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  • 8 convicted in Texas immigration center shooting and protest are sentenced to decades in prison

    FORT WORTH, Texas — Eight protesters accused by the Justice Department of having ties to antifa were sentenced Tuesday to decades in federal prison over a shooting outside a Texas immigration detention center that wounded a police officer and that prosecutors called an act of terrorism.

    One of the defendants, a former U.S. Marine Corps reservist convicted of opening fire during the July 4 demonstration outside the Prairieland Detention Center near Dallas, was sentenced to 100 years in prison, the maximum punishment.

    The lengthy sentences were condemned by family members and supporters in a news conference outside the federal courthouse in Fort Worth. Hope Song, whose son Benjamin Song received the heftiest sentence, disputed prosecutors’ claims that her son shot the officer and said he didn’t intend to hurt anyone.

    U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor, one of two judges overseeing the proceedings, said what happened wasn’t a protest but “an assault on democracy.”

    “The need to deter this type of conduct is high,” O’Connor said.

    The seven other protesters received prison terms ranging from 30 to 70 years.

    Prosecutors said the eight are members of antifa, a decentralized anti-fascist organization and a target of the Trump administration. Antifa is not a single organization but rather an umbrella term for far-left militant groups that confront or resist neo-Nazis and white supremacists at demonstrations.

    President Donald Trump last fall signed an executive order designating antifa a domestic terrorist organization, even though there is no domestic equivalent to the State Department’s list of foreign terror organizations.

    The defendants deny any affiliation with antifa and maintain they attended the demonstration in support of detained immigrants.

    Prosecutor Frank Gatto urged the judge to impose stiff penalties.

    “People with that kind of extremist beliefs need extra time in prison,” Gatto said. “They believe violence is justified.”

    Phillip Hayes, Song’s attorney, said outside the courthouse that he takes issue with the idea that the protesters are extremists.

    “This is a bunch of kids and young adults who really have a really big heart and really wanted their voice to be heard,” Hayes said. “It was never intended that anybody get hurt. It was never intended that any shots would be fired.”

    Prosecutors said in court that Song had yelled “get to the rifles” and opened fire, striking a police officer who had just pulled up to the center.

    Hayes argued that Song’s shots were “suppressive fire” and that a ricochet bullet hit the officer after he arrived on the scene and “aggressively” pulled out his firearm. He said his client will appeal the 100-year sentence.

    “Song, aside from this day, has had an impeccable life. A former Marine. A good student,” Hayes said. “He had a lot of good qualities that were just ignored. The judge went ahead and gave as much as he could.”

    Other defendants and their family members pleaded for leniency in court.

    Autumn Hill said the gathering “seemed more like a party to me than anything else” and that she and others who participated ”didn’t expect or want any violence or destruction of property to occur.”

    Amber Lowrey told the judge that her sister, Savanna Batten, is a compassionate person with dreams of opening a bakery. She said Batten’s activism started with animal rights and evolved into anti-war and human rights advocacy.

    “She’s the best person I know,” Lowrey said.

    Hill and Batten both received 50-year sentences.

    Other defendants previously pleaded guilty to providing material support to terrorists rather than take their case to trial.

    Critics warn the case could have wide-reaching impact on protests given that organizations operating within the U.S. are supposed to be protected by First Amendment free-speech rights.

    Last week, federal prosecutors charged 15 people with impeding the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown in Minnesota. They claimed the demonstrators were members of antifa who conspired against the federal government to block arrests and deportations by setting up blockades around government buildings and throwing chunks of ice at federal vehicles, among other actions.

  • New photos show first look at Kennedy Center facade without Trump’s name

    New photos show first look at Kennedy Center facade without Trump’s name

    New photos show that President Donald Trump’s name is indeed off the Kennedy Center, offering the first public look at the performing arts venue’s facade since crews removed the letters by court order.

    The images were taken last week inside the tarp-covered scaffolding that has hidden the title of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for the nine days since crews removed Trump’s name. The images were first provided to the Washington Post by the activist group Hands Off the Arts before being independently obtained and verified by the Post.

    “This is the picture the Trump administration does not want anyone to see, so it’s all the more important … that people have an opportunity to witness when they’re winning,” said Mallory Miller, co-founder of Hands Off the Arts.

    On June 12, a 14-member crew erected scaffolding to comply with a court-ordered deadline to remove Trump’s name. The workers missed the deadline, taking down the letters around 3 a.m. Saturday. The Kennedy Center’s lawyers confirmed in a court filing later that morning the work was done.

    But the center left the scaffolding and tarps in place. For nine days, barricades manned by security guards have kept people from approaching and blocked any view of the exterior.

    The new photos show two rows of blank square panels, with black lettering just visible below. In older photos, Trump’s name occupied the bottom of the two blank rows.

    In a statement last week, Kennedy Center spokesperson Roma Daravi said the tarps and scaffolding “will remain up as crews address maintenance needs of the marble and soffit panels.”

    On Friday, lawyers for Rep. Joyce Beatty (D., Ohio), an ex officio board member whose lawsuit led to the removal, accused Trump and his allies on the board of “willfully sabotaging Kennedy Center’s iconic façade to assuage Defendants’ vanity or massage broken egos.”

    The trustees “appear to be actively undermining the restoration of the Kennedy Center’s name, in a petty act of defiance,” they wrote.

    On Monday night, House Democrats on the Transportation and Infrastructure Committee, which oversees the Kennedy Center and other federal buildings, said the center should take down “the shame scaffolding.”

    “Now that the Courts have compelled President Trump to take his name off another man’s Memorial,” they said in an X post, “it’s time for a return to normalcy.”

  • Supreme Court says Rastafarian can’t sue prison officials over shorn dreadlocks

    The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled a Rastafarian can’t pursue a lawsuit against prison officials who forcibly sheared his dreadlocks in violation of a court order while he was incarcerated at a facility in Louisiana.

