Nationally, Democrats need to net three seats next year to take control of the chamber. The sitting president’s party tends to lose seats in the midterms, as was the case for President Donald Trump in 2018.

    Trump has urged several Republican-led states to add winnable seats for the GOP. In Texas, a plan awaiting Gov. Greg Abbott’s approval includes five new districts that would favor Republicans. Ohio Republicans already were scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan, and Indiana, Florida and Missouri may choose to make changes. Some Democrat-led states say they may enter the redistricting arms race, but so far only California has taken action to offset GOP gains in Texas.

    The U.S. Supreme Court is unlikely to intervene, and the Utah Supreme Court may be hesitant to entertain an appeal of Monday’s ruling after it had sent the case back to Gibson for her to decide.

    The nation’s high court in 2019 ruled that claims of partisan gerrymandering for congressional and legislative districts are outside the purview of federal courts and should be decided by states.

    David Reymann, an attorney for the voting rights advocates who challenged the map, called the ruling a “watershed moment” for the voices of Utah voters.

    “The Legislature in this state is not king,” Reymann told reporters Monday evening.

    Leaders from the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee applauded the ruling as a victory for democracy.

    Republican Gov. Spencer Cox said he disagrees with the decision but holds respect for Utah’s judiciary. Meanwhile, the state’s GOP Chairman, Robert Axson, dismissed the ruling as “judicial activism.”

    Utah’s Republican legislative leaders, Senate President Stuart Adams and House Speaker Mike Schultz, said in a joint statement that they are disappointed by the ruling and are carefully considering their next steps.

    In 2018, voters narrowly approved a ballot initiative that created an independent redistricting commission to draw boundaries for Utah’s legislative and congressional districts, which the Legislature was required to consider. Lawmakers repealed the initiative in 2020 and replaced it with a law that transformed the commission into an advisory board that they could choose to ignore.

    The following year, lawmakers disregarded a congressional map proposal from the commission and drew one of their own that carved up Salt Lake County among four reliably Republican districts.

    Voting rights advocates sued, arguing the map drawn by lawmakers constituted partisan gerrymandering that favored Republicans. They also said the Legislature violated the rights of voters when it repealed and replaced the 2018 initiative.

    The case made its way to the Utah Supreme Court, which ruled that the Legislature cannot change laws approved through ballot initiatives except to reinforce them, or to advance a compelling government interest. The five-member panel sent the case back to Gibson in the lower court to decide whether lawmakers would have to redraw boundaries set as part of a redistricting process that happens every 10 years.

    The ruling Monday reinstates the voter-approved redistricting standards that lawmakers had overturned.

    Utah was one of four states where voters approved measures designed to reduce partisan gerrymandering in 2018. As in Utah, Missouri’s Republican-led Legislature quickly sought to repeal key provisions. Missouri voters approved the Legislature’s revisions in 2020, before the original plan was ever used. Independent commissions approved by Colorado and Michigan voters remained in place and were used after the 2020 census.

    The redistricting measures aren’t the only instances where state lawmakers have altered voter-approved measures.

    Earlier this year, Missouri lawmakers repealed a paid sick leave law passed by voters and referred a proposed repeal of an abortion rights amendment to the ballot. In South Dakota, voters approved a public campaign finance system, tightened lobbying laws and created an ethics commission in 2016. Lawmakers repealed and replaced the measure the next year with a narrower government watchdog board and looser limits on lobbyist gifts to public officials.

    ___

    Associated Press writer David Lieb contributed from Jefferson City, Missouri.

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  • Man pleads not guilty to 2 Valley murders, including April slaying on Riverside Drive

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    By TERRI VERMEULEN KEITH | City News Service

    An ex-con pleaded not guilty Monday to charges that he murdered an 81-year-old woman and a 53-year-old man during burglaries at their homes in the San Fernando Valley nearly three years apart.

    Erick Escamilla, 27, is charged with two counts each of murder and first-degree residential burglary stemming from the Aug. 2, 2022, killing of Ok Ja Kim at her Woodland Hills home and the slaying April 23, 2025, of Menashe Hidra at his Valley Village home.