    In a 6-3 ruling along ideological lines, the justices found Damon Landor could not sue prison officials as individuals under a 2000 federal law that requires states to protect the religious rights of prisoners in state institutions.

    Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, who wrote the majority opinion, found prison officials could not be held personally liable in most instances for violations of religious rights under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA). The ruling centered on the technicalities of the law.

    “Under the Spending Clause, Congress lacks regulatory authority to impose liability on them directly and must depend instead on consent,” Gorsuch wrote of the prison officials. “And because they never agreed to answer suits like this one, Mr. Landor’s case cannot proceed against them any more than a breach of contract action might proceed against a defendant who never formed a contract.”

    The ruling came over the objections of the court’s liberals, who said barring a remedy for a violation would render the law toothless.

    “Prisoners like Landor who suffer violations of their religious freedom in state prisons — no matter how blatant — will often be left remediless,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote for the liberals. “And encroachments on prisoners’ statutory rights are likely to happen with fair frequency, as state-empowered prison officials will have little incentive to abide by federal law, even if it is handed to them on a piece of paper.”

    She added: “We took this case to address whether Landor can seek money damages from the officials who ignored the law, held him down, and ‘uncrowned him before God.’”

    The ruling dealt with the question of who can be held liable under the RLUIPA but departed from a series of decisions by the Supreme Court expanding religious freedoms in recent terms, including allowing religious parents to opt their children out of lessons featuring LGBTQ+ books, permitting a football coach to pray on a field at a public high school, and protecting a Christian web designer who did not want to serve same-sex couples.

    That trend has pushed up against another set of court decisions limiting the ability of prisoners to obtain compensation for ill treatment in custody.

    Landor’s case began in 2020, when he arrived at the Raymond Laborde Correctional Center to serve out a term for drug possession. The two previous facilities in which Landor was incarcerated allowed him to keep his dreadlocks, a symbol of his religious devotion that he had grown for roughly 20 years and that reached nearly to his knees.

    At Laborde, Landor told a prison guard about his faith and presented him a copy of a court decision that found RLUIPA prevented Louisiana prisons from forcing Rastafarians to cut their hair.

    The guard threw the ruling in the trash.

    Despite pleading with the warden, Landor was handcuffed to a chair and held down by two correctional officers, who trimmed his dreadlocks. Landor was devastated, because lengthy dreadlocks are seen as a physical embodiment of Rastafarians’ religious commitment to God.

    After Landor finished his term, he sued under RLUIPA. He also filed claims in state court for negligence, infliction of emotional distress, and violation of the Louisiana Constitution.

    Congress enacted RLUIPA under the Constitution’s spending clause, requiring state corrections departments to comply with the law’s provisions in order to receive federal money. The law includes a provision that allows individuals to sue to enforce the law’s requirements.

    Landor’s case raised the issue of whether the law also allows people to sue prison officials for damages in their personal capacity. In 2011, the Supreme Court ruled it did not authorize claims against state prison officials in their official capacities, so the one remaining avenue for Landor to collect damages in federal court for his treatment was to sue officials personally.

    Zack Tripp, an attorney for Landor, told the justices during arguments in November that allowing suits such as Landor’s would be an effective deterrent to prevent the abuse of prisoners’ rights. If defendants cannot collect damages, he said, prison officials “can treat the law like garbage.”

    “It is the poster child for RLUIPA violation,” Tripp said of Landor’s case.

    In filings, Landor’s lawyers also pointed out that the Supreme Court held in 2020 that a “sister statute” of RLUIPA, employing the same language, does allow a plaintiff to sue a government official in his or her individual capacity for damages for religious discrimination.

    The Louisiana attorney general and Department of Public Safety and Corrections wrote in briefs that the state “condemns” in “the strongest possible terms” what happened to Landor. They said they have changed grooming policy in response to the incident.

    The state argued that allowing suits for damages, however, could open the door to lawsuits being filed against individual government officials in other areas of federal law, such as Title IX, the landmark statute that prohibits sex discrimination in education.

    A federal judge and an appeals court ruled against Landor, finding the law did not allow him to sue officials for damages in their individual capacities. All other federal courts that have examined the issue have come to the same conclusion.

    Landor is still able to pursue his claims in state court.

  • Giannis Antetokounmpo getting traded to Heat in blockbuster, AP source says

    MIAMI — Giannis Antetokounmpo wants more championships. So do the Miami Heat.

    And the Heat finally have another superstar.

    Ending a marathon watch for the next great Miami get, the Heat landed Antetokounmpo — a two-time NBA MVP and 10-time All-Star — from the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday night in exchange for a massive haul of players and draft picks.

    The terms, according to a person who spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the move has yet to receive the required league approval: Antetokounmpo and Bobby Portis are heading to Miami for Wisconsin native Tyler Herro, Jaime Jaquez Jr., Kel’el Ware and Kasparas Jakucionis. Milwaukee also gets at least four picks, including the No. 13 selection that will be made in Tuesday night’s NBA draft.

    It ends a wild back-and-forth in the final days of the saga, with the Bucks considering offers from both Miami and Boston for Antetokounmpo — who led Milwaukee to the 2021 NBA title, was on the NBA’s 75th anniversary list of its greatest players ever, is a nine-time All-NBA selection and is coming off an injury-shortened season where he averaged 27.6 points per game.

    There has been no secret that this is what Miami has sought, because this is what Miami usually seeks. The Heat pulled off similar moves by landing Shaquille O’Neal in 2004 (helping lead to the 2006 NBA title) and by getting LeBron James and Chris Bosh to play alongside Dwyane Wade in 2010 (leading to four NBA Finals runs in four seasons together, along with the 2012 and 2013 NBA titles).

    Now, it’s Antetokounmpo’s turn. At 31, the Heat clearly believe he still has many good years left — and it’s generally presumed that by making this deal they’ll give the Greek superstar a massive extension later this year.

  • Clive Davis, recording executive and star-maker, dies at 94

    Clive Davis, recording executive and star-maker, dies at 94

    When Clive Davis showed up at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967, he was a 35-year-old New York corporate lawyer and the newly appointed head of Columbia Records. Knowing “nothing about music,” he said, had not disqualified him from running the staid record company best known for classical recordings, Mitch Miller sing-along pop novelties, and Broadway cast albums.

    Grainy film footage from the festival shows him in the crowd, with his black glasses, receding hairline, and a white V-neck tennis sweater. Amid the long-haired, tie-dyed “Summer of Love” hippies, “I was the one who looked weird,” Mr. Davis said in a 2017 Netflix documentary about his life. “I was blown away.”

    The second act on the stage that day was Big Brother and the Holding Company, a San Francisco rock band fronted by Janis Joplin. “She was hypnotic,” Mr. Davis recalled of the then little-known singer. “I felt my spine tingle, my arms vibrate. I was overcome with emotion. This wasn’t just a social revolution, this was a musical revolution.”

    Mr. Davis persuaded Joplin to sign a contract with Columbia, then politely declined her offer for a celebratory sexual encounter, he wrote in an autobiography. She became the first of a legion of artists he would launch or rejuvenate into superstardom over a five-decade career in entertainment. The roster included Barry Manilow, Simon & Garfunkel, Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash, Aretha Franklin, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, Aerosmith, Barbra Streisand, Miles Davis, the Grateful Dead, Patti Smith, Whitney Houston, Alicia Keys, and Carlos Santana.

    Mr. Davis, 94, an unlikely tastemaker who stoked the star-making machinery longer and more successfully than most of his rivals and became one of the most powerful executives in the recording industry, died June 22, his family posted on social media.

    “To the world, our father was the iconic music legend whose vision, instincts, and relentless pursuit of excellence shaped the soundtrack of countless lives,” Mr. Davis’ family wrote on Facebook. “He discovered, mentored, and championed the greatest artists in modern music history, leaving an indelible mark on culture that will endure for generations.”

    A winner of multiple Grammy Awards and inductee of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Mr. Davis ran Columbia Records and later Arista Records, the latter a small label he built into an industry powerhouse. During his 25 years at Arista, he guided 200 singles to No. 1 on the Billboard charts. In 2000, his final year at Arista before being pushed aside, the company had more than $1 billion in revenue.

    Eye for musical talent

    Mr. Davis had an uncanny knack for spotting and adopting musical trends and embracing emerging young talent. “He has the mind of a banker and the ears of a teenager,” Manilow once said.

    Jann Wenner, founder of Rolling Stone magazine, said in an interview for this obituary that Mr. Davis “was instrumental in bringing modern white rock of my generation to the forefront” and developed a remarkable ear for music.

    “Clive once told me that he would take all the records in the top 100 home every weekend, and he listened to every single one of them,” Wenner said. “I never heard of anybody doing that so methodically. He kept abreast of everything commercial that was going on. He just loved it.”

    Music was decidedly not in his blood, Mr. Davis readily admitted in his 2013 autobiography, The Soundtrack of My Life, co-authored with Anthony DeCurtis. His taste in high school ran toward Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra, and rock and roll had no appeal at all. He credited his visit to the Monterey Pop Festival as a turning point. Going there, he wrote, “I didn’t realize at all that I possessed skills that might ultimately distinguish me: the ability to recognize and nurture new artists; to help those artists create their best work; to bring that work to the marketplace and have it make a powerful impact.”

    He was instrumental in turning 19-year-old Houston into an international star after signing her in 1983, and he shepherded her career until her accidental drowning in a hotel bathtub, in 2012, on the day of Mr. Davis’ annual pre-Grammy party in Los Angeles. She had been a close friend — and was his most successful protégé, even though drug addiction and the pressures of fame undermined her career — and her death affected Mr. Davis deeply.

    Mr. Davis’ detractors criticized his obsession with hits and chart-topping singles, which they said he sometimes pursued at the cost of artistic considerations.

    “His energy, his testosterone, all his hormones were ignited by having the biggest No. 1 records,” singer-songwriter Carly Simon, an Arista artist who generally lauded Mr. Davis’s talents, told the New York Times in 2017. “He is on the side of the winner at all costs, and the cost can be very high.”

    At Columbia, Mr. Davis turned the company into a premier rock label and brought millions of dollars in revenue to CBS, the parent company. He was stunned when, in 1973, he was called into the office of Arthur R. Taylor, then CBS president, and fired for allegedly using $94,000 in corporate money to renovate his Central Park West apartment and for his son’s bar mitzvah.

    Mr. Davis denied the allegations. He accused a personal assistant of forging signatures, falsifying invoices, and committing other misdeeds involving his corporate account without his knowledge. His ouster coincided with housecleaning at CBS amid a larger grand-jury probe of payola and drugs — “drugola” — in the record business.

    In 1976, Mr. Davis pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in Manhattan to one count of tax evasion for having failed to report $8,800 that the record company had paid for non-business-related trips. Other charges were dismissed, and he received a suspended sentence and paid a $10,000 fine. He later called the experience “the most humiliating moment of my life.”

    Mr. Davis staged a comeback by writing (with journalist James Willwerth) Clive: Inside the Record Business (1974), a best-selling account of his time in the music industry. That same year, he was lured to the failing Bell Records division of Columbia Pictures (no relation to Columbia Records).

    He rechristened the company Arista, the name of his Brooklyn high school honor society, and set out to build a top-notch team of industry veterans to grow the label. He signed artists such as Gil Scott-Heron, Lou Rawls, and Melanie, holding on to only two entertainers in Bell’s lineup — Melissa Manchester and the talented but still largely undiscovered Manilow.