    The murder charges include the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder during the commission of a burglary, along with allegations that he used a “sharp object” in Kim’s killing and a screwdriver in Hidra’s killing and that he has a prior conviction from 2019 for burglary.

    The Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office is expected to decide later whether to seek the death penalty against Escamilla.

    Escamilla is also facing one count of arson of an inhabited structure or property involving Kim’s residence, along with one count each of attempted murder and first-degree residential burglary involving an alleged attack on a man three weeks after Kim’s killing.

    He was arrested May 8 by the Los Angeles Police Department in connection with Hidra’s killing, with the other charges subsequently being added against him.

    Hidra was killed around 3 a.m. April 23, but his body was not found until 2:30 p.m. April 26, when police made a welfare check at the apartment on the 12600 block of Riverside Drive, between Whitsett and Coldwater Canyon avenues. He was pronounced dead at the scene.

    LAPD officers who originally responded to reports of a fight inside Hidra’s fifth-floor apartment did not discover the body because they got no response to a knock on the door and they did not enter the apartment.

    It marked one of three recent cases in which the LAPD has faced questions about police responding to calls and then eventually returning to find the victims dead.

    “I want to acknowledge that there are questions surrounding the initial police response to the incident,” LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell said during a news conference soon afterward. “The Los Angeles Police Department is aware of these circumstances and we’ve initiated an internal administrative investigation to examine all facets of that. We’re unable to comment or provide details at this time since the investigation is ongoing.”

    LAPD homicide Lt. Guy Golan said Escamilla allegedly accessed the roof of the apartment building and used a skylight to enter the apartment next door to Hidra’s unit. Escamilla allegedly then climbed from the balcony of the vacant unit to the one attached to Hidra’s apartment and went inside, leading to a “violent confrontation” with the victim.

    The police chief credited the work of homicide investigators and cooperation with the FBI Fugitive Task Force for locating Escamilla, who was found at a hospital, where he was being treated for an unspecified medical issue.

    “Over the past several weeks, investigators, forensic experts and technical personnel have worked tirelessly to gather evidence and pursue every lead,” McDonnell said. “This includes interviewing witnesses, securing warrants, using advanced technologies and ensuring that no stone was left unturned in the pursuit of justice.”

    Just over a month after his arrest, prosecutors subsequently added charges involving Kim’s slaying and the Aug. 23, 2022, attack with a “sharp object” on the surviving victim.

    Authorities had offered a $50,000 reward in October 2022 for help in finding Kim’s killer.

    She was discovered in a bedroom at her residence on the 20800 block of Martha Street at about 8 p.m. Aug. 2 by family members who were concerned after she failed to show up at a family function that evening, according to the LAPD.

    “When officers and Los Angeles Fire Department personnel arrived, they discovered the deceased victim burned in her bedroom, which showed extensive signs of arson,” police said.

    “The subsequent investigation revealed the victim was brutally murdered, having suffered sharp and blunt force injuries, and (was) strangled during a home invasion robbery sometime between the evening prior on August 1 … to the horrific discovery the next day,” police said.

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    City News Service

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  • Man convicted, sentenced to life in prison for murder of Denver community leader Ma Kaing

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    A second man convicted of first-degree murder in the fatal East Colfax shooting of community leader Ma Kaing was sentenced to life in prison on Friday, the Denver District Attorney’s Office said.

    Pa Reh, 21, will spend the rest of his life in the Colorado Department of Corrections without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence after he was convicted of first-degree murder by a Denver jury in July.

    Reh was one of four men charged in Kaing’s death in the 1300 block of Xenia Street in July 2022, which sparked community outrage and calls for change in how 911 calls are handled by phone companies.

    Kaing, 42, was unloading dessert from her car outside her family’s apartment building when Reh and three others began shooting at a passing car driven by people they had a dispute with.

    She died at the scene in her son’s arms.

    Kaing’s family, friends and community have described her as a vital part of the East Colfax neighborhood, where she served on the neighborhood association’s board of directors, volunteered at a nearby food bank and was quick to help anyone in need.

    Kaing and her family had opened Taw Win Thai and Burmese Restaurant just six months before her death.