    Mr. Davis embarked on an ultimately successful effort to remake Manilow into a defining pop star of the 1970s. This undertaking involved persuading Manilow to record songs that he hadn’t written but that could be propelled into hit singles. Among them was “Brandy” — soon renamed “Mandy” — that charted in 1975.

    In a key moment in their sometimes contentious relationship, Mr. Davis handed Manilow a number called “I Write the Songs.” Manilow, who considered it ludicrous to record a song with such a title when he had not written it, initially refused. His resentment festered and eventually led to an argument that ended with Mr. Davis declaring, “Well, if you were Irving Berlin, we would know it by now!”

    Even Manilow conceded Mr. Davis’s inerrant judgment when it came to matching a voice to music. “Clive believed it would be a number one record for me, that it would be a signature song,” he told Newsday in 1990. “And he was right.”

    Profound loss

    Clive Jay Davis was born in Brooklyn on April 4, 1932. His father was an electrician and, later, a traveling tie salesperson. His mother, with whom Mr. Davis was extremely close, died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 47 when Mr. Davis was 18 and a scholarship student at New York University.

    “It was the most profound loss of my life,” he wrote in his memoir. Eleven months later, his father died at 56 after a heart attack. Mr. Davis later said that losing both parents at such a young age left him with the sense that anything he loved and embraced in life could be taken away in an instant. But those losses also served to propel Mr. Davis’s career, leaving him with a resilient survivor’s instinct to push forward.

    After graduating from NYU in 1953, Mr. Davis received a scholarship that enabled him to attend Harvard Law School. He completed his law degree in 1956 and briefly worked at a New York law firm whose clients included CBS and its then-chairperson, William S. Paley. Mr. Davis joined Columbia Records in 1960 as an in-house counsel.

    In his autobiography, Mr. Davis revealed that he was bisexual and, later in life, had been in a long monogamous relationships with male partners.

    In an industry replete with ego and massive financial rewards, Mr. Davis’ longevity was remarkable. At Arista, he reinvigorated R&B singer Franklin’s stalled career, branched into rap and hip-hop, and launched Patti Smith when she was a young poet. He also survived the uproar that ensued when it was discovered that the German R&B duo Milli Vanilli hadn’t done the singing on its debut album and had lip-synced songs during TV and concert appearances.

    “Clive just seems to be ever-growing,” said Franklin in a 1996 Los Angeles Times interview. “He loves the music and appreciates his artists. He’s not just kicking back somewhere counting his money. He is a consummate record man who is constantly involved.”

    But in 2000, Mr. Davis was unexpectedly replaced by the head of BMG Music, Arista’s parent company, to make room for a younger leader. Mr. Davis refused to take a secondary role and threatened to leave. Startled at the thought of losing him, the head of BMG’s North American operations immediately offered to let Mr. Davis launch his own label with an initial investment from BMG of $150 million.

    Mr. Davis would get 50% of the profits, and he could take five major Arista artists with him. He founded J Records (after his middle name). In 2008, Mr. Davis became chief creative officer for Sony Music Entertainment.

    He liked to point out that he hadn’t dreamed of a career in music, especially one with such an extraordinary outcome. A 2001 Washington Post profile noted that he never stopped feeling “ravenous” for winning singles. “It’s always like the first day,” he said, “and it’s always like the first year. It’s not a chore, it’s just a particular mental attitude. I take none of this for granted.”

  • Israel holds to Lebanon truce, with troops kept on defense

    Israel holds to Lebanon truce, with troops kept on defense

    JERUSALEM — Israel and Hezbollah appeared to maintain a tense ceasefire in Lebanon for a second day on Monday, as mediators in the U.S.-Iran talks announced a mechanism aimed at ensuring the truce holds, and Israeli troops operated under new orders designed to lower the risk of flare-ups.

    Israel’s top diplomat, however, warned that the country would not withdraw its forces from the self-declared “security zone” it has established in Lebanon up to about 6 miles north of the border.

    “Israel will respect the ceasefire in Lebanon as long as it won’t be breached by Hezbollah,” Foreign Minister Gideon Saar wrote in a social media post on Monday. “We don’t have territorial ambitions in Lebanon, but we will not withdraw from the security zone and expose our citizens to Hezbollah’s attacks and possible invasion.”

    Saar’s post came hours after Pakistan and Qatar, the mediators in the U.S.-Iran talks, announced an agreement to create a “deconfliction cell” to ensure the “adherence of the termination of military operations in Lebanon.” It would include representatives from Iran, the United States, and Lebanon.

    The quiet on the Lebanon front was still settling in after a furious round of hostilities on Friday and Saturday that began when four Israeli soldiers, including a battalion commander, were killed when their tank exploded.

    A fifth soldier was killed in the same area Saturday, setting off waves of Israeli retaliatory strikes. The military said Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group, had launched more than 50 rockets targeting its soldiers operating in southern Lebanon.

    The fighting centered around the area of Kfar Tebnit and nearby Ali Taher, a strategic ridgeline overlooking the large city of Nabatiyeh in southern Lebanon. The Israeli military recently issued an updated map of its security zone that placed Kfar Tebnit and Ali Taher just within the area under Israeli control.

    That appeared to be more than coincidental.

    The Israeli military said that Ali Taher was the location of a fortified underground Hezbollah stronghold that has long served as the militia’s southern headquarters from which it directed fire against Israeli forces and communities in northern Israel.

    Should the militants inside try to leave that stronghold without surrendering, it could pose a threat to the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire.

    Ceasefires in Lebanon have been declared, broken, and reinstated numerous times in recent weeks, but the fighting has persisted amid disagreements over what constitutes defensive actions by Israeli forces.

    An Israeli military statement Monday said that it had gained control of the area of the Hezbollah compound and encircled it, adding that “dozens of Hezbollah operatives are currently trapped with no ability to exit.”

    Hezbollah said Saturday that it had attacked Israeli forces advancing toward Ali Taher.

    Later on Saturday, the Israeli military said it had received “updated directives” from the country’s political leaders and would no longer be “conducting proactive strikes” in Lebanon. The military reserved the right to respond if Hezbollah did not abide by the ceasefire and targeted Israeli troops or civilians.

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu insisted in a video statement Monday that his directive to the military, and that of the defense minister, remained clear and unchanged: “Our fighters in southern Lebanon have full operational freedom to thwart any direct or emergent threat against them or residents of the north.”

    He did not address whether the military had been ordered to refrain from offensive action, and a spokesperson would not elaborate.

    Israeli commanders received new orders Saturday restricting them to defensive actions in Lebanon, stating that troops may only fire to counter an immediate threat unless authorized by the military’s chief of staff.

    The new orders specifically bar Israeli soldiers from firing warning shots at civilians attempting to return to southern Lebanon unless they get too close to the soldiers, according to two Israeli officials who insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

    The orders also bar Israeli soldiers from blowing up homes and other infrastructure inside the security zone without the approval of senior officers, the officials said.

    Spokespeople for the military did not respond to repeated requests for comment Monday.

    Sarit Zehavi, president of the Alma Research and Education Center, which focuses on Israel’s northern border, said she feared that the ban on offensive operations would put Israeli soldiers in the position of having to be responsive rather than proactive.

    “On the ground, it takes time till you understand what’s a threat,” she said. “This will eventually cost the lives of soldiers.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • First round of U.S.-Iran talks ends with high hopes and big challenges

    ZURICH — The morning after the first overnight session of renewed talks between the United States and Iran, aimed at turning an incomplete truce into a lasting peace deal, the vibes were as warm as the heat wave currently washing over Switzerland.

    Mediators from Pakistan and Qatar said early Monday that Vice President JD Vance and his Iranian counterparts had made “encouraging progress” toward the goal of cementing a final peace agreement within 60 days. Swiss officials called the outcome “constructive.”

    “Yesterday was a very, very good day,” Vance told reporters Monday afternoon. “We made a lot of good progress. We did exactly what we wanted to do.”

    He added that Iran had promised to readmit nuclear inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency, a U.N. watchdog, though Iran did not immediately confirm that.

    But other details that emerged from the luxury Bürgenstock Resort Lake Lucerne suggested that the discussions over the next two months could still prove difficult and that efforts to reach a deal could proceed in fits and starts.

    Iran’s delegation, headed by the speaker of parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, walked away from the table Sunday to protest a social media post from President Donald Trump that threatened to resume U.S. attacks on Iran if a deal did not come together. They eventually returned.

    Perhaps more important were the still-unresolved topics that appear to have dominated much of the conversation.

    The 60-day window, which was established by the initial memorandum of understanding that Trump and Iran’s president signed last week, was meant to be a period for Iran and the United States to solve crucial issues left out of that first-step deal. Most notably, that includes Iran’s nuclear ambitions. The memorandum says that Iran will dilute its existing stockpile of near-weapons-grade nuclear material but does not clarify how that will happen or whether the country will be barred from producing such material in the future.

    Those issues were not center stage, aside from Vance’s mention of the IAEA inspectors, whose return would still be far from a solution to the nuclear question.

    Instead, the first talks focused largely on two topics that were supposed to be settled: How to enforce a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, and how to ensure shipping traffic, including oil tankers, flows freely again through the Strait of Hormuz.

    Israel launched the war on Iran alongside the United States in February and was not party to last week’s initial deal. Despite the deal’s call for a ceasefire, both Israel and Hezbollah have continued to carry out attacks on each other. Iran protested Israel’s attacks over the weekend by saying that it had closed the Strait of Hormuz — which has been clogged throughout the war, sending global oil prices skyward — though U.S. officials said that ships were still passing through.

    Mediators from Qatar and Pakistan, who joined Iranian and U.S. officials at Lake Lucerne, said Monday morning that discussions would continue through this week.

    Some analysts warned Monday against an overly optimistic takeaway.

    Financial markets had reacted to Trump’s initial agreement with Iran “with a classic show of irrational exuberance,” Carl B. Weinberg, the chief economist for High Frequency Economics, an American analysis firm, wrote in a research note Monday morning. “This week should bring a reality check,” he noted.

    Weinberg added that he believed Iran was likely to string out the talks for much longer than 60 days — all the way until January 2029, when the next U.S. president will take office.

    The stop-start nature of the negotiations has heightened the uncertainty.

    Vance had been scheduled to fly to Switzerland on Thursday night, but canceled the trip at the last minute after Iran pulled out in protest, diplomats said, at continuing Israeli attacks in Lebanon.

    Nothing in the statements from the mediators, or from Iranian officials, suggested that the negotiations were barreling toward the sort of quick capitulation that Trump has intimated would be the endgame for the talks. For example, Qalibaf wrote on social media that Iran’s “armed forces are prepared to respond” if Trump attacked Iran again — raising the possibility of more war.

    Still, the releases from the mediators and hosts conveyed, at the very least, a sense that the talks had succeeded in starting the gears of a more traditional diplomatic process.

    Qatar and Pakistan said that the discussions had led to “the creation of a mechanism for further technical talks.” Swiss authorities said that the parties had agreed to “a road map aimed at reaching a final agreement within 60 days.”

    “Our aim,” Swiss officials wrote, “is that our diplomacy contributes to de-escalation, stability and peace.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Supreme Court restores conviction in 1979 murder of Etan Patz

    Supreme Court restores conviction in 1979 murder of Etan Patz

    NEW YORK — The Supreme Court on Monday reversed a lower court decision that had reopened the case of the man convicted in the killing of Etan Patz, a 6-year-old boy whose 1979 abduction in Manhattan reshaped American childhoods.