    “Her murder was an unspeakable tragedy for her family, for her immigrant community and, frankly, for all of us in Denver,” Denver District Attorney John Walsh said in a statement Friday. “…That sentence cannot bring Ma Kaing back, but it can send the powerful message that violence will not be tolerated in Denver.”

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    Katie Langford

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  • Texas Gov. Abbott vows to approve GOP-leaning congressional voting map

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    AUSTIN, Texas — Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Saturday promised to quickly sign off on a new, Republican-leaning congressional voting map gerrymandered to help the GOP maintain its slim majority in Congress.

    “One Big Beautiful Map has passed the Senate and is on its way to my desk, where it will be swiftly signed into law,” Abbott said in a statement.

    Texas lawmakers approved the final plans just hours before, inflaming an already tense battle unfolding among states as governors from both parties pledge to redraw maps with the goal of giving their political candidates a leg up in the 2026 midterm elections.

    In California, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has approved a special election to take place in November for residents to vote on a redrawn congressional map designed to help Democrats win five more House seats next year.

    Meanwhile, President Donald Trump has pushed other Republican-controlled states, including Indiana and Missouri, to also revise their maps to add more winnable GOP seats. Ohio Republicans were also already scheduled to revise their maps to make them more partisan.

    In Texas, the map includes five new districts that would favor Republicans.

    The effort by Trump and Texas’ Republican-majority Legislature prompted state Democrats to hold a two-week walkout and kicked off a wave of redistricting efforts across the country.

    Democrats had prepared for a final show of resistance, with plans to push the Senate vote into the early morning hours in a last-ditch attempt to delay passage. Yet Republicans blocked those efforts by citing a rule violation.

    “What we have seen in this redistricting process has been maneuvers and mechanisms to shut down people’s voices,” said state Sen. Carol Alvarado, leader of the Senate Democratic caucus, on social media after the new map was finalized by the GOP-controlled Senate.

    Democrats had already delayed the bill’s passage during hours of debate, pressing Republican Sen. Phil King, the measure’s sponsor, on the proposal’s legality, with many alleging that the redrawn districts violate the Voting Rights Act by diluting voters’ influence based on race.

    King vehemently denied that accusation, saying, “I had two goals in mind: That all maps would be legal and would be better for Republican congressional candidates in Texas.”

    “There is extreme risk the Republican majority will be lost” in the House if the map does not pass, King said.

    On a national level, the partisan makeup of existing districts puts Democrats within three seats of a majority. The incumbent president’s party usually loses seats in the midterms.

    The Texas redraw is already reshaping the 2026 race, with Democratic Rep. Lloyd Doggett, the dean of the state’s congressional delegation, announcing Thursday that he will not seek reelection to his Austin-based seat if the new map takes effect. Under the proposed map, Doggett’s district would overlap with that of another Democratic incumbent, Rep. Greg Casar.

    Redistricting typically occurs once a decade, immediately after a census. While some states have their own limitations, there is no national impediment to a state trying to redraw districts in the middle of the decade.

    The U.S. Supreme Court in 2019 ruled that the Constitution does not prohibit partisan gerrymandering to increase a party’s clout, only gerrymandering that’s explicitly done by race.

    More Democratic-run states have commission systems like California’s or other redistricting limits than Republican ones do, leaving the GOP with a freer hand to swiftly redraw maps. New York, for example, cannot draw new maps until 2028, and even then only with voter approval.

    Republicans and some Democrats championed a 2008 ballot measure that established California’s nonpartisan redistricting commission, along with a 2010 one that extended its role to drawing congressional maps.

    Both sides have shown concern over what the redistricting war could lead to.

    California Assemblyman James Gallagher, the Republican minority leader, said Trump was “wrong” to push for new Republican seats elsewhere. But he warned that Newsom’s approach, which the governor has dubbed “fight fire with fire,” is dangerous.

    “You move forward fighting fire with fire, and what happens?” Gallagher asked. “You burn it all down.”

    ___

    Cappelletti reported from Washington and Golden from Seattle. Associated Press writer Kimberlee Kruesi contributed to this report from Providence, Rhode Island.

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