    The court’s unsigned opinion restores the conviction of the man, Pedro Hernandez, who the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals had said last year was entitled to a new trial.

    The three liberal justices — Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson — noted their objection to the majority’s order.

    Hernandez was found guilty in 2017 of kidnapping and murdering Etan, but an appeals court overturned that judgment in July. Months later, the Manhattan district attorney’s office, which prosecuted Hernandez, asked the nation’s highest court to review the decision.

    On Monday, a defense lawyer for Hernandez, Harvey Fishbein, said the Supreme Court’s order meant his client would not get a new trial and that his team was “terribly disappointed.”

    “We firmly believe that an innocent man is in jail for a crime that he did not commit,” Fishbein said.

    In a statement, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said the case had “changed a generation of New Yorkers.”

    “This office has remained steadfast in its pursuit of justice for Etan and the Patz family and will continue to stand by this important conviction,” he said.

    The Supreme Court’s action sends the matter back to the lower courts and is the latest development in a case that stumped investigators for decades. Hernandez, a handyman who lived in New Jersey, was arrested in 2012 and first put on trial in 2015. But after 18 days of deliberations, the trial ended in a hung jury. The case went back to trial and, in 2017, a Manhattan jury convicted Hernandez after nine days of deliberations.

    The reversal of Hernandez’s conviction last year reopened a case that had appeared finally settled. From the first days Etan went missing, when he was walking the two blocks from his home in the SoHo neighborhood to a school bus stop, the case generated intense public interest. Etan’s abrupt disappearance — and the killing of 6-year-old Adam Walsh two years later — ushered in an era of heightened caution among American parents.

    In its 10-page opinion Monday, the Supreme Court said the 2nd Circuit got it wrong and exceeded its authority.

    The lower court opinion “appears to reflect serious doubt about the reliability of Hernandez’s confessions,” the majority said, but the relevant statute does not permit federal courts to “disturb a state-court conviction based on such an evaluation of the evidence.”

    The liberal justices did not explain their disagreement. The ruling was issued as part of the court’s routine orders and without the justices holding oral arguments.

    For decades, investigators in Manhattan struggled to figure out what happened to Etan. His body was never found, and in 2001, he was declared legally dead.

    The critical break in the case came in 2012, when one of Hernandez’s relatives contacted investigators. New York police officers traveled to Hernandez’s home in Camden, N.J. After about seven hours of questioning, police said, Hernandez confessed — first before being read his rights, and twice more after.

    Hernandez was 18 at the time of Etan’s disappearance and worked at a bodega where investigators believed Etan had been killed.

    There was no scientific evidence linking Hernandez to the crime, and his confessions to investigators were quickly called into question.

    Hernandez’s lawyers argued that the statements were invented to placate the police. They asked the court to suppress them, saying they were a result of Hernandez’s low IQ and the product of psychotic delusions. The judge nonetheless said that they could be used as evidence.

    During jury deliberations at the second trial in 2017, the jury asked the judge whether they should disregard one of Hernandez’s later confessions if they found that his first one was not voluntary. The judge gave a one-word answer: No.

    A federal appeals court found that the judge should have explained a Supreme Court precedent about such serial confessions and ordered that Hernandez be released from his 25-years-to-life sentence or get a new trial.

    Prosecutors in Manhattan, led by Bragg, argued to the Supreme Court that Hernandez’s conviction should not have been overturned because it was not based on an “error in the decades-long investigation, in the admission of Hernandez’s confessions or in the evidence presented at trial.” The appeals court had said that the judge overseeing the trial, Maxwell Wiley, had violated federal law and therefore invalidated a jury’s verdict.

    In their response, Hernandez’s lawyers said that the judge’s instruction to the jury had touched on the central issue in the case.

    “Far from exhibiting the kind of clear error for which summary reversal is typically reserved,” his lawyers wrote, “the 2nd Circuit’s decision is correct.”

    This article originally appeared in the New York Times.

  • Why Trump has been attacking the Supreme Court, with 3 key rulings ahead

    Why Trump has been attacking the Supreme Court, with 3 key rulings ahead

    When Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch hosted a gathering of his former clerks last year, a prominent attorney and Donald Trump ally who had played a key role in Gorsuch’s rise was notably absent.

    Gorsuch had nicknamed his friend Mike Davis “the general” for helping him secure his first federal judgeship, leading a campaign to get Gorsuch confirmed to the Supreme Court, and then serving as one of his inaugural clerks.

    But the relationship soured last year as the Supreme Court began to rule on some of Trump’s policies, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive issue.

    One recounted how Gorsuch became upset when Davis lashed out at Justice Amy Coney Barrett, calling her a “rattled law professor” for siding with the court’s liberals in a pair of rulings against Trump. The other said Davis was angered by Gorsuch’s vote to block Trump’s use of a wartime authority to deport Venezuelans.

    The people differed on whether Gorsuch had asked Davis not to come to his clerks’ gathering or he chose not to. Either way, the rift highlighted the growing conflict between Trump, his MAGA allies, and the justices, which has burst more fully into public view in recent months.

    That turbulence makes for a tense backdrop in the waning days of the Supreme Court’s 2025-26 term, as the justices prepare to rule on three signature Trump initiatives: limiting birthright citizenship, firing the heads of independent agencies, and reshaping the Federal Reserve.

    Many legal experts believe that the justices have signaled they will rule against Trump on two out of the three, blocking his bid to deny citizenship to those who were born to parents here illegally or lacking permanent residency, as well as his effort to remove a governor of the Fed board.

    “It seems like almost 100 years since you’ve had a clash approaching this level between the president and the court,” said Jeffrey L. Fisher, a law professor at Stanford University. “You’d have to go back to the New Deal to have any kind of an analogue.”

    During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt tried to pack the court by expanding it from nine justices to 15 after the court struck down key parts of the New Deal. The plan ultimately failed, but not before the court began upholding some policies that Roosevelt championed, possibly in response to his threats to add justices.

    Davis, who declined to comment on his relationship with Gorsuch, said in an interview that if the court rules against Trump on birthright citizenship, as he expects, it would be an inflection point. Birthright citizenship is the principle that nearly everyone born on U.S. soil is a citizen.

    “When the Supreme Court gives Chinese birth tourists birthright citizenship, it’s going to destroy its legitimacy with a broad swath of the American public,” Davis said, referring to people who ostensibly travel to the United States to have American children. “They are following politics and vanity projects instead of the law.”

    Defenders of birthright citizenship note that the 14th Amendment says that “all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside.”

    In another major case on Trump policies, the court will decide whether the president can remove without cause the heads of roughly two dozen independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission, that Congress set up to be insulated from political influence.

    In addition, the justices will rule on whether Trump can fire Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook while a lawsuit over her removal plays out in the courts. A ruling for Trump would give the president far greater control over the powerful central bank.

    These rulings, and other major decisions, are likely to come in the next week or so as the justices sprint toward the end of the term in late June or early July.

    The disaffection with the Supreme Court among Trump’s allies is notable because the president reshaped the court in his first term with three staunchly conservative appointees, who have delivered major victories for conservatives on abortion, affirmative action, religious rights, and more.

    This term, the justices have handed the administration a string of wins on the emergency docket, allowing Trump policies on limiting immigration, freezing foreign aid, and dismantling the Education Department to move forward for now.

    Trump appointed Gorsuch, who did not respond to a request for comment, along with Brett M. Kavanaugh and Barrett.

    The wins have not satisfied Trump, who has attacked the court — including his own nominees — in increasingly caustic and personal terms that legal scholars say have little historical precedent; Trump has called the justices “bad,” “stupid,” “weak,” and other epithets.

    Davis suggested that such comments could have an effect on the justices. “Sometimes feeling the heat helps people see the light,” he said.

    White House spokesperson Abigail Jackson said in a statement that “this administration values the judicial branch.”

    “The American people have always valued President Trump’s ability to freely speak his mind and share his thoughts directly with them,” Jackson said. “It’s one of the many reasons why the President was resoundingly reelected. He will unapologetically share his opinions about the Court’s rulings, as is his right.”

    Richard Lazarus, a Harvard University law professor, said the heart of the conflict is Trump’s view that the conservative justices owe him fealty, rather than acting as an independent branch of government.

    “There’s no question that Trump, starting with the tariff case, has taken aim at the court and made quite clear his expectation that justices who were nominated by Republican presidents should vote for his positions,” Lazarus said.

    In a 6-3 decision in February, the justices ruled that Trump did not have the authority under a 1977 law to impose sweeping tariffs on most of the nation’s trading partners. Of the court’s conservatives, Gorsuch, Barrett, and Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined the liberals in the majority.

    After that ruling, Trump excoriated some of the justices at a news conference in ways he had previously reserved for lower-court judges. The president said he was “ashamed” of the justices who ruled against him, later singling out Barrett and Gorsuch.

    “I think it’s an embarrassment to their families, you want to know the truth,” he said.

    In April, Trump kept the heat on by becoming the first sitting president to attend arguments at the court. Many saw his appearance at the birthright citizenship case as an attempt to pressure the justices to back the administration.

    Later that month, Trump accused the liberal justices of embracing “warped and perverse policies, ideas, and cases” and said the conservatives “give the Democrats win after win.” He added that “certain ‘Republican’ Justices have just gone weak, stupid, and bad.” The justices do not see themselves as representing particular parties but as expressing judicial philosophies.

    Trump’s attacks have continued. In a nearly 550-word Truth Social post in May, Trump lamented Barrett and Gorsuch’s lack of “loyalty” for ruling against him on tariffs.

    “Well, maybe Neil, and Amy, just had a really bad day, but our Country can only handle so many decisions of that magnitude before it breaks down, and cracks!!!” Trump wrote.

    Amid the acrimony, the justices and Trump have also exchanged olive branches. Trump invited the court’s conservatives to a state dinner for Britain’s King Charles.

    They’ve also had other interactions. Roberts hosted a clerk reunion that Vice President JD Vance and second lady Usha Vance attended.

    The justices have offered only muted responses to Trump’s broadsides.

    Asked whether he owed loyalty to the president during a CBS News interview in May, Gorsuch said his “loyalty is to the Constitution.” In March, Roberts said attacks against judges and justices are “dangerous” and have ”got to stop,” but did not mention Trump.

    Behind that reserve, Trump’s attacks have sparked debate among the justices, according to a person familiar with their thinking, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe private conversations. Some want to ignore the attacks, while others favor a more forceful public response, the person said.

    Roman Martinez, who heads the Supreme Court practice at Latham & Watkins and argues frequently before the court, said responding to Trump could prove a slippery slope.

    “The net result of being drawn into a back-and-forth with politicians is it is going to lower the stature of the court and the institution and make it look more political and politicized,” Martinez said. “I don’t think that’s in the court’s best interest.”

    Fisher said it appears Trump is trying to demand loyalty from the justices the way he has with lawmakers and administration appointees, but he lacks an effective cudgel. Supreme Court justices have lifetime appointments, so Trump cannot threaten them with primary challenges or fire them.

    “He’s casting about, looking for some way to make the court feel like he’s watching them and is putting pressure on them, but I don’t think it has much of an effect,” Fisher said.

    Hanging over the strained relationship is the question of whether the president will openly defy one of the court’s rulings at some point, a scenario that many legal experts say could plunge the nation into a constitutional crisis.

    Most legal experts say the administration appears to be complying with high court orders so far. They note that Trump went along with a ruling blocking the deployment of National Guard troops to Chicago, among others.

    But dozens of lower-court judges have found that Trump officials are flouting their decisions, particularly when it comes to immigration cases. And some experts see signs of slippage even when it comes to the Supreme Court; Lazarus said the administration’s response to the tariff case, for example, “strikes me as pretty close to non-compliance.”

    The Supreme Court struck down Trump’s tariffs as illegal, and a specialized trade court has ordered the administration to refund $166 billion in import levies paid by businesses. Despite the rulings, Trump officials have gone back to court arguing they should not have to refund the full amount.

    Trump also said in an interview that he would “remember” companies that do not seek a refund, a comment some saw as a warning to those that do. A judge has complained about the pace of the administration’s refunds. The administration has said it is difficult to process so many payments.

    Whatever the outcome in the remaining cases this term, Fisher said he sees no letup in the tension between Trump and the court.

    “Almost all substantive policymaking is coming out of the White House instead of Congress, so it stands to reason there is going to be continued friction between the courts and the president,” Fisher said. “All the more so when you have a president that describes himself as willing to push boundaries.”

  • Quarantine comes to an end for the last of the hantavirus ship passengers in Nebraska

    OMAHA, Nebraska — The last eight American passengers who endured 42 days in a specialized hospital quarantine unit after exposure to an unusual hantavirus outbreak on a cruise ship that killed three people have left the Nebraska facility.

    U.S. Department of Health and Human Services officials on Monday confirmed the end of the quarantine.

    “Through close collaboration among federal, state, and local partners, HHS helped protect the American people, contain potential risks, and bring this response effort to a successful conclusion,” HHS spokesperson Emily Hilliard said in an email.

    More than 120 people were evacuated from the MV Hondius in Spain’s Canary Islands early last month — including the 18 Americans who wound up in the National Quarantine Unit in Omaha — though most were from other countries.

    In addition to those people evacuated by health officials in full protective suits, at least 30 other passengers had left the ship earlier before the outbreak was documented. That included seven Americans, who were allowed to monitor for any symptoms at home. When the ship eventually docked in the Netherlands, 25 crew members and two medical personnel were on board and had to quarantine.

    The World Health Organization didn’t immediately respond Monday to questions about the status of all the other people who had to quarantine around the globe. A total of 13 cases of the virus, including the three who died, were identified among people who were on the ship.

    Most Americans returned home but some were forced to quarantine

    One of the American passengers, Angela Perryman, had been held against her will and against the recommendation of a government medical expert. She said in an interview Monday passengers were told that the quarantine monitoring period ended Sunday at 2 p.m. She left on a flight that evening. Others were flying out Monday, she said.

    “We were locked in our rooms until 1:55. And at 2 o’clock, ‘OK, well, everybody walk out and go home,’” Perryman said, speaking from her Florida home.

    Some stayed the night elsewhere in Omaha, but Perryman pushed for a flight home that evening. The government paid for the flights, she said.

    Seven of the last remaining patients stayed there voluntarily, but Perryman was forced to stay as the result of a controversial quarantine order that was deemed unnecessary even by some health officials.

    Perryman and seven others spent six weeks at the National Quarantine Unit at the University of Nebraska Medical Center. That monitoring period was set because symptoms of hantavirus have taken as long as 42 days to appear in previous outbreaks. None were reported to have developed the illness.

    Ten others who were at the facility were allowed to leave earlier under an agreement that they would be closely monitored in their home states.

    Outbreak developed on a small cruise ship

    The passengers were on a Dutch cruise ship, the MV Hondius, traveling in the South Atlantic that became the setting of a hantavirus outbreak that killed three people, including a Dutch couple who health officials believe were the first exposed to the virus while visiting South America.

    Hantaviruses usually spread when people inhale contaminated residue of rodent droppings, but the hantavirus that caused the outbreak, called the Andes virus, may be able to spread between people in rare cases, health officials say.

    Some 25 Americans were on the ship, including about seven who disembarked in April and 18 who remained on board. Sixteen were evacuated to the Nebraska quarantine unit in Omaha on May 11, and two other Americans joined them a few days later.

    Passengers staying in Omaha enjoyed Nebraska hospitality

    During the passengers’ stay, local Omaha restaurants and food trucks delivered special meals for them to enjoy almost daily. And the nurses sometimes made Starbucks runs to deliver some of the passengers’ favorite drinks.

    The rooms they stayed in are like hotel rooms equipped with a desk, television, internet connection, and exercise equipment to help the passengers pass the time.

    One of the passengers, Jake Rosmarin, on Monday morning posted an “I’m finally coming home” video that showed him leaving his room at the quarantine center, hauling two suitcases and a backpack and turning out the lights as he walked out the door. Later Monday, he posted a video of the Omaha skyline shot out the window of his plane as he headed home to his fiance in Boston and his family.

    Rosmarin, who is a travel blogger, posted a tearful video Sunday thanking the staff of the quarantine unit, the Omaha community, and his family and friends who helped him get through quarantine.

    “I want to thank the Omaha, Nebraska, community for welcoming us with open arms and showing us complete kindness and generosity. And a big thanks to all of you who have helped me get through this because I really don’t know if it would have been as easy without the support from strangers,” he said while wearing a Nebraska Huskers sweatshirt that someone sent him.

    Florida wouldn’t agree to monitor passenger round the clock

    Perryman had a darker take. She was forced to stay after Florida officials refused a federal demand that the state provide round-the-clock surveillance on her if she were returned home. This happened even as they had started making travel arrangements for the passengers weeks ago, she said.

    “Nobody actually expected anybody to get sick at that point,” she said. “Everybody was well aware that we were all going home on commercial flights.”

    She called the six-week quarantine “a political stunt.”